Spotlight moved forward, passing through the guards without even looking at them. He could see the multitude of lights coming from them, like every person, the sight having become the normal long ago.

It was different at the start, when he could only discern them as beams, as thick and focused pillars, while in truth they were tapestries, thoughts interconnected, tying every aspect of each person's perceived touch, smell, sound. It required much more finesse to operate but also took much less energy from redirecting the whole thing ‘matrix couldn’t see them at his level of detail, thankfully, and he seems to have moved on to another way entirely of using it.”

Spotlight carefully pulled at the connected strands, changing how thoughts led into each other. The guards didn’t even think of looking in his direction, looking away distracted by something or other. Their brains were now telling them was more important.

‘Always much easier to call attention to something else than to block or revert it.’

Spotlight moved like a ghost through the base, everyone he passed by completely ignoring his presence, always seeming to find anything else around him much more interesting than his form.

He quickly found a security terminal, seeing all the cameras spread around, a guard dozing off while other played solitary in the computer. ‘Typical. They think no one would be crazy enough to attack a government facility, and if they were, no one knew where exactly the bases were located.’

“Well, let’s see here where’s the alarm.” Spotlight said out loud startling the guard playing who immediately jumped from his chair, taking the gun that he had at his waist and pointing it at Spotlight, who made no move, only watching with an amused smile.

“Who are you?” the guard yelled, trying to awake his friend at the same time, not taking his eyes off Spotlight.

The other guard woke up startled, looking around and understanding the situation, immediately reaching for the alarm button.

“Much better to leave the people who know do their jobs, right?”

“What are you talking about, stand down?” spotlight paid no mind to the rambling of the guard as he calmly messed with his attention, both guards, that were in full alert at him, suddenly became much more concerned about the alarm looking at each other and setting to scan all the cameras

“Search the outside and the areas of access. This is the intruder alarm they shouldn’t have moved too far away from the entrances.”

Spotlight smiled at the scene, approaching the guards working hard at their jobs, searching for something that was there with them.

‘Oh, perfect’ spotlight saw an army knife in a holster in the back of one of the guards moving to get it, all the time manipulating attention away from himself reinforcing other points of interest to the brain of the two, like tugging a marionette away from a certain path.

It had to be constant, but at this point, it was second nature. Like a swimmer would know exactly the moment to take a breath amidst the fast pace they moved through water.

Spotlight expertly played with the knife in his hand, spinning it over and over. He prepared himself for what had to be done. When he walked out of this place, there would be none left alive

‘This scum stands about as the Families torture and kill thousands. They have no agency. If they’re not going to act against the oppression of the regime, they have no place standing in our way.’

The knife plunged deeply into the guard’s throat, his eyes went wide and with just a little nudge, all he could think of was his wound. It encompassed everything. He couldn’t start to form a thought about the perpetrator.

It was similar to easy to divert the other guard. He was with just a few nudges on the tapestry of his attention, focusing on his friend’s wound, imminent death and the need to protect himself. Ironically losing track of the one there who had done it all.

Spotlight struck the knife at the last guard’s chest, leaving it solidly stuck there. ‘This will serve me well too’ spotlight thought, taking the guard’s gun and exiting the security room.

There was panicked running as the alarms blasted. Spotlight saw someone running in his direction and efficiently killed them with a single bullet to the head.

He went like that from room to room, disposing of every person in the building. Were they guard, scientists or even cleaners.

‘The people working here day after day not doing anything, complacently letting the regime control their lives and destroy our country from the inside. I cannot tolerate them.’

‘It’s a shame matrix is not ready for these drastic actions, the other fools and their weak will, they don’t see what needs to be done.’

‘Sometimes you need to take matters in your own hands’ Spotlight sighed, shaking the blood from his hands as he let yet another knife inside someone, stealing their gun to continue his crusade.

He moved like a ghost in the lab, a specter of death leaving no one alive, steadily approaching the central rooms where they ran the experiments and the director of this place would stay.

‘Ah, if I’d be so lucky as to encounter one of the big shots, that would be great. Who knows, maybe I can get one of the core scientists, the Sulphals bio kinetics are some of the worst scums in this country.’

‘Even if I can’t though, there’s probably some good information here.’

Spotlight kept entering all the rooms, cleaning the place of people and investigating any computers for useful information

He eventually encountered a lab deep into the facility, it had a glass wall, completely transparent for some reason, and a secured door with a biometric lock, there were no guards in front of it, so he couldn’t try to open it from this side. Inside the lab was all focused around the central stretcher, with lights and robotic arms hovering above and around it the scientist worked there, with a table full of tools by his side, the rest of the lab were unused stretcher, closed cabinets and a long balcony with some equipment spotlight dint recognize, microscopes and computers.

