This chapter has been proof-read by: AnthonyL

Since RRL rewards smaller chapters, i am now dividing the chapters in two parts.

-------------------

The announcement that I intended to move in with them ended up being met with a lot of positive feedback from most of them. This was something I would have never considered if not for the possibility of going back to earth. Building a mobile home, moving it through jungles, canyons and rivers up to a red mist vortex where we would have to live for months, or even years was not something I would be able to do on my own.

If I wanted to get back to earth, I needed to work with them, but that was not my only reason. One of the major factors pushing me to move closer to them was to keep an eye on Marc. I couldn't shake this ominous feeling. I felt like the more Marc would be excluded from the group, the more dangerous he could become.

Eliminating him would have been the most drastic solution, but only a psychopath would think that way. By killing him, I would become even worse than him in a way. Not only that but the other survivors would most likely see me as a dangerous murderer myself afterwards.

I had never killed a human before, and seriously didn't wish to start doing so. I had no intention of losing what I had left of my humanity because of this ass-hole after all. Because of him, I was worried for the girls' safety and most of all, worried for the young Annie.

I wouldn't put beyond him the possibility of abusing the young 13 year old girl, even though I might be wrong about that. I had considered the possibility of having him die in an accident during a fight against a monster or something but the sad thing was that we needed him.

Among the 8 of us, 2 were too old to do manual labour, 1 was currently injured and another was too young. Including myself, that left us with only 4 able bodies to do all the work that needed to be done. As much as I hated to admit it, as the youngest man, Marc was necessary to us.

With all that considered, the only thing I could do was to keep a close eye on him and try not to push him over the edge. In the end, I had decided to move in with them but not the way they expected me to. I began to install myself in a secluded room in the west wing of the hospital, away from the group.

Unlike them, I didn't need to be in the area where the air was being purified. This was the best way I had found to be closer to them while keeping our interactions to a minimum. My new room was near the ER garage door where the ambulances used to get in, especially during winter.

Since the others would have been very confused as to why I was isolating myself so much, I decided to finally tell them about the fact that I wasn't too comfortable around people. I was fearful of their reaction at first but ended up being pleasantly surprised by how they actually reacted.

Instead of judging me, they all reacted as if they had finally understood why I was doing certain things, and acted certain ways. Apparently, they had first thought that I either, didn't like them or was even hiding something. Clarifying my condition seemed to bring them the peace of mind they were hoping for.

With access to a garage door and a spacious area, my new living quarters were already feeling like home. I brought a few power-tools, my entire stock of dragon meat, my dragon bones and skins and all the projects I was currently working on. I had also brought my giant bomb 'lil boy' and asked the old man Léopaul to put priority on finishing its detonator. I had also left most of my important possessions back inside my bunker just in case. Over there, I knew they were safe and would be waiting for me if anything bad happened here.

There was another reason for wanting to move to the hospital, and that was Rambo. Truth be told, I didn't intend to keep a dragon into a small enclosed area beside me. What if he accidentally fire to and burned everything. Also, what was I supposed to do when going to sleep if I didn't keep him inside? Keep him in the garage? Rambo would have never agreed to that.

Not only that, I also didn't know how fast dragons grew. After reaching a certain size, it would become impossible for me to keep him at my house. Having Rambo stay with the others also seemed like the best way to teach him not to see humans as food. Anyway, after considering all that, moving to the hospital seemed like the best thing to do.

I had spent 2 days moving into my new quarters, but most of my stuff was still inside my box trailer parked inside the 'garage'. The first thing I had done was to plug in a generator and install a computer looted from the nearby computer shop, and unpack my DVD collection.

Without a computer, this place would have never felt like home, so I had placed it as a priority. Since I was living far away from the others, it would take some time for Léopaul to connect me to the solar grid, so a generator would have to do for now. The next thing had been to install locks on the doors leading to my private quarters as to insure myself some privacy.

Robert and Camille kept offering their help but I decided to do everything on my own. I didn't want anyone to go through my stuff and was perfectly able to take care of everything on my own. I told them that instead of helping me moving my stuff, they should instead think of ways to bring down the king dragon.

I was already planning to use 'lil boy' against it, but I feared that even such a powerful bomb wouldn't be enough to bring it down, and was hoping the others would come up with some interesting ideas. We also needed to think of a way to lure it near the bomb but I already had my own idea on how to do that.

Right now, I was working to complete my riot suit v2.0 by sewing dragon skin patches on the weakest areas of the suit. I say sewing but working with dragon skin was more akin to working with metal. I had to use a metal grinder to cut the necessary pieces of dragon skin, then use a diamond tipped drill bit to pierce holes for the following sewing process.

It was hard work, but knowing how strong dragon skin was, it was definitely worth it. While I was working on my suit, I didn't have time to play with Rambo so I had looted toys from the pet-shop for him to play with. Thank to that, I now knew that if it wasn't made out of metal, Rambo would effortlessly destroy it.

His favourite toy was a giant ball bearing which was a simple steal ball, and he also enjoyed these dried dog bones meant to be chewed on. I was playing some heavy metal on my computer, sipping on a good bottle of vodka while Rambo was fiddling around with his metal ball, when a loud noise made me jump. “THUMP!* Ouchhh.... That... hurt.”

This was Emanuela's voice, not knowing I had installed locks on the doors, she had apparently rammed headfirst into the heavy steel door. “Knock* Knock* Knock*... Nathan?” Looked like she had finally learned what normal people do before entering someone's personal space.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Rambo had already learned that this noise meant that someone was coming to see us, and since he seemed to like Emanuela a lot, the little guy was overly excited. At least one of us was happy to get visitors. I dropped what I was doing and reluctantly went to open the door. “Yes what is it?” I asked.

