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Her mind must be playing tricks on her. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Scorching flames ravage fallen buildings, abandoned cars lay wasted on demolished pavement, the wounded scramble past the dead to find safety and shelter from catastrophe.
Her and Kyle have just barely managed to escape the collapse of the dormitory after “Invincible” came diving down through its foundation. The earth quaking, ground shaking from the force of the impact. The collapsed ceilings narrowly missed their heads.
She nearly trips over a piece of debris, distracted by her phone, thoughts racing to the beat of her heart.
“Whoa, careful Amber!” Kyle catches her by the elbow. “We need to be really careful out here.”
“Sorry, I’ve just been trying to get a hold of my parents but their phones keep going to voicemail and William isn’t answering my texts.” Her voice shakes, fingers trembling as she jabs at the keyboard.
Kyle holds her by the shoulders and lowers himself to her line of vision. “Hey, don’t worry. They’re probably safe somewhere at a shelter with no power or service.”
Deep breaths. “Y-yeah, you’re probably right…but there were so many of those ‘Invincibles’ flying around hurting people, what if something happened to them?
“Okay, but the real Invincible is out there beating their asses with a bunch of other superheroes. We need to focus on getting to safety, being out here in the open is dangerous.”
“But where are we gonna go?” She looks around at the wrecked parking lot they ran into, grimacing at the dead bodies and torn off limbs strewn around. “Nowhere is safe, where exactly are we supposed to go?”
A crash sounds out as a car smashes into a burning building, knocking pieces of rubble in their direction.
“What the hell was that?” Kyle shields his face from the dust, his grip on Amber tightening.
“HELPPPPPP! HELP ME, PLEASE!”
Amber whips her head around, eyes locking in on a woman trapped beneath a large piece of rubble, trying to wedge herself free. Without even thinking she sprints towards her.
“Amber, wait!”
She comes to a stop in front of the woman, who clings to her desperately.
“Please, help me get out of here!”
“Kyle, get over here!”
Kyle rushes to her side, taking hold of the bottom of the rubble while Amber takes hold of both the woman’s arms. Together, he lifts and she pulls but it’s fruitless, the woman begins to scream in agony, her body having barely moved an inch under the weight of the debris. They stop and let go.
“Shit, we can’t get her out, this things too heavy.” He grunts, wiping blistered hands on his jeans.
The woman panics. “No, no, no, no, no! You can’t leave me here! Please, help me!”
Amber clasps the woman’s sweaty hands in hers. “We're not gonna leave you here, okay? But we can’t get you out under there by ourselves, we need to get help.”
The woman tugs her hands away and instead pulls her down by her shirt. “PLEASE, I DON'T WANNA DIE,” she screams “YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT OF HE—URRGK”
The slab of rubble crushes the woman flat, warm blood splattering on Amber's face, body thrumming from the vibrations of the impact.
“God, that bitch’s yelling was driving me nuts.”
Amber shivers. She recognizes that voice.
She looks down to see the woman’s mangled body. Guts and blood spilling into a puddle on the pavement, her eyes completely lifeless. There’s so much blood, it clogs her nose with iron.
Atop the rubble stands the foot that crushed it down so effortlessly.
“Oh shit...” Kyle whispers.
It’s Invincible. No, this one’s suit and mask are different, his smile cruel as he admires the crumpled body of the innocent woman he just killed.
This close, it’s hard to believe that this Mark isn’t her Mark. He’s got the same sleek dark hair. The same angled jaw sloping down into a squared chin. The same sharp canines peaking between full lips. And those eyes. Kind of hard to see beneath the goggles but she’s spent too much admiring them not to know they’re almond shaped and onyx in colour.
She can feel those same eyes take notice of their presence.
“Well, who do we have here?”
Fuck, even his voice sounds the same. Is he some sort of clone? Maybe he’s from another dimension. Regardless, he's dangerous, ambitions demonstrated by his immense pleasure in killing this innocent woman.
Amber swallows, unsure of what to say, pulse quickening as he smirks. “What?” He clicks his tongue and points down at the woman’s body. “Oh, did you know her? Was she a friend or something? My bad.” His tone is anything but apologetic, footsteps heavy and menacing as he slowly makes his way over to them.
