Page 2 of Broken Obsession

“We’ll use those skills to be free of this place.”

It was already too late; they were already damaged, their energy ruptured and splintered across dimensions. Reality was a blur, a notion. A dream. There was only this body to anchor him. To remind him what was real and what was potential fiction. What they had lost, they would never regain, no matter how far from the institute they managed to run.

They would never be free.

But Ares didn’t say any of that. Instead, he found himself nodding along even as the world blurred and the ceiling flashed through different settings as though he were peering through a viewfinder.

Maybe they wouldn’t ever be truly free, but if Bal thought this was the way to escape Father and Mother, he had to be right.

Because Areswasa prodigy when it came to the arts.

“Reality is merely another canvas you can create on,” Bal said, voice drifting as his consciousness was pulled from his physical form. “If you want control, take it. Start learning how to use the pieces readily available to you.”

Like people.

Ares didn’t care for people. They couldn’t be trusted. But maybe if he could manufacture that trust…If he could win others over and construct an image of himself meant to be seen and acknowledged…If he could get even one of Father’s assistants to look at him as something more than a test subject, an object…

“Think of it as art,” Bal managed to suggest, just before he slipped away.

The grin that split across Ares' face was anything but cold or sterile.

“Not art,” he said to himself. “A game.”

Games were simple. Organized. They came with rules and clear lines. There were winners and losers and prizes and penalties.

It’d been ages since Ares had last been allowed to play anything more advanced than cards, but he remembered how fun they could be. There was something beautiful about structure. Thinking about it, he supposed he’d been wrong. It was similar to art after all. Each move helping to form a cohesive piece, the same as a brush on a canvas.

“I want to play.” Since they weren’t allowed anything from outside, Ares would have to create his own game. He coulddo it, and since he controlled the board, the odds of winning were in his favor.

Ares would convince the staff to play with him.

The prize would be control.

The end result, freedom.

Since he wasn’t particularly fond of the reality Father and Mother had created, he’d form his own.

And he wouldn’t stop until he had paradise.

Chapter 1:

It was freezing already, and the snow hadn’t even started yet.

Eden found himself standing outside an old wooden building, the pale light from the moon creating an eerie ambiance he could seriously do without.

Though it was fitting.

Only an idiot would be out here like this.

His gaze dropped to the rectangular device strapped to the top of his right wrist over the long sleeve of his leather jacket. The body-borne device known as a multi-slate seemed to taunt him, the message feed he’d received earlier that day lighting up the area, momentarily casting shadows at bay.

The number that’d contacted him this morning was untraceable, and no matter how many times he’d asked for the person to identify themselves, they’d refused. That alone should have been enough reason for Eden to block them and move on.

But the contact had mentioned his family, had claimed to know something about the devastating event that stole them from him five years ago, and…Eden couldn’t pass this chance up. Couldn’t risk being too afraid to follow through in the off chance it was real.

He’d wasted years searching for answers only to hit dead end after dead end. Rationally, he understood this could be nothing more than a shitty prank, or worse, a trap of some kind. There were certainly reasons he could think of for someone to go to these lengths to get him alone. While he wasn’t super famous, his face was recognizable throughout the universe thanks to his work with Astral Realms Innovations, the multi-billion-dollar company that’d used Eden’s likeness for one of their most popular characters.

“Okay,” he breathed the word out to himself, breath ghosting in the fridged air. “Let’s do this.”