Sinner's Run Ch. 06

Noah checked that his Cricket was fully-loaded, then yelled as loud as he could and ran towards the corner. The Pontiff spun out of cover, firing down the sights of his SMG. Noah ate two shots to the armor before he hit the deck and emptied the full clip into the Pontiff's midriff, shattering his armor. The Abbess drew a bead on him with her N-10, then flinched as Nala's spray of rounds shattered her armor and shredded the Pontiff's health and dropped him. Abbess tried to fire back, but Nala pounced on her quickly and felled her with two mighty melee attacks. Pontiff and Abbess vanished without a sound, their gear boxes appearing a moment later.

"See?" Nala said, reloading again. "Nothing to it."

"Yes, good job Noah, thank you very much Noah," Noah muttered, picking himself up.

They rifled through the gear boxes, finding a little bit of spare ammo along with armor repair kits that both of them used to top off their defenses. The first round was close to ending, and they needed to move to avoid being chipped to death by the Zone.

"Follow me," Nala said, taking off without even bothering to see if he was moving with her. Noah grit his teeth and followed as best he could, envying her speed. Snow crunched under his boots as they ran, eventually giving way to the soft loam of the forest biome that was much of the rest of the map.

"Shacks on the right," Noah called as the Zone stopped behind them. "We should loot them, we need better equipment."

Nala didn't respond, but she did change tack and moved towards the ramshackle buildings. The small grouping was one of the many unnamed clusters of buildings on the Run that weren't given official designations, but still held loot. Usually it was just ammo or consumables, but sometimes you got lucky and found a rare gun or piece of kit like a high-level armor.

Noah split off from Nala, each of them taking a small cluster of shacks to themselves. Noah found a better armor in his first shack, along with plenty of extra ammo for his Cricket. The second shack was empty, but the third contained a Lyuda rifle. It was a semi-automatic rifle that fired three shots in a triangle shape with each pull of the trigger. Without a scope it did good damage at mid-range if you knew how to aim well, but if you were lucky enough to find a long range scope it could really crack some skulls. Noah took it, but not for himself.

He went to meet Nala in the other shacks, and found the kaldar slotting an extended magazine into her N-99. He took the Lyuda off his back and set it on the ground next to her. She looked up at him. "What's this?"

"A Lyuda."

"I know what the gun is, dummy. I meant what are you doing?"

Noah once again tamped down on the urge to make an acerbic comment. "You know me, I'm a terrible shot. But you're not, so why waste a good rifle?"

Nala looked down the rifle for a time. Then she reached behind her own back and produced a Chakram shotgun. "Then I'll trade you for this."

Noah took the shotgun, hefting its weight in his hands for a moment before putting it on his shoulder. "Didn't find any extras for it, though."

"It actually works out." Nala took the Lyuda and stood up. She pulled both an extended sniper magazine and a long-range scope from her storage deck, the attachments appearing in the palm of her hand. She slotted the scope onto the rack on the top side of the rifle, and swapped out the magazine on the underside before racking the bolt. Her eyes shone with confidence. "Now I'm in business."

Noah frowned. "Don't you mean 'we're in business'?"

Nala snorted. "As if, Killer." She shouldered past him, moving to leave the shack.

Frustration boiled over inside Noah. She couldn't hurt him since they were partners, so even if he pissed her off it's not like she could claws his face off in retaliation. With that in mind, Noah grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. "Okay, no, I've had enough of this crap from you," he snapped.

Nala snarled, leaning in so her breath fanned over his face. "Watch it, Killer."

"Bite me."

Her lips pulled back even further from her incisors. "Careful what you wish for."

"What is this all about, Nala? You've axed me multiple times since that game where I screwed up. Yay, awesome, good for you! But it's somehow not enough? How does me screwing up once warrant that much retribution?"

"It warrants as much retribution as I damn well think it does," Nala said. Her tail lashed back and forth behind her, the tip flitting in and out of Noah's field of view. "You think just because-" She bit down on her words, shaking his hand off her shoulder before spinning and marching out of the shack.

"Just because what?" Noah called after her, loping after her to catch up. "Answer me, dammit!"

"Shut up," Nala snapped back. "Keep screaming like that and you'll bring every team down on us."

"Not until you give me an answer."

