059: Crispy on the Outside, Tender on the Inside

The Exiles attempted to organize a counterattack, but they were all pinned down behind their cover by the short-tempered Russian girl, forced to fire under the constant pressure of heavy machine-gun suppressive fire.

Thalia had completely lost her mind in the carnage.

John was operating furiously within the digital world.

[Plant T76 Global Surveillance (Hacked)]
[Upload scan data to squad / Yes]

Thalia’s cybernetic eyes began to flicker.

Her data cable connected to the control panel, projecting the digital outlines of enemies right before her eyes.

The artillery’s rate of fire reached its absolute limit.

Her ammunition reserve plummeted drastically, and the air directly above the gun barrels shimmered with heat distortion.

John set up his rifle from a high vantage point.

He was responsible for covering Thalia’s blind spots—his electromagnetic rounds could pierce through obstacles and steel plates, and the handling certainly felt smoother than kinetic weaponry.

The Exiles were battered into a state of sheer panic.

"Fuck!"

John suddenly clutched his head and crouched down, feeling as though a pot of boiling water was churning inside his skull.

He instinctively thought his Blacklight condition was acting up again, but his cybernetic eyes rebooted on their own, capturing a crimson data stream that linked his own body to the window across the way.

[Hack detected, cybernetic eye overheating process...]
[Progress: 14%]

"There’s a hacker across the way, frying my brain."

John flipped over, braced his rifle, locked onto the red silhouette across the street, and emptied the remaining rounds in his magazine straight into it.

The dilapidated tin shack was pierced right through.

A dense pattern of charred bullet holes was left on the wall, and the red hacking data stream was abruptly severed.

The humanoid silhouette collapsed onto the floor.

[Get down, John!]

Thalia screamed over the squad channel.

Bang—

The wall of the control room was blown through.

The monitors and the metal desk were blasted to pieces by heavy caliber rounds.

John fell backward onto the floor.

His vision spun violently.

A piercing tinnitus drowned out all other sound.

His throat felt painfully constricted, his body had momentarily forgotten how to breathe, and the room before him was filled with a flurry of flying debris.

The concrete floor vibrated.

John seemed to hear a faint sound; his hearing had been severely impaired by the attack, meaning the actual volume must have been deafeningly loud.

He forced himself to sit up, tearing open his scorched jacket to find two bullet holes embedded directly into the ballistic vest over his chest.

[Item: Sniper Rifle Round (Model Corrupted)]

"Hoo... hoo-hoo... Shit..."

John dragged himself over to the wall and unbuckled his side straps, finally bringing relief to his compressed and deformed ribs.

Excruciating pain radiated from his chest straight to his head.

John’s scalp tingled from the agony.

He hurriedly pulled out the injector from his tactical belt, suppressing the negative status effects with a dose of heavy-duty medication.

The squad channel was filled entirely with static.

[Are reinforcements here?]
[John! John! Answer me, you motherfucker!]
[Braga, go fish John out of there. If he's not dead, drag him back and throw him outside.]
[Which son of a bitch is firing stray shots?]

"I'm not dead, fuck. There’s a sniper inside the arched dome at the high point of the factory grounds," John replied over the channel.

Thalia quickly evacuated after emptying her machine-gun magazine, and the rest of the camp members also fell back behind cover.

The sniper who had accompanied them was engaged in frontal combat and lacked the energy or the proper angle to deal with the high tower.

Tat-tat, tat-tat.

Downstairs was a flurry of intense gunfire, with cross-shaped muzzle flashes spitting from every corner.

The suppression phase had ended, and both sides fell into a stalemate.

However, the Exile convoy out hunting must have received the news and was likely rushing back.

If the blitz attack failed to work, retreat was their only option.

Thalia cursed furiously over voice comms, while the camp members who had pulled back their lines desperately searched for a breakthrough.

[Mission Objective Updated]
[Eliminate the Exile Sniper. (Optional)]
[Retreat before reinforcements arrive. (Optional)]

John stepped outside the room.

He spotted the corpse of an Exile sentry—its head and body riddled with shattered gaps, blood dripping down the metal grating, with a smart sniper rifle lying right beside its foot.

[Weapon: Plato - Molted Serpent]
[Modifications: Heavy Penetration, Ballistic Calibration]
[Description: Corrupted Data. [Experimental weapon, no product serial number found]]

The contact points on John’s palm pressed tightly against the grip.

