Rise of the Night Stalkers

by Kurtis Eckstein

  Being at 40 points also meant I was at Thermal Stage 3, which hadn’t earned me any new skills, but had given me the option to level up my available skills, reducing their cost to use while improving their effectiveness in battle.

  My Heat-Ray Pulse was now at Stage 3, allowing me to fire a whopping twenty shots per resource, doubling its efficiency from Stage 2, while also costing less to fire continuously. I also upgraded my Heat-Particle Boost skill to Stage 2, with its efficiency having likewise doubled, thus halving the cost.

  The Heat-Wave Burst, Area of Effect skill, was still at Stage 1 considering I viewed it as the lowest priority at the moment, and it was already really effective against regular Night Stalkers. Plus, I really wanted to be able to shoot down drones as needed, without wiping out my reserves every time.

  Now that we were at this point, I honestly would have preferred to remain holed up in the church tower and continue leveling our stats as much as possible, but I knew it was killing Harper not knowing how Savannah was doing.

  In the end, I finally gave her a goal to aim for, promising that we would check on her older sister once she could use fire magic. And now that she had reached that level, she had patiently waited for me to make my last adjustment to my own abilities before leaving.

  When we finally got ready to go, I realize that she had gotten significantly taller again, her body beginning to look more like she was a really skinny fourteen-year-old instead of ten. Her hair was a ton longer too, going down well past her shoulders, almost to the middle of her back. I had no idea what the reason was though, since I had invested her points purely into Thermoacoustic.

  However, when I checked her Mass stat, I saw that it had gone up by 8 points, now being 43, and it appeared my Mass stat had increased a little too, with it being up by 3 points to 117 total.

  So maybe it was due to the evolution? Sort of like accelerating her natural growth? Or maybe raising stats by a certain amount just happened to increase mass too?

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure.

  However, it had affected more than just her height and hair-length. Her arms now looked normal-size, in comparison to the rest of her body. And, checking the details of her Mass stat confirmed that her ‘Enlarged Hands,’ ‘Enlarged Feet,’ and ‘Elongated Arms’ had all just vanished from her augmentations list.

  Her skill ‘Quadrupedal’ had also disappeared.

  Her speed hadn’t changed technically, since the displayed number was based on her wings, but I saw that she now only had two speed stats – one for her wings, and one for two legs.

  Which meant, she truly had lost her ability to efficiently run on all fours.

  It wasn’t a huge sacrifice in my opinion, and she didn’t seem to care either considering she hadn’t really run on all fours since she had gotten wings.

  However, either way, Harper looked a lot different now from when I first met her, and it had only been about a week!

  There was nothing I could really do about it though, and she seemed fine with her rapid physical growth. If anything, she was happy to be looking like a teenager instead of a little girl.

  I still didn’t hesitate to remind her she was only ten chronologically, finding some amusement in teasing her about it, much to her chagrin. Granted, she wasn’t really focused on her age at the moment, instead being much more concerned about her older sister.

  On the way there, she opted to ride on my back instead of flying herself, trying to enjoy the cityscape scenery below us, instead of thinking about what awaited her at the hospital. Of course, her worst fear was that Savannah had ended up dying, but honestly the knife hadn’t even been that big. Although, while I understood that the size wasn’t the only issue here, I wasn’t nearly as worried about her as Harper was.

  I also wasn’t as attached either, to be honest.

  It was true that I had a desire to keep Savannah alive at this point, but I felt like her dying wouldn’t be the end of the world, unlike how it would affect Harper. Because her family, especially her older sister, felt to Harper like her last connection to her human self.

  On the way there, we did discover one issue with Harper’s rapid growth – specifically, with her longer white hair. It wasn’t ideal for flying, really getting in her face and just whipping around everywhere in general due to my pounding wings.

  Thus, we made a short stop on a rooftop about halfway to the hospital to chop off most of it. I helped her gather it all up on top of her head, and then swiftly sliced through it with my tail, leaving the majority of it about jaw-length once she let if fall loose again.

  The motion reminded me of having to cut my own hair when I first woke up, though I had cut it much shorter than hers. I doubted I had sported long hair as a human, which meant I must have just experienced the same rapid growth that she had, almost as if our evolutions were accelerating our biological clocks by years.

  I mean, really that seemed to be exactly what was happening, especially in Harper’s case. But then, it made me wonder how old my body was when considering how many evolutions I had undergone. Certainly, I still looked no older than my early twenties, but natural evolutions usually took millions of years, or something like that…

  Ugh, just the thought was making my head hurt.

  At this point, age had zero effect on my life, so I wasn’t going to worry about it.

  Once Harper trimmed her bangs down a little with her own tail, she returned to my back and we resumed our trip.

  When we dropped down in the parking lot right in front of the Radiation Therapy entrance, we found Garrett sitting just inside the glass doors, reading a magazine. He jumped in surprise when we landed, due to our proximity, looking up with wide beady brown eyes.

  “O-Oh, I’ll go get…err, someone,” he said, more to himself than us, scrambling to put some distance between us since I had closed the remaining gap by walking right up to the entrance.

