"Bang!"
"Bang!"
Two clear shots could be heard, the jarring sound amplified by the acoustics of the hall.
Mr. Valen had pulled the trigger, firing two shots into Thomas' gut, the man's form trembling in shock at the sudden impact, blood gushing from his wounds.
But he wasn't finished.
"Shit," Lexa cursed as she dove behind a crate, her reaction immediate.
At the same time, the other guard—who'd just watched his colleague get shot—gritted his teeth. "Fuck this," he muttered, firing straight at Mr. Valen.
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
His shots resounded, but Mr. Valen did not panic, rather, he lowered his head into Thomas's collapsing body.
"F-fug you c-"
Surprisingly, Thomas was still partly alive, blood gushing out of his lips as he stuttered, his body serving as a shield to block his partner's shots.
"Argh," Mr. Valen suddenly groaned in pain, noting that one of the bullets had somehow torn through Thomas's body, and struck his left arm, punishing it even more.
Gritting his teeth, Mr. Valen gripped Thomas's collar with his right hand, hefting the dead weight with sheer force and his upper body's leverage.
Meanwhile, the bespectacled guard advanced—his shots becoming more accurate, with each step—until—
"Bang!" A decisive shot tore through the air from Mr. Valen's side as he had abandoned Thomas's form and shot a bullet at the guard, his hit landing on the man's temple.
"Thud!"
Losing cerebral function, the guard immediately slumped to the ground, his glasses snapping under the pressure, creating a brief moment of silence.
But in this silence Mr. Valen remained alert, his arms trailing to the hollow crate Lexa had used to seek cover.
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
"Bang!"
Mr. Valen fired repeated shots into that crate, his eyes focused as he put hole after hole into it, aiming to kill the woman behind it, but then a bad feeling graced him and he turned around.
"Bam!"
"Bang!"
A shot was accompanied by the sound of a violent collision, as Lexa kicked the gun out of his right hand, a stray shot firing into the air along with the gun.
Mr. Valen reacted quickly, raising his right leg and slamming it against Lexa's unbalanced core, forcing both himself and Lexa to stagger towards opposite directions of the room.
Lexa grunted, her brows furrowed as she observed that Mr. Valen wore a black hoodie soaked with his blood on the left sleeves and a pair of jeans.
'His breaths carry a certain rhythm, much like mine,' Lexa thought before smiling, her tone light as she voiced out, "You have awakened, right? I can't really tell since you don't look any different."
To her question, Mr. Valen remained quiet, rather, he observed her as she had observed him.
Lexa wore a grey hoodie and a matching pair of sweatpants. Additionally, her hair was tied in a bun, granting her a rather refreshing appearance.
"Why are you staring so intently? You're making me blush," she intoned coyly as she began to move, slowly.
Mr. Valen's left arm hung dead at his side, soaked in blood, the gunshot having torn through muscle and maybe bone.
Across from him, Lexa had begun to circle him her disposition switching from coy to composed.
Her stance was loose, almost relaxed, with no wasted motion, just potential violence, and then...
"Tap!"
She tapped the floor softly with her foot, as though she was about to move, it was an attempt to bait him, one which he hardly fell for.
Towers of empty wooden crates were sprawled around them, offering cover as both an advantage and a risk.
In that moment, both of them moved, each one swiftly rushing towards the other, and in an instant, they were upon one another.
But Lexa was faster, so much so that she struck first, her hand moving to the left side of his face in a blur.
"Pa!'
Mr. Valen wanted to block with his left hand but quickly realized that he was too injured to even raise it, allowing Lexa's slap to connect, disorientating him slightly.
Said slap was followed by a lightning-fast kick to his knee, her brows scrunching in brutally.
But Mr. Valen was not an inanimate object, despite the fact that he was injured and unfit, he pivoted himself just enough to absorb the impact, stumbling back against a crate, but Lexa did not follow.
'Such an astonishing degree of force she commands,' Mr. Valen thought as he bore the pain on his knees.
Lexa, on the other hand, frowned, a breath escaping her lips as she retrieved a retractable blade from her backside, but she still did not move.
"You are good at enduring pain, and you fight good," she began, her gaze locked on him as she continued. "I had imagined an unstoppable genius who could counter everything, but if this is all you're capable of I'm-"
"Disappointed?" Mr. Valen suddenly interrupted, his expression unchanging as he asked. "You work for Vlad?"
At the mention of the name Vlad, Lexa raised a brow, "What's it to you?" She asked.
"It's nothing," Mr. Valen began as he raised his left hand, dragging down his sleeves to reveal his bullet wound which was still profusely bleeding.
