Sam’s eyes behaved differently when he was thinking fast. They weren’t any better than before but his brain was. They weren’t really fast enough to keep up with the darts and trying to focus on them just left them as an odd blurry streak in his vision, slowly and inexorably moving towards him from all directions.
“Don’t worry about me, protect yourselves!” Was all he heard his grandfather’s voice say in the white room.
It was then that it became apparent just how enhanced his grandfather really was. His hands flicked out so quickly that Sam couldn’t even see him move. Flick, flick, flick, and the darts flew back. It took the better part of a dozen attacks before he could even figure out what his grandfather was doing - he was rapping them out of the air with his knuckles, much like he was performing the fastest punch Sam had ever seen. It looked oddly like he was doing a martial art like tai chi to his eyes, casually sweeping, patting, and punching the darts just enough that their course was diverted and they missed him. Those that he didn’t simply dodge outright, anyway. To regular people it would look like a cloud of darts suddenly appeared around him. His movements were far too fast for the cameras to really catch. Even with his enhanced speed Sam could only see tiny bits of what he was doing.
The infiltrators didn’t simply fire darts, though. They began to rush the field, and that was something the agents on security detail noticed.
“What can we do?” Juan asked.
“Pounce them!” Loki shouted in his head.
“Get ready,” Sam said.
The infiltrators met the agents and, though they were caught by surprise, the agents began to fight them equally. Enhanced punches, kicks, and projectiles were thrown, fired, and exploding everywhere. Even though the combat had just started, Sam witnessed a guard get shot in the head just as an infiltrator got slammed into the ground hard enough to snap his neck. Both people still seemed to be alive.
The crowd was only now starting to realize what had happened and screams were starting to erupt around the arena. Some of the fastest people were already up and running.
Much to his horror, Sam realized that the agent closest to his booth wasn’t turned towards his grandfather, but towards him. He started raising his pistol at the trio.
“Infiltrator!” Sam shouted out loud, his voice seeming strangely distorted.
“Holy shit, get down!” Juan shouted.
Loki’s real body sprung out of the cage and into the air before any of the rest of them could react. Even with the slowing of the perception of time there was only so fast a person could go before muscles ripped and ligaments tore. He wasn’t human though, and the reaction times of a cat were like lightning. Loki moved through the air in a blur of teeth and claw.
“He got physical augments?” Juan asked, startled.
“Cat’s don’t need augments to be fast.” Sam said back.
Loki let out a howling screech in both reality and the void that was drawn out as he slapped the dark sunglasses off the agent’s face. The next attack from his other paw struck the agent's eye directly, and he howled and pulled back, his gun firing into the ground as he tried to get the cat off of his face.
“Get him! We can’t give him time to recover!” Sam shouted. “I won’t let him get hurt again!”
He and Juan jumped. The overly large eyes of the agent had obvious perception enhancements, but none of his improvements seemed to be physical. Sam dove behind him and speared the back of the man’s knees with his shoulder at the same time that Juan tried to tackle him. If not for their enhanced speed it would have been impossible for them to pull off but the void gave them the chance to talk and move with insane coordination. Sam felt an odd similarity to the way the infiltrator civilians were fighting on the other side of the arena.
The infiltrator hit the ground, grunting. Sam took the chance to grab at his gun, still regularly firing into the ground. He couldn’t wrestle it away but he could direct the shot somewhere more useful.
In any other circumstance he would have hesitated. As it was he felt himself moving in slow motion as he slowly and deliberately bent the man’s wrist so he’d fire at his own head.
“Loki! Move now!”
The cat was off the man’s head before Sam even realized it.
It took one bullet to end his struggles.
Despite his grandfather telling him that he was immune to motion sickness, he felt ill in an entirely different way as he realized he’d just killed a man. A man being controlled, sure, but a man.
He lost precious seconds heaving, only to be alarmed by a loud banging as the trunk of the old gas-powered car flew open.
The form that stepped out was only somewhat human. It looked more like a skeletal centipede with guns and arms. It had no obvious eyes on its humanlike head, but countless small cameras jutted out of its metallic frame.
“Oh god.” Sam said. “It’s a warframe!”
