Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

I hated the reluctance Amelia was obviously fighting through when she spoke. Not because I knew it signaled bad news for me, but because she sounded like… well, like she was hurting herself just to get the words out.

"There's not a whole lot to be found on him, actually. But… official family registers are open to the public. Titus Flinn. Age 57. Married to Isobel Flinn, deceased. Father of Adrian Flinn."

I didn't stumble. I didn't cry or scream or whatever. I just felt… heavy. Heavy and empty.

Then amusement began to bubble up my throat. The next moment, laughter was echoing off the walls of the horribly gross maintenance tunnel.

"Something funny, ya little punk?" Mela demanded, sounding like an edge of deranged laughter might just be lurking in her voice, too.

"Yep! Hey, Amelia? Turns out we really are perfect for each other! Both of us have some truly wonderful father figures. You think if we introduced them and made our relationship 'public', they'd kill each other for us?"

"Knowing our luck, they'd be best of friends," she scoffed. I didn't need to look at the call screen to know she was huffily crossing her arms under her chest.

"True. Imagine, though: we can one day inherit their evil empires and merge them into an ultimate mega corp of doom and gloom! I'd be the scary warlord snatching people up for you, and you could make horrible monstrosities out of our poor victims to fuel our armies!"

She shuddered, which was enough to silence my laughter. "We shouldn't tempt our luck. That sounds like something our fathers might actually do if they sat down together and decided to cooperate."

It was my turn to do a full-body shudder, which almost made me walk into the wall.

At least I was drawing closer to my destination. Thankfully, since I'd gotten the bike illegally registered to me (and paid for all the bells and whistles at the manufacturer's site), I was able to track its coordinates. Still, I was starting to doubt that I'd be able to drive it out of the slums safely.

The meds had well and truly set in by that point. While I couldn't even comprehend the idea of pain anymore, my body was sluggish and somewhat unresponsive. I could walk just fine, but I had no idea about my ability to connect to and drive the bike.

I wisely didn't let Amelia and Mela know that, though. I just kept moving until Mela's voice demanded my attention.

"I… understand if this isn't something ya'd like ta chat about, but… why were ya in the slums, kid?"

I glanced at the feed. It was hard to tell whether she was uneasy in the sudden silence, or too curious to hold her tongue. More realistically, she was probably just trying to stop my eyes from fluttering closed so often.

It wasn't my fault, though! My eyelids felt heavy, and the path was relatively straight. I just had to keep the litter in mind and occasionally take a turn left or right in the same-looking tunnels.

Regardless, the redhead was waiting for an answer.

"Mom and I used to live in the outer districts, actually. I was too young to really remember it right. Then mom got sick, and our credits started running out, and she sold the place we had there and we moved into the slums. She still worked in the outer districts. We just didn't live there anymore. And then she disappeared, and I got a suspiciously large payout in my account, and… the rest is history."

I was a truly sublime storyteller, wasn't I?

"Sorry if I'm not really explaining things," I mumbled. "I don't like to talk about it. My mom… She tried it hide it, you know? But by the end there, she was suffering enough that she couldn't really do that anymore. Kids always notice more than you want them to, anyway."

"I guess." Mela sounded distinctly uncomfortable. "Only family I can remember having was my brother…"

"Fucking hell, why are we all so messed up?" I groaned, forcing my feet to move a little faster. It made the world kind of sway from side to side, but it also meant I could get home that much sooner.

I needed to hug Amelia and refuse to let go for a good while.

"Cause that whole thing about opposites attracting and whatnot is crap." Mela laughed a little, high-pitched and awkward. "If ya find someone who's like ya, whether ya know it or not, yer way more likely to stick together."

"True. Look at me! I latched onto this reckless ass way before I knew we had nearly identical sad backstories," Amelia snarked, making me smile in spite of everything. "Except I learned how to look after myself, and this idiot's constantly trying to get himself killed."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Haven't managed it yet!" I declared cheerfully.

She scowled into the camera. "Don't worry. I'll fix that when I get my hands on you."

We devolved into friendly squabbling, which was an admittedly good thing. Sleepiness had started rolling over me in relentless waves. I just wanted to slump against the wall and let unconsciousness take me.

Banter was all that kept me putting one foot in front of the other.

It was only when I reached a point directly underneath the indicator for my bike's location that I felt a jolt of excitement and wakefulness go through my system. Just as I started looking for a way up, however, I came to another realization.

Even with credentials, I wasn't sure the guards would let me pass between districts. Not with the way I currently looked.

Most of the crap staining me was my own tar, sure. But the jacket I was wearing had very prominent Zerx logos all over it. I wasn't as worried about the bottom half of my outfit, which just had little accents in their colors. Suspicious color coding wasn't quite the same as being covered in gang symbols.

