He
Lucien sat cross-legged upon the narrow slab of metal they called a bed—though it had neither the comfort nor kindness the word implied. His wrists, ringed with old scars and fresh chafing, rested limply on his knees. The air in his cell was bitter cold, the kind that seeped into the skin and settled in the bones.
He had not truly slept in weeks.
Sleep, real sleep, was a luxury for another life—a life long buried beneath surgical lights and chemical nightmares. Pain had long since dulled. It no longer screamed or even knocked; it simply existed, like the grey walls or the ever-present hum of machines.
But beneath the ache, beneath the numbness, something waited.
A spark.
A silent, trembling ember that refused to die.
It was not anger. Nor hope. Nor even revenge.
It was hunger.
A hunger for understanding.
Lucien's gaze, glassy and unmoving, remained fixed on the smooth white panel of wall opposite him. He paid no mind to the fresh welts scoring his forearms. Nor to the weight in his limbs. Nor even to the low throb in his skull from whatever concoction they'd injected him with this time.
Across the room, barely visible beneath the faint blue light, his younger brother lay slumped and unmoving. Strapped to another table. Another test. Another procedure. Another day stolen from the child he used to be.
Lucien's chest twisted with something sharp and unnameable.
He couldn't let that happen.
He wouldn't.
> If I'm supposed to be a creator… then what have I created but silence?
The thought struck him like a curse—quiet, venomous, and inescapable.
They had called it a creation-type mutation. Whispered about it in hushed tones behind observation glass. But what had he actually done with it? He couldn't conjure fire. Couldn't warp time. Couldn't mold matter like clay or tear holes in space.
But once—just once—he had felt something.
Not pain.
Not rage.
A resonance.
His eyes slipped shut, lashes clinging together with sweat and dried blood. He drew in a slow breath. Not to ease the pain, but to sift through the layers of memory that refused to fade.
That day.
The first day.
When his brother's small body lay limp on the floor, bleeding, still, and too quiet. Something in Lucien had snapped—a soundless rupture, like a thread breaking in the soul.
He hadn't used science. Or logic. Or machines.
He had simply willed him to live.
And something within Lucien had answered.
He remembered the warmth in his hands.
The light behind his eyes.
And his brother had healed.
Wounds closed. Bones knitted. Breath returned.
Lucien's brow furrowed. The realization curled inside him like smoke.
It wasn't healing in the normal sense. It hadn't come from him.
It had felt… familiar.
> "It was like…" he whispered, voice hoarse, "…like Wolverine."
He stumbled to his feet, swaying slightly as he crossed the few feet to the wall. His palm pressed flat against the sterile surface. Cold metal grounded him as the memories surged forward.
> "Wolverine," he murmured again. "The healing factor… from the comics. But how…?"
Flashes came now—bright and unrelenting. Comics stacked on his childhood bed. Anime flickering on cracked screens. Games he'd played. Stories he'd devoured. Heroes and villains, gods and monsters.
Goku. Kaneki. Kars. All Might. All for One. Ben 10. The Lantern Corps. Superman.
He knew them.
He'd lived in their stories once.
And suddenly, it clicked.
> What if that's my mutation?
Not creation in the way the scientists thought. Not some omnipotent act of building from nothing.
> What if I can extract the essence of anyone I've seen—anyone I've admired—
and rewrite it into someone else?
He gasped, pressing harder against the wall as his legs weakened.
He wasn't summoning.
He wasn't inventing.
He was transferring.
Like pulling traits from a fictional genetic library stored within the deepest layers of his mind. Each character he'd ever watched, read, or loved had left an imprint. A fingerprint in his memory.
And his power—his mutation—allowed him to reach into that memory…
…and mutate reality with it.
> "I'm not a creator."
> "I'm a mutator."
And his brother—that first act, the healing—hadn't been a miracle. It had been a mutation seed. A random power draw from a fictional source… embedded like a parasite in his brother's DNA.
The randomness made sense now. He couldn't choose which trait manifested. Only the source.
But the result?
> "They obey me," Lucien whispered, mouth dry. "Every mutated being… obeys me."
The implications crashed over him like a tidal wave.
He could mutate anyone.
Imprint the powers of gods onto strangers. Curse tyrants with monsters' might. Bestow cosmic abilities on children, beggars, or soldiers.
One seed at a time.
Each one unpredictable. Unstable. Powerful beyond imagining.
And all of them bound to him.
He staggered back to the cot, clutching his chest as his breathing came faster, ragged.
> "If power is the language of this world…" he breathed, eyes wide with dawning awe,
"then I will rewrite the dictionary."
> "And I will teach the multiverse a new word."
> "Chaos."
He sank down, laughing softly—half delirium, half triumph. His body trembled with the weight of realization.
He wasn't a builder. Not a scientist. Not a conjurer.
He was a seedmaker.
A crafter of rogue genes and forbidden futures.
His tools were not atoms or circuits—but ideas.
Ideas forged from fiction, wielded like hammers against the laws of reality.
> "They'll never see it coming," he muttered, a grin spreading across cracked lips.
"I'll give gods to beggars. Tyrants to orphans. I'll flood the black markets of the multiverse with a thousand seeds… and burn the illusion of balance to the ground."
And somewhere—beyond concrete walls and suppressor fields, past steel doors and sedative gas vents—
Something stirred.
Not in the monitors.
Not in the minds of his captors.
But in reality itself.
A pulse.
A flicker.
A ripple.
The first Mutation Seed had begun to form—not in his hand or in a test tube.
But within him.
Waiting.
Humming.
Ready to be harvested.
And one day, unleashed.