Lexa frowned at that display, noting that Mr. Valen was about to say something, and indeed he began.
"Have you ever wanted something so badly that your world narrows to a single focus, thinking, sharpening, and organizing every step of the way?" Mr. Valen suddenly asked, inciting a look of surprise from Lexa who continued his words.
"Your hands move with purpose, and you pour endless hours into chasing that fleeting moment of victory." She said, her words inciting a small smile from Mr. Valen.
"How do you know those words?" Lexa asked, her brows widening in surprise.
Ignoring that look, Mr. Valen said while walking towards, Lexa. "Vlad had told me that when I was a child, he was the chief of security at the place of my birth, meaning he had witnessed the birth of ten impossible humans, each with distinct abilities, a side effect of our advanced cerebral powers."
"Some had telekinesis, some could hypnotize, while I, the best of the bunch, gained remarkable control over my body."
"The fuck, are you talking about?" Lexa muttered while holding up her blade, her form guarded.
It was then that she noticed that Mr. Valen's hand had stopped bleeding, but that was not all.
She observed that Mr. Valen remained expressionless, which was not a change to his usual expression, but there was a certain relaxed look to it, like he had gotten rid of the pain.
But mind you, the pain was there, he had just silenced it.
If pain were a broadcast, he had simply changed the frequency.
Lexa watched in sheer astonishment as the muscles of Mr. Valen's left hand flexed in unnatural patterns under his pale skin, squeezing, tightening, and aligning themselves, making the once pale hand appear a bit shriveled.
Mr. Valen's pupils dilated, his breath heavy as his voice trailed, "though I have a powerful mind, the human body can only take so much, meaning my mind is constantly in a state of rest, unfortunately for you to use my ability, I have to activate a portion of it—"
"You're done," Lexa muttered, moving in again, hands weaving in an unnerving, fluid rhythm as she closed the remaining distance between them.
"Swoosh!"
Her blade cut through the air as she brought it down with a force but Mr. Valen did not flinch, nor did he step back.
Rather he lifted the ruined limb with his shoulder and locked his elbow in place, predicting the geometry of the block in his mind like a machine calculating an angle.
"Bam!"
The blade reached, but Mr. Valen met it with meat and bone.
The sound was sickening, metal cracked against his forearm, skidding off the bone, grinding against the ruin of his hand.
But the angle held, his body had absorbed the blow, and redirected the force through his locked frame.
He didn't scream, he didn't even blink, and upon noting this a chill ran through Lexa's spine.
Both were in close range to each other, with Lexa trying to lodge the blade deeper into her victim's stone-like flesh, if that was even possible, but Mr. Valen leaned even closer.
"You're Vald's daughter aren't you?" He whispered to her in a chillingly robotic manner which reinforced Lexa's bad feeling.
Quickly, she let go of the blade and attempted to-
"Bam!"
A loud collision akin to the sound of a small gunshot swept Lexa off her feet, her ribs shattering, her breath seizing.
Mid-air, her thoughts were in a scramble as her brain worked to grasp what had produced such a force.
It was after she hit the ground and fell to her knees that she managed to look up and observe that Mr. Valen was in a punching stance, blood seeping out of the pores of his right hand while his muscles tensed and constricted in an attempt to control damage.
A thud rang out as Lexa collapsed soon after not fully grasping what had happened.
Mr. Valen, on the other hand, knew exactly what happened, blood seeping out of his mouth as he stepped back, his gaze blurring.
And yet he endured, he could not fail now, not when he had destroyed his body to this extent.
The human body has built-in neurological and physiological limiters to protect one from overexerting muscles, bones, and joints to the point of self-destruction.
What Mr. Valen had done was simple, he had simply spit on nature and forcefully removed all restrictions that would weaken his punch.
Of course, there were consequences; he struck her at a speed of about sixty meters per second, and of course, the human body was not designed to handle such forces.
He had shattered his bones and torn his tendons—additionally, the whiplash had damaged some of his internal organs.
The damage was irreversible; in fact, it was a miracle that he was still alive.
He had rendered his right hand nearly unusable in addition to his left hand, but still, by the grace of his own miraculous ability, he used them.
Of course, he could not maintain this state forever.
He had four hours until his body simply lost all function.
«I have four hours until I fucking die.»
With that, Mr. Valen walked to Lexa's slumped form and observed that she was still breathing, but he did not have the energy to disturb her.
Rather he picked up the gun which he had used to murder the two guards and searched them for fresh rounds of ammunition.
Upon getting what he needed, he looked around, then swiftly walked out of the hall lest civilians call the police at the noise they had caused.