She had appeared with only the briefest of warnings, the sudden displacement of air and a sickeningly sweet smell. When he had turned, he had only the briefest of glimpses of a short, skinny girl in bib overalls with frenzied orange hair. Then she had been crashing into him, arms wrapping around his shoulders with disproportionate strength as she smashed her lips against his. His fingers had gone for the gun in his waistband, but she had laughed and then skipped away, blowing him a kiss and wink before disappearing with even less warning than her appearance. Even after she was gone, her scent lingered as he stood there, trying to make some sense of what had just happened before entirely giving up on it and turning back on his progress down the sidewalk.
As he stormed through the slums, her smell clung to him, and he initially blamed it for the growing headaches as he trooped towards the hovel his parents had decided to make home. He gave the girl no further thought, numb to the strangeness of it after seeing the daily news reports on some individual who had created a tsunami merely by thinking about it, or turned everybody in a diner into glass. Every day, more and more Prometheans* were crawling out of the woodwork, only adding to the chaos of the dark city.
Screams, gunshots, and sobs poured from the adjacent alleys and the crumbling, cramped apartments. People were dying mere yards away, murdered by another or by their own volition. But there would be no police. There never were; not in Midtown. Law enforcement was a joke, and a bad one at that, only earning the faintest of snickers and mostly from the simpletons, the fools who could find humor in the simplest of things. Gangs ran 'Madtown,' as its less-than-upright citizens had so quaintly nicknamed their cesspool of a city, and any officer who wasn't on the take was mere moments away from a close casket funeral.
As he entered the apartment building, he had to pause, placing a hand on the banister to steady himself as the sensation of molten metal poured through his veins. The pressure in his head felt as though it was going to crack his skull to escape and he nearly buckled, held upright only by his crushing grip on the newel post. Spots swam before his vision and discordant sirens shrieked in his ears. Leaden weight possessed his limbs as he fought to progress up the cracked and stained stairs. A slender hand pressed to his spine, its cool touch offering a brief respite from the inferno that consumed his interior, and he snapped his crystal blue gaze towards the sloppily dressed pro, obviously having just completed a transaction, who had stopped to help him.
"Are you all right, sweetheart?" she asked, and he marveled at the sincerity of the voice, the softness in her too-young eyes.
"Am I dead yet?" he grumbled.
"No," she assured him.
"Pity."
Grabbing the banister, he hauled himself upwards, leaving behind the confused and mildly affronted girl to return to her place on the street, attempting to entice passerbys. He dragged himself up the six flights of stairs and down the hallway to the battered door that he took a moment to rest against as the hammering in his skull became sharper, more pointed. It was like serrated knives tearing into his brain only to be savagely ripped back out, and he pressed his palms against his temples as he slowly sank to the floor. A sheen of sweat covered his skin and made his simple white shirt cling to his body as his organs strained to tear from his body, away from the pain and fire that consumed him. As though the stabbing into his head had released some stopper, thoughts now flooded his mind, causing the pressure to rise again. Every sort of concept, idea, and theory he had ever heard washed from even the smallest of convolution of his brain and his vision became clouded with numbers that at first seemed jumbled but quickly organized into long equations that had once made even less sense to him than the previous jumble. Now it was painstakingly obvious and his gaze flitted amongst them, lips racing as they recited the formerly aggravating expressions.
They soon faded, along with the worst of the headache and he staggered to his feet and turned to the door, wrenching the knob and shouldering into it, forcing it open. Stumbling into the cluttered portmanteau of kitchen, entry hall, and dining room, he was greeted with a rough grumble.
"And where the Hell you been, boy?"
His father was a thin, scruffy man with prominent veins that popped out even further when he was angered, and who rarely dressed himself in anything other than his sturdy work clothes, complete with dirt crusted boots. Seated at the rickety card table that sufficed as their dining place with the paper spread in front of him, he glared at his only son who lingered by the door. At the counter was the boy's mother, perched beside the boiling soup pot set on the gas stove as she diced vegetables and leveled her own disapproving stare.
The youth's cold eyes slid from one to the other, and he, once again, failed to feel any of the innate connection he was supposed to have for his progenitors. Focusing on his father, he answered, "Busy. Unsurprisingly, the Street Kings are too stupid to do anything without the proper guidance."
"I thought I told you to stop running with those thugs," his elder growled.
