Before I could kill her, however, my Ultimate Ability wore off. Once the three hostile warriors realized I was vulnerable again, they opened up on me.
My Active Ability had already recharged, so I used it to blink out of the line of fire. I then used it two more times. After I used it for the third time, my Active Ability went on cooldown.
Luckily, Lisa’s dome-shaped shield finally wore off. Both my Active and Ultimate Abilities were on cooldown, so I simply raced away from the three enemy warriors, zigzagging from side to side to present a hard target to hit.
Yet some of the bullets hit me in the back, toppling me forward. I collapsed to the ground right in front of Nadia’s rectangular shield. Maya and Thomas stepped toward me, each grabbing one of my arms and dragging me to the other side of the shield before the enemy warriors could finish me off. Maya immediately went to use her magic-like healing abilities on me.
After that, we continued to fight the enemy team. Roman and his battle drone were doing the most damage to our team while he himself always stayed behind Lisa’s rectangular shield. He was not taking any chances. It was up to me to lurk him out of his hiding place or aggravate him enough to cause him to make a mistake. So I was doing my best to constantly rile him up. I was constantly blinking next to him and discharging my weapon at him, and then when he turned on me, blinking away from him before he could fire back at me.
When I used my Active Ability for the hundredth time to materialize next to Roman, he was ready for it. I opened fire on him only for my bullets to zip right through him. I instantly realized Roman had employed Holocopy—a skill that had his battle drone create a holographic copy of Roman.
Before I could glance around to locate the real warrior, my Passive Ability kicked in.
You are in danger. An enemy is aiming at you from behind.
I quickly glanced back over my shoulder. Both Roman and his battle drone were behind me, which meant that he must have employed another skill of his called Transporter, which could teleport him to the current position of his battle drone.
Both Roman and his flying robot opened up on me. I was ready for it, though. Before I could be hurt, I used my Active Ability to blink out of the line of fire.
Roman yelled in rage, realizing that his tactic to kill me had just failed. He was not eager to let me get away with it. His anger clouding his judgment, he activated his Ultimate Ability, turning himself into a berserk. He then dashed after me, running through Lisa’s energy shield.
“No,” Lisa shouted to him. “Get back, Roman!”
He did not heed her advice. He was so keen on dealing with me he did not care about his own safety anymore.
Seemed like my tactic finally worked.
In berserk mode, Roman could run extremely fast. I had to use my Active Ability to avoid being caught by him. When he and I got close to Nadia, she employed her Ultimate Ability, trapping Roman with the four of us inside her dome-shaped energy shield. He did not seem discouraged by the fact that he was now alone with four enemies against him.
When Roman darted at me, I used my Active Ability for the third time to blink out of the shield. Since Roman could not follow me out of the dome-shaped shield, he turned toward Maya and Thomas. However, they were not keen on fighting Roman while he was in the berserk mode, so they raced out of the shield before he could get them. He then turned to face the only enemy that was still inside the shield and thus within his reach—Nadia.
He launched himself at the girl with such a force she got knocked backward and collapsed to the floor. Roman wasted no time climbing on top of her. He began to tear her powered exosuit with bare hands. He was extremely strong while in the berserk mode. Nadia could not knock Roman away from her, because he had pinned her arms to the floor with his knees.
My Active Ability had already recharged, so I blinked inside the energy shield and immediately opened fire on Roman. My bullets ripped into his flesh, but the wounds healed up almost instantly. It was really hard to kill him with regular bullets while he was in the berserk mode.
I created a dark energy bomb and hurled him at Roman. It took care of the guy. The ball of dark energy exploded on impact, hurling him away from Nadia. The girl’s powered exosuit took some damage too, but it was Roman who took the brunt of the blast. He literally got ripped in half. Two halves of his body lay on the ground, intestines and other internal organs falling out of his upper torso.
“No,” Lisa yelled in pain and rage upon witnessing Roman’s death. “You bastards!”
Roman had damaged Nadia’s powered exosuit so badly, it was a total wreck now and could not be used anymore. However, it did not really matter. Now that Daud and Roman were dead, the enemy team hardly posed any threat to us.
Nadia got out of her destroyed exosuit, and we all attacked the hostile team, which now consisted of only two warriors—Lisa and Marina. We focused entirely on Lisa because Marina was no threat to us at all.
It was not long before it was over. We walked to Lisa lying supine on the floor. She was alive, but her powered exosuit was badly damaged, electrical sparks erupting between the exposed wires in the ragged holes in her exosuit. We stood next to Lisa, keeping our weapons pointed at the girl. Her powered exosuit was clearly unresponsive, but Lisa could still get out of it. She chose not to, though, being well aware that she would be dead as soon as she was out of her exosuit.
“Don’t kill us, please,” Marina whispered. She was on her knees, her hands up in the air, the weapon she had tossed aside a few minutes earlier lying several feet away from her.
Marina clearly did not want to continue the clash. She had not wanted to fight us to begin with, for that matter.
We glanced at each other. We did not need to say anything to one another to know what we were thinking. We were not cold-blooded murderers. We lowered our weapons.
