THE LAST GUARDIAN OF GREYFENWOOD

Chapter 2: Predator Protocol

The impact felt like hitting a wall of liquid concrete.

Cold. Dark. Breaking bones.

Finnian's body was sucked into the whirlpool at the bottom of the waterfall, spun around like a rag in a giant washing machine. The water pressure pressed against his eardrums making him scream in pain. The river current hit his back against the rocks of the riverbed, forcing him to release the last traces of oxygen from his lungs.

The world turned black. There were only bubbles and pain.

However, the killer instinct refused to die. Finnian's hand reflexively gripped the roots of a mangrove tree protruding from the muddy river bank. With a muffled roar in his throat full of water, he dragged his body up to the surface.

"Hah... cough... shit!"

Finnian vomited murky water mixed with blood onto the mud. He lay face down, his chest heaving for air. His whole body was shaking with cold. His cargo pants were torn at the thigh, and there was a long gash wound on his left back from the wood splinters from the hut earlier. Fresh blood seeped out, dripping onto the ground.

Greyfenwood Forest was not silent.

When Finnian tried to lift his head, he saw something strange. Strange even by the standards of this forest. The wild Foxglove flowers around where he lay began to glow.

Not the soft green light they usually emitted during a full moon, but an aggressive pulsating scarlet red. The flowers seemed to react to Finnian's adrenaline and biosignature which was in fightorflight mode. The red light spread from one petal to another, creating a visual trail that connected Finnian to the forest, as if his external nervous system was exposed.

"Turn off the lights, you bastard," Finnian hissed, trying to cover the flower with mud. "You want to tell the whole world I'm here?"

KRAAK.

The sound of branches breaking in the distance stopped his movements. Not because of the wind. That's footsteps. Heavy. Rhythmic. Mechanic.

Finnian froze his body. He pressed his ear to the wet ground.

One... Two... Three people. A distance of less than a hundred meters, moving spread out in a net formation. The vibration of their footsteps was too heavy for ordinary humans.

Exoskeleton.

Finnian felt his waist. His Bowie knife was missing, having come loose when he hit a rock in the water. He had no firearms, no knives, no protective clothing. He was just a cold, wounded, bare-chested hunk of flesh in the middle of a forest of enemies.

He glanced around in calculated panic. His eyes caught the carcass of a stag stuck in the roots of a tree, half rotted but the bones were still strong. Next to it, a bush of the Deathbell plant grew—a type of local poisonous plant whose sap can paralyze motor nerves in a matter of minutes if it enters the bloodstream.

Finnian grinned slightly. His eyes turned dark, his pupils dilated to swallow his green irises. The fear was gone, replaced by something much more ancient.

"You don't need bullets to kill," he whispered to himself, quoting the words of his mentor who had died decades ago. "You just need intention."

He crawled silently towards the deer carcass. With one powerful jerk, Finnian broke the deer's sharp, jagged ribs. It was about fifteen inches long, sharp enough to pierce an artery.

He squeezed Deathbell sap onto the tip of the bone, then smeared the entire body with cold, smelly river mud. The mud was not only visual camouflage, but also disguised his body temperature from cheap thermal sensors.

Now, he was no longer Finnian O'Connell, the human fugitive. He is part of the mud. Part of the shadow.

"Alpha One, report. Sector A is clear. No visual sign of targets," radio static sounded faintly from twelve o'clock.

An Iron Fang soldier stepped out from behind a giant bush of ferns. He looked like a mini walking tank. His body was clad in matte black polymer armor, with a hydraulic exoskeleton that whirred softly whenever he moved. His helmet covered his entire face, leaving only the blue visor on. A plasma assault rifle hung casually on his chest.

The soldier stopped right in front of Finnian's hiding place behind the hanging roots. His helmet's sensors swept the area. The red beam of the scanning laser passed through Finnian's mud-covered body.

Finnian's heart was beating very slowly, a breathcontrol technique he learned from a mad monk in Tibet. Do not move. Don't breathe. Be a rock.

The laser passes. The soldier stepped forward again, his back to Finnian.

That was his final mistake.

Finnian got up from the mud without the slightest sound. His movements were fluid like quicksilver. He lunged at the soldier's back, not with a brute blow, but with surgical precision. His left hand closed the helmet ventilation gap at the soldier's mouth to muffle the sound, while his right hand plunged the poisonous deer bone right into the armor gap at the base of the neck.

One weak point. Between the neck guard and the helmet.

JLEB.

The soldier gasped violently. He tried to scream, but the Deathbell sap worked lightning fast, freezing his vocal cords. He tried to aim the weapon backwards, but the exoskeleton locked in confusion in response to the user's muscle spasms.

