CHAPTER 1
PLUNGE INTO THE DARKNESS, Part 9

 … …?!

My heart drops. It never occurred to me that I might have been put in a room with a dead man!

Anxiety!

“What are you afraid of? He’s not going to get out of bed and yell, ‘Surprise!’”

“You really are cynical, aren’t you?” I snap, barely hiding my misgivings about him.

“Do you want your answers or not?”

I take a deep breath, just to process the buildup of emotions, and nod.

“Good. My name is Deck. I’m not from Canada, as you’ve probably guessed, but I’m on Prince Edward Island because of what happened here four days ago.”

I’m in the same room as a corpse… no! I can’t think about that right now. I’ll process it later.

… Wait, did it just…? No! Later.

“Are you talking about the storm?”

“Exactly. The storm was actually a cover for… something else.”

“You talk about it as if someone caused it,” I say.

“Someone did.”

… Yeah, let’s just pretend that’s a normal answer.

“The technology where I come from is far more advanced than yours. Using the storm, we were able to distract the Canadians from the alpha-moleculator. Contrary to what it might seem, it’s not a weapon. At least, not exactly. Its explosion caused the release of electromagnetic waves imperceptible to living beings. These waves altered the genetic makeup of many humans, causing them to develop abilities that I think you would now call ‘impossible’ to gain or learn. Every human affected by these waves gained these abilities, as you experienced firsthand. The dapper guy in rags who attacked you became a steel man. The rest of your world is now full of people with these abilities. They could be water men, women who shoot lightning from every pore, kids with superhuman strength—”

“Okay, wait a second!” I say, trying to wrap my head around it. “So, am I one of these ‘mutants’? And where you come from, you created this… weapon, which isn’t really a weapon… for what exactly?” I ask, a bit annoyed at what feels like a prank.

“The genetic makeup of humans is relatively neutral compared to ours. Before testing it on ourselves, we needed to experiment on lifeforms that were of no consequence to us. If the experiment had failed, it would have meant your death because you would have destroyed each other. It’s well known that when humans are faced with something they don’t know or understand, they react with force. Just look at the man who attacked you less than six hours ago. Just because he saw you as different, like himself, he thought you were the cause of all his problems.”

You humans. And what exactly is he then?

“E-even if your story might be a bit too elaborate to be a lie”—though I actually have quite a few issues with it—“you’re saying a lot of things that don’t make sense. You talk about humans as lifeforms that are inferior to you, you talk about mutants… Why did that man become so insane that he tried to kill me? And can I ask what my powers are? I create afterimages of myself, the whites of my eyes turn black, I emit vapor of the same color, and then…! Oh no, I sent that poor, misunderstood guy into a black hole! I didn’t know that… that…!” I did something terrible, I might have killed a man. “I have to bring him back.”

“Wait, you still don’t know how to control your powers.”

“Shut up!” I whisper, warning him not to touch me. “I know there’s probably nothing that can be done for him now, but I’m going to bring him back. Even though I had no bad intentions, I don’t have the right to kill a man. It might sound trite, but so be it.”

Deck keeps his distance, afraid of what I might do to him, precisely because I still don’t know how to control my new abilities.

I try to replicate what I did during the fight, but I can’t. Maybe it’s also because deep down, I know I don’t want to reopen a black hole and put someone in danger.

“Good thing your powers seem more sensible than you at the moment. Now, stop it. I can still answer more questions, but I won’t be able to if you accidentally send me to that place.”

“Death Valley!” Deck suddenly grows uneasy. He motions for me to look in the mirror on the nightstand. That’s when I realize the problem lies in my black eyes. “Oh no, please go back to normal.” I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid that nothing has changed. I don’t have the courage to look in the mirror or meet the albino’s fearful gaze.

“Let me continue. I was wrong. Judging by your tone, you don’t seem troubled by the situation. You asked me about what powers you have. You might not believe me, but I watched your fight very closely. I got chills seeing how fiercely you took on that madman,” he says, pulling his arms around himself.

“The authorities even tried to intervene, which is why he didn’t get to you right away. But you were probably too far away to notice,” he explains. “Anyway, after realizing their bullets were useless, they just let him keep going. They were crushed by their own inferiority and the mutant’s clear superiority and thirst for your blood. They must have been terrified by his blank stare.” He covers his mouth as if to stifle laughter. I wonder what he finds so amusing.

“Could you…?” I urge him to continue.

“Ah, right… As I was saying, I can state with absolute certainty that your power is darkness.”

Oh, now I feel better! I laugh tragically inside. I have the powers of a messenger of darkness.

“You can’t tell me something like that. What kind of power would that even be? What sort of darkness would do the things I’ve done?” What a bitter thought.

“Your literal concept of darkness is very different from mine. For you, darkness comes with the setting sun or simply from blocking the light. It’s due to the absence of photons in a given area. But for us, the sun never disappears. We don’t have revolution cycles. We created gravity with our technology by studying the orbital motion of other solar systems. Do you know what dark matter is? It’s a component of matter that can’t be observed because it doesn’t interact with light. For us, it’s the opposite. Also, this matter is ‘alive,’ so to speak, and every thirty-one Earth hours, it covers the apical layer of our thermosphere, bringing darkness.”

I have to admit, I’m becoming a bit fascinated by his story, though it also makes me uneasy.

“You’re not a dark creature like you think. You can manipulate dark matter at will, from its molecular density to its response to light and gravitational effects. That’s why we can see it when you use your powers. You also produce it from your body like it’s no big deal. This is why you might be one of the most fascinating lifeforms.”

Caught up in the heat of the discussion, he grabs my hand, and I pull back. Now that I think about it, I hadn’t even noticed he’d stood up.

Damn, this gives me chills.

“Enough already. Who are you, though? You talk as if… as if you weren’t human.”

…

“You still don’t get it? I’m not human at all. I’m a Nixtrian from the planet Gedar. I was the only one of my kind disgusted by what our ruler, Blud, intended to do. I came to Earth to find allies among you, but during the journey, while I was busy with my research, I discovered something quite disorienting. Basically, all creatures already subjected to the alpha-molecular are destined to go mad, change for the worse, and embrace their greedy, wrathful, and arrogant sides in the most twisted ways possible, as their judgment will no longer be reliable. For some reason, you might be the only one on the face of the Earth who won’t lose their mind, unlike the other mutants who are soon destined to do so and who haven’t yet unlocked their powers.”

I open my eyes again. I don’t need to look in the mirror to see if I have a puzzled look on my face. If all of this is true, then I could be the only hope to save the planet from self-destruction. And failure is not an option.

I don’t get the joke.

“Please say something.”

…

“Hmph… I knew you couldn’t be Canadian.”