Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 453. Experiments and grenades

Henry’s POV

Dr. Lawrence took a moment to gather herself.

"Again, thank you for coming." Taking a deep breath, she continued,

"Not long after you disappeared, we got the notice that the center would be closed. While nearly everyone was sent home, the most promising individuals were brought to different smaller institutions to continue therapy and continue to train..." She paused and interlocked her fingers on her lap.

Leaning still against my fist, I made an impatient motion, asking myself when we could start with the killing.

"My family... ’fired’ me and told me I should leave this project... but I insisted on staying with Kenny’s group, and they ended up letting me. However, the experiments, the training, and the therapy in this new smaller facility, along with the arrival of a new doctor, changed drastically."

I chuckled.

"Changed? People got locked in glass cells and were forced to take drugs or what?"

Dr. Lawrence took a deep breath.

"Then... not ’changed to the worse’; let’s say ’the bad treatment continued.’" She corrected.

"My father and grandfather disappeared while I was... stopped from leaving or contacting anyone." She straightened up and looked at me.

"Henry, we need your help. I am ashamed to ask you, but please help us."

Finally.

I stood up slowly.

"Do you have a place to go?" I asked her, and she shook her head.

I looked up and thought a bit, asking myself repeatedly, ’What would Kenny think? What would he do?’ before getting an idea.

"I know a place." I looked at the door that would lead out of this room.

"Are there cameras outside?"

Dr. Lawrence nodded.

I made sure that my mask was in place while walking to the door, but then I stopped in my steps.

"But not in your room? There are also no guards in front of your room."

"There is more security outside than inside..." She hesitated while I tilted my head.

"This liquid... this substance..." She leaned back and tapped against the wall her bed was pushed against.

"The new doctor said... nobody could teleport past it..."

"Did you give Kenny this information?" I asked murderously and got the answer by just looking at her.

HA!

"Dr. Lawrence." I smiled under the mask.

"How about we conduct an experiment, hm?"

"No, I took a look at it, and he was wrong; it is just a glass-plastic mixture... I wouldn’t have asked—" She raised her hands, trying to placate me, but I ignored her.

"You like experiments, don’t you?" I crossed the two steps between us and grabbed her arm.

"No, wait, Henry, calm down, calm down!" She tried to get out of my grasp.

"I really... hate it when someone tells me to calm down."

I let the acid stream through my body before it crossed over onto hers through the contact we were making, so fast that she was unable to even scream.

The next moment I felt myself flying to my destination before getting put back together.

Interestingly, when I appeared in the dark yard, my hand was still gripping something, and it was alive.

I looked down at Dr. Lawrence, who was as pale as death, her mouth oozing with vomit and blood, her limbs shaking, as she went limp. But she was still alive.

So I could teleport with other beings without killing them; it was just a bit uncomfortable for them.

I grimaced and shook her a bit so that she wouldn’t choke on her vomit before dragging her back to the porch of the dilapidated house with the door that was still broken.

I pushed the door open and looked at the lightly dressed girl sitting on the couch to the left.

She stared at me in panic, and yet, while I tried to think back and place her under the occupants of this house, she composed herself at a rapid speed and smiled.

"Hi, handsome..." One of her hands was sunken into the sofa crack where she probably had a weapon hidden.

I looked ahead, hearing other people but not seeing anyone, as they were either upstairs on the right or left side of the building.

"Deandra Landor, Felicia Wright, Sven Lenox Draft." I rattled down the names and saw the girl’s expression change.

"Are you the one who saved us?" She asked.

"No. I am his sidekick." I corrected with a hum and saw her standing up.

She bowed a few times, wearing a much more genuine smile, with her hands that were now empty.

"I’ll get them." She waited until I nodded before running through the big open space in the wall.

I flung Dr. Lawrence onto the sofa, hearing her heart beat rapidly but steadily.

I waited impatiently, then clenched my jaw before turning her to the side to stop her from choking this time as well.

