Andreas Viktor de Vygon was born on a hot summer night in 1963. His mother died in childbirth. His father was a mean drunk bastard of a man who never truly forgave him for it.

  Andreas grew up in a small apartment in inner-city Tombguard, falling asleep every night to the sound of his neighbours fighting and fucking and his father’s shows echoing from the living room. His school was within walking distance, just a block away. The few friends he made all lived nearby. The first ten years of Andreas de Vygon’s life were confined to less than a single square kilometre. He never knew any different and never truly cared. Until one night, when his eyes were opened to the truth.

  Andreas had mixed feelings about his father. On one hand, he was a powerful, terrifying man. He had an almost regal nature and exuded authority in every movement. Andreas couldn’t help but to respect the sheer strength he held. One day, he wanted to be just like him. On the other hand, he was also cruel, vindictive, and loved nothing more than to take out his own anger and pain on those weaker than him. Andreas, unfortunately, was always his go-to target. Andreas hated his guts.

  Most nights, Viktor de Vygon the elder would only get angrier the more he drank. But for some reason, this night was different. Andreas’ father sank into his armchair, muttering something to himself. He called to Andreas to fetch him another beer, and Andreas obliged, his hatred for his father growing slightly stronger at being treated like some sort of servant.

  “Siddown, boy,” Viktor had said, slurring like the drunk he was, snatching the beer from Andreas’ hands. “I got sommin’ to tell ya.”

  Andreas did as he was told. He always did as he was told. “What is it, father?”

  “You learned about the Godling in school yet?” he asked, spitting the name like a slur.

  “No, sir,” Andreas replied.

  “Lemme tell you a story…”

  Viktor told Andreas the tale of the ancient de Vygon clan and their legendary battle against the Godling hundreds of years ago. How his ancestors struggled under the tyranny of that terrible thing from beyond the stars. How they secretly rebelled, forging a weapon imbued with shards of bone from the Godling’s previous human hosts. How they etched magic sealing symbols onto the blade, learned from the Godling’s own practise of granting human collaborators strange abilities, and then sealing them away by carving the symbol onto them when they resisted. How they battled the Godling for a whole day and a whole night until Franziska de Vygon, last surviving member of the family, plunged the Godkiller Blade into the Godling’s chest and finally ended centuries of suffering.

  He told Andreas how the last remaining de Vygon sealed the Godling underneath the family hold, and how Tombguard rose up around it. How for the past 700 years, the de Vygon family watched over the Godling’s prison, ensuring it could never escape. How the Godling’s blood seeped into the earth, eventually affecting the population, causing children to be born with the same strange powers the Godling once granted Its conspirators. How the Godling began acting out, creating terrible monsters with its remaining power, and how those born with Godling blood in their veins fought back against them, eventually forming a Union ran by the de Vygon family, right in the place the de Vygon ancestral hold used to be.

  Andreas listened, totally rapt, stars shining in his eyes. Him; the descendant of a legendary hero who saved the whole world. Only, it didn’t take very long for the illusion to crumble apart. One solitary look around Viktor’s dingy apartment would make it clear that Andreas was no legendary hero’s descendant. He was the son of a bum who killed his own mother coming into this world. When he asked his father why, Viktor told Andreas a truth that would stick with him for the rest of his life.

  “We were born unlucky.”

  It turned out, Viktor’s father Thomas was the second son. Only the firstborn of each generation was set to inherit the ancestral home and all it entailed. Scorned from the birthright owed to him by his name, Thomas de Vygon descended into obscurity, and he dragged Viktor and Andreas down with him.

  Looking at his father, Andreas could see that Viktor had accepted his place in the world. He had no ambitions beyond his next bottle of beer, content to live a simple wage-slave’s life.

  Andreas would not accept it. He was owed. That night he made a vow to himself; that he would not be satisfied with this humiliating pittance of an existence, where his only purpose was serving those above him. He would do everything in his power to rise above, to reach the station he deserved. One day, no one would look down on Andreas de Vygon.

  It would only be him, standing alone above the world.

  —

  Andreas never had many friends growing up. While he was perfectly able to make them, should he so choose, his sights were always set much further in the future than schoolyard companionship.

  While other kids his age were outside playing, Andreas would be at the library, studying and learning more about his newly revealed lineage. He learned that he had a second cousin a little older than him, named Siobhan. She was set to be the next inheritor of the de Vygon ancestral home, now known as the Heroes’ Union. Nothing in the world hurt more than knowing there was someone else out there who had everything he’d ever wanted.

