The night in Brightburn enveloped the house in a cold that seemed to seep not only through the cracks in the old wooden window frames but also from the very earth, soaked with dampness and exhaustion. The wind howled outside, chasing scraps of yellowed newspapers and dry leaves—brittle as the bones of a forgotten world—through the empty streets. I stood by the cracked glass, peering into the darkness where the dim glow of streetlights—their yellow light flickering like dying candles—barely pierced the thick gloom mixed with smoke from distant fires. The glass under my fingers was cold, rough with dust, and the crack running across it resembled a thin bolt of lightning frozen in the air. I traced it with my nail, feeling tiny shards crumble under the pressure. This house, this town—everything was coming apart at the seams, just like my life had before I realized who I was.
Darkside showed me that I was still weak. But the creature that seized my mind revealed the full abyss of my weakness. It infuriated me so much that I wanted to simply drown everything around me in fire. But I had to change it all. Calm down and find a solution to all the problems.
From childhood, even in my past life, I understood who I was and who everyone else in this world was. For me, the world was divided into two roles: master and slave, killer and victim, strong and weak, rich and poor, wise and fool.
I was a slave and a victim until I came of age. A slave to a city where children were killed and sold like goods, a victim who tore out the throats of other children to survive. A vile life I wanted to escape. To something bright and pure.
Alas, the very moment only a brief instant separated me from adulthood, I realized something had to change. But changing things radically was difficult.
That's when I joined the army. Becoming a slave, but now a killer. Later, I became a master by killing my masters. The parable about the victor, the dragon who becomes a dragon himself, was always relevant. At least in my case.
But all that is in the past. A мимо, in which I died. Memories that have faded.
And I was reborn.
Now I have become the Absolute.
Above everyone in this world.
---
Kate sat at the table, clutching a cup of cold tea. Her fingers, thin with chipped nails, trembled, leaving faint ripples on the surface of the dark, almost black liquid in the dim light of the lamp. On the table beside her lay a spoon speckled with rust and a couple of crumpled napkins, steeped in the smell of the damp basement. She didn't look at me; her gaze was fixed on the cup, as if she could find answers in those ripples. Tori lay on the couch, wrapped in an old woolen blanket with faded patterns—once bright red and blue stripes now looked gray, like ash. Her chest rose and fell slowly in a faint rhythm of breathing, each inhale accompanied by a soft rasp that I could hear even over the howling wind. My blood had saved her from death, but it hadn't restored her strength—her face was still pale as chalk, with thin blue veins visible under her skin, and dark shadows lay under her eyes, as if someone had drawn them with a charcoal pencil. I looked at her and thought: how many others like her were dying right now while I stood here by the window?
Through her body, I could see that this virus was unusual in its nature. Unusual in that it seemed alive. A thinking virus, as if designed to attack ordinary people.
It made me think.
The world outside was collapsing. I felt it in every dull sound of sirens echoing from afar, in every sharp smell of burning that saturated the air and settled on my tongue with a bitter taste. It wasn't just the smell of smoke—it was the smell of death, roasted flesh, and melted plastic. I pressed my forehead to the glass, the cold piercing to my bones, and thought: how much longer could I stand here, watching this, before I broke? Or had I already broken and just not noticed? It was time to act.
"Are you serious about doing this?" Kate's voice trembled like a string ready to snap. She raised her eyes to me, reflecting the light of the old lamp with its worn, soot-stained shade—yellow, flickering like her voice. In her gaze mingled anxiety, exhaustion, and something else—a spark of curiosity, faint but alive, like a flame in a pile of wet leaves. "A new world, an empire… It sounds like madness, Brandon. Like a lunatic's dream. Do you really believe you can do it?"
I looked out the window, where the wind hurled a handful of fine gravel against the glass, making a dry clatter like footsteps in a desert. That street I'd walked down in the distance was empty, save for an old rusted pickup, long abandoned by the neighbor's house, swaying in the gusts, its suspension creaking. Its cab was littered with trash—candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, a crumpled map faded beyond legibility. No one had come back for it. They'd left. Or died. I remembered how children used to run down this street, how Mrs. Haley, the old woman with a perpetually sour face, watered her roses from a tin can, how the smell of freshly cut grass mingled with the aroma of her pies. Now, it only smelled of rot and loneliness.
"Madness is what's happening now," I said, my voice sounding firmer than I expected, echoing off the walls with peeling paint. "The virus devours people like black mold, wars tear the earth to pieces, burning fields and cities, and those who could stop it sit in their golden towers. They sip wine from crystal goblets while children starve in the dirt. The internet is chaos with lunatics rejoicing at the end of our world. Hundreds of thousands, millions of photos and videos worldwide. I'm not a god, Kate, but I'm stronger than them." I clenched my fist, feeling the skin tighten over my knuckles. "I can break their world and build a new one. Not because I want power. Because there's no one else."
She was silent, and I heard the cup clink against the table—her fingers trembled harder, the spoon beside it shifting slightly, leaving a thin scratch on the worn tabletop. I turned. Kate looked at me, biting her lower lip so hard it left a white mark on her skin. Her hair—dark with sun-bleached strands—fell over her face, hiding part of her forehead, and I noticed one strand trembling with her breath. She'd known me since childhood, from the days when I first got my powers—a clumsy kid just playing at being a child. They'd seen all my heroism on TV: burning buildings, saved lives, news reports with my face blurred by speed. And now, that truth hung between us, heavy as a lead ball, cold as the knife I'd used to cut myself for Tori.
