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~Zivalene

inFAMOUS: Legacy of the Beast
Chapter 3

"We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot."
~Abraham Lincoln

Now the tingle in Cole's brain led him to a small cul-de-sac on the edge of the commercial district of the city. Hardly any of the homes remained standing after the explosion. Then again, there was hardly anything impressive to look at before.

All of them had been run down, old, and unstable. The homes were so undesirable that they were practically a small step up from being homeless.

There came hushed whispers from the wreckage of one of the smaller houses. The closer the Conduits came to it, the more they could make out mournful sobs.

Suddenly the crying stopped for a moment. The sound then started to come from another house in the neighborhood.

A few seconds later it relocated to yet another house, then another until the noises returned to the home they had originated from.

The phenomena gave the cluster of deserted buildings a haunted air. Cole could see Kuo tense up in the corner of his eye. Torin seemed to be slightly unnerved. He wasn't accustomed to dealing with superpowers.

Following the sobs while they were still stationary, the three moved carefully into the decrepit home.

In a small bedroom in the back was a young man down on his knees, breathing small, quiet sobs. He appeared to be the same age as Cole if not younger. He had bright blond hair that had been covered in dust and insulation. His sweatshirt was colored blue and white. The rest of him was dressed in casual jeans and canvas shoes.

Cole heard Kuo moan uncomfortably as they approached him closer. On the bed was the black husk of a child's corpse, incinerated by the Beast's powers.

The young man thumbed over its small, crusted hand as he quietly cried a name over and over again. "Nina… Nina…."

He had no idea he was being watched.

On the floor lay the corpse of another body with the contours of a woman. Cole only assumed that these were the bodies of his wife and young daughter.

His body began to radiate what looked like a pale lavender smoke. Cole motioned for his companions to take a step back. There was always significant danger when a Conduit's powers had just manifested, as often times they lacked restraint over their new abilities.

An instant later, the man was gone in an eruption of purple mist. Cole could feel the power growing before he had disappeared, like his ability required an intense burst energy to work.

He traced the presence elsewhere in the neighborhood. It bounced from one location to the next in no set order.

Looking to Torin he said, "When he comes back I need you to hold his hands together."

"His hands?"

"Conduits use their powers through their hands. Bind their hands, and they can't use their powers."

The officer nodded with interest, trusting in the expert knowledge Cole possessed of their kind.

"Here he comes…" said Cole, sensing the buildup of energy condensing before them.

The next moment, the man reappeared. Torin rushed up to him and grasped his hands before folding them behind his back.

The blonde was startled by his sudden arrest and struggled against the officer. "Are you kidding me? What are you cuffing me for now?"

"I'm not 'cuffing' you, Eddy," replied the officer calmly. "I'm only keeping you from disappearing again."

"...You are?"

Cole walked into his line of sight. "Your powers are reacting to your emotions. If you want him to let go, you need to calm down."

Eddy froze at the sight of him; not in fear but out of respect. Apparently, he had recognized him from the streets.

He stopped resisting Torin's grip and took a breath of air. "But why is this happening to me? I didn't want this. I didn't ask for this. One minute I'm heading to the ice-cream shop for my niece to cool her fever, the next I was running for my life from some giant monster. Then I blacked out. When I came to, I found them like this. And whatever this is... I can't control it."

"Easy," Cole reminded him. He took a moment to repeat the same explanation he had given Torin, summarizing how the Beast, the Plague and his new powers were all related to each other.

When he was finished, Eddy hardly seemed angry at all to hear that Cole had assisted in the death of his loved ones. In fact, the news seemed to numb him more than agitate him. "Then I have you to thank for sending Nina and Jaime to a better place."

This response outright stunned the other Conduits. Kuo then questioned, "How can you be so comfortable about this? They were your family."

"Well, it's...not that I'm comfortable with it," Eddy admitted. "It's more like I was prepared for it. Nina's been sick with the Plague since last week. My sister has— had— a habit of blowing all her money. I've been spending every dime I make bartending at the Bloody Mary to keep a roof over their heads for her, so medicine took a backseat."

