In a small suburban house sat a lanky, skinny man. His skin was white, and his eyes were baggy.

  He was shirtless, having no clothing aside from the elastic pants he wore.

  Around him were pieces of meat, red and white bits scattered everywhere. The occasional bone could be found scattered throughout the room. He was covered in blood, soaked in it.

  It dripped from his matted black hair and onto the already-soaked carpeted floor.

  It dripped.

  And dripped.

  And dripped.

  The man’s eyes snapped open, and almost immediately, he puked. Vomit escaped him over and over again, and his body pushed out a large amount of material. It blended in very well with the mess around him.

  It had the same color and texture as the gore surrounding him.

  Eventually, he ran out of material, but he kept dry heaving. He would stop at times, look around, look anywhere, only to have his stomach continue the evacuation process. Blood was everywhere, flesh was everywhere, and death was everywhere.

  And the poor man knew he had done this.

  A voice laughed in the back of his mind. He didn’t bother to even acknowledge it. But it knew that the man heard him, and it mocked his disgust.

  It kept laughing and laughing, but the noise didn’t bother the man. It was expected. It was like watching the fallout of a hurricane or staring at the broken crumbled-up homes left by an earthquake.

  It was natural.

  He hated himself for the apathy. He hated himself for a lot of reasons, too long to list. But even self-loathing had settled into a rhythmic wave of emotions. It had a pattern, a movement of highs and lows and this was just one of those highs.

  He cried the voice laughed, he dry-heaved, the voice laughed. He hated himself, and the voice hated him as well.

  After about thirty minutes of this, like a child who had ignored their alarm the first ten times it had gone off, the man stood. He looked only towards the bathroom and walked with stumbling feet, ignoring the squish of the cold and sticky carpet.

  He stepped. Once, twice, thrice, four times.

  He was almost there.

  “Stop,” A voice spoke.

  He thought it was the one in his head for a moment but it was a new voice entirely.

  He stumbled. He wanted to be clean. He wanted to wash himself, then run away.

  He wanted to escape before they got here. Escape before he gets them.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  Then he yelled.

  “Please get away from here. I- you can’t stop me. This- I am at least a major B-rank threat. Please contact the Union, if you stay here any longer he- I might loose control. Please call them. Please.”

  He heard footsteps.

  “Please, no,” he begged the voice. “Let's just run. It’s practical, you know it is. We can just leave, we don’t have to kill-”

  “My, my,” the voice suddenly spoke. It was pushing his mouth, using his face, his body, his form, but it was not him.

  “You don’t take too kindly to a warning now, do you? The man practically begged you and you couldn’t be bothered to wait.”

  “You were on my schedule.” The other person replied.

  Their voice sounded clean. It sounded coherent and put together. Every word was pronounced and executed so clearly that it seemed to have an accent of its own.

  “I assume this is Mr. Hyde?” The clean voice added.

  Hyde, that was what the voice in the back of its mind called himself. That was who controlled his body now.

  “You’ve heard of me?” The voice in his throat mused, turning to confront the owner of the clean voice.

  The man was draped in white. The clothing was something strange, something between the robes of the pope and the gown of a surgeon. He had a long white coat that covered everything from his neck to his feet and it walked with nothing.

  He had walked through the room, through the carpet soaked in human blood, and yet not a single drop of it was on him. Behind him were footsteps of white fur. No, not fur but carpet. The spots where he stepped were clear of blood and flesh. They even lacked the original brownish stain of time that had settled there.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” the surgeon answered.

  “Really now? That’s rare, quite rare. I’ve never been the hunted-”

  “Doctor Michael Andres, born 2107, day month or time unknown. Born a few decades after the Upheaval, our monitoring abilities hadn’t quite caught up yet. And even when they would get there they’d be limited by those pesky privacy laws. 2121 was the year of your first and major transformation.

  “Fourteen years old, having read the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you must have made a wish. A stupid teenager’s mind is the type to glamorize the character within that book. I found it to be rather stale in truth, though the idea of a potion that could separate the human soul into angel and devil is a curious thought.

