Cyberpunk: Ultimate Cyborg System-Chapter 591: Black Skull. (Part Twenty Three)

Rose stared at the Black Skull, the old lens of her safety goggles casting a yellow filter on her field of sight. The full face tattoo was enough to strain her nerves, and she had to remind herself again and again.

'No… this is not him…'

Her grip on the pistol tightened, forcing her to take her finger off the trigger. The continuous laughter didn't help at all. The warehouse was no longer airtight, but the goons had already inhaled enough of the gas. What awaited them was a slow and painful death, and they would laugh through it all, unable to stop until their lungs and hearts gave up.

Making her retreat right now would have been the right choice. Among the lieutenants of this accursed gang, the man standing before her was the only one who invested in his personal strength, enhancing himself all the way to Level 4. Not only that, but he's also an ascended cyborg with the best implants money could buy.

The fact that he walked in without a gas mask showed that his bionic lungs were good enough to filter out the Joker Gas, a chemical weapon most cyborgs would struggle with. The rest of his implants were likely of the same quality, if not higher. She never had a chance at beating him. Rose knew that, and yet…

"What are you doing here?" She asked. "Black Skull is done for. Shouldn't you be looking for a way out?"

"That's… an awfully arrogant thing to say…" Harry replied. "Did you really think that killing a few pawns would bring us down?"

"No, but killing all of you will do." Her right hand slowly rose, pointing the barrel of her pistol at the skull-faced man. "I will make quick, but on one condition."

"Oh?" Henry raised an eyebrow, as if amused. "And that is…"

"Jason. Tell me where I can find him."

Harry let out a chuckle, and the laughter around them intensified for a moment.

"Hooo, I gotta admit, you are a funny one."

BLAM

A bullet shot out, aimed straight at his left eye. It cut the distance faster than the human eye could follow, but it seemed to slow down as it reached its target. Harry was already gone by then. He stepped to the side, moving out of the bullet's trajectory, and walked straight toward the one who fired it. He was already standing before her by the time the finger she had on the trigger relaxed.

Swatting the pistol out of her hand, he reached toward her delicate neck and wrapped his fingers around it, finding no trouble lifting her like that. The bastard was taking great care not to snap her like a twig, but the look of agony that was revealed when he peeled her mask off was a clear sign of the pain his cold fingers induced.

"How about a different deal?" Harry said. "When our little red demon friend appears, we will have him decide what your life is worth. Depending on what he is ready to offer, you might get to live another day. Heck, I might even give you the bastard you're so eager to get your hands on. What do you say?"

Struggling to breathe, Rose grasped the arm connected to the hand choking her. One wrong move would result in her death, so trying to free herself from his grasp was a very bad idea. The way she gritted her teeth showed how little she cared, and the glare from her purple eyes, neither of which was covered by her hair, carried such immense hatred that the skull-faced man was frozen for an instant.

"Fuck… you..." She forced out from between gritted teeth. "Go… eat… shit…"

The empty threat helped Harry regain his calm, only for it to be rubbed from him right away. He had failed to notice the armpit holster under her jacket, which appeared to carry a cylindrical device the purpose of which would soon become clear. It received a command sent to it through Rose's NIM, which caused its top to rotate and snap out, revealing a slender tube at the center. Red tendrils shot out of it as if escaping a prison, but they didn't make it far before a single wave exploded from the device.

Rose didn't grasp the bastard's arm to try and free herself from his grasp—She was holding on so he wouldn't toss her aside in the second it took for her weapon to work. A translucent red wave exploded from her arm, washing over the entire warehouse in an instant. Harry's eyes went wide, and before he could react, sparks exploded from every joint, leaking from between the lines dividing the panels of his bionic body.

As if his power had been cut, he fell down to his knees, and the hand he was holding out fell to his side. His eyes were one of the few parts he still retained from his old body, so even though everything had been shut down, he was still able to see just fine.

Free from the bastard's cold hand, Rose went into a coughing fit. She fought through it and rose to her feet, reaching behind her and taking hold of the second pistol she had on her.

"How do you… like it?" The corners of her mouth rose into a grin, saliva drawing trails down to her chin. "It was really… really hard to get…"

Harry's vision had turned red from all the glitching notifications popping up one after the other. What little he could discern told him that all of his bionics were shutting down, and that brought with it the realization that he had just been the victim of an EMP attack. For an Ascended Cyborg, something of that nature was the stuff of nightmares, but that was in the past. The newest generations of implants were created with countermeasures for such threats, and with his being of a military grade, a simple electromagnetic pulse shouldn't be able to cripple him. Unless-

'Sun Flare!!!'

The Joker Gas should have been his first clue. If the purple-haired woman had access to one internationally prohibited weapon, why wouldn't she have a second one on hand?

In the last war, drones, bots, and cyborgs ruled the battlefield. The arms race had led to the creation of increasingly more powerful machines, as well as a way to deal with those created by the enemy. The result was the equivalent of the atomic bomb in the age of bionics—the Sun Flare.

As the name suggests, the grenade-like weapon was made to release a wave of powerful electromagnetic radiation that mimics the properties of a solar flare. Though it failed at dealing permanent damage, what sets it apart from the other EMP weapons is its ability to bypass any and all protections, rendering anything with a chip useless for a varying amount of time.

In a world where having implants was becoming a crucial part of life, anything that could disrupt them was entirely prohibited from even entering civilian zones, and Sun Flares faced the strictest regulations due to their portable nature and ease of use. Having one in hand was practically a death sentence, as authorities are allowed to shoot to kill in that case. As for situations where someone is found to be peddling them around or keeping them in a store, a life sentence would be the best they can hope for.

Sun Flares had not been seen since the last great war, which just went to show how strict the regulations truly were. The possibility that any of his opponents might take one out never even crossed Harry's mind, but that was his mistake. He had underestimated the hatred his enemies harbored and the lengths to which they would go to bring him to his knees.

"I lied," Rose said, stretching her right arm to point the pistol directly into Harry's eye. "I always intended to make it quick."

Her finger rested on the trigger, and she wasn't about to hesitate when pulling it. A single bullet through the eye would be more than enough to finish a cyborg, even an ascended one. With him unable to as much as twitch, Harry could only accept his fate, but then he heard it. A faint click, but it didn't come from the pistol, the barrel of which he was staring into.

Rose looked up with a start, then quickly dropped to the ground, using the skull-faced man's huge body as a shield. A rain of bullets passed right through the spot where she had been standing. She rolled to the side, then rose to her knees, immediately taking aim, but she didn't get the chance to fire as a giant hand came swinging at her like a battering ram. Next thing she knew, the warehouse's metallic call was upon her, and she crashed into it like a doll thrown by a very angry kid.