Respawn: Lives 1-5 (Respawn LitRPG series Book 1)

by Arthur Stone

  Having dealt with the keepers of the peace, Kitty made no moves to escape the scene of the crime. She ignored the frightened looks and screams of the public, assertively relieving the cops of their weapons, taking their handcuffs, and giving both guns to Rocky. “Stick these in your belt and cover them with your shirt. We’re getting out of here. A crowd is gathering, and that’s dangerous. It attracts the looneys. Also, stick those handcuffs in your pocket. I don’t have anywhere to put them.

  As he walked and worked to hide his trophies, Rocky looked around like a thief on the prowl. “You’re nuts. They’ll cordon the place off and we’ll never make it without a car.”

  “That’d be great, but they won’t pull it off. No communications signal.”

  “Their walkie-talkies work, though.”

  “Yeah, which means the police know something terrible is going on in this town. Look, they’re not going to care about us. They’re usually all hanging out on the outskirts, near the cluster boundaries. In fact, lots of them just stare at the edge of the cluster with bleary eyes, doing nothing else.”

  “Why would a cordon be good?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said it’d be great if they cordoned us off.”

  “Of course it would. When they do that, it’s easier to get hold of better weapons.”

  “Like machine guns?”

  “Sometimes, but better pistols, at least.”

  Rocky couldn’t believe the calm of this one-hundred-pound girl—and that weight included her clothes, the shoes, and the bottled water she had polished off before the heist—and yet, at the same time, it didn’t surprise him. Her swift takedown of those two cops proved she was capable better than any words could. Still, he couldn’t tell his mind to wrap itself around Kitty’s nonchalance as she took down two guys, armed to the teeth and alert, ready—or so they thought—to clean up a couple of possibly armed criminals.

  Something was wrong here.

  Limping behind his companion, Rocky moved behind the next corner on their way and asked, “What if a SWAT team comes?”

  “That would be awesome. They have the best weapons,” she replied without a moment’s pause.

  Rocky didn’t know how to answer that. His cursed knee was always hindering his thoughts, and today it was behaving worse than ever. He had barely gotten up from that dorm bed when it started killing him. His companion had told him his leg would improve quickly, but it was telling him otherwise. It would only get worse and worse.

  “Could you walk a little slower, please?” Rocky was humbled by having to make the request, but he couldn’t keep up. He braced himself for a new assault by Kitty’s favorite word for him.

  This time, she acted differently. She stopped abruptly, spun, and ask with atypical compassion, “Is it really that bad?”

  Rocky suspected a punchline. He answered dryly. “I think my knee is about to fall apart. Can’t you hear it creaking?”

  “No, I can’t. It’s in your ears. That happens. Can you drive?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you always ask ‘what’? Can you drive a car?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t tried. I should be able to. I know I can ride a bike. What does it matter?”

  “We’re never going to get far on foot,” she offered thoughtfully. “We’ll have to come up with something.”

  “Cars are too dangerous. I took a taxi once. That turned out well.” At least he still had his sarcasm.

  She agreed. “Eventually, these digis start going so nuts that it’s best to just stay far away from the roads.”

  “What about bicycles?”

  “Those would be okay, but motorcycles would be better.”

  “Time for a hijacking, then.”

  “No, you know, bikes are better. They’re not that quick, but they’re quiet. You’re sure you can turn the pedals with that knee?”

  “I won’t be breaking any records, but as long I don’t push it too hard, I can manage. I’ve done it before.”

  “Alright, Rocky, the Mexican dinner is canceled, but we still need to grab a good meal somewhere. Then we need to change clothes, plus I need to pick up something. Then we can go to the gun shop. Then, at last, we’ll get bicycles.”

  Rocky glanced at Kitty’s inflated pockets. “Are we actually going to buy everything, or are you going to pull that nonsense again?”

  She nodded as she continued on her way, adjusting her pace to that of her crippled companion. “Sure, we’ll have a decent meal and pay for it all. But not for the weapons, of course.

