“Scream…” I heard a voice whisper… “Scream…”

  “Scream…”

  “V…”

  “V!” Jackie shouted while coughing and hacking, “V!– Fuck, mmf! Where are you?!”

  “Mmhhnn…” I shook my head and roused myself awake. “Jackie…?”

  “V, thank fuc-AGH!” he suddenly snapped in pain and collapsed next to the briefcase. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah… I… think so…” I struggled to get my perception back, only now just realizing we must’ve plummeted off the roof and fell through some sort of glass ceiling.

  “Dios mio…” Jackie sighed, “Wait, the Relic!– AUGH! Fuck me… this ain’t good…” Blood… a lot of blood… leaked out from his sleeve and jacket… Jackie…?

  “Jackie! You’re bleeding, bad!”

  “Fuck… don’t worry about me, I’m fine… check the biochip!” he said weakly, his voice already cracking. Shit… if blood is getting into his lungs, he may only have minutes before he’s out. We had to hurry. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the Relic, but he insisted and I had to keep him calm. Stress weakens the body, and he needs all the strength he can muster.

  “Fine – wrap something around yourself to stop the bleeding! Hang on, Jack!” I shouted as I tried to climb up, but he refused to give up the briefcase.

  “Biochip… first!”

  “Jackie, don’t be a fucking idiot! You can’t enjoy its spoils if you’re dead, now hurry!”

  “Fine…” he relented as he looked around and found some tape on the shelf, lifting up his shirt with a heavy groan and wrapping the tape around his torso… Fuck, a gut shot… Looks like a .50 caliber by the size of the entry wound. His armor stood no chance… shit, it didn’t go all the way through?! No, no, no!! He needs a ripperdoc fast! “The Relic!” he shouted at me.

  “Uh– right, um… Depressurized… integrity falling, 94 percent… 93 percent… Jackie, it’s done!”

  “Shit!” he collapsed beside the case again, “Fuck… uh… Evelyn! Call her!”

  “What?! Why? And tell her we broke the fucking case?! The fuck is she gonna do, come over here and fix it for us?” I lashed out at him.

  “Just do it!!”

  Without another word, I called her up as he requested. “V?” Evelyn answered, “Konpeki’s all over the feeds, what the fuck is going on over there?!”

  “Got a problem!” I shouted, thoroughly out of breath still, “The case is damaged… hull integrity’s compromised, biochip’s failing, fast!” I checked the case… “86 percent! 85 percent!”

  “Shit…!” she sneered, “Okay, listen to me, there’s only one thing you can do. One of you’s gotta slot the Relic into your neural port!”

  “What? Is that even safe?!”

  “The longer you wait, the greater chance we’ll lose it!” Evelyn insisted.

  “Well…” Jackie mumbled as he mustered the strength to open the case, “Somebody’s gotta do it…”

  The Relic was no larger than a standard shard, yet looked… alive. Glowing red, with dancing murals of black flowing around its core… It was strangely beautiful, yet so very ominous…

  “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit…” Jackie signed the cross and inserted the chip into his port without a second thought, lest he changed his mind.

  His eyes glowed blue as he interfaced with the Relic, running a diagnostic sweep.

  “Jackie? Can you hear me? You okay?” I asked him, having recouped my breath at this point, “Talk to me, brother.”

  “Don’t know… I guess… I don’t feel any different…”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well… urgh… got a bit of a stomach ache… but I don’t think it’s the Relic’s fault… heh…” he mumbled. God dammit, Jackie…

  “Once we’re back, we’ll run a full brain scan and sweep,” Evelyn reassured us, “But you two need to get the fuck out of there first!”

  “We’re working on it!” I shouted back at her.

  “Nah… thought we were gonna stay… have a couple o’ drinks in the bar, y’know…”

  “Jackie, she hung up.”

