The moment he realized the bomb couldn't be detonated, the man wearing the rabbit mask sprinted into the mall. When he heard the sound of glass shattering behind him, he rolled behind a checkout counter, grabbed his walkie-talkie, and shouted, ["KILL THEM! KILL ALL THE HOSTAGES!"]
At once, several extremists in the furniture section on the fifth floor were about to act when suddenly a few soft whooshing sounds rang out.
In the next instant, one man after another had their foreheads burst open, blood spraying out, with the tip of a pen sticking through.
It turned out that each of them had been pierced through the back of the head by a steel pen, which blew out through their foreheads, killing them on the spot.
However, there weren't hostages only on the fifth floor. On the fourth floor, in the baby products section, a large number of hostages were also being held.
And among them were many young mothers, as well as infants still wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Those extremists didn't hesitate at all. Upon receiving the order, they were about to open fire.
People collapsed in despair, clutching their heads and crying. Mothers hugged their children tightly, instinctively using their own bodies to shield them.
Yet the gunshots they imagined never came.
Two red beams shot down from the ceiling, swept around in a circle, and all the extremists froze in place. A moment later, their bodies split into several pieces.
On the fifth floor of the mall, Alex smiled and raised his head. His eyes, which had just fired the laser beams, returned to normal.
He had long since scanned the entire mall and pinpointed the locations of the extremists. He had already drawn up a plan before taking action, leaving them no chance to shoot the hostages.
———
"Did it fail?"
Hiding behind the checkout counter, the man looked toward the furniture section. There were no gunshots, neither on the fifth floor nor the fourth.
His heart instantly sank to rock bottom.
He was the mastermind behind the incident, and also Alex's kill target, Gandi Alda.
At that moment, he heard the sound of something tearing through the air. Reacting instantly, he rolled away. The checkout counter behind him exploded apart. Amid the flying debris, a blue figure was clapping his hands, brushing off the fragments that had fallen onto his shoulders.
Seeing the blond hair and handsome face, Gandi Alda gritted his teeth and spat out a sentence.
"Damn you, Homelander!"
Of course Alex heard him. He shook his head and looked at Mr. Rabbit.
"Game over."
"You have two choices now."
"One is to tell me exactly what kind of organization your 'Dark Night Council' really is. If you do, I'll give you a quick death."
"The other is to say nothing, and I'll crush every single bone in your body, one by one, until you turn into a pile of mush."
Gandi took off his mask, revealing a face with Middle Eastern features, "Dream on, Homelander! You're not getting any information out of my mouth."
"Is that so?"
"That's really a shame."
Alex lifted off the ground and smiled.
"Let me just make sure. You are Gandi Alda, right?"
The man froze. He didn't understand how Homelander knew his name.
His expression confirmed it for Alex. The man in front of him was indeed his target.
With a faint smile, Alex flickered forward in a flash, appearing right in front of Gandi and stepping down on his right foot.
Gandi let out a shrill scream. His right foot was flattened under Alex's step, all five toes instantly crushed.
"Sorry, I used a bit too much force," Alex said, spreading his hands.
His response was a rifle shoved almost against his chest, followed by a hail of bullets blasting out of the muzzle.
"Die!", Gandi roared. The veins at his temples bulged as he squeezed the trigger all the way down, spraying bullets at the blue demon in front of him.
Alex shrugged. As each bullet deformed and dropped to the ground, he reached out and grabbed the barrel of the gun.
The rifle barrel instantly twisted out of shape. The rifle blew apart, and one of Gandi's hands was blown open, blood spraying everywhere.
Mr. Rabbit screamed and staggered back, collapsing onto the ground and scooting backward inch by inch.
Suddenly, he pulled a syringe from his pocket.
He shouted, "Long live the Council!"
Then he stabbed the syringe into his own thigh and pushed all the liquid inside into his body.
This familiar scene made Alex recall the international airport incident, where a man named Edi Orr had injected something similar and then turned into a monster.
Now this man had also injected "holy blood," which was in fact a "gene serum," and the effects appeared almost immediately.
Gandi's skin was first dyed a layer of iron-black. Then his teeth began to fall out one by one, clattering onto the ground. From the toothless mouth, new teeth grew in, sharper than before.
At this moment, Maeve arrived nearby. She had already taken care of the remaining extremists. Seeing Gandi undergoing some kind of transformation, she couldn't help asking, "What's going on?"
Alex, smiling broadly, waved at Queen Maeve, "This guy took drugs. I ran into something similar at the airport last time."
"After injecting some mysterious substance, they turn into monsters."
Maeve spread her hands, looking completely baffled.
"And you're just watching?"
Alex said indifferently, "What does it matter? Besides, attacking before giving the other side a chance to show off would be pretty rude, wouldn't it?"
Maeve laughed, "You're really polite."
Then she charged forward like a speeding train and slammed straight into Gandi. He was sent flying at once, his body twisting unnaturally. His spine was probably already broken.
Alex floated in midair, entering spectator mode.
"Maeve, I think you should equip yourself with one or two weapons. A sword and shield would suit you well."
Maeve shot a glance at the man floating in the air and said irritably, "My body is the best weapon."
Then she saw Homelander point his chin forward. Turning her head, Maeve saw Gandi getting back up, his deformed waist restoring itself to normal.
He lifted his head and looked at Maeve. Just like Edi Orr, his eyes had turned blood-red. Aside from that, there weren't many other changes.
Overall, he still looked mostly human.
Maeve frowned and heard Alex remind her, "The weakness of these monsters is the head. Only when the head is destroyed do they truly die. Otherwise, no matter how severe the injury, they'll recover quickly, like vampires from legend."
Without saying a word, Maeve rushed forward. After a few accelerating steps, she leapt up, clamped Gandi's head between her powerful thighs, gripping with both inner thighs, and twisted hard.
Crack!
Gandi's neck snapped instantly. His body spun halfway through the air before slamming heavily onto the ground.
Maeve stood up. Turned around. Her right leg lifted high, toes rising above her head. Then, using her heel as the point of force, she brought it down like a massive axe, chopping straight toward her opponent's head.
Just as Gandi's head was about to be smashed by Maeve, the man suddenly moved like a gecko, scrambling sideways in a bizarre motion, causing Maeve's kick to miss.
BANG!
The entire fifth floor shook. Maeve smashed an irregular crater into the ground, and the surrounding shelves toppled over in all directions.
But Gandi didn't die. Holding his head with both hands, he twisted a few times and snapped his neck back into place.
Then he turned and ran. His speed was inhuman. In the blink of an eye, he crashed through a window, burst out of the mall, and fell toward the parking lot behind the building.
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