"Good weight," Kevin said, executing a few practice swings. The blade cut through the air with a satisfying whisper. He secured it to his thigh opposite his energy pistol, the sheath improvised from what looked like reinforced rubber hosing.

  The man nodded with grim satisfaction, then produced a second offering: a compact pistol with mismatched parts and a hand-carved wooden grip. "Eight rounds, .45 caliber. Powder's homemade, so the kick is mean, but it'll punch through most anything."

  Kevin examined the weapon with professional interest. The barrel had been salvaged from a pre-war firearm, but the firing mechanism appeared custom-built. He checked the chamber, verified the safety, and then aimed at an empty can sitting atop a fence post thirty yards away.

  The crack of the shot echoed through Fairville's courtyard, causing several residents to flinch. The can flew backward, a clean hole punched through its center. Kevin nodded with satisfaction. The recoil had been substantial but manageable, and the accuracy was better than he'd expected from such a jury-rigged weapon.

  "I'll take it," he said, securing the pistol in a chest holster. The seven rounds went into a small pouch on his belt, each one hand-checked for consistency.

  Nearby, Val was examining Duncan's assault rifle with critical focus. Her wolf ears rotated at each sound, moving independently like radar dishes tracking multiple targets. Her fingers moved over the weapon's energy cells with the delicate touch of a pianist, checking connections and power levels.

  "Full charge," she confirmed, her tail lashing behind her with restless energy. "But we should conserve where possible. Might not get another chance to reload before we hit their base."

  Duncan nodded, taking the weapon back and performing her own final checks. "Secondary power cell is at eighty percent. Should be enough for sustained engagement if needed."

  Kevin turned his attention inward for a moment, checking the red bar in his vision. The RTD reserves showed at full capacity, the Redz40 in his system fully absorbed and ready for deployment. Usually, AIDA would offer some clinical observation or tactical suggestion at this point, but the AI remained silent in his mind, waiting, observing, calculating. The quiet was almost unsettling.

  "We ready?" Duncan asked, her voice pulling Kevin back to the present.

  He gave a single nod. "Let's move."

  The Humvee's wheels spun briefly on loose gravel as Duncan engaged the motor, then caught traction and accelerated toward Fairville's gate. They passed through the settlement's makeshift barrier with a rattle of metal on metal; the guards offered solemn nods as the vehicle sped into the wasteland beyond.

  Duncan pushed the vehicle to its limits, the electric motor whining under the strain as they flew down what had once been a suburban highway. The landscape blurred around them. Twisted metal frames of pre-war buildings jutted from the earth like the ribs of long-dead beasts. Mutated vegetation crawled over abandoned vehicles, tendrils of crimson moss consuming the remnants of civilization with patient hunger.

  The reddish light of late afternoon cast long shadows across the broken terrain, transforming mundane ruins into grotesque sculptures. A tangle of highway overpasses created a concrete knot against the horizon. Everywhere, the detritus of the old world served as a reminder of what had been lost, and what had replaced it.

  "Two miles out," Duncan announced, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. "Based on their presumed pace, we should intercept them before they reach the tower."

  Kevin scanned the horizon, his enhanced vision cutting through the dusty haze. In the distance, moving figures caught his attention. It was a loose formation of approximately twenty raiders making their way across a stretch of broken asphalt. The Bloodbath's massive frame was recognizable even at this distance, towering over her subordinates.

  "There," he said, pointing. "Two o'clock, about half a mile."

  Val had already spotted them, her wolf eyes narrowing as she assessed the situation. "Perfect. Drop me at that building." She pointed to a crumbling three-story structure that had once been a hotel, its façade partially intact despite the century of abandonment. "I can cover your approach from there."

  Duncan angled the Humvee toward the building, maintaining speed until they were within a hundred yards. Without waiting for a complete stop, Val pushed open her door and launched herself from the vehicle in a fluid motion that reminded Kevin of predators he'd seen in nature documentaries. Her body seemed to flow rather than fall, rolling with the momentum and coming up running.

