May 2023 - Side Story (Pt. 2) (Patreon)

Hey guys 👋 Here's the second part of the story 😄

[Part 1]

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Around an hour later…

You’re sitting in your car, eyes glued to the small, nondescript house right across the street. The engine of your car is off so as not to attract unwanted attention and your driver’s window is cracked open to let some of the fresh night air in.

Your target should have been home like, half an hour ago. Fidgeting restlessly in your seat, you wonder if someone has somehow gotten to him or whether he’s currently lying dead in a ditch or an alley somewhere in the city, and that all of your efforts will be for nothing and that—

Oh, wait, there he is! Your heart almost soars in joy. He’s walking down the sidewalk and he’s looking very tense and jumpy. He keeps glancing behind him as if he expects someone to jump out of his shadow. Well, to be fair, this is not the best part of the city. The houses are less taken care of and some of the streetlights keep flickering—a few are outright just dead—making the street pretty dim. But even you have to admit now that the darkness around just feels a bit… off now that he’s here. Maybe it’s just his anxiousness getting to you.

As he reaches his front door, he glances one last time around him and you instinctively duck down, trying to make yourself as little as possible in case he peers through your car window. After a few seconds, you take a peek again and you see that he’s already inside.

And what the fuck— You’re pretty sure you just saw a shadowy figure darting for a second around his side door. It might be your imagination, but you’re not taking a risk. You slip on a balaclava maks and do a quick check on all your weapons before getting out of your car and swiftly make your way to the house.

Before you can even decide on where or how to get in, a loud crash and a gurgling bloodcurdling scream cut through the dead silence of the night. Fuck! You run to the side where you saw the shadowy figure and see that the side door is actually open.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Without hesitation, you bolt in, not caring about the ruckus you are making as your heavy boots hit the old wooden floor. It’s not a big house and it doesn’t take long for you to enter the living room and see the crime scene.

Your heart sinks as you see your target lying in a pool of his own blood, his chest is rising up and down shallowly while his injuries are still spurting blood at a fatal rate. You don’t need any extensive medical knowledge to know that this guy is done for.

His eyes are open wide and filled with terror as he looks up at you. He glances at something behind and… above you and he wheezes just in time for you to quickly roll out of the way. You feel the swipe of a knife as it whizzes by your cheek, the cold steel barely kissing your skin.

Getting into a crouch position, you take out your pistol and fire a few shots at the area. You catch a glimpse of a figure in a full black combat suit before the surrounding shadows rush to cover them from the hail of bullets.

You step back slightly as the mass of shadows drops down from the ceiling like a goddamn bat. It turns out to be the right decision as not a second too late, the figure rushes—no, more like launches out of the shadow’s embrace right at you, a combat knife poised to deal a fatal strike to your neck.

If it were not for the combat training and instincts that your father drilled into you ever since you were young, you would probably be dead already, drowning in your own blood like the poor guy. You manage to stumble back a bit more, leaning your body as far away as possible, and your opponent’s knife only ends up swiping at the air.

Launching so far and so quickly like that is not normal. This person must’ve used an ability to enhance their combat capabilities. Dual-powered, possibly? Shadow manipulation and something you’re not sure about yet.

Shit, this is bad. The person is not a slouch in combat it seems and with their two powers, a head-on fight of prowess, you’ll most likely lose. Not to mention you’re not as young as you were. The only way you’ll win is to use your experience to outplay them and hopefully copy and disable their powers temporarily to level the playing field for a few minutes.

Taking advantage of them overextending their reach, it’s time for your turn to close the distance. You try to whip the butt of your pistol on their head since they’re the next lead you have and you really want them alive for questioning.

A shadow tendril solidifies and swats your hand away. Before you can do anything, you’re suddenly thrown back across the living room. You feel your breath getting knocked out of your chest and you barely managed to compose yourself quickly and get on your feet to evade the living room furniture that has started to… fall down on you? Glancing down, you notice that you’re standing on a wall.

Ah, you see. You think you know what the person’s other power might be. It must have something to do with shifting gravity, which explains how they perched on the ceiling like a bat earlier. You know because it’s the same power that Sasha has and Sasha often used it to walk on ceilings… Wait, and the shadow powers too…

Your blood freezes as your mind comes to a horrifying hypothesis—or more like a conclusion. One that you’re not sure whether you want to be proven right or wrong. That thought is enough distraction that it makes you react a bit slower and in heated moments like this, every second matters.

You realize last second that it’s too late for you to evade the chair that is falling right toward you. So, instead, you cover your head with your arm and hunker down instead. You feel it break against your shoulder and back, which would’ve probably hurt quite a bit if not for the adrenaline rushing through your body right now.

As soon as it passes, you quickly take a look above you and—Fuck! You’re suddenly crushed by a weight pressing down on you. The two of you struggle but having gotten caught off guard, you end up getting overpowered instead, your pistol discarded a few feet to your right.

The person is now on top of you and is pressing down a knife aimed right at your face. The only reason you’re still alive is once again thanks to instincts. Your hands move faster than your mind can process and they’re currently gripping tightly around your attacker’s wrists.

Finally, physical contact. You hope you’ll be able to finish copying their powers quickly. It is literally the only way you’ll be able to leave with your life right now. Sadly, you can’t really control how fast the process takes, but you know it takes longer when there are layers of clothes between your palm and the person’s skin, and when the person has more than one power. According to the very rough calculation in your head, it will probably take a minute or a minute and a half at the very least.

The person is really strong, however, and it takes everything you have to hold the knife at bay. At this rate, you’re going to lose really soon. You grit your teeth even harder as your muscles strain.

