SNAFU: Hunters

Smaller than Pointy, the nine-foot monstrosity wore full body armor, matte black carbon fiber over enormous metal plates, and wielded a battered stop sign like an axe. A mane of black hair flowed down her back from a topknot that gave her a vaguely Mongolian look, though she bore the extended brow and thick facial structure of bonks everywhere. Enormous claws extended from her left hand, the gleaming metal bolted to or through the bone and stretching half a meter from her fingertips.

Conor swung, two-handed, but without purchase he couldn’t put enough force into the blow to threaten such a creature. She didn’t take the feint. Faster than he believed possible, Scratchy sidestepped and swung. He twisted to take the blow on his hip as the stop sign swatted him from the air. He took the landing on his left hand, cartwheeled, and came up swinging.

The monofilament blade sparked against the sign inches from his head, skittering up the handle to bite into the reflective sheet metal. Scratchy twisted, tearing the blade from Conor’s hands, and swiped low with her claws.

Laughing, Conor stepped into the swipe, using her elbow for a foothold to spin-kick her in the face. The steel toe caught her in the temple, the shock of metal on thick bone reverberating up Conor’s left leg as the blow arrested his momentum. The reinforced steel in his boot crumpled with the impact, crushing his toes.

Scratchy dropped the sign and stumbled back, shaking her head like a dog.

Conor dove into a roll, grabbing the hilt of his blade on the way by. The metal shrieked as he wrenched the sword free. He spun, weapon up, and gave her a nod of respect.

“C’mon, lassie. You’ve got some fight in you.”

Scratchy swept up the sign and advanced, makeshift axe and claw whirring almost too fast for his augmented eyes to follow. Metal clanged against metal as he backpedaled, limping, sword flashing to deflect the blows before either crushed or sliced him to pieces.

His back hit the wall. Scratchy swung.

* * *

Hurya al-Azwar closed her eyes, but heard only the soft trickle of water in the distance, the echo washing it out to white noise in the sewer tunnels. She muttered a soft prayer of thanks that sanitation services had long-since failed in this part of the city, and only the ghosts of odors remained to haunt her senses. All said, the sewers smelled much better than the mall above.

Her COMMs produced nothing but occasional static, like her GPS and the IFF linked through the network of Dragonflies, though because of intervening metal or deliberate jamming she couldn’t say. Pointy – despite Conor’s childishness, a lack of known identity had ensured that the name stuck throughout operational planning – had vanished down the twisting corridors, and the heat from the walls kept her from tracking him with IR vision.

The tunnels had rocked a few minutes earlier, in what she’d hoped had been a deliberate explosion set by Platt or Rowley, and since then her world had condensed to long, dark corridors rendered bright by augmented eyes, dripping water, and the desiccated memories of ancient shit.

She waited. Rats squeaked in the distance, their feet scrabbling across the stone-and-mortar hallways, too far and too quiet for human ears to hear.

Something Pointy’s size couldn’t move through these corridors without making noise, and her augmented ears could pick up a pin dropping at ten meters. A scrape of boot on the floor, a shoulder brushing against the wall. If he moved, she’d hear it, and she’d have him.

A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, tickling from her hairline until it hit the collar of her undershirt, the white cotton soaked under her armor in the oppressive heat. She tightened her grip on the carbine, textured handle proof against her sweaty palms, and took one careful step, rocking from the ball of her foot to her toes. Silent, she regulated her breathing to the barest motion, letting not even that betray her presence.

Her ears pricked at a soft scrape. She turned, rotating soundlessly on the balls of her feet, breath held. It came again, closer, from a hall on the left. She lifted the REC7 and crept two careful steps back. The FoF highlighed a potential target, blue for an unconfirmed type. Another step back, and–

She jerked up, too late. The giant shape landed on her, thick, sinuous muscle crushing her arms to her chest. Pain exploded in her trigger finger as it snapped sideways in the guard. Hot runnels of fluid streamed to the floor as serrated barbs sank deep into her flesh. She stomped with the strength of a dozen men, driving her heel down onto the foot below.

Pointy only squeezed harder. Her ribs, fused as part of augmentation, cracked. Slamming her head back, she hit thick muscle instead of teeth or nose. She gasped in a breath, but her lungs wouldn’t inflate. Held in the air, she found no purchase. The grip tightened, and the fire in her chest strangled hope. Bones shifted, her infrared vision blurred.