Lightning arced through the air again, for the dozenth time. The manacles exploded off my skin, and the electricity arced up the pole, sending the man holding the other end, over ten feet away seizing. He was wearing rubber gloves and boots, and the grounding wire had similarly exploded. The lightning did not care.

As the man’s convulsions came to an end, I got to my knees slowly. Instantly, all eyes and weapons were trained on me.

“Blackett, I know this is not a negotiation, but I will not sit here and endure this slaughter. Men are dying because of me. Now let me get in a police car and take me to my jail cell or whatever it is you do with Exhumans.”

“Exhuman, be silent and lay on the ground. The XPCA has the situation under control, and you will–“

“This is not a negotiation,” I said, with steel in my voice.

Yesterday I woke up worrying about a football game and went to sleep wondering about a scholarship. This morning I woke up worrying about my family, and tonight, if I ever slept again, I’d be seeing the shuddering bodies of people I was killing right now jerking and twisting, their inhuman screams–from the ones who could even scream–distorted by their exosuit helmets.

“This is not a negotiation,” I repeated, looking him in the eyes this time. “You will allow me to place myself under arrest without any more death, or I will show you exactly how much death and destruction I can cause.”

His eyes narrowed, and the suited soldiers around me tensed. “Are you threatening us, Exhuman?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. You, these men, and I all know you can’t detain me now. If you could, you would already. So that leaves two options: You let me walk, and I’m being charitable here and letting you choose the destination, or I kill all of you and find someone who’s more willing to negotiate with an Exhuman.”

“Nobody will talk to you, especially after you wipe out an entire XPCA squad,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Then I guess I’d just have to keep killing. Might take a long time and a lot of people. So. Negotiating starting to sound good now?”

His men were all looking at him now. I got the feeling they all agreed with me…so far as realizing I could wipe them all out effortlessly at least. If they were talking, they were doing it on internal comms. Blackett’s expression never changed, he just stared at me, livid, his eyes still narrowed. I was certain that my being on my knees, heck, my very existence was offensive to him, but he seemed frozen in place.

Abruptly, he stood up straight. “Exhuman Athan Ashton, know that if I had my way, this operation would continue until you either died on that pavement or were in secure custody. However. A superior officer with clarity and vision surpassing my own has determined that your negotiation is acceptable and you will be transported to a holding facility without restraints.” He made a jerking gesture, and the soldiers lowered their weapons.

Two of them appeared at my sides, but did not try to touch me. Instead, they ushered me to the back of a black armored van, the entire rear compartment of which was empty except for benches along both sides. I asked them to wait outside, which they did, while I slid in and buckled my seatbelt. To my relief, it apparently did not count as a restraint, since it didn’t explode violently. The two soldiers joined me afterwards, sitting opposite and adjacent to me.

The doors closed, and that was the last I saw of my house or hometown. There were no windows, only vents high up on the walls, and the van slid along the ground almost silently. It was impossible to tell which way we were going, or for how long.

Not that I would have been able to focus anyway. I’d killed a dozen men and threatened federal agents with terrorism and death. I was only trying to help, but it felt like every decision I could make was wrong. Death vs. death, blood on my hands no matter which way I turned. Nobody should ever have this much power, to casually kill another without effort or consequence, it was dehumanizing.

After hours, the van had imperceptibly stopped. I only noticed because the two soldiers looked like they had started getting ready to move out. They seemed jumpy and anxious, and I didn’t think it was just me, since they’d been calm through the trip. The one across from me gestured for me to stay and his distorted, synthesized voice instructed me to wait for a minute.

The two of them got off the van, and after a few moments, one returned with a canister about the size of his huge exo-suited fist and placed it at the entrance to the vehicle.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what that is, or what you’re doing, but it’s not going to end well,” I said. “Just let me go, please.”

The distorted synthesizer crackled. “Commander Blackett sends his regards, you murdering son of a bitch.” He pushed a button on top of the canister and slammed the van doors shut.

There was an almost inaudible click as the van doors locked shut, and then a booming crack of thunder, obliterating the seatbelt and blowing the back doors off the van, one flying into a soldier, and sending him flying backwards a dozen feet, before he finished sliding to a stop. The other soldier was still right behind the van, the doors having flown inches over his head. His face snapped to me, and while I couldn’t see through his helmet, I could still read the unmistakable look of terror on his blank visor.

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The device, whatever it was activated, letting off a low thrumming sound and glowing with an unbearable white light. I couldn’t look directly at it, and shielded my eyes with my hands. The guard did the same but only for a few seconds before he stumbled and began grabbing at his helmet. He pulled it off and I thought for a second his face had melted off and poured out of his helmet.

No, instead he’d just been vomiting inside the helmet, and his face was red and covered in what looked like burns and blisters. I was horrified as I watched his skin smoke, wither and blister, as the entirety of his skull turned into warped flesh jerky, with him screaming a hoarse wail that no human should ever have been able to produce. After mere moments, he ignited completely and presumably died, as the screaming stopped.

