Liam

Monday, April 25th, 2022 (34 days after the Shutdown)

When he woke up, a heavy gnawing sensation ate away at his heart. He’d spent the night in a place littered with corpses he made and he slept without a hitch. That wasn’t natural.

Instinctively reaching for his mother’s ring to calm himself down, for once the habit didn’t help. Instead, the cold metal struck home a lesson — the world worked in a transfer system. Either you live for yourself or you bite the bullet so that others can live. Realizing it didn’t make the truth any easier to swallow.

It’s time I got out of this place.

As he stood up, he was hit by the faint smell of decaying flesh. Up to this point, there wasn’t a hint of rot, even with the dozens of corpses. It was coming from something that hadn’t been sucked dry. Looking over at the table cover the girl had been under, Liam's eyes hardened.

He couldn’t hear her anymore but he couldn’t move himself to check.

Is this what you wanted? An emotionless creature? “Live to survive” In return for you saving my life, that’s what you wanted from me, right?

Walking amongst skeletons, their empty sockets seemed to follow him as he stopped at the door.

“How could you?!”

Flinching, Liam couldn’t resolve himself to turn around. He could feel the hatred of a dozen pairs of eyes boring into him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the lifeless room.

“We wanted to live too! You—”

He took a deep breath in.

The chatter in his head stopped.

Free of their voices for the time being, in his haste to leave he absentmindedly pushed the door open… forgetting to check what was on the other side.

The lobby of the building was packed with people clamoring and yelling at each other. Their faces were haggard and their postures were slouched in defeat like they’d been running for a long time. A couple were knocked out on the couches while others held their heads in their hands. All of them wore a red sash around their arms to identify them.

Nope. That’s my cue to disappear.

Quietly shutting the door, Liam locked eyes with a woman leaning against the wall. Holding each other’s gaze for a solid three seconds, the woman’s expression grew more flabbergasted at the sight of him.

Putting a finger to his lips, Liam shut the door with the woman watching him in confusion the whole time.

Fuck.

Sprinting to the other side of the other door at the back of the room, the moment he slipped out the back door he heard the front creak open.

“I’m telling you, someone is hiding here! It’s probably one of them!” a female voice earnestly said.

Encased in the darkness of the stairwell he stood in, he controlled his breathing till he could clearly hear them.

“Why didn’t you make a noise sooner t— Everyone cover your mouth!” a deeper voice cried. “That be Jerry… why is he shriveled? Why are they all shriveled?! Bitch, are you trying to get us killed?! Did you have a friend here?!”

“I-I didn’t know t-this… please d-don— AHHH!”

A body collapsed to the floor and Liam heard her faint whimpering as more people shuffled into the room, marveling at the tapestry of death in front of them.

“Boss, there could be one of those shadow freaks in here,” Liam heard a man say, his voice lacking the fear the woman’s voice had.

“No… they would be turned to stone then and we would’ve heard the monster by now. We saw this group alive a week ago. They couldn’t have decayed to this point if it was natural, but judging how we aren’t dead right now, whatever did this is out of power.”

Good deduction, Liam noted, eyeing the light coming from the top of the stairwell.

“This bitch said there was a guy. If he’s responsible for killing our cash cow, he’s going to be exhausted. Spread out and bring him to me alive. You three stay behind and search where these corpses might’ve hidden their water.”

Having eavesdropped on enough of their plan, Liam started sprinting up the stairs. Why be cautious when it would only slow him down?

Voices rose in alarm in the banquet hall and by the time he reached the second floor, he heard the door crash open below. Flying up the steps two at a time, he could feel the vitality he'd stolen from the teenagers coursing through him.

Every door he tried didn't budge and each time he stopped to try, by the sound of their panting Liam could tell the gap between him and pursuers was waning.

Abandoning his efforts with the doors, he ran to where the daylight was coming from.

An explosion had torn open the side of the building, taking with it the flight of stairs to the next floor. He tried his luck with the door but someone had barricaded the other side. Stranded without any hope of escape, he smiled ruefully knowing it was the end of the line for him.

Hearing his pursuers scrambling up the last set of stairs, Liam studied the north end of the city spread out in front of him. Along the edge of the city in the distance, far away from the core of downtown, he could see smoke rising from a settlement.

