Fatigue and the nearness of death awakened Drax’s dulled instincts. He did not want his siblings to cry upon learning of his death. He would let no one cause his parents grief again. But most of all, he hated this rabble that had brought chaos to a sincerely nice place that had taken them in. The suffering and harm inflicted on the locals enraged him, and he lunged forward, no longer growling and no longer restraining himself.
They only understood strength? Fine. He was strong, and they were not.
A raised arm blocked an automatic burst. Bullets drummed against the bony armor, leaving the tiniest of cracks. The slight pain distracted him from Inverted Control. Drax burst into the flames to the right of the van, ruthlessly driving both fists, wreathed in power spheres, into the knee and shoulder of a woman who flinched at his speed. His saliva splattered across the visible part of her face, where terror gave way to pain. Red bloomed on the scarf covering her face. A sharp agony in his thigh snapped shut his maw as it opened for a bite, and he jerked, twisting to the left.
Another terrorist had fired a shotgun at him. The shot pierced his sweater, burying itself in his dark flesh. But the wounded attacker had fared far worse: the spread of pellets had struck her too, shattering her cheekbone and catching a rib. Her problems. Drax snatched up the falling weapon, not even trying to fit his finger into the trigger guard. He hurled the submachine gun, breaking it against a second terrorist’s legs, and the man sank to the asphalt with a wild cry, clutching at his now motionless legs and rolling left and right. His clothes caught fire.
“What’s the matter?” Drax giggled. “Does it hurt? It hurt the officer, too. Let me take the boo-boo away.”
“Monster!”
He drew his outstretched arm back; his green pupils turned to the right, shifted left, and fixed on Inverted Control, who had stretched out her hand toward him and was pulling a pistol from the pocket of her robe. With a trembling hand, she aimed the weapon at him.
“D-don’t move...” a high, cracking voice stammered. “O-or... or I’ll shoot! You’re an Abnormal! Why are you on the side of tyranny?!”
“Pointless drivel. I won’t even dignify that with an answer... Although!” A chuckle rolled out of his throat.
His clothes hung in tatters; he was bleeding from cuts, had nearly lost his life, stood at gunpoint, shackled by the effect of a power, and yet he felt utter exhilaration. There were no chains on him; the lines around him were clearly drawn, and he knew what needed to be done. What he had to do. Taking a sidestep to the right, he made his leg kick sharply at a chunk of stone that had been knocked loose by Singer. It struck Inverted Control in the chest, forcing a strangled cry from her.
The sensation of disorientation vanished, and Drax was on the wretch in an instant, knocking her head against the van and breaking the pistol. Something hissed inside it, and the pistol burst in a bubble of electricity, jolting his arm unpleasantly. The rabbit mask cracked; a corner fell away, and a wide brown eye stared up at him against skin the color of milk chocolate.
Weak little hands pushed at him feebly; the pupil dilated at the sight of the dripping saliva and the approaching teeth.
“M-m-m...” Tears rolled down beneath the mask.
“Scared?” Drax bristled. “People were scared, too. Don’t worry, I’ll relieve you of...”
He stopped, his grip tightening on Inverted Control’s throat. What brought him to his senses was not her pleas, but the smell of urine, which returned him to that night. The prying loose of a piece of his bony plate, the mockingly solicitous voice, and the feeling of utter helplessness. The places had swapped: before him was another person, and now he was the one with total power.
Was this the person he wanted to become? This is a kid in front of me! Her voice is younger than Rudrani’s...
Drax snapped his jaws shut, easing the pressure on her throat, realizing how close he had come to simply breaking it. What was most frightening was the absence of revulsion. He had maimed several Softskins and didn’t feel bad about it. A gleaming whip cut his thoughts short, arching his whole body into a bow.
Electricity coursed through him, convulsing his internal organs. He gave distance to Inverted Control, deliberately letting her go so that the destructive pain that tormented him would not leap onto the girl. She instantly scrambled away, finding herself in the arms of a taller boy in a dark jacket with silvery fastenings and a demon mask covering his face. From the boy’s open hand, a long electric whip stretched toward Drax, casting a blue glow onto the mask, half of which was painted red.
“Get away from her, mutie,” ordered Lash.
Behind him, his friends hadn’t even been distracted from breaking open the van doors.
“It... won’t help.” Drax retreated further, moving out of the electricity’s reach. His teeth chattered; a wisp of smoke rose from his mouth. His vision narrowed and expanded. “You won’t stop me with a little twitching. I’m giving you a chance. Surrender, and I won’t touch you. Otherwise, I’ll have to hurt you.”
