In the midst of an electrical storm, which was a normal thing to have happen a few times every year like hurricane season back on Earth, an innocuous training camp was being unknowingly besieged.
People started to go missing and didn't answer their personal com. It didn't raise an alarm at first, mainly because the electrical storm had a tendency to disrupt both power and communications, even when run on local reactor power. It was still early morning and the shifts had already changed, so no one was going to be found missing from their posts for several hours.
As the storm progressed, more of the outlying buildings were infiltrated and cleared in the same fashion as the interrogation building was. No one knew this, of course. Most of them were inside and waited out the storm. It could last for an hour or it could last for several days. That was the thing about electrical storms. If it gained more power, it stayed longer and caused more damage.
It really was the perfect cover for any nefarious purposes, and several of the guards took this opportunity. Since the main lights were off, it was child's play for them to acquire one of the prisoners and to sneak off to a secluded part of the camp to have a little fun. They normally couldn't get away with things like that, since regulations forbade them from damaging the recruits. This time, one of them had found that this particular prisoner wasn't going to be leaving their facility.
“I am going to enjoy this.” One of the guards said as he opened the door to the small three room building they used for storing the camp's maintenance equipment.
“She's got such a sweet motherly face, doesn't she?” The other guard asked as he carried the gagged and bound woman inside.
“She's not going to have that look for long.” The first guard said. “Soon, she's going to have my-URK!”
“Ha ha! Your urk?” The second guard asked and set the woman down. “Is that your pet name for your dick?” He turned around and didn't see the other guard. “Huh? Where did you go?”
“He's in my bag of holding.” A very scary voice said.
“W-w-who s-said th-that?” The second guard asked and reached for his wrist com.
“Your death.” The voice said and then the guard's wrist was crushed.
“ARGH!” The guard yelled and tried to pull away from whatever had a hold of him, and he couldn't.
“Tell me where to get the list of prisoners.” The voice asked and crushed the guard's other wrist.
The guard cried out and tried to get someone's attention, to no avail. They had chosen this building precisely because you couldn't be heard from the outside. With the storm raging, he doubted if people inside the building would hear his shouts, not that there was anyone else there. That was the other reason they chose it.
“TELL ME.” The voice said angrily.
Both of the guard's ankles were crushed, one after the other, and the guard whimpered and rolled around on the floor. “All right... all right.” He said. “Back... at my post...”
“LIAR!”
The man's knee was crushed and he yelled and shouted as he cried from the pain. After a few moments, he calmed down. “My... my pocket.” The guard ground out through his teeth, then the datapad he had smuggled out of the control room floated out and was scanned through almost faster than he could see.
“You were of some use after all.”
“T-thanks.” The guard said and tried to stop his tears. “Now let me go.”
“I never said I'd let you go if you helped.” The voice said.
The man felt excruciating pain for a moment, then there was the sound of a wooden bat hitting a watermelon and he died as his suicide charge went off and mulched his brain.
*
“Oh, god.” Simone said and let my hand go as she sat down on the floor. Her stealth faded away and she stared up at me as her whole body trembled. “H-Hunter... why are you... so angry?”
I made my hands into fists and didn't say anything as I dropped my own Stealth and walked over to the woman that was about to have so many very bad things happen to her. Her flowing brown hair was thinned out from not being washed and probably from torture. Her face was almost gaunt and her eyes were slightly sunk in and had dark circles around them, as if she had two healing black eyes. Her body had thinned as well, probably from malnutrition, which was practically impossible since most foods had everything the body needs.
My angry face softened as I absorbed the solid Presence I had used to distort my facial features. I looked at the very scared woman and she didn't try to yell, or struggle, or try to get away. I knelt beside her and made sure she saw my calm face, despite my emotions raging inside of me to hurry up and kill everyone in the compound, regardless of the real prisoners. I saw the same sloppy scar on the side of her head that the other prisoner had and reached out to cup the side of her face.
