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Chapter Text

Ok so, while working on this story it occurred to me that seeing as its an alternate ending a lot of the set up details to it are just barely referenced with the assumption that the reader already knows the backstory and lore and whatever else. That may not actually be the case, so I figured it would be worth while to write a small primer/recap of the Unbreakable/Split/Glass series so that people know what’s actually going on. It will also give me a chance to mention the slight changes I’ve made to the story of Glass to better suit this alternate ending. If you’re aware of the stories of these films already, feel free just to either skip to the end of this to see the changes section, or just skip this entirely and get into the story in the next chapter. Either way I hope its helpful.

The series begins with the film ‘Unbreakable’. The film is set in the city of Philadelphia, and in it we are introduced to DAVID DUNN, a security guard who is depressed and dissatisfied with his life and distant from with his wife AUDREY and child son JOSEPH. The film begins with a devastating train crash, of which David is not only the sole survivor, but is completely unharmed. He is then contacted by ELIJAH PRICE, a dealer in fine art, particularly comic book art, who suffers from a disease that gives him weaker and easily broken bones. Elijah believes that David is in fact a real life, undiscovered superhuman, and that comics are in fact the last remnant of a lost way of telling the history of such individuals. He relays this theory to both David and his son. David responds with disbelief and initially refutes Elijah.

As the story continues we learn that David was once a college football star, but was forced to retire after a car accident in which he and his now wife, Audrey, were hurt. Despite this, Elijah continues to pursue his theory. We learn that save for the car accident, David has only ever been hurt one other time when, as a child, he was almost drowned in a school swimming pool. He has never been sick or physically harmed outside of these incidents. Elijah tries to convince David that every hero has a weakness, and that water is probably his.

Eventually, even David begins to come around to the possibility, and in doing so he discovers that he has seemingly unlimited physical strength as well a sort of psychic ability to see the crimes of those who have committed such acts when he physically touches them. These discoveries are shared with both Elijah and Joseph. This ultimately results in Joseph attempting to shoot David to prove his powers. David defuses the situation but realises that he needs to find the truth about this in order to save both his family and himself.

It is here we learn the truth. David wasn’t hurt in the car crash in his youth, and instead choose to fake an injury and give up his football career in order to be with the woman he loved. In the flashback that reveals this we see him use his super strength to save Audrey from the car wreck by ripping the door of the car open.

The climax of the film sees David beginning to embrace his abilities for the first time, resulting in him saving two children from a home invader. He realises that this is his purpose, and for the first time in years he feels genuine happiness in his life and closeness to his family, resulting in him confiding in Joseph, letting the two bond as father and son.

David then goes to Elijah to thank him and ask what happens next. The two shake hands, and through his psychic touch ability, he discovers that Elijah has in fact been responsible for multiple mass-death disasters, including David’s train crash. He states that in trying to find David, in sacrificing so many lives, he finally knows who he is, viewing himself as the arch villain/nemesis to David. The film ends with David walking away to inform the authorities of Elijah’s crimes while Elijah dubs himself ‘MR GLASS’.

The next film in the series, ‘Split’ takes place almost two decades after Unbreakable. We are introduced to CASEY COOKE, a teenage girl in high school. She is quiet, withdrawn and a social outcast. She and two other girls are kidnapped by a man and taken to an unknown underground base of sorts with locked doors and no windows. Here, we are introduced to KEVIN WENDELL CRUMB, or more specifically, one of his personalities.

We soon learn that Kevin suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), causing his mind to break into twenty-three different personalities. However, it becomes clear that there is more to his condition than just a mental element. Each of his personalities display unique physical attributes and qualities, Kevin’s body literally changing to develop muscularity or even diabetes depending on what personality is in charge, or in ‘the light’ as they refer to it. Within these personalities, a coalition of sorts has formed. Calling themselves ‘THE HORDE’, they believe that their condition, born of suffering, makes them stronger and that it is their destiny to lead others who have suffered in a revolution that will reshape the world. They believe that a new personality, known as ‘THE BEAST’, will soon emerge and will be the one to lead them. This coalition of personalities is actively working to bring about this emergence by kidnapping and cannibalizing those who they deem are unworthy, believing their lives will fuel the Beast. This is to be the fate of Casey and the other two girls.

As the story continues Casey leads the others in a handful of attempts to escape their situation, eventually learning more about Kevin and his personalities whilst also establishing connections with certain ones. We discover that Kevin was abused as a child by his mother who also suffered severe mental health problems when he was left with her after his father died when he was young. We also learn that a number of personalities are actively trying to stop The Horde, and are desperately trying to receive help from the psychologist who has been trying to help Kevin and the others.

Things eventually come to a head. It is revealed that the source personality, Kevin, has been kept in a coma like state by his other personalities and can only occasionally by bought forth by saying his full name. He begs Casey to kill him, but its too late. The Beast emerges and takes control. He kills the other two girls along with the psychologist whilst Casey escapes into the tunnels, only to eventually be trapped by The Beast. The Beast displays a number of superhuman abilities such as being able to climb on walls, enhanced strength, and enough durability to withstand close range shotgun blasts with almost no injuries.

It is here that we discover the tragic truth about Casey. After the death of her own father, she was taken in by her uncle who has been sexually and physically abusing her ever since. To cope with this, she had taken to self harm, severely cutting herself on her stomach and shoulders.

It is upon seeing these scars that The Beast stops, declaring that she is one of his chosen. The Beast departs to begin his revolution. Casey escapes from the tunnels, discovering that she had been in the subterranean maintenance halls of the Philadelphia city zoo. It is revealed that Kevin works there, and the Beast identity is an amalgamation of various animals. It is heavily hinted at that Casey has been changed by her experiences and suggested that she has finally found the strength to report her uncle.

Elsewhere, The Horde, now finally in full control, stand in victory and in awe of the Beast, vowing to continue their goal of a revolution of the broken.

Lastly, as horrified onlookers watch news reports about the incident at the Zoo and about the Horde, we see David Dunn is amongst them, knowingly watching the TV as he realises that this must be another superhuman.

The final film of the series, ‘Glass’ is set three weeks after the ending of Split. We are properly reintroduced to David and his son Joseph, who are now working as a vigilante team protecting the city from low level criminals. David, who is finally satisfied with his life having found his purpose, has become an urban myth and labelled ‘THE OVERSEER’. David and Joseph are attempting to track down The Horde despite David being sought by the police.

The Horde have been continuing to kidnap and eat girls in order to further empower the Beast, but are frustrated by the lack of the revolution of the broken that they believed would happen once the Beast started revealing himself.

David ends up confronting the Beast and freeing his latest captives, but both of them are captured by DOCTOR ELLIE STAPLE. She takes them to a psychiatric hospital and says she specializes in treating people who believe they are superheroes. She has been given three days to treat both David, Kevin and Elijah, who is revealed to also be a patient at the hospital. Elijah appears to have descended into a catatonic state via a mix of apparent despair at his situation and sedative drugs administered to stop him from escaping. If she cannot convince them, David and Kevin will be prosecuted for a number of crimes, whilst Elijah will undergo a mental procedure designed to ‘cure’ him of his criminal tendencies.

Over the next few days we see doctor Staple do all she can to convince all three of them that they are deluded and suffering from various mental conditions. We discover that she is keenly aware of details of their lives, somehow having closely studied each of them.

Whilst this is happening we are reintroduced to Casey, who is now living with foster parents having reported her uncle, and is generally doing better in her life now but is still clearly affected by her experiences with the Beast. Along with Joseph and Elijah’s mother (who was also seen in Unbreakable), they attempt to both help their respective characters and to convince Staple that what they believe is true, to seemingly little effect.

The story takes a turn when it is revealed that Elijah has been faking his catatonic state and has been working on a new escape plan, one that is boosted when he meets the Beast. We learn that Elijah views the Beast as an opportunity to finally prove to the world that superhumans actually exist – by having him fight David at the opening celebrations of the city’s newest skyscraper, THE OSAKA TOWER, it will force both of them to really use all of their abilities and provide undeniable evidence to a watching world. Agreeing to help, the Beast and Elijah escape, forcing David to escape too in an effort to stop them. This results in another clash between the two on the external grounds of the hospital whilst Doctor Staple attempts to contain them.

It is here that we learn of the secret connection between all three. The train crash that revealed David’s enhanced durability was also the same train crash that killed Kevin’s father, resulting in him being left with his abusive mother, meaning that Elijah was the one responsible for the creation of both. Enraged, the Beast fatally harms Elijah before clashing with David again.

The climax comes to an end with the death of all three characters. David is thrown into a water tank by the Beast. He escapes but it left powerless for a few moments due to the water. It is in this moment that David is drowned by Staple’s security forces. At the same time, Casey attempts to convince the Horde to stop, having previously establish a connection with them due to their shared history of abuse. This results in the original Kevin coming to the light, only to be shot by a sniper under Staple’s command. Lastly, as both David and Elijah are dying, Staple reveals the truth about herself.

It turns out that she is a member of an ancient and secret order that had dedicated itself to covering up the existence of superhumans regardless of if they are good or evil. They believe that they are too disruptive to the balance of human civilisation. Staple was sent here to try a more humane method of neutralising superhumans by either convincing them they were normal or by using her procedure to alter their minds to achieve the same affect. The sequence ends with her reporting to her group that all three of them were in fact superhumans but that they have been contained and she will continue her work.

It's at this point that Elijah’s secret plan is revealed. It turns out he never intended to escape, but to use the hospital’s own security cameras to capture all the evidence he needed to prove the truth of his beliefs. He has secretly emailed this evidence to both his mother, Joseph and Casey. The film ends with the three of them posting all the evidence online and watching as the world reacts to these revelations, having thwarted doctor Staple’s attempts at containment.

My Changes

So my story begins at the end of the climatic battle in the hospital grounds between David and the Beast. Rather then be killed here, the two of them and Elijah survive to instead enact the finale at the Osaka Tower, as was teased in the original film. In order to better serve this idea I have decided to make some small changes to the base story too. These changes are:

Firstly, the film takes place three months after Split as opposed to three weeks. This is to give both Casey and the Horde more time to process what happened in Split and to make progress on their individual goals.

Doctor Staple’s gaslighting of David is much more effective in this version, resulting in a huge crisis of faith for him that is heavily explored in this story and is the reason for his much more weakened state during his second fight with the Beast.

The Beast himself is also a lot more powerful in this version. By proving his abilities to the Horde, he has earned their full support with their faith directly fuelling his powers.

Lastly, Elijah isn’t as badly injured in this version, and therefore is able to survive the Beast’s attack once his involvement in the death of Kevin’s father is revealed.

Anyways that's pretty much everything. On to the story!

Chapter Text

“We will finish this, in front of the world.” The Beast growled, barely able to contain his fury. His deep voice was like the sound of a force of nature, powerful beyond measure. He pounded his chest and let out a roar that no human should have been able to make, then looked at the scene around him. It was glorious. The police cars had formed a wall with their cars and their flashing lights at one end of the green in front of the hospital where they had tried to rob his Horde from him. All it did now was to serve as a hiding place for all the fools who dared try to stop him. Only now were they beginning to understand how powerless they were before him.

And this was just the beginning.

The sound of coughing from beneath him regained his attention. The man, the strong man with the hood, the one who would provide the means to his ultimate vindication, was beginning to stir again. Good. There had to be some fight left in him for what was to come. Just the thought of it made him salivate, he could almost taste the glory. Turning, he looked back to the Osaka Tower. Towering above the Philadelphia skyline, it was an impressive monument to the inadequacy of the unblessed, but he and his Horde would soon change that. It would be a grand monolith to mark the awakening of the world to the truth. To his truth. With furious excitement, he started towards the city.

“Kevin!” A voice shook his hold on the light as someone grabbed his arm. The Beast let out a snarl, then glanced down at the person holding him.

Casey.

“Come back to me Kevin, please! Kevin Wendell Crumb! Kevin Wendell Crumb!“ Casey called out desperately as she tugged on his arm. It was amusing in a way. She was like a flimsy screen door, hopeless in the face of a hurricane. And yet, and yet, she still refused to break. That was the strength of the blessed.

“Casey. You have been kind to us. But the time has come for us to embrace our destiny. You will see, it will help you too. You will be free.” The Beast said, as warmly as he could manage.

“They’ll kill you! You need to give Kevin back the light. Please. You don’t have to do this.” She pleaded with him, tugging his arm.

“Their weapons can no longer hurt me. I am beyond that now, we are beyond that now! Don’t you see, child, don’t you realise? We are at the moment of ascension, and it will be glorious.” He said, his eyes widening at the thought of what was to come.

“You don’t have to kill anyone else! They already see you. Just like you saw me. I don’t want you to die.” Casey said, and for the first time he saw the tears in her eyes. He understood her fear, but there was no need for it. Not now.

“You do not see child. I cannot die. Not anymore, not when absolution is so close. Look at them! Look at how they cower, how they squirm at just the sight of us!” The Beast bellowed, looking towards the police barricade. He swiped his free arm before him, as if he could just swat them all away like the flies they were to him now. But still Casey didn’t let go. That warmed his heart. She was the first of his anointed, and in her own way, however flawed it may be, she was still trying to stand by his side. She was precious, but he couldn’t allow his fondness for her, or the fondness of any of The Horde, to hold them back. He placed his hand on one of her arms, gently but firmly, and pulled her away. She didn’t try to stop him, but shook her head. She seemed to be accepting the truth, but her eyes revealed the true fear she was really feeling.

“Kevin Wendell Crumb.” She said softly, before he could stop her. She said it again and again, in the way that only she seemed to have, that way that cut through all his rage and all the voices of the others that had been singing in unison, leaving them all dulled. And all away from the light.

“I, I don’t, stop saying that.” The Beast said, his voice suddenly weaker. Somewhere deep inside, Kevin, his source and seed, stirred. And Casey could see it.

“Kevin?” She asked hopefully. She received no response for a moment as the Beast’s eyes went wide and distant, and a flicker of someone else shone through them.

But then it was gone.

When The Beast spoke next his voice was cold and concrete, soft and quite but still undeniable and unmissably full of conviction. And it was utterly chilling.

“That won’t work anymore, Casey.”

A second later the shot rung out.

The sniper’s bullet slammed into the Beast’s chest before either he or Casey had even heard the shot. It hit with the force of a truck focused on the point of a needle, and should have blown a hole straight through him. Instead, there was a flash of sparks as the round fractured and deflected away, leaving only a slight red mark where it had hit his chest.

The Beast roared triumphantly, his power rushing back to him as the rest of The Horde came back to him in the light, adding their belief to his own. He spun to face the police, barely noticing as Casey snatched her arm back and took a few steps away from him, the shock all to evident in her. In the distance, he could see that same look on the faces of the man who had shot him, and the woman who had given the order. For a second he considered charging them all, but thought better of it. Enough time had been wasted.

The good doctor would see exactly who he was, right along with the rest of the world. The tower awaited.

The water was cold, and seemed to seep through into every part of him. It always felt cold no matter its actual temperature, but right now it felt like ice, shot directly into his veins. It numbed every part of him, his mind and body alike, making it hard to think, to move, even to breath. It had taken everything he’d had to break through the wall of that water tank, and now he was barely able to lift his head when he heard the sniper shot ring out across the courtyard.

Now all David Dunn could do was watch as the man who called himself The Beast broke into an animalistic sprint down the green that led away from the psychiatric hospital and towards the main road that led back to the rest of the city. He had made it maybe a dozen yards before a hail of gunfire erupted from the nearby police barricade, but if any of the bullets hit him, they did nothing to slow The Beast down.

Get up, he said to himself. You have to get up.

Deep inside him, a familiar feeling flickered. It was faint and distant, yet something he recognised instantly. He always recognised it, even if he didn’t really understand what ‘it’ was. What had Elijah called it? His ‘unflinching sense of good’. Is that what it was? Maybe at once point he had an idea, but now he truly didn’t know anymore. His mind travelled back to the other thing Elijah said, the one word that he had never really become comfortable with.

Hero.

He had always had trouble thinking of himself as such. It was a word that carried so much weight to it, and had so many expectations. He didn’t know if he could match that, even after all these years. The one thing he knew was that he had to help people, that he needed to protect and to guard and to save and to do whatever he could to try and make those around him safer. It was the only thing that made him feel less empty, less out of place. Less wrong. Was that how heroes were meant to feel? Because he knew there was another way of describing that – selfish. What if the only reason he did the things he had been doing for so long was for him, and that he didn’t really care about people? What if his actions really were just the symptoms of an illness he didn’t know he had?

That was what doctor Staple had told him. That was what she had begged him to believe. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, to hear or see or even acknowledge the possibility that she was right. But her words had sunk deeper than he had expected, had found the miniscule cracks in his understanding of himself that went right down to his foundations. She had found the fears and doubts that he had held hidden inside from the moment he had first put on his raincoat and headed out into the dark and unknown. Even now he could hear doctor Staple’s words, spinning in his mind, and the more he tried to ignore them the more powerful they seemed to become, the more they seemed to make sense. Every second he had been fighting The Beast he had been fighting a battle inside his own mind, and the end result was always the same question.

What the hell was he doing?

It was a question he didn’t have an answer too, because there was no one answer that really fit everything. Everything he thought he knew had been thrown into doubt, everything lost to a chaos he had spent his entire life trying to resolve. And yet, despite everything else he was experiencing, the feeling of the water on his body still made him shudder and convulse. The feeling was just starting to wear off when he felt a pair of hands grab him by his collar and haul him across the still soaked ground. He tried to plant his feet while also reaching up to whoever had grabbed him, but it was no use, he was just scrambling. The next thing he knew, his head was once again being thrust beneath water. He couldn’t even tell where he was, and it was pure luck that his hands found purchase when he was blindly thrashing about. He pushed with all he had, but barely managed to grab half a mouthful of air before his head was forced back under. Even now, he could hear doctor Staple’s words in his mind, like a record stuck on repeat.

If he was as strong as he believed, why couldn’t he free himself from the man holding him, the man drowning him? A normal man, not someone like him who believed the impossible. Or once believed it. There was no doubt left now, not when the lights where about to fade for the last time.

“David! David, take my hand!” He recognised the voice of doctor Staple, and a second later he felt enough slack in whoever was holding him to be able to raise his head a fraction, enough to see her there, her hand held towards him. He stole another half breath. With every moment making it harder to think, and without really knowing why, he reached out. He took Staple’s hand.

That was when the sound of a powerful engine came blasting over him. In a second it was there, practically on top of him. Staple snatched her hand back as the person who had been holding him darted for her, pushing her out of his sight. For a moment David couldn’t care about the noise. He rolled onto his back, eyes blinking as his lungs raced to drain the atmosphere of oxygen. The first sound he registered was another voice.

“Dad! Get up dad, we’ve got to go!” Joseph shouted. His son’s voice sounded distant, but all of a sudden he was there, hands on his shoulders, heaving him upwards.

David’s legs felt like jelly. He didn’t know how many steps he took before he mostly fell into the back of the van that had skidded to a halt on the grass. He didn’t recognise the vehicle, though judging by the medical equipment and padded walls, it was one of the hospital’s transports for patients. Joseph didn’t bother to shut the sliding door, and instead jumped back into the driver’s seat. The wheels spun for a moment, sending a shower of wet grass into the air before they finally gripped the ground, and the van raced off just as the men who had been scattered by it’s sudden approach, who David now saw were dressed as police SWAT members, got back to their feet. All David could do was hold on. His lungs were still burning, and every breath he took ended in a series of violent coughs. Suddenly the van skidded again to a stop, and David found himself looking at a girl that he only half recognised.

“Get in!” Joseph shouted at the girl. She looked at him, uncertain. “You saw what they did! They’re going to come for you too. Last chance Casey.”

David coughed again, and the girl, Casey, looked at him. Despite the stupor he had found himself in, he recognised the look on her face. It was a look he would always recognise, one he had worn often enough himself. It was the look of a person standing before two very different paths, uncertain which to choose while also knowing that regardless of that choice, there would be no way back. All he could do was look back at her, wishing he could give her some kind of guidance or answers, but then the moment of fateful stillness was shattered. A round of bullets slammed into the side of the van, and in that moment, Casey made her choice.

Casey had barely jumped into the van before Joseph slammed the accelerator as hard as he could. The engine roared with power, and the van bounced for a few moments before finding the tarmac of the nearby access road to the hospital. With more shots whistling through the air, David watched as Casey reached over and slide the door shut. As darkness filled the inside of the van, David found himself with a new question, one that he hadn’t been expecting.

What the hell where they going to do now?

Elijah watched as the stolen hospital van disappeared behind the line of trees that traced the access road and out of range of the police officers who had been chasing after it. He laid back on the ground, ignoring the crunching of his bones. Another wave of pain exploded through him, but he didn’t much care for it anymore. Pain had been his constant companion all his life, he wouldn’t have gotten this far if he hadn’t learnt how to cope with it. But right now, despite the immense injury he had suffered at the hand of The Beast, the pain was just a distant sensation on the edge of his nerves. It was being blocked out by something far more powerful, a feeling he had chased his entire life.

Vindication.

He was right. He had always been right. Everything he had ever believed, everything he had spent his life searching for, it had been real and true and he was the one to finally force it into the light. He had seen through the falsities and exaggerations that were forced upon the stories in the comics, understood the forgotten connections that were so well hidden he doubted that even the writers and artists themselves were aware of the connection they shared to the past. To the past, and now, to reality. An impossible reality to anyone else, but not to him. Yet even in his wildest imagination, he didn’t believe his plan would be this successful.

The Beast and The Overseer were free. Not just free, but let lose and unleashed, set on a path of collision that the entire world would see. Everyone would bear witness to the truth he had discovered. They always would have done, he had seen to that, but now it would all come about in a much more direct way. The Osaka tower had always been a magician’s bluff – a puff of smoke and a flash of light in the right hand to hide what the left hand was doing in the shadows. It was a pipe dream. That part of the plan hadn’t meant to succeed, despite how glorious he had imagined it would be. And yet, despite everything, despite all the obstacles that had been put in his way, the misdirection had become the main act. It was going to be remarkable. The Beast would tear down the walls of the city’s greatest achievement and rip through anyone who tried to stop him. And David, his sweet David, would stand before him, would do whatever he had to protect people. It was his undeniable calling, his destiny finally come knocking. He would stand so that others didn’t fall, and in doing so they would both push each to dig deeper inside of themselves than they ever had before. It would be a spectacle, an inhuman display of feats that would force the entire world to see his truth. The only possible truth.

A convulsion of pain went through his chest and he coughed violently for a few seconds. He felt a trail of blood make its way down his chin and knew it wouldn’t be long before he slipped into unconsciousness. After years of breaks he had come to recognise the ones that had the potential to be fatal, and the fractures to his collarbone and ribs were up there. If he didn’t get help soon this might be the last break he would ever have to face, but the thought didn’t bother him as much as it would have done in the past. His life would at last be added to the long line of sacrifices that he had engineered over the years to get to this point. So many lives given up. He had never forgotten the weight of his actions, not for a single moment. How he had wished there had been another way, how he had agonised over each soul he had taken. But he didn’t regret it. He would never regret it. Their lives had paved the way of revolution, and if his own was to be the final stone in that path, then so be it, he wouldn’t fight it. If the bill had finally come due, he would gladly pay it.

A rush of movement caught his attention. It was the police who had been called to secure the facility. They were rushing around, breaking the line they had been waiting behind, no doubt preparing to chase the escapees. There was something strange about them, something very off, but it was becoming harder to focus now.

“Elijah!” His eyes darted to the side as his mother rushed over to him. She collapsed to her knees and pulled him into her grasp. She cradled his head. “Oh baby, stay with me. Help is coming, help is coming.”

“Its ok mama, it doesn’t hurt anymore.” He said, forcing a smile. She held him tighter, trying to hold back her own tears.

“Didn’t you tell me there was a showdown at the end of a limited edition?” She asked, wiping away the blood on his chin. It took him a moment to realise that she was just trying to keep him talking. “How come you didn’t know how it was gonna end?”

“Oh Mama.” Elijah said. He looked into her eyes, seeing the love she still held for him despite everything that had happened. He didn’t know how she could do that. “This is not a limited edition.”

There was more activity now, cars pulling away and people shouting orders into radios. People were rushing all around him, panic and alarm on their faces. It was impossible to miss the shift in the energy. Change was on the air, and nothing would stop it now. He looked to the Osaka Tower in the distance, and imagined all the storm of chaos that was about to be unleashed. He smiled at himself.

“This was an origin story,” he whispered, more to himself than to his mother. “The whole time.”

Elijah was only half aware when someone else crouched down next to him. His body was going numb. He knew there was no way that was a good sign.

“Would you mind stepping away for a moment, so I can check him?” That voice took his attention. His mother moved away to make room for a pair of medics. And the doctor who was with him. Doctor Staple looked at him, her face a mixture of fear and… disappointment.

“I apologize, doctor. It doesn’t seem like we will get our conversation.” He forced out the words. Staple gave him a sad smile.

“It’s ok.” She said as she took his hand. For a moment a look of indecision passed over her face. But then she seemed to make a choice. She turned to the paramedics who had been waiting at either side of him. “Stabilize him, we may need him.”

Elijah couldn’t help himself any longer, and had no choice but to let his head fall backwards. He was distantly aware of someone pushing a needle into his skin, and then a cold sensation running through the veins in his arm. Then everything started to be surrounded by a comforting blackness that beckoned him into a welcoming embrace that promised safety and end to the pain. As he gave in to the encroaching void, a single thought went through his mind.

I create superheroes. And soon the entire world would see that.

Chapter Text

The warehouse was empty and cold, somehow feeling colder than even the outside. In a strange twist of fate, it was located only a few blocks away from the very same abandoned factory in which The Horde had held those they had captured, the victims who were fed to The Beast in order to grow his strength. It made sense that The Horde had chosen this area. There were many such empty premises in this district, on the edge of the city. The various manufacturing industries of the city had suffered in recent years as times and requirements of the population had changed. The rate of change had been rapid, more so than many had expected. It had left much of the infrastructure racing to catch up and to modernise, with only rats and the ghosts of the past around to occupy them now. One day this whole distract would be either torn down or retrofitted, but until then it made the perfect hiding place.

The sound of the stolen hospital van’s radio was quiet, yet in the empty cavernous space of the warehouse it sounded as loud as a concert, though David suspected that might be partly due to the situation they were all in now. So far none of the news channels that Joseph had flicked through had mentioned anything about the events that had happened at the hospital. There had been no massive display of police cars spreading across the city, no helicopters shining spotlights into every back alley. It was like nothing at all had happened. Maybe that was the point though. Maybe they were worried a display of force would only drive the escapees further underground. Or further in to madness. He and the Beast were meant to be psychotic after all. And then there was Elijah. In all the chaos of Joseph’s improvised escape, he hadn’t managed to see what had happened to him. He could still almost hear the sound of his bones breaking when The Beast had hit him. David knew all to well how hard he could hit, and even if all the power and strength and whatever else they believed wasn’t real, a strong hit would be more than enough to hurt Elijah.

Elijah. Mr Glass.

Even now, David still had trouble consoling the two identities of the man. Over the years since their first encounter, David had visited him a number of times. There had been questions only he had answers to, and the truth was, despite all the horrific things he had done, he was still the only person on the planet who had understood who David was, what he was going through. He had been right, all those years ago when he had said that there was a connection between them. It was a topic that had come up again and again in their conversations.

