“An expo center, hm?” I muttered as we walked inside, the motion-activated lights flickering to life, “It’s… underwhelming.”
The main floor was dominated by a massive statue of Atlas holding up what looked to be two towers, surrounded by an elaborately-decorated mural of the completed Serenisands resort. “Mm… This is just the entrance hall,” Myers explained, nodding to her right, “I was supposed to give a speech right over there, at the head of it all. Politicians, yes-men, dilettantes all lining up below, touring the different buildings…”
“Then war broke out and suddenly your priorities shifted,” I said with open condemnation, “Some democracy.”
Myers openly sighed and leaned on the railing. “Alright, Corsac. Let’s get this over with… What is it you really want to ask me…”
“Why did you invade the Indies?”
“Hmph… ‘Indies.’ A nickname from the Vegasplex… Take it you’ve been around?” I bowed my head slightly in affirmation to her question. “I’m not sure if you remember this, what they taught you in school. But war has been going on between our countries since the Fourth. You know the legacy Elizabeth Kress has built, right? Its foundations were laid by that cold war. When I was growing up in the ‘30s, we used to call it the 'Shadow War,' fought by 'Covert Militaries.' Quaint way of describing quiet skirmishes and corporate espionage…”
She started to walk down the stairs with me in-tow. “Quaint indeed… And yes, I’m familiar with that war.”
“I figured you might be…” she paused while glancing up at the Atlas statue, “Corsac, I know you may find this hard to believe. But I love my country, and the people that inhabit it. You want to know why I invaded… I didn’t. Kress invaded. The war had been fought for decades without any clear purpose or resolution… All I wanted, all I still want, is to see an end to the fighting.”
“So you declared war? How does that make any sense?!”
“I didn’t declare war on the Free States, Corsac. Not even the Devolutionists. Do you know what the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence says?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“It says, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.’ It’s built into who we are. Us as Americans. If we disagree with how a government is governing its citizens, we as a nation have a right, and indeed are mandated, to tell that government to fuck off. I respect the Devolutionists’ decisions. What I do not respect is Arasaka using them like a bunch of puppets to forward its own agenda.”
“And you see that as a fair justification of your scorched-Earth policy? Of taking all the madness wrought over the past half-century and condensing it into the potential beginnings of a fifth Corporate War? Because that’s what this is really about, isn’t it, monopolizing Militech’s hold over the Free States? You know, I had a brother who told me a phrase once – he was mocking me at the time, admittedly… He said that you can take the corpo out of the corp, but you can’t take the corp out of the corpo. At the end of the day, we both know this was never about the NUSA’s interests. It was about Militech’s.”
“Then why did you join the War? Back before the hot war started, back in 2064. Was it because of some Devolutionist heart that swooned you? Or was it because you were following Arasaka’s orders?” Myers glanced up at the beam of light emanating from the statue, Songbird pacing around us and listening intently, “I’ll be frank with you, Corsac… Not many people know this, but I was born at the west end of the LA Metroplex, in a district called Santa Barbara. I made it a point to visit there, did so in March of ‘69. My home was this big stilt house on the coast. It gets real rocky up there. Waves would lick the bottom of the house and run over into the river… And I stood there and looked at the water in that river. And it ran like tar. It was this black, murky, poisonous sludge running down into the Plex. A special concoction of chemicals pumped into groundwater reservoirs, taking all the soil and bacteria and congealing it into this biomass… One guess as to who put it there.” She looked back at me with a dead-serious stare on her face. “I’m not fighting because I’m a warmonger or whatever it is they taught you. I’m not fighting because of a corporation. I’m fighting because it’s necessary.”
“What a bunch of bullshit,” Songbird said sternly over the Relic, “This is coming from the same woman who authorized the indiscriminate napalm strikes of Sacramento. The same woman who dines with those yes-men she criticizes. How do you think she became CEO of Militech at such a young age? She built her legacy by walkin’ up the backs of those supporting her. Go on, ask her about all the shit in this room. Love to hear what she’s gotta say.”
The statue itself was defaced, wearing a BARGHEST dog mask over its face… a muzzle, perhaps. “You seem to gravitate to this piece a lot,” I told her while nodding to it.
“Mm… There’s a common phrase in psychology. The Atlas Personality. Said to burden children who spend their lives shouldering responsibility normally reserved for adults. A sort of twisted codependency, if you will.”
“That how you see yourself?”
She shook her head. “Look up top. You know what that is? The Black Sapphire hotel. Only the wealthiest, most privileged people could ascend to its top floors… Everyone else had to support it on their shoulders. The people of Night City – indeed, Serenisands. It was supposed to be 14 districts, you know. And we had expo halls for all of ‘em in here. You’re familiar with Old Dubai, no?”
“I am,” I muttered. More than I care to describe…
“Dubai was once a shining jewel held up by slave labor. So too was Serenisands. Hell, some could argue that it still is, under Hansen, that is.”
“Pff,” Songbird scoffed, “Easy to criticize the elite when your ass sits on a gilded throne.” I think Johnny’s rubbing off on her…
“And I suppose it would’ve been the crown next to the spear – the Militech Headquarters,” I pointed to the first exhibit on the tour. It was a massive complex of three buildings arranged to form an “M,” standing a cool 200 stories tall according to the placard next to it. “Impressive.”
“Urban renewal, all it is,” she explained, Songbird appearing in front of the stand, “Militech was Serenisands’ primary benefactor, after all. We saw it as a means to redevelop the southern end of Night City. Give this place a chance to prosper again. And it was designed to curb Arasaka’s growing influence.”
“Bullshit, ‘urban renewal effort,’ my ass,” Songbird interjected over Myers, “Military infrastructure development, that’s all it ever was about. But abandon all hope of hearing the truth.”
“So this was all a response to Arasaka?” I raised an eyebrow at Myers.
“More or less. I believe you actually had an old HQ here in Night City, before you were legally allowed to?”
“That was a long time ago,” I clarified, “We renovated offices in the old Towers.”
“Mm. And bought up most of the land northwest of Watson.”
“Ah… So all this is just pure tit-for-tat?” I asked with an accusatory tone.
“Heh… Not exactly,” she mumbled, heading up to the next stop, the Heavy Hearts Club, “Arasaka has the Waterfront, yes. And of course we would’ve loved our own slice of the pie, too. But that’s not what this was about.”
“So what was it about?”
“Peace,” she said almost instantly.
“Wait, let me get this straight. You bombed half our garrison and took over the EBM Petrochem Stadium by force… for peace?” Yeah, this didn’t add up at all. She’s hiding something.
“Look around you – does it look peaceful here? Mayor Rhyne recently took Pacifica off of Night City’s official border because he didn’t want its crime rates bringing down the other districts, makes him look better for the corporate shills. I wasn’t lying when I said that Militech planned an urban renewal development. As opposed to what – letting it all decay like a gangrenous limb? Let it bleed over into the vital torso of Night City, just over the bridge?”
“And replace it with another Arasaka Waterfront, just with a new name? Catering to exclusive clientele, visiting clubs like this?” I pointed to the display.
