Mistrunner 2 a cyberpunk.., p.65
Mistrunner 2: A Cyberpunk LitRPG, page 65
No—if I was going to reach Nora, I’d have to go through the Specters the hard way, and what’s more, I needed to do so quietly, lest I bring the entirety of the tribe’s Operators down on my head.
At one point, I might have blanched at the task laid out before me. After all, the Specters were one of the three biggest tribes and arguably the most powerful tribe in Nova City. My uncle’s guidance had thrust them to the top, and his absence—as well as my efforts—had only begun to weaken them. Eventually, the entire organization would crumble, but that would take years.
It really put my monthslong campaign to sabotage their operations into perspective. Sure, I’d been annoying. I had struck a few key blows that would eventually bring the behemoth down, but truly making a difference would have taken far longer than my patience could support.
It hadn’t been completely pointless—in fact, I’d been far more successful than I had any right to expect—but it veered far closer to that extreme than I wanted to admit. Killing a few lieutenants and fostering conflict between the tribes was a good first step, but if I’d really wanted to bring the Specters down, it would have taken years. They were just too big for anything else.
So, it was a good thing that I’d abandoned that path.
Because although I might not have been capable of quickly ending them through subterfuge, there was nothing to say that I couldn’t do so via a more direct approach. In short, I expected that having all the Specters gathered in one place might make my task much, much easier to complete. And on top of that, I didn’t even have to worry about civilians getting caught in the cross fire.
Not that that had ever really stopped me before.
But I’d changed. I couldn’t deny it. And I really wasn’t sure if I could justify the deaths of even a few innocents. Not anymore.
Luckily, I didn’t have to confront that conundrum. The city’s virtual abandonment had freed me in a way nothing else could have.
But just because the situation was set up so I didn’t have to make difficult moral decisions, that didn’t mean my path would be easy. The megabuilding was absolutely infested with Specters, and that was saying nothing of the thousand or so Enforcers just outside. The first hint of conflict would bring them running to intervene. So, I needed to find a way up to the top floor without being seen.
Once again, my previous knowledge of the building came in handy, and I knew precisely what route would serve me best. So, after checking to make sure that my weapons had been reloaded and Stealth was active, I exited the stairs that I’d climbed from the subbasement. Immediately, I saw a clump of Operators stationed nearby. But they weren’t really paying attention, probably because they reasoned that someone would have to go through an army of Enforcers to reach them. That, combined with Stealth, was plenty to keep me hidden.
But that wouldn’t remain the case for long. I wasn’t sure how the ability actually worked, but I did know that Stealth was far from perfect. It was great so long as it was bolstered by Camouflage or if nobody was looking for me, but the more attention my enemies paid, the less effective Stealth would be. So, I didn’t waste any time before backing away and out of sight.
Turning a corner, I almost ran into another group.
The collection of mooks was only a few feet away, but they were so preoccupied with their own conversation that they didn’t even notice me as I skirted past.
“I flat out don’t believe it, Stick.”
“That’s ’cause you’re an idiot, Lesa.”
“She’s just a little girl.”
“A little girl who happens to have the Wraith’s blood.”
“And she’s not so little no more,” added the third member of the group. “She’s gotta be eighteen now? Nineteen? When I was that age, I’d already killed three folks.”
“That’s ’cause you’re a murderous psychopath, Bob.”
“I don’t know why …”
I passed out of range, leaving them to their conversation. Over the next hour, I slowly crept through the megabuilding’s halls as I made my way to my destination. And over that time, I overheard a dozen such conversations, making it clear that Nora hadn’t been secretive about whom, exactly, they were supposed to be guarding against.
Fortunately, most of the Operators lacked urgency and were only barely paying attention to their surroundings. They didn’t really believe in the threat, and even if they had, they were protected by an army of Enforcers. As far as they were concerned, they were just backup in case I chose to attack the Enforcers outside.
It brought a certain satisfaction, creeping among them undetected. Certainly, it was nerve-racking, and the entire time, my heart felt like it was going to explode from overuse. But it brought with it a feeling of power unlike any other. One little flick of my blade, and I could end any of them I chose. That knowledge, that I held their lives in the palm of my hand, gave me a heady rush I can scarcely describe.
Not that I would exercise that power. If I did, I knew I couldn’t keep it quiet. And soon enough, a wave of armed and armored mooks would descend upon me. I’d had my fill of fighting hordes of enemies, and I had little desire to test myself against such odds. Not again. So, I remained hidden as I crept through the corridors.
There were a couple of close calls, and I was forced to stop and wait out a particularly diligent Operator or two, but eventually, I found my way to the first floor’s security terminal. In most cases, each floor featured a closed security system. However, I knew from personal experience that there was still a nominal connection. There had to be so that, if the building went on lockdown, it wasn’t just on one floor.
For most would-be hackers, that would be an insurmountable issue. But for a {Mistrunner} like me? I was willing to bet that I could use that connection to access the entire building’s security. If not, I would have to adjust my plan—avoiding the cameras on the sparsely protected first floor hadn’t been that difficult, but I knew that getting to the penthouse undetected would be impossible unless I managed to deactivate the cameras, at the very least. Hopefully, I could manage a bit more than that, though.
