The effects of adrenaline caught up to the hacker and left his body feeling weak and unsteady. His ribs ached. The wound in his shoulder burned. His core felt uncomfortably hot, while his skin was cold and clammy, and the conflicting mix of sensations was making the world tilt and spin around him.
Still, Crypto held his ground. He refused to back away from the hulking automaton in front of him.
It was roughly the same height as Revenant, though significantly bulkier- its design was more streamlined, lacking in sharp edges and angles. Armor plating reinforced its joints. Its body was a dulled gunmetal gray, unpolished so as not to give away its position by reflecting light. Black fabric - something rough, like canvas - covered part of its shoulders and upper torso. Affixed to the fabric was the insignia of the Syndicate, a rank patch with a considerable number of stripes and chevrons, and several service ribbons. Crypto wasn't good at identifying rankings, but it was obvious that this thing had a high status within the corporate network. It didn't have a name tape like the guards' or agents' uniforms did, nor a serial number that one might expect to see on an inorganic being.
A few torn wires hung from the side of its neck; some inside its shoulder caught in the moving parts of the joint and made the mechanism catch for a moment… He had no doubt that the machine would still have no difficulty in tearing him limb from limb, if it was so inclined.
The automaton didn't seem interested - for now - in inflicting further harm. It regarded Crypto from a neutral stance- behind it, Revenant struggled to dislodge the piece of metal that it had used to pin him against the armored vehicle.
"You know who I am," the hacker said angrily between heavy breaths. "Then you know what I'm after. Let my sister go, or I'll broadcast proof of the harm you've caused throughout the Outlands! The Harvester, how you forced the circumstances that led all of us to the Apex Games so you could profit off of us… I can prove everything now!"
He found it difficult to tell whether he was shaking from the exhaustion of his injuries, or from rage. The machine in front of him didn't care either way- it threw back its head and laughed, a human gesture that felt wildly unnatural for this metal behemoth.
"We've known who and where you are since you destroyed the repulsor tower on King's Canyon," it said. "Your dark, mysterious persona became a fan favorite in the Games. You've served us well there; the Syndicate sees no reason to remove you from that position. You are guaranteed a life of luxury under our protection, Mr. Park- we need not be enemies."
It nodded its head in a way that was likely meant to appear reassuring- though coming from this thing, the gesture felt hollow. Crypto blinked several times. He understood all the words, but it felt like his brain was struggling to assemble them into concepts with meaning. It was difficult to tell if that was a result of his exhausted body struggling to cope with his injuries, or simply because- this was impossible. No, they couldn't have found him… He was too careful, too strategic, his identities too well constructed…!
"As to the matter of your sister… Mila Alexander escaped from Syndicate holding weeks ago. When you disappeared from the Apex arena, I thought you would lead us to her. Surrender now - cooperate with us - and I am willing to guarantee her safety."
The hacker realized that his mouth was slightly open, that his grip on his weapon was slackening… He set his jaw, squared his shoulders, and righted his stance. He couldn't afford to let his guard down now. He couldn't give in to the fatigue that threatened to consume his body.
"I don't… believe you."
Crypto's voice was quiet - weary, and with a tone of uncertainty that he hadn't wanted to convey - but his message was delivered with the same defiant look in his eyes. What reason did he have to trust the organization that had been hunting him for the past six months- the same one that had rigged the Games; had coerced the competitors to become property of the Syndicate…?
He could think of none. How did he even know that his sister was still alive-?
No. No, he couldn't let himself go there.
"We would much prefer to have your cooperation than to work against you," answered the automaton. "If you remain on the wrong side, though- how long do you believe that you can keep going, with the limited resources available to you? Ask yourself honestly, Mr. Park."
Whatever direction that question was going to send his mind spiralling was interrupted by the dissonant screech of metal on metal. Revenant tore the piece of steel that had impaled him out of his body. Static and broken signals cut across his senses- a warning about system power flashed briefly. A snarl left his vocal processor as he suppressed the negative feedback. The automaton turned toward him - away from Crypto - in response to the sound… In a swift motion, Revenant pivoted and struck at the other machine with the sharp edge of the piece of metal. He aimed for the neck; the automaton twisted its body and dropped low in response to his assault. The jagged end of the beam swung harmlessly - albeit by a quarter of an inch at most - past the side of its head.
