Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1) | 2024 WATTYS WINNER

67 - Where All Worlds Meet

Killing was sometimes a necessity in Hadrian; cold-blooded murder less so.

But when it came to this particular member of AmpCore, Chloe Delgado was not screwing around. She recognised the son of a bitch – the one who'd destroyed her little slice of peace in Hadrian and very nearly killed her along with it.

Demir, they'd called him. The AmpCore creeps had been so absorbed in their little stand off that no-one had even noticed them come creeping in along the observation gantry, watching the madness unfold. She'd seen the girl – Ferra – die, shot in the back. And then she'd found her vantage point and made her choice.

Well, Mr. Demir, she thought, good fucking riddance.

The shotgun blast hit the AmpCore agent in the temple and blew his head open, bursting forward from the temple and ripping out through his right eye in a spray of blood and brain matter.

The force of impact sent Demir spinning drunkenly, amplifier twitching and sparking as his neurons misfired. She saw the baffled look flickering in his remaining eye for an instant as he saw her – a tiny glimpse of his killer before he died.

An explosion of energy ripped through the chamber as he died. Apparently killing an AmpCore operative while they were in the middle of doing... whatever they did, was a dangerous thing.

Delgado had to duck down behind the gantry rail as a storm of errant energy bolts erupted in the chamber, firing off in all directions. One of them missed her by a hairsbreadth, and alongside her, Kirk dropped flat with a yelp, narrowly avoiding being speared through the torso by one of the blasts.

Metal creaked and clattered, and a hissing sound echoed in the air for a few seconds before it faded away. There was an instant of stunned silence as the people below, embroiled in their own private war, tried to figure out what had just happened.

Then Nevay rose up from her hiding place, her face contorting with a demented grin, the heavy rifle stock pressed against her shoulder as she turned, aiming down into the factory. Delgado tried to reach out to her and drag her back down, but it was too late.

"Nev-,"

"Cutter Jennings says 'hello', motherfuckers!" Nevay screamed, and then she opened up, flicking the rifle's control to full auto.

A hail of high calibre rounds went scything down into the shocked guards and operatives. The nearest soldier died instantly as three shots punched down through his head and shoulders, and a second operative was hurled backward in a spray of blood, her chest riddled with holes as Nevay swept the rifle in an arc.

Then everyone else in the room reacted and all hell broke lose.

Some of surviving AmpCore agents started trading bolts back and forth with Piper and her friends; enraged binary screams erupted in the air and the codewraiths surged in all directions, some of them coming towards her, others inserting themselves into AmpCore's civil war.

Nevay dropped back down as a couple of the corporate guards spat fire back at them, their long rifles flashing with blue muzzle flares. Whatever they were firing blew holes in the gantry, and very nearly took the gangster with them. Delgado flattened herself out and tugged her handgun free, barking off several shots to send the guards ducking back into cover. Further along the gantry, Kirk stuck the barrel of his jolter out through a gap in the side railings and fired, catching one of the onrushing wraiths. The machine went spinning, garbled code spilling from its mouth as it tried to counteract the electronic charge.

Stuffing her pistol back into its holster, she let loose with her shotgun at the codewraith now that it was close enough. The shell blew it backwards, the charged cobalt rounds further overloading its internal systems.