“The early ’00s were a nightmare. Honestly, I still don’t understand how society didn’t fully collapse then. Well, I guess it did, in a way.”

Who the hell is this girl? What had she done? Had she used a power? I didn’t even see her move, and the guy just dropped dead with a metal rod embedded in his temple. As if things weren’t bad enough, instead of being stuck here with a mafioso warden, I was now stuck with a super-powered psychopath.

Is it wrong that I’m more freaked out about being faced with her than the fact that there is a literal dead body at my feet? I should be freaked out about the dead body, right? Rationally speaking, the only threat, the only unknown in this situation was the super-power wielding creepy girl in front of me, not the dead guy on the floor.

I needed to focus on the whole situation. But as usual, my brain was refusing to fully cooperate. This time at least, it was understandable as there was A FUCKING DEAD BODY NEXT TO ME.

“If you’re not going to say thank you, can you at least get us out of here?” She interrupted my train of thoughts with an exasperated voice.

“Uh… What?” I was taken aback. “How?”

I didn’t have time to dwell on the more macabre part of this whole situation. Not while we were still trapped and in danger.

“Use this.” As she spoke, an angle grinder materialized out of thin air in front of me and immediately fell to the floor.

“Holy shit! You’re an Impacted! I knew it! That’s how you got this guy!” I exclaimed in a loud whisper as I stared in fascination at the tool she was pointing at me. “What else can you do? Can you summon weapons?”

“No, just tools. But they can be deadly,” she said intently. “You can do all the fanboying you want when we’re done with this, though.”

I shook out of my stupor and grabbed the power tool. I was about to turn it on before I realized something.

“Wait...” I said, “...won’t the noise alert them? I mean, I’ve never used one of these, but I’m pretty sure they make a hell of a lot of noise. ”

“Shit, you’re right,” she said. “Hang on a second.”

She seemed to focus intensely for a few seconds, and a giant pair of bolt cutters clattered on the floor next to where I stood.

“Try to cut the chains, will you? You just put one of the handles on the floor and hold it under your foot and push the other one down with your arms.” She said as she squirmed on the floor to try to get closer to me.

“...Alright.” I gulped as I grabbed the tool by its massive handles. It took a few tries until I got the proper hang of it, but I managed to snap a few links in the—several, I now knew—chains that bound her.

“God, that feels better. Thanks for that, son,” she said with satisfaction.

Son? Who does she think she is? On the other hand, she literally killed a guy. I should probably not say that out loud. Not that I was going to anyway. She ignored my inner turmoil and shook off the bits of chains loosely strung around her feet.

“Call me ‘A’ by the way.” She said while tying her dirty hair in a loose ponytail with… wait, is that a zip-tie? “What do I call you?” she continued.

“Uh, you can call me Alex, I guess,” I muttered. Wait, do I need like a super-hero name now? Or a villain one, seeing what we had just done.

“Alright, Mr. Guess,” she deadpanned. “What are you in for?”

I honestly couldn’t explain how or why, but at that moment, I found that funny. It wasn’t that the situation wasn’t dire or that I wasn’t stressed out, but the fact that I was stuck in a cell with somebody who appeared to simply not care about our situation and made shitty jokes had noticeably positive effects on my anxiety levels. Her candidness and the fact that she was so flippant about this whole situation made me forget about it for a little while. I think that this is the reason why I started trusting her the tiniest bit at that point.

The way I answered felt almost natural. As if I was greeting an old friend whose antics I was fed up with.

“Okay then…” I started, looking at the padlock on the barred door in front of me. I tried jamming the bolt cutter to reach for the shackle but found that the tool was too large to fit. “The bolt cutters don’t seem to be the solution. How do you plan on escaping?”

“I don’t. I’m here for a reason, and I’m following my initial plan. Feel free to come with.” She replied with an unsettling smile. She then casually conjured a crowbar in her hand and jammed it between the cell door and the wall. “This shit would be way fucking easier with Grindy.” She spat between two seemingly fruitless attacks on the door frame.

“Grindy?” I asked in puzzlement.

