"I hereby take authority over the Antithesis scourge, which have no right to our planet or anywhere, and we hit that swarm into the SUN!"
-Perr Pat, televangelist, shortly before her death in 2025
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When I finally emerged on the roof of the apartment building, I released a sigh of relief. I mean, I knew exactly how many floors were left the entire time, but there nothing quite like reaching the finish line to make you like an ordeal was over with. Clearing the building had been like exactly the type of game I don’t like: jump scares, occasional bodies, and monsters in unusual and creative places.
It was hard to say why so goddamn many Model Nines had hidden themselves in this one fucking building- Juny had checked, and no other building had been reported as having so many- but the most simple explanation was just that they were the most malicious little fucks to ever hide and seek, and this one happened to have had its power lines cut off at some point. There’d been a smattering of other models, too, but only in ones and twos.
The real problem, of course, was the sheer number of apartments I’d needed to check. After the second floor I realized I should have checked the actual apartments as well, and I had to go back down and start over from scratch. I left an Eyebot on the first floor by the door, just in case, but it hadn’t caught anything trying to escape. With sensors unreliable, I searched every goddamn room in that building over the course of hours, and despite the raw number of Antithesis feeling sizable at a few dozen, they’d been so spread out that I encountered one only a couple times per floor.
Some floors were entirely empty, or at least I sure hoped they were.
It was boring. It was tedious. It was, nonetheless, dangerous. It still had to be done, though, so I’d sucked it up and kept going. It was unfortunate I couldn’t burn the accursed rectangular offshoot of hell to the ground out of sheer unrelenting spite, but I was pretty sure it was bad form to cause billions of dollars in property damage to get revenge on an inanimate object.
“Juny, call the car up here, please,” I said, the words coming out with an unsurprising lack of energy. Juny, changing her color scheme back to normal, perked up.
“Oh? Did you figure out where they’re most likely sending you next?” she asked, making me wonder if she knew already.
“No, but walking up all those stairs sucked, and I’ll be damned if I walk back down them.”
“You could always jump!”
“Is your goal to drive me stark raving mad by the end of the week?”
The hovercar arrived, but Juny didn’t answer the question. I asked again as I climbed in.
“…Juny?”
Still no answer. She just floated there. Menacingly. I decided some questions are better left unanswered, anyway.
“Whatever, just me a line to Nguyen, please.”
A dial tone I recognized from old television shows played as I awaited an answer. He took a surprisingly long time to pick up, all things considered, but a couple of minutes later he took the call. While I waited, I glanced out at the wall, finding that the attacks had resumed in my absence, although they were coming only in drips and drabs. Probably just keeping people busy.
“Sai- ah, Erica, was there something you needed?” he asked, again barely stopping himself from saying one word too many.
“I’m finally finished with that building. Got anything else for me?”
“Oh, thank the Protectors. A large group of Model Threes was just called in on the right flank, and we’ve already redeployed as many as we can spare. Can you handle them?”
“Sure, is that your right or mine?”
“I don’t know which direction you’re facing.”
“…right. Sorry, it’s been a long day. I’m sure Juny’s figured it out already, so consider it handled.”
“Thanks, and good luck.”
“Juny, take us outside the wall, I want to hit them from the side.”
I probably didn’t need luck to handle Model Threes, but he sounded pretty desperate, so maybe there were just that many of them. Juny turned the car towards the flank and gunned it a bit harder than I liked, and it wasn’t long before we were outside the wall, setting down far within the tree line. Branches snapped and fractured as several tons of car fell through them.
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As I stepped out, my motion tracker immediately started throwing a wall of positives at me, though I really didn’t needs its help to spot the mob. We had set down northwest of the northwestern most corner of the wall and outside of Boone entirely, in order to be on the opposite side of the Antithesis. We were actually far enough towards their territory to avoid friendly fire, as I would be shooting in the direction of the killing zone abutting the longest section of the wall, while they were shooting north from a position somewhere to my east.
I’d made the decision on the fly, but there was a logic to it. On the wall I was just one gun among many, and that just didn’t feel like my style. Anyone could do that. I was, as a samurai, in a position to outmaneuver the Antithesis and had the capacity to survive behind their lines, taking pressure off the defenders, so that’s exactly what I’d done.
Stepping past some trees and into sight of the Antithesis, I felt myself projecting an image of stampeding wildebeests onto the Model Threes. It felt like the entire volume of Threes attacking the wall this morning had been funneled into this one attack, even if I knew that simply wasn’t possible, given that they were dedicating the resources to maintain pressure on the other fronts as well.
