Apex Resistance Ch. 6-8 (Original Sci-Fi) (Patreon)

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

A/N: Hey everyone, this is actually three chapters in one because I’m making the difficult decision of pausing Apex Resistance for the moment to focus on the other free write idea (An Invincible OC fic) that has completely stolen my attention.

It is still my intention to come back to Apex Resistance at some point either after this new idea is finished or later on. Still, thanks for reading up to this point and hope you enjoy these last three chapters for the time being!

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Chapter 6

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Naturally, thirty minutes later Kal is beating himself up for giving in to his new instincts even as he races through the trees and tries to catch up to his would-be hunters.

He should have begun chasing them immediately. It wasn’t like he was hurt all that bad, one dinky little hole in his chest wasn’t going to put him out of commission any time soon. Unfortunately, his body hadn’t agreed with him, nor had his hindbrain.

Hopefully it was just because it was his first time being injured and therefore his body reacted stronger than usual in order to take care of the issue. If he found himself stopping and consuming whatever food he could find every time he took a bullet to the chest, it would almost certainly be a hindrance.

Still, if he had only ignored his instincts and focused on what his rational mind knew needed to happen, Kal would have already finished hunting down Graham and the other surviving bluebloods. He would have definitely caught up to them before they could make it back to their camp and killing them would have been simple now that he knew their rifles caused little more than ‘flesh wounds’.

Alas, instead by the time he catches up… they’re already in their base camp. And of course, for these rich fucking twats, that meant they were behind concrete walls with security turrets swiveling back and forth, hiding out and cowering in their panic room as they waited for help to arrive.

How did Kal know this? Simple, he could hear them from the edge of their camp’s perimeter.

“What the fuck was that, Graham? Seriously, what the fuck was that?!”

“I don’t fucking know but it doesn’t matter, Brad. You got that? It doesn’t matter because it can’t get to us here. The turrets will turn it to mince meat long before it can get at us.”

“You better be sure about that, Graham! I’m not dying here, I swear to fucking god!”

In Kal’s totally unbiased opinion, Brad sounds like he’s about five seconds off from having the same sort of accident that Kyle did before his death. He’s talking a big game, but his tone makes it clear he’s utterly terrified. Good. Kal can only hope he can drink in some of that fear before he finishes the job.

The other surviving blueblood on the other hand…

“You know more than you’re saying, Graham.”

“… Shut the fuck up, Ken.”

Kal perks up because this ‘Ken’ fellow has Graham sounding a bit rattled. Admittedly, Graham was probably already pretty rattled by, you know, losing most of his ‘guests’ to the very same prey he was supposed to be hunting. Especially since he’d shot Kal and it had done absolutely nothing as far as Graham had seen.

“Be honest with us. This is one of your family’s experiments, isn’t it? The next step in the process.”

Graham growls.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Only, it sounds a lot like Ken knows what he’s talking about. And now Brad’s fear is being set aside in favor of growing suspicious towards Graham as well.

“What does he mean, Graham? What does ‘next step in the process’ even mean?”

“Stop asking questions, both of you. You don’t know what you’re even asking me for here, okay?”

Silence falls and Kal can’t help but be a little disappointed. He was really hoping to learn some more but it seems like he’ll just have to hunt for answers some other way.

Only, just as he’s starting to look at the perimeter of the blueblood camp to see if he can find a gap in the turret coverage, Ken’s voice drifts out from their hidey hole to reach his sensitive ears again.

“We’ll sign NDAs.”

There’s a pause before Brad makes an incredulous noise in the back of his throat.

“Huh?”

Graham though is conspicuously silent as Ken elaborates.

“Everyone else is dead. Obviously, you need us to be on your side here. But we can’t do that if you don’t tell us what we need to know so we know what not to say. And more than that, given just who died on this island today, you and your father are going to need all of the support you can get. Have us sign some NDAs, read us in on what’s going on, and promise us a slice of the pie. That way we all come out of this ahead.”

There’s a pause before Ken continues on in a forcibly casual tone.

