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Chapter 67 – Flashback and EMP
🕑 Added 2024-10-31 13:54:20 +0000 UTCJace crouched, “I’m guessing someone you knew?”
“…My brother…” Priam whispered. He kept the hat over his face and Jace could barely hear the voice despite his obscenely enhanced senses. “…Why did you save me? You should’ve…run away…just let me-”
Jace put a hand on his shoulder and very, very gently squeezed. “It’s alright. I’m here for you.”
Priam looked up, and Jace saw the tears streaking down his glimmering, gold eyes. “Williard…my brother…we both chose Aspirant…after growing up in Khrox…” he sniffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “He…he threw me out of the way…of a charging monster…I ran and met Rory and Giordo. They…they had me carry their stuff…I…I’ve never…”
Ollie whispered in Jace’s ear, “He has never processed the trauma, I would bet. It would explain why he latched to you so quickly after proving yourself kind and somewhat protective. He is substituting you in place of his older brother, just as you had done mistaking him for Verve.”
But he’s not Verve, and I’m not his brother. Jace did not want the responsibility of taking care of someone else. He needed to be strong, to survive, to get to Tier 10 to bring Chroma back. But his body acted on its own to protect Priam. And it wasn’t his Swordmage Stance pushing him to do it – that was all about attack and defense.
It was something else. Some innate desire to protect this smaller bunny-man. In that moment, holding Priam’s shoulder, Jace recalled a memory quite vividly…
>>>---<<<
“Get back here!” Jace whisper-shouted in fear, panic, and anger as Chroma slipped through a gap in the fence that he was not small enough to squeeze through. It was too high for him to get over, also. He pulled out his set of small bolt cutters and began snipping the links.
Chroma was six and had only been on the streets with Jace for a year by then. He was still teaching her the ropes – and one of those lessons was to never go inside a Corpo’s property line at their warehouse district.
Hanging around outside the fence? That was fine. In fact, it could be considered one of the safer places to sleep if you were there in between patrols. But going inside? That was not done.
“It’s okay, Jace,” she said as she moved in front of one of the big shipping containers. “This one isn’t locked.”
“Chroma, get back here!” Jace whisper-shouted once more. “It’s dangerous!” He kept working at the links. Come on. Just a few more-
A sound that made him feel the worst type of fear resonated with his ears. It shook his bones and he felt the instinct to run and fight. But it was overcome by a more important one – protect her.
Around the corner from Chroma, a hulking, metal, biped suit of power armor appeared. It was easily fifteen feet tall, equipped with two enormous grabbing arms. An exoskeleton suit, sometimes called a mech. The person inside the plexiglass carapace looked down, and the speakers crackled letting his voice out. “Oh? Thieves? This is going to be fun.”
Chroma let out a scream of fear and began running to Jace. He shoved the wires as far apart as possible as she ran past him, and the duo took off down a side-street. Jace could hear the thunk, thunk of the footsteps following them – and the shredding rip of the fencing being torn asunder.
He picked Chroma up and held her head with one hand, keeping his arm under her rear as he kept sprinting
These corpos had free reign of the city. They could chase him down, crush him for fun, and then go back to work without anything happening to them. Street folk were like rats, and they were allowed to exterminate Jace’s folk.
However, being on the streets as long as he had been, Jace made sure to always carry around a few devices just in case of emergency. Extremely tricky to make, he had to trade some creds from a prior courier job for the devices. Three micro-EMP charges. He would have to attach them to the mech to affect it. And he’d have to get one on the leg joint to keep it from pursuing.
The mech didn’t have any firearms from what he saw – it was a basic model. Maybe used for loading cargo at the warehouse. But that didn’t explain why it was chasing them. Maybe it’s some type of sick corpo game? He’d heard of corpo-cops hunting down and arresting some of the street folk under the pretense of ‘loitering’, and even killed them if they tried to run. Do they have some kind of tally system?
It disgusted him. The fact that he and Chroma were second-class citizens. If they had stayed in the orphanage, they wouldn’t have been able to be on their own. They would’ve been property of General Logistics for the rest of their lives. Wage slaves working at some terminal. Out here might be dangerous, but they were free to make their own way in the world.
Jace emerged from the alley on a street just at the edge of gang territory. He could still hear the mech coming, but a plan came together into his head as he saw the symbol on one of the buildings nearby. He knew the gang. Steelheads.
