Rune Zero by Hugo Huesca

Author:Hugo Huesca [Huesca, Hugo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LitRPG
ISBN: 1545241481
Amazon: B06ZXTH35R
Goodreads: 34875982
Published: 2017-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

John had been dragging David for several feet when the hacker’s legs caught up with what was expected of them.

He jogged alongside the agent as a sea of terrified students ran, screaming, in all directions. Some of them towards the site of the accident, bravely —or stupidly— thinking it was just that, an accident, and perhaps there were people there who needed help.

No human force was going to help Wade Phillips, sadly. Technology was simply not advanced enough to heal a hit from a bus at full speed. It probably wouldn’t be twenty years from now, either.

Technology was advanced enough to let every student inside the bus survive with only some scratches and a broken bone or two. Kudos to the engineers.

David was having the time of his life. Why was everyone running? Hell, why was he running?

He began to laugh as he ran. He threw his fist in the air, feeling the breeze pass around his body.

He blinked and the scene changed. He was lying horizontally in a grassy field. Police helicopters (human-manned. Fool me once, and all that) were flying in. Fire trucks were near, he could hear their screeching. Paramedics. Media. You name it, they were here.

But, his field of vision was occupied mostly by John Derry, standing in front of him. A giant judge, deciding if he’d wield the sword or the olive branch.

Here’s what John did. He reached down and slapped David’s face, hard enough to make him see stars. If he had slapped a TV screen, it would’ve blacked out for a second. David’s face did the same.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you—”

“You were in shock.”

“Oh.” David felt he was himself again. His face hurt. He was sure the agent’s hand was now imprinted in his cheek. It stung, too. “Thanks. I feel better.”

Beat. Pause. His mind was placing all subroutines back online. Your system just went through a small safety protocol to minimize lasting psychological damage. Thanks for understanding. Do you want to send a bug report?

David realized John just tried to take him out of shock by slapping him hard.

“You think you can take a man out of shock by slapping him?”

John had the gall to act unimpressed. “I’m not a psychologist. It seems like it worked, doesn’t it? You’re making sense again.”

“I’m pretty sure shock doesn’t work that way.”

John helped him stand up. Standing up made him dizzy, and being dizzy made him remember the sight of Wade Phillips crushed underneath the bus. David’s stomach began a popular uprising inside his body.

“Technically, you weren’t in medical shock. You were having an acute stress reaction —different from medical shock. So—”

David doubled over the grass and emptied the contents of his stomach. That was a liquid stream of tube-fed nutrient mixture. His throat burned with pain and threatened to close up.

When he had finished, John handed him a handkerchief the agent kept in his pocket. “Feeling better?”

The hacker accepted the cloth and cleaned himself as best as he could, all the while feeling pitifully sorry for himself.

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