Predominance (38 page)

The moment I realized these facts, I stopped dead in my tracks, and something in my heart began to darken.

I remember the next few minutes as the last of Victor Bellator—the last few minutes of the man I once was, and would never again be. An epiphany took up most of this time, enlightening me with a reality that I had always sought to ignore. I came to understand many things in those few moments, things I would otherwise have never even considered. One of them was the reason behind Damian's revenge, and how he had succeeded with his plan, which I now understood was never meant to test my resolve over whether or not I'd choose Sarah over Yvette. Apparently, he already knew the answer to that. No, his sadistic plan—other than to watch me sacrifice someone who loved me for someone I loved—was to get me as close and powerless to Yvette as he was to Sonya when he watched her die... and then to watch me mourn them both as I had watched him mourn his beloved wife. And though he didn't get to kill Sarah, I knew he saw his victory as complete, from wherever he was watching.

“Freeze!” The voice of a police officer reminded me that I was still alive—in body, that is—and that my presence at the crime scene, looking the way I did, needed to be explained. “Stay on the ground!”

Ignoring their commands, I got to my feet and stared blankly at the fire. I heard them order me to surrender, but I wasn't ready for them yet. I wasn't ready to let go of that fire. Instead, I decided to go back to my epiphany, before making the biggest decision of my life.

As I watch the fire consume all my hopes and dreams, I remembered the words of my counterpart, the one I had chosen to call evil. He'd warned me about this in the cavern of my nightmare—about me not being strong enough to protect the people I loved. He gave me the choice to keep them safe, and all I had to do was let him out. All I had to do was give in to the same power Damian had, a power that would not only have made me stronger, but would have helped me keep the person I loved the most out of harm's way. But I didn't want to listen—then. My “delusional views of morality,” as he so eloquently put it, got in the way. And now Yvette was dead. All because I chose to believe that good always needed to prevail over evil.

Good and evil, right and wrong. What the hell are these, if not just words? Wouldn't it have been 'good' to stop Damian? Wouldn't it have been 'good' to save Yvette? Wouldn't it have been 'good' to be powerful enough to avert all these things from happening in the first place? Of course it would have. But I chose a different path; the path I thought to be the right one at the time, the good one. Now I could only see 'good' as the perception in which we determine our own reality—and my reality had changed, violently and completely. My reason for existence had been taken from me, and I had been left behind in this cynical world with nothing but pain.

There was only one way for me to make sense of my existence now, and that was that I had been left behind to render justice to the memory of the people who'd fallen in vain. People like Tom, Barbara, Billie, Roger, Denali, Sonya. And of course, my beloved Yvette, for whom I was ready to go to any extremity to avenge. But in order to do this, I needed enough power to defeat my
adversaries. And Damian couldn't have been any clearer when he'd beaten me earlier on the roof. My feeble abilities were no match for his ever-growing power. And he was now not only my biggest adversary, but my primary target.

I knew what I had to do now… and it pained me.

“Victor!” Sarah's voice made me turn as tears slid down my face. I looked for her among the dozens of police officers who were crowding the street, and found her between two of them. They were holding her back, keeping her from approaching their primary suspect, at whom all their guns were aimed. “Victor!” she called again. “Just do as they say. Please!” Tears glazed her beautiful green eyes.

“She's gone, Sarah,” I said, my voice breaking. “She's gone…”

“Don't move! Turn around and put your hands behind your head!” the officer in charge commanded. Yet he kept ordering the squad—through his radio—to hold their fire and restrain from approaching the subject. It was obvious they thought they had their bomber. They probably thought I had another bomb on me, or perhaps a device that could detonate another somewhere else—who knows? But they were definitely reluctant to make a move.

“I should've listened,” I told Sarah between sobs. “I should've listened…”

“Victor!” Sarah managed to slip away from the officers' restraint. But she was quickly stopped again and held back. “Look at me!” she cried. “I know you're hurting, but this doesn't have to end like this. You don't have to die, Victor. Please!”

