Invictus

Chapter 45: Wrecking Ball

It happened so fast that my eyes couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Debris, concrete, rebar, shattered metal piping, and an endless amount of dust seemed to crumble and swirl around me. I crashed through the roof, then the top floor, and another floor, and another. My momentum carried me through water and electrical lines. Sparks from severed wires shot blinding shades of white into my eyes until I came grinding to a halt into a familiar tiled floor.

I expected to turn and see my body broken into five million pieces, but the opposite was true. I was not only intact, I was unshaken by the fall. The impact hadn't even phased me, my body was unbreakable like Kali's. 

A quick look at my surroundings told me that I was inside the same cafeteria Twitch had attempted to make her escape from, and just like Twitch I found myself surrounded by a whole bunch of Freaks.

Shock hung across their faces. They couldn't explain what had happened. It must have been hard for them to see me through the dust cloud I'd created from the impact. My eyes however, were better than there's. I was the Hunter, the greatest creation Kenneth Orion Harris had ever conceived.

I could feel my muscles thrumming again. The military disciplines imbedded deep into my subconscious from Joe's neural writer were begging to be used. I had to remind myself though that this time couldn't be like Carlin Street. I didn't want to kill these men and women, I only needed them out of my way.

They're not the enemy. They're simply pawns, victims to a system that made them what they are.

With that in mind, I leapt from the crater towards the first Freak I could get my hands on. He was a larger man with a buzzed head and tribal tattoos. It was impossible to say what his abilities were because he didn't even have a chance to use them. In seconds he was colliding into the wall behind him.

Another Freak, whose gender was indiscernible, with whiskers and a lion's tail charged towards me. The Freak jumped across the room and tried to level a punch into my chest. I could tell by the angle and shape of the open faced palm that the Lion was trying to collapse my ribcage onto my heart. The blow came so quick that I didn't have time to parry or block. It would have been an instant kill had my bones not been tougher than steel. 

The Lion's wrist cracked as it slammed into me. But this wasn't Tia, this Freak knew pain, and nothing would stop it from achieving its objective. It continued the attack with even more ferocity now, kicking and clawing madly, but the element of surprise no longer belonged to the Lion. It tried to go for my eyes but over extended its reach leaving its midsection exposed. I tore my fist into its abdomen, then I struck with my opposite elbow across its face. The Lion was down for the count after that.

Two other Freaks took the Lion's place. The one had an eerie yellow glow around her body. The other had what looked like solar panels for the skin of his head and a giant black gun for a right arm. The glowing woman's hands began to light up like the sun as she stared angrily back at me. The beams of light emanating from her arms were so bright that it forced me, and everyone else in the room, to turn away. As the light on the girl's arms dimmed I noticed that the gun inside the man's arm was starting to glow orange. His cannon-hand must have been gathering power from the UV rays being emitted from the girl.

The man with the gun arm then fired an explosive shot that ripped through the cafeteria, tearing up tile, chairs, and folding tables, along with any other Freaks in its path. I avoided the blast by falling into the ground next to a Freak who tried to vomit all over me.  It was a good thing he missed too because the  puke immediately started melting through the tile floor. I kicked him away from me and rose to my feet. 

Then a young looking amputee in an electric wheelchair hovered into view. He had no legs and only a single arm. His whole body was covered in white bandages making only his eyes visible to me. I couldn't be sure through the bandages but his eyes seemed to have a nervous look on them. He let me dispatch three other Freaks before he hesitantly hovered in closer. The mummy boy's advance was stopped by the appearance of my mother's killers.