Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

For once, the news I had for Mela wasn't horrible or deeply worrying. That was a genuine relief… even if the information wasn't immediately actionable.

Not without taking a few risks.

"So, the Zerx leader is someone called Gatorz." Mela speared me with an irritated glare as she paced around the van. "Who, in spite of his childish nickname, is apparently some kind of netrunner whiz, which is why most people don't actually know who leads the gang?"

"Yeah. According to Gorilla… errr, I mean, Landen…" I corrected myself, feeling the same minor spike of guilt that appeared whenever I thought about the man's connection to my mother. "Gatorz never actually goes out into the field anymore. He just orders people around and uses representatives. No one other than the core members of the gang, the ones Titus sent out here to control things, know who he is."

"Hoookay. At least we can take him out easily enough, if the info is good," she grumbled.

"You know it is," I replied. "Once Amelia gets her hooks in, they don't have a choice but to tell the truth."

She nodded vaguely, her eyes drifting to the maps displayed on the wall of screens. "Right. Right. So, this genius runner thought it would be a good idea to set up a secret lair on the fringe of Zerx core territory, and pretend like he's just another civilian. 'Cause he sucks at direct combat, and he was afraid people would try to take him out directly?"

"Yep."

"And ya just got the info? Just like that?"

"Mela… again, not much anyone can do about eldritch mind control. Or reprogramming. Or whatever you want to call it." I crossed my arms, shooting my own glare in her direction. "Can we focus on planning this? It's not going to be easy, even with the info. The guy's not an idiot. He's still got guards and security and stuff. Landen said the building is trapped to all fuck. Some senior Zerx members are there too, posing as ordinary civilians so they can protect Gatorz's ass."

"Fine! I just… don't like ta think about how easily Amelia can just… ya know."

She waved her hand as she trailed off, not that she needed to elaborate. I could agree that Amelia's whole skillset was more than a little disturbing.

"I know. And I respect that," I said. "Still, let's just —"

I froze as the world shuddered and my hair stood on end. A second later, my Essence senses were thrown wide open. A flood of the eldritch substance swirled around me, draining away into a point somewhere inside the Cattery.

I didn't waste any time on pleasantries. Instead, I put every last bit of my strength and speed into launching myself out of the van and back towards where I knew Amelia was working, cursing myself all the while.

She had said she wanted to focus on getting more things done. She'd insisted that I should inform Mela of everything about Gatorz myself, and immediately. But I should have known better. I knew how close she was to one hundred Essence, and I still left her alone!

By the time I burst inside, the Essence flood was already beginning to wane. My eyes instantly found Amelia. She was curled up on the floor in a crumpled heap.

I collapsed onto my knees and swept her up in my arms.

"Love? Amelia? Please say something," I begged, brushing matted strands of hair away from her eyes.

Eyes that snapped open a second later, stealing my breath away.

I'd always loved the shade of green in Amelia's eyes. Even when she got cyber optics installed, she'd kept the shade going, occasionally letting the manufacturer pattern show just for the aesthetics of it.

Right now? Her eyes were still green, sure. But the color was very much off.

A noxious, toxic-runoff green glowed back at me from her irises. I also couldn't help but notice that her cybernetics no longer looked the same. Something had subtly shifted, making the eyes look both more natural and more alien at the same time.

"Adrian?" Amelia muttered sleepily. Then her entire face lit up in a grin. "We can have kids!"

"I… Ah… What?" I faltered, the whiplash doing horrible things to my heart.

"I know for sure now! We can definitely have kids. I mean, I might need to do a bit of tinkering to make sure they come out looking fully human, and they're definitely going to have, you know, weird abilities and stuff. But they're going to be ours, and they'll look and act human, and isn't that enough? Oh! And I can help you grow stronger now, too! I can't believe I couldn't figure it out before. I just need to convert the DNA, and —"

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I could barely follow the flood of words coming out of her mouth, and there was no denying that manic gleam in her eyes, but I still felt largely relieved.

"Love?"

She snapped to attention immediately, focusing on me with the kind of intensity that made me blush. "Yes?"

"What happened with your Essence? Did you develop a core, too?"

"Oh! Yes, I did, but it's not a horrible thing. It's actually helpful! We can store Essence, recharge it, and even manipulate it a lot more easily than humans can. The cores are also the reason we can use all these awesome skills! Well, the cybernetics did the heavy lifting at first. But even if we lose those now, we'd still keep our skills!"

"Wait, really?"

"Yep! They're like… um… it's complicated, okay? Lots of weird, way-too-many dimensional eldritch biology. The cores aren't just in our bodies, and… never mind. They're not harmful! Well, mostly. Probably? They help more than they hurt, anyway, so it doesn't matter. I need to get back to work, because we need more drones. I can properly strengthen them now. I need to work on our upgrades too, and —"

Amelia kept chattering away, looking more than a little hyperactive. I simply let out a sigh.