The girl from before came back with one young Black guy and two girls.

The girls from last time looked much better.

"Hi! What..." Sven stepped forward, stopping to speak when he saw Dr. Lawrence on the couch.

He looked at me uncertainly, and I asked,

"Is anyone here good with medicine? It would be good if she survived." Probably.

I pointed at the deathly pale blond woman, who was now trembling.

"Just a bit..." Felicia said and crouched by Dr. Lawrence’s side, starting to examine her.

"You don’t have a water shortage?" I asked them, seeing them alive and apparently well fed and watered.

Sven shook his head.

"Nobody attacked or came to us; the moment we heard bombs, we went into hiding..." His eyes flitted to the girls, and he didn’t say more before pointing downwards.

Ah. They hid inside the cellar that had been full of rats and that also had held the two women in cages.

Either way, their house seemed to not have been met with bombs or the like; it was still standing.

Sven continued,

"We had enough food at home from the... previous occupants." He was very careful with his words, probably not to trigger the victims of the gang we had eradicated.

Maybe they were spared from the water shortage because the gang had made an ominous deal with the government, and nobody came for them because the vicinity wasn’t the best before everything went down to hell.

Or they had just been lucky.

Who cares?

"Will she survive?" I asked, staring ahead again. If I remembered correctly, we had never been on the left lower side of the building, where the gang probably had stored their weapons.

I should take a look before going back.

"I think so..." The girl examining Dr. Lawrence eventually took the couch pillows and placed them under the patient’s legs to heighten them, and the trembling really stopped.

"Alright. I’ll soon bring a few more. They will stay with you; take care of them." I announced, and saw Deidra nodding expressionlessly.

"We will take care of them," she assured me.

I hummed before teleporting to the room on the left side of the building, and when I arrived, I was blessed with an arsenal of weapons.

Normal guns, machine guns, but the best were... grenades.

Kenny would be so excited, seeing this.

I took five grenades and teleported back to Dr. Lawrence’s room.

I leaned against her door and listened in.

As she had said...there was not much to hear, so I opened the door softly, just a crack, and tilted my head again.

A few murmurs of people, mostly guards, were a few corridors away. Together with most of the guards were five sleeping individuals.

Alright, the distance should be enough.

I closed the door again before pulling the pin of two grenades, rolling one under her bed and the other under her desk before I teleported about a few hundred meters away from the building.

I landed on a grassy field and spotted a tree not far away, to which I teleported next at inhuman speed.

Standing on a branch high up, I could already hear the detonations, followed by yelling.

I watched the tightly secured factory; the guards and men in camouflage first streamed into the building speedily before running out again.

...I hope I didn’t grill the others... Kenny wouldn’t like it.

I still had three grenades left and threw one of them in the opposite direction of the factory, to the field... to confuse them a bit.

Not bad... It exploded beautifully, and besides the holes in the ground, fire slowly started to spread.

Next I threw one onto the large dirt road in front of the factory building, towards the bunch of cars.

I chuckled when I saw the chain reaction of one grenade exploding, then a car exploding, then the next car following suit.

Amidst the people that finally began to rush out of the building, I saw Mr. Howard and Kenny’s sister.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out my gun.

Aiming at the middle-aged man running. I pulled the trigger.

How were Kenny and I such good marksmen?

First, naturally, because Kenny is good at everything he does, but another reason should be that hand-eye coordination is something that our generation with smartphones, computers, and games should be very good at. If you add our inhuman senses and abilities, it should lead to a good result.

And a good result indeed; the bullet met Mr. Howard’s shin, probably shattering it.

He fell, screaming loudly, but everything was chaos, as everybody interestingly ran not toward a direction that was not burning, but toward the cars at the beginning of the row that had not yet exploded.

A few men helped Kenny’s father up, and the first cars started... Mr. Howard and Lauren made it to one, and it seemed the way to another unharmed car was being cleared for a VIP or something.

