BANG!!
The muzzle flash shattered the dim bar, everything moving in a sickeningly slow fraction of a second. My survival instinct overrode my terror. I didn't think. I lunged forward, closing the distance before Mark could level the smoking barrel for a second shot. My right hand shot out, slamming hard onto his shoulder—precisely anchoring the neurological key I had just spent thirty minutes carving into his subconscious.
Drip... drip...
Thick, hot blood slapped the wooden floorboards. Then, the delay ended, and a white-hot pulse of pure agony tore through the side of my face.
"Aahh! Damn it, it hurts!"
I clamped my left hand over my ear. The bullet had grazed it, leaving a jagged, burning ruin. Red liquid poured through my fingers, hot and sticky. My vision blurred from the pain, but I forced my eyes open. I couldn't drop the act. Not now.
Wavelenght detection. Frequencies screaming. Beta spike across his lobes.
Mark's face was a mask of unadulterated horror and guilt. He looked like a man who had just accidentally executed his own brother.
"W-what d-do I do?" he stammered, his hands shaking violently as he looked at the blood on my fingers. "It was my fault. I'm so sorry, Ed. I didn't mean to shoot you."
"It's okay, Mark," I said, forcing my voice into a strained, rhythmic drone to fight his spiking adrenaline. "They're friends of mine. They just came to join the drink. Lower your guard."
I patted his shoulder a few more times to calm him down and driving the anchor deep. Beta receding. Alpha crawling back. Come on, sink.
Around us, the bar was a tomb. Prisma's squad unit stood like statues, completely paralyzed. They had stormed the place expecting a firefight, totally blind to the fact that I was actively holding a human mind by a thread. If Mark broke the trance now, his five-times-sharper Awakener traits would sense the trap, and we would all die in the crossfire.
"Nothing is wrong. Just a misunderstanding," I whispered, locking his vacant stare until I felt his Prefrontal lobe finally starve itself of the surrounding environment. Theta locked. "Just stay here a moment. I need to stop the bleeding."
I backed away, leaving Mark trapped inside the cage of his own mind, and turned on my heel toward the squad leader.
I backed away, leaving Mark trapped inside the neurological cage of the hypnosis, his mind anchored securely to my touch. I turned on my heel and walked straight toward the towering figure of the squad leader.
"The mission is clear. I need a painkiller. Do you have one?" I asked. My eyes were dead, cold, and indifferent. I kept my voice perfectly flat, refusing to let the agony in my ear dictate my tone.
Looking at her up close, a dark, toxic urge flared in my chest. My fingers twitched, itching to draw my Glock 17. I wanted to shove the iron barrel directly into her mouth and pull the trigger until it clicked on empty. The sheer, intoxicating pleasure of imagining her brains painted across the wall made my heart hammer violently against my ribs. It was a bizarre, addictive rush of pure malice.
"Nina, go tend to his wound," Prisma commanded, ignoring my venomous stare as she looked down at me from her towering height. "Did you succeed?"
"Yes," I spat, my jaw clenching. "Though it almost put a hole at my face just because a certain muscle-head giant decided to storm the place early."
A flicker of surprise crossed her face. I didn't care.
I watched the micro-expressions ripple across her features, mapping the subtle shifts in her facial muscles like data points on an EEG graph. I didn't see a human being standing in front of me; I saw a flawed piece of meat that needed to be put down. It was taking every ounce of my willpower not to draw my Glock and execute her right here.
I wanted to watch her eyes go dull as the neural synapses in her prefrontal cortex permanently misfired and went dark. The thought wasn't just comforting—it was a cold, intoxicating rush that made my fingertips tingle with anticipation. People like her were just variables. And variables meant to be eliminated.
"Great work, Edgar," she said, her voice completely devoid of remorse
"But you need to do it faster so that this circumstances didn't occured. I do remember telling you the time limit of 30 minutes. And it was goes past it already. Then proceed with the next step." With indeferent tone. she keeps on giving a comman, not even a shred of guit? not even a simple apologize?
Without caring that Nina was currently pressing a gauze pad against my bleeding ear, I took a predatory step closer to the female giant. My hand blurred. I drew my Glock 17 and pointed the muzzle directly toward her chin from below.
"After your idiotic breach almost got me killed, you have the nerve to order me around?" I growled, my voice dropping to a low, serrated whisper. The adrenaline didn't make me panic; it sharpened my vision into a hyper-focused tunnel. "You wanted to get rid of me by the suspect's hand, didn't you?
