Triple the Power

The exo-suit’s massive steel fist thundered toward him, but Sear didn’t flinch. He moved like water—an effortless sidestep, so fluid it looked rehearsed. The strike missed him by inches, slicing through the air. Time almost came to a stop as Sear’s face was next to the arm.

Slow moments, over extending a Rookie to say the least. Worse than Alis was back in the warehouse.

Sear’s dagger flicked upward with surgical precision, slicing cleanly through exposed hydraulic tubing under the elbow joint. A burst of pressurized fluid hissed out like a dying breath, and the suit’s arm locked, frozen in place.

The laughter in the exo-suit comms died instantly.

“What the hell—?” the pilot snarled, wrenching at the controls. His arm wouldn’t respond.

Sear tilted his head slowly, eyes glowing in the suit’s HUD like two flashlights as Sear cleaned of his knife against his shirt.

“You should’ve listened to the smart one.”

He was already moving again—slipping under the frozen arm. The exo-suit’s heavy frame turned clumsily and slowly. Sear’s second hit plunged deep behind the knee joint, severing another critical hydraulic line.

The machine buckled. The suit crashed onto one knee with a metallic clang, panic blooming in his voice.

“Fuck—he’s fast! I need cov—!”

He never finished. Sear tore the dagger free from the knee joint and jumped of the ground towards the left, his dagger quickly drove it into the shoulder plating of the Exo suit, he pushed the blade deep between the armor’s seams. Sparks burst out. The exo-suit’s left arm began to spasm violently.

The pilot screamed.

“GET HIM OFF ME! GET HIM OFF ME!”

The pilot to the left reacted instinctively, raising his rifle— Click Click

Out of bullets. Just like I guessed.

The delay was fatal. In the second it took for him to realize it, Sear launched his blade.

Using the crippled exo-suit’s back as a springboard, Sear hurled the dagger mid air before he rolled back to his feet as he hit the ground. The dagger spun in an arc and struck dead center of the second pilot’s visor, it tore thru the metal and the screen giving him visuals, the point embedding between his eyebrows with a dull crack.

The blade didn’t kill him—but it blinded him.

The man gasped. Blood poured down the inside of his helmet, coating the screens, the remaining hud started glitching from the damage the blade had done.

“Gah—G-get it out! I can’t see!”

Sear didn’t even slow down at the pilots distress. He grabbed the crippled suits arm and yanked. The exo-suit tilted sideways, trying to correct balance with its one functioning limb. Sear used the open hand of the suits unfonctuanal arm as a step as he placed his foot on it and pushed himself upwards. Boots slammed against metal as he mounted the machine like a predator over a pinned animal.

One slash—two slash-three slash, his blade tore the metal leaving deeper marks each time. Sparks erupted as Sear’s slashing had made a X hole into the cockpit from the back of the suit. Sear let out a twisted smile as he laid his Dagger to the side, his hands grabbed hold of the metal thru the holes. He used brute force as he bent the metal outwards.

“No, no—WAIT—PLEASE!”

Sear tore a hole into the cockpit fully, revealing a sweating, trembling man, eyes wide, hands raised. He looked barely older than a himself. His face glistened with fear, all arrogance shattered.

Sear leaned into the hole he had made, voice a whisper.

“You laughed.”

The pilot’s breathing hitched as Sear reached for his dagger.

“Laugh now.”

The dagger slid into his throat without him even realizing it.

The man gurgled, twitching as blood poured out in thick, bubbling streams. Sear didn’t blink. He pulled the blade free, letting the body slump like a discarded puppet.

The exo-suit slumped with it, metal groaning as it shut down.

Behind him, the second pilot was still stumbling, blind and panicked.

“J-Jack?! Help me, I—I can’t see! Help me!”

Sear walked up in front of him, boots hitting the dirt with a muted thud. He looked up at the murder machine slowly, his white eyes narrowing as he stared at his dagger—still embedded in the suits visor.

“Jack’s dead.”

The blinded pilot froze.

Sear picked up a rock as he holstered his dagger. The Rock flew powerfully towards the Exo suit as Sear threw it.

“You’re next.”

A loud sound echoed into the Exo suit as the rock hit the metallic frame.

The pilot staggered, stepping backward one step at a time, careful, uncertain. He hit the air blindly with the exo-suits arms moving in heavy and clumsy movements.

The only sound in his world was footsteps—slow, deliberate. Growing louder. Closer.

Then—impact.

Sear leaped. His hand found the dagger hilt lodged in the visor. With a savage push, he drove it deeper. Through skull. Through thought. Through everything.

A sickening crunch echoed across the glade. The exo-suit’s legs gave out.

It collapsed backward as sear pushed himself of it with his legs, it crashed into a tree with a thunderous BOOM, falling still.

Sear rose from the ground, breathing steady, blood dripping from his dagger like dark rain.

Three exo-suits remained. They had just finished of the remaining Fallo units of the western group, just in time to see Sear finish of their comrade.

Sear turned toward them, eyes burning with that calm, inhuman energy.

“Your name was Alis, right?” he asked, walking toward them at a slow, unnerving pace.

“we have met before.”

The exo-suits didn’t move.

Sear tapped the flat of his knife against his forehead as if trying to remember a long-lost memory. His grin widened—no longer smug. It was sharp. Hungry. Something primal.

“Ah… right. You were the one from the warehouse,” he murmured.

“The one who knocked me uNcONsCiOus.”

His voice dropped an octave. His smile twisted into something uglier.

Alis’s hands gripped her controls tighter. Her HUD blinked red warnings—elevated heart rate, pressure spikes.

One of the other pilots turned toward her, startled.

“You beat him before?”

“Sort of…” she whispered. “But… he’s different now. Stronger.”

Her words caught in her throat.

This isn’t the same man from the cabin. That man… he almost seemed human.

This one isn’t.

Sear holstered his bloody dagger. He took a single step forward and then dipped into a theatrical bow.

His white eyes never left Alis.

“Well… nice that we could meet again, Alis.”

The words were polite. But his tone was anything but.

The blood on his knife shimmered.

And he was still smiling.