It was there, just as I’d suspected. Hanging from the ceiling, on some kind of swivel mount, was the biggest gun I’d ever seen—outside of the WWII tanks.

  It was pointed right at me, right at the slit in the partially opened door that I was peeking through. We’d probably attracted their attention with all the vandalism we’d been doing to the door. I assumed the only reason they hadn’t started firing yet was because the door would offer decent cover.

  As if they were reading my mind, the door beeped and tried to open. It didn’t get far before getting caught on one of Cloridan’s daggers. He’d stuck it in near the frame, to make sure we didn’t open the door too far.

  Whoever was in charge of the gun didn’t like that, because they opened fire. I jerked back, as much in an automatic reaction to the noise as it was in fear for my life.

  “Strong door,” Cloridan commented.

  “Not that strong,” I replied. It was disintegrating before our eyes. As yet, no bullets had made it through, but at this rate, it was only a matter of time.

  [Static Image]

  I cast an image of the door, behind the door, from my perspective. From the point of view of the gun’s controller, the door had been restored to pristine condition and was no longer affected by the hail of bullets they were putting out. The bullets were still slamming into the door, of course, but what they couldn’t see… didn’t hurt me?

  It took them a moment to notice. At least, I assumed that was why they stopped firing. Robot guns had a very limited emotional range, so it was hard to tell if it was confused.

  “Should I just go in invisible?” Cloridan asked. “I can cut it down off the roof, and we can get on with our day.”

  I thought about it, but I didn’t have anything better. I sighed and made with the [Greater Invisibility].

  Once invisible, Cloridan strolled up to the remains of the door. He reached into some convenient bullet holes and pulled it out of its frame. Setting it aside in the corridor, he confidently walked through the illusion.

  A little while after that, there was a screech of metal, followed by a crash. I cancelled the wall image and walked into the room. Ah, they still had some cameras. I waved to one before I wrapped both of them with small blankets via two casts of [Phantasmal Object]. It cost a little more, but it would last longer.

  Cloridan waved the gun at me, for what reason I don’t know. He couldn’t really communicate with me when he was invisible. I cancelled the spell.

  “I don’t think I can fire this thing,” Cloridan said. His disappointment was evident.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to,” I said, taking a look at the gun. “Guns this heavy aren’t supposed to be fired by people.”

  “Oh, the weight isn’t a problem,” Cloridan said, hefting the whole assembly with one hand. “I just can’t find the trigger.”

  I wanted to scoff at the idea but my adventurer habits wouldn’t let me pass up an increase in firepower. I took a closer look.

  “To start with, you can cut this off, and lose that cable,” I said, pointing to what looked like a telescopic sight welded to the frame. “That’s the camera.”

  “Sure thing,” Cloridan said, pulling out a dagger.

  “Wait!” I pushed the gun so it wasn’t pointing at the open doorway the others were going to arrive through. “If you’re going to work on it, make sure it isn’t going to fire on its own.”

  I looked for an ammo clip. Instead of that, there was a belt of bullets, much like the ones I’d seen in war movies. Unlike those belts, this one had been torn off and was only about a foot long.

  “Where’s the rest of this?” I asked. Cloridan pointed at the ceiling.

  “That’s where the rest of the ammo is, then,” I told him. “Do you want to dig it out?”

  “Eh. Sounds like too much trouble,” he said, carefully setting the gun down.

  I shrugged and looked at the rest of our party as they arrived. “Which way to the control room?” I asked Lucas.

  He looked up at the cameras, covered in cloth, before he pointed at the right door.

  I nodded and gestured for everyone to back out of the room, except for Cloridan. I made us both invisible and then I cast [Static Image] on the two doors we weren’t going through. Then I pushed the button to open the door.

  Nothing happened.

  I sensed Cloridan was puzzled. I could only see his outline, but I got the impression from the way he was cocking to the side.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I’m pretty sure they’re leading us into an ambush,” I projected with [Sourceless Sound]. “I thought they might be tired of getting their doors wrecked, but I guess not.”

  Cloridan shrugged and plunged his daggers into the door again. By now, he had a pretty good idea of where to stab and wasn’t just trying to find the locking mechanism by blind luck.

  At the same moment as his dagger shorted out the lock, the two other doors in the room opened. Two cyber-zombies were behind each door, and they… stood stock still.

  They must have been confused by the illusions of blank walls that were in front of them. I didn’t wait for them to figure out that they could just walk through them. I could see through my own illusions, which meant that I could target through them.

  [Phantom World].

  I cast it four times. Controlling four sensoriums would be a challenge even for my System-enhanced mind, but I made things easy for myself by just blanking everything out.

  The four cyber-zombies whirled around in a fairly convincing imitation of panic. I wondered how they were being controlled. Did each one have a human behind the screen using a joystick? Or did they all take orders from a single human controller, but act autonomously?

  Despite being armed, they didn’t start shooting randomly. I was glad for that. It might have made it easier to get them to shoot each other, but with so many potential shooters, I was worried about stray shots.

