Chapter 328
I quietly slid back into the building where I left Mira behind. The handoff had been a completely uneventful affair. I slunk toward the edge of the heights, strapped Iris to the waiting hover-bike, and then watched it fly off toward Nael’s clinic.
Honestly, it was a little too easy. I half expected to be shot at by merc squads or hunted by mutants, but nothing of note happened. I kept to the shadows, and even without Blackout hiding me from cams, Luna took care of anything electronic. There were no traces of my passing outside of steps in the snow. Even those faded quickly.
The only iffy part of the whole hand off was when I got to the edge of the heights and ran into the military patrolling the area. Even that was taken care of with my special investigator badge that I got from Uncle Ezra. No clue what he loaded the identification badge with, but getting through the military patrols posed no issue for me. Granted, they were more so present to stop mutants from escaping than anything. Always having identities on me was the way to go.
So yeah, Iris was safe and sound. Two of the four Polar Moon members were alive. Three accounted for. There was just one left—the giant cyborg werewolf Kaynis. Hopefully he’d be safe and sound when we found him. I liked happy endings, and him being alive and well would be for the best.
“Mira? Where are you at?” I asked lightly as I slipped into the lobby. The chem lights that’d been tossed out were slowly starting to lose their glow. Not that it mattered too much to me. My perfect night vision let me see through the gloom without any issue.
The corpses of Mind Freak and the others were still here, as well as the mounds of dead mutants. The still living element, however, had vanished into the wind. I looked around, finding tracks in blood and shoe prints heading down a far hall. Eight shadow figures churned to life thanks to Panther’s Sight, heading down the hall.
”Three floors up, first door next to the stairs.” Mira’s voice came across the Packheart Rings. There wasn’t a hint of pressure in her voice, which was a good sign.
I worked my way back up the stairs and stumbled across a room with a light glow emitting from it. I casually slipped in, shadows still clinging to my body thanks to Illusive. None of the seven within even noticed me, though Mira’s eyes flicked to me. The Packheart Rings gave my position away, so it was no wonder how she saw through the Skill.
Mira leaned forward, resting her hand on one of the seven’s trembling shoulders. “You may have been used, but the only thing that matters is you’re back. You’re free now.”
While I was gone, it looked like she’d managed to calm down the group. They still looked like broken dolls, but there was a sense of focus in their eyes. A spark of self that hadn’t been there originally. That was hopefully enough.
I dropped my Skills, reappearing in the room. Three of them flinched, reacting to my presence. The others still looked too out of it to have a proper reaction. Still, three of seven was quite good. It seemed Mira had some skills in this field as well.
”Miss…” One of the young men spoke up, his voice distorted with something heavy. He took a breath and then glanced at me through the corner of his eyes. “Y-you’ve done enough. We—we’ll take care of the others. Get- get out of here and settle down.”
The other two nodded their heads, hands tightening on their rifles. It seemed that their shared suffering had established a certain camaraderie between the group. A man with a gruff voice spoke up, face hidden behind a combat helmet. “You’re here for a reason. We can’t hold our saviors back by continuing to impose.”
“Are you going to be okay?” My mikata asked, a trace of concern in her face.
“Although we may look like this now, we still hold all our memories of our time—“ The man cut himself off, rapidly shaking his head. “There won’t be any issue.”
Right, even if they were fully under that witch’s control, they were still high-end mercs at the end of the day. Maybe not to the extent of having their names known, but it shouldn’t be too much of an issue for them to get out of here if they kept their heads down. Especially not with the fighting dying down across the heights.
The last of the three quietly rounded up the four and got them on their feet. Although they were like broken dolls, they took to and followed him easily enough. Within moments, the group was locked and loaded.
They slipped out of the room, just leaving the one with a gruff voice. “I don’t know how to thank you, but—“
“There’s no need for thanks.” Mira waved it off with a smile. “If you see someone suffering, isn't it only natural to extend a hand?”
“You’re one of the few people that think like that.” I muttered under my breath and moved up beside her, subtly eyeing the man.
”You just don’t know where to look.” Mira lightly punched me in the arm. I, of course, easily dodged the punch. She didn’t put any real force into the slow hit.
”We’ll find a way to thank you properly.” The man bowed his head, face brokering no room for argument. Then, before either one of us could say anything else, he headed for the door.
I watched him go for a moment and then checked the Dragonflies. They group worked their way back down through the building. “I hope this doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.”
”It’ll be fine.” Mira patted my shoulder and casually shifted the conversation back to the mission at hand. “Luna, do you have a location?”
“Yes!” The Netrunner called. “I-it’s Robinson Tower, sub-level two.”
Saint’s voice came across the Packheart link. “Heavy fighting in the area. Mutants and mercs both have a presence, so watch yourselves.”
“What are we looking at? Any named mercs? Notable mutants?” I asked. Hopefully, this would be an easy in and out. For once. First was Cornucopia and then Mind Freak, so if the pattern held, we’d probably run into a mutant queen or something at this rate.
At the very least, Mind Freak wasn’t too big an issue. Mira easily took care of what could’ve been an extremely annoying opponent. Guess it was just a bad match up. Not to mention the mind controller definitely had an inflated infamy thanks to the nature of her abilities. She wasn’t much of a threat outside of her Kinetic ability.
