The moment we got hit by the jamming signal was marked by everyone around me flinching collectively and going a bit pale. A second later, my tablet beeped at me with "lost signal", and the drones overhead shuddered before taking off and scattering in every direction.

"Sir?" Projector-carrier number one looked up at me as he held the device.

"We just need to do as we practised," I said. 'Plan' was a big word in this instance, since I'd mostly just made sure to tell everyone that the people at the wall would likely start signal-jamming us sooner or later, we were streaming on the emergency channel after all. Hefting the tower shield onto my back and looking at the crowded 'recruits'. "Go to your designated safe-houses, do your best to reinforce them, and hang tight. Avoid drawing attention to yourselves, don't shoot unless it's absolutely necessary, and take in stragglers if you can."

I was thankful that the mask hid my face, I wasn't entirely sure I would've been able to appear as confident. The district was too large, and even with the weapons we'd "rented" from the local gun shops, none of the groups would be able to handle anything above lone F-class monsters. Our hopes hinged on drawing E-class and above into kill zones. In an ideal world, with the given gang territory we had to protect, we'd need about forty such areas.

The last update placed the Sewer Saints at having barely enough to handle five.

The sound of suppressed gunfire snapped me out of my concerns. It was barely a whisper, yet it had set off alarms as I scanned the area for threats. "Leave, now." I told the crowd, pointing them in the opposite direction of the potential danger.

As soon as they'd cleared the small plaza, I took off, fingers crushing corrugated metal in my rush up the nearest building. In my hunt for the source of the firefight, I caught a blocky shape against the night sky, even with my nightvision, the thing was barely more than a perfectly black silhouette. Only the faint shimmer of active camouflage betrayed its outline whenever it got too close to a neon billboard.

Corporate. No doubt.

I chewed the inside of my cheek. It couldn't be a coincidence that there was a heavily-cloaked AV moving through the district, not when we were being jammed. Were they sending support? The sound of unsuppressed gunfire meant they were meeting with resistance. The fighting could only-

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

The sound from the sirens nearly made me jump out of my skin. The wall of noise had a physical force to it, blasting off from several sources at once, a wail that grated against my bones, so loud it made it hard to pick up on the firefight even as I hurried closer. A single leap carried me across the gap between rooftops. The metal heaved under my weight. Ahead, a billboard flickered, drowning the alley below in fuchsia light.

Down below, three civilians (thugs?) crouched behind an overturned vending machine, pistols out. They were trembling, looking around nervously at one another until one of them was chosen to peek out from their cover. The moment their head crossed the safety of cover, a suppressed shot followed, a fléchette piercing cleanly through the victim.

The man fell without a sound, only a spray of dark droplets across the plastic pane. The other two bolted, trying to look for anywhere safer. I choked on the warning, eyes wide as they both dropped before they could even realize their mistake.

The alley became still, and my blood went cold.

A mix of nausea and anger flared as I locked on to the shooters. Four figures wearing dark black body armor that looked like they'd been plucked straight out of a corporate promotion video. They moved down the alleyway with perfect synchronization, sweeping the area without so much as a peep nor a gesture. My confusion over their lack of communication was answered when I noticed a falcon logo on the side of their helmets. They were standard laser-data devices straight out of a catalogue, allowing for wireless communication even under heavy jamming, so long as there was line of sight.

Bulstra in one hand and shield on my back, I ducked behind the building and down a half-rusted drain-pipe, already reaching a conclusion of what needed to be done… and formulating a plan. Shadow's words echoed in my head: one, picking a target and knowing what stood between them and me. I peeked behind the corner, watching as one of them brought out a suitcase and planted it against a wall.

My gaze fell on the closest figure, the one working on the metal briefcase as they punched into a keypad. There were a dozen meters, a stack of empty crates, and a handful of rusted metal sheets working as dividers. Second step was knowing what would happen once the alarms went off. The other two soldiers were looking for possible threats, covering the alleyway's entrance, semi-automatic subsonic fléchette guns tightly in hand.