The room temperature seemed to instantly drop to zero. The low hum of the bar died completely. Behind me, I heard the faint, distinct click-clack of weapons clearing leather. Every operative in the room shifted their weight, their boots scuffing against the floorboards as their hands hovered over their holsters.
They didn't move yet, but I could practically map the electrical spikes of intent firing through their motor cortices. I knew the exact millisecond my index finger contracted. Even a fraction of an inch, a dozen barrels would flash, and my body would be turned into a leaking sack of meat.
But looking up into Prisma's eyes from the other end of my barrel, I realized something terrifyingly liberating: I didn't give a fuck. In fact, the thought of painting the ceiling with her brains while the squad tore me apart felt beautifully, intoxicatingly fair.
"You almost killed me twice, you heartless fucker!" I roared, spitting a thick glob of bloody saliva right onto the tip of her shiny combat boot. I was done. Done with this brainless, bargain-bin, disposable squad of absolute circus clowns.
Something inside my brain didn't just snap; it unraveled, threw up its hands, and left the building.
"Do you even know what my actual job description is, Prisma?! Because I sure as hell don't!" I screamed, my voice cracking into a maniac, psychotic register that shook the dust off the liquor bottles. I stepped forward, practically pressing my chest against her tactical vest, completely ignoring the dozen guns currently pointed at the back of my skull.
I gestured wildly with my free hand, almost slapping Nina with a bloody gauze pad.
"I literally showed up for my first day this morning! Did anyone sit me down for onboarding? Did anyone give me a handbook or explain my duties? No! Because Daniel had to go and die the exact same morning I arrived, and everything went to absolute shit! I am completely winging this! But from what I can gather, I am the guy who does the precise, elegant intellectual property theft of the human mind! Do I look like a bullet-sponge to you?!"
The operatives stared at me, their mouths hanging open. Nobody moved. The guy aiming a shotgun at my ribs looked deeply uncomfortable, like a bystander witnessing a retail worker finally losing it at a Karen on their very first shift.
"Oh, I went past the thirty-minute limit? My deepest, most sincere apologies, your Majesty! I went over by one second! A single, solitary tick of the clock! And do you know what I was doing during that one second? I was finishing the entire damn mission! The target was capsized! The subconscious key was turning in the lock! I was literally on the syllable 'th—' of waking him up as our perfect little puppet!"
I let out a sharp, barking, terrifyingly ecstatic laugh that echoed through the stunned silence of the bar. A manic grin split my bloody lips, my teeth stained red.
"You, you majestic tower of pure, unadulterated muscle-headed stupidity, couldn't wait one more second! Your internal clock runs on pure caveman logic, so you decided to Kool-Aid-Man your way through the front door right at the finish line! You didn't save the day, Prisma! You ruined a masterpiece on my first day of work because you wanted to kick a door down!" I'm not finished. I added another line immediately
"I haven't even filled out my tax forms yet! I don't have dental! I don't have health insurance! I don't even know where the pastry is! And instead of a proper welcome, I get a giant, illiterate ape looking down her nose at me because I didn't clock out on time!"
I leaned in so close she could smell the copper on my breath.
"Apologize!" I whispered, my eyes wide and entirely unhinged. "Say 'I am sorry, Edgar, your first day has been an absolute nightmare because my brain is made of wet cement.' Say it before I decide to see if your skull can pass a ballistic test, you over-glorified, giant gorilla!"
Every member look at me with a surprise look on their face. Not expecting me to let loose. HAHA, but who I am to care? I DONT FUCKING CARE!!.
Prisma let out a dry, mocking laugh. "So, all this pathetic theater and borrowed courage is just for me to beg for an apology?" Her lips curled into a cruel smile. "Where did you scrape up that backbone, little shit?"
Completely ignoring the loaded firearm pressed against her flesh, she took a step forward, her massive fist clenching into a knot of white knuckles.
"SHUT UP! DO YOU THINK I WON'T PULL THIS TRIGGER, YOU MOTHERFUCKER?!"
My hands were shaking violently now, the front sight of the Glock wobbling toward her. She kept looking at me.
"Shoot then. See if I care," she whispered. "But it looks like the dog needs to be re-educated."
Prisma was suddenly inside my guard.
"I'LL SHO—"
Before my index finger could contract to pulled the trigger, an unimaginable force slammed right at me.