Angel of Death

With a thunderous beat, the man’s wings of metal flapped hard and drove him upward. He rose through the air like a predator taking flight, silent and merciless. Each wing stretched nearly three meters across, a one-of-a-kind creation. Constructed of interlocking alloy panels shaped like inverted elongated diamonds - referred to by the few authorized to work on them as feathers - they were aerodynamic blades as much as instruments of flight. When extended, even the slightest flick could shear through composite armor. To slice through the neck of a soldier required no more effort than a casual gesture.

He climbed high above the ruined city, the left wing still streaked with blood, and vanished into the cover of clouds. He did not feel the cold air whipping against his skin, ruffling his black hair, or the moisture beading on his face and plating. He did not notice the sun when he burst through the upper layer of cloud, its warmth washing across his body. Instead, he banked sharply, circling in a predatory arc as a rising wail overpowered the rush of wind in his ears.

The ion engines embedded in his feathers roared to life, jolting him forward, accelerating him to patrol speed. He adjusted his angle, blue eyes narrowing as his vision cut through the thick clouds. Obstacles like these meant nothing. His engineered organs were hundreds of times more capable than a normal human’s. He was equipped with the best technology money could never buy - classified systems born of secret projects.

Were it not for the fearsome, retractable wings of jet-black metal protruding from his back, he could have passed for any man. Because, in truth, he was human. A human reshaped, honed, and raised for one singular purpose.

To kill.

A target flickered into his vision. Without hesitation he rolled and dived, plunging toward the streets below. The air trembled around him, vibrating as the howl grew louder, the sound swelling until it filled the sky. At monstrous speed he pulled up, engines cutting out, coasting silently through the canyon of ruined skyscrapers.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

His left wing whispered across the neck of an enemy soldier, severing it as cleanly as if the man had never existed. Bullets cracked skyward, but the winged figure had already surged back into the clouds, untouched.

He hunted again. A squad of soldiers trudged cautiously along a cratered avenue, a tank lumbering behind them. Even with the armor in play, one pass would be enough. In the span of a heartbeat, he calculated his route, his timing, his risk - negligible.

The ion engines screamed like banshees as he dove, announcing his presence to the ground forces below. That was the point. Fear was his sharpest blade; soldiers who heard his wail often froze, paralyzed by instinct, their bodies betraying them before their minds caught up.

The city rose up to meet him. He skimmed the streets, flying so low he could feel the disrupted currents rolling over shattered wreckage.

Five. Four. Three.

The fusion reactor buried deep within his body pumped energy into the capacitors housed along his spine.

Two.

That energy surged into the feathers, their metallic surfaces humming as they drew more power than a city could consume in a year. Blue sparks danced across his vision, growing brighter.

One.

The tank’s rear loomed ahead, a black wall of armor. The blue light flared, curling into rays that wound around his body and wings like living serpents. His wings drew in tight.

Then came the flash.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, he vanished.

When he reappeared, he was already past the tank, the enemy soldiers neatly arrayed in his path. His wings scythed through them before they had time to scream. Behind him, the tank erupted as its ammunition cooked off, fire blooming from its hatches, the crew consumed in an instant.

But he saw none of it.

The deathly wail rose again as he climbed, fading into the clouds. His eyes scanned the ruined terrain, indifferent. Victory and slaughter meant nothing. They were the same as breathing.

He was known by many names.

To his superiors, he was J-1.
To the few authorized to speak with him directly, he was Jere.
But to the soldiers who heard the banshee wail before the reaper descended, he was something else entirely - the Angel of Death.

He felt nothing for the title. The fear it inspired was useful, but isolating. He could not remember the last time he had spoken to anyone about anything beyond combat, much less to someone his own age. The absence no longer stung. He had grown accustomed to it, or told himself he had. He was a soldier. His purpose was singular: follow orders, and kill.

The war had dragged on for five years, grinding both sides into stalemate. Then he had been completed. A weapon unlike any other - human in appearance, decades ahead of any known technology, and utterly without equal. His presence alone was enough to tip the balance of entire campaigns. Convoys, fortresses, bunkers - it did not matter. If it could be marked as a target, he could erase it.

Small-caliber bullets could not pierce him. His wings could shrug off the impact of a tank shell. Beneath the skin that mimicked humanity, his body was a lattice of machine and biology: cybernetic musculature, a compact fusion reactor where a stomach should have been, neural processors threaded through his skull. He did not eat. He could, in theory, but his reactor provided all the energy he needed, and it could run for hundreds of years.