Someone appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, spotting the corpos and immediately throwing their hands up in surrender.

The two nearest soldiers took aim.

My legs moved before the trigger squeezed.

I shouldered through the rusty wall. Tin screamed. Tower shield first, I slammed into the closest soldier before he could shoot. The impact hurled him onto his back and I didn't lose an iota of momentum as I kept going towards the second. He'd noticed my approach, spinning around, gun barking as he let loose several rounds, each fléchette bouncing off of my shield as I swung. The man's scream trailed across the air as he slammed against the wall.

Soldier three had hesitated, giving me just enough time to swing the shield, using the edge like an axe and crashing it against his knees. Ceramic and bone cracked, the man screamed as he collapsed, trying to take aim even as he fell. I threw myself out of the way, bringing up the shield before he skewered me.

The fight concluded the moment the gun clicked empty. Keeping the shield up, I stepped on his arm and, ignoring the pained gasp, yanked the gun out of his grasp. The device immediately beeped, a tiny LED switching to red.

"Bio-lock," I muttered, throwing the thing as far as I could while turning to the other two. One wasn't moving and the other was groaning but unresponsive. I hoped neither would die, but that wasn't my main concern right now. "What are you-"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Something 'clinked' against the ground.

A white-hot flash seared itself into my retinas a split second before a thunderous clap of sound exploded inside my ears. The world suddenly turned upside down and then spun, up and down scrambled in every direction as I launched myself off, more out of instinct than tactic.

I slammed against something solid shoulder first and head second, pain erupted out of my lower back. With teary eyes that could see nothing but burned out afterimages, I barely made out a fence and lunged over it with far too much force. I hit the ground and stumbled into the nearest side-alley, keeping the shield up to block from anything following me. Heart caught in my throat, every sound was muffled through the ringing tinnitus, eyes watery and stinging as if I'd just dipped them in hot sauce, my sense of balance shot and turning every step into a drunken stumble.

Flashbang.

I bit my tongue to stop myself from making any loud noises, thankful I'd at least taken a moment to consider an escape option before jumping in. I definitely owed Shadow for that little pearl of foresight. Not trusting I wasn't being followed, I kept stumbling my way around, eyeing behind and at the sky every other second. That AV potentially carried heavy armor penetration, the sort that could punch through my shield, and I did not want to take that risk.

AP:

21 / 200

I chewed on the inside of my cheek as the system rattled at me in a mix of annoyance and concern. Despite being barely able to see or hear anything, the prompt screen was on clear vivid display in perfect detail. I noticed how it shifted position as I moved, following the line of the horizon far more reliably than my eyes or sense of balance could currently track. The stamina stat was paying dividends, making it possible to push through the constant stumbling without losing my breath.

"Thanks," I whispered under my breath.

The pain on my lower abdomen went ignored until I could actually see shapes and colors rather than just blurred lines. When I finally stopped to stop and assess the damage. The fléchette rounds had punched two clean holes through my flank, the injuries stung with every step, a trickle of blood running down my shirt and pants. Based on the brief glimpse of the weapon they'd been wielding, these were Sigruta fléchette rounds, self-steering smart munitions. Whoever had shot me had been aiming for my spine.

I'd been lucky.

There was a mild sense of morbid awe as I could see the wound clotting in real time, blood clotting in seconds the moment I stopped moving. This was the power of Healing 5? The system just chirped smugly as I set aside the fascination, waiting for a hot minute before I clambered my way back up to the nearest rooftop to get a view of the area.

Much to my surprise, I immediately spotted the AV roughly at the same place I'd seen it last time, floating near to a "BoobsRUs" neon sign that blinked irregularly. The siren kept blaring in the background, and my ears were still ringing, it was impossible to tell if there was more gunfire happening.

I ground my teeth. They'd killed three civilians already.

