After a few days had passed with far too much time to think, my cage's door began to open. There was no one on the outside, I saw, as I stepped through. The hallway beyond was long and empty.

This couldn't have been an accident. They were far too organized for that. Instead, I realized, seeing all the doors begin to open down the length of the hallway, this was feeding time for the prisoners. I wasn't the only one. Dozens of men and women came out of cells just like me to shamble into the hall.

They were deprived of food and water for days before being let out, and they all moved with purpose to the left. I could smell the freshly cooked food, there. None of them went right down the passageway, though, and I wondered what was down there.

I had been living off the hyper-efficient stores of energy that my body had developed for the last few days. That had allowed me to regain my strength.

The Conquistador could not take away a person's fat stores, only the more abstract fuel of their Power. So, I was not as exhausted as the others while I looked around.

I was, however, still wincing in pain. My head had not stopped throbbing for a second since I halted its desired mutation. I could practically hear Hickory mocking me for the contradiction.

"You've killed thousands of animals. Man is no different," he said. "I know that you can't tell the difference. It's all just entropy to you now. So why are you wasting my time with this nonsense?"

I refused to engage with him. His taunts had been constantly trying to get under my skin. Besides, he couldn't listen or learn. He was bred for one purpose. To kill and replace my personality.

He couldn't understand. It wasn't about refusing to kill anybody. That was a line I drew and refused to cross because it would mean something else, far more important to me. It would mean that all of my disgust at the Heroes was nothing more than self-indulgence. It would mean that there was not truly any justice. Just people doing as they wanted, no different or better than waves crashing on the shoreline. 

It would mean Maximal was right about me.

"He should have killed you when he had the chance," Hickory laughed, reading my thoughts. There was nowhere I could go to hide from him, it seemed. "You gave up your humanity, but you're still clinging to the identity you built on its sand, like the pissant you are. That's your trick. For all your supposed disillusionment, this has all been nothing more than an exercise in your pretentious philosophy. You fancy yourself a Stranger to this world, still. Even after the beach, where you gave in to the Ouroboros, you harbor the will to hold back from its growth."

"I just wanted to be left alone," I told him, giving up in keeping quiet. Between the pain and how his words cut through into my reasoning, I could barely keep my morale. I couldn't silence my mind, anyway. I was hardly some Buddhist monk. My thoughts were always going. They only silenced in the deepest midst of the hunt.

That was what I decided to do, then. I put myself to work, turning right down the hall and running the opposite direction of Alejandro's slaves and the delicious smelling food. There were many unfilled cages down the corridor's length. Many that reeked of rot and waste, where victims had been bled dry and left to die.

But after all of them came a dead end, and what I had been searching for was there. A mystery to occupy my mind. Anything to force my focus back on practical tasks and away from introspection.

One giant door waited for me at the end. It was placed not against the wall, but the floor, like the lead vault above a nuclear reactor. The passage walls had fallen away into another vaulted ballroom sized chamber, to make room for the gargantuan piece of containment.

Whoever or whatever the Conquistador was keeping down there, it was the size of a building. The perfect battery for his Crystal, no doubt. A prized possession.

"A Kizmet?" I said, wondering aloud. "What else could it be? This bastard trapped a Kizmet..."

An involuntary laugh came out of me, giddy at the thought. Hickory loved the danger and insanity of such a feat. "See? Can you really keep bitching about these people, Walt? They have the will to conquer this world, and that's why they own it. They're damn geniuses."

I started back in the other direction, running. I had to keep my momentum. I didn't want to get left behind either if there was only a short window of time to eat. To my tormentor, I weakly tried to counter him. "The point was to escape oppression, man. Heroes, villains. Right and wrong. Not just become better at it."

"Power always works to its own end, and it's a fool who thinks he can use Power to destroy itself... Only a Braindead-Red thinks that way, you Liberal piece of shit."

"Fuck!" I beat my head, trying to dispel the voices. The evolutionary design had adopted Hickory's consciousness as a model for survival, and I didn't know how to argue against it. I could only fight the idea that it was inevitable. I could only try to escape this hell to someplace where the adaptation would die.

The light at the end of the tunnel awaited me. Luckily, they had yet to close the door behind them. The prisoners had come straight out into a larger room with tables and chairs. A makeshift cafeteria, and someplace with sights and sounds to break me out of this spiral.

The Conquistador had made a makeshift prison beneath his castle. It was sickening to see all the emaciated people here, chugging water and shoveling food in their mouths, just to survive.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Behind us, five or so cleaners descended into the dungeon, no doubt to remove the feces and dead bodies from our cages.

I stood tall over the crowd. Though my Power was still numb, I had my physical form. I was still easily a Class Three or even Class Two brawler.

My hands clenched and unclenched as my eyes scanned quickly for an exit. They hadn't tried to hide it, I saw. They were simply that confident that we would not try to escape. That we were good and beaten down.

I was the only person among the prisoners whose strength was embedded in their body, and not their stripped Power. So I could see why. But it wouldn't stop me from walking straight out those doors.

Just as I started towards them, however, they swung open, as if by cue. The finely groomed King came in, looking fresh-faced and manned on either side by three Supers as his bodyguards.

He immediately pointed out to me and called. "I see you're up and fairing better than most! What a wondrous Power."