“You guys can go,” Nadia said. “But don’t try to follow us, okay?”
“We won’t,” Marina replied, her relief almost palpable. “Thank you.”
Suddenly, her expression changed. The girl got scared for some reason.
“What’s wrong?” Maya asked, looking at her.
“I can’t do it,” Marina whispered. She was clearly talking to someone else, not to us. “I’m sorry.”
“What’s happening?” Maya asked, this time addressing our team.
“I think she’s talking to Echo,” Nadia said.
She must have been right. Echo must have been sending Marina text messages that only she could see and read.
“No,” Marina cried out. “I’m not useless! I can’t continue to fight. Roman and Daud are dead, and Lisa’s exosuit is totally wrecked. I can’t defeat them on my own. You have to understand that!
Marina went silent for a second as she read another message from Echo.
“No,” she cried out again, tears filling up her eyes and trickling down her cheeks. “Don’t do it! Please! I’m begging you!”
Marina’s eyes bulged out, and her mouth opened wide. She clearly could not breathe. Taking remote control of the nanotrites in her body, Echo was suffocating the girl.
“He’s killing her,” I yelled. “We gotta do something!”
Maya used her healing ability on Marina, but it did not help. Echo must have adjusted the nanotrites coursing through her veins so that they were unresponsive to Maya’s healing abilities.
So all we could do was watch as Echo was smothering Marina.
It was not long before the girl was dead, her unblinking eyes staring up at the ceiling, her mouth still wide open.
“You fucking asshole,” Thomas yelled. “You killed her.”
Since Thomas had hacked the nanotrites in our bodies, Echo could no longer text us. So the AI used the hidden loudspeakers to talk to us.
“She disobeyed my orders,” Echo said, explaining his actions.
“What about her?” Nadia asked, nodding at Lisa. “You gonna kill her too?”
The
re was a brief pause before Echo replied.
“No,” he said. “Unlike Marina, Lisa is a very good warrior. She never questions me. She is a good asset. She might serve me later on. Unless you kill her now, that is.”
We should probably finish Lisa off right there and then to avoid dealing with her later on. Then again, we were no cold-blooded murderers. So we left Lisa be and continued to make our way through the space station, heading for the Main Control Room.
At some point, we got into an enormous room that ran for at least a few hundreds of meters in length. We took a moment to examine it.
The room had to be some sort of genetic laboratory. It contained glass tanks and tubes that held various creatures of all shapes and sizes. The creatures were some sort of bio-genetic mutants. I was not even sure how to describe them. Someone had spliced the genes of one creature with that of some others. The resulted creatures were ugly and scary, malformations of all sorts of animals and huge insects.
“What the heck is that place,” Thomas whispered.
In the middle of the room was the largest tube. Unlike all the other ones, it was not transparent. It had a small rectangular window, though. Wondering what was inside the tube, I walked up to it and looked into it through the window.
What I saw in there made me gasp.
There was a person inside the tube. I knew that person very well. Only she could not be there. She was long dead. How could she possibly be in that tube? What was happening here?
I kept staring at the girl inside the tube. The window was very small, so all I could see was the girl’s face and shoulders. As far as I could tell, she was naked. Her eyes were closed, but she was clearly alive.
My teammates walked to me to look into the tube.
“Do you know her?” Maya asked after she saw the girl trapped inside the tube.
“I do,” I whispered.
“Who is she?” Maya asked.
I was silent for a few seconds, then finally replied, “It’s Alyson.”
Nadia lifted an eyebrow.
“Alyson?” She asked. “One of your former teammates, right? But I thought she was dead.”
“I thought so too,” I said.
“Echo must’ve cloned her,” Maya said quietly.
“But for what reason?” Thomas asked no one in particular. “And why did he put her in this room filled with some sort of genetic mutants?”
Echo’s voice emanated from the loudspeakers hidden all over the enormous room.
“I’m really glad you happened to have stumbled upon this room, warriors,” the AI said.
“What the hell is going on here?” Thomas asked. “Have you cloned Alyson?”
“That’s correct, warrior,” Echo replied. “I have cloned her.”
“What are you doing to her?” I asked, balling my hands into fists.
“I need to explain something to you, warriors, so bear with me for a moment, please,” Echo said.
Suddenly, a text message popped up in my field of vision.
Nadia: We need to get out of here, guys. Echo is just stalling.
Since Echo no longer had any control over our nanotrites, he could not see and read our text messages. That’s why Nadia texted me instead of saying it out loud.
Another message popped up before my eyes.
Thomas: I agree with Nadia, David. We’re wasting time here. We have to go.
I sent them an answer.
David: You guys can go. But I’ll stay here. I have to find out what he’s doing to Alyson.
Maya took a step toward me and took my hand in hers.
Maya: If you stay, I’ll stay too.
Nadia looked between us before replying.
Nadia: Come on, guys. We gotta go.
Maya: We can’t just leave David alone here, Nadia. So I’ll stay with him. You and Thomas can head for the Main Control Room. We’ll catch up with you guys later, okay?
Nadia clearly was not keen on separating. But she had no choice.