“You know why you really come here, don’t you David?” He had said, during their last conversation. It had been a number of years ago, in a psychiatric facility in a different part of the city. Not long after that meeting, Elijah had mounted another escape. He had been free for a week before he had just casually walked back into the facility. No one, not even David, had known what he had done, but in the eyes of the authorities, it didn’t matter. Elijah had been moved, to Raven Hill it turned out, but at the time David had decided he had to cut off all contact. He had been worried that in some kind of twisted way, he had been subconsciously encouraging Elijah, but there was also another reason, one that he hadn’t wanted to admit. It had been present in every one of their meetings, a secret shadow that had sat between them, and one that only Elijah had dared to call out. David knew exactly why he had continued to visit Elijah.

In some strange, convoluted way, there were still friends.

And the truth was, right now all he wanted to do was talk to him.

David looked down at the steel pipe resting on his lap. He had found it when he walked the perimeter of the warehouse after they had pulled in, a leftover from whatever manufacturing machines had once been here. He had told the others he had just been checking to see if the building was secure, but the truth was he needed a moment away from it all. It still felt like there was water in his lungs even now, and his still damp clothes didn’t help. He had been so lost in his thoughts that he had walked straight into the old pipe. Any other day, any other time, he would have just laughed at himself and kicked it aside and moved on, but something had stopped him. Almost absentmindedly, he had reached down and picked it up. Now, sitting here with his back against the wall as the light from the fire in the garbage can washed over him, he couldn’t help but look at the bar. He reached out and wrapped his hand around it, but couldn’t bring himself to squeeze. It should have been nothing, he knew. He had bent steel with his bare hands before, crushed it even. But that was then, and it was all different now.

You’re not special. You never were.

Though she had never said the exact words, the thought was spoken in Doctor Staple’s voice. It was the only one he could hear, the only voice that seemed to matter now. He just couldn’t get past it. What if she was right? What if he had just been lucky all this time, had been living a lie and was nothing more than a victim of an undiagnosed head injury that had made him so confused he couldn’t tell what was real about himself anymore?

There were so many questions, too many. And the more his mind raced trying to find the answers the more he felt his sense of self slipping. Once again, his rain coat felt like it was growing tighter around his chest, and suddenly the pipe on his lap seemed to feel ten pounds heavier.

There was a crackle from inside the garbage can that took his attention. The sound lasted for a few seconds as something shifted, consumed by the flames. The light the fire was giving off changed, shifting to a harsh shade of yellow that almost seemed angry. David watched for a moment as the shadows created by the flickering flames played across the floor and walls around him.

The Beast and the rest of The Horde were still out there, making their way towards the Osaka Tower. It had been just over an hour since their escape from the psychiatric hospital. The Beast was fast, but Philadelphia was a big city, and if he wanted his big public reveal it was a safe bet he wouldn’t be leaping across rooftops. Still, it wouldn’t be much longer before he reached the tower and whatever final act this had all been leading towards began. Even if The Beast wasn’t a super being like he and David had believed, the strength of a man experiencing a full-on psychological break could still create chaos. He could still kill a lot of people. That alone was enough of a reason to get up, to do something even if he wasn’t a real hero. It was enough of a reason to try.

David looked at the pipe on his lap again. The weight was so heavy now, he didn’t think he could lift it. But it was more than that now. He didn’t think he wanted too anymore.

It wasn’t his responsibility.

David felt his mind go numb as he continued to look at the fire in the garbage can. He didn’t fight it, not this time. Instead he just watched as the yellow flames grew higher, making the shadows dance even more.

Chapter Text

“Is your dad ok? He looks kind of out of it.” Casey asked as she sat on the edge of the van’s side door. She felt the van shift slightly as Joseph leaned over from the front seat. He followed Casey’s gaze, and his eyes lingered for a moment on his father. He had pulled his hood up now, and despite the light of the fire, his face was hidden behind a mask of shadow. Casey found herself wondering how many criminals had seen that image before David had stopped them. Was that justice? That was one of the questions at the heart of this, the very thing the doctor at the psychiatric hospital had tried to paint as something else, nothing more than harmful vigilantism. It didn’t take a genius to see how heavy that question weighed on David now.

“I don’t know. I’ve not seen him like this before, at least not since I was a kid.” He said honestly, then went back to fiddling with the van’s hospital radio. He had managed plug his phone into the radio and had used some sort of black-market program to break into the frequencies that the police used, and was doing his best to monitor the various channels. So far though, as much as she had been paying attention there had been no mention of the escape or the Osaka Tower. Not even a general alert or warning. It was like it hadn’t happened at all.

“Since you were a kid? He has been doing this that long?” Casey asked. As she did she reached over into the back of the van and started tearing up another carboard box that had held a supply of medical masks. Each part she pulled free she threw into the fire.

“Yeah, ever since the East Rail 117 crash. It took him a while to find his feet.” Joseph said as he flipped to another channel.

Casey nodded her head but didn’t reply. She had been little more than a baby at the time of the East Rail 117 and the other disasters that Elijah Price had caused. Over the years there had been various articles and memorial anniversaries, even a TV documentary or two, but after a while it all seemed to vanish. It was like someone had come along and swept it all under the carpet, and everyone in the city had seemed only too eager to forget about it all. It wasn’t even an urban myth now, just a dark chapter whose page had been turned. But now here she was, in the middle of something that was impossible, something she barely understood.

“Is he really as strong as they say? I’ve seen some of the videos online. They don’t really show anything.” Casey asked. The Overseer. That was a myth she had heard off. Most people just laughed it off, but every now and then a new rumour or video would do the rounds in her school. Most thought it wasn’t real, not really. But the videos and the pictures always kept on coming.

“Good. We’ve tried to be careful but there’s just so many cameras now.” Joseph said, switching the radio to a general news station before turning to face her. She looked at him.

“So its all real then? He does go out fighting bad guys and helping people?” She asked. She was genuinely surprised, but didn’t know why. The memories of the zoo’s basement were still as fresh in her mind as they day they had happened, the sight of The Beast climbing the walls and bending bars. The sight of him shrugging off the shotgun blasts and roaring defiantly. Why should a man in a raincoat going round saving people be any different? Yet somehow it was. The Beast was terrifying, a thing of horror. Yet the Overseer, David, the entire idea was something fascinating and noble, something incredible. Something, though even in her mind the thought was only whispered, aspirational.

“We prefer to call them patrols. I know, its weird right? We try to ground it a bit, try not to think about all the comic stuff that Elijah talked about. Well, dad doesn’t.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit hard to imagine someone really wearing spandex and capes.” Casey agreed.

“I know right? Its so hard to get a decent utility belt too.” Joseph said, and for a moment the gravity of the situation broke. They both shared a small laugh, one that was as delicate as the flickering licks of flame still peaking over the top of the garbage can.

“How are you doing? I’m sorry you got dragged into all this, I shouldn’t have asked you to come with us at the hospital.”

“It’s fine, really. You did the right thing. I, I need to be here. Besides I’ve been in worse situations.” Casey said, subconsciously rubbing the scars on her stomach. That wasn’t entirely true though. She hadn’t really had a chance to process the events of the hospital, what they might mean. In a way, she was still trying to process everything that had happened at the Zoo. It had been the start of so many changes, it had left her numb in a lot of ways, moving from one thing to another in a blur. The only thing that had stood out was the moment her uncle was arrested. She would never forget that.

“I can’t believe you survived the Beast the first time around. We tried finding him once the patterns of abductions became clear. I’m sorry we couldn’t save your friends.” Joseph said. Casey flashed him a sad smile. He didn’t know all her story, about the abuse and torture. 

“It was tough.” She said simply, trying not to focus on the memories. The girls who had been taken with her, they weren’t really her friends, but the screams of friends and strangers all sounded the same when push came to shove.

“How did you do it? Convince him not to kill you, I mean. It looks like you are friends with him. It’s hard to believe there is anything good left in him, anything to be friends with. I can’t believe you even came back into all this. Is there anything we can use to stop him?” Joseph asked, but there was something in his tone. Something that sounded all too similar to the questioning of the police, who had seemed to care only about what they could use, and not her story. The same tone of the people who didn’t really care what she had to say, no matter how horrific it was. She couldn’t help but shift slightly, edging closer to the far door of the van while drawing in her arms tighter around her, almost defensively.

“Them. Its not just one person. And its not really friendship.” She said, unable to hide the edge in her voice.

“Casey I’m sorry.” Joseph said, his tone so different that she couldn’t help but look back at him. His entire expression had shifted. It had become the haunted look of a person who had battled their own mind, and not always won.

“I know what its like not to be listened to. Not to be believed. I shouldn’t have made you feel like that. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing you’ve been bombarded with stuff like that all your life, right? People trying to control your story before you’ve even finished telling it, saying that all the things you’ve been through, all the things you’ve seen and felt, doesn’t matter. That, in a way, it isn’t real, and you’re a fool for believing it ever was. It’s horrible. Especially when you hear it so much that it starts taking root in your own mind. You find yourself believing what they want you to believe, despite everything that is going on around you, happening to you. You start trying to convince yourself that its your fault, that there’s something wrong with you and that’s why you feel like the odd one out, that you are a misfit or a freak. Like you deserve it.” Joseph’s face trailed off, his eyes going distant. All Casey could do was look at him.

“How do you know that?” Her voice a whisper, but it was enough to bring him back to the moment. It was his turn to smile sadly.

“The reality of having a super powered father isn’t like the comics at all. People don’t believe you. Even those closest to you.” He said simply as a flash of sadness, of grief, went through him. But then he shook his head and smiled like he was embarrassed, and whatever feelings had been going through him were buried once again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it all tense. It’s already tense enough. I just, I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. And I don’t know what else to do. But that’s not on you.”

There was a long moment of silence. Joseph turned back to the radio and switched it to another local news channel. There was still nothing. With every second that passed, Casey turned inwards, looking to her deepest thoughts, to the very edge of her certainty, to the point where beliefs became secrets that seemed too fragile to speak. But she had to try.

“It’s not for him. You asked why I came back. It wasn’t for Kevin or any of the others. It was for me.” Casey said softly, so softly that the words were almost lost to the crackling of the fire. Joseph turned the radio down and she felt him turn and look back at her. She forced herself to take a deep breath, then lifted her head to look at him.

“It’s hard to explain. I don’t really get it myself.  He saw me. The Beast. He and the others. Somehow they managed to see all the pain I was in, all the stuff I tried to hide. It was like he could see it as clearly as if it had been written down and handed to him, like he could read every one of my scars and see the story behind each one. They didn’t judge me for what had happened to me. They made me feel like I wasn’t a mistake. That I wasn’t alone, not just some broken thing to be pitied and forgotten. I’d never felt that before. I’d never had that kind of connection, with anyone.”

“You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to.” Joseph said as she paused for a moment to organise her thoughts better.

“No, no its ok. I want to talk about it. I think I need to.”

“Ok.” Joseph said. Casey took a deep breath.

“Being seen like that, being understood. It was confusing, confusing in a way that nothing else has been. It felt good, but at the same time, scary, like sitting too close to a fire or maybe holding your breath to the point where the room starts to spin. The only thing I can think to compare it too is it being like a drug, where the hit is so high you can ignore the burning in your veins.

For a long time after the zoo, it felt like the only way to keep feeling ok was to focus on what he had said, how the Beast had made me feel. That I was blessed, that the abuse my uncle had put me through, the pain I had inflicted on myself when I cut myself, that it was all worth it because it had made me strong and powerful. I had become chosen. He had seen that, he had helped me realise that. Just the fact that I meant something to him was like a drug. I was worthy, special, and that made all the bad go away, at least to a degree. I felt like I could deal with anything as long as I had that, and for a time I thought that was all I wanted.”

“It kind of sounds like a cult.” Joseph said. Casey nodded.

“I think that was the point. The Beast, he wants followers who are like me, people who have suffered. He wants a legion, and he knows just what to say to get you to believe in him. Maybe that’s one of his super powers, I don’t know. All I know is I valued that connection so much it was like I was still trapped in the tunnels beneath the zoo.”

“Is that how you became friends with them? Is that why you tried to help them back at the hospital?” Joseph asked, his tone free from judgement or condemnation.

“No, not friendship. It took me a while to realise that too. See, when the Beast and the rest of the Horde saw me, something else happened. Something I don’t think they realised or expected. I saw them. I saw all their pain and suffering. I saw what they had been through, what Kevin had been through, the same way they had seen me. It just took me a while to really understand it though.

The Beast, he believes that trauma makes you strong, that going through something horrible will make a person powerful. It all comes from what happened to Kevin. When his father was killed in the 117 rail crash, he was left with his abusive mother. He suffered so badly, in so many horrible ways, that he couldn’t cope. It broke him, and his mind fractured. He literally created personalities who could deal with the things that he couldn’t. The Beast, the Horde, yeah they are strong, but they got it wrong. There’s a difference between being created to be strong, and choosing to be.

You know the saying, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It doesn’t. The only thing I got from what happened to me was pain, and there was nothing, nothing, blessed about that. Trauma leaves you broken and suffering, and sometimes you don’t survive it, you don’t move on or get better. Sometimes all you can do is exist. You become a damaged husk barely able to function. Closed off from the world, numb, keeping people at a distance because it’s the only way you can feel a measure of safety. Isolation, loneliness, it becomes a blanket that you wrap around yourself.”

“Sounds familiar.” Joseph said, and for a second something slipped into his voice that made her believe he really did understand what she was saying. But then he continued, his tone neutral again. “I can’t believe you survived.”

“There it is, there’s the point. I did survive, I did become strong, but not because of what happened to me. I survived because I chose to, because I wanted to. My strength came from me, not from my abuse. I refused to let it break me, even when I didn’t know what to do about it.

Trauma isn’t a blessing. It’s a horrible thing and not everyone makes it through, and that’s important. That’s vital. That’s what the Beast doesn’t understand, and he is going to hurt a lot of people before he realises it.” Casey stopped herself. She already knew what was coming next, could practically hear Joseph’s question before he even opened his mouth.

“There’s still something I don’t understand. Why you? Why do you think its your responsibility to stop him? You could have just walked away, and no one would have blamed you. It probably would have been the smartest thing you could have done given everything that’s happened.” Casey stared at him for a moment. Then she looked at the fire, and the way its light washed across David still sitting silently with his own thoughts. She looked back to Joseph.

“There’s a connection between us, me and Kevin. I don’t know how else to describe it. I can’t explain it, but I feel it, I know its there. He has been so consumed by what has happened to him that all that’s left of him, all his personalities, they believe that trauma is necessary to their very existence, to their strength and power, and they can’t see just how toxic that is. The only way to stop them, and they do need to be stopped, is try and make them see that. And it seems like I’m the only one who really understands that.” She said, her heart beating faster in her chest with every word she said, her lips trembling as she clenched her fists. It wasn’t hard for Joseph to pick up on.

“That’s not only it, is it?” He asked. She forced a smile.

“You’re easy to talk to, you know that? I don’t think I’ve ever opened up like this before.”

“It’s ok, you don’t have to continue.” Casey took a deep breath, trying to ease the knot in her stomach. She pushed away the cold feeling going down her spine.

“Our trauma links us, but its like, I don’t know, its like we’re on the opposite ends of the curve. I’m the exact opposite of him. In spite of everything that has happened to me, despite how close I came to ending it all, I’m still here. Not because of anything else, but because I chose to be. But…”

She paused. This was it. It was like tearing open every one of her scars all over again.

“I’m afraid. I haven’t felt fear like this before. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been scared before, I’ve been terrified. Every time my uncle… every time he came to me, I was afraid. But it was a familiar fear. I knew what was going to happen, I knew how to get through it. It was predictable, horrifying and disgusting, but predictable. But this… I don’t know what’s going to happen with this. I want to believe that I’m right, that all that stuff about me choosing to be strong is real. But I can’t get away from the idea that I’m just grasping at straws, that its all wishful thinking and I’ve got it all wrong. It feels like I’m stepping into the dark with absolutely nothing to protect me and its terrifying. No matter how much I’ve tried, I can’t get away from it. What if he is right, what if what the Beast says is true and the only reason I’m still here is because of how my abuse shaped me?

The only thing I can think of is to be here. Believe me I would rather be anywhere else, but I can’t. I’ve tried running, tried hiding, tried staring in the mirror and shouting at myself until the words ring true. But they don’t, not completely, not yet. I don’t know what else to do but be here. I can feel it, the connection between me and Kevin, pulling and calling and practically dragging me to this same point. Maybe, if I face him, The Beast, if I can just stand before him and say no, I’m not going to give in to what you think, I’m not going to accept it, then maybe that’ll be enough. Maybe then I’ll know if what I want to believe is enough. Maybe then I won’t be afraid anymore. And maybe, just maybe, I might be able to save him, too.” Casey’s voice trailed off into silence, replaced only by a suddenly sinister crackling from the fire.

That was it. She had put it into words, all the things she had been thinking and feeling and trying to understand for the last few months. It sounded insane hearing it out loud, an impossible idea that couldn’t be real. Yet it was the only thing that made sense. It had taken her so long to accept it, but inviting someone else into her madness was a step that felt too far.

“I dunno, forget what I said. I’m just being an idiot. I probably am as messed up as they say I am.”

“Hey, stop. You don’t have to do that. It’s ok, I believe you.” Joseph said, cutting her off before she could say anymore.

Casey had to bite her lip to stop a tear from falling.

“I’m sorry, really. It’s still weird to think that people would believe me. I feel like a fool.”

“I think you’re incredible. Honestly. I can’t imagine the kind of pain you’ve gone through. And for what its worth, I think you’re right. About all of it, about the way you survived and your connection. I think you’re more right than you know.”

“What do you mean?” She asked. It was Joseph’s turn to shift nervously. He looked at his father and then back to her as an uncertain smile flashed across his face for a second, quickly replaced by a look that was the picture of hesitancy.

“You were open with me. I guess its only fair to be open back. The connection you described, it all fits with everything else that’s going on. You both lost your fathers, your heroes. Kevin was left with his mother right? He became the victim to her villain, and then ended up following in her footsteps. You did the opposite. It’s just like countless stories in the comics, two paths splitting at the vital moment, defining everything that came before and after. You’re just as much a part of this as Kevin and Elijah, as my father. It makes perfect sense that you would be here.” He said, clearly trying to restrain himself but he seemed to be buzzing with an energy. It wasn’t quite excitement or enthusiasm, but closer perhaps to relief that he had found more evidence of his own theory. She could appreciate that, but a single question remained.

“So what are you saying, that you think I’m some kind of superhero?” She asked. Once, just the idea of that would have been ridiculous, impossible. But now…

“Honestly, I don’t know. Sometimes I like to think that I have this figured out. But then I catch myself and realise just how in the dark I really am with it all. All I know is, there seems to be a lot of coincidences all of a sudden, don’t you think? First you, and then the connection between Kevin and my dad being created at the same time. Makes you wonder what else is coming next.”

There was a series of rapid-fire crackles from the garbage can. The yellow light of the fire flared for a moment before quickly vanishing as the fire dropped low, using up most of its fuel. Casey hadn’t added anything to it during their conversation; she hadn’t even thought about it. She looked around and grabbed the torn-up pieces of box she had forgotten about. She was about to throw them into the garbage can when the radio sounded, and both she and Joseph focused on it.

“Breaking news now coming from downtown this afternoon, and it looks like technical difficulties might delay the much-advertised grand opening of the Osaka tower this evening. Rumours coming out of the site suggest problems with the gas lines beneath the tower could be to blame for the last-minute problems, though tower officials are yet to confirm anything. Authorities are on scene, but as of yet there have been no announcements of cancellation of celebrations, though attendees are urged to stay alert for coming updates. We will return to this developing story throughout the show, but in other news…”

The announcement quickly returned to its regular programming as Joseph and Casey turned to look at each other, their faces pale.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Casey asked. Joseph nodded.

“It has to be. The people from the hospital have to be behind it, but I can’t think how. They think we’re all crazy, that the Beast isn’t real. How could they ever pull something like this off?”

“I can answer that.” A new voice came from the side. They both looked to see David slowly walking towards them, his hood down and an uncertain look on his face. “I know what they’re doing. I know who they are.”

Chapter Text

The Osaka tower seemed so much bigger up close than when seen from a distance. It already seemed like some kind of futuristic monument that had been forced into the earth by some unknown alien force, but up close it was something else entirely. Set alone from the rest of the Philadelphia skyline, it was wider and taller than any other building, and its shining silver panels and distinctive lines gave the whole structure an air of the future, almost as if it were a building out of time, plucked from the future and placed in the now to act as a beacon of some kind. To many it symbolized hope and development, a sign that the rejuvenation of the city’s forgotten areas had finally begun, and that it was the first step in embracing a future that had been all to long in coming.

In a way, the Beast found himself agreeing with that.

It was more than time for the city, for the world, to bear witness to the future he had the honour of creating. He had been right, it would be a glorious site for his first congregation, his first presentation of the one truth that he had etched into every fibre of his being. That was why the sight before him filled him with such rage.

It was all wrong.

From beneath his stolen hoodie, every one of his muscles strained with barely controlled anger. Beneath him, the concrete of the pavement was decorated with a series of small cracks from how hard he had been flexing his feet, just aching to pounce. But there was no point. All around him, the crowds of onlookers were being dispersed, being forced out of the park that surrounded the tower. The park itself had been filled with stands and tents and all other kinds of festivities put on by the Osaka cooperation as part of its thinly veiled attempt to prove to the fools of the city that they were going to be some benevolent force. They were like sheep blindly following whoever held the biggest stick, unaware that they were eagerly walking into the grinning jaws of wolfs. They needed a saviour, and it was up to him to show them the way. To make them worthy. But that was all at risk now.

Off to one side he saw a group of TV producers talking with a police officer. They nodded, seemingly resigned to the situation, and turned back to their crews to pass on the order to pack up their equipment. No, this was unacceptable! There had to be a way. He could strike now, reveal himself, but people were already confused and distracted about whatever story the authorities had made up to try and stop him. He had already killed five undercover guards who had undoubtedly been looking for him, feasted on their flesh. He was certain this ‘emergency’ was nothing but a cover to stop him, but he wouldn’t allow it, not when he was so close.

What had the creator said, Elijah? The chemical plant, high in the center of the building. Elijah had wanted to destroy it in order to gain the attention of the world for his own motives. A good plan, and now one that would serve his own ends instead. When all the cameras returned to see the devastation, when all the sheep flocked to see the newest spectacle, that is when they would see him.

And that was when the man in the hood would come.

The strong man, the one who had withstood his rage before. He had to be out there somewhere. The Beast was certain that he would have escaped the hospital too. He had felt the man’s power, as unbelievable as it was, but it was more than that. He had sensed the hooded man, David, he had sensed his resolve, his need to be the opposing force. Not he or any of The Horde had ever come across someone like him before. He was different from all the doctors and support workers who had tried to convince them that they didn’t exist, that they needed to be fixed. No, David didn’t doubt who the Horde was. He faced them as an equal and, whether he shared their faith or not, as a believer. That actually made the Beast thankful for his existence, for how could anyone truly appreciate the unrelenting might of a crushing wave if not for the shore that was there to meet it? David would be the unwitting priest who would lead the ceremony of his unveiling, and together their actions would mark the beginning of a new era. They would fight. They would thrash and destroy and give the world undeniable proof of their supremacy, spreading beautiful carnage in the wreckage of one of humanity’s most laughable examples of inadequacy. And then, with all the world’s eyes on them and no way of denying the truth, he would strike the final blow. The death of the hooded man would be the ringing of the bell. The unseen chosen, still lingering in their doubt and decay, would hear his call. They would come to him, be found and awakened to the truth about themselves. He would be their guide, and never again would they be ignored or denied. The unworthy and unsuffered, the despondent unbroken who would never know true strength, they would all hear The Horde then.

The Beast turned his attention back to the tower. He could see the guards gathering with the police at the various entrances around the base. There was no doubt more inside. So be it. The path of ascension would be marked with blood.

And then the entire world would see how powerful he and The Horde could be.

Chapter Text

Doctor Ellie Staple stood in the sky lobby on the tenth floor. She stared out of the window, tapping her foot nervously. Even on the other side of the plaza that had been created around it, the Osaka Tower took almost all of the view in front of her. The plaza was full of tents and amusements, like something from a festival, but thankfully seemed only a third full, with most of those who were planning to attend the opening celebrations of the tower yet to arrive. That had been a small stroke of luck, but there was no way of knowing how many people were still in the apartments that surrounded both the area and even at a third of capacity, the number of attendees below was still in the thousands. The cover story had been put together without any time to plan. Convincing the public that there was a major gas leak took time to prepare. Evidence needed to be manufactured, people needed to be bribed or forced to cooperate; there were a dozen things that needed to be done and none of them had a chance of being complete any time soon. It would take a miracle to convince the city authorities that they needed to evacuate the entire area, especially on such short notice. That was why she was here. Turning away from the view of the tower, she looked to the only other person in the lobby with her.

Even with his broken body surrounded by advanced medical equipment and braces, there was no denying the awareness in Elijah Price’s eyes.

She had missed that before, when she had underestimated him. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“What do you think of the view?” She asked. Elijah looked at her for a long moment, studying her. The medics had done their job well. Given the reaches of their organization, they had technology that was far ahead of things in the public eye. Elijah showed no signs of pain at all now, and his readouts were doing well.

“It seems like a wonderful place for a showdown. Much grander than the parking lot of a psychiatric hospital. ‘A place of dreams’, or whatever Osaka’s latest slogan was. I apologize, the TVs in the hospital didn’t always get the latest news.” Elijah said, staring at her the same way he had been staring at the building.

The air between them was so heavy it seemed one step away from crushing the floor beneath them with its weight. For a long moment neither of them said anything. Their faces were expressionless, like those of poker players or rather, army generals sitting around a war table trying to figure out some unseen enemy’s next move. It was Ellie who broke first. There was no time left for half measures. She had one last chance, one last gambit before the matter was taken out of her hands and full sterilization countermeasures were put into effect. The thought of it made her shudder.

“Let’s not pretend anymore, shall we? I’m sure by now you’re already piecing it all together.” She said. The corner of Elijah’s mouth twitched in what could have been a smile.

“I take it, its time for that conversation?” He said knowingly. Her eyes narrowed.

“Indeed.” She said with a sigh. Her stomach was in knots, but she had no choice. She walked behind Elijah’s wheelchair and pushed him away from the window, further into the center of the room so his focus would be entirely on her. She made sure not to touch any of the tubes or braces that disappear beneath the purple thermal blanket that was wrapped around him. She had hardly believed that when she had seen it. Of course it would be purple.

In the middle of the lobby was a simple metal table with a chair on one side. It was the only furniture in the otherwise cleared room. The rest of it was simple, plasticine white wash walls with steel elevator doors and corridor openings, and a few plant pots that were too large to move. The whole area was bathed in a slightly pinkish glow from a number of clam shell lights that were mounted high on the walls.

She moved around to the other side of the table and sat down.

“I’m going to make a deal with you Elijah. As you have no doubt guessed, time is not on my side. I want you to help me. In return, there are certain benefits I can offer you.”

“Why would I care about anything you have to say. My will is done regardless. One way or another, the world changes today. Nothing can stop that now.” Elijah said without missing a beat.

