Mistrunner - Chapter 16 - A Tender Side

I had plenty of advantages going for me. Training. Experience. Skills. But even then, I often found myself woefully outmatched when I went up against the aliens. My potential was higher, but they’d had decades to make the most out of what they had. And that made all the difference.

Jeremiah Braddock IIII

After a short drive through the town, we pulled into a sizable supply depot, where a host of burly men and women were waiting to unload the supplies we’d brought. The boxes were unmarked, but my uncle told me that they contained much needed medicine, ammunition, and foodstuffs. He also explained that, while the town was mostly self-sufficient, his support made the residents’ lives much more comfortable.

“And without the ammunition,” he said, leading me out of the warehouse. I scrambled to keep up as he continued, “This place would have been overrun years ago. Those bandits out there, they aren’t as well-armed as us. Most of them use pre-Initialization weapons. Almost useless against anybody with decent Constitution, cybernetics, or armor. But there are a lot of them.”

My side twinged as I hurried to keep up. My uncle wasn’t the sort to slow down, even when I was clearly injured.  After the battle, my body had been riding high off of the adrenaline, but as soon as I’d started to come down to reality, the pain had set in. And it had only gotten worse as the hours dragged on. Now, every step brought with it a stab of agony. The icon on my HUD that indicated my health was uniformly yellow, and parts had even turned to orange. Any worse, and they would have been red.

My ever-observant uncle had already noticed this, and he led me to a building near the supply depot. It had a three-foot tall red circle with a cross cut-out painted on the door.

“This is a med unit,” he said. Pointing to the symbol, he added, “If you see that, the person inside has some kind of healing skill. Some are actual doctors. Some might be cyber surgeons. Others could be triage specialists. But the point is that if you’re outside of a megacity, and you’re hurt, look for a building with this symbol. They’ll help you, so long as you’ve got the credits.”

“And if I don’t?”

“A gun to the head usually works,” Jeremiah said. “But that’s more of a last resort kind of thing. You don’t want to piss off the person trying to keep you alive.”

“Noted,” I grunted, clutching my side.

“Hopefully, your Triage ability will eventually make this superfluous, though,” he said, knocking on the door. As they waited for an answer, he explained, “It won’t be as good as a real doctor, but once you advance it enough, it’ll come damned close. Now, once we’re in here, you need to pay attention and do exactly what she says. You could learn something.”

“Uh…okay?”

Before I could ask anything else, the door slid open, revealing a tiny woman with canted eyes. Once, she’d probably been very pretty, with delicate features and silky hair, but now, she was so wrinkled that it was hard to tell what she might’ve looked like before time had its say.

“Hello, Kimiko,” Jeremiah said, grinning. “Long time no see.”

The tiny woman looked my uncle up and down, frowning as they engaged in some sort of non-verbal back and forth, then said, “An acceptable arrangement.” She glanced at me, and I could practically feel her eyes boring into me, seeing my ever secret. After a few seconds, Kimiko said, “Just her. You stay out here.”

“Oh, c’mon, Kimmy – I’m not – ack!” He stopped talking and cleared his throat. After a deep breath, he said, “Seriously? You’re still angry?”

The woman ignored him, then said to me, “Come, child. I will treat you inside.”

I glanced at Jeremiah, and he gave me a nod, so I followed the woman inside. I had no idea what she had done to him, but I hadn’t missed the note of alarm in my uncle’s expression. So, I asked, “What did you do to him just then?”

“Immaterial,” she said, leading me inside. The interior of the building was cramped, with only an examination table, a stool, and a couple of cabinets. “Sit.”

Obviously, she wasn’t the sociable type, so I didn’t bother saying anything else. Instead, I just followed her directions. After that, she had me lift my shirt a couple of times so she could get to my injuries, and I was a little surprised that they weren’t a lot worse than they actually were. Perhaps my [Combat Utility] had already started to pay off. Whatever the case, I watched closely as Kimiko applied a variety of salves and shots before closing the worst of my injuries with a needle and thread.

As she worked, I could feel something moving in the air; it wasn’t an air current exactly, but something else. Kimiko was halfway finished before I realized that it was Mist moving in accordance with her skills. “Wow,” I muttered to myself.

Kimiko stopped what she was doing. “What did you say, child?” she asked.

“Uh…sorry,” I said, not wanting to offend her. She seemed a bit prickly, and if I didn’t know anything else, I knew not to piss off the woman who might one day hold my life in her hands. “Just…I haven’t felt the Mist before now. It surprised me is all.”

“You have a healing skill?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No,” was my answer. “Well, sort of. I have [Combat Utility], and one of my abilities is Triage. I guess that counts? I’m still a little bit in the dark about how everything’s supposed to work together and progress. I’ll figure it out, though.”

“Triage,” the woman muttered to herself before going back to work. She only had a few more stitches before she finally wrapped my torso in bandages. After that, she directed me to lower my shirt and handed me a vial of purple liquid. “Drink that before you go to sleep. It will help aid your healing.”

“Thanks,” I said, settling my shirt back into place. “Do…I don’t know – do I pay you or something?”