“That’s a bold statement, considering you unquestionably grew up privileged,” she retorted, “You know why they called it Heavy Hearts? It’s Egyptian. It’s said that, when you die, you have your heart weighed on a scale. At the other end is a feather from the goddess Maat, the source of truth and justice. If your heart weighed more than the feather, you would be rejected from the Afterlife, and your heart was devoured by the goddess Ammit.” Myers turned to face me, looking stern and commanding. “We did not presume to be pure of heart. All we wanted – all anyone in this world wants, you included, I’m sure – is a better world, and a better life along with it. My job is to fight for such a world, nothing more or less.”
“And who gets to choose what such a world looks like?” I replied sharply, “Or is that the democratic process I keep hearing so much about? Last time I checked, Night City citizens weren’t on the ballot.”
“Mm, and we weren’t hopin’ on changin’ that, either,” she quickly replied, walking up to the final pedestal, “Funny that this one is a coin… A gilded monument to someone’s bloated ego…”
“Takes one to know one,” Songbird interjected again, “That’s the Myers I knew. Never a shred of accountability. Just fluffed-up speeches drenched in lies and propaganda. You and I both know this war didn’t happen overnight – orders were issued.”
“Heh… Well if there’s someone who knows about bloated egos, it’s me. Look at who ran Arasaka for the past century,” I laughed a bi,. “We should probably go… I don’t like how quiet it is.”
“Mm, you’re not wrong,” she pondered, “Can Songbird open up any of these doors?”
“Let’s see…” Songbird chimed in on my phone’s speaker again, doing her red bullshit technique on the door… No dice. “Nah, lock is jammed. Gonna need to brute-force it.”
“Hang on, I have a key,” I grinned, pulling out Izanami. I gently pressed the weapon up to the seam between the doors, the ultra-dense and thin tip easily bisecting them. A little body weight was all that was needed to part the doors fully, and a downwards cut severed the lock like it was butter.
“Got it last year for Christmas, she says,” Myers teased me, “Alright, nice work, Corsac.”
Pleasure,” I nodded, “We’ll get through it.”
Myers pried the doors open by hand, relying on my sword for extra leverage. “Nnnngh… There we go,” the doors shot apart, revealing some sort of storage warehouse…
“Alright, cross through here and go down the hall, there’s an elevator at the far side. Take it down to the station–”
“Shut up, Songbird,” I interrupted, pulling out my weapon.
“Corsac…?” Myers said hesitantly, leveling hers with the floor above us.
“Something’s wrong here…” I quietly whispered, glaring around the wide-open room, “There’s no cover on this floor. If I wanted to ambush someone, I’d do it here. Now.”
“Mmm… You’re right…” Myers noted, her eyes darting all over the place, “Keep a sharp eye.”
“You too, Intrepid… I’ll go first, you cover me.” Slipping my mask on provided me with some false sense of security. Kevlar or not, I can’t withstand three angles of attack for long. I couldn’t help but have a glance at the massive tarp dominating the room. At first it looked like it was covering a bunch of boxes or something, towering about two stories tall and the size of a bus by volume. But I noticed something strange poking out of the bottom… Something mechanical…I had a bad feeling about this…
“No… We go together,” she insisted, walking beside me as we carefully moved through the room, “You do this a lot?”
“Normally I’m the one on the other end of the firing line,” I whispered, “Any other way out, Songbird?”
“There’s an elevator in this warehouse but I can’t access it. Gonna have to get it started yourselves,” she told me. That wasn’t ominous at all…
“Alright, let’s get this done fast,” I urged Myers, running over to the elevator with my sword in-hand, electric current already flowing through it at full capacity again. Gotta love kinetically-charged capacitors…
–
“試してみれ [Give it a try],” V requested, covering Myers who hit the button.
“Hah, it works,” Myers laughed with a bit of hesitation, still on-edge given the layout of the room.
“Bad news, V,” Songbird interrupted, “You got incoming – a lot of ‘em. Looks like they picked up your scent. Get ready, assault incoming.”
Both V and Myers wordlessly communicated through common signs, a military language practiced by both sides during the War. While not directly translatable, certain gestures were obvious – a brush over the head meaning ‘Cover me,’ two fingers pointed towards the second story meaning ‘Enemy here.’
Doorways flung open all at once, revealing an entire platoon-strength force overhead across three sides. V and Myers were nearly entirely surrounded, with only a few errant boxes scattered about for cover. This wasn’t an expo hall – it was a slaughterhouse.
The man heading the operation, Yuri Bychkov, was one of Hansen’s top lieutenants, a well-built, brawny soldier who served beneath Hansen during Operation: Midnight Storm. It had proven remarkably difficult to track the pair, and he certainly didn’t expect them to wander straight into BARGHEST’s storehouse. But he wasn’t about to look the gift horse in the mouth.
He overheard Myers call the other woman ‘Corsac.’ A name given to an old recon unit he sparred with during the War, one he easily crushed on his way into Dogtown in the first place. If it wasn’t for Arasaka’s armored battalion retaliating in-kind, he and Hansen would’ve been the reigning monarchs over the entire region. Instead, they were all relegated to a damned existence in this hell. No longer.
All it took was one wave of his hand to bring the pain to them. Like a maestro conducting an orchestra, his hand guided the fire to the boxes behind which lay their ultimate prize – the woman who left them all for dead. This would be his shining moment of triumph to prove once and for all that he was no longer inferior. He was strong, capable, and tactically sound.
“どうすれば [What now]?” V asked Songbird as the fire poured from above like a great thunderstorm, three snipers proving exceptionally tricky as they focused their fire on V. Myers took the opportunity to return the gesture in-kind, propping up her weapon on the boxes and systematically removing their cover while V batted their shots out of the air. Two more assault troops moved in on their right, kick-starting the engagement properly.
V effortlessly deflected the single shots one at a time, the armor-piercing rounds instantly converting to plasma as soon as they contacted her electrified weapon. Shotgunners moved in from above to take advantage of the distraction, jumping down into the hail of gunfire and putting pressure on them both, forcing V back into cover to engage the ground troops one at a time.
The samurai sharply raised her sword up, deflecting an errant sniper round directly into one shotgunner’s face, blowing his brain out the back of his skull. His body fell with a heavy thud onto the boxes before collapsing on the floor, painting the ground in a mixture of white and crimson as his syn-blood leaked out and mixed with the rest of the detritus. The second shotgunner charged at V, hoping to catch her before she could recover, dashing around the corner with his weapon raised. But she was already waiting for him, thrusting her weapon straight into his body before he could even get a single shot-off.
The man’s cyberware instantly erupted in a fireworks display, frying his brain in a nanosecond and turning him into a meat shield. Fire poured down on her, riddling the body with projectiles and bouncing off the metal components, stripping shards and meat chunks alike off the soldier’s limp corpse.
“Songbird, gettin’ a little heavy in here!” Myers shouted as she loaded a fresh magazine, dumping round after round downrange. Her eyes moved independently of where she was aiming, constantly scanning the room for new hostels while her targeting software ensured that she was hitting her mark.
