[2009 – October]
[Somewhere near the Canadian Border]
I didn't know who the woman was that I had grabbed from the underground base nor did I care enough to ask nicely. I came to shed blood and reap life, not for intel.
I had no intention to get involved in all this beyond saving Emma's daughter and bringing ruin to this place.
I didn't care which high-ranking officials or private organizations were connected to all this. I wasn't going to 'bring justice' to them.
After all, I was a Realm Lord and not some masked idealist.
In the first place, there was no such thing as 'justice'. 'Justice' was just a shallow concept thought up by people so that they could give themself some peace of mind. In reality though, it was an empty and very fragile construct.
Even if the men who had abused Emma and cut her open to take her ovaries were alive, there was nothing I could do to them that would make Emma feel as if 'justice had been served'.
She would still be in pain, and she would still suffer nightmares. What had been taken from her, couldn't just be made up for by killing, torturing, or imprisoning the perpetrators. If it could, Emma would have long since gotten past her traumas as she had done exactly that in the past.
She had hunted them down, one by one. And yet, it had not changed anything about what had happened to her.
In reality, there was only the cycle, an endless repetition of creation and destruction, of action and reaction, of fortune and misfortune. The duality of existence was the only constant that held true as we walked our path. There was no happiness without sorrow, no relief without pain.
To find peace in this endless cycle, a sense of balance that allowed one to endure hardship while seizing every moment of happiness, was the meaning of life as I understood it. And it was undoubtedly one of the most difficult things to accomplish.
Still, as such, I wasn't under some kind of illusion that enacting violence upon these humans would in any way be 'justified' or an act of retribution. This was simple vengeance, my motives purely destructive.
Impassively, I crushed the jaw of the woman in my grasp, unwilling to hear her muffled pleas and cries for mercy, her blood, which coloured my hand bright red, turning to ash with a simple flare of Darkforce.
A sharp spear of formless psionic energy pierced into her head only a moment later, shattering her mind with utmost violence as Emma ripped out her memories.
It was an incredibly cruel display of her strength as a telepath, especially so considering that she normally preferred to silently enter the mind of her victims and manipulate their memories and thought structures without their knowledge, leaving behind no trace or injury.
Suddenly though, Emma's form trembled violently as she stepped back, her voice filled with despair as she gasped out a single word: "No … "
Reaching out, I grabbed Emma's hand as I turned around, the crippled and dying woman scattering into ash with but a thought of mine.
"What did you see?", I asked quietly, a concerned frown on my face, though Emma didn't answer.
Gripping my hand tightly, she looked up with heart-rendering pain overflowing from her crystal gaze, tears threatening to spill from the corners of her eyes as she shook her head, unable to voice out the horrors that the woman's memories made her privy to.
“Show me.”, I demanded softly as I partially lowered my mental shield, already having an idea about what she had seen.
Images and voices appeared in my mind the next moment like a raging stream as years worth of foreign memories entered my brain.
A normal human might have collapsed under the influx of information, some might even have developed mental issues, considering that a baseline human lacked the necessary mental strength to separate their mind from those foreign memories.
Fortunately, I wasn't human so my mind wasn't even slightly strained by this stream of memories. What I saw though, caused me to sigh inaudibly while I gained a better understanding of who it was that we were up against, and who it was that I had grabbed from the base.
The tenth installment of the Weapon Plus Program, Weapon X. Or to be more exact, this base represented the rogue remnants of the Weapon X Program – 'The Facility'.
From formerly being a secret government-sanctioned program to a private business that focused on producing living weapons, the Facility sold artificially created mutants and genetically enhanced humans to the highest bidder.
Under the leadership of a man called Malcolm Concord, the organization had been formed after the U.S. government had shut down the original program.
Urged on by his hate for humans after having been disfigured by Logan in the past, Concord had thus employed Adam Harkins to create a being that specifically hunted down mutants, an operation that was financed by selling the 'inferior goods' to third parties.
The underground base was the main base of this organization and it also housed multiple successfully enhanced baseline humans that acted as secret agents and assets, who were regularly sent out to complete tasks of varying nature to help the organization.
Those tasks ranged from simple intimidation and intel gathering to kidnappings and assassinations.
The woman that I had just killed, had been one of the genetically engineered, enhanced human beings, and her name wasn't unfamiliar to my ears.
I had a vague impression of Kimura even though she only appeared in the comics, which I had rarely read in my past life. From her memories, I also understood that like I remembered, she had been Laura's handler and instructor, having taken great pleasure in brutalizing the young mutant girl excessively.
It was also her that had killed Laura's mother after Sahra Kinney had helped Laura escape from the Facility.
More importantly, I likewise learned that the Facility had used Emma's DNA to create dozens and hundreds of clones, most of which having died as infants.
