THE LAST GUARDIAN OF GREYFENWOOD

Chapter 11: Delirium

The world was no longer a forest.

Greyfenwood Forest had melted, dripping like oil paint on a burning canvas. The green of the leaves turned into wet concrete gray. The sounds of jungle insects were replaced by the honking of black taxis and the rumble of a distant subway train.

Finnian was no longer sprawling on the muddy ground. He was standing in a narrow alley in the East End, London.

Heavy rain fell, but it didn't wash his skin, it felt like needles of ice. In his hand wasn't a high-tech Gauntlet or a stolen pistol, but a suppressed Walther PPK with a barrel still smoking.

"No..." Finnian whispered, his voice trembling. "Not today. Please, not today."

The VX-Red neurotoxin was more than just a poison; it was a cruel time machine. The chemical burned Finnian's hippocampus, forcing him to replay the one moment in his life he hated most. The archive of sins he had tried to bury with whiskey and women for the last five years.

At his feet lay a young man. His face was ruined. Not by bullets, but by repeated blunt trauma. The man wore a torn Metropolitan London police uniform.

"You promised, Finn..." the young cop looked up, blood flowing from his mouth. But his voice wasn't human. It was broken radio static. "You said you were an informant. You said we'd take down the Bratva together."

"It's an order," Finnian heard himself speak, but he wasn't controlling his mouth. It was the 2018 version of Finnian. Cold. Obedient. The Syndicate's mad dog. "They know you have the recording, Detective."

"I have a kid, Finn! My wife is pregnant!"

Finnian watched his own hand rise. His index finger squeezed the trigger.

BANG.

The sound echoed forever. The young cop's head snapped back, slamming against the wet cobblestones. A pool of blood expanded, pitch black like oil, creeping toward Finnian's leather shoes, swallowing his feet, rising to his knees.

"Stop it!" Finnian screamed in the real world, but inside his head, the blood kept rising until it reached his neck. He was drowning in a sea of his victim's blood.

"Forgive me! FORGIVE ME!"

*

"Finn! Finnian! Open your eyes, asshole!"

The voice sounded distant, muffled behind layers of water.

In the real world, Elena Vance was dragging Finnian's ninety-kilogram body through thorny bushes. Elena's breathing sounded like a broken steam engine. Her injured, cauterized right shoulder throbbed with blinding pain every time she pulled Finnian's jacket collar.

Finnian was raving, his body convulsing. White foam mixed with blood bubbled from his mouth because he had bitten his own tongue.

"Don't die... don't you dare die, you idiot!" Elena grumbled, tears of frustration mixing with sweat on her face. "I didn't drag your big ass two hundred meters just to watch you die of an overdose!"

They were hidden inside an old, moss-covered concrete culvert. Elena knew they couldn't go far. The Shadow, that masked assassin, was toying with them. He let them run. Like a cat letting a mouse with broken legs crawl a little before pouncing again.

Finnian suddenly grabbed Elena's arm. The grip of his iron hand, the Gauntlet hand was so strong that Elena shrieked. Her radius bone felt like it was about to crack.

"Don't look at me!" Finnian hissed, his eyes wide open but pupils pin-point, a hallmark of nerve gas poisoning. He wasn't seeing Elena. He was seeing ghosts. "The blood... it's everywhere!"

"Finnian, it's me! Elena!"

Finnian slammed Elena against the damp concrete wall.

In Finnian's hallucination, Elena wasn't a beautiful woman in a dirty lab coat. Elena was a fire-eyed demon emerging from the cop's pool of blood, coming to claim vengeance.

"You have to die..." Finnian mumbled, his right hand fumbling for the knife that was already lost. "Die so it gets quiet!"

Elena coughed as Finnian's forearm pressed against her throat. This man, even half-dead and delusional, possessed monster strength. Elena struggled, punching Finnian's face with her healthy left hand.

"Wake up! It's just in your head!" Elena screamed.

Finnian didn't listen. He raised his Gauntlet fist. The green light in the tubes flickered unstably, just like its owner's mind. One punch from that iron hand would shatter Elena's skull into fragments.

Elena stared death in the eyes. Ironic. Saved from Iron Fang only to be killed by her savior.