I nearly thought it was finally the five hostages or Mr. Lawrence, but then I saw a face that seemed awfully familiar, surrounded by military men as he was brought over the big grassy space between the factory and the partly burning dirt road.

Dr. Carell... heh.

So he was ’the new Doctor’?

Incompetent in each of his reincarnations, so easy to recognize.

I hope Kenny hadn’t seen him, though it would explain why he had to think of me to be alright again—I mean the reason why he had to calm down in the first place.

Did they find his counterpart, or better said, the Dr. Carell living in this—in our world—to let him continue the legacy of his counterpart from the commander’s world?

Ha! Another absolutely not.

I aimed my gun at him and soon shot.

The bullet struck him directly in his eye, and he fell, while the circle around him reached for him and dragged him along nevertheless.

I contemplated teleporting there to make sure to feed him a few more bullets, although the shot into his eye seemed pretty convincing, but I stopped myself.

I couldn’t make the same mistake as I had made in the Lawrence mansion—this time I would operate just from a distance.

Smoke started to come out of the factory’s door, and a few seconds later, amidst other running people, five individuals were carried out: three girls and two men.

Lucky.

I had anticipated that they wouldn’t leave these first-class hostages behind, but it took more time than I thought.

The beginning of the row of cars was unharmed, the middle was burning and had already exploded, and the end was short of exploding.

Dr. Carell had already been brought away, while I didn’t see Eugene/Elijah at all; he had probably never been here in the first place.

A few people started to run after cars that didn’t take them, and a fight seemed to break out between a few white coats and men in camouflage.

There were a few gunshots while the five sleeping individuals were placed into a white truck—also at the beginning of the row.

The truck started and drove away.

I pulled the pin of my last grenade and threw it at the beginning of the cars after a few minutes so that no other car would be able to follow.

Then I teleported a good distance parallel to the dirt road and waited for a few kilometers before I sent a spark of shadowy energy to one of the wheels of the truck.

The tire broke, and the truck soon came to a halt, while the cars ahead sped away.

I teleported closer to the truck, and without opening the door, I acidified the two people in the front seats, letting them disappear before they could even scream.

Going to the back door and opening it, I found the twins, Harry, Patrick, and Chelsea, lying partly over each other, probably sedated.

If I teleported with them, rendering them half-dead, Kenny probably wouldn’t like it...would he?

Besides, I got rid of quite a bit of aggression by shooting a few villains and letting things explode, so it wasn’t as if I insisted on transporting them that way.

I could drive them away in the truck, but... how low were the chances that this truck was bugged?

I sighed and pulled them out, first three of them at once, then two of them, speedily bringing them deeper into the grassy fields, away from the dirt road.

I didn’t even try to wake them when we were out of sight of that truck. Instead, I pulled my phone out and video-called Kenny’s phone.

The other side immediately picked up, and I looked at Ren’s enlarged face.

Besides the ungodly hour, he seemed wide awake, very obediently fulfilling the task he had been given, even if it was later than I thought.

"Good job." I smiled and tapped his head on the screen.

The kid broke into a wide and proud smile before showing me Kenny without me having to ask.

Still asleep, and he looked like his usual strong and handsome self.

"Does he still have a fever? Is he still hot?" I asked and soon saw Ren’s small hand reaching for Kenny’s forehead from behind the phone.

Then the view changed back to Ren, and I saw him shake his head.

"Good..." I thought for a moment before furrowing my brows.

"But he isn’t cold either, right?"

Ren shook his head, this time with more vigor.

"Alright." I looked at the smoke far away and the absolute nothingness I stood in with the five people laid in a row at my feet.

I had no idea that there was so much unused landscape, with just a few factories here and there, all very far apart from each other.

Looking back up, besides the smoke, I could faintly see a wall at the end of the landscape, which was probably our quarantine fence, stopping everyone from entering and leaving the city, including its outskirts.

I sighed and asked the child,

"...You know where Ethan’s room is, right?"