There was no day or night in that place. There were times of darkness and times of intense, buzzing light. There was no sky, only finely fissured white ceiling tiles. No grass or dirt, no flower or fruit, just the cold ceramic and metal floor. We ate on tables made of stainless steel, sitting on shiny benches we had to wipe down every evening. We slept in locked boxes on simple mats with itchy, cotton blankets. The air we breathed never changed - sterile, stagnant, hissed out at us from invisible vents.
I remember now - I was the youngest. The last clone of the last batch. One of many, well over a hundred.
My memory picks up in the worst place it possibly could: me, clinging to a cold wall, clawing at it with my fingers as if I could burrow into it. My breathing is ragged, hot, quick, desperate. Pain in every inch of my body. There’s nowhere to hide in this cavernous gym, linoleum with sliding panel walls and floors that can adjust to any layout. Right now, it is a void, a simple, gargantuan box that only houses me and our trainer.
“Up, on guard.” Sledge. My tormentor, the ultimate shapeshifter. Their voice, their entire body is different every time we train. This time, they take the form of a tall, pale woman with a shaved head, and just to show off, no eyes or ears at all. Only a nose and a mouth. Sledge doesn’t need eyes, or ears, or hell, anything else. If they wanted to be a single arm crawling at me down the vast, empty training hall, they could, and they’d still be just as deadly.
With a burst of energy, I shoot to my feet just in time to meet Sledge’s fist with my hand. I take all the energy I can from their strike and respond with a push kick into their stomach. I pump heat and power into Sledge, caving in their chest. Bones splinter, flesh squelches. Their skin turns purple and then black from the heat. Their torso pops and sizzles like bacon in the pan.
Sledge falls back, spewing blood from their mouth. They look down at their ruined chest and smile. Their ribs realign under skin that’s rapidly healing, regaining its normal color. “Good. You’re learning. But you’ll need more than heat. Let him take control.”
I glance away from Sledge, angry at the thought of handing the reins over to my older brother. “Why do I have to?”
Sledge’s answer is to snare my left forearm with a clawed hand. I steal the energy of the claws digging into my arm, but not before they shred my skin, covering my hand and wrist in blood. I scream and drive up a knee that cracks with kinetic power, but Sledge’s chest opens up so I hit nothing but air. The flesh closes around my leg, and they proceed to rain elbows on my head, backhand my jaw with strength that could kill a lion. It’s like trying to fight an alien octopus made of coiled muscle and bone.
When my vision goes gray and I can’t stand on my own, Sledge finally lets me go. I slump to the floor.
Footsteps approach and I hold my hand up for mercy.
“Get up.”
It’s not Sledge this time.
I crack open one eye against the blood and agony.
Gabriel, my oldest brother, kneels next to me with a frown on his face. In the past, he’s always appeared in the uniform all the clones shared, a simple gray spandex suit. But this time, he’s wearing a green-and-black costume with a cape, a real cape outfit. Megajoule’s costume. “Let me take control.”
“I-” I would if I could. But I don’t know how. “I can’t.”
Gabriel snarls at me. “If you can’t do it, you’re going to die. Like all the others that couldn’t.”
“If I knew how to do it I would!”
“You need to let go.”
I scream: “What does that even mean?”
Gabriel grabs me by the head, almost squeezing my skull with his hands. He stares at me with death in his eyes. “Rid yourself of your Self or else Sledge will kill you. Right now. This is it. I can’t keep you anymore. I overheard them saying this was your final chance. So, you don’t exist. You can’t exist. There is no Gabe. There is only a vessel.”
“How do I just stop existing?” I ask, desperate to avoid dying.
Before he can answer, the entire gym shakes and rumbles as if from a bomb. I cry out and wrap my arms around my head. Sledge’s head snaps to the entrance of the gym. The rumbling doesn’t stop, and it seems like the entire world is going to crash around us.
“Stay here!” Sledge orders, rushing to the gym doors.
Except when they open the doors, they’re greeted with a flash of lightning and fire. A meteor screams its way into the gym, ripping through Sledge like a hot knife through butter. Scattering my tormentor into tiny pieces, the meteor clarifies into a living man.
Megajoule. Really, really, Megajoule.
