O.C. Saar
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Omega Release | Chapter 11: Going Big AND Going Home
🕑 Added 2025-06-02 18:11:01 +0000 UTCI massaged my shoulder as Aren and I exited the shooting range that Silver provided us. “I didn’t expect this damned thing to have such a kick to it, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Silver shrugged. “I warned you about it.”
I chuckled dryly, “Yes, you did.” I opened up my quest screen and looked at the timer. We had little over a day to steal and deliver the package. “Right, time is not on our side, so we’ll head off. I’ll talk to you later, Silver.” I hesitated for a moment. “If that’s okay with you, that is.”
Silver looked at me for a moment before nodding. “Come back after you deliver the objective. I’ll have something to give you.”
I nodded and walked off, hearing Aren’s shoes slap the floor as he ran to catch up to me a few seconds later. I nodded at the tiny old lady acting as Silver’s secretary as we walked through the lobby.
Aren vigorously waved at her. “See you later, miss!”
“You can call me Mrs. Rogerton, young man.” She told him in a kindly voice. She then turned to me and glared silently. I rolled my eyes and ignored her reproachful look.
Soon enough, Aren and I stood in another elevator, looking mighty pleased with ourselves. I got a fancy new gun, and Aren got weapons and armor. And Silver didn’t shoot me. The day was starting well.
“So. Now what?” Aren asked, adjusting the tonfa looped under his belt.
“Well, now comes the unpleasant part, ” I said, letting out a huff of annoyance.
“The warehouse?” Aren asked with a voice full of excitement and fear.
I snorted. “I wish. No, we’ll be deposited to a random otherside sector of our quadrant and have to make our way to an elevator with Topside access.”
Aren started. “Wait, what? I thought the warehouse was on the Underside.”
“The random exit is both a security measure and a test,” I smirked. “People who go to the Orphanage to buy weapons will come out with powerful and expensive stuff. Random exits minimized the risk of getting ambushed by people looking to procure them for free. At the same time, if you are deposited in, for example, the territory of an enemy clan, if you and your group can’t make it to the closest elevator even when carrying armaments from the Orphanage, those weapons were clearly wasted on you anyway. And we’re going Topside first because I need to pick up something from my place.”
Aren hummed, “Hardcore. I like it.”
I snorted. “Yeah, well, you’ve never gotten dumped on the home turf of a clan that put a bounty on you.”
With a ding, the doors opened, and we stepped out. I looked around for an idea of our location and saw an insignia painted on the side of a nearby building. It was a black and purple arrow pointing upwards over a circle of orange.
“Fuck.”
“What is it now?” Aren said, looking exasperated.
“The elevator dumped us on the home turf of a clan that has a bounty on me,” I said in a rush. I looked around desperately and saw a dark alley between what looked like a clothes shop and a pastry shop. “Quickly, in there.”
Aren took off immediately, and once both of us were safely nestled in the shadows, he turned to me and hissed, “Who put a bounty on you?”
“The Onyx Track,” I hissed right back.
Aren looked taken aback. “You pissed someone off in the Track enough to get a bounty on you?” I silently nodded. “Who… Who the fuck are you, man?” he asked, sounding confused and a little concerned.
“Not the time, Aren,” I interrupted him. “We have to find the closest elevator before we are found. Once we are safe, we can have a little chat.”
He mulled it over for a second and then nodded. “You do owe me some answers, though, 'cause I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Yes, yes, fine. Now focus.” I said, my patience fraying at the edges. Every moment we spent here increased the chances of them finding my signal. I was a moron not to bring a signal blocker. “We need to find an elevator with Topside access, but nowhere near the main roads. They only have short-range trackers, but bounty hunters for the Track that catch on to my signal and then detect an elevator call near it will catch up to us before the elevator arrives, and then we’ll be screwed.”
“Alright, back streets, that’s my specialty,” Aren whispered, “Follow me.”
We walked down the winding alley, taking random turns as we headed deeper and deeper into the lesser-visited parts of the Obsidian Track Clan territory. Occasionally, Aren would tell me to cross the street to another alley he found. Looking around, as we walked, our surroundings became increasingly destitute.
Eventually, we walked through what looked like wholly abandoned neighborhoods. The tall habitation units around us were rusty and devoid of sound, light, or any signs of activity, and the shopfronts were all empty and covered in a thick layer of dust. I barely noted it all since I had my eyes glued on my mini-map the entire time, hoping to find a topside elevator signal.
“Hold on, I’ve got something,” I whispered to Aren after getting a green blip on my minimap a couple of hours into our frantic and random search. Unfortunately, the green blip was on the other side of an iron wall made of hastily welded scrap metal plates.
