Chapter Forty-Eight - It's Never Easy

Chapter Forty-Eight - It's Never Easy

Chapter Forty-Eight - It's Never Easy

And so I thought to myself... these games, their gacha mechanics and rewards, they addict our clients, the players.

What if I ran a business the same way? Competitive WvW, where the W means Worker.

It was genius!

--Extract from the biography of Nimbletainments owner, 2039

***

Who am I looking for? I asked Myalis.

The group that Grasshopper was escorting was thirty-six members strong. Im afraid that I can confirm that some of them have died. There are some cameras still active throughout the building.

Fuck, I said. Knowing Grasshopper, with all of her... Grasshopper-iness, she wouldnt take that all that well. Lets find at least some of them alive.

The first floor of the building was all offices and cubicles and that sort of horrific shit. I counted no less than three water coolers as I ran deeper into the building.

The centre was a wide-open space sporting balconies on the floors above with glass sides, a large staircase, and in the very centre, a glass-walled elevator. It probably made the poor fucks tied to one of the cubicles feel great when they could crane their neck back and see the people a few levels above them.

Right now, the steps leading up had a lot of blood on them.

I swore as I ran through the lobby and skipped over some womans corpse. Was she one of Grasshoppers? I asked.

She was. The group moved up.

Made sense. They wanted distance. Didnt look like it worked out too well though. I counted four more bodies on the staircase. Three dead aliens too, Model threes with their faces caved in or with mangled bones.

So the group were fighting back. Probably for the best. Model threes werent too hard to kill, overall. Id done it with one arm and a pipe. I crouched, then jumped up. Myalis caught on to my intentions and fired off the jets on my legs, sending me rocketing up the space around the stairs.

I twisted a bit and landed unsteadily on the third floor. Another body, this one next to three dead model threes. A fourth was chewing the corpses face.

The alien paused mid-chew and turned its too-many-eyed face my way.

I stomped over to it and swung a boot into the side of its face. I dont know if it was the anger, the armour, or some combination of the two, but the kick smashed it hard enough that it crumpled to the side, very much dead.

I moved on.

Screaming up ahead had me refocusing on what was at hand. I started running down the corridors until I rounded a corner and found Grasshoppers people. They were using a couple of desks as a barricade. One was wielding an office chair like a battering ram.

They were stuck in a corner office, the entrance hounded by half a dozen model threes and a model four. It felt strangely familiar.

I slowed my sprint to a more careful walk, then raised up my Bullcat. I made sure there wasnt anyone behind where Id be shooting, then I flicked the gun to full auto.

It was like pressing a chainsaw into a steel drum filled with loose pans. A screeching scream filled the corridor as pellets rained across the passage.

The aliens were shredded in a blink, the wall behind them filled with a thousand pinpricks. The screaming from the office intensified for one brief moment, then calm settled.

I walked over, then eyed the other length of corridor. I could see the skybridge from out of a window, but not the entrance onto this floor, which was past a few walls. There were some aliens running over in through passageway. I mowed them down with a quick burst, then my gun clicked empty.

Reload, I said before turning to the barricade. Any injured? I asked.

There was a sudden cacophony of thanks and demands. Save me! Thank you! Oh god, oh god.

I pumped the Bullcat. The heavy Ker-chunk silenced everyone. I asked if there were any injuries, I repeated myself. Well tend to those, then move back downstairs. Grasshoppers down there. Shell be wanting to see you.

The barricade came down in quick order. I got two more cat mechs, just to keep an eye on the group, then I handed out healing packs like they were candy. They were basically smaller, cheaper versions of the nanomachine healing suite that Id used on Grasshopper. Small enough that someone could just stick it against their own side and hold it there while it did its thing. Probably nowhere near as effective, but the worst injury I saw was a bad cut on one guy's leg.

Myalis, I need a way back down that wont pass through the same corridors, I said. There were some kids in the group. Theyd probably seen worse on TV, but... yeah.

Myalis outlined a map for me, and with a nod, I started off in that direction.

They followed, though some of them protested. I think the idea of not having a samurai around to keep them safe did wonders to quell the protests of those who were in that kind of mood.

Our path back down was done mostly through more discreet stairwells on the edges of the building. No one complained about having to go down a couple of floors. The cat mecha Id bought watched the groups back while I took the front.

On arriving at the first floor, I was greeted by one of the mechs Id left with Grasshopper. The cat nodded, then turned and strutted off in the way only a cat could. We crossed some dead aliens a bit later, which might have explained all of that.

All that was left was getting back to Grasshopper, then figuring a way to get her and the civilians out of the area safely.

Easy.

***