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Project: AKRA pt 13

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(They are down to three people, assaulting the base soon, will they be able to save AKRA?)

 

Raist spread his arms out while he was falling through the sky, seeing the two of them further down through clearings in the clouds of mist close to the bottom of the river.  He enjoyed the quick freedom of the descent when the small cord he was tied on began providing a counter to gravity as he rapidly slowed down, controlling the final length of his descent with a button on his suit.

Spinning around slowly, he lowered himself the final few body lengths to the small rock platform the other two were at.

Agrest took their three cords, pressing them into the wall and triggering their camouflage system, which caused them to fade into the rock color.

“What’s the likelihood of hostile creatures in this water?” Raist asked.

Philira shook her head rapidly.  “No way, this water is too fast.  Even if there are creatures, the water should hide our thermal signature with the outside of our suit being cold.  I’ll wave when I have the system set up on the other side.”

She knelt down, spiked another rod into the ground and dove into the water without waiting for any command from Raist.  Her body moved up and down in a rhythm as the wave started by her head swept through her whole body over and over as she flew across the rapids.  Scouts…good at everything.

“I am glad she is such a good swimmer,” Raist said.

“Yeah, never got good at that style.  Luckily I could pass all my tests doing the side-stroke.”

Raist was spiking his safety system, hooking it up to the line Philira was establishing when Agrest put his hand on his shoulder.

“Something doesn’t feel right.”

Raist didn’t like the pit in his stomach hearing Agrest say that, but evenly responded, “Why, what’s wrong?”

Agrest shook his head.  “I don’t know, can’t explain it.  But call it a Sniper’s intuition.”  Raist was ready to dive into the water having seen Philira’s pink hair emerge from the other side and waved the two of them over when Agrest interrupted him.

“If I don’t make it out alive, can you deliver a letter I have in my room back on the ship?” Agrest asked coldly.  His joking demeanor was totally gone, replaced by a dim realism.  “It’s to that girl we saved last time on Azure 2.  I was always scared to write her back.  But at least let her know that I died, but was thinking about her, okay?”

Raist turned around, and pushed him hard.  “Don’t you dare say that!  What is everyone’s problem?!  We have been through way worse shit than this.  Border-Action 9, the assault on Klattu, being stranded on Kilo?  Come on, Ziko’s arm?  I lost both of mine on Kilo.”  Raist lifted both of his arms as he went on.  “These are bio-synths!  We sustained a few injuries early and everyone is thinking this is the end?”

“Heh.” Agrest pushed Raist’s hand away as his lip rose in a slight grin. “You feel it too, then?”

Raist turned around, mad Agrest had basically gotten him to admit his unease, and dove into the water.  He started swimming with all his might against the harsh current.  Memories of the drownings he sustained during swim ‘training’ came back to him, but only focused his mind as he crashed through the waves and rocks.  He felt a strong pull that was Philira’s line dragging him to the other shore.  He felt his back legs sweep to the right, pulling away from him, and suddenly went spinning into the water as he got trapped in a whirlpool.

Underwater, he tried kicking off a huge rock he was trapped next to, but the whirlpool was too strong.  He stopped struggling and went limp, conserving his oxygen.  His nanites would keep him conscious for a much longer time than even the best breath-holders on Terra were capable of before nanites, but still knew anything could happen.

He protected his head with his arms as he hit the rock over and over with every spin of the water.  Feeling the line on his suit finally tighten, it forcefully ripped him out of the whirlpool and back to the surface.  He turned on his back, took a breath, and continued covering his head as Philira dragged him to the other side.

“Brings back bad memories of water survival school!” he shouted over the din, standing up and shaking the water off his face and hair as he backed away from the spraying mist the river was generating.

“Haha, yeah,” she agreed as she smiled. “Lot of memories is for sure.”

He suddenly remembered that as much as he went through, while he was in tactics and strategy classes, she was probably still out there swimming and running.  He felt bad for even thinking about his hardship; he had no doubt the ‘expendable’ Scouts were trained far more cruelly than the Leaders.  She had swum through those rapids that likely would have killed Raist had he not had assistance.

Agrest was dragged to the shore and Philira hid the line across the river.  Now that this line and the descent line were established, on the return trip all they would need  to do is hook up to it.  The mechanism could pull them across the river, or up the cliff.

Project: AKRA pt 10

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Raist took a prone position in the clearing Ziko had cut through the forest with his CSW, while the two close range fighters fought back-to-back against the horde, standing right above Raist.

