Call me Raptor. I have been blessed by fate with the power of flight. But that, here inside this dark tower, don’t help a lot.
Much more useful is my sword, Ladnikia.
She has changed my life.
I have been always the most ineffectual of the heroes around. At first, I was a speedster. With me, there was the fastest man alive, Tobias Cristopher. He made me look like a turtle.
Then, I gained a super exoskeleton, able to do nearly anything. The first moment I would have used it, my son would have been killed.
Now, my life has changed. Ladnikia is raw, unstoppable power. Whoever stands in my way, ket killed. And there is no need to master swordplay. The blade fight by herself.
Just like now, when a battalion of armored Olympic track runners, aiming laser guns at me, come down the stairs.
“Kill the Eurostar!” they keeps shouting. “Kill Euro! Kill Euro!”
Olyimpic track runners? In the middle of the Amazon jungle? That doesn’t make much sense…
The heads begin flying. One after another, the attackers falls.
Yet, I am weak. Bloods and soul should nurture my sword and powering me… something doesn’t work here… just like for Chance.
THIS CAN’T BE REALLY HAPPENING!
The Hoods’ matrix.
It’s all a deception. A fake.
The world around be begins to dissolve…
…I am strapped to a table, Drake the same on a table near me.
Chance, totally naked, is fighting with two men in lab’s coat. Another one is reversed on the ground, blabbering unintelligible words about his mommy.
The two men keeps throwing things, like scalpels and scissors, toward the Swedish. But no one is able to make contact with him. And by chance (by Chance) one of the scalpels end on the straps that keep me tied.
I stand up, and without take aim send the scalpel in the right eye of one of the lab men. Then I jump down, to the corner where Ladnikia is, take her, and as her power flows back inside me, I cut the heads of both men.
Chance looks at me seriously, but doesn’t say anything. He just point his index finger to the other side of the room. On another table, much distant from where I was, there is Ameristar.
“Jackie!” I cry.
I run to her. Chance lock the door of the room, which is circular, without any window. From what I have seen, the tower is a very tall cone, with the rooms in the center and a spiral staircase on the outside, between the rooms and the external wall.
Ameristar is sleeping, or so it seems. Chance manages to free Drake, that opens his eyes and looks at us perplexed.
While he get back on his feet, Chance comes near Jackie. He open one of her eyes. “She’s in a coma” explains. Then, he notices blood on the back of her head. There is a small hole. Horror appears in the eyes of my friend.
“She needs medical care, NOW!” he shouts.
In the same moment, something begins booming just outside the door.
