Shutdown by Johnson Kyle

Author:Johnson, Kyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

Lone Star of Shadow

Nightshade slipped through the darkness of the end of the night, hugging the side of a huge, mostly crumbled building to avoid the sharp eyes of the sentries posted on the roof of his target. Death essence flowed around him, cloaking him in a haze of shadows, and he blended perfectly into the blackness surrounding him, but he still moved carefully and cautiously. A redheaded bitch taught him the dangers of overconfidence, a lesson he’d learned well and refused to repeat.

He seemed to recall a time when he’d though that he was receiving the benefits of the best tech available in this new world. He’d been given all sorts of gadgets to make his job easier, and he thought those devices were the pinnacle of human creation at the time. The NSM showed him how wrong he was. He thought that he’d once considered his former compatriots to be models of efficiency, but he now knew that wasn’t the case. People took ideas off on wild tangents, focused on their own projects, or gave up when something seemed too difficult or complex. They argued as egos clashed and sometimes refused to cooperate with others who might make their creations better but would ask for equal credit.

None of that happened under Slim Casey’s rule. Everyone worked together without complaint, focusing only on his master’s stated goals without deviation. Egos never intervened with progress, and no one abandoned a project unless ordered to do so. That excess of focus and determination resulted in myriad new technologies that the SE could only dream of, including his upgraded shadow cloak and armor that passively drained his essence to protect him, never taking more than his natural regeneration could restore.

That progress sped up noticeably with the arrival of the dragon, who seemed to be an endless font of knowledge about the Shift and the Facets. Nightshade wondered if the creature was the true creator of the cylinder tucked into the satchel at his hip. He remembered that he’d once thought it was impossible to store Spirit energy inside a device. Obviously, he was wrong since the cylinder pulsed with that stored power. He couldn’t imagine a human mind coming up with something so complex, but the dragon…

Nightshade shivered as he thought of the mighty beast. While he appreciated what it had done for the NSM, he knew that his missions were carried out at its urging. Everything he did benefitted the dragon, not Slim Casey, and that thought rankled him. He wanted to serve his master, not some monster, no matter how powerful and dangerous it might be. However, he also wanted to live, and he knew the dragon could snuff him out with only a hint of effort, so he followed orders and did what the creature needed him to do.

This mission seemed liked a fairly pointless one to him. He didn’t need the device on his hip to complete it; he thought he could kill his target pretty easily by himself.

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