I had a very target rich environment for myself, all the same.
Having numbers didn’t do much to prevent them being caught flat-footed when I opened fire. Eager to test out my new implant, I started off with one SMG, and when it was down to 75% capacity, I added the other, staggering my fire to keep from being caught while reloading.
Using both hands to fire via the Bonus Brain implant was an experience that was hard to put into words. It felt simultaneously like I was seeing double and not; my vision remained exactly the same, yet my perception seemed to split in two. I wasn’t ambidextrous, but I was pretty sure this was not what that would feel like. Even with two reticles on my HUD, I could track both and accurately determine when each had settled over a target.
While it wasn’t perfect, SMGs weren’t precision weapons anyway. Every trigger pull put a handful of bullets through some sorry Model Three, its closest buddy, and then the three spinach-fuckers behind them for good measure. I was tempted to simply hold down the trigger and watch them transform into a sickly green mist, but that would waste too much ammunition to be worth it, even if I’d clear a large swath of the horde in the process.
The Antithesis weren’t a hive mind, from what I’d been told, and it showed in the confused reaction my sudden attack received. They were unable to respond as a single unit, with individual Model Threes being forced to make a snap decision on whether to continue towards their target, perhaps knowing instinctually that to do otherwise would destroy their chances of overwhelming the defenders, or to turn towards me, the more immediate threat.
Rather than turning the river of alien flesh towards me and inundating me with its volume, some continued on, others turned, and a small number froze, their literal pea-brains unable to cope. That was fortunate. I could probably break out the HMG if I needed to, but I would still be hard pressed to keep up with that many of them. With a hovercar not far behind me I wasn’t worried about being overrun, but I could certainly be chased off if enough of them came at me.
Instead, the Antithesis were divided between myself and the defenders, unable to overcome either. I allowed some to escape in order to focus on the ones coming at me and the significant number that were still clustered, having yet to come into my firing arc. As one gun ran out of ammo, I would return it to my thigh to reload, bringing it to bear again before the other ran dry. I found that my new implant helped even with that, making it easier to coordinate the hand-off and get my weapons into the right place for reloading.
Dozens upon dozens of Model Threes went up in paste as the minutes passed, until finally the vast cooperative organism that was the Antithesis concluded this attack had failed and the attack petered out. Or maybe they just ran out of bodies to throw at the problem. I don’t know how rutabagas think. To be honest, it didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment at this point. They were ‘just’ Model Threes, the fodder of Antithesis-kind.
“Is it just me, or is it weird how many Model Threes they keep sending out? They have got to know this isn’t working by now, but I haven’t seen many of those double digits Alana bought tank shells for.”
“I do have footage of them being killed by tanks! All sightings have been along the front wall, you may just be lucky!”
I snorted at that, dismissing the possibility immediately. Lady Luck had stopped answering my calls a while ago.
“Chalking it up to luck doesn’t sit right with me. How much of their forces are usually Model Threes this far into an attack?” I asked, trying to sus out what their ineffable strategy was. They did seem to be trying new things frequently, but always while employing light units.
“Unfortunately, it is difficult to make an assessment by comparing to past incursions, as stealth hives often act in unique ways. Alana has been striking their larger hives, so it is entirely possible the bulk of them have been lost defending them, though! Would you like me to ask her AI how many they have encountered?”
“No, that’s alright. I just can’t shake the feeling we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Think I should go help them clean up the stragglers?”
“You could! You will be happy to know, though, that the defenders appear to have the situation under control!”
After acknowledging Juny’s statement, I spent the next few minutes thinking while I waited for my next call. Eventually the gunshots to my left petered out. Moments later I got a call, which was pretty much what I was expecting by now.
“Good work, Erica! Looks like they’re shifting their focus back to the center now; are you able to help out?”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on it. Not going to join your guys on the walls, though…I think I have a better idea on how to handle them.”
It was perhaps down to his apparent Samurai worship that Nguyen didn’t question what I was going to do instead. I looked towards the city, thinking back to the moments their attacks had died down the most, as well as the occasional references to Alana’s work behind their lines I’d heard.
The Antithesis always reacted to counterattacks to the detriment of their assaults. They were reactive, not proactive. Even their assaults felt almost like they were going down a list of tactics rather than deliberately probing for weaknesses. Like water seeking the path of least resistance, correcting its flow by following a path laid out for it, not by creating its own.
I could use that.
“Hey Juny, I need a jump pack.”