THUMP... THUMP... THUMP... THUMP...
Heavy footsteps thundered across the hospital rooftop.
Fast and desperate.
Loud enough to wake the dead... yet the building remained silent. No curious face appeared and no alarms rang. It was as if the world decided not to notice.
Just as the sound of the footsteps reached the edge of the rooftop, a low thud followed.
Thud!
"Damnit! A barrier...?!"
Against the cold concrete skyline, a hulking figure loomed over the edge, glaring at the translucent wall blocking his path.
It covered the whole hospital like a dome. And in his arms was a terrified woman, clutching a newborn tightly to her chest.
"...I guess this is where we parts ways. Now, be an obedient lower human and hand over that baby..." he growled.
The woman froze in terror not by the threat, but by what she was seeing under the brilliance of the moonlight. Her eyes widened in disbelief.
"Wha... What the..." she stammered, the words caught in her throat. "... You're a cat?!" she blurted out in shock.
"Who are you calling a cat?!" he snapped. "I'm a Faw!"
"A... flaw?" she asked with a confused look.
"No! A Faw! Faw...!" he repeated, frustration rising. He then sighed. "...It's a race"
He paused, "Why am I explaining this to you? Hand over the baby now!" He scrowled.
She didn't even hear he had just said, her mind still reeling in shock from the discovery of a race named Faw.
"A race?" It sounded impossible,but judging from his expression, he wasn't joking. "But… why would they be after my baby...? And that man or woman or whatever earlier… wasn't human?"
Her thoughts spun so wildly that she became convinced she'd either died, gone mad, or somehow been cast as an extra in a very low-budget horror movie.
"Hey! I'm talking to you, hand over the...."
Before he could finish his sentence, a blade lunged at him, aimed straight for his head. He dodged just in time, narrowly avoiding it, but the edge grazed his whiskers as it whistled past.
The weapon kept going until it slammed against the barrier and ricochetted back with unnerving precision into the hands of the man clad in a sleek, black, high-tech combat suit.
"Motherf*cker..." he touched his face and snarled. "You bastard! You cut my whiskers!"
The man clad in black didn't respond, he simply glared coldly at the humanoid cat, his eyes filled with infinite killing intent. The humanoid cat man instantly shut up as his body trembled slightly.
The woman also felt a dread crawled up her spine as she stared at the man too. "Oh no... he's here"
"You look piss. Well what's done is done!" he said spreading one hand in the air helplessly. "...but you were really quick to set up this barrier though."
The man in the black combat suit then lunged at him, but the humanoid cat man jumped off the edge of the roof.
"Ahhhhhhhhh!" the woman screamed in terror as they fell.
As they plummeted from the hospital's towering height. In his arms, the woman clung to him desperately, her own grip tight around the baby. His claws extended, talon-sharp, as it lanched onto the open window frame of a room below. With a powerful swing, he swung inside.
But just as he was in the midst of swinging inside, a searing pain shot through him. His grip weaken as warm blood trickled down his face, stinging his eyes, and his vision blurred.
THUD!
He crashed inside sending the woman with her baby soaring across the room. The woman landed on her back, shielding her baby from the impact.
"What happened...?"
As she stood up, the scene before her made her want to scream, but she clapped her hand over her mouth, forcing the sound back down.
A sword was imbeded in the head of the humanoid cat and she knew it belonged to the man clad in black.
"You better run and hide before he comes..." he said in a low voice barely audible. "He will take the baby"
*cough, cough*
"How I'm I suppose to do that? And why where are you people after my child?"
"...haha, do you think we would be after an ordinary child. Even beings beyond your comprehension are after him."
"Why?"
"The powers residing in him..." he then whispered. "It might also you be in you..." his voice drifted off as his eyes closed.
"What powers?!"
No answers came from her question.
Staring at the humanoid cat lying motionless on the floor, a wave of sadness crept into her chest. she was surprised why she felt this way. Was it because he had saved her from the man clad in black? Maybe... but she couldn't say for sure.
She knew that he had come to kidnap her baby too, he was supposed to be an enemy... but yet, she felt no fear, no anger towards him. And looking at him now she felt a strange, aching pity she couldn't explain.
It didn't make sense, nothing about this situation made sense. And she wasn't given a moments rest, her body instantly tensed up as she heard a sound coming from the top floor. She immediately darted towards a corner and hid behind a cabinet. Her body pressed hard against the cold wall.
She glanced down and saw her baby still sound asleep, it was as if the chaos happening didn't matter to him. She didn't know if she should be worried or glad.
Through the corner of where she hid behind the cabinet, she saw the man clad in black land from the ceiling. He walked slowly towards the faw and dug out his sword from its head.
"The third division really sent a weakling like you," he muttered. "But you managed to breach my domain... well it's shame you're dead."
As he pulled out the weapon, it dissolved into his palm, sinking into the gauntlet like liquid metal. His fingers flexed once as the armor sealed seamlessly over his hand. The man tilted his head slightly and his gaze shifted straight towards the cabinet, where the woman hid.
Her breath hitched in her throat. "No… he didn't see me… right?"
A single step, then another... it was slow and unhurried.
The sound of his boots against the shattered glass echoed like thunder in her ears.
"He sees me." Panic instantly exploded inside her chest as she turned to bolt for the door... but a hand shot forward. Iron fingers clamped around her waist before she could take another step.
"You think you can hide? You forgot that we're in my spatial zone"
She struggled wildly, twisting and kicking, but his grip didn't budge. It felt like being caught in a steel vice. Then a faint blue glow flickered to life on his wrist. He raised it toward his face, and a small holographic screen unfolded in the air showing an image of a man.
