“Ini bodoh!”
“Lanka…” Jamie terdiam di belakang mobil. “Tenang saja.”
Ryan mendengarkan pertengkaran mereka sambil mengintip dari jendela mobilnya. Star Studios milik Dynamis —yang memenangkan penghargaan untuk orisinalitas nama—membentang seluas kurang lebih dua setengah kilometer persegi, terletak di sebelah timur New Rome. Mereka memiliki taman terbuka khusus dan sekitar tujuh gudang. Dari kejauhan, Ryan memperhatikan para staf memindahkan potongan kardus, para pekerja magang membawakan kopi untuk atasan mereka, dan para pemeran pengganti sedang mempersiapkan diri. Studio-studio itu hanya memiliki satu pintu masuk pos pemeriksaan, dan hanya ada sedikit penjaga; mereka jelas tidak menduga akan ada serangan.
Meski begitu, kelompok itu tetap parkir di luar studio, tak mampu menemukan jalan masuk tanpa terhalang kamera pengawas. Ki-jung tertidur dengan kepala bersandar di bahu pacarnya, matanya terpejam. Sambil menjaga jarak aman dari studio, ia mengirim tikus-tikusnya untuk melakukan pengintaian.
Dari pemahaman Ryan, keluarga tikus Chitter yang telah disempurnakan bertindak sebagai relai, memungkinkannya mengendalikan segerombolan hama di area yang luas. Ryan menduga bahwa alih-alih telepati sejati, yang merupakan kekuatan Biru, Chitter secara fisik memodifikasi tikus-tikusnya menjadi perpanjangan dari sistem sarafnya sendiri. Di satu sisi, menghancurkan tikus-tikus utamanya akan membatalkan kekuatannya untuk sementara waktu, tetapi di sisi lain, hama-hama familiernya dapat bertindak secara mandiri tanpa campur tangan langsungnya.
“Maksudku, kenapa kita harus mengambil risiko melawan Wyvern , alias pengubah bentuk naga yang bisa melawan Bos , jadi dia,” Lanka menunjuk Ryan dengan jari menuduh, yang membuat pose tersinggung, " bisa mendapatkan bantuan pribadi?"
“Karena Vulcan menginginkannya, dan dia salah satu Capo,” jawab Jamie, “dan kalau beruntung, kita tidak perlu berhadapan dengannya. Aku ragu dia punya waktu untuk pekerjaan akting.“Bab ini diperbarui oleh n0velfire.net
“Apa yang terjadi kalau kamu salah? Tak satu pun dari kita bisa melawannya!”
Masalahnya, Ryan juga punya firasat buruk.
Ia tak bisa menjelaskannya, tetapi kurir itu telah mengembangkan intuisi yang kuat atas berbagai putarannya. Dan saat ini, indra keenamnya memperingatkannya akan bahaya, akan seseorang yang mengawasinya. Namun, lokasi mereka saat ini seharusnya menjadi titik buta bagi kamera pengawas.
Dia harus memasang radar di mobilnya.
Agak putus asa, Ryan menyalakan radio dan mengaktifkan fitur spesial, berharap menemukan musik jadul yang bagus untuk meredam kebisingan. “—di berita lain, Republik Romawi masih memberlakukan jam malam, setelah pembunuhan Gaius Julius Caesar—”
Lagi dengan Caesar? Sudah dua ribu tahun! “Saluran berita apa itu?” tanya Jamie penasaran. “Aku tidak kenal pembicaranya.”
“Ini Chronoradio-ku,” jelas Ryan sambil mengganti saluran. “Alat ini mendengarkan saluran lintas ruang dan waktu. Tapi entah kenapa, biasanya salurannya disetel ke era Republik Romawi.”
“You should work on your stories, blabbermouth,” Lanka taunted him. “They didn’t have radios two thousand years ago.”
“In one version of the past, they did.”
“You can’t have multiple versions of the past.”
Ryan looked at her with a deadpan look. It was wasted effort with his mask on, but still. “That’s not how time works,” he said, with the same tone as an adult talking to a petulant child.
“Fuck you, Einstein.”
“Whenever you want,” Ryan replied, before finally finding the Post-Apocalyptic Blues channel. Ki-jung chose this moment to wake up.
“So?” Jamie asked her.
“Wyvern isn’t present,” she said, scratching her neck. “Someone’s filling in for her.”
“See, I knew she didn’t do her own stunts,” Jamie told Lanka, vindicated. “She’s probably too busy with fieldwork.”