I wonder if that’s where everyone went? Separating themselves from the chaos of the city.

“You bastard, you took us for a run there, eh? I-I’m going to have fun watching what’s coming for you,” a man wheezed, his shirt drenched in sweat. “Wait a second… w-why do you look completely fine?”

“That’s barely important right now, idiot,” another man hissed, stepping in front of the rest. “Are you going to come with us peacefully or are you going to make this difficult?”

Liam watched him raise his shirt to reveal a gun tucked in his pants. Taking one last look outside at the city of Oakville, Liam raised his hands.

“Thank you,” the posse’s leader said in relief. “Boys, grab him.”

“You don’t need to do that. I’ll come quietly.”

***

Despite his assurance, his escort didn’t want to take any chances with him. Someone was positioned on every side of him with the group’s leader taking the lead in front of him.

Unlike the time they went up, they were walking against the light so everything was darker, forcing them to a crawling pace.

‘Would you like some help?’

You?! What happened to leaving me alone?

‘... Plans have changed. Things are moving faster than I anticipated and you need to be ready for them,’ the demon inside him replied.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

What “things”?

‘I can not tell you. The less you know, the better it will be.’

And I’m supposed to blindly trust you? Didn’t you tell me to find the answers with my own strength?

‘You are pitifully weak. We can no longer afford to wait. Do you wish for my help or not?’

Chewing on his lip as he looked at the faint outlines of his captors, Liam remembered the drained bodies in the banquet hall.

… What are you going to do?

He thought he could feel the demon smiling inside his mind.

‘I am going to give you the performance of a lifetime. Observe everything and commit it to memory. Prepare yourself.’

Liam could feel his consciousness waver as the creature inhabiting him possessed his body.

“Observe everything and commit it to memory.” Commit what?

Shadows started to leak from Liam’s body, drowning the remaining light in the stairwell. But in the dark, it would be impossible for his captors to notice.

“Oi, are any of you lot getting colder or is it just me?... Guys? W-Wait a minute— Hey! I can’t see anything!” a guard exclaimed.

Through the demon, he could feel the shadows beginning to grow taut as they reached their limit.

‘In my weakened state this is the most I can muster but it is enough. Watch.’

The pool of shadows began to tremble as Liam began to sink into it; the cries of his captors growing quiet and indiscernible. He’d become one with the shadows.

Trapped in their embrace, voices tried to whisper to him but once they realised Liam couldn’t understand them, they left him alone. In their absence, he became aware of other details. He could tell the location of everything within the shadows.

They appeared in his mind like snapshots in black and white, bit by bit forming a clear picture. He knew the exact locations of the four people, all of them blindly spinning around in alarm.

The next thing he knew, he was in the walls, looking down on them with a knife in hand. Poised to strike, with a shudder, the shadows withdrew from around him and silently landed behind the last of the captors.

With a single slash, the 5-inch blade cut across the other man’s throat causing him to gasp and tumble down.

“Oi, Parker! Parker are you alright! Someone check on the prisoner!” the captor’s leader cried.

Hidden from each other in the shadows, only Liam could see them as they futilely struggled to get their bearings. He faded back into the shadows and appeared in front of the closest captor.

“You!” the man exclaimed, recognizing Liam’s indistinct appearance.

The captor tried reaching for him, yet his hand passed through Liam.

“What?! This is your doing! Run—”

His sentence ended in a gurgle of blood. As the demon wiped off the blade, its attention became fixated on the last two.

‘One of them is scared. Feel their panic through the shadows.’

Liam focused his attention, trying to understand what the demon was saying.

I can’t feel—

‘Focus harder. Do not speak.’

Resigning himself, he turned his attention inward to the image the shadows had made. Turning off the panicked noises in his surroundings, he could feel a shadow in front of him wavering. Just as he tried to pry deeper, the man’s presence disappeared.

‘He has run away, out of the range of the shadows. ’

Feeling the aura of the remaining captor spike, Liam’s possessed body rushed forward in a wave of darkness and plunged the knife into his back. The man’s body shuddered and went still.

‘The first to hesitate is the first to die. Your attackers will not grant you mercy because of your mistakes.’

