Chương 58: Suffering From Success

Kelly was still pissed. The frustration over her dead magic cube was a hot, sharp thing in her chest, and her entire body was buzzing, overloaded with the raw mana she'd vacuumed up. The power had no outlet, itching under her skin. It was a lot of energy with nowhere useful to go. So when a captain walked up with those stupidly thick tank-level cuffs, she didn't even think. She just pivoted and kicked. The kick had no flair; wasn't stylish or fancy. What it was, was a direct, frustrated transfer of kinetic energy.

Mana Vacuum's excess power flared through her musculature. The captain left his feet. He pinwheeled through the air, a human projectile, and landed in a clattering heap about fifty yards away. A sudden, sharp thought hit her in the standoff. She'd only siphoned a fraction of the cube's power before it blew. The rest had vaporized the Dome. If that unfinished taste had supercharged her this much... what would happen if she drank the whole thing? She looked back at Halverson and the rest of the stunned response unit.

"Anyone else want to try and manage my calendar?" She could have asked him nicely. But Kelly was in a very bad mood, and really wanted a second to herself. Just a moment to exhale. [Title equipped: Slaughterer of Men] A sigh escaped her, but it carried something else—a wave of primal fear that slammed into every soldier present. It bypassed their training, their emotional dampeners, their neural meshes, and dug straight into instincts buried so deep they predated civilization. How did that work?

Mana didn't touch humans, so the fear couldn't have come from mana. It had to work the same way the system's status did—by targeting a deeper layer of existence. Metaphysiology. The soul. Huh. Now that was a thought. She was absolutely taking that apart later. For now, the result was obvious: unnatural panic, fear and hesitation spread through all present, as if they'd all remembered they were prey.

"As I said," she said, her voice cutting through the silence.

"I am having a spectacularly bad day. My patience has left the building. Trying to arrest me right now is a fantastic way to become a statistic. So, unless you're volunteering for that role, I suggest you find something else to do." She almost yelled at the responding Sergeant who stood there in shock, his trigger finger trembling seconds from lighting her up, but filled with hesitation.

It seemed even he was wary of the speed of movement she'd just displayed, and was acutely aware that the distance between him and the scientist who had just displayed the speed of an Expert was not enough.

"Fine," the captain said, voice low and even.

"We'll take you in alive—if you make it easy. But don't mistake that for a promise. You give us a reason—one—and we end this right here." The captain's voice was a flat line. He was talking for her benefit; she knew their real chatter was over neural comms. He wanted her to know they were done playing. At his command, the soldiers moved with practiced precision. They fanned out, their aim snapping to her legs, her knees, the tendons in her ankles.

Every shot was calculated for maximum debilitation, minimum chance of death. The best of them, the high-level operators who'd been stationed near the Dome and the cube, were already dead, vaporized in the initial blast. This was what was left—the perimeter troops, the B-team with more gear than actual power, hoping their equipment could close the gap she represented. The outer perimeter soldiers were… lacking. The ten Elites she'd flattened at the Dome's entrance were the real deal. Top shelf.

Their job was to hold the main kill zone against anything the regular grunts couldn't handle, a final outer defense for the portal tech inside. They had the high-grade gear, the polished skills, the whole corporate warrior package. They were the bodyguards while the actual players secured the new toy for its trip off-world. These new guys? Different story. They carried rifles designed to put down creatures rated up to 60 EQ. On paper, that firepower could definitely hurt her. But paper didn't account for reality.

In reality, the soldiers wielding them wouldn't even manage breaking through her Fortress of Endurance Title. Their shots wouldn't outpace her Herald of Unending Vitality's regen. And right now, every cell in her body—her mana-compatible troll muscles, her augments—was still drunk and oversaturated from the cube's explosion. She was running on pure, volatile magic. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. They were toddlers with shotguns.

Dangerous to a dumb beast. Less dangerous to anyone with a shield and the common sense to take the shotgun away. Kelly raised her leg, slowly.

"All units engage, danger close—!" Kelly stepped forward in a blur, the potent mana still thrumming through her and her Title boosting her speed, her wristband transforming into a long shovel that slammed the captain into the ground before he could even finish making the order. The remaining captain's face turned to disbelief, then concern, and then fear. He and his subordinates stopped their attack movements once they realized she was much stronger than she appeared.