Spotlight could see through the glass the scientist deep into his work, completely focused on doing something to the open body of a mutant.

‘This is the scum I was talking about’ spotlight thought, coldly watching the scientist. He concentrated on the man’s attention. There was a tiny strand that showed he was hungry and missing some coffee, he must have been focused there for a long while, and spotlight diverted his focus from his subject as he increased the other ones.

The man stopped his work, sighing as he took off his gloves into the equipment’s table and moved to the door, opening the biometric lock and giving himself to the hidden executioner.

Spotlight put a bullet in the guy’s head without hesitation and moved to go inside the lab, where he expected to find some information

‘I might bring some blood to the matrix to use the guy’s power, but I don’t know what it even was, and also do that tether thingy, even work on dead people. What a troublemaker that one.’

Spotlight shook his head as he remembered some of the events of the last week ‘I had to almost kill myself with backlash setting all kinds of attention diversions on my power while I was out cold, a blessing I did that though, as while I was out matrix grew even more, even using my power himself.

‘I don’t even know if it was going to be particularly effective, but I had to try anyway, I’ve been feeling him around and I can get around him if I need as long as he’s not aware of me trying and I use my subtler way of messing with attention, maybe he just didn’t look too deeply into my power, thinking the brute force method was everything that it offered.’

‘Or it’s my constant habit of diverting everyone’s attention from thinking too deeply about me or my powers.’

He shrugged, refocusing on the situation at hand. ‘Anyway, it’s not the time yet. Matrix has a long way to go, and seeing the pit here will push him in understanding what needs to be done.’

‘And giving him a bio-kinetic power now... I don’t know the guy is obsessed; he might fall into mad scientist territory without even realizing it.’ he looked at the cooling body of the scientist he had just killed. ‘And no one wants that.’

Spotlight shook his head, smiling at the irony of losing focus himself and set to search the labs’ computers and the dead scientist’ phone.

He smiled, looking at his own cellphone where he saved everything he could find until now, hundreds of logs, emails, transactions, and all the juicy things. ‘Maybe the higher ups will listen to me now?’

He pocketed his phone, moving away from the lab. ‘now, find the administrator and then blow something up to cover our scape nicely.’

He went his way, now already knowing the place a little more intimately. He navigated his way to the administrators’ office, having to pass by more and more guards patrolling the place trying to protect the figure.

It was all useless, though. They fell like flies, Spotlight cleaning his way through them like a scythe through grass.

‘Found you, little rat,’ Spotlight thought, entering the door labeled as director. He directed the attention of the only guy in the room towards the bodies on the floor behind him and entered, unperturbed as the director pushed himself against the opposite wall in fear.

Spotlight made him focus on that fear more and more, creating a panic attack as he approached the director unhurriedly, leaving the rat cook in his own fear. When he got close, he touched the gun to the director's head, making him focus on the cold metal against his skin and its implications.

He shot the gun, looking dispassionately at the body slumping against the wall. ‘One less to go’ he thought, simply moving to search the office, finding a notebook containing even more damming evidence and the location of other places such as this.

Spotlight smiled, saving everything with a cold fury in his eyes, long since simmering into a deep hatred. ‘The hunt has only begun’

He moved again, this time not as a ghost but simple as the only living among the dead, looking at the facility’s map for something to blow up, something to serve as a reason as to why there were no guards coming their way, a simply misdirection, just like his power.

He found the gas storage for the entire facility and proceeded to carry a good amount of gas cylinders to the central lobby, humming a song as he went. It helped ease the boredom.

Then spotlight found an entire shelf of alcohol, flooding the complete area around the gas cylinders and taking the last bottle with him as he went out, it trickling a trail behind him.

‘I hope Ancestry has showed him enough,’ Spotlight thought idly as he exited the lab, ‘talked him into the right mindset. This country is an apple rotten to the core, there is no saving it. It needs to be completely remade from the ground up.’

He arrived to at the doors, letting the alcohol make a trail through the grass until the bottle ran out. He threw it away carelessly, turning to look at the lab, the night eerily silent.

‘And to do that, I need to destroy every trace of this corrupt regime.’ He aimed the gun at the trail and fired. It lit immediately, an explosion rocked the place a second after, spotlight covering his face from the light, the shock wave making him tumble.

‘Woo, that was intense.’ He laughed to himself. Settling to wait for Ancestry and Matrix as they surely would know what the explosion was. The signal to retreat.

He smiled, thinking of the new recruit, the diamond in the rough they had found. That guy was going to be the hammer with which he destroyed this country.