Snapping out of his daze, Adam found a huge fist in front of his face. It was more terrifying to discover who it belonged to, though.
A giant was on top of him.
A man with a small, bald head sunk into a tower of muscle. A bodybuilder with a morphology resembling that of a bull standing on his hind legs, with the shoulders and arms of a gorilla, and covered with scars that looked like scratches made by a lion’s claws. He wore military trousers and boots, a fashion that was no longer surprising to Adam, and a sleeveless shirt that was about to give way to the pressure that those huge pecs must be exerting underneath.
It was the same brute who, along with Simon, had attacked him and Juzo in Liberty Park that Friday night.
“Kitten has come to say hello,” the big guy introduced himself.
Where the hell had he come from? How had he not seen such a beast coming?! Had he been so distracted not to notice? Had the headphone volume been so loud he hadn’t heard him coming?
Adam tried to focus his eyes to get a better view of what was ahead of him, to know what his possible escape routes might be, but the dirt that had splashed in his eyes, in addition to hurting him with every blink, disturbed him more than he already was. He tried to get up, but slipped on the grass, damp with oil from the destroyed android.
Then something big and heavy grabbed his ankle, the giant’s hand, and that hand threw him into a void, into a force that sucked him in, dragging him towards the afterlife—the momentum produced by being thrown through the air. It was as if he were still while things revolved around him—the treetops, the weeds on the ground, the violet sky—until everything stopped with a sharp blow to the back, a blow that made him expel his very soul. The world had stopped spinning when a tree had crashed into him—or had it been he who had crashed into the tree? Nothing made sense, just the pain and the dizziness, the dizziness and the pain.
“Easy there,” Kitten spat to the ground, cracking his fists. “I’m not gonna kill you. Some broken bones will do to make my day.”
Kitten was a mercenary and a murderer; thirty-two years old, of which around ten he had spent locked up. Every so often he was confined to a cell, sometimes by the military, other times by his own bosses; and every so often he was released, sometimes by the military and other times by those who were interested in his services.
He started committing crimes at the age of nine. His massive stature and body mass had made him a terror to children and a promise to adult bullies. He had never been a bright person, but thanks to his strange animal instinct, he had always known how to surround himself with intelligent people and put himself at their service to achieve the only task that made sense to him: crushing skulls. At twelve years old, he already had three deaths under his belt; and from that time, he began to make a career as a mercenary and bodyguard for terrorists and important gangsters.
He was a clumsy criminal, and no one with an agenda was fond of clumsy criminals; they were feared, but they were not liked. Although his brute strength was unmatched by anyone else’s, that was enough for him and those around him.
How did Adam know that monster’s history? He didn’t know. Perhaps Juzo had interacted with him before or had studied his criminal record, and now that information was part of his unconscious. Who knows?! The important thing right now was to recover from that sharp pain that was exploding throughout his damn body.
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But before he could do it—Zas! A new blow. This time in the jaw, and as if he were experiencing it all from the outside, from a parallel reality, his senses went into slow motion. The fist drew a clear path toward him, and he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t move aside and couldn’t beg the big man to stop. The mallet hit him. Yes, it had ceased to be a hand; it was a freaking mallet!
The sound of his bones creaking, along with a gasping exclamation—something that sounded like ‘Ugh!’ that blew out of his lungs with his remaining breath—stretched out for long seconds before dissolving. Red flashes filled his vision, his tongue went numb, and the taste of blood filled his mouth.
He tried to stand up, but his body ached so much that his legs didn’t respond quickly. His muscles were held in shackles of pain. That block of a man was preparing to attack him, to sink those murderous knuckles into him again, and he… He couldn’t straighten up.
Had to avoid blows, or he could end up with a broken bone. Maybe one had already been broken; his jaw ached like a thousand hells. He thought of his spine. That beast should not hit his spine. Anywhere but the spine. If the big man hit him there, he would break his back and then… No. No. He didn’t even want to think about it. Ahead of him was the shattered body of the park ranger android; the pieces of metal scattered around it along with chunks of solid silicone, puddles of oil, and the head ripped off, along with a bunch of loose wires. That was how he would end up; that would be his head and those cables would be his spinal cord.
He tried to push his enemy away, but the energy he expelled was a sad essay of a normal Photia. With dizziness crowning his head, and the pain weighing on his neck like a necklace made of anvils, his chances of forming a real electric fire grenade and taking a good shot out of it were almost nil.
Kitten was making fun of him. The damned man was laughing, that stupid, heavy laugh. Adam saw him reach out to him; that mass of muscles went straight to his waist. He rolled on the grass and dodged to the side before those two huge hands could catch him; the branches of a bush dug into his back. The mastodon perched in front of him, squeaking his knuckles to restart the beating.
Adam intended to fly away, but he didn’t master that skill, and all he managed to do was hover less than three feet above the ground. He wobbled like a broken-down plane, and as he gained some height, his foot got stuck in the branches of the bushes. His escape plan went down just like him. He tried to flee again, but Kitten caught him by the ankle. Still hovering in midair, he turned desperately toward the man and threw other attempts of a Photia at him; sparks that only made him feel more humiliated.
His eyes stung, his mouth was injured and bloody, and even growling was a painful experience.
“Let me take care of him!” Juzo’s voice echoed in his consciousness, and for Adam, it was the trumpet announcing the cavalry. Having nothing left to try, he gave up the fight and handed over command of his body to his brother’s spirit.
Kitten pulled Adam toward him to hit him up close. But the moment the punch touched Adam’s face, when those knuckles dug into his cheek again, the lines of energy came to him as if they had always been there, behind a mental wall, waiting for the right signal to break free, and they exploded around him, searing the giant’s fist.
Kitten recoiled like someone who had just been doused with boiling water, spitting curses, and grunting in pain. Adam’s fire had completely blackened his arm, leaving his fist raw and smoking.
Adam rose, flashing lightning through his eyes; and despite his bruised face, his countenance was of an enraged warrior. He raised the arm that hurt the least, his right one, wrapped it in a whirlwind of energy, and backhanded the giant with a punch that knocked him to his feet. The crack of thunder, the same one that splits the sky during storms, sounded following Adam’s blow, shattering the tranquility of the thicket, and covering the wild sounds with its roar. And as the echo of living electricity dissolved, through the bushes and the shadows, as if it were a huge tree that had just been struck by lightning, Kitten crumpled to the ground on his back, fuming, his face hard in an expression of surprise.
The fierceness drained from Adam as quickly as a black cloud cleared from the summer sky, leaving the grimace of an injured young man in pain in its place.