Chapter 20: The blood of war
Just then, the roaring of troops storming the village echoed through the air and I instinctively gazed out of the window to view the adversary. What I saw was an army of humans engaging and slaughtering the citizens of the village. "Those are all humans!" I stated with surprise. "Where are the ogres?" "Ogres serve as Igthorn's personal army." Rose answered. "They only accompany him when he decides to join the battle and only joins when he spots a worthy opponent. He's only ever done that once that I know of and that was when he fought against the clone that killed his love, Lady Bane." As she explained this, we hardly noticed the soldiers entering the hospital until the sound of the first spray of bullets rang through the building. "Give me your leg Eric." Rose demanded and then asked, "You're on pain killers, right?" Confused, he simply answered, "Yes, my family naturally had a tolerance for the side effects. Why do you need my leg?" "I need to acquire the frequency of your cells. This is going to hurt like hell." She answered and then quickly flung the blanket off of him. She then pressed her tiny device on his wound and began pressing the single button twice while connecting another device to it. A light humming came from it and Eric jolted like something pricked him. "Ow. It wasn't as bad as you described." He retorted. "What are you talking about? That was just the tissue scan." Rose responded. She then gazed at her small device that she had connected to her little regenerating device and waited for it to finish blinking and making beeping noises.
Before her small device that resembled another device that I learned was known as a "cell phone" could finish doing its job, the doors burst open across the hall from us and war soldiers began flooding in toward us. If you counted, you may have come up with a total of twenty soldiers or more, armed with machine guns aimed right at us. "Freeze and we may let you live." One of the soldiers said to us, while aiming his gun at us. The soldier's outfits were all uniform in exact look and equipment. Their heads were hidden using a blue cloth hood that covered their entire head, their faces were covered with a mask that resembled a respirator and a demons mask mixed together. Adorned over the head of the cloth hood was a dark blue helmet that covered even the ears. His uniform was dark navy blue as well. Under his uniform they all wore vests that made them look more muscular than they actually were and they even wore black gloves that were long enough to cover their elbows. The soldier's pants were colored dark navy blue as well and each of them wore a combat knife strapped to their right sides. They also wore knee-high black combat boots with another knife on the left foot and a nine-millimeter hand gun on the right. The soldier in front soon recognized the determined glare coming off of Selina and hesitated before saying in a surprised gasp, "Commander Alumsdale?" She simply walked toward him and stared into the goggles of his uniformed mask and said, "Get your men to stand down now if any of you value your lives." The soldier then began shivering violently as if he had witnessed firsthand what she was capable of doing and what her very glare meant. Several of the men also had the same look throughout their bodies and it was confirmed when one of them on the left side of the squad leader raised his gun. In a flash, before anyone could even finish blinking, she had snatched the machine gun from the soldier with her right hand and grabbed the knife on his side with her right. If anyone blinked at this moment, they missed the rest of the amazing precision she displayed. She yanked the gun out of the soldier's very hands, spun the combat knife around and plunged the blade through the bottom of his chin and into his head and before anyone could process 'what just happened', she released the knife, not getting a single drop of blood on her hand. Blood gushed out of the man's wound and completely coated the handle of the serrated knife. The man fell backward into the crowd of soldiers as the blood spilled off of the bottom of the knife's handle, and struck the ground, dead. And all-the-while, Selina maintained her cold, determined expression. "Before any of you decide to avenge your fallen comrade, remember that I have been trained in the art of assassination. I am capable of removing all of you from this plane without getting as much as a drop of your blood on me. So again, if you value your lives, just stand down now." She urged them. The men simply gave in to their fear and stepped aside, allowing us to move through.
"I need time and an open space to regenerate Eric's tissue and heal his bullet wound." Rose exclaimed as her scanning device sounded off, indicating that the frequency scan was completed. "Heal him quickly and let's get out of here." Selina stated, never once breaking her frightening gaze at the soldiers. Rose then jammed the device onto his wound and activated it. The look a searing pain painted itself on his face and he began to yell to show just how much he was in. His face scrunched itself together and tears began running from his tightly closed eyes. His fists clenched tightly and he held onto the bed sheets as if his life depended on it.
The process only lasted a few moments, but it still killed me to see him in that much pain. I began crying myself as if I felt the intense pain that he was feeling. Even the soldiers, with their guns, cringed in fear at the mere thought of the pain if it wasn't deafened by pain killers. In six seconds flat, his screams faded down to a mere cringe and heavy breathing. "What a trooper." A soldier in the third row whispered to another adjacent to him. The other soldier simply nodded in agreement and added, "Yah, he survived... whatever that was." Then they were astonished when Eric stood up and began testing his balance to see if it worked properly, however, Rose looked sort of perplexed. "How come it took so long for the scanner to identify my frequencies and only mere minutes to identify Eric's?" She asked more to herself than anyone else. Instinctively, as if he was in school, one of the soldiers raised his hand to receive permission to present a theory. "I think I have an idea, mam." He said to get her attention. His comrades simply stared at him inquisitively as Rose asked him, "Yes, and what would that be?" "Perhaps it took longer because you scanned your frequencies from scratch, with nothing for the machine to compare it too. When you scanned the boy's frequency, it already had yours encoded and thus may not have had to change that much." Rose nodded to accept his theory as one of the soldier's comrades simply mocked, "Egghead!" If he had his mask removed, there would literally be no hiding his blush.