“And what would you do with that change? If, and it is a truly massive if, anything happens here, do you really think the world will suddenly shift into some new state of being? That everything will make sense? All the world will see is two troubled men in the midst of a disaster, their stories lost to the catastrophe around them. A catastrophe of their own making, if you don’t help me.”

“I thought they were just ordinary, disturbed men? Why are you so afraid if that’s all they are? I think the board has shifted past that point doctor. Its time to make a new move.” Ellie slammed her hands down on the table as anger filled her face.

“This is not a game, Elijah! The stakes are far greater than you can possibly imagine. People are going to die!” She shouted. Regret filled her instantly. Her mask had slipped, and revealed that whatever little control she still had over the situation was quickly fading. Elijah barely battered an eye.

“People die all the time doctor. Many of them without ever achieving or contributing anything to the world. Some sacrifices are indeed worth the cost, as bitter as that pill might be.” Elijah said, his tone cold at first. But then an anger she hadn’t seen building boiled over. “Come on, Ellie, why are you still trying to sell this story?! We both saw what happened at the hospital. You saw who they are, what David and The Horde can do. You saw it was real, I saw it in your eyes. I saw it the moment you bought them into the hospital! So why are we still persisting in wasting everyone’s time?”

“Elijah, I don’t think you understand what’s going on here.” Ellie said, trying to sound empathetic, submissive almost. She had never seen Elijah this agitated, and according to all the records she had seen on him emotional outbursts like this just weren’t his thing. Her mind was racing, but she had to play the part.

“No I understand quite well. You tried to drug me, tried to brainwash me, tried to make me doubt my sanity more so than I ever have, and when that didn’t work you what? Try to burn out the part of my brain that is a threat to you. And that’s the point, isn’t it? I, we, we’re a direct threat to you in some way. That explains the fake police and the set up at the hospital. No one gets to sequester an entire wing with that much security for just three patients, no matter how unique their ‘conditions’. Conditions which should trigger level one lock down procedures from the city’s authorities based on the supposed danger of your patients. The city should be crawling with police and news alerts by now! And yet we have, silence. I find that very… interesting.” Elijah practically shot his words at her, each one dripping in condescending venom.

“We were trying to avoid a panic. Situations like this can get out of hand quickly, and I have connections that allow me a certain pull. My insight is a valuable leverage, and allows me to try and resolve this situation as quickly, and safely, as possible. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Including you and the others.” She said, making sure she sounded every bit like a patient mother trying to get through to a stubborn child. A muscle near Elijah’s eye twitched.

“I bet you do have connections, doctor. Ones that go far beyond any medical community. You are more than what you seem, but I will hand it to you. You have done a good job covering your tracks. It’s like someone had blacked out the parts of your story that you don’t want people to know, but the ink stains are still there on your fingers. And it’s a stain that’s heavy. But the real truth in all this? The one you don’t want to admit? It doesn’t matter who you really are or what your trying to hide. It won’t change a thing. The wheels are already turning. You couldn’t stop them at the hospital, and you won’t stop them now. The world is going to see us. They are going to know we exist.” Elijah said defiantly.

That was it. That was the opening she needed, though she had wished it hadn’t come to this. But there was no other choice now, no other option that would work in the time that was left. Besides, what she had in mind had been done before, but only in the direst of circumstances. This had to qualify.

“Elijah, I think its time to put the cards on the table.” Ellie said. Elijah instantly shifted in his chair, clearly picking up the change in her tone. It was more than just that though. The entire air seemed to fizzle with an energy that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“What are you saying?” Elijah asked, for the first time sounding really uncertain. Ellie glared at him. She deliberately stayed silent for a moment.

“What if I told you, you were right. Right about me and what is going on here. Right about so many things. If you help me, I will answer your questions honestly and without hesitation.” She never broke eye contact with him while she spoke. For his own part, Elijah managed to mask his surprise well, but he couldn’t hide it completely. He may have been a master at reading and manipulating people, but she had trained her entire professional life to do the same thing, and could recognise the growing conflict inside him. She had to tread carefully, but she was on the right path. All she had to do was stoke the coals in the right way.

“The circumstances have not changed. Why would I trust you? After all the manipulation, the lies. Everything I’ve ever believed is about to be proven regardless.” He said, his voice without anger now. He was curious.

“What exactly do you think is about to be proven? You’ve already seen their abilities; you know what they can do.” She said knowingly, echoing his words back to him. “So what is really going to happen here? What are you going to learn that you don’t already know?”

“That’s not the point. The point is making the world see us, making everyone know that we exist. That we have a place and a purpose.” He tried to defend himself, but she was like a vampire honing on his one true weakness, one that was more meaningful to him than any broken bone.

“I understand that, I do, but that’s missing the deeper point, isn’t it?” This was it, the final plunge. “I know what you’re looking for Elijah. I know the thing that drives you. And I know you won’t find it out there, no matter what happens between David and The Beast. I’m offering you the chance to know who you really are, how you fit into all of this. Tell me their real weaknesses, tell me how I can stop them and prevent anymore lives from being lost, and I will give you the truth you’ve always wanted, the truth that the comics don’t tell.”

The room fell silent enough that she could almost hear Elijah’s heart skip a beat. She watched as the pupils of his eyes widened and constricted over and over again, as his lips grew tight against his teeth, as he clenched his hands as tight as he could to stop them from shaking. His own mask had slipped, and she could see the storm raging in his mind as he tried to think through the implications of making a deal with the devil. She couldn’t risk waiting for him to come up with an alternative.

“I need an answer, Elijah. The time for games is over.” She asked, while in her mind she tried to ignore the ticking of the clock.

“I will admit, this is a twist I didn’t see coming.” Elijah confessed, his voice heavy with reflection. But also indecision.

“Do we have a deal Elijah?!” She pressed as she locked her gaze with his. His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t look away. It was like matching eyes with a cobra, impossible not to be drawn in. When he spoke next, the question that come out of his mouth was both as obvious as it was vital, a key he didn’t know he needed.

“Who are you, Doctor Staple?”

Chapter Text

“I know what they’re doing. I know who they are.” David said, his voice so soft that even the low crackling of the embers from the fire seemed like they might overwhelm it. Joseph and Casey both looked at him searching his face for answers. But he wasn’t even sure himself. He didn’t know how he could tell them, but they had all heard the news broadcast from the van. They were shutting down the area around the Osaka Tower, trying to delay the launch events that had been months in planning and cost millions. There was only one reason for that.

“What do you mean dad?” Joseph asked without scepticism, already completely on board. Throughout all of this, he had always been by his side. David forgot that sometimes, that this was his story as much as his own. The thought actually made his stomach knot slightly. What kind of father would give his son a life like this? What kind of father would allow him down this path?

 “Back in the hospital. Doctor Staple asked me to take her hand.” David revealed. Joseph’s eyes lit up with understanding.

“Your insight. You saw something.”

“Wait, I don’t understand. What do you mean by insight?” Casey asked, clearly sensing something important was going on. Joseph looked at her.

“Its one of my dad’s powers. Its like an extra sensory thing. When he touches people, sometimes he sees the bad things they’ve done, like a vision of it happening. Psychic CCTV almost. Its how we find people to stop, how we make sure they deserve it.” Joseph explained.

“That’s how you found Kevin, isn’t it?” Casey said. Joseph nodded, then looked back to his father.

“What was it dad?”

“I…” David stopped himself, thinking back to the images that had flashed through his mind all too briefly. It had been so quick, just a moment, far vaguer than any of his other insights. That was if he ever really had any at all. He kept on thinking about what the doctor had said, about how it was possible that he just had some undiscovered, natural talent for reading people, that he wasn’t really getting visions after all. That would tally with his latest experience at least; how much could you really read someone while being drowned? All he had was glimpses, hints, barely enough to build a picture. And there was every chance he was just imagining it, just making up a story he wanted to believe, something that his injured brain would be able to understand when the reality was just too complex or strange to deal with. Or too terrifying. Could that be it? He hadn’t been afraid in a long time, not since he had started on this path. Maybe that was why he had clung so hard to his beliefs in himself.

“Its ok to be uncertain David, its ok to accept that you made a mistake.”

“But how do I know? It all felt so real. The things I did, they happened.”

“Sometimes, when a person has gone through the kind of trauma that you have, it resets the base line of reality. You get lucky, impossibly lucky, once, and your mind begins searching for a reason why. You start behaving differently, and your mind fills in the blanks to make it all make sense. I’ve no doubt you’ve done many of the things the people in this city talk about, but I question your perception of them. You have to accept that it is at least possible.”

Despite only being there for a few days, Doctor Staple had talked with him a number of times. He hadn’t realised how much of it he had taken aboard.

How much of it had gotten into his head.

And now he couldn’t help but think about it. It was all he could think about.

“Dad? Are you alright?” Joseph’s voice bought him back to the present.

“Its nothing. I think I was wrong. I just, I don’t know…” David said, his face seemingly sinking deep into his hood.

“Dad, what are you doing? This is our only chance. This is the only way we can get an idea of what we’re dealing with. Come on, time is running out.” Joseph said, pushing himself up from the van. He walked over to his father and placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. All David could do was look at him. The words were catching in his throat.

“Joseph… what, what if we got it wrong all this time? What if we’re just in over our heads?” He said, trying not to look at the look of betrayal in his son’s eyes.

“Don’t do that dad, don’t say that. We’re not wrong! We’ve never been wrong! What about all the people that have been helped? What about all the people that you’ve saved! It can’t be wrong.” Joseph said, he pleaded. David’s heart ached, but it wasn’t enough. The doubt was still there, still sitting at his core. It was a black hole, and nothing, no thought or feeling, no desire or belief, was free from its reach or grasp.

“I just don’t know anymore. I can’t get past it, I… it just doesn’t feel the same anymore.” David said, trying to give words to a feeling that had been building inside of him ever since the Doctor had first spoke to him. He couldn’t understand it. He had gone from being completely certain of who he was to this, a walking mess of contradictions and doubt that was so overwhelming it was hard to think about anything else. The one thing he did know was that he couldn’t look at Joseph right now. He couldn’t face that.

“Crisis of faith…” The voice was barely a whisper, so much so that he didn’t really make out what was said, but it was enough for both him and Joseph to turn.

Casey was staring at the floor, her eyes wide with realisation. She looked up at them both before standing up and walking over to them.

“Mr Dunn, David, we’ve not really talked properly, but I think I understand where you are coming from.” She said. David looked at her. He knew her story as much as Joseph did. It was incredible she was even alive, let alone here.

“I’m sorry you were dragged into all this. You shouldn’t be here.” There was a moment of silence. David watched as she and Joseph shared a look, a sense of knowing passing between them. She looked back to him.

“There’s a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened, but I don’t regret being here. Its one of the few things that make sense right now. I’m pretty sure you feel the same. We’re all lost right now. I don’t know how we’re going to find our way, but I do know that doing nothing won’t help. If we just sit here and wait, then its going to be down to others to decide what happens to us. And we already know how that is going to turn out. We have to do something, because its better than just waiting and hoping.”

For a second David wasn’t in the abandon warehouse any more. He was in a place far from there, long ago, in another moment of doubt. He was a teenager with two different paths before him, each one completely different from the other, each one feeling like a step into the unknown. The only thing they shared was the uncertainty they both filled him with. He remembered how terrified he was, how paralysed he had been. And then there was her. Then there was Audrey.

She was the only one who could get through the fog and fear, the only who could lead him back to solid ground. She had been his safe place all those years he had spent in doubt, when he didn’t know himself. She had been the one light, the one who had helped him to understand what he had to do.

In that moment, Casey reminded him of all that.

“Ok.” He said softly. He took a deep breath.

“It’s hard to put into words. Of all the things I’ve ever seen, of all the things I’ve ever felt from all my insights, nothing had ever felt like this. It was like pulling back the curtains and seeing the real world for the first time. We had no idea what we were dealing with. We were part of something so much bigger, so much older. We’re nothing but children, playing with things we don’t understand. I only saw a glimpse, a fraction of a handful of moments. I don’t have the whole picture, no where near what its like with the others, but if its true, if I’m right, I don’t know what we can do.

Doctor Staple, she’s not just a doctor. She’s part of it, part of them. I, I think, there’s a group, some kind of secret organisation. Something ancient. And they’re everywhere. I saw people from all walks of life, bar tenders and lawyers and street artists. Taxi drivers and police officers, politicians and journalists. Everyone. I don’t know who they are, I didn’t see much all. Just that they have a tattoo on their wrists, some kind of clover, a three-leaf clover. I don’t know what it means.

They’ve killed so many people. For years, hundreds and thousands of years, they’ve been killing people. People like me, people like Elijah and the Beast. They believe that we’re a threat to the world. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we do, it doesn’t matter if we’re killing people or trying to save them. They think we’re going to push they world into chaos.  Maybe they’re right, I don’t know.

But that’s the answer to the question. That’s the key. They are the reason why its just us three. Staple, she was sent after us to stop us, one way or another.”

Once again the warehouse became filled with silence, but it was different this time. The world had changed. It didn’t seem possible for the world to flip on its head so quickly, but there it was. David was right. In an instant, the three of them had touched upon a world that was so much bigger than any of them had imagined.

“My god…” Casey whispered as her hands came to cover her mouth.

“Those, those bastards!” Joseph said as he turned away and walked in a circle. He punched the air. “I knew it, I always knew it. I always thought there had to be something else going on, something more that we didn’t know about. This explains everything!”

“This can’t be real right?” Casey whispered, but her tone made it clear that she believed it just as much as Joseph did. It was the only thing that made sense, the only thing that explained everything that happened since the day of the train crash.

Superhumans were real.

So why did he still doubt who he was?

“Joseph, it’s not that simple. I could be wrong. I probably am getting it wrong, I was being drowned at the time. I don’t think we should trust this.” David said, but Joseph just stared at him defiantly.

“Why not? Dad it explains everything. Who knows how long Staple and her group have been covering up people like you? That’s why the police don’t actually know anything about what happened at the Raven Hill hospital. They aren’t real police; they are working for her, are part of this clover group. That’s why they tried to drown you! That’s why they’ve left you like this.” Joseph said, but his words were like distant echoes, lost in the fog that had engulfed him. No matter how much he listened, no matter how much he tried to focus on the logic of it all, it just wouldn’t settle.

“Doesn’t it feel too easy to you, too convenient? All of our questions, all of our problems, are because of a single mysterious group that no one has ever heard off but are apparently everywhere, capable of doing anything. Its just too simple. Its too much like…” David’s words trailed off.

“A comic book.” Casey said, finishing his unvoiced thought.

“It doesn’t matter what it sounds like if its true. And it has to be true. Everything else has been, everything else that we’ve done! How else can you explain what is happening at the tower. They’re trying to clear the area so they can keep on covering up the truth.” Joseph explained, completely confident in his statements. Almost on cue, another interruption come blaring across the radio.

“Another update now on the breaking news story at the opening of the Osaka tower. A number of what has been described as explosions have been heard coming from within the tower itself. Authorities have ordered an immediate evacuation of the area and are urging calm amid fears that the chemical plant housed in the tower’s twentieth to twenty-third floors may be somehow compromised. With little more information to go on, and with reports from within the area proving hard to come by at this time, speculation is riff as to how severe this incident really is. Stay tuned for further updates as we continue to monitor this developing emergency situation.”

“Elijah mentioned that chemical plant.” David said, more to himself than either of the others, but they both heard him.

“Elijah was almost dead when I stole the van. It has to be the Beast, he must be following Elijah’s plan. We have to stop him. We’re the only ones who can.” Joseph said.

“How are we going to get past Staple and her group? We’re going to be walking into a trap if we’re not careful.” Casey added, without a hint of hesitation in her voice. She was afraid, both she and Joseph were, but they weren’t backing down.

“If we don’t try people are going to get hurt. I don’t know what else to do but we can’t just wait here right?” Joseph said, and a second later Casey nodded in agreement. With that Joseph turned and headed for the van. It took him a moment to realise that David wasn’t moving.

“Dad, come on, we don’t have much time.” Joseph said as he turned back to him.

All David could do was stare.

He wanted to move, he really did, but all he could hear was doctor Staple’s voice in his head. It was everywhere, coming from all directions at once, telling him how wrong this was, how much danger he was putting himself and others in. How much danger he was putting Joseph in. It was all he could see when he looked at his son, and any energy that was in him was lost, swallowed by the void of doubt, disbelief and fear that had taken root in the place where his heart had once been.

“Dad, please. It’s time. We need to end this” Joseph said, and then he held out his hand.

David stared at his son, but still didn’t move. He felt like he a kid again, drowning in the school’s swimming pool. Joseph was right though.

The end had to come. He just wasn’t sure what it was going to look like when it arrived.

Chapter Text

From their high position in the building on the opposite side of the plaza, it was easy to see the flashes of light coming from within the Osaka tower. They had been quick and solitary at first, but as the minutes ticked by that had started to change. The bursts of light became more frequent and sustained, like a series of firecrackers or even miniature fireworks going off, some alone, some in bunches and from multiple directions at once. Even from this distance and through the glass, you could hear the cracking booms.

The sound of gunfire was distinctive and easily recognisable once you trained yourself to hear it. And Elijah had done all kinds of training and preparation. His entire life had been spent building to this moment.

“I don’t care! Find more men!” Came a panicked voice from the end of the room. Doctor Staple paced back and forth against the glass, stopping only as another round of gunfire came from the tower, this time a floor higher. The fingers of one her hands were bone white as she griped her phone tightly. There was no hiding the alarm in her face now. She turned and stared at the tower for a long moment. The silence seemed to haunt her more than any of the gunshots had. Finally she turned and stormed her way over to him.

“Things are escalating fast, Elijah. I need an answer, my friend.” She said as she returned to the table. She tried to make herself seem calm, but it was easy to see that she was anything but.

“There’s a lot of things to consider. There’s still a lot of pieces in play.” Elijah said simply, pulling the medical blanket tighter around him. It was strange, he had never really felt like this before. The pain was still there, but it was more like a blinking warning on the corner of a screen rather than an actual feeling.

“The board is being cleared, one way or another.” Doctor Staple said sharply, a cold menace in her voice. “My associates are very concerned. They have authorised the use of more specialist equipment. People are going to get hurt. But I suppose that doesn’t matter too much to you.”

“I suppose you are right.” He replied, playing her game. They both knew she was already in his head, but the door swung both ways. He was seeing a side of her that was rarely in the public eye. A side that was afraid.

“Right now, you are just a side note Elijah. You are contained, not seen as a threat, especially with everything that is going on with David and the Horde. But that won’t last forever. Once they are dealt with, and they will be, the spotlight will turn to whatever loose ends remain. I would consider that if I were you, especially if you decide to remain uncooperative.” Staple said, her voice still like an icy northern wind. There was something different in her eyes now. There was still fear, still sadness, but also… resolve. It reminded Elijah of the psychotic commitment of religious fanatics.

“You can trust I am considering all my options carefully.” Elijah said, refusing to back down from her gaze. He wanted to seem calm, unfazed, but the truth was anything but.

He had never been in a situation like this before.

Everything he had ever wanted was right there in front of him. Elie had promised answers to every question he’d ever had, and over the course of his life he’d had many. Of course he had wondered where the others must have been, the others like him and David. Even in the stories where the hero stood alone, there was always a legion of equally empowered beings ready to stand again him. Even if David was the only one of his kind, he should have encountered dozens similar to him on the opposite side of the moral spectrum. That had always been one of the large and lingering holes in his beliefs, but now here was a solution, a missing piece ready to be slotted into the picture, if only he dared reach out and take it. There were so many things he didn’t know, with each one offering the opportunity for enlightenment. How far back into history did this all extend? To the ancients themselves? To Hercules and Rameses and Gilgamesh? And how did these stories persist? How were they told again and again by people who could never possibly have experienced them? Doctor Staple had promised answers to all of these questions. But what was in a promise really? What weight did Ellie’s words really carry? Promises could be nothing more than sweet little lies easily swallowed but ultimately empty, or so a cynic might believe. And he had every reason to be cynical. But it was more than that though. It was so much more.

He was being asking to accept a veil, a muzzle, a place back in the dark. To not be seen or heard, to be remembered as nothing more than a blip in history, a curious outlier that had no place in the world.

To be nothing more than another mistake, gladly forgotten.

Just the thought of that sent more pain through him than of his broken bones ever had. It went against everything he had ever strived for, everything he had sacrificed for. It was asking him to accept that he wasn’t good enough, that he wasn’t an equal with the rest of the world when the truth was, he really was. He was extraordinary! A higher being who deserved so much more. He should have had respect and admiration, power and prestige, but the truth was his desire for those things would always be secondary. Recognition was the real prize, to know without a doubt that you had a place in the world and no one else could take that from you. He had been willing to give his life for that, even if it meant he would never see the reveal. He was still willing to give his life for that cause.

But what was the point of knowing your place in a story if you would never know the whole plot? Did seeing the end without knowing the beginning change what it meant, what it was worth? That was the question that haunted him, and no matter how much he tried to think it through, each time he got another answer, another path to take. It was like trying to trace the cracks in a piece of glass as it shattered, he thought, well aware of the irony of such an image.

“I understand this must be a lot for you to take in. A lot of stimulation after all those years in confinement. Its ok if you are struggling to process everything. We can talk about it, if you want?” Ellie said, shifting stances and sounding warm, welcoming, like a mother to a confused child. Almost like his mother.

“Is this where we’re at now? More psychological manipulation? I believe that’s now called gaslighting. Don’t do that, you’re better than that.” He shot back. She smiled and lowered her head for a moment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.” She said apologetically before her face returned to a neutral state. “Perhaps I was projecting. As you may have guessed, today has not gone as I was expecting.”

“We all must carry the weight of our sins. My mother would tell me that as a child.” Elijah said, but Ellie didn’t seem to hear him.

“You know I really wanted to help you all. I did. I didn’t want it to ever come to this. This was a chance to break the cycle, to make something better. I’ve fought years for this. There are many who still prefer the old ways, the violence, the death. I wanted us to be kinder than that, better. Fairer. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

“So a machine that lobotomizes the parts of a person that make them unique is a kindness?” Elijah asked, remembering the feeling of the laser against his skin. Even with his sabotage, it had still hurt. Ellie nodded.

“Yes. It’s a mercy. Everyone likes to think that they are unique, special in some way, but do you know what it means to be really unique? To stand out even when you don’t want to? It brings pain. All it brings, is pain. And then one day you wake up and realise that your entire life has been spent suffering, and all you want is the pain to go away. That’s what the machine did. Surely you more than anyone can see the logic in that, if not the compassion?” She asked, but it was like she was trying to convince herself more than him, and for a moment, just the barest second, something else flickered through her. A shiver of regret, a shadow of heartbreak. A memory buried deep, clawing at the lid of the coffin.

“You knew someone. Someone like us. That’s why this means so much to you, isn’t it? Of course, it all links up. Its all a part of the story.” Elijah said, seeing through the layers and masks that she had built around her. Ellie stared at him, but she wasn’t really seeing him. To her credit, there wasn’t a flicker of emotion on her face. Whatever she was feeling, whatever she was seeing, she had it locked down so tightly that all it could do now was make her hesitate for a moment. But then the stillness passed as she took a breath.

“I was a mother, once. A daughter.” She said with a weight that even Elijah hadn’t been expecting. It seemed to surprise her too, and the breath she took after the words had left her lips was heavy with relief, as if she hadn’t actually believed she would ever say them again. She allowed herself only a single moment more of reflection, then her eyes grew dark once again. She went to say something more, but never got the chance.

One of the elevators that led to the sky lobby opened, and a handful of people rushed out. Two of them clearly seemed like guards, wearing helmets and carrying shotguns, whilst the other two were carrying only touchpads. They were all wearing the same tactical-like police uniforms and armour that the crowd control officers had been wearing back at the psychiatric hospital.

“We’re slowing him down, but that’s it. Our bullets are just bouncing off him now.” One of the officers with a shotgun said without waiting to be addressed.

“What about armour piecing rounds?” Ellie asked as she jumped up from where she had been sitting. The officer shook his head.

“Not much better. They draw blood but he vanishes before they put him down, and when he shows up next he is fully healed. We can’t stop the Beast.”

“That shouldn’t be possible. Those rounds can punch through steel. He can’t have gotten that strong so quickly.” Ellie said, shaking her head. She looked at Elijah. He didn’t say anything, and just stared back at her.

“What are we going to do? There’s only a handful of floors left before he reaches the chemical plant.” Another officer said, one of the technicians holding a tablet. Ellie continued to stare at him for a long moment.

“The lights. The tower is full of advanced display screens that should be compatible with the flash program. How long will it take to load up?” She asked as she finally looked away. The two technicians glanced at each other.

“I don’t know. The tower’s security systems are state of the art, and they’re not meant for that kind of program.” One of them said.

“How long to get it to work?” The technicians exchanged another nervous glance.

“Twenty minutes? Half an hour?” Ellie nodded

“Get it done. Tell the others to do whatever they can to buy more time. What about the other containment procedures?”

“We’re jamming all the communications in the area, but people are trying to get around it, and the authorities are already investigating the connection loss. So far though, no news or clips have surfaced on the net.”

“And what about the Overseer? Has there been any sightings of him?”

“No, nothing, though we’ve had most of our personnel focused on the Beast. He’d have to be a fool to show up here.” The officer said, but Ellie shook her head.

“No, no he’ll come here. He won’t be able to resist. They never can.” Ellie said, glancing at Elijah. She was right, it was the same conclusion he had come to as well, but he suspected the way that they had reached that was very different. It didn’t matter though. Somewhere out there in the city, David was racing towards his destiny. The destiny of all of them.

“What about the final containment measure?” She asked as she turned back to the officers.

“But ma’am, we’re in the blast zone. And the evacuation has only just begun! There’s still thousands of people out there!” One of them said in a tone that immediately caught Elijah’s attention. She shock her head.

“It doesn’t matter. Set it up. If we have to, we can evacuate when the time comes.”

“But ma’am!” One of the officers protested, but she silenced him with a glare.

“The decision has been made. Just do it. I need to address the Consortium.” Ellie said sharply, making it clear the conversation was over. She turned and started towards one of the hallways that led away from the lobby. Elijah could see that her irritation was on the verge of boiling over, and fully expected it too when one of the officers called for her.

“Ma’am, what about him?” The officer said, gesturing towards Elijah. She stopped in her tracks and turned just enough so that she could see both him and the officers.

“Keep watching him, but focus on your tasks.” She said to the officers, but then fixed her eyes firmly on him. “He isn’t important anymore.”

With that Ellie turned and stormed away. There was the sound of an automatic door opening and then relocking, and then she was gone. Elijah watched as the officers looked amongst themselves and then at him. There was another exchange of words between them, nervous fearful words that Elijah didn’t pay attention too. He barely noticed as two of them headed back to the elevator whilst the other two stay in the lobby. One them, one with a tablet, sat down at the table and started working, with the other one, the one with the shotgun, walked over to the large windows and stared up at the Osaka tower on the opposite side of the plaza.

Jamming signal. Blast zone. Final containment.

Those terms went through his mind over and over, repeating again and again until a picture formed in his mind. It was strong and clear, like his own personal holograph image that he could walk around, walk through. He could see every detail, every nuance and subtlety. Everything.

Outside, another explosion sounded from the tower. Elijah barely paid it any notice.