Nala's claws scoured the bark from a tree as she passed, leaving deep gouges that bled sap. "I don't have to tell you shit. You're too much of a coward to understand."

"Yeah, I am a coward!" Noah said. Nala stopped and looked back at him, and Noah almost ran slapbang into her. "I never asked for this. You think I want to be here, running and shooting day in and day out? I've been a desk jockey my whole life. It was all I ever wanted to be! And then one day I wake up in the dropship with no clue as to how I got there, when none of this should even exist in the first place!" He realized too late he'd blurted out the part he wasn't supposed to tell people and clapped his hands over his mouth.

Nala cocked her head, angry confusion on her muzzle. "What do you mean by that?"

Damn it! Noah wracked his brain for an explanation that might mollify Nala's curiosity, but came up empty. Motion in the woods behind Nala drew his eye. A moment later, he realized it was a sniper barrel poking through a gap in two of the trees, with a very focused Montana peering down the scope.

"Get down!" he yelled, shoving Nala to the ground. A moment later the heavy caliber sniper round hit him square in the chest, shattering his armor like glass and darkening his vision around the edge. It was better than the alternative - Nala would've eaten the shot right to the back of her head.

He dropped to the ground clutching his chest, staring into her wide eyes. "Who's shooting?" she asked.

"Montana," Noah gasped. "God, it's like getting hit by a truck..."

Nala picked herself up, yanking the Lyuda off her back and setting the scope against her shoulder. "Stay here," she commanded.

"Believe me, I'm not going anywhere," Noah grunted, still doubled over. He wasn't in the downed state yet, but knew he had to be sitting on a sliver of health. Nala moved away from him in a low crouch, her careful feet making almost no noise where they stepped on the ground. Noah heeded her instructions, keeping his ear cocked to any noise around them. He heard more gunfire far in the distance, more teams fighting it out. Who had Montana's partner been again?

Nala's Lyuda fired three times, the kaldar using the faster firing speed of her rifle to her advantage. Noah heard Montana's rifle fire in answer, the bullet kicking up a plume of earth near him. The crafty sniper must have known he wasn't knocked down and wanted to fully take him out of the contention. Given that Noah was still struggling to breathe from the first shot, she honestly needn't have bothered.

He raised his head to try to get a peek at the action. Montana and Nala were trading shots from behind cover, moving from tree to tree in a game of cat and sniper, trying to gain the upper hand. Nala was quick, but Montana was born to handle sniper rifles. As if to emphasize the point, the sniper's next shot hit Nala clean in the side, obliterating the rest of her armor. Noah knew he needed to help - if Nala went down on his watch again he'd never hear the end of it.

So he decided to help in the best way he could: being a distraction.

Noah picked himself up and set the Cricket against his shoulder, remembering Quirrel's directions. Just a lovey little squeeze. He sighted at what bit of Montana he could see, and fired off a short burst in her direction.

The shots clipped her arm, but wasn't enough to down her. By firing, he'd exposed his position, and her rifle barrel swung over, zeroed in on his face. Noah screwed his eyes shut and braced for the impact.

Nala's Lyuda cracked. Montana's rifle didn't.

Noah opened his eyes to see Montana's gear box appear in a flash of light as the sniper was eliminated. Nala stepped out from behind her tree, panting from the short but intense encounter. "Guess her partner got axed early," the kaldar called. "How'd you know I needed a shot?"

"I didn't," Noah admitted, jogging over to the gear box. He opened it with a nudge of his boot, immediately grabbing the full heal hypo inside. He jammed it into his arm and took a deep breath as the healing...whatever it was inside set to work making him not feel like he'd been poked in the chest by God. "Only thing I'm really good for is distracting. I can't shoot, I have a weak punch, and every Prime here could beat me in a four hundred meter dash." Noah grabbed ammo and more healing items, looking up at Nala. "Only thing I can really do is eat bullets for people who are better at this than me and hope they pick up the slack. I didn't know that before, but I know it now." He took a breath. "Look, I'm sorry for letting you down that first time."

Nala regarded him for a time. Then she reached into the gear box and took what she needed, reloading her Lyuda as she did. "Zone's closing soon," she said in a quiet voice, racking the bolt on the rifle. "Come on."

Noah closed the gear box. "Right." Well, at least he'd made an attempt to mend fences.

