#backstory snippet | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

forwhump · 3 months ago

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a/n; happy new year !!!!!!!!!!!!!! have a little something nobody asked for <3 a little bit of background a little bit of lore and a whole lot of fun let’s gooooooooooooo 😚

tw/cw: captivity, medical torture, kidnapping, human experiments, mutilation, disfigurement, transphobia, misgendering, sexual violence, rape/noncon, racism

living weapon whumpee, outside pov

The most expensive weapon in military history had a budget that was undisclosed. Billions, maybe trillions of taxpayer dollars had funded all the greatest living minds across the world, scientists and surgeons and war heroes alike.

Operation Archangel. They’d nicknamed it Operation Widowmaker. The goal of the operation was to craft the perfect weapon. It was simple — every weapon had a fault. All of the money and carnage in the world at their disposal, and still, no weapon was perfect. Even the very best gun needed to be reloaded.

The most expensive operation in military history was as simple as it was complicated — billions of dollars to fund the creation of the perfect weapon. It wouldn’t need to be reloaded. It wouldn’t need to stop. It would kill when they tell it to kill and it would only stop when they decided it was done. The perfect weapon was three things; it was pitiless, it was obedient, and it was relentless.

Its name had been Silas Park, and it was only nineteen when they had gotten their hands on it.

Clip can still remember, surprisingly vivid, how cold that room had been. He’d been standing at Grieve’s left, Spider at his right. Grieve was sitting between them, at a table in a cold room tucked away in the lowest level of the prison. Overhead, one of the lights flickered, humming loudly with the strain. There were two requirements for the weapon — he had to be violent, and he had to be somebody nobody would miss.

They’d narrowed down the prospects, and the General, Grieve, had wanted to meet with them himself.

It was going to be Park from the second he had been escorted into that room to meet them. It was obvious.

He was a big kid. Park was tall in a way that was imposing, almost intimidating. He had to duck his head to fit through the doorway, forced down by the prison guards leading him in, and when he lifted it, he grinned at them. He had a wide, boyish smile, handsome and charming, dimples carving his face on both sides. Arrogant. From the corner of his eye, Clip had seen something twitch in the side of Grieve’s face and he knew that he knew it then, too. This kid was their weapon.

The guards sat Park at the table across from Grieve. They shackled his hands to the surface and his ankles to the concrete beneath. A guard stood just inside the door, while the rest filtered out to wait behind the safety of the two way mirrors. The entire time, Park grinned at them.

Park was actually kind of a crapshoot and it was hard to believe that it was going to be him. Clip had been kind of skeptical when his mugshot had come across the table — they were looking at some truly awful men, deplorable criminals, the worst of the worst, and some random Asian kid doing a couple years?

He had a record of violence going back as young as thirteen, but a lot of it had been excused. Included, with his mugshot and his criminal record, were a handful of newspaper clippings where he was lauded, in fact, for his violence. Some considered it vigilantism, it seems. This last time, over the age of majority, he was tried as an adult for an assault on a twenty five year old tattoo artist that had put him in the hospital on life support and with permanent brain damage; it was Park’s brother in law, and he’d beaten his pregnant sister so badly she’d miscarried at twenty eight weeks.

There had been a huge outcry for Park not to do any time; he was given three years because he got on the stand and openly admitted to trying to kill him. He was violent. It didn’t seem like he maintained a lot of impulse control. There was a likelihood he would reoffend.

However, he had family. There were people that would miss him. According to the records the prison had given them, there were people that would visit, and they would visit often. He had four sisters, and they each came to see him, one notably more often than the rest, almost every second day; the sister from the incident, if Clip has to guess. His parents came to see him every Sunday.

His parents, fortunately, were both immigrants, and immigrants, fortunately, were easy to incentivize, especially with roots as deep as grandchildren. The threat, however, the surveillance, would need to be constant, and the buyout, substantial; it added quite a chunk to the weapons budget. Clip hadn’t been able to imagine that being worth it for some random kid.

He could understand now. Whoever had put his mugshot in that pile must’ve already met him, because they must’ve known. It was something in the way he held his shoulders, in the way he looked at them, in the way he sat, cocky, confident, smug, but something else, too. Something a little more dangerous. He was the biggest person in that room.

With a grin and a lift of his eyebrows, he’d said, “what can I do for you, gentlemen?”

On account of the vigilantism — and phenomenal lawyers, and, probably, if Vein had to guess, being young and handsome — Park only got a few years, but realistically, he should’ve done more. A lot more. It wasn’t so much that he had tried to kill his brother in law but the messy, cruel way he had done it. It was the crime that had gotten his mugshot thrown in with all the others. No person should ever have to experience the level of violence this kid had inflicted. He was fucked up. And he’d never been sorry. Vocally, he’d never been sorry.

It was obvious in the way he had looked across the table at them, young and arrogant and amused. He was a constant danger to the people around him. He was going to be the perfect weapon.

