Corpo Age-Chapter 272: Final Hunt Pt.7

I slowly walked into the room without pointing my gun away from Silas. I had my Nyes spread out around my shoulders to capture a three-sixty of the room instead. The walk toward his desk was long and narrow, only opening up in a circle around his desk. On both sides of the room were various decorations like wooden sculptures, artwork, and some antique electronics.

The closer I got, the more my urge to pull the trigger grew, but I restrained myself. The closer proximity also allowed me to see telltale signs of installations embedded into the ceiling and floor in Silas’ immediate surroundings. As one of the higher-ups of SocialCorp, it was almost a given that there was an energy shield generator in his office to protect him. There could be hidden passageways for him to escape through, too, so firing when I was still a distance away would only give him a head start. It was better to close the distance.

I did just that and only stopped at the point where the corridor opened up to the wider part of his office space.

“Stand up and come over here, Silas. You’re coming with me,” I lied.

The back of his seat was facing me as he continued to face other the window that was showing the feed of some city.

“Hm, if you don’t want to come any closer, that’s fine. I have no intention of taking your life. Never had, really. You’re more valuable to me alive, but I can see how you find it hard to trust me.”

“I’m not here to talk. Get over here, now!”

The man finally turned to face me, flashing me a confident smile.

“You performed better than I expected. I thought the Executors would be enough. For that, I humbly admit defeat.” He bowed his head. “However, I can’t afford to lose. I can’t afford to entrust the future of our race to opportunists and idealists the likes your faction is composed of.”

I lowered my head to look through the sights of the Light Judgement in assault rifle mode. I only had one hand, but it was more than capable of supporting the weight.

“Seems like you’ve made your choice,” I declared, and then squeezed the trigger.

A bright light flickered into existence as the particle beam vaporized Silas’ internals—or so I would have liked. As I suspected, an energy shield blocked the way. Having expected this, I was already sprinting toward him to follow up with another attack. I threw away my gun in the process and proceeded to draw the remaining half of the molecular divider from Ferrumus.

The blade was only as long as the hilt now, but it still could still cut, and that’s all I needed from it.

Silas strangely remained calm and the holo-emitter in his desk activated, projecting a screen between us.

I didn’t know what he was up to, but I continued lunging toward him. I made it to his desk, where the energy shield had manifested, and swung down with my sword. I felt calm as my hand went past his desk without any hindrance, but that was when I made eye contact with him. He brought up his hand just as fast as I moved, despite having no visible chrome. I watched it carefully, prepared to respond to his action, but his palm simply came to a stop as it faced me.

“Stop,” he proclaimed. “Look at what is on the screen first.”

I was going to ignore him, but with the cognitive speed my bio-coprocessor afforded me, I had the leeway to take a peek at the screen. What was shown immediately felt familiar to me. It only took me a tenth of a second to realize it was just outside my office in Elevate City, in the work area for dozens of our employees. In fact, I recognized the people sitting at the desks. They were all frozen stiff while staring at me—no, in the direction of the camera.

I frowned at the scene. It was obviously a threat. One that I had to take seriously considering SocialCorp’s resources. If he had a deadman switch to some bomb he planted, I needed to hack into his systems to disable it first. That’s why I stopped my swing and glared at him. Behind me, my Nyes were working their way toward this low life.

“Is this your last gambit?” I laced as much venom as I could into my tone. I needed to buy some time to hack into his systems. “This is it? A high and mighty executive of SocialCorp, resorting to cheap threats? You really think this will stop me?”

“You’ve stopped, haven’t you?” he shot back.

“Even if you do this, there’d be no benefit to you,” I put on an act to persuade him. “I won’t let you go regardless of what you do. It’s just I’d rather not lose innocent lives if I can help it. My previous offer still stands. Come with me, and I won’t kill you.”

“Bargaining for my life is not my goal. You can do what you want with me.”

“What?” I couldn’t hold back and blurted out in surprise.

“If I’m to lose, then I at least want to know the person who vanquished has the resolve to back up their words. From our talks, I understand your motives are the same as mine—for the betterment of society. I need you to know that victory is before your eyes. Just know that all the people you know will be the cost you have to bear.”

There was movement on the screen. Someone came into view from behind the camera. He panned across my office toward the three personal offices for Claire, Thorne, and me. Inside our rooms, there were even more employees tied up inside. They were filled to the brim with people except for the office in the middle, specifically, my office. There were only four people there: Leo, Lana, Flo, and Lucy. They were practically the top-level management I had left in charge of our headquarters.

“Mr. Halls? Why have you frozen up? Please prove your resolve and finish what you must,” Silas said with a sneer. “I believe you’ve treated your employees quite well until now. They only have to work six days a week, I hear? You’ve compensated them well. It’s time for them to pay their dues.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

This bastard had likely investigated every single one of my actions in the past the moment I drew his attention. He was hoping to prove I didn’t have the guts to sacrifice the lives of my employees. Was I coming off as such a good guy until now?

Either way, while he was talking, I was busy with the new connections my Nyes made. Surprisingly, they found nothing to connect to on Silas. The man was entirely organic, but his holo-emitter was another story. It was giving us a live feed to Earth somehow, so my attention was redirected toward taking over this connection.

As if sensing my attempts, Silas suddenly let out a chuckle.

“I’ve been observing you, Mr. Halls. While your efforts are commendable, I would suggest you give more thought to my ultimatum. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to disable the deadman switch we installed around the explosives strapped to your headquarters.”

