Chương 95: 2.36 All-In

When the heavy door slid shut, Lemon squeezed Kit's hand and whispered, "Just sit over here, sweet boy." She steered him over to a little couch with a crystal-glass display flickering on the coffee table—some kind of action vid with laser swords.

"Just watch what you want."

"I can change it?" he asked, fingers already stretching toward the touch controls.

"Yeah, but nothing bad!"

"Promise," he replied, and Lemon could see she'd already been dismissed. With her little brother settled, she hurried over to Orin. The big man's head was wrapped in gauze, and he cradled it in his palms, clearly struggling to remain conscious.

"Orin!" she hissed, pulling one of the empty stools close so she could sit while looking into his face.

"Oh, hey, doll. Damn, I'm glad to hear your voice." His words were slurred, and he didn't open his eyes, though his lips, swollen and cut, curled into a slight smile.

"Did they do this?" He started to inhale but cut it short when he winced, gently probing his ribs.

"Who's they?"

"The people who own this place. The people who just put me in here with you!" She glanced around the room. It had the feel of a bunker—metal walls, a pair of cots, and sturdy furniture. In the far corner, past the couch where Kit sat, she saw a small kitchenette, and she licked her lips—paper-dry from stress.

"Uh, I didn't see 'em, doll—them who dumped you in here. As for me—" He winced again, sucking his teeth as he switched his probing from his ribs to his jaw.

"I think the ones who put me in here saved my ass. Some guys in an IG rover ran my cab off the road and were pulling me out of the wreck when…" He shook his head, opening one swollen eye to look at her.

"When some operators took 'em out. Think they tranq'd me, cause it all gets fuzzy after that."

"They didn't say who they were?" Orin shook his head, his bleary eye finally finding hers and locking on.

"What about you? How'd you get here?"

"A, um…" Lemon looked at the door. She wondered how much talking Gladia Ventress wanted her to do. She hadn't said to keep quiet. This is her safe house—or at least her ally's, right?

"A Royal. She…I think she's got the same people trying to kill her as we do." Orin sat up straighter, and his other eye opened a little.

"You know what? I think I saw that fancy lady when they dragged me in here—the young one who told me about the rift attack."

"Makes sense if she's the one helping Gladia out."

"Ah, shit! That's the Royal? Yeah, she was talking to Hector. It's her kid who's—""I know, Orin, I know." Lemon massaged the back of his big neck. It was clammy with sweat and hot.

"Don't strain yourself. Did they give you anything?"

"Some bugs, I think." Lemon squeezed his neck again, then stood.

"You've got a fever. I'll see if I can find you something to drink." Orin grunted his thanks, and Lemon walked over to the little kitchen area. The cupboards were stocked with all sorts of snacks—meal bars, chips, candied nuts, and even dried fruit. She took a bag of something called "pineapple," and then opened the fridge. Row after row of purified water bottles filled the shelves. She gave a bottle and the pineapple—after sampling a piece for herself—to Kit.

"It's like candy," she said. Absently, he took a piece. When he put it in his mouth, his eyes opened wide, and he looked away from the cartoon he was watching.

"It's good!" Lemon smiled and tousled his hair, then returned to Orin. When she put the cold bottle of water against his neck, he sighed and leaned into it.

"Feels good."

"Well, drink it. You're probably dehydrated." She watched as he took the bottle and started gulping. Then she opened her own and took a few sips.

"I think we're in real trouble, Orin." He chuckled mid-gulp and had to cough to clear his windpipe. When he spoke, his words were less slurred, though.

"You're kidding me, right? I'd say we're pretty much dead, doll." Lemon looked at him, at the state of him, and she realized he was right. If the Imperial Guard had already tried to kill him, then things were just as bad as she'd feared after Gladia's revelation; they were mixed up in something far worse than any trouble even Grando was likely to get involved with. At the thought, a fresh jolt of panic raced through her.

"Grando!"

"What?" Orin narrowed his less-swollen eye.

"Gladia mentioned him. Does he know much about Hector?" Orin stared at her for several seconds, his bloodshot eye unblinking. Then he glanced around the room. When he refocused on her, it seemed to her that he was very carefully weighing his words—like he was bringing every operating neuron to bear on the subject. Finally, after far too long, he said, "Eh, you know Grando. He probably doesn't know shit."

