Dan and Ada were still traversing the underground pathways while following the waypoint. He rubbed his eyes, tired at staring at the contrast of his bright flashlight and the barely lit tunnels.

  “I’m getting tired of this,” he said.

  Ada patted him on the shoulder. “So am I.”

  Dan opened another channel with Judith. “Where the hell are we going?”

  “Moving on the surface with all the mess that’s going on would be suicide, even with Ada by your side. The path you’re following is supposed to be the safest path to a sealed bunker. That’s where you’ll find the designated artefact. Adam’s team is a getting hammered as we speak on the surface. You’ll thanks me later.”

  Dan remembered that Li was still up there with the rest of the Kodak force. He felt a familiar anger flare up within him. He slammed his fist into the side of the tunnel.

  “I swear if I find out Li is dead, I’m shoving my fist down your throat Judith,” he seethed.

  “Oh so scary,” she said. Judith cut the call. Dan grumbled under his breath.

  The red hexagon led him down a bend in the pathway. Dan peered his head around the turn and saw light bleeding through a gated opening. The waypoint rested right on the metal bars at the end of the path. If he couldn’t get it open, then he could simply use Conservative to cut through the bars.

  He picked up the pace, though still kept each step deliberate and constantly scanned his cramped surrounding in case any traps awaited him. As he approached closer to the gated opening, a wave of odours hit his nose through his mask. He abruptly stopped and Ada bumped into him.

  “You detected the smell,” Ada said.

  “Smells like shit,” he said. “I bet Judith is screwing around with us at this point. It’s a sewer up ahead. I’m calling it.”

  Dan reached the metal gate and red hexagon disappeared then popped back up beyond the the metal bars. He had a downward view of what looked like flowing water. The water was a greyish brown shade. Judging from the odour hitting his nose, he didn’t want to imagine what was in its contents. He grabbed the various metal bars. After a minute of feeling the bars and not finding anything resembling a button, switch or a lock to smash to get through, he knew it was time to put his newly obtained sword to use.

  “Stand back Ada,” he said. “I’m gonna cut these bars and we’ll get through.”

  The Bloodknight nodded and she gave Dan a wide berth. He crouched down and gave himself room to draw the Conservative off his back. He then walked up to the gate and inserted his blade through a gap at the edge. He twisted and turned the edge to align with the outer edge of the opening and began dragging his sword through the metal bars. Each bar gave the Conservative a mild degree of resistance, though it didn’t stop the blade from slowly cleaving through. This was no normal sword.

  Dan cut all the way around before he kicked the metal gate and send it flying down into the murky waters below. He instinctively pulled back fro the opening before the splash. Even with how high up he was, he still didn’t want to risk getting splashed in the face with dirt water.

  He looked back at Ada. “Okay then, I’m going to be careful with getting down there. I’m not jumping into the middle of that stream of flowing shit.”

  “I understand,” she said. In the low lighting, her silver irises glowed while she looked back at him.

  Dan turned back to the opening and peaked down at the flowing waters. He looked around and saw a set of metal bars imbedded into the arch-shaped canal of this server. He reached his hand out and grabbed the first metal bar. He got the rest of his body out and slowly climbed along the bars attached along the ceiling. His feet finally made contact with the side passages and he breathed a sigh of relief. While the odour still wasn’t pleasant, at least he wasn’t walking knee-deep in sewer water.

  He watched as Ada closely followed, climbing down the same set of metal bars and finally reaching his position onto the side passage. His HUD still had the red hexagon floating in his peripheral vision. He turned and he followed it, wanting to leave this sewer as soon as possible.

  While Dan had faith that the filters in his mask would catch anything particularly nasty in the air and his lungs were built to be more capable and resilient than a regular man, he didn’t want to stick around this place any longer than needed. He quickened his pace and Ada followed closely behind him. She probably had it worse than him since she wore no mask or helmet.

  “Hey, how are you holding up?” she asked.

  “I’ve had better days,” Dan said. “But I’m still alive. We need to get out of this sewer before our lungs give up from the nastiness in the air. What about you?”