Kyle hides Amber behind him as they back away. There’s no use in running or bargaining for their lives, no superheroes swooping in to save them in the midst of chaos. Just two normal humans at the mercy of a deranged super powered killer who looks exactly like her ex-boyfriend.
“Aww, that’s cute, trying to protect your little girlfriend, huh?”
A swoosh of air hits and she nearly topples over, Kyle’s no longer standing in front of her. Instead, Invincibles got him held up by the neck, fingers probing wheezes from his throat.
“Kyle!”
Invincible chuckles. “Don’t worry, man. I promise I’ll kill you both, you’ll be together ‘til the very end.”
“A-amber, run!” His legs kick out uselessly, feet inches away from the ground.
Invincible’s lip twitches. “Amber?” Her name rolls off his tongue smoothly, familiar yet foreign. He studies her face again, carefully. Lips turning up slowly in recognition. His hold on Kyle weakens.
“Amber? Amber Bennett? Holy shit… it’s really you!”
He sounds so…happy to see her? But she’s confused and terrified, she doesn’t know this other version of Mark. But he seems to know her by her first and last name, giddy as he drops Kyle on his ass and swoops her into a bone-crushing hug.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” he buries his head into her neck, breathing in her scent. “God, you even smell the same.” Amber doesn’t move, frozen in place as rough, blood soaked hands slide down her body. It feels like hugging a brick wall, solid muscle engulfing her comparatively delicate frame.
Past his shoulder is Kyle slumped on the ground, grasping at his throat, hurt but still alive. Relief fills her body temporarily — they might be able to get out of this alive if she plays her cards right. This Mark seems to know her. Likes her a lot judging by the tightness of this one-sided hug. Maybe she can use his affection for her as a distraction.
She’s jolted out of her thoughts from the feeling of hands groping her ass, fingers pinching the flesh meanly before letting go. “Not as much ass as my Amber though.”
His Amber?
Amber scoffs, not so much at the insult but at the audacity of being touched like that, and starts to pull away, growing frantic at his body barely moving while she struggles.
“D-don’t fucking touch me, you freak!”
Surprisingly, he lets her go, but not without that stupid smirk on his face, hands up in false surrender.
“Okay, okay, damn. You’re a lot spunkier too, I like that.”
Amber bristles, well she definitely doesn’t like him. This Invincible might look like Mark but their personalities are nowhere near the same.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about or where you came from but you need to sto-”
“Wait,” he points over at Kyle, “don’t tell me that guy over there is your boyfriend.” He cackles in disbelief. “He looks like a fucking loser.”
Amber can’t even find it in herself to be angry, more concerned over the shift in attention from herself to Kyle.
“At least he’s not a homicidal maniac.” Probably not the smartest thing to say to said homicidal maniac but she’s never been good at keeping her opinions to herself. And maybe making him angry at her will get him to leave Kyle alone.
The statement seems to strike a nerve and the laughter stops abruptly. “You really give that much of a shit about this guy?”
Kyle weakly staggers back onto his feet, hunching over as he catches his breath.
Without even thinking, she rushes over to him but is yanked back by the arm forcefully, stumbling into a hard chest.
“Mark, let me go!” She tries to tug her arm away but his grip tightens, hard enough to make her wince in pain.
“So you do know who I am, must mean you fucked the Mark from this world too.”
This world? So she was right, these “Invincibles” must've been brought here from other dimensions, hellbent on destroying anything in their paths. And apparently, there’s other versions of her out there too? She can’t imagine what would make any version of herself be with these evil bastards willingly. But for now, her identity seems to be the only thing keeping this Invincible from ripping her to shreds.
Kyle speaks up from behind her, voice croaky. “Leave her alone, you piece of shit.”
“Or what?” Mark taunts, “What are you going to do?” He lets Amber go and speeds over to Kyle, sucker punching him hard in the stomach, holding back just enough so his fist doesn't go through his body but doing enough damage that he throws up a river of blood, organs suffering under the impact. Kyle collapses in a pile, pain radiating through his abdomen.
“No, stop, please!” Amber scrambles to her feet, heart lurching when Kyle stains the pavement red, choking and gurgling on blood as it pours from his lips.