“Die?” I considered that, glancing at the fire. “It's too late for that, Sarah. Victor Bellator is already dead. And soon, all the people who have ever hurt him will be dead too. I wasn't strong enough to save her. But I swear that I will be strong enough to avenge her.” Certain of my final decision, I turned back to Sarah and softened my eyes for her—almost as if saying thank you. A sad smile pulled faintly at the corners of my lips as I said, “Good-bye, Sarah.”

Sarah's eyes bulged, as if finally realizing my terrible resolution, and pleaded, “Victor—no!” But it was too late.

I closed my eyes, and began to voluntarily call upon the change I had so desperately tried to escape from before. A vortex of power began to whirl inside my head, rearranging memories as it saw fit—memories that had shaped the man I once was. In vivid flashes I saw my Dad, his hand on the handlebars of my bike as he guided me through a beautiful green field; Mrs. Montgomery, reading me a bedtime story as she stroked my head with motherly hands; Xavier, living with me the moments that only two brothers can share. And I saw Yvette, soothing my heart with a smile, as only an angel would have known how to do.

Soon all these memories began to fade away into the eye of the vortex, as if sucked in to be lost for all eternity. But this wasn't the end. The internal tornado then spun backwards and began to deliver all the painful memories of my past. In vivid flashes, I saw the things that had hurt me the most. I relived my accident, as well as the pain of losing my best friend. I saw Xavier's funeral… I saw my Dad's. I remembered the pain of losing him and the years of agony I'd suffered through with my condition. I tasted Dr. Walker's betrayal as I saw him lie to me over and over again. A sharp feeling of pain knocked on my chest when I saw Denali's blood in my hands, and remembered that last lonely tear that had trickled down his face.

The tornado arranged these images in the forefront of my mind in a collage of pain that I could no longer shake off or ignore, where the background that held it all together was the death of my precious Yvette. The agony was so unbearable I thought that it alone would kill me. But instead, an uncontrollable anger began to take over, soothing away the pain the memory tornado had left behind. The more I felt it, the less I hurt. The more I tasted my desire for vengeance, the more purpose I found to go on.

An addictive feeling of euphoria overwhelmed my senses, allowing me to feel the dark energy flow through my body, saturating my brain with an intoxicating feeling of power—unlimited power.

When I opened my eyes, things were exactly as I'd seen them last; in real-time, Victor's death and my birth had taken place in a split second. Not a thing had changed, yet everything was different. My eyes burned with delicious power; and though I couldn't see them myself, I knew they had changed from their natural dull brown to a puissant silver. I turned to the burning boat one last time and stared, feeling nothing but emptiness. My tears had dried, and my new eyes could no longer cry.

I felt nothing.

And that only increased my rage even further.

“Victor?” Sarah called upon a name that no longer had any meaning for me, yet I turned around all the same. “Victor…” she whispered, tears running down her face. Poor Sarah, I thought. She shouldn't waste her tears on me. Yet I didn't feel bad; not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't feel anymore. That capacity had been burned out of me. My humanity, my heart, had died with Yvette.

“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head! This is your final warning!” the officer in charge commanded again, aiming his gun directly at my head.

My hypersenses reached out toward the group of officers. “We have Intel on the subject,” I heard over the cop's radio. “Get ready to take him down.”

The officer in charged acknowledged. 

“NO!” Sarah shouted. “Don't hurt him!”

“Get her out of here!” the commander ordered the two men restraining Sarah, who spun her around to cuff her.

“Let her go.” The growl that came from my mouth was almost unnatural, enough to frighten the two cops to their cores. I could smell their fear, taste it, hear it in their accelerated heartbeats. They stopped and looked at me, dumbfounded. “Let her go,” I said again, my voice returned to its natural pitch. Then I began to walk toward them.

