Rhys froze as the red eyes stared him down. His fate was dawning on him and Rhys realised that this might be the end.

The creatures slowly stepped towards him, into the starlight where he could see them properly, revealing their horrifying figures. They were like monstrous skeletons covered in a thin layer of tawny pale white skin. They had four Limbs that ended in sharp spear-like appendages that Rhys could soon see impaling him. Their small red eyes sat high up on their long faces and their thin slitted mouths opened up to reveal rows of needle-like teeth.

Rhys shivered as he looked at them, the sight of them was so disturbing that he wanted to just cower in a ball. His attention shifted to a slushy pile of what looked like bloody ground meat on the forest floor. His face paled as he realised what it was. Mug's axe and some familiar clothes were sticking out from the puddle of bloody mush. And when Rhys looked at the creatures surrounding the puddle, he could see that their boney appendages were covered in blood and bone fragments, their ghastly mouths dripping with blood with bits of flesh stuck between their teeth. The man he had seen alive minutes ago had been reduced to that in such a short amount of time.

Rhys shivered in horror.

As if the creatures could smell his fear and realised that he was helpless, they suddenly charged at him, raising their spear arms and baring their atrocious teeth.

Rhys had no other option left. He had no fighting skills to fend them off with, and of course no powers to use against them. No gadgets or weapons or anything at all to save his life. All that was left was the core.

In that moment time slowed down for Rhys. The beasts were frozen mid-air and the sounds around him dissipated.

Before he could think, his hand had reached inside his pocket and retrieved his only hope, and the thing that would also probably kill him.

When a person infused with a core, a dangerous shockwave is released that could seriously injure or even kill anyone or anything in close proximity. That's why infusions were done in hospitals with absorption technology to stop the body and the surrounding people from being harmed. Not to mention the risk of failure when an infusion was done in uncontrolled conditions... Rhys knew that the chances of him dying here was probably over ninety percent, but still, if he was going to die, he wanted to die knowing what it was like to have a core. Ever since he was a kid he dreamed about having a core, and going through school without one had been pretty brutal. If this was the last moment of his life, he wanted to finally have what everyone else had.

Rhys brought the core up to his face and crushed the stone in his fist. As soon as he applied some force the core crumbled and transformed into silvery dust and smoke. Rhys took a deep breath in, inhaling the core until there was nothing left.

The creatures' teeth were millimetres away from Rhys's throat when an enormous shockwave exploded from within Rhys sending the monsters flying back into the forest.

Rhys felt in an intense burn blaze from within his lungs. It was as if his insides had been set on fire. He lost control of his legs from the pain and fell to the forest floor writhing in agony. Not being able to handle it, he lost consciousness, not knowing if he would ever open his eyes again.

——————————

A few beads of sweat rolled down the general's forehead as he saw the boney white monsters he had just killed get back off the forest floor and charge at him again.

They were a disturbing type of humanoid creature that had thin boney bodies with sickly pale white skin. All of the creatures had elongated necks and stretched limbs, glowing red eyes high on their foreheads and thin crescent mouths that occasionally opened to reveal rows of needle teeth. They were the creatures of nightmares, so much so that the general felt he needed to wash his eyes after seeing them. But the problem with them was much more serious than their hideous appearance, the creatures were actually frighteningly strong.

Although they looked like they were just skin and bones, they were deceptively sturdy. Their boney limbs seemed to be as hard as steel and they swung their sharp appendages at lightning speed with frightening accuracy. As if they were sewing needles. But much more frightening than that was their incredible ability, they were undead creatures.

As soon as his team members killed one, the creatures would automatically begin to heal and pick themselves off the floor to begin the fight again. Even if the general was much more powerful than them, he would not be able to last against them in a game of endurance, as they never died and could continue the fight forever. The general was in a sticky situation, although his team was managing to hold them back now, it would not be long until they succumbed from a lack of stamina and collapsed from exhaustion.

Should they abandon the mission and head back to safety now, or wait until the raiders came back so he could question them?

The general blasted a group of three undead creatures with his fire power as they scuttled towards him, burning them to a crisp. He then watched as they healed and began to get off the floor to attack him once again. He looked around the forest at his underlings to see them all panting desperately as they fought the ugly creatures. The general knew he had to make a decision and soon.

BOOM!

The general was pushed back a few feet as an incredible shockwave blasted throughout the area, and the nightmarish creatures around him were knocked off balance and fell over. Without having to think, he immediately knew what it was, he had seen his fair share of infusions already so he was very familiar with the infusion shockwave.

"Troops!" He shouted out to his team of soldiers. "Go fetch the raider and bring him to our portal. As long as one is alive we can get the information we need!"

The team that had been knocked over by the shockwave quickly got to their feet and headed through the forest to the epicentre of the explosion to go and retrieve whoever was there.