  “There’s something I wanted to ask you. It’s regarding your recruitment into the Alpha Corporation.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the Bloodknight. “Oh yeah, I didn’t give you a whole lot of details did I?”

  “Where did you grow up? How did Michael even find you?”

  “I was in New York where that gang fight took place,” Dan said. His mom immediately flooded his memories as he thought back to his time before becoming an agent. “Not a great place. Polluted air, rainy weather almost all the time, and lots of crooks or survivors like me just trying to get by.”

  Ada widened her eyes. “You’re from the badlands?”

  “Call it what you want, but yeah. I might be locked in a war between shards, but it beats being some impoverished kid back in that country,” he said bitterly. “Anyway, Michael Cynosa scooped me up as a corpse at death’s door and injected me with a serum. Turns out, that serum has given me the ability to use magic.”

  “I see,” she said. “Can you also answer where your hatred towards Kate Razor comes from?”

  Dan hesitated. He gave a deep sigh before he begun. “I’ll keep it direct. I don’t want to accidentally punch a wall and bring this place down. Kate was a former Alpha agent and one of the first people I met when I was put into my new team. Turns out, Michael pulled some strings for me and got me into a team that no rookie had any business being in. It’s how I met Jane Sunheiser. After my mom’s murder, I had nobody. But Michael gave me a second chance at life and I felt like I met my new family. Or at least something pretty damn close.”

  Ada’s face softened at hearing all this. Dan assumed she was making parallels in her head with how she felt after her best friend Cammy died. “On our first real mission together, Kate screwed us over and crossed onto the other side. She joined Kodak-Cresh and betrayed us. By the time the mission was over, half our team was decimated.”

  “I’m… sorry to hear that,” she whispered.

  “So yeah, you could say I would love nothing more than to see her dead at my feet,” Dan said bluntly. “And it’s the same reason why I can’t see myself accepting Judith’s offer to join her and become a Bloodknight. I’d be leaving behind people I’ve established real bonds with. Jane, Allen, Li, Angie… those guys are amazing. I can’t ask for better people in my life.”

  Dan’s mind drifted to all the past training sessions he had with Jane and Allen. He was still an underdog trying to tango with agents far more powerful and experienced than him. Memories of all the crazy situations he got himself into with Li and Angie during the heist and the Combat Games flashed in his mind.

  Ada remained silent, not pressing any further as they both continued walking through the sewer.

  “There’s another thing I want to ask you,” she finally said. Ada drew in a breath and asked, “Do you think love can still exist in this world we live in?”

  Dan stopped in his tracks and pondered the question. On one hand, he smiled at the absurdity of his current situation. A Bloodknight asking him about love in a disgusting and stinky sewer wasn’t what he thought he would be doing today.

  But then he looked back at Ada and saw her blank expression break, if only for a moment. Her face briefly twisted, most likely her remembering her friend she lost during training. The friend who got caught up in becoming a Bloodknight and completing her training. A friend who Ada was forced to kill in self-defense.

  “Yes I do Ada,” he said. “My mom sacrificed herself to buy time for me to run away. The gang that chased after us that day wanted whatever remaining valuables she had on her, namely her jewelry. Then there’s Benjamin Colt, a medic who was on our team. I was on the run after Kate’s betrayal and she chased after me through the city. When I regrouped with him, he healed my broken ankle and held off Kate when she caught up with us. I looked back only to watch my teammate get his neck snapped by that bitch. So yeah, there’s people in my life who laid down their lives for me. And there’s people who I would do the same for. You don’t just do that to someone who is a complete stranger.”

  Ada didn’t say anything. She simply nodded.

  Dan didn’t find it easy to give his answer. Not just because they were in a disgusting sewer with the smell of shit all around them. But giving such an honest answer made him open his heart in a way that felt… alien? The closest he had even been this emotionally vulnerable was towards Angie during the Combat Games. Beyond the basic camaraderie he’s had with his team and other Alpha agents, he had never shown much emotion other than passionate anger towards assholes who have hurt his friends. Ada was technically still an agent from an enemy shard which the situation even more bizarre.

  But there was something else he needed to get out there.

  “Love can’t exist on its own. It’s a packaged deal,” he said.

