Chapter 14

I was searching through the borg I had flatlined for any goodies he might have in his pocket when I heard it.

The elevator.

It left a quiet rumble through the floor as it settled. The elevator that was locked down so only Scavs could use it. Hiromi and Ichi’s crew wouldn’t be here yet.

“Here I go murdering again.” I whispered as everything went cold.

Instantly my mind had a thought and every part of me was nodding along.

I ran. Sprinted through the different rooms over the dead bodies and through broken walls before I returned to that little Bunker they had set up near the elevator. I crept up and unfortunately whoever had come up had already walked out of the elevator.

But that was fine. I slipped out through the hole as quickly and quietly as I could until I was once more on the Megabuildings outer walkway.

Then I pulled the HMG through the hole.

I wheezed a little at how heavy it was as it caused a twinge in my left arm that made me wince, but I fought through it anyways. How did Becca handle this thing!? Oh right. Cyber arms.

Gonna have to get me some cyber arms.

Because as I walked down the hall I caught the sight of the scav walking into their little den. That room led to the first Ripper room.

Which meant I had about thirty seconds before they realized something was up.

So I hurried down the hall. Not caring too much about making noise. This was their home base. They expected people here.

I crept through the ripper room, my face turning into a gentle smirk as I stopped just before entering the big room.

I took a breath.

Then I walked out around the doorway.

Three men. One was carrying a man over his shoulder.

Fuck. They had a victim…

Fine. I just wouldn’t shoot at that one, I adjusted my aim.

And pulled the trigger.

You know in the game the HMG was used every once in a while. It was an okay thing. A heavy weapon you could pick up and carry around for a bit until it ran out of ammo, or you had to do anything else.

It was okay. Not great. Not amazing. Just okay. Fun though.

This? This wasn’t a video game.

This was a fucking HMG fired from the hip by a fourteen year old unaugmented girl. I only weighed a tad over a hundred pounds.

Did I forget my broken left arm? Yes. Yes, I did forget my broken left arm. That is until about half a second after I started firing.

Then I remembered it. Oh did I remember it.

So yeah. Firing the HMG instantly fucked me up. Kicking me back and forcing me to push myself into a wall to keep from falling on my ass.

Too bad for the poor Scav that I had been aiming at though.

He turned into fucking hamburger. Turns out these HMG’s fired explosive rounds.

*500 XP Gained.*

The other two leapt for cover.

Which didn’t help when I manhandled the HMG arcing over towards the scav that wasn’t carrying an innocent.

Explosive ammunition doesn’t care about light cover.

I kept firing. The wall I was pushing the gun against to find any sort of stabilization practically crumbled from the treatment but it did let me arc the fire straight through the second Scav attempt to hide behind an overturned table.

*500 XP Gained.*

I dropped the HMG. I couldn’t shoot the third Scav without hitting the victim, and I didn’t think I could have held it for much longer anyways.

I drew my Unity with my good arm and rushed him.

The Scav was still screaming something in Russian as I leapt over the couch he had been hiding behind.

The poor victim looked like shit on the floor beside him obviously having been dropped like a sack when the firing started. But the Scav? He was cowering.

Four rounds into him before he realized I was there and he stopped moving.

*500 XP Gained.*

I breathed. Just breathed catching my breath before I rolled forward and grabbed my arm.

“Fuuuuu-!”

——

The Victim was still unconscious. I checked them out and they didn’t have any shards in their system or anything. Probably just drugged or beaten unconscious. So I hauled them up and put them on one of the newly destroyed couches before settling in myself.

My arm twinged a bit whenever I moved it.

I think I broke, broke it. I needed a nap, but needed to get the crates full of cyberware out first. I sighed hoping Hiromi hurried up.

The bodies were starting to smell… Worse than the room already smelled. While I waited I checked over my stats since I had nothing else to do.

Considering how much shooting I had just done, I wasn’t surprised to see my stats had gone up.

A lot.

*Annihilation skill level up!*

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

*Annihilation skill level up!*

I blinked at that one. Guess firing an HMG had leveled me up quick.

I stopped to check out the perks for a moment. This time there was a pretty quick delineation between shotgun perks and Machine gun perks. Luckily just a few options from the top was what I wanted. I picked it immediately.

Recoil Reduction. Know how to best reduce the effect of recoil on aim and your body.

That would hopefully mean when I shot the Burya my arm stopped breaking. I would have to test that though. I winced at that idea. So I moved on.

*Reflex Leveled up!*

This was a relief. Reflex was so determined by my skills since I didn’t have a direct way to level it. Now I was at Reflex 4. That meant I had even more Reflex skills to level.

Well those that hadn’t already.

*Blades skill level up!*

*Handguns skill level up!*

*Assault skill level up!*

Handguns was once more maxed out at Handguns 4. Blades was at 3, and Assault 3. So I still had some grinding to do with those.

Then I looked down a bit more on the list.

*Cool Leveled up!*

Cool 6. I guess killing all these scavs was pretty cool. I sighed. No wonder I was still calm and collected. Sitting around the dead bodies of the Scavs wasn’t even ruffling me. I shook that away looking at the last two skills.

*Ninjutsu skill level up!*

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

I had only gained one level of Ninjutsu. I guess Cool had leveled up once early on when I was still sneaking around, but since I had stopped using stealth mid fight it didn’t have a chance to level along with Cool.

Cold Blood though?

*Cold Blood skill level up!*

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

*Cold Blood skill level up!*

Four levels. Cold blood 6.

It was now my highest stat and skill. I rubbed my eyes a bit before opening the perks menu.

Ninjutsu first.

The list hadn’t changed much. One or two additional perks that seemed to have unlocked due to other skill trees.

Scrolling through the list I ended up finally deciding to keep focusing on the stealth aspect of Ninjutsu instead of the combat angle.

Which is why I kept circling around to this perk.

Cyber Ninja. After Breaching a system automatically upload a daemon that makes you more difficult to see for members of the network. Increases based on skill level of Breaching.

A combo perk. Breach and Ninjutsu. A perk I hadn’t had before. Being able to sneak past people after using Breach on them? That was already something I wanted to do!

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But it also meant I really needed to level my Breach and Quick Hack. So I could hack and Breach on the run. I looked around at the room full of Cyberware. I wondered if they had anything here I could use? But I shook that off to refocus.

Because I still had one more perk to choose.

Cold Blood.

I started looking down the list. It didn’t take me long to find what I wanted.

Fearless Chill. Fear is a powerful enemy. Good thing your enemies realize you have none. Fear is your ally.

From the description it read more like a diplomacy skill. If while under Cold Blood people realized I wasn’t afraid… that might be a pretty strong advantage.

Fearless people were scary after all. You never knew what they would be willing to do.

I picked it, I had already taken a perk to keep my body calm in terrible situations, maybe one to keep my mind calm would be a good combination too.

I looked at my skill points. The desire to spend them was there. But I held off for now. After this I would probably do some normal grinding for a while. I might even have the eddies to try working on my Technical Skill. That would be a nice thing to level. So I would hold off for a bit, figure out what I wanted to raise. Intelligence, or maybe more Cool and Stealth?

*Ringing*

I smiled as Hiromi finally called me back.

*Hiromi. You here?*

*Well I’m at the ground floor in the garage. You said the south side right?*

*Yeah the south elevator. You near it?*

*It’s right here, but the damn thing is broken, choom.*

*Yeah they had it locked down. Give me a minute, should be able to send it down from here.* I quickly rose, noticing the victim was still out. And hurried to the elevator. Just like I expected, the control panel on the elevator was completely destroyed having been pulled off and modified.

An absolute mess of wires and connections.

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