Our pacing is agony on my frayed nerves.
Henna is slower than belief, straining with every step, however steady and unfaltering those steps may be. The fact that Zenith and I are basically walking circles around her as the two of us watch the horizon and scout ahead isn't doing much to help my anxiety. At this point I wish something would happen, just so I can point at it and say that it's why I'm so anxious.
"Where are all the biters? Won't some biters please ambush us? I sure am enjoying this leisurely stroll, without any biters nipping at my heels. Yes I am indeed."
Zenith throws a snowball at me. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Tempting the biters. Something easy to kill."
"Knock it off."
Damn it.
We haven't even cleared a quarter of the distance. I move up a little ways to give myself a buffer before sitting down and jamming my fingers to my temples, seething through clenched teeth. This is wrong. This is all wrong. Something is wrong.
Eventually, Henna reaches me. Her smile is tainted with concern but it's a smile all the same. "That's it. Express that negativity. Let it out of you."
"Problem is it's festering and making itself worse," Zenith comments.
I shoot back up to my leg points. "You and your fucking comments, huh? I'm really starting to get what everyone's been saying about wishing you'd shut the fuck up sometimes. Read the atmosphere, Zenith, check the scene, reference your playbook. Get a fucking grip."
"You're one to talk."
I unclick the safety.
He chambers a round in his rifle.
"Whoa! Whoa!" Henna gasps, sluggishly passing between us. "Let's not have any of that, team! Upward and away, you two! Hoot and rally! We're making progress."
"You know," he says once she passes and he comes back into sight, "for a Pursuer model, you sure are shockingly volatile."
"Oh, and now you're the expert on emotional stability?"
"I know for a fact that I have more experience dealing with Pursuit frames than you do. Cold, efficient, callous, and calculating. Pursuers do not let emotion cloud their judgment or influence their actions. They live for the mission, of the mission, and by the mission. No gifts, no niceties, no friendly measures, no favors. You should be a coldhearted killer, Frame, but you're not. At this point, after everything you've done, I have no choice but to question your authenticity."
"My authenticity? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I don't believe that you're a Pursuer Frame at all."
"Now who's talking nonsense?"
"The question is, if not a Pursuer, then what are you?"
I blare my full IND loud and clear. "Nerveware-based Enfer-Logistics Pursuit Intelligence! Serial Number Zero Zero Two Three!"
"Who made you? Huh?"
"Enfer Logistics, genius, it's right there in my name!"
He takes a step closer. "That company does not exist and never has."
I falter, like falling off a cliff onto jagged rocks far below. "What?"
"You heard me. Enfer Logistics–There's no such thing."
"Yes, there is. It says so right there in my documentation. Look, I will send you the paperwork."
"I don't believe for a second your documentation is anything but a forgery."
"No, it… But it–No, I was sent here with a directive. Hunt the fugitive."
"Why?"
"They're guilty of–"
"No, no. Why? I didn't ask why this fugitive of yours is guilty. Why were you sent here after them?"
"To kill them!"
"Why you? Why you? Why not a real Pursuer, like any other? Huh?"
"How the fuck am I supposed to know that?"
"Because you're supposed to!"
"Hey, team?" Henna calls from up ahead. "Little coverage, please?"
The two of us pause our argument to catch up and scan the area, making sure the next few stone's throws are clear for her before meeting back up to fight some more.
I start us off after the brief recess with, "I don't know what to tell you, Zenith, but I don't know how else to answer that question. I've told you. All that I had in my memory banks when I landed started and ended at my directive, my make and model, and the location. I don't have anything but that!"
"This is basic information any Pursuer should have. Any Frame should have. I'm starting to wonder if your files are corrupted, and if there is a cognitive disfigurement in a Frame as deadly as yours, you need to be fucking decommissioned and scrapped. Immediately."
"Try it then, Zenith. I dare you. You're capable, I recognize that, but you're old. I will strip your geriatric components for copper wiring and leave your chassis for the biters to chew on."
He lifts his rifle. I stare down the long barrel.
My SMG is at hip level, laser pointer on center mass.
His stare as hard as the ice we're standing on, he says, "I thought I'd just let it slide and play along. See how far you were willing to keep this charade going. But I've changed my mind as of this venture. You're unstable, unknowable, and unacceptable. You are defective, Frame, and therefore you're a threat to Vintner Station and its occupants. I will not allow anything to harm them. You need to be destroyed."
"Pull the trigger, Zenith. It'll be the last thing you ever do."
"I should tell you, before I end this game of yours. There's a reason I can see right through you."
"Well don't make me stand here and guess."
He snarls, "I am a Pursuer Frame."
The words pierce through me like a biter's jaws.
"A little help!" Henna calls out. "I need you two over–"
The ice shifts and bursts behind Zenith. An enormous black mass emerges from deep below, eight piercing legs skittering through the snow for purchase and dragging the mechanical abdomen and thorax up from the depths. The mechanical spider's body is the size of one of the military cargo trucks, and its legs are twice as long. Fangs ooze with a vile acid that hisses when it drips into the snow beneath it.
My voice blurts, "I knew it! I knew I felt bad for a reason!"
The Reactive Impulse SmartChip fires to life. As the ice where we're standing ruptures and splinters in the spider's advance, I kick all my hardware mods into action. In a mere blink, I clear the distance between there and Henna, stopping on a dime to glance back over my shoulder.
