“Stop everyone!” Simon shouted towards the soldiers around. “I order you to stop.”

The soldiers stopped shooting and Pretty took this as a chance.

She did not care that he just saved her. She took a blue tube wrapped in a white packet out of her storage, tore the packet with her mouth and inside was a blue injectable device. She took the cap on and injected it on her right hand that was just shot by a dart. It was an antidote for the tranquilizing dart. After that, she took a serrated knife out of the cluttered mess in front of her and swiftly jumped to Simon’s back with the knife pointed at his neck.

But Simon turned quickly, as if he had eyes behind his back, and grabbed her right hand holding the knife, twisted it and swiped his right foot in her legs. He let go of her hand and she fell to the floor, the knife falling from her grasp.

For the second time she kissed the floor again.

But she did not give up. Dozens of knives appeared in both of her hands and she threw it hastily towards Simon.

Simon invoked his renisas quickly. A chunk of the white renisas around him converged on the front and it materialized into a square white sheet, two meters wide and two meters tall and two inches thick, the knives were bounced off by the shield.

Seeing that it did not work, a semi-automatic black rifle appeared in Pretty’s hand. She positioned herself in the ground and braced herself from the recoil of the rifle and shot towards Simon.

A barrage of bullets shot through the white shield. The force of the consecutive bullet forces Simon to step back and to reinforce his shield. Chunks of the shields flew and vanished from the force of the bullets, but it was quickly replaced by Simon’s renisas.

New white renisas flowed to the holes quickly and materialized. Pretty had no time being amazed by his renisas control. She barraged him with bullets waiting for his renisas to run out. That was her plan.

Renisas, just like any type of energy, was not limitless. This constant consumption of renisas would consume Simon’s reserve.

Pretty could see that the renisas around SImon was diminishing by the seconds. She just had to wait for that time where he consumed all his renisas then she would effectively bomb themselves together. That was her plan, bombing themselves together. Plain and simple. With the guards waiting after them, and with her renisas almost depleted, she had no hope of surviving this place anyway.

The soldiers upon seeing that their leader was being bombarded with bullets, took their guns but before they could react a disk of an electric bomb was thrown in their direction. It broke off into different pieces and flew in the 8 cardinal direction. Then it blows off into an arc of lightning spreading around the soldiers.

Pretty even took one of her hands from the rifle just to throw that electric bomb as she needed more time.

The renisas around Simon was now decreasing to a critical level. Simon’s calm face had now changed into grim determination and a trace of wariness smeared his face every second that passed. Exactly fifteen seconds later, the last renisas around him had flowed to the last shield he was holding. He was now out of renisas.

Pretty had switched three magazines already and seeing that it was the last shield, she waited for the moment the shield broke.

The shield was about to break when her gun suddenly stopped firing. A look of surprise that turned to dread passed on her face realizing she was out of bullets. She immediately took a new magazine out of her storage. She just unloaded the cartridge and was about to load it when Simon took that chance to dive on her, wrestling the rifle out of her grasp.

Her body took the brunt of his weight and the pain of being crushed distracted her for a second. It was enough for Simon to wrestle the gun away from her hand.

Pretty did not mind it. She thought this was even better. She only has very little renisas remaining, only enough for her to do one thing and she didn’t hesitate to use it one last time.

Her free hand, empty with the gun, flash a pink light and was now holding a gray grenade. With just one hand, she took the ring of the grenade expertly, using her index finger and freed the spring. Then she let go of the grenade and let it rolled from her hand to free the safety mechanism.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She took one last look at Simon above her and smiled triumphantly, “ Goodbye.”

She closed her eyes waiting for the explosion but nothing happened.

She opened her eyes and looked where she rolled the grenade just a few feet from her but instead of a broken and exploding grenade, she saw the grenade in the hands of Simon covered in thick filaments of renisas.

Shock filled her eyes. She thought he had no renisas anymore. She dredged all the remaining renisas that she had, she only needed a little bit to cover her eyes. After collecting for five seconds the renisas activity of Simon’s renisas flickered in her eyes, it was only for a moment but she was shocked by what she saw.

Simon’s rentom inside his body was blurring and moving erratically, as if it multiplied and was superimposing with each other. They looked like they were wrestling with each other, as if trying to escape from his body. Despite this, his rentom was still producing gray renisas and it was covering the grenade she had thrown, preventing it from exploding.