“Stop!” the commanding officer shouted, watching me take my first step forward. His finger began to tighten on the trigger of his Police Special...but he stood down the moment I showed him my hands, faintly raised and palms open, aiming directly at him. Poor fool, I thought. He probably thinks I 'm surrendering.

As I stepped forward, a wave of healing energy washed through me. I felt my cuts close, and a faint cool sensation as my bruises faded. The glass dagger popped out of my leg with a faint pulling sensation. Smirking, I told my ripped clothing to be whole again, and the drying blood on my skin to powder and drift away. This happened in an instant—and then I sent a gigantic wave of energy into the group of cops, scattering them like bowling pins. Some were propelled backwards so hard they smashed through buildings; some landed dazed on the ground; while others crashed into cars parked along the boulevard. I lost count of how many of them squirmed on the ground over their injuries, and how many just didn't move anymore. I honestly didn't care. That was the beauty of my new state.

I looked at the street where the police standoff had once been and saw nothing but empty police cruisers, their red and blue flashing lights still whirling. A wave of my hands crushed each of them into cubes no greater than three feet on a side; I vaguely hoped no one was still inside, but again, I couldn't give a damn. Then I turned to the only two cops I hadn't hurled away: the ones holding Sarah, which were standing frozen like statues. In this case it was their own fear holding them in place, not my power. I walked over to them and repeated my command one last time: “I said, let her go.”

The two cops let go of Sarah then, with their eyes bulging in fear, fixed on me. Sarah elbowed one of them in the stomach, took his sidearm out of his holster, and pointed the gun at them. “Back off!” she wailed, her hands trembling. The two cops exchanged uneasy looks after they met my eyes. Whatever they saw in them was enough to make them run and take cover behind a pair of the crushed cruisers, which were just barely large enough to offer them illusory protection.

Sarah lowered the weapon and looked at me with frightful eyes.

More sirens wailed at the end of the street, and police cruisers began to corner into the boulevard. One of the survivors had called for reinforcements and they were now on their way. Listening to their radio transmissions, I realized they weren't coming to arrest me… not anymore. They had different orders now, and they were coming from higher levels of government. But I laughed at the idea that any of these ordinary humans could take me down, so I stood in the middle of the street and waited for them to come.

“Please don't kill them, Victor!” Sarah shouted.

I didn’t acknowledge her, but as I felt them reach the threshold of my ever-growing power, I raised my hands and took aim, automatically compensating for what was to come by bracing myself against the Earth. I flexed my hands and cruiser after cruiser was crushed to ruin; not entirely, but enough to render them useless while keeping those inside them alive. Needless to say, the drivers lost control and some began to crash into each other; a few flipped and slid over the shiny boulevard. As I watched the injured cops crawl out of their vehicles, I noticed the power line that hung above them. I took aim at it, and with a wave of my hand I yanked it off the pole. The high voltage wire swiped over one of the flipped cruisers, making contact with the gas tank, producing a shower of sparks and then an explosion that spread a sheet of flame across the street.

“Victor!” Sarah called desperately from behind me. “Please, stop!”

I turned around and faced her, eyes smoldering.

She started and raised the gun in her hands. “You're not going to hurt me, are you?” Her question sounded more like a statement. But she shuddered when she saw me raise my hand, my lithium eyes piercing right through her. She realized then I was no longer the Victor she had fallen in love with. “Victor…” she whined, unable to contain her sobs anymore, “Please… don't.”

As my hand began to clench with the rage that now defined me, Sarah closed her eyes and put a trembling finger over the trigger. A loud thud made her open her eyes again, just to realize that my rage had been aimed at a cop behind her—a cop who would have shot her had I not interfered. He laid on the ground now, his neck broken.

She took a look at him and gasped.

Her eyes flew right back to me as she heard me approach, her gun still aimed at me. “Do it,” I demanded. “You know you have to. It's the only way.”

“I can't!” she cried. “Please! Just come back to me! I know you're still in there… I love you! I can't replace Yvette, but I can still save you!”