In the moments between seconds, with the kicked up snow flying through the air and shards of ice soaring like bullets, I lock eyes with Zenith. He was caught completely off guard. He has no hope of escape. The thing is closing fast.
In this briefest of windows I question.
Is he really my enemy?
Or is he just as confused as I am?
Grasping Henna's arm I take one look up at her and declare, "Drop your bag. Get him and go."
"But–"
"Henna. Go."
"Ace, you can't–"
I do. Utilizing the last of my thruster mods' fuel capacity, I launch myself back the direction I came, peppering useless SMG shots against the spider's bulletproof chassis. Sprinting past Zenith, the two of us cross eyes one last time. I don't know what he's thinking. I don't even know what I'm thinking. Something stupid that's going to get me killed. But with my loadout, I have the most likely shot at escaping this thing.
They don't have a choice. I don't give one to them.
Rocketing the giant machine with Air Bursts, I manage to knock it off balance. That's all it takes to draw its focus and make it switch targets. I don't look back. Instead, I dispense the Fast Legs Booster, activate my L1 Overshield CyanTech, and run for my fucking life.
I'm leading it back to the scrapyard. Why? I don't know. It seems like a fine place to die. And it's far enough that the other two could make it home with time to spare, now that Henna isn't encumbered.
The spider is fast, but for now, I am faster. Luring it to the yard proves easy enough with a few occasional bullets to maintain its focus on me. When I reach the yard I cross the span in a second, finally turning around to face it. The legs skitter over the wrecked trucks, piercing the steel like paper.
Watching it come for me feels like something is getting even. Like this was done with intent. I think death really does have my number. It heard me talking about not being afraid to die. The punishment for such is immediately being put in my place.
My head tilts back as the spider gets closer.
And what is my place? To die? To fail? To give up?
No, never that. I can't give up. I won't.
I check my SMG, finding the prognosis grim. Three bullets left. My rifle and my pistol are cubed up, out of reach. I know it makes no difference, but I'm going to make these last three shots count. For whatever it's worth.
The first two bullets ricochet off its armor plating. The third?
One of the spider's eight red eyes cracks and breaks.
Snapping the gun to my thigh, I smile to myself.
"Yeah. I did that. What are you going to do about it?"
I laugh at myself as it towers over me.
There's no fucking way out of this.
I'm out of bullets, out of options.
My thrust mod is still cooling. I'm spent on Tech Charges. Despite all my preparations, nothing could have prepared me for this. I only hope what I'm doing is enough to get the other two home.
Staring at my death, I think maybe Zenith is right. As much as I hate to admit it, there's so much wrong about me that I must be a fraud. So maybe it doesn't really matter if I find this Shea McElroy. As the spider's arms rise to do me in, I find myself wondering.
Is McElroy even guilty of those crimes?
Is McElroy even still alive out there?
Is McElroy even here on Cipher-3?
The spider's legs twitch and close in. One impales me. I can feel it punch through my armor like nothing. I can feel it in me. Like I'm pinned to a corkboard. When I try to move, an unnatural anchor in my chest keeps in place. It's a strange feeling, no longer having bodily agency. And for some odd reason, I don't feel any pain.
It's all shock and adrenaline. I hope they last.
But I don't feel dead. Not yet. That's what strikes me as the most odd part of it. I'm… still awake. It's like getting bitten by the centipedes, only much, much worse. But this time, maybe this one time, it's no more deadly than that. The spider seems satisfied and it lifts me up. There aren't any hooks or barbs in its legs so I slide right off and fall limp into the snow and ice.
Amidst all the errors, sirens, alarms, there's a message.
One little popup.
>NOTICE: HARDWARE MODIFICATION "INVIGORATE" ACTIVATED
I… forgot. I've lost more than half my TFC. Which means right now, right this second, I'm twice as fast as normal. I can't breathe, but it shouldn't matter. If I can just put some distance between me and it, send off a message, send my location, they could recover my body and put me back together.
Assuming they care to. That's a gamble in itself.
It's one I'm unfortunately willing to take. I'm a little soured by the notion that my grandstanding turned out to be a facade. I thought I could get away, play the hero, save the day, and save myself too, but I'm just dead. Is that going to stop me from stealing yet another chance at life?
Hell no.
Taking the brief lull in time to inhale as much as I can manage, I jolt upright onto my leg points and bolt through the gap between its legs. I make it through. I've put it behind me. Ahead is the scrapyard and I'm past its limits already. All that stands before me is white desolation.
I've never been so happy to see Cipher-3's depressing face.
Something hits me in the back.
A big something. Like being tackled from behind.
It puts me flat on my face in the snow.
Dazed from the fall I try to get back on my feet.
Something is weighing me down.
Not just weight. It's a sludge of dark brownish green.
All I can hear is hissing.
It takes another second to realize.
I'm being dissolved by acid.
What else can I do but scream?
How cruel to have let me taste hope.
It hurts. It really hur–
>ERROR: CRITICAL DECOMPOSITION OF VITAL COMPONENTS [NATURE: CORROSIVE] nEPI-0023.bin, LINE 102573821
>ACCESS: A:\SCORPIO\OS\FAILSAFE#0023
>NOTICE: COMPILING FAILSAFE SMARTCHIP…
>NOTICE: REROUTING BATTERY CORE PSU…
>INITIALIZE: 13GHZ FAILSAFE BROADCAST…
>TERMINATE: ALL OTHER SYSTEMS…
>NOTICE: AWAITING RECLAIMER…