  Harper stayed on my back, her arms wrapped around my neck, her chin on my shoulder, while we waited patiently. Of course, we could just walk in, but neither of us had any idea where she might be in the semi-labyrinth of a building.

  ‘He smelled funny,’ Harper commented in her thoughts.

  I recalled that her sense of smell had been upgraded from the start, much like my vision was upgraded a little, which meant I hadn’t noticed whatever she had. Focusing more intently on her recent memory of how he smelled, I instantly pulled away when I recognized it, not wanting Harper to know what it was.

  Garrett smelled like semen, like a guy who had either freshly had sex or at least recently relieved himself in the last day. Of course, with the electricity still off and no running water, he wouldn’t be able to easily clean himself.

  ‘What is it?’ she pressed when I attempted to block her from my reaction.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said as casually as possible. ‘Not important.’

  I could tell she wanted to keep pushing the issue, her curiosity getting the better of her, but when my thoughts hardened towards her due to her disobedience, she backed off. There was no way in hell I was going to let her know about something like that, even if it were true that a lot of kids her age already talked about that kind of stuff.

  Usually around 10 years old, or 5th grade, was when public schools began educating kids on sex, and also when a ton of kids developed major potty mouths – especially boys.

  However, unlike those little shits, Harper was in my care, and I wouldn’t let her be exposed to anything that would destroy her still-intact innocence – at least when it came to this kind of stuff.

  Hard to say she was completely innocent when she herself had killed two of those human bastards who tried kidnapping Savannah and Sarah.

  As we waited, Tony ended up being the first person to come out, unlike what we were expecting. He looked uncomfortable, probably because the last time we were here, Harper pummeled his two-timing ex’s head into the floor. “Umm, hey. Garrett is getting Randy, so…” he hesitated, seeming to reg
ister with wide eyes that the girl on my back looked older than just two days ago.

  “We’re here to see my sister,” Harper retorted. “Take us to her.”

  His dark brown eyes widened even more. “Oh.” He paused, turning slightly, probably realizing he didn’t really have a choice. “Umm…Okay.”

  We followed him inside, only to meet up with Randy in the dark hallway after the first lobby.

  Tony spoke up before the older man could. “They want to see Savannah,” he announced.

  Randy stopped where he was, not responding right away. “O-Okay, I’ll take them from here.”

  Why was everyone so nervous? Was there something they didn’t want us to know? And I knew it wasn’t just me, because Harper was thinking the same thing, being just as suspicious of their behavior.

  Even though Randy said he would take us himself, Tony still tagged along. They led us back into the second lobby that was lit up by sunlight, only for us to find it empty except for Garrett – no refugees – before taking us into a stairwell to the second floor.

  Surprisingly, the hallway wasn’t as dark as I was expecting, since all the rooms with windows to the outside had their doors open. I also realized the humans must usually stay on a different floor, considering all the rooms I saw were empty and bare. There was certainly no sign that anyone stayed in them.

  Savannah had her door open as well, with us finding her looking in the other direction, just staring out the window at the cityscape, the head of the bed elevated slightly – there weren’t any tall buildings blocking her view from this angle, only a deserted interstate in the distance that ran through the city. In fact, the biggest obstacle to her view was a nearby midnight tower a good two miles away, which meant she had a lot to look at overall, including the black sky-piercing spikes as far as the eye could see.

  “Honey,” Randy announced when he entered the room. “Mason and Harper are here.”

  I had to duck a little to enter through the doorway, with Harper still content to stay on my back.

  Savannah slowly turned her head towards us, having a delayed reaction in registering who we were. “Oh. Hi. Thanks for coming,” she said in a monotone.

  Randy turned towards us with an apologetic expression. “Emma gave her some pretty strong pain medicine, so she’s been a little loopy. Looks like she’s doing well though. The wound already looks a ton better, so she might be able to get out of bed and move around on her own in the next week. Maybe even sooner.”

  Tony decided to carefully slip past me as Randy spoke.

  I ignored the younger guy, my eyes narrowing at the older man’s overall posture, seeing his nervousness leak through again. “What did you do with Sarah?” I asked seriously, causing Tony to flinch, before he hurried on to the end of Savannah’s bed.

  The older man blanched. “S-She…she’s not here. We sent her on her way, so–”

  “Are you shitting me right now?” I snapped. “She tried to kill your granddaughter!”

  “I know, I know,” he agreed in a rush. “Trust me, I know. But when all this first started, we made an oath to follow the law, even though there’s not really anyone to enforce them. And yes, I’m pissed at her, but this kind of thing would get her prison-time at most – not the death penalty, so–”

  “So, you gave her neither!” I snapped again. “You just let her go!”

  He of course didn’t really know how to respond, seeming to fumble with words incoherently for a moment, before changing subjects entirely.

  “T-There’s something else we need to tell you,” he finally managed.

  My eyes narrowed. “What?” I said between my teeth.

  He grimaced, taking a step back. “W-We didn’t tell them anything, but there was a News Crew here the day before yesterday. I guess they intercepted our conversation with those soldiers, and so they sent out a group to try to find us.” His expression suddenly turned dark. “Those vultures are so desperate for something new to talk about, that they publicized the whole damn thing before our broken government could stop them. The world knows about Harper and you both, and the fact that you’re not like the rest.”

