With a quick, silent thanks to Jimmy for shoving him out of The Lace’s flying fortress, Kurt angled his body to fall as straight and fast as possible, swallowing his fear and focusing on the task at hand. He had four hundred and ninety-eight players to kill, and just under an hour to do it in.
As he fell, he looked around to see dozens of copies of the helicopter he had just fallen from. They were clustered in a giant circle in the air far above the city, each with a group of players plummeting from the bottom of their holds.
Fear began to rise as the city grew closer, the distant sky scrapers jutting to the south. Forcing it down, Kurt angled his fall to land in the far northern outskirts of the city, wanting to land more or less directly above where he had dropped. Yanking on his ripcord a mere handful of feet above the rooftops, he landed hard on grass and unclipped his parachute.
His phone was up, and his attaché called before he even stopped his stumbling run. “I need the Testarossa.” His attaché responded in the positive and the line went dead as he cautiously hid between two houses. Running with Gadot had made him paranoid about long-range rifles and hiding from the possibility of a sniper seemed prudent. The Ferrari he awaited pulled up to the curb a moment later and his attaché fell to dust the instant she parked. He had to pause as he got into the car, pulling up his phone as dozens of different colored flares rose into the sky around him. They were far away, but for the most part were in a rough circle around his position.
“Must be the guilds,” Kurt muttered to himself.
Kurt snorted to see the player count had dropped by roughly a dozen already, and he chalked it up to idiots who couldn’t use a parachute properly, or early game aggression. He revved the engine and sped away, heading towards the Downtown Cluster on an eight lane highway, where the flares were thinnest. He swiped up his map, with the timer and kill counter on the border and flicked it up to the windshield. Cruising at a fast but safe speed, he was dismayed when only three minutes into the match a gang of roughly a dozen players on high-speed motorcycles approached from the other side of the freeway. Kurt’s jaw hardened. Time to get aggressive.
He drew his Glock and pressed the button to roll down his window, thrusting the gun out of it and emptying his magazine in the direction of the oncoming bikers. They reacted predictably, each drawing automatic weapons of their own and returning fire. Kurt was pleased to see one of them drop during his initial burst, bouncing along the road before puffing into a cloud of silver dust, but the rest of the pack swerved and cut across the lanes, turning to fall in behind him and revving their engines to catch up. Kurt floored his own accelerator, reveling in the lack of NPCs to get bogged down in.
He streaked down the empty highway as the players behind him fired indiscriminately in his general direction. Rounds spattered the road around him and sunk into his car and body, driving home the point that this would be over quickly if all he did was run. His health would regenerate if he could shake them, but armor was a limited quantity, and his had already dropped by a quarter. He grabbed a drum magazine of Ratshot and slapped it home, glancing in his rearview mirror to gauge his opponents’ distance. Once they were within range, he sprayed the drum magazine at the bikes, aiming for their wheels. He was disappointed as no tires burst, and the return fire became more aggressive.
Kurt let off the accelerator, letting the car drift over a couple of lanes and ducking low in his seat as he allowed the motorcycles to catch up to him. With a jerk of the steering wheel and a jab at the gas pedal, he sent the Ferrari into a spin. Ducked down and holding his breath, Kurt spun out of control directly into the pack of motorcycles travelling at full speed towards him. Several thuds and screams of twisting metal accompanied the sound of shattering glass as he tore through the pack, wiping most of the clustered bikes out even as every window in his own vehicle was blasted apart.
The Ferrari slid to a stop against the center divider, Kurt’s foot firm on the brake while he ducked to avoid the glass and bullets flying around him. He lifted his gun hand to the windshield, spraying a magazine of fragmentation rounds into the road around him with a quick rotation of his wrist before sitting up straight. He dropped out the magazine, replacing it with his new drum of incendiary rounds. As he hit the gas and sped away from the few remaining bikers, he lit two of them on fire, no remorse visible on the features of his mask. The player count on his phone continued to plummet, far more dying than he was responsible for. With a shrug, he figured the teams must be actively engaging each other and sped away. Distant gunfire and explosions seasoned the air in the otherwise eerily silent city.
The only biker to have dodged Kurt’s spin revved his engine and lifted his bike’s front wheel from the ground as he pursued, his team’s wipeout not enough to dissuade him. His bike was pure white with chrome trim, and his motorcycle pants, jacket, and helmet matched.
Kurt fired a magazine of fragmentation rounds at him, reaching his arm back towards the rearview window. The biker dodged the incoming fire, swerving to either side of the freeway before accelerating towards Kurt again, a large, chrome-plated FN90 personal defense weapon pointed forward. Kurt tried to dodge, but most of the bullets seemed to find his car, and he was forced to duck low in his seat as it began to erupt in puffs of cloth and leather. He glanced at his HUD to see his health had dipped slightly and another sliver of his armor was gone, one of the tiny bullets having found purchase in his back with a sharp sting.
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The player count continued to drop, falling below four hundred and fifty. He looked back up to see a low-slung, fluorescent green car hurtling directly towards him, the spark of gunfire already lighting up its front end in warped reflections. Kurt swerved hard, bouncing against the concrete divider as the other car whipped past. The biker also swerved, dumping his motorcycle as he barely avoided being crushed.
