Cities in Chains

by Tao Wong

  “Leave it, boy-o. If he didn’t want to say, that’s his problem. You did your part.”

  “But...” I feel guilty. For what? The entire human race? For racist or idiotic assholes? Maybe it’s the Canadian in me that feels the need to apologize.

  “Leave it. You’ve got your own battles to fight.”

  I sigh, giving up. Ali’s right. I’ve got a lot more work to do, more people to check up on, more training to conduct. More Levels to gain. A few hurt feelings and broken noses, if there are any, is something I can leave for others.

  Chapter 13

  It’s been eight days since we returned from Vernon. The refugees have settled down, mostly, with many taking part in the development of our city. It helps that there’s enough vacant real estate that rent is still incredibly cheap. Even if large swaths of space are owned by me directly, there just aren’t enough people to actually populate most of the locations. The small increase in population barely makes a dent.

  Eight days and the Sect has not stopped launching probing attacks. Current consensus is that they don’t have the manpower to actually take Kamloops—at least not without losing more people than they’d be willing to risk. Between the Hakarta, my team, and the combat Classers from Kamloops and Vernon, we’ve got a sizeable force in an entrenched position. While we don’t have the resources to upgrade the town as much as I’d like, our defenses do give us a bit of an edge, especially since Benjamin is working on the approaches. Some of the things that mind of his has come up with are nasty. And innovative. Still, letting the Sect past our shield is the last thing I want to do.

  Mel has been keeping our combat teams sweeping out to the south of the Thompson River to harry our attackers, the group playing hide-and-seek in the lands around. Between Class Skills, technology, and forested areas, the hunting groups are just as likely to stumble across an opponent by chance as find them with Skill. It does mean that we have the north of the river to continue to run hunting and Leveling though, which is nice. It allows some groups to Level in more controlled environments while others gain experience in real combat. Like everyone else, I’ve been sneaking out to Level too, making use of my greater Constitution to squeeze in grinding sessions late at night and in the early morning. Unfortunately, stuck as I am at Level 39, the monsters available are a drop in the bucket.

  My musings, mostly procrastination as I go through the morning mail from Kim / the Settlement is interrupted by a call.

  “John.”

  “Mel. What’s wrong?”

  “We need you at the gates. There’s… something weird. We’ve got the shield up just in case, but you’ll want to see this.”

  “On my way,” I say, dismissing the notification and heading out.

  It takes me only a few minutes to arrive on Sabre and I find myself joining Mel and Mikito and another teenager at the edge of the settlement shield, staring through the shimmering force field at the blood-covered sole survivor of a group. As I walk up, the exhausted brunette outside the shield looks up, eyes locking with mine even as she cradles her stomach.

  “You’re here,” she says with relief.

  “I am…” I glance at Mikito and Mel. “Why aren’t we letting her in?”

  “She’s got a weird Status effect,” Mikito replies.

  I actually look at her and her status, noting the woman’s injured condition and another that I’ve not seen before. Blood Vector.

  Carla Flowers (Level 28 Wisp of Flame)

  HP: 44/490

  MP: 210/210

  Conditions: Injured, Blood Vector

  “Class Skill. She’s infected. If we let her in, she’ll explode and spread the disease to everyone else. As it is, she’s dying,” Ali explains. Even as he speaks, I see her health drop a little.

  “He let me go,” Carla Flowers says softly. “After he killed all of my team. My friends. He took his time, pinned me to the ground while he cut them apart, again and again. Said that he wanted you to know who is killing us.”

  “Who?” I say.

  “Utrashi Wyt,” the survivor answers, her voice coming out softer, weaker. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll kill him.”

  I grit my teeth, rage flaring. I walk forward, stopped only by the shield, as I meet her eyes filled with pain, despair, and rage. Her hazel eyes are filled with the knowledge that she’s dead already and won’t be able to enact her own vengeance.

  “I promise. I’ll cut his head off.”

