Death's Ultimate Upgrade

Chapter 10: The Iron Ditch

"Down! Get your head under the waterline, Kaelion, now!"

Nyvara’s hand slammed into his collarbone, driving him knees-first into three feet of freezing, chemical-slick drainage runoff.

Kaelion clamped his jaw shut just as a blinding cyan search beam cut through the iron grate twenty feet above them. The water tasted like copper slag and rotting insulation. Above their heads, the synchronized thruster-whine of three Association heavy-patrol drones echoed down the concrete conduit, vibrating through the rusty rebar in the walls.

"Don't vent your core," Nyvara whispered through clenched teeth, her mouth millimeters from his ear. She was crouched beside him in the muck, her twin blades pressed flat against her chest to avoid reflecting the light. "If those thermal optics catch even a flicker of that golden freak-show under your skin, they’ll level this entire storm canal with thermite mortar shells."

"I am currently marinating in industrial battery acid," Kaelion muttered under his breath, water lapping at his chin. "My core is doing everything it can not to freeze solid."

"Then tell it to suffer quietly."

The cyan beam lingered over the surface of the black water, ionizing the oily film on top with a faint crackle of static. For five suffocating seconds, neither of them breathed.

Then the drone thrusters flared, pitching higher as the patrol swept southward toward the burning perimeter of Sector 7.

Kaelion stood up immediately, coughing up a mouthful of stagnant water and shaking blackened sludge from his arms. "Remind me to thank Zarek when I rip his spinal column out. His bounty hunters have exquisite taste in geography."

"This is the Iron Ditch," Nyvara said, rising smoothly, her eyes already scanning the pitch-black tunnel stretching ahead. "Eight miles of subterranean runoff feeding straight into the outer filtration locks. It’s the only path out of Sector 7 that doesn't have an automated point-defense grid pointed at it."

"And the smell?"

"Free of charge. Move. We’ve got six minutes before the next drone sweep overlaps this quadrant."

Kaelion pushed forward, his combat boots sloshing through the heavy current. The golden veins beneath his skin pulsed with a muted, steady warmth, fighting off the biting chill of the runoff. "How much did Zarek put on our heads back at that relay terminal?"

"Two hundred thousand credits for me," Nyvara replied, her voice cold and rhythmic as she kept pace beside him, her boots barely making a sound against the submerged concrete floor.

"And me?"

"Five hundred thousand."

Kaelion let out a dry, breathy laugh. "Nice to know I'm worth more than you."

"You're worth more because you're an anomaly," she shot back, glancing sharply at his glowing chest plate beneath his soaked jacket. "A resurrected dead man who disintegrated a Class-4 gravity anchor with his bare hands is worth a lot of research money to the High Council's black labs. They won't just kill you, Kaelion. They'll peel you apart like a ration tin to see what makes you tick."

"They're welcome to try the can opener."

"Don't get cocky. Your vitals are still erratic. That burst of light back at the crater didn't make you a god; it made you a battery waiting to burn out."

"Felt pretty solid to me."

"That’s shock, idiot. It masks the failure points until your organs shut down all at once." She suddenly stopped, extending her left arm across his chest. "Wait."

Kaelion froze, his hand dropping instinctively to the grip of the heavy kinetic sidearm holstered at his hip. "Drones again?"

"No," Nyvara murmured. Her amber cybernetic eye dilated, the faint optical aperture clicking twice in the dark. "Drones have a signature hum at four hundred hertz. This is different."

"Different how?"

"Look at the water level."

Kaelion looked down. The black, oily runoff was rippling against his thighs—not in a steady downstream flow, but in erratic, rhythmic pulses. Something ahead was displacing large volumes of water.

"Did the locks open?" he asked.

"The locks don't open unless the water hits critical flood pressure," Nyvara said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. She reached down, quietly drawing her left trench knife. "We're not alone down here."

Before Kaelion could answer, a high-pitched metallic thwip sliced through the stagnant air.

