Chapter Forty-Eight – It’s Never Easy

Chapter Forty-Eight – It’s Never Easy

“And so I thought to myself… these games, their gacha mechanics and rewards, they addict our clients, the players.

It was genius!”

–Extract from the biography of Nimbletainment’s owner, 2039

***

“Who am I looking for?” I asked Myalis.

The group that Grasshopper was escorting was thirty-six members strong. I’m afraid that I can confirm that some of them have died. There are some cameras still active throughout the building.

“Fuck,” I said. Knowing Grasshopper, with all of her… Grasshopper-iness, she wouldn’t take that all that well. “Let’s find at least some of them alive.”

The first floor of the building was all offices and cubicles and that sort of horrific shit. I counted no less than three water coolers as I ran deeper into the building.

The centre was a wide-open space sporting balconies on the floors above with glass sides, a large staircase, and in the very centre, a glass-walled elevator. It probably made the poor fucks tied to one of the cubicles feel great when they could crane their neck back and see the people a few levels above them.

Right now, the steps leading up had a lot of blood on them.

I swore as I ran through the lobby and skipped over some woman’s corpse. “Was she one of Grasshopper’s?” I asked.

She was. The group moved up.

Made sense. They wanted distance. Didn’t look like it worked out too well though. I counted four more bodies on the staircase. Three dead aliens too, Model threes with their faces caved in or with mangled bones.

So the group were fighting back. Probably for the best. Model threes weren’t too hard to kill, overall. I’d done it with one arm and a pipe. I crouched, then jumped up. Myalis caught on to my intentions and fired off the jets on my legs, sending me rocketing up the space around the stairs.
I twisted a bit and landed unsteadily on the third floor. Another body, this one next to three dead model threes. A fourth was chewing the corpse’s face.

The alien paused mid-chew and turned its too-many-eyed face my way.

I stomped over to it and swung a boot into the side of its face. I don’t know if it was the anger, the armour, or some combination of the two, but the kick smashed it hard enough that it crumpled to the side, very much dead.

Leaning down, I checked on the faceless guy, then shook my head. Very dead. It looked like he was still holding onto a big knife that was stained green with alien goop. Those around him had clearly been stabbed a few times.

Good man. In other circumstances, he’d be hailed a hero.

I walked past him. There was a trail of blood leading deeper in to follow. As good an indication of where I had to go as any.

Bullcat raised, I started to follow the blood trail. The group must have moved pretty quickly. How long had Grasshopper been out of the fight for? A few minutes?

There are antithesis entering the building from a skybridge linked to the next building over.

“Alright,” I said. “Which floor?”

The third.

“Which floor are we on now?” I asked.

The third.

That was just brilliant. Folk had run up here for safety, then they’d run to the one floor that had more aliens coming onto it.