“Or you stop thinking about shooting us both in the head and just do it already. Then you can be the sole survivor and decide just what happened here. Only, even if you’re the only one getting to tell the story, that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else will believe it. Brad and I’s survival might be the key difference between everyone being willing to accept that this was a tragic accident… and not a premeditated attack.”

Brad lets out a raspy laugh.

“Whoa Ken. Don’t be silly, Graham would never shoot us. Right Graham? Tell him!”

The pregnant pause in the wake of Brad’s words is more telling than anything else. Finally, Graham chuckles, low and dark.

“You always were too clever for your own good, Ken.”

Kal can’t help but tense up, half-expecting to hear a pair of gun shots after a line like that. But even as he waits, anticipating the ‘removal of witnesses’… nothing like that happens. Instead, things are quiet for a long moment before finally, Ken grunts.

“Alright. We’re in. So tell us what’s going on and what we’re up against here.”

Hang on, had they just signed NDAs during that moment of silence? Did they just have those on hand like that? Kal can’t help but be a little baffled, but as Graham starts talking, he finds himself hanging off of every word the blueblood says.

“It’s called a war form, I think. Like you said Ken, it’s the next step in the process. We’ve had great success with our mutation serums so far, but we’ve never really managed to make weapons out of them. Until recently. One of our leading scientists, a Doctor Alice Korai, has been making significant strides in that department of late.”

“Hang on, is that the blonde with the huge knockers?”

“… Yes Brad, that’s her.”

“Huh, I always thought she got where she was sucking your dad off under his desk.”

There’s a pause in which Graham seemingly decides not to dignify that with an answer.

“The problem is that the technology shouldn’t be fully realized yet. As my father’s heir, I would know if Dr. Korai had finished the war form serum. He would have told me and asked for my input on how we could best market it to investors.”

“Unless he decided this outing was the perfect chance to test the finished product in a contained but relatively open environment.”

“Fuck off, Ken. My father does not consider me disposable. I’m his only male heir and my sister, as intelligent as she might be, is still a woman. She does her best, but she doesn’t have quite the head for business that a man does.”

“Your misogyny is noted, Graham. Even still, the fact remains that we just watched what appears to be an impossibility eviscerate more than half a dozen of our peers. And it likely killed Kyle and Steven too, given we haven’t seen anything of them in hours. So tell me, if your scientist hasn’t completed her work yet, how in the world are we being hunted by a war form right now? How did what was supposed to be a prey mutation turn out to be a monster capable of tanking a high powered rifle round to the chest?”

“That’s what I’m saying… this can’t be a war form. It must be something else. Someone, maybe one of our rivals from off-planet, snuck it in here. I bet it’s not even that idiot prisoner we released earlier today. Fuck, it probably ate him before it started hunting us. Whatever this thing is, it can’t be a war form.”

Funny, because from the sound of things, that was precisely what Kal was. Graham might be deep, deep in denial, but given Alice Korai had taken over his injection herself and even apologized for what she was about to do to him, it sure as hell seemed like she’d completed her work… and for some reason decided to test it out by siccing him on a dozen bluebloods for sport.

Was it really on the orders of Graham’s father? Some rich trillionaire who had decided to turn his son’s little hunting trip into a heavy weapons experiment? Even a blueblood wouldn’t be that cold would they? Graham was probably right, his father likely had nothing to do with this.

But then who was Dr. Korai working for? What were her motivations for doing all of this?

“Look, the helicopter will be here in thirty minutes. We’ll be gone and once we’re back home I’ll have my father send a squad to capture the monster so we can stick it in a lab and learn what there is to learn from it. And now that you two have signed your NDAs, you and your families can benefit from that knowledge as well. We just have to sit tight for a little while longer.”

Shit. Graham sounded certain and neither Ken nor Brad were questioning him. Which meant there definitely was a helicopter on its way to pick them all up and take them back to the mainland.

In a perfect world, one where Kal hadn’t let himself get distracted by his need to feed and heal, he might have been able to catch up and stop the three remaining bluebloods from signaling for help or activating their base camp’s turret defenses.

Then, while he wouldn’t have learned everything he just did about the ‘war form’ he apparently now was, he still would have been able to enter the base camp himself and maybe could have sent a false call for help. He could have been lying in wait when the helicopter arrived and ambushed whoever was on it before using it to get to the mainland himself.

