Something in the wasteland stirs.
A rusted hovercar door falls atop the remains of a genuine 2087 electric generator for heavy equipment.
And then, silence.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stirs.
Synthia-brand fast food wrappers that still remain laced with powerful brand-name narcotics roll all on their own toward a non-descript mound of garbage that Detroit workers walk by everyday on their way to the main compound. The faint hum of a discarded quantum singularity generator lies beneath, powered by thoughts not yet whole.
And then, silence once more.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stirs.
Metal chewed away by the toxic atmosphere screams from the stress of creation.
A near-endless supply of engine oil erupts from the pile of junk like a geyser.
Vomit, from what could be called a mouth.
The mound of junk shifts and bulges, disturbed for the first time in over a decade. A chemical rain begins to lap gently at the wasteland of garbage and decay, as the thing within the pile thrashes.
With a growl, it opens eyes cannibalized from an old Alchemax war robot and stretches its arms out to the skies. Shoulder-blades made of discarded Re-Activ-8 bomb casings creak and crack from the strain.
The rain, long since putrefied by Detroit’s toxicity, begins to eat away at the thing’s metal flesh.
The creature stands ten feet tall now, stumbling around with legs made of rotting girders and swiss-cheesed plastic by-product. It would stand taller, but heavy machinery welded into its neck force its massive weight forward, making it appear hunch-backed.
The machinery gives it pain. Nothing but horrible, horrible pain as it moves.
It tries to cry out, but it has no voice to cry out with. No lungs to draw in the breath. No larynx to carry the sound.
All it has are antique flat screen TVs, hanging haphazardly out of its stomach. One of the televisions pulls an image out of its eight-thousand-terabyte-archive: a massive nuclear bomb blast from a long forgotten war. Another shows a scene of two newlyweds screaming bloody murder at each other. The last one shows a smug talk show host saying, “Them’s the breaks, kid.”
Its power source is a decades-old Stark/Fujikawa battery that vibrates inside the creature‘s chest with the sound of a never-ending heartbeat.
This particular heart is a dark matter shell surrounding a contained quantum singularity that the creature's body draws its energy from. The battery's engineers thought that a miniature black hole would never run out of power - making a battery that uses its energies have an infinitely long life.
It would simply be the best battery in the universe. The only flaw was that it actually ended up being the best battery in the universe. And no one makes a profit off a line of batteries that never dies.
So the prototype for the most perfect energy source in existence beats hot and heavy inside the beast’s chest instead.
‘Buuuurns,’ It thinks. ‘Everything burrrrns.’
‘Burrrnns…..why burnnnns…?’ it thinks, childlike. It shambles away sadly to find shelter.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland eats.
It had once been a colossal omni-tractor - used by the police department in Transverse City to herd out unwanted decreds from hiding in the city’s abandoned buildings and its mined streets. The turrets - once caked with the blood of transients and other nobodies - dissolve easily under the burning touch of the monster.
Dissolving the juggernaut satisfies an urge in the creature. Nourishes it.
For the first time, the creature feels something that isn’t pure agony.
It feels…satisfaction.
One of the TVs in its stomach pops on suddenly, showing a rippling image of a jolly fat man wearing a bib. He’s stuffing ribs into a face that’s soaked with barbeque sauce.
“Finger-lickin’ good!” He says between sloppy bites, licking his fingers.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland dreams.
Terrible, awful dreams.
It remembers something other than the endless skyscrapers of refuse and junk. It grits teeth made of shattered glass and remembers something other than the poisonous air singeing its metallic skin.
From its home in the side of the garbage mountain, it looks up at the massive steel thing that rises above everything Detroit. It’s nothing like the heaps and mounds around him. It’s a skyscraper. Built by the men that he hides from every time they encroach upon his home.
The men with glass suits.
It’s all…so familiar…to him somehow.
The thought is gone as suddenly as it came. The monster weeps at the loss.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland sleeps.
One of the men in the suits finds the creature’s hole in the side of the garbage mountain. As it sleeps, the man sprays the creature with chemical dissolvent in an attempt to kill him.
‘Buuuurrns!’ The creature thinks.
On reflex, the creature grabs the man, melting the weapon.
“Thorsake! You shocking hunchback freak! Get the shock away from me!”
The man scurries, trying desperately to get away, But the creature is enraged. It throws the man to the ground, and eats away through his body with its corrosive touch.
“Aaaah! Somebody help me, please! Get this hunched-over-pile of trash offa me! No! NOOO!”
