“Funny that you’re doing the tech stuff and I’m the one out here fighting everybody?” I mean, it was.
“Shut up and hit people!” I could feel her irritation over the implant link.
Knowing that she had a point, I fired off a few more goobots, covering all the people near me, and then I ran around them down the side of the room, passing the newly born True who were crawling, or in some cases running and falling, toward the edge of the room.
Realizing that I had no time to speak of, I flew toward the birthing chambers, flipping to slow myself and then turning myself vertical to land. Only a couple steps away from the birthing chambers, the purple beam passed me on my left, close enough that my suit sensors felt the heat.
In the middle of all the teleportation, Cassie connected via implant. “I’m behind the birthing chambers. Can you keep them off me while I take them out?”
I didn’t see her drop through the hole, but my implant reproduced an image of her swinging across the birthing chambers and dropping to the far side next to the wall.
Even though I had no time to process it, my implant told me what the purple shot meant. Some Abominator guns had been given the ability to attack out of phase with reality, passing their victims armor. The technology turned out to be related to FTL technology, teleportation, and Abominator intangibility tech. Rook must have reverse engineered it or been inspired by what Jared’s device did.
Either way, it wasn’t Rook firing at me. It was one of the True, a male version of Stephanie wearing silver-tinged Abominator designed armor. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 25→
Aiming for the Hardwick Industries lab building, I half-expected that what was left of Protection Force’s team would be waiting in the air or on the roof.
They weren’t. I couldn’t see them anywhere.
Had they left or had they gone inside? I didn’t have time to find out. It was enough that we had to get in there and destroy the birthing chambers. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 24→
I didn’t have time to ask Cassie how her gun had stopped the shot because the next flash of purple targeted me.
Keeping myself in phase took everything I had. By the time that the purple glow around me disappeared, I knew that everything I’d pulled out of whatever power reserves I could access was gone. I wasn’t going to be able to prevent that if he did it again—not for a little while, anyway. All I could do was hope he didn’t realize it.
Of course, maybe I’d get lucky and a killbot would work. The way the night had been going, that was nothing to count on. Also, given that purple glowing tinge to Victor’s skin, I had no idea what he could do, but if he existed out of phase, the only way I’d be able to touch him is by using what the Cosmic Ghost’s taught me to power up the killbot somehow. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 22→
Not seeing anything appear yet, I directed one of the spybots to fly ahead of us and sent Cassie a memory of the last few seconds along with directions for how to see the spybot’s video.
She sent back the words, “If everyone on the team had implants, it would be so much easier.”
Then she spoke over the comm, “Ronin, remember when Rook captured me? If I get the chance, I’m going for him.”
I felt her queasiness as her words echoed in my head. “No, I don’t remember you ever saying, ‘Hey Cassie, the True have your face.’ I think I’d have remembered that.”
“We just found out. I thought we passed it on. With everything going on, I really don’t remember. It’s not just you though. They also based them on Emmy, the receptionist, and also Stephanie. She was at Stapledon.”
Stepping over to the body and staring down at it, Cassie held up her hand as if waving my comment away even as my implant reminded me that I had passed it on. Continue reading Mere Anarchy: Part 20→
Cassie and the gun’s arrival had distracted me from the Rook’s final killbot, something I realized as a wave of fear went through me.
The emotional push from knowing that my life could end at any moment left me scanning my HUD only to have the implant draw my attention to the small yellow glow behind the bot. It had flown past me in my moment of inattention and, contrary to its previous behavior, it wasn’t adjusting its course.
