❝ Every story needs a villain. ❞
Eris Schmidt was born during a time where the term 'Inhuman' wasn't known. During a time where she was a weapon to her father and an experiment to those around her. But she spent most that time frozen. And when she w...
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EVERYTHING.
It was such a grand word. Everything; the sky, the sun, the heavens. The open air, the neverending map, the endless road. Everything. The stars, the universe, the worlds beyond.
Most her life, Eris had known the opposite. She'd felt little.
She'd known nothing.
In the darkness, she faced was everything. But at the same time, it was nothing. An extension of grey and white. Feeling every agony, every emotion.
Memories of her past. One flooding in after another.
Eris saw faces of painted red, tutus of ironed white. She heard the voice of her father, the screams of her victims. She felt their pain and she felt her own.
The screamed that filled her ears came from her mouth.
Everything.
She felt everything.
And it was so much more than she'd ever expected.
Had things been different, she might have been on one side and not the other. Had her past been altered, she might have saved rather than killed. The perspective came from two sides and living in nothing all her life, Eris never had the chance to see what else was possible.
Everything.
It came with emotion she couldn't categorize, pain she couldn't handle, and the realization that death came for them all. In a world where things could always be different, that was the only certainty.
Death came for everyone.
Except those who were created by it.
~ ~ ~
They called themselves Inhumans.
She was called Pandora's Box.
She didn't know anything else.
The room around her was abuzz with voices. Men and women in white lab coats rushing back and forth in a flurry, trying to finish the job before the younger Schmidt came back. Words in German were thrown back and forth. Shouts, orders, curses.
They called themselves Inhumans.
The newest batch of enhanced, that was.
The woman strapped to the chair was one of them.
Bits and pieces of the Terragenesis mold littered the floor around her chair. She'd screamed when she was swallowed up. She had still been screaming when she came out.
She wasn't human anymore.
Shadows leaped off the walls and caused the lights to flicker on and off. The shouts and orders in the air didn't help, making panic roar through her ears. She ripped up and lurched against the restraints. But the leather straps did a good job at keeping her strapped down.
Until they didn't.
The room plunged into total darkness and when the lights came back on again, the woman was on her feet. Her chest rose and fell in heaves, brown hair hanging in tangles around her face.
The shouts in German doubled. Weapons were drawn, guns loaded.
Fingers trembled around triggers.
The woman surveyed her surroundings and gazed down at her hands, tendrils of pure darkness wrapping around her skin, slithering up her arms. It purred in her ears. Whispered through her mind.
Shadows turned her eyes darker. She took a step forward.
The guards retreated a step back.
"Unten, vermögenswert, stehen!"
Stand down, asset.
Overhead, the lights flickered. The shadows of the men extended on the ground, long and trembling. The woman reached for the darkness in their souls. The terror in their hearts. The nearest man was more afraid than the rest.
She latched around his shadow.
And pulled.
A scream filled the air. One so blood-curdling and horrific, that the rest of the men went scrambling away and the guard fell to the ground. He'd only made a single scream, eyes wide, face pale, chest still. Only one scream.
Before his shadow was gone.
Before his eyes turned black. Lifeless.
The woman stared at him, then back at her hands, as the guns were trained on where she stood again. Power. That's what that had been. A power she'd never felt before and a feeling of fulfillment that she'd never known until now.
"What..." Her voice sounded strange to her ears. Hoarse, cracked. Like she'd been screaming, but she couldn't remember when. "What did you do to me?"
Silence was her answer. The woman looked up.
Took a step forward.
A gunshot cut through the air.
The bullet met her in the forehead and she was on the ground in a second. It was a straight shot. One fired in panic, but with perfect aim. The life was gone from her lungs in a second and for a moment, the air was perfectly still.
Then shouts of panic shattered the silence.
Two bodies, one pool of blood, one with black eyes, and the white lab coats raced back and forth, panicking as the man who'd fired was dragged away. He didn't even fight back, face pale, eyes mortified.
Staring straight at the asset he'd just shot down.
Dead. Dead.
The younger Schmidt. Was she coming?
Dead.
Suddenly, the room plunged to black.
Screams couldn't describe what overtook the room when the darkness came. But the air turned so cold, death itself might have entered the room. Gunshots ricocheted off the walls. Cries echoed off the ceiling.
And then, there was silence.
The lights came back on.
Where the woman's body had lain, the shadows moved in a whirlwind and joined together, stretching out, rising taller, weaving together like a canvas. The shadows became fingers, arms, and legs.
Flesh and blood.
Where the woman's body had lain, she now stood. Awake, alive. In an empty room, the crust of Terragenesis on the floor.
She was called Pandora's Box.
And she didn't know anything else.
~ ~ ~
A TERRIBLY short chapter, I know, I know. But I was having trouble deciding where I wanted to go with the end of this book and I think I finally figured it out. So... yay? Expect at least one more chapter!
![Eris ▷ s.rogers [1] ✔️](https://img.wattpad.com/cover/171588761-64-k15915.jpg)