Shadow Runner [LitRPG]

The location? The slums. Or, to be more exact, a massive underground parking complex hidden under one of the nicer standalone buildings. The kind of place where the Zerx higher-ups might hole up while waiting for extraction.

The troops? Recently decimated. Still, we had approximately four hundred people positioned inside the surrounding buildings, ready to rush out and jump into action. Out of those four hundred, of course, only three were actual, independently thinking and (mostly) human beings.

The weather? Kind of meh. The day was just as hot, dry, and generally miserable as most other days in the slums. So, unfortunately, the momentous event about to happen would not be accompanied by suitably momentous weather…

Okay, so I was distracting myself a little. Even with Amelia and Mela right next to me as we waited behind Patch Six, standing at attention like the good little merc guards whose faces we were wearing, I was more than slightly anxious.

If the two sides somehow managed to hash things out… if Amelia's daddy dearest was more dangerous than we thought… if he wasn't as dangerous as we thought… there were a lot of things that could go wrong.

So. Many. Things.

Thankfully, the first step of our plan resolved itself positively as the sound of heavy transport reached our ears. It wasn't long before they finally came into view, all chrome and shiny and military-like, rapidly filling the large space around us as they spread out to check the perimeter.

The Nightfall Squad, rolling in to dispense justice on eldritch corroborators.

As snarky as I was in the confines of my head, the moment the transports were parked and ex-soldiers began to pour out of them, I almost lost control. I wasn't even sure exactly what that loss of control would have evolved into. All I knew was that the sight of Titus, dark and broody and frustratingly not-hideous, filled me with a deep desire to do something stupid.

The five hundred mercs he'd brought along were a pretty good deterrent, however. So, my dumb ass stayed where it was, and I made no move to claw anyone's face off.

Titus headed straight for Patch. "I see you are prepared. I arrived before Harkness, yes?"

"Yeah, you're here on time. He ain't here yet. Kind of wish he was, though. Fucking waiting…" Patch grumbled, sounding remarkably life-like.

Good thing he was one of our earliest drones. We'd made an unfortunate discovery as Amelia strengthened her abilities. The more control over the drones she had, the less capable they were of acting independently as their old selves.

The original batch of drones had made perfect sleeper agents. On our orders, they could venture as far from her as they pleased. The later batches, though, were far less capable of the kind of stuff Patch was doing right now, not to mention tightly bound to Amelia's location. We'd been forced to keep them all close to us during combat against the Zerx.

She'd tried to fix the issue, but the answer was eluding her.

"Fine." Titus looked around. Thanks to our face masks, his eyes passed over both Amelia and me without recognition. "Where is Miss Harkness?"

"Hidden," Patch replied. "She'll step in if she has to."

Titus nodded vaguely, glancing up at the ceiling. "The doctor will be in the building above us, correct?"

"That's the plan. And your guys got the place all rigged up, just in case. See those markers?" Patch motioned to the red patches on a good swath of the pillars supporting the ceiling of the underground parking lot. "I'd stay away from those, if I were you. Still, even if we have to go for that option, we should be good if we stick to the outer area. Your demolition experts do good work."

"I am aware of that, Six. I made sure their training was up to par myself," Titus answered with a mocking smile.

"Well, your guys did it and they have the trigger, so you know we're not pulling any funny business. Besides —"

Patch cut off as one of our drones suddenly pressed a hand to his earpiece after a crackle, drawing every eye in the underground space.

"The doctor's on his way, sir," the drone dutifully reported, addressing the words to Titus. "Our guys just clocked him. He'll be here in ten. He's got a sizable escort with him."

"Excellent." Titus looked unaffected by the second half of the report. We all knew Amelia's father wouldn't be stupid enough to come alone. "Shall we move into position, then?"

"Let's." Patch turned and led Titus towards the elevators that would take us up into the building.

Amelia, Mela, and I readily fell into step with him.

—

Watching Amelia's father arrive was kind of amusing, honestly. The man was just so full of self-importance that I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes.

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He rolled up in a rather fancy car, all smooth lines and gleaming finish… surrounded by four massive transport vans, which kept said car out of sight. These vans immediately disgorged guards just like the ones I'd seen around the doctor when he played host for me in his little lab of horrors. Literally every inch of them was covered in full combat gear, complete with dark, ominous helmets.

The cameras gave me a good view as he marched up to the building. He was flanked by guards, followed by guards, and had even more guards leading the way. Several stayed outside to guard the vans and front doors in an impressive show of force.

He only had two hundred 'troops', but boy oh boy, was he making the most of them.

There was something… off about the man, I decided. He wasn't tottering or visibly diseased or anything. In fact, he looked just as short and fugly as the last time I'd seen him, even dressed in the same kind of impeccable suit.

It took me forever to realize that it wasn't my eyesight alerting me to the weirdness, but my more esoteric senses. I could feel the doctor's presence grating at me unlike anything I'd sensed before. It just hit me as… wrong.

To be fair, I got a similar vibe from his guards, though vastly reduced. Still, I only had eyes for the man himself.

