POV: Adonai
"Even though there are lots of children in this audience. First time in my life I'm going to expose myself, so… excuse me while I whip this OUT!"
Adonai flourished a dish in front of them like a stage magician revealing his grand finale. Steam curled upward in lazy ribbons, carrying with it the rich smell of tomato, melted cheese, and herbs that filled the small dorm kitchen.
He held the lasagna out with an expression somewhere between an over-caffeinated child and a slightly unhinged mad scientist unveiling his greatest invention. Which, he reflected, was probably not the most reassuring look to have while presenting what he personally considered a culinary masterpiece to the woman he was trying to convince he was a serious individual… and to her fifteen-year-old brother whom he had met barely two hours ago.
"You really didn't have to cook for us," Sue said with an exasperated smile, leaning against the small dorm table.
"It's a matter of pride, I'm afraid." Adonai said solemnly as he began cutting the lasagne into neat squares. He served Sue first, then Johnny, placing the plates before them. "I simply couldn't allow that slander against my culinary expertise to go unanswered."
Originally they had planned to go to a café together, but due to some vague "personal matter" Sue didn't elaborate on, Johnny had come to stay with her in the dorm for the weekend. Since her roommates were gone, she invited Adonai over, if he didn't mind the extra company.
Adonai absolutely did not mind the extra company.
He certainly wasn't going to let some snot-nosed teenager derail his plans to spend time with Sue. The fact that said teenager would eventually grow up to become the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four was just a pleasant historical footnote.
One thing led to another, the topic of cooking came up, Sue mentioned she would cook something simple, and Adonai offered to help. Sue had looked scandalized.
Apparently she believed his ability to cook ranked somewhere between "unlikely" and "physically impossible." She said, very politely, that he didn't need to pretend to be someone he wasn't just to impress her.
Adonai had taken that personally.
He defended his honor. Sue expressed open skepticism at the idea that he had ever voluntarily entered a kitchen in his life.
And thus, with solemn dignity befitting a knight accepting a duel, Adonai declared that he would cook them the most delicious meal they had ever tasted. Then he marched into the kitchen and got to work.
"I still don't understand why you forced me to watch you cook a lasagna," Johnny said, squinting at the plate like it might suddenly explode.
"I'm teaching you how to make the ladies swoon, you strangulated little turd," Adonai said as he carefully served a square of lasagna onto Johnny's plate. "Weren't you listening to a word I said?"
"Why are you teaching my little brother how to pick up girls?" Sue admonished, though there was no real heat in it. "He should focus on his studies. He's only fifteen."
"He can do both. Right, Johnny?" Adonai said, winking at him. "Besides, a gentleman has no right to be uneducated in the culinary arts. Knowing how to cook is a basic survival skill."
Johnny nodded vigorously.
Johnny Storm, being fifteen years old and therefore biologically incapable of objective judgment, had already decided that Adonai of all people was the coolest guy he had ever met.
At that age, any adult who didn't dress like a substitute teacher and spoke with the confidence of someone who had definitely done at least three questionable things in foreign countries automatically qualified as "cool."
To Johnny, Adonai was somewhere between a mysterious international man of intrigue and the cool uncle who shows up at family gatherings with sunglasses, strange stories, and extremely questionable life advice.
Of course, most people eventually grow up and realize that the "cool uncle" was actually just an unemployed drifter with poor decision-making skills.
Johnny had not reached that stage of life yet.
Still, it wasn't hard to see why Johnny latched onto him. The kid clearly lacked a positive male role model. Adonai didn't know what had happened to Sue and Johnny's parents, but he was fairly certain they weren't around. Adonai didn't ask.
But knowing how parents of comic book protagonists usually fare, the odds were roughly fifty percent they had been murdered by a supervillain or a tragic lab accident and fifty percent they would eventually return years later as surprise villains with tragic backstories and questionable moral alignment.
Statistically speaking, option three had the highest probability.
Sue, for her part, seemed strangely supportive of the dynamic forming between them. She probably appreciated someone who could talk to Johnny about things he wouldn't discuss with his older sister.
Which made Adonai quietly question her judgment.
He was absolutely not the kind of person anyone should look up to.
But he digressed.
"I still don't think cooking is gonna attract girls in my school," Johnny said skeptically.
Like any responsible adult placed in temporary charge of a teenager, Adonai naturally chose to teach him how to pick up girls. What else was he supposed to teach him?
Taxes?
