Chapter 3: Late for ... a Firefight?

Megan hurried down the hall, blinking as the lights flashed to read her retina before she passed through each of the major checkpoints. The lab was just ahead, and there was important news.

When the alarm went off, she stopped walking, briefly thinking that she had made a wrong turn, or that the system had glitched on her retinas or something like that. But the alarm wasn’t localized. Something was happening.

She ducked to the side of the hallway when she heard gunshots, taking cover behind a pillar. She noticed that there were pillars every dozen or so feet, almost like they were set up for cover in a firefight.

But she didn’t want to move toward the gunshots; she wanted to move away. So not toward her lab. She looked at the wall and saw a sign that told her cybernetics was down this other corridor. She started moving quickly from one pillar to another, listening to the sounds of combat in the distance. She could hear screams, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. All she knew was something bad was happening, and she wanted to get as far away from it as possible.

QUEST: Duck and Weave. Avoid being shot and find some way to fight back. REWARD: item, 50 XP.

Those are always the best quests: the ones that reward you for doing what you were going to do anyway.

She heard footsteps approaching, and decided to pick up her pace, moving two columns at a time rather than from one to the next. She dared a glance over her shoulder, and did not like what she saw.

VIOLENT RADICAL, level 6. HP: ???/???

There were two of them. The dim lighting wouldn’t bother them; both were wearing helmets with a glowing light that suggested they could see just fine. They swept their weapons back and forth down the hall, little lasers passing across the empty space.

Meghan held her breath, not daring to move. She wasn’t sticking out from the wall, but if they moved to the right place, they might spot her even without her moving. She had to stay still. Had to be sneaky.

NEW SKILL: STEALTH 1/10.

You can’t always tell when you’ve gotten away with being sneaky. But a new skill appearing makes a pretty good case that she did. So does the two men moving down the other hallway, still looking for resistance. Megan held her position until they were out of sight, and then for another ten seconds after, in case they doubled back.

Then she hurried down the hall and into the first door that opened.

She ducked down as soon as she saw that the room was occupied, but the men inside didn’t seem to notice her. There were three of them. One of them was a researcher like her, only level 5. The other two were both violent radicals.

There were four dead bodies in the room as well. All of them formerly researchers.

She snuck closer to one of the bodies, hoping she might find a weapon and complete her quest. She used the sounds of gunfire to cover any noise she made and was sure only to move when the one remaining researcher was returning fire. She didn’t want to get hit by a stray shot.

She searched the body, coming up with a key card, a bunch of junk, and a matching weapon to the one that she already had. It did not trigger the completion of the quest.

Then the other researcher screamed, and the shooting stopped.

“Check the bodies,” one of the radicals said. “Make sure they’re dead. I’ll cover the hallway.”

Seemed like a bad idea to split up, but the other radical didn’t argue, just started moving among the bodies. First, he poked them with the toe of his boot. When one of them twitched, he fired a round into the head. Megan put a hand over her mouth to hide her gasp and realized she wouldn’t be able to make it back out the door.

The radical went right back to searching the bodies after shooting the first one in the head. He nudged them, he poked them, and he searched them.

Megan went to move away, and her hand nearly slipped out from under her. She had been resting her hand in a growing pool of blood from the person she had just searched. She looked at her hand, and it gave her an idea.

She lay down on the floor and watched as the puddle of blood moved closer and closer to her. Staring at it allowed her to relax her features and keep her eyes from moving around; they were too busy focusing on the puddle that grew closer and closer. She wondered if it would hit her face before the radical made his way to her.

“Well, look at you,” he said, standing over her. She didn’t move, not even blinking or breathing. “At least there was one looker among you.” He nudged her with his boot. She didn’t resist, letting him kick her over onto her back.

“Wonder which one of us got you. Probably Hal. I woulda noticed.” He bent down a bit, looking her up and down. “Where did we get you, hm?”

He bent lower, towards a stain on Megan’s shirt, checking to see if there was a bullet hole to go with it.

As he bent down, she put both stun guns to his head, one on either side, and pulled the triggers.

He jolted around as the electricity passed through him, and then he collapsed on top of her. Megan checked her battle log. A surprise attack, double attack, and critical hit combination put the total damage at 300 points.

She pushed him off her and started searching him, ready to hit him again if he made any kind of movement, but it was pretty clear that he was unconscious.

It would take too long to remove his armor, which wouldn’t fit her anyway, but she was able to pull off the helmet and mask. And she was able to get his gun.

QUEST COMPLETE. Gained Gorka-9 Assault rifle. 50-70 damage. Modes: autofire, 3-round burst, single shot. Ammunition: 30.

Weird that there was no experience for defeating him. She hoped she didn’t need to kill him to get credit for beating him. Maybe it had something to do with his friend outside.

What was his name? Hal?

She took the weapon and moved near the door Hal had gone out through. She moved slowly and quietly, gripping the weapon tightly. She saw that it was set to burst fire, so she prepared for the kickback, bracing herself against the wall next to the door.

Then, with as deep a voice as she could muster, she shouted, “Hal, you gotta see this!” Trying to sound as much like the other guard as possible.

It wasn’t a perfect imitation, but it worked; Hal wasn’t on his guard when he came through the door. And at that distance, she couldn’t really miss. Three shots – the first with a surprise bonus and a critical bonus, the second with just a critical bonus, and the third going too high to hit him – were enough to splatter his head all over the lab.

COMBAT COMPLETE. Having defeated two enemies of significantly higher level than yourself, without taking harm along the way, you have gained an experience bonus of 200%. You gain 3200 XP. You have gained multiple levels.

-Megan Proxy, Level 5 researcher. Experience 800/2400. HP: 150/150. Stamina 50/50. Technology Points (TP): 50/50. Cybernetics: 0/0. Abilities: Strength 1, Agility 1, Toughness 1, Willpower 1, Wits 3, Intelligence 5, Charisma 1, Luck 1. Skills: Guns 1/5. Research 1/5. Jury-rig 1/20. Stealth 1/10. Talents: Quick memory 1/10. Collected 2/25. Subterfuge 1/10. You have a talent for tricking people.

-You have 12 ability points to spend. You have 4 skill points to spend.

She thought about keeping the points unspent at least for now, in case she needs them later. But then she remembered that there were people here trying to kill her, and she needed to spend them now.

She’d gotten lucky so far, and that worked well. She put half her points into the Luck stat. A message popped up.

-Luck is a special attribute. Further advancement will cost two Ability points.

She wasn’t sure if that would hold true for other abilities, but decided to spread them out anyway. She put two each in Agility, Toughness, and Charisma. Then she put the skill points into Guns and Jury-rig, with the last two into Stealth. She noticed that when she increased her Toughness, her HP went up another ten points.

She was definitely getting more survivable. Which was good; there were more of those violent radicals out there.