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Mind & Machine C.21
🕑 Added 2024-05-31 21:50:26 +0000 UTCChapter — 21
Three people were rushing her in her direction with speed that she couldn't hope to outmatch. They were one man and two women, all of them having industrial-looking cybernetic arms that made their affiliation plain to see. They also had other cyberware on display.
"The boss was right. She went in this direction," One of the women said in a gleeful tone, oozing impatience.
Pistons? How the fuck did they find me?
Rei slung the rifle from her back into her hands only to remember it was empty. Switching her grip to hold the weapon more like a club, she engaged her cyberdeck and looked them over, her orange eyes blazing in the shadowy alleyway through the rain.
"Scary-looking fucker, isn't she?" The man said, but Rei wasn't listening.
All her focus and both threads of consciousness went to work, breaching their nodes with barely any resistance. The ICE was more challenging, and she had to switch her focus from all three and instead to one at a time, going for the more heavy-augmented-looking man first.
Rei felt herself heating up as she pushed for all she was worth, her mind dancing with code and data as he hammered her mind against his defenses. He suddenly stumbled, causing the two women to look his way before he cried out and collapsed, his limbs twitching.
"Fucking Magi," One of the women cursed before both returned to sprinting in her direction.
They were getting closer fast, and Rei shifted her focus to her next target, starkly aware that she couldn't get them both in time as she backed away while dodging the dumpsters and trash piles.
Her second target collapsed barely a dozen meters from Rei, and she didn't even have time to switch her focus to the third of the trio before she was on her, arm cocked to punch Rei in the sternum. Rei tried mounting a defense by blocking with her rifle, but it was a futile effort.
Rei flew backward with a surprised cry as the woman's forearm extended in a blitz; the cyberware The Pistons were famous for delivering a punch with enough momentum that Rei felt both her forearms break. The rifle also didn't help as it flew into her face, breaking her nose in the process.
Hitting a dumpster and nearly breaking her spine, she fell in amongst the trash.
Rei was disoriented for a crucial second before she felt something grab her shin with bone-crushing force, the woman having gotten a firm grip on her.
"Got you!" the woman said, her tone as gleeful as before but now tinged with a hint of bloodthirst. "If Joel or Miranda are dead, I'll make sure you suffer. Well, suffer now. I'm sure the boss won't make your stay with us a pleasant one."
Her villain monologue — as distasteful a picture as it painted — had one positive advantage.
Through pushing most of the agony aside with [Merciless] and gritting her teeth to deal with the rest, Rei managed to finally recover her wits enough to begin breaching the third of the trio as she ruthlessly pulled Rei out of the dumpster.
Rei felt the pressure on her shin heighten, and she was sure the woman was about to break it, considering the vicious grin she sported while staring into Rei's face as if looking for the signs of pain she sought.
Burning, soulless eyes met hers, and a moment of confusion flickered across the woman's face before she, too, began twitching, the metal hand holding Rei's shin involuntarily tightening as the sound of bone snapping rang out in the rain.
Rei stifled a grunt from the spike of agony as the woman screamed in pain — Rei focusing all her efforts on overloading the circuits in her cyberware to begin frying her from the inside in the hope the woman would let go.
She didn't.
Rei tried raising her arms to begin beating the woman's face in, but the mere act of raising them shot enough pain through her body to nearly break her concentration, only stopped by [Strong Will] reinforcing her desire to act.
Instead of punching, Rei continued breaching the woman's ICE to tear her apart from the inside, seeing the man rising unsteadily in the distance as he slowly recovered now that Rei wasn't actively interfering with his implants.
She brought her broken arms up to the woman's face and plunged her fingers into her eyes, putting as much force as she could behind the motion before her nails dug into the flesh around them.
The woman's scream reached a higher pitch as Rei managed to tear one of them out with a sickening squelch, the remaining one partially dislodged but saved from being completely removed due to the woman finally releasing Rei's shin in a wild jerk to fall backward.
Rei couldn't help but let a short, pained cry out at the vicious way the woman had released her as her shin now twisted at a near ninety-degree angle to the side.
