Only a metal shutter the width of a small truck separated Sam from the pavilion of pillar 12, where three soldiers stood soldered in place, resolves firm. Their engine blades purred in their hands. They knew a bloodbath was coming by the way the air felt on their skin, a soldiers intuition, though they had a confidence in her blood being spilled, not theirs. They were prepared.

  Sam knew this of course, with every step closer to the shutter she understood more and more about them, the sand strings of numbers that made up their bodies. Far left was more nervous than the rest, a fledgling, Sam could smell the chemicals in his blood screaming at him to run.

  He should listen, but he wont.

  Middle was by far the most skilled with her toned body and mind, the vibration of her sword barely nudged the steady hand that gripped it. Even Sam could tell at a glance that this woman could probably cut skulls like blades of grass. The wimpy looking man was much more deceiving than she expected, almost as equally skilled as the iron soldier next to him but skittish, not to be taken lightly for sure.

  Sam took the time to breathe, her sensing ability was much keener now. Whatever was happening in her body she was understanding it much more rapidly. She set her hand on the metal shutter, noiselessly.

  “ALRIGHT! REMEMBER OUR INSTRUCTIONS!” the woman barked at the two beside her, mostly to the newbie who had a tendency to forget orders.

  They each nodded before taking a single step towards the butchers.

  The shutters groaned and wailed under the invisible stress they were suddenly pushed by, a bulbous sphere shunted itself out of the entrance’s once uniformly flat surface. Just as soon as it appeared it vanished, turning into a gale of wind pressure as it exploded outwards, shattering the shutters in spinning chunks.

  The spread of debris seemed pre-planned as spinning sheets launched themselves towards all three of their heads, jagged-point side first. Three clashes of swords against steel confirmed that they had swatted them away cleanly.

  Barely having the time to take note of the situation, they each witnessed a mask-adorning woman stepping out from the settling dust, her glowing “eyes” piercing through the fake twilight. She wasn’t breathing, perfectly motionless.

  Uncanny,

  It was the first word that popped into their heads, as if planted there without their want.

  Her arms swiped at the air like a general ordering troops, and in seconds sharp crystalline structures appeared beneath the commander, shooting up at her ribs. With a furious elegance the armed woman dove forward, spikes narrowly passing her, neatly rolling on the ground before sprinting towards her target. The newer soldier followed in a burst of speed that matched her pace in seconds flat.

  Sam had clearly underestimated the agility of a pillar’s soldier, in only a blink’s time the woman had reached Sam’s front and the man had managed to swing behind her, skidding through dust and debris.

  At either side of Sam’s neck they lunged with perfect precision, giving her just as much time to react as she had gave them moments prior. The way the two swords were moving would mean complete decapitation. Having no other choice, she pushed her neck onto only one of the two’s blades, square in her jugular, narrowly avoiding the second in the process.

  The familiar taste of blood refilled her mouth again.

  The two swordsmen pushed further towards each other summoning sparks from their blades as they collided near their bases.

  Sam had about half of her neck lodged inside of the soldier women’s sword, but chose not to retreat further back towards the tip of its edge. She had enough sense about her to know these soldiers were no joke, it was clear then they trained with engine blades and had much more teamwork than one would expect of humans. However, Sam had something they weren’t aware of, her ability to refuse mortal wounds.

  Leaking blood from her mouth, she pushed herself further down to blade to the hilt. In an instant of flaming anger Sam pushed her arm up towards the woman’s gut, summoning the same tremendous force from the door prior into her fleshy body. The soldier flew back towards the naked doorway of the butchers, bouncing her brittle spine off of the metal chassis.

  Another headache.

  She didn’t understand. Why now? Was it something she did? Surely there was a reason why they kept returning to her over and over and over again. At first she assumed it to be overuse of her power, but she knew better by now, nothing was ever that simple with her. Eventually she came to another bizarre conclusion, the only other thing that could possibly explain such an odd downside.

  Variety.

  Her brain was a living generator, fuelled by what she only assumed was a raging endless mutation. If her power was like an engine that, progressively, generated more and more energy over time, then she needed to move that energy into more things. If she kept using the same moves the “engine” would have nowhere to send the energy, it would short circuit, a headache.

  Sam remembered she could create natural things just as easily as she could inanimate ones, the mask on her face was evident enough. As the woman rose up from her slumped position Sam outstretched her arm again, and this time a perfectly flat surface of a wooden platform appeared beneath the soldier to her bewilderment. With her other hand she swiped down, and out of the air summoned another hefty platform wrapped in branches and vines that slammed into the other.

  There was a booming echo of colliding wood, and the woman became a smudge of innards, leaving no trace behind whatsoever.

  The headache stopped.

  There was a hushed silence that hovered over the remaining soldiers as the dripping blood of their superior leaked from the vines. Fear sweated through them like bullets, Sam saw their beads of water even through their helmets. They couldn’t hide anything.

  Nobody could

  The new soldier gathered himself to move first, leaping far into the air towards Sam to cleave her in twine. He couldn’t help but let a primal yell escape his throat and lungs, a choked scream of declared dominance, a vain attempt at regaining his confidence.

  “YOU’LL PAY FOR THAT, FREAK!”

  With the headache stemmed for now Sam snapped her head towards the sky, at the man flying towards her. He cut through the air like a bird diving for prey. She stepped back before flinging up her hand, as if to sling the very core of pillar into the open air. A small column struck up from the dusted floor, shifting from steel to concrete as Sam willed it so.

  The blade clashed with the new, raised, ground lodging itself deep within its soft texture and showering the street with a fine white powder. His feet landed on the normal ground below it while his arms struggled the weapon in its concrete prison, trying to levy it free.

  Sam didn’t want it to be free, so it stayed.

  Without missing a beat, Sam twisted her torso, her arms becoming fine entangled black whips. In one fell motion she brought her arms round, from one side to the other, like toppling an invisible barricade in front of her. The stretched out, whip-like arms that swung wildly behind her suddenly became taught and snapped forward. In a smooth pendulum arc her whips swung to her side, slicing through the concrete block like a blade of leather.

  A fine line revealed itself at the column’s midsection. Soon after the lower torso of the new soldier collapsed into the lifeless pile of meat it now was, the upper half still clinging to the sword.

  His mouth leaked blood, enough to drown him, the pain was immeasurable.

  Sam could feel the pain leaking from him, his silent screams for it all to end, the pity and guilt that wormed itself into her skin. She swiped at his head from a distance. The whip cracked back, then forward stretching itself into a firm spear that poked straight through the concrete and between his eyes, the silent screams stopped.

  She reverted her arms back to their more humble human form, the sharp fibres of the whip unravelling and spindling themselves into the muscle and bone that made its length. It was then that the headache returned, only much worse than she was used to by that point. Sam could feel the pain stinging out from her eyes, it made her ears ring and her face feel red hot. Before they were only strong enough to warrant a pause at most, but this was something else entirely.