… Of course, he didn’t exactly know how to fly a helicopter, but how hard could it really be, right? Even if the controls were unlikely to be sized for his massive claws… bah! Either way, that path was closed to him at this point because try as he might, Kal couldn’t see any sort of openings in the turret screen now.

No, if he revealed himself, he would be filled with bullets long before he could reach the concrete wall. Which was a problem, probably. Sure, one ‘high powered rifle round’ hadn’t really hurt him, but a whole bunch of bullets would almost certainly destroy enough of his mass to endanger his life. One hole through his new body was one thing. Five hundred of them? That was something else entirely.

The likelihood of him getting to Graham and the other bluebloods before the helicopter arrived was next to none. But did that mean he just had to sit back and let them get away? Did that mean he was forced to just watch as they got to ride off into the sunset while he was stuck on this island until the black ops team came to capture him?

… No, fuck that. Kal’s two sets of red eyes narrow as he considers the base camp a bit more carefully… and then considers its surroundings. The tall, swaying trees around the camp were actually rather promising, now that he thought about it.

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The next thirty minutes are perhaps the most nerve wracking minutes of Gaham’s life, not that he’ll ever admit it. He keeps waiting for the turrets to activate and start firing, signaling that the monster has followed them back to camp… but it never happens.

By the time the helicopter’s rotor blades can be heard in the distance and he gets a ping on his tablet saying they’re coming in for a landing, Graham’s tension is through the roof. He relaxes a little bit more at the news though, a relieved smile spreading involuntarily across his face.

“They’re here. Let’s go.”

Rising from the bench in the panic room, he nods to Ken and Brad, both of whom rise to their feet and begin to follow him out. Together, the three of them make their way into the base camp’s courtyard. In hindsight, Graham wishes he’s taken the staff that his father had offered for this trip. If he had, they would have already had a team of commandos onsite to deal with the monster.

But no, he’d wanted to prove he could do this on his own with just his peers as company. It should have been a cakewalk. Instead, everything had gone to shit.

No matter. As he sees the helicopter slowly descending from the sky, the weight leaves Graham’s shoulders. Sure, the heirs to some very powerful men were all dead and that was going to be a problem… but it was future Graham’s problem. Right now, he just wanted to get on that helicopter and get out of-

“KRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIAAAAN!”

His eyes widen in disbelief as the silver-skinned monster suddenly leaps from the highest tree on the perimeter of their base camp. The turrets almost immediately slice up through the air, tracking towards it to begin firing… except they can’t because the creature isn’t just leaping to leap. It’s leaping at the helicopter.

Graham can only watch in horror as the monster’s claws sink into the glass cockpit of the helicopter like butter, breaking through and punching into the pilot in an explosion of viscera. The helicopter almost immediately begins to list… directly towards the camp.

“Shit!”

“Fuck!”

“Take cover!”

All three of them rush back as fast as they can, just as a moment later the helicopter hits the ground and explodes.

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A/N: Kaboom :D

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Chapter 7

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Kal leaps free of the helicopter just as it’s about to crash, yanking his claws back out of the cockpit as well as the body of the pilot he just killed. There are two more men in the back of the flying vehicle, but neither manages to react in time.

What does react in time are the turrets lining the wall of the base camp. They hadn’t fired when he’d landed on the helicopter, likely because they were programmed to avoid doing damage to ‘friendlies’. But as soon as he jumps away, they turn on him and searing hot bullets come flying in his direction.

That’s alright. Everything is going according to plan. Even as one of those lines of fire scores across his back, ripping through him, Kal doesn’t stop moving. After all, he’s inside of the base camp now, having used the helicopter to get himself to the center. And as it explodes behind him, he bursts into the metal building proper, catching up to the three fleeing bluebloods before they can make it back to their panic room.

“Oh fu-urrk!”

One of his claws pierces through the back of Brad’s skull and out one of his eye sockets in a gory explosion as Kal yanks his body backwards and flings it behind him. Another two strides and he reaches Ken, a clawed leg coming up and slamming into the small of the blueblood’s back, shredding through his body.