First, though, I needed to take care of the two mooks who’d been stationed outside the hub.
Usually, I’d just Misthack them and knock them out of the fight via a Ghost. However, with whatever protections blocked my abilities, that was impossible. So, I had no choice but to do things the hard way.
So, I crept closer, slowly pulling my nano-bladed sword from its sheath on my back along the way. As I closed in, I could see the two mooks’ body language shift. They knew something was wrong, even if they couldn’t completely see through my Stealth. Soon enough, they would start paying more attention, and once that happened, the indicator on my HUD would flash red, and I would be discovered.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I pounced, my blade slicing into the first mook’s neck with a horizontal strike. An instant later, I reversed my momentum and sent the mirror image of the first cut into the other one’s neck. In less than a second, the pair were dead. A pair of heads—one studded with actual metal spikes—fell to the concrete floor.
Before the blood could pool, I grabbed the pair of bodies and dragged them into the room containing the security hub. Then, I did the same with their heads before taking a moment to wipe the worst of the blood away with a towel I kept in my arsenal implant. It wasn’t perfect, but bloodstains weren’t so uncommon in the megabuilding that new ones would be remarkable. And if it came down to that level of scrutiny, the absence of the mooks meant to guard the hub would probably be more impactful.
In either case, I expected to be gone by that point.
With my tracks covered as best as I could manage, I sealed the door behind me and turned my attention to the security hub. In most buildings within Nova City, a simple security terminal would have sufficed. However, my uncle had taken it upon himself to upgrade his base’s defenses. So, instead of a single security terminal, there were three of them, all hardwired together. In addition, there was a large screen where someone could monitor the feeds from the various cameras.
It was the same sort of security system employed on the higher platforms, and like them, it relied on hardwired connections. That was the only reason I thought my plan would work. So, without further ado, I retrieved my personal link from the slot on my wrist and stretched it to the appropriate port in the dominant security terminal.
Finally, I used Mistwalk.
And to my enormous relief, I found no restrictions on the ability. There was a Mistwall, of course. Even the least secure terminals were equipped with basic defenses. But that mysterious force that had prevented activation of Misthack had no effect on Mistwalk.
It took a while to overcome the defenses, but one node after another fell before my practiced skills, and after about twenty minutes, I had full access. The first thing I did was deactivate the first floor’s cameras. Then, I sealed the exterior doors; I hoped to remain undetected, but in the event that I failed, I didn’t want a thousand Enforcers on my tail. Finally, I deactivated the autoturrets that protected the various elevators and stairwells.
With that done, I began my search for the virtual bridge that connected the ascending floors, and after a little more than half an hour—during which my heart continued to thud against the confines of my chest—I found it. Once I overcame yet another Mistwall, another hour had passed, but it was time well spent.
Because the entire building’s functions were laid bare before me.
With that access in hand, I quickly climbed one floor after another, repeating the steps I’d taken with the first level. And soon enough, the building was entirely unprotected.
But that wasn’t enough.
So, after retracting my personal link back into the Hand of God, I took one final step before setting off toward the elevator. Along the way, I set a series of demolition charges in out-of-the-way places; I had no intention of bringing the building down while I was still inside, but once I was finished and on my way, I fully intended to destroy whatever Specters remained.
I might’ve abandoned the idea of revenge at all costs, but leaving a bunch of potentially powerful enemies at my back just seemed like suicide with a couple of extra steps. And I certainly didn’t have a death wish, so I took appropriate caution.
Traversing the corridors of the first floor was just as anxiety inducing as it had been the first time, and added to that was the mental fatigue that came with already having spent hours at full readiness. I was a durable person with what I thought was a well-honed ability to focus, but even I had my limits.
I couldn’t even think about stopping, though.
Nor could I employ my normal one-foot-in-front-of-the-other strategy. That was great for repetitive tasks that required minimal input, but for something like infiltrating an enemy base, I needed to maintain a sharp focus.
Adding it all up, by the time I reached the elevator, I was a bundle of frayed nerves. But I avoided detection, even managing to plant a few extra demolition charges along the way. So, I was prepared to consider that a success.
I was tempted to simply take the elevator up to the top floor, but I knew that would be a recipe for disaster. There was no guarantee anyone was paying attention, but I had to assume the worst. Nora wasn’t an idiot, after all. Surely, she’d guard the most obvious point of ingress.
So, I chose to forgo riding the elevator. I didn’t intend to take the stairs, either. No—I was going the hard way.
With the autoturrets having been disabled, nothing barred my entry into the elevator car, and once I was inside, I leaped to the hatch at the ceiling, opened it, and climbed through.
A sense of vertigo washed over me as I looked up the seemingly endless vertical shaft. The megabuilding was more than a hundred stories tall, which meant that it stretched over a thousand feet straight up. The pillars that held the city aloft were even taller, and I’d already climbed those multiple times—once with Patrick on my back—but for some reason, the elevator shaft looked more daunting.