A generous donation to the prison and the deportation of Park’s parents and his fate was sealed.

He’d serve them for years, but his life ended that day, at nineteen.

Weaver and Carver were names everybody knew, high and low, even outside the reaches of surgeons and medical journals. Pioneers, some called them. Unconventional.

Really, they were mad. Their surgeries and their treatments, all experimental. Surgical and biological engineering, they called it.

Really, they were human experiments.

Thread had been flattered when he had gotten the call at the hospital, when he’d been pulled from his residency and hand selected to work under renowned Carver and Weaver at a highly classified, government funded medical program. They didn’t tell him what to expect.

His name had been Park once. They call him Park still, but there isn’t a lot of Park left. He’d been a big kid when they brought him in, but he hadn’t been big enough, not as big as they needed him to be. The first line of offence, for any predator, is fear — they needed him to be fearsome. They needed a weapon that wouldn’t only kill the enemy, but made sure they died scared.

There wasn’t a bit of him left untouched. Bone was transplanted, plated, organs replaced, flesh grafted. He’d woken on the surgical table as the scalpel had split the sensitive skin of his forehead, just beneath the line of his hair. He’d been shivering so hard his teeth had rattled against each other, his breath coming in short, wet pants.

His brain was next. They needed him violent, but they needed him obedient. Pliant.

“What,” he manages, and exhales sharply, trying to speak through clenched, rattling teeth. “What did you do to me?”

Above him, Weaver makes a trilling sort of sound, the kind that passes as laughter. “At ease, Park,” he says. “You won’t remember any of this. We’ll make sure of it.”

Park was a fighter.

He woke during surgery, and he woke with a strength they had just given to him. Three nurses died at his bedside before the soldiers were able to restrain him and he was sedated again.

The first three lives he took in the district were before he was even off the table.

They would be far from the last.

Beneath the neon glow of the surgical lights, what was left of Silas Park sat up on the surgical table.

A lot of him was still in there, was the foundation for what they’d created; it was impossible to tell by looking at him. If Thread hadn’t seen the construction, if he hadn’t had a hand in sewing him together, piece by piece, he imagined looking at him now, coming back to life, would make him retch. He was horrific. There wasn’t a kinder way to say or describe it, that’s as cut and dry as Thread could have been — Park was horrific. A grotesque patchwork of grafted flesh, of military grade technology, and the wounds were still fresh, the staples still raised. The jigsaw lines of his flesh, pulled tight and stitched together over the bulk of him, all looked strained and sore. It looked like it hurt.

Park looked around the room at them, and he looked at them vacantly.

“Can you tell us your name?” Weaver had asked, and he couldn’t. Weaver’s eyes had crinkled above his surgical mask. He always had very animated eyes — a byproduct, Thread wondered, of always wearing a mask. “Excellent,” he said.

Park was kept in seclusion until a team had been chosen for him.

He was shaping up to be a phenomenal weapon, to be exactly what they needed him to be. Every field test, he passed with flying colours. He could take a bullet and it wouldn’t slow him down.

He was perfect.

John Darren Grace was a formerly decorated captain and strategist, living at home after active duty with his wife and young children. He’d been bored, and when Operation Archangel had beckoned him out of retirement, he’d gone without much of a fight.

John was Darren to anybody he cared about enough to tell his name, and Point to the men he worked with. He’d always been Point because of his cane, his precious Little Debbie. It was hooked on one end, scythe like, barbed on the other. He’d been known to do a lot of damage with the point of that cane.

It was strapped to his back when he descended into the darkness of the district for the first time.

Darren was to oversee the unit where the weapon and its team were being held. A branch of Operation Archangel were the super soldiers — an entire, unstoppable battalion to work alongside the weapon. Being the first trial, they didn’t risk any working men. They went for the reserves.

Darren was assigned, specifically, to the select few chosen to work directly with the weapon, directly under him. The team was selected without Darren’s approval, or his knowing why. His first job was to track them down and bring them in, any means necessary. No witnesses.

He had a lot of fun with this first job.

Point found the girl in Texas.

They’d gone down in search of her brother, Robin. He’d done three tours during his time, but Point couldn’t say what he’d done during those tours that had warranted him being assigned to the Freak Weapon Team. Frankly, he didn’t read any of the information he’d been given on any of the assets. He looked at the photograph and their general vicinity and went sport hunting.

Robin was wandering the streets of Texas somewhere. He was last seen near Dallas. He was blonde.

They found him, with ease they found him, because Point always found them. But with him, he found the girl.

She was just a little thing, kneeling on the floor next to Robin, who didn’t have a lot of his teeth left and looked like he’d definitely seen better days. Point had no sympathy for the ones that fell off, he never had — if he wasn’t strong enough to be a soldier, he never should’ve enlisted. If he couldn’t handle it, he should never have wasted their time.