  She reached the hotel's exterior wall and began to climb, fingers and toes finding purchase in cracks and architectural features that would have been invisible to normal eyes. Her movements were unnervingly inhuman. She was too fast, too confident, defying normal biomechanics as she scaled the vertical surface as easily as if it were a ladder.

  Within seconds, Val had reached the third floor, disappearing through a broken window frame. Kevin knew she would be setting up her sniper position, establishing fields of fire, calculating wind direction and energy drop with the instinctive accuracy that made her such a lethal marksman.

  "One minute until they spot us," Duncan said, checking her weapon one final time. "Ready?"

  Kevin felt the familiar calm of pre-battle focus settling over him. His enhanced body hummed with potential energy, the red bar in his vision pulsing steadily, muscles coiled like springs waiting for release. The raiders ahead were disorganized, tired, and demoralized from their earlier defeat. It was time to finish what they'd started.

  "Ready," he confirmed, drawing both the energy pistol and the makeshift ballistic weapon. The weight of the machete against his thigh was reassuring, a final option when all else failed.

  Duncan gunned the engine, sending the Humvee racing toward the unsuspecting raiders. In his earpiece, Val's voice came through clear and sharp. "Target acquired. Awaiting your signal."

  The distance between predator and prey closed rapidly. Kevin's world narrowed to the coming violence, his mind calculating angles of attack, target priorities, and kill zones with cold calculation.

  The hunt was on.

  The first shot came without warning. One moment, the raiders were trudging forward in loose formation; the next, a raider's head disintegrated in a spray of bone and tissue. The crack of Val's rifle followed a split second later, the sound traveling slower than the bullet that had already found its mark. The remaining raiders scattered like startled birds, shouting and drawing weapons as they sought cover that didn't exist on the open road. Kevin didn't hesitate, he activated RTD.

  The world slowed to a crawl around him. Sound stretched into elongated, distorted waves. The panicked shouts of raiders became deep, unintelligible groans. The dust particles kicked up by their frantic movements hung suspended in the air like tiny planets. The red bar in Kevin's vision began to drain steadily as reality bent around his enhanced perception.

  He leaped from the still-moving Humvee; the ground seemed to approach with dreamlike slowness as he descended. The machete felt alive in his right hand, the makeshift pistol heavy and reassuring in his left. As his feet touched earth, he was already calculating trajectories, threat assessments, and kill priorities. The Bloodbath stood at the rear of the group, bellowing orders that reached Kevin as viscous vibrations rather than words.

  The female raider nearest to him had just begun to swing a rusty pipe toward where his head would be. In RTD, the movement appeared almost comical. Her muscles bunched with visible strain, face contorted in a slow-motion snarl, the pipe displacing air that rippled visibly in his enhanced perception. Kevin simply ducked beneath the arc of her swing, the pipe passing harmlessly above him.

  Before she could register his evasion, he drove the machete into her abdomen with calculated force. The blade parted flesh, muscle, and organs with surgical exactitude. Blood welled around the entry point, droplets hanging in the air as he withdrew the blade and pivoted toward his next target. The woman hadn't even begun to fall as he moved on.

  A male raider had managed to raise a pistol, the hammer just starting its journey forward in the firing mechanism. Kevin put a round through the man's face point-blank, the makeshift pistol bucking in his hand. The raider's head snapped backward, blood and brain matter erupting from the exit wound in a suspended crimson cloud that Kevin sidestepped as he continued his advance.

  The red bar depleted further as he maintained RTD, moving among the raiders like a ghost. Each movement was economical, brutal, and ruthlessly executed. A machete thrust into a kidney. A machete slash across a throat. The eye socket was pierced by a pistol round. A kick that pulverized a knee. Blood sprayed in artistic arcs around him, hanging in the air like abstract sculpture before gravity slowly reasserted its dominion.

  He broke a raider's arm at the elbow, the bone piercing skin with a spray of blood that scattered in slow-motion droplets. Another died from a machete strike that separated vertebrae, his head lolling at an impossible angle before his body began its gradual descent to the ground. A third received the last round from Kevin's pistol directly through the soft palate, the bullet transiting skull and brain before exiting through the crown.

