When Leveller was finished redirecting his power towards intelligence and his “dark half” came out, there was a split second where you could see what he truly was: a monster—he was to us what we were to a severely, mentally challenged individual—something almost beyond understanding, its thoughts bordering the unknown. His eyes gleamed with lethal intellect that could destroy a continent, his body posture lacked a single iota of doubt or hesitation.

He completely analyzed the situation in a moment, and the next he changed his whole personality, hid his intelligence, modified his body language to reflect relaxation and harmlessness. Unless you could read minds, you would never be able to tell. He was that good, better than the best Hollywood actor, better than a spy that had trained their whole life.

In this room only I and the AI could perceive what the true nature creature that stood in front of us was, the true threat it represented.

I didn’t speak to tell him what I wanted. There was no need. Seconds after his appearance, he’d already deduced it.

He didn’t speak much either. The first time I forced him to do something for me, he’d talked my ear off, trying to convince me, trying different approaches and schemes so that I’d let him go. Unfortunately for him, he found that my power made me resistant to his ilk: it was extremely difficult to trick people that knew you were trying to trick them and how.

He only said one thing, “I’ve warned you before, and I’ll do it again. You are playing with fire, gambling that you won’t get burned. This is the third time you call upon me, and it won’t be the last, since I am a useful asset to you, a deus ex machina for your inconsequential problems.” He dropped the human act and stared at me with an expression that promised me horrible things, “But as you know, eventually something will go wrong and I’ll escape. Release me now before I have to pull a Roko’s Basilisk on you.”

Leveller still had the noise canceling on, but his superintelligent alter ego could lipread, so I spoke, “And I’ll repeat what I always say when you bring this shit up. Either you do what I want right this instant or I’ll get rid of you. As for the future…I’m feeling lucky, so I’ll roll those dice.”

He shrugged and began moving towards Cyberscream. Then, because the bastard couldn’t resist having the last word, he said, “The house always wins. Perhaps next time we meet you’ll be more reasonable.”

Now that that was out of the way, Cyberscream and Leveller began applying the sophisticated virus that’d been developed by countless Mentals using the endless budgets of the government and several major corporations.

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The AI kept trying to convince me throughout all of this. It threatened me, listing all the things it would do to me once it overcame the virus we were injecting it with. It enumerated all the benefits I’d get from following it: my enemies, served on a silver platter; a lifespan of thousands of thousands of years. One by one, it attempted every trick in the book to change my mind.

Had things been differently I would have accepted its offer, even if it shared part of the blame for my downfall. The thing was even less human than Leveller. It had no feelings, only a cold insect-like focus. I could do a thousand things to it, each worse than the last, but it would not suffer even a tiny bit. This of course meant that my revenge on it wouldn’t bring me much satisfaction.

The thing is, I didn’t need it to achieve my goals. Therefore, the least I could do is get in its way, even if all I did was mildly inconvenience the nightmarish machine.

Throughout all of this, Terrorbyte cried out, begging me not to harm his master.

Once the loading bar reached one hundred percent, the virus did its job. The giant electronic equipment that towered over us went dark, the internal machinery ceasing its motion. It all felt very climatic, like watching a mighty dragon being felled.

But we weren’t no band of heroes, and the city of Jackson wouldn’t be showering us with petals and cheers for slaying this beast. No, the heroes of the city, either corrupted by the AI or clueless to its existence would be coming after us soon enough.

I walked up to the distraught prophet and ripped him away from the wreckage of his vehicle.

I threw him down on the floor harshly and stepped on his face with one armored foot, applying pressure so he’d feel some measure of discomfort.

“Hack his faith chip and disable it.” I told Leveller and Cyberscream. “I want him to be able to feel what I’m gonna do to him.”

They complied, and once Terrorbyte’s emotion controlling chip was off, I spoke, “Nerves, I want you to modify his brain. Make him feel an overload of nauseating physical emotions. Make him feel as if he is constantly too cold, too hot. Make it so his whole body itches, like he he has has bugs coming in and out of all his orifices. I want him to feel as if he is getting fucked and fucking someone, as if he has razor blades inside his urethra, in his eyes, in his ass…” The list continued on and on. I really wanted Terrorbyte to reconsider his life’s choices, to regret even thinking about going against me. I wasn’t here looking for justice, my days of heroing were long over. All for an eye, all for a tooth, that’s what I operated under these days.

By the time Nerves had finished his fine work, Terrorbyte was left a screaming mess. He still had some defiance in him and believed that his AI God would save him. But there’s no man torture won’t break in due time, and I was planning on keeping him like this for a long time—years, maybe decades. I was thinking of sticking him deep underground in the middle of nowhere with a supply of force-fed food. But that would all come later.

Now there were some things I had to take care of. I needed to get what was left of the facility under my control before the heroes arrived. Had to restart those cyborg production lines to make myself an army.

The thought I would do something like this never crossed Terrorbyte’s mind. Despite him being a cultist and a fool, he had a righteous side to him. He thought I was going to expend myself in a pyrrhic victory to get my vengeance on him. But he wasn’t the only one on my list, and I'd burn half the world if that's what it took to make them pay.

Making tens of thousands lobotomized cyborgs wouldn’t even enter the top ten worst things I’ve done.