141 The Noise Beneath My Skull

It was one of those strange moments again, where I would fall asleep and dream. Since I was a cape incapable of sleep, it shouldn’t have been possible for me to dream at all.

“Ah,” I muttered to myself, voice echoing in the void between thoughts. “I shouldn’t call this a dream… It’s more like a nightmare, isn’t it?”

*Thump.

It was a hollow thud, like meat against wood.

Dad continued to beat me up, while Mom begged him to stop.

“P-Please, please… stop, Tyronne!” she screamed, her voice trembling like glass about to break.

“You fucking bitch!” Dad shouted back, breath thick with beer and rage. “It’s my responsibility to set him straight! This little shit just disrespected me!”

Mom cried harder. “If you want beer, there’s still some in the fridge!”

Thump-thump-thump.

I was thirteen years old back then. I remembered it clearly. My ribs ached even though I knew this was only a dream. His fist slammed into my chest, then my cheek, again and again until I saw the ceiling blur. I didn’t fight back. I didn’t even raise an arm. There was no point. This was just another playback in my mind. Just a memory pretending to be real.

Yeah. I guessed it wasn’t much of a “nightmare.” I’d already lived it once. I couldn’t be bothered to flinch.

“The little shit just spilled the beer on me!” Dad yelled. “So I have to teach him to be careful next time!”

His voice boomed inside my skull, every syllable vibrating through my bones like static.

I sighed, mentally, if that was even possible in this kind of dream. Since I’d learned I could fall asleep through my Empathy, I’d been experimenting with ways to use both my Empathy and Telepathy ratings together. A bit of “dream-hopping,” as I called it.

It was unbelievable, really, just how far psychic powers could go when you truly pushed them. No wonder it was the psychic class that had developed the most techniques.

For most capes, a “technique” wasn’t all that essential. Potency and variety were what mattered. The stronger your power, the more tricks you’d eventually stumble upon. But for those who had reached the highest ratings possible, technique was everything.

That was how the difference between life and death was measured.

A straightforward comparison would be between an Invulnerable-9 who knew martial arts and one who didn’t. Same power, same rating, but one would dance through bullets while the other just stood there waiting to be hit.

Technique turned raw power into precision and made instinct into a weapon.

My “possession” was one such technique. So was the trick I’d learned from John, to detect killing intent like the shift of air pressure before a storm. And Crow, too. Crow had something else entirely. The bastard had managed to exorcise Silver and Onyx from Nicole. To tear ‘people’ apart with psychic precision.

“Ugh… This is getting annoying…”

*Thump.

Dad’s fist crashed into my face again. I felt my jaw twist sideways. My nose bent at an awkward angle. The blood tasted like pennies. I couldn’t tell if the dream was remembering the pain or creating it.

“Y—you’re drunk, Tyronne!” Mom shouted, clutching his arm.

“Drunk?” Dad turned to her with that same crooked grin, his breath reeking of cheap liquor. “You think this is drunk, huh? You think I don’t see you babying him?”

He shoved her back. She fell against the kitchen counter with a dull clatter of plates.

“I’m teaching him to be a man!” Dad roared. “To respect his father!”

“Please, stop!”

But he didn’t. His eyes were already gone, pupils swimming in red haze. He reached for something by the corner of the table. It was a long shadow that gleamed under the flickering light.

It was a bat.

Mom gasped, tried to pull it from him. He slapped her away so hard she hit the floor.

As his fingers tightened around that bat’s handle, I realized this wasn’t just a memory. This was where it all started. The noise beneath my skull, the rage, the fracture, and the reason I became what I am.

I could still hear his voice as he raised the bat over his head.

“Let’s see if you learn, boy.”

I sighed.

How could I forget?

We were new in Markend back then. The city hadn’t yet grown into the festering behemoth I knew now. Instead, it was still pretending to be civilized. The neighbors kept to themselves, cold and judgmental, staring at us from their porches as if poverty were contagious.

But it wasn’t just them that made life unbearable. It was him!

Dad had gambled away every cent we had the very first day we arrived. Every promise of “a new start” went down with the dice. When the debts came calling, they weren’t just collectors. Instead, they were a small gang, supposedly affiliated with a larger one.

To pay them off, he made Mom sell one of her kidneys. And when that still wasn’t enough, he tried to whore her out.

If it weren’t for Mom being so damn smart for the wrong reasons, she would’ve suffered worse.

I rubbed my temple, the memory unraveling like a film reel soaked in blood. It had always been vague to me, like something buried under too much trauma to touch. That was how pulls usually worked, and I had no power over what to remember and not.

The scene replayed in perfect misery.

Dad was about to swing the bat at Mom, the veins in his neck bulging, his mouth curled into that monstrous snarl I could never forget. The moment teetered with one more breath, and everything would have broken.

