Dan found the staircase and ran up as fast as he could. He didn’t care about how much his legs burned. It was either he got killed or he pushed beyond his body’s limits.

The explosions outside continued with the building shaking and small bits of debris falling from the ceiling. The Kodak agents outside were probably using grenades and tossing them into the building to flush him out.

He stopped once he got to the fifth floor to catch his breath. His legs gave out and he fell to his knees. This gave him time to reflect on his current situation, though he didn’t much like how things had turned out.

The team’s medic had been killed by Kate, who Dan had trusted and turned out to be a traitor. Dan tried to reach out individually to everyone else through the private channel and received no response, so their status was still unknown. Kate, along with a squad of Kodak agents, was still out there hunting him down. With only a pistol, one smoke grenade and a few blocks of remotely detonated explosives left in his arsenal, he had barely anything left to fight the enemy with.

The situation was as grim as it could get. This was pathetic. The odds were that Dan was the only Alpha agent alive. And yet he was the one running away. Others had died for him and yet he was running away. Even with his enhanced powers as an agent, his situation was no different from his daily struggle against gangsters and other degenerates back home.

Dan slowly stood, his legs fatigued though not burning as much, and continued walking up the stairs. He reached the sixth floor and slowly walked down the hallway. He reached a room without a door and peered in. Sounds of loud breathing and weeping reached his ears, and he saw two people sitting in front of a wall inside the room. The area appeared to be a public bathroom with the individuals sitting across from the stalls. The wall at the end of the bathroom had a sizeable hole in it along with piles of debris and embers across the floor.

Dan slowly stepped in and got a closer look at the two people.

His heart sank when he saw it was a woman whose arms were wrapped around a small boy no older than seven or eight. He was bleeding from his head and didn’t move. The woman was incoherent, nothing but slurred sentences as she cried.

Dan assumed that one of the grenades that hit the building must have blown apart the wall and the child was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn’t even have to think about his next move.

He walked towards the distraught woman. “Hey, are you alright?”

The woman slowly looked up and her expression switched from distraught to shock to anger all within a second. She stared up at him with an intense glare then slapped him in the face.

He was shocked, not because the slap hurt, but at the bizarre reaction.

“Get the fuck away from me!”

“Woah, calm down,” Dan said. “I’m just trying to help. You’re in the middle of a warzone here. You and your kid need to get to safety.”

The woman continued to stare at Dan and didn’t move from her spot. “You have some nerve giving me an order, you Alpha trash. All of this conflict is your fault. If you agents and the shard you serve weren’t so shit at your jobs, I wouldn’t have been forced out of my home and have to seek food from these radicals.”

Dan had no clue what the hell was going on in this region before he arrived. He barely even knew the overall political state here in the entire East. Instead of arguing with the woman, Dan kept his mouth shut. Maybe she could spill more information about this place and what was going on in this region.

“My son, he’s going to die,” she said through tears. “You and the other shards are nothing but bloodthirsty savages. You let Amethyst fall into ruin and now the local radicals have teamed up with more of your rivals. Look what they’ve done to this place!”

Dan glanced at the kid and scrutinized him. Aside from the stream of blood running down the side of his head, Dan didn’t notice any other major injuries on the boy. But he also didn’t possess X-ray vision like Ben, so he couldn’t tell if the kid suffered any internal injuries.

He reached into his pocket and grabbed the only healing stim Ben had given him earlier. Dan knew this situation wasn’t over, and he had no clue what other challenges he would encounter. His combat instincts told him to keep the stim for himself. But another part of Dan knew that someone else right now needed it more than him.

“Ma’am, I’m just a rookie,” Dan said, keeping his tone as level as possible. He needed the woman to know he was one of the good guys. “I have no clue what the fuck is going on, and I don’t know the history of this place or the politics. But I can help. I’ve got something that can help your son.”

“You shut the fuck up,” the woman snapped. “And get the hell away from me. You will never lay a hand on my Billy.”

“That’s not up to you to decide. I don’t know his injuries, but he needs attention.” Dan took the healing stim from his pocket and held it in his hand.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Regardless of this woman’s protest, he needed to heal that boy. Dan crouched in front of him and got the healing stim ready to inject. He didn’t know where the boy was most injured aside from the bleeding from his head, so he reached for the kid’s neck.

The woman’s incoherent screams filled his ears as the she tried but failed to hold him back from touching her son. Dan could barely feel her pounding his armor as he injected the stim into the boy’s neck and let it get to work.

A few seconds later, the kid slowly opened his eyes. The woman stopped her struggle and looked at her son.

“Oh my god, Billy,” she said, choking up. Dan stood back and remained silent as she hugged the boy.

