Apex Resistance Ch. 5 (Original Sci-Fi) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Fair warning, first half of this chapter is a flashback! Only one currently planned at the moment though!

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The worst part is that they let him think he’s gotten away with it. Kal knew, of course, that he shouldn’t have done it. He knew the punishment would be significant, that shoplifting was easily a prison sentence most of the time these days.

The laws had been changed back in his childhood, a so-called ‘war on crime’ that meant they could and would throw you into a cell and sentence you to years of hard labor for even the smallest offenses.

But times were tough and stretching each of his paychecks had been getting harder and harder. He’d been at the grocery store picking up things that they needed only to find that the price of fucking eggs had doubled again when he wasn’t looking.

He should have just cut back a bit more. Bought one or two items less. Made do with what they had. Been grateful they weren’t on the street and all that. At least they’d had a roof over their head.

… But he didn’t want to disappoint her. He didn’t want to disappoint his sister. She was the only family he had left, the two of them were all that each other had in the whole world. And… it was she who’d made the list and sent him off to pick up the groceries.

Obviously, that shouldn’t have mattered. The worst part was, Kal had known that she wouldn’t mind too much if he couldn’t get it all. She would have understood if he’d come home with half of what she’d put on the list. She definitely wouldn’t have blamed him… but that had just made it all the harder.

So yes, he’d done it. Instead of doing the smart thing, instead of simply buying less, Kal had gone ahead and tried to steal what they couldn’t afford. He’d snuck a few items into his cart, paid for what he had the money for, and bagged it all before leaving the store with his head held high, doing his level best not to give away any telltale signs that he was a thief.

By the time he’d made it home and begun unloading the groceries, he had really thought he got away with it. But then had come the knock on the door. A shiver had run down Kal’s spine and in that moment he’d known, somehow, that no… he hadn’t gotten away with it.

His sister Angie had gone to answer the door before he could and that was where everything had first started to go to shit.

“Um… yes? Can I help you?”

“Step aside, we’re here for a Kal McKay.”

“… I’m sorry, I don’t know who that-ah!”

Maybe he could have stayed hidden, but obviously when he hears the sound of someone being slapped and his sister crying out in pain, he’s going to react. Kal had lunged out of the kitchen to find two officers already pushing their way into the apartment, past his sister who was holding a hand to her cheek.

The moment they’d laid eyes on him they’d drawn their stun guns, while Kal had just raised his hands in surrender. He hadn’t tried to run, knowing full well that it was hopeless. More than hopeless, if he had run, they would have just taken it out on Angie and he couldn’t let that happen. If only he’d known…

“Kal McKay, face the wall, hands behind your head. You’re under arrest.”

He’d had every intention of doing what he was told. For his sister’s sake, he’d known he needed to comply. Unfortunately, Angie hadn’t felt the same way…

“W-Wait! Please, you can’t take him! He didn’t do anything wrong, I swear! Please, he’s all I have left!”

As the officers had approached to put him in handcuffs, Angie had rushed them from behind. Not to attack them, Kal was always quite sure of that. She’d only wanted to reason with them, to try and make them let him go. Not that it would have ever worked, but she’d tried anyways.

Of course, when she’d grabbed one of the officers by the arm, still pleading with them… he’d reacted violently in turn. Whipping his arm around, striking her upside the head. It had been a heavy blow, the kind that had made Kal turn around and snarl.

“Angie!”

But it wasn’t the fist that had done the most damage. No, that was the corner of the shelf she’d been knocked into. She’d struck it right on the temple and as her suddenly limp body wheeled away, there was so much blood. Even the officers had both frozen up for a moment, giving Kal all the time in the world to rush over to her, to try and check on her.

… But there was no point. She was already dead before she hit the ground. Killed in a single senseless act of violence. All because she’d wanted to try and help her big brother. All because he’d had a moment of weakness and tried to get away with shoplifting.

“Ugh, do we need to call a box for the girl?”

“… Nah, she’s gone. Nothing an ambulance can do for her now.”

“Fine, we’ll finish bagging the perp and then we’ll call for clean up.”

Behind him, the officers had discussed his sister’s death like it was a minor inconvenience. A hiccup in their day. And as they’d approached and reached for him… Kal had seen red.

To this day, he’s not sure how he’d done it. Whipping around to attack the closest officer, that just felt right. But somehow getting his actual firearm out of his holster, that was stranger. Those were usually supposed to be secured, after all. It shouldn’t have been as simple as making a grab for it but maybe the officer had simply been too lazy to strap it properly.

Not that Kal had been complaining at the time. He’d yanked the gun free, flipped it around, and had it pointed at the man who’d killed his sister in mere seconds… and then he’d shot him. Point blank. In the face.

“HOLY SHIT, MIKE!”

