Martial Weapon

I wince from the sharp pain of incised teeth piercing my backpack and scraping against my shoulder. All the while, I see a dozen pairs of legs racing toward me…

The Innovator, who is only standing a mere few feet away from me, continues to laugh, knowing that I can’t even touch him.

“Well, well, well! Looks like you’ll be joining your friend’s fate soon!” He snickers smugly.

He’s so close… I can kill him.

I fight through the pain, reaching for my pistol and aiming it at the Innovator’s wounded shoulder area. But just before I pull the trigger, the creature on my back, pulls my arm holding the pistol toward its mouth, tearing off a piece of fabric covering my arm.

The Innovator continues to taunt me, “I wonder… should I kill you both or turn you into test subjects…? Hmm, maybe I’ll discard the old man, as it’s always the young ones who are best suited for my experiments! GYHAHAHA!”

As the creature opens its jaws, intent on ripping the flesh from my exposed arm, I look around the room in desperation. My knife is broken, so I’ll need a physical weapon to contend with these creatures at close range… Anything will do! A brick? A shard of glass? Maybe there’s a loose piece of wood?

As I scan my surroundings, I observe a thin piece of metal lying on the floor, reflecting the dull illumination of moonlight seeping in from the windows.

It isn’t fancy, but this is the best possible outcome—an old hiltless sword lies just out of reach!

It’s so old and rusted that I would’ve mistaken it for an elongated piece of scrap metal, but I quickly closed and opened my eyes to confirm that this weapon was indeed real and not an adrenaline-induced hallucination.

The Innovator admitted to using those who couldn’t pay their debts as test subjects, so maybe one of them tried to bargain for their life by trading that old sword? No matter, I sense the mouth of the monster on my back start to close, and I quickly shift my arm so that it clamps down on the side of my pistol instead.

I begin using my arm to crawl to my left, discreetly reaching my hand out to the sword, hoping that the creature is satisfied with a meal made from metal for a moment.

“Ohohohoho! Still struggling to the end now, are you? I simply MUST keep you alive as my new experiment now!” the Innovator cackles.

I think to myself, “Sure, keep me alive and keep flapping that disgusting mouth of yours! A few more seconds is all I need to end your pathetic life!”

CLAP-CLICK!

My pistol falls from the creature’s mouth and lands in front me. Guess the monster had a more discerning palate than I thought.

Now, do I go for the gun or the sword?

Though guns are the most effective weapons to wage war, further improved by advances in thermal and electromagnetic technology, would it be so strange, so unthinkable to choose the sword?

I may be a trained tactical agent, but my base training with the Police was that of martial arts. I have been a keen practitioner since I was a youth, even well before my Paladin days.

Karate, Judo, and Kendo.

Unlike a gun, the sword is useless in the hands of an untrained wielder. But it was through these martial arts that I honed my body and perfected my movements to become one of the best officers in Crux, despite my limited practical experience. I made it to the top in spite of my knowledge of infrared technology, not because of it! My physical aptitude and strategic mind are what got me into Breakpoint in the first place!

With my mind made up, I place my hand on my pistol… and slide it over to Harbinger. Then, with my left arm, I plunged the sword into the mouth of the monster, causing it to go limp and freeing me from its crushing hold.

As I use the sword to pull myself up, I look over to see Harbinger using my pistol to good effect, finishing the last of the creatures surrounding him with ease.

“Look sharp, agent! They’re right on top of you!” Harbinger warns, and before Harbinger can ready his pistol to pick off the remaining creatures, I weave into the crowd, slicing through flesh and bone with each step.

The creatures are unable to follow my movements, leaving themselves hopelessly vulnerable to the lightning-quick strokes of my blade. And after a dozen swings, the bodies of a dozen creatures collapse onto the concrete floor.

For the first time since we’ve encountered him, the Innovator stops smiling, despondent that his test subjects weren’t able to protect him.

“S-Stop!” the Innovator pleads, proceeding to throw the monsters latching onto him in my direction. But with every creature he throws at me, I cut it down before it reaches me.

“He’s just one man with a sword! Not even a gun!” the Innovator screams, never imagining a man of invention to be bested by such a rudimentary weapon.

I get closer and closer to the Innovator, and eventually realize that not a single creature remained between me and him.

Finally… Revenge.

…

I put my hand into the tear on the Innovator’s shoulder, widening the gap in his suit, exposing frail, unarmored body.

WAAYYYNNN!

“Oh, that was the acoustic sound to call the creatures back, right?” I recall. “Too bad there’s no one left. Not that it would work without your wristpad to relay the frequencies to the receivers in their brains.”

Blood trickles from my ears from the high-pitched sound, and my sword begins to crack. So I jam my fingers into the Innovator’s ears, plucking the sophisticated frequency-canceling micro earpiece from them and placing them into my own ears.

“You boasted that you can hear the slightest changes in sound with these, right?” I conclude, remembering the Innovator’s explanation of his acoustic cranial device. “Good, I’ll want to hear everything that happens next!”

“Wait, I’m begging you! If you spare me, I’ll make you the mask. You’ll become—”

SWOOSH!

I plunge my sword into the tear in his spacesuit, carving his abdomen until I hit bone, probably one of his ribs. Without letting the Innovator even howl in pain, I twist my blade and slice across his chest, cleaving him into two pieces of meat. The two halves of his body crumple inside his suit, and his lab coat is dyed crimson with his own blood.

I look around, and though Harbinger and I are the only two survivors of this carnage, the floor of the foyer was carpeted in the bodies of the Innovator’s victims, and their blood painted the crumbling walls of this facility.

I move to rejoin Harbinger, who is catching his breath as he wipes the gore from the stock of his rifle.

He turns to me, with a tired look on his face, he walks to Jen’s corpse, lowering his head out of respect for his fallen comrade before taking Jen’s communication device and badge. He then walks over to Sarah, and with another apologetic bow of his head, he extracts Jen’s knife from her neck.

“You’ll need a replacement,” Harbinger advises, offering me Jen’s knife. “Jen would never permit me to send agents out on operations without a complete kit. ‘Always prepare so you never despair,’ she’d used to tell me.”

I accept Harbinger’s offer, though this blade feels far heavier than my old knife, maybe even my sword. Why was that?

Harbinger stomps toward the Innovator and draws his knife.

“That acoustic device of his could serve us well,” Harbinger confesses. “Too bad he killed the one person on our squad with the skill to surgically extract it… without mutilating the body.

“Harbinger, what are you doing?” I ask, questioning Harbinger’s reluctance to leave this awful place.

Yet, Harbinger simply looks at me with cold, piercing eyes, and says:

“Collecting evidence,” as he plunges his knife into the back of the Innovator’s head.