  “Eh…” he weakly stood up, barely hanging on to whatever was left in the tank, “Fuck it… let’s get outta here.” He reached into his pocket and took out an airhypo, calling Delamain while he did it, “Del… Be down in a couple minutes… be ready for us…”

  “Certainly, Mr. Welles,” Delamain replied courteously.

  “Better be fuckin’ certain…” he muttered as he injected himself, “Aaaaugh! Ahh, yeah, that’s the stuff… Come on, Cappy, let’s blow this fuckin’ joint.”

  I collected Yorinobu’s weapon and the blades off the ground and tucked everything back in its proper place, taking the lead while Jackie nursed his wounds behind me.

  Okay… focus. Protection detail, you’re escorting an injured VIP out of a building on a strict time limit. You have no defensive weapon with the katana, what do you do… Easy… Take it easy, V… Don’t think. Just do…

  –

  V overheard guards downstairs discussing plans to sweep every floor. So they don’t know precisely where we are, but they likely have a rough idea, she thought to herself, Perhaps we can sneak through unopposed… No… Jackie can’t last that long.

  “待って [Wait]...” she whispered to Jackie as he pulled out both of his pistols.

  “Por si acaso [Just in case],” he replied, already sounding weaker by the second. She didn’t have much time, and she knew it. V kept her left hand on the katana’s handle, ready to draw it the instant she needed it for a stealth kill as the two silently proceeded through the first and second floors. Several guards went cleanly past her, though Jackie’s massive frame would’ve been a dead giveaway, forcing V’s hand.

  She ambushed the guard with the late Emperor's katana, burying the sword deep into his shoulder without actually causing enough damage to kill him in one hit. Without a second’s hesitation, she twisted the blade and ripped it out, causing such massive trauma that the man simply collapsed in shock. This isn’t gonna work… she thought to herself, seeing as this blade is only as sharp as any other typical sword. It simply will not cut deep enough against armored opponents, microrotors or not; she couldn’t rely on such a weapon for anything other than a last-resort.

  V collected the sidearm from the ground, fearing she’ll need it quite soon as none of the guards in the other room had suppressed weapons. Jackie tailed her one room behind as she cleared each section in-turn, putting all of her strength into wielding the rapidly-blunting katana. However, by the fifth guard she silently dispatched, the edge had dulled to the point of nothingness, closely followed by the tanto failing to penetrate the Kevlar body armor as well. Neither of them had the physical strength to deal with them hand-to-hand, certainly not Jackie.

  Time to go loud… and pray… she glanced back at Jackie, as if to check he’d gotten any better when she wasn’t looking. Sadly that was not the case, however.

  She pushed herself flush against the door leading out to the main hallway, allowing Jackie to catch up with her while she recited her mantra to herself. 聞こえるまでさけぶ [Scream until you hear me]…”

  Without a second to waste, V leapt into action with the massively heavy and cumbersome AR sidearm, finding that it had surprisingly little recoil as she blasted fully-automatic fire directly into the torso of the nearest guard, pasting his remains all over the wall. “There!” Everyone else shouted in unison, struggling to get a hold of their firearms as she fired in seemingly every direction, darting from cover to cover with Jackie covering her rear.

  V was unusually-reliant on Jackie this time around, far more so than normal given that she lacked her katana. Likewise, Jackie exercised great caution – not just because of his wounds, but from a keen awareness of V’s and his own mortality. Nevertheless, he threw himself into the fight beside her, wildly firing his handguns over and around whatever cover he could find as V worked to draw their fire to her. She knew her subdermal armor could hold at least some of the projectiles at bay, banking on the enemy’s reliance on low-caliber smart guns to work to her advantage.

  The weapon’s hundred-round magazine seemingly fired without end as she sidestepped left and right, double-tapping corpses and searching for any sort of other firearms to help in their advance. Sadly, the only weapons these soldiers used were more smart SMGs – guns she knew would never penetrate the tougher-armored opponents. And this floor was teeming with them.