The showdown was upon them. And he had a plan.

Chapter Text

It was easy enough to reach the Osaka Tower.

The streets leading up the area were still filled with people who were more confused than panicked. There were a handful of police officers here and there, trying to direct people away from the tower, but the majority of them seemed as lost as the people they were directing. It made sense. The order to evacuate had come suddenly and was unexpected. It was only once you reached the central plaza that surrounded the majority of the tower that you really started to see the chaos that was beginning to unfold. At the base of the tower wreckage was strewn around. It was a mixture of broken glass and the solar panels that the building was known for, as well as the occasional bits of office furniture and a storm of discarded papers blowing all over the place. Up above, a number of broken windows could be seen stretching up the tower. In a few of them, the orange glow of fires could be seen. The fear was more tangible here in the plaza, like a heaviness in the air, but still hundreds of people were standing around, staring, refusing or unable to move. There seemed to be an air of the Titanic to the whole situation – that the building was just too advanced for any real disaster, that it couldn’t happen here. There was just too much disbelief. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe the slow response to the evacuation was because people could sense the world holding its breath, could feel the weight of the change that might occur here and wanted to witness it themselves. Or maybe people were just too afraid to do anything. In the end it didn’t matter. The lacklustre evacuation provided just enough cover for David, Joseph and Casey to slip into the tower unseen.

The question was, what did they do now?

David had his hood down as he led the way through the ground floor lobby, past the various welcoming and reception desks, past the elevators, looking for a service stair case somewhere out of the way. In his years of experience, the routes that were most out of the way were always the ones worth taking – they were also often the safest, and that was what mattered now. He glanced behind him, at the two people following. At Joseph and Casey. They tried their best to hide it, but he could see the fear on their faces. Every couple of seconds, the distant and muffled sound of some sort of explosion could be heard coming from above, and whatever masks they had pulled over themselves to hide their feelings would slip a little, showing the truth. It was one thing to talk about breaking the law and becoming a vigilante, it was quite another to actually do it. He should have made them wait in the van, he should have thrown them in there and broke off the handles of the doors. But they had been right. If it had been up to him, he would have walked away from all this. Yet here he was, jumping into the world of insanity all over again.

Why was he doing this?

It seemed like every step he took the same arguments that had haunted him for the last few days grew louder and louder. There was no point in him going over them again, looking for flaws in the logic. He wasn’t a superhuman, or at least no more so than any other gifted athlete. He didn’t have superpowers or special abilities, no matter what that gnawing sensation in his gut said. He was just lucky, incredibly so, and that luck, combined with some sort of undiagnosed mental ailment, had led him to believe something insane. Now here he was, trying to find someone who was even sicker than he was. And to do what? Fight him again? Stop him somehow? No, it wasn’t going to work out like that. All that was going to happen here was that he would discover just how out of his depth he really was. And if he wasn’t careful, people were going to get hurt.

But what if you are wrong?

That was a question he had been asking himself a lot lately, more than he ever had before, but it had changed now. It was coming from the other side, the other perspective. It was the voice that still clung on to the hope of impossibility, the desperate whisper of a reality that couldn’t be. The stubborn remains of a life that refused to die. And no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how hard he tried, nothing he could do could make that voice go away. It made his head spin.

“Dad?” Joseph’s voice pulled him from his self vilifications. He blinked rapidly and looked at his son. They were standing just inside the service staircase that David had led them too, with Casey pushing herself close to the door that led into the second floor, keeping an eye out for anyone heading their way.

“What did you say? I’m sorry, I was… thinking.” He said with a shake of his head.

“It’s ok. I was just asking what do we do now? People on the walkie keep talking about running search patterns on the higher floors. They’ve got to be looking for the Beast, right?”

“You’re probably right.” David said calmly. Hesitantly, but Joseph didn’t seem to pick up on that. He held the walkie-talkie he had picked up from a distracted officer in the lobby to his ear for a moment longer, then looked back to his father.

“So we should head up the tower right? Unless you think we can draw him out, bring him to us? He wants to fight you so that might actually work, and it could save a lot of people. What do you think?” Joseph asked, nodding to himself as he spoke. David glanced up the middle of the staircase. There was just enough space that he could see the stairs stretching high up into the building.

“We need to get higher, away from the crowds here. Its too much of a risk for anything to happen here with all these people.” David said honestly.

“Its so weird being on this end of things. It’s a lot different than I had expected, being right in the middle of it all.” Joseph said. Over the years there had been the occasional times when he had needed to more directly intervene in one of David’s walks, but Joseph was never really in any danger. At least he was aware of the fact.

“There’s some firefighters coming.” Casey said suddenly as she stepped away from the door. Joseph nodded.

“Come on.” Joseph replied, and without waiting he started up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. It actually took David a few seconds to catch up and take the lead. He may not actually be bulletproof, but any shots that hit him wouldn’t hit his son or Casey. That was still worth something. He just hoped he would have enough time to pull off his plan before that choice had to be made.

He had no intention of fighting the Beast.

There was no point to it, no reason for two mentally ill people to fight again in a silly act of hubris that would only put more people at risk. The people from the hospital had stopped the Beast once before, they would be able to stop him again. There was no need for him, no reason to get involved, despite what that nagging voice still said. All he had to do now was find somewhere safe he could leave Joseph and Casey, somewhere secure that they’d be unable to get out from. Somewhere they wouldn’t be able to stop him from turning himself in. That was the only play left to him now. The only way he could stop the arguing in his head.

“There’s people coming down!” Joseph whispered urgently. Without waiting, he rushed back down a few steps towards the nearest landing and pulled the door to the floor open. David turned and followed after him as he urged Casey through the door. The floor beyond looked like the office space for some kind of accounting company; the tower was home to all manner of companies, as well as a number of high luxury private apartments. Like most of the floors, this one was massive, taking advantage of the tower’s huge footprint to incorporate a number of open spaces. The one directly in front of them now had a number of sculptures and water features.

David spun around and pushed himself against the door frame, using his foot to keep the door from closing completely. He looked upwards, listening to the growing sound of hurried footsteps. But then came the voices. It didn’t take long to realise they were searching floors. And this one was next.

“We need to move. They’re searching the floors.” David said as he turned to the others.

“Over there!” Casey said as she pointed to an open conference room on the other side of the sculptures. They darted towards the room, with David bringing up the rear, his rain poncho whipping behind him. The conference room was nothing special, just a large room with an equally large table and chairs, a number of filling cabinets and other tables, and a trio of doors in the other walls that were all currently closed. But there was something about the doors that took David’s attention: they had locks.

“Dad, come on.” Joseph said as he and Casey ducked down behind the table.

“It’s going to be alright Joseph.” David said, his hands on the handles. A look of understanding came over his son’s face, but it was too late.

“Dad!” Joseph shouted, but David pulled the doors closed.

By the time David turned around the riot officers were already coming through the door to the staircase. There was something off about them, they had no markings on the outfits, but David had little time to think before they saw him. In an instant they were fixed on him rushing forward with guns raised. But they didn’t say anything. There was no shouting, no orders. He raised his hands in surrender as one the officers tilted his head to the side as he listened to something being relayed over the tactical mic in his ear. The look he gave afterwards was all David needed to see. Without thinking he was moving. He felt sluggish, slower than he ever had before, but for the first time in days he was actually certain on something. These men weren’t here to arrest him, to take him back to the psychiatric hospital. There was a look of murder in their eyes, the same look he had seen countless times in his years fighting the criminals of the city. As if to echo his thoughts, the bullets slammed into the doors of the conference room where he had just been standing. A volley of rounds followed after him as the officers shifted their aim, peppering the glass. A shard of fear shot through him as he glanced back. The rounds were high, and Joseph and Casey had been crouching when he had last seen them. There was nothing more that he could do for them now. He didn’t know what these people wanted, but he had to get away from here, had to lead them away.

He had to protect the others.

The deformed bullets rolled away across the floor like spilled marbles, as harmless now as they had been when first fired. Only a few of them ever managed to actually draw his blood now, but that was as far they ever got. He was becoming stronger, faster. More powerful. And all they could do was fire their pathetic guns and throw their puny grenades. It was all so foolish.

The Beast smiled. He had been right to come here.

Every step he took was another step along the path of his transcendent emergence. And it was glorious. He found himself taking more pleasure than he had ever expected at the sight of the fear of the officers, the scent of their terror. It was intoxicating to him, ethereal almost. Every time he trapped one of them, every time he sunk his teeth into their flesh, every time he felt their blood travelling down his throat – every single moment was empowering to a degree that was almost indescribable now. So much so that he found himself actually going out of his way not just to hunt them down, but to play with them. He could have reached the chemical plant several times over by now, but he couldn’t pull himself from the thrill of it all. He would let them have their moment, let them use their weapons if only to sweeten their flesh with a seasoning of false hope. Then he would strike. Sometimes he would separate them, killing them one by one until those that remained were left with no choice but to flee. Other times he would just emerge like a shadow from the darkness into the middle of a group and take them all at once. More than once he had even waited for them to call in reinforcements. There must have been scores of them searching the building for him, trying to stop him. Little did they know all they had to do was wait. He would find them all soon enough.

A surge of pain went through his shoulder. He roared, not from the pain but from his anger that they could still hurt him, however rare it was. They were pulling out heavier weapons now, denser ammunition. With coordinated efforts and sustained fire, they could actually gain ground against him. Actually hurt him. It was always temporary of course; he was healing so fast now that all he had to do was slip away and wait a few moments. But the fact it kept happening, the fact they could do anything to him at all, filled him with a contemptable rage. That was why he had to keep on going, had to keep on pushing. He was the champion of the broken, and every injury he got, every cut and slash and bullet wound he received and recovered from would only serve to make him stronger. His trauma would be flame that forged his bones into steel, his skin into Kevlar. It would be the thing that would make him… unbreakable. He looked up at the ceiling above his head, as if he could see directly through the few remaining floors left between him and the chemical plant. The time for games was over. No more hunts, no more feasting. Destiny awaited.

The sound of an elevator opening somewhere on the far side of the floor took his attention, and his heightened senses picked up the sound of more armoured officers quickly marching out of the metal box. It didn’t matter. He would make his way past them one way or another and take the elevator himself, and if they stopped it, he would just climb up into the shaft itself. Whatever happened, nothing will get in his way.

With renewed purpose he pushed his way through the floor, moving from shadow to shadow and either leaping over or barging aside whatever objects got in his way. Finally, he rounded a corner and the elevator was there before him.

“Contact!” One of the officers in front of the elevator shouted. They had formed a perimeter around it and were clearly waiting for him, but he didn’t care. The officers trained their guns on him as he broke into a sprint, but held their fire. He snarled, moving with so much force that he could feel the floor beneath him denting with every step. It was only when he was almost upon them that he noticed something different about these ones… they were all wearing thick eye protection.

The first flash of light came as he tried to turn away, but it was too late. His entire body convulsed as the display screens on the walls and the lights overhead all strobed again and again. There was nowhere he could turn to avoid it, and then all of a sudden it was there inside of him. It was like a hail of spears piercing every wall he placed before it. Burning and shrieking, it reached down to the very core, overwhelming even the commands of his own mind. It was all he could do just to hold on, but nothing could stop him as he feel to the floor. Every muscle in his body was straining, veins large and throbbing with both rage and pain. Inside his head, inside the secret neural cathedral where they all sat, noise like the explosion of a volcano sounded.

Flash, and yelling.

Flash, and shouting.

Flash, and screams.

“I thought he was meant to go back to normal.” One of the officers said. They were surrounding him now, their guns pointing at him cautiously, the lights and screens still flashing. All he could do was watch as they looked at each other and exchanged more confused words. Then one of them raised their gun and fired at him. He was barely aware of the sensation of the bullet hitting his stomach.

But it didn’t penetrate.

Instead the bullet just dug into his flesh for a second before rolling away. If he could have, The Beast would have laughed. Everything was different now. The light still hurt, still seared every nerve in his brain, but his grasp on it was iron. He wouldn’t let go, not now, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how much the others screamed. They still supported him, his Horde, but he couldn’t risk that changing now. He wouldn’t risk it, even if it meant silencing them for the time being. He was in control of the light, even if it burnt. And even now, inside, he could feel himself continuing to change. Cell by cell, his biology was continuing to shift. Continuing to evolve. All he had to do was wait.

“Ok, we can’t leave him here, the lights are already beginning to burn out. Set up the mobile device and get a gurney up here. Let’s get him to the doctor and let her sort him out.” One of the officers said. They all started moving.

None of them noticed the Beast’s hand slowly clench into a fist.

“They have to be doctor Staple’s men.” Joseph whispered as he crept along the cubicle wall, crouched down low. “I’ve been listening to police frequencies for years now. The way these guys are talking to each other, the codes and phrase they’re using, its not the way cops talk.”

“Makes sense. I saw the police arguing with riot officers when we were making our way through the streets. I doubt any real cops are actually in the tower at all.” Casey whispered back as she followed along behind him. Joseph held up a hand and slowed, coming to a stop at the edge of the wall they were hiding behind.

It had been easy enough to get out of the conference room once the bullets had stopped flying and all the riot officers had run off after David. Those first few steps outside the room were some of the hardest either of them had ever had to take, and every crunch of broken glass beneath their feet felt like it was an echoing siren that would quickly bring about their deaths. As soon as they had forced the doors open though the adrenaline had kicked in. There wasn’t time to process the fear of the situation, or how close they had come to a likely end, and neither were in any hurry to let those feelings in. So instead they had focused on moving, on putting some distance between them and the conference room. But that had only gotten them so far, and now they had reached a turning point.

“I don’t know where to go.” Joseph said as he looked back to Casey, hoping she would pick up his unspoken question.

“We could try to find your dad? Or we could keep going up and… see what happens I guess?” Casey said, gazing up at the ceiling.

“I don’t know what the right to do here is. It feels like whatever I do is just going to…”

“Hey, stay with me. We’ve gotten this far, right?” Casey said as if she were reading his thoughts. Joseph looked at her for a moment, then swallowed hard and nodded.

“Ok. So what do you think we should do?” He asked. He had to keep himself focused, but trying to supress his fear was taking a lot of effort. He could use some guidance.

“We should find Kevin. We need to.” Casey said with a stony certainty to her voice. He couldn’t help but look at her. Her eyes were wide, her face pale looking, her breath quick. It was clear she was battling her own demons, but there was something in her eyes. It was a look he recognised from seeing it on his father every time he stepped out into the night and the unknown.

“We’re not far from a sky lobby, a place where elevators cross over so they can reach higher up into the building. I think we should take one. The Beast has been here for awhile now. We can’t have much time left. I know it’s a risk but I don’t think we have much choice.”

“You’re right. Lets get moving before I realise just how stupid we’re being.” Casey said, and with that she took one last to check for more riot officers. Then she was moving, with Joseph quickly following.

It didn’t take long to make it to the sky lobby. It was a wide but mostly empty space in the middle of the floor, with walkways for offices and cubicles leading off from it. There was even a small shop selling sandwiches and drinks. Joseph instantly made his way over to the nearest control panel for the elevators that led higher up into the building.

“The elevators are still live. That’s good.” Joseph said as he pushed the call button. A second of strange silence crept slowly through the lobby, a surreal moment of normality in a situation that was anything but. It only ended when the ding of an arriving elevator broke the moment. Joseph tensed up as he got ready to move, but something unexpected happened.

It wasn’t the doors he and Casey were waiting by that slide open.

They both turned to look at the noise. Slowly, a figure emerged from within the elevator. It was large and dressed in black, and it took Joseph a second to realise it was one of the riot officers who weren’t real police. They had their back to them, but it wasn’t the officer that drew Joseph’s attention. It was the hospital bed they were helping to wheel out of the elevator. Or more specifically, the person laying on the bed.

Despite how many straps were wrapped around him, the Beast still looked like he was only one thrash away from breaking free.

He was surrounded by the riot officer that Joseph had first seen as well as three others. Every muscle on his body looked like it was straining, the veins in his arms and shoulders throbbing almost in time with the flashes coming from the small TV looking device that was suspended from a rig about two feet above his head. Even still, he was still snarling and shaking with clear fury.

“Oh no.” Casey said. Her voice was but a whisper, but one of the officers turned regardless. Things seemed to go from stillness to frantic motion so fast that the world might have gotten whiplash. The officer recognized them instantly and raised his weapon. He shouted at them to raise their hands as the other officers came to attention. When they didn’t respond the first officer raised his rifle. That was all Joseph needed to see to break him from the trance. He spun on the spot and grabbed Casey. Then he ran with all the strength he could summon. But there was nowhere to run. The only other thing in the lobby was a few column supports for the floors above. They were barely big enough to hide one person behind, let alone two. There was no other choice though. Half turning, half skidding he pulled himself and Casey behind the nearest pillar as the bullets began to fly, chips of concrete exploding into the air around them as the bullets slammed into the places where they had been only moments before.

The flashes of light burned in a way that no fire could. It was like someone had slipped sheets of acid beneath his skin, all over his body. He could almost taste it, the broken by-products of his body being torn apart. But despite all the pain, he still refused to look away.

For the Beast, the suffering was just another step to ascendance.

He had been powerless to do anything as the riot officers had strapped him on the bed and placed the flash box above his head. It was like his body wasn’t even his own. But that was then. With every second that passed now, he was regaining control. All he had to do now was continue biding his time. Everything changed though when they had taken him out of the elevator.

They had forgotten to strap his head down. Maybe they had figured that in the interest of speed that it didn’t matter. The flashes of light were powerful enough that no matter where he looked it would still affect him. They should have taken the extra seconds. Maybe it had been his enhanced senses or some element of his instinct, or maybe it had been sheer luck. It didn’t matter, the result was the same. He had looked to the side and seen Casey. His dear, precious Casey. The first of his chosen, the first of his legion. She had been there when he had first stepped from the shadows. It was an unexpected blessing that she should be here now. But then the bullets had started to fly. He watched as she and the boy had run and hide, or as close to hiding as they could manage. It was clear it wouldn’t be enough. They were going to kill her.

The rage hit him harder than even he had expected. It was a tsunami of fire that made the acid in his skin seem like nothing. It burnt away the pain, burnt away everything until there was nothing left but the fury.

He wouldn’t let them harm her.

He wouldn’t be their prison any longer.

He was ready.

The Beast turned his head so he was staring directly into the light box. He stared at it like it was a helpless deer in the middle of a field, unaware it was in the gaze of a tiger. The cruel, blinding flashes were just that now, flashes. They had no power anymore. They could do nothing to stop what was coming. It started at his wrists. The thick straps tried to cut into his skin, but they did nothing but stretch and snap as he wrenched his arms free. The straps around his legs and body faired no better. All it took was a few seconds. He practically threw himself up into the air, the bed crumpling beneath him.

The first riot officer didn’t have any idea what hit him as the Beast dropped down from the ceiling. There was an explosion of fabric and blood as the Beast, his hands like claws, tore into the man. It only took a few moments to find the man’s spine and crush it. The next thing he sensed was a bullet bouncing of his shoulder. The other officers had turned on them. Good. Let them see his power. Let them feel his rage.

The bullets stopped suddenly, only to quickly be replaced by the sound of dull, wet thuds and screaming. For a second, it was all Joseph could do just to breath, to force the ringing from his ears. Then came a flood of sensation. He couldn’t tell if it was pain or shock or just sheer relief at still being alive. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been shot, but a couple of the concrete shards that had broken off from the bullets strikes against the column had definitely scratched him. He looked to Casey. She was shaking, but seemed to be alright, or at least as alright as he was. The sound of more gunshots made both of them flinch, but the shots weren’t aimed at them. The adrenaline was still flowing. Without thinking he stole a look around the edge of the column.

The first thing he saw was a someone flying through the air and slam against a set of closed elevator doors, hitting so hard that the doors actually crumpled from the impact. There was a rapid flash of lights as a riot officer fired a burst of bullets, but all they did was earn the attention of the Beast. He let out an inhuman roar and launched himself at the officer. The gun fired again, only to quickly fall silent.

“Oh my god.” Joseph muttered. He had seen the Beast in action back at the hospital, but this was so much different. He was a primal force, a berserker of wild fury, tearing through anyone that stood in his way in the most brutal methods possible. He had never shown restraint before, but there had always seemed to be a rawness to his actions, an amateurish grasp of his powers. That had changed now.

“What do we do?” Casey asked from beside him. It took one look at her to know that she had seen the same carnage he had.

“I don’t know. I…” Joseph shook his head.

“Casey!”

The Beast’s voice echoed liked an explosion down the distance of the sky lobby. Like snuffing the flame from a candle, it was as if every other sound in the building fell silent. There was a distinct sound of footsteps, ones that were heavy and slow.

“Its ok Casey. The unworthy are dead. You can join me now.” The Beast said again. Joseph and Casey looked at each other. He had to think fast, but what could he do really? He was just alone, with no super powers and no weapons.

No weapons…

It was like a light went on in his mind. The guns hadn’t done a thing to help the riot officers or anyone else, but that wasn’t what he had in mind.

“I need to talk to him.” Casey said, though she looked horrified at the thought.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Joseph asked, stealing another glance at all the dead bodies and their discarded equipment.

“This is what we wanted, right? He won’t hurt me. He won’t.” Casey said, steeling herself. Joseph nodded. He wasn’t about to try and talk her out of anything now. To do so would only be a distraction that neither of them could afford right now.

“Ok. I’ve got a plan, kinda, if this all goes wrong, but I need your help. Get him out of here, to one of the other areas on the floor. Try to get him as close to the windows as you can ok?”

“I can do that.”

“Just be careful. The Beast is… changing.”

“I don’t have a choice, I have to do this.” She said, sounding anything but certain. She took a deep breath and went to stand, but he stopped her at the last moment.

“Hey, you got this, ok? I believe in you Casey. Good luck.” He gave her his best reassuring smile, but he didn’t know how much it meant. She smiled back though, then stood up and stepped slowly out from behind the column. All he could do was watch her go. He hated having to let her do this on her own. It wasn’t what heroes did. But there was only one thing he could think of, and this was the only way to do it.

All it took was a few seconds for the Beast to pass him by, but it felt so much longer than that. He barely paused in his movements, giving Joseph only the barest of glances as he hurried after Casey, clearly deciding he wasn’t worth the effort. Good, Joseph thought as he watched the Beast turn around a corner and walk deeper into the floor. He looked back towards the bodies of the riot officers and their discarded weapons. He pushed himself to his feet and raced over to them.

Guns weren’t the only equipment the officers had on them.

Chapter Text

“Hey.” Casey said simply as she stepped into the middle of the sky lobby, elevators on both side of her. She didn’t know what else to say, but it felt like the temperature of the whole area dropped a couple of degrees. Or it could have just been the shiver that went down her spine when she felt the Beast’s eyes come to focus on her. Joseph had been right – it was like he was a different person. He seemed bigger somehow, but not physically. Instead it was more like a shadow, an energy, like his sheer presence was extending outwards and warping the world around it somehow like some dark aurora.

“It brings me joy to see you here Casey. But I find myself questioning why.” The Beast said as he threw down the body of the riot officer he had been feasting on.

“I had to be here.” She said truthfully, taking a step back. The Beast smiled.
“Of course you did. You are to witness the ascension. Rejoice child, rejoice. Let go of your fear. I can smell it clinging to you.” He said, his deep inhuman voice echoing off the walls of the lobby. She forced a smile.

“Can we talk? There are things I need to say. You owe me that much at least.” She said slowly, choosing her words carefully. She didn’t know if talking to him like he was a normal person was the right way to reach him, but what other choice did she have? Screaming and crying had only gotten everyone else killed. Without waiting for his reply she started walking backwards, but she didn’t turn right away. She didn’t dare break the connection that had been forged by matching his gaze, not until he started walking towards her. She waited until he passed by where Joseph was still hiding before she turned. It was hard not to break out in a run, but she didn’t want it to look like she was trying to get away from him. She didn’t even know where she was going; she and Joseph had entered the elevator lobby from the other end. The lobby quickly opened up, with a handful of pathways leading out into the rest of the floor. There was no time to think. Glancing back to make sure the Beast was still following her, she picked a direction and moved.

“I’m over here.” Casey said as she heard the sound of the Beast approach. She had ended up in some kind of garden area, probably some kind of relaxation zone for the nearby floors. If it wasn’t for the overheard lighting and the windows that wrapped around the area she could have sworn that she was in the middle of some exotic jungle somewhere. She was surrounded by trees with long flowing leaves and grass that came up to her knees. The whole area was also filled with flowers of all the colours of the rainbow. There was even a small pond area over to one side, ringed by one of the paths that criss-crossed the entire area. She couldn’t see where they all went, but it didn’t matter right now. Her attention was firmly on the one she had travelled down, the one which the Beast now walked.

“Why did you bring me to this place?” The Beast asked. Even when he seemed calm, his heavy breathing was still terrifying, as well the snarls that punctured the rhythm every now and then.

“Have you seen the view?” She asked, surprising even herself with how cool she was. She was still one step away from shaking with fear, but she had done what Joseph had asked, and a new sense of stillness was beginning to fill her. She was standing as close to the window as she could without pressing her face up to the glass. She didn’t know what Joseph was planning. She should have asked him, but things had happened so quickly in the sky lobby. Yet despite how frantic it had all been she had actually noticed something about herself in that brief moment, something she didn’t really understand until she had stepped into the relative calmness of the garden area. She trusted Joseph. She didn’t know why, but she did. There would be time to think about that more later though. The Beast’s heavy breathing grew louder.

“It is, a fitting, backdrop.” The Beast said as he walked closer to the window, as close as she was. He took in the view without blinking.

“Are you ok?” Casey asked. He didn’t look at her.

“I am beyond their weapons now.”

“What about the blood?”

“A contribution of the unworthy, towards the revolution. It means nothing.”

“And I don’t suppose saying Kevin Wendel Crumb will do anything now, huh?” That actually made the Beast flinch lightly, but nothing more. He turned his head slightly, just enough to look at her.

“The light is mine alone to control now. The others have willingly surrounded to my vision.”

“Your plan to remake the world, to force them to see you. To see us…” Casey said softly to herself. She didn’t know if the Beast heard her. It was hard to read him. This was the longest she had actually spent with this identity. She wished she could talk to one of the others, to Hedwig or Patricia or any of the others that still thought of themselves as human. With any one of them, what she planned to do would have been easier. She didn’t even know if the Beast would hear her out. As if hearing her thoughts, the Beast turned to her.

“I didn’t think I would see you again, Casey. But your presence here is just more testament to the power of the suffered! This place will become a way shrine for the broken! A stepping stone to the new order. Our new order. You are the first, Casey. You are blessed.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. I’m not blessed.” She said, but her voice came out far weaker than what she had intended.

“Oh you are child, you are. You are remarkable. Your story will be an inspiration to the broken. You will be the real beacon of what we can achieve. And you are still so unrefined. The fires of pain have touched you, but with guidance you shall be reborn!” The Beast proselytized, his dark enthusiasm like a demonic preacher from some unknown church. He reached out with one hand and slowly stroked her cheek. His skin was hard and rough, yet his touch was somehow soft and carried with it a plethora of promises. He would protect her, would make her a part of a family. And all she had to do was accept him, to accept his truth.

To accept that she was nothing more then what happened to her.