AP:

21 / 200

The system raised the prompt in question. It was a definite possibility, transforming to something more combat-ready would make it far easier to deal with these… intruders.

I startled a little at the thought.

Intruders.

It felt… right. This was our territory. I wasn't about to let them step over us just because they had the gear to swing around.

Charisma:

22% -> 45%

Something to unpack later.

For now, I dismissed the possibility of transforming, as much as it could help deal with them, there were monsters I'd need to worry about in a few hours. So I reloaded my revolver and made my way back to the scene of the crime, circling around to approach it from a different angle. My mind kept going back to the weird briefcase they'd been using before I'd jumped them, it didn't match anything I could think of that would make sense to set up here.

Rain clattered on sheet-metal as I hugged a rooftop gutter and watched the AV move forward, hovering as its belly opened for a drop. Two fresh troopers floated their way down, held aloft by magnetic harnesses, and I had to reassess the situation further. According to every book I'd read on rules of engagement, magnetic harnesses were a game-changer since they could effectively grant flight to anyone attached to the system so long as the AV remained overhead.

I briefly thought back to the "colosseum" fight with Bear and tucked it to the back of my head.

One of the new arrivals peeled off, scaling a nearby water-tower and positioning themselves overhead. I couldn't help but notice it was perfectly within line-of-sight of the AV as well as the other corpos down on the street. Meaning they'd deployed a signal relay to make sure they could get support.

That would make things… complicated.

Street-side, the other trooper snapped open the new case. Quick-set foam hissed around three tripod feet, blooming like mushroom caps. They moved quickly, checking whether the foam had settled in only once before hurrying off down the street, the AV slowly trailing behind them from overhead.

I slid through a hatch and down a stairwell that smelled of mildew and old cooking oil. The alley from the earlier fight lay quiet below, a punctured vending machine still leaking soda into puddles that glowed pink under the neon ads.

The first briefcase sat where the blast had flung it, lying near one of the victims, the metal casing had cracked, latch half sprung. One of my bulstra shots had landed on it, apparently.

Giving a small whispered apology to the slain trio, I knelt behind my shield and eased the lid. Thin translucent beads pooled inside like caviar, each puckered by air exposure. They dissolved into vapor that hit my nostrils sweet and metallic, triggering the same part of my brain that remembered the smell of freshly baked protein-bread after a week of ration bars.

I pulled back, trying to recognize the scent and failing. My brain told me there was "a smell" and that it was "delicious", but refused to acknowledge any further details about it, as if encountering something that it couldn't quite grasp.

Stomach [F]: Digest any biological matter

"This is biological?" I asked the system skeptically, licking my lips. I tried to rationalize the gurgling of my stomach as a mere consequence of the past few hours of frenetic riot-wrangling. It would be bad to just leave this here, wouldn't it? What if it was some sort of biological weapon? It surely couldn't be good if the corporation wanted to be this sneaky about it.

It would be better to get rid of it all before it could potentially hurt anyone.

The decision was entirely logical, and none of it had been influenced by the gnawing intensified hunger currently biting at my insides. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva, feeling as ravenous as if I'd just turned back from a transformation.

With one last check of my surroundings, I plunged my hand into the goopy mess and tentatively licked my finger. It had a strong umami taste to it, mixed with some odd sweetness that made my mouth water and my stomach rumble more loudly. "Fuck it, if this messes up whatever it is they're planning, I'm not gonna complain."

I shovelled the stuff by the fistful, downing the whole thing practically in seconds.

Charisma:

45% -> 47%

Why would the system-

The case gave a soft double-beep, polite as a microwave.

Knowing that could not be something good, I picked up my shield, making it to the edge of the alleyway just in time to catch the roar of thrusters. The AV's blackened body swept overhead, I froze, scent still clinging to my lungs.

I caught the distinct whirr of miniguns and bolted before they could get a lock-on.

This was going to be tricky.

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