Time passed by in a slow haze. I had no sign of what was minutes and what was days. I awoke within the confines of what I can only describe as a white box. The room was completely empty, save for the black chair I woke up in. I couldn’t tell where the walls were, let alone the door. The room was an endless expanse of white light that was almost blinding. It felt like the afterlife. Had I journeyed through the tunnel of shadow? Had I gone through the door of light? Was I at the Gates of Heaven or the Gates of Hell? Or was I sent into endless Purgatory? I looked around at the perpetual white space with blank curiosity.

"Is this…? The afterlife?"

For a while, I was alone with only my voice and the quiet to keep me company. My curious voice echoed throughout the deep chamber of alabaster. When the echo resolved, all that remained was my heavy breathing and the steady thump of my heart. All was quiet amidst the emptiness. But the silence was not to last.

A single voice pierced through the domain of silence. A voice that was not my own, yet it spoke using my own lips. It was a voice that was not my own. I felt my mouth move on its own as words that did not belong to me came tumbling out.

"Far from it. Welcome to the land of the living."

Panic struck me like lightning. I screamed and felt my chair tip backward as I stumbled to the ground. I was breathing heavy as I felt anxiety take hold while the voice continued to speak through me. My lips became a conduit for this voice's existence.

"Relax kid, relax! You’re gonna be fine!"

I couldn’t relax. Too much had happened, and it was all coming back. Images of my father’s body burning and crumbling to ashes replayed over and over. I curled up on the floor in my astonishment and screamed to the heavens in the ceiling. My body felt heavy, like cinder blocks were strapped to my back. I couldn't move. My heart was beginning to pound against the confines of my ribcage. All I could hear was that quickening heartbeat. My chest felt like it would explode with each thump of my aching heart. The pain was unbearable, and yet I couldn’t even scream anymore. I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. My whole body was soaking with sweat. It wasn’t long before I blacked out yet again from the shock.

I descended deeper into the darkness of my recent past. I found myself falling headfirst into the pits of shadow. Ghastly wails assaulted my ears without mercy. Screams that were all too familiar chanted in a chorus of maddening cries. It was the same ambience that imprinted itself upon my memory. These were the screams of all those that Nina killed that day. Out of nowhere, flames pierced through the veil of shade surrounding me. Massive plumes of fire, the size of mountains, painted the bleak landscape. My eyes opened within this terrifying plane as I felt myself flip over and land on my feet. I looked around the inferno before me and saw a figure standing in the distance. A black silhouette with a long coat waving in the wind of the storm. I tried my best to get closer to the figure in the distance. I stretched my hand out to the figure as I stumbled forward through the smoke and fire. The wind and the flames all pushed against me, making it even harder to move. Every step felt like it carried the weight of every lost soul Nina claimed. All the torturous weeping grew louder and louder as I continued to walk forward. Through the cacophony of cries, I heard a voice that parted the sea of torment.

"Come on, son. Keep walking."

I felt my legs give in from the moment those words reached my ears. The voice was unmistakable. The voice that pierced through the veil of horror belonged to my father. My father's voice had ripped through the burning air and gripped my heart like a vice. My will to go on was shattered.

The flames sent me tumbling into the ground while they began to eat at my legs. I howled as I felt the fire tear through to my bones and nerves. In that moment, the flames swarmed me like starved rats feasting on a corpse. As I struggled against the fire, I heard my father’s voice once more.

"You’re almost there son."

I didn’t understand, but I kept crawling. I kept crawling as the flames had turned my legs to ashes. A trail of human dust lingered behind me as I dragged my burning torso across the abyssal floor. I lacked the breath to scream anymore. I felt my own blood claw at my lungs beckoning them to break free from their bony prison. Flames began to boil my blood into iron vapors. My vision was failing and my father continued to call to me. But no matter how hard I pushed, I wouldn’t make it. I felt my strength deplete little by little as the flames consumed me. Finally, my body succumbed to the flame and I went silently into the dark.