Much to his horror Sam realized that the other agents were not faring well against the infiltrators. Most of them seemed to be heavily enhanced, unlike the one he’d taken down, but Sam could recognize the telltale signs of endless practice. The infiltrators had trained for this fight somehow, knowing every single person on security detail better than they seemed to know themselves. If anything the infiltrators seemed to have much worse augments, but knowing your opponents moves before they made them was a tremendous advantage.
In spite of this nearly a dozen infiltrators littered the ground dead. Twice that many agents were among them however, both infiltrators and real agents.
“Well at least the other agents aren’t gonna come after us.” Juan said.
“It’d be easy to mix us up with an infiltrator right now,” Sam agreed.
On top of that the centipede-like form of one of the machine emperor’s soldiers finished flinging the metal hood of the trunk away and slithered out.
Sam moved to take the gun from the corpse in front of him to fire at the frame, but had to stop as a dart narrowly missed him. He realized that it was only centimeters away from his face and only his dodging practice in the simulations, which had become muscle memory at this point, were able to save him. He looked and saw the unmistakable blur of another dart headed his way.
Ian had found him, his mouth still open from “spitting” the dart at him. From across the field the dart sped towards him, moving in to strike. Even though he saw it coming he simply couldn’t make his body move fast enough to match his perception and it didn’t seem like he could possibly get out of the way.
That was when Loki leapt into the air, caught the dart with his paws and landed.
“We’ve got to get physically augmented,” Juan said.
“That’s not the end of it!” Sam shouted as Ian started charging at him.
Sam was vaguely aware that his grandfather was fighting the warframe in personal combat but had no time to focus on it. Ian began to jump in an all-too familiar leaping punch.
Sam hadn’t been moving at his fastest speed, and rapidly slowed the world down, telling the others to do the same.
They were now moving only in the white void, their bodies advancing so much more slowly as to be effectively frozen.
“Oh no, I don’t want to get beaten up again!” Juan screamed.
Loki didn’t talk, instead simply hissing and giving horrible screaming yowls.
“Alright, there’s no easy way out of this. We’re going to have to figure out a way to disable him or kill him. Don’t freak out. If it comes down to it, we've got nearly a month of fast-time in here before we run out.”
“I can’t believe we can just stand here and have a conversation about it! It’s like being able to pause the world!”
“Yeah it’s like that, but he’s still moving. You can see it can’t you? We have to figure out some way to deal with him or it’ll go just like last time. I don’t know how long we’ve got before he makes it to me, but it’s not going to be long.”
“Are we just going to ignore that freaking warframe?”
“If grandpa can’t handle it, none of us can. Leave it to him. Alright, look around and see what you can.”
They seemed to be stumped for a long while. At this speed their eyes couldn’t possibly keep up with their bodies, so just looking around in the time it took Ian to get to them would be impossible.
“I’ll use the agent's gun!” Juan said.
“Me first!” Loki screamed. The cat began jumping towards the gun.
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“He’s a cat! How is he going to shoot a gun?”
“King taught me!”
“What kind of things is your grandpa teaching him?”
“Things that’ll keep us alive, I hope. I don’t think that pistol will do much. I’ll bet the Machine Emperor upgraded him at least a little, and that wouldn’t have stopped him before the enhancement.”
Sam looked around the stadium again before his gaze landed on one of the cameras that had been knocked over when the scuffle began. It was only around two feet away.
“That’s it.” Sam said.
“What, you’re gonna record him?” Juan asked.
“Just watch and find out!” Sam shouted.
“That’s not a plan!”
Ian was almost twenty five percent of the way across the field. There was no possible way Sam could really outrun him without physical augments. Then again, he didn’t totally need to.
Loki was fast, and although Sam didn’t know how enhanced he was by the augment yet, he was quick enough to reach the fallen agent-turned-infiltrator’s gun. With seemingly unnatural strength he lifted the pistol the size of half his torso and fired.
The bullet was faster than the darts Ian had fired. Even at this speed Sam could only see a very brief blur as the bullet streaked through the air.
It was perfectly aimed at Ian’s head. The 9mm round bounced off of his metallic skull but seemed to disorient him.
Sam ducked with all the speed he could push into his body. Were it not for Loki’s bullet it would have been for naught, but he was barely able to avoid Ian trying to change his trajectory. Even so he managed to reach his objective, and grabbed the power cord in his hands.
Ian’s skills had improved, and faster than Sam thought possible he spun as soon as he landed and threw another punch at him. It was then Sam noticed his expression.
