"Who could have possibly guessed that dumping radioactive waste into Antithesis hives would just make them radioactive instead of killing them? I really thought it was the next big wave in nuclear waste disposal! I was doing you all a favor!
"...please don't kill me."
-Last words of Sergei Cameron, mastermind behind the plan which resulted in the creation of the Second Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
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I hardly had time to catch my breath from the previous battle before the building began to shake.
“Please stand right here!” Juny called out, directing me towards the closest staircase- the one leading down. “Keep your arms and legs inside the stairwell at all times!”
I hustled for the stairs, figuring this was a ‘move first, ask questions later situation.’ It didn’t take much imagination to catch onto what was happening, though I wondered what was going to make the stairs any more safe than, say, just getting the fuck out of the building.
Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long to find out. I was barely within the staircase before the shaking was joined by crashing sounds from above, and then the floor outside the stairwell vanished in an avalanche of building materials. Wood, pipes, plaster, and all kinds of other things fell through my line of sight, and I was pretty sure I saw some Antithesis bodies in the mix, too.
When the collapse finally finished, a thick dust hung over the space outside, with plumes of it wafting into the stairwell around me. I waved a hand in front of my face to keep it away from my damaged visor and waited for it to clear, revealing a gutted building that was now essentially nothing but pillars and crossbeams. Bits of floor and cladding clung to those remaining bits of structure, but all of the weaker components between them had vanished into the cloud below.
The only other things left were Antithesis. Coordinated by a Model Seventeen as they were, Model Fives had clustered around the edges of the building, clinging to the crossbeams as everything else fell down around them. I didn’t doubt there were other models as well, particularly hidden Nines, and maybe Ones that could swoop in as a swarm to disturb my balance. It was like I’d gone from a shooter genre to a platformer.
Before the Fives could start throwing things at me, I ducked back into the stairwell where I had cover to consider my options. First was the hovercar. Too obvious. I didn’t doubt the Seventeen would have Elevens waiting to dogpile onto me if I tried that.
Second was using the jump pack to leap my way up, but at a glance, it looked like the supports were fairly far apart, and it wasn’t a small building. With no running start I didn’t think I could make it, and besides, in the business, they called flying soldiers ‘skeet.’ It was best not to make jumps in the open and unobscured, particularly not repeatedly in a way the enemy could plan for.
Option three was navigating my way across the crossbeams and using the support pillars as cover, slowly taking out the Model Fives as I made my way up. Both two and three had the problem of my fear of heights, and three meant shooting at distant targets floors above me. The HMG wasn’t going to help this time, even assuming that it wasn’t buried below.
Fourth was simply destroying the entire building. Again. I suspected that would be more difficult this time, because I would be out in the open where Antithesis could swarm me, and I would likely need to remove more pillars thanks to the structure’s sudden weight loss regimen.
Three seemed like the best chance of success, but there was a problem with that: I’m afraid of heights. I’ve had to do many things that fly in the face of that over the last couple of days, but nothing so extended and dependent on not making a mistake. This time I would be walking a tightrope where if I lost my balance I fell off the building, and I had to maintain that for floor upon floor.
“Juny, is there anything that would help with my fear of heights?”
“Of course! Fear-Be-Gone will entirely block your ability to feel fear for two hours!” she chirped. That definitely sounded too good to be true.
“And the catch?”
“As it’s only temporary, you will be flooded by all the fear-related chemicals blocked by the compound when it wears off, almost certainly resulting in a severe panic attack!”
“Almost sounds like a great time when you say it in that cheery voice,” I complained, wincing. Still, that was a problem for Future Erica, and Present Erica kind of needed a solution now. “Stick a pin in that for now, we’ll be coming back to it. Now, if I remember correctly, you mentioned self-guided ammo a few days ago?”
“Yes! With self-guided ammunition, even a near-sighted toddler can hit their target!”
“Am I the near-sighted toddler in this analogy…? Whatever. I want an assault rifle that can load self-guided ammo. Use the MA5D model I made with the shroud removed. Make sure it has a burst-fire option and an under barrel camera,” I told her, figuring she could narrow it down and find something that could be placed inside a MA5D casing. She’d found ways to make all my other weapons match a different appearance so far.
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“Would you like it to have magnetic rails like your submachineguns?”
“Sure, may as well.” The reasons I’d declined to purchase a weapon like this earlier were still in effect, but I was now backed into a corner enough that I was willing to compromise a bit. Using the self-guided rounds felt to me like cheating, but in the end, that wasn’t a principle I was attempting to follow, just something I preferred to avoid. Now I had too many targets at too great a range to get away from that. Figuring out how to carry it was going to be a problem, too, but…oh, well.
Class I Kinetic Rifles unlocked!
