After taking care of the door gunner, Jake turned toward the cockpit, his mouth and sharp teeth sared with gore. He jumped into the cockpit, startling the pilot.
“What the hell?” he exclaid, turning to look over his shoulder at Jake, who was looming right behind him.
Jake briefly glanced through the cockpit glass and saw they were flying over an empty street lined with the skeletal remains of skyscrapers on either side. He then shifted his full attention to the pilot. Rembering the Mind Reader ability he’d acquired not long ago, he decided it was ti to put it to the test.
He reached out with one hand toward the pilot, who instinctively jerked his head to the side. However, there was nowhere for him to escape Jake’s grasp. He placed his clawed hand on the man’s scalp, clamping down on it. With a thought, he activated Mind Reader. Instantly, a torrent of the pilot’s recent mories flooded his mind.
Jake experienced the world through the pilot’s eyes, watching as he expertly navigated the helicopter, weaving between the towering skyscrapers. The pilot was calm yet tense, speaking to the other occupant of the chopper. However, Jake couldn’t quite make out the words—they faded into muffled echoes as if he were underwater.
Jake then realized what the pilot was doing: he was following a black figure jumping from one rooftop to another. The pilot pursued the black mutant without any trouble. For a mont, Jake marveled at the unfolding scene of the recent chase from the pilot’s perspective, watching himself dash across the rooftops with the helicopter trailing closely behind.
Jake then realized he could delve deeper into the pilot’s mories. However, as he ventured further back, everything grew hazy, and details slipped away like sand through his fingers. As he pushed deeper, the images deteriorated into completely indistinct shapes. Eventually, a dark blurry spot eclipsed his vision entirely. Jake realized he could only access a few minutes of a person’s mories, but he was confident that advancing Mind Reader to a higher rank and acquiring new upgrades would improve this ability.
Suddenly, a sense of unease flashed through his mind. It was Feral Instincts alerting him to imminent danger. He imdiately pulled back from the pilot’s mories and returned to the mont. He saw the pilot draw a pistol from its holster at his hip and point it at him. While still gripping the pilot’s head with one hand, Jake grasped the pistol with the other before the pilot could squeeze the trigger. He yanked the handgun from the human’s grip and tossed it aside. He then let go of the pilot’s head and slashed him across his throat with his claws.
The human’s eyes went wide as blood poured from the nasty gash in his throat. In the next mont, the pilot’s eyes glazed over, and his body slumped against the controls, sending the helicopter into a dangerous spin. Imdiately, alarms blared throughout the cockpit, drowning out the whir of the rotors.
He quickly surveyed the controls, hoping his Enhanced Intelligence would help him figure them out in ti to prevent the chopper from crashing. To his astonishnt, the dashboard was a complex array of holographic lights, sensors, and indicators. It looked more like the control panel of a spaceship from a sci-fi movie than the dashboard of a conventional helicopter from the real world.
Suddenly, the chopper shuddered violently as its tail struck the side of a nearby building, sending a jolt through his body. Jake decided to bail out. He didn’t have enough ti to figure out the controls, and he didn’t know if he could survive a helicopter crash or how badly he could be hurt. It was far better to leap from the falling helicopter before it smashed into the streets below.
He pushed himself out of the cockpit toward the open door, grasping at the walls for support. Below, the street lay desolate, choking with weeds and grass, littered with the remnants of rusted car fras. Jake steadied himself in the open side door as the helicopter continued its chaotic spin. He gripped the edges of the doorway, feeling the vibrations reverberate through his body. The alarms beeped and wailed, drowning out everything as the world outside swirled into a dizzying blur.
As the helicopter continued to spin around and rapidly lose altitude, it drifted across the street. Each full turn of the helicopter sent the buildings on the other side swinging closer. Jake waited for the right mont, and when the structure the chopper was going to crash into ca into view again, he pushed off with all his strength, launching himself into the air, performing a powerful mana-infused leap. As soon as he impacted the rough surface of the building, he dug his claws into the concrete. With a sharp scrape against the weathered wall, he anchored himself, his talons digging deep into the structure like fishhooks.
