The first semester at Michigan university had finished. Grades were set to be realised at eight a.m.
Alex was sat calmly waiting for his laptop to load the examinations section of his profile. His parents were stood behind him looked significantly less calm and clutching each others hands.
Alex turned in his chair and raised an eyebrow at them, "You guys don't have to be so stressed you know. I do study I promise."
Amanda smiled at him and kissed the top of his head, "We're not worried honey we're excited! Everyone can't wait to hear about you!"
The phone in her pocket buzzed. The family group chat had been pinging non-stop. The fact it was so early didn't bother Alex's grandparents who were up by six anyways.
The page finally loaded.
"Human Anatomy and Physiology module one - A*.
Common cardiovascular and respiratory conditions and their presentation - A*."
There were six modules in total. Alex had scored an A* in all of them.
Jack hooted like a football fan watching his team score the winning point. He clapped both hands down on Alex's shoulders, "Our boy the genius!"
Amanda was mumbling to herself and grinning while snapping photos of the screen. Her phone whooshed as they fired off to the family group chat.
"We've got to celebrate! Feed that big brain! What do you fancy kiddo?" Jack said, grinning and grabbing the car keys.
Amanda nodded fiercely in agreement. She threw on a jacket and managed to misalign almost every single button, "Italian? Greek? Steak dinner? You name it!"
Alex laughed and closed his laptop. His parents' reactions were exactly as dramatic as he'd expected. He was happy to have an extra meal added to the day.
The radio was dialed up to an almost deafening volume and the family of three drove while singing. They parked up at a Chinese restaurant.
The food was good and the portions were substantial. Alex happily ate his parents' leftovers.
Amanda and Jack were too stuffed for dessert, but they insisted Alex get one. Since he'd told them about his powers, he'd stopped hiding exactly how much he could eat.
The scoops of ice cream were just as generous as the main meal.
The waiter smiled and waved good goodbye, "Thank you, have a good day!"
The sun had come out from the grey cover of cloud and the air was warm. Jack sighed and stretched contently, "What a lovely-"
"Give me all your money! The purse, give me the fucking purse too!" The voice was shrill and wavery.
The stranger's eyes were bloodshot and his arms were painfully thin. His legs were equally bony, but his stomach was unnaturally swollen and protruding. The buttons on his stained shirt struggled to hold him.
Jack's smiled had vanished. He raised his hands above his head and said slowly, "Look we don't want any trouble-"
"Don't fucking speak! Give the the money!" The man screamed back.
In the window of the restaurant the customers gasped and hastily pulled out their phones to dial the police.
The man's arms were stick-thin. His face was flushed bright red and his eyes twitched incessantly but the gun in his trembling hand glinted with cold certainty. Pulling a trigger at close range didn't need a steady hand.
"Give it to me!" The man shrieked and lunged towards Amanda. His thin outstretched hand snatched at her purse strings.
The gun in his hand pointed about wildly and the crowd in the restaurant screamed and ducked under their tables.
Something crunched. The sound was fleshy and sickening.
Alex's fist smashed into the stranger's skull. The force behind it was enormous. The restrictions limiting his true strength remained intact, but the surge of adrenaline from seeing the gun-wielding stranger lunge at his mother had filled him with titan like strength.
The side of the man's skull fragmented. Boxers didn't attack the temples, the risk of causing lethal haemorrhages within the brain was too high.
The stranger's body toppled limply to the floor. His bleeding head hit the concrete. The smacking noise it made was nauseating.
Amanda and Jack looked to their son. Alex's chest heaved up and down as the adrenaline continued to course through him.
He looked between the both of them. His parents didn't recognise the coldness in their son's eyes.
He mouthed a few words, "Don't tell them."
Amanda and Jack knew immediately what he meant. They looked to one another and took a deep breath.
The crowd slowly begun to emerge from the restaurant. Cameras flashed and people whispered to one another. Their photos captured Alex standing over the gunman's corpse.
Alex's eyes narrowed slightly. He stared icily at the people taking photos of him. The people being stared at felt their backs break out into cold sweat.
The phones lowered. The brain processed enough information at any given second to utterly overwhelm a person. So the brain regulated how much information a person percieved. The crowd couldn't tell that Alex had powers, they didn't know that he could move quickly enough to snap their necks before they had any chance to defend themselves.
They didn't know any of that, but their brains recognised the look in Alex's eyes. The modern world placed humans at the top of the food chain. This hadn't always been the case. The people stared at by Alex were experiencing what it felt like to be prey.
Alex's modifications to his body were slowly elevating him to a higher level of life. If the trend continued to progress, one day his genes would become completely unrecognisable.
