CHPT 4: Awakened, Anew, Perfected— Cursed all the same…..

More darkness…

The two were growing quite intimate with each-other. Their familiarity with one another and their sequenced actions were growing. As a result, the abrupt emergence that accompanied the long blackness was less jarring.

Even so, it still shook him to his core, rattling his mind in an explosion of sensory development and tactile awareness. The effect left him stunned, grasping at his head with hands he'd almost forgot he had.

When his senses evened and his heartbeat was no longer audibly pulsing through him, he took in the calming silence for the first time. At least that's what he tried to do…

Silence was slowly becoming a foreign concept to him as the rushing waves of water continued to crash and shake against his senses like a mind-numbing symphony of waterfalls. Only the peaceful and serene array of scents that came with them were nowhere to be found.

All that met his nose was….shit.

Strong and muddled with dozens of afterscents as if the very physical servings of waste were actively being shoved up his nose. He gagged in response, causing him to inhale and quite literally taste the fecal matter molecules that hung on the air like a fog.

Maybe he'd finally made it to hell.

But, hell was supposed to be all full of fire and screaming tortured souls. He wasn't hot, he wasn't screaming, and neither were the voices above ground accompanied by the steady cluttering clack of footsteps and car engines. So distant he could forget them if he lost focus.

The pain in his mind faded with the sounds of the distant voices that seemed much more peaceful than himself.

He opened his eyes, thinking he'd see them. People. He was never a people person. After so many kills and witnessed deaths, they all seemed fleeting…ephemeral, crushing blows to his consciousness and possible dangers. But, after spending his last few moments dying and being questioned by some spacial god, he needed a heavy dose of normality.

"Fuck…"

No normality this time. Not exactly at least. He was alone, laying against the foul smelling cold ground of a room pressed into the labyrinth-like pathways of an old sanitary sewer way. Cold concrete walls occupied his left and right no more than twenty feet apart. The same– if not a little more, distance ahead, the room opened and gave way to the twin walkways splashed with the rushing sewer water running beneath.

The place was old, decorated with long insanely thick spiderwebs, most sewer systems were too small to be inhabited, but in New York there were many. Many filled with unsavory people and vagrants. In an ironic twist of fate, it seemed he had become one…..even more ironic was that he hadn't considered himself one before.

A memory suddenly rang through his mind that got a chuckle out of him as he sat up, feeling the swaying sense of dizziness rock him.

"A place within the heart of the city– close to criminality yet far from the prying eyes of outsiders. Nice one, dick." He said, remembering the eye's in the sky and their message.

He was still having trouble believing all that happened….

But, he was home nonetheless. He was in New York. It had a certain feel to it, he felt it. It was off– different. Not the same feeling, but the same place….somehow.

He couldn't fully explain– not now at least as he rose to his feet, unaware if the heavy sense of dizziness and seemingly random explosion of sensory perception was due to his recurrent slumber or the odd feeling of his environment.

Stillness held him for a moment, the last time he was on his feet, he was running from bullet fire– trying to stop any casualties from invading his line of work…any innocents.

The recollections flashed by in picture perfect images made vibrant through sound and smell– the gunshots hammered against his ears in flawless remembrance. It ended with the dead mothers face looking at him, her son sat beside her, the effects of trauma already beginning to rot and twist his mind.

Then, it was over. Leading him to question when his ability to recall events became so perfect.

He shook off the thought and made his way out of the small room worked into the sewerway, only stopping once he met the walkway that ran above the rushing foul smelling waters. He had to pull his white v-neck up over his nose to try and hide any semblance of the smell….and taste.

The metal gated floor creaked under his weight, letting out a loud metallic screech that echoed down the walkway. He was….heavier.

His eyes trailed down to the metal walkway he stood on. Black timberlands encased his feet, the water beneath the walkway churned and splashed its putrid green droplets onto the rubbery charcoal soles, causing him to nearly miss the object that floated and rolled along with the foul current below.

He turned, letting his eyes follow the black object flowing with the sewage waters. It didn't take a genius to realize it was a human body. The corpse's red blood trailed behind like a delicate red string leading straight to it as it traveled endlessly until the red was all that was left.

Dead bodies and blood. The voice used the sight of them as it's que to begin it's campaign of torture– toture meant to lead him towards salvation. Toruture with direction. Either way, torture was torture.

"Weak…..again…." The voice shook him, like fingers as cold as ice running down his naked back.

"Stop…" He murmured.

