I came back too with Eleanor shaking my side, and I groaned. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  She let out a relived breath, before standing up. Springer had steadied himself somewhat as well, all three of us finally having caught our breath. He looked at me and nodded. “That was… intense. Anything else you guys need? I want to take one or two of them back with me. I’d have preferred a live one but, well, I’m not quite that crazy.”

  My mouth curled down, and I shook my head. “No, sorry.”

  “Ah, it’s fine. I can take some more action…probably. What else are we doing?”

  The frown didn’t leave my face as I stared at him for a while, thinking about how to say what I needed to. “Springer.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to sit down for a second.”

  He looked confused but complied, taking a moment to sink down and cross his legs on the ground. “Alright?”

  “Eleanor and I, are supposed to kill you.”

  Eleanor slowly lifted a hand to the knife on her belt, which wasn’t helping my attempt to calm the situation down.

  “What?” He laughed incredulously for a moment, before looking rapidly between the two of us, both of our faces serious. “What? I-I haven’t done anything?”

  The frown on my face grew deeper, and a long sigh left me, like a force pushed down on my back and squished out the air in my lungs. “Yeah, that’s the problem right now. Do you know what an Inverse is?”

  He shook his head softly, his face a little pale but his focus unwavering.

  “Most people have powers that work based on a few rules. The inverse work, well, in inverse. For Eleanor and I, the more you know about our powers, the weaker we are. The roots of our powers are things that exist in the natural world, absent of human interaction. For you, your power, theres no way bringing art to life is anything but related to a root that has to do with people.”

  He swallowed thickly, slowly nodding his head. “Alright, yeah, I won’t deny that. My root isn’t anything, uh, natural. So, if by that logic I’m an inverse. Um. What does this have to do with killing me?”

  I drummed my fingers against the grip of my pistol, forcing myself to keep eye contact with him. “Because, the vast majority of inverse power users are homicidal at best. And the worse…The worst can become worse. The worst, can become animals in the literal sense alongside the figurative. The worst, become the monsters the size of cities. The King, Widow, J?rmungandr. We’re pretty sure that they all started as inverse people. So, the standing order by the government…”

  Elanor ran a thumb across her neck.

  Springer lifted a hand to ghost over the same spot on his neck, breath catching in his throat. His hand slowly lowered, going to his notebook. I lifted a hand to calm him down. “But, hey, we’re not monsters.” I glanced at Elanor, who at this point in the course of her life, hadn’t done anything like this. Unlike me. “Look, the two of us are pretty high ranking members of the military. If we vouch for you, which we can, we can delay your death.”

  “Delay?” His voice was shaky, a convict hearing what exactly a guilty plea will get them in terms of leniency, and finding it lacking.

  “...Inverse users like you…as far as we can tell, for Eleanor and I, the more we use our power, the more we feel drained, tired, overwhelmed. For you, and tell me if I’m wrong, it’s elating, exciting, euphoric, it makes you want more. Like a drug.”

  He swallowed thickly, eyes shaking slightly as he nodded once more. “I-I thought everyone felt that way, w-we just know it’s bad to feel that way right? To not get carried away?”

  I shook my head with my lips in a deep line. “It gives me a nasty migraine, and Elanor gets dizzy and nauseous.”

  “But…But it feels like…like bringing something to life for me. It’s…nice.”

  I started to lower myself down, not wanting to be towering above him while we talked about this. I groaned slightly as I sat down in front of him, resting a hand on the ground and another on my knee. Both away from my gun. “That feeling, it’s different for everyone, but for most people, it drives them insane. I don’t know if you’re hiding something, inhumanly strong willed, or special somehow, but you’ve shown no signs of the same lunacy other people in your situation have.”

  A shaky breath passed through his lips, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “Is there…Is there any evidence if this sort of thing is hereditary?”

  I glanced at Elanor, who frowned holding a straight expression for a moment, before she raised her hands. She shook her hand from side to side. When I didn’t look away, she flexed her hand as she thought for a moment. “Complicated. We don’t know if the issues come first, or the powers. People who have issues give birth to kids with issues. But it’s not guaranteed. Powers can birth inverse, and inverse can birth powers.”

  I translated it out for him, and he nodded along taking the details in quiety. “So…So what happens to me? I mean, I knew it was bad to give in to the powers, I mean,” He let out an almost delirious laugh. “Giving into power is like, the most textbook evil thing you can do but…So, if I…what would have to happen for me to…be like the Demons?”