  “Then I suppose the cycle of murder began. You’re a grower with a hyper-intelligent alter ego, meaning your grower form knew enough to move location after every crime and how to operate among the civilian population with your normal form.

  “A unique but not unheard of situation. Fortunately for everyone else and unfortunately for you, your grower form took to tormenting you and breaking down your sanity with acts of gratuitous violence. Murder, rape, cannibalism, et cetera, while you sat in the back and watched. Is that correct?”

  “Why yes, it is,” Mr Hyde replied with a large and toothy smile.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you,” The surgeon snapped. “Mr. Andres, would you prefer death to this miserable existence? Do you wish for it all to end?”

  Trapped in the back of his mind, caged in the center of his own being. Michael Andres yelled out with affirmation. It was silent and noiseless, but Mr. Hyde could hear it.

  Mr. Hyde frowned, and as if that was all the affirmation the surgeon needed, he nodded.

  Then, Mr. Hyde shifted.

  He grew, flesh made more flesh, and the sensation of his muscles, limbs, jaws, eyes, and bones growing overwhelmed him. It felt like a tumor was overtaking him. His skin stretched thin, threatening to burst open with the growing flesh, then even the skin began to grow.

  Veins squirmed on his forehead and sharp teeth cut his own tongue, but Hyde didn’t mind. He swallowed the cut bits of his own flesh as new parts grew to replace them.

  The house was small, too small for Hyde’s full form.

  In all of his decades of torment, even Michael hadn’t seen the full abilities of Hyde. He hoped that would not happen today.

  Hyde’s head met the roof. A mixture of wood and drywall tried its best to keep him down. It cut his skin as it splintered, bits of wood burying themselves into his newly grown muscles, but the flesh did not stop.

  It pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed, and pushed again. It ate the splinters, it broke the wood and invaded the attic.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  It was agony, fresh nerve endings sending pain signals down to the mind. Mr. Hyde redirected them, sending them to Michael and punishing him for his silent outburst.

  Michael screamed and Hyde smiled.

  “Interesting,” the surgeon noted.

  He was still there. Rubble littered the place and bits of the ceiling were dangling dangerously above his head, but he stood unperturbed.

  Hyde kept growing and with each growth, Michael felt a sense of renewing dread.

  Hyde had never grown this much before. He had never pushed for this much strength or power, and Michael didn’t know he was even capable of doing this. As Hyde’s head burst through the ceiling, Michael could only sit there trapped in the back of his mind, and watch as Hyde outgrew the house.

  It crumbled as Hyde’s torso burst through the ceiling. The surgeon seemed to have gotten buried beneath the rubble. He might be dead, but he probably wasn’t.

  Michael had called Hyde a Major-B rank threat, but that was based on his own assessments of Hyde’s abilities. He had once seen Hyde swallow a handful of children out in some countryside. He had heard them scream, felt them clawing in his throat, swallowed alive and still crying in his stomach.

  That had been one of the worst days of his life. He had stopped eating then, refusing any morsel of food, but if he tried to harm himself, Hyde would take over and prevent him.

  The house was now the size of his feet. Hyde was going all the way and this wasn’t a Major-B level threat, this was Major-A, maybe S.

  Michael wanted to cry. He wanted to close his eyes and not see or feel the destruction he knew would be coming. He wanted to beg Hyde to stop, beg him to only kill the surgeon and not the many houses beneath him.

  “Don’t worry Mr. Andres, this entire neighborhood has been evacuated. Its only me and you for miles around.” A small voice spoke.

  Hyde turned, looking for the source of the noise but couldn’t find it.

  “Now I must ask,” the voice continued. “What’s the exertion?”

  Hyde zeroed in on the source of the noise and saw the small man standing on top of the first broken house. The giant wasted no time, raising his foot to step on the little white stain. That was strange. Hyde normally played with his victims. He liked watching them suffer, but this time he seemed eager to end it. He seemed scared.

  There was an explosion as the rubble flew out beneath Hyde’s foot. Pieces of house and debris scattered through the streets and clashed with other homes, but for some reason, his attack did no more than that.

  It should have buried his feet into the ground. It should have caved into the sewers beneath and even further down into the ground.

  “I would like to take a moment before all of this fighting to ask you some questions,” the voice came again.

