Sarah slaughtered everyone inside. Victoria unlocked the doors to the prison cells. Jack’s people blew a hole in the building using a tank stolen from the military guys that tried to take down Cement Suit. Apparently Proxy had taken control of one of them and made some sort of deal. Alistair and his siblings had cornered Polybius.
Gar, Odie, and John had rushed out of the elevator, worried for me. There were six total prisoners inside. Danny was the only one who had actually been experimented on. The others were just being analyzed to see which technology should be bonded to them. Each of them was someone I knew: Mar, Joni, Evan the police officer, and my mom and dad. The medical team was tending to each of them. Most of them had just been drugged to keep them asleep while the technology was to be bonded to them.
Danny was being analyzed by Casper. He had been injected in the spine with a syringe full of tiny nanomachines. The label on the syringe said, ‘Project Dust (Phase 02).’ Casper was trying her hardest but she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Her pupils were slits, her eyes glowing orange. The sign that she was using her powers.
I ran away to keep you safe.
But all it did was leave you vulnerable while he targeted you one by one. All because I wanted to play superhero. All because I wanted to help people.
All because I wanted to feel a real thrill before I died. All because I wanted you to accept that I was going to die.
Gar shook me back to reality. I had been staring into space. He snapped his fingers in front of my eyes and physically shook me by the shoulders. When I looked at him he had a worried expression in his eyes.
“Are you sure you can go through with this?” He asked me. He was talking about me taking on Polybius, but that wasn’t what he was really asking. He wasn’t asking about the wedding with Casper either. He was asking about what I was really doing.
“I’m good.” I said back in his voice. He did a double take. “Sorry. It mimics whatever voice I’m thinking about.” I explained in my own voice. He just nodded.
“We’ll be right here with you. Right outside the door.” Odie said. He called John to us. We walked into the elevator together. The elevator doors slammed shut.
…
The door to Polybius’s office opened. I could see the entire world outside from Polybius’s transparent back wall. Storm clouds were beginning to arrive in the distance. The silver bridge that welcomed new people to the city of Silverage had a dim glow in the full moon. Mr. Polybius was enshrouded by darkness. All except the glint of the moonlight reflected in his glasses. I had to switch to night vision to get a good look at his face. He had a pleased smirk, and one upturned eyebrow.
“I see you’ve upgraded the suit. Very impressive.” He said with humor in his voice. I said nothing, so he continued. “And what’s this I hear about you working with the Platinum girl? She seems useful. Might take her as well.” He mused. I took a step forward. He didn’t react at all. He just kept rambling. “You thought you could protect your loved ones by running from them, didn’t you?” He began to laugh. “Your loved ones are how I plan to keep you in check. If I threaten you to keep you working for me, then you’ll never do it. But I do this and suddenly you listen to what I have to say!” He continued to laugh.
“It’s over. There’s three Platinums behind that door. I’m wearing my suit. There’s nothing you can do to keep us from taking you.” I said in my voice. He stood up and took off his glasses and tossed them aside.
“My ex wife told me not to do this. But it was the only way to convince you!” He yelled. Then he let out a deep sigh, straightened his tie, and sat back down. “Apologizes. Today has been stressful.” He said after sitting down. “I’m not worried in the slightest by a bunch of children playing cowboys and Indians with superpowers, to be frank.” He said in a much calmer voice. “They’d die before they could contain me. And if they kill me they’re just sealing their fate.”
He explained. Then an idea struck me. Something that would finally make him lose his composure. He’d put me through all of this chaos, upturned my life and threatened me. I just wanted to see him shaken before they took him away.
“What are you talking about, daddy?” I asked him in his son’s voice.
“What are you doing?” He said, standing up.
“Daddy, they’re going to take you away!” I squealed in a little boy’s voice.
“Stop that!” Polybius yelled.
“Daddy please don’t let them take you away!” I continued.
“I don’t want you to die!” I said.
“I said stop that right now! Stop it, Jacob!” He screamed.
“Daddy they’re going to torture you, prick out your eyes and feed them to you!” I spoke over him, louder.
“Stop right now or I’ll kill everyone you’ve ever loved!” He shouted like a maniac. I stopped speaking. “Just like I did poor Daniel.” He smirked.
Then everything went black. Just like when I connected to the suit.
Black.
Black..
Black…
…
It was like waking up from a dream. I wasn’t sure what I’d done, or hadn’t done. How much of it was real. I was there but I wasn’t there. In control but not.
I was alive and dead. I woke up covered in blood. Polybius’s blood. Soaked in bloody blood red. I’d seen so much blood over the past month, but never this much on me. Never covering my hands in sticky thick red.