  RTD at forty percent. Conserve energy while charging, AIDA's voice cut through his combat flow with crystal clarity.

  Kevin acknowledged the warning and released the time dilation, allowing the world to snap back to normal speed. The sudden transition was jarring. Sound rushed back at proper pitch, movements accelerated to real-time, and the bodies he'd dispatched finished their interrupted falls to the ground with dull thuds. But he maintained his enhanced strength, a more efficient use of his remaining reserves.

  A burly raider charged him, swinging a length of chain that whistled through the air. Kevin parried with the empty pistol, the chain wrapping around it with a metallic clank. He yanked hard, pulling the raider off-balance, then drove the heel of his palm into the man's throat with measured force. Cartilage collapsed under the impact, the raider's eyes bulging as he dropped to his knees, hands clutching futilely at his crushed windpipe.

  Behind him, Duncan's assault rifle discharged in controlled three-round bursts. Each grouping found its target with unerring accuracy, center mass hits that dropped raiders before they could reach effective range. She moved with fluid skill, positioning herself to cover Kevin's flanks while maintaining clear fields of fire.

  "On your six!" she called, her voice cutting through the chaos.

  Kevin spun, driving his knee into the spine of a raider who had tried to flank him. With the impact shattered vertebrae, the man's back bent at an angle human anatomy wasn't designed to achieve. Without pausing, Kevin grabbed another attacker by the throat, his enhanced strength allowing him to lift the struggling woman off her feet before slamming her into the ground with enough force to fracture her skull against the broken asphalt.

  Val's rifle continued its deadly rhythm from above, each shot finding vulnerable targets with inhuman accuracy. A raider attempting to take cover behind an abandoned car lost the top of his head. Another, raising what looked like a homemade grenade, had his hand separated from his arm by a shot so clean it seemed impossible.

  Bloodbath had retreated to the rear, shouting orders that went increasingly unheeded as her forces crumbled around her. A particularly brave, or foolish, lieutenant made a break toward Kevin, firing wildly with what appeared to be a pre-war revolver. Kevin sidestepped the poorly aimed shots, closed the distance in three rapid strides, and buried his machete in the man's chest. He twisted the blade before withdrawing it, ensuring massive internal damage.

  In less than two minutes, it was over.

  Kevin stood amid a circle of bodies, blood dripping from his machete onto the dusty ground. Twenty-two raiders lay dead or dying around him, their corpses sprawled in the twisted poses of violent death. His breathing remained steady, heart rate elevated but controlled. The red bar in his vision had stabilized at thirty-five percent, slowly beginning the regeneration process.

  "Clear," Duncan called, sweeping her rifle across the scene one final time before lowering it.

  Val descended from her perch with inhuman grace, sliding down the building's facade. She approached the carnage with clinical detachment, her tail curled behind her as she surveyed the aftermath.

  "Efficient," she commented, nudging a corpse with her boot. "Though you left the big one." She nodded toward the distance where Bloodbath's massive frame could be seen retreating, abandoning her dead to save herself.

  "She'll lead us straight to their base," Kevin replied, wiping the machete clean on a fallen raider's clothing. "And to this Jan Twotimes."

  They moved methodically through the dead, stripping them of useful supplies and functional weapons. Kevin found a combat knife of decent quality on one of the lieutenants. It was a pre-war KA-BAR with a slightly damaged grip but a well-maintained blade. He tested it with a few practice slashes, satisfied with its balance and edge.

  "We should move," Duncan said, checking her watch. "They'll have scouts watching for her return."

  Kevin nodded, securing his new acquisition to his belt. The red bar continued its slow regeneration, already back to forty percent capacity. He felt the familiar post-combat clarity. His senses were heightened, mind focused, body ready for the next engagement. This skirmish had been merely the appetizer. The main course awaited at the tower.

