To Witness One's Own Grave

The city was eerily deserted, the streets barren of both people and automobiles. Perhaps it was the ominous rain clouds gathering overhead, their dark bellies threatening a deluge. While it was natural for pedestrians to seek shelter, the near-total absence of traffic was perplexing.

A fifteen-minute, non-stop run brought me to the cemetery gates, leaving me breathless and flushed with an unnatural heat. The downpour had started midway through my sprint, a cold sheet of water that did nothing to quell the strange fever brewing beneath my skin. I was shirtless, clad only in my rain-soaked delivery jeans.

I scaled the nearest wall, seeking a vantage point from which to observe Boss Ren. Though not immense, the cemetery was a labyrinth of ancient trees, rolling hillocks, weeping statues, and towering tombstones. The driving rain further obscured the view, turning the landscape into a wash of gray and shadow. Spotting a cluster of figures near the cemetery's heart, I opted to maintain my distance, finding cover behind the trunk of a gnarled oak on a small, wooded rise at the edge of the grounds. From this perch, I had a clear view of the tombstones below.

A congregation of men in stark black suits stood before a single, freshly dug grave. A closer look confirmed my suspicion: Boss Ren stood at its head, his posture rigid. The others maintained a reverent five-meter distance. The presence of these men, their bearing as severe as federal agents, cemented the horrifying suspicion taking root in my gut.

As far as I knew, Boss Ren had no family buried here. There was only one reason they would all be here, with him, now.

That grave was meant for me. For his so-called son. I had to be in it—cold, lifeless, and probably mangled beyond recognition. These men wouldn't be present for a fake or a body double. Their attendance was the ultimate confirmation.

Words failed me. So... I really had died. I was dead. But if that was true, what was I now? A specter? A ghost? No, that couldn't be right. I had just spoken with Crazy Mo. I could touch things, feel the rough bark of the tree against my back. I was solid. I was... alive.

So what did that make me? The living dead? A monster?

Soaked by the chilling rain, I stood alone, my thoughts a chaotic whirlwind and my heart a hollow void. What was I supposed to do? March over there and announce my survival to Boss Ren? The exhaustion and the strange, internal heat from my run were intensifying, spreading through me like a poison. How could I possibly explain this? 'Hey, Boss, I died, got summoned to another world, and now I'm back.' He knew about the lives I'd taken, about my dark and violent past. He knew I was partly responsible for the tragedy that had stolen his family, his home, his sight—his entire world. And yet, he had still taken me in. He was a truly good man, and for that, I revered him.

I could only stare into the gray distance as a crushing weight settled over me, accompanied by a surge of unbearable heat. A scream tore from my throat, silent to all but me. It felt as if I were being immolated from the inside out, a human pyre in the pouring rain. My thoughts fractured. Black smoke and steam hissed from my skin, like water striking a red-hot forge. A web of incandescent red cracks began to splinter across my chest.

A profound weakness washed over me. What was happening? Within moments, the smoke billowing from my body thickened, the internal fire roared hotter, and the air filled with an audible sizzle. The crimson fissures spiderwebbed outwards, racing across my torso, down my arms, and up my neck. It was a unique agony, the feeling of being simultaneously scorched and flayed alive. The light pouring from the cracks grew so intense that, even from a distance, the men behind Boss Ren finally noticed me.

I was nearly lost within a shroud of my own smoke. The pain spiked, escalating so sharply that a guttural roar of pure agony ripped from my lungs. My consciousness began to fray at the edges. Am I dying again? This time, the agony was a thousand times worse, and I had no name for my executioner.

And then, as suddenly as it began, the pain vanished. I collapsed into darkness.

When I awoke, I was lying on the cot in my dungeon cell. I remained still for a long moment, allowing the fragments of my awareness to coalesce.

Oh. So it was all just a nightmare. The build-up, the revelation, the agony—all a figment of my sleeping mind. I sat up, clutching my head, which still throbbed with the phantom pains of the hyper-realistic dream. It was the most vivid I’d ever experienced; a sheen of cold sweat covered my body, a testament to how real it had felt.

Phew. I let out a long, slow breath. What a truly bizarre dream. My relief, however, was short-lived. A glance down confirmed I was shirtless again, and my recently settled thoughts scattered once more. The little princess had already seen me this way, of course, but that hadn't stopped her from calling me a 'wicked nudist' when she'd found me earlier. I still had no idea where my shirt had gone. Had that been part of the dream, too?