“No!” She shouted as she pulled away from his touch, taking a step back. The Beast didn’t seem to know what to do, how to react. It was like the part of him that read emotions was lagging behind the rest of his evolution. He just looked at her, eyes wide, mouth agape. It was the opening she needed.

“I need you to listen to me. I need all of you to listen to me. This is wrong, its all wrong. The things the Beast believes, he has it wrong.” She said quickly, trying to get her words out before she could stop herself.

“Child, you are not making sense.” The Beast said finally, but Casey was looking past his shark like gaze now, searching his eyes for the space behind, the darkness pieced only by the light passing through his pupils.

“I know how it makes you feel. That all the suffering was worth it, that all the pain had a point because it made you strong. But that’s not what happens, that’s not what happens to everyone. Its not what happened to me.”

“The might of the suffered is unquestionable! Look at who we have become!” The Beast howled.

“Not everyone has superpowers!” She screamed back, surprising herself. But she was on a roll now, unable to stop. “Suffering doesn’t make people strong. Being broken doesn’t give you power! It just leaves you broken. I know it because it happened to me, it was me. It is me.”

“But you’re still here?” There was something in the way the Beast spoke, a slight quiver to his voice. Something that said it wasn’t just him who had asked the question.

“I’m here because I chose to be. Please, you have to understand that, you’ve got to understand that it wasn’t the trauma that gave me strength. I chose to be strong, I chose to do more than just survive. It was me. It was always me. Nothing else. And not everyone can do that. Don’t you see? The Beast isn’t going to lead some kind of revolution. He is just going to hurt people. That’s all that’s going to happen, that’s all that has happened right?” She said, wishing she could articulate it better, wishing she had more time and could describe her thoughts like she had with Joseph.

“The revolution is unstoppable! It will be glorious and I will lead it!” The Beast yelled, this time actually sounding angry.

“All you are going to lead is a mass of desperate people looking for any way out! Any way to stop the fear and pain! If they follow you down this path of chaos and destruction all that is going to happen is they will pass their suffering onto others. People are going to die, the very people you claim you are trying to save.” She shot back, but the way the Beast was looking at her was shifting. It was starting to make her skin crawl.

“Why are you saying these things? Why are you giving up? You were so close to becoming a champion of your kind.” The Beast said, his voice suddenly soft. Casey’s mouth opened, but all that happened was her lips trembled. This was it. She wouldn’t let herself stop now.

“I’m not giving up. I just realised the truth. You, what you’re offering, its just an empty promise. I am more than my trauma; I am more than what happened to me. My suffering doesn’t get to define me. I do. I don’t know if I ever would have realised that without meeting you. But you’re wrong about what you believe. You’re wrong about me.” She said, pouring her heart into every word she said. It was easy once she started, and by the time she had finished she knew it was worth every ounce of fear she had felt getting to this point. Now all she had to do was wait. There was an aching in her fingertips like she was hanging by them over a thousand-foot fall. She knew it shouldn’t matter, she knew that her thoughts and values and beliefs should be hers alone. But even now, looking at the man who would be a monster and somehow finding the strength to still stand before him, it wasn’t enough. Despite the elation at actually saying all the things she had been trying to figure out, she still needed… more. She needed to know that it was enough. That she was enough. That even if the worse were to happen and she couldn’t reach Kevin and the others, that what she thought was right and true. She needed to face the storm one last time.

“Child, o child.” The Beast finally said. His voice was heavy with disappointment, hurt even. He went to reach out for her again, but she took another half step back. His open hand clenched into a fist and his entire demeanour shifted. “I see now that I was wrong to put my faith in you. You are not chosen, you are no champion. You are nothing but a victim, deserving of all that has befallen you. It breaks my heart, and I will weep for you when the time comes, but you brought all this on yourself. I see now that you are not one of us. You are not strong enough to stand in the light, you are not worthy of the power that could have been yours! I see now that I was wrong to choose you. You are unable to escape the chains that enslave you, you bathe in the fear that has been your companion all your life. Perhaps you actually needed it. Perhaps, you actually wanted it. Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the source of your chains, the confinement you can’t escape. You could have stopped it whenever you wanted, what your uncle did to you, but there’s a hidden truth there, isn’t there? All your claims of choosing to be strong are nothing but a smokescreen to hide that you aren’t strong enough to admit to yourself the dark secret that you hold inside you. But I see it, like I see you now Casey. I know that you liked it. You liked every part of it. You were not made strong because it wasn’t trauma to you. It was sweetness. You are not a survivor. You are not special. All you are is broken and weak, and now, I must end you.”

Casey could barely breath. The world seemed to shift again. It was like a filter of darkness had been slipped over the world, with the only brightness somehow being the offensively burning yellowy glare that clung to the Beast as he stepped menacingly towards her. He seemed even bigger now, his every muscle bulging with each pulse of the black veins pumping all so evidently beneath his skin.

“What, what do you mean?” She managed to force out, trying to resist the urge to shrink down.

“I am sorry my broken child, but I cannot allow the stench of your unblessed terror to continue, to risk it infecting my coming disciples. I will remember your story, but it is time for that story to end.” The Beast let out a vicious snarl, one Casey had never heard before, and his eyes went as dark as those of a shark set on a kill. He took another step towards her, the rage exploding from within him with such an intensity that she could feel the air burning around her. With the next step, any ambiguity that remained was swept away by an overwhelming murderous intent. She tried to back away even further, but the edge of the pathway through the garden caught her foot. She fell backwards, the leaves of the plants powerless to resist her. Despite the pain of the impact she was moving instantly, her feet kicking against the dirt as she scrambled to get away. She had to get away. There was no thinking now, no grand notions that she could do the impossible. Just an instinctual terror that told her to move, to get away from the monster and all its teeth. The Beast must have sensed her fear. With another roar he reached out for her, the fingers of his hand splayed as if they were about to transform into claws.

The last thing she had expected was the sound of a gunshot.

Joseph fired the assault rifle again, clenching the grips as hard as he could to brace against the recoil. He had practised firing guns before, but the kick of this one was something else. Already his shoulder was aching, but it didn’t matter. The plan was working.

With a monstrous snarl the Beast spun around to face him. Joseph fired again. This time some of the bullets actually hit the Beast, but he barely seemed to notice them. They either deflected harmlessly away or fell to the ground, smashed and deformed, leaving only small bruise like marks that quickly started to heal. He let out a sound that could have been laughter as his attention turned, fixed on Joseph, either unaware or uncaring of Casey as she crawled away from him.

“I know you, foolish child.” The Beast bellowed as he pounded his chest like a gorilla. Joseph fired again, more of the bullets going wide.

“Me? I’m a nobody.” He shouted back as he reloaded.

“You are the son of the hooded man. I wonder, do you have his strength? Would you be a worthy stand in for the man who would shepherd my ascension?” The Beast asked darkly.

“I guess Casey’s plan didn’t work!” Joseph shouted back. He had already worked that out, but he needed to buy time. He fired again, a long bust that served only to make the Beast raise his arms in a Christ-like pose, embracing the barrage of bullets like they were some kind of blessing.

“Those weak weapons can not harm me, boy!” He shouted triumphantly, embracing his own evident power with a manic glee. Joseph lowered the gun as he pulled something from the ammo bag that he had gathered from the dead riot officers by the elevators.

“I’m not trying to harm you.” Joseph said with one last look for Casey. He didn’t see her. All he could do for her now was hope she had gotten clear and continue with his plan. Now or never, he thought grimly.

For a moment, everything froze as he flipped the safety cap and pulled the pin on the grenade he had taken from the bag.

It hadn’t been hard to figure out how it worked; the instructions were printed on the side of the device. He arched his arm back as the Beast’s eyes filled with recognition and then understanding. He glanced back, looking at the window behind him, and how it had been peppered by all the ‘missed’ shots that Joseph had fired, a messy spider’s web of cracks spreading between them. By the time he had looked back, the grenade was already flying through the air. He barely had any time to react, trying to crouch low as the grenade landed short. Then it exploded.

The shockwave was more powerful than what Joseph had been expecting. The truth was he didn’t really know what he had been expecting, but the small device definitely had a punch to it. The flash of light passed in an instant, but it took a few seconds for ringing in his eyes to fade and the smoke to clear.

“These, weapons, cannot, harm, me!” The Beast screamed in his most demonic voice. He was crouched low on the floor, his hands literally dug into the panel flooring of the path through the now slightly scorched foliage on either side of him. Behind him, the window was snaked with more cracks. It had always been a desperate gamble, but the goal had always been simple – get the Beast out of the building. At first, Joseph had planned to just lure him away with promises of leading him to his father. But then he had found the grenades, and a wild idea had entered his head. He knew they were unlikely to actually do anything to him, but a shockwave could still push him. That was why he had asked Casey to get him by the window, that was why he had aimed at the reinforced glass to weaken it. Doctor Staple might have been trying to cover everything up, but right now Joseph’s priority, his only priority, was trying to save as many people as he could. At least if the Beast was outside people could see what was happening for themselves, could see the danger and run. It didn’t matter what the wider implications of that might be right now and this was the only thing he could think of, as stupid as it seemed. He wasn’t his father – he didn’t have superpowers. He had said as much when he had used his radio one last time to try and contact his father and tell him what was going on, right before he had gathered what gear he had scavenged and chased after Casey. There had been no response then, and he had no idea if his father had heard his message, but by then it didn’t matter. No, he didn’t have his father’s superpowers, but perhaps he could still be a hero just like him.

The Beast went to move, but the next grenade was already flying through the air. The riot officers had each been carry multiples of them. Joseph had taken all that he could find. His ears were numb from the constant booms, but he kept throwing them as fast as he could. Within seconds the air became thick with the smell of gunpowder, and he had to fight not to break out in coughing. He couldn’t tell what had become of the Beast. He had to have been blasted away by the explosions. He had to.

Joseph reached into the bag again, but he froze. He dropped his eyes and shook the bag, but it didn’t change anything. The bag was empty. The only grenade he had left was the one already primed in his hand. It would have to be enough. He looked up, back to the clearing smoke.

The shadow struck faster then Joseph could even think.

He lashed out and grabbed Joseph’s wrist, then with his other hand he pried the grenade from his hand. All Joseph could do was watch as the Beast threw it back down the now ruined path and garden area. He didn’t even look as the grenade exploded harmlessly away from them, his manic glare fixed completely on Joseph.

“You are brave, child, but you are not one of us.” The Beast said as he tightened his grasp. Joseph tried to pull away, but it only resulted in more pain.

“Because I haven’t suffered right? Not like how you wanted?” Joseph said, remembering every word of what Casey had told him. That only seemed to make the Beast angrier.

“You are unblessed! Unsuffered!” He shouted, his voice feeling louder than any of the grenades. He took a step forward and pushed down, forcing Joseph to kneel.

“Who made you the gatekeeper of suffering!?” Joseph yelled through the pain in him arm. The Beast actually backed off a little as a dark thought went through his even darker eyes. He let go of Joseph’s wrist causing him to fall, and then crouched down himself, just enough so that he was still towering over him.

“You are not suffered.” The Beast whispered as a sadistic grin crossed his face. “Not yet.”

That was when the world seemed to explode.

It happened so quickly. A rumbling from somewhere beneath the floor turned into the groaning of steel. A second later the area was filled with the sound of snapping and cracking and fire exploding upwards as the floor below them started to fall apart. Neither of them had realised until that moment how much damage the grenades had actually done to the building. The structure was a monument to the future – it was filled not only with offices and conference spaces, but all kinds of high tech laboratories and advanced manufacturing areas. While the most evident, the chemical plant above wasn’t the only place filled with explosive contents, filled with delicate instruments or elements that didn’t respond well to sudden shifts in pressure or temperature. The repeated shockwaves from the grenades had been small in comparison, but it had been enough to start a chain reaction in one of the sensitive labs on the floor below. The series of explosions that had followed had been rapid and grown more powerful with each one, until finally, as fire and destruction spread out across the floor, a number of support struts had been compromised. Not enough to risk the stability of the entire tower, but more than enough to collapse the areas of the floors directly above and below where the lab was.

Joseph watched as the Beast jumped backwards, his agility having grown with his strength. Joseph tried to turn. He was close enough to the entrance of the area that he might have a chance. As he did there was a flash of movement far in front of him by the entrance to the area, a flash of something familiar, but that was as far as he got. There was nowhere safe left to stand. The sound of the collapse became deafening as the final support strut gave way and entire garden area shifted. The Beast let out a furious scream from somewhere behind him as the floor gave way and gravity took hold.

Then everything went black.

Chapter Text

It seemed like forever for the sound of footsteps to fade away.

David had never felt his heart beat like this before. It had nothing to do with the running – he had been chased before and even been corned a few times and never even gotten out of breath. But he had never worried like this. Joseph and Casey were all alone in the tower somewhere, and he could do nothing to make sure they were safe. He had no idea what to do now. He had tried surrendering to the police, but all that had resulted in was a hail of bullets that he had been lucky to dodge. He had been this close to them tearing through his skin, but all he could think about was what would happen to the others. The only thing he could do was lead the attackers away, and in that it seemed he had been successful. He had dropped down at least three floors from the level he had reached with the others, maybe more, he didn’t think to count at the time. The aggressive police officers had pushed hard to find him, but had eventually given up. The silence had been a strange thing to be faced with, and even the self doubt in his mind had become quiet. What should he do now? No, he decided as he looked up and down the empty corridor he was standing in, that wasn’t the question now.

What could he do?

That was the only thing that mattered now. He had to get Joseph and Casey out of danger. No matter what else was really happening here, he knew that at least was the right decision. There would be other police forces he could hand himself into, as long as they were safe. The plan had been to head up, to the chemical plant. That’s where he had to go.

“Hello? Please, if there’s anyone out there, we can’t get out!” David froze mid-step. The voice, that of a scared woman, had come from just down the last corridor he had just passed. There was a moment of silence, but then she spoke again. “Please! The door’s lock is electric and closed as part of some kind of security measure. There’s a few of us in here, we thought the evacuation order was just a hoax and decided to ride it out. We didn’t know the door would lock! And we keep hearing gunshots! We need to get out of here!”

David’s breath caught in his chest. Time was ticking by. Every second he wasted was another that the others were put in risk. He had to go.

“You’ll be fine! Just stay put, you’ll be safe. Someone will come and get you soon.” He called down the corridor. There was a flurry of banging on the nearest door.

“No wait! Have you heard the explosions! The whole building could be coming down!” Another voice yelled out.

“Zach is right! You’re the only help we have! Please!” The original woman called out again. David stared at the door, then back down the corridor. The room was as safe as any other in the building, they would be fine, they would be safe and protected and – he stopped himself as another thought came into his mind. It caused him to shake his head, to want to cry out and just vanish into nothing, but he couldn’t get away from it no matter what he did. He looked back down the corridor and forced himself to take a step, saying again all the logical things that told him they would be alright.

The problem was, he didn’t believe it.

Before he even knew it, he had turned back and was in front of the room. He wanted to believe he was moving without thinking, but that wasn’t the truth, not this time. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was the right thing.

“Stand back!” He shouted. He waited a few seconds, then threw his shoulder into the door. That was all it took. The thick wood snapped around the lock and the double doors flew open, revealing a large break room with about a dozen people and maybe twice that in bottles of booze. They all looked at him, stunned.

“You’re not a firefighter or a cop.” The woman who had first screamed said.

“Don’t use the elevators, take the stairs. Get out of here!” David shouted, pointing out of the room. A few of the people started to move, but most them just stared at him. Then one of them stepped forward.

“You’re him, aren’t you? I’ve seen the videos. Its really you, isn’t it?” The man asked. The woman looked at him.

“Zach what are you talking about?” She whispered, as if she were frightened she would break the spell of the moment and reality would come crashing back in. The man swallowed hard as David took a step back and lowered his head so more of his face was beneath his hood. There was something in his eyes that David couldn’t place.

“You’re the Overseer.”

“You’re wasting time. Go on, go!” He shouted more forcibly this time. That seemed to break the trance and a second later people were rushing out of the room. He turned away as they passed him, but he caught sight of the last two people in the room. It was the man and the woman.

“Come on Zach, lets go.” She said, pulling him along. He looked her and nodded, but then back at David.

“Ok Trini, I’m coming but,” he looked back at David, “Thank you.” With that they were gone, chasing after the others that were heading for the nearest staircase.

David took a deep breath. It felt like the first time he had breathed in a long time. His shoulders dropped low, like he had finally dropped a weight he hadn’t known he had been carrying as the corner of his mouth turned upwards. He forced himself to blink, but it was like his eyes weren’t working, like they were refusing to go back into the dark. It was only when the mic in his hood buzzed back into life that he found himself able to focus again.

“Dad, dad can you hear me?” It was Joseph. The single was weak and hard to make out, but he was certain it was him. He put his hand to his head and pushed the mic closer to his ear.

“Joseph! Are you alright! Where are you?” He said, pleading to the god of radio signals.

“Dad, I don’t know if you’re receiving this. I hope you are. We’re on the fifteenth floor, at the sky lobby. Its not far from where you left us. The Beast is here. Casey has a plan to try and stop him, but I’m working on a back up in case that doesn’t work. Could really use your help.” There was another break in the single.

“Joseph don’t do anything stupid. It’s going to be alright, I’m coming. Just hold on!” David shouted as he ran for the stairs. The mic crackled again.

“Dad I hope you can hear this. I don’t have much time. There are a hundred things I could say right now, a hundred things I want to say. But there’s no time. Just know I love you dad. Don’t give up.” With that the signal dissolved into static. David clicked the control at the base of the hood, but nothing changed. A surge of adrenaline shot through him, and he reached the stairs in a time that would have smashed records if such things were recorded.

He was half way up the stairs when the first explosion came.

“Did you see the explosion?”

“I saw it on the readouts. It didn’t look as bad as this.”

“The structure isn’t compromised. It was localized to the south corner and only a few floors were affected. But still…”

“There’s a hole in the building. You don’t see that very often.”

“Yeah, look at the flames…”

Even from his position as the table in the center of the lobby, Elijah had been able to see the explosion that had bloomed from the inside of the Osaka Tower. He knew it had been coming. The two technicians had practically given it away with their sudden frantic typing. They had been plugged into the building controls for a while now, and had done everything they could to divert the pressure and prevent the damage to the lab from triggering an explosion. But it hadn’t been enough. There had been a brief flash of light, and then the explosion had broken free into the air outside the tower. All things considered, it could have been worse. The thick glass of the tower had contained most of the blast, with only those closet to the source breaking, but it had been enough for a ball of flame to bellow out along with a low level boom that had attracted the attention of everyone in the area. Even the technicians hadn’t been able to resist the urge to get up and look, being drawn to the window to look like moths to a flame. No doubt the hundreds of people still in the plaza below were also watching the events unfold overhead too. Elijah didn’t blame them. It was the same reason people slowed down when there was a crash on the highway. People were drawn to spectacle.

And what a spectacle this was shaping up to be.

It had been easy enough for him to follow the progression of events inside the tower. The technicians were assigned to watch him, but had their hands fall with their tasks. Besides, what threat could an old cripple be? They hadn’t said as much, but he could tell by the looks they had given him that was what they were thinking. Good. Let them think that, it made it easier to listen in, and what a story it was turning into.

David had been spotted in the building. He was moving up the tower, towards the areas where the Beast had been slaughtering all the forces sent to stop him. It was only a matter of time now before something happened that Elie and her secret organisation couldn’t cover up. That is, if he didn’t decide to help them.

Even now, he still hadn’t made his choice. Elie’s proposition had been more attractive then she probably knew, but the cost was more than any he’d ever had to pay before. The chance to finally learn how all of this fit together, the truth about superhumans and their hidden history. And all he had to do was give up any hope of being recognised for who he really was, to relegate himself to be nothing more than a madman gratefully forgotten. To agree to the greatest cover up the world would never know.

It should have been an easy decision. The fact it wasn’t disturbed him in a way that he found hard to understand.

He hated feeling this conflicted. It reminded him off the past, of all the steps it had taken to get here. Of all the deaths that he had orchestrated. There had been so many he had almost lost count, more so than just the ones from the three incidents that he had been convicted for. The Eastrail 177 crash had just been the culmination of escalating events that had taken the attention of most of his adult life. So many lives ended or ruined, just to get to this point. So many nights spent wondering if it what he was doing had been right. There were moments where he had come this close to giving up, to handing himself in. Times where he had spent all night looking at the faces of his victims. But even then, in the moments of his greatest crises, he had always remained true. His belief had always shone through in the end, reminding him that his actions were all for a higher purpose. There was more to the world, more to people, more to him, than anyone really knew, and he was going to be the one to show them all that, regardless of any relatively trivial cost. In the end, he had seen past the morality of his actions, had surpassed the conflict. In the end, some things weren’t about being good or evil, they were only necessary.

And yet here he was, doubting himself all over again.

A beep from the table took his attention. It was from one the two tablets that the technicians had left when they had gone to the window. Despite it being upside down, he was still able to read the message. It was an update on David’s movement through the building, another clip from one of the security cameras. Elie’s people had taken control of the CCTV system not long ago. It was all there, being recorded and saved. It wouldn’t be long now, but Elijah couldn’t help but find David’s actions curious. He was normally so good at avoiding cameras, but it was like he didn’t care anymore. He had seen it back at the psychiatric hospital too, the all too evident hesitancy in his movements and decisions, the weakness. What had Elie done to him?

David. The Overseer. He had come so far since their first meeting all those years ago. A swell of pride filled Elijah’s chest. Even after he had seen the results of David’s first efforts, he hadn’t been able to imagine how far David could really go. He had even told David as much during one of his visits back when he was in one of the other hospitals. It only made sense. The comics always overexaggerated everything, it was part of the process, but it made it hard to work out what an individual like David would really be possible of. Super strength and durability? Certainly possible. Full on invulnerability and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Once he would have said that was impossible, that whatever people like him and the others would be able to do would have to have a grounding in some way, a link to physical reality. He still didn’t expect to see people soaring across the sky, but he didn’t know what else was on the table now. He wished he could be there inside the tower to see it in person. He wished he could be there for David, to help guide him on this next part of his journey. That’s what he had tried to do in every one of their meetings, in every bit of advice he had given him. David was more than just his opposite, more than just his archenemy. David was his friend, however strange that relationship was now.

The sound of approaching footsteps took his attention. He looked up towards the sound, and a few seconds later Doctor Elie Staple strode purposefully back into the lobby. Her face was taught, her anguish like a veil over her. When she finally looked at him, there was a hollowness in her eyes.

“Time is up.” She said softly. Elijah knew exactly what she was talking about. Things inside the tower must have been coming to a head. It was finally happening, the moment he had waited all his life for.

“I presume your associates are not pleased by your handling of the situation.” He said, keeping his cards close to his chest.

“Things are beginning to spiral out of hand. The decision has been taken. It’s the only one that makes sense now.”

“And yet I’ve still not made my choice.” Elie lowered her head at that and closed her eyes. It was the look of someone who was watching their dream move slowly out of their grasp. She looked at him again, hardened.

“You know, I really do wish it could have been different. I really would have liked to have been your friend. Its too late now. Your choice has been made for you.” She said, her gaze boring a hole into him. Before he could respond she turned towards the two technicians. They were still at the window looking up at the tower, and hadn’t notice her return.

“You two!” They turned to look at her, looking like terror-stricken puppies. “The order has been given. Final containment measures are authorised. Prepare to move out.”

“But ma’am, the people…” One of the technicians said as they both came running over. Elie’s glare grew more intense.

“Collateral damage. The decision has been made. It’s time to go.” She said in a tone that made it clear the debate was done. She looked back at Elijah. “Prepare him too.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to let me die here in the explosions?” He said, a knowing smirk on his face. Elie didn’t seem surprised that he had put the pieces together on that part of her final containment plan. If they couldn’t stop David and the Beast and his Horde, the next step would be to bury them under hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble. The bombs were already being placed in the basement of the Osaka tower. Even Elijah wasn’t sure they’d be able to survive something like that. It seemed like Elie was thinking along the same lines.

“No, you are coming with us. A contingency. Like I told you, the choice has been made. You’re going to tell us how to stop them, whether you want to or not. There are other methods besides my own.” She said, her voice carrying sinister whispers that would have made a normal person shiver. Instead he just stared back at her, letting his face go blank. There was a moment of stand off between the two, but then she nodded to the technicians.

“Get it done. There’s not much time.” Without another word she turned and walked away. A few moments later there was the sound of the elevator, and then she was gone, off to deal with other matters that Elijah could only guess at, not that it was important right now. She was right, he thought as the technicians rushed to gather their things and prep his wheelchair for movement, time was running out. But he suspected they each had very different expectations for when the clock hit zero.

It only took the technicians a few minutes to prepare everything, and then all they had to do was wait for the signal to go. Neither of the technicians noticed they were missing one of their tablets.

David’s heart almost stopped.

It was like walking into one of his worst nightmares. The entire level was so flooded with water it seemed to be everywhere, as if the entire building had been thrown into the ocean and was slowly leaking as it prepared to become the newest addition to the Atlantis skyline. Even the air was thick with it, a fine mist that seemed to stubbornly remained suspended there in front of him, waiting to sting his skin as he walked through it. All he could do was hold his breath and push forward.

It hadn’t been hard to find the sight of the collapse. It was almost like his instinct was leading him right to it. The scenes of destruction were unmissable. Wreckage was everywhere. Pulverised bits of office furniture and lab equipment were mixed in with broken support beams, severed pipes and all kinds of other debris. It was everywhere, impossible to see from one side of the area to the other. As he walked he passed under one of the collapsed areas. He could see up at least three floors, but the view was dark and marred by a scattering of thick structural girders that still held the weight of the rest of the building. They had been largely unaffected by whatever had caused the collapse, and didn’t look to be in any danger now. Tt was so dark though that it was impossible to see much of anything up in the space where the floors used to be. The only light now was from the emergency lights and the occasional embers that had escaped the wash of the sprinkles. The fires were all out now, but their smoke had smudged the glass of the windows, most of which were still intact. It left the disaster area bathed in an eerie yellow light and moving shadows that seemed to change with every blink of the eye.

There was a sudden crash of metal as some pipes broke free from above and clanged on the ground. David froze, the water from the sprinklers washing against his boots. He was out there, somewhere in the shadows. The Beast. He could feel him, as surely as he could feel the water soaking into the protective jumpsuit he always wore beneath his rain poncho when he went out on his walks. It was the kind that construction crews wore, pale green and rugged enough to endure whatever he had gotten himself into in the past. But this was different. Every sense in his body told him that, yet all he could do was keep pushing forward.

He had to find Joseph and Casey.

If they were in here, if whatever Joseph had planned had caused this, then they would need his help, regardless of whether or not he really had superpowers. How could he have been this stupid? To put himself and Casey at so much risk. This was why this whole ideology was so dangerous. Believing in such things as heroes, it set a deadly precedent, one that was being proven by every second that he spent searching through the wreckage. He wasn’t a hero, but the Beast was certainly psychotic. Worse still, he was fanatical. In the face of a combination like that, there was only one thing David’s blurred mind could think to do – run.

But it was too late now.

