Chương 30: 28: Stalkers and Shadows

"Wait for Miles to give the all-clear," the blue-eyed brunet said for the third time in a row, actually pulling at my wrist before I could go around the corner. He was a tall, no-nonsense man in his mid-thirties with an aura of restrained violence and a weight of purpose in his every move. He was also rapidly becoming the number one pain in my ass.

A fleeting, half-glimpsed shadow slid around the corner swiftly and silently, all but indistinguishable from the mist to normal eyes and fuzzy even in my enhanced perception. There was a group of monsters around the corner, walking corpses head and shoulders taller than the average person and wearing armor of heavy, overlapping iron plates. Their weapons were strange spears of iron that ended in wide, slightly curved blades like someone had stuck a scimitar at the end of a pole.

The shadow-man slid up to the last undead in line then thrust a knife to the hollow of the being's throat from behind. The undead soldier faltered and the shadow used the opportunity to twist and pull at the knife, then stab it deeper. Its neck reduced to a ruin, its spine severed, the walking dead collapsed and its killer lowered it to the ground to avoid its armor clanging against the pavement.

Then with an economy of movement that could only come from thousands of hours of practice or supernatural skill, the shadow slid up to the next undead in line. Casually repeating his silent kill, the man moved up the line of monsters, dispatching them with the same strike to the only gap in their thick armor that would allow for a lethal blow. Then he came back to us.

"All clear, Sarge," the guy in the black civilian clothes said, his attire flickering and writhing around him like a living thing. They were less actual clothing and more a power like my super-suit that produced something to wear while also providing excellent camouflage.

"There were only four of them."

"Complications?" the aforementioned Sarge asked.

"They're getting tougher. A normal guy with a knife couldn't have killed them even if they knew where to aim." We hurried across the open street, not wanting to be noticed by something more dangerous than a band of roving guards. We made a detour around the remains of the warriors; The corpses were rapidly disintegrating and even their armor was rusting and flaking away as we watched.

It was thick so the going was slow, but a cloud of dust and decay was already forming around them which we didn't want to breathe in.

"Did their armor seem thicker to you?" the Sergeant asked the other obvious soldier.

"Thicker, heavier, yet it didn't impede them. It was better fitting, too." The shadow named Mike sighed.

"They must be strong to move so easily while wearing it too; it must weigh a ton." The two men exchanged glances and a few gestures whose meaning escaped me, then we moved on. Twice more we stumbled upon monsters. The first time it was a group of particularly overgrown, mutated Flayed Ones, oozing caustic goo that dripped to the ground and burned through asphalt and concrete with every drop. It was the first time I got to see 'Sarge' in action; he went in gun blazing.

His rifle looked like it had come straight out of an action movie who'd run out of budget for special effects. It made no sound, spewed no flame, didn't even kick back in his arms as he pointed it at the undead with the trigger pulled. Invisible little lances of force shot out of it t a rate of about a dozen a second and they shredded undead flesh as if they had been actual bullets.

'Sarge' calmly walked the barrage from enemy to enemy, shooting them down with little evidence of where the attacks were coming from. It was after they'd dispatched the fifth monster group on our way through the city that I realized what they were doing and why. In the interest of not being confrontational, my immediate reaction was discounted. Then the next. Then the following seventeen. It took until the next monster patrol to come up with a plan, but that just meant more time to test things before committing.

The moment we entered the city center proper, the monsters started multiplying in numbers and variety and their approach from multiple directions was proof we'd drawn the attention of whoever was in command among the enemy. A group of eight bloated zombies, each one easily the size of a bull and even stronger, split into teams in an attempt to surround us. With our group threatened, the two soldiers immediately fell in defensive positions. When the fight actually started though, something very curious happened.

Every time one of the bloated undead was about to be hit by a knife from the shadows or shot full of phantom bullets, its head simply fell off, their thick neck completely severed. When those eight were returned to their graves, a similar phenomenon befell the whole squadrons of Imps trying to swarm up, each one of the little devils getting a perfectly uniform, pencil-thin hole through their torso. The quartet of armored, spear-wielding wights that followed got their heads crushed from blunt trauma...

while their helmets remained completely intact.

"Shit, this is damn annoying," Mike the shadow grumbled as yet another enemy died before their eyes.

"It's what, the twentieth enemy that up and died on us when we were about to win? At least they are cleaning up after themselves," he added in disgust as the zombies slowly flaked away into dust.

"This is no laughing matter," Sergeant... Sorensen I thought his name was, said as I tried not to giggle like a little girl.

"What if it is a plot of the enemy to deny us growth?" He looked at the rapidly deteriorating corpses with suspicion, checking everything to see if he'd missed something. He hadn't. Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m10d Powers [2/35 pts] If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Force Adjustment III, Force Awareness II, Forcefield Creation I, Forced Acceleration II, Immutable Force II, Lasting Force I, Progressive Regeneration III, Proximakinesis III, Super Suit I Attributes [2/35 pts] Might 18, Agility 10, Reason 3, Vigilance 7, Ego 10, Luck 2 As the increased power from that many kills flowed into me, I smirked. Forcefield Creation was an extremely useful ability that didn't look like much, initially. A cubic yard of volume to apply powers in seemed small...

until you stretched it into a cylinder half an inch in diameter. Even with Proximakinesis being able to shove 'only' a couple of tons through it, it was like driving home a railroad spike with a wrecking ball.