  Although, just as soon as it started, the pain faded back to its normal level, and then to nothing not long after.

  Feedback

  she thought to herself,

  I can delay the headaches by using my power more creatively, but the headaches, the feedback, will only compound the more they’re pushed back.

  Her hand trembled, an aftershock of the “feedback”

  She shook her arms in place, making sure that everything was attached as she had planned them to be, shaking away the tremors in her hand at the same time, and then marched down the street.

  The shivering man left behind from his squad barely moved from where he stood, only a few feet ahead of Sam. He hadn’t moved an inch from where he started, fear rooting his feet to the ground. His shakes grew once Sam inched closer, her gnarled helmet staring him down like he was the nothingness that filled the air. His fear was palpable.

  Her mind searched his, swimming through the chemicals in his brain to confirm it for sure, that this truly was fear she felt. Sam only found the neurotoxins of a man far gone down the path of cowardice. As Sam had thought, there was no drive to fight from the ‘soldier.’

  To his surprise and relief she quickly averted her gaze from him and strode away down the street towards the rotting tree in the pillars centre, a thing that evidently pulled at her curiosity.

  Admittedly, she felt bad for the poor man. She didn’t want to kill or maim, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling thing to do, and so tried not to when she could. Only, she found it hard to find any situation where this was possible, everyone had to die. Luckily though, this was one of the few moments that she could, a coward with no drive to kill her didn’t deserve the fate of her past enemies.Besides she only needed answers, not bloodshed, it was nice to not resort to the latter for a change.

  Sam had only walked about a dozen feet before familiar disappointment cursed her yet again.

  In a lapse in cowardice, or perhaps sense, the shivering man tightened up, gripping his blade with a newfound fever for revenge. He hadn’t known his companions for long, but even still they had protected him from danger when it was most needed, and now from the monster that stood before him. He could still feel the relief and security that flowed through him whenever his captain took the blame for his many mistakes, the fact that they still considered him an ally. Moreover, the regret of not protecting them when they needed it pushed his mind into a vigorous sense of purpose.

  In an instant his eyes burst into raging fire; his head consumed by a ferocious blaze and his mouth smouldering from the heat. Sam had a wandering curiosity about her ability, specifically whether it could curate elements, like ice or lightning. Now she had her answer. He didn’t struggle, the fires had already turned his brain into a charred rock of flesh, along with the rest of his face and head. As the others did before, the body fell lifeless against the steel ground.

  With the dust settling on the ground Sam could finally take in the surroundings of Pillar Twelve, stocked stalls littered streets and still glowing lights flickered as though their bulbs were straining from exhaustion. It was barren, more barren than she could’ve possibly expected it to be. Even the huge tree at the centre of the city, one customary for every pillar, was withered and rotting, long since dead. In a way it was even worse than the shacks and cloth roofs below, a shadow of what could’ve been. Occasionally as she paced past alleys, Sam caught glimpses of symbols that were alien to her paired besides quarantine warnings.

  She froze in place.

  Three short figures, then four taller ones. More soldiers, a total of seven, snaked their way through the impossibly tight gaps, between buildings and stalls and through the windows of empty homes. She could sense them all beyond the brick walls around her. They bounded, like bugs, off every surface they came across, rolling over each other and tumbling under pipes. Sam didn’t understand their movement, they weren’t that of normal people or even soldiers and looked almost hypnotic from her distant sense. She peered into one of their minds and found an answer.

  It was a tactical decision, they knew Sam could sense things, someone was watching her from a distance.

  The second they breached into the street, with full view of Sam, they convened on her one after the other.

  The first attack came from her left, a short girl with an even stubbier engine blade, a dagger if anything, that came flying at Sam’s torso. The girl got within a few feet of her in a speed Sam could hardly register, like the soldiers before her, and pressed a small button on the daggers hilt, the blade extended itself by the inch until it had become a fine spear.

  It all happened so fast, with a flick of the girls wrist the sword swung out from her side almost three times its own length. Sam pushed the ground away from her, partially forcing the wind to carry her too, but “dagger” was far quicker. A fine slit opened on her stomach as its blade swiped past her.

  Sam took in a sharp breath of pain, then willed the ground to rise. A small metal beam appeared in the path of the girl, one she wasn’t anticipating being there before. The soldier’s leg caught the underside of its black frame, bouncing her off of the ground and into a reinforced glass window. A crater in her figure held the girl in place.

  The next fighter came soaring from a building far above her, the height from the fall managing to provide him with the speed he would’ve lacked, unlike the others. Still reeling from the slice on her stomach Sam tried to think quickly, her arm flew up and clenched tightly to brace. The skin on her forearm began to shift ever slightly, hardening itself into a tough carapace, the closest thing to armour she could think of in the split second before impact.

  She steadied her body and tracked the swords position as it came closer, adjusting her shield as it moved in the air.

  Its tip finally slammed down into the shell on Sam’s arm, clinking off and to the side. The man adjusted himself just before ground reached him to land and then, in one fluid movement, snaked around behind her. It was such a fast movement that Sam could barely register that his legs had moved at all by the time he had reached her back. She could sense he wasn’t as fast as the others were, but it was as if he preserved his momentum from the fall, his movement was baffling.

  Just as he did so, another aggressor came at Sam from the left alley, the same as the dagger girl prior. Without missing a step from their stride they leapt up to slice down at Sam’s gnarled wooden skull. A firm snake of stone rose up to parry the attack, the sparks of collision almost igniting the cloth shirt tied about their waist.

  As the soldier landed they positioned themselves at her front, as fast as the man did earlier, ready to follow through with another, more coordinated, attack.

  I cant die,

  She said to herself, in her own bubble,

  I cant die, then why am I…?

  Despite being able to heal from basically anything Sam still felt fear, and that fear alone was enough to tell her that she could lose somehow. With all of her “evolution” she still had fear, she had kept fear. Sam could think of a handful of ways she could be defeated, but the biggest one was simply being overwhelmed. She had already taken a few nicks, here and there in otherwise vital spots, and the pain of those alone were enough to drive her mad. What if Sam passed out from the pain at some point? Would her ability still work? She figured it would heal her enough to bring her consciousness back, but what if her enemies didn’t allow that? There was every possibility, in Sam’s mind, that if she passed out she probably wouldn’t wake back up.

  The fear and anticipation coursed through her as steady as her own blood, telling her that she, beyond all reason, could still lose.

  The cloth laden one struck from below, diagonally slicing up at her chest and whipping the air apart with their blade’s strength. It was clear he lacked speed, but the power in his arms was certainly not to be taken too lightly. At the same time the tall man behind her swung towards her chest at a similar angle, albeit from a different direction aiming for the same spot his fellow companion. Like the two from the butcher’s entrance before, they were trying to cut her in half.

