Scene 1
Resonance
• •
Ian's hand touched the glass.
Heat flowed in.
The tank glowed. Orange. Red. White. The glass cracked. Fractures spread like a spiderweb. Blue liquid seeped through the fissures.
It burst.
First tank. Glass exploded. Shards flew in every direction. Blue liquid poured out, hissing the instant it hit the floor, evaporating on contact. Ian's heat dried everything.
From inside, a man collapsed out. Early thirties. Burn scars over his entire body. His knees buckled and he hit the floor. Coughing erupted. Liquid surged from his lungs.
Second tank. Third. Fourth.
Ian's heat shattered the glass in chain reaction. Bursting. Cracking. Collapsing. Blue liquid flooded the floor. Orange flame covered it. Steam rose. Visibility blurred.
Fifth.
Sixth.
The boy fell out.
CS-0038.
He hit the floor on his knees, coughing up liquid. His thin body convulsed. Veins showed through pale skin. Fingers clawed the tile.
Ian approached. One step.
The boy's head rose. Black irises looked up at Ian.
Ian's hand reached out.
He took the boy's wrist.
Cold.
Frost formed on Ian's palm. The sensation of skin freezing. The polar opposite of heat. Darkness that swallowed flame.
And—
The pain stopped.
The iron skewer inside Ian's left femur froze. Ceased moving. The scraping sensation inside the bone was suspended. The cold had frozen the pain solid.
Ian's breath stopped. 0.5 seconds.
Not a scream. Not someone else's suffering. This boy's cold had frozen his phantom pain directly. A new painkiller. A new possibility.
The boy's mouth opened.
"…Brother."
A cracked voice. Vocal cords long unused. Squeaking like rusted machinery.
Ian did not answer.
Did not release the wrist.
Cold kept flowing in. Pain kept freezing. He did not want to let go of this sensation. A painkiller cleaner than screams. Anesthesia without side effects.
The other subjects began to stand.
The first man. Pushing himself up on one knee.
The second woman. Bracing against the wall with her one arm.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
Six subjects surrounded Ian.
All covered in wounds. All lacking something. All breathing.
All watching Ian.
"…The completed form."
The first man said.
"You're the completed form."
Ian's gaze turned to the man.
"What does that mean?"
"We're failures."
The man's voice carried no emotion. The tone of someone stating fact.
"We have abilities, but they're incomplete. Uncontrollable. We either go into overload or go weak. But you—"
The man's gaze traced the heat rising from Ian's hands.
"You're in perfect command."
Ian did not respond.
Perfect. Command. Completed form.
The words struck his eardrums. Were parsed.
He felt nothing.
Pride? Absent.
Superiority? Absent.
Only confirmed: that these people were weaker than him. That they needed him. That they could be useful.
He released the boy's wrist.
The cold cut off.
Pain returned. The skewer thawed and began to move again. But weaker than before. The cold had left a residue. Temporary relief.
"Stand."
Ian said. To the boy.
The boy stood. Swayed. Ian's hand caught his shoulder. Steadied him.
"Can you walk?"
"…Yeah."
"Good."
Ian's gaze swept the other subjects.
"Can all of you move?"
Instead of answering, heads nodded. Six heads, simultaneously.
Behind them, a sound. Footsteps. Hundreds of boot-soles hammering the floor. Metal clashing. Magazines seating. The Empire's main force had arrived.
Ian's heat surged.
"Let's go."
He released the boy's shoulder. Turned.
At the end of the corridor, light poured in. Searchlights. Laser sighting dots. Dozens of red points stamped themselves onto Ian's chest.
Ian walked.
Toward the light.
Behind him, footsteps followed. Six.
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Scene 2
The Main Force
• •
The corridor ended.
A vast space opened.
The facility's central hall. Ceiling thirty meters overhead. Iron stairways webbed the walls like spider silk. And at every level, soldiers were standing.
The Empire's main force.
Black combat uniforms. Full-body ballistic armor. Full-face helmets. An order of magnitude beyond the suppression company. What they held was different too. Not batons. Not electroshock units.
Railguns.
Electromagnetic accelerators. Weapons that fired metal slugs at five times the speed of sound. Weapons that punched through a human body like paper.
Dozens were aimed at Ian.
"HALT."
A voice boomed from a loudspeaker.
"Subject CS-0042. Kneel at your current position and place both hands above your head. Resistance will result in immediate termination."
Ian did not stop.
He walked. One step.
"Final warning. Halt."
Second step.
"Prepare to fire."
Dozens of railguns emitted a charging whine. High-frequency vibration. The air shuddered. Slugs were loaded.
Third step.
"FIRE."
Lightning poured.