Hector hunted the reaper, his Shadow Stalk ability keeping him hidden as he broke free of the stand of strange, trumpet-shaped trees and pursued it over the rocky plain. He'd already checked in with Mathews and informed her he was on his way back, but he'd seen the reaper, not too far from the ridge where the cave lay hidden, and couldn't pass up the opportunity; he wanted to get his next level-up started.

With his enhanced aura regeneration, thanks to the similite in his skeletal structure, he could keep Shadow Stalk active for a very long time—not that he needed to. Hector was a predator already, trained and practiced in the art of shadowing quarry, and now that he had almost limitless endurance and easy comfort in the rift world's harsh environment, he found he could avoid the aggressive fauna without reliance on the ability.

This was different, though; he was going in for the kill, and his goal was for the reaper to never know what hit it. With aura bending the light around him, burying his sounds and scents in a silent breeze, he charged over the flat, stony ground, and when he was just ten meters from the creature—skulking low on all six limbs, sniffing the air for prey—he activated his newest aura ability: Ghost Reaver. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

The transition was instantaneous and unlike anything Hector had ever felt. His senses were struck by a sudden change: the sunlight faded, and the world shifted into a blue-tinted twilight. The hot, moist air became dry and cool. The sounds of the wind vanished, and the distant howls, coughs, and screams of the rift denizens clarified, though they gained a strange, echoing hollowness.

More jarring than anything else, though, was the way he seemed to move more quickly—how the distance between himself and the reaper shrank as he leaped. His rapid progress threw off his timing, and Hector almost didn't summon his Aura Blade in time. At the last possible instant, though, the blade flared to life—a steaming crimson beacon on the pale blue plane. It appeared in Hector's hand, just as he positioned it over the reaper's neck. The blade severed the creature's head, and its body fell, twitching.

Hector's lips split into a feral grin; the reaper had never sensed him. He took two breaths and then his ghostly state ended; the world returned with a rush of color and heat. He heard himself panting, and his Aura Blade crackled and hissed, fading into steam as he released it. Hector spun, scanning his surroundings. Had he, in turn, been stalked? Nothing came at him. Nothing stirred. Squatting, he put his hand on the moist, hairless flesh of the reaper's shoulder and drew in its potentia. //43 potentia gathered.

Potentia available: 119. // Not as much as the one that almost killed me. //More than enough for a level, though. // Go ahead and start it. It dawned on Hector that he'd felt a brief rush from the potentia gain, but not enough to disorient him. It seemed the changes he'd gone through had finally hardened his corpus vivum to the flow of the stuff. He felt a strange sense of loss at the idea. //It's the similite; your channels are much broader than they were.

I don't think you could have handled the Ghost Reaver in conjunction with your Aura Blade prior to that upgrade. // Means I can handle a bigger boost now, too, yeah? //I'd say your boost capacity has easily doubled. Please confirm: you'd like me to spend 94 potentia on level 11? // Yeah. //94 potentia applied. Corpus Vivum conditioning has begun. Approximately 6 hours to complete level advancement. Disorientation, weakness, and even fleeting incapacitation may occur. Extra caloric intake is recommended.

Remaining aura potentia: 25. // Hector straightened and stretched his back, turning so he faced the ridge where the rest of his team members were hiding. With a deep breath, he started running; according to his mini-map, he was just six minutes away at his current pace. As he ran, he constantly scanned the horizon for danger. He saw some rift denizens, but nothing that seemed to want anything to do with him. In fact, on one occasion he crested a rise and came upon a pack of lurkers.

They noticed him, too, and Hector got ready for a fight, but the squid-like blobs turned and ran. It was such a startling turn of events that Hector stood there, dumbfounded, Aura Blade blazing in his fist, for several seconds before he began to laugh. Do they think I'm a reaper? //It… shouldn't be possible, no. The aura system made use of the reaper's organic material and modified some of your cellular functions, but you're still distinctly human. // Well, they sensed something they didn't like.

Hector let his blade fade, then started running again. On one level he was amused by the lurkers' reaction to him, but if he let himself dwell on it, he found he was a little bothered. Evie, ever aware of his louder thoughts, tried to comfort him: //You've slain two reapers and have their blood soaked into your clothing. You're rich in potentia in a way you weren't earlier. It's likely the lurkers recognized a threat— not necessarily that you're somehow part reaper.

// Hector mentally nodded and tried to put it out of his head. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter; he was alive to deliver vengeance for himself and the Contis—monster or human, the result would be the same. When he approached the cave, he slowed, and his gliding, silent steps didn't announce his presence.

