Outrun - Chapter 439

I crawled to the stairs as more shots echoed around the room at the top of the air traffic control room. A whooshing filled the air, and—

Boom!

A missile exploded against a console and sent me tumbling down the stairs alongside a wave of debris. I slammed down once, twice, thrice, and hit the wall at the bottom of the flight.

”Ugh.” I groaned and pushed a dented console that’d collapsed on top of me. This position was definitely compromised. “Why do they get to have missiles?”

“Medstim,” Luna unhelpfully reminded me. “I’ll send out a mass blind into the Node. Should buy us a bit of time to get out of here.” 

“You can do that?”  I tossed an empty Medstim to the side and tried not to focus on how impossible the little syringe actually was.

“I just got deeper access.” Her voice was twinged with annoyance. “It’ll only last thirty seconds.”

30 seconds? That’d be more than enough time to reposition. Especially with—

[Equip?]

A wave of dull discomfort washed through me and settled on my legs. They gave out below me, only for me to lurch forward and catch myself a moment before hitting the ground. Just like that, I equipped the ThunderGod Greaves.

The chrome itself had a relatively sleek profile with pulsating plates sticking out like the ancient armor of a samurai. Neon lights flickered just underneath the plates, and created a lightning like effect across the chrome. If nothing else, Raijin really knew how to appeal to aesthetics.

I shifted around on my new legs, and quickly got the hang of them. It was between them and the armor. Ultimately, I decided to sacrifice mid-range battle capability for close and long-range. Mobility would help all the way around, and it wouldn’t matter how good my subdermal armor was if I took a rocket like the one shot through the tower’s window.

At the very least, I didn’t feel like my toes were about to freeze off anymore. Granted, I also didn’t have toes… or pants? I groped around my chrome legs. Where’d my pants go?

Once I was comfortable enough with my new limbs, I darted back down the stairs with my rifle up just in case. I passed by the Merc program that’d faithfully guarded my path, and out the—

Click!

The time slow of Dexterity, which was only somewhere around 25%, gave me just enough time to react to the claymore at the door. I felt the servos in the ThunderGod Greaves whirl as I pushed them to max power in an instant, and I catapulted back across the room with Burst Step. My usual maneuver went so fast that I lost control of it and slammed into a wall.

”Agh!” I collapsed backward onto my rear and held my nose as the claymore went off and blew the door off the hinges. Hundreds of tiny steel balls bounced around the room like angry bees. A few ricochets even hit me on the far side, though their stopping power had been greatly stripped. “Luna?!”

”What?” Her lupine avatar appeared, and stared down on me. “What are you doing sitting around, Shiro? You look ridiculous.”

”You—!” I bit my tongue and shook my head. “What was that? Why’d the claymore go off? Didn’t you hack it?”

”Yuh, I changed its owner so kill participation would go to us.” Her eyes narrowed on me like I was an idiot. “A claymore’s still a claymore.” 

“You could’ve warned me!” I knew that, ‘course. Laser-primed claymores didn’t exactly have room for an IFF system in real life. That was real life, though. I figured it’d act like any other bit of equipment here.

”… sorry. That one might be on me.” She shrugged, and looked away from me. “Still. How many times do I have to tell you to treat this like it's real?”

”I’d remember a whole lot better if there weren’t so many exceptions,” I muttered under my breath, and staggered back to my chrome feet. 

I wasn’t damaged much outside of a couple holes in my coat. The Merc program I left on the stairs couldn’t say the same. It’d been much closer than me, and was totally annihilated by ricochets. 

”Remind me to look out for these things in the future.” I ran my finger along a section of the wall next to the door that was covered in tiny holes from where the steel balls shot right through. 

If this was real life… assuming my heart and head stayed in one piece, I could probably regenerate from this with Quick Healing? It wouldn’t be pretty. Although new tech was cool, old stuff was still terrifying.

”Ready, Shiro?” Luna asked.

”Um… yeah.” I lowered my posture into a runner’s stance, and waited at the doorway. With the snow storm gone, I had one opportunity to get a better position uncontested. I eyed the map, and checked the airfield for where I wanted to go—

“Go! Go! Go!” Luna shouted at me, and the world went black. It was only for a moment before my vision snapped back. 

I didn’t hesitate to throw myself out the doorway into the snow-covered airfield. The snow disappeared underneath me as I shot out like a rocket and pushed the ThunderGod Greaves to the max. The world blurred, and in a mere moment I left the air traffic control tower behind.

Not fast enough. I had twenty-seven seconds until vision came back, and I wanted to be on the complete opposite side of the airfield by then. My foot slammed down and catapulted me forward in a massive spring. Without hesitation, my next step turned into a Burst Step, and I practically teleported forward. 

Burst Step was already a strong movement technique, but add on the springiness of the ThunderGod Greaves? In no time, I crossed the entire airfield faster than a car and rapidly approached the entrance to the main research base. Is this how speedsters feel? 