He goes down with barely a whimper, the ‘calculating and confident’ young man reduced to nothing but a carcass in mere moments as his body squelches beneath Kal’s foot.

And then there was one. Graham reaches the door to the panic room and wrenches it part way open before Kal catches up to him… but he doesn’t manage to slip inside before Kal has already reached over his hand, planted a set of claws against the thick steel door, and slammed it shut again.

“SHIT!”

Scrambling to the side, Graham keeps moving… and Kal lets him. He could have killed the blueblood right then and there, but instead he follows after him, curious to see where Graham will go now that the panic room is lost to him. The blueblood runs and Kal keeps the distance between them closed by simply taking long, almost casual strides.

Reaching another door, Graham flings it open and runs through it. This time, Kal lets him do so, mostly because he judges the door to be much flimsier but also because Graham doesn’t even try to close it behind him. He just keeps running.

Ironically, the blueblood’s best chance at survival is probably to rush back outside. Kal doesn’t think anyone in the helicopter survived the crash, but the turrets out there are all still online and ready to fire on any hostiles. He assumes Graham is on their allied list, so the blueblood would be safe if he just sheltered beneath them.

Alas, there are no turrets inside the camp buildings. This whole assortment of temporary metal structures is completely free of the one thing Kal had to worry about. And instead of trying to make a break for outside, Graham is going deeper in.

It doesn’t take him long to reach the end of his chosen path. He flies through one final door and does try to slam this one shut behind him, only for Kal to rip through it easily. However, Kal pauses for a moment all the same, taking in his surroundings… Graham has led him right to what looks like a control room.

Either ignorant of Kal’s presence right behind him or simply too focused on his goal to care, Graham reaches the control panel and grabs hold of a microphone there.

“HELLO?! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?! THERE’S A-GGGRRK!”

Closing the remaining distance between them in three simple steps, Kal shoves his claws through Graham’s back and up and out of his front. His hand closes around the blueblood’s heart as his claws sheer through flesh, muscle, organ, and bone. And then he squeezes.

Graham collapses forward like a puppet with his strings cut, spitting blood all over the console as he expires. Kal lifts him up, holding his body aloft for a moment and reveling in the victory. This was the blueblood who had picked him out. This was the blueblood who had taken one look at him and said ‘you’ll do’ while knowing full well what sort of life he was consigning Kal to.

Only when a burst of sound comes from the console does Kal stop enjoying himself quite so much. Flicking Graham’s corpse to the side, he leans over the console, listening carefully.

“You broke up there, please respond. Please confirm status.”

Kal tilts his head to the side. Maybe if he could speak he might try to deceive whoever was on the other end of the call… but he can’t do anything more than growl. After a moment, that’s exactly what he does do, letting out the most inhuman, monstrous growl he’s ever made right into the mic.

“Jesus, what the fuck was that?”

And then he brings his clawed fists down onto the control console, slamming them both through it with all his might. Sure, maybe he should have tried to figure out what some of the buttons did instead… but truth be told, he simply couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. It was as opaque to him as most things that had to do with bluebloods… so destroying all of it makes far more sense.

Especially since he’s pretty sure the control panel is tied to the turrets outside. That’s why he rips it apart and then follows its wiring through the wall until he eventually finds the base camp’s generator. As soon as he’s located that, Kal goes about destroying that too, leaving the entire place without power just as the sun is beginning to set.

Not that a little darkness means anything to him anymore… but looking outside and seeing the turrets all powered down and neutered certainly means something to him. Kal grins toothily as he steps back out of the building and into the central courtyard. Staring at the destruction he’d wrought when he brought down the helicopter brings him even more satisfaction.

He’d done it… he’d killed every last stinking blueblood who thought they could hunt him like some kind of fucking animal. He’d gotten his revenge on the bastard who had picked him out too. But… was that enough? Was Kal ready to lay down and die?

Because that was the problem, wasn’t it? He knew what was coming next. Like Graham had told Ken and Brad, once they got off of the island, his father would send a full blown commando team to capture Kal.

Well, the three bluebloods were never getting off the island… but that commando team was probably still in the cards for him. Once they realized that something had truly gone wrong, they would send escalating forces to the island, both to try and ‘save’ Graham and to find and take him down.

