He said the words. He did. I heard them.

His eyes, those orbs of light blue, came across as dour in the dim lighting of the squalid half-home.

I peered at them, and then I peered down at the can of beans he had in his hands. At the way the table between us had been set with all kinds of garbage before my arrival.

Then my mind went to other places. Such as the rather rough welcome I'd received upon entry into this place. The colossal Intruder grabbing me and trying to smash me into atoms against an unyielding, unreal landscape.

I had assumed it was a fun, cheeky greeting between guys who knew full well that kind of encounter could only be beneficial.

However, in light of the recent findings, it could be that the Intruder was simply ordered to attack anyone that looked like its master.

'And then there's the silence all around the island. The feeling of emptiness. The faded colors. The way all the sounds I made were muffled. The way Buddy and the Drake reacted to…'

"Oh no." I said aloud.

"Yes. That was more or less the reaction that I was expecting."

"No. Not…"

I held my face.

"No. I mean, that too. But I just realized something else, you don't have Buddy with you."

I pointed at him.

"Your suit is torn in places. It is handmade."

"Well, yeah. Of course. What did you expect?" He snorted in derision. "I couldn't even stop myself from instantly killing humans and any other sentient beings when they happened to land in the same dimension as me. Not for the longest time anyway. What makes you think Symbiotes would be any different?"

I had to hold my head with both my hands.

"This is insane." I said suddenly. Drawing back my body.

"How did you… how did you even survive?"

He gave me a quizzical look.

"No. Yeah. Sorry. I'm not stupid. Just surprised. The beans and other canned foods. They can pretty much last forever. I guess if you kept moving and kept looting stores then… yeah. I can see how that would be possible. But…"

I shook my head in disbelief once more. Struggling to come to terms with the revelation.

"What about the animals? What about disease or shelter? What did you do during winter or freezing rain? What did you do during blizzards? What about the mons… actually never mind that last one. That sounds like a very straightforward question."

He sighed and leaned back into a tower of loose garbage.

"I suppose I should tell you everything. Might feel good to get it off my chest." He gave me a dry chuckle. "Even seeing you realizing it felt kinda good after all. Feels like I got a heavy load off my chest."

He nodded to himself. Taking another series of quick, sharp breaths.

"So, yeah. It all started that fateful day, when we were both six. You managed to just [Dominate] everyone around you in your immediate area. At least, that's what I get from your memories. Nice going by the way. Managed to kill those freaking crabs like a true professional and you didn't even hurt mom and dad or Henry. Truly a bang-up job."

He brought up his can of beans. Kind of how rich folks would bring up their glasses of wine to toast people in old movies.

"I didn't do that. I gathered up all the Psy that I could, which was a lot, and then I ordered them all to be silent. Forever. I was so desperate that all I wanted was for the noise to stop. For my head to be filled with my thoughts and mine alone."

His left arm twitched. As if the mere mention of the event had triggered some kind of instinct. An urge to hurt himself some more. His fingers lengthened into claws and he began raking thin red lines across his thigh. Rupturing the suit.

"At first, I convinced myself it was a nightmare. It was very easy to think so." He rolled his eyes and made a motion with his fingers near his ear. Indicating that he was loopy.

"After all, how could it not be? I'd been happily getting ready for bed a few hours before. Mittens cuddled up somewhere under my bed and hiding like the mischievous little scamp that he was and me all bundled up in a thick comforter. All warm and snug and ready for the next day. When suddenly mom scooped me up and dad started driving like a maniac. Rushing past people trying to get our attention and hitch a ride to the secured monster shelter."

He raised his hands. One of them still having claws for fingers.

"We left Mittens!" He pretended to shout. "Mittens was under the bed! We have to go back for Mittens!"

He chuckled once again and lowered his hands.

"There were people on the road, you know. I don't know if you recall that part in particular, but I'm fairly sure dad ran over a few poor souls on his way to the shelter."

"I am aware." I informed him.

"Though neither of us were thinking too much about it at the time." He went on. Giving me a sour smile.

