Lifeless lay on the soft mattress of his luxury suite with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. The air in the room remained perfectly still but his mind was a storm of arrogance and crushing boredom. He contemplated the people who walked the streets below. To him, they appeared like fragile dolls made of glass and paper. He knew a secret that they had yet to discover. He could sense the latent currents of energy flowing through their veins. Every human in this modern world possessed the spark of power within them, yet they remained weak and oblivious. They lived their lives in fear of the mutated beasts while the very strength to crush those monsters stayed locked inside their DNA.
Lifeless felt a surge of cold superiority. He possessed the wisdom of the current and the body of a 16 year old Greek god. He stood up from the bed and felt the density of his muscles ripple beneath his skin. He lacked the patience to stay in this gilded cage any longer. He walked toward the balcony and looked down at the street several stories below. He refused to use the stairs. He wanted to feel the rush of the wind and the impact of the concrete.
He leaped from the railing with a silent grace. The air whistled past his ears as he descended like a falling star.He landed on the pavement with a thunderous crack that sent spiderweb fractures through the asphalt. He stood up and brushed the dust from his shoulders. He intended to take a selfish walk through the city to entertain his restless spirit. He wandered through the alleyways, his senses dialed to the maximum. He felt the vibration of the city and the distant screams of citizens fighting for their lives. Suddenly, a flash of yellow and black blurred in his peripheral vision.
A jaguar jumped on him from the roof of a parked van. The predator was a mass of lean muscle and hunger. Its claws lashed out and scratched his arm, leaving four shallow red lines on his bicep. Lifeless looked at the wound with an expression of pure boredom. He never flinched. He swung his right fist in a tight arc that carried the momentum of a wrecking ball. The punch connected with the ribs of the cat and sent it flying into a brick wall. The sound of shattering bone echoed through the alley. The jaguar slumped to the ground, dead before it even hit the floor. Lifeless wiped a drop of blood from his arm and continued his stroll.
As he walked, he saw drawings of himself on the crumbling walls of the buildings. The people of Finland had painted murals of his face. Some saw him as a savior while others depicted him with a muzzle, a grim reminder of his past as a slave. He stared at a particularly large painting of himself and felt a hollow sensation in his chest.
He was a celebrity in a world that was dying. He turned a corner and found himself in a wide plaza where the ceiling of a nearby mall had collapsed. A massive shadow blocked the sun. A Fulminated Gorilla dropped from the jagged edge of the roof. It was a beast of nightmare proportions, its fur shimmering with sparks of static electricity. It ran into Lifeless with the force of a high speed train. The impact was so sudden that Lifeless failed to dodge. The gorilla grabbed him by the waist and began slamming him into the ground with a rhythmic, brutal violence. It threw him into a reinforced concrete wall, the structure buckling under the weight of his dense body.
Lifeless stayed on the ground for a second, his vision swimming. He got up in agony, his bones groaning under the pressure.
He reached for the hilt of the sword strapped to his back. He gripped the handle and pulled the blade free. It was a masterpiece of volcanic glass and steel. He focused his mind and tapped into the reservoir of red current within his soul. The weapon began to transform. The blade thrummed with a rhythmic heartbeat of kinetic energy. Tiny channels etched into the obsidian surface began to glow with a violent shade of crimson. The red current flowed like liquid fire through a complex network of artificial veins. It pulsed from the hilt to the tip, turning the cold steel into a humming conduit of destruction. The light was so intense that it left trails of scarlet fire in the air as he moved. He launched at the gorilla with his sword raised, but the beast was faster than it appeared. It swung a massive fist that slammed him back into the dirt before he could strike.
Lifeless felt the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He reminded himself that he was a genius with the most perfected physique in existence. He refused to lose to a mindless animal. He rolled through the dust as the gorilla tried to stomp on his chest. He stayed low and swung the energized blade in a wide horizontal sweep. The red current hissed as it sliced through the air. He cut the gorilla's leg open, the heat of the sword cauterizing the wound as it passed through muscle and tendon. The beast let out a roar of pain and dropped to one knee. Lifeless saw his opening. He surged forward and stabs his sword into the neck of the monster. He felt the resistance of the thick hide, but the red current melted through the flesh like a hot wire through wax.
He pulled the blade out and watched as the gorilla collapsed into a heap of smoldering fur. Lifeless cleaned the blade on his pants and walked away stomping, his boots leaving heavy imprints on the stone. He felt powerful, yet the boredom remained.
As he walked away from the plaza, he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. A small kid was running through a field of debris far away. The boy wore a t-shirt with a hand drawn muzzle on the front, a clear tribute to the image of Lifeless that the public loved. The child was screaming in terror. He was being hunted by a Slave of Divinity level jaguar. This was no ordinary predator. Its body was streamlined for extreme velocity and its eyes glowed with the cold light of a higher power. The boy was clearly speedless against one of the fastest things discovered on the planet. Lifeless watched the scene with a cold detachment for a heartbeat. He thought about his own freedom and his desire to be selfish. He remembered the ice and the chains. He looked at the kid and felt a strange tug on his heart.
"I don't have to be selfish, I just have to be free," Lifeless whispered to the empty air.
He shifted his weight and ignited the current in his legs.
