"Things will never be the same again."
Gneiss Underwood never thought that he could have a shot of a normal life.
Growing up in an environment where everything defied sanity, guns and loneliness were his normal companions, if not danger and Death h...
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"Sometimes the only thing that people see is what you did when in fact they should be looking at why you did it."
Number Twenty-Seven
How many did he kill tonight? He had lost count after twenty. The aftertaste was always bitter, and he hated every minute of it. Nevertheless, he had made a promise, and his choice was to keep it.
13 entered his office, ripped off the wired earpiece from his left ear and dumped his bag on the floor, mud and blood smearing its marbled white surface. He pulled off the black jacket he loathed so much, wrinkling his nose at the smell that clung to it. The shredded thing went straight to the waste basket. He threw the boots and the guns away and crawled to the couch barefooted and empty-handed. He laid there for a few minutes, trying to get some rest before he had to set out again.
Fifteen... no, make it five. He just needed five minutes to clear off the headache.
For a seventy-year old man, the battle raging outside, in the shadows of populated cities, was trying even for a veteran like him. He wasn't as fast or as powerful as he once was. The chill of the night was painful for his aging bones, and the injuries he kept on receiving wouldn't heal as well as they would if he were younger. However, he couldn't complain. He is 13, and he must live up to his name. For his dead comrades. For the Rare Kinds. For Creed.
Battles like these were common. UnGifted people never liked the idea of a superior race existing, and they felt the drive to hunt the Rare Kinds – agents of Creed in particular – from time to time. But fights never used to be this big scale. What's worse was that Gifted were fighting against their own Kind. The last time this happened, Creed paid a price too high. It lost half of the people working under it – for 13, his own wife and two of his daughters, and for the Master, Ophelia and their child.
Whoever was heading this Light, he knew what he was doing, and he was doing it well. Too damn well.
13 must had dozed off because the next thing he knew, there was someone watching him from the opposite side of the room.
"Holy f*ck!"
His Gift burst out of him, sending a blanket of darkness as inky as midnight across the room, entrapping the stranger. Three seconds passed by in utter silence. His shock gradually worn off, replaced by the sense of anger – that he had let someone sneak on him. He materialized a gun with his mind, and slowly, carefully approached the stranger. Instincts kicking in, 13 switched his illusions.
The darkness shifted to green mist. Snakes appeared out of nowhere, accompanied by tendrils of gray smoke that crawled on the floor. Horrible, nasty creatures straight out from the unholiest nightmares crowded the room. He controlled them, prepared them, to feast on the lone man. 13 was ready for the kill.
