I didn’t bother with the binoculars. I couldn’t see more than a few meters in front of me and the ground everywhere was under a centimeter of water.

I stopped when I realized that and knelt down to drink.

The raindrops around me slammed into the water and splashed, but I drank deeply before slowing and forcing myself to drink more of the muddy water than I craved. The healing fires were still burning behind the bullet wounds, and my missing thumb was still a useless, boneless, lump of flesh half the size of what a thumb should be.

Even so I was feeling something akin to pride. I hadn’t died.

I paused. Pushed myself up so that I was only kneeling in the water, and wondered why I didn’t leave right now. There were no guards, no one to follow me. I had weapons and energy and hundreds of implants in my gut whatever good those did.

The building the thirty-seven were in was lit with inner light. Electric light. The rest of the buildings had one or two bulbs at most inside. Some of the taller buildings had an external bulb. It seemed every room in the four story building was lit up.

Later, when I could experiment with Larkin’s weapon I’d learn the scope was something called a thermal scope. Like the night vision binoculars it changed how you saw the world. I wasn’t that close, but I was close enough to see that there were four levels of lit windows. Close enough to hear the music, which I didn’t have a name for at the time, even above the thunder and rainfall.

Had I hidden and used the rifle’s scope to look at the rooftop I might have seen the man, or at least a man-shaped lump under a canvas covering.

Almost all of the lookouts everywhere else had been asleep or distracted before I killed them.

This Larkin fellow wasn’t. Though in truth I didn’t know his real name as Larkin was beautifully etched into each side of the weapon’s heavy barrel

When I searched the building’s burned husk afterward, I found a large number of empty bottle and jugs that had contained alcohol. I can only assume he missed that first shot, when I was moving slowly and totally unaware, because he was drunk.

The weapon sounded different. The noise sharper, louder, and fuller than a rifle firing a gun powder round.

There was a line in the rain and an explosion behind me when the thunderous crack came. I was already looking at the building or I would have taken too much time wondering what had just happened

I dove behind a stack of crates covered in an oiled canvas tarp. The crates explodes as if there were men swinging sledgehammers into them.

Then they exploded with flame as whatever was inside the crates lit off.

I ran to the neighboring pile of whatever and dove behind it. I realized I’d left the hatchet and dove back just as the material I was hiding behind exploded.

I scooped the hatchet up and sprinted forward, skipping the first stacked pile of stuff and coming to a halt behind the next one.

He’d fired into the pile I ran past and then into the one I was hiding behind.

That’s when I realized these provided no cover at all.

I don’t know if it was instinct or some piece of memory that hadn’t been reconstructed, but I rushed the building trying to take wider steps so I wasn’t running in a straight line.

He got off another shot then, missing obviously, or I would have been a paste.

That was twice, when I looked back, that I absolutely should have died. He missed the first shot and then he missed when I rushed the building.

I dropped the hatchet and pulled the pistol out as I dove at the closed shudders on the first floor.

I didn’t so much manage to roll as crash through in such a way that when I stopped I was on my ass in an almost seated position.

I moved the pistol around the room, some long forgotten training taking over in much the same way the skill guidance took over.

I didn’t see the faces so much as line them up in the iron sights and squeeze. Hit or miss the gun kept swinging, left to right until I was out of ammo.

I picked a door and raced at it slamming my shoulder into the rough planks.

The planks gave out on top but only cracked and folded over the bar that secured the door from the other side. I saw a pistol in shaking hands inside and I pulled back.

The people in the room I was in that were still moving soon got a knife.

I had to reach across my body to get a new magazine for the pistol. I got it reloaded and then found none of the dots on the map were moving.

It took me a few quick sentences before the system identified the entity that had been the most elevated in this cluster a few minutes ago. The man had been the only one on the roof. Now he was one level down with a cluster of other yellow dots.

I colored him red, Important green, and then had the implant color the others based on elevation.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“But keep the red one red no matte the elevation, and the green one green”

“Understood,” she responded.

The music was still playing, filling the room with strong beats and deep thumps even as the thunder boomed behind it.

There was a naked woman tied to a low table half way across the room from me.

She was an orange dot on the map and-

I lifted the pistol and using the map and tried to figure out where the white dot was beyond her.

I started firing into the fur covered chair and five shots in the dot disappeared from the map.

I slipped another magazine in.

I switched to the rifle in the hopes that the bullets would drive through the walls easier as I tried to guess where the whites dots were hiding on this floor.

I did not eliminate anyone else with the first magazine of five shots. What did happen was one of the men in the rooms returned fire, and more importantly the rail gun that didn’t care about cover shot through the floor above.

Men screamed as they rushed down the stairs shooting rapidly into the room.

I lifted the pistol on my lap and shot them in the head one after the next.

I was shot twice for my trouble. My left shoulder was a mess of torn flesh and I couldn’t lift that arm. The other hole was in a lung and I felt the labored breathing already.

The echoing boom repeated from above over and over.