"Johnny, Johnny," Adonai said with a disappointed shake of his head. "You'll never become a ladies' man with that kind of defeatist attitude. Give me some commitment?"
Sue rolled her eyes. "Should I be worried about food poisoning?" she asked, eyeing the lasagna like it might suddenly rise up and challenge her to mortal combat.
"Nah, trust me," Adonai said with a dangerously confident smile. "You're going to be in tears when you taste it."
"Tears of joy, I assume?" Sue said, picking up her fork.
"…"
"Tears of joy, right?" she asked again, narrowing her eyes at the mysterious expression on his eyes.
"...Trust me on this, Sue," Adonai said with a noncommittal shrug. "This lasagna is as good as it gets."
They sat down around the small table. The lasagna gave off a comforting warmth, the cheese stretching slightly as Sue cut into it. The top layer was golden and bubbling, speckled with herbs. Steam rose as the fork broke through layers of pasta, meat sauce, and ricotta.
Sue took the first bite. Johnny followed.
Adonai leaned back slightly, watching with the smug serenity of a man awaiting applause.
Sue's face immediately twisted as if she had just bitten into something deeply offensive. "You know what Jean-Paul Sartre said about hell?" she asked slowly.
"Something wildly off the mark, I'm guessing," Adonai replied.
Whatever Marvel's version of Jean-Paul Sartre thought about hell, Adonai doubted the philosopher had ever imagined that hell was an actual physical dimension populated by demons who made torment their full-time hobby.
And contrary to certain modern trends, they were not misunderstood sad boys with emotional trauma. They were, by and large, colossal assholes.
Still hadn't forgiven that bitch Mephistopheles for what he did to my boy Peter, Adonai thought darkly.
"'L'enfer, c'est les autres.' Hell is other people," Sue quoted.
"Get out of here," Adonai scoffed.
"But then again," Sue said sweetly, "he'd never tasted your cooking."
Adonai leaned back, folded his arms, and sighed dramatically. "Tragic. A woman who can't recognize genius even when it is served to her on a plate."
"But jokes aside," Sue said, smiling softly as she took another bite, "it's actually really delicious. I didn't expect you to be able to cook."
"Why?" Adonai said indignantly. "Just because I'm really, really, really ridiculously good-looking doesn't mean I lack basic life skills."
"And very humble too," Sue said dryly.
"Seriously though," she continued, "it's really good. Where did you learn to cook lasagna?"
"Yeah, dude, this is amazing," Johnny added, already halfway through his portion.
Adonai's expression softened slightly. "Thank you," he said. "It used to be my mom's favorite food. So I asked my father to teach me how to make it in secret so I could surprise her."
He paused, remembering. "When she came home from work and saw it on the table… she looked at me like I'd just handed her the greatest gift in the world. She laughed, hugged me, and kept saying I'd spoiled her. I don't think I've ever seen her that happy over something so small."
"Really?" Sue said, her voice softening. "That's adorable. I didn't think there was such a soft side behind that whole playboy persona you've got going on."
"For your information," Adonai said defensively, "there is a lot more to playboys than people think."
"Like what?" Sue asked with a mischievous smile.
"Playboys are like onions," Adonai declared proudly.
"…What?" Johnny said. "What could an onion and a playboy possibly have in common?"
"I'm also struggling to see the resemblance," Sue said thoughtfully. "On one hand we have things that make you cry, stink up the room, ruin your makeup, and leave a lingering bitterness long after it's gone. And on the other hand we have… onions."
"Touche' "Adonai said amused.
She tapped her chin. "Actually you're right. They are similar."
Johnny leaned in. "How?"
"They both make people cry," she said sweetly.
"Layers!" Adonai interrupted triumphantly. "Onions have layers… Playboys have layers. We both have layers."
Sue and Johnny burst out laughing.
"Onions and playboys?" Sue said. "Really, Adonai? That's the best you could come up with?"
"Well," Adonai said with a shameless grin, "it got the point across, didn't it?"
Johnny wiped a bit of sauce from the corner of his mouth, still grinning. "So what are the layers exactly?" he asked. "Is the first layer the sunglasses or the ego?"
"Those are structural components," Adonai corrected calmly. "Entirely different category."
Sue leaned her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her hand as she studied him with open amusement. "Alright then, Professor Playboy," she said. "Explain the layers."
Adonai tapped the table with a finger as if outlining an academic lecture. "Layer one," he said, "is charm. That's the outer skin. It's an essential foundation and is visible at the first glance. Helps people tolerate you."