Meanwhile, at a military installation somewhere in the FSA, at approximately the same time…

In a sterile conference room, a senior commander, his uniform heavy with decorations, sighed as he stared down at the report on the table. Dozens of other high-ranking military officials sat around the polished mahogany, their gazes fixed on him, a palpable tension in the air as they awaited his command.

One of the younger officers, clearly out of the loop, leaned toward his superior. He whispered, "What's the situation? The commander looks like he's seen a ghost."

The report in the young man's own hands seemed innocuous enough—a simple confirmation that a particular individual had been sighted alive. He could only deduce that this 'individual' must be monumentally dangerous to warrant such a grave atmosphere.

"You're not cleared for this," his superior murmured back, his eyes never leaving the commander. "Just wait. The old man is about to brief the room. Pay attention. This issue is bigger than the Sovereign Code."

The young officer's eyes widened. Bigger than the President's security protocols? "A national threat?" he mouthed.

"That's right. And depending on how this plays out, potentially a global one."

"A global threat? We haven't had one of those since the Cold War."

"Yes, we have," the superior corrected grimly. "For the last fifteen years. Now be quiet and listen."

A moment later, the commander cleared his throat, his voice low and solemn, commanding immediate silence. "Gentlemen, thank you for assembling on such short notice."

"Two hours ago, we received a report. A man we believed to be deceased—a man whose death we verified—may, in fact, be alive."

A collective shifting of weight was the only sound as everyone leaned forward.

"This is a man who possesses enough leverage to collapse the entire Western Hemisphere," the commander continued. "He holds compromising intelligence on our nation, on every foreign superpower, and on nearly every clandestine organization known to exist. To put it bluntly, this man single-handedly holds the keys to igniting a new world war."

A sharp, collective intake of breath came from the uninitiated in the room.

Unable to contain his disbelief, one officer spoke up. "A man like that exists? And he's hostile? Where did he come from? Is he Umbra Mortalis?"

"No," the commander replied, his expression hardening. "He was one of ours. More accurately, he was our creation."

"One of us? So, a simple rogue agent."

"He's more than a rogue agent, Kestor," the commander said, his gaze briefly falling on the young officer. "He was a participant in the experimental program to create the perfect operative. We found him in a maximum-security penitentiary. He was ten years old."

"Wait, sir. How does a ten-year-old end up in prison?"

"For a typical crime, they don't. But his crime was anything but typical. Our files show his parents were murdered by local thugs. A few weeks later, the boy disappeared for several days. I think you can guess what he did."

"Don't tell me a ten-year-old took out a gang of hardened criminals by himself."

Kestor visibly relaxed. "No, he didn't." The commander let the silence hang for a beat before continuing. "He dismantled their entire organization, along with a rival outfit from the next territory over. The final body count was eighty-nine. He was the sole perpetrator."

A stunned silence fell over the younger staff. "That's impossible! How?"

"That's when he landed on our radar. It wasn't raw strength that he used, but cold, calculated brilliance—a level of strategic thinking no child should possess. He fed misinformation to both gangs, luring them into the same building for a supposed summit. While they were busy slaughtering each other, he sealed the exits and set the structure ablaze, having already prepared secondary traps to eliminate any potential survivors. When he was apprehended a few days later while continuing his vigilante crusade, he was deemed psychologically unstable. He was also the perfect candidate for our project, so we took him in."

"So we recruited him, trained him to be a super-agent, and he went rogue?"

"He wasn't just a super-agent. He was the apex predator of the program. The boy, Rylan Maxton, became the man, codenamed Axel—a ruthlessly efficient, emotionless killing machine. During an augmentation procedure, a device malfunctioned, sending a lethal electrical charge through dozens of subjects. He was the sole survivor. The doctors who treated him called him 'as tenacious as a cockroach.'"

Kestor swallowed hard, deciding it was best to stop making assumptions.

"Out of more than one hundred candidates, he was one of only five to survive the training. By fourteen, he was the perfect operative. We had high hopes, but it all fell apart in less than a year. He escaped our facility, hacked our highest-level criminal database, and disappeared. Our research had shown that the gangs he'd dismantled as a boy were just a minor branch of a vast international network. So he went on a one-man crusade, escalating his war on crime. Every attempt we made to intercept him ended in humiliating failure. The situation deteriorated when he learned of the government's... unofficial arrangements with certain criminal syndicates. He discovered the uncomfortable truth that, like most nations, we allow certain organizations to exist to manage the more unsavory elements of society. The underworld and the government—two sides of the same coin."