Dozens of slugs launched simultaneously. Five times the speed of sound. Invisible to the eye. The sonic boom of tearing air shook the entire hall.
Ian's heat exploded.
From his entire body.
Air evaporated. Slugs melted. Supersonic shards of metal liquefied three meters before reaching Ian. They fell in droplets. Vaporized before touching the floor.
Ian did not stop.
Fourth step.
"SECOND VOLLEY!"
Lightning again. Melted again.
Ian's heat intensified. Orange turned red. Red turned white. The color of a sun. A brightness the eyes could not withstand.
Fifth step.
The soldiers' formation wavered.
Fear.
The fear that railguns could not stop this. The fear of something that had left the category of human.
"LASER SQUAD, ADVANCE!"
New troops emerged from behind the formation.
Different equipment. Massive devices shouldered. Cables running to generators on their backs. Not muzzles—lenses. Focused lasers.
Ten of them.
They fired simultaneously.
Blue light poured.
Ian's eyes locked on the light. Lasers. Concentrated thermal energy. Heat to melt heat.
For the first time.
A collision.
Ian's white heat and the blue lasers struck each other in midair. An explosion. A shockwave rippled outward. Ian's feet slipped. 0.5 centimeters.
His left femur screamed.
The skewer was moving again.
Painkiller needed.
Screams needed.
Ian's mouth began to open.
Before words could form—
Black smoke surged from behind him.
The boy.
CS-0038.
The black smoke streaked past Ian. Toward the laser squad. Everything it touched froze. Lenses iced over. Cables iced. Generators iced.
The lasers went dark.
"Now."
The boy's voice. Cracked and rusted. But inside it, certainty.
Ian's heat surged again.
He walked. Toward the frozen laser squad. Toward soldiers who could not move. Toward painkillers ready to scream.
Behind him, other footsteps followed.
The first man. Electricity arced from his hands. Blue discharge. It snaked outward and burned through the soldiers' communication equipment.
The second woman. One arm gone, but from the remaining arm, metal was growing. Steel instead of bone. The arm became a blade.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
Each ability erupted.
Ian did not stop.
He reached the first man of the laser squad.
A frozen body. Limbs locked. But the mouth was open. Breathing continued.
Ian's hand reached out. Took the throat. Injected heat.
The scream erupted.
The pain dissolved.
────────────────────
Scene 3
Chorus
• •
Second.
Third.
Fourth.
Ian's hands did not stop. Seize the throat. Inject the heat. Harvest the scream. Move to the next.
Frozen soldiers thawed and melted.
The boy's cold froze first. Ian's heat followed and melted. A perfect sequence. Pin the prey, then slaughter. An assembly line.
Five. Six.
The entire hall filled with screams.
Not one person's scream. Dozens screaming simultaneously. High notes. Low notes. Short. Long. Overlapping, braiding, colliding, fusing into a single sound.
A chorus.
The inside of Ian's bones turned cool.
Phantom pain dissolving. Iron skewers pulling out one at a time. Spine. Femur. Knee. Ankle. Fingertips.
One scream for one pain.
Equivalent exchange.
But this time it was different.
When the screams layered into a chorus, the effect multiplied. Two screams dissolved three pains. Three screams dissolved five. Resonance. Harmony. Amplification.
Ian's heat grew hotter.
Frozen. Thawed. Screamed.
The first man swept past. Electricity from his hands struck the rear echelon. Comms equipment detonated. The commander's helmet exploded. The chain of command collapsed.
The second woman dove into the formation. The steel arm swung. Body armor parted like paper. Blood fountained. Screams erupted.
The third subject.
The ground shook. Metal floor tiles erupted from beneath the soldiers' feet. Like blades of grass made of steel. Punching through boots, skewering legs.
The fourth.
Gravity twisted. Ten soldiers were sucked toward the ceiling simultaneously. Thirty meters up. Then released. The sound of bones shattering. Screams. Silence.
The fifth.
The air vanished. Inside the soldiers' helmets, oxygen evaporated. Suffocation. Hands clawing at throats. Mouths gaping. Soundless screams.
Ian walked.
Toward the center of the hall. Stepping on corpses. Wading through blood. Passing melted equipment.
Heat cloaked him. The boy's cold flanked him. Electricity crackled. Metal erupted. Gravity warped. Air disappeared.
Six abilities danced simultaneously.
The Empire's main force crumbled.
Hundreds became dozens. Dozens became ten. Ten became five. Five became one.
The last soldier.
On his knees. Helmet gone. Tears running. Lips trembling.
"Pl-please…"
Ian stopped.
Looked down at the soldier.
Did not reach out.
No more screams were needed. His bones were empty. The pain had vanished completely. The chorus had dissolved everything.