It was the first topside elevator we managed to detect, but to get to it, we either had to get through the metal wall or take a detour that would add another half hour of navigating the labyrinthine alleys and streets. I squatted and tried to pull out a panel that looked big enough for Aren and me to crawl through, but the damned thing wouldn’t budge. I would have kicked it if that didn’t create a ruckus loud enough to be picked up by any Fieldsenser guarding this area.
“Blasted thing,” I swore under my breath, stepping back after another unsuccessful attempt at pulling it off.
“Leave it to me,” Aren said smugly. “You see,” He grabbed the plate with his left hand and used his right to tap it on the right corners. “Don’t work hard. Work smart.” He grabbed the panel with his right hand, knocked on the left corners with his left, and then effortlessly pulled it out, carefully and quietly putting it down next to the metal wall. “These things always have weak spots.” He smirked at me with smugness so strong that it almost felt like a physical, obnoxious object.
I had difficulty believing my eyes, but the kid somehow did it. “Whatever, let’s go. We wasted too much time as is.” I told him as I crawled through the opening and rushed to the elevator panel on the opposite side of the street.
“Aw, leaving so soon?” A male voice dripping with arrogance and mockery said from somewhere behind us. I whirled around and looked up. Two men and two women stood on the rooftops of the alley we had just exited. “The old you would have heard us tailing him in the first few minutes. Seems like the reports are true. Retirement really doesn’t suit you.” The man talking was the tallest of the two, and shadows obscured his face, but his teeth gleamed as he sneered down at me. “Who would have thought lowly us would find and capture the great R-”
His words were cut off as a hole appeared in his chest. Thanks to his monologue and the shadows that obscured my smaller movements, I had time to pull out my pistol and shoot the yappy bastard. He grunted and collapsed, and his companions reacted immediately, one of them yelping in alarm and diving for cover. I could tell that they were using the cover of the rooftops to move to surround us.
“Behind you!” I heard Aren scream. I turned around and looked up as fast as possible, but I’d been too slow. A man holding a blade ready to stab at my head was descending on me, having jumped off a second earlier. The world slowed down as the blade inched closer to my eye. For a treacherous moment, my mind sighed in resignation. At least I would be free from the pain, the memories. The consequences. For a moment, I gave up.
Then everything jolted back to normal as a blue-white barrier appeared before me and blocked the blow, throwing my assailant to the ground. Aren had rushed over to me and used his tonfa to protect me. I looked down at the kid for a moment, impressed and a little humbled at his bravery.
I couldn’t disappoint him. I turned to the man who jumped to his feet, and I took [Overdrive] out of my jacket. His eyes went wide as saucers, but before he could move, I pulled the trigger, blasting him back down to the ground, his chest sporting several more holes than he started with.
“You take the woman who went to the left. I got the two on our right,” I whispered to him.
With a hand signal, we both rushed off, using the shadows, nooks, and crannies to hide our movements. Once I found a good hiding spot, I threw a decoy marker out into the street, which started playing the sound of a person running on the stone pavement it landed on toward Aren’s direction.
I could hear the two bounty hunters, my prey, running over the roofs of the buildings in my direction. They stopped above me, and I could hear them whispering furiously at each other, trying to locate the source of the sound. After a second of tense silence, they jumped down, right next to the alley I was hiding in, and started looking around carefully. I held my breath, hoping they wouldn’t see or hear me. In my current position, I could kill one of them, but the other one would be able to take me down. Their movements betrayed that these were experienced fighters, even if they were amateurish bounty hunters.
I started running out of air and silently begged them to go away. Right as I started seeing spots in my vision, the sound of an energy rifle being fired echoed down the street. My two targets looked at each other, nodded, and started running toward the source of the sound.
Perfect.
Once they were five steps away from me, I silently left the alley and aimed my revolver at the man’s retreating back. I fired once, and the fracture bullet hit the mark, striking the man right between the shoulders. He took a few more stumbling steps before he collapsed to the ground, dead, his companion staring at his corpse in mute horror. Then she started screaming.
“Jergan! No!” She turned to me, her voice an octave higher, “I’ll fucking kill you!”. She started raising her pistol, but it was far too late. As soon as I had fired the shot at her partner, I pulled out [Overdrive] and aimed it at her.
