Quinn didn’t flinch.
She just stared down the barrel of the black pistol.
The metal looked freezing cold.
Noah’s gun clicked loudly in the sterile room.
He aimed his weapon directly at the medic’s head.
“Drop it Emma.” Noah’s voice was dangerously calm.
“I will blow your brains all over your clean floor.”
Emma didn’t look at Noah.
Her sharp green eyes stayed locked entirely on Quinn.
Her finger rested heavily on the trigger.
Quinn did the math in her head.
One hit point.
A gentle breeze would probably kill her right now.
Her ribs felt like crushed glass.
Black blood stained her teeth.
She had no titanium gloves and no energy left to fight.
She had to use her brain.
“You aren’t going to shoot me.” Quinn coughed.
A few drops of blood hit the pristine white floor tiles.
Emma raised an eyebrow.
“A billion dollars says I will.”
“If you wanted the money you wouldn’t have let us inside.” Quinn took a single step forward.
Her chest touched the cold metal barrel of the pistol.
“You would have shot me in the alley while my back was turned.
You hate the World Board.
You patch up street rats in a damp basement because you despise the rich people who rule this city.”
Emma stared at her.
The silence in the clinic stretched for three agonizing seconds.
Emma pulled the trigger.
Click!.
The gun was completely empty.
Emma smirked.
She tossed the useless weapon onto a stainless steel surgical tray.
“You have guts Solo Queen.” Emma pulled a pair of blue latex gloves from a cardboard box on the wall.
She snapped them onto her hands.
“Or you are just completely crazy.
Put the street rat on table two.
You get table one.
Bleed on my floor again and I will actually shoot you.”
Noah let out a long breath.
He lowered his gun.
He grabbed Jax by the collar and dragged the unconscious assassin over to the second metal table.
Quinn climbed onto table one.
The steel was freezing against her back.
Emma grabbed a thick glass syringe from a locked medical cabinet.
The liquid inside the syringe glowed with a toxic bright green light.
“What is that.” Quinn asked.
Her eyes tracked the needle.
“Alchemical stim-pack,” Emma said flatly.
“I stole a crate of them from Cranston Industries last year.
Normal stitches and bandages don’t work on System Users.
Your cells burn too hot.
This will force your body to rebuild itself.”
Emma didn’t wait for permission.
She jammed the thick needle directly into the side of Quinn’s neck.
Right next to the invisible bio-chip.
Pure liquid fire turned into absolute ice.
Quinn gasped loudly.
Her back arched off the metal table.
The agonizing pain in her shattered ribs vanished completely in a wave of freezing numbness.
[Item Consumed: Grade-B Alchemical Stim.]
[HP restoring.
+50 HP per minute.]
[Current HP: 51/355]
Quinn breathed deeply.
The grinding sensation in her chest stopped.
Her vision cleared.
The dark spots faded away.
Noah leaned against the concrete wall.
He loosened his ruined silk tie.
“We need a plan Quinn.
The Gamemaster just painted a massive target on your back.
Every psycho with a gun is coming to this city.”
“They are already here.” Emma walked over to a bank of glowing computer monitors.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“The dark web is going crazy.
Private jets are landing at the local airport.
Mercenaries.
Freelance Trailblazers.
They tracked the residual energy from your little red light show.”
Quinn sat up on the table.
She ripped her ruined white school shirt off.
She kept her black sports bra on.
She grabbed a dark tactical shirt from a pile of clean clothes in the corner and pulled it over her head.
“My mother did this.” Quinn’s voice was pure ice.
“She wants to force me out of the city.
She wants to herd me straight into the Trailblazer Academy so I have nowhere else to hide.”
Emma looked over her shoulder.
Her green eyes widened slightly.
“You know about the Academy.”
“I know they run the world.”
“They do much more than that.” Emma brought up a digital map of the globe on her screen.
Hundreds of glowing red dots covered the continents.
“They control the Rifts.
Dimensional gates that drop monsters and alien loot into our world.
The World Board hoards all the EXP.
They farm the earth like a private garden and keep normal people weak.
My older sister tried to expose them to the press three years ago.”
Emma’s voice cracked.
She stopped talking and swallowed hard.
She forced the emotion down into a dark box.
“A Rank 3 Trailblazer burned her alive.” Emma looked directly at Quinn.
The medic’s eyes burned with cold vengeance.
