“Do any of you speak English?” He asked.
The men stared at each other without speaking. Eventually, they all focused their gaze at a skinny man wearing a long white garment with a brown coat. He nervously stepped forward.
“I..I speak some. Who are you?” The man asked in a thick accent.
Neil ignored his question.
“Do you know about an impending attack on the base down there?”
He pointed at Bagram and slowly walked towards the man that spoke English.
The man didn’t answer. Neil sent out a shockwave of energy that pushed everyone to the ground and sent up another cloud of dust.
“I SAID, DO YOU KNOW OF AN ATTACK?!”
“Y-yes. Yes, I know of this.” The man stammered out.
“Good. Tell me everything you know about it.”
“Why should I tell you?”
Neil looked back and forth between all of the men staring back at him. He didn’t speak for several seconds. He looked directly at the man standing next to the one who spoke English and flung him into the air several hundred feet. His screams faded as he gained altitude.
“Oh, I can think of a few reasons.”
After several seconds of dead silence, the predictable effects of gravity took place, and the sack of meat that used to be a human being exploded in front of them.
CHAPTER 20
Steele walked into Neil’s room and found him lying on his bed, hands folded behind his head.
“Did you learn anything?” Neil asked.
“Not much. They told me what we already knew. The attack will be here within the next couple days, and they are expecting up to a thousand insurgents.”
Neil sat up out of bed and faced Steele.
“Twelve-hundred, actually, and it’s tomorrow morning at dawn. They’ll hit the south wall.” Neil stated plainly.
Steele looked at him quizzically.
“How do you know that?”
“They told me.”
“Who told you? Also, is that blood?”
Steele noticed the red drops spattered all over the front of Neil’s uniform.
“They told me.” Neil said, pointing to the blood drops on his chest. “At first they were a little hesitant, but they came around when they realized it was in their best interest.”
Neil told him the full story.
“Holy Jesus Christ.” Steele said. “You really are something, Neil. I need to go right now and let them know. If the intel you provided is true, then we only have twelve hours to prepare.”
Steele rushed out of the room.
“Steele!” Neil yelled to him before he was out of earshot. He poked his head back inside. “Tell them we need to find a place to stay for the night near the southern wall.”
He nodded and took off.
Steele returned after a few hours of spreading his intelligence to everyone responsible for defending the base in the event of an attack. He made up a story about the NSA intercepting encrypted radio broadcasts to prevent anyone from asking too many questions.
A bus came to take Neil and his belongings to a different location. They dropped him off at a mud hut along the southern wall of the base. Steele was already set up on a cot inside. The sun had already started to go down by the time Neil settled in.
“So, tell me again why we had to leave what amounts to a five-star hotel to come to this shithole.”
“That’s just the way it has to be.”
He didn’t really know how he knew it, but he knew that was where they needed to be. Steele wasn’t completely satisfied by his answer, but he had given up on questioning what Neil told him. Neil usually ended up being right.
Neil set up a sleeping bag on his cot and climbed in. The weights over his eyes pulled his eyelids shut, and he drifted off to sleep. He didn’t set an alarm – he knew he wouldn’t need one.
---
An explosion shook the ground, and debris rained on top of the hut.
The detonation was close enough that it things off the walls of the hut. Before Neil could open his eyes, Steele was already shaking him.
“Hitchens, wake up! They’re coming!”
He was already wearing his protective vest and helmet and had his issued sidearm in the hand that wasn’t violently pulling Neil’s shoulder.
Neil already knew what was going to happen next. It would happen just as it had happened before. He sat up and got out of bed.
“Get up there Hitchens! We need you now!” Steele didn’t know that he was being redundant. He had already spoken those words. Neil didn’t need to hear them again.
Neil stepped outside and witnessed the chaos unfold around him. Men with rifles searched in a panic to find the rest of their unit. Civilians ran for cover and shouted at each other over the sound of the blaring alarm. Neil was not part of the chaos. He was a symbol of order. Fate was guiding his actions.
He lifted himself off the ground high enough to see over the wall. A dust storm approached the FOB. The storm was not caused by wind. It was being kicked up by dozens of trucks and busses driving in a horizontal line towards the destroyed southern FOB wall.
Neil closed his eyes and shut off his senses to the world. He did not need to see or hear. Feeling was enough. He could feel all of the beating hearts, all of the ancient stone and sand, and all of the dust particles in the air around him. He pushed his mind outwards, to the south. He felt the snakes, the spiders, the scorpions, the struggling plant life, and finally the men in the trucks.
They were his now. He could do anything he wanted with them. He knew there was only one thing that he wanted them to do. He wanted them to die. There were many ways to make them die. He decided it would be quick. These men were not evil, they were just misguided. They were defending their homeland against perceived aggressors. Neil was not concerned with the politics of war. He was only concerned with doing the job he was sent there to do, because he was the only one who could do it.
Neil felt for the stem connecting the brain and the spine in each of the men. He held his open hand in front of his face and imagined the sensation of closing his fist around a Styrofoam cup. That’s all it would take to finish his job so he could go back to sleep.
