“Kylie.” She glanced around the basement, then down at herself, before back at Grey. “Right now, I get to make a choice. To choose a new species, a new class, before they get chosen for me. You saved me. Punished them. What do I need to help you punish these people, the ones who hurt you?”
Grey nodded thoughtfully. “Well, Kylie. The main target. She can teleport and throw fireballs at people.”
He looked at her. “I can get a potion to make myself fire resistant. A mutagen to make it permanent… and I’m gonna do just that, because then I can give the same to my creations. I can even a skill to help stop her from teleporting away. I have a whole plan in progress. If you want to help, anything that involves striking her at a distance and stopping her from teleporting away.”
The woman gave a slow nod… and closed her eyes. “There’s… plenty of options. But a Dimensional Mage….” She seemed to focus inwards. “Would be able to mess with people’s movements. And throw things at people. Not the best ranged damage, I think. But a gun…” she glanced at Grey, clearly thinking about the weapons she’d seen him use. “Would help with that.”
She looked thoughtful. “Do you like the serpentfolk look?”
Grey shook his head. “I don’t really care. I didn’t pick this for looks. I picked it because of reflexes. Durability. Venom.”
Was she going to try to appeal to him with her looks? She was admittedly attractive, but he didn’t really care about that anymore.
“...So. If I’m going to help you, I want to max out magical power. Warp space and screw with teleporting as much as possible.”
“Precisely.”
She gave a firm nod…. And then collapsed to the ground. Her body seemed to be glowing faintly… and he nodded. She was changing species. Might take her a few hours.
He picked her up, carrying her up the stairs… and as the other women searched the compound; finding their clothes, or others, and looting the armory… he laid her on the back seat of the truck.
The women seemed to be talking about something… and as he stepped out, he could see… a pile of guns. Of armored vests. Of ammo boxes.
They were looting the compound… and bringing it all together. One of the women was dressed, wearing what were undoubtedly her old clothes, while the others were still wearing oversized t-shirts…. But with armored vests and rifles strapped to their backs.
Grey nodded…. And had the abominations help with the looting… piling up all of the equipment and goods it seemed the system would offer credits for… and glanced up at the sound of sirens in the distance.
The cops were on their way.
Each of the women had herself a rifle… some ammo… and an armored vest. And they’d left the rest for him. Now… they were waiting for the cops.
He looked them over for a moment. “Use caution when the cops show up. I’ve worked with the locals before, they’re good people, but if you point a gun at them, you might have problems. I know you’ve been through some hard times. The men we just killed deserved to die, and we had no choice but to kill them. If you want to take responsibility, fine. If you want to blame it on me, fine. Just don’t mention the things I summoned.”
He raised his hand… and the two abominations approached… only to vanish into the Village as they reached him. The women seemed more comfortable when they were gone… and when the police cars stopped at the gate, the first two officers entered, weapons raised… and took in the scene, as Grey set his hands atop his head.
One of them looked at Grey for a moment… and nodded. “Sergeant Grey. Good to see you, sir. Anyone else here?”
“All the hostiles are gone. Everyone alive except one of the victims is standing here; she’s unconscious in the back of the truck.”
He nodded, studying the compound…. Then looked at the women. Stopping at one face. “Marcy?”
The woman perked up a bit at her name. It was the first time she’d seemed anything but broken. “Y…. Yes..?”
“Marcy, your dad’s been scouring the whole goddamn desert looking for you for a week now.” He glanced at Grey, then at the girl… and the others. “Alright, ladies. If any of you need medical treatment, speak now and we’ll take you to the hospital. Otherwise, if you want a ride somewhere, family, home, whatever, we’ll get you there.”
Marcy glanced over at Grey, then at the officer. “Can I…. stay near him til my dad shows up?”
“Of course.” The officer looked at the women.. Their weapons, armor… and then Grey, stepping up close. He leaned in… and Grey saw him flipping a switch on the body-camera attached to his chest. “What happened?”
“Brought one of their buddies back, they’d been ambushed, killed by some ants. He wasn’t in good shape. They were pissed. They knocked me out, locked me in a basement where they’d been keeping the girls, likely figured I’d killed their people.. me and the girls escaped. They knew some about how powers and storage work, but not enough, apparently. Gunfight. Killed them all, to my awareness. I got most of them, but the girls got some… and some of the girls got killed. All of them were beaten and raped. Some seem to have been here for quite a while. Others just got here.”
He glanced at the truck. “One of them seems to have fixated on me. Bit leery of it. If she still wants to help me when she wakes up, I’ll consider it, but I’ll be doing some dark stuff for the government in the future.”
The officer nodded. “Someone from the Army is looking for you. Said you didn’t pickup the phone, he needs you in Washington tomorrow.”
“Well then. I guess we better wrap things up. Want me to handle the bodies? Not sure how the paperwork needs to look.”
“If there’s no bodies, then as far as the EPPD is concerned, the rapists have vanished into the night, and if seen, are to be arrested.”
