Slime Evolution

Chapter 455 - Prey

Inside the still shaking cabin of the armored vehicle, the man with the black eye took a deep breath, trying to regain control of his own voice before giving the final order.

"We’re turning back, now," he repeated, his fingers already sliding over the panel to trigger the retreat route. "No discussion."

The vehicle’s rear thrusters spun up, starting the turnaround maneuver, the armored unit’s nose slowly swinging in the opposite direction from that frustrating chase.

It was then that the three men noticed something none of them expected.

Instead of the motorcycles and that black car taking the chance to simply flee and escape while they could, as happened with most of the people they chased, which would have been the most logical reaction after more than twenty minutes of being hunted, the whole scene flipped completely before their eyes.

Every motorcycle, except the one carrying the two girls they’d been chasing minutes earlier, was now converging on the armored vehicle itself, closely followed by that sporty black car that had just caused so much damage.

"What the hell is this?" the second man shouted, staring through the windshield with a look of total disbelief. "They’re coming at us?!"

"This doesn’t make any sense," the third man muttered, his voice full of genuine confusion. "For more than twenty minutes these tramps were just running scared. Why the hell would they grow some courage right now, when we’re already trying to pull back?"

None of the three could make sense of that sudden shift in the group’s stance, and the confusion quickly turned into a bitter, helpless anger.

"This is an ambush," the man with the black eye concluded, gritting his teeth hard. "They were just waiting for the right moment to turn the tables on us."

It was at that exact instant, in the middle of that alarming realization, that the entire vehicle suffered another sudden failure, the internal lights flickering violently before going out completely for the second time.

The armored unit immediately lost altitude, the very floor of the cabin seeming to vanish out from under the three men’s feet for one terrifying fraction of a second, before the emergency systems kicked in, activating auxiliary thrusters that stabilized the free fall before it turned fatal.

"SHIT, WE’RE GOING DOWN!" the second man bellowed, grabbing on to anything fixed within reach.

When the lights finally came back, flickering unsteadily, the three men stayed frozen for a moment, their breathing ragged and their hearts pounding, an uncomfortable truth slowly settling into each of their minds.

That armored vehicle, which minutes ago had been the relentless hunting machine chasing two defenseless girls through the streets of the Low Zone, was now nothing more than an empty, blind shell, unable to fight back, unable to attack, unable even to guarantee its own survival in the air.

They were no longer the hunters.

Ever since that black car had shown up, they had become the prey.

Outside, keeping a carefully calculated distance, Lohan watched that whole scene unfold with quiet satisfaction, his eyes fixed on the swaying armored vehicle through the Porsche’s windshield.

He had deliberately pulled back to a safer position the moment the enemy vehicle started to turn, both to keep the concentration needed to control the small clone still active inside its internal compartment, and to avoid any desperate shot the gunner might try as a last act of resistance.

Then, as soon as he noticed the armored vehicle’s intention to turn and flee, Lohan quickly gave a heads up over the comms.

"Everyone, listen up," Lohan said over the shared comms, his voice carrying an almost amused tone. "I managed to get into their internal system. This heap of junk is about to turn to scrap, and they’re trying to run now."

A brief silence fell over the call before the news really sank in.

"Wait, seriously?" Kai asked, disbelief spilling into his voice.

"Seriously," Lohan confirmed. "If anyone here wants a bit of revenge before they get away, now’s the time."

The reaction was almost instant, a chorus of excited voices bursting over the comms, every member of the Silver Lotus voicing their own excitement at that unexpected turn of luck.

Skye, however, stayed silent for a moment before finally speaking up, her voice carrying an obvious mix of restrained desire and responsibility.

"I really wanted to be part of this," she admitted, "but I’m taking Sara back to the warehouse now. She’s already been through enough fear today, and I don’t want to risk her seeing more violence than she already has."

"Understood," Lohan replied, without hesitation. "Take care of her. We’ll handle the rest here."

No one questioned that decision, everyone fully understanding her priority, but Kai and Jenny, without wasting another second, were already gunning their own bikes toward the swaying armored vehicle, arms raised, wielding plasma pistols that fired off colorful bursts against the metal hull.

The actual damage caused by that was practically negligible, both of them knew perfectly well, but after twenty whole minutes of pure terror and helplessness, they both desperately needed that feeling of finally striking back, of finally letting out all that built up adrenaline on something concrete.

"TAKE THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Kai shouted, firing off another burst, his face carrying a wild grin that stood in stark contrast to the controlled panic of minutes earlier.

Devon, still keeping a safe distance alongside the other bikes, turned his attention back to the comms, his curiosity finally winning out over the adrenaline of the moment.

"Halon, how exactly did you manage to hack into their system?" he asked. "That’s not something you can do with normal hacking, especially not at the speed you pulled it off."

Lohan laughed, a genuine sound escaping him despite the tension of the moment.

"I didn’t hack into their system," he explained. "I literally threw a little piece of myself inside the armored vehicle. There’s a small clone of me in there right now, eating everything it comes across."

On the other end of the line, Devon went momentarily speechless, his mind processing that information with an almost comical slowness.

"Wait," he finally managed to say. "You put a little Slime ball inside their car?"

"Basically, yeah," Lohan confirmed.

Devon immediately pictured that in his own mind, imagining that small crystalline blue ball of biomass spreading through the vehicle’s metal innards exactly the way Lohan did with monsters inside Elysium, digesting cables, plates, and entire structures with the same ravenous, relentless ease.

A loud, genuine laugh escaped Devon, the absurdity of that image breaking part of his built up tension.