"Many people call me 'Blade,' but I personally prefer another nickname." The dark-skinned middle-aged man's voice carried rich timbre despite the circumstances. "Daywalker suits me better."
As the Warscythe emitting brilliant green light slowly retracted, pulled back from its lethal position mere fractions from the stranger's face, the man gradually straightened his posture. His leather duster creaked softly with the movement, the material stiff with dried blood and urban grime.
He released a breath he'd been holding, the exhalation visible in the cool night air. Relief flooded through him in a wave, though his body language remained controlled, professional.
A pair of eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, lenses reflecting nothing despite ambient light, studied the blue metal giant standing before him with obvious assessment. When he spoke again, his tone had shifted to something more conversational, less survival-focused.
"I'm Eric Brooks. Are you Jessica's mentor?"
Nolan, wearing his helmet that revealed nothing of his expression or reaction, remained silent for a long moment. The pause stretched uncomfortably, broken only by the sound of blood dripping from his armor's ceramite plates.
Finally, he responded, voice emerging through the vox-grille with mechanical resonance.
"Nolan. Or you can call me Astartes if you prefer." The name carried weight, spoken with deliberate emphasis.
He lowered his helmeted head, the motion allowing him to look down at Eric's dark features more directly.
"How is Jessica's condition?"
Blade shook his head slightly, the gesture conveying concern that his controlled expression tried to suppress. Worry threaded through his rich voice when he answered, the emotion genuine and undisguised.
"Right now, Jessica is barely maintaining stability by relying on the healing ability inherent in her metahuman physiology. Her regeneration is working, but it's being pushed to its absolute limits." His jaw tightened visibly. "She chose to save others, putting herself between civilians and three vampires who had completed their transformation."
The vampire hunter paused, as if the memory troubled him deeply.
"These are powerful monsters. Even I need to carefully prepare extensive trap networks and favorable tactical positioning to have any chance of killing just one. She faced three simultaneously while protecting civilian."
Hearing the full extent of the situation, Nolan's helmeted head nodded once with sharp precision. Decision crystallized immediately into action.
He turned his upper body toward David without moving his feet, servos adjusting smoothly.
"David, contact Raditus immediately. Tell the tech-priest to prepare the stasis field pod for potential deployment. Jessica may require its use."
"Understood, my lord." David's synthesized voice carried acknowledgment.
David's distinctive metal appearance, its exposed cranial structure and glowing optical sensors, attracted repeated sidelong glances from Blade. The vampire hunter's eyes tracked to David repeatedly, clearly disturbed by the machine's appearance even as he tried maintaining focus.
However, Blade quickly gathered his scattered thoughts, forcing his attention back to immediate priorities. He addressed Nolan directly, urgency coloring his words.
"Follow me. We've secured a temporary hiding location, somewhere we can avoid the Blood Coven's tracking methods throughout the slums. They have eyes everywhere, informants in every block, but there are still blind spots if you know where to look."
The words had barely finished when Blade spun on his heel and ran toward the entrance of a dark side street. His movements carried the fluid grace of someone accustomed to urban pursuit and evasion, boots finding purchase on blood-slicked pavement without slipping.
After considering briefly, weighing options and priorities, Nolan hefted the Warscythe again. The massive weapon settled across his shoulders with comfortable weight.
He turned his helmet toward the automatic servo robots and David, the slight nod conveying clear instructions despite lacking verbal commands.
Then he drove his power armor forward, accelerating to match Blade's rapid pace. Mag-boots struck ground with heavy impacts, creating rhythmic thunder as he followed.
While both parties navigated through the narrow streets crisscrossing the slums, moving between pools of shadow and occasional flickering streetlight, Nolan quietly opened his simulator interface.
The display materialized invisibly before his enhanced vision, overlaying reality with glowing menus and options. His eyes tracked across selections with practiced efficiency.
He quickly navigated to the page designated for salvage operations, finding the specific function he required.
After selecting the option for healing items, establishing the search parameters, he made his decision without hesitation. Resources and time poured into the attempt, maximizing success probability.
[Designated salvaged items: healing items]
[Basic salvage consumption: one hundred hours]
[Increase the probability of salvage?]
[One thousand additional hours have been added]
[The probability of salvage is increasing...]
Nolan's tactical planning crystallized as he ran. If local treatment methods proved insufficient for Jessica's injuries, if her regeneration couldn't overcome the damage, then he would place her into the stasis field immediately.