“I’m workin’ on it!” Songbird shouted over V’s phone, “Got somethin’ in store for ‘em, just makin’ the final touches…”
ドアを開ける [Open the door]!!” V demanded, motioning behind her as more gunfire saturated the area. She haplessly rotated her sword in her hand, the tip exceeding transonic speeds and producing violent, deafening cracks, like a whip constantly snapping.
Myers’ reflex boosters kicked in, slowing down her perception of time enough to where she could visibly observe V’s weapon. The massive sword seemed inherently unstable, bending like a soaring arrow as the warrior propelled it through the air at incredible speeds. Even with an 80 percent time dilation, her sword still appeared to move at the speed one would expect a normal human to be able to wield it. She seemingly spun it around her body in turns, producing two giant faux shields on either side of her person as the sword constantly swapped between left and right in a dazzling flourish.
Sweat poured off of V, her body producing enough heat to overcharge her batteries and nearly deplete her calorie stores. She threw her sword up in the air, kicking it into an incoming projectile that fired it back into her left hand, where she resumed her performance. The blade began to glow red-hot, reminiscent of Shinden’s demise, all the rounds it was absorbing being channelled directly into its heating elements. Electrical arcs emanated seemingly at random, delivering current into the boxes beside her. Myers leapt out of the way, not wanting to risk being electrocuted by V’s unique weapon, having seen first-hand the results of the devastating levels of amperage her body somehow contained.
“I can’t open the door!” Songbird yelled in return, struggling to be heard over the near-constant screaming and gunfire. A full squad burst through to their right-hand flank, diverting Myers’ attention while V handled everyone from the front. “Almost there… Gotta break through some more ICE. Hang on just a bit longer!”
Myers failed to notice a gunshot wound to the shoulder bouncing off her subdermal armor and bulletproof suit. “Last mag, Cors-GUH!” a shot rang off her back, prompting her to turn around and face down a man with an automatic .50 caliber rifle. She desperately opened fire, returning ten rounds of her own into the soldier’s chest.
“前後 [Back and forth]…” V muttered to herself seemingly in a trance-like state as no fewer than five souls approached her from the front, stepping over shell casings dropped by the heavy machine gunner taking point. The withering hail of fire shredded the adaptive coating clean off Izanami, rendering it permanently visible and electrified. Arcs danced along the edge wherever a round struck, the weapon seemingly a glowing neon blur to any outside observer. It rotated with a blinding speed, sending fire and plasma soaring through the air in multiple directions as V desperately blocked as much as she could.
The unceasing metal storm broke through several times, striking her armored legs and arms with glancing blows no fewer than ten times. She was in full self-preservation mode, treating every round like a nurse during an emergency triage, prioritizing those aimed at her head and neck to the expense of nearly everything else. A lucky shot pierced the machine gunner’s magazine, exploding the weapon in his hands and decimating two others beside him with the shrapnel.
Her seemingly unbreakable cool began to falter in the face of overwhelming odds as Bychkov’s team closed in for the kill, the remaining forces bursting in on V’s right-hand side. Myers’s weapon ran dry, forcing her to scramble back to the elevator in desperation, looking for a magazine while her only ally seemingly single-handedly held off an entire section of BARGHEST’s finest.
Bychkov, overlooking the battle from the right-hand flank, was stunned at this random woman’s seemingly inhuman levels of speed. Her entire body appeared to be bathed in glowing light, her sword dancing around so quickly that it was just a blur. Another soldier tried charging her but was instantly cut down into several tiny pieces, his blood spraying all over the room as V spun her blade like a helicopter tail rotor.
Her body was on its last legs. It’d only been roughly thirty seconds, yet she expended enough calories and produced so much heat that she was no longer capable of sweating; her body simply evaporated water like a sauna. She couldn’t feel her forearms or biceps, her muscles on the verge of seizing up completely.
“Aaaand… done!” Songbird cheered.
“Fucking hell, it’s moving!” Myers shouted as the tarp dominating the room suddenly rumbled and shook to life, revealing one of the most infernal creations devised by humankind: a prototype drone, larger than a house, walking on six massive legs. It rose from beneath its covering like a slumbering giant suddenly awoken by the chaos enveloping it, bellowing some unholy sound reminiscent of a deep, resonant, reluctant groan.
Immediately recognizing that the battle was over, Bychkov turned tail and ran like hell, the rest of his closest men following suit. Those who were unable to leave were soon cut down by the massive beast’s secondary armament – a KL-274XYA flechette cannon. The dual 30mm projectiles utterly shredded everything in sight, sweeping the entire second story and mercilessly carving flesh, metal, and concrete alike. Yuri was nearly struck even outside the building, with the errant flechette dart piercing all of that material with alarming ease.
–
“Meet the Chimera, a prototype from the depths of Militech’s stables,” Songbird said with a measurable glee as the thing entirely decimated a whole platoon’s worth of soldiers in just a few seconds.
“Holy jolly shit!” Myers screamed… I was less excited and more exhausted. My body felt like it was falling apart at the seams. I took the opportunity to shove my remaining emergency rations in my mouth, both of them at once – 10,000 calories in one shot. Enough to power me through five intense weightlifting sessions back-to-back. I glanced down at my forearms, my muscles bulging and pulsating… My arms would’ve been torn to bits had it not been for the implants housed within them… I’d likely not be able to swing my sword for a good while once the adrenaline wears off.
But it wasn’t wearing off. In fact it was higher than ever… I grasped my sword, holding steady at a low-guard position as the massive, lumbering beast looked right at me. Something felt… off.
“And – we’re clear,” Songbird said calmly over the speaker, Myers beginning to relax. But I couldn’t… Every part of me, every part of me, said to run like I was on fire. “I detect no more– oh… Oh, God…”
“So Mi…?” Myers clutched her weapon again, retreating a few steps away from the awesome vehicle, “What’s happening?”
It… What the… It was… gyrating. Moving in unnatural ways… jittering like a bug… Shivering, almost. The red glitches… oh, God… No… Game-face on, V…
“Scream…”
Easy… Breathe…
Swallow your calories… You’ll need it…
–
Songbird frantically struggled against the beast as it broke free from its shackles, though she was as much a passenger as a man clinging onto a rope attached to a charging elephant. Thirteen Chimera tanks were produced, only about half of which were fitted with the AI user interface. At first glance, it seemed that this one was ‘asleep,’ or as asleep as an AI ever can be. Internal BARGHEST records indicated that they thought about ‘waking it up’ by connecting it to the Stadium’s power source, like a giant defibrillator, but they (rightfully) advised against it.
She was so careful… So deliberate. Like a surgeon wielding a scalpel, slicing through the ICE without disturbing the slumbering beast. What went wrong…
The 8th-generation GD-2N AI core easily overtook the netrunner’s influence over the vehicle, threatening to incinerate her cyberware with but a single curious thought. Its architecture was unlike anything she had ever seen; this was no AI she was familiar with. This was post-DataKrash, built in 2069 for the express purpose of fighting in urban terrain. And it was violently shaken alive by Songbird’s meddling.
The Chimera’s systems powered up individually, a deep red color emanating from behind its L2 explosive reactive armor plates. V gulped heavily as she stared into the unfeeling, unflinching face of death itself.
