CHAPTER 305: CHAPTER - 305

Chapter - 305

Stepping into the light was a nightmare. It looked like a dog, if a dog had been designed by a committee of sadists and built by DARPA. It was a robotic quadruped, the size of a lion, plated in black chrome armor. Its eyes were glowing red sensors. Mounted on its back was a dual-barreled turret.

[System Notification: Enemy Detected.]

[Type: K-9 Hunter-Killer Drone Prototype]

[Threat: It bites. And shoots.]

"Bad dog," Rick whispered.

The robot let out a synthesized roar and charged.

"Sharon! Shoot the legs!" Rick yelled, pushing Nadia behind him.

Sharon fired, but the bullets sparked harmlessly off the sloped armor of the drone. It was fast, closing the distance in seconds. The turret on its back swiveled, tracking Rick.

Rick checked his inventory. Cash. Rolex. Lint.

"Damn it!"

He needed something for the dog to chew on. Something distracting.

He looked at Nadia.

"Don’t you dare!" she screamed, reading his mind.

"You’re wearing a bomb vest! It won’t bite the bomb!" Rick yelled.

He grabbed Nadia by the back of her catsuit and shoved her forward, straight at the charging robot.

"Here, boy! Fetch!"

The robot’s sensors prioritized the closest target. It leaped, its metal jaws opening to crush Nadia’s arm.

Nadia shrieked, dropping to her knees and holding up her chained wrists to block.

The robot’s jaws clamped down on the heavy industrial chains binding her hands. CRUNCH. The metal held, jamming the robot’s mouth open.

"It’s stuck!" Sharon yelled.

The robot thrashed, shaking Nadia like a ragdoll, but it couldn’t bite down, and it couldn’t fire its turret without blowing its own head off because Nadia was too close.

"Hold it still!" Rick yelled, sprinting forward.

He didn’t have a weapon. But he had a Rolex. A heavy, platinum, thirty-thousand-dollar lump of metal on his wrist.

He jumped, landing on the robot’s back. He wrapped his arm around its metallic neck, putting it in a chokehold.

"This... costs... more... than... you!" Rick grunted, and then he started smashing the face of the Rolex repeatedly into the glowing red sensor eye on the robot’s head.

SMASH. SMASH. SMASH.

Glass shattered. Metal crunched. The robot bucked wildly, trying to throw him off.

"Die, you glorified toaster!" Rick roared, driving his fist—and the watch—deep into the robot’s electronic brain.

With a final, sparking shudder, the red light died. The robot collapsed, its legs giving out, trapping Nadia’s hands under its heavy head.

Rick rolled off, panting. He looked at his wrist. The Rolex was a mangled, twisted wreck of gears and platinum.

"My watch," he mourned. "I liked that watch."

"Get... it... off... me!" Nadia screamed, pinned under the dead robot.

Rick and Sharon heaved the heavy metal carcass off her. The chains on her wrists were bent and gnawed, but the bomb vest was intact.

03:15

"We have to go!" Sharon yelled, pulling Nadia up.

They sprinted the rest of the way up the tunnel. Their lungs burned. Their legs screamed.

They burst through a final door and out into the open air.

They were on the roof. The wind was howling, whipping their hair and clothes. The city lights were a carpet of jewels thousands of feet below.

In the center of the helipad, a sleek, black, futuristic VTOL aircraft—a tilt-rotor osprey hybrid—was spooling up its engines. The rotors were already spinning, creating a deafening roar.

Marnus Warner stood on the loading ramp, his purple jacket flapping in the wind. He held the real laptop in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. He looked at his watch, then at them.

He smiled. He raised his glass in a mock toast.

"Too slow!" he shouted over the engine roar.

He turned to board the aircraft.

Rick looked at the distance. Fifty yards.

He looked at the timer on Nadia’s chest. 01:30.

He looked at Sharon. "Throw me."

"What?" Sharon yelled.

"Fastball special! Throw me!"

"You’re too heavy!"

"Use the System! I don’t know! Just launch me!"

Rick backed up three steps. He activated Predator’s Focus one last time. He sprinted.

As he reached Sharon, she didn’t throw him. She dropped to one knee and laced her fingers together, creating a step.