She let go of the crowbar with a sigh, which disappeared before it could even hit the floor.

“My angle grinder,” She said, without turning to me. “Any idea of how we could get out of the cell?”

I looked at our former’s warden body on the floor, which was currently lying a couple of meters away from me. I found it disturbing how little blood had spewed out of the wound; the still-present metal rod acted as some kind of a drain stopper.

The fact that a dead body stood mere centimeters away from me still felt surreal. As if it hadn’t really happened. That girl is dangerous. I better not do anything stupid. I thought to myself. I stared at the dead body next to me for a few more seconds before turning my gaze back to her.

“I think there should be a set of keys somewhere, but I don’t see how we could reach him over there unless you have more range on your power,” I said. “Or is there something you could, um… summon to pull him closer?”

Ed’s body had fallen on his back a good two meters and a half away from us. His feet on A’s side of the cell and his head—with the big metal rod in it—towards the stairs.

“Not really, I can throw tools and stuff and pretty much conjure them wherever there’s space available in a 2-3 meters bubble around me, but I can’t pull on anything, let alone something I haven’t conjured.” She answered pensively.

“Do you have something with enough reach—wait, did you say you could conjure stuff wherever there was space available?” I suddenly asked.

“Pretty much yeah, there has to be something that can be moved where my tools are going to appear. It works pretty well in gases and liquids. A lot less inside of walls and people,” she said with a giggle.

I shivered at the implications.

“The only thing I have that’s long enough to reach him are my rebars, but I don’t see myself dragging that 90kg dead son of a bitch all the way to here using just a piece of metal.” She continued.

“Wait. I think I thought of something.” I said. “Do you have anything with a sturdy strap?” I asked. “And a thin and long piece of metal?”

“Yes, and yes.” As she spoke, she conjured a massive circular saw with a big strap and a long steel rod on the floor of my cell.

Smiling in wonder, I unhooked the strap from the scary looking piece of equipment and hooked it tight around two of my cell door’s bars. I placed one end of the rod in a gap and started twisting. With a heavy groan, the metal bent slightly, as did the bar in my hands.

“Yay, I knew it was a good idea to bring you along.” She cheered from her cell.

“What?” I asked in confusion. “You didn’t…”

“Never mind.” She interrupted as she summoned a second set of our makeshift skeleton key to get to work on her own door cell.

I tugged hard a couple more times on my contraption, deforming both the metal rod and the cell bars equally. By the tenth twist on the knot, the metal rod started looking more like a macaroni than a spaghetti. It was tedious, and I was sweating heavily, but the work was paying off. The hole created by the bent metal bars was not wide enough for me to pass through, but it eventually would if I managed a few more centimeters.

“Hey, do you have any more of these?” I asked while wagging the bent metal rod. She was having an easier time than me, it seemed, as the hole she had made was noticeably wider than mine.

“Yeah, sure.” She grunted while the bent piece of metal in my hand disappeared, soon replaced by a brand new one.

I got to work, and after another good five minutes, I unhooked everything from the door and frantically tried to squeeze my frame between the bars. I had to unhook my belt buckle, but in the end, I managed to get out. With some surprise, I realized that the crazy woman had beaten me to it.

“Awesome!” I yelled in victory. I froze as I realized my mistake a little too late and started when I felt a gloved hand swiftly covering my mouth.

“Are you fucking stupid?” She whisper-yelled sharply.

At this particular moment, the anxiety came back like a slap to the face. I was in grave danger, after all. I shouldn’t be fucking around. We waited a few seconds in tense silence for signs of our captors noticing me, but the only sound that came to us was the distant echo of dripping water.

“Sorry,” I squeaked out after she let go of me.

She just placed a finger on her lips as she cautiously crossed the room to peek at the top of the stairs. After a few tense seconds in silence, she sighed and looked at me.

“What am I going to do with you?” She sighed. “Anyway, so. Do you know the layout of this place?”

“No, I don’t even know where we are. They knocked me out before I got here,” I replied. “Unless we’re still at the old clinic in the Capucine district, which I doubt.”

