“Slight problem,” Tabitha’s voice crackled to life in my ear about two minutes prior to when I was expecting to hear her say we were free and clear. “I just lost sensor feeds ahead of me. Io, you got anything?”
Io’s sultry and reliable voice remained quiet. Her absence was not a good sign.
“Someone’s jamming us. Ryan, get up here. We might need to fight our way through.”
Sighing, I started working my way through the prisoners, telling anyone holding a gun to keep their eyes peeled. When I passed the pink girl holding my gun she nodded to me, appearing brave. A slight tremble to her lower lip betrayed her. I paused only long enough to remove my coat and drape it around her shoulders.
“Look after this for me, will you? Keep these people safe.”
“Th-thank you, mister. What’s your name?”
I really didn’t have the time to get into a protracted meet-cute right then, but as I moved past her I called, “Ryan,” over my shoulder and kept moving. By the time I reached the head of the line, our estimated time to arrive on our exit came and went.
If we really were being jammed, Io was almost assuredly freaking out right now. An image of a bunch of pigeons swooping through Eastport looking high and low for any sign of us played across my mind’s eye and I winced. Whatever was in the way of us reaching the surface really ought to tuck its head between its legs and kiss its ass goodbye because when I got up there it was toast.
“Status?” I asked the second I had eyes on Tabby.
“Blind. All of our sensors went dark right before we reached this point. The abandoned subway station is just up ahead, but if something is up there that’s smart enough to take out our sensors I’m concerned we’re walking into a trap. Where’s your coat?”
I frowned. “Gave it to that pink chick. She looked cold. Correct me if I’m wrong but can’t anomalies act as EMPs? Maybe a rogue anomaly cropped up nearby and cooked Io’s sensors.”
“She did look cold.” Tabitha tilted her head and gave my proposal a moment’s consideration. “An anomaly is a possibility, but that only adds to the unknowns we could be walking into, it doesn’t diminish them. I think a much likelier possibility is that Philip and Blitz teleported out of Club Ouroboros like most of the other people and got ahead of us somehow.”
“How would they know where we were headed though?”
Tabitha turned to me and made a face as if she were about to confess something unpleasant. “You and Philips got into a bit of a gunfight while I was clearing the upper level, didn’t you?” She paused. I nodded. She continued, “Please tell me you didn’t get hit.”
I started to say that no, of course I didn’t, but then I remembered those three impacts I felt as I was climbing up the rope. I remembered thinking they might have left some nasty bruises if it weren’t for my new healing factor and thinking I was pretty lucky.
Tabitha read the truth of the matter from my expression. “Shit. Philips is a lazy sack of swine. He hates it when prey runs away from him so he had his weapon outfitted with tracking bolts. He probably painted you and predicted where we were heading based on our course. Crafty son of a bitch.”
I wanted to be mad but honestly that was a neat trick. When I got out of these tunnels I would have to steal that move for myself.
My head rose to look down the path ahead of us. Then I looked back the way we had come, with all the faces of the innocent monsters looking back at me, expecting me to see them to safety. Lastly I looked at Tabitha, who looked nervous about the coming fight.
I reached my decision pretty quickly.
“Tabitha. Remember our first mission, when I told you to go up top while I stayed down and fought those vamps?”
“I remember not listening,” she countered, already seeing where I was going with this.
“Listen this time. I’m not the same naive kid I was. You’ve trained me faster than any other Keeper. You’ve humbled me and forced me to get better. You’ve made me stronger. You gave me back my hand. Let me handle this.”
“Ryan, no. Those are two highly trained Keepers out there. They’ll—”
“They’ll learn their place, is what they’ll do. I’ve already beat Blitz twice. And do you really think I can’t handle Philips? Think about it, Tabs, I’m giving you the more dangerous mission, here. I need you to find some other way to escort these people topside. All I need to do is go kick the asses of a pair of pushovers. C’mon. You and Hannah want me to be a hero? Then let me go be the hero. I can do this.”
Tabitha did not like it, I could tell both with my eyes and through our psychic connection. But like always, she submitted. Good girl.
She stepped over to me and planted a kiss on my lips. It started to get a little heated but she forced herself to break away early. “Listen, Philips likes to play games. He has the time advantage and probably set a trap for you. Whatever he has in store, you have to break his rules and fight him on your terms, or he’ll win everytime. Blitz is good, but he’s cocky and way too angry. Let him come to you and make a mistake, then make him pay for it. Oh, and don’t you dare fucking die on me, Ryan. I need you more than Hannah does, you hear me?”
I smiled. “Loud and clear. Don’t worry. I’d hate to disappoint Hannah by cutting her favorite show short after only one episode. I have lots of plans for how we can entertain her later. But first you need to complete the mission and see these people to safety. Think you can do that?”
