Cykopath- Birth

by Luca Braña

  “Yeah, you’re powerful now, rat, but don’t get any funny ideas. Don’t forget, there are a lot of us out there. Now get moving!” The giant brute shoved him towards the door to walk back to the dormitories. Cyko barely felt it, even in his unpowered state.

  Oh yes, you giant dimwit, he thought. He would love to give him his when the time comes, and it would be bloody, it would be painful, and the guards and scientists would regret ever coming to work in this place. They would be free, no matter the cost.

  8

  The door closed behind him with a loud bang, startling Myo and Snow as they continued to look at him. Well, Myo was, Snow was busying herself with rubbing her head against his leg.

  “Big brother! Are you all right?!” the small boy asked in concern, making Cyko chuckle. He could tell he would enjoy living with him. They met only yesterday, and he already worried over him, such a nice person he was.

  “Yes, I’m more than all right, look!” He grinned as he willed his power to run through him again, making both his body and eyes emit a soft blue glow. Myo looked at him in shock at first, then with amazement.

  “I-is that your awakened powers?!” He squirmed from his perch on the bed.

  Cyko nodded, grinning at his new roommate. “Yes! Now, I am finally ready to help the plan along! From what the scientist guy told me, I am an enhancer type, and can get more powerful due to my energy or something. It feels awesome, Myo, I wish you could feel it, too.”

  “That’s great! I’m happy for you, big brother! What will you do now?” he asked, raising one eyebrow at him.

  To answer, Cyko let the power die down. “Now, we wait and endure. We need to discuss plans for the next time we meet the other children in the gym. Don’t worry, now that I have my powers, everything will be all right,” Cyko said with a smile, earning himself one in return from his little brother.

  Going back to their usual routine of talking about random stuff, mostly about stories of their old lives, and playing around with Snow, Cyko had time to think about what had happened those last few days. First, the socialization, then he got to meet a stray cat that somehow found her way down to this place, and after that, he got a new roommate and brother, Myo.

  Today was the day he got his powers, the day that would mark the beginning of the rebellion they were planning against the people who created this place. Those geniuses all thought of themselves as brilliant—because they were children, they would be harmless and cause minimal trouble, hah!

  When the time came, he would show them what happened when you made children suffer, he would enjoy hurting them, he would enjoy inflicting on them the pain they inflicted upon him and his family!

  As Cyko now stared at the ceiling, preparing to sleep, he wondered when he started to have such bloodthirsty thoughts. He wasn’t like that before coming here, and much less when he still lived with his parents. He never entertained the thought of hurting someone else to the point he was thinking of hurting those responsible for this terrible place. Hatred was a perfect answer for this. Hatred for putting his family and so many innocent children in this place, hatred for what they did, for the lie of a better place that turned out to be a nightmare.

  Still, thinking about that would resolve nothing. He couldn’t act on his hatred, not now at least. He had to wait until they had a working plan to go off of, something that would leave the fewest of them hurt, but hopefully also making as many of the guards and scientists hurt as much as possible. He knew he could trust his family, and his gut told him he could also trust Tela to come through with her encouragements. The children from this place are now more likely to work together for a greater cause than before.

  As he closed his eyes, he wondered, what if he received a power that allowed him to multiply himself? To create weapons at will? He would be a one-man army and would greatly help in freeing everyone. A dream of a child who wished for freedom, that he had more power than he was given, so he could achieve his goal faster and with fewer difficulties.

  As he nodded off to dreamland, the boy saw himself wielding some sort of strange, laser weapons, shaped like arrows. He could swear he had seen them somewhere else before, but they were blurry, and he couldn’t see them well, but he could tell that they fit like a glove, almost as if they were part of him. Then, he saw himself turning into many blue-haired boys wielding the strange weapons, running up to meet against an unknown army, an army that was shaped curiously like the guards at their location.

  Unnoticed to his sleeping self, his body began to emit a soft glow, one not unlike the one that indicated his activated powers, and, for a brief moment, a ghost image appeared above his body, almost like a clone of himself. As quickly as it appeared, however, it was gone. Myo, who was sleeping, never saw the strange event, nor did the boy notice when Snow left his side and jumped over to Cyko.

  The feline started to rub herself against his sleeping arm, then stopped and looked at his sleeping form, her animal curiosity showing itself as it looked at the glowing aura the boy was emitting. Then, after a few moments, the cat curled up next to him and closed its eyes, preparing herself for another cat-nap.

  Cyko’s body continued glowing in the night as he dreamt of freedom and bloodshed.

  CHAPTER 2

  CATALYST

  1

  It felt like electricity was coursing through his body; not in a bad, painful way, but in a pleasant, exciting way. It seemed like he could do anything, like the world suddenly became much more detailed, like everything slowed down so moving fast became easy. His stamina seemed endless. This power running through his veins, it was his.

  As such, he couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he smashed another robot to pieces with his fists, dodging the shock rods of another three by leaping back several meters in an instant, then immediately jumping forward again, putting his small palms in the drone’s neck and smashing it like a tomato, sending sparks everywhere.

