Kyle’s energy blade flashed blue, illuminating the night around him. Another of the enhanced soldiers fell. A smile curled around his lips as the acidic blood splashed over him. Kyle knew full well that he had just ended a civilian life, but that didn’t matter at this point. The woman lying in pieces before him, her body slowly dissolving, was thought dead by everybody who had mattered to her long ago. Whoever was behind these retaliatory attacks, Kyle reasoned, was hunting down prisoners of war, trafficking victims and other subjects who had disappeared long ago. He never felt even the slightest twinge of guilt as the glaze faded from their eyes and they realized the gravity of their fates.
This particular night, Kyle had found his prey. Normally, the fighters came to him, drawn by his substantial power. All of the monstrosities and brainwashed fighters that the empire had created seemed bent on destroying anybody besides their own kind who was more powerful than the average human. Most likely, the move was due to the inhuman power it must have taken to raze the D.C. metro’s MaximiLand park to the ground.
Just a few hours earlier, Kyle’s tattered trenchcoat had been hidden under a bush near his usual haunt. Instead, he wore an elegant three-piece suit and sipped champagne in the ballroom of Sulgrave. He needed only a few seconds to scan the room before he found his mark. Another monster. She was almost painfully obvious to him, hiding in plain sight and waiting for a target of her own to come along. He presented her with that target. They spent an enjoyable night together, ending it with what any outsider would call a romantic tryst in the park at midnight. She thought she had caught him by surprise at his most vulnerable moment, but he had kept his weapon handy. He knew her secret. She thought he had played right into his hands, but he was planning to turn the tables.
It could hardly have been called a battle. The naked woman straddling Kyle got up slowly, grinning at him. He felt her aura change as her power awakened. She whipped around and fired a beam from her hand that would have vaporized any unwitting soul, but Kyle was already out of harm’s way. First, her hand came off. Another beam saw another hand hit the ground. She blocked Kyle’s next swing with her leg, as he predicted she would. The limb hardened enough to withstand his assault while she concentrated her energies on it, but she didn’t count on Kyle having a beam of his own. It pierced her beautiful face, melting it away to show a skull with bits of metal here and there. Behind the eye openings, a metal construct resembling a brain beat and pulsed. It heated up and began to shake as his beam made contact with it, and her iron leg softened. Kyle’s energy sword passed through it with ease, and with a few flicks of his wrist, the augmented body fell to pieces and dropped to the cold ground. The fleshy bits made a sickly plopping sound, then began to sizzle as they started the disintegration process.
This failsafe was almost surely in place to ensure that the police wouldn’t get involved in MaximiLand’s affairs and attract any unwanted attention. The irony of the situation put a grin on Kyle’s lips. He could go to his sister any day with the evidence he had gathered thus far, and she would hand everything over to her cop friends. Kyle didn’t want her getting hurt, so he kept her at a distance while he exterminated and gathered. He just wanted to wait until he had enough photos, witness accounts and material evidence to break the case wide open in one fell swoop. To that end, he pointed his finger at a bubbling piece of nanite-enhanced flesh and it stopped convulsing and smoking. Once he was sure the machines were deactivated, he willed the bubble to disappear, then stooped down and picked up the slab of meat. Once he made the brief flight across town to his hideout, it would be placed with all the others in cold storage, waiting for the day that they would be handed to government scientists for all sorts of poking and prodding. Waiting for the day that their true nature would be revealed to the world.
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