Lyrics to Cold by Crossfade
August 10th, 2030
The streets weren't as quiet and stable as they were just a few days ago. It was packed, it was filled, crawling with a rather large mob of regular people- but these people were armed, if anything, and all of them, every single one of these citizens had weapons on them- all sorts of weapons, ranging from guns and knives to metal rods and bats, anything that could be used to harm a living soul. They all shouted, they all screamed, and they were all crying out for blood, banging and striking against the doors and windows of the Kapacity Korp building. The security forces inside were little to none in comparison to the mob. Sure, maybe these guys here would gun down about ten of these attacking civilians, but they'd be overrun when they'd run out of ammo. And they'd all be killed with the staff.
"COME OUT! COME OUT OF THERE!"
"GIVE YOURSELVES UP OR FACE JUSTICE!"
Their angry screams never stopped, not since Dylan Blood had already won, painted the criminals within the corporation with the help of the SCX chip he had in control, the tool of the gods. It was known, it was spread, McMahon's crimes and the global conspiracy he had in store. Kapacity Korp was on the brink of collapse, but what Blood did, that of which he enabled, had more unpredictable consequences that sent the people into a frenzy, going into chaos.
Some of the towns and cities turned upside down after the news, deriving from the police and SWAT trying to halt the mobs' destruction of the facilities, which only led to the angry people turning their attention to them. Cars were already burning, destroyed, places had been looted, and Detroit, Los Angeles and now San Francisco had gone to shit. Vandalism, destructuon of property, and more crimes that truly showed what America was capable of. And it was all thanks to Dylan Blood.
That's it! Make the difference! Be the difference! Take the initiative, make the stand! Peter McMahon was that close to winning, and so were his followers! Kill them, they are all hiding within those buildings, trying to pretend that they are innocent! No one is, no one can be spared! Burn their houses! Kill their loved ones, the likely enablers! Set fire to their next of kin to ensure that their ideas of global genocide is forever buried! Justice is to be dispensed! First, these conspirators! Soon, the phenos!
I will hereby grant any pheno amnesty if the join my revolution!
And the world was shifting again, the escalating war between man and pheno skyrocketing to Bloodier proportions, the scale sizeable to the inevitable civil war.
They'd all fight on the streets, they'd tussle it out in the quiet places, they'd lock into war in the woods, at playgrounds, in the neighborhoods. Guns aimed at the air, phenos running underground. Choppers, patrol vehicles, heavy support. Anti-pheno weaponry. World War III contained inside American soil at most, and even if they would say it wasn't, really. That's how it would feel like. That was how the revolution began, and the revolution taken in the hands of the anti-phenos when everyone was concerned it would be the phenos themselves to stage the uprising.
Three patrol cars stopped right as the mob continued to break their way into the Kapacity Korp facility. The six officers all came out and drew their handguns out- and the siding phenos who defected to Dylan Blood's ideology out of fear or desire to be spared, whichever one it could be, stepped in and fended the cops off, taking them down as easily without killing them. Maybe they were there to see Kapacity Korp burn, and in Dylan's mind, that might have just been okay.
I will grant all phenos a place in my revolution for a brighter future! A world without these greedy politicians! The elites who control the way you live! The closed-minded! The real villains of America!
Chaos, endless turmoil, the burning of society started here, started now.
Together, we will be the new face of the rulers!
Act IV: Bloodier, Chapter X: Ghosts
Tennessee
Nathan Tyler Niles was in the study of his friend's mansion, the moronic Dick Sullivan, helping himself to a blunt with both Dick and Billy Clarke. They were getting high right when Lincoln kicked in those fancy wooden doors, armed with nothing but a Remington shotgun. Billy was startled shitless that he fell back off of his chair. Dick stood up and mindlessly approached Lincoln to disarm him, only for the albino pheno to strike Dick with the butt of the shotgun. "Which one of you is Niles?"
Billy gave his friend away, pointing and wheezing away at Nathan, laughing hoarsely. He signed his death warrant, delivered a point-blank round of buckshot to the face.
