by Lucas Flint
Startled, I looked down at the slowly shambling zombies and said, “But those are your Teammates, and mine, too. Are you going to blow them all up as well?”
“If necessary,” said Targetman curtly, “but I don’t think that’s any of your business to worry about. Unless you want to argue with me about it, that is.”
I hesitated. Though Targetman kept his rifle aimed on the zombies, I suspected he would have no trouble turning it on me if he thought I was going to get in the way of his plan. I hated the idea of my Teammates getting killed in an explosion like that, but maybe it would be a mercy given their current status.
So I nodded and said, “Fine. Do what you have to. But not until I stop Haru. Deal?”
Targetman was now looking through the sight of his rifle, but he said, “Deal. Now get going. I won’t be able to hold them off forever.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Despite my reservations about Targetman’s plan, I didn’t hesitate to jump into action. I turned around and shouted at Cy, “Cy! Get Giggles out of here. Hand him over to the first police officer you find and tell him what’s going on over here in the factory.”
“Uh, sure, boss,” said Cy, looking down at the unconscious Atmosfear under his foot, “but what about you?”
“I’m going to find Yama-sama and Master Haru,” I said. I pointed at the hole in the ceiling. “They’re probably out there somewhere. Don’t worry about me. Just worry about getting yourself out of here. And if you can’t find an officer, go back to our Base and lock Giggles up until I get back.”
Cy looked like he wanted to argue with me about this, but then he nodded swiftly and, displaying surprising strength for such a skinny guy, hauled Giggles over his shoulder and quickly ran away down the catwalk out of sight.
Even before Cy left, I flew straight up into the air. The hole in the ceiling, however, was more than ten feet above me, but thanks to jumping first before I activated Flight, I was able to grab the edge of the hole and haul myself over. Rising to my feet, I quickly took in my surroundings.
It was still dark out, but thanks to the lights from nearby buildings, I could see my surroundings fairly well. The roof of the factory was mostly flat, save for a protruding glass dome here and there. A few smokestacks stood as well, silently spewing black smoke into the air. At first, I didn’t see anyone else on the roof except for me, but then I heard the sounds of metal clanging against metal and looked up at the smokestacks.
At first, I didn’t see anything, but then I caught a glimpse of movement among the smokestacks. I almost dismissed the movement as my imagination, but when the familiar form of Yamamoto became visible for a brief moment, I knew that I had seen something. It looked like Yamamoto and Haru were fighting among the smokestacks, but I was shocked at how fast they moved. They were moving so fast that I couldn’t even see them. Heck, I could barely hear them aside from the occasional clanging of metal against metal. I knew ninja were fast, but those guys were faster than lightning.
In any case, I summoned twin Ice Daggers and was about to rush forward when a cry of pain exploded from the smokestacks. Yamamoto became visible again suddenly, but now he had a dagger in his stomach. He was perched against one of the smokestacks, somehow clinging to its surface despite the apparent lack of handholds and footholds. Then Yamamoto fell down toward the roof below, red blood trailing behind him. He hit the roof with a sickening thud and a second later Haru landed next to him.
Haru stood up to his full height and pulled out a full-sized katana from nowhere, raising it above his head, quite clearly about to bring it down on Yamamoto’s head.
“No!” I shouted. “No, you don’t, you monster!”
I fired twin Ice Beams at Haru, but neither of them hit him. Instead, Master Haru performed an impossible dodge, easily avoiding both of my Ice Beams without any issue. His gaze shifted to me and for a moment his eyes fixed on me as if he was surprised to see me.
But then he disappeared into thin air again. I looked around, but could not see him. My Hero Sense wasn’t picking up on him, either, which wasn’t good. It meant he could easily sneak up on me if he wanted to.
But I had no time to worry about that. Yamamoto still lay on the roof with his gut bleeding out. He wasn’t dead yet, but he would be soon if he didn’t get healed. Wherever Haru was, I had to try to reach Yamamoto and save him before he bled out completely. Unlike players, NPCs did not respawn upon death unless they were Sidekicks. And Yamamoto was definitely not a Sidekick.
