The Red Moon Rises

Part Two: Sight

He saw the fire surrounding him, laughter in the distance.

Saw her fall backwards, dying.

A hand placed on his shoulder and a chilling voice spoke, “You will soon outstrip even me. Your powers could be limitless.”

Jack Shepherd sat up with a start, sweat rolling down his back, he looked around and saw the fire dying and sighed, flopping backwards onto the ground, he’d been on the run for a week.

Heard news reports of a massive worldwide mobilisation of armed forces, and scientists debating whether he and his kind were the next evolutionary step.

He doubted it.

Jack closed his eyes, trying to remove the memory of the girl who had spoken to him, her name had been Suzie.

She had been next to unkillable.

Unstoppable in every sense of the word, and her powers had seemed almost limitless, yet even she had known her boundaries.

Yet she had told him he would lose his, and he would gain even more power than he already had.

Jack felt fear, he knew terror.

He couldn’t be trusted with that much power, the fate of the world? He’d already stuffed that up once, by killing Suzie. She had been about to protect the world, by removing the people of power who threatened the peace, and threatened what it meant to be human.

Yet he’d stopped her, and now the entire world would pay for that one move, the entire world had gone to war.

Yet all the renegades who’d been there had exalted him as a hero, and the rest showed fear. Nobody hated for what he had done… And that annoyed him.

And it annoyed him that it annoyed him.

Did he want to be a villain?

 

Eliza sat quietly, trying to think of something to say, watching him in the flickering flames as the fire began to die.

It was only about half past two in the morning, he’d barely slept for an hour… Yet the nightmares continued to plague him.

If only Suzie had survived, that may have been of some comfort to him, or then again maybe not.

Eliza didn’t know what to say to him, what to do.

She simply let the tears roll down her face.

 

Dominic ran his hands along the rifle, and grinned as he picked it up, “You’ve outdone yourself. This is quite an amazing tool.”

Veronica shrugged, “It’s what I do. That will fire four depleted uranium shells at a time, and will fire twelve rounds a minute. Please be careful where you aim it, because if it’s the wrong person, they won’t be getting back up again.”

Dominic nodded and shouldered it, “What else do you have for me?”

Veronica tossed him a pistol, “Modified desert eagle. Fires sabo rounds now. Twenty seven thousand degrees Celsius on impact. Be more careful with this than the rifle.”

Dominic raised his eyebrows and checked to make sure the safety was on and holstered it under his arm.

Veronica grinned, “There’s one more thing.”

He raised an eyebrow and she pulled up a belt with six grenades hanging off it, “Three second fuse. One should be enough to take out a couple of tanks.”