Chương 39: Beneath The City

This kid could help her? Kelly blinked once.

"Hmm."

"You're a kid in a closet. How does that turn into a Deadqueen location? Or access? Or anything useful?"

"It's not something I talk about," he said, in a voice that suggested it had been practiced on mirrors, vending machines, and at least one paramedic.

"My dad's a survivor of the Shanghai fallout. He, uh, kept a few souvenirs." He gestured vaguely, either toward nothing or everything.

"But it's not how I got the job or anything," he added, fast and a little too earnestly. Aww, he really believed that. Kelly smirked.

"I was looking for a way out. I'm thinking underground. I mean—no confirmation those things haven't made it there, right? If they have, we die. So I wouldn't mind a temporary arrangement. I can show you the tunnel. Make sure the building ignores you. Otherwise, we get torn apart trying to leave separate or crushed trying to hold the door." It made sense.

Kelly doubted the ones assigned to guard tunnels and underground labs, stationed in basement car parks, had stayed once the sky split open and began ejecting creatures that broke natural laws. The tunnel would still be dangerous, but the odds of survival were better than the monster kaleidoscope writhing and hammering in the street outside. If the tunnel led toward the botanical research facility, she could reach it faster and avoid getting shredded on the way.

"Does the underground connect to the east grid?"

"Yeah—of course it does," Caleb said.

"And, uh, a bunch of other places too. Why do you think the building's half-empty? Everyone without a weapon bailed the second the floor started shaking." Kelly nudged a chunk of the biological weapon with her boot.

"I was busy turning the Heavy into smaller parts, so no—I didn't catch where the tunnel was. What's down there? And why does an office need direct access to street-level escape routes?"

"You—uh, you seriously don't know?" Caleb asked.

"I mean—what even happened out here? I thought you were Vaughn. They're supposed to have those." He hesitated.

"Who are you really?" Kelly waved dismissively.

"I've explained this clearly already. Everyone upstairs who aimed something vaguely lethal in my direction experienced sudden, permanent organ failure. Cullen insisted on repeatedly firing lasers into my personal space, which felt excessive, so he also became abruptly deceased. His retrieval team and their genetically engineered murder pets joined him shortly after." She sighed, satisfied, as though recalling old memories.

"It was all in self-defense, of course. I'm not a monster." Then she smiled for the eighth time in twenty-four hours, mildly pleased by the day's sensible problem-solving.

"So where are we going?" A pause.

"Also, by the way, I really can't die, so don't copy anything I do. It won't go well for you." Caleb audibly swallowed and immediately re-evaluated several life choices. He'd known Kelly was the primary intruder, but he assumed there were unknown variables: likely accompanied by a covert strike force or perhaps stray bio-weapons. Realizing Kelly herself was essentially the stray bio-weapon caused him genuine concern.

Nobody sane would walk casually into a place like this and announce they'd wiped out an entire facility packed with armed operatives at 3-to-5EQ, equipped well above their rank, and a Meat Demon Goretank that was a minimum 6EQ threat response. Caleb decided not to question her about weapons, equipment, and specifically avoided inquiring how exactly she made her shadow casually break physics in ways current technology had notably failed to replicate.

He quickly accepted that she was clearly some kind of special operative here to casually steal technology humanity probably wasn't ready to play with yet—possibly government-linked or rogue Vaughn elite. Definitely someone else's problem. Caleb cleared his throat nervously, immediately adopting that careful teenage tone reserved for explaining complex things to adults who might bite his head off.

"I, um, apologize, miss—it's just, uh, basically Vaughn and GeneCorp both get attacked sometimes by leftover Deadqueen monsters or machines. It's happened on and off for years—it's in the company briefing, you know? Emails mention it sometimes." He guided her to a massive set of metal doors, and a shifting floor that would take them to their destination.

"They're pretty dormant until they get inside the building, then suddenly they're grabbing our stuff to upgrade themselves. Apparently, they're only after our tech or resources or whatever. Or maybe they're just greedy like us—I mean, fair enough, I guess. It got bad enough last year that GeneCorp and Vaughn started pretending to play nice to keep everyone safe while fighting over relics. And today…" Caleb gestured at the madness outside—the sky creature, floating freak, monster chaos everywhere.

"With everything totally losing it outside, I think that little game they've been playing just fell apart completely. Both Vaughn and GeneCorp bosses took off for safer planets ages ago. Most of the operatives left behind are either on triple-decuple hazard pay or raiding other places. Pretty much everyone's just waiting until somebody finds something good, then it's going to be open season. Kinda hoping Vaughn doesn't find it first, though…" Kelly finally had a handle on what was happening.

She'd never been a big fan of politics or global squabbling—it slowed down important work like breakthroughs and blowing things up for research. Normally she preferred ignoring it altogether until she was forced to acknowledge it to find a work-around. But government delays, corporate red tape, votes masquerading as progress—it all made her physically itchy.

GeneCorp and Vaughn were supposedly past their war machine era, switched to boring market battles ages ago, but clearly they'd never quite given up on murdering each other over shiny relics and backdoor control. It made sense, really: whoever was losing would send everything they had left armed to the teeth, hoping for one last grab at the wheel. She almost felt bad for Jackhammer, briefly wondering if he had at least packed a few meat demons to keep him company down in the control room. Enjoying this book?

Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Considering the desperate and clearly inferior force she'd handled at Vaughn HQ, she pegged GeneCorp's people in the control chamber as solidly second-place contenders in this sad little relay race of violence and betrayal. Either that, or this was just round one of multiple attacks from various overly ambitious teams, all slamming into Vaughn HQ until someone actually won.