"And that's why I caught you stealing from the pharmacy?" asked Torin quietly.

"Yeah. But it didn't matter either way. Nothing I gave her worked. The only thing that seemed to help was ice cream; it let her relax and be happy between fevers. I couldn't stand to see her suffer anymore, let alone watching her live such a stifled life the way Jaime handled money. Couldn't afford new clothes, kindergarten tuition or healthy food."

He paused as if he was having difficulty piecing together what he was going to say next.

"...Honestly, I was waiting for that thing—the Beast, you said? I wanted it to just take all of it away. We'd be able to be happy together afterwards, up in Heaven. No bills, no drugs, no Plague. I was hoping nobody would stop it. Not even you, Cole."

Cole was silent as Eddy finished his story. He was beginning to understand what kind of person he was; one with his heart on his sleeve, living for the sake of others and loyal to those he cared for most. He was a commodity that the world sorely lacked.

Kuo's voice broke the silence. "Eddy, I know this is hard for you, but you can't stay here. There are more people out there and the army is on its way. If we have time, we can help you bury them."

This offer saddened him, as if the thought of having to bury his sister and niece was something that hadn't occurred to him. He took another look at the corpses, and this time was deeply bothered like he could no longer handle the sight.

He inclined his head once and said, "Yes, I would appreciate that."

"The last ones are close to each other, but they're on the other side of town. We'd better hurry," reported Cole. Then he looked to Torin. "You can let him go."

Eddy grew nervous at his command. "But what if I disappear again to who knows where?"

"Just keep calm," Cole advised him. "You can't control your powers if you're afraid of them. Learn how to spend that energy in a way that's productive for you."

The young man took a moment to think. "If that's the trick to it, then there's something I need to know."

Cole waited for him to find the words to continue.

"I know you mentioned that the Beast gave us our powers...but you never explained how it worked. Why is it that some of us get powers out of it and others die? Why is it that I'm alive while Jaime and Nina…?"

"Conduits are people with a special mutation that gives us powers. The blast is meant to activate that mutation by drawing the electricity from normal people into a Conduit."

"So, the ones that die are essentially fuel for us."

"If that's how you want to put it."

This answer seemed to compliment a thought inside Eddy's mind. "Then...is that why I could hear all those voices when I blacked out?"

"Voices?" Torin asked. "You heard them too?"

Eddy was surprised to hear that he was not the only one who had experienced the phenomenon. "Yeah. It was like I was in a crowded room where everyone was talking at once. Somewhere in there I could hear Nina and Jaime calling my name. I just needed to know I wasn't crazy."

"You're not crazy," reassured Cole. "I heard voices too when I got my powers."

"So all those voices I heard were the people that I…" he paused, looking for the right word. "...absorbed?"

He didn't need another confirmation from anybody to understand what he had said made some strange, terrifying sense. Somehow this answer seemed to ease him.

With confidence he spoke to the man behind him. "Then go ahead. I think I can handle it."

Cautiously, Torin loosened his grip around his wrists. He remained tense, ready to grab hold of Eddy once more should he show any sign of vanishing again.

When he managed to remain in view for several seconds Eddy gave a satisfied half smile. "I think I've got it."

Next Cole led them to the marina at Pier 53, where sailors and fishermen alike began their venture out into the gulf whether to satisfy their hobby or supply their quota of shrimp and craw fish for work. Tourists could come here to take a tour of the bayou just beyond the dock. It had also been the location for the beloved Jaws Seafood Grill that doubled as a bait and tackle shop.

The docks neighboring the restaurant had been completely splintered and smashed into floating debris. Every boat, whether it had been powered by a motor or sail, had been capsized or tossed ashore onto the pier.

"Looks like taking a boat is out of the question," muttered Kuo disdainfully.

"We'll just have to find another way off the island," responded Cole distantly as if he had no interest in the topic at the moment.

The tickle in his brain led him to an overturned sailboat propped up against a twisted lamp post at the back of the grill. With Kuo's help, he was able to right the vessel onto its hull.

All the contents held inside had been toppled out on top of the tarp meant to keep the boat dry during the rains. Cole shoved aside the coolers and tackle boxes before pulling back the green sheet.