Johnny nodded seriously. "Makes sense."
It does? Adonai looked at the boy with amusement. As far as Adonai was concerned, he was just talking rubbish and making it up as he went.
"Layer two," Adonai continued, "is confidence. Without that, the charm collapses like a stripper pole at a church fundraiser."
Sue smirked. "You seem very experienced in this field."
"Years of rigorous research," Adonai replied solemnly.
"Peer reviewed?" Johnny asked.
"Indubitably."
Sue shook her head. "And the deeper layers?" she asked.
Adonai gestured vaguely. "You're asking lots of questions, my lady. Leave some for the police as well. And besides, some layers need to stay a mystery to keep you engaged!"
"Convenient," Sue said.
"Look," Adonai said, cutting another piece of lasagna. "The point is that people assume a playboy is just some shallow idiot who looks good and flirts a lot."
Johnny pointed at him. "Which you definitely do."
"Correct," Adonai said without hesitation. "But beneath that is nuance."
Sue raised an eyebrow. "Nuance?"
"Yes. Depth…Complexity. You picking up what I'm putting down?"
"Layers," Johnny added helpfully.
"Exactly!"
Sue poked at her lasagna thoughtfully. "So what layer are we currently seeing?"
Adonai pretended to consider. "Somewhere betwee–"
Before he could finish his sentence, Adonai noticed something strange about Sue and Johnny.
Frozen. That was the only word he could think of to describe it if he absolutely had to. Both of them had gone completely still in the middle of motion, like a robot whose batteries had abruptly died while it was still trying to perform its last command.
Every trace of movement had stopped.
The expressions on their faces remained exactly as they had been a fraction of a second earlier. Sue's face remained caught in the faintly amused expression she had worn while listening to him speak, the corners of her lips lifted ever so slightly as though she had been on the verge of responding, while her eyes held the same attentive warmth that now felt profoundly wrong when paired with the absolute absence of movement.
One of her hands was raised beside her cheek, fingers delicately parted as she had been in the middle of brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face.
Johnny, sitting across from him, had frozen in a similar way; his posture leaned slightly forward, his face carrying the look of bright interest, yet the life that had animated that expression was gone, leaving behind something disturbingly hollow.
His hand held a fork that hovered halfway between the plate and his mouth, the metal prongs spearing a thin string of melted cheese stretching from the plate below like a sticky thread that had simply stopped falling.
The steam rising from the food continued to drift lazily through the air, curling past their motionless faces.
They themselves, however, might as well have been mannequins placed around the table as props in a shop window.
The stillness was profoundly unsettling in a way that Adonai found difficult to articulate even inside his own mind. Human beings were never truly motionless. Even when sitting quietly they blinked, breathed, shifted slightly in their seats, their muscles performing tiny unconscious adjustments that gave them a constant sense of life.
Seeing that constant background motion suddenly vanish from two people who had been laughing and talking only a moment earlier created an eerie dissonance that made the entire room feel subtly wrong, as though reality had developed a crack somewhere beneath the surface.
Watching someone abruptly freeze in the middle of an action produced a kind of deep instinctive discomfort, the same feeling one might experience when staring at a hyper-realistic wax figure that looked human enough to fool the eye yet lacked the invisible spark that made a person feel alive.
What a creepy thing to look at, Adonai thought.
Only seconds earlier Sue had been teasing him with that dry wit of hers while Johnny hung on his every word like an overly enthusiastic audience member. Their voices had filled the small dorm kitchen with warmth and laughter, their gestures animated and lively, their personalities flowing freely through every glance and smile.
Then the movement vanished and life seemed to drain out of them in the blink of an eye.
The sudden transformation of two vibrant people into silent unmoving figures sitting across the table from him carried a quiet horror to it. Adonai found the entire thing intensely irritating.
He liked lively people. He liked loud laughter, animated conversations, expressive faces, and the general chaotic energy that living humans naturally carried with them. Seeing someone reach into that vibrant chaos and simply switch it off like a light felt fundamentally wrong to him, as though someone had taken two individuals and stripped away everything that made them themselves.
Now if this had been his previous life, he probably would have assumed someone was pulling an elaborate prank. He would have applauded them for their commitment to the act and complimented their remarkable ability to hold perfectly still without blinking.
But this was not his previous life.