“Hello, Emari.” I said and kept my voice calm and I removed the gag from her mouth.
Emari looked at me like she didn't know me, and I understood why. It had been many years since The Order had sent away my guardian without notice and wouldn't tell me where she had gone. Her note had said that she didn't know where they were sending her, either.
Now I knew.
They might not have sent her here right away; but, this is where she ended up and I was going to kill them all for doing it, even the ones I gave my word I would let go. They deserved to die for this.
“Emari, it's me.” I untied her hands and her feet.
Emari's eyes flicked over my face and when I thought I saw her dawning recognition, I smiled. “Ullir?”
“I asked you to call me Aaron.” I said and her eyes teared up.
“Aaron!” Emari exclaimed and put her frail arms around me. “Oh, Aaron! They told me they killed you for being a rogue!”
“They tried to.” I said and held her tenderly.
Emari let me go and I felt her exhaustion. “Aaron, they... they put...”
“I know.” I said and reached up and touched the scar. “I can only disable it for now.”
Emari closed her eyes and I used her own Presence to disable the internal battery and pulled the wires, so that even with a device like mine that used vibrations to activate it, it wouldn't detonate.
“Aaron, I'm so sorry I left.”
“Stop.” I said and she looked at me with wide eyes. “You didn't leave. They sent you away and robbed me of you.” I said and stood. “You stay here with Simone and I'll be back as soon as I can.”
Emari looked up at my imposing figure. “What... what are you going to do?”
“I'm going to kill them all.” I said and let a wide smile appear on my face, then I activated Stealth and disappeared.
*
Emari gasped and looked around with Presence and couldn't find him. “Aaron! Wait! You need to know that...”
“He's gone.” Simone said.
Emari turned her head and looked at a haggard woman not far away.
“You're Simone?”
Simone nodded and walked over to Emari and sat beside her.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Who are you to Aaron?”
“Friend. Lover. Confidante. Trickster.” Simone said. “He calls himself Hunter now, by the way.”
“What? Why?”
“Lots of reasons.” Simone said. “There's too many to tell you right now.”
“Why? Are you going somewhere?” Emari asked.
Simone chuckled and leaned back. “I can see why he liked you as a kid.” She said and held a hand out. “I'm a telepath and I need to check you over before I give you any secrets.”
“Is this a test of loyalty?” Emari asked and took the hand without hesitation.
“No, it's a test of trust.” Simone said and her mind grew in Emari's perception until that mind was all there was, and she discovered that Emari wasn't afraid of the all encompassing feeling at all. “You love him.”
“Of course I do. He's my Aaron.” Emari said and Simone saw in moments all of the times Emari and Hunter had interacted.
“You knew.” Simone said when her deep scan of Emari's mind was done. “You knew he was reincarnated.”
Emari nodded. “It was pretty obvious if you spent any time with him.” She said. “I still treated him appropriately at the right times to make sure he developed properly. Oh, and I made sure to mask him whenever we were near anyone of authority. I didn't want them to take him from me to experiment on him.”
“But...”
“They would want to try and discover how he did it, even if he didn't know how it happened.” Emari said. “They never would have let him go if they knew this was his second life.”
“Actually, he's on his third? Fourth? No, I guess it's his fifth.” Simone said and Emari stared at her. “I won't go into it right now, since you want to know the reasons he calls himself Hunter.”
Emari nodded and her grip on Simone's hand tightened.
“Well, it started when he turned sixteen and The Order tried to send him after a bounty hunter that could kill Order members...”
Emari listened with rapt attention to the woman she knew loved her Aaron, and she was happy that the Presence didn't waver once as Simone told her what she wanted to know.
*
I left the building and felt a little relieved that Simone wasn't here. I missed her telling me where people were; but, she was also severely slowing me down. I moved almost as fast as a lightning bolt to the next building and didn't bother trying to wait for someone to enter or leave. I opened the door just enough to fit and slipped inside and then systematically ran through every room and killed everyone I met. None of them even knew I was there as they died and then I stored the bodies before they had hit the floor.