Except it wasn’t a waste, because he had a girl with him. She must’ve been his sister — they had the same shock of white hair. Only hers was long, almost impossibly, pulled into a braid that looked soft and made her look a bit like a schoolgirl. She looked young — she could’ve been eighteen. It made Point angle his head. He’d always been very imaginative. A creative type, his wife always told him. Kind of a visionary. And he’d envisioned that little girl in a little pleated skirt, bent over the desk in his office back at the district, and the course of her life changed forever.

“You’ve got a girl,” he’d purred.

She’d looked at him, and she was probably trying to look indignant, but if she managed it went over Point’s head. She was very pouty, that’s all he noticed. Cartoon princess sort of mouth.

He’d always wanted a pet.

As the door grinded open, Bleak looked up, eyebrows lifting slowly as he watched Point and his extraction team filter back into the barracks. Everybody seemed to be present and accounted for, with the addition of the blonde slung over Point’s shoulder. A girl. Completely naked and long legged, her hair a white sheet at Point’s back.

“What the hell?” He said.

Point flashed him a grin as he passed his bunk. He’d always had a weird sort of grin, Bleak thought — didn’t reach his eyes. But, generous, he said, “gonna have to hurry and get in line if you want a turn with her.”

“What?” Bleak said. “Are you serious?”

“‘Course,” Point agreed, not breaking stride. “Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t share.”

Bleak cracked a grin. She was limp over Point’s shoulder, unconscious. He thought, poor thing has no idea what she’s in for.

None of them did, turns out.

The walk back to the barracks was a solemn one. Over Point’s shoulder, the girl cried the whole way, but she was crying so hard she wasn’t making any noise, just these pathetic, hitching things. On a very shallow, base level, they made Vineyard kinda hard; they sounded a lot like the sounds she made when he was inside her. On a deeper level, if he thought about it too hard, he knew he would finally lose the steadily loosening grip he had on his composure — he would lose his fuckin’ mind. What does she have to be crying about?

The walk back to the barracks was a solemn one. They each left bloody footprints behind them, uniforms soaked through by what little had been left of the soldiers not fortunate enough to make it out of that unit with them. About half of them hadn’t. The dog had killed so many of them.

The dog had slaughtered so many of them.

It was getting out of control, that thing. It was getting too strong — too sentient. It was becoming too aware.

It was never supposed to think all that much for itself, that was the thing. It was supposed to bite and kill and do whatever vicious attack dogs do, the genetically engineered weapon, but that was it. It was supposed to turn off and back on again. They were supposed to say attack and it was supposed to do just that. It wasn’t really supposed to think. It wasn’t supposed to be able to form attachments.

But that fuckin’ girl. It was fault, with her soft little noises and her wet little cunt. She was trouble. Vineyard had called it from the very first time he had laid eyes on her. Point never should’ve brought her here.

It wasn’t his fault, though, not really, not entirely. The girl was to blame. The dog was dumb — it was simple. It had been modified that way. The girl had found a way to take advantage of that — she was manipulating it. And they had made it so easy for her; they took this pretty, pathetic thing, and thrown it in a cage with a monster that hadn’t been around a pretty girl since even before they had gotten their hands on it.

Point never should’ve brought her here.

For a long time, the unit was as close to silent as it had ever been. Not entirely silent, not ever — Bleak didn’t think this place was capable of that. There was always some sort of chaos. The girl still cried, Point made these snarling, animal sort of sounds, and her body was making these wet noises that Bleak was sure would be enticing to him any other time.

But he had the girl face down, bent over the corpse of the dog, so freshly dead it was still bleeding. When it had died, it had been messy. There had been so much blood. Point had used leaking fistfuls of it as lube, right from the cavity of the dog’s opened throat, leaving shimmering handprints on her bare skin as he had fucked her and that thing had taken its last, gurgling breaths beneath them. Bleak had never heard anybody cry like that girl was crying.

Crowded close together on the other side of the common room, the assets had gotten really quiet, the junkie and the brown guy and the dyke. They usually wore grey — that day, it was shades of rust and ruby, splattered with blood and chunks of the dog.

Bleak stood with his men, and he watched just as silently. He watched as the dog got cold and he watched the way the girl kept one of her small hands twisted in his bloody sweatshirt the whole time. It was hard to feel bad for her, she made it hard to feel bad for her, but it wasn’t quite sitting right, not with Bleak and not with any of the rest of them, if the tense, curdling silence was any indication.

There was a hysteria to Point, a frantic sort of mania, a frenzied sort of cruelty. Something wasn’t right, but nobody stopped him. The girl begged for help, and none of them helped her. Silently, they watched.

They should’ve known something was wrong when Point first cracked that girl in half in the basement, and they should’ve stopped him then, as he fucked her on top of the body of her dog.

But they didn’t.

Bleak tilted his head back to look up, up, up at the dog, standing tall so many feet above him.

The precious weapon. The greatest achievement in the history of military weaponry. Park.

