Inside the Fire

Chapter 22: Eliminating

    The house is smaller now than it was, Fai still trails behind me. She can't decide if she can escape or not, I haven't forced her to stay, but I don't think I'll let her leave. Humans should never know what I'm capable of, and she knows too much. I duck in through the front door.
    If my memory serves, the owner of this house is quite short. I stifle a sigh, how bothersome, all the doorways are going to be like this. Getting to the old room is rather easy, I hold open the doors for Fai, using actions instead of words to get her to follow me. She's nawing at her finger nails, moving from finger to finger as she reaches their ends. Fai makes calculated glances in my direction, trying to gage me as well as avoiding eye contact. We make it back to, (my? Is that right?) room and she jumps as I close the door behind us.
    She paces the floor nervously, looking everywhere and nowhere in particular. What should I do with her? I fold my arms and watch her. I can't let her leave, it'd be easier if I just killed her, but I don't really want to. I've done things I've not really wanted to do before, but is it really necessary in this case? With her death I get more freedom of movement, but with her here I get... what? Fearful companionship? There was I time I'd wanted friendship with someone, and I do have history with her ancestor... although he did hate me the entire time I forced him to be around me. No, that's not right, he stayed to keep me from killing people. Perhapse she'll stay for a similar one? Maybe I'll let her decide. If she wants to leave, I'll kill her, I don't want to but at that point I won't have a choice. It's up to her then, I'm not telling her, but it's a choice between death and mild servitude. There's nothing she has that I want, she just cannot live freely as she had.
    I wonder what Nergui would say, I know he'd advocate for her freedom, keeping her around isn't in her vest interest, blah, blah, blah. Even thinking about how he'd lecture me makes me exhausted. I take a seat on the couch, Fai stops her pacing to see what I'm doing and makes a noise. A low chortle that evolves into hysterical laughter.
    Great, she's got more wrong with her than I'd originally thought, how tiresome. Her laughter reaches a fever pitch and she falls onto the ground with a huff.
    "I'm sorry-" She starts, wiping tears from her eyes, "This whole "situation" is so bizarre, and to see you, sitting on a regular couch, in a normal beige colored room. It's just," Fai shakes her head,
    "So bizarre."
    I smirk, I guess I can see what she means,
    "What, you never thought you'd see the monster that destroyed so many lives, just, exist?" My head cocks to the side.
    "No, I'd never imagined you'd be so.." Her face is perplexed, "Calm?"
    "Really?" I ask, rolling my eyes, "You think I'd be spending all my time sewing chaos?"
    Her face is so serious, it's a little insulting.
    "Where would I even get the energy-" ugh, whatever, she's not far off from me in my "teen" years. But even with a fresh body, the thought of being that active again is incredibly unappealing. "There's no need anyway, I've already achieved my goal." And I shrug.
    Fai's eyebrows decend, confused again.
    "Your goal? Returning to life? Or..?" She trails off.
    Answering her question is a bit personal. If I'm just going to kill or imprison her, what's the harm?
    "In order to understand what I'm saying, I need to tell you how this," I gesture to myself, "Works."
    "Your ancestor is the one that came up with the name Devourerer, he was the only human that lived then, that knows the truth. When I kill you, or anything really, I devour your souls-" her eyes grow wide, "Yes souls exist, and they are a source of power for my specific race."
    "There are many races of my kind, on my home planet, but mine is the only one that retained the ability to absorb the souls of the things we kill." I explain, "And since I was born at a disadvantage, I looked for... shortcuts."
    "Someone," My mother, I wince,"Told me about an exodus our ancestors made, and it gave me the idea to find where they had left. Surely there would be better than home."
    A smile spreads accross my face,
    "And it was,-" My breath speeds with the excitement of the memory, "There's a quality to souls, the more intelligent, the more power they give and here was a world full of frail things, with souls on par with my kind."
    "It opened possibilities, my brother had succeeded my father, not because he was particularly powerful, but because the people had denied my mother the right-" I frown, "They didn't like her, and my brother was easier to manipulate, he's..."
    What's a nice way to put this?
    "Soft, he cares about the people around him and tried to help them."
    Fai nods in understanding, kind people are often eager to please.
    "Even so, I didn't hold a candle to him. So, I took precautions and destroyed thousands of human lives to accrue enough power that my kind would fear me enough to obey me and then I-" I stop, why do I not feel proud of this? Why do I regret murdering my brother now? And why is it, that I feel regret for enslaving him body and soul? "Anyway," I continue,
    "I took the throne and my people rejected me, they would have followed me to the ends of the world's to stamp me out, what could I do but die? Hide myself until everyone that had stood against my ascension, died?" My voice is wistful, "That brings us to now."
