Being told that the third Radius Ability user hadn’t actually been with us the entire time was a shocking revelation—especially when I saw Emmy shapeshift right before my eyes. My doubts eased slightly when she explained that she was “born” with her ability upon her creation, meaning she couldn’t be an Ability user. After all, she didn’t have a human body mutated by outside energy.

Still, it didn’t add up. I distinctly remembered her saying she’d been teleported to the house, and her stated goal was to find me. That didn’t exactly help her case, especially since the Refs had teleported the Ability users to our locations. Even with the added knowledge that Emmy used Underground City tech to transport herself to Dante’s location, the thought that lies were being spread didn’t leave my mind.

The truth was something I intended to force out of both of them, but that plan needed to take a backseat. After all, I couldn't bring myself to worry about anything else at that moment when a man was emerging out of Dante’s chest like a ghost phasing through a wall. Judging by Dante’s face, this was way out of his expectations too.

Although, what we saw wasn't just out of our expectations. It broke them entirely. It wasn't just any man making his appearance known in the bar. With long hair blacker than obsidian that flowed in the air like molten metal, he made the atmosphere darker than it already was. Just as black as his hair was the eyepatch strapped around his left eye, seemingly containing something bright and green under it.

One foot. All it took was one foot on the ground and everything began to shake. It wasn’t the kind of violent shaking you’d feel during an earthquake. It felt otherworldly, as though the space itself couldn’t handle the presence of the person’s overwhelming intensity. Yet, the space couldn’t just kick him out—it could only deal with it.

It could only try its best to withstand the bare flesh and the immense energy of the man standing in the middle—Daemon Williams, the leader of the Underground Radius.

A guy like me, who only showed fear when it concerned his daughter, couldn’t bring himself to speak or even move in Daemon’s presence. Looking at the man scanning each of us in the bar was the only thing possible for me. Dante didn’t move and Emmy, who I thought would be jumping for joy over this, didn’t utter a word. In fact, I could hear rapid breathing coming from my right.

Finally, Daemon’s eye locked onto me. I thought a talking zombie like me would be the most unnatural thing here, but the one eye the guy had was… opposite. His pupil was milky white while his iris… or maybe the entire sclera was pure black. And I thought Dante looked devilish. This man gave the two-face a run for his m-

“You all hold your heads very high.”

I didn’t know why or how it happened, but it just did. A second before that sentence was said, my body was firmly upright. One second later and I was kneeling with one knee on the wooden floor. Dante had his whole body bowed. When another second passed, half of the bar had vanished into thin air, the night sky now watching over us.

Confusion mixed with pain had randomly filled my head as half of my skull plummeted down to my thighs.

Daemon’s lips tightened, his narrow eyes narrowing even more. “One knee down in the presence of your betters is unwise. They say the most humble man bows his head the lowest, though I don't expect a zombie to know the actions of man.” He spoke like anything he said was the absolute truth, a truth my voice wasn’t allowed to dispute. He turned to Dante and asked, “Boy, care to explain why you're in the same room as Jerome Hunter instead of retrieving Jason like I ordered you to do?”

“The guy you partnered me with from UCB used his ability so that we and few other guys were forced to play a game,” muttered Dante, who sounded out of breath. His body was still bowed. “The target was Jason who ran all the way to Hallowsville. Whichever team made it there first had dibs on that psycho.”

Dante’s father chuckled, anger brewing beneath. “Dibs? One of my men is rampaging through the surface, possibly murdering innocents as we speak, and you idiots are competing over dibs? I thought that ugly scar on your face would cleanse your mind of any idiocy left in there when you decided to associate with a Type Two Radion, but I was sadly wrong.”

“Would it be so wrong to say that we shouldn’t waste so much effort on a Radius Ability user like Jason Zoorheez?”, said Dante. “From what I’ve seen of his ability, I don’t understand how it could contribute to fixing the effects of the apocalypse. If anything, his ability is more suited to pure destruction.”

“And yours isn’t?” Daemon approached Dante, his boots leaving cracks on the floor. “Old Woman Teresa can heal wounds and reattach limbs. Kofi gives us electricity and keeps our technology alive. Your sister can rebuild houses, schools, hospitals. You protect yourself with forcefields… and you can’t even do that correctly. Your face is proof of that.”

“And Jason can kill you with a single word, so what’s your excuse for keeping him around? Unless… that is why you keep him around, why he’s ranked higher than me. You're afraid of his ability.”

“That masked fool is very much a killable man.”

Dante scoffed. “Yes, you're right. Of course my dad would never be killed by Jason. Afraid wasn't the right word–cautious is. Being cautious is smart considering what he can do. The psycho could kill you and he knows he can, but he also knows you can kill him too and that you know you can. Mutually assured destruction.”

