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Phantom Battle (Adam)

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 14:08

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Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 14:08

The trap would have worked perfectly if the victim hadn't had a rebreathing implant and the interior walls weren't made of Chinese concrete. Leaving a half-meter-wide rift behind him, Adam burst out of the room that was rapidly filling with poisonous gases.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 14:14

Red Bank was writhing in digital agony. The siren squeal was interrupted by system error messages; turrets fired indiscriminately. This played to his advantage: a patrol rushing to the noise found itself wedged between the blocked doors. The delay gave Adam time to escape into the ventilation labyrinths.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 14:15

Now what? He tried to remember if he'd ever been in a worse situation.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:22

Yeah, that's right. That's the day he got shot in the head.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:22

A couple of minutes of crawling on his hands and knees would have made a non-augmented person's muscles cramp up. He found himself at a hatch overlooking one of the observation centers. Bent in half, Adam stared through the SS-AP5 scope at the back of the guard's head, who was having an unusually shitty Monday morning.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:23

"Alert on level two. Southeast Wing, Sector B3," the man mouthed, standing in front of the screens in a tense pose. "No, sector B5! What the fuck?!"

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:23

The nervous voice, amplified many times over by the powerful speakers, echoed through the building, but it was too late: the image of the named area had turned into a blue canvas. Adam tried in vain to find Ciri on the monitors that occupied the entire wall.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:24

The man jerked as if he could feel the crossed lines at the back of his head, though he had no way of seeing the threat hidden by the glass shield.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:24

"Lay," he shouted to the aide who had decided to grab a coffee at the wrong time, "do something about that fucking drone!"

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:25

A sleepy Chinese man in a gray uniform froze confusedly in front of the robot. The drone was trying to break through the wall, confused by its trajectory and flashing red LEDs randomly.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:25

When the guard stopped dictating sector names and dropped his head helplessly on his hands, Adam gently squeezed the trigger, grouping out of habit. Atavism. With reflexes perfectly sharpened for any recoil, he had no use for it.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:26

The man collapsed onto the control panel and slowly slid to the floor. Security guard was a profession as dangerous as it was underpaid. Not that Adam himself was paid enough for all the crap that went on around him. He jumped silently to the floor, glancing at the rapidly fading images on the screens.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:27

Lay, who was trying to fix the drone, didn't have the slightest chance of not fending off the blade but of noticing the blow.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:28

It's hard to get completely used to the ability to take a life with a movement imperceptible to the eye. Adam remembered the phrase Taggart had thrown out, the one he'd half-heartedly heard on TV at the Shanghai clinic. //"That kind of power turns a man into a monster." That's the kind of thing people who've never held a gun in their lives like to rant about.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 11:00

Leaving the two breathless bodies on the floor, Adam sat in the vacated chair. Instinctively, he touched the hex board under his skin as the hacker module joined the cameras. The metavirus snapped the program nodes like peanuts.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 11:01

The surveillance system merged with the visual interface - the cameras became his eyes. The owl's angle of view was slightly nauseating.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 17:00

On the lower levels, the space was divided into narrow corridors filled with cables and pipes. Each of them ended with a door, behind which there was a cramped room. It's a typical layout of prisons and offices.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 11:04

The guards were searching the rooms for Ciri, who, judging by the way the cameras were off, was doing a heck of incomprehensible shit. Why hadn't she teleported to the quantum vault right away?

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 11:05

//"Because she's a girl from the Middle Ages that you stuck in the thick of it," the voice of reason answered him.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 11:05

Because she has no idea how to behave during the operation.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 11:06

Because you're both in deep shit.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 17:00

Adam drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk, waiting for the virus to take over the program unit responsible for accessing the doors. In buildings where everything was designed to prevent anyone from entering, it was easy to set up a trap from which no one would get out.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:21

He was still hypnotizing the screen when the cameras in the quantum computer vault malfunctioned.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:21

"Clever girl, Ciri," Adam exhaled, "what a clever girl you are."

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:23

++"Access granted."

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:22

Adam blocked the doors between the lower and upper floors, cutting off the guards' path upstairs. As he was about to send a message to Ciri over the speaker, he caught a glimpse of movement on the camera at the main entrance.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:23

Group of soldiers with patches on their lapels, logo in the form of a stylized bull skull. "Belltower. Rapid response team. But not so fucking rapid to stop an invasion in less than half an hour after infiltration. Especially not a facility with a two-hundred-kilometer radius of corporate waste scorched earth.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:24

They were set up. Or hunted down. Or both. It was expected, but not so fast! How could Wintermute have guessed they'd make it in that time...

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:25

Adam blinked. The leader of the mercenaries appeared on the screen. A predatory expression on his face, cybernetic muscles exposed outward like in an anatomical theater. There are very few fanatics in the world who hate nature so much. A sharp barking voice with an Israeli accent immediately surfaced in my subconscious.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:25

Bastard.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:55

It was extremely difficult to forget the man who had fired a bullet into your head. Adam hadn't forgotten the swarthy woman who'd followed the commander with deadly grace. Nor what she'd done to his coworkers. Civilians. Scientists. Friends.

Camrad_RIP 18.03.24 в 15:26

Adam sent the images to Pritchard.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:55

How are the mercenaries who attacked Sharif Industries connected to Tai Yun Medical? How could they have located them so quickly? And most importantly, how can he get Ciri out now?

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:51

//"Jensen," Pritchard's sharply hoarse voice came through the Infolink. - Jaron Namir. Yelena Fedorova. Tyrants. Get out of there, Jensen! The Sharif would be bankrupt to put you back together again."

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:50

What would Adam do without his tactical advice? Though if Pritchard's worried about him out loud, he's already buried him in his head.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:49

On the screen, a figure waddling under escort flashed. What the hell is he?! Eragon? What was he doing here? Judging by the broken nose and black bruises on his neck, he was certainly no goodwill ambassador.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:49

Adam took a deep breath and picked up the submachine gun. Where's Ciri?

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:48

The answer came to him in a most undesirable way.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:48

As Namir slowly withdrew his hand, pointing to the right, something flickered beside him, shimmering green like an oil slick on the water, and a thin figure materialized straight out of thin air.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:40

The image is gone.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:41

Adam rushed out of the security station more on instinct than plan: his imagination pictured Namir tearing Ciri to pieces, bodies burned beyond recognition, and fire engulfing the lab. Survivor's Guilt Complex, one of the most annoying characteristics on his record, hit him full force.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:46

When the lights went out and the doors clicked open, Adam regained his composure. He couldn't help anyone dead, and it was hard to imagine a more pathetic sight than a panicked cop.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 16:47

Think. If she teleported next to Namir, the mercenary should be knocked out as badly as he was knocked out on a rooftop in Detroit. If they left the elf alive, they'd leave Ciri too. If they didn't leave with the loot right away, they needed him.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:40

Adam slowly made his way down the hallway toward the Tyrants, listening for footsteps. He needed to separate them at all costs.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:33

The infolink vibrated. Pritchard has a knack for picking the right moment.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:32

//"Hey, buddy," came an unfamiliar voice in his head, belonging to a man hiding under the nickname wintermute, "don't be in such a hurry to meet the Lord God. Your princess is already in another castle."

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:31

Adam had only heard such a strong accent in Scottish sketches. The laryngeal hard R's were interspersed with a certain artificiality. Who leaked his Infolink data to the hacker? Appleby?

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:32

Wintermute sent him a picture of the rocky bank of the East China Sea. Judging by the time stamp, it had been taken exactly one minute ago. Adam suspected the guy was out of his mind, but not so crazy to send postcards.

Camrad_RIP 17.03.24 в 15:30