"Anyway, moving on. I made all the noise go away and not having the System to tell me just what I'd done, I assumed this was all a nightmare. Again, how could it not be? Mom was dead. Dad was dead. Henry was dead as a doornail. Just like all the neighbours. Just like the crabs. Just like all her little freaking kids."

He clapped his hands.

"Just like that. There one moment. Gone the next. No fanfare. No bright effects like in the TV shows where the Dragon Rangers made all those explosions happen after they hit the bad guy with the Turbo Friendship Blaster. None of that. Everyone had simply crumpled to the floor like… like… like…"

"Like puppets whose strings had been cut." I finished for him.

"Exactly!" He snapped a finger at me. "Exactly like that. Everyone just up and fell over and stopped breathing."

He let out a derisive, mocking laugh.

"So of course I thought it was a nightmare. What the fuck else was I supposed to think? I was fucking six!"

He slammed a clawed hand against the table. Sending the half-empty can of beans tumbling to the floor where it joined the rest of the refuse.

"I was only six." He went on. His mouth growing fangs and snarling. While his other hands grew claws that dug into his side.

"I didn't know. I couldn't possibly have known."

He stayed put like that for a full minute. Neither of us saying anything while the silence between us became deafening.

When at last he stopped hurting himself, the floor was drenched in little giblets of shredded meat. The stench of drying blood helping to mask the odor within the rest of the house.

"I thought it was all some terrible nightmare and I thought it would all go away when I woke up." He explained again. "So, I did the logical thing and laid down next to mom and dad. Right there in the middle of the shelter. With the crabs next to me and my neighbours on the other side."

"You managed to fall asleep right there?" I asked.

"After trying to wake them up for some time." He clarified. "I don't know how long I spent there. An hour, two, five. It all blurs together as I try to recall it. But that doesn't matter."

He waved the issue away.

"What matters is that it happened and that I couldn't make it so that it never happened."

He nodded to himself and sighed heavily.

"I woke up with crusty eyes. All red with tears. I was cold and snivelling. I don't know if you recall, but it rained heavily later that night. And throughout most of the morning. The crab mother had made a hole in the shelter's steel door, meaning the cold air came through without much trouble. And a long puddle had formed underneath their bodies. I stood up, shivering, and the first thing I noticed was that neither mom nor dad nor anyone else had moved an inch."

He sighed.

"And that was when it hit me. Not that I'd done it mind you. But that they were dead."

His eyes, those dirty chips of ice in the darkness, wavered for the first time. The pain seeping out even now.

"I was broken and I remained broken for a long, long time afterwards. I must have laid there crying for a whole other day. Just me and a whole lot of sobbing and a whole lot of rotting corpses all around me."

His hand went to his stomach.

"I recall being hungry. And thirsty. But those were vague ideas in the back of my mind. I wasn't really worrying about being hungry and I certainly wasn't worrying about the fact that my clothes, what little I was wearing, was stained with tears and snot. Those notions didn't even register until after mom and dad started smelling."

He brought his hands up and waved them in the air.

"Imagine it. Just like that, within a second, my entire life had crumbled before my very eyes. And then, two days later, I as a hungry, thirsty, cold, exhausted little kid had to come to terms with the fact that they were gone. And also, with the fact that no one else had come for me. No heroes flew in from the sky on golden wings of fire. No helicopters flew in from out of town. No police cars rolled up to the shelter with paramedics in tow. None of them came."

He spread his arms.

"Because it wasn't just my parents and my neighbours who were dead. Everyone was dead. Everyone and everything that was evolved enough to think."

He forced out a self-deprecating laugh.

"And I really do mean everything. Dogs? Gone. Cats? Gone. Parrots? Hamsters? Bunnies? Pigs? Cows? Goats? Chickens? Rats? Bears? Fish? All gone. Done. Donzo. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He brought his hands down and sighed.

"Haaaaaaa. Even worms. Mom and dad weren't eaten by worms because all the worms were dead. All of them. Everywhere. They were aware enough of themselves to be affected and so they died in their infinite numbers. Same with the flies and all kinds of trees. They just rotted away right then and there where they stood. The grasses survived. Some of them at least. But a lot of the flowers died and those that didn't had a real rough time without insects to pollinize them."

He waved the argument away.

