Breaking Bonds

I always dreamed of becoming a Bonded, although I suppose it was always an innately flawed fantasy. Humans can’t be Bonded. My colleagues made that clear to me when I first set foot in the institution. It is, after all, the entities that are bound to us.

When I was young, I found myself inexplicably drawn to their brief clips and snapshots, heroes and villains flashing across the television screen as my cheerios lay soggy and dejected in their bowl. It was never their brightly colored costumes, righteous speeches, or winning smiles that enthralled me. I was snared by the sheer, unadulterated power that oozed from their every action. They would tear through the sky with speeds that would make fighter pilots go green with envy; summon spires of flame and smoke, engulfing entire apartments in their wrath; or shift, feeble, human flesh tearing away to reveal toned, bestial bodies, capable of tearing a man to ribbons. 

Entire days would go bye where my time was exclusively dedicated to scrolling through list after list of heroes, and villains, and unaligned Bondeds. Periodically, I would stop upon a name, scrolling past any irrelevant background garble such as costume, appearance, affiliations, etcetera, until I found the meat. I would savor every description of power and strength. Closing my eyes, I felt the monumental might of Monument molding my every muscle into statuesque perfection or Cast Current’s signature crimson energy shooting through my veins before arriving at a violent release. If I kept my eyes squeezed just tight enough, just long enough, I could almost, ever so faintly, hear the crackling. But alas, it inevitably ended when I'd open my eyes.

Gone was the power of practical gods. Gone was the strength, the energy, the pride. All that remained was an isolated boy, his scrawny frame hunched over a keyboard as his reddened eyes returned to the screen and began to roam once more.

As much as I dreamed of power, I never actually expected to get it. To gain such abilities, you must first encounter one of the entities I have since learned are the true Bondeds, which cannot be done without encountering their Anchor.

While becoming a Bonded was an impossible dream, becoming an Anchor was merely a staggering unlikely one; and yet, I beat those odds.

As I was saying before, you must encounter the Anchor if you wish to encounter the Bonded. It is common knowledge that there is a set number of powers out there - a result of there being a set number of Bonded, and while the true number may evade us, those that are known are carefully tracked from host to host, Anchor to Anchor. Agencies of varying moralities but similar finances are equally invested in assuring that their Anchors’ successors remain within their institutions. They select exactly who will be the next ‘insert name here.’

That's one reason why some nobody kid isn't going to rock up to his parents’ place exclaiming he's going to be the next big name in heroism. Then there's the fact that most Anchors aren't exactly willing to give up their Bonded.

Most Bondeds are transferred immediately - and I mean immediately- after death. See, here's the problem. My prior statement, set numbers and all, isn't entirely true. While the number of Bondeds may be incapable of increasing, it is perfectly capable of decreasing.

Bondeds aren't capable of surviving without an Anchor. From the moment the heart stops, it is a countdown to get a compatible candidate to them before the Bonded is lost.

Usually, a Bonded picks their future Anchor while their current Anchor is still alive; however, if their chosen successor isn't in the immediate vicinity, or none had been selected, they may become desperate. A desperate Bonded will latch on to the nearest person who is even vaguely compatible, even a scrawny teenager with all the worthiness of a stale fry that's been sitting under a seat in the car for who knows how many months.

I was fourteen when I met my Bonded. It was clinging to the pale and bloody form of a man once known as Perigee. I knew the man on sight, though it took a moment to register. All my hours spent combing through the lists, basking in their powers, glaring at their masked faces made me privy to the powers bestowed upon that man.

It was the first time I'd ever really been close to an Anchor. My mom had noticed my obsession with the breed and had once taken me to a signing in an attempt to pry me away from my endless scrolling, but it had been unsatisfactory to say the least. The hero, a young woman going by the name Arum, had only managed to sign a handful of papers and shirts and whatnot before being called away for some urgent matter or another. I hadn't gotten anywhere near close enough to feel the firecracker-like energy that peppered her body.

This was different. Mere feet from the dying man, I could feel the desperate pulsing of an energy that was never meant to be stayed by human hands, yet there it was. Tied to a dying man, it was facing its own extinction.

The man stared at me through half lidded eyes. His gaunt face seemed emotionless, disconnected from the world, until his pale gray eyes settled on me. He seemed to stare through me at first, his eyes appearing glazed and listless before the energy pulsed. It jolted him, seeming to give him one last lick of life. With renewed focus, he noticed me all at once, reaching an arm out in my direction. He attempted to rasp something at me. All he managed was a choked noise as blood dribbled down his lip.

I can't explain to you why I took his hand. It wasn't to comfort a dying man nor was it with the intention of taking what he had. It was something deeper, something alluring that called out to my soul with the same beautiful intensity as a siren calling for a captain.

I felt it the moment our fingers touched: the ache, the enrapturing pain as the entity that would soon become mine slithered, yanked, and clawed itself in to my very being. It was a desperate scramble by a desperate being.

I was never selected to become an Anchor. No committee weighed over my capabilities nor did any psychologist examine my mental capability for such an ascension. I didn't push my way through trials and persevere in the face of near insurmountable challenges. No. Brian Mckinley only became Aphelion, grabbed that hand, stumbled down that alleyway, because he made a wrong turn when trying to buy a bag of chips. I beat the odds through luck and luck alone.

The institute found us a few hours later. Perigee, body cold and long since dead, was found laying in a puddle of his own blood. I wasn't too far off, lying supine, not far off. My hoodie had been smeared with blood, as had my face, which could be traced back to a nose bleed.