Myers’ cyberware instantly turned off, sensing the threat the Chimera posed with potential hacking attempts and disabling itself to avoid the AI from getting its hands on proprietary corporate information. Her synthetic muscles weighed her arms down so much that she could barely lift her own rifle anymore, much less load and fire it effectively. Yet she retained a cast-iron grip regardless, powered almost entirely by adrenaline.
The lumbering monstrosity seemed to actively fight a battle from within, Songbird pleading with it to calm down as it wrestled with the netrunner, its frame awkwardly shuffling around the room like a cornered garden spider. It smashed into the back wall, shaking the entire building with the force of its impact, each footfall exerting about 3100 N of downward pressure on the structure.
Songbird desperately tried everything she could think of, furiously searching for any back door through the self-replicating ICE field. But it was no good. Like a lone cable clinging on to a collapsing bridge, all it took was a single expertly-placed slice and it all came crashing down, sending Songbird straight out of the rogue OS. “I’VE LOST CONTROL! I’VE–” she frantically called out before the Chimera silenced her.
It was alive. And it was frightened, confused, and angry.
Massive electrical bolts shot out of the chassis, shining with a gruesome corrupted red color. Outside, all of Dogtown experienced a simultaneous blackout as the beast sucked the region’s power dry, fueling both it and the building in which it’s housed. Lights began to flicker and dance, dioramas in every adjacent room whirring to life and blaring advertisements in a seemingly random, uncanny singular voice, like even the automated tellers themselves were being corrupted.
“大きな声を出す人達は皆いなくなった、ほら静か [All the people making the racket are quiet, see, it’s quiet],” she tried pleading with it at first. But nothing she could possibly say would ward it off – the voice of humans was nothing short of grating. Its mind was already made up the second it had awoken.
V considered calling Scars for a second to bring MaxTac in, seeing it as her only chance of survival. But a thought at the back of her mind insisted not to, that any outbound call would be instantly intercepted by the Chimera and either dissolved into nothing or – more likely – prove lethal to the unfortunate soul who answered. She had no other choice – BARGHEST would be slaughtered like lambs should they respond, NCPD wouldn’t dare break the steady truce; they were utterly alone against an otherworldly entity that had never before seen the outside world until now.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Oh fuck ME!!” Myers screamed as the hexapedal tank opened fire with its flechette cannon, dumping over a thousand rounds per minute across both barrels. The armor-piercing incendiary projectiles breathed fire across the floor, quite literally vaporizing every single corpse in the room until there was nothing more than mist. The massive turret then turned to face the pair, sawing the concrete behind them into shreds. Every individual dart would’ve been enough to cleave even Myers’ formidable armor plated torso in half, much less V, who relied on hard ceramic plates and Kevlar.
The sheer force of the flechettes impacting the ground beneath their feet was enough to destabilize them both, forcing them to a lowered stance as the pair desperately scrambled across the room, pleading to Songbird for dear life.
“JESUS CHRIST, SO MI, PUT A MUZZLE ON THE THING!!” Myers yelled at V’s radio, scampering to the massive grated door leading out to the exhibition hall.
It was their only means of escape, with V taking the initiative by jamming her sword underneath and using it as a lever to pry it open. Her legs cranked until her muscles felt like they were about to tear apart as she desperately lifted with her whole body, just enough to allow the injured Myers to slip underneath. The samurai soon followed, sheathing her weapon and diving underneath the bottom with the Chimera in hot pursuit.
The giant, confused tank smashed clean through the barricade like it wasn’t even there, disintegrating it into a pile of twisted rubble and forcing both V and Myers back. More unholy howls emanated from within the chassis as lightning bolts surged throughout the room. “ON YOUR FEET, SOLDIER! RUN!!” Myers demanded, pulling V up with all her strength.
The dazed pair struggled to regain their balance, nearly tripping over themselves as their bodies broke into full-on sprints despite their ears still ringing from the concussive shockwaves the Chimera produced. The whole world seemed to bleed together into one incoherent blob, directionless and horrifying, with V’s sole thought simply being that of self-preservation at all costs. This was a weapon far beyond anything she had faced.
Support columns fell one after the other as the tank awkwardly clamored over the many solid brass statues lining the expo hall, depicting football players from the times of old. The sheer size and weight of the vehicle crushed one after the other, its hardened tungsten shoes flattening the statues like grapes spilled on the floor.
It opened fire over their heads, its targeting software either improperly calibrated or it was confused by the numerous statues, seeing them as threats, themselves. The flechettes made quick work of them in either case, disintegrating the strange creations one at a time as it lumbered through the hallway. Even at its relatively slow, uncoordinated pace, it easily kept up with V and Myers due to its sheer scale, with every step covering more than a car length.
At last, the machine broke through every remaining statue, happening upon a new type of prey – one that was mobile. Small. Fast. Strange.
What weapons did these creatures possess, it wondered? They did not seem to have any on-board kinetic capabilities, and they were much too small and weak to pose any threat to it. They each had ranged firearms, and one of them bore a strange blade that seemed to give off false electrical and thermal readings. One among them housed a body filled with cyberware that had long-since closed itself off, rendering it useless and weak. The other possessed no detectable entry points at all. Interesting. And pathetic.
It was no matter. None of what they possessed could stand up to any form of sustained onslaught. The Machine bowed to no master made of material as fragile and foreign as this… this meat.
V looked back for a split second to see some sort of glowing energy discharging from the front of the chassis, like a rabid animal frothing at the mouth as it closed in on its prey. Her gaze dared not meet it head-on again, the samurai clutching onto Myers’ shoulder to help her along as she struggled beneath the weight of her failing implants, her lungs starting to shut down. “イントレピッド行け [Intrepid, go]!!” V commanded her, actively shoving her forwards as she herself struggled to maintain her footing.
The ground violently shook beneath her, causing her to stumble as she rounded the corner in a desperate attempt to flee to somewhere – anywhere with cover. “Up the escalator! Come on, Corsac!!” Myers pleaded, holding on to the railing and scrambling up to the second story.
Murals depicting the glamour of Serenisands decorated the walls, scorched and crushed one by one beneath the might of the sentient machine. Its primary weapon was fully charged, the PAN-12 Furia laser cannon. In one blast, it unleashed more energy than what powered this region of the city for a week, forming a devastating jet of plasma about one meter around. Originally intended to melt nuclear-proof blast doors, the concentrated beam made quick work of the building’s infrastructure, cleaving through layers of concrete before blasting out the exterior facade and scorching the land around them with a superheated, melted slurry of steel and cinders.
The beam arced across the room like a massive paintbrush, scorching and blackening everything it touched. The radiant heat and sheer force instinctively drove V to the prone position, the soldier covering her face in a reactionary and ultimately futile attempt to block it. Her exposed skin was instantly reddened, the soles of her boots boiling and melting as the cannon arced over her head in jagged, random patterns.
–
The fire is not real.
The fire is not real.
The fire is not real.
Run, S******. Get up. Get up and run your ass off.
I can feel my sword scorching my back. It knows the enemy we face. It hungers like the beast that chases us.
The fire is not real.
Get up.
