"I'll finish you!" Morhdekai yelled, running at Dante. The general laughed at Morhdekai's lack of speed, and, with a swift motion, lifted up his chrome revolver and fired.
The sudden bang stunned everyone in the room, even Ezekial in the middle of one of his religious rants, and Colonel Morgan, the man fighting him.
Silence.
That silence was interrupted by none other than Morhdekai, who fell to the ground with a bullet in his head.
The subjects looked at Dante, who laughed in response to their bewilderment.
Emile finally broke the silence once again.
"If he can't do it..." Emile echoed, snapping the neck of an infected scientist beside him, "I'll do it for him!"
Dante, who was full of himself after he had just defeated Morhdekai, wasn't expecting the sprint that Emile was capable of. Emile bellowed a fierce roar and dashed at Dante, ready to chop him in two. Dante shot twice hastily, and missed both shots, which Derik caught in his mouth.
Emile, unaware of Dante also being a mutant, came in with his claws erect, hoping for a straight stab with the power of a jet. But, Dante slowed time around him, allowing him to dodge Emile, but narrowly, even with time at less than half speed.
The two engaged in close combat. They grappled and blocked, one blocking the other's every move. To the ones around them, it was like watching an unstoppable force collide head-on with an immovable object. They moved at near unseeable speeds.
It wasn't that General Dante was fast. He was as fast as anyone else in the room. but he used the slowed time to his advantage, making it seem like his moves were lightning quick. Emile, on the other hand, was just that; unimaginably fast.
The fights in the hangar continued. Alice shot at infected entering through the garage, while Ezekial and Colonel Morgan tried to get the upper hand in a fight of blunt weaponry. Derik had clanked his right arm into a shotgun and was losing spare scrap metal quickly, fighting any IUSOM soldier that tried to interrupt the scene. Morhdkai, of course, laid in a puddle of blood on the floor.
There were more fights going on than that, though. Just, more of a side process. Some IUSOM soldiers, allied with the mutants, were protecting the subjects from any undead threat that dared to intrude upon their encounter.
Emile and Dante were both hurt badly. Emile was slowing down, and Dante was putting less power into his attacks. Emile roared, refusing to give up. Dante grunted in reply, landing blow after blow to Emile.
Dante landed a blow to Emile's nose, breaking it and letting a stream of blood trickle down his face. Emile kept going, despite an unimaginable pain. Dante countered his persistence with a quick slam to the jaw.
Neither of the two could keep up this combat forever. Two things happened that ended the conflict, both of which caught the attention of Emile's surrounding friends.
Emile couldn't take the pain any longer. But, he felt something. Something like ten thousand knives had been lodged into every inch of his body. He collapsed.
Dante took advantage of the situation. He stepped on Emile and stomped, breaking his back. The loud crack alerted everyone in the room, their heads turning and looking in horror  at the victor of the final combat.
Dante just laughed, once again, in reply.
But Emile did something equally surprising. He got back up, and, grasping Dante by the shoulders, hundreds of spike pierced his skin. Razor sharp, each one reached two feet away, and refused to be stopped by the General.
Dante stood, impaled in the stomach, shoulders, and chest. Blood trickled down from his mouth, the crimson substance escaping his body and making a puddle on the floor as Emile returned to normal and both of them collapsed onto the floor.
The hangar garage doors collapsed, and Alice gave a thumbs up to the overseer's office, whereas Alex returned the thumbs up. Alice turned around and swiftly pulled the trigger on her M17, emptying four bullets into General Morgan's head. Ezekial thanked her and looked around.
"Emile! Morhdekai!" Ezekial and Alice exclaimed, looking at their two seemingly dead friends.
They ran ten yards to the two's bodies.
"Alice! Chek Morhdekai's heart rate. I may be able to save Emile real quick," Ezekial said, his hands lighting up in a bright yellow flare.
Alice obeyed, kneeling near Morhdekai. She put her palm to Morhdekai's chest, and moved her hand to different places for a few seconds.
"He's breathing at somwhere around twenty or thirty beats a min'," Alice said quickly. "It's slowly declining... How's it going with Emile?"
Ezekial was checking Emile's heart rate at the same time. "Wow... 250 BPM!" Ezekial replied. "I'll reset his rate quick! Clear!" He yelled, getting ready to transfer some of his own power to Emile. He quickly hit Emile on the chest with both of his hands, his hand emitting a small electrical charge.
