William woke up early the next morning. He brushed Marianne’s messy hair off his face and set her aside as gently as possible. William fished around for his clothes before walking to close the curtains, blocking out the first rays of the sun beginning to pour in; Marianne deserved as much rest as she needed. He crept out of the room.
William hovered along the lush hotel corridors, occasionally nodding to his fellow residents who were taking turns to watch over Firdaus’ residents. He doubted that they would cause any trouble, but it was still better to be safe than sorry.
He found Masako and Brett leaning their heads against each other in an exposed area of the dining hall, their fingers interlocking like a lovestruck teen couple. His smile slipped off his face as he felt a huge chunk of ice rise up to his position in the air.
“Trouble sleeping too?” William asked.
“As usual, yeah.” Vivian smiled serenely, sitting cross-legged on an ice block. “And I’m clearly not alone.”
William opened his mouth to make a comment about whether she had cold feet, but decided against it. The cold probably never bothered her anyway.
“The humans are already preparing,” he muttered instead. “I came up with this plan; it’s only right for me to be up early as well.”
“What’s with the sudden distinction? You’ve never referred to them as ‘humans’ before. Don’t forget, we’re on the same side here.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that we’re different,” William mumbled. “I’m a mutate, and also one who can make the choice to end the mutation wave. Kinda feels like I’m not doing the right thing by ignoring it.”
“You’re not. You’re making that choice right now,” Vivian said. “And I daresay it’s a good choice. I’d let everything else burn down without hesitation too if I had to choose between my loved ones or the rest of the world.”
William kept his silence.
“Whatever happens later, remember not to let your emotions get the better of you.” she continued. “That’s how Zacharias used to get me under control. He had trouble initially since we both have a red aura, but all he had to do was frighten me with our settlement’s gory tournament fights to get into my head.”
“Red aura just like you? So he’s that powerful too…” William sighed. “That’s just great.”
“Sorry!” Vivian exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to lower your morale. I just-”
“I get it. But if anything happens to me later, look after your sister for me, will you?”
“You’ll be fine,” Vivian insisted. “We’re going to make sure of that.”
William looked solemnly at the sun’s rays slowly creeping into the hallway and closed his eyes with a small smile.
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
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It did not take long for William to reach his destination, though he had to double check his holographic map a few times. He slowly turned around in a circle, admiring the physics defying structure that no architect would’ve been able to replicate in barely a week. The hydrokinetic man unscrewed the bottles at his waist, keeping his mind on the liquid inside as he walked into the entrance of a dungeon-like rock formation.
William kept his senses on alert, acutely aware of his allies spreading out into the nearly unrecognisable town of Sector 163. A few hundred bags of congealed blood popped up into his radar ahead of him.
Zombies. And it was obvious who they were guarding.
His breaths increased, but he slowed them deliberately to stop his heart from pounding. Calm down, Marianne and the others should be able to handle them with no problem.
He scarcely needed to wonder where Victor was when a column of metal crashed in front of him, blocking his path to a huge device crackling with red coloured sparks.
“Victor?” William called out to figure hovering above the source machine. It looked like Victor alright, except that he was completely covered in pockets of metal and earth. Two glowing points of reddish green peeked from the metallic plates swirling around his face, making him look more gargoyle than man.
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“You sure took your own sweet time coming here, Doctor Toh,” Zacharias spoke through Victor’s voice. “You came alone. Good, I wanted to have a private chat with you.”
“Then why don’t we speak face to face instead?” William’s voice echoed through the underground tunnel. “Don’t you need to make contact with me to take over my body?”
Victor dropped to the ground with a thud as the metal around his face moved away to reveal an uncomfortably sinister smile. “You figured out my ability. You really are as much of a genius as the media made you out to be.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but I’d really rather have my friend back.” William pulled out a device from his pocket. He turned the dial and aimed it at Victor.
The humming sound reverberated the surrounding air, but Victor flew away from the trajectory of the sound in time. The ground started to tremble, and William took to the air before it could collapse beneath him.
