The room was literally melting. The smell of barbeque made the Paul now, after all the pain and suffering and death he went through, want to vomit. This wasn’t because he was soft or something. This was simply because as a human being the thought of their own kind being turned to something delicious was disgusting.

A couple bodies collapsed on the ground. Paul could see they used to be guards, but not from their completely destroyed facial structures or anything like that. He knew it because he knew there were guards in this room and, as far as he could, there were only the bodies and his sister left. If he relied on the look of the bodies...he couldn’t even tell if they were male or female.

His sister. Paul found his sister strapped to a bed. She killed all the guards around her and rendered the electrical collar useless, but that didn’t mean she was safe. In fact, she was in more danger than before.

Alia could control fire, but that was it. In the moment of her fear and anger, she used every strand of power within her to create a fire as large as possible. Without being limited by its creator, the fire ravaged endlessly and killed almost everyone in the room. Unfortunately, Fire needed oxygen to burn. Coincidently, Alia also needs oxygen to breathe. Trapped in a concealed room with just a few small openings for air movement, Alia was already fainting from a lack of oxygen. Even though the fire died out as its controller fell, the air it consumed didn’t magically reappear. If Paul wasn’t here and wasn’t able to open the door and allow fresh air inside at the last moment, the girl would die of suffocation.

Luckily, that was nothing but an “if”.

A few gunshots broke the restrains. Paul knelt down and carried Alia between his arms. Just as he was about to leave the room, he heard a pained groan.

Looking down, he saw a man crawling on the ground. Every inch of skin on his body was melted. The only difference was the degree of the burn. A desperate voice came from what was left of his mouth.

The man was in pain. The feeling of briefly touching a lit stove could make most people scream. Multiply that feeling by god knew how many times and continuously put it on a single person was cruel beyond words.

Paul bit his lips. He could see the plea in the man’s eyes. The man wanted him to do something. He didn’t want Paul to save him. Instead, he was begging Paul to kill him and end his misery. He was already in hell, and death was an escape.

Paul drew his weapon and aimed at the man’s head. Just as the man’s eyes shined thankfulness, a weak voice suddenly stopped Paul’s action.

“Don’t…”

Paul realized it was from the girl in his arms. Ignoring the noise from the maimed man and wasting not even a single second to end his pain, Paul returned Alia to her feet. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah.” Alia looked at the man on the ground. Paul swore he saw a sense of satisfaction in her eyes, but he wasn’t sure because Alia quickly turned back to him. “You came back.” She said with somewhat excitement. She never doubted whether or not her brother would come for her, but she was doubtful of if Paul could make it.

He did.

“Yes.” Paul shrugged, barely able to hide his smile. “Now is not a place for words. We need to move now.” He raised his gun at the man once again, and once again his sister stopped him.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting him out of his misery. You can turn around if you want.” Paul thought her sister couldn’t bear looking at the man she maimed and tortured. “Look, he is going to die anyway. I just want him to die painlessly…”

“Then that’s the problem,” Alia said, to her brother’s full surprise. “Do you know what he did to me?”

Paul frowned. He didn’t like where this was going.

Alia grabbed onto the specialized collar on her neck and pulled it apart with incredible strength. Beneath the metal device was a ring of burnt flesh.

The girl touched the wound. It stung, but she kept her hand there.

“He hurt me. He experimented on me and wanted to dissect me...and now I’m going to hurt him...by keeping him alive.” Alia licked her lips as she saw the fear in the man’s eyes. “An eye for an eye.”

What she just went through was more than enough to generate some mental problems in the little girl’s fragile brain. PTSD was a deadly tool. Alia was betrayed by the people she once trusted with all her heart, and the more trust she had for the military, the more hatred she now holds. Just look at the guards. She lit the guards on fire and watched them scream and burn without a sense of regret.

Alia was always weak minded. The only difference was that in the past she covered up her weakness by being normal and trusting others to protect her. Now, she covered her pain by retaliating those that wounded her with everything she had.

“That’s enough! You don’t even know that’s the person that hurt you! Even if he is, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Vengeance is never the solution!” Paul didn’t know, and didn’t care, what the man did to Alia, or even if the man was the person that hurt Alia because everything that distinguished the man from other bodies was burnt beyond recognition, but he knew if he allowed Alia to do things her way today, then he would lose her. Today she could torture a wounded man, then tomorrow she could kill someone because she didn’t like the way they spoke, and the day after that she could be killing someone because she was bored or in a bad mood. Violence was a dangerous slope, and once she had her hands stained, life would be the cheapest thing in the world.

Paul already knew what it was like to take lives, and now that he was a distance away from combat and life and death situations and that he saw his sister was safe, he was starting to think logically. As he went back on what he did, he was horrified by his own actions.

The last guard told him what he wanted to know, and still he killed him. Now that he thought about it, he made a daughter lose her father and made a wife lose her husband for no reason at all.

The man was defenseless, and Paul still killed him

This was beyond what had to be done. This was simply cruelty.

This was bad enough, and Paul would do everything he could to keep his precious sibling from falling down the same cliff.

Suddenly, his mind went to the woman behind everything. Jean Turner. She was at most a year older than they were, but it was as if she had everything under control. He wondered if this was part of her plan as well. Maybe turning both him and his sister into brutal killers that could slaughter anyone that stood in her path without a sense of regret was what Jean wanted.

Paul frowned. He couldn’t allow that. He could allow himself to be turned into a monster for the sake of his sister, but he would never allow little Alia to be a killing machine of Jean as well.

After all, she was the last of his family, and he loved her with all his heart.

With renewed determination, Paul turned and, with lightning speed, pumped a single bullet into the man’s head, ending the poor soul’s misery.

“Paul!” The man expected retaliation, but he didn’t expect it to be this significant. Instantly, he felt himself pushed back by a wave of heat. Luckily, Alia pulled back her power before any harm could be done, and the slight burn on Paul was healed almost instantly by his power.

The two stayed silent for a while as Paul got back on his feet.

Finally, the man spoke quietly.

“Let’s go.”

The two walked out of the hell without another word.