Chương 279: Book 4 Chapter 38.3: Into the Minds of Madness

"Love?" Kraid scoffed.

"You really want to do a recap of your lovelife?"

"Yes, I do," Vell said.

"Who you love and how you love them is how you express some of your deepest thoughts and feeling." It was complete bullshit, but Vell hoped it was the kind of complete bullshit that would appeal to Yuna's apparent obsession with vapid therapy techniques. He didn't know whether to feel proud or ashamed when the blatant manipulation worked.

"That does sound like a good idea," Yuna said. Kraid snorted with derision at the very concept of love.

"Fine. But Vell's going first."

"Why? Don't have any love to show?" Over the many years of their rivalry, Kraid had shown no affection for anything beyond himself and the suffering he could cause. Vell was hoping that seeing Kraid for the loveless wretch he really was would finally end Yuna's sympathy for him.

"Maybe, maybe not," Kraid said.

"But why don't you start us off, Vell?

"If you insist," Vell said.

"Let me show you one of my old relationships."

"Is this really how we want to use an incredibly complex device?" Yuna said.

"You have like three ex-girlfriends on campus. I could just talk to them."

"Two exes and one very healthy ongoing relationship, thank you," Vell clarified.

"And I'm not showing you any of those relationships. We have to go a little further back." The memory projection changed, and the three found themselves in the most cramped space yet. Thankfully it was only a virtual projection, so they did not have to deal with the uncomfortable logistics of being crammed into a mid-size SUV. Vell kicked his legs up on the dashboard and looked at his teenage self in the backseat, currently cuddling with a skinny brunette.

"I hope you're not planning to scare me off with anything salacious, Vell," Yuna scolded.

"Of course not. We're a few weeks late for that memory anyway," Vell said.

"Just give it a minute." Vell sat back and forced them to endure his memories of high school romance for a while. Thanks to their shared mental connection, Kraid and Yuna got to bask in the awkwardness of pubescent flirting for a while, a torment made all the worse by the fact Vell was terrible at flirting. Kraid sighed at another awkward compliment and briefly contemplated building a time machine to kill Vell as a teenager just so that terrible sentence would never exist.

"How have you ever gotten laid, Harlan?"

"Beats me," Vell said.

"Probably because I'm tall. If I was five foot four I would've probably died a virgin."

"Now you're just going to die," Kraid said.

"You first, cunt," Vell said. He looked over his shoulder and saw the girl his teenage self was with tug at her collar.

"Ah. Here we go." Vell's girlfriend leaned in for a kiss. In spite of all the hormonal horror, Kraid and Yuna could feel an undeniable sincerity fluttering in Vell's heart. Vell was in love. Possibly for the first time in his life. The look of utter disgust on Kraid's face told Yuna the emotion was genuine. Then, as the crescendo of emotion swelled, it was caged. Teenage Vell pulled away from the kiss.

"Hey, Laura, stop," Teenage Vell said.

"There's something we need to talk about."

"Vell, you are the only guy I know who tries to talk their way out of a girls pants," Laura said.

"Shut up and kiss me."

"Stop, this is important," Vell said.

"There's something you should know. It's a long story, but I kind of... died."

"What, like you're one of those guys whose heart stopped for a few seconds and now you think you saw heaven or something?"

"Not exactly." Teenage Vell lifted his shirt, and Laura seemed momentarily excited that the canoodling was back in session. Then Vell removed the illusion bracelet he wore, revealing the scar sliced across his midsection. Yuna could actually see all thoughts of canoodling get blasted out of Laura's head. Vell recapped the train wreck, sparing Laura most of the gruesome details, but still making it very clear that he had been cut in half and resurrected under mysterious circumstances.

"What the fuck?" Laura began.

"So you're like, a zombie? I've been making out with a zombie."

"No, no, it's complicated, but I'm alive," Vell said.

"You were dead and now you aren't, that seems pretty undead to me," Laura said.

"It's like you were saying, like my heart stopped and then I got resuscitated, I'm just-""CPR is not the same as getting sliced in half and stuck back together, Vell." The argument escalated as Vell tried to explain his circumstances, and Laura irately refused to believe he was anything other than an undead abomination. Her anger eventually grew to the point she started tugging on the handle of the door to escape. Vell didn't stop her from leaving, but he did follow her out the door.

"Laura, come on," Teenage Vell pleaded.

