Apex 2: Rise of the Super Soldiers (9 page)

Aftermath

The crime scene had been investigated and cleaned right after Delacourt’s unconscious body had been latched to a bed in a holding cell under armed guard. It was pretty obvious what had transpired, but the military did not mete out vigilante justice so Delacourt would have a chance to defend his actions should he ever wake up. He’d most likely be shot for what he’d done.

Watson took a seat opposite Jack in his office and said, “What did he say when you got there?”

“I was too late. He cracked a grin and then his eyes rolled back and he hit the deck.”

“I feel sick to my stomach. But how could I know that a seasoned Commander would do something so treasonous and reckless.”

“He seemed like a prick but I wouldn’t have guessed he’d do something like that either.”

Watson rubbed his temples. “We don’t have any of the contagion left to synthesize now. He ate all of it. Between us, I hope it kills him.”

Jack got a pained look. “If it doesn’t, guns alone might not be enough to stop him if he acquires any abilities.”

“I don’t suppose I can talk you and Melanie into sticking around for a while longer?” He hated to ask but he had so few options available.

Jack scratched his head and shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “I don’t see how we have much choice. If he was evil enough to
kill that man, I think it’s best if we’re around when he wakes up. I can contain him, or remove him if he gets unruly. But I can only speak for myself. You’ll have to ask Melanie if she’ll stay.”

Watson nodded.  Then he said, “Ever since that man came into my life, it’s been a maelstrom of chaos and mayhem.”

Jack snorted. “I have a bad feeling that this is just the beginning.”

Watson looked like he wanted to cry.

Orbit

Shaylo’s ship was orbiting Earth at twice the distance of the moon’s orbit. He was no coward but he was no fool either. Those creatures had defeated the first invasion with relative ease. That had never been done before. They had scouted the planet long ago and deemed the inhabitants to be inferior in every way. So how had they done the impossible?

He said to his new first mate, “I want visual surveillance of as many population centers as possible. I want audio communications translated wherever you feel it’s necessary. I also want all anomalous activity investigated. They must have weapons we know nothing about. I want as much intel on those weapons as possible before we invade.
”

“Yes sir.” The new first mate had no idea how to do any of that but she wasn’t about to tell that to Shaylo. She just had to learn fast and make no mistakes as she went. Her life depended on it.

Shaylo sighed. “You might as well see how many survivors are left, if any.”

Luckily, she knew how to do that and had already doe so.
“I’ve already tried to track them down via their armor but the armor signatures are all devoid of biometric imprints. It’s safe to conclude that they all died.”

“I see. Good work. They’re lucky they all perished. No warrior should ever live to witness their own failure.”

“Shall I send High Command a status update?”

“
What the hell do you mean? We haven’t accomplished our goals yet so there’s nothing to report. Leave them out of the loop until I tell you otherwise.”

“Of course, sir.” That made her nervous. She knew Shaylo answered to no one, but she’d assumed he paid homage to High Command like everyone else had to. If he had elevated himself above their influence then there was no way to predict what he might do to accomplish the mission.

Awake

Hank woke up to the sound of screaming. It took a full minute before he realized the screaming was coming from him. His bed was on fire.

He yanked against the restraints latching his wrists and legs to the bed. They snapped away easily. Smoke swirled upwards towards the ceiling. But it wasn’t so thick to cloud his vision. He saw Sally, prone on a bed across from him. He jumped up and ripped Sally’s restraints off like they were made of papier mache. Then he quickly checked his own body for burns. Amazingly he was unmarked.

He was mildly surprised that when he hefted
Sally’s unconscious body out of the bed, that her body felt so light. And then the memories came rushing back. He and Sally had been investigating the weird orb inside the truck when it had gone off, spraying them with a blue mist. He remembered nothing else after that.

He carried
Sally across the room and turned the door handle but it wouldn’t budge. It was locked. He cried out for help and put his ear against the door waiting to hear approaching footsteps. He heard nothing. He banged on the door harder, hoping someone on the other side might hear him. The smoke was getting thicker and yet the fire suppression system hadn’t kicked in. He was trapped. Sally coughed a ragged, angry cough and her eyes fluttered open, but didn’t come into focus before she fell unconscious again.