"Scatter!" Nyvara shoved him hard to the right.

A heavy steel projectile smashed into the concrete wall right where Kaelion’s chest had been a fraction of a second earlier. The impact threw off a shower of orange sparks and pulverized stone, followed instantly by the deafening hiss of a high-voltage discharge.

BZZZZZT!

Arcs of bright blue electricity spiderwebbed across the wet concrete, scorching the moss and boiling the water around Kaelion’s boots.

"Arc-harpoon!" Nyvara yelled, sliding across the slick canal bed and ducking behind a collapsed iron sluice gate. "We’ve got scav-trackers!"

"How the hell did they track us into a sewer?!" Kaelion vaulted over a submerged concrete block, the kinetic shockwave of the electricity rattling his teeth.

"They didn't track us from above!" a raspy, synthetic voice echoed from the shadows fifty yards down the tunnel. "Zarek’s comm-bounty pings every open mercenary channel in the underbelly! You think you're the first rats to scurry down the Iron Ditch?"

Out of the darkness, four heavy floodlights flared to life, mounted atop the rusted catwalks that crisscrossed the tunnel ceiling.

The glare was blinding. Kaelion raised an arm, his enhanced vision adjusting instantly to reveal six figures crouching along the overhead pipes. They were draped in patchwork ballistic leathers, crude respirators strapped across their faces, their cybernetics jagged and rusted from years in the toxic sludge.

In their hands were heavy, pneumatic harpoon launchers rigged with thick copper tether cables.

"That's the one with the golden juice!" one of the scavs barked, leveling a double-barreled arc-gun at Kaelion. "Alive or dead, the boss pays the same! Bag his head!"

"Nyv, how many?" Kaelion asked, crouching low as the first volley of kinetic slugs chewed through the concrete beside him.

"Six on the catwalks, at least three more sloshing through the water ahead!" she called out, unhooking an EMP flash grenade from her tactical rig. "They're using magnetized grounding boots! Normal shock won't drop them!"

"Then I'll hit them with something heavier!"

Kaelion surged out from behind the sluice gate. His new strength flared instantly, muscles coiling like high-tension steel springs as he drove off the submerged canal bed. The water exploded behind him in a rooster-tail of spray.

"Target's moving!" the scav leader screamed. "Fire the tethers! Anchor him down!"

Three pneumatic cannons fired simultaneously.

CLANG! CLANG! SNAP!

Two of the harpoons missed, skipping violently off the curved sewer wall, but the third struck Kaelion square in the left shoulder.

The barbed steel head punched through his leather duster, driving deep into his flesh with a sickening wet crunch.

"Got him!" the shooter cheered from the catwalk. "Activate the winch! Fry the bastard!"

A violent surge of ten thousand volts coursed down the braided copper cable, illuminating the entire tunnel in blinding blue lightning. The current slammed directly into Kaelion’s chest, wrapping around his ribs and arcing through his nervous system.

Nyvara gasped from behind the barricade, lunging forward. "Kaelion!"

The scav-trackers laughed through their respirators, waiting for the body to convulse and drop into the black water.

The laughter died in less than a second.

Kaelion didn't drop.

He didn't even fall to his knees.

Beneath his skin, the golden wing mark on his chest flared with blinding, incandescent radiance. The blue electricity didn't burn his organs—it was pulled, drawn directly into the luminous lines coursing through his veins, swallowed whole by the Null-Point Vitality passive humming in his marrow.

[ ENERGY ABSORPTION ACTIVE. ]

[ KINETIC RESERVES CONVERTING. ]

Kaelion looked up, his amber-gold eyes burning like twin suns in the sewer's gloom.

"My turn," he growled.

He reached up with his right hand, wrapped his bare fingers around the barbed steel shaft buried in his shoulder, and ripped it out of his flesh in one brutal, tearing motion. A splatter of crimson and gold hit the water, but the wound instantly sealed behind it, glowing with cauterizing heat.

