He studied me in the rearview mirror, blood, bruises, the grin that didn't say a loser being bullied but a predator that just had a scuffle and came out victorious.
Then he barked out a laugh and stepped on the gas.
"Ha! I should hope so,"
He said.
"Bet they got at least a few broken bones then."
The cab merged into traffic.
"So,"
He added, glancing back.
"Where to?"
I froze. The grin slipped. My mind went blank. Where the hell was I supposed to go exactly? No home. No anchor. No fucking clue yet. Behind my eyes, Genesis didn't hesitate.
"XXXX Street,"
She said. I swallowed and repeated it out loud.
"XXXX Street."
The driver nodded.
"Got it."
The city rushed past the windows, neon smearing into long, vibrating lines as my double vision fought to keep up.
Engines roared, horns blared, people moved with purpose outside the glass, normal, functional, alive. Inside my skull, the memory train didn't slow. It accelerated. No brakes. No mercy.
At first, it was static. White noise behind the eyes. Then impact. Fire. Not metaphorical. Not poetic. Real fire, tearing through the sky like someone had ripped reality open with a rusted blade
A dimensional crack, spiderwebbing across the air above a residential block that smelled like fried food and summer rain. I was small. Too small. Legs short, lungs burning as I ran. Sirens. Screams.
The sound of something huge moving wrong, joints popping like wet wood snapping.
Shadows spilling out of nothing, crawling over buildings, over cars, over people who had been alive seconds earlier. My mother's hand in mine. Too tight. Shaking.
"Don't look,"
She kept saying, voice cracking, again and again.
"Don't look, just run."
I looked anyway. A thing unfolded itself out of the crack, too many limbs, too many mouths, skin like burnt rubber stretched over bone that bent the wrong way. It landed wrong.
Everything about it was wrong. Someone screamed my name. My father. Blood on his shirt already.
He didn't even get to finish the second syllable before something hit him from the side and erased him. Just, gone. Like a bad edit. My mother shoved me. Hard. I fell. Skin scraped. The world tilted.
She turned back. I remember her face more than anything else. Not fear. Not really. Just… resolve. Like she'd already accepted the math.
"Hide,"
She said. Then the monster saw her. The memory didn't cut away. Didn't blur. Didn't spare me. I came back to myself with bile in my throat, jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached.
What the hell…?
I rasped In my mind, fingers digging into my thigh as the taxi swerved through traffic.
What kind of fucking overused third-rate cliché setting is this?
My vision swam. The world insisted on continuing. Emergency shelters. Body counts on the news. Words like containment failure and localised reality collapse.
A government spokesman with dead eyes, promising compensation. Promising justice. A small hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and pity. No parents came back. No miracle happened.
I became a statistic. A survivor. A burden. The taxi passed a massive digital billboard, and even through the migraine, it punched straight through my skull. Bright colours. Over-saturated smiles.
Men and women in absurdly clean armor, cloaks billowing dramatically. Swords glowing. Staves crackling with fake lightning.
One guy was literally standing on a floating platform of fire, arms crossed like a superhero.
YOU CAN BECOME AN S-RANK HOMO EVOLUTIS TOO! APPLY TO HOMO EVOLUTIS ACADEMY TODAY. CHANGE YOUR FATE.
For a second, I froze. My breath caught.
"…What the fuck?"
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
"Who the fuck are those clowns?"
The driver glanced at the billboard, then snorted.
"Tell me about it,"
He said, shaking his head.
"How can anyone take them seriously? They look like they're all suffering from eighth-grade syndrome."
He paused, then shrugged, eyes back on the road.
"Then you remember they can shoot fireballs and lift cars. Ain't called S-rank for nothing."
That shut me up. Another memory slammed in. An orphanage. Grey walls. Peeling paint. The smell of boiled vegetables and disinfectant. Bunk beds packed too close together.
Kids who learned early that crying didn't get you anything except noticed. I was a loser there too.
Quiet. Small. Bruised a lot. Same as my other life, only worse before the army broke me into pieces and put me back together Into one piece, turning me Into the broken psycho I am today.