He stands, his skin giving off a ghostly glow, his eyes shining blue-white like the hottest star. Electricity arcs between his fingers. Heat roils beneath his neck and chest. He’s far beyond me in power, far beyond any of my brothers. I hold my hand up again, afraid he’s going to kill me.
The power leaves him, and he becomes a normal man in a costume. He looks just like me, except with crow’s feet around his blue eyes and silver peppering his dark hair. It’s only then I realize that tears are welling in his eyes. He bends down and asks, “Are you really the only one?”
“W-what?”
“The only one the eldest doesn’t control.” Megajoule offers both of his hands to help me stand. I take them, and once I’m on my feet, he licks his thumb to clean up a trickle of blood from my mouth. “Metis. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, if I’d known sooner…” he goes on and on, but my attention is drawn to a pair of sickly green eyes watching him fuss over me.
Standing in the corner at the other end of the gym, Gabriel stares at us, watching like a tiger. My eyes meet his, and he vanishes.
“He tried but… I can’t,” I say. “You’re not going to kill me for that, are you?”
Megajoule snarls and I retreat, afraid he really is here to end my life. But he throws his arms around me and it’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father holding me. “No,” he whispers fiercely. “I’m here to save you.”
He puts his finger up to his left ear and says, “Paul. I’ve got the kid. You’re sure he’s the only one?”
I can’t hear the response, but Megajoule winces.
“So, none of the others?” Again, he winces. He glances at me, pats my shoulder and then nods. “Okay. I’ll get him to you. Then I’m shutting this place down for good. You should get good and gone because if I find you or Terry here once this one is out, I’m not going to be kind.”
He takes my hand, pulls me into his arms, and the gym disappears faster than I can process what’s happening. It’s not until we get to the sterile hallway outside, with the floors that look like an infinite void of black, that I realize we’re flying. I scream and cling to Megajoule, terrified he’ll drop me.
The lab rumbles again. Debris pelts my face, I flail wildly, and Megajoule spins out of control. We crash into the wall, the impact knocking the wind out of me. And then I’m gasping on the floor, looking up at the ceiling while immense amounts of energy flow this way and that like bullets ricocheting all around me. I fight to tilt my head up, to catch even one steady breath, and see Megajoule fighting three of my brothers in front of a gaping hole they created in the wall. My brothers move in tight, coordinated motion, as if they’d trained their entire lives for this battle.
As if they share one mind.
“We could defeat him if you’d let me take control,” Gabriel whispers, his hand falling on mine. His will puppeteers my legs, forcing me to stand even though I can’t breathe still.
“I-” I panic, feeling him sliding into my skin, like my body is a glove he can put on at any point. “I don’t want to kill him!”
Gabriel screams in my air: “Then you’re useless!”
The sensation of a slap on my face, though there’s nothing, no one to hit me. I recoil and lean into the wall, but I fight to stay on my feet.
My brothers all share one expression - a snarl of feral fury. They surround Megajoule, their bodies glowing with power. But Megajoule has more - just from the heat he’s holding alone I’d say he’s worth ten of them. He shows them as much. Even sharing a mind, they’re teenagers trying to fight a cape with decades of experience. He has no rule against killing - but he is kind. He quickly kills the three clones with lightning fast strikes to their heads, flooding their skulls with so much energy they could never hope to stop it. It’s over in an eye blink.
Megajoule flies back down the hall, the regret etched into his face softening as he reaches me. “Are you okay?”
I open my mouth to speak, but Gabriel’s fingers dig into my neck, choking me. Megajoule’s eyes widen. I struggle against Gabriel’s grip, but can’t throw him off, can’t think him away.
“If you’re not going to help, you’re going to die!” Gabriel hisses.
“No! No!” Megajoule pulls me into a tight hug and the world lurches again. We smash through layers of metal, rock, support beams, each impact shaking me and making it worse as I fight for air against my oldest brother. The world fades out.
One final crash and Megajoule is screaming: “Paul?!”
And there he is, Paul, wide-eyed, four years younger, running his old fingers over my face. We’re in the office I saw when the dampener unlocked part of my memory, with the large mahogany desk and windows looking out on the mountains.
“He’s dying! Gabriel’s killing him!” Megajoule shouts. “Do something!”
Paul does something with his power, and the fingers relent. I gasp for air, my vision returning. “That won’t hold for long. I need to get him away to do more delicate work.”
“What are you going to do?” Megajoule asks.
