He wasn't entirely sure what he'd expected to feel once he stepped outside the safe zone- general, unimaginable agony; heat and fire dissolving his flesh and muscle until bare bones remained… Something awful, certainly.
To his surprise, Crypto didn't feel any different. He may as well have still been on the other side of the barrier. In fact, he felt a sense of relative calm here- beyond the Ring, he didn't have to worry about being shot.
He told himself to think nothing of it, and continue moving as quickly as possible. The hacker knew better than to trust this serenity to last.
The ground crunched beneath his feet. It felt more brittle, and didn't cling to his boots as much as he walked. Superficially, it seemed convenient. He knew better- it was the first indicator of the danger outside the Ring.
He became uncomfortably aware of his own heartbeat. It felt more intense than it should- just an indicator of the brisk pace at which he was walking, he told himself. Soon, the sensation was radiating out. It was as though he could feel the blood racing through his entire body with every pulse of his heart.
Not long after, a tingling spread over his skin. It was mild at first, no worse than an itch from an annoying piece of fabric. As he kept going, it turned to a feeling of burning hot needles poking into every inch of flesh on his body. Then it became nails, digging all the way into the muscle.
The hacker brushed at his arms, shoulders, chest, thighs, face- every inch of his body that he could reach without stopping, in a futile effort to diminish the tortuous sensation. He clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt, too… that ache was more natural and familiar to him, which was almost comforting, in some strange way.
He fell to his knees. In a disoriented frenzy, he pulled off his backpack and fumbled with the straps, frantic to retrieve a syringe. His eyes watered- he couldn't tell if they were irritated too, or it was simply a reaction to the pain creeping over and through his whole body.
With the injection of the smart polymer into his arm, the violent sensations subsided. His body used the synthetic material to replace tissue that had been damaged by exposure to the Ring. He stood, shouldered the backpack, and kept walking.
In the absence of widespread agony, the wires that ran across his chest and back to transmit signals to his drone now felt uncomfortably hot against his body. His joints ached, and he could still feel his heartbeat pounding through his entire being. He imagined that he could feel the blood sloshing through his circulatory system, and it felt as though he had to move carefully to avoid making a large slosh.
When he pulled out his mini-computer to check their position on the map, the metal casing left angry red burns on his hands. It had been heated by the Ring- he hadn't even noticed.
A pneumatic hiss to his right prompted the hacker to turn his head. Revenant stood a few meters away, a syringe clasped in one of his clawed hands. Discolored streaks ran across the surface of the simulacrum's metal plating, and sparks flew from his joints. He noticed Crypto's shift of attention, and locked eyes with the hacker- Crypto looked away quickly.
The hacker's foot caught on a patch of uneven ground and he stumbled. He felt as though the surges of energy from the Ring were messing with his mind, if that were possible- breaking his focus, causing his thoughts and actions to feel slow. His eyes could see clearly, yet he couldn't seem to make sense of what was in front of them. Thought and sensory perception depended on electrical signals between neurons, he knew, so it seemed logical that exposure to bursts of electromagnetic energy such as this would disrupt those processes- beyond that, he didn't fully understand the science. Perhaps, if by some miracle he survived, he'd ask Wattson about it.
He paused to use a syringe. When the injection was finished, he reached for his mini-computer to check how far they had to go- and found that it was powered down, and wouldn't turn on. "Jenjang! FUCK!"
Swearing in only one language just didn't seem to cut it.
In a state of panic and desperation, he wanted to throw the mini-computer at the ground as hard as he could. How could he have come this far only to have such a ridiculous problem? He thought better of it, though, and put the device back into his pocket.
Seeing how the hot metal casing had blistered his fingers, the hacker unpackaged another syringe. The burns didn't hurt nearly as much as he thought they should, judging by how they looked- somehow, he doubted that was a good thing. The bursts of RF energy were messing with his nervous system as he suspected; that, or he was dying…
The thought didn't worry him. Instead, it felt oddly peaceful.
He wouldn't have to run anymore, constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering what would happen when the Syndicate finally found him. He'd no longer have to live as someone else, with painful memories of the life that had been taken away from him. It would mean the end of the Apex Games for him- no more fear, no more feelings of horror and dread as he aimed a rifle at his friends and squeezed the trigger, no more nightmares or waking up in a cold sweat when the assassins who were searching for him intruded his head. He would be… free, from all of it.
In that moment, he understood what had been taken from Revenant.
But he didn't have the luxury of giving up. Mila needed him, and turning his back on family was never an option.
He wished that Bloodhound were here. The hunter had been a reassuring presence on the battlefield, and they had an uncanny sense of direction- they'd be able to navigate the arena without a map easily.
"We're almost there," Revenant grunted.
Crypto raised his eyebrows- had the assassin just read his thoughts? No, of course not… What a ridiculous possibility for his tormented mind to come up with. Revenant was simply reacting to the green glow of the distant beacon, now visible from their position and becoming stronger as they closed the distance.
The final stretch of their excruciating journey was uphill. Crypto's feet dragged along the ground as he forced one in front of the other. After everything that had happened from the moment that he and his sister discovered the algorithm until this point, that one minuscule inconvenience felt incredibly unfair.
