System Activated: You now profit from fear
497 Views · Ongoing · paulrider757
Blurb
"You have until Friday, Mr. Reed. After that, your father's garage stops existing."
I had nothing left to fight back with. No money, no leverage, nothing but a dying auto garage and a promise I made my father before he passed. Then a car nearly killed me in the middle of the street, and I woke up hearing a voice in my head that changed everything.
It told me I now carry the Negative Emotion System. Every time I cause real fear in someone else, I get stronger. Richer. Sharper. All I have to do is make people suffer.
I told myself I'd only use it on people who deserved it. The corrupt inspector. The greedy developer. The ones already hurting my town. But power like this does not stay clean for long, and somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing the version of myself I was leaving behind.
Now my best friend is asking questions I can't answer. The woman I love is starting to see something in my eyes that scares her. And somewhere out there, an organization has been watching hosts like me for a very long time, and none of them lived long enough to tell their story.
I built an empire out of other people's nightmares. But if fear is the price of power, what happens when I finally run out of enemies to spend it on?
"You have until Friday, Mr. Reed. After that, your father's garage stops existing."
I had nothing left to fight back with. No money, no leverage, nothing but a dying auto garage and a promise I made my father before he passed. Then a car nearly killed me in the middle of the street, and I woke up hearing a voice in my head that changed everything.
It told me I now carry the Negative Emotion System. Every time I cause real fear in someone else, I get stronger. Richer. Sharper. All I have to do is make people suffer.
I told myself I'd only use it on people who deserved it. The corrupt inspector. The greedy developer. The ones already hurting my town. But power like this does not stay clean for long, and somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing the version of myself I was leaving behind.
Now my best friend is asking questions I can't answer. The woman I love is starting to see something in my eyes that scares her. And somewhere out there, an organization has been watching hosts like me for a very long time, and none of them lived long enough to tell their story.
I built an empire out of other people's nightmares. But if fear is the price of power, what happens when I finally run out of enemies to spend it on?