“Pull the seed out of his Affect. I don’t know if it’ll reverse the possession but… It’s all theory right now.”
Megajoule nods to Paul and to someone else standing beside him, who I hadn’t noticed until now. “I’m going to deal with Gabriel.”
“There are dozens of clones,” Paul warns him. “You need help. You can’t stop them all by yourself.”
“The girl.” Megajoule stands. “The one you have locked up in the third basement.”
“She’s…” Paul hesitates.
The third person’s voice fills the gap: “She’s beyond insane.” I’ve never seen this man before, never interacted with him, but he wears a lab coat just like Paul. He barely reaches Megajoule’s shoulders in height. He wears the most obnoxious ‘I am a tourist,’ outfit I’ve ever seen under his lab coat - cargo pants, Hawaiian t-shirt, sandals. He slouches and stuffs his hands into his pockets but pulls them out again to scratch at his thin, scraggly beard. There are small scars pocking his face and carving the beard into little patches. “The tests pushed her too far.”
“You pushed her too far,” Megajoule says, his words dripping with venom.
“Easy. We agreed, remember.”
Megajoule clenches his fists, turns away from the two scientists in fury. Only I can see his face from this angle, and it bears the darkest expression I’ve ever seen. “Can she be reasoned with?”
“She… can. She hasn’t eaten in weeks now.”
“Eaten?!” Megajoule snaps his head back at them. “Eaten, Terry? Eaten what?!”
The words hammer on Paul’s and Terry’s heads, and to be honest, I think Megajoule is about to follow up with his fists.
But I know who they’re talking about. The monster they keep in the basement of the lab. They hold her in a special chamber, in a maze that tests my brothers against her power. The girl that drinks our blood.
“She stopped,” Paul says. “Told us she wouldn’t eat another…” He looks down at me, guilt wringing his mouth into a frown.
“Then I’ll free her-”
The office shakes. Megajoule lifts his head, his gaze sharpening as he searches for the threat. Paul crouches over me protectively, while Terry backs into the office door, frantically searching for the door handle while also watching for danger.
“Out of time,” Gabriel laughs, but this time, using my voice. I’m speaking now, against my own will. “I can’t use this one, but I can use a lot-” I clamp my hands over my mouth to stop him from saying anything else.
All at once, five of my brothers rip through the floor, tearing it apart with their shining hands. Megajoule blurs and warps between them and us.
Paul lifts me up and supports me, wrapping one of my arms around his shoulder. “Come on, kid, come on.”
“What about Megajoule?” I ask, even as Paul pulls me through the door Terry left hanging open.
“He can handle it. We can’t,” Paul says. He looks anything but sure as he says it.
We run down hallways I’ve never been in before. Parts of the facility not meant for me but for the staff and researchers. Compared to the part of the lab I’m used to, this part seems downright pleasant. Carpet floors, normal lamps that cast yellow light. Rooms with actual furniture in them. Warning sirens blaring over the speakers.
I want to use my power to flee, to fly like Megajoule, but it doesn’t respond to my call.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Nah. I’m not letting you do that,” Gabriel whispers.
At first, all I can do is limp, but as the fear and adrenaline set in, I start a real run and quickly outpace Paul. He barks directions at me once I get a few feet ahead of him. “Left! Double doors on the right, three doors down!”
The world is collapsing. The rumblings come every couple of seconds.
“Not far!” Paul shouts.
Halfway down the hall, four of my brothers rip through the walls and turn to face me. “You think I’m letting you run?” they say in unison. “You’re not going anywhere. Neither is Paul, or Megajoule. It’s my time now, baby brother.”
I have no power. I look back at Paul, who stares in terror at the clones.
They fly at us like bullets.
I close my eyes. Maybe death will be a relief.
Megajoule rips through the floor, meeting the charge not five feet from me. His hand slices through two of them instantly, and the other two meet their ends at the points of red spears hurled from the hole Megajoule made in the floor.
The creature that emerges behind those spears is an emaciated wraith, a pale white ghoul so thin the widest points of her limbs are her protruding knees and elbows. Every bit of her is drained of color, from her milky eyes, to her diamond skin, to her shock white hair. She shows her teeth, long fangs fit for rending meat and splintering bone. Red claws tip the ends of her fingers.
“Carnality,” I whisper, at the same time Paul says, “Project Ichor. She listened.”