As I opened the door, I saw Emanuela who was still rubbing her forehead with a pained expression. “It's about the ways of killing the king dragon you asked us to think about. We are gathering in the main room and are waiting for you.” She said while still rubbing her forehead. Rambo ran between my legs and began to rub his head against her legs.

Seemed like he was now acting like a cat, strangely enough. “Heyy there you beautiful! Pet* pet* pet* You're a good boy, I love you. You'd be even better if you convinced your father to come see me more often. *giggle* Pet* pet* pet*” Rambo seemed in trance, totally charmed by her which was a bit worrying. “Fawwtar?”

Sigh, I wished she would stop adding weird words to his vocabulary already. Because of her, Rambo was now calling me 'Fawtar' and would keep saying 'I wuv yu' all the time. I felt like she was turning my beautiful bad-ass dragon into a magical girl or something. “Alright you can go, I will be right behind you.”

I dropped everything I was doing and made my way up to the communal room where we always had our strategy meetings. When I arrived, everybody was already arrived and waiting for me. “Okay, now that Nate is here, we can start to share our ideas.” First began Robert.

“Remember when I asked you for a small piece of dragon skin?” Asked Robert while looking at me in the eyes. “I needed it to test a few chemicals and guess what, dragons aren't immune to sulphuric acid. So if we added a barrel of powerful acid to your bomb, it should inflict some serious damage to the beast.” Clap!* Clap!* Clap!* Clap!* Said Robert which earned him a few claps from the people who thought it was a very good idea.

“Anyone else has an idea?” He then continued. Sensing that it was finally her turn, Camille stood up and shared her idea on how to kill a king dragon. “Dragons are similar to most creatures in the aspect that they need to breathe. That's why I thought about attacking it with toxic gas like Sarin gas or something.” Clap!* Clap!* Clap!* Clap!*

Once again, a very good idea. “Anyone else have an idea?” Inquired Robert. Then, as if it was his cue, old man Léopaul stood up and laid a schematic on the table. “This is a blueprint for what I call a 'taser floor'. The goal is to lay a net of wires on the floor linked to tens of batteries linked in series with a blablabla meant to boost the blablabla current pulses and blablabla......”

Nobody really understood what he was saying but from what I understood, he was planning to build an electric floor that would paralyze it for a short period of time. I had to admit, this was a brilliant idea since it would immobilize it long enough for it to breathe in Camille's toxic gases that should theoretically destroy its lungs.

Then it was my turn to share my idea. I dreaded this moment, it felt like back in school during these horrible moment where I had to speak in front of the class. I reluctantly stood up and began my quick explanation. “This thing eats dragon meat, so I plan to put poison on some of my dragon meat and use it as bait. That way, if we fail to kill it on the spot, it should eventually die later of poisoning.”

Once again, everybody seemed impressed by the idea and began to discuss among themselves. All I wanted to do at this point was to go back to my private quarters but instead, decided to remain a while longer until the meeting was over. The ambience wasn't so bad after all, Annie was playing with Rambo in a corner of the room and everybody seemed excited after hearing so many good ideas.

The only one who didn't seemed happy about the situation was obviously Marc. I was still seriously annoyed that Camille had categorically forbidden me from laying hands on him. Normally, I would have ignored her, but if the group ended up turning against me because of it, it would become problematic.

Just looking at his smug face made me want to punch him. At this point, I was completely ignoring what was happening around me, and was instead lost in mental fantasies. I was imagining myself with my hands around his neck, squeezing until his face turned blue then eventually popping his head off like a big zit.

My fantasy felt so real and so vivid that I could even imagine red mist coming out of my body, slowly going around his neck and gradually tighten around it. Marc's face then turned red as panic began to show on his face. Even though I knew it was only a fantasy, I was still very much enjoying it.

As I was about to imagine his head being ripped off, the feeling of something pinching my right leg brought me back to reality. When I turned to look at what was pinching me, I saw Annie staring at me with angered eyes. She was digging her nails into my leg and seemed very angry for some reasons.

As I was looking at Annie, strange sounds then attracted my attention back to the people around me. “Cough!* Wheeze* Cough!* Cough!* Hann hannn Wheeze* Wheeze*“ Marc was wheezing and coughing his lungs out while holding his neck, and everybody around the table was in panic.

Camille had run to him and began to inspect him to see what had happened but luckily, Marc seemed to gradually revert from blue to his original colour. Was my fantasy actually real? Had I really manipulated red mist and tried to kill him with my mind? Wait, how did Annie know that it was me? Nobody else seemed to suspect me to be the cause of Marc's sudden respiratory problem except her.

Curious, I leaned in closer to the small girl and without warning, sent a violent burst of red mist out of my body. Annie flinched and stepped back as soon as I did, proof that she could see the red mist just like me. I showed her a big grin that meant I had found out her secret, then laid back on my chair as she ran back to Rambo. Because of this, I spent the rest of the meeting lost in thoughts. Why were Annie and I, the only people capable of seeing the red mist?

Then my thoughts turned to what I had just done. If I could use red mist to do that, then it was something similar to telekinesis in a way. I definitely needed to train this ability in the future. After the meeting, I went back to my private quarters and continued to work on my riot suit. Rambo was destroyi- 'playing' with a kids toy meant to learn basic alphabet. “I wuv yu!” I suspected him to be smart enough to learn something from it, but he seemed more interested in destroying the poor plastic toy than learning from it.

As I was about to complete my suit, something that I hadn't felt in a long time happened. I was feeling sick and dizzy which were signs of red mist poisoning. I was surprised, I hadn't felt this in a very long time and even believed to be immune to it. I expelled a bit of mist and eventually felt better.