“I wish you hadn’t failed,” his mother said after a nearly successful suicide attempt.

The wickedest spark ignited the deadliest fire.

...

It all began with two brothers and the ninety-nine individuals cradled by the light of one and sustained by the shadow of the other.

Through their combined influence, the hundred grew into a solid thousand to become Ten-Thousands.

Scattered in their hundred respective countries and under the yoke of subtle shadow guidance and invigorating sparkles, each member reached the zenith of their domain, further empowered by mutual support and the bond they shared as the first genetically enhanced generation.

The brothers of light and darkness bore different families names, but something much deeper united them. For the brightest sibling, this had been clear since his brother shadowed a path to planetary unification—the greater good.

This should have been clear.

Sadly, while light shines unilaterally, darkness carries many shades.

Perhaps he had been deceived all along, or perhaps they had never been on the same wavelength. Maybe the war changed him, or maybe she changed him. The light brother would get an answer. At any cost.

Everything had just been… fine until that infamous day.

Like sand in an oversized hourglass, humans fell by millions. Unfortunately, much earlier than they should have.

The atom never made the difference. May it please the egalitarians.

World War III started nuclear.

Ironically, it turned out as the perfect opportunity to carry out their plan. All too soon, but time was of the essence, and something had to be done.

Both brothers sacrificed a lot from the start. Only, with the war, their journey became a one-way trip to hell, compelling them to do to their relatives what they would not have done to their worst enemies.

Manipulation, deception, enslavement, torture, murder? Mere tools at their disposal. Ten thousand executioners, one purpose to uphold. The greater good.

A thousand solid, nine thousand tools, such was the consensus among the ten Gregoryos leading the organisation. Or rather nine, with the light brother at their head. For him, it was and always was: two solid, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine tools. The greater good.

Only his brother concealed a weakness. And this one revealed by herself. A woman. With alluring eyes that ineluctably drew in like gravity and an unparalleled emotional instinct to sweep any being off their feet, she had not stolen her place of third Gregoryo.

Such personage bound with the ordinary man who held the world in his shadows. A coincidence? He couldn’t believe it. Only she was there and joined the secret, making the duo a trio.

Not for long, if it was up to him. Despite sheer control over the organisation, his attempts to get her out, mitigate her influence, and blind her sank into darkness.

Mistrust grew into hate, yet her only answer was boundless clemency. He slowly understood what his brother saw in her.

Two had become three. They formed a trio whose strengths far outweighed their individual shortcomings.

Under their yoke, their organisation, Ten-Thousands - which included the knowledge, skills, resources and influence of 10,000 gifted who spent their youth exacerbating their genetic advantage - toppled the weakest countries one by one.

These slow and silent assimilations were carried out from within by long-standing members, who occupied key positions and held the weaknesses of major authority figures. Not all politicians would sacrifice their countries for the survival of their loved ones. Three solid, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight tools. Never had so many hemicycles exploded throughout history, even less from within.

May they’ve been the most devastating terrorist group - History is Written by Victors.

From this point, problems emerged. Ah, planetary unification. The greater good. What disillusionment.

Although Ten-Thousands presented a complex nature, its organisational structure remained simple. At the head, the ten Gregoryos divided the five continents. Each led a team of nine people, both partners and competitors. These sought their position and handled a country in the same region, their homeland. One hundred individuals for one hundred countries. The cycle repeated twice, from one hundred individuals to Ten-Thousands.

From the beginning, they had fought for the same thing: the greater good. But with the world at their feet and the war over, a question arose. What next?

Many knew the greater good of one was not that of others. The rest learned it at their own expense.

Fantasies unravelled, and for the first time since its creation, Ten-Thousands experienced internal conflicts.

Planetary unification was not forthcoming, and ironically, he, who misled everyone, felt the most wronged. He brought them all together. Gave them a meaning. His light was supposed to blind everything.

And yet,

The nine other Gregoryos were all endowed with a specific will, a greater good quite different from his own.

In his endeavour, his own allies overthrew and imprisoned him. Light confined to darkness.

However, he did not lose hope. His brother would save him. Had to save him. They shared something much more robust than genetic ties: a volition.

Torture? Manipulation? Nothing can break their bond. Nothing.

A very dark joke accompanied his first prison meal; the printed dish formed a sentence. ‘Thank you, ViK.’ Only one person called him this. More than enough to freeze his blood, but his confidence stood unshakeable. A few years ago, a second person had joined the secret. His brother had only one weakness, and he should never have trusted her.

