Chapter 159: Voices in the mist.
Damien cried loudly and the others turned to look at him. Their eyes widened when they saw Morris standing with a blade that had blood while Damien crumbled to the ground.
Before they could ask questions, a white mist approached them, curling around them like the fingers of a ghost.
"Help me." A voice came from the mist.
This time, the voice was that of a woman. Nobody knew that voice better than Elan for it was the voice of his dead wife, Lisa.
He faltered.
"Lisa." he called out.
The other men were spooked even more. Lisa had been cremated ten years ago. What would she be doing in the forest?
Buck and a few others turned and started to run.
Elan run into the mist.
Morris tried to run but Damien grabbed a hold of his leg. His eyes were shining with vengeance and fury. If he was to die, he wanted to die with at least one of his enemies.
Buck looked back one last time, and he saw Morris falling and shouting for help.
One of the men turned back to help but the young boy increased his speed, leaping over dead trees and crushing everything beneath his feet. He recalled the words of the chief, "only fools die young."
He was no fool.
****
On the other end of the forest, the hunt was still continuing when they started hearing voices.
"Does anyone hear that?" Someone asked. "I think I hear voices in the forest."
Major Elio froze and so did Sunshine.
"Okay, back, back...." Sunshine shouted frantically. "The mist is on the move somewhere in the forest. RUN NOW!!"
They could hear crunching on the forest floor, movement of creatures that were also escaping the mist.
Hades wanted to carry Sunshine directly and fly her out of the forest, but she turned him down. If they both escaped like that, what about their men?
The soldiers that were pushing the carts with the creatures they hunted abandoned them. She looked back and waved her hand, sending it all into her space.
Major Elio and Hades were the only ones that saw what she did.
As they ran, she swept her hand out, forming walls of ice. Mist could be delayed by ice walls for a while. All they needed to do was buy time to get in the cars and drive away.
Forty minutes later, they made it to the cars and sped back to their bases.
As soon as she left the decontamination center, she went to the information center and accessed the cameras she had made Hades place on the trees in the forest.
She had created a local wireless network for this exact purpose but only her, Hades and a handful of soldiers that were going to monitor the camera feed knew about it.
Warren was the Quinn in charge of monitoring the team and he was in the information center, frowning because a warning alarm was going off on the base.
"Sunshine, what is going on out there?" he asked her.
"Mist." she answered rapidly. "It’s the damn mist."
Warren’s frown deepened. "But we have the weather under suits and oxygen masks. Didn’t you say we stood higher chances of surviving the mist because we had gear?"
"The people from the other bases do not have weather under suits." She replied as she zoomed in and observed a pack of wolves in the forest running into an underground cave.
The alpha wolf howled and then the cave was closed with a stone from the inside.
Warren’s mouth fell open. "Did those wolves just close themselves in a cave?"
She nodded. "The alpha mutated."
Warren leaned forward. "Aren’t mutated animals supposed to double in size?"
She shook her head. "Not necessarily. Some become intelligent like that alpha wolf. If we had come across that alpha and his pack during our hunt, half of the team would probably have been wiped out. This wolf would not have fallen for the beach ball bomb like the dumb rooster."
Warren had another question. "What rooster?"
Hades entered the surveillance room with a comms officer that had something to show them.
"Our drones captured this while you were on the hunt." She said as she took a seat. "This is close to Stone village where Damien Quinn and others sought refuge."
They watched the footage which was sped up to the part that mattered the most.
"This man stabs Damien in the back." The officer zoomed in.
Hades and Sunshine recognized him.
"That is Morris, he is the son of the chief of the Stone village." Hades said.
"He does not like outsiders." Sunshine added. "I am not surprised that he killed Damien, and I am sure that he will try to kill the rest of the outsiders there."
Hades leaned in. "Something else was going on. They paused, grabbed their weapons and formed a circle before Damien was stabbed."
Sunshine had noticed it too.
"The drone did not capture sound." The officer shook her head. "But this is not what I wanted you to see." She played the rest of the footage for them.
"Mist!" Sunshine exclaimed.
They could see it on the screen, clear as day. Damien, Morris and a few others were swallowed by the mist. Ten minutes later, Damien walked out, looking confused. After a few seconds, he ran off at a very abnormal speed.
Warren gasped.
"That son of a...." Hades paused. "He awakened."
The Comms officer had paused the video, and she continued it. About fifteen minutes after Damien left, Morris walked out of the mist as well.
He was bigger in size and taller. He was a giant with muscles that could crush anyone and anything to death.
"I will be damned, he awakened too!!" Warren exclaimed.
Sunshine was in shock, and she laughed.
Warren gasped even louder when Morris shrunk back to his normal size and rather than taking off, he started hunting.
"How..how...now..how...did he..." Warren stammered and almost swallowed his tongue.
Sunshine was impressed. She had never seen someone learn how to control their abilities so quickly! Also, she had never seen anyone that awakened a giant ability. What the hell was it?
She had not even heard about before rebirth. While she had come across people with super strength, none had been a giant.
Was this a case of a mutation within a mutation?
"System, what ability is this?"
[Gigantification. On some worlds it is known as Macrokinetics or Mass manipulation.
It is associated with: Super strength, enhanced durability, and shock wave movement.]
"I would not want to meet him on a battlefield." Major Elio’s voice came from the doorway.
Warren straightened his back, laughter in his eyes. "Poor, poor Damien. He is probably on top of the world because he awakened super speed. He doesn’t know that his enemy is an awakened super giant."
Hades smirked.
"Did anyone else make it out?" Sunshine asked.
The comms officer shook her head. "They are all dead, we saw their bodies when the mist left. Some animals carried them off."
Sunshine expected to hear that much. Damien and Morris got lucky.
"Oh, a watcher was keeping an eye on the area. It flew away with the mist."
"This is probably a game to them." Hades mumbled.