"Oh, shit-" Dick stumbled around, walking backwards, only for his right leg to get blasted right off. The imbalance caused him to fall, but Lincoln reloaded another shell into the chamber, blasting again right through Dick's chest, making him fly a few feet back.
"You there..." Lincoln aimed at Nathan, having the sughts fixated right on his cheek. "Do you know who I am?"
"I- I see the news-" His joint had fsllen clean out of his hands by then. "You're him, you're that guy with a bounty on his head-"
"Don't get any ideas," Lincoln warned. "I know about that, but McMahon will never be able to deliver if someone does manage to end me."
"What?"
Lincoln lifted his leg and kicked the wealthy man down on his back. "Talk to me about something."
"O-of c-course-" Nathan complied. "J-just don't kill me-"
"We'll see about that-" Lincoln let the shotgun face out of Nathan's body. "The Freights, I've heard secondhand that it was all orchestrated, planned by political or government goons, and when I asked for a name, you know what I've gotten back?"
Nathan gulped.
Lincoln leaned in closer, and whispered, "Nathan... Tyler... Niles."
"Oh, God..."
"No..." Lincoln picked up the man by his nice white shirt, dragging him into the kitchen of torture. "There is no God."
"Where- Where are you taking me?"
"You're going to talk it all out for me, right? This is just in case..."
"...Oh, God."
St. Pierre General Hospital, New York
The ICU monitor beeped as intended, the bed of the current patent still being occupied by them, but in the moment, no doctor or nurse were checking in on them. Lemuel Porter had fallen into a comatose state right after the bullet was extracted, and there was no godly way of knowing if he'd ever wake up or pass away. But, they were a hospital and nobody was ever going to be given special treatment. One week or two until they'd pull the plug on the life support, and so ended the last of the Porter family's bloodline.
If Lemuel didn't open his eyes, that was.
The young brat of messy, uncombed hair lived once more without so much as a warning, and he, dressed in a hospital gown that happened while he was asleep, broke away from the wires laced all around his body, still perfectly remembering- No, seeing- Allie Taggart holding a gun and shooting Lemy right in the head.
Allie. His friend, his ally, his-
TRAITOR! Lemy stood up on his feet when the ICU monitor blared in alarm, activating the siren to summon the staff. He didn't know where he was at first, but things made damned more sense. And things truly made more dense that before.
FUCK EVERYTHING! FUCK OUR CAMPAIGN! I WON'T BE USED!
All that he had been told by Allie, those endless words of rightoues, bloody justice, the wild west horseshit- it was all that it was, just horseshit, fake words to encourage and toughen Lemy up against the enemies of the real behemoth, the true storm of the season. On, how he played right into their hands. How he hated it so damn much. First step, find Allie, find that senator, and make them pay. And then- And then... Whatever his bloodlust craved. Whomever it craved.
Two doctors and a nurse bounced into the room, quickly surrounding Lemy. I'LL KILL YOU ALL!
Tennessee - Hours Later
Lincoln had wrapped up, and by then, Nathan Tyler Niles was a body with three knives stuck into the chest area, back laying down to the floor, and the blood had formed a large lake of a mess around the kitchen, not that the albino minded or scared about, he got what he wanted. Lincoln had gotten all the answers he wanted, and none of this was as good as he hoped it would be.
Very well, this all runs deeper than I thought at first.
He stayed around the mansion, surprised to have no cops or anyone else come around to see. A look around the place had told him why; he found a shed used as an arsenal, mostly handguns and shotguns of all sorts, the merry winter wonderland that brought Christmas early for his taste. Pretty sure these guys had a habit of shooting on a daily basis, the norm here. Who could tell Lincoln's noise apart from the common practice?
He stocked up on them, taking all that he could into the red McLaren parked in the garage.
Niles told me all about it, all that shit that had been planned even longer than when it started.
He'd not burn the place to the ground, even when he wanted to.
It all started in 2011, when someone had the idea to fabricate a domestic dispute that later became the so-called War of Fire in 2015. It started since before the death of President Jordan Leak, that I've known, they were a thing, but... In the beginning, it was three of them. Harrison Rains, Derek Snyder, and that other one- Garrett something. Holland? They started out blowing up the homes of the rich, trying to balance the shit out, but they moved on to everyone in total, blaming them all for having their heads in the sand while the elites maintained the power they had on.
