Right, ghost kid, playtime is over. Enough gazing at me as if I'm some captivating new type of fungus. Time for the Hales Express Relocation Program.
Just need to be gentle…ish. Wouldn't want to damage the merchandise before I figured its warranty, right? Let's find out if you're simpler to catch than a greased Scorcherat. . . judging by those eyes, probably not. Here goes nothing…
I lunged – a swift, controlled grab directed at his skinny arm. Should've been easy. Kid's perhaps knee-high, probably weighs less than my toolkit. Simple snatch, right?
Wrong.
Woosh! Air. That's all I caught. The little scrap of shadow was gone. He'd pivoted, dropped, and slipped behind a collapsed generator casing quicker than my credit balance drops after a night at Scar-Lip Jin's bar.
"How?!" The kid didn't even seem to move quickly, just… kind of disappeared. Like a poorly rendered holo-vid glitching out.
"Alright, fine! We're playing hide-and-seek now, are we?" I muttered, scanning the darkness around the generator. My voice echoed strangely in the large, lifeless space of the substation. Talking to myself again. Great a sign of mental stability, Drevin, good job.
"Come on out, kid! I've got… uh… slightly less moldy rations? A shiny piece of scrap? A glowing review on the Underscape Orphan Job Board?" Silence. Just the drip-drip-drip of gods-know-what from the ceiling and the hum of my own gear.
"There!" A flicker of movement near that mess of high-voltage cables. The ones actively sparking. Naturally.
"Hey! Thats not a toy!" I hissed, starting towards him again, weaving through the debris field. He darted away again, skittering over a pile of rubble like a roach evading a boot heel. Damn, the kid's got moves. Where does a six-year-old learn parkour this good? Did his mom toss him around instead of burping him? Note to self: Never challenge Underscape toddlers to an obstacle course. My pride, and possibly my ankles, wouldn't survive.
He slipped through a narrow opening between a fallen support beam and the wall. Too small for me to follow easily.
"Seriously? Are you trying to make things challenging? I just want to take you into an thrilling life of slightly less hazardous scavenging and potential black-ops work! It's a step up, trust me! Maybe? Probably not, but hey, the benefits package includes not being eaten by whatever laid those giant glowing eggs over there!"
Still nothing. God, I hate this kid, If I had one of those fancy teleport quirk like the privileged kids in Academia's Core class, this would be easy. Grab, zap, finished. But nooo, Drevin Hales, the quirkless star, excels at 'exceptionally good at tripping over things in the dark' and 'mediocre lock-picking' as his main abilities. Just wonderful. My life choices are flawless.
Alright, think. He can't remain in there indefinitely. Perhaps I can flush him out… or just wait? Patience isn't exactly my forte, particularly when my rad-meter is still beeping. Wait… was that… yes! A scrap of tattered cloth protruding from behind that rusted maintenance panel near the gap.
"Gotcha!"
I lunged once more, quicker this time, aiming for the panel—FWIP!
He wasn't there. He was already halfway across the room, vanishing behind that stack of glowing… sludge barrels?
"Seriously kid?" Those things might be leaking enough hard radiation to give me a quirk, and not the exciting flying type. He'll either come out with a third arm or be melted into goo. Fifty credits says goo… wait, oh no, there he is. Peeking out. Still annoyingly in shape. Guess my betting odds truly suck today.
(Drevin sighs, placing his hands on his hips, genuinely confused and frustrated.)
Okay. Okay. Kid wins this round. He disappeared again, like my last bit of optimism. Fine. Let him conceal himself. Play ghost. Gives me a moment to actually fetch that damn capacitor for Scar-Lip Jin..assuming the little ghost didn't take it while I was engaged in the world's dirtiest game of tag.
"Now, where did I put my pry bar. . .?"
I knelt by the relay housing again, pulling out my multi-tool. Just need to pop these old locking clamps… careful now… almost… there.
"Gods, it's actually intact!" A Series 7 Pre-Collapse capacitor core, hardly any corrosion! Scar-Lip Jin might actually pay full price for this one. He might even smile, which usually just looks like his face is trying to escape his skull, but still a JACKPOT!!
I just need to disconnect the primary feed without getting shocked by residual charge and—CRRAAAASSHHH!
