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The third floor of the mall had a large open space occupying the entire north side dedicated to a food court. A floor to ceiling window stretched across the far wall- or it had, before the Antithesis arrived. Cracks ran through the glass panels in places, while other panes were entire shattered, the glass scattered across the floor of the food court and the street outside.
At the foot of the window, a barricade had been set up using most of the tables in the food court. A cluster of militia sat inside it, occasionally popping out to take potshots at Model Fives hiding in the restaurant fronts to either side. A few Model Threes had died in the space between, but I didn’t see any more of them around.
I crouched near the top of the escalator as I examined the situation, trying to get a better idea of what I was dealing with before running in. My suit would deflect most quills thrown by Model Fives, but a lucky hit could be debilitating all the same.
“I thought only Threes and Fours were spotted exiting those Fourteens. What gives?”
“That’s correct! A review of the camera footage and reports shows no record of any Model Fives until they began to emerge from the holes outside the wall under their own power.”
“Then what are those?” I asked flatly, gesturing towards the food court.
“Maybe there was another hole?”
“And if there’s no sighting of them, it’s probably under this building, isn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question. “Let Nguyen know, and tell him I’ll deal with it as soon as I clear the upper floors.”
“Of course!”
The Model Fives were entirely oblivious to my presence at the moment, and I saw no reason to change that. Instead of heading directly to the food court, I looked for a staff door and slipped into the employee-only halls that connected the back ends of each restaurant, emerging into one in the middle where I would have line of sight of all the restaurants on the opposite wall.
The kitchen was abandoned, but some of the equipment was still on. I flicked the off switch on a deep fryer full of unidentified black lumps, charred beyond recognition, in fear of it catching fire, then headed for the front.
A single Model Five was occupying the space at the front, squeezed into a space barely large enough to fit it behind the cash registers. Its tongue never stopped moving, plucking quills from its back and flinging them towards the barricaded soldiers. It didn’t even notice me before I opened fire, tearing it apart in half a second.
As it collapsed, I took cover behind the counter that had been protecting it and peered out, identifying the Fives occupying other restaurants across the court. I set my arms on the counter to steady my aim and began to pick them off one at a time. Each kill took far more ammunition than I would have liked, but the range was longer than my weapons meant for, even if the bullets are effective that far out in theory, and my aim at that distance is still a work in progress.
With half a dozen more Model Fives in the grave, the militia rallied and began to open fire on the aliens along my side of the court, quickly clearing them out now that the suppressive fire had been more than halved. One of them gave a jaunty wave in my direction as I stood and exited the fast food joint.
I hadn’t moved more than six steps before something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. In the back of the restaurant neighboring the one I just exited was a Model Six, tucked away out of sight of the militia members. After a moment of shock, I returned my SMG to my thigh holder and reached for the shotgun.
It opened its mouth and warbled.
A second later, my shotgun dropped into position and I pulled the trigger, blasting a hole into the massive command unit, but the damage was already done. My motion tracker went crazy as Antithesis boiled out of every store on this floor, along with the employee-only sections and maybe even the floors above. It was impossible to tell if this was a planned ambush or merely a rallying call for reinforcements, not that it made much of a difference.
My shotgun returned to its position and I grabbed both SMGs- not because I could properly dual wield them, but because I wanted to be able to switch immediately when one ran dry. I barely had them ready when the first Model Threes began to reach me. The closest one made the mistake of approaching in the open and died first for its mistake. Another vaulted over a counter and shifted to face it, revoking its existence before it could land.
The militia began to add their fire to the mix as well, killing many of the Model Threes and buying me space. I also felt a few rounds pinging off my armor…but I chose to believe someone had very poor aim rather than that someone I’d never met wanted me dead. They were militia, not trained soldiers. I backed up towards them as I continued to shoot, but with so many targets, it was getting hard to make sense of my motion tracker.
One of them managed to approach from behind a toppled table and launched itself at me, only to find out that I now weighed significantly more than an unarmored human as it bounced right off my Dainsleif armor instead of tackling me to the ground. My first SMG ran dry killing it, and I returned it to my thigh, allowing it to be reloaded while I placed both hands on the remaining gun.
The first wave, largely consisting of Model Threes, continued to fall without causing any real damage to myself or the militia, but their charge was serving as cover for the slower models behind them. I slew several more by the time the first Model Five reached firing range, and then quills were added to the chaos- with myself as the main target.
“I recommend taking cover!”
“Kind of planned on it, thanks.” I emptied the rest of my magazine into the foremost Five and then turned and dove over the barricade. I dropped into cover just before quills began to land, thudding against surprisingly sturdy tables and failing to penetrate. I glanced at the man next to me.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“So how’s your day been?”
“I was going to thank you, but you somehow made it worse!” he accused with a note of incredulity. As he spoke, he plucked a grenade off his vest, pulled the pin, and lobbed it blindly behind him and over the barricade.
“Yeah, kind of starting to think I have a natural superpower and that it’s a bad luck aura.” I popped up as soon as the grenade exploded, having swapped weapons while speaking, and used the explosion as cover to kill a couple more of the Model Fives- in addition to the one it had killed. I could see a second wave of Model Threes arriving, but something odd brushed my senses at that moment. As I dropped back, I looked up, spotting several Model Fours crawling on the ceiling. “Eyes up!”
The Fives momentarily forgotten, everyone but me- my weapons would have probably gone right through the ceiling, too- pointed their weapons up and opened fire at nearly the same time, tearing into the sneaky Fours that had been moments away from dropping onto us. Their carcasses fell just feet away from the barricade with wet splats, closer than any Antithesis had approached so far.
