Lucien pulled his dagger from the guard's heart with a wet sound that echoed in the sudden silence. Blood had splattered across his cheek during the brief but violent encounter, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand, his movements casual despite the carnage surrounding him.
The corridor behind him was a testament to efficiency—bodies of facility guards scattered across the floor like discarded puppets, their weapons still clutched in hands that would never fire again.
The entire engagement had lasted only a few minutes, and the silence that followed felt almost oppressive.
Natasha and Bucky emerged from a side corridor, their own sections cleared with the same professional thoroughness. Bucky's metal arm gleamed with fresh blood, while Natasha's tactical suit showed barely a wrinkle despite the violence she'd just dispensed.
"Your count?" Natasha asked quietly, her voice carrying through their earpieces.
"Fifteen," Bucky replied, checking his weapon.
"Eleven," Natasha added.
"Thirty-two," Lucien said, his tone matter-of-fact.
The brief silence that followed spoke volumes about the difference in their capabilities.
Lucien moved deeper into the facility, following the familiar layout that mirrored his own prison too closely for comfort. His footsteps were silent on the concrete floor as he approached what looked like the containment area—a hallway lined with heavy doors that brought back memories he'd rather forget.
The moment he stepped into the corridor, automatic weapons fire erupted from both ends. Bullets whined past his head as he dropped into a roll, his enhanced speed carrying him out of the kill zone before the guards could adjust their aim.
One dagger left his hand in a silver arc, catching the first guard in the throat and dropping him instantly. The second guard had time to look surprised before Lucien appeared beside him, moving faster than human reflexes could track. A precise twist, and the man's neck snapped with a sound like breaking kindling.
Two more who won't hurt anyone else.
The gunfire had stopped, but Lucien could hear something else now—quiet sobbing from behind the heavy doors that lined the corridor. The sound sent ice through his veins, bringing back vivid memories of his own time in captivity.
There were two cells, their doors marked with numbers like he remembered from his own imprisonment. Through the small windows, he could see two figures huddled in the corners—girls who looked to be around his age, their faces pale with malnutrition and terror.
They looked exactly like he and Anna had during their darkest moments—broken, hopeless, convinced that rescue was just a cruel fantasy.
"Get back," Lucien said to the girl in the first cell, his voice deliberately gentle despite the blood on his hands and clothes. "I'm going to break the door."
The girl—blonde hair matted with grime, wearing the same gray jumpsuit he remembered too well—pressed herself against the far wall, her eyes wide with confusion and desperate hope.
Lucien placed his hands against the heavy steel door and pushed. The metal groaned, then shrieked, then exploded inward in a shower of twisted fragments. The girl flinched at the sound but didn't take her eyes off him.
"It's okay," he said, stepping carefully through the wreckage. "I'm here to save you."
The words felt strange in his mouth—playing the hero when he'd spent so long just trying to survive. But looking at her face, seeing the exact same terror and desperation he'd felt for months, made it feel right.
He moved to the second cell, where another girl—this one with dark hair and haunted brown eyes—was watching through her window with the kind of careful attention that came from expecting violence at any moment.
"Same thing," he told her. "Step back."
The second door met the same fate as the first, steel and concrete no match for his current strength. The girl inside—she couldn't have been more than sixteen—stared at him like he was some kind of impossible dream.
"Don't worry," Lucien said, his voice carrying absolute certainty. "You're safe now. Both of you."
Safe. When was the last time anyone had been able to say that to them and mean it?
That's when Natasha's voice crackled through his earpiece, urgent and professional. "Lucien, we've got five Sentinel units moving toward your position. Heavy armor, anti-mutant weapons. ETA few seconds."
Sentinels.
The same type of robots that had captured him and Anna, designed specifically to hunt and contain people like them. He remembered their strength, their durability, their complete lack of mercy or hesitation.
But that was before.
"Understood," Lucien replied, positioning himself between the two girls and the corridor entrance. "I've got it handled."
He could hear the mechanical footsteps now—heavy, rhythmic, getting closer. The girls behind him pressed against the walls of their destroyed cells, fear radiating from them in waves.
"Stay behind me," Lucien said without turning around. "Whatever happens, don't come out until I tell you it's safe."
The first Sentinel rounded the corner with military precision, its sensors immediately locking onto the three mutant signatures in the corridor. Red targeting lasers painted lines across Lucien's chest as the machine raised its arm-mounted weapons.
Come on, you metal scraps!
