I tried not to panic as the barrel of the merc’s revolver was pointed right at my face. Medtech’s helmets were reinforced, naturally, but he didn’t have just any pea shooter. It was closer to a hand cannon that might be able to pop my helmet like a tin can. Not to mention I’d already seen just how effective he was from the watchful eyes of my Dragonflies. Even if the bullet bounced off my armor, he’d be able to shoot in between the gaps.
Allowing him onto the flyer definitely wasn’t part of the plan. It complicated so many things. It was still within a manageable level, but I’d have to move carefully. Not to mention he was already pointing a gun at my head.
“We don’t have time for this.” I slowly waved a hand towards the rapidly fading CEO. Really, it was a miracle he was even still alive. When we fire-bombed him, it was to force the call to Medtech. I didn’t think he’d also be poisoned. Dorrin being dead on arrival was so not part of the plan.
Mira slowly lifted her hands beside me. The hologram I attached to her helmet shimmered softly where it hid her halo. Her voice came to me through the Packheart Rings. “How do you want to play this?”
“I have all the time in the world.” Tex didn’t seem to care in the slightest that Dorrin was about to die again. Both sides needed him alive, though, so it must’ve been a bluff.
”Shiro?” Luna asked through the Packheart Ring. She was busy driving the Medevac, but it wasn’t much of a surprise she was watching back here too.
”Just wait,” I whispered back to the two of them just low enough that the helmet’s mic couldn’t pick it up. Then I spoke up to Tex. “If you stall me any longer, neither one of us will get what we want.”
”If I’m gonna lose anyway, then it don’t matter.” The gun pointed at Mira flicked to Dorrin instead, and his trigger finger twitched.
”Woah, woah, woah, let’s think this through, okay?” I panicked a bit, and stepped in between Tex and the CEO. “We can talk about this when we get back to the city.”
Tex laughed, and his eyes narrowed on me. “And what? Your entire team’ll be lyin’ in wait to ambush me?”
Ah, so that was his angle. I glanced at Dorrin. We’d already won, and he knew that. We were within our territory, he had no way to get out, and he was wary about fighting us. I could see it in his eyes. He recognized us as a cut above the other mercs… probably vastly overestimating us, but we were the ones that managed to get Dorrin out.
I eyed the man, and readjusted my plan once more. “We’ll let you go if you behave.”
“And I’m supposed to take you at your word for that?” Although he said that, he dropped one of his revolvers into a holster, and roughly wiped at his forehead. The other stayed trained on Dorrin. “I reckon y’all will backstab me just the same.”
”Do you have a better option?” I backed away from Dorrin as a concession. Tex pulled his finger off the trigger, though still kept it levered toward us. “Ever heard of honor amongst thieves?”
“That kinda honor’s shakier than a fence in a sandstorm.” Tex jerked his revolver to Dorrin, and shuffled back to one of the seats in the back of the Medevac. He kept his revolver in hand, and watched me like a hawk. “If I feel somethin’ off, he dies first.”
”Chek.” I let out a breath. That at least bought me some time. The plan would need to be adjusted slightly, and I’d have to figure out how to deal with Tex still, but there were more pressing matters at hand.
I turned back to Dorrin and checked his vitals once more. I had half a mind to just let him bleed out on the table, to be honest. Or to shoot him up with adrenaline so he could be awake and feel just how terrible of a state his body was in. Sentinel wanted him alive for the big payout, though, and I wouldn’t make the first move for his life with Mira still here.
“Needles?” I finished setting up the IV, and stretched out a hand to Mira.
”Oh, right.” She pulled out a bunch from the cabinet I told her to look in and handed a bundle of sterilized needles to me.
Just before grabbing them, I flexed my hand slightly. The armor we had on was specially prepared for Medtech medics. It’d been a pain in the ass to refit all four sets of armor, but I’d found quite a few cool pieces of tech hidden away. For one, the arm guards had an autosterilization feature that completely sterilized my gloves with a brilliant UV light.
I grabbed the needles, hooked it up to the IV, and tried to find a vein in Dorrin’s body. Most of his skin was covered in burn blisters, though, and the poison running through his body made his veins shrivel. Not to mention his pulse was so weak I couldn’t even feel a vein.
Instead of continuing to do it the old fashioned way, I grabbed a different scanner, and pulled it over the gurney. It flashed, and a grid dropped over his body. A moment later, the grid narrowed and bright holographic lines traced the veins all over his body to make it easier for me.
I found one—and accidentally burst it when I put too much pressure into the needle. The scanner flashed red, and a warning chime broke out of it. How the hell did medics make this look so easy? It took me four more tries before I managed to get the needle into one of his shriveled veins properly. Once I did, the scanner automatically shut off and a cheerful tone rang out.
”That’s nifty.” Mira stood just next to me with her arms crossed. She constantly snuck glances back toward Tex while she watched me.
