Alex Severo
We at Asylum received word that an agent known worldwide as the Reaper would be coming. What, was I not good enough to track down the escapees myself? Did the wardens not trust me anymore? Will they punish me for not being able to tell that Elektra was two-faced? All I've been told about this situation is that nothing will be discussed until the Reaper gets here. These wardens hate repeating themselves twice.
"Cerberus," a guard calls my name – the one I go by. "We've got an approaching vehicle. Looks official."
Grunting, I grab a pair of binoculars and peer at the faraway Humvee, which bounces over rocks and snaps tree branches in half. "Yeah. That's them," I acknowledge. My body feels stern and on edge, as if it's ready to pounce. My voice is low; almost a growl. Right now, I'm serious and stoic; all business and no games. This is only temporary: I know that much. At anytime, my MPD can kick in and screw me up.
The gates screech open, the sound like a razor against flesh. It never bothered me until it meant that Asylum needed someone else – someone better than me – to do a job. It's like a stab in the back after all I've done for them. My walkie-talkie beeps in, resting on the wall. "Cerberus, you here?"
Swiping the device, I hold the button and speak. "I'm here, Warden. What's up?"
"Greet the visitors and meet in the security control room. Stat."
"On it," I promise, descending to the courtyard. The guards herd others into the closest buildings. After the retaliation of the five escapees, everyone is on edge about being near the walls. They saw how we unloaded our magazines of bullets on them and how I attacked. If someone even looks like they're trying to break out, they'll be swiftly put to rest.
The Humvee parks just outside and the passenger door opens, unloading a person, before speeding off. I don't understand. How can this one person be more useful than I am? Me, who can mimic any power in my range. Me, who has unmeasured loyalty to Asylum for taking me out of my home life. What can the Reaper possibly have to offer that I don't? I have more drive to prove myself. I may not have been trained by some lavished agency, but I certainly have my wits about me to figure out all the tricks.
A girl approaches. She appears to be about 19, but her eyes look as old as dinosaurs. There's an aura of intellect and lethality around her that makes her intense and unapproachable. Her hair cascades down her back quite a bit, the shade of raven's feathers. Her eyes are a dark brown, almost black color. Her skin is smooth and an olive tone. She scans me from head to toe. "You're Alex Severo?"
Hearing my name – my real name – for the first time in years is unfamiliar. I almost forgot how it sounded. For a second, I'm confused. Who is Alex? Why does he have my last name? But I remember my identity before Asylum and I tense up. "I go by Cerberus."
Reaper scrutinizes me. "You don't look like you have three heads.""
"The wardens want to meet us in the control room. Follow me, please."
"Us?" she echoes. Her voice silky but empty. It's as if there's supposed to be a lightheartedness in her being. But it seems like it was crushed to pieces years ago. "They want to see you, too? Aren't you the jackass who opened the gates for the convicts in the first place?"
Clenching my fists, I try to keep my temper down, but there are voices in my head that make it hard. They tell me to finish her before she starts on the job I should've been handed. They tell me to shut her up. They call me a monster for harboring these voices. There's another voice, too: my mother's.
"Calm down, Alex," she says as she wipes pools of my blood from the floor. "You wouldn't want to go to the Therapist's, would you?"
"Don't take it to heart. Jesus. I'll follow you to the wardens," Reaper says, snapping me back to reality. I take deep breaths to clear my head, but there's no way I can ever do that. The voices of my other selves – my other personalities – swirl around my brain endlessly. For some odd reason, my hands feel sweaty. I go to wipe them on my shirt when I notice that they aren't sweating at all: they're bleeding. I clenched my fists so hard during my flashback that my nails dug into my skin. This used to happen in my sleep when I first got to Asylum and I had nightmares. I kept my nails painfully short – clipping them to the quick. But the nightmares slowly stopped and I had let them grown out.
The Reaper is silent when she walks, as if she's stalking a predator. The guards on courtyard duty stare at her with unhinged jaws and frozen eyes. They're blessed with the presence of a senseless killer.
