Chapter 88: Atom Smasher (1/2)

Atom Smasher wasn’t one for words, so he went straight for the kill.

His glowing hands unleashed a stream of red particles at the presidential guard. Sarin reacted quickly enough to retaliate with a shockwave, the blasts colliding in the middle of the room. The resulting explosion shattered all the Knockoff bottles on the production line.

Ryan froze time, Black and Violet Flux floating out of his armor, as he dragged his allies away from an Elixir shower. Even if one half of his team wore armor and the other regularly dosed on the juice, any drop seeping through a crack would ruin everything.

The courier always knew a fight with Fallout was a possibility, so he prepared accordingly. His and Len’s suits had been reinforced against heat and radiation, enough that they could survive sustained exposure; the Saturn armor could probably survive a close encounter with Leo Hargraves. And as he guessed, Sarin’s shockwaves could match the nuclear cyborg’s weaker particle beams, probably since they both drew energy from the Red Dimension.

However, Fallout had shown in Malta that his power could rival an A-bomb. While he shouldn’t go all-out in his main laboratory, Ryan had no idea how far his abilities and durability extended. Neither did he find blueprints of the cyborg’s armor in Dynamis’ database, nor a way to hack it.

But Ryan loved challenges, and he had a few tricks up his sleeve.

When time resumed, the production line was drenched in multicolored fluids. The robotic arms preparing the bottles had short-circuited, though the power armors in the room kept working.

“We should have killed you both years ago.” Alphonse Manada aimed his right arm’s energy minigun at Len and Ryan. “Completed the family set. I had the gut feeling you would prove troublesome.”

“You already killed us once,” Shortie replied, raising her water rifle. “This… this is payback.”

Len and Sarin attacked Fallout before he could open fire, the former with a stream of pressurized water, the other with a shockwave. Alphonse raised his left hand and expanded a shield of crimson particles outward from it, protecting himself. He then opened fire with his minigun, unleashing a volley of plasma shots.

What the weapon lacked in accuracy, it more than made up in firepower. The projectiles tore through walls and machines like butter, forcing everyone to dodge. Mongrel and Shortie managed to duck out of the way, but Ryan had to freeze time to spare Sarin five holes in her suit. “You know, if I keep saving you, people will start talking,” Ryan told his damsel in distress once time resumed.

“Don’t focus on me, take down that jackass!” his VP snarled back. “I don’t need help!”

Mongrel used an aerokinetic blast to propel himself towards the ceiling, and then threw a fireball past Fallout’s particle shield from his vantage point. The flames heated up the metal armor, but failed to inflict any damage while Alphonse slowly stepped forward. The reinforced walls were starting to look like cheese.

“Minions, keep him busy,” Ryan ordered his troops, while he dashed forward. Shockwaves, flames, and pressurized water forced Fallout to raise his shield, leaving his back exposed.

The courier stopped time and a purple phantom raced after him. Ryan crossed dozens of meters in a dash, dodging plasma bolts frozen in midair as he tried to figure out a plan. One of his devices could probably take down the nuclear disaster, but the cyborg’s power armor might have a countermeasure. The group needed to soften Fallout up first.

Ten seconds…

The courier bent a corner around the room, the ghost of the future past gaining ground on him. But it was nowhere close to catching up.

Fifteen seconds...

Ryan positioned himself behind Fallout, his feet anchored in the ground.

Twenty seconds...

The ghost almost reached Ryan before the courier unpaused time. He activated his armor’s chest blaster, unleashing a searing white burst of energy from it.

As Vulcan warned, the recoil almost threw Ryan on his back. The intense heat created a bubble of compressed air around the cannon that pushed him backward, but the armor’s servos held. His cashmere poncho, however, turned to dust; another victim of this bloody, senseless war!

The blast hit Alphonse Manada in the back and propelled him forward like a cannonball, the impact tearing the minigun from his arm. Ryan’s teammates dodged out of the way as he crashed into the reinforced door. Already weakened by the minigun fire, most of the wall collapsed and Fallout continued his flight into the next room.