No matter how confident I was in dealing with this situation, I was definitely feeling creeped out by this guy now. His obsession with making me resolve myself to take out my employees was strange, to say the least. I couldn’t understand why he was so eager to die and also bring down innocents along with him. I seriously doubted his previous words about not being a sore loser.

“Tell me, what makes you so confident in this deadman switch of yours?” I asked in order to buy more time.

“Your actions of trying to hack into our comms clearly demonstrate your lack of understanding of how quantum communication networks work. There’s no way for a novice like you to be able to disrupt what even an expert would find impossible.”

“Is that all you have? You’re seriously willing to die as long as you bring some of my employees down with you? You do realize my closest allies aren’t even there, right?”

“Of course, you refer to COO and head of security. While I would’ve loved to include them, things never turn out perfectly in the real world and I accept that. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to allow you to keep a few trusted allies in what you plan to do next. I hope you understand my greatest enemy is neither you nor that fool, Krai. It’s the corrupt and greedy fools that allowed our society to become stagnant for so long.”

“If you recognized you lost, then why don’t you join us instead? We may not be implementing your plan of choice, but having your assistance would only increase our chances against these hated enemies of yours.”

He calmly shook his head, completely disregarding his own life. His eyes showed he had no willpower to cling to his life anymore.

“No, that wouldn’t help your cause as much as you think. After this war, there will inevitably be a moment of weakness for the winner of this conflict. If I join forces with you now, all these insatiable leeches will realize something is up and rally together. Only by eliminating me will Krai be able to keep them in line.”

“This—You planned for a scenario like that to happen?”

Silas said nothing and simply looked at me.

“Prepare yourself for what you will have to shoulder from now on and finish me off. I’ve disabled the energy shield around me.”

Silas Vexel - SocialCorp

Silas carefully regarded the man in jet-black power armor across from him. His face was hidden behind the helmet, but through his long ears of dealing with people, he could clearly tell how pensive he was.

Seeing how undeceive he was, Silas couldn’t help but reminisce about his past self when he was just as green.

It had been unfortunate how things turned out, but Silas didn’t regret it. It was comforting to know his opponents had the same end goal as him. He brushed off the difference in methodology due to their different experiences.

Silas had been involved in the corporate world for as long as he could remember. He witnessed the worst of people and how that vileness could easily be spread like the worst contagious disease. This was especially so when that vileness came from the top. For better or worse, people imitated their leaders and would do things they thought they could get away with.

He knew both Krai and this Rollo Halls were fundamentally different from him. They were brought up in the streets. Naive people like them foolishly believed in the goodness of others. That same naivety made keeping the population stupid an easy task. All that was needed was limited education and some creative marketing. While they proved a few members of this lower caste could uplift themselves, their core nature couldn’t be changed.

To Silas, the idea of trusting in the intelligence of the general populace was ludicrous. His years of research and study showed that the majority of them were like animals. They were shortsighted and easily fooled. The corporate caste had practically reinstated slavery and none of them knew any better. Just by framing things as a job and giving them the illusion of choice, they had even gotten these slaves to take care of themselves, saving their owners the trouble. No longer would their well-being be their concern, nor would they have to pay for their board. It was essentially a more advanced form of slavery, where the maintenance cost for slave owners was even cheaper.

Silas was just happy the end could be seen for all these malpractices. No longer would humanity condone their self-destructive behaviors for the sake of short-term profits. Whether his rivals succeeded or not, he believed things would definitely be changing. They were already at rock bottom, which meant there was only one way to go from here.

“Mr. Halls? If you’re hesitating this much for just a bunch of employees, perhaps you would like to rethink your plans? If you can’t shoulder the responsibility of mankind, perhaps you should step aside so I can implement the much-needed change instead. Tell Krai I am dead, and take a body I had prepared to him. You can retire from this conflict and take a tour of the solar system while I finish what must be done.”

“Is that your true end goal?” the young upstart executive asked. “You were just trying to play mind games in order to get me to betray NPC?”

“I am making you do nothing,” Silas defended. “The decision is in your hands.”

Another moment of silence ensued, much to the dismay of Silas. He couldn’t believe the person who had bested his plans was this indecisive. He had allowed himself to be at the mercy of someone who turned out so unimpressive. Perhaps he should consider more drastic actions instead.

Silas was just about to compile a message to his agent back on Earth when the man before him finally broke the silence.

“Okay, I’ve decided.”

“Don’t keep me in the dark here. You answer?”

“I’ll shoulder the responsibility that you wanted to so much. It’s just that I won’t be sacrificing anything in the process. This is checkmate.”

Silas was just feeling at peace during the first part of his words, only for him to quickly break out a frown. He looked up in confusion at the man, who slowly sheathed his half-broken sword and drew his sidearm before pointing it at his face. He recognized it as a work from Premier Arms, a cheap mass-market model that only had the selling point of being very quiet. He didn’t concern himself with it for long, as he was too busy wondering what the young man meant.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let you go without an explanation.

The scene depicted on the holographic projector panned without Silas giving the order to do so. Then a packet of information was sent to his SAID. He opened it to view the contents, and he could only suck in his breath in response. He exhaled in understanding and turned his eyes back to the man before him. The moment his eyes landed on the cold barrel of the pistol, the soft whimper from the subsonic weapon reached his ears before his vision faded to black.