WARNING! This fic contains bad language, violence, torture, gore, mentions of self-harm, character death and an offhand reference to child molestation. Long story short, this is what happens when I'm allowed to write when I can't sleep for days at a time. Takes place between Rex going missing and Black Knight taking over completely.
"We don't have to take this, backs against the wall.
We don't have to take this, we can end it all."
"Bully" by Shinedown
He stared down at the boy whose chest he had a boot on, the barrel of his shotgun aimed square between a pair of muddy brown eyes that simply blinked dumbly up at him until he pulled the trigger, splattering shards of skull and globs of brain matter all over the floor and walls. His eyes followed from the bloody mess on the ground to the doctor two of his men were holding with her arms behind his back, both holding her eyes open so she was forced to watch. "Ready to tell us which one's the freak, or do I need to keep blowing fucking skulls open 'til I get the right one?"
"Y–you don't understand, we can't just let you have Nath—" the doctor seemed to realize what she was saying and shut her mouth, but the damage was already done. Another of the hunter's men looked through the charts for any name that might match what had slipped out.
"Nathaniel Anders, the only name that's even close. He's in solitary." The doctor started to say something, but before the first word had left her mouth the hunter had turned his gun on her, pumping a shell into her just like he had the boy. His men let her go and wiped splatters of grey matter, blood and bone off their body armor, pulling their own guns from their backs and following as the hunter left. "Says he was segregated well before they noticed he'd EVOed."
Hunter Cain wasn't listening. His legs ate up the yards between the room and segregation, the thought of splattering the freak these shrinks seemed hell-bent on protecting across the pretty white walls of his cell his only focus as he absently reloaded his gun. One heavily booted foot slammed hard into the door of the first segregation room he came to, gun level as it swung open and his eyes surveyed the room. Empty. He moved to the second, giving it the same treatment and moving onto the third when it, too, proved to be empty. He hit pay dirt at the last room, his shotgun trained on a teenage boy sitting against the far wall, crimson eyes staring out from under shaggy black bangs that hung to his bottom eyelashes. But the hunter wasn't paying attention to his eyes.
No, his attention was drawn to the bloodied knife hanging loosely from the boy's pale-skinned hand and the many long, thin red lines crossing over the skin on his arms. "Guess we know why they segregated him," he said with a chuckle, his men laughing along with him as two of them aimed their guns down the hall they'd come from, the third aiming into the cell. "You ready to die, freak?"
The boy's hand clenching tighter around the hilt of his knife as his free hand came up to brush his bangs out of his eyes. Without his hair hanging in them, Cain could see that his pupils wanted to slit like a cat's, though they'd dilated nearly round in the almost pitch black of the cell. The boy wasn't looking at him, though; he seemed more interested in the goon aiming an assault rifle at him. He brought the knife up to his mouth and licked the blood from the edge, seeming to be very careful not to cut his tongue open despite the many cuts on his arms.
Three things happened very quickly after that; the boy's pupils contracted, the goon screamed bloody murder and an entire clip of assault rifle ammunition was emptied into the cell, apparently right into the boy. The goon fell to the floor, his feet pushing hard against the tile even after his back pressed against the wall, still screaming and staring into the gunpowder filled cell. Cain smashed the butt of his shotgun into the armored mask covering the goon's face, his screams still echoing horribly in the hallway even after the impact knocked him unconscious with a sickening crack that may well have been his skull fracturing. "Guess that takes care of the freak," he chuckled again and turned to walk away, stopping dead in his tracks when a laugh from inside the cell joined in with his.
The boy was laughing, a hissing sort of sound that made the hunter's blood seem to freeze in his veins. "Guess he didn't like that game…" his voice was very bland compared to his laugh and sent the same chills through his veins, but he wouldn't let that stop him from doing his job. The gunpowder cleared out of the air and there the boy sat, staring at Cain with a lazy smile on his face and not a drop of blood on him that hadn't been there when they'd booted his door in, even though there was a line of bullet holes in the wall he was leaning against that clearly should have turned the boy's chest and midsection into pulp.
"Maybe you want to play with me," he said and pushed himself up, allowing the hunter to see that the line of bullet holes did indeed continue across where the boy had been sitting. He aimed his shotgun at his head and pulled the trigger, watched for the span of one missed heartbeat as suddenly the boy was gone, replaced by something red-skinned and bloody – forked tail waving behind it and enormous leathery wings stretched to what had to be nearly twice its height. Then the boy was back, the wall behind his head shattering as the shell slammed into it. He pulled the second trigger on his gun and again the thing was there, the wall shattering again without leaving a mark on either the thing or the boy.