This was the Marvel universe, a world where telepaths could casually stroll through other people's minds as though browsing through a library, where ancient gods from forgotten mythologies occasionally walked through New York City like tourists, and where the laws of reality possessed an alarming tendency to bend whenever someone with the right set of powers decided to interfere.
Given that context, it did not take him very long to figure out what was happening.
"…Hmm," Adonai muttered, leaning back in his chair while studying the frozen siblings with visible displeasure. "I see what's going on. Which one of you is it? Jean or the Professor?"
"Forgive the intrusion, Adonai," Sue said.
The voice belonged to Sue. It came from Sue's mouth, her lips moving smoothly as the words left her throat with the exact same tone and cadence she normally used.
And yet the moment the sentence reached his ears, Adonai knew with absolute certainty that the person speaking through her was not Sue Storm.
The subtle rhythm of the speech was wrong, too controlled and deliberate, like someone wearing another person's voice as a mask.
"Ah, the Professor then," Adonai said calmly. He folded his arms and regarded her with a flat expression. "I certainly hope you didn't just mind-rape my friends here to tell me about the weather," he continued in an even tone. "Whatever it is you want to say, make it quick. I'd rather not see them like this any longer than necessary. It's disgusting."
"I apologize for the discomfort," Sue's body replied, the Professor's voice speaking through her with measured politeness. "Yet desperate times call for desperate measures. We have an emergency."
"Go on," Adonai prompted curtly. "Seeing as you chose to hijack the minds of two innocent bystanders instead of calling me like a normal person, I assume this emergency ranks somewhere near the top of the catastrophe scale."
He knew he was being deliberately rude, but that was intentional. The last thing he wanted was to give Professor Xavier the impression that casually puppeteering the people around him was an acceptable way to initiate a conversation whenever he felt it was convenient.
Emergencies were one thing, but there were still boundaries that should not be crossed so easily, especially when the alternative methods of communication available in the year 2000 were perfectly capable of accomplishing the same task.
Telephones might not have reached the sleek technological heights they would achieve in the decades to come, but they were more than adequate for something as simple as placing a call and delivering a message.
"I will remember that for the future," the Professor answered calmly.
Adonai doubted that very much.
Charles Xavier had always been portrayed as a benevolent and compassionate figure in many of the stories he remembered, the kindly mentor guiding young mutants toward a better future, yet those same stories also revealed over time that the man possessed a number of deeply questionable habits and secrets that did not always align with the image he projected to the world.
Still, Adonai decided not to push the matter further for now. Up until this point the professor had behaved reasonably enough in their interactions, and there was always the possibility that this version of Xavier resembled the gentler incarnations seen in certain cartoons or films rather than the morally complicated figure from later comic arcs.
"The X-Men need you, Adonai," the Professor continued. "We have received information indicating that something potentially catastrophic is occurring. A group of mutants numbering in the thousands are being systematically exterminated as we speak."
"What?"
Adonai's initial shock lasted less than a second before his mind began racing through the fragmented timeline he had constructed in his head regarding the events of this universe.
The unfortunate problem with hearing that thousands of mutants were currently being massacred was that the statement failed to narrow things down in any meaningful way.
Mutant history contained several catastrophes involving large-scale slaughter, and depending on whether one counted comic continuity, film timelines, or alternate universes, the number of such tragedies could easily climb beyond three.
Which meant he needed clarification.
"There are groups of mutants who have withdrawn entirely from human society," the professor explained patiently. "Many of them possess physical mutations so extreme that they cannot hide among ordinary people even if they wished to, and after enduring years of fear and rejection they chose to isolate themselves beneath the streets of New York in the abandoned tunnels and forgotten sections of the sewer system. They have formed their own community down there, one that survives quietly in the shadows of the city above. They call themselves the Morlocks."
The Morlocks? Adonai frowned. Isn't that too early?
From what he remembered, events on the scale of a mutant genocide were supposed to occur after the superhero era had fully begun.
According to the rough timeline he had pieced together, that period should not begin until somewhere around 2008. The world around him still looked very much like the calm before the storm. Tony Stark continued living the carefree existence of a billionaire playboy industrialist who spent his time attending extravagant parties and selling advanced weaponry to the highest bidder, and if a man flying around in a red and gold suit had begun saving people across the globe, the news would certainly have exploded with the story.
Likewise, he had heard no reports of a giant green monster smashing through city streets in uncontrollable rage, nor had he seen headlines warning the public about a masked vigilante swinging between skyscrapers while terrorizing New York's criminal underworld.