He’d only been a kid when he got here. Looking up at him, Bleak could remember that kid but he couldn’t see that there was anything left of him in there anyway. Park stood tall above him, above where he was slumped against the concrete wall, both of kneecaps crushed. Park’s hands were bigger, probably, than dinner plates, and he had a strength that had grown more than they had anticipated, more than it was ever supposed to. Every day, he was getting more dangerous. Every day, he was getting harder to control.

Head angled down towards Bleak, his hair was hanging in his face, long and inky, shadowing his scarred face. When he grinned, it was a flash of teeth from the shadows and Bleak had never felt the way that made him feel before, not once in his life.

“I didn’t touch her,” he said, and his voice was coming out all shaky, trapped behind his chattering teeth. His legs hurt so bad — he didn’t think he’d ever been in so much pain before.

Park watched him closely. Fuck, he was big. “Yeah,” he said, and his voice was just as awful as the rest of him, a rumble so low it was almost distorted. “You did.”

Bleak shook his head against the wall, trying to take a full breath in. Failing. “I didn’t,” he said. “I swear.”

Slowly, Park angled his head. “You can keep lying,” he said. “You’re gonna die anyway.”

“Please,” Bleak tried softly. He was thinking about his girlfriend — his fiancée. They were supposed to get married next year. What was going to be left of him to send home to her?

“Wren begged,” Park said, and his voice had gone flat. Bleak was going to die. “Didn’t he?”

Bleak didn’t mean to flinch, but he did. Park flashed his teeth at him again and it was unkind.

Bleak’s last words were a series of please and stop and oh, god.

Park was picking chunks of Bleak from his teeth and from under his fingernails for days.

Standing in the gallery, Thread watches closely as the bonesaw cracks into the weapon’s skull once again.

Weaver and Carver weren’t ready to give up on him yet, but he had officially been declared a hazard. He was no longer within their control. The soldiers had lost so many — Point was down over half his men, and Thread had doubts that any of them had died quickly. The weapon was made to hurt, to inflict suffering, but it was always supposed to be at their behest. He was supposed to be their strongest weapon, but he was never supposed to be stronger than them. He was out of control.

This was a Hail Mary before he was deemed defective and they had him put down. The girl was to be removed from the unit, placed somewhere else, somewhere she couldn’t influence him, and the dog was to undergo a series of chemical lobotomies before he was released back to the unit.

Wipe the slate clean again, Weaver described it. Cut out the cancer.

In the dredges of the basement, locked behind armoured steel doors, the dog had started to lose his mind.

Working the guard shift outside, Vineyard could hear the dull, rhythmic sound of him beating his head against the wall again, again, again.

It made him smile. The captain, Point, had been gone a few weeks, furlough, and he’d missed a lot while he’d been away. Vineyard wasn’t looking forward to what he would do when he found out the girl had been transferred, but he figured the dog would lessen that blow a little bit. He was fucked up. He was getting worse every day.

They’d tried to have him execute one of his subordinates. It was a test in obedience, and he hadn’t passed. For whatever reason, at whatever turn, there was a stubborn dredge of Park left in there, fighting to be let out. It was too much of a risk and he’d been forced into isolation. It had the desired effect.

Every so often, inside his cage, the dog would lose it. He would start shouting, bellowing, but he hadn’t been able to speak since the lobotomies and his shouting was always unintelligible.

Use your words, Vineyard would tell him. I can’t help you until you tell me what you want.

He was looking forward to introducing Point to this new dog. They were waiting to start his obedience training until he came back.

Of course, Point never came back.

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chaotic-orphan · 10 months ago

Note

Hey! Excitedly waiting for the next intoxicating fear update, no rush tho take your time:)

Intoxicating Fear (XV)

A foreboding calm

Part one // Masterpost // continued from here

If you noticed Kit’s face-claim change, ahahah… no you didn’t ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Ambrose didn’t come back for days. Kit didn’t have any of the strange headaches, there was nothing. No shred of contact. No stupid texts, no phone calls, nothing.

It was eerie. Strange.

Kit had to re-learn how to be a person again. How to exist without the constant threat of violence or pain, or Ambrose. The further they got away from Friday, the greater Kit’s anxiety grew that Ambrose would come back.

It was a quiet Saturday, too quiet. Kit woke and checked his phone to see if Ambrose text but nothing. It was… unsettling. As if there were tiny ants crawling through his veins and scurrying along his nerves pulsing to see if they could sense Ambrose’s presence lurking.

Every electric pulse of stranger’s nerves sending signals their brains prickled Kit’s fight or flight just in case it could be Ambrose. He couldn’t escape it in the shops, walking down streets, on the metro, in his apartment block because he could feel someone walk up the steps to his floor… and walk right past it.

He couldn’t seem to relax, to find any sort of peace on his own. Music didn’t help not even when he blared it on max volume in his ears. Tv shows barely served as a distraction and by the time Sunday rolled around Kit decided he needed to go back to work, just to be somewhere he knew Ambrose couldn’t ambush him.

