Epic

"Kortock?"

"Mh?"

"Since I have to kill ten rhino cobras without my special skills, and my strength is lacking…I am not good with guns, either…but my intelligence is decent."

"Go ahead and flex if you want, but you should be aware that no one knows what makes the intelligence stat go up and what makes it go down. So, it's like a lottery winner flex."

Kortock commanded the car to stop. They were now in a parking lot that had once served as a stage for an epic battle.

What a pity it was that the word "epic" most often meant epic losses as well. For five years, mankind had suffered incredibly devastating amounts of casualties. Ian did not like to think about it. No one wanted to think about it. They were at the peak of human technological progress, yet they were losing. There always seemed to be more krobinnuti coming their way, even though the humanoids were very much involved in the war and kept on slaying the enemies. The krobinnuti had the numbers and the advantage of sheer animal strength.

The global melancholy and the underlying pessimism formed the cold blood of Earth right now, and things were getting worse. While wars were supposedly occasionally refreshing to the economy, now, the planet was sliding towards a depression, an era of scarcity – and suddenly Ian saw a flash of the memory he had from a coming of age ceremony he had observed as a kid. Even the basic cybernetic suits had been better back then, and the newcomers had been given better pistols. Now, Ian was the only one in his generation to have a suit that would cost more than a new car.

Apparently this was the downside to his intelligence soaring. He had to think about things he didn't like.

Who would have liked war? Who would have wanted to be on the losing side?

[INTELLIGENCE IS NOW 13]

"I thought about poisoning the cobras," Ian said with his newfound grim confidence pushing him to put himself out there and get the validation he craved.

"Poison…"

Kortock hopped out of the car and gestured towards Ian to make the younger man come with him.

"Here is where my sister died," Kortock said and pointed at a spot on the ground.

"Here is where my uncle died as well," Ian said, thinking about the morbid nature of the kind of forgetting it took to make a parking lot out of a place of a tragedy.

It was really peculiar that there was not a single statue reminding of the events that had played out here.

"If you think I don't hate the krobinnuti…"

Kortock shook his head.

"If you think I am rubbing elbows with them just because I blackmail one of their generals, you could not be more wrong. My…relationship with the captured one has kept them at bay. Mostly."

"Helps to have a hostage, I guess." Ian scratched his head. "Can you help me poison a carcass and bring it into the jungle?"

"Then the filtigers will eat it, though. You will need to drive them away somehow. Unfortunately for us, the filtigers and the cobras eat the same things."

"Then I will just stand on the ground I have demolished with my fire and shoot every tiger that comes towards the carcass. Is there a problem with that?"

"Besides it being dangerous enough to get you killed seven times? No, I don't think there is anything wrong with that idea." Kortock grinned. He walked towards a crack in the asphalt.

He pulled something from the crack and put it into his pocket.

"You are going to need backup so badly. I know I said I would not be too involved with you, but I will come with you. Don't ask me why."

"What did you just fetch from that crack?"

"None of your business, son. No offense, but none of your damn business."

"None taken."

They walked back towards the car, but before they got close, an explosion bursted out of the vehicle, destroying it completely.

Ian was a bit late, but his instincts told him to duck.

Kortock grabbed him.

"We're going to go to the laboratory! Now!"

Ian followed his mentor. They sprinted towards the lab, running through empty streets and place that were surely not frequented by anyone but a few junkies.

Ian felt like Kortock suspected everyone.

As they arrived to the lab, Ian stopped his mentor.

"What is going on?! Is someone trying to kill us?!"

"No, I think they wanted to congratulate you," Kortock hissed at him. "What do you think that was? Explosives in my car? Someone knows I drive you around. Someone wants either of us or both of us dead enough to risk collateral damage. We had some insane luck right there!"

They entered a room with such a massive amount of chemical compounds inside that Ian got dizzy from reading three warning labels. He was not a chemistry nerd, but he had always liked the look of those bottles and other things that were apparently part of that swagger.

Kortock packed up some bottles and pushed the bag to Ian.

"You need to be away from 13 for a while. Don't take this personally."

"Hard to do so after an assassination attempt."

"Just go. I will sort this out. There is a traitor and they are high enough in the structure of the military or scientific complex that they know our whereabouts. It was merely…a fortunate timing for us. Go. Go see what is left of the jungle and meet me at your house, at midnight, you understand?"

Of course Ian understood. He ran towards the rainforest.

There was not, in fact, much left of it. The smell of smoke still lingered around. Trees had fallen, with only the sturdiest individuals standing up, and all the vegetation was charred and black, if not downright ashes.

Ian looked at his bag. This had not been his intention. He had to mix up a deadly poison on his own, protect himself and prevent the filtigers from eating all of the bait.

Bait. He didn't even have the bait yet.