Kamil’s heart pounded as he raced down the shuddering, crumpling, crumbling halls of what was once humanity’s greatest triumph over the apocalypse. He felt ashamed of himself, but he couldn’t help it.
He was afraid.
He didn’t fear for himself, though. No. No, he’d seen too much, done too much for that. He’d weathered the worst of the Horror.
He was there when Leviathan sunk Japan.
Fifteen liquid clones working together with the original to conduct a calamity of massive proportions, some wretched ritual born half of old magic and half of impossibly-advanced science. Waves the size of Everest, drowning the entire nation, visible even from the upper atmosphere. He’d watched those they couldn’t evacuate in time simply… disappear. Swallowed by the sea. Drowned in the deep.
He was there when Australia burned.
When Behemoth attacked Brisbane, empowering the Tweed Extinct Volcano to metamorphose into Yellowstone on steroids, suffocating half the continent in a toxic ash, scouring the surface and poisoning what lay beneath. He’d flown above the fields of petrified corpses that now riddled the irradiated landscape, a solemn memorial to the greatest ecological disaster since the time of the dinosaurs.
No, Kamil didn’t fear for himself. He wasn’t afraid of death. His fear was greater, grander, all-encompassing.
The thought that everything they’d built would fall.
The knowledge that the death toll already exacted, though devastating, was nothing compared to what awaited them before the day was done. The crippling, soul-wrenching despair that all their best efforts, all their little evils, that every sacrifice they had made would be for nothing.
The fear ran rampant through his frame. His knuckles were pale, fingers blanched bone-white as he desperately gripped the nearest railing whilst the Triumph slowly plummeted to Earth.
This flying fortress, this helicarrier-metropolis was home to tens of millions, the sole safe haven for those whose true homes were lost to Horror. Its name was no mistake, for it, and its many lesser siblings, represented no less than the collective achievement of all the best aspects of Kamil’s people.
Tinkers dreamed up her structure, Thinkers improved upon it, Shakers and Blasters and Brutes drew her up from the guts of the earth. By cape and man and one hundred thousand spent lives was she was pieced steadfastly together. The lot of them, working as one. Humans, parahumans, Case fifty-threes…it didn’t matter. They were all the same, in the end. They were all fighting to survive.
And they did it the right way, this time.
Built their ranks up slowly. Smartly. Piece by rigorous piece. No traumatized, horny, hormonal children. Only experts. Endurance training. Physiological, psychological, even spiritual. Brutal. Grind them down to dust, stitch them back together. The best of the best of the best in mind, body, and soul.
The powers are just a job. A tool. Like any other.
Of course, it didn’t hurt they had the last surviving member of the Triumvirate on their side.
Keith was essential. Indispensable. In every way. Power. Charisma. Experience. He was the one who told them about all the Cauldron caches down below. The vials. Just lying there. Waiting there. Theirs, for the taking. He was the one who let them know just where to strike.
Every day, a new vault. A new weapon. A new cadre of capes.
Until they were legion. Until they were multitude.
Until they were unstoppable.
When they turned back Leviathan in Shanghai, Kamil had felt it, then. A spark. A hope. People, normal people, going about their days with steps just a touch lighter, faces just a bit brighter.
When they took Behemoth’s arm in Detroit, that spark turned into a wildfire.
But through it all, Keith never smiled.
He was…different. Since the fall. He didn’t call himself Legend, anymore. He didn’t call himself anything. There was this…air, about him. He wasn’t cruel, but he wasn’t exactly kind, either.
Not like he had been, those few times before the Morning that the both of them had met. There was a darkness to him, now. A hatred. A spite. He was even-handed with the troops, and infinitely compassionate with the refugees, but he tore into the shadowy organization’s remnants with a ruthless fury that made Kamil…wonder.
Just what had they done to the hero?
Just what was Legend looking for, down there, in the dark?
Whatever it was, they never found it.
Kamil never asked about it, and they never found it. And slowly, as the days, and months, and years dragged on, no matter the vials they stole, no matter the victories they claimed…
Legend never changed.
