The Widow's Web 004 (Patreon)

I made my way to the server room first, spurred on by Ada’s information. As useful as better weapons or protective gear was -as much as I was enjoying running around naked, this wasn’t really the situation or the environment for it, not even close-, and as glad as I would be to have them, the fact that there were people actively finishing creating portable backups of the facility servers was too tempting a prize. Even if the information contained there only related to the facility she was currently in -there was a better than even chance it wouldn’t- it would still be more than enough to make her a pretty penny and destroy Umbrella completely.

Not to mention, it would make a potent shield against the corporation itself. Dead-man’s switches were a potent thing, when used properly, making a very nice ‘Sword of Damocles’ style deterrent to dangle over people.

So, I swooped in, took those backups, and went from there. It wasn't hard, given that the only people present in the server room were a handful of scientists that were defenseless, and entirely willing to let me have whatever I wanted once I pointed guns at them. Honestly, I was almost disappointed by how easy it was -as absurd as it all was, being the secret agent sneaking through an enemy base and snagging important intel in spite of all attempts to stop me was a heady fantasy- but I soothed myself with the knowledge that my life was only going to get more dangerous and complicated from here.

Provided I managed to get out alive, which was not necessarily going to be easy. At least in the broader city above, there was plenty of space to get lost in. Down here, not so much, and that could verry well be to my detriment. Still, onward and upward, as they say. Glory and fortune to the bold and brave, all that sort of thing.

And with that in mind, I started moving quickly, pistols in hand and a -literal- mental map of where I was going firmly in mind. A side benefit of some of my modifications, it seemed, because a single long, careful look at the facility map had been more than sufficient for me to memorize it. And I seemed to always know where I was as well, on that mental map. Even without the still-intact signage and occasional wall-mounted maps, I wouldn’t have gotten lost, and for that -if nothing else- I was grateful to the person behind my enhancements.

I was quiet, too. Catlike, to use the common comparison I’d read in more books than I could count, darting through hallways at a speed that should have had my bare feet making loud slapping sounds as I moved and instead making barely a whisper. A whisper that no one would ever be able to hear over damn near any other sound, including their own breathing. Throw in the panic, well, I could probably go right past someone and have them miss me completely.

And the building was full of panic. The T-Virus had been in the water supply for over a day, now. By tomorrow, the hordes would start forming as containment measures began to collapse under the strain of so many infected turning so quickly. Heck, from what Ada said, certain parts of the city might already be getting dangerous, though whether she was being entirely honest with me or trying to guilt/scare me into moving faster, I didn’t know. And, frankly, it didn’t matter at the moment.

What did matter was reaching Doctor Bard and getting my hands on his research and the materials required to create the vaccine. If I was lucky, I might even be able to keep the man himself alive by snagging him before that psychotic fuck Nikolai arrived to murder him. Better still, I might arrive at the right moment to kill Nikolai, and in so doing probably save more than a few lives.

It would certainly make Jill’s life easier, though I planned to snag that particular lady in blue as soon as possible and help her eliminate the NEMESIS. Which, the thought occurred, might be a hell of a lot harder than canon -which was bad enough as it was- in a Cyberpunk world like the one I had now found myself in.

Something to try and plan for as best I could. If nothing else, helping her break contact properly and leaving it chasing its proverbial tail in the city until the nuke arrived might prove sufficient. One could only hope that would be enough, anyway. The damn thing had proven absurdly resilient in the game, even before it’s mutations had run rampant and turned it into the flesh colossus that had required multiple direct hits from the FINGeR to kill.

Then again, without those constant mutations that had helped it survive Jill’s efforts, it could very well be vulnerable to a ‘one shot’, provided it was hit with enough firepower. I wasn’t entirely she what would qualify as ‘enough firepower’, but certainly more than the standard weapons she’d had access to in-game. Might not even be worth trying, though, if we could let the nuke handle things.

Mmh.

Anyway, I was finding it remarkably easy to make my way towards my objective, and there were signs everywhere that the facility was being evacuated as rapidly as possible. Or perhaps I should say abandoned? It was probably a more accurate way to describe it, certainly, judging by the spilled coffees and assorted office detritus that seemed to be increasingly scattered around as I reached the less-remote areas of the facility.

Naturally, as soon as I had that thought, I ran into a pair of security guards heading in the direction I had just come from. Quite literally, in point of fact, as they stepped through a door in the heartbeat before I passed it, resulting in me colliding with the nearest of them. To his credit, he reacted instantly, trying to grapple with me even as his companion swore and moved away, trying to raise his Saratoga and bring it on target.

