by Ivan Shaman
Almost reaching the entrance, one of the front squads stopped, hiding behind the barricades. Or rather, they thought they were hiding. In the opposite building, Demon had placed a dozen cyborgs with the pumped ‘Marksman’ skill. It was only necessary to wait a bit longer so that as many people as possible would get in his death trap.
A red signal flare, fired by the vanguard of the people, soared over the houses surrounding the relay station. Then over one of the nearby skyscrapers soared two more flares: blue and green. Demon was immediately on the alert: two rockets of different colors could mean anything – from retreat to...
Dozens of steel harpoons shot up from the roofs of the nearby buildings. Long cables followed them. Then heavy fire started from the rooftops. The people shot at the empty windows, shattering them to smithereens. There was nobody inside, why were they doing it?
There was nobody inside! Cold sweat ran down his back. Taking care of his brothers, he removed them from positions open to fire, and now most of the relay station was empty. The people could easily occupy the middle and blow up any floor they liked without meeting any resistance at all.
It was necessary to focus their forces immediately. Having selected all available fighters on the relay station’s map, he sent them to intercept the people. He didn’t use the Masters and a couple of the brothers, who still shielded the destroyed stairwells. Nevertheless, there were too few fighters – less than twenty, in fact.
It was time for Demon to join the battle. Jerk! He climbed to the fifth floor, but there were still five floors left. Jerk! The brothers couldn’t cope without him. Jerk!
He broke into the tenth floor as the first group of people prepared to lay explosives. Not today! Shot! A plasma ball crashed into the group of foes and, exploding, threw them to all sides. The station swayed a little, which meant he had to stop firing plasma while fighting near the core.
Jerk! He didn’t have to kill them, he just needed to throw them out of the station. Strongman! Jumping to the next fighter, the Emperor tore off his submachine gun and threw the soldier out the window with one hand. However, there were too many of them. New people arrived on the floor from different directions.
Jerk! The ‘Strongman’ was still working. Demon clung to the hook that stuck in the floor and yanked it with all his strength, pulling the metal out of the concrete. The man, coming down from the roof, fell to the ground, dragging the cable with him. One less. There were still two dozen here though.
A heavy bullet from a sniper rifle, launched from a minimum distance, pierced through his right shoulder. Snipers! He’d forgotten about the snipers. The people methodically fired at the stairs, killing his brothers one by one, arranged for them as if in a dash.
He could have started a song, but it was still too early. I should move.
Jerk!
The Emperor activated the ‘Connection’, covering all the remaining fighters, but he didn’t take them under his control. Now everyone in his army just thought faster and saw farther – although his own speed slowed down at times. Marksman! Fire! A plasma ball landed on the nearby building and immediately five people got incinerated. Jerk!
Demon was missing something. An opportunity, a chance. He didn’t have time to think, he had to fight. Jerk! The cooldown of the ‘Strongman’ was almost over. A little more and he would be able to pull another hook away. The people on the side controlled by him fearfully hid behind cover, not daring to jump towards certain death.
The snipers continued shooting, but, thanks to his ‘Connection’, the brothers and sisters managed to remain hidden. Their losses were minimal, but still there were only about ten to fifteen cyborgs left. The people were much more numerous.
His reactions had slowed down. He even missed the moment when one of the fighters on the roof leaned out and fired a line on him, hitting the central plate of his horn armor. It didn’t cause any real damage, but Demon fell to the floor from multiple shots. A dozen people immediately jumped out from behind their shelters. Marksman! A plasma ball crashed into one of the front people, but the shock wave and heat were enough to destroy all five foes.
He managed to rise from the floor exactly at the moment when a sniper’s bullet hit the polymer tile in the place where his head had laid a mere second ago. Snipers! What could he do with them? The rifle he had prepared, lay on the twentieth floor, but he couldn’t leave the core undefended.
“We’re here!” Lancelot shouted, fending off the people with the heavy assault shield, which he constantly dragged along with him. “Cover the Emperor!”
Relaxing for a moment, hidden behind Lancelot’s shield, he suddenly remembered his Shooters sitting in the opposite building with the anti-tank grenade launchers. They still had two shots left. Connection! Control!
Taking one of the Shooters with a grenade launcher under his full control, Demon ran to the corner of the building and crouched so that he wasn’t visible, firing a rocket on the roof. The shot was so successful that several cables flew into the gap between the buildings.
“Lancelot, stay here with three Shooters. Don’t let the people get in on this side. You have enough ammunition.” Demon looked around. If he left four cyborgs here, he would have only seven remaining. Where was Jane? Damn, that wasn’t important now. “The rest follow me! Clean the floor of people!”
Keeping the ‘Connection’ on constantly was extremely tiring, but it was vital. Although he would now be happy to sleep for a week or two and eat a mountain of canned meat. But he couldn’t relax. Jerk!
Three dozen people occupied a dense defense, carrying out a suicidal mission to undermine the relay station. Before the people reached the core, they needed to get into the elevator shaft and lay explosives there first.
