Chapter Thirty-Four – The Edge of the Sword

Chapter Thirty-Four – The Edge of the Sword

“Why?

Because it’s cool as shit!”

–Three Swipes, 2037

***

Things happened fast.

Gomorrah opened up with a surge of flames so hot I felt them through my suit. It was a spitting bar of fire wider than a person’s head, and it instantly started to melt everything within a metre of it.

Doc Hack was just as quick. Three arms tore out from his body and grabbed his assistant to place the poor idiot between the doc and the flames. The man screamed as he cooked.

Doc Hack drowned the screams out in return fire, the guns held by three of the arms he’d deployed spraying bullets across the lab.

There was no grace in the way he fired, just a wild spray of shots that pinged off of empty tubs and cracked into cement pillars.

Gomorrah rolled to the side, the wash of her flames ending as easily as it had begun. She hid behind a pillar while weathering the storm.

My turn, I supposed. I whipped out my Trench Maker and sighted down the barrel even as my finger squeezed the trigger.

Doc Hack looked worse for wear, the front of his smock still alight, but beneath it were layers and layers of prosthetics, all shifting into place. He stumbled back even as thicker, armoured arms rose to intercept my shots. Electrified bullets crashed into steel plates with a snapping buzz and did fuck all.

“You are making a mistake!” Doc Hack roared, his face twisted into a mockery of anger, plastic teeth bared.

“You don’t have room to talk about mistakes,” I shot back.

The Doc fell onto his rear with a heavy crash.

I paused. Was it over?

The back of his smock tore apart and long multi-jointed legs slammed into the ground. He started to scuttle backwards.

There was only so fast a body that size could move.

I grunted and aimed to fire again, then motion caught my attention from the edge of my vision. The guard.

He screamed something incoherent and loud as he raised a gun to his hip and fired.

I winced back as a trio of shots clattered against my helmet. It rang, but the pain wasn’t any worse than being hit with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Shut up!” I shouted at him before putting two in his chest.

“Cat!” Gomorrah called. “He’s moving out!”

I whipped my head around to see Doc Hack slamming through the doors at the end of the lab. I swore and bolted after him, Gomorrah a step behind me.

We arrived in a long passageway, the Doc already halfway down it. “You would bring this city down with your greed and naïvety!” Doc Hack screamed.

I took two steps into the room, then raised my Trench Maker up and fired.

Doc Hack’s head exploded, plastic and servos flying back.

“I was the solution to all of your ills!” Doc Hack roared.

“God damn it!” I shouted as I started to run and fire centre of mass. I wasn’t sure if anything actually hit; I could barely aim standing still.

“I got him!” Gomorrah said. She fell to one knee and raised her flamethrower.

I ducked away and activated my railguns.

Doc Hack must have seen it coming. “Then I’ll take the place and burn it down with me!”

I hadn’t noticed the pipes in the walls and the ceilings. They were everywhere, in every corridor we crossed and every wall we passed. The O2 signs and the methane warnings were like ads in my periphery. Easily ignored.

Doc Hack fired. This time it wasn’t a wild spray, but something more calculated.

I saw the holes punched through the rusty old pipes as if they were paper.

There was a hiss, and Gomorrah’s flames raced across the room.

The world went white, white and warm, and I felt myself being thrown back into the nearest wall. I didn’t hear a damned thing, but the alerts across my vision warned me my ears were off.

I stumbled away from the wall and shook my head.

Everything was on fire. The walls were blackened and fire poured out of pipes in long jets.

Doc Hack was gone.

My hearing returned with a pop, and I was introduced to the sound of the world burning and crumbling apart.

“Gom!” I shouted.

“I’m fine!” Gomorrah said. She picked herself off the ground and surveyed the room. “Keep going. I’ll take care of this,” she growled. “Kill him for me, would you?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The floor had collapsed, the ceiling too. Large slabs of concrete with crooked, rebar-like grasping fingers poking through.

Where was that fucker?

I leapt over the hole, vaguely aware the collapse had gone deeper than I’d initially thought. This was going to be costly.

The corridor bent, and I found Doc Hack running while tearing off broken limbs. The lost mass was lying across the floor, discarded arms and legs trailing behind the doctor, who was running all the faster now.

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“Wait!” I screamed as I took off after him. I whipped out my Icarus, Trench Maker slammed into my thigh holster. “I need to kill you!”