Rick planted his foot in her hands. Sharon heaved upward with a scream of effort.

Rick launched into the air. He soared over the gap, arms outstretched.

Marnus turned just in time to see a man in a ruined Italian suit flying through the air toward him like a missile.

Rick tackled Marnus on the ramp. They both went down hard on the metal grating. The champagne glass shattered. The laptop skittered across the deck of the aircraft.

Rick grabbed Marnus by the lapels of his purple jacket. "Cancel it!" he roared, slamming Marnus’s head against the ramp. "Cancel the bomb!"

Marnus laughed, blood bubbling on his lips. "Or what? You’ll kill me? If I die, the dead-man switch triggers it instantly!"

He held up his hand. In it was a small, black remote with a single button. His thumb was hovering over it.

"One press," Marnus gasped, grinning like a skull. "And she goes pop. And this whole building goes down."

Rick froze. He had him pinned, but he was checkmated.

The VTOL pilot, seeing the struggle, gunned the engines. The aircraft began to lift off, the ramp tilting steeply.

Rick and Marnus started to slide.

"Get off my plane!" Marnus shrieked, kicking at Rick.

Rick looked down. They were ten feet in the air and rising. Sharon and Nadia were shrinking figures on the helipad below.

00:45

Rick looked at Marnus. He looked at the remote. He looked at the laptop sliding toward the edge of the ramp.

He made a choice.

He let go of Marnus with one hand and grabbed the remote. He squeezed Marnus’s wrist, hard. CRACK.

Marnus screamed, dropping the remote.

Rick caught it mid-air.

Then, with a savage grin, Rick grabbed the laptop with his other hand.

"Thanks for the ride," Rick said.

He headbutted Marnus. Hard.

Marnus stumbled back, dazed.

Rick didn’t wait. He jumped.

He leaped off the rising ramp, clutching the remote and the laptop to his chest. He plummeted twenty feet down, tucking and rolling as he hit the hard concrete of the roof.

He groaned, pain shooting through every inch of his body. He scrambled to his knees.

The VTOL was rising fast, banking away into the night. Marnus was standing on the ramp, screaming in silent rage.

Rick looked at the remote in his hand. It had a small LCD screen. CODE REQUIRED.

"Damn it!" Rick yelled. "It needs a code to disarm!"

He looked at Nadia. 00:15.

She was sobbing, paralyzed with fear.

"The code!" Rick yelled at the shrinking VTOL. "Marnus! What’s the code!"

Marnus, safe in the air, leaned out. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"CHECK THE LAPTOP, YOU PEASANT! PASSWORD IS ’GREED’!"

Rick slammed the laptop open. It was password protected. He typed GREED.

Access Granted.

A window popped up. REMOTE DETONATION OVERRIDE CODE: 7734.

Rick punched the numbers into the remote. 7-7-3-4.

He hit ENTER.

00:03...

00:02...

00:01...

BEEP-DOOOOP.

The red numbers on Nadia’s vest froze. The LEDs turned from angry red to a cool, safe green.

DISARMED.

Nadia collapsed, weeping hysterically. Sharon dropped to her knees, head in her hands.

Rick sat on the concrete, holding the laptop and the remote, watching the VTOL disappear into the clouds.

He let out a long, shaky breath.

"7734," he muttered, looking at the remote upside down. "It spells ’hELL’. That smug bastard."

He looked at Sharon. He looked at Nadia. He looked at his ruined suit.

"We did it," he whispered. "We actually did it."

But as he watched the sky, a cold feeling settled in his gut. Marnus was gone. He had escaped. And Rick knew, with absolute certainty, that this wasn’t over. This was just the end of the prologue.

[System Notification: Main Quest ’The Tower of Babel’ - SEMI-COMPLETE.]

[Objective: Rescue Nadia - SUCCESS.]

[Objective: Eliminate Marnus Warner - FAILED.]

[Reward: 25,000 XP. $50,000. Reputation with ’Corporate Oversight’ Increased.]

[Warning: You have a new Nemesis.]

Rick closed the laptop. "Yeah," he said to the empty air. "I figured."

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