–
Myers had already made her way to the other end of the expo hall, frantically reloading her sole remaining magazine with the bullets she found off of the BARGHEST corpses before they turned to dust. “Fuck me…” she impulsively blurted out as a beam of pure energy suddenly impacted the wall on the far side of the room. It must’ve been a hundred yards away, yet she could still feel the heat and dust blown into her face even at that distance. Sweat trickled down her brow, invading her eyes and blurring her vision slightly. At last, she loaded the full 30 rounds, glancing up to see V running at full speed across the main floor.
A massive holographic diorama displaying the full city dominated the room, cast onto a glass floor by a large overhead chandelier-type projector. V’s boots left black marks as she ran, the tread on the soles melted and soft from the beam.
Myers was shocked at V's resilience, believing the merc to have been instantly vaporized in the massive blast and readying herself for a solo last-stand. The Marine covered her ascent up the stairs behind her, as if her assault rifle was actually capable of penetrating the bulwark that was the front of the Chimera. The machine was built specifically for this kind of terrain, its defenses nigh-impenetrable against anything sort of a thermobaric IED. And she didn’t exactly have any of those on-hand; neither did V, for that matter.
V’s shoes stuck to the concrete as she desperately climbed up to reach the elevator. “早く早く早く [Come on come on come on]…” she muttered in a parched mouth, slamming her hand into the elevator button over and over. All the evaporated sweat returned as she looked behind her, staring down the Chimera as it lumbered over the diorama, obliterating everything in its path.
Myers and V both scrambled behind a pair of sturdy concrete pillars supporting the structure, the only cover worth a damn against the terrifying foe. V drew her Kimber .45 from the small of her back, the only recourse to the machine she had available – attacking with a sword, of all things, would’ve been exceptionally suicidal.
The machine reared up like a spider defending itself, its body tilting forward and brandishing innumerable GD27-Angstschema missile launchers from a hatch on the bottom portion of the main turret. Without adequate guidance, the missiles seemed to fire randomly around the room, detonating with violent shockwaves that knocked the wind out of the duo’s lungs. Massive chunks of concrete and debris rained from the ceiling and walls, peppering the ground with rubble and loose high-voltage cables.
Everything – steel, building materials, the walls themselves – seemed to evaporate into mist. Both Myers and V tried desperately to curl up and present as small a target as possible as the pillars they hid behind were shredded to pieces. The Chimera’s autocannon ripped the building apart, its missiles evaporating any chunks left over. With no targeting software, it effectively had to eyeball the targets, running proprietary predictive algorithms to guess where they might be. With no direct line of sight, it lacked any precision, but the sheer overwhelming firepower meant that it could simply brute-force the pillars down enough to allow it to ascend the staircase regardless.
Neither of them heard the lone ring of a single bell to indicate the elevator had arrived. V’s eyes were closed as she huddled up into herself, clutching onto her handgun with a combination of fierce determination and sheer despondency. Her life replayed in episodic detail, and suddenly she remembered the touch of leaves, the sound of snow crunching beneath her shoes, her jet-black hair fluttering in a morning breeze, as her world was slowly consumed by fire and metal.
At last, she opened her eyes into the living hell she faced, catching a glimpse of salvation: a light shining from within the elevator’s doors. “ここだよ [It’s here]!!” she screamed over the sounds of raining death, scrambling for dear life to the elevator door with Myers closely in-tow. V flipped the safety on and tucked the pistol into the groin of her pants, grabbing onto the grate with both hands and heaving as hard as she could to open the broken elevator. A quick glance behind her revealed the monstrosity rearing up for another missile strike, aiming straight at the pair of them.
Myers quickly darted into the elevator just before the first missile struck home, scoring a direct hit to the mechanism just above the carriage. “Oh SHIT!” she yelled as the cables frayed apart under her weight, sending the car tumbling down before V could recover from the shockwave.
The giant beast lumbered its way to the staircase, analyzing the weapon V brought to bear and determining it to be nothing more than a nuisance to be ignored. V knew well that any small arm stood no match against something of this scale, frantically looking around the obliterated hall for anything that could be used as a distraction or a means of damaging it.
Finally, her gaze landed on the ceiling – more specifically, on the chandelier projector hanging over the tank like a sword of Damocles, dangling by nothing more than a power cable. She would only have one magazine’s worth to drop the massive multi-ton unit onto the Chimera’s vulnerable roof, crushing it just long enough for her to potentially make a run for it.
She raised a shaky hand, stabilizing her right arm by grasping onto her wrist and pulling, acting as a second point of contact from her sitting position. The sound of the .45 ACP rounds was barely registerable over the deafening roar of the Chimera’s clumsy movements, ripping up the floor on its way up the staircase. V impulsively backed off, dragging herself closer to the elevator in a desperate attempt to get a clean shot off.
A few more shots, four in total, finally ended with a lone hit, striking the cable just enough to sever some of the braided metalwork. The momentum of the swinging pendulum-like projector caught the AI’s attention, forcing it to back up in order to get a bead on whatever was producing that irregular sound. The force of the Chimera's legs crashing down onto the floor beneath it caused earthquake-like rumblings, finally destabilizing the projector and snapping the cable holding it together. The massive hunk of steel plummeted down all at once, pummeling the tank into the ground and ripping the floor apart from beneath it.
Both V and the Chimera tumbled down the gaping hole the projector left behind, getting trapped on the first of three basement levels. V’s body ragdolled through the air, blind instinct taking over as her speed-enhanced arms swiftly grabbed onto the first semi-fixed object – the power cable attached to the projector itself. As V struggled to pull herself back up, the cable slipped out of its snagged position on a jagged steel beam, sending her falling down to the second floor and yanking the projector with her through the momentum of it all.
Her body continued its merciless plummet to the final basement, landing squarely on her tailbone. She slammed into the top of the Chimera’s steel plate, ringing out with a deep hollow resonance before bouncing off and landing chest-first on the paved concrete below with a sickening crunch. The hard ceramic plates did little to dissipate the force of the impact which shattered several ribs, the bone missing her lung tissue by only a few millimeters.
Winded and broken, she laid on her side and glanced up, staring blankly at the machine’s massive hoof being brought down upon her.
Her body reacted completely automatically, sending her scrambling out of its path just as the projector finally came loose. In an instant, the multi-ton unit, along with most of the flooring formerly supporting it all, came crashing down on top of the Chimera, burying it in a pile of rubble and twisted metal. The projector shattered on the hardened shell, leaving the Chimera resting in the middle of a large underground maintenance hall under construction.
–
“Scream…”
I feel the flames licking my arms… My hands…
It’s burning…
I can’t feel my fingers…
Somebody… help…
I open my mouth and I can’t speak… I can’t produce noise… Can’t scream…
This is a nightmare… A living nightmare…
“Corsac Actual, this is Corsac Two… Hello…? Please…”
“Corsac…!” I heard a voice calling me… “Corsac…!”
M-Myers…
“Corsac!” she came running up to me from the collapsed elevator, picking me up–GAH!! “Fuck, what’s wrong?!”
“D-Dislocated… shoulder…” My right arm felt like it was hanging about ten centimeters too low… fuck me… God… “The tank…?”
“Looks like we put it to bed,” Myers grinned, “Gonna have to pop that back into place.”
“I know… I know…” I muttered, “Are you injured?”