Lucien moved before the Sentinel could fire, crossing the distance between them in a blur of motion that the robot's targeting systems couldn't track.
His fist connected with the machine's head with a sound like a thunderclap, and the entire upper section simply ceased to exist, fragmenting into a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
The second Sentinel was already firing, energy blasts scorching the air where Lucien had been standing. But he was no longer there—he was beside it, his hands closing around its arm cannon. With a casual twist, he ripped the weapon free and drove it through the robot's torso like a spear.
Sentinels three and four tried to coordinate their attack, flanking him from both sides with synchronized precision.
It didn't matter.
Lucien caught the first one's punch with his bare hand, the impact creating a shockwave that cracked the concrete walls. His return strike went completely through the machine's chest, emerging from the other side in a spray of hydraulic fluid and circuitry.
The fourth Sentinel lasted long enough to register surprise in its optical sensors before Lucien's kick separated its head from its shoulders, sending both pieces flying in opposite directions.
The fifth and final robot had the wisdom to try retreating, but Lucien was already moving. He caught it at the corridor junction, his hands closing around its leg. What followed was less a fight than a demonstration—the Sentinel torn apart piece by piece until nothing remained but scattered components and leaking fluids.
The entire engagement had lasted less than a minute.
Lucien turned back to the girls, who were staring at him with expressions that mixed awe, terror, and desperate hope in equal measure.
He was breathing normally, his clothes barely disheveled despite having just dismantled five military-grade anti-mutant robots with his bare hands.
"Told you," he said simply. "You're safe."
The blonde girl was the first to find her voice. "Who... who are you?"
"Someone who was in a place just like this," Lucien replied. "Someone who knows what you've been through."
"You were a prisoner too?" the dark-haired girl asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"For seven months," Lucien confirmed. "They experimented on me, drew my blood, and treated me like a lab rat. Just like they did to you."
Tears were streaming down both girls' faces now—not from fear, but from relief so profound it was painful to watch.
"Are we really free?" the blonde girl asked.
"You're really free," Lucien said, and he meant it with every fiber of his being. "No more experiments. No more cages. No more being treated like animals."
Natasha's voice came through his earpiece again. "Intelligence gathering complete. We've got what we need. Time to go."
"On my way," Lucien replied, then looked at the two girls. "We need to leave now."
They followed him without question, staying close as he led them through corridors littered with the bodies of their former captors.
Neither girl seemed bothered by the carnage—if anything, they looked satisfied seeing the people who had tormented them lying still and silent.
The trip back to the Quinjet was swift and silent. Bucky and Natasha had already planted explosive charges throughout the facility, set to detonate once they were safely away.
As they emerged into the forest, Lucien could see Yelena waiting by the Quinjet, her expression professional but not unkind.
"Two more?" she asked as they approached.
"Two more," Natasha confirmed.
They boarded quickly, the girls settling into seats with the careful movements of people who still couldn't quite believe their ordeal was over.
As the Quinjet lifted off, Lucien watched through the windows as the facility behind them erupted in a series of controlled explosions, fire and smoke rising into the night sky.
"It's really gone," the blonde girl whispered, staring at the destruction.
"It's really gone," Lucien agreed. "And so are all the records, all the research, everything they did to you. It's like it never existed."
Both girls turned to him then, tears flowing freely down their faces.
"Thank you," the dark-haired girl said, her voice breaking with emotion. "Thank you for saving us. I thought... I thought we were going to die in there."
"Thank you for giving us our lives back," the blonde girl added, reaching out as if to touch his arm before stopping herself, old habits of isolation dying hard.
Lucien smiled genuinely, "You don't need to thank me. You would have done the same thing if you could."
From the cockpit, Yelena's voice carried back to them with characteristic bluntness. "You did a good job today. Twelve minutes for complete facility elimination. Not bad."
She paused, checking her navigation systems. "Now we have seven more locations to visit."
Lucien nodded, settling back in his seat as the Quinjet banked toward their next target. Seven more facilities.
Seven more opportunities to give kids their lives back. Seven more chances to prove that the monsters who preyed on children weren't untouchable.
Seven more chances to make things right.
The two girls were already falling asleep, exhaustion and relief finally overwhelming the adrenaline that had kept them alert. They looked peaceful for the first time in God only knew how long—safe, protected, free.
With that, he waited to reach the next location
The hunt had just begun.
.....
POWER STONE GOAL: 700 ( 1 Extra Chapter)
Another chapter in a few hours... Author was being a lazy a** for once, forgive me😔.
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