Chapter 479: Freedom

Ciel’s now ruby eyes micro-analyzed the tightening of Keres’s grotesque, chitinous grip against Catalina.

Creak... click...

The serrated edges of Keres’s forelimbs dug into the fabric of Catalina’s clothes, holding her suspended like a broken puppet.

Ciel sharpened his hearing, filtering out the deafening roar of Salia’s shrieks and the thunderous thwip-thwip-thwip of plasma guns firing incessantly.

He checked the timing of Keres’s movements, calculating his exact reaction time, and measuring precisely how much the pressure of that deadly grip loosened whenever his focus changed.

Then, his mind worked way beyond and quickly assessed how much more loosened he needed that grip to be to snatch Catalina safely, completely unscathed, out of Keres’s deadly embrace.

If he were a millisecond too slow, the reflex arc of the Zerg could snap Catalina in half.

If he were too fast, the friction alone would tear her skin.

Fortunately, Ciel didn’t need to wait for long. Because Keres made the fatal mistake of getting too comfortable in the situation, believing his hostage made him completely invincible.

Hssss-ck-ck.

As Keres tracked Salia’s erratic, spinning movements. Keres also noticed Salia’s frantic plan to come over to his side to form a tag team.

That made Keres extremely annoyed. A low, vibrating growl rolled through his chest. He let himself think, trying to re-strategize his escape route.

As Keres was deep in his thoughts, he didn’t even notice that his grip on the human woman was getting too loose. The pressure gauge of his claw dropped by a mere five percent.

But in a huge zerg body, it was already loose enough to safely take out a human head.

Ciel didn’t waste a single second waiting for Grayson’s call. He moved exactly as he had already planned. He simply vanished, crossing the open ground so fast that his silhouette stretched into a pale, ghostly blur.

Fwish!

The next second, the air pressure around Keres changed.

Before the Zerg’s compound eyes could even register what happened, Catalina was already completely gone from Keres’s limbs. She was already tucked securely against Ciel’s chest.

But Ciel didn’t celebrate, nor did he let himself breathe a single sigh of relief. He knew that he was still within the perimeters of the danger zone.

He quickly got away, executing three massive, silent strides into his pre-determined retreat position close to the building.

Patter-patter-thump.

Ciel took a sharp, small breath to stabilize his oxygen levels, then immediately sprinted further away toward the building where he could call Pete or Thiago to tend to Catalina.

It took a few agonizing seconds before Keres finally processed what happened.

His hostage was gone.

"SKRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!"

Keres let out a furious screech so loud, so violently high-frequency, that it shattered the nearby glass windows of the building.

SHATTER! CRASH!

The sonic wave spread far and wide, which instantly earned most of the people’s attention back to Keres.

When Grayson turned his sharp attention back to Keres, his silver eyes instantly took in the empty, thrashing claws of the zerg. He realized exactly why the beast was throwing such a massive tantrum.

As if he had been waiting for this exact moment, Grayson raised his plasma gun and fired without a single shred of hesitation.

PHEW-PHEW-PHEW-PHEW!

The relentless, rapid-fire cut creates a bunch of straight-line lights. The first superheated bolt burst a massive, smoking hole directly into Keres’s primary shoulder joint. The explosive thermal kinetic force made Keres spin half around due to the sheer impact.

CRUNCH-FIZZ!

Keres’s chitinous armor splintered into a thousand flying shards. The second plasma bolt slammed heavily onto his exposed thorax before the first wound had even finished blasting its green, boiling blood into the air.

Grayson advanced steadily as he fired, closing the distance with a terrifying speed, but he didn’t move recklessly. Every step was calculated, keeping his center of gravity perfectly balanced.

Every single shot landed exactly where the carapace was the thinnest—under the joints, along the seams of the neck. Every step was calculated to keep Keres too dizzy, too off-balance, and to even think of a single counterattack.

Thwip-crack! Thwip-crack!

But even as he was managing Keres just fine, the brief delay while waiting for Ciel to come back made Grayson’s thoughts drift onto another, darker matter.

The hidden, boiling sense of urgency he couldn’t get off his mind—a phantom weight pulling at his instincts, reminding him of the ticking clock and stakes.

He looked at the green blood pooling on the ground. For a split second, it reflected someone’s unconscious face.

No. Focus, he said to himself, his jaw tightening until it ached.

Grayson turned that suffocating internal worry directly into lethal rounds, putting each burning bolt into Keres’s flailing torso.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The blue light flashed against his cold, sweat-sheened face.

He convinced himself that it was just a second more of waiting. He told himself that the balance had already tilted in their favor. He reminded himself that Ciel would arrive by his side any time now to help cover for him.

But as Keres let out another wet, dying rattle—gurgle-chk, raining on his parade.

.

.

.

Like Keres, Salia was running out of luck. The instant she realized that Keres was a goner, Chronos and Julius had been more aggressive than before. It was like they were actually holding back all this time.

Chronos hit her low, clamping down on the trailing edge of her ruined left side and preventing a perfect heal.

"Stay down, pretty insect," he might have purred, if his mouth had been free for anything but biting. "This is getting pretty embarrassing."

And from above came Julius, who folded and dropped. The talon sheaths flashed at the tips of his feet, trailing two thin lines of fire. He raked down her right side, the side she had been keeping intact, and tried to tear it open.

SLASH!

SKRRRIIII!!

Salia screamed.

Julius beat her one good wing hard enough that she began to have a problem in lifting them both for half a heartbeat.