He had appeared from nowhere. Or maybe David had been too lost in his thoughts to notice him. Either way, there was no missing the way the Beast slammed into him. It was like being hit by a freight train. The sheer force of the blow was like nothing David had ever felt before. He was heaved from his feet, and then a second later he was flying through the air. There was the sound of smashing as he crashed into a pile of debris. He was barely able to figure out what happened before the Beast was there in front of him, hauling him upwards. He pulled him so close that when he snarled, David could feel his rancid, bloody breath on his face. He roared, a sound greater than even the constant hiss of the still on sprinklers, then threw him to the ground. There was a splash of water, and then he was there, on top of him. The Beast raised his arms and slammed them down like a gorilla. It was all David could do raise his arms to defend himself, but the blows rained down like sledgehammer strikes. It hurt, it actually hurt him. He’d felt pain before, but nothing like this. That realisation seemed to trigger his fight or flight instinct, and he somehow rolled to the side and managed to get enough leverage to throw the Beast off of him.

He moved without thinking. Even if it had all been a lie, his years of hunting the city’s criminals had installed instincts into him that were hard to shake off, no matter what else Doctor Staple had convinced him of. He rolled to his side and pushed himself up, trying to block out the feel of the dreaded water washing over him as he did so. It felt like he was rolling around in an ocean. He was so sluggish. Dragging his feet through the water, he threw a punch at the Beast, but he had already flipped himself upright and was ready for the blow. It was the hardest punch David could manage. He had put everything he could into it, everything a normal man like himself could summon.

The Beast barely seemed to notice it.

All that happened was he took a half step back, though it seemed to be little more than the curling of a spring. He lashed out blindingly fast, like a viper, and seized David, his fingers scraping against his chest as they clenched around his clothes. The next thing David knew he was being slammed to the floor. He was like a ragdoll to him. The Beast whipped him around, smashing him into the wreckage. There was the sound of ripping cloth, and then David was rolled across the floor.

“Is this all you can offer?!” The Beast yelled as David pushed himself up, his voice bellowing over the wreckage. He looked at the torn bit of clothing in his hand, shaking it around like a bit of meat he had triumphantly taken from his prey. David looked down. It was the front part of his rain poncho. “Your sacrifice will mean nothing like this!”

“I’m not here to fight you!” David shouted, but the Beast just snorted like an angry bull.

“You are here to die! To prove to the world the might of my power! But you can’t do it like this. You are broken! Weak! No one will see the truth in your suffering like this!” He shouted, lashing out and smashing a nearby cabinet that had survived the collapse of the floors relatively intact.

“You’ve got it wrong. The Doctor was right! We don’t have superpowers, we’re not special. This is all just, just a terrible mistake.” David said, but it meant nothing. The Beast threw aside the torn cloth and rushed him, seizing him by the throat and lifting him off the ground.

“You are wrong!!! They are all wrong! I will no longer be denied!” He yelled, then slammed him to ground. For a second his face was in the water. David snapped his head up, coughing.

“I’m not going to help you! I’m nothing!” He yelled in between breaths. The Beast crouched down next to him, his massive muscles threatening to break through his skin from the tension. For a second, something changed in him. It was like someone else entirely was speaking.

“David, look at yourself. Look at where we are. The Beast has thrown you all through this wreckage.” This voice was calmer, but no less deadly. There was still that fanatical look in their eyes.

“What are you saying?” David asked, his voice a whisper. The Beast, or whoever it was, leant closer. They smiled softly, menacingly.

“David, there’s not a scratch on you.” David’s mouth fell open, but no words came out. He had heard those words before, long ago. How could they know? They couldn’t. Unless it was true. David looked at his hands. His uninjured hands.

“There is strength in you.” The Beast bellowed from above. David hadn’t even notice him stand up. Whoever else was there was gone now, and the Beast’s demonic voice bellowed with furious might. David looked back at him. “I will help you to find it again.”

The Beast lashed out, grabbing David. He could barely keep his feet under him as the Beast dragged him along, forcing a path through the wreckage through sheer force alone. It took a few moments, David wasn’t sure how far he had been dragged before the Beast released him. The sprinklers in this area weren’t working, though the yellow emergency lights seemed brighter here. David stood up, bracing himself for whatever the Beast was going to do next, but nothing came. Instead, he had stepped backwards, moving far enough way that he was just an ominous shape standing in the shadows. What was going on? David got the sense that trying to get away would be a mistake, so he turned his attention to area before him. He didn’t get it, it was just like the rest of floor, filled with wreckage. The only thing that was different was the towering pile of debris that was in one corner. It looked like it had pilled up against a wall as it had fallen. For a second David just stood there, trying not to shiver from the water that coated him. But then something cut through the noise of the sprinklers. A sound he would know anywhere.

He was moving before he could even think. He jumped on the pile of wreckage and started frantically searching, grabbing at pieces of broken steel and plaster and glass without a second thought. Every second that passed was more painful than anything the Beast had just done to him. There was just so much debris. Every time he moved one piece more would fill the space it left. It was only when his foot slipped that he saw a gap being enough to actually look through, but the sight that greeted him almost made his heart stop.

It was Joseph.

He was almost completely covered by a mass of wreckage, so entangled it was difficult to see what was connected what. Yet there was no mistaking the sight of blood. It coated an entire side Joseph’s T-shirt, and maybe more that he couldn’t see.

“Dad?” Joseph said again. It had been the meekly sound of his voice that had first gotten David’s attention.

“Its ok Joseph, I’m here. You’re going to be alright, I’m going to get you out of here.” David yelled as he grabbed at the wreckage. His hands were struggling to find purchase, desperately dancing across the jagged metal. He knew he was moving more out of panic than precision, but it was hard to calm himself.

“Dad, dad its ok. I know its going to be okay now, because you’re here.” Joseph said slowly. It seemed hard for him to focus. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Don’t talk ok? Save your strength.” David glanced back over his shoulder. There in the shadows, the Beast still waited. He was watching every moment, unmoving. “Help me! You’ve made your point, now help me, please!” The feel of a hand on his own took his attention again.

“Don’t worry about me, dad, its not important now. It’s not what matters.” Joseph said through half closed eyes, even now trying to be the rock.  

“Why did you have to do this? Why did you have to try to be like…” His voice trailed off as he pulled at the broken metal grate in front of him. It wasn’t moving. None of it was. It was like a single solid mass, resolute in its determination to defy any efforts to move it. He just couldn’t do it, he wasn’t strong enough. He was just a normal man. No, he was a fool, and now his son was going to pay for his sins.

“Hey, don’t blame yourself for this. I, I wanted this, I chose it. It’s not your fault.” Joseph said as David took his hand. His grip was so weak, his hand cold. How could he ever have allowed this to happen? He had been more than a fool, he had been a deranged, delusional charlatan. Doctor Staple had been completely right about him. All he did was hurt people, make things worse.

“You should never have been here! Why would you ever want to be like me?!” David shouted, his fear and frustration robbing him of focus, of what little, normal, strength he actually had. He grabbed the nearest bit of metal with both hands, but could do nothing more than make it rattle. His mind was going blank now, the only thing left being the sheer, ice cold terror that now gripped his soul as surely as his still soaked cloths clung to his skin. If there was one thing that was true about Elijah’s theory, if there was one element of all of this absurdity that was real, it was this moment, this situation. He did have a weakness, one that had nothing to do with water or drowning or anything like that.

It was his family. It always was.

“Dad!”

Joseph’s voice was stronger than he had ever heard it before, and when he met his son’s eyes, he saw a burst of strength. He recognised the type, the look. He had seen it before, in the worst of the people he had put down, that last minute rush of determination that only came when the end was near. It was normally accompanied by a sheer primal terror, a need to survive, but that wasn’t what he saw when he looked in Joseph’s eyes.

“Dad, I’ve always wanted to be like you. You’re a hero. It’s who you are. It’s who you’ve always been. I’ve always known it.” Joseph gave a smile that was filled with hope and conviction. He looked as deep into David’s eyes as anyone ever had, pushing past the fear, past the doubt, reaching a point David had thought had long been sealed away. “I’ve always known it, dad. Always. I believe in you. Just like mum did.”

Audrey.

It had been so long since he had been to this memory that he had almost completely forgotten it. The edges were blurry and cracked. It was like an old photograph that had been left in the sun too long, but with ever heartbeat the details began to come back into focus. It was just enough.

He was home. It was morning. On the living room table was a pile of papers and forms. He remembered filling those out. This was when he had decided to quit his security job and started his own business. The forms had been complicated, and on this particular morning he had been in no mood to sit down and force himself to go through them. He had been too ecstatic. The night before had been his most successful patrol yet. He had managed to track down one of the head enforcers for a huge local drug dealer who had elevated to murder when their territory had been threatened. Taking down the enforcer was the first step to finding the dealer themselves. It had been a big win for him, and it had left him feeling fantastic. All that had changed when he had approached the kitchen.

The voices of Audrey and Joseph had been clear to hear. He was older here, a teenager, but still so young. He had stopped when walking when he heard the tension in their voices.

“I hate that place.” Joseph said as David edged down the corridor. He pushed himself against the wall, just close enough so that he could edge around the corner and see both of them without being seen himself.

“Everyone says that about school. It’s a right of passage. Now eat your eggs before they go cold.” Audrey said as she joined him at the table. She had barely sat down before she noticed the look on Joseph’s face. David had seen it too. “Honey what’s wrong?”

“I…” Joseph’s voice trailed off before it had even really started. There was a paleness in his face, a hollowness that went beyond the usual tiredness that all teenagers suffered. It was like someone had drained the life from him. Audrey reached over and rubbed his arm.

“It’s ok, I won’t be mad. You can talk to me. You’ve been really off for the last few weeks. I’m worried.” Joseph nodded.

“I quit the football team.” He said simply.

“What? But you’ve been obsessed with football for ages. For a while there it seemed like all you could talk about. What happened?” Audrey said carefully. She was never a fool, she could tell there was more to this, David realised. It was a strange turn of events. Joseph had been giving every spare moment he had to football, so much so that he had been missing classes and been pulling back from his friends. He didn’t know what to make of it.

“It’s ok. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t for me anymore.” Joseph said, clearly trying to shrug it off.

“Joseph, come on.” Audrey shot right back. He let of a dejected sigh, realising that he wasn’t going to get out of this that easily. He went to talk but stopped himself for a second as a thought went through his mind. David recognised that look.

“I quit because I’m no good at it. I’m not talented enough. I don’t have what it takes.” He said, completely defeated.

“Joseph, honey that’s nonsense. I’ve seen you play, you’ve got all the talent you need.”

“You don’t understand!” Joseph dropped his head and let it rest on the table.

“Then tell me. Please. You don’t have to be afraid. If it’s upsetting you this much, if its that important, then its important to me too.” Another long paused filled the room. When Joseph looked up, his eyes were red with tears he was fighting his hardest not to let fall.

“I’m not enough, mum. Not for the things I want to do, not for the things I have to do. I’ve tried so hard. It hurts so much. But its all for nothing. I can’t do… I can’t play football. I’m not as talented as…” His voice went silent, but the last word hung in the air as plain as day. In that moment, David understood.

He had been around Joseph’s age when he started to realise something was different about him. He hadn’t understood at the time, the possibility hadn’t even entered his mind, but it had been then when his powers had first started to emerge. The strength, the stamina. The invulnerability. Joseph had always wanted to be like him. It all made sense.

“Joseph, you don’t have to be your father, you-”Audrey said, but Joseph just shook his head as a said smile came across his face.

“It’s ok mum. You don’t have to say anything. I’ve made peace with it. I’m not good enough. That’s all there is to it.” He said, and with every word he spoke the emptiness that filled him spread out until it seemed like there was nothing of him left. He hadn’t known how powerless Joseph had been feeling. All he wanted to do was walk into the kitchen, pull his son in to a hug that all the world’s worth couldn’t buy, and tell him how important he really was. But Audrey beat him to it.

“Do you remember how it was a few years ago? I mean right before the train crash? It might be hard to remember, everything got so intense so quickly back then. It makes the whole time period kind of blurry, at least for me. But there’s some things that are still clear. Like your father. He was different back then. I don’t know exactly how to explain it. It was like he was lost somehow, like he had become numb to the world. Numb to us, too.” She said, pausing as both she and him unknowingly relived the memories together. How unhappy he had been, how he’d been pushing away his family without even really knowing it. It had been so difficult, for all of them, so much so that it had almost broken the family apart.

“Mum, what’s this got to do with… football?” Joseph asked. She smiled softly, regaining her chain of thought.

“My point is, your father went through the same kind of thing that I suspect you are. I know what you’re going to say, that he was always great at football and never once struggled with it, but you’re missing the point. The fact is, he has struggled. I know how much you love your father, how much you admire him. He had an incredible talent, and it made him great at what he did. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be great too. Here’s the thing Joseph, here’s the thing you really need to understand. There’s more than one way to be great at something. Its not always about talent. Its not even about hard work, though that is certainly part of it. Its deeper than that.” She paused so that she could turn and look at him square on.

“What is it?” Joseph asked.

“There’s a simple truth in the world, yet its one that sometimes even the smartest people can take a lifetime to figure out. It doesn’t matter what you want to do with your life, it doesn’t matter if you want to be a rocket scientist or an artist or a five star chef, it doesn’t matter at all if you don’t believe in yourself. That’s the key. That’s the thing that’s going to give you strength in your darkest moments, it’s the thing that’s going to keep you going and keep you true when everyone is telling you to stop. Its not a fix all though. Its not going to magically make you good at something, and its not going to make it easy. Sometimes we don’t get to do the things we want. For one reason or another, things don’t go as we hoped or planned. But if you believe in yourself, it won’t beat you. If you believe in yourself, you can find your own path, your own way of doing stuff, your own way of finding worth and joy in whatever it is you want to do, even if its not like what you first planned. You don’t have to be like anyone else to do that. And you know what? Sometimes, if you have faith in yourself and are strong enough to forge your own path, you can end up doing remarkable things, things that no one thought possible.”

A new type of silence filled the room. It was light and energetic, filled with an energy that had seemed a distant memory in the moments before. Once again, the world seemed full of hope.

“Mum, that’s a hell of a speech.” Joseph said finally. Audrey smiled at him. And then Joseph smiled back.

“I’m a physical therapist, part of my job is motivating people. But what I said is true Joseph, every single word of it. Promise me you’ll think about it, ok?”

“I will. Thanks mum, I feel a bit better now.”

“Good, now eat your breakfast. I don’t think there’s any harm missing first period.” She said with an impish grin, causing Joseph to laugh.

Despite the moment passing, David was still rooted to the spot in the hallway. It was more relief than anything else. He found himself letting out a breath. Joseph was going to be ok. That was all that mattered. As long as Joseph and Audrey were alright then everything else would fall in line too. As he started to compose himself, the sound of more conversation came from the kitchen.

“Mum, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure honey. What’s on your mind?”

“Mum, what do you think happened to dad?” It was Audrey’s turn to freeze. A strange look went over her face, one that both Joseph and himself were unable to recognise. When she spoke next, there was a coyness to her voice.

“I think he found himself again. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m glad it did. Your father, he was, he is, an incredible man. Sometimes he forgets that. More than anyone I’ve ever met, I think he needs to be who he is. I don’t think either of us really understood that for a while. But somehow… we made it back. Somehow, he became the man that I fell in love with again. And then so much more.” Audrey smiled as she shook her head, as if there was something else on the tip of her tongue that she wanted to say but thought better of it. It was probably some embarrassing memory of the two of them together, David had thought at the time. The idea that it could have been anything more than that never once crossed his mind.

“Yeah, dad is pretty awesome.” Joseph agreed, smiling at his mother and clearly not picking up on whatever subtleties that had slipped past her guard. He just seemed happy. “If there’s anything I believe in, its dad.”

“Yes,” Audrey said as she toyed with the food on her plate, her eyes starry and distant. “I believe in him too.”

In an instant, David was back amongst the wreckage again, the orangey yellow emergency lights lighting up the seemingly endless spray from the sprinklers.

How had he forgotten that? The memory had been so clear, yet a moment ago it was as if it hadn’t even existed. It did of course, he knew it had happened, but it was one of a million domestic memories that made up a lifetime. All of them were precious, all of them an equal part of the journey that had led him to this point, but memories had a way of blurring together, particularly the routine requirements of an everyday life. It had just seemed like a normal morning of a normal day. Nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. Yet it was all different now.

Audrey.

Even now it was hard to think about her, yet he wouldn’t have it any other way. There was a hole in his heart now, and as agonizingly painful as it was, it was one of the few things he had left. Every moment they’d had together had been a gift, and waking up in the mornings next to her had been one of the greatest pleasures of his life. They had shared so much, perhaps more even than what he shared with Joseph. She had always supported him, even when she knew he was holding back things. She had always been there to chase the nightmares away. And now she was doing it again.

Of all the memories that could have come back to the surface, why had it been that one? Though as soon as the question went through his head, he knew it was silly. It had come to him because it was what he had needed. And because, Audrey had been right. It was like she had been speaking directly to him, not then but now, speaking through the echoes of time and past the veil of death. Her words were like blades of light, piecing the shadows that had surrounded him.

It was like waking up from a decade long coma, one he hadn’t known he had been in.

David looked down again at the wreckage beneath him as Joseph’s eyes slipped closed. There was no hesitation. He reached down and wrapped his hands around the thick, mangled bar that seemed to run through the core of the wreckage, the thing that seemed to hold the majority of the debris together.

How could he have ever let this happen? The thought was familiar, but the feel of it was different now. It didn’t fill him with paralysing dread, but instead a raging fury that raced along his veins like the impossible union of fire and ice.

It's alright to be afraid, David, because this part won't be like a comic book. Real life doesn't fit into the little boxes that were drawn for it.

He could have stopped this situation. He could have put an end to it before it had gotten this far. Why hadn’t he just trusted himself, the thought echoed in his head as he forced his hands to grip tighter, so tight that his fingers started shaking as the rubbed against the jagged metal.

It's hard for many people to believe that there are extraordinary things inside themselves, as well as others. I hope you can keep an open mind.

All the years he had been active, why hadn’t that been enough proof? Ellie, Doctor Staple, had gotten into his head in a way that he hadn’t even imagined was possible. She had found cracks in his mind that had long been sealed, yet she had forced them open anyways. He could still feel the pain of it, but he wouldn’t be suffocated by it again. Come on, he shouted in his head as he clenched his jaw.

There are two reasons why I'm looking at you like this. One because it seems in a few minutes you will officially be the only survivor of this trainwreck, and two, because you didn't break one bone, you don't have a scratch on you.

Come on! He crouched lower and adjusted his grip. Every muscle in his body screamed from the effort, but it didn’t hurt. It was instead a numbness that he was doing everything he could to fight back against. He would never stop fighting again. The bar beneath him started to shake.

Why is it, do you think, that of all the professions in the world you chose protection?

There is strength in you.

A lot of people are going to die! Overseer! If you don't. Get through. That door.

Dad, I’ve always wanted to be like you. You’re a hero. It’s who you are. It’s who you’ve always been.

Yes. I believe in him too.

David looked down at the closed eyes of his son. He thought about Audrey and Elijah and everyone else he had come into his life because of all this. He thought about all the pain, all the doubt he had ever felt, all the despair for a world that he couldn’t find his place in, all of it. And then he thought about how right had felt when he had truly embraced who he was for the first time. People were going to die if he didn’t do that again! Right now, right in front of him! This was it, this was the moment he had been rushing towards his entire life without even knowing it. He could feel it, in his body and his soul, he could feel it just beneath the surface. He couldn’t run from it any longer, couldn’t hide and pretend this wasn’t real. He was more than just a man, more then just a guy doing something ridiculous and insane. He was a hero.

And now he believed it.

There was a loud shrieking snap as something finally broke.

David hauled the severed ends of the steel bar aside as the rest of the wreckage became looser. He dug down, grabbing whatever he could and throwing it aside. Massive bits of concrete flew through the air like they were nothing more than pebbles, chunks of warped steel clattered across the ground as if that was where they had first fallen during the collapse. It didn’t matter what was in front of him or how heavy it was. All that he cared for was reaching his son.

In the end all it had taken was a couple of seconds. Slowly, David stood up from amongst the pill of rubble, rising from the pit he had dug as concrete dust fell away from him. Combined with the mist from the sprinklers and the silhouette of his half torn rain poncho, it made him look like some otherworldly being that had touched down on Earth for the first time. Steady on his feet, he stepped away from the pit and quickly made his was to an area that was relatively clear. It was there that he crouched and laid Joseph down. With a trembling hand, he reached out and placed two fingers against his son’s neck, checking for a pulse.

“You have suffered.” A deep and familiar voice came from behind him.

David up and turned, his hands balled into fists of rage. By the time he had spotted the Beast slowly stepping forward out of the shadows he was all he could think about. He had done this. He was the one who had caused all this suffering. Had caused all this new pain that was sitting right there next to his anger. It made it hard to think, hard to process anything else. But he knew he had to stop him. That was his guiding light now.

“Welcome, brother, to your new life. I thought you were going to be the anvil on which the final swords of my revolution would be forged! But I see now the truth. I have created you, my greatest champion.” The Beast said triumphantly, as if this had been his plan all along. He stepped out into the light holding his arms wide like some biblical figure.

“All you did was make me see how much I need to stop you.” David said, coldly defiant. The Beast let out some kind of snort laugh, as if what ever happened next didn’t matter, as if he had already won. Maybe he had, maybe that was the case, but David knew in that moment he was going to do everything he could to stop him.

David didn’t even feel the water from the sprinklers as he charged at the Beast. He barely even gave it a consideration. Any fear of it had been burnt out of it by something far more terrifying. He could have been stuck in the middle of the ocean and he doubted it would have had any affect on him.

There was a flash of arms and teeth and fingertips that were on the verge of being claws as David slammed into the Beast. He hit him again and again, light blows that were more about testing David’s defences than anything else. They both knew this wasn’t even a fraction of what the Beast could do, but David was in no mood for playing games. That first hit had lifted him enough for David to get a grip, and now he dug down deep and surged himself forward, picking up speed and force with every footstep. Within moments they were racing through the wreckage that littered the floor, literally blasting through anything that was in their way in a shower of splinters and shards. The part of him that was still logical reasoned that he just had to get the Beast away from here, away from where he could cause the most destruction and death, but there was another factor at play here, something as primal as the lust for violence that seemed to fuel the Beast’s own strength. There was a part of David that just wanted to run away from this place, to put it and what had happened here behind him. No father should have to see his son like that.

The Beast finally realised that there would be no warm up, no gladiatorial measuring up of titanic abilities. The prelude was over and the main event was upon him, but he hadn’t been ready for this particular turn. All he could do was scream in frustration as he tried in vain to escape the Overseer’s grasp. But then they hit the glass.

The building’s window shattered instantly as David charged through it like it was nothing more than a paper screen. Shinning slivers of glass shimmered in the sunlight as the two flew outwards into the open air outside the building. Then gravity took hold.

Their fate was out of their hands now.

Chapter Text

Casey raced down the stairs as fast as her feet could carry her.

She was practically throwing herself down the staircases, almost slamming into the wall at the end of each turn. Floor after floor passed by in a blur, and it was only once her pace had slowed that she’d realised how far she’d gone. The ground seemed a lot closer now when she looked out of the window, but the view hardly mattered to her now. All she could focus on was the sound of the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Her heart had never beat this fast before, but even now it felt like nothing compared to the burning in her veins. She had barely survived the partial collapse of what felt like an entire side of the building, but the shock from that still felt like nothing compared to the tornado of thoughts that had stormed back into her mind once she had been too out of breath to move.

She had faced the Beast and survived, but not come out unscathed.

Even now the battle was still raging in her head. She had survived, that was enough, that was the whole point. So why had it left her feeling so hollow? No, it was worse than that. The Beast’s venom was still creeping through her veins, his poisonous words repeating in her ears. It made her want to fold inwards every time she took a breath, and she hated herself for it. In a small instance, in a handful of words, he had hammered home all the fears and doubts she had always had about herself, gave a voice to all the things she had feared the world would think about her and her situation. She had never been torn down like that before. She had guessed he wouldn’t have reacted… well… to what she had to say, but his response had shattered past every shield her new beliefs had given to her. It had been like her new strength hadn’t even been there at all, and when he had come for her, when he had looked at her like he had all his other victims, she had been utterly powerless to do anything. She had frozen, just like she was now, just like when her uncle had…

The thought made her shiver in a way she hadn’t in a long time. How could she have thought she was anything other than a… a victim. She wasn’t anything special, she wasn’t strong. She hadn’t chosen to be a survivor. All she had chosen was to delude herself. The best thing she could do now was to get out of her before she got herself killed, and then burry herself, seal herself away from all of this. To lock herself up in the dark and to never again leave her cage of shadows.

No.

The thought was as repulsive as any other that she ever had, so much so that for a second, she had to fight away a wave of sickness. But the other feeling, the one that was like a steel rod inside her spine that refused to bend, it was still there. She stood up straight, her chest still heaving, but not from the breaths she was quickly taking. It was something else, a surge of certainty and defiance that was like a rushing river of adrenaline being shot through every vein at the same time and made heart fill with strength. No, she repeated to herself. She wouldn’t go back there, she wouldn’t go back to how it was before, how she was before. She couldn’t. There had to be something else that could be done, something else she could do help and stop more people from getting hurt. It was the only thing that made sense to her now, the only thing she could focus on. Turning, she made her way to the nearest window and looked out, down at the central plaza, her mind racing. As she looked at all the crowds of people still trying to work out what was going on and what to do, an idea formed in her head, and in that moment she couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t seen it sooner. It had been right there, the key to everything, and now she new what she had to do. There was no way of knowing if it was going to work, but it was the only chance she had now, and if both Joseph and David were gone, it might be the only chance any of them had to actually stop the Beast.

Casey went to climb the stairs again when something impossible caught her eyes. It was the sight of two men surrounded by a shower of glass, falling through the air. In a second they had gone, fallen out of sight. For a second she thought she had imagined it; she wanted to believe that she had imagined it, but the truth was written all over her face, was in the knot in her stomach. There was no more time for indecision. She started running as fast as she could.

The concrete cracked from the impact.

For a moment the world seemed to hold its breath, and the only thing that cut through the stillness was the sound of the glass from the broken window falling around him. Each jagged piece was like a deadly tinkling splinter stabbing into the veil, shredding it with every shard that smashed against the ground. Only once the last piece had fallen did time seem to come snapping back into motion.

David climbed to his feet and looked at the maze of cracks around him.

In the past, lesser impacts had occasionally knocked him unconscious, but he had hardly felt this one. He had landed hard on his back, but all that had done was create a small cloud of grey dust from the broken pavement. He turned and looked up at the tower, barely able to see the place from where he had leapt. He had actually survived that fall. When he had charged the window, he hadn’t even thought about the possibility of dying, and despite his renewed faith in himself even he had to admit, it was a remarkable feat.

Everything was different now. In all his years of patrolling the city, he had never felt like this. It was like he had stepped into another body, another mind. Everything was sharper, clearer. In the past, he had never exactly felt ‘bad’; he didn’t get tired or out of breath. But he had never felt this… alive. It was like he was still falling through the air, the sheer adrenaline from the wind rushing past him as he fell becoming a sustained baseline feeling now that was surpassed only by his almost blinding rage for the Beast. The Beast… David spun around, searching the area. They had separated during the fall, and now he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, David came face to face with something he hadn’t considered.

“Are you… alright?” A man in a blue jacket said.