So far the only confirmed superhuman event that had occurred in this world involved Captain America during the Second World War, and even that legend had ended with the man supposedly dying when his aircraft crashed into the Arctic ice decades ago.
Which meant the age of superheroes had not properly started yet. So why in the world was something as significant as the Morlock massacre happening now?
The X-Men at this stage should barely have been established as a functioning team, a group of young mutants still learning to control their abilities rather than seasoned fighters capable of handling a catastrophe of this scale, and the idea that they were already facing something as brutal as a large-scale extermination campaign felt like history itself had started running ahead of schedule.
"Where do I meet the team?" Adonai asked without wasting another moment, already pushing his chair back as he began preparing to leave.
"They have already departed for the tunnels where the Morlocks live," the Professor replied.
"I see," Adonai replied while slipping his shoes on. "Then I assume you will provide directions so that I may join them."
"Yes," the Professor said. "Listen carefully, because I won't be able to maintain this connection for long."
Through Sue's unmoving body, Xavier began describing the route in calm precise detail, instructing him to leave the dorm building and head three blocks east toward an alley behind an old laundromat whose cracked pavement concealed a maintenance hatch that led into the city's sewer system. Once inside, he would need to follow the main drainage tunnel south for several hundred meters until he encountered a rusted ladder descending into a secondary network of abandoned subway maintenance passages where the Morlocks had constructed their hidden settlement from scrap metal, discarded machinery, and whatever materials they could salvage from the underground ruins.
The Professor continued outlining the path through the maze-like tunnels, warning him about collapsed corridors, flooded sections, and the faint markings the Morlocks used along the walls to indicate safe routes through their territory.
"Very well," Adonai muttered once the instructions ended. "Let us hope we're not already too late."
He paused as another thought crossed his mind. "What about Susan and Johnny," he asked while glancing back at the frozen pair. "Will they remember this conversation?"
"No," the Professor answered gently. "I have ensured they will not retain any memory of this moment. As far as they are concerned, you received an urgent call and left in a hurry due to an emergency."
Adonai disliked the casual way that answer came, because the quiet alteration of someone's memory carried the same invasive weight as the earlier mind control, yet the urgency of the situation pressing down on him left little room to argue about it now.
Without wasting another second, he bolted out of the dorm and began making his way toward the sewer entrances as quickly as possible, heading straight for the tunnels where the X-Men were already fighting in the darkness.
…
It was at moments like this that Adonai considered, with a sardonic twist of amusement in the back of his mind, that his absolute immunity to telepathy could occasionally become more of a liability than an advantage.
Normally the ability to walk through a world populated by telepaths without fear of having one's mind casually rummaged through like a desk drawer was a blessing beyond measure. There existed very few things in the Marvel universe more intrusive than a psychic deciding to treat your thoughts like public property.
However, when those same telepaths were currently coordinating a rescue operation somewhere deep within an underground labyrinth, his immunity meant he could not receive so much as a mental whisper guiding him toward the right direction.
Which left him wandering through sewer tunnels like an idiot.
For the last fifteen minutes he had been walking deeper and deeper beneath New York City with nothing but darkness, dripping pipes, and the overwhelming presence of human waste for company.
The smell alone could have driven a weaker man to insanity.
Adonai had failed to consider the sheer difficulty of locating the Morlocks' hidden settlement inside this sprawling maze without someone physically guiding him there. The tunnels twisted endlessly in every direction, branching off into new corridors and maintenance passages that looked eerily identical to the last ten he had passed through.
The deeper he walked the more the place seemed to swallow the sense of direction itself. Every tunnel appeared indistinguishable from the last, every branching passage promising new paths while offering no reassurance that any of them led toward something meaningful rather than simply further into the labyrinth.
The faint electric lights scattered here and there flickered weakly, some of them hanging from exposed wires that swayed gently whenever a distant current of air passed through the underground system, and those trembling lights cast long, distorted shadows across the damp concrete walls in a way that made the tunnels feel even more oppressive.
As he walked, Adonai found his mind drifting toward an old curiosity that had bothered him back when he had still been nothing more than a comic book reader sitting safely in his old world.
How in the hell had something like this ever been built under New York City?
The scale of the place alone was staggering, a sprawling network of subterranean infrastructure large enough to accommodate entire communities, broad corridors wide enough for several people to walk side by side while towering ceilings disappeared into darkness above them where pipes and support beams crossed in tangled formations.