I awoke from my sleep like a diver resurfacing above the ocean, desperately gasping for precious air. Sweat dripped down my shaven head as I came to terms with my environment for the second time. I was sitting back in the chair. My body was shaking. Something was inside me, fighting for control. I knew that the voice had something to do with it. My eyes were wide with fear. I had no idea what had happened to me.

In truth, I wished I had died. I wished Death had taken me from this pathetic existence I was trapped in. I didn’t want to be alive. Not like that. Not with that fear. It was like I had been born again. I felt like an infant once more, everything in the world was new and terrifying. I heard what sounded like a door opening followed by the voice talking to me again through my body.

"Someone’s coming."

"I know."

"It’s Genesis, look alive dammit!"

"Get out of my head."

"It’s not your head anymore."

Genesis approached me. His fluttering black coat was a striking contrast to the white room I occupied. He approached me in graceful strides characteristic of his commanding nature. I could feel his strength from his footsteps alone. Every step he took felt like it had the power to reduce mountains to rubble. Just who the hell was this guy? Why was he so strong?

I glared up at Genesis and got a much better look at his face. He really did look a lot like me, but he was tall and authoritative. The look of a commander suited him almost too well. He looked to be at least nineteen, maybe twenty. Thin strands of ebony fell just above his eyes while the rest feel neatly along the shape of his skull. His eyes were like a deep bronze sea adorned by a sleek pair of black glasses resting upon the bridge of his nose.

His clothes hadn’t changed much from the day I met him. He wore a black button up shirt with matching pants and shoes. A crimson necktie matching the interior of his iconic black coat sat against his chest. A black scabbard was strapped to the side of Genesis’ coat, housing his Claymore.

Genesis stopped in front of me as I shifted my eyes downward into the reflective glossy floor. It was hard maintaining eye contact with one as intimidating as Genesis. Instead, I sought solace in my own reflection. But, it was not adoration that drew my eyes to the ground. It was fear, and fear is what kept me fixated upon myself. It was a fear which emerged when I gazed into my own eyes. My eyes had changed. My left eye had turned blood red while my right eye was a bizarre mixture of white and black splotches. It looked like ink spilling into a glass of water. I had no idea that I was still talking to the voice in a haze. My muttering ceased when I heard Genesis speak with anger.

"Shut up! Both of you!"

I immediately looked up at Genesis with my mutated eyes. I must have looked like a lost, wounded puppy.

"It seems you have no control over your Second Personality, let alone your powers," Genesis said with a much calmer tone.

The other voice within me retorted almost immediately.

"I’m perfectly under control. The kid here is just weak."

Genesis stood there, meeting my hopeless gaze with his own cold stare. He looked angered, almost like he was disappointed in something. I was uncertain of what thoughts could be going through such a complex mind. Genesis spoke a simple command as I sat there staring into his cold bronze spheres.

"Stand up."

Those words hit me with such force I felt like I would choke. No one could imagine such a trivial command would evoke such a negative response. But, when you become lost in an abyss of thought you lack motivation for the simplest of tasks. Stand up? But why? I couldn't help but analyze that command, being in the state that I was. What was left for me in the outside world? My father was my whole world, my life was his. His death was the end of my world. Now that he was long gone I had no one else to turn to. I was now locked within this white purgatory. I had no reason to continue living. Despite the fact I had survived Nina's flames, I was dead. My life was completely destroyed, and I had nothing to go back to.

Life is more than just the blood pumping through a person's veins. It’s the people you experience it with. And when you experience so much of your life with only one person, you risk losing yourself once they're gone. I had lost everything as well as myself. My reason to stand up died with my father. Even the shell of skin sheltering my soul was not my own. Nothing in this new existence felt like it belonged to me.

One would expect curiosity to drive me forward. But I walked a blurry line between the strange and familiar. I was trapped in between lives both old and new. While Abraxas plucked me from the false old life I lived, I had yet to make the choice to carry on. After all, how could I carry on without someone who made up so much of my life?