As he approached, he looked over the prisoners. Passing by each one, he ran a hand across their head, touching them idly. He was checking their Power, I suspected, and harvesting whatever strength had returned to it. Every time, the person looked drained in the seconds after. This confirmed my suspicion.

This time, I wouldn't make the same mistake hesitating as I did with Mary. I didn't slow to speak. As soon as there was enough room between them and the door, I would duck low and circle around. I could be far too fast to catch, even if they slowed me.

Sensing the move I was about to make, one of the men at the King's side, a gringo, spoke. "Don't try anything," he said, waving his hand once dismissively.

The effect reminded me of Dupe's Power. I could feel my desire to run drain out of me, but I had not forgotten it. Instead, I simply lost my urgency. As I did begin to move, it was fearfully and slowly, like I was trying to back up from a snake about to strike without alerting it. 

"See," Alejandro jabbed him, "what did I tell you? I've never seen a strong Power granted to a stupid man. He won't give up so easily."

"He's your brainwasher?" I asked. I was acerbic as I did. I couldn't contain my anger. "You just discourage people into working for you? That's how you control them?"

The Conquistador quickly reached me and placed a hand on my armored chest. He looked me over in the better light of this hall. Yet, I didn't feel him drain my strength. He stroked his short beard with his other hand, thinking. "Only until they accept the simple pleasures in life. Then, they are liberated to enjoy the drink and company we have here, and they will lead happier lives. But you... Happiness is not for a person like you, no... What are we going to do with you, hmm?"

Hickory's voice screamed into my ear, bringing tension to my jaw as I fought not to let him speak aloud. "Now is your chance. You can move faster than he can react. Tear out this twink's throat, boy. Take his domain for your own. Do it!"

But it wouldn't belong to me, I thought. It wouldn't be a place where people could be free from mandatory service and 'Heroic' police states. It would be a Barony like any other. I abhorred this slavery, yet I doubted Hickory's old Southern sensibilities would feel the same. With him in charge, nothing would get better.

I saw the millions of people that I could devour flash before my eyes. The stars and planets I could grow to consume with my Power. The entire universe was offered to me, from my vantage. I only had to bow down to his hunger for Glory. 

"Your Power is swelling, but you will not use it," the Conquistador told me. "You think I do not know your limits?"

Those words were like a slap to the face, pulling me out of my own thoughts. Looking down at him, I questioned, "What do you know?"

He brought a woman forward from his side. A petit little thing. She stared straight into my eyes and nodded. The Conquistador did not have to hear from her to know what she had seen. "I see your mind," he said, "and your history. She grants me the latter. And, all who dwell in my domain for long grant me the former. You see, this is what a great King does. My Power is weak. Alone, it does nothing but boost that of others'. How do you think I built this empire, then? By surrounding myself with allies who can do more. Together, we are far mightier even than one such as yourself, even with all your potential. Because to us, you and your weaknesses are an open book."

"You're within inches of your death," I heard myself say. Hickory took control and twisted my face maliciously. The King narrowed his eyes, and his hand fell away. He did not speak at first, and Hickory went on. "You didn't see me in here, did you? You know his limitations so you think you know the whole story. But our limitations never last for long."

"There's more than one mind in there," the petite girl said.

I hung my head and told the Conquistador through gritted teeth. "He doesn't have to come out. If you just let me go now, I think I can k-keep him away. His existence is only justified by chaos..." The pain flared as my demeanor shifted. There was no way they would just let me go. I was kidding myself. These were the kinds of people who hammered the world shamelessly to the breaking point. They took everything they could and their ego never allowed them to believe the truth. That eventually, someone stronger would take it from them in kind. Hickory reveled in this process.

Rusty had shown me that the only alternative to suffering was not to live at all. I had accepted it then, and now I was coming to accept it again. I felt the inevitability of the contradiction's resolution. Once I accepted life, there was only one way to respond to it.

Everything had been leading to this. Since the very first fires at the gas station, there had only been one end. Whatever that could burn, would. And in the end, only the person that flourished in hellfire remained.

"He won't make a suitable gift if his Power can create new minds," the King concluded, disappointed. "And with his healing, there will be no possibility of a useable corpse for the Lich. No, unfortunately, there is not much I can do with you, despite all my high hopes."

Slowly, I felt myself relax. The headache cleared away. The relief almost brought me to my knees.

Part of me had believed that it would always be the same person that lived to see eternity. But now I understood, immortality was the object of rebirth.

My neurons finished restructuring just as the Conquistador put his hand on me and drained my Power once again. I stumbled, but I didn't fall. I supported myself on one of the nearby tables.

"There we go." The King looked to his compatriots. "Send him back to his cell. And assemble my files. I'll need to double-check, but I think I know the right combination of Powers to rid us of this particularly interesting problem." At last, he solemnly expressed his remorse to me. "I hate to see such potential go to waste, but there is simply no way for me to utilize it. It was a pleasure meeting you, of course, Walter. But our time must be brief."

I grinned ear to ear, only a tinge of sadness in my voice. "Do what you gotta do," I said.

In a blink, I was back in my cage. They had teleported me there, with the door already closed to lock me in. Sitting in the filth, I was weak, but I was resolved. Walter had died a long time ago. The old Hickory had burned there too, killed by me. All of it to reach my final form. Now, there was only Creep, and the work was done. There would be no more voices, merely desire and action. Free.