Chapter 1: Hydrogen Pt. 2

She could not contain the strongly mixed feelings anymore..

...and closed her eyes shut hoping time would freeze..

The Five could hardly believe their eyes. "Does he have a deathwish?", some of them murmured. The rest of the team including Captain Frederick were rendered immobile and speechless but Daphne was exhibiting a different reaction altogether. Tears started to build up in her oceanic blue eyes, crystallizing the reflection of stars and moonlight of the night sky. The rising hydro pressure formed a stream down her rosy cheeks, as she witnessed Dexter leaving the scene in a slow-motion disbelief and heartbreak. 

"Hh..Hhh..hhh..How could he..." stuttered both her upper and lower glossy lips. 

She was unsure whether the stutter and shivers was caused by the night's frigid atmosphere, or due to the emotional turbulence currently blasting her heart inside out...or both.

 Seconds later, they could hear the sound of shattering glasses followed by a loud scream of agony from a quarter mile away. It was so loud, it almost matches the audible magnitude of The Horn of Apocalypse, The Doomsday Trumpet with a soul-crushing effect to anyone who is unfortunate enough to hear it.

        

At first, cracks started to form on the glass window, centering at the initial contact point...

...next thing he know, he broke his way through the glass at supersonic speed.

At a distant vision range, gazillion tiny pieces of sands and silicon mixed with synthetic polymer to strengthen the structure, were flying around his body...which begs the question, how on earth did the military-standard bulletproof glass managed to be shattered in the first place? An impregnable shield able to withstand gunshots was penetrated single-handedly by a mere mortal? Sounds implausible from a rational mind's perspective, but not to Dexter who by a lucky strike, has a convenient trick up his sleeve, literally. The answer, surprisingly, lies with the particular hand of Dexter's that was holding the fountain blue liquid. The strange liquid aside, his left hand is no ordinary hand...far from it. It's a prosthetic limb he developed and designed himself after losing his arm in a tragic bike accident in 2006.

Dexter's prosthetic left arm

Still airborne, he was rolling uncontrollably until he landed on top of an office desk, then to the floor, but not before he wreaked havoc the initial positions of all items on the table from neatly-arranged documents, files, stationery, a company's executive laptop with the company's logo behind it, a coffee mug, a coffee maker and a few other personal belongings. The series of kinetic movements however, came to a ceasefire when he was finally stationary. Technically speaking, a successful landing of a commercial flight on the airfield of an airport is an acceptable comparison to his spontaneous man-made meteor impact.

Though the impact of the semi-elastic collision was both excruciating and unbearable to Dexter, a small part of his primal human spirit was glad that he's still alive and breathing. For a split second, he thought he would not make it, and yet he did. Several exchanges of rapid inhalation and exhalation which sounded almost like a sigh of relief took place in that room. His body is initiating homeostasis - the regulating of internal factors to stabilize his internal body environment - heat level, pH or specifically in this case, blood oxygen level, one that he lacked severely. Exhausted by all the attempts that he had made to survive, he was gasping for air as if he was suffocated. Normally after a while, at this rate, a normal person would have regained the default consciousness level...But the more he breathe, the more he realized that his vision and surrounding were starting to dim and get blurry. "Ughhh...what the hell is going on?"

His head felt spinning like a drunken sailor. As if the light betrayed him that night, he slowly blacked out and fainted on the floor...enveloped by the horrific pool of his own blood. He of all people knew that blood loss from gunshot wounds are not to be taken lightly. Dexter could feel his heartbeat was getting weaker by the moment. Is this it? Has he reached his inevitable end? Has The Reaper's lethal scythe finally touched his soul? At this point his consciousness started to wander...away from his mortal mass. He could easily relate it to The Dementor sucking away Harry's life essence in one of the famous Harry Potter movies he loved so much. Only this time, The Dementor is Death himself. Now that he thinks about it, this whole night has been a realization of the famous Android game, Running Fred. It's funny how much one's mind could have drifted off in an NDE (Near-Death Experience).

It wasn't just sheer luck and coincidence. Fate was what brought him there that night. Written in the heavens, it sure has its own mysterious way of revealing its twisted web of destiny to mankind. When Dex sent himself flying into the building, little did he know that the building he was in, was in fact, a secret lab for illegal human experimentation owned by Van Usrah Pharmaceuticals-the second largest international legal drugs and medical supplier whose CEO (Chief Executive Officer), is none other than his lab partner in Harvard, Dr. Shamil Van Usrah who also happens to be the secretary of WHO (World Health Organization) under UN (United Nations). He had always knew that at some unknown junction in his life, they will cross path again. Lady Fate has written on the pages of her dusty ancient book, and as she would put it, their destiny would sooner or later, be intertwined. Whether or not that day is today, is still unknown.

At this point of chronos, memories started to resurface and his entire life was flashing before his eyes...