Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

Chapter 150: No Plan B



The building looked peaceful enough, despite being surrounded by a sizable group of Zerx guards. That's probably why our current target didn't hesitate to approach.

Watching via a wall of screens inside the building, I narrowed my eyes as he strolled up to the door, all cocky and secure and not suspecting a thing. Sure, he was flanked by four cybernetic-wielding ex-soldiers he trusted with his life, and he was visiting a nominal ally, but still. The arrogance!

I knew that this was an ironic observation, coming from me. After all, I was still trying to sort through my newfound (over)confidence myself.

I ignored the irony and focused on the screens, where multiple camera feeds let me and Amelia spy on everything in the vicinity,

Waiting at the front door was one of the elite guards attached to Gatorz. From our target's perspective, this was another sign that things were just fine.

"Okay," snapped the target as he finished his approach. "You ordered me and the boys to visit at our earliest convenience. This better be good, because those fucking druggies can't hold the line for —"

That's as far as he got before the surrounding Zerx moved like a well-oiled machine, cybernetics activating and guns coming up. The poor idiot barely had enough time to widen his eyes before our enhanced drone slugged him right in the nose. Then he was eating dirt.

His followers, well, followed soon after. If the few remaining civilians, hiding for dear life in the surrounding buildings, thought it odd to see a bunch of Zerx dragging the unconscious bodies of their own inside, no one was going to complain about it.

That's how the final Zerx member of my daddy dearest's 'Nightfall Squad' went down. With a bloody nose, and no bloody clue what hit him.

I could only imagine things from the perspective of the slum denizens. They were minding their own business, living their own lives, when all of a sudden some asshole mercenaries came in and started a war that covered a good quarter of their available living space.

Then, not even a full week later, things just petered out. Zerx were dying all over the place. Mercenaries were marching in the streets. There were vast swathes of newly freed-up real estate for all those homeless, displaced, and dispossessed to claim as their own, so long as they were brave enough to do it.

Meanwhile, the remaining gangs of the slums were nowhere to be seen.

Remembering that little turn of events brought me more than a little malicious joy. Apparently, since we went to town on the Zerx, only the bravest and dumbest gangers dared to wear gang symbols openly. And those who did so were dealt with quickly and violently.

Not by us, mind you. We were a bit too busy with the Zerx at the time. It was the slum residents and the gangers' own former colleagues who took up the fight, leaving the idiotic fuckers beaten and bloody in the nearest alley with all their symbols torn off or defaced.

No one liked the idea of the war possibly stretching in their direction. Who knew?

Of course, none of that was really our concern. Whether life in the slums finally took a more permanent turn for the better or not, we had done what we came to do.

The Zerx gang was done for. The Nightfall Squad members who had been posing as gangers were down and out. Our mercenary friends were paid, looted up, and retreating back to their homes.

That left us with the riskiest part of our plan, and one that had gone through several different iterations before we finally settled on the idea most likely to work.

Two scroll calls, made by two different people. Both firmly under our control.

If Patch were still his own person, I could only imagine he would be quaking in his boots right that minute. Well, he actually was quaking and sweating, but not because he was really feeling all those stressful emotions. He was merely following the script we'd fed him.

Terrified, but still defiant and ready to do what he had to. That's the impression we needed him to make, and thanks to whatever eldritch fuckery went on in a drone's brain, he was pulling it off marvelously.

The call continued to ring, the video feed connected to the large screen in Gatorz's lair. Gatorz himself stood at attention behind Patch, looking vaguely worried.

I almost wished there was some dramatic click or guitar riff or something as the call finally connected. Instead, there was only a sudden brightening of the dark screen as the visage of a man took it up.

"Patch Six," Titus Flinn declared, making it sound like a scolding and an accusation all at once. "The latest nuisance to our plans… and, by all reports, which I didn't get from any of my men, the slum conflict victor. What can I do for you, exactly?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I hated how much I looked like him. Sure, I had my mother's face, but his eyes and hair? Those looked like they'd been copy-pasted right onto me. Especially since he had his hair slicked back into a ponytail, and I myself had neglected cutting my hair for a while.

I suddenly and very badly needed someone to cut my hair right down to the roots… though, from how much Amelia liked to play with it, I was pretty sure she'd object to that.

"Tell me," Patch snarled, the picture-perfect example of vitriol. "Are you working with him? Did you feed our guys to that fucker, Flinn?!"

Titus Flinn stared. "What?"

"Graham Harkness. Don't fucking tell me you don't know who that is. I know for a fact you've been selling people to him!"

"Correct. Just as you did, at one point. Pretending like your hands are clean doesn't suit you, Patch," my father drawled, curling his lips in either pretend or genuine disgust. It twisted his face into something foul, but I couldn't deny that the fucker still looked handsome.

I kind of hated the fact that he was good-looking. I would have preferred someone like Amelia's father: a caricature of a man, whose name I was once more systematically deleting from my brain, in spite of just hearing it. The wonders of mental repression!

