He still remembered when the little cretin had said it. On the day of his departure, the perfect, blessed child that everyone fawned over had struck at his greatest vulnerability.

“A bastard in the truest sense of the word. Your father beat you for a good reason, and he was right to leave you.” Leo had told him. His parents had showed no reaction, and when Maxwell thought back on it, he hadn’t, either. Maybe he had just ignored it then, and maybe his parents had simply not heard, or were too caught up in their grief.

But he knew that he’d said it, and after the first couple of days, a furious hatred burned within him every time he saw the child.

‘Someone’s causing the schizophrenia to worsen.’ The stray, strange thought crossed his mind every once in a while, but it was always extinguished quickly. Not this time though.

It probably wasn’t… maybe. Unless it was. But it was too unlikely to be happening to him. Who was even strong enough to mess with the mind of a tier seven awakened? Nobody on the ship. But there were people who came close... and it wasn’t hard to target a weakness.

And then, the line of thought disappeared again, just like they always did. In its place, Maxwell remembered that his schizophrenia had been cured a few months ago... so why was he still taking his medicine?

‘Erich’s trying to kill me.’ Maxwell quickly concluded. There was nobody else on the ship that would have the incentive or capability to mess with the communications of the ship.

He couldn’t kill the man, though. Not in broad daylight, at least.

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‘What the fuck am I thinking?’ Maxwell abruptly caught himself again.

Maxwell suddenly stood up from where he had been sitting, and his gaze locked onto a woman sitting at the other end of the cafeteria. A woman he didn’t recall at all, despite having done thorough background checks for everyone on board.

‘Murder was too far. It’s over.’ Maxwell thought, deeming it likely that the woman could hear his thoughts.

His body burst with power as his soul flooded through his soul sphere, and the distance between him and the woman disappeared almost instantly.

She couldn’t even react; she was simply slammed into the alloy wall, which warped beneath the force. He held her throat in his hand, and with a thought, he could kill her.

But he hesitated, for a brief moment, knowing that killing the woman could remove any chance of interrogation.

And that brief moment proved to be dangerous, as a dozen different apparitions surrounded him. Most of them were beings he saw frequently. His father held his wrist in an iron grip, and tears formed at the edges of his eyes as a searing pain filled his entire body.

Maxwell’s soul compressed around him, but the apparitions didn’t disappear. They were only partly because of the woman. There was nothing he could do about them.

He tried to figure out something that he could do to retaliate against the woman, but the searing pain and the hail of hate coming from the apparitions slowed his thinking.

Finally, he realized that his other arm was fine; his father only gripped one of them. It shot forward, to grab at the woman’s throat and to end her life, but it simply slid through the woman, slamming against the wall.

‘What? Where?’ Maxwell thought, suddenly looking around to try to find the woman, but the apparitions deliberately blocked his vision.

“Catch that woman! She’s fucking with my mind!” Maxwell shouted, remembering the handful of very shocked men and woman in the cafeteria.

Maxwell took a second to calm his mind, and decided to spread his soul out in order to locate the woman. His soul was one of the few things that his schizophrenia couldn’t affect, and so it should be able to find the woman.

And then, his mind went blank, and the people around him saw him fall to the ground limply.