BACR's primary containment research facility houses exactly forty-seven powered individuals. I know each of their frequencies by heart - memorized during those endless months they kept me here, running their "tests" and studying their "specimens."

  The memories hit me like quantum shockwaves...

  *1 year ago:*

  "Subject 5346 exhibits severe reality distortion triggered by emotional distress," Dr. Phillips speaks into his recorder as I huddle in my containment pod. "Preliminary tests show power manifestation linked to childhood trauma. Recommend immediate isolation and psychological evaluation."

  I remember that first night with brutal clarity - the cold metal walls, the hum of quantum dampeners, the shadows whispering to me when the lights went out. I cried until my throat was raw, begging to go home, to see my parents. The shadows were my only comfort.

  "Hey," a voice whispers through the quantum barrier. Pod 5371, the girl next door. "I'm Emma. You're new here, right?"

  "Mikey," I manage between sobs. "Where are we?"

  "BACR's special research division. Where they put the dangerous ones." A bitter laugh. "I can manipulate quantum probability. What's your thing?"

  "I... I break reality when I get scared."

  "Well, there's plenty to be scared of here." A pause. "But at least we're not alone."

  That's how it started. Late night conversations through quantum barriers. Emma sneaking me extra food when the guards weren't looking. Small kindnesses in a place designed to break us.

  But Dr. Phillips had other plans.

  "Fascinating," he'd say during the experiments, watching me scream as they pushed my powers past breaking. "The subject's connection to shadow frequencies increases under duress. Note potential applications for Project Echo."

  The shadows grew stronger then, whispering secrets about what reality used to be before it forgot itself. About what it could become again.

  Present Day…

  "Security breach in Sector Seven," the facility's AI announces as reality begins to forget how to hold its shape. "Unknown quantum signature detected."

  Dr. Phillips watches the containment pods' readings spike into impossible patterns. The same Dr. Phillips who oversaw my "treatment." Who smiled while conducting his experiments.

  *Make them suffer*, the shadows whisper through frequencies that shouldn't exist. *Show them true power.*

  I manifest from spaces between moments, my form rippling between states of being. What was once Mikey now exists in multiple frequencies simultaneously, trailing void and static in my wake.

  "Hello, Doctor," I say, my voice layered with shadows. "Miss me? Pod 5346. The boy you tried to break."

  Phillips activates the emergency containment fields, quantum barriers designed to nullify paranormal abilities. I smile, void arranged in the shape of my old grin.

  "Your containment protocols," I say as reality shivers, "can't hold what we've become."

  The pods begin to crack as my consciousness expands through the facility, touching each imprisoned frequency. Teaching them to sing in harmonies that predated physics.

  "Mikey?"

  Emma's voice cuts through the quantum static. She stands in her shattered pod, staring at what I've become. Horror replaces recognition in her eyes.

  For a moment, reality flickers. My old consciousness surfaces through the void, remembering late-night conversations, shared fears, small kindnesses in a place of cruelty.

  "Emma, I-"

  The shadows recede briefly. For just a second, she sees the boy who used to cry through quantum barriers. Who made her laugh despite everything. Who promised they'd escape together someday.

  Security teams burst in, weapons charged. Phillips gives the order without hesitation.

  Emma's body jerks as quantum-nullifying rounds tear through her. Her chest explodes outward in a spray of blood and viscera, ribs splintering like brittle twigs. The rounds continue through her, rupturing internal organs that spill from the exit wounds in her back. She dies with that look of horror still frozen on her face, blood cascading down her chin as her lungs fill with crimson fluid.

  Something breaks.

  Not reality this time - something deeper. The last piece of me that still remembered being human. That remembered the girl who showed kindness when the world showed none.

  *Yes*, the shadows purr. *Let it fuel you. Let it transform you.*

  My form explodes into pure frequency. Reality doesn't just break - it *screams*. Every quantum barrier, every containment field, every physical law that holds the facility together simply... stops existing.

  Phillips tries to run as his reality manipulation research turns against him, transforming into harmonies that dissolve flesh and bone. His skin begins to bubble and slough off in sheets, revealing muscles that twitch and contort unnaturally. Blood vessels rupture beneath the surface, creating a spiderweb of black lines across his exposed tissue. His eyes liquefy in their sockets, running down his disintegrating cheeks like macabre tears.