“Huh? There used to be a clinic there?” She asked as if it were important information. “Anyway, no, we’re a few kilometers away, at the edge of town, close to the big ass roundabout next to Agnolles. Like not far from the industrial park.”

“Shit!” I swore when the realization hit me. “We’re in a virtually deserted part of town, especially at night. So people probably won’t hear us calling for help!” Anxiety had finally decided to come creeping back. No. I mentally corrected. It was there all along. I had just forgotten about it.

“You got this whole thing backward there, Mr. Guess. It’s them that won’t be heard screaming.” She giggled, a maniacal grin creeping up on her face.

The most frightening thing about that girl, I reflected, wasn’t her power or the fact that she acted like an actual serial killer. But rather the fact that her behavior seemed to go from perfectly reasonable to utterly insane at seemingly random intervals. I didn’t want to end as collateral damage from her upcoming butchery, so I just laughed nervously.

“Now, you have a choice there, mister. You either come with me, and we’ll deal with these guys, or you try to make your way out of here on your own without getting caught. Or killed.” She said casually. “So, what will it be, Mr. Guess?” She grinned again, showing an impeccably straight row of teeth.

This felt like an actual bargain with the devil. Would I forsake my soul and plunge into the unknown with that crazy girl? Or would I simply try my chance at running away? This was one of the rare times in my life where I could clearly see which one was the more rational decision. I knew for a fact that the second choice, albeit uncertain, was the more logical one. I will probably never know whether I made the right call in the end.

“Um…” I started. “I think I’ll come with you.”

Wait, what am I doing? I’m lucky to be alive in the first place; why would I try to stay with her? Because for a microsecond, I felt a thrill. More than that, I felt excited about something. It had literally been years since I had felt anything motivating me. The madness of it all, the uncertainty of the outcome, the craziness of that girl… It felt like standing on top of a cliff and feeling l’appel du vide and actually wanting to jump. Not because I wanted to end my life, quite the opposite, in fact. I wanted to do it because it would make me feel alive.

It was settled. I would follow that girl, see why she wants to do to these people. Maybe if I go, I can stop her from killing… too much.

“Oh?” She asked, genuinely surprised. “Are you aware that you might die just as well if you come with me?”

All the joy and lunacy was gone from her voice. She sounded genuinely surprised at my answer.

“Yes. And I plan on surviving. I think I’m quite durable.” I said, absentmindedly rubbing my deformed finger.

“What do you mean?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.

“I also happen to have an ability… Although I came into it only today.” I explained.

“Oh.” Her brow quirked in interest. “Please do go on.”

“I think I… Uh… I think I have a healing factor. Like Wolverine or Deadpool, you know?” Speaking of Deadpool… There was a similarity in the demeanor with A’s. Actually, scratch that. Deadpool was just goofy-crazy. A, on the other hand, was more of a… bipolar kind of crazy.

“No, I don’t. I don’t watch anime. What’s a healing factor?” She asked, slightly irritated.

I forced myself to not object to her mistake. Not the time, Alex.

“I can heal wounds very fast, I think,” I said, raising my finger. “This was cut off this morning. It regrew in a few seconds.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened a little bit. “Wait. So…”

She materialized a box cutter and immediately proceeded to stab me in the arm.

“What the fu—” Is all that came out of my mouth before she covered it with her hand.

“Stop screaming. We’re trying to be somewhat sneaky, you idiot,” She loud-whispered in exasperation.

“You just fucking stabbed me!” I spat through gritted teeth. “Why would you fucking do that?”

“Well, I had to check, obviously,” she said as if it were the most absurd question in the world.

“No, you didn’t!” I hissed.

I let go of the wound I was holding for a few seconds to reveal a still bloody but closed scar where she had stabbed at me.

“Okay, that’s pretty dope. You’ve definitely gone up a tier in my friend list,” she said excitedly.

I had to admit I was impressed as well. The pain hadn’t actually been that bad, and the wound closed in a matter of seconds. I’m pretty sure I could shrug off a bullet wound at this point. Well, provided it didn’t hit me in the brain, that is. Although, I wasn’t exactly keen on finding out.

