"The Dread," Stu murmured, backing away slowly. That "Level 99" designation was freaking him out. "You're the Dread."
"Yeah, that's what they call me. What do they call you?"
"Stuart."
"Oh yeah?"
"Stuart Brakely."
"What a coincidence. Your name is my name, too." He said this in a singsong voice. "Where'd you come from? The past? The future?"
"Neither."
"You're not going to tell me?"
"Why should I?"
He grinned wolfishly. "You shouldn't keep secrets from yourself."
"You're not me."
"You're something like me, though, aren't you? Stuart Brakely. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when I saw you the other night, but I guess you're the real thing." He took a few steps forward. The strange, cobbled-up metallic parts of his body continued to reshape and readjust themselves as he spoke -- the plates on his chest snapping together, the tubes on his shoulders slithering down and attaching themselves to other parts of the structure. The metal itself almost seemed to be alive. Meanwhile his organic parts seemed to be in pretty good condition for a zombie; though he had some red blotches on his face, he was not obviously decaying.
What the hell was that writhing cybernetic equipment all over his body, though? What was he? The ICON system had decided that he was a brainy, but Dr. Snowe had suggested he might be some kind of mutate, too.
Level 99. Was that the highest level possible? Most ordinary zombies maxed out at around level ten, and he seldom saw irregulars higher than level fifteen. Mutates like the Living Hell, the Cannibal, and the creature that had destroyed the electric shell had had levels in the twenties, thirties, and forties. Level 99, though? Just how powerful was this guy?
The fact that he looked and sounded like Stu -- apart from the bizarre gadgetry all over his body -- was unsettling, too. It was so fascinating, seeing this alternate version of himself, that he found it hard to look away.
"You saw me the other night?"
"Through the eyes of one of my mutates," he said airily.
Stu recalled the flying mutate that he had encountered earlier, the one that Rico had claimed had been spying for the Dread. Its eyes had had a weirdly intelligent look to them.
"Cool chainsaw," the Dread remarked.
"Thanks," he said guardedly.
"Looks like you've been having fun with it," he said, observing the piles of dead zombies. "Even got a couple ragers. You're not entirely human, are you?"
"Look who's talking. What's that mechanical shit all over you?"
"This?" He looked down at himself, at the constantly-shifting plates, gears, and wires. "You might call it a suit of armor. After a while, see, I figured out what the infection was doing to me. I figured out how it worked. I figured out how to control it. Now the bug works for me, just like the zombies do. It does what I want."
Stu didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Maybe he was insane? But he didn't sound insane; he sounded calm, relaxed, totally at ease.
"What do you want?" Stu asked him, still slowly retreating. He picked up Excalibur, which he had dropped earlier.
He snorted. "What do I want? I think that should be fairly obvious. I want to kill Dr. Snowe, and put an end to his little resistance movement once and for all."
"Why?"
"I don't want him to find a cure."
"Why?"
"You're asking a lot of dumb questions here."
"Sorry. I'm new to this world. There's a lot of things I don't know."
He raised an eyebrow. "You came from another world? Another planet?"
"Another dimension." The longer he could keep him talking, Stu thought, the better. "A different reality."
"Oh. So you're a version of me from a parallel world. That's neat. I suppose it was Dr. Snowe who brought you here. But what was he trying to accomplish? Did he think it would freak me out, if I saw an uninfected version of myself?" He shook his head. "The old man really is crazy, isn't he?"
"I'm not going to let you kill him. Or anyone else, for that matter."
"I don't think you can stop me."
"I can try."
The Dread studied him for a moment, apparently impressed by his bravado. "Maybe you'd be interested in switching sides? If you're not even from this world, why should you risk your life for it?"
"I've made friends here. Besides, it's the right thing to do." He paused, then added, "Plus I don't want to end up a zombie freak."
"An insult!" he exclaimed, in mock outrage. "How dare you!"
"You're one weird guy, you know that?"
