The Tutorial's a Bit Brutal (1)
Getting his hands under him and pushing up off the ground had gone well enough. The sensation that shoved itself between his toes the moment he stood was another matter entirely.
Squish.
The instant he took a step, something soft and yielding gave under his foot. Sour sludge, soaked through with old grease, slid cold between his toes. He didn't even want to guess what it was.
"Haa... my life is genuinely fucked."
The sigh that broke out of him scattered white into the empty air. He shook his head hard and looked up. Skyscrapers that had torn through the cloud cover flashed in a light he already knew by heart.
No denying it.
That was the skyline of Nowak City, plain as day. His secondhand gaming chair's backrest had snapped, he'd gone face-first into the floor, and when he opened his eyes he was standing in the middle of a landfill.
He looked the part, too. All he had on was one ragged hospital gown, and every time the cold wind brushed him, his whole body prickled.
"No way..."
On a hunch he felt along his left collarbone, and his fingertips caught on a rough scar. A number, stamped clear in blue ink. 07.
He was Seven, the protagonist of Escape from Nowak. He'd actually been stuffed into the skin of the man who was supposed to become Nowak City's most promising human butcher.
A shattered ampule syringe lay on the ground. He picked it up and turned it, and a serpent coiled into a triple helix caught the light and glinted.
"It's really Alden Corp..."
His thoughts went cold. Right now he'd started as a hidden-route test subject, and the penalty on that route was clear enough. Thanks to self-replicating pluripotent stem cells, he began in a body that spat out every piece of cyberware it was given.
What did that mean, in plain terms? While everyone else chatted through chips in their skulls, he was stuck hauling a brick phone around like the world's most pathetic analog outcast.
Well. Give up the cyberware, and there are other advantages.
How much those advantages would help him get out of a landfill right this second was another question.
"First thing is getting the hell out of here..."
The moment he set his first foot on the slope of the trash hill—
Crack!
"Ghk—fuck!"
Something sharp drove into the heel of his right foot. A sensation like a heated branding iron boring clean through him swept his whole body. On a monitor it would have been ten points off the health bar and done. Reality was merciless.
"Nn—ngh..."
Every time he put weight on the ruined foot, dark blood dripped onto the muddy water. Teeth clenched, he dropped onto a pile of trash and checked the sole. Had a shard of glass been hiding under that old rubber mat he'd just stepped on?
He was still trying to figure out how to pull it when—
Shrrk!
From the cut, raw red flesh wormed up like bloodworms and writhed. Skin and muscle cinched in from every side, then spat the glass fragment lodged between the bones clean out. In a few seconds the split skin had filled with new flesh, no trace left behind.
He touched the sole in a daze. Smooth. Whole. The pain from a moment ago felt like a lie.
"...Ha. Shit. I really am a test subject."
A hollow laugh broke out of him at the sheer absurdity of the hyper-regeneration, but he was on his feet again at once. There wasn't time.
As far as his memory went, this place was the O'Neill Barrens—a colossal lawless zone on the outskirts of Nowak City, where every kind of industrial waste and wreckage rotted together. He ran the information in his head at speed.
Which way out?
The southern waste-processing plant? That was the toxic sludge lake. Bare skin wouldn't last a second. Rejected.
The western approach? Steel Heads territory.
Walk in there naked, no gear, and they'll strip me alive.
Rejected.
There was only one way out: the narrow alley that led into the La Frontera slums.
That's the route. That's where I meet the NPC who'll actually play along.
He hurried into the steep cut between crumpled containers and the tangled remains of scrapped cars, careful on the old iron plates as he started down the slope.
Creeeak!
"Oh—hey?!"
A corroded zinc sheet couldn't take his weight and caved under him. A scrap pipe caught on his foot and went rolling down the slope with a thunderous clatter.
Crash!
Noise rolled through the quiet trash canyon.
"Ah, these checks are actual dogshit..."
He was just getting up when rough footsteps and the scrape of metal burst out from around the corner.
"Hey, up top! What was that noise?"
"Some rat?"
