Mutagen

He stood there in front of Mark with his friendly smile. Welcoming him in this dark world….

And he was greeted with silence…

Mark stared at him silently, without any expression or even any urge to reply.

His lips started to twitch and his smile started to crumble.

"Damn it! Can\'t you even follow the norm even for a short time? You should ask questions like where this place is or what is going on, right?"

Freed started to feel depressed. Mark was still staring at him blankly.

"You\'re too boring you know that."

"Well, thank you."

Mark finally replied.

"It\'s not a complement!"

"I know."

Freed stared at Mark who was calmly looking at him.

"I give up."

He said as he walked towards Mark and sat in front of him.

The two men stared at each other for some time without talking. In the end, it was still Freed who broke the silence.

"You\'re not going to ask me something? You have questions right?"

"I have a lot of questions but I don\'t know where should I start."

Mark shrugged his shoulders.

Freed stared at him.

"If you\'re looking for something to start from, you better start working on you own emotions and showing it on your face genuinely. Really… Seeing you having a straight poker face since the start is reeaaallllly irritating."

He said to Mark with all seriousness which made Mark start to touch his face.

"Hmm? Why isn\'t it working?"

Mark said with all confusion as he judged his current expression with his hands.

"Of course, it won\'t work." Freed felt helpless facing the poor guy in front of him. "As I said, we are in your subconscious right now and it will only show your genuine emotions on your face. You don\'t have the ability to show your fake expressions that you always do in here."

Hearing that, Mark finally stopped touching his face revealing his blank look once more. That face made Freed sigh once more.

Freed knew the reason of this. This was the true face of Mark, a blank one without emotions. The expressions he always showed outside was all his practiced reflex and voluntary expressions in order to react to the circumstances around him. His smiles, his shock, his bitter expressions and the other expressions he showed outside were all fake. His true face was nothing but a blank slate.

The only times he showed his true expressions was when he was truly overwhelmed with a particular emotion and his expression at that time was truly different from his rehearsed ones. This was one of the reasons there were many times that he was reacting about something else less crucial when he had to react to something more important in front of him.

It was all due to him being an extraordinary Empath.

Since the time he started to absorb the emotions of others without rest and control, he started to confuse which emotion he was having. Both his emotions and the emotions of other people scrambled inside his head started to overwhelm his own. The manifestation of his emotions started to weaken and the expressions on his face started to stop showing. In order to cope with things, he started to practice his expressions in order to at least show a reaction to others when he needed to.

Now that Mark did not have a body to control, his real expressions were revealed bare. Rather, there was no expression on his face at all.

Freed sighed again.

"You should really work on that. Mei really liked it when you show your true smile."

He said while looking at Mark with a bitter smile.

"You even know that huh. I don\'t know how she found about it though."

Mark replied remembering how Mei\'s eyes lit up when his true expressions came out and how she looked sad when he showed his fake ones.

Finally, Mark looked straight at Freed.

"Just what are you anyway? I don\'t think that you\'re just some alter ego I created in my mind right? Well, I think, you\'re not someone to take over my body and replace me. Even though you took control of my body several times in the past and gave me a lot of head ache, you never harmed me intentionally and even saved me several times from death."

Hearing that question, Freed finally smiled with excitement. It was as if he was waiting for it for a long time.

"Then, what do you think am I?"

"Probably, a transcendent consciousness or a foreign soul residing inside my body like a parasite-"

"HEY!" Freed shouted interrupting Mark and stood up. "That\'s rude you know that?!"

Mark just shrugged Freed\'s retort and waited for his answer.

Seeing Mark stare at him blankly again, Freed felt as if his energy was draining faster. His emotions scattered in the non-existent floor.

"I should answer your question right?"

Freed asked weakly which Mark nodded to.

"Alright! Behold!"

Freed picked up him emotions that scattered in the floor and yelled with a smile.

PLOP! PLOP!

He then tapped his shoes on the ground creating that water drop like sound.

Mark then felt dizzy as the darkened surroundings started to distort. A sudden bright light momentarily blinded him making him close his eyes. When he opened his eyes…

The dark surroundings were gone. What replaced it was the blue sky filled with white clouds. Below him were large green forest and afar were tall stone covered mountains.

He realized that he was sitting suspended in the air but he never felt like he was going to fall. Finally, he turned to Freed who was looking at the scenery with a nostalgic expression. It was as if he longed for this scene, this place. He looked like someone who had long gone far from his home and could never come back anymore.

