Invictus

Chapter 30: Going Off

Adam filled us in on his brilliant plan.

Trenton would stay back and tend to Santiago while Kya, Adam, and I would deal with the cops on the street. There wasn't much discussion, Adam gave us our assignments and that was it. Mine was the most vague of them all,

"All I need from you is to 'go off.' Think you can do that?" Adam told me.

I just smiled.

Once Santiago could "see" more men moving in closer to the house, the planning committee was over. A few seconds later I was squaring up with the front door, preparing to draw the next group of officers to me.

I didn't wait for them to make the first move.

I kicked the 200 pound sheet of metal into two men with the battering ram in their hands, knocking them on their backs. I then threw myself into the mob and got to swinging.

They tried non-lethal force at first, one of the men going for a stun grenade. As soon as I sent him soaring backwards into Adam's grassless lawn, the others abandoned their conservative approach.

Bullets tore through me at point blank range, driving me more and more feral with every hit. I became a twister tearing my way through a crowded room, the mass of officers flying into the walls and concrete floor of Adam's porch. My adrenaline had hit critical mass at this point. I couldn't even tell you how it happened. I just punched, threw, and smashed anything I could get my hands on. The result was a patchwork of disfigured men and women in riot gear strewn across the porch and lawn.

Once I finished with them, I stepped off the porch and onto Carlin street. I then headed straight for the nearest of the two police barricades.

I walked out over the double yellow line running down the center of the asphalt, slow and menacing. That was when the helicopter spotlighted me over the crest of the houses. I wasn't trying to be sneaky, I wanted to draw him out. We needed that helicopter gone if we were going to make it out of the city, according to Adam.

I made sure the light from the helicopter was clinging to me before I rushed towards the police barricade, another volley of gunfire slamming into me; gunfire that I had become numb to.

When I was within a hundred feet of the four officers gunning me down by the S.W.A.T. van, something heavy pierced my lungs, stopping me dead in my tracks. It wasn't like the sting of the other bullets, this one had teeth. The foreign metal clawed its way around my insides taking away whatever breath I had left with it. I collapsed onto the asphalt and looked back towards the door of Adam's house, trying to find the shooter.

Where was he?

He must have been camouflaged, concealing himself in a nook along a rooftop somewhere. A few more bullets like that and I'd be down for the count... At least until my body pushed the metal out of me and healed itself.

Another heavy bullet entered pierced my calve, my teeth grinding as the shot tore another gaping hole. I then watched, my face against the pavement, as Adam raced out the front entrance with Kya in tow. He was waving his hands so dramatically that I almost began to question whether he was right in the head... until I saw his victim. A flaming body jumped off the roof of one of the houses on the other side of the street. 

Adam was waiting for the sniper to reveal himself, and I had to admit that I was grateful for his intervention. The rifle that fell from the flaming officer's hands was one I recognized from my VR military simulator; the thing packed a punch. I now understood why it felt almost impossible to breath.

The sniper fell from the two story structure and landed right on his back. Unfortunately for him, the fire didn't consume instantly like it had the officers trying to take Kya; Adam let him burn slow, the sounds of his screams echoing into the night.