TS6 - Chapter 8

Kat dove across the table, knocking Jasper’s coffee out of the way as she tackled him.  For a fraction of a second she saw his eyes widen, and then her shoulder hit his chest, knocking him out of his chair a moment before the security guard behind him managed to pull his trigger.  

The bullet whipped through her awareness, a ripple of gravity traveling almost too fast for her metaphysical senses to track.  Then, it struck her upper back just below her shoulder like a hammer blow.

White hot pain and shock stripped Kat of her thoughts.  Gravity twisted around her with a mind of its own, striking like a snake as it grabbed ahold of the guard who had just shot her and accelerated him into the ceiling with bone jarring force.

More pain screamed white hot agony inside her skull as Jasper bounced off the cafe’s floor followed a half second later by her.  Her senses blurred as she tried to ground herself and filter the distraction from the wound, but distantly Kat heard a flurry of gunshots as the rest of the security detail ripped the traitor apart.

She rolled over onto her back, heaving for breath.  Heather was screaming for backup as she ran over to Kat cradling one hand under the back of her head while the other put pressure on the bullet hole, trying to staunch the steady flow of blood.

God did it hurt.  The room was far too bright, and Kat felt dizzy.  Part of her wanted to cough.  Part of her was thirsty.  Part of her wanted to claw her way out of her own skin if it would just make the pain STOP.

A dark, scaled, hand touched down on her forehead.  Purple light flowed down the limb, wrapping her up in a blanket of Psi energy and finally the pain stopped.  Everything stopped.  Kat could still blink her eyes and breath, but she couldn’t feel the floor beneath her or the people on either side as her team tried to stabilize her and secure the room.

“You must focus,” Dorrik’s voice was harsh and insistent.  Now that the pain was gone, she turned her head slightly, taking in his face.  The lokkel’s crest was rigid, the small scales around the sides of his eyes pulled tight.

“Miss Kat.”  He was tense, muzzle leaning close to her face.  “You earned Cure Wounds III in the last dungeon.  You must use it.  I have used Selective Paralysis to numb your body so that you can focus, but I am unable to cure anything.  I do not know how serious this wound of yours is, but-”

But.  There was no way that was good.

Probably a lung shot.  Modern medical technology would be enough to fix her up if a doctor got to her in time, but Kat had already been attacked once.  She absolutely did not trust her fellow shareholders, and being put into a medically induced coma for treatment in a company hospital would mean that all of her rivals would have access to her helpless body.

She licked her lips.  The first words to the incantation for Cure Wounds III distorted her throat, harsh and alien as she tried to force the mana infused syllables into the world.  Her voice stuttered and failed, the new and unfamiliar spell too much for her as Kat’s focus began to drift.  Even without feeling the pain, blood loss was beginning work it's dark magic on her.

Kat shook her head, trying to re-center herself.  Already the edges of her vision were starting to blur, a sure sign that she would need to hurry.

This time the words sounded correct as she forced them out.  There were a couple times where her thoughts wavered and her voice stuttered, but it wasn’t enough to stop the golden mana from welling up inside her body.

Her body began to glow as mana drained rapidly from her reserves.  She couldn’t feel the wounds closing, but something inherent to the magic informed her when her lung reinflated and the bullet hole began to stitch itself shut.

After about three seconds, the sounds of the cafe snapped into focus.  Suddenly the cacophony of noises switched, and Kat began to make out the voices of their respective security details as they circled around the three shareholders and shouted for assistance.

Jasper lay on the ground next to her, a security officer on top of him and shielding him from any possible harm.  Her enhanced hearing could make out each and every curse as he cussed under his breath.  Across the room, one security officer held the barista against the wall while another pressed a gun to the back of her head.

“Kat!”  She winced as Heather all but screamed in her face.  “Talk to me Kat!”

“I’m here,” Kat croaked out.  The purple light covering her body faded away, leaving a sensation of exhaustion and dull pain, like she was suffering from a whole body bruise.  Silently, her head throbbed, a testament to her almost empty mana pool.

That was something new.  She hadn’t come this close to running out of mana in almost a half dozen levels.  Apparently, the gunshot had done more damage than she’d thought.