Genesis looked down at me as if he was a god looking upon his creation.

"Why won’t you stand?" asked Genesis in a calm voice.

"Why does a baby stand when its mother tells it to?"

Genesis seemed to cock his head. My response was more than unorthodox.

"You're not an infant anymore."

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Do you remember your childhood? Did you stand up when your mother told you to?"

Genesis clenched his teeth in a fury.

"A child stands because it must obey the orders of their mother."

"Wrong."

I glared up at Genesis with enraged, yet cocky eyes.

"You do things because you have a reason too. Just following orders is never enough. It is not a reason. It is an excuse," I said with a defiant tone.

Genesis gripped his sword tight. My words were beginning to upset him. I continued my speech regardless of Genesis' obvious disdain.

"We were both children at some point. We had to have a reason to stand. We had to have a reason to carry out our lives on our own two feet. No child ever listens to their mother blindly. But you never had a mother, did you?"

I heard Genesis grunt as he drew his Claymore. I sat completely still as he brought his blade down onto me. A loud clash of metal echoed throughout the glossy white expanse. My left arm had moved on its own and blocked the strike with a sword made of light. Genesis seemed a little surprised by the sudden defense, as was I.

"I may not like this sack of shit, but this is my body too. I am not going to let you harm it, Genesis," said the other voice with determination.

Genesis grunted and withdrew his sword to his side. He stepped back and looked down at my lonesome self. I sighed as I stared back at him before I spoke up weakly.

"I won’t stand. No matter how much you threaten me."

"Why won’t you stand? You had a reason to stand before, what happened to make you want to fall?"

"You know damn well what happened!" I responded in a growl.

Genesis sighed to himself and took a moment before speaking once more.

"Your father."

"The one reason I had to live is gone. It and my own body were burned alive. By all definitions, I should be dead. I don’t belong in the world of the living anymore."

"Then find a reason!" Genesis shouted.

"You and I both know that the dead cannot walk the Earth."

Genesis turned his back to me. He took a few minutes to think. He had one trump card up his sleeve. His victory now banked solely on one advantage. Genesis continued to glare at me. He then tossed his Claymore at my feet.

"If you are so hell-bent on being dead, then run my sword through your chest. Allow the shell to die with everything else," Genesis said with confidence.

I felt Genesis set his eyes upon me as if to declare his victory. He was right to do so. He was much smarter than me. I had only two choices. Take up his offer and die in pain, or keep living as the empty shell I was.

The truth was, I wanted to die. I wanted it to end. My greatest desire was to move on to the afterlife and be with my father and mother. But there was something inside me that made me hesitate. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. A sick grin stretched across my face as I looked at the Claymore at my feet. I wasn’t ready to die yet. I had one thing I had left to do. My grin was quickly retracted as I struggled to pull myself away from the precipice of madness. I could feel a murderous intent manifesting within. I could not let it win over my mind.

"Show me your resolve," Genesis said as I struggled to decide.

"No. I can't..."

Genesis frowned in disappointment as he retrieved his blade. His scorn made a visible stain on his face. I looked up at him with a question formulating within my gaze.

"May I ask you something?"

Genesis reluctantly nodded and gestured for me to proceed with my inquiry.

"What do you think it means to live?" I asked.

"Shouldn't the dead focus on the fact that they even lived in the first place?" responded Genesis in an attempt to turn my conflicted emotions against me.

"Don't you think my question may determine whether I am dead or alive?"

"Perhaps," Genesis said in agreement as he took a moment to think up an answer.

Life is not an easy thing to understand. It is so infinitely complex that mere men could only hope to comprehend it. But, it didn't stop the two of us from trying.

"Feeling. As humans, we have the ability to feel an overwhelming sensation. Psychologists called it self-awareness. A feeling that tells us that we are here, that we are alive. I believe Descartes' theory falls in line with this idea. The idea that we think, therefore we are. Perhaps that is the best explanation for that feeling of self-awareness."

