Chapter 10 - Nightmares
He was tied by straps to an inclined chair, in a dark room illuminated only by a projector pointed toward his face.
Everything, this whole situation occurred because he decided to visit his parents at the clinic after leaving Jessica's house after spending some enjoyable moments together.
Opening the now closed door of the clinic, he heard his parents discussing about experiments results, making his way toward the conversation sounds, he opened the door of the examination room and saw a gruesome spectacle.
A man tied to the reclining chair, unmoving, his arms dangling, only hold by straps. The man was bleeding from all the orifices of his visage, his eyes were rolled in their sockets, while blood was flowing from it along his face before falling deal after drop on the tiled floor, forming a puddle of blood.
Turning around, his mother let out a sigh.
"Arthur, you should have call to tell us you would come. We're already tired after all this failed work, and now you gave us extra work."
She said it nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Meanwhile, his father walked beside him and inserted a syringe in his arm and injected a paralyzing drug in his system.
He didn't had time to react, between this macabre scene and the strange behaviour of his parents, his mind was in turmoil, and soon fell to the ground unable to move.
His father, or rather the mad scientist he could barely link to his father raised him with difficulty before placing him on the chair.
While his father was sorting out strange liquids and medical equipment, his mother strapped him tightly to the chair and started to talk softly to his ears.
"Huu." He wanted to cry to alert someone in the neighborhood, but he could barely produce comprehensive sounds.
" Don't worry. Soon, everything will be back in place as it always do."
He awakened in the middle of the night, sweating, but it wasn't the tropical heat prevailing in his house that made him sweat.
" Again! Why did these nightmares or memories don't stop coming to me each time I go to sleep."
Getting up from the bed, he walked to the sink and washed his face with water.
Ever since Rickmer's mental restraints were erased from his mind, these memories came to his mind.
This nightmare where they made him forgot was a recurrent one, each time different, in the past he should have discovered their secret more than once.
The only good points in some way was that anterior memories to his adoption by this couple of psychopaths appears sometimes.
Several times, he saw a blond woman with blurred features, but her voice was perfectly clear, despite his efforts to remember, he couldn't see clearly her facial features.
He remember being held in her arms, he remember playing with her in the park, he remember Christmas eve opening his gifts with her help. He couldn't remember her face or ever seeing a father, in all the flashbacks he saw, it was always the two of them.
In the past, he would have searched every nook and cranny to discover his past, but not anymore.
Ever since his pointless adventure from the past, he became calmer, more thoughtful, he now knew that appearance could be treacherous.
Furthermore, he knew that his mother was deceased, unearthing the past was pointless.
Even if his present conditions was far from the ideal future he imagined, he doesn't wanted to lose it. He doesn't wanted to once again engage in a struggle with the Justice League or be the pawn of person's like Luthor.
He tried to go back to sleep, but was unable to, so he turned on the television and was lost in thought as some stupid telenovela was left in the background.
He was playing with his powers, breaking objects and then brought back the pieces together before joining the molecules back together. Bringing them back to their previous state.
Sometime, he was afraid of his powers, except magic and several overpowered individuals, few peoples could stop him on this earth if he were to become dangerous, or if someone found a way to mind control him, as that witch boy tried to.
More so as he found other ways to use his powers. Recently, he was searching for a way to create a barrier to protect himself from the hostile environment of space vacuum.
Several parameters have to be taken into account, oxygen, heat, pressure, radiations, otherwise he would die in less than two painful minutes. It was just for fun, if you can't move faster than light, going to space is utterly pointless. Forever trapped in this solar system.
Before he realized, the sun was high in the sky. Half of his night was spent in nightmare and the other half was spent lost in his thought.
Getting up from his bed, he decided to take a shower, and to start taking care of the gang matters, to him day and night was the same thing.
He was almost unknown here, his name may have been heard because of international media, but the impact was limited in those poor regions. And with his invisibility, no one can see him if he don't want to.
Leaving, he looked at his home, it was small but it gave him a sense of normality.Creating the illusion that his life didn't became a mess. Truth be told, he didn't had to live in such a house, he became millionaire when he was on the run.
At that time, he ran into a local drug lord in Panama, and he decided to use for the first time a power he felt inside him ever since Martian Manhunter intruded upon his mind. It was the first and last time he used it. This power gave him an horrible aftertaste in his mouth.