"Just listen to me. I thought we were-""I thought you were a human," Laura spat back.

"Not some zombie freak!" Laura stormed off without another word, leaving Teenage Vell to wallow in utter misery. A misery the three spectators could all share in, thanks to Yuna's technology.

"Wow," Kraid said, as he circled Teenage Vell's miserable memory.

"That was pathetic." Yuna ignored him and took a more sympathetic bent.

"I'm sorry, Vell," she mumbled.

"That must've hurt."

"Yeah," said the modern Vell.

"I won't lie, that one stung for a while." With the benefit of hindsight, Vell could easily see how the brutal rejection had cast a shadow over his relationships for years afterwards. It wasn't until he'd started at the Einstein-Odinson and started to make friends just as strange as himself that Vell had been able to get over his fear of rejection, and even then it had taken a while.

"But I dealt with it," Vell said.

"Mostly. Probably still some unresolved bullshit rattling around in here."

"If it'd help, I could kill Laura for you," Kraid suggested.

"The only person you should kill for me is yourself," Vell said.

"Now, let's see your complete absence of a love life."

"Well, about that," Kraid said. He swept his skeletal hand across the scene, and the memory shifted. The suburban parking lot vanished and was replaced by a dense arboreal jungle, with no sign of civilization for miles around. The memory of Kraid trekked through the dense foliage, looking not much different than his current self.

"When and where are we?" Yuna asked.

"Jungles of Borneo, about a decade ago," Kraid said.

"Presumably on your way to kill an endangered tiger," Vell said, noting the rifle slung over past Kraid's back.

"Rhino, actually, but I would've shot a tiger if I'd seen one," Kraid said.

"Should be just a second, and…" Kraid trailed off as his younger self found the rhino he was looking for, lined up his shot, and put a skeletal finger on the trigger. Both Kraid's took a second to smile as the younger one prepared to kill an endangered animal. A loud gunshot echoed through the jungle, and the rhino panicked for a moment and thrashed in pain before falling over dead.

"Oh, is that what you love?" Vell said.

"Killing endangered animals?"

"Wait for it," Kraid said. His younger self did not look satisfied, but outraged. He checked his gun and found it was still loaded -Kraid had never fired a shot. With a frustrated huff, Kraid teleported down to the rhino's corpse in a flare of black magic.

"Hey! Get away from my kill!" Another flare of black magic flashed near the rhino's corpse, and a tall, red-haired woman stepped out of the green-black fire, rifle still slung over her shoulder. She glared at Kraid without an ounce of hesitation or fear.

"There's only so many of these left in the world, lady," Kraid said.

"I wanted to kill that one."

"Well tough shit, slowpoke," the woman said.

"Now get away from my rhino, I've got to get that thing ready to eat."

"You're going to eat it?" Kraid scoffed.

"There's a conservation group camped out a mile that way. Rub their noses in it."

"I know, I was going to eat it with them," the woman said.

"Cut it up and serve it to the gang, then tell them what they just ate after they're all finished." Kraid raised an eyebrow. After a moment of consideration, he stepped aside.

"You know, I have a wonderful recipe for rhino steaks," Kraid said.

"I'm open to recommendations," the woman said. She extended a hand in Kraid's direction.

"Alicia Crowley."

"Alistair Kraid." From there, the memories started to jump rapidly. First Yuna and Vell got to see the utter horror on the look of conservationists faces after their unwitting meal of rhino. Kraid and Crowley sat on the sidelines, basking in their horror and looking utterly delighted. Then the scene jumped to the duo cutting brake lines in cars, cutting down trees in the rainforest, and then hopped to the two in an office, poring over paperwork while bantering with each other.

"It's a little hard to tell, but in this one we were sabotaging insurance claims," Kraid said. He sighed with fond reminiscence as he watched Alicia pore over the paperwork.

"Ah, Crowley. I've never met anyone so good at denying healthcare to cancer patients." The memory of Kraid made a giant red X on one of the forms and then showed it off to Crowley. They both laughed together, with the exact same malevolent chuckle. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"If this weren't so horrifying it'd be kind of sweet," Yuna said. Vell nodded in agreement, moreso with the "horrifying" aspect. The memory shifted to Kraid and Crowley enjoying a meal in a fine parisian restaurant. Vell was shocked to see a moment of actual, evil-free romance, until the couple got up and fled without paying for their meal. In spite of the pointless and petty acts of evil, Vell could sense that same rush of emotion that had suffused them all during his memories of Laura. Kraid was in love. Somehow.

