The moment Madhead burst out of the corridor, she saw Carl slipping behind a trash container nearly two meters tall. At the same instant, Oliver and Jack Welles, who were facing the corridor entrance, opened fire together.
The dense web of bullets from the Copperhead and the Nova did not slow Madhead in the slightest. She charged straight toward Oliver, her enemy, relying on her Subdermal Armor to take the shots head-on as the rifle and revolver fire slammed into her body.
"Cabrón, this lunatic doesn't plan on living. She's going to rush us and die together with us. That gun is a Crusher, and our cover probably won't stop it."
Watching bullets punch into flesh only to get stuck against the Subdermal Armor, Jack Welles cursed under his breath. His finger never left the trigger as he hoped that steady hits might bring her down before she got close enough to tear them apart with the shotgun.
"This Subdermal Armor is even worse than I thought. How much did she spend on this? Is this some new model?"
Oliver was just as miserable. This crazy woman from Maelstrom was already reckless enough, and she was even firing her pistol at him while charging. He did not even know her, so why was she trying so hard to kill him?
The impact from the kinetic weapons was mostly absorbed by the Subdermal Armor. A small part of the force still transferred into Madhead's body, but it was nowhere near enough to slow her down. In less than a second, she reached the ideal range for a shotgun.
She tossed aside the empty pistol and raised the Crusher Shotgun with both hands, aiming at Oliver and Jack Welles. One second later, their bodies and their cover would be blown apart together.
But Carl was not going to give her that chance.
When he had hidden behind the trash container earlier, it was not to run away. He only needed to disappear from Madhead's six cyber-eyes for a brief moment, since their coverage was hard to escape. Right now, with all six of her eyes focused forward on her enemies, Carl climbed onto the container and leapt down toward her.
Madhead caught the sound of air moving, but the weapon in her hands was already hard to turn. Carl judged his own weight at about seventy kilograms, and with the downward momentum added in, even Madhead with her heavy subdermal implants could not avoid being knocked to the ground.
That was all Carl could manage.
As soon as his limbs felt the impact with the floor beneath her body, a clenched fist smashed into his face. That fist was reinforced with Subdermal Armor, like wearing a steel glove, and a single punch sent Carl snapping backward as blood poured from his shattered nose.
"Get off me!"
Because Carl's thigh pinned down her other arm, Madhead followed up with another punch from the same hand. After the second hit, Carl was close to his limit, his head ringing like a struck bell and his thoughts starting to scatter. At this final moment, he still found a narrow chance to fight back.
Oliver and Jack Welles had already rushed out from behind cover. To avoid hitting him by mistake, they dropped their guns and tried to help restrain this Maelstrom member by hand. At the same time, Carl had grabbed his gun again.
The only ones tangled together were him and the person from Maelstrom. He did not need to worry about friendly fire.
The sound of the Militech Lexington rang out again. At the same time, another punch landed on Carl's face, caving it in so badly that Oliver and Jack Welles could barely recognize him. Even so, Carl forced a smile on that ruined face.
He had already fired, and he had hit her fingers.
By taking those punches, Carl had confirmed that the Subdermal Armor at most covered the back of her hand. Her fingers were not protected by Subdermal Armor, which meant they could be shattered by bullets.
What Carl destroyed was not the fist that could still beat him senseless even with missing fingers. He chose the other hand, the one pinned under his thigh, the hand that was still gripping the Crusher she refused to let go of even while on the ground.
Her fingers shattered under the bullets, and the gun she could no longer hold found a new owner in the next moment.
"Nice to meet you, lively lady."
Before Madhead could throw another punch, her six red-glowing cyber-eyes locked onto a single object. It was the massive frame of the Crusher.
"Maybe we'll meet again next time."
"Pong!"
The face packed with cyber-eyes burst apart right in front of him, and Carl shook his head as his body tilted to the side. The blast left his ears ringing, and his balance slipped for a moment. He barely stayed on his feet.
"Hey, are you okay, KK!"
Oliver, a step faster than Jack Welles, rushed over and held Carl up. He glanced at the Maelstrom body on the ground and clicked his tongue. "That really looks like a blood flower exploding."
"I almost died."
Carl felt sharp pain across his face, and his hands were already numb, like something had come loose. The recoil from the Crusher was far worse than he expected. He had fired just once, and both arms had gone dead.
"Get up first, Carl."
Jack Welles came over to help lift him and stared at the crooked nose and torn cheek with exposed flesh. He pressed a hand against Carl's nose. "Bear with it."
Before Carl could react, Jack Welles twisted hard. There was a sharp crack in his head as the nose was forced back into place.
"Ah!"
The pain made Carl cry out. "Damn it, Jack Welles, you could at least warn me!"
"Warning just makes it worse," Jack Welles said calmly. He gave a simple, almost honest smile that looked strange on his scarred face. "How does it feel now?"
"Better. It hurts, but the stabbing pain is gone."
Carl bared his teeth and looked at the Maelstrom woman on the ground. "Judging by the quality of her Subdermal Armor, she was probably the boss around here. Regular gangers cannot afford armor that shrugs off Nokota D5 Copperhead fire. We can breathe a little now."
"No wonder this job paid a hundred thousand Eurodollars. I thought those Corpo Rats were being generous for once," Jack Welles said, switching back to that name. "Turns out it was this kind of monster. The Nokota D5 Copperhead could not even get through. That armor alone costs at least thirty thousand Eurodollars."
"It is fine. Most of the work is done now," Carl replied. "We just need to find the crate and destroy it. Once that is done, the remaining seventy thousand Eurodollars is ours. You can even afford decent Subdermal Armor after we split it."
He patted Jack Welles on the shoulder. "After we find it, we need to see Viktor Vektor as soon as possible."
"Works for me."
Oliver picked up the Crusher that Carl had dropped earlier. "We can also try jacking into the bodies from before and see if we can pull money from their private accounts. Hopefully their heads are not too damaged, or it will not read."
"That probably will not work," Carl said with a shrug. "I put a bullet in every one of their heads."
"Then forget it. Dead is dead anyway," Oliver replied. "If she were alive, maybe we could have hired a hacker to dig into it."
While they talked, they moved fast. Jack Welles, with an injured leg, went around collecting weapons to sell later. Oliver and Carl, whose face hurt but could still move, searched the factory for a computer to look up records about the crate.