An explosion vibrated throughout the warehouse, then several more in quick succession. Boom, boom, boom, boom! The entire city could probably hear us at this point. Whether we liked it or not, we were on a timer. Dietrich was likely returning with reinforcements, and we didn’t know what Seraph and Rector were going to do. Whoever came, we had to survive to see it.
“Create more distance! Avoid stepping into his range!” Uncle Ali barked as a metal panel fell a few feet to his right.
It hadn’t been more than a couple minutes and we had survived a lifetime’s worth of near-death experiences, but I call them lessons. Uncle Ali was right. Even if that was Dad, he was still a breacher. He was the enemy, and he should be treated as such. We had to strategize, communicate, and find a way out of this shithole together.
“Shit!” Althea ducked as a generator flew over her head and banged against the far wall, sparking and leaking and dead. “Dad's pissed!”
The Alternate didn’t obey natural laws and concepts (we’d tried [Execute] first thing but it failed to apply), and for that reason, we couldn’t depend on depleting his stamina and mana. We had to dispatch him the hard way. However, he was the epitome of a wild fighter: all brute force and no finesse and real strategy. Those things could be exploited as long as we played things smart, but our family suffered from chronically low IQ.
“I’m going in!” I told the others.
[Memento Recollection - Nightingale Shotgun]
Dad saw me coming, seemingly scowled underneath his grayed face, and tried to clothesline me. I slid under his arm, spun onto one knee, and shoved the barrel against the back of his right calf. Bang. No damage, but the concussive blast kicked his leg up—we had deduced he possessed a similar [Skill] like my [Forged Skin]—and he leaned back like a half-chopped tree threatening to fall. I pulled him the rest of the way down. That’s timber.
Alternates might be exempt from human concepts but not from human physiology.
“Back!” Uncle Ali tapped a few times on his left exo-forearm and a small barrel popped out from underneath. It shot a needle-like projectile into Dad’s chest. Everything he did slowed down like with the stasis bubble. It was taking eons for him to curl his fingers and bend his legs, but this didn’t look like stasis. What was it—? A temporal restraint, that’s it. Dad was physically experiencing time at a fraction as we were.
Did America start prototyping this tech? Well, no time for questions.
[Memento Echo - Nightingale Shotgun]
Dad saw his kids and brother surround him with iron.
We fired. Bright flashes illuminated our strained faces, sweat dripping down our chins, but we kept our fingers latched on the triggers. We couldn’t hesitate or let up, not even for a second. This was our strategy. Immobilize him, and during the small window of time, inflict as much damage as possible.
“It’s fading!” Uncle Ali screamed above the gunfire and stopped firing first. Thea was next—
"?▎ ▕ ▅▕▂▊▄??!" We underestimated Dad’s strength. From the ground, him and his big arm swung around like a mighty scythe. Barely, me and Thea pulled back, but that left our uncle stranded with his back almost against a wall.
And unfortunately, that was exactly where Dad was looking at. "▇▎ ? ▃??▄ ?▎ ▕ ?▇▎ ? ?▎ ▕? ▅?▂▄ ▍▎ ?, ?▋█?!" If this version of Dad had turned his heart black, then of course his kids would’ve never existed. The only person here who had any real ties to “Dad” would be his older brother.
Uncle Ali looked down at Dad, his expression unmoving. “Come get me, then, Bastien.”
The exoskeleton extensions on his boots began glowing, and he leapt onto the walls and started running, being low enough that Dad could reach. He was perfectly perpendicular to the ground, surely fighting against gravity, yet he ran like it was a fucking suggestion.
[?▊█▋▋ ?▂▔█??▔█▎ ▍: █▆▍█▔▄▃ ▁▎ ▃?]
Grayscale embers flaked off Dad’s skin like piping steel from a forge. Couldn’t tell if it was painful to experience, but his knuckles glowed with the intensity of flames. He roared, shaking the warehouse, and chased after his brother like a feral beast. Wildly his fists swung, clipping everything in his way except for Uncle—he was too high, too slippery, and too stubborn to fall.
