19

You cautiously open the door and walk into the lab. Just as you do this a red light starts flashing in the ceiling, and you hear the sound of a siren. Somehow, you must have activated an alarm without noticing.

It's likely that the guards will be arriving soon. They probably don't represent much of a threat to you, but eventually the police could arrive in larger numbers.

You remove the blanket from the body, to find the body of a woman in a tight spandex suit and a cape. Slightly shocked, you step back. The body is badly bruised, and her face is swollen.

Part of the suit has also been damaged by some sort of blast, but you think you recognize her from the news. You can't quite remember her name… maybe Captain White? Or was it the White Defender? She was a yon-kyu that was famous for her social work, working to defend those in the poorest communities.

There are some tubes inserted into the veins in her arms, as if somebody had been extracting her blood.

Next

There is then a loud bang as a guard violently pushes the door of the lab behind you open, cracking part of the glass wall in the process. He's very tall and extremely well-built, with the shape of a professional body-builder. His face looks rather brutish, almost animal.

Smiling cruelly, he takes out a baton from his belt. Then, he flexes his muscles, which to your surprise start to expand in size. The veins feeding them glow momentarily, as his upper uniform is partially torn in the process.

He doesn't say a word, but saliva starts to drop from his mouth as he walks towards you.

The shadows start to form around your opponent, who stumbles around blinded. He's clearly affected, as his movements become much slower and disoriented.

Smiling sadistically, the guard opens his arms wide. He then grunts loudly, moment at which you realize that all attempt at communication is probably futile.

The hellfire hits your opponent.

The guard then grabs one of the chairs that was lying around, and sends it flying towards you. However, he is so clumsy that you easily dodge the chair, which comes crashing onto one of the side walls.

Smiling, you shake your head, which only seems to increase his anger.

You teleport behind him and punch him. This takes him completely by surprise, and you land a direct hit on his head. The punch hits him, making him stumble sideways. This allows you enough time to do something else.

The foam coming out from the mouth of the guard now starts trailing onto the floor, and he screams even louder than before. Clearly, the frustration inside him must be mounting.

The hellfire hits your opponent.

Badly injured, enhanced guard stumbles and falls unconscious on the floor. Obviously, he was no match for you.

Next

As the guard falls on the floor you see how his muscles start to lose some of their size. While not quite returning to the size of a human being, his features and constitution become more normal.

It's unlikely that he was the only guard in the building, though given his nature it makes sense that the company might have been keeping him out of the eyes of the public.

You doubt that it'll take the rest of the guards long to arrive, and the police might not be too far behind. Also, who knows if there are similar guards to this one lurking about in the building, who might also be heading towards you.

You walk towards the strange machine, which doesn't look like anything you've seen before. The fluorescent plasma liquid slowly rotates in a vortex-like movement, with two buttons next to it. One has a schematized symbol of a brain on it, with the other showing a muscular bent arm.

There is also a computer terminal and a screen, though they appear to be password-locked.

As you press the button the plasma starts to agitate and change color, condensing into a liquid that is poured into a syringe. With a click, a section of the machine opens, and the syringe is presented to you.

The liquid inside it pulsates with a weak light that somehow reminds you of that of the meteorite stone that gave you your powers. Could they have somehow managed to condense its energy into this syringe? Or, is this something else completely?

You thrust the syringe into one of your veins, and you feel a tingling rush of energy flowing into your body. It's somehow similar to what you felt when you touched the stone, but slightly painful. You feel almost as if somehow the energy going into your veins had been contaminated.

Your brain enjoys the feeling, though you feel your muscles twitching in pain.

At this point you start to hear the noise of a loud group of people approaching. There must be a dozen, if not more, judging by the number of torches illuminating the corridor outside. However, the sounds are so loud that there could be many more behind.

Not knowing what kind of guards these may be, you decide that it is better to leave the scene.

Next

You thus swiftly retrace your steps out of the building, and make it back to the subway station as quickly as you can.

Eventually, by the time you get home you are feeling very tired, and after taking a quick shower you slowly get into bed.

Next

You wake up quite late on Saturday morning, feeling rather tired from the long week behind you. Slowly getting out of bed you relax around your apartment for a while, calmly having breakfast before deciding what to do during the weekend.

You check your phone and find a couple of messages there. Your friend Arthur is proposing to go for a late lunch at a nice Asian fusion restaurant, which opened a few months ago. He is a bit of a foodie, and most of his social activities tend to be centered around eating at the trendiest restaurants. Then again, he has a food column in a fashion magazine, so he has managed to merge his hobby and work.

You've known Arthur for several years, after casually starting to talk to each other at an airport. The flight you were both supposed to be on had been delayed, and the airline gave you some food coupons to go eat something.

Arthur was standing next to you, and succeeded in convincing you that you could get a great meal with the coupons that you had. It seems he was happy to show off his knowledge about restaurants in the airport. Given that you didn't have anything else to do, you decided to follow him.

The restaurant turned out to be very good, and you found out quite a lot about him during this time. He was born in St. Augustine, in Florida, and proceeded to explain the long history of the town, since its founding by the Spanish around the middle of the 16th century.

Eventually, he went on to study Linguistics in college, and after a brief period of teaching English in Korea he decided to return to New York to work. Apparently, his time in Korea was good, though eventually he felt he outgrew the place and realized that he had to move when all his friends left the country. Nevertheless, he spoke enthusiastically about South Korea's cuisine.