Thankfully, I did have a simple black t-shirt under the jacket, a remnant of my original outfit. I peeled the jacket off and let it drop to the ground to join the rest of the horrid litter.

Not so thankfully, that did make my current state a lot more visible. The jacket was torn up, but it had masked my injuries a little. The t-shirt was far more obviously torn all down the back. It even had a few bullet holes.

Still, by the time I located a ladder that would let me get up to the street level, I decided not to do anything about the way I looked. I probably could have paid off or shaken down some random slum dweller for a change of clothes, but it wasn't worth the fuss.

Not when my injuries might actually be helpful.

I braced myself, gripped the ladder rungs, and started pulling myself up.

The top was tricky, seeing as I had to shove aside the manhole cover, but I could also push up and to the side much more easily than I had struggled to gain purchase upon entry to the tunnels. Only a handful of a minutes later, I was back aboveground and gulping down the horrible, contaminated, earthy air of the slums.

I blinked owlishly as the heat slammed into me, struck by how much more pleasant the tunnels had been. And they were full of litter and dead stuff! Then again, so were the slums, so…

No one stopped me. No one asked questions. If anything, people were in a hurry to move away from me. I was clearly trouble of some description. A couple of idiots looked tempted to try and mug me or something, but they backed off like everyone else when I panned my head to lock my eyes onto theirs.

Shadow-eyes once more proving their superiority!

My ride was, blessedly, exactly where I'd left it. It took me longer than it should have to get it free and ready to ride, but I managed.

That was when my audience saw fit to make their doubts known.

"Adrian…" Amelia ventured. "Are you sure you don't want us to come pick you up? You're safe now. We'd be safe. Just find a place to lay low for a bit and wait?"

"I'm fine!" I startled myself when I realized I'd said that aloud. In an unacceptably whiny voice, too. "I'm fine. Really. I can do this."

I staggered on top of the bike and almost toppled the thing in the process before stabilizing myself. "See?"

My lover made noises of supreme disappointment in me. "Adrian, if you die on that fucking bike, I'm going to —"

She didn't get to tell me what she would do to me, because I slid my hands into the bike's controls and connected to the machine, rousing it to full wakefulness.

Funnily enough, the moment I did that, everything felt easier. The bike wasn't failing, or sleepy, or missing bits of itself. My Shadow-tainted mind had no issues interfacing with it.

So, with a roar of the engine, I urged the bike to take me home.

"Told you I'd be fine," I said somewhat smugly as the bike glided through the streets, rapidly taking me from the slums to the outer districts. That particular transition still didn't warrant guards, apparently. The sensors just let me slip through when my ID automatically confirmed I had the right to travel between the two locations.

It was between the outer and middle districts that I had my first encounter with law enforcement. They flagged me down the second I was within their reach.

Thankfully, I'd had plenty of time to consider what I wanted to say.

"Thank fuck!" I exclaimed rather loudly, now with maximum whine in my voice. "You have to do something about those pathetic slum dwellers! They almost killed me, and I couldn't find a single officer or Peacekeeper to lodge my complaint with!"

I swear I saw the two men, who had been gearing up to question me, wilt before my very eyes.

"Uh, sir —"

"Look at me! Look at the rags I'm forced to wear right now!" I frantically motioned to my outfit. "I had to buy this nonsense off a slum dweller! Me! Because they stole my clothes! They only left me my shoes! And all the physical credits I had on me are gone. I demand justice for this! All my friends told me the slums were supposed to be fun!"

Ignoring the startled sounds of Mela and Amelia, I tore into the two poor idiot guards, giving them my very best Jason impression. Apparently, the little whiny shit I'd had to endure all that time ago was good for something.

Twenty minutes or so later, after I'd thoroughly fried their patience, the two guards strongly demanded I get a move on and leave them to do their jobs. They gave me plenty of assurances that they would totally find my attackers and bring them to justice, which I pretended to totally buy.

Like the fuckers would ever set foot inside the slums.

Not that it mattered. What mattered was that I was now firmly inside the middle districts.

I immediately set a course for the nearest clothing shop. My routine had worked on the first set of guards, but I didn't want to test my luck entering the inner districts. Besides, ditzy rich idiots or not, the guards in the middle and inner districts were far more likely to ask questions and make actual records of what happened. I didn't want that.

So, one quick shopping trip and one mildly traumatized shopping assistant later, I was back to looking presentable. The clothes were even similar to the outfit I'd been wearing when I set out on this little adventure in the first place.

I have to admit, though, that when I exited the shop and eyed up my bike, I was tempted to give in and ask Mela and Amelia to fetch me. I felt like a roughly human-shaped collection of noodles at that point. My need for a nap was just about overwhelming.

But I didn't. Instead, I just sighed and forced myself to move.

As I powered up my bike again, trying very hard not to slide off of it, all I could think about was how much I needed that hug from Amelia.