Crypto squeezed the trigger. A hail of bullets hit the automaton in the back- they glanced off harmlessly, or stuck in its outer armor plating. Whatever alloy this thing was made of was high-density and engineered at a particulate level, without the molecular imperfections found in conventional materials. He hissed in pain as the recoil of the rifle put pressure on his injured shoulder. The automaton made a grab for Revenant's leg. As it did, the assassin vaulted over top of its body and drove the end of the metal weapon down toward one of the joints at the back of its neck. It shifted its weight and twisted its body sharply out from under him- Revenant fell to the ground, and the jagged beam skidded away under the van.
The automaton drove its fist into the asphalt where Revenant had been milliseconds prior. It spun on the heel of its back leg- as it rotated, the assassin moved with it, maintaining the same position at its flank. It tried to break the pattern of movement by abruptly switching directions. Revenant felt the shift in its weight- his forearm reconfigured into a bladed weapon, which he drove up into the underside of the automaton's jaw as it turned toward him. A harsh, metallic grinding noise resounded. He twisted the blade sharply and retracted it, carving a deep gash into the side of its face.
It shouted in response- its tone carried much more surprise than pain. Revenant saw its reaction as an opening, an indicator of weakness… He went on the offensive; the automaton shifted back and avoided his attack. Nearby, the engine of Torc and Augustin's van had gone quiet; they had come to a stop to pick up Wattson. Their surroundings were much more quiet in the absence of active guards, all of whom had either fled or been killed- perhaps some were only unconscious, if they were lucky. Crypto snapped a new magazine into his rifle with a click.
Their last remaining adversary - for the moment - swung its arm down on Revenant from above. He raised his right arm to block. The impact of metal on metal rang out. Its other hand curled into a fist, aimed at his midsection. His left arm moved to the side to block, but the automaton immediately pulled back and redirected. In the microseconds that he was thrown off balance, his opponent reached for the exposed internals from the piece of metal debris that it had gouged him with earlier. It found its mark- something snapped out of place; several wires tore away. The onslaught of warnings and broken signals that resulted was enough to drop Revenant to the ground. He couldn't sort environmental data from his systems' alerts about the damage he'd endured- even without the addition of his human counterpart's feedback, it was too intense.
He was only vaguely aware of another presence, moving in behind the automaton. Something pulled it away before it could do even more damage. Cade- he leaped from the hood of the vehicle nearby; his fist connected heavily with the automaton's head. Though he didn't have the strength to cause it any lasting harm, the amount of force that his cybernetic enhancements could produce did appear to catch it off-guard for a moment, and it stumbled backward. Crypto fired at it- he was running out of strength, his body losing the ability to sustain through this fight, and the recoil nearly knocked him on his back. The automaton turned toward him.
"Enough! You cannot win this battle, Mr. Park. Give up."
It sounded annoyed, as if the hacker had inconvenienced it.
"Cade-!"
Revenant was back up and in a combat stance- though he appeared rather unsteady. He tossed something in Cade's direction. It skidded across the asphalt, and the enforcer chased after it. His hand closed around a flat, rectangular object with a smooth surface- Torc's business card holder, in which he kept the transceivers that Colomar had designed.
"Goddamn it," Cade growled under his breath as he popped the case open. Getting close enough to the automaton to attach the transceiver meant being within easy range for it to snap his limbs like twigs. This thing was beating Revenant in a battle of raw power- he had no doubt that it could crush him within seconds, regardless of his augmentations… His breath came out in a low whistle, which was met with a series of groans and sharp hisses from the others as he rushed the metal beast.
"For heaven's sake, Cade," Torc's indignant voice called in his ear. "Can you not whistle into the commlink, please?!"
"Priorities," the enforcer snapped back without slowing down. In front of him, Revenant was engaged in close combat with the automaton. He'd taken on his shadow form- smoke and ash swirling around him as tendrils of red energy crackled… a quantum state in which he manipulated the properties of his body at a subatomic level, fluctuating between wave and particle traits at will.
Okay, Cade thought as he leaped onto the automaton's back and wrapped one arm around its neck. The shit they show in the Apex Games isn't fake. I lose my bet with Mauser. If I live tonight, I'll let him know...
Revenant's blade cut across the front of the automaton's chest. Sparks flew, only to give way to a purely superficial scratch. It pivoted and dropped to one knee, using the change in momentum to flip Cade over its shoulder and toss him to the side. With the enforcer out of the way, it made a grab for Revenant's shoulder. He stepped sideways, turned, and evaded its arm. It had anticipated his movement, however; its other hand tore a door off the side of the abandoned prisoner transport and struck him center-mass with the corner edge. His form vanished on impact and rematerialized several feet back; the ghostly smoke and crackling energy subsided.