That’s what found him staring at the Hero Tower as he emerged from the sea of commuters. He took the overground train on the raised train tracks that ran through the city. The Hero tower loomed above them all in the old-town, inner district at least. Maybe if they built it in the business district there would be some competition. Maybe it wouldn’t look as impressive.

It still managed to make Kit’s thoughts turn static, almost mute, as if he was staring out at the sea, bare feet on the sand and listening to the waves come in and out.

Even with all the cars and honking noises of the city’s traffic. Kit disentangled himself from the bustle and took the revolving door into the lobby of the Hero Tower, and for the first time in days? Weeks? months, he felt safe. The familiar smell greeted him with a sudden burst and he almost sighed at the scent. It smelled refreshing, clean, but not to the sickening degree of a clinical, hospital smell. It was more personal, more like a showroom in a beautiful house on the outskirts of the city— that was definitely outside his budget— would smell of.

A small voice in his head said that it smelled like how Mentor’s house smelled when he was a teenager, but Kit ignored it and continued to the lift. It was directly opposite the lobby entrance and had a keypad in front of it. Kit lifted his hand to key in the passcode when tanned, lithe fingers beat him to it.

Kit’s alarm system had alerted him to the individual approaching him, but it was the smell of the pungent cologne that identified them.

“Well, well, well Mallory. Risen from the dead. Poor Superhero was worried sick,” a voice dripping with mock concern slithered from his left. Kit tilted his head up to watch the numbers on the lift drop, ignoring the idiot.

24, 23, 22—

“Are you sure you’re able to come back to work? We were coping just fine without you, Hero of Heroes.”

“I figured you’d miss me if I stayed away too long, Sawyer. God knows what other poor soul you’d make suffer your company.”

The doors opened and Kit stepped towards them, but it was Sawyer who got in first. Seeing Sawyer’s weasel-like face put a dampener on Kit’s mood. Sawyer had a long face, with a pointed nose and long thin lips that were always a little bit unsettling. Not to mention his mocking jade eyes that judged your every move.

Though, to Sawyer’s credit, he wasn’t Ambrose, and Kit joined him in the lift with that reassurance, pressing the button for his floor.

“Just the atmosphere when you were gone was so refreshing, Mallory. It was as good as the academy days after you left. Everyone was happy, not having to look at the moping orphan and listen to his poor excuse at humour.”

Kit leaned back against the corner of the lift, as far as he could get away from Sawyer and let out a small scoff of a laugh.

“I’m sure they got plenty of laughs out of seeing your ugly mug everyday.”

“Wow, playground insults,” Sawyer deadpanned, swiveling his head to Kit. Kit smiled. “What’re you? Five?”

“Outta five.”

Sawyer scoffed and looked back to the numbers go up in the lift.

To be fair to Sawyer, he wasn’t a bad looking guy. He had a sort of elegant charm working for him, with his slicked back hair and strange features. It was mostly his personality that was hideous, cold and distant like his powers. His shadows always kinda creeped Kit out, even in their academy days. That fear seemed laughable now; compared to Ambrose… Sawyer was a saint. Not to mention the fact that Sawyer was actually a competent Hero, unlike Kit.

“The class prodigy. The crème de la crème,” Sawyer said. “The poor orphan graces us with his presence. How marvellous a day. Aren’t we all blessed?”

“I’m not feeling very blessed to have to stand this close to you, pal,” Kit retorted, smiling sweetly at Sawyer. “Especially in such a confined space.”

Sawyer scoffed. “You’re so full of shit, Sparky.”

Kit shrugged. “I eat a lot of fibre.”

Kit barely had time to enjoy the retort before a giant, shadowed hand slammed against his chest and pinned him to the metal wall behind him. His head bounced off the metal on impact, but Kit didn’t make a sound or struggle. He just stayed still as Sawyer closed the distance between them and slammed a hand beside Kit’s head, leaning in even closer.

Sawyer’s smile was lopsided as he stared down at Kit, but his eyes burned like two coals. “You don’t even know what it’s like for the rest of us normal, mere mortals, do you?”

Anger flared hot in Kit’s chest and he was about to retort when Ambrose flashed into his mind and he faltered.

“Us heroes and villains, we’re all where we are today because we didn’t fit into the normal life…” his silver tongued voice repeated in Kit’s mind. “A normal person would be dead if they had that much electricity coursing through their body.”

“God,” Sawyer said with an exasperated sigh, pulling Kit back into the moment where he was. In the lift, with Sawyer, at the Hero tower not basement where Ambrose kept him chained. “You’re not even paying attention are you? What? Too good to respond to me now? Hey!”

Sawyer slammed his hand on the wall again and Kit flinched. Wide eyes shot to Sawyer’s black and it was as if all oxygen had left the lift and Kit was horribly aware of the confusion that was painted clearly across Sawyer’s features.

The shadowed hand dissolved from Kit’s chest but he didn’t move. He stood frozen. Sawyer the headlights, Kit the deer.

Kit never flinched.

Never.

Not even when they were in the academy.

