Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

I eyed the compass. “We should be closing in soon.”

Mira and I had already been moving through the heights for a while now since I pulled her out of the Aether. So far we’d managed to avoid almost everything that would stop us. There was a run-in with a squad of PMCs, but even that wasn’t an issue. Neither side wanted a fight, so we both tactfully pretended we didn’t see each other.

”How can you tell? I thought it was just direction?” Mira pulled to a stop just at the mouth of an alley and peeked out onto the streets. Her rifle was up and at the ready for any sign of a threat.

”Triangulation. Math stuff.” I’d figured it out not that long ago when Luna made the tracking way more precise then just the cardinal directions. It’d been a while since I last triangulated something.

“Hey, I’m actually kinda good at that now.” Mira glanced over her shoulder with a smirk. The halo on top of her head pulsed lightly. “Clear, by the way.”

”Chek.” We slid out of the alley onto snow filled streets. Streetlights flickered, casting deep shadows and reflecting off the white. As far as most streets went, this one was actually pretty clear. The Scath Heights were a mess, and that would only grow come morning when the military charged in here.

Honestly, the entire place felt like a predator’s den. Like we were walking into the maw of the beast without realizing it. I didn’t say anything, but Mira looked like she was feeling it too. At least, if her tense shoulders were anything to go by.

We moved up to an electrical relay station. Usually, these things were buried underneath the city and out of people’s sight. They did things differently in the heights though. It was left just out in the open with barely a fence topped in barbed wire protecting the place. And even then, the fence was half torn apart.

The station itself had seen better days. Transformers had exploded, parts tossed all over the place. Wires cross across collapsed metal, and the entire place looked like it’d been hit by a freight train. Repeatedly. The high-pitched whine of electricity buzzed through the air, crackling and sizzling with every fresh flake of snow.

”Don’t touch anything, Shiro.” Mira warned me not so subtly.

”I won’t, I won’t…” Besides, could I even survive such a high voltage hitting me all at once? Sure, electricity didn’t injure me anymore, but… I was kinda tempted to reach out and test my luck. For research purposes, of course.

The walls and ground around the place were burnt black with explosions. Craters from gunfire covered absolutely everything. Whatever happened here, there’d been a massive fight at some point.

Mira led the way forward, just as she’d been doing most of tonight. She stopped just past a fence. ”Drag marks.”

A trail of bloody snow led deeper into the relay station past all the electrical bits exposed to the elements and into a building nearby. They were inconsistent drag marks though, and four prints were prevalent in the snow. “Not human. Mutant?”

”Maybe.” Mira’s grip tightened on her rifle. “Let’s take this slow. I don’t want to be ambushed.”

I checked the compass one more time, finding the ping pointing into the building that the drag marks led to. “Here’s hoping for the best… Luna, can you pull up a location ping for her yet?”

”Uh- n-no. Get closer.” My HUD flashed and an array of red dots scattered around the building ahead of me lit up. “H-here’s a ping from devices connected the Node Tower though. I-I filtered it, so it should mostly be people.”

”None of them are moving.” I informed Mira and checked over the red dots. “Be ready.”

“As I’ll ever be.” Mira took a deep breath and then kicked open the door with her boot. The metal whined sharply and slammed open, announcing our presence to anyone or anything within the building.

“You sure that was wise?” Although I asked that, I followed her in, carefully watching the shadows of the building for any sign of movement.

Mira swapped to her rifle and clicked on the flashlight, illuminating a small lobby area that’d been abandoned. “Hate to break it to you, but we both reek of raw meat. If there’s a mutant or beast, it likely knows we’re here already.”

Ugh, thanks for the reminder. The stench had already faded from my mind, but with her words it hit me like a sledgehammer once more. Crawling through the fleshy walls of the Aggrican lab hadn’t left us in the best state to be prowling around the city even if neither of us was injured.

“You have any flashes?” Mira asked me with casual ease like we weren’t both tensed up and waiting for an attack. “I didn’t see any in your armory.”

“No. I haven’t bothered with them.” I recognized her game almost immediately. Just like down in the Underground what felt like a lifetime ago, we were trying to appear like we weren’t aware of a predator. Which meant something tipped her off that we were already being watched. This was just a show.

Mira dropped her rifle back into its sling and pulled a flashlight from her pocket. “You should. Even if they don’t work against mercs, they're still super effective against beasts.”