He vanished from his standing position, leaving a sonic boom in his wake. He ran toward the kid with two hundred miles per hour velocity. The world became a smear of grey and brown. He reached the child a fraction of a second before the jaguar could close its jaws on the boy's neck. Lifeless grabbed the kid and carried him to a far place of safety behind a line of armored vehicles. He turned back toward the predator without a word. He sprinted back to the cheetah and punched it squarely in the chest. The blow was enough to level a building, but this beast was durable enough to just fall back. It skidded across the ground and regained its footing instantly. It was a divine creature, built to withstand the wrath of a god.
The jaguar lunged with a speed that tested even the honed reflexes of Lifeless. It lashed out with a paw that moved like a whip. It scratched Lifeless across the chest, a strike so deep that it almost ripped the muscle. The tissue was denser than concrete, yet the divine claws tore through it with ease. Lifeless screamed in a mixture of surprise and white hot pain. He got knocked to the ground and felt the warm surge of blood soaking his shirt. He tried to kick the jaguar with his legs to keep it at bay, but the cat was nimble and stayed out of his reach. He grabbed the sword once more and swung it at the jaguar, the red lines of energy flickering with his fading concentration. The beast dodged every strike, its movements fluid and mocking.
"If I am not winning in strength, I am winning in intelligence," Lifeless thinks as he watches the predator circle him.
He realized that the beast was reacting to his movements before he could complete them. He needed a distraction.
He yanked the leather shoe from his right foot with a snarl of desperation. He got up and stood his ground. He swung the shoe toward the jaguar, offering it as a sacrifice. The animal instinct of the beast took over. It saw a moving target and lunged, clamping its jaws onto the tough material of the footwear. It actually bites it. Lifeless used his extreme velocity to vanish from the front of the creature. He moved to the back of the jaguar and wrapped his massive arms around its thick neck. He applied the most forceful chokehold ever recorded in the entire solar system thanks to a massive surge of adrenaline. Every muscle in his upper body knotted into granite. He felt the windpipe of the monster begin to collapse.
The jaguar went into a frenzy. It was a fight for survival. It kept flicking every way to escape the iron grip. It scratched his hands, his legs, and his face. Lifeless felt the skin being torn from his cheeks and the blood dripping into his eyes, but he refused to let go. He squeezed with a strength that defied the laws of biology. He felt the heart of the beast hammering against his chest. Slowly, the struggles of the jaguar became weaker. Its movements became slower and less focused. Its eyes lost their divine glow. Finally, it stopped moving. It was dead. Lifeless released the carcass and fell backward, gasping for air. His body was a map of wounds, but he was alive.
He forced himself to stand. He ran back to the kid and picked him up with trembling arms. He carried the boy to the nearest hospital, ignoring the gasps of the people who saw his mangled chest and bloodied face. He handed the child to a nurse and turned away before anyone could ask him for an interview or a photo. He walked through the streets of Helsinki as a ghost, his mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. He reached his room and locked the door. He sat on the floor and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He saw the scars and the blood. He saw the eyes of a boy who had everything but felt like he had nothing.
"I am loved, but I do not deserve to be," he said, his voice breaking.
The weight of his own choices crashed down on him. He realized that he had been blessed with a strength that could save the world, yet he had spent his time sulking in a room or taking walks for his own amusement. He was a hero to the kid, but he felt like a villain in his own story. He broke down crying, the tears mixing with the blood on his face. The absolute realization of his own selfishness was more painful than the scratch on his chest.
"I am so selfish," he sobbed into the silence of the suite. "I was blessed with strength enough to help people and I only helped myself. I am going to the Amazon. I am going to fix the mess I allowed to happen."
He stood up and washed the blood from his skin. He dressed in his most durable gear and strapped his sword back onto his shoulder. He walked out of the room with a new sense of purpose. He found Jarvis in the command center, the scientist surrounded by monitors showing the destruction of the world. Lifeless walked up to him with his head held high.
"I am going to this mission," Lifeless said, his voice steady and low. "And if I do not leave alive, I will enter trying."
Jarvis looked up from his screens and stared at the boy. He saw the fresh bandages and the raw determination in his eyes. He stayed silent for a long moment, measuring the change in the atmosphere.
"Okay," Jarvis said, his tone unusually soft. "I thought this world was going to break apart before you found your spine. Wait a mere second. Were you crying?"
"It does not matter," Lifeless responded, refusing to acknowledge the vulnerability. "Let me heal from this wound in your hospital for a few hours. I will kill the remaining animals in this city to clear the path, and then I will go to the Amazon trip of yours. Prepare the transport."
Lifeless turned away and looked out the window at the burning horizon. He felt the current pulsing in his hands. He was no longer a bored teenager or a selfish alien. He was a man who had finally chosen his own fate. He would go to the jungle and face the divine corruption. He would fight until his heart stopped or until the world was safe. The script was gone, and for the first time in his life, Lifeless felt like he was truly awake. He would cleave the fate of the world, even if it cost him everything he had left. He was ready for the chaos. He was ready to be the hero that the boy in the muzzle shirt believed him to be. The journey to the heart of the Amazon would be the most intense struggle of his existence, and he would welcome the pain with open arms.