The two of them walked in silence, hearing the hum of the closing Zone grow closer behind them. The combat zone was shrinking to the area around Annex in the center of the map, and the next closure would make the building there the only play area. Noah and Nala stuck to the higher elevation where the forest area sloped down towards Annex. They stopped behind a large rock, Nala scanning the horizon through the scope of her Lyuda. Noah watched their six, Cricket in hand. Two other teams were left - Quirrel and Iago, and Larka and Fidget. It was a surprise not to have 32 in the top, and Noah wondered what had happened to her.

"You didn't have to lose anything," Nala said.

"Say what?"

Nala took her eye away from the scope for a moment to look at him. "You didn't choose to be here. It sucks for you, yeah, but the rest of us? We made a conscious choice to enter into this because of what happened to us outside. There's a reason it's called Sinner's Run and not Good People Who've Never Made A Mistake Run."

Noah frowned. "What does that have to do with anything?"

The kaldar huffed a heavy breath out through her nose, nostrils flaring wide. "I'm jealous of you. That's why I've been taking it out on you so hard these past couple weeks."

"Why would you be jealous of me?"

Nala shifted into a more comfortable position, tucking her tail into her lap as she leaned on the rock while maintaining her vigil. "Why do you ask? Are you jealous of me?"

"Uh, yeah?" Noah answered. Nala's ears pricked towards him. "You're kidding right? You're a badass! You're an ace shot, you've got claws for days, you're strong, confident, poised, maybe a bit obsessive at times." He slumped a little against the rock. "You're everything I'm not."

"All of those things are objectively right," Nala admitted. "But it's because you never needed to be. You were put here by circumstances beyond your control." She paused and swallowed before continuing. "I chose to be here. I chose to come to the Run to escape the mistakes of my past. The shit that haunts me every night when I go to sleep. You can't even begin to imagine the price I'd pay if it meant I got to live the kind of banal life you led before you came here. I never would've been manipulated, never would've..." She trailed, her jaw tightening.

Noah knew how the sentence ended, thanks to his knowledge of the game's lore. Never would've been tricked into committing war crimes as a member of a private security force. "It wasn't really the best life," he argued. "I didn't do anything, really. Just went to work, sat at home after, unwound with movies or video games."

"Sounds wonderful, honestly," Nala said.

"For a while it was," Noah said. "But then you realize that your social circle consists of a roommate who doesn't understand you and can be kind of a dick and a few people who you've never met in person, just over the internet. The isolation sets in, and you start to crave interaction of any kind." He laughed. "You only get laid once every blue moon."

Nala's tail flicked. "From what the rumor mill says, you don't seem to have as much trouble with that last part as you think you do."

Noah's throat dried up. "There's a rumor mill?"

"By that I mean Fidget. It's not that hard to pick up what's going on once you've figured out what she's really trying to say when her mouth's going a thousand miles an hour."

Noah groaned and put his head in his hands. "Great."

"Hey, at least you're not banging, like, Quirrel or something. That one's definitely into some weird shit."

Noah snickered. "No doubt." Nala laughed as well, and Noah felt something healing between them.

The kaldar got to her feet, lowering the Lyuda. "Ring's closing in thirty. We should get down there."

Noah nodded. "Lead the way."

They both kept their heads on a swivel as they scurried down the hill, wary of any shots that might be fired up at them from Annex. They reached the side of the building, and held up for a moment. Nala pressed her ear to the wall. "I wonder if we're the only ones-"

A roar of gunfire from inside the building answered her unfinished question. Nala shouldered her Lyuda and pulled out the N-99. "Close quarters time," she said.

Noah switched out his own guns, putting up the Cricket in favor of the Chakram shotgun. "How do you want to play this?"

Nala tilted her head to the side, and something in her neck popped. A shudder ran through her whole body, from the tufts on her ears to the tip of her tail. "Shoot at the first person you see, repeat until they're down, move to the next one." When she looked back at him, Noah saw that she'd activated her ultimate, her eyes suffused with red. "Simple."

With that, Nala took off like a shot, shouldering open the Annex door and running inside. Noah kept after her as best he could. They rounded a corner at full speed, Noah's boots skidding on the floor as he corrected his balance. Nala needed no such halting, simply springing up onto the wall for a few paces as she dropped back to the floor and kept up her momentum.