This power was a mental invasion, he could intrude in the mind of someone else and learn everything they know, be it knowledge or skills. But to do this, he had to watch their past as if it was his own.
At first, he felt an attraction coming from others, something was telling him he could do something else, something he never did before. So, he found a criminal to test it, a powerful drug lord in Panama, and once his hand touch the forehead of the criminal. ideas, Informations, images, crashed into him like a train sailing at full speed.
He saw himself as a child, he saw himself being abused by a drunk man, he saw himself raping an underage girl before strangling her to death, he saw himself burning bodies, he saw himself laughing while watching people die from poisoning. He saw himself as a monster, he felt these emotions as if they were his own.
After several hours to digest and sort out the valuable informations. He gain access to the data in a fiscal paradise where more than 12 millions U.S dollars were deposited, but ever since that day, his philosophy towards crime became darker. Why don't we kill the criminals all one for all ? Why don't we reconditioned them to become obedient tools? Why don't we use them as lab rats for scientific research?
He knew his thoughts were influenced by the life he just lived by proxy, and so he chose to not use this new power anymore to prevent them to affect him more than they already did.
Like there were several way to use his telekinesis, it was evident he could limit the thoughts rushing into him and only select to learn the skills or knowledge worthy of interest, but he was afraid to be corrupted by these foreign thoughts before being successful.
More than once he threw up after this experience, feeling this pleasure, the pleasure he felt while raping and killing. If he used it on someone more normal from here on, he may be able to gain skills without seeing these horrors, but he would be influenced by their life and chose to not bet his mental health.
He learnt a lot during his studies at Gotham library with his favorite redhead.
The brain store different informations in various area, separating them by types, memories short and long terms, emotions, skills (procedural memory) and many others.
In theory, he could separate them and search by category, but he was afraid of the consequences it would have on him.
Walking through the streets, he was looking at the shops, home, park, and thought to the destruction he caused. He destroyed banks, train stations, stores, and everything else.
On another universe, it would have been an economic catastrophe. But in a world were aliens are fighting wearing spandex in the sky of metropolis, it can be resolved with some time.
Nonetheless, it didn't prevented media to talk about it excessively during weeks.
As he thought, everyone was talking about Fire actions from last night, it was on the lips of everyone in the streets. The little girl and her mother will soon leave for Brazil, he searched for her and located in her house, packing her stuff.
Making his way toward the poorest corners of the town, he saw armed men in the streets with dogs ready to attack.
Finally, after walking several dozens minutes, he saw his first target of many. A workshop to process raw materials into drugs ready to be sold on the streets by dealers.
Ever since Escobar, cartels of narco-traffickers flourished in South America.
Today, Aiden will make their stocks and plantations vanish into a puff of smoke.
Bending light and sound around him, he entered discreetly inside the workshop. The odor permeating inside was nauseating, it smelled a mix of smoke and chemical products. So, he created a barrier around him to block odors.
He saw a large quantity of leafs, surely coca being poured into a large tank containing what seem to be gasoline, creating a murky looking liquid.
( A processing plant of cocaine. Not really surprising in South America.)
He listened to them several minutes, maybe he would learn something interesting, but he heard nothing except worry of Fire coming back to take care of them or recipe dosages.
He knocked them all out simultaneously before firing a telekinetic blast at molecular level toward all the raw materials and tools in the building, separating molecules and making it vanish from existence.
He exited the now empty workshop and made his way toward his next target on foot. He had a lot of time and wasn't in a hurry, these guys will continue to sleep for a long time, and even if others are warned, they will probably suspect a rival gang of theft.
It maybe exacerbate the tensions between gangs over the short term, but once all the gangs will see that other gangs suffered the same thing. They should calm down a moment to think about it.
Arriving at the next site, a cache of weapons, he repeated the process and destroyed everything once again.
At the end of the day, he did it a total of eighteen times, taking as target every gangs without distinctions. When he saw the setting sun in the sky, he finally hurried a bit more and flew from one target to another while still being cautious of maintaining his invisibility.
He didn't only destroyed narco-traffickers resources, he collected informations and learnt about a party that will be held tomorrow in a neighboring town. The reunion will be organised in a luxurious villa and all the most powerful peoples in the underworld of the country will be present, be it drug lords, arms dealer, leaders of prostitution ring, corrupted politicians....The worst of the worst.
