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The Model Twenty-One was leading me somewhere.

I couldn’t divine where, but it likely wasn’t anywhere specific. It could kill me at any time if it had just enough time to grab hold. So it didn’t need me in a particular location to gain enough of an advantage to win; it just wanted me further from friendly territory. Was it wary of fighting two Samurai at once? Did it just want me more exhausted when it cornered me on the off chance I could hurt it, simply out of an overabundance of caution?

The only thing that was clear was that I couldn’t go along with its whims. I would need to reverse course and head back towards the occupied section of the city. But that wasn’t a solution in and of itself. I couldn’t hurt the Model Twenty-One directly, and I couldn’t outrun it, so my only remaining choice was to outsmart it somehow. It was all well and good to say that, of course, but it was another to pull it off, especially when I didn’t have much of an idea how smart it was in the first place.

Right now I needed to do two things: first, slow it down, and second, change directions, which would be too dangerous with it right behind me. I was pretty sure the last grenade I’d dropped had forced it to stop or make a detour, so that was my best bet. I would be taking a risk here; the Model Twenty-One needed to be smart enough to identify a threat and avoid it, but not smart enough to realize anything I threw at it was probably harmless and charge right through.

So anything I did use needed to make a big and flashy show, but have a limited range, because if I did accidently catch it in the splash zone it might catch on.

Positioning would be key. Even in the event I got it to slow down for a moment, it would buy me seconds at best, so I needed to be able to use those seconds to the fullest. This time when I jumped to the next building I didn’t go straight ahead but instead at an angle, bringing me closer to the side of the building. I couldn’t cut across very sharply with it behind me, but over the course of a few buildings’ lengths I would wind up at the corner.

I just needed to survive that long.

Like most of the buildings around here, and particularly on the higher floors from what I’d seen, this building was unfinished. There were no obstacles to slow either of us down except support pillars. I cut it especially close to one of them and the Model Twenty-One, with its larger frame, would be forced to make a more drastic dodge. That got me to the other side and I quickly transferred myself to the next skyscraper in line.

This time I found myself dodging a Model Six the moment I landed, barely managing to alter course before I would have run right into its flank. I don’t think it was intentional on its part, otherwise it would have been facing me, so I could only hope the Model Twenty-One would suffer a mishap.

Model Fives were firing at me as I crossed the floor, but I didn’t have time to deal with them and had to just trust my armor to stop any direct hits. I think I was somewhere around the center of the abandoned city by now, or at least the edges of what might be considered the center, so it was possible there was a hive somewhere in this building. It wasn’t on this floor, though, so I didn’t have to deal with avoiding egg sacs and vines, fortunately.

When I was nearing the corner I decided to go ahead and enact my plan.

“Instant Star!” I yelled to Juny, grasping the grenade with one hand as soon as it appeared. I primed it, and the moment I bent my knees to jump, I dropped it. Even as I was sailing through the air amidst a cascade of broken glass I was already shouting for the next one. “Another!”

I landed and halted my momentum instead of running this time, making a ninety degree turn to my left. Again I primed the grenade in hand, and the instant I was about to jump I dropped it, praying the Model Twenty-One had been delayed enough to give me the time I needed. Sure enough, I made it to the next building unmolested, a third grenade in hand as I made one more turn, bringing me to a full one-eighty.

The series of explosions in my wake barely even registered as I jumped one more time, leaving the third and final grenade behind as a present. I crashed through the window of a corner office, this time one with proper walls, and I had a premonition that this floor wasn’t going to be so easy to navigate.

When I emerged into the hallway outside I saw that I didn’t have a clear path through the building this time, and would instead have to navigate the hallways. Though I had entered via a corner office, the hall directly in front of me didn’t look like it was long enough to get me all the way to the other side.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A right turn wouldn’t exactly be helpful, though, so I started forward, not wanting to let the Twenty-One catch up to me. I was halfway down the hall when I realized it was a moot point- the invisible Antithesis had apparently seen through my plan and sought to cut me off. The wall to my left exploded shortly ahead of me, and I skidded to a stop, bringing my assault rifle to bear reflexively.

Bullets ricocheted off its body harmlessly, doing little more than making its body shimmer from the impacts. It was good enough to serve as suppressive fire. The Model Twenty-One flinched for a moment and moved to dodge, and the instant it did, I spun and booked it back down the hallway, cutting around the corner to take the hallway I’d passed over earlier.

