Argonaut - The Kinetic (Part I)

Chapter 3 - Of Machines And Men

Chapter Three – Of Machines And Men

20th Dec 7:12 AM

 

Greif, pain and misery exploded out of me in a wave, I shot out my arms and involuntarily sent out a shockwave with my new power that shattered the windows of every car in the car park. The vehicles closest to me were blown to the side by the force of the impact.       

Liz was gone, gone! Dead with the rest of the passengers on the condemned plane. No, she couldn’t be dead, she had to be alive. There was no way Liz was dead. I started to stagger towards the wreckage in the distance when my old friend the voice in my head stopped me.

‘Don’t do it David’ it said gently ‘you know she died in that crash, you won’t like what you find. Whatever those things were that did this are getting away. Go after them first, then if you feel the need, come back to the crash.’     

My pain turned into anger, they had done this. They had taken Liz away. I was going to tear them apart. I wasn’t going to let my power slip away from me now. I could move things without touching them, and those things included me. With an explosive blast I rocketed off the ground and tore through the air chasing after the three dots in the distance.

Wind lashed my face as I gained altitude; I didn’t care about how high I was or how fast I was going. I only cared about the three dots and about making they suffer for what they had done. With a spike of white hot rage I accelerated to as fast as I could bear, the air around me began to roar as I tore through the sky insanely fast.

I covered my ears quickly; I knew what was going to happen next. With an earth shattering *boom* I broke the sound barrier. Whatever these things were they couldn’t fly this fast, I was catching up fast.

I could see the dots more clearly now, they looked like men. Large metal men about a foot taller than an ordinary man and covered from head to toe in gunmetal grey armour. The armour was arranged in layers, so that they still had a mostly complete range of motion, the helmets they wore flowed into the chest-plates, they were round with a wide V-shaped visor. Built into the armour on the underside of each left forearm was what looked like a small machine gun. Turbines on their lower legs and on the top of their forearms controlled their flight. It was like looking at something out of science fiction. Great, I was fighting Iron Man.

The metal men turned their heads when they heard the sonic boom; they looked right at me as I came up fast. I drew back my hand and supercharged it with energy like I had at the Starbucks, but this time it was a lot more powerful. I went for the middle one first, letting my arm tear through the armour of its back and protrude through its chest.

I tore my arm free as the remains of the metal man fell to the ground far below. One down, two to go. I looked at my arm, since it hadn’t actually touched the metal man it was completely unharmed, locked in my clenched fist was a combination of twisted metal, circuits and some kind of slippery liquid. These weren’t men at all, just machines. But someone had to be controlling them.

The remaining two metal men sprang into action fast; they banked around to either side of me, raising their left arms and firing their small but very powerful machine guns. I raised my hands to stop the bullets just in time. The bullets came to a stop in mid-air a foot from my open palms.

I stared coldly; my face was full of malevolence. My turn. I send the bullets back it their sources, one of the metal men managed to avoid them; the other one wasn’t so lucky. Bullets tore through the armour, ripping the internal wiring to pieces. The heap of scrap metal that used to be an awesome piece of technology lost power and began to plummet to the ground.