"How dare you!" The voice hissed unnaturally. It sounded as if air was escaping from broken lungs.
The stranger's eyes burst open. The crowd screamed and scrambled backwards.
Alex's parents subconsciously stepped back. They looked to their son. He hadn't moved.
The stranger's neck twisted like a spring. His head faced upwards but his stomach was still pressed against the pavement.
The stranger's hands and feet shook violently. Then, with a violent crunch they snapped. The soles of the stranger's feet and the palms of his hands squirmed and pushed up from the pavement.
There was another sickening crunch and the man's shirt burst open. His stomach flowed like liquid and moved to his back. His stomach was wriggling rapidly and pulsing. The bulge was larger than a pregnant woman's.
The stranger no longer looked human. His twisted arms and legs resembled a spider crouching on the floor.
"It should've been mine! It all should've been mine!" The man screamed.
His pupils bounced from side to side violently. His tongue lolled out from his mouth and frothy yellowish liquid poured out and dripped to the ground in pungent streams.
The crowd screamed louder. A dozen people were screaming help into their phones while others were half-sprinting, half-stumbling away.
The man's stomach pulsated forcefully. The outline of a hand pressed against the stretched skin.
Seven sharp nails pierced through the stomach. The long pale and bony arm of a being that was never supposed to exist stretched out.
It's body was folded up into an impossibly small ball. Now it began to unfurl itself.
The thing had no nose or eyes. It's head was a smooth grey oval. A set of ugly grew lips opened as the creature shrieked with rage or delight. Hundreds of jagged perfectly white teeth snapped wildly.
The creature's legs unfurled. The joints of its knees folded backwards. It raised it's clawed hands into the air and thrashed them about madly. The shrieking grew louder and more manic.
The restaurant had built a small koi pool outside. Alex reached in and grabbed a rock covered in greenish moss. He gripped the rock tightly and sprinted towards the creature. The pale monster was more than eight feet tall. Seeing one of its delicious snacks approaching, it ran forwards with its arms waving about crazily. Its long forked tongue whipped about in the air.
The creature was fast, incredibly so. It moved faster than Alex could, at least without lifting the restrictions on his strength. Its long legs stretched impossibly far with every step.
Alex didn't blink. He ducked under a wild swing of the creature's sharp and jagged nails. The stench of sulfur hit him forcefully.
The creature shrieked in anger. Its tongue licked across its own face, enraged that it wasn't tasting the delicious red liquid inside the snack's body. It swung again. This time it's nails carved into Alex's shoulder.
The pain didn't bother Alex. The creature's reach was longer than his and its arms moved so quickly they were a blur. But now the distance between them had closed.
He raised the stone aloft and brought it down violently against the creature's knee. The joint cracked and splintered, the creature toppled to one side shrieking in agony.
Nails the colour of charcoal dragged across his skin. He leaned back as he would to avoid a punch and the nails narrowly missed his eyes. They gouged groves into his cheek instead.
Alex brought the stone down on the creature's outstretched arm. The bone and cartilage cracked easily. Its clawed hand fell limply at its side. The beast was fast and agile, but it moved on instinct, Alex knew where it was going to strike every time. His first attack was calculated, the thing's greatest advantage was its ghost-like speed. The ruined leg showed no signs of healing.
The creature's tongue flew forwards like a snake. The flesh was so pale that Alex could see the network of vessels pulsing with black blood. The tongue's surface was covered in sharp barbs. Alex stopped it with his forearm the second before it was about to strike him in the throat.
The barbs sank into his forearm. The puncture wounds immediately began to throb violently. Alex's eye twitched, it was the first time he'd had a reaction to pain in weeks. The tongue wasn't poisonous, but it was coated in a toxin that amplified pain a dozen times over.
He wrapped the tongue around his arm, disregarding the barbs that pierced deeper into his flesh. He pulled hard and the creature's hairless and smooth head was tugged towards him.
Pungent black brain tissue splattered across his face. He tasted it on his lips. The flavour was intense and sulfury, like rotten eggs. The creature's skull was as brittle as the rest of its skeleton. A child could've shattered it.
Alex wrenched the stone free and smashed it down onto the creature's shoulder. Its brain and head were a mangled and dripping mess of black blood and fragments of stark-white bone. The beast's limbs shouldn't have been able to move, but a power that had existed far longer than man forced the demon's uninjured arm to lash out desperately in every direction.
Fresh rows of claw-marks were painted across Alex's chest. Blood seeped out almost eagerly and soaked his shirt. He struck for a second time on the demon's shoulder. The beast's arm twitched and its ruined throat gurgled with a final sorrowful scream. The long pale demon finally fell still.