Emile gasped for air. He got up quickly, shaking his head and holding his head. He stumbled a little. "What's going on?" He asked Ezekial.
"Morhdekai may be dead." Ezekial and Emile slid over to his corpse, Emile still gasping.
Ezekial started the same procedure he had done on Emile. Emile, however, couldn't focus. He felt something in his chest, like a hole.
"Clear!" Ezekial said, shocking Morhdekai again. He repeated this several times.
Emile grunted, grasping his head. He had a splitting headache. This was odd, as he had an immunity to head injury since his mutation.
As Ezekial continued to operate on Morhdekai, Alice tiptoed over to Emile. "What's wrong, Emile?" Alice asked him, grasping his shoulder.
"I feel... different," Emile replied, feeling his chest. Sure enough, there was draft there. Emile looked over to Dante's corpse to see if anything may have caused this. He gasped, and slid over.
There was a vaccine, full of a crimson liquid near Dante's hand. The position of his finger implied that he was about to throw it to the floor and shatter it. He had no time to make the move, though.
Emile looked down his jumpsuit at his chest. There, at the center of his chest, was a small scar - the result of Dante penetrating his jumpsuit and taking blood from his heart-blood that contained his powers.
Then, Emile remembered something.
"Guys?" Emile asked Alice and Ezekial.
"Hm?" They both replied.
"Morhdekai got shot in the forehead, correct?" Emile said, picking up the shot of his blood. At that moment, he also noticed that his claws were retracted, despite the fact he had fallen with them at the ready.
"Indeed," Ezekial agreed.
"Move aside."
Ezekial and Alice moved away from Morhdekai as Emile stood up. "I can save him."
Alice and Ezekial stared at him as if he were insane. Emile thought the same way about himself as to doing this. But he had to do it. For his friend.
Emile leaned down near Morhdekai. He took one last look at the vaccine is his hand, and with one last breath, injected it into Morhdekai's chest. Then, he pushed the plate on the back, injecting the blood into his heart.
Morhdekai's eyes flew open, and he jumped up immediately, knocking Emile aside as Morhdekai hopped in place, looking around.
"What the hell is going on?" Morhdekai exclaimed, grabbing Ezekial and shaking him.
"Emile, bless his soul, saved your life with a vial of blood, is what it seems," Ezekial replied, stepping away from Morhdekai and dusting off his jumpsuit.
Emile was just getting up as Morhdekai walked over to him and picked him up, hugging him.
"Thank ya so much, little mate!" Morhdekai said, obviously overcome with joy at the act Emile had just committed. "Uh... sorry." Morhekai said, loosening his grip on Emile and putting him down slowly.
Emile caught his breath. "It's ok."
"Emile, what was in that vial that you gave to Morhdekai?" Ezekial asked Emile, approaching him calmly, with a puzzled expression on his face.
"Yeah. Not even Ezekial could heal him. And where did you get the shot?" Alice questioned Emile.
Emile replied to neither of them. Instead, he turned to Morhdekai and began.
"My friend, I have given you a gift - or a burden, depending on how you use it." Morhdekai, Alice, and Ezekial stared at him with blank expressions. "You now have a part of me in you - my powers," Emile explained, showing his clawless hands.
"This shall be an advantage for us. You have unimaginable power, and I no longer have any. Your skull and brain take little damage, you can sprint at superhumans speeds, or so I hope, and, you have claws as sharp as swords." As Emile said this, Morhdekai looked at his hands.
"Stiffen your hands," Emile commanded. "Will them to a new form."
Morhdekai followed the command. "Dammit!" Morhdekai exclaimed, as tendrils crawled up his fingers, morphing them into claws. "So, you mean... You're not...?" Morhdekai fumbled, the words spilling out awkwardly.
"Not at the moment, no," Emile answered to the the unasked question. "I'm human. Susceptible to the Infection. Unable to run at fifty miles a hour. Dull fingers as opposed to claws. But we'll fix that soon."
Alice and Morhdekai loooked at him with their mouths hanging open, while Ezekial simply stared at him.
"Morhdekai. Cut Dante and take blood from his head," Emile commanded, motioning the command.
"Uhhh... what will that accomplish?" Morhdekai asked Emile back.
"Question me not. Drink of the blood of bygones. Trust me."
