Soldier of Time

XXI: The Victorious (3)

The stairs were wide, and they turned as they went down, making a huge square. In the middle of a long direct fall to the lobby, the soldiers saw Hanibal go down and prepared to face him. Still, the killer had already activated his special ability, and everything slowed down. In contrast, Hanibal saw how a silhouette of him leapt into the gap left by the square of stairs, firing in two directions.

The blond young man imitated said silhouette without thinking and shooting, and he killed two of the soldiers who were not expecting that movement. Upon landing, he saw the silhouette straightened up to his full height and dodged three shots, then ran quickly and went down while he evaded another burst of shots thrown by the soldiers.

By imitating this movement, this achievement evades all the shots. The soldiers were surprised as the dust of the shots hitting the wall flew into the environment.

Now Hanibal was face to face with the remaining soldiers. His power was activated, and he saw what he had to do perfectly and did it.

He advanced from the front elusively, moving through the enemy shots laterally while he fired and hit the heads of his opponents. One of the soldiers lunged against him, but he received him with a blow with the pistol handle that forced him to stand up and receive a shot from one of his companions in the background.

Hanibal’s weapons had run out of bullets, and he tossed them into the air to remove two knives from his belt. He moved, making precise cuts and dodging shots with torso and head movements.

Two of the soldiers backed off and tried to shoot, but Hanibal threw his knife and killed one by causing the blood of that soldier to run into the eye of the soldier next to him. He was blinded for a second and lost the killer from sight just to open his eyes and see him by his side, holding a knife near his throat. The man saw him and tried to say something, but Hanibal wordlessly sliced his neck.

After that, he took his weapons, reloaded them, and continued to descend, leaving a wave of the dead behind him.

The elevator opened in the hotel parking lot, and Karen’s soldiers saw her appear. She ordered them to protect the entrance and not to let anyone pass while she took the Chancellor by the hand and led her running to the vehicle.

“Where is Albert!?” She demanded from the Chancellor whose naturalness had dissipated in the sea of bullets. Her calmness was no longer more than a pleasant memory of a better time, a time where the devil himself was not looking for her to assassinate her.

“He is in the panic room. How should you be?!”

Karen no longer had time for formalities or delicacies. She felt the razor on her neck, and Hanibal’s intent to kill made her blood run cold. Karen managed to get into the vehicle and started it, but Hanibal would not let her escape.

In the hotel room, the Deer received a beating, the robot would beat him against the walls, and his head would spin. The robot tried to place his hands once more on the body of the Deer, but he stopped time.

He waited for a second for his adrenaline to calm down, and he could think clearly. The robot was about to put his hands on him, so when he released the time the Deer dropped, escaping from his grip and rolling on the ground, he took his gun and tried to shoot him.

But this one jumped, falling on him and placing his hands on his neck after knocking down the gun.

The Deer struggled to try to separate the robot’s hands from his neck, but it was useless. It had much more strength than him, and suddenly he heard Simon’s voice on the radio saying, “Deer, lift your head from him!”

The Deer put his hand on the metal chin of that machine and, using all his strength, and raised his face to see how it blew to pieces after Simon’s shot.

The creature stopped moving, and the Deer took a breath before getting up.

“Simon, the chancellor?”

“He’s in the panic room.”

“And Hanibal?”

“He completely ignores him, and he didn’t even go into the room.”

“What…!!”

Hearing that, the Deer began to run until he reached the room where the Chancellor was, and through the communicator, he asked, “Are you OK?”

“Yes, I am safe. How is the Chancellor?”

The Deer stopped time and began to think, and everything was very wrong.

“Simon! Where’s Karen?”

Simon kept silent while Billy fired outside the room. The attack was almost at the minimum intensity as if the objective had been achieved, Simon with his sight, he was looking for Karen only to see her on the street getting into the truck and driving at full speed.

“She’s downstairs! She’s on the run with the commission woman!”

