“I’ll be going. I will raise the alarm inside so you all can go around the laboratory. The pits are in the back.” Spotlight said to ancestry and me, we were looking over a hidden lab in some random woods in the countryside.

“The pit?” This doesn’t sound good.

“You’ll see”

I sighed, accepting the mystery, and Spotlight started walking towards the entrance, the guards not noticing him as he entered the lab.

“We’ll wait for the alarm and then we’ll go around the back.” Ancestry said to me.

I nodded, the time passing seemingly ultra-slowly as I looked around and towards the guards, waiting for them to spring into action any second, Ancestry was checking his swords over, making me think of his power again, maybe it was something worth asking to copy?

“So, what’s your power?” I said directly, hoping to distract myself while we waited.

“Heh, Spotlight told me you were a power otaku”

“Otaku, really? But I guess so.”

He laughed. “It’s about the swords. I can conjure some ghosts based on their story and properties.”

Oh, it conjuring ghosts then. That was a side I didn’t think about. I assumed it was more to do with enhancing yourself in different styles. “Are the ghosts a base human power with the skills of the past wielders or do they have more interesting properties.”

“More like both, they assume forms that I have no control over. I can only control what they do, and depending on the historical value of a sword, the ghost is proportionately stronger.”

It’s a very conditional power. I wonder if I could fit it with mine, but I don’t think it’s a good fit.

We heard the alarm ringing, echoing far. “That’s our cue,” Ancestry said, moving to our right in a steady gait, a hand in the handle of his sword.

I followed Ancestry, going by the edge of the cleared space as we circled the lab; it was fairly big, and we set a steady pace as we circled around it, in a couple minutes we were at the other side, the fenced area in this side encircled a barren ground backyard, with another fenced area in the middle of it, the inside fence seemed much sturdier with mounted weaponry and gated doors.

We looked around and there didn’t seem to be any guard on this side, probably having entered because of the alarm.

“So how you wanna do it?” Ancestry asked me.

I was taken a bit by surprise, thinking that he would just lead the whole thing.

“Well,” I said slowly thinking it over, “there are no guards and I don’t see any cameras but even if we did i don’t know if we could make anything about them, the whole point of Spotlight entering there is the distraction so we should probably just go for it.”

Ancestry nodded seriously first, then cracked a smile, “yeah you’re right. It’s not that complicated”

“Why ask me then?” I asked, looking confusedly at him.

“Well, it’s good to include people in things, and also who knows maybe you had another idea.”

A good reason as any, I guess. I shrugged. “As I see, we just go straight to it then.”

“What about the fence though” he said as if just thinking of it.

I eyed him skeptically. “You mean all those swords are just for looks”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Let’s go”

We got up from our crouched positions and made a beeline to the section of the fence that was closest to us.

We arrived by the fence and ancestry took out one of his swords. “my power is more versatile than you might’ve thought”. He said as he smiled and a projection of a gauntlet appeared over his arm, making the sword itself glow. Both were like a transparent blue projection, like a hologram, but completely crisp and solid to the eye."

“At the start, I thought it even was something about augmenting swords,” he said as he moved in a burst, cutting a hole in the metal.

“Come on.” Ancestry urged us forward

It was a pretty interesting power, and I wondered what each sword did, what were the most iconic and historical swords anyway, I didn’t know and they probably weren’t here on Brazil but it would be interesting to see what his power did with those.

It didn’t see to work well for me though, if it functioned the way I’m thinking it does, there isn’t anything that I would gain from it, maybe it could interact in interesting ways with other powers though, like with Swordjuice’s.

If I combined the two, would the projections have more attributes or would it be able to make projections from any weapon, or maybe even take away from the swords their historical power as an enhancing liquid instead of as a projection.

Impossible to know and even then, can I really mix powers like that? It isn’t something I tested, but if I could, I almost salivated at the thought, the number of possibilities.

Would it be like playing with Legos, the pieces of powers matching each other, or wouldn’t they match? It is something that I need to test when we return to the base.

Ancestry slapped my shoulder, taking me out of my musings. “Pay attention, man.”

“Oh, sorry, got lost in thought”

“No joke, you’re lucky your power is not dying, man. Cause otherwise... sheesh”

At this point, we could hear sporadic bursts of gunfire from the lab. I wondered if Spotlight was going to be fine, but he probably knew what he was doing.

Ancestry cut the internal fence as easily as he had cut the outer ones, the artillery was pointed to an obscured hole in the ground and we slowly approached it

As we got closer the pit’s putrid smell started to become impossible to not notice, heavy overbearing and painting a picture I was not sure I was ready to see.

Ancestry grimaced as well as we got closer, and he searched for where the enormous lights were switched on, finding it eventually and going to get them lit. Light flooded the place, illuminating the pit, a giant hole into the ground dozens of meters deep.

Getting to the edge and looking down, I felt queasy by the view. Hundreds of putrefying bodies in all stages of decay filled the considerably large circumference of the hole, it seemed to be close to ten meters across.

“This is what they do to the outcasts,” Ancestry was saying, I realized. “I hear they use them for free labor or to fight in underground arenas for the fun of the Families in the other parts of the country. But here the Sulphals use them as training dummies to their abundant bio kinetics, and to their sick experiments.”

I could see on close inspection that the bodies sported all sorts of deformities and tumors, protrusions of flesh and bone, abnormal sizes and all manner of fresh growths and modifications. The picture of powers being used with no regard to the well-being of these people.

“Why the guns then?” I asked, looking at the mounted machine-guns around the pit, pointing down towards it.

“They must discard them after the experiments. They probably survive sometimes.” Ancestry said somberly.