I don’t know what started the fire, but it was knee-high by the time I noticed.

There was a table overturned near it and the flames flickered and clung to its surface in an unnatural way. Blue and slick with yellow tongues only at the tips.

The rug beneath it began to smoke as I reloaded.

One of the bottles exploded and there was a quick flash of fire.

I looked from the spreading fire to the woman tied to the knee high table.

She was naked, but covered in red welts and lines, blue and black bruises covered her breasts and face and one eye was swollen closed.

The other was staring. Not at me. Not at anything at all really.

I noticed her hair was cut close to her scalp and the ear closest to me was cut off.

I put the first bullet into her head and then rest into the bottles stacked on the surrounding tables and crates.

The fire grew as I reloaded. I watched the map.

Some of the white dots had changed back to yellow as they moved around from the building.

In time there was only one white dot left.

The music still poured out of the boxes in the corners and the the booming gun above kept firing through the floors seeming at random.

I checked the map, moved to the side of the building the red dot was farthest from and realized I’d lost my hatchet. I punched into the locked shutters, unable to figure out the trick to release the thin pieces of metal.

They popped open easily and I climbed out.

This window, like most in this settlement, didn’t have any glass at all.

I ran doing my best to keep track of where the red dot was. I kept multiple buildings between myself and the dot while focusing on the other dots that left the building returning to yellow as they did so.

Soon enough the red and green dot as well as nine other yellows were in a neighboring building while the other yellow dots moved toward the vehicles.

The pink and orange dots had either gone dark or remained in the burning building.

The rain was still heavy, but the thunder had moved past us and as strong as the wind was, daylight was following the storm clouds.

I killed four of the five dots before they reached the vehicles.

Firing the rifle without my left arm meant I had to steady it on crates. Which slowed my pursuit.

Buildings between us or not, the man with the rail gun did his best to guess where I was and began firing through buildings.

The buildings seemed to hinder the rounds as little as the crates did.

Thankfully the settlement was built on a hill, so as I ran away the holes that exploded through multiple buildings were higher and higher in relation to me.

I circled around as best I could.

Rain or not the building this had started in was a thick column of orange and red fire. The rain smashed the smoke into the ground and caused it to cling and choke.

The yellow dot had gotten one of the massive vehicles started. I put two rounds into the front windshield only to find it was not disturbed at all.

The vehicle lurched forward and the engine died.

I had to climb up a bit to get to the door. I glanced through that small window to see him turning knobs and cursing.

The door’s handle was a flat lever I needed to rotate up. The door clicked and swung open.

“Hurry-” the man began as he looked over his shoulder at me, “hells,” he said as he reached for a pistol he’d put on the dash. I had to holster my own pistol to climb up to the high door, so I lunged in.

He struggled as I got the pistol around then he went limp. I definitely ruined the implant on this one.

It became a game of lining up shots with the rifle, checking the map to make sure the red dot was not on the side of the building I would be firing into, and then pulling the trigger on the target I had.

Sometimes I had what felt like a perfect shot, except the red dot was on that side of the building and I couldn’t afford to risk the return fire.

I shot Important by accident.

I was lining up on a shot on a window and checking the map every few seconds, saw that the red dot was pacing on the other side of the building.

When something moved on the other side of the window, I fired, picked up the rifle and ran, jumping down from the second story and racing left, and then farther away from the building doing my best to stay low.

By the time I checked the count, expecting it to be nine and finding it so, I couldn’t see the green dot any more.

The system confirmed the that the green dot was the last to disappear. She already confirmed that it shouldn’t be possible to hide your implant from the feed, but she also confirmed that I currently was doing just that.

Eventually there were four yellow dots and the red.

I had just fired from a location farthest away from the center of the settlement where the vehicle were.

I always ran first, then checked after. Even on the other side of the buildings the man would return fire, shooting blindly through the buildings and sometimes getting uncomfortably close.

The dots, when I checked, were already out of the building and moving quickly toward the vehicles in the center of the abandoned settlement.

I sprinted to the side moving to the entrance of the settlement. I grunted as pain flashed when my left arm moved with each step. I held the rifle in my right hand and pressed that against my left arm trying to keep it near my chest but it still moved a lot.

Hopefully I would be able to fire upon them as they left.

The booming continued as the rail gun fired and there was a scattering of the lesser gunfire.

I had a moment of understanding when I realized each man could drive a separate vehicle.

I was breathing hard and trying to ignore the fact that I was once again at zero energy. My speed was tearing my shoulder with every long stride and I was having problems reloading even when stopped with how badly my right hand would shake.

The hip pouch was full of ammo but the magazines were sometimes for the pistol and sometimes for the rifle when I pulled them out. I’d left them scattered all over the settlement when I drew out the wrong ones.

Six or seven times I had a lined up shot and pulled the trigger only to realize I hadn’t reloaded the weapon.

I stopped before a long open stretch of land catching my breath as I checked the map.

It was clear. No dots except those that were orange or pink.