Underneath laid a tall and burly middle-aged man dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit. His dark brown hair was just as long and unkempt as his thick beard. Obviously he had not been given the opportunity to tend to his personal hygiene in prison. Even so, he was built well above average in terms of muscle mass.

He looked up and blinked several times like he hadn't seen daylight in centuries. He seemed tired as if he had only just woken up from a nap.

The prisoner's eyes darted around, finding the faces of the four people above him. But when he found the hot glare of Torin's eyes he appeared to instantly shrink.

A second later the officer had him by the collar and held him up against the metal post with such ease he might as well have weighed as much as a child, proof that his strength had been drastically improved after the blast. His fingers were clenched so tight that his knuckles turned bone white.

"I threw you in a hole on death row five years ago," growled Torin fiercely. "How are you still alive?"

"This is Louisiana," answered the prisoner brashly in a gruff voice. "You know as well as I do you're more likely to die of old age waiting for the executioner to call your name."

This response warranted several enraged blows to the face.

"Hey! Hey!" Cole yanked the officer away as if punishing a dog pleasing himself with his bitch. "What's wrong with you?"

"That man is a murderer!" roared Torin.

"Last I checked, good cops don't beat the shit out of people for no reason."

"Who do you think you are to lecture me, you genocidal—"

"Cole," said Kuo with a wary quiver. "Something's happening to him."

At the sound of confused grunts and shouts, Cole whirled around to see the escaped convict writhe and tense in pain. His voice began to deepen into low, guttural growls while his body was distorted into a larger, thicker, inhuman frame. As his body continued to change so too did the color of his skin that began to yellow and slowly bush into a thick coat of fur.

"A shapeshifter…." Cole muttered beneath his breath. He had Torin began to step away.

A few seconds later, what had once been the man's long tangled mess of hair had become part of his new body, covering his neck and chest. His fingers shortened as claws jutted from the ends of each nail and toe. The coccyx of his spine had elongated into a tensile tail.

It was at this point in the transformation that Cole realized he wasn't turning into some hideously deformed creature beyond imagination. He was becoming something familiar and recognizable in the natural world.

He had changed into a fully grown lion, a feat that somehow comforted Cole in the sense that he wasn't changing into an enormous behemoth like Bertrand or John. However, it still left him uneasy.

The man in the lion's skin breathed unevenly, his eyes clouded in the most human form of confusion an animal could achieve.

"He looks lost," Kuo observed quietly. "Maybe he can still understand us."

"Understand us?" questioned Torin. "He's a wild animal, he isn't capable of 'understanding' us."

"He's a Conduit, like us," Cole snapped at him. "And like every Conduit, he can't control his powers at first and neither can you."

Torin glared at him, left without a valid opinion on the subject.

"What's his name?" Cole asked.

"His name?" Torin scoffed. At the receiving end of a serious stare from the other, he sighed. "Richard Blaine."

Eddy glanced at him with wide eyes. "That's Richard Blaine?"

Cole turned back to the large cat and leaned forward a bit, looking straight into it's gold eyes. "Richard? Can you hear me? I'm a friend."

The lion did not respond. The only sign that it still lived was the heavy snorts and breaths. It didn't even blink or twitch once.

"If you can understand what I'm saying, give me a sign. Move your paw."

He waited again for acknowledgement, but nothing came. Cole pondered whether he was like John or Bertrand— in control but unaccustomed to the change or detached from all sense of self and sanity.

"Screw it," said Torin impatiently, reaching around for his service pistol. "Might as well put him down and be done with it."

"No," Kuo reached for the weapon and pulled it to his side. "If you shoot him you'll only make things worse."

Cole called Richard's name one more time.

Feline eyes darted to meet his, dilating at the sight of him. Ears folded back, nose crinkled and teeth bared. The changeling Conduit let out a hungry growl.

Keeping his gaze fixed on Cole, he crouched low to the ground and slowly began to creep in a circle like a real predator hunting its prey.

"That's not good…." Eddy whimpered.

"Don't tell me you still plan on negotiating," whispered Torin.

