Gamma Protocol (092)

[092]

AN: Extra thick chapter!

ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates]
ETA: 4min 52secs 

You are currently “20.2 meters” from [coordinates]
The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

Ajax’s neuralink was doing overtime to tone down the extreme anxiety currently burning through his body. It poured biochemical stress suppressants and played small copyright-free AI-generated tunes in a vain attempt to soothe him. The electrical components of the processor sent precise jolts down his nervous system to stop the shaking, and keep his heart from full-blown tachycardia.

His eyes were locked on the feeds from the drones outside.

The yard lay carpeted in dissolved monster bodies that still hissed and frothed. At the center stood the target: larger again, maybe five meters total, torso plated like overlapping obsidian blades. It looked like a reptilian knight welded out of the blackest glass. Its claws were hooked scythes, each big enough to shear through a mid-sized car. The monster’s face had become a solid wedge, no eyes, only a slit down the center pulsing dim cobalt. Fresh ridges along the jaw made a toothed collar, serrations catching the sunlight each time it snapped at a flyer. 

In a whirlwind of violence, it clamped a talon in one hand, braced a foot, and wrenched. The claw tore free with a crunch that made a knot in Ajax’s stomach. The target shoved the severed limb into its maw and chewed. Growth rippled down its arms and up its spine, growing a bit larger, pulsing.

And even then, the winged monsters were becoming a threat faster than it could grow them. The monsters that before had not been any larger than a person were now several times that. Their serrated edges ripped through reinforced concrete and metal like tissue paper, chipping away at the target’s armor from every angle and all at once. It didn’t matter how many it killed and ripped and ate, it spent more time completely enveloped than free of the attack.

All around it, the flying monsters kept smashing against each other, merging, growing.

The sound of Copper clicking a fresh railgun barrel into place snapped Ajax out of the trance. “What are you doing!?” he asked with a slight shrill to his voice. “W-we’re going to die, the manual says-”

“The manual says that in the event of getting caught up in a meguca confrontation, bury all assets with a tracker, and in the event of their retrieval by another team, our families will be compensated proportionately,” Cucumber said, pulling out another drone from the pack, not bothering to plug the fiber optic now that the jamming had stopped. “And we say our life’s worth a lot more than every piece of munition in this room.”

He swallowed. “But the AI recorder…” The program installed at the start of the mission, tracking every move, every word, every bullet.

Copper reached out his large hand and patted Ajax on the shoulder. “If we live, we get premium. Then no problems. If we die. Then no problems.”

“Not even Copper would be able to make 2 clicks in five minutes under heavy aerial monster assault. So think of it this way, Wires,” Cucumber handed him an assault rifle. “Your fight or flight is kicking in, and fleeing isn’t an option. So either go hide, or help put more iron into that thing.”

The moment was punctuated by a ‘THUD’ outside and a building-shaking roar that made the ground tremble underneath Ajax’s feet. He hesitated, swallowing a knot in his throat as he grabbed the firearm. “I’m… I’m not as good a shot as… you guys.” He had the software, and some parts of him were cybernetic, like his eyes, lungs, and trachea (a basic requirement for most denizens of the truly deeper levels of the second district). But he didn’t have the kind of software nor hardware that would’ve made even the best unenhanced marksman envious.

Copper shrugged, shouldering the railgun in favor of the machine-gun he’d been carrying all this time, the barrel wide enough it might as well have been an auto-canon. “When hitting wall, doesn’t matter where you hit it.”

Another roar, Ajax tightened his grip. “I-I’m ready,” he lied. He doubted anyone other than maybe the cyborg himself could ever be ready for what would be waiting for them outside.

---

ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates]
ETA: 4min 51secs 

You are currently “1,780.1 meters” from [coordinates]
The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

“Everyone push inside! We’re closing the gates!” Vesper shouted through both her own voice, the intercomms, and through every available channel, amplified thanks to Quinn plugging her straight into the bunker’s comm’s system. “Don’t shove, just move! Keep going inside, every corridor, every room, just move!”

The bunker was at capacity, it’d been at capacity for hours. Now they were opening the restricted areas just to get every last person they could, and even then, there would be no room. One look at the crowd and it was clear they would run out of literal space sooner than they would citizens.

Some grim part of her wondered how much worse it would be if the flying monsters hadn’t shown up. Vesper did her best to ignore the stains the panicked crowd were trampling over.

“With this much people, the ventilation system-”

“Doesn’t matter.” She cut Quinn off. “As long as it can hold for a few minutes, we can hold through the blast.”