“I’ll manage,” she promised.
Then we went our separate ways.
I made sure she and the prisoners were off on a new path before I turned to the abandoned subway station and started walking towards it.
“Ryan?” asked a small voice from behind me.
Turning around, I spotted that thicc-as-hell pink slime girl standing in the doorway, wearing my coat. “I said I wanted to help and your wolf girl told me you could use me?”
Phrasing. Fuck, she’s cute.
“Uh, maybe,” I admitted. “What sort of powers do you have?”
Wobbling slightly, the pink goo that made up her body mass suddenly split into two nearly identical copies of her that stood on either side of the ‘core’ copy. One of the copies was wearing my coat and the other was holding my other Roulette Rouge. The key differences between these two copies and the original was that her core self was slightly more opaque and difficult to see through. She also had a small pink orb floating around inside her biomass, right around her navel, whilst the copies were completely hollow. Whilst the core copy remained thicker than cake, though slightly diminished after splitting her biomass, both of her copies were pencil-thin little spinners that I just knew I could just throw around like pillows.
No small amount of mental willpower was required to keep myself focused upon the here and now as a myriad of possibilities sprang to mind about exactly how I could ‘use’ her as she so helpfully phrased it.
In unison, all three of herselves said, “Ta-da,” in equally soft and nervous voices. “I can command them from miles away and they can help you in a fight. You can do anything you want with them, they’re totally expandable. I can always grow more as long as I keep eating. Do you think you can use them? A-and me, too?”
Fuck yes I can.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Euna.”
“Alright, Euna. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. Please head back to the group. If you leave your spinners, I mean, copies with me, I’ll find some way to repay you someday.”
The core Euna positively beamed as she nodded and darted off back to rejoin the others.
Both of her copies turned to me expectantly, awaiting my commands. I glanced towards the abandoned station ahead, Tabitha’s warning about Philps being a tricky bastard ringing in my ears, then examined Euna’s copies. One wearing my coat. The other wielding one of my weapons.
“Hmm. What can I do to make you both look more like me?”
Both copies glanced at each other and suddenly shifted. Their pink biomass melted and reformed into identical copies of me, outfit and all.
A grin split my face as a plan started to form.
I led the Euna-copy wearing my coat out first, just sending her out with the simple instruction of ‘walk straight to the exit, looking around suspiciously every now and again.’ She did her job perfectly.
She made it right up to the edge of the station’s platform and started to climb up when a camouflage net suddenly launched from the platform and pinned her, and my coat, to the curved outer wall of the subway tunnel.
Agent Philips peeked out of cover and leveled a rifle at the pinned copy. Three bolts flew out of the darkness and punched clean through her head—which, since it currently looked like my head, was extra disturbing—splashing pink goo everywhere.
“You got him!” called a voice from further along the line. Blitz was kind enough to appear, melting out of the shadows obscuring the far side of the subway track and moving toward what looked like my corpse laying on the dirty ground. “See? I told you it’d be easy. He’s an overconfident idiot. Guess you really were being paranoid.”
“Hush, he might’ve been an idiot, but Tabitha sure as hell ain’t—get back behind cover!”
“Now,” I whispered to the other one. “He’s right there.”
She rushed out, Roulette Rouge leveled, and fired a hail of razor-shot; shredding through the concrete pillar that Philips was using as cover. I heard the blond man curse loudly and saw him duck back behind cover. But not before I marked his heat signature on my HUD.
Blitz charged right at the remaining copy, his thin pistol elongating into a katana as he ran. He kicked off the curved wall of the subway and dove towards Euna’s remaining copy.
I clicked my Roulette Rouge’s top barrel into the grenade-launcher configuration and the bottom barrel into the submachine-gun mode. Cryo-rounds on both.
As Euna’s copy struggled to fend off Blitz’s slashes and Philips rose from cover to take aim at her, I struck. The satisfying thunk of the grenade firing towards Philips was matched only by the look of shock permanently flash-frozen across his face as it hit him square in the chest and instantly turned him into a popsicle. Looks like I outplayed him.
Blitz slashed through Euna’s remaining copy, severing my doppelganger in half and revealing its molten pink insides. A similar look of shock crossed his face right before I strode forth and unleashed a hail of icy projectiles upon Blitz, which all super combined and made him into a frozen Blitz-sicle in no time.
Cautiously, I moved over to the pink biomass struggling to reform and plucked my other Roulette Rouge from the ground. Keeping both guns trained on one of the agents, I moved to Blitz and regarded him as coldly as possible.
“That’s three times you’ve struck out going up against me, Blitz. Ever heard of the phrase if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? Might be time to rethink your strategy there a bit. Just saying.”