He smiled weakly. "Better a zombie freak than what I was before. Nobody ever paid any attention to me before I became infected, before I became like this. I had the most useless, boring life. Now everyone knows who I am. I've made my mark. I've brought the world to its knees. And now I'm going to kill off the last vestiges of hope, to make sure that nobody can ever undo what I've done."
Maybe he was insane. Or maybe it was the zombie infection that had given him this attitude; as Lucky had told him, though they retained their human intelligence, brainies were just like any other zombie in their hatred of humanity and desire to spread the infection.
And the Dread wasn't just any zombie. He was the first zombie. If the virus itself had a spokesperson, the Dread would be it.
That remark about his having led a boring, useless life seemed like some kind of clue, though. Living a quiet life playing video games and working a dead-end job at a computer repair shop had never bothered Stu, but this other Stu...well, maybe he had come to resent his station in life. Maybe he was happy to have found any notoriety at all.
"Dr. Snowe has developed a cure," he tried. "He might be able to cure you."
"I don't want to be cured."
"All right. Suppose you succeed in killing Dr. Snowe. Suppose your zombies succeed in conquering the world. What then? Don't you think you'll be pretty lonely, being the only intelligent person in a world full of zombies?"
"I was lonely before," he said, shrugging. "I'll be lonely after. What's the difference?" But then his body language changed, and his eyes narrowed. "Now get out of my way. I don't want to have to kill you, because it seems like it might be bad luck, like breaking a mirror, but I'll do it if I have to."
"I'm not going to let you hurt anyone," he said firmly.
"Have it your way, then. But don't say I didn't warn you." And he started walking towards Stu, in an unhurried sort of way.
Stu tried to guess what kinds of powers the Dread might have, and how he might combat them. Was he stronger than Stu? Faster? Apart from their intelligence, brainies were essentially ordinary zombies, but the Dread obviously had other powers, perhaps derived from the living technology all over his body. Ula had mentioned that he could fly.
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He started up the chainsaw. The Dread ignored it.
Let's find out how fast he is, Stu thought. He raised the chainsaw, accelerated himself with the Speed Freak skill, and feinted an attack. He had no intention of striking the Dread, but only of seeing how quickly he would react. The Desert King had surprised him with his speed; Stu was not about to repeat that mistake.
The Dread tilted his head to one side, evincing no surprise whatsoever at the sudden burst of speed. When Stu tried another feint, this one a bit closer, one arm shot out, seized Stu by the wrist, and flung him to one side. He skidded over a puddle of zombie-blood and nearly crashed into a wall, only stopping himself at the last second.
Well, there was his answer. The Dread wasn't just fast; he was very fast. Shit. Close-quarters fighting was Stu's specialty, but against an opponent who was faster then he was...
He revved up the chainsaw again and approached the Dread a second time, but a little more cautiously. If he could stay just outside his range, and jump in with a few well-aimed attacks...
He tried using the chainsaw like a knife or sword, jabbing at him with the tip. The Dread avoided the jabs easily, and when Stu raised the chainsaw high above his head and tried to bring it down like an axe, he simply batted the blade away with an armored arm, producing a shower of sparks and throwing Stu off balance.
Stu was beginning to get the feeling that the Dread was merely toying with him.
"Okay," the doppelganger said casually. "I've got a pretty good idea of what you're capable of now. You've got a speedy's speed and a rager's instincts, but you're not on my level."
The Dread darted forward, his body a blur, and snatched the chainsaw out of Stu's hands as easily as an adult might take a toy away from a child. He grasped the saw's miniature motor with both hands and crushed it completely, crumpling it up as one might crumple up a sheet of paper. The motor popped and sparked, and dynamo fluid leaked out of it, and that was it; that was the end of the alien chainsaw.
Stu was less distressed by the loss of the chainsaw than by how easily the Dread had taken it away from him. He couldn't match his counterpart's speed...at least, not with his current stats and skills. But he could do something about that. He quickly opened up the skills menu with his eyes and purchased the third level of Speed Freak, along with the third level of Strong Arm, each of which cost sixteen points. The familiar electric tingle raced through his muscles.