Taking careful steps, Cole whispered back "I'll lead him around. Find somewhere safe to hide."

"What about you?" asked Eddy in concern.

"I've handled worse than a lion."

Once Cole was able to lead the animal to face away from his cohorts, they turned to run as they had been told.

Richard's ear's twitched at the sound of wood creaking beneath rushed footfalls, causing him to spin around. Unleashing a loud roar he began the chase, outright ignoring Cole's presence.

Just before he was able to round the corner after his prey, Cole took hold of the cat by the middle and tackled all four-hundred pounds of him to the ground. Richard thrashed and struggled against his superhuman might, unable to break from his grip.

With the full intent of quelling the changeling's uncontrolled rage before anyone could get hurt, Cole released enough electrical energy from his body to paralyze a large adult man. In his caution not to painfully electrocute Richard, his captive was able to roll onto his feet and toss Cole off.

An instant later, the lion pounced on top of him, pinning his left arm and chest with two heavy paws. Cole reached out his one free arm in an attempt to latch onto its face and administer a stronger, inoculating shock.

But Richard's new heightened reflexes were faster, sinking sharp fangs deep into his forearm, tearing at flesh and muscle. Cole let out an agonized shout, fighting to free his other hand to defend himself.

At the sound of a loud crack, Richard cringed and howled in pain, releasing Cole's limb. It had been a gunshot from Torin's pistol, providing assistance from the bottom of the pier's stairs at the sight of the other Conduit in danger.

As he fired off more rounds, the lion left Cole bleeding on the boardwalk to attend to the more prominent threat. Torin's heart pounded as his adversary closed the distance in only a few seconds, shrugging off the impact of bullets without so much as a flinch in his rage.

Kuo shrieked for him to run, but fear mixed with a loyalty to duty kept him stubbornly firm in his spot.

Richard reared onto his hind legs at a full six and a half feet and swiped at him with one giant paw. With immense luck, only Torin's gun had been struck, flying from his hands toward the edge of the dock. The shock of the attack caused him to knock his heel against the bottom step, tumbling onto the flight of wooden stairs.

Just before Richard's forward momentum brought him down onto the officer, his neck was suddenly strung by a visible line of electricity, forcing him to stay upright and unable to reach his victim.

On the other end was Cole, fighting against the intense pain from his wounded arm to keep the tether taught.

"Go! Now!"

But even with the advice to take the chance to escape, Torin instead used the opportunity to retrieve his weapon.

Cole, seeing him scramble in any direction except for the street, sent another current into Richard's body. The cat howled in agony.

With brute force, he planted both front feet on the ground and gave a violent jerk. The forward motion pulled Cole face first into the dock.

As Torin dove for his gun, his shaky adrenaline probed fingers accidentally gave it the one inch of push it needed to tumble into the water. Cursing, he desperately stretched his arm into the bay to blindly search for it.

But a menacing growl warned him that he had no time to look.

He flipped onto his back to see Richard coming at him full-force, ready to take advantage of his poor positioning. His mind went blank out of fear, whipping his hand from the water to hopelessly block his face.

A strong torrent of water rushed to sweep the lion off of its feet. Immediately after came Cole to take on the cat one more time.

Torin was stunned, realizing that his hand still felt soaked, as if he had never removed it from the bay. Looking down his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

From his fingertips to his elbow, water covered his arm in a thick sleeve, defying the nature of gravity and molecular bonding.

At the sound of gurgling water he looked back toward the bay. To his amazement he saw something he could only describe as physically impossible. There was a structure jutting out of the surface, made entirely out of water itself as if the bay developed self-awareness and created a malleable appendage.

He noticed that the form seemed to bend and wiggle in correspondence to the movement of his hand, like a snake dancing at the bidding of its charmer.

He looked back to Cole, who by this time had locked his fingers onto Richard's front paws, preventing himself from being pinned once more. Electricity surged into his opponent, yet somehow he still had the endurance to shake it off and snap his teeth at Cole's face.

Torin climbed to his feet, thrusting his arm weighted down by water toward the scuffle. He had hoped that his powers worked in a similar fashion to the motions he had seen from Cole. And in return, the same flood of water shot passed him.