“So, where do we start?” I asked as I forced myself to ignore the insanity of my current predicament

“Upstairs,” she said as she pointed upward with a nail gun I hadn’t seen being summoned.

We quietly made our way up the stairs and ended up in a dimly lit concrete hallway. The ceiling was relatively low, even though it paused no problems for either of us since we both hardly reached 175cm. The walls looked to be of an off-yellow color, but I figured they were most likely tinted by the barely working neon lights on the ceiling.

“Where to now?” I whispered.

“Opposite of where the exit is,” she said confidently.

“Okay. That way, then.” I indicated the exit sign standing a few meters away from us.

We followed the long hallway, carefully peaking through each door as we passed. Most of them were either heavily run down, had the roof caved in, or were simply locked. After a few minutes of sneaking around, we started hearing voices from one of the rooms at the far end of one of the hallways.

The door was slightly ajar, and what looked like cigarette smoke was seeping out of the opening. The room seemed to be brightly lit, and the floor in front of it was noticeably less dusty than the rest of the building.

As we carefully advanced towards the end of the corridor, the sounds inside the room grew louder. I could distinctly hear chatter, laughter, and the faint sound of hard rap music. We stopped in one of the adjacent rooms a good ten meters away from the lit room and crouched down behind the wall. The room was cramped and empty, and the walls bore marks of the past shelves that must have garnished it. This probably used to be some kind of supply closet.

“So, what’s the next step?” I asked nervously.

“You can stay here and warn me if more come in. You’ll probably be dead weight anyway,” the girl said bluntly.

The air shimmered ever so slightly as miscellaneous equipment started popping out of thin air. The first item was a pair of blue coveralls that she quickly donned over her current clothes. Next, she summoned a pair of massive wrenches that she strapped in her coverall’s tool belt, followed by a bulkier cordless nail gun that replaced the one she had been carrying until now. She followed with a pair of sturdy-looking security boots, and finally, she produced an all-black welding helmet that she immediately donned.

I eyed her warily as she got up with a grunt. Even with her somewhat diminutive frame, she looked threatening. She looked at me for a second before summoning another helmet.

“Here, put this on. It’d be really stupid if you died now,” she said, throwing me the helmet. “I’ll call you if I need anything.”

I struggled to catch it and cringed at the clumsy display. I put it on, the same way A had, and looked at her through the tinted glass-pane. I could see quite well, even though the visor was tinted.

“Wait, what happened to being sneaky?” I asked.

“I didn’t want them to flee from this place. Now I know that they are as far away from the exit as possible, and I’m pretty sure they’re all in there. Or the important ones, anyway.” She paused. “And, also, I didn’t want you to get killed.”

“What? Why?” I asked in confusion.

“You’re funny, and you didn’t freak out when you saw me kill that dude. Bonus, on top of that, your power is even weirder than mine,” she said with some seriousness in her voice. “Call it solidarity between fellow impacted, or something.”

“I—uh…” I couldn’t come up with a reply as she exited the tiny room with resolve in her stride. I waited anxiously as the sounds of her footsteps quickly slowed down. I didn’t dare imagine what would come next. Should I have gone with her? After all, she’s the reason why I’m out of that cell. Plus, I’m definitely more durable than her.

I debated with myself in silence as the atmosphere grew more intense. After a few seconds of tense quietness, a voice erupted from the lit room.

“How the fuck did you get out? You shouldn’t have come here!” the man yelled.

“Pizza delivery!” a voice I was now quite familiar with answered.

“What the—” the man who had spoken got cut off by what I assumed was her starting her assault.

I heard the sound of metal on flesh, then the room exploded with sounds of gunshots, yells, and grunts.

