Dark smoke drifted into the air, trying to rouse something awake, but he was refusing to awaken. Tyrone believed he was dead, but believing in something – even as deeply as he did – did not make it so, especially with a power like his.

And a wake-up call was long overdue.

A dark flame blazed across Tyrone’s corpse, and the body bag housing his corpse was rendered to ash in an instant. There was no heat or burning, just a very distinct type of oblivion born from the deepest depths of the Dark Dimension.

And funnily enough, the Dark Dimension was very resistant to death.

Tyrone felt something clutching his throat, but there was no suffocation; something weighing on his limbs but there were no weights; something cackling in the background, but there were no sounds.

It was as if the world had become an illusion… no, it had always been an illusion of invented systems to keep the wandering minds in check. But at this moment, Tyrone felt free from all those constraints.

Still, he knew it wouldn’t last… it couldn’t last, and of course, he didn’t want it to last, but he welcomed the breath of fresh air. He no longer felt guilt about his brother’s death, his father’s misfortune, or his mother’s pain.

And though he thought he had forgotten her, it was only now that Tyrone realized that he had been carrying Tandy with him the entire time. Love was not something so easily shed even across Universes.

However, by far the most painful thought was that Sprite could see it all. With the kind of connections, they had – a kind he could not classify – Tyrone knew that she sometimes got impressions of him.

Just as he could feel her annoyance at the moment, she could feel the weight on his shoulders… and it was time to leave the darkness and carry those weights once more.

The next moment, Tyrone jumped awake as if shocked by electricity. His nerve tingled and a mad headache welcomed his mind back into the world of the living. Everything felt like a renewed sense of newness.

“What?” Tyrone scanned the room – it was a strange mix of a mortuary and a lab. There was no way to distinguish which it was, but just from a glance, something at the back of his mind could tell exactly what it was – A place things that aren’t already dead, goes to die.

Of course, he didn’t have the best history with places like these – black people rarely did, and with the dystopian future vibes he was getting from this Universe, Tyrone had no delusion that someone kind had rescued him to shake his hands.

A couple of seconds passed in silence.

Tyrone was at a loss, gathering his wits, sorting the jumbled memories popping up in his head. The importance varied, but soon, he started to remember everything – he had definitely died. There was no question about it.

And it wasn’t some type of questioning death, but a very practical death with a gunshot to the head. If someone drowned and found themselves alive, that could just be an accident, but being shot in the head was usually a very decisive end.  

‘Unless I am related to 2pac,’ Tyrone chuckled a bit. “I was dead?”

It was hard to believe, but he had to accept the truth because one thought about Sprite placed everything into perspective. And right now, he could have no goal nor aspiration beyond finding the girl who could keep the darkness inside of him in check.

Even now, just thinking about her absence, Tyrone could feel the darkness in his body celebrating and growing hungry, starving for the familiar cosmic light that had become its favorite snack.

“I can still feel her,” Tyrone raised his hand into the air, watching as shadows danced across his fingers, hissing and sucking any light from the nearby environment. “I need to get out of wherever the fuck this is, but I need to know where I am, first.”

Tyrone kicked the metal table aside and started ruffling through whatever he could find, but nothing was found… at least, not until Tyrone forced open one of the body storage compartments of the morgue, finding a corpse with clothing intact.

“Do they put people in morgues with clothing on?”

Appalled by the discovery, Tyrone forced open another compartment… and another compartment… and another one. His mind did not want to register the trend, but by the fourth body, it was undeniable. Unthinkable as it may be, it didn’t surprise him as much as it should have – as much as it would a couple of days ago.

“These corpses are all kids.” Tyrone brushed a finger across a child’s face, feeling the familiar coldness of what his body had been mere moments ago. “What the fuck is going on here? Are they killing kids?”

He started to rummage through the only wooden desk in the room, recovering the clipboard he had discovered some minutes earlier. Of course, at that time, he didn’t bother to read it but seeing what he has seen, Tyrone knew answers were needed.

The darkness inside of him was raging already, there was no need to feed it more negativity, and those kids would stay on his mind otherwise, becoming negative emotions that would ensure nightmares.

The Nightmares were what he hated the most.

“Subject 501 – telekinesis.”

Tyrone flipped the paper on the pad.

“Subject 512 – psychokinesis.”

Tyrone flipped again.