Hoping the woman was temporarily out of commission, Rei focused back on the man who was now barrelling in her direction. A furious snarl was on his face as he let out a wordless yell, an injector held in one hand while the other was cocked back like the woman's had been — prepared to strike Rei down.
He was just about to leap over the slowly rising form of the second woman when his legs acted up, his stumbling feet making him fall face down upon her, making his landing spot cry out in pain as the sound of one or more bones breaking rang out.
"Squeaky bitch!" The woman lying beneath the man cried, her voice full of pain and rage.
Rei, though, didn't listen; her mind focused entirely back on her closest adversary — the woman now recovering from having one of her eyes torn out of her skull. She felt her cyberdeck heat her blood to a degree she suspected had begun encroaching into territories that would start causing her actual harm.
Rei was already starting to grow a tiny bit dizzy, no doubt from a combination of pain and her brain overheating from the hot blood circulating through it.
However, with Rei's body so utterly broken, she had no other way to damage her foes. With increasing viciousness to match the trio, she began to digitally tear through the woman anew, her mind whirling as one thread of consciousness targeted her cyberware to immobilize her while the other went to her neural link, sending data the neural link tried to neutralize ineffectively.
Rei overloaded her brain with electric impulses, frying it.
The woman collapsed in truth, parts of her body steaming.
Turning her attention to the recovering duo, she repeated her actions, her head growing foggier as she pushed on with purpose. It wasn't long before they joined the first woman in death. At least, Rei thought so until the notifications came through.
「Notice:
[2] Adversaries neutralized.
Received: 200 Experience」
Only two of them died? And only 200 experience? Wilma, on her lonesome, gave 200. Do they somehow have levels that determine the experience gained?
Not actual levels, as that wouldn't make sense, but perhaps their threat level to me personally?
That wasn't the end of the notifications, though, and Rei's swimming head quickly glanced at the next ones.
「Notice:
[Strong Will] skill level has increased.
Level: 7 → 8」
「Notice:
Skill level ceiling hit. Governing attribute: Ego insufficient for further progress.」
「Notice:
[Athleticism] skill level has increased.
Level: 3 → 4」
「Notice:
New skill learned.
[Pain Tolerance, Level 1]
Governing attributes: Body, Mind
Description: Pain, a biological response to incurred damage, contains valuable data about one's physical condition but can nonetheless be harmful on its own. This skill helps with dealing with the incapacitating side effects while still retaining all the data supplied by nociceptors.」
「Notice:
[Pain Tolerance] skill level has increased.
Level: 1 → 2」
Rei lay there, her cold mind processing everything that had happened for a few seconds.
Her body was overheating but slowly cooling again now that she wasn't putting such strain on her cyberdeck. She couldn't just continue lying there, however, and there was one other foe still not entirely neutralized.
It was the woman lying beneath the man if the minute twitches she saw in her metallic fingers were anything to go by.
I need to move. I can't stay here. I've probably already been stationary for too long, considering that these three managed to find me somehow.
Needing to cool down faster — a prospect helped by the heavy downpour — Rei let out a hiss of agony as she started moving her arms in an effort to remove her hoodie. The garment was keeping most of her body heat contained as it wasn't thoroughly soaked through yet.
「Notice:
[Pain Tolerance] skill level has increased.
Level: 2 → 3」
The pain lessened ever so slightly from the skill leveling up, but it wasn't enough. Making a decision, Rei acted.
「Skill Points: 5 → 2」
「Notice:
[Pain Tolerance] skill level has increased.
Level: 3 → 6」
The relief was immediate, and even though Rei's arms twisted and turned with horrific grinding of bone fragments scraping against each other, her speed of movement increased by magnitudes. Judging by the information the nociceptors — also known as pain receptors — were supplying made it clear she was damaging herself in doing so, but there was simply no other choice.
Finally clear of her hoodie, Rei thought about removing her pants as well but decided against it. She could already feel herself cooling down as the droplets splashed against her swiftly dampening t-shirt. Her mind steadily cleared as her brain returned to non-lethal degrees of temperature.
