Chapter 113 Clues to the Church of Science

Chapter 113: Chapter 114: Clues to the Church of Science

Chapter 114: Clues to the Church of Science

The moment despair appeared in Butcher Barlow’s eyes, his body finally lost the ability to hold itself together. Under the relentless assault of the Chainsaw Sword, the giant frame broke apart into more than a dozen pieces that scattered across the ruined suite. Axel Vance stopped attacking and drew a deep breath, his chest rising heavily after the enormous expenditure of physical strength and Psionic Power.

The Chainsaw Sword’s engine dropped to a lower growl while the pale energy surrounding its edge gradually faded. Axel had expected the fight to be over, but the sight on the floor immediately turned his stomach. The pieces of Barlow’s body were still moving.

Severed limbs and torn chunks of flesh writhed across the floor like a nest of enormous worms. The largest surviving piece contained half of Barlow’s head, and the remaining eye still stared at Axel while the mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Even worse, the severed left hand had begun crawling toward him on its fingers.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," Axel muttered as he stepped away from the approaching hand. Barlow’s vitality was clearly no longer concentrated in the brain, heart, or any other single organ, because every separated piece continued trying to survive independently. As long as the tissue retained enough energy, destroying the body’s overall structure apparently meant very little.

Axel raised the Chainsaw Sword again and looked at the crawling hand. "Fine. Let’s see you keep moving after this." Instead of flooding the weapon with ordinary Psionic Power, he reached for the far stranger force dwelling inside him.

Color of the Stars answered.

An unnatural spectrum spread along the Chainsaw Sword, coating the moving edge in shifting colors that never seemed to settle into one recognizable shade. The moment the weapon touched Barlow’s living tissue, the nearest fragments visibly slowed, and Axel felt a powerful current of vitality being drawn through the enchanted weapon and into his body.

The effect was immediate. Energy that had been drained during the fight began returning, easing the exhaustion in Axel’s muscles while replenishing some of the Psionic Power he had burned through moments earlier. Realizing the Color could completely drain what Barlow’s regeneration depended on, Axel started clearing away the remaining living fragments.

The pieces stopped moving one after another as their vitality was stripped away. Even the half of Barlow’s head that had been trying to roll away lost its unnatural activity once the Color reached it. By the time Axel finished, nothing on the ruined floor possessed enough life to move again.

A familiar notification appeared in his mind.

[Color of the Stars: EXP +200]

[Detected: Host successfully purified a twisted soul]

[Physique +0.5]

[Physique: 4.1]

Warmth surged through Axel’s body almost immediately. His remaining fatigue vanished at astonishing speed, and the injured ankle that had been crushed by Barlow’s severed arm rapidly stopped aching as the damage repaired itself. When Axel tested his weight on the leg again, it felt almost completely normal.

He looked down at the ruined remains covering the suite and frowned. The name Church of Science still sounded almost embarrassingly plain, but there was nothing amateurish about what the organization had created. Corpse soldiers, extreme regeneration, independently living tissue, and whatever Barlow had become were all evidence that the cult’s experiments were growing more dangerous.

The door slowly opened behind him, and the wolf-masked leader cautiously appeared with several surviving members of Jigsaw’s organization. They stopped immediately when they saw the devastated room, their gazes moving from the remains on the floor to Axel standing in the middle of them with the Chainsaw Sword still in hand. After several seconds, the wolf-masked man gave him a slow, solemn nod.

Axel returned the gesture without saying anything. Whatever doubts the vigilantes had held about him earlier were gone now, replaced by a mixture of gratitude and unease. Their leader then motioned for the others to begin searching the suite for anything that might connect Barlow to the Church of Science.

The masked group moved through the wreckage, checking what remained of the room and collecting anything that seemed potentially useful. Axel stayed near the wall and let them work, knowing Jigsaw’s organization had far more experience following criminal networks and hidden connections than he did. If Barlow had left behind anything valuable, these people were more likely to recognize it.

Several minutes later, a man wearing a snake mask stopped beside the remains of a destroyed sofa. He reached into the debris and pulled out the thick empty syringe Barlow had discarded before the fight. "Boss, take a look at this."

The wolf-masked leader walked over, and Axel moved closer as well. The snake-masked man turned the syringe carefully in his gloved hand and explained that he had worked around medical equipment before. "This isn’t the kind of thing you normally see used on people. Heavy-duty syringes like this are more common in large-animal treatment or specialized animal-research work."

Axel’s attention sharpened. "Can you narrow down where it came from?" The masked man nodded and said that one of the few local places likely to keep that kind of equipment was an animal-research and veterinary-support unit attached to Miami Central Medical Center, a large hospital complex with several research facilities.

That name immediately lodged itself in Axel’s mind. The Church of Science had repeatedly hidden its supernatural work behind the language of research and experimentation, so a medical complex with laboratories, service areas, and restricted research space would fit their pattern disturbingly well. The syringe might be the first physical lead pointing toward where Barlow’s transformation had actually taken place.

The wolf-masked leader carefully secured the syringe as evidence and ordered his people to continue searching. They spent more time going through the destroyed suite but found nothing else that clearly connected Barlow to the organization. No correspondence, address book, laboratory notes, or obvious communications equipment survived to point toward another location.

That absence was meaningful on its own. Axel suspected the Church of Science controlled contact from its side and gave disposable assets like Barlow almost nothing that could lead back to the organization. Their operational security was clearly much stronger than the grandiose speeches of their enhanced followers suggested.

Once the search produced nothing more, Axel picked up the Chainsaw Sword and looked toward the wolf-masked leader. "If that’s everything, I’m leaving." The man nodded and replied in a rough voice, "Thanks for tonight."

"We both got what we needed," Axel answered. He left the ruined suite without ceremony and separated from the vigilantes rather than staying for whatever cleanup came next. Before long, he was back outside and moving away from the Sunset Gang stronghold alone.

When Axel reached his vehicle, he did not immediately start the engine. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes, arranging the night’s discoveries into a single chain: the Sunset Gang, the disappearance of Butcher Barlow, the transformation into a New Human, the Church of Science, and now the syringe tied to Miami Central Medical Center.

One clue after another was finally beginning to connect. Axel could not yet prove the Church of Science was operating directly inside the medical complex, but he was increasingly certain that one of its important facilities had to be hidden somewhere nearby. An underground service level, an abandoned research wing, a restricted morgue area, or the animal-research unit itself could all conceal something far more dangerous than ordinary hospital work.

Axel opened his eyes and looked through the windshield toward the distant lights of Miami. For the first time, the Church of Science no longer felt like a faceless organization operating everywhere and nowhere. Somewhere inside that medical-center complex, he suspected, was the next door leading deeper into the cult.

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