Seeing Freed\'s expression, Mark did not try to disturb his reminiscence and started to observe the magnificent scene further. On the forest below were oddly shaped trees with reddish smooth bark and circular leaves along with other trees that never existed on earth. He then saw a bird about the size of a sea gull flying above the forest. It had an elongated beak shaped like a flamingo\'s but had wings that looked like an eagle\'s. The body of the bird was shaped like a pigeon\'s and its tail was like a rooster\'s. Furthermore, its feathers were composed of black and white alternating colors with a red crown on its head.

He realized that this scene in front of him was not from Earth at all.

When he looked around, Mark saw a city from afar. The city looked like something that came from sci-fi movies with circular buildings and glass covered highways. At the center of the city was a large stronghold like building with several tall towers around it. Atop the tallest building was a holographic emblem looking like a royal family\'s from fantasy novels.

He looked at the sky and there were actually two small suns and two moons despite that it was during the day.

Mark looked back at Freed. The latter was already looking at him taking pride with the scene around them.

"Let me introduce myself again."

Freed said as the blue polo, black slacks pants and red shirt he was wearing started to distort. His clothes became a robe armor with elegant royal style but it had a right shoulder armor extending to his arms and into a glove. The glove had a marble sized crystal at the center and the light from the crystal extended towards the crystal tubes on the armor giving a sci-fi vibe on it.

The marble sized crystal looked familiar…

"I\'m Freodelius Arishtalia. The young king of the former Kingdom of Arishtal in the planet we call Eriellis." Freed bowed. "You\'re right. I\'m not an alter ego you created. I\'m a consciousness that drifted thousands of years in space before finding you when we arrived here in Earth."

Freed raised his right hand to his chest.

"You must be thinking how and when?"

"I\'m not." Mark looked at the crystal on Freeds glove. "You entered my body six years ago from that crystal with a golden orb inside right? The one on your glove looked identical, just different in color."

"Seriously, you\'re no fun at all." Freed smiled bitterly. "Well, that shortens the need to explain I guess."

"Say… This planet called Eriellis. It\'s not some world from a parallel universe right? Since you said that you have been drifting in space, then, this planet is somewhere within the same universe. Probably in another galaxy, am I right? So, you\'re an alien."

Mark examined Freed as if trying to unravel what he really looked like.

"Hah…" Freed sighed. "This is my true appearance you know that. I\'m not some grayling or reptilian in disguise."

Overwhelmed by confusion and curiosity, Mark finally let out an uncertain expression. Freed felt satisfied seeing that Mark showed that kind of face.

"I\'m also human, no the people from our planet are also humans. It\'s just we were raised in a different planet. In fact our ancestors came from here, Earth."

Freed started to tell his origins.

Their ancestors came from the older civilizations of humans on Earth. Probably, it was even a civilization that was not recorded in history of any of the current countries. It was a lost civilization.

It was not that they managed to build a ship or any vessel that could traverse space. Their civilization was coerced by the creatures they acknowledged as gods to ascend to another plane, another world. It was because a disaster was about to happen on Earth. They did not know that those gods they acknowledged were actually extraterrestrial beings that guided the civilizations to develop at that time. The disaster then came. Earth was submerged in water through endless days of rainfall.

At that time, the people of their civilization had already left using a very large vessel that could traverse through the sky and through space. Their ancestors were made to sleep inside coffins made of metal and glass. The moment they woke up, they were already at another blue planet called Eriellis.

Through the guidance of their gods, their civilization developed quickly and even way faster than the civilizations left in Earth developed. Even in the modern times, Earth was still struggling with the development of land vehicles but Eriellis was already exploring the planets around them without any problems.

One of the reasons of their fast development was because the whole Eriellis was managed by a single monarchial government. Even though there were still internal disputes over power, country destroying wars did not happen to hinder their development.

Freed was the latest, the youngest and the very last king in the history of Eriellis. He was also the last member of the Royal Family of Arishtal in existence.

It was because the planet they called home, the planet they called Eriellis, was nothing but a speck of debris floating in space now.

"So, your planet was destroyed?"

Mark asked.

"Unfortunately, yes."

Freed sounded sad and emphasized the current scene around them.

"This scene you see here is actually the last scene of peace in our planet before it fell into chaos. It was the day before the fall of our planet started."

Freed suddenly looked at the sky.

"Look, it is coming."

Mark traced the direction Freed was looking at and also stared at the blue sky.

BOOOM!!!

A scene of several bright lights exploding in the atmosphere following a sound of explosion and the shockwave that blew away the birds, trees and even buildings.

"Familiar right?"

Mark blankly nodded.

The scene currently unfolding in front of them was similar to the video he saw in the internet several days ago.