Rei's forearms were swiftly bruising from the internal damage she'd added from the broken bones, but she gave it little thought.
She had to move.
First, though, let's see if these three have anything of use strapped to them.
Dragging herself to the woman she'd ripped the eyeball implant out of, she searched her pockets, finding nothing. She did find a combat knife strapped to her thigh, though, and after pulling it out of its holster, she continued dragging herself — by her now scraped-raw elbows — toward the other woman and man.
Rei tried stabbing the woman in the head with the knife, but her arms simply bent with a greater jolt of pain that she relatively easily pushed to the side. Instead, she moved the knife to the woman's throat, sawing the sharp blade against the unarmored flesh until she hit the trachea, blood gushing down her broken arms and into the puddles of rain she crawled in.
The woman's twitching grew even more severe, and Rei was concerned she'd regain mobility and lash out at Rei. She couldn't see her eyes as her face was firmly planted face down on the asphalt-like material beneath.
Her concerns didn't come to pass, however, as only half a minute later, the blood pulsing from her heart stopped, merely leaking in a small trickle.
「Notice:
[1] Adversaries neutralized.
Received: 50 Experience」
Only 50 experience this time? Whatever. I need to focus.
Rei made her way around the now two corpses, searching their pockets and the rest of their bodies.
The woman didn't seem to have anything of value on her person, but the man had another combat knife and another find that was even more valuable in her current situation.
Rei inspected the logo of a stylized human heart with a star in its center before reading the label on the injector:
ULM MedJec Zeta, Reconstructive Nanite Injection.
If I'm not mistaken, I've heard of ULM — Ultra Life Medicals. I think the dive chambers supplied nutrient supplements made by them, so this should be legit.
Not having the option to hesitate in using the possible lifeline she now held in her hand, she injected it into her shoulder. It made a hiss as it disgorged its contents into her flesh; Rei felt like her shoulder bloated for a second before her blood carried away the nanites or whatever was in the injector.
Rei didn't exactly feel the nanites in her body, but something was happening.
Crunching sounds came from her forearms as she saw them move into proper alignment, the pain spiking for a second before subsiding somewhat. The same happened to her leg, and the nose she'd forgotten was broken and leaking blood. The pain in her spine also went away.
She felt healthier overall — the lingering nausea from her body nearly lethally overheating having subsided.
The fuck? I can understand that I am feeling better, but my arms and leg snapping back into position before seemingly mending can't be normal. Surely, one must at least partially set the damaged bone into alignment before any real mending can occur.
She had only hoped to fix some of the flesh and ligaments she'd no doubt torn asunder, but the result was way above expectations.
Suddenly, a very familiar hunger reared its ugly head, screaming into her mind to supply the due sustenance.
So either the injector has severe requirements to heal anything, or the System somehow helped things along and made the injector even more powerful.
Wait a second... This feels way too game-like. 'Use a health potion to regain health' and all that jazz. The System must have been behind it being so effective. I can sleep to heal, for fucks sake.
Rei gingerly made to stand, her body feeling feeble and ravenous but good enough to stand. She looked herself over with careful motions before noticing her chest.
And there they go. I won't be pleased when I turn off [Merciless]. Not that it's that high up on my list of concerns...
Chief amongst them was how the trio had found her. It sounded like they'd known where to look.
The few street-rat kids she'd spotted in the distance before engaging her adversaries had run off, and she was currently alone as far as she could see, but that didn't mean her journey to her current position had been devoid of people.
There had been so many people that following her through the crowds should have been impossible, and she'd deleted the footage of herself in the store, meaning that no one should have picked up on her from there.
I'm also sure that my ICE has protected me well enough in the public mesh. I would have noticed something if anyone had been tracking me through there. I'm sure of it.
She'd also shielded her call with Miyo, meaning that she doubted that her position could have been estimated through that.
Then what?
Rei suddenly remembered something she'd put aside as it hadn't seemed important — maybe even risky — to look into when held captive inside the facility:
Her cyberware.