"The fuck are you..?" he pulled the trigger again as a slow, even smile crossed the boy's face, his heart skipping another beat when the hammer fell on an empty chamber. The other two goons both abandoned their watch of the hallway, aiming their guns at the boy even though they knew now that bullets couldn't hurt him. Hunter Cain didn't even bother reloading. Neither the assault rifle nor his shotgun had done any damage to the thing in the cell, but the knife had… he watched the boy look up at another of the goons.
His pupils contracted again, this this goon didn't scream or shoot into the cell. He took several steps back, muttering what sounded like a prayer as he turned his gun on the other goon, eyes wide behind the face mask as he pulled the trigger. Cain grabbed the goon's gun, soaked in blood from the – now partially liquefied from machine gun fire – goon, taking the other one out as he started his prayer over and started to round on him. The hunter tossed the gun down and turned back to the cell. "What are you?" he asked again.
"I'm the one who brings all the Christmas candy," he said in the same bland tone, standing in the middle of the cell like he expected to be shot at some more. "I'm the one who brings the devil's brandy, I'm the one who beats you when you're bad… and I'm the one who loves you when you're fucking dead." It hadn't taken long at all – barely a heartbeat passed between the boy making eye contact with him and his eyes slamming shut, but he knew it was too late. When he opened them again, he was staring at the thing.
It was much closer this time, one raw, bloodied hand coming up to close around his throat. "So tell me," it said in a sharp, hissing voice. "Who's your daddy?" It closed its hand completely, enough time passing between then and darkness that Cain saw it take its hand away soaked in a black liquid that flowed like blood, though he didn't feel any pain or dampness before there was nothing.
He didn't know how long it'd been between darkness claiming him and the feeling of a knife trailing across his chest forcing him awake. It'd felt like years, decades even, since he'd first stepped into the cell, his eyes blinking open to stare at the ceiling in the dark. The room was painfully hot, the floor blistering the bare skin of his back. What the hell… he thought as he tried to swallow, his mouth and throat both far too dry to accomplish even that simple action.
"'Hell' is exactly right, Hunter Cain," he turned his head and found himself staring up at the boy, a vague shadow of the thing flickering in and out of view on occasion. "You've been a very bad man for a very long time, and now you get to pay for every little thing you've ever done. All because you had to go and stick your nose where it doesn't belong. And the best part is… you're going to feel it all before you die, and no one's going to feel the least bit sorry for you."
The boy's pupils dilated a bit and he sat perfectly still, almost like he was listening to something… Cain thought he could hear something whispering in a language he couldn't even begin to understand. All at once his pupils contracted again, and Cain felt the knife press hard into the flesh of his cheek and sink to the bone, but he didn't feel any dampness flowing from the wound despite clearly feeling the pain. What the hell kind of place was this?
"You won't bleed here," he heard as he closed his eyes to avoid looking at the boy as the knife was dragged across his chest, feeling all the pain of the wound but no blood flowing from this one either. "Or dehydrate, starve or any of those other silly things that would let you out of this early. You're going to suffer like all the other bad men over history." As if to prove his point, the boy slammed the knife straight through his heart – the pain was enough to make him choke on a scream as he felt cold steel slice through meat and bone.
"Freak," Cain hissed at him, earning a stab in the groin for his efforts. He tried to double over in pain and felt like his arms and legs were shackled down, tugging on them only making the burning feeling against them intensify. Even when he relaxed the burning didn't seem to go back to its previous levels, just hovered right where it was. Nathaniel stabbed him again, this time in the head, his empty sounding laugh echoing in the small space. The knife sliced through his throat and for an instant as it crossed his windpipe he couldn't breathe, the feeling passing as soon as the back edge passed through.
His heart hammered in his chest and the knife sank into it again – slowly this time, twisting in a painfully slow circle as it sank in. Somehow the knife was still icy cold despite the furious heat of the room, only seeming to get colder each time it passed through his skin. He felt the flat of the knife press against his navel, the sharp edge digging in as it was dragged up towards his ribs and then the blade rammed to the hilt into his gut, slicing upwards through his ribcage. "No screams?" He heard him chuckle and opened his eyes, finding the thing kneeling over him, a broad grin on its face as it brought the knife up for him to see.
