The sound of bullets biting into the building’s fa?ade made me flinch, but Mela just growled angrily.

  “Fuckers here already? Follow me, kid.”

  I didn’t protest as she broke into a run, less from having nothing to say and more due to the strain of keeping up with her.

  Stupid tall people with stupidly long legs.

  She led me to a stairwell and surged downwards, taking the steps three or four at a time. I almost tripped and flew right into her back. Instead, I managed to stumble into the wall. Using it to steady myself, I forced my aching body to match her pace.

  One floor down, we came upon a scene of carefully controlled chaos. Men and women were toting guns around and taking their positions. They all stayed well clear of the windows and grouped up near strange nooks in the walls.

  A simple glance revealed multiple hatches and the like set deep within these nooks, allowing the defenders to tear them open and return fire from unexpected directions. Nobody was doing so at the moment, though. The Kittens had chosen to wait and observe their enemies.

  Every so often, a few brave souls would walk up to a window, part the blinds, and peek out. Bullets immediately began to beat a rapid-fire drum against the windows whenever this happened, but the glass was holding so far, surprisingly enough.

  I shot a startled look at Mela. She answered with one of her signature bloodthirsty grins.

  “Reinforced. That glass is gonna stand up to even heavy calibers for a while. Long enough to spring a fun trap, I’ll tell ya that much.”

  I didn’t doubt it. I just followed her over to one of the smaller hatches.

  “Now, kid, I want ya to shoot when ya can, but don’t fucking dare turn that thing in the direction of anyone around ya. Also, only step in when I need more bullets or something. Yer not a trained shot, ya don’t have training to fight with us, and yer as green as they come. Just… don’t fuck up or get in anyone’s way, ’kay?”

  I felt that was deeply hurtful and unnecessary, but I wilted and nodded under the woman’s scathing glare. Still, this did prompt me to look around for some way to contribute safely.

  The idea hit me when I saw a few gang members struggling to look at scrolls from the corner of their eyes. The scrolls did contain feeds from various cameras, after all, so a single glance could be helpful.

  It could also be dangerously distracting. But if they didn’t have to look at the scrolls at all, because someone was providing overwatch…

  I can do this. I can figure this out.

  Quickly, I brought up the menu for my eyes and flicked through the options.

  It didn’t take long for me to land on a tab marked ‘connected networks.’ It took me even less time to figure out how to open the camera feed. The second I did, though, I swayed heavily on my feet.

  The world shifted in front of my eyes as the left half of my vision was suddenly taken up by a camera feed from outside. Gangers dressed in the neon colors of the Zerx were wildly firing at the Kitten HQ from shoddy cover. Their eyes were wild, their faces fixed into a rictus of ecstasy. Some kind of Booster variant drugs, probably, from the way their veins stood out against their skin.

  My right eye could still see normally, though I did notice a whole list of cameras with small preview shots of each hovering at the edge of my vision.

  “I can see the gangers outside,” I said quickly to catch Mela’s attention.

  She looked at me in some confusion before her eyes widened.

  “Oh. Your left eye… it’s glowing. Hrm. That could be useful.”

  She started giving me instructions, guiding me to the right cameras that would cover our angle of the building. There were six in total. I even figured out how to ‘split’ my view between them all. It was a bit like having six monitors stacked together, except I was being forced to watch all of them at all times. Just trying to keep track of the details like that was giving me one hell of a headache, but I convinced myself it was something I had to get used to. I also kept telling myself that it would help.

  Still, Mela noticed something was off. “You okay, kid? Ye don’t look so hot.”

  “Gee, thanks. And I’m fine. I just never did this before. No, don’t look at me like that. I’ll get used to it. ’Sides, wouldn’t you prefer me on camera duty instead of trying to fight?”

  “Fair.” She shook her head. “Just… keep an eye out. Call out when they’re being dumbasses and leaving cover, or if they’re trying to bring in the big guns. We’ll be fighting back soon enough.”