The earliest Freights were not the ones who wanted to wake the herd to show them what they took for granted on a loop. Sure, all Freights were bad, all versions of them, but they had the right idea- and I'd hated to have admitted that. They did... Didn't they?
Turns out that it was just them cleaning house. Somehow the rich and the politicians aren't exactly friends, and the one name that hired and funded the three, covered their asses for so long- meaning for those four years until they were "caught"- it just happened to be the worse one of them all.
You know who had it sectioned? A conspiracy hidden from the sun so well that it made all pre-existing black ops look messy- that was all from the one and only Jordan Leak, the US president since 2008, re-elected for the second term four years later. The man beat Mitt Romney somehow, truly amazing, and even more considering how twisted the shit is. Ha, don't forget that he was killed by the Freights-
And then it hit me; the bald president had made himself the sacrifice in his own game, and in doing so, the hunt of all Freights had been really prioritized, an effort to cover his own dirty tracks. Of course Rains, Snyder and Holland were dead now- They knew, and they died for it.
That's your president at work, ladies and gentlemen, using your tax dollars to fund domestic free-thinkers. Fuck them, fuck every last one of these criminals, and then myself for being a part of that. Lori. Me. Chandler. Rebekka. Dana. Fiona. Darcy. Steven Hill. There are others I can't name, so many of us. So many crushed to death under all of that rubble, the fall of Leak's fabrication, the breaking point of my own-
M-my own-
He had pulled out of the garage, but then stopped, applying the brakes hard. To think.
My rage is infinite.
He closed his eyes, and in the blink, he saw the inner projections of Lily and Clyde in mind.
My friends and family, I've forsaken-
His lips twitched, reacting to this spring feeling of genuine of uneasiness.
I've... I've made them fall where I should have.
Clyde had shown his colors to betray Lincoln, but was it ever so simple? Was it that way that he saw it, or was there another reason? Was it that Clyde only wanted to help him by putting him away?
And then there was the matter of Lily. That poor, sweet Lily Loud whom he led to his own battle, and in turn, her own death- in the arms of the scoundrel Dylan Blood some-fucking-how. He had her there, in the base for an unknown period of time, having hurt her, starved her maybe. Subjected and used as an object against Lincoln- and it drove the albino mad and upset. It turned his stomach, did his head in. It was ugly to think about, but to shake it off was another story.
Damn it all...
Things were easier before, when the enemy was just one corrupt piece of shit and the phenos who would misuse the very gifts they were given. There were too many of them, even when, and he'd see in on the news, Dylan Blood had already been assembling the masses of both concerned citizen and defected pheno to his side, turning them to Kapacity Korp in what could only be described as a civil war- Not even that, for Dylan Blood and his faction had no real rival fighting back. The death toll as vastly rising while the containment protocols were put into effect.
Lincoln called it, safely guessing that the phenos under Blood would be too much for the anti-pheno forces- and let it be known that Dylan Blood had the advantage with the SCX device, tactically giving out orders and having his followers retreat before they faced opposition.
And slowly the world turned upside down, with the nation stopping their everyday lives to begin protesting or joining the new faction in arms. Who's side were you on?
Lincoln drove fast through the stop signs of the streets, no longer giving a shit about the law. Cops were all organized as a blockade against some angry lot of protesters, be it they were at a school, or at a mall, some Goddamn place was being attacked and that was certain. The heads were all rolling for this, minds being lost, the true insanity coming to light. Public and private killings and massacres. Bodies were littered, and more would be dropped.
He did see it, and he never looked away from the bodies, most of them being left discarded through the towns and cities he passed by on the way. Decapitated bodies, dismembered limbs, hangings of the phenos as if they were cursed people, something worse than those Salem Witch trials. Be a pheno and you weren't safe until you gave yourself to the cause, the cult of Dylan Blood. Either than, or run, rub from the United States of Disorder.
The United States of Blood.
Lincoln could still find it in his heart to extinguish this particular fire, kill everyone who dared to upset the balance, make some noise, but the world...