"Bacteria were still around though, so things still rotted away. Slowly. But enough about that. After I managed to get up and away from my parents, I found myself starving and dying of thirst. Standing was painful. Breathing was painful. Thinking about anything brought me back to mom and dad and that was all kinds of terrible. I was like a zombie. Moving about without really being aware of what was going on around me or what was happening. The water was still running in the shelter, since it was built to last a couple of weeks under siege, so I used a water fountain to do away with the thirst. As for the food, the lockers were fully stocked with canned beans and the stoves were electric and running off of a local generator. Again, built to last under siege. I found a can opener and I ate the beans. I wrapped an emergency blanket around myself and I moved over to the rec room so I didn't have to see the bodies and I sat there in front of the old TV the shelter had. Watching old movies in VCR over and over again while I waited for someone to come. For rescue."

He rolled his eyes.

"What an idiot right? Looking back on it now, I keep banging my head against a metaphorical wall that I didn't think to find another place that hadn't been torn open."

He coughed out a half-laugh.

"So anyway, I was left out there in the open. A kid on a dead world. After the generator shut down, I filled a backpack with all the canned beans and all the water bottles that would fit. And then I walked past them. All the bodies. To reach the exit."

He held his breath.

"I cannot even begin to describe the smell in that room. The way they looked… I…"

I knew then, if he were not a Shifter, he'd be vomiting non-stop as he recalled the memory.

"I moved quickly through the mess. And then I was out there. On the open street. Dead monsters all around me."

He chuckled then.

"I actually saw an open Rift twenty minutes after walking out of the shelter. These wolf-mantis things coming out. Each one over three meters tall and seven meters long. Scary as all shit."

The chuckles grew louder.

"I remember being confused. Not because they were there. But because they kept falling over as soon as their heads poked out of the Rift. It was… honestly hilarious in hindsight. They, the new ones I mean, kept having to push the corpses of the old ones to the side in order to come through and then, just like that, they too keeled over and died. Crumbling like puppets without strings or ragdolls as soon as you stopped holding them. None of them seemed to realize that something was off."

He barked out a derisive laugh.

"Though to be fair, I didn't realize anything was off about me either. I couldn't figure out what was happening or why I'd been spared. I just knew that I could run past them without them catching up to me. Little did I know, if they knew what they'd been dealing with, it'd be them running away from me."

He leaned back again. Hands by his sides. Looking exhausted.

"And then it all became a blur. I walked and walked and walked. Until I reached the fire station. I recalled dad going over all the emergency meeting places I was supposed to go to in case anything happened. There were people there, of course, but they were dead and the fire trucks were missing. My guess now is that they were all attending to fires when I killed them and the blazes ended up getting out of control."

His eyes glazed over.

"There were a lot of fires that first year. You'd be walking down a street and be met with a building or a house that was reduced to ashes. Though most of those incidents stopped after the gas ran out. After that, I lived exclusively off of canned foods and water bottles. Moving from store to store and filling up a couple of shopping carts I had tied together with those bungee cords things I found inside a big-box store. I slept wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. With no fear of what might happen to me. Why would I be afraid? Everyone else was dead and so were the animals. Forget the dogs and cats. Even the flies and the worms and the snails were gone. Poof. Just like that. What was going to hurt me? What was still alive out there that could even think of hurting me?"

He leaned closer. Nodding along as if to answer a question I hadn't asked.

"I was moving south. Not because I was aware of the cold, though I was. Freezing to death wasn't really my main concern you see. It was a concern, but I felt so numb all the time that I might have welcomed such a death if it came. No, I was worried about the people here. The conclusion I had arrived at, after going over all the knowledge a six-year-old managed to filter through his surroundings, was that there had been some kind of atomic accident in the plant up north. Dad was always going on about how irresponsible it had been to build it there for some reason or another and I, not knowing any better, judged that it was the reason everyone else was dead. Why I had been spared? That I did not know. But I figured I may have been special in some way. Like someone who was immune to zombie bites in those movies. Only with the atomic accidents. Don't judge me too harshly. I was young and stupid."

He was rambling now. His eyes not even centered on me.

"I recalled that the atomic plant was up north and I figured I could find people if I got away from it. So, I went south. Walking. With the shopping carts trailing behind me. It sounds a lot worse than it actually was. The roads were always empty and clear of people and there were enough stores all over the place that I always had a change of shoes or clothes or backpacks ready to go. On several occasions, I even got into a car. The first one was a beat up truck, but it did the trick. It still had the key inside and I drove it all the way until the fuel ran out. Actually, I made it all the way to the US border without crashing it."

He sounded proud of the achievement.

"Again, there was no one to crash into me and I was going some 20Km per hour at most, but I was still proud of myself for that one. After that I un loaded my bags and found some more shopping carts to load them into. Then it was back to walking. Until I found another car with the key inside of it. And after the second time, I learned to stop at gas stations. Not only could I refuel without paying, because who was going to stop me, but if the car had something wrong with it, I could always exchange it for a new one since the people who died in gas stations had their cars and keys still with them. Once, I even changed another old truck for a brand-new Bentley. I couldn't appreciate the windfall then of course, but I do recall that thing being the fanciest piece of steel I had ever seen. Also, bonus points, it had a computer attendant built into it that could self-drive and sort-of talk to me."

He made a pained face.

"It was a cheap AI, all things considered. But it had been the first voice I'd heard in over a month by that point. I actually broke down in tears when it first talked back in that robotic, emotionless tone. I asked it all sorts of questions and the AI quickly deduced that, to put it mildly, shit had hit the fan. It called all kinds of emergency services all day every day, but lo and behold, no one came to the rescue. Still, it was company, of sorts, and I trusted my new robotic friend to take me all the way to his owner's primary emergency bunker. A huge underground complex that sat prettily in Florida's western border. His owner was dead of course, but the programming meant that securing human life, especially children's lives, was still a built in-priority. He talked me through each and every re-fuel. Each and every stop for rest. Each and every re-supply along the way. And it was a long, long way to his master's home man. I lost track of time, but we must have passed at least 200 empty towns on our way there. All devoid of any life. Human or otherwise. There were Rifts along the way. Because of course there fucking were. But the funny thing kept happening over and over again. Monsters check in, but they don't check out."

He snorted at the poor attempt at humor.

"I don't know if you knew this, but the fuel inside engines degrades after some time. Same with the fuel inside gas stations. I think it was a few months. Three, maybe four. And then Bently, that's what I called him, didn't start up again. No matter what I did, he plainly refused to start. So I wept and wept and wept. Having lost the one friend that had kept me company all this time in this heartless fucking excuse for an existence."

He sighed and the sigh felt like a dagger in the ribs.

"Still, he saved my life. Because the old owner, whomever he'd been, had been a prepper. And not just any old run of the mill, the reds are coming so hide your wives kind of prepper. Nooo sir. Mr. Prepper was a full on psychotic madman. With a crippling paranoia and a couple billion dollars to his name. At least that's what I figured. I did have to drag his dead staff outside the bunker complex before I felt comfortable using it, but after that? Whew. This place had everything. Running water connected to an internal system of cisterns and a few aboveground rainwater deposits that automatically filtered out debris and toxins. Solar panels to last for decades. An actual backup system connected to a geothermal generator way deeper underground and rooms upon rooms upon rooms. Filled with books, tools, canned goods of every kind and honest to goodness hydroponic gardens."

He inclined his head sadly.

"The plants were dead of course, and I couldn't even begin to contemplate running the gardening machines. Not that it would have worked anyways. My power was always on. Always on full blast. It mixed with my [Presence] abilities you see. Just like that, you start to live and whoop, you're dead. But moving on, I lived in that bunker for the next 15 years. Until the Tutorial took me. I ate, slept, watched old movies, caught up on some reading, maybe played a few games and went right back to sleep again. That was how it was for the first two years. When I turned 9, I had a dream. I would somehow become a super smart scientist and figure out what had happened to the world. Maybe even inventing a time machine or something to save it."

He rolled his eyes again.

"Go ahead and laugh, but I thought it was actually possible. Superpowers were a thing and lots of comic books and movies had time travel as a plot, so why not? What did I possibly have to lose?"

He took another shallow breath and released another shallow sigh.

