To any normal observer, Daniel was finished, but he had an ace up his sleeve. Just as his armor disappeared, his body drifted further over the exit’s threshold, carried forward a few inches by the last of its momentum. Those inches saved his life.
The door to the room shut behind Daniel with a loud CLANG. It cut straight through the spears piercing him, allowing the Pioneer to stagger forward. Coughing up blood, he injected a stimulant and continued staggering forward, legs shaking as he felt the poison course through his system. He had no choice but to grit his teeth and put one foot in front of the other, dashing away from the closed door as fast as his normal body could carry him. Soon, the Mentalist smashed through the security door, raising its hand and sending more flying objects after the fleeing Pioneer. In the nick of time, a turret burst from the ceiling, incinerating the debris with a burst of fiery ammunition.
Daniel had made it to a powered segment of the facility, relief flooding through his system as he scrambled away from the Gamma class enemy. He wasn’t truly out of danger. The loss of the System and the poison coursing through his veins meant that he was only running at a tiny fraction of his prior speed. The Xenos behind him used its Overclock to cut through several of these new defenses, shooting out more tendril-like fingers toward the Pioneer’s back. They dug into Daniel once again, pumping more poison into his system before being cut down by a laser cutter. Daniel took another stimulant, forcing life back into his limbs and desperately putting more distance between himself and the Kharnidd, but deep down, he recognized he was fighting a hopeless battle.
As Daniel thought that, he remembered something. His eyes turned toward the blinking notification Nuntius had left him, eyes hazy as he read through the message. Yet as those hazy eyes read, they suddenly began to widen. They began to widen with hope.
Daniel manifested a syringe of Litradia in his right palm, shining red liquid catching the light as it swirled around. Pressing it to his neck, he sent this new substance flowing through his veins with a warm, cleansing power. He felt it battle the Kharnidd’s poison with the force and heat of a raging bonfire, purging the foreign elements without hesitation. Strength returned to Daniel’s muscles, and his posture straightened as the fire returned to his eyes. Eventually, the poison was totally gone, but the Litradia wasn’t done. It got to work on the whole of his body, healing every bit of damage caused by the poison and even more damage that had pre-dated the poison. The medicinal substance of the stimulants was also still in his system, healing the last of the physical damage caused by the claws.
It is worth noting that Litradia did not actually heal normal physical damage. It healed the damage that came from Psionic poisoning. The Kharnidd’s poisons did precisely that kind of damage, which manifested itself in symptoms of extreme weakness. Litradia purged that poison and healed all the Psionic damage that Daniel had taken, making him practically good as new. It had even given him a mild resistance to future Psionic poisoning as well. Daniel knew all of this because of that last notification Nuntius had given him. That beautiful fellow had given him a short excerpt from a longer document, detailing how Litradia was the ultimate antidote to the Kharnidd’s poisoning and Psionic poisoning in general. His AI companion had likely guessed that Daniel was clueless and had taken the initiative to tell him about the solution that sat in his back pocket. Nuntius was learning.
Body fully restored, Daniel now had the strength required to jump out of the way of the Kharnidd’s next few attacks, hearing the defensive systems whirr to life all around him and take aim at the dangerous Xenos. Daniel finally managed to gain some ground on the enemy, striding confidently as he grew closer to his ultimate objective.
That said, the Mentalist wouldn’t let him go without a fight. Hars narrowed its eyes and raised its hand to gather power again. The primary reason the Mentalist couldn’t use the Annihilation Ray regularly was the physical backlash it caused. However, Hars was usually capable of shooting out at least two of them in relatively quick succession before the backlash got serious. The initial laser It had used to carve a path toward the Pioneers had been different, since it had been Overclocked and boosted by his Enhancement orb. The last ray had been shot out at base power, allowing Hars to use the technique again right here.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Daniel threw himself down an adjoining hallway, watching as the laser pierced through several security doors behind him. The Ray tracked him as he got up and continued to run, the beam pursuing him even through countless layers of defenses. Fortunately, it flickered out soon after it appeared, so it didn’t manage to hurt Daniel, but the damage was already done. Much of the facility’s defenses were cut right through, and the Kharnidd made up the distance between them at the speed of thought.