I flicked my sword out, and darted toward a red dot set up at the entrance to the base. One of the three people inside had left and loitered around the reinforced entry. It was a free three points.

I darted around toward a set of heavy doors blocking the way forward, and stomped both feet down. The metal soles of my chrome screeched against the concrete as I slid forward in a trail of sparks thanks to the sheer momentum of my movement. 

By the time my brain caught up with my speed, my target had already appeared. It was a man in heavy juggernaut armor. Thick ballistic pads covered every part of his body, and an exo-skeleton whirled under the heavy suit. “… my eyes back!”

I barely caught the tail end of his conversation before Burst Stepping toward him. He flinched, and his rifle jerked up toward my head—only to be cut into two pieces as my slash went down. The top half of his body followed a beat later, and I slid past him a dozen steps.

With a flourish, I flicked his blood off my blade, and reactivated the ferrofluid sheath. Inside, my brain jolted around in my head thanks to all the motion and an intense headache formed. I leaned forward into a bow to cover up my heavy breathing. Although the legs let me go quickly, the rest of my body wasn’t designed for that kind of speed. 

My vision swam, and I slowly turned back to the fresh corpse. Five seconds left. He’d definitely been about to shoot me. I took a few more breaths, and tried to get my pounding heart under control. “I thought you said they’d be blind?”

My legs were steaming. Literally steaming. Water dripped off the plates of my chrome legs, and created a puddle around me. I’d been moving so quickly that I produced enough heat to melt the snow still clinging to me. Add overheating to the lack of breath and head strain.

“You aren’t the only one with a runner, Shiro… you’re slurring your words.” 

“No I’m not?” As I spoke, I heard it for myself. My tongue felt thick in my throat, and I shook my head. That only made the pounding ache at the base of my neck all the worse.

”Stim again.” She appeared next to me, and looked me over. I did all that sprinting, and she could just teleport wherever… must be nice. “I think you have a concussion. Or whiplash?” 

“Just from that?” I rubbed at the base of my neck, and slipped a stim through the bulk of my winter coat. The pain abruptly started to fade away.

Note to self—before going for chrome in real life, make sure I had the foundations to sustain it. At the very least, I should’ve gotten some kind of spinal or grayware enhancement to make sure I could keep up with the speed I was moving at.

”Do you have any idea how fast you were going?” A trace of disbelief filled her voice. “What do you mean just from that?

“That guy still reacted to me, so it wasn’t fast enough.” I jerked my thumb back toward my latest victim, and flicked an empty stim syringe away.

Luna crouched down by the guy’s body, and shook her head. “This guy had speedware active. KairoTech Skairov Mk.3. It can overclock to create a sustained time dilation of 65%.”

“Oh.” Then… I really was moving fast, huh? Granted, this guy was also bogged down by heavy juggernaut armor. What if I got speedware on top of the ThunderGod Greaves? Wouldn’t I be unstoppable then? 

I moved over the juggernaut, and pried off the back plate of his armor. It was easy enough since it was cut into two pieces thanks to my monomolecular blade. I pried off the exoskeleton the guy was using, and cut open the back of his shirt. 

The Skairov was unfortunately also cut into two pieces. The ugly scarab looking tech wasn’t something I could repair without a lot of time. Even then, speedware was infamously finicky, so there was no telling if I could fix it to begin with. I stood back up and shook my head.

Okay, that was step one of my master plan to escape done… and there wasn’t another step. The ThunderGod Greaves were a lot more effective than I thought they’d be. “Is there more to the ThunderGod set, Luna?”

”Um… looks like there’s the ThunderGod Strikers, too.” A holographic display of similarly designed arms popped up in front of me. “Want me to adjust what we’re rolling for?” 

ThunderGod Strikers… I’d hate to run into any of this stuff in real life. Raijin was cooking up some terrifying chrome in their labs, huh? What did the Strikers do? Shoot lightning? 

“…no. Keep going for an anti-material rifle.” The sooner I got one of those, the better. I already saw how the AP-38 failed to penetrate the Operator’s chest earlier. I needed an upgrade to keep on top of my opponents’ progressing chrome and armor.

I pulled up my map, and checked the research base. There were two other people here, though both of them were in a bioweapon research wing. There were probably all sorts of horrifying things down that way. I read through the labels of the base, and my eyes dropped down to a weapon research wing far off to the side of the place.  

The loot chests in the DarkNet Battle Royal could give just about anything, so it wasn’t super pressing to get into places like armories or med bays to get things like guns and medical supplies. That being said, the loot tables were weighed. Looting an armory would of course grant a higher chance of getting weapons. Additionally, there was stuff lying around that didn’t come from a loot chest.

“We’re going here.” I pointed it out to Luna and confidently strode deeper into the Drastostovosky Research Base. Hopefully by the time I came out, I’d be armed to the teeth.