As morning draws upon the dome Bruce begins to crack out of his hardened shell and turn back to his daytime form. He falls forwards into the mud but magically flies back into his previous position. Chester holds his hand out in front of him with his eyes glowing blue, Bruce looks around himself and sees electrical blue lines around him. Chester moves his hand to the right of Bruce and Bruce begins flying backwards up into the air against his will. Chester grins and drops him midway in the air making him fall into the mud beneath him. Bruce angrily rises above him but Chester holds him in place in mid air, “Let me be your right hand man. I’ve got some mush’s I need to turn to mush” says Chester manically. Bruce unleashes a grin on his face and Chester releases him, he continues to fly in the air and raises a hand out to Chester. Chester shakes it and their eyes both glow with power.
Cooper sits atop the roof of the hall and watches awaiting the return of Martin, suddenly he hears a thud from behind him, Cooper pivots around and immediately stumbles a little backwards, looming over him is the giant figure of Bruce and Chester. Cooper immediately jumps off the building but Chester freezes him in the air, “Nice try mother fucker but I’m done messing around. It's time for you to taste the code and be the finished work” says Bruce as he approaches Cooper. Bruce reaches forward and grabs the yellow stone from Cooper's chest, he rips it out and attaches it to the gauntlet. Cooper looks on in fear with no ability to counter or do anything. Bruce flexes his hand inwards and the stones glow, Chester and Bruce grin at each other and begin walking away, “Have a nice life, or don’t, I’ll see you in hell” says Bruce manically as he walks away. The blue magical outline fades from Cooper and he falls to the ground. Cooper lands on his arm and that tanks most of the damage, it immediately breaks and Cooper attempts to scream in pain but covers his mouth as to not alert Bruce and Chester. Cooper stands up and with tears in his eyes tears his arm off his body completely, blood spurts everywhere and Cooper cries harder but continues to cover his mouth throughout all of this. Cooper looks into the distance and sees the end of T block, he looks with determination. He begins walking with his arm bleeding everywhere, Cooper moves his hand from his mouth, his throat now hoarse from screaming in pain. He places his arm on the bloody gap where his arm once led and continues his walk to T Block.
As Cooper approaches T block he walks up beside and sees the one area not engulfed in fog, Cooper walks in and looks at the back of a man, slicked back black-ish brown hair and a large size. “Murray, I need an arm” Cooper says with seriousness. Murray Ardron swivels around in his chair revealing half of his body to be replaced with robotic parts. He stands up but doesn’t walk far due to his shackles, “You’ve seen better days” says Cooper, Murray grunts, “So have you” he says in a grumpy response. He pivots and grabs something from his desk, it is a titanium arm with metal pins extending from the shoulder point. The hand notably has 6 fingers instead of 5. “Prototype of my own” says Murray as he holds up his hands and flexes an also six fingered hand, “Six fingers for more ability.” Cooper picks up the arm and shoves it into his bleeding socket. He digs it in and doesn’t scream, he feels desensitised to the pain in his arm at this point. He immediately flexes his fingers and wiggles his sixth finger separately to the others. Cooper wipes away the tears and sits on a stool and looks at Murray, “So why hasn’t Bruce killed you, surely it's like top of his mind” Murray sits down and looks Cooper in the eyes, “He's keeping me alive because he thinks we’re friends. Truth is I hate his guts, I’d do anything to go against him. Look at these shackles, he knows it himself that we truly aren’t friends and he's worried about me. Hes going to torture me once hes done with you, just for the fun of it.” Murray says this all and looks Cooper in the eyes. Cooper can see the sadness and depression in his eyes, Cooper stands up and pats him on his back. Cooper walks to the door of the room, “We’ll save you Murray… I promise” says Cooper as he stands on the balcony of the area outside. Murray stares into Cooper's eyes blankly before nodding. Cooper attempts to super jump off the balcony but just ends up tumbling over the railing, “I fucking hate not having powers” he says while laying on the rocky concrete ground.
