The Battlefield Is My Soul
The warehouse where I discovered the god's drug was no larger than five square meters at most. There was no way a corporation would bother transporting such a small quantity of goods, so there had to be other warehouses elsewhere. I logged the location into my database and stepped back outside. The corridor remained deathly silent. As I scanned my surroundings, my eyes caught a corpse lying at the far end of the hallway. Even from this distance, the body sprawled face-down on the floor stood out with unnatural clarity. If it was this easy to spot, it would definitely cause problems later.
Should I hide it?
So far the corridor had been perfectly straight, so there was no need to consider other factors. But as I moved deeper into the building, there was no guarantee the layout would stay linear. I started toward the corpse to conceal it.
"......"
Suddenly the atmosphere felt wrong, and I froze mid-step. The hallway was eerily, oppressively quiet. The corpse still lay rigid and cold at the far end. I stood motionless, staring directly into its eyes. The irises glittered with shifting colors. The moment I saw them, I pressed a hand to my forehead.
I'm fucked.
The corpse's implant was still active. Someone was sending a transmission to it. And nine times out of ten, that someone was a colleague. Once they realized the sentry's comms had gone dark, how would they react? Even if these were just slum gangsters without any real discipline or system, at least one of them would come to check. Which meant it was only a matter of time before they discovered an intruder had broken in.
I quickened my pace. My priority was to locate as many warehouses as possible before the enemy caught on.
It took them barely five minutes to put the entire building on high alert. Considering they hadn't fired a single shot and had moved in complete silence, they must have found the body. I'd tried to stay as quiet as possible until I was spotted, but one of them had caught on. Then gunfire began echoing throughout the entire structure.
My heart hammered violently. Still, I kept my cool, marking every place I'd already checked while scanning the remaining areas and pushing forward. Jack still hadn't responded. The whole building must have been ringing with sporadic gunfire by now. I used my implant to filter and pinpoint the chaotic footsteps echoing from every direction.
I located warehouses, eliminated enemies, and advanced swiftly. But the smooth progress didn't last long. True to the building's mostly linear corridor design, both ends of the hallway were soon blocked off, surrounding me from all sides. I ducked into a room between corridors and struck first before the enemy could enter.
I hurled a grenade to the right to push the attackers back, then let the bullets flying through the smoke continue to rake across the hallway. Several enemies approaching from the left were cut down by stray rounds.
"Hey, you stupid bastards! Aim properly!!"
The moment someone shouted and the gunfire from beyond the smoke ceased, I burst out into the corridor and began cleaning up the remaining hostiles. Shots started flying again from the other side of the smoke, but by then the situation was already under control.
I kept moving and discovered five more warehouses. After checking every blocked and open path, I determined there were three other buildings connected to this one. Based on the pattern of warehouses I'd found so far, they had probably scattered around twelve in total. There was no guarantee that all of them contained what we were looking for, but I still had time to search.
I moved my exhausted body, climbing floor after floor. When I rounded another corner, I spotted what appeared to be an officer. A massive brute was blocking the hallway, aiming an array of heavy weapons straight at me. I flinched and immediately ducked back behind the corner. A split second later, a gatling gun and automatic grenade launcher opened fire, slamming devastating impacts into the opposite corridor.
"Die, you little rat bastard! Hahahahahahaha!!"
The enemy was firing wildly without even knowing if I was there. The thick smoke made it impossible to see even an inch ahead. After a long barrage, the weapons finally overheated and shut down automatically. The smoke still hadn't cleared.
This was my chance.
I dashed through the smoke and crossed the hallway. The moment I emerged, I found two gun barrels pointed directly at me. They were backup weapons the enemy had prepared after his heavy ordnance was disabled. Fortunately, they didn't pack the same firepower. I slid low to dodge the incoming slugs and unleashed a barrage of buckshot at him.
But the opponent was no ordinary thug. "Guh!" I'd assumed he was just another gang member or low-level soldier, but his reaction speed was on another level. He managed to stomp down on me with his foot as I tried to slip past, pinning me in place. A muzzle the size of my face pressed against my crushed guts. It was a matter of inches.
