First Son drew his focus from the doorway to each of the small feeds that ringed his vision. In his lower right was the roto drone Sally, straining with all of its power to keep itself airborne mere centimeters now from the ground. With quick movements from his hand, he gave it the command to turn and face backwards while it followed him out. He checked Sally's ammo loadout, noting she still A little cyber punk offering...
had a little over 60 rounds left.
Judith, hovering just inside the doorway, was scanning the interior of the room for viable targets. Judith was a nasty girl and had done most of the killing, leaving her with a sparse 35 rounds. He switched her fire mode over to single shot and plotted a course back out to the van with the command to stay within a meter of him at any given time.
Ronaldo and Caesar, the two little fly-spies, were perched on the wall and ceiling of the path out, monitoring the various doors and service lifts that let into the body of the club. First Son noted that they were clear save for the bodies of the Ancients who had been between he, the hovering ladies, and Jade.
His stomach turned a small flip thinking about what he had seen. Her eyes, her skin, all of the blood. It looked and smelled so real. Worse than a BTL, because he couldn't shut this one off. The metallic tang wouldn't leave his senses no matter how hard he tried. The sound of his own teeth gritting brought him back to the moment. He took a deep breath, doing his best to ignore the smell of copper and keep from shaking. Then, with almost steady hands, he released the clip in his auto pistol, slipped the over-half-spent thing into his pocket, and loaded a fresh magazine.
First Son flitted over the video feeds once more while sending a boot command to little Carlita outside the club. A panda popped up into view and held up a sign saying “loading” where her vid stream would appear. With a deep breath, he gave Judith the move command and started out the door. Ronaldo and Caesar still showed the way out as clear, but First Son kept his finger twitching on the auto pistol’s trigger.
Stepping over two bodies that Judith had chewed to pieces outside the door, he paused for a moment, eyes lingering on one of the elf’s faces. He seemed... familiar, but First Son couldn't place where he knew the man from. It was all so... real. There was no shutting this off, no escaping from it. Actual blood was on his shoe. He noted as he walked forward that the bottom of his soles were coated in the stuff and left his own prints on the black pads of the club’s dance floor. He would have to buy new shoes, eventually.
A panda popped into Sally's feed looking worried and holding a sign saying “Bad Guy”. An elf sporting a blue mohawk and a nasty snarl was coming through the kitchen door, partially hidden by a booth in the way. Sally didn't have a shot - stuck so low to the floor as she was - but still the little motors on her belly-mounted machine gun strained to target him. Too late. The elf fired.
White hot pain bloomed in the middle of First Son's back and knocked the wind from his lungs.
“FUCK!” he yelled as he pitched forward and bounced off of a table to land hard on the ground. Dermal plating and the reinforced Kevlar weave of his jacket kept the bullet from puncturing him, but the kick was a bitch. His own vital readouts confirmed his suspicions as his vision came back. That cute little panda informed him (while adjusting a pair of golden reading glasses) that the combination of plating and kevlar would stop bullets without a problem. But Christ on a cracker, it still hurt!
As these thoughts ran through the hacker’s mind, Judith turned and fired a short burst. The elf had seen her in time to dive to the side. He landed with his head exposed to Sally. She groaned from weight and shifted to the right, and in a moment the elf was nearly split in two from belly to head.
Pushing himself to his knees, First Son kept his head down and checked Ronaldo and Caesar to make sure the way was still clear. As he was doing so, Carlita's little panda held up a sign saying “ready to go” and then First Son disappeared into a yellow smoke cloud, revealing a low angle of the street outside. There were three elves dressed in fine suites coming in from a side alley, just visible to him from around the edge of a tire. Two carried SMGs, their elongated banana magazines curving away beneath them. The third elf carried a double-barreled street sweeper. An archaic weapon, but effective enough to chew through most armor at short range.
First Son saw the elf with the street sweeper making gestures in the air with his hands. On a hunch, the young hacker scanned incoming and outgoing frequencies, and there it was. Mr. Street Sweeper was scanning and moving around interior cameras. Still recovering from the slug to his back, First Son picked up the feed the elf was tapped into and saw himself from third person, sitting kneeled on the floor.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself to his feet and pulled a running animation from the matrix, transposing it over the feed and showed an image that at first glance looked like him running towards the front door. Mr. Street Sweeper took the bait. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum opened up with their SMG's at the door. Daylight punctured through the steel plating.
“Carlita. Deliver your present,” First Son said aloud while giving the command. Carlita's visual changed as she scuttled forward towards the backs of the three elves. In the her feed, a small feeler reached out and poked at Mr. Street Sweepers leg.
Outside, the elf felt a pinch on his leg and he looked down. At his foot was a small drone, about the size of a roach, carrying a solid ounce of plastic. His scream was lost in the SMG fire and Mr. Street Sweeper almost swore the little drone saluted him before the world exploded.
Carlita's feed went blank in First Son's vision at the same time that a tremendous roar blew the club’s front doors off of their hinges sending the holy portals skittering across the dance floor carrying bits of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum with them.
Fist Son nodded to the two drones flanking him. “Let's go, ladies,” he pronounced with the most bravado he could muster through the pain of the gunshots. He squelched through what was left of the trio as he pushed his way outside. His stomach turned as Sally's rotoblades sent gooey blood and small bits flying while she hovered over the street towards the van. First Son called Ronaldo and Caesar back as he opened the back door of Face’s van and lowered the ramp. Sally settled into the belly of it and he made his way to the cab while Judith secured herself to the roof.
Through the entire drive, First Son fought to keep himself together; fought to keep the realities of the situation from making it through the SIM filter that he usually saw these things through. It stayed with him - the smell, the feel of his foot slipping in blood. The fact that Jade was nestled inside of Sally's metallic body, burnt and...eyeless, to a degree. He focused himself on driving, building a completely new alias, and having that alias order a medi lift team to meet him at the safe house. They were paid triple to bring everything needed to treat the wounds he had seen on Jade and keep their mouths shut about it. Then, with the van on autopilot, he set about the grim task of rigging up Rosa, Carlita's twin, with a present to make sure the docs took what they saw of their patient to the grave.
