Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

My claws twitched at the sight of guards piling into the room. My Stalker instinct flared up, urging me to resort to immediate violence in the presence of humans.

It was easy to ignore, though. You know, on account of how those humans would most definitely stomp me into the ground in seconds if I charged at them.

The wild chaos of flames spreading through the room both hurt and aided me. I was getting dangerously close to heatstroke. My head felt all dizzy and wobbly, and I had to fight down the impulse to cough. On the other hand, the fire was so eye-catching that it took a lot of pressure off of my Stealth. The heat haze was rather useful, too, just in case someone looked in my direction closely enough to glimpse the wavering blur of my concealment skill.

"Stupid runner fuck, fucking up until the very fucking end…"

The gorilla's voice heralded his arrival. I tensed up even further at the sight of him filling the doorway, his much bulkier frame making him seem far more intimidating than the other guards.

"Block these doors! Find the fucker who did this!"

My stomach dropped, and I bit down on my lower lip until I drew blood.

There goes that plan.

I'd been hoping against hope that maybe I could squeeze past them all and sneak my way out. Now five of the idiots were inside the room already, squinting past the flames into the far dark corners, while the other three fanned out in front of the door. They were standing so close to each other that slipping past them was an impossibility.

I realized, then, that waiting would do no good for me.

I spun up Clairvoyance, and the future spilled before me… only making what I had to do even more difficult. Shade after shade of future events scrolled by me with every twitch of my muscles, every minor permutation I could make, and every dumb decision.

In the end, I settled on what would cause the least damage to my person.

Right as the gorilla guy turned away from me, barking into an earpiece about hurrying up the reinforcements and collecting every firefighting implement they had, I chose to burst forward. I aimed for the nearest of the three guards blocking my way out.

Being so close to them and jumping into their line of sight, the faltering of my Stealth was inevitable. Luckily, their first reaction was to stagger as their blurry, fragmented view of me shot knives of pain right through their brains. That bought me enough time to bat away the gun the guy was trying to raise and slice through his throat so deeply, his head nearly came off.

Unfortunately, that also gave the gorilla more than enough time to spin around, his attention drawn by the exclamations of two guards and the sudden gurgling of the dying one.

I knew it was coming. Clairvoyance had shown me that much. So, it was with resignation that I twisted the corpse around while it was still on its feet and tried to force it between me and the gorilla fucker.

That didn't stop three bullets from sinking into my left hip, thigh, and the side of my stomach.

I nearly screamed. Just barely keeping the noise in, I swiped my claws through the face of another guard, tearing out an eye and a good fraction of his face.

Two down.

The third guard managed to get his bearings at that point. He raised his gun as I darted past him, but one final slice of my claws damaged the weapon just enough that it completely misfired and almost came apart in his hands.

Then I was running down the hallway, trying to ignore the growing weakness in my left leg as I bled way too much tar all over the place.

The shouting behind me picked up. I cursed when Clairvoyance once again cursed me with knowing the future without being able to change it.

Just as I reached the nearest corner, the gorilla burst out of the room, and I already knew I couldn't do much to foul his aim.

In a move that must have looked impressive from the outside, I managed to make my right arm blur through the air and take two hits meant for my center chest and face. Said move was enabled solely by dying dozens of times in Clairvoyance, along with my cybernetics' amazing sensitivity and precision. Even with all that on my side, the final shot still found purchase in my lower stomach, the pain nearly knocking the breath out of me.

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The glimpse of utter rage on the gorilla's face made me feel a little better as I turned the corner, but the emphasis was heavily on little. Especially as he launched himself after me faster than a normal human should be able to move, the metal of what were likely cybernetic feet pounding on the floor.

In that moment, I had to admit I felt a little desperate.

There was a long stretch of hallway ahead of me, with nothing but several doors on my right and two windows on my left. Dipping into one of the rooms would send me into a dead end. Running down the hallway would see the gorilla catch up with me.

Stealth was already faltering as I started to burn through the last tenth of my Essence, and it wasn't really helping besides. The gorilla had been scowling like the sight of me pained him, as it should have done. Yet in spite of that, he was frustratingly accurate in his aim… almost like he'd had practice shooting at similar targets.

Then, in a moment of both madness and brilliance, my eyes caught the skyline of the city through one of the windows.

It was kind of grimy and disgusting, honestly. But for lack of a better course of action, I threw myself straight at it.