  She was never fast by any means, but she could do so much more than simply move her legs unlike everyone else. The floor below her feet morphed from steel to rubber, and then span in place like a motor. In an instant her body was moved to the side towards the towering stone snake, the conveyor belt-ground still chuntering at a blistering speed. She quickly shifted her body mid travel, so that the snake was at her back and the two soldierswere both in her line of sight.

  Their blades passed neatly by each other without so much as a scrape on their polished surfaces. The tall man, now at Sam’s right, traded his weapon to his off-hand and swiped at her with as much of his momentum as he could save from the failed strike. A quick scorefrom her abdomen to her neck was much harder to avoid neatly, with the tip of the engine blade already reaching within an inch of her skin faster than she could think of a way to move. Instead, the moment the sword touched her Sam phased through it’s structure as best she could.

  The metal turned to the same sandy feeling texture Sam was used to feeling, its whole length vanishing past her as it arced up to her jaw. As the attack reached its end her concentration waned, for only a tiny moment, solidifying just in time to rip out of her chin.

  Sam’s conveyor belt carried her backwards into the snake with blistering force, crashing into its structure and breaking it into dozens of baseball sized chunks. Not having time to seal the wound on her face, she launched the falling rocks around her towards the cloth bearing attacker in front of her like shells of artillery. Most of them missed entirely, flying behind them and into the window where the short girl still lied in her crater. One of them, however, nestled itself jagged end first into the corner of his helmet.

  The cut on her chin fizzled and melted, the blood pouring from it looking murky and black. The man’s engine blade must’ve been coated in poison or acid, a gimmick of his weapon that Sam forgot they could have. It burned and bubbled, and the pain choked back the screams she wanted to release as though she was winded.

  Sam held her hand over the wound and sealed it neatly, flinging a glob of toxic secretion to the ground with the pain fading somewhat along with it. Unable to catch her breath, the man came at her yet again. He swiped at the air below the now sealed cut he previously made, at the neck so seemingly unguarded.

  Sam quickly ducked below his sword and circled around him, pushing her hand out and coercing pressure to force itself into the man’s body.

  He flew backwards like he had been yanked by invisible strings, his limp body shooting across to the other side of the wide street. However, before the man could land naturally Sam noticed something curious and worrying.

  A bystander, one of the few still present on the upper surface of pillar 12, watching the ongoing fight with terrified spectacle as the man’s body flew directly towards them.

  Sam panicked, a simple curious civilian didn’t deserve to be crushed like the soldiers around them. Those eyes, those scared eyes that looked as though they had given up already, the thought of killing someone with them made Sam sick. She quickly pulled both her hands up as though commanding reigns that led into the ground in front of the civilian. In seconds a stone wall erected itself, the flying man splatting against it with enough weight to shake its supports.

  Headache.

  Sam had used too much stone; her mind poisoned her for the lack of creativity, a crime unforgivable. she huddled over herself to cradle her throbbing head.

  Half the length of a full engine blade pierced through her spine and out the middle of her ribcage, the soldier wrapped in cloth had gotten up from their brief dazing blow and was now pushing their weapon’s length further into Sam’s body. As soon as it had reached hilt length they twitched their finger ever so slightly, pulling on a trigger at the grip. An explosive burst of fire erupted from the cross guard of the sword, bellowing out of the exit wound like dragons breath.

  Scorched blood filled her lungs, sputtered out of her with every berated breath. Her eyes grew heavy, the pain lulled her weary body to sleep.

  Rest

  The new ashed blood in her lungs whispered up to her through her throat.

  No more, it hurts, resting would mean no more, no more pain, it hurts, sleep,

  Samcouldn’t sleep, fear was still loitering somewhere, sleeping would mean losing. Sam couldn’t lose, she held onto her conscious mind as best as she could, finding some way of keeping it awake for longer.

  Anger, sharpened her lucidity for just a second more.

  Thirteen individually sharpened and fine metal spikes shot out of her back like pistons, skewering her attacker like a pin cushion. Instead of letting the corpse fall, she retracted the spikes and held the body in the open air. The blood tried to leak out of their body like it was supposed to, but Sam held onto it firmly. She pulled it out of the holes left in the soldier, each strand of red ichor trailing from them in strings that glistened as wet things did. All of the blood convened from the body to Sam’s hands, six thickened strands of blood, that rested themselves in the gaps between her fingers with their tips forming into hardened needles.

  She gripped all six and at once threw them towards the tall man who was still barely standing from the collision with the fabricated wall. They stuck into him like harpoons, the lodged blood leading back to the suspended soldier. With a thought, the trail of floating blood pulled itself taught with elastic force. The tall man vanished from his feet the second the blood needles pulled him, as did the corpse, with the two of them slamming into each other and turning into a fine red mist.

  Sam struggled to breathe, to gaping wound in her body clogged her throat with her own blood, and for a moment the whole world burned with the funny colours of suffocation. It didn’t take long for it to close back up, the serrated and burned flesh regaining colour and sealing itself like water filling a tiny gap, buteven so the world continued to spin around her.

  In fact, all her injuries so far had lingered longer than they should have. It had only taken until a few moments ago for the bullets from the door guard to finally fade, their pain becoming dull and almost unnoticeable. Now though she had over a dozen different little wounds all over, cuts and bruises and scorch marks lining the inside of her skin, it was getting harder to cope with all the pain.

  She could sense the anger emanating from behind her, so strong that it didn’t even warrant the use of her power. It was almost comical how angry this person was.

  Her short body fell from the cracked glass crater, stumbling over her own legs as she tried to stand. A firm grip on the handle of her dagger engine blade, humming with the same tired rhythm as her breath. The girl stepped once, then once again, before falling to her knees weakly.

  The soldier dragged herselfback upright and continued marching towards Sam, eventually working herself into a light, sprinting sort of motion. It was a very long shot, but her target was in front of her, back turned and seemingly just as tired as she was. A clear opening

  This wasn’t about pride any more, nor was it revenge or even duty. The girl remembered her family below the surface, the kids and their small stomachs that rumbled day in and day out. If the information she was briefed on was correct then the psychopath, the monster, in front of her threatened the whole colony.She couldn’t let those close to her starve. Within time the soldier’slimp legs carried them within a few inches of it, of her, she raised her dagger high above her with both hands wrapped around it tightly.

  The woman slammed her blade down towards Sam’s back, where the part where the shoulder blade fell off into soft flesh, and released a guttural scream.

  “DIE”

  The moment the knife swung Sam had already moved out of the way. The girls arm twisted about itself at the elbow, pinned by Sam’s hand pinching at her wrist.In a swift, blur of a motion Sam stabbed at her throat with her remaining arm, two fingers straightened for puncture.

  The girl whimpered at the sight of her cold glowing eyes, they were the eyes of her killer.

  Just then Sam stopped, right before the girls jugular, and pulled her arm back slowly until her fingers were below their jaw. Without saying a word, she gently tapped the underside of her chin and turned to walk away.