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Then, a few ters below him, the chopper crashed into the building with a thunderous roar, the rotating rotor blades smashing into nurous fragnts upon hitting the unforgiving concrete and stone. A foot-long piece of blade shot free and buried itself in the stone wall just inches beside his head. He dangled precariously, his eyes locked on the chopper as it plumted toward the ground several floors below.
The crashed helicopter lay on its side on the sidewalk, the broken stubs of the rotor blades still whirling above the wrecked fuselage. The chopper didn’t catch fire—at least, not right away. Jake noticed strange blue bolts crackling and shooting from the damaged engine. Then, without a warning, the helicopter suddenly exploded.
Flas erupted, and smoke billowed upward, swirling into the air. Burning debris flew up and then rained down, with so of the larger pieces soaring high enough to nearly touch his dangling feet. Jake hung from the wall, gripping it with one clawed hand, his eyes fixed on the burning wreckage below as thoughts raced through his mind.
He’d just taken the lives of two humans, yet his inner beast remained suspiciously silent. It felt strange. Then, he understood what that silence ant: he was now in complete control, not just of his body but of his emotions and desires as well. While he’d often referred to his dark urges as his inner beast, he’d always known, deep down, that they were his own desires—not so mysterious being living inside him. He’d simply been unwilling to accept that truth.
After the transformation, he’d beco a monster, both physically and ntally. At first, he was afraid to acknowledge it, which was why he’d had to co up with the “inner beast” excuse. But now, he was finally able to embrace his monster side. He could no longer pretend to be anything else, and there was no point in trying. Whether he liked it or not, he was a monster.
Evolving into Stage 2 had likely played a role in his ability to accept his beast side. While his human and monster sides had felt like two separate identities before, after evolving into Stage 2, they must’ve rged into one, reshaping Jake into what he was now. He’d gained much better self-control as well. Even though he’d just killed two survivors, it hadn’t triggered a thirst for more human blood as it had in the past when he’d fought survivors.
Jake’s thoughts drifted back to the two occupants of the chopper he’d just killed. He’d had no beef with them. He’d given them plenty of opportunities to leave him alone, but they hadn’t taken them, opting instead to continue pursuing him. While they’d had no idea how dangerous he was, that didn’t grant them immunity from the consequences of their choices. They’d made their decision and paid the price.
Giving the matter no more thought, he recalled what he’d learned from the pilot’s mories. Not much, really. He’d failed to glean anything useful while delving into the pilot’s mories. He still didn’t know what they’d been searching for while flying around the city, nor did he understand where or how they’d acquired such a powerful futuristic helicopter. The gang they belonged to, Los Demonios, must’ve had access to a significant amount of equipnt, but where they were getting it from remained a mystery to him.
At its current stage of progression, the ability wasn’t particularly useful, but he knew he could improve it by advancing it to higher ranks and acquiring upgrades. Curious about how much Mind Reader had progressed after he used it on the pilot, Jake called up its stats.
Mind Reader: Rank I (20%) (Upgrades: 0 of 4) (Uncommon)
A single brief use of the ability had advanced it by 20%, which wasn’t bad at all. Once it reached 100%, he would be able to upgrade it to Rank II, making it more powerful and useful—potentially letting him delve into a target’s mories beyond just a few minutes as well as improving their clarity.
Suddenly, he heard sothing. He imdiately turned his attention to his surroundings. Feral Instincts were silent, so he wasn’t in any kind of danger, but he scanned the street below anyway. He saw a group of survivors on the other side of the street, watching the burning wreckage of the chopper. Jake couldn’t tell if they had just discovered it or had seen it plumt from the sky. The wind carried their voices to him, but they were too far away for him to make out what was said.
One of the survivors looked up at the sky as if wondering what had caused the chopper to crash. That’s when he noticed Jake dangling from the building wall on the other side of the street. The man pointed a finger in Jake’s direction, and the rest of the survivors turned their attention toward him.
Jake looked around. Right below him, a piece of rebar protruded from the wall. He released his grip on the wall, allowing his body to drop. He caught the rebar piece, halting his descent. Then, with a quick powerful motion, he hoisted himself up onto the rebar, perching atop it and maintaining perfect balance.
He looked around one more ti and noticed a shattered window on his right. Turning toward it, he propelled off the rebar and launched into an empty room beyond, disappearing from the sight of the survivors before they could grasp what he truly was.
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