In his haste he didn't even hear Kuo call out for him to stop. By then it was already too late, and Cole had been too busy defending himself to see it coming.

Although Torin's lack of experience using powers left the stream without much force, the simple amount of water was enough to cause unforeseen damage.

Upon being doused, lightning began to storm from Cole, bellowing in incomprehensible pain. Paralyzed, his muscles failed to release Richard at the other end of his hands, giving him the same unrelenting dose of electricity.

The roars, screams and sparks went on for longer than anyone dared to count, until finally the electric Conduit shorted out and the two of them collapsed to the floor.

Torin only stared flabbergasted as Cole's body continued to pitifully conduct whatever residue of electricity was still left inside him. With the danger passed and adrenaline replaced by sullen guilt, the water on Torin's arm slunk to the ground.

Kuo and Eddy raced down the stairs to his aid. As the woman cautiously took him into her arms and tried to shake him awake, Eddy asked hardly above a whisper, "He's not dead, is he? ...I mean, if it was that easy you'd think the militia would have carried around super-soakers."

"He's alive," reported Kuo with a tired sigh after setting two fingers at Cole's throat. "He's weak, but not dead. He lost a lot of electricity. We need to find a source for him to drain."

"The whole city's blacked out," said Eddy. "What can we do?"

"We can do this." Torin drew his taser from his belt and removed the cartridge from the end. At the press of the trigger, a small arc of electricity cracked between the two poles.

"It'll be a patch job at best," replied Kuo.

"It'll be good enough to wake him up and get him to a battery in one of these motorboats."

Kuo agreed and moved her arm away as Torin quickly approached and placed the end of the weapon at his chest. Almost instantly Cole took in a sharp breath as if he had been forced to hold his head underwater for several seconds. He then proceeded to wince and groan in pain before looking up at his female companion.

"That was too close."

"Be thankful you're alive. It could have been a lot worse."

"Cole," started Torin as he holstered his taser, "I am so sorry—"

"It's fine," the other said with a rasp. "You didn't know."

Behind them, Richard groaned in a strange human-creature hybrid voice as his body slowly returned to its natural shape. Torin didn't hesitate to restrain him in handcuffs before he could take the chance to harm anyone else, and to his surprise he didn't struggle against him at all.

In fact, he seemed to enjoy himself with a smile on his face.

"All that time on the force toughened you up, Davis. You punched me so damn hard I blacked out."

Torin glanced at him with squinted eyes. "Richard, you didn't black out. You turned into a lion."

This answer was met with unexpected uproarious laughter. "And you developed a sense of humor?"

"He's not joking," replied Cole, hardly awake himself.

The hefty man looked at him as if he had completely forgotten he was there. "I remember you. Didn't I see you tearing up the city with that…" He stopped to chuckle once more. "...giant thing?"

His reaction outright surprised Cole. How was he able to find something so unbelievable so funny? It was as if he thought it was all one huge prank.

"Yeah..."

"You look like shit."

"Why are you laughing?"

Past stifled laughs, Richard answered, "Because, this is all just another dream brought on by all those pills the warden gives us to keep us placid."

The four Conduits shared a confused stare.

"Don't know why I even bother explaining it to you. None of this is real. I'll wake up in a few minutes and go back to staring at the inside of a cell for the rest of my life."

Torin came around to his front and shined the light of his heavy duty flashlight into each of his eyes, watching his contracted pupils as they followed the light left to right without the smallest flutter.

He replaced the lamp into his belt. "Richard, you're not high on drugs. This isn't a dream; it's real."

The smile remained. "That's just what you hallucinations want me to think. Just shoot me so the shock can wake me up. I've had more pleasant dreams than this."

"I've already shot you," answered the other as he reached for the convict's bloody shirt and raised it. This caused Richard to wince in pain. "Six times."

The sight of six clean bullet wounds in his side turned Richard's skin paler than it had previously been from the loss of blood. His laughter and giddy smile were nowhere to be found.

Now he appeared to be seeing the destroyed city for the first time. The more trashed piers and wrecked buildings he saw, the more grounded his mood became. He looked to the officer with fearful eyes. "What the hell is going on?"

