Betrayal

It was as though those eyes were looking down at him through tiny tubes.

Jack fearfully fumbled an M9 Pistol from his thigh holster and struggled to react.

His movements were swift and practiced, but he was too late.

"Bang!"

With a thunderous crash.

Ba Di raised his right leg and swept it toward Jack's waist as though kicking away trash.

Jack let out a shrill scream. The instant his waist met Ba Di's sweeping leg, his spine snapped completely with a crisp crack. Like a rag, he folded over Ba Di's calf into a < shape before being flung away.

He slammed into a wall more than ten meters away. Blood vessels burst, spraying blood; muscles ruptured, and large splatters of blood sprayed across the wall in a horrifying sight.

His face twisted in terror, his eyes bulging as his body convulsed endlessly before sliding down the wall.

The cruel crimson brought suffocating terror to the deathly silent warehouse.

It was like smashing a water-filled balloon against a wall, bursting it into a dazzling spray of bloody flowers.

Jenny covered her mouth, her eyes wide as she screamed. She had never expected something like this to happen.

The other soldier, Mason, was stunned.

His comrade had flown past him right before his eyes. The gale from the kick whipped across his face. Everything had happened too quickly—his comrade had become a puddle of mangled flesh, all his blood splattering across the wall.

Mason instinctively turned to look at the wall. His comrade's terrified face, those bulging, savage eyes, and the huge spray of blood on the wall left him frozen with fear.

He suddenly felt fortunate that he had thought his comrade's gunfire would be enough and had not fired himself.

"Krrt... Soldier, report! Report! What happened?"

Slade's voice from the radio was especially piercing in the silent, empty warehouse.

Mason's body stiffened. The hand holding the radio began to shake. His mouth was dry, unable to produce even a trace of saliva for him to swallow.

The radio in his hand felt like a hot potato, like a grenade with its pin pulled. He desperately wanted to throw it away.

His gaze shifted to Ba Di beside him, carrying a trembling question in it.

Ba Di smiled indifferently. "Report truthfully, soldier."

Mason trembled so badly he nearly threw away the radio. Facing Ba Di's merciless smile, he could only report with shaking hands and sweat streaming down his face.

"C-Colonel, the alien... he... regained his ability to move. He kicked... kicked Jack... to death."

After finishing, Soldier Mason swallowed the tiny bit of saliva that had finally formed in his throat.

There was silence on the other end of the radio as the information sank in.

Then Slade's voice burst from the depths of his throat.

"Ba Miu Luo Di!!"

Mason looked at Ba Di in terror, not knowing how to answer his superior.

Ba Di nodded faintly, satisfied with Slade's displayed fury. His gaze lowered to the pistol holstered on Soldier Mason's green-uniformed thigh.

An M9, eleven rounds.

Ba Di pulled the pistol from Mason's thigh, disengaged the safety, and examined it as though he were deeply interested in firearms.

Mason trembled all over, feeling like needles were stabbing his back. An M16 Automatic Rifle hung across his chest. The instant Ba Di lowered his head to inspect the M9 Pistol, Mason had the urge to raise his M16 and shoot Ba Di dead.

But he did not dare. He was scared out of his wits.

Jack had fired thirty shots in a row—thirty bullets.

The M16 fired at 900 rounds per minute, with a muzzle velocity of 975 meters per second and an effective range of 550 meters.

Within optimal range and at maximum speed, Jack had not landed a single shot. The alien had closed in and kicked him away like trash, snapping his spine and leaving him splattered across the wall in a burst of blood.

Firearms no longer gave Mason any confidence.

Ba Di lightly beckoned toward the radio. Mason understood and shakily extended it into Ba Di's hand.

Ba Di pressed the radio button and said coldly, "Slade, you were right all along. Though in my eyes, you are equally foolish."

The moment Ba Di finished speaking, without any warning, the M9 Pistol spat bullets.

"Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!"

Mason met the same fate. Nine bullets struck his chest and heart in rapid succession. Blood sprayed from him as he wailed and screamed, then fell dead to the ground.

From the moment they had begun to fear Ba Di from the depths of their hearts, this ending had already been decided.

Slade listened to Mason's dying screams and clenched his teeth coldly.

"This was all part of your plan. From the moment you woke up, you had already been planning this."

"Colonel Slade, you are too inexperienced. Every one of your thoughts is in my mind. Your will was not firm enough to fully carry through with guarding against me and imprisoning me on the Negative Fourth Floor."