The device would freeze her temporal state, preserving her exactly as she was while preventing further deterioration. That would buy time to acquire better healing techniques or items through the simulator's functions.
If that approach also failed, other options remained available. He could attempt contact with Kamar-Taj, see if their mystical healing exceeded technological medicine. Or perhaps Thor might know of Asgardian methods applicable to humans.
As long as Battle Sister Jessica didn't die on the spot, experiencing catastrophic system failure before intervention, then Nolan possessed countless potential methods to save this careless apprentice of his.
He refused to accept her death as inevitable outcome.
Blade led Nolan and David through countless winding streets that penetrated deep into the slum's heart. The passages twisted and turned, creating a maze that would confuse anyone unfamiliar with the area.
Buildings leaned at unsafe angles on both sides, their walls covered in graffiti and water damage. Refuse piled in corners, creating obstacles they had to navigate around. The smell of human waste, rotting garbage, and chemical pollutants hung thick in the air.
Eventually they arrived at an empty lot where countless abandoned vehicles and construction materials had been dumped and forgotten. Rusted car frames sat atop piles of broken concrete. Twisted rebar jutted from collapsed walls like exposed bones.
David commanded the servo robots through encrypted signals; the flying machines having remained invisible throughout the journey. They completed reconnaissance operations with complete stealth, sensors sweeping the area from aerial vantage points.
David reported findings to Nolan through the communication device, data transmitted directly to his helmet's display.
This precaution wasn't because Nolan distrusted Blade's words or intentions. Rather, it represented necessary battlefield methodology, standard tactical procedure when operating in hostile territory. Trust, but verify.
No ambush detected. No trap signatures registered. The area appeared secure.
Nolan moved forward slowly, each step measured and cautious despite the clear scan results. David led the automatic servo robots in formation behind the two humans, machines maintaining defensive spacing.
After approximately five minutes of careful navigation through the junkyard's obstacles, they arrived at a hidden space. The shelter had been constructed precariously from abandoned car shells welded and stacked together, creating walls and a partial roof.
At that moment, a young woman with distinctive orange-red hair sat on the ground inside the makeshift structure. Her head bobbed up and down repeatedly, the motion suggesting she'd been fighting sleep and losing the battle.
The next moment, hearing approaching footsteps that penetrated her drowsy state, the woman suddenly jolted upright. She woke completely in an instant, adrenaline flooding her system.
She gritted her teeth, features twisting with desperate determination. Her hand clenched around a plasma pistol's grip, the weapon rising to aim at the heavy figures entering the space. The gun trembled slightly in her grasp, exhaustion making her hands unsteady.
"It's me, Trish! Stand down!" Blade's rich voice cut through her panic immediately.
The young woman released a sigh of relief so profound her entire body sagged. Tension drained away, replaced by bone-deep exhaustion.
As she climbed to her feet from the ground, her movements slow and stiff, she finally registered what stood behind Blade.
The tall blue metal giant triggered a response, her eyes widening dramatically. Her mouth fell open slightly, words failing as her mind struggled to process what she witnessed.
"Trish, how is Jessica's condition right now?" Blade, having entered the hidden space fully, asked the question softly. He addressed the young woman whom he'd identified as Patricia Walker, genuine concern evident in his tone.
"Fortunately, she's stable for now. She just fell asleep a few minutes ago." The young woman's tired expression showed clearly despite the dim lighting. She blinked her eyes subconsciously, trying to focus through fatigue.
Her gaze repeatedly darted toward Nolan, who wore the imposing power armor, and David, who had just appeared behind the group. Neither sight seemed to compute properly in her exhausted mind.
At that moment, Nolan raised one thick arm and removed his metal helmet with a soft hiss of releasing seals. The action completely revealed his short gray hair, wolf cyan eyes and expressionless, determined face. His features showed no emotion, carved from granite.
"Well, Jessica always talks about you to me during our conversations. But I never imagined you would be so young." Patricia Walker's extremely quiet whisper emerged almost unconsciously, spoken more to herself than anyone else.
But Nolan's keen hearing, enhanced far beyond normal human capability, caught every word despite the low volume.
He didn't respond to her observation directly, offering no explanation or acknowledgment. He didn't even glance toward where Jessica lay resting, trusting David to handle medical assessment.