“No, child,” she said. “I will take what I require from your guardian. You may leave, now.”

I blinked at the sudden dismissal, as well as her claim that she would take anything from Jeremiah. However, given that she’d briefly choked him – or maybe just caused him to cough; I was a bit fuzzy on what exactly had happened there – with nothing but her mind, I thought it was probably a good idea to just follow her directions. So, I muttered something to convey my gratitude, then left the building as quickly as I could. I didn’t even realize my heartrate had spiked until I got outside and let out a deep breath.

“Unsettling, isn’t she?” my uncle said. I looked up to see him leaning against the wall of the building, his eyes trained on our surroundings. I followed his gaze, seeing that the pedestrians – and there were more than a few of them – were giving him a wide berth. Some had even crossed to the other side of the street to keep from getting too close.

“A little, I guess,” I admitted. “But I feel better.”

“I would expect so,” he stated. “She’s one of the highest ranked doctors I know. Tier-3, if you can believe it. And all of her skills are focused on medicine. If she lived in Nova City or one of the other megacities, she’d be an extremely wealthy woman.”

“Oh.”

He gave me a wry smile. “C’mon,” he said, pushing himself off the wall and starting down the street. “I want to get you settled in. And I have a surprise for you.”

That perked me up. “A surprise? What kind of surprise?” I asked, hurrying to catch up to his long-legged stride. “Is it a hoverbike?”

“What? Why would I give you a hoverbike? You don’t even have a piloting skill,” he said.

“You can use them without one,” I stated. “The CB-280 Oppressor is rated for unskilled and novice pilots who –”

“No,” he said. “I did not get you a fucking hoverbike. Keep up.”

I glared at him. Of course, I knew I didn’t have any call for resentment. After all, he’d spent a not-so-small fortune on equipping me with high-tech cybernetics and firearms. Not to mention the Tier-7 Nexus Implant, which as far as I could tell, was priceless. However, I couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed; I’d made no secret about wanting a hoverbike. I’d left plenty of brochures lying about the apartment, and I’d even signed Jeremiah up for one of those sketchy mailing lists that would flood his inbox with all sorts of information on all the latest models. He knew I wanted one.

And what’s more, he had plenty of money. More than even I suspected, given how causally he’d bought military-grade weapons and implants for me. He could afford it. So, it didn’t make any sense at all that he wouldn’t buy one for me. They weren’t even that expensive.

I kept muttering to myself about the unfairness of not getting what I wanted as I followed my uncle through the town. We attracted a fair bit of attention, a fact that I thought could be attributed to our status as outsiders. But no one bothered or approached us, probably because Jeremiah practically radiated danger wherever he went. Someone would’ve had to be a fool to mess with him.

At last, we reached out destination – a building with a rough, white façade and a red tile roof similar to what I’d seen on the bigger, more decorative building from before. This one had a sign, proclaiming it to be the Dew Drop Inn. Back home in Nova City, there were plenty of places that served as temporary lodging. Flop houses. No-tell motels, where people paid by the hour. Even a few high-end hotels in the more affluent districts that catered to the few wealthy outsiders who visited the city from afar. This place, it was different. It had an almost wholesome air about it – an impression aided by the hand painted sign that bore its name.

Jeremiah wasted no time before pushing through the doors, and feeling dozens of sets of eyes on my back, I had little choice but to follow. Inside, I found a well-lit room that defied my expectations.

“So much wood,” I muttered, wide eyed as I took in the scene. “Is it real?”

In Nova, wood was expensive and rare, as much because concrete was more durable as it was because harvesting it required people to venture outside of the city. But here, it was everywhere. Tables. A bar. Chairs. All made of polished wood, usually with bronze accents.

Jeremiah let out a chuckle, “Sure is. The original Dew Drop Inn was a restaurant, believe it or not. Franklin and Nancy just coopted the name.”

He strode toward the bar, where a young woman stood. She was a few years older than me, with black hair and a comfortably plump body clad in jeans and a purple top. The rest of the inn, as far as I could tell, was mostly unoccupied. There were a couple of men sitting at a table in one of the corners, and a woman sitting at the end of the bar, staring into a glass.

“Joanna,” Jeremiah said with one of the most genuine smiles I’d ever seen on his face. “How are things?”

“Okay, I suppose,” she said, her voice husky. “Same room as always?”

He shook his head. “Need an extra for her,” he said, hiking his thumb toward me. “One of the little rooms will do. And it’s long term. At least six months. Maybe as much as a couple of years.”

“Oh?” asked Joanna.

I chose that moment to introduce myself. Stepping closer to the bar, I said, “I’m Mira.”

For a second, Joanna looked confused, but then, recognition dawned. “Oh – Mirabelle! This is your niece?” she asked, glancing at my uncle.

“In the flesh.”

“I don’t like being called by my whole name,” I groused.

“Not getting what you want builds character,” Jeremiah stated.

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever,” was my muttered response. I was used to him ignoring my preferences about my name. Maybe one day I’d get some cool nickname, like the most famous operators, but I had a feeling that even if that came to pass, my uncle would still call me by my full given name.