“Chek. I should buy one.” I shoved the scanner away, and moved to the head of the gurney just out of Tex’s sight. Once there, I summoned out the canteen and linked it into the IV. My Shiro Slurpie flowed up through the see-through tubing and down into Dorrin.
I set up a second IV in his other arm, and pulled out actual blood to feed into him from the Medevac’s stores. The stuff flowing through the canteen would disappear at a certain point to cover my tracks, and I’d rather not have him bleed out entirely once we moved onto the next stage of the plan.
The speaker of the Medevac crackled to life, and a digitized voice spoke. Just like Mira and I, Luna was almost unrecognizable. “Multiple flyers inbound. There’s a blockade forming between here and Medtech.”
”Circle the area.” We weren’t headed to Medtech, anyway. I tossed a bag to Mira, and nodded toward the front of the LRAT. “Stall for us.”
”Roger.” The heavy turret on the Medevac started to thunk. I could feel the vibrations echoing through the ground even back here.
I worked on Dorrin for a while longer before turning my attention to Tex once he was stable enough. Still had only a barebones idea of how to deal with him. Fighting him outright wouldn’t be ideal. At the moment, he was wary of our capabilities. Once he saw our actual level, that might change.
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I wrapped one last bandage around Dorrin, and moved away from the CEO. ”How’d you see through us?”
Tex just watched me for a long moment, and then nodded to the side. “Those two bots didn’t help.”
I followed his gaze to the other two Shocktroopers. They both just sat there, completely immobile on the side of the Medevac. Underneath that heavy armor, though, were two bots based around the Industry Friends from the water purification plant.
There were always four Shocktroopers in a Medevac. With Saint and Luna back in the city, I had to improvise. “I ran out of time to code behaviors.”
“Even if it wasn’t that, Medtech’s medics are highly trained. Your partner looked like a lost puppy.” He sighed, and shook his head. “I shoulda seen through it back on the island.”
”Don’t beat yourself up over it.” I went through a lot of lengths to make our disguises near perfect, including drilling how Medevac Shocktroopers usually acted. The armor, too, had been heavily modified to make us look like different people. Mira’s was fine, but mine was filled with so much stuffing to make me look bigger that I felt like a turkey.
Tex just laughed mirthlessly. “I take it I’m not gonna get paid for this one. Just my luck.”
”Can’t win them all.” I leaned back against the side of the gurney and watched the merc.
“Or any, recently.” Tex finally slid his revolver back into his holster, and relaxed a bit. “You actually gonna keep your word?”
Honestly, I was planning to get rid of him back when he first got on the flyer. He was behaving though, and I didn’t really want to kill him. “Chek.”
“Not many—“
”Brace! Rockets inbound!” The mechanical voice of Luna shouted across the speakers of the Medevac.
I froze for a moment. Yet another thing that wasn’t part of the plan cropped up. Even a master like Viper couldn’t account for every bit of chaos. “Who the hell’s shooting rockets at us?”
“The submarine surfaced.” Mira ducked back into the cabin from the front of the flyer. “What’s the plan?”
“Seems the councilman wants to recoup losses.” Tex stood up, and drew one of his revolvers. Mira’s rifle snapped to him a beat later, though he didn’t seem to care in the slightest. “Open the hatch.”
”Why?” I stared at the man with wide eyes. “To ensure we cleanly blow up?”
“You have a better idea?” He threw my words back in my face. Tex lifted a revolver, and mimed toward the door.
“Fuck.” I closed my eyes tightly for a moment, and then slowly nodded. Luna, watching me from her safe spot out on the relay, opened the side hatch a moment later.
The pressure in the cabin abruptly shifted, and rain billowed into the LRAT. Loose pieces of equipment were sucked out the side of the vehicle almost instantly. The wind roared with the fierceness of the storm above. Through it all, I spotted eight blazing trails headed in our direction.
Tex took a breath, and dropped his other hand onto the revolver’s hammer. His hands turned into a blur as he fanned the hammer, and eight shots rang out. Every bullet hit its mark, and eight consecutive explosions broke out over the choppy waters of the bay.
Tex sagged like the act took a lot out of him, and staggered away from the hatch. I casually reached into a small slot of my armor, and discretely pulled the Jade Dagger from the hidden compartment. Hidden Hands and Hidden Weapon turned the act even more discrete.
This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Naturally closing the gap to him would just arouse suspicion, so I couldn’t sneak a slice. Honestly, I didn’t expect the rockets to play into my favor, but I didn’t want to let the chance pass me by. I might not have another.
The moment Tex moved to sit down, I Flash Stepped toward him. My entire body turned into a bolt of lightning, and surged across the cabin instantaneously. The moment I turned physical once more, a bullet slammed into my stomach and deflected off the side of the armor. By the time I lightly slashed across his neck, a third, fourth, and fifth bullet hit me.