Because in this one, weakness didn't just make you invisible, it made you prey. Other kids had awakened abilities. Minor ones. Tricks. Sparks. Enhanced strength.
Nothing impressive, but enough to remind you every day where you stood on the food chain. At the bottom. I learned how to disappear. How to take hits without reacting.
How to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut. The staff called me "well-behaved." The bullies called me nothing at all. Years blurred together. Same bed. Same meals. Same ceiling.
Same emptiness until I finally became eighteen and was eligible for goverment funded housing, the taxi slowed.
"Here we are,"
The driver said, pulling up to a curb. I blinked, dragged back into the present.
Outside the window stood a concrete slab of a building that looked like it had been given up on halfway through its lifespan. Government housing.
Bare concrete stained by decades of rain and neglect. Narrow windows barred with rusting metal grates. Balconies sagging slightly, patched with mismatched boards.
Half the exterior lights were dead, the rest flickering like they were tired of trying. A keypad glowed faintly beside a reinforced metal door. The driver twisted around.
"Twenty ninety-nine."
I reached into my pocket automatically. Fingers brushed folded paper. I pulled it out, fifty, I handed it over and pushed the door open.
"Keep the change."
The driver stared at the bill for half a second, then broke into a grin.
"Thanks a lot, kid."
The door shut. The taxi pulled away, disappearing into traffic like it had never existed.
I turned toward the building and limped up to the entrance. The electronic lock stared back at me, keypad smeared with fingerprints. My head throbbed.
"…Code?"
I muttered, digging uselessly through the mess of half-memories. Genesis answered instantly.
"2345."
I didn't question it. Fingers tapped the numbers.
BEEP. CLICK. The door unlocked. I stepped inside. The interior was worse. Fluorescent lights buzzed weakly, some dead, some flickering. The air smelled like damp concrete and old cooking oil.
Walls were scuffed, tagged, patched where holes had been punched and half-heartedly repaired. A security camera hung crooked in the corner, its red light either broken or intentionally disabled.
"Second floor,"
Genesis said. I climbed the stairs slowly, each step sending a dull ache up my leg. The stairwell echoed with distant sounds, TVs, arguing, a baby crying somewhere above.
"Five."
Second floor hallway. Narrow. Carpet worn down to threads. Doors lined up like teeth, each with a cheap metal number plate. I stopped at 5. My hand hovered uselessly.
"…Keys?"
Genesis sighed in my head, long-suffering.
"Check your other pocket, Idiot."
I did. Cold metal. A small keyring. Right. I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The apartment was small. Painfully so. One room serving as both a living area and a bedroom.
A thin mattress on a metal frame. A chipped table with one chair. A kitchenette barely worthy of the name, hot plate, sink, cabinets with peeling veneer. The air smelled stale. Closed-in.
Like no one had bothered to open a window in weeks. Government-issued survival. Bare minimum. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, finally letting my weight sink.
"…So,"
I muttered, staring at the cracked ceiling.
"This is home."
Genesis didn't let the moment breathe.
"Shut it, you can be sentimental later"
She snapped inside my skull.
"Get in the shower. Now. You've got two minutes before your brain turns into soup."
I groaned, pushing myself off the door with a hiss as my leg protested.
"Gen darling, I'm kinda busy existentially collapse and ewrything..."
"Move, asshole, and don't ever call me darling, it makes me want to puke"
Hearing this, I limped across the apartment, not daring to curse at her In my mind since she could read It.
Each step heavy, vision still slightly doubled, the world tilting at the edges like it hadn't fully decided to stay put. The bathroom door stuck for half a second before creaking open.
It was worse than the main room. Cracked tiles. Rust stains around the drain. A showerhead that looked like it had personally survived three different maintenance budget cuts.
The mirror above the sink was fogged with age, silver backing eaten away in dark patches. Didn't matter. I stepped into the tub fully clothed and slumped down against the cold porcelain.
The second I reached for the faucet.
"Cold. Max,"
Genesis barked.
"We need to drop youre body temperature now."