Ian's gaze passed the soldier and went to the far end of the hall.
A massive door. The facility's exit. The way out.
Ian's foot was about to move.
"Entertaining."
A voice.
A voice that filled the entire hall.
Ian's foot stopped.
Not from behind. From above. The ceiling. The iron stairway thirty meters up.
A man stood there.
Black coat. White hair. A black eyepatch over the right eye. Only the left was visible. A gold iris. Light that did not belong to a human being.
The man placed a hand on the railing.
"So the completed form was alive."
His body tilted.
He fell.
Thirty meters.
He landed.
No sound.
No impact.
He alighted like a feather. Ten meters from Ian.
The boy's cold reacted. Black smoke billowed. It reached toward the man.
The man raised a hand.
The cold stopped.
Frozen in midair.
Unable to move.
The boy's face went white.
"Wh—?"
"Failures."
The man said. One step closer.
"More efficient to dispose of them all at once."
Ian's heat surged.
The man's gold iris locked onto Ian.
Inside Ian's left femur—
Pain exploded.
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Scene 4
Superior Purification Officer
• •
His knee buckled.
Ian's body pitched forward. His hands caught the floor. Heat melted the tile. But it could not hold him up.
Pain.
Not the phantom pain.
Not the skewer inside the bone.
Something new.
Something had awakened inside his left femur. Something that had been asleep. Something that had been dead. The thing the researcher had spoken of.
The suppression device.
"Impossible…"
Air hissed between Ian's teeth.
"It burned away…"
"The device inside your body burned away."
The man took another step. Nine meters.
"But mine is different."
The gold iris flared.
The pain doubled.
Ian's spine arched like a bow. A moan burst from his mouth. Heat went haywire. The floor melted. The walls melted. But the pain did not stop.
"Superior Purification Officer."
The man said.
"Codename: Reaper. My job is collecting failures like you."
Eight meters.
"Three years ago, I was sent to dispose of you too. But the research team insisted you were 'the completed form.' Said they wanted to see the results."
Seven meters.
"Is this the result?"
The man's gaze swept the hall. Hundreds of corpses. Melted equipment. A floor stained with blood.
"Not bad."
Ian's hands trembled.
He tried to gather heat. Tried to focus. But the pain sabotaged everything. His entire nervous system was screaming.
"Your heat."
The man said. Six meters.
"Impressive. But limited. Your ability radiates outward. It doesn't protect the inside."
Ian's gaze climbed.
The man's gold eye.
Inside it, something was churning. Not light. Not darkness. Pain itself. Suffering given form.
"My ability is the inverse. I inject pain. Directly into every nerve inside your body."
Five meters.
"No amount of screams will help. The pain I deliver accumulates faster than you can discharge it."
Blood ran from Ian's mouth. He had bitten his tongue. Trying to overwrite pain with pain. It failed. What this man was delivering existed on a different plane.
Footsteps behind him.
The boy.
"Brother!"
Black smoke reached toward the man.
The man's gaze shifted to the boy.
The boy collapsed.
No scream. No convulsion. Like a puppet with its strings cut, he crumpled to the floor.
"CS-0038. Cold ability. Incomplete. Slated for disposal."
The other subjects began to drop.
The first man. His electricity died.
The second woman. Her steel arm fell away.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
All on the floor.
All motionless.
Ian was alone.
Four meters.
"The completed form, they said."
The man's mouth curved.
"This is all you've got?"
Ian's fingers scraped the floor.
The heat had not died. Weakened, but alive. As long as the heart beat, the heat lived.
Inside the pain.
At the bottom of the suffering.
A single sensation surfaced in Ian's mind.
A scream.
Not the boy's. Not the soldiers'. His own. The scream he had produced three years ago, in the torture chamber. The scream that had cost him everything.
The proof of weakness.
The beginning of sin.
Ian's teeth locked.
His lips split.
Blood ran down his chin.
He swallowed the scream.
Heat surged again.
Weakly. Faintly. But it did not die.
The man's eyebrow shifted. Barely.
"…Interesting."
Three meters.
"You're withstanding the pain?"
Ian's head rose.
Amber eyes met gold.
"I'm not withstanding it."
His voice was cracked. Blood was in it. But it was not broken.
"I'm used to it."
The man's foot stopped.
"Seventeen years."
Ian's palms left the floor.
"Every moment."
His knees straightened.
"This much—"
His body rose.
"I've been feeling all along."
Ian's heat exploded.
White flame engulfed his entire body. Over the pain. Over the suffering. Over the scream.
The man's gold iris dilated.
For the first time.
Surprise.
Ian's foot moved.
Toward the man.