151 No Freebies

“So, what now?” I asked because none of us were saying the obvious. “It seems we might share mutual interests.”

“I will never work with you. Ever,” Chad replied, firm.

“Cool,” I said. “I didn’t ask. I don’t need you on my side. I don’t mind not getting the freebie. Amelia, your thoughts?”

Chad’s face twisted. “Did you just call me a freebie?”

“This is stupid,” Amelia said sharply. “Did either of you really think that forming some little alliance would improve things? I don’t trust either of you. For all I know, both of you could be lying. Nick, fighting god? The Entity? I don’t even know where to start with that.”

“I’m a bad guy on a mission to save the world,” I replied.

“You know who you sound like? Light,” she shot back. Then she turned to Chad. “As for you. What exactly is your goal? Help me? I find your sudden appearance in the Wamond Chronicle extremely suspicious. So no, I trust you the least. If you came here to sabotage me, you should think carefully about how you plan to do it. I have no problem killing you if it comes to that.”

She said it like a threat, but my empathy cut through her performance. Her pulse wasn’t steady. Her fear was deeper than her anger. She could not kill Chad. Not yet, not in this state. Her heart worked against her words.

“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” Chad said. His tone was quiet, but something in it was brittle. The veins stood out along his forehead. His jaw clenched. His fists were tight enough for his nails to leave marks. For someone like him, this was restraint. He should have been shouting.

“When I said I want to help you, I meant it. You are uncomfortable with the idea that I changed. Fine. I will tell you my goal.” He took a breath that sounded like it hurt. “I don’t want regrets. That’s why, when I had the chance to kill this bastard,” —he glared at me— “I took it. Now, you are in front of me. You are clearly in need of an ally. So I offered it. I have too many regrets already… too many things I wish I could have done differently. That’s why I want to treat you better. I am your friend, aren’t I?”

Amelia stared at him like she didn’t recognize him. The version of Chad she knew threw punchlines and punches, not this.

He extended a hand.

“If you are so unsure… then take it.”

I moved.

The instant before Chad could pull back, I crossed the space between us. He reacted late, too focused on Amelia. This was an opening I would never get a second time.

My mind opened like a blade.

Telepathy and empathy condensed into a concentrated spike, driving straight into his cortex. Migraine-level pain flooded his skull. His breath hitched as his body locked.

Amelia shouted, “Nick, what are you doing!?” Her claws formed as she lunged, a tiger-shaped force behind her movement.

I pivoted and kicked the back of her knee. Her leg buckled, her strike lost momentum. I slid past her, never breaking stride.

My fingers touched Chad’s face, and I sank into him.

Possession took hold without prejudice.

The world around me dissolved, and I slid into Chad’s mind like stepping through a half-open door. His psyche bucked and screamed at me, but I held firm. I had done this enough times that the sensation of another consciousness clawing at the back of my skull no longer rattled me.

His earliest memory rose like a tide.

I stood in a massive estate, marble floors shining under an artificial chandelier glow. Servants passed like ghosts. The Hamilton name hung heavy over every surface: portraits, engraved plaques, trophies, awards, and headlines displayed in frames. Yet for all the grandeur, the place felt hollow.

Chad’s father was absent. His mother flitted somewhere else in the world. Meetings. Campaigns. Appearances. Charity lunches. Chad saw her once a week if he was lucky. Maybe twice if schedules aligned.

Yet the kid loved them. Too much. They were everything he wanted to be.

Pressure sat on him even at that age. Tutors drilled him in etiquette, posture, and tone. He didn’t laugh loudly. He didn’t run down hallways. He didn’t eat with his hands. He lived as a statue carved from money and expectations.

The scene shifted.

I became nine-year-old Chad, standing stiff in a sea of adults at one of those endless Hamilton gatherings. The air smelled of wine, perfume, and polished wood. I bowed my head just right, spoke only when spoken to, honored every tone and gesture I had been instructed to mimic.

It was a suffocating kind of performance.

Behind my eyes, the real Chad screamed at me.

