He had spent years building this up -- this entire corporation was brought upon by the skills he secretly possessed. Walter Enterprises was a household name featured in the news multiple times and responsible for a myriad of new, wonderful inventions. He started from nothing but grief, using the determination of such a big dream to form the veil that prevented him from thinking of all the wrong he’d dealt with. He was almost positive that his dreams were impossible to reach and would take decades to fulfil, if anything. These dreams were not anything he sincerely longed for – he had no desire to become a corporate shark – but he was angry. He wanted to prove himself and turn his life around, to turn away from his old ways.

They said he’d get nowhere in life, but look at him now.

The thirty-year-old stared out the window with his hands clasped behind his back. The city buildings, many of which he either owned completely or held a share of, looked ghastly against the periwinkle of the pre-setting sky. They were crooked and mismatched – reminders of the concrete jungle he lived in. He couldn’t remember the grassy green fields or gentle flowers he used to come into contact with every day. He no longer recalled exactly how nice it felt to have the sun kiss his skin; in the city, the only things of nature that contacted him were the rain, snow, and diseased sun.

The brightness beyond his windowpane made his eyes burn and he turned away, looking at the rest of his apartment in utter disdain. The Monfort chaise that sat adjacent to the Alain Roguebuoy modern glass coffee table draped with luxurious Peruvian blankets, all beside the abstract piece of art he’d bought at the last art show he’d gone to. “Ridiculously overpriced,” he’d called it when he first set eyes on the bill. “A child may as well have done it.” Yet he’d bought it anyways. The vanity that came with money and power overwhelmed him in small, exponentially growing surges like tides lapping up on the shore, getting over closer to engulfing the sandcastle completely. He became everything he loathed as a youth and it filled him with dread as thick as molasses. What had he become?

He strode over to the kitchen, tucked neatly behind “invisible” glass stairs, and reached into the wine rack for an expensive bottle he’d reserved for when he’d finally propose to his girlfriend of however many months. Sliding down on the ground, he leaned against the refrigerator and popped the cork off. The liquid spilled on his expensive suit and on a regular day, it might have made him angry and that was pathetic. It was pathetic that he had run out of real problems and settled for lashing out at others for no good reason at all. It was pathetic that his heart was a null void and he couldn’t remember his girlfriend’s birthday. She was an annoying bitch who was only with him for his money. He’d been with so few people as a teen that it was only now he realized how gifted he’d been. Diana was angelic compared to this shallow bint who did nothing more than hang off his arms at social events. He was going to break up with that bitch because she smelled like the mount of the Upper East Side and dressed like a French socialite. He was going to break up with her because she had no concept of time and always took three hours to get ready before their dates. He was going to end it with her today, on her birthday, when he should have instead been getting ready to collect her for their eight o’clock reservations at Iliac. He stood up for a second to grab the phone that sat on the counter; it rang five times before switching to the voicemail. ”Hello, you’ve reached...”

“We’re over. I mean, happy birthday and I hope you enjoy it, but we’re over. You can pick up the reservations at Iliac and put it on my tab, but we’re done. It’s nothing you’ve done; I just can’t stand you in the slightest. Don’t call back.”

He hung up and went back to drinking. The alcohol gave him clarity, it wiped away the steam that had formed in the heat of his endeavours and returned him to his old self. It was under that influence that he’d stretched out to accomplish something better – something to really influence the world more than some household electronic ever could. Pushing himself off the hardwood floors with his free hand, he sat the bottle on the counter and walked past the expensive furniture, around a corner and up to a painting that stood out from the others. It was scintillating and entrancing – the only bit of decorative art in his penthouse apartment that meant a thing to him. It was painted by an old friend of his, a daughter of Iris who’d seen him through thick and thin but lost touch with him when he fled the camp. His hands calmly rose to unhook the picture from the wall and set it gently against the one adjacent him. Beneath it was a single, small bump in the wall that anyone would have disregarded but his wealth and social stature had seen pure perfection and the fact it remained there was no mistake. Pushing down on it hard revealed that the bump was actually a button and the wall really a door, pivoting silently on the spot. Standing against the wall, it turned with him on it until he was in a whole other room.

The room was a great expanse lit by garish lights that brought out the flaws in everyone but also left no option for concealing anything. Along the north wall were various hand-crafted weapons undoubtedly sought-after by militias worldwide. They didn’t have the resources he did; all the scientists fear and money could buy couldn’t equate the powers that coursed through him. He let his hands graze against a crossbow if only to feel the metal beneath his fingertips. It was good to feel real metal for once, aside from the stainless steel of appliances and the cool gold of a watch. His gaze was shifted to the corner behind him where tools and pieces of metal encircled a slick, smooth-looking vehicle that was finally complete. This was the start of his new life.

An aged man in a suit cleared his throat, making it apparent that he was present and the other man turned to face him.

“Mister Clarence, you have a phonecall.”