I sat there completely unaffected by the device, but completely horrified that they had tried and failed so completely to do that to me. I stepped out of the van, kicking the device further inside on my way out. There was a loose semicircle of soldiers staying about 30 feet back, and in the middle of them, Blackett. I stomped towards him, and the soldiers closed ranks, forming a wall between us.

“What, you want me to go grab that bomb and bring it over here for you guys?” I asked, making them exchange nervous glances. “What is that thing? Just pour out radiation or something? Is that the type of shit XPCA comes up with?”

“XPCA will use whatever means it needs to pacify and control Exhuman threats.”

“And I am NOT an Exhuman threat, though the way you keep pushing me, I am certainly going to be one soon.” I began counting off on my fingers,” I came out of my house when you told me, I laid on the ground, I submitted to arrest, I stopped you from throwing yet more lives away, I travelled…wherever the fuck we are peacefully…”

“And then on the other hand, you stormed my hometown with a goddamn army, sacrificed a dozen lives for literally no purpose but your own stubbornness, had to get told off by your superiors because of how incredibly incompetent you are, and then you pull this shit and melt one of your own people alive. And…AND! You are pissing off the one guy in this situation who is seemingly the only one here doing your job. Me! Fuck, no wonder Exhumans always seem to go berserk and kill everything, you guys do a fantastic job of demonstrating just how shitty humanity can be!”

His hand twitched towards the firearm at his hip while I berated him, especially when I mentioned his superiors. “Do it. Please do it, I’m begging you. Of all the lives I’ve ended today, yours will be the only one I’ll be glad to do,” I goaded. “I’ve seen enough people try to shoot me and die today, but maybe you’re not as smart as I am, so I’d love to see you try again.”

Reminding him of how ineffective it might be seemed to calm him down, and his hand resumed its rest at his side.

“Exhuman Athan Ashton, you will enter this detention facility and will not speak another word,” he said, through gritted teeth. I wondered if his superiors were reaming him over his earpiece at that very moment. “Take him to cell 1.”

I followed a soldier who stomped ahead of me in a heavy exosuit towards the only building in the area, a small one-story building surrounded by walls and walls of razor wire and what looked like automated turrets. XPCA stared down at me from a half dozen tall surveillance towers, each manning a mounted gun. In the distance, I could see another couple dozen vans parked in straight lines, and beyond them, some airships I didn’t recognize and a pair of VTOLs.

The area might have been beautiful, if it weren’t an XPCA military base. There were tall trees everywhere, white mountains in the distance, and a cloudless blue sky above. I could hear birds chirping in the nearby trees.

We stopped before the first gate, heavy barbed metal spikes in a frame of concrete festooned in razor wire. Lights and guns were trained on me from every angle as the spikes receded into the ground, letting us move forward. We only went about ten feet before encountering another identical gate. The gate behind us began to raise, leaving the rest of the convoy party outside, just me and the one soldier entering.

The gate behind me was about halfway up when I heard the same thundercrack explosion as before, and when I turned back to look, it had been reduced to a twisted wreck of metal. I let out a sigh, I didn’t know if gates and fences counted as restraints, but my powers were pretty clear on it.

“ALL FORCES OPEN FIRE,” an older man’s voice boomed over the base’s external PA. Presumably a warden or something. He apparently hadn’t been informed of my powers.

I hunkered down and tried to protect my exposed skin as best as possible as millions of shards of fragmented, scorching metal poured down on me. I could see nothing but flashes and hear nothing but gunshots, all blending together into one continuous roar, as the base’s defenses poured bullets, rockets, lasers, and god-knows what-else into my shield’s waiting arms.

The onslaught only lasted seconds before two of the security towers had fallen, and arcing lightning had detonated the majority of the automated turrets. The soldier who had been escorting me had wisely jumped for the ground as soon as the order was given, and was lying prone with his arms over his head. The other soldiers who had been part of the convoy had similarly known not to fire, and were holding in a ready formation.

The base defense were not so lucky. The towers that were still standing were blackened with scorch, and the soldiers manning the turrets were thrown to the ground, if lucky.

Less than ten seconds and the whole of a secure facility laid to waste. Again, I shuddered to think what would happen if I had decided to use my powers. I could have been the most apocalyptic Exhuman event yet.

A minute passed, and the only thing stirring was the soldier next to me, who’d gotten to his feet. He didn’t even train his gun on me anymore, probably concluding that doing so was more a danger to him than to me. The air was completely choked with smoke, and I was rubbing my arms down, trying to nurse the small burns like pockmarks all over me. After long minutes of waiting where I could hear Blackett yelling at something over comms, the facility door opened.

An older officer with a similar uniform to Blackett walked out with a half-dozen XPCA in exosuits flanking him. He yelled “What is he still doing here? Get him into a VTOL and get him off my base!” I heard more yelling from Blackett behind me, and the soldier next to me gestured towards the landed craft with a pointing finger.

I just hoped Blackett didn’t try anything stupid when I got out of this ride. He was beginning to run out of men, and I was beginning to run out of patience.