"I'm don't run with them. I run them. Straight into the meat grinder," he gave a small, almost drunken chuckle that had his father rocketing out of his folding chair, sending it toppling as his veins bulged and the mousy woman gave a jump, cutting herself with her knife. The boots crashed against the floor, shedding their crusted layers of dirt, as the tall, stringy man quickly closed the distance and smashed his bony knuckles against the teenager's face. His head turned with the force of the strike but he offered no other inclination of feeling the blow, his eyes clear and focused on the floor. Angered by the lack of reaction, his father drew back his fist again.
Everything seemed to slow again as the number swam before his vision but this time they weren't as random. It was the speed of the fist inching towards him, the torque of his father's body, the distance between him and the table, the temperature of the boiling water on the stove, deduced by the ferocity of the bubbling. And suddenly it all became clear. He shifted his weight and the fist brushed past the crimson hood of his jacket. Continuing into a spin, he placed a hand on the back of his father's neck and compounded their momentum, driving his elder into the rickety doorknob. The first blow served to daze him, make him more malleable for the following several blows that shunted him into oblivion before his limp body was tossed to the floor.
The back of his head caught the edge of the frail chair, sending it arcing and spinning wildly over the table. As the boy's mother, her mouth open in horror began to reach for the phone, the leg of the chair slipped into the handle of the soup pot, and the twist and momentum emptied the steaming water onto the homely woman. She fell to her knees, screaming as her skin transformed into a vibrant red, and she wiped at her eyes as her son calmly strode to the table and launched a powerful kick to its edge, correctly placed so that the table slid instead of turning into its side. It slammed into the side of her head with force to drive the side of her head into the knob on the stove, which with a sickening crunch, followed by her silence. Now empty, the soup pot rolled to the boy's feet and he scooped down to pick it up, grasping both handles before smashing it down into his father's face, destroying the bones that made up his face and ensuring he would never wake again.
Left in the hush and carnage of his calculations, he let the pot clatter to the floor, closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, and reveled in the peace. All too soon, the tranquility was shattered by a wail, which would have put a banshee to shame, filled the air, cutting from the baby's room. He grit his teeth as the headaches returned and when he opened his eyes, he found the heavy knife that his mother had been using in the vegetables was now in his hand. Regarding it for a moment, his fingers tightened about the handle as the cry rose in pitch again and his gaze focused. Lurching down the hall, he sang softly, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word . . . I'm gonna kill this whole damn world . . ."
He paid no heed to the sticky blood that coated his arms and drenched his once white shirt as he loaded the dufflebag he had dragged out from under his bed. Beside him was the knife drawer from the kitchen, mostly empty now as he completed the transfer. Several guns had been added to the growing arsenal, along with a sizable store of ammo. As he added the last of the knives to the bag, he reached back under his bed and pulled out the bulletproof vest he had obtained, along with the kneepads and elbow pads back when his parents had tried to encourage his habit of skateboarding. As he dragged them out, one of the straps hooked on an old Halloween mask, tugging it along.
He paused, staring at the devious smirk of the Devil. It was carved from wood and fitted with straps to secure it to one's head, an anachronism amongst the rubber and latex masks of modern times. Small horns jutted from the forehead, and fangs filled the wicked smile. Slowly, he reached down, picking it from the ground and then pulled the straps over his head. He took a second to adjust it before tossing the armor into the bag and zipping it shut. Standing, he strode to the kitchen where the snake-like hiss of the gas persisted, the flame off. Rigged next to the stove was a strange set-up of fishing line, a poised strike-anywhere match, and an old-fashioned kitchen timer that was steadily counting down. Not bothering to give the cooling corpses a glance, he headed out the door, pulling up his hood and zipping his jacket as he did so.
Striding calmly down the halls and clattering down the stairs, he soon emerged out onto the street, where a breathy voice asked from the shadows before she even glimpsed his face, "Hey, handsome, you looking for a good time?"
There was a thundering boom above them and fire roared from the apartment building, the force of the explosion blasting a few bricks from their place. The girl, who could not have been any older than him, only had an instant to look up before one of the tumbling block eclipsed her temple and her body crumbled, all tension in her muscles gone. Blood began to pool about her head, matting and staining her blond hair as he stared dispassionately at the new corpse.
Beneath the smiling mask, he responded to her inquiry.
"I already found it."
*Prometheans: organisms infected with the Prometheus Strain, a virus intended to accelerate evolution. Prometheans are stronger, faster, tougher, and heal quicker than humans, and most possess abnormal powers, and sometimes physiologies, that sets them apart from the rest of the population. Initially, it was only believed that humans could contract the Strain, but there have been recent appearances of animals and even a few plants that have become infected
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