We stayed silent, the harsh light bearing on the sickening view when I saw motion on the surface of the sprawled bodies.

One of them was getting up, crawling over the other, putrefying bodies to stand. His skin was all gray, but with patches colored a deep green, he had stitches running all over his body; he was a mutant with a front facing horn coming from his protruding face like a rhino’s, probably some mutation to do with the animal. It happened often enough. The whys were a mystery, as always.

This poor guy, who seemed to be 25 at most, had huge tumors growing all over him, making his skin taunt with the growth under them. He shuddered with unfocused eyes; the tumor shaking like something was inside them.

What the hells did they do to him, I thought, alarmed. The machine guns whirled into place, aiming directly at the guy. I couldn’t take even a step before they fired, filling the man with holes. He fell once again, this time to never rise again

“They aren’t just fascists Matrix, they’re actual monsters,” Ancestry said by my side, the anger clear in his voice.

I nodded. “I need to go down there.”

“Why, the guns probably going to fill you with holes, and he’s already dead, or are you saying you can revive the dead?”

“No, I can’t. I need to check if I can use his powers.”

“What?” his voice strained, his hand holding his sword tightened. “You’re one power hungry mothe-”

“No, that’s not it, for fuck’s sake.” I said, my face grim as well. “If I can get even a sliver more powerful, that is a little earlier that I’m able to destroy this government.”

Ancestry stared at me without words for a second, a grin taking over his entire face as he looked at my determined face. “Yeah, sure man. I’ll help you along even.”

He took another sword from a scabbard, the other one that was on the other side of his waist from the one he was already wielding. And concentrated with his arms stretched.

Blue light overtook him starting from his hand and forming the gauntlet then the entire set of armor over his body, when it was complete the armor moved out of him as he kept standing and the projection of a warrior stood there in front of him now.

The same occurred again now, on the other hand, and the second warrior joined the first. Ancestry opened his eyes and nodded to the warriors and each of them went to one of the machine guns, slicing them in half easily.

“That’s pretty cool, but you know I could just take the bullets right.”

“Ah, yeah, but isn’t it unpleasant?” He said, a laugh in his voice.

“Yeah, it is actually.”

I nodded, getting serious again, “okay, I’ll go there.”

I prepared myself and jumped down onto the pile of bodies, grimacing hard at the feeling, I could strengthen my body as I fell just from the expectation of the fall, so it hurt but I broke nothing and the pain was gone in a split second as my legs got stronger.

I tried to feel any matrix inside the corpses but couldn’t; they were all truly dead, and must have been for a while already. I touched the blood coming out of the bodies in over one occasion, but it the tethers didn’t work as well. So, I came here for nothing. I kept going anyway, arriving at the rhino guy.

Even if they were alive, I don’t know if I could heal them; I had Rebeca’s power copied, but it was really slow working and I don’t know how much of the liquid I can make, as it would be severely more energy draining than herself using it.

The blood was still oozing fresh from the bullet wounds and I touched it. The tether wouldn’t activate, anyway. I had to try anyway, and it didn’t change my conviction. As I stood here literally on a mountain of bodies the Families created, I felt rawer than ever the need to uproot the government. They had to go, one way or another.

Finished with my resolution, I turned, looking at the long wall of earth. “Now, how am I going to get up?” In the end, I only had to climb digging in the earth that thankfully was dry and hard packed and one of the projections pulled me up the rest of the way.

“What are we going to do about this place?” I asked finally. We were moving away from the pit to go around to the front again.

“Spotlight is going to kill the leaders. A head on confrontation would bring too much attention, as much as I wanted to skewer all of them.”

It would have to do. Killing them wasn’t ideal, but where would we even keep them? They would cooperate and they couldn’t be allowed to continue doing this kind of thing.

Maybe it was the fury talking. I certainly had more of it now over what they have been doing. It only reaffirmed the need for the regime to be brought down. It had reached an inhumane state. Everyone who had the power to do something about it should as well.

But I knew that only striking down their facility wouldn’t topple the giant. We had to have a plan; we had to do it in a way that they couldn’t come back and we surely had to destroy the head of the snake.

I would need to know what the dawn breakers plans were ultimately, if they were realistic and all that. It was a long journey, and I had to get strong enough to crush all the opposition alone if need be.

All the army and the personal guard of a leader of a country who had been collecting the strongest in the country for more than a decade. How hard could it be, really?

As we were walking by the forest half crouched inside the cover of the trees, we heard a gigantic explosion coming from the building. It seemed to shake everything, and we stumbled and had to steady ourselves, looking at each other alarmed.

“What was that?” I asked

“It must be Spotlight’s get away sign, let’s go.” Ancestry said, sprinting towards the front of the lab now. I followed suit, not caring for stealth anymore

Spotlight was waiting for us at the entrance, the alarms on the facility now silent. Spotlight had a grim look on his face and gave a sharp nod to Ancestry and then to me.

“You showed him?”

“Yes” Ancestry said simply, looking at me with something that seemed pride.

“I wanted to show it to you Matrix, so you understood what they are capable of, and why we can’t leave them be. We can’t pull our punches, we can’t forgive.”

I nodded. “I cannot forgive them as well, Spotlight. And I don’t plan to stop until this country is completely free.”

“Were there any survivors?” Ancestry asked.

“Not a single one.” Spotlight said grimly, looking at the lab shining a faint red light thought the doors, from a fire brewing inside

“Let’s go before reinforcements or the fire control arrives.” Spotlight said, and we followed suit, quickly navigating through the low vegetation to where we left the car.

The trip back to the safe house was spent in a quieter somberness, each of us with their own thoughts, mine in how I needed to get stronger. This country was overdue a revolution.