"I was doing business with him until I fucking learned what he's doing!" Patch hissed. "Like I've told you before, I value my independence, Flinn. I know to stay the fuck away from that kind of insanity."

"And what, pray tell, did the doctor do to upset you so much?"

Patch glanced to the right. "Bring it in."

Two of our merc drones emerged into view, carrying a corpse between them. The corpse of a desiccated, dead Shadow with its core ripped out.

To say that Titus snapped to attention was an understatement. Anger distorted his features into the dictionary definition of wrath.

"What is that thing doing there?!" he demanded.

"Graham Harkness made it. Made it, Flinn. This used to be one of our guys! A fucking veteran! Harkness somehow made cybernetics out of these Shadow monsters. Behemoths, too. He's sticking them onto people left, right, and center. Fail to withstand the cybernetics, and you turn entirely! That's the fucking man you've been selling to!"

"I didn't… He never said… I didn't fucking know, Patch."

What struck me the most was that my father looked genuinely remorseful. It actually seemed like the truth of what had been happening was almost too much for him to bear. Like the sight of the corpse, a supposed veteran, was breaking his heart.

"He fucking tried to give the crap out to slum gangers, too! Look at this shit!" Patch held up a dusty old bag, tearing it open to reveal odd-looking cybernetics. "He's trying to infect the entire city. Do you have any idea what would happen if the corpos found out?"

Titus did know. So did we, now. We'd gotten curious and finally asked the right questions to the high-ranking Zerx we'd stolen.

Apparently, where eldritch infestations were concerned, wiping out a district or two was the least the authorities were willing to do. If Amelia and I had gone with one of our original plans and spread widespread chaos and infection… Well. I wasn't fond of the city of my birth, but I didn't really want it glassed from orbit.

Not while we were still in it, at least.

Titus looked like Patch had uppercut him right in the jaw. "I will reiterate. I did not know. You could have approached me with this instead of taking apart my slum operation, Patch. I did invite you to join us back when —"

"Well I didn't fucking know you didn't know, right? I realized you're not fucking supporting this horror show when I captured your men! The others surrendered right after to prove they're not fucking with things they shouldn't."

"I presume you'll let them go free, then? Now that the misunderstanding is resolved?"

"That depends." Patch crossed his arms and glared at my father. "What will you do to make this right?"

There was a beat of silence.

"What do you have in mind?" Titus asked.

"Your help with ending this. I want that fucking doctor wiped off the face of this planet."

To my surprise, Titus resolutely shook his head. "No. I value my men, but I need to do what's right for the majority. I'm not going to storm his holdings in the inner districts. That's suicide."

Patch eyed him for a second, full of anger and disdain. Then a smirk slowly spread across his face.

"What if I say you don't have to? I can lure him out into the slums. We'd just need you and your men to help us take him out, along with any other freak shows he brings with him. And I want you there, Titus. I want to see you make this right, personally. You can have me and my guys after."

"Really?" Titus raised an eyebrow. "What happened to 'valuing your independence' and 'staying away from insanity'?"

"Insanity found me. And independence ain't worth dying for. If we do this on our own, we'll have the corpos on our ass. You're the only one who would be able to shield us."

Titus laughed. Oddly enough, it sounded somewhat bitter.

"True."

"We have a deal, then?"

"If you can really lure him out to the slums… then yes. Yes, we do."

"Oh, we can." Patch's smirk twisted into a sneer as Amelia stepped into view. "Meet our guarantee."

"Mr. Finn? I'm Amelia Harkness." My lovely ripper crossed her arms and stared at the camera, her eyes gleaming with malice. "Let's talk about how to take out my father."

The star of the second call was Gatorz. A very weary and disheveled-looking Gatorz.

"Yes? Ahh, it's you. I assume this is about delayed shipments," Amelia's father snapped irritably, his horrible yellow eyes flashing.

"Not fucking exactly," Gatorz snarled from the confines of the small, stuffy room we had him in for the moment. "We need funds, and we need extraction. And we need you not to fuck us over when it comes to both."

"I do not make it a habit to 'fuck over' my business partners."

"Oh yeah? Not exactly what I heard. You sure dropped Patch's crew with no word or warning."

"On your urging. For a better deal. This is not exactly how you ask for favors, Zerx. Or should I refer to you as a Nightfall Squad grunt? You are wasting my patience. I would lose very little if I made your connections a known factor among the wider corporate circles."

Gatorz laughed, low and ominous. "Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you. Sure, we had to run, but we ran into something interesting out there. Something you definitely want to see."

"Oh? And why do you think you have anything that would interest me?"

Gatorz's teeth gleamed in the gloom as he grinned. "Because we've got your fucking daughter and her boy toy, that's why."

The good doctor suddenly stiffened. His eyes glowed brighter, the color becoming even more noxious.

"Explain."

No matter how much I hated to admit it, the way he snapped out that word was pure Amelia. At least my lovely ripper was grinning like a shark at the image of her father. Malice and glee danced over her face in equal measure as she stood with me in the corner, well out of the camera's view.

Everything was falling into place. We would either walk away free to do whatever we wanted… or we wouldn't walk away at all.


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