“Did you fall out of that building?!” Another person asked. Before David had even had a chance to process an answer, a score of people had joined the others, rushing across the plaza. They were all starring at him with the same look on their faces, a look that told David all he needed to know – they had seen everything.

“I…” His voice faded as he tilted his head down, hiding it more beneath his hood. What was there to say, what could he say?

“What happened to the other guy?” Someone else asked. A second later, they got their response.

The lump of concrete flew so fast it was difficult to see. There was a gasp from the crowd, and then David felt the piece of rubbly pass by his head with a sharp swish. He could do nothing but watch as it slammed into the chest of one of the onlookers. She instantly collapsed to the ground with the bit of rubble embedded in her body, dead before she hit the floor. David spun round as the crowd screamed and jumped back.

The Beast snarled as he jumped on to the roof of one of the temporary stands that had been set up in the plaza. There was another piece of rubble in his hand. He launched it at David, but he easily stepped aside and avoided it.

“Are you prepared, my dissident disciple?!” The Beast boomed, tearing away what remained of his shirt. He was so much bigger now. He was like some kind of mutated body builder whose anatomy had shifted to something inhuman, his muscles bulging so much they seemed one step away from bursting through his skin.

“I’m nothing like you!” David yelled, instinctively taking a step towards him, not caring who heard him. Just seeing the Beast made his anger flare. The Beast laughed. He then stood up straight and reached up to his shoulder. David hadn’t seen it before, the shard of glass sticking out of his body. Without breaking his gaze, The Beast pulled the shard out. There was a spurt of blood, but then it abruptly stopped. He looked at the shard for a second, before throwing it aside. By the time the glass had hit the ground the wound on his shoulder had already healed. There wasn’t even a scar.

“I told you, we would finish this in front of the world!” The Beast yelled, his voice loud and powerful.

“Let’s finish it then!” David shouted back.

Nothing more needed to be said. The Beast leapt from the top of the stand and fell like a laser guided comet. He hit the ground fist first, smashing the concrete where David had just been standing. It all went so fast after that first blow. The Beast roared again as he pummelled the ground with blow after blow, sending a shower of concrete chips exploding into the air. All David could do was back up, dodging as best he could. But then someone screamed. One of the onlookers hadn’t been quick enough backing away, or maybe she had just been too shocked. Either way it didn’t matter; she was still hit be handful of shards, enough to make her bleed and cower as the Beast continued ploughing towards her. David didn’t think. He lunged forward.

It was like two freight chains slamming together. David did his best to grab the Beast’s arms, but his timing was off, and the Beast seized him by his waist and threw him into the ground. It had worked though. The girl had managed to move, but now David had another problem. He was pinned, barely able to move as the Beast brought his fists down on him like a gorilla pounding the ground. Each blow was like being hit by a car, and he knew exactly what that felt like. Each hit knocked the breath from his chest. For a few moments all he did was try to roll with the blows as he tried to wriggle out from beneath the Beast, but it was no good. He could only guard for so long. Waiting until the Beast raised his arms again, David pulled his arm back and then let his fist fly.

The blow connected. The Beast hadn’t seen it coming. David’s fist hit him square in the jaw, sending him flying a dozen meters to the right. David rolled and jumped to his feet instantly, but the Beast was just as fast. He was ready when David slammed into him, his feet tearing up the ground like the tracks of a tank. David had the momentum though, and with another well aimed blow he sent the Beast flying forward again. He smashed into another stand, hitting it so hard he smashed through it completely. David didn’t drop his pace and run right through the hole he had created, jumping into a different part of the plaza. It was more open here, the display and carnival-like stands of the previous area giving way to a more natural space. There were artfully placed boulders and a few trees, grass and marble and wooden benches. And people. So many people.

What where they are still doing here? The evacuation had already begun when he and the others had entered the tower, so why where they still here? They were staring up at the building like it was some kind of show, their phones out and recording every detail they could see. A handful were gathered around the spot where the wreckage of the stand had stopped, but there was no sign of the Beast.

“Where did he go?!” David asked urgently as he skidded to a stop next to the crowd. They looked at him, confusion and fear in their eyes. What had they seen? One of them crowd pointed off to the side.

“The big guy? He headed for the street.” David looked in the direction the person had pointed. Not far from the garden area of the plaza was the small road that run around the perimeter of the area. It was filled with even more people and a number of emergency buses, though the pace was slow going. Barely any of the gathered vehicles were moving, and those that were trudged along at a snail’s pace. It was like the entire evacuation had stalled, but he didn’t have time to think about that. He jogged forward, searching the area, but there were just too many people, too much stuff. The Beast could have been anywhere. A shiver went down his spine. The Beast could be anywhere… including right behind him.

David spun round, but it was too late.

The Beast slammed into him, knocking the air out of him. He felt the Beast’s fingers dig into his back, into his flesh, as he threw him forwards. He spun through the air before hitting something that didn’t instantly collapse. There was just enough time for his senses to return for him to realise he had hit the wall of one the buildings on the outside of the plaza. Then the Beast was on him again, hauling him up by his neck so high that his feet no longer touched the ground. He snarled like a rabid animal. The blow that came next was the first of many. David could feel the wall behind him crumbling with every strike against his ribs. He had to do something. He brought his hands up, put them together, and slammed them down as hard as he could on the joint of the Beast’s arm that was holding him. The arm crumpled, so much so that David heard the bones snap as he fell to the ground. The Beast took a step backwards as he howled, more out of anger than pain. He whipped his arm out, straightening it, the damage already healing.

“Is that… all… you got?” David growled defiantly as he regained his breath. He couldn’t help himself, but instantly wished he had when the Beast used his good arm to send a devastating uppercut at his head. The blow knocked him off his feet again. He didn’t black out, but for a few moments, a few long moments, his view of the pavement was accompanied with a ring of ominous blackness. The Beast sensed his moment.

“Unawakened masses! See me now!” Even in his groggy state, David was able to focus on the Beast’s voice. He forced his head up, fighting off a wave of dizziness, and watched as the Beast walked slowly back to the garden area of the plaza. He came to a stop next to one of the decorative boulders. It was the size of a car. He turned, his arms wide, holding himself like some kind of psychotic preacher. There was something in his posture, his tone, something David didn’t know what to make of.

“You are blessed to be here, now, to witness with your own eyes the dawn of the revolution!” He shouted again. People were looking now, turning to face him, unable to ignore the sheer volume and distinctness of his deep, bellowing voice. The more people looked at him the more it seemed to drive him on.

“I am the first of the chosen! I am the strength of the evolved suffered, and you will all see me now! You will witness my undeniable might and then, I will anoint the worthy amongst you! And you will beg me for the chance!” He let out another inhuman scream. All eyes in the area were on him, and he knew it. It was like someone had poured petrol on a fire. Blistering with energy, he spun back around to the boulder. It was so much bigger than him, but it was like it meant nothing. The Beast set his feet and grabbed it. He let out a scream, a primal noise of rage and fury and power.

Slowly, the boulder raised into the air.

It was like watching some kind of titan from mythology. Even David was stunned. The Beast roared triumphantly as he hefted the boulder onto his shoulders, and then higher still. It didn’t even look like it was an effort for him. Slowly, he turned, the concrete slabs beneath him cracking slightly with every step he took. The dark smile on his face was as manic as it was terrifying.

“See the power of the suffered!” The Beast shouted. Then, without any hesitation, he threw the boulder. It was like it was nothing more than a rubber ball. The giant rock flew through the air, smashing through both a tree and a lamp post with ease before it crashed into the side of a bus with so much force it actually tilted it for a moment. There was a horrible sound of tearing metal as the bus hit the road again, the boulder firmly lodged in the middle of it. The Beast looked to the crowd. His smile grew into a demonic grin as he pounded his chest. He closed his eyes, waiting for the adulation that he had so long sought for.

But the applause never came.

The Beast opened his eyes again as a new look snuck onto his face, one that seemed far more unnatural than any of his snarls or glares. He looked around, searching for the awe and worship he had expected. But all he saw was fear. Everywhere he looked, people were cowering away from him, too scared to do anything but freeze up. They hadn’t been moved. They hadn’t been inspired or awakened or any of the other things the Beast had hoped for. And that was unacceptable.

Somewhere inside of him, something dark and unfamiliar flickered its fork tongue, something that terrified him.

He screamed, and in that moment the doubt that had tried to creep in was transformed into a blinding, burning fury that served only to reinforce his beliefs. If they wouldn’t come to him, if they still don’t understand what he was offering, then he would just have to give them more evidence of his power.

David hadn’t been ready for what happened next, especially as he was still coming around. Nobody was ready in fact. The Beast moved so fast, faster than he ever had before. All anyone could do was watch as he seized the person nearest to him. There was a blood curling scream as the Beast tore into the man with his claw like hands and razor-sharp teeth. By the time the victim was thrown aside, there was little left but a pool of blood and a mass of torn flesh. But the Beast was still hungry. He set his sights on another person as the crowd started to break up and flee in all directions.

David forced himself up to his feet. His head was still spinning slightly, but he forced himself to focus. It had all happened so quickly. The scene had gone from stunned silence to utter chaos, and now the Beast was lashing out at anything that moved, as if he had gone fully rabid. With every second that passed, more blood was being spilt, more fear and confusion was filling the area. He rushed forward, instantly breaking out into a run. He pushed past the people, the remains of his rain poncho flapping in the wind behind him. He was full on sprinting when he slammed his shoulder into the Beast, hitting him just as he was about to leap at another victim. It wasn’t a direct hit though, and he only skidded a few meters. He spun around, screeching at him. David braced himself. It was going to be different this time. However they fought, it would be more brutal, more desperate. He clenched his jaws as the Beast flexed his muscles.

The sound of a horn was the last thing either of them expected.

Both of their heads whipped around, looking down the road. The sound was coming from one of the buses. It was racing towards them. Even from here, David could see the terror on the driver’s face. It wasn’t the bus’s actual driver, but seemed like a terrified civilian who had taken the wheel. Unfortunately, the Beast had seen it too. Without saying a word, he rushed towards the oncoming vehicle, leaping at the windscreen. With one hand tearing into the metal roof, he used the other to smash the glass of the windscreen. The terrified driver screamed, but put up no resistance when the Beast pulled him out and threw him aside. The Beast smiled sinisterly as he gripped the wheel and wrenched it free. The bus immediately started to swerve, growing wilder with each back and forth movement. The Beast jumped clear as the bus picked up more speed, but then it swerved to the side and hit the lip of the pavement that lined the road, bouncing it back.

Bouncing it straight towards where a crowd of people had gathered, trying to get into one of the other buildings.

There must have been a few dozen, all of them too taken by their own fear to notice the danger speeding towards them. David looked at the bus, and then the Beast, standing there smiling at him, willing him to chase him. It wasn’t even a choice though. David darted for the bus, planting himself firmly in its path as it careened towards him.

He didn’t know how fast the bus had been going when it finally hit him, but it didn’t immediately knock him aside or drag him under the wheels. The front of the bus crumpled as he dug his hands in. It was the only thing that kept him up. His feet were skipping along the surface of the road, but time was running out. He glanced up at the rapidly approaching crowd. Some of them had noticed the bus speeding towards and started to scatter, but it wasn’t enough. There were only seconds left. He had to act now. Gripping the bus with all he had, he stamped his feet down. A horrible screeching filled the air as the rubber of his shoes battled with the tarmac of the road, but then he pushed down hard, digging in with all he had. There was the feeling of something hard breaking, and for a long moment he actually felt his leg go numb. But the bus quickly started to slow. With only a few meters left, it finally stopped. He felt the engine stall as the bus gave one last death rattle, shaking, but then it fell still as the engine disengaged. A wave of sheer physical relief passed over him as he let his arms fall and stepped out of the small troughs his feet had created. He turned around. By now everyone who had been trying to escape into the apparently locked building had heard the bus coming and turned around to see it, but now they were all looking at him instead. In their eyes, he saw the same look that the Beast had hoped to see, but there was no time to waste.

“Get out of here!” He shouted at the crowd.

“We can’t! All the exits are being blocked off by the police!” Someone shouted. David’s eyes narrowed as his mind raced. What could that mean? It had to be Doctor Staple. What was she up to? More screaming brought him back to the present. There was nothing more that he could do for these people, but the Beast still had to be stopped. And he still had to pay for what he had done to Joseph… With rage filling him, he ran around the side of the bus. The Beast was there crouched over in the middle of the road, feasting on another victim. David looked around, seeing the damaged that had been caused by both the boulder and the speeding bus. An idea came to mind. He broke into a sprint, pausing only for a moment to crouch down and grab something from the wreckage on the street, then he was moving again, rapidly closing the distance between them.

“Hey, forget about me?!” David shouted as he skidded to a stop. The Beast looked up at him, blood dripping down his chin and covering his chest. He barely had a second to react before David swung the broken piece of lamppost at him. He swung it like a baseball bat, hitting the Beast straight in his chest. The blow was hard enough to send him flying up into the air and into one of the buildings. He smashed into one of the giant temporary video screens that had been placed on buildings all around the plaza area. Before everything had unfolded, they played glorified adverts for the building’s features and interviews with people in suits talking about their hopes for the future. But now they were all blank, showing nothing but an error code. The one the Beast smashed into exploded in a shower of sparks and glass that littered the sidewalk below. The Beast slide down but quickly recovered. He thrust his hands against the wall beneath the screen, his claw like hands easily piercing the brick walls, gripping it like it was nothing more than a climbing frame. He clung there above the street, like some kind of furious gremlin, looking back at David and snarling. Effortlessly, he ripped a brick from the wall and threw it at the ground. David gripped the broken lamppost shaft even tighter.

There was still more to this fight.

Chapter Text

Casey barged through the emergency exit of the Osaka tower and rushed along the side until she was looking out at the plaza. There was no point worrying about alarms, the entire building was blaring with sirens now. She didn’t have to look long. The signs of the fighting between Joseph’s dad and the Beast were easy enough to see once you had gotten used to the idea of superbeings. It wasn’t so much the wreckage, but more the looks on people’s faces. It was a look she well recognised now, one she had worn herself often enough. Sometimes it was terror, sometimes it was awe, but whatever else was there, it was always accompanied by a broken disbelief, a sense of the impossible, a shock. It was a hard feeling to describe, the moment you realised something impossible was real. You knew it was true, you had seen and felt it, but it was like the rest of your mind was still racing to catch up. It was a hard thing to reconcile with yourself, but right now it made it easy to follow the path. Tearing her eyes from the stunned people standing together in bunches here and there, Casey run through the plaza.

Following her instinct, she pushed through the park area and found herself almost entirely on the other side of the plaza now. It was another largely open area, but it was filled with dozens of square marble bases and glass display cases. All of them were filled with a mixture of modern art and examples of technological innovations, examples of the things that the companies in the tower were hoping to create. Even now, with all that was going on with the tower, there was still so many people just standing around. Some were looking at the displays, others were chatting or wondering why they couldn’t get a signal on their phones. Just like everywhere else in the plaza there was an air of confusion clinging to the people here, but there was something else too, an irritation that was on the verge of boiling over to a panic fuelled anger.

“What’s going on?” She asked as she walked over to a group of people. One of the group, a woman, gave her an annoyed glance, as if this wasn’t the first time she’d heard this question.

“The police have closed off the street for some god only knows reason. How are we meant to get out of here if its so urgent?” The woman said as she held up her phone trying to get a signal.

“Yeah it’s a massive crap show. They don’t even look like real cops.” Another member of the group said.

“Thanks.” Casey said as she walked on, though the group barely noticed. They had been right though. Not far away, the ring of buildings that lined the plaza opened up, giving way to a street that led off into the city. It was entirely blocked though be a mixture of threatening black vans, police cars and various barriers. And all of it was guarded by people in thick black riot armour. Not real cops, the guy from the group had said. Clover. It had to be. They were still trying to contain all of this. Surely they couldn’t think they could cover it all up now?

Without thinking, she had wondered over to the street, to the road. There was still no sign of David and the Beast, but her instincts were screaming at her that this is where she needed to be. A flash of movement caught her attention. On the other side of the road that marked the boundary of the plaza, a few buildings down from the exit road, a set of double doors opened up. The building was the largest on the street, but still sat in the shadow of the Osaka tower. Its door stretched along its entire base though, and as one they opened, pouring out more officers dressed in black riot armour. And there, in the middle and right behind the first wave, was Doctor Staple and Elijah. He was in what looked like some kind of advanced medical wheelchair, being pushed along by one of the officers. They stopped by the road side as a handful of officers started barking into radios and pushing the crowd aside. Casey rushed back and darted behind the nearest statue. They had to still be looking for her, there was no doubt in her mind. Slowly, she peered around the corner. They were barely a dozen meters away, so close she could see the stress on Staple’s face. She looked to Elijah, to ‘Mr Glass’. He looked so frail. If you were to pass him on the street you would never have imagined he was the one responsible for so many deaths, so many of the city’s disasters in the past. His actions were still an unspoken truth amongst the city’s inhabitants, so much so that even making her way through the plaza she had heard people making muttered references to the past, wondering if the tower would be added to the list of Mr Glass’s crimes. It was weird, she thought as she looked at him. He didn’t look evil. He didn’t look like a killer. But she knew all too well the masks that darkness hid behind.

Without warning, Elijah turned his head. It was like he had heard her thoughts, and looked right at her. He matched her gaze perfectly, and Casey knew he had seen her. He couldn’t hide his surprise, but then a soft smile crossed his face, like another piece of a puzzle that only he could see had fallen into place. Casey narrowed her eyes quizzically, but before she could think about it anymore, the world changed again.

There was a terrible sound of crashing. Casey spun around in time to see a number of the displays shatter as something was driven through them. It was them. Even as David pushed the Beast along, they continued to wrestle. It was like watching a tornado rip through a town; nothing seemed to slow them down. All she could do was cover her face and drop down to avoid the small shower of debris, but then they had passed her by. Many others did the same thing, but most of the people in the area just turned to see what the new commotion was.

David threw the Beast to the floor. Not for the first time, he wished he still had the broken lamppost shaft, but the Beast had knocked that away not long after he had jumped back down from the wall. They had been fighting ever since, throwing their might against each again and again looking for the cracks that just had to be there, somewhere beneath all the super powers and determination. David had been lucky so far; most of the fighting had taken them away from people, but the opposite was true now. There must have been hundreds of people here, all no doubt held up by the nearby roadblock. What the hell was going on now?

The sound of a blood curling snarl took his attention. The Beast had sprung up from the ground. He snarled again, but this time it wasn’t at David.

“You!” The Beast screamed, starring at one of the nearby buildings. David followed his gaze. Elijah. There he was, along with Staple and over a dozen of her guards. They were all glaring at him and the Beast, as was everyone else in the area. The new wave of anger that rushed through the Beast was so powerful it was like a blast of fire that even David could feel. He understood why. The revelations about Mr Glass’s involvement in both their origins was still fresh in his mind. The Beast roared again and then, as if he didn’t even care about David anymore, rushed towards Elijah. For a moment, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The Beast begun barging through the crowd, literally tossing people aside before they could even react. At the same time, the guards around Staple jumped into action, rushing forward and firing whatever weapons they had without any thought for the people in their way. By the time reality caught up to what was going on, the Beast was already fighting the guards. They stood no chance, they had to know that. Yet without fail, one after another threw themselves at him. It was the actions of true fanatics, people willing to lay down their lives for the thing they believed in. That was all that mattered to them. Anyone who got in their way was just collateral. Whether it be from stray bullets or the vicious blows of the Beast, people were getting hurt.

That was all David had to see. He moved, diving into the middle of the fighting. He did his best to draw the attention of both sides. The guards were more than willing to come at him, but he had yet to see the Beast be like this. He wielded a single-minded focus. Anything that got in his way now was just an annoyance. He dispatched his victims with a cold ruthlessness that was driven solely by a need for vengeance. The only thing that made him pause was the bullets. At this close range, and with clear shots, they had enough power to still do damage to him, enough of a risk that he couldn’t afford to ignore them. Even when David threw himself around his waist, it only took his attention for as long as it took to pry him off and throw him across the street. He landed hard against the curb, close enough that he could hear Doctor Staple yelling furiously, desperately, into her phone.

“We need reinforcements! They cannot be allowed to escape!” She yelled not caring who heard. She turned to Elijah and dropped low, matching his eye level.

“Something amiss, Doctor?” Elijah said dryly. She ignored it.

“Tell me how to stop them, please. Tell me now, I need to know.” The sound of a particularly horrible scream took her attention. The colour drained from her face as she turned back to Elijah. “Tell me how to stop him at least!”

Elijah looked at her silently. But then that smile came over his face. David had seen it enough to recognise it. It wasn’t gloating or smugness, but rather the look of a man who knew something that you didn’t, and was glad to be able to teach you.

“You can’t stop him.” Elijah said as he learned forward. “You never could. But I think she might just stand a chance.” With that, Elijah slowly turned his head to look at something across the road, in the display area of the plaza. David followed his gaze, his stomach sinking when he saw what he was looking at.

Casey.

She was making her way through the chaos, moving towards them. What was she doing? Why was she here??

“Casey get out of here!” David yelled. She looked at him, but the moment she did David realised his mistake. The Beast had heard him too, and turned his head too look at her too. He dropped the person he was holding, and headed for her.

Casey. The great traitor.

With the flex of his hand, the Beast crushed the spine of the guard he was carrying, his weapon dropping to the ground. He could hear him still whimpering in pain, but his eyes were fixed firmly on the girl ahead of him. Just the sight of her set his teeth on edge. His inexhaustible pit of rage flared again. Her betrayal was just as great as that of the broken man, Elijah. In a way, they had played integral parts in his coming. And now they would be part of the key that would unlock his future and begin the revolution. It all made sense now. Of course, the unseen broken had yet to come to him. He had to free himself from the sins of his creators, had to finally take that last step into the burning light and let it purge him of whatever chains were left. Casey, Elijah, and the hooded man. It didn’t matter whose blood he tasted first.

They would all die by his hand.

Casey didn’t know what she was thinking. She just had to be there, had to try and reach Kevin and the others one last time. Yet the look on the Beast’s face now was unmistakable. It was like standing before a rabid tiger or a starving lion, a deep primal feeling of threat that made you realise you were nothing more than prey. He was going to kill her.

“I can help you!” She shouted, but the Beast only roared at her. She had to do something! Her mind raced for an idea, anything, but it was too late. Suddenly he was there in front of her, his mountainous form seemingly threatening to block out the sun. His breath was coming in rapid, excited bursts, his eyes as dark as shark’s. He reached towards her, clawed hand grasping at her throat. All she could do was watch. But then another hand came into view, sneaking its way over the Beast’s shoulder. Over his should, and round his neck.

David wrapped his arm around the Beast’s throat as hard as he could.

This was it. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he was certain of it. This was the moment, and if he didn’t stop the Beast now, he never would. He called on every ounce of his strength, clamping down hard as the Beast realised what was going on. Instantly he was thrashing around, clawing at the air. He reached up, pulling at David, pulling at what remained of his rain poncho, desperately trying to find any purchase he could. Each time he did, David would shrug him off, twisting just out of reach while all the while continuing to squeeze harder. The Beast let out a huge, defiant roar that might have been deafening if it wasn’t abruptly cut off by David’s chokehold. It wasn’t over though. It was like trying to plug an erupting volcano. There was so much strength there, so much power. But David wouldn’t let go. He thought of everyone that the Beast had hurt, all the people he could have saved. He thought of Joseph. No, David thought defiantly, bitterly. Furiously. No, he wouldn’t let go.

It was like watching a clash between the sea and the sky. Two impossibly powerful entities, finally forced together, warping the world around them with the intensity of their conflict. All Casey could do was jump backwards as the Beast charged at nothing, his desperate, frantic thrashing like a tornado destroying anything in his way. He smashed into one display cabinet and then another, each step smashing the concrete slabs of the plaza beneath him. Yet no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get David off him. It was like a cowboy running down a raging bull, draining its energy until there was nothing left. The Beast’s eyes flicked as he slowed. Finally, he dropped to his knees. He clawed at David’s arm around his neck, but they were empty gestures, harmless compared to the power he was faced with. He growled again, but it was a pitiful sound, one that faded as David squeezed even harder.

“Don’t do it!” Casey yelled before she even knew what she was doing. In a heartbeat she was moving, racing over to where David stood above the Beast, still choking him. He glanced up at her. The face beneath the hood wasn’t the man she recognised. It was the face of pain and fury. It was the face of the very monster he was trying to halt.

“He has to be stopped!” David yelled. There was so much pain there, so much suffering. In that moment, she understood why. She hadn’t seen Joseph since the collapse in the tower. She hadn’t let herself think about it, about what that might mean. Yet looking in David’s eyes, she got her answer.

“I have to kill him!” David said as the Beast weakly struggled again, though it was still enough to send cracks into the concrete.

“You’re right, he has to be stopped.” Casey said as he placed a hand on David’s arm. “But you don’t have to become like him to do it.”

David looked at her, but he wasn’t seeing her. He was somewhere else, somewhere in his mind, fighting a different battle.

“Just give me a chance. Please. I need it.” She said as David’s attention came back to her. He nodded, loosening his grasp just enough for the Beast to take a breath. He instantly tried to break free again, but it was pointless – there was nothing he could do to break David’s control over him now.

“You, are, weak!!!” The Beast snarled as he looked at Casey. “Even now you will not do what is needed!”

Casey crouched down slightly, enough so that she was on his level. He was still staring at her, the anger in his eyes clear. There was only one card left to play now. All she could do was hope it was right, hope it would be enough.

“Do you remember what I said before? How it wasn’t my suffering that made me strong, but it was me who decided to be strong?”

“Pitiful nonsense of a person too foolish to see how pathetic she really is, too scared to be anything more than a victim!” The Beast snapped back. Casey took a deep breath, letting his words wash harmlessly over her.

“I was wrong, at least when it comes to you. You, you and the others, you didn’t choose to be strong. You were made that way. There was never even the possibility of choice for you all. It just was. And I see now, I understand, I know what really happened. What happened to you, what happened to Kevin.”

“What, what are you saying?!” The Beast asked, a touch of fear in his voice, a look of uncertainty in his eyes. Casey reached out and took his hand. He didn’t fight her, but she could feel the terrifying power in his grasp.

“You and the others, you were born from Kevin’s suffering, from his trauma. You are strong and powerful and mighty, because that’s what you have to be, in order to protect him. Because even now, even with how powerful you’ve become, he is still suffering, isn’t he? Kevin is still broken. Even by your definition, he is still weak. His trauma didn’t make him strong. He made all of you because he couldn’t be strong, because he couldn’t face the pain of what happened to him. Just like countless others can’t, because it doesn’t work that way, it doesn’t work how you think it does. And you know it, don’t you?”

“What, what are you saying?” The Beast said as he shook his head, his voice so much more human now. Casey squeezed his hand.

“It’s ok. You were just trying to help. You were trying to help Kevin, but that’s not what happened, is it? You and the others were meant to be the answer to his suffering, but you’ve only made it worse. He is in there, now, terrified and in pain, because the very thing that has made you strong has destroyed him. You were meant to protect him, you were meant to be the answer, but now you’re just another part of the problem. Don’t you see? There’s almost nothing left of Kevin now, and if you don’t stop now, it will be too late. You’ve become the very thing you were meant to protect against.”

“I, no, you’re wrong, I…” The Beast muttered weakly, but his voice faded out.

