Halo Knight wanted to sleep, but the memories wouldn't let him. They hit him like a tidal wave, making him feel like he was drowning in his own brain, and they actually blocked out the world around him.
His memories were about the light and the darkness. The light was a flying, golden-haired man in a yellow suit and a blue cape, and the darkness was a shadowy, enigmatic creature. Once, Paul had seen them with his own eyes, when his keepers let him take a trip down to the city. That had been the very first memory to return. His current avalanche of memories involved secondhand information, but it was all new. He suddenly recalled instances when he'd heard about the two of them on the radio, read about them in the paper, and listened to conversations about them. The military scientists had loved to talk about them...but they didn't remember them, anymore. No one did.
The light had saved individuals, ships, trains, and even airplanes. The darkness had terrorized the city, changing his form as necessary. There were other people associated with the light, other faces, but they were blurry in Paul's mind. Allies and enemies, probably. He did, however, remember a certain building, but he couldn't quite place it. It was definitely in New York, though.
Was he seeing a forgotten past or a jumbled future? Why did the light and darkness look so different in his head?
Paul Battaglia suddenly realized that he was leaning against a grimy, filthy wall, and he pushed himself back to a standing position. The mental onslaught was fading. His memories were breaking up like morning fog, with the real world visible behind them.
No, don't think like that...these memories are part of the real world, too. They have to be.
After the fight, he'd flown away as fast as he could, eventually taking shelter in a condemned building. The place was dark and almost completely silent, except for the rats and dripping water. He'd sat on an empty crate for most of the night. Paul stumbled back to that crate now, nearly collapsing on it. His entire body ached. The suit was rugged and protective-it had been designed for fighting Russians in space-but he was sure that he was covered with bruises. Daredevil hit hard. He was like one of those "karate" guys they showed on TV, the ones that could shatter brick with their bare hands. But Paul was no stranger to pain. When he first started using his powers, he'd experienced intense physical pain, particularly in his hands. It gradually went away as his body adapted to his abilities. Years later, the scientists told him that he'd developed a "high threshold" for pain.
Paul took off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. It had become sweat-soaked during the fight, and it felt like it had dried funny; he probably looked like a porcupine, now. Not that he cared about anything that trivial. Paul's heart was still pounding, and he felt like the walls were closing in on him. The fight had something to do with that, of course, but it wasn't the main reason. Paul had no idea what to do next, and he was terrified.
It reminded him of when his body had first started changing. He'd gotten incredibly sick, and his parents had dragged him to doctor after doctor, trying to figure out what was going on. Paul still remembered that feeling...the creeping suspicion that his entire world was falling down around him. One of his recurring thoughts had been "This isn't supposed to happen." He'd only been thirteen; young people were supposed to be healthy. Paul had told himself that, if he made it through this, the worst of it would be over. The rest of his life would seem much better in comparison. And for a while, that seemed to be true. But here he was again: the light had betrayed him, teaming up with the darkness, and that definitely wasn't supposed to happen.
His experience with Angel and Daredevil went against everything he knew to be true. He'd seen the pattern a hundred times over, in religions and mythologies from all over the planet...but, for some reason, they'd broken it. The light was supposed to defeat the darkness, and the world would be replaced by something better. Paul had thought that his job was to help that process along. Instead, the process had...malfunctioned or something, and now everyone was off-script.
Paul held his helmet, staring at it. Something's wrong. You have to figure out what's going on, so Halo Knight can fix things.
The memories had sparked all of this. He'd been experiencing them for less than two months, but they'd radically changed him. One day, the scientists had really been pushing him-they wanted to use his gravity rings in space vehicles, because they'd be much more effective and compact than chemical rockets-and he'd been hit by his first vision of the light and the darkness. It almost made him pass out. They told him that it was just an "exertion-induced hallucination," but it kept happening. He figured that hallucinations were like dreams, random and chaotic; what he'd seen was consistent and orderly. It was always the same hero and villain. His memories were detailed, and the details stayed consistent with each other. There weren't any contradictions.