"Where will you start?" she asked finally, her voice quieter but now carrying a resolve, as if she'd surrendered to the inevitable. Her fingers gripped the edge of the table, nails digging into the wood, leaving faint marks.
"With a cure," I replied, clenching my fist so hard the skin whitened over my knuckles, muscles aching from the tension. "My blood saved Tori. It can save others. And then… I'll find those who grow fat on this chaos. Their wealth will become the bricks for a new order." I pictured their faces: glistening with sweat, sated, their eyes full of contempt. They saw us as ants scurrying under their feet. I'd make them choke on their gold.
And then I'd find those who created this abomination, that black slime flecked with red, devouring people's bodies.
Kate swallowed, her throat bobbing, the lamp's shadow sliding across her neck, highlighting the sharp collarbones under her sweater. She'd lost her parents, and all she had left was me and Tori. She nodded, her eyes glistening—tears? Or the lamp's light? I didn't know. But I understood: she was scared, but she believed. That was all I needed. The faith of one friend in this cold, dying house meant more than the cheers of a crowd.
---
Morning came gray and damp, the sky shrouded in clouds like dirty cotton soaked with rain that hadn't yet decided to fall. Kate and I descended to the basement—a cramped space with a low ceiling, where the air was heavy with the smell of mold, old wood, and something acrid, as if vinegar had once been spilled here. The floor was cracked, resembling a map of a long-dead world, and in the corner lay Kyle's rusted tools: a hammer with chipped red paint on the handle, screwdrivers with worn plastic grips, a couple of cans of dried-up paint with labels long faded. I remembered how Kyle used to fix his old motorcycle here, how the smell of gasoline mixed with his curses when a bolt fell into a crack between the floorboards. Now he was gone. So was the motorcycle.
On a wobbly table that creaked with every movement, we set up a lab: Kyle's old microscope, found in the shed, with a scratched eyepiece and rusty screws; a few glass flasks, yellowed with time, with tiny bubbles trapped in the glass; syringes from the first-aid kit with worn markings, one slightly bent. I rolled up my shirt sleeve, exposing my arm—clean, without a single scratch, though blood stained these hands and always would. Invisible but sticky, like tar. I took a knife—dull, with a notched blade speckled with rust—and pressed it to my wrist. A curious feature of my powers: if I wanted, I could make myself pierceable; if I didn't, steel was powerless. I wanted it. The pain was sharp but familiar, like an old friend who shows up uninvited. Blood emerged slowly, dark red and thick, with a metallic sheen, unlike human blood. I looked at it and saw more: faint threads, shimmering like stars in a night sky—my essence, my power, alien to this world.
It dripped into the flask, drop by drop, making a faint chime as it hit the glass, like someone dropping coins into an empty jar. Kate stood beside me, her breath uneven, escaping in short puffs of vapor in the cold basement air. She watched the crimson liquid fill the vessel, her fingers fidgeting with the edge of her sweater, leaving tiny pills on the wool.
"It shouldn't look like that," she muttered, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. "It's… like it's alive. Like mercury, but hot."
"Because it's not just blood," I said, gritting my teeth as the wound closed on its own, leaving only a thin pink line that quickly faded. Pain. It had been a while since I felt it. Sobering. "It's power. My power. And maybe the only thing left of who I was before all this."
We worked all day, mixing the blood with chemicals—ampoules and powders I'd stolen from ruined labs around the world. I recalled breaking into those places: shattered windows, the smell of disinfectant, bodies in white coats lying among broken test tubes. It would've been a foolish act and murder if not for time—there was almost none left. I heard through the walls how Tori's organs weakened, how her heart beat slower, saw how the virus devoured her from within, leaving emptiness. This abomination was consuming the only person who'd ever been kind to me in all my years.
I had to do something. Even if it was madness.
My knowledge of virology was patchy—fragments gleaned from books, conversations with scientists like Bruce, whose lessons I absorbed like a sponge. But this was my blood. The most important ingredient. I clung to that hope like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood. The knowledge in my head whispered: you can do this. And faith—or stubbornness—pushed me forward.
By evening, we had a murky liquid the color of rust, with a sharp smell of iron and something sour, like lemon mixed with vinegar. I filled a syringe—the plastic was cold, sticky with dampness—and injected a dose into Tori, carefully piercing her thin skin on her arm. The needle went in with a faint crunch, and I froze, afraid I'd overdo it. She didn't wake, only twitched slightly in her sleep, her brows furrowing, her fingers clutching the edge of the blanket.
We waited, sitting on the cold floor amid dust and old boxes stuffed with yellowed newspapers and broken toys from Kate's childhood.
I saw with my vision that my blood spread through her body. I saw it slowly but surely consuming the virus, devouring it like a predator, then vanishing, leaving nothing behind. An hour later, her cheeks flushed, her breathing deepened, the rasp disappeared, and the shadows under her eyes began to fade, like fog under the first rays of sunlight.
Kate pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes glistening with tears she'd held back all day.
"It's working," she whispered, her voice trembling with relief, nearly breaking into a sob. "Brandon, it's really working."
I didn't manage to save her parents…
"We need more now," I said, wiping the blood from my hands with an old rag that smelled of motor oil and mold. "And people to distribute it." I looked at my hands, at the faint lines of scars that vanished instantly, and thought: how much could I give? How much of myself was I ready to cut away for this?