  The soldier’s arm dropped immediately, the blade collapsing onto the ground bellow the two of them. The girl stood perfectly in place, a dainty flower springing from the crown of her head, its pink petals flowing gracefully in the wind and wry smile scrawled from cheek to cheek. The roots Sam implanted in the girl had already taken their course, she had died.

  Sam tried to make it painless. The flower was called an ‘Oneirologia’, something curated by Sam herself while the girl was hobbling towards her. She realised her senses could reach bounds she never thought possible, subconsciously Sam started to know everything about everything. She thought, if she knew everything about the stuff that already exists, then what if she made something that didn’t.

  A hallucinogenic plant that could put a person into a permanent dream state before killing them seconds later, that was the plant “Oneirologia”. She hoped that the girl had a peaceful sleep, and hoped the flower worked as she intended it to do in the first place.Hoping was all Sam could do any more.

  The stray civilian caught her attention.

  “H-HE-” Sam’s voice was choking, she hadn’t used her throat to speak in a while, there was still some leftover flesh debris clogged in places she couldn’t clean.

  Coughing, she continued “HEY! YOU!”

  The bystander poked her head out from behind the stone wall. It instantly turned to a shower of dead autumn leaves, primarily because Sam needed to keep up her power’s momentum out of fear of another headache. But more importantly to see the face of the person she was saving.

  “You should go back inside!”

  She could sense the other four soldiers quickly approaching them, they seemed to have taken a more straightforward approach, the main road, at the expense of surprise. An element they already lacked, whoever was watching her must have found out about her “sense”.

  “SERIOUSLY!” Sam continued, “YOU COULD GET HURT STANDING THERE!”

  In an instant Sam’s arm erupted into a red mess, a stinging vibration shaking her down to the bone. A shock wave, the electrical kind, is what her senses identified it as. Another attack.

  The four new soldiers crept over the horizon, the frontman with his thin engine blade spread open wide like a fan with its metal frame arcing electricity along its silver petals. The others stood close by, weapons drawn and resolves steeled, Sam could sense the relief inside of them at the sight of her bloody arm.

  These soldiers never stopped, one after the other after the other, warm bodied machines designed to kill her. How many would she have to kill? How many had she killed so far?

  Her arm hung by a thread of muscle and almost touched the floor.

  Why did they keep coming? Don’t they know what’s happening? To their own pillar no less?

  The remaining nerves in her hand pulsed, still feeling the shrieking echoes of the shock-wave that collided with her.

  Her anger boiled her skin, the pain being a sickly-sweet adrenaline that numbed the pain. It was easy to be angry now, it made everything hurt less, it was natural and warm and it got rid of things for her.

  The soldiers ran towards her yet again, leaping off of walls and stalls in unison and vaulting over each other as though their movements had been practised.

  The soldiers lined themselves up, suspended in the air by their acrobatic skill. She could see their helmets glistening in the light of the afternoon beautifully, like shining dots in the sky she could draw a perfect line between them.

  Sam burned, the anger burned at her from inside and she let it burn unimpeded. The thread connecting her loose arm to the rest of her body doubled in size, then towed her limb back up from the ground until it was clean and healed. She clenched at the leather of her glove until it squeaked and then let it rest, the burning didn’t subside.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Good,

  Sam shifted her new arm up at the tiny people flying around the street and let the anger, the burning, bubble behind her eyes. All at once, she pushed the anger out in front of her.

  From every surface, every wall floor and rustic lamp, spindling lines spat themselves out. They flew opposite to their birth, connecting to any surface it could with metal spikes and wires shooting from them like branches on trees. Within time the whole street was criss-crossed with fine barbed wire, enough to coat every surface in razor sharpened steel.

  She pushed further, pushed the wires away until they dragged themselves down the street. They gradually picked up speed, the rough carvings in metal left behind by the moving threads became clean slices as they turned from stagnant webs to shifting blurs. Soon the mesh of metal was slicing through everything in the area like a twister of blades. They moved so quickly, so ferociously, that they almost appeared as ghostly spectres, like the very air itself, until they came into contact with a solid object. They bent and turned and curled and span like wind, like sharp metal wind. The four new combatants barely had a second to process the carnage in front of them before their beings turned into diced cubes that scattered the streets in a shower of blood.

  The wires fizzled away the moment the last snag of metal cut through the last bit flesh, the chunks of street stalls and people eventually falling and an uncomfortable silence fell on the nearby area.

  For the first time in what must’ve been hours Sam finally felt nothing hostile, no killing intent or the hum of a patient blade ready to gut her. She could finally breathe easy and gather her mind, at least for a couple minutes while the headache passed. Soon, she’ll be able to confront the freak responsible, soon everything would be justified.

  A brick collided with the back of her skull, the weight of the blow pushing her body forward. She hesitated to turn around, to face her attacker for even a second after all she had been through.

  The bystander from before stood earnestly, bloodied brick in hand with a nasty scowl on her face.

  Sam had never seen hatred like this before, even the soldiers before didn’t hate her as much as this woman did now. It was as if seeing all the destruction around her didn’t deter the citizen at all, that they still had the gall to strike someone who couldn’t die.

  Sam didn’t even speak, not a single word or sound escaped her lips as she turned back to her objective. She tried as best as she could to walk away.

  The woman yelled obscenities at her back, ‘Monster!’ this and ‘Bitch!’ that.

  One foot in front of the other.

  She threw the brick after Sam; it flew a measly couple feet just barely grazing her leg.

  Sam felt the bruise swelter under her skin, it hurt more than the bullet wounds.

  She tried to move faster.

  The woman didn’t stop, rocks and loose screws flew from her shaking hands until Sam had cleared her vision, far beyond the end of the street.

  Sam just couldn’t understand; the confusion, the deafness and blindness, the pointless violence, it all grew eerily familiar to her the more inconsistencies she bore witness to. She became convinced that something changed in people the past two thousand years while she slept, that people couldn’t possibly have been this stupid before.

  Sam felt invisible eyes burrowing into her from every darkened window she passed by. With every vengeful glare the weight in her chest grew, doubling and doubling until the fleshy organs inside her became strangled by the pressure. She wanted to leave, needed to go anywhere but here, anywhere where the eyes couldn’t judge her.

  In an instant the space around vanished behind her and replaced itself with something new like being forcefully tugged past a wall of water.

  Suddenly Sam was in front of the decaying tree centrepiece, with an equally degraded gate that firmlyembedded itself in the base root. She blinked again and a new environment greeted her, a giant table forged out of wood lying in the middle of a very temporary room carved into the guts of the tree. It was dim, only lit up by yellow tablets and screens forcibly installed on the walls. It was clearly some sort of bunker room, a hidden space somewhere no one was supposed to know about.

  Sam had no idea this room even existed, yet somehow she was standing in its shadow. She had teleported, that much was clear enough, but to a place entirely alien.It was similar to when she wandered through the snow outside, the strange stomach churning feeling from then oozed past her with each change of scenery, back when she felt the humanity inside her a little more than she did now.