Me and Althea desperately chased behind, our hearts thumping at the damage. Dad left larger impacts than before, accompanied flickering embers and burn-marks. That [Skill] had empowered his body with fire, probably improved his durability too, which really meant we had to watch ourselves, especially Uncle.
He was caught in the shittiest position out of the three of us, but with the look on his face, you’d think this was a minor inconvenience to him. Dad roared louder, sounding more like a destroyed speaker than a person, and jumped high and wanted to slap Uncle down like a damned fly. Fortunately, our uncle was just as annoying as one.
His exoskeleton took him off the wall and across a wide gap—wider than any human could jump—and his boots landed firmly on a pillar. At the same time, metal whined and a burning claw-print was imprinted onto the wall. Dad distortedly snarled and craned his neck upwards, finding his prey scurrying up the pillar.
"▆▄▔ ▃▎ ?▍ ▇▄?▄!" Dad grabbed a rotting pallet off the ground, his fingers burning into the green wood, and hurled it upward.
Uncle ported and wood shattered against steel and concrete; it wasn’t the prettiest or the most perfect form, but he landed feet-first. The exoskeleton absorbed the shock that would normally render someone wheelchair-bound. However, he was on the ground and there was a rampaging bull stomping after him.
“Now, Thea!” But we were here.
[Memento Recollection]
[Memento Echo]
[Chain Gauntlets]
As I said, Dad might be an Alternate but he wasn’t above human physiology. [Chains] wrapped around his scurrying legs, two each, and they caught. He crashed face-first, the momentum pulling us forward and nearly taking us off our own feet.
We looked up and saw our uncle press a closed fist against the center of Dad’s back.
[Skill Error: Anti-Slayer Technique - Flow Reversal]
What would happen if you had fire boiling through your veins and someone came along and fucked up your internals? It’d be some of the worst pain in human existence, Alternate or not. A high-pitched screech tore through the air and I had to clamp my ears; through the inhuman screams, I heard audible popping like firecrackers.
Dad was convulsing on the ground, his arms and legs spastic, as glowing baseball-sized cysts grew across his body. They burst. Glittery gray blood splattered around him in thick puddles and poured through the open wounds; and the blood on the ground—plus any other biological matter—evaporated within seconds.
The screeching died down into regular fucked-up screaming, and our ears no longer wanted to bleed.
“Think he’s done? You fucked up his PPS,” asked Thea as Uncle regrouped with us.
He trained a barrel on the convulsing Alt. “I don’t know. You’ve fought one of these things before; what’s their biology?”
I summoned a [Rifle] and did the same thing. “Stubbornly resilient. We needed overwhelming firepower to kill them. Rector, Seraph, Archknell, Rei.” Or in Zhu Xinyue’s case, her own son.
Uncle smacked his lips together. “Nothing changed. You have me.”
I chuckled despite the shitty odds. “Yeah, guess we can say this is our most one-sided encounter yet.”
The screaming stopped. Dad was on all fours. Steam hissed from his pocked back, looking like someone had taken an ice-cream scoop there. He slammed a fist against the ground, then again, and shouted to Hell like he was making a promise to the devil. We didn’t know what he said or if it was a primal growl from his corrupted soul, but he stood.
Dad stood, unable to be taken down no matter what was thrown at him. Bleeding, wounded beyond any sort of medical care, but he could go for another twelve rounds.
That’s so annoyingly accurate.
Uncle ordered, “Split up!”
We broke into the same formation we’d taken throughout the whole fight: a little triangle of death, trapping Dad in the center. We circled him and kept our feet moving. On all corners, he took fire. Magick, energy, our shots struck or grazed his gaping wounds. Finally, we had a chink in the armor that we could blow right open. He shielded himself using his arms, grunting at every sting, but Dad was stronger than the pain no matter the version.
"▄▍▎ ▕▆▇!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, and the first person he saw was his daughter.
[?▊█▋▋ ?▂▔█??▔█▎ ▍: ▌?▍? ▃▄?▔?▕▂▔█▎ ▍]
He could still use [Skills]. Didn’t matter, I expected that.
