She didn’t heed my words at all, and I was left panting after her as she bounded through the forest with the grace of a gazelle.
By the time I reached her, she was already standing in front of the crate and about to touch the glowing pad on the double doors.
“Wait!” I yelled when I caught movement in the corner of my eye. It had been something big and black, going around to the back of the supply crate.
I raced toward her and pulled my gun. One of the other players was on top of the crate, maneuvering toward the edge. The alien looked like a mangy dog, but he walked on two legs, wore silver armor, and carried a spear. I noticed too that he hadn’t found a nano arm yet.
There was no way I was going to get a shot off, due to my angle, so instead I barreled into Ella as she touched her hand to the pad. At the same time, the dog-man leapt down off the crate.
We rolled away as a growl issued from inside, and I turned to see half the dog-man’s body disappear into the mouth of an apex predator.
“Holy shit!” I scrambled to my feet.
The predator tossed back its scaly head and gulped the rest of the dog-man down its throat.
Attention Warriors!
An opponent has died!
18 Remain.
“Run!” I screamed and pushed her ahead of me.
A quick glance over my shoulder made my asshole pucker up—the predator was looking at me with an odd grin, like he was giving us a head start for the fun of it.
We raced through the forest, managing to keep ahead of the heavy footfalls behind us. There was no way we could outrun the thing, so I searched for a tree to climb.
“This way!” I urged Ella toward me and veered right.
There was a dead tree leaning up against two others, and it created a kind of ramp to the thicker branches. Ella saw where I was going and gracefully bounded ahead of me and up the dead tree. I carefully maneuvered up the slippery deadwood on all fours, but Ella was already leaping from branch to branch. Within moments, she had disappeared into the thick canopy.
I reached the first branch and looked down to find the T-rex alien still chasing us, crashing noisily through the forest. It was about a hundred feet away and coming fast.
I had barely reached the center of the wide tree, clinging to a thick branch and deciding where to go next, when the predator caught up to me and shoulder-slammed the trunk at full speed. I held on for dear life with my nano hand, which clamped around a branch above me so hard, I heard a crack. The entire tree shook when the predator hit it again. Red things like acorns rained down on the monster.
Ella was much higher in the tree than I was, and it looked like she had a good hold. She was glowering down at the predator, and there wasn’t a hint of fear in her eyes.
“Let’s just wait him out!” I yelled up at her and then saw her working her way farther along a branch. It didn’t take me long to realize she was considering doing something stupid, like jumping on the predator’s back with her sword.
The predator rammed the tree again, and I almost lost my footing when the branch I was holding with my nano hand snapped in two. I climbed higher when the beast backed up for another run, and when he hit the tree again, I was prepared.
The predator looked up at me with murderous red eyes and let out a roar so powerful, it blew my hair back. Its stagnant breath washed over me, and I actually gagged. It smelled like morning breath mixed with rotten meat, and it was so pungent, I swear it must have burned my nose hairs.
The creature’s barbed tail ripped into the tree mere inches from my foot and gauged out big chunks of warty green bark. It tore at the trunk in murderous frustration and even bit into it with its dagger-like teeth.
At this rate, the beast was going to chop the tree down, and if that happened, we were going to be really screwed.
So much for waiting it out.
“Shoot it with your gun!” Ella yelled down to me.
I’d considered that, but I was afraid it was just piss it off more. But we were low on alternatives, so I pulled my weapon, aimed into the gaping maw, and pulled the trigger.
The predator acted like it had been stung on the tongue by a bee, but it didn’t appear to be injured at all. It hit the tree again and again and tore at it with its wicked claws. The barbed tail carved out massive chunks of greenwood, and the tree started to tip to the side with a splintered moan.
I was knocked against the tree so hard that my gun fell out of my hand, and when I leaned over to snatch it out of the air, the predator struck again. A vibration passed through the tortured tree as it shook violently. I lost my balance and flailed for another branch but missed.
Then I was falling backward in a twisting motion.
The predator roared below me and attacked the tree as I mentally enabled the laser sword. I somehow managed to land on its back and felt its tough scales scratch my legs and chest. I ignored the pain and plunged my sword into the beast’s side.
The laser sword sank like a toothpick in hot brownies, and the beast let out a tortured howl. It bucked me off hard and sent me sailing through the air. Luckily I hit a patch of soft moss. I rolled to my feet with the laser sword humming in front of me.
Ella was now on the predator’s back, hacking and stabbing the beast’s neck with her metallic sword. She looked like a warrior princess from Planet Babe, and for a moment, I stared in awe at her prowess. The predator’s tail swung haphazardly, crashing through trees like a wrecking ball and keeping me at bay. But then the tail stuck in the bark of a thick tree, and the beast lurched drunkenly to one side. Ella was still stabbing it like a Norman Bates enthusiast, and when the monster finally dropped to its knees, I found an opening and slashed its scaly throat.
The monster’s roar became a gurgle as it let out its last breath and dropped dead.