Behind me the Model Twenty-One slammed into the corner wall feet first and launched itself right into a run on my heels. Jumping into a run wasn’t quite enough to make up for the delay inherent in halting its own momentum during the turn, though, a fact I took advantage of on the next corner by dropping yet another grenade behind me to make it stop a little bit longer.

I’d misjudged the distance, though, and when the Model-Twenty One turned the corner it was caught in the ensuing plasma explosion. Given that my motion tracker still wasn’t picking it up, I’d received no points, and a glance over my shoulder showed nothing but a scorched and empty hallway, though, the damage was non-existent- and that strategy wasn’t going to work anymore.

I hung a left, then a right, a right, and one more left, pursued every step of the way by the world’s most mobile Venus fly trap. That got me to the other side of the building, though, and I splintered apart a wooden door as I entered another corner office and went right for the window. The Model Twenty-One, too broad to fit through the door, ripped apart the frame as it passed through behind me, its speed dropping for just long enough for me to make the jump.

Landing in a small but empty room- it looked like it would have been a doctor’s office, eventually- I scrambled through the door to the hallway before the Twenty-One could follow behind me. I made a split-second guess as to where the waiting room would be, skirting around a counter and out into a long, empty room, and then immediately into the hallway beyond.

Behind me the Model Twenty-One slowed as it was forced to shoulder its way through several doorways in a row, and I decided I had one last trick I could pull to make it hesitate. I swapped my assault rifle out for my shotgun and spun, holding down the trigger as I attempted to hit what I couldn’t see.

Several high-explosive rounds hit home, and the force of the explosions combined with its already lowered speed resulted in the Twenty-One being reduced to a stop. I could just barely make out its head shaking off the impact through the smoke the shells had left behind before the cloud dispersed too much for me to see anything.

I didn’t waste any time resuming my running again as the large Antithesis broke apart the door frame in its way the hard way, unable to apply its mass and momentum to the job this time. I would have a bit of a head start now while it regained its speed. At this point it occurred to me that my next two jumps land me in buildings, but the one after that…

There might be a way I could kill the Model Twenty-One after all. In fact, it was an application of the way I’d killed a large and sturdy model just hours ago. Assuming a fall over a mere few dozen stories would be enough, that is.

“Need a smoke grenade when I land, next two buildings” I told Juny now as I navigated my way to the next window.

“Of course!”

I flew through the air across a street, bathed in twilight as the sun fell below the mountain peaks. Right as I landed on the top floor, I gripped a grenade provided by Juny and took off running, dropping it halfway through the floor. It wasn’t going to actually make the Model Twenty-One lose track of me since it could hear my footsteps, but that was exactly what I was counting on.

With a cloud of smoke at my back I jumped to the final building, which sat directly across from the wall. Gunfire could be heard loud and clear here, and the windows of this building were already riddled with bullet holes- where they still existed at all.

Once again I dropped a smoke grenade. My invisible predator surged towards me recklessly, knowing the smoke was harmless and having grown used to my methods by now. It burst through the smoke and jumped, ready to chase me into the next building-

Except there wasn’t one.

I sailed out over No Man’s Land in an arc that would be impossible flat without my grav-chute, and my jump pack increased the distance I flew even further. The Model Twenty-One, on plant-muscle power alone, didn’t have the jump strength to catch me. It flailed its limbs and raked one across my thigh just as my jump pack fired, and I hissed in pain as its claws ripped apart my armor like aluminum foil and ravaged the muscle and skin beneath, but then it was falling and I was rising.

Silently, the Model Twenty-One dropped to the ground below. It was a long way down- dozens of stories, over a hundred meters. Its arms struggled to find something to grab onto, something to jump off of, its lonely fight for survival just barely visible thanks to the smoke rising from below.

While I slowly descended, it slammed into the ground, too far away to hear over all the sound of battle- but I could imagine a sickening crack. Amazingly, it still wasn’t dead. However, its limbs had clearly been shattered in the fall, as it could do little more than crawl towards the nearest humans, determined to kill even now.

One at a time, tanks began to alter their aim. Their turrets turned slowly, the barrels depressing until they pointed right at the high-tier Antithesis helpless before them. The closest one fired, and the Model Twenty-One disappeared for as it was struck by a shell designed to penetrate armored vehicles, and yet, when it reappeared, it was somehow still alive. Battered, thrown backwards by the impact, but living.

A second tank fired. Then a third, a fourth. Only when five tanks had chipped in did I finally receive a notification that I had received points- nearly one-thousand of them, even with five tanks doing most of the damage.

I didn’t have time to celebrate or question that number, though, because I had about ten minutes to find a nice, quiet place to have a complete and utter meltdown.