Callidus Rising | Complete ✔️ | Book 1

6: Without Authorization

"Any second now! Just over here waiting to get mauled by a blood-hungry genetic plague victim," I shout at the suit.

The metal on my right palm continues to shift around. I raise it up to look at it just as my boot snags something, pulling me straight onto the ground.

He smiles triumphantly, but his teeth are black and I can basically see his putrid breath as he exhales.

It set a trap... and drove me right into it.

I frantically try to free my boot of the trip wire that held some sort of sticky substance.

"Lukas! Lukas help, please," I cry out.

It whirrs over to the wire and a thin red light came out of his projector. Lukas slowly moves it through the thick chord.

The Victim is about 2 feet away and closing.

We wouldn't make it in time.

The chord snaps, and I flail around trying to get to my feet, but he is already here.

When he reaches down to grab me by hair, I kick a booted leg out and he basically flies backwards to hits the wreckage of an old Floater.

He shook his head, spattering the blood that the shattered glass had caused. I gulp.

Oh no...

He runs at me again, this time not to capture me and save me for later despite his hunger, but probably to kill me.

He growls like an animal as he nears again. The Victim lets out a lion-like roar and pushes off the ground with all fours, and pounces right over me.

I thrust both my hands over my face to offer some feeble sense of self security before the crushing weight and rotted teeth come, but it never does.

The only thing I hear is a limp thud.

Shakily, I move my hands away from my face and a little buzz gains my attention.

A very small cone-like piece of metal is right beside the dead Victim, and there's a hole right through the place his heart used to beat.

What the hell? What is that thing?

Then realization hits me.

I flip my palm up and look at it. The center piece, where a small sphere had been before, is empty.

Immediately, the little arrowhead flies over and melds right back into my palm as the curved sphere it was before. I just stare at it in disbelief.

I guess scavenging in the building did pay off.

"I apologize for acting without authorization, but it seemed you were in mortal danger, and I cannot have my host dying on the first day," the familiar female voice remarks.

"Wha-Wait, you did that? And thank you," I ramble.

"Yes. I did. And you are very welcome. I must say, without your assistance there with that boot of yours, you'd probably be dead. A very powerful software hacked me into being able to act without authorization," the suit responds.

Lukas?

"That's correct, I can't just let the thing I'm sworn to protect die out here," Lukas responds in his peppy Australian accent.

I laugh.

It isn't one of those fake laughs that you give when someone says an awful joke, it is one of those "hey world, I'm still alive" laughs.

It is so terrible, but I honestly don't care. I had just survived a freaking Victim for crying out loud. The equivalent of at least 4 zombies.

~~~~~~~~~~

Hey! Back again. Just one thing today:

BADASSSSSSSSSS RIGHT? No, jk 😂♥️

PS... The eye at the top is what I imagined the Victim's eyes looking like.

Thanks for reading!
♥️