Kamil could only watch as the man who had become his closest, dearest friend grew more and more saddened, more and more withdrawn, his beautiful, breathtaking, warming light dwindling down and down to nothing. Suffocating.
Dying.
And with Legend’s reclusion, the cracks in their impenetrable armor began to show.
Like all tumors, the first signs were innocent enough. It was inevitable, really. A couple of rallies, here and there. Normal humans. Non-parahumans. Collecting themselves in public places and beginning to…
Well, just to wonder.
What exactly would happen to them, once the war was over?
Cauldron vials were growing scarcer by the day. And the supply of caches wasn’t infinite. It was simple math. Soon, they’d all run out.
There’d be no more heroes, after the war. No normal life. Everyone knew that. Things would never go back to the way they were. And, while parahumans were still a minority right now, there were…more of them.
Much more.
Thirty percent, nearly.
They were the soldiers. Brutal. Ruthless. Emotionless.
Killers.
The best of the best of the best.
‘These people were given the power of gods,’ a protestor cried out. ‘We’re neanderthals to them. What happens when there’s no more war for the warriors?’
‘When there are no monsters left,’ the churning crowd answered, ‘the killers will make their own.’
Kamil remembered it, but he’d paid it little heed.
They were minor things, really, the riots. Sporadic. Disparate. And peaceful, always peaceful. Of course, he’d been a fool. He’d been busy. Overwhelmed with work. Consumed by the possibility, the inevitability, so close, and so brilliantly lustrous, that they might…
That they might actually win. That they might win the war. That the fighting might finally be over.
And so, when their outings increased in frequency, Kamil let the protestors be. They weren’t hurting anyone, after all. Free speech was the cornerstone of a healthy society. So he’d just…brushed it aside.
And when he began to hear more and more of this sentiment, even within the halls of Alliance headquarters, he’d brushed it aside.
And when one of his closest aides, one of his very best Thinkers, perished in a routine vial run, he’d thought, ‘well, accidents happen.’ And he’d brushed it aside.
Looking back, it was only a matter of time before the pressure burst.
It had all started so…unremarkably. That was the funny thing. Even now, that was the funny thing. A parahuman killed a young man during a training exercise. He was a Blaster, a powerful one, and a novice. One shot went wide, and…well.
Unfortunate.
Nothing at all remained of the boy. There wasn’t even a body to send home to his parents. He’d been all of sixteen years old.
But then, this was war.
And besides, it was hardly the cape’s fault. These accidents were almost the norm. People died, on the front lines, all the time. Every day. Deaths were commonplace. Capes and humans alike. This wasn’t a tragedy. Brisbane had been a tragedy. And even if it took one hundred tragedies like this one to prevent another tragedy like that one, Kamil would call that a fair exchange. An easy exchange.
So he’d reprimanded the cape, but that was it.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
That was all.
He’d brushed the rest aside.
And when the leader of the Humanist movement, who Kamil was surprised to learn had gotten itself a name, met with him, he’d brushed that aside, too. When the man asked him to imprison the cape, he’d denied.
That cape was a soldier, and every soldier was vital. This wasn’t a daycare. They were at war.
And he’d said just as much.
And only when he glanced into the Humanist’s eyes, and saw the pure, abject, relentless hatred lain within, only then did Kamil pause for a moment.
And draw himself out of planning the next attack.
And consider that something here was very, very wrong.
But by then, it was already too late.
Everything was always so much clearer in retrospect.
Now that all was lost, now that everything had fallen apart, Kamil could see it all clearly. So clearly. How had he missed the signs? He’d spent so long fighting monsters that he’d forgotten how human beings made war. They didn’t do it with teeth, or claws. They were softer than that.
They warred with words.
Kamil could see it all so clearly, now, as all fell to pieces around him. He could see it as plain as day. As plain as the nose on his face. He recognized it for what it was. The hot, irrational, emotions. The many crowds whipped into frenzies. The ideology spreading like lightning. Like a virus. A plague. He’d seen it before.
This was the work of capes.
