Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

I froze up a little, okay? It wasn't my fault! It's not exactly an everyday occurrence for someone to start screaming at me about my dead mother and how I stole her face.

To my utter shame, however, it wasn't just shock that made me pause. As I stared at the furious eyes of the bound man, I felt… torn.

A part of me wanted to tell Amelia to drone him up immediately. His anger and obvious mental instability weren't exactly conducive to conversation. Besides, his hatred of all things eldritch (and me in particular, apparently) meant he was unlikely to entertain any of my questions.

On the other hand…

A small, embarrassing part of me wanted to try and reason with him. If he was that angry with me over 'stealing' my mother's face, then he cared about her, right? He had to have known her personally, too.

My mother had been loving and supportive. She'd almost certainly done something incredibly stupid to secure a slightly better future for me. Yet she was, essentially, a stranger.

I didn't know what kind of food she liked. She'd always bought my favorites when we had enough credits.

I didn't know what her hobbies were, or if she even had any. She'd spent all her time either working or playing with me, teaching me things she insisted I should know.

I had absolutely no clue about her past. She'd never talked about it, or about my father.

The only thing I really knew was that my mother's arms were cybernetics of considerable quality. That's it. I kind of suspected her eyes were cybernetics as well, but I'd never managed to prove that.

So, though he was a raving asshole who had tried to kill me, Mr. Gorilla was suddenly also a link to my mother and her past. Maybe, if he knew who I was, he'd help me? Maybe I could get a real connection to my mother again?

Maybe…

I cut off that line of thought with a grimace. It wouldn't lead anywhere helpful. Deep down, I knew I was just being sentimental.

And sentimentality was a luxury we just couldn't afford.

"Turn him, please," I said gruffly. "He's useless like this."

My words cut off the stream of threats Gorilla was still throwing my way. His eyes widened in terror as Amelia stuck her hand into his head. He tried to wiggle away, but with how tightly he was bound, that didn't even slow her down for a full second.

I forced myself to watch his eyes roll back into his skull, ignoring the taste of ash and disappointment in my mouth.

Amelia had gotten rather fast at converting people. These days, she barely needed to dip her fingers into them for half a minute. Yet this time, I saw a frown slowly deepen on her face as two full minutes passed by.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"He's resisting me! How is this… oh. He has Essence. A lot of it, I think? He's actually got more than me… again, I think. I'm doing it, but, it's like his body is actively fighting the changes I'm making."

I tilted my head a little, taking in Gorilla again. He did have a full suite of cybernetic limbs, and he was military…

"That makes sense, I guess." Then I felt my mood brighten as a smile slipped onto my face. "Oh! Hey, this is another point in favor of you not needing to worry. About doing something to me accidentally, I mean. I have more Essence than you do."

"For now." She smirked, but I spotted the relief tugging at her features, fighting against the ever-present doubt. "I did heal you with no issues, though."

"You healed him with no issues, too," I pointed out. "He doesn't have a ruined jaw anymore. And we did read that stuff about Medics healing people out in the field, when they come across wounded soldiers. I think our bodies have no reason to resist healing, so it's easy to do. But now you're actively hurting him by turning him into a drone, so…"

"Mmmhmmm." She nodded vaguely in agreement, then shifted her entire focus to the task at hand.

A moment later, she slumped in relief as Gorilla's body went slack.

"I'm done. And… hrm, I'm at ninety-eight Essence now. That's weird. It's almost like… like I stole some of the Essence he had? And the way my drones are changing… I need to check this!"

She got that faraway look in her eyes that told me she was messaging someone. It wasn't long before one of our oldest drones, a merc that had been brought to our clinic for a cybernetic installation and gotten yoinked instead, walked into the room. Amelia moved over to him immediately, sticking her hands into exposed skin and muttering to herself.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I busied myself freeing Gorilla, since he was now officially one of ours. The handcuffs and the rope were easy enough to remove. It took me a while to cut away the twisted lengths of metal wound around his cybernetics, though.

By the time I was done, Amelia was also wrapping things up. There was a look of quiet awe on her face as she eyed the drone up and down. When she turned around to face me, that look shifted into a blinding smile.

"I finally know what they're doing! They're changing into Essence sinks. It's like their bodies are evolving to draw in Essence more efficiently, using part of the Essence to continue fueling the changes while funneling the rest to me! The amount of Essence I'm getting this way is pitiful right now. But if it continues, I'm going to be constantly growing my reserves, even if I'm doing nothing!"

The smile forming on my face froze as all the implications of this hit me, one after another. "Wait. Isn't that, um, kind of bad? If it's all Medic-tainted Essence, then…"

"That's the best part! It's not! Their bodies are the ones filtering the Essence, so it's remarkably pure, as far as I can tell. Kind of the same as what a regular human would get by following those exercises we stole from my father. And the best part is, I think I can mess around with them to funnel half the Essence to you! That way, you'll be able to get some non-tainted Essence as well."

