The Enforcer
Three groups remained.
Jace set his sights on the one led by Dozer, the gang's muscle-a mountain of a man encased in sleeveless riot armor built from scavenged plates and arrogance. He carried dual double-barreled slug slingers, crude but devastating. One shot could tear through steel.
Jace perched on a catwalk above, evaluating the spacing. Dozer's men fanned out, scanning for intruders. Getting close would be suicide.
He reached into his Stash and withdrew a holo-drone-one of the smaller recon units from the factory cache. Activating it, Jace programmed a crude projection: a taunting figure hurling insults and flipping off the enforcer.
The hologram flickered to life across the floor.
"Hey, tin arms! You forget your sleeves-or your brain?"
Dozer's roar shook the rafters. "Get that bastard!"
The goons surged after the illusion. Perfect.
Jace moved. He leapt from the catwalk, landing without a sound behind the last man in the line. His stinger lashed out, the electrified claw wrapping around the thug's neck. One quick yank-and silence.
Another turned just in time to meet the flash of boom knuckles. The concussive punch shattered his neck and spine, dropping him instantly.
Dozer thundered after the hologram, panting, veins bulging with fury. The fake image rounded a corner, pulling a gun and firing blanks. Reflex took over-Dozer unleashed all four barrels at once. The slugs tore through walls, vaporizing the drone in a shower of sparks.
He blinked. Nothing but silence.
Jace struck.
He vaulted from a support beam, kicking both weapons from Dozer's hands before the man could react. The enforcer countered fast, slamming a heavy boot into Jace's chest and sending him tumbling backward.
Jace rolled, recovering in time to snap the stinger's cable outward, using it like a whip. The barbed coils cracked across Dozer's exposed arms, slicing through muscle. The man bellowed in pain, swinging wildly.
Jace sidestepped, ducked low, then flicked the stinger around his neck. With a hard pull and a surge of energy through his boom knuckles, he drove a mega-strike straight into the enforcer's jaw.
Dozer's head exploded into shrapnel and mist.
The body dropped, armor clattering. Jace exhaled, gaze already shifting toward the next group.
---
The Trap
Below, the Wizards' VP-a slick man called Joker-sauntered through the factory with a handful of thugs in jogging suits. Small, sharp-eyed, with a diamond tattoo over his left brow, he exuded self-importance.
Jace stalked them from above, crouched among the girders. He lined up a shot, extending his stinger toward one of the men, only to watch the cable glance off an invisible barrier with a spark.
"Shields," he muttered.
The trio of goons stepped forward, shedding their outer layers. Beneath the cheap tracksuits gleamed integrated combat systems, one with a back-mounted ion shield, another with speed boosters along his calves, and the third wired with magnetic field amplifiers coiled around his arms.
Black-market HexGate tech. Dangerous.
Jace activated Memory Steal, eyes narrowing as the world sharpened. His vision overlaid with flickers of data-their systems, models, tactical functions. Lines of code streamed across his HUD, outlining energy patterns and cooldown times.
But when he tried to reach deeper-searching for exploitable weaknesses-the System flashed a message:
[Error: Unauthorized system type. Access denied.]
He gritted his teeth. "Figures."
They'd upgraded with stolen HexGate implants, too complex to breach with his current level. He'd have to improvise.
---
The Machine
Jace ducked behind a press assembly as the speed-augmented thug blurred forward, kicking over a stack of barrels.
He needed leverage.
Hack.
The System pinged. The surrounding factory hummed to life. Conveyor belts rattled. Pistons began to pump. Red lights strobed through the haze.
[Hack Success. Control established. Duration: 00:42]
Jace seized control of a robotic arm with a heavy claw, guiding it through the machinery's overhead tracks. The arm swung down and clamped around the ion-shield thug before he could react.
The shield flared bright, then failed. The claw crushed him like a tin can.
The speedster struck from behind, booting Jace hard into a railing. He recovered fast, sliding beneath a conveyor as the magnetic user raised his arms, drawing loose metal into a swirling storm.
"Cute trick," Jace hissed.
