I slapped a new magazine into my pistol, and staggered behind a cargo container. My legs still felt like jelly, though sensation was rapidly returning to them thanks to the Medstim. “That scared the hell out of me.”
”Just like we practiced, Shiro. This guy’s running ICE all over this place.” My map was updated with over a dozen new pings. “We’re still in the early stages, so it shouldn’t be anything too crazy.”
”Chek.” I dropped my pistol back into its holster, and my rifle snapped up into my hands. Time, which abruptly jumped to normal speeds, slowed once more.
I peeked out beyond the cargo container to check on the situation inside the warehouse, and my eyes caught on glowing pixels scattered on the ground. The worst part about taking out ICE programs like Merc? They didn’t drop any loot for me.
A few moments passsed, and I darted to the far wall to hide in the shadows. My rifle snapped up toward movement on the catwalk—
A burst of bullets slammed into a Merc, and stray rounds plinked off the metal walls of the warehouse. The program flashed brightly, and melted into glowing pixels of code that scattered down across the warehouse like falling snow.
Up above me, the metal of the roof groaned like there was something massive pressing down into it. I checked the minimap—Summoner was still up there alongside nine other programs. The coward hadn’t bothered peeking me down here with his ICE.
My eyes shifted across the map, and I pulled out a flashbang. I ripped the pin out, and tossed it against the side of a container. It perfectly bounced off, and disappeared down a pathway formed by the containers in storage.
Bang!
I dove out of cover, and landed on my shoulder. The moment I moved past the metal walls of the container, the muzzle of my rifle flashed brightly. Bullets arced down between the containers and slammed into a trio of Mercs that’d tried to sneak up behind me. With all three flashed, none of them even got a shot off on me before they were flatlined.
As for how a flashbang worked against what should be just digital programs? No idea. At least, not a good one. Sure, Luna went into a long ramble about how it all worked. Most of it went in one ear and out the other. It was the same for how guns here worked considering we were all streams of data and not actual physical entities.
She said something about bullets essentially just being scrap code that blocked connections, and the dive gear turned that blocked connection into sensations of pain. Flashbangs here, presumably, worked off the same concept and used scrap code to attack and blind optics.
I wasn’t totally sure, and that didn’t matter. All that mattered was my guns and everything else worked close enough to how they would in real life. Generations of people much smarter than me had ensured as much with the evolution of the net.
My magazine shot out, and I slammed another one up into my empty gun. I was already moving toward the next group by the time the map updated with renewed positional information from Luna.
Mercs were… well, they were capable defenders in a sense. They were also incredibly stupid. Luna had used them during our practice sessions to get me used to the sensations of combat in the DarkNet. They had only two directives—attack and defend. They didn’t do either one of them particularly well. More like meat shields and stall tactics than anything.
“How do we want to do this?” I asked Luna, and darted back out through the hole in the warehouse wall. I’d made my distraction. While Summoner was busy looking one way, it was time to attack from the other.
”Just get me close, and I’ll pull them into a duel. It’ll isolate them from their ICE.” Luna’s voice was tinged with frustration. “This bastard’s really pissing me off! That’s the third Black ICE program he’s tried to kill me with through the server!”
”Can’t you just hit him back?” I slung my makeshift grappler up to the top of the curved warehouse, and it caught on the leg of an exterior catwalk. It stuck out of the roof, and was where Summoner had been sniping from just earlier.
“I want to see the bastard’s expression when I crush him… ‘sides, it takes a lot of points to do that. They must’ve hit a bonus objective somewhere.” Luna popped a timer up into my HUD. “Thirty seconds till they have vision back. Want me to blind them again?”
I checked our points. 8 left after all of the chaos. We were running seriously low. We weren’t going to be able to get the next parts of our plan down if we kept spending them as we had been. We needed 50. “No.”
I hauled myself upward along the grapple line. After a bit, the curve of the snow-covered warehouse rounded out enough I could mostly sprint up it with the help of the grapple line. I slunk up toward the catwalk, and smoothly flipped over the safety railing. With a jerk of my wrist, the ice-pick detached and I whipped it back up to me.
The timer hit zero. For a moment, nothing happened. Snow billowed, and a wash of white scattered across the catwalk. The storm had intensified while I was inside the warehouse, so now I could only see shadows across the roof. Red lights intermittently pulsed along the edges of the catwalk, which made the shadows crawl.
”I know you’re up here!” A shout came from the far side of the catwalk. I crouched low on instinct, and carefully started to slink forward. “It’s not too late to turn back!”
”Just get us close, Shiro,” Luna quietly reminded me.
“Chek.” I shook out my rapidly numbing fingers, and adjusted my snow-goggles. “We can talk about this! Come meet me in the middle!”
”… fine!” A shouted reply came back, and one of the dots on the map started to walk toward me. I watched it for a moment, and shook my head. So that’s how you want to play it, huh? Did he think I was an idiot?
