8 CHASE

The guards had a hard time spotting Kevin because of the darkness and his silent teleportation. He soon reached the black Camry, but the beeping noise made by the car when he unlocked the door gave away his position.

The sounds of gunshots rang out, followed by the sound of the car's rear windshield breaking. Kevin quickly got in the car.

"Aghh..."

A cry of pain escaped his mouth just as he tried closing the door after getting into the driver's seat.

A bullet had gone straight through his left forearm.

Kevin's face turned pale, but the adrenaline running through his veins kept him focused on getting away in one piece.

He quickly lowered his head, turned the key with his right hand, and stepped on the accelerator, trying to get out of the parking lot as fast as possible.

Kevin squeezed out all the remaining energy in his body and formed a rebound shield to cover the back of the car.

  [Rebound Shield Experience +1]

A rain of bullets came flying towards the barrier faster than the speed of sound; but then, an astonishing scene occurred!

The space barrier fluctuated slightly, and the bullets seemed to be swallowed by the barrier and disappeared without a trace!

Kevin got a vision of bullets entering an empty void. In that space, the metal bullets rapidly decomposed into...nothing...eroded by the void.

The kinetic energy carried by the bullets was also absorbed by this space and combined to form a blue energy layer around the shield.

Kevin had a hunch that he could reflect this energy as long as he wanted to, but he couldn't do so now; it took all his focus to drive with one arm injured and he didn't have it in him to aim backwards.

In that instant, his entire focus shifted to the excruciating pain in his arm and manoeuvring the vehicle. His brain had hardly any other thoughts to pay attention to.

The car rushed away from the base at incredible speed, leaving behind a pissed Captain Kenny.

"Mother fucker! Should have shot that bastard!"

Captain Kenny looked hideous as he stared at the black vehicle driving away in the night in the moonlight.

"And who the fuck taught him to drive? I thought he'd never been out of his cell!"

There was silence all around. Nobody really had an answer. #37 had never seen the outside world and was created in the facility. How he learned to drive was anyone's guess.

"What are you lot staring at my face for? Get in the fucking car and go after him!"

Just when he ordered the pursuit, Kevin had already gained a considerable head start. He had turned on the GPS navigation and was driving straight towards the nearest city.

His forehead was covered with sweat, and his face had turned pale because of blood loss.

It was only because of his strong desire to live, the absence of other vehicles on the road, and that he had worked as an Uber driver in his past life that he hadn't crashed the car yet.

Looking at the speeding vehicle in the distance, Kenny shouted at his driver.

"Hurry up! Catch him before the bastard ends up killing himself!"    

The guard driving the car was already sweating. "I'm going as fast as I can, sir!"

"Then go faster, damn it!" 

They could only watch as the car got closer and closer to the city. The bullets fired at it seemed to have no effect at all.

Kenny had a cold look on his face. "I'll see how far you can run! Eventually you'll end in my grasp, and this time..." He was already imagining all the delightful torture he would inflict upon the boy once in his grasp.

Soon they approached the slums outside the city and saw a black vehicle riddled with bullet holes with smoke coming out of the engine. The boy was nowhere to be seen, and it was difficult to find any traces in the night.

After searching for a while and finding no clues, Kenny had to return to the base.

"Keep searching! I want him found before dawn!" He barked his last order before returning.

Experimental Base No. 23.

Inside an executive suite office at the centre of the institution, the hot-blooded captain sat with the demeanour of a drowned mouse.

"Can you please explain to me the circumstances under which a low-level mutant managed to escape this super secure facility under the watchful eyes of your extremely competent men?"

The middle-aged man leaning back on the chair, wearing a black suit and slicked-back hair, asked a sweating Kenny in a casual tone.

Despite the casual tone and the friendly smile of the man, Kenny knew Alejandro was anything but friendly. Usually, when your boss gets angry at you, you would at worst lose your job, but with Alejandro, you might just inexplicably disappear and find yourself on his experiment table.

Kenny did his best to calm his nerves and said, "We were caught off guard sir, the mutant displayed abilities that were not mentioned in the briefing..."

Hearing this, Alejandro's expression turned a little curious. "Is that so?"

Originally, he cared little about this #37. After all, it was just an ordinary experimental subject in his eyes. There were many second-grade mutants locked in this facility.

He picked up the newly arrived file on his table and gave it a casual read.

It contained an analysis of #37's newly demonstrated abilities, as well as his complete history since the day of his creation.

Possible new abilities:

Mutant ability-Teleportation:

The mutant seems to be capable of short-distance teleportation and does not seem to require a visual lock on the target location. 

Mutant ability-Energy beams:

Mutant can emit dark energy beams. Initial analysis shows that the beams have high penetration, capable of decomposing any matter they touch. The specific upper limit of damage is unknown and requires further testing...

In a short period, the researchers had analysed Kevin's abilities accurately.

If the effect of the rebound shield hadn't been very subtle, and had it not been too dark to notice it, they would have analysed it as well.

After going through the supposed new abilities that caught the entire security team with their pants down, Alejandro lost interest in #37 once again.

"Tch, it's still a failure..."

He shook his head.

As a mutant cloned from the genes of two A-class mutants, # 37 only had this much to show. To be honest, he was quite disappointed; after all, he had headed the Omega Project personally and held very high expectations for it.

At first, he could only absorb sunlight and was disregarded as a failure. Now it turns out that the kid had hidden his best abilities, but they only turned out to be this much?

Can Teleport, but just a few metres? We have speedsters that run faster than sound.

Can shoot black lasers, but what's the use? Just use a gun to kill people and a rocket launcher to blow up walls. We already have laser weapons, anyway. There's nothing novel about lasers anymore.

"What a waste of time and money." He sighed. "Just get him back to base. Let's see if we can juice him up and increase his teleportation range."

-END OF CHAPTER-

If you like this work, please consider supporting me at Pate@n/DreamyApe.