    "You murdered thousands for power?" Fai guffaws.
    I glare at her,
    "I took power from those undeserving of life to begin with, to be king." And I stand up from the couch in one fluid motion, "What would you do to carve out a place for yourself? When everyone around you denies your existence, calls you a corpse to your face and blames you for the death of a progenitor you never knew?"
    "It still doesn't excuse-" She starts, but my hand cuts off her windpipe and I raise her from the ground for the second time today.
    "I'm not excusing my actions, what's there to excuse? You asked, I answered, now you want to lecture me because you didn't like it?"
    Wait, I freeze. What am I doing? Hadn't I let Nergui lecture me? I had gotten angry at him before, but, ah fuck. It's this families' DNA to lecture and take the high road. She's not to blame, it's in her nature to be this way. I set her back down on the ground, already regretting getting angry with her about something she can't help. Although it's not her fault, I don't want to apologize. Letting her live should be apology enough, right? Hm, I don't like it.
    Before I can do anything stupid, again, I turn away from her and go back to sitting on the couch. Also not an apology and criss my arms. Fai sits slumped on the ground where I dropped her, holding her neck and staring at the floor. She hadn't been harmed, I made sure of that, she healed before her pain receptors could send a signal to her brain. Intimidation had been the goal, but seeing her unresponsive again... what a pain.
    "There are some things I need to take care of, did you want to stay or help?" Changing the subject should help.
    "Are these things, people?" Fai whispers.
    She has to know I have to take out everyone that knows about me right?
    "Yes."
    Her eyes close, her head shakes side to side,
    "I want to go to work." Fai's voice is hollow.
    Going to work, the icream shop? Her head is as empty as her words were, but there is a hint of desire to get away to a familiar and safe location. Safe to her, she hasn't been attacked there and it's refreshingly boring. It'll give her time and space to think as well. Okay, it shouldn't cause me any problems.
    "That's fine," I wave my hand dismissively, "I'll see you there if everything goes well on my end."
    Fai visibly shrinks in size, I think I prefer her lecturing me to whatever this is. She doesn't move, it's as though I've frozen her in place with my brash reaction. So it's me that needs to leave first? Sure, fine.
    "There's no need for me to hang back and plan," I scratch under my chin, her her jerks up, "I'll head out, you take care on your way to work yeah?"
    I stand from the couch, and pause at the door, my hand on the handle. Shit.
    "And, I'm sorry for grabbing you by the neck?" I throw back over my shoulder, "I'll work on that."
    There I did it. I'm not going to apologize next time though, unless I overreact again. The Terminous is happening to me? I shut the door behind me, ignoring her reaction completely. Now then, hunting people.
    First should be everyone that saw footage of me, I only need one to find the others. The others I can scramble their memories a bit, mix up my face with others and delete the security cam footage. I know I won't be able to get it all, but as long as I get everyone involved in the museum event properly confused, or dead, my identity will be protected. I emerge outside to find it raining. Lovely. Perhapse I should add a curse to the footage? Would that even work? It's all math, zeros and ones placed in a specific order with no physicality to it's existence. It won't hurt to try, I guess.
    I take a moment to spread my awareness through the city, all I need is one of the two security guards that had been rather busy earlier today... there, at a bar. Drinking his sorrows away, he'd been fired. And his co-worker hadn't wanted anything more after what they'd done. Tough break for him, perfect in gor me. With some slight flirting and mental manipulation, getting him alone will be easy. Fai likes how my face looks, a human unaware of what I am should have a more difficult time denying me. I pause to look at my reflection. There is a great many differences, I notice to my surprise. My skin is a flushed Carmel color, eyes are not sunken in and I'm ripping with muscle. I've always been tall, but pale and sickly looking. There's nothing unnerving about my appearance now.
    My heart lightens, and I flash myself a smile at first, then get closer to inspect my teeth. Clean. Well, I haven't had years of munching on iron rich humans in this body. The mirror image is nearly a stranger, our bone structures, eye and hair color are the same, but not much else. This shorter hair style suites me fine too. What am I doing. I jerk away from the reflective surface. Preening like a bird? I shake my head. My human form isn't even my real face, just an approximate shape of what I'd look like if I was human.
     I set myself up in an alleyway close to my target and reach out for his mind again. Inebriated humans are easier to deal with, more prone to accept suggestions. His mind willingly molds itself to my unspoken requests, and it's not long until her rounds a corner drunkenly and bumps into me. He wavers and stumbles onto his back foot, eyes fixed on my chest.
