A tide rippled back and forth along a coast of glistening white sand. Evan looked at his bare feet embedded in the course hot surface – or at least it should have been course and rough. It smelled of sea, but otherwise there was only his sight and a phantom connection to the other senses associated to the beach. This was a VR prison. It was like standing in a dream, walking without gravity. Instead of moving with each step, the beach shifted underneath Evan like walking on a treadmill.

  He was also closer to the ground than normal, shorter, existing in a younger version of his body. This place was familiar. Yes… it was his home. The old one. The one he hadn’t seen since his terrible birthday party. It toed the ocean, raised by cross hatched wood. It was more real than his memories of it.

  Memories… one stood before him. There. A man in swimming shorts, hair loosely combed back, watching over the fickle tide with an easiness about him.

  “Dad?” Evan croaked; his voice modulated as if speaking through a computer microphone.

  The man twisted his gaze toward Evan. It was him. The Governor. The betrayer. Father.

  “Evan…” he said. He took a step toward Evan.

  Evan took a step toward his dad.

  Step.

  Step.

  Step.

  Step.

  They faced off against each other… but what would become of it? An embrace, or the cracking of fist to jaw?

  Neither.

  “I saw you,” Evan finally started; fear, hate, love - all mixing in him like paints that spiraled into the air and splashed to the ground. “I saw you on a camera, and from Andrea’s visions… You gave up Alpha base… you tricked us. Gave us up to Shwood, and he tried to kill us. Why? Why…”

  His father sighed and looked upon Evan with reddened eyes. “To protect you. Always to protect you.”

  “No. No, you can’t make this about me. You’re a murderer. You’re the monster, not me.”

  “You’re right, son. I am a monster… I am a sinner. But I have done it all for you. I’ll tell you the truth. All of it.”

  Hate seized Evan’s chest. “What truth?”

  “Everything… When I came to the Federation, I was nothing, just a refugee trying to survive the war between my home nation and this new one. My family barely survived. Our last name used to be something else, I cannot remember what, I was so young. All I remember was my father telling me we were now Hendricks. He named us that so we would not be so obvious as refugees on our documents. Many others from my country were found and killed by angry mobs, or deported back to the war-torn land, but my family survived because of my father’s plan. It was then that I realized that survival was worth the cost, whatever it may be.

  “As I grew older, I studied hard, and eventually found myself in a respected position manufacturing and selling weapons technology for Monolith Industries. The same weapons company that was bombing my home country. It was at Monolith where I met your mother, and we married shortly after that.”

  Evan couldn’t force himself to tear away from his father’s words. How? How could this man speak in such a way that made him listen? Look at him in such a way that stifled the corpses and the blood, and brought memories of love?

  “I was there, Evan. I was there when Monolith discovered the impossible. Titan Project… it was meant to be a bioweapon to help end the war vs. the South, a poison. But rebels, the same rebels you’ve worked with, sabotaged the facility… People died in the explosion, yes, it was the radiation that leaked out with the bioweapon’s vapors that created the Affliction. Everyone in the city either died in the explosion, the rapid mutations, or the chaos of hundreds of thousands of superhumans spontaneously developing powers all at once.

  “I wish that your mother and I could have been spared. We almost were, for we were miles out of the main city. We didn’t develop the mutation, but our offspring would. The Federation discovered this pattern in many of the people who were near there that day. I knew this might happen, and I had made a deal with a friend, Brutus Brushwood. He’d help cover up where we had been during the incident, and in exchange I would help him get a position in Monolith. Any lie, any deal to protect my family.

  Eventually, you would be born, and we’d raise you. Your mother always worried, always talked and fretted about what you might become. Always I reassured her that it would be ok, but never was it enough, even when I had gained power as a politician, it was not enough.”

  The Governor choked up.

  Evan was motionless, trying to process all this information, to understand the truth that he claimed to be telling.

  Father regained his composure, and continued, now sitting on a large rock, and staring out across the waters. “I needed to make sure you’d never be discovered if you ended up becoming Afflicted, or even if you were found out, that the right misdirection would be set in place to protect you. So, I found a kid, whose parents had been near the city on that day. I welcomed them into our family and kept his parents close. The Feds came for him like planned… but then you saved him. Several times this would happen, the person I’d orchestrated to take the fall for you, you’d always save instead.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “You… You let me be friends with Ken, and adopted him, just so you could sell him out if I ever got exposed?” It all made sense. Why the Feds had come for Ken on Evan’s birthday, and again at school when he was taken instead of Evan. It was sickening, and he crumpled to his knees. Still, he had not been prepared to hear the rest of his father’s confession.

  “Yes, I groomed Ken to be your stand in. But that failed, and your powers were again exposed. In your place, I went to prison. I always tried to protect you, son. Then you returned the favor and rescued me. We had the chance to return to our life. I struck a deal with Shwood again. He’d watch over you while the Federation dealt with the rebels. We’d be in good favor with the government long enough for us to disappear and reform our life again. That included Ken. But Shwood had his own deal with the Feds, and I was recaptured and placed here, while you were to be handed off as well. I was thankful you had escaped… but now, you are here, and I once again failed.”

  Evan felt heat surrounding some aspect of him, not the virtual part, the real him. “You killed them. You sent Krow to bring me back, you sold out the rebels, you put me and Ken in Shwood’s hands. You killed Zachary, and Luna, and everyone at Alpha. You killed my brother.” The vision stuttered for a moment, ripples of electrical static. “Mom… she called me monster, Dad. She hated me. It was me, wasn’t it? If I’d never been born. If I’d never had powers, she’d be alive. They’d all be alive. I killed her, and I always tried to make up for it for nothing.”