To do it, two soldiers were breaking the wall down with sledgehammers, and they would finish soon. Demon and his brothers arrived just in time. Heavy fire and bayonet fighting was on their side. The cyborgs were faster and more resilient than the people, and, thanks to the ‘Connection’, his group had the ‘Jerk’, ‘Shooter’ and ‘Marksman’ skills. The enemy soldiers were also skillful, though. They clearly had taken part in many battles; they were well equipped and trained, and, most importantly, more numerous.
Demon shot ahead of the curve. Using his overwhelming ‘Perception’, he knew where and when his enemies would appear; through the noise of the automatic bursts, he could discern the sounds of a man’s breathing behind the walls. Automatic bullets easily pierced the thin office walls, but that worked in both directions.
Taking his machine at the ready and moving in short sharp rushes, Demon managed to get to the wall, behind which the people were setting up the explosives. Having calculated all the possibilities twice, he decided that the main positive in his case was his speed.
He shot long bursts, killing those setting up the explosives first. The people fired back, but he was no longer there. Jerk! Concentrate! Fire! Jerk! The people shot at random, and yet they managed to kill three cyborgs before their last fighter fell. In order not to bother with protecting the explosives, Demon threw it out of the broken window of the tenth floor.
“Lancelot, how are you?” He asked via the ‘Connection’.
“Everything is okay. There are no people on our side!” Lancelot reported cheerfully.
“Hold the position ...” he began.
The building shook so badly that a wave passed from its foundation to the very top. Demon grabbed the wall and focused, inspecting the core by peering through a hole in the wall. The tension on the fibers was sufficient. Someone then blew up explosives a couple of floors below. Cursing, the Emperor left the cyborgs to guard their current floor, and he rushed down the stairs.
Chapter 42. Death
Having climbed down, he clashed face to face with Death. The Japanese woman, dressed in an armored suit, saw him half a second later, just enough to dodge his machine gunning. Her reaction was instant. For the first time in his life, Demon saw a human make the ‘Jerk’. He could swe
ar that it was this skill, but that was impossible.
Immediately approaching him, she struck him with a long blade to the stomach. Demon felt the combination steel, mixed with carbon and aluminum in its layers, pierce his Kevlar layers – the first, then the second armored plate, another two hundred Kevlar layers and, finally, it stopped on his own horn armor. It couldn’t go any further.
Gracefully half-turning, leaving his side, Death pulled the blade from her enemy. However, it was completely stuck, so she jerked in the middle of the movement and sprained her arm. Demon couldn’t hold in an ominous smile. He sharply hit her with his rifle to her head. However, instead of the expected skull crunch, Demon heard only the dull ringing of one metal against another.
Death twisted her arm, leaving the glove with the blade sticking out of his armor, and she rebounded, hiding behind the wall. From the point of view of a person who couldn’t see through walls, it was very smart. Not with him, though. Lifting his machine gun, Demon opened fire. The incredibly fast girl seemed to know where he was shooting every time, and she constantly changed the direction and speed of her movement.
She looped through the corridors with such efficiency that he spent almost the whole ammunition firing at her without hitting. After inserting the last full magazine, he activated the ‘Strongman’ and went through the two nearest walls, shortcutting and jumping out to meet her. He didn’t succeed in catching her by surprise, but now, at least, she had nowhere to run.
Jerk! He kicked her chest, throwing her almost to the ceiling. He saw the frame plates of armor crumble on her suit. Marksman! She fell exactly where he had expected; he shot her, but the bullets crashed into her substituted arm.
Jerk! They begin to move simultaneously. Her speed was simply incredible, physiologically impossible for humans. He wasn’t a human, and he was faster. Punch! A sharp, nanomachine-created blade passed over her head, cutting off a shred of her hair. She ducked under his arm and, using his own power, threw him over herself across the floor.
Demon rose to his feet immediately. In flight, he had dropped the machine gun, and the girl, smiling, had already aimed the barrel at him.
Well, baby, you’ll be surprised.
Jerk!
Death fired, clamping the trigger to the limit, but only one, the last, bullet flew out of the gun. Dodging it, the Emperor activated the ‘Strongman’ and, without thinking twice, threw her from the building.
He thought there would be some kind of dying cry or other manifestation of the fear of death, but instead, behind the girl’s back, two familiar engines started working, and she landed gently a few floors below.
“Blazing! We urgently need help! People have MANPADS! ” Marcus reached him through the ‘Connection’.
“Where are they?” Demon asked, unwilling to take the Luminary under his control.
“They’re in the fifteen-storied building opposite you,” the Senior Master said, and he pointed it out on the minimap.
In a few quick jumps, Demon climbed to the tenth floor. Everything was normal here. The people had broken through, but they had encountered fierce resistance.
“How about ammunition?” He shouted.
“It’s enough! We’re collecting it from the corpses!” One of the Shooters replied, trying not to look out from behind an improvised barricade made from the dead people’s bodies.
The fifteen-storied building was about three hundred yards away. An aimed shot from such a distance could hit exactly in the center, so Demon ran up, jumping over three steps and using the ‘Jerk’ in full. He didn’t stop at the fifteenth floor. Having run five more floors, he lay down in a sniper position, previously prepared for him, and clung to the rifle’s telescopic sight.
