Mistrunner - Chapter 10 - An Unfamiliar World

My training gave me an advantage, but even that wasn’t enough to guarantee survival. To survive the Initialization, I had to become something more than a soldier. I had to become an unrepentant, unhesitating killer. And I did. God help me, I did.

Jeremiah Braddock III

“It’s so green,” I muttered, my face practically pressing against the plastiglass of the car’s window. “How is it so green?”

Indeed, everywhere I looked was more vegetation than I’d ever seen before. In school, my class had once visited one of the Silos, and even that farming tower paled in comparison to the natural landscape stretching out to the horizon. There was also more water than I thought I’d ever see. Dirty, brown, and looking as if anything at all could be lurking below the surface, I can freely admit that I felt a deep sense of trepidation just from looking at that swampy abyss.

Ever since I’d found that grate, beyond which I could see the land far below Nova City, I’d thought myself worldly. Most people in the city didn’t get to see such things. However, that small look at the wider world was ill preparation for what I now saw on either side of the concrete road.

Beside me, my uncle let out a chuckle. “Never gets old,” he said.

“What?” I asked, not daring to tear my eyes from the marsh.

“This,” he said. “Your reaction. It happens every time I bring someone down here.”

“I…I don’t understand,” I said. “If all this is down here, then why do we live up there?”

To punctuate my question, I thrust my finger to the sky. The series of huge platforms that held Nova City aloft loomed over us, casting a long shadow across the swamp to the east.

“It’s incredibly dangerous down here,” my uncle stated.

“More than the Garden? Or worse, Algiers?” I asked.

Jeremiah said, “Immeasurably so. Up there, there are rules. But down here? There’s nothing but your own power to protect you. Most people aren’t up to the task. Nearly eighty percent of the Earth’s population were killed before they could figure that out.”

I swallowed hard, but I didn’t respond. I had no concept of how many people were alive back then, but the idea of losing eighty percent of Nova City put some things into perspective. It was more people than I could count, and that was just one city. From what I’d learned in school – and from everything Jeremiah had told me – there were dozens of cities with just as many people back then. And that wasn’t counting all the people who lived in rural areas. The number of dead was staggering and incomprehensible.

Such thoughts occupied my mind for the next fifteen minutes; as I stared out at the landscape, we passed a few signs of previous civilization. Crumbling and mostly submerged side roads, rusted signs, and a few decrepit buildings were all that was left. Once, I even saw a boxy vehicle, rusted and half-buried in the muck, and I was filled with a sense of loss.

It was easy to know that so many people had died. Everyone was taught as much in school. But no one had any context. More, sequestered in our towering city, we never had to see the remnants of that fallen civilization. Now, though? I couldn’t escape it, and I was beginning to understand – at least on some miniscule level – why my uncle was the way he was. He’d lived through it, after all. He had seen everyone he knew, everyone he loved, die. It would be enough to harden anyone’s heart.

And I knew he’d been a soldier even before the Initialization, and an elite one at that. How much death had he seen? How many had he killed?

“Eyes up,” he muttered. My head swiveled toward him only to see that his eyes were locked on the northern side of the road. On that side, the water looked less like a swamp and more like a lake. But what do I know? Before that day, I’d never seen either up close; I was completely reliant on what I’d learned in school. Either way, I was ill-prepared for what came next.

In an explosion of mud and water, a huge shape erupted into the air. It shot forward with unnatural speed, colliding with the truck a hundred yards in front of us. The vehicle was about thirty feet long, boxy, and, like our car, floating on a cushion of Mist. It might as well have been a plastic toy, for all the resistance it displayed.

A great metallic screech filled the air as the truck rocketed off the road, tipping over a few dozen yards into the murky water.  At the same time, Bart slammed on the brakes, halting our momentum in the space of a second. When the mud and water settled, I gasped at the creature sprawled across the road.

“W-what is that thing?” I muttered.

“Gator,” said my uncle, already opening his door and getting out of the car. “Ambush predators. Fast in short bursts. Extreme bite force. Very durable.”

“An alligator?” I gasped. I’d learned about some of the area’s native species, but my class had never gone into much depth in our studies. Given that people never left Nova City, there was no reason to know what kind of animal life lurked in the swamp below. I had always been fascinated, though, and I’d gobbled up every bit of information I could. That information, though, seemed to have been wholly inaccurate.

For one, the alligators in my books were supposed to have been, at most, about fifteen feet long. At most. But this one? This creature was more like the dinosaurs that had been long extinct even before the Initialization. I didn’t exactly have a measuring tape handy, but if it was less than fifty feet long, I would have been surprised. All rigid scales, teeth, and bulging muscles, it looked quite a bit heavier than the comparatively slim creatures I’d learned about.

