NEW SIVER MEMBER:- Ethan Byrne, tyler saylor, Glowbot, Po'okela Gonzalez, and Rome
NEW GOLD MEMBER:- Master Zenpo
Happy reading
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For a long, stretched-out moment, the only sounds in the ancient tomb were the drip... drip... drip... of condensation from the ceiling and the low hiss of the Trikru torches.
Twenty warriors, blades drawn, stood frozen. They were looking at a ghost. A man from the Old World, scarred and massive, standing in the steam of a metal sarcophagus, speaking a language none of them had ever heard.
And yet, they had.
"Gonasleng..." one of the warriors whispered, his knuckles white on the hilt of his axe.
It was the language of the enemy, the tongue of the Mountain Men, yelled from their battlements. It was the language of the past, of the ancestors who had burned the world. To hear it spoken, not screamed over a radio or in a grainy, flickering video, but live, from a man who looked like a god of war... it was an omen. It was a nightmare. They tensed, ready to spring, to silence this ghost before it could curse them all.
But Anya and Lexa didn't move. They stared, their shock different.
They understood him.
The language was taught to their commanders, to their Seconds. It was the language of strategy. To understand the enemy, you had to understand their tongue.
And this man had just asked, in perfect, unaccented English, "Holy shit! How long was I out for?"
Anya felt a shiver, not of fear, but of... awe. It was a feeling she loathed, a feeling she hadn't had since she was a child. She suppressed it, and her hand tightened on her sword. She turned her head slightly, her voice a low command to her warriors.
"Relax. Stand down."
The warriors looked at her, then at the man, then back at her. But they obeyed, their blades lowering, though the tension remained thick enough to cut.
Anya took one step forward, planting her feet. She was the Commander. This was her land. This... thing... was her problem.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What is this place? What tribe do you belong to?"
The questions registered in Mike's mind, but they were distant, like a radio playing in another room.
He was... alive.
The cryo-sickness was there, a faint, chemical fog at the edges of his mind, but his new body was already annihilating it. His enhanced metabolism was burning it away like a furnace.
He felt... incredible.
His old body, the college-kid body, had been a cage. This... this was a weapon. He could feel the dense, powerful muscles, the hardened density of his bones. He could feel his heart, a powerful, steady thump... thump... thump... in his chest, pumping the cryo-fluid out, replacing it with super-oxygenated blood.
And his mind...
Oh, God, his mind.
It wasn't just "smarter." It was like his old brain had been a single-core processor, and he'd just been upgraded to a quantum supercomputer.
Jack the dog hadn't been kidding. Nine times. He wasn't just thinking one thought at a time. He was parallel processing.
Thread 1: Threat Assessment. He was cataloging everything, all at once. Twenty-two individuals. Twenty warriors, late-teens to mid-thirties. Two leaders, female. The older one, Anya, was in charge. The younger one, Lexa, was her Second. All armed with primitive melee weapons: swords, axes, spears.
Torches, five of them, provided the only light. The air was damp and cold. One entrance, the one they came through. A perfect chokepoint. He could kill all twenty-two of them in under a minute. Conclusion: No significant threat.
Thread 2: Sensory Overload. His new senses were screaming. He could smell the pine resin in their hair, the rust on their blades. He could smell the sweat of the warrior who had stumbled, a sharp, coppery tang of fear. He could hear the fluttering, rapid heartbeat of Lexa as she stared at him. He could see the fine scars on Anya's face.
And then the memories of who he was came in.
'So I was a US Government experiment. An attempt to create the perfect soldier, to unlock the 90% of the human brain. I was the only "success." But I broke out. Of course I did. I was too smart, too strong. I became a ghost. A mercenary. The world's deadliest, most expensive hitman. Codename: Slade. My... my real name... still Mike, lol.'
'And just before the world went to shit...'
'I knew. Not the details, not the when. But I had high-ranking clients, scared politicians, and corporate cowards. They were all building... arks. They knew the end was coming. So I used the mountain of money I'd earned, a literal dragon's hoard of blood money, and I built this. Not a bunker. A tomb. A private hideout. I locked my gear, set the pod for a hundred-year nap, with a failsafe to open if proximity sensors were tripped. And I went to sleep, ready to wake up and inherit a new, cleaner world.'
'Got to say, Jack... that is one heck of a plan. A cryo sleep entry. A clean slate.'
The entire internal monologue, the threat assessment, the sensory data, the lifetime of new memories... it all processed in the span of seconds.
He refocused on the woman in charge. Anya.
Lexa, however, had lost her patience. The man was just... staring. He was ignoring their Commander.
"HEY! SHE IS TALKING TO YOU!" Lexa's voice echoes in the metal room.
Her shout pulled Mike from his thoughts. He blinked, regaining his focus. He had to play this part, the groggy, disoriented man from the past. He couldn't let them see the supercomputer. Not yet.