  It was while he was studying the legends surrounding the Godling that he came across an interesting little tidbit. He would pass it off as a pointless piece of trivia for many years, but the fact he learned in that library would end up changing the course of his life.

  Legend stated that the one who pulled the sword from the Godling’s chest would be granted any one wish within Its power; their deepest, strongest desire – at least according to the things the Godling would tell people to try and get them to free it. The only catch was, no one could actually approach the Godling unless they had the Godling’s blood inside of them; only those with a power could get near enough to ever pull the sword out. It was typical; because even if Andreas had been given the respect his name deserved, he’d still never be granted a wish, just because he was born inferior. Nothing would ever be handed to him. It just meant he had to work harder to get ahead.

  Not that he’d ever really want to draw the sword and undo all the hard work his ancestors put into sealing the Godling away. He wouldn’t be much of a hero, then.

  That being said, Andreas had always been good at finding loopholes.

  —

  When Andreas turned 18, the first thing he did out of school was join the military. It was a new life for him in two ways; he could finally leave his waste-of-oxygen father behind forever, and he was finally in a place where he'd be able to climb. Get above people. Maybe even reach the top.

  At first, it was just more of what he was used to: getting yelled at and ordered around. He'd been expecting that, obviously, but it was still grating. He was a de Vygon. These people should be kissing his feet as he passed. Regardless, he got through those first miserable months of being a new recruit, and eventually started moving up through the ranks. It took a few years of grit and hard work, crawling through the dirt and breaking the skin of his knuckles in combat training, but he started earning his promotions in due time. Throughout his fourteen years of service, he made it to the rank of sergeant first class, and had designs on getting an officer’s commission. Unfortunately, some things were not meant to be.

  Andreas did a few tours of duty, and earned a few medals in the process. For all intents and purposes, he was a decorated soldier and a respected leader. It was what he’d been hoping for when he first enlisted. But it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to just have people under his command, because no matter what there were still people above him, officers giving him orders, telling him what to do. It wasn’t right. It was beginning to feel like no matter how high he climbed, he would never truly achieve the greatness he was destined for. Even thinking about his prospects as an officer didn’t seem like they would amount to much. So much kissing ass, and for what? For nothing truly important to change. It would take a lifetime to reach the top of the military hierarchy, and even then he would still be accountable to the whims of the country’s leadership. Maybe he should have aimed for politics instead, but even if he reached the big spot at the top, what would truly be different? He would still have to suck up to other country’s leaders for the sake of diplomacy – he wasn’t going to run his country into the ground being an ass just because he hated not having full agency over himself; he had more maturity than that. So, what was even the point?

  It was beginning to occur to Andreas that perhaps servitude was simply an unavoidable fact of the human condition. So long as there were two people left on the planet, Andreas would have a duty to his fellow man. Compromise above all else, because violence only meant mutually assured destruction, and where would that get anyone?

  Perhaps if there was a way to get so far above the rest of humanity that resistance to his will was utterly futile, his dream could come to fruition. As if that was even possible. Even the Godling; a divine being as old as the universe itself and as powerful as a dying star, was brought down by the sheer dauntless will of the human spirit.

  Granted, the Godling was malevolent, and couldn’t understand the way a human mind thought. Perhaps if Andreas were in Its position, the de Vygon clan never would have even thought to resist him, for they would have had no reason to.

  It was a silly thought, and not one he entertained for long.

  The peaceful days of running his soldiers through training drills quickly blurred together, and Andreas was in the midst of debating whether or not to quit the military for a new pursuit or just commit and get an officer’s commission when a sudden scandal hit that all-but made the decision up for him.

  He was walking the grounds of the base one night, just to stretch his legs, when he heard a strange sound emanating from the alley between the barracks and the mess hall. It was past lights out, so his soldiers should’ve all been in bed. He elected to check it out.

  When he peeked around the corner into the alley, he wasn’t all that surprised at what he saw; it was pretty obvious based on the sounds. A man and a woman from his unit, pressed up against each other, rutting like animals in heat. He was debating whether he should pretend he didn’t see or go chastise them when he realised something was wrong. The woman was pressed face-first against the wall of the mess, both wrists restrained behind her back by one of the man’s hands. His other was covering her mouth. She appeared to be crying.

  Andreas didn’t remember much of the rest of that night, but based on statements from the subsequent disciplinary hearing, he knocked out three of the man’s teeth, broke both of his wrists, and left him with a concussion. Andreas himself got away with a fractured hand from hitting the guy too hard.

