Chapter 9: To Finish What One Started

With a little bit of practice, and a few failed attempts, Nathan managed to open the bridge slightly closer to the supermarket he had encountered the woman last night.

He opted not to open the bridge directly in the shopping center, fearing it was too exposed in such a location and instead found a partially demolished building to stash the other end inside.

Nathan had a momentary debate weather to wait for night to fall, as this time London was currently experiencing day time, however Nathan decided the sooner he got to the body the better given what usually happens to festering corpses.

Nathan managed to make decent time getting to the supermarket, despite the fact he had to re-route more than a few times due to hearing motion, or his tendrils sensing humans.

Nathan did however make note that only those in hazmat or sealed suits would be able to confuse his tendril's senses, they would know a human was near but not where.

This behavior was the complete opposite if the human was without any of that protective equipment, with his tendrils snapping to them the moment they came into his range which was easily a 100 - 150 meter radius around him. By using these new found senses to his advantage, he managed to avoid all contact.

It was solely because of the increased activity, that reaching the supermarket took longer than a few minutes, as Nathan had to snake his way around the various pockets of activity he sensed.

As soon as the supermarket came into view, Nathan's pace slowed as he mentally prepared himself for what he was going to have to do.

He wanted to live, and this was the cost for it. Besides, it was better her than an innocent right? after all she had attacked him seemingly without provocation. However, as he stepped into the entrance, his eyes was attracted to a patch of vibrant yellow.

Focusing on it, Nathan had to suppress the urge to vomit. Just a few feet away from the entrance, was a torn up hazmat suit covered in blood. But perhaps what was more concerning was the fact the suit's occupant was missing most of his mass, giving the corpse the look of an Egyptian Mummy, except no peaceful expression was on the corpses face.

The look of anguish, fear and pain was stretched over the man's features almost as tightly as his greyish flesh was in places. Sharply looking away from the grizzly scene, Nathan hurriedly moved to check on where he had encountered the woman last night, only to affirm his fear: She was not there, and most likely she had done that to the man and likely his friends too.

Cursing as his eyes laid on the now dried blood patch where he had left her, his tendrils began to vibrate and search around behind him. There were human's nearby, though he couldn't tell if they were in protective gear or on the outside the building. Deciding the latter was the most likely, Nathan opted to attempt to power out of the shop at speed, seeking as ever to avoid contact at all costs.

Nathan barreled out of the shattered front door of the supermarket, like a bat out of hell. His inhuman legs powering his sprint forward with celerity. As soon as Nathan cleared the door his tendrils locked onto a small group slowly sneaking their way up to the building he had just left.

With his enhanced eyesight he could see, the abilities' irony not being missed on Nathan given his complete lack of externally visible eyes, that the group had frozen and focused on him from their hiding place daring not to move.

Nathan couldn't help but think from their reactions, that it would of been a whole different interaction had this happened in America which subsequently led to more thoughts, primarily pertaining to the scale of these events.

Nathan had just assumed it was a local thing, or rather he had simply had no reason to think of if it had happened outside of the immediate area until now. Curious, and with his initial plan ruined, Nathan went to satiate his curiosity.

He ran North, knowing he was on the Northern side of the City and thus the closest exit of the city would be that direction.

Nathan's intent was to establish if the disaster had radiated outside of the city bounds, for if it didn't it would imply that the disaster was most likely targeted. Of course before he drew such a conclusion he would have to check the full extent of the range of the disaster zone, but this would be a good first indicator.

However as he traveled, he began to make out a thickening haze in the air around him, that initially had caused the ambient light level of the day to lower causing Nathan to think Night was approaching.

Noticing this his attention was drawn to the fact the air felt distinctly more heavy here and in fact bore a similarity to the strange liquid Nathan had crawled out of underneath Hivebert.

Before Nathan could continue on his journey, however, he heard a distant explosion. Turning his head in the direction of it, his enhanced eyesight made out the smoke pattern on one of the larger spines that protruded from the ground.

From what Nathan could see, the explosion had had little effect on it, for after the smoke cleared it was still standing and lacked any obvious sign of damage.

Curious as to what caused the explosion, and more importantly if it should be of any concern to him, Nathan cautiously began to approach the site being careful to try and approach it from an elevated angle as to hopefully see or sense danger before it was atop him.

Standing at the top of a highrise which Nathan had clambered up the old way by using the internal stairs. Nathan looked out over the city, and more specifically the spine that had recently been aflame.

His tendril's initially didn't seem to pick out anything, but just before Nathan was about to move closer to the spine to see if he could make out anything. He saw a streak of flame darting out, towards the spine, coming from the direction of a road between two buildings.

From his angle a building blocked the point of origin of the flame, but given the pop-woosh sound Nathan heard shortly after seeing the rocket, he came to the quick conclusion that this was likely a military force of some kind.

The detonation of the rocket once again yielded the same effect, only this time it was much closer and consequently bestowed Nathan the gift of temporary tinnitus and the deep discomfort of having your entire internal structure shaken by a powerful shockwave.

Nathan was about to leave the building, to head in any direction but the direction that would take him into the path of what he was certain was the military. However, just as Nathan was about to leap off the rooftop of this high rise, and down to a building below it Nathan's tendrils vibrated and snapped to attention, sharp boney protrusions fully extended.

As soon as he turned his attention in the direction his tendrils had focused, he could see the not only the source of the disturbance, but also sensed an incoming volley of familiar spines she had sent his way.

Nathan could feel they were far faster than before, and far more numerous. Even as she pounced between buildings, she would fire a sequence of three or four more at him.

Fortunately, due to her being at least 80m out her accuracy and the resulting impact force of the spines wasn't great. One whizzed straight past Nathan's right bicep, carving a shallow cut along its path, straight through the material of the strange clothing he was wearing and his flesh.

Nathan cursed, the wound no more painful than stubbing one's toe, or suffering a papercut and within seconds the black inky liquid-smoke belched from the wound and sealed it in it's entirety.

As it did, Nathan opted to not be a stationary target given how quickly his aggressor was closing the gap.

Nathan had previously taken a survey of the land, when he was seeking to flee from the military group that were firing the rockets, however Nathan knew if he was to leap down he would be an easy target while he fell for he couldn't change course.

On top of this the building he was eying up to land on, was quite the way down and if he messed up his landing roll would cost him his mobility for a few seconds while the damage healed.

Weighing all this up in a fraction of a second, Nathan ran away from the Woman, and aimed for the floor of another high rise below, smashing through the glass of the other building with relative ease.

Landing with a stumbling roll and quickly getting to his feet, Nathan noticed he was in some kind of office complex. But more importantly, this was an office complex comprised of cubicles, making it practically perfect to fight the woman in due to the abundance of cover around him.

Grinning as his tendrils coiled and vibrated eager, he awaited the arrival of his prey that was not far behind.