“We’ve alerted emergency services,” Heather replied, her eyes scanning the room as if she expected another threat to pop out of one of the cupboards. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.  Just hold still and we’ll have you in a secure hospital within the hour.”

“GroCorp security is on its way,” Davis called out.  “We should have another fifty agents within the next two minutes.  There’s no way to know if they’re affiliated with another shareholder, so we will have to stay alert.  We’ve already had one assassination attempt, there’s no telling if our assailants had a contingency plan.”

Kat sat up, her entire body groaning in protest.  Dorrik offered her a hand and she grabbed it, his scales strangely cool to the touch as she let the lokkel pull her to her feet.

“Call off the ambulance,” she said, voice scratchy as the words sawed away at her irritated throat.  “I managed to fix up the worst of the damage.  I don’t think I should run an obstacle course right now, but I’m healthy enough, and a good night’s sleep followed by a little more magical healing will do more good for me than anything GroCorp’s doctors can manage.

Heather reached up and tapped the side of her smartglass, but she didn’t say anything.  Instead she cocked her head slightly to the side, lips pursed as if she needed some form of confirmation.

“Dorrik and I have been hunting on the eighteenth floor for the better part of a month now,” Kat continued, answering her security chief’s unspoken question.  “That means silver tier dungeons, and silver tier dungeons mean that I have access to new abilities.  I don’t want to talk about my capabilities out in the open, but I’m fine.  That was a lot closer than I thought it would be, but in a couple of days the only real fallout from this will be that I’ve managed to ruin another suit.”

“Are you sure you don’t need to see a doctor?”  Heather asked hesitantly.  “Whip is going to kill me if I let you come home without a checkup and it turns out that anything is wrong.”

Kat shook her head, letting a pained smile curl her lips.

“Oh plenty is wrong.  I think there is still a little blood in my lungs that my healing spell didn’t clean up as it stitched my body back together.  My mana is low enough that I have the start of a migraine, and my spell seems to have taxed the rest of my body in order to heal the damage from that gunshot so I feel like I jumped off a moving truck.  Still, there is good news.”

Heather perked up.

“The new magnetic assisted guns the labs have cooked up pack a punch.”  Kat said sagely.  “Seriously, there’s kevlar weave in my suit and the guard only got off one shot.  Despite that, it felt like I took a three round burst from a battle rifle.  Honestly?  If I didn’t have my healing and we weren’t within five minutes of a hospital, that could’ve been the end.  Someone needs to tell the engineers that they’re doing great work.”

Heather groaned, tapping her eyepiece as she shook her head.

“I take it back,” the security chief replied.  “Whip is going to kill me anyway.  If the first thing you do when you get home is compliment the craftsmanship of the gun someone used to shoot you, she's going to think that you have an undiagnosed head wound.”

“Why?”  Dorrik interjected.  “The pistols are well made.  I obviously can’t provide any technical expertise on combining modern plasma coil technology with the hybrid magnetic inductors that your engineers are using, but given the limitations imposed by your planet’s technological base, the weapons are remarkable pieces of work.  Honestly, if I didn’t have another half dozen ideas for research papers on your world’s culture and art, I would likely want to write one on the synthesis of modern and primitive weaponry and how it is changing the political and military face of your planet.”

“Right.” Heather responded before sighing deeply.  “You know what?  I’m surprised but I shouldn’t be.  Honestly, this is exactly the reaction I should’ve expected to a near death experience.  I don’t know why I assumed that this would be a moment of reckoning for you.  I’ll just let Whip deal with it.  You’ll listen to her.”

That drew a wince from Kat.  Whippoorwill was absolutely going to yell at her.  She, perhaps correctly, thought that Kat took too many risks, and to be fair it was hard to characterize ‘tackling someone that was about to be shot’ as anything but a risk.

One of the security officers stepped out into the hallway, scanning the area outside the tiny cafe before popping his head back inside.

“Clear,” he called out, draining some of the tension out of the room.  Kat trusted her own senses more than a random guard, but she couldn’t hear anything either.  If there was some other threat out there, it was waiting for a moment when their team let down their guard.  For now, the immediate risk had passed.

The guard rolled off of Jasper, grabbing hold of the nearby table and forcing himself to his feet before offering the young man his hand.  Jasper grumbled a bit as he let himself be pulled upright.