The last room was a small barracks and there were six men and one woman inside it. Rather than try to stay stealthy about it after I slipped into the room, since after I killed one of them they would all know, I kicked a trash can across the room to make as much noise as possible instead.
*
“What the hell was-GLAHG!” The man's words were cut off because his head now faced the other way. The others turned to look and two of the men took an invisible fist to the face, which pushed them away from the group, then one had an invisible foot lodged into his sternum.
“Shit!” A disembodied voice said as the body fell to the floor and the blood splashed up onto the 'invisible' assailant, whose boot was now caught on the dead man's rib cage.
“Call the-” A nearly silent laser blast blew the man's head off and the last man and only woman stood there and stared at the carnage that had taken less than five seconds to happen. They both took laser shots to the face as well and neither of them had reached for their wrist com to warn anyone else.
*
I stored my father's custom laser pistol and stood on the man my boot was stuck in. It took two tries to get my foot dislodged from his chest and my boot was soaked, both inside and outside, with blood. I took a step with it and it made a wet squish sound, so I sighed and slipped it off, used one of the men's shirts to dry off the blood and stored the boots and the bodies.
I left there and went to the next and last building. It was the administration building, according to the datapad, so I knew that this was where they kept the high priority prisoners and the main commander of the training camp. I wanted to avoid that man for as long as possible as I killed the rest of his underlings. I went back under Stealth, despite the risk of discovery for using Presence, and made my way around the building.
I killed two secretaries, a stock clerk, three office workers, and eight guards as I worked my way through the large building. I avoided going to the basement where they stored the prisoners, because I wanted to save the guards there for last. My bag of holding was starting to get heavy, too. I quickly made it to the top floor and stood in front of the door to the man in charge of the place, then opened it and stepped aside.
When nothing happened, I peered inside and no one was there. I entered the office and looked around and saw the datapad on the desk. On it was the daily schedule and at the moment, the man in charge was taking a tour of the basement holding cells.
Dammit, dammit, dammit. I thought, then retraced my steps to get to the bottom floor as fast as possible. I arrived at the right door and since I had already killed the guards and stored them, my way wasn't barred. I carefully opened the door and saw two more guards on the other side.
“Hey, wait until shift change to come in to stare at the pretty ones.” One of the guards joked.
I snapped his neck and stuffed him into my bag of holding. The other guard stared at the spot that his friend had just disappeared from. I grabbed his neck and broke it as well, then he joined all of the others in my bag. With the current obstacles out of the way, I crept into the basement and went down the stairs, and was relieved that there were no guards on this door.
I listened as hard as I could to see if there was anyone on the other side. I didn't hear anything, so I slowly turned the door handle and eased the door open. It let out a loud creaking sound and then I heard a loud laugh from across the room.
“So much for sneaking around, huh? We all heard you.” A man's voice said.
Someone else laughed. “Intentionally rusting the hinge was a great idea, sir.”
“I did it to terrify our trainees.” The man said. “Catching people trying to sneak in is just a bonus.”
“You might as well come all the way in.” A different man's voice said.
I pushed open the door with a fingertip and hopped to the side, then a dozen laser bolts flew out of the open door and hit the stairs.
“Cease fire.” An authoritative voice said. “He's smart enough to get into our basement. He's not going to stand in an open doorway.”
I felt a wave of Presence pass over me and held in my wince at the strength of it.
“Oh? You're not a Presence user?” The man asked, curious. “How did you get by the guards?”
“I didn't get by them.” I said. “I killed them.”
“I don't feel any bodies at the door or up the stairs.” The man responded. “What did you do to them?”
“Do you really want to know, or are you stalling so your men can swarm me out here?” I asked.
