The Hallowed Cure, page 23
So he wanted to sword fight. I was sorely tempted, given how much I’d practiced swinging a blade around over the past seven months. This would finally be my chance to face off against a real opponent, to put everything I’d trained for the past seven months to the test.
It would also be my chance to get myself stupidly killed for no good reason. Even if I could win sword to sword, I wasn’t here to play samurai showdown with some asshole in edgy black armor. My squad was still missing, and I couldn’t find them if I got a limb hacked off.
Still ... maybe I could bait my enemy into telling me what was going on before I left them to play with themselves in an empty street.
I locked Savagery to my back and then, unarmed, activated my external microphone. “Hey, dickhead.” I spread one arm insultingly and pointed with the other. “Yeah, you with the Massacre knock-off.
Want to tell me what you did with everyone else in this city?”
The person in the jet-black Hallowed armor responded by shifting their weight and charging into the alley at a jog with their glowing red blade raised. In that moment I sorely missed Dismay, which, Hallowed armor or not, would have let me incinerate this idiot with a single trigger pull. Still, at least Savagery wouldn’t make me die faster when I used it.
I activated my jets and rocketed straight up.
I watched the bubble on the front of the black suit’s helmet tip upward as I rose. Given the way my enemy slowed uncertainly, he obviously hadn’t expected me to take off with fucking rocket boots.
Doctor Sharpe must not know about Caitlyn’s upgrades to Hallowed armor.
I landed on a fire escape six stories up with a loud clang, then pulled my Crater Puncher off my armor. As I’d once said to Caley, after a particularly frustrating session of getting my ass kicked in blade-to-blade combat, bringing a sword to a gunfight was a great way to die holding a sword. Nine’s AI targeted the enemy as I shouldered my Crater Puncher.
I opened fire with no regard for fair play. Sadly, the first CP round missed the enemy’s bubble helmet. It hit its shoulder instead, cracking armor.
The person in the other suit spun and ran as I fired again and again, robbing me of any further chances to put a round through their
helmet bubble. They weren’t that stupid. I pumped three more rounds into their back as they sprinted away.
I was a bit disappointed with my first attempt to crack Hallowed armor with CP rounds. It was tough. Rounds that would have made an unarmored person exploded from the inside simply sent the enemy armor stumbling, though I almost took the asshole down after a round cracked his kneecap. After he limped around the edge of the alley, I checked my ammo.
Three rounds remained of my first eight round magazine. I couldn’t afford to lose those given the situation, so I’d risk a reload later. I maglocked my rifle back to my armor.
“So long, dumbass,” I told my now retreating foe. Despite his quite genuine offer to cross blades, I felt absolutely no shame about shooting the shit out of my attacker with my Crater Puncher from on high. This wasn’t a wargame. This was war.
I sank my armored hands into the brick of the building and climbed steadily. With one or more sword-wielding enemies running around at street level, taking the high ground and surveying my surroundings seemed like a good idea.
Since the enemy armor apparently couldn’t fire back, I had no need to waste more fuel rocketing to the top of this building, and since there was apparently no one around anywhere in the city, I had no concern about the noise I’d made crawling up the side of a building like a goddamn Mute. I hopped onto the roof and rushed to the edge of the building.
A quick scan of the street showed my enemy’s drop pod where it had landed, but no sign of my enemy. They were likely hiding in an alley somewhere, trying to fix everything I’d cracked. While the idea of hunting them down and finishing them off was tempting, I doubted they’d be stupid enough to let themselves get caught in the open like that again. My squad remained my priority.
“Nine, can I jump down from here?”
“Yes, Sergeant Riven. Though the impact may be jarring.”
I thumped the side of my helmet and jogged for the front edge of the building. “Good thing I don’t have a headache.” I leapt off without
hesitation, plummeting five stories to the earth and landing hard enough to crack the sidewalk. No one shot me.
I jogged immediately for Lincoln’s waypoint. “Nine, keep an eye on my six.”