I eyed her for a moment. Dropping her rifle went a little far. Unfortunately, it seemed she was fully the target of whatever was stalking us. Insight didn’t offer even the slightest premonition of an attack.

A massive form burst through the wall just next to Mira, slamming into my mikata with the force of a semi-truck. Only, just before it could attack, Mira flickered and her entire body shifted like it was a hologram. The beast charged right through her and hit the support pillar of the lobby, shattering it.

“Behind!” Mira called out and solidified like nothing happened. I pushed it from my mind and focused on the fight. There’d be time to ask questions later.

With her out of harm's way, I focused on the monster that’d tried to take us by surprise. It was a massive, brutish beast of what was once human. The thing was shaped kinda like an oversized ape mixed with a hog. It swiped a massive arm out in a backswing, sending a layer of dust and bricks out in a spray like a shotgun.

Time slowed thanks to Dexterity. Instead of the AR, I pulled up my coil-pistol loaded with a frag grenade. The grenade exploded against the beast, sending it staggering to the ground with a chunk missing from its beefy arm.

Fear the Reaper flared out of me a moment later, completely freezing the beast. I couldn’t use it on the Cornucopia monsters earlier since they were more of a hive mind, but against an instinct driven creature like a mutant, it was super effective.

A spray of bullets slammed past the frozen beast with precision, pulping its head into the ground. It was an extremely anti-climatic fight. Mira fired one more shot into its still twitching form to ensure it was dead before moving over to me. “It appears the head is its weak point.”

I gave her a hollow stare and reloaded the grenade launcher. “You can’t keep saying that.”

“What? It’s the truth.” Mira chuckled lightly. I got what she was trying to do. Keep things light so we wouldn’t focus on all the death and destruction. She turned serious the next moment and tipped her head. “Doubt that was the only one. You ready?”

”As I’ll ever be.” A red light in my HUD moved further inside the building. It wasn’t someone moving as much as it looked like a body being thrown across a room. “Looks like we stirred the hive.”

”Back up to the relay station and hold the door?” It was the best defensible position around here. A natural chokepoint formed by the building itself.

”No, hold the lobby.” She pointedly flicked her flashlight to the wall where the previous mutant burst through. Then she slung the rifle back over her shoulder and swapped to the LMG. “At least we have clear sightlines here.”

”Chek.” I backed up behind her and prepared myself for first contact. Already, noises were starting to stir from within.

I rifled through my bag and pulled out the rebuilt sentry turrets I’d thrown away during my attempted escape from Mother. These ones were slightly improved from last time. They had bigger ammo capacities, though still lacked a proper targeting algorithm. I tossed the two turrets to either side of our holdout position, and they whirled to life. “Luna.”

”O-on it.” Who needed targeting algorithms when I had a Netrunner? The turrets stopped rotating freely and pointed toward the inside of the building.

Seeing me get set up, Mira pulled a handful of chemlights from her pockets and tossed them out. A soft green glow filled the room, letting her have full vision of the space. “Where were those things earlier?”

”Didn’t really have time to set them up.” I looked over the turrets one more time and then settled back into a firing position. “Is now really the time for this?”

”I guess—“

Boom!

The wall across from us burst apart with a massive shape lumbering through. It immediately ate a face full of lead from Mira and dropped to the ground barely a few steps from the wall.

That was just the start of the chorus of chaos. The sound of wet footsteps, clacking claws, and pounding feet filled the air. Dozens of creatures rushed out from every nook and cranny of the building. None of them were perfectly alike, all twisted into malformations of the human body by the human mutation virus. Some looked animalistic, some looked human with disturbing proportions, some looked like they were perfectly normal.

The stench of unwashed bodies was immediately overpowered by the sharp tang of gunpowder. All four of us, Mira, the turrets, and my lovely self, unloaded into the waves of mutants headed our way. We didn’t need to talk to call our shots. Camaraderie led us to not wasting a single moment. Or maybe it was thanks to Mira’s hyper processing speeds and my time slow effect that we could move perfectly in sync with each other.

Mira’s LMG layed down a wall of fire, each spray measured and precise to keep the hordes back. Muzzle flashes painted the building bright like a strobe light. The nightmare slideshow of mutant limbs and broken faces was only put to a stop by Luna and I.

With Mira focused on keeping the horde back, and killing where she could, most of the permanent solutions came down to me and the turrets. Luna sneaked shots in from the off angels of the turrets, each one finding its mark with the precision of a machine. I wasn’t quite as precise, though made up for it in quality.