The same black, blood-like substance that'd coated the things hand soaking the knife. He watched as it dripped onto his chest, but he felt nothing as it touched his skin. "This is what evil looks like, Cain. This is what flows in your veins here." It brought the knife up to its lips and licked it clean, its crimson eyes focused on him as, when the knife was clean, it sank the blade to the hilt through his windpipe.
He couldn't stop himself from struggling against whatever was holding his hands down then, his body panicking from his sudden inability to breathe and trying to get his hands on the knife to get it out. The heat increased with each pull against the restraints, his skin blistering and blackening as the smell of burning flesh started to choke him worse than the knife in his throat was. And still the thing just knelt over him and laughed – the boy flickered in and out of view, but he seemed just as amused as whatever the damned thing over him was. Then both their pupils dilated again, the thing pushing on his shoulders to force him still as another whisper echoed through the room.
"You do know how to take the fun out of things," the thing grumbled to the whisper when its pupils contracted again. The whisper sounded again, angrier this time, and all at once the heat was gone, the boy standing in the middle of the room again while Hunter Cain blinked in confusion. His skin still felt blistered and blackened and he still couldn't breathe, but when the knife slashed across his throat this time he saw blood spray from the wound, the boy's eyes closing until the spray stopped. Cain reached for something to hit him with – a gun, one of the knives he had hidden, hell even a toothpick would have done right then – opting to swing at him when the knife sank through his body armor and into his heart instead.
Nathaniel had taken up his place against the bullet-ridden wall again before Cain even hit the ground, his eyes staring blankly up towards the security camera over where his door was. He smiled at is as he dropped his hands to rest on his knees, the knife dangling loosely between them.
"Thank you for coming on such short notice, Doctor Holiday." Her eyes moved from the bloodstained hole in the ground to the one in the wall, then finally to the head of the institution. He was as pale as a summer tan would allow him to be and seemed shaky, almost like he'd lost his lunch at least once since whatever had happened in the room. "You have no idea how hon—"
She spoke over his flattery. "If you have wounded, why didn't you call a hospital instead of Providence? This doesn't look like an EVO attack." She watched the man exchange a look with another doctor, who nodded. The man sighed dejectedly.
"A bounty hunter paid us a visit… one who specializes in hunting EVOs."
"Hunter Cain," the man jumped as Six's voice sounded from the doorway, but nodded and shifted so his back wasn't to the suited man.
"Yes. He was after one of the patients, Nathaniel, who we discovered had turned EVO some months ago. We believe he was informed by an employee – the institution frowns on sharing any kind of information outside of our walls, so we will be conducting an investigation to find out whom." He glanced at Six, backed a little further away from him – Holiday found it amusing that he was so terrified of a man in a suit. "I believe they showed your associate the footage from this room and the hall outside Nathaniel's room."
Six nodded, motioned for Holiday to follow him into the hallway and closed the door behind her once she was out of the room. "His powers are a new one on Providence. I sent a copy of the footage to Kn—White, his orders are to bring it in for curing or indefinite containment since termination doesn't seem to be possible."
"What do you mean, 'doesn't seem to be possible'?" Six pulled his phone from his pocket, pulling up a video and holding it for her to see. She winced as screams and an explosion of gunfire reduced the phone's sound to nothing but static, the security camera transitioning smoothly to heat so the gunpowder in the air didn't hinder it and smoothly back when the air cleared, the boy still sitting in his spot without a single scratch on him. Her jaw dropped as she watched Hunter Cain's shotgun go off, the boy replaced by something her brain could only parse as a demon for less than a second before it was gone, her wide eyes sliding from the phone to Six's face.
"Exactly what I said," he told her, eyes flicking to the door as it opened and the head doctor stepped out. "What else can you tell us about this boy? Where'd he get the knife?"
The doctor shook his head. "He brought the knife with him – a gift from his sister's boyfriend for not ratting him out when he was molesting him, skinned the sick bastard alive with it when he caught him raping his sister. Good luck getting it away from him if you try. We don't know too much about him other than that, he only ever talked to Doctor Matthews and Timmy, the two people the bounty hunter shot in there." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the room.
"Will he come with us without the risk of anyone getting hurt?" Holiday asked, watching the doctor shift nervously. "Well?" she prompted.