His hand didn’t close.
Neil hesitated for a brief moment. In his temporary lapse of certainty, Neil had broken the plan that fate had set before him. He had interrupted the chain of events that were supposed to guide him into the future. He was not a blind slave to the forces he did not understand. He had control over his own life.
The men in the trucks drove towards the destroyed wall. Neil didn’t need to kill them. He didn’t have to be a vengeful god. He could be merciful.
Neil cut off their engines, and the vehicles all slowed to a halt. He reopened his eyes and saw the dust cloud disperse into the air. A line of still vehicles sat less than a mile outside the wall of the FOB. Minutes went by without any movement.
“Finish it, Neil.”
The voice came from Neil’s radio. He immediately recognized the voice of Carl. Why was Carl in Afghanistan?
“It is finished.” Neil responded.
There was silence for several seconds before Carl spoke again.
“I knew you couldn’t be trusted.”
Neil’s radio shut itself off after Carl finished speaking.
The scene in front of Neil changed in an instant. The vehicles erupted into balls of fire and smoke. Hundreds of tiny explosions went off simultaneously. After a few seconds of silence, the sound reached Neil and he understood what had happened.
He had seen enough movies and played enough video games to recognize the sound of the 30mm Gatling cannon on the front of an A-10 Warthog. He heard several streams of the BRRRRRRRRRPP sound the cannon made, followed by the ground erupting in fire and dust near the vehicles.
Neil watched six A-10s perform strafing runs on the line of vehicles, completely decimating them. The fuel tank erupted any time one was directly hit. Burning men climbed out of
the vehicles and dropped to the ground as the skin melted off their bones. The sky filled with thick black smoke.
“NO!” Neil yelled as he witnessed the carnage before him.
He had decided those men should live, and they had defied him. Who were they to question his will? A fire erupted inside Neil. The flames could be seen shining through his eyes. He felt heat radiating through his fingertips. The pilots who had defied him deserved punishment.
The six aircraft circled overhead to make another pass at the line of vehicles, but they would not complete their mission. Neil ripped the wings off of each one, and they spiraled out of control straight for the ground. The pilots ejected the same instant, and the fuselage to their aircraft impacted the ground seconds later. Each jet exploded into a towering inferno from their fuel combined with the payload and could be seen high above the horizon.
Six men supported by parachutes floated gracefully towards the ground, but not for long. Neil severed the harnesses connecting them to their parachutes, still fuelled by his rage. Gravity took hold. One of the bodies impacted the ground close enough that Neil heard the awful crashing sound just a short distance away.
As the chaos subsided, so did Neil’s desire for revenge. The fire inside him burned itself out, and all that remained were the coals - the memory of what he had done.
“How…how could you?”
Neil heard the voice of Steele below him, back on the ground. He looked like a father whose son had just betrayed his trust. The disappointment in his eyes shocked Neil out of his aggressive trance, and the realization of what he had done dawned on him.
“They killed those people. I had let them live, but they defied me.”
Even as Neil spoke, he could hear the guilt in his own voice. His justification was not one that Steele would understand. He wasn’t even sure he understood it.
“They were the enemy. They were supposed to die. You killed six innocent Americans. You murdered them!”
Neil had never felt so conflicted in his life. He felt shame for what he had done, but he was also angry at the people whose side he was supposed to be on. His mind was in a state of tug-of-war with itself. On one side, Neil’s humanity pulled with all of its strength, but on the other side was the person Neil had become. His ability was pulling his identity into two separate halves, and the side that made him kill those pilots was winning.
His heart beat faster as the conflict inside ripped him apart. The stress made him feel physically ill. He couldn’t handle the situation he found himself in anymore. He needed to escape. He had to remove himself from the guilt, so he did.
Neil took off into the sky and oriented himself towards Georgia. He sought the comfort of his living quarters there. It was the only place he had left where he could feel at peace.
The automated C-RAM in the base had determined he was a threat. Thousands of rounds of hot metal filled the air. A thick yellow line of tracer rounds followed his movement as he ascended. The rounds bounced off of him harmlessly, and he ignored them. He was out of range of the tracking system in a few seconds.
He flew home at breakneck speeds. The terrain below him blurred past so quickly that his eyes didn’t have time to make sense of it. In minutes, he was hovering several thousand feet above the NSA building. He let himself fall, like he always did, and landed softly in front of the entrance.
No one paid him any mind as he continued on his way down to PRECINCT. When he entered the department, he saw that the entire place was deserted. Neil walked around, searching for signs of life, but found nothing. He felt no presence of any human life.
He paused while walking by the testing facility, and noticed that the door was open. He and Carl were the only ones who could open the main doors, but Carl was nowhere to be found. He had somehow found his way to Afghanistan, and was watching Neil closely enough to call him on the radio. Neil walked inside the giant metal room, hoping to find some explanation for why it was unlocked.
