The Yellow-Eyed Beast Part 4

PART 4 – Resolution

It was hot, and murky, and the humidity nearly made the air swimmable.

Bugs. Light rain. Overcast. Woods.

This base had plopped itself down in the middle of the forest, still absolutely buzzing with wildlife and overgrowth.

The automatic rifle let out several hot roars sending screaming metal ripping through several pounds of human flesh. Everyone who took a bullet fell, and probably didn’t see the blur that was Naya strafing across the battlefield. She was fast, like a gust of wind. It was almost like she wasn’t there.

A man who peered up from his cover saw nothing as well. Camo smattered tac-gear complete by a visor for thermal and normal sight, kevlar and ceramics for armor, and an automatic rifle similar to what Naya had been using. There was the Arksys patch on his chest which looked like a sharp cross shape with a circle passing halfway through each bar. Eyes scanned the area, and just as he was about to dip back and radio his allies he suddenly felt himself jerked backward A fist hit his solar plexus with such force that the whole world went black immediately. His heart had exploded in his chest.

The door to the guarded bunker was suddenly several things at once. Unhinged, flying through the air, and ten feet inside the room courtesy of a size eleven (women’s) combat boot with several psi of force delivered therein. The man who’d been waiting to light up the fool that entered the door lay a few feet from the steel piece of structure with a deep gash in his forehead and scrambled to his feet as he came to.

He came to, too late. Suddenly he was pinned against the wall, lifted from 5’9” to about 6’4”. He looked down at the woman lifting him there and his face lit up with shock. The uniform was different on this one. There was no patch, and everything he had on was black or grey. He had no visor, not even a helmet, just a vest and a UMP sub-machine gun (now lying helplessly several feet away).

“Y-you! You’re the Tigress! You’re the Gehenna experiment aren’t you?!”

Naya stared harder, head tilting a little bit and then looking over her shoulder at the door, everyone outside was still fighting the stragglers. She looked over the captured officer again. No, definitely no Arksys patch.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Gehenna. The experiment to try and nurture a piece of The Bane in a human-like host. We stole their files. You…” he struggled a little, but a knife lifted to his eyes and he stopped, “You should be helping us. Why would you be against us now?”

Naya’s eyes widened some, the tip of the blade slicing just barely into the skin of his lower eyelid.

“Keep talking…”

“Ah! AH! W-wait wait! FUCK WAIT!”

She paused.

“I’m…I’m assuming you at least know about the final phase right?”

“Yeah, cold sleep, Model 2 fights me. They want it to win.”

The man frowned and shook his head as best he could while in her grip, “I'm afraid you're mistaken,” he said holding on to her wrist, “maybe they called it cold sleep, but...Tigress...” he pulled himself up some against the wall freeing his windpipe just a little, “You're not going to fight the Model 2.”

Naya snarled, “What are you getting at?”

“They plan on cutting open your brain, analyzing every little development to the tiniest detail, removing your genetic material, and then creating the new Model from that. You're to be...essentially; its mother.”

She paused, freezing in place.

“It’s how we estrange it from the original mass. We run it through several people...”
Yellow eyes widened, “You’re not going to fight Model 2, Tigress. You’re going to give it life.”

“He lied to me.”

Her gaze took on a thousand yard quality, staring past the man she was holding up against the wall, ears no longer taking in the sounds of gunshots and shouting outside. She was no longer there, simply empty and gone. Lost in thought.

“So, what do you say? We can free you. Give you a new life.”

Another soldier entered the room with weapon raised, and she turned holding the man’s body and armor between herself and the shots being fired. He convulsed with the impacts of the bullets a couple of times, her left hand held to his chest, blank look still on her face. Sudden a pressure built and popped like a bubble.

His back exploded.

Gore, bone fragments, and bloody entrails erupted onto the firing soldier getting in his eyes, spearing his flesh and staggering him. Before he could recover she was in front of him, reaching down gently, one hand on his shoulder and the other on his jaw to lift…and pop.

Separated spinal cord.

