Xander backhanded Tommy’s fist as he attempted to strike out again, and the boy felt the power of the simple motion tug at the ligament in his shoulder.
Shocked and desperate, Tommy punched at him again.
Glaring through him, Xander finally remained. He reached out his open palm and let the fist hit it, clutching down quickly to stop it in mid-swing. He squeezed, slowly, dragging out the pain as long as he could as he heard the bones in Tommy’s hand snap, crackle and pop like cereal. Blood streamed out from between Tommy’s fingers and he started to scream, tears forming in his eyes. Something in his hand made a wet snap.
“Hey, man stop!” came a new voice from the road.
Xander turned with a bitter look on his face, ready to tear this new person in half as well. His eyes were completely black.
Derek ran toward them, out of breath from sprinting across the street from his house. He pushed Xander and Tommy apart, placing a hand on both their chests.
Tommy immediately fell to the ground and curled into the fetal position, clutching his maimed appendage as Sud rushed to his side.
Xander drew back a fist and was about to hit Derek, then he stopped and blinked. His pupils shrunk back to normal as he realized what he was doing, the primal urge inside him still pushed him to go for his friend’s throat. He looked down at his hands, trembling and shaking off droplets of Tommy’s blood. “Thanks, man,” he said humbly to Derek, his voice gruff and distant as he continued to stare at the blood on his hands.
“Yeah,” Derek replied, squeezing Xander’s shoulder. “You wanna grab a game or a drink, cool off?”
“Okay,” Xander said, between deep breaths. “Okay.”
Derek nodded and walked ahead, thinking that Xander was right behind. When he entered the Factory, Xander bent down to come face to face with the whimpering Tommy. “You ever talk about a woman like that, or if you even look at Cathy like I’ve been seeing you,” he paused, grabbing Tommy’s shirt collar again, forcing him to look him in the eyes. Xander licked his dry lips,“... I’ll kill you.”
“Genblade. You got a visitor. Keep it short, eh?” Tom Lensherr said, stepping away from his guard post for the first time in hours. He’d made a vow to himself to be nice to Genblade these next few weeks. After all, after that he’d be dead and they’d all be a lot happier.
It wasn’t an easy truce.
“A visitor?” Genblade perked, his face lit up with an eerie smile. His lips were still smattered with the blood of the guard that he had attacked. They couldn’t risk giving him a cloth. The last time they had, he’d used it to slowly strangle a young guard. Anything was a weapon in his hands. Every so often, Genblade would moisten the blood with his tongue, forcing it not to coagulate. It chilled the other guards to their core.
Tom had seen Genblade’s work first hand. He had been the officer who’d discovered the body of Jamie Dawkins, the first victim of Genblade’s massacre. He remembered the night clearly, the image burned into his mind no matter how much he wanted to root it out and never think of it again.
He glared down at Genblade, a look of disgust coming over him. “Just get up, will ya?”
Genblade walked into the visitor’s room they had made especially for him, his chains clinking steadily with every step he took.
His eyes sparkled wide when he saw his visitor, his evil grin widening from ear to ear. He sat down and stared through the glass, his pale blue eyes running over the man over and over as his warped mind tried to figure out what his purpose here was. After a few moments of curious anticipation, he picked up the phone and put the fractured receiver to his ear.
Mike picked up his phone, holding it near his face without ever actually making contact with his skin. It felt dirty to him, somehow. “Hello, Genblade,” he said flatly, revealing neither the anger nor the fear that the killer’s presence had stirred in him.
Genblade squinted a confused look at him, but he still grinned wide. “Hi-ya Mikey! How ya been?”
“Yeah, okay,” Mike said dismissively, rolling his eyes and glancing away from the glass to his side.
“How’s the woman?” Genblade smiled profusely.
Mike grew silent for a long moment. When he finally got his nerves together and spoke, his voice wavered slightly with anger and made Genblade smile. “You know that judge will never actually let you live, right? You’re gonna fry, you smoldering sack of crap.”
Genblade’s smile faded into an amused sneer.
“I figure, the least you can do is give us the information floating around in that... thing you call an excuse for a mind, before it boils under a couple thousand volts, right?” Mike said with false lightheartedness, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.
Genblade stared back at Mike through the plate glass. He reached out a finger and tapped on it, bringing the phone close enough to catch it. - click-. -click-. -click-.
Mike laughed. “You don’t seriously think you can psyche me out with those parlor tricks, do you?”
Genblade smiled, leaning against the small ledge of the sill on both elbows. “They had such plans for you, you know... Still do. I think they really could’ve made something of you.”
“Who?” Mike asked, raising an eyebrow before realizing that Genblade had lulled him out of the tough-as-nails persona he’d spent twenty minutes in the bathroom practicing before telling the guard he was ready.
Genblade smiled. “Had some plans of my own, though. I think