  I nodded, heart suddenly beating in my chest much louder than before.

  While we waited, I busied myself with watching the idiots. Really, it was a bit like seeing toddlers recklessly breaking everything around them. They were shooting wildly most of the time. Some of them even looked surprised or lost when their magazines ran empty. It was all typically mindless Zerx behavior.

  What did give me a chill was the line of much calmer Zerx hanging back. These looked way more put together, as Mike had described. Their weapons were also way higher quality. If the bigger crowd was barely using pea shooters, these guys looked like they packed heat on the level of Mela.

  When I pointed them out to her, the woman snarled and cursed. Then she ripped a scroll out of some nearby Kitten’s hands so she could see for herself. “Fuck. There goes my hope this is just some bunch of jumped up druggies acting out of turn. The fuckers shooting right now are just new additions and rabble. Those are the actual Zerx in the back. The guys they recruited and trained properly. I even recognize a few of ’em.”

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  “Why aren’t they up front, then?” I wondered aloud, earning myself a look of exasperation.

  “Because they’re not idiots.”

  Garren’s voice interrupted us, crackling through a set of speakers I hadn’t spotted before.

  “Everyone on your marks. We hit back in ten, nine…”

  As soon as Garren started to count down, all levity, nerves, and even anger fled from the gangers around me. The transformation was so quick and total that I could hardly believe it. I could only watch, stupefied, as every nearby Kitten stepped up to the hatches and prepared.

  The countdown hit zero, and all hell was unleashed.

  The hatches were torn open, and a hail of bullets rained down on the drugged up Zerx. Courtesy of my front row camera seat, I could see exactly how much devastation that caused. Blood sprayed through the air. Entire limbs were detached from the bodies they belonged to. Far too many lives were snuffed out in an instant.

  The majority of the Zerx panicked. Some even dropped their weapons and tried to scramble to better cover, but that wasn’t meant to be. The few cowards who weren’t gunned down by opportunistic Kittens were mercilessly taken out by their own gang members.

  I got to watch as one of the more ‘put together’ Zerx stepped out of the back line, drew a gun, and emptied a shot directly into the forehead of a fleeing druggie. The reed-thin ganger dropped, and the back line of Zerx laughed. I felt a bit of bile rise in my throat.

  Not all of the druggies were completely useless, though. There were still at least eighty men and women down there in this initial wave, and while a ton were getting scythed down, a few had enough presence of mind to look for where the bullets were coming from.

  Shot were fired back, and I just about jumped out of my skin when a spray of blood painted the floor a couple meters away from me. The Kitten screamed as he went down. Someone surged forward and dragged him back, already applying first aid. A few more people grunted when other shots grazed or hit their mark, but at least we didn’t have any fatalities yet.

  Then the more experienced Zerx finally made their move.

  Cars wheeled out of alleys, interposing themselves between the attackers and Kitten bullets. Several honest-to-goodness metal barriers, each probably weighing a ton, were carried out easily by men and women whose arms and legs shone chrome. The back line of Zerx pushed forward, ruthlessly claiming their spots behind these obstacles. I even saw one of the druggies get shoved away from cover when they tried to take up the spot of a more experienced Zerx.

  These new enemies were a whole new brand of trouble. Whereas before, the Zerx fire was wild and ineffective, it was now anything but. I shouted out a warning when one of the Zerx peeked above the hood of a car with a large rifle, but it did nothing to stop the woman from firing.

  The shot ripped through one of our windows. Suddenly, I was inhaling the acrid bite of slum air as I covered my head against the glass shards raining down all around me. Mela was cursing up a storm. She fired wildly at the Zerx, but the woman had ducked away too quickly.

  Another spray of blood heralded an injured Kitten. This time, when I looked over, I was greeted by the wet gurgling of a man with a large hole in his throat. The guy in charge of playing medic did not move forward to help, and the gurgling did not last very long.

  I had to tear my gaze away from the Kitten’s blank, unseeing eyes.

