Animus Boxed Set 1 (Books 1-4): Initiate, Co-Op, Death Match, Advance

by Joshua Anderle

  The final gun, a Siren, was energy-based. It looked to be more of a stun gun, better used against robotics and tech than human mercs or the like—maybe good against aliens? He didn’t feel much like taking a biology course.

  “These are all specialist weapons,” Kaiden called. “I mean, they look good, feel good, got some nifty abilities and all, but don’t you have somethin’ a little more…I don’t know, classic?”

  “Well, we do train specialists here at Nexus,” Sasha reminded him. “However, I see your point. We may have something.”

  Kaiden saw the guns in the cabinet disappear to be replaced by a single pistol—black and copper with a long barrel and a curved grip and trigger. He picked it up and examined it.

  “Debonair.” He smiled. The name was certainly better. It looked like a rapid single-shooter. Aim, then pull the trigger. It was all up to you how many you killed and whether you were still standing.

  “It was one of our options for a few years, but it quickly grew obsolete in the eyes of our students and development teams. It’s energy-based with a strong piercing shot but only fires as fast as you can pull the trigger and doesn’t have a lot of stopping power or shielding damage. Unless you can hit the same target multiple times, of course.”

  Kaiden smiled. It worked for him.

  “Give me a few targets,” Kaiden requested. The bullet-riddled dummies disappeared and were replaced by five new ones in a V formation.

  He pointed to the one furthest to the left, exhaled, then pulled the trigger.

  It felt as if he’d hardly touched it when it fired, sending a streak of heat from the barrel into the chest of the dummy, dead center.

  Oh, hell yes.

  He shot quickly down the line; one to the head, then the chest and appendages, adjusting to the firing speed and recoil. The gun was brisk, accurate, and left a hole. The guys who wrote this thing off must have been spoiled as hell.

  “I’ll take it,” Kaiden exclaimed, pointing the gun to the ground as he looked over to see the bullet-riddled dummies disappear.

  “Well, congratulations. I’ll add it to your academy profile for future use,” Laurie confirmed. “Now then, before we begin the test proper, I need to try something first. Hold still, would you.”

  “I thought you said we weren’t doing any more of that map swapping stuff.” Kaiden sighed, his belligerence returning now that the gunplay was over for the moment.

  “We’re not. I merely need to test the damage output. It’s more difficult to hit a moving target, obviously,” Laurie explained.

  “I see… Wait, am I the—” Before he finished his question, Kaiden felt a searing pain in his chest as he was knocked to the ground, coughing and sputtering as he rolled behind the cabinet and scrambled to his knees.

  “Asshole!” He growled his fury.

  “That seems sufficient, although I suppose I should ask…” Laurie mused. “Is it real enough for you, Kaiden?”

  “Yeah, no, it’s great,” he snapped back.

  “Very well, let us begin,” Sasha instructed.

  Kaiden looked out from behind the cabinet and saw a number of faceless, humanoid beings materialize in the bay. They were all different colors—white, black, red, blue, and yellow. Some held guns while others had melee weapons, and some held nothing at all.

  “The test will begin in thirty seconds. Each target is worth a certain number of points depending upon weapon, shots required to destroy them, and ability. Your final score will depend on your points earned, and for every hit you take, you will have points deducted.” Sasha’s voice droned the instructions without apparent emotion.

  Kaiden saw a red number ‘30’ appear overhead in the ceiling and begin to count down.

  “I hope you’re ready,” Sasha cautioned.

  Kaiden’s smile returned as he faced down his targets, raising Debonair with a measured movement. “Damn straight.”

  Chapter Ten

  Kaiden dove behind a low wall, barely dodging a blast of electricity fired at him from above. Flying bots, yet another thing he was not prepared for.

  Still, that only made two things out of a potentially infinite number of possibilities to be prepared for.

  Still looking good.

  He peered briefly around the wall, sighting on two bots which climbed a stack of boxes to try to reach higher ground. They stood right out in the open.

  He ducked out, aimed, and pulled the trigger twice. With one hit in the head and the other through the neck, both disappeared. If you wanna be that dumb, I’ll be happy to take the free points.