One might argue that Kal’s best option was probably death, considering the alternative was being captured alive and used to make more of himself. And yet… he really wasn’t ready to die yet. Angie wouldn’t want him to just give up. She’d want him to keep fighting. He was closer than ever to freedom as well… he just had to reach out and take it.

With a huff, Kal turns back around and heads back into the building. If he’s going to do something particularly crazy, he’ll need all the strength he can get. And something tells him that Graham, along with his two remaining blueblood buddies, is going to be his most satisfying meal yet.

-x-X-x-

A few hours later, Kal makes his way back to the beach, as satiated as he’s ever going to get. He’d even gone ahead and consumed what he could of the helicopter crew, though parts of their bodies had already turned to ash in the resulting fire from the crash.

Still, he can safely say that there’s no food left for him on the entire island. Not a single trace of meat remains. And that means its time to leave. Of course, the problem with that is… he still has no fucking clue which way to go.

But he’s screwed either way, isn’t he? If he stays, then he’ll only be hunted more and more aggressively until they capture or kill him. And if he leaves, he might just swim out into the middle of the ocean and find himself unable to find the mainland.

As the night gets darker and darker, Kal does his best to circle the entire island’s beach. He looks out into the horizon, trying to see if he can find even a hint of land out there. Hell, even if its another island, at least he can island hop a bit to confuse his eventual pursuers.

Unfortunately, he sees nothing even with his enhanced vision. It’s just ocean and dark sky all across the horizon.

Only… just as he’s coming to the conclusion that he’ll simply have to pick a direction and pray, Kal hears something instead. He hears… what sounds like a boat. Immediately, he perks up. He’d expected anyone else who showed up looking for the bluebloods he’d massacred to come by air. Helicopter or plane, two types of transportation that he knew he wouldn’t be able to commandeer to fly away from this place.

But a boat was different, wasn’t it? His claws were massive, but he thinks he might be able to hold a steering wheel without too much difficulty so long as he was careful. So… all he had to do was kill everyone on the boat and he would be fine, right? He could take it and it would be his and though he still wouldn’t know exactly what direction to go in, he might be able to use the boat’s systems to figure out. Or, they might even have a map…

Moving in the direction of the sounds, Kal dips back into the treeline in order to hide and obscure his approach. He arrives at the stretch of beach the boat is coming up on relatively quickly, watching as it comes closer and closer to shore.

As it comes aground, Kal tenses up in anticipation, expecting to see Spec Ops in the best gear that money can buy filing off of the boat. Which is why he’s rather surprised when that’s not who steps off of the boat at all.

“Alright doc. We’re here and in the dead of night too. I hope this works out for us… for your sake if nothing else.”

“You don’t need to be so distrusting Mister Anders. I came along personally as insurance against this being a trap, did I not? If we’re to die… we’re to die together.”

Dr. Alice Korai steps onto the beach alongside a bunch of people that look like they’re straight out of some guerrilla fighting force with how they’re dressed in mismatched gear and wielding guns that look like they’re half a century old.

The ‘Mister Anders’ next to her scoffs even as he eyes their surroundings cautiously.

“Yeah, well… it wouldn’t be the first time some blueblood’s pet has been brainwashed into sacrificing themselves to take out a Resistance Cell. You’re just lucky that what you’re offering is worth a hell of a lot more than our lives. If this works out…”

“It will work out. I’m certain of it.”

Kal can’t help but be a little baffled. He’s not sure if he ever expected to see Dr. Korai again, but he definitely didn’t expect to see her here… and with the Resistance to boot. What were they doing here? No, wait… were they here for him? That seemed unlikely, but also like it was the only plausible answer. Alternatively, they could be here for Graham and the others. Perhaps to take them hostage and hold them for ransom?

Well, that wasn’t going to work out well for them, now was it? Considering each and every blueblood was already dead…

After a few minutes, Mister Anders and Dr. Korai take the lion’s share of the people from the boat with them into the woods, making a beeline for where Kal knows the base camp is located. They leave behind a simple skeleton crew guarding the boat… a small enough group that Kal knows he could rip through them and steal said boat in mere minutes if he wanted to.