We arrive at the security control room. There are five major wardens here. The head of Asylum, Warden Jones, speaks. "I'm busy today, so I want to keep this quick and short: no questions asked. Agent Elwood," he addresses Reaper. "You've read the stats of these inmates. Cerberus, you've interacted with them all on a personal level. With the two of you both on their trail, we as a whole believe you can predict their next move and bring them in."
Reaper gapes, slamming her hands on the main table. "No way. That's not happening. I work alone, and I've never failed a single one of my three hundred twenty-five missions because of it."
"That's a nonnegotiable, Elwood," Warden Jones asserts, the other wardens nodding. A hope sparks in me. So they do still have faith in me.
"I can walk out at any given time, you know," she threatens, a fire blazing in her dark eyes.
"No you can't," Jones negates. "We've got the place sealed off and even you, the Immortal Evil, can't escape."
That's right, the Reaper's power is temporary immortality. I could try to tap into it now, but I have no idea how it works. Where does she channel the energy? Does she connect to some divine power, or the dead? A power like hers seems like it could cause serious detriment to one's self. Are there backfires to using immortality?
"Why even give this guy the time of day?" she questions, shooting daggers at me as if this is my fault. I mean, it kind of is, but that's besides the point. "He's the one who screwed everything up in the first place."
"Which," Jones quickly renders. "Gives Cerberus more drive to prove himself. Isn't that right?"
Vigorously, I nod.
"He will join the Reaper on her mission, Agent Elwood. We'll even increase his ambitions with an ultimatum."
Clearing my throat, I speak up. "An ultimatum, sir?"
"Yes," Warden Jones confirms. "If you don't take care of those five mutts, then we'll do what you've feared since coming to Asylum. We'll put you right where we found you, got it?"
Put me back at home? With my parents? Hell no. That won't happen. Never again.
"I understand," I confirm with a nod. I feel the color from my face vanish with the thought of being at home again. "I'll do more than my best."
"Reaper and Cerberus, I'd like you two to get acquainted and discuss plans. However, I do want you on the hunt within the hour. You two are dismissed."
You might be intrigued by my home life. If I could describe it to you in one word, it would be "inhumane." My father was the owner of a huge, global company. We lived in a mansion and had all the money in the world. My mother was a little crazy...she was a lot crazy, actually. When I was younger, I had a tough time with my MPD. I didn't know what was going on, at first. It started with voices in my head, then the sudden changes in my mood and attitudes. My mother thought I was possessed by a demon or something.
She hired a therapist to talk to me – a normal one. He diagnosed me with multiple personality disorder, but my mother refused to believe that was the issue. She thought I was perfect. I was the child of a millionaire and an ex-model – I had to be pristine. She claimed that whatever my problem was, wasn't from me; it had to be from an outside source.
After the normal therapist, she reached out to someone else. She told me it was a therapist, but I know that he wasn't. I would get tied to a chair in the lower basement – bound at the feet, waist, ankles, and knees. They gagged me and blindfolded me. From there, they would trigger my switches with obscene methods. From breaking my fingers and toes, to stuffing my nose with tiny red bugs that would "cleanse my soul," to choking me to near-death.
Once a switch had occurred, they would electrocute me on maximum voltage, trying to rid me of a psychological disorder as if they were an exorcist. Mother called him the Therapist, and though that's not what he was, he did become "the Therapist" to me.
The inability to discover a cure drove my mom insane. She spent thousands to millions of dollars on that torture expert, and still she had no idea how to fix the unfixable. Eventually, the tiniest of things done wrong would require an appointment with The Therapist.
From not ironing all the shirts correctly, to misplacing a TV remote, to breaking a glass – anything a normal teenager would do would require The Therapist's torture. I'll never forget when that savage brought in help. A second man was present, once. They drilled metal bolts into my back and hooked them up to the electrocution machine. Over and over, they would beat me until I switched. And over and over, they would send lightning like Elektra's into my body.
I still have scars from the incidents: my back has white circles evenly spread along my spine, my fingers and toes are a little extra bony and angled, and whenever something gets my heartrate accelerated, I think of torture sessions with The Therapist and his help – the electrocution was brainwashing.