  Since they were being so restrained, I thought it would be worthwhile testing their reactions. I had one of them see an image of me, walking away from them.

  The zombie I’d targeted lunged forward. I’d placed the image so the lunge took it into the main room. Even though the only thing it could see was the bait I’d dangled, it didn’t stumble. The zombie’s senses, whatever they were, must still be functioning. They weren’t passed on to the controllers, but they let the monster move around without difficulty.

  I let the image of me fade out and cast [Sourceless Sound].

  “Cloridan… take a stab, see if it dodges you.”

  I couldn’t see if he rolled his eyes, but he dashed in close to make an attack. As expected, the zombie dodged and even took a swipe at Cloridan in return. Sadly, the claw-like hand it was using was the one that was holding the gun, so the swipe was slow and clumsy. Clordidan dodged it easily and took a step back out of range. The monster did not follow.

  Could I control them like this? It was worth trying, so I restored one monster’s sensorium, editing out all the other zombies and pasting an image of Cloridan over one of the remaining monsters. It looked around… as if it was suspicious, I thought. I had the image of Cloridan charge it, and it opened fire.

  It hit the target I was aiming at, but as the targeted zombie jerked and spasmed under the hail of bullets, the other two zombies seemed to lose their reserve. They started firing randomly.

  I dodged. I’d been told that the System wouldn’t let a dodging person get hit by unaimed fire, but I didn’t want to test it. I dived down to the floor and barely had the presence of mind to use [Sourceless Sound] again.

  “Shoot ‘em! Shoot ‘em! Shoot ‘em!”

  Cloridan was so quick to respond that he may not have been waiting for me. His gun was absolutely silent, but the thudding impact of the bullets was easy to see. With their senses impaired, they were nothing but a shooting gallery for him.

  That didn’t mean they went down easy, though. It took more than one shot, or ten for that matter, to take them down. Cloridan emptied the last of his cyberpunk guns and dropped it to the floor. He kept firing, though, the sound of the bullets’ impact changing as he switched to WWII ammo.

  The sound of gunfire was replaced with the ringing in my ears as the last of them fell. Cloridan hadn’t been making a sound, but the zombies sure had been. The smell of…cordite? Gunpowder? Whatever it was that these guns used, the room smelled of it pretty strongly. I lay on the ground for a second while Cloridan started stripping the corpses of guns and ammo. I suspected that the Heckler & Koches that the zombies carried would be his new favourite gun.

  The rest of the party came creeping forward now that the firefight had stopped. I cancelled [Greater Invisibility] so I could talk to them.

  “It went well?” Borys asked.

  “Eh, so-so,” I said. “I was hoping I’d be able to control them by controlling their vision, but it didn’t work as well as I’d planned. I’m better off just blinding them.”

  “Did they disbelieve it?”

  “No, they couldn’t. But the people behind them could. That didn’t end the spell, but they could just choose not to act on what they saw. That didn’t make them effective, but…”

  “But not the easily controlled pawns that you hoped for.” Borys finished for me.

  I pouted. “I wanted some zombie foot soldiers as well, dammit!”

  Borys chuckled and held out a hand to help me up again.

  “You think that’s it?” he asked. “No more zombies?”

  “Not between us and the committee,” I said. “I’m speculating here, but if they had more, they’d have sent more. There must be more in the facility, but Sarotheil can take care of them if they show.

  The demon was guarding our rear. The boys had seen enough of how he fought, and now we were keeping him away from the frontline as much as we could, to avoid him seeing all of our tricks.

  “So what’s next?” Borys asked.

  “We’ll see,” I said. I pushed the button for the lift. To my surprise, it turned green. A moment later the doors opened with a ding.

  “I guess they got tired of the game where they tried to stop us and we wrecked their stuff,” I said.

  “Or it’s a trap,” Borys said.

  “It’s always a trap,” I agreed. “But that’s what [Phantasmal Emissary] is for.

  I cast the spell and gestured for Cloridan, still invisible, to join it.

  “Let’s see if they’re willing to negotiate,” I said. My Emissary pushed the button for the second floor.

  I was half expecting some kind of traditional trap, like a trap door or gas pouring out of a vent. But none of that happened. The lift went up, the doors opened, revealing a simple corridor.

  I stepped out first, looking around, up and behind me. There was a camera tucked up in the corner, but nothing else. I moved forward, letting Cloridan follow behind.

  Before I reached the door at the end of the corridor, it opened and a woman stepped through. She was tall, with an elegant, poised demeanour and she had shoulder-length ash-blonde hair tied back in a loose bun. She looked at me as if I was some shit she’d scraped off her shoe.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish,” she said, her voice sharp but tinged with exhaustion. “But you should know that you’ve significantly reduced the chances of Mankind’s survival. Before you feel the need to destroy any more crucial infrastructure, why don’t you come in and deliver your demands.”