Nolan simply nodded his head slightly in Patricia's direction, the gesture minimal and perfunctory. Then his eyes immediately turned away, refocusing on the dark-skinned vampire hunter with laser intensity.
"Daywalker." Nolan's voice emerged flat, businesslike. "How much do you know about the Blood Coven's structure and operations? What is their organizational hierarchy? How many members do they claim? And most importantly, how did Jessica and her friend become involved in this situation?"
Upon hearing Nolan's rapid-fire questions, Blade released a slow sigh. The sound carried weariness, frustration at circumstances beyond his control.
He raised one hand and removed the sunglasses from his face with deliberate motion. The action revealed a pair of strange eyes that seemed to reflect dull red light from their depths, an unnatural quality that marked him as something other than fully human.
Simultaneously, David's optical sensors flashed with blue light as the Man of Iron took purposeful steps. It moved quickly to where Jessica lay in the corner of the hidden space, her body barely visible in shadow. David crouched beside her with surprising gentleness, beginning immediate injury assessment.
Taking advantage of this moment, while David worked and Blade gathered his thoughts, Nolan absorbed information from multiple sources. Blade's detailed account combined with Trish's occasional whispered additions, both perspectives painting the complete picture.
Gradually, the entire sequence of events that had led to this crisis became clear. The puzzle pieces assembled into coherent narrative.
Jessica and Trish were not reckless fools charging blindly into danger, despite how the situation appeared. They had operated with reasonable caution initially.
Their involvement had begun through repeated conflicts with local gang operations along the Mexican border. Each confrontation revealed additional information, breadcrumbs leading deeper into criminal networks.
Gradually, investigating methodically, they had discovered a chain of criminal enterprises used specifically for transporting human slaves. The trafficking network proved extensive, moving victims across state lines and international borders.
The endpoint of this chain, the final destination where the enslaved humans were delivered, was the Blood Coven located deep within these slums.
Especially after learning about the Blood Coven's true scale, seeing evidence of the chaos and control they maintained throughout the impoverished area, Jessica had made the smart tactical decision.
She recognized clearly that she was not qualified for this battle, that the threat exceeded her capabilities. She planned to request support from the base, calling in Nolan or better-equipped forces.
But they hadn't possessed time to implement that plan before everything went wrong.
The Blood Coven, which maintained countless eyes throughout the slums, informants and controlled civilians providing constant surveillance, had identified the threat. They used local people as unwitting accomplices, leading Jessica and Trish step by step into a trap that had been prepared well in advance.
Facing siege by countless mind-controlled civilians, people who attacked with suicidal determination, even Jessica's considerable powers proved insufficient.
She had been forced to kill with her plasma pistol, cutting down humans who weren't responsible for their actions. The moral weight of that necessity had crushed her even as she fought.
This violent confrontation also attracted attention from someone else who had been exploring the Blood Coven's reality within the slums, conducting his own investigation.
Blade, the vampire hunter known as Daywalker, had been planning his own assault. He'd been gathering intelligence, preparing for a major strike.
Blade observed the situation briefly from concealment, assessing combatants and threat levels with professional efficiency.
After confirming that Jessica and Trish belonged to his side, that they fought against the cult rather than for it, he immediately intervened. He stepped in to save Jessica and Trish from being overwhelmed.
Afterward, both parties engaged in hurried conversation and tentatively formed a hunting team. The alliance proved temporary but necessary, combining their different capabilities.
Unfortunately, during subsequent battles against cult forces, Jessica's phone screen had been accidentally damaged beyond repair. The cracked display rendered the device useless, cutting off her ability to contact the base for support.
Just when everyone was discussing their next tactical steps, planning how to proceed or escape, the situation deteriorated catastrophically.
Vampires from the Blood Coven, true supernatural threats rather than controlled humans, attacked the three of them with coordinated precision.
Jessica, driven by her instinct to protect others, chose to save people in the nearby slums who had been accidentally caught in the crossfire. She threw herself between the vampires and fleeing civilians.
Besieged by three vampire demons simultaneously, facing opponents far exceeding her combat capabilities, she sustained serious injuries. Only her enhanced durability and regeneration had kept her alive.
Everything that happened to the survivors afterward matched almost exactly what Nolan and David had reconstructed from physical evidence and logical deduction.
They had been hiding constantly, moving between safe locations, always running for their lives from pursuit that never ceased.
Until the roar of bolter fire completely shattered the slums' night, announcing that Nolan had finally arrived.