In a single bound, he collapsed Thea’s corner, but the pesky brat was faster. Her arms regrew [Chains], and they flew and found the joists above, hugging them. Thea pulled herself upwards like a damned superhero, soaring far above Dad who was chasing after a ghost at this point.
Magick seared into his back, nailing several craters where his skin and flesh should be. He grunted and stumbled forward, turned his head and saw his son running at him with a deathwish.
He smacked downwards, narrowly missing my head, and crushed some bug on the ground instead. On the back of his hand was an oozing, disgusting hole. I snapped my [Rifle] in half and the scrap transformed into [Daggers]. Not enough time. His hands came at me. They swiped and jabbed, missed, and he slapped the ground again.
I drove the [Daggers] into the wound, feeling the tips sink into his unnatural flesh and even scratch against the concrete.
Dad yanked his hand away and howled, ripping the [Daggers] out. Two more chomped into his calves, the sound of squelching “flesh” too vivid in my mind. He yelped again, limping now, and swung his arms like he was fighting bees, but he couldn’t hit me or Althea.
Right, because Althea rejoined us by nearly crashing into me with [Blur]. “Uncle!”
“Back!” he shouted again appearing from out of nowhere, and he pulled another toy from his rig. I recognized this one: another stasis bubble grenade.
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Dad was too slow.
Just like when Uncle had first saved our asses, Dad was trapped inside the bubble but he wasn’t nearly as healthy as before. His bleeding was nearly frozen; it might be life-saving in the right situation, but not this one. Quite the opposite.
As we rehearsed, we produced our irons and stormed, letting a hailstorm of bullets cloud the awful sight of Dad away from our eyes—
A new shadow appeared high in my peripheral, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood and a familiar sinking feeling clawed into my stomach. Guess not even the stimulant was strong enough to stave off the returning feeling of despair, huh?
I looked at my uncle, and he looked at me.
Chains were lashed around his neck.
They snatched him off his feet and dragged him over the ground, his rifle clattering from his fingers. I screamed and chased after him. He let out this wrenching, choked cry as he helplessly clawed at the chains. He kicked his legs, groping now at anything on his rig for a way out. Until he was lifted bodily in the air and hung from the joists.
His body jerked and his arms momentarily went limp.
Something was on the fucking rafters. I saw them.
[Skill Activation: Certain Shot]
My first shot hit right on, nailing the fucker in the shoulder. They staggered and a volley came their way.
The chains unraveled from Uncle’s neck and he dropped like a brick. A [Blur] whizzed past me and caught him just before he hit the ground hard. They rolled together, and I heard the blessed sounds of my uncle coughing his life back together.
“ALEX!” Thea screamed for me.
“I know!” I searched the warehouse with my barrel for our second attacker. Dad was still trapped inside the stasis bubble, but the surface was already starting to shimmer. No good. This wasn’t any fucking good!
I… My stomach was getting eaten from the inside out. My arms were shaking again. Everything screamed at me to run away, to not suffer another tragedy. I knew who attacked us. There could only be one explanation, and no matter how much I instinctively knew, I couldn’t get the words to form in my head. I tried to whisper it under my breath, but all that came out was chokes not unlike Uncle’s.
I let out an incoherent mess of sounds to release the tension in my throat.
The stasis bubble collapsed finally, startling me with its racket and sparks. I ignored them, thinking Dad would stay down for a few seconds, but among the circus there was an out-of-place sound: the slinking of chains.
From where the bubble had collapsed, a woman strolled into the open. Accompanying her was a long chain-whip, dragging a pointed metal-weight that scratched the concrete. If Dad resembled Mongrel, then she resembled Blackviper but with twice the professionalism and stoicism. She wore a specialized combat bodysuit, a cross between tactical and xia, and stood no different than a hurricane. She was a disaster that you pray you never come across, because her presence meant one thing: death. Much like Dad, she was put in grayscale and you couldn’t see her face, but I didn’t want to. Neither of their faces.
I didn’t want to create new memories with them, where their hateful, cold, and murderous eyes were burned into mine.