While I focused on the area ahead, scanning for threats, Nine would keep an eye on everything behind me and warn me if the asshole with the sword came charging from his alley. As much as the Cloud Nine’s AI sometimes annoyed me, I did appreciate it having my back in this particular case. One more block passed without any more Cloudhoppers, drop pods, or assholes in black Hallowed armor showing up. I jogged to a stop before the building Lincoln had fired his flare from.
This building was at least forty stories. Was Lincoln still up on the roof? He’d likely still be up on the roof, since the protocol when firing a green flare was to remain where you’d fired it. If he encountered action and had to run, he’d have fired a red flare to let us know he was moving.
I hadn’t seen a red flare on my way over. Time to try the radio again. “Nine, can you break through the jamming now? Can you hear or see Lincoln?”
“Sadly no.”
I pondered using my external speakers to shout to the roof, but I doubted even my magnified voice would carry up forty stories. This building looked to be the kind where people worked, with a huge expensive lobby secured by deceptively sturdy glass and metal doors. There was a large marble front desk inside with two large display screens backing it. They displayed a logo I didn’t recognize.
I walked toward the doors and slammed my armored fingers in, pushing until metal broke and glass shattered. “Nine, can you translate any of this foreign language shit?”
“Accessing local database,” Nine said, as I literally wrenched the front doors open. “This building is the headquarters for Mictera Solutions, a company specializing in networking and enterprise solutions for global companies looking to expand their—”
“Great, thanks,” I said, cutting Nine off as I pushed my way inside. “Do they make weapons?”
“No, Sergeant Riven.”
“What about things that explode? Is there anything in this building I can make explode?”
“Please remember that Miss Alexander asked us to avoid damaging any local infrastructure unless all other options were exhausted.”
“I’m just asking.” I kept an eye out for any people as I walked right though a flimsy plastic turnstile toward a set of four gleaming elevators, two on each side. “Like you said, options.”
As much as an elevator would limit my ability to swing around Savagery, there was no way I was climbing forty flights of stairs after the journey I’d just had across the city. I gently poked the Up button by the elevators. It lit up. Everything in this city seemed to be working just like how I’d expect a city to work, except the whole place was abandoned.
The absence of people still bothered me more than the dickhead I’d shot at outside the building. An enemy Hallowed in refurbished Hallowed armor made perfect sense if Doctor Sharpe had brought some of us to act as her security detail. But a fully functioning city of forty thousand people without a single one of them anywhere in sight? That was a mystery I thoroughly did not like.
A pleasant ding announced the elevator’s arrival. The doors rumbled open. Above me, the rumble of an approaching Cloudhopper announced the return of the one I’d seen earlier or a new one, possibly carrying another Hallowed for me to play with. I had no intention of waiting for them.
I took one glance through the huge glass doors I’d wrecked, but the enemy armor had yet to show itself again. I stepped into the elevator and clicked the button labeled “PH.” Naturally, it didn’t light up. I probably needed a keycard or something.
I clicked 39 instead. The doors rumbled closed. Pleasant music played as the elevator whirred upward at a decent clip.
Judging from the momentum I felt in my stomach and against my feet, this was a fast elevator. Yet I felt the elevator slowing halfway up the building, just past floor 20, and as it came to a stop at floor 24, I realized it was going to stop. Was I finally going to meet
someone in this building? A glowing red sword burst through the elevator doors.
The only reason that blade didn’t go straight through my chest is because, for as long as I’d been alive, I’d always instinctively crowded to the left or right side of an elevator. I’d lived too long on the streets to ever feel comfortable standing directly in front of a door when I opened it. My paranoia saved my life, and it also gave me the perfect opening to swing Savagery.
I swung Savagery in a full arc, glowing blue. My Hallowed blade went through the side of the elevator, the keypad, the doors, and whatever waited outside. A human cry followed my swing. I took that as encouragement to cut my way out of the elevator.
