152 Cause & Effect [Chadwick Hamilton]

It had been a mistake accepting that hand back then.

If I had a way to turn back time and if I’d known what it would cost, I would have never said yes. But knowing myself, knowing the idiot I was, I’d probably say yes again. Every time.

The White Room was where my sanity first began to peel away.

It wasn’t really white, not after the first few days. The walls were padded in some sterile material, glowing faintly, as if light came from nowhere and everywhere. It was the kind of place where sound didn’t echo right, where time stretched until it felt like it might snap.

They brought us in groups from children, teenagers, and adults, all of us “capes.” Different powers, different origins. We were told we were candidates for something greater. The rules were simple. Fight. Kill. Survive.

Refuse, and your competitor would kill you anyway, helped along by the invisible handlers watching from the other side of the glass. I tried to resist at first, tried to reason, but reason doesn’t feed you when the walls keep closing in.

After the third week, at least, what I thought was a week. I stopped fighting for survival. I fought because the killing kept me from thinking. I fed on my hatred for Eclipse, for the world that sold me into this hell, for the faces I had to erase just to breathe another hour.

Days blurred into months, then into something uncountable.

When the final fight ended, there were three of us left.

I sat on the sofa, its softness strange against my skin. I was a mess, half-naked, and streaked with blood that had long dried to a crusted brown. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the shock of stillness.

Across from me sat a woman, staring at a cactus that sat awkwardly on the white table between us. Her left eye was covered by an eyepatch. Later, I’d learn her name was Gloryhole, her own choice for a cape name, apparently, because she thought it was funny. She’d been a prostitute once, recruited because of her genetic compatibility with some mutant strain.

The other survivor was a man whose skin was pale as ash, body sewn together like a ragdoll. Patch, they called him. A superpowered criminal who’d been granted a pardon to participate in the program.

The door opened.

A man stepped in. It was Continuity.

“Congratulations,” he said, voice smooth as glass. “You’ve completed the White Room Program.”

None of us answered. Gloryhole looked at him with that half-lidded amusement that masked exhaustion. Patch just sat still, eyes hollow.

Continuity clasped his hands behind his back and continued, “From this point forward, you’ll be working for me, under Division 5.”

I remember his next words clearest of all.

“You’re no longer in the world you came from. Reality here flows differently. Time moves more slowly in this place.” He gave us a brief smile. “Rest for now, as much as you can. An attendant will lead you to your quarters.”

I did as I was told. The attendant guided me through a series of seamless halls to a small room. I stripped, showered, and watched the water run red until it cleared. When I finally lay down, the bed felt alien.

Later, Continuity visited me again. He came alone, unguarded. I didn’t hold back my questions.

“Why me?” I asked. “Why the White Room? What’s Division 5? And what did you mean by time moving slower here? How can you justify everything you’ve done?”

He didn’t evade. Didn’t lie. He looked me straight in the eyes and answered as if reading from a report.

“You’re not special, Chad,” he said. “You merely fulfilled the parameters for high secondary and tertiary pulls. The White Room was adapted from an existing project in another world, one of the more successful prototypes of another civilization. As for Division 5? Division 5 handles containment and engagement with the Entity.”

I frowned. “The Entity?”

“A name for what your kind call a god, a virus, or evolution itself. Depends who you ask.” He shrugged. “As for time, this world ranks low in significance across the multiverse. Because of that, it moves slower, drags behind the current. It’s a convenient property for research.”

I stared at him, speechless. It wasn’t the words that stunned me. Instead, it was the ease with which he said them, as though all of it made perfect sense.

“And the SRC?” I asked. “You think you’re justified in doing this?”

He smiled faintly, eyes gleaming. “The SRC doesn’t need justification. We’re the strongest force there is.”

For a long moment, the room was silent except for the slow tick of the ventilation system.

Then he added, in that same calm tone, “Since we’ll be co-workers from now on, Chad… I value transparency.”

He turned for the door.

“In return,” he said, looking back at me with that unreadable smile, “I expect loyalty.”

I didn’t even have time to react when Continuity stabbed me.

The blade slid cleanly through my throat. I didn’t feel pain, not at first. Just pressure, then the warmth of blood spilling down my chest. The shock made me stumble back, clutching my neck, trying to stop the bleeding that couldn’t be stopped.

I remember the sound of my heartbeat slowing, the room spinning in colors that weren’t supposed to exist. My last sight was Continuity’s face as I collapsed.

When I blinked awake, I was alive again.

