“Sir, request permission to leave the building to go for a run,” Creed stood at attention, chin up, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in. His dark-blue eyes stared straight ahead, unmoving. Though his facial expression was perfectly blank, inside his emotions were a storm.
Dr. Chaunders had been updating his report for Dr. Williams’ review. It was oh-six-hundred hours and Creed wasn’t needed until oh-eight-hundred when a meeting had been called to discuss the soldier’s future. After watching Creed through his smudged glasses longer than what would seem necessary, the sniveling scientist waved at the soldier. “Fine. Go, but talk with no one and be back cleaned up and ready for our meeting in two hours.”
“Sir, yes sir,” Creed barked, spun in his black military boots and marched out of Dr. Chaunders’ office. Inwardly, he was breathing a sigh of relief. He had to get out of this building before his feigned composure completely cracked, and he needed all the poker-face he could muster to handle the meeting with Williams.
After changing into his running clothes, he hit the track that doubled as a road encircling the large campus. So content was he to breathe the crisp morning air, he didn’t notice the recognition on the face of one particular soldier busying himself with pushups just outside the doors to the Research Hospital. Nor did he take notice of the snicker as the soldier abruptly stood and jogged toward the men’s barracks.
Creed had some thinking to do and he always thought well when he ran. The girl in his dream was the first thing he wanted to allow himself to think about. He frowned slightly as he tried to place her face, to no avail. He was sure he would remember those eyes if he ever met her. The image of her beautiful dark pools slipped across his mind and he forced his legs to lift even higher, his stride longer as though he was chasing her echo.
Having taken a counter-clockwise direction around the long road, he was just passing the mess house/commissary when he noticed this part of the road had recently received a new layer of asphalt causing the chemical tar smell to assault his nose.
Ordinarily, Creed was absolutely attuned to the world around him, but with the image of the dark-eyed beauty intoxicating his emotions and the arid scent of new asphalt blinding his sense of smell, he was caught completely unawares when jumped by six metas.
No words were exchanged; the fight was its own colloquy.
Two of them had thick wooden baseball bats.
Four flashed razor sharp, nine-inch blades.
Creed caught a glimpse of the pale-blue eyes of his brother smirking twenty yards away as he watched.
A sickening whoosh sounded as one of the bat-wielding metahumans swung, hoping to make contact with Creed’s left knee. Rage exploded in Creed as his brutally fast hand grabbed the bat in midswing and used its momentum to smack the blade from the grip of the meta behind him. The same breath brought the glint of another knife flying end over end toward Creed’s chest. His anger gave him a searing calm so it felt as if he had plenty of time to swing away with the bat, changing the blade’s direction in flight. The projectile embedded itself neatly in another meta’s shoulder, but Creed hadn’t stopped to watch the impact. His assailants, on the other hand were mesmerized by the gore.
Instead, he used that second of distraction to aim at the side of another knife wielding attacker, and didn’t even flinch when he heard the sickening wet thwump as that body collapsed. Creed didn’t watch him twitch on the ground like another of the attackers staring in abject horror, his bat poised uselessly over his shoulder. Creed’s muscles sang with adrenaline as he sliced the legs right out from under the guy, dislocating both kneecaps—the attacker’s baseball bat cracking stupidly on the ground.
Four down, Creed thought with iced fury.
His brother wasn’t laughing anymore.
The remaining two attackers exchanged panicked looks before dropping their knives and stepping back—palms up in surrender.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gavil screamed at the two retreating soldiers.
“Listen, Gavil. This is your fight,” one of them barked back.
“You want his ass kicked so bad, you do it!” The two turned and jogged back toward the mess hall.
The brothers stood staring at one another. The four metas injured in the battle, forgotten. They may as well have been alone—squared off against one another, just like old times.
“Yeah, Gavil. Are you too cowardly to fight your own battles?” Creed asked voice calm.
Gavil’s eyes narrowed. “How’s your head?”
Creed had been closing the distance between himself and his brother but stopped dead in his tracks at this question.
“What?”
“Your head? How’s it feeling these days?” The older brother crossed his arms and looked expectantly at his brother. “Oh, and speaking of ‘these days’ do you know today’s date?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Gavil?” Creed watched his brother warily. He scanned the area, wondering if this was an attempt at distraction before another attack.