Just as Lily’s frantic words hung in the air a dark shape launched itself from the wooded embanknt. It was Adam.
Clad in the girl’s dress he flew through the air. The heavy hamr was held high.
The entire movent was a blur of calculated violence.
It was so fast so unexpected that no one on the road below had ti to react. One mont they were staring up at an empty path the next a costud nightmare was upon them.
He landed directly in front of the officer who had been questioning Lily.
The hamr swung down in a brutal unstoppable arc.
It crashed into the side of the officer’s head.
The impact made a sickening crunch a wet solid sound that cut through the night.
The officer’s eyes went wide with shock for a split second. Then he collapsed like a sack of bricks. He fell behind the police van unconscious before he even hit the ground.
Adam didn’t pause. There was no room for hesitation.
The mont his feet touched the asphalt he twisted his body.
His montum carried him into a spin.
With his free hand he flung the sharpened piece of rebar.
The makeshift spear shot through the air. It was a dark arrow seeking its target.
It struck one of the boys who had fled the hill the one who had scread about Adam being a monster.
The tal point sank deep into the boy’s side. He went down without a sound collapsing in a heap on the road.
Now all Adam held was the hamr. Two enemies down in less than three seconds.
The students who had been huddled together near the police van scattered. The scene descended into chaos.
Lily’s face drained of all color turning a pasty white. Her legs gave out from under her. She crumpled to the ground her body shaking uncontrollably with terror. She couldn’t even scream anymore.
The remaining students ran in every direction screaming their lungs out. They fled into the darkness leaving the carnage behind.
The second police officer the one who had watched Adam die before reacted with a speed born of training and panic. He whipped his service pistol from its holster.
The movent was a blur of practiced efficiency.
Adam’s attention snapped to him instantly.
He was the only real threat left. Adam began to move forward. He intended to close the distance before the officer could get a clear shot. He needed to get within range of the hamr.
But he was too late. He had underestimated the speed of a trained officer. He had miscalculated.
A deafening BANG split the night air. An invisible force slamd into Adam’s chest.
It threw him backward. It was a pain unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
It was not the blunt force of a baton, the sharp slice of a blade.
It was a searing tearing agony that seed to incinerate him from the inside out. He had never been shot before. The force of the bullet sent him stumbling back.
A gaping hole was now torn through his chest and the girl’s blouse he wore.
The officer didn’t hesitate.
BANG!
A second shot rang out.
It hit Adam in the other side of his chest. His body was thrown back further his legs buckling.
He fell to his knees. His vision was swimming. The world turned into a blurry ss of flashing lights and screaming faces. The hamr fell from his hand clattering on the asphalt.
The officer kept firing his face a mask of cold professionalism as he neutralized the threat.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
More bullets tore through Adam’s body.
One of them struck him in the head.
The world dissolved into an instantaneous painless flash of white light. Then absolute darkness.
He was dead.
In the familiar empty void Adam’s consciousness floated.
He was a disembodied thought in a sea of nothing.
I knew I would die the mont the police showed up he thought. A sense of detached resignation washed over him.
The shock of being shot the searing pain it was all just another mory now.
Another death to add to his growing collection. It seed I’ll need a new plan. The frontal assault had failed.
As he floated in the darkness the familiar blue system window materialized before him. But this ti the ssage was different. The text glowed with a slightly different hue.
[FATAL DAMAGE DETECTED. HOST VITALITY AT ZERO.]
[THREAT LEVEL IN CURRENT LOOP EXCEEDS PREVIOUS PARATERS.]
[SYSTEM HAS IDENTIFIED A NEW OPTIMAL RETURN POINT.]
[REQUESTING HOST’S PERMISSION TO SHIFT REVIVAL TO NEW CHECKPOINT.]
[< YES >] [< NO >]
Adam stared at the ssage. A flicker of surprise cut through his post-death apathy.
This was new. This was a change in the rules.
The system had never asked for his permission before. It had always sent him back to the sa mont in Jas’s office without any input from him.
A new return point... what did that an? A chance to change the initial conditions? A different starting line? The possibilities were intriguing. It was a variable he hadn’t accounted for.
He didn’t need to think about it for long.
The old loop was a dead end.
It always started with him in a position of weakness reliant on the actions of others.
It always led to the sa cycle of violence. He needed to change the ga not just his strategy within it.
He focused his intent on the "YES" option.
The mont he made his choice the word pulsed with a bright light.
The system window dissolved. The darkness around him began to warp and twist.
It pulled him into a vortex of swirling colors and fragnted images.
He saw flashes of his past deaths. The tal rod. The hands on his throat. The wire. The explosion.
The gunshot. The sensation was disorienting entirely different from his previous revivals.
He felt as though he was being pulled apart and reassembled not just through ti but through space as well.
The process felt both instantaneous and like an eternity. He was a piece of data being rewritten and transferred to a new location.
Then as suddenly as it began it stopped. He was sowhere else.
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