Endzone: Simulated Apocalypse - Chapter 116

Drawing a leg back, Ragnar busted down the entrance of the kidnappers’ lair, both doors making contact with one of the many traffickers inside with a stifled scream. Were they dead? Either way, Ragnar didn’t care. No room for scum like them on this already ruined Earth.

“Who the fuck are you!?” shouted the man who was supposedly the ringleader. Tattoos, Caucasian, bald. About 5’11, seemingly somewhat well built. The jewelry on him indicated some strong profits at some point in the past.

“Ooh,” replied Ragnar, following up with a gravely chuckle that made his adversaries raise their guns. Ten to one, handguns rather than automatics. He liked his odds. “I’m what you might call a nice, cold can of beat-your-fucking-ass like a drum at a rock concert.”

Immediately, he began brawling. Ragnar grabbed the nearest henchman by the throat, crushing his trachea with a sickening squelch as he used the dead body as a shield against the bullets, then throwing the corpse at another two of the men who crumpled. Like lightning he dashed around the room, running too fast for them to aim—strides long, legs powerful. Easily moving at twenty miles an hour and punching like a goddamn truck, thanks to the sickeningly-strong bioenhancements he’d received as a supersoldier. An uppercut to the jaw, a steel-toed kick to the ribs, a face crushed against a concrete pillar—all of them dead in seconds, till it was just Ragnar and the employer of the deceased.

“What do you w-want? Money? I can give you money. You want the people? They’re you-”

“There’s only one thing I want, you fucking maggot.” Ragnar retorted, kicking someone’s entrails off his shoe. His scowl was audible behind his metal mask as he towered over his target.

“W-what is it? I’ll do anything, please, just let me go!” he dropped to his knees, blubbering and sobbing as his tears fell onto the concrete floor. Ragnar grunted in disgust at the groveling fool, turning away slightly before speaking.

“For you to feel pain. I will drag your sorry ass to the pits of the underground metropolis and exact every bit of agony you exacted onto your victims. I will make you eat your own fucking slimy organs raw, bite by bite. I will ensure you tread the thin line between life and death for days on end, till you are a carcass in limbo kept barely alive. The only sensation you will know is agony, right till the end when I throw your body to rabid dogs to tear apart.”

Right as the poor man pissed his pants out of fear, however, Ragnar’s growling rant was cut short by the entry of the police. Mutilated bodies were checked. The police commissioner walked in – Commissioner Smith, a gray-haired, balding man of about seventy with a thick bushy mustache that wriggled when he spoke, wrinkles and furrows along his face from years of stress.

“Christ’s fucking sake, Titan. What the fuck happened here!?” he spluttered, in awe at the horrific scene around him. “We’ve talked about this. You can’t just dispose of people. They need to be brought in for questioning, for fair trial-”

“Yes, we have talked about this. And I distinctly remember telling you to go fuck yourself. I didn’t see anyone else doing the dirty work here. You wanted to wait another week, but they were getting ready to move operations,” Ragnar’s voice raised the longer he spoke, keeping the ringleader in his range of vision before picking a handgun off the ground.

“You had information you weren’t sharing!?” The commissioner was furious, prodding his finger into Ragnar’s chest once—but that was one too many times. “I’ve fucking had it with you. We’re taking you in, Titan. Your identity can stay a secret, but you’re obstructing our investigations-”

Ragnar tossed the gun once into the air, catching it again in its firing position. The weight indicated it had a single bullet left. Ragnar looked at the police forces that had entered, scanning faces, before taking aim with lightning speed and firing a round into the left eye of one of the constables, blowing his face apart instantly before anyone could even react.

“He was a rat,” he said quietly. “Telling them whatever intel he had, letting them stay one step ahead. That’s why I don’t work FOR you, Commissioner. I work with you. I’m my own general, soldier, commander and weapon. You don’t tell me what to do, especially when I’m the one risking my neck to keep your officers safe.” Ragnar raised his head from eye contact with the commissioner at the sound of clicking. Over twenty handguns and assault rifles belonging to shocked and frightened policemen were aimed at him due to his outburst just now.

“Come quietly,” the commissioner said coldly, despite the truth that had just been exposed. “This is the time I am going to ask.”

Ragnar thought back to why he’d become a hero. Why he helped people. Ever since those news reports, the fights he’d gotten into. He knew he could very well do whatever he wanted, he had the power to do so. Few could stop him. But what purpose was there in that? Spend time stepping on others, only for it to collapse one day when he finally kicked the bucket? No, he had wanted to impact people’s lives in a good way, help them. Better to better his own life and that of many others. There was a limit to what materialism could bring in terms of happiness, and he had reached it long ago. The first people he’d helped had been in awe. Thanked him, encouraged him to do more good. Their comfort and smiles supported his forced self-certainty he could be more than a monster, more than a lab project.

But then the police got involved. Started using him as a tool for their inefficient ways. They let the worst criminals off with a swift death or a life sentence in humane conditions. It disgusted him. Ragnar wanted to do things to criminals that sent a message to stop the other ones. They didn’t let him. He was tired of being leashed and ordered around. This was his last straw. Guns? Aimed at him? When he’d STOPPED the unnecessary loss of life? No.

This world was an unjust one. And if he wanted to change it… he couldn’t do it on his own, with his meager power as one single man, no matter how individually strong he was. He needed more power. He needed more strength—the strength to change the world.

But for now… glancing at all the gunpoints aimed at him and the slowly ticking clock, counting down to his demise, he’d need to break out of this situation, before anything else.