  “Wishers have different manifestations with different rules, yes. Some have fundamental changes to this physiology that allow them certain abilities, such as tinkers and biologically altered individuals. For them, exhaustion is physical; a sum of stamina and training informs the expenditure and degree of their abilities. It can even be mimicked via genetic altering, as you very well know. But active abilities that break and violate the conventional law of physics have their own form of exertion. For growers, it's emotion, rage, hatred, fear, et cetera. What is yours?”

  Again, Hyde found the source of the noise, and again he attacked. This time the surgeon was to the left of him, about a hundred feet.

  Hyde hit harder this time, putting the whole of his weight onto the man. The giant jumped onto the white spot. But just as he was about to land, the ground disappeared, and all that was left was a hole. A giant cube of land had just evaporated from the pavement to the ground beneath it. Hyde grabbed at his sides, spreading his arms out wide and grabbing at the edges of the hole. His weight was heavy, and his palms struggled to keep him up.

  In front of him, standing at the edge of the hole, was the little white surgeon.

  “Please, answer the question before causing any further property damage.”

  Hyde pushed off the edges of the hole and propelled himself forward, reaching for the white-robed man. He grabbed nothing.

  And that was when Michael felt it.

  They had always been able to feel each other's emotions and understand each other's feelings. That was what made it all the worse; Hyde’s evil was his evil. When Hyde killed with joy, he felt. Michael felt the joy and evil burning in Hyde’s heart, and Hyde felt the pain in his.

  But now, for the first time in his miserable existence, Hyde felt something else.

  Fear.

  Hyde was afraid, and Michael reveled in it.

  Hope shined within him? Was this it? Was it finally over? Would this be the day Hyde met his end?

  There was joy, then there was fear. For all his desire for death, Michael realized something within the moment, he feared it.

  He wanted it more than he feared it but he feared it nonetheless. Hyde roared at his terror, climbing fully out of the pit and raising his giant hand high.

  “I see,” the surgeon spoke. “So that’s it then. Your ex-”

  Hyde smacked down on the surgeon. Wrath and fear bleeding together into hatred.

  The surgeon now stood on his hand, still unbothered, still untouched.

  “Your exertion is suffering; you feed off of the suffering Michael goes through. And since the man fears death, as any man should, the closer I get to killing you the stronger you become.”

  The words sent terror into Michael’s soul and a new fear rose in his mind. Hyde squashing on cities. Hyde burning down millions. Hyde killing, torturing, eating the whole of humanity.

  Fear ran through him, and though he wished it didn’t, he could not stop it.

  He had always known that Hyde took pleasure in his suffering, but he thought it was evil. He assumed it was sadism and provided nothing more than sick and twisted joy to the monster.

  But now, he knew and the future seemed all the darker for it.

  Hyde smiled, and the growing that had stopped started up again. Michael tried to prevent it. He tried to control his panic but Hyde wouldn’t let him. The fear in his mind was set free and Hyde devoured it whole.

  “Well, as much as I’d like to see the whole of you, everything has a limit,” the surgeon sighed.

  Hyde moved and the ground rippled as his punch sunk into the earth. Streets turned into rubble. Houses collapsed by the dozens and the shock wave shook the neighborhood.

  And that was from one punch.

  And somehow, the surgeon stood atop Hyde’s hand, normal and unbothered.

  The surgeon kneeled and touched Hyde’s buried fist and spoke one single word.

  “Separate.”

  And Michael felt his soul split in two. There was no pain, no screaming, or hellish noises.

  Just a quick and simple change.

  Where there was one, now there were two.

  Michael lay where Hyde stood. He looked around surprised to have gained back control of his body. He sat in his own footprint and found himself in the very center of the indentation Hyde had left.

  To the left of him, far to the left of him was a large squirming worm. It was about the size of a cat and it writhed and shook, squirming in pain and shock.

  It was Hyde. He didn’t know how he knew but he knew.

  He got up, approaching it slowly. He reached around, grabbing for a stone that fit his hand.

  “Stop,” a voice spoke. “Don’t kill it.”