  “Robbing a gun shop, huh.”

  “When the power goes out, the gun stores usually close since the alarm system is out. That’s how it is in most clusters, anyway. They won’t be selling anything, and we don’t have any documents, anyway. These digis are strict about that. Not everywhere, of course, but in official city gun stores, yeah. As for unofficial gun stores, well, those kinds of places aren’t exactly listed in the phonebook.”

  Rocky was losing his ability to be surprised by his companion. “So, a romantic dinner, then we grab some rags, rob us some guns, and make a getaway on bicycles?”

  Kitty shook her head. “No, then we wait for the call. We can’t leave until it comes.”

  What the hell is this call? Why do we have to wait for it? And what new problems is all of this going to cause me?

  Chapter 15

  Life Five: On Hold

  Rocky strained his arms, dragging a security guard ruthlessly knocked out by a girl one-third his size back behind a shop counter. Kitty didn’t surprise him anymore, but she did amaze him. Despite all her modest physical attributes, she dealt an impossibly fast blow to lay the man flat. He looked scary, by anyone’s standard, his frame packed with everything but fat. But he had collapsed straight backward into the door, which magically opened despite being locked tight from the other side.

  His companion didn’t just know her way around ATMs. She could unlock mechanical locks with her superpowers, too.

  “Should I cuff him?” Rocky suggested, nodding at the downed thug.

  The girl was ringing and jingling with impressively fatal contraptions, absorbed in selecting the best of them, so she answered without thinking. “No need.”

  “He won’t be lying there like that forever.”

  “If he wakes up, I’ll hit him again. I don’t mind. How are you with a rifle? Or are you only good with pistols?”

  Rocky shrugged. “I didn’t even know I knew how to shoot a pistol at all. You know how it goes with our memories.”

  “Shit, quit being stupid. Just answer how you feel. Don’t think about it. Here, take aim at something with this rifle. How does it feel? Does it suit you, or do you have no idea what you’re doing?”

  “It feels like I understand it,” said Rocky, unsure of himself.

  “Hmm, that’s bad,” said the girl with a frown. “If you don’t know for sure, best not to take chances. We’ll take a shotgun for you. It won’t shoot far, but if you’re close up, it’ll hit. Or do you what to try the rifle instead? Dammit, I don’t know. You know, you don’t care. Morons don’t have opinions on these things. What are you just standing there for? Grab a couple of cases for these guns. We can’t carry them openly through the city. That makes the digis nervous. Get some kind of hunting outfit, too. Not something too light, or you might freeze. It can get cold at night. And during the day, too.”

  Rocky followed Kitty’s string of commands, rushing around the store and grabbing everything she had mentioned. Just a few minutes later, their two cases were packed with all kinds of heavy arms, and more things fit in a bag, including their carefully selected clothes.

  In the midst of the heist, Kitty suddenly became alert, leaped over to the entrance door, which they had propped open, and a few seconds later screamed in alarm, “Rocky, let’s go! Follow me, quick!”

  He rushed after her without question, leaving the packs of bullets she had just demanded he seize by the handful. In th
e brief time he had known her, he had noticed she rarely raised her voice. Which meant that something had happened to overrule her core habits. In this world, that something was probably not good.

  Kitty charged forward intentionally, as if she had planned this surprise exit all along, considering every last detail. Urging her limp companion on, she dashed to the next building and firmly kicked open the massive wooden door, which had miraculously unlocked seconds before. Then she took to the stairs, stopping on the landing between the second and third floors and taking up an observational position near a narrow, filthy window.

  Only then did Rocky dare to ask, “What are we doing?”

  “Huh? Don’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Great, not only a lame moron, but a deaf old lady, too! Stand still. Maybe they’ll just pass by.”

  He didn’t want to ask who “they” was. That would probably just get him an incomprehensible reply or another “moron.”

