Previously on Watcher of the Infinite...
People used to call me Velocity X—a name that gave them hope in a city that had forgotten how to smile. Now, they call me Evil X. I saw the temporal door opening and I knew it was the only chance to save my mother from the earth that is swallowing her.
But now, the mask is off. I am just a normal guy from a humble background. By day, I sweat at a construction site (mjengo), earning a meager 4$ (500 KES) a day just to put food on the table. I studied Biochemistry and Mechanics, passing with top grades, but when my father disappeared, life turned cold. No office would hire me. No company wanted the son of a ghost.
I tried to be normal. I have a girlfriend, Sarah, who is my only source of light, my only hope. I wanted to leave this darkness behind and marry her, to live a simple life. But the suit—the armor fueled by Dark Tachyons—had other plans. It abducted her, dragging her into the void. Now, the voices in my head are screaming: "If you won't be our avatar, we will take everything you love."
The sun beat down on my neck like a physical weight, a relentless Nairobi heat that turned the dust of the construction site into a fine, choking powder. It stuck to my skin, mixing with sweat to form a layer of grime that made the scars on my back itch—the jagged marks where my suit's neural spinal-link used to interface with my central nervous system. In 2026, I was a god who could outrun the sound of his own name. In 2012, I am just another "mtu wa mkono," a laborer whose name the foreman can't even be bothered to remember.
"Elias! Wewe, kijana! Haraka!" the foreman shouted, his voice gravelly from years of shouting over the roar of mixers. He waved a blunt, calloused finger toward the rising concrete wall. "Hii mjengo haitajijenga yenyewe! (This building won't build itself!) If you want your 500 bob, you move like your life depends on it!"
I wiped the stinging sweat from my eyes with a dusty forearm and hoisted another fifty-kilogram bag of "Bamburi" cement onto my shoulder. My muscles, once tuned to the effortless efficiency of the Velocity Force, screamed in protest. Without the Negative Tachyons to dull the lactic acid and suppress the pain, I felt every ounce of the burden. I looked at my hands—once the hands of a genius who designed kinetic dampeners that could survive a black hole, now they were just stained with lime, calloused, and shaking from exhaustion.
[ADVANCED RAW SYSTEM: BIOMETRIC DEGRADATION]
USER:Elias (Human / Suppressed).
CURRENT ACTIVITY:High-Intensity Manual Labor.
CALORIC DEFICIT:Critical (Your last meal was a piece of dry 'Booma' at 6 AM).
WAGE TRACKER:4$ (500 KES) — Pending Site Supervisor Approval.
SYSTEM ADVISORY:Your biochemistry is in a state of 'Survival Flux.' The Bio-Chem knowledge in your temporal-lobe is flagging a massive drop in glycogen. If you do not consume glucose, the Dark Tachyon residue in your bone marrow will begin 'Auto-Feeding' on your muscle fibers. You aren't a speedster right now, Elias—you're a candle burning at both ends in a windstorm.
SENG NOTE:Aki Elias, pole sana maze. From flying over KICC to carrying 'mifuko ya simiti' for the price of a KFC meal? That's a heavy fall. But listen, the suit isn't 'gone.' It's like a predator hiding in the long grass of your mind. It took Sarah because it knows she is the only anchor keeping you from becoming a monster. If you want her back, you can't fight with a spade—you'll need to face the Void. Kaza butu, foreman anakucheki!
I sat down in the skeletal shade of a half-finished pillar during the short lunch break. I clutched a small black polythene bag—a "plastic ya janta"—containing a cold piece of boiled maize and a bottle of tepid tap water. My mind kept drifting away from the noise of the hammers and the smell of wet concrete. I kept seeing the blueprints of the Velocity X suit.
I had built it with such noble intentions. I wanted it to be a shield for Kenya. I wanted a way to protect the CBD and the slums of Kibera alike while my father was lost in the currents of time. I never knew that the Dark Tachyons I synthesized in that basement lab had a consciousness. I didn't realize that the more I ran, the more I was feeding a jealous, sentient shadow.
"Thinking about her again?"
I looked up. It was Kamau, an older laborer with skin as dark and tough as the concrete we poured. He had been at this site since the foundation was dug. He noticed the silver locket hanging from my neck—the one I tucked under my dusty overalls. Inside was a tiny, blurred photo of Sarah laughing at a picnic in Uhuru Park.
