Leaving my home induced a sinking feeling, like I would never see it again. Like I would never have a home again. I let my mind run wild then: I would have temporary homes, a roof and four walls. Nothing would ever feel like home though.
Home. The scent of the detergent dad insisted on using, the one that was always buy one get one free. It was an unpleasant smell, like someone had doused the entire place in bleach. The fancy stone floors mum insisted on installing, the ones you couldn't walk on with socks due to its slipperiness, unless you wanted to risk your life. The door to the bathroom that only locked when you turned it three times clockwise; anti-clockwise definitely wouldn't work unless you wanted to risk taking the entire lock off. It was a haven of familiarity, of habit.
Going by that logic, I supposed, this wreck wasn't my home anyway.
This unfamiliar place smelt of charcoal and burnt marshmallows. Every little familiar thing was now a reminder of death and destruction. Mum's immaculate floor, scratched and chipped, unrecognisable in that its spotless white surface was now dusty black. Selena's treasured kitchen counter on its side, covered in glass and the wreckages that used to be the overhead storage cupboards.
This was no longer the place that constantly smelt of an unpleasant mix of bleach and dad's failed cookies that always ended up tasting like cardboard. I used to dread waking up in the morning to the scent of cardboard cookies, wondering how many of the dry, chewy barely edible concoctions I would have to force down that day.
I could've done with some cookies, actually. Cardboard or not.
On our way down the stairwell, I collapsed.
Natasha swivelled on me furiously. "What are you doing? If you make noise they'll find us."
I barely heard her through the pain in my stomach. It was like hunger, like the type you would feel between breakfast and lunch except it was ten, no a hundred, times worse. It felt like I'd never eaten in my life. It was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
"What are you doing now? Crying?"
"You have no sympathy do you," I gritted out between clenched teeth. "I haven't eaten in a century."
"God I hate pointless exaggeration. It's so overdramatic."
"Is that really the priority? I'm dying here."
"If the universe wanted you to die, you'd be dead already." Those words sounded sincerely sinister through the voice changer. I felt something weirdly textured hit the side of my head and another object a second later. I stared daggers at where I thought the rude girl was standing, cursing the audacity of her. "Here, an energy bar and a bottle of water. Its all I can offer at the moment until we get to base."
"Base?" I asked her, fumbling around on the filthy floor for the packet.
"Don't ask questions and just eat. You'll see soon enough."
Finally, my hand closed around a packet. In that moment, I was glad she couldn't see me in the darkness. I tore into the packet like some rabid animal and the energy bar was consumed by some hungry demon inside me before I could properly taste it. The water was my next victim, spilling down my chin and fresh clothes in my haste to empty the bottle. It was way warmer than drinking water ever should be but it eased the painful dryness of my throat.
"You didn't eat or drink for three days… how are you still alive? Humans barely survive that long without water." Her voice was full of fear, that metallic twinge that I'd recognised earlier.
"Maybe I can just endure a lot."
"No normal person can survive an explosion, Cato."
"Then maybe I'm a mutant… or whatever you call them."
"Surely, I would know if you were. You don't seem like one."
"You don't sound so sure."
"Well how am I supposed to know?" She snapped. "I'm as new to this whole thing as you are." Her footsteps told me she'd begun to descend the stairs again.
Hauling my tired and heavy body to its feet, I forced myself to pick up my pace. "Wait for me, you freakishly-fast walker."
"Shut up."
"You know, you don't always have to be so harsh."
"No. Seriously, shut up," her voice was a whisper, the voice changer making it sound oddly like TV static, or that ghost hunting equipment that filtered out white noise to find the voices of spirits. "There's a mutant right there."
"How can you tell? I can't see a thing."
"The red glow. It's the radiation from the explosion that they've retained. Its underneath their skin, in their blood, so mutant's veins light up bright red, kind of like a freaky human lantern."
"Well… what do we do now?"
Her hands scrabbled to grab my shoulder, overly-sharpened nails digging into my skin. She gave me an aggressive shove down what I assumed to be the last step since my feet met solid ground.
"Hey! What if there had still been stairs there? You could've killed me!" I whisper-shouted.