A pull of the trigger later, her headless corpse collapsed to the pavement. I rushed over to their corpses and connected the wire from my watch to theirs. Everything they had on their person had its ownership license transferred to me in a few seconds. Hearing a second shot from an energy rifle, I left the two corpses to be reclaimed by recycling clouds. Within the hour, a black cloud would appear as if conjured by magic and break down the corpses and their belongings to their component elements so they could be reused. That was fine by me. I could use a fabricator to print out any items I looted from them if I wanted to.
I reached the scene of the battle a moment just as Aren punched the woman he was fighting in the stomach, the head of his right tonfa hitting her solar plexus.
With a loud electric ZAP, the woman went flying, smashing into the wall behind her with a sickening crunch. She collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, leaving a red streak on the metallic surface.
Aren looked down at the woman he had just killed with hard eyes. Seems like this wasn’t the kid’s first kill. “You alright?” I called out to him.
He clenched his jaw and nodded, wordlessly walking back to the elevator. I quickly looted the woman and returned to loot the first two would-be bounty hunters.
The elevator arrived with a ding as I walked up to Aren, and we walked in. The rest of the trip took place in complete silence, the sudden explosion of violence and death leaving us both a little off-balance.
We arrived at a spot near my bike, and I drove us back to my Hab unit. As I parked, Aren looked at me with a quizzical look. "Need to pick up something, remember?" I grunted. "Come in."
I only had to hit the door once before it fully slid open, and I walked to the kitchen, Aren walking hesitantly behind me, looking at my filthy home with obvious distaste.
"Hey, bud," I told Hob, patting the stovetop. “Disable sleep mode. Give me a report of any changes.”
A little jingle played as Hob came online. “Greetings, sir.” His voice remained cold and robotic. “No changes in status. A fatal error will occur in t-minus 41 hours and 12 minutes.”
“Wait, this is what you’re doing this all for?” Aren said, sounding incredulous. “A hab unit AI?”
“Yes,” I said simply. “Hob, unlock the wardrobe wall,” I said, pressing my finger in an inconspicuous indentation next to the temperature dial. I didn’t even feel the needle poke my thumb. I heard a deep click from the wardrobe to the left of my desk. “Initiate sleep mode.” I patted the stove again and straightened up, heading for the wardrobe.
“But… Why?” Aren said. “A new one is expensive, but a fraction of the mission’s reward. You could do a few low-risk missions and be able to afford one.”
“My brother created it,” I said coldly. I opened the wardrobe and pushed some coats aside, revealing a hidden button in the back wall.
“Then why doesn’t he repair it?” he crossed his arms in front of his chest.
I turned to him, and I could tell that something in my eyes scared him. I gritted my teeth, trying to stay in control. “Because he’s gone. Now, wait here.”
I didn’t wait for his reply. I just entered the wardrobe, closed the door behind me, and pressed the button. A few seconds later, the back wall opened to my old armory, hidden somewhere in the Otherworld’s labyrinthine corridors. The harsh white light that greeted me was nostalgic, but looking around the room, I felt a pang of regret. All my shelves and my display cases were empty. Everything that I had to remind me of past glories was gone. All of my trophies and equipment had been sold off for booze.
Well, almost all of it. I looked at the mannequin at the far back, sporting a set of red, leather, and metal armor that felt like home. Looking at the armor made me feel better and worse.
I went to the fabricator next to a display case that used to hold the top hat of a blackjack assassin I took down. Havels was his name, I think. I ordered the double whiskey on the rocks that had been denied to me for far too long and took a long, glorious sip. I felt everything got just a little better. The kid didn’t mean anything by what he said. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know. I needed to cut him some slack. I signed contentedly and turned to the armor.
“Well, old friend. How about we cause some chaos once more?” I grinned.
As it turns out, I fit in the armor just fine, even if the waist was a touch tighter than I remembered. Slipping into it felt like being embraced by a long-lost loved one, and I let out an involuntary shiver.
I used the elevator disguised as a wardrobe to return to my hab and took a deep breath. I couldn’t wait to see the kid’s reaction. His face was going to be glorious.
I swung open the wardrobe door and stepped out, looking in expectation at Aren, who was lying on my couch with his dirty shoes on.
He looked at me for several seconds before something seemed to click behind his eyes. “You…” Aren hesitated. “Steelfist. Sister Silver. The way you fight… You’re the fucking Rust Reaver!” He scrambled up from the couch and stared at me, slack-jawed.
I put my fists on my hips and puffed out my chest, mentally commanding my trademark black mask with red streaks to appear in front of my face. “The one and only.”
Aren looked around, his mouth still open in disbelief.
“What the fuck? How did you end up like this? What the fuck happened to you, man?”
Man. That kid sure knew how to boost my ego.