The wound was gone. Not even a scar remained. My blood, what little had spilled, had vanished as if the act itself had been erased from history. I staggered to my feet, confused, panting, eyes darting between my clean hands and the man standing before me.

“What... what the hell did you do?” I rasped.

Continuity smiled faintly, wiping the blade on a handkerchief before tucking it back into his coat. “Relax,” he said. “That was a demonstration. Nothing more.”

“A demonstration?” I barked. “You slit my throat!”

“Yes,” he said casually. “And then I reversed it.”

He stepped closer, the white lights above reflecting on the silver of his glasses. “You’re wondering what that means. My power,” he said, “is the result of a mutant strain, a singular essence, impossible to replicate but potent beyond measure.”

He tapped two fingers to his temple. “I don’t just manipulate time, Chad. I manipulate causality. Cause and effect are mine to rearrange.”

I stared at him, still trying to make sense of his words.

“When I stabbed you,” he continued, “the effect was your death, the absence of life. The cause? The knife. Could be the loss of blood itself. What happens if you reverse them? Factually speaking, you would still be dead. However, rearranging a timeline of events would invalidate an existing one. You get a paradox, and what had been true would become false. I severed the link between the two and rewrote it. Now, your death has no cause... until I decide otherwise.”

He let the words hang, watching me absorb them.

“So if you ever think of defying me,” he said softly, almost kindly, “remember that the cause of your death is still there. It was paused, not erased. I only need to restore it, and you’ll die exactly as you did just now.”

I clenched my fists. “You’re saying you can kill me anytime you want.”

Continuity smiled again. “No, Chad. I’m saying you’ll stay alive... as long as you obey.”

The following weeks blurred together into blood and exhaustion.

I was sent on mission after mission, across worlds that shouldn’t have existed, realities folded into each other, each filled with danger and ruin. Some worlds were endless deserts where life survived by eating light. Others were oceans of rust and bone, where the air itself screamed.

Each assignment tested the limits of my endurance and power. Each victory came with a new scar, physical or otherwise.

I didn’t understand the multiverse, not really. But I wasn’t stupid. The SRC had access to countless realities, each rich in resources, and each locked in endless conflict. It wasn’t about exploration. It was conquest.

Sometimes, when I thought I’d lose it, when another mission turned into a massacre and my sanity began to rot, I’d think of Eclipse. That name was enough to ignite the fire in me again. The memory of what they took, what they destroyed, burned hotter than fear or exhaustion. Revenge kept me alive when reason couldn’t.

On one of those missions, in a dying world whose sun had cracked into fragments, I found information about my father. It wasn’t what I’d expected.

Before he was known as Sunstrider, the superhero who brought light to the city, or before he ran with Crow’s crew as a villainous cape, he had been something else entirely.

A refugee.

He came from a world on the edge of collapse, a low-resource world crushed by oppression and starvation. By some miracle, or sheer desperation, he escaped and crossed into our world. There, he met Crow in the early days, before the name meant anything. Together, they carved their way through the chaos until Father became the Sunstrider everyone worshipped.

Hearing that shattered something in me.

A year later, I returned to Markend with my hard-earned vacation. I’d been avoiding it for too long. The city was the same: gray skies, crooked towers, and the constant hum of life pretending everything was normal. I wasn’t here for nostalgia. I was here for Eclipse.

I hunted for histraces, but the SRC cut me off at every turn.

“Mind your business, Hamilton,” they said.

“This isn’t your jurisdiction.”

“Division 5 doesn’t involve itself with domestic affairs.”

Their words made my blood boil.

After everything I’d done, this was how they saw me. An unstable thug. A blunt instrument. A man ruled by rage. They didn’t see the purpose behind it. They never did. Of course, Continuity also gave me a warning.

I sat on the balcony of my rented flat, overlooking the Markend skyline, the wind cold against my face. I’d never imagined I would come back to this place, but I did.

Markend had changed.

The streets were the same in shape, but not in soul. Neon lights hummed more weakly, and the city seemed quieter than I remembered. Fewer heroes patrolled, fewer faces looked up at the skyline expecting salvation. Even the name ‘Windbreaker’ had long faded from the city’s memory.

Windbreaker was gone.

There were no more fan clubs, and no more kids wearing imitation jackets. The posters had been replaced by newer heroes, cleaner faces, safer brands. It was sad, I supposed. But that was karma.

In my time back in Markend, I tried to live like a human being again, away from the horrors of other worlds and the blood-drenched ghosts of the White Room. For the first time in what felt like a long time, I could hear silence and not expect screaming to follow.

Still, the leash around my neck was there.