Hank had seen men die in horrific ways. He’d fought nearly indestructible aliens. He knew fear inside and out. He knew it wasn’t an emotion to cower from, but rather, to embrace. Fear induced responses that were necessary to ensure survival. Fear could make your reflexes sharper and your mind more focused.
The adrenaline surge that accompanied it could dull pain and make you stronger. Fear was your friend when you needed it and it was rarely wrong because it was an instinct, passed down by ancestors who’d survived long enough to pass down their genes. Fear was an emotion used by the winners to survive and when it overcame him so quickly, he knew to use it to help him get out of the predicament that had summoned it from its depths.

He looked around the smoke filled r
oom wildly for an escape route. There were no windows or doors besides the door he was already standing at. His fear intensified, spurring his feet into action.

He placed
Sally on the floor, ran to his bed frame, stood up on it, and fiddled with the ceiling mounted fire sprinkler, whilst ignoring the flames that threatened to engulf him. He couldn’t get it to activate so he jiggled it to try and get it to work. It came away in his hand and water instantly sprayed down on his flaming bed. He waited for alarms to sound but they didn’t come. The fire was now out but the smoke had grown thicker, strangling his airways. He jumped down and hefted Sally over his shoulder.

Why had they been locked in a room and who’d set his bed on fire? Were they being executed in some sort of convoluted way? He hadn’t trusted the military over the course of the past month but now he seriously distrusted the institution because it seemed like they’d either tried to kill him or at the very least, left him in a situation where he would surely die without their intervention. He coughed and put his ear against the door one last time, waiting for those footsteps to come that never would.

His fear intensified, fueling the growing anger within him. And then something unexpected happened. He felt a surge of adrenaline within him and then he felt a kind of instant release. Just as he felt the release, he saw a wave of heat escape his entire body, obliterating what little clothes he had left on him and shredding Sally’s clothes too. Sally’s hair shot back as though blown by an incredible wind. The heat rushed outwards quickly, leaving behind a sort of hazy mirage. The steel door buckled as though it had been hit by a tank. It didn’t blow all the way off but it didn’t have to. Hank could see light through the jamb and upon closer inspection, saw that the deadbolt had broken into pieces. He grabbed the handle and tugged as hard as he could. The handle came off in his hands. He reached his fingers through the crack and tugged on the door again. It groaned and creaked but it opened. The smoke billowed through the opening past him, setting off smoke alarms. That made him furious. Did it mean that the fire alarms worked everywhere except in the room he was being held in; the only room on base that was on fire?

He was starting to believe that that was the case and his paranoia informed him that
Commander Watson had set them up to die. He must’ve been furious that they’d disobeyed orders and investigated that metallic sphere. But that didn’t mean they should be burned to death, did it?

He looked over Sally’s nude figure quickly, to make sure he hadn’t just killed her with whatever had escaped his body. She was still breathing.
Her nudity barely registered in his disorientated mind.

He
heard voices heading his way but the last thing he wanted now was to see a military uniform. Naked and confused, he did the only thing that came to his mind: he ran. He was faster than usual too, which especially impressed him since he had the added weight of Sally’s body to carry. He whooshed past fellow troops, their bewildered faces, but blurs to him. One soldier fell over backwards from the force of his wake.

He reached the blast doors just as a different siren started to blare. It was a lockdown siren to put the base on high alert. That meant that the base was his enemy now; they were trying to stop his escape. He keyed in the code to open the doors, and thankfully it went through before the lockdown took effect.

He slipped through with Sally still slung over his shoulder.

A sentry yelled at him to get on the ground. He knew the guy. He thought the guy was okay, albeit a bit awkward from time to time.

Hank shook his head. His throat was still raw so when he spoke, it came out raspy. “I’m leaving, Steve. They tried to kill me, man. Please don’t try and stop me.”

Steve
trained his rifle on Hank and said sadly, “We both know I can’t do that, Hank. I have to ask you to surrender. No harm will come to you. I’m sure there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”

“They set me on fire. They locked us in a room and set it on fire. I had to break out. And now they’re trying to recapture us. I won’t allow it.”

Steve opened his mouth to speak, and Hank took the opportunity to flee. He left his mark quickly, kicking up a sizable chunk of asphalt as he pushed off. Reflexively, Steve’s finger twitched and he fired a shot right into Hank’s bare chest.