Dan’s ears picked up activity outside through the collapsed wall. He heard unintelligible voices, most likely coming from the Kodak agents below. The same terrible gut feeling and pressure in his eyes returned as when he’d narrowly avoided getting his head taken off by gunfire outside.

Dan didn’t know what was coming, but he knew no one was safe in this room. He said, “We’re not staying here. We need to move.”

The woman looked at him. She didn’t have the same hateful look in her eyes, but that changed when a sudden explosion shocked everybody.

The wall next to the open section exploded into flying bricks and other debris. Dan bent down and picked up the women and the boy. The woman screamed something at him, but Dan ignored her, rushing the out of the bathroom with both in his arms. The pressure in his eyes only grew in intensity and something told Dan to let the two go as he got to the door frame.

He threw both out into the hallway. “Get out of here!”

Something exploded behind him and he was knocked off his feet. His body slammed into the door frame, and he fell onto the floor of the bathroom. His ears stopped ringing as he turned around.

Part of the ceiling behind him had been blown up and embers and debris littered the corner. That had to be from a grenade launcher, as Dan found it difficult to believe a hand grenade could do that much damage.

He stood back up and slowly walked towards the two openings in the bathroom wall. Peeking over the collapsed wall, he saw the Kodak agents on the streets six stories below. Immediately Dan saw the one with the grenade launcher as well as Samantha, who had caught up with the group, for a total of five agents.

Dan also saw Kate, who was speaking with the group of agents, presumably giving them orders. Taking a closer look, Kate appeared worn down and her skin somehow looked more pale than usual, even in the dark. She clutched her upper chest, the same spot she’d gotten hit by one of Ben’s poison needles. It must be have been taking affect.

Kate said something to Samamtha before turning around and slowly walking away. Dan was tempted to pull out his pistol and just shoot her in the head while she was weakened and had her back turned. But he didn’t.

If he did take the shot, he would reveal his position and the other Kodak agents would hammer it and possibly kill him. He had nothing to match their firepower.

Dan clenched his fist. He had to keep his anger in check. He couldn’t afford to do anything brash. Up until now, Dan never once considered himself a hero. All he did was fight and run to survive. The only other person he was willing to help out was his only family, his mom. But even with such a brutal childhood, he never once enjoyed the sight of seeing innocent people getting caught up in other people’s messes, especially children.

Before he became an Alpha agent, Dan could do nothing but continue to fight for his own survival as gangs and criminals would take advantage of others who were weak and couldn’t defend themselves. He had no power to help.

Whether it was his enhanced hearing or the Kodak agents not bothering to speak with quieter tones, Dan picked up the conversations happening down on the street between the Kodak.

“Do you think he’s still alive in there?” one agent said.

“Of course he fucking is. I was aiming my grenades randomly to scare him. You think I would actually aim for him?” That came from the agent with the grenade launcher.

“Yeah, and how do you know you didn’t kill him by accident?”

“I’m not a fucking idiot. You think I would kill our prey that easily and end this game? You know I got two thousand credits on the line.”

“I got three thousand that he stays alive long enough to see me one last time before I kill him,” Samantha said with glee.

The conversation below only added further fuel to Dan’s building rage. Not only did they put innocents in harm’s way, but they were laughing at him. This chase was nothing but a game to them. Just an infantile competition.

Dan had to keep himself from punching the wall as he heard the obnoxious laughter coming from Samantha and her pals. It was laughter he was all too familiar with. The gangsters and criminals who had chased and harassed him and his mom back at home had laughed the same way. To Dan, he was doing what was necessary to survive and live to see the next day. To his tormentors, he was just fun prey.

Hearing enough of that bullshit, Dan slowly crawled away from the collapsed wall and contemplated his next move. Either he surrendered himself to the agents outside, or he had to find a creative way of taking all of them out. The choice was obvious. Dan knew he couldn’t live with himself if surrendering was how he spent his last meaningful moments. These Kodak agents were ruthless. He doubted he would be treated humanely as a prisoner.

He had to fight back. His chances of surviving hung on what he planned to do next. Dan raised his fist and brought it down on the floor, cracking the tile.

Fuck this shit, Dan thought.

Michael Cynosa didn’t save his life just for him to give it up. Jane Sunheiser had put him through the toughest trials and training exercises and was beginning to warm up to him and recognize his progress. He was an Alpha agent. This was finally his chance to start making a difference in this world. No longer would he be held back by a lack of power or resources.

Dan’s eyes welled with tears when he remembered how his mom died. She told him to run as she stayed behind to distract a group of gangsters. The parallel with Ben’s death wasn’t lost on him.

Up until this point, he had struggled and survived so much. Regardless of his ranking and low stats, he was going to fight.