CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Moses' Apartment, New York City

"If he is so dangerous why didn't we just kill him then and there?" Lazarus asked.

"Because he has a part to play in this just like all of us," Philip tried to answer simply.

"What is so important about a murderer?" Moses added.

"The first will be marked by a sign only the seer can tell." Phil quoted.

"Scripture?"

"Sort of...ancient Chinese prophecy."

"Oh, one of those," Vlad tried being funny.

"I didn't know what it meant until my vision of Ollie. So I had to make sure it happened in real life. I saw that kid doing something...that I haven't seen since the caves of Afghanistan."

That seemed like eons ago. That's when Philip remembered his primal fear, losing all these powers and going back to being a helpless blind man. Philip looked around, there was no one from his past to talk to for reassurance. This was the first time he actually felt regret for sending Dr. Randolph away.

"Anyway, I needed to see how it worked. I needed to watch him and not interfere because soon there will be hundreds of them, just like him..."

"What?"

"I thought everyone's powers were different?" Moses argued.

"Most are. The superior gene is added to the person's structure according to their inner core, their personality. A lot of people are natural born killers."

"So, you brought me there to analyze him?" Lazarus tried to figure out.

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"And what did you see?"

"It looked like he sucked this blue..." Lazarus' look went blank, as if he was being hypnotized by fear, "Smoke out of him as he was dying."

"Soon there will be an army of those super killers here in New York. If we don't stop them the city will fall."

"What do we do?"

"We wait." Philip enticed them, as Lazarus, Moses, and Vlad looked at each other, utterly puzzled. Philip continues, "We wait until their leader presents himself and then we destroy him, showing the entire city how to defend themselves."

"The leader is that kid?"

"Welcome back, Laz."

"And that's why you didn't kill him," Moses wrapped it all together.

Philip got up from the table and walked down the hall to the room to put his DarkFlood outfit on. Moses looked around the table at Lazarus and Vlad. Who would ever think that he would play host to an Arab and a Russian, being of Haitian descent himself, and with Oklahoma Phil in the room, this was beginning to feel like a black market United Nations.

"We should get uniforms of our own." Vlad said outright, as if expecting reticule, but forcing himself to bring it up anyway. Moses didn't want an outfit, he knew the stone was his make and skin. As his flesh was mostly eroded from his arms now, he was doing everything he could not to make it worse.

Philip walked back out as DarkFlood and went to open the kitchen window to the fire escape. He didn't say a word.

"Why do you never tell us anything!" Lazarus blurted out, "I mean, about your dreams, your visions."

Philip looked back, "Because if I did you would either go crazy or lose all hope, and that doesn't just go for you three but anybody who's not like me."

"What makes you so different?" Vlad did not know yet.

"I was like this before any of you, before the two suns, and soon the day will come when everyone will see why." DarkFlood climbed the fire escape to the roof and had a look out at the city before he jumped. Vlad and Moses followed him up there and Vlad tried to go with him. But Philip refused, telling him he was not properly trained yet.

"It's okay, you will have your time. And I can tell you this... you all do make outfits, but just know that this cape is not for decoration, it was a gift from my Sensei."

Philip teleported away and Moses talked with Vlad up top for a bit before they went back downstairs. "He talks like everything to come is so certain already. He's losing his humanity."

Vlad disagreed, "He mentioned his cape. Our comrade was politely telling us not to copy his cape. I think he is still very much human underneath all that dred."