  When she hears my promise, Carla smiles slightly. She raises her hand, calling forth her Mana, and fire comes, so hot and so fast that she probably doesn’t feel it. Much. Mikito lurches forwards for a second and then stops, held back by the shield and good sense. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the stranger standing next to Mikito step backward, face pale before turning away and refusing to watch. Mel’s lips tighten but he doesn’t look away. Neither do I.

  I watch her burn until there’s nothing left of her or her equipment. We watch in silence, my stomach churning with the acidic knowledge that I can do nothing but witness her death.

  Only when it’s done do I speak. “What happened?”

  “The Blood Warrior—Utrashi—was hiding in the group they attacked. Just waiting for them,” Mel says, shaking his head. “My fault. I should have expected something like that. We’ve been seeding the beasts and Mikito among the hunter groups. Should have realized they might have done the same.”

  I turn to Mel, my eyes glowing with anger. His fault. Her death, their deaths, was his fault. I open my mouth and Mikito steps between us, the tiny Japanese woman craning her neck upward to meet my eyes. The teenager shifts slightly too, his hand falling to the katana at his side. I glance at Mikito automatically and she stares at me, daring me to speak.

  “Not your fault,” I grate out, not needing Mikito’s reminder. I’m angry, but I understand we make mistakes. For that matter, any of our groups without Mikito in it probably would have died too. Even one with the pets. “Mikito, we should let Lana know. Her pets…”

  “Already done. We’ll group her pets up more, keep them in tighter groups,” Mikito says, understanding my hesitation. Neither of us wants Lana to lose another pet. For all her strength now, she’s still somewhat emotionally fragile from losing her brother.

  “Who’s the kid?” I tilt my head sideways.

  Mikito looks uncomfortable for a second before her face turns placid again. “This is Lee-kun. I’m training him as an Aonisaibushi.”

  Lee turns to me, bowing slightly, and I have to keep my face from twitching. It’s weird to see a blond-haired, blue-eyed teenage male bowing while wearing a katana.

  “Aoni…” I give up. Mikito said it so fast and fluently, I had no chance of repeating it after her. “That was your Class before, no?”

  “Yes.” Mikito nods.

  “You can give it?”

  Mikito glances at Ali, who sighs, looking at me.

  “Not exactly. With certain prestige Classes, you can train others in it. Not all Classes, and not all people, but if you managed to achieve a rank higher than the one you’d like to train, it’s possible,” Ali explains. “It’s still no guarantee the kid will be able to get it, but it makes it possible.”

  “I can only take three apprentices at a time,” Mikito says, waving at the kid.

  I nod, noting that his Class hasn’t changed from Artist yet, which I assume means he’s still learning under her. Still, knowing Mikito’s Class, I can see how upgrading someone could be useful.

  “Drawbacks?” I say. There has to be some.

  “Experience. He doesn’t lose his old Class. This one just replaces it eventually and he restarts at Level 1. However, his experience requirements to go up to Level 2 are the same as his previous level,” Ali explains.

  I can see how that’d suck, but with his Level only at nine, the kid isn’t likely to be hurt much by this.

  “Thanks,” I mutter to Mikito for her explanations. Then I turn to Mel, who was patiently listening. “All right,
tell me what you plan to do about this.”

  Later that evening, Lana finds me lying down in the old office leading into the core room, staring at the ceiling. Ali’s disappeared, driven off by my silence and grumpiness. I never bothered to replace the furniture in here, so lying down is my best option. It’s not even dirty—the building modifications keep the floors and ceiling so clean you could eat off them.

  “Missed you at dinner,” Lana says, taking a seat across from my prone form, sweeping aside a discarded chocolate wrapping paper. The timer before it gets absorbed runs out a few seconds later and the wrapping paper dissolves into nothingness. Such a useful feature, though some people turn it off as they don’t want to inadvertently lose something important.

  “Didn’t feel like the company,” I say, continuing to stare at the ceiling.

  “Brooding?” Lana says, a half-smile on her face.

  “Thinking.” A shred of self-honesty forces me to admit, “Maybe brooding a little. Labashi mentioned we should be on the attack. Throwing them on the defensive, rather than stay on it ourselves. We failed, rather spectacularly, at trying that the last time.”