“God it. Keep an eye on the girls. I’ll clean things up. Though… they stole my phone. Mind calling it for me after?”
***
It took ten minutes and six calls to finally track down his phone, once the bodies were cleaned out; in a locked room in one of the buildings, containing a safe, a series of lockers… and apparently a fair amount of stolen goods.
There were a handful of the TK rifles and pistols; even some of the identical armor; that Grey had looted from the Minoans earlier, as well as some random one-off handguns and other tools. There was also a small notepad, an old-fashioned tape-recorder… and a set of notes about something called ‘the Vine’, or ‘the Chain’.
He picked up the notepad, frowning. It was stained in blood, and had notes in blue ink.
He blinked. Were the Chosen actually enemies of humanity? It didn’t really matter, aside from possibly making it easier to get allies.
He flipped a few pages, finding more notes about ‘The Vine’.
That was… interesting, but irrelevant for his purposes.
He dumped the whole pile of stolen gear into storage. He’d load it all into the store kiosk later… and picked up his phone, checking; seven missed calls. Most of them from Parsons; two from Sledge.
He nodded… and sent Sledge a text. ~Ran into the Militia again. At their base with the cops. All handled.~
He switched over… and picked Colonel Parsons from the list. “Sir. Sergeant Grey; apologies for the lack of communication; my phone was stolen.”
~Stolen? But you got it back?~
“The cops are currently sorting through their place. I can give you details if need be, but thats unimportant. Am I still going to Washington?”
~Thats the plan right now. Might not be by the time we leave, but thats the orders so far.~
“Any reason for it to change?”
~Dragons are bringing down aircraft. Magic is allowing perfect counterfeiting of currency, so stores aren’t taking cash anymore and people are quitting their jobs all over. A single rare-grade item can be traded for half a million dollars worth of gold at the kiosk… so far, gold would be dropping in price if cash was still worth anything. I don’t know what the country is going to look like tomorrow, but I know that its still going to need to deal with Undead. We’ll figure things out. Leave your truck; I’ll have a detail grab you at 0500.~
“I’ll be ready.”
This was a problem. If there was no America, and no Texas anymore, would Nightfire still respond to a crisis here? Did he need to set the trap right now, use everything he had, gamble on a chance at getting it done?
He assessed what he’d seen and known of Nightfire.
He was stronger, tougher, and faster than when they’d first met. He had the ants; and now the abominations. But even if she hadn’t grown, the her from that day could still kill him with exactly the same fire whip power; even if his armor was fire resistant, she could just pick him up and smack him into the ground.
He would die. That wasn’t really a problem, he didn’t really care about whether he lived through this; but the fact that he would die without killing Nightfire certainly was.
He’d sell everything except gear for himself and Kylie, and re-assess…. But really, the offer to ‘power-level’ him by dragging him around with a team of elites in a helicopter?
Following along simply had too many upsides. He needed to be ready to go, and with a plan, at 0500. They’d been impressed by how he handled the zombies in Mexico; but if they wanted to handle them across the country, he needed to figure out how to do so. This needed some research, or they might pick someone else for the job… and level them up instead.
***
He took a moment to gather together the enormous pile of loot he’d taken from the Militia. A variety of guns; mostly not upgraded, but at least ten that were. Tools.
All-told… over twenty common, unaugmented guns. Would likely only fetch a few credits, maybe 10, if any.
Seventeen uncommon weapons. Should net him over a hundred credits each.
One rare weapon. At least a thousand.
Eleven Uncommon armored vests. Again, over a hundred each.
A handful of Uncommon tools…. And… he frowned. He’d picked up a small black chip from three of them. It was a round object, a circle, looking much like a poker chip, with a symbol he didn’t recognize.
He examined one.
He blinked. So. If he died… and they left him mostly intact… there would probably be two of these. One you could use to make a mutagen for the village shard… and another for the truck storage.
Could he see the contents in any way? He tried to focus on it again, see if any more details were available.
He nodded thoughtfully. He would see if he could just sell the chip. That had to be worth something to someone out there.
He examined the next one.
It started to display a long list of assorted camping supplies, but he ignored it. Practical, but not what he needed. Though… it would be good to have in an emergency.
He started to save it… only to remember… he’d picked up a generator, and a whole pile of camping supplies, a while back. He didn’t need any of this. Only the ammo was even maybe useful, and he had tons of that now.
He checked the last one.
…Well then. He would sell the rest of it as junk. Get an Entry Portal, if it were cheap… loot the place of anything valuable… and then sell it, just like someone once did the one he now owned. If he were lucky, he could get close to ten thousand credits for it, and that shard by itself would cover the ‘Moderate Fire Resistance’ mutagen he wanted.
Time to get home and summon up the kiosk. He’d likely have a late night, if he went ahead and looted the new shard… if so, hopefully he’d be able to sleep on the flight to washington.