  Of course, he realized he was trash-talking artificial opponents that probably couldn’t register insults at all.

  “Die, you pale meat-sack.” Kaiden heard another bot yell at him in a stilted voice, and he looked over to see one aiming a rifle barrel at his head from a few feet away. Instinct took over. He leaped down and back, firing a shot that pierced its knee. It fell as he placed two more shots into its chest, then it vanished.

  “Pale? I’m not pale!” Kaiden huffed.

  “That’s what you’re focusing on?” Chief jeered.

  Kaiden looked around. “Makes me sound like I’m sickly or something.”

  “He also called you a meat-sack.”

  “Eh, I’ve seen Sci-Fi. That’s kinda basic for droids and the like, right?” Kaiden asked, drawing the top of his gun back to reveal a larger exhaust vent. He let it go, and it snapped back into place after it cooled a bit.

  “Still disgraceful, though. On your left, up high,” Chief warned, his tone suddenly brisk.

  Kaiden looked back to see the three smaller flying creatures from before. He took off in the direction of a pillar. Security walls and reinforced barriers popped up throughout the bay, but they also seemed to disappear or deactivate every so often while the pillars had remained so far. They were the safer bet.

  Even among all the chaos and gunfire, he could hear the static discharge as the flying bots’ guns charged up. He looked back to see if he could take a quick shot. The flying group broke out of formation, seemingly anticipating the possibility, but he saw his chance. Kaiden reached back and aimed a bit further to the left of one of the disengaging flyers. He squeezed the trigger, and the bullet intercepted the flyer as it tried to bank out.

  Yes. He smiled as he leaped out of the way of the blasts from the other two and behind the pillar. He slumped down as they flew by and prepared to fire as they circled around.

  “Hey, watching you get shot at is fun and all, but mind if I get in on the action here?”

  “Sure. What are you going to do? Blink furiously at them?”

  “Tell me what you think of this, smartass.” With that, Kaiden saw Chief’s avatar disappear.

  “Did…did he just bail on me?” he asked, perplexed.

  So much for a faithful companion.

  The hum of the flyer’s electric gun snapped him back. Dammit, he’d let himself get distracted. However, as he went to realign his shot, he saw the flyer on the right slam itself into the other, knocking it out of the way as it fired, missing Kaiden. Then it turned its own gun and blasted itself into oblivion.

  “What?”

  “Pretty bitchin’ right?” Chief asked gleefully, his avatar reappearing on display with a new tab of functions.

  “Where’d you go? What’s onscreen?”

  “Look to your left.”

  Kaiden did, seeing the flyer hovering right next to him. He jumped up quickly before realizing it wasn’t following him or charging its gun.

  “The dandy professor loaded these things up as drones, which means they have a connection I can jump into,” Chief proclaimed proudly. “All simulated, of course.”

  “Huh…that actually is pretty cool,” Kaiden admitted. “I would have thought he would have blocked that.”

  “No need to, typically, remember? Not just anyone can do what I can,” the EI bragged.

  “Technically, it’s because of the special device in my skull, not just you
,” Kaiden reminded him.

  “Not that you remembered, you trigger-happy dunce.”

  “Dammit.” He sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you that.” Kaiden took refuge behind the pillar again.

  “So, what do ya got for me?”

  Kaiden looked back. He didn’t see any more flyers, but the soldiers were loaded in at a much more rapid pace and quickly made their way over to him. He looked at the board—he still had more than three minutes to go.

  Plenty of time for extra points.

  “You could be bait.”

  “Sorry, forgot a wig.”

  “Then you go get ʼem, buddy,” Kaiden suggested dryly.

  “Semper fi, motherfuckers!” Chief bellowed as he flew off, blasts of electricity following in his wake.

  Kaiden moved out from his hiding spot and dashed across the room, firing shots along the way. The soldiers were now a massed rainbow-colored group. They seemed to have stronger weapons than him, but they now had a distraction to deal with.

  He continued to fire as he saw a barrier appear about twenty yards away. Two minutes and fifty seconds left on the clock. Three shots were immediately followed by three dead grunts. Good to see he hadn’t gotten rusty.