    "Men ain't 'apposed to have tits." He slurs out.
    "Is that so?"
    I crush his spine when his head and neck connect. This human doesn't have a moment to react before I'm sifting through his memories. Damn, he hasn't met very many people. The guy is an introvert, but he does know his boss. Another thread to unravel, she's next on my list then. I set him down against the wall in a pose that suggests he's only sleeping. As long as no one looks at him too closely until I can get far enough away.
    He knows her voice, mental voices aren't far from spoken, but they do carry a distinct cadence. You don't have to be patient with your mouth when thinking like you do when speaking. And some thoughts lack any cohesion at all. Jumbled of sounds, images, textures. I shudder, those minds are the hardest to understand. They're too close to the ancient race of my kind. Terrifying creature of immense size, power and age. Speculation is the closest I'll get to linking the two
    Her thoughts come as a blur, she's looking at a screen? I turn around from the direction I was thoughtlessly heading. A computer, she's taking notes from the day. The keys being pricked by her fingers is calming to her. This boss of the security guard may enjoy her peace, I'll go to see her instead of pulling her away from her chair. The building she's in is much like the ones around it. There are many windows left open, I check into her mind, briefly leafing through her more recent memories. One of the open windows are hers. A bird is less conspicuous than me scaling the building, and far less troublesome than dealing with all the security protocols the humans have put in place inside.
    My clothes return to their baser elements when I shift into a hawk. I fly up to her window, and dice into it. Before my feet touch the ground, I'm already shifted back into human form, clothes sticking themselves back onto me. With disinterest, she turns to look at what had made the mild thump. Her gasp stopped short by my hand over her mouth, the other wrapping around the nape of her neck.
    "You have two choices. Answer my questions and die or answer my questions and forget I was here. Which do you choose?" I whisper.
    Giving her a false sense of hope, I'm being quiet, so others must be able to hear. The game begins.
    'I'd rather forget than die, but why does he think I'll answer any of his questions?' She thinks snidely.
    A smile splits open on my face,
    "You don't have a choice with that."
    Her eyes widen, she'd heard of super soldiers with special abilities, but never one with mind reading abilities. In her line of work, I'd be quite valuable.
    'Shame he's holding me hostage.' Her thoughts wistful. 'In more ways than one.'
    Leaving behind a trail of bodies is not ideal. I need her to choose to be smart. It's a win win really, she lives, I get my answers. Although, the easy way is so EASY.
    'Fine,' her mental tone is dismissive, 'Ask your questions.'
    Good.
    I rapid fire my inquiries fast enough for her to not think about her answers carefully and slow enough that her mind has time to register the questions. Before long, I have my answers, but like with the man before her, I only have her direct superviser. These humans are meticulous with their secrecy, but even they slip up, someone knows more than the confines of their position as a cog in this socialist machine. This system that protects them, traps them.
    Could it be, that I don't need to hunt down the line? Would the people in the know still be thinking thoughts about the events that occurred earlier in the day?
    I rip the memories of my visit from the security guard superviser, and let her fall to the ground. Waking up on the floor with a headache and no memories of the night before us a common enough occurrence that she won't be too suspicious.
    Opening the window a little more, I jump out of it, changing into a hawk once more until I can touch the ground. I'm looking through the surface thoughts of everyone near me, expanding my search until I find someone, cowering in their bathroom. They're trying to psych themselves up to go to the lobby. But since my escape from the lab, they know I could be anyone. It's the janitor, the guy who'd picked up the animal to be shoved into my enclosure. Hate fills me, too much for this bird body. I land in human form, skidding to a stop while I pull clothes on. Other humans around me start to react to a naked man falling out of the sky, but the runes I'd carved onto me take effect and they quickly forget that I'm there.
    Why hate this innocuous human? Ah, the cats. I've seen worse cruelty in my day, but he had forces my hand. I know it's not his fault, that he'd only done what he was told. But it doesn't erase the memory of their fear from my mind, and how I was helpless to save them. Somewhere in my head, the older cat exists, with the multitude of others that had died during my quest to gain power. Guilt? Is this what this heavy feeling is? How dare he make me feel guilty! I did what I had to do! I shake my head, refocusing on finding the janitor.
    Although, the fact remains that he's still alive. His role must be larger than the guy that cleaned the inclosures and got the coffee pot going at the start of every shift. The lab was filled with concrete, anyone unfortunate enough to still be working were buried alive, but not this guy. Either he's extremely lucky, or had been told to get out. He'd lived in the lab, his quarters were there so he could be on call. Yet here he was, exiting his room to grab something greesy to eat on the first floor of his building. His lack of self control will be his undoing.