There’s a long moment of silence where Kitty just stares at me without moving. He’s so still, like he was on the roof earlier. It’s eery. Frightening in that way a spider or a snake can be frightening right before they strike.
Kitty opens his mouth and replies with a simple, “No.”
Then he springs towards Rohan, throwing himself at the other man with unnatural speed. Rohan seems to have been more ready for the attack than I would have given him credit for, and he meets Kitty with the same level of opposing force. The two of them start their fight all over again.
It’s kind of annoying. We were really getting somewhere. I think. Maybe.
I puff out a breath of air and cross my arms over my chest. This time, the idiots are on their own. If I see someone go for a kill shot, then I’ll intervene, but otherwise I’m going to let them bitch slap each other to their hearts’ content.
It seems like an odd thing to think, but I almost admire their fighting skills. Both have clearly had some hardcore instruction. That, alongside their inhuman speed and strength, makes it genuinely incredible to witness them go at it. The only people I’ve ever seen move the way they do are the Liquid Onyx survivors.
I’ve watched countless YouTube vids and TikToks of battling supervillains all over the world.
There’s such a striking similarity, it makes me wonder if Rohan and Kitty were part of the original Liquid Onyx experiment.
It’s certainly worth considering. There are supposed to be dozens of Liquid Onyx survivors running around the world right now.
Kitty manages to get a solid hold on Rohan. He flips him onto his back and uses incredible force to slam his head into the concrete road twice in quick succession. It doesn’t quite knock Rohan out, but it does seem to disorientate him enough to give Kitty the upper hand. He pins Rohan beneath him, sitting on his chest, knees pressing into his biceps.
Faster than my eyes can properly track, Kitty reaches into a pouch hidden in his thick belt and produces what appears to be a small syringe full of clear liquid. Before I can appropriately react, Kitty sticks the needle into a dazed Rohan’s neck. He pushes the plunger and injects whatever that clear liquid is into him.
Rohan must be alert enough to understand what’s happening because he reacts to getting injected like a wild animal caught in a trap. He lets out a choked snarl and tries his hardest to fight off Kitty. He goes at the man, pinning him with a ferocity that is nothing short of unsettling. He really loses it, biting and scratching and clawing, gurgled shouts ripping out of his throat, his desperation and lack of inhibition building and building until it reaches a fever pitch.
It’s not the kind of fighting you’ve ever seen in films or TV shows. This is the fight of a person who knows what it’s like to be trapped inside their own body with no promise of escape, his entire existence controlled by an incessant terror. It’s the fight of someone who has experienced the consequences of defeat.
I’ve seen this kind of fighting before. Mostly from people who have lived through horrific abuse because yeah, I’ve had to see a lot of that during my time as a FISA agent.
It makes my stomach roil to witness Rohan’s seemingly instinctive reaction. Minutes ago, he was trading barbs with me, and now his fear is so potent in the air I can almost smell it. Whatever’s been done to him in the past, it was probably beyond awful, maybe beyond anything I can imagine.
Kitty keeps Rohan pinned through sheer stubbornness alone, I’d guess, until Rohan eventually stops fighting altogether. He seems to become groggier and slower before he slips off into unconsciousness. The liquid in the syringe was probably supposed to make him easier to transport.
I put my finger back on the trigger and fire off a shot at Kitty’s back.
Although it’s true I don’t know Rohan, he’s still a FISA agent, and therefore I have a certain responsibility towards him. Plus, he’s a person, and I swore to spend my life protecting as many of those as I can.
The FISA-created tranq bullet enters Kitty’s back much like an ordinary bullet would, breaking through material and skin with remarkable, awful efficiency.
The bullet casing will dissolve once inside his body, instantly releasing the drug encased within into his bloodstream.
Kitty’s body halts on top of Rohan, and he whips his head around to look directly at me. Those pale eyes stare at me with lethal intent, and I feel an immediate threat from him.
I fire off another shot before he can put that threat into action. Then I fire off two more.
If Kitty is a Liquid Onyx survivor, one or two bullets will not be enough to knock him out. Their immune systems and physiologies are so different from an ordinary person’s, they might as well be aliens. Even twenty years later, we barely know anything about how Liquid Onyx works, or what it really does to a person.
Kitty loses consciousness much like a tiger would, slowly and not without some difficulty. He stares at me with dormant rage almost the entire time.
CHAPTER FIVE
LEO
I call Damon to help me get both Rohan and Kitty back to one of the safe houses FISA has scattered around the city.
I thought about taking them directly to Danger’s FISA base, but I’m hesitant to take Kitty somewhere so classified without knowing who he’s affiliated with. What if someone’s tracking him? He wouldn’t be the first enemy agent to have a tracker embedded in their clothes or under their skin.
It makes more sense to take him to a place I can safely secure him until I call it in and am given orders from a higher power, namely my aunt.
Damon balks at first when I ask him to load two unconscious people into his borrowed car because he has “morals” or “sense” or something, I don’t know. I stopped listening to him until his rant ended, and he started doing as I requested.