  “John?”

  Sam snapped her attention forward, only just noticing the six people of varying ages, genders and races gathered around the pale dead table. Each garnered capes of different darkened colours embroidered in a shining emerald finish that cast oceanic reflections at the bottoms of their necks like scarfs of pool water. They circled around the table, some clockwise, others in the opposite and one or two stood perfectly still at their chairs.

  “John!” a lady waving papers like fans hurriedly charged towards the other end of the room. Her black cloak catching on straggling splinters poking from the walls.

  “I know Cecile! Let me think a minute without your voice grating in my ears!”

  John, as Sam assumed, was a much older man stretching into his eighties at the very least, which was evident by the skin stretched around his withered forehead.

  “No you don’t know anything! What the fuck happened to the soldiers?!” Her voice was furious.

  The emerald lining of her blue cloak traced itself into a pointed cog symbol in the centre.

  Sam recognised it slightly from her engineering days as being the mark of a leader, a trailblazer in one field or another, this one in particular used to belong to Sam too.It referred to those fidgety enough to be crowned a head of all things mechanical. It was much sharper than she remembered it being, although based off of ‘Cecile’ and her talk of soldiers and death she assumed the mechanical umbrella now included the late engine blades.

  Cecile inched closer to John when he refused to answer, lowering her tone to a harsh whisper “What are we supposed to do now?!”

  “I don’t know okay? Clearly the report was right, we should have listened. Isn’t that right Lucas?”

  John turned his attention to the second man stood still in the room, one who was younger but not by much.

  “Fuck off John” He responded, devoid of any real feeling behind the words.

  Lucas seemed detached from the others, in contrast he didn’t seem to care much about anything going on, resigned to his self predicted fate.

  “No, I don’t think I will Luke.” John rolled his shoulders towards the younger man, his pale white wrinkled face furrowing even more. “Wasn’t it a scientist that gave the report of this ‘Sam’ fellow? I’m pretty sure that’s your department-“

  Lucas shot a burning glare John’s way, “It wasn’t a scientist!”

  There was almost a hint of pride or anger in that response, Sam figured, some residual humanity still left behind. It matched the deep red cape pinned to his rightmost shoulder. Its insignia, the ‘burning hope’, being an ironic title for one as acceptingof death as him.

  Lucas continued once the accusations silenced themselves “As we ALL know, it was one of the remaining miner girls who gave the report.”

  The room went quiet.

  He relaxed himself somewhat, relieved that his company was listening “IF it were one of mine I’d have taken it more seriously, I think all of you know that”

  “Oh? Was that a jab at me Luke?” a much taller black skinned woman with a face somehow firmer than anyone else in the room towered over the man. “I’m sure the agricultural district would just love to hear those words come out of a man like you”

  “Be still Meghan, I meant that your people have had it the hardest out of all of us, who knows what they might’ve said for any hope of salvation?”

  “It was your incompetence that started this whole shit show to begin with!” her voice boomed off the wooden walls enough to make their ears sting.

  Meghan’s passion reignited debate amongst the others, each voice squawking over the over.

  Luke’s was the first to pipe up, having the confidence to square himself up to Meghan’s imposing figure

  “I FOLLOWED PROCEDURE EXACTLY! It wasn’t my formulae that caused this, it was her poor planning!” He nodded his head towards Cecile, who so far had managed to avoid criticism.

  “What? Its not my fault whatsoever!” she swatted at the air, “How was I supposed to know how volatile the disease was?! I was only told to funnel it back out into the void, I wasn’t expecting the mortuaries to burn the bodies so quickly”

  A shrill voice made itself known “There was just so many people dying what did you want me to do?!”

  A tiny man with a poof black hair adorned in yellow, the head of healthcare.

  Lucas spoke yet again, turning his attention away from Meghan to face the man “You had cures, you could’ve used a couple to curve the death rates at least somewhat, you idiot!”

  “He’s right there at least,” Meghan said, “That spike in deaths is what led to the majority being forced underground, which is how this ‘Sam’ got to the incinerator begin with”

  “It isn’t that simple I’m afraid” another man stood by the small one, unremarkable at best, “If Ivan used the cures more liberally the public would’ve caught on the instant it stopped being a pandemic, which would’ve made my job much harder… as you’re aware.”

  Ivan breathed lighter, relieved from the support, “Thank you, Pete. Obviously I couldn’t just control the infection rate like that, it’s too obvious”.

  “Don’t get yourself involved Pete, I’m not about to argue with the head of ‘public perception’” Cecile barked, her twitchy hands signalling him to ‘Fuck off’.

  “Hey at least I did my job correctly unlike the rest of you dimwits”.

  John cleared his throat, and the whole room hushed themselves and focused on his words.

  “Let’s not fight each other like brutes, please? There’s no reason to point fingers at who started what, clearly his plan had some glaring oversights” sensing the growing tension from one person in particular, he lowered his tone “I’m sorry Luke”

  Lucas nodded in reception, then started his reply with a much more relaxed, if not hopeful, perspective, “So… what do we do now?”

  “Well, clearly we need to do something about this ‘Sam’, she knows the plan a little too well and is clearly not having it...”

  The moment he finished, John froze in place.

  It was evident to Sam now that this man was the leader of thePillar. His deep green cloak was framed in shimmering black, instead of the usual dark emerald like colour, and sported an embroidered number ‘12’ in clear, crisp white on his back.

  There was no symbol other than that, just the large number, he represented everything here.

  “That’s good and all but how exactly are we supposed to stop this person?” Meghan chipped in,

  Combat was out of her jurisdiction but her demeanour showed curiosity, especially with the report from Twist in the hospital below.

  Cecile sensed the eyes glued to her for answers and reluctantly gave in to the pressure, “Uh, I could maybe give out some more elite engine blades to the remaining soldiers… It’d at least be something, right?” she looked towards John for reaffirmation.

  It was then that they noticed just how still John truly was, scarcely managing to breathe from where he stood. His sweat, even from a distance, seemed cold. Chilled with fear. When they followed his gaze they found the source of his terror.

  A pair of floating purple flames, staring at them from a shadowy corner.

  It is said, in Egyptian mythology, that ones actions are summarised against them once they die with the resulting balance, or lack thereof, deciding their fate. Sam remembered being taught the subject when she was only a girl, when toys and the opinions of her peers were her only concerns.It was only when she grew older, and wiser, that she found the idea fundamentally unfair. In her opinion, the weight of your choices is decided at several points throughout your life until you die as a result, like a tree of crossroads, of good and bad decisions from the day you’re born till the day you die. It was unfair that someone could live, doing whatever they please for some 80-100 years and only then could they be judged for it. What if you were shitty for 70 years and suddenly ‘redeemed’ yourself in the last 20 with good deeds? Those good deeds, no matter how good, couldn’t possibly erase the decades of bad ones.