And yet… he doesn’t take a single step towards the beach. Instead, his red eyes follow Dr. Korai as she leads the Resistance deeper into the island. And after a beat… he moves after them, tailing them deeper into the forest.

He wanted answers, after all. And that woman might just be the only one who could really give them to him.

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Chapter 8

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As he follows them back towards the destroyed base camp, Kal finds himself truly struggling with his instincts for the first time since his transformation. Before now, the only time that his human mind and his monstrous instincts had been at odds was when he’d stopped to eat the slaughtered bluebloods, allowing Graham and his two remaining peers to escape.

Ultimately though, he’d given into his instincts there because the human part of him was afraid that if he took too much damage, he might not be able to recover. So healing himself and shoring up his reserves had seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, even if he’d beat himself up for it after the fact.

Only… now he found himself stalking Dr. Korai and the Resistance and having to force himself to stop seeing them as either food or enemies. When it was just Graham and the rest of the bluebloods, it was so much simpler. They were hunting him, after all. He was well within his rights to hunt them back.

… But not every human was food. Not every human was an enemy, or so he hoped. And Alice Korai very well might be the only human being who could truly tell him exactly what she’d done to him… and if it was possible to reverse it.

Of course, that brought to mind the question of how to go about confronting her. Did he just step out into the open and hope they didn’t shoot him? No, they would almost certainly shoot him if he did that and Kal wasn’t interesting in taking more damage.

But then… what? Maybe he could wait until the good doctor was alone and confront her that way. If she went off on her own at any point, he would certainly have an opportunity then. Except… an opportunity to do what? He couldn’t communicate with her. He couldn’t say a damn thing.

It’s enough to make Kal growl lowly in frustration, but luckily he’s far enough away that none of the humans he’s tailing can hear him. Instead, they keep moving forward, looking jumpy as all hell and staring around like a monster (perhaps him) might jump out at them at any moment.

Finally though, they reach their destination. Kal isn’t sure how they’d done it, but Dr. Korai had made a beeline for Graham’s campsite, even in the pitch black darkness. Somehow she’d known exactly where it was. Of course, when they all lay eyes upon what Kal had wrought, specifically the destroyed helicopter and the blood splatters…

“Jesus… what happened here?”

“I told you Mister Anders. If all went according to plan, we would arrive to a massacre.”

“Yes but… why are the turrets off? The bases’ defenses are shut down from the look of things…”

Kal is glad he destroyed the generator now. He wouldn’t want these idiots to turn it back on and reactivate the turrets somehow. Luckily, Dr. Korai seems to agree.

“Just be grateful that they are. I can assure you that we would not be on their list of friendlies.”

With that, the doctor moves deeper into the base, looking around carefully all the while. Mister Anders follows her, frowning most severely, his head on a swivel. The other Resistance members fan out on his orders, keeping their eyes peeled.

But they’re all still human and the sun has long since set. Kal doubts they would be able to see him unless he was pretty much right in front of them. Indeed, sneaking past their hastily constructed perimeter to delve deeper into the base camp with Dr. Korai and her Resistance handler proves to be all too trivial.

“That’s a lot of blood…”

“Heh, not as much as there should be. He was hungry.”

Kal finds the two of them shining flashlights on the blood splatters left behind by Ken and Brad. He’d consumed the two bluebloods in full, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to lick the floor and walls and ceiling clean or anything like that. That had felt a little excessive.

“You really think the Resistance can use your monster then?”

“I know it can. Now come on, I should be able to get Graham out of his panic room.”

Kal would arch a brow if he still had them. That short interaction was very interesting and revealed quite a lot, actually. Of course, he doesn’t get long to dwell on it because a moment later and they reach the panic room in question. The panic room… which is unlocked and empty.

“… Shit.”

Mister Anders takes one look inside of the empty room before whirling on Alice with a growl.

“Shit? That’s all you have to say? We’re supposed to be capturing the heir to the blasted Pactus Consortium here. Along with your pet monster! And I don’t see either of them!”