There was just something so peaceful about all of this. About seeing the world go in flames, the society to crumble, it all gave him some sort of sick satisfaction. Everything had begun to spiral out of control already, and soon, with the path remaining as it was, it would all fall down. The new overlord would acquire an army big enough, of a variety of powers, to take upon the entire American opposition and claim the throne for himself. It only took him days and the proper resources to do it the way he did it, and he did it perfectly, with no limitations or hesitation to inflict the harming and killing of those who stood in his way.
By golly, Lincoln wasn't called out by Dylan as an enemy. Yet.
Maybe it wasn't too late to stop him, and now, now when Lincoln had walked away with nothing byt garbage after having a nice chat with Niles, there was no other fight left in the list. It was now all centered on Blood and his rising number of minions. Gun them down, run them over, shove grenades into their mouths- The world was the war zone it had always been, only just revealing itself in an all-out field, extended to all places. More hostiles to take aim and blow away, it wasn't so bad in that angle. It wasn't so bad for him to jump in and give in to the beast inside him, that particular monster that his sisters never liked. No Lynn. No Luna. No Lori. Nobody to stop him, and it took the world to change, and for them to die off for it to be possible.
May they rest inside heaven, but for him, heaven was here. Heaven was all around, covered in blood, corpses and chaos.
Heaven, wasn't.
Lincoln slowed down when he saw a group of five figures in iron skull masks emerge from a burning Wells Fargo bank, waving around weapons or bags of money. The bags were dropped and then sprayed with gas canisters before being shot at. They were burning the currency rather than naming off with all of that dough. Anarchy.
Lincoln pulled to the other side of the read and engaged the men with one of the Colts in the passenger seat, taking them all down as he drove slowly past them. Funny how they didn't seem to have Kevlar armor on them. Cocky, arrogant bsstards participating in the disruption- and yet Lincoln enjoyed the bloodshed.
New mission, kill them all.
He saw patrol cars later down the road, many of them going around in all directions. He didn't give much thought of it, but the key fact that they were spares, going off to separate locations to try and keep whatever little peace was left. Before he crossed the next street, an ambulance, blaring its sirens and speeding through the crossing street- while being chased by a galloping pheno, running like a cheetah. Lincoln veered off his own course and sped after the animalistic pheno. The predator became the prey.
Elsewhere
Lemy walked away with nothing but a pair of scissors and the blood of his new victims all over his gown. He slaughtered and stabbed and shot everyone he saw, his sanity having been shattered in half by then, and one could make the educated assumption the bullet had done more than just damage him physically. Those he never caught had ran and hidden in various places, but he was only trying to attack those in his way, for his mind was only and ever so interested in exacting revenge upon Lincoln Loud.
And his message would be out.
He started with the rooftop, dragging up the body of a nurse. He smeared up the invitation onto the empty helipad, letting the circling news chopper know what he wanted to get out there. "I WANT THE ALBINO!" The insane boy yelled to the skies. "BRING ME THE FREAK! BRING ME THE CLONES! BRING ME MY ENEMIES!"
The message went live in a matter of minutes, reaching to Lynnette and Lyra from where they were. "Oh, shit, this is the guy I was with-" Lynnette brought her face closer to the television. "Oooog, look! He's gunning for our daddy dearest."
Lyra took a closer look to inspect the scene. "If that's not disturbing, I don't know what that is."
"Where- St. Pierre General Hospital..." Lynnette had a funny idea. "Hey-"
"No," Lyra denied, already knowing what the blonde was thinking. "Don't you even-"
But Lynnette took off running away from Lyra, chuckling heavily. "We've got a mission to complete!"
"LYNNETTE, WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO INTERVENE! HEY!"
"The rules have changed, in case you haven't noticed!" Lynnette slowed down and pulled into a green clearing, leading Lyra right to her. "I don't know the entire history of events that lead up to our own era, but... Aunt Lana died before our time? No, you and I well know she was alive past this year-"
"Yeah, I know that, and..." Lyra clenched a fist to her chest. "Does that mean we tampered with events? No, no- That can't be, we couldn't have... I couldn't have, but you-"
"Whoa-" Lynnette dropped her arms. "Here we go again, blaming me for being caught and placed into that X-Elite shit!"