I discovered my power of mimicry when I was walking home from private school. I was travelling down an alley as a shortcut when I encountered a white-haired man in his teens, his eyes an odd shade of red: a mutation due to supernatural abilities. I didn't know this until a van veered down this alley and snatched me up. The perpetrators in the vehicle were none other than my worst nightmare. They said that my mom declared me late for dinner, and that they had to switch me until I was "mommy's good boy" again.
During a switch, I somehow connected with the red-eyed man. Suddenly, I just...wasn't in the van. I was at home, in my room, sitting on my bed as if nothing had happened. The man had the power of teleportation. Using that power, I bounced all around town, getting noticed by Asylum. They came after me, and I willingly went alone with them. I've been here for six years now, and what do I do to repay Asylum? I open the gates to five criminals.
"They're going to run straight because that's all they know," Agent Elwood says to me as we enter the cafeteria, sitting down at a table. "Once we get there, we cuff them and bring them in. Simple enough that even you can do it." The Reaper slaps three pairs of energy-restricting cuffs on the table and slides them over to me.
Gritting my teeth, I tuck them into my pockets. "I'm not inept, you know."
"I don't know much about you, but I don't have to. I'm great at reading people. For one thing, I know you hate change. Your mind seems pretty scattered, so I can assume that because your thoughts are always changing, you hate when the world changes, too. Oh, and you were a rich kid with...daddy...no, mommy issues, right? You love Asylum for taking you out of your...not home, that would be an understatement. More like mansion, huh? And now you feel in debt for opening the cage doors to a bunch of lunatics."
The Reaper's attitude was already annoying. She's ostentatious, demanding, and high-maintenance. I wish there wasn't substance behind her words so I could point out the flaws in her assumptions. But unfortunately, there are none. She hit me right on the dot.
"So, what? We leave this place and just...go straight? Then what?" I inquire, steering the topic off my life.
"We'll pick up clues on our way. Now, I think I can nail four of these subjects with no problem, but it's the girl who goes by 'Elektra' that would appear difficult. I've caught her before, back in Russia. But she was surprisingly resistant to our information-extracting techniques." For a moment, I imagine the Reaper as The Therapist, torturing me after gagging me. I doubt she's have a problem doing such a thing. Where there's supposed to be a light in her eyes, there are blackholes. "So what's she like? Actually, what are they all like as people? The more I understand them, the quicker I can get this finished."
"Elektra is incredibly strong. No one knows anything about her past, let alone her real name. As a person...well, I thought I knew her, but she betrayed my trust."
Thoughtfully, Agent Elwood nods. "So she's self-serving. That's quite a classic downfall. Tell me more about your backstabbing friends."
"Sarah Lewinski causes as much harm as a butterfly, but her power is something straight out of a Louisiana Voodoo shop. She cares a lot about Leo, who is the jokester of the group. Leo's the classic class clown who would get in trouble by the teacher but talk his way out of it. However, his self-confidence is incredibly low," I inform.
"Alright, I can work with it. Sarah is the clichéd 'good girl with a pure soul.' Leo is the defense mechanism of every teenager: funny and cool on the outside, but a storm of hormones and self-doubt on the inside. Next?"
The way she talks about these people: dissecting their characters without ever meeting them – disgusts me. Sure, I hold resentment towards them for doing what they did, but I wouldn't start gloating over finding their fatal flaws.
"Ren was here for like, five days before he broke out. He's short-fused and hates Kya, for some unknown reason. Although, when it comes down to it, he seems like a leader."
"That's self-explanatory enough: the hot guy who looks like sex on legs, but is a moody asshole. And this Kya girl, who is she?"
I feel myself hesitate. "I don't know anymore. Before, she was cool and calm at all times. She always spread herself thin for others and never flexed a single ounce of her power. I thought her to be incredibly thoughtful and passive. But when she created that dome of ice from rain...there was something different about her; an underlying strength."
Reaper tilts her head back as if savoring my words. "Now that's interesting. A sweetheart with a sour stem. So what's at her core?" Agent Elwood requests a coffee from a passing lunch lady, despite the time. "I never get coffee at the agency. It's total bullshit."