I ran toward Yamamoto, but when I was about halfway toward the fallen Grandmaster, my Hero Sense suddenly began going off in my head like crazy. The danger was coming from my left, so I ducked, and just in the nick of time. A katana flew over the spot where my neck had been a moment before. Haru was right next to me, so I lashed out at him with my Ice Daggers, but he jumped out of my reach and held his katana before him in a defensive position.
“You have good reflexes for someone who was not trained in ninjutsu,” said Haru. He didn’t sound even remotely tired despite his intense fight with Yamamoto. “But your reflexes, as good as they are, won’t save you from my assault forever.”
I raised my Ice Daggers before me. “I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you. Atmosfear is gone, probably dead. And your factory is going to get blown up along with all of the Z-Virus crap you’ve been making with it. Your whole plan to make a world free of death and pain is about to come to a pretty embarrassing end.”
“I am not surprised Atmosfear fell,” said Haru. “He always struck me as the type of man to underestimate his enemies. As for my factory, it is no matter. I will start again if I must. The Z-Virus is not the only path to immortality. If I fail here, then so be it. I have all the time in the world to succeed.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “You’re not immortal already, are you?”
Haru’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I have said too much already. Time to die.”
Haru rushed toward me, his bloody katana flashing before me. His katana flew toward my face, but I raised my Ice Daggers just in time to block it. But Haru was already on the offensive, slashing and jabbing at me with shockingly fast speed. Although I managed to block most of his attacks, I wasn’t able to block or parry all of them. I got a few cuts or jabs here and there, which took off bits of my HP. It wasn’t much, but every little bit added up. Unless I could get on the offensive fast, I was probably going to die by death from a thousand cuts.
It didn’t help that my bloodthirst was coming back. A part of me couldn’t help but think about how much I wanted to chew on Haru’s flesh. My conscious mind kept getting distracted from the battle, which would have been the end of me if my instincts hadn’t kicked in. At this point, I was running on pure instinct and adrenaline, parrying and striking back without thinking about it.
But even my best attacks didn’t work on Haru. He was just too dang fast. His katana weaved through the air like a snake. He had to be even faster than Cy at this point. It was all I could do to keep up, but even then, I still suffered multiple wounds. And every time I did manage to slash one of my Daggers at him, Haru would just jump out of my reach and come at me again, this time even faster than before. He wasn’t moving so fast that I couldn’t see him, but he was moving just fast enough to make me think that I probably wasn’t coming out of this alive.
Just as I was beginning to see the pattern of his attacks, however, Haru suddenly pulled back. Before I could react, he lunged forward again and slashed both Ice Daggers out of my hands. My Ice Daggers flew into the air and I immediately tried to use Ice Beam, but then Haru placed his katana against my throat. I froze, my arms held out and charging with frozen energy, feeling the tip of his katana pressing against my throat without piercing it.
“Why … why aren’t you killing me?” I said, my breathing shallow as I tried not to look down at the blade pushed against my throat. “Why not finish me now?”
Haru tilted his head to the side. “Because I won’t need to
. Tell me, what is the current rate of your Infection?”
I glanced at the Infection rate in the corner of my vision. “Fifty-four percent.”
“Hmm,” said Haru. “Why don’t we get that up to one hundred percent?”
Haru pulled his sword away from me, but I didn’t have any time to react before he pulled out a needle from his pockets and rushed toward me. He slammed the needle—which was black with the Z-Virus—into the side of my neck. I screamed in pain as he pressed down on the back of the needle and this notification entered my vision:
You have been Infected with the Z-Virus again! Speed of Infection: Doubled.
My eyes focused on the notification for only a second before Haru ripped the needle out of my throat and stepped out of my range. Not that he needed to, however. The extra Z-Virus surging through my body was pure torture. My blood boiled and my skin became deathly cold. I screamed in agony and fell onto my hands and knees. My whole body was wracked with spasms and pain. My vision became blurrier and blurrier. A pounding headache threatened to split my skull in two.