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“Mutually assured destruction…”

Dante lifted his head a little. “Yeah… that's it. You grant him a seat at your table and free him of any crimes he might commit, like what he did to that boy. In exchange for that, he does what you say and stays underground so you don't kill him.” Dante snickered. “You must be pissed at me now. Your caged animal finally found the key.”

“That's ironic coming from you,” Daemon retorted.

“When have I ever acted like an animal who kills people for pleasu-”

“The day you killed your mother.”

Daemon’s voice echoed across the room, causing the ooze on my body to shake like jello. He didn't really shout that sentence, yet there was this commanding boom in his voice that made you want to listen. I could almost feel the tension weighing down on my back, and it got even heavier when I saw Dante slowly lift his head more until his eyes met with his father.

The permanent grimace on his scarred half seemed to have an angrier look to it.

“You lift your head too high, boy.”

“The only man who’s lifting his head even higher than me in your vicinity is Geremiah. The guy has the balls to nickname himself G.O.D, and I don't really blame him. He believed he had the authority to… make his own rules. A man shouldn't follow his own rules when his betters have already made them for him. But now look. We have to play his little game just to get Jason back.”

“Not any longer,” replied Daemon, folding his arms. “Tell me his current location.”

“I wouldn’t know the exact location. I just know a guy let us rest in his shed for a couple hours. That’s probably where he is right now.”

“That’s sufficient enough,” said Daemon, holding his hand out in front of him.

I thought that entering the room through a man’s chest and filling the area with such overwhelming aura that I couldn’t even stand would be the most absurd thing the leader of the UR could do here. That was until the head of a man appeared in his palm, blood staining the floor.

It was the guy with the afro who started the game in the first place… but how the hell is his head in that guy’s hand!?

The curiosity in my mind was too much for me to keep myself mute.

“How…,” I muttered. “How-”

“Your next line is ‘How were you able to kill that guy so easily?’, right?”

“How were you able to kill that guy so easily?” I paused for a couple moments, taking in what Daemon had just said. It was when I saw him pointing casually at me that I realized that he said what I just said at the same time as me.

“I was able to kill this man easily because he was weaker than me. Any man who calls himself ‘God’ is no true god. Play silly games and you win stupid prizes. This irrelevant who thought he’d be relevant learned what his prize was.” He looked at his white turtleneck sweater stained with blood and sighed. “Next, you’ll gasp in shock and ask, ‘W-What the hell are you!? What kind of power is this?”

I gasped in shock and asked, “W-What the hell are you!? What kind of power is this?” I paused again. “Wait… What!?”

Daemon approached me with the head in his grip, and the weight on my body got heavier. Though, it wasn’t so heavy as to where my willpower would be snuffed out so easily.

“People tend to be so predictable, Hunter,” said Daemon, voice laced with boredom. “I already knew you would refuse the death of your daughter when we asked you about it, but it was amusing to see you cause so much trouble down there. What I didn’t predict was how weak you would allow yourself to be after all this time. Dante told me how the world fast-forwarded from two weeks passing to a month because one of Corleone’s men interfered with your child’s ability, and yet you still wasted those two weeks. Trying to master energy bullets and whatever other energy blasts in your arsenal when you have the ability to absorb and release anything. Then, you have the audacity to absorb another Type Two Radion when you barely know how to use your ability. What makes you think you have the intelligence to master another set of abilities?”

“Her name was Rosalina, and she gave me her form so that I could protect my daughter from you and the rest of your Radius freaks who want to-”

“Unsightly.”

Despite me destroying my teeth before, they had somehow spawned back in. Not ‘cause they healed though. They just… appeared out of nowhere.

“If you’re going to communicate, you should speak with a proper-”

Before Daemon could finish, I reversed the work he did to my mouth with my fist, teeth and bone once again falling to the floor. “Until I can suppress my urges, my teeth will remain broken. Don't fix them again.”

For the first time since he got here, Daemon had a look of shock on his face. There was no way he'd be that shocked over me damaging my own body, so what was he so wide-eyed about? The smirk on his face confused me just as much.

“Perhaps there are some who can… afford to hold their heads high.” He tossed the Afro man’s head to the side. “Stand up, Hunter. I want to see if your resolve translates to your power as well.”

I was pretty sure he was asking me to fight him, but what would he even gain from that? He seemed disappointed at my training methods, so why was he so interested in seeing what I can do now?

No… It’d be wrong to say I didn't learn anything substantial since I left the Underground. I didn't just have Rosalina’s form, I had my form as well.

That was two.

Although, this would be my first time actually transforming into it in the outside world. Though, if I took a page out of Dante’s methods on how he controls and reshapes energy, I should be able to do the same with that orb inside of me too.

It was my energy. I just needed to spread it across my body.

“Form Change: Nuclear Version.”