“Run!”

“What is the problem?!” Serena asked as she ran up to Kayden. She must have seen when he fired shot.

Serena looked like she was about to ask more questions, but suddenly, she froze, a shocked expression appearing on her pretty face.

She had obviously noticed both the T-1 that Kayden had destroyed and had most likely seen the six newly appearing T-1 tanks which were still fully intact and in perfect condition.

Not wanting to waste any time explaining what had happened to her and due to their currently dangerous situation, Kayden only pointed at Serena and shouted, “We’ve got big trouble! Lead the rest of the group to continue along the way to the secret exit.”

“What about you?” Serena said, seeming to notice that Kayden had not included in the instruction.

“I will stay here and try to buy some time.”

“That’s too dangerously. You can’t stop them all by yourself.” Serena then pointed at Kayden’s gun and said, “I should be one to do it. As a Resistance soldier, I have more experience than you at using that. I think you should give me the gun.”

Kayden shook his head and said, “No. You are the only one in our group who knows the way out of this place. So, you should go with the rest.”

Seeing that Serena wanted to argue further, Kayden quickly added to try to reassure her, “Don’t worry, I will retreat slowly as I shoot. I don’t have a death wish.”

Kayden had been repeatedly been taking glances at the six T-1s even while he was trying to convince Serena to leave with the rest of the group. So, when he took his most recent glance at the T-1s, he saw that the T-1 at the front of the group had already noticed the T-1 he had just destroyed.

The T-1 group had all entered into the path between the working machines in a single file arrangement due to the hallway been too narrow for more than one T-1 to move side by side, so only the one at the front had seen the destroyed T-1.

When the first T-1, the one at the front of the group, saw the one that Kayden had T-1, it looked around, obviously searching for what had destroyed its fellow T-1.

And just a few moments later, when it looked down the hallway, it found Kayden.

Kayden was still in the process of convincing Serena, but his last glance made him realize that the first T-1 had already noticed him.

And Kayden already knew what would surely come next. The T-1, just like the any other Terminator, on detection a threat — currently Kayden himself — would soon follow the Terminator philosophy which seems to be “shoot first, ask questions later”.

Kayden pointed at the T-1 who was looking at them with its glowing eyes and shouted, “Please this is not the right time for arguments! That thing has already detected us! Go now if you don’t want these survivors to be hurt!”

The rest of the group had gathered around the arguing duo. They had already noticed both the destroyed T-1, and Kayden’s words had called their attention to the six other T-1 that were appearing at the end of the hallway one by one.

As soon as they saw the six T-1s, they stared at them slack-jawed and in silence, looking dazed and shocked, obviously scared and not knowing what to do.

Serena looked at T-1s, and then she looked at the survivors. She seemed to have noticed how frightened they looked because she turned to Kayden and nodding, she said. “Alright, I will lead them to the exit. We won’t move too quickly, so should not lose us if you retreat slowly while holding the machines off.”

She then turned to the rest of the group, and while snapping her fingers loudly in order to break them out of their dazed state and Serena shouted, “Everybody, wake up! This is not the time to scared. All of you will be coming with me now. Move it!”

Serena shout jolted the survivors awake from their fearful stupor.

Nadiya, especially, seemed to quickly regain her motherly and protective instincts towards her group members, and she immediately joined Serena to coax her group members to wake up from their shocked state and run in towards the direction where Serena had pointed.

Serena saw that the survivors had started moving and was about to join them, but before she left, she turned to look at Kayden who was already aiming at the first T-1 and said, “Be careful. Don’t die here.”

Without glancing backwards to look at her and keeping his full focus on the T-1 he was aiming his rifle at, Kayden nodded after he heard her words.

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m capable of. I really don’t have a death wish, you know.”

While he watched the T-1 as it started its aiming motions, Kayden heard Serena’s fading footsteps as she ran to meet up with the rest of the group.

While Kayden had been arguing with Serena for those few seconds, his HUD had already locked on to the first T-1, his Phased Plasma rifle aimed and ready to dispatch the T-1 with a well-placed plasma shot to the head.

Kayden had not yet taken the shot because he did not want to create new suspicions of his abilities in Serena — there was no way she would not develop some suspicions if she witnessed an untrained and untested ‘normal’ survivor destroy Hunter-Killers with extremely accurate headshots.

Therefore, when Kayden heard Serena’s fading footsteps, he released a relieved sigh.

Then, he put on a confident — and maybe a little cocky — smile.

And without giving the T-1 any chance to fire its miniguns, Kayden shot at it first.

Headshot!

Following the explosion of the T-1’s head, it immediately stopped functioning, and the minigun barrels which were beginning to rotate prematurely grinded to a halt.

‘Too slow. Too easy. No wonder it has a low danger assessment level.’ Kayden thought while he haughtily blew off non-existent smoke from the tip of his rifle’s barrel.

