“Specialist Cabot’s got a rocket launcher that’ll do it in, but she can’t hit what she can’t see, ma’am,” Sergeant Jackson told me in response to my question. That was a start; if I knew we could hurt the Model Twenty One, I just needed to arrange a situation where we could hit it.

“Juny, do we have any way of making it visible or holding it still?” I asked, scanning the battlefield for any sign of the target.

“Of course! I would suggest Xinchi Riot Bullets! They are made of a quick hardening resin that will stick to anything they hit and harden when exposed to high heat! A Model Twenty One is capable of breaking free quickly, but it will be both visible and immobile for a brief moment if the coating is sufficient!” Juny reported. I wanted to ask how those didn’t just kill rioters when the heat was applied, but I put it aside for now. I ejected my magazines from both SMGs instead.

“Load up both SMGs with a full magazine and keep those resin bullets coming.” The other problem was how I was going to stop the Twenty One from just killing everyone while I hunted for it. Step one was obvious: I would need to make myself a target again by leaving cover. But I wanted something to deter it too so that it wouldn’t just attack the mercenaries in a moment of opportunity. “Is there anything that would keep it away from the barricade other than fire?”

“Antithesis are vulnerable to certain audio frequencies!”

“Give me a few drones that can project it and scatter them around the mercs, then. Sergeant Jackson, I’m going out there. I’ll give Cabot a chance, so make it count.” Eyebots with speakers for a face appeared around the group as I turned to address the sergeant, one foot already on a crate and ready to carry me over.

“We’ll be ready, ma’am,” the sergeant confirmed.

I hopped the barrier and stepped through the wall of flames separating us from the Antithesis, my shield flaring briefly but holding up. This was going to be the tricky part. I knew it had blood on it, but so did everything else. Until I could tag it with resin, my only advantage was that I knew Twenty Ones liked to attack any way except head on.

For a moment I thought I saw it from the corner of my eye, but I realized it was nothing but a spray of blood. I stood still with my back to the flames, limiting the directions it could approach from, while the mercenaries behind me gunned down anything approaching. As Antithesis were shot to pieces around me, I caught something odd on my motion tracker- a ping from above.

Just in time, I sidestepped away, taking a glancing blow to the shoulder instead of having its full mass come down on my head. I spun, so close to the Twenty One that I couldn’t even aim at it with both weapons, and sprayed it in the flank, dotting its side with patches of resin. It wasn’t much yet, but it was a start.

The creature bounded away immediately, and I just briefly got a good enough look to realize its feet were coated in blood, which was probably how I’d detected it. But the Twenty One probably wasn’t going to try that again, and its feet would be much harder to detect among all the bodies. I waited at the ready for its next attempt, but it soon became clear it wasn’t going to attack me here again. Instead it threw a body at me, and I ducked, letting the Model Three sail into the flames.

“Can I get Haley to make me a hole?” I asked, deciding I needed to take the fight to them.

“Do it, Brown,” the sergeant ordered, and Haley gleefully obliged by emptying an entire drum of grenades at once, blowing holes in the Antithesis front lines. I charged into a gap in their formation, effectively daring the Twenty One to come after me.

With all the explosions, any Model Nine scales in the area had been swept away, so I was able to detect attacks coming my way from most models. We’d collectively thinned the herd quite a bit to boot, so I had no trouble slipping through as long as I was careful. If they started to close in on me, all I had to do was jump over their heads.

Still, I didn’t catch the next attack from the Twenty One. It came seemingly out of nowhere and bowled me over in a tackle but failed to find purchase on my shields, so we both went rolling. Last time I was in this situation my suit was too bulky, but this time I was able to roll with it and bring my weapons up before the Twenty One could disappear again, tagging it in the rear with resin bullets.

I couldn’t linger long, though, because smaller models were already trying to mob me. I shouldered a Three aside to escape encirclement and dodged around a Six, both of which were riddled with bullets by the mercs in my wake. Coming face to face with a wall of Antithesis I was forced to jump, landing on a Six and immediately hopping off, but the next thing I knew I was flying in another direction, my shields gone and my suit beeping at me furiously.

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My jump jets righted my flight, though, and on a hunch I checked my landing spot and opened fire, raking the back of the Twenty One already waiting for me there with resin. It was gone by the time I landed, but that had been the most hits I’d landed so far, so I was more than satisfied.