“I don’t want your bounty money Quinn.
I want to watch you burn their entire empire to ash.
I am your medic now.”
Quinn nodded slowly.
Found family.
The best kind of family.
The kind forged in shared blood and mutual hatred.
A low groan echoed through the clinic.
Jax shifted on table two.
He slowly opened his good eye.
The other eye was swollen completely shut and purple.
He looked at the sterile fluorescent ceiling.
He looked at Noah leaning against the wall.
Then he looked at Quinn.
“Did we win.” Jax whispered.
His voice sounded like dry gravel.
“My mother is The Gamemaster.” Quinn walked over to his table.
She looked down at him.
“She faked the cancer for five years.
She cut my apartment building in half with a laser sword.
We are the most wanted people on the planet.”
Jax blinked his good eye.
He processed the insane information.
A slow crazy smile spread across his bruised face.
“Awesome.” Jax coughed and winced in pain.
“I always hated your apartment anyway.”
Quinn actually let out a small laugh.
It hurt her ribs but it felt good.
Noah didn’t laugh.
He checked his encrypted phone.
No signal.
The underground clinic was blocking the reception.
“Emma,” Noah said sharply.
“Do you have a backdoor out of this clinic.
Noah Brooks does not die in a damp basement.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
“There is an old subway maintenance tunnel behind the sterilization room,” Emma said.
She walked over to Jax and began wrapping his dislocated shoulder with expert speed.
“It leads straight to the harbor.”
Quinn opened her blue glowing screens.
She needed to check her stats.
She needed to know what the Trailblazer class actually did.
The text was still dripping crimson.
[Class: Trailblazer (Incomplete)]
[Status: Evolution Bottleneck Active.]
[To complete the Evolution you must consume the Prime Core of a rival Trailblazer.]
[Warning: Failure to consume a core within 48 hours will result in terminal organ failure.]
Quinn stared at the floating red words.
Consume the core.
The System wasn’t just giving her powers anymore.
It was forcing her to become a predator.
She had to kill another teenager with a bio-chip and eat their power.
If she didn’t become a monster she would die.
The clinic lights flickered wildly.
A loud mechanical siren blared from Emma’s computer monitors.
Red warning text flashed violently across the screens.
“Proximity sensors tripped.” Emma dropped her roll of medical tape.
She ran to the monitors.
“Someone is in the alley.”
Quinn cracked her knuckles.
She didn’t have her titanium gloves.
She just had her bare hands and her Level 11 stats.
“Is it the silver-haired boy.” Quinn asked.
She braced herself for Julian.
Emma typed furiously to bring up the external security camera feeds.
It wasn’t Julian.
Three people stood in the rainy alley outside the heavy iron door of the clinic.
They wore pristine white tactical uniforms.
They didn’t look like normal street mercenaries.
They looked like arrogant royalty.
The leader was a tall girl with long blonde hair tied in a sharp rigid braid.
She held a massive sniper rifle that glowed with bright pulsing purple energy.
“System Users,” Noah hissed.
He raised his handgun and aimed it at the door.
The blonde girl on the screen didn’t knock.
She didn’t announce herself.
She just pointed the glowing purple rifle directly at the security camera.
She pulled the trigger.
The monitor went instantly to static.
A deafening explosion rocked the clinic.
Dust and loose plaster fell from the ceiling.
The heavy iron front door didn’t just break.
It began to melt.
Bright orange heat seeped through the thick iron.
The metal turned white-hot in a matter of seconds.
It started dripping onto the concrete floor like liquid lava.
“The backdoor.” Emma yelled over the roaring heat of the melting door.
“Go.
Right now.”
Noah grabbed Jax’s arm and hauled him off the table.
They stumbled toward the back sterilization room.
Quinn didn’t move.
She stood perfectly still in the center of the clinic.
She stared at the melting iron door.
[System Warning: Apex Trailblazer Squad (Rank 5) breaching.]
[Evolution Catalyst detected.]
Three rival cores were standing right on the other side of that door.
Quinn needed a core to survive.
The System demanded blood.
The iron door bubbled and hissed.
A massive glowing hole melted through the center of the metal.
Quinn lowered her stance.
Her eyes flared with cold blue light.
She wasn’t going to run.
The Evolution demands a sacrifice!
Quinn needs to eat a core to survive, and a Rank 5 Squad is burning down the front door.