  I lifted my hands up and to the side, palms open. “Don’t know. It’s just that, at the center of the corpses of those beasts, the ones we recovered at least, we found people. Well, we haven’t touched the King, but the other guys. We don’t think all of the big ones are from your type, and the little ones definitely aren’t, but…we’ve got no clue how it all works. We assume you all have an intrinsic understanding of it, because it happened almost twice before powers became well established. There's a lot to gain from someone like you, willing to communicate and talk to us, trying to resist the power. I don’t think the government will treat you harshly as long as we’re vouching for you, and you’re working with them. Chances are pretty high you’ll be sticking around us, or stuck in a base somewhere, but we won’t have to kill you.”

  “Is- are those really my only choices? I…I can’t stay in my home?”

  I shook my head slowly. “You’re a risk to millions just by still breathing. But you also have the chance to save potentially more people by letting us learn from you. Honestly, I understand if you hate this, if you hate me for telling you, but…My hands are tied by duty and by the weight of lives beyond us.” If I had the choice, I’d pick the quick death personally, but that probably wouldn’t comfort him much. “You consider yourself a scientist don’t you?”

  “I am. Don’t say that to me like I’m a preschool kid playing in the dirt wearing a Halloween lab coat. I might not have your resources but I learned what I could.” He started running a hand through his hair, his shoulders lowered, and his eyes closed as if some part of his body was now missing. “I didn’t do it very well apparently. I lived my whole life never…? I never noticed?”

  I paused for a second, as the palpable self-disappointed radiated off him instead of any kind of despair or grief. “...Like I said, most of the time the tell is mania. That and people don’t talk too much about their powers.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “And I didn’t much talk to people.” He slowly picked himself up, and I paused a second before doing the same. “...Can I ask? I know we haven’t known each other very long, but would the two of you really just kill me?”

  “This conversation happening is us trying not to. If you tried to run, tried to fight either of us, then yeah, we’d have killed you.” It was half the reason I asked him to sit down first. Because it’d be harder for him to start running or drawing. His head lower, easier to draw my pistol to in a shorter time.

  “That’s…pretty messed up.”

  “No arguing there.”

  This was a first for the two of them, a person with Inverse powers who wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t for me. The persecution this group of people received wasn’t as severe as it could’ve been, since it became naturally taboo for people to discuss their powers unless needed. When someone figuring you out brings physical pain, conversations about yourself start to become less frequent. It also didn’t help that the government was quick to shut up information about people with Inverse powers, not wanting those individuals to realise that people learning about their powers made them stronger. Lot of good that did.

  In all honesty, beyond the shaky morality of putting a young man into a shallow grave for a crime he had no hand in perpetrating, I was smart enough to figure some things out based on motif alone. And the guy who spent his time in a giant building covered head to toe in butterfly drawings, who wanted to come with us for the sake of understanding the butterflies more, and had the possibility of turning into a monster. Well, he was probably the Monarch.

  The Monarch was a butterfly, if everything about this place hadn’t made that obvious. A monarch butterfly. The flaps of its wings literally could’ve caused hurricanes, and did cause tornadoes when it used them in full force against some of us. I had thought, at this point, that it would be where it’s supposed to emerge from in a year or two.

  The stomach of the King.

  A caterpillar, probably larger than a semi-truck, inching its way through the insides of another creature, biting into gore and viscera with its pincer teeth made for eating leaves. Hollowing out a thing the size of an island, then metamorphosing in its skeletal shell.

  I looked down at Springer, trying as hard as I possibly could to recall information about him from my past life. But, my memories were too scrambled. I hadn’t even really thought about it, but I was having trouble remembering things from this time.

  There was the usual forgetfulness of five years passing, and of going through hell in the years that followed. But to relive a memory, and retain none of the information? To recall none of it at all? Something was wrong with my head.

  Regardless, what I did remember indicated that this man would be one of the contributing factors to humanities death. A pretty large part of me was tempted to forgo the mercy and put a bullet in him and be done with it.

  But the larger part of me knew I had more to gain by keeping him close like this. A lot of progress got made once some people with Inverse powers revealed themselves as non-threats. There was a lot of cruelty first, but progress after. I was hoping to skip the prior and get straight to the latter with him.

  He was also the best possible choice to do this with, of the inverse that transformed that I knew about. His transformation would require the chrysalis first and foremost, Meaning a period of immense vulnerability. If he went crazy, we’d probably have a year or two to do something about it before he was a problem.

  Springer was starting to make up his mind, eyes closed. “...I mean, it isn’t much of a choice but, I’ll go with you two. I’d like to see the inland world, there's probably more to learn. Maybe…there will be a way to get rid of this, and let me be normal.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder, letting out a relieved sigh. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s the powers that make you different from normal.”

