Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

30 - Rotten Core

The roof of the car slammed into the road.

The impact shook Piper's teeth inside her jaw, and only the autobelt that whipped tight around her body stopped her head from being smashed into the concrete. She let out a yelp of surprise, dangling for a moment, before the belt disengaged again, freeing her to slide out of the seat, landing in an awkward heap in the upturned car.

Blinking furiously, she shook her head to clear it, trying to figure out what had just happened.

The codescream ripped into her ears, stinging her implants, and Piper suddenly felt the presence all around her. Anger avalanched in on her from all sides and she heard a crash from overhead.

A rending screech of metal made her swivel around in an awkward crouch, to find the passenger-side door being torn clean off its hinges. She whipped her amplifier from its sheathe just as the leering, metal skull of a codewraith appeared in the opening.

This one was mostly humanoid, like a spindly chrome skeleton right down to its metal hands that reached for her, a lipless, toothless jaw of metal opening as it howled at her.

Piper reacted. Her implants flared with the strength of panic and a pulse of force erupted from the tip of her amplifier. It smacked into the codewraith, hurling it away with a crash and tearing chunks out of the car's frame in the process.

"Son of a bitch!" Toran snarled from the front seat. She looked over to find him squirming loose of his belt, amplifier in his hand. "Out, out! Everybody!" A flick of a wrist and the driver's side door exploded free, propelled straight into another wraith waiting outside.

"Piper," Odiye gasped. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She turned around, and saw him holding his jaw with one hand, reaching for his amplifier with the other. "Are you?"

"It's nothing," he grunted, nodding to the hole where her door had been. "Go."

"Holly?"

The only response she received was the other passenger door blowing open as Holly lashed out with her amplifier. With teeth gritted, the other AmpCore student looked back over her shoulder. Shards of shattered glass had raked down the left side of her face, forming a bloody criss-crossing canvas. Holly winced for a moment, eyes closing in concentration.

A broken shards tinkled out onto the roof of the overturned car as she pushed them out of her skin. Piper watched dumbstruck as the other girl forced the foreign matter out. Blood still streaked her face, but when she was done she wrenched her neck from side to side and her eyes snapped open.

"C'mon," she snarled, before lunging out into the street.

Piper followed, scrambling out of her side, pausing long enough to reach back into the car and drag Odiye out after her, before looking around.

What she saw filled her with fear.

There were wraiths all around her – at least five from where she stood. The one she'd launched away was already clambering back upright, metal jaw clashing as it unleashed an ear-splitting codescream. A couple more were humanoid, but she saw one that looked more like some kind of feral dog, hunched over on all fours with a blizzard of metal tentacles thrashing mindlessly from its back.

Garishly clad men and women from the corporate heart scattered in all directions, screeching in terror, but Piper knew the codewraiths weren't interested in non-combatants.

They were here for her.

"What the fuck?" she heard Holly exclaim from the other side of the car.