  The superior weaponry wasn’t the only trick the new Zerx had, either. They were concentrating their fire. It wasn’t long before the rest of our windows were blown out, one after the other. Kittens could no longer move around the room as freely or effectively as before. They had to edge their way carefully past these new deadly openings.

  I had no clue what the building walls were made of, other than that it was some soft, porous material. Plumes of it rose into the air whenever bullets hit the wall, but it did its job well. Instead of sending the pellets of death ricocheting around the room, the material trapped them and robbed them of their momentum, sparing us at least that one threat.

  I fumbled through the first few minutes of actual fighting. My callouts weren’t slow, but they were distracting more than they were useful. I did slowly get into the rhythm of it, though, especially once I memorized all the designations Mela was hissing at me.

  “C3, RED CAR, GUN THAT BITCH DOWN!” I screamed.

  I was rewarded by the bark of several guns, and the woman using the particularly large and deadly rifle was buried under a rain of lead. I couldn’t even conjure up the sick feeling that had lingered in my chest before. I only felt a grim sort of satisfaction as the Zerx who’d killed three Kittens finally died.

  Someone stepped up and took her weapon, of course, but they were at least not as precise or as lethal with it as the bitch had been.

  Mela chose that moment to duck down and back away, hand fumbling for the magazines one of the Kittens had dropped at her feet some five minutes ago. I stepped forward into her place, keeping my body pressed up to the side of the hatch as I opened fire through it. I tried to focus my shots on a spot where one of the Zerx kept peeking around his barrier, but by the time Mela was ready to switch back in, I’d barely managed to scratch the metal.

  By that point, frustration had replaced my fear and nausea. I was forced to admit that Mela was right. I wasn’t very useful. Not as a gun, at least. I had one Zerx to my name so far, and that was more because the idiot had stumbled out of cover straight into my shots than because I was improving as a shooter.

  I was improving. But I was also fighting through three different kinds of dizziness and a fair bit of existential dread.

  Even as Mela shoved me aside to resume her place, my vision glitched yet again. All the faces around me turned into monsters with fanged grins and molten eyes. Mela’s arm was detached at the shoulder as some high caliber round pulverized most of the flesh, leaving just a few stringy pieces of skin and tendon attaching the limb to its owner.

  My vision snapped back to normal. Resisting the urge to empty my stomach, I bodily tacked Mela and pressed to the wall. She was about to bite my head off when a bullet whizzed through the air exactly where’d she’d been standing.

  Her eyes were wide as they stared at me, but I didn’t say anything. I just crawled back to where I had been a moment before. Still scanning the cameras, still ready to scream instructions when the chance presented itself, I fought to keep myself together.

  The glitching was getting more frequent.

  It had started as a few vague flashes every now and then, just before one of the Kittens I’d been fighting alongside got maimed or killed. At first, I couldn’t react fast enough. I didn’t even know what name to scream to warn them.

  That was slowly changing as my adrenaline ramped ever higher, the battle raged on, and I started to get to know the people fighting and dying around me. It almost felt like a curse. The second I learned someone’s name, the moment I started to see them as more than a faceless Kitten, the visions came on more frequently.

  And I was often still too slow. My body and mouth could only move so quickly.

  At least the other gangers weren’t questioning my attempts to help. They seemed to assume it was just part of my overwatch. Already, more than a few of the Kittens were looking at me with far more friendliness than before. Already, I’d made a difference.

  Funny how none of that felt like enough.

  Of course, the universe couldn’t just let me languish in my pity party. My eyes widened in alarm when I spotted four chromed out figures suddenly rush out from behind the Zerx lines, actual honest-to-goodness riot shield hefted in front of them.

  “Borgs! Incoming borgs!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, then rattled off their lines of approach. People focused fire on them immediately, but it wasn’t enough to stop the monstrosities of muscle and steel from getting way too close to the building.

  Close enough to pause in their advance before a cluster of grenades came sailing towards our broken windows.