"I didn't think it was possible," Vell said.

"I'm a very complex individual, Vell Harlan." Yuna leaned in close and examined the couple as the scene shifted to a beachfront date. The sunset shimmered in Alicia Crowley's hair, and Kraid's heart fluttered. Then Alicia raised a finger and fired a blast of destructive energy at an off-shore oil rig, causing an environmental calamity that would have consequences for years to come, and Kraid's heart started to pound like cannonfire.

"You really loved her," Yuna said. She looked elated that her theories might finally be validated.

"Kraid," Vell said. The underlying horror was starting to seep through. Vell had never seen or heard of this woman before.

"What happened to Alicia?" All Kraid offered in return was a toothy smile.

"Kraid!" The cannonfire heartbeat slowed, and became steady. Too steady. Kraid brushed one hand across Alicia cheek -and then he pivoted on top of her, and put both hands around her neck. Alicia laughed it off, until the pressure tightened. Yuna backed away in horror.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm a scientist," Kraid said, as he watched his younger self.

"This is an experiment." Alicia started to kick, and curse, and cast spells that bounced off Kraid's magical protections. Kraid never loosened his grip.

"What are you doing?" Yuna demanded again.

"Stop it! You love her!" Yuna tried to grab Kraid and pull him away, but her hands passed right through the memory projection.

"I did," Kraid said.

"Alicia Crowley was the only person I've ever loved, and probably will ever love. And that's why I had to do this experiment. Wouldn't get another chance." Alicia's struggles started to slow as her face turned blue.

"Had to see if I was capable of it, of course," Kraid said.

"That's why I went for strangulation. Could've just snapped her neck, obviously, but that wouldn't have given me any time to think about what I was doing. Really had to give myself the time to have doubts and regrets, you know?" Alicia's struggles stopped, and with her last breaths, she choked out a muffled plea for mercy. Kraid didn't even blink. As helpless spectators to the memory, Yuna and Vell could only watch in stunned silence as the scene played out -and came to a brutal end.

"Turns out I can power through," Kraid said. He looked at his past self with nothing but admiration.

"There is nothing in existence that can stop Alistair Kraid from doing whatever he wants. Not even love." The younger Kraid didn't even blink as Alicia's eyes closed forever. Yuna stared at the younger and current versions of Kraid and saw the exact same satisfied smile on both. In his eyes there was no hesitation, remorse, or regret. He had killed the only person he'd ever loved, and he was happy about it.

"You- you're a monster," Yuna said.

"Wow, it's almost like me and Vell have both been trying to tell you that the whole time," Kraid said. Vell felt absolutely no satisfaction at being proven right.

"Do you get it now? Do you get why I'm evil?"

"No," Yuna whimpered.

"None of this makes sense, there's no reason-""Exactly!" Kraid's delighted shout boomed across the memory of a beach, and he stomped forward to meet Yuna face to face.

"Evil is not an outcome, it is not a result, not the answer to some mathematical formula of traumatic injury and mommy issues," Kraid said.

"Evil is a choice. An action, a decision, that anyone can make, at any time, for any reason." Kraid leaned in low and bared his teeth in a predatory smile at Yuna.

"Even no reason at all."

"But that's not- people are supposed to have reasons, there's supposed to be cause and effect," Yuna whimpered.

"I see you're still struggling with the concept," Kraid said.

"Well, let's have Professor Kraid give you a remedial lesson in evil. I have some lovely memories of cannibalism I've been dying to show you." The memory tried to shift, and Vell yanked it back. He could feel a stabbing pain in his head, like a migraine, as he finally started dueling with Kraid for control of the mindspace.

"Oh, finally we get to the good stuff," Kraid said. He pulled back, and half-formed memories of burning meat briefly flickered into existence before Vell pulled them back to memories of school equipment and study sessions.

"Yuna, I think it's time to leave," Vell insisted, as he struggled for control of the memory projector.

"Can you shut this thing off?"

"Not while you're stuck between memories," Yuna said.

"I need a stable scenario or we're all risking mental damage."

"You can't just unplug it?"

"I wasn't expecting a mental battle of good versus evil today, Vell!"