“You going to sit there all day? Or do you want to use some of those weapons I spent a fortune on?” my uncle asked, leaning into the car.

Suddenly, I noticed that the creature had forgotten all about the truck that had borne the brunt of its initial attack. Instead, it was looking straight at us. Or me. It was all I could do not to wet myself in fear.

Jeremiah didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he took on a shooting stance, and, a moment later, a huge rifle had appeared in his hands. It looked almost identical to the one he’d bought for me – not the Kicker. The Pulsar I couldn’t use yet. However, there were subtle differences between the one I had stored in my Arsenal Implant – most notably, that it was a bit bulkier, had a slightly longer barrel, and a much more elaborate scope. The base of the gun was identical, though.

“I’m not going to kill it outright,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “So, unless you want to get eaten, you’ll pull out your weapon and go to work.”

I shook the mingled fear and surprise from my mind, focusing on what I could do. Even as I did, my uncle opened up, firing a curiously quiet shot from his rifle. In a millisecond, the alligator’s left front claw exploded in a shower of gore. I was surprised to see the glint of metal as well. But the creature was a long way from stopping. In fact, it seemed even angrier than before. It darted forward with a hissing growl.

Throwing the door open, I scrambled out of the car, diving away just in time. The monster – and it had graduated from animal, by this point – crashed into the car, flipping it on end and sending it tumbling away. I couldn’t worry about the vehicle’s – or the driver’s – fate; I needed to stop it.

Rising to one knee, I summoned the Kicker from my Arsenal Implant and squeezed the trigger. I was no novice to firearms; my uncle had been training me to shoot since I was little. But it didn’t matter. With the huge, scaly creature looming over me, I couldn’t miss. Or that’s what I thought.

My shots went wide as panic threw off my aim.

“Focus!” growled my uncle from the other side of the road. He crouched there, for some reason ignored by the giant alligator. “Remember your training.”

I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the panic gripping my chest. My heart was beating out of control, and my hands were trembling. It was so different than practicing at the firing range. It wasn’t even like when I’d run from Turk and his mooks. No – a monster the size of the alligator elicited a primal sort of fear that sapped the focus of even veteran warriors.

But I was better than that, wasn’t I? Jeremiah had spent so much time and money to give me a chance at survival. He’d given me a Tier 7 Nexus Implant, which was a priceless treasure that may have been completely unique. I couldn’t afford to let that go to waste. I didn’t dare.

So, I took another calming breath, sighted on what I hoped was a vulnerable spot, and fired. Short bursts. Squeeze, don’t pull. Maintain proper stance.

Despite its name, the Kicker had barely any recoil, which allowed me to concentrate my fire in a tight grouping. One burst after another tore into the monster’s neck, and the reward was a fountain of scaly, bloody flesh. It let out another hissing roar, and as it whipped around, its long tail skidded across the swamp on the other side of the road, sending up a cascade of murky water.

I strafed, continuing my staccato firing pattern until, after a few more seconds, my magazine ran dry. With practiced precision, I dragged the magazine from its well and dropped it. A moment later, another magazine was in my hand, summoned from my Arsenal Implant. I jammed it into position and chambered a round before resuming my firing pattern.

It wasn’t enough, though. I was doing plenty of damage, but the monster was enormous. Even if I hit the same spot a thousand times, it would be a minor miracle if I hit anything vital. And something told me I didn’t have time for that kind of strategy, anyway. I needed to change tactics.

Thankfully, the alligator was hobbled by my uncle’s initial salvo, which had completely destroyed its front leg. Otherwise, it would have snapped me up in its jaws before I even had a chance to react. I wasn’t going to let his efforts go to waste.

So, as I backed away – heel to toe, with continuous fire – I came up with a plan. It was stupid. Dangerous, too. And I was sure my uncle would berate me when everything was finished. I didn’t think he’d let me die, but who knew what he was thinking? He’d just pitted me, a mostly untrained, barely Awakened Operator, against a monster that would give a dinosaur a run for its credits.

Maybe it was a test. If I passed, he would judge me worth his effort. If not? Well, I would be gone, and he could move on with whatever other plans he might have.

Once I was about forty yards away, I flicked a switch on the Kicker, and it transformed. The barrel elongated, and the body grew a bit bulkier, from which a scope unfolded. I sighted in on the mass of torn and bloody flesh that had been my target for the last couple of minutes. Taking another deep, steadying breath, I fired.