Warning: system power low. Approaching critical value.
He took a couple of uneven steps back. His adversary watched, head tilted.
"Do you think that you can outmaneuver me, Revenant? I've seen your programming, you know- and your fabrication drawings. Nothing that you can do would-!"
It was cut off in its sentence abruptly when Augustin's van rounded the corner of the overpass and came speeding straight at it. The automaton leaped out of the way- but it had misunderstood the corporal's intentions. Rather than hit it head-on, Augustin pulled the wheel to the side at the last second, intending to side-swipe it and knock it down without risking damage to the vehicle's engine. It put itself back in his path- the corner of the van struck its leg. The van's right headlight shattered, and the automaton hit the ground hard.
Cade charged it and knocked its arm aside as it scrambled to recover. It got hold of his ankle and twisted sharply, dropping him to the pavement beside it in a fit of swearing- but it was too late. He'd already taken advantage of the opening and attached the transceiver to its chest.
"Torc! Torc, shut it the fuck down- now!"
The back of the van opened. Wattson jumped out and rushed to Crypto's side. Behind her, the scientist could be seen, his face illuminated by the holographic screens from his neural interface. He pulled up a geometric wireframe of the automaton- an input on a menu to his right overlaid its electrical layout over the model.
Augustin rolled down the window.
"Come on, you guys," he shouted. "Defense Force is on our tails. We need to get out of here!"
The automaton made another grab for Cade's leg. He quickly pulled away. It climbed to its feet to chase him-
...on the model projected by his neural interface, Torc severed the connections from its CPU to its actuation system. Its legs collapsed under it and it fell face-down onto the asphalt, unmoving. The scientist grinned widely and pumped his fist as a little gesture of their victory.
"Hey. Nice- uh, nice work," Cade grumbled grudgingly as Revenant staggered past him.
"If you value your internal organs, stay the hell away from me," the assassin snarled in response. Neither of them bothered to look at the other as they spoke. At the answer, Cade threw his hands up into the air in an equally aggressive reaction.
"You stay away from me, you ugly motherfucker!"
"Cade," Augustin called, leaning out the window of the van. "Come on, fré- let's go!"
The enforcer scoffed and shook his head, but he heeded his friend's warning and wasted no more time getting into the vehicle. The instant the doors had slammed shut, they sped away- off the highway, onto the dark, narrow gravel roads as soon as possible.
"We need to get to a rendezvous point and switch vehicles," Cade informed the others over the crunch of gravel under spinning tires. "Make sure none of those Syndicate goons can track us- then we'll get back to our command center. Lay low where we're safe, patch ourselves up, and take stock of where we stand."
Augustin nodded.
"What happened there, kanmarad?" he asked after a pause. "This operation was to free prisoners, yes?"
Several seconds passed in uncomfortable, tense silence.
"It was a setup," Crypto finally replied in a hoarse voice, barely loud enough to be audible. "There weren't any prisoners."
Somehow, every time it seemed like he was getting somewhere, his path turned into a dead end. The Syndicate knew his identity, knew that he'd been hiding out in the Apex Games- where did he go from here?
He had no idea where Mila was now, or how they'd found him. In the moment, his initial thought had been that Revenant had led him into a trap, deliberately supplying him with bad information and false hope-only for the assassin to save his life when a Syndicate guard caught him foolishly unprepared. The way they had reacted to Revenant's presence made it decidedly unlikely that he had led Crypto into a trap for them. This was all them- their resources and their tactics, trying to divide those who had formed alliances against them… Or maybe he was doing that all on his own. He had never been much of a leader.
Augustin stayed silent after his response, did not press for further details- which he appreciated immensely. He didn't think he could find the energy to string sounds together into sentences anymore, not right now. The corporal's right hand turned the steering wheel, and the light from the vehicle's display glinted off the edge of his metal wristband. SPC EMET, 290131 - EOD UNIT 226 - MISSING BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN.
The hacker buried his face in his hands and cried quietly, as Wattson wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.
I'm sorry, he thought, over and over. I need to do better. I will do better.
He was failing everybody around him. Failing in his duty as an older brother to protect Mila, failing to bring her home safe, failing to keep those who were loyal to him from harm, failing to expose the Syndicate. Their reach and their grip were too powerful… He found himself wondering if he could spare everyone else around him from further pain by turning himself in.