The commander paused, letting the weight of his words sink in. "Over the next decade, he systematically dismantled countless criminal empires and corrupt political regimes, all while amassing a treasure trove of blackmail material on virtually everyone of consequence. Fearing the power he wielded, we redoubled our efforts to capture him. And, as usual, we failed. Then, one day, he emerged from the shadows of his own volition, with a single message: a warning of an imminent, large-scale terrorist attack on our soil and an instruction to lock down our airspace."

A shadow of profound regret crossed the commander's face. "We ignored him. We saw it as an opportunity to finally capture him and focused our resources on that. The result... was the 9/11 catastrophe. A national tragedy we will carry to our graves. We could have prevented it. While we were failing, he was succeeding. He stopped the fifth plane."

"The fifth plane, sir?" Kestor asked, confused. "The official record states there were only four."

"That's the public narrative. The truth is, a fifth plane was targeting the White House. Axel single-handedly prevented it from being hijacked."

A palpable chill went through the room. Even for those who knew the story, the memory was a raw nerve.

"After that day, we pulled back," the commander continued. "We monitored from a distance, but we ceased all active interference. It was the least we could do—a tacit acknowledgment of our debt, and perhaps a gamble that he bore no true malice toward his home country. He also," the commander added, his voice dropping lower, "prevented Choson from initiating nuclear war."

The shock from the younger officers was even more profound this time.

"The man personally thwarted the launch of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles aimed at its neighbors. The operation was a success, though not without significant collateral damage. The warheads detonated deep within the Vast Sea, far from any population centers. However, the resulting seismic event ruptured a tectonic plate, triggering the tsunami that devastated the Xendai region of Nihon a few years back."

"To think... that something like that was covered up… Is that even possible?" another young man muttered.

"Why do you think Choson stayed silent when that comedy mocking their great leader was released? It was funded by a Nihon-based shell corporation. That was Axel's passive-aggressive retaliation. His accomplishments are legion. In ten years, he amassed so much power he no longer needed to hide. His enemies operated under an unwritten rule of mutually assured destruction: if Axel were ever killed, his network of associates had standing orders to release every secret he'd ever collected. So they left him alone. He stopped his crusade and began to live a quiet life."

Kestor's jaw was practically on the table. "An incredible story, sir. But if he retired, why is he a threat now?"

"Because, according to this report, he died nearly a week ago. We confirmed it—a bizarre industrial accident. The entire global intelligence community was stunned. With him gone, the race was on to find the device containing his data. We couldn't find it. We turned the city of Brookland upside down, interrogated his known associates, tore apart every location he frequented. Nothing. Global tensions spiked as governments started pointing fingers at each other. Then, this afternoon, we received a new report. Rylan Maxton is alive. He was spotted in the very same city by an operative assigned to one of his contacts. We have footage."

An assistant dimmed the lights, and a video flickered to life on the main screen. The footage was brief, captured from the first-person perspective of a camera hidden in a pair of glasses. In the lower-right corner of the frame, a hand holding a pistol was visible. Despite the torrential rain, the image was clear enough to show a man in the distance, wreathed in an unnatural black smoke. The operative zoomed in, revealing a shirtless, scarred man whose face, though partially obscured, matched the file on Rylan Maxton. Then, something impossible happened. Blazing red fissures erupted across his skin, growing in intensity until his eyes glowed with the same crimson light. A few seconds later, a blinding flash of white light bleached the camera's sensor. When the feed adjusted, he was gone. Nothing remained but the wind and the rain.

The lights came up, revealing a room of stunned faces.

"Gentlemen," the commander said, his voice like granite. "Mark my words. This is a man who has cheated death time and again. His 'death' last week was a test. A brilliant, terrifying feint to see how his enemies would react. I don't know how he faked it—a clone, a perfect body double—but he fooled all of us. This is a man who would orchestrate his own demise just to watch the fallout. His reappearance means the test is over, his objective is met, and he is preparing his next move. We are now at our highest state of alert. I want defense contingencies drawn up immediately. Expand our surveillance network. Under no circumstances are any personnel to engage the target. And expect the unexpected. As you have just seen, this man operates outside the known laws of physics."

After the briefing concluded, the room erupted into urgent strategic discussions.

Meanwhile, in a dungeon cell in another universe, a certain man was lying on his side.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

"Aaaah, yeah, that's the spot. Keep scratching."

The very man who had the most powerful military leaders on the planet scrambling in a state of panic was, at that exact moment, enjoying the simple, primitive pleasure of a good back-scratching. If they could see him now, they would surely believe they were hallucinating. They had constructed a myth, a grotesque monster to fear, and had completely missed the easygoing man at its core. In its own way, that simple truth was perhaps more world-shattering than the fact he had single-handedly averted nuclear war.