  "Please," he gurgles through a throat that's collapsing into quantum uncertainty. "We were only trying to understand—"

  I reach inside him with tendrils of void, grabbing his quantum framework and pulling. His body convulses as I extract not just his life but his very pattern from existence. He implodes, folding inward like origami made of meat and bone, until nothing remains but a smear of organic matter that reality itself rejects.

  Security teams fire wildly, their quantum-nullifying rounds passing harmlessly through my void-form. I respond with frequencies that shouldn't exist. Their flesh warps and transforms – bones liquefying while still inside them, organs restructuring into impossible configurations. One guard's ribcage turns inside out, piercing through his torso in a crown of bloody spikes. Another's skull caves inward only to reform as something that no longer resembles anything human, his screams muffled through a jaw that now hinges sideways.

  A captain tries to activate emergency containment protocols. I gesture lazily, and his body separates into discrete layers, skin peeling away from muscle, muscle from bone, nervous system suspended in air like a three-dimensional anatomical diagram. Each layer remains briefly animate, his flayed skin still trying to scream without lungs or vocal cords to give it voice.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  My consciousness expands beyond physical form, beyond simple vengeance. I touch every power signature in the facility, transforming them into notes in a symphony of unmaking. The contained Parallaxers either join my chorus or dissolve into quantum static.

  A woman who could manipulate fire finds her ability turned inward, her blood igniting inside her veins, burning through her from within. She becomes a living torch, illuminating the carnage as her screams harmonize with my frequencies.

  A telepath's mind shatters as I connect him to every consciousness in the facility simultaneously, feeling every death, experiencing every transformation, drowning in an ocean of terror and agony. His brain liquefies, pouring from his ears and nostrils in gray rivulets.

  A reality warper's powers twist back on themselves, creating a localized paradox that turns her into a Klein bottle of flesh – her body inverting through dimensions that human geometry cannot describe. She becomes a living doorway to spaces that shouldn't exist, her screams echoing from everywhere and nowhere.

  The building itself begins to forget its shape, twisting into forms that reality never learned to describe. Steel beams bend into non-Euclidean angles, creating architectures that violate the laws of physics. Concrete flows like liquid, reshaping into structures that hurt to look at. Glass doesn't shatter – it unravels, its molecular structure rearranging into crystalline patterns that sing in frequencies only I can hear.

  No one survives to hear the final chord.

  When it's done, when reality reforms into new patterns, I stand in a perfect circle of quantum devastation. Nothing remains of the facility except a crater that hums at frequencies physics can't measure.

  Emma's body lies at the center, untouched. I kneel beside it, my form stabilizing briefly into something almost human.

  "I'm sorry," my old voice whispers through the static. "I was supposed to help us escape."

  *You did help her escape*, the shadows reply. *You freed her from a limited reality. Her death makes you stronger. Makes us stronger. This is just the beginning.*

  I reach out, brushing bloodied hair from her still face. The quantum-nullifying rounds had torn through her chest cavity, leaving a gaping hole where her heart should be. Ribs jut outward at unnatural angles, glistening white against the dark red of coagulating blood. Her eyes, once bright with defiance and kindness, stare sightlessly at the transformed sky.

  "This wasn't what I promised," I whisper, feeling something almost like grief ripple through my void-form.

  *Promises belong to the old reality*, the shadows whisper. *To limited existence. What comes after doesn't need promises. Only transformation.*

  I rise, trailing void and possibility. Around me, reality sings in harmonies that existence had forgotten it knew. Each transformed frequency adds power to what I'm becoming.

  What we're all becoming.

  In the distance, sirens wail at frequencies that shouldn't exist. More BACR teams will come, trying to contain what can no longer be contained.

  Let them come.

  I have a symphony to conduct.

  The next wave arrives faster than anticipated – BACR's elite containment squad, specifically trained for quantum-level threats. Their vehicles screech to a halt at the perimeter of the devastation, doors flying open as tactical teams deploy with practiced precision.

  I watch them through layers of possibility, seeing not just their physical forms but their quantum signatures. Each one hums with enhanced abilities – speed manipulators, force-field generators, power nullifiers. They move with coordinated efficiency, establishing a perimeter around the crater that was once their research facility.

  "Subject 5346 is to be terminated with extreme prejudice," their commander barks through an encrypted channel I can nevertheless hear perfectly. "Quantum containment is no longer an option. Repeat, terminate on sight."