It wasn’t the same sneering rage he’d had before. It was pure unadulterated terror.
Sam held the cord in front of his face. Ian’s fist shot out with the same speed as that bullet as another round from the pistol hit the back of his head. It threw off his punch slightly, letting Sam live. It was enough though as Ian’s strike connected with the cord Sam held taut just above his head against the wall of the stadium arena.
Ian’s steel and Titanium reinforced knuckles tore through the protective coating on the very live wire and through it with the force of a bullet, cutting the cord in two.
The shock from touching the inside of the power cord drove Ian back, shouting in pain. Sam grabbed it and pushed it at Ian’s head, causing him to violently convulse as soon as the connection was made.
The very same metal-reinforced frame that protected him against projectiles did nothing to protect him against electricity. The damage inflicted on him was far worse than it would have been against an unaugmented human being.
Sam watched in slow motion as Ian’s skin began to crack and burn, and pulled back in horror.
Regardless of what he’d done, Sam simply couldn’t watch someone die by his own hands in slow motion.
Ian fell to the ground unconscious.
“Kill him!” Loki screamed. The gun fired several more times, with the ricochet nearly hitting Juan as it bounced off Ian’s head.
“Die mom murderer! Die!”
“Aaaaah!” Juan screamed. “Enough of that! Give me the gun!”
As he fell, Ian mouthed something barely audible before falling unconscious.
“Don’t let it catch you…”
“Listen, both of you,” Sam said, his mind unnaturally clear and focused as he stared at the still form of the person that had nearly killed him just a few months ago. “We need to help. The good guys are losing out there!”
“Oww, guns hurt my chest.” Loki said. “Make it stop!”
“That’s what happens when you try to shoot something half the size of your body. I guess slowing down time isn’t always a good thing,” Sam said.
“What can we do?” Juan asked.
Sam looked out at his grandfather battling the warframe. Even though he could barely see the flicker of high-speed moves and blows exchanged he couldn’t understand it at all. It reminded him of a chess match between grandmasters who were also sword fighting on a tightrope while the tightrope was on fire. Every single move seemed lethal. Every single one was calculated and planned. His grandfather looked utterly focused as he dodged, rolled, punched, shot, and flipped like a gymnast on crack.
“I don’t even know where to start with that.” Sam said.
“I think if we fought that we’d just die.” Juan replied.
“We need to help the good guys!” Loki shouted. “I know what to do!” He started running full speed across the field. Of course in slow motion they had plenty of time to watch him go.
“Follow him!” Sam screamed.
Almost no time had passed since the conflict began. A few augmented people had managed to make it out of the stadium but many were still in the stands. Simple shock had paralyzed most for precious seconds, then simply taking the time to run did the rest.
Loki zoomed across the field to the car the warframe had emerged from.
“I can’t open the door!” He complained. He tried jumping and grabbing with both paws, but the door had an old-fashioned mechanical push button he simply didn’t have the weight to deal with.
Although it only took a few seconds it felt like it took forever as they made it to the old gas convertible. Sam grabbed the door and pulled it open as Juan jumped in the passenger seat.
“Rip this off!” Loki screamed as he pointed at the key slot. Sam did just that, wincing as his fingernails ripped and hand throbbed in pain for what felt like an hour. Even so, it worked. The cat started working on the wires, using his claws to cut his way through in an unnaturally precise way. Soon the car started.
“Go go go!” He shouted. Sam hit the gas and the car started speeding across the field.
Juan held the gun out of the window, taking precise shots at the infiltrators. Sam did his best to run them over, hitting a seemingly fragile and petite blonde woman standing over four heavily enhanced agents corpses from behind. The others were not so easy.
“This might be a bad time to say I’ve never driven a car before!” Sam shouted. “I only know this stuff from school sims!”
“Yeah well I’ve never shot a gun before!” Juan said, casually shooting one of the infiltrators in the back of the neck.
“Ram him! Ram him! Ram him!” Loki cried each time they got close to one of the infiltrators.
“Use the virtual rooms to practice before your body moves!” Sam screamed. He followed his own advice and created a sim within the white void of the arena. He crashed the virtual version of the car hundreds of times before moving his real muscles. It was only a few hours worth of practice, but that was enough to keep him from immediately killing them all by driving straight into a wall. Juan seemed to instantly become more accurate with the pistol by the time he finished practicing.