A small group of high-level Strangers and Masters, manipulating everything, moving behind the scenes. So many capes had died during Gold Morning that Kamil hadn’t even thought it possible. He’d thought all the S-Class threats were dead.
But, what if some had survived?
Survived, and hidden.
Biding their time.
A shadow cabal.
With no heroes to fight, and the whole world consumed by war, there would’ve scarcely been anyone left to stop them. Plotting behind the scenes. Stealing vials. Waiting patiently. Poised to take command, to take control. Now, the war was almost over. Now was the perfect time to strike.
All they needed was a reason. And he’d given it to them. Just like that.
And now it was too late.
Too late to stop them. Kamil had lost so much, he’d already lost so much. His mighty helicarriers were falling from the sky. His forces were in ruins, crippled by infighting. There were reports of massive revolts, Masters, Strangers, capes changing into the shapes of friends and family, sowing discord everywhere they went, reaping the lives of people, his people, like wheat in a field. Like wolves among sheep.
Like flies, on a rotting carcass.
There was only one hope left. One last salvation. One potential recourse. Everything couldn’t be saved, not now, not anymore, but maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t all lost, either.
The world’s strongest hero.
Kamil hadn’t seen Legend in years, now. Years. No one had. The former Commander-in-Chief of the Gold Morning Alliance had long abdicated his post. Spent his days secluded in absolute solitude, locked into his personal quarters on the Triumph, just waiting to die.
Maybe, just maybe, he could save the day one final time.
So with trembling limbs and a terribly unsteady gait, Kamil passed by door after door, bulkhead after bulkhead, stumbling past hydraulic chambers and desperately keying his omnicode into Tinkertech locks that hadn’t seen use in ages. Until he reached the final one.
And wrenched it open.
“K–Keith!” He cried out immediately, panting as he entered, squinting around the darkened, squalid quarters. He detected a distinct stench of red meat and alcohol, mixed with a strangely-sickening hint of mint leaves, and had to stop his stomach from lurching.
“We’ve been betrayed!” He shrieked, still blinking about the room. “Qui–quickly! There was an attack, the…the Triumph is falling! Please, you have to help! You have to help us! You have to…to…”
Kamil froze.
His pleas died upon his lips. He’d finally caught sight of Keith. Legend wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t at his desk. He wasn’t pacing about the room.
He was staring out the window, watching the Triumph fall.
Watching the air scream by. Watching the afterburners tear themselves apart. Watching people, his own people, wail as they fell miles to their deaths.
Watching.
Just watching.
Unmoving.
“Oh…oh, no. Oh god,” Kamil whispered, as the crowning revelation made itself known to him in one awful moment of naked truth.
“They…they…you…even you…” he stammered.
Legend didn’t move.
Kamil collapsed to his knees.
He had nothing left. No recourse. No ace in the hole. Nothing.
Except…
“Please,” he muttered, staring at the back of the husk who’d been his closest friend. His voice shook mightily as he spoke.
“Please, I beg you. Don’t-don’t do this. You’ve already won. Our forces are in ruins. We will never recover from this.”
There was no reply. He’d no way to know if his words were even heard, if the Master controlling their greatest hero could make them out. Regardless, he continued.
“Please, I…I know what it is, you want. And I’m willing to give it to you. Anything. Anything at all!”
Still, no reply.
“I can make the transition smoother. That…that must be worth something, to you, yes?”
Nothing. Kamil grimaced at the taste of iron on his tongue. He must have bitten it earlier.
“Please,” he tried, one final time. “These are innocent people. Their deaths will bring you nothing.”
Silence.
Kamil collapsed to the ground. Every scrap of remnant strength had abandoned his body.
Powerless.
Helpless.
Useless.
There was no point to this. The Master could not hear him. There would be no respite, no mercy, no quarter. There would be no happy ending. All would die today, and the world remade would be a wretched one.
He’d failed.
Then, a sound.
Kamil’s eyes widened, and he looked up.
Legend hadn’t turned around, but his right hand, and arm, were raised. His muscles tightened, his wrist whipped out, and his fingers clicked against one another, producing that same sound once more.
A snap.