Two scavengers came out—grease-soaked vests, single-eye sensors bolted to their faces. The moment those flashing yellow lenses met him, their mouths split into grins.
He was fucked.
"The hell? Some hospital-gown cripple crawled out?"
"Wait. That on the collarbone—that's an Alden Corp mark, right? Hey! We turn him in, we get paid, yeah?"
Clack!
The ugly muzzle in the bigger one's hands swung up at his chest.
"Ah."
Of all things, what the man was holding was a Mastiff 4. An ultra-large-caliber shotgun.
A direct hit and I die!
He scanned his surroundings at once. Turn his back and run, and a slug the size of a cannonball would plant itself in his spine. He knew that. There still wasn't another option.
Protect the head!
He was probably still around level one, but even now, so long as the brain stayed intact, he'd be fine. He ducked, wrapped both arms around his skull, and threw himself sideways.
BOOM!
A roar that tore at his eardrums, and flame flashed.
Thud!
The impact hit his right side like an industrial hammer, and his whole body was flung into the air. His breath stopped cold. His gut must have been shredded. Hot blood surged up his throat.
"Khak...!"
Here, I play dead. Nicely.
He let the momentum carry him, went limp all over, and crashed into the ground without mercy.
Splat!
He drove himself face-first into the thick mud. Jaw slack. Eyes shut. Breath stopped dead.
The blood spread across the ground went cold. Pain swept his whole body. He twitched as if he might spring up any second, but Seven clenched his teeth and held.
Move now and the finishing shot comes. Take one in the head and I'm a hundred percent dead.
Slosh. Slosh.
Boots crushing through the mud hammered at his ears. The whine of a cheap prosthetic motor circled between the steps.
"Tch. Dropped in one shot. Durability's weak as hell. No implants either?"
"Hey! We were supposed to take him alive, you idiot!"
"How the hell am I supposed to bring a dead guy back? We'll haul him in and sell him somehow!"
The big scavenger came over and nudged his skull with a boot. Seven's neck bent, and his slack gaze tipped toward empty air. The scavenger flipped the collar of the hospital gown, checked the barcode on the collarbone, and whistled.
"Yeah, he's Alden Corp all right. Pull a few organs and an underground clinic'll pay three thousand credits!"
The man lowered the shotgun's muzzle to the ground, then drew a rough hunting knife from his chest as if he meant to open the belly. That was the moment he let his guard down.
Seven's eyes snapped open. The two eyes that had been slack a moment ago burned red in the dark. The scavengers were still snickering, already counting the payout, when—
Shhk!
Seven's arms whipped out like lashes and wound around the scavenger's ankles.
"Huh?"
In the next instant Seven ignored the limits of his joints and twisted his arms and his whole body as they were.
"Huh...?!"
Crack!
The ankle wrenched under the sudden motion, and the big man lost his balance and pitched forward. Seven used the recoil as a springboard and launched himself up like a coil.
Shrrk!
From his fingertips, red muscle and tissue burst outward and sheathed both hands. In a breath they had become the flayed paws of a beast. Something white surged up from the ends of all ten fingers.
Shhk!
Ten bone claws erupted from where his nails had been. The pain of tearing through his own flesh ran straight into the will to kill.
"Wh-what the hell is this bast—!"
The scavenger was still shouting when Seven raised both hands and drove the crossed claws into the chest of the man collapsing to his knees.
Crunch!
The claws buried in the thorax and carved a diagonal line. The chest split open, and dark blood fountained out. The big man's breath was cut in a single stroke.
"H-hiiik?!"
The jaw of the one still standing began to chatter.
"Wh-what—! This m-monster...!"
What was left of him went white and yanked the pistol from his belt. Too late. Before the muzzle could come up—
Thump!
Seven hurled the fallen corpse. The scavenger flinched aside from his partner's body, and in that gap a vicious shape came out of the dark at a run. By the time he brought the gun to bear, Seven's claws were already in front of his nose. They were coming. They were stabbing.
Thuk!
The claws of the right hand punched in under the scavenger's jaw.
"K-khhk..."