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  She could physically feel the gun become lighter and less controllable as the magazine expended, only finding a few spare assault rifle mags on one of the corpses – the rifle itself had a bullet going through the trigger pack. Fuck… she thought as she collected whatever she could find. Jackie struggled to keep his eyes open as she frantically reloaded her weapon’s magazine one round at a time, shaking and hyperventilating as each round found its home. Her adrenaline spiked again as she heard several more pairs of boots, reloading two AR magazines’ worth before ramming the drum home and unloading on the lot of them.

  Jackie expended his remaining ammunition on a pair of guards coming up behind her, rushing over with all the strength he had to collect more handgun magazines and pocketing them. “?Cargado, vamos [Loaded, go]!” he yelled at her and V leapt out, carving a path through what little remained. Heat emanated from her weapon’s handguard to the point where she would scald herself just holding it, leading V to switch over to handling it like a pistol.

  The pair moved cautiously and deliberately, with Jackie communicating his every move with V, if only to let her know that he was still alive and kicking. She had no doubt the big man could make it out of here, so long as the pair remained glued to one another. Still, every hallway was more of the same – an ordeal from start to finish, marked with several guards at least, ammunition collection, and checking one another for fresh wounds.

  V’s subdermal armor was barely holding together by the time they reached the central plaza, though after the latest round of executive protection detail, it seemed there was a minor lull in the fighting. A lull which was immediately broken by three more armed guards rushing in before the pair riddled them with bullet holes as well, expending their ammunition stores again.

  –

  “V… I’m sorry…” Jackie groaned as he checked each body for ammunition.

  “For what, bro?” I asked him, loading every cartridge I could find from whatever spare mags happened to be lying around. I can’t believe this weird little peashooter will be our salvation, but it seemed to be doing well, and it was really handy in these tight spaces.

  “I, uh… I think I should leave you to vettin’ our gigs from now on.” Fuck, he’s coughing up blood…

  “Jackie, just hang in there! The elevator’s just around– Fuck!” Someone came around the corner, another one of those heavily-armored patrols, no doubt. I slammed the drum home and unloaded what little ammunition I had in the weapon through the shoji blinds in front of me. The armor-piercing ammunition easily cleaved through their defenses – thankfully only a few rounds of return fire grazed me, otherwise I’d be clutching at my gut like poor Jackie right now.

  “Jackie, come on, we gotta move!” I shouted, “Jackie…?”

  “Yeah– yeah, I’m here,” I saw him spitting out more blood. Fuck… “Guy plugged me again.”

  “What?! Where?”

  “Mmurggh… Right bicep…” he muttered, “Don’t worry… I got this…”

  “Bullshit, man! Stay back!”

  “V… please…” he threw himself up and ran ahead of me, “I said I got this!”

  “Jackie! Fuck…”

  –

  V chased Jackie down a final hallway leading to a large T-junction, with elevators flanking both sides of them. “くそ...背中合 [Fuck – Back-to-back]!” she ordered Jackie and he instinctively pinned himself behind her. The pair rotated and walked simultaneously, once again performing their great dance of death as they filled the room with hot lead. V led the way with Jackie in-tow, sustaining tremendous punishment as a machine-gunner rounded the corner and started emptying his own drum at them both, to devastating effect. V returned fire, but not before taking an armor-piercing shot to her chest, shattering her subdermal armor after it easily passed through her unitard. Blood gushed from the open wound as she screamed in pain, launching herself at the enemy and taking Jackie with her, still fused to her backside.

  Jackie dumped several magazines’ worth of rounds behind them both, propping up their advance with a continuous barrage of fire as he alternated between his left and right handgun. His pain editor worked overtime as he sustained yet another shot to his right, this time injuring his shoulder and forcing him to call out for V’s help. They instantly swapped positions, with V firing on Jackie’s side and vice versa, keeping it up throughout the entire hallway.

  The floor was littered with corpses and rubble, a long trail of blood conspicuously following wherever the pair went as their untreated injuries ceaselessly gushed out.