If this is really going to be your end… Then you want to at least try to figure out something. Could this person above you possibly be your long-lost son, or is it a cruel and freaky coincidence that there is another dual-powered individual out there with the exact same powers as your son?

You look up to their face—or at least where their face is supposed to be. Instead, you’re staring into the blank, pitch darkness that is covering it. The shadows are seemingly alive and writhing in agitation. You wonder if it has something to do with the person’s mood.

There’s only one thing you can do to try your hypothesis. It most likely won’t work, but it’s not like you’ll get another chance to try another method.

“S—Sasha…?” you croak, your voice trembling both from physical exertion and emotional one.

The person above you flinches visibly and they stop pushing the knife down on you. Their chest begins to rise and fall quickly, the sound of their ragged breathing is mixed with your own.

Your own heart is racing a mile an hour in your chest, but for an entirely different reason to theirs, it seems. You can hear the drum of your own heartbeat rushing in your ears. And then, you decide to take advantage of the situation before they can fully recover.

The surreal moment is broken as you twist and yank the knife out of their slack grip. Both of you yelp in surprise as the gravity suddenly reverses back to normal, dropping both of you back ok the rickety wooden floor.

They are seemingly still a bit dazed by the sudden change. The shadows that veiled their face have dissolved like black vapours, revealing the balaclava-covered face underneath. You swiftly pounce on them and get on top of them, reversing both of your positions from a few seconds earlier.

You see their gray eyes—so familiar—widen as they stare into your own gray ones. They flail their hand frantically, trying to call to the shadows around them, but they don’t come to their aid like before. Oh, it seems you have finished copying their abilities. It would take another minute or so until your body fully adjusts and you’ll be able to use those powers yourself.

But you’re not going to wait for that and having a mirror fight is not in your plans. No. It’s time to end this fight.

“Sorry, kid. But, I promise we’ll talk again later,” you say before knocking them out with a strategic and careful strike to the temple. They immediately go limp. The night is still eerily quiet and the only sound left is your labored breathing. Fuck, you hope no one calls the cops yet.

You instinctively check your mysterious attacker’s pulse and vitals—something that takes you back to your days as a vigilante; it feels like another lifetime now.

Now comes the moment of truth…

Your hand trembles, whether from trepidation, anxiousness, or even excitement and anticipation… You don’t know anymore. The only thing you know is that you need to know.

In one fell swoop, you grab the edge of the balaclava mask and yank it off. What you see surprises you so much that you almost fall back. The face underneath the mask is clearly Sasha. Older, sure, and with more scars, some faint and some more visible—God, what did they do to your little baby—but his facial features and hair… they are undeniably your son’s. After all, you know him better than the back of your own hands and you’d be able to picture his face even in death.

A half-laugh, half-sob tears through your throat, and without thinking, you take him into your arms and hug him tightly. If it were possible, you would never let him go again. You cradle his head to your shoulder gently and you stroke his back soothingly. He’s still unconscious, so he probably won’t feel it, but the action comforts you.

It feels like you’re experiencing every possible feeling and emotion all at the same time: Immense relief that your son is not dead, sorrow at all the wasted years that you could’ve spent with him, anger at whoever did this to your son, anticipation for your reunion once he wakes up, but also trepidation… because what if he doesn’t remember anything about you or his old life… All of these feelings war against each other in you and the closest thing you’ve felt like this was when Sasha was born, although that was more of a mix of various positive feelings.

After a minute, you realize you should get the hell away from here as soon as possible. You’ll have more time to spend with your son later on. You try to heft Sasha, but he’s far from the small boy he was ten years ago. Thankfully, you copied his powers earlier and you’ve seen him carrying things that were obviously too heavy for an eight-year-old to carry around. He must’ve used his gravikinesis power to lighten the pull of gravity on those things.

Well, time to try it out. You picture lifting Sasha, imagining how light it would feel and… Hup! You manage to lift him up in both of your arms in a bridal carry. He still feels pretty heavy, but you can manage.

After taking a couple of steps, you almost trip on something heavy and solid on the floor. Glancing down. You notice that it’s your beloved pistol! You are so preoccupied with Sasha that you forgot that it got knocked out of your hand a while back.

Both of your hands are full right now and you don’t really want to bother dropping Sasha to grab the gun if possible. Hmmm… How about the shadows? You reach out mentally to the ample shadows around you. Oh, you do feel something. It’s such a weird and indescribable sensation, but a section of the shadows solidifies into a tendril and grabs the pistol, bringing it back to you.

“Uh… Do you mind putting it in my holster?” you ask it out loud, feeling awkward. The tendril shakes up and down a bit as if nodding before actually sliding the gun into your belt holster. Huh, neat. “Thanks,” you say and the tendril nods again before dissolving back into the surrounding darkness.

You make your way back to your car, which is parked right across the street. Setting Sasha’s unconscious body on the front passenger seat, you go back to the trunk and grab the rope that was meant for your now-dead target. You really don’t want to restrain your own son, but it needs to be done in case he wakes up mid-way in the journey.

Your mind wanders as your hands move automatically, tying up Sasha’s wrists and circling the rope around him, basically tying him to the car seat. You then get back into the driver’s seat and quickly drive off.

Along the way to the family compound, you can’t keep yourself from constantly glancing over at your son. After a decade of him being missing, it still feels surreal to have him sitting right beside you right now and deep inside, you’re afraid that if you don’t keep your eyes on him, he’ll be gone… And you’ll be alone again.

But also, for the very first time in years, you feel as if a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders. Not all the weight though, as you still need to find the person behind all of this. However, that’s a problem for another day. Right now, you’re just happy enough to have your son back and you feel more alive than you’ve been in years.