  Just like the scientists said, this was an experiment, one meant to test his newfound powers, and sure enough, it wasn’t very different from a normal one. He had to face an army of cheap mechs equipped with shock rods and flamethrowers. He was pretty sure it would hurt as much as a normal experiment if he let himself get hit, but then again… he was allowed to fight them to his heart’s content.

  Ducking from a thrust by one of the robots, he grabbed its appendage and ripped it off, causing sparks to explode from the machine. Cyko immediately used this new weapon to break the enemy apart, before jumping away to dodge a small wave of fire sent at him.

  That was another interesting part of his newly awakened powers. He somehow knew how to fight, which was weird, considering he never really practiced any martial arts before. The blue-haired boy remembered expressing the desire to learn to his parents, but he never got the chance to try it, because they felt that it was better he grow up a little bit first, and then the accident happened.

  But now, he somehow knew the best way to move around his opponent’s attacks, the best way to use their attacks against them, and the best way to take their blows should he be forced to get hit. It was like he had trained his whole life, but he could also tell that his attacks had no form to them—it was all a frenzy. Wild attacks, like that of an animal, of a raging predator ready to tear his prey apart.

  Yet even a raging predator had awareness of its attacks, instinct.

  Grunting as one of the shock rods hit him, sending painful tremors throughout his entire body, Cyko merely shrugged the attack off and punched the offending robot in the face, breaking it apart and making the mech fall like a sack of potatoes. He was more durable now, a shock like that merely made him uncomfortable, and he could swear it used to hurt much more before he awakened.

  Still, what was the current experiment? Fight a horde of them. A mass of a thousand of those trash cans. How in the world they had both the numbers and space to fit them all, he had no idea, but what they wanted from him with this was very clear, even to his young mind. They needed to kno
w how durable he was, how long it would take for him to go down.

  They had literally thrown him inside the large area and told him to fight for as long as he could, but for once, Cyko didn’t mind. He also wanted to test his limits, to know how long he could fight, to know how useful his newfound power would be in freeing them all.

  That brought to mind whether it was wise to actually let the scientists know what his true limit was, but right now he didn’t care. The rush of battle was addicting, the frenzied blood running through his veins made him euphoric, a feeling that the boy was starting to appreciate—as it made fighting that much easier.

  He was surrounded on all sides by the cheap, silver robots, flamethrowers and shock rods at the ready, but it was fine, he could take them all, he would take them all!

  Jumping towards the ceiling, narrowly dodging a jet of flame that melted another robot down, he leaped back towards the fray, crushing several of the tin cans with the impact of his landing. Looking around, he noticed that another wave of robots was lining up to replace the ones he destroyed, he tsk’ed, annoyed.

  He had destroyed over a hundred of those things already, he lost count around 140, and it seemed like there was no end to them! The walls on the far side of this room had several doors, with dozens of them coming out all the time, did they have an entire factory just to make those things?!

  He wondered how the machines stacked up against the guards, if they were weaker or stronger, but he figured it was probably the former. It would be a terrible idea to face guards that were weaker than the machines that super powered children could destroy by the dozens a minute. He wasn’t stupid, there had to be more defenses in this place than just the guards, and even then, they were enough to take down Torch. In fact, Cyko wouldn’t be surprised if the same tin cans he was beating down into rubble were also a part of the security system… a very expendable one.

  Still, it would be annoying to deal with so many while fighting the guards and whatever other defenses this place had. Cyko decided that he should bring the issue of the ‘training drones,’ as the scientist called them, up to Tela when he had the next chance to meet her, which would hopefully be soon.

  Getting up from the remains of another crushed robot, he looked at the never-ending pack. They said there were a thousand total. A thousand of them just for him, or a thousand overall? He didn’t know, but he would certainly do his best to show them the damage he was capable of.

  He was pretty sure he had destroyed over two hundred of them by now, and he was just getting started. With a grin, he picked up the destroyed robot’s shock rod and wielded it like a baseball bat.

  “C’mon you little suckers, try to get a piece of me!” he shouted as he jumped back towards the army of fragile steel, smiling like a madman.

  2

  Cyko was panting hard as he was escorted back to his room, he really had given his all today, and managed to destroy the thousand strong army of robots that the scientific jerks had thrown at him. He had proven himself this day, he was strong enough to take as many enemies as he could.

  The bearded fool had congratulated him, saying something about his value increasing by several levels thanks to his results, and that once the experiments were over, he would be one of the elites, the strongest of the army they were amounting to “protect the world,” he had said. The nerve!

  Still, it had been good exercise, and Cyko could tell that if push came to shove, he could handle several hundred more, so at least the scientists didn’t know his exact limits yet. Sure, they had said that he was probably near exhaustion at that point, but in the end, it didn’t matter. With this strength, he would help free everyone—his family, and of course, his new little brother, Myo.

  Oh Myo… His situation worried him. It had been three weeks since they met, and each time the younger boy was called for an experiment, he came back looking miserable and much weaker than before. It was obvious even to a young kid like him that his power was more of a curse than the ‘blessing’ the scientists said it was supposed to be.