Worse than all of that pain, however, was seeing the Infection rate rising in the corner of my vision. Fifty-four percent … fifty-six … fifty-eight … sixty … sixty-five … seventy … seventy-five … eighty-five … ninety-five … ninety-nine percent …
One hundred percent.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The pain went away. Where moments before my whole body felt like it was about to fall apart, now my body felt … nothing. No pain. No pleasure. Just a dull sense of lifelessness. The only thing I felt was hunger and thirst. Hunger for flesh. Thirst for blood.
A notification appeared before me:
Debuff added: Zombification. Class changed to ‘Zombie’ and Alignment changed to ‘Unaligned.’ -100% Intelligence and, Charisma. +100% Strength, Stamina, and Defense. Duration: N/A.
A voice somewhere in the back of my mind told me that I should have been upset about this development or at least disturbed. Maybe at one point, I would have been.
But now, I felt nothing. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what feeling meant anymore. The very concept of feeling anything—pain, pleasure, love, even the senses of my body—drained away into utter nothingness. The only sensation I could feel was my lips and throat burning with hunger and thirst, but even that was more automatic than conscious, and I wasn’t sure such things even counted as ‘feeling’ anymore anyway, whatever that word meant.
Footsteps nearby made me look up. Master Haru stood before me. Despite my rapidly failing memory, I did remember him. Maybe it was a side effect of the Z-Virus designed by him. Something about how he looked made me want to obey his every command, although another part of me didn’t want to listen to even one word that came from his mouth.
“I don’t need to ask you to know that the Infection is complete,” said Master Haru. “I have seen what perfectly Infected zombies look like. Your skin pale as snow, eyes red as blood, and a heart as empty as the pit.”
I blinked. A fading part of me would have said something in response to Master Haru’s statement, but I felt more like sitting back and listening to his commands than anything. He didn’t tell me to respond, after all.
Master Haru clapped his hands. “Stand tall.”
I immediately rose to my full height. I almost rebelled at the last minute but followed the order anyway. After all, what else was I supposed to do?
Master Haru looked me up and down with triumph in his eyes. “Tell me, Winter, how do you feel?”
“Feel?” I said. The word tasted as wrong on my lips as rotten meat.
“Yes, feel,” said Master Haru. “How does it feel?”
I stared sightlessly at Master Haru for several seconds. “I don’t know.”
Master Haru suddenly punched me in the stomach. Again, the fading part of me would have responded to that, but I didn’t even feel it. I just stared at Master Haru’s fist, unsure what he was trying to do or what point he was trying to make.
“Did that hurt?” said Master Haru.
Something told me I should have known what the word ‘hurt’ meant, but it might as well have been a word from a foreign language I had never heard before in my life. Yet for some reason I said, “No, it does not.”
Master Haru’s eyes crinkled as he smiled under his mask. “Wonderful. I hope now you understand the beauty of the world I am going to create. A world without pain, without fear, without … death. The last enemy that shall be conquered is death. Do you know that proverb?”
“It sounds familiar.”
“Good,” said Master Haru. He sighed deeply. “I can start over. Even if all of my Stalking Shadows are killed, even if my factory is destroyed, I can start again. I can use the Z-Virus in you as the basis of a new strain, one even stronger than the last. For if it could overcome the will of a player as strong as you, then even the mightiest Heroes and Villains will be unable to resist the new world I am building.”
Something in the back of my mind told me this was wrong, but again, I didn’t argue with Master Haru. But a thought did occur to me and I said, “You said you are making a world without death. What does that mean?”
Master Haru looked genuinely bewildered by my question. Perhaps he wasn’t used to zombies asking him questions. “No one will die. It’s quite simple.”