There was another man approaching from around the corner. He ran into her fist as it tore through his chest sending his life spilling over the side of the bunker. Eyes rolled back, breathing ceased. She pushed him off and walked around the cement building.

“He lied to me again.”

Teeth clenched, then fists.

The building cracked, splits appearing in every face of the structure.

Naya screamed in rage.

Suddenly the whole fortified piece of defense splintered like wood and imploded. All of it smashing into the single most condensed point it could as if the hands of God had descended and tried to make a cement snowball.

The men who heard the scream and the thunderous crash turned to look where she was, but she was gone.

“I’ve had enough!”

One turned his head to face the threat behind him. His body stopped, his head kept turning, spinning, flying through the air independent of the rest of him and colliding with his comrade who was knocked down.
Before his eyes could even widen completely, he too met the same fate as the building.

There was a messy ball of human pieces roiling on itself in the center of this battlefield surrounded by woods, overcast sky, and now it was raining harder.

Where was Tigress?

Radio calls for assistance, reporting the danger, went out.
…………………………………………………………….

“Search her room, check her vitals, tear apart everything in the training chamber. You!” Toma pointed at another scientist, “Are all doses of godsbane accounted for?”

The red headed woman he was shouting at already looked frantic. Their lab was locked, secure. The white walls were garnished heavily with security cameras and sensors.

Toma stared into a camera, “Check all of the footage over the past week, scan for Gehenna 6 and report back to me if you spot the Tigress in this lab!” On the other side of the camera, the security officer hit the intercom button.

“Yes sir.”

Toma bit the thumb of his replica hand. It looked real, covered in fake skin, fiberglass bones and such. There was only the faintest whirring noises with each movement. “How the hell is she attacking our men?”

……………………………………………….
Back on the battlefield, there were bodies as far as the eye could see. Arksys soldiers that she’d come with, and the Insurgent team they were sent to eradicate. Many were in pieces, had giant holes in them, or were barely recognizable as humans in a pile of gore.

Naya was covered in blood.

She had three bullets in her left arm, listless eyes turned to them and a careful hand moved over to pull out each one, flicking it away with her thumb. Not a single slug had gone deeper than half an inch.

Ping.

Ping!

Ping!

She reached up and touched her ear.

“What?”

Toma’s voice screamed frantically from the other side.

“Tigress what are you doing out there!?”

“I’m killing them. All of them, because I don’t trust any of them.” She smiled, “You lied again, Toma. Didn’t you?” Yellow eyes turned up to the rain.


Toma started to speak, but didn’t know what he was going to say.

“I’ll take that silence as a yes. It’s alright though.”

Toma’s silence persisted. Everyone was quiet even though more ears were on that call.

“Because now I’m free. I can escape.” Her smile became a smirk. “I know what the final phase is now.”

Toma sat down and ran a hand through his hair. The red-headed scientist stopped typing and raised her head. “Sir I—“

Toma held up a hand to silence her.

“Naya…if you do this you won’t be able to stop. We will eventually find you. I can’t help you then…”

“Help me?” Naya chuckled, “You do that? I had no idea…”

“Naya I know you think I lied to you, but I’ve been working as hard as I can to make what I told you into the truth. I believe…”

“What? You think I’m what you’ve been going for the whole time? That there’s no need for a Model 2?”

Toma was quiet for a moment, “Yes. I do.”

Naya laughed, “I thought that’s what you’d say. You cheesy sap. So romantic, Dr.Toma.” Naya walked forward, heading toward the woods. “I’m guessing you realized by now that I’m immune to the godsbane? You know, that stuff designed to shut down my nervous system temporarily? Well, depending on the dosage.”

Toma rubbed his temple, taking a deep breath. “How long?”

“Six months.”

Some of the other scientists gasped.

“So when you took off my hand…”

“Yeah. That collar couldn’t have actually stopped me. The stuff in those needles would have had about the same effect on me as a shot of whiskey. I needed a better opportunity, though.” The tigress chuckled, “Found one. Anyway, you want to know the funny part?”

Toma ran a hand through his brown hair, “Sure.”

