Vandermein

XXIX

Gunfire erupted like a hailstorm on a tin roof. 

I watched two guards go down, blood gushing from wounds inflicted by an invisible assailant. Kenzie and Boone took cover behind the car doors, picking off guards from the wall, sending them careening down to the concrete sidewalk.

I injected the Titan, a vial I'd used only once before, the day I hung up the cloak for good. 

Maybe that retirement came too soon.

I breathed in the cold air, like crystalline energy making all things loud and slow and simple. My skin hardened into stone, shirt ripping, gums bleeding, eyes bulging. 

I felt more alive than I'd ever felt before, more powerful, more deadly than any man alive. 

I piloted a body of Kevlar skin and carnage, barreling myself directly toward the $600,000 privacy wall we'd built several years before. I broke through like a linebacker on homecoming night, sending bricks flying inward toward the house. 

Small pricks, like bee stings, bounced off my skin. A wall of assault-weapon-wielding guards were standing on my lawn, their muzzles flashing bullets directly toward me. 

Good, I thought. Let me draw their fire. 

Marie was laying waste as well: gunmen in the back of the line were falling one by one.

"Keep moving!" Boone shouted behind me. He and Kenzie were using me as a cover, wasting guards left and right. 

"We need to get to the bunker," Kenzie informed both of us. 

To my ears, their voices sounded like distant echoes, far less important than the men before me who were still breathing when I wanted them to stop. 

I lifted a stone fountain from the ground and hurled it onto a balcony they'd turned into a sniper nest. The force and weight collapsed the elevated platform, taking the sniper with it. 

"Through the garage!" Kenzie ordered. I felt her climb on my back, using me as a mounted battering ram. She fired rounds, sending hot shells down my shoulders and arms. 

Bodies were strewn across the yard, some twitching, most perfectly still. Marie was somewhere clearing out the house. Inside, faint gunfire could still be heard; shouts and curses rang out before cutting off entirely. 

I punched the garage open, sending the door flying forward into a huddled group of mercenaries. Boone opened fire, his shotgun turning bodies into modern art against the drywall. 

We were inside, and just in time. My Titan was running out, and I would be running out with it. It's not designed to last any longer than five minutes, otherwise it would kill the host. 

My skin softened. My vision blurred. 

I was able to stay awake, but only barely. My speech was incoherent, the lingering Vigor the only thing keeping me upright. 

"Come on, let's get inside the bunker," I slurred. 

"What's in the bunker?" Boone asked. 

"The arsenal," I answered.