I crashed out of the narrow metal container just as another strike from that red Hallowed blade met the glowing blue of Savagery. I’d kept my blade raised and angled, as Caley had taught me, to intercept any strikes at my head or torso. If my enemy had gone for my legs, I’d be fucked, but perhaps they were too busy screaming about the hole I’d just cut in them.
Once I was clear of the now wrecked elevator, I found myself on a darkened floor filled with cubicles and one set of badly dinged up Hallowed armor. My opponent was currently stumbling back. It was the same asshole I’d fought on the ground, and it was obvious my earlier shots had fucked with his mobility. He was having trouble keeping his feet.
I saw at once that I’d also carved a deep gash through his armor.
Blood glistened on his black armor. Some still spurted from the slash, but I suspected his Hallowed regeneration had already all but closed the wound. How had he gotten up here ahead of me?
A quick glance at the shattered glass window on the building wall answered my question. This asshole must have called their Cloudhopper and used a drop cable to get a lift, then punched in through the side of the building and hit the elevator button. As much as I appreciated all the trouble they’d gone to in order to ambush me, this time, I decided, I wasn’t going to let them go.
I only had two spare clips for my Crater Puncher, and my enemy was already badly wounded and fighting on a bum leg. It was time to
do this the fun way. I set my feet and readied my blade, staring down the bleeding black armor of my opponent. “Ready?”
My enemy took a defensive stance and raised their blade, but didn’t come toward me. Something about the way they moved had been bugging me since I first encountered them, but it was that move in particular that finally broke the block inside my brain.
I’d seen someone move like this and hold their blade like this before, both in real life and in simulations. I’d fought him this past afternoon. I couldn’t kill this person until I knew the truth.
“Frost?” I whispered, not daring to believe it. “No fucking way it’s you.”
My enemy simply waited, saying nothing. With their bum leg, they obviously didn’t feel comfortable advancing on me, but looked perfectly prepared to defend against any attack. Yet instead of moving in, I kept my guard up and spoke to Nine.
“Nine, clear the opacity on my helmet. Let him see me.”
“Confirmed, Sergeant Riven.”
With my face now completely visible, I stared down my unmoving enemy from a position just out of striking range. “Tony? Is that you in there? It’s me, Riven.”
I couldn’t think of any immediate way Doctor Sharpe could have gotten her hands on Tony’s body, but it wasn’t impossible. After our battle with Lindsay Griffyn’s God Armor on the roof of Cloud Nine, where Tony got himself blown up saving Kiara Prescott from a rogue missile, we had left what remained of him on an empty roof.
I still felt bad about that, but we’d been sort of busy trying not to get fucked by Cloud Nine’s entire security force at the time. Still ...
had Lindsay salvaged Tony’s body and sent it to Doctor Sharpe?
Had she rebuilt Tony Frost and somehow brainwashed him?
Or was he simply so pissed we’d left him behind he wanted me dead?
“If that’s you in there, Tony, you better tell me now. Skye’s alive.
She’s back in Dios and queen of the Mutes. She’s doing great.
What’s Doctor Sharpe told you?”
Glass and metal crashed behind me. I backed and spun as Nine, quite unnecessarily, warned me about something I already fucking
knew. “Another enemy, Sergeant Riven.”
“I see that.” I coldly evaluated my new opponent.
The newcomer also wore black Hallowed armor, just like the person I’d been fighting, and carried a big fuck-off sword ... just like the person I’d been fighting. So either there were two Tony Frosts up here with me, or these assholes simply fought like him and used similar blades. Either way, the arrival of the first Tony’s backup assured me I was done trying to make friends.
The second Frost charged me like the first, glowing red Hallowed blade raised. An urgent beeping from Nine told me the Frost behind me had also decided to move. The first Frost hadn’t been standing his ground. He’d been bluffing me until his backup arrived so they could put me in a pincer.