The Dread stopped and frowned at him. "What did you just do?"
"What?"
"Some kind of...biological mesh," he said, studying Stu carefully, as though seeing him for the first time. "You've got a nanite system in your body, don't you? It's not like mine, but..."
The Dread could actually sense that he had purchased a new skill? This was a frightening development.
After a moment, however, he shrugged, and said, "Well, that's interesting, but it won't help you. Back at it!"
Now that he had lost his gun, his knife, and his chainsaw, Stu's only weapon was Excalibur, and he was only barely able to bring it up in time to defend himself from the Dread's attack. The villain's movements were a little easier to read, now that Stu had leveled up Speed Freak, but his speed was still overwhelming. Stu swung the bat with all the strength he had, but was only able to land two or three solid hits, and the Dread shrugged those off as though they were nothing; the aluminum bat merely bounced off of him. The various plates and sections of his cybernetic system moved tectonically across the surface of his body, gathering together and thickening themselves in order to protect him from Stu's blows; the armor was almost liquid in the way it flowed over him.
He couldn't penetrate the armor with a baseball bat. He took aim at the Dread's head instead.
But the Dread refused to stay still. He juked around, avoiding every blow, and then struck back with a blow of his own, one arm suddenly transforming into a giant claw and raking Stu across the chest. The claws must have been extremely sharp, because they bit deep, digging through his skin and stuttering across his ribcage. Ignoring the sudden pain, Stu tried to smash the claw with the bat, but he couldn't even do that; it transformed back into an ordinary hand, and the Dread slipped out of range.
Howling in frustration, Stu chased after him, desperately trying to hit him. The Dread continued dodging the blows, and then, to Stu's surprise, he avoided one blow by launching himself straight up into the air, and hovering there, as though gravity had no effect on him at all. Stu noticed a pair of silvery plates on the soles of his feet, similar in appearance to the grav boosters on Luna's glider. He really could fly. Damn it.
He seemed to be having a good time -- he threw back his head and laughed at Stu's futile attempts to reach him. "This is more fun than I thought it would be," he said. "You think like me, move like me. I can tell from your face what you're about to do. You really are another Stuart Brakely, aren't you?"
"I'm not like you."
"Maybe you're more like me than you think. I wonder what would happen if I infected you. Maybe you'd start to see things my way." But then he shook his head. "Nah, I don't like that idea. Two Dreads? The world wouldn't be big enough for two of us."
"Get down here and fight," Stu growled at him.
"If you insist." He dropped back down to the ground...but then something strange began to happen. His body began to enlarge, building itself up, his arms and shoulders swelling grotesquely. Long, black blades burst out of his arms in a spray of oily fluid, and the hydraulic tube-system engineered all over his body began pumping furiously. His appearance had been merely strange before, but now it became monstrous -- that of a misshapen hybrid of man and machine. His face, however, remained the same, his silver eyes glinting with menace. He grinned.
"Oh, shit," Stu groaned, and in the next second, the Dread launched himself at him. Stu took a stance like a batter and tried to hit him as he came forward, but the monster knocked Excalibur out of his grasp as though it were nothing and slashed at him with his blade-hands, ripping into his right shoulder, and then his left, releasing a bloody mist. When Stu tried to put his arms in front of his face to protect himself, the blades ripped into those, too, almost completely severing his left hand and cutting off a couple of fingers on the other. Shocked, he tried to backpedal, but the Dread was unrelenting, cutting and slashing him to ribbons with one blade while stabbing him in the gut with the other. The final swing slit his throat, causing him to gag and gasp for air as blood filled his lungs, and the Dread followed that up by almost casually punching him in the chest with the palm of his hand, causing him to fall, rather unceremoniously, onto his back. The monster stood over him, looking down at him, amused.