Ryan let out a cough, his chest burning. It came from the heart, as they said.

“Nice shot,” Sarin mused. “Is that what a drone strike looks like?”

“Sometimes, a leader must get his hands dirty,” Ryan replied.

“He’s not dead yet,” Len warned as she stepped into the next room, right before letting out a horrified wail. The rest of the group quickly followed, and froze.

The next room contained an entire factory so large, the ceiling probably took space from the floor above. A maze of machinery and tangled pipes formed the next part of the assembly lines, bordered by a catwalk wide enough to let a battalion walk in formation; Ryan guessed that this allowed groups of soldiers to take positions in case of an emergency. Strange devices covered in bulbs and flashing lights thrummed as they vomited Knockoff Elixirs. The usual mad scientist lair, in short.

The sight that awaited them made even Ryan, who had grown jaded to everything, pause for a moment.

A dozen naked humans floated in glass containers above the production line, like lightbulbs atop metal altars. Tubes injected thick red blood into their back intravenously, and others pumped out Elixir-colored liquids into the machinery. Ryan’s eyes stopped at the closest prisoner to the entrance, a muscled woman with black hair and white dragon scales growing on her neck.

Wyvern.

Ryan also noticed a carbon copy of Devilry, and a feathered man which he identified as Windsweep, the Tempest Knockoff’s template. Others the courier didn’t recognize, but one pod contained a half-formed embryo of a panda-human hybrid.

Clones.

They were modified clones of the Knockoff’s templates, transformed into living organ processors. Bloodstream’s fluids passed into them, absorbing their genetic material before being processed into Knockoffs.

“Shit…” Sarin said, unable to take her eyes off the clones.

Mongrel had a similar reaction. “I’ve been drinking people?”

Len’s hands trembled on her water rifle, her gaze following the blood. The pipes funneling it into the clones traveled through the walls, and towards another room behind a reinforced door.

The scaly Doctor Tyrano worked behind a large control panel near the cloning pods, his reptilian claws typing on a special keyboard adapted to his saurian biology. He briefly looked up his screen at the people invading his laboratory, but his reptilian expression was one of supreme disinterest.

“I’m busy,” Dr. Tyrano said while returning to his computer. He even ignored Fallout, who had landed on the catwalk and quickly risen to his feet. “Take it outside and come back later. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough!”

“You cloned the Panda!” Ryan raised an accusing finger at the scientist. “You maniac!”

“Blame the kids’ division!” he replied while continuing to type. “They’re obsessed with furry mammals!”

“You… you twisted...” Len snarled at Alphonse Manada. Crimson particles flowed out of the cyborg’s back, right where Ryan hit him before. “All of that… all of that pain, for a fistful of euros?”

“It’s all for the dream.” Alphonse shrugged off fireballs thrown by Mongrel, his metal shoulders opening to reveal rocket launchers. “All for the dream.”

Fallout fired a dozen rockets, clearly no longer caring about collateral damage. Ryan attempted to stop time, but immediately canceled the effect when his past self appeared in very close proximity. The armor extended his time stop, but also his cooldown period.

The president activated the suit’s laser weapons while shielding Len with his body, Sarin assisting him in blowing up the projectiles before they could reach them. While they avoided a direct hit, stray shrapnel ripped holes in Sarin’s suit and Mongrel’s chest.

Explosions shook the lab as Alphonse’s projectiles hit the ceiling, the assembly line, and the cloning pods. One rocket incinerated the Panda’s misshapen duplicate, while another damaged the pipes and caused blood to drip onto the catwalk. Though Len’s armor was undamaged, she looked at the red fluid with fear and disgust.

“Stop, Mr. Vice-President!” Tyrano shouted at Alphonse, diving beneath his control panel to avoid a rocket. “You’ll destroy the laboratory!”