He was taking careful burst shots, squeezing a few rounds, gauging whether the creature needed more rounds to die, then either delivering, or moving on to a new target.  The counter on the side of the rifle shot down rapidly.

He squeezed the final 30 into some creature hopping between the trees and as he rolled to his side to put a new magazine of 1,000 in.  The magazine was in, and his hand was going to the ‘accept’ toggle when he saw a huge bird diving out of the sky right at their group.

“Up…!” he started, but it was too slow.  Its mouth peeled open to reveal a tri-maw opening ready to consume one of them.  The creature was closing on them when its large neck was separated from its body, liquid exploding out the backside as its head crashed to the ground not far from them, its body gliding into another dead creature.

“What?”

Raist toggled the rifle back on, and saw a line of white tracers clearing the sides of part of the trees.  He knew that weapon anywhere: it was Leio’s Sweep Rifle, but she was aiming horizontally.  What killed the bird?

“It’s Agrest and Leio!” Philira shouted, another of her clips dumping out of her Plaz-Shot and hitting Raist in the head as she reloaded with robotic speed.

He didn’t need to tell the two he was with to not hit them, and he hoped the other two knew they were here.

Beasts continued advancing on them until all of them mysteriously stopped, turning and running as fast as they could.  Death had not scared them before, so it was definitely something different.

“Phi?”  Raist asked.

“Something’s coming…top of the trees.”

The strange silence had returned to the forest, though a few wounded screams still pierced the night.  Raist hated killing animals, and hearing their moans as they were sawed apart by the grass hurt his soul.

“Drone!”  Philira shouted, grabbing Ziko and diving to the shot-up ground.  Above them a large floating disk hovered over the scene of their battle.

“Shoot it!  Shoot it!” she yelled.

Raist was the only one of the three with the longer-range weapon and brought it to bear, and though he was giving it rapid bursts of ten sonic rounds that were undoubtedly flying straight through its hull, its size would not easily be brought down.  The two he was with were each rapidly reaching for their longer-range weapons as a firing arm extended above the disk.

A loud whoosh reached them long after the rocket did, rending the ground apart as they were flung through the air.  Raist crashed into one of the trees between two of the razor edges and escaped serious damage.  He switched his weapon to packet mode, morphing the small rounds into larger slugs designed to pierce before blowing apart inside their target.

He aimed at the disk that was readying another rocket and started shooting, catching the white tracers of the Sweep Rifle also on target of the drone.  The thin, fast spray of the Sweep rounds, and Raist’s exploding slugs were pounding away at the machine.  It tilted to one side for a moment, but righted itself.  Raist was sure it was going to fire again until its core exploded and it crashed somewhere into the trees above them.

He was breathing hard, his mind in combat mode, looking around everywhere for the next thing to kill, and with nothing moving for a long time he gradually began to come off his combat high.

Something was hurting his core and looking down, he saw a mat of the spiky grass imbedded into his chest after being propelled by the rocket.  He pulled each out; feeling the distant pain of sucking out the semi-vacuum each projectile had created in his body.

He pushed himself out of the slight cove of his tree and staggered to the clearing.  “Who is alive?”

“We are, but Ziko is hurt,” Philira’s voice had an edge he never heard before in it.

Raist ran over and saw Ziko slumped next to a tree almost exactly like where Raist had been blasted.  The difference was he was moved slightly to one side, right into its sharp edge.

“Zi…ko?” Raist asked nervously.

“Yo, I’m alive, but shit…these plants are even worse than the creatures.”

Ziko’s words made it seem like he was okay, but Raist realized Ziko’s left arm had been cut cleanly off right by the shoulder.  His nanites and suit sealed what was left of the arm to prevent any bleed off; it actually looked like he had a stub arm his entire life with how clean it was.  The fact he could talk clearly was a result of their advanced training, and very tailored drugs to block pain and maintain combat efficiency.

“Your ar—” Philira started, Raist grabbed her and shook his head no.

Big Scifi giveaway I am part of

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Hey guys I am part of a big scifi giveaway this week.  I am giving away Project: AKRA if you have not picked it up yet.  Lots of new talent to check out.

http://sffbookbonanza.com/freebooks/

I am still hammering away at trying to be an author, so something like this could help big!

Enjoy if you check it out.

Split my main book? Art work!