It didn’t matter, though.
I knew I could do it, and even if it further aggravated my already frayed nerves, I wasn’t one to stray from my chosen path.
I got to climbing.
It was a little easier than I expected, especially considering that I didn’t need to rely on pitons for handholds. As effective as those spikes driven into the concrete pillars were, using them to climb more than a thousand feet had always been an exercise in torture. By comparison, the elevator sported quite a few convenient ledges, facilitating the climb to a large degree.
Even so, I forced myself to stop every three floors, partially to rest my battered body, but mostly to plant a few extra demolition charges. In some ways, they were superfluous—after all, if the ground floor went down, the rest of the building would go, too—but I didn’t want to take any chances. Thankfully, the higher floors were more sparsely populated than the ground floor—it seemed that most of the Operators had been concentrated down there—so sneaking through those levels wasn’t as nerve-racking as it could have been. Still, even though I was careful in my approach and I kept my wits about me, I still had a couple of close calls—one of which ended with me having to strike down a particularly observant Operator before she could call for help. Aside from that, my path was unimpeded.
Like that, I climbed to the top of the towering megabuilding, leaving dozens of demolition charges in my wake. They were homemade from relatively easily obtained materials, so I’d come equipped with quite a few of them, but by the time I reached my destination, my supply had dwindled to nothing.
Not unlike my stores of ammunition. I still had enough to do what I needed to do—probably—but I’d definitely have to resupply when everything was finished.
If I survived.
Which wasn’t even close to guaranteed. I was self-aware enough to recognize that my chances of making it out alive were slim. After all, even my uncle hadn’t been invincible, and as strong as I’d become, I was nowhere near his level. But if it came down to a choice between my life and Nora’s, I knew which path I would take. And I would do so without even a hint of regret. In fact, if I had to trade my life for hers, I’d consider it well spent.
In the meantime, though, I had one more floor to conquer. And I knew it wouldn’t be easy, because even if Nora had sent the bulk of her people down to the ground floor, she would have kept the most powerful around her as a ring of protection.
That was fine, though. I just needed to go through them.
So, perched on the slim ledge beside the exit to the last floor, I took a steadying breath, then reached over to pry the elevator doors open. Without skipping a beat, I raced through the opening, my R-14 at the ready.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
TERROR
I know she’s coming. And after what she did to those people—more than a thousand dead, most without so much as a scratch—the terror has reached a fever pitch. I know I’m safe. I know she won’t kill me. But still … The fear remains.
—Nora Lancaster
The R-14 spat fire as I kicked off the ground and flew through the air. I landed half a dozen feet away in a roll that ended with me behind one of the concrete columns that supported the roof. An instant later, a hundred bullets followed in my wake, thudding into the ground and sending puffs of dust and shattered concrete spewing into the air. My own shots hit a blue Mist shield that was so well powered that it had become almost solid.
I peeked out from behind cover, hoping to see that my most recent salvo had had some effect, but as powerful as the R-14 could be, it still suffered from the limitations inherent in its design. As an assault rifle meant for versatility, it was good at a lot of things. It had solid range, good damage, and a decent rate of fire. However, being good at all those facets of combat meant it couldn’t excel at any one thing.
So, the Mist shield—which was sturdier than any I’d seen so far—remained annoyingly intact and frustratingly unwavering. To make matters worse, it did nothing to prevent the Operators it was protecting from throwing out one barrage of gunfire after another. Sort of like a two-way mirror, it was permeable from their side while being completely impenetrable from mine.
Fortunately, it didn’t form a complete circle. Instead, it took the form of a convex semicircle, which meant that, while I couldn’t simply go through it, going around might be possible. Of course, that brought with it a host of other problems, not least that doing so would force me to cross forty feet of open ground while they tried to pepper me with bullets.
I could take a few hits. I knew that because I’d experienced it. However, neither my subdermal Sheath nor my infiltration suit had really had enough time for complete repair, and my defenses would unravel very quickly under a hail of gunfire. To make matters even worse, my Misthack ability was still blocked, meaning that I couldn’t simply deactivate the Mist shield or let one of my Ghosts do the heavy lifting.
No—if I was going to get to Nora, which seemed increasingly less likely, I needed to get around the Mist shield, kill the Operators the hard way, and then move on to whatever other defenses Nora had set up.
Because I knew this was just the first layer. If I knew her at all—and I thought I did, by now—she would throw every Operator at her disposal at me. That way, even if I did make it through, I’d be exhausted and probably injured, which would make me that much easier to defeat.
Hiding behind that pillar, for the very first time, I seriously considered retreat. I’d already set enough demolition charges to bring the building down. So, I could accomplish my goal from more than a mile away, if it came down to it. All I had to do was head back the way I’d come, and there was nothing Nora could do to stop me.
Sure, getting through the Operators on the first floor would be difficult now that they’d doubtless been alerted to my intrusion, but I felt confident that I could make it through, even if I probably couldn’t do so unscathed. I would survive, though. I didn’t doubt that for a second.