Not when Nemesis beat the shit out of him and told him run back to whatever whore he crawled out of.

Not when he was assigned his first mission as a hero in training under Mentor.

Sawyer’s eyebrows drew down over his eyes. His voice softening as he asked: “why—”

The ding of the lift snapped them both out of a trance and Sawyer jumped back to the other side of the lift, hands behind his back and staring at the doors as they slid open. Kit did his best to appear normal too, though the heaviness in the elevator was suffocating.

Kit’s eyes flicked up to the floor number, 19, then went to the doors that were to reveal Tides. Kit’s heart stopped seeing her. She smiled at the two of them as she stepped into the lift.

“Hello boys,” she said in her bright happy way.

Kit swallowed, trying to force moisture back into his mouth while the doors closed again and Sawyer asked Tides what floor she was getting off on. His tongue was heavy and felt like sawdust, and practically scrapped his already chapped lips instead of soothing them, because Tides was the Hero who was with Kit on the docks that day.

She would have to remember Ambrose, right? Unless he made her forget, but did he even have time to do that? A million thoughts zoomed through Kit’s mind, some too fast to even catch because what if she remembered? Could she help him? Could he tell her about Ambrose, describe him even if she didn’t? Probably not with the fucking conditions of Kit’s freedom cemented into his brain and… Kit’s glanced at Sawyer from the corner of his eyes, whatever that was.

The lift stopped again at floor 27 and Sawyer walked out, saying bye to Tides, and it was just Kit and Tides left. Tides worked out of the same floor as Kit so they could ride the lift up together. This was his chance. He had to say something.

It was Tides who spoke first. “I’m happy to see you’re feeling good, Kit,” she said, and Kit looked at her. “Superhero said you had a bad flu.”

“Yeah,” Kit began, then cleared his throat. “Yeah. It’s good to see you actually, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that night on the docks.”

Tides turned her body to face him, resting her back against the opposite wall. “Of course. You saved my life.”

“Do you…” Kit began, but trailed off. How was he going to word this? “Do you remember the Villain we were fighting?”

“Of course. It was Omen.” The words hit Kit’s chest like a freight train. She remembered! She knew! That would make explaining his current predicament so much easier. “He’s…” Tides began, but shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself, a distant glaze coating her eyes. “I still have nightmares about that night.”

Kit’s heart lurched in his chest because he knew exactly how she felt. He knew exactly what being Ambrose’s puppet felt like. As if she was covered in a layer of dirt that she couldn’t shake, like a film of grease around her entire body and inside of her, violated. A small voice wondered if she flinched at the thought of Ambrose too.

“Can you explain the feeling?” Kit asked, voice gentle. Tides’ bright green eyes found his, almost pleading.

“Kit…” she said instead, reaching forward and wrapping her hand around his forearm. “I know you must be thinking about Mentor and how he felt, but you can’t let vengeance consume you. Omen is a monster, you can’t torture yourself with this. We’ll catch him.”

“It’s not—” Kit began but the words caught in his throat and he wanted to curse. He ran a shaky hand through his hair and let out a sigh. He let out a huff of a breath and lifted his gaze to meet Tides’s green eyes, “it’s not about Mentor. It’s about you. About… why he was there that night, on the docks. When there was a co-ordinated attack on the city.”

Tides hummed thoughtfully. “You think Omen recruited a group of Villains to attack me on the docks?”

Kit shrugged. “Maybe not Omen,” he said as the lift doors opened again onto their floor and the pair stepped out. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Ambrose would do, he didn’t exactly seem like a team player. “Maybe some other Villain is pulling the strings.”

“Have you told Superhero this?” Tides asked, flicking her dyed pink hair over her shoulder.

“It’s just an idea that’s been bouncing around my head,” Kit told her honestly. There was something about that night that he felt like he was missing. Some part of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit. It almost seemed like Ambrose was waiting for him, but then again… his reaction to Kit the other day was strange, so maybe not Kit? Maybe he was waiting for someone else.

Tides pulled him out of his thoughts as they rounded the corner to Tides’s desk. “I think you should clue Superhero in on your theory. Maybe he can help you paint a fuller picture.”

“Yeah,” Kit said with a nod, moving to leave. “I think I will. Thanks Tides.”

Tides hand shot out, wrapping around Kit’s forearm stopping him in his tracks. Her smile was reassuring, as she said: “and Kit, seriously, don’t beat yourself up about that night. You saved me. Remember that.”

Kit swallowed a scoff.

Oh he would remember if he could, if Ambrose hadn’t taken that memory from him. He just smiled in reply and squeezed her hand on his arm before stepping back. Maybe Tides was right, he thought, walking straight to Superhero’s office, he could use a second opinion on all of this.

He couldn’t talk about Ambrose or Omen, or what he did to Kit personally, but he could talk about it in a roundabout way. He was sure he’d find a way. Ambrose wasn’t always flawless in his commands, Kit proved that when he was able to stay in his childhood home, he’d find a path through if he was careful.