Reluctantly, Morhdekai stepped over to the corpse of Dante and kneeled. He turned his head to Emile one more time to confirm the action. Emile nodded in reply.
Taking in a breath, Morhdekai lightly (for his strength) injected a claw into Dante's head. The blood flow had yet to stop since his death, and a small stream of blood flowed down his head. Morhdekai, with hesisitation, licked his index claw, taking a sip of the blood.
Instantly, Morhdekai gained some of the knowledge of Dante. In less than a second, the blood had been recognized as someone else's. It entered through his bloodstream, circulating at light speed through his system and through his heart. His mind then recognized the intelligence stored in the blood cells.
"External vaccines with isolate versions of our abilities are in storage at E-X3 Test Facility," Morhdekai said. "IUSOM soldiers are heading for it right now. We have to go quickly, otherwise... The IUSOM will have hundreds of us against us!"
"I can't go unarmed," Emile said. "Alice, do you have any weapons I could use?"
Alice stood there for a second. "Follow me," She said, walking towards a door on the side of the hangar. Emile suspected it was an armory.
She and Emile walked to the door, and Alice opened it for Emile. When he entered, he recognized it as an armory. Weapons, ammunition, armor, ammunition belts, and the likes filled the room, sitting on hooks on the walls. Shotguns in one section, tactical knives in others, articficial energy weapons in yet another, and so forth.
Alice tiptoed in the room and shut the door behind the two. "I've got something new... Please don't tell Alex I let you use it," She said, walking over to the shotgun section. She reached towards the bottom, picking up a chrome shotgun from two rusty metal hooks that looks as if they should have given way a much longer time ago.
This shotgun that she had grabbed from the shelf was no ordinary firearm. It had five barrels and a hoop-shaped clip. On the side of the barrels were designs of a multi-headed dragon with razor-sharp fangs and black scales.
"This is the 'Hydra' pump shotgun," Alice explained. With one pull of the trigger, it shoots a twenty five gauge shotgun shell from each barrel. It has three recoil settings; Light, medium, and uncut. Light recoil will barely affect you, but the damage output will be minimal. Medium has a pretty good amount of kick and maximum damage. Uncut is for tactical reasons. It'll knock you back twenty yards if you don't hold on tight. If you keep a steady stance, you can shoot and get behind cover to reload all in one shot.
"It loads fifteen shells at a time, meaning three shots before a reload. It's a long and dangerous realod, so be careful," Alice explained. She jogged over to the other side of the room and grabbed two tactical belts.
"This one is for your shotgun shells," She said, holding up one with around thirty five shotgun shells on the strap. She put it over Emile's head, and fastened it across his chest and on his waist. "Those are easy acess shells. There's a pocket with a zipper-" She said, pointing a large, black pouch with a zipper on it. "-that holds around twenty five reserve shells."
"'Mmkay," Emile said, adjusting the belt slightly to stop it from constricting him. "And that one?" He asked, gesturing to the other one she held.
"It's supposed to be a tactical holster for squad assistant and suppliants," She explained. "You'll be using it to take the vaccines safely from the facility."
"You're one smart girl," Emile complimented her. She blushed.
"Thank you. You're very... sweet," She returned.
"So, Morhdekai and I need to get going," Emile said, as Alice, albeit difficulty, reach over Emile's head and thre the tactical strap over him, the holsters for the vaccines going over the shotgun shells. Alice fastened the gear with the straps and hooks on his back.
"Aren't I coming?" Alice said, putting her hands to Emile's chest.
"I'm worried you'd get hurt. Stay here," Emile commanded, walking over to a section of the armory with pistols in it.
"Awww man...," She complained as Emile picked up a 9mm pistol with grip and laser modifications. He grabbed a few clips from the ammunition supply box, and put them stiffly in the vaccine holsters.
"What are you doing?" Alice asked Emile, looking up to him.
"Trust me, I'll have used all of this by the time we're at E-X3. If I don't take it, I'll use the shotgun's ammo, and I won't have anything to use at E-X3. It's a breeding ground, you know," Emile explained in reply.
"Take whatever you need. I trust you." Alice wrapped her arms around Emile, pulled his head down and kissed him.
Emile and Alice held that action for about fifteen seconds. Then, Emile put his head up and said, "We really need to get going. If what Morhdekai said is really what Dante knew, we haven't time to lose," He reasoned.
"Just promise you'll liven to enjoy another moment like this with me."
"All I can do is hope."
***