Part Six: Steve Austin never looked like this.

Xander had been stuck in hell for seven days. Seven days of physical tests that pushed him to the point of death, and seven nights filled with screaming and strange dreams. After seven days, Xander had decided one way or another there wouldn't be an eighth.

For the last three days he had been pretending to be weaker then he felt after Surgeon healed him. Today as the guards were relaxed Xander made his move.

Grabbing the larger guard escorting him back to his cell Xander smashed his knee into the mans face. Then using every skill he had picked up in three years Slaying Xander spun around, punching the second guard in the throat, sending the second man down for the count. Keeping his momentum up Xander turned and kicked the recovering guard in the side of the head, aiming for the temple region.

As soon as he was sure the two men were down Xander began to run. He had spent seven days finding out the quickest path from the arena to the gates by what he overheard from guards and inmates. He figured he had another thirty seconds before an alarm went off, and then another seven minutes of a full sprint until he reached the gate.

For once luck seemed to be with him as things went according to plan. The alarm went of and thirty seconds after that Xander ran into a wall of men with guns. Xander never slowed down as the men opened fire, he simply followed his instincts and dropped to the ground.

As soon as he went to the ground he started to slide with a form that would make a professional baseball player jealous. Smiling at the fact that this wouldn't even be possible without the suit he had been given to protect the guards from his powers Xander plowed into a guard, knocking him over.

Without wasting any time Xander took the knife from the boot of the guard and plunged it between his captors legs. This action not only made one guard completely incapacitated, but shocked the second guard hesitating.

To his credit the second guard didn't hesitate long, just a few seconds. Luckily for Xander a few seconds was all he needed to deliver another throat punch.

Pausing only long enough to take guns, explosives, and gas masks from the guards, Xander resumed his run toward the gate.

The next few minutes were war as Xander made his way towards the gate. By the time he reached them he was almost completely covered in the blood of guards, as well as his own.

When he finally reached his goal Xander wasn't surprised to find that the console that controlled the gate had been turned off. Xander had expected them to do this and was prepared.

While the gate would be hard to penetrate from the outside, it had some major weaknesses on the inside. Weaknesses that Xander had spent five days figuring out how to exploit.

Placing the grenades he had stolen in very specific positions Xander pulled the pins and ran for cover behind the console.

The following explosions was deafening, but the following sound made Xanders heart leap in joy and do the Snoopy Dance. The second sound was the gate falling inward, and opening a way to freedom.

As Xander sprinted out into the freezing weather he thought about the promise he had made to himself to take some of the other mutants with him. Shaking his head he assured himself that he would keep the promise as soon as he came back with reinforcements.

Searching for the best way to run Xander spotted a lone guard running toward him. As he watched the one man became two, then four, then sixteen. At this point Xander decided to run any way that would take him away from the thirty-two men.

Stumbling, falling, and sliding on the snow Xander cursed himself as he left a trail a mile wide to be followed. There was no way he would be able to loose the freaking multiplying man like this. He needed to calm down, remember the skills he had learned when he was possessed during Halloween.

Forcing his breath to even out as he ran, Xander felt his calm return to him. When he saw one of the multiple men up ahead he even believed that he could take him out.

This fantasy was promptly obliterated when the multiple man raised his arm and fired something that shattered to Xanders left. Xander could almost physically feel his inner piece shatter with the rock.

When he slid down the hill and into the man Xander finally got a good look at his pursuer, and almost lost his lunch. The man was a boy, no older than sixteen, that had all his limbs cut off and replaced with some kind of cybernetic implants.

The limbs didn't look like anything seen on TV or in the movies. The things grafted to the kid were ugly, hard looking things, and Xander could almost hear the metal scraping against the boys bones.

"Kill me," rasped the boy, even as a metallic limb slammed into Xander causing another duplicate to appear.

This is how Xander met the darkness, in an ever increasing storm of blows with his attacker begging for death.