Slime Evolution

Chapter 453 - Maneuver

Lohan narrowed his eyes as he noticed, through the reinforced windshield, a metal barrel jutting out from a side opening of the armored vehicle, pointed directly at the Porsche.

’That’s an electric weapon,’ he recognized instantly, his own body tensing up in the seat. ’And it’s aimed right at me.’

The barrel had a sturdy shape, with small coils visible along its length, a type of heavy weaponry Lohan had already seen used against armored targets in security reports Isabella had casually mentioned in a few conversations. Definitely not the kind of weapon any regular person carried around on the street.

For a moment, he considered simply ignoring it and continuing forward.

After all, that car belonged to Isabella Vance, and given the fortune and the care she put into every detail of her own collection, Lohan figured the armor on that Porsche had to be far superior to that of any common vehicle driving around the High Zone.

’But is it worth risking that?’ he asked himself quickly, his finger already moving instinctively toward the wheel. ’If I’m wrong about how tough this car actually is, I could not only get badly hurt by a shot like that, I could also destroy the gift she just gave me today.’

Not wanting to risk either, Lohan yanked the wheel in a sharp, sudden motion, making the entire body of the car bank into a tight turn that made the thrusters let out a sharp screech against the compressed air holding them up.

The electric shot cut through the space exactly where the Porsche had been an instant before, hitting nothing but empty air, while Lohan felt the centrifugal force press his own body against the side of the seat, the car’s internal systems letting out a faint alert tone as stability was pushed to its limit.

’That was close,’ he thought, his human heart racing. Unlike when he’d broken into Oscar’s penthouse, where he’d only faced a few ordinary people with light weapons, being aimed at by heavy weapons like that one was far more frightening than he’d expected.

In the rearview mirror, he saw the glowing trail of the shot dissipating in the air behind him, a scorched dark mark on the asphalt where the electric beam had hit the ground instead of the car itself.

That detail alone was enough to confirm that this wasn’t a toy, and that underestimating that vehicle could cost him dearly.

’Okay, I definitely can’t keep driving in a straight line near that thing,’ he thought, adjusting his grip on the wheel.

Regaining control of the maneuver with a smoothness impressive for someone who’d only driven that specific model for a few days, Lohan used the momentum of the turn to gain a different angle, cutting behind a broken light post and reappearing on the opposite side of the armored vehicle before its gunner could recalibrate the aim.

The Porsche responded to his every command with an almost supernatural precision, the magnetic suspension systems compensating for each sharp turn before the inertia could even fully destabilize the vehicle.

Lohan felt, for the first time since receiving that gift, a genuine appreciation for the engineering behind that machine, far beyond the simple aesthetics that had drawn him to it at first.

’Isabella really chose well,’ he thought, cutting another tight turn between two abandoned containers on the side of the road. ’If I were in a normal car, I probably would have already been hit two or three times by now.’

The armored vehicle, for its part, was heavy and slow to react to sudden changes in direction, a structural weakness Lohan quickly identified and started exploiting without mercy, cutting angles that monster of metal could never hope to replicate.

”Skye, I need you all to draw their attention for a second,” he said over the comms, his voice coming out steady despite the adrenaline.

”Copy that,” Skye replied, without hesitation, already tilting her own bike to swerve the opposite way, pulling the electric cannon’s aim toward the left side of the armored vehicle.

Taking advantage of that opening, Lohan hit the gas hard, the Porsche cutting through the air on a diagonal path that brought him close enough to the side of the vehicle, right where a small reinforced glass window, likely used for manual visual checks in case of sensor failure, still sat partly open because of the very gun barrel jutting out through it.

The gunner, still trying to readjust his aim toward the motorcycles zigzagging in the distance, didn’t even notice the black car’s quiet, fast approach along the vehicle’s own blind side.

’Perfect,’ Lohan thought, feeling his own concentration of biomass gathering quickly inside his body, each fragment of internal energy condensing with a precision that came from weeks of constant practice.

He considered, for a brief second, trying something more elaborate, maybe several fragments hitting different points of the vehicle at once, but quickly dismissed the idea. He still didn’t know the exact cost of sustaining a functional clone outside Elysium, and risking everything at once on an unnecessarily complex maneuver seemed too reckless for the moment.

’Let’s try simple and direct first,’ he decided. ’If it works, great. If not, I still have the car and my own strength to fall back on.’

Without hesitating, he shot a small fragment of himself out through the car window, a compact, dense ball of crystalline blue jelly, about the size of a tennis ball, which flew through the air on a perfectly calculated arc before slipping through the gap in the armored vehicle’s window and disappearing inside.

Lohan felt, almost instantly, his own biomass reserve drop far more sharply than he’d expected.

’Wait, that cost way more than I calculated,’ he thought, a jolt of alarm running through his mind as he felt his own internal reserve empty out almost completely, leaving only a residual scrap of stored energy. ’Forming a functional clone, even one this small, apparently costs a lot more out here than it does inside Elysium.’

But the moment that small fragment touched the inner surface of the vehicle’s battery tank, any concern over the cost completely vanished in the face of what happened next.

Lohan, feeling the intimate connection with that small piece of himself, released the digestion in it completely, with no restraint at all.

And the effect was instant, almost surreal to witness.

The small ball of biomass began spreading like hot oil over ice, dissolving the reinforced metal surface with an ease that resembled a heated knife cutting through soft butter.

The metal, which had calmly withstood armor piercing rounds and improvised spells minutes earlier, simply gave way before that acidic, ravenous contact, forming a hole that kept widening as the small clone pushed further into the structure.

Taking advantage of the freshly opened breach, Lohan’s fragment pushed even deeper into the vehicle’s internal compartment, reaching the bundles of electrical wiring that powered the propulsion systems and the tracking sensors themselves.

Wire after wire was consumed with the same ease, the electrical current being digested right along with the conductive material itself, every spark of electricity absorbed and instantly converted into a satisfying nourishment that flowed back, through the mental connection, directly into Lohan’s core.

Entire circuit boards melted on contact, optical sensors turned into small puddles of processed material, and even the internal structural supports, made of a reinforced metal alloy, gradually gave way before that relentless, silent digestion spreading through the compartment like a hungry, viscous shadow.

’This is... this is actually working really well,’ he thought, a genuine smile forming behind his own improvised biomass mask.

Not only was that small clone systematically destroying the innards of that armored vehicle, it was also generating, back for Lohan, a surprisingly generous amount of fresh biomass, gradually refilling the reserve that, seconds earlier, had seemed dangerously close to running out completely.

’That actually makes sense,’ he thought, watching his own internal numbers climb steadily. ’All that reinforced metal alloy, all those complex electronic components, that’s a considerable amount of dense matter to digest. It’s not organic biomass like a monster, but it’s still real substance, worth more than regular food.’

He kept his focus steady, mentally guiding the small fragment of himself through the vehicle’s internal compartments, deliberately avoiding any direct contact with the three human bodies he could sense through the small clone’s spatial perception, still present in the front cabin, protected for now by the distance and by the control compartment’s own structure.

’Now I just need to leave this useless hunk of junk broken enough for them to realize it’s not worth continuing anymore, but if they still insist, revenge can be served hot too.’

Meanwhile, inside the cramped, dimly lit cabin of the armored vehicle, three men clad in dark gray MedPharma uniforms kept their eyes fixed on the tracking monitors, the atmosphere heavy with a tension that mounted with every passing minute the pursuit dragged on without success.