Paul continued to experience the memories, but he didn't talk about them unless someone asked. He didn't want them to think he was crazy. The scientists told him that gravity could affect the human brain, and that some mutants had mental powers, so maybe this was connected to his abilities. A few CIA people started hanging around; they seemed extremely interested in what he could see. That was probably the only reason they didn't shoot him full of drugs and put him in a padded room.
He started to think of them as light and darkness: not just because one was good and one was evil, but because the yellow-and-blue man had light-based powers, while his adversary was literal darkness, this sort of man-shaped hole in the universe. It reminded him of the books he'd read when he was younger. When you're a sick, possibly-dying teenager, you're going to be both morose and curious...he wanted to know about death and the afterlife. One of his doctors had given him a bunch of books on the subject. He'd been stuck in bed, so he'd had plenty of time to read. Since the books were about the afterlife, they usually covered end-of-the-world situations, as well. People would die normally for most of history, and everyone alive at the end would pass to the next plane at once. Paul remembered the near-universal patterns in all these beliefs. At the end, a dark evil would rise, the forces of light would defeat it, and mankind would be ushered to some cosmic realm.
A darkly funny thought had struck him. If these beings were real, and if some of the mythologies and religions were real, what if the two of them accidentally triggered the end of the world? Most of the old prophecies were vague and mysterious. A light being defeating a darkness being...what if that was close enough to get the job done?
Paul had gone from one extreme to another-he'd spent years as a hospitalized teenager, miserable and missing out on his life, only to end up in the optimistic, ambitious space program. As much as he loved all the gadgets and exploration, part of him was still hung up on what he'd gone through. A dangerous question started to form in his mind. Namely, would it really be so bad if the world ended?
Throughout history, people kept trying to change things, but it was usually one step forward and two steps back. Paul had thought about government and society. Their solutions were short-term at best...but what if a long-term solution was available? And what if he was the only person that realized it? Now that Russia had the bomb, World War 3 could be on the horizon, so the world might be ending, anyway. Why not just give up now and avoid the whole thing? Part of him felt ashamed to even think it; the country had always had a can-do, never-say-die spirit, and his current line of thinking was defeatist. If America was a religion, then this was definitely heresy.
Paul watched as the space program developed. As great as it was, what could it possibly do for a new mutant in his situation? Instead of being an outcast on Earth, the mutant would be an outcast on the moon, instead. It wouldn't really change anything. Not for mutants, and not for anybody else, either. People were people, regardless of where they happened to live. They'd have the same problems that humanity had always had.
The adults liked to shrug and say "That's life"-but why did they have to be alive? Especially when almost everyone agreed that something better was waiting for them on the other side?
At that point, Paul's life had divided into two halves. An alpha and an omega. There was the New Frontier, JFK and rockets and social change, a fresh beginning for America. And there was this idea of an apocalypse, something that would sweep everything away, end humanity's struggles, and finally let them rest. As he continued to remember the light's never-ending battle against the darkness, the latter felt like a better idea than the former.
And then the devil started running around Hell's Kitchen.
There'd been rumblings about him for a few months, but Paul assumed that it was just a story, like the albino alligators in New York City's sewers. Nobody could agree on what he was. A vigilante, a ghost, the devil himself. Then, credible witnesses started to come forward. The city's kids-who were famous for sneaking out after dark, so they could keep playing-had seen him in action a few times. He must have pulled off some amazing feats, because the kids started calling him Daredevil. Someone managed to take a blurry color photograph of him. He was a yellow and black monster, with shimmering red eyes.
Paul was intrigued by this new figure...he didn't quite look like the darkness that he remembered, but one of the guards said that he used to wear all-black. And that monster was capable of changing forms. Still, he wrote it off as a coincidence. Then, less than a week ago, a winged man was sighted in Manhattan. One witness claimed that he had blond hair-just like the yellow-and-blue man in his memories.
An angel and a devil, appearing in the same city within two months of each other. He was the only person that remembered the light and the darkness. And his gravity rings sort of looked like halos, didn't they? Paul decided that it was all one giant sign. A sign from the universe, reality itself, as opposed to any gods. That was when he'd decided to escape, so he could put his plan into action. He'd been so certain...and now, just a short time later, he didn't know if he was sure about any of it.
