Genesis End

By Spinning Demon (Topman) and Gauntlet (Shadowman)

Chapter Eleven - Hard-To-Heart

Sure enough, the next day Hard and I were paired together for duty shifts. It felt strange to be working regular patrol, sweeping the streets while somewhere out there peoples' souls were being sucked out of their chests... or however that worked.

But there was not much we could do right now. Ha'Khael was our only insight into what was happening, and it's not like all of us could follow his every footstep waiting for inspiration to strike. We had to divide and conquer. Besides, as sad as it was to say, the mystical deaths were far fewer than those dying of the KADE outbreak, so unless we could find some kind of proof that the two investigations were, in fact, connected, then finding out where KADE came from and stopping it was a bigger priority.

Still, there wasn't much to go on. Shadow was trying to negotiate a warrant to look deeper into emerGEnesis, but as with all beaurocracy it was slow-going. Spark was no longer at the hospital - with the number of KADE patients increasing, and no cure in sight, they were over capacity, and a decision was made to move all KADE victims to an emergency compound erected in the center of town. Half triage, half quarantine zone, the compound was staffed with both medical staff to tend to the ailing and researchers who were trying to engineer a cure. Even though KADE had shown no signs of being contagious, volunteers were few. Spark was one of them.

The rest of us were just trying to do what we could to stem the bleeding. There wasn't anything that guns, fists and breakneck speed could do against a bioweapon. We just had to keep our eyes out.

For a long while, Hard and I made our rounds in silence, and it was obvious that neither one of us wanted to speak up. But I felt like it was on me to say something first, since I'd screwed up so bad with him before... even if I hadn't meant to.

"You know, I already said I'm sorry..." He didn't react. That's ok, I wasn't finished yet. "But I've been so busy trying to get you to realize I wasn't to blame, that I didn't say the most important thing. It's not true, what I said. You're not a... a crybaby, or whatever. You've been through a hell of a lot, way more than I ever have. It takes a lot more than the stuff I'm made of to face that kind of adversity and come out okay."

For the first time since I met him, Hard looked me in the eyes with more than just hollow recognition. It was a bittersweet moment. I finally felt like I'd seen my first glimpse of the real him, and the real him was many metric tons of pain.

"Did I?" he asked.

"Did you what?"

"Did I come out okay? ... I keep asking myself that. I feel like I'm just... waiting. Waiting for something to happen, something to click. I keep wondering if I'm just being nostalgic, just missing the 'Good Ol Days', or if it's more than that."

Was I crazy, or did he just say something I completely related to? I nodded, and I think he saw in my face that it wasn't just out of sympathy but out of understanding.

"It was never like this on the other teams," he continued. "I was pretty mellow as Fireman, even if the Muffin Man kept bugging me. And my time on the X-Force was just wild, we just had one crazy adventure after the next! And the Warriors, man, we were such badasses..."

He seemed to brighten for just a moment before fading out. "And now they're all gone. Erased by Red, scattered to the wind after the War... I was going to make their legacy known by going out in a blaze of glory. But even that backfired. I've been brought back to life twice against my will now... the first time I was enslaved, and I'm starting to wonder if the second time's turning out any different than the first."

"Come on, it's not that bad! You don't really want to have died as a rampaging plutonium addicted fiend, do you?"

He shrugged. "Hnnh, I guess not. I just never thought I'd be the last one left, y'know? I always figured I was such a hothead, I'd be the first one to bite the bullet. Maybe that's why I keep sacrificing myself 'for the greater good'. Maybe it's not really about being noble... maybe it's just that death is what I'm best at."

"Dude," I said, not really knowing how to reply without sounding like an after school special, "just... death's not something you show off during Talent Night, alright? It's... I mean, look at all the shit going on around us right now. Just trust me, you don't want any more death in the world than there already is."

"Maybe you're right... but living like this, all my pasts swirling around in my head and not a single person left from them to make any of it seem real... it's damn near unbearable."

"Yeah... I guess I should count myself lucky, I don't really have a past to haunt me. I mean, before I was a Mech, I was just a satellite's AI, charting solar systems and whatever."

"Yeah, you should count your lucky stars for that."

