In the realm

Michael had killed countless creatures. Having had much time to bloody his katana on the red things that didn’t seem to fight that well, he suddenly was charged full sprint by several people. They wore rags and metal plates, so he had to care more about his aim with the blade and aim for limbs and heads. As the people got closer, he started to vaguely recognize their faces.

He didn’t pay attention to it as he had to fight for his life and continue forward. After having sliced nearly without effort through about thirty of them, he started to remember where the faces came from. I killed you he thought as he cut through another neck. As he moved to run his blade through another chest, he saw another face he remembered. You killed Sarah. He stabbed his sword through his neck before grabbing him by the head and slamming it into the wall beside him.

As he withdrew his blade from the chest, he saw another man slow his run down and throw his hands up. “It wasn’t worth it,” he shouted with a thick russian accent, “the money wasn’t worth my life for those kids!” Michael recognized him. He was the mercenary that he had caught trying to smuggle trafficked children through a cartel smuggling route.

Michael leapt forward and buried the edge of his sword in the man's throat. “You knew what you were doing!” he shouted as he dragged the blade sideways across his throat and allowed the body to fall to the ground. He looked forward and noticed the crowd had gotten dense. Fuck, I’ve killed a lot of people he realized as he sheathed his blade and grabbed his AKM. He didn’t have time to have a sword fight with literally every person that ran at him worthlessly. He began spraying in a controlled manner, his rounds flying through the crowd and dropping damn near everyone. By the time his drum ran out, there were only three people left. Two of them ran fast as possible while one sat on the ground cowering.

They moved way too well to be like the rest of the crowd. You were Enhanced he realized as one of them leapt toward him with a knife out. Michael stepped to the side as he cocked his katana back like a bat and swung it hard. He cut the flying assailants face in half, proving that staying in a fixed trajectory of movement was indeed a terrible idea.

The next one kept his feet firmly to the ground as he moved fast toward Michael in laterally shifting steps. This one kept his knife inverted in his hand and tried swiping it quickly as if intending to cause minor cuts before going for something worse. Barely cutting along Michaels vest, he couldn’t quite keep up as well as he had when he met Michael in Germany and nearly killed him.

Michael blocked his arms with the blade before grabbing the knife hand and twisting it. Having dealt with similar movements and knowing this time that his enemy was enhanced, he was ready. Once the knife fell from his hand, Michael tossed the katana up and used his newly free hand to grab the knife before it could fall to the floor. He shoved it through the solar plexus before reaching up to catch his weapon and swing it downward at an angle into the attackers neck. He grabbed the knife out of the man's chest and shoved it through his eye. As the man started to fall, he ripped the katana outward from his chest and moved to the last man who sat on the ground. The most familiar face of all; Bernard.

“You killed me once,” he shouted as he started trying to crawl away on his back, “do you really need to do it again?”

Michael walked over to him and kicked him in the face. “I guess I can ask you the questions I never bothered to ask,” he said with snide bitterness, “for starters, why give weapons to people who wanna kill us?”

“Not ‘us’,” Bernard shouted back, “you!”

Michael stuck the Katana through Bernard's leg and anchored him to the ground. “Why?”

“Because I thought I’d be the exception,” Bernard said as he began crying, “I wanted you gone so I could sleep at night!”

“Why did you kill Sarah?” Michael waited for an answer. Bernards sobs silenced, but this was not satisfactory for Michael. He reached down and struck Bernard in the face with a hard closed fist. “Why?” His voice was calm, but Michael had a boiling hatred inside him waiting to explode.

“She seduced me,” Bernard whimpered, “she got me to fool around with her, but then something happened and it was gonna jeopardize my marriage and my career!”

“What happened?” Michael waited for an answer only a few seconds before striking Bernard again. “When I ask you a question, it requires an answer. Stop making me have to hit you each time I ask.”

A woman's voice replied. “I got pregnant,” Sarah yelled out. “We were both drunk, and I didn’t exactly think about condoms when his less than satisfying dick squirted me.”

Michael looked at Sarah with a burning glare for a brief moment, before turning back to Bernard. “You mean to tell me,” he said through gritted teeth, “that you orphaned a child because of convenience?”

Bernard snapped at him, “I didn’t let the fucking bastard exist!”

Michael was hit with a sudden dizziness. “You,” he tried to project words but could barely whisper, “knew she was pregnant,” he remembered that she wasn’t showing. It was early. “Did she not take pressure for abortion?”

Bernard tried to reach for the sword. Michael reached up and crushed his wrist. “I couldn’t let it live,” Bernard shouted in pain as Michael twisted the fractured bones in his arm.

“You murdered a woman for something you did,” he ripped the fractured section of arm from his wrist and started stabbing Bernard in the side of the head. He repeated the stabbing until Bernard's skull broke open.

Sarah shrieked in horror as she saw Michael’s full brutality. She held her hands to her mouth as she watched in shock while Michael grabbed Bernard's head and tore it from his body. As she watched Michael slam the head against the wall and walk forward, she followed him with the sudden urge to grab a hold of him and try to bring him some kind of comfort. She couldn’t bring herself to try as Michael sped his walking speed up and approached a door. He ran toward it and kicked it wide open.