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Chapter 17: He Knows! He Sees!
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[Damn, that 'gentle' response was colder than Iceman.]
[He's not wrong. Their life experiences are worlds apart.]
[Jean has yet to experience something that traumatic, while Adam lived in a lab. Of course, their morality is different.]
"Now for the harsh approach," Adam continued, his voice dropping, becoming flatter, more analytical.
"I will kill. I will continue to kill. There are many sound, logical arguments for this. 'You keep the moral high ground while standing on the bodies of the innocent they will inevitably slaughter.'"
"'They know you won't kill them, that's why they never, ever stop.' 'You fight for a perfect future, but the monsters you spare are actively destroying the present.'"
He listed them off like theorems, his stolen intellect giving each point a razor-sharp edge.
"'You don't let a plague live because it's 'unethical' to burn it out.' 'If punishment never stops the crime, then justice is just a performance.'"
"In a world where prisons are revolving doors for super-powered individuals, sparing them is performative virtue that costs real, innocent lives."
"Pacifism in this reality isn't peacekeeping, Jean. It's surrender dressed in a costume."
Jean's face grew paler with each sentence, but he wasn't finished. He had a story now, a narrative framework gifted by his expanded mind.
"I recall a tale," He said, his eyes distant. "A city, rotten with corruption and decay, gave rise to a plague. If only the plague just killed... It did more; it reanimated the dead, turning them into ravenous, infectious monsters."
"The king, seeing no other path, made the agonizing decision to destroy the city. To burn it all and bury the ashes, uncontaminated and contaminated alike."
He leaned slightly towards her. "But his entourage, his most trusted advisors, stopped him. They saw him as a tyrant, a monster without love or mercy."
"They spoke of hope, of finding a cure, of seeing light in the darkest night. They believed his ruthlessness was not the behavior of a true king."
[Oh shit, he's going for the philosophical shit, but this story sounds familiar.]
[This is a zombie apocalypse analogy, isn't it?]
"But it was the behavior of a king," Adam stated, his voice absolute. "They were blind to his pain, to the sacrifice he was making of his own sanity."
"He would have lived the rest of his life drowning in the guilt of his actions, but he would have borne that burden because it was necessary. It had to be done for the sake of his kingdom, for the world."
"He knew there was no perfect solution. His entourage, however, believed there was. And the world paid the price. The plague spread. Millions died, their hope and mercy serving as the vector for their own annihilation."
He looked at her, his gaze piercing. "What you are doing is morally good in a vacuum. But in this world, you are choosing to sacrifice the world for the sake of your own conscience."
If you kill them, you carry the guilt, the pain, the horror. You sacrifice a piece of your own soul for the people who truly need protection."
"You make the world a safer place at the cost of your own mental peace. The harsh truth, Jean, is that you lack the courage to carry that burden."
The car was silent save for the hum of the engine. Jean looked utterly crushed, her worldview cracking under the weight of his brutal words.
Then, abruptly, Adam's entire demeanor shifted. He let out a soft, dry chuckle and leaned back in his seat.
"But all of that is irrelevant," He said, waving a dismissive hand. "None of those high-minded arguments matter to me. I feel no guilt. Not a shred."
"I am, at my core, a coward. I don't want to leave anything in this world that could cause me or the few I care about even a moment of future suffering. Life is too much of a bitch to waste sympathy on stains."
He closed his eyes, pressing his fingers harder against his temples. "My head is killing me. I need to rest."
[WHIPLASH. My god, the whiplash!]
[So the philosophical rant was just him thinking out loud? His real reason is pure, unadulterated self-interest?]
[He's not a hero or a villain. Well, maybe he will be a villain if things move on like this?]
[Jean looks like she just got hit by a truck of existential dread.]
[I agree with him hard. Like, there is a reason every pedophile is wished death by many. Some people understand there is no free will, and it's their environment that shaped them to be like that, but does that matter to the parent or anyone else? No, if anything, blame God for shit RNG spawn!]
[Well said, life at heart is a shitty gambling simulator.]
He said nothing more for the remainder of the journey. When they arrived at the mansion, Adam moved to head directly to his room, but Cyclops was waiting in the entrance hall, his posture turned rigid with irritation.
"Cypher! What the hell did you do to her?" Scott demanded, gesturing to Jean, who was following behind Adam like a ghost, her eyes vacant and unseeing.
