"Shit!"
Roy threw himself sideways just as the creature slammed into the armored vehicle.
CRASH!
Metal folded inward with a deafening shriek. The entire vehicle rocked violently on its suspension while one of the creature's batons punched clean through the windshield in an explosion of safety glass.
Roy hit the wet street shoulder-first and slid hard across the bricks. Pain flared through his elbow.
The creature screamed again.
The sound no longer resembled anything human.
Roy scrambled onto his feet and ran.
His boots hammered against rain-slick stone while yellow fog tore past his face in twisting currents. Somewhere in the distance, gunshots echoed through Prehevil.
BANG!
BANG!
The sound bounced endlessly between buildings.
Roy nearly slipped while turning a corner and slammed one hand against a wall to steady himself. His enhanced vision sharpened every detail around him into nauseating clarity. Water dripped from broken gutters. Tiny fractures spread through brick walls. Loose papers shifted beneath the wind several streets away.
And behind all of it—
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
The creature was chasing him.
Roy risked a glance backward.
Big mistake.
The creature rounded the corner almost instantly. The way it ran was almost human.
Its arms and legs swung just as a human would, its body weight shifted just like a normal man but it was anything but that.
This was anything but normal.
Batons scraped sparks from the walls as it sprinted through the alley with horrifying speed. Saliva whipped from its stretched jaws in translucent strands.
"Alll-Mer—!"
Roy turned sharply and nearly collided with a barricade. It was a large mass made out of barbed wire, wooden spikes and sand bags.
"No no no—"
He pivoted away and bolted toward a row of houses instead. Every door he could see was boarded shut.
Roy reached the first house and grabbed the handle anyway.
Thud!
Locked.
BANG! BANG!
He slammed his shoulder into it, the wood slightly groaning under the pressure but beyond that, nothing.
Behind him came the sound of wet footsteps slapping violently against stone.
Closer than he liked.
Roy darted toward the next building.
His fingers trembled while grabbing the knob.
Locked.
"Open! Open, you piece of shit!"
He kicked the door hard enough to rattle the frame.
The creature screamed again making Roy instinctively look back.
The thing was only twenty meters away now.
Its head twitched constantly while its ruined mouth hung impossibly wide. The skin around its shoulders flexed unnaturally as the split arms tightened around their batons.
Roy ran again.
His lungs burned.
The streets twisted endlessly around him beneath the yellow fog. More barricades blocked entire intersections. Abandoned military trucks sat crooked along the roads with shattered windows and rust gathering beneath their doors.
The creature vaulted over debris with terrifying momentum. One baton smashed through a street sign accidentally, sending twisted metal spinning across the road.
Roy cut through another alley. And that was the mistake.
Another barricade blocked off the alley entirely in a mass crates, concrete and barbed wire. It was a dead end.
"Oh god..." Roy muttered.
The alley suddenly felt suffocatingly narrow.
He turned around—
—and the creature stepped into the entrance.
Fog curled around its swollen body as the thing tilted its neck at him.
Roy backed away instinctively until his shoulders pressed against the barricade behind him.
The creature charged.
"FUCK!"
Roy grabbed a loose wooden plank from the barricade and swung desperately.
CRACK!
The plank exploded apart against the side of the creature's head. But it seemed to have no sense of self preservation or pain at all. The creature barely reacted.
One baton slammed into Roy's ribs.
CRUNCH!
Pain detonated through the entire left side of his body.
Roy felt himself lifted clean off the ground before crashing into the barricade hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
For one terrible second, he could not breathe at all.
And then a searing pain blasted from his back. He had been slammed right into barbed wire. As he slid down, his leather coat suddenly became his enemy and his flesh became entangled.
Roy screamed.
The sound tore itself raw from his throat as the barbed wire dug through leather and into flesh. Rusted hooks bit deep into his back, shoulders and arms while his own momentum dragged him lower across the barricade.
RIIIP!
His coat tore open.
So did skin.
Warm blood spilled instantly beneath his clothes and Roy nearly blacked out from the sheer overload of sensation crashing through his enhanced nerves. He could feel every individual barb lodged into him. Every tiny jagged edge buried beneath flesh.
The creature was already on top of him.
One of the split arms grabbed Roy by the collar and yanked him forward violently.
The barbed wire tore free from his back.
Wet flesh ripped open alongside it.
"AAGH—!"
Roy convulsed as strips of skin peeled away beneath the hooks. Blood splattered across the sandbags and concrete behind him in thick dark streaks.
The creature dragged him off the barricade like a ragdoll.
Then slammed him face-first into the street.
CRACK!
Roy's nose exploded.
White light flashed across his vision.
The creature mounted him immediately after, knees crushing down onto his spine while its ruined mouth clicked and twitched inches from the back of his head.
One baton rose, then came down.
CRUNCH!
Roy's left shoulder caved inward.
A sickening scream escaped his throat again and the baton fell as if on queue.
CRACK!
His forearm shattered this time.
The enhanced senses made everything unbearable.
He could feel: bones splintering beneath muscle, tendons snapping apart, blood vessels bursting under impact.
His body registered every microscopic detail with horrifying clarity.
The creature grabbed him by the hair and lifted his face off the pavement.
