Running

Lily—who was sitting cross-legged on the sofa as she was practicing her basic meditation—suddenly jumped up when her wrist watch beeped with a red light.

She rushed to her computer and switched it on. She tapped the wrist watch and twisted the face a bit and a holographic map appeared indicating Richard's current location. She frowned deeply; Richard's heart rate was beyond normal.

Richard had never sent a distress signal in the past eight months and she knew that this time it meant serious trouble. She zoomed into the location.

"Groovy Wild…"

She put everything away and rushed into Richard's room. She placed her palm on a particular point on the wall and the small area came to life and the blue light scanned her palm then turned green. A small light beam appeared and scanned her eyes for a few seconds.

The huge wall slipped open and revealed another room inside. She went in and the wall closed behind her. She scanned the room and saw Richard's equipment scattered around. His grapplers, electrocutors, and detachable submachine gun parts were kept carelessly. She ignored those and rushed to the inner part of the secret room. There was a jet there. She quickly got into the fighter jet and brought it to life.

Richard's mother had been very paranoid even before he had been captured by the Zeros eight months ago and after that incident she had made it a duty to keep everything on standby including gifting her son a private fighter jet.

Lily had been trained in all these things—it was partly the reason why Richard's mother hired her as a bodyguard for her son.

The opposite wall opened up and the fighter jet zoomed out. The journey from Misthill to Baywich would normally take about 6 hours or more depending on where one lived in Misthill but the fighter jet was at least twice as fast and given that she didn't have to worry about the road situation, she knew she could make it within fifteen minutes more or less.

….

Richard jumped out from behind the tree and aimed his gun and shot again at the nearest man. He doubled over in pain and moved to the back instinctively. Richard proceeded to deal with the other two.

This—Richard thought—was the disadvantage of wearing bullet proof material all over your body. It not only decreased their speed and reaction time but the blunt force of all those bullets that hit them before was enough to give them some damage to the skin or internal organ.

The bullet proof vests were also wearing out since it couldn't withstand so much strain from that many bullet hits. It was only a matter of time before these guys fell short.

Richard exploited the situation and quickly grappled one of the remaining masked Zeros and pulled him towards himself then he quickly spun around to shoot twice at the other one. The pain also made him wobble.

The weight of their layers of vests made it impossible for them to close the distance and Richard was now faster than them. Just as he was about to turn his body and attack the third one he had grappled, his waist snapped again.

Richard groaned and fell on one knee. His breathing becoming heavier by the second. The masked man quickly delivered a jarring punch to his ribs and he fell to the ground. He raised his gun and aimed to fire but Richard grappled the gun and pulled it out of his hand. He grabbed the gun and quickly unleashed rounds of bullets on him. Blood spattered everywhere despite the bullet proof that protected him. He fell heavily with a thud.

The other two were slowly shaking off the pain they were feeling. They struggled to stand under the weight of their vests. Richard, however, denied them the chance and quickly pulled out his electrocutor and shot out bits of metals that clung to the first masked man.

He fell over as the electric arcs spiralled around his body giving him an electrocution that reached to his insides. He doubled over again and this time, he was dead.

Richard pulled the trigger of the electrocutor again but only snapping sounds came out. 'Shit! I'm out of bullets!'

He limped away but the last masked man poured a line of bullet at him but ultimately his own bullet became empty. Richard continued to limp towards the direction the recruits had headed in. sounds of leaves ruffling came from the opposite direction.

'More Zeros?'

He continued to run feeling really drained. He didn't have any more juices left to fight any more gun battle and the bad news was that he had left the machine gun behind and only had his grappler and electromagnetic weapon.

The former could be used two more times at best while the latter wouldn't do any lethal damage to the human pursuers except to push them back a few metres while bruising their skins. His hand gun had a few more rounds left but it wasn't enough.

His bag was nowhere to be seen. In the chaotic battle he had lost track of the bag. Just as his thoughts were going in circles, another buzzing sound came from overhead. He rushed under a tree and waited for the rain of bullets to pass but this time, explosive projectiles were sent randomly into the forest.

Richard leaped out to the other side, barely able to continue running. The explosions sounded and sent a mound of dirt onto his body. He coughed dryly and slowly pushed himself up. He looked at his wrist watch again before limping deep into the forest.

….

"Get down!" Marco shouted still holding his gun with his good hand. The recruits hurriedly sought refuge under the trees but he bullets still found some.

Marco watched as blood and flesh flew before his eyes. These were people he was supposed to protect. He raised his gun amidst the pain but then he realised that there was nothing he could do about the fighter jets.

He leaned closely against the tree trunk that provided him a canopy when bullets dug holes in the ground just by his feet.