Chapter 442 - A Wonderful Idea

The spider tank lurched underneath me, and ground to a halt on the streets of the city. Drastov City ended up not being quite as city-like as I expected. At least, not anymore. The entire thing was buried in dense snow at some point, so only the tops of buildings poked out of the white field. The entire first three stories were buried entirely.

Naturally, that meant most of the cover I’d expect to have in a city had also been buried. It was far more open then I would’ve first expected. This would be the perfect place for a—

Pwing!

A shot whizzed and slammed into the optics of my spider tank. The glass shattered, and erupted in a spray of sparks that took me by complete surprise. “Sniper!”

”I see that!” The guns along the spider tank churned to life and fired away blindly back toward where the shot came from.

“Get us out of here!” I rolled to the side just in time to dodge a shot that ricocheted off the heavy metal armor of the tank, and dangled from the side of the chassis. I hauled myself up, and dove behind the heavy guns of the tank.

“Right.” The spider tank sprung sideways, and carried me between two buildings sticking up from the snow. The metal legs clanked against the top of a building buried in the snow as we left the buried streets behind.

Another shot slammed into the chassis of the tank just as we broke into cover. Thankfully, the sniper rifle wasn’t the high-powered type. Might even be another Rustek AP-38 based on the sound, though I couldn't be too sure. The round ricocheted off and disappeared into the packed snow.

I checked the map, and traced the shot back to a building near the center of the city. It was the one I’d been looking at given its position to cover most of the buried city’s main streets. Someone already beat me to the punch to get set up. That complicated things a bit, but it was only to be expected.

I hopped off my spider tank and drew my sword. The monomolecular edge hummed as I cut a massive hole in the wall. I wedged a knife into the slice, and pried. The cut out section collapsed back toward me, leaving an entrance in the side of the building. “Hide it in here.”

“You sure?” The eyes of the spider tank flashed blue, and a light on top of it lit up the inside floor of an office building. Spider tanks were originally designed to get into tight places as a search and rescue vehicle, so it easily squeezed into the small floor and crawled forward into space.

“Leave it as a little surprise for the late game.” Having an ace up my sleeve wouldn’t hurt anything. ‘Sides, it was too big to be moving around with out here. “What’ll happen to it if the Node closes around it?”

“I’ll be forced to cut contact so a rogue AI doesn’t try to trace the link back to us.” The spider tank settled down. “If it comes down to that, I’ll move it just before the Node closes around it.”

“Chek.” I grabbed the cables of the spider tank’s winch, and darted back to the collapsed wall. With a few more cuts of my sword, I easily hooked the cables to the wall. “Alright, pull.”

”Never thought I’d be using a spider tank for something like this.” The winch whined, and the wall slowly lifted back into place.

”Why not? This is what they were originally designed for.” Though they’d been armored and armed, the bones of a spider tank couldn’t be hidden.

With that set, I circled around to another building I had my eye on. The apartment building wasn’t nearly as tall, though it was positioned near the center of the city. More importantly, it had plenty of windows for me to move around and open fire from.

I kicked in a door with the ThunderGod Greaves, and snapped my rifle up along the hall. In an instant, I dashed to the other side to throw of anyone that might’ve been tracking me. Burst Step didn’t hurt chrome legs, which meant I could use it all I wanted. “Anyone nearby, Luna?”

”Not right here… unless they’re hiding their traces.” Her wolf avatar appeared just next to me, and lowered her nose to the ground. “Hold position, and I’ll do another sweep.”

”’Kay.” I eyed the hall for a moment longer before drawing my sword and cutting a little hole in the wall just above the floor. I carefully pulled one of my last two claymores out, and set it up so the laser-trigger poked out through the hole.

With that taken care of, I backed away and did the same just in front of a set of stairs. If anyone tried to come in here, they’d be in for a world of hurt. Just in case, I also tossed out a bunch of caltrops I found somewhere, and deployed the rest of my Mercs around the place. No one would be getting in here without making at list a bit of noise.

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”Hmm… actually, an you reposition these guys up a few stories,” I asked Luna. There was probably someone in the running who could get in through the upper floors.

“One thing at a time.” Luna sighed, and a pulse went out along my minimap. It was a smaller pulse then usual, and drained some of my points. Three red markers that hadn’t been there before appeared, though none of them were in my building. Yet. “Watch yourself.”

”I see them.” I eyed the three ghosts that’d hidden from the initial sweeps of this place. “They know that we know?”

Her avatar lifted its head and stared at me with judgemental blue eyes. ”No. I was discreet… still, watch yourself, Shiro.”