Superhero’s office was half a flight of steps above all the other desks that the normal heroes worked out of. It’s walls were made of a tinted glass which meant that he could see out but you couldn’t see in. A good security measure for the boss, Kit remembers Superhero telling them with a self-depreciating laugh when the architect was installing the new glass.

Kit remembers humming in response, watching as Mentor’s normal two-way glass was removed and couldn’t help but feel the difference in authority immediately after Superhero took over.

Now, Kit didn’t really care what kind of wall Superhero’s office had as he climbed the short flight and walked into the office without knocking.

Superhero wasn’t alone, and Kit felt a conversation die as he entered the room. “Oh, sorry,” Kit said, standing in the doorway. “I didn’t realise you had company.”

Kit met Superhero’s bright eyes over his guest’s head and he made an effort to smooth out his pinched up features. He offered Kit a smile, “not at all, Kit.”

The grey suit Superhero was deep in discussion with turned his body and smiled when he saw Kit. Kit offered a grin back, letting the door close behind him. He would recognise those warm silver eyes anywhere.

“Kit,” Mr Silver said, taking Kit’s outstretched hand and clapping his other hand to Kit’s elbow, squeezing it reassuringly. “How have you been?”

Kit shrugged, patting Mr Silver’s shoulder in return as they let go of each other’s hand. “Good, good. It’s good to see you, it’s been a while.”

“Indeed it has,” Mr Silver replied with his smooth voice. “You’ve already made your mark on the city.”

“Wouldn’t be able to if people like you didn’t keep it running,” Kit shot back. Mr Silver wasn’t a hero, but he was a gifted individual. His power lay more in his mind than a physical, typical Hero power. He had a gift for patterns, facts and numbers, all very cerebral he told Kit when they had first met. Mentor had taken Mr Silver on as a liaison between the Hero agency and the government, but he was more like a family friend than business associate.

Kit looked between Silver and a disgruntled Superhero, who was trying very hard to hide his expression below a pleasant façade. “What’re you doing here today?”

Silver straightened his posture, inclining his head a little and Kit’s eyes went to Superhero and back again. “I’m sure Superhero will fill you in on the details,” Silver said, fixing his suit jacket. “I think that’s my cue to leave, Superhero.”

Superhero smiled with thin lips as he nodded politely to Mr Silver. “Of course, Mr Silver. Always a pleasure.”

Silver raised his eyebrows as he passed Kit, and Kit frowned, following the man with his eyes. Silver opened the door and paused just before he stepped out, glancing back to Kit, his features conflicted. “Give Mentor my best when you see him again, Kit.”

“I will, Silver,” Kit told him earnestly. Silver smiled before he left the office and closed the door behind him. Kit’s head snapped to Superhero who had his back to Kit, hands on his face, letting out a frustrated sigh.

“What was that all about?” Kit asked, watching as Silver walked through the office towards the lift and press the call button.

“Bureaucratic bullshit as usual,” Superhero said with a huff behind him. Kit turned to face Superhero once the elevator doors opened, fixing his gaze to Superhero instead. “I need a cigarette.”

“You’re a hero, Superhero,” Kit told him lightly. “You can’t save the world if you’re out of breath rescuing kittens.”

“Mmm, a drink then,” Superhero said, walking around his desk and settling heavy into his chair with another sigh. He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses. He raised his eyebrows to Kit who shook his head in reply. Superhero shrugged and poured two fingers of whiskey, almost slamming the bottle onto the table.

“Why was Silver here?” Kit asked, taking the seat in front of Superhero’s desk, reclining into it.

Superhero shook his head, as if it was too serious a subject to remember. Kit stared at Superhero expectantly while he gulped down the whiskey in one shot.

“Jesus, Superhero, are you okay?”

Superhero shook his head, going to grab the bottle again. “What did you need?”

Kit watched as Superhero poured out three fingers of whiskey and screw the cap back on the bottle before reclining into his seat.

“Uh, yeah, I was just talking to Tides on the way up about a theory I have about the villains uniting.”

Superhero paused, eyebrows furrowing, casting deep shadows over his already deep set eyes. “Thank god I’m already drinking,” he said, tone anything but humourous. “Continue.”

Kit leaned forward in his seat and began, careful to avoid saying anything about Ambrose. “I don’t think the day Tides was attacked on the docks was a coincidence. That the attack just happened to coincide with the attack in first and in the business district.”

An unreadable expression flashed across Superhero’s face, more like how it was when Kit walked in on him and Silver. Kit almost winced at it, and said after: “listen, I don’t want to pile shit on your plate—“”

“No, no,” Superhero said with a sigh, leaning forward too and setting his glass down on the desk. He rubbed his eyes with his palms and let out another long frustrated huff. Then he looked up at Kit almost sheepishly. “How did Mentor do this for so long?”

Kit’s face broke into a sad smile. “I honestly don’t know.”

