I pulled Maria out of the water as she sputtered and spit out a mouthful of the stagnant salt water through the skull mask’s mouth slit. The tight-fitting top did nothing for hiding her body as both her breasts slipped out of the top; only the bone armor she wore on top of that hid her assets. In the background, music played. “Breaking the law! Breaking the law! Breaking the law! Breaking the law!” 

I teleported out her shotgun as another chunk of bone came up between us and the prisoner who peeked out the window and fired on us. He tried to hide, but the moment he did, the bone flew up and encompassed his hand. The next moment, he was dragged out of the window and thrown in front of Maria. I thought she might have tried catching him again, but as she pulled the gun up and blew him away, I knew I didn’t need to hold back… Until I scanned the building and saw that one of the two remaining prisoners was a powered individual.

I’d have to find a way to kill him without doing too much damage to his body. The other non-powered, not learning his lesson, moved closer to the window as I whispered to Maria. “He’s about to look out the third window to the left. Get ready to shoot him.” She pointed and waited as the man played the perfect whackamole partner, poking his head fully out the window allowing Maria to practically blow it off.

It was insane to me, but most people were that stupid. If you doubt that anyone would actively put themself in danger, go on Live Leak and watch a dozen people all get electrocuted to death running toward a downed power line in water before someone finally catches on and yells at them to stop doing it. Think of the average intelligence of a person and know that half of the people in the world are stupider than them. 

And on top of that, they’re all criminals. I don’t want to judge people by someone's profession… But criminals tend to be stupider on average than the average person. As the powered person inside moved further back, at least he had the intelligence not to expose his body to bullets. I warned her. “Let’s split up. I’m going inside to deal with the last prisoner, he’s a powered individual. Go see if your dad needs help with anything.”

We split up as she waded through the water toward her father after moving away from the sight line of the windows. I made my way inside, The bottom floor was separated from the top, where the person was. I didn’t rush, I walked through the now knee-high water as I made my way up the staircase. I waited for the powered person to make his move. I still didn’t know what kind of power he had.

Powered people had an almost haze to them when I tried to look at them with my spatial power. I could view a person normally, but the haze that surrounded powered individuals made it impossible. The moment my head peeked above the floor, he fired his gun at me. Unlike the other people, I only poked it up for a split second before dipping down again. After getting a good look at him, I was honestly disappointed.

His power… Seemed incredibly useless. Knife-like fingernails seem amazing until you remember they’re attached to fingers. He’d break his fingers over and over again, flailing them around before he grew used to using them. Even still, I had the space to get more zombies, so I still planned on killing him and converting him to one under my control. I was honestly tempted to just walk up there and see if I could soak the bullets from a standard gun, but why risk it? Instead, I walked up as the bone block started to form the shape of a shield.

Slowly walking up, now with a shield between us, I wait for him to unload his entire gun. We’d already met, and he knew what I was capable of, so out of sheer terror of me, he fired his gun to depletion, draining it all ineffectively into my bone barrier. I heard the click, click, click of a spent gun and rushed him, knocking the second gun he reached for out of his hand before binding his hands together with the bone shield I was manipulating. As it wrapped around his neck, it formed a bone pillory, making it impossible for him to do anything.

I figured out how to kill him without dealing any damage to his body. A handle formed out of the back of the pillory that I grabbed and led him down the stairs. He might have thought I was going to capture him again, at least until we made it to the ground floor and I slammed his body down into the water as my foot held the pillory in place. His body flailed in instinctive terror for a few minutes before it slowed, then stopped.

Drowning was a terrible, brutal way to die, but this man was a killer. I could have bled him out or made him OD on drugs for an easier death, but he really didn’t deserve that kindness. I didn’t remember him from the previous timeline, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t off doing terrible things to people with his power until someone finally killed him. His corpse started to move again after a minute or two. Instead of thrashing in fear, it moved slowly as I wasn’t holding its head underwater; it was able to make its way to its knees and then stand up.

It was fearful, the position the creature was in when it came back to life made it instinctively wary, and then to see a man look at the zombie without a hint of fear made the zombie fearful of me. Going zombie form, I bound the zombie. It was trivially easy compared to Elsa, as the connection snapped into place in a matter of seconds, with the zombie barely fighting.

I made my way outside by myself. I picked up one of the walkie-talkies off a body floating near the entrance, and I spoke into it. “Hello, is this set to the right frequency? Over.” The walkie-talkie was silent for a few seconds before Maria spoke. “Did you get him?” I waited a few seconds before asking. “What was that? Over.”

“Did you kill the other powered prisoner?” I waited another few seconds before telling her. “You have to say over at the end of your sentence, or I won't know you’re done speaking. Yes, I did kill him… Over.” She sighed into the walkie-talkie, and I waited a few seconds to tell her. “He’s a zombie, I’ll bring him out now. Over.” Things were wary, but with the zombie corralled with my power, no one fired at him.

It was better that the volunteers got used to zombies now. It would be terrible if they panicked the first time they saw one and ended up dead because of it. We dealt with that. The sheriff wanted me to fill out paperwork for the murders before I told him there was a zero percent chance of that happening. He was smart enough to know not to push it, I wouldn’t kill him, but this was the third time I saved his people, pissing me off wouldn’t be a good thing.

Maria called out to me before I left. “Hey, you’re going past my house. Can you drop me off on your way home?” I sighed as I just wanted to get home, take another shower, and go to sleep, but I still agreed with her. We made our way toward her home as she guided me through the flooded streets. The rain poured down, thoroughly soaking me through as we made our way there.

I was honestly caught off guard as she stepped off the boat and asked. “Hey, do you want to come inside for some coffee?” I was pretty bad at picking up on hints, but that line was obvious to me. She didn’t want to drink coffee; she wanted me to come inside, but could only think of offering coffee to get me to follow her. With a shit eating grin, I answered. “Sure.”