346: Headhunter (Patreon)

Max picked his steps gingerly. This jungle was a nightmarish place, no doubt about that. Crawling with parasites and weird bugs, not to mention all the monsters, some of them like literal dinosaurs. A good firebombing would vastly improve things.

Still, that was one reason to be glad for the Shenrans. The pair had some kind of anti-parasite charm on them, and he and Dakota were glad for their presence from that alone.

Hopefully they’d be able to grab it from their corpses, once they’d taken care of the target and dealt with the pair. Shame it had to go that way, but there was no room for sentiment in a business like this.

Glancing back, he saw the three others in a line behind him. Dakota was scowling at her mud-soaked trousers. Wu and Lin were behind her, Lin peering at the sky through gaps in the canopy above. A new habit, one he’d observed ever since they saw that Hornet with the mark. Wu was red-faced and irritable.

Max decided now was a good time to add to that misery. He opened his mouth only to pause, frowning.

There was something… a stir in the air, he—

Wu’s head disappeared. One moment there, the next an electric crackling sound, a flash of steel, and it was gone. The man’s headless body stumbled a step and toppled, blood geysering from the stump of his neck.

Only long experience kept Max from freezing. ‘Enemy!’ he screamed, heaving his auto-shotgun up. Dakota was drawing her pistol, no time to take up the cumbersome anti-mat on her back. Lin whirled and gasped at the sight of her fallen companion. Ripples poured from her as she activated Symbiotes.

But before she could make any difference her head vanished too. Max saw it this time. Carved off and seized by something invisible that darted into the bushes.

He aimed after it, sprayed buckshot, was joined by Dakota. Lin’s corpse fell. His weapon clicked empty in seconds, the rounds having shredded the leaves of innumerable bushes.

Stepping backwards he exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Dakota. They both felt it, the certainty that the enemy was still out there, would at any moment come down for another slashing attack.

Dakota threw herself to the ground just in time as something sliced by where her neck had been.

‘Shoot it, shoot it!’ she screamed.

Max turned and ran. He had a brief image of her horrified face before he thrashed his way through a bush, burst out the other side, and settled into a sprint.

He could hear her yelling, cursing him and screaming for help both. But the gnaw of guilt was nowhere near as bad as the terror he felt when her voice abruptly cut off.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he gasped. He felt it right behind, death breathing down his shoulder. With an inarticulate yell he threw himself sideways.

He crashed through another bush and then he was dropping off an edge, stomach flipping, flailing at nothing. The ground came up to meet him after only a couple metres and he managed to slam into it without breaking anything but then he was tumbling, rolling and spinning down a sharp hillside.

He ended up wrapped around a tree, hundreds of metres down. Groaning, he tottered to his feet. His auto-shotgun was gone and he stared blearily around. Saw the shine of gunmetal and started towards it, found it in a tangle of wildflowers.

Max felt better with it in his hands. He looked up the slope and saw he’d fallen a long way. ‘Alright,’ he hissed, and deactivated his Shield, Shelled just like the Cultivators had shown him and Dakota. ‘Just stay quiet. Creep away. Done with this shit. Done with it!’

‘Too late for that.’

He spun, a howl tearing from his throat and buckshot roaring from his auto-shotgun. Only to find a dark figure, already up terribly close, faceless helmet gazing at him. The shotgun’s barrel was caught, the gun was torn from his hands. His Combat Chip jerked into life in time to raise his arms, try to block the fist coming for his face.

The fist smashed into his jaw and Max reeled back, only for another fist to catch him from the other side. Before he knew it he was on the ground, head spinning.

‘Don’t,’ he mumbled, raising a beseeching hand.

‘I won’t. Take your pack off.’

Max blinked as the world swam back into focus. ‘What?’

‘Show me what’s in your pack.’

Max had expected to be dead by now. Another ‘What?’ was all he could manage.

A ghostly claw burst into view, talons extended.

‘Take your backpack off, open it, and remove what is inside.’

Menaced by the claw, all questions were chased from his mind. Max fumbled at the straps. He got it off, tore at the clasps, pulled free its contents. A long box, containing a polearm.

‘Get up. You’re coming with me. Leave the pack but bring the box. You seem smart enough, but just in case you aren’t… activate any Symbiotes or pull a weapon and you’re dead.’

Max rose, as slow as he could manage. ‘You need me alive,’ he breathed. ‘If I die, this thing will disappear. Teleported back to the Guild.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ With the realisation he wasn’t going to die, a little of his confidence was creeping back. ‘Jail me?’

‘Something like that.’

Max smiled. ‘Fine with me. So long as I’m alive, no one else can come after you.’

The figure in the camouflaged skinsuit nodded. ‘That’s right. Get moving. We’ve a lot of ground to cover.’

###

The Scoundrel was predictably reticent. That was fine with Nicolai, to whom he was no more than a method of preventing the polearm from disappearing. He was pretty sure that if he so much as touched it, it would vanish.

But the guy kept glancing at him, working up his nerve for something. Nicolai wasn’t surprised when after walking for some time, the Scoundrel spoke up. ‘Since we’re gonna be together for some time, I figure I ought to introduce myself. Name’s Max.’

Perhaps he was hoping that humanising himself might make Nicolai slightly less willing to kill him. Or perhaps he was just the type to speak when nervous.

‘I’m guessing you already know my name.’

‘Sure do.’ Max let out a bitter chuckle. ‘We never should have come after you.’

‘Why did you?’

‘There’s a lot of money on your head. Over a ‘mil, last time I saw. That and… we were overconfident. Thought the Blood Hunters made us immune to retribution. Didn’t take the warnings of the Guild seriously.’

‘Warnings?’

‘The Guild had said some stuff about you winning two Tournaments, out in whatever Sector you’re in. Staff said you were a dangerous target.’