It had always been one of the details that had bothered him slightly when he was still a fan reading comics in his previous life, the idea that an enormous subterranean structure capable of housing thousands of mutants could somehow remain hidden beneath New York for years without the wider population noticing had always strained his suspension of disbelief.
So naturally he had looked into it. In typical comic book fashion the explanation had been both mundane and faintly absurd.
The tunnels had originally been constructed sometime in the 1950s as part of a classified government project. The United States government had commissioned the creation of a massive network of underground shelters beneath several major cities in preparation for the possibility of nuclear war. In the event of a national catastrophe these tunnels were intended to serve as emergency evacuation zones where portions of the population could survive the aftermath of a nuclear exchange.
Then the project had quietly collapsed under its own logistical nightmare.
Funding vanished, political priorities shifted, and the partially completed system had eventually been abandoned and sealed away from public knowledge. The vast majority of New York's citizens had absolutely no idea that a second hidden world stretched beneath their feet.
Over time the tunnels had become a strange kind of hidden frontier, a place where society's unwanted and forgotten could gather beyond the sight of the city that rejected them, a shadowed underworld capable of sheltering entire communities simply because no one bothered to look down into the darkness beneath their feet.
The sheer size of the underground system made it impossible for any authority to patrol every corridor, and countless passages remained unexplored even decades after construction ended.
The tunnels were not small either. Exploring the entire network would likely take days, perhaps even weeks if someone attempted to chart every corridor. That sheer size was the one fragile thread of hope Adonai clung to as he continued walking through the darkness.
If the Morlocks had scattered themselves throughout this vast maze then the killers hunting them would face a difficult task. Even an organized group would need hours, perhaps days, to sweep through a network this large while searching every chamber and corridor, and the Morlocks possessed the advantage of familiarity with the terrain.
They lived here, navigated these passages daily, understood which tunnels connected to which hidden alcoves and which narrow passages could be used as escape routes.
If even a few of them managed to slip away into the deeper recesses of the tunnels they might still survive.
Now if I could find anyone at all, or hear the faintest sound of movement or fighting somewhere within this maze, Adonai thought quietly as he continued walking, then perhaps I could follow it.
That thought had barely formed when a smell suddenly struck him with brutal intensity.
The stench arrived like a physical blow, a thick and nauseating wave of foulness that flooded his senses so violently that his body recoiled instinctively.
The odor possessed a sickening complexity that made it almost unbearable, a putrid mixture of rotting flesh, sour milk left too long in the heat, human waste, spoiled vegetables decomposing into slime, and beneath it all an acrid undertone of sweat and decay that clung to the back of his throat like poison.
His enhanced metabolism allowed him to resist the immediate urge to vomit, though the effort required genuine concentration as his stomach twisted violently in protest.
The scent dragged an old memory from the depths of his mind.
Years ago, when he had still been a child walking home with his brother, they had passed beneath a bridge where a dog had died and been left to rot in the summer heat. The carcass had swollen and split open under the sun while flies swarmed the body in a buzzing cloud.
The smell had been unbearable. What he smelled now surpassed that by an order of magnitude.
Adonai slowly began walking toward the source of the odor. Each step forward intensified the stench until the air itself felt contaminated, thick and oppressive, forcing him to breathe through his mouth as he moved toward the source with a growing sense of dread tightening inside his chest.
And then he saw it.
The tunnel opened into a wider drainage chamber where murky water flowed slowly through a shallow canal carved into the concrete floor.
Bodies floated on the surface.
Dozens of them.
Perhaps more.
Some lay partially submerged in the dark water, their limbs drifting gently with the sluggish current like broken mannequins discarded by some careless giant. Others had piled up against the metal grates along the sides of the tunnel, their corpses tangled together in a grotesque cluster that reminded Adonai of the way dead rats sometimes collected along sewer drains after heavy rain.
Many of the bodies carried obvious signs of violence. Torn clothing revealed wounds where blades or bullets had ripped through flesh, and dark stains had spread across the water where blood had mixed with the filth of the sewer.
Some of the dead possessed the unmistakable physical mutations that marked them as Morlocks - elongated limbs, strange growths along the skin, distorted facial structures that had once made them outcasts in the world above.
Now those differences had been erased by death.
The current slowly nudged them against each other so that occasionally a hand or foot would bump against another corpse with a soft sound, the movement producing faint ripples across the water that carried the bodies slowly forward like drifting debris.
