ALL THE KING'S MEN | BARRY ALLEN

10. BLOODSPORT

❛ chapter ten! ❜

ten | bloodsport—raleigh ritchie

       Earth-48. That's how Cisco called it before opening a breach to the place its own inhabitants had called Warworld, home to engineered warriors bred to wage war against anyone who was willing to open fire and also due to the amount of wars that had taken place in it. I couldn't count them with my fingers even if I wanted to; for centuries, nations would fight each other for the stupidest reasons, killing thousands of people, turning cities into something unrecognizable only to show off their capacity of survival. Nations would always come up with a way to raise from those ashes, becoming more glorious, magnificent and powerful with each war it passed, but wars found a way to become more powerful as well. A place where hate and violence had reigned was the place that I grew up to call home.

       My earth wasn't like the rest and it probably deserved what happened to it, but still, amongst all those people with a thirst for war, lived innocent people.

       It was the year 2050 when the first wave of 'metahumans' walked my earth. Their powers were product of a virus, a virus brought by a group of astronauts when they returned from a planet called Onyx in a distant galaxy. The virus affected hundreds of people in the world before scientist could find a cure, soon, half of the earth's population was meta. Powers such as super strength, the ability to read people's mind and control over the elements were the most common. However, these powers weren't at its full capacity, nobody knew how to use them, and still these metas were persecuted, for society couldn't stand the fact that they were superior to the 'normal' people—considering that we were engineered to be, in all aspects, the best.

       The military had already killed many when scientists—who were fascinated by the phenomenon—discovered that the effects would just wear off. They wouldn't get rid of metas that easily, though, considering that a little bit over a hundred years later a wide range antimatter explosion would grant anyone in its way with super human abilities and this time the effects would not wear off.

       By the time I was born, that in 2150, Warworld was not as gory and violent as it had been in the past. It's hard to imagine that things were even worse. Metahumans were now accepted in society, some things remained the same, though. Like any ten year old from a military family would be trained five times harder than the ten year olds from an ordinary family for eight long years in a special institution, the Prime Academy, where they'd be taught from how to fight and wield any sort of weapons to pretty much killing someone to grant the survival of the best.

       The only difference was that now, they would give these new warriors the chance to decide whether to stay in this path of violence or to lead a life away from anything related to it and be free to become anything they wanted, like becoming a baker, a tailor, a teacher, a lawyer, etc. I decided to stay, just like the majority always did and since I didn't have anyone left, I had nothing to lose but my own life. That was the normal on my earth, and even if we were not at war, we all knew it was better to be prepared, after all it was always kill or be killed during a war.