Five of them though survived longer, all of them reaching the age of thirteen. Until one by one, their vitality had been exhausted, their genetic structure having become unstable as a result of them being clones.
At this point, only one girl was still alive as just a few hours ago another girl had passed away, leaving behind a sole survivor that could be counted as Emma's offspring.
Kimura's memories didn't really give an answer to the question of these girls just being Emma's clones or not, as she wasn't privy to such secrets. She had thought that they were just clones but with Laura as an example, they could very well be more than that.
Still, seeing Emma this distraught, I felt somewhat helpless because I knew that nothing that I could say or do would be able to take away her pain and sorrow.
This helplessness though rapidly turned into fuel for my wrath as I turned back to face the mountain, beneath which the underground base was located.
Eyes burning with white flames, I managed to find the girl that had called us here with Kimura's memories as a guide, the many high-tech pieces of equipment that were supposed to isolate any kind of scrying being useless in the face of my abilities.
Electrodes attached to her forehead, the girl was naked and strapped to what looked like an operating table. She wasn't conscious as half-a-dozen men and women in white coats took samples of bodily tissue and analyzed the data that was displayed on a few monitors.
Reaching out with my mind, I wrapped one of my barriers around her thin figure and directly brought her to Emma's and my side before anyone else could react.
Seeing the girl appear out of nowhere, Emma seemed to push aside her own pain as she reached out with trembling hands and took the unconscious girl into her arms while I formed some simple clothes around her with a soft black barrier.
"I-Is she okay?", Emma asked worriedly, her voice breaking somewhat.
"Just sedated.", I answered with a quiet nod, while still facing the mountain range, my nose easily picking up the smell of chemicals that rushed through the girl's bloodstream.
I could feel Emma's hesitation as her gaze jumped from the girl in her arms to the distant mountain, immeasurable hate burning fiercely in her eyes.
Exhaling slowly, I loosened my hold on the endless Darkforce that coursed through every cell of my body, dark cracks spreading around my figure as the very fabric of this reality seemed to struggle under the weight of my anger, tremors shaking the very land that I stood on.
“E-Elijah?”, Emma called out, her tone unsure.
“Don't worry, I won't leave any of them alive nor will they go in peace.”, my voice sounded out darkly, shaking the atmosphere, as the vegetation around me slowly turned to dust, its vitality unable to escape the bottomless hunger of the darkness that dwelled in my soul.
[2009 – October]
[Somewhere near the Canadian Border]
I didn't know who the woman was that I had grabbed from the underground base nor did I care enough to ask nicely. I came to shed blood and reap life, not for intel.
I had no intention to get involved in all this beyond saving Emma's daughter and bringing ruin to this place.
I didn't care which high-ranking officials or private organizations were connected to all this. I wasn't going to 'bring justice' to them.
After all, I was a Realm Lord and not some masked idealist.
In the first place, there was no such thing as 'justice'. 'Justice' was just a shallow concept thought up by people so that they could give themself some peace of mind. In reality though, it was an empty and very fragile construct.
Even if the men who had abused Emma and cut her open to take her ovaries were alive, there was nothing I could do to them that would make Emma feel as if 'justice had been served'.
She would still be in pain, and she would still suffer nightmares. What had been taken from her, couldn't just be made up for by killing, torturing, or imprisoning the perpetrators. If it could, Emma would have long since gotten past her traumas as she had done exactly that in the past.
She had hunted them down, one by one. And yet, it had not changed anything about what had happened to her.
In reality, there was only the cycle, an endless repetition of creation and destruction, of action and reaction, of fortune and misfortune. The duality of existence was the only constant that held true as we walked our path. There was no happiness without sorrow, no relief without pain.
To find peace in this endless cycle, a sense of balance that allowed one to endure hardship while seizing every moment of happiness, was the meaning of life as I understood it. And it was undoubtedly one of the most difficult things to accomplish.
Still, as such, I wasn't under some kind of illusion that enacting violence upon these humans would in any way be 'justified' or an act of retribution. This was simple vengeance, my motives purely destructive.
Impassively, I crushed the jaw of the woman in my grasp, unwilling to hear her muffled pleas and cries for mercy, her blood, which coloured my hand bright red, turning to ash with a simple flare of Darkforce.
A sharp spear of formless psionic energy pierced into her head only a moment later, shattering her mind with utmost violence as Emma ripped out her memories.
It was an incredibly cruel display of her strength as a telepath, especially so considering that she normally preferred to silently enter the mind of her victims and manipulate their memories and thought structures without their knowledge, leaving behind no trace or injury.
Suddenly though, Emma's form trembled violently as she stepped back, her voice filled with despair as she gasped out a single word: "No … "
Reaching out, I grabbed Emma's hand as I turned around, the crippled and dying woman scattering into ash with but a thought of mine.