But Elena was a scientist. She knew biology. She knew how VX-Red worked. The toxin cut off brain signals to the heart. Any moment now, Finnian would go into cardiac arrest. This aggression was just a final surge before his system shut down completely.

Sure enough, Finnian's body suddenly went rigid. His eyes bulged. He froze.

Then he fell forward, collapsing onto Elena with his full weight. His heart stopped beating.

"No... Finn?"

Silence.

Elena pushed the heavy body aside. Finnian's face was turning blue. His lips purple. No pulse in the neck.

"Damn, damn, damn it!"

Elena tore open the small waist pack she stole from the medical tent before Finnian blew the place up. Her hands trembled violently. She dumped the contents onto the dirty concrete floor. Bandages, antiseptic, a scalpel, and...

A red auto-injector tube. Military Grade Epinephrine - High Concentration.

Only one dose. And the needle was long, terrifying, designed to penetrate light combat armor.

Elena ripped open the remains of Finnian's shirt, revealing his chest covered in the dragon tattoo and scars. She felt his ribs, locating the heart amidst those stiff pectoral muscles.

"This is going to hurt, Finn," Elena whispered. "Like hell."

She raised the injector with two hands, positioning it right over the sternum, slightly to the left.

"One... Two... Three!"

THUD.

Elena drove the thick needle down with all her strength, piercing skin, muscle, and passing between the ribs, straight into the heart muscle.

She pressed the piston button. Clear fluid shot into Finnian's ventricular system in seconds.

No reaction.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Elena began to cry, pounding on Finnian's chest. "Wake up! You murdering bastard, don't just die!"

She leaned down, pressing her lips to Finnian's, giving desperate mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Not a romantic kiss, but an exchange of air filled with blood and fear.

"Come on..." Elena whispered between breaths. "Fight it!"

Suddenly, Finnian's eyes snapped open. Wide.

GASP!

Finnian inhaled greedily, the sound like someone just surfacing from the deep ocean. His back arched, veins in his neck bulging out.

The impact of the military adrenaline hit his nervous system like a nuclear detonation. The neurotoxin wasn't gone, but the adrenaline forced his heart to beat, overpowering the poison. The pain was excruciating. It felt like his blood had been replaced with boiling acid.

"AAAARGH!" Finnian roared, a long bellow that echoed throughout the sewer tunnel. The roar of a beast cornered and mortally wounded.

The dragon tattoo on his back seemed to move due to extreme muscle contractions.

Finnian rolled over, vomiting bile and residual poison onto the floor. He coughed, eyes glowing red, sweat pouring off him like rain.

He looked at Elena. His vision was still blurry, but the ghost of the dead cop was gone. He saw Elena crying and terrified.

"Do... c...?" Finnian's voice was raspy, like sandpaper rubbing together.

Elena slumped beside him, laughing hysterically while sobbing. "You came back... You psycho, but you came back."

Finnian yanked the injection needle still stuck in his chest and threw it away. He felt his heart beating 200 times per minute. His head was clear. Too clear.

He was no longer the calm Finnian. He was a bomb with a lit fuse.

The fear from the hallucinations had changed shape. The guilt about his past had burned a hole in his soul, and now... the only way to fill that hole was with violence.

He looked at the Gauntlet on his left hand. The energy indicator was full. The adrenaline in his body triggered the Verdant Core reaction in his blood into overdrive.

Finnian slowly stood up. He didn't stumble anymore. He stood tall, radiating a killing aura so thick Elena felt the air temperature around them drop.

"Where is he?" Finnian asked, his voice calm but lethal.

"Who?"

"That ninja fucker who gave me those nightmares," Finnian clenched his iron fist until it creaked. The green light on his arm turned reddish-orange a warning color.

Outside, the light footsteps of The Shadow could be heard on the dry leaves. The assassin was coming to check his handiwork.

Finnian grinned. A joyless smile. The smile of a wolf that just survived a trap and saw the hunter approaching.

"Stay here, Elena," Finnian ordered, picking up a rusty iron bar from the trash in the culvert.

"Where are you going?"

"Therapy," Finnian replied.

He walked out of the hiding place, not to run, but to welcome a guest.

***