"Quick question," Kelly said cheerfully.

"How's your relationship with upper management these days?" Caleb blinked.

"Upper management? They're in space, probably enjoying the show or taking selfies with celebrities. We don't really hear much from them." Kelly couldn't exactly confirm it, but she suspected all the big-shot, superhuman celebrities with their off-world yachts were definitely hovering just out of sight, waiting patiently for the chaos to boil down to a manageable size before descending heroically to claim whatever shiny thing turned up.

Then they'd pretend to care, maybe pose dramatically with refugees for the news while pocketing valuables from the wreckage—pretty much their standard catastrophe game plan.

This basically meant that once Kelly started seriously showing off or acquiring Traits that would draw attention, the real monsters—the ones with astronomical EQ ratings, endless advertising contracts, celebrity guest spots, and probably personal fan clubs—would start dropping from orbit, kindly asking her to step aside and follow them at gunpoint.

Maybe it hadn't happened yet because GeneCorp expected Vaughn to openly fight back if they took her, and certainly hadn't factored in or realized Kelly had already quietly resigned from Team-Vaughn in spirit. Back in her first life—before loops, before flaming tentacle creatures, before New York turned into a portal zoo—she remembered how the big names stayed quiet in the face of the portals. Hiding behind their public defense contracts, spewing meaningless assurances. Defensive. Promised safety.

Focused on evacuation. Or bunkers. Buying time while the rest burned. They'd been waiting, back then, for the gold rush to start. Kelly sighed, rubbing her temples theatrically.

"Alright, that's enough. My brain hurts now, and it's definitely not from complexity, but stupidity." Politics was basically monkeys juggling explosives—fun from a distance, bad up close.

"Just point me toward the main basement entrance and tell me which path heads east." Caleb didn't need telling twice. After quickly explaining how to reach the main underground entrance, he scampered after her. He walked a half-step behind Kelly, his shoes scuffing against old tunnel concrete. The emergency lights hummed along the walls. Around Kelly, several spheres of acid drifted in slow orbit, each one a perfect liquid planet with a surface that smoked faintly where it touched the air.

One circled her shoulder, another moved at her hip, a third swung wide and traced the edge of her shadow. They shifted with her stride and never wobbled, held by the mer-blood she kept locked into an unnatural calm. Caleb watched one sphere swing past his face and flinched. He said, "How are you doing that? With the acid?" His voice cracked.

"Did they... are you an acid wizard?" Kelly didn't turn.

"Blood wizard, actually. Acid's just a side hustle." Caleb went silent. Kelly's mind moved elsewhere. The Title, 'Outrunning Death,' had potential. Twenty percent more speed each second. Past ten seconds the death penalty vanished. Eleven seconds came out to 7. 4 times her original pace, a 643% increase. She could run through a straight line and cross distance that should take a minute in a heartbeat. The stopping would be a problem. A body at that speed hit with enough force to turn concrete to powder.

She walked with the acid spheres orbiting her shoulders, her lips moving around the math. Could she survive hitting something at that speed?

"Maybe. Layer myself in armor and pick a target that breaks before I do. Angle low and let the ground shave off speed in a long, violent skip. Launch into open air and let the sky eat the momentum over distance." Every option ended with her broken, burned, or both. But broken could be countered. They kept walking. The path was clean enough, and the tunnels were well designed, leading more or less where they were supposed to. It was a safe journey. Until it wasn't.

As Kelly descended deeper, they encountered corpses. Monstrous corpses—little green pointy-eared man-like creatures and their eviscerated bodies. Soon, the reason behind the scattered corpses became immediately obvious. Giant skeletal snake-things and man-shaped bone-creatures sprawled everywhere, some horse-sized and extremely aggressive. Caleb nervously referred to them as "undead." Kelly snorted, figuring some fungal parasite had probably set up shop inside the fused and mutated bones.

Out of habit, she stuffed a few samples into her shadow storage for later investigation, surprised to see they went all the way through. No plans to inject. Probably. Fortunately, most of the skeletal creatures barely rated at 3EQ, and their rating didn't fluctuate, likely due to their only capability appearing to be regenerating and fusing any and all bones.

They were mindless enough for quick kills without trouble, and easily manageable, posing no real threat beyond swarms forcing her into the occasional Title swap. Caleb nearly passed out from panic whenever Kelly showed genuine scientific curiosity in hunting down whatever larger threat controlled them. She'd relent, though, only to avoid his hysterics, destroying them instead out of straightforward annoyance.

Caleb insisted they were controlled by something worse, and nearly hyperventilated when she showed interest in locating it. She sighed. Curiosity could wait. East was easier. She smashed everything in the way. Thankfully, Kelly had become very good at smashing things. Every minute or so, groups of jagged skeletal things stood in their way, endlessly regenerating until the glowing stones inside their heads or ribs were shattered.

Kelly started collecting these stones out of habit, while Caleb sensibly started navigating them around any obvious trouble spots. But as they continued deeper, the skeletons became stronger, and far more aggressive. Kelly wiped out four separate groups of a dozen or more higher-EQ bone creatures, maintaining herself at a steady 150% boost thanks to Death's Foe. Eventually, they arrived at the largest chamber she'd seen so far. It was massive.

Two exits branched off at the far end—one clearly leading toward the surface streets of the east district. Both routes conveniently converged right here. At the opposite end blocking their path was a large metal gate, guarded by the meanest, toughest, largest, angriest-looking skeletons yet. They looked bizarre—like ancient knights made entirely of fused and plated gothic bones, hardened by unknown means to deflect high-pressure bullets.

And even stranger yet, for some reason, they were busy attacking a group of heavily armed humans in covert gear.