I was now positively freaked out. My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. Somehow, ‘fight’ won. I rushed out of the closet towards the room where the girl had entered. The sounds of gunshots resounded in my ears, way louder than I thought those would sound like in real life. When I reached the doorway, my mind drew a blank as I took in the scene before me. What I initially thought would be a small room with a few people playing cards was, in fact, a full-blown drug and money den. There was, I reckoned, at least ten men in the room, five of which now lay on the floor, motionless. One of them was the man who had caught me at the abandoned clinic, I noted with morbid satisfaction.

While the chaotic bullet storm raged in the room, I frantically flicked my gaze around the room to lock it on the remaining five men who had taken refuge behind an overturned table. One of them was that Samir guy, the one who had caught me. They all had a gun in hand, and one of them, a well dressed older gentleman with a shiny earring on his ear, even sported what looked like to be an uzi.

Out of their table’s top—now flipped on its side—protruded several metal pieces ranging from nails to rods like the ones A and I had used to break out of our cells. Luckily enough for the bastards behind it, the table looked like it was made out of a big piece of wood resting on a steel panel. So it had taken the punishment quite well.

I looked towards the other side of the room, where A was currently taking cover behind a concrete pillar, marred with bullet chips and impacts. It looked like an overdone matrix shooting scene, and the floor was filled with blood and rubble.

My mind struggled to think of a plan of action, as one of the thugs—Samir, I noted—looked at me from behind their table. Panic seized me yet again as he yelled something at his colleagues that I couldn’t quite hear with all their guns still firing.

The man closest to the one who had his eyes trained on me yelled something back as he took notice of my presence. I had less than a second to act. I ran straight at them, I didn’t know if I was truly invincible or not, but this was the only thing my reptilian brain could think of.

I yelled out incoherently as I ran towards them to catch their full attention. Three out of the five of them immediately trained their guns at me. I ran full tilt to close the few meters between us when they started shooting. After a couple of misses, I felt a sharp pain in my left arm, then my leg, then my torso. That last one stopped all my momentum. I tripped and fell to the ground as I clutched my chest with my right arm.

I could only think of how hot the bullet wounds felt. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it felt as if I was being prodded with soldering irons. I clenched my teeth and screamed. Or tried to. One of my lungs must have been punctured as I couldn’t get any sounds out of my mouth.

A cacophony of firing sounds resounded as the earring guy fired his Uzi in my back. Strangely, pain and sounds started to fade as I felt warm blood pooling underneath me. My vision blurred as I smelled sulfur and tasted iron.

“Are you dead?” I heard a voice over the tinnitus. The ringing gradually receded as I regained my senses.

I felt numb. At first, I feared my spine might have been severed at some point until I felt the steel tip of a security boot kicking my shin.

“Ow,” I let out weakly while spitting some blood and drool.

“Oh, would you look at that! You weren’t even lying!” the voice said, sounding surprised. My mind really struggled to remember who this voice belonged to. I groaned as my surroundings became sharper and louder.

“Hey, you alright?” The voice spoke again as I tried to move my arms.

It took unbelievable effort, but I managed to turn to my back after a solid half-minute of struggling. I winced at the exertion, but I managed to catch my breath steadily in the following instants.

After an immeasurable amount of time, my mental faculties finally came back. The voice belonged to that girl. Did I know her name? Did it start with an A?

I was lying on the floor where I had been shot down earlier. Wait, I’m not dead? Holy shit!

“I’m not dead,” I croaked in surprise.

“Yup,” the girl answered.

“Are the guys with the guns dead?” I asked as worry started creeping back into my mind.

“Yup,” she simply repeated.

I sighed in relief. At least I wasn’t at an immediate risk now. I could stop panicking and go back to the much more familiar level of anxiety I was used to.

I kept breathing for a couple of minutes with my eyes closed. I was starting to doze off when A spoke again.

“Are you going to sleep here?” She asked, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“What? No! Of course not!” I replied with a start—the fear of staying here longer than I should prompted my body to finally sit up.

This was the first moment where I realized that nothing hurt. I should have been in pain, though. Shouldn’t I? I mean, I got shot several times!

I wearily looked at my left arm, where I knew a few of the bullets had been lodged, to find only reddish messy scar tissue. The skin was all wrinkly and venous, and it pulsed with creepy organic swells. But the fact remained that I was alive.