Of course the turrets didn't react to him—Evie was broadcasting the clearance code—so when he came around the corner, moving through the shadows like a human-shaped panther, Freddy nearly jumped out of his fancy armor as he hastily swung his rifle toward him.

"Don't shoot, kid."

"S-saints, Hector! You scared the piss out of me!" He reached up to rub his hand over his visor, like he was trying to clear away some fog. Hector moved closer, and Freddy lowered his hand.

"What happened to you, man? Where's your gear?"

"Reaper bit a hole in my helmet, and the air did the rest." Hector held up his shredded sleeve.

"My gear's seen better days." Freddy took a step back, looking Hector up and down.

"You're different."

"Made a level, bought a few new… talents." Hector started to move into the tunnel.

"Gonna check in with Mathews." Freddy tracked him with his gun, and Hector knew his face would be white inside that helmet—that he'd be licking his lips nervously, his mind racing.

"Just a minute, man—you've been gone for three damn days." Hector turned to regard him.

"Yeah?"

"What's up with your teeth?" Hector grimaced, baring his shiny teeth.

"What? You've never seen a chrome job?"

"S-sure, but you didn't have that before you left!" Hector stepped closer to him, and though he was only a few centimeters taller, it felt like he was looming, like he somehow dwarfed the young Royal. Freddy's trigger finger—still outside the guard—twitched, but he didn't do it; he didn't put his finger on the trigger as Hector pushed the barrel to the side and put his hand on the kid's shoulder.

"It's an upgrade, Freddy. A corpus vivum improvement."

"Oh? Well, yeah, I guess I've seen stranger things…" Hector pulled his lips back and clicked his teeth together.

"Let's just say my aura system is creative." //Thank you! //"Anyway, Mathews is probably going to have a fit if she figures out exactly what I did, so just try not to bring it up—" Another voice sounded behind him: "She is, huh?" Hector whirled, and when his eyes fell on Mathews, standing just inside the darker shadows of the tunnel, his grin widened.

"Damn, Commander! If I'd known you were that good at sneaking around, I would've brought you with me."

"You're looking awfully fit for a guy who nearly died—a guy without rations for three days on an alien world. You sure seem to be breathing this thick, damn air pretty easily." Her finger tapped the side of the heavy blaster she carried. Hector wasn't sure the thing was still functional, but he wouldn't want to find out. He'd thought about what he'd say to the team—how he'd explain his uncanny knack for thriving in the harsh environment.

"Yeah, well, let's just say I've had to play some of my cards. Let's get real: you all didn't think I was as fresh as I was pretending, did you?" Hector thumped his chest.

"I've got some tech in here that I wasn't exactly advertising."

"Sounds like something a fiend might say." Mathews said, her helmet's visor unreadable.

"Come off it, Commander. Fiends fit in. They don't go and make their teeth shiny. They don't give their host more muscle mass and walk around the rift world without a helmet."

"Well? I'm listening. What's the part that's going to piss me off?" Hector sighed.

"I guess there's no point in hiding it. I was low on resources, and my aura system was getting ready to cannibalize tissue to complete a skeletal upgrade. While I was out of it, my AI got the bright idea to use the similite I found." Freddy half laughed, half choked, and Mathews dropped her blaster, letting it hang from its sling as she approached Hector, shiny black visor tilted up toward his face. She grabbed the sides of his head and used her gloved thumbs to tug on his cheeks.

"Show me!" Hector bared his teeth, and he saw the reflection on her visor—the first clear view he'd had of his teeth. They weren't exactly chromed, but there was definitely a metallic sheen behind the white. When she tilted his face left and right, he saw the telltale iridescence of the similite.

"You son of a bitch! You aren't kidding!"

"Listen, Mathews, I know it's a lot of money, but I only had a kilogram or so"—another lie he'd practiced in hopes of minimizing the team's sense of loss—"and anyway, I have the coordinates for the mine; I bet you can sell that to a few ambitious independents." While Mathews stared and Hector spoke, he noticed Kristy approaching through the dark tunnel. Her armor and evil-bunny helmet had seen better days, but the gleam of those two pink-chrome eyes was unmistakable.

He knew she'd heard, and he expected an outburst, but when her voice came crackling out of her helmet's speaker grille, all she said was, "It doesn't matter, Commander. We're all probably going to die in here, and if we don't, it'll be because of that monster standing in front of you. Might as well go all-in."