  “We couldn’t just leave the refugees in Vernon,” Lana says pointedly.

  “Really?” I say, frowning. “I don’t think that’s right. We could have passed right through the town, hit the Sect in Kelowna like we’d planned, or at least met their planes in the air. But we decided to stop, take the town because it was offered to us, and we fell for their trap. Then we lost people trying to cover the civilians rather than concentrating our forces and hitting them hard. We might have killed that Rock Thrower in Vernon, but we should have finished off that Blood Warrior.”

  “You’re saying you’re regretting saving their lives,” Lana says warningly.

  “I know. But if we had hit them hard, focused on killing their people rather than playing defense, maybe they’d have gone on the defensive too. If we’d pressed the matter, left the civilians to evacuate themselves and pushed against the Sect’s forces…”

  “You don’t think they’d have sent more help?” Lana says.

  “I don’t know.” I exhale roughly, shaking my head. “I’m not a general. No tactician. I just wonder if we could have done something else. And now, we’re here. We’re back to playing defense when they were meant to be on defense. It can’t last. The Sect must be sending people over, or consolidating their people, or something.”

  “So you want to go attack them again?”

  “Yes. But we’ve got to keep the city covered too. The Hakarta aren’t enough, not anymore. Not after the losses we suffered early on. And we can’t afford more,” I say, shaking my head. “That means keeping the team here. They’ve moved enough people up that if we left, they might be able to take the town. Maybe do some real damage…”

  “Worried they might destroy the town?” Lana says softly, concern in her voice.

  “Yes. They’ve shown they’re willing to kill civilians, and while it might be frowned upon, it’s not entirely taboo. No UN here to stop them. Not that it did much good in our world…”

  Lana sighs, squeezing my hand, and I return the squeeze. The losses during the fight weighs on all of us, even if we’ve had experience losing people. Too many empty homes and abandoned buildings on our trip down, too many people we couldn’t help, no matter what we did. For all that the System has changed us, we’re still human.

  After a moment, Lana lies down, resting her head on my stomach, and holds out a hand to me. I frown, then pull a chocolate and hand to her. We lie in silence, ruminating on our losses and what we can do. Still, with her silent presence, it doesn’t seem as bad.

  Alarms, deep in the night, wake me from dreams I’m thankfully unable to remember. I jerk awake, staring at shrill noise, as Lana does the same. Without asking, Ali’s already displaying a map, showing the attack on the settlement’s Shield.

  “Who is in charge?” I say, hands flicking as I pull clothing from my storage and dress.

  “Not sure. Mel and Mikito are asleep,” Ali says, frowning. “Ah… Leopold.”

  “Who’s he?” I say, glancing at Lana.

  She’s already up and dressed fully. She gives me a nod, moving toward the door and leading the way to the attack.

  “One of the residents. Has some prior military experience, which is why he was chosen,” Ali says, eyes flicking as he reads his screens. “He’s ordered the hunting parties to converge. Should we countermand the order?”

  I grunt, staring at the cluster of dots. Just over sixty Sect members with some assault vehicles are opening fire, hammering the settlement Shield. Not enough to take it down immediately, but if we leave them at it, it’ll go down in four or five minutes. On the other hand, we’ve only got two hunting parties—ten people—out there, and who knows how many other hidden attackers are on the Sect’s side. For that matter, I’m curious how they got in so close without alerting us. Behind the Shield, the guards are gathering, over thirty of them already there and more streaming in.

  “Let them close in but don’t engage. They’re dead if they do,” I say, rubbing my chin. “Can the beam weapons help?”

  “A little,” Ali says, shrugging. “They’re still liable to be destroyed the moment you open the shields.”

  “Damn it,” I growl, running down the streets. We really need to figure out a better option for those guns. “Patch me in to Leopold.” Once Ali gives me the thumbs-up, I say, “This is John Lee. What are your plans?”

  “This is Mel. I’ve taken over for Leopold,” Mel says. “Once we get a critical mass behind the shield, we’ll lower it and hit them hard. Everyone has been given specific targets. Our goal is to kill as many as fast as possible.”

