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Aiden's momentum was explosive, but the result was a letdown.
To save his daughter, Waltz had long since turned his own body into a playground for viral and chemical enhancement. His physical attributes weren't just superhuman; they were peak-mutant. With a casual side-step, he dodged Aiden's desperate tackle, pinned the young man to the floor, and leveled a cold, predatory gaze at Kael.
"What is the meaning of this?" Waltz rasped.
"Don't be in such a rush, Doctor. Take a good look at this 'lab rat' here. His name is Aiden."
Kael ignored the snarling Renegades closing in and pointed at the struggling boy. Waltz froze. He slowly loosened his grip, pulling Aiden up by his collar to scrutinize his face. A flicker of recognition crossed the doctor's hardened features.
"Aiden...?"
"Let me go!" Aiden spat. "I've come for revenge, Waltz!"
Waltz looked confused. In his memory, he and Aiden had been close—he had almost viewed the boy as his future son-in-law. "What happened to his mind?"
"Too many drug trials scrambled the hard drive," Kael shrugged. "Memory's muddled. It's fine; a good beating usually fixes the hardware."
"Usually?" Waltz's mouth twitched. He wasn't sure if Kael was a genius or a psychopath.
"Anyway, let's put the family drama aside," Kael said, waving a dismissive hand. "It's getting dark, and I have things to do. From now on, Waltz, you work for me."
Waltz's expression darkened into a sneer. He was no longer a man of medicine; he was a warlord who had sacrificed his soul to save his daughter. "Work for you? On what grounds, boy?"
The Renegades tightened their circle. Hakon, sensing the shift in the air, tried to blend into the shadows and slip away. I'm just the delivery guy, he thought. This is above my pay grade.
Before Waltz could give the order to kill, Kael moved.
He lunged forward, his movement a clinical application of Calculating Survivor logic. His elbow drove into the chest of the nearest two-meter-tall Renegade like a hydraulic piston. The man was sent flying, his ribcage collapsing with a sound like dry firewood snapping. He knocked over three others as he tumbled.
The sudden violence made the remaining thugs catch their breath.
"I have no room for trash in my organization," Kael said, shaking off his sleeve. "I want you, Waltz, because you have a brain. These eyesores are just slowing us down."
"Who... what are you?" Waltz's voice trembled. The power Kael displayed exceeded even his most optimistic experimental data.
Kael didn't answer. He tilted his head slightly. An arrow whistled past his ear, only for him to catch the shaft mid-air with a gloved hand. Without looking, he snapped the head off and flicked it behind him. A Renegade sniper tumbled from a crate, the arrowhead buried in his brow.
Within sixty seconds, ten fully armed Renegades were reduced to piles of soft mud.
Waltz lunged, a desperate, powerful punch aimed at Kael's jaw. BANG. Kael's counter-strike sent Waltz flying into a parked van, denting the iron plate as the doctor became firmly embedded in the metal.
"Boss, you didn't kill him, did you?" Hakon whispered, suddenly reappearing at Kael's side to show his loyalty.
"Relax. He's thick-skinned."
Sure enough, Waltz let out a beastial roar—the unmistakable sound of a Volatile—as he tore himself out of the van's side. His drug-enhanced physiology had taken over, sacrificing his reason for raw, feral power. He lunged at Kael like a cannonball.
Kael didn't blink. He met the charge with a kick that sent Waltz back even faster, dragging him across the concrete for ten meters until the doctor slumped into a coma.
"Drag him to the safe house," Kael told Hakon. "And pick up Aiden while you're at it. It's dark."
The night in Villedor belonged to the monsters. As Hakon and a dazed Aiden hauled Waltz toward safety, Kael stayed behind. He flicked a discarded long-blade into his hand and struck an iron railing, the metallic ring acting as a dinner bell for the Virals crawling out of the sewers.
"Come on then, you stinking things," Kael whispered, assuming the starting stance of Flame Breathing.
Even without supernatural fire, the bio-rhythm overclocking made his blade a blur. By the time he walked back into the safe house, he was dragging the headless corpse of a Volatile.
"The usual, Aiden," Kael said, tossing the creature's hideous head to the boy. Aiden nearly dropped it in horror.
"You want me to... grow the mushrooms?" Aiden asked, remembering the gruesome stories Hakon had told him.
"You want the truth about Mia? Start chopping."
Inside the safe house, as the sound of meat-cleavers rang from the kitchen, Kael sat across from a recovering Waltz. The doctor's memory of the "experiment" was clear: he hadn't been trying to kill the children; he'd been trying to save them from a terminal strain. Aiden was the key to Mia's survival, and Aiden had volunteered for the trials.
"I can save her, Aiden," Kael said, looking at the young Pilgrim. "X13 has the GRE hardware I need. But we do it my way. No missiles, no destroying the city."
Aiden looked at Kael's chest, where the GRE key was hidden. He'd planned to steal it, but seeing Kael decapitate a Volatile with a piece of scrap metal had changed his mind. Negotiation seemed like the only logical path.
"So, will you join my team, Aiden?" Kael asked. "I'll research the Evolutionary Agents, Waltz will provide the data, and you'll be the bridge."
Kael's plan was simple: Use Aiden to keep Lawan—that human-shaped Volatile—distracted so she wouldn't ruin his research. He'd save Villedor, cure the virus, and turn the last city on Earth into his personal laboratory.
The speedrun was officially in progress.
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