The gunfire abruptly stopped, and Tex’s entire body flopped back akwardly on the seat. I jerked away from him with a ragged gasp of air, and stumbled back toward the other side of the LRAT. “Fuck.”
It felt like fire burning through my stomach. Hot blood poured out in waves through the cracks in my armor, and dripped down onto the floor of the flyer. My stumble back turned into a complete collapse as my head pounded in confusion.
“S—Alpha-One!” Mira’s arms wrapped around me, and supported me just before I could fall over. “Shit, shit, shit… there’s so much blood.”
“Be fine.” I dropped a hand onto my stomach, where two of the five shots had punched through the armor and decided to intermingle with my intestines. After a moment, Cold-blooded activated to help clear up my head.
I shot a glare at the now paralyzed gunslinger and slid my knife back into its slot. What the hell was that reaction time? He managed to get off five shots before I could even cut him just a little. Some kind of speedware, probably, but it was still crazy.
”You are most definitely not fine!” Mira grabbed me, and easily hauled me into a princess carry. She carried me over to Dorrin, and shoved him to the side to set me down. “What do I do?”
”Hemostatic spray.” I waved a hand toward one of the cabinets, and shakily pried off the chestplate. Tex was paralyzed with his head looking the other direction, so I didn’t have to worry about him seeing anything. “Overwatch? How are we?”
”Better than you are.” Saint answered smoothly. “Everything else is falling into place. Just waiting on you… You are okay, right?”
”Just a flesh wound.” It was most definitely not just a flesh wound. I’d be okay with a small nap, though. “We’ll move on in a bit.”
”I-I can maybe stall for another few minutes, but you need to move.” Luna popped up a weird painting made up of red dots with a single, tiny green dot in the center. “You’re the green dot.”
”Oh.” It seemed my plan to stir the mercs into a frenzy so they could cause chaos worked a little too well. We were almost entirely surrounded. The only saving grace of the situation was that they were mostly in boats, and flyers weren’t typically armed. The HMG on this thing was enough to keep most everyone back.
“Here.” Mira rushed back over to me, and sprayed a liberal amount of foam into the bullet wounds. The bleeding abruptly ground to a stop, and the spot the spray touched turned a little numb.
“Thanks.” I pulled open a different cabinet, and withdrew an Adreno stim. It took a bit to line it up, but then I shot it into myself. The pain instantly started to fade away and my heart hammered in my chest. Cold-blooded dropped a moment later.
Thankfully, they’d gone through all of the way, so I didn’t have to worry about the bullets being stuck inside. I wasn’t too worried about it, but Mira paced around me. “I-is there anything else?”
”I just need to take a nap.” I sat up and groaned softly as I felt the injury pull weirdly. Perfect Donor was already doing its work, but it was a much slower process then I would’ve liked.
“What about him?” Mira nodded back toward the still paralyzed cowboy collapsed toward the back of the LRAT. She wanted to kill him. I could see it clearly in her eyes.
“Right…” I pulled my chestplate back on to hide my form once more. Next, I grabbed a dozen hover pucks out of my bag.
“I got it.” Mira snatched them from me before I could crouch down and layered him with the stuff. She moved around him, and strapped them to his duster.
He did shoot me, but technically I attacked first? Not to mention he’d mostly kept his word, so I wanted to keep mine. I’d been trying to kill less people recently, anyway, right?
“Sorry about this. I really do intend on keeping my word, though.” I patted his cheek lightly to make him focus on me once Mira finished. Not only that, I kinda wanted to prove him wrong. There was, in fact, honor amongst thieves. “Hey, if you survive this, no hard feelings, chek? You did shoot me several times.”
”Is it a good idea to taunt him?” Mira shuffled around the Medevac and started to gather stuff up. “We should just kill him. It’d save us future trouble.”
”I’m not taunting him. I doubt we’ll even see him again after this.” I sighed, and held a hand against my stomach. “‘Sides, his chances down there are a lot higher than up here.”
Even through the paralysis, Tex glared up at me—until I rolled him over so his face was on the ground. I slapped the button for the LRAT’s hatch, and it sprung open as the cabin depressurized again. Rain and wind roared and billowed into the cabin once more.
I pulled out an emergency life vest from the side of the LRAT and smoothly slipped it over his shoulders. Then I simply pushed Tex out the back of the flyer. The grav pucks would reduce gravity just enough that an impact on the choppy waves below us wouldn’t kill him. If he was lucky, he’d be totally fine.
I watched him fall for a moment before closing the hatch once more and turning back to Mira. It was time for the next phase.
— — —
AN: I know a couple of you saw through that, like, early on. Kinda sad.
Honestly, I dunno how I feel about this one. I was trying something new with using a different perspective to keep you guys in the dark, but I really didn’t like it. I don’t mind doing different povs every once in a while. The constant side pov felt like it pushed it a bit too much. I just like showing the MC’s perspective too much. Probably won’t happen again, to be honest. It was kinda fun exploring actual strong people though.
