The recoil damn near tore my shoulder out.
"Fucking hell...!"
The oversized .50-caliber revolver bucked in my one remaining hand which had a bunch of holes In Its armor plating oozing blood
The muzzle flash painting the tunnel white-hot for a fraction of a second.
The humanoid abomination mid-lunge too many joints, too many teeth, skin stretched like wet parchment over something that never evolved on Earth popped out of existence as if reality itself had flinched.
One second it was there.
The next, nothing but drifting black motes and the echo of my gunshot hammering through the practically destroyed underground tunnel.
I staggered backward, my tactical artificial Intelligence who I nicknamed genesis, gen for short screaming warnings in her usual robotic artificial female voice in my head.
STRUCTURAL FAILURE: LEFT LEG
SEVERE TISSUE DAMAGE
MOTOR FUNCTION: CRITICAL
"Yeah, yeah"
I panted, dragging my ruined leg after me, armor plating grinding against concrete.
"Put a sock In It will you gen"
Every step was a small act of defiance against physics, biology, and common sense.
My left leg wasn't so much attached as it was remembered, a few stubborn strands of muscle, torn cabling from the power armor.
And a whole lot of spite keeping it from falling off entirely, well truth be told It mainly thanks to a shit load of combat stims I was currently on.
Hell I haven't been that high as I am now even In my long gone prime years and I used to snort and swallow a lot of shit.
So that's saying a lot. Blood sloshed inside the suit. Mine. Probably some of theirs too. Hard to tell at this point anymore.
Another shape crawled out of the shadows ahead, long arms scraping along the tunnel floor, skull wrong, eyes glowing with that evil psychic Lazer sword wielding wana be lord light. I just raised the revolver again. Boom.
The abomination folded backward like it had been yanked by an invisible wire, chest imploding, body collapsing into an oily smear that evaporated before it hit the ground. Another corpse.
Another kill notification flickered courtesy of gen and vanished in my cracked HUD before I could focus on It.
"Seriously for fucks sake"
I growled, limping deeper into the ruined underground artery beneath what used to be a financial district.
My left eyes which was now a nasty as fuck bleeding gouge In my fully enclosed helmet itching nonstop from all the dust.
Skyscrapers above, turned into jagged gravestones. Down here? Concrete veins and emergency tunnels, choked with dust, flickering lights, and things that absolutely did not belong in the same universe as coffee machines and fire exits. I fired again.
Another one went down, shrieking in a voice that sounded like feedback through a broken speaker. I didn't even flinch anymore.
It wasn't the bloody CV virus. Not gods damn World War Three. Not fucking aliens.
Not climate collapse. Not even some divine judgment bullshit.
I barked out a bitter laugh as I fired again and kept retreating.
"Nooo,"
I spat, teeth clenched.
"It's the fucking third-rate, overused, bargain-bin trope of reality turning into a gods damn MMO RPG with no bloody tutorial, explanation or even proper fucking gaming experience balancing"
The HUD pulsed, lagging slightly, cracked right down the middle like my life choices.
AMMO: 2 ROUNDS
STATUS: BLEEDING
DEBUFFS: MULTIPLE
"Oh for the love of gods youre a peach gen but you can suck my hairy pale shit covered ass gen"
I told it. Another abomination charged, its legs bending the wrong way, mouth splitting open vertically like someone had tried to unzip a face and failed. Boom. It dropped.
I limped, dragged, staggered, through the destroyed underground tunnel, past shattered maintenance carts, past emergency signage still optimistically pointing toward exits that no longer existed.
Until I saw a wall, well more like there was a bunch of debris blocking my way, for a second I just stared but the next.
I just turned and pressed my armor covered back against it, back scraping against concrete, hydraulics whining as I slid down just enough to brace myself.
Two more shapes rushed me. I raised the revolver. Boom. Boom.
Both went down in showers of black particulate and half-rendered gore.
Silence. Just my breathing now. Ragged. Wet. The wheeze of a man whose lungs had smoked too much and screamed too often.
I let my armored head thunk back against the wall.