He was speaking like himself again. The clawed paw that had been reaching for his soul withdrew; hunger no longer controlled his actions. Drax remained himself.
And he liked it.
“Surrender? Sit on drugs, stripped of the ability to do what we know we can do?!”
“Like what? Attacking people?” Drax taunted him. The force spheres vanished from his fists. He had deactivated his power. “Yeah, right. To the camp, to the camp.”
“We’ve been forced! Every day the bitches in power give us a choice: either go serve in the military Academy, where they’ll try to mold us into soldiers, or swallow pills and lose our natural gifts until we turn twenty-four!” Lash roared, pressing the trembling girl tighter to himself. “You don’t know what it’s like to have a power and not be able to use it. It’s like living with a paralyzed, dead limb.”
“There’s always another way. Don’t like it here? Leave and become a hermit beyond the borders.”
“This is our home! Our city! Let them fuck off with their stupid laws! You’re right, there is another way. Resistance to injustice!” He raised his arm with the whip.
“Try resisting this...”
Blue, red, and white slammed into him, dragging him away from the van and closer to the fire. Drax didn’t have time to catch his breath before blows struck him, delivered by an experienced hand. The first thrust aimed at his carotid artery, slipping deftly between the plates of his carapace. Then blows rained on his elbows, followed by the dull sound of knuckles bouncing off the bone above his solar plexus; immediately after, painful jabs at the wounds on his back and side; and finally, two kicks to the back of his knees.
Gasping, Drax hunched over. He was seized by the jaw, and his head was wrenched sharply. By a miracle, he managed to turn in time, avoiding a concussion, and threw his arms forward, blindly scooping. A teenager sprang back from him—dressed in a white skirt with pleats at the sides and a red sleeveless vest, with a gold star tattooed on the left side of her chest. Her skin was blue, and her curled hair bounced around her heart-shaped face.
A second later, she was no longer there. A hurricane of attacks whirled around Drax, reaching him from every possible direction. Strangely, both of his previous opponents had frozen, doing nothing. He tried to get to them to stop the cutter who was widening the breach in the van, but then he was torn off the road.
He took a hook to the torso. Not a real one—he saw no fist; the space in front of him had blurred—but the sensation was very much like a missed punch from another Malformed. The fast-moving teenager didn’t hit that hard. At another time, he would have even been glad, but raising his head and tracing the distorted space to a lanky boy in blue pants and a jacket, he felt a wild irritation mixed with genuine hatred. All around, shooting was going on; the police were overcoming the terrorists, and these brutes were stopping him from ending the fight!
Drax raised his arms as high as he could and brought them down on the obstacle pressing against his chest. It seemed to burst, and he landed, advancing on the boy in blue. The boy’s face was crossed with scars that ringed his left eye. The Malformed intended to add new ones. He swung, tormented by the super-fast opponent, and struck.
A yank at his leg foiled the simple move. From the boy in blue stretched a strip of murky haze, seizing Drax by the leg and dragging him aside. Several more strips of murk layered over his arm, forming a sharpened petal that slipped onto his fist like a glove. This point met Drax’s hand, and the collision pushed them both back.
If only I could use my power! The thought flashed through Drax’s mind. He shook his right hand. A noticeable gap had been punched between his middle and ring fingers, and with every movement, chunks of the bony growth fell away. I’m thinning out. Sooner or later, the armor will no longer save me. He thought about fleeing, trusting the adults to resolve the situation.
He remembered the wounded officer, Horatia, and the civilians. They all had homes or friends waiting for them, and unlike him, they didn’t have his durability. Even the Defenders needed help.
“Sit!” laughed the blue-skinned girl, stopping beside her partner, with their backs to the dark shop. “Whatever bone you wanted to pick with those guys, try taking it from us, fossil.”
“I don’t recommend trying to run, barbaric freak,” the boy said tensely. Behind him, segments of vision-smearing haze were rising. They fused into a single whole, surrounding the pair with a wall. “I’ll pulverize your arms and legs, and you’ll be thrown out to the savages as a cripple!”
“Fools! Look at who’s fighting and where! You’ve attacked an ally!”
On the roof of the damaged club stood Gunther in his dark-red uniform. His face was already covered in protrusions, and he was clearing away debris. Shifting a heap of stones aside with his arm, he pulled out a coughing couple in evening wear and pointed them toward the arriving servants, prepared to lead the patrons away.
The pair obeyed the shout. Together with Drax, they cast their gaze over the battlefield. Breathing heavily, Horatia was stopping the bleeding of an officer wounded in the throat. Another policeman had cut short an attempt by the black-clad terrorists to break through to the shop with civilians and had laid out three of them. Father was rolling in the fire with Werewolf, trading heavy blows. Bites had torn out huge chunks of flesh from the pyromaniac’s chest and shoulder; one tendril had been bitten in two, but William hadn’t come out unscathed either.