  However, she also didn’t believe in any supernatural force that had that kind of power to begin with. Sam had the stark belief that these integral scales that appear throughout life are weighed by yourself and no one else. That, at times, you are self aware enough to know that you’re standing at the crossroads. That, at times, you are self aware enough to know what side of the scale you just tipped.

  She imagined in that moment, staring at the room full of pale and fearful eyes, that this self-awareness had suddenly dawned on them. She wondered which side the tipping scale had rested upon just now, as the chills on their bodies crept inwards towards their innards. She didn’t have to read John’s mind to find out which side he placed himself in, his drained face said it all.

  Words tried to escape his withered lips but his throat clamped them in place. He almost choked on the words alone, but dared not twitch in the wrong way in case the eyes would notice.

  The purple eyes were not under his command however, no matter what he did the outcome wouldn’t change.

  In an instant the body moved from the shadows, seeming to vanish before reappearing in front of John, on the table where his papers lied crunched under its boot.

  Cecile drew her fine blade, unfolding it from a pocket-stuffed box, and attempted to point it’s tip to the figures neck. Before the blade could move even an inch away from her, a gale pinned everyone in the room to far walls in one rush of wind, all except John.

  Before any words were spoken, before even a yelp could make itself heard, Sam grabbed the green clad old man by his leathery throat. His legs kicked and thrashed around for any foothold he could get, his whole being lifting up off the ground by Sam’s steel-locked grip. She wasn’t killing him, not yet anyway, she simply didn’t want him running.

  Sam cocked her head to the side, the purple light emanating from her mask glinting off the eyes of Cecile.

  “I’m borrowing him for a while” the chill in her voice stung like fire, it sounded like the inevitable, it sounded like control.

  The helpless souls in the room didn’t have the skill nor time to prevent Sam from vanishing yet again. Like smoke the two of them flitted into the air leaving only blank space behind in their wake.

  It wasn’t teleportation, though the effect was something similar, Sam folded space onto itself. She brought the place she wanted to go closer to where she was, and then let it go back to where it was supposed to be with her now inside it, all in an instant. She wanted to go to the top of the tree, somewhere quiet and empty, and by the looks of her surroundings she was now there.

  Sam looked down at his hostage, and at the gnarled stumps where his legs were supposed to be. He screamed, as she expected of someone who had recently had his legs torn from his body.

  “Whoops, sorry about that.” Sam muttered half heartedly, “I guess it’s pretty unpredictable when you fuck with space like that huh?”

  She noticed a chunk of her arm was also missing along with her captives legs, although she could heal in an instant it proved conscious ‘teleportation’ to be a much more difficult task than she initially thought.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll try to be more careful the next time I void skip”

  She tried; she really did try to find a cool sounding name for once instead of being silent like usual. Sam could already feel the skin on her back stabbing embarrassing daggers at her, in retaliation for even attempting.

  “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! Y-YOU PSYCHO BITCH”

  He resumed screaming soon after, or at least tried to scream with Sam’s hand gripping his throat.

  She breathed a hushed sigh of disappointment before responding, “So, John right? do you mind answering some questions for me?”

  He continued screaming

  She pressed her free hand against his forehead, the second her skin made contact the bleeding from his legs stopped and along with it his cries of pain.

  “What?” he breathed heavily, alarmed by the sudden unnatural calm that washed over him.

  “Questions, you’re going to answer them John.”

  He looked down at the bone like dead tree top below him, they must’ve been some hundred feet from the peak.

  He felt the urge to scream again

  “Answer them and I let you down, John”

  “OKAY!… okay I’ll answer whatever you want just... don’t hurt me, please” The man’s voice trembled.

  Sam smirked at the irony of his statement and resisted the urge to tease him further, there was more important things at stake.

  “Why?” her grip tightened slightly

  “W-why what?”

  “Why did you make a disease? Why would you kill so many people like this?”

  “We didn’t make anything we just did as we were told!” His eyes spoke truth, just not the truth she wanted,

  Sam had the urge to immediately ask who could give such an order, but needed to know what was happening first.

  “And why would you do as you’re told when it leads to this many people dying?”

  Sam shook the man as he suspended in the air, loosening her grip just enough to remind him of how quickly he could fall,

  “Why do this?”

  “BECAUSE IT MADE SENSE!”

  John for the first time in the ‘interrogation’ looked his attacker square in their eyes,

  He lowered his tone as her spoke “…Because it made sense, the populations are too high! Food is…its low, lower than it’s ever been before!”

  Sam didn’t bother to question further, her unrelenting stare spoke volumes,

  John continued obediently, “It makes sense right? you kill two birds with one stone! Thousands die but millions will live from their sacrifice, don’t the ends justify the means?”

  “You cant just take people’s lives like this, you’ve removed choice, their choice!”.

  John, to her surprise, began to yell, “Nobody gets to choose how they die!”

  He quelled his shakes just enough to continue with sombre confidence, “we’d all die regardless because of the shortages, either we die starving or we die full.”

  Sam retorted harshly “Then how did the shortages begin?! We designed this place be infinitely renewable! There had to be some inciting incident!”

  “There wasn’t any!”

  He had been truthful so far but this time his lie was blatant, she could practically taste the poison dripping off his tongue.

  But, before Sam had the opportunity to question directly, her head grew heavy again. It was another headache, only one much more deeply imbedded in her skull, right in the centre of her brain where headaches were most definitely not supposed to be. This wasn’t feedback from her abilities, that was a much colder pain compared to this, this headache seemed spurred on by Johns words somehow.

  It was familiar in once sense though, they felt the same as the ones she had in Pillar seven with Flick, albeit much worse.

  No, this wasn’t a headache at all. The intensity of the pain made the cause much easier to notice, when Sam realised what it really was she almost gagged.

  Voices. Voices, images, sights and sounds and feelings. All at once in speeds incalculable by human standards, all at once flashing in her mind. Information about anything and everything in present pulled through her consciousness like a slide show. Answers to every question, both asked and not.

  Earth to rocky soil to voids, space time coordinates that painted themselves in blank spots/space. silica tetrahedra- a voice personified mouth lungs, heart. Mind, person, thoughts of questions and white noise and eyes,

  other existence.

  Void was death, is birth of stars. Fire, ice. Thoughts of ground, of the meaning to breathe the last-first breath, oxygen from carbon from trees, of which are corpses that decay carbon and create carbon and create life. Breathe. Water with bacteria insides of bodies, of minds, viruses in bodies, war paint, blood. bodies small, large. Knives edge, the edge of razors and life itself, kill and burn and singe, blood.

  A wormhole near a sun, a star with all the elements of life, of everything and nothing at all, but everything hasn’t been made yet. creatures like bird people, soldier camps and people eating people, a dying, smiling, greed.

  None of it made any sense, like single frames of movies flashing to her out of context, like millions of movies.