  He was not a squeamish man by any means. He was willing to hurt and kill to get what he wanted – his goals were so grand that there were very few lines he wasn’t willing to cross in pursuit of their achievement. But not rape. Never rape. There was not a single act so depraved and self-indulgent as that. Every bullet through a skull; every broken finger of a captured enemy, they had a purpose. There was no information to be gleaned via rape that could not be otherwise gained through enhanced interrogation techniques. If the prisoner wouldn’t talk through all of them, rape would not serve to tip them over the edge. It was pure indulgence that violated a person’s freedom and agency in one of the deepest, cruelest ways. It was unconscionable.

  That was why Andreas was sure to spare no detail on what he had witnessed at the disciplinary hearing. This was a man under his command, and thus it was his responsibility to make it right.

  Only, nothing would ever come of it. At least, not for the perpetrator.

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  See, the soldier that committed the vile act turned out to be the son of one of the top generals that Andreas was beholden to. And so, the universe once again demonstrated the futility of trying to do good from below somebody else’s boot. No one gave a damn about the rape. All they cared about was the fact that Andreas put that kid in the infirmary.

  In the end, he was given an ultimatum. Shut up about the rape and be honourably discharged from his position, or keep going and have his name dragged through the mud. Andreas was not so invested in justice being served for this one single act that he would throw his entire life and all his ambitions out the window. So he picked option one, and retired from the military at the ripe old age of 32.

  —

  After his departure from the military, Andreas was left somewhat directionless. While leaving the military had been an idea he was entertaining, he hadn’t yet made up his mind about it when he was forced out, nor did he have any plans for afterwards, other than the big one.

  With no idea where to go and no clue what to do next with his life, Andreas decided to embrace directionlessness. And, what better thing was there to do when directionless than wander?

  He spent several years travelling the world with his saved funds, trying to find new purpose amidst the realisation that he would likely never achieve his true goal. He stood at the White Cliffs of Dover in England, staring out over the endless sea and debating flinging himself into it. He visited the coliseum in Rome and the parthenon in Athens, looking back over thousands of years of human culture. He pushed his way through the busy streets of Mumbai, buried in the sheer density of the population, awed by the thought that each and every person here bustling through the crowd was on their own path through life; each one just as rich and varied as his own.

  He took a step back from humanity to focus both on nature and on himself. He meditated with monks in remote Tibetan villages, scaling their mountains just to see if he could. He hiked through miles of South American rainforest. He trained with masters of every martial art he could find, seeking to hone both his mind and his body in search of the truth. The truth of what? He wasn’t sure. Maybe everything. Maybe this curse of a life he’d been given; simultaneously destined for greatness by virtue of his bloodline, and owed nothing by the tragedy of his birth. The son of a dead mother and a drunk father. The unwanted, discarded descendant of the world’s greatest hero. Truly, what was left for him other than what he could make for himself? There were no handouts in this world, not for him. If he truly wanted what he sought, he would have to fight for it. If there was no easy path, he would carve a new one out tooth and nail.

  It was when he was standing at the sight of an ancient battle with the Godling that the idea occurred to him. Staring out over a flat plain of lifeless dirt that once held a city in ancient Syria, he realised the true power that the Godling held, and why It held it for so long.

  2000 years ago, this place was a bustling metropolis of the ancient world. When the Godling arrived on Earth, this city was the first to take up arms against it. The Godling used it as a brutal and bloody example, and because of that one act, Its reign lasted almost 1300 years. Until the de Vygons came along, no other large group of people had the bravery to stand against It. The few individuals who did were equally as brutalised, and in just as public a manner. Transmuted into misshapen playthings and decorations, still living every second of their agony until the Godling was done with them. According to her personal writings of her clan’s war with the Godling, Franziska de Vygon’s own father was transformed into an ornate dining chair of broken bones and ripped flesh one terrible night, still screaming for days until she was finally able to find him and put him out of his misery.

  This city in particular was razed entirely to the ground, not a single stone or soul left in existence. Even now, two millenia later, no life grew on the spot the city once stood. Animals avoided it. The only reason modern humans knew of its existence was through the records of the city’s neighbours.

  Before Its imprisonment, the Godling held the ultimate, utmost freedom in the world. It held this freedom for so long because It stole freedom from humanity.