“Don’t touch Mom!” I heard myself scream.

It wasn’t a conscious act. The words came from the memory, my thirteen-year-old self re-enacting what happened five or six years ago.

Dad turned to me, his eyes swimming in drunken rage. “Or what?!”

My voice cracked. “Or… or… I’ll kill you…”

His grin widened. It wasn’t amusement. Instead, it was disbelief curdled into mockery.

“Kill me!? Me?” He threw his head back, laughter spilling out like bile. “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha~!”

He began to march toward me, the bat swinging wildly, knocking over the lamp, breaking furniture, and sending shards of glass scattering across the floor.

“Kill me?! Do it, brat! Do it!”

I crawled backward, palms slipping on the blood from my nose, my heart pounding like a war drum. He loomed closer, the bat raised high above his head, ready to end me.

Finally, Dad swung.

I flinched, raising my arms out of instinct, but the impact never came.

When I opened my eyes, Dad was gone. The bat hit the floor, rolling to a stop near my knees. The ground where he stood was untouched, leaving nothing behind. There was no trace, no sound, and no corpse.

He had been erased.

At that time, I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know what I’d done. Everything happened too fast. I looked down at my trembling hands, watching the faint shimmer of distortion fade around them.

“So that’s what happened,” I murmured, the dream-space echoing my voice. “Ah… I killed my dad.”

A hollow chuckle escaped me. “That’s neat.”

The words tasted like rust.

The world around me began to blur with the house dissolving into shapes, sounds, and ghosts. Mom’s figure appeared next, her face soft and sorrowful. She walked toward me, kneeling, her hands cupping my cheeks the way she used to when I had nightmares as a kid.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” she whispered, her voice distant but warm. “It’s just a bad dream. You’ll wake up soon.”

“Mom…” I breathed, my throat tightening.

“Shh,” she said, stroking my hair. “Just rest, okay? You’re safe now.”

Safe. That was a funny word.

The exhaustion from reliving it all washed over me, heavy and cold. I felt myself slipping, sinking deeper into that strange in-between state, neither fully asleep nor awake. Her voice faded with the dream. When I finally opened my eyes, I was no longer in my childhood home.

I was lying on the dusty floor of an abandoned house, the smell of rot and rain-soaked wood surrounding me.

It had been a couple of days since I returned to this world, since I practically nuked an entire city in another world. The memory still lingered, like the afterimage of lightning burned into my retinas.

I yawned, stretching my arms as a flicker of fatigue ran through me. Strangely enough, I felt… refreshed. It was a foreign feeling, like remembering how to breathe after drowning for too long. For someone like me, someone whose powers denied the luxury of sleep, the act of resting felt like a glitch in reality.

I raised my hand, flexing my fingers. Sparks crawled across my skin, dancing between my knuckles before fading. A light buzz followed, the hum of charged nerves. I exhaled slowly, amused.

“Sleeping actually recharges my electrokinesis… huh. Didn’t expect that.”

My eyes drifted to the small table beside me. Guesswork had bought me food from the convenience store earlier: a plastic bag with instant noodles, microwaved chicken, and an overly sweet canned coffee. I stared at them for a while before deciding to give my stomach something to do.

Guesswork was probably out there right now, weaving his lies and half-truths, pleading my case, scheming his way into the SRC’s good graces. I didn’t think much of him when we first met, since his kind of power seemed like a joke. Guessing things? It was hardly impressive.

But after what we’d been through, I couldn’t deny there was some kind of… camaraderie there. Fragile, maybe, but real enough to acknowledge.

Still, I couldn’t tell how much of it was genuine. His friendliness might’ve had more to do with the future than with me. That’s how his power worked.

“I guess it makes sense if he develops clairvoyance,” I muttered, picking up the cold chicken, “but I don’t think I can trust him that easily. It wouldn’t hurt to make use of him, though… If I can keep my privilege, I’d be able to move more freely.”

The meat was dry, but the salt and oil had a comforting sting to it. I chewed slowly, letting the quiet fill the room. The convenience store’s cheapness carried a certain nostalgia. It was the kind that reminded me of life before blood and power.

Mom came to mind.

After I murdered my father, she started acting differently. Distant, cautious, yet stronger in ways I didn’t understand back then. I didn’t know she’d joined the SRC until much later. It explained a lot about the cover-up of Dad’s disappearance, the sudden silence of loan sharks, and the quiet that followed our chaos.

Mom must’ve done something behind the scenes. I stirred the noodles with the disposable fork, watching the steam rise.

I wondered where I’d be right now if I hadn’t buried that memory so deep, suppose I hadn’t forgotten the trauma that caused my pull. It was a natural self-defense, sure, but it also made me realize something unpleasant. Maybe that was where my cold-heartedness came from.