The first man’s arms locked around my ribs, trying to bear me down, and I let him think it might work for the half-second it took to drive the heel of my palm up under his chin, snapping his head back with a harsh grunt of surprise and pain. His grip loosened as he reeled back, and a moment later he tried to respond with a hasty, wild right hook that I saw coming from a mile away and dodged all-too-easily, slipping underneath it without an ounce of strain.

Everything was slow. Not literally, perhaps, but compared to how fast my own body was moving, he might as well have been wading through the same molasses I felt as if I’d been fighting in the tank. A jab to the solar plexus folded him at the middle. An elbow to the temple, short and sharp, sent his helmet skidding sideways. He threw another punch, desperate and ugly, and I caught his wrist, turned it, and felt the joint give. He grunted again, through his teeth, only to start choking when I drove the edge of my hand into his throat. Cartilage crunched beneath the blow, collapsing inward, and he stumbled back to sprawl across the floor as he desperately tried to breathe through a throat that was no long capable of it.

The second guard had finally positioned himself and gotten his SMG up, but his partner’s collapsing body was in the way, and the muzzle wavered as he tried to find a clean angle. That brief moment of hesitation was all the opening that I actually needed to attack him in turn. I went left, low and fast, out of the arc of his sights, and closed the distance before he could correct. One found the weapon’s handguard and pushed, while the other clamped onto the stock, wrenching the entire weapon until it was pointed squarely at the first man’s ruined, wheezing face.

The second guard’s reflexes did the rest of the work for me. His finger was already curled around the trigger, tight with panic, and all I had to do was reach in and press my own over his, forcing it down. The gun hammered against our mutual grips in a stuttering burst -three rounds, maybe four or five- and the man on the floor stopped trying to breathe. Stopped doing anything at all, really, as brass rang against the tile and the sharp stink of gunpowder stun my nose.

“No, no, wait...” the second man managed, in a voice cracking with something that wasn’t quite a plea -or a curse- and with eyes so wide that I could see white all the way around his irises. He was terrified, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him finish making whatever bargain he’d been about to offer.

My knee came up, hard and vicious, driving between his legs with enough force to lift him half off the floor. The breath went out of him in a thin, strangled whistle, the SMG slipping from nerveless fingers as he folded in on himself and dropped to his knees. His forehead nearly touched the tile. I caught the weapon before it could clatter, shifted my grip, and put a short burst through the top of his skull.

He pitched forward and stayed there.

Breathing just as evenly as I had been before the fight started, I stripped the both of them of any useful equipment that they had -including extra magazines for the Saratoga, which was nice. Pistols were all well and good, but a compact SMG certainly had it’s place in things.- before moving on.

Fifteen minutes later, and I was glad for the better equipment, because the approach to Bard’s office and lab were littered with the fresh corpses of a half-dozen security guards. Each and every one of them killed by high-powered rounds that had punched straight through their armor, and I huffed out a sigh as I both blessed and cursed the universe. Nikolai was clearly here -I couldn’t imagine anyone else would have a reason to do this, or such an easy time of it- and that quite possibly meant Bard was already dead. That being said, hopefully I could make Nikolai dead as well.

He’d probably be enhanced, to say the least. He was a member of UBCS, after all, not to mention the fact that he was an Umbrella Monitor, and I didn’t doubt he would be quite dangerous. However, I was ‘quite dangerous’ as well, and it wasn’t as though I had any intentions of playing fair. Based on how he’d acted in game, especially towards Jill, I didn’t doubt he would be grandstanding a bit before murdering Bard, which would provide me with an opportunity. Checking my Saratoga -and quickly reloading it, because I’d be damned if I started this with a half-empty magazine- I advanced.

The first thing I saw, past those bodies, was the fact that the door to Bard’s location was hanging open, one door propped by the slumped-over corpse of yet another security man. The first thing I heard was two voices, one thickly Russian and cruelly amused, the other Midwest American and thready.

“Still you refuse! I find it fascinating, Doctor. You are sitting in a pool of your own blood, one that is spreading rapidly, and you still believe that you are somehow in a position to deny me what I have come for. Do you think your defiance is going to inspire me, humble me, make me leave? If so, you will be sorely disappointed.”

“You think I don’t know that? It’s exactly the reason I’m not giving you what you want. You’re going to kill me either way, so why the fuck would I do anything to help you before you do?”

“Spite, then? Ha. I can respect it, even admire it, but it won’t do you any good, I’m afraid. I’m not expected to rendezvous with the rest of my unit to infiltrate the city until sometime in the morning, and with things in as much chaos as they are, I very much doubt anyone will interrupt us. So I have plenty of time to encourage you to be as helpful to me as possible.”