Points reduced to... 5981
New Purchase: Fragarach 3A
Points reduced to...5691
I took up the modded MA5D, flipped the fire selector to burst, and activated the camera as a test. Connecting to my augs, the rifle projected a window where I could see as if I was looking from just under the barrel, with a reticle for where the weapon was actually pointing, given it was a bit above center. Unlike my normal reticles, this one had brackets around it, which I assumed indicated lock-on status.
There were too many Model Fives out there for me to expose myself to fire while killing them. As a trial, I poked the Fragarach out the stairwell door and scanned the floor above me for a Model Five. After holding it on target, albeit shakily, for a few moments, the brackets met in the middle to form a box and turned green. When I pulled the trigger, despite the extended range, three bullets zipped through the intervening space to rip through my target, sending it falling to the earth many stories below.
Moments later, countless spines turned the area around me into a pincushion.
They definitely knew where I was, and were waiting for me to leave cover. Before I could even begin moving, I was going to have to thin out their numbers, and fortunately for me, I would have no trouble killing them without leaving cover. Pushing my rifle out into the open again, I scanned through the many I-beams crisscrossing the now empty center of the building, pinpointing and eliminating every Model Five I could get a line of sight on from this position.
I could only really aim at those within a couple floors of me before there were too many girders in the way, but those happened to be the ones that were the biggest threat to me at the moment, so I could complain. Once I’d killed the ones I was able to hit from here, I withdraw my rifle and braced myself.
“Alright, just two more things and then we can get a move on. Hit me with the Fear-Be-Gone and give me two drones with shields to catch their spikes,”
New Purchase: Fear-Be-Gone
Points reduced to...5616
New Purchase: Shield Drones x2
Points reduced to…5316
I reached down for the smaller box and gingerly retrieved a syringe. The other, larger boxes opened on their own, and out came two more Eyebots, this time with large shields attached over their faceplates and no antennae. Either shield would be sufficient to cover my body entirely from one direction, and since they were attached to drones, I could have them move as I aimed to give me clear lines of fire.
“Okay. Give me a two hour timer the moment I inject this,” I told Juny as I lined the syringe up with a port on my armor. I took a deep breath and jabbed it in, then depressed the plunger. Nothing seemed to change, but when I glanced out, I didn’t feel the usual sense of vertigo.
The problem was that I wasn’t going to feel any other fear either, and fear was an important survival tool. I would have to be careful not to forget to take cover, among other things, just because my body wasn’t screaming at me to do so anymore.
With those details taken care of, I used five points to reload the Fragarach. For the first time in a while I had to do it by hand, as all the reloading arms on the Dainsleif were either dedicated to other weapons or covered by my jump pack. Another thing to track.
Finally, I stepped out onto the closest I-beam, shield drones trailing behind me and immediately covering my vulnerable sides- one to the left, as we were on the right side of the building and I’d been able to eliminate the Model Fives there fairly thoroughly, and another to the rear, guarding my back. I strode forward with chemically-induced fearlessness, trying not to lose track of my footing while staying aware of the motion tracker and looking for targets.
I heard spines begin to ping off the shield behind me, but that wasn’t a surprise. With the position I’d been in, that was the side with the most Model Fives still in position. I hurried to the closest support pillar, pressing my back against it and crouching both for stability and to present a smaller target, then started picking off more Fives one burst at a time.
Every twelve shots necessitated a reload. It helped me keep track of my kill count and get a rough estimate of the Fives per floor, which was about eight, spaced evenly around the perimeter. No blind spots. Five on the floor above were already dead. Four and three on the ones above that, respectively. From the new position I cleared out the floor above entirely, then spun and firmly gripped the support beam with one hand.
Normally what I did next would be unthinkable, but right now, it made me feel nothing whatsoever. I leaned out over the open air and stepped around the beam, hugging it as I reached for the other side with my other arm. It was a task made more difficult by the weapon in my hand, but the beam wasn’t so thick as to prevent me holding onto it with the crook of my elbow, so I wrapped my trigger arm around it and held on tight while I transferred one foot.
I was keenly aware of the shield drones taking hits as I made the transfer, but their titular shields were doing the job. Moments later I was across, and I took the opportunity to shoot down another pair of Fives, lightening the incoming fire just a bit more.
I had to repeat my maneuver thrice more just to get around to the other stair case leading up. The two support beams- three, presumably, with one being behind the stairs- on my side of the building weren’t connected to the other side in the middle on this floor, only to the frame along the outside of the building, so I first had to transfer to that, then to the crossbeam on the other side.
Each time I reached a pillar, another few Fives fell to the ground, dead. But really, my progress was minimal. If I were to peer upwards I couldn’t even see the top from my current position.
All the same, it felt like progress when I reached the other staircase, and with the way this building was set up, I only needed to swap sides every third floor. But the timer in the corner of my vision told me I’d wasted fifteen minutes already, and a sense of urgency told me I was going to have to pick up the pace.