"He won't give you personally any trouble, Doctor Holiday – but he won't like your associate at all. Nothing personal," he added nervously to Six when he raised an eyebrow in question. "Nathaniel developed a rage trigger towards adult men due to the incident with the boyfriend; it expresses itself violently when he feels the least bit threatened, but if he doesn't feel like he's in danger he just ignores everyone. Given the incident with Hunter Cain…"
"He's likely to assume Six will hurt him and try to hurt Six," Holiday concluded. "How do his powers work, can anything be done about them?"
The doctor seemed much less nervous now. "The most we can tell is that he requires direct eye contact. We don't know what happens after that, Doctor Matthews and Timmy are the only two that ever survived seeing whatever he shows them, and he asked them both not to talk about it. He let your Lieutenant Kenwyn blindfold him for now, she's helping him pack."
He held up a hand when Six started to say something. "I've been watching this boy since he came in four years ago; letting him have his games will keep him much more controllable, even if you just use them as rewards. If he does his chores – keep his space clean, showers, whatever else you decide to ask of him – let him have his game for an ho—"
"You specified that his trigger is towards adult men in particular," Holiday interrupted. "Why?"
"Nathaniel loves to play with other teenagers, or even children. When he can be good for an entire month, we renew his game subscriptions so he can play with others over the internet – gives him a chance to socialize and still keeps them out of harm's way. He's very social towards people his own age." Holiday nodded, as if that answer was all she needed to know. She reached up and pushed a button on her communicator.
"Kenwyn, bring him to the exit when he's ready." She let go of the button and leaned against a wall, waving in a very dismissive gesture to the doctor. "I knew I'd heard his name before," she said when the doctor left.
Six raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Rex was telling me about an EVO named Nate he'd teamed up with on one of his war games," she told him. "It's too coincidental that we've got an EVO who spends a lot of time gaming who happens to be named Nathaniel."
He started to comment back, but Holiday shook her head and pointed down the hall, watching Kenwyn and the boy pick their way slowly down the hall. The boy had his eyes covered by a black bandana, a black hoodie covering his arms as his hand rested on her shoulder to keep him from losing her. She could see a black leather sheathe attached to his belt that she assumed was the knife he'd had in the video – sooner or later she'd need to do something to get it away from him, if not for the safety of others than for his own if the marks on his skin were anything to go by – and she could see his shirt had something on it, but couldn't see enough of it to identify. "Hello Nathaniel," she said warmly.
"Hello," he said in a sort of bland – slightly slurred – voice, his head angled to look at her feet as if it was an automatic gesture despite the blindfold. He had the hood of his hoodie up and his shoulders hunched in a posture that very clearly said he felt like a kicked puppy, his shuffling steps and the slight slurring telling her they'd drugged him sometime before Providence had arrived. "You sound pretty."
Six frowned at that, but a warning glare from both Holiday and Kenwyn kept him very quiet. They didn't need to risk that his presence would set the boy off in any way, let alone a violent one, and the longer he cooperated the less chance there'd be an incident before they returned to HQ. "Thank you," she said with a smile. "Kenwyn, put him in a transport and stay with him if he wants you to." He kept his hand on her shoulder and followed as she left, turning to smile at Holiday for a second. "Impressions?" she asked Six when she was sure they were out of earshot.
"He's drugged," Six said flatly. "Not easy to get an impression of someone when they're drugged out of what little mind they have. Why's he here?"
"Sexual assault induced PTSD and a related detachment from reality," Holiday answered as she recalled the medical file she'd pulled up on him on the way.
"He's a nut."
"Not what I had in mind when I asked for impressions, Six." But she smiled, appreciating the attempt at humor.
"Dangerous even without being an EVO, his powers only make him more so." Six raised an eyebrow down the hallway towards the room they'd been keeping the boy in. "Keeping him isolated seemed to work for them until Cain interfered, that and medication may work while he's in Providence's care."
"But you don't think so," she said. He shook his head.
"No. It may work while you're around, but if the woman gets her hands on him…"
Holiday understood immediately. "We'll have to find a way to terminate him if we have to go under… he's too dangerous to be left with her, or to take with us while we're trying to stay off the radar. Maybe with salt and holy water," she mused with a laugh, more to herself than him. It sounded silly even in her head, but there really wasn't another name in her head for whatever she'd seen in the video but "demon". And the more she thought about the current state of things at Providence, the more she was starting to like the idea of killing him well before he ever got there.
Black Knight didn't need a demon's power.