Chapter 15
Phantom and Jester
Maria clung tightly to Felix's arm like a cat to a bath, her shrill screams drowned out by the wind blowing past them.
As they got closer to the building, Felix readied to pull the pin on his parachute. Maria, on the other hand, hurriedly deployed hers, causing her to launch upward by the wind and leaving her airborne for a little while longer.
He touched down first, his parachute followed. He lifted his goggles and stood in wait while Maria was still in the air. Neither were aware of the mechanical eyes watching them as they descended — cameras zooming in on them as they reached the roof.
Felix had a smug grin as she floated towards him with arms folded. As he helped her get down, she yelled in a shivering voice, "Shut up!"
"I didn't even say anything." Without a single word, he won.
With teary eyes, she turned away from him.
As she did, she caught a glint in the distance. Her expression shifted and pushed Felix to the ground, "Get down!"
The concrete erupted. The ground exploded into rubble, riddled with metal rounds.
On the ground, Felix saw the armed drone floating above them, he kicked her out of it's path while rolling to the other side, waiting for it to run out.
As it stopped to reload, he got on his knees, pulled out his white gun, and started glowing blue.
But as he fired, the blue energy scattered into particles.
"Wrong gun…"
The drone followed him, not letting him draw his gun. As he rolled and dodged, a knife curved through the air, striking down the machine.
"That…" Maria said, looking to Felix, "…is what it means to be an esper."
As the drone fell in front of him, he furrowed his eyebrows.
"But I didn't learn anything." He huffed.
"You'll understand." She pulled the knife out of it, answering, "Come on, no time to waste."
The two agents walked to the door, and Felix jiggled the knob. "Mhm?"
"What?"
He rummaged his pockets, "I don't have anything to lock-pick with. Let's look for another entrance, grab your grappling hook."
"Or break this one down."
"Oh right." He realized, "Stand back, it's probably booby-trapped."
Maria snickered in response, taking a few steps back.
Before he could pull out the black gun from under his coat, she sprinted forward, "The thing you need to know is that being an enhanced human, an esper—"
"Huh?" He glanced over to her to hear what she had to say, but she came rushing toward the metal door.
With a loud bang, the metal door suddenly crashed inward to the building. A cold sweat dripped through Felix's face as he slowly turned and saw Maria's leg steadily hanging from her kick.
"—Is that it lets you do things no one else can." She smirked.
"You kicked down a metal door. Ironic."
"Shut up. After you~" She replied with one hand on her chest and the other pointed to the entrance.
"Th-that's not—We should try this again."
"Aww, Felix. This isn't a competition. If it were, then I've already won." Maria answered sweetly, much to his chagrin.
"... Parachute." He whispered.
Her grin turned sour.
As the two reached the hallway, Felix extended his arm in front of her and said; "It's possible that they've set traps all over the building."
"I suppose bullets are just gonna fly from all over the corridors?"
"They did earlier, didn't they?"
She shrugged her arms and suggested, "Alright, so split up to cover more area?"
"Right, be careful. We're up against one of our own… an enhanced human."
"Maybe he knows what it means to be an esper?" Maria snarked.
"Good luck." Felix answered as he put on his mask.
With a nod, she smirked, "And leave nothing to chance."
They nodded to each other and took different directions.
*
The two agents dashed through the bright, peach hallways with a single bound, becoming nothing more than a dark flicker on the surveillance footage, while a figure watched over them.
Maria traveled through the corridors, where she noticed a silhouette from the other corridor. She quickened her pace, but as she followed the shadows, she found herself at the entrance of the indoor parking lot. The air was damp, and the green lights were hazy.
She brought out her gun in one hand, and her knife in the other, and sought out the shadows that moved in between the wreckage. Yet as she took a step forward, there was a thick, metal noise that caught her attention. As she looked down, fires and shrapnel suddenly burst out right in front of her.
Felix stopped in his tracks as he heard a sound coming from one of the rooms in the hall.
He approached as quietly as he could and slowly opened it.
Immediately he noticed that the scent inside was foul.
It was dark, but there was a sickly green light coming through the window shades.
The black-haired agent looked down and followed the fluid flooding the floor. As he went further into the room, it did not take long for him to find the source.
On the bed, he found three bodies piled up above one another. Sheets seeped red.
He hesitantly came closer towards them to investigate, and saw that they were all riddled with bullets, as he slowly searched their bodies, he noticed something small glinting – it was a pin with a red bird symbol marked with a red 'x', hidden in the stains.
Felix put his mask to the side of his head and muttered, "Robins…what happened?"
A loud banging suddenly came from the white, wooden wardrobe from the corner of the room, he pulled out his white gun.
Though armed and ready, dread crawled through his skin as he took a step forward. A drop of sweat had formed on his face.
Crunch.
He lowered his gaze to the sound, to the mild pressure pushing back.
Beneath his boot, a crushed syringe.
As the bead of sweat struck the floor, visions of a golden fire burned through every other one of his thoughts.
Professor Tetsuya's desperate face as he marched through the yellow flames.
A child with golden hair reaching out to him.
Felix squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth, only for the wooden banging to drag him back to the present.
A pale man burst out from the wardrobe and tackled him to the floor.
Shoved against his back, the agent yelped, "What—?! Get off of me!"
The pale man's face got up and close to the Elite Agent's, with wide red eyes and dark bags underneath.
He growled and kept Felix pinned to the ground while a putrid string of saliva flowed out of his mouth, dripping against Felix's cheek.
In panic, Felix smashed his forehead against the man's jaw.
As the man moved back and clutched his mouth, Felix grabbed his arms and threw the man over the bed and slammed over the corpses stacked over it.
"Eww…" He quickly wiped off his cheek in disgust.
The pale man growled, foaming in the mouth, and rushed back at him. But Felix quickly grabbed his white gun and shot him, stunning the man in place.
"Who are you? Were you the one who did this?" Felix huffed out as he quickly got back up.
"M-more… give— give me m-more! More!" Growling as he powered through and pounced back at the agent, "MORITZ!"
Felix instinctively pulled out his black gun, and with a big bright burst, the man was slammed against the wall, while the recoil threw him back against the other wall. The powerful impact caused the lightbulb to flicker and buzz.
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue, still unnerved by the sudden assault. "Bollocks."
Felix got up and he calmed his breathing before approaching the man's body. He placed his hand on the man's neck.
"Good, he's not dead just yet… hopefully I could still get a few answers from him." He sighed in relief, despite the man already bleeding out from his shoulder.
Felix put on his mask and slapped the man's face. "Wake up."
"G-guh…" The man mumbled out.
The agent knelt down to his level, his featureless white mask staring into him. "Who did this to you? What happened?"
The man's face contorted with deranged anger and shouted, "M-MORITZ!"
He grabbed Felix by the throat, but the agent stared at him with cold blue eyes and placed his black gun, Misery, against the man's forehead. A pink and red mist then splattered on the wall.
Felix holstered his gun, noticing the slight tremble in his hand. He clenched it tightly into a fist, forcing the shaking to stop as he stood up.
He glanced back to the three other corpses in the room. He moved to the door and flipped the light switch so that he could investigate.
Clink.