Ella ripped her blade free and stood on the back of the downed predator and let out a primal scream.
Congratulations, Warrior!
You have killed an Apex Predator!
Nanobot Bonus: Animal Instinct (Sense Danger)
Proximity: 100 Yards
Duration: 1 Earth Hour
Would you like to use NOW or save for Later?
“Did you get the Animal Instinct bonus?” I asked her as she leapt to the ground, long black ponytail whipping around tantalizingly.
“Yes, but I’m saving it for later,” she said.
“Me too. It’ll come in handy when we’re trying to rest.”
“Or while we’re mating,” she said with a devilish grin.
I chuckled at her forwardness and surveyed our surroundings. We’d made a hell of a racket, and someone or something must have heard us.
It was time to get the hell out of there.
She must have been thinking the same thing, because she trotted beside me when I jogged back to the hills.
We hiked for a while and finally found a canyon between the tall ridges which had been impassable up until then. We carefully picked our way through it, keeping an eye on the ledges above. This was a perfect spot for an ambush, and for a moment I considered enabling Animal Instinct, but the canyon was shallow, and soon we were climbing the steep crag at the far end.
Halfway up we discovered a shallow cave, and I glanced at her with a shrug.
“Looks like a good spot.”
“I don’t know.” She scanned the area. “Everyone will be vying for a shelter like this. Better to lie in wait and kill them when they come to explore.”
“We’re going to need a shelter,” I pointed out. “It’ll be night soon.”
“So that we can have sex?”
“What? No. I mean, maybe. Listen. We need a base camp, and this is a good spot. We’ve got a view of the forest and the valley, and nothing is going to be able to attack us from behind because of the mountains. The initial fighting has died down, and this game could last for days, weeks—hell, months even. We’re much better off with a defensible location like this.”
As if to underscore my
point, it began to rain.
“You make a strong argument,” she said and moved inside.
Enough light shone into the cave to allow us to see well enough, so we set about exploring the shelter. It proved to be about ten feet wide and had a high, domed ceiling. Near the back it opened up wider, which would allow us to duck out of sight from anyone coming in through the entrance. Water trickled down one side into a hollow where the wall met the floor. I let the water pour over my hand and sniffed. I didn’t smell anything, which was a good sign.
“I wouldn’t drink that,” she said.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got to drink something. And if the game masters have poisoned all the water, this will be a pretty quick and boring game for them. You said your kind need water, right?”
“Yes, we do…” she said hesitantly.
“All right then.” I cupped my hands and let them fill with water, then I drank a mouthful.
She watched me closely.
“Tastes good, but I’m going to give it an hour and see if I get sick. If I don’t, we can drink our fill.”
“Good idea.” She looked at me like she was waiting for something to explode out of my chest.
Big squarish rocks were scattered around the cave, and I moved a bunch of the bigger ones to create a kind of bench against the wall opposite the spring. It wasn’t much, but it was a place to sit. Ella gathered some of the smaller ones and made a fire ring, and I realized we had more in common than I had thought.
Once we had cleared the ground of rocks, we sat on the bench and took a break. I was pretty wiped out. My nano bonuses had worn off, and I hadn’t had any real sleep since the night before the abduction. Sure, I had been unconscious, but it wasn’t the same as a good night’s sleep, that’s for sure.
Ella showed signs of fatigue too, but she was still alert, and I could tell the wheels in her head were still turning rapidly.
“What’s on your mind?”
She looked to me quizzically. “Why did you want to team up with me? Only one person can win this game.”
“Because we’ll survive longer if we work together.”
“And what happens if we’re the last survivors? We’ll have to fight each other to the death.”
“Let’s worry about that when it happens. There are still dozens of players left.”
“Not dozens.” She tapped at the air, and I realized she was looking at her interface. “The kill counter says there are still eighteen of us left.”
“The point is we have a long way to go. We’ve got to find some food, and we need to stack up nanobot bonuses that we can enable. Enhanced hearing is just the begin—aw, fuck!”
“What is it?” Ella shot to her feet with her sword in hand.
I pressed my hands to my ears. “Not so loud, I think I accidentally enabled enhanced hearing.”
“Well, that was stupid.” She her eyes rolled back and her lids fluttered.
“Shh… I hear something!” I gestured for her to freeze.
The sound was faint, like a cat purring in another room, and there was also a rustling of leaves.
“Come on,” I whispered. “They’re going to come snooping around the cave any minute. We need to ambush them from above the entrance.”
We hurried out of the cave and climbed the sides of the entrance, where we could lie in wait. It was still raining, and we were soon soaked through.
I heard someone approaching, and they were getting close. “Any minute now,” I whispered. “It sounds like a cat or something.”
“What’s a cat?”
I pressed a finger to my lips and peered through the small shrubs that covered the top of the cave like a mustache.
I saw movement in the thick tangle of brush. Strangely, the rain was the only thing that suggested a form, because instead of hitting the ground in some areas, it hit something else and slid down the sides. It was like whatever was lurking down there was made of glass.
