Aftermath or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Conduit Gene

by Just One Face in the Crowd

Charlie Hunter is a young Conduit, just trying to live her life and escape anyone's notice. Unfortunately, her plans for a quiet, inconspicuous life are dashed when she gets involved with a group of Conduits trying to change the world, and save it at the same time. (Takes place about a year after inFamous: Second Son.)

1. Prologue

The day after I turned fifteen, I became a killer, and my life changed forever.

It was in self-defense, but that didn't matter. It didn't matter because I was Conduit, and I'd killed a man with my powers. It didn't matter that the man had been armed trying to kill me. It didn't matter he'd done terrible things to me. It didn't matter that in the end, he'd deserved to die.

I was a Conduit, a bioterrorist, a freak, a monster. Worse, now I was a murdering monster.

That's all the locals could see, it was all the D.U.P. could see, so I became invisible.

I ran, I hid, I became one of the faceless things living on the street, and I stayed under the radar, away from people, away from anything that could hurt me, or that could be hurt by me.

Because that's what bioterrorists do, right? They hurt people. They're monsters, right?

That's what the D.U.P. wanted us to believe, and we did, for a while. Even me. Because I was just a scared kid, I had no idea how to fully control what I was, what I did. The first time I'd used whatever it was I had, I'd killed somebody.

It didn't matter that I hadn't even known I was a Conduit. In the eyes of others, I was a bioterrorist. Something to feared, locked away, and forgotten.

Then I met some people. People like me. Good people.

Bad things happen to good people.

And happen they did.

But we made a difference, I like to think.

We tried.

And really, isn't that all anyone can do?

My name's Charlie Hunter, and this is the story of how I learned to stop worrying and love the Conduit gene.