"Get over yourself, you've survived an explosion. I think you'd survive a little tumble down the stairs. Besides, you wanted to see a mutant: here's a mutant."
I squinted my eyes in the darkness, trying to discern shapes. Soon enough, I saw the glow she was talking about. The neon red light pulsated like a living thing, resembling the lava you would see in volcanoes. It lurked about five feet away, at the end of the lobby which was the most illuminated part of the building. I crept along the corridor, fingers finding the walls to guide me.
I threw a glance back to Natasha. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Make something up."
"You're a whole lot of help."
I sighed, willing my fear to be swallowed by the inferno within me. I gulped in a deep breath of stale, heat-choked air and continued, begging my footsteps to be light. Kai's shoes were heavy, much heavier than my practical airy trainers. I would miss those trainers… they were like a second feet to me.
I advanced closer and closer to the… thing, my heart beating faster and faster, building up like an airplane about to take off. I clutched the mirror shard tightly in my scarred hand, not caring if it bit into my skin. The reassurance of a weapon in my hand was enough to put me more at ease.
Three feet away from the thing, I stopped.
"Greetings," I said, loudly enough for it to echo slightly in the lobby.
"What are you doing?" Natasha whispered desperately from the bottom of the stairs.
"You told me to make something up," I retorted angrily.
The thing shifted, turning its attention towards me. From the little light from the fires, I could see the slightly deformed shape of a human: a overly hunched back, elongated arms which brushed along the floor like the mops that were usually stored here and… a battered fedora placed awkwardly atop a freakishly enlarged head. Compared to the size of his skull, the hat looked hilarious. Like a doll's hat put on an adult human.
Wait.
I'd seen that fedora somewhere. I'd seen it every day when I walked in through the lobby. "Banks? Is that you?"
Finally, the thing turned round, its hands making a horrible dragging noise reminiscent of a murderer dragging a body as he slowly swivelled on awkward feet. The thing stared at me with neon red eyes. Eyes which were twice their normal size and bulged abnormally out of its skull.
"Banks… what happened to you?" I almost felt sympathy for him.
Impossibly, his eyes got wider. "S-s-st."
"What?"
"St-ay a-a-way."
"Banks? It's me. You remember me? Cato. The guy always playing video games. I live on the thirtieth floor. We had conversations, you and me, about… the weather and stuff. You remember that don't you?"
"St-a-ay a-away." The thing that used to be Banks hugged its abnormally long arms around its eyes. It was scared.
"There's no need to be scared. I won't hurt you." I advanced towards him, offering an outstretched hand. That seemed to offend him more.
"STAY AWAY!"
The thing lunged away from me, dropping to the floor in a protective ball. It began to quiver, the neon red in its veins pulsing faster and faster.
A hand on my shoulder almost made me jump into another dimension. Natasha. "Leave him, he's harmless. He must've been an arrogant person in his previous lifetime."
"How do you know?"
"Mutants show complete opposites in personality. Violent people become feeble, kind people become monstrous, arrogant people become subservient."
I pictured the old Banks, sitting at his desk with his feet propped up on the wood, smoking his e-cigarette. I remembered the sneer he would send to everyone when they checked into the building, like he was internally judging everyone. Like he thought he was superior. The thing that was now Banks cowered in my presence. A man who never would've bowed down to anyone, who saw himself as on the top of the world, someone who could control those he perceived to be beneath him, a scumbag who, if asked, could not conjure up a single bad thing about himself.
"How do you know that?"
"You have an awful lot of questions."
"Because you have an awful lot of answers."
"Fine. It's because I know people who changed."
"What happened to them?"
"She was my girlfriend. The kindest human on this earth, who cried at disney movies or if anyone on the news was suffering… she changed."
I didn't dare to pursue the topic further, even through the mask I could hear her pain. I wondered what would've happened to Kai if he'd changed. A personality reversal… but Kai wasn't just one thing. He could be kind but he could also be mean. He could love but he could also hate. He was neither a good nor a bad person. Weren't we all like that? Neither good nor bad? A flame battling with silver?
"I can't bear to look at him anymore," I muttered. I turned to Natasha. "Let's go."