Chương 48: The Wrong Survivor

His trigger finger twitched as he appeared before her in a flash of movement, and his steps faltered with suspicion as he immediately read her latest Enhancement score—well above civilian grade.

"8. 6? Why are you here? Nobody's reported a survivor from the impact zone." He looked her up again.

"How'd you get through the fallout? This crater has seven different heat signatures still rising. There's been no border movement on entry logs, no life signals in the nearby buildings." He paused as if reading details, then kept moving—probably after spotting the Genecorp clearance buried in the EQ signature and deciding whoever backed her outranked his curiosity.

"Genecorp sanctioned? Hmm. Something's interfering with our comms—secure lines are down, only web and satellite left—so you're going to have to come with us until we confirm you're someone useful," the captain barked with timbred authority as his squad moved to surround Kelly, guiding and guarding her as they cleaned up the fallen from the battle raging around them. Another large soldier cut in from behind him, blasting a struggling corpse at point-blank range before looking up.

"She's sanctioned, right? Genecorp? Maybe she's one of theirs!" he yelled, pivoting.

"Senator Friedman mentioned a research team would be inbound to extract the artifact." The captain didn't look convinced.

"Then why's she here without an escort? The suit's researchers are too cowardly to go into hot zones alone. Not unless those bloodbags finally ran out of clipboards and grew spines. She should be at an evac bunker or whatever's left of the Hyperloop stations." He tilted his head slightly toward her, voice lower now.

"So what are you—messenger, researcher, or bait?" Kelly remained silent, her eyes peeled on the chaotic war erupting around the formation.

"Well, I am a scientist," she acquiesced, allowing them a tertiary glance at her Vaughn credentials; just enough to see who she worked for, her division, and her name, but not much else.

"Wait—a scientist?" He checked her posture, scanned her credentials, then glanced back at his men.

"You're with Vaughn? I didn't realize you Vaughn dogs would send noncombatants to the field so soon. You might be field bait." He laughed, adjusting a shield that sprang from his forearm to defend against a diving undead before promptly snatching it from the air in a flash of movement and shooting the downed corpse until it could no longer move.

"I'll need to check with command once the box stops jamming our secure lines, but with that rating, you shouldn't even be on-planet. You saw the stampede, right?" Kelly nodded with tentative guilt. She really needed to figure out how to raid Reggie's crew for Deadtech without triggering a monster stampede and destroying a section of the city. The captain fired into the distance, then continued, "It was madness—as if something possessed every creature within a mile. It broke all our containments.

Some buildings near the center are still under siege. Genecorp HQ's gone—wrecked from the inside. They say it was the target of the stampede, and some maniac inside started cutting through the floors while the rest of us were busy, then scrubbed the footage!" he yelled through the sound of death and gunfire. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Kelly wasn't surprised that Genecorp hadn't reported her to the authorities.

That meant they had plans for her and didn't want to share the rewards. Naturally, she planned to ruin their plans in the best way possible. The captain reloaded in a blur before sparing her a glance, oblivious to Kelly's thoughts.

"So you're here for the box. Is it true what they say about them?" he asked curiously, his eyes eager and his voice low but direct, jerking his head toward the alien structure spewing insanely dense, vibrant mana into the atmosphere.

"We know the magic-portal freaks are planting these boxes all over the globe. Lab geeks think it means things are gonna get worse; that they're terraforming, and even deadlier creatures are coming!" He looked equally concerned and excited.

"Maybe there'll be another interspecies war!" At his words, Kelly was already adding "fit the magical alien terraforming structure into shadow space" to her to-do list, right after breaking into the botanical lab. She had read about them online but had never seen one for herself.

Aside from the magic staffs and the basic-ass pre-technology weapons some of the more dangerous monsters sometimes carried, the boxes were the first real pieces of portal technology to land, and from the reports, they powered themselves without any biological input. Unless there was a little gnome or something equally ridiculous inside them, they were exactly what humanity needed. Whenever they appeared, the whole world's internet—all the worlds—went crazy with greed.

If everyone with a pulse was curious about the magical terraforming structures, even off-worlders, why shouldn't she have one of her own?

"I hate to break it to you," Kelly said, thumbing toward the alien structure rising behind them, where the air crackled around streams of densely packed, highly saturated mana curling off the surface like a slow gas leak from hell.

"But you're way off. I didn't come here to help you figure out how to worship the magic box." Her voice stayed even, unconcerned by the threat he posed. She had Reggie's crew's Deadqueen tech, after all—all three pieces. Whatever he was capable of didn't matter if it passed right through her. And best of all, she would see it coming. Kelly pointed again at the structure dumping mana into the sky in thick columns that twisted on the way up.

"I'm not your researcher, and I'm not here to help you collect that thing either." She rested her hand back on her hip, one boot scraping the dust.

"I destroyed Genecorp's headquarters while the heavy hitters were away. Seventy floors, top to bottom." She scratched the side of her jaw as if checking the math.

"I didn't even do anything, and they kept trying to kill me. Can you believe that?" She raised both palms to the sky in genuine frustration.

"Everyone who pointed a weapon at me first died trying. The stampede happened right after, so the whole thing's probably a pile of scrap now." She paused as if still calculating.

"All of it was self-defense, obviously—I checked." Her eyes lifted to the serpent drifting over the city, its coils already casting lines across the skyline.

"I'm here to stop the invasion. That thing up there," she gestured at the sky, where the serpent had finally begun to emerge, slow and visible, "is going to eat this city in a few hours. And when it does, everything still breathing will be dead, including you—probably… no, definitely." Her eyes continued to track the horizon, then returned squarely to meet his.

"If you're planning anything, now's your chance to make it entertaining."