  They didn’t just pass by. First, Rocky finally heard what Kitty was hinting at: the nasty rumble of a huge engine. The sound gradually grew, and before long its source was visible: a heavy truck driving down the boulevard median. The strange thing about it was that someone had added a few serious upgrades. A metal frame replaced the body, lined with bars and steel sheets filled with loophole-like slots. The cabin was armored, too, and sharpened iron spikes protruded from all sides. Some kind of combat turret was mounted on top, swinging back and forth from side to side, frightening the slowly staggering crowds of digis with its large-caliber machine gun.

  “The hell is this circus!” Rocky inquired.

  “Get used to it. In this world, that’s the car you take when you want to go shopping.”

  “You mean if you’re an immune?”

  “There aren’t enough armored vehicles in the world to go around, so they make do with what’s available. Goddammit, I should have known. They’re heading to the store. They know about it. Bastards.”

  “So they’re... competitors?”

  “Good job, Major Obvious.”

  “There are plenty of them in there. Why didn’t your crystal tell us about them?”

  “It has to recharge. I can’t use it too often. They were too far away when I used it last time. Outside the cluster. It doesn’t pick them up that far.”

  “What kind of people are these? Decent ones?”

  “How should I know? Probably not. Have you met a truly decent person in this place? Plus anybody out here would love to kill me. Or take me to Romeo, if they know about his desires for me.”

  “So what are we standing around for? We should get out of here!”

  “Quit fussing and calm down. Even if they have sensors, they’re unlikely to be able to distinguish us from all the digis around. We’ll see who they are. Maybe that’ll come in handy later. Then we can leave by cutting through the building. There’s got to be another exit down that hallway.”

  The car stopped in front of the store, its engine roaring delightfully that it no longer had to push its unnatural bulk. The doors flew open, and Rocky saw familiar figures pop out, along with those he could not see from his position.

  Well, “familiar” was a stretch. It was the guys he had seen that first time. They weren’t that different from the other immunes he had encountered, with the exceptions of Horsefly and the risen Kitty. They had the same military look, with assorted weapons wielded in a way that made it clear they were willing to shoot anything that moved.

  The opened shop doors put the visitors on edge, but they pushed through. Doors open wide, the three of them moved inside while two stayed at the entrance, keeping watch over the neighborhood. One of them, at least, was still in the car, since the machine gun turret was still spinning.

  Kitty had been watching all of this closely. Suddenly, she jerked up, and announced, “Finally!”

  “Finally what?” Rock didn’t understand.

  “The thing! What we’ve been waiting for! It’s the call. Time for us to go.”

  She lost all interest in watching the goings on outside and dropped to the second floor, waiting a moment for her straggler.

  Rocky limped down, complaining. “I can still hobble along straight roads, but on stairs I’m a joke. We have to get bikes soon, or I’ll be reduced to crawling.”

  “No bikes for us. It’s time to clear out. When a team like that hits a city, there are probably more, and I really don’t want to have to say hello.”

  “Why do they all want to kill you?” Rocky asked when he caught up to Kitty in the hall.

  “You see my Humanity?”

  “Low negative.”

  “Well, if you kill me, your Humanity won’t go down. Not even if I try to give myself up. Until I get back up to neutral, I’m not showing my face to anyone.” She paused. “Though even then, I won’t want to be seen. Romeo won’t let me go that easily. He’s a stubborn monster.”

  “Full of unrequited love?”

  “Hah! You kidding? I doubt he even knows the word ‘unrequited.’ You’ll see all kinds of perverts in this world, men and women with every taste. I bet half of them have some kind of crazy fetish. Come on, you’re driving the motorcycle.”

  “What motorcycle?” Rocky was confused by the sudden change in subject.

  “Hah! You’ve seen a motorcycle before, right? Well, I saw one right on the other side of this building, in the parking lot. We’ll ride it to the mark, and then clear out of this town. Alright, I’ll drive. You’ll get us stuck somewhere, because you’re a moron.”

