Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

It's a funny thing, anger. It can spur you to action. It can freeze you in place. It can hone your mind and make you less reasonable than a clanker given a direct order.

In other words, I was halfway to Mort with my claws extended before I had even processed things properly.

Then I jerked to a stop. In spite of my rage, I knew that I needed more from him than just his blood.

Granted, Mela wasn't making it easy to remember that. The redhead was, somewhat reasonably, going apoplectic. The string of curses that left her mouth almost made me blush through my own violent emotions. I definitely heard Amelia giggle-gasp at some point.

But instead of focusing on Mela's suggestions about what I should do to the runner, I just stalked closer.

Now, someone with more preservation instincts would have set up sensors to alert them if they were being approached while netrunning. Mort either didn't have those instincts, or he lacked the funding. Either way, he was completely unaware of my presence.

Even when I found myself standing right in front of his twitching, goggle-wearing ass.

By goggles, I mean the old-timey things designed to help you immerse yourself in the netspace without the use of eye cybernetics. Why he was wearing the things when he had at least half a dozen cables running from his neck and a set of cyber eyes, I really couldn't say, but it was kind of convenient. It really let me get my 'ominous hover' in.

By then, I really couldn't keep my rage in check any longer.

My hands moved so quickly, they might as well have been a blur. One moment, Mort was lounging in his chair, blissfully oblivious to the world. The next, his goggles were roughly batted away, the wires connecting him to the chair were severed, and he had a hand covering his mouth with claws threatening to press up into his liver.

Funnily enough, he couldn't even tell for the first few seconds. Getting severed from the net so violently has its definite downsides. The man was sent into such heavy spasms that he almost impaled himself on my claws all on his own.

Then, finally, his dull gray eyes lit up from within and focused on me. He went very, very still.

"Hi there, ho there friendo," I crooned, almost as lovingly as I would to Amelia, except with malice dripping from each word. "Fancy seeing you here! You know… in this chair… wearing the Zerx threads… it's almost like the Kittens were never violently massacred!"

I knew my voice was growing a little unhinged, and the less said about the rictus my face had settled into, the better. But really? Seeing him quivering under me like that was profoundly satisfying.

"I mean, seriously! I knew you were a fucking asshole, Mort, but this? Going this far?" I leaned in even closer so he had a good fucking look into my blood-red eyes. "Betraying us? Siding with the Zerx? It was you, you fucker, wasn't it? You cut off the defenses, fucked me up when I tried to connect to the cams… Nothing to say for yourself? I'm gonna remove my hand now, and if you try to scream I will fucking gut you."

I applied a little pressure, just enough for my claws to break skin. Idly, I noted that my claws had come out to play on both hands. That meant Mort currently sported some dots and lines of blood where I'd clutched onto his face.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I forced my fingers to relax the death grip they had on his mouth. His first words to me were… disappointing.

"Who the fuck are you?! I can —"

The slap rather effectively shut him up. The only reason he got a couple new cuts instead of losing half his face was because I chose to backhand him like the little bitch he was.

"Who am I?! Are you fucking — No, no, you probably didn't even bother remembering my face. That checks out."

I looked around wildly, my eyes landing on a large standalone monitor that a Ping told me was disconnected from the other systems in the room. My quickhack also detected a very faint connection to the outside, meant for incoming data only. My suspicion for the monitor's purpose was confirmed when I Breached into it and found it was connected to the building's camera data streams.

I overrode that connection, turned the audio on the monitor up, and routed my call video through it. Then I pointed a claw at the screen. Amelia was in one corner, watching with an amused smile on her face, but most of the display was taken up with Mela's wrathful face in all her raging glory.

"Recognize her, maybe?" I asked cheerfully.

The way Mort instantly became several shades paler was amusing.

"M-Mela…"

"That's fucking right, ya sack of fuckin' shit! We trusted you, we —"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

A bang at the door that had closed soundlessly behind me cut us off. We all froze, as stock-still as kids caught shoplifting for the first time.

Then another, louder bang came. I switched back to the camera feed, replacing Mela's fuming face with a quartet of Zerx gathered around the door. They were all toting the type of high-caliber guns that showed they meant business.

"Fucking runner… Open up if you're alive, you idiot!" one of the Zerx shouted. He was bulkier than a gorilla and wearing the kind of buzz cut that had screamed 'military' from the days of old Terra up until the present.

"If you want to fucking live through this, you'll find a way to send them away," I hissed at Mort. "If not… your throat's the first thing I'm tearing open, and I won't stop fucking you up until they come in here and shoot me full of bullets. You get that?"

He didn't acknowledge me, but when he spoke, his voice was remarkably steady.

"Fuck you want?" he rasped, the words echoing in the hall outside through some kind of hidden microphone.

"Fucking runners." The gorilla man's eyes narrowed dangerously. "We just found two of our guys dead. Did you not fucking get the warning? Your access panel's been fucked with, too. Someone took some kind of knife to it."