Now, if I were living in some sort of action movie -or if I was particularly stupid- this would be the moment where I dramatically entered the room and said something pithy about him not actually having any time after all. But this wasn’t an action movie, and I wasn’t that stupid, which is why I stepped through the door with my SMG raised and braced to shoot. Which I did, the minute I had him in my sights, a half-dozen rounds rattled off at barely a dozen feet.

Most people would have aimed for his center of mass. Hell, if it wasn’t for the fact that this was Cyberpunk, I certainly would have, but it was Cyberpunk, and that meant shooting him in the chest could damn well do nothing but aggravate him. I needed an advantage, a way to make him more vulnerable, and most people were considerably more vulnerable when they were screaming on the ground with several bullet holes in their legs.

The sound he made when the bullets bit into his legs weren’t quite the agonized scream that I had been hoping for, but it was certainly a sound of pain, and they buckled all the same. His rifle clattered across the floor in Bard’s direction, and before I could do much of anything at all the wounded and bleeding Umbrella man lunged for it. His hands were slick with blood and it was obvious that he’d probably never held a gun more than a handful of times in his life -if at all- but neither of those things seemed to do much to slow him down as he leveled the weapon at Nikolai’s face and held down the trigger.

Whatever enhancements he had, subdermal armor at the very least, it wasn’t anywhere near enough to stop high-powered carbine rounds at point-blank range. His head evaporated into a red mist almost instantly, leaving his corpse to slump to the ground while I stared in shock.

“…alright, I didn’t expect that.” I admitted aloud after a very long moment, eyeing him and the rifle he still held with appraisal and suspicion alike. “Gonna try and shoot me too? Or turn me in?”

“I don’t give a damn about Isaac’s projects, yourself included.” he grunted in response, dropping the weapon somewhat limply to his side and struggling to his feet, one hand pressed to the gunshot wound to his stomach and his eyes locked on his workstation. “The only thing I’m interested in is trying to mitigate this disaster. The t-virus, it’s going to destroy the city. If it isn’t stopped, it could spread even farther.”

“You’re not wrong about that, but no matter how much vaccine you make here, it won’t be enough to stop things on its own. You can’t mass produce it, not under these circumstances.” I pointed out, lowering my weapon to something resembling ease, confident he didn’t plan to kill me. If he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have dropped the rifle.

“You’re right, I can’t. Especially not before I finish dying of this wound. Which is why I’m going to give you everything you need to put a stop to things yourself.”

“That’s an awful lot of faith to put into someone you’ve never met. Why trust me with that?”

“I don’t need to trust you, I need to trust your enlightened self-interest. You could have bypassed me entirely and escaped, you didn’t. Could have shot me, you didn’t. You want to live, so having access to the vaccine is something you’ll be interested in. You’ll need money and influence to stay safe and free, which the information I’ll give you can provide if you bargain with the right people.” he confirmed, huffing out a pained but genuine laugh. “Simply put, I’m relying on the fact that you’ll understand that selling or trading the vaccine to the government is the thing most likely to keep you breathing and uncollared.”

The man had a point, and I was both disgusted and impressed by how right he was with it. Whether I would do something purely because I was a good person -which I was- or because I wanted money and protection from the people who would inevitably be after me -which I did-, I was going to do it all the same.

“Fine. You’re right about that. I fully intend to make as much vaccine as I can carry, take the research and samples to make more, loot this site’s backup servers, and walk out of this city a rich hero.” I confirmed, deciding to be as bluntly honesty as possible. It wasn’t like he was likely to survive, strange as it sounded. He certainly didn’t seem to have any bioware or cyberware that was going to help him survive that gutshot. That, or -and this was just now occurring to me- Nikolai had been given over-rides to disable it. That would make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it?

All the more reason to be very careful about what I installed and who installed it once I got out of this hellhole.

“Go right ahead. I don’t have any loyalty to Umbrella, not anymore, so what do I care if you destroy them once I’m dead?” he retorted, beckoning me forward as he slumped into his desk chair. “Now listen carefully…”

#######################################################

I actually did some rolls for events in this chapter. Those rolls went very, very well. No guards present in the server room -which is why I didn't bother actually writing that scene- and no injuries thus far! Likewise, there was a small chance that Nat would catch Nikolai before or during Bard's murder, which was a success! That's going to give a leg up on everything else, and make the next chapter go a lot smoother for our girl!

Therefore, this next vote is for what she should do after she rendezvous with Ada!