"She's gone, Kamau," I whispered, the plastic water bottle crinkling in my shaking grip. "And it's my fault. I brought something into my house... something that doesn't belong in this world. It took her to punish me."
"Nairobi swallows people, Elias," Kamau said, leaning back against the cold pillar and lighting a cigarette. "Sometimes they get lost in the crowds of the stage, sometimes they get lost in the 'shida' of life. But a man with your eyes... you shouldn't be carrying cement. I see you looking at the structural beams. You're calculating the load-bearing stress, aren't you? Why are you hiding in a mjengo?"
"Because if I show them what I can really do," I said, looking down as a tiny, violet spark suddenly flickered under my dirty fingernail, "the world will burn. And I don't think I can put out the fire this time."
[SYSTEM INTERFACE: VOID WHISPER DETECTED]
SOURCE:Dormant Neural Interface.
MESSAGE:"She is shivering, Elias. The Void is a cold place for a girl with a heart of gold. Give us your fury. Give us your speed. Bring the Genesis Core to the altar, and we will return the girl. Reject us, and we will rewrite her history until she never existed at all."
THREAT LEVEL:Catastrophic (Emotional Blackmail).
SENG NOTE:Don't listen to the 'voices,' kiongozi! It's a trick! The suit is using your love for Sarah as a leash. It knows your Bio-Chem brain is trying to find a way to neutralize the dark energy naturally, so it's forcing your hand. It wants you to take the 'shortcut' of the Dark Tachyons. If you slip into that 'Evil X' mindset, there's no coming back to the estate. Nairobi doesn't need another villain; it needs the son to be better than the father.
The afternoon shift began with the heavy sound of a generator roaring to life. But as I reached for another bag of cement, the sky over Nairobi began to change. It wasn't the usual afternoon rain that sweeps in from the Ngong Hills; these clouds were different. They were swirling in a jagged, unnatural spiral, turning a bruised, sickly purple that cast an eerie light over the city.
The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of blood. My chest began to throb, a rhythmic, pulsing ache right where the suit's kinetic reactor used to dock.
Suddenly, a scream of pure terror erupted from the street four floors below the construction site. I dropped the bag—it burst, sending a cloud of white dust into the air—and I ran to the edge of the unfenced scaffolding.
A black rift, swirling with violet lightning, had torn open in the middle of the busy road, stopping traffic instantly. Drivers abandoned their cars, fleeing in panic. And there, standing in the center of the darkness, was a suit.
My suit. The Velocity X armor.
It was empty, yet it stood with a terrifying, predatory posture. Its visor glowed with a hateful, sentient violet light. In its metallic gauntlet, it held a tattered red scarf—Sarah's scarf, the one I had bought for her at a stall in Gikomba for her last birthday.
"Elias!" the suit's internal speakers boomed, the sound amplified by the buildings around us. The voice was mine, but layered with a thousand whispers of the damned. "The wage for your 'normal' life is paid in blood! Your $4 cannot buy her back! Come and claim your bride, or watch as we erase her soul from the tapestries of the Infinite!"
The other laborers scrambled back, crossing themselves and shouting about "majini" and "shaitan." But I didn't move. I stood at the very edge of the 4th-floor ledge, the wind whipping my dusty overalls around my legs. The 500 shillings in my pocket felt like a cruel joke. The dream of being a "normal guy" with a humble job and a wife was shattered.
I closed my eyes, breathing in the ozone. I reached deep into the Bio-Chemistry of my own cells, past the exhaustion and the hunger, looking for the Negative Tachyon catalyst I had hidden in the very marrow of my bones. I felt the darkness stir. It was hungry. It was waiting for me to say the word.
"You want your avatar?" I whispered, my voice turning cold and hard as the concrete under my feet. "Then you'd better pray you can handle the man behind the mask. Because I'm not running for hope anymore. I'm running for her."
I stepped off the ledge.
I didn't fall. For a split second, the laws of gravity in Nairobi ceased to exist. A explosion of violet lightning shattered the scaffolding behind me as I accelerated toward the ground, the "Evil X" energy finally reclaiming its host.