The street was a powder keg, and Sterling had just lit the fuse.
His Vanguard squad ford a perfect, gleaming silver line, their energy rifles a silent, deadly promise.
Jax, in the van, let out a string of creative, and probably physically impossible, curses.
Jinx’s voice was a low, dangerous growl in Michael’s ear. "I’ve got a clean shot on Sterling’s head, kid. Just say the word."
"Negative, Jinx," Chloe’s voice cut in, a block of solid ice. "Engaging The Vanguard here, with DGC patrols minutes away, is a tactical non-starter. We do not have the resources for a sustained firefight."
She was right, and Michael hated her for it.
He was trapped. Outgunned. Outmaneuvered.
This is what happens when you aggro two different factions at the sa ti, his inner monologue drawled wearily. The quest log gets ssy.
"So, what’s it going to be, stray?" Sterling asked, his voice dripping with condescending amusent. "Are you going to co along quietly? Or are we going to have to get our very expensive armor dirty?"
Michael just stared at him, his mind racing, trying to find a dialogue option that didn’t end with him in a cage.
"You know," he said, forcing a calm he absolutely did not feel, "for a guy who gets paid by a corporation, you talk a lot about getting things dirty."
"Don’t you have a team of interns for that?"
Sterling’s perfect, handso face tightened, a flicker of genuine annoyance in his glowing eyes.
"Cute," he sneered. "Always the last resort of the powerless, isn’t it? A witty remark."
He took a slow step forward, his energy blade humming.
"This ends now."
Just as he raised his blade, a new sound cut through the tense silence.
It was a high-pitched, electronic screech.
A sound of pure, unadulterated, and rebooted fury.
The Stalker.
It was getting up.
Its glitching, broken form pulled itself to its feet, its limbs snapping back into place with a series of sickening, wet clicks.
Its featureless chro face turned, and it seed to look from The Vanguard, to Thanatos, and back again.
It had two targets now.
Everyone was a threat.
"Oh, this is just delightful," Jax’s voice crackled over the comms with a note of pure, manic glee. "The party just got a plus-one!"
The Stalker didn’t attack them.
It turned and flowed, a river of black smoke, straight for its original target.
The DGC analyst, Daniel Sterling, who was still cowering at the far end of the street.
"The witness!" Jinx’s voice yelled.
The situation exploded into a beautiful, chaotic, three-way ss.
"Vanguard, secure the asset!" Sterling roared, his own mission paraters overriding his personal grudge. He and his team broke formation, sprinting after the Stalker.
"We can’t let them get him!" Michael yelled into his own comms. "Jax, cut them off!"
The plumber’s van roared to life, its tires screeching on the wet cobblestones as Jax threw it into a hard, sliding turn, creating a two-ton, rust-colored roadblock between Sterling’s team and the fleeing analyst.
The Stalker was on the analyst in an instant, a blur of black smoke and chro.
But just as its obsidian blade was about to descend, a hail of high-caliber rifle fire stitched a line across the brick wall beside it.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Jinx, from her rooftop perch, wasn’t aiming to kill. She was aiming to distract.
The Stalker recoiled, its form wavering, its attention montarily drawn by the new threat.
It gave the analyst the only opening he was going to get.
He ran.
He scrambled down a set of wet, iron stairs that led to a subterranean loading dock.
"He’s going underground!" Michael shouted.
This was their chance. A chaotic, desperate, and probably stupid chance.
"Chloe, we need a new plan!"
"I am already formulating one," Chloe’s voice was a calm, steady anchor in the storm.
A new waypoint flashed on Michael’s HUD.
A massive, gleaming, multi-story structure that took up an entire city block.
It was a monunt of glass and steel and corporate ambition.
The OmniCorp Grand Atrium.
One of the city’s newest, flashiest, and most crowded high-end shopping malls.
"The mall?" Jax’s voice was a squeak of pure disbelief. "Boss Lady, are you insane? We can’t have a monster fight in a shopping mall! The property damage alone would be... glorious!"
"It is a civilian population center," Chloe stated, her logic cold and brutal. "The Vanguard’s rules of engagent are severely restricted in a high-density, public area. They cannot deploy heavy ordinance. It is a tactical equalizer."