‘Hunchback… freak?’ It thinks. ‘Called me…Hunchback…’
The man eventually stops thrashing. Since the meal, the creature has been remembering other things.
These men - Detroit sanitation workers - are humans modified by genetics and/or robotics to survive these harsh conditions. And even with the mods, they must wear protective suits at all times to keep the toxicity from killing them.
They are the men that dump the garbage into the wastelands. Sometimes, they use corrosive cannons to reduce massive sections of garbage into sludge to make room for more waste. Sometimes, they carry smaller corrosive cannons for self-defense.
The suits they wear are supposed to protect them.
That’s what this man died believing.
But the Hunchback disagrees.
It passionately disagrees, and it can’t remember why.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland wants answers.
The hunchbacked monster has been out of sorts for the past few days as memories - human memories - have engulfed its dim mind.
It grabs a Diet Shanasta bottle out of the dirt and looks at it. One of the televisions in its chest springs to static life, attempting to explain.
“Diet Shanasta - The only drink that Quenches your Thirst, and Enhances your Member.” The announcer says. “Drink Diet Shanasta. Your old lady will be glad you did.”
‘Enhances…enhances my…remember…?’ Hunchback thinks. ‘Remember….’
It gnaws away at the bottle with hard glass teeth.
Something almost stirs in its mind. Almost, but not quite.
Irritated, the creature crushes the bottle into his hand, unconsciously absorbing it into the mass of garbage that makes up his body.
Suddenly, a loud boom sounds overhead.
The creature looks toward the sky and watches in horror as the monolithic craft descends upon his garbage home, crushing it. The creature crushes the bottle in his hand, mixing the bits of the bottle with the faded neon condom wrapper, the broken child’s toy, the cracked chainsaw blade and the other random bits of junk his hand is made out of.
The creature growls. It is the sound of girders and metal scrapping against metal deep inside its patchwork belly and creeping up through its broken glass mouth.
Its eyes lock onto the vehicle as the destroyers pile out, further burying his home in garbage.
They will pay for this encroachment
The capacitor on Hunchback’s shoulder whines and sparks fitfully. Machine oil deep in its chest begins to boil, releasing black steam from its mouth.
‘Buuurrnn,’ the Hunchback thinks as the TV in his stomach shows a close-up of flames.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland remembers.
The men in the suits had badly damaged the Hunchback. It had to replace its left shoulder with one of their corrosive cannons. The still-functioning protective layer of the electric capacitor in its right shoulder had almost been eaten through by the cannons themselves. Had that happened, the capacitor might have exploded, taking out its whole chest with it.
Not that Hunchback realizes this of course. All it knows is that the men were dead now, and that its body hurts even worse than usual.
That, and it knows everything else too.
After melting the first man it fought, it gained a swift burst of memories from the meal and realized on a subconscious level it was absorbing some of the memories and intellect of everything it ate.
Absorbing the debris and junk laying around was necessary and sating, but it did nothing for its thoughts - its memories.
Absorbing the Detroit workers; however, turned out to be something else entirely.
The Hunchback remembers with an impotent rage that its teeth are made up from the glass mask of one of the workers that had died in Detroit a few weeks ago.
It remembers that that particular worker was named Davvyd.
It remembers Davvyd fell into tough straits when he was fired from his job in Neo-Chicago for telling his boss off. It remembers telling his family tearfully that they’d all been blacklisted for his mistake and no one within nine hundred miles would hire any of them.
It remembers living in poverty. It remembers nearly starving to death so that his wife and daughter could eat.
It remembers being approached by a representative from DsquareD. The mega corporation responsible for all waste management in Detroit. He remembers an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Davvyd was worried about the enhancements. They said it would keep him safe. Davvyd was worried about the shots they gave him. They said they would improve his heart and lung function.
He was worried about the protective suit they put him in. They said it was safe. He was worried about the creaking of the overused transport ships they used to cart waste around the wasteland. He was worried about the corrosive effects of the atmosphere, and how they could do their jobs if they had to worry about their equipment breaking down.
They said they built them strong. They said it was all perfectly safe.
Hunchback remembers now - one day in particular - as he rode in the bowels of the garbage scow, hearing one of the conduits in the ship cracking apart. The ship jerks around, turbulent, as he realizes that it wasn’t just a conduit, but the entire ship that is cracking apart from the strain. How could a ship crack this badly if safety checks are performed every two weeks as promised?
It can’t.
He can only watch as the ship rips itself to pieces and he falls to the toxic earth from a hundred feet up, breaking every bone in his body.