Luke looks around outside the library door in search of Cooper, he heard a large thud minute before and wanted to check on Cooper. He spots Cooper walking away from T block and he runs over to him, the closer he gets the more his gaze is drawn to the arm. Cooper waves it at him and flexes the fingers, Luke waves back and his attention is drawn to Cooper's chest. He notices the lack of a stone in the centre and presses Cooper about it, “Where’s your stone?” he asks with confusion. Cooper sighs, “Bruce…” he says somewhat glumly. Luke looks annoyed but then turns his look into determination, “We can’t be down a stone wielder, come with me” he says and grabs onto Cooper's arm. Cooper instinctually follows behind Luke, Luke begins walking to where the entrance to his original hideout was. Sound of feet running is heard behind the two and Luke immediately turns around and shoots without thinking. Jake luckily ducks moments before due to his prior knowledge of Luke’s trigger finger. Luke drops his gun and shield to his side and looks surprised at Jake, “It’s been a bit man… oh yeah and Aidan wanted me to tell you something-“ begins Luke but Jake cuts him off, “I don’t give two shits about Aidan, he gets on my nerves. I’m joining you, I got kicked out for being the ‘human equivalent of Vetri.’” Jake does air quotes and Luke and Cooper nod in agreement about the Vetri statement, “Yeah Vetris done literally nothing, kinda wish he would just do something-“ Luke begins to say but is cut off again, this time by a gigantic boom and smoke cloud coming from the library. Luke grabs onto Cooper and Jake’s arms and runs down into his original base of operations. They all reach the room and Luke knocks on a metal door on the left side of the room, “We’re back” he says as the door opens. The door opens and mysteriously a familiar looking hand pokes out, the more the door opens the more the identity of the hand can be seen. Preston stands in the doorway looking back at the group, Cooper and Jake stumble backwards a little out of shock but Luke’s expression turns to anger. “That’s not fucking funny Sam!” he yells as he jumps onto and strangles Preston. Preston’s body begins to shift while Luke is choking him out, chunks of his body seem to glitch into another person, after a couple moments his face completely shifts into Sam F. Sam grabs onto Luke’s throat and shoves him off him, “That’s what you get for leaving me for so long!” Says Sam in a raspy voice while coughing and spluttering. “Sam!” yells Cooper and Jake as they run in to hug him, Sam allows Jake to hug him but adamantly pushes Cooper away. “It’s good to see you too” says Cooper through gritted teeth. “Sam, we’re going to need you and your stone out there in some way or another, it’s looking bad” Luke says as he points at a pointy blue thing poking out of Sam’s pocket, Sam immediately shakes his head, “No-no absolutely not! I’m not going out there” he says with adamant frustration at even the thought of the question. Jake nods at Sam and Sam nods back, Jake takes the stone from his pocket and holds it in his palm, “Be careful with it, it morphs you into essentially whoever your thinking of” says Sam precautionarily at Jake, Jake’s body begins to shift, his height shrinks and his face begins to resemble Aidan, he makes an angered noise and drops the stone. The stone crashes to the ground and makes unnatural effects like sound waves as it hits the floor. Cooper sees this and crouches down to inspect, he scratches his chin and thinks for a moment. He looks around the room and spots Sam’s guitar, “Sam, I know you aren’t going to listen to me” Cooper says but Sam interrupts him, “You're right! I’m not!” he says happily while looking into Cooper's eyes with a grin. Cooper looks angrily at him and grabs the stone from the floor, Sam dives to stop him but fails and Cooper runs and grabs Sam’s guitar. Sam holds up his hands and begins screaming obscenities at Cooper, Cooper hoists his guitar in the air and strums the chords using the stones sharp tip as a pick. Nothing happens to begin with but quickly sharp arrows like bullets fling out and forwards, Cooper strums again and shoots out more projectiles, Sam, for the first time in months smiles at Cooper. He stands up and takes the guitar and stone from Cooper and looks at it in a new light. He smiles and nods at Cooper before turning back to Luke, this time with a different vision. “Ya know what, fuck it, sure. How bad can it really be out there?” he says with a grin. Luke nods and they all begin to leave the room.