When he learnt about it, Aiden chose to go see what a party full of nauseating bastards would look like, maybe he could enjoy the food and add to the festivities.
His goal wasn't to clean the town of his filth or eliminating all the leaders of the underworld.
It would either create opportunities for others that may be worse than those currently in power or trigger a gangs war to take their places.
Batman and others heroes was the perfect example, once a gang is taken out, a worst one take his place, and criminals adapt to fight against superpowered individuals which worsen the already bad situation.
He wanted to learn more about the meta-human trafficking he discovered last night. If that guy immediately knew were to bring the girl to sell her, it mean that a well established trafficking network exist. Knowing from his own experiences that superpowers can bring unwanted attention from dangerous persons, he chose to track it back to the origin and destroy the root definitively.
After destroying every drugs processing atelier and all the weapons stocks he discovered after scanning the whole town, he headed toward the coke plantations. He learnt their locations while spying them before destroying the facilities.
What took most time was traveling, once above the coca plants, he made them vanish and traveled to another plantation.
He was back home late into the night. However, he was satisfied with his work, and gone to bed with a peaceful mind.
Once again his subconscious was playing trick on him, a nasty trick. Once again, he sunk in a world of dreams, and was confronted to what was surely buried the deepest in his subconscious.
He was looking at the lady with blurred features he supposed to be his mother. She was seated on a bench in a park and was looking at him as he was sliding upon a toboggan.
She raised from the bench and took him in her arms as he came to her.
" Tomorrow is your birthday, Charles. Let's buy some decorations for your party."
" Yeah! We'll buy lots of candles!"
( Charles! This is my true name.)
He could only watch as his child body was buying provisions with his mother in the mall.
( Why can i never see her face?! ) It was not the first dream about his childhood, and each time he was unable to see her appearance clearly, even after great efforts of memory.
After buying everything they needed, they walked along the streets together holding hands and then took the subway for a ten minutes ride.
Out of the subway station, they resumed their travel on foot but were unable to as a van parked in the street open one of his door and drag them inside where a man wearing a balaclava inserted a needle in their arms.
Then they fell asleep and worked up several hours later.
He woke up seated in a chair, he was drowsy and confused.
" Mom? Mom, where are you? Mom...?"
Looking everywhere, searching for her, he discovered he couldn't get up, he was tied to the chair. His shackles were black nylon cables, seeing these plastic wire, he bended down and bite it, trying to free himself.
It took him two minutes and he hurt his teeth, but his arm was free.
He caught a scalpel laying on a table near him and free his other arm and his feet.
Keeping the scalpel in hand, he opened the door of the room and started to navigate in this unknown environment. At the end of the corridor, he saw a door with light escaping from the gaps, clenching the door handles, he opened the door as silently as he could.
The room was dark, with a lonely light illuminating a medical bed with two doctors standing around it looking at the person liying on the bed.
A man and a woman wearing doctor's coat were taking notes while looking at his mother.
" Serum #23 was injected to the subject. Still no reactions 10 minutes after injection." The man was talking in to a dictation machine.
" Could you inject a dose of....wait! "
The woman was ready to inject something else to his mother, but she suddenly started to tremble and fell a conclusive state.
"Mom!" Seeing his mother strange behaviour, he ran by her side, ignoring his two kidnappers.
He took his hand and talked to her.
" Mom! Why are you jumping around? I want to go back home." He was oblivious of the danger is mother was in, his child mind wasn't able to understand.
" Seems like we forgot our little guest, a chance he came back for his mother. Continue the experiment, I'll take care of the child."
The man took him by the arm, and tried to drag him outside, but he wasn't willing to obey. He grab the scalpel and stabbed it with all the strength he could muster in one of the legs of the man.
"Aie!! Help me taking out the child. She's done for, don't bother with her anymore."
Finally, together they dragged him outside. It was at this moment that he finally saw it, the visage of his mother.
She was beautiful, with blonde hair he knew her after all these dreams. Shining aquamarine eyes, thin blond eyebrows, rosy round cheeks and a beautiful smile.
She was looking at him, she was giving him a loving smile.
" Char...les..."
But with each second passing, her smile was leaving her face. Her deep aquamarine eyes were whitening until becoming glassy and lifeless.
" Mom!" He let out an heart shattering cry as he was dragged outside the room.
Drool started to accumulate at her lips, she stopped convulsing and her body became cold.
She was no more.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone