My Worst Enemy, Myself and I: Chapter 1 – A Villain Within

Chapter 1 – A Villain Within

“Now, I’m finally free,” I say as I snap the neck of my pregnant wife in one hand and my child’s neck with the other.

I let go of them, letting them fall to the city streets and the horrified crowd below me. Wait. What is happening?! What have I done?!

I did what I had to. Life is too difficult to endure. It’s becoming increasingly expensive each year, resulting in more work and stress for lower pay. The world also seems to turn against me. It despises my beliefs, and I can’t change the laws or the powerful people who oppose me. What’s the point of living just to suffer and enjoy a few fleeting things that come and go like a breath of air? I saved them from living the misery that is this life. Now, I must join them with one step off this building. Ah, but fate is cruel, because after falling five stories down to the concrete, I live. The damage done by the fall quickly healed and was only mildly discomforting.

What’s going on?! What am I doing? Why are my clothes and skin color two different colors, and why’s there an evil, deep voice in my head that sounds like mine?

Why’s there a light and gentle voice in my head that sounds like mine?

All I wanted was a better job to support my family.

All I wanted was the power to be free and do what I want.

I went somewhere to be experimented on to get powers. They told me they’d separate the evil from me.

What is evil? It’s what opposes what I like nothing more. With the powers I have, I can finally shape the course of my life as I wish. No more compromises. No more letting people tell me what to do. The threat of poverty and violence no longer applies to me. I’m a truly free man.

No. I’m confined in this body with myself and my temptations. I won’t be free until I get the voice to stop taking control. Getting up on my feet, I try not to look at the smashed remains of my wife and children and push through the scared crowd as the police arrive. Come on! I should also have the power to fly, run fast, or at least leap up into the air!

I should kill them too, and make a name for myself here. This isn’t my home city. These people are foreigners and would make good practice for my new abilities.

No! I leap up into the air, right into the side of a building. As I grip onto it, I run up the face of the building, reach the top, and leap from rooftop to rooftop, then down to the ground when the superhuman heroes start coming after me. They shoot their powers of electricity and ice at me, as I manage to block them with my arms, turning them into large white shields with three interconnected circles on them.

There’s no outrunning them. I can run fast, across the face of buildings, and leap into the air fairly high, but that isn’t getting me away from them. Changing tactics, my arms turn large and black with sharp, reaching fingers on my shoulders, elbows, and hands. Using these weapons, I slash at my pursuers, knocking them into buildings, cutting off heads and limbs, sending cars and heroes into traffic, and into the air into other pursuing heroes and a news copter. With no one left in sight, I take a few more sharp turns, keep running, and head into what seems to be a quieter and darker area of the city where no one should easily find me.

I catch my breath in a dark and filthy building, regretting what I just did. How can I lose control of myself so easily? God, have mercy on my soul. What curse has been afflicted upon me? What did I do to deserve this?

I hate this whiny, judgmental voice in my head. There has to be a way to get rid of it. If I remember correctly, I had the Coronamento Corporation experiment on me to get these powers. They must’ve put me in this city for a reason, so they must be nearby, or maybe I can find a building they own. They’re everywhere nowadays, so they shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Picking myself back up, I walk outside and notice my reflection in the broken glass of a condemned store with police tape around it. I’m wearing a half white, half black hoodie with pants and shoes that follow the same color pattern, but in opposite parts. Part of me has my normal skin color, but my brown eyes and hair are so dark now to the point where they look black. As for the other half of me, it’s a greyish white with black and white eyes and grey hair that’s cut short.

Enough of this looking in the mirror. I know I look good, so there’s no reason to check at all. With my hood on, I walk among the crowds of the city and get a feel for where I am. I’m definitely in a foreign land because the demographics and churches are different than where I’m from, that being Nexum.

I’m in the Columbian Union, specifically the city of Meridian. It’s nicer than I heard it was. The people seem to get along, and I even see a church dedicated to the religion I’m a part of that’s commonly worshipped in Nexum.

This is also the home of the so-called hero, L’Obscurité, who came to my country with John Elio, disgracing it by attacking and forcing it to pay reparations for what its leaders and influencers did to it. They got what they deserved when our leaders attacked them, their families, and friends. With the powers I have, I should finish what was started and make them pay for what they did.

We deserved it for what we did to them. We hated these people and thought they were lesser than dogs because they believed differently from us.

They’re the reason why living became so expensive for me and caused my family so much more suffering. I was a fool to trust the Coronamento Corporation to give me powers when they were the ones who supported the villains who destroyed my country, but now I’ll make them regret it. It was part of the plan, after all.

Finding a building owned by the Coronamento Corporation isn’t hard. Given their pride, they have one of the largest buildings in this city, filled with modern, Art Deco, and Gothic architecture.

Seeing it makes me sick and fills me with rage. It should crumble to the ground with everyone still in it.

Going in, I find a sleek and clean place with people walking around the place, despite it being late at night. Without realizing it, my entire appearance has changed. I look into a nearby mirror and see that my appearance has changed into the man in a suit I was looking at, who I assumed to be a boss, given how he was talking to a group of people who were following him. Perfect. Using this disguise, I walk through security, who seem not to have noticed me.