Boom.
The wall of the corridor we were in exploded in flames, and the man pinning me was blasted straight out the window.
Jack still hadn't said a word through comms. Hesitation. I mulled the words over in my mouth for a moment, then simply tossed them out over the line with no particular meaning.
There was still no reply from the other side.
I staggered across the corridor before collapsing headfirst onto the floor. I'd found eleven warehouses so far. Only one remained, but the enemies swarming in from every direction were becoming a serious nuisance. Jack provided support whenever I was in real danger, but it wasn't enough to significantly reduce their numbers. I understood why. For a long-range sniper like him, exposing his position by firing wildly from outside would be suicide. A rear support sniper's job was to stay hidden at all costs.
That said, my current body wasn't built to endure a prolonged fight. The accumulating damage far outweighed what I could recover, putting me at a long-term disadvantage. Normally I would have pushed through that kind of damage somehow, but this was a full-scale raid on an organization's headquarters. The absence of my original body weighed on me more than ever.
I gingerly touched my stomach, which had grown so soft I could tell just by pressing on it.
If I keep climbing all the way to the top like this, will I even be able to get out?
Well, I'd figure that out when the time came. If worse came to worst, I could always jump out a window. My body might get smashed to pieces, but staying alive was the most important thing. If necessary, I could just replace the broken parts with implants. If my entire body was destroyed, I'd simply swap everything out for properly sized implants. After all, everything except my brain was basically machinery anyway. What was there to hesitate about?
I gave a bitter smile and forced my body to move again. The top floor was getting close. Just as I finished clearing the corridor ahead and prepared to advance, I heard the sound of metal scraping behind me. Counterattack? Or dodge? My mind spun at full speed for a split second. My sluggish body wouldn't manage a counter, I decided. I barely managed to twist aside and avoid a fatal wound.
A long monomolecular katana sliced shallowly across my side and chest before pulling free. I spun and pulled the trigger on him.
Bang.
The body lost its head in an instant. Blood gushed from his neck and mingled with the blood flowing from my own wounds. I pressed hard on the injury and took refuge inside the final warehouse. Noisy commotion echoed from outside. The gang members who had been chasing me had finally caught up. There was no longer any way out through the path I'd come from.
I hesitated for a moment, then spoke.
I clamped my mouth shut and listened to the noise coming from outside. All kinds of shouts and cackling laughter mixed together in a chaotic din. I could even hear them tossing grenades into rooms where they thought I might be hiding. The building shook sporadically. I steadied my overlapping, disoriented vision. My mind had never been clearer. Strangely enough, it was always like this when I was on the verge of death. Even though my head felt like it was about to split open and the world was spinning, my consciousness became razor sharp. So clear that I wondered if the world had always looked this vivid.
My body was in agony and the situation was overwhelmingly against me, yet I felt a sensation I couldn't escape from. It was a feeling I wanted to preserve even if it meant driving myself into a corner.
The gang members were getting closer. There was no more time to wait. Jack's voice came through the comms again.
At those words, I looked around the warehouse. As expected, it was another room haphazardly stacked with the corporation's "materials." I tore open one of the packages and pulled out several test tubes. One should be enough.
The ingredient list was mostly stimulants.
I didn't know exactly what kind of synthetic drug it was. It could have been for simple pleasure and satisfaction, or perhaps to create a more advanced combat stimulant. The only thing that mattered to me right now was that it contained a large amount of stimulant components.
After listening to my plan, Jack said:
I wondered what kind of expression Jack was making right now. He had always looked at me like I was some kind of monster. What did he think I was?
It seemed he thought of me as something that merely wore the shape of a human.
I thought for a moment before answering.
I think I finally understood why Jack had been wary of me. I looked down at the synthetic drug in my hand. It was a transparent liquid that sparkled with a blue glow. For an ordinary person, the amount was probably close to a lethal dose.
I poured the entire contents of the test tube into my body.
There was no reply from Jack. I rose to my feet, feeling my consciousness expand to its absolute limit.