Standing dutifully with Mela and Amelia, behind Titus and slightly off to the side, I kept my gaze locked on the cameras. Our drones led the doctor to the room where Gatorz was waiting, one floor below us. The doctor's men cleared the room before our drones admitted him.

As soon as he entered, a screen inside the room crackled to life, revealing the visage of my father.

"Harkness. I would say it's good to see you, but that would be a lie." My father's eyes narrowed. "I'd hoped that Patch was lying. Judging by the state of your escort, I know now that he wasn't. I loaned you all those guards, Doctor. What did you do to my men?"

What?

I blinked in surprise as the good doctor broke into a brief bout of laughter.

"I improved them, Flinn. Did you actually think I didn't know you were placing sleeper agents around me? Please. I dealt with that long before I was ready to give them… enhancements."

"Gamma zero three five ten seven," Titus said flatly.

"I gather that's your code?" The doctor's lips curled in a sneer. "Trying to tell my own guards to shoot me in the back? They don't work for you anymore, Flinn."

My father bristled, but said nothing.

The doctor went on, "This is a trap, then? I suspected it, but the proof you presented of Amelia's presence was compelling, which makes me think you do have her."

It better have been 'compelling.' Gatorz had paraded our 'unconscious' bodies on camera before the doctor had decided to bite.

"I'll have my daughter returned to me, Titus," continued Amelia's daddy dearest. "I've invested too much into her to let you keep her. And her 'boy toy', as you put it. But you will regret this."

"The only thing I regret is not killing you sooner. Nightfall Squad, end this."

He was on our side and all, temporarily at least, but the sheer cringe factor of Titus' words just about killed me.

Granted, I didn't have much time to dwell on it, because chaos erupted the very next second.

The few people we had stationed inside the room immediately opened fire on the doctor and his escorts. Outside, mercs began to stream out of the surrounding buildings and parking lot, guns erupting into a cacophony as they tried to rush the doctor's guards.

The doctor merely smirked as his eyes lit up with that disgusting yellow.

His own side erupted into violence… and their thin veneer of humanity fell away instantly.

I watched from the safety of the floor above as the bodies of his guards twisted and grew. Uniforms tore, revealing shiny cybernetics and the irritated flesh attached to them.

Some developed long, spindly limbs, which they used to reach for the nearest mercs and tear them to pieces. Some became hulking monstrosities of muscle that simply crushed everything around them. Others shambled around, noxious liquid dripping from jagged claws.

Our drones did their best. So did Titus' mercs, to my reluctant approval. But that initial clash was still a slaughter. The sudden eruption of inhuman violence was clearly not something our side had been expecting. For each of the few monstrosities they managed to gun down, three or four mercenaries fell.

Then, of course, there was the good doctor himself.

I was shocked when his own suit tore apart and his stature grew, taking him from almost comically short to nearly two meters in height. Even more shocking, though, were his limbs. His left arm gleamed green like Amelia's, rippling and shifting through different shapes. His right arm was pale gray like mine, with claws erupting from the fingertips. His legs were also mismatched, one vermillion red and the other a muddy brown.

Worse still, all the skin connecting to the cybernetics was beyond infected. It looked white and sponge-like, with horrible black-purple tendrils sneaking through the flesh.

That still didn't stop him from bounding right up to Gatorz in one sudden step and slamming a fist down against the drone's head. The following spectacle was… explosive. The single blow managed to cave in the drone's face, pulping it even as it drove the resulting mess of blood and flesh into the former runner's ribcage.

By the time the doctor's fist stopped, it was already deep inside Gatorz's stomach, and everything in its path was just… gone.

Titus cursed as he closed out of the call and jumped to his feet. Still, to his credit, he immediately reached for the weapons waiting on the desk in front of him. He was clearly ready to confront the good doctor, in spite of what he'd just seen.

"All troops engage at maximum capacity. Spare no ammo. Everyone ranked less than Elite and without advanced cyberware, get out of this building. Malt, get that detonator ready. We might need it," he snapped at the drone to whom Gatorz had entrusted the device. The drone saluted right back at his faux-commander. "You lot, follow me. We have monsters to kill."

He stormed out of the door at a speed that made my eyes widen. If there had been any doubt that the man had some top-tier cybernetics, it was gone. In fact, before Amelia's enhancements, he could have just blown through us in seconds and been done with it. Now? I could keep up in pure performance, but I strongly suspected I'd need every last advantage Clairvoyance could give me to make up for a difference in skill.

As we ran, I spared one final glance at the cameras.

Titus' mercs were putting down the monstrosities outside, but even better than that? They were dying, too. Meanwhile, our drones were ever so subtly hanging back, letting the Nightfall Squad soak up the losses and the initial ferocity of combat. Just like we'd instructed them to do.

Turning, I focused on following Titus down the hallway. A cold smile crept over my features as I thought about how easy it would be to put a couple bullets into my father's back at that moment. Or my claws…

I didn't, but only because we had a plan. Take out the good doctor first.

Then I could indulge in my own revenge.