"I have no other explanation as to why... Why Aunt Lana died soon..." Lyra lowered her fist. "You're right, Dylan Blood's reign doesn't happen until 2039, so why...?" She spun around slowly in a 360 angle. "Why did our journey through time feels like it shifted the future?"
"It couldn't have been us," Lynnette believed. "We didn't mess around with his plans for the future or Aunt Lana's death, Lyra. Maybe it was something else-"
And then, the oddest thing had happened to them both, starting with Lyra first. Lynnette pointed right at the brunette's hands, leading Lyra to look down to find that her hands were appearing and disappearing, almost like they were glitching out of reality. They flashed from visible to ghostly, and it wasn't just her hands that played this bizarre symphony, but the rest of her body. "LYNNETTE!"
The blonde stepped back from the fading brunette, her mouth startling about. "Luh-Luh-Luh-" She knew fear again, fear of the unknown, of the inexplicable. The lack of knowledge that left her unable to make the right move, and the humane fear that left her terrified and frozen that she never helped out Lyra in whatever this was. If that wasn't enough, Lynnette succumbed to the same phenomenon, able to feel her hands become the nothing in their place when they zoned out of physical form. "WHAT'S HAPPENING?! LYRA!"
"GRAB M-!" Lyra reached her arms out towards Lynnette. "-ANDS!"
Lynnette locked in with Lyra, holding tightly. "DON'T YOU DARE LET GO! DON'T YOU DARE-!"
One second, they were there, in the middle of a grassy field, vanishing within the blink of an eye, never to be seen again.
Elsewhere
And to both time travelers dispatched for the unorthodox kill mission, it stopped. It stopped and they let go of each other's hands when they realized it. It might have been awkward but who was to say? "Uh-"
Lynnette pulled away. "Uh... Sh-shut up."
Lyra looked all over herself, relieved that the odd spectacle had stopped. "Dude, holy shit- Holy shit, what-?!"
Lynnette flexed her hands out. "Back to normal."
"Yeah, thank God for-" Lyra went disturbed by a sudden ripping in the air, a thunderous boom of a sound that spooked both her and Lynnette altogether, making them look upwards. In the endless blue sky, empty save for a few clouds here and there. A group of three projectiles high in the sky came crashing down right onto the field, fifty to a hundred feet away from the zoomer girls.
Lynnette, being herself, rushed around and investigated the objects, finding that they were silver pods of some sort. "Hey, Lyra, are these those NASA astronaut guys?"
Lyra had a funny feeling about all of this. "Hey- Get back, stupid, it might not be safe-"
The three pods, all of them of life-size, opened up, the weird hatches going upwards. And out came three familiar faces to Lynnette; Linka, the female albino clone, Leven, the one closer to the base form, and the more sensible one, snd finally, Caroline Pingrey, the pheno able to reshape and harden her arms at will. Lynette was pleased to find and meet them again, as weird and random as this way. "Hey, it's the clones! Lyra, look, these are the clones I've told you about! And that girl with the freaky arms!"
But Linka and Leven drew rather confused looks, glancing at each other, lost. "Sorry, who are you?"
"Who are-?" Lynnette laughed, wheezing only to see Linka being serious. "What, don't you remember me? We ran with the X-Elites? The general guy? Uhhh, these two were with us, and that one guy- Lemuel and another one-"
"What the devil is this mental patient prattling about?" Carol dusted off her clothes, shaking her legs. "I'm not going to have this from any of you today, I'm leaving."
"Wait, honey bunches of totes!" Linka chased after Carol, slobbering for her body. "I'll do your bidding for a nip slip!"
"Why do you look like Lynn Loud?" Leven pointed out, observing Lynnette. "She didn't have a daughter, did she?"
Lyra ran behind her sister and cupped her mouth. "Sorry, this woman is delusional!" And with that, Lyra dragged Lynnette feet away from Leven and company. "What are you doing?!"
"I swear it on mom's legs that those were the same people I've met! I don't know why they're acting...-"
"Hmmm?"
"L-Lyra...?"
Lyra crossed her arms, glaring at her. "What?"