My direct superior had warned me: “Do not interfere with Eclipse. The SRC will handle it.”

So I obeyed. Not out of respect, but out of survival. Continuity’s little “gift” in my throat still pulsed like an invisible reminder of who owned my life.

It pissed me off how much my desire for revenge had cooled. I hated the calm that had taken its place, and the dull acceptance that came after years of killing across realities. But maybe that was the human part of me trying to crawl back.

And in that strange calm, I found love again.

Mindy.

She had always been smart, top of her class, and the type who thought logic could solve everything. But she wasn’t sharp emotionally. Easy to read, and easy to sway. Maybe that’s why she’d fallen for me in the first place.

She had been my girlfriend once. The kind who smiled at my lies because she wanted to believe them. She caught me double-timing her more times than I could count, yet she still stayed. I used to think it was because she loved me. Maybe she just didn’t know how to let go.

When I disappeared into the White Room, she was left behind with nothing but silence. I often wondered how she’d taken it, what became of her when I was off killing strangers for the SRC’s multiversal ambitions.

Now, standing in the middle of Markend again, curiosity got the better of me.

I wanted to see her.

After a little digging, I found her address, buried in a forgotten part of the city, a cramped apartment wedged between two tall, decaying buildings. The kind of place that barely saw sunlight.

I knocked.

When the door opened, I almost didn’t recognize her.

Mindy stood there, hair messy, eyes sunken, skin pale and dry. Her belly was round and heavy. She was pregnant. The apartment behind her was cluttered with laundry and half-broken furniture.

She looked at me, lips trembling, and for a second, I thought she was about to collapse. Instead, she slapped me.

“You bastard!” she cried, tears spilling freely. “You left me! You left me pregnant and alone! Do you have any idea what they said about me? What did they do to me?”

Her voice cracked under the weight of it all.

I touched my cheek, still stinging from the slap, and stared at her belly. My mind went blank. My first instinct was simple. It had to be mine.

“I didn’t know,” I said quietly. “Mindy, I—”

She slapped me again.

“You didn’t care!” she screamed. “You ran away, left me to deal with everything! I lost everything, Chad. School. Friends. My life!”

I stood there, half in guilt, half in disbelief. She had known about my cheating, and yet she’d stayed loyal. Back in school, I’d even had someone keep an eye on her, paranoia, maybe, but that was how I knew. She’d never cheated once. Not once.

“I’ll take responsibility,” I said finally.

Mindy laughed bitterly. “You? Take responsibility? You don’t even have money. You’re just some poor bloke now, aren’t you?”

That’s when it clicked.

She didn’t love me. Maybe she never did. What she’d loved was the idea of me, the wealth, the status, and the family name that had once carried weight. But even that was gone now. The government had stripped it all after my father’s crimes were exposed.

Still, I didn’t walk away.

A lesser man would have.

But I wasn’t going to be trash. I wasn’t going to be the kind of man society said my father was, a villain, a coward, and a monster who ran from his mistakes.

I wouldn’t be like Eclipse.

So I stayed.

Days turned into weeks. I worked hard to win her back and to prove I could be more than the ghost of the man she once knew. Slowly, she let me back into her life, piece by piece.

As I learned about her new life, I saw how much she’d suffered.

After I vanished, the rumors spread fast. My father’s fall from grace made me a target, and by extension, so was she. People at the university called her names… whore, slut, bitch. Some said she’d seduced me to climb socially. Others whispered she’d slept her way through classes.

It was a university she got through with effort, being able to skip the rest of high school so she could take the accelerated program. Yes, it was an opportunity she received when we were almost graduating anyway and something that opened to her thanks to my connection when the Hamilton was yet to fall. In the end, she was reduced to a mere nobody because she got involved with me, and her pregnancy became more and more obvious.

Eventually, the pressure broke her. That’s when her powers emerged. Telepathy, the kind that let her hear every insult whispered behind her back. It didn’t make her stronger; it broke her even more.

Worse still, she was carrying a child while all of it happened.

Every word, every thought around her, was poison.

Eventually, she dropped out.

I began to see her differently, not as the naive girl I once toyed with, but as someone who had endured far worse than I ever gave her credit for.

With my salary from the SRC, I could make a life for her. For us.

So one evening, as the rain drummed softly outside her apartment window, I looked at her and said, “Mindy… marry me.”

She froze, eyes wide, breath caught in her throat.

I wasn’t sure whether I was doing the right thing.

But maybe that didn’t matter.

I just didn’t want to be my father’s son anymore. I didn’t want regrets. I wanted to matter. If I married this woman, I might be able to change myself.