Maybe that was the moment I stopped being a child.

I leaned back against the wall, staring at the cracked ceiling. Knowing the multiverse was real only made it worse. It made me curious what kind of life I would have led if I’d remembered everything sooner. If I’d known the reason Mom became an SRC agent was to protect me… or if I had been conscious of my sin all along?

I chuckled quietly. It was the kind of laugh that didn’t sound like me.

“Hah… I should abandon this useless thinking,” I murmured, finishing the coffee in one bitter gulp. “I’ll get nowhere if I keep going down this road.”

My phone vibrated against the table. Guesswork had left it for me. The screen lit up, flashing a number I didn’t recognize. It was an unknown caller.

Of course, I answered the phone. Instinct, maybe. Or boredom. The ring had gone on long enough to irritate me anyway. I placed it to my ear.

“Hey, Nick, you still alive? This is Bunny, speaking…”

It had been only months since I last heard that voice. Though calling it a “voice” was generous, since Bunny was a digital ghost, a unique cape that lived inside machines and data streams. He had no body, no heartbeat, and no face. He was code and consciousness stitched together by strange powers.

It wasn’t shocking that he’d found me. What was shocking was how easily he’d done it.

If Bunny could trace me, then others could too. SRC surveillance, rogue capes, and even remnants of the Ten. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone magically survived… It was the Ten, after all. Still, there were too many eyes, and paranoia was a constant companion.

But worse than that… what if this wasn’t Bunny?

“Proof,” I said flatly. “Or I’ll find you, rip your limbs apart one by one, and leave nothing for the cops or your nonexistent family to see.”

“So brutal with the threats,” he replied, tone light and teasing. “Rip my arms, huh? If you can find me, go ahead and try. But if you want proof, fine… The day before John’s SRC task force, you—” a short pause, then a smirk in his voice, “—you jizzed in your pajamas.”

I froze.

No. No way.

That was too specific and humiliating!

Even if Bunny had been spying on me back then, even if he had access to every motel camera on the block, there was no way he could’ve known. He didn’t even have a proper physical body, and I believed he was yet to become fully conscious at that time.

That line, though, the part about ripping his arms off, made my skin crawl. Bunny didn’t have arms. He was a consciousness in machines; he slid through wires and vents and servers, not meat and bone. Whoever was on the line either wasn’t Bunny at all or was pretending to be.

“This is annoying.”

I leaned back, thinking. This could be good practice for me, a little stress test on my powers. I’d been cautious lately. Ever since the National Supreme Directorate, I’d been regulating how many powers I derived and how far I pushed them. At the moment, I had five in my arsenal: Intangibility, Empathy, Telepathy, Researcher, and Electrokinesis.

My Empathy and Intangibility should be well above nine, near passing their limit. Telepathy and Researcher hovered around the mid-fives, and Electrokinesis was weak, maybe a three.

Still, that was more than enough for a little cleanup.

“I changed my mind,” I said into the phone, standing up. “I won’t rip anyone’s limbs. But I am going to kill someone. Stay where you are, and I will make it painless.”

I didn’t wait for his reply.

The house I was in wasn’t much. It was a single-story ruin with cracked walls and busted windows. The city outside pressed close, skyscrapers and apartment towers watching like vultures. Too many angles. Too many open lines of sight. The place was practically begging for a sniper’s bullet to pass through.

Guesswork really picked a fantastic hideout.

“I am going to give that bastard an earful…”

I dropped the phone, then stomped on it. The crunch was satisfying. Now that the call was over, I could think properly. If Bunny could reach me, then this safe house was compromised. Maybe it wasn’t even “safe” to begin with.

I was about to phase through the nearest wall when I heard the sound of metal creaking.

Behind me, the fridge door swung open with a faint hiss.

I turned, electricity crawling over my hands out of reflex.

“What?” said Guesswork, crouching inside the fridge like it was the most natural thing in the world. “First time seeing a secret tunnel?”

I blinked. “…You could’ve warned me.”

He shrugged, climbing out halfway. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“I didn’t even feel your presence,” I muttered.

“Yeah, about that.” He tapped the side of his head. “Got a surgery. Lump of nullifier metal around my brain. Blocks most detection.”

My brows furrowed. “That’s… insane. Your powers are based on cognitive functions. You could’ve lobotomized yourself.”

“I know.” He grinned faintly, eyes sharp with that usual, unreadable glint. “Turns out my power doesn’t come from the brain. Took a leap of faith… worked out fine.”

“That’s pretty reckless.”

“That’s what makes it fun.”

He glanced around, lowering his voice. “Anyway, we can’t stay here. This safe house is compromised. We should go,”

I didn’t need to ask how he knew. His expression told me enough.

Without looking back, Guesswork ducked into the fridge tunnel again. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “Move your ass, or you’ll regret it.”