“That’s that.” She wiped sweat off her forehead as finished scouting the Hilton district. She hopped from building to building, light footed like a ninja. She reached the apartment in no time.

  She finally reached the white cluster of buildings, she jumped onto the crashpad then stepped into her apartment from the window into Sharkz’ room.

  The light from the window illuminated the room, next to it was a bed, with splotch’s tank which was currently empty. Next to the tank was a desk where Aswhin sat, a black laptop was there and he was typing frantically.

  “Oh you're here! Took you longer than usual though, I even had enough time to pass by hud’s place to get the hack module.”

  “I took my time.”

  “Is that sweat?”

  “It’s just water I ran into a dude–”

  “I can smell it, Carias. What were you doing?”

  “Nothing important, let’s just start–”

  “Carias. I’m serious.”

  “I said it was nothing cmon leave–”

  “Carias!” He grabbed her arm firmly, a bit too firm, she felt trapped. She hated that feeling. Actually. She despised it. “Sharkz said you shouldn’t train. Your unstable and getting out of your comfort zone could–”

  “I KNOW!” Her voice stirred wind in the room and loosened Aswhin’s grip as he stumbled back, his head dizzy. The royal authority was still present, and worked on humans.

  “Sorry I didn’t mean to–”

  “It’s okay Carias, just– sit down. Let's work on this."

  There was a moment of awkward silence, with the occasional typing and beeps coming from the computer.

  “Alright, give me the phone.” She handed him the phone, still silent, embarrassed.

  “First we copy the files. Since we can’t directly get the info from the phone onto the Drive we’ll pass by the laptop that removes the security measure thanks to the module.” He proceeded with the steps as he spoke, the green bar on the PC took a moment to fill up.

  “Cmere let's take a look at the things they got, looks like we got some encrypted stuff as well.”

  Carias was listening silently till now. She got a bit closer. “Theres no chair.” She promptly swayed her hand as water formed a stool she sat on. She mumbled a response. “Prolly more info for someone with more clearance.”

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  “Like that scientist mhmnn. They even have spies that look like normal people. They should really control the entries into the city.

  “Thougt the Parkour group and Sharkz kept the city safe enough, I suppose.” She looked at the screen, five files were there each labeled : Hybrids ; SuperHumans ; Symbiote ; HumanA1 ; HybridI1E

  “What you wanna start with?”

  “Hybrid I guess?”

  He opened the file with the distinct noise of two clicks.

  Videos, images, documents of text all loaded filling up the whole page. He scrolled down as the documents kept loading, seemingly endless. They were mostly of Sharkz and Carias from different angles, some blurry pictures of earlier fights with a few– embarrassing pictures, to say the least.

  “Woah that’s–”

  “A lot. Too fucking much!” The table under his hand sizzled. “They have absolutely no aspect of privacy, they're all toxic, a bunch of narcissistic idiots who only care about money and their lives! I’ve seen enough.” He got up, and exited the room, by the window. “I’m gonna go buy new phones. I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”

  There was a small pause, the busy city was silent and she sat there.

  Carias stood up from her water chair and dismissed it with a flick of her hand, and sat on the cheap ‘ergonomic chair’ Aswhin was previously sitting on. She took a deep breath and took the mouse clicking out from the ‘Hybrids’ folder.

  She thought : ‘Let’s see what we have on our hands.’

  ******

  Earlier while Sharkz put a hole in Mako’s head, a middle aged man dragged his body through the city, a few wild ice shards pierced his body. It was so cold it felt like fire, not ice. His uneven steps, his breath, his blood dripping from his wounds echoed in a city that was silent (at least for now).

  “How did they not melt yet?” He mumbled under his breath. He was walking to get to a speed boat to try and escape this island.

  His white labcoat was dirty, full of dust, dirt and blood, a mix of his own and other gunmen.

  The city was quiet but ruined, cars, corpses and buildings littered the cracked, broken streets like trash.

  His ears were full of blood, the sonic booms ruptured his ear drums.

  He stopped walking. The floor rumbled, Mako’s punches cut air at mach 50. It was amazing that the whole city wasn’t destroyed due to the intensity of this fight, which was nothing for Sharkz.

  Another, even louder boom sounded. Sharkz threw Mako out of the city. This one triggered a small earthquake which made the already weakened Noah Smith fall to the ground.

  “Fuck!” He shouted in pain.

  He looked up from the ground and saw barriers that seperated the combat zone from the safe city area.

  He hastily tried to take off his lab coat to blend in with the civilians. As he reached his sleeve the long ice crystal blocked it.

  In haste, he grabbed it and tried to pull it out. It wouldn’t budge, it was even colder than before.

  “It fucking froze–” His vision started getting burry and he felt droopier. Noah looked for a place to go, to hide.

  A red glint caught his eye, he looked, trying to see where it came from.

  On top of a building a caped man stood.

  The researcher looked into the man’s red eyes for a second, thoughts of suicide, images of death, his own death filled his brain, unable to do anything else then think. His brain was overloaded and he blacked out.

  Phoebus from the Parkour group jumped down using his magrope to hang on to the light and took Noah Smith, Lead researcher at H.S.A.R.F..