And yet, he was not without thought. His creators had tried to excise such things - emotions, questions, the inefficiencies of humanity - but in their absence, his body had begun to fail. So they returned them, discovering to their satisfaction that he did not need to feel for them to control him. Raised as a weapon, taught as a weapon, spoken to only as a weapon, he learned to dismiss his emotions as distractions. Inefficiency. His superiors encouraged this, rewarding his detachment.

Their rewards never brought joy. What mattered was the task, and the completion of it. That was his life: traveling from battlefield to battlefield, executing orders, nothing more.

But sometimes, there were no orders.

In those rare intervals, he was permitted to go where he wished, so long as he stayed far from the front lines. He despised those moments. Walking through bustling cities with his wings retracted into his back, no one recognized him. No one knew what he truly was. He observed the people around him - laughing, embracing, living lives intertwined with one another - and he could not comprehend it. He did not understand their bonds, their warmth, their closeness. He could not understand why he lacked the same.

Still, he was not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of distraction. He knew morale required upkeep, even in weapons. His came in the form of a small MP3 player, wirelessly connected to his mind. Music dulled the thoughts that crept in during downtime - the questions about his purpose, his existence, the possibility that something in him was missing. Dangerous thoughts.

Music silenced them, if only briefly. His superiors allowed it, even rewarded him with unrestricted access to whatever he wished to hear. But when the orders came through, the melodies faded into nothing. The questions dissolved. The silence returned.

And then he killed again.

Because that was why he existed.

The sun was sinking low, its light bleeding across the ruined skyline. Jere fought on the ground now, his wings half-extended as they carved mercilessly through all who stood before him - soldier or civilian, it made no difference. Any who dared to oppose him were cut down in an instant. Those who broke cover and fled found no mercy; the specialized feathers - launched from his wings and operating as autonomous drones - hunted them down. They hovered above him in formation like a ring of spectral blades, darting outward to spear fleeing targets before snapping back into orbit around their master.

Bullets struck his skin but glanced away harmlessly, absorbed by fibers in his altered DNA that mirrored spider silk - five times stronger than steel on a strength-to-weight basis. His wings rang with sharp metallic pings as rounds ricocheted away. He advanced steadily, each step measured, unhurried, unstoppable. To his enemies, it was a nightmare made real: an immortal figure walking through their fire, shrugging off everything they threw at him, staring into their eyes in the instant before his blades unmade them.

The drones fanned outward, weaving in and out of shattered buildings, clearing entire streets without requiring his command.

Then a tank burst from a side street, its turret snapping toward him in a frantic attempt to acquire its target. The instant it entered his field of vision, his wings snapped fully wide. With a single beat he vaulted skyward, reactor surging as capacitors filled. The feathers sang with energy, a rising metallic chorus.

Blue light erupted.

The tank vanished in a fireball, its turret wrenched free by the explosion of its own ammunition. Jere landed calmly on the far side of the wreckage and resumed his walk as though nothing had happened.

The battle was nearly over. The city, nearly captured. The enemy, nearly broken.

But desperation breeds recklessness. This was no ordinary city - it was a vital hub, its roads threading like veins to every corner of the nation. Losing it would mean losing the war. And so the defenders did not retreat. They chose ruin instead.

Aircraft screamed overhead, unleashing payloads before banking away, pursued by streams of anti-air fire from both armies. The cacophony of battle grew to a fever pitch. And then - something shifted.

Jere felt it in the air. A pressure. A weight. Something alien. He halted mid-step, tilting his head, listening as bullets still peppered harmlessly against him. To him, they were nothing but tiny pricks on the skin.

Then the order came. Broadcast directly into his mind.

Evacuate immediately.

He did not question it. He was not built for rebellion. With one powerful beat of his wings, he launched skyward, dust spiraling in his wake as he cleared the rooftops.

But it was already far too late.

The cruise missile struck. It came in at Mach four, a spear of steel carrying annihilation. The enemy had chosen their solution: if the city could not be held, it would not be taken. They had pressed the button.

Above, other contrails streaked the heavens. ICBMs. Countless warheads, already on their way to their own marks.

Jere knew none of this. He registered only a single flash as the missile plunged into the city below.

He did not see the detonation. He did not feel his body being vaporized, his atoms unraveling into nothing. His life did not flicker past his eyes.

There was no farewell, no final thought.

Only the instant blackness that swallowed him whole and dragged him into the depths below.