2 Unexpected Surprise

In the year 1950, after two neutron stars collided not far from our solar system, an explosion of great scale was caused, producing a gamma-ray burst that struck the Earth directly. However, instead of creating a great deal of damage that would have ended all life, the ray that lasted for a few minutes emitted gamma radiation that changed something in our DNA and made us evolve in a way we never expected.

The entire world had superpowers. The entire human species had all become a superhuman society. You'd think that famine, poverty, conquest, war, and everything that made us humans greedy and malicious would disappear with these great powers. Unfortunately, the opposite happened.

The world was thrown into chaos, greater than any other time in human history. War, death, violence, and disorder became something that people had to live with after World War 3 broke out due to great political issues.

That's when Gamma and a few of his allies stepped up to fix the greatest mess in human history. Their accomplishments were something that had people in awe as hope slightly started to return back to them. They were called 'Heroes,' the true meaning of justice, safety, and hope to the entire world.

Twelve years ago, Gamma wanted to clean the world from superpowers, which are the cause of this great chaos. Thus, he used his power to try and absorb the radiation of the entire world, which, unfortunately, led to his death after absorbing 40% of all radiation on Earth. Leaving 60% of the world's population with superpowers. His death is something that people still mourn to this day in the year 2000.

Well, unfortunately, I was one of that 40 % of the world that didn't have any superpower. My inferiority complex and the disappointment towards myself are immeasurable. There isn't a single day where I don't ask "What did I do for this to happen to me?" Always digging my head into my pillow and having an existential crisis while thinking about anything I might have done wrong in my life. I would have taken the easier route in life and just ended it, but my family's support was something that made me completely forget about it. I am who I am because of them.

Which led to me having an average everything in life. Especially my school life.

My school day was like any other day, boring to the end. Classes, talking with friends, crushing on a girl that is out of my league, and most importantly, being yelled at by teachers while I sleep in the classroom. I wasn't a good student, but a smart one.

After a boring school day, I walked back home on my own. My house was the farthest from school, so I had to walk alone quite a distance. Upon reaching my home that was located on the outskirts of the town, I saw a black sedan parked right in front of it. I was happy to see it because it was the car that my dad used to get back home with.

As soon as I walked up to the door and placed my hand on the door handle, I was paralyzed. An overwhelming feeling of fear froze me in my spot. I felt like collapsing to the ground and vomiting my entire breakfast and lunch, but I regained my composure before I fell. I took a deep breath, just for a strong stench of iron to assault my nose. I have never experienced something like this, what was going on?

I tried once again to regain my composure and used all of my might to open the front door.

What I saw...was...undescribable...

My older brother, Katsu, had his back to the wall. His right arm was torn off and his chest was penetrated by many bullet holes that were spread about his torso. He was pinned to the wall by a machete that stabbed through him and reached the wall. His hanging body was soaked in blood.

My older sister, Aiko, was in two pieces. Her upper body was lying down on the floor in front of Katsu, mutilated from the immense amount of slashes. Meanwhile, her lower body was lying down on the stairs. She was soaked in her blood as her guts scattered about the floor.

My younger sister, Hina, was lying down right in front of me in a pool of blood. She was carrying her rabbit plushie that was previously as white as snow, which is now as red as blood.

"Br...Brot...Brother..." Hina called out to me, her voice hoarse as she spoke in whispers, trying her best to try and reach my leg and grab it.

Hina looked up towards me before her body went limp. Her eyes were locked onto mine as she went lifeless.

Each one of their faces had a look that haunted me, it was a look of pure hopelessness and despair.

At this moment, my mind went blank as I shifted my stare from the corpses of what had once been my family, to the one that's still alive. My father. His once silky black hair is now bathed in crimson blood.

His darkening eyes pleaded for my forgiveness, as his mangled mouth struggled to produce any sound. By shifting my focus down on his body, I saw his guts splattered on the ground as he struggled to block the never-ending fountain of blood that continuously spilled on the ground. He gave me one last look before saying...

"F-Forgive me... So-" I couldn't even hear his last words before someone pulled the trigger of the gun that suddenly found itself on the back of his head.

The bullet pierced his skull and revealed his brain matter, to which I could only lower my eyes, seeing the fallen dead body of my father hit the ground, lifeless. My entire vision went red, I don't know if it was from the blood I'm seeing everywhere, or if it is from the ultimate level of despair and rage that assaulted my will, my soul, and my heart.

A man wearing a black coat suddenly came out from the kitchen, carrying my mother's decapitated head in his right hand. I couldn't see his face, but I'm certain he's giving me a simple smile. A gut-wrenching grin that didn't hold anything out of the ordinary, yet... Just seeing his smile alone filled my spine with chills.