“There’s no guarantee she won’t fly in after somebody calls the alarm,” she replied, opening the window and lighting a cigarette.
“The bad news, however, is that Wardrobe replaces her for the stunts,” Ki-jung continued, “and Atom Cat is there too.”
Jamie didn’t sound concerned about Wardrobe, but instantly bristled when she mentioned the other Genome. “Wardrobe gains power based on her costume, right?” Ryan asked, trying to stir up his memory.
“If she dresses as a vampire she drinks blood and burns in the sun, if she dresses as Wyvern, then she can fly.” Ki-jung nodded. “It’s a very weak version of the real thing, so even if she dresses like Augustus you can still hurt her, and the effect lasts only as long as her clothes are relatively intact.”
“Yellow Genomes are bullshit,” Lanka complained.
“I can understand Wardrobe’s presence, but Atom Cat?” Jamie asked his girlfriend.
“He’s doing a guest appearance in the movie,” she replied, showing concern. “Do we abort?”
“Abort?” Ryan turned his head around. “Why abort? He’s that powerful?”
“Atom Cat is… was, one of us,” Jamie said.
“He’s a spy?” Ryan asked. “Like James Bond?”
“No. It’s complicated.” Jamie joined his fingers, trying to find the right words. “He’s having a teenage rebellion phase, but he’ll come back into the fold, eventually. His parents are part ofAugustus’ inner circle, and we’ve been explicitly forbidden from endangering him in any way.”
“Don’t let him touch you, blabbermouth,” Lanka said, “or you go boom.”
“He can transform anything into a bomb, but only with direct skin contact,” Ki-jung added.
“Interesting,” Ryan lied, before asking the really important question to Ki-jung. “CGI, special effects, or stop motion?”
“They use CGI.”
The courier put his head on the steering wheel, mourning the loss of cinema’s golden age.
“So what do we do?” Lanka asked Jamie. “We go in gun blazing, make a ruckus, and then bolt away?”
“No,” Jamie replied, turning to his girlfriend. “Here’s what we’ll do. You flood the studios with rats from afar, make a ruckus, then we immediately drive away.”
Ryan immediately understood the obvious flaw in this plan. “Wait, we don’t fight anyone?”
“No.”
“Betrayal. Betrayal!” the courier pointed a finger at Jamie. “You can’t do this to me!”
“I won’t let you get in a firefight with Atom Cat, Quicksave,” Jamie replied. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want any trouble on that front.”
“You ask too much!” the courier said, his fellow Genome sighing in defeat. “You’re killing me, Jamie! You’re killing me!”
“You’ll live through it.” The swordsman shrugged, before turning to Ki-jung. “So?”
“I’m your girl,” she said, falling asleep. Ryan turned to Lanka for support, but she simply looked out of the window, finishing her cigarette. He couldn’t blame them since they weren’t immortal, but damn, it sucked all the fun out of this mission.
As minutes passed, Ryan noticed agitation near the studio. People getting out of the warehouses, screaming.
Then they came crawling.
Hordes of thousands of black and brown rats. They escaped from the warehouses, breaking windows under their sheer weight. There were so many of them, that the rodents had to climb on one another to advance, forming waves and walls of fur.
Ryan almost felt pity for the poor Dynamis trainees, confronted with this terror while they toiled without any hope for a paycheck. Obviously, panic spread all around the area, the staff fleeing in all directions, coffee cups being spilled, guards desperately trying to shoot the rodents…
“My, my…” Ryan whistled. “This city has a rat problem..”
“That should satisfy Vulcan,” Jamie chuckled. “Now, let’s go home before the Private Security arrives.”
The courier couldn’t agree more, especially since he still felt uneasy.
Ryan pushed the accelerator pedal, abandoning the vermin-infested studio for the city’s broad lanes. As he drove all the way to the group’s shared house, he almost hoped for Wyvern to come from the skies, or Atom Cat to track them down on a motorcycle for an epic car chase. Or even the Meta to ambush them.
Instead, they returned home without a problem.
Frankly, New Rome’s heroes disappointed the courier. Perhaps Leo Hargraves' Carnival had given Ryan a false image of what superheroes should be, since they were brutally competent, but Dynamis' corporate champions didn’t impress him much.
“You’re sulking, blabbermouth?” Lanka asked him, finishing her smoke and throwing it out of the window. Ryan stopped time, caught the smoke, and put it in an ashtray in the glove compartment.