“He made it all look so easy, even the government visits.”

Kit licked his lips, the question written all over his face. Superhero scoffed and shook his head before standing and walking to the window that overlooked the office. He stood there, looking onto the floor like a disappointed parent. His hands on his hips, shoulders slumped, head dipped slightly.

“Silver’s not really the government, though, Superhero,” Kit said standing too. He didn’t join Superhero by the window, instead he turned and sat back against the edge of the table, crossing his arms over his chest. “He’s part of the regulatory—”

“Regulatory Office of Powered individuals,” Superhero said over Kit, cutting him off. “Yes thank you, Kit. I know.”

“So what was the problem?”

Superhero sighed again. He was sighing too much. Too despondent. Did Silver say something bad? Has he noticed something that the world was skimming over? Something substantial?

“He said the same thing you’re alluding to, something I don’t want to know about.”

Kit straightened, his stomach bottoming out. “What?”

“There’s something big coming, apparently. Some new villain in town that has been, as you hypothesised, recruiting villains to a common cause.”

Kit’s mind raced at the information, his mind too slow to process it. Was he right? Was it Ambrose? Omen? Was he organising a group of Villains for god knows what?

“Do you know—”

“No, nothing,” Superhero said gravely. A soft slightly hysterical laugh burst from his lips. “We’re barely managing now, Kit. I don’t think the Hero agency will survive this! It’s ridiculous. Nobody wants to become a Hero after what happened to Mentor and most people have either resigned like cowards or decided they want to keep their powers to themselves.”

Kit frowned. “What do you mean? When I left the Hero academy it was—”

“Full? Yeah.”

Kit bristled as Superhero turned to face him again, expression grave. Superhero walked over to the two armchairs at the far side of the office, settling heavy into one of them.

“You were one of the last classes to graduate. Well,” Superhero paused, eyes flickering almost sardonically to Kit’s, “not you obviously, what with Mentor taking you in.”

Kit ignored the silent accusation in Superhero’s voice as he said that, but it must have been written plainly on his face.

“No, no, I don’t mean— in a bad way, Kit. You were the best in your class, obviously Mentor would take an interest in you. You’re a good kid. A good hero. A good guy. Everyone likes you, I just…” Superhero continued with a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

Kit swallowed, sensing the tension that was weighing Superhero down. He walked over to the armchair opposite Superhero and sat down.

“What is it?”

“Some parents pulled their kids from the academy after Mentor was attacked.”

Kit stared at Superhero. He hadn’t heard this. Surely Sawyer would’ve told him, or someone would have messaged him to tell him.

Sawyer’s words replayed in his head: “Just the atmosphere when you were gone was so refreshing, Mallory. It was as good as the academy days after you left. Everyone was happy, not having to look at the moping orphan."

Maybe he misread his friendships at the Academy. Maybe they all just secretly hated him but Sawyer was the only one with any guts to tell him to his face. Or maybe someone did reach out and tell him but he couldn’t remember because of Ambrose’s stupid compulsion.

“But… what?” Kit blurted out, bewildered. “Why? I don’t understand.”

“Mentor was a symbol more than a man, Kit. He was hope. It wasn’t just a dark day for you when he was attacked. The city mourned with you.”

Kit swallowed the lump in his throat. This wasn’t at all how he expected this conversation to go. That’s what was wrong with Superhero, he had lost hope, but Kit didn’t— well, he didn’t know the current situation was so bleak.

You didn’t know because Ambrose didn’t want you to know.

“But you’re Mentor now, Superhero,” Kit said, his voice insistent. Superhero lifted his head, eyes wide like a boys. “You’re the new symbol of hope. We can stop this new villain like we’ve stopped every villain before them. Together.”

Superhero let out a breath of startled laughter, running his hand back through his hair.

“Who’s supposed to be who’s support again?”

Kit stood from the chair, shrugging with a charming smile and said: “I’m the Hero for Heroes, remember? That includes you.”

Superhero laughed, shaking his head.

“One good press release and you’ve already let it go to your head.”

“What can I say? The people love me. The masses love me. The heroes—” hate me “love me. It’s so hard to be everything for everyone all at once.”

“Uh huh. How about you do some work instead of talking me to death?”

Kit paused once he opened the door to the office. “If you need another psychiatrist session you can always come to me.”

“Get out before I kick you out," Superhero said and Kit laughed as he left, closing the door behind him. He descended the steps with the smile on his lips until he got to his desk and sat down, facing the small partition. Only then did he let his concern morph his features, safe from anyone else's scrutiny.

Superhero's worry was more than just the standard concern for the city. The very Hero profession could be at stake if they didn't find and stop this new villain on the scene, and Mentor had worked far too hard to let it all be for nothing.

He needed to talk to Ambrose, find out what the bastard knew. Only then could Kit plan properly… but after Ambrose stormed out of Kit’s apartment he had been quiet as a mouse. Kit could only hope that he would drop by again.

*~*~*~*~*

Continued here

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