Thank you very much to AlienGhostWizard14, The Shadow Keeper, AllAmericanSlurp, xxWasabiWarriorAlertxx, and daphrose for leaving reviews! You guys are so thoughtful. Also, thank you to all who followed and favorited!
Okay, quick note about this. Originally, only the ending was supposed to be different, but the alternate ending didn't make sense when grafted into the original, so modifications throughout had to be made. This version is shorter. It's also going to be a bit strange at first, but it'll make sense in the end.
Please enjoy this alternate version.
The sound of cold, calculated steps pulses through the dim hallway, disturbing the silence imposed at that lonely part of the island some days ago. The walls seem to loom closer as they watch the unfamiliar figure pass by, his gait steady as he proceeds towards the last room in that long row of empty rooms. The man doesn't seem intimidated by the eeriness, although. He's not a stranger to these after all. In fact, at times, he prefers it.
Absently, his thumb grazes the edge of the cap of the vial clasped within the palm of his hand. He thinks of how unnatural all of this is, the kid being contained like an out-of-control monster. The boy has agreed to it, he's aware, but it still does not make sense – even to him. It's peculiar and even ironic that the stepfather and stepsiblings he's always willing to sacrifice his life for, no matter their faults, could be this harsh and unforgiving towards him. It appears that they would rather nurture and protect these other children that they had only known for days rather than nurture and protect the one that they had known for years.
He thought they're supposed to be the good guys?
Then again, maybe he shouldn't be too quick to judge. He does not know much about being a good person after all.
He stops when he reaches his destination. He then peers into the thick, murky glass of the reinforced door and knocks loudly.
A slow movement starts inside. His eyes follow as the silhouette sits up. "Douglas? Hey," Leo's surprisingly cheerful tone rings through the heavy partition between them.
He nods. "How are you?" he asks.
Leo stands up from the couch and then shrugs. "Oh, you know. Still locked in a cold place because of temper issues and a dangerous glitch," he says. He sighs, and his breath creates a light fog. He grins as he sees the blurred outlines of his step-uncle. "I guess I can't complain."
He says nothing.
"You have something for me?" Leo asks.
"I do." He opens the small box beside the door and then deposits the vial inside. A few seconds after he closes it, he hears a squeak at the other side and then something shutting.
"Thanks."
He watches as the kid walks back to the couch to sit down. From what he can tell, the boy is examining what he has just been given. "It's potent, so try to get it in one swig," he instructs. "The sedative will take a few minutes before it kicks in. It will make you feel dizzy and nauseated."
A nod. "Okay," Leo responds.
After a moment, he speaks again. "What happened?" he asks.
"Hm?" Leo sounds out before swinging back the contents of the small bottle. He makes a disgusted sound as he coughs out. "Ugh. You—" he gags, "you weren't kidding about this tasting nasty. What did you use to make this, Adam's gym socks?"
"What happened?" he repeats, ignoring his remarks.
He hears the kid smacking his lips, perhaps in an attempt to get rid of the putrid taste that had burst through his mouth. Then, he sees him lean back on the couch as he shakes his head. After a long while, when he has settled down, the kid responds, "I messed up." He breathes out in disappointment. "I know you weren't here when it happened, but…you probably already saw my handiwork. Classrooms with no electricity, twenty-one students recovering in their capsules. Twenty-two, actually," he corrects sadly. "Chase got caught in it, too."
"Your energy transference glitched."
"Big time," Leo says. He closes his eyes as he feels the first wave of dizziness. "I just got so mad. They just stepped on my last nerve, and I just snapped. It's bad enough that I'm failing in leveling up, but to be picked on by other kids because of it, I…I just got tired."
He remembers watching the surveillance recordings clearly. The playback began with the kid walking out of the training center and into the classroom. He was already upset at that point. He didn't have to wait a long time to find out why: trailing behind the kid was a small group of six bionic children—one that's fairly young, the rest being teenaged—obviously deriding him. Two of the boys were using their molecular kinesis to make walking away hard for the kid. There were no sounds, but the kid was obviously telling them to leave him alone repeatedly. The children just laughed when he did so.
This went on for a few more minutes until one of them decided to trip the boy in front of a much bigger crowd. More laughter all around.
It was the last straw.
After the kid got back on his feet, the members of the small group poised to continue, but the kid held up a hand in front of him. They seemed to take it as an encouragement, and they acted on the wrong presumption that the kid can't do anything they can't do better.
Then, it happened.
He can still remember the look of rage on the kid's face, so blinding that the boy didn't even notice the damage he was inflicting all around him, like the electricity flickering severely because he was absorbing too much energy. He didn't even notice his siblings rushing in, yelling at him to stop.