I woke in the medical wing of the institute, surrounded by pristine white walls, doctors in pristine white coats, and the pristine white papers they shoved towards me. Of course I signed. Maybe their medications made me delirious, or the newfound energy pulsing in my bones. Either way, I didn't bother to read it.

My parents were contacted shortly after, but it didn't matter. My life at the institute had begun.

I was returned to institute custody shortly there after. I recall my mother weeping and my father calling out as they held him back but I couldn't bring myself to care. The life I had always dreamed of, obsessed over, had been gifted to me and all I had to do to keep it was to follow along, leaving my old, crummy life behind.

It was about a month after moving to the institute when I noticed my roots were going gray. From beneath straw blonde hair peaked the first traces of silver. Of course I had noticed that Perigee's hair had held a similar hue, but it had never before crossed my mind that it had been one of the Bonded-related changes that the doctors had started rambling about. They had hit me with a seemingly endless barrage of tests and examinations in preparation. They were ecstatic when after only three months, my hair had entirely turned. It was only then they let my training begin.

They told me about the Bondeds, what they really are, but that doesn't matter. What matters is how they interact, not only with the environment, but with each other and their Anchors. Learning to use the moon blades was exhilarating, but learning to sift out other Anchors, to read their Bondeds, was my true calling.

Years later, now bearing the name I had unknowingly taken up with that fateful signature, I would stray from my assigned duties, searching for the telltale wakes of Bondeds going about, wistfully unaware of their watcher. Over the years, I have found many Bondeds clutching onto hidden Anchors who went to great lengths to suppress their gifts. As much as it irked me that those who would squander such gifts were allowed to retain them, I never spoke a word of it to my superiors. To tell them would be to squander my own, becoming subjected to constant scrutiny. I'd never be left to watch in peace, drinking up the wide array of different energies lurking in the supposed safety of the shadows.

Sometimes they would whip their heads around, catching twinges, slight pokes and prods, or sudden jabs. Maybe they even felt the slight chill of another bonded rubbing against their own. Either way, they ignored it, comforting themselves with the thought that they merely bumped into someone, or, better yet, that they just imagined it. It is absurd what people are willing to ignore to maintain their comfort.

Even as I strayed further and further from my tasks, no one ever suspected anything of my secondary gift. Perigee was never so tuned so why would Aphelion be any different? They complained as my fervor waned and tedious tasks were left incomplete, but what were they really going to do? They couldn’t fire me and they certainly wouldn’t risk losing the Bonded by killing me.

I suppose they could have locked me up, but that would have been just more of a resource drain. They must have preferred partial work over no work, eventually settling for letting me do jobs and detracting from my pay whenever they were incomplete. I didn’t care. I never had any particular need for the stuff when the institute already supplied the essentials.

They should have locked me up.

I never did anything particularly abhorrent. I never went around on a murder spree, twisting people's heads off before popping them in my mouth - yes, that is a real example. You can find several articles covering it if you’re that interested - nor did I create a scandal by kidnapping rich kids and threatening to turn them into homunculi if their parents refused to pay up.

I just quit trying. If our opponent didn’t have a Bonded, I didn’t care. There was a thrill that came with testing my Bonded, using my silver blades against the firm flesh of the strong thrumming or the crackling barriers of the electric rivers.

What point was there in even bothering with someone so empty? Sure, they could have a gun, but a bullet would hardly scuff my shield, let alone damage it. I could take on a dozen bondless men without a single cowering civilian coming to harm. I did exactly that once. The institute had me standing watch over some new frou-frou exhibit the museum brought in. It took less than seven minutes from when the first woeful weapon was raised for me to lay out the last of the groaning wretches.

I suppose that might have contributed to my apathy. I became so indubitably certain that any non-Bonded threat wasn’t a threat at all. That Hubris is why we’re here today.

I failed. I failed to consider someone who I saw as an empty vessel, a Hollow, foolish and feeble, as even the most minuscule of threats. I ignored the slim woman with the long black ponytail pulled through her baseball cap as she strutted into the backstage area with a blatantly stolen pass.

I had known Amelia Ortíz - or, I’d at least interacted with her as she prepared behind the scenes - and, while I hardly spared a thought for the Hollows, even I could tell the woman wearing her badge was not a four-foot-eleven Latina with a passion for bracelets.

Yet, she was a Hollow and I couldn’t care less.

I should have been concerned for the real Amelia. I should have confronted that woman and asked exactly how she acquired that pass. Maybe then I would have noticed the odd bulges protruding from her satchel, or how it seemed to lack those very protrusions as she slipped out half an hour later, stolen pass long since discarded.

Maybe I should have just paid attention to the notice board. Then, I might just have noticed that same angular face glaring back at me: Amanda Coath. The Bonded Butcher.

I’m sure you remember that day. Even at your young age you should have had some notion of the chaos succeeding the detonation. Did your parents weep and speak in hushed voices? Did your neighbors wail as they realized that their son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, cousin, friend, colleague, or whoever else was never coming back? Did you sneak peaks at the television, staring wide eyed at the sullen faces when your parents thought you were long asleep? What was it like returning to school? Did your teacher stare down with mournful tears as children held up sloppily colored charcutiers of their favorite caped crusaders?

My hubris killed them. I killed them. Twelve of my comrades, Bonded and Anchor both, were murdered alongside nearly three thousand civilians. Their blood, their ashes, can never be scrubbed away.

They died because of me and I didn’t even have the decency to die alongside them. Ever impatient, Aphelion scampered off in search of something worthwhile. As determined as I was not to squander my abilities, I failed to utilize them when they mattered most.

I retired immediately afterwards, many assuming I was amongst the deceased. Even the institute didn’t suspect my survival until nearly six years later when I reemerged with the sole entreaty that they acquire my successor.