He pushed the needle of another syringe into his arm. The end was in sight now - he could see the beacon - and that made him feel even more exhausted. He wanted to stop and rest, but he couldn't- not with the Ring attempting to tear his body apart atom by atom, warded off only by the ability of smart polymer to mimic the molecular properties of any material.
Revenant was first to arrive at the beacon. Unsurprisingly, the machine was able to handle the grueling pace and uphill trek with more consistency than Crypto's human body. Not being a carbon-based life form hadn't spared Revenant from the brutality of the Ring, however; as Crypto approached, he could see melted insulation dripping down the simulacrum's frame where wires were exposed. The finish that coated his metal plating was severely damaged, much of it raised in patches and peeling off. Sparks still came from his joints when he moved. He appeared unfazed- he barely seemed to notice.
Revenant slid the data card into the port on the beacon, after which he stepped back and waited, watching Crypto from his menacing stance.
Calling for a fallen teammate to be returned to the arena required a four-digit code, unique to each team, randomized and assigned via their mini-computers at the start of a match. A competitor shouldn't be able to call in someone from an opposing team- if they could, it would be too easy to raise their kill count, and the corporation would waste a lot of money on additional clones.
Crypto had stolen a universal access code some time ago, used by the workers who ran the Games' technical functions. He entered it on the keypad. The green light from the beacon pulsed, then disappeared.
The ship had been called in.
The hacker unpackaged a syringe and pressed it into his arm. He willed it to ward off the pain and disorientation brought about by the Ring long enough for his plan to work- he'd have only a short window in which to override the programming of the drop ship.
A resounding mechanical whine indicated that the ship had decelerated from its faster-than-light travel, and was beginning its descent to a level from which passengers could drop onto the arena ground. Crypto already had his drone in the air. As the hydraulic door at the back of the ship began to lower, the drone made its way inside.
The hacker found himself face-to-face - via the neural link - with a bewildered Mirage, who looked directly into the camera and blinked in confusion. Crypto smirked- it was known among the competitors that he and Mirage had a bit of a rivalry, and the look on that idiot's face was one of utter bafflement. He didn't have time to concern himself with Mirage, however- he needed to access the ship's CPU and override its programming in about thirty seconds.
Revenant's optics tracked Mirage's movement through the air as the trickster fell from the drop ship. The assassin repositioned himself so as to be standing directly in front of Mirage, who landed on his feet with a hard thud that forced the air out of his lungs. When he regained his balance and straightened up to find the simulacrum looming over him, his eyes widened and he slowly raised his arms in cautious defense.
"I- I, uh… Ah, where- what…? Uh, please don't kill me."
His face was contorted into a nervous grin.
Revenant laughed- a hollow, mechanical, inhuman sound. Oh, this skin-suit's reactions were priceless… Pathetic, certainly, but entertaining nonetheless. He lunged at Mirage, and a squeak escaped the trickster's mouth. Mirage stumbled backward clumsily in his haste to put distance between them. The assassin was contemplating the effort versus the entertainment value of chasing as Mirage ran away- Crypto's frustrated, somewhat panicked shout returned his attention to the task at hand.
"The uplink is too slow! I can't access the ship's computer in time."
Tension was reflected in the hacker's facial expression, even as he concentrated on controlling the drone. They had mere seconds to override the unmanned ship before it would depart.
A compartment in the metal plating of Revenant's forearm opened, allowing an orange orb to roll along his wrist, into his hand. It crackled with radiant energy that had a resemblance to miniature bolts of lightning, glowing with a red aura. He pulled his arm back from the shoulder and lobbed the orb at the drop ship with as much force as his robotic body could generate, wrist following shoulder which followed a rotation of his hip. It hit its mark, and arcs of electricity spread over the entire surface of the ship, sparking and glowing with that same red aura. The humming of the ship as it hovered in the air went silent, and it fell into an uncontrolled descent.
Though his eyes were distant - focused on the visual input that his brain received through the drone - Crypto's face turned to Revenant with a look of shock. "What did you just do?"
"Focus, skin-suit," the assassin responded impatiently as he unpackaged a syringe.
The Ring worked by causing electrons to move faster in their orbit around the nuclei of atoms, generating heat within a structure by using that structure itself at a subatomic level. It was effective against carbon-based entities - humans - and it was particularly effective when used on metal. There was such brilliance to it, really- the perfect method of granting a slow, painful death to any living thing, even a mechanical being who embodied the polar opposite of so-called humanity.
Too bad he couldn't really die.
Now barely visible in the distance, Mirage collapsed on the ground. Revenant felt a sense of calm, watching him- the environment around him was... equal to him, for once. He wasn't the only one being forced to suffer.
The drop ship's computer rebooted itself, and its mechanical whine started up again. It leveled out of its free-fall and came to a stop, hovering a foot or two above the ground. Only its primary systems were online at this moment- with less demand on the resources of its processor, Crypto was finally able to uplink the drone and access the ship's navigational options. He sent a command for the ship to land, and it did.
The hacker disengaged from the neural link, and turned to face Revenant.
"Let's go."
He was finally at the end of this terrible journey. He ran for the drop ship - for whatever answers awaited at the facility it would return to - now within his reach.