Previously in Watcher of the Infinite Earths...
My name is Kennie Johns, and I finally realized that my life is a script written by someone else. The "accident," the hole in my chest, and the "mother" who nursed me back to health—it was all a beautifully crafted lie. When I confronted her in our kitchen, the scent of sukuma wiki and ugali still in the air, her face shifted. The woman I loved as a mother vanished, replaced by the cold, calculating gaze of Morgana, the witch who betrayed my kingdom in the old world. I am not a son; I am a lab rat. And as she pressed the trigger on the remote, my body—wired like a machine—collapsed into the darkness.
Chapter 4: The Laboratory of Lies
Darkness. Not the peaceful darkness of sleep, but the heavy, suffocating static of a system being forcibly rebooted. It felt like my brain was being scrubbed with steel wool.
[ADVANCED SYSTEM INTERFACE: SYSTEM RESTORE INITIALIZED]
Status:Forced Memory Wipe in Progress (88%... 92%...)
Current Command:Execute "Nightmare-Free" Protocol.
Neural Load: 400% (DANGER)
Warning:Internal hardware (Neural Wires) detected. User autonomy: 0.1%
The static suddenly shattered with the sound of a high-pitched electrical whine. My eyes snapped open, but I wasn't in my bedroom with the posters of Harambee Stars on the wall. I was strapped to a cold, slanted surgical table in a room that smelled of ozone, chemical rot, and the metallic tang of blood.
My chest was exposed, and I felt a chill that went deeper than the skin. Looking down, I saw them—thin, glowing fiber-optic cables, looking like neon-violet veins, threaded directly into my sternum scar. They pulsed in rhythm with a heart I wasn't supposed to have. Every pulse sent a jolt of artificial "calm" into my brain, trying to drown the fire of my memories.
"You really are a stubborn one, Kennie," a voice purred from the shadows.
Morgana stepped into the light. Gone was the floral apron and the gentle, tired eyes of a Kenyan mother who worried about her son's university fees. She wore a sleek, tactical bodysuit made of a material that shimmered like oil on water. Her right hand was still partially transformed—thick, grey fur and obsidian claws that clicked rhythmically against the glass of a high-tech tablet.
"Where is she?" I rasped. My throat felt like I had swallowed a handful of dry sand from the Chalbi Desert. "Where is my real mother? The one who actually loved me?"
Morgana laughed, a cold, hollow sound that echoed off the metallic walls of the bunker. "There is no 'real mother,' you little fool. Did you really think a 'normal' woman could survive giving birth to a monster like you?"
She walked closer, her eyes glowing with a predatory yellow light. "You were grown in a vacuum-sealed vat using the DNA of the Dracula Supreme and the residual energy leaked from the Goddess of Time. I raised you for three years in this 'Nairobi' simulation just to see if your core would stabilize. The 'accident'? A script. The 'recovery'? A calibration. You were never a son, Kennie. You were an investment. An experiment to see if we could harness a God and keep him on a leash."
I struggled against the restraints—heavy, magnetic shackles that bit into my wrists. A surge of electricity from the wires in my chest locked my muscles in a violent spasm.
"The old lady... at the roundabout..." I managed to choke out between gritted teeth. "Was that a test too? You almost killed her!"
"A necessary calibration of your kinetic output," Morgana replied, swiping her finger across the tablet with cold indifference. "We needed to see if the 'Sonic Dash' could be triggered without shattering your fragile human shell. You passed with flying colors, but you were too efficient. You remembered the 'Old Code.' Now, we have to clear the cache. We can't have you waking up the Goddess before the Harvest. I need you silent, Kennie. I need you to be the good, broken boy again."
[ANCIENT RAW SYSTEM: CORE RESISTANCE]
Anomaly Detected:External overwrite blocked by 'Goddess Fragment'.
Skill Sync:Memory Recovery (Rank: E - Recovering)
Flashback Triggered:The Siege of Lycan City.
Suddenly, the cold laboratory walls vanished. My mind was pulled back into a sky that bled purple. I saw Morgana, years ago, standing atop a mountain of Lycan corpses in the heart of a burning Nairobi. I saw her handing a silver dagger—the God-Slayer—to Lucifer. I saw the look of absolute triumph on her face as she watched my kingdom fall. The betrayal wasn't a nightmare; it was a debt.
The rage I felt in that memory began to heat the wires in my chest. The violet light of the cables began to flicker, turning from a submissive purple to a predatory, volcanic gold.
"What is this?" Morgana hissed, her tablet suddenly sparking and emitting a foul-smelling smoke. "The delete command... it's being rejected! The wires... they're melting!"
"You forgot one thing, Morgana," I said, my voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a power that made the surgical table hum. The shadow of the Dracula Supreme—a towering figure of wings and ash—flickered briefly against the wall behind me. "You can't delete a God with a remote control. Not even in a cage like this."
I didn't just pull against the restraints; I ignited. The "Sonic Dash" energy surged, but I didn't use it to move. I channeled it inward, right into the fiber-optic veins. The feedback loop was instantaneous. The cables exploded in a shower of sparks, and the magnetic shackles shattered like glass.
I stood up, the glowing wires hanging from my chest like severed, sparking entrails. My skin was steaming, the "student" clothes I wore singed and blackened.
The Watcher's Perspective: Above the Simulation
High above the secret facility, hidden within a dimensional pocket beneath the real KICC, the man in the dark suit watched the thermal spikes on his monitor. The screens were turning red, showing a massive energy leak in the basement levels.
"Boss... Morgana has lost control," the man whispered into his phone, his hand trembling so hard he almost dropped the device. "The lab-rat is burning through the Neural Dampeners. He didn't just survive the wipe—he's absorbing the dampening field and converting it into Raw Mana."
The voice on the other end was a low, terrifying growl that seemed to vibrate the very air of the room. "Then the simulation has reached its end. If we can't control the Dracula Supreme, we bury him. We cannot allow the 'Source' to return to the Goddess. Activate the Facility Self-Destruct. Collapse the pocket dimension. Let the Goddess of Time mourn her hero in the ashes of a dead world."
The Final Confrontation
Back in the lab, the alarm began to wail—a deep, booming sound that signaled the end of the reality I had known for three years. Red emergency lights bathed the room in the color of blood.
Morgana backed away, her face twisting from a human mask into a full Lycan snout. Her clothes shredded as her muscles expanded, her fur standing on end as she prepared to kill what she could no longer control.
"You think you're free, Kennie?" she growled, her voice a mix of a woman's snarl and a beast's roar. "You're just a battery! Without these wires, your 'hole' will consume you! You'll burn out in seconds!"
I looked at my hands. They were glowing with the embers of a dead world. I could feel the vacuum in my chest pulling at the air, hungry for the power Morgana had been using to keep me suppressed.
"Then I'll make sure those seconds are the worst of your life," I said.
I moved. It wasn't a sonic dash—it was a hunt.
[ADVANCED SYSTEM INTERFACE: EMERGENCY LOG]
Condition:Hybrid State Unlocked (Human Shell / Dracula Core).
Power Level: 12.5% (Rising Rapidly)
Environmental Hazard:Self-Destruct Sequence Active.
Time Remaining: 01:45.
[NEW OBJECTIVE]: KILL THE BETRAYER MORGANA.
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE]: ESCAPE TO THE SURFACE BEFORE THE DIMENSIONAL COLLAPSE.