Sitting on a hospital bed in an empty room, William Winters looked into the wall opposite him with a lifeless expression on his face. His usually healthy-looking skin was pale and the stains of dried tears were very apparent on his face even with the scant amount of light from the noon sun that was let in through the small gaps in between the blinds.
His ice-blue eyes were cold and indifferent, bordering on lifeless like his face. The horrors William had seen recently were still seared into his mind and he didn't want to close his eyes anymore because of this fact. The fact his eyes were bloodshot showed that he hadn't blinked his eyes in a long time. But he couldn't not blink for much longer as the pain was so physically uncomfortable that it felt like ants were crawling over his eyes, so in the end, William quickly blinked his eyes.
But he soon found himself cursing himself.
Tears once again flowed from his eyes, images of what had happened weeks ago once again coming to live in his mind. His mother and father being beaten to death, his sister crying as the Espers forced themselves on her...the fact he was helpless, hog-tied and forced to watch it all. More tears fell when he came to this thought.
But his eyes didn't stay cold and indifferent, instead, they flared in anger and William instantly started flailing about. Though the restraints on his wrists and ankles stopped him, it helped him to burn off the wrath flowing through his veins. But it wasn't enough and he stretched his arms as far as he could, the restraints digging into his flesh, bruising and marking his akin. When he'd stretched himself upward as far as he could, his pain and rage reached a crescendo and he roared out hoarsely.
"ARGHHHHH!" his shout sounded like it came from a supernatural creature rather than a human and before soon nurses rushed into his room again like this wasn't the first time it had happened.
The nurses looked tired and hurried stabbed a syringe into William's thigh, thoroughly sedating him, and then leaving after doing a quick check on a few screens next to him. Though it did nothing to get rid of his anger in his eyes.
POV Change - William Winters (1st Person)
I should stop doing that...Being in a sedated body with a working mind leaves me nothing but time to think.
And I want nothing more than to not think anymore. Images of what they did to my family...what they did to me...it's all floating around in my head...and it's boiling to the point where I feel like I'm going to explode. I just want to tear everything apart - even myself - to see if it could placate this pain. It's maddening.
I couldn't feel sad anymore. Only anger. Hatred.
Nothing more. Just those two things.
What I wouldn't do for power. For real power.
('<>' means speech inside William's head that isn't his own thoughts)
A deep, rough voice, like rocks being clashed against one another, spoke in my head. I froze, wondering if I'd finally gone mental, that the events that I'd experienced had broken my mind or whether the sedatives they'd given me were messing with my already unstable mind.
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Instantly I stopped my thoughts, my eyes closing to slits, feeling immensely annoyed at my mind for seemingly making fun of me.
"Oh really? You can give me power? A voice in my mind?" I spoke for the first time in weeks, my voice sounding rough, dry and even slightly weak, but it didn't stop me from chuckling slightly, "Well, it seems I've gone insane."
It felt like my body was being cut up by mini-razor blades and my blood had turned to acid. The slight smell of burning also hit my nose and I guess I must either be burning or I'm having a stroke. Luckily I could still get some words out, so I tried to plead with the voice inside my head.
...Jesus Christ, I've really gone fucking mental.
"Uncle! Uncle!" I whispered with what little air was left in my lungs, "Fucking stop!" my hoarse whisper got a sadistic laugh from whatever the voice was before the pain slowly receded to wherever it came from.
"No!" I hurriedly said before composing myself slightly, "No. I believe you, alright?" I said partly to myself and the voice but as I said it, I remembered what the voice had offered:
Power.
I felt my heartbeat quicken as my anger once again flared. My thirst for revenge had been ignited by the possibility of power being given to me.
"You spoke of power. What kind of power?" I hoarsely asked, doing my best to hide my greed for whatever power he could give me, and failing terribly at doing so. The laughter from the voice told me that last part.
It didn't take me long to think about it, the images that were ever-present in my head were all I needed to decide on my answer.
"I'll take it. I'll take the power you're offering."
Scoffing, I answered in a hateful voice, "I don't care. From what I've seen, most Espers are monsters anyway, so I'd only be joining the club. Anyways, why do you sound like you're trying to talk me out of accepting your power? Just give it to me," I spoke in an impatient voice - the quicker I could get the power, the quicker I could set off on what I needed to do.
"Why would my blood be different?"
Before I could even say anything, I felt a weird feeling invade my body. It was both bitterly cold and boiling hot and it felt like wave after wave of ants flowed into my body and were using my blood vessels as new tunnels for a new colony.
I could feel a biting pain and before long it became much worse, causing sweat to cascade off my body. But it had nothing on the pain the voice made me feel when I thought it was just a voice in my head because I'd gone mental. So I just grit my teeth and accepted this pain as a process to gaining the power offered to me, which it probably was.
So as this weird feeling, and the pain it brought, spread, I just closed my eyes and laid back, thinking about all the things I'd do when I gained the power.
Little did I know what I'd let myself accept.