The bullet hit with a satisfying sound, and I was rewarded with a geyser of blood and gore. I almost celebrated right then and there, thankful that I wouldn’t have to enact the rest of my plan.

And that hesitation almost cost me my life.

Moving more quickly than it had moved since tackling that first truck, it shot forward. I squealed in surprise as I narrowly darted to the side, but I kept my wits about me. Mostly. Okay, so I went a bit blank for a second, and when I came back to myself, I was in a full sprint. But it probably looked like a tactical retreat, right?

Probably not.

In any case, I soon recaptured my calm – at least as well as I could, given that there was a giant aquatic lizard that wanted to eat me – and stowed my rifle. For the next part of my plan, I needed something different. Something a bit more specialized.

I summoned Ferdinand II.

The weapon was a true hand-cannon, a revolver that shot rounds almost as big around as my wrist. Which wasn’t really saying much, considering how skinny I was, but it seemed abnormally big. Of course, the original Ferdinand was much more remarkable, and its rounds had probably graduated from small arms to heavy munitions, but Ferdinand II was still impressively endowed.

More importantly, I’d loaded him up with depleted atium rounds. I wasn’t entirely sure what atium actually was, but it seemed expensive. And given that the rounds were explosive, that kind of said everything I needed to know about how damaging they might be.

In the time it took me to summon Ferdinand II into my hands, the alligator had recovered, and if it was angry before, it was absolutely and royally pissed off after having half of its neck turned into so much minced meat. It charged forward, its claws digging furrows into the concrete street. I could feel the force of its bellow even before the sound overwhelmed me, but I held my ground.

Ferdinand II would pack quite a punch. I knew that. But the drawback was that he was still a pistol, and as such, he didn’t have much of a range. Add to that the fact that I’d had a lot less time to practice with pistols, and I knew that I needed for the alligator to come lot closer if I was going to make the shot count.

Gritting my teeth, I crouched. The smell of its breath – all rotting meat and moist grossness – washed over me. I could see its dagger-sized teeth. Its beady eyes. The scaley skin. It was a true monster, the likes of which I’d never expected to encounter. But I summoned every ounce of courage I possessed and tightened my grip on my hand-cannon.

The alligator closed, covering the few dozen yards in the space of a second. When it got close, I dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the monster’s snapping jaws. Even so, I took a glancing blow from its right claw, which drug a line a fire down my side. I let out a scream, but I couldn’t let myself be deterred.

I don’t know if it was my recent Awakening or luck, but I managed to twist in the air, aim, and fire in one motion. Ferdinand II kicked in my hand, but the explosive projectile flew true, burying itself in the mass of torn flesh that was the result of my efforts so far. For a brief instant, I seemed to hang in the air, thinking that I’d fired a dud.

Then the round exploded, and I, suddenly, I was tumbling through the air. That lasted barely a moment before my shoulder hit the concrete and I skidded across the road. My momentum took me into the murky swamp water, where I collapsed in a heap. When I finally gathered enough of my wits to sit up, I was rewarded with the sound of laughter.

My uncle was standing at the edge of the road, his hands on his hips as he beheld my handiwork.

The entire right side of the alligator’s neck and much of its head was just gone. It still twitched a bit, but even I, with my lacking zoological experience, could tell that it was dead. Curiously, the massive wound revealed metallic bones.

A nearby splash made me flinch, and my head whipped around – followed quickly by Ferdinand’s muzzle – to see Bart’s unassuming form looming over me. His clothes were covered in muck, but he didn’t seem hurt. He offered his hand, which I took. After he levered me to my feet, I looked past him to see that the car was hovering only twenty yards away, seemingly unharmed.

“What the…”

“Your uncle invested in quite a few defensive features,” the driver said. “Pity you won’t be able to take it much further.”

“Huh?”

“The Mist,” Bart said. “In the city, it’s corralled. Controlled. But out here, it’s too wild for hover cars to work. You’ll have to use vehicles with traditional wheels.”

“O-oh,” I said. I’d never heard anything like that before, but that shouldn’t have surprised me. After learning so much in the past day, I was unsurprised to find that my education had been even more inadequate than I had first suspected. I didn’t know anything, and the sooner I wrapped my head around that fact, the better prepared I’d be to address the lack of knowledge.

“You did well,” Bart said.

“Thanks, I guess,” I said, vainly trying to wipe the muck from my pants. Why had I chosen to wear my favorite jeans? Stupidity, that’s why. And now my boots were probably ruined, too. Let’s not forget my hair, either, which was currently playing host to a horde of half-decayed sticks and probably an army of bacteria. Annoyed, I demanded, “Why is it so freaking hot out here?”