The yell seemed to jolt her back to awareness. She shook her head slowly. "He didn't do anything, Scott."
Her voice was faint, drained. "I just… I need some time to think." She brushed past them both and headed for her own room, leaving a confused Cyclops in her wake.
Adam offered no explanation, continuing his path to his room. The moment he closed the door, the full force of the migraine crashed over him.
He stumbled to his bed, collapsing onto it as his consciousness fled, overwhelmed by the foreign intelligence violently integrating with his own.
He awoke several hours later. The world was different.
It wasn't just that he saw it more clearly; he understood it on a fundamental level.
It's difficult to describe, but he felt like a different species looking down on its primitive ancestors.
And it was agony.
With this new, perfect clarity came a perfect, eidetic memory. Every moment of his life was instantly accessible, replaying with cinematic detail and emotional fidelity.
The cold loneliness of the hospital in his first life. The searing, white-hot pain of Hydra's probes.
The sound of his own screams echoing off sterile walls.
The feeling of his scalp being peeled back, the vibration of the drill in his skull.
The crushing despair of twelve years in a featureless box.
It was a torrent of suffering, each memory a fresh wound.
His eyes trembled, threatening to spill over with the accumulated trauma of two tortured lifetimes.
And then, they stopped.
A profound, glacial calm settled over him. The pain was still there, the memories still vivid, but they were now just data.
They were inputs to be processed, and they led him to the same result, the same goal.
His eyes, when he looked in the reflection of his dark monitor, were utterly relaxed.
How should I describe the feeling? The word should be limitless, not in a true sense.
It's merely a feeling of someone who has made a vow so ludicrous that's the only way to define it.
The final chain had been broken.
Before, his resolve to become Absolute or die trying was tempered by one primal fear: not death, but a return to captivity.
The fear of being sealed away again, of experiencing that unimaginable suffering once more.
Stupefy had given him the key to his own ultimate escape. His curses were always more effective on himself.
If he turned the full, Prime version of Stupefy inward, he wouldn't just become a vegetable.
He would unravel his own consciousness at a fundamental level.
He would delete his intelligence, his memories, his very sense of self.
It would be an erasure more total than any death; even his soul would be scoured blank.
There would be no Adam Cypher left to suffer.
The thought was a comfort so profound it was almost blissful. He had a kill switch.
A final, absolute defense against the hell he had endured.
"Ah," He whispered to the silent, dark room. "How lovely."
[That sounds so stupid, but cool in the same way.]
[It's kind of logical. Adam always looked much too sane for me. Like, he was in hell for more than a decade? How could he be sane?]
[Yeah, the cracks are finally showing, signs of insanity.]
[Imagine he was reincarnated in HxH. With a vow like that, he would be insane, no?]
[I feel so sorry for him. He's so broken.]
"You do not have to feel sorry for me. I am who I am today because of what I went through, and I love who I am... I wouldn't have it any other way." Adam then closed his eyes.
He needed to think. He gave the audience enough entertainment for the day.
The sound escaping Adam's limits, seemingly talking to no one, left the audience so shocked that the chat stayed inactive for several seconds before erupting like a volcano.
[?????????????][...][WTF?][WTF???][What's happening!?]
[I knew it! He knows!][He can see us]
[I knew there was a reason why the government deleted the Illuminati Discord. They're afraid of us discovering the truth!]
[The government is hiding the truth from us!]
[That's the reason all discussions about the shot are being deleted on all platforms!]
[Only the TV Show's live chat is safe. Keep in mind that you can make private live chats here! Wink wink Illuminati]
[Shhhh]
[These retards actually believe a TV Show character is speaking to them!! Lmao.]
[I know, right? Adam is just insane, and him speaking to his imaginary friends is just a coincidence.]
[But it happened several times!]
[The nature of human psychology is that we like to create coincidences where there aren't any. Tens of thousands must be chatting at any given moment, so it'd be weird for such coincidences not to occur.]
[I don't know man you're too well spoken, too good grammar, I don't believe you.]
[What? Are you stupid?]
[He's stupid, but I agree with him; the government must've hired him to lead us astray.]
[...]
Truly, the audience was Adam's greatest source of entertainment. They're a powerful force that shall hopefully help him nicely.