  Ada stared down at the flowing stream then looked back at him. “What do you mean?”

  Dan swallowed, carefully thinking on his words. “When people like my mom and Ben put their lives on the line for my sake, and when I did the same for my teammates in all of my previous missions, it wasn’t just the power of love. Love by itself is just an emotion that comes and goes. If you love someone, you also have to protect them.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Is that why your hatred towards Kate runs so deeply?” she asked. “Because you feel that you failed to protect the teammates that died from her betrayal?”

  Dan couldn’t even bare to look at Ada. It wasn’t because she said anything offensive, but he had no idea that words could paralyze him to this degree. His eyes stayed on the flowing sludge in the middle of the sewer. The grey brown tinge to the waters, the bubbles along various parts of the flowing sludge, and the sounds of the flowing streams occupied him. The stench was a mere afterthought while Ada’s words kept him stuck.

  Once he got his nerve back, he turned and continued walking along the side passage of the sewer.

  “I-I think it’s best if we continued the mission,” he said in a low voice.

  “Okay then,” Ada said, responding softly.

  Dan continued following the red hexagon on his HUD. The rest of the drab and nasty scenery blurred all together into one mesh that he simply wanted to escape from. The waypoint finally led to a ladder that ascended up to a manhole cover. The red hexagon then shifted and floating to the top of the ladder. They finally reached the exit.

  He began climbing first. He reached the top and pushed up against the manhole cover. He didn’t expect the slab of metal to be so damn heavy. Resorting to both hands, Dan finally got the cover to budge and pushed it out of the way. A wave of fresh air hit his face and he was thankful to be breathing clean air again. Or at least as clean as the air in an active warzone could be.

  Dan reached for the pavement and pulled himself up. He feet finally touched the surface and he stood up and looked around. He was in the same city under red overcast skies and was under siege by the Church of Nanotology.

  He heard Ada climb out behind him and slid the manhole cover back in place. Dan kept an eye on his surroundings, constantly swerving his head in multiple directions and taking in his immediate surroundings. The red hexagon floated past his vision and laid beyond what looked like a corporate building that stood about forty floors tall.

  This particular part of the city hadn’t deteriorated nearly to the same degree. Dan didn’t see numerous corpses piling up anywhere and most of the buildings were relatively intact. Parked vehicles rested silently on the sides and not one of them was set ablaze or flipped over. He had a hard time spotting any property damage beyond a few smashed windows.

  While looking around, he spotted something strange in the corner of his eye. He jerked his head down and saw Ada’s hand reaching for something close to his coat on his left side. She abruptly pulled her hand away and when he looked up to see her reaction, she stared off to the distance, seemingly scanning the rooftops for threats.

  Dan’s handgun was on his right mount on the side if his coat. His newly obtained sword was placed along his back. He also didn’t recall putting anything into his outer pockets. So that ruled out the possibility of Ada trying to steal weapons from him. She also had her own gear which made that theory even weaker. Then a crazy and impossible scenario popped up in his mind.

  If Ada was reaching for his left side that didn’t have anything for her to take, then maybe she was reaching for his hand? He replayed that short interaction in his mind and saw her fingers almost make contact with his palm before she abruptly pulled away.

  Before he could theorize even more, there was one way to find out for sure.

  “Ada, something wrong?” he asked.

  She stopped scanning the rooftops around her then turned her head to him. “I—,” her eyes suddenly went wide and Dan’s ears were hit with a sudden crash behind him. The sounds was like something metal and heavy dropping right behind him accompanied with glass shattering.

  He spun around and saw a glowing slash mark run across the entire length of the forty-floor building nearby. The entire building slowly slid down his direction. Thousands of tons worth of concrete, steel and glass were about to bury him.

  “Run! Get the fuck away!”

  Him and Ada instantly ran along the road. Dan activated his berserk to give himself the desperate speed boost he needed to his sprint speed while Ada used her warp dancer and kept pace with him. Her multi-colored afterimages along with her swift jumps and spins in midair would have looked graceful and beautiful if Dan wasn’t running for his life from a giant collapsing building.