I swapped to my coil-pistol and fired a grenade into a group of them massing for a charge. The explosion knocked several of them down, and a perfectly thrown pyro grenade followed a moment later. Mira shot it at the exact point to maximize the effect, covering the mutants in a carpet of sticky fire. They rolled and screamed as they burned to death.

“Loading!” Mira stepped back to reload, letting me take the front. Another wave, these ones bigger and meaner than the first, charged out of the rapidly building up smoke and dust.

Insight flashed right as my rifle clicked empty. Once of them closed in, tanking several shots from the turrets by sacrificing its arms. Its claws flashed out as soon as it got within its deceptively long reach. I ducked down to slide between its massive legs, though one of the claws tore a thin streak of white pain across my arm.

”Fuck!” I flinched, throwing off my slide. I made up for it with a groin shot. My shock gauntlet flashed and whirled to life, sending bolt after bolt of electric deterrence up into the mutant before it could take advantage of my poor position.

Electricity arced up between the mutant's legs, making it scream in utter agony. I followed it a beat later with a much stronger surge of my own bioelectricity, completely locking the best up. A spray from Mira’s rifle caught the mutant’s face right after, ending its life. “You okay?!”

”Focus on the fight!” I tossed out another pyro grenade defensively. It exploded just in front of the line, causing the group to hesitate before charging in at us. Combined with Fear the Reaper at max strength, and the instinctive creatures completely froze. A few even scrambled to escape. In that brief moment of hesitation, I reloaded and sprayed into the group once more.

Between the turrets and me, we easily bought time for her to finish the lengthy reload process. Soon she was back in the fight, laying down the law with a heavy wall of bullets.

By the time she had to reload again, she dropped the LMG and just stuck to her rifle. The mutants were already just dregs left. A few magazines later, and the last of the creatures collapsed to the ground. The entire lobby was full of corpses now.

“Shit.” I dropped my rifle and scrambled to dig into my backpack. I pulled out my medical stuff and hosed the cut with disinfectant. It burned, but the pain was better than chancing a mutation. Especially with this strain being hyper-mutative in nature. I had absolutely no idea how Quick Healing would react to mutations, and I didn’t want to even handle it.

Thankfully, the cut wasn’t too deep to begin with. I’d pulled away before it could get me too hard, so it was just a thin cut through my clothes and into my arm. I stabbed the sigh with a needle and drowned out the bloody mess with one of Medtech’s Mute-No. They were expensive, but worth it for fighting off HMV.

”You good, Shiro?” After she made sure we were clear, Mira hustled over to me and helped wrap the injury.

”I sure hope so.” I held out my arm for her and looked around the lobby. “How we looking, Saint?”

”That looks like it was most of them.” Saint called across the Packheart Ring. “I can’t find anymore on drones.”

”You see Iris?” I asked the man. “Tall, built like a berserker, red hair—“

”No. Nothing but PMCs torn apart by the mutants.” Saint sighed. “I couldn’t get to the upper floors. The doors are barricaded. I’ll try one of the windows.”

”All set.” Mira pulled the bandage tighter one last time and then moved away.

”Chek.” I looked at the compass pining Iris’s transponder and moved to pack my turrets back up and reload them. She was definitely here somewhere.

“That went well. Aside from the small injury, of course. We fought off a much larger force, though.” Mira finished fully reloading her guns and poked at one of the mutants with the barrel of her LMG. “Ugly brutes, aren’t they?”

”HMV at its finest.” I looked over the once-humans. Unlike normal mutations, like having four elbows instead of two, HMV fully broke down the brain. People affected by it were closer to living zombies piloted by the virus than anything. “We going to talk about that first one phasing through you?” Official source ıs ɴovelfire.net

”It’s the ExoCore…” Mira’s expression dropped slightly. “Can we talk about it later?”

”Chek—that’s fine.” Although part of me wanted to take a closer look at the chrome and figure out what was going on, I pushed it to the back of my mind. Now wasn’t the time.

“Got something.” Saint announced. A moment later, a bright green ping popped up in my vision several floors up. “Iris, maybe. She’s heavily injured, but still breathing.”

”P-please hurry.” The desperation in Luna’s voice was unmistakable.

“Well, would you look at that? One of them survived after all.” Mira’s smile came back with full force. “We should go.”

”After you.” I waved a hand toward the depths of the building.