Once she gets her cup, she takes a long sip and cherishes the flavor. Closing her eyes and faintly smiling, she almost looks at peace. Then her eyes blast open and her almost-smile turns into a grimace. "Wait. Ren has the power of fire, and Kya has the power of water, right?"
"Yeah, what's the big deal? I mean, it explains why they keep each other at arm's length away, but I didn't think that mattered so much," I admit.
"There was a prophecy made about twenty years ago by some crazy Energy Sages back in Japan, apparently," she explains. "I don't believe in that cosmic crap, really, but this is interesting. They basically said that the sun descendant will have two paths to travel down: one good and one evil. Their duty would be to destroy or save their world."
"Alright...so Ren is either going to burn everything in his path or help it, according to these guys. But what does that have to do with Kya?"
"The descendant of the sun can only achieve greatness if given the proper circumstances: cause, will, and guidance from the moon descendant. You see, the two are yin and yang. I'm sure by now, Kya has figured that out. She seems smart. But with how the two immediately are repulsed by each other, there's no way Kya will give Ren this magical 'guidance' to help him do good. So Ren will be destroying the group on his own in no time. However, if they realize that yin and yang aren't opposites, but two halves of a whole, then the rest of the prophecy comes true."
I furrow my brows and scratch my head. "And what's the end?"
"The ending of the yin and yang, sun and moon prophecy is this: the enemies of their realm will be vanquished. Now, I don't believe in all that mumbo jumbo, but I do think that there are nuggets of wisdom in that junk. Ren is explosive and Kya is placid. Together, they could help each other battle whatever personal struggles they have, which could give the group a serious morale boost: that was a given. If not, then of course Ren will burn everything that crosses his path. And as for the wannabe vanquished enemies: that's us."
I'm an enemy, now? If that's true, then maybe "enemy" is just an opinion. The enemies to me are the five people who turned their backs on the one place keeping them safe from the world. Do they honestly think that the people will accept us mutants for what we are? We're marked up lunatics with psychological issues. Our eyes and hair are unnatural and they make us stick out like a sore thumb. Luckily for me, I look completely normal besides the scars on my body and the crookedness of my fingers and toes.
To them, Asylum must be the enemy. To me, they are the enemy. To the Reaper, everyone is an enemy. To Asylum, the escapees are the enemy. If we keep it going at this rate, then we'll all get vanquished by the prophecy.
"Now that we're caught up, we should go now," Agent Elwood chirps, finishing her drink. "Oh, and what power do you possess?"
"Mimicry," I respond. "With a certain radius, I can replicate any power."
The Reaper looks at me with blank eyes, displeased with my answer. Being immortal is what sets her apart from the world; it's what makes her different. I'm sure that the possibility of me stealing her spotlight troubles her, so I put her mind at ease by saying, "Don't worry. I don't plan on using your power anytime soon. It seems too dark for me to tap into."
"Too dark, huh?" she emptily replies, walking out. To the guards, she whoops, "Open the gates. We're rolling out."
"No supplies?" I question, thrown off guard.
"We don't need any," she promises. "The escapees had no supplies. We have to follow in their path – get in their heads – to truly track them. It was raining when they left, so any footprints are gone. Right now, we're relying on instinct. Luckily for you..." the guards corral the Asylum inmates away from the walls as they screech open. "...my instincts have never been wrong. I just have once piece of advice for you, Alex: stay out of my way."
Again, I clench my fists, my previous claw marks reminding me to keep my cool. Splaying my hands into palms, I sigh. "I'll stay out of your way if you stop calling me Alex."
Agent Elwood scrutinizes me. "How about I don't call you anything at all? How about you just follow behind me like the good little Asylum boy you are?" she patronizes.
"My name is Cerberus," I remind her.
"Very well," she sighs.
"Thank you, Agent Elwood."
She cringes. "I hate my last name: it's my father's and that man is a total dick. Just call me Reaper...or Lana..."
"Lana?" I echo.
"Yeah, it's my first name. Unlike some people, I actually go by it. Now get your game face on, you three-headed dog. The gates are open and my mission is starting."
Call me crazy, but I have a feeling that working with Lana is going to be a little worse than a living hell.