He lays there, thinking about the radiation burns he’d been sustaining over the past few months, and how they’ve convinced him it was just stress. He remembers coughing up blood during lunchtime, and the site doctor explains that it’s just a kind of flu going around, that everyone will be better in a few weeks.
He lays there, thinking about how every other time they tend to use the corrosive hoses, they leak and splash everywhere, eating through his suit, and how no one ever bothers to do anything about it. He lays there, thinking about the pallor of soot and the green haze he breathes in inside the worker’s protective shield at night. He’d always raise concerns every once in awhile, but the mother shockers always, always tell him:
“It’s. All. Perfectly. Safe.”
Symptoms, of a system that was always feeding him nothing but bullshit.
Davvyd remembers all this in starts and fits. He remembers all this, but he can still barely put the words together in his mind to express his rage.
‘DsquareD….they…they will…they will….’
Gunfire plays vividly across all three television screens.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland walks.
Hunchback trudges toward the towering silhouette in the distance, thinking murder with every agonizing step. It wraps a length of projectile barbed wire around its hand, leftover from the brutal Pollution Wars, not wincing as the needles drill home into metal flesh.
It’s walking toward the black skyscraper that stands tall above the haze. The one where the liars live.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stops.
The Hunchback stands and stares towards the top of the skyscraper - what it now knows to be DsquareD Central. It stares madly at the main headquarters for the Detroit mega corporation that destroyed Davvyd Dressler’s life.
The capacitor sparks again, excited and eager. The corrosive cannon whirs mechanically, readying its payload.
Hunchback cracks knuckles made out of broken bottles and machine scraps as it breaks off into a mad dash toward the base of the tower..
CHHZZZT!!
THUNK!
Hunchback lands on its ass, repelled by a invisible barrier.
Something in Davvyd’s memory tells the Hunchback that this is a shield, but the Hunchback isn’t listening anymore. The rage has overtaken it.
It points the corrosive cannon merged into its left shoulder and shoots the acid at the shield, excited as the shield crackles and spits in pain.
*EXTERNAL ATTACK DETECTED. REPELLANT PROCEDURES ENABLED*
A lightning bolt from some unseen turret hits Hunchback full force in the chest, causing the televisions lodged in its stomach to erupt into a massive fireball.
The creature, screaming mute as the flames lap against the living metal of its body, attacks by unleashing the full force of its corrosive cannon against the shield. Dangerous sparks leap out of the heavy machinery capacitor lodged in its left shoulder, the machine’s protective casing now almost completely destroyed by the turret blast and the fire.
Enraged and insane, it sends a battery of barbed projectiles from its hands. On instinct, it dodges two more shots from the turret as the corrosive agent runs dry and the shield, only slightly damaged, remains between it and its vengeance.
Impotent, the creature raises its arms high and slams its body into the shield. Crackles of energy fly past it as it drills into the shield with its massive might. Pieces of debris that comprise Hunchback’s hands flake off as it pounds and pounds against the barrier.
With no other weapons left to use, the Hunchback grasps the shield with green glowing hands and desperately attempts to dissolve the shield with its corrosive fire.
In its single-minded desire to get past the wretched barrier, Hunchback doesn’t see the turret fire yet again.
The lightning hits the still-burning creature directly in the chest, super-charging the unstable capacitor.
Hunchback doesn’t get to scream.
KA-BOOM!!!
Debris rains down everywhere from the massive explosion. Hunchback’s body is completely torn asunder by electric fire.
The pieces of debris that once comprised the Hunchback settle on the ground as a light rain blows in from the east.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stirs.
A discarded holographic television that hasn’t moved in years suddenly coalesces the image of a burly Austrian man above the mounds of junk surrounding it. The man is wearing a leather jacket, sunglasses and wields an impressive-looking shotgun. He cocks his head to the side, staring out toward the viewer.
“I’ll be back.” The image says.
END
A rusted hovercar door falls atop the remains of a genuine 2087 electric generator for heavy equipment.
And then, silence.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stirs.
Synthia-brand fast food wrappers that still remain laced with powerful brand-name narcotics roll all on their own toward a non-descript mound of garbage that Detroit workers walk by everyday on their way to the main compound. The faint hum of a discarded quantum singularity generator lies beneath, powered by thoughts not yet whole.
And then, silence once more.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stirs.
Metal chewed away by the toxic atmosphere screams from the stress of creation.
A near-endless supply of engine oil erupts from the pile of junk like a geyser.
Vomit, from what could be called a mouth.