"Get the analyst to the mall," she commanded. "They will not risk a public incident."
It was a terrible plan.
It was a brilliant plan.
It was their only plan.
Michael sprinted for the stairs, the sounds of battle—the crack of Jinx’s rifle, the hum of The Vanguard’s energy weapons, the screech of Jax’s tires—fading behind him.
He took the stairs two at a ti, landing in the damp, echoing space of the loading dock.
The analyst was there, huddled behind a stack of crates, his face a mask of pure, abject terror.
"Co with if you want to live," Michael said, the words tasting ridiculous and aweso on his tongue.
The analyst just stared at him, his mouth agape.
A flicker of black smoke from the top of the stairs told Michael their ti was up.
He grabbed the analyst by the arm, yanking him to his feet.
"Move!" he yelled.
They ran, plunging into a dark, narrow service corridor that connected the loading dock to the mall’s sub-level.
The air grew cleaner, warr. The stench of the atpacking district was replaced by the faint, sterile sll of air conditioning and floor wax.
They burst through a set of double doors and into a different world.
The OmniCorp Grand Atrium was a cathedral of consurism.
Three stories of gleaming white floors, chro railings, and high-end storefronts, all centered around a massive, bubbling fountain.
It was late, but the place was still bustling with late-night shoppers, tourists, and the kind of wealthy, beautiful people who probably thought a "Gate" was sothing you bought for your country estate.
They had made it.
They were surrounded by a hundred potential witnesses.
They were safe.
"Okay," Michael panted, leaning against a railing, trying to catch his breath. "I think we lost it."
Just as the words left his mouth, a woman a few feet away scread.
A high-pitched, piercing sound of pure, unadulterated terror.
Michael looked up.
On the third-floor balcony, directly above them, a familiar, glitching silhouette was coalescing out of the shadows.
The Stalker.
It had followed them.
Panic erupted.
People scread, a wave of pure, chaotic terror that sent shoppers scrambling in every direction.
The beautiful, serene atrium turned into a stampede.
The Stalker ignored them.
Its featureless chro face was tilted down, its empty, soulless gaze fixed on one person.
Michael.
This wasn’t a mission anymore.
It was a grudge.
He pushed the terrified analyst behind him.
"Get back," he growled.
Then, he heard it.
The soft, professional click of a DGC-issue comms unit in his ear.
Not his comms.
The mall’s security.
He looked around.
The mall’s private security guards, who were usually just bored-looking guys in ill-fitting blazers, were moving with a new, terrifying efficiency.
They were forming a periter. They were herding the civilians towards the exits.
And their blazers didn’t quite hide the sleek, silver, and deeply familiar Vanguard armor they were wearing underneath.
Sterling’s voice, a cold, triumphant purr, crackled over their radios, loud enough for Michael to hear.
"Lock it down," he commanded. "No one gets in. No one gets out."
Michael looked up at the Stalker on the balcony.
He looked at the Vanguard soldiers sealing the exits.
The mall wasn’t a safe zone.
It was a cage.
And they had just been herded right into the middle of it.
The high-pitched, electronic whine of a DGC scanner, followed by the soft, almost silent hum of multiple energy weapons powering up.
He looked up, his blood running cold.
At the far end of the street, a sleek, silver, and deeply familiar set of armor shimred into view as its cloaking field disengaged.
It was Sterling.
And the entire Vanguard A-team was with him, their armor gleaming, their weapons raised.
Their targeting lasers, a half-dozen bright red dots, all converged on a single point.
His chest.
"Well, well, well," Sterling purred, a cruel, triumphant smirk on his handso face.
He looked from Michael to the twitching, disabled Stalker.
"Look what we have here."
"A monster-on-monster cri."
He gestured with his own energy blade towards the fallen Chira.
"I’ll be taking that," he said, his voice a low, possessive growl. "As evidence."
He then looked at Michael, his eyes shining with a cold, predatory light that was sohow more terrifying than the Stalker’s empty chro face.
"And you," he finished, his voice a low, final, and utterly victorious promise.
"You’re coming with us."
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