Alex stood over the filthy mess of another Rampager, his fist covered in blood.
He looked over his shoulder.
Parker, the man with the Ruby Armor Quirk, lay propped against the wall with a massive hole in his chest.
Dead.
The two men he had brought with him to the space station were dead.
Now, only the pilot remained, cut off from all communications, waiting for him at the retrieval spaceship.
Alex doubted that the wait would ever come to an end, though.
Steps rang out on his other side, making him look away from Parker's corpse.
Gehrman Sparrow, one of the Apostles who prayed to a foreign God, walked toward him, reloading his revolver.
Just how many bullets did he even carry on himself?!
Thirty minutes.
That was the time they had spent at the space station already.
In that time, Gehrman must have fired at least a hundred rounds of bullets, if not more.
If it weren't for the Apostle's weird shoulder mushroom, which had let them avoid dozens of monsters, they wouldn't have reached so far so quickly.
What did it matter anyway?
Two good men were dead.
These monsters were nothing but ORIGIN's crew as well.
Alex looked at the blood on his hands as he thought of that.
He had killed hundreds, if not thousands, of men who fought for a cause they didn't truly understand.
So, it wasn't like killing troubled him.
But that was war.
This?
Alex couldn't even think of a word for what was happening at the space station.
"Cleansing," Gehrman Sparrow said coldly, looking up at him. "Rampagers are beyond saving. Once a person mutates to this degree, there is no way to reverse the transformation. Unless, of course, the Gods intervene."
Alex hated this man.
There was something deeply wrong about this guy.
But fate had left him no choice but to work with Gehrman Sparrow.
The guy obviously knew more about these mutated people, whom he called Rampagers, and was surprisingly suited to the conditions to take them out—conditions that were grossly unfavorable to Alex's own Quirk.
Gehrman projected the hologram through the mushroom on his shoulder again.
Several red dots blinked on it, moving around—some slow, some ridiculously fast.
Almost two dozen Rampagers that they had avoided while reaching this location still lingered across various modules like ghosts.
And, beyond this location, inside the Control Room, lay only three.
All Rampagers?
Alex dreaded learning the answer to that question.
Because out of the three unknown people inside the Control Room, he knew the identities of two, neither of whom he could afford to…
"You should leave," Gehrman Sparrow said casually, killing the hologram.
That was it!
Alex lunged forward and grabbed the lunatic by the collar, lifting him.
He brought the man so close to his face that he could see into his eyes that were hidden behind the glasses, despite the darkness surrounding them.
"I cannot leave," the Radiant growled. "This is my mission."
Gehrman, seemingly unbothered, rocked his head.
Alex saw the man's right cheek twitch as if he were chewing on something; another quality that he had come to hate about this man.
Then, as the twitch stopped, Gehrman's head returned to its still position.
"You are a useless man, Alexander Becking," the Apostle said as if it were a fact. "You are a liability. Your mere existence here is a testament to your foolishness. You… are worthless to me; to whatever lies beyond this door."
Alex didn't know why, but he ground his teeth so hard that dust from them must have shaved off.
Muscles twitched on his face and hands as the thought of squeezing this lunatic to death crossed his mind.
Then there was an intuition, lingering somewhere in the back of his mind.
He would die long before squeezing this man's head to a pulp.
Alex knew from whom that intuition came.
So, slowly, he let go of Gehrman, sighing.
"Why?" Alex asked as the lunatic straightened his shirt, carrying a small smile on his lips. "Why did these people… become Rampagers?"
"You already know the answer," Gehrman said, turning around. "They… saw something they shouldn't have."
Then, the Apostle opened the Control Room door, Alex taking a deep breath behind him, preparing to go all out; to go beyond, if he must.
…
Alex, half astounded and half horrified, stared at the insides of the massive Control Room.
Gehrman Sparrow, standing next to him, was staring forward as well. Even though his face carried no expression, it felt like his emotions resonated with Alex's own. And rightfully so, given the sight in front of them was beyond what they could have ever imagined.
In the middle of the Control Room, within a transparent globe that glowed cyan, hovered two figures.
One was Skycrawler, blood bursting from his eyes, a cyan-colored, visible force oozing from his entire body, becoming the globe that surrounded the two figures.
Next to him, with her eyes closed, was the USA's No. 1 Pro Hero, and probably the current No. 1 Hero in the entire world — Star and Stripe.
And it was she who horrified the two men.
Eyes… tiny, hundreds of eyes… brutal, bloody, and pupilless eyes… covered Star's entire body, some half-closed, some opened wide, all carrying black-blue veins inside them.
Just looking at them gave the impression that those eyes would blink in the very next moment, giving life to the horror.
"Time…" Alex said, sensing the dryness in his voice.
Gehrman Sparrow nodded heavily in agreement next to him. "… She must have created a rule to pause her mutation from spreading further. Almost instantaneously. Otherwise, we would have found her winking at us at this moment."
Joke?
This fucking lunatic was joking right now?!
Then, something suddenly clicked in Alex's mind, making him spin around fast.
"Where is it?!" he asked, putting his back to Gehrman Sparrow. "Where's the third lifeform?"
"It's hiding under the control panel over there," the Apostle casually said, making Alex snap his head in that direction. "Come out. I will shoot in three. Three…"
"Wait!" a man shouted.
The moment they heard the voice, both Alex and Gehrman experienced deja vu.
And when the man himself crawled out, their eyes widened simultaneously as well.
Because this man, wearing a white lab coat, was none other than…
… Dr. Samuel Abraham!
***************
AN: With the lowest tier, you can access 5 Chapters ahead of Webnovel + 3 Backlog Chapters + ALL original images compiled according to the Volumes.
If you are liking the work and would like to support it, consider checking it out. [Links available in my Webnovel Profile]