Oh God.
What have I done.
Oh please dear God let me wake up.
I looked down at the floor. Polybius’s neck had been snapped. It was a twisty broken bloody mess. I couldn’t tell where his head started and his body began. His face had been beaten to a bloody red pulp. His teeth loose around on the ground. Broken bone jutting from places. He wasn’t even recognizable as a human anymore. His shattered glasses lay in the corner, where he had thrown them. Blood splatter colored the glass.
“Daddy!” I heard a high pitched voice squeal and I flinched all over.
No.
Please no.
I heard the creak of the door slowly opening. The noise of a crying little boy echoed from the pitch black room.
What have I done?
I prepared myself to console a traumatized child. But then I saw the hand.
It’s movement was erratic. Its head bobbed up and down as it fumbled forward like a zombie. Each footfall was hard enough to make a thud. It sounded like a walking earthquake. The room filled with the smell of formaldehyde as it moved forward sluggishly. It was seven feet tall while hunched over, with dark grey scarred over skin.
Staples as long as my fingers ran along tracks all over its body. The top of its head was nearly bald except for a handful of loose white hairs. Its eyes had no eyelids, and the yellow orbs were covered in spider webbing blood vessels. its lips were barely there at all. The overalls it wore were faded and torn in various places and seemed to barely contain it as it moved towards me. It looked just as much like a corpse as the body on the floor.
Its massive eyes started to spin and shake when it saw its father’s corpse. When it screamed I was expecting a deep guttural sound, like a lion’s roar. But this was the squeal of a little boy. It sounded like a child having a tantrum at a supermarket as it threw its arms into the air and just…
Screamed.
“You killed my daddy!” It squealed. It lowered its arms. It stared at me and huffed out deep breaths. It clenched its fists.
“I- I’m sorry!” I yelled. I forgot to change my voice back, so I sounded exactly like him. The thing looked at me in confusion and screamed even more. Then it raised its basketball sized fists and began to slam them down right on top of me. This snapped me out of my daze. I instinctively went for the move I’d done weeks ago, on Cement Suit. I tried to catch his fists.
Except this time I had my new, stronger, more durable suit. Except this wasn’t Cement Suit. I was nearly crushed by fists. I fell to my knees and my arms felt like they were going to pop. Then he lifted his arms back up and was about to slam them again. I moved out of the way before he could and did the only thing I could do. I ran for the door. I practically ripped it open and ran out the room.
I grabbed the red smiley off my bandolier, twisted it, and threw it at the hulking monster before he had the chance to catch up to me. I slammed the door shut. The explosion was enough to send the door flying off its hinges and me with it. I was slammed into the opposite wall of the hallway by a punch from a door.
Which wasn’t nearly as bad as the punch from the creature that came charging out of the room immediately afterward. Its punch created an arc flash that sent me flying down the hall. Everything went white as I was thrown forward. I was blinded, winded, and just got hit by a punch with as much force as a cannonball. And before I could open my eyes it was charging at me again.
Where is Alist-
My thoughts were given a jarring interruption when the thing grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground. It held my throat tight and squeezed hard. I could feel the crackling bioelectricity the thing was giving off. My fur was nonconductive but it could only do so much to protect me.
The explosion had blown off half of its face, revealing a bloody thick white skull. Its mouth was now in a perpetual scowl. Its right eye was a black hollow space. What little hair it had was burnt away, still orange with flame. Its clothes were black and shredded. Chunks of muscle and bone were now exposed, as the stitches on its arms and neck had been ripped open by the blast.
But it was still just as strong as it was. It was giving off bioelectricity equivalent to a transformer, and it was healing right before my eyes. Its wounds closed up. Its skin crawled back along its skull. Filling in the empty hole of its eye with muscle and grey scars. I couldn’t do anything as it raised its massive fist. All I could do was squirm and scream as it punched me so hard my body left a dent in the wall behind me. I felt like I was going to die.
I…
It grabbed me by my arm.
I’m gonna…
It tossed me into the nearest room. When my body being thrown against the door wasn’t enough to open it, it kicked me so hard that my body broke the door off its hinges.
I’m gonna die.
It grabbed me by the throat once again. I could barely see in one eye, because of the punch. I could feel its electricity on my body now. Sending my muscles into spasms. Making my insides feel like they were being attacked.
But I don’t wanna die.
I don’t…
I don’t wanna die…
He threw me against the transparent back wall of the room. I went through it like glass.
Please. I don’t wanna die.
