'There he is!' Thought Karen. She was the leader of the group, though not by any consensus. She had some peculiar skills. One such skill was Beguile, it allowed her to warp the mind of a person, making them subservient to her in the extreme.
This was the skill she had relied on the most, using it to gain allies who would put her life before their own without question. Now, some months into the apocalypse, she'd been through several groups. The only galvanized who had survived so far was Steven, her main protector.
She had another skill she had yet deigned to use, however. Reave. It allowed her to steal a skill from someone she had fatally wounded. But it was a unique skill—once used, it would disappear, replaced by the skill she stole. That's why she'd been keeping it in her pocket, waiting for the perfect moment.
"Amazing," she said when she witnessed the Orb skill in use. "That's it! I have to have it. It's beautiful, deadly, and stylish. I need it."
She'd been there when Jose had helped the people in Panama and had been following his trail ever since, hoping to take one of his skills. He had shown the most promise of all the galvanized she'd met.
Karen was even more impressed with Jose now that he'd somehow shaken off her more powerful Beguile skill again. Thus far, no one else had managed the same feat.
She issued commands to her team as Jose fought the alpha dog. "Close in on the remaining dogs, then wait till he defeats the boss, and I'll take my new skill."
That is exactly what they did. They unloaded on the remaining dogs until their shields failed, riddled the larger ones with holes, and then moved on to the regular dogs.
By the time they were done, the boss had just fallen, and their savior was facing away from them.
Karen ordered silence. She borrowed a rifle, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
***
[You have acquired a new skill…
Jose activated Volt-Gen after defeating the Harbinger. He was still reading his system prompt when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest. He looked down to see six bullet wounds tearing through his torso. Disbelief clouded his mind.
"What?" he gasped, reaching for the wounds. Had they been aiming for the monster and hit him by accident? Was this really happening?
His breathing turned ragged, and pain crushed him like a vice. He coughed up blood as he turned, slowly, to look at the others. Halfway through the turn, his legs gave out, and he collapsed.
Cold seeped into his body, stealing his breath and sapping his strength. He was losing blood by the gallon while lying on his side, trying to fight the paralysis that held him fast.
Realization hit him like a wrecking ball as he heard the slow and calm steps approaching him. It was no mistake that he was shot. He'd been betrayed by the people he'd come to help.
Rage rose up, hot and electric. Why? Why would they do this? How had he let this happen?
He'd known—known that the world was riddled with shitty people that often did unexplainable things, and had been cautious thus far. So why did he forget? Why did he risk himself for people he didn't even know? Why did he turn his back on strangers while he was vulnerable?
Footsteps approached, slow and deliberate. A blonde woman with blue eyes knelt beside him. "Thanks for the help, sweetie," she said with a grin. "And for the wonderful skill. This couldn't have turned out better if I'd planned it myself."
She wore black cargo pants tucked into commando boots and a white V-neck shirt that exposed her ample cleavage.
Jose felt it—an absence. A piece of himself simply gone. Not death—a hollowing of some kind.
The woman ruffled his hair like an adult would do to a cute kid and began walking away.
"W…hy?" He'd managed to spit out the word between the spurts of blood flowing down his cheek, pooling in the floor around his face.
She turned, crouched, and looked into his eyes with that same gleam of madness. "Why what, darling? Why are you dying? Because I shot you, silly. Why did I shoot you? Because you had something I needed. Killing you was the only way to get it."
"Well, it is a shame really. I could have used a fierce protector like you in my team. But, oh well. Live and learn, I always say… Well, not for you of course silly, you unfortunately have to die. Anyways, nice seeing you again, but I have to get going. Need to practice with my new skill and all."
Jose stared after her. Her words were deranged. Her eyes, unhinged. Seeing him again? Did he know her?
He committed her every detail to memory. She would pay. Somehow, he would survive.
A biting cold stole his breath. His mind swirled with pain, rage, and despair. He coughed blood one last time. Darkness claimed him.
***
Jose jumped at the sharp pain on his cheek. He opened his eyes to find a crow pecking at him. It was much too large, the size of a bald eagle. He smacked it away and sat up.