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Hey guys, been silent for a while but still busy at it.  The main thing I am working on is my main book ‘VayneLine’ and as of right now it is 500 pg ms word pages big – huge in other words.  I am considering splitting it to make it more manageable for readers.

Here is the cover art I drew for it once, you might recognize my avatar in there!

Make sure you click for high res!

New story time! Slipdrift

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Hey guys going to start the same thing with Proud Infinity, give sections of a story out each day and the whole book will be done in about a month.  This story is about a guy who is a start athlete and is caught and forced to play a deadly version of the game.  The whole story is over at amazon for 99 cents right now.

 

Slipdrift

 

The violent sport of Gun-Drift still endures with its popularity, despite calls to stop the game, or the occasional rumor of illegal/deadly versions.  Nearly every planetary system contains an Arena that has Gun-Drift among its events and carries a tremendous public following.  There have only been a few substantiated reports of these unregulated Arenas, but have proved difficult to close down the tight crime rings that keep them in operation.

 

– Terran Intradex Ver. 4: ‘Gun-Drift’

 

See also ‘Common Games at Arenas’; ‘Gun-Drift: Confirmed Deaths’

 

“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” he warned as I kept my gaze coldly focused on the man I hoped I would one day kill.  His flunky clubbed me in the stomach due to my noncompliance, shouting “Listen to ‘um!” in a drawl.  I tried fighting my head and eyes upwards to him one more time, but the shock rod hit me in the back, knocking me to the floor.  I staggered one knee up, starting the say the name “Fe…” before I heard the whine of the electrically charged rod hitting me one more time; I went down, blacking out before I even hit the ground, unsure if I was saying his name, or the name of the girl I loved.  As my world shut down it would be the last time I saw the natural light.

 

***

 

Somewhere in an abyss of unconscious thoughts swirling without any guidance, a vague sensation of something slipping down my eyes eventually became overpowering.  “Uhhh…” My partially comatose body rolled to the side, but the strange spilling sensation continued.  Like a shock across my body, the lightning strike of awakening blasted across my physical and mental states as I opened my eyes and found myself looking at the rusting pipes of a fixture.

‘Where am I?’  I rolled to the side as I saw the teal-colored thin wall of a repulsion-field extending from the ceiling to the floor; excluding the light this produced, the rest of the locale I now found myself in was dismal, dark and dank.

Proud Infinity pt 32

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Trego is in jail wondering if everything was just a dream.

 

“You would forsake me so fast?”  It was her voice.  I wondered how long before I would start hallucinating about her.

“Fuck you, go away,” I said to the darkness.  Damn, I hated just being used.  I kind of wanted to shoot her if the circumstances were such that way again.

Her…the cause of everything.  Guess it was not too long.  It was in the shadows of despair within my mind and the actual darkness in this cell that I definitely started to hate her.  I felt used beyond redemption.  White blood celled.

The bag was pulled off of my head, and her bright blue eyes were almost touching mine.  She smiled was wide as she brought her face back.  “Hi Tre!  My, what have they done to you?”

“Unfortunately…” my voice came haggard.  I had not spoken in a long time, and being deprived of water left my throat dry.  “My race has… our less than… glorious… moments towards each other.  Are you… real?  Or just here to…to torment me before I die?”

I honestly expected her to disappear, or maybe appear as the guy who was probably going to torture me.  But she stepped forward, putting her hands on my arms, and something happened as I was falling towards her.  I landed in her chest as she held me gently.  My arms hung limply at my side and I definitely could not feel them.

“Proud…you are real…” I mumbled, feeling her actually hugging me and feeling overwhelmed by that fact as I whimpered softly.

“Of course.  Why would I not be?  I had promised I would protect you, did I not?”

“Did…you?  Can’t… remember.  I can’t move…hunger…pain.  My arms…”

“I know.  I know.”  She held me there, and something warm was flowing from her into me.  I felt a strange awareness come over me, an awareness I once possessed slowly come back to me.

“Healing,” I stated and she nodded.  I could at least walk, even if I felt weak and out of it.  “But how can we get out of here?  I thought you cannot influence reality that much?”

“I have gotten stronger.  I am still limited, but enough to get you out of here.  I had to wait until everyone in your near reality counted on you dying.  To that reality it makes no difference if you actually die, or are simply gone.  The jail guard was killed in an accident today, he was the only one who knew you weren’t actually dead yet.”

“Complicated rules.”

Her eyes widened a bit at the simple truth of my statement.  “Indeed.  It is time we go.”