The prank proved short-lived as they confined him with all four limbs tied to the wall in total darkness. He could only feed himself through a narrow suction tube.

Months passed, and no one came. Yet he never wavered. His brother had already engulfed the world in his shadow once. It was just a matter of time.

The isolation and sensory peace were no hindrance to him. Just an opportunity to further refine the intellectual faculties that already made him unique among the gifted.

One day, the door to his isolated, darkened cell opened, letting the light shine through. The happiest and saddest moment of his life.

For a moment, he saw his brother, a mere illusion after so long in darkness. Instead, the least desirable person appeared. The problematic woman and target of all his suspicions. She crossed the door and spewed words he did not bother to interpret.

He only wanted to talk to one. All others could die.

His actions only followed his ravaged state of mind. As soon as she untied his upper manacles, his left index and middle fingers went straight for her eyes while his other hand drilled through her jugular.

As her figure fell to the ground, he ravaged her in utter madness.

When his last fingertips and knuckles shattered, he considered another way to soothe his fury. It’s when he noticed that his lower shackles had also been removed.

This disruption allowed her half-dead hand to reach his face. She stroked his cheek.

After so long without light, he couldn’t discern the socket of her punctured eyes, yet he saw.

At that moment, everything made sense. Two solid, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine tools. So that’s how it felt. To be a tool.

The Gregoryo had chosen the hundred of them. As number One, his only mistake was to believe he was his chosen one. Two solid, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine tools. Ironically, she chose light over darkness.

What a surprise that besides preparing his escape, the foolish girl had used her last moments to bloody write on his cheek: Hide.

Fate may have been cruel, but nothing will be more than revenge—his new volition.

These events had taken place close to a complete era before his birth and had nothing to do with him.

But that a reminiscence of his ancestor encroached on his mind proved how little time he had left. Just enough to make one last decision.

As humanity faced unprecedented dangers, he had developed his own conception of the greater good. The resulting unwavering conviction allowed him to detach himself from any influence, including the overwhelming pride that enveloped all Merigenians. His particularly lopsided ego blinded the stars at a time he still proudly stood as Ethan of the Divine Neurons.

And yet, for the first time, he doubted.

On his right, the body of a girl devoid of herself languished in pure agony. Her silver hair and pale complexion faded as a dark purple substance spread through her arteries, veins and then gushed out from every hollow that formed in her previously soap-smooth skin.

Aliens or humans, his companions agonised the same way, suffering the worst, venomous torture under his eyes.

Tilly, Bailey, Rosalind, Shaka, Molly, Jabril, Fang, Ghostie, Stunner and even Irvin. The few comrades - who had hitherto survived an endless hecatomb - slowly sank into a sticky sea of poisonous quicksand. He was the only one who had the luxury of glancing around, or rather the misfortune of holding a last spark of free consciousness.

Amidst the bloodbath stood a woman. Thousands of long but thin, waving snakes formed her hair. Most shared a viscous, dark purple hue. They multiplied steadily, splitting to fall to the ground, then corrupted the surroundings, expanding her domain.

Most other snakes remained dormant in their multi-coloured shimmering hue. Only a few serpentine strands stood out. The second most prominent appeared as liquid and cyan as the soothing Caribbean water. In contrast, the third and fourth raged fierce thunderbolts and swirled like growing hurricanes. Dormant.

Her eyes sometimes shone an aggregate of these shades through her living hairs - with an extra, piercing golden radiance.

With a vicious smile, she raised her arms as if signalling the start of a show. The bodies of his near-dead companions rose.

In a macabre dance, they attacked each other. A giant black fist, whose wrists and arms appeared to be devoid of ligaments, crashed down on the skull of a mole-like civilised alien. The silver-haired woman beheaded a green-haired one with a graceful stroke of her sword. The head rolled towards Ethan. Her lifeless cyan eyes spun endlessly toward him, and her lips curled into a horrific smile.

Ethan gazed down impassively, then raised his stare.

The monstrous woman glanced back. “Feel,” she said. Her tone contained an unquenchable loathing as if the very concept of hatred manifested in her word.

Sadness, fear, and then madness raged from his corrupted Dark-Core. Since his first moments of consciousness, his unwavering will had subjugated all his subconscious abilities, yet for the first time, he unwillingly felt.

