The transformed boy lunged again, but this time Morgan was ready. He avoided the attack and used the boy's speed against him by grabbing his arm and using it as a lever to slam him face-first into the brick wall of a store nearby.
A normal person would have died from the impact, but the transformed body just shook it off and tried again. Morgan didn't let him have a chance.
"Day by day... I started to know that the Syndrome is the same as a virus that turns humans into monsters who have power."
"But the sad part is they can't even control themselves before getting killed by their own brain, which can't withstand the gift from the Syndrome."
"What is the God's thinking for giving humanity such power that they can't even control...?"
"In the end... faith is just a piece of shit full of lies."
He had learned from his past life that newly transformed people were dangerous but predictable. Their new bodies moved faster than their rewired minds could fully control.
They were strong and swift, but they didn't know how to use their strength and speed. They relied on instinct instead of strategy. That made them easy to beat if someone knew what they were doing, and Morgan had killed enough of them to remember how they worked.
The fight lasted less than thirty seconds and ended with the boy's neck breaking. Morgan let him fall to the ground, and his body went limp.
The mother's scream from inside the building cut through everything. It was raw and primal and it was full of grief that Morgan knew would never fully heal.
He didn't have time to think about it or feel anything about what he had just done because two more transformed were already coming toward him with the same predatory look in their eyes. Morgan ran as fast as he could so that the problem he tried to fix would be solved faster.
He ran not away from them, but toward the intersection three blocks north, where the transformation energy felt strongest and the screams were loudest. His weak teenage body hurt with every move, his lungs burned, and his legs were about to give out, but he kept going with a strength that could only come from having been through much worse.
If this was happening all over the city and the Syndrome was affecting more than one place at the same time. The death toll would be terrible unless someone did something about it.
The intersection was a mess. At least twenty people were down, and some were still changing while others had already finished and were attacking anyone who got too close.
There was an empty police car with its doors open and engine running. The officers who had been inside were now either dead or changed. The air was thick with screams and the smell of violence, and blood painted the asphalt in patterns that would take weeks to clean.
Morgan looked at the situation with the cold logic of someone who had done this before. Seven people had transformed, and three more were in the middle of changing and would become threats in the next minute or two.
Many scared civilians were trying to run or hide, but most of them were too panicked to do so well. There were no other fighters around, so he was alone.
"Bloody hell..." Morgan wipes his sweat and thinks that being alone meant that no one could slow him down.
He picked up a metal street sign that had been ripped off its post and tested how heavy and balanced it was. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
The transformed saw him right away. Their focus shifted from the fleeing civilians to this new target, who moved with purpose instead of fear. They came at him in a loose group, with no plan or coordination, just their instinct to hunt.
Morgan let them in. The first one to get to him was a woman in her thirties whose transformation had given her long fingers with bone claws on the ends.
She swiped at his throat with quick, obvious moves that were easy to read if you knew what to look for. Morgan ducked to avoid the attack and drove the street sign through her chin, where the metal punched through soft tissue and into her brain. She fell right away, even though her enhanced body still had the same deadly weaknesses as any other.
Two more came at him from different sides, trying to get around him. Morgan moved between them like he was dancing, and the force of his dodge made the street sign swing in a wide arc that hit both of them in the face.
The blow broke bones and sent them flying, and Morgan followed up with precise blows to the temple and throat that knocked them out for the final time. And then there are four left for him to handle.
His muscles were screaming, and his teenage body wasn't made for this kind of long-term fighting, but he couldn't stop and slow down. Every second he waited was another second for further adjustments to happen and another civilian to die because he wasn't quick enough.
The next person to change was a man who looked like he had worked in construction before the Syndrome took him. He was bigger than the others.
His transformation had made his already large frame even bigger by adding layers of thick muscle that made him look like something out of a nightmare. He grabbed a parking meter and ripped it out of the ground like it was made of cardboard. He swung it at Morgan with enough force to break concrete.
Morgan didn't try to stop. Instead, he rolled forward, getting close enough to the man that the parking meter couldn't work.
He hit the street sign with all his strength, driving it into the man's knee. The stronger joint held for a moment, then it broke with a loud crack that Morgan could feel as well as hear. Morgan hit the man in the base of the skull, which broke his spine and killed him.
Three were left, and Morgan's vision was getting blurry from all the work. His hands were shaking, and his breath came in short, ragged gasps that showed his body was reaching its limits faster than he had thought it would.
He couldn't keep his efforts up for much longer, not with this weak teenage body that wasn't used to the kind of fighting he was doing. But he didn't have to keep going. He just had to stay alive long enough to make a difference.
"I'm outnumbered if this keeps going on..."