A singular communication line opened up, and Isia’s face plastered itself all over the feed. “WHERE’S AXEL!?”

Vesper flinched and hesitated. She suspected exactly where Axel had been, the sound of two monsters fighting one another was hard to miss even this far away. Not that she would’ve needed to when the district-wide notification had included images of a creature she’d never seen before ducking it out with a living flying horde. But she could not admit that, she knew exactly what their sniper would do, she had to-

“Fuck, he’s not there?!” Isia said. “I’m-”

“I am ordering you to come back this instant!” Vesper blurted. “Axel’s location is unknown right now. If you go looking for him blindly, you’ll get caught up in the blast too! Do you think he’d want you to kill yourself like that?”

Isia’s face stilled, brows furrowed, face twisted with uncertainty. “I-”

“He survived a meguca assassin.” The gang leader cut her off. “Do you think he can’t survive a green nuke?”

The sniper faltered before her shoulders dropped. “I’m a minute off, save me a spot.”

Vesper sighed, hiding her relief as she cut the line off, eyes lingering on the living stormcloud that had been growing and compacting over a singular spot on the district.

She really hoped she was right, Isia would never forgive her otherwise.

“Please don’t die,” she prayed to whoever might be listening.

---

ETA: 4min 35secs

“I need a priority high-speed AV right NOW!” Shadow’s mangled body thrashed against the restraints, three separate megucas wearing white medical gowns pinning her down. Blood poured out, trying to grasp through missing limbs, wounds reopening.

It shouldn’t have been this way, they had a dozen elders out in the field, they should’ve noticed the flock of monsters had not been a dispersed group of weaklings but a singular C-class. If she’d known… if she’d known…

“SOMEONE SEDATE HER!” Several voices shouted at once.

“Heal me on the way!” She screamed, flinching as a needle was jabbed into her neck. Her mind lashed out through the neuralink, sending message after message to the elders.

Yet she’d only been met with silence.

---

TARGET DISTANCE: 180,121.1 meters
Launch Timer: 4min 10secs

Elder Summer sat atop a foldable plastic chair perched at the pinnacle of New Francisco’s highest skyscraper. Violent winds howled in a relentless torrent, screaming across glass and metal, yet not a single strand of her hair shifted from its precise position. The world around her was frozen solid, ice crystallizing on exposed surfaces, but the biting chill never touched her skin.

Her gaze cut through the dense carpet of clouds below, zeroing in on the swarm of flies amassing at her city's gates. Behind her, an entire tower's worth of verdant vegetation twisted, pulsating rhythmically with the force of her power, an immense, a lone touch of green that crowned the city’s otherwise neon and metal blandness.

Two days of power.

That was what it would have cost her to eliminate the threat before it had bloomed into the monstrous problem that confronted her now. Forty-nine precious hours of meticulously gathered resources, careful cultivation, and accumulated strength. Energy she was meant to conserve and grow until the imminent arrival of an A-class Leviathan. Energy she knew even now would not be enough to take on the monster without that AK01 weapon.

All because the C-class’ first appearance had been mistaken for a swarm of F’s and G’s so trivial Elder Summer hadn’t even been alerted. Now, having been roused prematurely from a rare moment of rest, she confronted a creature that demanded one hundred and three hours' worth of her power. At the current rate it was killing humans, it would rapidly ascend into a B-class within the next few hours, something she would not tolerate.

Yet despite the staggering waste of resources, the irrecoverable sleep lost, and the bitter taste of her frozen apple, Elder Summer couldn't suppress the faintest hint of amusement. Observing the pup below her, bearing new and intriguing fangs, was undeniably entertaining.

She had encountered Megucas who burned their very emotions for power, others whose abilities thrived on quantized, mechanical precision, and some who straddled the line between both. Yet this new power radiating from the boy felt entirely foreign, as if being fed from some unknown external force rather than anything internal, elusive and impossible for her senses to define or pinpoint.

“Did Hecate do this when she ‘fixed’ his soul?” Elder Summer murmured thoughtfully, taking another contemplative bite from the crystalline apple. Could it be that the most secretive elder was finally stirring?

“No, too overt, even by her standards,” she concluded, eyes narrowing slightly. Even Elder Fulton would have detected this anomaly had she paid close enough attention. Perhaps she already had. It might well be that woman’s fear of the unknown driving her relentless pursuit of the young pup’s removal.

Elder Summer leaned back, plastic creaking, briefly entertaining the notion of going out of her way to preserve this curious anomaly, before swiftly dismissing the idea. To alter the nature of her attack so it would be less indiscriminate in what it damaged would cost her a monumental eight hundred hours of accumulated energy, a price far too steep, even for entertainment this rare.