“Uh, are we going to teleport or something?  I don’t think we can just walk out.”

She disappeared, and I certainly did not make the trip with her.  “Uh, Proud?”

The door to my cell opened, and she was the one that had done it.  “Come on.”

“And if we are caught?”

“I will protect you.  It will not happen though.  Stay close.” She offered her hand and I reached for it, but my hand did not move.  She bent down, grabbing it, and I noticed my emaciated arm that she had taken.  I had been in this delusional state in this dark cell for longer than I likely knew.

At the very end of the hallway, I tried tugging her back as I saw the shadow of a guard coming.  She shook her head and sure enough the form on the wall had turned around and started walking away without ever turning the corner.  We walked through some sort of facility, and it was uncanny that at every turn someone would be walking through the opposite door, or turned engaged in something.  We continued in the strange ballad of perfect timing until we came out to a ship pad.

Proud Infinity pt 30

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Here we go guys, getting near the end, I hope you are ready for some pretty big plot twists!

 

In a moment I realized it partly might have been a distraction.  From two sides we were attacked.  Mitreah was engaged with one group on the other side of the room.

“Tre!” Proud yelled my name.  I glanced to my left seeing her form between me and a squad that had come into the door.  The next instant her form was bending over as the rounds from their rifles were entering her body.  Her body moved a bit, dancing slowly from their energy hitting her.  I had once found out she truly could take rounds in our physical dimension if she ‘lowered’ herself enough to the base level, but was bound by certain rules regarding the consequence.

“Proud!”  I yelled to her slumping form as I lifted my unlimited Liner pistol and unloaded round after electro-magnetically propelled round into the group, leaving them holed and dead.  I had taken out four skilled men with a commercially available pistol.  That is how far I had come.

“Proud!”  I yelled again, running to her.

She was kneeling, and turned her head towards me, tears in her eyes.  “It hurts.  What a terrible sensation!  In future resets do not stand there so I will not have to feel this.”  She managed a grim smile and went back to looking downwards.  From her body there was not blood leaking out, but rather a light blue energy that was barely visible from her bullet holes before disappearing in the air.  Her eyes were closed, and despite how bad her body was massacred, I would almost swear the wounds were disappearing, but why were her eyes closed!?

“Proud!”  I yelled again, and then my eyes went wide as a fire ripped through my shoulder.  The momentum from the bullet entered my shoulder and threw me to the ground, stumbling forward over Proud.  I hit the ground, and panic from the pain threatened to completely take over my mind.  Only the simple thought of noticing Proud trying to get back up kept me sane.

I lifted my head to see a heavily armed squad from the other door that was firing at Mitreah.  A huge round entered her body, exploding out from her backside along with a grim mix of organic tissue and metallic substrates.  She staggered for a moment and continued onwards into the fire.  Another round hit her in her other arm, a piece of it flying off from the energy.  I could visibly see how much momentum there was pushing against her in bullets as she staggered forward.

She stabbed the first one though the chest as another round from the man next to him ripped through her body.  I saw her pause for a moment, gathering strength perhaps for her slash out of that body into the next one.  It cut the next man in half while the final man backed up professionally, firing coldly at the target in front of him.

“Mitreah!” I yelled, coughing from the pain.  I thought she was going to go down right there with her slumping form.  She was slowly going down, then I saw a poise take over her body as she launched at her final target, stabbing her arm into him, pulling downwards as the two of them fell into each other, dead or dying.

Another person came from the other door.  I used much of my focus I had gained with Mitreah while in extreme pain to line my pistol up and shoot the two of them dead before they could do anything to our wounded party.

‘No…It doesn’t end like this.’  I tried standing up, and when it failed I contented myself with crawling over to the railing.  Below me was a spherical core of blue and white energy that hung suspended between two huge rotating metal braces, a white light softly radiating outwards.  Though the light was white, I knew its true evil nature.  I had been its victim enough times.

I activated the bomb, and lay there as a thought hit me.  Should I just abort and try again?  But…a deep fear came to the surface that maybe indeed this was ‘real’, that I had no second chance, and that all my lives were really just an illusion; that thought seemed easier to dismiss, but the idea that something critical had changed and I would not reset seemed likely.  At the very least what if something had changed by me being so far in here?  I could not take the chance.  The sacrifices to get here been too great to risk it ending in failure.