“I listened, Paul!” Carnality sings, pouncing toward us. She jumps onto Paul, causing Megajoule to shout in alarm and me to jump to help him, but she’s not hurting him. Instead, she clasps his shoulders and jumps excitedly, saying, “Are we really leaving this place? Will I get to see the sky?” Then, the girl turns toward me, bares her fangs, and makes to leap. I scream, knowing she’s responsible for the death of at least a dozen of my brothers. Even if I had my power, I wouldn’t survive.
Megajoule warps between us. “He’s not one of them!”
Carnality stares, licking her lips, but doesn’t attack. “You’re a good Gabe.”
“You ate my brothers,” I whisper.
She frowns and grabs my hand, holding it in her own before pressing it to her head. “I’m sorry! I didn’t want to! You have to believe me, I couldn’t help it! I wanted to not, I starved myself, but they just made me hungrier and hungrier. I’m sorry, good Gabe, I would vomit them up if I could!”
I stammer, unsure of what to say to her. I just pat her arm so she’ll let go of me.
Megajoule looks me up and down. I realize, as he inspects me, that he’s injured - there’s a burnt, charred wound in his side, and a jagged cut on his thigh.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He smiles at me, tight lipped. “I’m fine. You keep going, I still have work to do.” He coughs, and it’s heavy and wet. Not a good sign.
The hall shakes, and another clone emerges from Megajoule’s hole in the floor. “Time to move over, Julian, for the new blood.” He cackles.
I can’t stand this anymore, can’t stand seeing his expressions on their faces. I charge the clone before Megajoule can stop me, and scream, “Let go of my brother!”
Gabriel grins ferociously at me through my brother’s teeth. He forms a smoking fist and swings it at my heart. Desperate, I call on my power, and find there’s nothing. “Nope,” Gabriel whispers. “It’s mine, not yours.”
Megajoule rushes between us, taking the hit that would have ended my life. He absorbs the impact and returns it with an identical strike through the clone’s heart. Still smiling, the corpse falls to the floor.
His chest heaving, his breathing labored, Megajoule turns to me and says, “They’re not your brothers, Gabe. They’re just him.”
“If we don’t get out of here now, we’re not making it out at all,” Paul says to me.
Megajoule nods to us, and even though he winces from pain, he flies back down the hole. Immediately the rumbling begins again, the sounds of battle. I’ve got no clue how many of my brothers are left.
Carnality grins at us before diving down after Megajoule.
“Will they be okay?” I ask Paul, staring down into the depths of the lab.
Paul pulls me along with him, dragging me away from the hole and toward the end of the hall. He answers my question in a low mutter that almost seems like he doesn’t mean for me to hear: “Seems like they’re wearing him down. He has to kill them all. They only have to kill him once.”
“Where are the other capes? Can’t they stop him?”
“Kid, this lab has maybe two or three people that know about it and can send help. We’re in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. We’ll be lucky if anyone else gets here today. Megajoule is it.” Paul looks back at my brother’s bodies. “If Gabriel survives with any hosts… I don’t know what’ll happen.”
“What about me?” I ask. “I’m a vessel.”
“Not if I can help it, kid,” Paul says, tugging at my arm.
Paul leads me down another set of halls. I give up trying to keep track of where we are and resort to just trusting his lead. I want to run faster, but he’s the only one who knows the way out.
The battle in the lower levels seems to chase us. Every time I think we’ve left it behind, new, stronger tremors prove me wrong. Gabriel can sense where we’re going. He follows me like a bloodhound.
“There! The lobby!” Paul shouts. Down the hall is a set of double doors with circular glass windows, shining with an intense, yellow light I’ve never seen before. Paul seems to forget his age as we make the final sprint to those doors.
Paul said it was a lobby, but all I see is a slaughterhouse. Blood covers every wall, and minced bodies litter the floor. The corpses are so thoroughly crushed they’ve turned to a mushy paste with only a few recognizable pieces scattered throughout. I recognize a foot, an eyeball, a thumb, half of a face. My feet squelch into the mess.
Standing in the middle of the lobby, between freedom and us, is Gabriel in one of my brothers. His hands drip with the gore of the lab workers he’s slaughtered.
