Chapter 184: Get Out
As the two chatted, Jackie walked over slowly, arms crossed, and stopped behind Arthur.
“Hey!!”
Maybe out of spite for Jackie undermining him earlier, the short man jabbed a finger at him arrogantly and barked, “Big guy, sit down!”
He pointed at the sofa under his foot, his face twisting unnervingly as the exposed cybernetics around his eyes writhed grotesquely.
“I...? I’ll stand.”
Jackie didn’t move.
“Say it again! Sit here!”
The Maelstrom gang member’s voice carried a sharp edge, like he was chewing on gunpowder.
“I said, I’ll stand!” Jackie narrowed his eyes and stepped forward, towering coldly over the short man.
“But I want you sitting! This is our turf!”
This Dum Dum guy was unusually bold. Even with Jackie’s arms thicker than his waist, his neck stayed stiff with defiance.
The tension between the two set everyone on edge. The Maelstrom member holding the crate hastily set it on the coffee table, his crimson cybereyes locked on Jackie’s massive frame.
Arthur stood up, lifting his left hand as if to break it up.
“Easy... easy...”
His gravelly voice was steady, as reliable as his aim...
Dum Dum, still squared off with Jackie, turned his blood-red eyes toward Arthur.
“That’s better! If you want to do business with us, you gotta—”
He mistook Arthur’s calm for submission, and a smug grin spread across his heavily modified face. But the grin froze in place—
The man he thought was backing down already had a strange-looking revolver in hand. Faint streams of light flickered inside the dark barrel.
“Bang!”
A gaping hole burst open in Dum Dum’s mangled cybernetic face. Arthur’s eyes didn’t even flick to the corpse—his gun was already swung sideways, aimed straight at the head of the man who had just dropped the crate.
“Bang!!”
Only after the second gunshot did the Maelstrom gang finally react, fumbling for the pistols at their waists.
Next to Arthur, Jackie had already uncrossed his arms and drawn both pistols. A storm of bullets erupted like rolling thunder.
No words were needed between them. Jackie had been ready the second Arthur stood.
With only four or five goons in the room, Arthur and Jackie didn’t even bother with cover... their sudden attack brought instant silence.
“Bang... Call that my greeting...” Jackie muttered, kicking a corpse aside as he walked to the crate. “Hey! Problem solved. Let’s check out our little treasure.”
He flipped the lid open. “Look at it. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Just this little thing?” Arthur asked casually, loading a bullet into his revolver.
Inside was a jet-black robot, four-legged, with two claw-like forearms that looked like a predator’s pincers. Its rectangular body was topped with a large camera lens. Now it lay crouched inside the crate, like an insect ready to pounce.
“Don’t let its size fool you. This is the latest Militech hardware.”
Jackie grinned and slammed the lid shut. What had taken two Maelstrom thugs to haul, he tucked under his arm with ease.
“Let’s move, hermano. We gotta fight our way out!”
With the crate hoisted and his guns reloaded, Jackie nodded to Arthur.
They didn’t head back the way they came—the elevator was a death trap now. Jackie scanned the area, spotted something, and waved Arthur over. “This way...”
The factory blared with “beep—beep—beep” alarms, red lights flooding the halls as their silhouettes disappeared into the darkness.
They climbed from crate to crate until they reached a grated metal walkway. The path stretched forward, reeking with a pungent stench.
Arthur, unburdened, went first. The smell made him wrinkle his nose before he reached back to pull Jackie and the crate up. “This little thing’s heavier than it looks.”
He set it down at his feet as Jackie jumped up beside him.
“Cough! Cough!” Jackie hacked as soon as he surfaced. “That stench... smells like meat. This is the assembly line... Damn it, I wish we could switch routes.”
“Better than waiting on bullets.” Arthur’s eyes were already sweeping the area ahead.
After only a few steps, they spotted an opening below—leading into a quiet control room with no enemies in sight.
Arthur jumped straight down... scanning the surroundings carefully. To the side was the hall they had passed earlier...
The grunts who’d been cleaning their guns were now crouched low, prowling across the hall.
Arthur gave Jackie a signal to stay quiet, then slowly raised his gun... aiming at the farthest target.
A shot like that was no harder than hitting a still target at the range.
“Bang!”
The dull crack was followed by an electric hum as the bullet punched cleanly through a Maelstrom skull.
“Who’s there?!”
“Goddamn it! Show yourselves!”
“Kill those two!”
The shouts echoed up from below. Their vantage point sat high above the hall—perfect for shooting. And Arthur was a perfect marksman.
Sparks leapt from the grated floor under their feet, while below, not blood but showers of electric sparks burst from the heads of the cyber-psychotic Maelstrom members.
Arthur didn’t even need to reload before every last thug had dropped.
Still moving smoothly, he stood on the steel stairwell above, hawk-eyed, scanning the room...
No resistance—at least for now.
“Those Maelstrom lunatics are no better than the Scavs... all cut from the same filthy cloth.” Jackie still didn’t bother setting the crate down, proof of how little effort the fight had cost him.
“Looks like a few more are eager to die...” Arthur’s gaze snapped toward the exit.
The doors burst open, and a wave of Maelstrom gang members surged inside...
And right then, a warning progress bar suddenly appeared in Arthur’s vision.
Author's Note
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