Chapter Sixty-Six - Move Faster

“Q: Can you choose not to be a samurai?

A: Yes and no. A Vanguard can choose to retire at any time. But removing the AI-brain-interface is impossible without harming the user.

Q: What are some common mistakes samurai make at the beginning?

A: Either over or under spending on points. Points are a resource, learning how to manage them is part of learning how to be an effective Vanguard.

Q: How do AI view each other?

A: Usually with cameras.

Q: Since AI are artificial, are you afraid of dying?

A: Humans are nothing more than lucky collections of star dust. Are you?”

-- Curated Q&A with Lyvalis, one of the first Protector AI on Earth, 2026

***

I had three gaps to clear to get to Gomorrah. That meant two rooftops, then the one the Fury was currently parked on and waiting for me.

The roof I was on at that very moment though, was melting. It was covered in those cheap flat panes of non-reflective solar panelling. The surface layer of plastic was turning sticky, and each step I took crunched as I broke through the solar cells.

My shoulder-mounted guns spun around and fired behind me. I couldn’t see what they were targeting, but I could hear it as bodies thumped onto the ground around me.

You need to move faster if you wish to make it.

“Trying,” I grunted between gasps. I wanted to be a little more snarky than that, but snark required breath, and I was all out of that. The air was so hot and muggy that even with my suit doing what it could to regulate things it was still a chore to breathe.

I came onto the first gap and lunged.

My jumpjets fired off and I sailed across a narrow street, one leg coming up before me to make it so that I’d land at a sprint.

At that moment I had hanging in the air, I glanced down between the buildings. It was interesting to see what the mounting heat was doing. Some windows had burst open and raging fires were burning within, with tongues of flame kissing the sides of the buildings.

Other spots looked nearly intact. Maybe the glass they had was tougher, or less likely to melt. Hundreds of AC units were melting out of the windows they were jammed into. Most were made of cheap plastic which could very much not endure the kind of heat we were putting on them.

My foot met the next building and I kind of bounced a bit before I really took off. With a grunt, I vaulted over some vents and then cursed as I had to go around an animated billboard that was fritzing out hard.

A couple of model ones slammed into the side of the board, cracking it more than it already was.

My guns thumped again, and I shifted as I noticed the recoil pushing me forwards just a bit. “What’re you shooting?”

You currently have several large flying models chasing after you.

“Oh,” I said. I ducked to the other side of the billboard, hopefully cutting off their line of sight for a bit.

I paused, just to take a breath, but then one of those tower-AC units a few metres away from me burst into flames. A pipe burst on its side and it pissed fire all over. That was my signal to keep going.

My armour was warming up a whole lot. Maybe too much, even.

Disabling passive stealth systems. We don’t need to hide your body warmth and I doubt anyone nearby will be able to hear your suit’s cooling systems in your current predicament.

I could hear my suit humming faintly. It didn’t feel any cooler though. I grimaced and continued running. The next gap was easy. I cleared it with barely any help from the jumpjets. The next roof had a damned garden on it.

Probably one of those stupid attempts to ‘greenify’ things. The plants within were smouldering already. They didn’t even catch fire so much as they desiccated on the spot.

I jumped again, fired a little spurt from my jump jets and used that to hop onto the top of the nearest greenhouse. It wasn’t designed to carry my weight, and the metal being so hot that it was likely going soft didn’t help any.

Still, it collapsed in such a way that I fell in the right direction and was able to cartwheel my arms around to stay even.

“Graceful,” Gomorrah commented.

If I wasn’t out of breath I would have something snippy to tell her.

I ran to the edge of the roof and jumped. All I had to do was land, then grab onto the Fury. We’d move away, and I’d be nice and safe. Maybe I could reposition myself on it further out. Or jump out of my armour and into the car itself once we were in a safer spot.

With a grunt, I brought my legs up to clear the edge of the roof.

Catherine! Above!

My railguns fired, but it was just a little too late. My HISS activated with a scream, a last-second warning that I didn’t know how to heed.

Something heavy smacked into me. It wasn’t a direct blow, but it knocked me out of my gentle arc and into a wild tumble. I saw a large feathered body falling past me, feathers on fire and body writhing.

I crashed into and through a window--one of those with bars across the bottom to keep pigeons away--then I landed on my side in someone’s living room. The couch was smoking, the TV was melting, and the carpet was on fire.

“Fuck!” I swore.

“Cat!” Gomorrah said. I heard a whine from above, the Fury moving. Was she leaving?

I jumped to my feet, then winced. My armour’s interior wasn’t warm, it was scalding. I could feel the warmth pressing in on me.

Use your points, please.

“Ice! A bomb.”

A bomb appeared and immediately exploded in front of me. It sent a wave of white fumes racing across the room with a hiss, and I felt my armour cooling off even as frost covered the walls and floor. But only for a moment. The frost was melting off faster than it could spread.

A whine just outside had me turning to see the Fury lowering itself down, passenger-side facing me. The door opened and Gomorrah gestured. “Come on!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I grabbed the edge of the window, placed a boot on the bottom sill, then jumped across the gap.

I didn’t fit through the door. Well, most of me didn’t fit. My upper body did, and the moment my feet swung out below I kicked up and found something to push my foot against on the car’s undercarriage while I held onto the passenger-side seat.

The AC was blasting, I noted idly. Gomorrah used a few non-church-approved words and we shot upwards. The car sounded... off. I didn’t know nearly enough about hovercars to say how, but I knew that a few things were busted with the Fury.

“That was stupid,” Gomorrah said.

“I agree,” I replied as I kept hugging the seat. “Do you need to drive so fast?”

“Yes.”

My railguns deployed, but not to shoot. Instead they reached up and pressed against the ceiling, giving me a couple more points of contact. That was only somewhat reassuring. Gomorrah was flying as if I wasn’t hanging halfway out of her car, and while I trusted her, my trust in her was only a bit stronger than my grip on the carseat.

“Gom?” I asked.

“One second,” she said.

We started to slow down, then I felt us dropping. There was a thumping from nearby, guns going off, and I winced as the Fury shook. An explosion had gone off nearby.

“Just the wall’s anti-air,” she said.

“Thanks. I was dying to know,” I said. “I’m slipping Gomorrah.”

“It’s fine,” she said.

“I think it’s very not fine!”

The car stopped and Gomorrah looked down at me. “Cat.”

“What?”

“You can let go. We’re hovering over the wall. It’s a metre below us.”

I paused, considered her words, then lowered my leg down until it hit something solid. “Oh,” I said before I lowered my other foot and then let go of the seat. I was standing right atop the wall, just a couple of sections away from the gap, which had closed noticeably since we’d left.

Stepping back, I left room for Gomorrah to lower the Fury. Gomorrah stepped out of her car, then walked to the back and inspected the back where the steel was crumpled in. “That’s... that’s not going to be easy to fix,” she said.

I shook my head, then patted her on the shoulder. “It’s alright. We made plenty of points today, I’m sure all the squished parts are replaceable.”

“Might as well replace the whole car,” she muttered. Then she rose up and shrugged. “Guess I’ll be getting a new one.”

“Wow. That was fast.”

“That was pragmatic,” she said before turning back towards where we’d come from.

The city was melting. Even from the wall I could trace the growing circle of destruction just from the spreading cloud of smoke on the inner edge and the crumbling buildings in the centre. “We made a bit of a mess, haven’t we?”

“Hmm. Not as satisfying as actual fire,” she said.

***