"You have noth–"

"Enough!' He snapped, hearing the slight change to his voice before dropping to one knee to center himself in the sewer.

In an odd way, focusing on the horrid smells and distant sounds of the people above ground, it helped. Brought him back to reality, because reality was–newly, made unavoidable.

When he opened his eyes, all that met him and his senses was his own face. No maternal spirit of violence leading– pushing, him towards some perceived salvation, just his own face reflected in the waves of bile and waste riddled waters.

That was surprising enough on it's own for a number of reasons. He looked….different. The face he was used to looking at was aged. Even though he was only in his early thirties when he….died, he looked about ten years older at the time. Aged by pain, lack of sleep, trauma, facial scarring and cancer.

It seemed almost none of that had followed him after experiencing his divine intervention with the eyes in the sky.

No, not at all. Now, he looked almost ten years younger. Not a reversal in time– but a true change on it's own. His hair remained the same. A silky black array of dreaded locks that now loosely hung from his head uncomfortably close to the water, giving him a more roughened appearance due to the shadows it cast over his face. Signs of determination– or child-like idiocy. Throughout his years, he'd lost portions and clumps a dozen times over. Ripped from his scalp when men and women began using it against him in combat. Combat, it changed all of it's victims and pursuers. Even if his hair had remained the same– in some act of rebellion against the woman who'd always controlled his life, he was no different. He remembered how much he hated mirrors– the scars were too much. A reminder of what was seemingly no more. All that remained were the thin remnants of a gash running across the bridge of his thick nubian nose that had visibly been broken a few times too many. It stood out plainly on his dark-bronze skin.

The sight triggered another memory, reminding him of when he'd gained the injury. When his mother's hired hands began training him in combat. They practically ate him alive that night, ripping into his sides, arms, shoulders….and face. Damaging the nose his mother so often said reminded her of his wretched father.

When the memory ended, the rushing waters stilled, allowing him to watch as his thick black eyebrows furrowed, casting small yet deeper shadows over his slim monolid eyes that seemed to hold all the age the rest of him lost for some reason.

He sighed and ran a shaking hand over his face, feeling the dryness of his lips and scruffy texture of his mutton chopped beard that never failed in giving him a rather rugged edge.

The purpose was always to hide the scarring on his cheeks, but something told him if he shaved, they wouldn't be there anymore. He wondered if all his scarring elsewhere had left– all the markings after each kill. Even his first marking, the family marking that eternally labeled him as the spawn of his mother. He wondered…

"What the hell is this…?" He whispered, standing once again only to notice yet another difference on the way up.

It wasn't only his face that had changed. It seemed all of him had. He was ripped. Something he hadn't been in years. When his cancer hit, cardio became the bane of his existence, leaving him with nothing but slow paced heavy weight training to take out his stress and hone his physicality. The result left him in a state of raw bulk surrounded in a thin layer of fat. Worked wonders in intimidation, but in fights that went the distance he had to favor entering the clinch to use his strength.

That didn't seem to be the case anymore. The layer of fat had gone, replaced by more muscle, leaving him in a state of lean mass. Even his legs looked longer– more athletic. Although, at his size he was never exactly fast. He had to be at least two hundred and fifty pounds based on the way his pants wrapped around his hulking leg muscles along with his shirt that looked ready to tear at the seams as they encased his capped shoulders. The drastic change was unreal, almost like he was brought to his utmost physical potential.

Before he could continue gawking at himself, a small rumble ran through the sewers, riding the ceilings above him like a shockwave coming from far away. Like an explosion. The sounds of the voices and cars above stopped for a series of seconds before regaining normalcy.

New York had indeed become different, because whatever that was, it wasn't normal. And yet, the people were fine. Almost like they were conditioned to some degree….

The urge to leave the sewer was suddenly one he couldn't ignore. The Eye's in the Sky had said he was given a second chance. Another go at a life he was slowly remembering more and more of….in all it's gory detail.

He had scores to settle, his people had turned on him– forced him to watch innocents die. Forced him to cross his one line of no casualties ever.

Richard and Reagan were traitors– they were also only the tip of the iceberg. His Syndicate had crumbled from the inside long before his twin sentinels had traded up, it was the only way that made sense. He was sure of it– Anton spoke of it. And with his second chance given by divinity of unknown origin, he'd weed out the corruption, burn it to ash and continue towards ridding himself of his curse.

"Let's try this again…." He growled before walking his way through the sewers to reach the condensed city above. To reach his home.