"The vessel and host are secured. Send the lift—" the voice on the other side suddenly cut him off saying:
"Discard the vessel... give her the pill."
The man went silent for a moment, eyes narrowing as he listened.
"Alright, understood."
Just as he finished saying this, he took out something that looksed like a pill from the pocket of his black high-tech combat suit, and fed it to the woman.
"Hmm! hmmm! hmm!!" she struggled as she refused to eat it.
The man didn't show any pity as he mercilessly shoved the thing in her mouth. She tried to spit it out but could not, it was as if the thing was going down her throat by itself. The man took the baby and tossed the woman aside.
"Give me back my baby!" she screamed, her voice filled with fury. Her eyes locked on to him, burning with helpless rage as she couldn't touch him.
WAAAHHH!!
The baby suddenly cried. It pierced through the room, sharp and desperate. The cries echoed loudly in the room. It was like a tiny voice calling to return to his mother's embrace.
The moment the sound reached her ears, it was as if something inside of her had snapped.
Her pupils faded... then disappeared completely. Her eyes turned pure white, blazing with a blinding light that shimmered like molten silver.
"Shut your mouth!" the man hissed in irritation.
But the instant the words left his mouth, a freezing chill slithered up his spine, every instinct in his body screamed danger. He spun around—
BOOM!
The air exploded.
His body shot across the room like a cannonball, plummetting into the wall with bone-shattering force. At the same time, the crying baby floated gentle through the air and landed safely in the woman's arms.
She drifted forward, hovering above the ground like a descending goddess. Her movements were slow, gracefuk and unnatural. It was as if invisible strings were guiding her.
Her face was eerily calm, her eyes empty and not a single trace of human emotion lingered in her expression.
"H-How…? Im… impossible…" he whispered like a madman. A gallon of blood spilled from his mouth. Just one punch... only one and yet nearly seventy percent of his high-tech combat suit had been reduced to scrap metal.
Standing right before him, she moved in a blur. One hand shot forward and locked around his neck, lifting him off the ground as if he weighed nothing at all. In her other arm, she still held the baby... steady, unmoved.
The man couldn't move, It wasn't fear. No… it felt as if the very air around him had hardened, locking his body in place in the air. Like an invisible chains pressing against his limbs. And yet... through the cracks of his shattered mask, a wide grin slowly spread across his face.
Then he laughed.
"Hahaha, so… this is the power of cosmic energy. And this... this is only the remnant left inside you…" he let out a long breath, almost a sigh of admiration. "I finally understand why His Grace… and the other leaders of every division desires it so desperately."
His gaze sharpened.
"Just the leftover fragments within you made you this powerful…" a brief silence followed. "…Then what about him?" He stared at the baby in the woman's arms.
The thought of this, made him feel the urge to take of the baby for himself. The moment the thought crossed his mind, the grin on his face vanished as an agonizing scream followed.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
Golden specks of light leaked from his body like escaping fireflies, it drifted in the air entering the woman's body.
"My life force...?! she draining it!!"
Suddenly the glow intensified in seconds, draining him as his skin shriveled and collapsed inward, centuries passing in the blink of an eye. His high-tech combat suit sparked and flickered, then crumbled apart into glowing dust that scattered into the wind.
In moments, only brittle bones hung in the woman's hand and a final pulse of golden light surged out of them... *Crack... Fade...* then they dissolved into ash, slipping through her fingers into the air until nothing remained.
Then the sound of breaking glass echoed as the world seemed to shift.
"Ahhh!" An old man in the hospital bed jolted upright as the woman suddenly appeared in front of him. He fumbled for his glasses, nearly dropping them, then squinted at her glowing eyes.
"Is she a ghost? No… ghosts are transparent." he muttered to himself. "You.. You're a witch! I knew this hospital was haunted. I told the nurse the night shift felt strange" the old man mumbled to himself loudly.
The woman's head turned sharply, her gaze met with the old man. Staring at the glowing eyes of the woman, the old man swallowed hard as he felt a chill crawl up his spine.
The glow in her eyes faded as she dropped to her knees, clutching her baby and gasping for air. Her fingers trembled as she caressed his face.
"What kind of power was that?"
It had felt like she had become another person… like a supreme being which could do anything. It was scary.
CRASH!
The wimdow glass suddenly exploded inward as a beast burst through. It was like a grotesque fusion of ape and dog. Then it gaze met the old man lying on the bed.
The old man's eyes bulged. His jaw dropped wide enough to fit an egg.
"MONSTERS!! I KNEW IT! This hospital is cursed!"
Seeing this she immediately stood up and bolted for the door, she knew it was here for her child.
More creatures smashed through the windows and burst through the doors of several hospital wards behind her as she ran blindly down the corridor and into the hallway. The hallway erupted into chaos as screams echoed and the creatures barked and howled like twisted monkey shrieks.
Then it hit her. She spun and sprinted down the stairs, racing back toward the room she had been in moments before.
But the monkey-dog were relentless in their pursuit.
Back in the room, the old man lay back on his pillow, his eyes closed as he muttered to himself, "I'm going to die… I told my wife I didn't want to come to the hospital, but she insisted."
Then a weird smiled crept on his wrinkled face.
"Well aleast if I die, l'll be free from her nagging. Take me."
He waited.
Nothing happened. He opened his eyes and saw no creatures but only shattered glass on the floor. And from the broken door, he guessed the creature had gone after the woman.
There was nothing he could do.
He sighed dejectedly and lay back on his bed.