  Cyko himself wondered… would the same be true for me? Would his own power eventually reveal to have fatal downsides, ones that would possibly get in the way of the escape? No, he shook his head. He wouldn’t allow himself to fall into despair, he was strong now, stronger than all those guards, he just needed the perfect moment to—

  “What you waiting for, rat? Get inside, now!” He was shoved inside his and Myo’s shared room, having only now realized that they had arrived. He looked back to glare at the guard, the same giant as always, and noticed the position his weapon was in. He blinked.

  As the door closed, he gave a small grin towards the gigantic guard. He hoped it unsettled him, since he couldn’t really tell under that helmet he wore, but his message was clear. I barely felt that. As he noticed that the idiot had actually struck him with his weapon rather than push him inside, and true enough, he hardly felt the impact and simply registered it as a shove. Things were going to change pretty soon.

  Turning back from the door, he looked around his small room and noticed that Myo wasn’t there. With a frown, he called out as he made his way to the bathroom. “Myo? Are you in the bath?”

  The bathroom door was open, no one was inside, which made Cyko’s stomach knot up in worry and anger. Darn it! They had taken Myo away again, after what he had gone through just yesterday! And worse, even, he couldn’t do anything about it! Sure, he could probably break out of this room with brute force alone, but it would only be a matter of time until he was overwhelmed by the prison’s defenses.

  Sighing to himself to try and calm his beating heart, he grabbed one of the two towels on the hanger. As much as he hated it, there was nothing he could do about it, and after the fight, his body was really in need of a good shower… Even if this prison’s facilities were anything but good.

  A few minutes later, he walked out of the uncomfortably small bathroom and went to sit on his bed. He looked around again and sighed, Myo had yet to come back and until then, he would continue to worry about him. The poor boy was always terrified when he returned, he could only imagine—no, feel—whatever torture they were putting him up to.

  He grunted, the only thing he could do was wait … Shaking his head, he decided to do something productive with his free time.

  “Tela, can you hear me?” he asked with his eyes closed. And sure enough, he heard a PING like sound in his mind and felt someone observing him as he listened to the telepathic girl’s answer.

  “Yes, loud and clear, is there something you want to say?” Hearing her sweet and reassuring voice eased his tension up somewhat, making it easier for him to concentrate.

  “Yes, the geniuses did more experiments on my powers today,” he thought to her, smirking as he felt a sense of amusement from the redhead at his name for the scientists. “They made me fight a robot army, a thousand of them to be exact. It wasn’t exactly easier, but lately, the experiments they are doing on me are less painful and scary, and more like… like…” He struggled to find the correct word.

  “Like they were analyzing you?” She guessed the word, and Cyko nodded, although he was pretty sure she couldn’t see that particular action.

  “Yes. This is the third experiment they did to me since I activated my powers, and like I told you, the first time they had me run as fast as I could, and the second, they made me carry a bunch of large blocks around. This is actually the only time since then that the experiment had anything painful involved,” he explained to Tela, and he could somehow tell that she was listening intently to his words.

  “Yes, this is something they do to the awakened ones,” she said with a strained voice. Cyko could feel the displeasure she was emitting. “From what I managed to pry from them, the torture they make us go through for months on end is what makes us activate our hidden genes. The life or death situation, the struggle for life, the desperation to survive is what, according to them, awakens our hidden powers. Just like a tale of a character breakin
g their limits to unleash unfathomable power… this can only be activated during our childhood,” she explained to him in distaste, and Cyko actually could share in her anger. Making hundreds of children go through hell just to make themselves an army…

  “It gets worse,” she continued, “this is how they actually are managing to keep the awakened children from rebelling for so long. Their treatment gets better the more they progress through their plan—the better you are, the more important you are to them, and gradually, they’ll make you feel important.”

  Cyko now could feel the sadness in her words and for some reason, he really wanted to comfort her, but… their treatments get better?

  “It doesn’t seem like that for Myo, my new roommate. He’s had his powers longer than me, almost two months already, and he always comes back terrified, hurt, and in a gradually worsening situation…” he said to her in a guilty voice, and suddenly, he could feel a warm sensation of comfort around him, as if he was being hugged.

  “Myo… Is that the name of your new roommate?” she asked him gently, to which Cyko nodded, before remembering that she can’t see him.

  “Y-yes, I kind of became a surrogate brother for him… He is just seven years old…” he said in an anguished voice, making him remember his other family members… And how several of the ones that are missing weren’t more than seven.

  “Please, be brave, for him. We still need to meet each other again so we can all discuss the start of our plan. I know it’s hard, and I wish I could do more for you, for him, for everyone…” she said in a sad voice, but still she hadn’t let up on her comforting aura in the slightest. Cyko smiled, she really reminded him of his older siblings with how caring she was.

  “Please, you are already doing a lot for us, don’t blame this on yourself… Blame it on those villains who put us here. They don’t even keep their word, they told us we would be able to meet each other again soon, but it has been three weeks since then!” he exclaimed, trying to comfort her with their mutual anger for the people who put them here.