Ba Di spoke as he raised the M9 Pistol and pointed it at Jenny.

Jenny froze. Facing the gun in Ba Di's hand, her mind went blank as she stood there in a daze.

The situation was too abrupt. No emotion or words could describe what Jenny had witnessed.

The man she deeply loved.

Ba Di was pointing a gun at her?

"Do you think you can escape? You can't break through the fully equipped battalion on the surface—a battalion of thousands. You can't escape, Ba Miu Luo Di!"

Slade nearly roared the words.

"Bang!"

The sound that came from the radio was a gunshot.

A bloody hole beneath Jenny's delicate right collarbone began to spill bright red blood, staining her vivid red dress with blood.

Jenny snapped out of her stunned state. That gunshot dragged her out of the blankness in her mind.

Her face turned deathly pale as she stared in disbelief. "Ba Di... weren't we in love?"

Yet another gunshot rang out, and a bloody hole appeared above Jenny's heart.

Her shoulder jerked. Like a lonely, helpless blood-red lotus trembling beneath the sun, she had been abandoned with nowhere to belong.

Jenny felt no pain from her body at all. Ba Di's gunshots had swallowed all her pain.

"Do not make love sound so great."

Ba Di spoke expressionlessly. His words to Jenny and the gunshots were all transmitted through the radio for Slade to hear.

"All of this was achieved through my own efforts."

"Aren't you my slave? Then please, die for me!"

Ba Di's merciless voice accompanied the firing of the final bullet.

Jenny's eyes went lifeless. The mental shock, along with the blood splashed across her bright red dress, left her numbly collapsing to the ground.

In the pool of blood beneath the sunlight, her vivid red dress appeared even more bewitching.

At that point, the M9 Pistol was empty.

Ba Di let out a slight breath of relief.

Slade had actually been wrong. Ba Di was confident he could break through a battalion of several thousand men, but he was not confident he could keep Jenny safe.

He did not yet possess the bulletproof Body of Steel, nor could he fly. Bullets could still hurt him.

He had only initially awakened his Kryptonian genes. As the genes of the lowest-ranking warrior, this power was strong enough. But compared to the superior genes of generals or commanders like Superman, Fiora, and Zod, he was truly weak.

He could not even fly yet.

If he took Jenny with him, she would only die more horribly.

Alone, Ba Di was a god, a demon.

But with Jenny, he could only carry a corpse.

"Ba Miu Luo Di, alien, you truly are a cruel, violent beast."

Slade's voice came through the radio again.

"You, who imprisoned me for research, have no right to say that."

Ba Di's gaze swept over Jenny's vivid red dress as he silently calculated how long it would take to get from the surface down to the Negative First Floor, and how many more minutes Jenny could keep bleeding.

Given Jenny's value, she would not be allowed to die.

Perhaps she would deeply hate Ba Di in the future.

But so what?

If you do not even understand why I shot you now...

Then go ahead and deeply hate me for playing with your feelings!

That was how it had been on Krypton. He had betrayed everyone to obtain what he wanted.

And it was still the same here.

An unnamed fury rose in Ba Di's heart. It was as though a savage flame had ignited within him, burning alongside the tidal rush of blood through his heart until his entire body grew scorching hot.

He was angry at himself, yet he forcibly suppressed that anger.

Anger alone was useless. It had to be vented. There had to be destruction.

Ba Di was furious, yet calm.

Rage burned through his nerves, giving him the urge to destroy everything here. His sun-enhanced, evolved brain began gathering and searching for practical ways to destroy this place.

He said cruelly and coldly, "Slade, I know there is a military force waiting for me on the surface. I also know that at the entrance to this warehouse, you have gathered all the soldiers of the Negative First Floor, waiting for me to come out so you can turn me into a beehive."

"You have been wrong all along. I will not escape toward the surface."

"Keep guarding against me, Slade Wilson! If your defense fails, all of you will die!"

Ba Di's face was cold and merciless as his icy, emotionless gaze swept over Jenny.

Jenny lay sprawled in the pool of blood, her slender hand crawling unwillingly across the ground. Her fingertips seemed to reach for the small red box before her, the one containing the ring.

The fury in his heart burned even hotter. His face became as cold as ice. He crushed the radio in one hand, then turned and walked toward the warehouse doors.