She'd considered that there was a high chance a tracker or other cyberware had been installed along with it, but other than a cursory inspection, she hadn't pursued it further in fear of getting caught snooping out solutions to bypass any such software before she was ready to make her escape.
I doubt, however, that WolfMosh is the one tracking me at the moment and supplying the info to The Pistons, as that frankly wouldn't make sense. But that can only mean one thing:
Whoever infiltrated Cyber Fang HQ has access to whatever software WolfMosh created to track me.
Rei was cooling down but still didn't feel up to doing any more strenuous mesh magic. She didn't think that would be necessary, though, as all she needed to do was delve deeper into her cyberware than she'd ever dared look before — something she should be able to do without much issue if she took a slow yet steady approach to it.
However, she couldn't just stand there working on it.
My first mind perk sure was a good pick.
Splitting her mind, one thread of thought went to work splicing her cyberware, while the other focused on her environment as she began a painful jog. Her bones hurt as she put pressure on them, but they had at least healed sufficiently for that much.
She couldn't move as fast as before and was sure it wouldn't be long before she was found again, considering how fast the — most likely mediocre — members of The Pistons she'd just eliminated had moved.
I need to find food as well.
That didn't appear to be much of a problem, as when she ran out of the alley — drenched in filth, blood, and rain, gaining some alarmed glances from the nearby people — she spotted a vending machine not far ahead.
The part of her mind that wasn't focused on finding whatever code kept track of her position breached its frankly laughably flimsy security before she began ejecting package after package of some sort of food bar that at least seemed somewhat nutritious. She also ejected a can of soda that claimed to be strawberry-flavored.
She swiped all of it up in her arms before moving on, conscious of the stares she was gathering.
Not that anyone was barring her path. None cared other than to keep their distance.
It wasn't anything like strawberry — too sour and artificial for a start — but the 'berry' part wasn't far off. She still drank it in big gulps before stuffing the candy-like bars down her throat, instantly regretting the order she'd done so in as the bars were surprisingly dry and crumbly.
Another vending machine saved her as she ejected another drink, this time of sparkly water that cleaned the not-too-pleasant aftertaste and dryness from her mouth and throat.
Rei continued moving, going through alley after alley, careful not to move in a straight line now that she knew her position was most likely tracked.
It wasn't enough, however, as she soon came upon another squad of Pistons.
They didn't shout out upon noticing her or speak any threats this time, merely charging in her direction. Luckily, there were only two gangers, and before they could even reach her, they had begun to twitch, collapsing one after the other.
Being a Magi, when up against people with little to no defenses, sure is overpowered.
Not wanting to overheat again, as she already felt her body heat climbing from the jogging and intrusion into their systems, she moved forward before jamming both of her combat knives into their skulls. At least she tried to.
The first one died instantly, but upon trying to repeat the action on the second one, her knives merely tore off synthetic skin and muscle from his bald scalp before hitting something that clinked like metal.
Reinforced skull? No matter.
She dodged the man's twitchy attempt to grasp her wrist as she backed off before moving back with a vengeance, stabbing the knife into his eyeball, making the sharp instrument slide off the wholly mechanical implant before sinking in next to it and going a few centimeters into flesh.
It made the man scream and flail wildly but didn't finish him off, so after dodging his wild gestures — his fists extending and retracting like hammers — she jabbed it into his ear after missing once, the knife sinking into his brain.
He collapsed, dead.
「Notice:
[2] Adversaries neutralized.
Received: 100 Experience」
50 experience apiece once more? Oh, well.
Rei jogged on after searching the duo for anything useful — not finding anything. Her second thread of consciousness worked furiously in an attempt to find whatever gave her position away before she was surrounded and overwhelmed.
That none of them carry guns has been a blessing so far, but me getting my hands on one after defeating them would have been great. I'm still too weak physically to actually put up a real fight against anyone as I am.
She also tried calling Ichiro again, but once more, she didn't get through.
There are many reasons as to why he wouldn't pick up, but most of them are less than ideal. I highly doubt it's because he doesn't want to be disturbed in the middle of some romantic escapade.
Comments
Falxie
TFTC \o/
