Gorge parked his van by the empty dumpsters and walked out gingerly, like an old man in pain. Now that Nestra paid attention, he was already different compared to before the purge. The bald asshole used to have this strong fat build that said he could take a punch and deliver two, but now his loose shirt hung loose from visibly narrower shoulder. His belt was tighter too. He looked softer. Like a civilian. The loose shirt also hid the colostomy bag and possibly a handgun too. His expression felt more guarded, more bitter. Nestra reassessed her opinion. He was down but not out and his unassuming appearance was just a shield. The retired captain expressed relief when Nestra walked out of the shadows. She’d made sure there were no cameras around, and the highway superstructure above them would block the sight of surveillance drones. It wouldn’t help if someone was actively keeping an eye on her but that was a risk she had to take. “Palladian, by Riel did you ask me for fun goodies this time. What are you hunting? A war walker? A plane?” “Heavily modified aug who attacked us during the purge. One of the survivors,” she calmly replied. His expression fell into one of shock. “Zapped his ass. I think he has a grudge.” “You still have the ‘Window Maker’, right?” Nestra fell to the side as a wave went over her. Red error signals covered her overlay, showing damage. Her chest was constricted but when she caught herself, she realized she was unharmed. Shinoda lay on the ground. There was some blood. No time to check. Cleaver was walking towards her again. She tossed her last grenade at the aug but she could see its large form walking through the cloud. “CONNECTION RE ESTABLISHED. EXITING SAFE MODE.” “Angmoh girl, you back! I’m jamming him but…” Bullets peppered the shield. The local thugs Shinoda had faced the first day were firing their peashooters at the advancing colossus. “This is Valerian. I’ve engaged the sniper. Delay Cleaver if you can!” But the aug was already drawing a weapon from its back, this time some sort of shotgun. The system that helped him shoot those who shot him must have been malfunctioning or the street urchins would be sieves by now. Still, had to draw him away from them. Give Valerian time. “Get them to stop firing and get Shinoda,” she ordered as she raced out of cover. The thugs hesitated and started looking around like headless chicken instead of taking cover. Idiots. Nestra dropped her submachine gun and drew the Window Maker. Her first three bullets carved deep dents into the shield. Sparks flew, and the shotgun swiveled in her general direction. There was a door in front of her. She crashed through it just as Cleaver carved a crater in the wall to her left. Better not to get hit once. Behind her, one of the thugs exploded in a shower of gore. That motivated the rest to seek cover. Heavy stomps confirmed Cleaver was going after her. Yes, he had to have her. She knew he could grab Shinoda and get out and he would accomplish an objective, but she also knew he couldn’t. That was twice now she stymied his efforts. He had to have her, and she would use it to drive him away from the others. He was delectably predictable. Nestra rushed up some stairs. That was an abandoned part of the hab block, too exposed to the outside. Completely walled off and emptied. She knew it because she’d patrolled it once or twice. It was scrupulously kept free of trash to avoid a severe cockroach infestation. Not much light but that wasn’t a problem. She reloaded her window maker and considered her next move. She just needed to delay Cleaver, really. She would use Valerian to deliver the last blow, and she had an idea. After all, augs had their drawbacks. “Angmoh girl, he’s right behind you! I’ll keep jamming his shit but be careful lah.” Nestra angled right and raced, Cleaver stomping behind her. He was really fast in a straight line but she kept turning and turning. He also seemed to always know where she was. “Scramble his optics?” “All I can do is mess with the targeting. He has a LOT of shit running at the same time.” “Palladian, Agent Nephrite has dealt with the sniper. Just hold on for a little longer,” Kim’s voice said. Cleaver was gaining on her. She planted a foot on a nearby wall and turned into a room, then jumped, crossing it in one go. The heavy stomps rang in the corridor behind her. She aimed the window maker and shot through the wall, once, twice. She was hitting something. Something clipped her calf. Hard. She fell as a lancing pain tore through it. Blood. She was hit, though the armor had stopped half of her leg from being torn off. Red signals on her display. It hurt like a bitch. “LACERATIONS DETECTED. FIRST AID IN PROGRESS.” A cool flood dulled the pain as she