Ch.5 Twitch

Tracking down Mark's run down apartment is easy enough, the map carried complete schematics. Waiting on a roof top across Eric waits and watches as Mark, the now unemployed guard tracks his way across the apartment. An over weight, sure to be alcoholic….and then it registers in his head. "Mark in the Dark.". And instantly Eric wishes now to kill the ex guard himself, the hell with stopping this so called other killer. His blood is boiling, current pulsing. Mark, the guard who preyed upon those in solitary confinement, killed many, by breaking their spines. Jason would also remember this monster, shame he's off else where.

Then it plays into mind. Alkon, the former mutant prison was located in Florida, why would so many guards be in run down New York? Certainly there would seem to be another mystery at play. But before Eric can work out the details, in flies Twitch, the mutant lemur. Twitch, the first documented mutant animal, with an intelligence to rival that of Eric's.

Hello Eric, chides Twitch telepathically.
"Where were you?"
Observing.
"You do that every day, what are you looking for?"
I don't know, the world is very new to my eyes still. Did you know there are pictures on buildings that move in pre set patterns?
"Yes, those are mostly ads for some product or the next. There timed and then they repeat."
Twitch's eyes light up. His curiosity at how the world works an operates never ceases to amaze Eric.
Who are we watching?
"A possible target for our supposed killer."
A killer?
"Yes. What, Jason left that part out?"
He said we were just watching someone, didn't say who.
"Well now you know. In any case, it's quiet so far. In fact there's no certain probability that we'll even catch him. In fact if he doesn't show, I'm very much contemplating killing him myself."
Twitch hovers in front of Eric surprised, Kill?
"Yes. Kill as in dead."
Will he not die if you don't?
"All things die, all creatures. We all die alone…." Eric hadn't meant to add that last part and suddenly he found himself confused. Why had he said that, an echo perhaps? "Anyway it's not about killing him just for the simplistic hell of it," he said reclaiming his confidence. "It's about revenge," his voice became cold. "For everything. All the suffering he ever inflicted…" he said the words with a scared memory, still unwilling to heal.

Killing someone just because of a bad past seems off Eric. If you give in these emotions, do you not in fact become the same evil you so wish to kill?

"You're missing the point, he killed hundreds, possibly thousands, this man is a monster."
Be that as it may, if you freely kill that man, then you will loose that which makes you human.
"I'm not human," Eric said bluntly.
No, but you stem from the same origins and mutants have not existed long enough to attain their own denomination in forms of compassion or emotion. You kill him and the hollow will only grow and you won't be able to fill it.


Eric looked at the creature a little awe struck. Twitch, the mutant lemur who could stare and marvel at a holo ads, was giving Eric, the supposed to be higher intellect moral advice of how to be both human and mutant. How? How could he, this animal, possibly understand or even comprehend the complexions of human and mutant nature? Eric just stared at Twitch with an unwavering gaze. Twitch stared back his wild green eyes, never blinking, never moving. Finally, Eric looks away and simply says, "I've done worse."
The god's honest truth.
I know…
Eric sighs, "You know better then to sift through m private thoughts."
I do it not to invade Eric, merely to understand. If you wish to know, all of what I just said to you was collections of morals you have sense left behind. There still in you, buried deep beneath the anger, hate, guilt and shame.
"I feel nothing anymore…"
Not even for her?"
"Just shut up," Eric cuts in and Twitch notices a few light poles dim and fade and a slight drop in the temperature. When nothing more is said and feeling uncomfortable, Twitch merely flies away.
Eric pays the creature no attention, he simply watches Mark. The notion of killing still hangs in the air like a ghost hopelessly clinging to a life left behind.