Swimming from darkness, Anzel broke free of his unconscious state and awoke to a nightmare. A deep sense of urgency suddenly shot through his body as he desperately tried to stand. His limbs were shaking, covered in blood that wasn't his.
He quickly collapsed back face-first onto the ash-stained pavement, unable to move. He felt numb. Emotionless. Suddenly, the darkness came back to submerge him under its infinite grasp.
Blazes of light flashed past his vision, reaching out to him with a heat that shook him back to his senses as a large shadow came shooting down from above. He knew that if he didn't move at that very moment he would die.
As if nudged by some invisible force, he tossed his body aside like a rag doll, his primal instincts kicking in as a large metal pipe came crashing down from one of the tenements beside him followed by sprinkles of broken glass. It made cracks in the pavement just inches from where his head had been.
He took in large gasping breaths as the flames danced around his body, watching them with deep anticipation as if he were waiting for them to consume him. Unable to move. Unable to feel. Unable to think.
After a few moments, the numbness in his body finally began to fade and was replaced in full by the blistering heat of the flames as well as a shock of pain coming from his right arm. When his vision became clear, the first thing he saw were the bodies. The fire charred the skin to a crisp black, eyes melting deep into the skull.
Dozens of men all dead in an instant. Anzel wanted to scream but found that his voice had fled. Water. I need water. He instinctively thought to himself as he again tried to stand, this time with a little more power.
"Damn!" He cursed to himself as he felt the energy once again slip from his body, fleeting as if afraid of his reckless movements.
That's when he noticed the smell. It was the smell of smoke. The smell of blood. The smell of death. All of which he shouldn't be able to take in. He suddenly kicked into high gear. Every instinct in his body screamed to run for shelter. No no no! Damn it! How long was I out!? He thought in desperation. He clung to the side of his face.
Broken. Just as he suspected. The gas mask he had been wearing was torn open on one side, leaving half of his lower face completely exposed. He needed to find shelter and fast.
His limbs shifted on their own as if controlled by strings. He sprang across the bodies of his dead comrades in limbing leaps trying to seek his way out through the smoke. He stopped short however as his foot hit a smaller figure hidden beneath the rubble. It was that of a small girl, skin blackened and eyes bubbling out of their sockets.
He stared down at her with an empty expression on his face. Disgusting. He thought to himself. Anzel felt disgusted by how easily she had died, at how fragile life had seemed to become for him, but time was short and he had to keep moving.
Blinking away the image from his mind, Anzel pressed on through the haze before suddenly bursting through the doors of one of the towering tenements untouched by the flames. Sections of it fell crumbling from the amalgamation of flesh and metal, the organs of the building turning a charred black.
Anzel pressed on, his eyes wandering frantically before locking on a fallen rag. He dove for it as if his very life depended on it. Perhaps it did. He covered the torn side of his gas mask and began to ease himself. Next, he assessed his wound. His right arm held a gaping slash, blood gushing in a seemingly endless fountain. It should be fine. Yeah, it's fine. He tried to reassure himself.
That of course was a lie. However, he had much bigger problems to worry about right now. For example, the havok that attacked them might be still lurking around the area, seeking through the haze to find its next prey. Anzel, unfortunately, would be that prey. A massive wave of relief washed over him thinking himself lucky he had even survived the first encounter.
That was before he heard a soft shuffle coming from the far corner of the room. Anzel jolted alert and then relaxed once again. A boy sat kneeling over what Anzel presumed to be his dead mother. He wasn't crying, he just seemed well…emotionless. Then again, that was how everybody seemed to look in Section-7A nowadays.
The body of the mother was not charred by the fires but rather impaled. The sight sent shivers down his spine. Impaled. Yes impaled, perhaps by the same creature that had attacked his squad earlier. He crawled over to the boy who glared up at him and sprang back in a sudden flick of motion.
"S-Stay back!" The boy shouted at him. Anzel simply ignored him.
He assessed the body of the mother with a keen eye. The gaping hole he stared at melded into a bloody mess. Shit. Was all that could come to his mind. It was massive. He had been expecting the worst out of this mission, but this was worse than the worst. Anzel and his squad had arrived late on the scene. By then, most of the previous were already dead. Their fight against the creature was short-lived as it quickly dashed through the smoke, killing them off in mere seconds.
Anzel had not gotten a good look at the creature as the smoke and smog from the city's pollution was far too thick but he could tell that it was massive, nothing that would fall in the category of Class-X of course; the Shifters would handle those. But for mere foot soldiers, a Class-Y of that size, judging from the wound, would be monstrous. If that was the case and the creature was still stalking him, wouldn't he have heard it by now? This made him uneasy.
