Chapter 34: Mortality
Minimizing the sound of his footsteps, Marcus prayed in his heart that he wouldn’t be caught. Clutching his bleeding arm, he walked down the steps to the upper floor of the mall.
His survival plummeted each second, he couldn’t hear a thing at the moment. A blood trail was slowly killing his cover. Now adrenaline was completely gone, the pain slammed into him with full force.
Nevertheless his mind was fixated on a single goal, which was finding medical supplies before his mana ran out and his ability deactivated.
At the bottom of the stairs, he leaned on the wall for support and walked over to the room at the end of the short narrow hall way.
There was barely any light but due to his experience back before the apocalypse, he knew he was headed for the janitors office.
Twisting the door knob, he made he was in any began opening the drawers. He searched through the items with touch alone and when he didn’t find what he was looking for, he switched to the next drawer.
Moments later he had found what he was looking for, a flashlight. Switching it on, the batteries were dead. So he had to search for another two minutes till he found some working batteries.
Now armed with a flashlight, he pointed at the four walls around him and saw a fading sheet of paper pasted on the wall. "The building structure." Mentally Marcus marked the places he was headed and where he was likely to find trouble.
"Too bad, I doesn’t explicitly show where the medical pharmacy is." Leaving the janitors office, he walked into the second hallway leading to the staff compartment. He needed nothing there so he walked on to the stairs of the first floor.
A place where everything mattered. Descending with some much effort to not make a single sound he was soon standing in-between empty wooden shelves.
Holding his dagger up to his chest, he advanced slowly, taking care not to make a single noise. Walking to the end of the first aisle, he bent to his knees and looked beyond the shelves.
Eight shelves away, two men were casually chatting, wearing ragged clothing and carrying sticks. They sat on crates, one leaning on the wall, the other leaning on a shelves. Marcus couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he knew they would hear him.
Slowly crawling out the first aisle, he moved into the second one, walked to the end and did it again. Soon he was moving in a slithering path through the aisles and on the eighth he stopped at the opposite position he was at the first aisle.
Now he was looking at the back of the guy leaning on the eighth shelf and the face of the guy in front of him. Marcus took a deep breath as he knew one slight slip up and his cover was gone.
Holding a squat position, he waited a few moments and leaped towards the ninth shelf. Instead of landing with his feet, he rolled and mistaken toppled hit a shelf.
"What was that?" One of the men said rising from his crate. The other looked at him with a fearful expression, "Let’s check it out." Marcus was sweating buckets as he hid behind the shelf he nearly toppled.
He knew they were getting closer, manifesting his dagger he sighed deeply. The weapon in his hands would be the tool of thier deaths. Aiming at the end of the aisle he stood at, he threw his dagger and watched it curve into the previous aisle.
Two grunts were heard and then thuds came after the dagger had returned to Marcus’s hands. Still alert, he checked the bodies and found thier throats cleanly slit.
Thier bodies made him freeze in place. Thier expanding blood pools and morbid postures made him drop to his knees. "I...I... I have killed," Looking at his hands, he felt a stare dog into the back of his head.
Turning slowly he say a young boy of about fourteen, staring at the scene with a pale stricken face. The boy opened his mouth and Marcus rushed up to him.
Covering the boy’s mouth with a hand, Marcus shoved him against the wall and held up his dagger. There was no way the boy wouldn’t raise an alarm if he was released, so Marcus was caught on a two way road.
He could either try reasoning with the boy or ending the boy’s life which at the moment was the most practical choice. Marcus raised his dagger, hands shaking. But moments passed and he hadn’t struck, he couldn’t strike.
Lowering his hand, Marcus let out a sigh. "I am going to release you now. Please don’t make any noise, I mean no harm, I just need to collect a few medical supplies because my team is dieing out on the roof."
Saying this he say the boy’s face melt a little. So Marcus took this as a sigh and slowly lowered his hand, an action which would turn out to be the gravest mistake he could make at that moment.
Freed from his grip, the boy turned around to let out an alarming shriek. Marcus had predicted this and caught the boy by the mouth again, this time, there was neither hesitation nor mercy.
Marcus brutally stabbed him on the neck till he was dead. However the boy’s alarm had gotten out already and people were on their way to Marcus’s position. He had to move and fast.