Daniel made it into another open square room as the enemy appeared, ducking behind one of the few remaining turrets as the Xenos appeared. It shielded through the fire, hitting the apparatus with more debris to make it non-operational. Daniel fought back, hitting the remains of the machine with the Destroyer’s Strike and sending it flying in the general direction of the Kharnidd. The Mentalist snorted with derision as it noted that the projectile was poorly aimed, sailing easily past It even without intervention. The attack was promptly ignored in exchange for an attempt to target Its wily foe. Hars was taken by surprise, then, when the ceiling caved in on Its head.
Daniel had learned from his past mistakes, targeting the destabilized ceiling above the Xenos rather than the creature itself. The turret brought a large section of metal and basalt down on the enemy’s bubble shield, allowing Daniel to dash down one of the adjoining hallways and escape again. The Mentalist shrugged off all the stone, knocking it off in a burst of power and giving chase again.
A forcefield flickered to life behind Daniel, which the Kharnidd pelted with debris before it was destroyed. Two laser turrets appeared and started shooting away at it, but the Kharnidd took the attacks on its shield to try to hurl more things at Daniel. He wasn’t as quick as he had been in the past, so a few of the smaller rocks made their way past his guard and punched some holes in his body. Another stimulant kept him in fighting shape, and he fought back, manifesting his blaster and shooting away at the Kharnidd’s overtaxed shield. It was forced to turn its attention away from Daniel and toward the laser turrets, lest they break its shield and damage it. That allowed the Pioneer to continue his escape.
Still, he was running out of tricks and defenses. The Kharnidd dealt with the lasers and shot after Daniel. It crashed through three more metal doors and crushed two security drones to their death, flinging their destroyed corpses right at Daniel. He only barely managed to dodge them with a last-second roll, but the creature was already shooting out its devilish finger-cannon attack. A leap, enhanced with the Destroyer’s Strike again, barely managed to carry Daniel across the threshold of another forcefield before they could hit him. And at that point, the Kharnidd had had enough. It whipped out another Enhancement sphere, tossing it down the hatch and gathering up a whole new arsenal of projectiles. Daniel had turned another corner by now and was putting more distance between the two of them, but the Mentalist was having none of that. It shattered the forcefield like it was made of paper, tore turrets out of walls, and smashed through two more groups of security bots. It flew through the remaining distance between itself and Daniel at a whirlwind pace, bearing down on the Pioneer at lightning speed.
Daniel, for his part, was leaning on his Strike-enhanced leaps to get away as fast as he could, but his mental reserves were officially reaching the bottom of the barrel. The wind whipped through his hair as he soared down a corridor, but the ungodly noise behind him told him that the Mentalist was closing in. His vision dimmed as he pushed out everything he had to get to the room at the end of this hallway. His Domain alerted him to a well-aimed metal panel flying at him from behind, but it was all Daniel could do to turn around and bring up both arms in a Strike Enhanced punch. The bones in the limbs shattered, the force of the attack vibrating through Daniel’s body, and he spat out blood as he blasted backward down the corridor. He was no longer able to support his Domain, so it vanished. He wasn’t in control of his flight, so he hit the ground once, then twice like a rock skipping across a pond, feeling more bones break as he did. He tumbled into the room in a pile, coming to a stop when he hit a central object. A forcefield sprang up around the door, but it wouldn’t last more than a few fractions of a second.
That would be enough.
This facility was obviously getting its power from somewhere, and Nuntius had given Daniel the full breakdown from the very beginning. The primary power system for its most basic elements came from a highly sophisticated, self-sustaining geothermal plant located deeper down. However, the backup power system, and the primary power system for the facility’s weapons and defenses, was right behind Daniel. Implanted within the circular metal terminal that Daniel was leaning against was a large glass cylinder. A cylinder that was filled with a pulsing white light. Squinting through the pain, Daniel forced his shattered arm up to touch the glass. To touch his objective.
As the room’s forcefield defenses shattered, Daniel finally made contact with the Meta Battery.