  The more she focused on it the faster the images flooded past her, faster than she could possibly comprehend. And, like a child counting their breath,suddenly Sam couldn’t stop focusing. It was a complex feeling to put into words, even for Sam who thought herself quite familiar with these strange sensations by now. Even though she couldn’t comprehend the things being shown to her she somehow knew them, as though she was born with the information imbedded within her. Was her head inflating? No, being scraped away perhaps? Was there bees swarming her? Or wasps? Or elephants? Or planes? Whenever she thought the flooding of her mind couldn’t get worse it doubled in intensity as if to bite back at her naivety.

  At some point the pain in her brain took precedence over the man held around her fingertips, and she reluctantly let him slip from her grasp to the ground below.

  To his admittedly relieved surprise, he was stolen from his free-fall by a soldier, one of four who had managed to reach the dead treetop less than a minute before Sam’s episode began. With the old leader secured, the remaining three scrappy ‘warriors’ hobbled themselves up skyward branches in an attempt to reach Sam while they still could.

  She only snapped out of her self-imposed information overload once her body sensed the imminent danger climbing towards her. Her eyes gained colour finally, her consciousness returning to the moment at hand despite being a second or two late. Just late to not register the boy leaping towards her.

  The soldier swivelled the engine blade in his hand, delicately balancing it between his fingers as he primed like a spear, pointed at Sam’s chest. With the tugging of a thin string at its handle, a roaring blue flame erupted from the blade’s pommel. The boy let the fire drive his grip hand forward ever so slightly, before twisting his entire body to launch the sword like a jet propelled rocket.

  By the time she had recognised the attack the blade was already hilt deep in her ribcage, with the jet of flame behind it rocketing her body far into the distance. Eventually the fire died out and the momentum carrying Sam followed soon after, careening them both down towards the ground. Once it slammed her into the roof of an abandoned library, a delicate clicking noise echoed from the weapon, like a spark attempting to birth itself. Sam just barely managed to choke back the blood in her throat by the time she looked at herself to asses the damage, by then a third tiny click sounded out and stopped indefinitely.

  A flash of colour burst out from her chest, a small slither of a star being born from her open wound that baptised her body in explosive flames.

  The boy from the treetop looked out to see where his enemy landed, the fizzing and popping of fireworks from a distant roof confirmed his engine blade had succeeded in maiming his target. A swift hand wave to the other two informed them of her position and a brief yell to the bigger man, who only just got to the scene of the fight, informed him as well. Within time the four of them made their way towards the bloody bonfire.

  It was silent. Black as well, like the night that encompassed her on summer nights with friends. She could almost feel the warm breeze, the giddy laughter and bloated thoughts from cheap liquor that christened her, her and her friends. There was fire, gentle fire, and brief moments of warmth whenever a swayed shoulder bumped into another. But it was cold too. So cold, painfully cold compared to those nights.

  Sam realised her eyes had closed, when had they closed? Her body felt odd too, parts of it were numb whilst others felt like they were burning, when was she hurt again? As she looked around at her surroundings she gathered that she had passed out, either from pain or exhaustion, since the environment around her felt alien. She counted herself incredibly lucky that soldiers hadn’t reached her yet, that must’ve meant she was only out for a minute or so at the most. Once she saw the state of her body it was clear how her consciousness managed to slip away from her in such a crucial moment.

  One of her legs hung over the edge of the roof like a strewn towel whilst the other smouldered in piles of her own ash besides her. Half her torso, the part where her still heart bled profusely, was barely recognisable as human flesh as it sat some ten feet or so from the other half.

  Whilst healing obviously proved easy for someone who could materialise anything they wanted out of thin air, it didn’t lessen the pain even slightly. The feeling of her nerves reconnecting still sent chills down what was left of her spine, and when she did eventually rise back to her feet the phantom of her wounds made her knees buckleout of fear. Couldn’t she just stop now? Was their even any point in going on any more? Why couldn’t she just rest?

  Her mangled leg shifted its bones completely back into place, not so much as a grey scar along its length as it healed, however her attention was more focused towards the hatch a few dozen feet from her small crater.

  Heavy breaths of four men panted from behind the locked latches, pants that quickly blended into the rumblings of their hotter breathed weapons. In a horrific display of strength, the giant blew the hatch far off its hinges leaving only haggard screws and smoke in its stead. The men lying behind it expected a half-charred corpse lying still in front of them, however once they clambered onto the roof they were only greeted by a small pile of rubble. Locke, The largest man there, having ran into their target some time ago in the hospital some hundred feet below their surface, was the first to look every which direction in search of his prey. Whilst the rest of the soldiers scanned the ground and even the city streets, a giant engine blade began revving up from behind them, its tip setting its sights skyward.

  The blade came from non-other than Locke holding the rear and its target was quickly moving, shifting as it pointed at the sky.

  Sam knew better than to pick fights she could avoid, and with her mind-bending abilities there weren’t many fights she couldn’t. By the time the soldiers had reached the roof she was already tearing through the air in a mad dash for safety in a matter of seconds. Although, despite how boundless her powers seemed to be flight was still something entirely alien to Sam, however in her mind it was enough to simply throw herself towards the sky and worry about the finer details later.

  However, despite how far she was and how fast she was going, a bullet whipped past her ear.

  followed by another.

  And then, another.

  A hailstorm of bullets rising towards her, a shimmering wall of steel poised directly at her, the large man on the roof keeping steady aim as he unloaded a stream of heavy ammunition. A couple shells lodged themselves in Sam’s side whilst a good dozen more sheared past her, leaving only red trails on her body and jolting her off course massively.

  Cursing through her teeth Sam hurtled uncontrollably towards the edge of the pillar, her speed almost certainly being enough to powder her bones the moment she collided with the metal wall. Gripping what little focus she had tightly within her, Sam pulled gnarled wood spires out from the tallest building she could. Forming a massive incomplete wall of oak that braced itself for impact, a lot more than what Sam could accomplish herself anyway. A low thud sounded clear through the streets and in an instant her body went limp, the wooden embrace only barely slowing her to a halt at the expense of her already battered body. Her barely conscious form went from spiralling through the air to dropping like a flake of snow quickly melting into cold, sterile rain. And, like the rain, a smooth metal domed roof waited below for her descent.

  Before yet another roof could welcome her, a flower the size of a small field erupted from its surface, ready to catch her free-falling body in its gentle arms. Whilst lessening the blow significantly, the living cushion proved unable to prevent the fragile ceiling caving in from the impact of Sam’s rough landing, shattering into dozens of glass shards and fragments of metal that fell into the dingy space within.

  The room was dark. Darker than dark even. The single spotlight of a fading twilight glow from the Sam-sized hole above was the only source of light, and it was dim at best. The whole space was shrouded in a veiling luminescence.

  In this passing light Sam stayed, staring at the ill lit corners of her new domain. Her mind wandered, again, back to her now distant past and old companions, the fellow creators of this world she was stuck in. For a moment Sam forgot where she was, forgot about the reality that surrounded her and simply dwelled in the memories. Letting her mind fragment even further than it already had, letting the world she once knew fall around her to ruin.