"As I said… I'm having a very bad day, and this is your last chance to go home with the right amount of arms and legs." And with that proclamation, Kelly gently placed her shovel down to rest on the downed captain's head. She definitely wasn't threatening his life or holding him hostage. No, she was just innocently resting her shovel of retribution. His head just happened to be there. She had to admit that the first hit made her feel a little better, but its placement on his vitals was purely coincidental. Honest.

After that, they paused, weapons aimed, as one captain raised a fist and yelled.

"Dr. Voss! I don't—how the hell—" he paused for a millisecond. Whatever military cocktail coursing through him snapped him from 'freaked out man' to 'soldier.' He spoke again.

"Five hours. Your strength is off the charts compared to the report. Put him down. Step back. Do not make this worse—""Shut up." A familiar face, Captain Halverson, interjected with an outstretched hand, approaching Kelly with the caution of a man who knew he could die horribly in the next few seconds and also knew exactly how to avoid it.

The man she'd sent flying earlier had held the highest EQ among them, and the one currently held beneath her foot held the second highest score among their numbers, and was a strength type. They had weapons that could harm someone of her level, but not without taking high casualties in the process.

"I know her, let me handle this," Halverson said. Really? The hypocrisy was so thick you could taste it. Back when she was just a barely-augmented intern, they would have beaten her senseless and tossed her into some black-site camp where war crimes were treated like selfies. But now? Now that her titles let her fake an Expert-class presence, now that she had thrown down power way past some average Thresholder—maybe even past the Peak—the rules changed.

Suddenly, it was all careful maneuvers and tactical capture plans. Captain Halverson locked eyes with the other captain, his stare loaded with intent. Kelly could easily guess they were communicating over neural comms. It was the universal look for get every gun we have pointed at this woman, now. Halverson was probably arranging for an entire army to show up while playing nice.

"Halvy. What are you doing here?" Kelly's voice cut through the tension.

"Getting this close is uncharacteristically suicidal, even for you."

"New orders," he bit out, his jaw tight.

"My team is the investigation unit. The other regiments are securing the perimeter against the incursions. Trust me, I don't want to be here."

"Don't have a choice? Sounds familiar." She reached into her shadow and pulled out the jagged shard of Ithili's weapon, tossing it onto the ground between them. It landed with a heavy, alien clatter.

"Evidence," she stated.

"Here's the real story for your report. The peace with the other corpos is a joke. Genecorp is in bed with our so-called 'greatest enemy'. They just destroyed a massive terraforming cube in the center of that dome trying to cover their tracks." It was half true. They didn't need to know her role in the cube's final moments.

"Look, Voss. Even if that's true, you still have to come in." Halverson's tone lost some of its official edge, sounding more tired than robotic.

"We'll check the wreckage, go through any recovered footage. If everything lines up and you haven't broken any laws, you'll be free to go. It's just procedure." So then... there they were, Halverson, half-crouched behind cover erected on a collapsed billboard that once promised clean air for all—a bold claim, considering the sky currently had the hue and consistency of boiled blood, and most people below the poverty line still filtered their homes with old parts and creativity.

And Kelly, surrounded by guns and orders for her arrest. Kelly paused. She stared off wistfully, then turned to Halverson, the familiar face and voice of pragmatic reason.

"Say… Halvy, how are your relations with Off-worlders?" Kelly asked. There was a silence—long, tense, meaningful. Then a distant explosion underlined it, from the direction of City Sector 12. Or what used to be it.

"Off-worlders? Which ones?" Captain Halverson said, not looking up.

"The Jannad on Jupiter mostly deal with the Mars colonies—industrial shipments, diamonds. They've got old ties to China, Saudi, some of the AI war remnants. We don't talk to them much. And the Upper Echelon?" He shrugged.

"Some of them have been accused of trading with Neurojihadists. Black market tech, that kind of thing. Maybe ask them when you get out." Kelly heard the word 'Neurojihadist', snorted, and thought, Christ, they're really just throwing darts at a thesaurus now. After the AI coups, the media coined many terms designed to trigger fear and frame threats as unknowable and everywhere.

It worked: people panicked at headlines, funded defense budgets they couldn't spell, and let governments rewrite rules they never knew existed to green-light invasive laws, while the public stewed in existential paranoia, unsure if the danger was really still everywhere or just really well-branded. She smiled faintly, eyeing the hostile invaders in the way one would eye a waitress delivering dessert. Kelly shrugged, unconcerned, gesturing upward.

"I just ask 'cause one of them's aiming a full-kinetic railgun at your head. Thought you might wanna settle any outstanding debts before your brain exits via neck."