The distance, with the increase in height, was about four hundred yards. It was a simple range, given his skills. However, the people smartly decided not to be simple targets. They had placed a few pre-prepared shields on the roof, almost completely covering the view. Almost.
Marksman! He saw them – the swarming fighters, hastily collecting tripods. They probably didn’t have time to prepare in advance. Perhaps they wanted to come even closer. Aim! Exhale! Fire! A heavy all-metal bullet pierced the improvised barricade and hit the head of one of the fighters. The Emperor was sure that panic would begin, but instead, the people accelerated even more.
Then he chose his next target – about forty people crowded around the launchers. Shooting them one by one would be nice, but essentially it would be useless. Having targeted the rifle at the MANPADS, Demon fired. Having flown half a mile, the bullet crashed into the tube of the rocket launcher, getting into the compartment with the fuel, but it didn’t damage the oxidizer. The people ran away from the installation in different directions and hid behind the shelters, fearing an explosion.
It completely paralyzed their work for a few seconds, and Demon had enough time to recharge and shoot again. This time, the oxidizer was also damaged, and streams of flame diverging from the tube were visible to the naked eye.
After making a few more shots and finally driving the people from the roof, the Emperor rose to his feet in satisfaction. The threat had been eliminated. Now it was possible to take the battle to the snipers. But he saw neither snipers nor rocket launchers. It was worth checking how the rest of them were, and he still needed to find Jane.
Swearing at himself, Demon looked through the list of the survivors – only nine out of one hundred and fifty cyborgs remained. Seven of them, including Marcus, were the Masters sitting at the very top of the relay station. Two more were a Shooter and Kris. The rest, including Lancelot and Jane, were listed as dead.
Down below something had happened. Something had killed his charges. He hadn’t even noticed it. He hadn’t tracked the moment when the gunfire had ceased.
“Kris! Can you hear me?” He asked, standing up next to the staircase so that he could see several spans.
“Yes,” she replied dully. Judging by her status, she was injured.
“What’s going on?”
“They got in reinforcements. A lot. Some of them were strange… abnormal. They saw perfectly in the dark and even tracked me. I hid in the basement. That’s the only reason I survived,” Kris answered.
Bad, Demon thought. Extremely bad. He remembered well the boy with brown blood and inhuman reactions. What if he wasn’t the only one? What kind of people were they?
“Well, hide then, and try not to be found,” the Emperor relayed and switched to the ‘Connection’ with the Senior Master. “Marcus, how much time do you need?”
“We have some difficulties. One more hour, and we’ll finish.”
“We don’t have that much time,” Demon finished, looking down. A man had climbed up the stairs quickly. A man who could climb three yards up in one jump. The Emperor didn’t want to find out who was moving towards him. He just took aim and, having foreseen the landing place after the next jump, shot.
The bullet, flying at a speed of about seven hundred yards per second, overcame two floors in less than four thousandths of a second, but in some incredible way, his enemy managed to start moving. The bullet didn’t hit him in the head, but instead, the man’s shoulder. A fountain of brown blood scattered along with scraps, leaving marks on the wall.
Now Demon was one hundred percent sure that the soldier wasn’t human. At least, not completely human. There was no time for ceremony. Marksman! Charge! He waited for a few seconds. The man didn’t appear, but the Emperor saved the charge for another reason. Fire!
A fireball crashed into a weak spot on the staircase, prompted by the ‘Master’, and the ladder fell down, burying the strange man under the rubble. It was dangerous to wait. If several more of these strange humans followed this one, he wouldn’t cope alone. However, he wouldn’t be alone!
Jerk! He barely touched the steps with his feet. Jerk! Flight after flight, he got to the height at which even the floors weren’t marked. Jerk! He flew into the hardware room, discouraging the Senior Master, tho
ughtfully twirling a board in his hands.
“What are you doing?!” Demon asked, looking around the room.
“I’m trying to fix a switchgear which stabilizes the signal strength,” Marcus replied in confusion. “What are you doing here? You have to keep up the defense.”
“There is no longer any defense,” the Emperor answered. “Is the antenna okay?”
“Yes, we’ve repaired it. The signal can be transmitted, but anyone who connects will burn-”
“Fuck off.” Demon went to the output device. The ‘Master’ skill advised that it could be applied to his implant. “Quickly evacuate it. I’ll give the signal.” Not listening to what Marcus was saying, Demon stuck the adapter into his neck, concentrated, and then started singing. He turn on the ‘Connection’ to the maximum, feeling the Light diverging from his body. Then the darkness came!
Chapter 43. Sun
Impenetrable, viscous, all-consuming darkness. There was nothing in this darkness – no stars, no matter, no space. Even no time.
There was only he, infinitely small, lonely, and miserable.
He tried to look around, but in order to turn his head to the side, he needed sides and a head. There was nothing in this darkness of complete solitude.
Demon still remembered that he had once existed, that he had lived. However, this life seemed to be a mixture of ghostly memories, completely incompatible with each other. They were illogical, strange and outlandish. In his memory, rituals and worship of crucified corpses was mixed with eating bodies of still-living people; bloody battles escalated into dinner parties, but all this didn’t make any sense.