I knew from my time with the Kittens that the windows were reinforced, so I led with my right arm. The claws, filled with Essence, easily sliced through the glass. And when my body followed, the crack I'd just made let me burst right through the window.

For a single, glorious moment, hot air slammed into my face as I hung weightless over the street.

Then I began to plummet.

My mind churning with every last mental support stat I had, I scrambled desperately to catch hold of something. I failed. Instead, my fingers and palms got scratched to all hell.

Then some distant memories of cheesy action movies popped into my head, and I extended my claws. I pushed Essence into them desperately, then cursed as my claws sliced through the building's façade like butter. I also slammed into it for a moment with my fully body, which swiftly sent me hurtling away from it.

I reduced the Essence use to nearly nothing. My claws noisily caught and raked through the building's wall, yanking me into another impact. This resulted in a lot more friction damage to my fingers, palms, and whatever else got caught between the wall and gravity.

Four of my claws cracked. I failed to suppress a yowl of absolute agony.

And yet, my effort worked. Sort of. What had been nearly certain death changed to an extremely painful flop, all air getting driven right out of my lungs when I finally hit the ground.

Dazed, bleeding tar from way too many different point on my body, and having somehow clung to Stealth that hid my face only at that point, I blearily looked around me.

I was in an alley between the Cattery and a nearby building, lying on a pile of trash bags. Most had burst from impact, spilling horribly smelling crap that looked like toxic runoff and gleamed with oily sheens. Something had stabbed into my back at several points, too. I could only hope it wasn't one of the needles or injectors so readily used by the Zerx.

The only saving grace I found in the whole mess was a decided lack of said Zerx.

Whether this lack came from the commotion or the order to assist in the server room, I wasn't sure. But as I staggered up, in spite of my body screaming at me not to move, no one was in sight.

Then I almost toppled over as a wave of vertigo slammed through me.

"Adrian! Adrian, please talk to me!"

Amelia's voice made me snap out of the daze. I forced one foot in front of the other as I headed… somewhere.

"I'm fine! Just fine!" I managed to force the thought through, though I refused to unclench my jaw to actually say it. That would open me up to whimpering, screaming, cursing, or crying. Whichever came out first.

"Adrian, listen." Mela cut sharply through Amelia's babbling and curses. "I know where you are. Go to the end of the alley and then break left, right now!"

The order focused my mind once more. I dropped Stealth, dragging my feet forward and towards the end of the alley. As I moved, I tried to force the grand total of my leftover Essence points to circulate through my body. I felt a shudder go through me, like someone had splashed me with ice cold water, but it strangely made it easier to bear my injuries.

The constant stream of Essence pouring into me also helped, if I was being honest. Somehow, it seemed to contain actual energy for my body to burn, making my clumsy steps carry me in spite of their wobbliness.

"Good. Now left, left! There's another alley in that direction, and a manhole cover."

"Manhole cover." I giggled a little, feeling a part of myself slip into delirious territory in response to the pain. My lips even curled into a smile. It almost felt like I was back in the good doctor's clutches, running that stupid maze again.

Except the agony there was brief, wasn't it?

I stumbled according to Mela's instructions until I found myself collapsing in front of the manhole cover she was so fixated on.

"Open it. Hurry. There's actually a tunnel and some supplies down there. Zero sewage, I promise. It's a very old Kitten bolthole. Garren liked those. Mort might have mentioned something about them, but… It's the best I can offer. Now, Adrian!"

Amelia jumped into urging me on too, but my body felt so very heavy, and my arms were so busted. With a sigh, I tried to force my limbs to cooperate.

To my utter shock, they actually did. Better than the rest of my body was functioning, actually.

Still, it was a struggle to lift the cover and nudge it aside enough to free up space for my body. Not to mention squeezing myself in and actually sticking to the ladder there before trying to shift the heavy metal cover back into place.

I ignored the part of me snarking in the back of my head that they'd track me down anyway through all the tar I'd left behind. I ignored the voice when it told me I'd bleed to death even if they failed to find me, too.

And then I missed a step on the ladder, leaving me to hang by my hands alone. My very achy, very busted hands.

I relaxed them on instinct, wanting to spare myself the pain, and then I was falling again.

The final thing I heard was Amelia screaming and Mela cursing desperately before I hit the bottom, and then the pain of my injuries was no issue at all.

I could feel absolutely nothing in the sweet embrace of unconsciousness.