The light was shattered.

It lied in shinning fragments in the dark, reflecting beams of brightness in all directions. Inside the confines of his mind, a chorus of voices shouted. The noise was inescapable, as was the truth they were all screaming. The Beast could barely find room to move, let alone speak. Everywhere he turned, another voice was there. He begged them to listen, begged them to understand his actions. But it was no good. Their fury was a storm, one that robbed every ounce of power he had. His voice became weaker than it ever had been as all the others came together in a single voice.

Casey was right. They had been hurting Kevin. Now they had to protect him.

It was a rushing tide of binding darkness and searing light. They engulfed him, consumed him, jumped on every part of him. He struggled, he fought, he dug his claws into his own personal fragment of the light, but it wasn’t enough. The bars were being placed, the locks being set. All he could do was scream as the pit closed in around him, as darkness invaded every part of his being. As the light was ripped from his hands. It wasn’t enough though. One by one, the fragments of light went out. The space became ever more still as one by one, they all stepped into the dark. And then, as only a small, candle-like flicker of light remained, the space became empty. Only a single voice remained.

“Wha… Casey?” A new voice said, one that was distinctly different from the Beast’s. Casey nodded to David. They had both seen the transformation, both felt the change.

“Kevin?” She asked hopefully. Kevin nodded as David wearily loosened his grasp on him. He seemed so small now, so weak. His arm instantly fell as he let go of Casey’s hand.

“Its so quiet now. We’re all going away. They’re waiting for me. They’re going to protect me again.”

“Kevin, its ok now. The Beast is gone.” Casey said, placing her hands on Kevin’s shoulders as he started to sway. He gave her a weak smile.

“It’s alright… Thank you.” He said, and for a moment a look of blissful calm came over him. it was the look of a man at peace. Then his eyes rolled back into his head before closing. Any strength he had left vanished as his consciousness disappeared into the unknown ether in his mind. He slumped to the side and collapsed to the ground.

Casey and David looked at each other. For a moment it was tempting to think it was over, that they had done it. But as close to the end as they were, there was still one more step to take. Without saying a word, they both turned to back to the street, to the building, to where Doctor Staple and Elijah still waited.

That’s when the world changed.

Chapter Text

It was time.

Elie watched as the Beast tore through the guards, but her attention was on all the others, the people who had fled far enough way to actually stop and watch what was unfolding. The people who had pulled out their phones and were recording every impossible act, every drop of blood. She shook her head. As a psychologist, she was well aware of why people felt the need to record every last aspect of their lives, but she still couldn’t believe it was an actual thing. The danger was right there. They could see it just in front of them, not even twenty meters away. Yet still they stopped, time and again, stopped and turned, and looked and recorded. But it was quite the spectacle.

She had been right about them. They were special. Remarkable. Incredible. Even from here, she could practically feel the power flowing from them. It was a power that could move mountains and change the course of rivers, a power that could raise empires and alter the minds of millions. It was a power that mortals weren’t meant to have. She had seen the secret history that the rest of the world didn’t know. She knew how these situations played out more often than not. She knew how much they tipped the scales.

That’s why she had to end it now.

She watched as David forced the Beast to his knees. He really was a hero. In another life people would believe in him, would follow him, would try to live up to the example he would no doubt set. But it meant nothing now. She looked past him and the Beast, up at the Osaka tower. In her mind she imagined the basement and the high yield explosives that had been hastily attached to the key support columns. There was far more than what was actually needed. The blast would be huge, more than enough to topple the tower onto the plaza and indeed a lot of the surrounding area. It would crush and bury anything and anyone here. David and the Beast were strong, but there was no way they could survive that. At least, that’s what she hoped. But every second that she wasted now meant that hope became a little thinner. Yes, she thought, it was time.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the detonator that one the technicians had gave her. She flipped up the safety catch and got her fingers in the right positions. She pressed down the trigger, pressed the primer button. The button on the top the detonator turned red. All she had to do was press it, knowing that her life would be the cost. She closed her eyes and took a moment to think about her daughter. Then she pressed the button.

The explosions never came.

Her eyes instantly sprung open as she scanned the tower, but there was nothing. No plumes of fire or smoke, now cloud of debris. She pressed the button again and again, checking she had the procedure right and hell, even that the batteries were in the right way round. In desperation she stepped down the steps and closer to the street, to the tower, and tried again. Still there was nothing.

“Not quite what you expected, hmm doctor?” A voice came from her side. The moment she heard it a cold chill went down her spine. She turned.

Elijah was sitting in his medical wheelchair, smiling at her. In his hands was a tablet. It was one of the same ones her technicians used. In that instant, she knew everything.

“You hacked the explosives, didn’t you?” She asked, already knowing the answer. Elijah nodded.

“And your jamming programs. Its all right here, just a click away.” He explained simply, his finger already hovering over the screen.

“Don’t do this Elijah, please.” She said, desperately trying to think of something. She had no moves left though, nothing.

“I think I’ve come to a conclusion in regards to your offer, doctor.” Elijah said, his face a mask that was impossible to read. But he hadn’t pressed the button yet.

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what I’m offering! You have no idea how far this goes, how much you don’t know. It would change everything for you. You could be so much more if you let us help you. You are special Elijah, you really are.” She said, though the attempt to play to his ego was so obvious a child could see it. It seemed to make him think though. But then his eyes narrowed.

“How many other people have you said the same thing to before you put a bullet through their skull? Did you ever really think any of them were special, or just abominations that needed to be eliminated? Did you think your daughter was special?” Elie actually flinched at that, but any feelings she’d had about her daughter had long since been locked and buried away. Still, an edge of anger managed to slip into her voice.

“Look around you, Elijah! Is this what you really want? All this destruction and chaos, all this fear. This is how it starts. It gets worse from here, it always does. One minute you’re inspiring people to do better, the next you’re the cause of a genocide. It always escalates. And now, in this time, with the culture as it is, this obscene obsession the world has with superheroes, it’ll be worse than it ever was before. It will change the world in ways I doubt even you, with all your genius, can imagine. Please, don’t do it.”

Her words hung in the air, a cold shield of logic that was her only remaining defence. She hoped that he could feel the weight of her words, that he could see the horrors that she knew reflected in her eyes. She hoped her terror didn’t have to be shared with the world.

Elijah sighed. He looked past her, at David and Casey and the Beast, then at all the people who were watching them. He studied their faces, moving quickly around the crowd before letting his eyes go distant. When he drew a breath to speak, Elie felt every muscle in her body seize up.

“You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here. That’s,” he turned to look directly at her. “That’s just an awful feeling.”

“Elijah…!”

He pressed the button.  

The effect was instant. All at once, the jumbo display screens that had been put on buildings all around the plaza came to life, showing footage that had been uploaded from various security cameras all over the area. At the same time, hundreds of phones all dinged with the sounds of notifications, as the very same clips being played on the jumbo screens were posted to all kinds of video sharing and social media sites. Then there was the sound of countless messages, finally free to be sent to contacts all over the country and indeed the world. It was like the bubble had broken, as the same scenes repeated itself all over the plaza, in all the buses and cars that people had tried to escape in, in all the surrounding buildings that people had hid in.

Now the entire world could see how David fought the Beast. It was there on the screens, every titanic blow and impossible feat, from the moment they had burst out of the window of the tower to David stopping a bus and the Beast ripping through people like they were paper. His programming had captured and packaged it all.

Now the entire world would see that superhumans existed.

“Elijah… what have you done?” Elie muttered as she watched the incredible footage play out again and again, all around her, as a wave of excitement passed over the crowd. Up ahead, by the barricade on the exit street where more of her people still waited, she watched a news reporter crew burst into action as they realised that their signal had returned. Their camera turned to look at the jumbo screens, then at the Osaka tower itself. Without saying a word she glanced down at the useless detonator still in her hand. Even if it worked, it would be pointless now. The genie was out of the bottle, in a way it never had been before. And she didn’t know how to put it back. Something on the ground caught her eye, something that had been discarded by one of the dead guards that the Beast had killed. It was a simple act to take the few steps, bend down and retrieve it. When she stood, she aimed the handgun directly as Elijah. She couldn’t stop the truth, but she could stop him at least.

Her eyes slammed shot on instinct as she pulled the trigger.

It took her a second to open them again, and another second to register what she was seeing. It was David, standing in the space between her and Elijah with the girl, Casey, off to one side. The torn remnants of his rain poncho blowing in the wind. And the bullet from her gun lodged in the material of his overalls, right in his center. He looked down. Then, with one hand, he wiped the bullet away. It fell to the ground, as deformed as if it had hit a solid rock wall. There wasn’t even a mark on David’s skin. He looked at her, and when he did she saw that all her gunshot had done was destroy any lingering doubts about himself that might have still been lurking in the shadowy depths of David’s unconsciousness.

“You’ve finally fully embraced who you are.” She said, stating the fact that was clear for everyone to see.

“The person you tried to steal from me.” David replied back, though there was no anger in his voice. Rather, it was completely calm, completely certain. She dropped the gun. It was useless now.

“Are you going to kill me?” She asked. His gaze grew cold.

“No. There’s been enough killing today. You’ve failed here, doctor. Just go.” He said, completely committed to his decision. Elie let out a small, humourless laugh.

“For what it’s worth, you’ll make a fine hero. Make the most of it while you can. You, none of you, have any idea what you’ve started.” She explained, a true empathy in her voice. She had meant what she had said. He would be an inspiration. Even she could feel it. But there was no telling what happened next. Even she didn’t really know. All she was certain of was that there would be a response to this. There had to be.

With just a nod to David, she turned and headed for the barricade.

She looked at Casey as she passed her, noting how different she suddenly seemed.

She took a glance at the Beast, at Kevin, now blissfully lost in a coma of his own making.

And lastly, she looked at Elijah. She paused as their eyes met. There were no words exchanged. Instead, just a simple understanding. She had underestimated him and paid the price. She had lost.

As she approached the barricade her people signalled her. She moved on autopilot, issuing the orders to withdraw from the area. Yes, she thought again, she had greatly underestimated all of them.

Whoever came after her wouldn’t make that same mistake.

David made sure doctor Staple was truly gone before he turned to the others. Casey still looked shocked, but there was no fear on her face anymore, no terror in her eyes. She just seemed numb, but in a good way, like she was taking that first breath after jumping into a cool lake on a hot summer’s day; that moment when you realised that not only were you alright, but you might actually be better than you were before. He could almost hear her heart still racing, but she looked to be ok, at least for now.

He turned to Elijah.

David had seen it all happen, seen the conversation between him and Staple, seen him change the world with the press of a button. Given everything that had just happened, he seemed remarkably calm. He was just sitting back in the wheelchair, a small smile on his face as he watched the scene around him. Slowly, as if he were stepping once again into Elijah’s world, he walked over to his side.

“I like your cape.” Elijah said without looking at him. For a second, David was confused. But then he looked down at himself and understood. With all the fighting, he had completely forgotten about how the Beast had ripped his poncho back inside the tower. With just the hood and the back piece remaining, it certainly had a kind of heroic look to it. He didn’t know how to feel about that.

“How are you? Did they hurt you? How are you even here?” He asked, changing the topic.

“Staple wanted me to help them. She wanted to know how to stop the both of you, what your weakness were. But I see that you’ve evolved past that now. There’s still much more to you, but this is a good start. I’m proud of you.” Elijah said, at last looking up at him. David’s stomach twisted into a knot.

“Proud? A good start? Elijah people died here today. A lot of people. This is nothing to be celebrated.” David said firmly, but it only made Elijah smile.

“Still that unflinching sense of morality. I was truly right about you. I hope you can see that now. You’ve found your place. Tell me, Overseer, please, how does it feel?”

“It’s…” David paused. He already knew the answer to that question. Being this certain of who he was, it was a crystal-clear clarity that now filled every part of him. He had never felt this good in his entire life, even after all the punishment he had taken. But even now, a cloud of guilt still hung over his new sense of self. So many people had died, so many people had been killed. And then there was Joseph… He still couldn’t find the right words, but all he knew for sure in that moment was a part of him wanted to say that it wasn’t worth it.

“It’s enlightening, isn’t it? That’s one of the few words that can describe it. I only wish it hadn’t taken so long.” Elijah said, and David honestly couldn’t find the strength to disagree with him.

“At least its over now.” He said, looking back at the crowds of people.

“Over? Its not over David. It’s just the beginning. Elie and her group, they won’t stop. They tried to destroy us in the most devastating ways. The most personal ways. I won’t let that go. I can’t.” There was an edge to Elijah’s voice that David hadn’t heard before, not even in their conversations when he had been in prison.

“Elijah, you can’t go to war with these people. I saw them, in one of my visions. They’re everywhere.”

“And that’s why they need to be stopped. Even now, we’re still at risk.”

“Then we’ll stop them. But we’ll do it the right way. The world knows now. That has to change things.”

“And what if it isn’t enough? What happens when they come for us? What happens when they come for the people you care about?” Elijah spat, his growing fury evident. David just looked at him, unable to hide his own shock. “I won’t let them bury us again. I don’t care what I have to do, who I have to hurt. Its not going to happen. Even if it takes a million dead bodies, so be it. It’ll be worth the cost.”

David moved from where he had been standing at Elijah’s side, turning to face him directly. For a moment all the two did was stare at each other. David saw the man who had put him on the path that had allowed him to make sense of his life. He had been his friend, his guide, his confidant and mentor. Together they had changed the world. But he was also something else. A man whose pain and anger had irreversibly changed him, a man who was capable of monstrous things. He was dark and dangerous, and now whatever evil that had been growing inside of him for so long had seen its chance. It had been given air and a chance at the light, it had seen everything it could be, and now there was no stopping it. Perhaps there never was.

“You know, I’ll have to stop you.” David said slowly, leaving the unspoken meaning in his statement to hang in the air before them. Elijah actually smiled, and David knew exactly why.

“I know you’ll have to try. Its who you are. And this, Mr Glass, is who I am.” Elijah said, a finality to his words. They both felt it. It was like saying goodbye to someone you knew you were never going to see again.

There was another long pause, another silent exchange of thoughts and feelings. Then, with a single final nod, David turned away. He looked for Casey, but she was already making her way to his side. He almost didn’t recognise her at first. There was something different about her, but she seemed uncertain. It was like she was learning to walk all over again, and still hadn’t quite worked it out yet.

“Are you ok? How are you doing?” He asked as she drew near.

“I’m alright. I’m doing… better.” She said, but there was something in her tone that made it clear she didn’t want to talk about it. David looked at her for a long moment, expecting to see some kind of weakness that was on the verge of eating her alive. Instead he saw strength. An unrefined raw strength certainly, but it was definitely there, even if she didn’t want to talk about it. That was fine, she had earned that.

“Ok then.” He said simply, giving her a reassuring smile.

“Are you alright?” Casey asked. There had been little time for conversation once Staple’s intentions had become clear. He nodded.

“I’m as fine as I can be. Its all sorted now. Its over.” He said, though Elijah’s words were still ringing in his ears. As if reading his thoughts, Casey looked past him.

“What about him?” She asked, gesturing at Elijah.

“Not something you need to worry about. Come on, let’s go.” He said without looking back, but Casey didn’t move. There was a strange look in her eyes. Almost on autopilot, she took a step towards him. David turned, but Casey was already speaking.

“Hey, I know we haven’t really talked, but I know who you are. Or at least, the stuff they say about you.” She said softly, but it was enough for Elijah to look at her.

“And what do they say?” He asked, though he seemed more amused than anything else.

“Not a whole lot really. I bet that will all change now.” She said, causing him to nod in agreement. David frowned. Where was she going with this? She seemed to have a way of connecting with broken people, but now wasn’t the time to explore that.

“Can I ask you a question? Its something I think I need to know.” She said, her tone turning more serious, serious enough for Elijah’s expression to change.

“You may.” He replied, looking at her fully.

“Why did you do it? Push the button, I mean. I head what Doctor Staple offered you. It must have been tempting at least. So, why, what swayed the decision in the end?”

Elijah looked at her, looked at her with that look that seemed to see right into the core of a person. It was like he could see all your fears and doubts, all the secret parts of yourself that you kept hidden from the world. He had always been incredible at reading people, at figuring out either the exact thing they needed to hear, or what he needed to tell them to get them to do what he wanted. Sometimes it was both. But he didn’t say anything right away. Instead he looked back at all the people still in the plaza.

“There have always been unknown forces that don’t want us to realise what we are truly capable of. Even besides Elie and her secret group, there’s always been things in the world that sometimes we can’t even recognise that are set against us. From the moment we’re born, through every breath we take. They don’t want us to know the things we suspect are extraordinary about ourselves are real.” He paused. Only they were close enough to actually hear him, but it was somehow like he wasn’t speaking to them at all, but instead to the wider world, to the stones and to the sky and to all the eternal things. Even David was paying full attention. He had never heard his friend speak like this before.

“I believe that if everyone sees what just a few people become when they wholly embrace their gifts, others will awaken. Belief in oneself is contagious. We give each other permission to be superheroes, to be incredible, even if we don’t have powers at all. We will never awaken otherwise.” Another pause, and then both David and Casey watched as Elijah turned his attention back to them.

“It doesn’t matter who sees what happened here today, superhuman or not. Everyone in the world will know how powerful they can all be. And whoever these people are who don’t want us to know the truth, wherever they are and however strong they might be, today,” Elijah’s smile was so bright it could have lit up a dying star. “Today they lose.”

For a moment there was nothing to say. For a moment, for a brief precious moment that passed all too soon, the three of them were connected to something that went far beyond themselves. In a way it was like they weren’t even themselves anymore. Instead, they were the widened eyes of the countless masses that were watching the videos of what had happened. They were the shocked open mouths that turned into smiles, the lump in the throat, the racing, thundering, heartbeats. They were the whisper that turned into a roar, the secret that became the truth. In that moment, they were a new, fragile light, brightly flicking against the dark, one that everyone could see.

They were hope.

“You need to leave David. Before the real authorities get control of the situation.” Elijah finally said as an approaching siren wailed in the distance. “I’ve edited the footage to hide both of your identities, but that won’t mean anything if you’re still here David. People will remember the faces of those in capes. You might want to remember that.”

“Casey, will you do me a favour?” David asked, ignoring Elijah but not his warning. She looked at him. “Joseph, he is still in the tower. He is… he is still up there, on the floor of the collapse.”

“I’ll lead the rescuers to him. I promise.” She said confidently. He believed her. His heart was aching, but Elijah was right, and there was nothing else he could do here. He took one final look of both of them, then a lasting glance at the tower. Then, as people started to look in their direction, he turned and ran. It didn’t matter where he was heading, as long as he got away. And nothing could stop him now.

A few seconds later Casey ran off too, spotting a fire crew heading for the tower. All Elijah could do was sit there on the steps of the building where Elie had put her final test to him. More and more people were starting to look at him now, starting to takes pictures and record videos. It didn’t matter; secrecy was the last thing on his mind. He had done it, he had changed the world. This was the moment he had spent every second of his life working towards in one way or another.

This was the moment the world was let into his universe.

Chapter Text

DISASTER AT OSAKA

TERRORIST ATTACK FAULTED BY HOODED ‘HERO’

IT CAN’T BE REAL – CAN IT?

‘SUPERHERO’ SHOWDOWN

MR GLASS RETURNS

WHO IS THE OVERSEER?

Casey scrolled through the headlines and trending topics as she waited on the steps outside the hospital, still feeling slightly like she was in a dream. It was a feeling that had been with her every minute of the last two weeks, ever since the incident at the tower. She had been right in the middle of it, but it still felt like she was racing to catch up at times. Everything was changing so quickly. The entire world was talking about what had happened. The story had blown up so fast. The opening of the tower itself had been world news, but hardly something to fill the headlines. Now though, with the actions of David and the Beast clear to see, it had reached a new level. The footage had spread everywhere, and any lingering doubt had been put to rest once the testament of survivors and witnesses had started to come to light. Even then though, the entire world was still in some kind of state of shock. The truth had been revealed, and in doing so it had unleashed a new type of chaos that would take a while to sift through, and perhaps even longer to actually believe. She understood that feeling. It had been how she had felt for a while too, before all this had happened. And yet now…

It was hard for her to describe how she felt now, even after having some time to think about what had happened. She had replayed the moments in her mind over and over again, her confrontations with the Beast as vivid now as they had been when they had happened. She had been right. In the end, when she had found herself standing in the fire, her belief in her own strength had pulled her through. She was more than her trauma. So why did she still feel so… lost? That was the only way to describe it. At first, in the hours and days after, when she had been back at her foster home with her new family, holding secret all the things she had just done, she had felt fantastic. Not only had she survived, she had succeeded, and proved to herself that she was on the right track. She had never felt this certain about anything in her life. But then, as she had watched the news and read the articles, something started to fade. She still found comfort in her new outlook, her strength still held true, but there was something missing. It was like she had tasted the forbidden fruit and now nothing else measured up. No matter what she did, she couldn’t figure it out. A buzzing from her phone took her attention, but it was just another notification from another news feed that she had started to follow. As she clicked it, a picture of the Beast from the fight in the plaza flashed across her screen. She stared at it for a long moment. For a time, the only way she could see him was in her nightmares. Now his face was everywhere. But it didn’t frighten her anymore.

The Beast. The Horde. Patricia, Hedwig, all the others. And of course, Kevin. After the fight in the plaza he had been taken into custody of the federal authorities who had shown up to investigate the attack on the tower. No one had known what to do with him, especially once it was revealed what he could do. The last updates had revealed he was still in a coma, barely showing any signs of life, and that he had been moved to a secure, secret medical facility and was being monitored.

The same thing had happened for Mr Glass. Judging by the news clips and articles she had seen and read, Elijah had revelled in claiming responsibility for everything that had gone down at the tower, and was now being held in a similar facility somewhere outside the city. She didn’t know how he had done it, but it wasn’t surprising. With his intelligence, he had somehow found a way to convince the authorities he was the one who had planned everything, the one who had caused all the deaths and destruction. Parts of it they had easily accepted. With his history it hadn’t been hard for them to believe he had orchestrated the explosions and the fires, and the unexploded bombs in the tower’s basement had gone a long way to supporting him. But then he had claimed that he had secretly been communicating with the Horde for years, even when Kevin still worked at the zoo. He said he had been training and guiding him, preparing him for the day of his reveal at the opening of the tower. According to his story, it had been the Beast that had broken him out of the Raven Hill psychiatric hospital, and together they had made their way into the city and unleashed chaos until the Overseer had appeared and stopped them both. So far, or at least according to the news that she could find, his story was being treated as the official one.

Even by the psychiatric hospital itself.

That had made her pause when she had first read that. It was the only sign of Doctor Staple and her Clover forces. It seemed as if the one thing they were better at then covering up superhumans was covering up their own existence. There had been no record of Staple being involved at the hospital, no records of David or Kevin being held there or even arrested. It really had been a ruse. Joseph’s theory had been right. Just thinking about the implications of that still made her head spin a little. Staple and Clover, they were still out there, watching from the shadows. They knew who she and the others were, what they could do. It might not be straight away, might not be for a while, but she knew for certain that they would be back one day. She was sure of it.

The sound of doors opening took her attention. She stood up and slipped her phone back into her pocket, and watched as two people slowly stepped out into the midday sun. One of them was in a wheelchair, being pushed along by the other. A smile crossed her face.

“Welcome back to the world.” She said as David noticed her, adjusting the backpack he had slung around one shoulder.

A second later, Joseph did too.

“Casey!” Joseph said with glee. He went to get up, but winced and grabbed his shoulder as he collapsed back down into the wheelchair.

“Easy, you’re not done healing yet, remember.” David said before turning his attention to her. “Casey, how are you doing? You didn’t have to come.”

“I’m good. I wanted to be here. It felt wrong not to be.” She explained. David nodded, understanding. It was strange to see him like this without his hood. He really did look just like anyone else you would pass in the street.

“Its good to see you. I mean, its good to be seeing anything right now.” Joseph said, smiling.

“I’m still surprised they let you out. How many pain killers are you on?” She asked, laughing slightly at the look he gave her.

“All of them, I think.” He said as he shook a large prescription bag. Considering what he had been through, he didn’t look too bad. On of his arms was still in a cast, and he had a line of stitches across the side of his head. He’d also had some broken ribs and a few other wounds from the bits of wreckage that had pierced his body in a few spots. Yet here he was. Alive.

“Casey.” David said, the tone of his voice heavier now. She looked at him.

“Thank you for this.” He said simply. Casey instantly knew what he meant. She had done as he had asked, back in the plaza. Finding Joseph hadn’t been that hard in the end, though she would never forget how her stomach fell when she saw him laying there in the clearing of the wreckage that filled the rest of the area, utterly motionless. She had ignored the warnings of the firefighters and rescuers and gone straight to him, determined that he wouldn’t be alone. She had sat down next to him and taken one of his hands in her own, trying to be strong, trying not to let any more tears fall. It had felt like it was all she could do for him, for David. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, holding his hand with her eyes closed, before she had heard the sound of breathing that wasn’t her own. Then he had half opened his eyes.

She had stayed with him as the rescuers had taken him to the hospital, and until David had shown up a few hours later, utter disbelief on his face. Ever since then they had all stayed in contact, as day by day Joseph came more and more back to life.

“You’re welcome, David.” She said. He nodded, and she gave him a heart-warming smile. She looked at both of them. “So what do we do now?”

“We prepare.” Joseph said, his voice so steel like that is surprised both of the others. “We find out what we can and look after each other. We’re the only ones who know the truth, and its all going to change now. Its all going to be different. So we get ready for the next time.” Joseph looked at each of them in turn as a silent moment passed between them, a quiet moment of agreement that whatever this was now, and whatever it would be next, they would face it together.

The moment was suddenly broken by a pair of doctors rushing past them. All three of them turned to watch as they passed.

“…come on, it’s all hands on deck. There’s been a massive collapse at the building site on 38^th street. People are still buried apparently. They’re expecting a lot of casualties…” The voice of the doctor faded out as they rushed into the building.

As one, the three looked back at each other. David looked at Joseph, and then at her. In an instant, everything had changed. The air between them became filled with a very different kind of energy as the look on David’s face shifted. He became certain and determined, a knowing look in his eyes. Joseph nodded.

“Go.” He said softly, but it was enough.

“I’ll help Joseph. He’ll be fine. I keep my promises, remember?” She said as she moved behind Joseph’s wheelchair and grabbed the handles. David nodded.

“You guys go home. I’ll be back soon.” He said, something new in his voice now. Something heroic. He turned and started to purposefully walk away.

“Be careful dad.” Joseph called out. David looked back at him.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile. “Remember, I’m unbreakable.”

With that, David pulled something from his backpack. Then, with the torn poncho that now looked more like a hooded cape in hand and ready for use, he turned and quickly headed off in the direction of the 38^th street. Within seconds, he vanished into the crowd. Casey watched as he went, and watched all the other people around him too. They didn’t even give him a second look as he passed by. None of them were aware of how special he was, of how much he would put on the line to save any one of them. None of them were aware of the hero amongst them.

Casey sucked in a breath as her grip grew tighter on the handle bars. She suddenly became very aware of her heart racing inside of her chest, its frantic beat matched only by the rush of thoughts in her mind. Something clicked into place, something felt righter than it ever had before. The missing piece had been found. She knew what she wanted to do, what she had to do.

She knew who she was meant to be.