“Subject 603 – freeze breath.”

“Subject 624 – DNA degradation.”

“…………………………………….”

A couple of minutes later, darkness danced across Tyrone’s body, but this time, it was a more seething type of darkness – the silent killer type, and it didn’t render his clothing to oblivion. This type of darkness had a very specific target, and Tyrone didn’t want to find out what it was.

“These kids are experiments.”

CLICK

The door in the corridor opened, and Tyrone barely managed to slip into a gap between the compartments, but with the mess he left behind, it was no surprise that the Mortician noticed something was wrong as soon as he entered.

“What the heck-”

Tyrone slid from between the gap, snatching a surgical blade from the metal table the Mortician had so kindly rolled inside. He placed the blade on the Mortician’s neck and the chubby man froze in place.

The scent of urine permeated the room after a couple of seconds. It disgusted Tyrone but, in hindsight, it also attested to the fact that he had chosen the correct man to ambush – a weak mentality usually meant acquiring answers easier.  

“Wha – wha – wha?”

“Pick something and say it,” Tyrone frowned and kicked the chubby Mortician in the ass. “I am sure one coherent sentence is within your vocabulary. Ain’t you guys that work in places like this have Doctorates and shit?”

“Wha… I – I… Uhm…”

“Fine,” Tyrone pressed the blade even harder, creating a slight cut on the Mortician’s neck. “Let’s start with some basic questions – how do I get out of here?”

“The stairway… to – to – to the left corridor. You- You will need my pass.” The Mortician quickly removed the pass from his coat, and slipped it into Tyrone’s hand, afraid the mutant would simply strip him naked to get it.

“Okay, and-” Tyrone couldn’t even finish what he was about to say because the small scalpel in his hands flickered with darkness that – like an instant infestation – tore through half of the Mortician’s face before any of them could realize it was happening.

It was only after the chubby Mortician dropped to the ground, his body dissolving as if a vampire exposed to sunlight, did Tyrone recall one of the glitches of his particular ability – any weapon held in his hand, along with anything was touching, would become oblivion.

“At least, it leaves no evidence behind,” Tyrone could hear the Sprite in his voice as he made that comment, but he pointedly chose to ignore the comparison that had popped into his mind.

But as soon as he thought about her in a more conscious matter, his mind drifted to what she was doing at the moment. For some reason, he could tell she was alive, but she felt less bright… she used to be a sun in his dark skies, but now, she had waned into a small star.

“Let’s see what’s under here,”

Tyrone removed the cloth covering the lower portion of the metallic table, and what he saw almost made him jump away in fright.

“He’s still breathing,”

African American descent, definitely less than twelve years old, and a certain kind of chubby – the kind that showed a pampered kid who didn’t have to work for a meal in his entire life.

Tyrone could tell the kid’s story by looking at his face. This was a classic case of making sure the test subjects were happy, but as he scanned the room and where would have been his test table, Tyrone knew the Mortician would not have been so kind to him.

“Help…”

It was barely a whisper at first, but then, it became something more.

“Help…”

Tyrone stood and stared at the child, knowing there was no help. The mere fact that the child had been brought to the morgue was a hint enough. Tyrone couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong, but the darkness aching inside him could be helpful in times like these.

And it was currently telling him not to touch the child.

Had it been a few days ago – wondering lost in a time period that wasn’t his own, a period when a black man could be beaten on the streets for just being black – Tyrone would have helped anyone who asked for assistance, but now, he was an entire Universe away.

He had also met Sprite and Laura.

Tyrone’s perspective could no longer be the same, and just like in the hood, he wasn’t about to stick his head out of the door to witness somebody getting killed… at least, that was the way it was supposed to be, but now, more than the hood, he felt like someone who should use his ability for good, less it consumed him.

And yes, he could tell that’s exactly what it wanted to do.

“Come on. We have to go.”

But, against all the instincts and logic in his mind, Tyrone scooped the boy into his arms and exited the Mortuary with long strides. It felt right to do what he did. As for where he was going, Tyrone just hoped the Mortician was lying about the direction to the exit.

Then again, with the new feel for his power, Tyrone was confident that teleportation at this point had a 50% chance of success. It was not the percentage he wanted it to be, but it was better than the shitshow of teleporting away and back just to get shot in the head.

“Probably, one of the dumbest ways to die.”