In the back of my mind somewhere, a memory sparked. I saw a young woman running away from a crazed zombie. I saw the young woman run into my arms and ask me to find the man who killed her boyfriend. The exact details were fuzzy and grew fuzzier by the second, but despite my lack of feeling, this memory sparked … something inside me. I clung to it for dear life even as the memory slowly slipped between my fingers like sand.
“No death …” I said. “At all?”
“None whatsoever,” said Master Haru. “No pain, either. No more innocent people will have to be murdered. Or killed by assassins. Or suffer in any way. Once the Z-Virus spreads far enough, everyone in the world—from the youngest child to the oldest man—will be able to live for eternity, untroubled by thoughts, by feelings, by anything that might get in the way of existence. Isn’t that wonderful?”
My instinct was to say yes, but then I saw the young woman’s face again. Tears filled her eyes as she asked me to find the man who killed her boyfriend. And somehow, I knew the man was an assassin. How I knew that, I wasn’t sure.
But seeing the contrast between the tears in the young woman’s eyes in my memory and the cold way in which Master Haru boasted about his new world was impossible for me to reconcile. And despite the fact that my Infection rate was at a solid 100%—despite the fact I craved flesh and blood more than anything—I wasn’t so sure I wanted to serve Master Haru anymore.
“I will take your silence for a yes,” said Master Haru. He turned around. “Come. With Atmosfear dead, the factory is lost. We will start again somewhere else. And this time, I will know better than to trust players to help me.”
I took one step forward, but then stopped. Now I did feel something. It wasn’t hunger for flesh or thirst for blood. It wasn’t pain, either, or pleasure. It was another feeling entirely, one I was well-acquainted with. It burned through me as hot as a flame, cutting through the cobweb and fog that had settled over my mind.
It was anger. White-hot, burning anger. And it was directed toward Master Haru.
This time, there was no hesitation in my step. I summoned another Ice Dagger in my hand and stalked toward Master Haru. He must have sensed something was off, however, because he stopped and turned around to face me. His eyes fixed on the Ice Dagger in my hand and he said, in a slightly confused voice, “Winter, what are you doing? There is no one to fight out here. It’s just you and me.”
I said nothing. I had one goal now, and one goal alone. Driven entirely by my anger, I forgot the hunger, forgot the thirst, forgot everything except for my only goal. A goal I would stop at nothing to complete.
Before Master Haru realized what was going on, I grabbed the colla
r of his shirt and pulled him up close. For the first time, I saw fear in Master Haru’s eyes. It was a primal fear, the fear of a creature that knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was going to die today.
“Live forever, Haru,” I said under my breath, “in hell.”
With that, I slashed my Ice Dagger across Master Haru’s throat. Master Haru’s throat exploded open and blood flew everywhere. He didn’t even scream. The fear in his life was replaced by lifelessness and I pushed him down through the hole in the ceiling.
I watched as Master Haru’s lifeless body fell until it hit the floor of the factory with a loud, sickening crack.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The second Master Haru’s body hit the roof, I dropped my Ice Dagger into the factory. I would have fallen in myself if I hadn’t staggered backward. With Master Haru now dead, the anger from before was beginning to subside. It was becoming harder and harder to maintain my very self, much less consciousness, as the Z-Virus sought to reassert control over my body and brain.
But I did see this notification:
You killed [Stalking Shadow Master Haru]! +5,000 EXP!
That single notification broke through the fog in my mind and reminded me who I was. It wasn’t enough to level me up again, but now I was much closer to reaching the next level than I was before. A smile crossed my face at the thought that Master Haru was indeed dead. After all, you didn’t get experience for enemies you didn’t kill.
But the pressure of the Z-Virus over my body and mind was intense. It felt like I was trying to hold a massive five hundred foot door closed that a giant was trying to open. I fell to my hands and knees, clutching my skull and breathing hard. Despite what Master Haru had said about zombies not feeling pain, I was beginning to feel pain now, the psychic pain of my old self trying to reassert control over my body while the Z-Virus resisted.