"So I read. Math textbooks and science textbooks. Those too advanced for me at first, before I thought to simply find a lecture plan and catch up with my regular schooling. My English sucked and I'm fairly sure my speech patterns were affected by whatever movie series I happened to be watching at any given time. But I managed nonetheless. Even to the point where I started building simple robots powered by batteries. After that, I shifted my focus. My one mission was to build an engine for Bently. Something that could power him without using fuel. After I succeeded, I moved on to other projects. Scouting robots to see if anything had changed around the world. Drones made with whatever I could scrape from the nearby towns' hardware shops and factories."

He smiled at me.

"That was how I first made GOZO. Though mine was different from yours. He was supposed to be a mobile repository for Bently. A body of sorts that he could speak through via a simple Bluetooth connection. Bouncing off of the compound's own antennas. I wanted to talk to him wherever I was, not just in the car."

"Holy cow man." I spoke for the first time a long while. "And I thought the last guy was sad."

He waved me off.

"If anyone one of us has had a rougher story that mine, then I wouldn't even consider that resulting thing human. Why, I would barely consider myself human. How could I? The monster who destroyed everything? The beast that ended the world? How could I ever call myself a human?"

"And the Tutorial?" I asked. "What happened then?"

"The same thing." He admitted. "I barely had time to open the Status Window, before the centipedes dropped dead. Before everything and everyone dropped dead. I… ha… I didn't even know I had absorbed Randall until his own memories came flooding in. That was what I meant by synergistic abilities. Everything I had triggered some aspect of [Eternal Silence] or it was triggered through [Eternal Silence]. I knew who Randall was. Who he had been. But I also knew he was dead and that I had killed him. Him and all the others. Slab. Dusty. Charlie. Olga."

"I assume Boris didn't even make it?" I asked him, wanting to be sure.

"I had no idea who this Boris even was until I read through your memories." He admitted. "To me he was just another faceless corpse. How could he be anything but that?"

"And the bosses must have died with them." I reasoned. "Them and Granny Golden."

"Yep."

"Which explains what the Dragon was doing there."

"Yep."

"And he just up and died."

"Yep."

"Holy shit."

"You think that was my biggest concern?" He laughed at me. Waving his clawed hand that was now once more covered in blood. His own blood.

"Dude, I had just been given the System window. As well as detailed descriptions of all my powers. I was forced to read, in excruciating detail, how I was the sole person responsible for the deaths of everyone in my home world. In my home universe. And everyone who'd come here to this Tutorial with me!"

He barked out a laugh.

"Forget the Dragon or Randall or Anezka. I was curdled up into a ball. Recalling mom and dad. The crabs. Re-living it all over again as I sobbed in the middle of some damp hallway."

I paused until he was done laughing at himself. Until the silent dread returned.

"Did you ever figure out how to stop it?"

"Yeah." He admitted. "A year later. But by that point I'd gained something of a reputation. Divines can't be killed you see. They'll only go back to Pandemonium to reform themselves. But they remain somewhat mortal when they're out and about in the material realm. Singing Metals tried to get to me. And died. Stitches, the creator of all Symbiotes, did the same and ended up the same. Singing Metals tried two more times but after that, it was more or less obvious I was a Divine in the making and that this power was so high-levelled that she was just wasting time."

"And did you ever find any humans?" I asked. "Try to form bonds?"

"The Excursions didn't stop for me." Was all my host said in response.

My eyes widened.

"But, you said you only got a handle on the power after a year." I repeated.

"Yes."

"So if the Excursions kept going despite that…"

"Yes." He stopped me.

I sucked in a breath. Then released it in one long hiss.

"I'm sorry." I said finally. "I can't imagine what that must have been like."

"I know." He said, now with some cheer. "That's why I'm so happy for you. For us."

He spread his arms wide as if to hug me.

"I don't have to keep suffering under the weight of all my sins, because they never happened. Because I never happened. Because it turns out this really is someone's bad dream after all."

His hands clasped mine.

"So, I beg you. Brother. Do me one last kindness. One last favor for this tormented soul."

I stared into his eyes. My reflection shining in the dim lighting. My mind already knowing where this was going.

"Make it end."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.