Hank knew he’d been hit but he kept running for his life. He knew that when the adrenaline dumped
out of his system, he’d die from the wound. A rifle shot from so close was not something anyone survived. He swerved off of the winding road and broke through the tree line.

After another few minutes of running, he slowed down to check out the damage. He placed
Sally on the ground and swept his hands all over his chest and then his body, looking for the gushing wound, but found nothing. He was going to live. Steve had somehow missed him.

He picked
Sally back up and took off at a sprint, with a new lease on life and a newfound purpose. He’d get his head straight, steal some clothes, and then find a way to make Commander Watson pay for what he’d tried to do to them.

Lockdown

Watson’s jaw hung open as he was debriefed.

Apparently Hank had somehow set his bed on fire and then broken through a three inch thick steel door. Then he’d been shot center mass from close range and shrugged it off as though it were no big deal. Then he escaped into the mountain wilderness with his buddy, Sally slung over his shoulder, running at inhuman speeds. For some ungodly reason, they were both fully nude.

Jack sighed and said, “His powers should flourish
pretty soon. Who knows how they’ll manifest?”

Watson shuddered reflexively. Hank and
Sally were always loose cannons, worse since the alien attacks last month. Now they had unknown superpowers and he had no control over them. He could only imagine what they’d do with so much power and no supervision.

He looked past Jack to one of his soldiers. “Beef up security outside Delacourt’s room. The last thing we need is for him to escape too.
Then he said into his radio, “Security will be tripled outside Commander Delacourt’s room immediately. I want this place on lockdown. Get to work.”

He was just replacing it on his hip when the
radio squawked. He put it to his mouth and said, “Go ahead.”

The voice on the
other end said, “Sir, Commander Delacourt is out like a light. Additional security isn’t necessary. He isn’t going anywhere.”

Angrily Watson barked,
“I didn’t ask for your opinion. You received your orders and I expect you to carry them out to the letter.”

“Yes sir
.”

From Bad to Worse

Delacourt watched from his bed as the soldier holstered his radio. His newfound
super human ability was some type of telepathic mind control. He recognized it the moment he’d regained consciousness as though it had always been there within him. He’d summoned the door guard with nothing but a thought. When the guard appeared before him like a mindless puppet, he knew he had special powers. Then when he heard Watson order additional guards, he used his mind to force the guard to reply.

It was a long shot getting the trooper to try and convince Watson to refrain from clamping down on security but it was worth a try.

He focused on the young man and bid he come closer. The soldier obeyed silently, walking to the side of the bed and releasing the restraints. Then he helped Delacourt to his feet and stood aside as the Commander dressed.

Delacourt walked out of the room, leaving the confused soldier behind, bewildered and alone.

He passed several scurrying troops as he made his way to the blast door exit of the bunker. He barely had to concentrate to convince them they hadn’t seen him.

He had to get out. He was deemed a threat and he’d be dealt with if he stayed.

To his delight, he saw Watson standing with a small gathering of troops. He used his mind on them all. He blinded the others to his presence as he compelled Watson to open the bunker door. Watson did so immediately, not so much as giving Delacourt a passing glance as they brushed past each other. With that done Delacourt convinced an outside sentry, with only the power of his thoughts, to drive him into the nearest town.

He got in the passenger seat of the truck and let out a long sigh. He wished he could’ve brought Jack or Melanie or one of the other two infected with him but escaping so easily was enough of an accomplishment all by itself. He could always come back for them, bring them into the fold later by altering their thoughts, as soon as he regained his strength.

He felt butterflies in his stomach. The future was exciting for once in his life. He now had the power to affect change in the world. He could recreate it any way he wished. He’d always wanted to control people, absolutely, and now he could.

The elation was short lived because a single thought entered his head, ruining his jubilation: he should have forced Watson to bite his own sidearm before he escaped. It didn’t really matter in the broader scope of things, but it would’ve been a nice touch to watch the man kill himself.

He decided right then to go back as soon as possible to kill off the arrogant bastard. But first he had to find somewhere to rest and rejuvenate. A lot of work had to be done and all of it would require his utmost concentration.