  He remembered the voice. It was the surgeon, but he didn’t care. He didn’t listen. He needed to kill it. He needed to kill him. How could he allow such a being to continue to exist? How could he allow it to breathe?

  He had to end it.

  He raised the stone above his head, only to feel it crumble into a ball of dust before he could bring it down.

  “You don’t know what that thing is,” Michael screamed. “You don’t know what it’s done. What it's made me do, what it wants to do!”

  “On the contrary, I know exactly what it is,” the surgeon replied.

  “Do you? Do you truly?” Michael asked.

  “Of course, it is the separated evil of the human soul. That’s what Hyde was in the story, and that’s what it is now.”

  Michael just stared at the stain on the floor. The pitch-black worm waited, squirming like a blind and dying beast, searching for the shade.

  Michael frowned, his lips clenching. He wanted to kill it, he wanted to end the thing.

  But even now, even in this very instant, Michael felt something else in the depths of his soul, mercy.

  “What’s wrong with me?” He asked echoes of a cry kept down in his voice.

  “Nothing,” the surgeon spoke. “As Hyde is the separated evil of the human soul, you are his antithesis. You are the good left behind. That’s why you care for it even now, that’s why you never turned cold to the torment. His Jekyll and the persisting good in the heart of every man.”

  “Is that so?” Michael Andres replied, still staring at the thing on the floor.

  “It is,” the surgeon replied as he walked over to the squirming creature. He leaned over curiously and touched it.

  Michael watched as the worm seeped into the surgeon’s hands and even the surgeon’s plane face shone with surprise in the moment.

  “Intrest- ting,” the surgeon managed before his face twisted into a disgusting smile, a familiar smile.

  “No!” Michael screamed but it was too late. The surgeon was no more, and only the cruel cruel thing remained.

  Then Hyde stopped, and then Hyde screamed.

  “A curious thing about emotional suffering,” the surgeon said. “It is a byproduct of empathy. If you care about something, anything, then losing it or seeing it come to harm will cause you some great discomfort. Michael was an endless well of it, I’d imagine. The perfect host for your composition.”

  Hyde looked at him and stumbled towards him.

  “But I am quite clean of such troubles.”

  The surgeon muttered.

  Then the word was repeated once more.

  “Separate.”

  The worm was thrown onto the floor again, thinner this time as if infecting the surgeon had staved it more than helped it.

  “Hm,” the surgeon said. “It has a few hours left to live, maybe a day. But I should be able to synthesize food for it, though I’d need some help. Hmm.”

  Michael just stared. He didn’t know what to say to the man. He couldn’t quite believe it himself.

  How had a person, any person, taken in that thing and managed to expel it?

  “How?” Michael questioned.

  The surgeon was bending over with an open container, and hadn’t even heard him.

  “How?” He repeated, a little louder this time.

  The surgeon packed in the worm, scooping it up with the aid of a glove and making sure to gather any contaminated earth in the area.

  But still, he was unheard, and the surgeon was just muttering to himself in the corner.

  “We'll have to burn the whole place, maybe with the help of Paragon, just to be sure. He should be able to-”

  “HOW?” He yelled this time.

  “How did you do that? How did you push it out?”

  The white-robed man turned to him with a look of slight surprise, as if he had already forgotten about him.

  The surgeon stared at him. It wasn’t a cruel stare nor a hateful one. It wasn’t empathetic or kind. It wasn’t comforting or annoyed, it was just a stare.

  A moment of observance that was utterly removed of emotion.

  “I do apologize, Mr. Andres. A Union team will be here shortly to assist you and your new predicament. Don’t worry yourself, in cases like these you will be seen as a victim and be granted freedom by a Union judge after a thorough investigation. And while we will advise you to secrecy, as exposing who you are and what Mr. Hyde has done can and will lead to problems within your own personal life, you are free to express your experiences in any way you choose to. As for your accommodations, the Heroes’ Union will be paying for your necessities for the rest of your natural life. And I expect you to live for another seventy years or so, even though it has been about a century since your wish, Hyde has been increasing your lifespan, keeping you near your twenties for that duration so you should be able to live a more than healthy life.”

  “How-”

  “Good day,” the surgeon spoke, and then he was gone.