He spotted a dumpster and ran over to it, lifting the lid and putting Chroma in it. “Don’t move until I come back,” he whispered as he shut the lid on her still-crying and full-of-fear face. Going back to the alleyway, he looked at the wall at the rain gutter that was still attached to the wall. Gripping it, he clambered up until he was on the two-story roof. Laying down, he waited.
The mech ran by underneath him, and stopped for a moment as it surveyed the area. Jace’s heart stopped as he saw it look at the dumpster and begin moving that way. No! he did something stupid and risky as hell – jumping down on top of it. He almost bounced off, and felt pain lance through his torso as a rib or two cracked. But he was on it, and he slapped one of the EMP charges right onto the engine compartment on the back.
The device whirred and exploded in a pulse of electricity, and the mech shut down with the pilot trapped inside. Jace could hear faint cursing from within, but he slid off. Landing on his feet, he fell onto the ground slightly and saw one of the Steelhead crew getting out of the building they had converted to their temporary headquarters. The man was really chromed out – covered in custom plating that was very shoddy work, but also extremely cutting edge, cybernetics as a whole were relatively new.
“Hey! You!” he pointed at Jace.
Jace pointed at the mech as he stood up on shaky feet, “It’s disabled. EMP. You got 3 minutes. Scrap is yours.”
The Steelhead laughed, a robotic, synthesized sound as Jace realized his voice-box was also replaced. “We got some scrap! Get out here!” The man seemed to ignore Jace as some of his fellow chromed-up gang members approached the mech with a variety of machining tools. Jace could hear the man inside screaming – and he knew what his fate would be. A grisly death as the gang members ripped the machine apart and ripped the man inside apart for his integration components that let him interface with the mech.
Jace staggered over to the dumpster, grabbed Chroma, and headed towards one of the docs that owed him. “Listen to me next time,” he whispered as he brushed her hair with his fingers – only noticing then that two of them were broken.
“I’m…sorry…” she whispered into his chest.
>>>---<<<
Jace shook his head as he looked down at Priam. The bunny looked just like Chroma did. That’s why I did it, he thought. Fuck me. I didn’t want this. He sighed and shook his head, drawing Priam’s gaze once more. “Just…be more careful next time,” he muttered as he pulled Priam up from the ground. “And promise me – when we get somewhere dangerous, listen to me. Okay? I probably have more experience with danger than you.”
“Ye…yeah.”
Sheathing his sword, he grabbed his pack and got Priam’s as well, handing it to the bunny. “Ollie? Mind dusting whatever it was inside the armor?”
Ollie nodded and flew over to the suit.
<<<<<>>>>>
[Stardust Acquired: 100]
<<<<<>>>>>
That little? Jace thought. “Get half to Priam.”
“Roger!” Ollie said with his chipper voice.
“Th…thank you,” Priam said as he grabbed Jace’s hand. “I’m sorry. You’re not my big brother. You don’t have to protect me.” He looked up at Jace and there was a look of resolve in his gaze. “I’ll be stronger. I promise. You’ll be able to rely on me.” His voice took on a harsh tone, “I won’t be a liability.” The word brough to mind a vitriol that was unexpected.
Jace nodded and squeezed Priam’s hand slightly before letting it go. “Let’s get going. There’s still some Complexes we can clear before The Dungeon Run is over.”
>>>---<<<
Yholl felt simmering rage as he watched the two Aspirants leave his ruined tower. They found my phylactery. One half. He sent his vision through a spell to the top of the glacier tile, and felt a jolt of fear race up his spine. The ground was chopped up, and the other half was missing.
They found both halves.
He sank into his chair. Who were these two? Aspirants with purple fingers that marked them as members of some unknown faction. One who was a Pulsar – easy enough to determine. But the other was a total anomaly of Cosmic Power. Yholl buried his face in his hands. I’m bound by the stupid contract.
Part of The Dungeon Run was that, since it was an event that utilized The Cosmic System, he had to sign a contract with a representative of The Cosmic System. A mysterious entity known only as X. The person who could unlock The Cosmic System’s interface with Nihilethelea for the purpose of associating the world’s natural ‘dungeon cores’ with a Complex – what he called dungeons.
The terms of the contract were exacting. One of them that was quite odd, since it had not been applied in prior years, was that he was not allowed to harm any Aspirant who participated. He had signed off, not truly concerned.
But then, an idea popped into his head. I may not be able to harm them…but other Aspirants can. The idea was just too perfect. The best workaround he could have asked for.
He cast a spell to broadcast his voice across the world. “This is Double-A, coming at you with an update!”
