The Deadeye

Tuesday, 1st of March, 199 A.C, 4:25

“Places everyone, places. The first performance is always scary, but you all practiced your lines, right? You’ve blocked these scenes with me three times, and ran through them… eight more, by my count. So just loosen up and have some fun! And remember: no matter what may come, the show must go on.” - Speech by Mr. Rosenbach ahead of Lilith Notch’s middle school theater debut

I could check my duster. Scour my pants pockets. Hell, I could ask a logistics officer to look for me. But I didn’t have to. I already knew my search wouldn’t turn anything up.

The fact of the matter was this: The bullet loaded into my rifle’s chamber was the last Knockout round of its caliber within at least a mile.

I had better not miss.

I had, *somehow*, gotten this far without so much as a jolt from my Veil. Scoping out the multi-story behemoth that was getting ready to blow us all to pieces, a rather large part of me wished I hadn’t been so stingy with my powers. This wasn’t the kind of thing people were meant to deal with sober.

I heard Ira shouting orders. The ranged support on the wall was to clear a line to the monster for the Pugilist and Berserker, who would be accompanied by a small contingent of conscripts. A suicide mission basically, but if I knew the Pugilist, he would take it on without a second thought. As utterly risk averse as he was, he always seemed to throw caution to the wind when he sensed a big opportunity.

Speaking of opportunities, I had finally drawn a bead that I was happy with. I wasn’t sure how much mileage I’d get out of plunking a shot off the Psychon’s ‘skin’, but if I knew one thing about anatomy, it was that eyes are one of nature’s universal weak spots. As luck would have it, the big guy had two good ol’ peepers begging to be poked.

It wasn’t a difficult shot, per say. The wind was weak and the monster couldn’t have been more than sixty meters out. It was, however, cold as hell out. The night had started unseasonably warm, but now the chill was piercing through my gloves and nipping at my fingers. It took conscious effort to keep from shivering.

Just to be sure, I gave up the night’s sobriety for a quick hit from my Veil. I gently squeezed the trigger. Nice and slow. Soft enough that when the shot went off, it came as a supr-

KT-UNK

The Psychon’s eye splattered into a mess of purplish goo, sizzling as the Knockout round ate it away. The beast staggered back, letting out a roar of pain loud enough that several conscripts dropped their weapons and clutched their ears. Its bow arm swung wildly towards the sky, and in an effort to clutch at its face it errantly loosed the bolt of dark energy in an off-kilter arc.

The bolt sailed overhead, slightly warping the air around it. It made its way as far as Central before ramming into a skyscraper and exploding. Purple sparks showered down from the point of impact, and smoke billowed up from the newly created three-story hole in the building.

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My ears picked up something peculiar. Or rather, they picked up a peculiar absence. The wall had been a buffet of sound throughout the night. Shouts, screams, gunshots, the clatter of weapons, all the hallmarks of a battle. Not anymore.

It was dead quiet. Even the Psychons seemed to slow their attack, perhaps out of awe for their champion. The only thing breaking the silence was the nearby bustle of the field hospital. The doctors, nurses, and paramedics were too busy keeping people alive to acknowledge what had happened. But up here, conscript and Veiled alike stared wordlessly at the destruction our foe had caused. It hadn’t even been on purpose. It was a stray shot, a misfire. Its real target was us. The wall.

Our hopes of not following in the fate of that building were now resting squarely on the two squadmates of mine about to dash into the darkness.

I recalled the promise I had made to Angela about showing up bright and early — and sober — to help her tomorrow. I wasn’t going to be able to keep that promise, was I?

***

The Berserker

Seeing that arrow fly overhead, I gave the Pugilist a worried look and muttered, “are you sure we can take this… *thing* on?”

He tilted his head slightly. “No, but we can’t exactly *not*, either. What better way to make waves than this?” He wasn’t exactly convincing me, absolutely drenched in blood as he was.

I exhaled sharply through my nose, trying to dispel the knot in my chest. “Okay then…”

The last of our assigned detachment hopped the wall and gathered around. Seven people, no doubt bribed by the government into going with us.

I recognized Cath among them — the woman who had almost set off my Veil at the beginning of the night. When she saw me, she took a break from adjusting her now cracked bike helmet to give me a thumbs up.

“We’ll handle the small fry,” she said. “Just try to be quick about taking out the big guy, yeah? This helmet of mine can only take so many more hits.”

Her cavalier attitude bewildered me. But it also calmed my nerves somehow.

The Pugilist nodded. “We’d better head out then.” He turned and took off, the rest of us quickly following behind. We were free to keep a brisk pace, almost a sprint, thanks to the gunshots ringing out behind us. Even without the covering fire, the Psychons seemed more sparse than they had been for most of the night. Could it be that they were running out of steam as dawn approached, and this monster was their last push?

We passed the edge of the floodlights’ illumination, now relying on the beams from our Chippers and the glow of our target for vision. The Psychons were bolder here, not having to worry about being harried from the wall. Still, they were surprisingly few in number, and we only had to slow down a little to cut them down.

One of our lights hit something pitch black, its surface almost absorbing the beam entirely. It was cylindrical, the size of a large tree trunk, but looking up confirmed that it was not some strange vegetation. It was a leg. We had arrived.

I hadn’t fully grasped the hopelessness of the situation until I got my first good look up close at the thing we were *somehow* supposed to take down. I tried to establish a battle plan, but its sheer scale defied any proper sizing up. Usually, when faced with an opponent bigger than me, I would try to go for its vitals, but… how would I get up high enough to do that? How would we even get in striking range without being trampled?

I stared at the titan’s face, tens of meters above us, and felt my Veil begin bubbling to the surface. A purple glow was gathering around the left side of its face. The area that the Deadeye had shot. It condensed and congealed, and in a matter of seconds its eye was back. As if it had always been there.

I gave a wild-eyed look to the Pugilist for comfort, but found none in his grim expression. Familiar pink veins crawled out along my arms. With the few seconds of control I had left, I glanced at Cath, but her face was contorted in a sudden terror. We were all going to die here, weren’t we?