I craned my neck to give him a proper look of complete incredulity. "Did you just make a pun? You?"

Hard actually grinned slightly.

"There might be hope for you yet, big guy."

["Top Man, are you there?"] The voice that peaked without warning through my communicator was Gemini's. He sounded rushed.

"Yeah, I'm here Gem, what's up?"

["We have come across another victim of soul theft. Ha'Khael would like to examine it as quickly as possible, in case any lingering trace of the killer can be detected. You are the fastest on foot, so you will have to carry him there. Hard Man and I teleport to meet you there."]

"Sure, just send me the coordinates, I'll be there before you know it."

There was a slight pause. ["Keep your line of communication open, please, Top Man. I will continue to monitor you as you proceed."]

For once I wasn't about to argue. It was the first time I'd be without a babysitter in two days, with a hostile takeover going on in my head and a manipulative demon piggybacking on my shoulders. Even I'd be cautious.

"You got it," I replied. "Sorry big guy," I said turning to Hard Man, "duty calls. We'll finish our heart to heart another time."

****

Ha'Khael was as light as he looked as I zoomed through town with the slender mage on my back. He looked unphased at the prospect of riding a skating robot through the crowded urban streets; I supposed when you've lived that long, you've done it all.

"So, young squire, how many ne'er-do-wells did you catch today?" he quipped.

"Just the one," I grumbled, "and he'd better stop calling me squire if he knows what's good for him."

"Can anybody really claim to know what's good for themselves?" He leaned back and let out a chuckle. "Besides, you'd really prefer to go by the name 'Top Man'? It's dreadful."

"It's the name I was given," I said, resisting the urge to shrug.

"I've been given many names," he spat, "but I prize the one I earned. After the desolation of New Eden, I was given a name in the proper tongue, as is tradition, my reward for the great feat I had accomplished." He leaned in uncomfortably close to my face, so close I could see his white irises leering at me from the inky black of his eyeballs. "Ha'Khael - the Voice of the Serpent." He settled back on my shoulders. "I always did love the Old Testament."

"And your eyes... how did they get like that? The inverted colours, I mean."

"Oh, it's a fairly commonplace occurance when a human's body has remained possessed for an extended period of time. It's an old wives' tale that it was God's way of keeping us from hiding among them for too long, though more modern scholars assert that it's a physical manifestation of our corruption seeping into the host. Whyever do you ask?"

"It's actually something I've seen before, but in robots, not humans. I even had them for a while, when I was under a delusion that I was an alien overlord occupying a robot's body."

"Hm, well of course demonic possession of a robot is impossible. But, your bodies seem to have been built to simulate many biological responses to make you more relatable. You breathe without lungs, blink without eyes... perhaps this is another manifestation of this phenomenon, as your systems attempt to emulate what happens when a human becomes corrupted." He paused, and I could practically feel him looking me up and down. "But who knows?" he smirked. "Maybe you have a bit of a demon in you after all."

"Maybe," I joked, trying to laugh off his comment even though it hit pretty close to home right about now. "After all, my nickname is the 'Spinning Demon'."

"A much better name than 'Top Man', you really should call yourself that instead."

"We're here," I said, skidding to a halt in front of a dingy apartment building in a low-income part of town. Ha'Khael climbed down from my back and walked up the steps gingerly.

Gemini and Hard were already waiting for us inside. We ducked through the cordoned off doorway and into the stillness of the crime scene.

"Exquisite," Ha'Khael said as he ran an index finger along the length of the victim's spine. He was in his early fourties, a heavyset man who like all the rest was frozen with eyes wide and mouth agape. "The subtelty of the spell is masterful. There's barely a trace of mysticism in the air surrounding us."

"So how did the killer get in and out without some kind of spell?" Hard asked.

"I'm not convinced the killer ever did either one," Ha'Khael replied as he took his first look at the man's face. He gently ran the back of his hand along the corpse's cheek. "Yessss, this explains so much. You know, when you first brought this case to me you told me the bodies were frozen in a look of sheer terror."

"Yeah," I said, "so?"

"So I have seen this look many, many times in my life. And this is not terror. It's awe."