Alex held the stone with both hands and smashed it down on the creature's mangled skull. He didn't care that the creature had stopped moving. The crowd watched with wide eyes and horrified expressions as the young man they'd watched cheerfully eat a meal with his family, became covered in the guts and blood of the monstrous creature. Alex didn't stop until the creature's entire upper body was pulverised into minced flesh and bone.
Only when the anger in his chest begun to clear did he slowly allow the stone to roll out of his grip. He sat down heavily on the pavement. His chest heaved up and down. He exhaled a heavy breath and tore off strips of shredded fabric from his shirt. He tied them methodically around the puncture wounds on his arm.
Helicopter blades roared overhead. Cables dropped from the machine's belly and nearly two dozen GDA agents holding huge rifles slid down. The grey masks that covered their faces reminded the crowd of the demon's pale features.
The GDA agents immediately began securing the scene. The civillians who hadn't run were gathered together. A few minutes later an armoured vehicle with the U.S military logo arrived. The leading soldier saluted the GDA agents and ordered the group of civillians to board a bus with blacked out windows.
Alex watched his parents leave with the group. His eyes tracked them closely. He'd tried to go with them, but a GDA agent had informed him that he needed to remain at the scene. The agent informed him that his involvement required review by a more senior official.
Another helicopter soared across the city. The pilot's voice broadcast through the chopper, "Two minutes till landing."
Dr Molay didn't react to the pilot's announcement. Her cold blue eyes analysed the streams of information being fed to her tablet. The distress calls had come in from more than a dozen civillians. The number of civillians involved immediately raised the emergency level. Two squads of response teams had already touched down in the area. She waited for an update on the situation.
Her earpiece crackled. The voice of squad leader of team one played, "Target down. I repeat target is down. We are moving to secure the perimeter and gathering witnesses."
The security feed from the area patched through to her tablet just as the squad leader finished speaking. She watched as a regular mugging turned into a supernatural incident. A tall and slender otherworldly being ripped its way out of a man's stomach. The security feed didn't capture sound, but the way its mouth moved told her that it was shrieking in delight at its arrival to the earthly plane.
Dr Molay knew immediately what kind of creature they were dealing with. It wasn't one that was supposed to be on earth.
'This is the third demonic entry this month.' She thought solemnly to herself.
That kind of frequency wasn't normal. Her fingers flew across the screen and a request was sent up to a higher chain of command for urgent review.
The footage playing on the tablet suddenly zoomed in. The AI assisting her in collecting and analysing information had automatically focused in on a key civillian. The AI scanned its databases and attempted to get a lock on the civillian's identity, but the man's back was facing the camera and shoulders and hair alone weren't enough to get a match.
Dr Molay watched the civillian who'd disarmed the mugger pick up a stone. He didn't run or step back from the demon like the rest of the crowd. The security camera captured him charge towards the demon.
The helicopter began its descent. Dr Molay stood up. She stepped out of the helicopter before its landing gear hit the ground.
The team leader of response team one was engaged in conversation with a civillian. The helicopter's blades swallowed up their voices, but Dr Molay read their lips.
"My parents are on that bus, I want to know where they're being taken."
The team leader's mask removed any emotion from his voice, "That information is currently classified. They are being taken to a secure facility where medical treatment will be offered. Their statements will be taken and verified. I cannot provide any information regarding their location."
The response wasn't unexpected, but Alex didn't like seeing his parents herded away with the other civillians to an unknown secondary location.
He was about to another question when a cold and clipped voice interrupted. The speaker shouted so that they could be heard over the helicopter, "They're headed to an underground facility in Detroit. That thing you fought was a demon, their kind leave traces of energy wherever they go. Everyone who's seen it needs to be sanctified with holy water, its for their own safety."
Alex recognised the voice instantly. She still wore the same grey pantsuit, but the blue colour of the GDA pin on her chest was a shade darker. She wore it in the same place admirals displayed their military medals and badges.
Dr Molay had seen the man in front of her before. Once in a lecture she'd given at Michigan university as a favour to a friend of her husband; the second, in a forest, after he'd discovered and killed a runaway experiment from the laboratory of a genius, but mentally unstable scientist.
Now he stood in front of her covered in blood once more. This time the blood smelled of sulfur, not decay. Neither smell was pleasant.
"Come." Dr Molay instructed. She nodded to the response team leader and started to walk away. She didn't turn back to see if Alex was following.
Alex knew that he didn't have any real choice. He followed after her. He was more than a head taller and caught up in a few steps.
Dr Molay opened the door of an armoured vehicle. Alex noted silently that the plating must've been at least a foot thick. He turned his head to look at the GDA agents and U.S military photographing and blocking off the restaurant and surrounding buildings. Then he stepped into the vehicle.