I spun and went after the Frost with the bum leg. He blocked my first strike, but didn’t block the elbow I then sent rocketing into his helmet bubble. My elbow hit hard enough to spiderweb his whole bubble, and while I could have finished him off right then, his partner was almost on top of me. Unlike my duel with the Frost AI earlier tonight, a draw wasn’t acceptable.
He tried to grapple me, and I flipped him on his ass and ran.
Another thing Doctor Sharpe might have failed to tell these two assholes was that in addition to receiving training from Sara Caley on how to swing a sword, I’d spent a lot of time with Mia learning to fight unarmed. The second asshole leapt over the first and came for me, and I pivoted just in time to block his strike.
The second Frost fought to break my guard, but I’d practiced this with Caley as well. I couldn’t get the space and leverage for a sword strike, so settled for kicking the second Frost right in the knee. My strike cracked the armored kneecap and sent him stumbling backward.
If I’d wanted to kill him, that would have been the time to press my advantage. Yet the one behind him was up again and the Cloudhopper was still circling, possibly ready to drop more. I could still retreat. I tossed a mocking salute and dashed for the stairwell.
I cut the door open with one downward slice and barreled through shoulder first, then locked my blade on my back as I thundered up
the stairs. I spun at the top and pulled my Crater Puncher. I spun just in time to pump the last three rounds of my first magazine into the idiot limping after me with his sword raised.
This time, given the close range, one CP round cracked straight through his helmet bubble. I didn’t get the chance to see whoever was inside the armor because their head exploded when the round penetrated their helmet bubble. I felt the familiar, unwelcome guilt of straight-up murdering someone that always hit me after I made a kill, yet it didn’t bother me as much as it once had. That dickhead swung a sword at me. He had it coming.
I ejected the spent magazine, dropped to one knee, and grabbed another magazine from where it was maglocked to my armor. I slapped that into the Crater Puncher and kept it pointed down the stairs, past the man whose head I’d just blown off. Sadly, the first injured Frost showed no interest in poking his head in to get it shot off.
He, at least, had learned I had no interest in a fair fight.
I pondered grabbing the Massacre knock-off from the Frost I’d just decapitated with my CP round, but what was I going to do with another blade? Also, if these Hallowed weapons were anything like the ones Jack made back in the war, Doctor Sharpe could likely make the damn sword explode by remote. I had no intentions of blowing my hands off tonight.
I still had a squad to find, and that last Frost couldn’t easily pursue me. I’d leave him to mourn his partner. I backed up the stairs with my Crater Puncher shouldered, then turned and jogged up.
Fifteen flights to go unless I wanted to risk the elevator again. I didn’t want to risk the elevator again.
I braced myself at each stairwell for another blade to cut the door open, but it seemed the remaining Frost had had enough for the time being. I knew he wasn’t Tony Frost, of course, but seeing the way he fought and moved and the type of blade he used reminded me enough of Tony that I allowed myself that mental fiction to avoid spending mental energy I didn’t need. I’d fought Frost before too, at least in simulations, so thinking of these unidentified soldiers as him helped my self-confidence.
Huffing and almost out of breath, I reached floor forty. The door remained closed, but a cautious push revealed it wasn’t locked.
Unlike me, Lincoln wasn’t the type to just bash doors off their hinges when he could open them. Hopefully, he hadn’t been cut up by a bunch of Tony Frosts before I arrived.
I unlocked my Crater Puncher, braced it in my armpit with one arm, and pushed the door open with the other. The moment the door opened I shouldered my rifle and moved through, sweeping the roof from left to right. The door slammed shut behind me.
I immediately found one target—a silver suit of Hallowed armor Nine flagged as friendly—and jogged forward in relief. Lincoln was alive! It was only once I moved closer that I realized Lincoln was sitting casually on an air conditioner with his back to the edge of the building, entirely not ready to defend himself.
His helmet sat beside him, not on his armor, and his shield and mace sat stacked beside him, though in reach. Worse than that, he seemed to be having a snack. Given comms were still jammed, I activated my external microphone.