Where was he? How did he get here? What was he doing?… What was with the feeling of Dejavu?
He sat on the ground rummaging through his brain collecting the scattered bits of memory from before he—blacked out again… Again? When had it happened before?
He had fought a beast and won. Then he met someone? No, not exactly met. More like, saw someone? And heard them speak. It was all hidden behind a fog.
The first memory he could clearly grasp was the hell he'd endured.
He'd been shot, several bullets hitting his lungs and heart. Blood—there was so much blood, it had flowed out of his mouth, nose, ears, and the exit wounds on his chest. He reached up and felt the holes in his cuirass.
How had he survived?
The more blood he'd lost, the colder he'd gotten. The kind that cut through the bones, and turned your insides to ice, and would not leave even if one were standing in front of a fire.
The closer the feeling got to his heart, the weirder the pain, it was as if someone was pulling his soul away from his body while replacing it with that bitter cold.
At some point it had transitioned into a burning inferno. One second, he was freezing, and the next, he was burning. He felt as if he'd been cremated from the inside out—his bones incinerated, his muscles and insides calcined, and his flesh atomized to dust.
Then came the worst feeling of all, nothingness. It was accompanied by a phantom pain, unplaceable and all-consuming.
A sharp pain that was nowhere and everywhere all at once, as he lay in a void. An echo chamber that only reverberated the phantom pain, somehow giving it different levels of agony accompanied by both fire and ice.
How had he survived the torture of it? Had he survived the torture of it? He was alive, of that he was sure. But was he sane? Was all of that real, or some hallucination that had driven him temporarily insane?
No, it was real. The memory of it, both physical and emotional, was too strong and fresh to be a hallucination…
Volt-Gen! He'd activated it right before he was shot. Did it continue working while he was slowly dying from the wounds? It had to have been that. There was no other explanation for his survival from such fatal wounds.
The woman, yes, he remembered now. There was a woman who'd shot him and taken…something.
What had she taken? He knew something was missing. But what? It couldn't have been a physical object, she hadn't even touched him for more than a second after all.
Jose checked his status and froze.
[Health: 280/305 Ether: 10/56
Level: 9
Soul: Ancient
Race: Sapient
Genus: None
Species: None
Strength: 18
Constitution: 20
Endurance: 20
Agility: 23
Dexterity: 17
Awareness: 18
Wisdom: 15
Capacity: 25
Free Points: 4
Skills: Strike, Volt-Gen, Crafting (Beginner), Bolt, Thunder Wave, Null-Bind]
A skill was missing.
How had she stolen it? How could anyone steal a skill? Did she use a skill of her own? Maybe a special one?
He wasn't sure. The only thing he knew was that he needed to find a way to track her down and make her pay, make her somehow return his skill.
In all the anger and confusion, he nearly missed the fact that he'd leveled up and had another new skill. The new skill was perfect for what he needed to do, at least, from the description it was.
[Null-Bind - Bind your enemies draining their life force and strength.]
The feeling was pushed to the back of his mind as he activated it.
Two broadhead arrows materialized, one above each shoulder. Each had three expandable blades; he flexed his will, and the arrowheads expanded and detracted. The shafts were six-foot-long chorded lightning that wriggled in the air like flying snakes. The lightning was as black as a void in space. It pulled at the space around it, even sucking the light near it.
He felt a giddiness at the thought of slowly killing her with that skill after what she'd done to him.
Jose stopped short—what was happening to him? He was one to pay back double for any wrong done to him. But he'd never enjoyed it. It felt wrong to feel joy at hurting another person, no matter how much they deserved it.
Suddenly, he remembered the crazy feelings he'd had before fighting the Canis Herald. What was that? Did the she-devil use some type of mind control skill on him? Did those exist?
Of course they did; magic, skills, monsters, anything was possible now.
She one hundred percent had used a mind control skill on him, and then she stole one of his skills after thinking she had killed him.
'That bitch is much too dangerous to face before protecting my mind against such a skill.'
He needed to find a way to stop her from turning him into one of her puppets the next time they met.