Chapter 17: The Hidden Route (1/2)

“It can’t be them.”

Ryan searched inside his car’s trunk, finally putting his hands on his secret weapons: his coil gun, and a bag of flour. “What do you know of Leo Hargraves’ Carnival, my feline friend?”

“That they’re wandering heroes fighting marauders, warlords, dangerous Genomes, and Psychos,” Atom Cat replied, his back against the car. “They help communities pro bono, then move on. They’re modern knight errant, not assassins.”

“That’s true,” Ryan conceded. Which was partly why he respected them as a group, even after the problems they caused him. “But they’re also pragmatic knights. When they fight, they don’t pull their punches. They hit hard and fast, and unlike most Genomes, they actually use small unit tactics.”

“You speak as if you fought them.”

“I did.” And they gave him his fair share of resets, especially in his early loops. “I was present when they killed Bloodstream four years ago and got caught in the crossfire. Now, usually, I love being in the middle of interesting things, but that day cost me something dear to me.”

“Something, or someone?”

Sharp cat.

It had been the day Ryan had drunk his Elixir, which he did to survive that disaster in the first place. He couldn’t fully control his save point back then, and he ended up trapped in a suboptimal route.

One which separated him from Len.

As the thought crossed his mind, Ryan glanced at the Mediterranean Sea, the rising dawn refracting on its waters. As it turned out, the assassin had established their base in a ship graveyard between Rust Town and the old harbor. The supertanker he had seen on the shores was only the first of an army.

Metal husks of tankers, boats, and even aircrafts were lined up on a sandy shore, rusted by saltwater. Barnacles had made their home on the belly of ships and airbus planes alike, with small alleys between each steel corpse. The IP signal came from an isolated garage nearby, a metal hangar partly built inside a cruise ship. Probably some kind of chop shop, scavenging the husks and selling back parts.

Rainy, toxic clouds appeared north, though strangely, they moved against the wind and towards the harbor. Was it the doing of Dynamis, blowing the pollution away from Rust Town?

Atom Cat crossed his arms, remembering something. “Dad once told me that he fought their original line-up years ago, before he and Mom adopted Narcinia. Augustus was still establishing his powerbase back then. He killed half of the Carnival’s members and drove off the rest.”

Well, they had returned to finish the job. Better late than never.

“But I never heard anything about a glass manipulator.”

“They have a lot of turnover, so this may be a new recruit,” Ryan replied. Considering the invisibility and the fact they often killed through bombs or mundane means, such a Genome could credibly fly under the radar. Especially if all witnesses end up dead. “I can’t move the car closer or carry anything with screens. I’m pretty sure they can detect and control glass over a vast radius.”

“How vast?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan replied, tossing his cell phone to the backseat, alongside all electronic devices. He only kept the nuclear bomb and the rabbit plushie. “They may even know we are here already.”

“Alright, then I will stay near the car, and if you don’t send a sign within half an hour, I will call Wyvern for help,” Atom Cat decided. “What about your mask’s goggles?”

“Silly, they aren’t made of glass!” Ryan replied. “They’re alien stuff!”

“Right, and that… is that flour?” Atom Cat frowned at Ryan’s toys. “Do you want to bake them a cake?”

“They will never see it coming.”

Atom Cat smiled thinly. “I know you won’t listen, but please don’t do anything stupid.”

“Don’t worry, I have more lives than your nine ones,” Ryan replied, packing his stuff and moving to the garage.

Though, he would be lying if the situation didn’t make him uneasy. The Carnival’s members were powerful Genomes, and that assassin had killed him twice already. A wrong move might result in another reset, and their previous history made him tense up.

As he reached the locked door, Ryan realized now would be the perfect time for a stealth mission. But he was pretty sure it was useless, and he never had the patience for them.

Instead, he shot the lock with his coil gun, the electromagnetic projectile going straight through the steel. “No country for old men!” he shouted, entering the garage weapon raised.

Unlike the movie, no one welcomed him with a shotgun past the door. In fact, the garage didn’t hold any car, engine, or ship parts.

Instead, it housed several computer servers.

Dozens of them in total, clearly jury-rigged and linked to an autonomous electric generator. Two air conditioners worked to cool them down while wires went through a hole in the ground, probably linking the system to Dynamis’ underground cables. A massive desk with a single chair stood in the middle, surrounded by screens.

Also, Ryan noticed that he could see the ship graveyard through the windows easily enough, yet he had seen none of these servers from the outside. There was definitely an optical trick at work.

Yeah, this wasn’t a recent development. They must have spent weeks, if not months, setting up this safe house.

Ryan approached the computer, currently displaying a boring screensaver on five different screens. It seemed he had busted the operation while the mysterious assassin had gotten away.

Or so they wanted him to think.

Without warning, the courier froze time, opened the bag of flour, and rotated on himself. He sprayed the white powder in every direction, on the screens, windows, servers, and the corners.

A humanoid torso appeared right behind him, standing in a corner with a partially visible sword raised.

Here you are.

The flour had hit some kind of invisible armor, so Ryan took the time to draw ‘kill me, I’m a perv’ on the chest. As time resumed, the figure froze as they found itself with a coil gun pointed to their head. “Caught you, Invisiboy!” Ryan couldn’t help but gloat, “Or is it Invisigirl? I can never tell.”

“I will move faster than your finger on the trigger,” Invisiboy replied, his voice muffled by his strange suit.

“Are we playing Lucky Luke? I can draw faster than my shadow… faster than time even!”

“I don’t think you actually stop time, Cesare Sabino, you only give the illusion of it,” he replied, absolutely calm. “Or is it Ryan Romano now?”

“Ryan,” the courier replied. He tried to identify the voice, but the suit muffled it too much. “I don’t think we met though, Mr. Carnival.”

The figure let out a sigh of frustration at being identified. “We did. Though you didn’t know I existed back then.”

“Ah, I wondered if you were a new recruit or an invisible ace,” Ryan mused. That explained a lot of his organization’s success if the Carnival had a hidden operative of his caliber. “What should I call you, then?”

Realizing that a fight wouldn’t break out unless he started it, the mysterious Genome became fully visible. His entire body was coated in bright blue glass, from head to toe; the substance prevented Ryan from seeing anything. The armor was completely shapeless, the face round like a featureless doll. It made the vigilante look rather eerie.

Ryan realized that this man mimicked invisibility by somehow bending the light around his armor, perhaps using the same process used in lenticular technologies. The courier could barely fathom the sheer control needed to pull that off, although that trick didn’t protect him from smoke or rain.

This was some powerful Orange Genome.

“You may call me the Shroud.” The glass man tilted his head to the side. “And if you haven’t shot me in your ‘frozen time,’ I assume you want to tal—”

Ryan threw the flour bag at his face.

Invisiboy stood in silence, the paper bag falling off his helmet and onto the ground; his face now looked like that of a clown with all the powder.

“That was highly immature,” the assassin said, dusting the flour off his helmet.

Well, he killed Ryan twice; the courier had earned the right to be petty. “Don’t blame me if I keep my weapon drawn,” the time-manipulator said since his current host’s sword remained ever threatening. “You’ve been assassinating a lot of people lately, and killing you is still on the table.”

“You and Il Migliore have nothing to fear from us,” the man replied, crossing his arms. “Our current targets are the Augusti and the Meta.”

“Oh, then I assume you must have hacked into Dynamis by accident.”

“Only to root out the infiltrators in your company’s midst,” the Genome scoffed. “To be honest, I’m surprised you even managed to track me down. I was very careful not to leave a trace.”