“You should run, little pup,” she murmured softly, chin resting lightly on her palm as a faint smile played across her lips. “It’d be a shame if you ended up crushed beneath my boot.”

What in the world was that shadowy guardian of his thinking, neglecting the fundamental lesson every Meguca should know from the outset? When an elder stepped into the arena, survival hinged on running away and nothing else.

But then again, if the boy were foolish enough to be trapped between an elder and a rampaging C-class, perhaps he never had the potential to matter at all.

---

ESTIMATED STRIKE-ZONE: 2km from [coordinates]
ETA: 3min 31secs 

You are currently “31.7 meters” from [coordinates]
The City of New Francisco thanks you for your collaboration.

They stood upon the security box atop the building like it was their bunker, screaming as they each poured bullets out into the sky by the hundreds per second and not a single one missed. The sky was flesh, flapping and flying in a tornado of razor-sharp serrated edges and howling winds. The number of monsters might have technically decreased, but that was because they were merging into something that would come out nastier.

And though there were eight of them, shooting and swapping with every reload, Copper alone stood at the forefront of the chaos. The cyborg fired the railgun with his right, the crack sounded like tearing sheet metal. The hypersonic round sliced through two lesser flyers before punching into a larger one’s center mass. Orange shock rippled across the connector membrane. The massive flyer staggered, dark fluid geysered. Copper then twisted the autocannon machine-gun he’d been wielding with his left and plunged four rounds into the monster, putting it down for good.

Without missing a beat, the cyborg twisted and landed three rounds on three flyers that had attempted to approach from their blind-spots. The man had turned into an anti-air walking turret of death, targeting everything that got close enough to matter, while the others mostly poured their munition into everything beyond that perimeter.

“CHANGE!”

Copper roared, jumping into the security box as the others stepped outside to pour lead at anything that got close. Within the security box, Ajax with thermal protective gear was aiding the cyborg to remove the red-hot barrels for both weapons and handing over a fresh set.

“CHANGE!” Another roar, and the cyborg was right outside once more, with Ajax picking the assault rifle and trying to aim at anything that might help.

ETA: 2min 59secs

Something swooped overhead, and they collectively flinched as the shadow stretched as large as a building, large enough to blot out the sun completely as it descended with the ferocity of a winged blender. It tore through the other flying monsters, shredding them into paste and frothing flesh before continuing its way down upon them.

“DUCK!”

Despite the command, none of them knew where to go that might be safe, so they did the only thing they could: They opened fire straight overhead. Yet it would be an angry black blur that saved them, passing overhead like a meteor as it tore a bloody gash through the monster’s length.

It roared, recoiling before a part of its amorphous body slapped the black blur and spiked straight to the ground. And for a moment, the mercenaries froze, watching with slack jaws and wide eyes as the flock of smaller monsters swirled like a tornado, descending towards the crater.

“FIRE!” Ajax found himself momentarily surprised that it was his own voice that had given the order.

Copper moved first.

The cyborg hurled the railgun aside, wrapped both bionic hands around the autocannon, and dug in as armored struts punched from his boots, anchoring him to the buckling concrete. The gun bellowed in an unbroken roar, a tongue of molten tungsten that lit up the darkness. The continuous recoil ground the floor beneath him to powder. The incandescent torrent carved a path through the swarm, flaying the weaker creatures into shredded flesh and shattered bone before they could dodge.

“CHANGE!” Copper roared through the comms, everyone had gone deaf from the barrage.

Already a second wave was gathering, a part forking off towards the massive monsters and melding into the open wound, closing the frothing flesh.

ETA: 2min 25secs

Ears ringing, Ajax moved to throw a fresh barrel at Copper when he was shoved out of the way, sending him careening against the security box’s wall.

Cucumber’s headless body collapsed next to him.

The flying monster’s body was torn to purple mist before Ajax could even register its presence.

Copper was screaming, face twisted in rage as he unloaded several more rounds into the pulped monster before turning the weapon skyward at the descending tornado of fanged flesh that had chosen to focus on the noisy squishy humans. Every other mercenary took aim and unloaded everything they had.

“RUN!” The order rang from every channel all at once. “RUN, WIRES!”

ETA: 2min 03secs 

Ajax’s legs were moving underneath him as he tumbled and tangled his way forward. The roar of the autocannon was followed by the floor began to crack and give, and in a singular horrifying crunch, it went silent.

And Ajax ran faster.

ETA: 2min 01secs 

“Help!” He screamed, choking in his own ragged breaths, the dull sound of wings and tearing concrete giving chase, catching up.