"That thing you saw—it gave us powers. You turned into a lion and attacked us. I had to do something."

"I did what…?" Richard could hardly believe what he heard. He looked to Cole, cradled by Kuo, and immediately found the gashes on both sides of his right arm.

"You don't remember anything?" asked Kuo.

His dark eyes met her pale blues, making him shiver under her gaze. "No."

In the silence he appeared to sink into a moment of clarity, like he was in between two cars crashing at the lines between fiction and reality. Whatever he did remember and wrote off as a dream suddenly carried the tangibility of a real-life crisis.

Giving him the privacy of his thoughts, Kuo assisted Cole to the nearest electric powered boat at the end of the dock, clearing away any obstructions in his path and pulling back the tarp. Richard watched in horror as blue ribbons flooded into his body, and the wounds on his limb faded away without leaving so much as a scar.

Seeing Cole revitalized comforted Torin, but only slightly. The guilt stayed with him that if he had just trusted him to do what he did best—be the hero—he may have gotten out of the scrap with just a bite.

Cole felt Richard's fear pierced him at the core. He had been cut off from society for five years. Everyone else had time to let the new strange nature of the world sink in before being hurled into their new life. He had been hiding behind lies to make sense of what he didn't understand.

He asked Kuo to find a first aid kit from within the boat before approaching him, instructing Torin to ease him on his side and to keep him still.

"What are you doing?" asked Richard.

"You're a Conduit now," answered Cole. "That makes you almost bullet proof and able to heal quickly. But there's no harm in helping it along." He held his hand above his side and said, "You might wanna hold your breath for this."

Before Richard was able to question his intent again, he let out a deafening shout. Torin pressed against him to keep him from moving at the intense pain.

Blood seeped from his wounds as the bullets were pulled from his body by magnetic attraction into Cole's palm. After counting to make sure he had removed all six he tossed the scarlet coated pieces of metal into the bay.

Kuo ripped open a small packet of antiseptic towelettes and dabbed the open sores, cleaning the blood and whatever dirt and grime could have gotten into them. The man took a sharp breath through clenched teeth. She then reached for a roll of gauze and began to wrap his waist with careful diligence.

"There," she said after biting off the excess tape. "You should be able to take those off in a few hours."

Richard scoffed and looked between them again. Then he settled on Cole and asked, "Why are you helping me? You heard him say it—I'm a murderer."

"It's a long story," the other answered, implying that tailoring an explanation for someone who had no clue on current events would only waste what precious time they had left. "What you need to know is that the army is coming, looking for people with superpowers to shoot. That bright orange outfit you've got on won't help you."

"So I take it you and I have a common sin."

"I don't think you've ever helped a giant monster destroy a city for the common interest of humanity."

Richard nodded with a crooked frown. He certainly didn't expect such honesty, no matter how outrageous it sounded. "Then I assume you have a plan to disappear."

"As soon as we find the last Conduit, we're heading to the mainland. It'd be in your best interest to come with us."

Richard paused to observe Torin's reaction, who did not seem pleased by the bartering. "And who's to say I won't be thrown into another prison when we get there?"

The officer looked to Cole, awaiting his answer.

"There is no prison for Conduits," he said, ignoring Torin's demanding glare. "The rest of the world sees you as a threat that needs to be dealt with. You'd be thrown into a grave, not a jail cell."

Although he didn't seem to favor being called a 'threat', a smile found it's way to Richard's face. "I'll take that as an official pardon of my crimes."

In contrast, Torin showed obvious displeasure. However, he bit his tongue and brought his nemesis to his feet.

Richard glanced to him and said, "The handcuffs, if you don't mind."

"I don't think so," replied the other.

"It's alright Torin," interjected Cole with confidence. "He won't be going anywhere. And if he loses control again, I know how many amps it'll take to calm him down."

Torin gave another suspicious stare at his captive, who answered in response, "You don't have to worry. Scout's honor."

The mock left a bitter taste in the cop's mouth, but nonetheless he unlocked the restraints and took it upon himself to urge the group to continue their search.