“I was a little scared to leave. I don’t know what’s out in the world other than what you’ve all told me. What if that was all lies to?” Naya leaned against a tree staring out at the field of bodies; at her handiwork.

“That makes sense, Tigress.”

“Doesn’t it though?”

“Listen,” Toma said, “I…was told there was a way to make you a normal child. It was going to be something we did once testing was complete. I was going to adopt you, retire from Arksys.”

“Oh?” Naya examined her nails, bits of coagulated blood under them. She flicked them out. “Do tell me your fascinating and idealistic dream, Toma.”

“I was, but they wanted to keep me. By the time our…incident occurred.”

“You raping me, yeah.”

Toma cringed some, but continued, “I had a family. They had more leverage on me then. They leaned, hard. I…I had no choice. I—“

Naya paused and her smile faded.

No choice.

It took a moment for Toma to realize what he’d said and suddenly he opened his mouth to speak.

“Naya I—“

“Have a nice life, Toma.”

Just before their line disconnected, Toma heard the blades cutting through the air. A whooping, hypnotic thrumming. Helicopters. His eyes widened.

“One of the choppers is near her!” he shouted. The Redhead jumped a bit, not sure what he wanted her to do with that information.

“Team Seven respond. Over.”

“Right here sir, over.”

“Are the choppers inbound or out? Over.”

“Outbound sir, scouting the area for Gehenna 6: Tigress as we speak, over.”


“They were just near her, she couldn’t have gotten far. Over.”

“Loud and clear Toma sir. We’ll find her. Over and out.”

The redhead spoke up finally.

“Dr. Toma. Orders for her escape are to kill on sight, aren’t they?”

“What?” Toma turned to look at Red. She swallowed.

“Dannison. It was last week, he said if Gehenna 6 tried to escape that was an automatic Do Not Capture flag. She’s escaping. That team is going to kill her.”

……………………………………………………….

The guns on that helicopter were vicious, practically cutting down the trees she used as cover.
Naya kept her head down, an arm shielding her face as wooden debris flurried everywhere. Suddenly she winced as a bullet cut right through her liver.

Falling to the side she kept low, fire passing over her and the tree coming down to crass just in front of her face.

She could hear the helicopter blades whipping through the air with such ease. It was banking, turning, trying to face her and see if she was still alive.

Naya didn’t scream, though the agonies showed on her face, a hand over the wound. She looked down to see plenty of blood oozing out and closed her eyes. Slowly, the bullet inched and popped from her skin. She looked up seeing the helicopter just barely hidden behind some branched.

The Tigress reached out to it, feeling her will wrap around its metal body. Slowly her hand began to close…

…………………………………..

“Dr. Toma…?”

His eyes flitted across the screen. “No…”

Red shook her head, “I…I can’t believe it.”

“Chopper offline. She took it down.”

The radio fuzzed, Toma hit the button.

“Go ahead.”

“Sir…chopper three is down. It…we don’t know what happened…”

“It’s gone. No one on board reads any vital signs. We can’t track them at all.”

Suddenly, a familiar line chimed on. “Sir! Tigress’s comm line is green!”

“Naya!”

……………………………………………..

There was a burning wreckage behind her now. Dozens of bodies, fallen trees, and all that blood and fire. It was fitting, suiting her rage at her place in life. At her birth. At her purpose.

“I’m going to disappear now, Toma.”

“Listen, Naya. You don’t know what you’re doing. This project will continue with or without you. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. Come back, I can protect you!”

She finished tying some bandages over her waist, “Too late for that.”

“Please…”

“We both no begging doesn’t do you any good. You may as well save your breath.”

Naya stood and took out the earpiece speaking directly into it.

“You can try doing what I did. Just close your eyes and dream yourself unborn. Unmade, in the cold dark void. There, nothing can hurt you. Nothing can lie to you. Nothing can touch you.”

(("You don't know what they'll do to get you b-"))

She smiled and flicked the piece back behind her letting it sail several yards onto the burning pile.

“Goodbye!”

She was out of sight, out of mind. It was all just in time for the whole bloody thing to explode.

“And happy fucking New Year…”