"Looks like they're moving," said Mark.
"Good," said Mum.
And that was that.
Angus
It took me a while to explain to Mr Hit-and-run why he was tied to a chair in the middle of a conveniently deserted warehouse. He didn't believe it at first, that someone would take the time to kidnap him because he'd run over some girl. When I told him that I didn't like wife-beaters either, he looked positively stunned.
"We're not married!" was his excuse. That said it all for me.
Make no mistake. It's not that I don't enjoy violence. I do. I was designed for violence, for tearing and crushing and snapping flesh and bone. So if I can control the brute in me, the seething rage and hunger that threatens to erupt every living minute of my life, if I can control that, then mindless idiots like the one whimpering in front of me had no business assaulting a defenceless woman because he was upset.
I reached out and tasted the texture of his thoughts. I smelt the fear in his sweat. This one would be easy.
About the time Marcus was setting up his lab and doing various degrees in genetics and physiology, I set out to explore the potential that my father had seen in me just before he died. I discovered that I was able to delve into the minds of people, to pick out the essence of who or what they were. I could sense fear, and anger, and greed, and lust, and hatred; although I couldn't actually read people's minds or hear what they were thinking, I could get a sense of their thoughts and feelings. And one day, as I was dealing out my own form of justice to an unrepentant paedophile, I realised that I could modify that essence, those emotions. Inserting anything into a human mind was almost impossible under normal circumstances. The rapidity and randomness of their flickering thoughts made it almost impossible to get through. It was like trying to penetrate a firewall.
That day I discovered that there was one thing that slowed thoughts and concentrated the mind, allowing me to drive a specific concept or set of values into that briefest of gaps. Pain. Severe pain crystallised thought, and the amount of hurting required depended on the individual. Pain is always subjective. That paedophile had required hardly any. Some needed a lot more to render their thoughts motionless.
I broke Mr Hit-and-run's left femur with one hand while I searched for that elusive gap. It shimmered briefly into existence, and I thumped a silvery wedge into his mind. He would never knowingly hurt another living thing again. I cut the restraints that held him, and carried him to a nondescript white van parked just inside the massive doorway. I'd leave him near a deserted road, and then call emergency services anonymously. They'd find a bewildered man next to a road, he wouldn't remember what had happened, or how he got there, and they'd assume that he was just another hit and run. Ironic, really.