Chapter 99: The Storm Part 4
A soldier raised his rifle.
SWOOSH!
Francis vanished from his spot.
The man’s eyes widened — just enough to show he understood what true fear felt like.
A claw punched through his chest and tore sideways. Armor, ribs, and flesh came apart. Blood misted the concrete.
Francis didn’t slow.
Another came from the left with a combat blade already drawn, angling low for his gut.
Francis dropped beneath it, twisted past the attacker’s guard, and drove his elbow into the spine. The body folded forward and hit the ground without another sound.
More gunfire erupted from both directions as the two sides resumed their exchange.
BRRRRT—
Rounds tore through the smoke behind him. He paid them no attention.
By now, the soldiers understood a terrifying truth. Whatever they were dealing with, it was not something their training had accounted for.
"NEW HOSTILE! NEW HOSTILE!"
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!"
"KEEP FIRING!"
Nobody moved for half a second.
A younger soldier near the barricade stared at the corpse split open across the pavement, rifle trembling in both hands.
He trained for riots.
For insurgents.
For beast at worst.
Nothing in training covered a gray-skinned creature casually tearing through gunfire while eating organs off the dead.
A corporal shoved him hard from behind.
"MOVE! SHOOT HIM!"
The soldier finally fired.
The rounds missed immediately.
Francis had already moved before the trigger finished pulling.
A sniper fired from above.
CRACK!
Francis felt the round before he consciously processed it.
His Advance Trajectory Reading mapped the bullet’s path in fractions of a second — not as thought, but as reflex — and his neck and shoulder muscles made the smallest adjustment possible.
The round passed close enough that he felt displaced air brush his cheek.
’Elevation. Around sixty meters. Second position. Off to the right. They’re trying to disrupt my momentum.’
He crouched beside the nearest corpse and tore the liver free, swallowing it without ceremony.
CRACK.
Another shot. He shifted posture as he ate — a slight lean, nothing more. The round skipped off the concrete where his head had just been.
CRACK.
This one came from the offset position, the second sniper trying to catch him mid-adjustment. His body had already accounted for it.
He rolled his shoulder back half an inch and kept moving toward the next corpse.
’They’re learning fast. Two shooters switching pace to throw me off. Smart move. Still won’t save them.’
From a distance, it looked less like evasion and more like the bullets simply had no business with him.
The Covenant fighters saw it too.
Then someone shouted from across the boulevard —
"THAT’S OUR REINFORCEMENT!"
"THEY SENT US A POWERFUL ALLY THAT CAN DO FULL TRANSFORMATION!"
"WE CAN WIN THIS!"
"DON’T STOP SHOOTING!"
The excitement and morale spread instantly.
Cheers broke out up and down the line. Covenant members who had been locked behind barriers rushed out into the open.
Fighters climbed over burning vehicles and shattered barriers without caring about casualties anymore.
One man took a round through the shoulder and kept charging while screaming prayers into the smoke.
Another dragged an ammunition crate through open fire purely because he believed victory finally arrived.
RPG teams pushed through the smoke while riflemen kept firing at the snipers dug in inside the capitol.
Across the boulevard, Defense Force officers started yelling conflicting orders.
"HOLD POSITION!"
"FALL BACK TO THE SECOND LINE!"
"WHERE’S THE SUPPORT UNIT?!"
The momentum they had spent the last several minutes reclaiming — ground won through superior positioning, disciplined suppressive fire, all of it started collapsing.
The Covenant front pushed hard like maniacs.
Barriers were overrun one after another. Both sides hit the gutling platform simultaneously and dragged its operators off screaming.
Even the rooftop snipers began to hesitate, their focus drifting toward the gray-skinned figure calmly moving through the kill zone, pausing only to feed.
Their hesitation cost them immediately. More intruders crossed the boulevard. Explosives landed closer to the Defense Force rear.
Francis kept eating.
Twelve more seconds. Maybe fifteen.
Then a shadow dropped from the smoke above the boulevard.
It landed directly between him and the remaining corpses. The impact was controlled — no wasted movement on the landing.
The figure straightened slowly.
A tall man in a black segmented suit. Thin lines of faint blue light traced across its surface like zigzag lines.
