CHPT 5: Marvelously Misplaced…..

Running.

It was something he lost enjoyment in early enough that he'd completely forgotten the simple pleasures it brought through time. So much so, that he was stunned as he jogged through the old sanitary sewer ways in pursuit of reaching the surface to walk amongst his home of filth and crime once again.

The remnants of his cancer were nowhere to be found. As he stomped his way down the metal gated walkways of the sewers, his lungs felt infinite. Even as he pushed what was supposed to be his maximum speed. He couldn't have been going more than twenty miles per hour, and even so– as the dirtied rock walls and sewage flowing below passed by in a dark blur, he felt no physical exertion. None at all.

All that came to him was a rising sense of wondering if he could go faster. Believe it or not, he was positive he could. But, before he could actively engage in the childish curiosity, he found the familiar sounds of the bustling city above falling more harshly on his ears to the left of him. Now accompanied by the distant destructive buzz of construction work, and they were only growing louder with every second longer he spent sprinting. Until he eventually found himself stopping beside an intersection in the metal walkway. The wasted waters rushed and churned, flowing from four opposing directions to create a twisting cyclone of foul smelling chaos. The walkways that each flowing current ran beneath were shrouded in more darkness. Luckily he wouldn't need to venture through any of them.

The ladder that led to the surface ran down the wall to the left of him, blending in so well in all it's grimy blackness that he almost missed it.

Without a second more to waste, he approached the ladder and climbed. Feeling his urge to reach the surface grow by the second along with a distant feeling of dread for which he had no idea of. All that did was make the distant feeling worse.

A feeling that faded once he placed his left hand against the cold metal manhole cover and shoved it up and out of the way, giving light to the darkness of the sewers that splashed against his skin with a welcomed warmth. He pulled himself towards it until he fully emerged from the sewer and set foot on solid city concrete.

He stood in an alley wedged in between two brick retail stores. The empty path welcomed him in all it's silent glory. Not an absolute silence though– not even a silence known through general definition. What fell on his ears from the alleyway was a city silence. A low hum of all the chaos that came from smashing together the lives and technology of hundreds in a few block radius. Cars whizzed by, children cried, fathers and mothers of all nationalities barked at their children in any number of languages. It was a mess, just like always.

The sound of his thick black boots on the pavement returned with a slow yet eager rhythm as he walked out of the alley and into the city streets full of life and stress.

Immediately, he was bombarded with a number of personal scents as people rushed past him with wary eyes and tensed muscles. More people flowed in and out of stores like ants. He felt himself slowly catch the wave of movement until he was apart of it once again, calmly walking while he observed everything.

To his left and right, reddish-brown brick apartment buildings and mixed use buildings loomed over the city streets making him feel almost claustrophobic. The colored awnings of each store he walked under cast his vision in and out of partial shadows, seemingly adding to the chaos. At the end of the block, an el train ran across it's rusted railway that sat a couple dozen feet above ground. He didn't need a single street sign to know exactly where he was.

"Jackson Heights…..Queens, but different." He realized after noticing the difference between more than a few of the stores.

In the midst of his study of the buildings, his left shoulder collided with a man, stunning him out of his head in an instant.

"Hey buddy, watch we–...."

He looked down towards the man speaking to him just in time to see the rising sense of fear force the man's vocal chords closed while discomfort twisted his previously aggressive appearance.

And then, he was gone. Swallowed up by the constant flow of the city that was predominantly heading in one direction before coming to a stop no more than forty feet ahead where people crowded and yelled obscenities amongst each other.

Moving towards large groups of commotion was never a good idea in any context really– but for some reason, he had the strongest urge to see what they were all so keen on witnessing. In the time it took for him to approach, people came and went in seemingly timed sequences. Appearing in a rush to join the swelling horde before leaving with defeated and fearful expressions while they carried bundles of paper in their hands. As if they were kids approaching their presents on christmas day only to find boxes full of half burnt coal.

When he arrived at the back of the crowd, he half expected to find the same– literally. But, as the people parted in wariness of him and his new imposing size, he realized it was something arguably far worse than coal that they were hovering around.

Media. A newspaper stand to be exact....

It felt familiar– only smaller. Like the people walking the city streets around him. He'd grown in more ways than he thought– at least a few inches. Putting him at six foot five at least.

After a few more seconds of cutting through the mob of people, he stood at the front of the newspaper stand. It's owner sat at a stool behind the towering shelf of newspapers flanked by four bigger men that looked like guards. Only he couldn't see the trademarked print of guns, damaged knuckles or cauliflowered ears. They were for show. Props.

Even so, a newspaper stand to have hired intimidators was something he'd never seen. But, it didn't take a genius to know that meant bad news. Since when was local media so important?

"Hey pal, this ain't a viewing gallery. You get your papers for twenty bucks and keep it pushin….and hurry, we usually sell out by eight am." The owner stated, looking him up and down from beneath his mop of stylized dreadlocks.

"Twenty dollars?....That's a hefty price increase. Never a good sign." He thought before approaching the stand amidst the chaotic hum of talking people surrounding him.