My heart wouldn’t be able to take it.
My finger eased on the trigger, and I sputtered and shook my head. “Guess… Guess you never escaped, Mom.”
***
The next two days blurred together in Hangzhou. We kneeled before TVs and scoured our dying phones for any crumb of information; we rested in abandoned homes and storefronts and scavenged them; we joined fellow survivors and parted ways peacefully or otherwise; we hid from hordes, ran from them, and rarely we fought; but most of all, we walked. The odd thing about the apocalypse was how empty it felt. We strolled through streets that should’ve been brimming with people, entered markets where we were the only customers, listened to the lonely wind reeding through broken doors and glass—for long stretches of time and space, we were the only souls.
I remember the fourth day pretty well. After much grief—that’d be later criticized—the military was finally establishing secure camps for survivors. They’d used drones to dump fliers across the city that had detailed maps of the locations. We picked a couple up, found the nearest camp, and that’s how we joined forty other people with the same idea.
We marched together as a bloody, dirty, tired mass like parishioners to an impoverished church. You couldn’t go five seconds without someone coughing or sniffling, sometimes groaning. At the time, I didn’t like it. We were too bunched together; in the event of an attack, getting stomped to death and getting a crossbow bolt to the head were both pretty likely—it was the first time that I thought like that: pragmatically about my survival.
Fortunately, my fears never came to fruition. About a few kilometers from the camp, we found large yellow arrows pointing us where to go. A few minutes later, a patrol spotted us and we had a personal escort. A troop of equally-worn rifles took up security, too wired out of their minds to enjoy a friendly word let alone a conversation. Closer and closer, though, we approached our new home.
It was at a high-school that had been fortified like a castle. I spotted multiple barrier generators, a convoy’s worth of tactical and combat vehicles, and manpower to match. Tents were erected in the parking lot: medical, supplies, information, what-have-you; and they each had miserably long lines. Some survivors lingered at the gates; once they spotted us, almost all of them stood up and their eyes were bright with despairing hope.
I didn’t know so many people with bloody clothes and bloodier injuries could look like that.
Unfortunately, we were diverted into nearby tents and split into two lines: single individuals and groups. An official began explaining that we had to undergo a “quick checkup” to ensure we weren’t bringing “anything" into the camp. It made sense, and no one in our family fought against the procedure.
Someone among our group did: a belligerent middle-aged man who earned a rifle-butt to the stomach for his protests.
“Just follow their orders,” Mom said as we moved up in line, ignoring as the man was getting cuffed and dragged away. “They’ll ask questions, so answer truthfully.”
I rubbed my shoulder. “What if they find out we’re Temps?”
“Temps are the last thing on their mind,” Dad followed.
“Will we really be safe here?” asked Thea meekly.
“We will be,” Mom assured her—assured us. She scratched her wrists, picking at some of the scars there. “Your father and I will make sure of it.”
From the looks of things, the school seemed safe. Miserable, but safe. Members of our group filtered from the tents and entered school-grounds, collecting goodie-bags of supplies and extra clothes before being led into the building. Sometimes, we heard shouting from nearby officers and mils but nothing that scared the shit out of us. More so than usual, I ought to add.
After almost a week of surviving in the city, we finally found “paradise.” It might be surrounded by more guns and bullets than the average American town, but we’d be safe. Soon, when VIPs were going to be extracted first, we would be on the first truck out of here.
That’s what I foolishly thought.
It was our turn. Inside the tent were a few medical workers, a couple rifles and their officer pulling security. One of the rifles barked in Mandarin, and his CO translated in a thick accent, “Take off your bags and set them in the trays!”
“C’mon,” Dad ushered us and shed his bag first.
After we removed our bags, the officer turned our bags inside out and spilled everything on a dirty plastic table. He began sifting through presumably for “contraband”—whatever that might imply in this scenario.
At the same time, one of the medical workers latched onto Mom and brought her arms out. She, the worker, scanned the interwoven layers of scar-tissue, grimacing behind her glasses and face-mask. <...Where did you get these scars from?>
Mom uncomfortably pulled away but the worker held onto her wrists.
