Life. Pattern recognition. Survival. Superiority. Masochism.
Life. Inferiority. Servitude. Prejudice.
Death. Hate. Murder. Blood.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
It was all he felt in that particular moment.
A holy tome was strapped to his chest, bound to an electric apparatus humming faintly. His small frame—twelve years old, bruised and exhausted—sat shackled before a sick, twisted jury. Wires dug into his back, exposed and raw. His skin was inked with black markings etched into him like a curse, laced with copper alloy dust that shimmered faintly under the sterile lights.
They stared at him—expressionless.
Blank-faced.
Watching.
He didn't understand.
Didn't know why he was here. Only that he had been kept in a cell for what felt like months. Only that they told him he was guilty. Guilty of something he hadn't done.
And that he was about to die.
Falsely accused. Forgotten. A child before executioners cloaked as justice.
George Junius Stiney Junior.
"Your death is in honor of the two women you murdered—21-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 16-year-old Mary Emma Thame."
He remembered them.
Two local rich girls. Pretty. Cruel. The kind who smiled only when they were mocking someone. They didn't like people who didn't look like them. Didn't act like them. Didn't belong.
He had just been nearby that day—taking a stroll. Existing.
They were found raped. Burned. Cooked by someone wielding an electric-type augment. The town was shocked. Furious. Desperate for someone to blame.
And he?
He had mild electrokinesis. Barely enough to light a streetlamp.
Perfect scapegoat.
There was no evidence. No motive. Just presence.
They took him. Twisted a narrative. Said he confessed. Said he snapped. Said his family was ashamed—so ashamed they turned their backs on him.
A simple, peaceful life shattered like glass under the boot of power.
George's electric-blue eyes stared coldly at the corner of the execution chamber. A detective stood there—smiling.
Not wide. Just enough to make it personal.
George knew the sponge on his head wasn't wet. It was dry.
They were going to cook him slow. Slow like a roast.
He remembered the interrogation. The beatings. The shock-dampening cuffs that turned his augment into pain feedback. They hit him until his bones hummed. Forced him to speak words that weren't his. Whispered suggestions. Twisted thoughts. A confession placed like a loaded gun in his mouth.
They made him believe.
For a while.
Now?
Now the despair had cooled. Curled into something else.
Hate.
It sat in his chest like a storm coil—boiling.
They pulled the levers.
One. Two. Three.
George screamed.
His body convulsed, nerve endings frying as his skin split along the copper veins etched into his flesh. Teeth clenched—cracking—as the voltage spiked. His voice tore through the chamber, a raw, guttural roar, calling out to a god who wasn't listening.
But his captors had forgotten two things:
The potential of augments.
And the will of a man with nothing left to lose.
Above the execution house, the sky boiled.
A storm had been forecasted—a hurricane coiling in the vast atmosphere of Atheris, a planet ten times Earth's breadth. The enforcers had dismissed it. What did weather matter to justice?
They were wrong.
A bolt of lightning—unnatural, concentrated—speared through the courthouse roof.
At the same moment, George's dying instinct surged.
His augment answered.
Light. Force. Pain.
The room detonated in a concussive blast.
His eyes—blank, then burning—snapped open.
The copper scars across his body glowed white-hot. His left eye blackened, the iris pulsing an electric, hateful blue. Pupils slitted. Flesh knitted itself back together as his restraints shattered.
The jury screamed.
The detective's smirk died.
George stood.
And then—he moved.
Flesh ripped. Bone seared.
"You executed me for murder," his voice crackled, a distortion of sparks and fury. "Now let me show you what murder really looks like."
The detective died first—grasped in George's sparking hands, body jerking as voltage turned his insides to charcoal. The guard who left the sponge dry followed, his skull bursting from the surge. The copper-lined enforcers melted where they stood.
A few, he let live.
So they could tell the story.
Then—he was gone.
His body dematerialized, surging into the power lines, a storm given form, riding the current as a magnetic wraith.
Above, the clouds parted.
A single shaft of light speared down—like heaven itself was watching.