"I will save you. All of you." He declared aloud, even though there was no one there to hear it, or so he thought. "I will stretch out my palm, and secure all of your lives and futures."
And with that, he jumped straight into the entrance of the empty mall, only for him to be beheaded.
'Beheaded' is inaccurate. More precisely, the flesh and bone from his clavicle was completely eviscerated, making his head and neck fall off from his body.
Like shattered porcelain, he thought as his mind went dull, the pain temporarily fading as the blood flow to his brain had been cut off. As his head tumbled down, pulled by gravity, it rotated back as he glimpsed what was left of the rest of his body. The bone of his thigh was exposed, white cracks gleaming in the faint morning sun. His arms had been shredded to pieces, each one reminding him of when he'd go to the butcher's shop to get some meat.
His stomach had been raggedly torn apart, his intestines fell like dying worms, and the rest of his torso clung to what had killed him.
Wires. Thin steel wires tied to the glass receding doors of the entrance. He hadn't noticed them when he recklessly jumped into the room, and that had been his doom. Who left this trap? It wasn't worth thinking about. He would still have needed to pass this route just to enter.
His eyes slowly shut close. His consciousness was closing off. Ha. He thought. Not as painful as he'd expected. Though he couldn't say he had much experience. This was only his third try.
Every segment of his body shut down, bleeding out of life, and he died.
A hundredth of a second later, his sliced-off left hand, cut at the wrist and missing his index and ring finger, twitched.
His fingers grew back rapidly—bone regenerating, pink flesh wrapping over them, blood running through them as his skin sealed like tape on a package. All in a tenth of a second. The muscles and tendons at the wrist grew back, extending all the way to his shoulder, his neck, his jaws, his skull. His eyes. His brain woke up.
I can think again. He thought. He assessed his surroundings. His right eye was still missing, though that would be fixed soon as the nerves were already growing back. The thin layer at the back of his eye regenerated and aqueous fluid pumped in rapidly—his eye would be back in a second. His teeth, nose and hair were still missing, but he had already optimized for his brain to be prioritized.
I am grateful for this power, he thought, thanking the man with grey flowing hair who had granted him—a complete nobody in this dying, rotting world—a hope.
He tried to extend his senses to the little part of his body that had healed. Only his arm and head. With that, he placed his fingers on the ground, flexed them, and shot himself forward.
In only ten seconds, his entire body would be back to normal. No pain. His body screeched in agony at the moment, having experienced the complete loss of quite literally all the parts of his body, but he had assured himself the past tries that it would all be okay in ten seconds. He told his brain to ignore the pain. He would grit his teeth, but only the incisors had come out.
Ten seconds. That was all he needed to return to full strength, but someone in this dead mall would not let that come to pass.
The side of his head fell out—sharp pain coursing through what was left of his entire being as a cut in the shape of an ellipse cleanly sliced through his skin, skull and brain. Blood spurted out, and even his body couldn't regenerate more blood than he could lose.
He was morbidly interested in how he looked right now, but another cut erupted on the other side of his head.
Why is—Who is—Am I in the—How did I get—I'm sorry Mu—I didn't mean to—Don't kill—I hate you.
He tried to think, but the cuts kept coming. No matter how much he tried to evade them, it was incredibly hard to do that with only a neck and a head.
His brain tried to form thoughts, but it kept getting diced up, destroyed, annihilated. Gray matter accumulated on the floor—the mass of his entire body twice over.
Someone, whoever it was, had figured out his power. And they were thoroughly killing him for it. He couldn't even patch together in his thought process where his life started and where it began.
Death. Death. Death.
The rhythm was almost musical now. A faint whistle in the air before each slice. Like someone conducting an orchestra of mortality.
He knew with the authority he had been granted, it was theoretically possible to live forever. He would keep regenerating automatically as he perished, and the person killing him would run out of stamina eventually. But whoever this person was, it didn't seem like these hits—that he couldn't even perceive—would ever slow down. He couldn't see them, smell them, hear them, sense them in any way. Only the whistle. Only the end.
He could wait. He could wait for them to tire out and fight back with his less-than-average strength. But he could not wait. His soul screeched in agony. He was not sure if he could stay sane for much longer. Red blotted his vision, his mind, his being.
What if I forget who I am? What if I forget why I'm here?
The thought terrified him more than the blade cutting through his frontal lobe.
Change of plans, he thought, each syllable getting severed by another slice. Only his head remained, thin cuts appearing rapidly, draining the life from his endless cup.
He switched his consciousness from his brain to his eye—the eye that was barely formed. Staying in his brain would ensure being target to the endless cycle, since his attacker deemed strikes to his brain his vital point. Even if they realized his power, there was no way to combat it.
Unless—
No. He would not think that far. He would not hesitate. As another slice landed on his face, his eye was cut off, bouncing out at an angle to the left.
The regeneration process repeated, only now he had changed position. Closer to his attacker, even if only by an inch.
MOVE. Get closer.
He removed priority from his brain, his motive already established. No other mental activity was required. He directed attention to his arm, using its stump midway at his bicep to hit the floor and bound forward.
Pain no longer mattered. All he had to do was—
MOVE.
He saw it. A glint of light. The steel wires at the entrance of the mall.
A thin steel blade, so thin it completely vanished when placed directly vertical in line of sight, cut through the skin of his cheek.
He dodged it. 'Dodge' is used generously here, but this slice did not end his life. He was making progress. He just had to keep moving.
Whistle. Brain bisected perfectly at the center of the hemispheres. The process repeated.
MOVE. MOVE. MOVE.
He had barely moved fifteen feet, and he wasn't sure how much his attacker was retreating, but he was making progress. That was all he cared about.
Whistle. Slice. Regenerate. Whistle. Slice. Regenerate. Whistle. Slice. Regenerate.
He could guess where the blades were coming from by the angle they hit him, but apart from that, he felt like he was running a marathon uphill. Blind.
The grind. The improvement in his skills—even though the learning curve was exponentially steeper than any challenge he had encountered—reminded him of the joy he got when he improved at something. Whether it was playing video games, making tacos, at...
Wow, there really isn't much I've improved on, he thought as another slice claimed him. He had lost count after the first ten. He couldn't even estimate if this was his hundredth or thousandth reset. Where did life start and when did it begin?
At least I'm getting good at something, he mused, feeling that familiar twisted satisfaction as his consciousness faded again. Even if it's just dying well.
This was the kind of man he was—the kind that could wax philosophical while staring into the abyss. The kind that would grin at his own destruction if it meant getting one inch closer to his goal.