Chapter 62: Quest Complete (1/2)
“I’m losing him!” Wardrobe panicked.
It didn’t take long for Ryan and the Panda to locate their allies, who had turned the rubble of a collapsed building into a shelter. Cosplaying as a masked surgeon, Wardrobe had raised an improvised hospital tent from whatever material she could find.
She had managed to stitch up Atom Cat’s stab wounds the best she could, but Felix remained in a state of shock. Shroud, meanwhile, was losing blood at an alarming rate in spite of her best efforts. Acid Rain’s grenade had not only blown off his right arm, but impaled his thigh with shrapnel.
“Can’t you do CPR?” The Panda asked a stupid question.
“CPR can do almost anything,” Yuki replied, “but not give someone their blood back!”
“But there has to be something you can do!” the Panda panicked. “You could turn into Christ!”
“I can’t solve every problem by cosplaying as Jesus!” Wardrobe protested, quickly losing her nerve as her efforts failed. “Who can heal any wounds? I can’t think of the right persona!”
“I think I can help,” Ryan said while searching inside his suit for a knife and wires, to perform improvised surgery. However, even an optimist like him thought saving Shroud would be a long shot. The vigilante had lost an incredible amount of blood; if he wasn’t a Genome, he would have perished already.
The courier blamed himself for this mess. Ryan was used to fighting alone with no regard for collateral damage; he didn't do so well in a team, where he had to avoid friendly fire. The courier should have trained with his team before the battle, learned to coordinate better with the group.
Right before Ryan could start a last-chance surgery, he sensed an odd feeling down his spine; for a second, he thought Acid Rain had survived the headshot, only for a violet tear in space to open near the group. The Carnival teleporter Ace and someone dressed as a plague doctor stepped through, immediately flinching at their wounded teammate’s sight.
“Move away,” the plague doctor ordered, whom Ryan identified as the Carnival member Dr. Stitch. He opened a black bag he carried around his waist, to reveal an assortment of tools and strange organic devices. He quickly grabbed one of them, a horrifying white tumor with tendrils sticking out.
“W-why do you carry that on yourself?” the Panda asked, resisting the urge to vomit.
“My expertise is in viruses and bacterias,” Stitch replied, the tumor wriggling within his fingers. He quickly applied it to Shroud’s wound, the tumor grafting itself to the vigilante’s flesh. “My bacteria colony will help repair—”
“No time for mad science exposition,” Ace cut in, before focusing on Ryan and the Panda. “You two, report.”
“Sarin has been blown away, and Acid Rain’s skull blown out,” Ryan said. He couldn’t resist making terrible jokes when stressed.
“Good, Wyvern and Devilry are handling Frank for now, so we can assume the perimeter is secured,” the teleporter said with a nod, while Stitch and Wardrobe cooperated to save Shroud. “You can still fight, right? Then you come with me. Stitch and Wardrobe will go to the infirmary and treat the wounded.”
“We should take Wardrobe,” Ryan protested. “I mean, Whalie is as big as a whale, and Yuki’s Japanese. She’s his natural predator.”
Ace seemed somewhat amused by his joke, but remained serious. “We have many fighters, but not enough people to treat the wounded.”
“How are things going?” The courier asked, while Ace opened a portal towards what looked like a Dynamis hospital camp. Wardrobe and Stitch quickly dragged the wounded through the rift.
“Worse than expected, but still good,” the teleporter replied, closing the portal and opening another. “Leo and Mr. Wave blew up the Meta’s mech, but Adam barricaded himself inside his underground base. We’re fighting his remaining men door-to-door, and Psyshock is throwing brainwashed suicide bombers at us.”
As Ryan had expected, failing to kill the brainjacker caused casualties to increase exponentially. Most importantly, he could read between the lines.
Sunshine couldn’t destroy Mechron’s base without killing the Meta-Gang’s hostages, and now, they had to clean the bunker up with an old-fashioned assault. Which meant Dynamis had learned of its existence.
If the enormous casualties wouldn’t force Ryan to restart, this change would. Though they had provided valuable help during this loop, the courier didn’t trust Dynamis with Mechron’s technology. Too many corrupt elements in their ranks.
Ace opened a new portal, Ryan and the Panda passing through. In the blink of an eye, they left the toxic open atmosphere of Rust Town for the suffocating claustrophobia of Mechron’s bunker.
Ryan didn’t recognize the room, some kind of industrial warehouse with metal arms and cables dangling from the ceiling. Assembly lines dedicated to robot manufacturing had been repurposed into improvised barricades; the air smelled of ozone, and ominous red lights pulsed from the ceiling. The corpses of both Psychos and normal humans lay on the ground, torn apart by heavy weaponry.
Fallout and armored members of the Private Security had formed a line, bombarding the Meta-Gang’s barricades. To Ryan’s surprise, none of their enemies were mutated; they were all dog drones, brainwashed technicians, and enslaved denizens of Rust Town. Most of them carried Dynamis-made firearms, but a few wielded strange weapons with Mechron’s logo on them.
Most nightmarishly, all of them wore suicide belts, and the Meta-Gang had tied up people to their barricades. Not only did Psyshock throw brainwashed slaves at Dynamis, he dared use his few remaining sane prisoners as human shields.
“I’m just saying, that’s why I’m against automation,” a Private Security member in power armor declared, as he blasted a hound drone with a laser minigun. “First they steal our jobs, and then they try to steal our lives!”
“Yeah, and I’m paid three thousand a month when these things cost a quarter of a million to make,” another guard added, using a flamethrower to torch Psyshock’s brainwashed cannon fodder. “That’s the real economic inequality!”
“Shut up and keep fighting,” Alphonse grunted, raising a hand at a technician threatening him with a rocket launcher. His metal fingers shone with nuclear energy, before blasting the attacker apart with a gamma ray.