I took a moment to process Genesis' hypothesis.

"But there are people born into this world who can't sense anything, or feel emotions. How can they feel that they are alive?"

"It is like Descartes said, we think therefore we are. This feeling is one of the mind. No human can ever lose that sense of self-awareness. We can only distract ourselves from the idea of our own existence. But, self-awareness cannot be permanently erased. Otherwise, we would be nothing but husks."

I chuckled to myself. Something about this conversation was humorous to me. While his points were sound, the fact Genesis would recite Descartes was amusing. In my opinion, Descartes was the most overrated of philosophers.

"You keep quoting Descartes. You could have picked any philosopher to back your argument and you chose Descartes. Why?"

"His theory, to me, is the most fitting," responded Genesis in an almost defeated voice.

"We aren't here because we think. There are things beyond simple cognition. I believe that we dream therefore we are. Dreams are the greatest proof that we have any existence. They are like a metaphysical ID card. No two dreams are alike in the same way no two bodies are alike. Even memories can be sucked into the dream space and become dreams themselves. All the more reason to believe that I don't exist. What you see in this chair is no longer a living human being. I am just a skin suit left here to rot away with the passage of time. I have no dreams, and trauma has practically erased my memories. I feel empty. The feeling you spoke of, I can't feel that anymore. I have become the very husk you described. Self-awareness is the sense of belonging to the world, that you are here now and here is where you were meant to be. But now, I don't feel like I belong anywhere…"

Genesis looked at me with pitying eyes. He felt sympathy towards my plight. My broken spirit had revealed itself to him and he was overwhelmed. He had no more angles left to take except for one. He looked at the sword at his side.

"Then why didn't you take your own life when I offered you the chance?"

"I… I don't know."

Genesis shifted his gaze back to me as he revealed his new strategy. The question that would shut me up for a while.

"Do you want revenge?"

I felt my mind begin to ache. My eyes widened. I could hear Nina's maniacal laugh in my ears. My fists began to close tight. I was starting to sweat.

"I don't know."

I was taught never to harbor hatred towards those who hurt me. Even when I was picked on as a child my father would always advise me to "kill them with kindness." My father's advice was the guiding force in my life. But I could not deny. There was an inkling of darkness eating away at my innocent heart. A hatred unknown to a heart filled with light was intruding upon me. Deep within, I wanted to spill Nina's blood. After all, everything from before that day was a blur. The guiding words of my father could no longer restrain me from acting upon my anger.

There was a glint in my eyes as my curiosity peaked. A primal desire sparked inside my heart. The thought of avenging my father began to take root in my mind. Immediately, a path revealed itself to me. But there were doubts in my mind. From what little memories I retained, I had never killed before. The thought of killing Nina felt satisfying, but disgusting at the same time. Could I do it? Could I bring myself to take a life? Even if I could bring myself to steal Nina’s life, how would I find her?

"What if I told you I could help you kill her? All I would require of you is that you stand up from that chair," Genesis continued.

I said nothing. Silence pervaded our conversation. Genesis clenched his teeth in frustration. My stubbornness drove him furious.

"What about your sense of honor?!" Genesis asked in a desperate cry.

"The dead have no honor!" I screamed.

That was the last straw. The questioning of my honor was what finally broke me further.

"You are not dead! No matter how many times you say it, you are alive!"

"You're wrong! My body may continue to move, but my purpose, my memory, every part of the person I was, died. You are giving orders to nothing more than an empty shell. I should have gone on to the next life! I'm just a fucking shell that has no more belonging to this world! I am Earth's fucking tumor!"

Genesis stepped back. He felt the full weight of my words as I descended into my madness and sorrow. He was beginning to regret the things he said. He looked at me, desperately hiding his shame.

"He won't do it, Genesis. Despite the control I have, his will really is something else. He won’t let me in completely," the "other voice," said.