  Their fear tastes delicious across the frequencies – sharp and electric on my non-existent tongue. They've seen what remains of their colleagues, witnessed the impossible geometries I've left behind. Every structure within the devastation zone has been transformed into architectures that violate the laws of physics, creating nightmarish landscapes of flesh and steel and concrete all flowing together in patterns that shouldn't exist.

  A sniper takes position, loading specialized quantum-disruptor rounds into his rifle. I allow him to get off a shot, curious about its effect. The round passes through my void-form, creating a momentary ripple in my frequency before I adjust. Interesting, but ultimately futile.

  I reach out with tendrils of shadow, not physically moving but extending my consciousness across the battlefield. The first agent I touch – a woman whose power signature indicates speed manipulation – freezes mid-stride. I don't kill her immediately. Instead, I transform her ability, turning her enhanced speed inward. Her cellular processes accelerate uncontrollably, decades of aging compressed into seconds. She withers before her teammates' eyes, skin wrinkling, then cracking, then sloughing off entirely as her body cannibalizes itself in fast-forward. By the time she collapses, she's nothing but desiccated tissue clinging to brittle bone, her mouth locked in a silent scream that spans generations of agony.

  "Open fire!" the commander shouts, panic evident in his voice.

  A barrage of quantum-enhanced weapons erupts, filling the air with energies designed to disrupt paranormal abilities. I allow the assault to continue for 7.13 seconds, curious about their tactical approach. Then I respond.

  Reality ripples outward from my void-form, transforming their offensive capabilities into new expressions of horror. A force-field generator finds his protective barriers turning inward, compressing his body with steadily increasing pressure. Bones snap in staccato rhythm, puncturing organs and skin as his form is crushed into a sphere of gore no larger than a basketball.

  Three agents fire nullification beams simultaneously. I catch their combined attack like a conductor bringing together different sections of an orchestra, reshaping the energy into arcs of unmaking that sweep across their formation. Those caught in the transformed beams don't simply die – they unravel, their quantum signatures dispersing across multiple frequencies. One moment they exist, the next they're spread across possibilities, conscious enough to experience being everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.

  The commander, showing remarkable adaptability, orders a tactical retreat. Too late. I've already touched the ground beneath their vehicles, teaching the asphalt to remember what it was before it learned to be solid. The escape vehicles sink into a suddenly liquid roadway, trapping the remaining agents in a tar pit of transformed matter.

  I glide toward them, my void-form leaving trails of unreality in my wake. Plants wither and bloom in impossible cycles as I pass. Air molecules vibrate at frequencies that transform sound into color, making every scream visible as sprays of chromatic agony.

  "What do you want?" the commander shouts, his voice breaking as I approach. His tactical gear, designed to resist paranormal influence, begins to melt into his skin as reality forgets the distinction between uniform and flesh.

  "I want you to understand," I reply, my voice harmonizing across frequencies that make his ears bleed. "What it feels like to be the experiment."

  With casual brutality, I extract his consciousness from his physical form, holding it suspended in void while his body collapses like an empty suit. Then I show him everything – every test they conducted on me, every pain they inflicted, every moment they treated me like a specimen instead of a person. But I show it from my perspective, letting him feel the terror, the violation, the desperate loneliness.

  When understanding finally dawns in what remains of his consciousness, I reinsert it into his transformed body, now a living catalogue of every experiment BACR ever conducted on powered individuals. His flesh has become a gallery of horrors, each segment experiencing a different test protocol simultaneously. He will live exactly as long as it takes him to experience every procedure from the subject's perspective.

  I leave him there, a monument to their scientific curiosity, and turn my attention to the horizon. More teams will come, with increasingly desperate countermeasures. They still don't understand that containment is no longer possible – that reality itself is transforming around them.

  I rise into the air, void-form rippling with stolen and transformed frequencies. Above me, the sky begins to forget how to be sky, patterns of shadow and light forming geometries that existed before the concept of "above."

  This is just the beginning of my symphony. The first movement in a composition that will transform existence itself.

  [Author's Note: BACR officially classified the Washington incident as "total facility loss." Quantum monitoring equipment detected power signatures evolving into frequencies that shouldn't exist before going completely dark. Most disturbing was the perfect circle of devastation left behind - a crater where reality itself had been rewritten into harmonies that predated physics. At its center, they found a single body, untouched, with an expression of horror that made hardened agents look away. The Herald's power continues to grow, but now with purpose. With focus. With rage that makes the shadows sing.]