"Did- Did that- Are we...?" She shook her head when it sounded so utterly ridiculous in her head. "Did we get taken somewhere else?"
"No..." Lyra denied, believing it to be impossible. "No way it could have... Couldn't it?"
St. Pierre General Hospital
Lemy had gone back down from the rooftop when police had already come in full swing, guns drawn out to take down the maniac slashing the staff about. Things were never going to be the same after this, and maybe, just maybe, he'd walk away from this to live another day. He could find a way out, but his rage was besting him, controlling his actions, his movements and words. When he saw the first wave of them, he howled at them. "STAND BACK OR PERISH IN THE HELLFIRES OF MY ETERNAL FLAMES!"
The very second, their screaming kicked up the floor, ordering him to stand down, and when he didn't, only drawing near like he didn't hear them, one of the officers brought him down with a bullet to the kneecap. Lemy cried out, dropping the one leg. He was half immobile in that second, but still, he persisted.
"FUCK OFF AND DIE!"
Lemy missed the second batch of Boy Scouts from behind, now getting cornered by them in both sides. It seemed like he had lost, but the scissors in hand suggested otherwise.
"COME ON! COME CLOSER IF YOU DARE!"
All Lemy did was give himself the insurance to be killed by the police in that second. The next fire that was shot knocked him right out of life, having been centered in between his eyes. The body fell, the pair of bloody scissors dancing out of grip. The mad boy had died for real this time.
Tennessee
There was a Kapacity Korp facility that he passed by- and by his own self-interest, he wanted to know what lurked within those walls. Oh, of course he knew what Blood reduced them to, what was likely taking place within the facilities. Still, a man could dream.
Lincoln armed hinself with only a shotgun and a handgun, readying himself before he entered.
No such noises inside, no voices had told him it was occupied, but it paid to be on guard. He moved softly and slowly, moving past the reception area, coming into full view of the first floor. Dead bodies decorated the entire floor, only meaning that this place was hit already. He moved through the corpses, also finding that a few, maybe four or five of them were fallen police officers. A unified but failed stand, how poetic.
He moved into the stairwell, choosing to go down to the only sub-level the place had. Hmmm... What could they have been doing down here?
He'd know his answer soon enough, stopping right before he passed through the doors. He lifted the shotgun up front, using the barrel to slowly push open the door. The very second he was halfway out, the shooting ignited through the floor. He barged out, rushing away and unloading his lead up against a wave of four Blood supporters armed with Uzis and MP5Ks. They sprayed in panic, and they succeeded in hitting him, but he hit back, blowing holes out in each of them just as fast as it had started. Neither these guys were holstering any armor, a gravely rookie mistake.
Only two of the four were still moving when he finished up target practice, both moaning in agony, drooling out blood through their masks, putting themselves in labored breathing. Lincoln was merciful- he considered it mercy by putting them out of their misery, and that's what he did, blasting them away point-blank in the head, further tainting the place with their blood.
After that, and feeling somewhat satisfied, Lincoln took a look around, wondering the reason why they were here. And he looked into the rooms, curious by the possible toys that were left scattered around. Maybe Kapacity Korp was good for something in the long run.
And he was right as rain, having entered the room at the end of the hall. The magnificent large contraption of eight feet in height, and six feet in width and three in width, was there, the perfect U-shaped mechanism with a foot ramp that led up to the center of it. This, the perfected time travel device that had gone untested, with all of its notes left at the desk on the right of the room.
Time travel.
Time travel... The one-way ticket to reshaping what was and what could never be. And he very well felt he knew what could never be. And he smiled greatly, feeling the fate of the future now fall right into his hands. And he knew just where to go.
Here's to a new world.
I never really wanted you to see
The screwed up side of me that I keep
Locked inside of me so deep
It always seems to get to me
I never really wanted you to go
So many things you should have known
I guess for me there's just no hope
I never meant to be so cold
AN: Prepare for Timeline X.
This world has been laid to waste. Dylan Blood will shut down all power plants and send the world spiraling into darkness, but wait, there's more! More surprises, more revelations! And the introduction of a big element to the story! Don't go away, fellow readers, I've got more chaos cooking up in the lab.