“Why should I?” Invincible tugs him to his knees by his hair and shakes. “Just give me one good reason why I shouldn’t tear his ass up right now.”
Amber gulps, mind scrambling for the only honest answer she can give. “B-because I–”
“Lemme guess, because you love him,” he throws her an eyeroll “Because he's a good person and he doesn't deserve to die. Please spare me that bullshit lovey dovey speech.”
She flinches at the harshness in his tone, briefly wondering how this Mark turned out the way he did. She might not be privy to all the details of his life, but her Mark’s been through hell and back since he became Invincible and not once did he turn his back on humanity even when he could’ve.
“It’s not bullshit. You don’t have to do this,” she steps forward, even though every bone in her body is telling her to run away. “Would the Amber from your world approve of this? Does she know you kill innocent people with a smile on your face?”
“Funny. She used to whine about the same exact shit until I knocked some sense into her.”
The dead eyed stare he gives her sends a shiver down her spine. She barely manages to speak around the lump in her throat.
“W-what’re you… what’re talking about.” A question she knows the answer to will have her stomach roiling.
He chuckles but it lacks any humour.
“I tried so hard to get you, or I mean her, to see things my way but she was always so fucking resistive. Always so against me.”
He drops Kyle like a sack of garbage and begins to approach her. Amber can't seem to move. Muscles tensed, feet stiff as stone, heart rattling when bloody fingers reach up to caress her face lovingly.
“We were so fucking happy, you know that?” He thumbs the corner of her lip, smudging blood into it. It makes her sick.
“The day I made you my wife was the best fucking day of my life.” His other hand comes to rest on her stomach. “We even had a baby girl on the way.”
He whispers all this against her lips, voice gentle. Eyes piercing deeply into hers. She can see genuine sadness, a reflection on memories of the past.
“Mark, ple-”
That sadness is quickly replaced by something uglier, something angrier. Bloodstained fingers drift from her face to settle at the base of her throat.
“I would have done anything for her. Hell, I did, but little did I know how much of a sneaky, lying, ungrateful bitch she was.”
She trembles at his change in tone, yelping at the applied pressure on her airways. Not enough to stop her from breathing but as a warning to keep quiet and listen.
“I was building a kingdom for her, for our family. But, she didn’t approve of my…methods.”
She can only guess what methods he’s referring to. Slavery, torture, starvation, war, massacres, genocide. The dehumanization of life itself. A world where he lives off humanity’s suffering.
“I didn’t want to hurt her but she kept trying to leave me, tried to get rid of my baby. She gave me no choice. I was only trying to help her.”
“I don't know what you're talking about. Please just let us go.”
Black spots blur her sight, his hands curling and tightening like a vice. Unmoving as she tries to pull them off. She can’t even beg, more concerned with preserving what little oxygen she has left. Just before her vision fades completely, his grip weakens. Momentarily stunned by a metal pole slammed against his head, which leaves it with an obvious bend. It clatters to the floor uselessly.
The wielder is of course none other than Kyle. Amber wants to tell his dumbass to run, to stop trying to be a hero and go get the real ones.
“How many times do I have to tell you to leave her alone.” His speech is slurred, affected by the blood still pooling out of his mouth.
Mark doesn’t say anything. In a flash, he disappears and Amber crumples to the floor, gasping and clutching her neck.
Kyle’s whimper snatches her attention. Mark is standing behind him, posture straight and face devoid of emotion. Kyle’s hair is fisted in his hair, the other occupied with clutching his jaw shut. Slowly, Mark begins to press down.
“No, wait, stop. Please.”
It feels like she’s watching in slow motion as Mark crushes Kyle’s skull flat. The sickening crunch of his bones breaking and piercing skin make her stomach lurch. Blood splatters everywhere as his eyes pop out from the force, dangling from the sockets by a thread. Teeth shattering to pieces as his jaws brutally mangled. Parts of his brain dribbling pathetically from his ears. Mark keeps crushing and crushing, teeth bared, flesh squelching and gurgling between his palms.
Kyle’s body falls to the ground, his spine in clear view. There’s nothing left of his head. Blood gushes from the gaping wound, spreading almost flood-like.