Roy saw his own blood running through the cracks in the bricks below him.
Then the creature smashed his head downward again.
Squelch!
His teeth cracked together hard enough to chip.
Squelch!
Squelch!
Squelch!
The world became noise and pain.
Roy flailed desperately beneath the monster's weight, his fingers clawing uselessly against wet stone while the creature beat him with methodical brutality.
One of the batons suddenly jammed beneath Roy's ribs and lifted him partially off the ground.
For a brief second, Roy felt pressure.
Then—
SHLK!
The weapon punched through him.
Roy's eyes widened.
The broken end of the baton protruded from beneath his chest slick with blood.
Air vanished from his lungs.
He stared downward stupidly.
The creature had impaled him.
Then the creature ripped the baton back out with a spray of blood splattering across the alley.
Roy collapsed sideways wheezing violently while warmth poured from the hole in his torso.
"No…"
His voice came out broken and wet as he tried crawling backward.
One arm barely worked anymore, his left shoulder hung lower than the other and his vision doubled constantly from the repeated impacts to his skull.
The creature stepped closer.
Closer still.
Its shadow swallowed him beneath the alley lights.
Roy stared upward at it helplessly.
The creature raised all three batons overhead.
His nervous system felt molten. Every heartbeat sent agony pulsing through him in waves strong enough to make his vision blur.
And then—
Thump.
Roy froze.
Another heartbeat followed.
THUMP.
Heat spread behind his eyes. The Eyes of Sylvian pulsed.
The sensation crawled through his skull like boiling liquid spreading into his veins.
Each second brought more and more clarity to his clouded mind. And with gritted teeth, Roy felt overcome with a desire.
Survive.
The creature brought down the batons and with a herculean effort, Roy rolled to the side.
BOOM!
Roy felt fragments of brick impact his cheek as he tried to stand up despite his injuries. He instinctively clutched the hole in his stomach, feeling a boiling heat emerge from there.
The hole was closing.
His fingers pressed against torn flesh knitting itself together beneath his palm. Muscle dragged itself inward. Skin twitched violently while blood vessels reconnected one after another.
Roy stared in horror.
Like countless invisible fingers beneath his skin were stitching him back together strand by strand, torn muscle dragged inward in twitching spasms while fresh blood bubbled from the still-open hole in his torso.
It hurt.
Alll-Mer above, it hurt.
Roy could feel every nerve reconnecting, every blood vessel sealing shut and every twitch of meat beneath his palm.
And just as Roy was shocked looking at his wound...
The baton screamed toward his head.
WHAM!
The impact clipped the side of his jaw and sent him spinning across the alley. Something cracked in his neck and white light burst across his vision.
The creature was already advancing again.
Roy felt a deep seated anger boiling in his mind as he stumbled backward.
The alley tilted violently around him. Blood poured from his nose and mouth in hot streams while one side of his jaw pulsed with nauseating agony. The creature kept advancing through the fog with twitching, uneven steps.
Roy tried putting weight on his left arm to steady himself against the wall.
The limb buckled instantly.
Pain shot up through his shoulder and he nearly collapsed again. Beneath torn skin, he felt the broken bones in his forearm grinding against one another as they slowly dragged back into place.
The creature lunged at him with one of its arms just as Roy had finished standing up.
The baton smashed into the wall beside his head hard enough to crater brick. Chunks of concrete sprayed across his face and then came the second blow.
Roy barely managed to hop backward before it shattered against the pavement where his knee had been a moment earlier.
The third struck him anyway.
WHACK!
The impact clipped his ribs and sent him reeling into the opposite wall. Fresh pain erupted through the already fractured bones in his side.
"FUCK—!"
He slid downward, gasping.
The creature closed distance immediately.
Roy forced himself to move.
He shoved himself away from the wall just as another strike descended.
BOOM!
Roy ran.
Or at least tried to.
His leg still spasmed horribly whenever he pushed off too hard. The muscles around his stomach wound tightened and twitched as fresh flesh continued sealing itself together beneath his shredded clothes.
Behind him came that horrible wet clicking from the creature's throat.
Roy risked a glance over his shoulder—
—and immediately regretted it.
The creature was already mid-swing.
Roy twisted instinctively.
Crack!
The baton smashed into his upper back instead of the back of his skull.
Pain exploded through him.
He felt something in his spine shift wrong.
Roy crashed face-first onto the pavement and screamed into the wet bricks.
For one horrifying second, his legs stopped responding.
"No no no no—"
Panic surged violently through him as he clawed forward with his arms.
Then warmth spread upward from his spine.
Pins and needles stabbed through both legs.
Movement returned.
The creature raised its batons again.
With gritted teeth, Roy pushed off with his hands backwards and kicked at the creature's legs!
Thud!
The creature buckled, clearly not having expected such an attack from him and fell on the ground on its back while one of the batons clattered from its grip and skidded across the alley.
Roy's eyes locked onto it instantly.
Weapon.
Adrenaline carried him forward and another pulse surged through him, rejuvenating him with endless vitality.
He rolled onto the ground and grabbed the baton. Then, quickly standing up, he looked back towards the creature, eyes locked onto its sickly form.
The creature slowly got up from the ground and that was when Roy noticed it.
The thing... it was smiling now.