“Why are you so upset?” he asks, and I realize he’s talking to Paul. Paul, whose hand is over his mouth, who’s doubled over, pale and trembling, who can’t answer Gabriel’s question. “You know all of you deserve this, I can feel your guilt. I wasn’t going to let any of them escape. All these people experimented on me and my brothers for years. Every single one of them, including you, are complicit in my torture. They deserved far more than I did to them.” Then, the clone turns to me. “Brother, please. If you won’t let me in, at least work with me. We can bring this all to the ground, we can find the person responsible for this, and we can end them.”
I don’t think I can trust him. “If that’s what you want, why are you killing Megajoule?”
“Because he’s trying to kill me!” Gabriel grins at me, taking a step toward us. “I’m sure he knows they made us to kill and maim, to be their ultimate weapons. A perfect army. He doesn’t see humans when he’s looking at us, none of them do, Gabe. They see their one-mind-in-many.”
Paul steps in between me and Gabriel, scowling at my brother, still looking like he’ll lose the contents of his stomach. “Alright, that’s enough.”
“You’re gonna lecture me when you can’t even keep your lunch down?” Gabriel asks, his smile growing until it seems like it could split his cheeks open. “You think anything you say will change this? What I’m going to do to you and to the world?”
Paul holds his arms out, showing off the old off-white lab coat, riddled with mustard stains around his sleeves. “No. I think I’m just gonna kill you.”
“I’d love to see how you pull that off.”
Gabriel warps to Paul, scattering and scalding the viscera in his wake. He crosses the distance in a heartbeat. Paul ducks, and being an old man, it’s a clumsy, awkward movement, but his timing is perfect. The punch aimed for his heart glances his left shoulder, leaving only a skid mark on his shirt. Then, Paul’s hand slaps the clone’s chest, and all the heat in my brother’s fist vanishes. Like he has no power.
A knife blade flashes out of Paul’s pocket and digs into my brother’s heart.
The clone looks down, probes at the stab wound, chuckles, and falls to join the dead at our feet.
“Clever,” Gabriel whispers in my ear.
Paul touches the burn mark on his shoulder and hisses in pain. “Damn, that hurt. C’mon, kid.”
I’d walk, but my body won’t respond, and not in the ‘Gabriel won’t let me’ way. I’m shaking, overcome by fear, by the beating I took not a half hour ago from Sledge, and by sprinting the whole way here. My legs refuse to take another step, and all I can do is slump to my knees.
Paul hooks his hands under my armpit to keep me from falling into the gore. “Kid, just a little more, just a little more.”
“Why? Why should I go?” I ask. “I don’t know what’s out there!”
Paul blinks, frowning, and kneels next to me. “I can promise you it’s better than in here.”
“If I stay, I’ll die. Maybe that won’t be so bad after everything.” I look at him, at this old man who watched me from a glass box for years. I’ve never had any strong feelings for him over any other staff. He’s just the one who I talked to the most. But right now, he’s the only person who can hear my words. “Maybe I should die, if this is what you made us for.”
The old man grimaces at this. He looks down at the floor, shudders at the blood, then looks up at me again. “Alright, kid. I know what’s out there.”
“What?”
“You are.
“…I am?”
“You just gotta be brave enough to go find yourself.” Paul manages a smile as best he can. “You ain’t… you ain’t just made to do what he said. To be Gabriel’s puppet. You’re not him. You’re Gabe. G for…” He looks away from me, clearly searching for more words to say. “G for Good… A for Able… B for Beautiful… E for Enough.”
I drink those words in. G for Good, A for Able, B for Beautiful, E for Enough. I don’t know what, if anything, is magical about them, but once he’s uttered them, I feel like I can stand again. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Paul says, helping me to my feet.
Before we can get to the door, the hall behind us erupts with battle again. Megajoule, battered, his cape torn, one hand clutching the wound in his side, flies into the lobby, chased by a dozen of my brothers. Paul shouts and pulls me down, away from one of the clones’ deadly fists.
The look Megajoule gives me is the look of a man who’s realized he might die. His blazing eyes, so like the sun, have begun to flicker. “Run!” he screams, and I do.
I run for everything I have in my life. I breath the words: “G for Good, A for Able, B for Beautiful, E for Enough.” Paul rips the lobby door open and I sprint through, just ahead of the titanic clash.