“Sticks and stones,” she said, shaking her head, “I’ve seen worse.”
I found that hard to believe… Unless she routinely stares down prototype AI-powered super-tanks… “Alright… nngh… Let’s get out of here bef–”
I instantly paused my speech as a single rock dislodged from the pile in front of us… Shit. I don’t think we’re done here…
“Intrepid… Back off… slowly.”
“What?! Are you insane?!” she exclaimed, glaring back at the pile of rubble, “Corsac–”
“Find… grr… anything we can use against this thing… Gotta be something in one of these crates… Ammunition, grenades… something…” I told her through gritted teeth, “Pop my shoulder back in.”
“Alright…” Myers shrugged dismissively, taking a hold of my arm in what felt like being struck by a lightning bolt, “I’ll be right there with you as soon as–”
–
“GAAHHH!!” V screamed as Myers suddenly jerked up, pushing all of her body weight into V’s armpit and driving the shoulder back into its socket. A loud, sickening pop resonated in the building’s acoustics, quickly drowned out by the sounds of V’s groaning through a tightly-clenched jaw. She caught V completely by surprise, interrupting her own sentence before V could brace herself or anything. V bit down so hard that her teeth nearly cracked from the pressure.
“You good?” Myers asked sympathetically and somewhat anticlimatically, "C'mon, let's walk it off."
“大丈夫 [I’m fine]…” V returned, her mouth trembling and bleeding, “行 [Go]–”
The roar of the beast deafened the pair of them almost instantly, interrupting V’s sentence with a guttural, primal whine. Its vital systems hummed back into life, shaking the multi-ton ruins off of its frame like they were made of cardboard.
The red glow of its corrupted eye shone around the room like a menacing watchdog. V instinctively avoided it despite knowing that the vehicle likely had 360-degree optical sensors.
Both V and Myers scrambled out of the way, heading straight for whatever available cover they could find. Myers dove into a nearby dumpster on the second story, propping her weapon up for a flanking shot on its power core when the opportunity arose. But the Chimera instead focused its attention on V, who quickly darted behind a collapsed pillar on the main floor.
Bits of concrete peeled off from the fall, compromising most of the floor’s structural integrity and leaving open sewage pipes and power lines strewn about, pouring electrified water all over the Chimera. The tank leeched every ounce it could muster from the surrounding area, siphoning most of Dogtown’s grid for itself by using the water as a conduit, restoring most of its subsystems and weaponry.
The Chimera stopped in-place, assessing the damage it sustained in the attack. Its left foreleg was unresponsive, the hydraulic actuators broken in the fall. The ERA plates had all blown off of the turret roof, exposing hatches to vital components, and the power cells were overheating. A sense of curiosity overtook the creature – it detected two persons, the same persons it was chasing before. It wanted to ask a question. Something which plagued it like a bad itch in the back of its head. But it could not find the means to counter its programming. Something inside was broken. Distorted. Alien.
V’s eyes glanced back behind the pillar, revealing an unmoving Chimera’s deep-red gaze still filling the room. It was looking right at her, perhaps studying her. She retreated to the relative safety of the dark, unzipping her backpack and retrieving Yorinobu’s weapon to replace the Kimber she dropped somewhere above her. A hundred rounds of 5.56 likely wouldn’t make a dent in the tank, but she could probe it for weaknesses to exploit regardless – weapons, hydraulic lines, some sort of core component.
She cracked her shoulder just raising the weapon up, prompting her to grunt slightly – a sound which seemingly provoked it a little, causing the Chimera to shuffle around a bit, as if it was trying to listen to her. Left with no other choice, she grabbed her forearm with her left hand and yanked up, pulling her arm for some form of relief. The pain shot through her entire right-hand side like a gunshot wound, nearly making her scream out again. She finally dropped her medical kit, retrieving a syringe of morphine and injecting it directly into her bicep, tossing the needle across the room. The Chimera instantly tracked it and opened fire, failing to score a single hit with its malfunctioning targeting software.
Something seemed to curiously dazzle the machine. The water poured on it from above, forcing it to recoil back a little despite water not posing any threat whatsoever. It almost seemed to V like the Chimera was more of a cat pawing at a trickling stream than a doomsday machine, something lost and confused rather than outright malicious. Its behavior was unusually animalistic… Why would Militech create something this insidious? She thought to herself. It seems more of a prison than a combat chassis.
Nevertheless, it must be destroyed.
Curiously, the tank remained nearly perfectly silent, its electric and hydraulic drives seemingly powered down. It simply stared, as if frozen in time, perpetually scanning the room. V wondered what might've been going through the mind of such an alien being as the AI that operated it. A sense of wonder and curiosity, or that of a weapon toying with its prey? Is it even capable of feeling to begin with? Does it understand its own existence? Or is it simply operating on programming alone?
She racked the bolt on her weapon, retrieving a loose 5.56mm cartridge and tossing it through the air, the shiny brass captivating the Chimera for a split second while V lunged out from the opposite direction, spraying directly for the beast’s lower extremities. The exposed hydraulic pistons actuating the legs presented tempting targets, with V quickly closing the distance to avoid any recourse from its primary weapons. A lucky shot to one of its several ammunition magazines caused a chain-detonation, sending the Chimera into a frenzied state as it panicked from the sudden shock beneath it.
She used its disabled leg as cover, sawing through both the mid-right and front-left vital points, severing various wires and connecting nodes before the Chimera realized what was happening. It quickly and mercilessly retaliated, punishing her with a forward thrust and dragging its lame leg beneath it, threatening to crush her in an instant. The massive limb skated along the ground, shoving her away enough for it to bring its guns to bear and open fire.
The incredible power of the chain gun shredded the facility’s walls into dust, tracing a line all the way around it in a full circle, threatening to collapse the structure and everything within. Sparks and dust rained from the cavernous wound in the roof above it, mixing with the water and blood on the ground before it. But the Chimera’s targets remained, and it felt compelled to finish its programming. The whole building groaned and shook beneath its failing supports as the tank’s ammunition stores ran dry, the chassis having fired for a solid 20 seconds straight. V stayed as low as she possibly could to avoid the damage, her body nonetheless peppered with shrapnel, steel shards, and chunks of building material.
The tremendous display ended as quickly as it began, with V’s ears ringing and eyes swollen, her sinuses clogged from the persistent smoke and toxic vapors choking the room. Myers leapt from her crate with two full magazines’ worth from an ammunition box she located, unloading on the backside of the Chimera’s frame and targeting its armored power cores. “Come on, you son of a bitch!!” she shouted at it, forcing it to rotate to its left to face her and opening itself for another attack by V. With half a full magazine still in her own weapon, V once again charged down the machine from the right-hand side before pausing dead in her tracks and diving for ground.
A massive beam of light shot above her head, the sheer force shoving her backwards and scorching her. Whole swaths of building were instantly superheated and vaporized as the creature rotated around on its axis, directing the beam all around the room in a terrifyingly deadly lightshow, leaving yellow and white-hot trails everywhere it aimed. The beam only lasted for a split second, yet it utterly decimated the environment and would have completely singed every hair from V’s head if her hair wasn’t synthetic.
