Each one of them had to be eliminated. There
was no point in trying to argue this logic. The fact remained that all of them
had been witnessed of something they shouldn’t have and they needed to be
killed before they could say a word to anyone. Lucas did a very thorough list
where he wrote the name of each person that had seen him move that object with
his mind. Every single one of them had to be destroyed unless he considered
them to be harmless with that knowledge.
Actually, he did consider that for a while.
After all, it wasn’t like he knew them all personally. All of the opposite, he
couldn’t care less about who they were and he did try to convince himself that
none of them had seen absolutely anything on that night. But then, someone was
stupid enough to tell someone else, maybe as a funny story, and Lucas had to
take care of it before it couldn’t expand beyond those two people. His watchful
eye had been right then and he concluded it should be a definite answer.
But, as he planned everything, he thought that
probably every single one of those people didn’t really know what they had
seen. Maybe they were confused and had decided to deny it or even rejected what
their eyes had brought to them because their beliefs did not match any of what
was happening with that unique moment in time. It was possible that people
weren’t as bad and terrible as he thought they were. But then someone spoke
about it and then someone else did and he realized what he had to do.
A total of one hundred and fifty three people
would have to be killed. That was the amount of people that had seen the large
explosion he had caused very high in the atmosphere. He had caused that by
pushing a bomb that was going to detonate, destroying a whole town. His
reaction was to use his mind to push the object as high as he could. That way,
the bomb would go off but harming no one. His effort almost caused him to faint
but he bomb successfully detonated away from town.
The problem was that, during that night, the
monthly fair of the small town was taking place and, at least, a thousand
people were there, eating and enjoying many rides and games. So was he and it
was just after winning a plushy on a booth that he discovered the plans of a
mad man and had only second to propel the bomb up into the night sky and hope
his plan worked. That was why so people had seen his feat and that’s why know
he needed to eliminate them all, as they couldn’t be allowed to know what he
did, least of all tell anyone else about it.
For many weeks, he decided to listen to every
single person he remembered in the fair. The good thing was that he had a
photographic memory and he was able to a complete list of people that had seen
the explosion high up in the sky. After that, he followed every single one of
them and checked on their lives to see if they had spoken about him at all.
This they didn’t know, but he had very good hearing, able to hear a person
speaking from many kilometers away, which he used to his advantage.
He would spend hours hearing what a family
talked about during and after dinner. Lucas did that in order to convince
himself that maybe some of the people would be able to keep their mouths shut,
for the good of the future and because they were afraid to say something out
loud that seemed a little bit too crazy. However, that first family finally
talked about it almost a week after it had happened. There was no choice in
Lucas’s mind. So he entered the house at night and killed them with care.
The idea was that he didn’t want the police or
anyone else to think that someone had silenced those people. Instead, he wanted
them to believe that all of these people had died of natural causes. Of course,
after the first few, imagination would begin to be much more difficult to
harness. But, thankfully, not much of it was needed because no one questioned
the first deaths. It was all seen as a coincidence or as tragic ending stories
for very happy and, sometimes, very sad stories.
When he wasn’t doing what he was doing, he
punished himself physically for what he did. He did so because it was obvious
that he wasn’t killing criminals but all of the other people instead, the good
ones, the ones that had families, and something they loved doing and lives that
shouldn’t be disruptive of someone who wasn’t able to find another solution for
an immediate answer. Lucas blamed himself for not having been able to handle
things in a different way, for having to kill.
Yet, he couldn’t change his plans now that he
has started to execute. It wouldn’t make any sense to ignore them and let oust
him as what he was. They couldn’t understand what was happening and what had
been happening to him since when he was a teenager. Although he had received
training, Lucas had never been able to master the complete arts of mind control
and everything that had any connection to it. People wouldn’t understand that
having those abilities was more of a curse than a blessing. And he couldn’t
explain carefully to anyone, it would take much too long.
Two weeks after his initial decision, only
forty-two of the former group was still live. He had killed most of them during
their sleep so they could be able to avoid pain and everything related to it.
Lucas hated himself every single time he had to do it and would have loved to
have a second opinion but there was no one there except him and his plan. He
couldn’t be stopped and he honestly regretted that because a good person always
wants to be stopped when they do something for the greater good.
More often than not, the greater good is a way
to shield oneself from criticism and understanding. He would have loved all
those little children and the adults to understand that he didn’t want to hurt
them but that he knew very well, after hearing all of them, that most would
like to have his abilities or at least be able to see them in action once more.
Once they had seen something so strange, they really wanted to see it again and
again, until time came that it made no sense or they decided to be afraid.
And fear was his number one enemy. Many of
them had already planned to speak loud and clear about what they had seen and
whom they had seen doing it. Although they felt a little bit of envy, fear was
the key in making them move against what had fascinated them at the start. All
of those he killed first were that kind of people, thinking they were doing
this country a great service by pushing a fellow human into the pool of hungry
sharks that was the military or even worse.
No,
his powers had to die with him and that was it. He completed his mission almost
a year after he had decided that was the only solution. There was no one to
recognize that but at least he was in peace, or something close to that, at
last. He also decided to never use his powers again, even at home where no one
could actually see him. His short run as a powerful man was over. Lucas had so
many other things to be worried about and he was glad everything now was on the
past.
But that never actually happened because the
death of all those people was on his hands. It doesn’t matter what this
intentions were back then, he had killed all of those people in order to
protect himself. Every single day, he had to be convinced that what he did was
the only choice. But then, months after finishing, a voice appeared in the back
of his head and it told him something that he wasn’t expecting: an alternative.
His own brain wanted to explain to Lucas how things could have been so
different. But at the end of the day, he had to live with what he had learned.