Dr Molay was seated inside. The lighting inside the vehicle was harsh and yellowish. In the middle of the vehicle, a thick pillar served as the foundation for a large table.
Another GDA official, this one with a prominent red cross stitched on her shoulder, motioned for him to take a seat opposite Dr Molay.
"Do you feel any dizziness?" The medical officer asked.
He nodded, "Yes."
The demonic creature had carved deep grooves in his arms and chest. He was lucky that the beast's nails hadn't managed to nick any arteries. Or at least, that was how it appeared.
The fact he hadn't bled out from a wound to an artery could be explained by good fortune. But the volume of blood he'd lost was enough to fill a large soda bottle. That kind of blood loss came with diziness and nausea.
The medical officer asked a few more questions. Alex's answers were all exactly as she expected. The medical officer typed her assessment into a screen on her wrist. The machine calculated Alex's rough height and weight and fed back an answer.
"My records say that you've recieved a dose of tissue repair-accelerant before. You've lost a sizeable volume of blood, but you're young and your heart is healthy. Your pulse is strong.
We could take you to a medical facility and give you a blood transfusion, or I can administer the repair-accelerant now." The medical officer said.
The choice was clearly being placed in Alex's hands.
The decision was easy. He didn't want to go to a GDA medical facility. A simple blood test would reveal a dozen different abnormalities in his body.
"I'll take the injection." Alex replied.
The medical officer nodded. She retrieved a pre-filled syringe and a crystalline pill from her bag. Alex placed the pill on his tongue.
"Sharp scratch."
The needle plunged into his arm. The cool fluid inside flowed into his body. The wounds to his arm and chest started to squirm a few seconds later. The crystalline pill in his mouth dissolved to provide energy for the healing process.
His wounds were healing at a rate visible to the naked eye. Alex looked away from the granulating flesh and asked the woman sat opposite him, "What was that thing?"
Dr Molay looked up from her tablet. She then looked back down and typed something. She turned the tablet so Alex could see it. Dozens of images of horrifying looking creatures populated the screen. Some had long curved horns and burning red skin, others were covered in mouths that bit endlessly at empty air. One of them looked just like the creature Alex had killed.
"Demons. Things that aren't supposed to be in this plane. Their souls and bodies are bound to hell, but there are rituals that can break those bonds and allow them to appear in our world." Dr Molay turned the tablet back around.
"Someone's been sending out signals, calling them to our world."
Alex looked at her intently, "Do you know who?"
Dr Molay met his gaze. Her fingers curled over the edge of the tablet, "We're looking into it."
Alex nodded slowly, "I hope you find them."
"Soon." He added.
"We're doing everything we can. Red Rush has been searching the city. We're closing in." Dr Molay replied.
She leaned in closer to Alex, "Civillians don't usually get told this much."
Her tone raised alarm bells in his heart, but Alex's face didn't change. He'd been careful. He hadn't used his powers out in the open. Killing two supernatural creatures was impressive, but any decent special forces soldier could've done the same.
Alex didn't say anything in response. He looked at Dr Molay, waiting for her to speak.
"You're a gifted kid Alex. Michigan university medical programme, straight A's in high school, provincial boxing champion. You're doing great things."
Dr Molay swiped her tablet and slid it slowly across the table, "And we think you could do more."
Alex's eyes flicked to the tablet.
'C-S-F-T-S. Civillian Special Forces Training Scheme.' The title read.
"The world can be a dangerous place. Bad things happen to good people all the time. If you weren't here today those people, your parents too, could've gotten really hurt." Dr Molay was avoiding the truth and both of them knew it. If Alex hadn't acted to immobolise the creature, it would've torn apart everyone present. The GDA response team would've been picking up bodies instead of taking witness statements.
Dr Molay continued, "People like you. People who react and fight back, we want to give you the skills to do that. When something like this happens, things like that demon, we want people out on the streets who'll pick up a gun or a rock and attack.
The scheme's new. I helped design it. I'd like you to take part."
She scrolled down. She stopped when her finger reached a short, but detailed list. They were benefits that graduates of the scheme would recieve.
- 24/7 surveilance and threat detection in the neighbourhoods of immediate family members.
- Security clearance to access emerging threats in the local area.
- Legal protection covering protection of private property or neutralisation of human/supernatural threat.
- Weapons and unarmed combat training with members of the special forces.
The first sentence had already made the decision for him.
Alex looked up at the GDA agent in the grey suit. Their eyes met, "I'd like to join."
For the first time, Alex saw Dr Molay smile. She extended her palm to him. Her handshake was firm.
"I hoped you would."