Belle strode around the table, frowning as she looked from the empty coffee mugs to the dead traitor.

“Poison and a gunman,” she said.  “It seems that Jasper was the primary target, but they certainly weren’t shy about making an attempt on the rest of us.”

“T-hank you, Kat,” Jasper stuttered out, the stress of the moment overwhelming him as he struggled to keep his speech under control.  “If you h-hadn’t taken a b-bullet for-”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied, putting a hand on his shoulder.  “I saw him moving to threaten you, and I just acted.  You’re a friend.  My first priority was getting you out of the line of fire.  On that level I succeeded.  Next time I’ll be quick enough to do it without getting shot.

She winked at Jasper, drawing a weak smile.

“I’ll admit that part sucked,” Kat finished.  “If you can avoid getting shot, I’d advise it.  I think this is my third or fourth bullet, and it really sucks.  I’ve taken worse injuries in the Tower, but for some reason it just seems more real in, well, real life.”

Davis just snorted, motioning with a hand toward where their guards had the barista pressed up against the wall.  Two security officers pinned each of her hands up against the tiles while they removed the earplugs that had been forced upon her earlier and began patting her down.

“Found something,” the woman on the left remarked, holding up an empty glass vial.  “Looks like the employee here is the source of the poison.”

The barista squeaked, somehow seeming to shrink further into the wall.

“Hold on,” Kat said, her voice still scratchy as she walked toward the security team.  “She’s the one that tipped me off that something was wrong.  I’m not sure she was a voluntary part of the plot against us.”

“Oh God no,” the woman blurted out.  “The guy you just-”

She gasped for air, interrupting herself before she could finish her sentence.

“The guard you just shot showed up here about an hour ago.  He told me what drinks to make and gave me the poison.  He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do it.  I didn’t know who the coffee was for, I swear.”

She was crying between hyperventiated gasps of air.

“You have to believe me.  He knew who my family was.  He knew my boyfriend.  He said he’d kill all of them.  I don’t know how he found me, but I couldn’t risk it.  Then the shareholders showed up.  I knew your houses would do worse to me so I tried to warn you, but-”

“It’s fine,” Kat replied, shooting a concerned look toward Davis. “She tried to warn me before I could drink.  That’s how I knew to slap the poison out of everyone’s hands.  We should still question her to learn more about what happened, but I don’t think that she’s got a bomb hidden under a counter or something to finish the job.”

“I’m more interested in how the guard planned all of this out and why,” she continued, nodding to Davis as the older man’s expression grew sour.  “Betrayal is one thing, but he was able to procure poison, and determine where we were going in advance to sabotage the location.  This seems a bit beyond what a small team of killers could manage.  It feels like something more dangerous is at work here.”

“Nothing dangerous on my end,” the barista blurted out.  “I just want to serve coffee and go home at the end of the day without someone threatening to cut my family’s eyes out.  Just coffee.  No danger please.”

“Let her go but keep an eye on her,” Davis grumbled, “we’ll follow up on her story but there’s no need to traumatize the girl any more than we already have.”

Belle stepped up, slipping past the disengaging guards so that she stood right in front of the barista as the young woman stumbled away from the wall.  Kat couldn’t see her expression, but she didn’t need to.  She shivered in sympathy with the girl.

“Come now,” Belle said.  “A lot has happened today, and I’m sure you can’t wait to get all of those secrets and worries off of your chest.  In a couple minutes, GroCorp security is going to tear this room apart, and I doubt the subcontractor you work for is going to be thrilled about that disruption even if none of it is your fault.  Why don’t you come back to my compound?  I’m sure we can have a nice chat.  Who knows?  The two of us might end up becoming friends.”

The barista looked at Kat, as if asking for guidance.  She could only shrug back.  Answering Belle’s questions wouldn’t be a pleasant experience, but staying behind meant dealing with GroCorp security and there was no guarantee that they would be any friendlier.  Worse, they would be looking for a scapegoat to blame the attack on.  There was a very real chance that she might ‘disappear’ in the wake of the attack only to be executed after a quick show trial.

The younger woman’s expression firmed and she extended a hand to Belle.

“Amelia,” she said, her voice wavering.  “It’s nice to meet you, shareholder.  I hope that I’ll be able to help you with whatever it is you’re trying to figure out.”

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