In the middle of the room was a giant steel cube. It was the same one Neil had seen in the same room before. He felt a strange attraction towards the cube. Its presence calmed him, and drew him in closer. He lifted the cube off the ground, pushed on the outside of it to make it smaller, just like before.
The cube shrank with ease. Neil continued to push on it, and he placed his hand to feel the warmth of the energy within. The cube glowed from the pressure building up inside, and he contained the heat inside the cube instead of allowing it melt the metal panels lining the room.
The cube shrank to a miniscule size, and the glow illuminated the entire room. In his hand, he held the power of the sun. He placed what was left of the cube in-between his two fingers and stared into the glowing orb of raw energy. He squeezed with his fingers, and the cube shrank to the size of a grain of sand. The light outshone the brightest light bulb, and yet his eyes were not damaged by staring into it. His body protected itself against the scarring that would have otherwise injured his eyes.
Even though Neil had contained the heat inside the cube, some unexplainable energy still radiated from it. It warmed his body to the core, and soothed him. He stared into the orb of light for hours meditating on its still beauty. It resonated with him like no earthly object ever had.
It told him that he didn’t have to be ashamed of what he had done. The old Neil was holding him back from reaching his true potential. He had transcended humanity into something greater. Consequences did not matter to him anymore. Divine beings were not concerned with the opinions of their subjects.
Neil felt a human presence behind him. He closed his palm around the cube, and the glow that lit the room was extinguished.
“End of the line, Neil.”
He turned and saw Tanya standing in the doorway, and she wasn’t alone. A half dozen men wearing full body-armor ran from behind her and formed a circle around Neil. They held weapons, but they were weapons unlike any Neil had seen before. They were large and shoulder mounted. The barrel of the weapon was not hollow, and Neil did not see anything that resembled a magazine or belt for ammunition.
“Why are you doing this?” He asked her.
“You’ve become volatile. Unpredictable. You have become a threat to national security more than you are protecting it. It’s over.”
The men flipped a switch on the weapons they were holding, and a low buzzing noise resonated through the testing chamber.
The men squeezed the trigger of their weapons.
Neil’s mind automatically reacted to the threat before he knew he was in danger. The weapons did not fire a projectile, but rather a beam of high-intensity electromagnetic radiation. The particles were massless, and Neil could not directly influence them. He curved the space around his body.
He had acted completely on reflex, but somehow he was demonstrating a level of power that he had never come close to before. The fabric of space itself was twisted to protect him. He was being protected by a force stronger than his own will. He could see the beams bend around him harmlessly, and knew that he was safe.
“What the hell?” Tanya said. “He said this would work!”
Panic had set in once she realized her plan had failed. She knew what fate awaited her.
Neil destroyed the weapons, and the beam shut off immediately. Everyone stood in silence, paralyzed with fear.
“End of the line, Tanya.”
“No. No! NO!!!”
Neil still held the cube in his hand. He opened his fingers, and the cube floated in front of his face. Its glow once again illuminated the room. His audience was captivated by the display of power before them. No one knew what the object was, but they were mesmerized by its beauty.
Neil released the heat from inside the cube.
CHAPTER 21
In a flash, the radiating energy vaporized everything it touched. Tanya’s eyes didn’t have time to fully widen in surprise before the molecules in her body were ripped apart and dispersed into random directions. The metal shield that enclosed the testing ro
om was not designed to absorb the volume of energy Neil had released. The entire underground facility crumbled as the support structure was instantly reduced to molten metal.
The building collapsed around him, and he protected himself from falling debris. His only refuge was destroyed. He had nowhere to go, except to the place he called home in his past life.
He thought about the people he left behind when he came to Georgia, and felt a strange disconnect from them. His best friends were only vague memories. His family was no longer a part of his identity like they once were.
When his thoughts went to Emma, he felt a sharp sting in his chest. Just a week earlier, she was the most important thing going for him. Now he had almost completely forgotten about her.
Almost.
He still felt the pain from the way she looked at him behind the barrel of a shotgun. He still held on to the connection he felt to her, even after everything that had happened.
Neil burst through the rubble of the NSA building to the surface into the sky and made up his mind. All that was left from his past life was Emma. He didn’t quite understand why, but he needed to see her. She would help him decide who he was.
He looked down at the collapsed building below him one last time. People were still screaming, and emergency vehicles came from all directions. He felt a small bit of remorse for the lives he had destroyed inside the building, but he had detached himself almost completely from such human emotions, and his guilt washed away quickly.
Neil flew towards his old college town in Michigan. When he landed, he noticed that everything looked different. Physically, it looked the same, but it had lost all familiarity, like returning to a relative’s house that hadn’t been visited since childhood. Neil had only been gone a few days, but he had gone through a transformation that distanced himself from his old memories.
He landed in front of Emma’s house and walked up to the front door. He didn’t feel the presence of anybody inside, but he didn’t have anywhere else to go. He unlocked the door from the other side and walked over to the living room.
Superhuman Nature Page 23