“It’s just, I expected a road bump of some kind,” Ryan replied when time resumed. His gut may have been mistaken. “This is boring.”
“See the bright side, you will finally see your girlfriend again,” Jamie tried to comfort him.
“What’s she like?” Ki-jung asked.
“I will present her to you,” Ryan said, much to her delight. He had to admit, he started to like this group. He wouldn’t get too attached nor make the effort to know them better since they could forget him anytime, but for professional criminals, they were quite nice to hang out with.
Parking the car in front of the house, Ryan let the others climb down but didn’t follow yet. “I’ll just listen to the radio for a bit,” he replied. “Can you call Vulcan?”
“Sure,” Jamie promised, “Also, it’s movie night. Robocop or Robocop 2?”
Ryan raised two fingers since he liked movies with stop motion; even if he had seen both films countless times already. He was busy trying to find the Jazz Sixties channel on his chronoradio when Ki-jung reached the house’s door, exchanging pleasantries with Lanka.
Except Ki-jung suddenly stopped, as she was within an inch of the door handle. Ryan lowered his car window. “What’s up?”
“I can’t sense the rats I left at home,” the rodent master replied, bothered.
“They scampered off?” Jamie asked.
His girlfriend shook her head. “I explicitly told them to stay and watch the place.”
Now, Ryan wasn’t the only one with a bad feeling. Lanka drew her gun, moving first with a frown on her face. Ki-jung took a step back, while her female friend put a hand on the door handle, the other ready to shoot through it.
Click.
Ryan instantly stopped time when he heard that oh-so-familiar sound, but it was already too late.
When the world turned purple, his power freezing everything in place, the house had already transformed into a giant burst of flames and debris; the inferno swallowed both Lanka and Ki-jung whole and incinerated them instantly. The blast had somehow caused all his car’s reinforced windows to explode into sharp shards and triggered its alarm.
Ignoring the glass shards grazing his skin, Ryan emerged from his car and rushed at Jamie’s side, making a futile attempt to rescue him.
When time resumed, he received a mouthful of dust, ashes, and stones for his trouble, the entire house having been vaporized. Jamie, thanks to his armor, was more shocked than hurt physically.
Emotionally though…
“KI-JUNG!”
The swordsman rushed to his girlfriend’s side, but even with her Genome durability, the blast had killed the young woman instantly. Her flesh had been seared so much, her eyes had fried and one could see the bones.
“Damn,” Ryan said upon observing the corpses, before glancing around to look for the responsible. No one in sight, although he couldn’t distinguish things clearly through the smoke. “I didn’t expect that at home.”
“Ki-jung…” Jamie muttered while holding his girlfriend in his arms, his horrified eyes then wandering to Lanka’s body. He then turned to Ryan, panic overtaking him. “We have to go to the hospital!”
“It’s useless,” Ryan replied, having studied medicine enough to know they lacked either the tools or the time to make a difference, “They’re dead. You can’t do anything.”
For the first time since he met him, Jamie looked at Ryan with a new emotion: pure, undiluted fury. “That’s all you have to say?” he asked venomously. “They’re dead?”
Thing was, Ryan had seen so many people die, that he had grown numb to it. He cared on an intellectual level, but since he could still rewind time and avert this attack, the destruction carried no emotional weight. The courier liked both girls and would make sure they survived next time, but he didn’t see the point of being sad now; he would rather gather as much information as possible to make sure he prevailed in the future.
Ryan would have loved to say he had become a creature of logic… but apathy would have been a better word.
Still, Jamie’s incensed, distraught expression saddened the courier enough to make an effort; after all, the swordsman had tried to help him with his own lingering sadness. “It’s okay, I can bring them back,” Ryan promised. “I can—”
The courier noticed movement at the edge of his vision and turned around.
The glass shards from his car flew at him like thrown knives.
Worse, Jamie’s armor suddenly seemed to suffer from a short circuit, a surge of lightning electrocuting him. The swordsman Genome let out a scream of pain, as the sheer voltage fried his flesh and forced him to release Ki-jung’s corpse.
Shit, the killer was still nearby!
Ryan stopped time to dodge the knives. He looked around to locate for the source of the attack, but no one was in sight. Was the attacker invisible again?
He never had the time to confirm it, no pun intended.
The moment time resumed, the courier felt a sharp pain in his neck. His vision turned upside down, his entire body below the throat going numb as his ear hit the grass. Glass shards swirled above him like a tornado, shredding Jamie alive before he could recover from his own armor’s incapacitation.