  So, that was the real reason why they were all so nervous.

  “Where are they now?” I demanded.

  He gulped. “I don’t know. But we had just returned from dropping off all the people you saved at the powerplant – oh, and they wanted to thank you, by the way, for saving their lives, and they said they knew how the Night Stalkers got in, so they felt confident they would be alright…” He paused, seeming to backtrack. “But I had mentioned where we had come from to the news reporters, before they asked about you two, so they might have gone there, and…” His voice trailed off, probably realizing that those humans wouldn’t be so tightlipped about what I had done.

  Dammit, what an annoyance.

  But then again, was this actually a bad thing? I really didn’t want to deal with the military being on my ass, so if I spoke with these nosy humans, then maybe I could indirectly communicate with the government – tell them I was on their side.

  I wasn’t really. The only side I was on, was my own.

  But I would be foolish to think I could take on the whole world by myself, especially when I had Night Stalkers to worry about too. Without some kind of ally, I might get crushed from two sides instead of one.

  Harper finally dropped off my back to go to Savannah, knowing she didn’t need to worry about any of this stuff, since she would just do what I told her. Plus, there was nothing she could do about Sarah at this point – the twenty-something year old was probably long gone. I knew that too, and even knew this outcome would probably happen, but I was still pissed as hell about it.

  But this newest development might actually be helpful if I was smart in how I handled it.

  Needless to say, Randy didn’t know what else to add, unsure about my expression. I was about to change the subject back to Sarah and berate him more, just because I was still pissed about it, only to stop when I sensed Harper react oddly just as Savannah began speaking.

  The nineteen-year-old’s tone was still loopy sounding. “Hi, sis. I’m glad you–”

  In a flash, Harper shoved her face next to Savannah’s shoulder, before looking back at me with a hard expression. “Her sheets smell like Garrett,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  “Garrett?” Savannah repeated, only to grimace. “Ugh. I had this really horrible dream,” she added quietly, speaking to no one in particular. “Where he…right in front of me…” Her voice trailed off as she cringed, shaking her head as if to rid her mind of the dream-like memory.

  Randy, Tony, and I all froze solid, but for three very different reasons. For Randy, it was confusion. For Tony, it was suspicion. And for me?

  It was pure unadulterated rage.

  I was already angry from Savannah getting hurt in the first place, though Harper beating Sarah’s head into the floor just before I got there helped alleviated that rage momentary. Still, I had full intentions on killing that slut, and only stopped because Savannah asked me not to, as Harper was dragging the woman’s limp body out of the room by her blonde hair.

  So, my fuse was already short.

  But then, Randy just told me that they let her go! The bastard let her go!

  I was pissed!

  I felt like a soda bottle that had been shaken.

  And now, the cap had finally blown.

  “What?” Randy asked, sounding dumbfounded, not fully comprehending what Harper or Savannah were saying. “Garrett? I was in here all night, and he didn’t come by.”

  “He was in here this morning,” Tony countered with a furrowed brow, not having quite pieced it together yet. “I came to check on her when you were talking with Emma around five this morning, and–”

  I abruptly took a step forward. “YOU LET THAT BASTARD SEXUALLY ASSAULT HER?!” I roared in Randy’s face at the top of my lungs, causing him to fall back on his ass.

  Technically, there wasn’t even evide
nce that the asshole had physically touched her, but as far as I was concerned, him even ‘getting off’ in her presence while she was drugged might as well have been sexual assault.

  I didn’t give Randy a chance to respond though, bolting out of the door at lightning speed, seeing red in my vision as I became consumed with a murderous wrath unlike anything I had experienced before. There were no longer any coherent thoughts in my mind, and Harper might as well have not even existed in that moment – no thoughts of her innocence to hold me back.

  The entire world vanished before my eyes as I developed tunnel vision, a laser-like focus eating away everything in my peripheral.

  Now there were only two truths in the world – I was a predator, and I was hunting my prey. Except that my prey was a predator himself, just a lesser one.

  I couldn’t even fathom why I was so pissed, considering I could measure a time in days, when Savannah had almost been kidnapped and I couldn’t have cared less about what fate awaited her, knowing full well what those bastards had intended.

  It was because it hadn’t been my problem then.

  But I supposed I had made it my problem now.

  Bursting into the sunlit lobby, I saw my prey was nowhere in sight, so I went to the next likeliest location – where I had originally found him. However, when I got outside, I discovered he wasn’t there either, prompting me to backtrack, wondering if enhancing my own sense of smell would help me track him down.

  Just as I returned to the sunlit lobby, I found him casually walking out of a doorway, which I realized was a family bathroom. At the same moment, both Randy and Tony came rushing out of the stairwell, with the older man yelling at me.

  “Just wait! Please! We shouldn’t jump to conclusions, and–”

  “Are you shitting me right now?!” I roared back, before turning my attention to Garrett, who was thoroughly about to piss his pants, even though he had just used the bathroom. “What did you do to Savannah?!” I demanded, wanting him to admit it, about to torture him to death to get him to do so.