“I survived actual bullet wounds,” I disbelievingly muttered.

“Yup! And you actually spat the bullets out as well.” The girl said, pointing to various bits of crushed metal on the floor. “Pretty gross stuff.”

I looked at the remains of the blood-covered pieces of metal on the floor in front of me. I don’t know whether that happening was a good thing or not, but it was decidedly gross.

“How?” I asked. “How did they exit my body?”

“The easiest way they could have,” the girl shrugged.

So my power also covered bullet wounds. It was comforting, in a way. Although I still clearly felt the effects of blood loss as I had never felt this weak before.

“How did you do it?” I asked, looking up at her.

“Well, your well-timed distraction was a window narrow enough to deal with them,” she said, pointing behind me this time.

The scene I laid my eyes upon was one of pure carnage. Three headless bodies lay against each other on the floor next to a massive circular buzz saw blade that was half embedded in the adjacent wall. Further away stood a fourth body, this one with an enormous hole in his forehead and two long nails embedded in his eyes. A few meters away, against the far wall of the room, rested the three missing heads.

I gagged at the morbid scene. It took all I had in me not to expel the content of my stomach. The sheer strain that healing the bullet wounds had put on me seemed to convince my body that it should salvage whatever calories it could. I looked up at the author of the grim display, who had now raised the front panel of her mask and was smoking a cigarette.

Oddly enough, the girl seemed less scary after all that mayhem. Perhaps it was because she looked like she had run a marathon and was barely standing, or perhaps it was because of this whole situation’s surrealism. Maybe I just lost too much blood, and I’ve just fucking lost it.

“Why did you kill them?” I asked. “I mean, I know they screwed you—and me—over, but couldn’t have we called for the cops or something?”

She eyed me for a few long seconds without answering, a faint sneer on her face. Finally, she sighed and reached into her jacket, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She threw it at me without a word and proceeded to take a hit on what my nose finally informed me was NOT, in fact, a cigarette. I carefully unfolded the sheet to find a picture of a young woman, with tangled brown hair and torn up clothes, lying crying on the floor. I noticed that a chain seemed to be clasped around her ankle.

I threw a confused look at A as I struggled to understand the implication of what was depicted in the picture I held.

“This was one of their many victims. The fuckers you see here were all accomplices in her kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder,” she said, her tone gone hard for the first time since I had heard her speak.

“Oh…” was all I managed to say.

“Yeah.” She scoffed. “What you saw tonight was not even a fucking fragment of what these walking bags of cocks deserved.”

“Why didn’t you call—” I started.

“The cops?” She interrupted. “I did. Turns out at least two of them are in on it, Officer De Sevin and Martel. They covered everything up and blackmailed me.” She said with barely restrained fury.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said.

“Please don’t even,” she cut me off. She took a long hit on her not-a-cigarette. “Want to do something meaningful about it? Kill slavers and rapists.”

I shut my mouth before I made her angrier. I lowered my eyes in silence as I inspected the rest of the room in front of me. The other dead bodies I had seen before entering, I now realized, were riddled with 5cm long nails, most of them embedded in their chests and torsos. I couldn’t help but notice that one of the guys that had been shooting at me, the one with the earring, in fact, was missing.

“Where’s the other guy, the one with the earring? Did he get out?” I asked suddenly.

Her face grew even somber at my question.

“Nah, he’s still here.” She replied, nodding towards a pile of trash bags.

I looked at it in confusion when the realization dawned on me. The things I thought were just a pile of trash and rubble were actually limbs, cut up, and peaking out of huge industrial-grade trash bags.

My eyes widened in shock as I looked back at the girl.

“You—” I started.

“We have to get rid of the bodies. I don’t think anybody in the neighborhood has heard—or cares—about the gunshots but better be safe than sorry. I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay here a little longer.” She said as she threw her roach on the floor.

“My name is actually Alison, by the way.” She said with a disquieting smile as she extended a hand towards me.

I don’t know why, but I took it.