He was repeatedly lifted into the air by a whole forest of pulsating meat cables and mercilessly pounded into the ground, opening craters in the road. Father’s nose was pushed aside; two fingers dangled, unable to form a fist. The skin on his left arm had peeled back, returning to the former sharp blades that were now carving channels in Werewolf’s chest.
A battle of its own was taking place above the battlefield. Pierre hovered on air currents, desperately dodging the objects sent his way by Singer. She lifted an entire car, and the mutant flattened himself against the object as it flew past, smashed the windshield, pulled out the screaming man inside, and lowered him onto the roof by wind. His reward was a sharp rain of glass from the car. The wide-brimmed hat fell apart, and a long cut split Pierre’s hairstyle.
All of Drax’s dislike for the man evaporated. His father’s childhood friend was a true hero. Pierre pushed off from the air, closed in on Singer, and slammed the butt of his pistol into her chest. The woman’s musical serenade turned into an enraged shriek.
The fight was raging at the van and spilling onto the street, not the other way around.
“Olcinia, looks like we screwed up,” muttered the boy in blue.
“Crap...” Olcinia drawled. “On the side of the leprous reject...” She broke into a run, circling Drax on the right. Her silhouette hung near the teenager for a moment, breaking apart, and Olcinia herself had already knocked down a black-clad woman, seized her by the chin, and slammed the back of her head against the road. Likely the heavy hood had played a small protective role, but the terrorist sprawled out, dropping her submachine gun.
“Hey!” Drax caught her by the arm, looking into her eyes, which were full of fury. Olcinia hated him, ready to bite at the touch. “There are wounded everywhere.”
“Not blind,” the girl hissed.
She flinched at the embrace. Drax pressed himself against Olcinia, shielding her with his body from the shots.
“Stop groping me! Qezon’s covering me!”
“That doesn’t matter now! We’ll sort out everything later! Evacuate people to safety!”
“Then Qezon and Gunther will be left without cover!”
“I’ll be with them,” Drax promised. A strip of blurred space flew past them, stinging a shotgun-wielding terrorist. “Act. You have speed; I don’t! Damn it, people are burning alive! Lives need saving. Don’t make me argue until we’re blue in the face.”
Qezon gave a short laugh, strangled and succeeding to sound guilty. The hatred in Olcinia’s eyes flared anew. She nodded, pushed away the arms releasing her, and tore from the spot. First, she scooped up the woman with the concussion and possible skull fracture and carried her to the police. Then came the terrorist whose legs Drax had broken. When carrying them, she slowed down, not reaching the peak of her insane speed. Drax assumed she didn’t want to harm the wounded through friction.
“So sorry for the beating. You can knock out my every tooth afterwards, just don’t drag my friends into it...” Qezon began.
“Squash the bad guys, and nothing happened!”
“I’m not going to murder...”
“Same here! Let’s break them!” Drax crashed into a terrorist retreating toward the van.
The man managed to point his shotgun at him and fire while falling. Qezon’s force field stretched between them, taking the pellets. Drax immediately turned the man’s face into a bloody mess and left him for Olcinia. The situation was gradually clearing up. No more than a handful of attackers remained; Lash and Inverted Control were loitering beside the bandit who was cutting into the van.
Who needs aid? Father would tell him to piss off and would be right; there was nothing for him in this fight. Singer was out of reach. The shooters were dangerous, but the officer had spoken of prisoners. Better to prevent their release.
“Cover me!” Drax shouted, hurrying to the van.
The electric whip rose and came down on him. Drax shielded his face with his arms, and the energy splashed in sparks across an invisible screen in front of him, not reaching the bone. Qezon moved behind him, not abandoning his ally, and in his peripheral vision, Olcinia kept appearing, carrying off the wounded.
In the alley behind the van, a policeman emerged. His uniform was riddled with shots; blood was streaming down his boots; his lips had lost all color. The trembling, barely breathing man aimed his pistol at the back of the bandit in the welding mask. Those gathered nearby stopped firing at Drax, switching targets. Gunther hurled a billiard table covered in green cloth from above. This expensive piece of entertainment knocked down two black-clad terrorists, crushing them against the shop walls.
Inverted Control knocked the pistol from the partner’s hand and pointed her hand at the policeman. His finger began to withdraw from the trigger, and the torso of the man busy breaking into the van unexpectedly collapsed inside it. The pounding from inside ceased.
Faster! Drax urged himself on. He must hurry!