Virus: Insanity

~5~

Stephen awoke feeling unnatural and heavy, the world tinted a sickly yellow. It looked bloated and rounded, as if he were looking through a bubble. He sat up, looking around. His eyes landed on a window, seeing a boy sitting on a bed, half of his body deformed so that it looked like a grasshopper. He glared at it and it glared back. He hissed at the thing and it hissed in response. He recoiled, the boy copying his movements. Frustrated, Stephen grabbed the water glass on his side table, yelling as he threw it at the window. The glass shattered, revealing a black backing. Stephen gasped. It wasn't a window. It was a mirror. He panted, gripping his bed. Oh my god, he thought. I'm a mutant. I'm already going insane. Ohmygodohmygodohmy-
    "Stephen?" Luna's soft, concerned voice cut through his dazed reverie, making him snap his head over. She stood in the doorway, her purple eyes worried and gentle. Stephen relaxed slightly, still panting.
    "What happened to me?" he asked, the words foreign and sharp in his mouth. Luna walked over and sat on the edge of his bed, seeming a bit hesitant. An undiscovered rage welled up in him; he grabbed her shoulders and glared at her. She won't tell me unless I make her. "What happened!?" he yelled, shaking her slightly. Her shocked expression brought him back, making him realize what he was doing. He released her, slowly setting his hands on the bed. She recovered quickly, tucking her hair behind her ear.
"The mutants experimented on you," she started slowly. Once she realized that he had his wits mostly about him, she relayed the information as she normally would. "They had developed a new virus, one that could supposedly give someone the full extent of mutant powers while keeping their sanity."
    "Then why am I breaking down?" he asked, gripping the bed. "Why am I a...a freak?"
"The virus wasn't entirely perfected," Luna replied. "It stopped functioning before it was finished."
    "So I'm a half-mutant?" Stephen asked.
"Yes," Luna replied. "But it shouldn't restrict you from normal life." Stephen swore under his breath. Then an inhuman voice spoke to him, crept inside his brain. He'd heard it before, just not as prominently. Kill ker. He gasped. He had to kill Luna. She was the one keeping him from fulfilling his destiny. The future flashed before his eyes: Mutants writhing in pain as they were cured, millions of them, while Luna held him back. Kill, kill, kill. Use your power. Mutantkind will live on. The screams of Luna fueled him as his sharp fingers dug into her soft flesh, her warm, thick, creamy blood running down his arm and dripping onto the floor. She screamed for help, screamed and screamed and screamed. The noise of crackling electricity snapped him out of his insane attack. His arm tingled as if he had struck it against a wall after it had fallen asleep. His mind flashed back to the mission in the Arctic where he had nearly gotten assassinated, his chest stinging where the scar was. He stepped backwards, his fingers sliding out of Luna's... Is that her arm or her chest? It was her arm; the bones he felt were vertical. His shelled fingers tingled as he pulled them out of her squishy flesh, his shoulder still stinging. He looked to his left, seeing four men standing almost perfectly still, electricity creeping up the wires coming from their wrists. Time seemed to be slowed down, the pulses of electrons taking whole seconds to reach him. He casually pulled the barbs out of the plate on his shoulder, dropping them. It took ten seconds for the men standing nearby to open their eyes wider and then clench them up again, recovering from the shock of their target ignoring their tasers. Stephen asked as realization dawned on him. Time didn't seem to slow down. It had slowed down. He laughed, not one of joy or excitement, but of annoyance.
"I'll be damned," he said, setting his hands on his hips. "Hell, I'm ALREADY damned. Might as well give them one more reason to hate me. Now I've got some sort of time warping power." All of a sudden, something in his brain snapped. The world went back to normal speed and he slowed down with it. The next thing he knew, he was being chloroformed and the world faded to black.