It took the Deer two seconds to put the puzzle pieces together and said as he ran to the elevator.

“That woman is the real chancellor!”

Simon stood up, looked at Billy, who was still watching, and said, “I owe you a beer and an explanation, don’t die!”

And with those words, Simon jumped into the void. Billy ran to the window to see how Simon slid down the rope to reach the ground. As the Deer got to the elevator in the other building, he watched as several of the soldiers stood up and said.

“Give medical attention to those who need it. Karen is in danger. I’m going to chase her.”

He entered the elevator and descended with speed, and when he left the hotel, Simon was waiting for him with an open door of the vehicle, he got on, and they shot in the direction of Karen.

“How will we reach them?” Slevin asked seriously.

“Don’t worry, I can see them...” Simon said. In the car with Karen, the Chancellor was terrified.

She is she was driving at full speed, and she was trying to get to the barracks quickly. If she could take the Chancellor to the government palace or to the barracks, she would be safe.

The woman was trying her best not to fall from her seat in the back of the truck. She was trying to hold on to the doors when several shots collided with the armoured glass of the rear window.

“Get down, Chancellor!!” Karen yelled as she drove with speed.

Hanibal chased her closely on a motorcycle. He was firing, but the armoured truck was not taking any damage. Karen, who was concentrating on the road, felt her adrenaline rise, and she said to try to reassure the woman.

“Calm down, Chancellor! Nothing will happen. You are safe in this vehicle!”

But when she finished saying that, another robot landed on the hood of the car with such force that it turned over instantly. The truck slid quite a bit on its roof until it collided with a fountain in a small square.

Karen’s head was spinning, a trickle of blood trickled into her right eye as her breath made it difficult for her to hold air. The smell of burning metal and gasoline invaded her lungs with such severity that the young woman preferred to choke than to breathe that pestilence.

For a few moments, she had forgotten who she was and what she should do until the moan of a woman in the back seat reminded her of her role. The lieutenant reached out to search for her weapon, enduring such intense pain that her teeth gritted with every inch that she moved.

The back door of the van was ripped completely off, and the robot grabbed the woman and dragged her out of the car. He dragged her a bit on the asphalt, ignoring Karen’s futile attempts to stop him.

The robot threw the Chancellor in the center of the road like someone who throws a sack of excrement in a stable. The woman was loudly crying as she looked at whoever was moving her with total confusion, her eyes widening each time, trying to make sense of that situation. Her breathing was getting weaker, but her mind was travelling through a million possibilities.

Hanibal parked and walked slowly towards the woman. She was stunned looking at the robot, and when Hanibal put her gun against her head.

“Jericho!” The girl said while pointing with her finger at the robot.

To which Hanibal smiled and shot without hesitation, destroying the poor woman’s head. The Chancellor’s brains fell scattered on the floor at the feet of that psychopath. His eyes, once full of life, were now empty sockets. The story of that woman had ended.

Karen was crawling to get out of it in the car, the blow hurt a lot, but she put all her effort into achieving it. When she managed it as best she could, she stood up and looked at the Chancellor on the ground and a Hanibal walking away from her. Seeing him, she tried to take her gun from him, but in her effort to get it out, she noticed she had left it in the car.

The murderer looked at her and smiled, the girl disappeared before her sight using her power, but Hanibal activating his, moved his arm a little to one side of him, and pulled his trigger.

The bullet was fired, hitting the young woman’s chest and forcing her to fall into the fountain behind her. Hanibal made to finish it but heard several vehicles approaching. Just like his mission, he already had finished. The man got on his motorcycle and disappeared from the scene.

A few minutes later, Simon and the Deer arrived at the site only to find a soaked Karen sitting a few meters from the corpse of the Chancellor. When she saw the Deer, she said with teary eyes of frustration and sadness and touching with her finger where the bullet had lodged in her vest.

“He killed me too!!”

Slevin looked at her and remembered what it felt like to have his life in the hands of that murderer. Hanibal King had won once more.