"You," he said, pointing toward the boy. "How long has it been since it attacked?" The boy just sat motionless.
Then he slowly opened his mouth. "I-I don't know, maybe an hour?" He replied with uncertainty, his eyes fixed on what he seemed to find an interesting spot on the ground.
Anzel felt the tension slightly release from his body. Knowing these creatures, they wouldn't have stuck around in one place for an extended period of time. It was probably long gone by now. Looks like I get to live another day. He didn't know if that was a good or bad thing anymore. He then suddenly tore himself away from the body, leaving the boy in a confused and broken state. He threw himself out of the tenement and onto the burning street. The boy quickly followed behind. He looked to be around the age of eight or nine. Annoyed, Anzel turned back to face him.
"What?" Anzel asked bluntly.
"Aren't you going to help me? I-I'm scared. I don't know where my sister went and, and…" he replied in a quivering voice.
"Not my problem," Anzel said, his voice cold and distant yet mixed with a slight hesitation, before staggering further down the alley. Don't think about him now, if he gets involved with me he'll just end up getting hurt. Like all the others in his squad. He paused. It's not my fault, right?
In the back of his mind, he had known that something was off about the situation. His mother always used to say that he had a keen eye. Anzel knew he wasn't the brightest, but more often than not he spotted details no one else was able to. Before this mission started he pointed out the slight difference in the protective radius issued by high command after the first squadron was wiped out.
Usually, that meant that the havok had advanced to the second stage. The vast majority of his squad at the time was either too drunk or deprived of sleep to notice and laughed him off. If they'd listened, maybe things would have been different.
Maybe they'd have called for reinforcements and adjusted their strategy. But they didn't. Not only because he lacked the authority to press others into action but also because they hated him for a sin he committed years ago.
Is it really just to blame my lack of authority and reputation for my own squadron's incompetence? Yet again, if they had somebody more reputable taking charge of the tactical side of this operation maybe this never would have happened. He knew very well that his reputation had been shattered within the military.
It was an unforgivable act he committed but Hazil, being first lieutenant at the time of the incident, protected him from the backlash. And now they hate her too. Everything I do just ends up getting somebody else hurt one way or another. It was too much for one man alone to think about, especially not now.
Anzel crossed over the bodies once again, this time searching for an extra gas mask that wasn't burnt to a crisp before stopping short. The alley he was in was fairly large with towering tenements made of flesh and metal reaching far beyond the glaze of smog that the city produced.
The sky was of an inky black texture, its gray clouds above supporting the dark atmosphere of the city whose soft bioluminescent lights of green grew suffocated under the smog's oppression. The metropolis, known as Section-7A, was the capital of the Coalition Army's nation, standing as one of the highest production zones in Etheria, second only to Centrepoint and Cyros. Its use of biotechnology and pre-Genesis industrial innovations turned the city into a living, breathing machine.
Anzel gave a quick glance behind him to see the boy still following in his tracks, he had no gas mask with him. Great. He thought to himself before turning back to the boy who seemed to be slightly surprised by Anzel's sudden change of heart. Behind him, he saw a mask that wasn't completely destroyed. He walked past the boy and flung the mask off of his comrade, a nameless soldier who Anzel had only seen a few times in the weeks he was enlisted. Anzel threw the mask back to the boy who struggled to catch it.
"Here, put this on. If you want to follow me, at least protect yourself," Anzel instructed and the boy complied.
He thought about the boy's mother. What he really should be doing is getting him to the nearest stable building for shelter but maybe what this boy needed right now was somebody to guide him. I'll take him back to the command tower and get somebody to properly help him instead of shoving him into a tenement. Least I can do, right?
Anzel gave the boy the best reassuring smile he could pull off then quickly scanned the remaining corpses to find a replacement for his own mask.
Suddenly he stopped dead. Something was wrong, very wrong. Wait, even if the havok ran away our reinforcements would have enacted a pursuit right? He saw some unburnt faces of the soldiers from their squad's reinforcements who were instructed to be posted at the command tower until further notice.
They would of course die trying but then why? Why are all of these bodies left in one area? He pondered, and he was right. All of the bodies seemed to be concentrated in one tight area. The boy stared back confused at why Anzel had suddenly come to a halt. Anzel then turned back toward the pile of bodies behind him.
He wished he hadn't, he wished that at that moment he would have stayed oblivious to this one fact. However, now it was far too late as he saw one massive leg protrude out from the back of one of the corpses and slam onto the street with a deafening crack.
Then came another, and then another until six blood-stained limbs hung still on the pavement. Suddenly a small figure was lifted from the ash and rubble, suspended in the air by all six legs. It was the girl he had bumped into once before, her body still charred black with eye sockets now left completely empty. The girl's mangled face twisted into a grim smile.