Grinning, Joanna said, “He does that to me, too. I go by Jo, but he’s always called me Joanna. I like to think it’s the senility setting in. He can’t even remember what people prefer to be called anymore.”

“What? I am not senile!” he said.

“You’re like a hundred-and-fifty,” Jo argued. “Way past the point when that kind of stuff starts to set in. The mind’s the first thing to go. Or that’s what they say. I’m not old, so I can’t be sure.”

I giggled. “You are kind of old,” I said.

Jeremiah looked back and forth between us, then, with a sigh, gave up. I mentally celebrated the minor victory as he said, “Anyway – you have those rooms available, Joanna?”

Neither of us missed the emphasis on her full name. For some reason, it felt even more like a victory, and I resisted the urge to give Jo a high-five. As I basked in the glow of finally putting my uncle off-balance, Jo gave him a pair of keys, and he started toward a set of stairs in the back of the room.

As we passed the woman at the end of the bar, she erupted into motion. I couldn’t even track her movements before I heard the distinct blip of a plasma pistol going off. A second later, I saw a hole at least four feet wide in the wall.

Jeremiah hadn’t been idle, though. Instead, he had one hand wrapped around her wrist, where he’d redirected the shot that had clearly been aimed at him, and the other around her throat. All semblance of mirth was gone from his face, replaced by cold implacability as he leaned in. I don’t know what he did or how he knew it, but he growled, “Corporate scum.”

Then, without further words, he flexed his hand and crushed her entire throat. Her hand went limp, and the gun clattered to the floor. But he didn’t stop. Instead, he kept squeezing until he got to her spine, and with a heave, ripped it from her body.

Looking back at me, he said, “Another lesson for you, Mirabelle. Never stop until you’re sure they can’t come back. There are hundreds of regeneration and life-saving skills out there, but the people who can recover from a decapitation are few and far between. Remember that.”

“O-okay…”

He glanced at Jo, who hadn’t moved, and said, “Sorry about the mess, Joanna. Tell your dad I’ll pay for any damages.”

“No problem,” she said, her husky voice gaining an edge. She wasn’t afraid. Instead, I got the impression that she was angry.

“Do you need me to clean it up?” was his next question.

She shook her head. “No,” Jo answered. “I’m sure one of Milo’s amigos are going to be here soon enough. They’ll want to look for anything that might lead us to how she got in.”

“Any ideas?”

Again, his question was met with a shake of Jo’s head. She said, “No. I don’t recognize her, but that’s not that uncommon these days. Some of the people here, they’ve got family in other towns. Sometimes, they visit. I just figured she was somebody like that. But I’d never seen her before a few days ago.”

“That makes sense,” Jeremiah said.

“It does? How does any of this make sense?” I asked.

“That’s not something that concerns you right now,” he answered. I started to object, but he forestalled me with a raised finger. “You’re not even trained yet. Focus on that, and when the time comes, I’ll tell you everything. By that point, you’ll have the power to get involved if you want to.”

It wasn’t the response I wanted, but it was all I was going to get. So, I gave him a nod, and after that, we settled in to wait on one of Milo’s “amigos” to come by. Sure enough, after only five minutes or so, a swarthy, dangerous looking man dressed in all black fatigues stepped through the door. He gave Jeremiah a nod, but he didn’t say anything before kneeling beside the body and rifling through her pockets.

“I’ll leave you to it, then, Carlos,” my uncle said, which earned him a grunted reply from the kneeling man. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Si, jefe.”

With that, Jeremiah led me up the stairs. My room was on the first floor, but we only paused long enough for me to get a look inside before he practically dragged me to the top floor where a much larger and more luxurious suite waited. Once we were inside, he bade me sit, then pulled a chip from his pocket.

“Here,” he said. “I know your birthday isn’t for another two days, but I wanted to go ahead and give you this now. It should make your training a little easier at first.”

I took the chip. “What is it?” I asked.

“Just download it.”

Wondering why he wouldn’t just tell me, I rolled my eyes, but I did as he asked, sliding the chip into the slot on the side of my neck. An instant later, a notification appeared on my HUD.

Download file [Leviathan, Full Library]? [Yes] or [No]

I gaped at the notification.  Leviathan weren’t a normal band whose music I could just find on the net. They didn’t do shows on the entertainment feeds. And they certainly didn’t put their full library on a chip. As far as I knew, the only way to get access to their music was to go to one of their shows or to buy one of the bootleg recordings of one of their performances. And even those weren’t all-inclusive.

I frantically confirmed the download, and a second later, a list of almost seventy songs were listed on my HUD, most of which I’d never even heard before. Some, like Kamikaze Parade, were little more than rumors. But there it was, listed in the ninth slot.

“H-how did you get this?” I asked, looking up at my uncle’s smiling face.

“I don’t know if you know this, but I’m kind of a big deal,” he answered. “Happy birthday, little girl.”

I couldn’t stop myself from launching myself at him and throwing my harms around his broad shoulders. As I buried my face in his chest, I mumbled, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” It probably wasn’t terribly understandable – due to the tears and the fact that my words were muffled by his shirt – but in that moment, I didn’t really care. In that moment, I was the happiest girl in the whole world.