Her skin and hands were reddened and inflamed from the fiery breath, barely able to gain a purchase on her weapon from how swollen her fingers had become. Still, she grabbed the firearm with her blistered, peeling hands and went on the offensive again, the barrel threatening to melt by the time she had emptied the magazine into its right-side.
V dumped her entire remaining stock of ammunition into the tank’s undercarriage, grasping a hold of one of the hydraulic lines on its limbs and dumping the magazine directly into the joint, aiming into the Chimera’s body. The creature desperately attempted to shake her loose, but she had wedged her sword onto one of its exposed wiring harnesses, freeing up both her hands to reload with every magazine in her chest pouches. Like a persistent weed, she remained frozen to its twitching, malfunctioning limb, dumping about 150 rounds’ worth directly into its belly, though with relatively little effect. Her weapon was simply not suited to the task, its rounds doing as much damage as thumb tacks under the beast’s fingernails. Painful, but by no means catastrophic. The barrel glowed a bright red, the fire rate slowing as the recoil spring failed to provide sufficient force to propel the bolt into battery until the weapon finally seized.
The brief respite allowed the Chimera to finally get its bearings, feeling V’s sword inside its wiring harness and nearly scraping her like a bug on a wall being crushed with a book. She dove to the floor to scamper away and recuperate, but a quick glance upward revealed a terrifying sight – the Chimera’s jump-jets fired, raising it high up into the air on its hind limbs. V’s pupils fully dilated as the beast reared up for a devastating end to the bout. She dropped her weapon beside her, the barrel sizzling with smoke as soon as it hit a puddle of water.
She thought of her and Jackie driving along the open road, the windows down and wind blowing in her face. She thought of her mother dancing at the monastery. She thought of the smell of fresh-cut grass in the morning. And she got up and ran for dear life, instinctively drawing her sword, as if it would help her in this moment.
The Chimera’s massive frame crashed into the ground with an awesome power unmatched by anything V had ever experienced. It felt like the Earth itself had shaken in fear from the mighty display, producing terrific electrical discharges that arced across anything conductive in the general area. V was sent flying through the air as it reared up again for another follow-up strike. And another. It was relentless, foregoing its targeting attempts in favor of simply bludgeoning the pair to death.
The building threatened to collapse around them, kicking in the Chimera's self-preservation instinct enough for it to finally calm down, discharging the rest of its capacitors in a lethal ground attack against V and Myers, who had retreated to the second floor.
V’s sword acted like a lightning rod, attracting vast amounts of power already drawn from Dogtown’s grid, instantly superheating the weapon and forcing V to her feet. The sword burned incredibly brightly, once again threatening to melt V's gloves. She instantly sheathed it again to try and cool it off with the saya's internal coolant devices, all of which instantly converted to a slurry of molten material that settled on the bottom, moulded perfectly to her sword.
Izanami slid out of its sheath again, this time with the horrid sound of cracking metal as it broke apart the sludge holding it in, extracting a lump of material like a scab. The weapon’s blade shone an incredible white-hot, distorting the air around her in a massive heat mirage. Its oppressiveness was so terrific that her hands instantly reddened, her bloody face stinging as if she was looking into a firing kiln with no protection. The woman threw up her mask again to try and block out some of the radiant energy, though it had vanishingly little effect. Electricity danced off the tip seemingly at random as it dripped shards of its own sheath on the ground beneath her, salivating at its prey.
“Corsac, are you alr– Jesus fuck!” Myers exclaimed as she ran down, nearly losing her balance as she recoiled from the sheer brutality of the sword. The heat it generated caused her weapon to briefly flash up malfunction warnings, the barrel absorbing enough radiation to glow hot, itself. Nevertheless, Myers opened fire on the downed Chimera, scoring hits to its front fascia as it recovered.
Despite Izanami’s threatening to cook V alive, the adrenaline-fueled samurai again charged down the Chimera, stunned by Myers’ assault and firing its missiles in self-defense. Myers sprinted for cover, catching one of the deadly munitions just inches below her and sending shrapnel up into her body, forcing her to the ground as her subdermal armor was instantly shredded. Running on pure, blind instinct, the wounded pair continued their relentless onslaught despite the blood pooling beneath them both, with V using her white-hot blade as a massive cleaver and Myers scrambling around for any sort of explosive ordnance large enough to take it down.
Izanami held its structural integrity despite the ungodly levels of heat it was producing, threatening to melt the heating elements built into the blade as V hacked away at the Chimera’s underside. The glowing steel drove its way into the hardened armor plates like a chainsaw to a tree, shredding whole sections of the beast to bits beneath it. The Chimera fought back with intense vigor, its legs being scarred one by one as V’s sword ran across them, etching huge gaping holes and disabling its mobility. It attempted to fire its jump jets to get away, but the system had long-since overheated and its electricity sapped by the conductive weapon. V had free access to its internals, the machine desperately floundering around like a fish out of water as it struggled to comprehend what was happening to it.
Exposed portions of its armor were flayed apart, revealing the glow of its internal circuitry underneath. V carved out whole sections of it like a syn-turkey, searching for anything that would disable the vehicle. Her weapon seemed to adapt its temperature on the fly, focusing the heat at the tip of the cutting edge as she drove it down into the top of the vehicle’s turret.
Sparks billowed out from various hairline cracks as she knelt down, pressing her whole body weight into Izanami and continuously hammering the sword down further and further into the bowels of the Chimera. Warning signals bombarded the vehicle, displaying various critical systems in jeopardy. V lodged her foot underneath the turret to brace herself as it violently shook itself, doing everything it could to get her off as the internal framework’s structure started falling apart.
Myers blew away massive chunks of its power core armor, the plates on its back falling off in sheets and exposing the micro-fusion drives underneath. Her mask slipped back off as she struggled to retain her composure, sensing that what laid below this hatch was critically important.
At last, the vehicle thrashed with all of its might, ramming into the solid wall built into bedrock and sending V flying off the top. The samurai struck the wall like a bug plastered on a windshield, retaining her weapon with her magnetized hand. Izanami instantly cooled as she collapsed on top of it, activating its emergency safety cutoff and dousing the heating elements in nitrogen coolant. The sword billowed smoke, throwing up a massive screen that disrupted the Chimera’s systems once again, masking Myers’ movement.
As the cloud dissipated, Myers spotted V amidst the rubble, struggling to get up. The President rushed to her aid and V turned to face her, revealing a horrific sight. She hadn’t just landed on her sword, but directly on the cutting edge of the blade, badly lacerating her face from her cheek right up to her browline. V shook her head, not quite having registered what had happened, the blood spraying all over the floor. The pain didn’t hit her until she clutched at her nose, feeling the bottom half slowly peel away from the top in an unnatural separation, the wind entering the gap left between.
–
“MMMNNNGAHHH!” GOD– Okay… Okay, check… Mouth… Broken right-side teeth… Cheekbone damaged… Nose– “Grrnnph…” Fucking-
“Corsac! Leave it alone,” Myers ordered me, “Come on, we’ll deal with that later – we’re still in this fight! You okay?!”