The resulting explosion of blood, bone shards, and brain matter had coated Kal’s entire front. Before he could turn the gun onto the second officer, he’d found himself being electrocuted, the stun gun making his fingers spasm and forcing him to drop the stolen firearm. It probably would have been a bullet through HIS head if the officer wasn’t already holding the less lethal option.

He’d flopped onto his back like a beached fish, the current only growing in power as the officer had turned it up to maximum. Enough to kill some men, Kal remembered reading. Not that it had mattered. He would have welcomed death in that moment, especially since the last thing he saw before the darkness closed in was Angie’s lifeless eyes staring at him from across the floor.

Alas, it was not meant to be. He’d woken up again in a cell and been sentenced to life in prison for killing an officer of the law mere days later. And that had been that.

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They said your entire life flashed before your eyes when you were about to die. Kal wouldn’t know, but he did know one thing… getting shot in the chest hurt in the same way getting electrocuted by that cop’s taser had hurt three years back.

The key difference was the pain was much more temporary and not a continuous surge. He’s still thrown from his perch by the force of the bullet, however, falling out of the tree and landing on the ground dozens of feet below. However, he easily lands on his feet.

Confused shouts from the other bluebloods make it clear that Graham was the only one who actually caught sight of him. The problem was, Kal didn’t know how the fucker had done it. He hadn’t so much as looked in Kal’s direction before taking that shot. There was no moment beforehand in which Graham’s eyes had passed over Kal’s hiding spot.

So how had he whipped around and made such an accurate shot in a split fucking second?

In the end, he can’t spend too long trying to figure out the how. Instead, he needs to focus on the here and now. He can hear them rushing through the trees to try and locate him, meaning he only has a scant few seconds to decide what to do next. Fleeing would probably be smartest… but red hot anger courses through Kal’s body and the pain that should have been radiating from his chest is practically nonexistent.

He’s not bullet proof… but he’s certainly not as hurt as he should be. And that… that knowledge keeps Kal right where he is until the first of his would-be hunters manages to put eyes on him.

“There it is-urk!”

Just in time for Kal’s claws to punch through his throat, ripping his head half off before the blueblood even has time to bring his rifle to bear.

“What was- whoa! Holy shit, it fucking killed Kenneth! What the fuck is that thing?!”

More follow the first. Kal whips the body around in front of him just as a barrage of rifle fire comes his way. Even if their bullets seemed to do little permanent damage to him, they still hurt. So letting them perforate their buddy’s corpse instead just seemed like good sense.

As soon as the firing stops, Kal tosses his meat shield aside and leaps. He’s the fox in the henhouse as he lands among the bluebloods. None of them can react in time before his claws whip out. Truth be told, the resulting massacre is… cathartic in a way. Killing the so-called rich and powerful always will be, especially given the circumstances surrounding their presence on this island.

They’d come out here to hunt him. To make him their prey. But now he was the hunter and they were the hunted. One after another, Kal slaughters them en masse. He rips a head off of one, he disembowels another, he tears a third from limb to limb.

Not a single bullet more actually hits him in all this time. Some manage to fire their rifles, but they’re terrible at aiming and he’s very, very fast. Until all of the sudden… there’s no more combatants. No one left alive at all, in fact.

It’s then, as Kal stands there in the midst of the carnage he’s wrought, that he realizes something… he definitely hadn’t killed ten men. More than that, as terrified soft faces flash through his mind’s eye, he realizes he also didn’t kill Graham.

Red eyes narrowing, Kal takes stock of the bodies around him. This is made slightly more difficult by the fact that some of those bodies have been rendered down to base parts, but eventually he’s able to count them out… mostly by the number of heads.

Six. He counts six heads. And he definitely pulped a skull at a certain point, but that’s still only seven corpses total.

Which means there are three left. Graham and two others. He can hear them crashing through the underbrush off in the distance if he really listens. They must have started running almost immediately after he started killing to have made it as far as they have, however.

Kal wants to chase after them. No, rather… he needs to chase after them, because otherwise they might flee the island through whatever transport they have and he’ll be left behind. Instead… he finds himself pausing.

Looking down at where he was shot in the chest, Kal blinks upon seeing a hole. Not a bullet wound with blood pouring out of it or anything like that, but a literal hole. When he puts a clawed finger in it and scrapes around for a bit, he finds that it goes all the way through while being entirely sealed along the insides.

His body had healed itself almost immediately but also left a damn hole through his torso. As if the mass destroyed by the bullet had been permanently removed.

Kal’s eyes narrow as he stares down at the bodies around him. Some instinct was telling him that if he wanted to fully heal, he would need to feed. That same instinct was pushing for him to do so in an almost overwhelming manner now, driving him to slowly sink to his haunches and begin consuming the flesh of his prey right then and there.

… He could catch up with Graham and the others quickly enough for a short snack break, right?

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A/N: Kal’s new instincts get the better of him…

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jyaPEZpGzbQ2hjVLX_oYZYeU3e85cexXwJOIW5LkJZQ/edit?tab=t.0