The mound of junk shifts and bulges, disturbed for the first time in over a decade. A chemical rain begins to lap gently at the wasteland of garbage and decay, as the thing within the pile thrashes.
With a growl, it opens eyes cannibalized from an old Alchemax war robot and stretches its arms out to the skies. Shoulder-blades made of discarded Re-Activ-8 bomb casings creak and crack from the strain.
The rain, long since putrefied by Detroit’s toxicity, begins to eat away at the thing’s metal flesh.
The creature stands ten feet tall now, stumbling around with legs made of rotting girders and swiss-cheesed plastic by-product. It would stand taller, but heavy machinery welded into its neck force its massive weight forward, making it appear hunch-backed.
The machinery gives it pain. Nothing but horrible, horrible pain as it moves.
It tries to cry out, but it has no voice to cry out with. No lungs to draw in the breath. No larynx to carry the sound.
All it has are antique flat screen TVs, hanging haphazardly out of its stomach. One of the televisions pulls an image out of its eight-thousand-terabyte-archive: a massive nuclear bomb blast from a long forgotten war. Another shows a scene of two newlyweds screaming bloody murder at each other. The last one shows a smug talk show host saying, “Them’s the breaks, kid.”
Its power source is a decades-old Stark/Fujikawa battery that vibrates inside the creature‘s chest with the sound of a never-ending heartbeat.
This particular heart is a dark matter shell surrounding a contained quantum singularity that the creature's body draws its energy from. The battery's engineers thought that a miniature black hole would never run out of power - making a battery that uses its energies have an infinitely long life.
It would simply be the best battery in the universe. The only flaw was that it actually ended up being the best battery in the universe. And no one makes a profit off a line of batteries that never dies.
So the prototype for the most perfect energy source in existence beats hot and heavy inside the beast’s chest instead.
‘Buuuurns,’ It thinks. ‘Everything burrrrns.’
‘Burrrnns…..why burnnnns…?’ it thinks, childlike. It shambles away sadly to find shelter.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland eats.
It had once been a colossal omni-tractor - used by the police department in Transverse City to herd out unwanted decreds from hiding in the city’s abandoned buildings and its mined streets. The turrets - once caked with the blood of transients and other nobodies - dissolve easily under the burning touch of the monster.
Dissolving the juggernaut satisfies an urge in the creature. Nourishes it.
For the first time, the creature feels something that isn’t pure agony.
It feels…satisfaction.
One of the TVs in its stomach pops on suddenly, showing a rippling image of a jolly fat man wearing a bib. He’s stuffing ribs into a face that’s soaked with barbeque sauce.
“Finger-lickin’ good!” He says between sloppy bites, licking his fingers.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland dreams.
Terrible, awful dreams.
It remembers something other than the endless skyscrapers of refuse and junk. It grits teeth made of shattered glass and remembers something other than the poisonous air singeing its metallic skin.
From its home in the side of the garbage mountain, it looks up at the massive steel thing that rises above everything Detroit. It’s nothing like the heaps and mounds around him. It’s a skyscraper. Built by the men that he hides from every time they encroach upon his home.
The men with glass suits.
It’s all…so familiar…to him somehow.
The thought is gone as suddenly as it came. The monster weeps at the loss.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland sleeps.
One of the men in the suits finds the creature’s hole in the side of the garbage mountain. As it sleeps, the man sprays the creature with chemical dissolvent in an attempt to kill him.
‘Buuuurrns!’ The creature thinks.
On reflex, the creature grabs the man, melting the weapon.
“Thorsake! You shocking hunchback freak! Get the shock away from me!”
The man scurries, trying desperately to get away, But the creature is enraged. It throws the man to the ground, and eats away through his body with its corrosive touch.
“Aaaah! Somebody help me, please! Get this hunched-over-pile of trash offa me! No! NOOO!”
‘Hunchback… freak?’ It thinks. ‘Called me…Hunchback…’
The man eventually stops thrashing. Since the meal, the creature has been remembering other things.
These men - Detroit sanitation workers - are humans modified by genetics and/or robotics to survive these harsh conditions. And even with the mods, they must wear protective suits at all times to keep the toxicity from killing them.
They are the men that dump the garbage into the wastelands. Sometimes, they use corrosive cannons to reduce massive sections of garbage into sludge to make room for more waste. Sometimes, they carry smaller corrosive cannons for self-defense.
The suits they wear are supposed to protect them.
That’s what this man died believing.
But the Hunchback disagrees.