“I’ll stop when they’re dead!” Atom Smasher snarled back and kept firing. The entire floor trembled as rockets hit the ceiling and blew holes in the catwalk. The wounded Mongrel had to dive to the side to avoid another projectile, while Ryan took another to the chest; thankfully, the Saturn armor shrugged it off.

This made Ryan worry. The Architect designed Lab Sixty-Six to make sure the laboratory would survive even the building’s collapse, but she didn’t mention anything about internal structural damage.

When Fallout thankfully ran out of projectiles, he raised his shining hands in Len’s direction to blast her.

Having reached his cooldown period’s end, Ryan froze time and quickly punched Fallout in the glass dome protecting his head. Empowered by his armor’s enhanced strength, the blow cracked the reinforced glass, making the Dynamis cyborg stumble back. His particle beams instead hit the ceiling, melting the steel.

“This glass dome isn’t protecting me from you.”

Red particles so similar to Ryan’s own flew out of the crack in Fallout’s helmet. The crimson, shining skull behind it seemed to scowl and breath nuclear fire. The air around him shimmered with heat.

“I am the hand that splits the atom, the light that slays life.” His fists burnt with a crimson glow, a promise of death and cancer. “All that I touch withers, and dies.”

“Didn’t anyone tell you?” Ryan raised his fists, revealing the blades hidden in his forearms. “I’m immortal.”

Alphonse attempted to grab the courier’s head with his glowing hand, and he was surprisingly faster than he looked. Ryan deftly dodged and responded with a punch of his own, but to his surprise, Fallout managed to deflect the blow and counter with another.

“You know Krav Maga?” Ryan asked in disbelief, but the armored cyborg responded with a particle beam to the face. The courier lowered himself to dodge the attack. “Minion!”

“On it!” Powering through his injuries, Mongrel launched an aerokinetic blast of air at Fallout’s left knee, making the heavy colossus stumble. Ryan exploited the opening to ram his fist and blade through the cyborg’s helmet.

Though the glass dome shattered into tiny pieces, releasing red particles into the air, Ryan’s retractable blade also shattered upon hitting Fallout’s skull. Perhaps the courier’s previous clash with Wardrobe had weakened it.

Fallout exploited Ryan’s brief surprise to viciously headbutt him, his skull unleashing an energy pulse on impact. The courier’s vision flashed red for a moment as the shock sent him flying backward, but the Saturn armor resisted.

Ryan gathered his thoughts as he lay on the floor, his vision blurring due to what felt like a concussion. Alphonse Manada loomed over him while what remained of his glass helmet melted. A crimson nuclear fire erupted from inside the cyborg’s suit, making Fallout’s skull look like the Terminator emerging from the flames.

His hand reached for Ryan’s head, but a stream of pressurized water hit him from the side. The liquid heated up into steam at his contact, but offered the courier a brief respite.

“Riri, back off!” Len had moved behind Tyrano’s control panel, while Mongrel flanked Fallout with air blasts. Sarin herself still struggled to cover the holes in her suit. Her gas leaked out, rusting the machinery and even the floor.

Ignoring the minions’ attempts to distract him, Fallout raised his armored foot above Ryan’s head, and attempted to smash it beneath his heel. Of course, Ryan had patented this authoritative move, and took outrage.

The courier froze time, violently kicked Alphonse in the chest to make him stumble, and rolled away to safety. Unfortunately, even the time-stop didn’t shield the courier from Fallout’s radioactive presence, as the constant warning messages on his armor’s lenses attested. Just approaching that Chernobyl advertisement might kill a normal human in seconds, and a Genome in minutes. They needed to take him down now.

However, the courier noticed something interesting as he rose back to his feet. The Black Flux he produced devoured Fallout’s crimson variant, like black holes eating light.

Questions for later.

Deciding to use his trump card, Ryan opened a small compartment in the armor's backpack, a black sphere no bigger than a tennis ball coming out. The courier tossed it at Fallout, the projectile hitting him when time resumed.