ETA: 2min 00secs 

He reached the edge of the building, yet did not break stride. Without looking over his shoulder, he jumped.

Something caught him.

Something hard and sharp. Searing pain erupted from a hundred tiny spikes prickling through his protective gear like it was paper. The sound of beating wings was accompanied by a violent crash before he was unceremoniously dropped on the ground. Ajax rolled, pulled his gun out and froze as he stared up at the black glass-like monster that stared back.

The monster that had saved him.

ETA: 1min 51secs

Everything caught up to Ajax all at once. “They’re going to nuke the monster!” He screamed, pointing at the floating fortress of writhing flesh and fangs. 

For a fraction of a second, he could’ve sworn he saw understanding flash across the unblinking glowing blue eyes from within the monster’s obsidian wedge-like head. The creature opened webbed wings that had not been there earlier and leapt with enough force to crack the concrete, sending Ajax tumbling back.

The storm of flying monsters gave chase, but were not fast enough to keep up with the obsidian creature as it rushed straight towards the largest one of them all. 

ETA: 1min 38secs

Fang-tipped flesh tentacles whipped out of the C-class, swiping and slashing at the smaller monster that didn’t bother to dodge, instead clinging to the flesh and biting down on it with zeal. The C-class swatted and vibrated, even sending the other flyers to harass the creature, yet it continued to eat its way through, directly into the mountain of flesh.

The flying fortress wailed, a shrill ear-splitting scream of pain as it shuddered violently, spewing fountains of frothing blood.

ETA: 1min 30secs

The C-class vibrated with anger, rising into the sky, following the sound of a roar that was getting further and further away. It climbed in pursuit of the creature that had eaten its way through to the other side, and was now using the C-class’ own bulk as a barrier against the more nimble but smaller individuals of the flock.

In a furious shriek, the flying fortress accelerated, beating its building-sized meat-flaps hard enough to cause powerful winds all the way down at ground level.

ETA: 55secs

The two monsters shot upward on a column of roaring air, leaving the first pursuer a mere pinprick against the vault of the morning sky. Ahead, the C-class behemoth and its swarm still dominated the horizon; by sheer bulk it could mask the sun, yet even that vast shape could no longer hold back the light forever.

ETA: [Cancelled]
Elder Summer says: Duck

From the heart of the city, the tallest skyscraper lit up. A single spear of emerald light erupted from its summit, etching a perfect arc across the sky until it found its mark. Beam and beast collided. 

Light devoured everything. The flare burned through ocular filters rated for soldering arcs. Ajax yelled, palms slamming over optic ports, even as the shockwave caught him. The atmosphere tore outward, then crashed back in a tidal punch; whatever windows that had survived disintegrated into razor rain. The roar exploded through his bones, rattling cartilage, alloy, and straight down into bedrock in one relentless surge.

There was almost no heat, yet Ajax’s skin prickled as if sun-scorched. When his optics finally rebooted, the sky was shedding phosphorescent green leaves in a verdant storm. Each fragment settled with a hiss, cracking pavement and coaxing vines, flowers, and moss from fresh fissures until concrete blossomed with impossible life.

And above, he spotted the faintest outline of a black figure entering a spiral at terminal velocity. Both wings were severed; every twitch scattered plumes of smoke and bioluminescent fluid. It flew much how a rock would, it didn’t.

Ajax never saw the exact point of impact, but the sound arrived all the same:

THUD

There was a thick floral dampness in the air that Ajax had never smelled before, refreshing and invigorating despite the gaping pit in his chest. The young man slowly descended to his knees, closing his eyes as he fixed his gaze on the highest tower in the city. “Thank you for your great miracle, Elder Summer,” he whispered the prayer, finding his words held far more reverence than any previous iteration.

Witnessing the scale of her power this close was nothing but awe inspiring, and surviving it impossible had the elder not chosen to spare them of her wrath.

The moment was interrupted by his neuralink, a warning flared.

Grimacing, he stood up. Though he felt invigorated, every part of his body ached with dull pain from over-exertion. Ajax dragged himself back towards where the others had died, sparing their crushed mangled bodies a small sad nod. He was no stranger to death, but these ones had stung.

He gave their remains a quick appraisal scan and sent an asset-extraction request to the mercenary’s AI-manager, and a next-of-kin notification request. 

It was the least he could do.

Silently, he picked up the moss-covered railgun, dusting off the vegetation and hefting part of its weight with his shoulder while the barrel scrapped against the pavement. A system’s check confirmed it was good for one shot.

He hoped it would be enough.

He had a contract to finish.