Chapter 322
Julian made another desperate attempt to break free. Placing his palms on the ground, he pushed with all his strength. His suit granted him immense power, but it didn’t help him at all. The hole had closed around his waistband, and below, the maw pinned him with its numerous teeth, digging into his power armor.
To break free, he needed to somehow make the hole he had fallen into open and force the monster’s circular jaws apart. To do this, he likely needed to kill the creature that had immobilized him. He doubted there was any other way to pry the jaws open.
The problem was that to attack his assailant, he needed his weapons, but they were out of reach. His submachine guns were holstered on his thighs, trapped within the monstrous maw.
Even if he managed to get them back, they would probably be useless, as it was unlikely they were still functional. The creature’s jaws had likely crushed the weapons, damaging them beyond usability.
But he still had his fists. He began punching the ground beneath him, putting as much force as he could into each punch. Yet, the result was nothing. The obsidian-like material felt tougher than rock. He could achieve a better outcome by striking a concrete wall, leaving small dents and cracks. Smashing his fists against the black material, however, didn’t seem to damage it at all.
Still, he didn’t let his initial failure to break free discourage him. He reached down and tried to force his hands between his waistband and the solidified black substance. After some effort, he managed to do so. He then pushed, exerting all his strength and the power of his suit to widen the gap in which he was stuck.
After a moment, he gave up. It was no use. Even with his power suit greatly enhancing his strength, he was powerless against the strange obsidian-like substance. Desperation washed over him. There was nothing else he could think of to escape.
That’s when he realized Ethan and the rest of the team still hadn’t showed up. What was taking them so long?
Suddenly, he spotted movement ahead and immediately looked up. The morphus, who had been absolutely motionless until this point, took a couple of steps toward him. Julian felt his heart sink. That was it! The freaking mutant was going to kill him, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it!
He struggled against the pit he was stuck in with renewed vigor, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get free. The morphus didn’t fully cross the space toward him, though. After taking two more short steps, it stopped and lowered itself into a crouch, its eyes never leaving Julian.
Keeping its gaze on him, the black mutant slightly tilted its head to the side. Although its face appeared incapable of expressing any emotions, Julian realized the creature was observing him with uncanny curiosity, almost like a child who had just torn off the wings of a fly and watched it scramble chaotically on the ground. This made him furious.
“What are you waiting for?” he yelled at the mutant. “You sick fuck! Just kill me already! Is that what you want, ain’t it? You are just a mindless killing machine, nothing more! So either set me free or kill me!”
The morphus didn’t show any reaction to his words at all. It didn’t attack, nor did it make the slightest movement. Instead, it continued to stare at Julian with an unsettling interest.
One of the teeth pressing against his armor suddenly managed to break through. He screamed in sudden pain as the pointed tip of the teeth penetrated his leg.
“Ethan, where the fuck are you?” he screamed into his comms. “My suit’s failing! I need your help!”
“Use your abilities,” was his boss’s cold reply.
That’s when Julian completely lost his patience.
“In my situation, my abilities are useless,” he yelled at his boss. “Don’t you fucking know how they work?!”
There was a brief pause, then came the same reply, “Use your ultimate ability. Let’s see what happens.”
Julian wanted to send his boss to hell, but he stifled the urge, deciding to humor the dumb asshole this once. Maybe, just maybe, after witnessing that his abilities were useless in his current situation, his boss would finally come to his aid.
With a thought, he activated his ultimate ability, creating several illusion copies of himself all around him. Immediately after that, he used his active ability, and his suit engaged its disguising feature, rendering Julian completely invisible.
Sure enough, for the monster beneath him, it didn’t matter whether he was visible or not. Its jaws were still clamped around the lower part of his body, the teeth getting increasingly deeper into his power suit.
His illusion clones darted around the area, but Julian saw that while the morphus slightly turned its head to watch them, it didn’t move from the spot. The pitch-black mutant obviously wasn’t fooled by his trick.
Out of the corner of his eye, Julian spotted some movement. He jerked his head to look that way, and what he saw shocked him. Now that he was deep within the morphus’ lair, he believed he had seen it all, convinced that nothing could catch him off guard. As it turned out, he couldn’t have been more wrong.
There were some protruding ridges along the walls on either side of him. Until now, he hadn’t paid them much attention, taking them simply for weird interior elements. As it turned out, they were much more than that. The ridges suddenly uncurled like enormous fingers, each ending in a huge, nasty-looking talon.
One of the talons sliced through the air at an incredible speed, piercing one of his illusions. Another talon lunged forward, impaling a second clone. Since this one was just passing Julian, after going through the clone, the talon stabbed Julian in the shoulder. The power armor he wore failed to protect him against such a powerful blow. A scream erupted from him as the sudden pain jolted through his body.
Then he spotted something else. There were some kind of bulges here and there on the walls and the ceiling. Again, he paid them no mind until now, dismissing them earlier as odd design choices of the decorator of this place. However, he now noticed that they began to unfurl, and he realized they were some kind of fleshy tubes.
They aimed at his illusions, who were aimlessly dashing around, and began shooting greenish projectiles at them. Julian had no idea what those projectiles were, but he certainly didn’t want to be struck by any of them just to find out. Luckily, since he was still invisible, the tubes targeted only his clones for now.
However, he knew his abilities would soon wear off and all the morphus’ defensive systems would focus on him.
“Ethan,” he yelled in his comms. “Get me out of here before it’s too late!”
“I can’t do that,” came Ethan’s indifferent voice.
“What?! Why?”
“Your task was to flush the morphus out. We need to lure it from its lair into the open to surround it. But you didn’t succeed. I can’t risk sending my team into that hole. There are too many traps and monsters, not to mention the morphus itself, and not enough space to maneuver. We’d be slaughtered if we went in.”
Julian couldn’t believe his ears. Was Ethan really going to leave him behind? How could he?!
“You can’t just fucking leave me here to die, you motherfucker!” he yelled at his boss.
“Sorry, kid,” Ethan said without inflection. “You’re on your own now.”
While Julian couldn’t believe he had been left behind, he couldn’t say he was entirely surprised. While they pretended to be an elite military unit, in reality, they were just a ragtag group of scumbags who joined Los Demonios because it was easier that way.
None of them cared about one another and could easily leave the one in distress behind instead of risking their lives to save them. Leaving one of them behind was nothing compared to the terrible things each of them had to commit to join Los Demonios.
His illusion clones suddenly disappeared. Almost at the same time, he became visible. Now that the talons weren’t distracted by his clones, all their attention turned to him. Several of them simultaneously struck him from several directions, breaking through his power armor and penetrating his flesh.
The tubes shot their projectiles at him, and as soon as they hit him with wet splashes, he realized it was acid. It quickly started eating at his armor, and before long, it reached his flesh, inflicting an enormous amount of pain on him.
The morphus suddenly leaped to its feet and dashed to the trapdoor above. The mutant then jumped up and disappeared from sight.
Kill them, Julian thought, knowing the morphus was now going after his teammates. Kill them all.
Then, his body succumbed to the wounds, and everything went dark before his eyes.