I pressed on both out of a fear that maybe this really was my only life, and another feeling of if I really had lived a million lives that I just wanted this to end.  I rolled to my side, grasping the bomb with the opposite, non-shot hand, and laughing once as I pitched it off the edge to the core a few stories under me.  So this is how it ends…

I turned back around, maybe ready to die when I saw those three scientists still there.  “Like I’m letting you out of here.  We are all dying here.”  I lifted my pistol and shot the three of them who tried to run, before I felt fire enter my stomach from a different angle and I blacked out.

 

***

 

“Uhh…pain…” I woke up half expecting the softness of my pillow I had seen so many times.  But this time I was already standing, my body was trying to fall down held up by what seemed to be chains on my wrists.

“So the terrorist is finally awake, huh?”  There was a voice in front of me.  Something painful hit me in the stomach, and I coughed hard as my head swung back and forth.  I felt some saliva leaking out of my mouth, but I could barely bring myself to swallow it.  What was going on?

“Why did you do it, Trego?  Why’d you sell out your whole race?” the voice asked.  I couldn’t see anything.  Was I blind?  Fear flooded me at the thought of never seeing again.  “Is ‘Trego’ even your real name?  Who are you an agent for!?”

No strikes to my body from the voice, and no further prompts for a while let me think about what was just said.  Something critical had changed in my reality.  I definitely was not where I usually was when I ‘died’ or the cycle ended.  Was the loop I was in over?  The voice said selling out my race and being an agent.  I remember once a long time ago I had indeed thought that maybe I was part of an experiment to see how long I would go before I’d break.  Was this what it was about?

I thought not though, because I had lasted impossibly long.  I had resorted to killing myself before going through with this; what more would a military or whatever want with me?  How could I have passed the test any more so when I resisted for so long?

“What race?” I asked the darkness.  Maybe I was not even Solarian, just a butterfly dreaming he was…

Damn, was I really an agent?  No way…but why did I decide to blow up a reactor?

Proud Infinity pt 26

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I hope you guys picked up the books, I will continue pasting Proud Infinity sections, but hope you got them!

 

“Is it true you are here just to help maintain my sanity?” I asked.  I had slowly pieced that together.  From what I had figured out, LineGods like Proud occasionally interfaced with ‘acting agents’ or whatever we were called.  In situations like this, the time loops can be so mentally breaking that the agent does not ever act correctly so the LineGod interface is created.  What I was not sure of was if the fact Proud was here meant I would not have ever gotten out of this on my own, or if she was a ‘reward’ of sorts, or what exactly.

“One of my reasons.”  She was swinging her legs off the bench like a little girl.

“It fucked me up for a long time the first couple times we had sex, or I tried killing you.”

Her face was sad as she looked downwards.  The bow and her long green hair hid her face.  “Yeah, I felt so bad for you during that time.”

“I used to think ‘why the hell is this girl here, she is only making it worse.’  I see that’s not the case now.”

She smiled at me.  “I am glad.  I am only here to help.”

“I see that now.  Most of what I do is to eventually get out of here, and on some level to help you because I care about you.”

I looked at her and thought back to the myriad of thoughts I once had about her.  She was a manifestation of some universal will in a way that would most synch with me.  It was disturbing at first, maybe a touch of shame to see my perfect embodiment of a female in physical form, but given her tailored traits I quickly came to like her.

“For a long time I stayed distant from you because I felt like it was this ultimate manipulation.  Something crafted just for me, in a way to be this trap I would fall for.  Like I was some dumb animal lured in by an intriguing girl.”

“You were harder to convince than some others.  Your skepticism was an advantage as well as a clear negative in terms of us having a good harmonic rate.”

I grabbed her hand, and we held hands as we watched the ducks swim around.  “What I realized, and this is hard to state, is that you were just a ‘child’ of the universe much in the same way as I was.  You are much more so, but you were not the universe, so much as just this thing it spit out.  Haha, that sounds so bad.”

She laughed too.  “It’s okay.”

“But that you were a person – sort of – like me that was stuck in this.  You were the only one who knew what was going on.  The only one I could talk to, even if you couldn’t answer everything I asked.  You became my friend, the only one I could turn to.”

“That was kind of the point!  Of course I was here to help your mind, and to eventually have you do the right thing to break this loop.”

“What happens when we break out of it?”

“Don’t know, never happened!”

It made me laugh a little.  “Are your Chrono Senses perfect?”