Memories of the predator’s enhanced camouflage from the movie of the same name flashed through my mind, and a shiver crawled up my spine.
Lightning flashed, and as the thunder rolled into the valley, the outline of a lithe feline creature became clear for a fleeting moment. The creature suddenly bolted from the underbrush and ran into our cave. I turned to Ella, but she was already leaping off the ledge.
“God damn it!” I cursed under my breath.
I activated my laser sword, leapt down after her, and landed in a crouch. She had enabled her nano shield and glanced back at me. Together we crept into the cave, Ella in front with her shield raised and her sword arm ready to stab the first thing she saw, and me with my sword up and my sidearm ready.
A low growl issued from inside the cave, but I couldn’t see the alien, even with the glow of our nano weapons. When we reached the back of the cave without spotting the creature, we looked at each other with puzzlement.
Our confusion turned to dread as a deformed silhouette filled the entrance and the glow of our weapons revealed a hideous alien. The thing was tall, and its big saggy tits suggested it was female. It looked like a hag straight out of the minds of the Brothers Grimm. Moss-covered skin hung from a crooked body. The limbs were bony, and a bulbous belly took up most of its mass.
It pointed a crooked finger at us and let out a scream that would have made a banshee’s ears bleed, then it charged toward us, shooting the nano gun attached to its right arm.
The bullets ricocheted off Ella’s shield with a thwap thwap thwap!
I fought the urge to cover my ears and calmly crouched into a shooting stance.
“Kill it!” Ella shouted, but her voice was nearly drowned out by the hag.
I popped up over her shield and fired three times, but the hag wove from side to side, and only one of my bullets hit her. Blood sprayed from her right shoulder, and her nano gun drifted to the floor. The bullets chewed up the stone floor and sent flecks of rock hurtling into Ella’s shield. I fired again at the middle of the hag’s chest.
She rocked back at the impact of the bullet and opened her mouth impossibly wide. To my shock and horror, a thick stream of green puke shot out of her mouth and splashed against Ella’s shield.
We ducked behind it as the fetid stench of the vomit wafted over us.
I couldn’t see shit due to the slime-covered shield, and I wasn’t about to take a peek and risk having my face melted off. The puke ate through everything it touched, including stone.
I couldn’t see the hag, but I did notice a cat-like form drop from the ceiling.
The screaming ceased, the puke stopped hitting the shield, and a new growl reverberated in the cave. Then, what sounded like a cat fight began.
Ella cautiously lowered the shield to sneak a peek at what was going on, and we saw a cat woman tearing an obviously dead hag to pieces with her long, wicked claws.
Attention, Warriors!
A player has died.
17 remaining.
That notification was followed by another.
Congratulations, Warrior!
You’ve contributed to the death of another player!
Nanobot Bonus: Enhanced sight.
Increase: 50%
Duration: 5 Earth minutes.
Would you like to use NOW or LATER?
I quickly tapped LATER, and the message disappeared.
“Freeze!” I said and aimed the gun at the cat woman’s head.
She hissed as she crouched over the hag’s body.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, “But you need to step away from her.”
She backed away, glancing at the exit.
“Don’t even try it. You’ll be dead before you reach the door.” I had no intention of killing the alien, but Ella was growing impatient.
“Just shoot her, and get it over with!”
The cat woman looked from Ella to me fearfully.
“I’m not killing someone in cold blood.”
“That prosthetic is mine!” said the cat woman, giving
it a covetous look. Her voice was angry but melodic. “I killed her.”
“We killed her,” I corrected.
I couldn’t make out many details since she had her back to the bright entrance, but the outline of her body told me that she was had no nano arm, and suggested pin-up girl curves.
“I lured her here, I killed her, and I want my reward,” she argued.
“We’re the ones with the weapons,” Ella reminded her as she pointed her sword at the cat woman and walked around her to block the exit.
With the cat woman covered, I holstered my gun, approached the hag, and detached her nano arm.
“Listen.” I stood and pocketed the new prosthetic. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
“You don’t?” she asked in disbelief.
“Ella and I have teamed up, and we want you to join us.”
“We do?” said Ella.
“If we work together, we’ll be safe.”
“Safe?” The cat woman laughed. She had a sweet voice, which made the hag blood dripping from her claws that much more unsettling. “None of us are safe.”
“Well, we’ll be better off then. With three of us, we’ll have a huge advantage over those who have been working alone. Don’t believe me? Just ask the hag alien what she thinks.”
Both women glanced at the corpse.
“So?” I said. “What’s it going to be?”
Cat woman looked from me to the hag and then to Ella, and finally nodded. “I’ll join you on one condition,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I get one of the nano arms.”
“You don’t get to have a weapon until we know we can trust you,” said Ella.
“Give her the shield,” I told Ella.
“I’m not walking around with a stump.”
“I’ll give you the laser sword,” I said.
“What if I want the nano gun? You’ve already got a sidearm.”
Warwick: Galactic Arena Page 3
