Kate was still on all fours while clutching her stab wound to the chest. Dan charged at the last Kodak agent and delivered a diagonal slash across his armor. The agent fell to his knees and keeled over. For a moment, the desert was now desolate and the sounds of combat had subsided. Dan sheathed his Conservative and exchanged glances with Li. The stealth specialist yanked his combat knife out of the neck of a dead agent and responded with a thumbs up.

  “Kate!” Adam said. The skull-faced agent rushed over to her.

  The blond didn’t respond as she was still coughing up blood. Dan recalled that he didn’t have any healing items on him.

  “We need to get farther away from that damned wall,” Li said. “It’s a miracle no one at the top has shot at us yet.”

  Adam picked up Kate and carried her in his arms. “Over there. Let’s make a run for those sand dunes and try to lay low for a bit.”

  The skull-faced agent began sprinting through the desert with Kate in his arms. Dan and Li followed suit, pushing themselves to keep pace with the Kodak agent. Dan refrained from using his berserk or warp dancer and Li held back from using his death step. It would be a waste of their corrosia energy and they had no clue what other hardships this wasteland had in store for them.

  Dan and Li were neck and neck with each other as they both rushed up the first sand dune while Adam lept once he reached the top. He turned to his teammate.

  “Hey Li, you got any healing stims on you?”

  “Unfortunately not. I had at least one in my inner pockets but it got destroyed during that hunt for the cult master. When we got separated, I had a close encounter with a Church agent. That fanatic smashed the damn thing while we grappled with each other.”

  “That sucks,” Dan said.

  “Why do you need it? I thought you already have a healing factor. And it looks like you recovered from your disorientation. Otherwise you wouldn’t have chopped those Kodak agents to pieces.”

  “I was hoping to give it to Kate,” he said softly.

  Li didn’t give an immediate response. The two of them reached the top of the sand dune and lept over it just like Adam. They both slid down the downward slope and reached the bottom, only to resume their run toward the next sand dune.

  “So… you and Kate are friends now?” Li asked pensively.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But being down one ally isn’t good for us. Especially since we’re trying to escape.”

  Li didn’t press further as they both focused their attention on running through the desert, climbing and jumping down sand dunes and putting more distance between them and the defensive wall around the city. The duo eventually slid down the last sand dune and they saw Adam and Kate at the bottom.

  When Dan’s feet hit the sand, he rushed over toward the pair. Adam was crouched beside Kate who was lying down flat on her back.

  “How is she holding up?” Dan asked.

  Adam’s skull-faced helmet remained firmly down at Kate. Then the agent grabbed his helmet and pulled it off his face.

  “She’s… she won’t make it,” Adam said grimly. “I don’t have anything to stop the bleeding.”

  Dan’s heart sank. Kate wasn’t someone he considered a close friend and he had spent more of his agent career hating her than seeing her as a teammate. Still, someone who had helped him was dying right in front of him.

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  Kate raised one hand and Adam grabbed hold of it.

  “Is… is Dan around?” she asked weakly.

  Adam glanced up at him and Dan walked around Kate and stood at her opposite side. “Yeah, I’m here. I got sand all over my armor though.”

  Kate looked up at him and Dan felt his chest tighten. Her blond hair was frayed and mixed in with the sand around her. Her skin was cracked and dry from the heat and her armor still glistened with the gaping stab wound on her chest. But her blue eyes still pierced through the absence of any light in the desert.

  “I wanna thank you for just… being here,” she whispered. Kate lifted up her other arm and Dan grabbed her hand without thinking.

  Kate blinked and tears streamed down the sides of her face. “I’m sorry guys. I’m a fucking idiot. What I have currently should have taken my attention over reviving a dead family member. I made a deal with the assholes at Kodak-Cresh and they screwed me.” She coughed up a goblet of blood, coating her lips and chin in red. “I should have just focused on our relationship, Adam. We could have been more serious than we are now. Or maybe I should have still stayed with Alpha and kept our relationship a secret.” She glanced over at Dan. “I’m sorry. You were right Dan. You were right.”

  Adam lowered his face and Dan couldn’t see what he was feeling. But he assumed it wasn’t exactly normal for agents, especially Kodak ones to outwardly show any emotion that wasn’t determination or anger. Dan still held onto Kate’s hand, who’s grip was gradually weakening.

  His chest tightened even further and he could feel some heavy pressing in his face. His eyes began to feel a burning sensation as he held back his tears. Why did he feel this distraught over someone he had spent hating for so long?

  Even with this strange turmoil he felt, Dan still acknowledged that Kate had helped them get this far outside of the city’s walls. Even if she did betray him and kill off members of his original squad, she used her dying breath to admit to her failures and apologized to him.

  Dan felt no grip from Kate’s fingers and so he gently laid her hand down onto her side. Adam did the same. He didn’t lift his face up and instead just put his helmet back on his head.

  Li stood just a few paces away from Adam. None of them said a word, all three silently paying their respects to an agent who had helped them all get this far. The silence was broken by a low humming noise off in the distance.

  “Wait a minute,” Adam said.

  Dan lifted his gaze from Kate’s body and saw a large dark object hovering over to them. It was around one hundred fifty meters away. He squinted and saw this dark object floated over the sand, some invisible force was elevating it off the ground. As the object got closer, its size expanded until Dan recognized it as some sort of vehicle. The invisible cushions under the vehicle left tracks in the sand and even blew strands and individual grains off to the side.

  “That’s not good,” the skull-faced agent said. “That’s a fucking strider hover tank.”

  “They’re sending tanks after us now,” Dan muttered. “We must really be hot shit then.”

  “Those things are fast and light and only need one operator thanks to help from a basic onboard AI assistant. It’s packing an energy cannon and missiles.”

  Li hovered his hand over his pistol, for what little good that would fare against a tank. “In other words, that tank is designed to hit hard and fast while also being capable of repositioning itself quickly.”

  Dan saw the top part of the tank light up. Then he remembered that the strider had an energy cannon.

  “I think that tank is powering up a shot,” he shouted. He quickly sprinted to the side and the other two scattered in their own directions. A cartoonishly brilliant red beam of energy pierced through the dark desert and smashed into the space they had once stood a moment earlier. Kate’s body took the full brunt of that shot and was probably reduced to bits.

  Adam opened up a channel to him.

  “I guess that complicates the funeral,” he said.

  “I’m not giving up,” Dan shot back. “As long as we’re still alive there’s always a way out of a mess. Adam, we’re going to steal that tank or die trying. You with me?”

  “Another exciting scheme,” Li interjected through the channel. “Count me in.”

  Adam gave an amused huff over the channel. “Sometimes I wonder how things would go if we were just on the same side. Well, it won’t be impossible, but we can’t fuck this up. We’ll need that tank if we plan on getting around this desert. Plus, your soft ass looks as if you’re about to pass out if you don’t get some air conditioning.”

  “Fuck off,” Dan said. “Are we doing this or not?”

  “I’d rather we do anything than join the grains of sand in being part of the desert. Plus, those tanks are built to withstand radiation so we’ll have shelter from the incoming storm. Ready for a hijacking kid?””

  “Yeah,” Dan said with grim determination. “Let’s fucking steal this tank.”

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