His face was covered by a close-fitting mask, no mouth opening, only eyes visible.
Two more stepped out from the broken side street to the left.
Three total.
One of them rolled his shoulders, and Francis heard the faint click of metal joints beneath his coat.
The third stood completely still and said nothing.
The first one spoke. "Don’t let him keep eating."
The second glanced toward Francis. "That’s the target?"
The third didn’t answer.
He just moved.
SWOOSH —
Francis lifted his head a fraction.
The strike came from directly behind — a blade aimed for his spine, fast and straight with no telegraphing.
Most opponents would have needed to turn to process it. His Trajectory Reading had already mapped the path before the attacker crossed half the distance.
He didn’t turn completely. He rotated just enough, raising his forearm.
CLANG.
Metal hit claw. The attacker absorbed the deflection and pushed off instantly, sliding back across the cracked asphalt to reset.
’Good recovery. Trained to disengage on contact. Not reckless.’ He noted it without slowing down.
The second one came in immediately — elbow dropping toward the side of his neck, trying to capitalize on the deflection window.
Francis stepped inside the arc. The elbow passed through empty space an inch from his ear. He felt the wind of it.
The attacker clicked his tongue and followed with a second strike, faster, tighter, adjusted.
Francis turned slightly. The blade passed again.
He watched another opponent tighten his grip on a length of chain wrapped around his forearm.
"It’s reading everything," the chain user grumbled.
The blade user stepped back half a pace, jaw set. "...Useless."
Francis finally straightened fully.
Three Special Categories. Blade, chain, suit. None of them eager to close the distance too soon.
He studied them without moving. They were no longer confident.
There was a specific quality to fighters who trained extensively: they could recognize when a gap existed between themselves and something else.
These three just found that gap and were standing on the wrong side of it.
He could kill all three. The question was cost. The blade user was fast enough to make contact if he overextended.
Chain user was still unknown — range weapons in tight quarters carried their own risks.
The suited one hadn’t fully committed yet, which meant he was either waiting for an opening or something else entirely.
"We need the elite team for this." the chain user spoke.
Francis’s ears moved slightly.
’There it is.’
’So, the elites are occupied. That’s why only three were sent. They calculated I wasn’t worth the resources.’
It wasn’t arrogance on their part — it was triage. Somewhere else, the Defense Force’s elite units were tied up with the others.
Reasonable strategy. Wrong target.
The blade user shifted his weight, moving to Francis’s left flank while the chain user drifted right.
A pincer attempt, putting pressure on both sides to limit his movement. The suited one stayed centered, patient.
Francis ran a quick internal count.
In his experience, the quiet ones in a coordinated group were either the anchor — the one holding formation and creating openings for others.
’Which are you?’
The chain user’s grip shifted slightly. The blade user’s weight transferred to his front foot.
They were about to attack again.
Francis exhaled slowly through his elongated nose.
He began calculating the most efficient sequence.
Not because he was afraid.
Because wasting energy on this fight meant less for whatever came next .
’Come. Your innate talents will be mine.’
Though they were not as strong as the Elite members, they would still provide plenty of nutrients.
And right now, almost anything was good as long as it brought him closer to ten thousand livers.
Elsewhere—
BOOOOOM!
Nathan’s first met the obsidian hammer head-on.
A shockwave burst outward, cracking the ground in a spreading ring
He slid back several meters, boots grinding trenches through the ground before he planted himself and stopped. Steam rolled off both arms.
Across from him, Tron stood strong like a mountain.
The massive man lowered his hammer slowly until the head rested against his shoulder again, expression the same. Like he just swatted a fly.
’What kind of body does this guy have?’
A normal opponent would have been scattered across the pavement. Tron just stood there, a wall of muscle and armor that didn’t seem to register the exchange at all.
Then Nathan’s eyes dropped.
Small fractures radiated from beneath his opponent’s feet — not from the immediate impact, but a half-second after it.
The force didn’t stop at the man’s body. It had passed through him and dumped straight into the ground.
’So, that’s how it is.’
Nathan nodded in understanding. He knew what special categories could do. This looked like a higher-level version of kinetic dampening.
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