The bone blades tore through flesh, smashed the palate and the skull, and burst out through the crown of the helmet. Brain and blood ran down the edges in thin streams. The scavenger's limbs shuddered, then went slack.
Shlick.
Seven shook his hand the way a man shakes off filth. The claws pulled free, and the corpse with the hole through its head collapsed bonelessly into the mud. Blood had gotten on his face, so he wiped it off roughly and spat what had splashed his lips. Through the stink of the landfill came the smell of blood.
"Ha... this is self-defense, you bastards."
He looked down at the tips of the nail-claws. Drops of blood fell from them, one after another. What surprised Seven was how weak the shock of his first kill turned out to be. Forget the guilt the media and the books always went on about—he didn't feel any shock at all.
Wow. I really did turn into a complete psycho, didn't I?
He mocked himself for it even as he dropped to the ground and started rifling the bodies at once. The first thing he found was the 9mm pistol on the scavenger with the hole through his head. He pocketed it, but he doubted he'd ever use it.
My main weapon's these claws anyway. I'll sell the gun later.
For a moment Seven looked down at the five sharp pairs of nails dripping blood from his fingertips. Claws like these on both hands would slice thick muscle and bone alike. Against the enemies this early, they were more than enough.
The huge lump of steel the first man had dropped was a different story.
"Yeah, that's a Mastiff 4. A little rusty, but."
Whoever had been maintaining it, the barrel—thick as a cannon—was scored and greasy. Didn't matter. What he held now was the most powerful ultra-large-caliber pump-action shotgun you could find in Nowak City. An ordinary human couldn't even fire the thing. Pull the trigger without cyberware arms or an exoskeleton and the recoil would wreck your wrist and pop your shoulder. In the game, anything under a certain Strength stat couldn't use it at all.
But this body I've got now?
Bones could shatter and knit again in two seconds. In the original, the test-subject route and bioware arms had no large-caliber restriction, paid for in health.
Trust the regen and let it rip.
For a trump card—something to slam in at close range when the claws couldn't reach, or into the skull of a heavy-armor target—it would do just fine.
Seven roughly flipped the corpse's chest open. Somehow the bandolier hadn't torn. Brass 4-gauge rounds, each as thick as a finger, were packed in tight.
"One, two, three..."
He wiped the blood off the barrel on a torn scrap of the corpse's shirt.
Clack!
He hauled the pump and shoved it home. With a dull metallic sound, one heavy slug was drawn solidly into the chamber. The grip settled into his palm like it belonged there. While Seven was still gathering the loot, the hole in his gut had already closed.
Clink!
The heavy lump of lead that had been lodged in his belly came up in a rush of blood, and the regeneration finished. He was just about to stand when—
Vmmm.
A low vibration from the far side of the canyon shook the ground. Beyond the ridge of the trash mountain, five or six searchlight beams punched through the smog and poured down on the open ground.
"Gunfire was over here! Find them!"
"It's an ambush! Steel Heads must be here! Watch yourselves!"
Voices, large and small, rose between the heaps of trash. Seven jerked his head up. What he saw in the distance was a pack of more than ten scavengers. A few of them even had machine guns, for all the good their pride did them.
Ten to one, and machine guns? It wasn't like this in the original.
At the turn he hadn't expected, Seven clicked his tongue inwardly. Reality was not playing out like the game's tutorial.
At my current stats, this is razor-thin.
He thought it through. His hyper-regeneration had limits. A max-level test subject might have gone on a rampage with his bare body, but if this were the game, he was level one. Eat a frontal hail of bullets and he'd be overwhelmed. Even now, if his head blew apart, he was in real danger.
A frontal charge is suicide.
Chrrk!
Feeling, in his bones, that this wasn't going to end cleanly, Seven moved his feet in a hurry. Behind him, the beams of the vehicles washed over the corpses. Screams and shouts burst from the scavengers almost at once.
"Fuck! Jimmy! Jimmy's down!"
"Which bastard did this! You're dead when we catch you! Come out!"
Seven threw himself, without a sound, into the dark the mountain of trash had made.