The Twenty One, though, seemed to realize it was becoming more vulnerable, because the next time I ran into it was when a bloody claw whipped out from behind a heap of bodies to smack me in the chest, popping my shields just after they’d recovered from the last hit. My chest armor was the thickest though, and it absorbed the hit with little more than a scratch. I was sent skidding backwards, but managed to stay on my feet. My opponent didn’t press the advantage, committing even more to ambush tactics than before.

It didn’t know about my motion tracker, though. While I couldn’t always detect the Twenty One itself, I could detect other Antithesis- so when another pile of bodies erupted, the high tier model bursting forth from beneath the bodies, I wasn’t as surprised as it surely hoped. I dodged its jump and unloaded two entire magazines before it could get away this time, practically coating one entire flank in resin.

Changing tactics, it darted behind a dead Six only to reemerge from the other side, returning faster than I expected. I tried to dodge, but I wasn’t its target this time. It snatched one of my SMGs out of my hand as it passed. Not that that was going to slow me down.

“Juny, give me another SMG, same ammo load,” I said, holding my left hand out. A moment later there was a pristine gun in my hand as if it had been there all along. The tide was beginning to turn here, though, and I think we both knew it. The Twenty One was losing its ability to hide, and though it didn’t know precisely what my weapons were doing to it, it was probably wary for that very reason. It didn’t want to expose itself for too long, because that would just give me more time to coat it in resin.

But the Twenty One was also an Antithesis, and its purpose was to kill. It had no sense of self-preservation. It would never retreat in order to stay alive- only look for another avenue of attack.

So I wasn’t surprised when the Twenty One came at me again, probably thinking I’d been disarmed, and with all the resin already coating its body, my motion detector caught it before it reached me. I managed to tag it in the face before it swerved out of the way, but it could only hide for so long. The lower models were dwindling rapidly, their strongest assets either dead or tied up fighting me, so the places the Twenty One could hide and the distractions it could take advantage of were running out.

Still, it was stronger than me, and it was only a matter of time before it decided stealth was impossible and attacked liked a cornered animal. After I managed to nail it a couple more times it finally gave up with the stealthy approach and came for me directly. The Model Twenty One darted out of cover one last time and rushed me, claws out and slashing for my stomach. I caught the first strike with one forearm, its immense strength enough to stagger me and snap something in my arm, but I was too high on adrenaline by now to feel it.

I still had one good arm, and I used it to coat the Twenty One’s leg with resin from ankle to shoulder. It swiped at me again, but a quick hop backwards triggered my jump jets and I got away with only a light graze. Next it tried to pounce, four clawed feet outstretched and reaching for me, but Juny saved my ass with a shield drone that came rocketing in from behind me, catching the Twenty One in the chest and shoving it back several feet.

“Give me a grenade with this stuff to finish it off,” I said to Juny, holstering one gun and holding my hand out while the Twenty One eviscerated the drone with a single motion.

“It has an impact trigger!” Juny helpfully supplied. I hit the only button on the device and lobbed it right at the Twenty One just as it leapt forward to tackle me, this time using its shoulder. The grenade caught it mere feet away from me and burst, filling in the gaps in the resin coating it- the coverage was so great that I almost regretted not just opening with it, but I knew it would have been nearly impossible to pull off while the Twenty One was still evading.

First it needed to be convinced the resin was harmless, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t coated parts of its body the grenade didn’t reach.

My whole abdomen compressed as the huge caniform Antithesis slammed into me, sending me skidding backwards on my back. It didn’t stop moving, continuing through into a final leap that would pin me to the ground, ending the fight.

I kicked my legs up and caught the Model Twenty One in the belly, allowing its own momentum to carry it over me instead- and into the wall of fire the mercenaries had been maintaining this entire time. In an instant the resin coating its body hardened and it hit the ground stiff and unmoving but still alive, just toasty- that is, until a mini-rocket struck it head on, blasting a hole in its armored hide that even it couldn’t survive.

Even then, I would have assumed it was alive if I hadn’t received a point notification for the kill. That drew a sigh of relief from me, and I hauled myself to my feet, giving the team a thumbs up. Now that I had the freedom to look around, I realized the room had gone quiet, all of the Antithesis wiped out entirely. No doubt the ammo Juny provided the mercenaries had contributed; with zero constraints, Huifang and Haley would have been absolute terrors considering the weapons they were using.

Just one last job before we could call this mess dealt with. I would need to clear the roof and reactivate the anti-air defenses or place some of my own. I wasn’t about to jinx myself by making any assumptions about how hard that would be.