Finally with all of his team members out of the way and now that the mission was coming to an end the general could finally unleash what he had been holding back. As the nightmare monsters began to rise off the floor, the general let the fierce flames within him reek havoc. In an instant the forest was overtaken in a hurricane of searing hot flames that burned everything it touched to a crisp.

As the soldiers were carrying the convulsing Rhys through the portal they marvelled at their general's strength for what must have been the umpteenth time since they had been under his command.

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The portal they went through connected them to the sector 5 military base, and thankfully the hospital was conjoined to the base so they quickly transported Rhys who was in a critical state to the hospital.

The general who was desperate to get some answers took some of his soldiers and followed Rhys to the emergency room to personally oversee his treatment. He had to make sure the boy lived so that he could question him, and furthermore, if the kid had picked up a decent ability, he wanted to recruit him.

It was not long before the nurses had hooked up the convulsing Rhys to an assortment of machines and were pumping him full of medicine in order to save his life. For a moment Rhys stopped shaking and the room calmed a bit. Everyone thought that Rhys's condition had stabilised only for Rhys to start convulsing even more violently. His chest lurched upwards while his arms and legs jerked wildly to the sides.

"Hold him down boys, we don't know what type of ability he gained!"

The general shouted as he saw Rhys's condition worsen considerably. The general had seen quite a few infusions without technology in his day, and he could say without a doubt that anyone who suffered this badly during an infusion would die.

The five soldiers in the room rushed to the convulsing teen's side and held down his shaking arms and legs.

The nurse in charge of the patient was at an utter loss. Never in her life had she seen such a hectic infusion. The core was practically devouring the boy and pushing him to the brink of death. Although the nurse was completely stricken by the situation she realised that she had a patient who needed her. She was not going to let this sixteen -year-old kid die on her watch. He still had his whole life ahead of him, and she was going to make sure he lived to live it.

The nurse turned to her junior and ordered her, "Go get doctor Rayburn and his paired infusion specialist, they should be in room three right now!"

The nurse ran over to the equipment draw and retrieved the gem tools and rushed over to the boy who was in the middle of a painful seizure and infusion heart attack.

"Hold his head down!" She commanded the general.

The general at first seemed taken aback by someone commanding him but then complied with the nurse seeing how dire the situation was as the boy started to froth at the mouth.

Using the clear gem saw, she sliced open the skin above the boy's heart and as gently as possible lowered in the absorption rod, hoping that the crystal would be able to soak up the extra core energy that was harming the boy's body.

However to her dismay, as she pulled the rod out to check, not even a pinch of power had been absorbed into the rod. It was as if the core was determined to make the boy its host and nothing else would do.

Just as the nurse was about to move onto plan B, a horrible monotonous beep echoed throughout the room. The boy's body suddenly stopped moving and the air around them grew deathly cold. Everyone looked up in dismay to see the clear flatline displayed on the heart monitor.

The soldiers who had been holding Rhys let go of him and took a step back. The general turned around to look out of the window with his hands folded behind his back. He lamented the loss of what looked to be a young man, but more than that he had lost all his leads to whoever was selling government property.

The nurse dropped her implements to the ground with a stupefied expression on her face. Although it was a military base's hospital many people came in to heal their injuries, she hardly ever saw anyone die because of how advanced medicine had become. However, she had lost this patient in the blink of an eye, furthermore, he had died such a horrible painful death. She was quite shaken by this.

Just then the other nurse and doctor Rayburn ran into the room, both of them were just as shocked to see the young man laying too quietly on the bed.

Doctor Rayburn hastily approached the boy, immediately taking his life scanner and pressing it against the boys neck. Rayburn's face darkened as the screen displayed a bleak black cross. The young man was dead, officially.

"Time of death, nineteen minutes past one, am." He gloomily read out the verdict as he slid his life scanner back into his coat pocket.

"This is why infusing outside of a hospital is dangerous." Rayburn muttered as he looked down at the corpse. The young man's hands were still balled up into fists but his face had already gone limp.

"I can't imagine the kind of pain he went through." Nurse Jackie felt her eyes well with frustration as she looked down at the first patient she had ever seen die, she had known sector five would be tough, but to see a death like this in her first week was too much.

"Dammit all." The general rubbed his tense temples, he was back to square one again with the kid dead. "Well Doctor we have work we need to get back to, can we trust you to make the proper arrangements?"

"Of course." Rayburn said as the general and his troops walked past him. However, the general and his men stopped dead in their tracks at the sound of a pained gasp.

Rhys shot up in the bed, frantically gasping for air. A few moments ago everything had been pitch black, not an inch of light or a bit of sound, not even his heart beat which had completely terrified him. But as the cool air flooded back into him and he could see the lights, he calmed down. However he immediately began to fret again when he saw a baffling sight: words across his vision.

[Ghost System]...

********

Ahhh finally the fun can begin. 😭😭😂😂

-Knightley