Nadia: Okay. Let’s go, Pinky.
However, Thomas shook his head this time.
Thomas: We have to stay together, guys. We better not stay separated. Besides, I kinda want to find out what this stupid AI Echo has been doing to one of David’s former teammates too.
Nadia was not happy about it. She turned to look at me as she pointed at the tube where Alyson’s clone was trapped.
“She’s not your former teammate, David, you have to understand that,” she said.
She was so agitated she had actually said it out loud instead of texting.
“Well, you are not exactly right, warrior,” Echo said, having overheard Nadia. “She might as well be considered your teammate you fought alongside for many months, David, all thing considered.”
“What exactly do you mean?” I asked.
“The female in the tube is Alyson’s clone,” Echo said. “The Alyson that was your teammate died many months ago, and there is no way to revive her. However, the clone in the tube has almost all the memories that your teammate had.”
“What?” I blurted. “How can this be possible?”
“As I said, I have some explaining to do,” Echo said. “See, every time a warrior is put to sleep in a cryogenic chamber in a dropship, his or her up-to-date memories are scanned and copied.”
“What?” Maya said. “You never told us this!”
“No, I have never disclosed this,” Echo said as calmly as always. “You were not supposed to know that. Anyway, every time you were going on a mission or returning from one to your space station, you had to get in your cryogenic chambers. While you were asleep, warriors, I copied your consciousness and all your memories—your soul if you will.”
“So this Alyson knows everything that the real one knew?” I asked as the realization hit me.
“You are almost correct, warrior,” Echo said. “She knows almost everything that the real Alyson knew. The last time the real Alyson’s brain has been scanned was when you and your teammates were returning to your space station from the Sot Lodikar asteroid belt situated in the Sot Lodikar solar system where you had to destroy a pirate base. So the only events that this Alyson is not aware of are those that took place on your space station after you and your team returned there from the Sot Lodikar solar system.”
I glanced at Alyson in the tube. So she was not aware that the real Alyson had been killed by Vlad. If she was to ever wake up, she surely would be wondering how she ended up in this place.
“That’s why I corrected you, Nadia, when you said that the clone was not David’s former teammate,” Echo said. “Since she has almost all the memories the real Alyson had, she can be considered his revived teammate.”
“Okay, Echo,” Maya said. “You now have to tell us why you cloned Alyson and what you’ve been doing to this poor girl here.”
“I am very glad you asked these questions, warriors,” Echo said. “I am really excited to tell you what I have accomplished here. David, I want you to remember two missions that you and your teammates completed many months ago. First, your very first mission where you had to locate and deal with a giant spider that telepathically controlled smaller arachnids, making them attack the human colony on that planet. Do you remember that mission?”
“I do,” I replied. “What does it have to do with Alyson, though?”
“I’ll explain it to you a little later on, so bear with me for a bit longer, please,” Echo said. “One of your secondary objectives was to bring a sample of that giant arachnid back to me, remember?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was Vlad who did it.”
“That’s correct,” Echo said. “Thanks to the sample of the spider’s DNA you provided me with, I could clone the arachnid.”
“Why would you need to do that, though?” Thomas asked.
“As I said, exercise patience, please,” Echo said. “You will understand everything in a moment. The other mission I want you, David, to
remember is the one on the wandering planet. Do you remember what you discovered there?”
“Yes,” I replied. “We found an intelligent alien named Mor there. His bio-genetic technologies were far more advanced than anything humans invented so far.”
“That’s right,” Echo said.
“I also remember that you made us hand the alien over to Lisa and her teammates so they could bring him to you,” I added.
“That’s also correct, warrior,” Echo said and added without an iota of humor in his voice, “Your memory capacity is truly incredible, David!”
I was not even sure if Echo was being serious or had acquired an ability to drop sarcastic jokes.
“Where is Mor now, by the way?” I asked as I looked around. Mor was not in that room, though. There was no tube large enough to accommodate the elephant-sized alien.
“Unfortunately, Mor died some time ago,” Echo replied without any sympathy in his voice.
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“Mor possessed a great knowledge in genetic biology,” Echo said. “Unfortunately, he was not willing to share his knowledge with me. Which is why I had to make him talk.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked. “Did you torture him?”
“Yes,” Echo said without any emotion. “He did not break easily, though. I was torturing him for several months, always inventing new methods to hurt him until he finally broke. After that, he shared some of his knowledge with me. Unfortunately, he was so badly hurt he died not long after that. So I was not able to milk him dry. Yet even that small piece of knowledge I managed to get from Mor was incredibly useful for me. I had learned really a lot.”
“Okay,” I said. “So how do Alyson’s clone, the sample of the giant’s DNA, and the intelligent alien relate to one another?”
“You are about to find out, warrior,” Echo said. “You are in for a surprise. I hope you will like what you are about to see.”
I did not like his words. I did not like them all. Something really bad was about to happen, that was for damn sure.
“Wait! Don’t do it,” I said in a weak voice, though I had no idea what Echo was about to do. One thing was for sure, though. I did not want to know what was about to happen.
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 51
