The railgun on Rush’s arm clicked as the mechanism charged up again. He turned to face the half-destroyed mech chasing him, and was forced to leap back by a rusted fist slamming down towards him. The impact knocked one of the mech’s fingers off, but it kept crawling forward, dragging its severed torso down the street in pursuit of Rush.

  “Perhaps we should just keep running, Mr. Rush,” Elvis suggested. “It’s doing a fine job of destroying itself without us.”

  As Rush continued to run, the broken mech continued to pursue, and several scraps of its torso were torn off as it crawled.

  “I’ll try,” Rush said. He turned and ran, trying to put as much space as possible between himself and the mech. To his surprise, the mech matched his pace with ease. It clawed its way forward with crumbling hands, pulling what was left of its body after Rush.

  “Oh, why does Kellarin Technology have to make such quality products?” Elvis moaned. “How is that thing still operational?”

  “If it’s core mechanisms are still intact, all that damage is doing is making it lighter,” Rush said. With most of its body gone, armor peeling off, and with extraneous extremities like fingers falling apart, the mech was probably moving less than half the usual weight, but with limbs designed to carry twice that when necessary. Whatever the mech had lost in structural integrity, it had gained in speed.

  “Perhaps one more shot to finish it off, then,” Elvis suggested. The mech’s grasping fingers scraped at their heels, swinging close enough that Rush felt the surge of air across his back.

  “Trying,” Rush said. He’d never have time to take aim and fire with the mech so close. He needed some distance to line up a shot.

  When he spotted a large gap in a building, Rush dove in, hoping the mech would be unable to follow -or if it did follow, that it might collapse the building on top of itself. The crawling bandit seemed smart enough to not take the risk, so Rush dove further into the ruined building.

  “Right through here, and then we can try to get behind it and-”

  Rush felt a sickening crunch under his foot, and stopped mid-stride. The eyeless helmet turned towards the floor, reflecting a shattered skull.

  The broken shards of bone rolled away from Rush’s foot as he stepped back, falling into place with thousands of others. Rush looked up at the crumbling floors of the ancient building, and saw dozens of corpses in various states of decay scattered around the wreckage. He stepped back in horror as he noticed a few corpses that could not be more than a few weeks old.

  “Oh dear,” Elvis said. “This must be where he hides the evidence…”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  A city of scattered corpses made for poor bait. The bandit had been gathering all of his victims in one place to hide them from future targets. Rush looked down at one of the corpses mummified by age, and noticed how torn the clothing was, and how pockets had been turned out and bags scattered across the room. The bandit hadn’t just been dumping people here -he’d been looting the corpses.

  Rush looked down at the pile of broken bones. Elvis tracked the motions of the mech outside, as it circled the building, waiting for Rush to emerge.

  “Mr. Rush, we should focus our efforts,” Elvis said. “The mech is currently moving to the right. If we move out the east side now, we can catch it off guard.”

  Rush said nothing. He was staring down at what seemed to be the scattered bones of what had once been a hand. A small hand.

  “Mr. Rush?”

  The power saw made a whirring sound as it sprang from the wrist of the Scrapper suit.

  The crawling mech froze in place as it heard a metallic roar. Seconds later, Rush came tearing through a crumbling wall, scattering debris through the air. The mech swatted at him, catching the armor on its palm and slamming it down into the ground. The kinetic barrier absorbed and redirected the energy, and Rush crawled out from under a motionless palm, saw still roaring.

  Another fist came down, and Rush lunged towards it, latching on to the broken armor with a magnetic grip and launching himself up and over the fist, directly onto the cockpit of the mech. His power saw slammed down on the corroded glass and started to kick up sparks as it slowly cut through. The mech let out a discordant roar, as broken speakers turned a spoken insult into an incoherent shriek. Rush kept cutting as the roar shook the mech and the air around him.

  “Mr. Rush, look out!”

  Rush didn’t even turn around as the massive palm came slamming down. The kinetic barrier stopped it in its tracks only a few inches away, but the hand kept pressing. The mech continued to roar, and Rush continued to cut.

  “Mr. Rush, we are dangerously low on power,” Elvis said. “This consistent pressure is rapidly draining our shields!”

  The mech kept screaming, and Rush matched it with dead silence. The power saw retracted, and Rush activated the concussive cannon, firing it point-blank into the cockpit glass. The glass cracked, but did not shatter, and the crushing hand behind him closed in.

  “Mr. Rush!”

  Rush reactivated the power saw, and jammed it into the center of the crack. As his shields gave out and the crushing hand of the mech closed in, Rush activated the saw once more. The blade started to spin just as the palm hit his back.

  Shards of glass flew through the cockpit as Rush finally broke through, with the mech’s own hand providing the force needed. The power saw kept spinning as Rush stumbled forward, and scraped against the ground, kicking up sparks as he righted himself.

  The cockpit smelled of death and rust. Rush paid no mind to anything but his target. He locked eyes on the pilot’s seat and focused on the man within. The man responsible for the tower of bones. Rush’s power saw revved once again -and then stopped.

  What was left of the man was bone white and bone thin, frail and emaciated. Sunken eyes looked at Rush with more desperation than anger or fear. The pilot was almost as broken as the mech itself -on his last legs, desperately crawling forward with what little he had left. The near-skeletal bandit released his grip on the controls, and one handle broke off in his grip.

  The power saw stayed extended, but did not spin. Rush stared at the pilot in silence. The bandit was clearly terrified, but so dehydrated he couldn’t even sweat

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “I don’t know.”