The smell was overwhelming here.
Adonai felt his stomach twist violently as the reality of the scene finally crashed through his mind, and despite the resilience of his body the reaction came too quickly to suppress.
His breakfast surged upward in a violent wave.
Lasagne spilled from his mouth as he doubled over beside the wall, half digested pasta sliding onto the concrete floor while chunks of ground beef and tomato sauce followed in a thick, sour stream. Melted cheese clung to the mess in sticky strands while fragments of pasta sheets and bits of onion scattered across the damp surface, the entire mixture forming an unpleasant pool that steamed faintly in the cold air of the tunnel.
His breathing came ragged for several moments as he remained bent forward, one hand braced against the wall while the smell of rot and sewage continued to assault his senses.
Too late. The realization settled into his thoughts with a crushing heaviness. Way too late. Are there even any survivors here?
For a long time Adonai had built his life around a very specific philosophy, one born partly from grief and partly from the realization that existence could end abruptly without warning. The death of his mother had carved a deep wound into his childhood and left behind a lingering awareness that life possessed no guarantees, that the future existed only as an uncertain promise that might vanish before it could ever arrive.
From that realization he had constructed a worldview centered around the pursuit of pleasure, excitement, and intense experience. He lived like a man permanently chasing the next moment of exhilaration, constantly pushing himself toward whatever sensation promised to make his blood run faster.
The psychology behind that lifestyle ran deeper than simple indulgence. Hedonism, in its purest form, was about immersion in the present moment so complete that past regrets and future anxieties lost their power.
The hedonist did not concern himself with consequences beyond the immediate horizon.
The hedonist sought intensity. Excitement. Laughter. Pleasure.
The rush of adrenaline when danger brushed close enough to feel. Sorrow and grief belonged to a distant place he preferred not to visit.
It was a philosophy that allowed someone to feel vividly alive while remaining emotionally detached from the crushing weight of the world's suffering. One could acknowledge tragedy intellectually without allowing it to seep into the heart.
Which was exactly how Adonai had lived.
He chased thrills. He existed in a continuous present of movement and sensation, always seeking the next source of pleasure that would push the previous high a little further.
He felt sympathy, certainly, and he was not cruel or indifferent to pain, yet his mind instinctively shifted away from lingering too long on tragedy because dwelling there threatened to drag him back into the same crushing sadness he had experienced after his mother's death.
Standing in this tunnel shattered that comfortable distance.
The corpses drifting through the filthy water carried a weight of human suffering so overwhelming that his usual defenses faltered. Their eyes stared blankly into the darkness above, some half open while others remained wide as though frozen in their final moments of terror.
The lifeless gaze of the dead created an unsettling sensation that pressed against his conscience with silent accusation, as though those hollow eyes were asking why he had arrived too late to help them.
Those eyes disturbed him more than anything else. Terrified him.
They contained no life, no warmth, no lingering emotion - only an empty stillness that seemed to swallow the light around them, drawing the mind into a quiet abyss where grief waited patiently.
The sight of them awakened a familiar heaviness deep within his chest, the same suffocating sadness he had spent years trying to escape, and now it surged forward with relentless force as the smell of decay and the quiet drifting of corpses filled the air around him.
For the first time since his mother's death Adonai felt tears sliding down his face while he stood there in the darkness of the tunnels, the carefully constructed emotional armor of a lifelong hedonist cracking under the unbearable presence of death that surrounded him in the dark tunnels beneath New York.
AN: Yo, what's up-wait, wait! Don't throw tomatoes yet. Chill! Chill! Chill! I swear to God, let me talk first. I know, I know… I promised this chapter would come out on the weekend. But..uh..look, promises are hard, okay? Life happens.
Anyway… it's been a while since this story was updated. Mostly because I assumed not many people were interested in it anymore. But to my surprise, some of you actually were. Like, a lot. A few people even signed up to my Patreon specifically for this story. Which, honestly, gave me a huge boost of motivation to keep writing. So yeah, thanks for that. You guys are awesome.
Now for the slightly less awesome news: there probably won't be another update for the next two weeks or so. I'm planning to write some advanced chapters for patrons first so they can actually get their money's worth. After that, updates will probably be a bit more infrequent, maybe once every two weeks or so, because my primary fics (the dxd one) will be my main focus for a while. Anyway… enjoy!
If you enjoy my writing, consider supporting me on Patreon:/abeltargaryen?