He relaxed his muscles, letting his body reload automatically in sync with the weapon’s built-in software.

[Item: Sniper Rifle Ammunition]

The pressure-relief valve on the black gun casing unfolded, splitting down the center like cracked serpent scales. Diverging from the traditional magazine placement, ammunition was loaded directly from the top.

Click!

[Δ5/0]

Hugging the wall, John poked the muzzle out. His cybernetic eyes linked with the scope, zooming in and focusing until the arched dome came into absolute clarity.

He saw a streak of fire sweep through the air.

Tracing the trajectory backward, he locked onto the sniper's position, only to spot a patch of writhing white gel blending into the air, barely visible beneath the gloomy, overcast sky.

Military-grade camouflage.

No wonder this bastard hadn't been spotted earlier.

"Got you, scum."

John squeezed the trigger. His shoulder dipped slightly, feeling as though he had been shoved hard by someone pressing a fist directly against him.

Bang—

A residual white line of the trajectory lingered in the air.

In his vision, John clearly saw flickering electric arcs erupting around the sniper, followed by a burst of bloody mist as half the bones of an arm were exposed outside the armor.

Bang—

John fired again, blowing the target's head apart.

This was his first time attempting such long-range elimination. Suffice it to say, the weapon coverage of the CQC chip was truly formidable. Furthermore, this experimental sniper rifle had low demands on cyberware, while its precision and magazine lethality were merely mediocre.

It was likely targeted at the mid-to-low-end street market.

It held little appeal for high-end firepower users like Elon.

[John took that shithead down!]

Thalia immediately led her people charging back into the transport station, and the long-stalemated gunfire flared up intensively once more.

[What the fuck!]
[There’s movement in the lounge.]
[Ah—]
[They let something out.]

As John sprinted across the iron-wire catwalk, sudden static crackled through his earpiece. Before he could find a suitable sniper perch, several signal sources on the squad channel went dark.

Bzzzt.

He slammed on the brakes. All the electronic equipment around him was spitting out electric arcs, and the surveillance cameras were winking out one by one as if their circuit boards were being fried.

John switched to the surviving surveillance feeds.

He saw a figure glowing completely blue deep inside the warehouse, driving a fist straight into the distribution box and ripping out the miniature circuit breakers, sockets, and wiring entirely.

[Device signal disconnected]

The image on John’s screen flickered back to normal, and a figure instantly materialized right from the direction where the camera had just died.

[Name: Giancarlo [Electric Eel]]
[Faction: Exiles [Iron Foot - Kombu]]
[Scan: ETGC-cortex (Experimental), Blood Pump, Sandevistan 3.0, etc.]

John caught sight of several high-end cyberware modifications, along with a few serial numbers lacking product names—likely experimental products from Plato’s warehouse.

The Electric Eel was bulkier and more robust than he appeared in the files.

[Bounty: Assaulting an officer, multiple homicides, false imprisonment, etc.]

This bastard’s rap sheet was extensive, making him an extremist even among the lawless Exiles.

[This bastard’s cyberware is a bit troublesome.]

A warning came over the voice comms.

Sparks and smoke sizzled all over the Electric Eel’s body, and his mental state looked completely unhinged. In the blink of an eye, he flashed a dozen paces forward, swinging a piece of iron to strike down a camp gunman.

That guy was still convulsing even after hitting the ground.

The squad channel was filled entirely with harsh static noise.

At this moment, Thalia returned to the machine-gun seat.

She clamped down hard on the trigger, firing relentlessly at the Electric Eel. Heavy bullets slammed into the bastard’s muscle fiber bundles and subcutaneous armor, blooming only into a few bursts of bloody mist.

The Electric Eel was forced to stutter in his steps repeatedly, then vanished on the spot.

He reappeared right beside the heavy machine gun, his scorched cheek pressing fiercely against Thalia’s. Her cybernetic eyes were disabled, leaving her optics flooded with crimson current and continuously leaking white smoke.

Bzzzt, bzzzt, bzzzt.

Thalia’s vision was nothing but a mess of data turbulence.

Bang—

The Electric Eel’s head tilted violently to the side, the skin on the back of his head blasted into a bloody mash plastered across the floor.

Beneath it lay writhing blood vessels and machinery.