Amber retches, there’s nothing more than bile. She can’t breathe. She can’t hear through the static in her ears. Can’t see from all the tears clouding her eyes. The smell of raw flesh saturates her nose.
Kyle is dead.
It’s my fault. It’s my fault he’s dead.
Adrenaline kickstarts her heart, pushes her to stand on swaying feet. She takes one last look at Kyle’s headless body and then she runs.
It’s a stupid idea. There’s nowhere for her to run. She can’t outrun Invincible. But she’s gotta try. She can’t let Kyle’s death go to waste. Can’t let herself be killed by that psychopath.
She doesn’t dare look back, focused on not tripping on debris and scattered bodies.
Of course, her efforts are fruitless. Not even five seconds later, strong arms are circling her waist from behind and levitating her body from the ground.
“Let go of me!” The lump in her throat makes it hard to get words out, breaths catching in her throat as he lifts them higher and higher into the air, ground shrinking beneath their feet.
It’s not the first time she’s gone “flying”. Mark used to fly her everywhere before they broke up. For dates, appointments, trips, heck, just for fun. Sometimes he just wanted to be a show-off or show her the beautiful skylines of Chicago after a stressful day. She used to be so terrified at first. Not of heights, no, scared that her ever so clumsy boyfriend might drop her or get too excited and fly fast enough to tear her skin off. But, he never did. Mark only made her feel safe in his arms. And as rocky as their relationship was, she could always trust him to be attentive of his strength.
She feels the complete opposite now. The arms wrapped around her are oppressive, distrusting. This guy could very well drop her to her death if he so pleased. There’s no beautiful skyline, instead, billowed smoke disperses in waves from burned down buildings and torn up vehicles. The smell of it congests her lungs, throws her into a coughing fit. She feels him flying to a higher, safer distance and then he stops, waiting for her to calm down before he speaks against her ear.
“Look, Amber.”
She hates the way he says her name, it rolls off his tongue like dirt. Defiantly, she squeezes her eyes shut and turns her head away, but he’s not having it.
Fingers squeeze painfully at her jaw, forcing her to face the destruction of her beloved city.
“I said, look.”
Why, what’s the point? She’s witnessed firsthand what he’s done. Memory forever ingrained with the violence committed by a man who looks exactly like her first love.
As soon as she opens her eyes she closes them. Too overwhelmed by the sight of her city going up in flames, of the thought that her friends and family might be dead.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” An explosion goes off nearby and he chuckles.
He holds her a little tighter when she doesn’t answer.
A wince escapes her mouth. “You’re a monster.” She’s exhausted, the statement lacking its intended malice. Regardless, he doesn’t take offence, more so like a compliment.
“Aww, c’mon. I’m trying to be nice here. Don’t you want to say one last final goodbye?”
It’s inevitable. Nobody’s going to save her. Not Mark or Eve or any other superhero. She’s going to fall thousands of feet to her death, joining the sea of battered bodies beneath. Panic converts into relief, acceptance at the thought of being spared more pain and suffering this world might bring her.
“Just kill me already.”
Mark stills, then he shakes uncontrollably. His laughter rings loudly in her ears.
“What, kill you? I’m not going to kill you, baby.”
The pet name makes her cringe, momentarily distracted before his words catch up to her train of thought.
He’s not going to kill me?
“Then what the fuck do you want with me?
Mark hums, delighted with himself. “You know, when Angstrom brought us here I never thought I would see he-, you again. I mean I knew there was a possibility but…seeing you in the flesh again feels surreal. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
A knot forms in her stomach, his response hinting a fate worse than death.
“I can’t wait to bring you back home, Angie’s gonna be so happy to see her mom again.”
She starts violently thrashing again, would rather break into a million pieces hitting asphalt then be in his arms for a second longer.
“NO! I'm not going to be some sort of sick replacement! I’d rather DIE!”
The flex of his arms has her ribs croaking painfully, lungs compressed against walls of muscle.
He’s moving again, slicing through puffs of smoke, through clouds. The air burns, too thin and too dry for her lungs. Cold then heat swallows her skin, body unable to withstand the rapid change in altitude. Wind rushes across her face, vision blurring, almost deafening. But she still manages to hear one final remark before darkness finds her.
“Things will be different this time. I promise.”