  The two of them had enough lead in their systems to fill V's weapon's magazine to capacity by the time they reached the elevator proper, though it of course read that they were denied access. “くそ [Fuck]...” V cursed to herself as she clutched her chest, discovering upon trying to walk that she’d somehow also ate a round to her left leg.

  –

  “Jackie… What… anything new… injuries…?” I asked, trying to catch my breath as I frantically searched for any sort of keycard, ammunition, first-aid… anything. Fucking rapid-response teams, they never bring anything more than the absolute essentials… Trauma Team wasn’t due for another minute, and they were liable to shoot us on-sight before we could collect enough ammo to hold both them and Arasaka off.

  “Hnngh…” Jackie moaned, “Got plugged twice more… You?”

  “Three… I… I think…” I checked my body for more entry wounds, though found nothing new. “Check my– AHGHH!” I tried breathing in and felt an incredible, sharp pain jab me right in the back. “FUCK!”

  “Took one in the back, looks like…”

  “Mmmh,” I coughed and hacked, “Think it… Fuck… Yeah… penetrated my chest cavity…”

  “Shit… you okay…?”

  “Yeah… God, that shit hurts…” I shook my head and tried my best to steel myself, limping beside him to someone wearing a commander’s insignia. “Perfect… Come on… yes– AGH!” I roared in pain as my excitement was hampered by the bullet floating around my insides, “Come on, let’s delta…”

  “Right behind… you…” Jackie coughed and gurgled blood. I’m not sure how much more we could take… But it would have to be enough to at least get us through the lobby…

  We got in the elevator and I hit the button that would either make or break us, ripping off the rest of my utterly shredded suit to more thoroughly check my wounds.

  “Fuck…” Jackie muttered as he clutched his chest, “Saburo fuckin’ Arasaka… 150 years old… and dies today, of all… fuckin’ days… That’s like… some Divine Comedy shit… heheh…”

  “Jackie… come on, save… ugghhgh… Save your strength…” I muttered through closed teeth.

  “Whaddya… think I’m doin’... Should try doin’ that yourself, miss… striptease… Mmmffuck…” he spat out some blood onto the floor, “But… chill, Cappy… We’re gettin’ outta this alive…”

  “We will… Jack… Come on… We’ve been through worse…” I said with a hint of laughter.

  “Heh… Heheh, hehe…” he chuckled in return as the elevator started slowing down. Time for one final push… Our last one, one way or another…

  –

  Lead started pouring into and out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened, with V and Jackie scrambling to take cover behind a nearby work desk. With the rapid-response forces depleted, Arasaka deployed its special-operations soldiers – people much like V, herself, and outfitted just as well.

  Soldier after soldier poured in, staggered in teams of four and six, utterly shredding the cover behind which V and Jackie cowered. Nevertheless, they held a superior position, unable to be flanked and the roof too low for aerial strikes. Grenades arced over their heads, with V scrambling back and throwing two back over before eating a third one that detonated about 10 meters behind her, showering the top of her head in shrapnel. Jackie lined up his pistol's magazines on the floor, dumping and reloading each as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  The battle was long and brutal, with shreds of debris flying and their weapons echoing throughout the vast chambers comprising the lobby like an artillery barrage. V raged on alongside Jackie, showering the enemy with ammunition while taking another round in return – this one striking her left kidney, forcing her to the ground before she picked herself up through sheer willpower alone. They both seamlessly covered one another, slowly moving out from behind the desk and into the open as the enemy's numbers dwindled.

  However, upon entering the lobby proper, they encountered their final obstacle – a massive Arasaka-branded Minotaur robot, bristling with cannons and missiles. With the soldiers decimated, the pair immediately poured fire on the towering beast, their ammunition simply bouncing off the front as it returned accurate, constant fire.

  The lobby was torn asunder as V and Jackie ran for dear life, with seemingly every bit of available cover being blown to smithereens as soon as they occupied it. The blast waves shook and rattled the pair's broken bones, sending shards of debris the size of railroad spikes flying around the room.