Pretty had never seen anything like it, not the gray renisas nor that state of a rentom, but she could feel the malicious emotions Simon’s rentom was giving off, and it gave her the chills.

Pretty’s renisas totally emptied and now, she could only see the constrained but smiling face of Simon, his rentom invisible.

Simon looked at her, as he struggled with the grenade, and Pretty felt fear inside her. There seemed to be hundreds of gazes she could feel from that look.

She took a step back and breathed heavily. Her breathing grew harder and then a sudden torrid of exhaustion slammed at her.

She swayed, holding her head, and fell on the wet floor. She realized she couldn’t move her body anymore.

To her dismay, she had already hit her limits. Her body had now caught up with her. She had been overusing it for the past 24 hours, without giving it any decent rest and now it was shutting down.

Pretty’s body was an abnormal one unlike normal humans’ body, because it was grown and raised in a lab. She was a synthetic being, a poor attempt on creating humans that only succeeded on a fluke. She only knew about this a few months ago.

She always thought she was just born premature or was born deformed and different from other humans. Her body is far from normal in terms of physical characteristics and it also operates quite differently than others. She liked to call it minor deformities, like her hands were shorter than the other, her fingers are in different sizes and she did not even have a pinky finger. There were other babies born like this, she knew, so she thought she was just one of the unfortunate ones.

Aside from that, she also had a deformed face which had always made her the target of countless bullying. Her eyes were far too apart from each other and in different sizes. Her nose was almost flat and her lips were crooked, the upper part raised too much while the lower lip was thin, almost nothing. Her overall head shape was not even symmetrical, she also has thin hair that formed in patches around her head.

She was not just ‘not beautiful’, she was the definition of ugly.

But that was not the worst. Her body was frail and weak to physical activity and it was prone to sickness. That was why she had to constantly wear a mask and gloves. But it had a weird way of working itself. Her body could feel pain and exhaustion by small dosages. Then when her body was resting, it would let her feel so much pain and exhaustion as if they were only saving the pain and exhaustion for later.

She would not even know she was sick until she had put herself to bed and then she’ll feel the brunt of the sickness multiple times its intensity.

It was the same this time. She felt too heavy as if something was crushing her. Her mouth was very thirsty for water and her stomach was twisting, giving her an intense pang, demanding her to give it food. She felt she could eat anything right now. Her throat was clogging for some reason and she wanted to puke but it felt like it was stuck on her throat.

Her body was so tired it started to affect her thoughts. She started to feel it would not be that bad not to move. She did not care if the world revolved today, she just wanted to lie down. She was also in pain. She couldn’t point out where, it felt like she was hurting everywhere.

She sprawled on the floor with tears of frustration in her eyes.

Her brain got a sudden clarity, and she ignored all the sensations she felt with everything she had.

Her body might be giving up on her but a huge part of her mind was still so clear and full of seething anger and frustration. She couldn’t end up like this.

She stood shakily on her knees and crawled towards Simon who was a few feet from her.

She took a serrated knife on the floor and stood on her wobbly feet. With all of her mental strength, she hobbled himself towards Simon’s direction.

Simon just let her, still holding the grenade with his renisas. His calm weird eyes were tracking her all of her moves but she did not look back.

The few soldiers who were still conscious were enraged by her move but they couldn’t do anything about it. Their bodies were suddenly frozen by something they did not know. They wanted to step forward or raise their guns but their body wouldn't listen. Something deep inside them did not want to go near the two or even make a move.

“St–top it!” Winston shouted, his voice stuttering and breathless. “You’re t-too much! How can you kill someone who just saved you!” He wanted to move but even shouting those words took a lot from him.

Pretty did not listen to. She raised her right hand holding the knife and shakily tried to stab it at Simon’s neck but she went out of balance and she fell on the floor.

Breathing heavily, she stood up again. With a shout she held the knife in both of her hands and aimed it towards Simon’s neck with all of her last strength.

At the same time, a voice spoke out of nowhere, “ It is ready, sir.”

As if a switch was flipped. Simon swiftly evaded the knife attack at him and he hurled the grenade he was holding towards the floor a few meters from them. Suddenly a huge booming sound was heard and Pretty felt herself hurled by a huge force, her body was then bombarded with multiple shrapnels and random objects. She flew for a few meters and slammed on the hard wet floor.