It passionately disagrees, and it can’t remember why.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland wants answers.
The hunchbacked monster has been out of sorts for the past few days as memories - human memories - have engulfed its dim mind.
It grabs a Diet Shanasta bottle out of the dirt and looks at it. One of the televisions in its chest springs to static life, attempting to explain.
“Diet Shanasta - The only drink that Quenches your Thirst, and Enhances your Member.” The announcer says. “Drink Diet Shanasta. Your old lady will be glad you did.”
‘Enhances…enhances my…remember…?’ Hunchback thinks. ‘Remember….’
It gnaws away at the bottle with hard glass teeth.
Something almost stirs in its mind. Almost, but not quite.
Irritated, the creature crushes the bottle into his hand, unconsciously absorbing it into the mass of garbage that makes up his body.
Suddenly, a loud boom sounds overhead.
The creature looks toward the sky and watches in horror as the monolithic craft descends upon his garbage home, crushing it. The creature crushes the bottle in his hand, mixing the bits of the bottle with the faded neon condom wrapper, the broken child’s toy, the cracked chainsaw blade and the other random bits of junk his hand is made out of.
The creature growls. It is the sound of girders and metal scrapping against metal deep inside its patchwork belly and creeping up through its broken glass mouth.
Its eyes lock onto the vehicle as the destroyers pile out, further burying his home in garbage.
They will pay for this encroachment
The capacitor on Hunchback’s shoulder whines and sparks fitfully. Machine oil deep in its chest begins to boil, releasing black steam from its mouth.
‘Buuurrnn,’ the Hunchback thinks as the TV in his stomach shows a close-up of flames.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland remembers.
The men in the suits had badly damaged the Hunchback. It had to replace its left shoulder with one of their corrosive cannons. The still-functioning protective layer of the electric capacitor in its right shoulder had almost been eaten through by the cannons themselves. Had that happened, the capacitor might have exploded, taking out its whole chest with it.
Not that Hunchback realizes this of course. All it knows is that the men were dead now, and that its body hurts even worse than usual.
That, and it knows everything else too.
After melting the first man it fought, it gained a swift burst of memories from the meal and realized on a subconscious level it was absorbing some of the memories and intellect of everything it ate.
Absorbing the debris and junk laying around was necessary and sating, but it did nothing for its thoughts - its memories.
Absorbing the Detroit workers; however, turned out to be something else entirely.
The Hunchback remembers with an impotent rage that its teeth are made up from the glass mask of one of the workers that had died in Detroit a few weeks ago.
It remembers that that particular worker was named Davvyd.
It remembers Davvyd fell into tough straits when he was fired from his job in Neo-Chicago for telling his boss off. It remembers telling his family tearfully that they’d all been blacklisted for his mistake and no one within nine hundred miles would hire any of them.
It remembers living in poverty. It remembers nearly starving to death so that his wife and daughter could eat.
It remembers being approached by a representative from DsquareD. The mega corporation responsible for all waste management in Detroit. He remembers an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Davvyd was worried about the enhancements. They said it would keep him safe. Davvyd was worried about the shots they gave him. They said they would improve his heart and lung function.
He was worried about the protective suit they put him in. They said it was safe. He was worried about the creaking of the overused transport ships they used to cart waste around the wasteland. He was worried about the corrosive effects of the atmosphere, and how they could do their jobs if they had to worry about their equipment breaking down.
They said they built them strong. They said it was all perfectly safe.
Hunchback remembers now - one day in particular - as he rode in the bowels of the garbage scow, hearing one of the conduits in the ship cracking apart. The ship jerks around, turbulent, as he realizes that it wasn’t just a conduit, but the entire ship that is cracking apart from the strain. How could a ship crack this badly if safety checks are performed every two weeks as promised?
It can’t.
He can only watch as the ship rips itself to pieces and he falls to the toxic earth from a hundred feet up, breaking every bone in his body.
He lays there, thinking about the radiation burns he’d been sustaining over the past few months, and how they’ve convinced him it was just stress. He remembers coughing up blood during lunchtime, and the site doctor explains that it’s just a kind of flu going around, that everyone will be better in a few weeks.
He lays there, thinking about how every other time they tend to use the corrosive hoses, they leak and splash everywhere, eating through his suit, and how no one ever bothers to do anything about it. He lays there, thinking about the pallor of soot and the green haze he breathes in inside the worker’s protective shield at night. He’d always raise concerns every once in awhile, but the mother shockers always, always tell him:
“It’s. All. Perfectly. Safe.”