  “Chief, how ya doin’?” Kaiden asked and received a cacophony of curses, yells, and excited exclamations in response. “Double back. They’re all making a beeline this way.”

  “Gotcha. Like shooting anthropomorphic skittles over here!” Chief hooted. Kaiden then heard a loud bang and another zap. “Son of a bitch. Flyers are back. They are upgraded and very pissed.”

  “Can’t you just cast yourself into one of them?” Kaiden questioned, watching as Chief flew back into range with a trio of V-shaped flyers speeding after him like frenzied sharks chasing a maimed barracuda.

  “Nah, they’re firewalled this time. I guess the professor patched that. I don’t suppose you know how to hack, do ya?”

  “Trigger-happy moron, remember?”

  “Oh, then that gives us a new option. Shoot them, you moron,” Chief roared, his orb glowing red in Kaiden’s display.

  “Say please sometimes. It’s like you don’t care about my feelings anymore,” he replied sarcastically.

  Kaiden whipped around and fired at the flying bots. He was able to graze a couple, but they weaved between his shots. Chief was right. These were an upgrade. He saw the barrier that was protecting him begin to vanish and grunted in annoyance.

  “Chief, fly past me and keep steady. I’ll get them from behind.”

  “Gotcha,” the EI acknowledged. He cut hard to the left and began to serpentine to avoid more shots from the other flyers.

  Kaiden ran off, rolling and dodging between shots from the now distracted ground bots. Another wall loomed a few feet ahead and he rolled behind it but felt a shot make contact with his calf. He hissed in pain. Simulated or not, it felt like fire just tore through his leg.

  He saw Chief and his pursuers fly past, rolled onto his back, and steadied his aim.

  “Drop out of the air on my mark, then retreat,” Kaiden ordered. He exhaled as he lined up his targets.

  “Mark!” he yelled. Chief’s flying bot deactivated briefly and dropped out of the air like a brick before reactivating and speeding in the opposite direction of the enemy flyers. Kaiden pressed rapidly down on the trigger, landing multiple shots on the flyers. Two evaporated, and the remaining one banked left.

  It circled around and gunned for him. It streamed smoke but remained airborne. Kaiden cursed and tried to fire, only to hear the buzzing error alert from his pistol. It had overheated. With a loud expletive, he opened the exhaust vent, but he knew there wasn’t enough time. He was gonna take some shots before the gun cooled.

  “Oh, I got this bastard,” Chief exclaimed. An electric surge crashed into the remaining flyer as Chief flew past. The bot stalled and then crashed into the ground and evaporated.

  “Damn. Nice shootin’, Chief,” Kaiden called.

  “Heh, I just showed that son of a—” Kaiden heard a loud bang, and Chief’s avatar bounced around on the screen. “Biiiittttccchh!” it cried as Kaiden heard the sound of metal crashing into the ground in the distance and a small explosion.

  Kaiden saw Chief flash between a rage-fueled red, a disgusted green, and a somber gray.

  “You flew straight into the mob, didn’t ya?”

  “I’m flying with one eye. My depth perception is shit,” Chief retorted.

  Kaiden couldn’t help but chuckle. He looked over and saw that there were only four seconds left. “It’s all good, Chief. You were pretty badass there for about three seconds.”

  A loud buzzer went off. Kaiden closed the exhaust vent on his gun as the remaining bots dissipated. He walked out into the center of the bay, limping slightly, though he was certainly healing faster than he would in reality.

  It still stung like a sonofabitch.

  “Nice job, Kaiden my boy,” Laurie remarked cheerfully. “An excellent use of your EI’s capabilities, I must say.”

  “It was actually Chief’s idea. I hadn’t considered it,” Kaiden admitted.

  “It is a wonderful thing, the partnership between an initiate and their EI,” Laurie mused poetically.

  “Not exactly intended, however,” Sasha noted. “This was supposed to be a test of your firing and survival skills in their natural state.”

  “I showed plenty.” Kaiden huffed his only slightly defensive disapproval. “Besides, we’re supposed to use our EIs here. I thought that was the point.”

