"And lo, God in his wrath did send upon us a plague, that which is known by the heathens as the Antithesis, to punish those who didst defile his creation."
-The Rainier Bible, 2050
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Getting to the room I’d used last night was a race against time.
The combat stim I’d used wasn’t so polite as to stop working instantly as if a switch was flipped the moment the timer hit zero; even as I walked through the doors of the base I could feel the effects wearing off, leaving my system exposed to all the fear-related hormones that had been building up in the last two hours. It wasn’t even as simple as just getting to my room; I had to take care of a few other things on the way.
“Juny, please give Alana a full report on the battle in that first skyscraper. Y’know, the tactics the Antithesis used and such. Let her know there might be more Model Twenty Ones in command,” I told Juny as I struggled to walk, a new batch of nanites already hard at work knitting my thigh back together. There was no time to wait for the process to finish.
“Of course!” came her answer, from the Eyebot that had caught up with me at some point. I should have caught it with my motion tracker, which just told me how badly distracted I was already.
“And let her and…Nguyen, I guess, know I’m going to be unavailable for a bit. Just tell them it’s a bad reaction to a stim and not to let anyone into my room…no matter what they hear.” I could already feel a panic attack oncoming, and it was taking all my self-control to hold it back. There was no doubt in my mind that it would be as legendary as Juny had promised.
With every step my leg healed a bit more, and my speed increased as I pushed my way through the halls. Night had fallen and the Antithesis attacks were lightening up, so there were quite of number of men and women coming off duty to wade through. Fortunately my armor made me look much bigger, and people tended to get out of the way when someone huge comes through.
No one even joined me when I got onto the elevator. That might have been the fresh coat of blood I was wearing, though. I silently apologized to the janitors that would have to clean up the bloody footsteps left in my wake.
By the time I reached the room I was looking for, I found it hard to even breathe. My eyes were clouded by tears and my throat was swollen. Terror was climbing its way up my spine. It was a good thing I didn’t need my hands to remove my armor, because they were shaking so hard that I’d have trouble just removing a shirt.
I slammed the door shut more out of a lack of fine motor control than anything else and triggered the opening function on the Dainsleif the moment there was enough space to climb out. But when I tried to step backwards, my wounded thigh didn’t move and I fell backwards, hitting the floor roughly. That last blow the Model Twenty One slipped in had damaged the armor so badly the left lag had jammed shut.
My throat tightened further. Having my leg restrained was exacerbating my already escalating condition. Grabbing the armor’s frame, I pulled myself to my feet and took a closer look at the armor. I was thinking through a fog by now, but if anything, the panic was sharpening my determination to free myself. I had to step up onto the frame, using it as a support as I pulled my leg up and out of the mangled armor, but even then, I was unable to sigh a breath of relief because my mind was already shutting down.
At long last I collapsed onto the bed, unable to care about how dirty I still was. All I could think about was grabbing a pillow and burying my face in it before the screaming started. I wish I could say I blacked out at that point from the stress, but somehow I remained aware throughout the entire ordeal.
The bottom fell out of my stomach. My spine felt like it was sinking into the abyss. Vertigo struck me more powerfully than anything I’d felt before. Even with my eyes close the room seemed to spin like the inside of a dryer. Seconds passed like hours as I screamed into a pillow, simultaneously experiencing every moment of acrophobia I should have felt while fighting along with the fear of each and every brush with death I’d experienced.
There was no thinking during that period. Just riding out the wave.
My throat grew hoarse and my muscles became sore from tensing up. When I finally began to calm, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know how long I’d been melting down. More minutes passed before I could move again, as I first had to wait for my rock-hard muscles to loosen again and my constricted tendons to let up. It was unbearably painful with nothing else to distract me; I’d had muscles lock up before, but never all of them at once.
And of course when I did finally manage to move I proceeded to overcompensate and fling myself right off the bed.
“Ugh,” I groaned, lying there bonelessly. Juny was silent. After a few moments I got to my feet and dragged myself into the shower despite feeling more exhausted than I ever had before, tearing off my tattered clothes and turning on the water. Cold water blasted me, reminding me a bit too late that I had to wait for it to heat up, but I signed in resignation and just started scrubbing.
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I found the bed filthy when I returned and wrinkled my nose. I was in no mood to clean the sheets myself so I went a different route. Considering that my clothes were destroyed again too, I probably needed to consider getting some kind of Samurai-grade self-repairing shit too, but that could wait.
“Juny, are there some sheets and blankets I can buy with points? Class 0 if possible, I don’t want to spend much on this.” As I spoke I tore the ruined sheets off the bed and piled them in the corner, then set about finding a change of clothes.
“If you must,” Juny replied, reminding me of the last time I’d bought something in Class 0. It was the only other time I’d ever heard her break character, but I was too fatigued to think about it much. I had other things to spend my limited brain power on before bed.
