by The Eurostar
The EPS:
Edulcore Cicciotto:
Turning into hydrogen obviously means I can't carry the gun. There is no way a cloud of gas can hold a solid object. If that WAS possible, I could take Eddie and disappear from the sick world of Walker.
I will return to the gun, sadly. There is no way I can escape Walker's orders. I left the gun and the costume in a secure, dark corner, and currently I am running down the ventilation shaft.
There is something I have to do before. I must put the guards to sleep. All I have to do is turn into sleeping gas and pass through the lungs of every guard in this complex, sparing the metas and my comrades. An intelligent tank of sleeping gas, that's what I am for Walker.
The task is easy, and soon the half-hundred guards and civilian personnel of the base are knocked out, and I am back to the costume and the gun, and the seven poisonous darts with which I must play God.
Choosing the lives of seven human beings to infect them with a monstrous disease. I will gladly shoot these darts into Turner and Walker and his acolytes. But this poison will not kill instantly, so it will not help me.
Hmm...
Well, time to choose my seven subjects. I turn into clay and begin to move along the corridor, where I encounter noise, screams, a multitude of people running in my direction.
I ply over the wall, the gun buried inside my thickness, aimed on the passage. These people, many looking normal, but there are a few... a few monsters, I would call them. The metagene is surely not a blessing for everyone.
Oh, God, which ones must I shoot?
There is a scaled man, very similar to the monster that cloned my blood to create Eddie. Out of his dress comes a long tail, and he has fangs out of his mouth.
Zap! The dart hits him, and I feel a heavy burden over my shoulder. What have I done?
Could aesthetics be my judgment criteria? It seems unfair.
Then I see a big muscled man trying to push a young blonde girl to the wall and rip her shirt open. Okay, he deserves this.
Zap! I shoot him, and he falls for an instant to the ground. The girl jumps away and, to my amazement, begins to shoot some kind of fire from her eyes, killing the people in front of her to open up a way to run.
Merda! What I have done? So much for playing God.
There's no way I can be honest in this. And I can't stop, nor I can even commit suicide. There's my son to care for, and Vidalia, too.
Vidalia... strangely I am becoming attached to her hour by hour, but she seems so fragile, and she is so beautiful.
Presto. I must finish this work quickly.
Three very massive men, dressed in leather costumes and steel chains pass. Gladiators, they seem to be. If the show Walker talked about was something like a Roman circus, they might be like gladiators, executioners of innocent metas brought here for the enjoyment of perverted people. Who knows? But it's a choice like any other, so...
Zap! Zap! Zap!
Two more darts. How much I would pay to put these into Walker and Curie!
The crowd of metas has dispersed. I must find others.
I turn into human form and walk farther. No one on this floor. I become granite and break the ceiling, landing on the lower block.
Here the situation is hot. There is a sort of battle between two factions of metahumans. They are free. They should help each other to find a way out, and instead they fight.
I am disgusted. What good would a revolution be to them? Maybe Turner was right. Hold them in check, never let them walk among ordinary people.
Wait, what am I thinking? They are like captive dogs. They have been kept in chains for much too long. Yet, the fury in their eyes, the brute force they express. I don't know what to think.
Zap! I shoot aimlessly into the crowd, and it's a child who falls down.
I vomit. I can't do this. But there is one dart left.
I don't want to continue this senseless carnage. But I am sure there is some sort of video-recorder in this suit. I can't just shoot at the wall, hoping Walker will never know.
Merda, merda, merda...
I return to the upper floor to look for the killing girl I saved. She deserves the plague, at least. I put the gun on a shelf, turn around the corner, then become gaseous, floating out of my costume, and begin to look for her. I will find her and will make her follow me to the place where I left the gun. Then I will hit her. Any other way, I could end up hitting someone else.
And I swear I will not poison any more innocents today.
Zap!
It's meeting time. Doe has not yet returned, and there is only Vidalia waiting for me.
"Have you done the work, Ed?"
"Look at my face, Dalia," I whisper, handing her the gun. "What will happen to these innocents?"
"The only thing that's important is what will NOT happen to me, you, and Eddie," says the girl coldly.
"Maybe you are right. Report to Walker that I failed with my last subject."
"What?"
"After I shoot her, she took fire, and in a matter of seconds she was reduced to ash. Surely an after-effect of the plague on her particular metagene."
Dr. Curie later confirmed that the tracker nanite was among the ashes of the woman.