1.2) Abigail Kovacs, The Leviathan

Humanity is evil, yet it is righteous; humanity hates, yet it loves; humanity destroys, yet it creates. Humanity can never be defined as one or the other. It’s the culmination of individuals and their choices that create these spectrums of good and bad.

And it’s all just simple probability–it’s all arbitrary.

Abigail Kovacs was standing in the corner of the dark control room of the underground private prison she had infiltrated, surrounded by monitors that displayed footage of the various prisoners held throughout the building.

On the desk next to her was a stack of files she had taken from the shelves to understand the scope of the illegal operation they were running in the prison; the weak glow of the monitors were the only source of light in the dark room because she had destroyed all of the lamps and panels in the process of pummeling the owner of the prison.

Perhaps reading about all the different kinds of prisoners held within the monitors made it very clear to her how random the world seemed to be when choosing its winners and losers.

Here, the owner of the prison was paid by clients to kidnap and keep people imprisoned for whatever length of time. Despite the inherently cruel nature of the prison, she had to admit that it was an interesting concept, and that the prison seemed to embody the arbitrary nature of human choices.

Some of the prisoners, she believed, deserved the punishment. For example, the file she currently held in her hands described a male prisoner who had gotten away with the murder of his ex-girlfriend. The father of the victim had decided to take matters into his own hands and put away the murderer for good.

Others were kept imprisoned for lesser things. Another prisoner, this time female, had simply been imprisoned for mouthing off at a convenience store to the wrong person at the wrong time. If this prisoner had simply kept her mouth shut, she could have lived the rest of her life with the same rotten attitude in freedom. Instead, the client who paid for her capture had visited the prison every weekend just to torture her.

But when she looked across the monitors, all of them looked the same to her. They were all human, and they had been put here for whatever reason. It didn't matter what their gender was, what their age was, or what their ethnicity was. No one was safe.

Still...

As her eyes focused on a particular screen, she could hear the owner of the building return to consciousness.

“Hrkkk…”

Abigail looked back down at the table, trying to find the file of the person in that particular screen. Meanwhile, she could hear the man struggle to free himself from the chair she had loosely tied him to. The man eventually fell to his side and scrambled on the floor, clearing trying to reach something. She didn't react, calmly flipping through the files. Then, she heard him shout.

“A FUCKING MANIAC IS IN THE CONTROL ROOM! GET EVERYONE HERE NOW!”

Abigail had expected it. She turned away from the monitors and stomped his hand that had gotten ahold of a walkie-talkie. He screamed. But as she was about to stomp on his jaw, she stopped herself. This particular man had gotten on her nerves, but she didn’t really like being unnecessarily violent. It never felt good in the long run.

So instead, she grabbed him and sat him back down onto the chair, this time tying him properly. Then she sat back down on the desk, using the light of the monitors to continue reading through the files and waiting for the hallway to fill with as many reinforcements as she could attract.

***

After about seven minutes, Abigail opened the door into the dim, gray hallway of the prison. Her entry was received with immediate fire, with bullets completely destroying the door before she could open it fully. As the echoes of gunfire rang out throughout her ears, she stood motionless in front of the gunfire and waited for the commotion to end.

It seemed that only the men in the front were armed with firearms, while the rest of the thirty-or-so men seemed to be holding knives and bats. It was expected. Normally, they would have been more than enough to take a single infiltrator down.

Soon, the men at the front looked in her direction with a confused expression, which then turned into a look of surprise.

“It’s a goddamn Leviathan,” one of them said, gritting their teeth.

Abigail’s medium-length hair weakly shone gold under the dim hallway’s lights, her blue eyes sharp and focused on the group in front of her. She was dressed in a light brown trench coat, keeping her neck wrapped in a long white scarf, indicating her status as a Leviathan. Not much about her appearance indicated that she was a woman–generally speaking, it was only the subtle femininity of her face that gave it away. Though if she was in a truly bad mood, that too would disappear. And at this moment, she was indeed in a bad mood.

“Still, it’s a single fucking guy. We can take him,” another one said.

“... Dumbass. I’m pretty sure that’s Kovacs.”

There were murmurs. She could see in the back that some of them were trying to leave through the elevator. The ones closest to her were immobile, anxiously staring at the sword that she kept sheathed on the left of her hip.

Her sword was perhaps one of the few things that eclipsed her own fame as a Leviathan–it was one of the nine mysterious anomalies that were found scattered throughout the Earth. Simply referred to as the “Fourth Anomaly”, the sword had the power to absorb any and all kinetic energy that was directed at the user and the blade itself–and the power to redirect that tremendous energy to wherever she wanted.

And with the hail of bullets that she had just stood through, there was more than enough energy to shatter their skulls. And as for those who could survive–well, the blade was sharp for a reason.

Abigail slowly put her right hand on the hilt of her sword. And immediately, the ones in the very back rushed into the elevator. And the others, who heard their rushed and scattered footsteps, turned and followed them in a panic. Unfortunately for them, the only thing that would be waiting for them outside was the local police.

It was all over. There was no need for blood.

She sighed. She had a small urge to cut them all down right there, but felt that it would make the clean-up process too difficult. She didn’t want to sour her relationship any further with the local police. And besides, there were people here who didn’t deserve to see such violence.

And deep within her heart, she knew that these men were just unlucky–that under better conditions, many of them would have lived peaceful lives and condemned violence.

It was all arbitrary; the world was arbitrary. And so was her justice.