015 FIRST KILL
"How dare you attack me?" Mad Cat roared, his hand clamped tight around Damen's throat.
When Mad Cat was struck by mental attacks he scanned for the closest threat….and that threat was Damen. With a shocking blink, he was at Damen's throat.
"Damnit, how did he catch me?" Damen complained in his mind.
Then he realized it was impossible for Mad Cat to know about his mining app and that he was the one attacking him.
Gasping, Damen managed to croak out feigning innocent, "It's not me! What the hell are you talking about? Are you crazy!!…I came here for the concert!"
For a moment, a flicker of doubt crossed Mad Cat's eyes. Damen was just a teenager who loitered too near to them… not a powerful assassin. He's got the wrong person.
He released Damen and spun around, scanning the shadows for his unseen attacker.
But the street was empty. The only one in sight was Damen. He was the only suspect, so Mad Cat's finger jabbed toward him again. "It's you, isn't it, boy? You were the one who attacked me?"
By then Stephan and a handful of thugs came onto the scene. Stephan's eyes lit up with recognition. "That's him! He's the kid who stole your money!"
"What?" Mad Cat bellowed.
"Damnit, I couldn't act my way out of this now when Stephan recognized me," Damen thought.
"No! You've got the wrong guy!" Damen pleaded, his voice cracking.
Damen knew he had made a terrible mistake. He was too hasty and greedy.
Targeting Mad Cat had been reckless. He hadn't expected the man could dash hundreds of meters in an instant. That was Mad Cat's superpower.
"I can't underestimate Meta-humans ever again," he vowed but that was for a future time.
Survival was all that mattered now.
"Damn it," Damen muttered under his breath. "There's no way out of this."
"It's him, Boss. I'm sure of it!" Stephan insisted.
"I should've killed you the moment I could," Damen thought bitterly.
"Kill him now, Boss!" Stephan urged.
Mad Cat usually ignored the chorus of his underlings, but this time, he obeyed. With a wicked grin, he drew a dagger from his belt and lunged at Damen.
"This is it", Damen thought. "So, this is how I die."
His life flashed in fragments—years of torment under his uncle's family, the endless bullying at school, the injustice from teachers, thugs, from everyone.
The DemCoin app had seemed like salvation, a glimpse of freedom. But that gift had turned short-lived, if he was going to die tonight.
The dagger drove into his chest, narrowly missing his heart. Pain ripped through him.
"AARGH!" he screamed.
And then—something strange happened.
Mad Cat screamed too, his face twisted in shock as he collapsed to the ground.
Damen's mining wasn't done yet. He pressed on "Acquire: Command," stealing Mad Cat's third available stat and fourth stat in quick succession.
Mad Cat was struck by powerful mental attacks from his mining acquisition.
Everything blurred.
Damen wasn't in the right mind now. He suffered an almost death, so he wasn't thinking straight.
Acting on instinct, Damen wrenched the dagger from his chest. In one swift motion, rage overtaking reason, he plunged it straight into Mad Cat's skull before he recovers from the mental attacks.
Blood sprayed all over him.
Mad Cat fell limp and dead.
"Run!" Stephan shrieked at the sight of his boss's death.
But Damen was beyond reason now. Adrenaline surged, and a killing madness was flooding his veins. He lunged at Stephan, driving the blade into him.
Stephan collapsed, lifeless too.
Then came the others. Damen tore into the thugs, one by one. His strikes were brutal, merciless. Screams filled the night until silence swallowed everything.
When it was over, Damen stood amidst the carnage, his chest heaving, and blood dripping from the blade. Slowly, the haze lifted.
He stared at the dead bodies before him.
"What… what did I just do? Did I kill these people" he whispered. Although they were deserving of it, Damen was still shocked that he had murdered Mad Cat, Stephan, all of them.
It was Damen's First Kill.
There was no time for remorse. He fell to the ground in shock and panic.
It felt like eternity to him but in reality, it didn't take long before Damen returned to his senses. "Now I must deal with this mess."
He remembered the news of the frequent gang murders in the city. Dead gangsters were often found burned and all evidence destroyed. Even the police couldn't solve the cases.
With that as inspiration, Damen dragged the corpses to a nearby car, stripping them of their Aur cards before pouring gasoline all over.
"Boom"
Then with the strike of a lighter, the car went up in flames together with the bodies of Mad Cat, Stephan and the thugs with it.
Damen quickly escaped from the crime scene after that.
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Damen's body was a map of pain. The bleeding had stopped, but the wounds still burned, raw and screaming for proper treatment.
Normally, he would have gone straight to a hospital.
But not tonight.
Showing up in shredded clothes with stab wounds would invite questions he couldn't afford to answer.
"What do I do now?" he thought, his jaw throbbing. "I need medical treatment… but I can't be seen in a hospital with wounds like this."
A second passed.
Then his lips curled into a thin smile.
"Hospital it is."
Damen ran all the way to Melrose Hospital No. 3. He bypassed the reception desk, slipped through a service entrance, and ghosted up a stairwell, staying close to the shadows.
In the doctors' locker room, his hands were slick with drying blood as he rummaged through cupboards until he found bandages—and a spare set of scrubs tossed carelessly over a chair.
He taped his ribs as best he could, bit back a hiss of pain, then pulled on the clean clothes. His bloodstained ones disappeared into a bin.
"Next stop… Suite—whatever it was," he murmured, forcing his aching legs to move toward the patient wing.
Then it came back to him.
Suite 10051.
He slipped inside.
It was Ralph's room, shared with several other patients. Ralph was sound asleep, breathing evenly.
The cluster of occupied beds felt like a gift to him.
Damen allowed himself a bitter smile. "Perfect," he whispered. "There would be plenty of witnesses here who'll see me here in the morning."
He sank onto the visitor's couch beside Ralph and kept watch as the night clawed at him.
The horror replayed itself again and again—Mad Cat's face, the others falling, the finality of it all. It was the first time he had taken a life.
He knew, with chilling certainty, that he would never be the same.
Damen forced himself to breathe.
Fear gave way to action. Action to preparation.
He stopped thinking about the killing itself and focused instead on what came after—running through it over and over until it felt solid, until he was certain there was no evidence left to be found, there were no mistakes.
When dawn came, he would be here. Seen and remembered. These people—Ralph, the patients, the staff—would become his alibi.
If even a shred of suspicion tied him to Mad Cat's murder, this room would shield him.
Satisfied, Damen leaned back and closed his eyes… and finally, he slept.
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