.
.
Anywhere But Here
A fireball blossoms and Chaos sweeps in.
Elaborate plans scatter as machinery splinters, and desintegrates. Hello, old friend! Chaos. Limitless and free. It’s only fitting that it should blast through Ethan’s escape plans as well. The detonation fries his eyes before hurling him into the air like a twig. He slams against a hard surface, probably concrete, and drops, broken, onto a floor strewn with shattered glass and fragmented machinery. A salty taste of blood seeps into his lopsided grin.
All around him, men are moaning. His comrades in army drab – but not much longer, because the illusion spell that allowed him to infiltrate their ranks wobbles like a punch-drunk tightrope walker. Hard to maintain when your eyes feel like they’ve been poked out with a branding iron.
Ethan can’t see the flames but he can feel their crackling heat on his skin: not yet close enough to devour him, but too close for comfort. Nearby, the moans of one of the injured soldiers turn into screams as the fire starts to play with him. Further away, shots are fired, erratic staccato bursts of destruction....
... while ...
...back in Ethan’s old cell, his doppelganger dummy takes a bullet to the head. Ethan yelps as pain hammers into his brain, just as the man’s death severs the connection...
Chaos. Pure, undiluted chaos.
It’s really quite brilliant. Power surges through the air, fuelled by insanity and blood, causing rifts and eddies, breaching the very fabric of the world. Sweet, succulent chaos. Ethan laps it up until it sings in his veins. There’ll never be a better time to hitch a ride. There’s no telling where he’ll end up, and in the state he’s in he’ll be at anybody’s mercy, but what if the gallant Miss Summers is defeated? What if the Initiative wins this little power spat? Ethan doesn’t want to die here. Actually, he doesn’t want to die, period. But if it be now, well, it had better be anywhere but here.
The smell of grilled meat mingles with the stink of charred polyester. Unbelievably, the burning soldier is still screaming.
Ethan doesn’t need eyes to see or hands to grab the ever-shifting tendrils of power that lash through the air. All it takes is the knowledge how to bend chaos to one’s desire and enough reckless despair.
Anywhere but here.
The rest is silence.
FIN
Story Notes:
Spoilers for the comics up to volume 4. Contains some brutal imagery.