While the militia were busy with that, I cut down the second wave of Model Threes, a task made easier by the fact that I now had a much better firing arc to take advantage of. It was a tense few moments, as while I could kill the Threes easily enough, I had to do so while quills were hurtling towards me, unable to take cover while the militia were occupied elsewhere. If I stopped killing the Threes to duck, they might reach our position before the Fours were dealt with, and then everything would definitely go to shit.
A dozen Threes died trying to take advantage of our distraction. In the same time, multiple javelin-like quills struck my armor, crumpling or snapping against the plating and rocking me ever so slightly with the force of impact. Each hit was harmless, but a reminded that I could be hit at any moment, and I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them hit somewhere less protected.
Finally, the men and women around me returned their attention to the ground, and I ducked down to reload. Just as I sank, the man I had spoken to previously rose up, and in a moment of sheer bad luck, his head intersected with the trajectory of a thrown quill. A chill ran down my spine as a wet crunching sound came from beside me, and his body collapsed, his head run through just below his left eye, joining the handful of dead that were already behind the barricade.
A series of emotions went through me all at once. Disgust, horror, fear, and most of all, guilt. Guilt that I hadn’t killed these Antithesis faster, that I hadn’t made myself a target to draw fire from the brave men and women lacking my advanced armor, and that I had come here to save them only to let him die.
Fuck that.
I knew it was stupid, but in a fit of pique, I found myself vaulting the barricade. There were still over a dozen Model Fives launching quills at us, and I was now their primary target, exposed and out of position. Better me than the frail group at my back. I pushed my armor to the limit as I barreled forward, shielding my vitals with my arms while quills bounced off me. In seconds I was among the Fives, using the closest of them as cover against the rest.
I’d love to say that I engaged in physics-defying gun-fu and dodged all their attacks while putting bullets in them, but I’ve been a samurai for a week. So I settled for pulling my shotgun and blasting them.
The closest Five grabbed a spine from its back and tried to stab me with it instead of launching it. I turned and tanked the hit while raising my shotgun and firing, punching a slug through its stubby little head. The creature behind me came in for a ramming attack, and although I knew it was coming, I didn’t have time to do anything about it. It smacked into my back and, being the size of a car, shoved me forward into the one I’d just killed, emptying my lungs as I was squished between them.
Unfortunately for it, a single digit Antithesis just didn’t have the strength or mass to kill me instantly, and the Five in front of me was too dead to push back. I felt something snap in my torso, but as the Five’s momentum died, I found I had just enough space to grab an SMG from my thigh and twist, pressing the barrel to the monster’s temple.
With its brains evacuated from its skull- actually, do Antithesis have a brain? Headshots kill them, so let’s go with yes- it collapsed onto its side, clearing my line of sight on the next in line and freeing me. This one lobbed a quill at me from short range, and either by luck or learning, it struck my shotgun-toting arm, puncturing the undersuit and piercing all the way through my biceps.
A flash of pain ran through me, and I dropped the shotgun. The benefit of an SMG, though, is that I don’t need both hands to fire it, especially not with my suit assisting. I realigned my SMG and unleashed another burst, scrubbing one more alien bastard from the census. On the other side of the room, the militia rallied, their lower-power weapons chewing through the hides of our alien foes bit by bit, but failing to kill them as quickly as my own could.
I sidestepped the bodies I was sandwiched between and brought the next xeno into my line of sight, killing this one before it could even respond. I spun, knowing this action would have brought me into view of another one as well, and finished off a mostly-crippled Five struggling to bring a quill to bear due its injuries, courtesy of the militia squad.
Torn between targeting me, being capable of killing them instantly one at a time, and the militia, who were wearing them down with gradual damage, the remaining Fives split their attention and made their deaths that much faster. I went down the line and put each of them down, their numbers dwindling until finally, there were none left.
With all the Antithesis dead, I finally dropped to the ground, panting through gritted teeth as I struggled to remove my helmet with one hand. My other arm was radiating so much pain that I couldn’t even feel my broken rib. Finally, I yanked the helmet off and dropped it to the ground, then asked Juny for a regen suite. In the background, I could hear the militia slowly leaving cover, unsure if the battle was over.
“Huh, I thought that was a robot…”
“You thought a robot was more likely than a samurai?”
Peanut gallery aside, I huffed nanobots and then waved them over.
“Can one of you do me a favor and pull this thing out of my arm?” I asked, gesturing to the quill. I knew from experience now that they would first need to break it off, then pull it through, and I couldn’t do that myself.
“Would you like some painkillers?”
“Would they mess with my head?”
“Anything strong enough to dull the pain of removing a foreign object from your arm will likely have an effect on cognitive processes.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Yes!”
I shook my head as the survivors approached, knowing from the gunfire echoing down from the upper levels that I would need enough awareness to keep fighting a while longer. This was gonna hurt like a bitch, and there was no getting around it.
“So do I just, uh…” a woman began, miming pulling on the quill. I explained what she was going to need to go and bit down on a piece of cloth she handed me. Everything went white the second she laid her hands on the quill, and I let out a wordless scream the moment she began to apply pressure. My world was pain for an eternity, and when it ceased, I realized my helper had only broken the quill- she hadn’t even drawn it out yet.
There was no amount of bracing that could prepare me to feel that again, but with great reluctance, I nodded for her to continue. The sensation of that biological weapon being drawn out through the wound was like nothing I’ve ever felt and was also nothing I ever wanted to feel again. It slid through and between my muscles, grinding against bone, accompanied by pain so severe it drowned out all semblance of rational thought.
When it was out, I didn’t even have the presence of mind to check if the wound was closing, though I could feel a squeeze that indicated my suit was preventing further bleeding and probably sealing the hole in itself. I fell over, breathing heavily, sweat falling down my forehead.
“I’m just…gonna lie here for a minute…someone else can tell you what to do next…”