"Ssshh..." Finnian whispered right next to the soldier's helmeted ear, his tone almost erotic, intimate, like a lover whispering a dirty secret. There was a strange satisfaction that spread through Finnian's groin as he felt the life fade in his hands. Adrenaline mixed with ecstasy. This is the anesthetic. "Sleep well, Iron Pig."

Finnian rotated the bone in the wound to ensure maximum damage, then lowered the heavy body slowly to the ground so as not to make a thud.

"Alpha Two, this is Bravo. There is static interference on Bravo One's biomonitor. Check position," the radio voice from the corpse's helmet rang.

Finnian smiled coldly. One fell. Two more.

He didn't take the soldier's plasma gun. The weapon had a DNA biometric lock, he knew Iron Fang's technology. Taking it will only trigger the alarm. Instead, Finnian drew a tactical knife from the sheath on the corpse's thigh.

Cold metal in hand. Finally.

Finnian didn't run. He climbed the banyan tree above him, wrapped his legs around the strong branches, hanging upside down like a bat, waiting for the next prey to come check out.

The remaining two soldiers came at the same time, weapons raised at the ready.

"Bravo One? Report!" shouted one of them.

They saw the corpse of their friend lying in the mud. The light from the flowers around the corpse glowed brighter and brighter red, as if the forest was feasting on fresh blood.

"Contact! Man Down! East sector!" The second soldier shouted, aiming his gun's flashlight at the corpse. "Stab wound in the neck. What the... is this a bone?"

"Upstairs!" shouted the third soldier, his instincts sharper.

But Finnian was already sliding down.

He threw himself right on top of the third soldier. The weight of his body plus gravity hit the soldier until he fell on his back. Before the soldier realized, Finnian's tactical knife had penetrated the visor of his helmet, sinking deep into the eye socket.

CRACK.

Blood sprayed the inside of the helmet's visor, making it blurry instantly.

The second soldier, panicked at the speed, fired wildly. ZRRTT! ZRRTT! Plasma bullets burned tree trunks and the ground around Finnian.

Finnian rolled to avoid the gunfire, using the third soldier's corpse as a meat shield. Plasma bullets hit the corpse's armor, sizzling burning through the polymer.

With one jerking movement, Finnian kicked the second soldier's exoskeleton knee with the heel of his foot. He knew the weakness of the Iron Fang Type4 design; His knee hinges opened in a standing firing position.

The soldier staggered, losing his balance due to the weight of his own armor. Finnian didn't waste that split second. He dashed forward, cutting the hydraulic hose on the soldier's thigh, then swept the knife across the unprotected neck.

Blood spurted out like a fountain, dyeing the mud and the Foxglove flowers even redder.

The whirring sound of the hydraulics stopped. The gunshots stopped.

The forest was silent again, except for the sound of Finnian's heavy breathing and the 'clickclickklik' sound of the armor's cooling system starting to shut down.

Finnian stood in the middle of the three corpses. His half-naked body was covered in mud, poisonous sap, and the warm blood of his enemy. His chest rose and fell in a rapid rhythm. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the remaining adrenaline recede. The hunger in his stomach felt delicious now. The sexuality of death still throbbed in his nerve endings.

"I'm sorry, Mother..." he muttered softly, an old habit. "Your kid sinned again."

He crouched down, searching the last soldier's tactical pocket. He found an energy bar, a bottle of water, and a spare gun with a universal lock.

"Not bad," he muttered as he bit the energy bar greedily, still with bleeding hands. It tasted like chocolate sawdust, but it was the best thing he'd ever eaten tonight.

Suddenly, he felt a small sting at the nape of his neck. Like a mosquito bite, but hotter.

Finnian patted the back of his neck reflexively. His finger touched something small, hard, and buzzing. He pulled it free.

It wasn't a mosquito.

Between his index finger and thumb, a microdrone the size of a fly writhed. His micro-needle feet were still wet with Finnian's blood—having just taken a DNA sample. The camera in the drone's eyes flashed red, staring directly into Finnian's retina, recording his dirty face.

Before Finnian could crush it, a clear, emotionless, mechanical voice came out of the drone's mini speaker. The voice was not a soldier's voice, but the voice of the central AI system.

"Blood Sample Confirmed. DNA Match: O'Connell's First Descendant."

Finnian's eyes widened. His heart, which had just calmed down, started racing again. This is much worse than just a military attack. This is confirmation of genetic identity.

"Target Acquired: Subject Omega."

Finnian squeezed the drone until it shattered into metal shards. However, he knew it was useless. The data has been sent. The location has been exposed to millimeter precision. The GPS coordinates were now on someone's screen.

And in the distance, from behind the darkness of the forest he thought was safe, came the sound of howling. Not a wolf. The sound was too metallic, too chainsaw, too synthetic.

They released the dogs.

Finnian spat the rest of his energy bar onto the ground, spun the stolen gun in his hand, and stared into the darkness that was coming to life.

"Come on," he growled. "We'll play the second half." 

***