He toggled Stealth Mode on his nano suit. The world bent, light slipping around him.
Deploying another hologram drone, he sent a decoy sprinting down the floor. The speedster lunged after it-straight into Jace's ambush.
The stinger lashed out, tripping him mid-charge. A rack of parts came down on his body with a crash. Silence followed.
The magnet user roared, slamming his palms outward. Every loose object in the room spun around him like shrapnel. He forced the damaged robotic arm aside, its joint snapping under strain.
Jace thought fast. He smashed a nearby pipe, flooding the floor with water. Then he tore a live wire free from the wall and hurled it into the puddle.
Electricity surged. The explosion of light and sound threw him backward, but when the glare faded, the magnet user was twitching on the floor-his implants fried, body smoking.
---
The Illusionist
Only Joker remained.
Laughter echoed through the haze.
Then five voices joined in perfect sync.
Jace blinked. There were five Jokers, each identical-each wearing the same grin, same diamond mark, same clawed gauntlets.
Illusions? No-something more tangible.
Jace focused, using Memory Steal from range. The system pulsed-fragmented visuals filled his vision: cloning vats, prototype neuro-splitter nodes, HexGate insignia. Each clone drew fragments of the original's consciousness, tethered through a shared processor embedded in their chests.
"Real enough to bleed," Jace muttered.
One clone lunged from the smoke, slashing his arm and disrupting his stealth field. Sparks scattered.
Five Jokers circled him, jeering. "Let's see which of us kills you first."
Jace spun the stinger in a wide arc, keeping them back. He couldn't outlast them-he had to find the original.
A plan sparked. He feinted left, drawing two clones forward, then vaulted to the upper rafters. From there, he scanned-watching how each clone moved. When one staggered as another dissolved, he saw it: pain mirrored.
"Got you."
He dove. A clone jumped to intercept; Jace impaled it through the chest with the stinger. The clone exploded into smoke-and the true Joker winced, clutching his ribs as another duplicate materialized beside him.
Each new clone drained him.
Jace pressed the advantage, ducking under another slash and grabbing a multi-stun orb from his stash, a device stolen from the Wizards' earlier haul.
He hurled it into the cluster.
The detonation erupted in a cascade of blue light, stunning all five Jokers at once. The air rang with static.
Jace launched forward, boom knuckles flaring. The first punch obliterated a clone; the second broke another's spine. The third crushed the final double, leaving only the real Joker standing barely.
Desperate, Joker tried to split again, body convulsing as energy coursed through his implants. Another clone half-formed, then shattered as blood streamed from his nose and eyes.
His heart seized. He fell, lifeless.
---
Aftermath
The last of Joker's clones collapsed into smoke, leaving the factory silent except for the hum of damaged machines. Faint sparks danced across shattered panels, lighting the haze with short flashes of blue.
Jace stood amid the wreckage, breathing hard, his body trembling from the fight. Every muscle ached, and the acrid air stung his eyes as he took in the destruction-the ruined equipment, the bodies, the burned-out lights. His nano suit was torn and sparking from the clone's attack, rendering it unfit for another engagement. He quickly stored it in his Stash and pulled on his original black gear, feeling the heavy, familiar fabric against his skin.
Somewhere deeper in the building, voices echoed-low, angry, organized. He could hear boots on metal, accompanied by the sound of a motor starting. Instinctively, he crouched near the catwalk railing, peering down. Far across the floor, the glow of the shipping dock lights broke through the smoke, revealing figures near the exit-still alive, still working. The fight wasn't over.
Jace checked the stinger's charge, rolled his sore shoulders once, and steadied his breath. There were still names left on his list, and he meant to cross out every one of them tonight.
The factory fell silent once more, the smoke curling from the ruined machinery, and the lingering scent of ozone and burnt oil filled the air. He knelt beside the fallen gang members, deactivating and collecting their systems-ion shield cores, speed mods, electromagnetic nodes, and Joker's failed neuro-splitter. Each vanished into his Stash with a flash of blue light. He didn't yet know how to use them, but he knew they'd matter.
Jace tightened his grip on the stinger. "Come find me," he whispered.