There was a light chuckle and then two grenades came out through the open door. I quickly put my blast shield into place and turned on my personal shield as both of them exploded. As I has guessed, one was a flash grenade and one was a shrapnel grenade.
“AAAAH!” I yelled as I pretended to take damage. My shield easily deflected the shrapnel and my blast shield blocked the light. I stored it and took out my father's laser pistol as I waited for the men to rush out. Two of them were stupid enough to try, so I shot them both in the face and moved away from where I was.
“You might as well come all the way in.” A man's voice said. “We promise not to hurt you.”
Someone else laughed and was quickly silenced.
“We have the prisoners here, so if you're here to save them, you'll have to come in to save them.”
“I'm not here to save them.” I said. “I'm here to kill you.”
“Oh? Who hired you?” The man responded.
“You're not that important to warrant a personal contract.” I said to give his ego a hit. “I'm here to kill all of you.”
Several laughs greeted that statement and then there were several yells from people and then the sound of a laser pistol. A man yelled in pain and started to plead for his life.
“If you don't show yourself in ten seconds, I'll kill this man.” A different voice said.
I chuckled. “Why wait? Just shoot him now.”
There was another laser blast and another yell, then silence.
“That's one death on your hands.” The authoritative voice said to try and make me feel guilty.
“Ha! You're kidding, right?” I asked. “I've killed over seventy people here so far, including your secretaries and office workers. I think one was even a file clerk.” I said and no one responded. “What? Did the truth shock you?” I laughed. “I just told you that I was here to kill you all. Whether the trainees die by your hand or mine makes no difference, except for when it happens.”
“You really believe that you can come into my compound and kill the people working for me.” The authoritative voice said, surprised.
I laughed again. “Believe it? I just did it. You and the people in that room are all that's left.”
The Presence built up in the room. “No, you're lying.” The authoritative voice said. “It can't be true. No one can get in here undetected!”
“I didn't say it was undetected.” I laughed again. “If you kill all the witnesses, though... who is going to report the break in?”
“Sir! There's no answer on any of the coms.”
“WHAT?!?” The authoritative voice yelled and the Presence pulsed.
I slipped two grenades out of my bag of holding and set one for three seconds and one for eight seconds, then tossed them into the room.
“FLASH GRENADES!” Someone yelled and then the flash grenade went off.
“I am going to skin whoever threw that!” One of them said, then the second one went off. “AAHHH!”
Multiple people hollered as they all had looked at the grenades just when the second one went off and I slipped into the room past their view. I saw that it was a big room with rows of cells on one side and a kind of workout area on the other. Fifteen guards and over double that in prisoners had their faces covered and were rubbing their eyes, so I slowly walked along and shot the guards in the neck, since their faces were covered.
I had killed three of them and wounded two more before I felt a pulse of Presence. It picked me up and threw me across the room and I slammed into the bars of a cell, then I slid to the floor.
“Please tell me you aren't dead.” The authoritative voice said and he faded into view from the shadows and walked over to me. I was still under Stealth; but, he was using his Presence detection range like a radar and could still see me.
“W-wait.” I said in a shaky voice and let my Stealth technique fade away. “Don't... hurt me.”
“Oh? And why shouldn't I do that?”
“I... I'll surrender... as long as... you keep your goons as far away as possible.”
“Ha. Ha ha ha!” The authoritative man waved at his remaining troops. Instead of staying far away, the ten of them had huge grins on their faces and walked towards me.
“No! NO!” I covered my face with an arm and twisted slightly away.
“You are going to pay for what you've done.” The authoritative man said and just as the goons grabbed my arms to pick me up and the others started to pummel me with their fists and laser rifle handles, I hit the button on the device I had stolen. There were ten distinct sounds of a wooden bat hitting a watermelon, and all ten men dropped to the floor, dead. The authoritative man stared at the pile of bodies and then at me as I stood up and pushed them off of me.
“I told you I was here to kill you all.” I said and raised my father's laser pistol and shot him in the head.