"That was an amazing fight. I'm sorry you missed such an exciting family feud. I wish it didn't end that quickly." He said as he threw my mother's severed head right in front of me, still holding the same smile on his face.

With tears coming down like a waterfall, I dashed towards the man with all my might and anger, only to get shot in my right side by another man wearing a blue scarf as he was sitting in the living room.

"Calm down kid." He expressionlessly said while lowering his pistol.

"Okey dokey, fun time's over! Do what you do best, Akuishi." Spoke the man in the black coat.

Suddenly, I felt a pair of heavy footsteps walking towards me, followed up by a light touch on my shoulder. Suddenly, the bullet hole I had in my side disappeared with the pain that accompanied it.

"He is all fixed up, Katsuri." The man wearing an expressionless full white mask, seemingly Akuishi, confirmed after treating my wound.

"Alrighty, let's get going!" Kasturi cheerfully replied after releasing an insane laugh.

The man with the black coat picked me up on his shoulders as I saw my family's last moments. All of them had a look of despair, rage, disbelief, and most importantly, a look of sorrow and sadness as if they were pitying me, who had a worse fate than all of them combined. My life...has been ruined.

------

I woke up while being dragged by two people that were wearing black tactical uniforms and were carrying military rifles. They dragged me across a long hallway, and at the end of it was a large metallic door. They threw me inside and closed the door as they made their way out.

Standing up, I realized that I was in a large room full of people, maybe 200 or 300 hundred people were in here, and they all looked distressed, shocked, terrified, hysteric, all were mentally damaged.

The large iron wall in front of me rose like a garage door, revealing a large platform that had three people in it. I recognized them all. They were the ones that killed my family.

The man in the middle was the one called Katsuri, he had black hair, black eyes, and a smile that never left his face.

The man standing to his right was the one called Akuishi, he had dark brown hair, brown eyes, and an expressionless face that didn't show the tiniest of emotions.

The last man was the one wearing that blue scarf. He had dark blue hair and a pair of deep blue eyes. He didn't talk or do anything as he glared at me, staring only at me.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to my fine establishment. I'm sorry for the rough welcoming but just bear with me for now. I can tell that all of you are now wondering where this place is and how you can get out. Well, we are in the middle of nowhere, so don't bother trying to escape or break out.

I only want one simple thing from you, and after that, you can go back to your daily lives." He said, trying his best to talk in a friendly voice.

"We only want you to try a newly made medical injection, don't worry since it's 100% safe." He said before breaking his friendly character after a wide and bone-chilling grin formed on his face.

Suddenly, five doors opened. "Please enter slowly, and one by one," Katsuri ordered.

The same door I was thrown out from opened, and due to me being the closest to it, I entered first.

I walked through that long corridor until I reached what looked like a hospital room, only way darker. And in there, was a man wearing a lab coat. At this point, my body was moving on its own. I was too shocked and traumatized to analyze anything. I just want to get out of here, so I did as they told me.

I walked to that room and sat on a metal chair as the man instructed me to do. He grabbed my arm and injected me with a light blue substance.

After that, he told me to go through a door that was in front of me that led to an equally large room as the previous one. It was a bit empty, but people started going in one by one until it was full again.

"Now everyone, we will play a game of waiting." Katsuri said, "I am sorry to bore you, but it is essential." He added as he kept staring at his watch while we kept waiting for a couple of minutes...then it hit.

My body was dying from the inside and outside. My veins were almost going to explode from whatever was going inside my body. I couldn't even scream because of how intense the pain was. I was just suffering in silence as everyone was going through the same thing.

Then, the bodies started dropping.

One by one, everyone dropped to the ground, dead. Some were horribly disfigured, some had their skin melted off from their bones, some had their mouths filled with blood, and were choking on their fluids, and some were just dead from the intensity of the pain.

The pain kept going until it suddenly stopped before I went back to normal, and so did four other people who looked my age.

"Perfect, just as expected. Now, for those who survived, I owe you an explanation. You have been injected with a highly concentrated and modified blood sample from the hero known as 'gamma'."

Wait...the hero gamma? The first hero? The first man to have superpowers?

"And for those who don't know, gamma was the first evolved human and the one who was directly hit by the gamma-ray burst in 1950. And with that, he had a power that allowed him to control gamma radiation, which made him very powerful. As you know, 12 years ago, he tried to free the world from superpowers, so he tried to absorb all the radiation that was in the world.

He did absorb 40% but instantly died, hahaha! But, anyway, we found his body and did some experiments on it so we could profit from him. As you can see, you are the only test subjects that survived this experiment. Sorry to say, but you will stay here a little longer." Katsuri had a disturbing smile on his face as he gazed at us with a horrifying expression that emitted suffering and despair.

"Welcome...to Laboratory 5."