Dan had no feelings towards honor. Where he grew up, he had to fight for every scrape of food, clothing and other resource. He didn’t have the luxury of engaging in fair fights, especially when the gangs he encountered took pleasure in hunting down those weaker than themselves.

As much as he hated Kate and Adam and would enjoy the satisfaction of killing either of these two himself, he knew that his new powers came at a heavy price. He needed his teammates to help him.

After the smoke cleared, Adam was still writhing on the ground. The intense flames that had engulfed his entire upper body had faded into light embers on various spots of his armor. The intensity of Dan’s flames must have been so great that Adam ripped his helmet off and gasping for air, as if he was suffocating within his own armor from the extreme temperatures of the flames.

To the side, Dan saw Li slowly approaching Adam and peppering him with shredder rounds from a distance. Somehow, Adam still had the strength to retreat. He tried running, tripped and fell then frantically crawled away while getting his back and ass chewed up by Li’s Aero AMG.

Kate suddenly pulled her head back, narrowly serving away from the path of a silenced pistol round. Because of the strain on Dan’s left side, his grip loosened on Kate’s wrist and the traitor broke free from him. Her head jerked to the side, presumably eyeing Angie. She pulled her machete back and threw the entire blade in Angie’s direction.

Angie fell backward, narrowly avoiding the flying machete as it missed and clattered onto the cold floor.

Kate used her speed to charge directly at Angie, possibly to take out the carrier of their heavy weapons. Dan didn’t allow Kate the opportunity.

He intercepted that bitch by diving and grabbing Kate by the ankle, tripping her and forcing her to slam face first into the cold floor. The traitor angrily looked back at him and Dan declared with full confidence, “As long as I’m alive, you’re not killing any more of my teammates. You want a fight, I’ll give you a fight.”

Using the last bit of his strength, Dan squeezed Kate’s ankle as hard he he could. His grip was powerful enough to crush Kate’s ankle through the armor. Kate’s scream filled the room and Dan felt no remorse. If he wasn’t so strsained with aches and pains throughout his entire body, he would had more torture to follow up with.

Instead, Dan slowly stood back up, while still holding onto Kate’s broken ankle. He grabbed Kate’s other leg and lifted her up. He spun around a few times, not giving a shit about Kate’s scream before letting her go. Kate’s entire body flew out the room through the wide metal doors Dan and his team entered through and she skidded down the long hallway behind them.

“Angie, close that door and lock the bitch out,” Dan strained.

His teammate had gotten back to her feet by now and said, “Okay, I’m on it.” She flashed him a worried glance before running toward the doors and finding the nearby control panel. She finally shut the doors. And for good measure, she pointed her silence pistol at the control panel and blasted it. Dan watched the brief muzzle flash illuminate the shadowy area beside the door with a sick smile.

Dan looked back to see where Adam had gone. He saw Li reloading his Aero SMG and pointing his weapon at the darkness beyond the pillars ahead.

“My eyes are killing me,” Li said, implying he couldn’t use his x-ray eyes anymore. “His armor still held up against the barrage I sent his way as he crawled away. Injured or not, he’s still a tier two. I couldn’t risk rushing after him and being lured into a trap in the darkness.”

“Not a problem,” Dan said in a strained voice. He didn’t have to look hard to find where Adam had crawled to. The shredded armor pieces and charred bits littering the floor along with some blood stains gave Dan an easy path to follow.

Surprisingly, the red arcs of bioelectricity flowing and cracking throughout Dan’s body gave him an ambient light source within the shadows as he walked beyond the pillars following the trail. He found Adam illuminated in dim red, slumped against a wall holding onto one of his arms. The Kodak agent spotted him and his eyes went wide.

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While Adam didn’t say anything, he knew he was vulnerable. Dan delivered his last attack with a simple punch across the tall agent’s face. Adam tumbled across the floor and laid unmoving.

Seeing his opponent down, Dan powered down from his berserk state and his vision returned back to normal. He wiped the blood from his cheeks and eyes. Dan slowly walked back to the container, doing his best to push through the extreme aches in his legs. Actually, his entire body felt like it had been puit through the wringer.

Angie approached him slowly from the other side of the room and said, “Did your eye color change?”

“What do you mean?” Dan said.

“I thought your eyes were hazel?” Angie said. “They’re glowing red from all the way here.”

Dan’s eye color was irrelevant. He knew it had to been some side effect from using his powers.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Li said, slapping Dan’s shoulder.

Even through the coat and armor, Dan let out an agonzing grunt from Li’s slap. Every muscle in him felt fired up and strained, even more so compared to the aftermaths of Jane’s intense training session prior to this mission.

“Fuck that hurt,” Dan said. “Next time, don’t do that.”

“My apologies,” Li said. “But seriously, you did more than what any tier one could have done against those two. You’re a fearsome warrior, Dan.”

In that moment, Dan didn’t feel all that intimidating. A spinning blue icon in the center of his vision popped up in his HUD and then expanded into a diagnostic. The results were grim.

Internal bleeding in kidneys and liver.

Low blood pressure.

Blurred/double vision.

The results continued scrolling across Dan’s vision. Even with his HUD’s stats literally within his eyeballs, he found it tough to focus on all the injuries his body had just endured from maintaining the berserk transformation.

Dan struggled to stand up straight and had to crouch a bit, putting his arms on his thighs. Angie walked up to him and stopped a few meters shorts.

“Seriously Dan, how the fuck did you do all of that?” she asked. “Somehow, you set that guy on fire and then that monstrous strength and speed you showed against Kate. No way any normal tier one could do all of that.”

“It’s as he said, he’s gained some strange new powers,” Li said, being the voice of reason. “Lucky for us, he’s on our side. Dan, can you continue the mission?”

Dan struggled to lift his chin up, but still managed to do so to meet Li’s gaze. “Yeah, I have a few aches and pains throughout, but I’m good,” he lied.

Congratulations!

You have reached Tier 1 | Level 18.

You have earned 5 stat points.

You have a total of 10 unused stat points.

At the very least, Dan got something out of that intense fight against his most hated adversaries. “Just give me a moment guys. Going to allocate my stat points real quick.”

Dan knew that if any more bullshit happened, then he would be forced to fall back on his new abilities to make sure the container and his teammates survived. He strongly thought about putting all ten of his stat points into the supernatural stat if it meant his body could maintain the use of these powers longer.

At the same time, he knew that he would be neglecting his other regular stat categories. Dan took the one and only healing stim within his inner coat pocket and injected himself in the neck. The familiar and comforting ice cold sensation pooled in his neck before gradually spreading throughout his body. Most of his aches and pains faded away and he could finally stand up straight without his back protesting.

The damage the berserk transformation was so great that even a healing stim didn’t fully heal his body. Breathing still trigger some pains in his chest and the aches everywhere else didn’t entirely disappear.

Dan made up in his mind where his ten points would be allocated into.

Strength: 23 (+5)

Supernatural: 8 (+5)

Congratulations. Your updated stats are now:

Strength: 28

Supernatural: 13

“Geez, that berserk mode is worse that steroids. Has to be,” Dan muttered.

“Feeling better?” Angie asked.

“Yeah, but not a hundred percent,” Dan said. “Even a full healing stim didn’t fix all the strain that berserk mode put me through.”

Dan bent over and grabbed the handle of the container. Li without hesitation walked past him and grabbed the container from the other side. The two lifted the container.

“Okay, no more bullshit,” Dan said. “We’re getting this thing up to the roof and we’ll await our ride. Then, we get the hell out of here.”

“Right!” Angie said.

Li simply nodded in agreement. The trio walked past the still unmoving body of Adam Torrent and through the next door.