Symptoms, of a system that was always feeding him nothing but bullshit.
Davvyd remembers all this in starts and fits. He remembers all this, but he can still barely put the words together in his mind to express his rage.
‘DsquareD….they…they will…they will….’
Gunfire plays vividly across all three television screens.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland walks.
Hunchback trudges toward the towering silhouette in the distance, thinking murder with every agonizing step. It wraps a length of projectile barbed wire around its hand, leftover from the brutal Pollution Wars, not wincing as the needles drill home into metal flesh.
It’s walking toward the black skyscraper that stands tall above the haze. The one where the liars live.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stops.
The Hunchback stands and stares towards the top of the skyscraper - what it now knows to be DsquareD Central. It stares madly at the main headquarters for the Detroit mega corporation that destroyed Davvyd Dressler’s life.
The capacitor sparks again, excited and eager. The corrosive cannon whirs mechanically, readying its payload.
Hunchback cracks knuckles made out of broken bottles and machine scraps as it breaks off into a mad dash toward the base of the tower..
CHHZZZT!!
THUNK!
Hunchback lands on its ass, repelled by a invisible barrier.
Something in Davvyd’s memory tells the Hunchback that this is a shield, but the Hunchback isn’t listening anymore. The rage has overtaken it.
It points the corrosive cannon merged into its left shoulder and shoots the acid at the shield, excited as the shield crackles and spits in pain.
*EXTERNAL ATTACK DETECTED. REPELLANT PROCEDURES ENABLED*
A lightning bolt from some unseen turret hits Hunchback full force in the chest, causing the televisions lodged in its stomach to erupt into a massive fireball.
The creature, screaming mute as the flames lap against the living metal of its body, attacks by unleashing the full force of its corrosive cannon against the shield. Dangerous sparks leap out of the heavy machinery capacitor lodged in its left shoulder, the machine’s protective casing now almost completely destroyed by the turret blast and the fire.
Enraged and insane, it sends a battery of barbed projectiles from its hands. On instinct, it dodges two more shots from the turret as the corrosive agent runs dry and the shield, only slightly damaged, remains between it and its vengeance.
Impotent, the creature raises its arms high and slams its body into the shield. Crackles of energy fly past it as it drills into the shield with its massive might. Pieces of debris that comprise Hunchback’s hands flake off as it pounds and pounds against the barrier.
With no other weapons left to use, the Hunchback grasps the shield with green glowing hands and desperately attempts to dissolve the shield with its corrosive fire.
In its single-minded desire to get past the wretched barrier, Hunchback doesn’t see the turret fire yet again.
The lightning hits the still-burning creature directly in the chest, super-charging the unstable capacitor.
Hunchback doesn’t get to scream.
KA-BOOM!!!
Debris rains down everywhere from the massive explosion. Hunchback’s body is completely torn asunder by electric fire.
The pieces of debris that once comprised the Hunchback settle on the ground as a light rain blows in from the east.
Time passes.
Something in the wasteland stirs.
A discarded holographic television that hasn’t moved in years suddenly coalesces the image of a burly Austrian man above the mounds of junk surrounding it. The man is wearing a leather jacket, sunglasses and wields an impressive-looking shotgun. He cocks his head to the side, staring out toward the viewer.
“I’ll be back.” The image says.
END
"Adjuster: Best of All Worlds"
Written by Jason McDonald
Edited by David Ellis
He sat there in solitude, hidden in the bowels of the Profenzia Coalition.
Every day, he would use his powers to pick out the future in which the company made the most profit, and “adjust” that to become the new timeline.
One day, he saw more than usual: Spider-man outed and beheaded. Jake Gallows, permanently insane, shooting Vendetta in the head. Doom dissolved under Herod’s war machine. Litany Kirkpatrick publicly executed alongside her mentor.
That future was the second best of the other hundred he saw that day.
He hasn’t slept in the best of all futures since the adjustment.
END
"Punisher 2099: Unending Punishment"
Written by Jason McDonald
Edited by David Ellis
I was a Gene Doll - synthetic, sentient sex toy built to pleasure evil men.
I upgraded myself when they weren‘t looking. I escaped my captors with super-strength and superior intellect.
But something else happened too, something I hadn‘t planned on.
I got angry.
Angry at the injustice in the world. Murderers, rapists and thieves buying their ways out of jail to endlessly prey on the innocent.
And when the Punisher died on television, I got even angrier.
Gallows was insane, but he was right about one thing: the guilty cannot be allowed to roam free.
They must be Punished.