Paul's neck was killing him. He stood up, stretched, and walked around a little. The windows were mostly boarded up, but there was still enough light to see by. Besides, if he really needed to, he could make his own light, anyway. His injuries were feeling worse, not better, but that was probably his body waking back up. He was tired and hungry. Not cold, though-the suit had been designed for a place much colder than this.
He'd left his helmet on the crate. When he glanced back at it, he briefly felt like it was watching him...
Paul risked a quick peek through one of the windows. Outside, it was morning, and life was going on without him. Geez, look at them. They're all insane. That was the sort of thing that crazy people thought, but in this case, it was actually true. It was one of the things that he was sure about. Paul didn't know exactly how long their species had been around, but they'd been living the same day over and over, since the very beginning. Why couldn't they see that? "Humanity tries to fix things, humanity mostly fails, rinse and repeat." It was time for a different kind of day. Instead of trying to solve all of their problems, they needed to just admit it was impossible and end the whole thing.
When he'd been in the hospital, he'd seen how destructive that kind of thinking could be: he still remembered the other deathly-ill patients, the ones whose lives were made worse by the doctors' constant attempts to "save" them. They should have just let them go. Human beings didn't like to give up, men in particular. They'd been raised to be tough and fearless. But Paul was part of a new generation-the Children of the Atom-and he'd moved past the old kind of thinking.
They're all the same. The doctors, the scientists, the politicians, the generals...even the superheroes. They all think that they can solve everything. Every previous generation thought that, too. I can't believe there isn't a word for that. There must be, though, right? It's like it's right on the tip of my tongue.
Paul shook himself out of it-he didn't need to be thinking about that, right now. There were questions that he needed to answer. If Angel was the yellow-and-blue man (maybe they were more visions than memories, which was why he'd gotten some of the details wrong), why had he turned on him? And why was the darkness pretending to be a superhero?
The old stories were full of betrayals and rebellions...Lucifer trying to conquer Heaven, wars between the gods, things like that. Maybe Angel was supposed to be the light, but he'd chosen not to do his job for some reason. The being posing as "Daredevil" could have bribed him. It had to be something crazy like that, because light and darkness weren't supposed to work together. No, no, that just wasn't natur-
-Paul suddenly remembered his mother dragging him to a hospital chapel, back before she found out he was a mutant (and killed herself). His mystery-illness had been getting worse, and he'd started asking questions about death and the afterlife, but she didn't seem to know much about it. The priest's answers hadn't been that good, either. She still made him go for a few Sundays. And one time, the priest had said something like "What fellowship can light have with darkness?"
For a split-second, Paul thought that he'd found the source of this whole idea, and he was convinced that he was crazy. But he knew that the memories were real, and some of this stuff couldn't possibly be a coincidence.
No, no, no. It's like you said: Angel is a false light. Come on, some of these questions answer each other. Why doesn't Angel look like the yellow-and-blue man or have his light powers? Why did he help the darkness? Well, it's because he isn't the true light. The yellow-and-blue man is someone else. Someone that's, uh...
The helmet still seemed to be staring at him. Paul suddenly felt the urge to form a gravity ring, and when he did, he stared at the silver light it created.
It's you, Paul. You have to be the light.
The idea made him laugh-he wasn't capable of being any kind of hero, let alone taking on some ultimate force of darkness. Besides, he was scrawny, pale, and dark-haired, while the yellow-and-blue man was the opposite of all those things. But the scientists had told him that gravity and light were connected. Was he "remembering" a fuzzy, symbolic version of the future? Or maybe, since they felt so much like memories, he was getting his own past mixed up with a literal future, merging them together in his head. Was it possible that his powers would eventually turn him into the yellow-and-blue man?
Look at it like this: it's a force of nature, an inevitable process. Like having the wind at your back. Every culture agrees that the light defeats the darkness, so who are you to argue with that? Just play your role and let it happen.
Paul was (basically) human; he needed to sleep and heal a little more, and he'd have to go steal some food, as well. But, once he was ready? It would be time for Halo Knight to deal with the entity known as Daredevil. If Angel refused to kill him, he'd just have to do it himself.