"You're messing with the Sarge, aren't you?" The unexpected question coming from behind my back did not make me leap a dozen feet in surprise; this just meant there were enough stealthy people around I was getting used to it. Though it echoing eerily like a man shouting from the depths of a very deep cave was new experience even with all the craziness and magic.

"What gave me away?" I asked, still watching the older man trying to find any clues amid the latest batch of monster corpses.

"You were smirking too much," Mike the shadow informed me with a sigh. His form blurred, almost becoming one with the mist before settling into solidity once more.

"Do you have to antagonize him? You know he's trying to keep you safe, right?"

"He does believe he is, yes." We both followed as Sorensen took point.

"He didn't even ask what my powers were."

"It wouldn't matter to him. He tries to protect all of us," the twenty-something soldier added, the respect for his superior clear in both his tone and stance even through the inhuman qualities in both.

"And powers or no powers, he has trained for war. Why not let someone more experienced handle things?"

"Because more experience doesn't mean good experience." And that was all I was going to say on the matter.

"What's his plan anyway? Dealing with that tower next to the exotic pet shop is going to take more than a stealth gun and towers can't be assassinated."

"That'd be why old man Dallas added you to the team, I guess," he mused.

"What are your powers? Invisible blasts? Telekinesis?"

"It's complicated." Mostly because I wanted to keep the full extent of my abilities a secret.

"Think of a personal force field I can stretch out with effort. But mostly I'm strong, fast and I fly."

"... you got a Superman package?" For once Mike's voice didn't echo oddly and I felt like I held his full attention when the rest of our brief conversation hadn't.

"That's way cooler than this shadow stuff I got. I mean, don't get me wrong. Stabbing monsters before they can see you is cool too, but we're talking about classic superhero stuff here! How did you get something like that?"

"Natural awesomeness?" I quipped and dodged away from a kick to the shin, cackling. This Mike guy wasn't bad, for a soldier. That he was only about four years older than me probably helped, but his friendly attitude helped more. So I decided to throw him a bone.

"I think how we choose to fight against the monsters plays a role. Probably our personalities and thoughts, even the environment at the time." Because for all both Jerry and I could pick powers from a list, all our picks ended fitting specific themes anyway. I hadn't started out with a plan so everything fitting so neatly in a theme... it bore certain implications.

"How did you kill your first monster?"

"Shot it," Mike replied blandly.

"Didn't get much from it back then. I only started noticing a difference by my sixth, seventh kill?"

"You were using a gun, so that figures." I thought back to Julia, Tomio and certain bombs that leveled a building.

"The old hunter with the huge rifle uses a gun and he's probably the strongest in our group," Mike protested and I didn't disagree. His shot had gone through my defenses with ease and hurt like Hell. Except...

"He's an old guy and it's his personal weapon. The way he talks about it, he'd probably marry it if people let him." That spear I'd used early on had worked well enough but in retrospect my growth had been faster when using my own body and powers alone. There had been a marked difference with how easily I'd gotten used to punching through monsters, too, as opposed to using weapons. In contrast, Jerry and Tomio both used tools but...

"It matters, I think, the effort we put in. A gun is usually impersonal, takes little effort to use and its killing power is due to little bits of explosive, not the user. Stabbing a monster with a knife is better, punching them in the face even more so."

"You killed one of those zombie things by punching it?" Mike asked incredulously, coming to a complete stop and staring.

"You look like you could do it now but that's from the powers, right? You were what, a fifteen, sixteen year old student?"

"Seventeen, thank you very much," I shot back.

"And I didn't punch it, I beat its head open with an old telescope." I'd hated that thing, too. The telescope, not the zombie. Actually using it in Astronomy class had felt stupid because it had been s clunky and had to be manually adjusted. It had made for a much better weapon than it had been a learning tool; bashing the walking dead with it had felt cathartic.

"No shit?" the soldier chuckled.

"Was it then that you got super-strength?"

"Yes and no. It also involved beating another zombie with a school chair." Though which had come first, the telescope beatdown or the chair smashing? The first day of the invasion was a bit fuzzy. Probably the infection from the undead goop. I'd been incredibly lucky it hadn't killed or zombified me.

"Now you're really having me on," Mike protested, but he was smiling. Even his shroud of shadows faded a bit, revealing a carrot top with green eyes and loads of freckles. Huh... I'd have pegged him for a brunet like Sorensen, but that was just too many old James Bond films talking.

"Nope! It happened just like that. You can ask Mandy and Jerry if you don't believe me." Our glorious leader signaled us to slow down as he sneaked into the next intersection but I could already see there was no monster patrol to fight so I paid his actions little mind.

"Anyway, personal effort in dealing with monsters influences your powers to some extent, though choices and belief seem to matter too." Because Mandy had kept insisting magic was magical even after Jerry had 'proven' it worked like a game and got vague magical fire powers whereas deep down accepting Jerry's explanation and going along with his plan led to being infected by the same game-like interface. Eh, it had worked well enough so I wasn't complaining.

"I guess all the sneaking and stabbing after we ran out of bullets made me... sneakier and stabbier?" He thought about it for a moment then shrugged.

"I can live with that." BOOM! An explosion of emerald fire made a crater of the street down to the sewers. The blast wave was strong enough to hurt me, though that was mostly my ears getting a double dose of tinnitus, and hurl Mike and Sorensen away like ragdolls. Then the smoke and mist inside the crater coalesced into two towering figures of shadow and dread.

"You had to jinx it, didn't you?!" I shouted at Mike right before the Black Hands charged.