Mom raised an eyebrow, holding her arms close.
Mom inched closer to us, wrapping a hand around her right wrist.
The doctor forcibly grabbed her wrist and tried pulling her close. That was a mistake. As soon as he touched my mother, all hell broke loose. She fought back and started screaming, Dad barged in and the rifles physically held him back but they were obviously losing to a man twice their size. The noise attracted guards from outside, and soon, everyone was screaming and everyone was fighting and I was caught in the middle.
Thea cried, hanging onto my arm for dear life as we were getting shoved around. I yelled for our parents, begging them to stop and come back. I barely saw them among the moving sea of heads and bodies, but then the waves split for a brief moment.
I saw the doctor glued onto Mom’s arm, his white eyes wide and terrified and manic.
He was looking down at Mom’s faded magic tattoo.
Through his face-mask, he said something. I couldn’t tell what he said; not even the perfect lip-reader could read him. Whatever it was, he gave his terrified stare to Mom. I had never, never seen her so scared before in my entire life. She was the kind of person who would laugh at the goriest horror movies, be completely unfazed at the thought of violence, and had performed violence herself to breachers and people.
But this man had reminded her what mortal fear was.
The bodies began converging together again, but just before I lost sight of Mom, I saw her other hand reach into her pocket.
There was a cry and a great spray of crimson blood, spewing all over the floor, the dirty white canvas walls, and the ceiling. And people. A small line was slapped on my cheek. Something thunked. A woman screamed, then a man, then everyone; among them, someone shouted,
A great force shoved through the crowd and almost tackled me and Althea to the ground. My head steamed with adrenaline. Questions sped through my mind and paralyzed my hands: What’s happening? Who killed who? Am I going to die? Am I going to die—?
“ALEX!” my mother’s voice stole me from my panic; she held onto our arms, her fingers burrowing into our skin. A dark crimson streak was thickly brushed across her cheek, over her nose, and into her stringy black hair.
There was a different woman in those eyes.
“RUN!”
Before I could ask why there was blood on her, she shoved us ahead and returned for Dad.
I was running before my brain realized my legs were moving.
***
I didn’t know how we escaped the school without getting caught or shot dead. All of us, Mom and Dad included. We were lucky. Genuinely, actually lucky. This is the first time I was willing to say that without sarcasm or snark.
We found ourselves God-who-knows-where in Hangzhou. We just ran as far as our tired legs could bring us, and the soldiers weren’t willing to chase a family of murderers into dangerous territory. Again, we were lucky that we didn’t encounter any outside patrols or Slayers, or God forbid, breachers.
Inside the dark corner of a corporate lobby, away from the windows and light, were us: a defeated family. I thought this was rock-bottom. We had nothing because we couldn’t collect our shit. No bags, no food or water, no tools and weapons—we didn’t restart, we regressed to literal zero. We were wanted criminals. Our faces would be plastered on every street corner. Nowhere was safe for us now. I thought the world was genuinely going to end, now, and the apocalypse would start with our family first.
We were tearing at the seams.
Mom sat against the wall, burying her hands in her face, while Dad sat a few feet away. The shadows casted darkly over his face, burying the light in his eyes and joy in his expression. He held emotions that I never knew he had. Contempt, resentment, disgust. He said not a single word but treated her like a pariah.
They left their two kids questioning everything.
They left Althea scratching at her arms and head, uncontrollably shivering with fright. I couldn’t stop them.
I don’t know when or why I decided to finally speak up, but I had: “Why…?”
My voice, quiet as it was, picked everyone’s heads up.
“Why did you kill him?” I asked Mom. “Why did you do it?”
Mom lowered her hands and stared down at her magic tattoo. I’d never asked about it like how I never asked about her scars. Briefly she glanced over to her glowering husband; wordlessly, he abandoned this topic to her. It was her turn to lay bare her trauma, and her lips quivered as a result.
“I’m…” Mom squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them a sliver. “I had to. He was from your mother’s old orphanage. We weren’t raised as innocent kids—no, we were raised to be terrible. As… As living weapons.”