William lays half awake and half asleep looking at the ceiling. Vetri lies across the room from him and William turns to look at him sleeping, Williams face turns into a grimace as he processes the fact that its been like 5 chapters and Vetri has done fuck all. William rolls and looks towards the ceiling and sees a dark looming figure hovering above the library, William squints at it in his half awake state before the figure seemingly becomes too and charges at rapid speeds through the roof. William attempts to dash up from his makeshift bed but it's to no avail, Bruce and Chester smash through the ceiling creating a massive sonic boom. They float above William as he looks on in horror. Vetri at this point is fully alert and awake, he creeps away to the back wall of the library and seems to go unnoticed by Bruce and Chester, Vetri looks for any exit from the library. He gulps and looks toward the ventilation panel that leads directly outside the building, Vetri holds his stone out in front of him, gripping it tightly as to not be seen and begins squeezing himself through the blades of the vent. The vent shreds through Vetris body, sending blood and guts flying everywhere inside the vent, but it immediately regenerates due to the power of the stones, he squeezes uncomfortably through to the outside of the library. The vent is now engulfed in blood but it manages to not attract the sight of Bruce or Chester, Vetri stands up and looks to the drain on the ground, he moves to it and pushes himself through it similar to how he has done with the vent but less painfully. Painful sure, but anything less than the pain from the ventilation panel. He falls into the underground tunnels and begins walking to H Block, where he saw the others go earlier. William looks as Bruce and Chester loom over him, he attempts to get up and run but Bruce hoists him into the air by his throat. William begins to charge up an attack but Bruce grabs onto the ball of energy and crushes it using the power of his newly added stone. William looks shocked and Bruce hoists him into the air and throws him up through the ceiling, he flies through the hole made by the two earlier, he recovers quickly and dives head first towards Bruce, he begins charging energy around him as he descends. Bruce grabs onto Chesters arm and both of their eyes begin to glow a lightish blue, as William is about to hit, Bruce shifts at the very last moment away and William crumples into the floor. William springs back upwards and floats in the air with green energy surrounding his hands. Bruce lets go of Chesters arm and points the gauntlet at William. William begins to charge a beam but Bruce shoots out a beam of yellow energy from the gauntlet, causing William to burn slightly despite the massive size of the beam and fall to the ground, unable to do anything. Williams' hair lights a blaze and Bruce lands in a massive stomp upon the ground, creating dust around him in a gigantic cloud. Masking his figure as just a black shape and the coloured glows of the gauntlet stones. William lies there in recovery and Bruce approaches him. Bruce grabs the stone dawned upon William's chest, he begins tearing it off but William suddenly feels the courage coursing through him from the gauntlet and holds on, his green pupil flickers between yellow and green. “You are nothing without this stone!” yells Bruce as he finally manages to tear it from William's chest, William tries to reach for the stone with his gauntleted hand but Bruce slams the gauntlet into his head. Killing him immediately, blood and parts of Williams head go everywhere. Coating the surrounding area. Bruce picks the teeth off his now stained gauntlet, he sighs in annoyance. “Pathetic, Absolutely pathetic” he says in a condescending way as he looks at Williams' destroyed head. He grasps onto Chesters arm and their eyes begin glowing light blue, they retract backwards in the air and look down upon William's body before flying away. Williams' body lies there, dormant, for multiple minutes. Miraculously Williams' phantom arm begins to twitch and shift, throughout this twitchting the arm grows smaller and seems to travel back up through the hole in Williams shoulder it had been implanted into. The glob-like liquid begins to spurt out of the open hole leading from Williams neck to where his head once sat, the liquid shoots out like webbing and grabs onto parts of Williams head. Pulling them back together, over the course of around 5 minutes Williams head becomes reformed, stuck together with what looks like glue. The cracks begin to glow, they glow brighter and brighter before Williams eyes snap open. He gasps for air and looks around in shock and surprise, William watches as the liquid returns to his arm and his arm reforms to its original shape. He flexes it and looks at it before holding it up to his face and seeing his reflection. A reformed face, lots of scaring lay across it but it was a reformed face. William falls backwards in shock. He was something without his stone. He had pulled himself back together. Piece by piece.
Aidan sits in the chair of Damons operation room, still writhing in pain after almost an entire day, “It's shocking you're not dead” says Damon abruptly while working on Prestons body. Aidan looks at him in surprise, Damon cracks a small smile at him and Aidan tries his best to grin back. Damon stands up and walks away from Prestons body and picks something up from his desk, a small syringe full of purple liquid of some sort. He returns to Prestons body and injects it into Prestons arm, Prestons arm twitches lightly and the still visible veins glow a very light purple ish colour as the liquid moves up through his neck. As it reaches the head it somehow continues going, growing back a chunk of Prestons face and eye. Damon and Aidan look on in awe, the area quickly corrupts but Damon turns to Aidan and points at him, “You saw that right!” says Damon a little excitedly. Aidan nods and Damon returns to his work desk, pulls out a mallet and begins crushing up some crystal substance. “Crystals began growing through the floor and I kinda ‘last ditch efforted’ it but it worked! Now Prestons too far gone… but you…” says Damon trailing off as he scoops the crystal dust into a small blender. The blends them up into a fine paste before filtering them through a sieve and pouring them into a syringe, it creates a purple liquid. Damon closes the needle and flicks it lightly, he approaches Aidan. Aidan turns his arm with as much energy as he can muster. Damon injects the liquid into an open vein of Aidans and the effect happens again, the purple liquid flows through the veins. This time travelling onto the other side of Aidans body, as the liquid gets to that side Aidan begins to drool a little before opening his eyes wider and having his pupils dilate. He sits up in his chair and looks at Damon, it's almost as if Aidan has returned to normal. The hole on Aidans arm spurts out a tiny bit of black goo before shooting out a mix of purple and black. Aidan carefully stands up from his chair, “You-you… did it!” says Aidan in a raspy yet excited voice. Damon smiles, “It's temporary, meaning you’ll need more, your life is kinda dependent on it” says Damon in a serious tone. Aidan nods as if he's listening but truly he's just excited to feel normal again, he stretches his arms up into the air and lets clean air into his nostrils. A single tear rolls down his cheek, he forgot about how important the small things were. Aidan pivots to turn around to the window, only to see nothing. Literally nothing, other than a dark purple cloud covering everything. Aidan frowns a little and returns to his seat and looks to Damon, “When can I leave?” he asks. Damon looks down glumly into his lap before looking Aidan in the eyes, “Our futures dark… maybe never…” he says sadly. Aidan looks down into his lap, he had managed to forget all that had happened until that moment and he felt all the memories come crashing back to him. Aidan slumps down and cups his head in his hands, he begins crying as his memories flood in. Damon pats him on his shoulder for a moment before sighing and going back to his work.