…
Was that Ryan’s headless body at his side?
The beheaded courier could only widen his eyes, before all the glass shards fell on his skull like a rain of swords.
Ryan woke up at his Plymouth’s driver wheel, back to the beginning.
Instead of moving directly to Renesco’s place, the Genome parked his car near the city’s entrance, staying still as he gathered his thoughts.
“Twice!” he snarled out loud. He had been had twice when he was so close to finding happiness!
Okay, now, that settled it.
Someone was after him. Someone bold enough to attack while he had a whole group of Genomes at his back.
But who? Ryan was flattered to have a secret archenemy, but he didn’t see anyone with the means and motives except the Meta. Or did the assassin target him on principle due to joining the Augusti?
Was it a lone wolf? This person seemed like a professional, and you would need a mighty bomb to cause an explosion that powerful. Ryan dying right after he stopped time implied that the killer had figured out his cooldown period, and Chitter’s rodents had been killed to prevent them from warning their master. That must have involved a lot of information gathering, perhaps even a whole crew.
Bagaimana kejadiannya… orang yang bertanggung jawab jelas bisa mengendalikan kaca. Karena mereka bisa menggoreng komponen teknologi baju zirah Jamie, bahkan mungkin kinetik silika. Itu juga bisa menjelaskan dugaan ketidaktampakan itu sebagai ilusi optik, atau semacam kostum cermin.
Serangan itu brutal, tak terduga, dan berlangsung kurang dari lima menit. Pembunuhnya bukanlah calon pahlawan yang tak berpengalaman seperti sebelumnya, melainkan seorang profesional berdarah dingin.
Kurir itu mempertimbangkan apa yang harus dilakukan selanjutnya. Masalahnya, bahkan jika ia berhasil menjalankan misi yang diberikan Vulcan dan menghindari penyergapan di rumah, melanjutkan perjalanan tanpa berurusan dengan si pembunuh mungkin akan membawa mereka langsung ke Len.
Meskipun hal itu membuatnya marah, Ryan memutuskan untuk menunda misi utamanya sampai ia berhasil mengatasi rintangan itu. Pembunuh misterius itu telah membunuhnya dua kali tanpa pernah muncul secara langsung dan jelas tidak peduli dengan kerusakan tambahan. Lebih buruk lagi, jika pembunuhnya bukan seorang penyendiri melainkan agen orang lain, membunuh mereka hanya akan memberi Ryan penangguhan hukuman.
Makna hidup adalah menemukan kebahagiaan. Ryan tak merasa bahagia tanpa Len. Sengaja atau tidak, pembunuh ini memisahkan mereka, dan akhirnya harus pergi. Tamat.
Dia juga tidak ingin Jamie dan teman-temannya mati. Kurir itu tidak senang melihat penderitaan orang lain, meskipun ada orang brengsek seperti Ghoul. Perfect Run-nya akan membuat semua orang yang disukainya bahagia, dan kelompok Jamie kini menjadi bagian dari kategori VIP itu.
Dia tidak akan membiarkan mereka mati.
Ryan mempertimbangkan masalah ini dengan logika dingin, untuk melihat bagaimana ia bisa menyelesaikan masalah dalam lingkaran baru ini. Sejauh ini, si pembunuh hanya menyerang Augusti atau kurir itu sendiri, tetapi itu mungkin karena Ryan bekerja sama dengan sindikat kriminal. Jika tidak termasuk hipotesis serigala tunggal, hanya dua organisasi yang memiliki Genom, motif, dan sumber daya untuk menyerang mereka: Meta dan Dynamis.
Kalau itu Meta, yah, Ryan sudah berjanji untuk menghabisi mereka, jadi sekali dayung dua pulau terlampaui. Tapi firasatnya mengatakan dia melewatkan satu detail, dan dia segera ingat detailnya.
Pelabuhan.
Ryan teringat seorang penerbang yang menyelamatkan anggota Keamanan Swasta ketika ia melawan Ghoul dan Sarin di sana. Ia pikir ia tidak bisa melihat mereka dengan jelas karena kegelapan, tetapi mungkin itu karena mereka tidak terlihat, keberadaan mereka hanya terlihat oleh asap. Karena sosok itu tidak membantu Meta tetapi menyelamatkan karyawan Dynamis, Ryan mengecualikan sosok itu sebagai pihak yang bersalah.
Yang tersisa hanyalah seorang main hakim sendiri… atau seorang agen Dynamis.
Saatnya menerima tawaran Wyvern.