Blitz’s katana suddenly ignited, and a blast emitted from the vest he was wearing under his clothing that broke apart the ice. He immediately went on the offensive.
Our blades clashed back and forth as he unleashed a savage barrage of light attacks. The only reason I managed to block them all was because I was dual-wielding whilst he only had the one blade. Still, the heat from those flames was getting a little too close for comfort.
Things changed when he managed to disarm me, and suddenly he landed a bunch of those hits, cutting through my clothing and leaving slashes all across my torso. My healing factor made it less of a big deal than it could have been, but that shit still hurt and the flames did a real number on my clothing.
Smelling blood and going in for the kill, Blitz made a cutting motion towards my throat. That was his mistake. I made sure to make him pay for it. My monster blood suddenly surged and I felt my skin harden as my primal side came out. The blade shattered across my neck, leaving Blitz staring at the ruined blade in shock.
He started backing away fearfully.
I followed, changing my gun’s firing mode to shotgun.
“I don’t know about you but I sure as shit didn’t sign up to idly stand by while a bunch of innocent people are slaughtered for entertainment.”
“Dude, what innocent people? They’re just monsters!” Blitz protested.
“‘Just monsters,’” I repeated incredulously, tilting my head slightly to one side. “So are a lot of your coworkers, numbnuts. Monsters made that fancy gear you’re wearing. Monsters built the vehicles that you drove to reach that little nightmare-club downstairs. Hell, I’ll bet monsters even served you breakfast this morning. Think about that the next time you sit idly by while the real monsters watch a pair of kids fight to the death for their shits and giggles.”
Flicking the ammo-selector over to electric-rounds, I unleashed a shock-blast into his chest at point blank range. Electricity arced across his body for a few seconds, and when it was done; Blitz was out cold.
I rounded on Philips and found him chiseling his way out of the ice. Aware of Tabitha’s warning to be cautious, I grabbed my fallen weapon and clambered up onto the platform.
Philips looked at me in wide-eyed panic.
“Please, don’t do it. Don’t kill me!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Kill you? Why the hell would I kill you, dipshit?”
“Oh. I just assumed…Tabitha didn’t tell you?”
My blood ran cold. “Tell me what?”
Philips chuckled. “About her and I, of course! She used to love it when I would fuc-”
Enraged, I raised both of my guns and fired round after round into Philips’s stupid face.
The hologram of agent Philips flickered, revealing a small projector resting in the center of an icy puddle. He was already free. This was a trap! My eyes widened, and I caught a glimpse of movement in my peripheral vision.
Another one of those nets he used to capture Euna’s first copy suddenly sprang down from the ceiling, ensnaring me and pinning me to the floor of the subway.
Fuck!
“Gotcha, dumbass,” Philips crowed, appearing from behind a pillar toting his battle rifle in one hand and a small remote control in the other. “I can’t believe you fell for that. Oldest trick in the book.” He chuckled mirthlessly as he leveled his rifle at my head and mimed taking a shot. “If it’s any consolation, I lied. Your little bitch was far too much of a prude for my tastes. I prefer the slutty ones. Now, that snake-bitch on the other hand, what’s-her-tits with the blouse? She might be a fun little sidetrip on my way to call this in to the boss.”
Struggling against the net in vain, I yelled in impotent frustration and glared up at Philips. “Yeah? Gonna go brag to Aleksei about how you brought down a guy with three weeks of training? I’m sure he’ll be real proud. Let me out of this net and fight me like a man!”
The agent scoffed and lowered his rifle ever so slightly. “Wait, you still think Aleksei is the one calling the shots? Puh-lease. You’re even dumber than you look! Still, too bad old Tabitha got to you first. With the right conditioning, you could have been a valuable asset to the cause. What a fucking waste.” With a sneer plastered across his face he raised his rifle back into position and went to pull the trigger.
He never got the chance.
Euna’s damaged clones had merged their biomass and reformed into a single body, which came sprinting at Philips and donkey-kicked him clear off his feet. His three-round burst skittered off down the subway tunnel as he slid across the platform. His remote control went one way while he went the other and Euna’s copy dove for the control. She landed facing away from me—giving me an unforgettable view—got her hands on the control, and hit the command that freed the smart-net, allowing me to get up.
Philips, lying on his side, sighted Euna and pulled the trigger, scattering her pink goo all across the subway station floor. He moved to reacquire me as a target but he was too slow. I sat bolt upright and leveled my guns at him.
Hand-cannon mode. Four armor-piercing rounds center mass. Philips’s rifle clattered to the ground and he rolled onto his back from the force of the shots. His eyes stared up at the ceiling, seeing nothing.