  The Governor took a deep breath. “You didn’t kill your mom.”

  “Wha…?”

  “She was going to tell the doctors about you, the news, anyone who would listen.”

  “No, no…”

  “She was going to bring them to you, send you away to prison, kill you. ‘He’s not my son,’ she told me, ‘He’s a monster.’ You were no monster Evan… I would always protect my family.”

  The revelation built up in Evan, clawing at his chest, trying to break in. He stepped back, horrified, repulsed by his father. “You’re a liar. Why would I ever believe you?”

  “I couldn’t let them take my son. I wouldn’t let her take my son. So, I smothered her, and saved you, as I always have tried to do.”

  “Wha…” Evan felt the blood in his veins. His vision refracting with static and lines. Black walls flickered into his sight, green error text floating around from some alternate dimension. “Why did you do all of this? Why? What kind of person does that stuff to people?”

  “What are they compared to my flesh? They are nothing and have always been nothing compared to you. I would kill, lie, steal, betray everyone if it meant you lived.”

  “I didn’t ask for any of that. You’re the freaking monster. I want… I want to kill you.” The words dripped from Evan’s mouth.

  “Because I killed for you? You have killed for yourself as well… all those soldiers. Even now if you kill me, you’ve done no different.”

  “Those were accidents… I’m nothing like you. I didn’t kill people in cold blood. I’ve tried to redeem myself.”

  The Governor spoke evenly, his features bearing the intensity of his nature, “And you’re a better man than me for it… but what I did was necessary. If you manage to break free from here and defeat Krow or conquer the Federation – all of it would be possible because of what I’ve done for you.”

  The words tethered Evan. Was he just a creation of his father? A puppet controlled, and actions written for him? No. This man was not God, this man was a person, manipulative in all ways. It didn’t matter what the Governor told him, he would make his decision because it was his to make, and what he thought was right.

  “Evangelos, please. I am your family.”

  “My name’s Evan, and you killed my family.” The world sputtered and cascaded in specs of corrupting data. He could feel the heat, the sensation of his body, the constriction of straps and wires. He sensed those ensnaring vines of copper melt away and his body become his again. His fingers dug into the machine around his head, and he flung the device across the room. The device around his neck was gone as well. Computers hissed at what he had done, biting at him with sparks from the coiled wires he’d just emancipated himself from. A burning fume filled his nostrils and gagged him. An alarm blared in his ears. But once he had gathered himself, witnessing his real legs, arms, and the cold room of the airship, he then turned to Blink. With a flick of his hand, the neck device and VR around her head faded to dust. Krow had not been so prepared as he’d seemed to think.

  Evan looked beyond Blink, and saw the Governor strapped to a similar chair, with his own collar and VR headset.

  Evan jumped to the floor, the sparking wires biting at his heels. A fire built up in him, and now he would let it drive him.

  The Governor’s chair melted, heated by Evan’s powers. The VR headset and collar sparked and blew away in a heap of thrashed metal. Now the man’s face was bare, blinking profusely. He was old, grey hair, deforming skin.

  “Ev-!” Before he could speak, he was ripped from the seat into the air as Evan’s power filled the room.

  Evan willed the Governor’s molecules, crashing him into a wall, cabinets and computers warping like foil around him. The tile beneath him liquified like water. Finally, the Governor groaned in agony as skin tore from his outward facing cheek, exposing blood, then muscle, then bone. The man’s clothes ripped apart, exposing his wrinkled form. He, who had been so powerful, was nothing but a weakly creature. He could be snapped in half. He could die here. As if he never existed.

  Then Blink’s words hit Evan.

  I realized,

  looking at his crinkly old body;

  What was the point?

  So, I forgave him and

  moved on to try and help the people I loved instead.

  Evan looked back to Blink, strapped to her chair still. Her face was cut up by the whirling of energy that Evan emanated. Guilt washed over him. He let go and fell to the ground, along with the Governor, and sizzling wires, and the ash, and the dust. Stars overlaid his vision, his consciousness spun, but still he fought to hold on.

  The Governor sputtered and crawled across the floor until he could prop himself up against the back wall, which was warped and gnarled like melted wax. His hand covered the wound on his cheek. “You are… incredibly powerful.”

  Evan looked back at this man, this weak man. He was ashamed that he’d tried to kill him, that his powers had invertedly harmed Blink, and that he’d almost became the monster his mother and Krow had called him. Maybe he couldn’t save everyone, and maybe sometimes the means to save the meek was to defeat the strong, but vengeance would not guide him. Seek to redeem, be ready to defend.

  The Governor snapped, “They aren’t your family, they aren’t your blood.”

  Evan gritted his teeth, barely able to keep himself from losing consciousness again, and laying far closer to this man than he wanted to be. “That’s why I love them. They are the family that I chose.”

  That captured the Governor. His mouth quivered; the determination seeped away.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late for salvaging his family. Maybe Evan could teach his father what he’d learned about love. Maybe they could change the Federation together.

  Maybe.

  But then Death returned.

  The lab doors burst open in a blast of fire. A handful of Federation soldiers stormed into the room. One bent down to grab the Governor. Two others checked on Blink.

  The last one approached Evan, gun directed to his head. He called over the radio. “The specimens are secured. Permission to execute?”

  MARCH 21st at 10:02am CST.

  REMINDER - These chapters were written a long time ago, but never fit into the main story.

  Interlude release schedule:

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