rolled to the side just as the wall exploded. Cleaver came through in a shower of crushed plaster, a behemoth of metal behind a damaged riot shield. She’d also hit his flank. The colossus thundered towards her like the judgment of God himself. It was too much for the old, tired floor. It broke down under him and sent him crashing down below. Nestra’s relief was short-lived. The riot shield embedded itself through the damn ground right behind her, thrown with great strength. She grabbed for the foam just as what remained of the floor cracked and she fell down. Cleaver was waiting for her at the bottom like a giant trapdoor spider. The dim light turned his heavy armor into an obsidian shell and his eyes shone with a malevolent red light. She aimed the foam dispenser just as his shotgun swiveled towards her. He didn’t shoot because he thought he had her. She didn’t hesitate. Heavy, quickly expanding foam covered the entire right side of his body, including the gun arm. Hydraulics groaned under the strain but that foam wouldn’t peel off so easily. It was designed to disable walkers. Nestra landed on her good leg and aimed center mass, but Cleaver’s left arm intercepted the shot with preternatural speed. It blew up to shards right to the elbow, yet the punch still connected and the last shot went wide. The Window Maker slipped from her numb fingers. She grabbed her sword with both arms and drew, hitting the damaged arm and releasing an electric charge at the same time. The damaged arm connected with her belly. Even through the armor and even dulled, the blow hit her like a truck. She was sent crashing against a nearby wall. The entire armor was flashing red by now but her head was protected. Unfortunately, she fell on her wounded leg and collapsed. More blood. The smoking titan that was Cleaver reached for his namesake weapon hanging on his back and realized he no longer had the fingers to grip the hilt. Nestra grinned at him through the pain. She picked herself up painfully. Bruised ribs, for sure. “What’s funny?” a cold voice asked her, low and robotic. The red glare was fixed on her as the wounded titan closed the distance between them, Nestra standing but not moving. She smiled even more broadly when Valerian landed right behind him, when Cleaver’s torso rotated on itself too fast for her to follow and when it didn’t make a difference. With shining green threads lighting his skin, the gleam pushed a large thing that looked like a cattle prod in Cleaver’s wounded flank and pressed a button. Shimmering purple bolts arced from the weapon into the aug who shook and collapsed soon after. Electric mana. That was an artifact, and not a shitty one either. The titan fell on his side like a hunk of metal. Valerian turned to her. “Nestra! Are you alright? That was so impressive!” Power filled Nestra’s demonic self. Elation lifted her spirit above the pain and the stress to a state of felicity. Yes. YES! She’d won the hunt with the conditions she’d set, just the way it was meant to be because she was the fucking best! The best of the best! Riel dammit that felt so good. Victory. Full victory. She felt like laughing maniacally. “Don’t worry, he won’t move for a while. This voltage should have disabled him for at least an hour.” Nestra realized she’d been fixedly looking at the fallen aug. Valerian’s words finally registered, turning bliss into amusement. She pointed at a steam of steaming pink fluid dripping from the aug’s ears. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s walking that off.” “What? Oh! Ooooh… Oh no. Well, this is, but nevermind I need to see to your leg. Quickly.” Nestra looked at her calf. Yeah ok she wasn’t walking that one off either. Crushed raspberries on half of it. Thank fuck for the painkillers. “Not here, let me carry you out first to Shinoda. I still want to keep an eye on him.” “One moment please,” Kim’s voice said in the comms. “Mr Flash, once again your Continue reading more chapters on NovelHub for the best experience.” “You will be compensated for your efforts. Good. Now please, approach the dearly departed Mr Cleaver.” Nestra removed her mask and regretted it a little because it stank like hell in here. She waited while Kim essentially guided Valerian towards a secured compartment lodged in the aug’s upper back. As expected, it contained a drive. “His psychological profile suggested that he wouldn’t trust subordinates with the drive, and would most likely keep it on himself. Please reconvene to the parking lot. I will be here shortly.” Valerian actually princess carried Nestra back, and though it implied Nestra hadn’t done the lion’s share of taking Cleaver out, she still appreciated it in a weird, intimate kind of way. It helped that Valerian was