  He let out a small exhale, a tired attempt at a laugh. “Yeah, guess that’s fair. Alright. Is there…anything else for us to do here?”

  I looked at the various corpses strung around, nodding. “Eleanor’s going to stick behind and burn the corpses. You and I are going to take a walk, collect whatever you can carry with you, and say your goodbyes.”

  He nodded, and I threw a hand over his shoulder as we walked, just trying to calm him down and ground him. “You made the right call. We’ll both do what we can to keep you treated well.”

  He was silent, and once again pushed up glasses that weren’t there. He was looking straight down as he walked. “You know, I always wondered if, maybe, we deserved the monsters. God wiped the world clean once, maybe this is just him doing it again? I can’t help but wonder what I’ve done wrong to deserve the flood, or if the individual doesn’t matter, and he just judges the whole. Then, does that make me a proof of corruption? A trial we we’re built to fail?”

  “...I mean, not that I believe in your god, but this would be a pretty fuckn weird way to wipe the world clean. If he exists and just wanted us dead, we’d just be dead wouldn’t we?” I gave him a pat on the shoulder, pulling away from him. “I probably wouldn’t ask the preacher, he’ll try and kill you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He’s part of the church. They think you guys are literal demons in human flesh. We just think you’re crazy.”

  “Great. That’s…wonderful. My life is amazing. Perfect, no flaws or errors whatsoever.”

  He seemed like a pretty good guy, but it was worth remembering that he did give in, in the past. He became a monster. Looking at him as he wallowed in the complex emotions of discovering this, I couldn’t help but get my own doubts.

  A wave of steady anxiety passed over me, starting from the tip of my spine, steadily running it’s way all the way down my body. What if he was faking it? What if he had known from the start? What if this trip had been a way of getting himself closer to his metamorphosis? Maybe we caught him off guard, but he was still just acting. Still just pretending.

  “You alright?” His words brought me out of my train of thought, and I realised my hand was on my holster.

  I relaxed the hand, letting it rest to my side. “Fine. Lets get going. Am I going to have to fight the preacher to get you out of here?”

  “No. I’ve wanted to make a trip inland for a long time. My uh, parents went that way, an-”

  “They left you behind, I know. Chances are they’re dead, and if not, impossible to track down.”

  “How did you…?”

  I turned to face him as we walked. “Assume that I know everything about you. Assume you can’t ever lie to me because I will always know it. I genuinely think you’ve been given a shit hand in life. But If I think for half a second that you’re lying about something in regards to your power, if I think you’re doing something behind our back, I won’t hesitate. The fate of the world is in my hands, and I’m not going to falter in doing what I need to do.” He nodded hesitantly, and I clapped him on the shoulder. “Good.”

  He shifted uncomfortably, and pushed my arm off of him. “Would you quit threatening me then being nice? It’s sending mixed singles.”

  “I’ve got mixed feelings about you.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve picked up on that.”

  We finished the rest of the walk back in silence. It only took a couple of minutes before the vision behind us started to fill with smoke, the bodies lit up properly by Eleanor.

  There wasn’t really any distinct reason to burn the bodies. They didn’t come back from the dead, or pollute the area, or create more monsters from the corpse. It was just superstition. When something unnatural dies, you burn it. You turn it into ash, so that it’s corpse, so that it no longer exists.

  There's a purity there. In fire. In burning something. There’s a calm that washes over you while you stare at the fire burning away at the thing that tormented you. A sort of nothingness that takes over your emotions, holding you in stasis as you watch it with blank eyes. The flame is like a shifting wave, only capable of moving forwards, climbing up. The surety of it, the knowledge that nothing can return from ash.

  In a more pragmatic way, the smoke clouds that pop up after a successful monster extermination are a deep comfort to people. Seeing that column of polluted air rise up means your troubles are lessened. It’s something like a calling card. Places like this all had there own names for us. Dogs, government agents, help. But back home, inland, people like us were known just for our success, for our smoke. It’s why the official name of our kind started getting called Plumes. The government encouraged it, it was a name a lot more gentle than the people who held it, and it had a kind of respect. Which was most of why people here didn’t use it.

  Our vests have a little capsule of thermite and tend to scavenge the rest of what we need to set the bodies alight without hurting the world around us. I thumbed it idly as I looked up at the smoke.

  “You know.” I broke the silence as I pulled my eyes away from the rising cloud, joining the others in the sky. “I think I’d like to be given the same courtesy when I die.”

  “That’s…odd. Monsters burn, people get buried.”

  I didn’t respond, just deciding to keep moving forwards.