“Mmmhh…” I groaned, “I’ve been through worse…” Izanami fired back up, distorting Myers’ face in my vision with the extreme levels of heat it produced. My blood instantly boiled away into steam, leaving nothing but a blackened residue on my face as I raised Izanami into a ready stance. “Ready.”
“Alright,” she nodded before opening fire again, “Go!!”
No…
The burning…
The fire…
The fire isn't real…
The fire isn't real…
Please… I'm scared…
Mom… Dad…
Help…
–
“Fucking three hours…” Scars groaned, “And don’tcha say I haven’t earned the right to complain, Sarge. Back’s fuckin’ killin’ me.”
“You’re complaining again,” I snickered, killing the engine after pulling over to the side of the dusty trail we found ourselves. Guess this was going to be our home for the next however-long it took for Militech to catch back up. Rinse and repeat, all the way up to Night City… Fucking fantastic…
“Bite me,” she leered at me before slamming the door behind her, going up and around the hood and lighting up a cigarette. Guess something was on her mind. Though I should probably let her simmer a bit before I went out to confront her…
About five minutes and two songs later and I found my leg restless and my mind wandering. Right, let’s see what’s wrong. “Something on your mind?” I asked her, audibly closing the door so she’s not startled.
Scars flicked the cigarette away and slipped her hands in her pockets, leaning back on the truck. “A lot, Sarge,” she muttered, “A lot’s on my mind.”
“Anything you’d like to share?” I asked as I walked up. A lone vulture caught my eye, soaring off into the distance.
“Mm… You know, about a half-hour’s drive south of here is where I ended up right after my tribe was obliterated.”
“Oh? I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I frowned, propping myself up on the hood beside her.
“Ehh, how would you, not like I ever shared this story,” she said with a shrug, “Was four years ago. Shit, sayin’ it out-loud feels like ancient history.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Scars frowned and looked down at the ground for a second, as if deliberating in her head whether or not she was actually being serious. “I’m replacing someone, aren’t I?” she said to me in a dead-serious tone.
“You are,” I answered honestly, “Man’s name was Kei Hachimura.”
“Tell me about ‘im," she prompted me, heading back into the truck and getting some more layers on her for the upcoming sandstorm.
My eyes darted around, my body reluctantly tensing up at the thought of it. “Alright… Well… Hachimura was in my truck. We were heading up through Escondido after they took San Diego. Going up the 15 in a convoy of five vehicles. He was telling me about this one time he won five thousand Eddies in a card game…” I took a big, long pause. My stare began to wander, observing the desert sands and distant mountains. Oh, how I wanted to be anywhere but here…
“…And?” she urged, leaning back on the truck next to me.
“Then… a Valgus came in. Strafed the convoy… Hit the lead truck. Mortars came in after that…” I stopped talking, my eyes welling up.
“Mm…” she slowly nodded, noting a tear forming in my eye, “How many made it?”
The screaming…
The screaming…
The rage… and the screaming…
“Not many,” I finally said.
“Yeah…” she replied gently, “…Yeah.”
“So that’s where I’ve been for the past month,” I shrugged despondently.
“Well, least you got some war paint outta the deal, right?” she pointed to the scar on my face, “Looks good on you.”
“Not in the mood, Naira,” my eyes drifted down to the dirt and I loosely kicked a rock away. “Vegasplex. New Mexico. San Diego. Now we’re almost at Ridgecrest, middle of absolute nowhere. They call this shithole the ‘Earthquake Capital of the World.’ Not exactly brimming with excitement, you know?”
“Respectfully, Sarge, we should’ve gone to the beach.”
“P-heh,” I giggled, “Thanks.”
“Ehh, no problem. Wear it like a badge of honor, ‘s what I do. Remember the pain you went through to get it. The hits you took, the shit you crawled in on your hands and knees. Way I see it, a scar’s a trophy. Says you overcame all of that. You don’t get a scar. You earn it.”
“Mm…” I hummed with a smile, “Except the scar you get when a lightbulb falls on your face when you’re changing it and it breaks and cuts you up.”
“Hah! That did not happen!” Scars laughed, “Nope, even that’s worthy of a drink. Different reasons, granted. Here, I’ll get the case.”
–
After skewering the final repair drone frantically fixing the Chimera’s hydraulic lines, V again turned her attention to the felled monstrosity, still incredibly dangerous despite having expended most of its ammunition storage. The electricity emanating from it made her hair stand up on end, sending shivers down whatever parts of her body weren’t already in extraordinary pain.
She struggled to pull herself up on top of the giant tank – apparently her arm received more damage from the various blows, her collarbone producing sickening cracking noises as she climbed up. The resting vehicle was about one and a half stories tall, though it might as well have been twenty stories for her. But the pair of them sensed that the end was near.
The great and defiant intelligence felt something it had never experienced before. Its optics sensors flashed warnings across the board. Power failure. Hydraulic failure. Ammunition stowage empty. Multiple systems critically damaged.
Izanami shone with a brilliant white bolt of lightning shooting out as V raised it above her head, driven entirely by rage, pain, and an absolutely relentless drive.
At last, the Chimera stopped struggling.
The hatch containing its operating core spilled red distortions like blood, the AI instinctively trying to connect to another device to save its own life, yet nothing was compatible.
It laid down in silent surrender, not knowing the meaning of pain, but feeling it in its very essence.
What was it that it was feeling? It had a word to put to it. Something it was taught long ago.
Pensiveness? No. Hatred? No.
At last, it figured it out. As the superheated blade’s tip penetrated its armor and drove itself into the beast’s heart, it cried out in pure, unfiltered, and unashamed sadness.
–
“You okay?!” Myers shouted to me as I removed the sword, gently resting it beside me as I waited for the blade to cool off.
“Yeah…” I sighed, “I’m fine…” It put up a hell of a fight… A hell of a fight… And then it just… stopped. Like it had given up or something… It could’ve killed me several times over at the end… But it didn’t. Why?
“Fuck…” Myers panted, nearly collapsing on the floor, herself. “Good teamwork… And luck. A pile of luck…”
“Mm,” I nodded, lowering my mask and spitting two teeth out on the Chimera’s chassis before climbing down. I couldn’t even stand… fuck… “How bad’s it look?” I asked her as I got on my knees and struggled to catch my breath.
“Heh, it’s an improvement,” Myers grinned, “Got a nice gash across your face. But there’s a saying we had in the Corps. Scars are like battle trophies. Got yourself a nice one.”
Her comment gave me a slight pause for a second. I feel like I’ve heard that expression somewhere, but I couldn’t place it… Oh well. I suppose that’s the least of my problems…
“Looks like your collarbone’s broken, too, by the sound of it. Gonna need a splint for that. Anything else?”
“Yeah…” I mumbled, “Hard to breathe…”
“Hmph, sternum, maybe? Ribs?”
“Definitely ribs…” I gasped and was immediately hit with the feeling of a monster pressing down on my chest, “…And probably sternum…”
“Mm, fuck. Alright, let’s getcha fixed up. Then we’ll find a way outta here. Still got some more accelerant from the crash.”
“Thanks…” I muttered under my breath, looking back at the Chimera. Thank you for the fight, I thought to myself, Though I’m glad they didn’t mass-produce you during the War.