  If Andreas was truly passionate about his goal; if it truly meant enough to him that he would do anything to achieve it, he needed to not be squeamish about taking freedom from others. He needed to not be squeamish about risking everything in his quest for it, including his own ideals. He’d killed before, but that was on the battlefield, at the will of his commanders. Now, he needed to be ready to kill for himself.

  No price was too great in search of the ultimate freedom. And really, what had the de Vygons ever done for him anyway? He owed them nothing.

  They, on the other hand, owed him everything.

  —

  After six years of travelling, Andreas decided it was finally time for him to return home. It was the turn of the millennium; a time of new beginnings and fresh starts, and that was certainly Andreas’ plan for when he arrived in Tombguard. He still had a decent little nest egg saved from his time in the military, having lived a very frugal lifestyle for his time there, so it wasn’t hard to rent out an apartment and start making moves on his next job.

  It was in the midst of his return that he learned about his cousin Siobhan’s marriage to a Korean man. That on its own wouldn’t have bothered him if it wasn’t for the fact that she decided to forsake 700 years of her ancestry and take her husband’s last name. Why she would choose to give up the name de Vygon – a name that invoked the presence of the legendary warriors who saved the world – for a nothing name like Min completely escaped him. Apparently, he even missed that she gave birth to a son the year before his sabbatical; a bouncing baby boy named Ashley, born before the two of his parents got married.

  It was just another reason why Andreas was the only one fit to bear the de Vygon name. He may have despised his ancestors for throwing him aside like trash for the crime of his grandfather being born too late, but at least he had respect for the history his name represented. At least he didn’t throw it all away like Siobhan did.

  They would learn the mistake it was to disregard him one day. They all would.

  Andreas began formulating a plan, putting together a complex flow chart that took up an entire wall in his apartment. He wasn’t worried about anyone seeing; he had no friends and no interest in taking a lover, and his landlord never came around. It would take years to both perfect the plan and execute it, but if it worked, it was a surefire way to ensure he made it all the way to the top, so far ahead that no one would ever hold sway over him again. True freedom was within his grasp.

  He called it Project Genesis. Genesis, meaning beginning, the word originating from the Abrahamic creation myth; the title of the very first book of the bible. The genesis of new life, created by his hand. The genesis of a new Andreas, born of stolen divine power. The genesis of a new world, formed by his desire. It felt… fitting.

  The Godling’s wish was the key. One single wish to grant his deepest desire. He would wish for the Godling to transfer all of Its power to him. Should any part of It remain afterwards, he would use his newfound power to destroy it so completely that it would cease existing entirely, just like that city in Syria. Thus, circumventing the obvious ethical issue of releasing the Godling in the first place.

  But only someone with a power could get close enough to make a wish. That meant Andreas needed someone else to make the wish for him. No amount of money or political power would give him enough sway to convince someone in the Union to release the Godling, nor to believe in his goal above their own desires, which meant that he needed someone with a power that was completely and entirely under his control.

  He considered children, but that would take far too long, and it was too much of a gamble as to whether they had a power or not. He considered brainwashing, but that was too traceable. The plan would be no good if he was arrested for kidnapping before he could enact it. No, he needed something in the middle. Someone with total allegiance to him, who would do anything for him, but who had no connection whatsoever to the outside world.

  What he needed was a clone, one with genetic material sourced from someone with a power. But that alone wasn’t enough. He also needed something to make them grow up quickly to save time, and a space to house and train them before unleashing them on the world. He needed a team to help raise, train, and heal the clone, and a team to help develop the cloning and growth technology, as well as any other genetic or technological modifications he might have wanted to make.

  It was possible, theoretically. The science for the cloning and rapid aging was sound. But the amount of money it would require was unfathomable. Loath as he was to admit it, Andreas had no choice but to do his least favourite thing; kissing up to people above his station. He needed some rich friends, and he needed an excuse for Project Genesis that wouldn’t make them immediately call him crazy. He needed a job that would put him in contact with those up in the higher echelons of society.

  That last piece was a little bit of a wrench in the plan. Other than his name, he had nothing with which to attract those of high standing. He would simply need to work his way up from the bottom. Again.

  To that end, Andreas joined the esteemed Tombguard police force, getting fast-tracked through basic training and promoted straight to lieutenant within the first few months thanks to his military experience. Not quite as high as he was aiming, but it would do for now. He remained in that position for a few years before passing his captain’s exam and finally being given command of his own precinct. Much like his position in the military, it was gratifying having control over a whole precinct of cops, but he was still far too beholden to both other captains and his superiors.