  So, mysterious secret calls, her dark affair with Romeo, these hunters thirsting for her blood since she had red text for some reason—and now a “mark.”

  None of it made any sense.

  * * *

  Kitty’s hair was dark brown, but she drove a motorcycle like the blonde from some old joke about the intellectual weaknesses of fairer heads. She drove mostly through yards, usually yards filled with assorted obstacles, but she would surge onto the road abruptly without really even looking, paying no mind to the honking, cursing drivers reacting to her antics. It was like she was following the guidance of some distant lighthouse which she was trying to reach in the shortest possible time and distance, with no regard for all the others using the roads.

  The next time someone asked Rocky if he could drive a motorcycle, he would answer without hesitation, “I can drive five hundred times better than that crazy lady.”

  They almost got into serious trouble twice—once avoiding a crash only by some miracle—but even that failed to teach Kitty to be careful. A patrol car turning a corner turned on its siren and tried to chase them down but quickly lost them in Kitty’s labyrinth of backyards.

  The pair stopped suddenly, in a place where decent people never go. It was some kind of dilapidated boiler house with a rundown porch, with bushes and a mini-wasteland to the left and the frame of an unfinished building to the right. The work on it probably stopped about a year ago. It was abandoned, but not too old.

  Kitty dismounted the motorcycle and walked confidently to the construction site. Rocky said nothing but decided to follow, grimacing from the still-growing pain in his knee. Thankfully, they did not have far to go. Soon the girl had stopped by a pile of construction debris and was using a stick she had found to dig through it. Strange behavior, of course, but Rocky made no comment. It must have been vital for Kitty to cruise across town like that just to get it.

  But what was it?

  Something black and alien glimmered, a brilliantly polished surface underneath the concrete slabs. A few seconds later, and Kitty had it: a long case made out of some kind of plastic. She placed her find up against a concrete block and pushed both hands up against it. The case’s lid opened on its own, revealing what lay inside: a bulging dark blue bag and a bizarrely-shaped short sword. The blade had a beautiful curve, with an irregular but attractive edge, a narrow, winding, wavy blade, and a strangely twisted grip. It was a cool weapon, but too lightweigh
t for a man. It even looked fragile. Maybe better suited for LARPing. Although I suppose this is hardcore LARPing, actually. It wasn’t in reality a toy, though—he was sure of that. Nor was it a wall decoration. It was an instrument of killing, plain and simple. A sheath lay beside it, too. It was the same color as the case, and seemed too narrow to fit the blade.

  Kitty grabbed all of the goodies, stood, and gave him an order. “Stay here. I need to change.”

  Rocky was about to remind her that the clothes they had grabbed from the store were sitting by the motorcycle, but he stopped himself. The girl had not had time to grab any apparel there. She must have planned to put on whatever was in that blue packet. Given the tiny size of it, her new digs promised to be as skimpy as her spawnday suit, which he didn’t mind at all.

  Why then did she need to change at all?

  He wasn’t wrong. When Kitty emerged from the unfinished building a few minutes later, Rocky had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping. The clothing was essentially the same as her previous apparel, but the shorts had been replaced with what he would call panties, just as short. Her top, meanwhile, looked like a cargo vest designed by someone who had formerly only worked for women’s swimwear catalogs. She had new shoes, too. Black boots that looked so comfortable that he wanted some for himself, despite their obvious feminine appearance.

  How the hell had she fit all of that into such a tiny bag? He pictured himself wedging it all into that sack with his feet. It still didn’t fit. That sword had managed to fit into the sheath, too, and now both were affixed to her clothing, fitting into a strangely stylish clasp.

  LARPing indeed. Kitty could get a job in any fantasy adventure TV show with that get-up. And yet, at the same time, it looked practical. The perfect set for the adventuring heroine. Where beauty meets potency. No stores sold anything like that.

  It was clear now why Kitty had been careful to get a haircut, and why she had neglected to mention clothes for herself at the military store. She had it taken care of. Somehow.