  “You are, but this evaluation test was supposed to create a baseline of your normal abilities,” Sasha explained.

  “Oh, come off it, Commander.” Laurie sighed. “Like you said, this was a test of survival as well as weapon skills. The initiate simply used all tools at his disposal to create the best scenario in his favor. There’s nothing negative about that.”

  “I’m not in disagreement, but considering the circumstances, I have to reconfigure his final score considering the tools used,” Sasha announced.

  “Do what you have to.” Kaiden yawned. “Chief just made this a bit more fun. I think my skills speak for themselves.”

  “As long as you understand, please proceed to the designated room for the profession exam,” Sasha said.

  Kaiden heard the ‘click’ of a door unlocking and turned to see lights turning on behind a window pane and a green light glow over the entrance to the room. He walked over to it casually after rubbing his leg briefly, stretching his arms along the way.

  “Surprised you didn’t pipe in there,” he said in a hushed voice.

  “Eh, didn’t feel like bickering. If they didn’t want to give me my due, screw ʼem. But I gotta give my props—gotta crack shot as my partner. That’ll be handy,”

  “So, I’m a partner now? I’m not a host anymore?”

  “Well, it ain’t that pretty in here and the food bites, so you don’t exactly make a great one, anyway.”

  “I only break out the good stuff for the classy people,” Kaiden jested.

  “So what, you want to get a bowtie or somethin’?”

  He laughed. “Kinda hard to see you as a badass with a bowtie.”

  “Ah, to hell with ya. I’d rock that,” Chief gloated, his hue changing to an amused pink.

  Kaiden’s smile widened, and he released a relaxed sigh as he drew closer to the room. “Guess there’s nothing you can tell me about the exam, huh?”

  “About a profession exam? Nah, it’s not like a test of skills or something. It’s like a questionnaire and a few simulations to see how you would handle different situations. Even if there was a real exam, they would probably tune me out anyway, considering how commander/professor buzzkill just got all uppity,” Chief surmised, shaking his body back and forth onscreen in a weary manner.

  “I getcha.” Kaiden nodded. “Guess I’ll just have to see what happens. It’s not like I have anything else to worry about. I was probably just gonna end up a grunt anyway. The best damn gr
unt on the planet, sure, but still a grunt.”

  “What about that thing that girl said?” Chief asked. “Chiyo? She said that people answer how they feel they should, not how they want to or something like that? Maybe think outside the micro-brain on this, and you might get something better than spare blood for a career,” Chief suggested. “Just don’t go on autopilot like you did when you installed me, and you’ll be fine.”

  “You ever gonna let that go?” Kaiden asked.

  “Hell no.” Chief chuckled. “But hey, I’ll admit, it ain’t startin’ to feel like too much of a slog now.”

  “Well, glad to see ya come around.”

  “Keep this up, and I might even invite you to my next barbeque.”

  “What the hell are you doing in my head?”

  “Oh, look, you’re here. Best of luck and all that,” Chief gibed before fading out.

  “I can still see you in my HUD,” Kaiden said before the avatar disappeared. “Cheeky bastard.” He shook his head as he opened the door to the room.

  A lone chair stood on a circular pad in the middle of the room. Kaiden walked over to it. “I’m here, what’s next?”

  “A moment, Kaiden. Sasha is finishing up tallying your score from the firearms test,” Laurie said.

  “Got it, but do I just twiddle my thumbs or what?”

  “You can go ahead and take a seat. I’m sure he’s almost ready.”

  Kaiden obliged, sat down in the chair, and leaned back. He pondered Chiyo’s words. Should he answer like he wanted to? He tried to make sense of the words. Why shouldn’t he simply go with his experience? He was good at shooting, fighting, and general violence, sure, and he had some other basic skills, but the combination probably wouldn’t turn heads or anything, even outside this place.

  He wasn’t a hacker. Most of his engineering knowledge was mechanical rather than technological, but maybe that could be something? He thought back to the Tsuna he had met at the train station, Geno. He wondered if he cared what others thought he was supposed to do, or if something like that was even a factor to them. Maybe stressing about something like this was a completely foreign idea to them, or maybe they were like ants or something and had a job right out of the womb.