Chapter 118: [118]: The Lure, Broadcasting the Glitch
The smell of cooked meat and melted platinum lingered in the damp air of the sewer tunnel.
Sebastian crouched over the smoking rigid corpse of Apostle Cole. The armor was completely fused shut. It acted as a high end coffin for the puddle of sludge inside.
He didn’t care about looting the gear. The platinum was corrupted and useless. He already had enough god tier junk sitting in his bottomless inventory to fund a small nation.
But he needed something specific.
He raised his heavy boot and brought it down hard on the chest plate of the armor.
CRACK!
The brittle superheated metal caved inward and revealed the charred blackened cavity where Cole’s heart used to be. Resting amidst the ash was a glowing jagged piece of rectangular hardware. It hummed with a faint sickly purple light.
It was the Apostle’s communication array. It was the direct neural link Cole had used to broadcast the System’s twisted religion to his followers.
Sebastian reached in and yanked it out. The severed wires sparked violently against his black leather glove.
[Item Acquired: Admin Comm-Node (Corrupted)]
"What are you doing with that?" Gwen asked while keeping her distance from the smoking body. She holstered one of her pistols and crossed her arms. "That’s Church hardware. It pings their local network. If you hold onto that, every fanatic in Outpost Rust is going to know exactly where we are."
"That is exactly the point, Seattle," Sebastian said. He stood up and tossed the glowing node casually in his hand.
He looked down the dark endless labyrinth of the sewer tunnels. Outpost Rust was massive. It was a sprawling shantytown built into the skull of a dead space leviathan. Tracking down fifty heavily armed religious zealots door to door sounded like an absolute logistical nightmare.
Sebastian hated walking. He hated wasting time even more.
"I don’t want to play hide and seek with a bunch of iron plated freaks," Sebastian explained. His silver eyes glowed faintly in the dim light. "I want to go home, plant my City Core, and take a nap. So, instead of hunting the rats, we’re going to ring the dinner bell."
Gwen stared at him as her tough cynical exterior cracked just a bit. "You want to lure the entire Iron Disciple faction to us? Sebastian, they don’t feel pain. They don’t retreat. They are a hive mind of raw unadulterated fanaticism. If you broadcast your signal, they will literally crawl over each other’s dead bodies just to tear you apart."
"I know," Sebastian smirked with a dark predatory expression that promised absolute violence. "It’s going to be a bloodbath. Let’s go find a radio tower."
Thirty minutes later, they had ascended from the irradiated sewers back into the neon drenched chaotic slums of the leviathan’s lower jaw.
They stood at the entrance of a long narrow alleyway. It was a perfect claustrophobic bottleneck. The walls were made of towering rusted shipping containers and fused bedrock. This effectively boxed in anyone who walked down it.
At the far end of the alley stood a towering jury rigged broadcast antenna built out of stolen satellite dishes and glowing mana cables.
It was the local pirate radio tower for this sector.
"Alright, this is the kill box," Gwen announced as her professional smuggler instincts took over.
She walked to the center of the alley and dropped a heavy duffel bag she had hauled from Corbin’s bunker.
ZIIIP.
She opened it and began pulling out pieces of heavy matte black hardware.
"You want to fight an army, you need crowd control," Gwen muttered while rapidly assembling a heavy kinetic auto turret. The machine clicked into place with a satisfying heavy metallic thud.
"These are modified Vanguard sentry guns. Armor piercing rounds. Motion tracking. They won’t kill a Level 80 tank but they’ll chew through their kneecaps and slow them down."
Sebastian watched her work with mild approval. He leaned against the base of the broadcast tower and was entirely relaxed.
"Set them for a crossfire pattern," Sebastian advised. He pulled the pulsing Admin Comm-Node from his pocket. "Keep the elevation low. I want them tripping over their own severed legs."
Gwen shot him a dark look but adjusted the tripod legs of the turrets. She angled the heavy barrels downward. "You are seriously messed up in the head, Seattle."
"I’m just optimizing the workflow," Sebastian shrugged.
He turned his attention to the broadcast terminal. It was a mess of sparking wires and crude localized UI panels. He didn’t bother trying to type on the sticky holographic keyboard.
He just slammed the glowing purple Comm-Node directly into the central processing port.
BZZZT!
The terminal shrieked in protest. The cheap neon lights stringing the alleyway violently flickered. Sebastian forced his raw unadulterated Anomaly signature into the local network.
He was essentially taking a massive digital middle finger and broadcasting it directly into the neural implants of every single Iron Disciple within a ten mile radius.
[System Override: Local Broadcast Initiated.]
[Signal: ANOMALY-ZERO.]
[Status: Hostile Entity Openly Defying the Grand Design.]
A low vibrating hum began to echo through the slum. It wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling. It was the collective synchronized rage of a hundred religious fanatics receiving a direct insult to their god.
"Broadcast is live," Sebastian announced casually and stepped away from the terminal. He walked to the exact center of the alley right between Gwen’s two automated turrets.
He didn’t draw his Earth Sword. He just shoved his hands into his pockets.
"You really think they’re all going to come?" Gwen asked as she racked the slide of her pistols.
CHK-CHK.
She took cover behind a rusted dumpster. Her eyes locked on the dark entrance of the alley.
"It’s a religious compulsion," Sebastian said. His voice was completely devoid of fear. "They worship the code. I am a glitch in that code. To them, my very existence is a sin that must be purged. They don’t have tactical sense. They just have a target."
The distant ambient noise of the cyberpunk slum began to shift. The haggling of merchants, the shouting of drunks, and the hum of plasma engines all faded away. It was replaced by a new terrifying sound.
CLANK.
SCRAPE.
CLANK.
It was the heavy synchronized marching of metal on stone.
"Here they come," Sebastian whispered.
The transition from a desperate survivor to a Warlord of the Juncture was complete. He wasn’t hiding anymore. He was hosting the slaughter.