"What is that?!" the scav leader shrieked, backing up along the catwalk. "The current didn't drop him! He ate the whole capacitor!"

"He's not human!" another yelled, frantically fumbling to reload an arc-canister. "Cut the line! Cut the damn—"

Kaelion grabbed the heavy copper cable with both hands, planted his boots against a submerged iron girder, and hauled backward with four hundred units of raw, enhanced physical force.

The catwalk groaned.

The rusted steel support struts sheared off their ceiling bolts with an earsplitting shriek of tearing metal.

"Hang on to something!" the shooter screamed, but it was already too late.

The entire twenty-foot section of iron grating ripped free from the ceiling, plummeting downward and slamming into the canal with a colossal splash. Three scav-trackers tumbled into the churning, electrified sludge, their heavy weapons tangling in their own gear.

"Nyvara, right flank!" Kaelion roared, launching himself toward the fallen wreckage.

"On it!"

Nyvara blurred out from the shadows, her twin blades spinning in tight, lethal arcs. She closed the distance to the two surviving scavs on the water level before they could raise their sidearms. Her first strike severed the pneumatic hose of the nearest tracker's respirator; her backhand buried the second blade directly under the armor plating of his throat.

The man collapsed into the water without a sound.

"Two down!" Nyvara called out, wrenching her blade free and spinning to face the remaining ground crew. "Kaelion, the leader’s got a heavy winch on the rear sluice gate! If he drops the flood baffle, we get crushed!"

Fifty yards ahead, the scav leader had scrambled onto the primary control platform overlooking the drainage canal. His cybernetic hand was already locked around the manual release lever of a ten-ton iron floodgate.

"You want out of Sector 7?!" the leader screamed through his broken speaker grille, his face twisted in panic and greed. "You can wash out with the rest of the garbage!"

He slammed the lever down.

A mechanical siren howled through the tunnel.

Above them, the massive iron floodgate broke free from its magnetic locks, sliding down its vertical guide rails like a giant guillotine, threatening to seal the tunnel shut and drown them in millions of gallons of backed-up industrial filth.

"The gate!" Nyvara shouted, sprinting through the water, but the distance was too great. "We won't make it under before it seals!"

Kaelion didn't hesitate. "Get behind me!"

The golden lines across his arms burned white-hot. He surged forward, every muscle in his resurrected frame screaming as he sprinted headlong toward the falling slab of ten-ton iron.

"Kaelion, don't!" Nyvara yelled. "You can't stop that weight!"

The floodgate was three feet from the floor when Kaelion slid beneath it, throwing both hands upward into the descending steel.

BOOOOOOM!

The impact shook the entire tunnel foundation. The sheer crushing force drove Kaelion down to one knee, cracking the concrete bed beneath his boots into spiderwebs of pulverized dust. His teeth ground together so hard blood welled at the corner of his lips.

The iron gate shuddered, groaned, and stopped—held suspended inches above the rushing water by the trembling, glowing frame of a single man.

"Move, Nyv!" Kaelion roared, his voice tearing from his throat as the golden light beneath his skin flickered violently under the impossible pressure. "I can't hold this forever!"

Nyvara dove under the gate, rolling to her feet on the other side, her daggers immediately finding the scav leader’s chest before the man could draw his backup pistol.

The leader dropped dead onto the control platform.

Nyvara turned back to the gate, her eyes wide with terror and disbelief. "Kaelion! Slide through!"

"If I let go..." Kaelion gasped, his shoulder muscles tearing and stitching back together in micro-seconds under the crushing kinetic strain, "...the lock triggers permanently!"

Before he could throw himself forward, a heavy metallic clank echoed from the shadows behind him.

Kaelion glanced over his shoulder.

Standing in the water on the other side of the gate, three more heavily armed scav-trackers emerged from the darkness, their arc-rifles aimed dead at his exposed back.

"Hold him right there," the new point-man sneered, resting his finger on the trigger. "Let's see if your gold skin can stop three armor-piercing slugs point-blank."