  –

  “Jackie… FUCK!” the metal beast fired another barrage, obliterating the planter and forcing us to move back to the work desk. “Jackie… listen…”

  “How the fuck do you… do you take this shit out?!”

  “Look… back in the War… we had to split into… into two teams… One flanked around the rear… go for the ammunition, it’s explosive… It’s the only damage you can do with those pistols…”

  “What?! So you're… what… bait?! Fucking… Fine…” he panted and coughed up more blood as the mech unloaded another salvo of 20mm over our heads, “What about you?”

  “Can’t… do anything… out of ammo…” I got out between breaths… “Now move!!”

  “V, no–! Fuck!”

  –

  With every ounce of energy she had left, V sprinted across the lobby as fast as she could, ripping her sword out of its sheath and charging straight at the beast, bellowing a war cry Jackie had never once heard before and ushering him into a second wind. V screamed her lungs out as the robot lined up a shot with its battery, firing a sequence of guided missile attacks that instantly pummelled and threw V to the floor.

  She tried to get up, leaning on her weapon as the infernal machine reloaded its 20mm, staring directly into the face of death as Jackie finally made his way around it. At last, she failed to grip the sword and collapsed onto the floor, spitting blood and baring her teeth, displaying not an ounce of fear for her imminent death.

  "NO!! V!" Jackie pulled the trigger exactly where she instructed, unloading both weapons in less than a second and igniting the Minotaur’s magazine stores, causing a chain reaction that annihilated it from the inside. The force of the explosion once again floored V, now lying motionless in the middle of the walkway as Jackie cheered for his accomplishment. As soon as he saw his sister, though, he immediately holstered his expended, overheated weapons and rushed to her aid. The machine was still scorching-hot despite having expired, with ammunition and batteries continuing to cook off and enveloping V in a blanket of searing heat. Jackie pushed right through, dragging his sister’s body with all his might before falling to one knee.

  –

  “Scream…”

  Mom…? Mom… I’m scared…

  Dad…? Are you there?

  Help…

  Jackie…?

  “Mmmhhuuhhh… Jackie?”

  “Fuck… thank God…” Jackie sighed heavily through a visceral combination of blood and tears raking down his face. “Shit… V… your face…”

  “What– Ooooouughh…” I murmured… I could feel it… Like a raw, dead hole… my nerves were probably singed shut… “How bad is it…”

  “Burned you up pretty bad,” Jackie sighed, “But… hey… it’s an improvement…”

  “B-heheh…” I chuckled before reeling back in agony as it hit me at once. “Air… hypo…”

  “Airh– yeah, yeah…” he produced one from his pocket, “My… last one…”

  “Fuck… keep it…” I shook my head and made my way off the ground, grabbing the sword and slinging it over my back before collapsing again. “God… Mmff…”

  “Not a… negotiation…” he told me before pumping it straight into my chest– Oh fuck yeah… that’s the stuff…

  I shot up to a standing position, my body now flooded with endorphins and adrenaline with no way to regulate it. “Fuckfuckfuck…!” I shouted as I took off, my heart beating like a goddamn hammer as Jackie followed me into the elevator. This is it – after this, my body’s had it. Jackie’s body’s had it. We had to get to a ripperdoc. Fast. Fuck the safehouse…

  “Fuck’s… taking it so long?!” I shouted through my bloodied gums after pressing the call button about a million times. “Jackie, c’mon, brother, we’re almost home…”

  We both got in the elevator as soon as it got there, no longer stopping to search for ammunition or meds; that time was long-past. Unless there was a secret blood bank with about five liters of Type O negative, we were committed. It was all up to Delamain, a busted-up sword, and Jackie’s fists to make us or break us. “Urrghh…” Jackie gurgled up more blood before wiping his chin off, “Leakin’ a little…”

  “Same here, Jack…” I nodded, my face in excruciating pain despite the medication he gave me. What I would give for Shinden right now… Never again going into something like this without it… Never…