One of the emperor’s puppets looked like a skinhead with gorilla-sized arms. He picked up and threw crates of corn with startling accuracy from one of the agricultural displays at them but with his enhanced speed Sam was able to swerve out of the way before spinning the car and hitting him with the rear end, sending him flying into the stadium wall. It took fifty virtual tries before he felt comfortable doing it for real, even with time slowed.
“This is fun!” Sam laughed.
“I can’t believe how easy this feels!” Juan said back, firing another few rounds at infiltrators that were near to killing their opponents.
That was when the warframe seemed to take notice of them. Its head spun and it raised one of its arms - the one with a giant blue-glowing plasma weapon on it.
“Listen to me!” His grandfather’s voice suddenly shouted in his head. “Do exactly what I say! Take a hard right, now!”
Sam did exactly that and found that he’d driven onto the platform the car had originally been on - then they kept going. The tires left the ground as the vehicle flew through the air.
King kicked the arm of the warframe in a flying leap and caused it to miss its tracking just slightly. Sam could feel the scorching heat as the ball of white hot plasma began peeling the paint off of the outside of the car, but they’d been narrowly missed. Instead the round hit the stadium and caused seats to explode in shrapnel. People too slow to leave went flying.
“Oh shit!” Sam screamed as the car headed towards the wall.
The car ran into the thin stadium barrier and went through it, the airbags popping out as Sam desperately grabbed at Loki, saving him from going through the windshield.
By the time Sam had his thoughts together he realized the car was totalled.
In the distance he heard a massive explosion just outside the stadium. Panicked, he kicked open the twisted door of the car and crawled out. His nose was bleeding from when he hit the airbag.
That was when he saw his grandfather down, the warframe pinning him against a wall.
“Noooo!” Sam screamed. He saw the body of a fallen agent and the gun he’d been using and grabbed it, firing at the towering war machine. The warframe paid little heed to the bullets bouncing off its metallic hide.
“You took my parents from me! You took my life from me! I won’t let you take him too!” Sam screamed out loud, each word seeming to take an eternity to complete.
He began to run forward. In the distance he heard another massive explosion just outside the stadium. But paid it no heed, charging in.
The machine seemed to pay him very little attention as it swiped its tail at him. He moved to dodge but it changed trajectories, suddenly moving to intercept him and throwing him back. Even with time slowed he realized there was no way to avoid it. Sam felt the impact push him up into the air and sent him flying towards the stands. At the same time he noticed something huge and dark in the sky.
From behind the warframe a giant spinning top came flying down from the sky through the open roof of the stadium. It tried to move but King took a coin shaped disc out of his pocket and slapped it on the arm holding him up.
“You’re not going anywhere!” he screamed.
The frame seemed to convulse in an oddly human way, standing still as the giant top-like structure of the Gravitron ride smashed it into the ground.
Sam landed in the seats, feeling the telltale pain of broken ribs before he landed. Surprisingly he felt nothing else snap, but he felt a great deal of pain. Groaning, he knew he had no time to waste as he got up and stumbled towards the field again. Juan came up to grab him and support him.
The crushed frame was still struggling, and Sam noticed the light in its eyes start to brighten and flicker. He remembered this from his classes on the first invasion of Antarctica.
“It’s going to self-destruct!” He sent through the void.
“Like hell it is,” King said. “If it did, all of this would have been pointless.”
Reaching down to the machine’s chest, he took another one of the coins out of his pocket. Using his enhanced hands he ripped away at the frame at lightning speed before slamming it against the increasingly bright heart of the metallic monster.
“You’re going to fail.” It said, “You had to struggle this much against one of my bodies. You can’t fight the rest of mankind and all my armies!”
“Watch me.” King said, slamming the coin-shaped device against the core. The light immediately began to fade as it lost power.
“Hey Sam?” Juan said.
“Yeah?”
“Let’s not come back to the fair.”
“Yeah, I think we’ll skip that from now on.”
As Sam looked around at the surviving agents and disabled infiltrators in the blood soaked arena, Loki went over and slapped the Warframe in its now lifeless metallic face.
“That’s what you get for fighting me!” He shouted.
“Well,” King said, finally turning and regarding the trio. “I told you that you should have taken that ride when you had the chance!”