"Seriously,"
I muttered.
"Fucking hell."
This was not how it was supposed to go. I was just about getting used to my miserable little slice of peace.
I'd paid for it in cartilage and vertebrae, depression, ED and all other side effects that comes with being an army grunt for twenty five years straight.
I was finally getting my life back on track. All I wanted, all I was begging the universe for.
Was to enjoy being a thrice-divorced, alimony-paying, alcoholic, nicotine-addicted ex-army grunt with fucked knees, a wrecked back, and anger management issues that at this point technically counted as a personality. That was it. That was the dream.
Instead, I got this. Fucking reality with patch notes.
I flicked the revolver sideways with a grunt. The HUD stuttered as I did, spiderweb cracks distorting the digital ammo counter.
I shook the weapon hard, muscle screaming, until the smoking casing finally popped free and clinked against the concrete and spun there, hissing, like it was laughing at me.
I jammed the revolver up under my other arms that was missing it's forearm armpit, pinning it there with the weight of the armor.
Just a bloody stump wrapped in cracked synth-fiber and dried gore, useless except as an anchor.
With my still barely functioning hand, shaking now despite everything, I dug into one of the pouches on my belt.
Armored fingers scraped fabric. Then nothing. No weight. No resistance. Empty.
I froze for half a second as I realized this was finally It
This was the moment that I had been doing my hardest to evade.
But it seemed like death was finally going to get lucky.
Realizing this I barked out a dry, humorless laugh.
"Ha... well,"
I muttered, voice echoing weakly down the tunnel.
"fuck me sideways."
That was when I heard it. The screeching, the sound of my Impending death.
High-pitched, wet, layered, like metal tearing through cartilage, multiplied and harmonized. It came from ahead.
From behind. From side tunnels that hadn't existed five minutes ago.
"Seriously fuck me…"
I whispered as I sagged against the wall for a moment, feeling the tremor run through the heavily damaged suit as it struggled to keep me upright.
Then I straightened as much as a one-legged, half-armed corpse-in-waiting could.
I grabbed the revolver by the grip again and then flipped it around.
And clenched it by the barrel instead, knuckles whitening, and growled.
"Gen. Activate self-destruct sequence."
But unlike the usual robotic artificial female voice that should have answered In confirmation only silence followed.
The HUD flickered as If It was glitching. Static crawled across the cracked display.
"Oi don't tell me you're gonna glitch on me now all of a sudden?"
I barked sarcastically yet just like the first time I didn't get a response.
The fuck Is the gods damn AI going on a strike or something?
I thought only to see shapes finally emerge from the shadows, four of them at first, then more, bodies bending wrong, limbs too long, mouths splitting open as they saw me.
Red threat markers courtesy of gen flared across my vision like a bad joke.
"Tch seems like she still functioning properly so what gives?"
I snarled and hurled the revolver with everything I had left In me.
It spun end over end and smashed straight into one of the fuckers eyes with a wet crunch, making the dirty thing stumble back in a spray of ichor and fractured bone.
It didn't kill it. But it screamed and that was good enough.
I reached back and drew my combat knife, rusted, nicked, older than most of the assholes who'd ever commanded me.
The blade felt right in my hand. Honest. Simple. That was when the AI finally spoke in my mind.
"Unable to comply with the order, sir."
I blinked because since when did the microchip embedded Into my brain.
Ever gave a fuck about my well being, I'd be more believable If she was actually self aware and was just trying to preserve herself.
Since detonating the fusion core would mean the end of her too.
"The fuck, Gen?"
I snapped, squaring up as the first abomination lunged.
"Since when do you start not listening?"
I met it head-on, driving the knife up under its jaw and sawing sideways. Black fluid sprayed across my visor. Another slammed into me from the side, claws scraping, prying at a seam in the armor.
"I dont care if youre having youre digital period or whatever but last time I checked youre the one whose occupying space in my brain so you better overload the fusion reactor, theres no fucking way Im dying without taking these fuckers with me if i do ill haunt youre digital ass for the rest of eternity"