"What did you say again?" he asked.
That was it. Lexa was a hair's-breadth from lunging.
"Lexa!" Anya's voice was steel. She put a hand on her Second's shoulder, stopping her. Lexa shot her a look of disbelief, but she stood down, her hand still gripping her sword so tightly her knuckles were white.
Anya held her ground. She could feel it. This was not a normal man. The muscles and his scarred skin yelled 'not normal'. The calm in his stance, even while being surrounded by 20 warriors. The way he hadn't even flinched when Lexa yelled. He hadn't perceived her as a threat at all.
This man was a warrior, and a strong one at that. He was more dangerous than any three of her own men.
Anya repeated her questions, slow, deliberate, as if speaking to a child or a madman. "Who. Are. You."
Mike finally gave them his full attention. His tactical brain had its orders: Integrate. Gather intel. Secure a position of power.
"Well..." he started, his voice rough from disuse. He cleared his throat.
"The name is Mike. Just Mike."
He looked around the tomb, at the dead consoles. "What am I doing here? Well, let's just say... after completing my last 'job' before the world went to shit, I went to sleep. And now I've woken up here." He looked directly at Anya.
"And what tribe am I part of? I don't know. The United States? Or whatever this... area... is called now."
Lexa seized on the word. It was an Old World word she recognized. "Job? What was your 'job'?"
Mike turned his gaze to her. He let a smug grin spread across his scarred face.
"Nothing special," he said, his voice dropping. "I was just the world's deadliest... and costliest... assassin."
The word hit them like a physical blow. Assassin.
Lexa's breath hitched. Anya's eyes widened, just fractionally. A killer. A hired killer. A professional. Not a warrior who fought for land, for people, for honor... but a man who killed for money.
Anya's mind put the pieces together.
He is from before. He has been asleep for a long time. He belongs to no one. He is... alone.
And he was, without a doubt, the most dangerous human being she had ever laid eyes on. She could not, would not, let him walk out of this bunker and fall in with another tribe.
"You are... lost," Anya stated. It was not a question. "Your world is gone. This is our world now."
She sheathed her sword. It was a gesture of immense trust, or immense confidence. "You need answers. We need to understand what you are. You will come with us. Back to our village. We will answer your questions there."
Mike looked at her, then at Lexa, then at the ring of warriors.
He smiled, but this time it was all charm. "Sounds good. Lead the way." He looked down at his simple cryo-pants. "Just... let me get changed."
He turned his back on them all and walked to a simple locker set in the wall. He unlatched the thin, apron-like chest armor and let it clatter to the floor.
He was... built. The Trikru warriors were strong, but this was different.
This was a body crafted for one purpose: war. Every muscle was defined, a perfect, dense map of power, his back a V-shape so wide it looked almost inhuman. Scars, dozens of them, crisscrossed his skin like angry white rivers.
The warriors stared. Lexa stared. She wasn't just assessing him anymore; she was... mesmerized.
Anya stared, too, her mind cataloging the sheer, brutal potential.
Mike grabbed a simple black, long-sleeved shirt from the locker and started to pull it on, stopping halfway. He turned his head, that smirk back on his face, his golden eyes locking directly onto the two female leaders.
"You want to see me change?"
The words broke the tension.
Anya, the Iron Heda of the Trikru, who had not shown a hint of weakness in twenty years... blushed. A dark, angry, uncontrollable flush crept up her neck and onto her scarred cheeks. She was mortified.
Lexa, jolted from her trance, just glared, her face a mixture of anger and... something else. She didn't move. She was still eyeing him.
Anya recovered in a split second. "M-My apologies," she stammered, furious at herself. "We will be waiting outside."
She turned, her authority snapping back like a whip. "EVERYONE! MOVE!"
She grabbed Lexa by the arm, who was still staring, and physically hauled her out of the room, the Trikru warriors scrambling to follow.
Mike was left alone in the room, the sound of their retreating footsteps echoing down the metal hall. He let out a low, deep chuckle.
'Even they have a cute side...'
The humor vanished as quickly as it came. His face settled back into a mask of cold professionalism. He finished pulling on his shirt and gear.
He walked to the weapon panel, the one with the handprint scanner. He placed his scarred, calloused hand on the dark screen. It lit up green.
BEEP. HISS.
The thick, armored glass slid away, revealing his tools. His katanas. His pistols. His staff.
He reached in, his hands closing around the familiar, comforting grips of his weapons. A feeling of completeness settled over him.
"This," he whispered to the empty, humming tomb, "is going to be fun."
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JUST A REMINDER!! I ONLY HAVE +3 CHPATERS ON MY P@TREON, GIVE ONE MORE DAY AND IT WILL HAVE THE +5 CHAPTERS.