That familiar distant feeling of dread writhed like a snake in the shadows at the back of his mind as he pulled one of the newspapers off the shelf and let his eyes scan over the cover.

Like always, the newspaper's design was made to pull you in. It's blocky thick italicized lettering, usually both witty and dramatic while also getting straight to the point. Kane hated newspapers– hated seeing his grisly work dramatized in comical lettering for the whole world to see. Only now, it wasn't his work. It also wasn't his time…..among many other– more unsettling things.

The date read, "August 12th, 2017"

And somehow, that was the least troubling fact, "Unstable Mutant Outbreak Numbers Continue to Spike since the start of The Great Emergence!"

His eyes continued to scan the paper, reading about world record levels of property damage, terrorism, strong arm robberies, assaults and murders….apparently, all at the hands of what the paper kept referencing to. Mutants.

"What the hell is this….? What is happening!" He thought, accidentally crushing the newspaper in his hands as his mind repeatedly tried and failed to wrap around the new discoveries he was metaphorically drowned by in a matter of seconds.

"Hey, asswipe! Either you pay for that now, or after my guys run your pockets. Choose." The owner of the stand said in an agitated tone as he rose from his stool and pushed his hesitant rent-a-guard squad towards Kane..

Their unwillingness to fight was written plainly over every inch of their bodies. They were big– probably strong as hell too. Football players– a few linemen and a wide receiver based on their height. But they were no fighters, and they knew it.

Despite this seemingly obvious fact, a good chunk of the people that once crowded around him loosely began to back away even further. Their eyes never moved from the stand even with the perceived start of a fight.

The threat of violence brought back his maternal spiritual plague, starting as a distant agitating echo that only rose as they got closer. Pushing him back into his corner, twisting his mind into what it was allowed to be only when he was behind the mask.

"Compartmentalization is important. Not now…." He whispered the words.

Another few hesitant steps from the guards.

The violence was closer than ever, bringing the voice and it's damaging internal effects with it.

"They are weak…..kill the–"

"Not now!" He snapped, placing a calloused hand on his thrumming skull. After a moment of silence, he was back. Rattled, but back, coherent enough to see the approaching guards, the hungry crowd around him and the smug shop owner.

As if it hadn't been clear the moment he stepped foot on the sidewalk, getting information suddenly seemed as important as getting food– and the newspaper stand owner was loving every second of it. Probably why he jacked up the price of the paper.

Kane continued to watch the men move forward, eyes darting from the oncoming muscle-heads to the stand he still stood beside, the voice only barely held against the defensive walls of his psyche. He had an idea, one that wouldn't result in any blood dying his knuckles any further.

He looked over at the newspaper stand owner– ignoring the guards as he spoke to the man, letting his eerily soft accented voice rise above the steady murmur of chatter. "Greedy eaters dig their graves with their teeth, asswipe."

When he was finished speaking, he grabbed the newspaper stand and pulled it to the floor. Much to his surprise, instead of pulling a few loose pages, he ripped out an entire level causing the entirety of the stand to come crashing down in a tornado of ink splashed papers and metal railings.

The crowd that circled them all like a pack of hungry wolves descended on the papers in an avalanche of screams, shouts and shoves to get to the freed papers.

Kane shoved his way through and emerged on the other side with the owner yelling for his pseudo guards to do something. The sounds slowly faded as he dropped into another alleyway to get out of the public eye.

He came to a stop partway into the darkness and sat on a grated plastic container that smelled of old milk and cardboard.

With shaking hands, he began flipping through the newspaper, letting the sounds of fluttering papers blend with the loose pages of older issues that flipped and blew across the dirty concrete floor around him. Too marred and distorted by water damage to be legible, leaving his current paper as his only source of horrifyingly hard to understand information.

After a few minutes, he found himself at the backpages of the paper where games and crossword puzzles resided, leaving him to think over everything he'd absorbed. Every word, every letter, every date. It all stuck to his mind like the dirt and grime that stuck to the city air around him.

To no one's surprise, it was more hit pieces on the Mutants. More retellings of the damage they were causing, their unfair mode of government defended lodging in Westchester, and an entire plethora of politically unpopular titles the paper had bound to the heads of the home in Westchester. All he got were two last names for them. Mccoy and Grey…..and their home for the gifted.

Sounded like a law-firm for domestic terrorists with the way they spoke of Mutants..

And on the other end, the paper propped up a few groups as well. Stark Industries and Oscorp for it's scientific advancements and their potential to reclaim safety in New York. Kane could've laughed when he read it the first time. The paper spoke as if New York was ever a "good" place. Either way, Stark Industires, Oscorp and The Avengers seemed to be in high praise.

At least according to the paper. He wanted to know what the court of public opinion had to say– he needed information. What or who were Mutants? At first he thought they were diseased….but they were capable enough to rack up billions in property damage on a global scale. So maybe not. He also had never heard of these fortune 500 companies that were seemingly viewed under a halo of light....companies and enterprises that big were never the good guys– he knew better than anyone. Something was off, the paper was about as opinionated as he was lost.

And to top it all off, he now completely understood why that feeling of dread that had been gnawing away at his insides became so strong when he'd first found the newspapers.

"I'm in a different….world."