Yvonne watched intently as the man's face began to contort. "He's really done it. The rumors are true."
"What are you talking about?" Alex asked, frowning.
"I've heard about this, but I've never seen it before," she said, unable to tear her gaze away. "The word is that Riley has secretly developed several kinds of super soldiers using genetic engineering. I think this is one of the more powerful types. There is a drug that triggers changes in their bodies. Within a few moments of taking it, they can become incredibly strong and as fast as lightning."
Alex thought the whole idea was ridiculous. It simply wasn't possible to change an ordinary person's body that much with just a drug. But when he watched what was happening to the man, his skepticism began to fade.
The man's flabby skin slowly began to move, looking as though thousands of insects were crawling around under the surface. It was disturbing to watch, but Alex couldn't look away as the man's wrinkles began to smooth out.
Is his skin shrinking? he wondered. Or is his body getting larger?
Yvonne quickly backed away. "The drug stimulates all the energy in his body," she said, sounding panicked. "Get back, you're not his target!"
Alex snorted and looked at the man again.
His body had stopped changing, and the loose, saggy skin was now stretched tightly across his frame. The skin hadn't shrunk; it had been filled in. The man was now bulging with muscles, and his face barely looked human.
"Ha!" The man licked his lips and looked at Alex. "Boy, you never should have let me finish my transformation. Now you're going to die."
"This should be fun," Alex said, smiling. "I haven't encountered a good fighter in a long time, and I've been looking for someone to spar with. Shall we?"
His opponent swung a massive fist at him, but Alex wasn't concerned about a simple punch.
He raised his own hand, and their fists collided. The attacker found himself knocked back a step.
The man cried out in surprise. He had thought that, after his transformation, Alex would be a trivial opponent, and he couldn't understand why Alex was so strong.
Brute force wasn't going to work, so he tried speed. In the blink of an eye, he was behind Alex, ready to launch a surprise attack.
But the surprise was on him. Alex was no longer there. There was a sudden, sharp pain in his back, and the blow lifted him off his feet, sending him flying through the air to land on the ground with a thud.
The fall hadn't hurt the transformed man. What had shocked him was the discovery that Alex was even faster than he was.
Alex wanted to test his opponent's limits and launched an all-out attack.
His speed and strength were incredible, and his martial arts moves were simple, without any fancy routines. A punch was a punch, a kick was a kick, and there was no pattern at all.
However, these simple movements of fist and foot held incomparable strength. The man could barely block the attacks, and each of Alex's strikes shook him, forcing him to retreat in confusion.
Everyone watching was amazed, including Sawyer and Yvonne, who had retreated a good distance away. They were astonished by Alex's power.
He was landing a lot of fierce blows and beating back the transformed man, but he couldn't seem to hurt him.
When a punch or a kick connected, he felt a slight elasticity, almost like he was hitting rubber, and he realized his blows were being absorbed.
But he wasn't intimidated. He continued to keep his opponent off balance while he considered the situation.
When he concentrated in a certain way, he could see things other people could not. Now, he examined the man carefully, looking for a weakness.
He finally spotted something in his opponent's chest. There was a slight malformation in the man's heart, so he quickly focused on the energy that powered his great strength and landed a mighty blow on that exact spot.
The man screamed and collapsed. His whole body convulsed as the huge muscles softened, but his face remained contorted and unnatural looking.
Alex dusted off his hands and said, "Is this the best your organization can do? I'm not terribly impressed."
Yvonne leaned against the car, staring at Alex and at the shaking man lying on the ground.
**
By five o'clock the next morning, Alex, Donny, Sawyer, and Yvonne were in the interrogation room of the Demon sect, along with the restrained super soldier.
The other two soldiers were locked up in separate rooms.
After the fight the evening before, Alex had called Donny. He knew Riley Naysmith was behind this, and he needed answers. Although Alex could defeat thousands of troops by himself, he preferred to let others handle any investigations.
Donny found the genetically engineered soldier very disturbing. During the night, all traces of the man's transformation had disappeared, leaving him the way he had been before. He was loose and flabby, like a person wearing too-large clothing made from skin. It was horrifying.
Donny had known that Alex was so powerful that even the best fighters from several well-known families could not withstand him. But the idea that he could take down one of these super soldiers was beyond anything he had imagined.