He didn't notice his older brother jump in between him and the group to save them from him. Not really. At least not as quickly as he should have.
When he stopped, everything was a wreck: some of the machines were fried, and several students were on the floor, struggling to get up despite their weakened states.
The video ended at the moment after the kid tried to check on Chase, after Adam and Bree stood in between the two of them, firmly preventing him from getting any closer while a look of fear and confusion reflected on their faces as they stared back at him.
"I don't like this."
He catches a glimpse of the kid lying back down on the couch. "Just a few more minutes, and then it will all go away," he says.
"No. I meant this," he says, his words beginning to sound slow and slurred.
He only looks on.
"Is it hard? Other people being scared of you?" he asks earnestly.
"What do you mean?"
"Like, does it get easier?" he explains. "People looking at you the way they do. Do you get used to it after a while?"
He does not respond.
"I just wanted to know," the kid explains, "because now the people I care about are scared of me, too."
"They just don't understand right now," he explains. "When they do, they'll know that they made a mistake."
The boy bobs his head. He chuckles. "I don't know what you just gave me, but this stuff is good," he says.
The smallest of smirks pulls at a corner of his mouth.
"Douglas?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to fix my arm?"
"Why fix what's not broken?"
"Oh," the kid says. A few beats afterwards, he says, "Well, can you do something for me? Can you turn it off?" Leo takes in a calming breath. "I don't want my bionics anymore, and I want to go home."
"Home?" he asks, his brows lightly rising in intrigue. "I thought this Academy is your home."
"No," Leo says calmly. "I want to go back to Mission Creek, with my mom and Janelle and my grandma. That's where I should be."
"I don't think this is what you want."
"It is." Leo snuggles further into the comfortable couch. "I've thought about it. This is what I really, really want. This is for the best."
"Leo. Don't let those upstarts walk all over you," he says. "Don't let them be right in assuming you are weak."
"I don't have to prove anything to anyone. I know I'm not weak," Leo says. "And that's why I'm asking this. I'm thankful that you gave me a chance to experience these abilities, I am, but I don't like what it's turning me into. This is not who I am. I don't want to live the rest of my life constantly trying to prove something. That's exhausting, and I'm never going to be happy. Plus, with these, I will destroy everything I touch. Have destroyed everything I touched, actually." He shakes his head. "My family is all I have. All of these are not worth losing all of you. I'd rather be back to the way I was before."
"So, you're just going to throw everything away. Even the thing that makes you different from the rest of them."
Leo smiles sadly. "Before I met Adam, Bree and Chase, everybody treated me like I was different," he says. He sighs. "I don't want to be different again."
He watches as the boy teeters gradually and inevitably between consciousness and sleep, fighting the effects of a very strong medicine to make his plea.
"So, can you do it?" the kid asks.
He thinks about it. "No," he says candidly. "I can't."
He expects at least a puzzled hum or a mumble regarding something irrelevant, but nothing comes.
He strains his eyes to see inside. No movements. He waits for five more minutes, and then he signals, "He's asleep."
A dark mist bursts inside the containment room, and in the middle of it materializes the first of his creations. S-1 grins ravenously down at the kid. "Well, what do you know? Your dinky arm's apparently not so dinky after all," she says. Then, she whips her head around at the man standing outside the door.
Receiving the confirmation that all awareness has fled the boy, he taps the button on the modified cybermask attached at the side of his neck. A soft whir goes through his stature, and soon the image of Douglas Davenport ceases to reflect on the metallic door in front of him.
"You think they know we're here?" S-1 asks him.
That wing of the island remains undisturbed, but through his enhanced hearing he can hear an alarm blaring off at the main part of the Academy. He supposes it was activated when the sensors picked up the use of bionics in a room where they're containing the kid. He smiles dimly. "They know we're here," Krane assures her.
S-1's grin widens. "Come on," she tells an unconscious Leo as she takes hold of his right shoulder. "You're coming with us." She kneels down beside the couch, and then vanishes again in a dark mist, this time taking the boy along with her.
Krane crosses his arms as he turns around to look at the bright Pacific daylight filtering in through the small windows lining the walls above. He comes closer to the light, to the warmth. It has been a long time since he's stood this close to the ocean. He stays there for a while, waiting. It's not long until hears the sound of feet rushing in at a distance.
Just before they come upon him, he vanishes in a gasp of dark mist, leaving behind a tangent trace to remind them of their grave error.
X, thank you again for being so nice to me. I hope you (and everybody, too!) enjoyed. :)