"Well, that's… a relief," I muttered, trying to keep a smile on my face.

I wasn't exactly lying. Having a source of non-tainted Essence that might balance out all the eldritch crap I'd taken in already… that was a reassuring idea. Unfortunately, there was also a part of me that squirmed and rebelled at the thought.

Two parts of me, really. Two sets of eldritch instincts, lurking uncomfortably close to the surface.

I very carefully chose not to think about what that meant for my future.

Then another thought hit me, and I whirled towards Mr. Gorilla.

"Wait! He had more Essence than you, right? That means he probably had over one hundred. Hundred was the point at which I got the weird core thing, so… does he have one, too?"

Amelia's eyes widened at the question. She rushed over, her fingers turning into some rather sharp implements which she applied to Gorilla's outfit with great gusto. When she finally stuffed her arm in his stomach and started looking around, though, the answer came all too quickly.

"No." She shot me a rather morose glance. "No, he doesn't have a core."

I didn't find it hard to offer a reassuring smile in turn, however. It wasn't like this was a surprise or anything. After all, my tar substitute for blood had clued us in a while ago to the fact that I'd already gone through several mutations.

"It's fine, love," I assured her. "I haven't gone insane since I got my core, or lost myself, so it's all a-okay. Anyway… how do you feel? You're awfully close to a hundred Essence units yourself."

She hesitated, biting her lower lip to the point that she almost drew blood.

"It's… weird. It's like there's this tension in my belly, but it's not actually there? And my entire body feels on edge, like something is about to happen any second now."

I didn't say anything. I just wrapped her up in a hug.

We lingered like that for a little while, ignoring our war against Zerx, the rapid approach of Amelia's first true mutation away from humanity, and everything else weighing on our shoulders.

She was the first to pull away, giving me a grateful little smile. "Okay. I'm fine! I need to get back to the Zerx we've caught and convert them into drones. Maybe make a few more explode-y surprises. First, though… We should question our prisoner, shouldn't we?"

"Yeah," I admitted with a sigh. "Yeah, we should."

Reluctantly, I turned my attention back to Mr. Gorilla. He looked so… empty. Completely drained of whatever personality, however shattered, he used to have.

Oh, well. At least he was going to answer all my questions now.

"What's your name, soldier?"

"Landen Brady," he answered easily, with not an ounce of hatred. Progress!

"Good, good. Now, how do you know Isobel Flinn?"

"She was my commanding officer. First in the army, and then when we started working under Titus."

Something twisted in my chest again, just the tiniest bit. There was a good chance that my mother had fought and bled to keep this man alive. And here I was, reducing him to… this.

"Were you aware of the fact that she had a son?"

"No."

Sometimes, I really hated the nature of drones. I would have liked some more details with these answers.

I guess I'll just have to dig them up myself.

"What did you know about her? Do you know what happened to her?"

"Isobel disappeared with no warning shortly after her marriage to Titus. She was the second-in-command of our company, so her absence was immediately noticed. We were all ordered to drop the subject and never investigate what happened to her. We were worried that this disappearance was a result of her declining health."

I stared, feeling an odd kind of anger sweep through me.

"Declining health? Explain everything from the start."

"Something happened during one of our missions. Some kind of creature attacked her. We got her out, but the medics said the thing used a kind of poison, or something similar. It didn't seem to affect her much after she recovered, not at first. But then we noticed she was gradually weakening and taking a less active role in the company."

In a flash of memory, I relived all the moments from my childhood when my mother had looked so… drained. She was good at keeping those moments from me, but even she slipped up occasionally. A few times, I'd walked into a room to find her struggling to get her arms to work right. Her fingers would twitch on the table, failing to close around whatever object she was trying to lift. I'd even seen her drop things randomly.

She'd always brushed those moments off, and they'd never lasted long. It had been easy enough to overlook them. Now, though, I hated myself for not being more attentive.

"And none of you tried to find her?" I growled. "Not a one?"

"Some of us from her old unit tried. Everyone who did got reprimanded. Miles kept pushing, and then he disappeared, too. All attempts stopped after that."

Well. I now knew my father was a grade A asshole, for sure!

I shook my head, putting all of that aside for the moment. I could keep grilling Gorilla Drone on the subject later.

For now, we had an actual war to end.

"Who is leading the Zerx? I want everything: their name, their location, what they can do, the kind of cybernetics they have. Every. Last. Thing."

My eyes shone a brighter red as I poured all my frustration and anger into this new line of questioning.

I might not be able to do much for my mother. But I sure as fuck could get behind killing some more Zerx.

And the first step was to take out their leader.