“What?” asked Gemmel.
“Anton had the MedAid Kit!”
Sienna closed her eyes. The Feeders had come out of nowhere; not a single blip on the Servant. It had been Anton’s job as Navigator to get them safely to recon point, scanning the route for movement. Feeders were rarely motionless, always seeking out more energy to consume. She almost hoped Anton had screwed up his part of the job — the alternative was quite worse.
The Sigma-8B Quartet has been tasked with obtaining any vital materials from a series of buildings a number of miles west from the Sigma-8 encampment. Once a university, it had been mostly picked clean long ago, but a returning scout patrol had notice a smaller compound that appeared yet scavenged. The whole area had been Feeder-free for almost a year, the mission relatively safe. The Quartet had been more concerned about random Leechers than anything else.
In all, it had started out simple enough. The battered diesel-converted-to-cooking oil Hummer had taken them there quickly, Sean behind the wheel and Anton beside him. While Sean was a good driver, Gemmel was a better shot. He had ridden true “shotgun,” while Sienna prepared for her role as Spotter. Gemmel and her brother had been reluctant to take her into the Quartet initially, but preferred they had eyes on her than any other group. In the end, they had to admit she had worked out well. Sienna had a tendency to find vitals in a room others would’ve passed by. Sean, of course, often joked that his sister was “observant of everything except the people standing next to her.” Sienna didn’t get that, and that pissed her off even more.
But no one could argue she wasn’t good at her job. Sure enough, almost a dozen unopened MedAid Kits had been discovered along with a few cases of pemmican substitute. Although they hadn’t found any weapons, the rations alone more than made up for the trip. All four of them had grown complacent, too busy joking as they stashed their find in the Hummer to stay alert. The rations packed first, Anton had been walking out of the door with half the MedAid Kits when the Feeders had descended on them.
“I think we can make it to the Hummer!” yelled Gemmel.
“We need those Kits!” Sean yelled back. “At least some of them, we’ve got two pregnant chicks back at Sigma.”
Sienna’s gun clicked empty. “I’m out!”
Gemmel threw a clip to her without taking his finger off the trigger. She reloaded her M&P .22 and fired off a few shots. It did very little except to slow the Feeders’ advance. Not prepared for this type of fight, only Gemmel and Sean had explosive rounds. A few bullets didn’t do much to a Feeder; you had to render it inert.
“I’m out,” came Sean’s voice over the sound of Gemmel’s gunfire. “You got the Mossberg on you?”
The stubby, pistol-grip shotgun flew over to Sean along with an attachment of ballistic buckshot. Gemmel tried his best to lay down some kind of suppression fire as Sean loaded. Sienna took the opportunity to gauge their distance from the Hummer. Fifty yards seemed a long way off.
Suddenly there was an explosion and short, barked scream. Sienna spun to see her brother collapsed back, blood streaming from his face. The world went quiet as she watched a few drops of red spill from his forehead onto to dirt. Quiet, slow and red.
“Sienna!” bellowed Gemmel.
Sprinting behind the garden wall, past Gemmel and firing above him blindly, she slid next to the prone form of her brother. Immediately she saw the smoking remains of the Mossberg. It had jammed, backfired and torn into Sean. Her hands trembling over him, she considered how lucky they were that the sixty year old gun had lasted this long. Projectile weapons, antiquated and dangerous! Jaw clamped so hard her teeth hurt, she finally turned Sean towards her to examine the damage. Most of his right ear was gone and the injuries to his eye looked extensive. Blood was flowing freely and he was out — but still alive. It didn’t matter. Unconscious, with damage this severe, he wouldn’t be able to tap his bioelectrics and heal himself. Not unless…
Sienna positioned herself to see over the wall. Fifty yard ahead sat the Hummer, only another twenty to the half-dozen MedAid Kits lying beside the mutilated body of Anton. Between all that sat three rusting car shells, the broken remnants of a picnic table, something that might have been a fountain once, and near thirty Feeders. It would be impossible.