Dropping the body, he couldn’t care out hidden evidence and just sprinted out of the room which was once a storage facility. Out of the room he saw himself on a balcony staring down at the huge expanse of the entire mall.
Partly Armored people rushed up the stairs from both sides leading to the balcony. Calculating the possible escape route, his eyes glowed as his ability slowly layed out the chances for him.
Once the first person’s feet touched the tile of the balcony, Marcus leaped of the balcony and plummeted fifty feet to the ground. Rolling to reduce the noise, he instant dashed into hangers of clothes.
The men stopped at the balcony and looked around for what ever made that noise. "Boss look an intruder is here." A woman reported to an almost fully armored man, showing him her bloody palms.
Nodding slightly, the man said. "Find it before the King returns from his hunt." The woman nodded and together with other people around her they scattered to look for Marcus.
The intruder himself sprinted through the mall. "For a group with such a terrifying leader, these people do have low coordination skills." Closing into the medical section, he leaped over a shelf of snacks knocking it down in the process.
He then sprinted in the opposite direction. With his experience working part-time in supermarkets and malls, he noticed that most had their medical section located on the left side of the entrance.
That was where he was headed, grabbing a big backpack which was lying uselessly on the ground, he grabbed a few water bottles. Also throwing some on the ground to break and spill as traps.
Uncorking one of the plastic bottles, he raised it to take a sip but suddenly slid to a stop. "Your the intruder right," Someone said raising a lantern to his face. Marcus couldn’t hear him so he couldn’t answer.
"I would take your silence as a yes." The man said swinging his chain at him. ’I knew this would happen sooner or later.’ Activating his cultivation ability, he pulled out his dagger and lunges forward.
This was a human so it would be relatively easier than battling the owl..., or so Marcus thought. Throwing an airborne roundhouse kick, the man raised his hand while punching Marcus’s open abdomen with his chain wrapped fist.
Surprisedly, Marcus felt the punch as he dropped to his feet. The man had been flung across the mall and through the main entrance. After that battle Marcus was now give times stronger than peak humans.
He was officially a mid to high level superhuman while other awakened struggled at peak human strength. Not thinking about the incident for long, Marcus bolted away to continue on his mission.
"His weapon is powerful or his just very strong. I am at my extreme weakest after all" Deactivating his ability, his previous terrifying speed reduced to someone closer to mundane.
’I still have a long way to go conserving my energy is best.’ Leaping over a ledge he stumbled and rolled to avoid falling and loosing his momentum.
Few paces away from him was the end of the mall, so he diverted and entered a row of shelves. "It’s supposed to be somewhere around here." He said collapsing on a shelf, coughing droplets of blood, he rose and continued searching.
In moments he would be surrounded and overwhelmed with enemies, so he frantically threw items of the shelves as he searched.
’ Nothing’s is here, they may have hidden it in the backroom’ Darting over to the opposite row of shelves, where he could probably find the backroom, he saw himself slowly down considerably.
His lungs were failing, making it extremely hard to breathe. ’Damned ribs.’ Reduced to merely limping, Marcus saw with the corner of his eyes, his survival percentage reduce drastically.
Yet he couldn’t just keep moving forward like nothing happened. Gritting his teeth, he increased the pace of his limping yet it wasn’t enough and soon he was sent rolling.
Someone had slammed into him, he forced himself up as quickly as he could, but noticed he had already been surrounded by his pursuers.
They brandished their weapons, circling Marcus as they slowly closed the gap.
Calling his dagger to his palm, Marcus quickly assessed everyone around him searching for the weakest link. And he found it.
Most of the survivors were humans, those surrounding him proved that. No one would send only a single awakener and seven humans to surround a strong awakened even if injured.
Casting his gaze on a teen girl of about fourteen, Marcus knew she was the awakener due to the bits of mana leaking from her presence.
Although she was an awakened she was also the weakest of all the other adults surrounding him. So if Marcus truly wanted to survive, he had to make choices which discarded his morality.
Lunging towards a man beside the awakened, Marcus swiftly sidestepped and slit the unsuspecting girl’s throat. ’I am sorry.’
Activating his ability one last time he dashed through the electronics area and into the backroom. His speed so astonishing he dropped to his knees once in the backroom and vomited dark blood.
Fighting his blurry vision, Marcus rose to his fidgeting feet and dragged two shelves to barricaded the door... that was the last thing he remembered.