Legend was snapping.
“I see that bad moon, a-risin’”
He was…singing?
“I see, uh trouble, on the wa–ay!”
But his voice was different, somehow. Deeper, perhaps. Or richer. It wasn’t normal.
It wasn’t right.
“I see earthquakes, and I see lightnin’”
It was sickly. Slimy. Nauseating. Like thick oil, spilling forth past his lips.
And was that…buzzing?
“I see some bad times, today!”
All of a sudden, Legend stopped his song.
He turned around. His movements were wrong, all wrong, too. Too smooth. Too polished. Too precise. Too perfect.
He looked at Kamil, and he smiled.
And Kamil realized, for the final time, ever, that once again, he’d been wrong.
This wasn’t the work of some shadow cabal. It wasn’t a cadre of remnant S-class threats. It wasn’t a group of Strangers, and Masters.
It was just one.
And it wasn’t human.
It never had been.
Its sharpened teeth glinted brilliantly under the jaundiced, burnt-yellow light of exploding afterburners, reflecting the image of a thousand innocent souls who fell to earth.
Its teeth parted and Kamil saw a legion of flies emerge, crawling over one another endlessly.
The sounds that spilled forth from its maw in a burst of mind-rending, ear-splitting noise could not be called words, but somehow, he understood them all the same.
“Little ape.”
It said, pleasantly.
“You are already giving me what I want.”
“You are giving me exactly what I want.”
~~~
Cape Name: N/A.
Civilian Identity: Kamil Armstrong.
Classification: Director, Parahuman Response Teams.
Affiliation/Base of Operations: Boston, MA.
Notable Ancillary Characteristics: Non-Parahuman.
Personal History: Born March 1971 in Portland, MA. His parents’ wealth was plenty sufficient to secure Kamil a comfortable passage through his college years. Attended Northeastern, receiving his bachelor’s in Parahuman Sociology, in which he then chose to pursue a graduate degree. Following his career in academia, Kamil immediately found work as a consultant to the PRT Boston department in 1998, following full induction to a high-level managerial position in the early 2000’s. Eventually, he was promoted to the Director.
Psychological Profile: My interactions with the Director of the Boston PRT were few and far between, and, as such, this account shall be largely speculation. Kamil was short, unmarried, and had no children. He did not seem a particularly extroverted, or publicly-comfortable individual. He was not dissimilar to Armsmaster, or Director Piggot, in this respect.
However, where Kamil differed from his colleagues was the way in which he treated those capes for whom he was responsible. By all accounts, Kamil was a diligent, compassionate and rational man who cared deeply for the parahuman teenagers under his charge in the Boston Wards. He may not have been the most intelligent, but demonstrated a significant wisdom, and rationality, instead.
Kamil did not see parahumans as weapons to be wielded nor did he treat them like freaks. Instead, he was greatly compassionate towards the often traumatized teens, working well with them and thereby allowing them to work well with the men and women of mundane society. Particularly with regard to Case 53s.
It is a shame he never advanced further through the ranks.
Current Status: Presumed deceased.
Circumstances of Death, if Applicable: The circumstances surrounding the Boston PRT Director’s death are murky, as there are several distinct pieces of evidence which heavily imply his activity during the roughly ten-year period which immediately followed Gold Morning, designated contemporarily as the Horror, and subsequently, the Folly.
We have by far the least information from this time period, for obvious reasons, save for the fact that these ten years represented the climax of humanity’s war with the Entities and their derivative forces, as well as the culmination of what is now known as the Ancient human epoch. We know that there was some effort put forth by our ancestors to resist their quasi-extinction, and we know that it ultimately failed. Finally, we know that, at the end of it all, less than an estimated 200 million humans remained across the entire globe.
We also know it was during this time period that the vast majority of our ancillary bases and vial caches were assaulted, their contents stolen for unknown purpose. This represented a significant blow to our future plans and, to this day, we remain unaware of the thieves’ identity or rationale. Thankfully, our primary base proved quite impregnable.
-Entry #09917 from the private records of Sarah Livsey. Security clearance required for access: CABAL.