“That is a weird question to me, but as you understand it, yes.  I see all the paths that we can take.  However, there is a break that occurs, and of course, until we break out of this, I cannot see the next cycle.  It is a pretty strange thing for me.”

“Are you…uh, hard to say, but like have you done this before?”

She shook her head, giggling; she seemed like a kid again to me.  “No, this is the first time I have been created, so you are my first.”

I sighed a bit.  “Good, I don’t feel as stupid.”

“I am part of the Line, so I was vaguely aware before this, but as an individual, no this is completely new to me.  I have had a very good time with you.  I feel quite lucky to have been granted creation!”

“Anyway, I think I have most of this ready to go.  I got a few key players into position, and I have made it into ReCorp a few times but also get killed pretty early.  I have not tried in a long time, and got a lot of training with Mitreah, and some tactics from that old guy.  I guess we are going to figure out if I can make this stop fairly soon.”

The wind blew and some of the mist hit us.  It felt cold.  Real.

I continued, “I am glad I met you Proud, you have been fun to get to know.  If it ends, and you are gone, or I die, I am still happy to have met you.  To go through this with, as dark as it has been.”

“Don’t talk like that.” She separated her hand from mine and rubbed my hair.  I leaned into her and let her continue massaging my head.  I was happy to feel her hands on me.  Her soft fingers played over my eyes, going through my scalp, and just the nice feeling of her stomach and ribs methodically breathing.

“It is getting late,” she began, “are you going to end it?”

“No, I want to spend all the time with you.”

“Okay.  Me too.”  She tickled my chest, bringing her finger up and down.  I kept my eyes closed so I would not know.  I only kept focusing on the nice feelings before I was hit with the most tremendous pain imaginable for a few short moments.

 

Proud Infinity pt 22

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How many annihilations ago was that?  A thousand?  A million!?

In the absolute darkness of my being and existence Proud had saved me from the darkness of myself, showing me my own light by simply exposing hers.  Taking a few deep breaths, trying to wipe the tears away I recalled some of the positive things I had figured out during the focus of every time after that, since I decided to actually get serious.

Right, remember the things I had figured out even during the darkness.  Like how my repetition of a hundred different phrases and conversation branches allowed me to sleep with numerous girls, showing me I could find out almost anything from anyone with exactly the right prompts.  What was initially fueled by dark sexual desire proved to be very useful in the fact I could use perfect conversation choices positively, and not having anything to do with sex.

The old guy at the fence?  Indeed he was in the Space Forces as he claimed, but he also was a special operator.  What did I learn?  I rubbed my eyes, trying to recall.  Definitely some stuff about infiltration and explosives.  What exactly had he taught me?

What was hard was that I could no longer separate ‘my’ knowledge with what I had learned from others simply teaching me.  A thousand repetitions with the same person, each ‘cycle’ simply advancing the conversation as far as I had learned from the prior cycle, allowing me to eventually learn everything a person was capable of teaching.

I got up and left, slightly energized by the memory I was actually making progress.  Normally later in the day the old man would be over-looking the pit, but long ago figured out where he lived.

I went to his house, knocked on the door and he was much more suspicious and cold compared to his more jovial act at the overlook.

“What do you want?” he asked through a chained door.

“Coding Alpha Delta,” I let it sink in a little.  “We need to talk.”

From my view, I saw the one eye looking at me through the chain blink once, then he unchained the door.  He put the pistol under the slot on the table like he always did, not knowing I had been killed by it quite a few times.

By playing the role of an agent from the highest reaches of Solarian intel, I was able to learn a lot from him.  At this point I was sure I had exhausted everything he had to tell me, but it was a good reminder.

Had I always known that an innocent nano block used to repair stuff could be overrode to create controlled directional explosions?  Had I always known my Liner pistol could be turbo charged simply by taking over the cover and turning the limiter off?

I doubted it, but there was no way to know. Knowledge was a strange thing to me that often hung at the edge of my understanding.  Given all the loops I had been through, what was ‘my’ knowledge melted away into this strange mixture of things I now knew from others.

The old man had just finished showing me how to take the limiter off my Liner pistol; I could probably do it better than him at this point.

“You still have the explosives you were tasked with, right?”

“Are you requesting transference, Operator?” he asked back.

At this point everything was growing dark.

“Negative, just need to make sure.  But I always knew you still did.”  I lifted my Liner pistol up.

“What…are you doing?” he asked, concerned.

“Resetting,”  I said.  I pulled the trigger as I ended my life in a far less painful way.