‘You’re not in the same Sector as me?’

‘Nope, don’t think so.’

Nicolai was faintly surprised by that. He’d unconsciously assumed these guys were from the same part of the City. That was… actually slightly annoying. He’d been intending to perform a little brain surgery on Max in order to ensure he couldn’t pass on any information of what he’d seen, then turn him over to the Queen once he was done with him, so Serrin could gain the Mark.

Max was peering back at him, oblivious of the fate he’d just been spared. ‘You seem pretty experienced with this. Hunting people.’

‘I did it for a long time. When I was younger, I was a little like you.’ Only a little. Even back then he would’ve come out on top against Max and his crew. He kept his eyes moving as he walked and talked, and remembered other conversations with other killers. People often got chatty when they sensed the end.

‘Nice that we can talk like this. Be civil. A lot of the bastards I’ve known in this business… no sense of honour. More like animals than men.’

‘Some are like that.’ In fact Nicolai’s animalistic, murderous need was at that moment pounding in his blood. He felt the hungry the gaze of the Dark Spirit. But he had control, and he’d been ready for its peak and was now monitoring the steady fall.

It used to be that killing could vent it easily, and then he’d be calm. Now, it seemed that though venting it was still necessary, fighting made it burn briefly stronger. Each time, he had to ride out the burst of strength it received as he fought and killed, and only after it dissipated could he relax and consider the vicious impulses truly vented. After he’d almost attacked Serrin he was keeping very careful tabs on it all, with Threat Analysis and Psychology aiding him. The pair told him that he was at 46% Need-to-Kill and steadily falling.

He’d experienced a strong temptation to test out the Dark Spirit against one of the Cultivators. So strong in fact that Psychology was pretty sure some of the Dark Spirits own desires had been bleeding through into him. But he’d been prepared for that, too. He’d known since the first time the Scoundrel’s sent their Blood Hunters for him that he needed to keep one of them alive, and with the Dark Spirit let loose the pressure would’ve been even greater. It should be released only when he was entirely willing to kill everyone around him, or the next time he wanted to experiment and bound himself.

‘What’s my cell like?’ asked the Scoundrel.

‘Basic.’ It wasn’t finished yet, but he’d rush it once they were back. He didn’t intend to waste any more than necessary on this man. Max seemed to have forgotten (or was perhaps refusing to think on) that the polearm would disappear at the end of the week regardless. He hoped to find a way to destroy it before that happened. Either way, since the man had the wrong City access, at that point there would be no more need for Max.

The real problem was what Serrin would think about all this. The youth wasn’t just overly principled, but naive. Even the Mask hadn’t tried to convince him to spare this lot, was aware that in a life such as his there was no room for letting off enemies who’d seen too much and were far from innocent.

‘Well, I’ve experienced worse, I’m sure,’ Max added. Fear pushed another chuckle out of him.

‘Did you tell anyone else what you saw in my base?’

The man tensed. Just slightly—almost imperceptibly, in fact—but to Nicolai’s eyes, merged slightly with Psychology and the Mask, plus the faint yet all-encompassing view of the Dark Spirit, it was as obvious as if the Scoundrel had jumped a metre in the air and shouted it.

Max knew this was an important question.

There was a picket of drones around them and one of them was looking back, zoomed on the man’s face. He saw the tiny shifts of facial musculature, the dilating pupils. Signs of deep and frantic thought. Added to this were the movements of his Soul, open and unguarded compared to the average Cultivator.

Max was trying to work out what was better: to say no one knew, or to say someone knew. But from his reaction Nicolai had already read the truth.

They’d told no one else.

‘Yeah… there was someone. A friend of mine. But don’t worry, he’s keeping it to himself. So long as he knows I’m alive, he won’t—‘

The box Max held shimmered and vanished.

Both of them stared at the empty space it’d occupied. Nicolai thoughtfully, Max with utter horror, face rapidly paling.

The Scoundrel’s Mark flickered and his head turned in response to a notification, gazing at a message only he could see.

‘What’s it say?’

‘It says… the Guild detected I was captured and my mission has… minimal odds of success. They have, uh, decided to recover the tracker.’ He turned to Nicolai, wearing a sick grin. ‘But you can’t kill me. My frien—‘

Nicolai pulled his pistol and shot him twice in the face.

###

After that he destroyed Max’s Soul and seized his Symbiote. He’d managed the same from the guy’s partner, the woman with the anti-materiel rifle. Both the Cultivators, on the other hand, destroyed their Symbiotes shortly after death. It always surprised him how consistent they were with that.

If he were to die, he wasn’t sure he’d care to deny his Symbiotes to his killer. He’d be dead. Why bother? He was increasingly sure that they were in some manner trained to do it, so that when the time came they didn’t hesitate. He supposed that if all these Cultivators had been brought up in a Clan or Sect, it would make sense for this sort of thing to be drummed into them.

After all, an organisation of Cultivators would want to ensure that when they lost soldiers to another organisation, that those soldiers denied whatever they could to the enemy.

As to the two Cyborgs, their Souls just screamed and begged. They hadn’t seemed to even consider the possibility of destroying their Symbiotes. This seemed a far more natural reaction, and he was glad for it.

Max only had a basic Shield Symbiote. The woman, however, had both a Shield and a Symbiote that allowed the user to create a spiritual eye, one which could be left somewhere to record. Upon returning into Soul Sense range, the user could receive its recordings. A kind of Cultivation drone, it had the benefit of being able to perceive basic spiritual effects, as a Cultivator would, with the drawback of only working passively when outside of Soul Sense range.

He’d also looted a pair of red orbs from each of them, eight in total. With the ones he’d gained from the Blood Hunters, he now had sixteen, far more than he needed to make the amulet. With that, he’d able to avoid being tracked by them.