This whirlwind of emotion destroyed him from within, disturbing him with irrational thoughts. With emotional thoughts. Tilly.

The greater good: Humankind.

Tilly.

Humankind.

Tilly.

Humankind.

Tilly.

He knew they wouldn’t survive. Any exchange would only be detrimental, an unnecessary risk—a rewardless sacrifice.

As Ethan’s mouth half-opened, some purple liquid poured out.

“Speak,” she said.

A single spark of his tainted Dark-Core recovered. Just enough to utter some intent. “What do you want?” He addressed her from will to will.

Her lips turned up as if she had had the thrill of her life. “Your suffering.”

Despite knowing very much how it would end, Ethan couldn’t help. Ah, irrationality. “Why?” He asked.

Her serpentine hair stood up, revealing pure anger through the twitching of her tanned skin. “Why? Why?!”

The half-giant black man - who had unwillingly left a crushed human-sized mole on the ground - approached the alien species. His mouth opened and revealed teeth as sharp as white. He hollered in agony first, despite being the eater.

Ethan could merely observe as she forcefully turned two friends into prey and predator.

She giggled until the last bite, then shifted her attention to him. “You picked on my poor baby.”

A baby? No, a monster. A being with a boundless ego, keen to sacrifice anything for his benefit. Someone with enough power to immerse everything in his darkness. Humanity’s greatest threat. The Last Gregoryo.

Even in death, his unleashed will destroyed everything in its path and perverted the minds of the mightiest, only to fulfil one last whim.

“All right. I’ll suffer as much as you want.” With each additional word, he failed to live up to the core concept he had developed. “At the charge of a single wish.” An unequivocal reluctance mixed with a certain inner peace.

The woman approached. Detaching from her hair, a snake swarm crawled over his body. The liquid and the gaseous ones slithered their way through the gaps in his face while others sank their electric fangs into his putrified skin. Organically speaking, he had long been dead. Not even she would have dared to keep him alive knowing what he was capable of - little remnants of life remained only in his decaying Dark-Core.

“Perhaps. What do you value the most?” She asked.

Lulled by her deadliest reptiles, he might keep quiet but not lie. “Humankind.”

The mouth of his corpse opened wide. Through it, a slimy turquoise cobra emerged. Far thicker than other snakes, a tiny half-broken obsidian diamond twirled in its centre.

The woman stared at the new serpent, discarding the falling corpse behind. “Your wish?”

An infinite sadness seized him as if his life had no more meaning. Perhaps influenced by his new host, he increasingly desired the salvation of the one whose death he had masterminded.

The liquid snake flicked its tongue out, emitting a shrill sound. “Let Tilly go.”

“Very well, the Amuse-bouche lasted long enough.”

Wind serpents cut the silver-haired woman to pieces. Fiery snakes reduced the remains to ash, and then a blazing tornado blew them away.

May she rest in peace.

The fate of his other companions proved quite different. Assimilated by the purple quicksand, only snakes containing their respective attributes re-emerged. These attached to her hair, adding new coloured strands.

The woman turned toward him, both kept alive and entrapped within the cyan cobra. She reached up, stroking its cheek. “Now connected, may you feel my suffering. I will feast on yours till the end of mankind.”

Perceiving the bottomless pit of heartache she strained to fill through her every action, Ethan realised, far too late, that the will of the last Gregoryo never drove this.

Someone had ensnared him in a contest that wasn’t his.

Sinking into the floating bed that caressed him with relaxing ripples bordering on the divine, a teenager awoke. His dazzling dendrites, like hair, flashed from turquoise to a light purple, not unlike the representation of a neuronal network.

Last night he had a strange, somewhat inexplicable dream, of which only snippets surfaced—an unprecedented shame for young Ethan. So far, no matter the depth of his slumber, such stages of awareness abided his will as a tool to refine his understanding of the world.

A never-ending purge, pushing humans to commit the worst atrocities in pursuit of survival, formed the thread of his recent nightmare, whose culmination alone remained discernable.

What shocked him the most was not its decade-long duration - his perception of time being altered in such a state - but its inherent fantasist aspect. It signed the first time any form of irrationality permeated his mind.

Notwithstanding a hectic agenda, Ethan refused to jump to this conclusion. Every bit will be analysed.

One day at a time, and tomorrow marked the dawn of a new era. Although far too young to seize the best opportunities of the incoming interplanetary age, his ambition remained overweening. Sooner or later, Mars would cradle the greatest human civilisation.