Adhara's Sonder

Chapter 27: Rampage

Cyrus didn't remember waking up the next morning. Suddenly he had been lying in bed, staring at his ceiling for hours. The sun had risen long ago but he couldn't have guessed what time it was.

He inhaled, a deep sigh, as though he hadn't taken a breath since the night before. Breathing, blinking, moving—things Cyrus had been avoiding so that he would avoid setting time in motion again. He couldn't bear the past, he dreaded the future, and so he lingered in the present where he could simply exist, without blame or responsibility. His thoughts went to relativity. Time, Cyrus figured, was nothing more than movement, vibration of atoms, and position in space. To stand outside time was to completely stand still. In this single moment, there was nothing more for Cyrus than to stare at the ceiling and think about relativity, trying to remain completely still.

But eventually, the breath ended. Cyrus had stopped but time moved on without him. Though he was still, the world moved regardless, and time became the motion of everything else. And try as he might to be unmoved, he was never truly still. He took another breath, a sharp one to steel himself, and rolled out of bed.

Cyrus wandered through his empty house. The previous night, he had texted his friends and told them not to come home from the hospital. He had told them what he had done and why it wasn't safe. Even now, he glanced out the window—he didn't see anyone yet, but he expected Acryogen police to arrive in force at any time now. He couldn't involve his friends with that, so he told them to stay away. He did not tell them who he was.

Who he was—and who was he, Cyrus wondered morosely as he lumbered into the bathroom. He looked in the mirror. Who was that, in there? A notorious, mass-murdering supervillain? No—he was the same as he had always been, surely! Just a mild-mannered college student, albeit with a theatrical streak and a proclivity for pyrotechnics. Mere quirks—one of dozens like him in the city. No one special. Certainly not worth singling out above everyone else—not as a threat to the city. Not even as the "chosen one" to save it. Just another citizen.

No, Cyrus decided, Adhara must have made a mistake. Perhaps, he reasoned, by the very act of going back in time, she had changed events on the timeline! Yes, that was it!

Hadn't she once said that "Time travel has an inexact effect on sequential events?" The things she had described to him from her own timeline didn't match what was happening in his Hudson City. She was wrong, she had to be. Perhaps the Cyrus Agrah from her time became a monster, but he wasn't. He wouldn't. He nodded to himself in the mirror, strengthening his resolve before marching downstairs.

This was all just a big misunderstanding, he decided as he poured himself a bowl of cereal. And it wasn't too late to make things right. But as he opened his silverware drawer, he noticed that the spoon he sought was quivering. The milk in his bowl quivered too, and eventually, he felt the tremors vibrating up through his feet. He rushed to the window. Coming over the hilltop was an army of Grimlords and police officers, side by side, around a fleet of Roadsters and drones. Mason must have finally found a way to regain control of them. Cyrus rolled his eyes and grumbled, setting his cereal down on the table hard before rushing upstairs to find his gauntlets.

By the time Cyrus had put his suit on and stepped outside, his house was surrounded. Standing at the forefront, directly facing him from across the wide perimeter, was

a curious hybrid. It was an Acryogen-made android; there was no mistaking the telltale manufacturing style—another Adhara prototype. Cyrus figured it to be a model one or two generations newer than Mystery Man. But its body had been fused with a Grimlord. The human skull, tiny on the massive shoulders, would have been almost comical if not for its glowing red eyes and pulsating black body.

"Efficient!" Cyrus called. "Combining a combat android with a Grimlord. Best of both worlds, right?" he stepped forward boldly. "You probably figured they would cancel out each other's weaknesses, right Mason?" He looked around as if expecting to find Mason in the crowd, resting his hands condescendingly on sassy hips. "I thought you would have learned by now. I don't need weaknesses."