Impossible, unless she damned herself.
Carefully cradling Sean’s head, she moved him closer to Gemmel. He glanced back twice, grief painted all over his wide face. Anton had been a friend, but Sean was like a brother.
“He’s alive,” she said as she began pulling weaponry off Sean’s body and setting it beside Gemmel.
“Not for long,” he growled back.
Sienna pulled the last two M&P .22 clips from Gemmel’s belt pouch and sat the empty XM8-MOD next to him. Pocketing the two clips, she checked her own ammo, and did a quick inventory on Gemmel’s. He’d be out within minutes.
“We’re dead if we don’t get out of here,” Sienna said in a flat voice. “We won’t be able to get Sean to the Hummer, and he won’t survive without a Kit.”
“Cheery,” replied Gemmel.
“And you’re almost out.”
“Yep.”
Sienna paused. “I’m going to get the Kits and the Hummer.”
Gemmel looked away long enough to drill through her with his eyes. “Are you fucking crazy? There’s no way you can get there, let alone make it to the Kits!”
“Not without… help,” whispered Sienna.
Gemmel blinked in confusion, but Sienna had already backed away before he could piece it together. Her fingers trailed across her Servant and tapped into the strongest T-Net connection she could find. Their surrounding environment, the atmosphere itself, was saturated with data. Data that could be manipulated through a Servant, the ever-present digital multi-tool, and through it now, manipulated by humanity who broke open the secrets of bioelectricity. Slapping her palm against the Servant’s screen and the raw feed she had opened, Sienna began leeching.
“No! What are you doing?” screamed Gemmel, forgetting the Feeders in despair.
Sienna felt the energy synthesize into her own physiology, her body adapting to the foreign power. It felt like a star going nova, like her molecules had tripled in size. There was a momentary, gestalt clarity, and Sienna found herself enlightened, if only for a nanosecond.
“Cover me,” she said, before vaulting over the wall.
She could see herself, like watching it on a live feed. But, not quite. No, she could see everything that was going to happen, and could then see her reaction. Possibilities, probabilities. And her reactions were exquisite. Sienna was aware of her movements, a graceful fluidity she had never possessed before, as well as the awkward, jerking motions of the Feeders. She danced between them, soared over them, twirled between the space of bullets Gemmel rapidly pumped out. Her own gun fired, almost as an extension of herself, knocking back Feeders into Gemmel’s targeting or to assist her own progression. Another shot, then another. Sienna’s foot landing on an exploding torso, propelling her up as her other foot caught the next one in the face.
The Feeders, once Leechers, once human… their eyes and mouths followed her. Dense, black entropic maws that absorbed even the residual light, they were only conduits for the all-consuming drive that dictated hands and feet that jittered after. Frail old women, muscular young men, small children — they had each succumbed to the addiction and had spiraled into the final stage. A bullet found all of them in some way. Hers slowed them down, Gemmel’s took them out. Damages to the shell were irrelevant, Feeders only fell once destroyed.
Sienna watched herself, watch her environment. Her hand found a head, flipped and landed. Gun up, two more shots. Out, and new clip loaded. Backing up without needing to look, she moved up the hood of a car. Higher ground. Sensations overlapped with images running into her system. The Hummer was ten yards off, the Kits only another twenty after that. She felt the paths the bullets would take, knew where the dwindling Feeder horde skittered. M&P .22 out, she fired a series off to her left while her knee took out one the right, her heel another. Off the car and running. She was faster, both in body and mind. Sienna didn’t even realize her arm had erupted out and disabled a Feeder until she was several paces past it. A single glance at the Hummer and she was gone. Only two more Feeders were between her and the Kits. Four shot up the front of the torso, and she was off her feet, legs wrapped around the head. One more shot down with a twist and the head came tumbling down. Sienna kept running.