Real warmth kisses my skin, and the mountain breeze runs through my hair, but I can’t stop to enjoy the natural air for the first time in my life. All I can do is pump my legs and keep sprinting, even though my chest feels like it’s going to collapse and my lungs can’t work fast enough to match my pace. My feet scrape on pavement and I can’t even try to understand my surroundings, the strange metal boxes with wheels, the tiny buildings made of wood and glass surrounding a courtyard of concrete, all overlooked by rocky peaks.
“Come back, little brother!” Three of Gabriel’s puppets fly ahead of me to intercept.
Megajoule sears a blazing arc across my vision, cutting through the three of them like butter. But not without a cost. He smashes into the pavement, sending up a plume of dust, and yelps in pain as he rolls. I want to run to him, to see if he’s okay, but six more clones dogpile him, all moving the exact same way, all screaming obscene war cries in unison. Megajoule kills three in a single blow, but then five more jump in.
I wish I could help him! I wish I could be fucking useful!
“Get away,” Paul says, wheezing as he finally catches up to me. “My car, it’s this way.”
Flashes of light burst from the dog pile, the signs of Megajoule still fighting. My brothers fall away, each one suffering a fatal wound, but each one dying slower than the last. There are still more flying out from the lab, all streaking toward Megajoule like missiles.
“He’s wearing out… we have to go!” Paul shouts, grabbing my hand. He tries to pull me toward one of the metal boxes with wheels, the thing he calls a car.
Except that his car erupts with metal and fire - one of my brothers’ bodies slices through the pavement and the line of cars, cleaving through the front side of Paul’s car before smashing into a small wooden building on the other side.
“No!” Paul shouts.
I turn back to watch the fight unfold, wishing so badly that I could help, that I could do anything.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please, win.”
The pile of clones bursts with blue-white light. Megajoule rises, moving faster than I can keep track of without my power. Not every one of his attacks is lethal - some of the clones that fall back rejoin the fight, even the ones that are missing limbs, parts of their face.
“He- he’s going to lose,” Paul says.
I grab Paul’s arm. “How can you know that?”
“There are still more clones coming,” he says, pointing to the facility doors. My brothers trickle out, aimed right at Megajoule as they fly from the lab. They aren’t the tidal wave they used to be, but they’re still coming. “Gabriel feels every single hit they take. And they’re still coming.”
“He feels it?”
“All of it. He must be in agony.” Waves of terror roll from Paul. Something like religious awe. “His willpower… it’s hideous. He will die a thousand times to win.”
“And I’m not even close to giving up,” Gabriel whispers in my ear.
Megajoule pushes his way out of the knot of clones with a blazing assault of kicks and fists. The pavement ruptures under the energy, shines with heat, arcs with electricity. Force washes over me and Paul, knocking us to the ground. I cry out, reaching for the old man, and can’t find him as the hot wind pushes us away from each other. “Gabe!” Megajoule screams.
It is the last thing he ever says.
The following seconds are unreal, absurd in their power. Bombs exploding rapid fire, as if fired from machine guns. My bones vibrate; I grit my teeth against the ache of it. A repulsive, pungent smell hits me every time I breathe. Screaming, whose voice, I can’t say. Burning, radiated flesh.
And above all that, the high note over this horrible music: Gabriel’s laughter. He doesn’t care if he dies.
The world quiets.
Megajoule sits on his knees, slumped over, a clone holding each of his arms. Blood drips from his mouth and nose, and the wound in his side has almost opened his stomach. The act of breathing requires his entire body to heave up and down with the same intensity that he fought my brother with. He looks like he’s clawing for each heartbeat he has left.
Gabriel has only three bodies left, the two who are holding Megajoule by the arms, and a third who stands before him. This third clone smiles down at Megajoule. “That was so close.”
Megajoule can’t speak. He lifts his head, snarling at my brother, but nothing leaves his lips but blood.
“You really did give me a run for it. I thought I wasn’t going to make it for a second!” He brays laughter like the world’s deadliest donkey. “But, three is plenty, and of course, Paul’s still here. Terry is still somewhere in the lab, cowering for his life. I have all I need to make more. And there’s always Park and his castoffs if I can’t.”
Megajoule’s face falls. He looks like he wants to weep, but can’t even spare the strength to do so.
Gabriel lifts his chin, forcing Megajoule to look him in the eyes. His eyes are the eyes of a man wearing no seat belt on the fastest roller coaster in the world. “And I gotta say, you were the best. This was awesome. You taught me so much in such a short time. You taught me that I’m ready.”