friendly, and that she trusted him. She was soon dropped in a prepared stretcher by a freshly landed hovercraft next to Shinoda. The poor detective was fine except for Kim fussing over him with the sort of angry concern some people had for reckless partners. Nestra had seen her mom do the same thing for her dad when he returned wounded from a raid. It distracted her from having to look at her mangled calf, especially at the beginning when Valerian extracted pieces of metal from the meat. “I apologize for any discomfort,” he said with a winning smile. “Think nothing of it. I’m so anesthetized down there you could stab me and I’d never know. I am thankful for your help, by the way. Both the killing and the healing.” “Yes, well, the killing part was unintended,” he said with a wince. “I thought his brain cavity was more isolated.” “Ok, all done, I will now proceed with the healing part of that’s alright with you, Officer Palladian.” “Look, friend, you’re knuckles deep in my Gastrocnemius muscle so I think at this point you can call me Nestra. Besides, you just did it two minutes ago.” “I got carried away. And sorry for the attention you’re getting.” Nestra looked back towards the market and the people she was meant to protect. They didn’t know Cleaver had been here for her, because of the trap she’d laid so they couldn’t be angry. Even the thugs who were crying for the death of one of their own still nodded when they met her eyes. Besides them, a horde of people and one of Flash’s drone surveyed the devastation with fearful eyes. Shredded pillars, pulverized wrecks and fallen debris punctuated an ashy landscape of cracked concrete with steel beams exposed like rotting bones. A long blood trail snaked down like a wound where the woman aug had fallen, torso pierced by Shinoda’s solid aim. The apocalyptic scene painted the tale of a desperate battle even though Nestra had felt in control, and the few glances aimed her way carried respect and even a little bit of admiration. Kim briefly stopped by Nestra’s stretcher on her way to the techs. She leaned over Nestra with a very serious expression, though her eyes were a little puffy. “Excellent performance, Officer Palladian. You truly were the right person for the job. And thank you… for protecting him.” “I wish I didn’t have to depend on just you two, and you, of course, Officer Nephrite.” “Happy to help, ma’am.” “Now let me see what’s on that drive. You can join me when you are done. I assume you are just as curious as I am to see if we found our grail.” Nestra was, in fact, really curious but she knew better than to hurry Valerian. He was taking his time and she was really happy she couldn’t feel what he was doing. Slowly, the damaged fibers were fixed and reattached until, with a last flourish, skin smoothly closed over the wound, She wouldn’t even have a scar. “Ok you got me, I’m impressed,” she admitted. “What about my swordsmanship?” “I’ll test your cattle prodmanship at a later date.” “Thank you, Officer Palladian. I shall hold you to it.” Valerian seemed super pleased for a moment and it gave his nice face and jade iris a sort of happy sheen man didn’t live in the real world, the sweet summer baby. Nestra wished for him to never lose that naive hope as she sat, but Valerian wasn’t done with her. “No no, first we cover the lesion with a protective bandage. You can remove it in two days and not before.” He applied a rather expensive BaiHua product, something designed to solidify the healed tissue as they tended to break very easily in the first few days after a healing was done. “You also can’t walk for another half an hour so the new flesh can settle. Let me get you a wheelchair.” Valerian dutifully pushed Nestra towards a working station at the edge of the hovercraft’s temporary base. Kim was already looking at the screen with a frown. A very long table was scrolling fast, filled with numbers. It followed the same pattern as the lone cached document they’d found on the first drive, but this time, there were a lot more data points. “Millions of readings. Tens of millions, not just in District Fifteen but closer to central and directly outside of the walls as well. I have no idea what to do with this. Are thaums the main measurement?” “Can you model it?” Kim asked. “Yes, if we send it to central they can get an AI to render it in a couple of seconds but… what are you looking for?” Nestra was starting to get a sneaking suspicion. “Use a 3D modeling of the city with thaum levels over time as the Z axis. You can use a temperature model as the base.” “Yes, they are probably the main point of interest. I doubt pressure and altitude matter,” Kim added. The tech sent the file. “They’ll need a moment. In the meanwhile, we can check the other