  He had no idea how far he had ran until he heard a loud crash far behind him and the ground briefly shook. Dan glanced over his shoulder out of morbid curiosity. The collapsing building didn’t crumble into a giant pile of rubble and twisted materials like he expected it to. The severed section of the structure had found a particularly sturdy neighbour to lean against. The sight was bizarre to say the least.

  On ground level, dust floating in the air on the road behind him. Whatever cars and other vehicles that were underneath the path of the building had been crushed. The majority of the building was somehow still intact as the building leaned on top of another building across the street. Somehow, this other structure was made of harder stuff as the squat building didn’t get squashed under the weight of the forty-floor behemoth. Dan scrutinized the little details in the bizarre sight. The cracking and raining of glass from the shattered windows, not just from the collapsing structure but nearby buildings and vehicles hit by the tremor.

  The car alarms that rang and reached his ears from all around drowned out everything else. Ada suddenly popped up beside him, her trailing afterimages disappearing as she powered down her warp dancer. Dan also powered down from his berserk mode.

  “Ada, did you see who or what caused this? You must have saw it before I did,” he asked.

  “That glowing slash mark across the structure. It came from a wave of energy that chopped through the building like a scythe,” she said. “I couldn’t see the source of the attack.”

  “So somebody just casually decided to chop down a building like it was just a set of weeds in a garden?”

  “It was no tank shell, missile or airstrike. I’ve heard that higher-ranked Church agents with their overwhelming power in corrosia can summon attacks with that level of destructive power.”

  Dan ran his sleeve over his forehead, wiping off sweat. “So, that attack might be from the cult master we’re hunting?”

  Ada nodded. “Possibly. I’ve also seen Judith pull off an attack similar to that. She would spawn that same golden blade in her hand and with one swing, she sends a wave of cutting energy that slices through anything in its path. Once you move up the ranks with your corrosia abilities, your ability to shape the world around you also exponentially increases.”

  While Dan tried to wrap his mind around having such destructive power literally in the palm of one’s hand, Ada looked up at the collapsed building and squinted. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened. But he had no time to process what Ada had seen.

  His entire body felt paralyzed as he couldn’t move, no matter how much effort he put in his muscles. Since he couldn’t even move his head, he glanced down with his eyes and saw his feet lift off the ground, along with a swirl of faint white energy wrapped around his body. The energy looked like faint mist but somehow it had an iron grip on him that wouldn’t let go as he continued to rise rapidly off the ground.

  “Dan! Enemies on top of the ruined building,” Ada shouted at him.

  His entire body rotated on its own in mid air as he rose higher. Eventually he reached just a few dozen meters above the collapsed building and saw a trio of robed Church agents. Two of the agents opened fire with their weapons, blasting radioactive rods down onto the streets below at Ada. The one in the middle had his hand raised and Dan immediately found the source of the strange energy that had taken hold of him.

  A stretch of the white energy extended out of the Church agent’s palm. In the agent’s other hand, he had an HoA rifle and lifted up the weapon, aiming at Dan. He was still completely immobilized by whatever this bizarre magic technique this was.

  Dan had one special move in his arsenal that could turn the tables and get him out of this mess. He conjured up the familiar feeling of hate and anger within himself and stared it the agent who had him bound.

  Glare activated.

  The Church agent immedaitely combusted into flames. The fires spread throughout his robes and within seconds he was engulfed entirely by flames conjured up by Dan. The hold his enemy had broke and Dan began plummeting in the air. The only ground beneath him was the side of the collapsed building.

  Berserk mode activated.

  Dan landed on his feet, both boots putting hairline cracks into the glass windows. The Church agent was still writhing in flames while his closest teammate jerked his hooded head in their direction. Dan sprung into action and quickly closed the gap between him and the Church agent slowly raised his rifle at him. He crossed the ten meter distance in a heartbeat and was alredy within the agent’s guard.

  Dan had his arm crossed over his chest and then lashed out with a nasty backhand across the Church agent’s face. His other arm quickly grabbed the elongated rifle out of the agent’s hands and he briefly watched his enemy plummet to his death onto the streets below.

