Chapitre 14: A Past Not So Distant

Levi, no, Jonathan looked around nervously seeing the all too familiar place. Pinching himself to make sure this was real and despite having a thicker skin he felt the pain.

It made him jolt upright from the chair he'd sat at many times. It felt like his pain tolerance was toned down to a negative hundred. Just moving made his entire being scream in agony.

'How the hell am I back here...'

He was back on earth — back to that toxic workplace — to the people he despised the most.

His nostrils flared at the realisation. Did he dream up the whole ordeal? Was he just sitting in this dingy office building this whole time, while his mind took him on a wild ride...

'It couldn't be, it can't be...I refuse to accept this. It was too elaborate to be fake. The after life, the world and its rule, dying multiple times...' With the internal struggle he was experiencing, he had an idea.

"System?" He yelled, getting up from the chair causing it to fall over. Nothing happened, not a peep.

He hated its robotic voice, but at that moment he would've given anything to hear it again.

'What do they call this? The Mandela effect? I don't know. Dammit.'

At his strange movements and voice the colleagues he'd killed in cold blood all turned to look at him.

"What's that freak?" Scott retorted with a sick twisted smile, that made the man he was looking at twitch.

For the first time, he noticed that he wasn't alone in the room. Killing them was still fresh in his mind yet here they were, alive and well.

'Did he just call me a freak?' He forgot his previous place in that world for a moment. The reflection of his old self was in one of the computers but he didn't care.

That would normally make anyone panic but he smirked. The docile him was long gone and he stood tall in the face of mock, as short as he was.

"I killed you once, don't think I won't do it again." He beckoned a Scott that was already taking strides towards him.

His hands balled into fat little fists, he was ready to swing at him but Scott never reached him. Instead, he melted right in front of him.

Turning into goo mixed with flesh, blood and bones. The smell was unbearable, he'd smelled burning and rotting flesh before but this was something else — something he'd never smelled before.

"Why Jonathan, why..." The others were walking up to him too, their skins already peeling off.

A loud clap resounded through the room, he was bleeding from the nose. He thought he could wake himself up but that didn't work.

"I'm not Jonathan, I am Leviathan!" He bellowed. "Forsaken son of a zodiac god." He screamed proudly.

As though those were the words he should've spoken from the start. Before he could say any more, a bright light blinded him.

He could feel his body being physically lifted from where he was. Everything disappeared.

'What happened?' He groaned waking up from the deep slumber. 'Dammit, did I dream those idiots too?'

"You fought...anyway it's been a week since you were knocked out. The thing disintegrated the moment you lost consciousness." It explained.

'That's a bit accusatory. I didn't create that monster.'

Looking around, Levi could see that his Hub was still intact. He was glad that they didn't destroy it, now the bigger question here was, why were these monsters coming into his Hub if they weren't destroying it.

'Where were you? I called for you...' The desperation in his voice couldn't be hidden.

He thought he'd gone back, that made him ill anger, he'd be lying to say it didn't scare him.

He was still a stranger to the world he was discarded in but he knew that it was better than the one he came from. In this one at least, he had a fighting chance.

"You were deep within yourself I couldn't reach..." It trailed off as though it was straining, hoping for silence.

'There are places you can't reach?' He was a bit amused.

"No time, something is coming."

He saw it, the hole was giving birth to yet another atrocity that he had to fight against. There were no weapons, he had no idea what sick joke whoever was playing but it made him mad.

Levi stood there and realised then that it was wasn't a snake nor a crab this time around, it was a giant scorpion and its stinger cracked the ground on impact.

The creature didn't wait for him to get over the emotions he was feeling all at once, the pincers flew dangerously fast, digging deep into his skin.

He muffled a yelped. His mouth was foaming from the pain, screaming was for the weak, he told himself.

He was foolish to think the mental world would mean that he couldn't feel any pain, the continous killing of himself was in another space so he didn't count that.

'I thought this space was mine and I controlled everything that happened, I DEFINITELY DID NOT SUMMON THESE!' He bellowed.

"...."

The system was lost for words. As systems they got trained seconds before they were imparted on a new host. Basically fed all the information at once.

Losing information was possible but extremely rare. It frantically looked through everything it had incase it had missed something, knowing the cause of this may give them a clue on how to stop it.

The scorpion withdrew its pincers violently. They came out with a chunk of meat, resulting in his arms losing their ability to work.

"No matter what you do, don't get stung!" The system advised, not having found anything useful.