To her credit, Dr. Korai doesn’t cower in the face of the Resistance Leader’s anger. Her lips pursed, she just shakes her head.

“Graham Pactus might be a spoiled brat, but he should have been smart enough to flee here when things became untenable. If he didn’t… come on.”

She leads the Resistance Leader to the control room next, where upon seeing the blood stain left behind by Graham’s missing body, Alice Korai lets out a soft, shaky breath.

“Okay… okay, so the Pactus Heir is almost certainly dead. This is still salvageable… but we can’t stay long.”

Mister Anders stares at the bloodstain for a long moment before scoffing.

“No shit we can’t stay long. This island will be crawling with Pactus Commandos by morning. Fuck, they’re probably already on their way. And once they know their precious baby boy is dead…”

Alice nods in agreement.

“Yeah. Look, let me just see if I can figure out where Kal McKay has gone, alright? You start getting everyone ready to head back to the beach.”

Kal tilts his head to the side as he listens to this entire interaction. Here’s the thing… for all that Alice is acting like she’s shocked and dismayed by Graham’s death… he smells her deception in the air. She’s lying to Mister Anders, at least about her surprise. No, rather… she wanted Graham dead. She expected Kal to kill him. None of this truly shocks her even a little bit.

It makes it a little easier to stomach what happens next. Because as soon as Mister Anders turns and leaves with a grumble, Dr. Korai barely waits for him to get out of hearing range before she turns and looks right at Kal despite the way he’s hiding himself in the darkness.

“Hello again Kal.”

He’s still a little caught off guard of course… but after seeing her lie to the Resistance’s face, not so much. That doesn’t mean he’s happy to have been discovered, however. Stepping out of the shadows, Kal growls as he looms over Dr. Korai, claws flexing. He has to control his urge to kill and consume her, but given how important she is to him, it’s not too difficult to hold back on such impulses.

Alice’s eyes flicker down to his flexing claws and then slide up and down the rest of them. She lets out another shaky breath, this one much more genuine as she takes him all in.

“My word… your transformation is… magnificent.”

Kal growls again, making her jolt. He didn’t necessarily want to let her know he agreed with her. Yes, he was sort of happy with his new body… but he’d also been happy with a human body too. As much as this form had let him take revenge and kill his way to a quasi-sort of freedom, it wasn’t what he would have preferred… given the choice.

“I’m surprised you aren’t attacking me on sight. Does some part of you still recognize me?”

Scoffing, Kal considers for a moment how to make her understand that there is a lot more of his mind left inside of his new form than she perhaps anticipated. In the end, he decides that he has to do a bit of charades… so he gestures to Graham’s bloodstain and then back down the hall to where Mister Anders had walked off. Then, he gives Alice a distinct Look as he tilts his head to the side.

The doctor’s eyes widen as she almost immediately picks up on what he’s ‘saying’.

“You were listening to us. You could tell I was lying to him. You can understand us… understand me. Kal… you’re still in there, aren’t you? All of you, maybe?”

Kal makes sure to nod emphatically at that to show she’s got it. A disbelieving laugh leaves Alice Korai’s lips and she shakes her head.

“Fuck… I’d hoped of course, but I hadn’t known what to expect. Just as I’d hoped you’d kill Graham Pactus for me. Thank you for that by the way. They’re all dead, aren’t they? Every single blueblood who came here to hunt you?”

Kal nods again, causing Alice to smile broadly.

“Good. Very good. I’m sure you have questions… that’s probably the only reason I’m still alive isn’t it? You don’t need to worry; I fully intend to answer every single question you might have for me. But first… we have to leave. Graham’s father will be sending an army once he learns of his son’s death.”

Kal holds up a hand and shakes his head. While he does want to leave this place… he’s going to need a little bit more if he’s leaving with her… or with the Resistance. Luckily, the woman in front of him seems to be quite intelligent. She easily picks up on his meaning without him having to try to communicate through more grunts and growls.

“You want an explanation first. I understand. Hopefully you can accept a barebones one for now. I injected you with the wrong serum, obviously. I made you into a weapon, giving you the power you needed to turn the tables on your would-be tormentors. In doing so, I burned myself with the Pactus Consortium and the Authorities. They’ll all want my head on a platter for this. So I did the only thing I could do… I ran to the Resistance.”