“Let go. Get out of my head. Stop this. Stop it, Nick!”

I ignored him.

A while later, a few kids my age approached me near the buffet. Sons and daughters of donors and senators. They smiled like wolves wearing silk.

“Let’s go outside. We want to show you something,” said one of them.

Nine-year-old me followed. He always followed. He wanted friends. He wanted to be liked.

We ended up behind the estate, far from the party’s polite laughter. The air changed. Their smiles did too. They pushed me. Laughed. Made me repeat lines like some kind of trained parrot. Forced me to kneel. Pretend to beg. Pretend to cry.

It wasn’t the first time. They did this every gathering. Every reunion. Every school event where security grew thin.

“Oh,” I murmured inside the memory. “So this is your origin story, Chad?”

“Fuck you,” Chad screamed from the back of my mind. “Get out! Stop looking!”

I didn’t stop.

The bullying escalated. One shoved me down. Another stepped on my hand. Someone spit. Someone laughed. Someone told me to bark.

Something inside the young Chad snapped.

The Pull came.

The air shuddered. Time stretched thin like taffy. My heart pounded like a war drum. My tiny child-sized muscles became lightning in flesh.

I moved.

One bully’s face smeared across the pavement. Another’s arm bent the wrong way with a sickening crunch. Bones cracked. Blood splattered. They shrieked. The world blurred in violent red strokes.

When it was over, my small hands dripped crimson.

And standing beside me, tall and composed in a tailored suit, came Hamilton Sr.

His father.

He looked at me not with horror, but with pride.

“You did great, son,” he said, voice steady. “Congratulations on your awakening.”

“D-Dad,” I—Chad—sobbed. “I… I’m sorry…”

“You did nothing wrong,” he said. “Power is taken with your hands. You took what was yours. You became your own man today. I am proud of you.”

The scene froze around us.

Back in the mental space, I spoke aloud.

“You had a good father, Chad.”

He twisted in pain at my words, mistaking them for mockery.

“Shut up!” he screamed inside my skull. “Give me back my body! GET OUT!”

“I meant it,” I told him, even as his mind tried to claw me out. “At least your father didn’t beat you up. That’s a plus for me.”

Chad’s outrage thrashed in my skull. He thought I was making fun of him. I was not. He had no idea what a plus that actually was.

The memories resumed on their own, the psyche continuing its timeline like a film rolling forward.

Chad grew up with confidence shaped directly from that bloody turning point. He learned to stand straighter. Speak louder. Run faster. He trained his powers. He became the wind in every room he stepped into, swift and free.

Soon enough, the estate no longer felt empty to him. It felt like his little kingdom.

He entered academy programs meant for prodigies. The Vanguard visited the school once to scout promising candidates, and Chad was instantly noticed. That was the first time he learned his father had been a hero the whole time.

Suntrider.

Markend’s golden standard.

Chad’s world lit up with purpose.

He studied more. Trained harder. Picked up the ideology of heroism like it was a family crest he was built to inherit. His sense of power grew. Pride followed. The pride turned into habit. Habit turned into identity.

The rest of his memory was familiar.

The popularity. The crowds. The high grades. The athletic numbers. The girlfriend he proudly paraded around. The effortless confidence. The shining poster-boy image of a good son, a good hero, and a good symbol for the future of society.

Then there was me.

Always quiet. Always alone. Easy to overlook. Easier to target.

The scene shifted again.

Chad stood in his father’s study, still in his school uniform. Suntrider sat behind his desk, mask off, eyes hard.

“I need you to keep your distance from a boy in your year,” his father said. “Nicholas Caldwell.”

Chad blinked. “Why?”

“You do not need to know,” Suntrider replied. “Just make sure his life is difficult. Make sure he does not grow confident. Keep him beneath you. Never let him find stability.”

Chad had hesitated, but only for a breath.

Then he nodded.

“Yes, father.”

He thought it was another lesson. Another step in growing into a man. Another moment to earn pride.

He did it eagerly.