His Regeneration skill was already working, trying to stitch him back together, but he was so thoroughly mangled that he could barely move -- when he tried to clutch his throat, to stop the bleeding, he found that his hand was hanging by a mere flap of skin; it flopped uselessly at the end of his arm. His heart was still beating, and still pumping blood, but most of it was spilling out onto the floor.
The Dread's blades must have been incredibly sharp, and his slashes delivered with incredible force, in order to cut through his fortified flesh. This was what it was like to fight a Level 99.
Stu tried to summon up the skill menu, to see if there was anything there that might help, but his injuries were so painful, so gruesome, and so distracting, that he couldn't focus. He started to panic. The Dread could cut off his head with one more swing, and he was pretty sure that the Regeneration skill wouldn't be able to grow him a new head...or a new body, or whatever. It would be the end of him.
Had he given Dr. Snowe and the others enough time to escape? Had it been thirty minutes yet? Maybe. But the Dread would almost certainly pursue them, and Stu didn't think they could hold him off.
His evil counterpart, still bulging with mechanical muscles, looked down at him and shook his head sadly. "You get it now? I'm not like the others. I'm more than just a zombie, more than just a brainy, more than just a mutate. I'm the fucking Dread." He raised an arm, preparing to strike at Stu's neck and end his life.
Stu braced himself for it. The faces of his friends flashed through his mind.
But just as the blade was coming down, a single shot rang out, and the Dread paused, taking a step back. He looked up.
"Get away from him," a familiar voice called out.
Stu groaned. It was Luna. What the hell was she doing here? Although he was in agony, he managed roll onto his side and catch a glimpse of her; she was standing about twenty feet away, and holding a rifle, which she was aiming at the Dread.
But she was in terrible danger -- the Dread was a Level 99; a mere rifle wasn't going to stop him. He was too fast, too strong. He could kill her before she could even pull the trigger.
"Luna," he moaned. "Get...get out of here..."
She ignored his pleas, and spoke to the Dread again: "Are you deaf? I said get away from him."
The Dread looked down at Stu. "Friend of yours?"
"If you...if you touch her..."
"You'll do what?" He laughed. "You really are pathetic. Just like I used to be."
Stu placed his severed hand against the stump of his arm, allowing it to reattach; the veins, nerves, muscles, and skin quickly knitted themselves back together. His other injuries were healing, too -- his slashed throat had sealed itself up, allowing him to breathe again -- and he was beginning to regain some strength, but...
The Dread regarded Luna again. "I remember you now. I saw you the other night, didn't I?" He glanced down at Stu. "You went out of your way to protect her." He took a step towards her.
"You goddamn freak!" Stu shouted. "Leave her alone!"
"Jeez, what a drama queen. And is my voice really that whiny? I never would've thought--"
Luna had heard enough. She opened fire on the Dread. But her first shot missed, and her second merely ricocheted off of his armored body. And those two trigger-pulls were all she managed to get off, before he was upon her. He slapped the gun out of her hands, knocked her down, and drove one of the blades into her shoulder, using it to keep her pinned to the floor. She yelped in pain.
Stu, summoning up all the strength he still had left, managed to climb to his feet -- almost slipping in a puddle of his own blood. He couldn't let this happen; he couldn't let the Dread kill her. But he had nothing left. His weapons were gone, and he only had twenty skill points -- not enough to purchase an offensive skill that might allow him to combat the Dread, if such a skill even existed. He was a Level 99, for fuck's sake. He did have the Red Wave skill, which he hadn't used yet, but killing the Dread with his bare fists...well, that just didn't seem possible.
But he couldn't stand by and do nothing. He limped over to the two of them.
The Dread glanced at him over his shoulder. "Say goodbye to your girlfriend."
Luna lifted her head. Her eyes met Stu's.
I love you.
She didn't speak the words -- she only mouthed them -- but it was apparently enough for the ICON system, because a message suddenly burst into view in front of his eyes:
Quest "Looking for Love: Luna" completed!Level Up! 42-57Gained 30 SP!