Chapter 80: The Institute (Patreon)

· You have unlocked memory [The institute].

……………………..

The Berserker bashed Sassan’s face in a second time. Then a third. And continued till he lost count. Now the man laid unmoving beneath him, and sparing the crushed face, now more blood than face, he got up.

The Berserker teetered on his first step but caught himself before he fell. The only sounds that filled the air now were of burning cars and the occasional explosion of ammunitions subjected to severe heat. Behind him, Sassan lay in a pool of his own blood but The Berserker couldn’t bring himself to care.

He willed himself forward, feeling the adrenaline wearing off as all the pain he felt intensified. Anousheh sat on the chair, bound. Her face cast downward, she was unmoving.

It had been ten hours since they took her. He had disobeyed a direct order, broken at least five Afghan laws and killed eight men before he’d found the compound. And despite it all, he had been a second too late.

He squatted before her. Her face was so battered and bruised he could barely recognize her behind all the blood and swelling. But there she was. His Anousheh. Dead.

He reached out a hand and touched her face, reverently. A sob escaped his lips, and he sat back on the floor.

“Anousheh…”

He’d been late. He’d fulfilled his duty but he’d been late. Failure was never an easy pill to swallow. And no matter how advanced magic was becoming, there was neither mage nor magical engineer that believed it would ever be able to bring the dead back.

As he stared at her, his mind refused to focus on the pain. As if in defiance, it wandered, retreated from reality.

“May the Valkyries guide you home,” he muttered.

Her body gave him no answer. And seated at her feet, he wept.

Quest: [Memory and Thought]

Evelyn Brown [First Lady to The Berserker] has been taken against her will. Save her.

· Bonus Objective Complete: Defeat her captor 1/1.

· [Blood Wrath] has increased.

· Primary Objective Failed: Save The First Lady 0/1

· Evelyn Brown is dead.

Quest [Memory and Thought] Failed.

The message faded slowly. Four hours later, his team found him crumpled beside her, almost dead from blood loss.

The world went dark.

Zed woke up kicking and screaming, a searing pain in his shoulder

“Calm yourself, child!”

Someone was screaming in his ear as Zed groped at the hand and screamed from the pain in his head. He felt battered and bruised, drenched in the mental anguish of loss. Anousheh was dead and there was nothing he could do about it.

Hands hurried to hold him down. One squeezed the arm he’d been shot in and he howled in pain. He struggled for freedom but his captors were too strong. One held down both his legs in a single arm, smirking like an alley cat that had its prey. Anger flared in him like a rabid animal and he struggled harder against his captors.

He was still struggling when calming words filled the air. They weren’t coherent but they conveyed enough emotions to know what the person wanted. They wished for him to calm himself. They wished for him to understand that they were not his enemies. That they were friends.

His anger eased by a touch. It simmered from its boiling cauldron, held down more by grief than the soft echo of whispered assurances. He was safe. Grieving, but safe.

He was also sad. He had failed Anousheh.

His arm still hurt but he was calming now. The fight was leaving his body and he was almost done when he heard someone mutter, “He does this almost every time.”

There was a touch of disgust in the voice that told him something different from soft assurances and friendly pleading. None of his men would know what he’d just been through and react the way whoever it was had.

Wherever this was, he’d been wrong to trust the people here. But his body was growing calm, his muscles relaxing. The fight was fleeing him no matter what he did and he knew enough to understand when he was under the workings of an Enchanter. He couldn’t let the mage win, and no matter what happened, he refused to go down without a fight. So he dug deep inside him, took the grief of his loss and turned it into fuel. He burned it for anger and his rage flared.

There would be time to grieve when he was free, and if he was lucky his men would already be searching for him. He simply needed to get out of here, wherever here was.

He bucked again and the person holding his uninjured arm staggered. Their hold waned and he took it as his chance. He twisted it from one side to the other, undaunted by the possibility of it breaking. After all, it was the arm the chief priest of the Umuchukwu tribe had inscribed in flowing runes. Whatever happened to it, it would heal to perfection in time.

He twisted one more and, to his surprise, his captor released the arm. In front of him a notification flashed and he dismissed it with a mental scowl.

Quest: [Memory and Thought]

Evelyn Brown [First Lady to The Berserker] has been taken against her will. Save her.

· Bonus Objective Complete: Defeat her captor 1/1.

· Reward: [Blood Wrath] has increased.

· Primary Objective Failed: Save The First Lady 0/1.

· Evelyn Brown is dead.

· Quest failed.

With his rune arm free, he squeezed it into a fist and struck the attendant holding his wounded arm. He struck for the elbow and it bent under the force of his fist but did not break. He took the briefest moment to be surprised before dragging his arm free. A blow from his rune arm could shatter a man’s skull. A strike to a woman’s elbow should’ve all but destroyed it even without activating the runes.

“You little runt,” the man with the alley cat grin scowled, reaching for him with his free hand.

Zed had been ready for this. Most men who come at him with such casual nature did it because they either possessed a certain level of magic or had augmented themselves with magi-tech. Considering the lady’s elbow hadn’t shattered from his punch it was safe to say the man was either a mage or an augmenter. And while he was larger than most men he’d faced, he was most likely going to go for magic.

He caught a flash of a blue band on the man’s wrist, glowing oddly bright and applauded himself mentally. Magi-tech. Augmenters always made the mistake of depending on the tech. They rarely considered the possibility that someone without augmentations like himself would be able to fend them off so easily.

Happy to be a surprise to his new enemy, he bolted upright and drew his right arm across his chest. Then he tapped into that primal part of him, the beast beneath the human, as the chief priest called it and drew on its essence. His arm was surprisingly small and he almost stumbled at the sight of his fair skin, but battle called for focus for survival. He couldn’t afford any distractions.

He felt the familiar flow of mana course through him and activated his defense rune. He’d barely felt it activate before the man’s hand cut through the air and grabbed him by the face and pinned him back down on the bed.

“Stay still, boy!” His tone was a deep baritone and he carried a brogue Zed had never heard before, not in his years working for the government.

His worry as to why his rune didn’t activate fleeted across his mind as he struggled against the man’s massive hands that now held both his face and his legs down.

“Doctor Shequifa,” the man rumbled with a touch of displeasure. “I think now will be a good time to sedate the boy.”

New found panic filled Zed. They had somehow managed—against all reason—to seal away his rune magic. Now they intended to sedate him. Normally, sedation wasn’t something he feared as his runes gave him resistance to most effects, but if his shield rune had somehow been suppressed then there was a chance none of his runes worked.

He tapped into his mana core once more and found it a pittance of what it was supposed to be. Regardless, he drew on it with the desperation of the mad as a pricking sensation filled his arm. The lights seemed to fade and his vision blurred.

· You have been sedated.

The notification was barely visible but he read it.

Then he fainted.