Genesis looked on analytically as I sat there shaking uncontrollably. The stress of two minds fighting for dominance was taking its toll on my body. Genesis nodded with affirmation and turned his back to me.

"I shall see what Lockhart thinks of this."

I didn’t know who Lockhart was, but he seemed rather important.

*****

Genesis exited the White Room and made his way to a rather elegant office located a few floors above. There, sat at the rich mahogany desk, was a man in a lab coat. A man with long blond hair. Genesis gave a short glance to the blond man before taking a seat in front of the desk. The scientist seemed to be looking over a slew of files. Genesis could barely make out the label on one of the file folders. Genesis presumed those documents had something to do with the new addition to the team. At the edge of the scientist’s luxurious furnishing was a nameplate that read "Lockhart." Genesis took a deep breath before finally speaking.

"It would seem there is some conflict between the boy and his Second Personality."

Lockhart laid down the files on the table and sighed deeply to himself.

"As to be expected. We never anticipated that things could get this out of hand. It is going to take some time before he is ever ready to accept what he is," said Lockhart with a grim tone.

"Nina has yet to be found. Her last act of violence was on such a scale that the authorities can no longer ignore it. There is going to be another battle, just like in New York," responded Genesis in concern.

"New York was different Genesis. My employer is the one responsible for Evo City’s construction. Therefore his ties with the local government run deep. He will more than likely put someone he can trust on the investigation. However, this does not change the fact that Nina must be dealt with and fast."

Genesis clenched his fist tightly as he struggled to keep himself calm and collected.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" he asked in a frustrated voice.

"Go right ahead. This is not the military."

"He’s a failure. We were rushed and now we may never succeed with the project."

Lockhart nodded in agreement and sighed deeply once more as he rubbed his fatigued eyes. He knew how harsh this setback was for him and the boy he had saved. But he and his team had been through worse trials.

Many years prior, New York City became the stage for an immense battle. Reports of supernatural and inexplicable events flooded the news sphere, forcing the United States to act. To this day no one knows exactly what had happened in the battle, except for Genesis and Lockhart. The scientist looked up at Genesis with an intense gaze.

"Even if he is a failure now, we must do everything in our power to make sure he is ready," Lockhart said in a demanding voice.

Genesis nodded and was dismissed. As he was about to exit the office, the twin doors slammed open. Standing there with clenched fists was an enraged young woman with blue hair and blood red eyes. She stormed into the room, passed Genesis, and headed for Lockhart with hatred and sorrow in her glare.

"You sick son of a bitch!" she screamed in frustration.

The scientist flinched slightly at the hurtful words spoken by the young woman. He turned to face her with an unwavering gaze as she continued her verbal assault.

"Why did you do this to him!? You should have let him die!? Why would you make him into one of us!? Hasn't he suffered enough!?"

Tears began to well up in her eyes as she screamed. She had never met the boy who lost his life, only to be reborn. She had no idea what his name was, yet she felt unfathomably empathetic. She had witnessed firsthand what Nina and Lockhart had done to the boy. She was there when Lockhart turned this poor kid into something inhuman. She watched as they operated upon his scorched body. She felt her heart collapse on itself as they shaved his burned scalp. She couldn't bear to look when they injected the Second Personality into his consciousness. The girl felt more than terrible seeing all those things happen before her eyes. She couldn't understand why, but her heart was with this stranger. What was this feeling of empathy? Why was she crying over someone she had never met?

Lockhart stepped out from behind his desk as the young blue haired woman continued to weep. The girl didn't understand anything. Her mind was reeling with confusion. But then, without warning, the screaming stopped. Silence seized the room as the woman felt Lockhart embracing her firmly. Her eyes began to quiver with tears as she felt her creator’s warm body give her shelter. With a shaky breath, Lockhart began to speak. His words made the sympathy in his heart ever more apparent.

"I’m sorry. I wish there could have been another way. I’m so sorry."

"I know," said the woman with a sob.