  As the twilight sky dimmed into night Sam swore she could see the faces of her old companions staring at her from the walls, ghostly blue heads in peaceful never-ending sleep. It was as though they had appeared to calm her mind, to soothe the poison that was ailing her morals. She shed quiet tears seeing their features again, it was the first time since she awoke that Sam had felt so safe. It was when the light in the room completely dissipated that she realised what stood before her wasn’t just the hallucinations of insanity or grief, but in fact the cryo chambers that belonged to the science district of pillar twelve.

  Her old friends lied only a few feet away from her, preserved in perfect frozen time as though she had saw them yesterday. Their pale blue glows warmed her very soul. However, the closer she got the more her body trembled, the more tears escaped the lids of her eyes along with the hushed whimpers of grief.

  “Did we do this?! Did we save everyone just to pit them against each other like this?”

  She waited for a response, there was none.

  “Weren’t things different once? People more civilised and streets cleaner? I mean, we weren’t trying to create a utopia, but surely what we made couldn’t have led to... this! Have… have things always been this way?”

  Still, silence.

  “HOW HARD IS IT!? TO NOT TAKE LIVES SO EASILY!?” her eyes became full, inflamed by her frustration “THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? BULLSHIT! THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE TO!”

  It was then, for a brief moment, that she caught a glimpse of her own reflection. The reflection of a gnarled wooden mask with deep purple-red eyes that burned with hideous fury. No matter how righteous the motive there’s no excuse for taking a life, so how was she different? What made her exempt from her own criticism? Even though, in her time, people were still shitty in their own right they didn’t eat people. They didn’t poison each other for population control. Or did they?

  It was clear to Sam that something changed inside her, something more than just her biology. Had humans always ignored such awful things for the sake of “the end”? The more Sam thought the more patterns lined up. Even in her past she remembered stories of wars, of atrocities committed on mass scales in only the vilest ways. Had she always ignored them? Always ignored how these things seemed to repeat endlessly?

  Perhaps now, with the amount of power and knowledge Sam held within her loose grasp, she had realised something. If she could start everything again somehow, clean the slate of the perpetual cycle the whole world was caught in, maybe Sam could make humans compassionate again? Create them from scratch out of the air she breathed, fix the violence with a new beginning. Was it hubris? She wasn’t sure, but something called to her. In Sam’s mind there was no way to save something that was this poisoned, you can’t partition mould from bad bread nor frostbite from dead fingers. The only cure was oblivion.

  Besides, Sam was different to everyone else here. No matter what any person did now, or in the future, they would all be dooming their own people with their actions. Not Sam though. She was and still is a woman lost to time, a paradox in motion who has no connection to anything. An outsider. And someone who is disconnected with the world around them doesn’t live by the same rules. Sam could finally do something.

  The ends didn’t have to justify the means, not any more.

  It wasn’t long before the men from the roof came to where Sam flew towards, still just as bloodthirsty as they were prior and ready to end the long day of conflict the pillar had gone through. There was a certain air of difference this time however, between the library roof and this resting place of the old, something changed. It was slight, barely even recognisable unless one was paying close attention to their own skin rippling with goose-bumps. There was tension. Despite the change the men got ready to breach the room and finish their drawn out fight, with the largest man lining up first. His shaking hands should’ve been a sign to the rest, telling them what lied ahead.

  Before the soldier could even graze the door he was launched backwards fast enough to turn him into a blur. It was as if the man was flying down an invisible aerial runway, and regardless of what got in his way he didn’t slow down. After powdering a good half-dozen buildings, the culprit of the soldiers sudden flight became clear. Sam, who was gripping the hulking giant by the scruff of his neck with hands that formed from air as she dragged his body through the sky.

  Once the destruction had reached the tree in the pillars centre Sam pulled herself up, up towards the glass dome before launching her human baggage far above her. With just a simple glance his body erupted into brilliant red strands of boiled blood, which then in turn evaporated with the heat Sam was creating in her mind.

  She felt no remorse, not any more anyway, only the burning anger that singed her eyes remained now.

  Not wanting to lose the momentum she was creating, Sam continued to heat the air where the man once was, scorching the sky until beams of plasma appeared like pillars and struck the ground beneath them.

  With the countless superheated lasers carving unknown shapes into buildings and battered floors it was clear to everyone what her goal was this time around. Sam was aiming to wipe the pillar off the surface of the planet, and it wasn’t going to be hard with the arsenal she had packed inside her brain.

  Several dozen men and women of varying factions leapt from the dead crown of the centre tree in desperate attempts to execute Sam in her free-fall. Scientists, engineers, soldiers and everyday workers equipped with every engine blade the Pillar’s armoury had left, launched their attack in chaotic unison. Sam swatted them away with just the wave of a hand, a pulse of solid air that pulled them all towards the ground. Sam chased after the falling bodies like a wolf in deadly pursuit, turning her mask into the gaping maw of a predator and driving its teeth deep into the torso of her target. Flicking her head to one side she tossed the now dead woman away from her only to launch her own arm from its socket, turning into an unbreakable chain that contained Sam’s steel-hardened hand at the end. Grabbing the corpse she swung her whole body in a spiral like motion, the body becoming a wrecking ball that accumulated the other free-falling attackers. With every person Sam hit she gained another body to the add to the end of her devastating swing, tiny spikes sticking them together. Soon about twelve people lied at the end of her chain which immediately detached from her body, igniting it like a grenade getting its pin pulled. The human ball she had created combusted into a monumental sphere of fire, the sheer power creating shock waves that bent the steel walls of the pillar itself.

  Falling down faster than gravity should allow, Sam collided with the ground like a small moon creating a colossal crater in her wake. Without hesitating she turned the ground into bundles of wood. Growing upon themselves, the natural tendrils coiled around the pillar twelve tree, tightening themselves and pulling upwards as if to uproot the whole thing. Turning to face her current objective Sam assisted the roots she had made by gripping the tree with her own psychic grip. Flinging her hand upwards the goliath wooden monument became airborne.

  There was an eery silence that blessed the town centre. One that encompassed their small world with fear as the shadow of their tree rose higher and higher towards the ceiling.

  The cracking glass was something that wasn’t supposed to be heard, like witnessing a dark miracle that seemed like a dream, so far detached from reality it was laughable.

  The rushing of air that quickly sucked itself out of the country-sized hole was much more realistic however. Like the screeching of death’s ravens laughing at their pitiful attempt to resist nature.

  Afterwards, silence. There was no light nor sound any more just infinite silence that kissed every surface. Any remaining electricity flickered in their final breaths, any building left untouched seemed frozen in time itself. there was nothing any more; no pain, no sadness, no manipulation, no cannibalism, there was nothing left to destroy.

  The only thing that remained, in the centre of a dead pillar with nothing but hollow homes left.

  Was Sam.