“You call yourself one of the Seven?” the man scoffed at me. He wore sunglasses – he obviously knew of my powers. That, or he was one of those jerks that wore sunglasses inside. Either way, I didn’t like him.
“I don’t call myself anything,” I replied, somehow not stuttering. My heart thudded in my ribcage and I glanced quickly to the drop that awaited me if I made a misstep to the left or right – one hundred feet from the ground, I thought to myself. They’d be lucky to find any part of my body that wasn’t liquidated goo.
“I’m tired of waiting,” the man sighed. I blinked, and suddenly, he was in front of me.
Oh, s**-
I was thrown backwards, landing at a precarious angle. My vision swam, and I coughed up blood – so his power was speed, huh? Fan-freaking-tastic.
“Get up,” a voice whispered into my ear, and I shuddered. Even without looking at him, I could imagine the sneer that adorned his face.
Using my arm, I managed to pick myself up and stare at him in defiance, though I couldn’t do much else. He walked towards me, and I couldn’t do anything but watch, my legs refusing to obey me. He curled his fingers around my neck and choked me for what felt like hours, lifting me off the ground.
When it felt like it was over – that my lungs could no longer survive without air – he dropped me, and I gasped, sucking in as much air as I could and rubbing the spot on my neck where he had grabbed me.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” The man began, and I realized that this was my chance to think of a plan – he obviously thought I had lost all my will to fight. Not a chance! “You blew up our headquarters, killed one of our finest captains – though I can’t say I liked him very much, so I guess that’s a point in your favor. Then, you come into my headquarters, acting like you own the place, and think you can just save your little girlfriend? Do you have any idea of who I am?”
“Sure, yeah,” I muttered, without really paying attention. If I do that, and then – no… but if I change the target to him… I was caught completely unaware when the man appeared in front of me again, driving his fist into my gut and knocking all the air out of me.
I had a couple of seconds of good hangtime before I landed on the platform again, thanking every God and Goddess that I had ever learned about in school that I hadn’t fallen off the edge.
“Don’t you dare ignore me, you pathetic piece of trash,” the man growled. I panicked slightly – he was obviously coming to finish me off. It was now or never. “You think because you’re the son of the –“
I dashed forwards, and the man smirked, easily anticipating my attack and dodging it faster than I could see.
One of his minions stood a distance from where the man and I were, and I glared into his eyes, focusing every bit of strength I had into this attack. The man was talking behind me, but I tuned him out.
Come on, come on…
When the man’s spine snapped straight, and his eyes grew dazed and unfocused, I knew my powers had taken ahold of him.
I pictured the scenario in my head that I needed him to see, and watched as his face twisted into a hateful visage.
“I’ll kill you!” the man roared. “You think you can kill my family and get away with it, huh?”
The man behind me looked up and noticed the red-faced George who was charging at us. “What are you doing, Blake? I told you to not get involved in my fight with this dumb kid.”
I smirked. When the newly christened Blake was two steps away from us, I quickly got up, suddenly feeling a wetness dripping from my nose – blood. Ignoring it, I attempted to wrap my arms around the man and hold him in place, but he quickly avoided it – and appeared right behind me, in the path of Blake.
The man turned, and had only a split second to shout, before Blake speartackled him off the platform, and they both plunged towards the ground. I didn’t bother to look – I heard the all too familiar cracks as their bodies were utterly destroyed.
I swallowed, blinking back salty tears that threatened to escape my eyes. Rubbing my nose furiously to get rid of the blood, I laid on the platform, sitting. Thinking.
You just killed an innocent man. Just to save your own a**. You’re a real great hero, aren’t you, Matt?
He was evil! He was working for them! I tried meekly to argue against myself, but it was for naught. I was an illusionist – that was my power, to create illusions so insanely real that to the person being affected, it was real. But my power required needing to know everything about a person, from where they were born to the date of the first time they had clipped their toenails. And that gave me a second ability – to ravage a person’s mind, and to learn more about a person than they knew about themselves.
Blake was not an evil person. He was a family man. He had two children, the elder one being five, the younger being three. His wife was dying of cancer, and with no way of raising the money to help her, he turned to a life of crime.
I killed a father.
I killed a husband.
I killed a man with a B-positive blood type. I killed a man whose birthday is – was - October 14, 1978. I killed a man who went to Montgomery State High School, and dropped out his senior year. I killed a man.
I killed a man.
*
I walked numbly to where I knew the jailcells would be – every factory they owned was designed exactly the same, to retain order and destroy uniqueness – the motto that the Man lived by. Blood was dripping from various cuts all over my body, and purplish bruises were developing where he had choked me, but I hardly noticed them. I killed a man.
“Matt!” a voice cried, and a tiny smile broke out on my face – Lily. That’s why you had to kill him, I tried telling myself. It was either him or Lily.
But it wasn’t, another voice whispered into my ear. You could have done so many other things. You need to kill, Matt… you’re a murderer. You’re a monster. If Lily knew the things you did… would she even look at you anymore?
I shook my head, and began to walk faster. His beautiful, wonderful Lily was just around the corner, he could hear her gorgeous voice calling his name, a little farther and he would be there –
No.
I dropped to my knees, staring blankly into the cell. There was Lily, all right – but she wasn’t alive. A prerecorded tape recorder lay next to her unmoving body, replaying his name every few moments.
No.
Not Lily – anyone but her.
A note was taped to the bars of the cell, and I grabbed it with trembling fingers, barely being able to wrench my gaze off her body, which looked out-of-place – a beautiful, colorful flower in a cell of gray.
Hello, Matt.
Turn around.
I turned, and to my everlasting horror and shock, there was the man again – the one I was so sure Blake had taken with him, all the way to the ground.
“No…” my voice trembled. “You can’t be alive! I saw you fall! You’re dead, goddammit! You’re dead! This isn’t real!”
Suddenly, all the cells around me disappeared, the colors melting into the ground as if there were a drainage pipe there. The man in front of me disappeared, melting, and I was left alone for a few seconds in complete darkness.
“You’re right, Matt, this isn’t real,” a voice said behind me said, and suddenly, all the colors came back – but I wasn’t in the jail anymore. I was back on the skywalk, with Blake in front of me, and the man behind me.
“…What?” I asked, my voice hoarse with unshed tears. “What… what the hell have you done?”
The man smiled at me.
“I’m an illusionist, just like you, Matt. I have sunglasses to protect me from you, but you have nothing to protect you from me. I laid an illusion on you from the beginning – my superpower is not speed, like you thought it to be. Neither you, I, nor Blake over there have moved this entire time. My plan was to keep you entrapped in that illusion forever, or at least until the boss got here. But unfortunately, you threw a wrench in my plans when you illusioned Blake into killing me, which obviously didn’t do much in real life, but obviously made me dead in your illusion world. So when you saw me again at the jailcell, the illusion fell apart, since you knew it couldn’t be real.”
“But… what?” I was still completely confused – what was the point of all this? Was Lily safe?
The man sighed impatiently and glanced at his expensive watch. “Look, you imbecile. I’m the illusion master. You’re just some kid. You’re new to the game of tricks and deceit. Maybe one day you could have been great, but now, I have you, and there’s no way to escape. Your friends escaped – they tried looking for you, don’t give me that look – but it was more of me letting them escape. Without you to protect them, it’s really only a matter of weeks before they’re all captured and killed.”
“It’s game over, Matt. You lost.”