[The Fifth Horseman]

Something I wrote down yesterday. I'll have to go over it with a hammer and butcher's knife a few times before it's any good, though.

Darkness, then a hiss.


The suit detects that its' wearer's breathing and heartbeat have stopped. A needle lances through their skin, delivering a powerful combination of synthetic adrenaline, stimulants and painkillers into their system. The mixture would be lethal to a human being - the recipient, however, was anything but that. Simultaneously, the suit begins electric stimulation of the musculature to reinitiate the cardiac and pulmonary functions. Once the drugs arrive at the blood-brain barrier, the synapses begin firing in an expanding chain reaction until...


My eyes snapped open.
I was laying face down on the cracked asphalt, my battlesuit's helmet laying broken amidst the burning debris several meters away. It took a moment to recall the events that led to this.
I lifted myself from the ground using my left arm, the right nothing but a useless charred claw. I was almost thankful the explosion destroyed its' nerve endings. The sharp pain lancing through my innards told me I most likely had internal injuries as well, but that was far from my greatest worry at the time.

I turned my head, looking for my enemy. Did I get him? Was it finally over?
My hopes were crushed as his unmistakable snarling mockery of a human voice sounded from behind me.
"That... hurt, you little bitch."
The shame of failure was bitter beyond words. We've lost. There was no weapon left I could use against him. I scrambled to get up and run, but found my legs too weak to even stand.

A powerful grip closed on my remaining arm, lifting me to face the speaker as his voice raked my ears again.
"Did you really think that little trick would be enough to defeat me?"
The right side of his face was one huge open wound, the metallic "flesh" stripped down from the dully shining bone, flames dancing at the edges of the destroyed area and in the empty eyesocket. I let out a brief smile.
"Made... you... bleed."
His remaining eye narrowed at the words, the response filled with inhuman hatred.
"You might have been spared... before. Now you will watch this city die, and then I will kill you in the slowest, most painful way I can come up with."
His hand tightened its' grip on my arm, dislocating the bones, then crushing them. The pain was excruciating even through the painkilled-induced haze. I heard a scream and realised it was my own.

As I blacked out once again, two questions desperately circled my mind: Where did we make the mistake? When did everything go so wrong?

Darkness.