  Too bad we can’t continuously raise and lower the shield. It’d give our people even more of an advantage. The shift costs a lot of Mana, and if we did that, we’d weaken and eventually destroy the Shield ourselves.

  “Are we sure it’s only this group?” I ask.

  “Drones are already sweeping the rest of the field, and we’ve got guards on all the other entrances. We’ve got it covered,” Mel says.

  “Lana and I are nearly there,” I inform Mel, only half-seeing the shadowed streets we run through. Without a main generator, each building is left alone to generate its own electricity and lighting, which means the streets themselves are intermittently lit by residual lights.

  As we turn the corner, the bang, crackle, and hiss of weapon fire and Class Skills can be heard. Our beam weaponry opens up as well, automatically adding their own damage.

  “Hold fire,” Mel orders a couple of seconds later.

  No surprise that a lot of shots go off even after the command, the order having to be repeated again and again. Mel and a few others growl and curse out the shooters half-heartedly, obviously more concerned about what they can see. As I near, I frown, noting how all the enemy dots have disappeared from my minimap. That doesn’t seem right…

  Rather than ask a stupid question, I jump onto the short wall that we use to give our people elevation for the attack. The scorched and broken earth is testament to the damage dished out by the group around me, but rather than bodies, there are but a few broken automated weapon turrets.

  “Ali…?” I say, unsure of what is happening.

  “A FLUCTUATION IN THE DATA PROVIDED BY THE SYSTEM WAS NOTICED ONCE ATTACKS IMPACTED. IT IS LIKELY THAT A CLASS SKILL WAS USED TO PROVIDE FALSE SENSOR INFORMATION,” Kim flashes to me. “IT IS CONJECTURED THAT THE SAME INDIVIDUAL HID THE SECT’S APPROACH.”

  “And the damage to the Shield?” I frowned.

  “DELAYED. ON ANALYSIS, ACTUAL DAMAGE WAS DONE A MINUTE BEFORE BUT WAS RELAYED TO OUR SENSORS LATE.”

  “You can do that?” I say, blinking. What kind of insane Skill is that?

  “YES.”

  “This has got to be the work of an Advanced Class. I’ll do some research, see if I can dig up what Class Skills and Classes this might be, but don’t hold your breath. There’re
a million options in the System for anything you can think of.”

  “Where are they now?” Mel asks, obviously having received the same information. I don’t see them on our sensors, which is disturbing to say the least.

  “UNCERTAIN.”

  “Pull the hunting groups back,” I order Mel. If those sixty Sect members—which I can’t even be certain of anymore—meet ours, they’d wipe out our hunting groups in no time flat. Better to pull back right now.

  “What’s the point of all this?” Lana growls, her hair a frazzled mess.

  “They’re attacking our morale,” Mel says, waving at the puzzled people around us.

  Most look confused, a few looking enlightened as Kim’s analysis trickles down. More than a few are annoyed, some thrilled as they boast about driving them off.

  “Doesn’t look that way,” Lana says, and Mel snorts.

  “Not right now. But if I’m not wrong, they’re going to start doing this every night. Maybe more than once a night. It’ll go from annoying to dangerous because we’re going to have to keep people on watch all the time.” Mel sighs. “The Afghanis used to shoot mortar rounds into our camp randomly. You could never really relax.”

  “Recommendations?” I ask, looking outward.

  “Not much,” Mel says. “We can up our hunting groups, hopefully figure out how many they’re actually sending. If we can counter them on an attack and actually make them bleed, that’d be best. But…”

  “They’re likely to be waiting for that,” I say, grimacing.

  Mel nods. “We’re also trying to protect a whole city, so our perimeter is too large. Maybe after a few weeks, if there’s a pattern, we can get Ingrid or some of the other teams out. But until then, there’s no guarantee we’d be able to find them.”

  “Will they be back tonight?” I ask, and Mel shrugs. “I’m headed back to the Core. Maybe there’s something we can find…” I wave goodbye.

  Lana indicates that she’ll stick around a bit, which leaves me walking alone even as Mikito and her apprentice come strolling up.