Whatever had happened was already done. Both of us were on track to becoming something decidedly not-human at that point… and I had to admit I was a little relieved by that. Being a regular human on our shitstain of a planet kind of sucked.

Besides, apparently, we could still have kids just fine!

—

I never even got the chance to suggest that I infiltrate the Zerx territory on my own and assassinate Gatorz. (Real name Mannie Gartez, age thirty-six, according to Landen.) Before I could say anything, Amelia and Mela told me to sit my ass down and keep any ideas I had to myself, unless those ideas centered around someone else doing the job.

Wisely, for once, I decided to do just that.

There was much speculation over what we could do and what our best options were. In the end, though, we settled on a somewhat simplistic strategy.

Mela contacted the mercenary companies under our employ and gave them three pressure points to apply particular effort against. Like three wedges driven into the stump of the remaining Zerx territory, those pressure points would open a path into the aforementioned territory, giving us the ability to flank our enemy troops.

One of the wedges just so happened to penetrate particularly close to Gatorz's apartment building. Once our hired troops had secured that foothold, we would take over and take out the guy ourselves.

Or, rather, Amelia would stick her fingies into his skull and root around in there until he decided his only goal in life was serving her.

Two days into this plan, I had to marvel at our progress. Our allies were doing great. They were well on their way to penetrating Zerx territory deep enough for us to try and pull off our 'assassination' plot, if the term applied. They'd even managed to massively reduce their losses compared to the start of the campaign.

This was primarily down to Amelia's newfound effectiveness.

If she was a master of molding and altering flesh before, I honestly had no idea what to compare her skills to now. The modifications that had always taken a lot out of her in the past were now done in half an hour or less. The number of enhanced bomber-drones she managed to put out that first day alone was, frankly, insane.

The only limiting factor was the number of captives we had. Our allies didn't question our need for 'enhanced interrogation' subjects, but that didn't reduce the time it took them to catch and deliver live Zerx. Even more frustrating for my lovely ripper, she had to focus on making more bomber-drones instead of replenishing our merc numbers.

But she did it. After a long chat with a very nervous Mela.

My adoptive big sister was a little leery of the Manic Mode Ripper, with admittedly good reason. After the bomber-drone discussion, we then had to talk Amelia out of creating more 'hunters.' Once we heard our allies needed help to break Zerx blockades, my lover insisted her creatures were just what we needed.

Mela and I had talked extra fast then. We'd pointed out that we couldn't afford to let creatures like that be seen. Their rampage would announce to the world that something even more suspicious than a badly thought-out war was happening in the slums.

In other words, the one eldritch monstrosity Amelia had made was enough, thank you very much.

She finally agreed that we should keep the creature under wraps. Of course, that meant it got to hang out with us most of the time, with Amelia occasionally cooing at it. It even hovered over us as we slept inside the Cattery, like the most ominous guard dog in existence.

Thankfully, my lover calmed down pretty quickly after both these conversations. She had to visibly restrain herself from giving into the Medic urge to craft increasingly elaborate biological crimes against nature, but she managed.

The day after the 'no-more-hunters' talk, though, she did have a rather surprising request for me.

"Really?" I looked from her to the three unconscious Zerx captives our allies had just brought in. "You want me to convert these guys into Shadows? But… weren't you just complaining about how you are running out of subjects, and our allies can't deliver Zerx to you quickly enough?"

"Yep! And I know this is going to sound weird, but… I need them to help make you stronger."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Amelia… are you planning to use Shadow flesh to enhance my frail, disappointing human body?"

"It's not disappointing! You know I enjoy your…" She trailed off, flushing when she looked back and saw the smirk on my face. "You absolute jerk!"

I laughed as she punched my shoulder a couple of times. "I can't help but note you didn't deny the frail part, though," I pointed out, once I'd finally calmed down.

"Well… compared to what I can do for you?" She shrugged helplessly. "It's not far off the mark."

"Okay… okay. I can turn them, sure. You don't mind if I, you know, shatter their minds first? Also, is it okay if I dig their cores out, or will you be needing those as well?"

"No, no. You can do your weird cannibal thing to the cores. I just need the flesh."

"Right. 'Cause you want to use it to enhance my body. And I'm fine with that. Yep."

She rolled her eyes at me and motioned for me to get to work. I did so, shrugging off the discomfort.

What did it say about me that I was about to let my Medic girlfriend partially fuse me with the corpse of a Shadow? And that I still dreaded the idea of that far, far less than lopping off my legs to replace them with cybernetics? I wasn't sure.

I was sure that I didn't want to know the answer to that question.