He darted around at jagged angles, brushing dangerously close to the rocks and rubble hurled at him. Water burst around him, blocking and redirecting the incoming debris. It gushed towards the geokinetic man and solidified into ice, rendering him immobile against the wall. William quickly aimed the device at his face, but a piece of rebar rose from the ground and knocked it out of his hand before he could activate it.
“Guh!” the hydrokinetic man grunted as the metal wrapped around him and pulled him roughly back to the ground. A desperate look danced in William’s eyes as he reached for Firdaus’ hypnosis device on the floor. So… close…
“That was awfully rude of you.” Metal bursted from around Victor’s armoured body, easily shattering the ice that bound him. “I just wanted to talk.”
“So you were planning to paralyse Victor’s mind with my brother’s toy?” He walked leisurely to William and picked up the device. “Well played. Brilliant plan, horrible execution.”
William’s heart sank as the device was crushed with a single squeeze.
“You don’t have the heart to kill your friend, but I wonder if you’ll think the same after hearing what I’m about to tell you.” Victor’s armour fled from his body piece by piece, sticking themselves into the surrounding walls. “Did it ever cross your mind how the Sector 16’s escape ship really crashed? How something so big just washes up onto the shore like a beached whale?”
Confusion danced in William’s eyes.
“It was me.”
“W-What? How’s that possible?” William breathed, stopping his vain struggle against his rusty bindings.
“It was really you I was going after, actually.” Victor’s voice seemed distant, fighting for attention from the hundreds of questions in William’s head.
“The true purpose of the mutation wave was to separate the elites from the commoners. While your world dies, our world will thrive as technology evolves faster than ever. The government had decided that the best form of governance for such a large population was a benevolent monarchy. So we decided to split the human species into two, with one ruling over the other in everlasting peace. What we didn’t count on, was a random small percentage of you to develop your PSI abilities to such a strong degree that you actually posed a threat to that balance of power. You blue aura mutates.”
“Of course, I couldn’t let that happen,” he continued. “So I took it upon myself to locate and eliminate the most evolved of mutates. I started scanning the world sector by sector, until your location popped up. I didn’t have time for the rest of the world before my fool of a half-brother showed up. He destroyed the only machine capable of detecting enhanced mutates with a single kick.”
William felt the rebars tighten around him as it began to lift him up.
“He called me a traitor to our kind and tried to sacrifice himself to end the mutation wave. An honest to god idiot, really. It wouldn’t have worked, not with his extent of mutation. So I was left with no choice but to wipe his mind with an entirely new persona to keep him busy; a control freak obsessed with dominating the world. It’s always easy to hypnotise someone to act out their innermost desires, after all. But of course, I also played the part as his humble servant to complete his delusion.”
“Ah! Look at me digressing so much.” Victor smacked his forehead and released his grip on the rebars. William caught himself before he landed face-first to the ground.
“As I was saying, I found you at the port of the escape ship ready to leave Sector 161. But the damn sector official wouldn’t clear my documents to let me go onboard. Troublesome military man and his rules. So I bit him there and then, and locked him in the armoury with his associate. I had to find another way to get to you, and there was one enhanced who happened to be showing off his powers in Sector 162.”
“Victor…” William breathed. “You took over his mind and his powers back then.”
Victor nodded robotically. “Victor wouldn’t have been able to do it normally, though. Turns out lifting a rescue cruise ship is a little harder than lifting a building, but whoever I control also has their abilities matched up to my level. I chased down the escape ship and plucked it from the water, crashing it onto this black hole of an infected town. And for insurance, I ripped open the hull for the mutates to infect everyone inside.”
“You… You bastard!” William’s body shook in anger. “My wife was in there! You killed her!”
“Just a little mistake.” Victor smiled sinisterly. “I didn’t think you would trade places with her. It was a good thing you did, though. It almost cost me my chance to fix the government’s mistake, and achieve our vision for the world.”
“What do you mean?” William snarled. “Come out and fight me one on one!”
“Not yet. Your emotions are… still insufficient. As you wish, you’ll have Dietrich back. There has been a small change in plans.”
Victor’s body slumped to the ground.