Apocalyptic Rebirth: With a repairman system space, she rises again.-Chapter 595: Invitation to all creatures.

Raydon’s head whipped around, his eyes burning with fury. "She’s pregnant, you bastard! Have you no heart? How can you think of killing a pregnant woman?"

"Maybe you do," Sheldon interjected, his voice as cold as a winter grave. He stepped forward, snatching a rifle from the nearest soldier. "But there’s only a stone where mine used to be."

He didn’t hesitate. A single crack echoed through the air as Sheldon fired. The bullet struck the woman’s hands, sending the beacon tumbling to the dirt. It clattered against the stones, but as it settled, it began to pulse with a blinding, rhythmic glow.

It was already too late. It had been activated. There was an energy in the air, and the wind started picking up. The guard dogs went silent and birds started to flee. The signs of danger were all there.

Get everyone to safety!" Hades roared, his voice straining against the screeching of the mutants.

The billionaires, usually so composed in their boardrooms, were suddenly reduced to a panicked, stumbling mess. They staggered back and forth in a frantic, zigzagging dance, the familiar streets of the city now a terrifying labyrinth they no longer recognized.

"Safety where?" Sheldon cried out, his voice cracking as he nearly tripped over a fallen masonry block. "Where is this ’safety’ you keep barking about! There is no bubble here!"

He didn’t get a verbal answer. Instead, the air around him whipped into a frenzy as the squad members descended. Without warning, the soldiers in their exo-suits swooped down like metallic hawks. They scooped up the wealthy men by their expensive lapels and waistbands, hoisting them into the air.

"Hang on, Shaw," one soldier muttered, his voice muffled by his helmet, "and try not to vomit on the suit."

The group was whisked over the chaos of Kingsbridge, soaring toward the grand, arched roof of the former Music Hall. Once a place of high-society galas and soaring symphonies, the hall had been gutted and reinforced, its velvet seats replaced by cots and medical crates. It was now a fortress of necessity_ the city’s makeshift emergency shelter and part storeroom.

Meanwhile the orange beacon on the pavement didn’t just glow; it hummed, a low-frequency vibration that made everyone’s teeth ache.

"First thing is to stop that thing," Hades growled. He lunged forward, fumbling an acid grenade from his bag. With a practiced flick of his wrist, he shattered an acid bomb directly over the device. A hiss of green steam erupted as the corrosive liquid began eating into the beacon’s casing. "With luck, the signal is dead. Maybe those things won’t know exactly where it was coming from."

Above them, the air suddenly filled with the mechanical whir-click of hydraulic joints. The elite squads weren’t waiting for orders. They slammed their palms against their chests, activating their exo-suits. With a hiss of pressurized air, they soared into the sky, their metal boots leaving shimmering heat trails in the air.

They went into formation, mimicking the same one that they had once seen the Watchers form. If anything moved, from any direction, it was going to be slaughtered.

Vicente watched them go, his unreadable expression finally cracking into a look of pure, unadulterated envy. He leaned toward Hades, who was busy shoving a panicked fruit vendor toward a side street. "In there."

"I need me one of those suits," Vicente said, nodding toward the flying soldiers. "Your wife promised me one. I trust in my poison but if I am overwhelmed, it won’t be much help."

Hades didn’t even look up as he hoisted a heavy wooden crate to clear a path for a mother and her child. "That doesn’t sound like my wife, she would never lose a chance to make money, so she could never give out a free exo suit. Not even to our kids." His own family members had paid for their exo suits. He had no doubt that she had taken gold from his vault in exchange for the suit she gave him.

Vicente was left in astonishment. What kind of woman made her children pay for safety equipment?

Hades pointed at a group of superhumans standing indecisively near the bridge railing. "Stop gawking! If you’ve got powers, use them. Everyone else, get to the shelters! Move!"

"Incoming!" Dominic’s voice roared from the sky, cutting through the chaos like a jagged blade.

The sky above Kingsbridge curdled. Out of the mist dived a nightmare, a two-headed horse, its skin stretched thin over pulsing veins, with wings made of jagged, iridescent bone. It didn’t just fly; it fell with purpose, aiming for Dominic.

The mutant’s wings wiggled with a sick, scissor-like motion, aiming to shear his head right off his shoulders.

Dominic didn’t flinch. He met the beast mid-air, his sword singing as it left the scabbard. With one brutal, vertical arc, he cleaved the monstrosity down the center. Two heads, two halves, one bloody mess that splashed into the river below and sizzled.

Then, the floodgates opened.

The bridge groaned under the weight of a dozen more horrors. Mutated wolves with too many legs scrambled over the stone railings, and mutated monkeys with elongated limbs dropped from the rafters.

"Raydon! Watch your six!" Hades shouted, kicking a snarling, hairless Llama to death. "Where the fuck did horses and donkeys come from and why are there hooves as big as one human?"

Raydon stood his ground near the pregnant woman, who was now shivering on the ground, the trance seemingly broken by the gunshot. He looked down at her, his voice softening despite the screams around them. "Stay low, ma’am, I am getting you out of here in one piece." It did not matter that she was the one that activated the beacon. She had not done so willingly so she did not deserve to die.

Sheldon, meanwhile, was calmly reloading his rifle, his face as cold as the stone he claimed replaced his heart. He didn’t look at the woman. He didn’t look at Raydon. He just tracked a leaping fox and pulled the trigger.

"One piece, two pieces," Sheldon muttered, the recoil of the gun jarring his shoulder. "I should have killed the knocked up bitch the moment I smelled trouble."

"You’re a real ray of sunshine, Shelly," Jon quibbled, dodging a swipe from a clawed hand through the broken window. He looked at the chaos, then at Hades, then at the soaring exo-suits. "Thank God we know Hades Quinn, I bet by now we would all be dead."

Sheldon scoffed. If anyone was to be thanked, it was Hades’ wife. She was the one that provided the exo suits which were allowing them to take part in the action. If things got too hot, they would fly back to the mountain.

And nothing was going to change his opinion on the pregnant woman. If she could be hypnotized to bring beasts to them once, she could do so again. She needed to die.

An apocalypse was survival for the fittest, not survival for the stupidest and most vulnerable!