While the Panda smashed through a barricade with a roar and Ace fled through another portal, Ryan approached Dynamis’ VP. “How are things going, Atomic Cancer?”
“The brainwashed thralls blow themselves up if we approach them, and they use their free-willed captives as shields,” Alphonse grunted, completely ignoring Ryan’s nickname for him. “Disgusting.”
“We have to take down Psyshock.” Ryan turned around, noticing Enrique Manada behind them. The corpo kept one knee against the ground, surrounded by thin, nearly undetectable vines spreading through the bunker’s corridors. “He is the backbone of their defense. If he falls, the rest will follow.”
“Greenhand?” Ryan asked, quickly lowering his head to dodge a stray bullet. “You’re here too?”
“Surprised, Romano?” the grass manipulator replied dryly, fingers on the vines. Unlike Ryan’s, the corpo’s cashmere suit remained fully intact.
“I thought you were more of a pencil-pusher, bravely commanding from the rear.”
“You thought wrong.” Enrique turned to face his brother. “Al, I’ve located Adam and Psyshock. Second room to the right. I suspect it is the base’s command center.”
This worried Ryan greatly. If the Meta already managed to access the bunker’s mainframe, it meant they might access the Bahamut. Knowing Big Fat Adam, he would press the trigger as soon as he could.
“I will carve a straight path,” Alphonse said, his metal hands shining with radioactive energy. “Brother, you guide us. Quicksave, cover our rear.”
“Does anybody have a spare gun?” Ryan asked, having lost his own during the fight with Acid Rain.
“Take mine,” Enrique said, searching inside his suit and tossing a Beretta at Ryan. The courier claimed it as his own, though with a clear lack of enthusiasm. “What, Romano? Not good enough for you?”
“I’m disappointed it’s not gold-plated.”
“You have strange stereotypes about my social position, Romano.”
“Enough prattle,” Alphonse said, before putting his hands against the right wall. The heat increased as he channeled energy through the metal, melting it away. Within seconds, Fallout had shaped a hole big enough to allow the trio to progress.
After a few minutes of improvised digging, the group melted their way into a large room shielded by a colossal blast door. As Enrique had guessed, the area looked like the bunker’s central mainframe; large screens covered the walls, while ten colossal server towers served as pillars holding up the ceiling. A single blast door served as the entrance, red lights flickering as tremors shook the complex.
The most noteworthy part of the area, though, was the gargantuan biomechanical construct at the center. The machine, easily the size of an elephant, reminded Ryan of a human brain, albeit completely blue and outfitted with thick wires, alien implants, and electrical pylons protruding outward from the cerebrum. A mass of nerve-like wires connected the structure to a metal pedestal supporting the biomechanical brain, while a crimson force field shielded it from the outside world.
Psyshock had intermingled with the machine like a bloodsucking flea, his tendrils intertwining with the nerves. Hannifat Lecter stood in front of the force field, his skin covered in an alloy carbon and his eyes glancing at the screens above.
“You know, Psyshock, I think it’s time to go Old Testament on them,” Hannifat Lecter ordered his second-in-command, as he watched Dynamis’ forces break past their defenses on the screens. “Bomb Sodom and Gomorrah back to the stone age.”
“I can’t, I need more time to crack the firewalls—” Psyshock froze, as he and his commander noticed the newcomers. His cold voice turned furious when he saw Ryan. “Little Cesare... you and your sister ruined everything.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said, pointing a gun at the brainjacker while Alphonse raised his hands at Adam. “It’s always a pleasure.”
“Fontaine, Grey, time to surrender.” Even with all the chaos happening around them, Blackthorn remained icily polite. “Release the hostages, you’re surrounded. There is no escape.”
“Perhaps,” Big Fat Adam replied with a false smile, before revealing an item hidden behind his back, “but I got one last trick up my sleeve.”
A bottle full of a black, swirling liquid, with Mechron’s symbol stamped on some kind of colored glass. An Elixir, as black as a starless night.
A Mechron-made Elixir.
“You know what they say!” Adam said, raising the bottle and preparing to throw it at the group like a Psycho-making grenade. “If you can’t beat them, join them!”
Ryan froze time, calmly raised his gun, and shot the bottle while it was still in Adam’s hand.
Much to his shock, the liquid moved in the stopped time. Like a living blob of black oil, it surrounded the Ogre’s fingers, melting the carbon armor and seeping through his skin.
When the clock struck again, Big Fat Adam let out a scream of pain, as the ooze swallowed his arm and progressed through his body. “Sir!” Psyshock shouted in alarm, as the Black Elixir slowly covered all of its host’s body like a mantle of darkness.
Fallout immediately unleashed a blast of energy at the mutating Psycho with enough power to vaporize him. Adam raised his blackened hand, and an invisible force canceled the atomic ray. It simply stopped existing past a certain point.
Hannifat Lecter wished he had died though. His screams turned deafening, as the Black Elixir melted his skin and flesh, leaving only blackened bones and organs. The Psycho’s body couldn’t assimilate the Black Elixir, and it devoured him alive.
“What is this sorcery…” Blackthorn muttered to himself, horrified by the sight. Meanwhile, his more ruthless elder brother increased the output of his blasts, to no avail; the Black Elixir’s power trumped his own.
Adam’s skeleton shambled, the black ooze manipulating the bones like a puppet. The undead’s body degraded at an accelerated pace, organs dissolving… and yet it could still form words.
“You… you… open…” The voice didn’t belong to Adam. “You…”
The corpse raised a melted finger at an astonished Ryan, black ooze leaking from the emptied eye sockets. Blackthorn quickly forced the courier behind him, as if to shield him. Aw, he cared!
“You… you… must open…”
Adam was no longer in control.