Page 14 of Justified (Ruthless Vigilante #1)

Chapter five

Noble

I ’d been sitting on this rooftop for the past half an hour watching this shady looking bastard across the street.

He was selling drugs to anyone who drove up to him to purchase.

I was contemplating on jumping down there and fucking up his night.

I mean, he was scum… although he wasn’t forcing anyone to buy the drugs.

He didn’t hold a gun up to their heads and rob them of their money, then toss them a meth rock for their troubles, possibly robbing them of their futures.

They all came to him willingly for his meth.

This place had a bunch of motherfuckers just like him working day and night.

You could throw a rock in any direction and hit one.

Last month, I took one out who was selling marijuana and bath salts.

I made use of the sticky-icky and money, but left the bath salts on him for the police to use as evidence when they booked his ass.

That was my good deed for the day. But then by the next day, there was another dealer on the same corner doing the same thing. Motherfuckers popped up like weeds.

Sure, I’d been doing my superhero… or in my case, anti-hero thing for three months now.

I had taken out pimps who were beating the shit out of, and even killing, their whores…

but not the whores. Who was I to tell a woman or man what to do with their bodies?

Not only that, but prostitution was a public service, as far as I was concerned.

Not everyone wanted to have to work hard at getting laid.

Sometimes, just paying for it was easier.

Anyway, I’d taken out abusive pimps, murders, thieves, gangbangers, and child molesters…

but drug dealers were a gray area for me.

Were they like fast food places? Sure, we all knew that shit wasn’t good for our bodies and if we continued to eat there, we would probably end up dying of some food-related illness.

But no one was making any of us go in there.

Or were dealers just as horrible as the other pieces of shit I’d flushed away?

Ah hell, this was going to fuck with my head.

I supposed I would take his ass out. When I decided to take up the mantle of vigilante, it was to make the city a better place.

Couldn’t have it be a better place with drug pushers on corners.

Man, I swear, if someone would have told me I’d be perched on some rooftop like a gargoyle in black leather with an armory strapped to my body to defend the people, I might have laughed at them.

Sure, I was a soldier and had even signed up with a secret organization to become an elite mercenary for the government…

or what I thought was the government at the time.

However, working within the law and outside of it were two very different things.

I flexed my enhanced muscles, watching them move under my impenetrable skin.

I couldn’t help but think back to the day that changed my life forever.

Mr. Carl Swanson had approached me after I had completed my second tour.

Painted some perfect picture about how I had the credentials to go even further in my military career.

That if I were to join their secret government organization, I would be sent to where the real fight was, where I could truly make a difference.

He even showed me footage of one of their elite teams saving a foreign diplomat I hadn’t even known had been kidnapped.

Let’s just say, the footage and the agent convinced me I needed to be where the action was.

I was so gung-ho at the time and wanted to make my country safe, so I joined like a fucking idiot, with little to no questions asked.

I wasn’t in their secret facility seventy-two hours before they were strapping me into a fucking chair and injecting me with some serum they were calling XSR14.

I remembered the shit hurt like hell and I felt like my body was melting into liquid as that shit worked its way through my system.

The whole time I suffered, their scientists were standing over me, discussing the possibility that I might not be a success.

How six other candidates didn’t make it because their bodies had rejected the solution.

I remembered panicking out of my fucking mind, thinking I was about to die.

I couldn’t voice my concern, as they had gagged me.

I just knew I was terrified and thought I was going to die.

“Just try to remain calm, Agent Nineteen,” one of the scientists said, placing his hand on my chest like that little physical contact was going to do the fucking trick.

Calming down was impossible at that point.

“If you survive this process, you will become extraordinary. You will have abilities that mere humans can only dream of. That is how you can become an elite solider. Remember, you signed up for this.”

The hell I had! I shook my head and I remembered the scientist nodding.

“Yes, you did. You knew we were top secret and whatever it was we were going to require of you, Agent Nineteen, you had agreed to when you walked through those doors. Our soldiers are the best in the world and we are doing the real work that truly protects our country. If you survive this process, you will be fitted with a neurochip, one of our own patented designs. It will ensure our investment in you stays intact.”

What he was saying wasn’t what I had been told.

I had signed up to join a team to go do real work that was saving my country.

Not to be some fucking lab rat. But there was nothing I could do about it.

I just had to lay there and take it. All I knew was that I felt like I was dying and the pain was so intense, I almost wanted to, just to have it all end.

At some point, I lost consciousness, and when I woke up, I was covered in dirt.

Again, I panicked and started clawing my way out of the grave they had buried me in.

When I was finally able to take in fresh air, I had a chance to look around at my surroundings.

I didn’t know where I was, all I knew was that I was in a forest because there were trees everywhere.

I was also naked as I climbed out of the grave.

For a minute, I thought I was dead and maybe that was what hell looked like.

I had assumed it was hell, because heaven was supposed to feel more serene.

At least, that was what I’d been led to believe.

It didn’t take me long to realize I was alive and well, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I’d been buried alive.

Was that the last step in the process? As I took in more of my surroundings, I realized that my grave wasn’t the only one there.

Six more were in the area. I guess I was assumed to be number seven.

So did that mean they thought I was a failed experiment?

Let’s just say, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

I covered the hole I dug myself out of with dirt, making sure it looked untouched.

While I had done that, I noticed that my strength and endurance had increased.

I wasn’t even tired, and I should have been.

I just started running in the first direction my feet took me.

Eventually, I came upon a cabin a few hours later, which meant they were burying those bodies truly in the middle of nowhere.

Lucky for me, the cabin was empty. I washed up and stole an outfit that was really too big for me, but something covering my naked ass was better than nothing.

I raided the pantry and found some canned goods that I devoured.

I didn’t want to stay at that cabin for too long, especially since I didn’t know who it really belonged to.

What if one of the scientists lived there?

I had to get as far away from the area as I could.

I hitchhiked several times until I found myself four states away from where I crawled out of my grave, which had apparently been in Aspen.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was different.

That whatever those scientists had done to me with that serum, had changed my metaphysical form.

I was strong as fuck, for one thing. I probably had the strength of at least fifty bodybuilders, maybe more.

I never seemed to get sick, even when everyone else around me did.

I didn’t feel pain for long, only a few seconds, and my skin never punctured.

Although, I didn’t find out about my ability to shape change until a month later.

In order to survive, I got a job at a diner washing dishes, and made enough money to hit the road again.

Eventually, I found myself in Silver City, and it seemed like the perfect place for me to put down some roots.

The truth of the matter was, I was tired of traveling like some fucking fugitive.

I was sure that organization wasn’t looking for me, as they thought I was dead, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling they somehow knew I had survived.

It was one of the reasons I wanted to keep a low profile.

I was in Silver City a few months before I met Jordan, and well, you know the rest of that tale.

I had to admit, I liked what I was doing now.

Every time I saved someone, it made me feel really good inside.

And often times, it made me pretty fucking horny.

There was just something about the adrenaline rush I got from putting an asshole in their place that got my dick hard as fuck.

Over the past few months since donning the mask, I’d come home after a night of crime fighting to fuck Jordan’s brains out, if only to release some of my pent up energy.

Not that he was complaining, my little nerdy slut.