One point later I had clean sheets and fell into bed, my wet hair soaking the pillow that had survived unsullied, but I didn’t care much at this point.
“Okay. Before I go to sleep I have got to deal with my armor and those organ replacements. How many points do I have now?”
“7,764!”
Well, at least I was flush with points to spend. I wasn’t sure how much I should spend on what though. Split it evenly between weapons, armor, and organs? Just the latter two? Or should I put the bulk into my armor and use what was left for the organs? To start with I thought it would be a good idea to unlock the next tier of power armors.
“How much would it cost to get Class II Power Armors?”
“400 points and 1 token!”
“How many tokens do I have?”
“You currently have five!”
“…what did I do to get those, anyway? Actually, what even are they?”
“Tokens are awarded for certain milestones and are required for upper class catalogues. You have currently earned tokens for killing your first Antithesis above Model Ten, surviving the trip through the infested section and killing a large number of Antithesis in the process, destroying a small hive, killing a Model Eleven unaided, and contributing heavily to the death of a Model Twenty One,” Juny explained excitedly. That was more than I could unpack right now, but if I understood correctly, earning more would take escalating achievements?
“Alright, first, let’s get that catalogue. Give me a list of Dainsleif models from that catalogue, too.”
“Of course!”
Class II Power Armors Unlocked!
Points Reduced to…7,364
At the same time as the notification appeared, I received a list of armor models. Several versions were skipped, probably because they were Class I. I poked through the ones that were available- with Class II armors available I was hoping to pick out one with energy shielding and an overall boost across the board, along with a slimmer profile.
I had to strike a balance here, because the more advanced the armor, the higher the level of enhancements I would need to safely use it. Armor wasn’t developed in a vacuum and eventually the society designing it was going to achieve advancements in cybernetics or gene modification, allowing armor to in turn be designed with higher specifications in mind.
Once I had enough time to adjust to them, I’d be getting those modifications too, but right now I was limited to what I could buy in a single night. Fortunately, the society behind the Dainsleif series had clearly developed it themselves, not using stolen technology. Each iteration was a slight improvement on the one before, only sufficiently different that it could no longer be considered a modification of the model before.
Changes in the base appearances in some generations made me suspect Juny had condensed several different product lines into a single chain, but I wasn’t going to bother quibbling over that.
Usually that meant an introduction of a new technology. The Dainsleif-11 was the first with a synthetic muscle layer in place of an exoskeleton, for instance, and the Dainsleif-12 had built in jump-jets equivalent to my current jump pack. Next was an improved power pack, and then finally, at Dainsleif-13, was the first version with proper energy shields, albeit a single panel, directional shield literally attached to an arm.
On the other hand, the Dainsleif-18 received a new integrated sensor system that provided more information than my brain could even process at once. In the end I settled on the Dainsleif-15, a number I was planning to reference as little as I possibly could. Actually, on second thought…
“Juny, are you compiling several different armor lines into one name?” I asked, deciding 15 was already past the point it was just getting silly.
“Yes! I believed that would fit best with your preferences!”
“No, after a while the number is so high that it sounds strange…even the F-35 didn’t actually have 34 previous models,” I told her.
“I see. Making adjustments now!”
After a moment the names changed and the Dainsleif-15 became the Mistilteinn-4. Better. At any rate, the new suit would be a huge improvement. Tougher armor, a more resilient body suit, form-fitting energy shields, and a motion tracker that would detect movement around corners were the main improvements, but it would also double my admittedly lacking strength. The visor would even shrug off even the sort of attack that broke my first one.
I would have preferred some improvements in resistance to extreme temperatures, but it wasn’t a priority. The real problem actually lay in the lack of exoskeleton. The Dainsleif-6 was able to fold open thanks to the exoskeleton itself. This suit lacked that, and as a result was significantly less bulky, but it was also harder to put it on and take it off. The armor plating had to be removed manually before I could slip off the undersuit, requiring technicians with specialized tools or an automated maintenance station.
Though on the bright side, that did make the suit more modular. I could replace any part of it to upgrade it incrementally. Altogether it would cost me 2,500 points, which was a lot less than I’d feared, but still pretty hefty. If I were willing to spend more I could go for automated shoulder-mounted weapons, but…anything beyond would be pushing the limits of what a suit this size could fit, and I didn’t want something the size of the Dainsleif-6 even if it would have higher performance.
I was going to have to buy it in the morning though. It would be easiest to have it placed directly onto me and buy the maintenance station later. For now…
“I’ll go with the Mistilteinn-4, but I’ll buy it tomorrow morning. We’ll use the Mjolnir Mk V design I made on day one. Now…I don’t know where to start on the bio upgrades, so what would you recommend?”