He sticks his fingers into Megajoule’s throat and flicks his arm out in a wide arc.
And that’s it. Megajoule, Dead, 49.
The clones let his arms go and he falls to the side. I thought I’d feel something when he went, but I don’t, nothing but the cold void opening as Gabriel turns his gaze on Paul and me. “And now, for you,” he whispers directly into my mind. “Carnality and Megajoule are gone, there’s just you. Last chance. Defy me and die, little brother.”
Whatever possesses me to stand, it’s not him. It’s my own heart, my own courage.
My own rage.
I rise to my feet and get between him and Paul. Even without my power, I’ll make him work for it. “You’re the worst fucking brother.”
Gabriel grins at me with all three of my brother’s faces. “Fuck yes.”
A red-white blur zooms past the clone, and in its wake, the clone gasps - his throat slashed open. The other clones whirl on their feet to face the new threat.
Carnality waits for them near Megajoule’s body, her eyes dark as she curls over his corpse like a child over their parent. She turns to face them not as the girl begging for my forgiveness, but as a demoness, an inhuman creature whose eyes only hold hunger.
She raises her arms, and from the fallen clones she draws all the strength she needs. Blood siphons out in tendrils from the corpses, red strands tied around her fingers like strings of fate. She weaves these tendrils into red spears and aims them at Gabriel’s last two clones.
“You could barely even kill one of us!” Gabriel laughs.
“He asked me not to eat you.” Carnality bares a wide mouth of knives at them. “But he’s dead now.” The tendrils of blood weave above her head, printing out new shapes. Hundreds of blood-conjured blades appear in the air. With a wave of her hand, they hail down on my remaining brothers. They seem to absorb the impact, not getting cut through, but then I see the shallow cuts in their skin.
Carnality reaches her hand out and pulls, like she’s tugging strings. The clones gasp as blood flees their bodies.
“No!” Gabriel screams in my mind. “Brother! You can’t let her!”
Staring at Megajoule’s body, I say with as much hate as I can muster, “Yeah, I can.”
The clones fall to the ground, their blood drained from them. Carnality doesn’t even drink it or absorb it or make it into more weapons. She hisses disdainfully and throws the blood to the ground.
The world rips in half as hands pull my ghost out of my body. Gabriel screams in my ears. “I’m not going gently! You’re going to give me your body!” I’m losing control. My hands start to spasm; my body starts to work.
“Help!” I shout to Paul. “He’s-” And then he closes my throat, not letting me breathe.
Carnality’s bright red eyes widen as she watches me struggling for air. I kick at the ground, anything to fight for this body - to fight for what’s mine.
Paul’s hands find my body. “I’m really sorry about this, kid.”
The next few weeks of memory are hazy. Whatever Paul did, what he had to do to keep Gabriel locked away, put me into somewhat of a trance. From the sunken space of my mind, I hear Carnality begging Paul to take her with us.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I’ve got to take him somewhere he can be free and I can look after him, but I can’t look after you both. I’m sorry,” Paul says.
Carnality’s head is on the ground, bowed as if in prayer to Metis. “Please, Paul, please.”
“Your hunger, girl, it’ll overcome you!” Paul replies. “You hunger for him most of all! You may be strong enough to resist it for a while, but eventually you’ll give in. It’s how they… we… made you.” There’s a pause and all I can hear is Carnality sniffing, and Paul sighs. “I’m sorry, I really am. You did a truly heroic thing today. But I’ve got to take him south-“
“South? To Houston?” Carnality asks.
“When did you-“ He stops. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know for sure where I’m going yet. But you should go as far away from us as you can. North, where there’s no one left. To the wild, hell, all the way to the North Pole if you can. You’re more well suited to survive out there than anyone.”
“…”
“Please, girl, you can’t come with us.”
“Okay, Paul. Okay. I’ll go north.”
That’s the end of their conversation. The last memory I have of Carnality is Paul loading me into a car, her huge, pink eyes fixed on me, her clawed hand waving goodbye as we drove away from her.
We spend the better part of a month making our way south. We make it to Houston. We find Carnality didn’t go north, like Paul told her, and she’d beaten us here by almost a week. And the rest is how Houston became part of the Vanguard.