It looks like they were all too busy to notice my sudden transformation, but I can’t guarantee that the cameras didn’t, so I'd better hurry up. Thankfully, the levels on the elevator here are labeled, so I go down to the superhuman research area. People wave and say hi, presumably to me, and I merely nod and wave back, unsure of the extent of my new mimicking ability. They’ll all have their throats slit soon.

I go into a room that’s marked archives and go to the largest computer, guessing it has the information I’m after. A camera in the top part of the computer suddenly scans my eyes, confirms my identity as the person I’m mimicking, and turns on. Searching through the database, I find shared folders marked for various kinds of subjects, such as those who were willing, prisoners who gave themselves up for experimentation, and employees and allies of Coronamento who also received experimentation with subcategories based on location and experiment. It’s a good thing there’s a handy search feature on this computer, so I can easily look for my name and not have to look through the many folders.

Searching for Zandro…Zandro…what’s my last name? Did I forget that, too? It doesn’t matter. I’m not part of any family anymore anyway. Zandro comes up with only one result that details that I’m a willing subject and was given the powers they told me about, that being to separate the good from the so-called evil, along with other powers that I didn’t care to listen to at the time, only wanting powers so I could carve my path to absolute freedom and self-rule.

It says here that I also accepted being moved to the Columbian Union, where my family and I were given an apartment as part of my compensation for working for a hero association here known as the Dominion, the one that L’Obscurité and John Elio lead.

My two primary targets. Maybe I can find the location of their family and friends here. I’ll break their necks like I did with my family and make a display of their deaths to really get to them. Just like my leaders, I know they’re invincible, so the only way to discredit them is to go after what they built and who they love.

No! I won’t stoop down to their level. The place that experimented on me is in the suburbs of this city and should have the answers I seek. Obviously, they didn’t mean for me to kill my own family and be off their leash like this, at least from what I’m reading.

At the same time, it could’ve been. I have a criminal record as a rioter against Dominion control in Nexum, so it’s possible they gave me these powers, knowing what I would do with them, so that they could further villainize my country and its people. Someone behind me says the name of the person I’m mimicking, giving me the first target, whose face I smash into the computer, leaving it unrecognizable. The alarm is now on. It’s time to cover this place in the guts of its workers.

It's time to leave! I break through the metal barriers that came down on the archive room and push through security who were waiting outside.

They were watching me, and they paid for it. They’ll all pay for it as I change my arms into black, sharp tendrils that pierce through skulls and necks, and sever people in two.

Turning my arms into white shields, I block their gunfire and the ranged powers and physical strength of their superhumans as I run towards the elevator, rip away the blocked doors, and run up the elevator shaft back to the ground floor, where more security is waiting for me and covering the escape of its employees.

They’ll all suffer the same fate!

No, they won’t!

They all deserve to die for what they did and what their employers did to me!

Stop it!

My body splits in two. One is a completely grey and white knight with a halo on the back of its head and a shield on its arm that focuses on knocking out security. The other is black and dark grey with sharp fingers reaching out from its edges that resemble devil horns. It is armed with a sharp, black arm with tendrils that cut through both security and the employees who get in its way. Both leave the front of this Coronamento building as a mess of bodies, both dead and knocked out.

I have to get out of here and get fixed, now! Running outside, I find two superhumans waiting for me, and an observing crowd at a distance. The two superhumans are Kane Mundr and Idelle Elio.

This is perfect. Kane is the hooded, crimson, gunslinging apprentice of L’Obscurité and the adopted son of Timeo Severe, and Idelle Elio is the armored sister of John Elio with two snakes on her back. Killing them or making them suffer will do major psychological damage to their respective loved ones.

No! I need their help!

Them? Help me? They’ll kill me instead.

“Please, you have to help me!” I force myself to say, as I turn back into my normal self.

Kane was about to say something, but now looks confused. “Help? You can say that again, buddy. You’ve been making a ruckus all night and need to stop.”

“I know! My name is Zandro, and I just woke up here, not knowing why I’m here or what I was doing. That’s why I went to Coronamento, to find answers, since they were the ones who gave me these powers. Please, help me! I have no control over my powers or mind!”

“Kane? What’s God’s verdict?” Idelle asks.

Kane looks at me with his eyes that are said to have God’s judgment for souls in them. He manifests two ebony pistols from thin air, points them at me, and says, “Death.”

As part of me tries to accept a pathetic death and beg for undeserved mercy, I charge at Kane and am immediately punched into the Coronamento building by Idelle.

Let them kill me!

They’re the ones who deserve to die. I’m going to rip their heads off and send them to their loved ones in a nice package.

No, I won’t! I run away, and Idelle chases me. Kane is soon behind her on his motorcycle and fires at me with his pistols, while Idelle tries to tackle.

Knowing the best way to get them off my tail, I run into the civilian crowds, throw them up in the air, run through buildings to start fires, and put families in danger that they can’t ignore. This works as planned, and they are forced to focus on the trash they protect, allowing me to escape into the furthest ends of the city.

Getting on my knees, I beg God for forgiveness and mercy.

He’s not listening. He’s already given me the solution to my problem, and I’m going to use it how I want to. Tonight is the start of something horrifyingly beautiful.

It’s the start of a nightmare, and may God have mercy on my soul.