A melancholic smile spreads across her face.

“Of course, the Resistance doesn’t accept just anybody. They wanted assurances of my change in loyalty. They wanted to know I was ‘legit’. I promised them if they came here that we would be able to kidnap Graham Pactus and likely retrieve you in the process. And that doing both would be significant blows to the Pactus Consortium and the status quo.”

Shrugging her shoulders, Alice glances down at the bloodstain, what little remains of Graham Pactus, once more.

“But he’s dead, isn’t he? You took care of him along with the rest of the bluebloods. You’re beyond my estimations, Kal. That’s why… I want to get you off of this island and back to the mainland. Not for the Resistance’s sake, but for your sake. They’ll use you if you let them… but they won’t be able to use you if you don’t want to let them. You can wait until we’re back on the continent and slaughter us all if you really wish. But please… let me get you out of here at least.”

It’s a tempting offer, to be sure. Very… enticing. He really does want to get off this damn island, and preferably without having to just pick a direction and swim in it. So going with the Resistance and Dr. Korai does seem like a good idea. But if she’s lying and they have some way of subduing him, he might just find himself imprisoned again after all…

“Here, let me show you my sincerity.”

Kal tenses up when Alice suddenly reaches behind herself and pulls out what looks at first glance like a gun. But a bit longer of a look and it becomes clear it’s some sort of triggered injector instead. Kal internally frowns, even as Alice shows it to him.

“You’re probably wondering how I knew you were here. Maybe you even had issues during your hunting of Graham and his peers. It’s because there’s a tracker inside of you, one that allowed him to know your location at all times. I piggybacked off of its signal with my own internalized interface, allowing me to see you from the moment we got off the boat.”

All four of Kal’s eyes widen, even as Alice steps forward with a smile.

“I can remove it for you if you let me.”

… Now he knew how Graham was able to shoot him out of that tree with pinpoint accuracy earlier in the day. The blueblood had literally been cheating. What a fucking coward.

In the end, Kal huffs and nods his head, letting Alice approach him and shove the injector into his side. Except it’s not an injector at all apparently because he feels something within him, a foreign object, being sucked out and into the device.

With a grin, Alice drops the tracker out of her tool and into her palm before crushing it right in his line of sight.

“No more of that now, at least.”

Then, she looks at him hopefully.

“What do you say, Kal? Let me get you off this island if nothing else.”

In the end… he doesn’t see a better option. After all, he still needs Dr. Korai for both answers and what comes next.

A few moments later, both of them walk out of the base camp to find Mister Anders and the rest of the Resistance gathered up. When they see him next to Dr. Korai, they all react as expected, eyes widening and weapons raised.

“H-Holy shit!”

“What the fuck is that thing!”

“Relax! Everyone please relax! He’s not dangerous. I have him under control… like I said I would be able to.”

Outwardly, Kal doesn’t react to that. Just another lie that the good doctor was telling the Resistance. He simply goes along with it, allowing them to think he was docile because of some science trick that Alice had pulled out of her ass.

After a moment of staring at him warily, Mister Anders finally nods.

“Alright then… at least this trip wasn’t a total waste. Let’s get out of here before this island is crawling with fucking commandos.”

And ultimately, that’s exactly what they do. They head back to the beach and load up onto the boat, albeit this time with Kal among them. And as they push off and head back out to sea, Kal stares at the island until it’s completely disappeared into the distance. Given his night vision and enhanced sight, that takes quite a while but it does happen eventually.

… In a way, he’d been reborn on that island. Forged even if one wanted to stretch the weapon metaphor to its limits. But what came next? Kal honestly had no idea… but he supposed he was ready to find out.

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A/N: So yeah, that’s all there is for the time being. Like I said, I intend to come back to this idea eventually.

For now, I’ll be posting chapters of the Invincible OC fic every weekday starting next Monday for the foreseeable future, so feel free to check out Chapter 1 of that here if you haven’t yet.

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KSq55RQuEnhqSZhZQABHKzOJOeV4_NAdSPVoU4qoPoE/edit?tab=t.0