"What did you see?", I asked quietly, a concerned frown on my face, though Emma didn't answer.
Gripping my hand tightly, she looked up with heart-rendering pain overflowing from her crystal gaze, tears threatening to spill from the corners of her eyes as she shook her head, unable to voice out the horrors that the woman's memories made her privy to.
“Show me.”, I demanded softly as I partially lowered my mental shield, already having an idea about what she had seen.
Images and voices appeared in my mind the next moment like a raging stream as years worth of foreign memories entered my brain.
A normal human might have collapsed under the influx of information, some might even have developed mental issues, considering that a baseline human lacked the necessary mental strength to separate their mind from those foreign memories.
Fortunately, I wasn't human so my mind wasn't even slightly strained by this stream of memories. What I saw though, caused me to sigh inaudibly while I gained a better understanding of who it was that we were up against, and who it was that I had grabbed from the base.
The tenth installment of the Weapon Plus Program, Weapon X. Or to be more exact, this base represented the rogue remnants of the Weapon X Program – 'The Facility'.
From formerly being a secret government-sanctioned program to a private business that focused on producing living weapons, the Facility sold artificially created mutants and genetically enhanced humans to the highest bidder.
Under the leadership of a man called Malcolm Concord, the organization had been formed after the U.S. government had shut down the original program.
Urged on by his hate for humans after having been disfigured by Logan in the past, Concord had thus employed Adam Harkins to create a being that specifically hunted down mutants, an operation that was financed by selling the 'inferior goods' to third parties.
The underground base was the main base of this organization and it also housed multiple successfully enhanced baseline humans that acted as secret agents and assets, who were regularly sent out to complete tasks of varying nature to help the organization.
Those tasks ranged from simple intimidation and intel gathering to kidnappings and assassinations.
The woman that I had just killed, had been one of the genetically engineered, enhanced human beings, and her name wasn't unfamiliar to my ears.
I had a vague impression of Kimura even though she only appeared in the comics, which I had rarely read in my past life. From her memories, I also understood that like I remembered, she had been Laura's handler and instructor, having taken great pleasure in brutalizing the young mutant girl excessively.
It was also her that had killed Laura's mother after Sahra Kinney had helped Laura escape from the Facility.
More importantly, I likewise learned that the Facility had used Emma's DNA to create dozens and hundreds of clones, most of which having died as infants.
Five of them though survived longer, all of them reaching the age of thirteen. Until one by one, their vitality had been exhausted, their genetic structure having become unstable as a result of them being clones.
At this point, only one girl was still alive as just a few hours ago another girl had passed away, leaving behind a sole survivor that could be counted as Emma's offspring.
Kimura's memories didn't really give an answer to the question of these girls just being Emma's clones or not, as she wasn't privy to such secrets. She had thought that they were just clones but with Laura as an example, they could very well be more than that.
Still, seeing Emma this distraught, I felt somewhat helpless because I knew that nothing that I could say or do would be able to take away her pain and sorrow.
This helplessness though rapidly turned into fuel for my wrath as I turned back to face the mountain, beneath which the underground base was located.
Eyes burning with white flames, I managed to find the girl that had called us here with Kimura's memories as a guide, the many high-tech pieces of equipment that were supposed to isolate any kind of scrying being useless in the face of my abilities.
Electrodes attached to her forehead, the girl was naked and strapped to what looked like an operating table. She wasn't conscious as half-a-dozen men and women in white coats took samples of bodily tissue and analyzed the data that was displayed on a few monitors.
Reaching out with my mind, I wrapped one of my barriers around her thin figure and directly brought her to Emma's and my side before anyone else could react.
Seeing the girl appear out of nowhere, Emma seemed to push aside her own pain as she reached out with trembling hands and took the unconscious girl into her arms while I formed some simple clothes around her with a soft black barrier.
"I-Is she okay?", Emma asked worriedly, her voice breaking somewhat.
"Just sedated.", I answered with a quiet nod, while still facing the mountain range, my nose easily picking up the smell of chemicals that rushed through the girl's bloodstream.
I could feel Emma's hesitation as her gaze jumped from the girl in her arms to the distant mountain, immeasurable hate burning fiercely in her eyes.
Exhaling slowly, I loosened my hold on the endless Darkforce that coursed through every cell of my body, dark cracks spreading around my figure as the very fabric of this reality seemed to struggle under the weight of my anger, tremors shaking the very land that I stood on.
“E-Elijah?”, Emma called out, her tone unsure.
“Don't worry, I won't leave any of them alive nor will they go in peace.”, my voice sounded out darkly, shaking the atmosphere, as the vegetation around me slowly turned to dust, its vitality unable to escape the bottomless hunger of the darkness that dwelled in my soul.