"No, I didn't get the warning. I was doing my fucking job, unlike you idiots! Nothing showed up on the cams, and no one's bothered me until you."

"Probably spooked him before he could gain access. That means he's close," another ganger growled. "Permission to track him down?"

"Granted. Take Picard with you, and be careful. Our guys don't seem like they'd managed to put up a fight at all. Extreme damage, too. Definitely cybernetics. Whoever this is, they mean business. Probably some kind of fucking merc." The gorilla man rattled off the orders, then turned his attention back to Mort. "You, runner. Keep an eye out. I swear if you let one of my guys get gutted because you're not paying attention —"

"Yeah, yeah, you'll fucking do something horrid to me. Now fuck off so I can actually work!" Mort snapped. If I wasn't the one holding claws to his throat, I'd have easily believed he was just being his normal asshole self.

The guard on the other end apparently agreed. While he cussed out both Mort and Mort's mother, which made Mort's lips twitch in brief amusement for whatever reason, he did walk off.

"There. Now what? I get gutted anyway?" Mort groused, just as irritably as the day I'd been led to him to get added to the Kittens security network.

I wasn't a fan of him mouthing off like that, as if he was still some incredible runner and I wasn't worth his time.

So I let him know.

See, the interesting thing about dating a ripper is how much knowledge you pick up about the human body. When I drove my claws into Mort's leg, I knew exactly what to aim for in order to cause pain without any risk of him bleeding out.

Mort's whole body locked up. His face went chock-white, and he audibly grit his teeth. Still, I did feel a brief bout of respect when he managed not to scream or even whimper.

I flicked over the monitor's connection again to reveal a much more satisfied-looking Mela.

"I have questions, Mort." The redhead kept squeezing and opening her hands, like she was trying to get at him through the screen. "We have questions. And ya better fucking answer."

"You haven't even asked me a thing you stupid fucking —"

I clocked him in the side of the head, making him jerk to the side violently, which was honestly kind of dumb. Typically, you want to reserve brain damage for after you're done questioning someone.

What can I say? My hand just slipped out.

"Let's start with how you're alive," I spat. "You sold us all out, didn't you?"

"No." The force of that word gave me pause. "I fucking didn't. When they attacked, all the defenses got shut down, hard. I couldn't do shit to stop them. The runner support they had… I had to boot myself out of the system, or he would have fried my brain. Fucked me up something fierce anyway. Didn't wake up until after the whole thing went down."

"And the Zerx just let ya live? And hired ya on top of that?" Mela snarled.

"They did fucking not! I woke up and tried to take back the building, but they started melting the entire fucking system from the inside out. I didn't even know there was a hack for that… Anyway, they found the data. Garren's data. That's when the attack stopped, and then Mak pried apart all the barriers between him and me. He looked like a fucking clanker. I was ordered to cooperate, or else."

"Data? What data?" I demanded, eyes flitting to all the server racks that decorated the room. Some were new, from what I could remember, but I now realized that several had been there before the Kittens fell.

"Contacts. Allies." Mort paused, wetting his lips. "Info on former military members. Garren was one. Ex-mil, I mean. I… I was, too."

"You?" I must have sounded more than a little incredulous, because he scowled.

"Yeah, me! What the fuck of it?! I did my fucking time. I earned enough credits to sign up for runner training. That was supposed to change things. Buy me safety. Instead, a day before I was done, the draft order hit and I… never you fucking mind. Garren was getting out legit at the time, and he helped a bunch of us just… disappear. He offered me work, and I stuck around."

"And this is how you repay him?!" Mela thundered. Her hand came down on the couch she was sitting on hard enough to break something. Much to Amelia's great displeasure, if the curses that followed were any indication.

Mort was not distracted. "Repay him?! He was fucking dead, Mela. Dead. When the fuckers snooped through the data, saw my history, and offered me a job, what was I supposed to do? Just fucking keel over?"

"Yes!"

His laugh was harsh. "Ain't how it works, sunshine. Fuck going down with everyone else. I got enough of that crap shoved down my throat back in my old unit."

It was another real struggle not to gut him.

Somehow, I managed to channel my anger into questions instead. "Why the fuck would they spare you, anyway? You something special? 'Cause it sure doesn't seem that way, with how easily I got in here."

His jaw tensed, but he was still frustratingly collected. "Because I'm ex-military. You idiots don't have a clue what you're fucking with here. The Zerx? They're just a front."

"Enlighten us, then," I ordered.

He hesitated only until he felt my claws.

"They're just a… branch. There's a merc company in the core district, made up of ex-military types only. The guy leading it is crazy. Wants some kind of payback for 'the way we've all been treated.' Ordered his assholes not to spill my brains when he found out I served."

My breathing picked up as relief and anxiety alike rolled through me.

Finally, answers.

"Names, Mort. I want names."

"Nightfall Squad. No idea why they picked that shitty name. The guy leading them is called Titus Flinn."

Flinn… FLINN?

Mort entirely missed how I froze as my brain short-circuited, struggling to process that one word.