files on the drive.” And they did. Kim was the first to gasp. “Riel, this is… Cleaver could not have possibly gathered that much.” “It’s signed by a user named Caine,” the tech helpfully added. “The most powerful ganger gleam. He should be in a Gidung corpo prison now… Hm.” The drive hosted a treasure trove of evidence with sources ranging from Gidung internal communications to ganger accounts and even videos of corpo cybernetics being shipped to Fifteen. It was more than damning. It was enough to send someone to the Red House until they died. Finally, Nestra managed to spot the face of the person responsible for her near death and the loss of the last standing MaxSec squad. He was a man, handsome in a conventional way, nose remade by plastic surgery. A mixed blood, half anglo half Korean probably. His straight hair was combed to the side and his suit always impeccably wrapped around an athletic body. A man of average height. One of the many corpo clones climbing the ladder of upper management. His name was Watkins. She had no fucking idea who he was. The internal mail he signed spoke of unique opportunities, of bottom line, of investments. Nestra’s lingering happiness at the victory melted when her gaze swept over the text there looking for anything, any hint that her would-be murderer had acted out of a grand vision to change or destroy the world, for vengeance or something but it all remained so very, very mundane. Meaningless. He had acted out of greed and ambition. She wasn’t even factored in the whole calculation. Hell, the entire purge had been left to the cops. She was just a collateral casualty in a scheme to make unprecedented amounts of cash. It was almost disappointing, how banal it was, Evil committed in a sanitized and distant manner, almost casually. She’d been personally hurt by actions decided in a boardroom months before the fact by people who were not even aware she would be there to bleed on their fucking project. She wasn’t even a liability in their eyes. She was an externality. But then her happiness returned. They were going to get fucked because of an externality. They were going to get fucked, right? “Riel, that is… hold on, let me send this to my supervisor,” Kim whispered excitedly. Kim left them behind, reaching to her ear. A second later, she spoke in rapid-fire Korean to someone out of sight. Nestra watched her hold for a while, then the quick speech resumed and lasted for a good fifteen minutes during which she acted increasingly agitated. Valerian and Nestra exchanged a glance, then shrugged. She had no idea if it was good or bad, and eavesdropping with a translation software would be very rude. By the time Kim came back, her eyes were like saucers. “Holy Riel. I just talked to the mayor.” “Yeah. Let’s keep it all under wrap for now but let me tell you, the stone is falling down the cliff.” “Ma’am, you may want to see this,” the tech interrupted. The simulation was here. Nestra and the others gathered around the screen, watching a rendition of Threshold appear there in cold blue, then red, pulsating bars covered the overlay. An angry red root spread over Fifteen and beyond to the wall. It was almost alive in the way it ebbed and flowed like a slumbering limb. The root burrowed through the rendition in complete disregard of man-made constructions. It was Nestra’s turn to gasp. “Palladian? What am I looking at?” “I know it was formulated as a hypothesis but… to see it here. This a telluric line or… I guess you call it a dragon vein. It’s a mana river.” “A mana river. Some places on earth have a higher mana concentration than others, and the ambient mana levels are increasing as well, which means that this river will only grow stronger over time, or at least it should. Gidung, well, Watkins was probably hoping for that.” “And this is valuable how?” “Whoever controls the space around a river can have their D-class recover faster, have better enchantments run on ambient mana, and I think they can even coalesce mana crystals from thin air with the proper arrays. I know it’s been tried in some of the largest portal worlds.” Kim blinked and so did Valerian. “You are surprisingly well-informed, Officer Palladian.” “I was originally supposed to be my father’s heir. I may look like a muscle brain now because that was my best option but I’m not stupid,” Nestra replied, pride stung by the comment. Kim actually gave her a short bow of apology, a sign the demon girl was in tremendously good favor. “My apologies, Officer Palladian. I was condescending.” “It’s ok. And yeah, this is… I don’t know how to explain it except to say that a mana river is literally a gold mine for the future of Earth. And that branch is already in Threshold. All that’s left to do is…”