The entire substation housing shake. Dust rained down from the decaying ceiling beams. I dropped the multi-tool, spinning around, stun prod immediately buzzing in my hand.
"Okay," I murmured to myself, heart suddenly trying to beat its way out of my ribcage, "That sounded distinctly like something large, angry, and probably hungry!"
And sure enough, from the darkness at the far end of the hall where a massive ventilation shaft had collapsed years ago, something was unfolding itself.
Oh, wonderful. It looked like a giant, mutated centipede got hideously intimate with a pile of scrap metal and razor wire. Multiple clicking limbs, far too many glowing red eyes, and dripping fluid in its body that sizzled when it struck the ferrocrete. It let out a screech that sounded like metal tearing.
"Well, hello there, nightmare fuel," I gasped, backing up slowly towards the relay housing again. "Didn't see you on the guest list. Feel free to just. . . keep nesting? Whatever multi-limbed horrors do in their spare time?"
Naturally, it began skittering towards me, those dreadful claws clicking faster on the floor. Great. Just great. My 'Whisper Field' wouldn't do anything against something this massive, and my stun prod would likely just tickle it before it used me as a toothpick. Time for Plan B: Run like hell and hope it trips.
Except, just as I was about to bolt for the side tunnel the kid disappeared into (figuring maybe ghost kids are less lethal than giant murder-pedes), more guests decided to join the party.
"Oh Crap." From that same side tunnel, two figures emerged, blinking in the dim light filtering down from the capacitor housing I'd just opened.
Scavengers. Bottom-feeders by the look of them – ragged clothes, makeshift pipe-wrenches turned clubs, salvaged stun batons crackling menacingly, and hungry. The kind that see someone like me – with relatively clean gear and working tech – as a walking loot drop.
One of them, a lean guy with sharpened teeth, noticed me. Then he saw the enormous murder-pede currently obstructing his way to the potentially valuable relay core I was moments ago.
His eyes narrowed. "Oi! Fancy tech-boy! Drop the gear and the loot, and maybe Grok here," he motioned towards the beast, which was now sniffing the air suspiciously, "eats you slow!"
Oh, splendid. Just splendid. Out of the ghost kid chase and into a three-way dance-off from hell.
Big Ugly (now named 'Grok', apparently) wants to chew on everything that moves. Pointy Sticks Crew wants my belongings and likely my boots.
Ghost Kid is missing in action, probably laughing his silent little ass off somewhere. And me? I'm caught in the middle with a half-disconnected capacitor, a stun prod with questionable battery life, and rapidly vanishing options. Unless 'dying horribly' counts as an option?
"Tempting offer," I replied, attempting to sound uninterested while anxiously searching for any escape route that wasn't obstructed by either razor claws or rusty pipes swung by desperate fools. "But I'm rather attached to my gear. Sentimental value, you know?"
Wiry Guy spat on the ground. "Your choice, tech-boy. Get him! "
Alright then. Aggressive negotiations it is. Also known as 'Try Not to Become a Shish Kebab slash Mutant Chow'. Here they come. Time to determine if this rust-bucket stun prod has enough power left for a party. . . or if I'm about to be an Underscape cautionary tale. Fantastic.
"It's party time! Let's find out if 'Zappy' here," I grunted, poking my flickering stun prod at the first scavenger lunging with a rusty pipe,"can persuade these fine gentlemen to rethink their life choices. . ."
Zap! He jerked for a gratifying second, then shook it off with a snarl. Low battery. Fantastic.
WHAM! Alright, a pipe wrench to the shoulder definitely beats a low-battery stun prod. Good to know. Stars exploded behind my eyes as I staggered back against the relay housing.
Wiry Guy and his delightful companion with the sharpened rebar advanced, grinning like hungry jackals. Behind them, 'Grok' the murder-pede released another metal-shredding screech, probably deciding which one of us appeared more appetizing. Options were narrowing. . . quickly.
"You should have just given us the gear, tech-boy! " Wiry Guy spat, raising his wrench for a skull-crushing encore. I squeezed my eyes shut, preparing for the impact, thinking perhaps becoming mutant chow was slightly better than being bludgeoned to death by idiots— Wait.