  Another few years of careful planning and kiss-assing, and Andreas got moved to the precinct he’d been gunning for – precinct 23. It had been in his sights ever since he learned that there was a huge empty underground space below the precinct, a leftover offshoot of the old de Vygon hold that had been built over. It was a fitting place to put his Project Genesis facility. Next step; insert himself into high society.

  Despite his best efforts, Andreas was never promoted above the rank of captain. It irritated him a bit, but he could handle it with the knowledge that he could move forward with his plan right where he was. His friendship with people like the commissioner and the chief meant that he was still being invited to these high society parties despite his relatively low rank; still getting the opportunity to rub elbows with these born elite; people who had done nothing of substance in their lives yet still stood in the station that he deserved.

  He had to be careful, though. Despite having a plausible explanation as to his motives for Project Genesis – that being wanting to manufacture superheroes to revitalise the police – the plan was still quite… callous, in regards to its flippant usage of human life – artificial or otherwise. There would be a public explanation that included none of the real details, of course, but the sponsors would need to know the nitty gritty of how the plan would proceed before they invested in him. They wouldn’t know the end result, but that was hardly important.

  He needed sponsors with both ambition of their own and enough moral bankruptcy to not care how they achieved their goals. Surely, not hard to find in this den of uncaring billionaires, but Andreas was cautious. One wrong move, and everything went up in smoke.

  It was a few more years of befriending these elite before Andreas met… Him. The most vile, disgusting man Andreas had ever laid eyes upon, and that included that little bastard rapist who he’d long forgotten the name of.

  Sebastian Beaumond.

  He just had this… air about him; a suave playfulness that hid something dark beneath his pristine exterior. Every word he spoke positively dripped with double-meaning and hidden manipulation. Andreas had never been a man that shied away from eye contact, but staring into those dark pupils of his made Andreas feel like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking out into the void. It was a similar sensation to the one he got at the Cliffs of Dover all those years ago, only with the dreaded uncertainty of not knowing whether the ground would crumble out from under him at any moment, throwing him to the uncaring waves below.

  On the surface, he was a buffoon – and it was a known fact among the elite that he could let his emotions get the better of him in occasional outbursts – but Andreas didn’t doubt for a second that Sebastian Beaumond was a much smarter man than anyone gave him credit for.

  He was a senator, with plans to go on the election trail within the next few years, aiming for the top spot. He would make the sort of evil, sadistic ‘jokes’ that Andreas would have sanctioned men in his old unit for.

  He was perfect.

  And when Andreas pulled him aside one night and told him the plan, Sebastian Beaumond’s smile grew wide, just a little too far to be entirely natural. He laughed that grating laugh of his, slapped Andreas on the back of the shoulder, and said:

  “You thought of all of that yourself? You’re a goddamn genius, Andy. I’m in.”

  —

  “She’s… She’s gone, sir.” Sadler said, his voice shaking; a perfect ambience to the rage that was bubbling up inside Andreas. “The tracking chip has gone offline, and her mask camera has been staring at the floor for the past hour, after she took it off in front of Matthews. The… the whole operation is compromised. The entire Union will know by now that she’s a clone of Rosalyn Garcia-Holmes.”

  Andreas stared at the monitor, displaying a coordinate of the chip’s last transmitted location, somewhere within the Union HQ. For some reason, he had a hunch that G-5 had something to do with its removal. Jordyn and the Union would have had no way of knowing of its existence otherwise. That little ungrateful bitch was forever a thorn in his side. He gave her life, and this was how she repaid him?

  In many ways, this was his own fault; he was mature enough to recognise that. He had allowed G-7 far too much freedom in the Union. He believed it was worth the risk – a foolish compromise born of the inevitable fondness between a creator and his subject. Some small part of him just wanted to see her happy. He hadn’t anticipated the little wretch growing bold enough to remove her mask – breaking the one rule he demanded above all else.

  It was okay. This was manageable. The explosives at the door of the Godling’s prison were in place; no one but Jordyn knew of their existence, and she would not be able to fathom their use or importance. He could enter at any time. All he needed was someone to pull the sword and make the wish.

  Jordyn would be ideal, but there was no guarantee he’d be able to retrieve his asset before everything came crashing down. Thankfully, Andreas was nothing if not a man who planned for every contingency.

  “S-sir?” George whimpered. “What do we do?”

  Andreas grit his teeth and took a breath, centering himself. All would turn out right in the end.

  “Wake up subjects G-8 through G-10 and prepare them for rapid habilitation and training. We are not finished yet.”