Serum

Chapter 29

The dust kept settling for a painfully long whole one minute. The only comforting thing about it was the steady grip Zhao Yunlan had felt on his right shoulder, as the Black Cloak Envoy shielded him, Shen Wei's broad chest directly leaning onto his back, both their hearts beating fast in synch. Who's gonna be left standing after this?

The utter darkness, the sandy clouds... no movement.

Then finally, the Chief of SID noticed a still body. "Shen Wei..." he nudged his partner, pointing towards the direction with his gun.

The Black Cloak Envoy squeezed his eyes as he tried to recognize the owner of the body. "It's not my brother..." he mumbled, unsure of whether he feels glad or frightened at the statement himself.

"Then be ready, Shen Wei..." Zhao Yunlan's voice had brought the Professor back to reality. He only nodded, his chin lightly tapping over the crown of Yunlan's hair.

The ground under their feet started to shake again and that was the signal for Shen Wei to teleport them somewhere else again. Breathing heavily, falling down to sit behind the toppled metal table, Shen Wei felt the Enhanced power in his veins depleting. He tried to summon it but nothing happened. He was spent. His wounded shoulder started to hurt severly and he clutched the gun wound instinctively. His hightened eye-sight started to turn back to normal.

Noticing the change in behaviour of his Black Cloak Envoy, Zhao Yunlan caught his hand. "Shen Wei, you okay...?"

"I'm sorry," Shen Wei mumbled quietly.

The Chief of SID tsked, not in annoyance but in worry, quickly thinking through all of his left-over options.

"Sorry, I'm still alive, brother!!!" Ye Zun screamed at the top of his lungs. He himself was barely standing. Just barely he managed to throw the dangerous metal railing falling on him away, he coughed from the dust around himself. Shen Wei and his cop had moved from the spot where they were before, that much he could feel through the floor, but not much more. His last back-up was lying most likey dead a few meters to his right. With all that scaffolding Shen Wei managed to collapse, he wasn't sure, which of the metal contructs were still standing, so he couldn't use the same strategy, since his senses were limited to only a touch. He bit his lower lip. He knew, which way the kids had run off to, but that was on the other side of the warehouse, he would surely have to pass the detective and his brother and apparently, they were just fine navigating themselves through the utter darkness.

He was in a disadvantage. Still, he wasn't going to give up.

"Shen Wei! I'm still standing!" He yelled again, kneeling, feeling the movement through the floor with his eyes closed. Nothing. Did they die? No, that wouldn't be so easy. It couldn't. For the pain he'd felt all these years, the torture, the pain, the seperation... the big brother who was supposed to protect him had abandoned him, running away! It should have been himself the lucky one, instead, he was kept in a literal jail, studied, probed by injections, hit by people, made to kill, handed down from one brute to another... his hair turned white one night but still they hadn't stopped. Hurting him, abusing him when he had the Enhanced collar on himself, making him do their dirty work when they'd taken it off. He'd eaten food off the floor, slept naked outside in winter, did whatever to survive! And his brother... his own family, the ONLY family... was enjoying a high school education... And while Ye Zun was turned into an assassin, having absorbed the power of and killed several Enhanced of his own age and even younger, Shen Wei graduated University as if NOTHING. FUCKING. HAPPENED!

Raising his anger to the max, Ye Zun let go of his imaginary reins, he was alone, as always, against the whole world. Right now, it definitely didn't matter, whatever the Triad had sent him here for. With a smirk he looked up, as the moon finally shone through the windows high up under the roof.