Task Force Delta

Chapter 13: Crimson Currents and Static Thunder

Yuki's words hung cold in the air, defiant against the deafening roar of the downpour.

The masked enforcer didn't respond with words. The glowing crimson slits of his porcelain mask flickered, the miniature core on his temples whining with a higher, harsher frequency as he shifted his stance in the churned mud.

"Cap! We're not letting you tank him alone!" Mars shouted, leaping off the catwalk. He hit the ground running, his boots splashing through the mire as he locked onto his Kirin's strict sequence.

Horizontal!

Mars swept his right katana in a blinding arc, slicing straight through a sudden wall of pressurized water the enforcer raised to block him.

Vertical!

Before the enforcer could counter, Rudy was already in position, stepping past Mars's flank with Icy Cold raised. "Kirin Art: Absolute Zero!" Rudy fired two frosted rounds, not at the enforcer, but at the puddle beneath the masked man's boots, flash-freezing the groundwater into a solid block of ice to lock his movement.

Sensing his footing pinned, the enforcer flicked his wrist to summon a wave, but Vanya dropped from the shadow of a freight car behind him. Moving without an X-Gene or a Kirin contract to track, she slipped beneath his peripheral vision and drove a heavy stun baton straight into the side of his knee, forcing his leg to buckle.

"Now, Yuki!" Mars yelled.

Yuki didn't waste a millisecond of the opening her team created. Ignoring the intense, burning pain in her left forearm, she set her forward foot hard into the dirt, establishing an absolute, unbroken anchor point. The dark, ink-like contract runes along her neck flared wildly, creeping past her jawline and edging dangerously close to her lower lip.

She thrust both palms forward, weaving her hands into a tight, complex geometric coordinate.

"Kirin Art: Gravitational Singularity!"

The spatial field around the masked enforcer instantly warped inward. The atmospheric pressure within a five-foot radius around him condensed into a crushing, localized vortex. The ground beneath him imploded, shattered concrete and rusted metal collapsing inward as the immense spatial force threatened to crush his chest and c***k his porcelain mask to pieces.

The enforcer choked back a muffled gasp as his body was pinned to the center of the spatial crushed zone. His water-blades lost their shape, splashing helplessly into the mud. Yuki took a step forward, tightening her gauntlets to deliver the final, overwhelming spatial collapse.

She had him.

Then, deep within the masked man's chest, something shifted.

An eerie, unnatural pulse echoed through the air—a heavy, resonant thud that vibrated through the mud and rattled the bones of everyone present. It wasn't the hum of his mask's Kirin core, nor was it the fluid pressure of his hydro-kinesis. It was something far deeper, buried within his raw biological DNA.

Thump. Thump.

The optical slits on his matte-black mask flickered from crimson to a blinding, jagged violet-white.

Before Yuki could finish her strike, the water pooling in the railyard stopped flowing. It didn't just rise—it began to hum with violently elevated pressure. The liquid surrounding him turned into razor-sharp, needle-thin needles, far more piercing and dense than before.

CRACK-BOOM!

A blinding flash of violet lightning erupted directly from his body, tearing through the rain.

The air in the railyard instantly smelled of scorched ozone and heavy copper. The water-blades orbiting him began to arc with high-voltage electricity, turning his hydro-kinetic torrents into lethal, electrified plasma currents.

A secondary X-Gene.

A Dual-Gene mutation—a absolute anomaly among Human X users, forced to surface by the hyper-overclocking of his Kirin mask.

Before Mars or Rudy could leap forward to intercept, the enforcer moved at a speed that defied human sight. He didn't just step; he traveled along the path of his electrified water currents, appearing instantly in front of Yuki.

"YUKI, MOVE!" Rudy screamed.

It was too late. The enforcer thrust a palm forward, discharging a concentrated spear of pressurized, electrified water straight through Yuki's defensive field. The piercing strike shattered what remained of her gauntlets' spatial barrier, tearing through her shoulder guard and blasting her backward.

Yuki hit the mud hard, skidding across the railyard as sparks of electricity coursed over her body. She coughed up blood, her vision blurring as her spatial contract violently backfired, the black runes pulsing wildly against her skin.

The masked enforcer walked toward her through the blinding rain, every step leaving a scorched, steaming footprint in the mud. He raised his right hand, a jagged blade of electrified water forming around his arm, aimed directly at her throat to finish the execution.

Mars and Rudy rushed forward in desperation, but the high-voltage atmospheric pressure radiating from the enforcer blew them both off their feet, throwing them into the rusted siding of a train car.

The enforcer stood over Yuki, his face mask humming with lethal violet light. He raised his arm, driving the electrified water blade down toward her chest.

Yuki's eyes began to flutter shut. But as consciousness slipped away, the fabric of her coat burned away along her spine.

Beneath her skin, right between her shoulder blades, an ancient, dormant mark—one completely separate from her Kirin contract runes—began to burn with a soft, blinding white luminescence. The rain falling directly above her back froze in mid-air, defying gravity as a strange, overwhelming energy began to manifest from her flesh...