The vibrant green car spun expertly on the freeway, and Kurt grimaced. He recovered from the partial crash and poured on the gas, hoping to get away from this new enemy. Two other low-slung, high-powered cars had joined the chase, swerving into the freeway. His Ratshot regenerated, so he fumblingly loaded his Glock with it and swung the gun towards the road behind him. A grim expression on his face, Kurt held his fire until the green car was closer, then sprayed the entire magazine through his rear window, aiming for the road line and his opponent’s tires. Nothing happened, and Kurt was forced to realize that he was likely the only one in this match without bulletproof tires.
He ducked from the return fire and darted up an offramp. As he reached the top and began a turn, a large pickup truck swerved around a corner and headed towards him, a monstrous machine gun opening fire from its bed. His opponents from the highway followed him up the ramp, but Kurt cut the wheel and drove back down the opposing on ramp, continuing his arc towards the Downtown Cluster in an attempt to avoid the large caliber bullets filling the air. More high-end sports cars were falling in behind him and engaging from the front, and Kurt was forced into a near-constant crouch as bullets filled the air around him.
His intention was to make a lap through the city, using the buildings to lose some of his pursuers, but a fleet of military vehicles approached from the front and derailed that plan. Three tanks of various origins and six technical vehicles with mounted machine guns flanked a strangely low-slung, twelve wheeled semi-truck with a series of long tubes in its cargo area. A tank shell exploded against a bridge support beside him and he cut the wheel, swerving into the heart of the Cluster. He glanced at his clock, making an exasperated grunt as he saw the timer tick past the eight minute mark.
There were a series of loud explosions and an accompanying drop in the player count. Kurt turned his car around again, coming back over the freeway on a bridge a few blocks away. A small war was playing out below him, the varied military vehicles engaging the swarm of sports cars to a predictable end. The white motorcycle made its return then, revving directly through the vehicles and wrecks on the freeway. He ducked his bike behind a technical while shooting its gunner. A nearby tank belched fire at him, causing them to destroy one of their own vehicles before the bike darted through the cloud of smoke and accelerated into the city. He dropped a blinking satchel on the onramp behind him as he drove, lifting a rude gesture without looking as the onramp crumbled in a thick orange fireball.
Kurt turned his now smoking car around and drove into the city, when he noticed an armed helicopter swing around a nearby hill and duck its nose toward him. The sky tore apart with the roar of high-powered engines as a Harrier jet swept through and annihilated the helicopter with a streak of bright sabot rounds, dipping to aim at Kurt as he fled. The road behind him erupted in asphalt and sparks as the Harrier switched into hover mode on the fly and attempted a sweeping bank to follow him. It slipped behind a building and Kurt immediately changed direction. A cluster of bright green flares rose into the sky from the freeway as he fled, and he was reminded of Jimmy’s warning about crews, as answering flares lifted above the rooftops further north.
More dots encroached from all directions on his map, and Kurt quickly realized there were no safe paths through the city. The different players and crews hunting him were spreading out, hoping to avoid one another as they attempted to engage him. His practice with the GoonStorm forces was coming in handy, as he began playing cat and mouse again, on a much grander scale.
Turning a corner that hugged a skyscraper’s lower level, Kurt came face to face again with the white motorcycle. Kurt dodged the bike as it charged him, cutting into a nearby alley and making a sharp, sliding turn to exit. The bike clung to his rear bumper like lichen, unshakable.
Kurt drove past a train station that housed a boarding platform directly before a tunnel that sloped down below street level. The biker in white sprayed down the back of Kurt’s Ferrari with his P90 again, the rattle of bullets bringing Kurt back to his situation. He dodged again, cutting into a multi-story parking structure and starting to climb the ramp nearest to him. Tires chirped as he cut the wheel, taking the corners quickly in an attempt to lose the bike. He only rose one level before turning and racing towards the other end of it, where a second ramp led to an exit.
Kurt glanced at his phone as a chime notified him he had survived fifteen minutes and been awarded the first chunk of the pot. He took the exit and turned back towards the train station, glancing around before revving the car up onto the platform, smashing through a flimsy ticket booth, and then bumping down onto the tracks leading underground. Turning to glance at the parking structure, Kurt muttered a curse as he saw the white motorcycle emerge and head straight for him.
With a roar, his engine revved and sent him shooting down the darkened tunnel. There were safety lights, but they provided poor illumination. Kurt hadn’t realized his headlights were smashed out until he tried to flick them on and nothing happened. Focusing on the dark tunnels ahead, Kurt pressed the gas and held tight to the wheel to counter the constant bumps of the tracks under his wheels. The light from the tunnel entrance darkened, and Kurt glanced at his rearview mirror to see the motorcycle bouncing along the tracks behind him.
Neither player could navigate well on the terrain, and when the tunnel opened up with a gravel bed, Kurt dodged to the side and gunned his engine with a spray of small rocks. The biker answered with another magazine of rounds from his chromed SMG, and Kurt was hit in the back a few times before he ducked across the center console. He kept his foot on the gas, ignoring the pain and trying to stay off the tracks. His wheels bounced, and he jerked the wheel too sharply, skidding against the wall and throwing sparks behind him.
He vanished down another dark tunnel, allowing the car to rise slightly up the walls as he ran from the biker, taking turns at random and using the flashlight on his Glock to navigate. While he couldn’t shake the motorcycle, Kurt managed to stay far enough ahead to avoid the wasp-sting bullets from the FN 90.