Watching in detached horror, the knife was pulled free and the man’s body fell forward, smacking the wall like he was nothing more than a sack of flesh. As the last echoes of their short-lived fight died, Liam could hear the sound of another group running up to meet him.

Walking down the stairs to meet them, the moment the party turned the corner it was over.

Targeting the largest at the back of the pack, Liam’s body jumped across and plunged the knife past its hilt till it stuck out from the other side.

“Shoot him!”

Snapping around, he dived into the shadows as bullets peppered the wall behind him.

“What the hell was that? Where did he go?” a woman demanded, her gun swinging around in case Liam popped out of the walls.

“Calm down, we know he’s not normal! Everyone put their backs together.”

The guy who escaped must’ve told them about me.

‘Notice their behavior. When threatened, weaker species tend to band together. That is more favorable in our case.’

Materializing from beneath them, he sprung up between them and his knife lashed out. Whistling as it spun in a circle, it was the last thing they heard before their bodies dropped. Why had it been so simple? One swing of the blade had been enough to snuff out their lives.

Panting from the exertion, Liam could hear the woman whimpering in pain as the steps ran red with her blood.

‘I can feel your heart hesitate. Did she not shoot at you? She was an enemy. Let her die as one.’

Stepping over them, he heard another group was running up the stairs.

No… let them live. We don’t know if they’re enemies—

Ignoring his request, Liam’s body dissolved into the shadows. Shivering as he traveled through them, the voices he heard before became more insistent and ethereal bodies materialized from the abyss. Passing through one, he found himself watching a stranger’s memories.

[He watched in dread as a growing expanse of an oily black spread out from a body and swallowed his friends. His friends screamed at him to move but he was immobilized by his fear. As it reached him he cursed the existence of the man they shot.]

Remerging at the top of the steps, Liam had to lean against the wall to support himself.

‘What are you doing?!’

I can see them… I can feel them. The people you killed, why are their souls trapped within me?

‘Where did you think they would go? Souls are containers of vitality. Draining their bodies wasn’t enough to bring someone back from the brink of death.’

But why are they inside me?!

‘You ungrateful…’ it whispered, its barely restrained malic making Liam’s head swim. ‘Every power has a source and this was ours. Enough of this. The next round approaches.’

Another group of sacrificial lambs came running, not having learned their lessons from the previous two groups. Like before, the demon carried out a one-sided slaughter. Modern weapons and massive builds couldn’t hold a torch this Liam’s eldritch companion.

‘My power is spent. The rest is up to you.’

Feeling it return to the depths of his subconscious, Liam’s body was returned to his control. Immediately, the backlash hit him. Collapsing onto his knees, all he could see around were the rivers of blood he’d spilled and fresh corpses he made.

His mind and body were so depleted he couldn’t afford to care anymore. That took too much effort.

“He’s right here! Call the boss!”

Turning away as a torch shone at him, he heard their disgust and alarm at the sight of their fallen comrades. A gun was pointed towards him.

“We have to kill him, kill him before he regains his energy.”

“Shut the fuck up. Go check upstairs to see what happened to the others.”

Grumbling their dissent, their boots squelched on the torn pieces of flesh as they walked past Liam.

“Oi, can you hear me? Answer if you can hear me.”

Liam slowly turned to the man shining the torch in his face.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Did you kill those kids downstairs?”

Tears started welling in Liam’s eyes.

“Holy crap, it was you,” the man remarked, his voice full of shock. “W-What even are…”

Footsteps raced back down as the man sent upstairs returned.

“They’re dead. They’re all dead. This asshole killed them all,” he spat, unholstering his gun. “I should kill him right now and be done with it.”

“You do that and I’ll be the first to kill you. Lower your gun, Mark,” the leader Liam had heard back in the banquet hall warned.

Tension filled the atmosphere as the two men stared daggers at each other.

“Now.”

Huffing in disbelief, the man kneeled next to Liam.

“Those were my friends you killed. You won’t be so lucky next time, freak.”

Pushing him before he left, Liam couldn’t resist his strength and folded over. With his face pressed in the pool of blood, the posse’s leader slowly ascended the stairs towards him.

“The only reason you’re still alive is because I find you interesting. A man with powers… seems to be getting more important these days. You better pray the higher-ups think the same.”

A burlap sack was pulled over his head.