  He spun and pointed the newly equipped rifle at the last remaining agent who laid flat on his stomach, still blasting. Dan took that as a good sign that Ada was still alive down there. He aimed the rifle and pulled the trigger. The weapon gave him kick back that even Dan felt through the berserk mode. A brilliant beam of green vapor raced through the air and incinerated the agent’s entire head and penetrated through the building.

  He powered down from the form and was blindsided by how damned heavy this rifle was. He took a brief scan of another new weapon from the Church.

  Name: Hand of Vengeance (HoV)

  Manufacturer: Prodical Arms (Church Subsidiary)

  6-round magazine

  13.5 x 94mm radioactive rods

  Description: The most hard-hitting and deadly sniper rifle known to man. Each of its already deadly radioactive rods are accompanied by tips made from highly modified alloys imbued with corrosia. This combination makes its rounds to penetrate all known armor and energy shield systems. This is Prodical Arms’ answer to the crack shot cannon.

  Warning: Radiation and toxic damage against organic targets.

  This gun appeared to be the Church’s equivalent to a sniper rifle. It packed a thick magazine behind its trigger and had a silver-coppery sheen for its overall finish. Its elongated barrel still emitted green-colored smoke from the shot. The weapon was a powerhouse, but Dan frowned when he realized he had kicked its owner down onto the streets and forgot to scavenge spare magazines. He also doubted that neither Kodak or Alpha Corp would have spare mags for this available to buy. Plus, the sniper was a bitch to carry. The length of this weapon substantially exceeded the full length of the Conservative sword and it weight what he estimated to be twenty kilos.

  The waypoint updated once against and now the hexagon pointed Dan down beneath his feet. For some reason, he had to enter through the collapsed building to get to this bunker that held the artefact he needed. His HUD then popped up an incoming call from Judith.

  “Dan, there’s been a… complication,” she said.

  “Yeah. Nothing but complications on my end too. One of those Church assholes just lifted my ass off the ground and now I’m on top of a collapsed building with no way down except through it. My nice little hexagon you shoved into my HUD is pointing my through the building. Didn’t you say this artefact was supposed to be in storage in some bunker?”

  “Yeah,” she said, stretching the word. “So about that. One of my Bloodknights contacted me and said the bunker had been breached and a few Church fanatics managed to get away with some stolen artefacts. The specific one I had just for you happened to be one of them.”

  He exhaled at the news. He lowered his Hand of Vengeance as its weight made his arm sore. “So what now? You expect me to go on some wild chase for this stolen artefact? Aren’t there anymore in the bunker? Don’t tell me they stole all of them.”

  “They didn’t, but that one I placed a waypoint on was specifically for you. Its concentration of corrosia was on the moderate side just so that you didn’t become too powerful. If I accidentally gave you an artefact that had high corrosia concentration, it might actually kill you. We can’t have that now can we?”

  Dan huffed. “Guess not. All you efforts to bring me here would be for nothing.”

  “Exactly. According to my waypoint, it appears that someone inside that building has your artefact. So be a good boy and get it.”

  “Now wait a—”

  Judith cut the call and Dan was left on his own. Then he received another call, this time from Ada.

  “Hey, it’s good to hear from you,” Dan said. “I got these assholes off your back.”

  “Good,” she said. “But what’s going on with the waypoint? It’s pointing me at the collapsed structure.”

  “The artefact with my name on it is inside. Some asshole stole it from the bunker and now I have to go get it. Do you have some way to get up here?.”

  Dan dropped his new sniper rifle, knowing that he had no use for such a heavy and bulky weapon in such tight interiors.

  “I can’t get to you,” she said. “That collapse has triggered a hornet’s nest of activity on the streets. Cultists and Church agents have made themsleves known.” Dan glance down and saw green tracers slashing the air and impacting the entrance of a shopping mall. “I can handle myself, but you’re on your own.”

  Dan stared down at his feet. He stood on a giant glass panel that was the window of this building. He activated his berserk again and lifted up his right foot. Bringing down his boot smashed the glass window and Dan fell through into the ruined office room. He quickly powered down and the red static flared and disappeared.

  “Stay safe Ada,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”

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