Zarek sheathed his machetes and unholstered a gun with a single hand. Feeling the weight of the cold steel in his palm, he felt a sense of ease.
He had been avoiding using a gun until this point, mostly to save on bullets. Without the ability to expel Godsfall from his body through means that weren't his Talent, he couldn't reinforce his mirror bullets like Priya could.
But he forgot how much he missed the feeling.
Maybe Priya was right.
Zarek grinned.
He was a little crazy.
Bursting out of the tree line with Priya in his other arm, he raised the gun high, firing off three shots before Priya could even fire one.
She aimed for the chest, as any smart marksman would do, but he had never been accused of being smart.
If he said that out loud, Priya would probably get angry again. Unfortunately for the gang members, that meant that they would have to eat these headshots.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
They hadn't even aimed their guns properly when three holes were drilled through three skulls. Seamless and unaffected by the hitching in his motion, they struck true.
"Still got it," Zarek said.
Priya would have rolled her eyes if it wouldn't have misaligned her shot. She managed to fire once, taking out the fourth and last of them right through the chest.
Zarek leapt over a car with Priya on his shoulder, taking her off guard somewhat.
"You can do that?"
"You can too," Zarek said with a laugh. "Don't worry, you'll get used to being superhuman really soon."
Zarek landed with a heavy thud and scanned the motorcycles. He picked out their engines, the treads on their tires, and their fuel situation with a single sweep. Picking out the one with the best combination of the three, he scooped up a helmet from the ground and tucked Priya's head into it.
"Ew." She pouted but didn't resist. Still, she was already thinking of scrubbing her head clean ten times over wherever they managed to stop tonight.
Zarek chuckled and scooped up a helmet himself. Better safe than sorry.
Pulling Priya onto the back of the motorcycle, he revved the engine and shot off. With a lean forward, he kicked it into a gear as fast as he dared to go with so many obstacles in the way.
The journey ahead would be trouble if Malik managed to find a faster way to catch up to them.
**
"—We found them! They're between exits 111 and 112 on the freeway! BANG!"
The echo of the gunshot cut off the walkie-talkie.
Malik stood with a frown on his face in what looked like a luxurious club VIP lounge. If a VIP lounge could have the scratch marks of wild beasts littered all across their once fine velvety couches.
Those exits… they were actually so close the entire time? They had hardly traveled more than three or so kilometers from the school.
Considering they had already been on the journey, they had probably been even closer than that. It felt like a slap to his face. Did they take him seriously at all?
After offending him and his gang like this, they actually dared to stick around.
The rage in Malik's heart slowly cooled down. There was something odd about that boy. He couldn't have been more than 18 or 19 years old. Though he had the frame of a man in the peak of his mid-twenties, the immaturity on his face was still there.
Malik had seen countless young men like this. They had bodies that were hardened through life and struggle, but there was no hiding the youth in the depths of their eyes.
The odd thing was that that youth wasn't there for Zarek, not in his eyes at least.
Somehow, Malik felt that Zarek knew far more than he was letting on. For that reason alone, Malik had to catch Zarek.
Why would a random high schooler know more about this nonsense than anyone else?
"What do you think?" Malik turned to a woman.
She looked to be in her early thirties, but she was actually in her mid-forties already, having taken very good care of herself. Zarek wasn't aware of this, but she had been Malik's right-hand woman from the very start.
Whether she actually survived to the point that Zarek came to know of Malik or not… well, that was a different matter entirely.
That said, things that happened in previous timelines wouldn't necessarily occur in this one either.
"There's no choice but to capture him. But we lost our bomb specialist, and this team might not have been very important, but it had a scout in it. And that scout cost us, what? 377 zombies to produce. That was a lot of manpower and a lot of effort now gone out in a puff of smoke."
Malik paused when he heard this. The rest weren't important. But those two deaths in particular… they were going to sting for a while.
"We'll need to investigate their deaths first. I heard gunshots, but that might not be the full story."
"I agree," the woman replied.
Sitting there elegantly in a tight cheongsam, she stretched out her curves and puffed on a long pipe.
"I wonder," she suddenly said. "How long is it going to take you to kill me?"
Malik raised an eyebrow. "What are you talking about, Qiqi?"
She smiled. "Just a thought."
"A stupid thought."
"Is it? In the real world… or I guess the world before all of this nonsense since this is the new world now… you were stronger than me, faster than me, better with a gun than me… you had faster reflexes, quicker reaction times… Then, it was convenient for you to use me as the brains of your operation. But what will you do if you no longer have those advantages? I can't help but wonder."
"It almost sounds like you want me to kill you."
"More like I want you to make a decision sooner rather than later. My Talent, I think you call it, is quite unique. If we are going to build something together, I want to see it through to the end. But if you are going to kill me, do it now and not in ten years when I've grown hope that you've finally seen me as something other than a pawn like everyone else."