But as soon as Kayden blasted the first T-1’s metal ‘brains’ off its shoulders, the remaining five T-1s, who had been following behind the first one — who had been blocking their view of Kayden —finally noticed Kayden and immediately locked on to him.

Three other T-1s, who had been hidden around the bend at their end of the path between the working machines also wheeled themselves in and they joined with the rest of the T-1s in jampacking the walkway between the working machines.

‘Shit! There is even more of them?!”

The eight remaining T-1 tanks seemed to have assessed his danger lever and considered Kayden to be extremely dangerous because without them even waiting to remove the two destroyed T-1s that were blocking much of the hallway, all of them started shooting their twin miniguns.

Many bullets poured down the hallway towards Kayden.

Kayden immediately replied with his own more destructive plasma rifle shots, quickly destroying three T-1s with another three well-placed consecutive headshots.

But this time, Kayden’s inexperience put in a very dangerous situation.

All this while, he had not placed much consideration on his own safety. He had not been performing any defensive maneuvers and had only been focusing on destroying as many T-1s as possible — yeah, popping T-1 head like oversized pustules sure is fun.

So, just as he was happily dispatching T-1s with consecutive headshots, he felt several hard impacts to his chest, his left shoulder and his left arm.

A sharp, burning pain quickly erupted from the various impact points.

Kayden immediately froze from the shock caused by the outbursts of extreme pain.

The immense pain immediately drew Kayden’s full attention to locations on his body from where he was feeling the painful sensations.

He quickly checked his body and immediately saw four bloody holes on his chest, with another one each on his left shoulder and left upper arm — six bloody holes in total.

The destroyed T-1s, whose bodies were standing unmoving in front of the five still functional T-1s and blocking much of their line of sight and target to Kayden, had caused most of the bullets shot from the T-1s’ miniguns to strike the destroyed T-1 bodies and be blocked by it or ricochet of the metal bodies and go way off their target — Kayden. Most of the bullets had ended up ricocheting off the wrecked T-1s and hitting the peacefully working machines to the sides, or the bullets struck the T-1 bodies, then lost their forward momentum and finally fell on the floor.

But even with that fact, a few bullets had managed to fly past the obstructions in their way and accurately strike Kayden’s body.

“I have been shot!” Kayden whispered, still in shock.

But just then, a two more shots slammed into his chest and added to his already agonizing pain.

The burst of pain from being shot yet again broke Kayden out of his state of shock.

Screaming in pain and shouting, “Ah! Fuck you metal-brained diesel guzzlers!” Kayden quickly gunned down another two T-1 tanks before dodging to the side of his end of the walkway.

Breathing heavily, he leaned his back on a large metal press machine beside the walkway.

Clink.

Kayden heard the sound of something small fall down.

Looking down to check, he quickly saw that it was a blood-stained deformed bullet.

‘That’s weird. This should be one of the bullets that struck me. It should still be inside my body.’ Kayden thought.

Realizing that the bullet must have fallen off from his body, Kayden quickly checked his wounds.

 Immediately Kayden noticed that the skin surrounding one of the wounds on his chest was quickly coming together like it was knitting itself shut, the bullet wound rapidly reducing in size.

“It’s healing! The bullet wound is healing!” Kayden muttered in shock.

Clink.

Clink.

Another two deformed bullet fell to the floor and drew Kayden’s attention to his other bullet wounds.

When he checked his other bullet wounds, Kayden found out that two other bullets wounds had already pushed out the bullets that had been inside them, and they were quickly closing up like the first bullet wound he had checked.

Clink.

Kayden watched as the remaining wounds on his shoulder and arm pushed out the bullets inside and started healing.

Clink.

This was when Kayden recalled that after he had felt the initial burst of pain when the bullets injured him, the pain had quickly decreased in its intensity, but his shock from the initial extremely painful sensation had made him not realize this important fact.

By this time, most of Kayden’s bullet wounds had finished healing, with only his unblemished skin remaining and no signs of the previous wounds remaining. Only the last of the bullet wounds were still in the process of closing up completely.

The whole process of the wound healing took only ten seconds to complete.

Looking at the little amount of blood — practically negligible — around where the bullet wounds had been, Kayden now realized that the bleeding from the wounds must have stopped just a few seconds after he was wounded.

Besides, it seemed the bullets had mostly caused injuries to his skin but had been stopped by his muscles from piercing too deeply into his body. His muscles seem like they much more durable than normal human muscles.

His muscles, his skin, and most like all of his other remaining biological body organs and tissues have obviously received some enhancements.

‘This is obviously Skynet’s work.’ Kayden thought after discovered a few more of his abilities.

Waking up from his shocked stupor caused by him witnessing such a wondrous event, Kayden started laughing.

“I can heal from bullet wounds! My body can heal fast!”

Kayden’s laughter quickly devolved into insane cackling.

“I can heal from anything!”

“Ha-ha! I am invincible!”

 

*****

Thanks for your support on Patreon:

heller8284

***

Check out my Patreon to support me: At www.patreon.com/Kendrix