What? No impact. Instead, a wet, tearing sound, followed by a choked gurgle. My eyes snapped open. The ghost kid. He was there. Between me and Wiry Guy. Where on earth did he come from? He hadn't made a sound. One moment, And Wiry Guy…
Wiry Guy was gazing down at his own stomach with wide, uncomprehending eyes. The kid's hand – his bare hand – was buried up to the wrist in the scavenger's gut. Fingers held rigidly straight, like knives.
(Drevin's internal voice loses all humor, replaced by cold shock.)
Did he just. . . ? No. Impossible. The kid's maybe forty pounds soaking wet. That wrench-wielder was solid muscle. But. . . there it was. The kid withdrew his hand with a slick, awful sound.
Wiry Guy made a wet sighing noise and collapsed to the floor like a discarded sack of garbage, the front of his tunic instantly soaking dark.
Before the other scavenger – Rebar Guy – could even grasp what occurred, the kid moved again. A blur. Faster than anything that small had any right to be. He ducked under Rebar Guy's frantic swing, pivoted on one foot, and drove his elbow upwards into the man's jaw with a sickening crack.
Rebar Guy went down like a ton of bricks, unconscious or worse. Two of them. Down in less than three seconds. By a six-year-old. Throughout it all, the kid's expression remained utterly blank.
Empty. Those black eyes expressed nothing. No anger, no fear, Like he was dissecting faulty machinery, It was the most terrifying sight I'd ever witnessed, and I once saw a Sludge-Walker attempt to mate with a maintenance drone.
SCREEECH! Right, I forgot about Big Ugly. Grok reared up, likely attracted by the sudden silence from the scavengers and the scent of fresh blood, its multiple red eyes locking onto the small figure standing over the bodies.
Here it comes, I thought. The kid's quick, but against that thing. . . ?
However, the ghost kid didn't engage it. As Grok charged, a mass of clicking claws and armored plates, the kid dodged to the side with that same extraordinary agility, allowing the monster to crash into the relay housing unit with enough impact to make the entire structure groan. Before the dust even settled, the kid had slipped into a narrow ventilation shaft close to the floor – a gap barely wide enough for him – and disappeared. Just… gone again.
Leaving me, bruised shoulder pulsing, staring at two dead or dying scavengers, a very furious giant mutant centipede freeing itself from the wreckage, and the faint echo of unimaginable violence.
Okay. . . deep breaths, Hales. Think. Scavengers are dead (thanks, eerie ghost kid). The monster temporarily diverted but certainly still an issue. Relay core… still intact. My exit route… currently occupied by the aforementioned angry monster. Wonderful.
I scrambled, grabbing the capacitor core and my fallen multi-tool, disregarding the pain in my shoulder. I had to act. Immediately.
Skirting around the debris, keeping an eye on Grok as it screeched and clawed at the damaged relay, I ducked into the side tunnel from where the scavengers had appeared – my only clear escape route.
I risked a glance back only once I was a sufficiently safe distance down the dark corridor. No indication of Grok squeezing its bulk through the tunnel yet, thank the rusted gods. But… there was something else.
Standing silently at the entrance to the tunnel, perhaps twenty yards back, was the kid. The ghost kid. He was just… observing me. Head tilted slightly, those flat black eyes tracking my retreat.
What the…? Is he… trailing me? Does he believe I owe him something? Or does he merely think staying close to the person with the working flashlight and the (mostly) operational stun prod is his best option now?
He stepped uncertainly into the tunnel, still silent and observing.
Gods, what a predicament. What do I even do? Express my gratitude? Offer him half the capacitor? He likely wouldn't respond anyway. And after witnessing what those tiny hands could do… provoking him seemed like a badly decision.
Fine. Whatever. Let him tag along. Can't be worse than Grok, right? Right?
I gave a brief, jerky nod back towards him –Then I turned and began moving again, quicker this time. "Stick close then, ghost kid," I thought, the cynical humor attempting, and failing, to completely mask the profound unease settling in my stomach. "Just. . . try not to stab anyone else unless I specifically request it, okay? Gods, what a hassle. What in the deepest pit of the Underscape did I just get myself into? "