Ahead of them, the hallway ended and opened up into a larger storage room filled with containers. As they got close, Iago ran past the doorway, headed to their right. Nala was through it a second later, springing off all fours like a feral predator onto Iago's back. One sweep of her claws put him into a downed state, a healing hypo clattering to the ground from his seized up fingers.

"That's one," Nala said. She took off again, loping out of sight in search of more prey.

Noah turned to head the other way and work his way around the crates into a pincer maneuver. As he did, one of Fidget's amplified grenades bounced off the wall above him and dropped down in front of him. Noah spun around and sprinted away as fast as he could, managing to mostly get out of the blast radius and only take a sliver of armor damage from the explosion. Down the hall, he saw Iago trying to crawl to safety so he could be revived by...

Quirrel vaulted over the container above him, landing heavily. His head snapped to Noah. "Heya, mincemeat!" he yelled, raising a Chakram of his own.

Noah ducked the slug as he fired, fumbling with his gun. His scrambling fingers yanked the trigger and fired back, the slug hitting Quirrel square in the chest by pure luck. His armor cracked, and the mercenary dove for cover. "Lucky blighter, but it won't carry ya out of this. Just sit still for a moment sos I can-"

An even louder bang shut him up, and Noah saw a gear box appear in the little nook where Quirrel had gone. A moment later, Larka strode out of the gap, calmly popping two more shells into a Hacksaw before snapping the breech shut. She looked to Noah. "Finyan," she greeted him.

"Hey, Larka," Noah said lamely. He racked the slide on the Chakram. "No hard feelings?"

"Of course not." Larka gave him a brief smile, then put her game face on. "It's been a while since that first game. Show me what you've learned."

Noah snapped the Chakram up and fired. The slug hit the metal container next to Larka's side, and she ducked into cover for a moment. Noah racked the slide again, the shell pinging to the ground next to his feet. He lifted the gun into the crook of his arm, bracing the stock with his shoulder. His steps were slow and careful as he closed in on where Larka was hiding.

Until he rounded the corner and realized she was gone. Somehow she'd sneaked away and was not out of his line of sight. He could still hear the clamor of Nala fighting Fidget, namely the myriad of grenades going off from Fidget's seemingly inexhaustible arsenal. The kaldar would have to contend for herself.

Larka reappeared around another container, firing the Hacksaw at him. More slivers vanished from Noah's armor as the pellets dotted the container next to him. He fired back, clipping her side.with the slug. Larka tossed down her barrier, a dome of light appearing around her from the portable generator. She withdrew an armor cell from her storage deck and twisted both halves, beginning the five-second channel that would fill a chunk of her armor back up. Noah didn't have any cells, nor could he shoot into the barrier - that was the whole point. But if he pushed her...

Go for broke, I guess. Noah surged out from his hiding spot and ran towards the barrier. Larka would have to choose between the armor repair or dealing with him being a distance where he couldn't miss if he tried.

Noah went through the bubble just as the armor cell finished channeling. He fired at Larka's broad chest. The shot obliterated what the armor cell had given Larka, and a little bit more besides. But Noah had forgotten one key detail.

In close quarters, Hacksaw beat Chakram every time.

The shot shredded Noah's armor, pain shooting through his torso. Larka's next shot dropped him to his knees. Noah cursed his short-sightedness.

"A bold move," Larka said.

"Hey, at least I tried," Noah grunted.

A sniper shot cracked into Larka's back from outside Noah's field of view. Larka turned and scrambled away, pounding past Noah. A moment later, Nala ran past. "Sit tight, Killer, I got this!"

Gunfire rattled out of Noah's field of view, and all he could do was crawl into a corner to try to keep as low a profile as possible. A moment later, something pink dropped down from a container above him with a loud "oof!"

"Hey Fidget," Noah said.

"Oh! Heya!" Fidget slowly crawled over to his side, both of them waiting it out while Larka and Nala fought out of sight to decide the game. "How's it going?"

"Oh, y'know. Bleeding out."

"Yeah, kinda sucks." Fidget made a face. "What can you do?"

"Get out of here, hopefully."

"Ooh! Right! I left one of those messages for ya. FIgured you might not get a chance being paired with Nala."

"Thanks." Noah raised his chin. "You know, I think we managed to hash it out, her and I. At least a little."