Chapter 35
My breathing was fast, hard, and heavy, while my heart rate was pumping at twice its resting rate, as I executed another Ghul with a quick horizontal slice.
Though technically I was static in my seat, the neural linking with my Shinka’s body was transferring that physical strain through my mind like a lucid yet physical dream.
The truest form of mind over matter, where I had emulated intense cardio purely through the transference of my mental perception.
Though I wondered: How long could the body sustain feedback like this while static and restrained?
The fact that many have died in the process of perfecting the Shinka synchronization system was telling.
Perhaps it was just my medical training talking, but I was hyper sensitive to the state of my vitals, not the least of which because there’d been so much talk that women couldn’t be pilots in the past. This was just a virtual reality simulation, of course, but how similar was the physical strain in here compared to the real thing?
This was no time to second guess myself. I couldn’t waste mental energy on these sorts of thoughts. Not when I was barely staying alive by the skin of my teeth.
I heard the blast before I saw it, and I dodged the barrage of energy shots, managing little more than a graze of my metal arm.
I’d avoided any critical damage so far, but there were still four more units left according to my count.
The fact that I’d not had an arm removed yet told me it was increasingly unlikely that Elio was in here.
Maybe I’d just been paranoid, and ended up in a separate server after all.
I took cover behind another wall, forcing my assailant to come to me if he wanted to engage. One hand on my gun, my shoulder cannons ready, and my other hand on the hilt of my shortest, fastest blade, I laid back on the floor, anticipating the moment the enemy unit leaped over the barrier.
Perfectly predictable, he was over my head, and I fired an endless volley of energy bullets right into him from below at devastatingly close range. The force of the blasts sent his mangled unit flying. That was unit number eighteen.
Two left.
I exhaled slowly, and I stayed behind cover as I let my heart rate come down. Four and a half hours had passed now. This had been the longest mission we’d ever done, and all of us would be sleeping late tonight.
I was almost there. Just a little more, and I would surely get the promotion I needed after all this. I didn’t know exactly what criteria they were grading me on, but I had to be getting some points for surviving this long.
I took ten full minutes to rest, admittedly a bit surprised that I was able to sit idly for so long.
I was comfortable that I wasn’t easily visible from a distance though, and if the last two Ghuls were guarding the reactor, they would be foolish to attempt to come to me based only on blips of lost allies on the map.
I verified all of my weapons were still functional.
One of my shoulder cannons had taken a hit in the last scuffle, but the other was operational, and my guns and swords were both fully charged after a little time back in their holsters.
My unit health scan determined that all of my limbs were largely undamaged, save some burns or broken flare from dodging bullets and blades, but it was all cosmetic.
Merely a flesh wound, I told myself.
Giving myself a small pep talk, I turned toward the reactor and started making my way through the last leg of the base.
Just two left. As long as those two didn’t include Elio or Sebastian, I had this.
The red rock spires of this canyon had truly built a natural fortress in the landscape, and I continued to dart behind hoodoos and leverage walls and warehouses to stay out of sight.
But as I got within the last kilometer of the reactor, the desert opened up and all that was left was an unblemished expanse of crimson dirt and a massive barrier wall, likely spanning a hundred meters or more in height.
The fortress completely surrounded the massive neon pink tower in the distance, while the reactor’s glow blanketed everything, pouring over the metal walls like a fog, and casting deeply contrasted shadows on the vast open space of nothing between my position behind this stone pillar and the entrance.
Per my mission briefing, my blast radius would only be about 50 meters, which meant I needed to get through the gate and all the way to the base of the reactor in order to do the damage I needed.
Using my zoom function, I homed in on the entryway. As expected, there at the gate, stood a single Ghul, firm, unmoving, and vigilant.
Wait, only one?
Where was the other?
Still staying out of sight, I surveyed the area.
The canyon walls were behind us, but they were too far from this fortress to allow for a sudden ambush.
If they’d been closer, I could have stayed high and infiltrated via drop in, which was obviously considered in the planning and building of the facility.
So where was the other Ghul hiding? The base had been quiet after I’d destroyed the last unit, and there was nowhere to hide up ahead.
Maybe one was patrolling the perimeter while this one guarded the front. That would be the sensible thing to do, right? If he was a sniper up on the canyon’s ledge, he would have already shot me in my last few scuffles, surely.
But if he was over here somewhere, the way the reactor radiated over the area obscured any heat signatures, and I had no other method to locate enemies.
The openness of the terrain meant I couldn’t come in from another angle without being detected, so I might have to just trust he was somewhere else still patrolling, and I’d somehow passed him by.
But to add challenge to my own predicament, the standard guns we kept on our units only had a range of about half a kilometer, and I’d need another two hundred meters at least in order to connect, so there was nothing to do but to charge in.
It was likely that was a consideration when modeling the mission to increase the difficulty.
If they’d simply given me a sniper rifle, I could have taken them all out without even breaking a sweat.
Instead, my limited weaponry meant I could move more quickly, but also would have to engage more closely.
If this mission was real, I didn’t know if I’d have the bravery to run in to my imminent death, knowing the outcome was going to be my end whether I won or lost. I couldn’t say for sure I’d even have the resolve to have executed so many men in cold blood to get here.
But knowing that completing this mission could be the difference between my opportunity to stand on the front lines and put a stop to evil instead of sitting at base and hoping a great hero would come and save me, it was an easy choice to make.
I was done being a helpless damsel in this life. This moment meant more to me than it could to anyone else in this training exercise, and I was going to fight like it.
I stepped forward, leaving my cover. The guard remained in his position. I knew he saw me, but he made it very clear that he expected me to come to him.
Still no sign of the second unit, but I’d taken on multiple enemies several times now, so I could likely handle it if he showed up. I kept that knowledge at the back of my mind, but focused on what was right in front of me.
Once I was in communication range, I watched the Ghul change his stance: A fighting position that I knew very, very well.
“Five hours, twelve minutes, 42 seconds. You took your time.” The voice of Sebastian Takeyama filled my cockpit, using the universal channel to communicate across teams instead of the normal private frequencies. “I hope you still have some fight left.”
Did he know who I was? I doubted the other team had been given my information, considering I hadn’t been given any of theirs.
I debated answering. If I responded, he would know for sure who he was dealing with, which would mean he had some idea of what to expect from my fighting style.
On one hand, I might have a better chance if I remained anonymous.
On the other hand, I might get an opening purely by leveraging his surprise when he learned I had made it so far.
Sebastian would never expect me to have been this successful, having trained with me every day.
I pulled both of my blades, and I shoved their hilts together.
The contact automatically activated the merge sequence, creating a double bladed energy baton.
It was the perfect combination of a lethal weapon and one I had always been the most at home with, and I needed every advantage against my final opponent.
If Sebastian was here, I could only guess that the last person in the game was, in fact, Elio. That was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it was unlikely he’d interfere with this fight. If anything, he might even be watching from somewhere.
But a curse, because if by some miracle, I managed to win this, then I would have absolutely no chance against the last defense.
“It’s going to be just you and me for this fight.” Sebastian confirmed my suspicions. “Don’t disappoint me, Snow.”
There it was.
If it was Elio or Breaker in front of me, I might have replied with a snarky quip or a taunting provocation, but not with Sebastian.
I swallowed thickly, then I entered my own fighting stance, no longer worrying he might deduce my identity. If anything, the assumption was a compliment, and proving his deduction correct was something to be proud of.
“I made it this far. I think that deserves some credit already,” I said, my grip relaxed on my hilt in a conscious effort to stave off the nervousness and tension pumping through my blood.