Still, they could see what I was doing, so I didn’t reveal I knew something was up. Instead, I slowly walked forward to meet the shadow lumbering toward me. The shadow grew and grew—
Pwing!
I tossed myself to the side the moment before the sniper took his shot. A high caliber bullet whizzed right over my head from behind the massive shadow, and disappeared into the snow storm. “Damnit!”
Heh, did he really think I’d fall for something that simple? I shook my head. The other eight programs were rapidly approaching, and heavy thuds echoed across the roof—
A familiar mechanical screech broke out across the roof, and ground my whirling mind to a halt. A red light gleamed from just behind the shadow approaching me. A much, much larger figure charged forward and slammed through a Merc program, scattering it into glowing chunks of code. Eight legs skittered toward me, and guns deployed across its body.
”Shiro!” Luna called out in alarm as our newest opponent revealed itself.
”I know!” Where the fuck did he get a spider tank?! I darted back into cover, and threw myself to the side. “I thought you said we wouldn’t see this kind of thing in the early game?!”
”I was wrong! They must’ve hidden it by distributing its—” My runner had a hint of panic in her voice for the first time since we got into the DarkNet Battle Royale, and abruptly switched tracks. “Fuck, get out of there!”
”You don’t think I’m trying?!“ I threw myself to the side as the red light locked onto me. A missile shot just past me and slammed into the far side of the catwalk. The explosion backlit the snow, and the entire structure shuddered underneath me.
Guns erupted alongside the body of the spider tank, and bullets shredded through the AC unit I was using as cover. In an instant, I was exposed before the massive tank. Crazed laughter erupted from just behind the spider. “Hahahaha! Talk about this, Nightbitch!”
The entire back side of the warehouse groaned and started to collapse back toward the explosion site. Every plan I made was entirely annihilated by the presence of a spider tank, just as the warehouse rapidly was.
Plan O, it was then. Plan Oh Fuck. I threw myself to the other side with Burst Step right as my cover exploded into a fireball. Dual machine guns trailed right after me, causing the snow to erupt all around as bullets whizzed by.
Another missile exploded against the back of the warehouse, and my entire side of the structure lurched back toward a rapidly opening breech. That… that could work? I just needed to get close to him, right? The spider tank—yeah, yeah that was an issue for Future Shiro.
I willingly slid back alongside the metal of the roof toward the hole, and whipped my arm forward. The head of the ice pick wedged in between the armor plates of the spider tank. With it secure, I dropped over the side of the breech.
For one heart-churning moment, I entered a free fall. Then the rope caught me and I swung back along the warehouse underneath the spider tank. Before I could second guess my decisions, I let go of the rope at the highest moment and flung myself along the warehouse's interior.
I heavily slammed into the side of the interior catwalk, and scrambled for purchase. Right as I was about to start falling once more, my hand caught on a bar and I was jerked to a stop. My entire weight dangled from my arm as my stomach lurched.
”Ugh, fuck.” I pulled myself up onto the catwalk. Bullets tore down through the panels of the roof wildly for a moment before stopping.
I rolled over, and flicked out my rifle. A dozen shots hit a Merc on the catwalk, and it collapsed. I staggered up to my feet, and sprinted down the underside of the warehouse toward Summoner. With my proximity to him, the spider tank didn’t dare continue to fire down through the roof to try and get me.
I Burst Stepped into a jump, and flew across a gap in the catwalk to the other side. A moment later, my sword flicked out. I cut through a section of the curved paneling of the roof, which clattered down against the catwalk. Before the ferrofluid sheath even returned across the blade, I lunged through the hole and back out under open sky. “Where is he?”
”Here.” A ping immediately lit up my vision, and a section of the roof glowed.
Time slowed as I drew my rifle, and I shifted directions. I had only a few moments at best until the guy either repositioned or the spider tank came to save him. I couldn’t let the gap I’d made through sheer agility alone disappear.
I darted forward under the effects of Dexterity and rapidly closed the gap toward Summoner. At first I couldn’t see anything through the blinding snow, and then his shadow appeared on the catwalk. He flinched, and glanced back toward me.
My rifle snapped up toward him right as he threw a puck at the ground. A shield projected upward, and caught the burst of bullets scattered toward him. A triumphant sneer filled Summoner’s face. Behind him, the phantasmal shade of his Netrunner likewise appeared to be gloating.
The reason for their confidence would be clear even to a blind man. The spider tank lunged, and dropped down between me and him. The red lights of its eyes flashed through the snow and locked onto me.
He wasn’t the only one without outside help, though. The storm abruptly stilled and digitized into microscopic pieces of code all around us. The spider tank likewise froze mid-fire.
The world around us faded, and all at once the four of us were transported elsewhere. The last thing I heard was Luna’s confident mutter, “got ‘em.”