  They returned to the Humvee, leaving the bodies where they lay for the wasteland scavengers. The engine hummed to life as Duncan engaged the motor, the wheels spinning briefly before finding purchase on the blood-soaked ground.

  As they sped toward the raider base, Kevin checked his remaining ammunition and tested the machete's edge one final time. The blade gleamed dully in the fading light, promises of violence yet to come etched into its imperfect surface.

  Chapter twelve

  WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. II

  The Humvee surged forward, its electric engine screaming as Duncan pushed it past safety tolerances. Kevin braced himself against the door frame. With the machete secured at his thigh, his mind already mapped the coming violence. Through the cracked windshield, the raider camp materialized from the wasteland haze as a broken-down apartment complex repurposed as a fortress, its windows dark eyes watching their approach. The red bar in his vision pulsed with stored power, ready to bend reality to his will.

  "Almost in range," Val announced from the back seat, her ears perking forward with predatory focus. She checked the energy cell on her sniper rifle, the blue indicator glowing at full charge. Her fingers moved over the weapon with expert care, adjusting the scope's settings for distance and light refraction in the reddish atmosphere. "Two guards at the barricade, ten o'clock."

  Duncan slowed the Humvee slightly, giving Val a more stable firing platform. "Take them before they sound the alarm."

  Kevin spotted the guards, two figures hunched behind a makeshift barrier of concrete chunks and twisted metal. Their weapons were cobbled together from scavenged parts but were still deadly enough at close range. One raised a hand-held radio to his mouth, lips moving as he reported their approach.

  Val slid the side window open, the sudden rush of air carrying a metallic tang of Redz40 particulates. Her tail lashed with anticipation as she braced the rifle against her shoulder, eye patch humming as it synchronized with her scope's targeting system.

  "Breathe in," she whispered to herself, her body going perfectly still.

  Two shots rang out in rapid succession, so close together they sounded like a single extended discharge. Blue-white energy lanced through the air, leaving momentary trails of ionized particles like ghostly fingers reaching for their targets. The first guard's chest erupted in a spray of vaporized tissue, leaving a smoking cavity where vital organs had been. He dropped without a sound, radio still clutched in lifeless fingers. The second guard managed half a step backward before Val's second shot found him, punching through the sternum and spine with equal ease.

  "Clear," Val announced, already tracking for additional threats.

  Duncan accelerated again, the Humvee's tires crunching over debris as they closed the final distance to the apartment complex. "More incoming," she warned, nodding toward the building's entrance.

  Raiders poured from the complex's main doors. Kevin counted at least fifteen, armed with the same mismatched collection of scavenged and improvised weapons. Unlike the disorganized mob they'd encountered earlier, these moved with purpose, taking defensive positions behind abandoned vehicles and concrete barriers. Their expressions registered shock at the speed of the attack, followed by the grim determination of those who knew retreat meant death at the hands of their leader.

  "There," Kevin pointed, spotting a smaller figure emerging from the building's shadows. "That has to be Jan Twotimes."

  The man was wiry, all angles and nervous energy, with stringy hair that hung in greasy strands around a face marked by Redz40 exposure. His eyes reflected the same unnatural luminescence as Kevin's own, but with a feverish, unstable quality. What marked him as important, however, was the weapon balanced on his shoulder. It was an RPG-7, its distinctive green tube unmistakable even at this distance.

  "RPG!" Kevin shouted just as Jan raised the launcher and took aim.

  Duncan reacted instantly, yanking the wheel hard to the left. The Humvee fishtailed, its rear end sliding across broken asphalt as the tires fought for purchase. The sudden movement threw Kevin against the door, his enhanced reflexes already calculating the vehicle's trajectory, the RPG's likely flight path, and his optimal response.

  He didn't hesitate. The door flew open under his push, his body launching into a perfect combat roll that absorbed the momentum of his exit from the moving vehicle. The world around him narrowed to tactical essentials: distance to cover, enemy positions, lines of fire. In his peripheral vision, he saw Jan's finger tighten on the RPG's trigger.