Yeah, being a named merc was impressive, but it also wasn’t at the same time. Take Mira, for instance. She could now be considered a named merc, Seraph, purely because her popularity and fame was skyrocketing thanks to Saint’s stream. There were a lot of small time mercs that fell into fame or bought it. The true scary ones, however, had been around for a long time and would continue being around for a long time.
“Several. Looks like most of the fighting is in the William Plaza out front of the tower though, so you might be able to get through without any issues.” Although he said that, Saint proceeded to bring up several images into my HUD and give me a full rundown of the situation. “Be careful. The plaza is, uh, its quite tight.”
Mira and I slipped back out onto the snowy streets and worked our way toward the tower while he talked. Plans and countermeasures for the various groups and targets formed in my mind one after another. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need any of them. Since when had trouble ever avoided me, though?
Basically, the mutants had started to form up into a massive herd, taking over several blocks and slowly pushing out to take over more space. They were a massive menace, large enough that most internal fighting had stopped to take care of the mutual threat.
The mercenaries, which had originally come to hunt for Polar Moon, had instead swapped to fighting the mutants. The military had finally got to work and put up a bounty for every confirmed kill of a mutant. Most mercs that came out here with the hopes of winning a lottery by capturing Polar Moon instead settled with recuperating their losses by fighting the mutants.
Benefits and money were the names of the game for mercs, and it wasn’t hard to see why they’d shift attention if they figured the chances of finding Polar Moon were too low. Better to make some money killing mindless abominations than to chase after a group that may or may not even be in the heights any more.
Likewise, the gang infighting had slowed to a crawl. The smaller gangs were already wiped out by now, either by mutant attacks, run-ins with mercenaries, or assaults by larger gangs. Now, most were boarded up and sheltered where they were, leaving the streets to the mercs for tonight while they prepared for the military raid come morning.
The heights weren’t nearly as chaotic as they had been just hours ago. To put it simply, the heights swapped from a free-for-all to team deathmatch. They still weren’t peaceful with bodies scattered freely, smashed cars, and streets laying abandoned. The constant gunshots and explosions had cut back to specific areas though. Now the streets just felt empty and isolated from the rest of the world.
— — —
Saint flicked back to a stream, watching a titan of a man in power armor rip a mutant’s jaw clean from its head. Even while working on all of that, his mind drifted through several different topics. Of course, he could just show bloodshed and all of that and he’d get people flocking to the stream. True reporters never missed a chance to tell a story, though.
So far, tonight’s story had been about the dangers of Savants. Everything he showed was carefully chosen and manipulated to get the idea out there that Savants needed much more attention then they were receiving.
There were other things he could’ve focused on, of course. Dozens of them easily fell into his lap thanks to the complete camera access given to him by Luna and Shiro’s Dragonflies. He could’ve focused on the gangs, suffering people, how outright inhumane it was to have an entire section of the city abandoned by the law, or even focused on something lighter like ranking mercenaries based on their skills. It just so happened that the Savant angle lined up perfectly with his previous article.
To be fair, the mutants were a major issue. And they did come from a Savant Lab as best he could tell. It wasn’t like he was making mountains out of molehills. And, like most reporters, he had an agenda for pushing the Savant angle. Tornado Arms was still under fire for having a Savant Lab. More negative attention to Savant Labs indirectly equaled more negative attention to Tornado. And, of course, more attention in general would make his connection with Inverse Media happier.
Saint idly clicked through a series of links and spliced together a quick show of a group of mercs fighting off waves of mutants. “Hey, Shiro?”
”What?” Her voice came across bleeding with annoyance. “Sorry.”
”No problem.” He glanced through a Dragonfly to see her picking her reloading a magazine from a pouch of loose bullets. They were closing closer and closer toward the center of fighting, so they were starting to run into straggling mutants. “What do you think about Eclipse?"
“They’re cool? Never seen one before, though…” She coughed lightly. “At least, not in real life.”
”No. The name.” He clarified and tossed together a short merc card of ‘Eclipse’. Most of the details he usually filled in for his viewers were full of question marks, giving the shadowed figure a more mysterious vibe. The dark red halo was adjusted ever so slightly to look more like an evil sun.
”This one of the mercs up there?” Shiro’s voice tightened slightly and her motions sped up.
”No—its you.” He chuckled and pulled up the chat logs for his stream, shoving them into her HUD. “See? They’re calling you Eclipse.”
”Pfft!” Mira ruffled the girl’s hair, sending steaks of silver and black everywhere. Then, just as quickly, she dodged a lethal looking kidney punch. “My little Shiro, all grown up. Oh, wait, I guess I should start calling you Eclipse now, shouldn’t I?”
“Whatever you say, Seraph.” Shiro’s voice came out cold, though there was no hiding the pout on her face like she was a kicked puppy.
“Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing?” Mira shot smirked and crossed her arms. “I actually like my name.”
“It’s either Eclipse or Jolty.” Saint offered up. “I personally like Jolty quite a bit. Or maybe Sparky? Or how about Shorty—”
“Saint.” Shiro’s voice was colder than ice. The reporter went silent when he felt a chill flood down his spine even from this far away. “I didn’t realize you were tired of living.”
“Ha, h-ha… funny joke…” He went back to work and abruptly cut off the link through the Packheart Ring. Eclipse it was, then.
— — —
AN: AH! I almost forgot.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Or happy holidays if you’d prefer.