Bart let out a laugh. “Kind of how it is down here,” he said. “You’ll get used to it. Or not. There’s a reason I stick around in Nova City most of the time. Come on.”

With that, he trudged through the knee-deep water, his feet making a horrible squelching sound with every step. With a depressed sigh, I followed. As I did, my adrenaline began to abate, and I became keenly aware of how much I hurt. Like, on a scale of one to ten, it was somewhere in the three-hundred range. And the wound in my side was leading the charge. With every breath came a sharp, stabbing pain that, if I was in any state to analyze the situation, would have probably been extremely alarming. As it was, it was all I could do not to openly weep, and by the time I got to the road, tears had gathered, despite my best efforts.

“Oh, that was fantastic!” my uncle said. “I’m not much of a pistol guy, but that was incredibly satisfying. I loved the way you softened it up; if you hadn’t, that low-velocity round would’ve just bounced off its scales. Good thinking, that.”

I nodded, pretending that had been my intention all along. Sure, I’d had a plan, but it had originally consisted of “shoot the same spot and hope you hit something vital”. That it had worked out was pure coincidence.

“She’s hurt pretty bad, boss,” Bart said. “Might want to get her to the safehouse sooner rather than later.”

My uncle glanced at my injured side and frowned. “Shit,” he said. “Right. Go get the car, Bart.”

The unassuming man nodded before heading toward where the car hovered. In only a few seconds, he’d pulled up next to us. My uncle, meanwhile, pulled a small cylinder from his pocket; it was red with white trim, and I recognized it as a med-hypo. It wouldn’t heal injuries, but it could stave off infection. More importantly, it would numb the pain lancing through my body.

Jeremiah jabbed it into my arm and depressed the button on the side. With a hiss of compressed air, it stuck me with a short needle. A second later, a comforting warmth spread throughout my body.

“Better?” he asked.

“Uh…yeah,” I answered, my voice sounding like it was a million miles away. “A little…um…woozy, I guess.”

“To be expected,” Jeremiah said as the car pulled to a stop beside us. The low hum of its Mist engine was comforting. My uncle guided me inside and a moment later, we were on our way.

Belatedly, I remembered the truck that had been knocked into the water. I asked about it, but my uncle said, “Not our problem. They’re probably already dead, and if they survived, they don’t need our help. We don’t concern ourselves with corporate rats. Traitors to humanity, the lot of them.”

I didn’t really agree. Everyone I’d ever met had just been trying to survive. Those soldiers and drivers might work for various corporations, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still people. But I knew that pointing that out would probably only set my uncle off, so I remained silent as we shot down the road.

Like that, we traveled for another few hours. As the sun began to dip below the horizon, Bart turned down one of the side roads. It was barely more than a dirt trail leading to the north, but he had no trouble guiding the car along the way. After another hour – during which night had truly fallen – we came to our destination.

Huge concrete walls loomed over us, atop which were dozens of armed people. Lights flooded the area, and a massive, intimidating gate barred our way.

“Welcome to Haven,” said Jeremiah.

“Uh…what is this?” I asked as the gates opened. Bart guided the car inside the walls, and I saw a series of concrete bunkers. There was also a sizable warehouse and a dozen small houses.

“Waystation,” Jeremiah said. “They’re all over the place if you know where to look. Not everyone wants to live in one of the megacities. Some people are too independent. If it weren’t for you – or your mom before you – I would’ve never permanently set up in Nova City.”

“Did she really die the way you said she did?” I asked suddenly, my lips loosened by the narcotic painkillers flowing through my veins.

Jeremiah sighed. “She did,” he said. “Freak accident. Just a mugging gone wrong. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished that she took the Tier-7 from me when I offered it. She refused, though. Said she wasn’t an Operator. Your father, though – he begged me for it. I almost gave it to him, too. When I saw him for what he really was, he ran to one of the corporations and told them everything he knew. Thankfully, I hadn’t told him that much. He lived an unremarkable life and died the same way he lived. Good riddance.”

I nodded. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard my father’s story, though I hadn’t known about the Nexus Implant until recently. Knowing what I knew of the man, it wasn’t surprising that he’d turned on Jeremiah so easily. He was a glitter fiend and a gambler, and his vices had done him in only a few years after I’d been born. I’d never known him, and given what I’d heard – from both Jeremiah and my mother – I didn’t want to learn any more.

“Alright, let’s get you patched up,” Jeremiah said. “We need to be moving tomorrow.”

“We’re not settling here?” I asked, surprised.

“No,” my uncle stated. “We’re still too close to Nova City. Besides, don’t you want to get in touch with your roots? Tomorrow, we’re going home.”