Apocalyptic Rebirth: With a repairman system space, she rises again.-Chapter 444: Out there.
The boar materialized briefly at the center of the square, eyes glowing unnaturally bright, a pulse rolling out from it like a wave, and suddenly half the squads froze or turned, weapons lifting toward familiar faces.
"I think it is messing with their heads somehow." Grayson yelled. "Stop them. Use non-lethal means if you can, don’t kill your own!"
The squads struggled desperately, those still in control dodging attacks, disarming rather than striking, shouting names, pleading.
"It’s me, look at me!" Craydon cried as he wrestled a sword from his brother Raydon’s hand. He did not want to use too much force because Raydon was his younger brother, basically a kid at twenty.
He had enlisted straight out of high school. He had never truly seen combat. This was his first serious mission. If his brother died on his watch, he would not forgive himself.
Hunter forced herself forward despite the pressure, placing her body between affected and unaffected soldiers, taking blows that rang through her frame.
Sunshine’s truck finally arrived. Her eyes were scanning the battlefield, searching for the mutated beast and her dog which had suddenly jumped out of the car and run ahead to the village.
Sunshine’s system chimed sharply, sending a red alert.
[Mutated Creature Identified. Species: Wild Boar.
Status: Prime Core Ingested.
Abilities Enhanced: Invisibility, strength + Mind Control.]
Her breath hitched once, then her eyes went cold. "Of course, that is why it is so strong, and all these guys failed to handle it." she muttered, fury coiling tight in her chest. "It swallowed my prime core."
For a moment, just one tiny moment, the system wanted to remind her that the prime core did not belong to her.
But it did not. Because the council was still hoping to get its hands on the stone.
Nimo jumped out of the car while Sunshine briefly took in the scene. Her men were shouting, some bleeding others were shooting and harming each other.
"Hammer," she ordered, voice low and lethal, "hunt for that creature. Track it and smash in its head. Leave the meat and don’t break my stone."
The hammer hummed in response, vanishing in a blur in search of the creature.
Sunshine stepped into the chaos herself, electricity crackling faintly over her skin as she focused not on the creature but on her people, moving fast, precise, grabbing a mind-controlled soldier by the shoulder and delivering a controlled shock that dropped him instantly, smoke curling from one as she caught another mid-swing and shocked her just enough to knock her unconscious.
"Sleep," Sunshine said softly each time, grief and anger twisting together as she worked through them, refusing to let anyone die to something that had turned them against each other.
Tommy saw what she was doing and began to do the same thing. "Be careful not kill them." Sunshine shouted to him.
From the roof of a truck. Major Elio short others with tranquilizers. Aiming for any part of their body with exposed skin. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦
When the last of the mind-controlled were down,
Sunshine turned slowly, eyes blazing as the boar reappeared briefly, eyes wide and skittish.
"You," Sunshine growled, electricity surging brighter.
The hammer slammed into the creature from behind, smashing one of its hind legs. It struck again with a bone-rattling impact, forcing the beast forward.
The boar shrieked as it found itself trapped between Sunshine, Hunter and the hammer. On the other side, superhumans had banded together, all ready to attack.
Sunshine launched herself forward, lightning lacing her movements, her strike cracking against its skull and sending it skidding across stone.
It tried to vanish and failed for a heartbeat too long, and Sunshine took advantage of the moment. The hammer flew to her, and she struck down on its head really hard.
"Let me at it," Greg begged eagerly. "I can smash too."
Sunshine barely heard Greg. "You hurt my people," she snarled at the boar, hammer rising and falling in a brutal rhythm, sparks lighting the square as the creature staggered, blood and static mixing.
Hunter joined in, firing precisely at the legs of the beast. But it had thick skin and the protection of the prime core. The bullets did not penetrate hard enough to cause death.
The boar screamed again, panic bleeding through its intelligence now, eyes flashing as it backed away, cornered, the watchers above drifting lower as if eager to watch from up close.
Suddenly, Pink screeched.
Then suddenly the boar vanished completely. Not flickering back, not reappearing.
It was gone. Even Hunter’s radar could not detect it.
The square fell into an eerie, ringing silence broken only by ragged breathing.
"Where is it?" Grayson barked. "Search for it."
Hunter stopped the soldiers before they could spread out. "Don’t bother, its gone." It had gone far enough to escape the radius of the radar.
Sunshine didn’t lower her hammer however and she kept her eyes sharp. "Keep the radar active. It can vanish and re-appear within seconds. The watchers must be masking it somehow."
Hunter activated her radar, maximizing its scanning abilities. While it did find some threats near the fortress, none was the boar. "I cannot find the boar but there are people here, inside the houses." It reported.
Right then, a scraping sound came from one of the stone houses at the edge of the village, the door creaking open slowly as if the people inside had heard Hunter reveal their location.
Five figures stumbled out into the open, four men and a woman, all dirty, shaking, eyes darting wildly, one of the men dragging the woman behind him by a heavy chain wrapped tight around her wrists, the metal clinking sharply in the sudden quiet.
"Help me," the woman cried, her voice cracking as she stumbled forward, hands raised, tears streaking paths through the grime on her face. "Please, help me." She pointed back at the house with trembling fingers. "I was kidnapped from Camp Pitbull. They were going to feed me to that thing. I swear, I swear I didn’t do anything wrong."
The soldiers raised their weapons immediately.
Hunter stepped half a pace in front of Sunshine, optics narrowing as her scanners swept the group.
Before anyone could respond, the tallest of the men yanked the woman back violently, nearly pulling her off her feet, his gun snapping up and locking onto Nimo’s direction.
His eyes were wrong, completely white, no pupil, no iris, just a blank, milked-out stare that sent a chill through everyone watching. "Don’t move," he said flatly, voice hollow, not his own.
Nimo gripped the acid grenade in her hand. "Suni," she said quietly, not taking his eyes off the man, "they’re not themselves."
The others shifted uneasily then, weapons twitching in their hands, movements jerky and unnatural, the chain clinking again as the bound prisoner struggled weakly, fear pouring off her in waves.
Sunshine stepped forward, expression hardening as pieces snapped together in her mind. "The creature didn’t just hunt," she said coldly. "It used them. Mind-controlled them. Had them lure people in and bring them back to be eaten. How the heck did the drones miss this?"
The man with the gun took a step forward, finger tightening on the trigger, and that was enough.
Sunshine moved in a blur, electricity snapping violently from her hands, a sharp crack splitting the air as controlled bolts slammed into the four men at the same time.
Their bodies seized as weapons clattered from numb fingers, all of them collapsed hard onto the stone ground, unconscious but alive.
The white glaze faded from their eyes as they fell.
The woman screamed and dropped to her knees, shaking uncontrollably, sobbing into her hands.
Sunshine approached the bound woman and knelt, her voice softening as she broke the chain with a quick, brutal twist. "You’re safe now," she said with calm, even though her eyes were still burning with anger.
She stood slowly and gestured for the medical team to move in.
Commander Grayson approached her from behind, looking toward the forest, just like her. "You think it’s out there."
"I know it’s out there," she said grimly.