Ella and Damien sit at the table in the H Block underground. Regretting their decision a little, Damien looks at Cody's hat in his hands. He barely knew him yet he wished he did, he wished this had never happened. A rattle sounds from a tunnel leading into the room, Damien and Ella both stand up instinctively, Damien draws his gun and Ella draws a sharpened ruler. A figure emerges from the tunnel, he is covered in shadow and Damien aims for his head. He pulls back the trigger but stops himself from shooting, he doesn’t want to make the same mistake Luke did. He drops his gun as he sees Vetri enter from within the shadows, Ella swings an attack and chops off Vetris arm. Vetri barely reacts and just picks up his arm and returns it to its correct place. Awkward silence filled with tension dwells in the room, Vetri speaks, “I know you don’t want to listen to me but-” Vetri begins to say but Damien cuts him off, “What did you do to William? My best friend?” he yells angrily at Vetri. Vetri looks both surprised and confused, “Nothing? We don’t know how William got his powers…” he responds in response. Damien looks angrily at him and begins to raise his gun again, “You made him into a monster! You sick fucking freak! And you left him at that library as you slithered away! You're a heartless monster” yells Damien at him. Vetri looks on without reaction, “Every man for themselves” he says in an emotionless way. Damien pulls the trigger and fires at Vetris' head, the bullet flies through and his brain splatters on the wall. Damien grabs onto Ellas arm and begins to run up the stairs, “What are you doing!?” yells Ella at Damien, Damien turns around with an angry yet sad expression lacing his face, “Avenging my best fucking friend” he says through tears. Damien kicks open the door at the top of the stairs and he hears Vetri regenerate and begin running after them, “Get back here you pathetic weaklings, I'm here to save you! I am the one true hero!” he yells as he chases them up the stairs. Damien slams the door at the top of the stairs and jumps and smashes through the glass doors at the front of H Block, Ella trails behind him. Damien runs without reason and runs to the edge of the dome, he begins slamming on the glass. Damien slams so hard his hand begins to mutilate, Ella walks up behind him and gasps in shock. Damien cries furiously while slamming on the dome, he crumples to his knees, suddenly Damien feels a metal hand place lightly onto his shoulder. Damien slows to a stop and finally turns around to look up at the man, William stands over top of him smiling sorrowfully at him. Damien stands up and hugs him, William hugs him back and tears roll down their faces, “I’m sorry I left you” says Damien softly as he crys into William's green cloak. William stares into the dome wall, looking at his reflection, “Don't worry… I would have too…” he says as he stares into his own eyes. They pull away from the hug and they both turn to look out of the dome. They see a dark green sedan pull up and out gets Martin Isberg. Martin approaches the dome holding important documents, William pushes his phantom arm through the dome somehow and holds onto the paper. Pulling the information from the page into his brain, the page lays blank on the other side, bar a few scratches and general printing errors. William shakes his head and looks at the others. “Mr. Isberg has found that Bruce is some kind of Mutant beast created by the government. It seems he escaped captivity and came here… he can implant himself into the ground and his subconscious controls his world while he's gone… using disgusting tentacles… they made him freeze at night to stop killing the night watchmen of his cell…” William says this while making terrified direct eye contact with Martin. “Why would they make someone like him then?” questions Damien, William looks on in horror and replies, “To end all humanity.”
← 4. The right hand man
6. A new vision →