“Just keep an eye on my back.” I moved up the stairs, and set up several more traps. Most of them were the improvised sort. Along the way, I looted several more crates that dropped mostly junk that I tossed out onto the hallway to act as a distraction.

It wasn’t until the seventh floor that I got something remotely good. I pried open an aged military crate with my knife, and a brilliant glow erupted from its insides. Several items, mostly the same junk as before, popped out. One, though, caught my eye.

[Rustek NeuroPort Mk.8 - Neural Load: +50]

“Where have you been this entire time?!” I grabbed the piece of chrome. It was a mess of parts that looked like a brain stem and connecting spinal column.

[Equip?]

Like it was even an option. I felt heat surge through the back of my neck, and an uncomfortable sensation washed through my brain. After a moment, the sensations faded, and I touched the back of my neck. It’d turned entirely to chrome, and had small little knobs sticking out along the vertebrae of the top of my back.

After a moment, I went ahead and equipped that subdermal armor I found a while back too. My skin twisted, and felt incomparably itchy. It was only for a moment as my winter coat was puffed out slightly by the new chrome under my skin.

”Ugh, is this how subdermal’s feel?” I scratched at the hard plates along my chest. It was like there was a bunch of ants inside of me that I couldn’t quite reach to dig out.

”Worse. Monarch’s systems just give you a fraction of the usual feeling.” Luna not so helpfully told me.

”Maybe subdermal isn’t for me.” I scratched at myself a bit more before forcing myself to keep moving. My every motion felt stilted by the heavy plates pushed inside of my body. In real life, I’d need to get an improved skeleton just to hold this stuff up, too… yeah, external armor was just better in this case.

Once I got used to my new chrome, I kept moving along the seventh floor. I thought about it for a moment before stopping just at the stairs to the eighth and doubling back to an apartment. I kicked open the door, and darted in with my rifle raised.

”Are we not going higher?” Luna asked.

”And risk getting caught in this thing if it gets brought down?” I swept the apartment with my sword out just in case, and then slid it back into its loop at my waist. “‘Sides, being that high will make it harder to shoot at street level.”

“Good point.” Luna vanished from my side. “One sec, we’re being hit with black protocols again.”

”Take your time.” I’d rather not be fried. That was fine, though. I should be okay without her looking over my shoulder for a bit.

Instead of going to the balcony, a predictable firing position, I cut across to a bathroom and slipped into it. A tiny window along the top of the wall looked out onto the street. Hopefully the off position would throw any counter-sniper off of and let me get in a few more shots.

I hopped up onto the toilet to get some height and carefully opened up the small window. It looked out toward where I’d been shot from. Before anything else, I needed to take care of other snipers. They’d make movement in the closing circles more difficult.

While I swept the buildings, I kept my eye on the minimap in the corner of my vision. There were seventy something Operators left, and almost everyone was pouring into this city. I wasn’t the only one to hit a ring console to get information, and that was telling.

Everyone seemed sure that this would be the last safe circle of the Node before it fully collapsed. It made me all the more confident that placing all those traps on the way up was a good idea. The last thing I wanted was for someone to sneak up on me. If I could just survive until the final ring, Luna and I had cooked up a surefire way to win this thing.

An explosion lit up the street, and made the snow turn a blinding white that burned at my eyes. I flinched back away from the window, and ducked down as my building trembled. Someone most definitely just died…

Despite the danger, a heavy supply truck rumbled and the engine roared as it sailed down the streets just below me. The headlights swung around wildly, illuminating the dark city. It reminded me of New Tress City, to be honest. Granted, that was the only abandoned city I’d been in.

Gotcha. The flashing headlights caught on the scope of a sniper, and the glint flickered through a shattered window. My rifle snapped up the second I spotted the man. The Vantage-8’s projectile projection pointed straight forward with almost no bullet drop. The Graviton Bolt’s projectiles seemed to resist gravity to a certain extent, which made it incredibly easy to fire.

I pulled the trigger, and the purple crystal danced across the sky toward the sniper. It definitely wasn’t a fast projectile, as was proven a moment later. Several shots slammed into the window I’d just been standing at, and debris sprayed across the bathroom. Who would’ve thought, but a glowing crystal was incredibly easy to trace back to its source.

I darted to a different window just in time to see a purple flash from the other sniper. In an instant, a perfect sphere was carved into the surrounding building, taking the sniper alongside it. The gravitational force collapsed in on itself, and a void was left in the side of the building for a few moments.

The concrete and metal groaned audibly, and the entire section of the building started to cave in. The building shuddered furiously before settling back down. Weakness Wrangler activated with a thought, and the structural supports of the building lit up a bruised purple. “Luna… I think I just had a wonderful, terrible idea.”