He gathered friends. He built loyalty. He learned how to isolate me socially and then physically. He learned how to bruise without causing suspicion. He learned how to frame things so people laughed with him rather than questioned him.

To Chad, it was just another test. Something to excel at.

To me, it was hell.

Of course, I eventually understood. Crow had been behind much of my life’s worst chapters, and Suntrider had been Crow’s ally. The Hamilton family always loved to pretend they were the right hand of justice. Turns out they served the same rotten roots as every other self-proclaimed savior.

The memory rolled forward again.

Laughter. Parties. Kisses behind locker rooms. Training with the Vanguard. Power growing. A future already set. An easy life. A shining path.

Until one night, everything went wrong for him.

The Hamilton Estate burned like a funeral pyre. Smoke darkened the sky. Sirens wailed. Neighbors gathered. Cameras flashed. News anchors reported it as a burglary gone wrong.

Chad stood outside in the glow of firelight, unable to breathe. His father was gone, stabbed right through the chest with some phasing power. His world collapsed in a single evening.

The mind froze.

Chad fell silent in the psychic space. The anger that had been thrashing at me earlier dimmed into something small and raw. He felt like a child again.

I let the silence linger a beat before I spoke.

“How does it feel,” I asked him quietly, “knowing you played a big role in my origin story?”

His presence trembled.

“To know you helped create Eclipse?”

There was no answer.

I did not expect Chad to answer. He was usually all fury and noise when confronted with the truth. Yet something in him steadied.

“Regretful,” he said at last. His voice carried an old exhaustion. “Now it’s on my hands to right the wrongs. That’s why I swore upon myself I will kill you with everything I have.”

I understood the sentiment.

The memory continued to roll forward like a train with no brakes.

Our first encounter after I robbed the convenience store was messy and ungraceful. Chad cornered me in the alley, preening like an idiot, sure of his victory. I remembered holding that shotgun, my hands steady, and pulling the trigger into his leg. The sound was deafening. It was the beginning of everything that followed.

Blood spilled and did not stop. They called Eclipse a menace, a terrorist cape, a walking disaster, and the most violent cape of the century. I did not correct them.

Our last confrontation had been the entire Watch against me. I still recalled the broken concrete, the smoke clouds, the blood-slick pavement, and my lungs burning as if they were full of fire. I had almost died that day. The only reason I escaped was instinct, desperation, and the raw animal desire to survive. Chad hesitated at the wrong moment, lost in his own fury, and I slipped free through the cracks of the world.

After that, silence swallowed everything.

I disappeared in Markend’s cape scene. Chad broke.

He tried to keep the hero act going, but the public turned on him the same way they had turned on me. The Watch disbanded in disgrace. His sponsorships fell through when news of Suntrider’s partnership with Crow surfaced. His mother tried to salvage their family name through all the political strings she could pull, but in the end, the house was already collapsing. She took her own life without leaving a note.

Chad stood in a ruined apartment with no lights, no heat, and no reason to wake up. He applied for the SRC because he had nothing left. They accepted him, barely. He tried to continue fighting because he did not know what else to do except move forward. He buried his mother alone before anyone could record it.

In time, his heart cracked.

I watched his memory as he stood on the ledge of a tall building. Wind rolled past his hair. The street below was distant, quiet, and ready to receive him. He leaned forward slightly, testing the weight of gravity.

That was when a stranger stood beside him.

A pale man. Skin like paper. Hair white as bone. Eyes without warmth. The kind of person who did not feel the world so much as observe it.

“You look like you have lost everything,” the man said.

Chad did not respond.

“I can give you purpose,” the man continued. “Strength beyond what you imagined. The power to face Eclipse. The power to destroy him, or surpass him.”

Chad did not move. He simply listened.

The man tilted his head slightly.

“Tell me. Have you ever heard of the White Room?”

Chad swallowed. Wind howled. Traffic far below moved like a different world.

“No,” he answered.

The man smiled with a stillness that did not belong to anything human.

“Then allow me to show you.”

Chad had no idea that it had been the beginning of a greater tragedy.