"You brought the evil," Vell said.

"Just get it done, I'll get us to a stable memory." The simulated world around them started to churn between a storm of blades and blood and a bastion of studies and childhood games. The stabbing pain in Vell's head only intensified as the duel for control continued. Kraid hardly looked bothered.

"I really love situations like this," Kraid said.

"I mean, ninety nine percent of the time battles for mental supremacy are entirely metaphorical, but this?" Kraid gestured to a blur of viscera and Lego sets by his side. Vell closed his eyes and strained with focus.

"Completely literal," Kraid continued. He chuckled at Vell's struggle, and doubled down. Though the pain in Kraid's own head grew, the misshapen images around them started to coalesce into images of violence and brutality.

"I'm not letting you do this," Vell grunted. Every image of horror in Kraid's head unleashed at once would overload Yuna's mind, just like had happened last loop.

"Nobody's ever 'let' me do anything," Kraid said.

"They just can't stop me." The image of Alicia Crowley briefly flickered through the maelstrom of their mental duel, and Vell faltered slightly. His legs gave out for a moment, and Kraid pushed the advantage.

"Decent work, Harlan," Kraid said.

"But we're both at our limit, and you're losing." Vell stood up straight, stopped pretending to strain, and smiled at Kraid.

"Thanks for letting me know you're at your limit."

"Wh-" The expression of surprise turned into a shout of pain as stabbing agony burned through Kraid's mind. The mental battle came to a decisive end as Vell stopped toying with memories of schoolwork and childhood toys and started focusing on his actual strongest memories. The maelstrom of conflicting memories solidified into his dorm room from last year.

Skye sat on the couch next to Vell, already napping on his shoulder, while Harley struggled to stay awake in another chair, and Lee tried to fight off yawning as she laid out preliminary plans for Harlan Industries. Harley finally fully dozed off, and Lee politely asked permission to spend the night, which Vell gave, before she too leaned back and fell asleep. Vell stayed awake for a while longer, just to enjoy the presence of his favorite people, in a rare moment of peace and quiet.

A moment he wanted more than Kraid had ever wanted anything.

"Got it!" The pleasant memory snapped out of existence, and Vell was sitting in a dumb chair wearing a dumb helmet again. He removed Yuna's helmet and popped back into reality. Kraid did the same, but he threw his helmet aside so violently it shattered on impact. Kraid took a few stumbling steps forward and brushed a skeletal hand across his face. His blackened bone hand came away smeared with red from a nosebleed.

"Feeling alright, Alistair?" Kraid turned around and sneered at the expression of smug satisfaction on Vell's face.

"So that's the second time I've beaten you," Vell said.

"I'm kind of starting to feel like you can be stopped." Whatever confidence Vell felt lasted about as long as it took for Kraid's bewildered expression to split into a satisfied smile. He wiped the last of the blood from his nose and then licked the remnants off his skeletal fingertip.

"I've always loved a challenge," Kraid said.

"Keep this up and you might actually be one." Kraid kept the smile on his face for as long as it took him to slither out of the room. The moment the door slammed shut behind him, it dropped into a scowl, one that lingered until he returned to the runecarving lab. It was abandoned, since all the students were off being tutored elsewhere, just as Kraid intended. He stomped past crates of machinery on his way to the office, where Helena waited.

"Your little excursion go well?"

"No." Helena looked up from her work. She was still confused on how Kraid, so vicious and violent in every other respect, could handle defeat with such ease. There was supposed to be a little vengeful muttering, at least.

"You don't seem bothered by losing," Helena said.

"Throwing a fit after every setback is a good way to make no progress at all," Kraid said.

"Besides, I always win in the end."

"What if you don't?"

"I will," Kraid said, with utter certainty.

"Especially against Vell Harlan. He's too... ordered." Helena thought back on everything she knew about Vell. Absolutely none of it could be described as "ordered". It was barely even coherent, most of the time.

"I'm not sure that's how I'd describe it."

"It's what it is," Kraid said.

"Sure, Vell Harlan is surrounded by chaos, but the man himself just doesn't have it in him. He desperately tries to keep everything together, keep everyone safe, keep it all from falling apart. He's trying to build a house of cards in a hurricane. Vell can pull all the clever tricks he wants, only takes one little gust to knock it all down." Kraid crossed his arms behind his back and kept strolling to his desk.

"It's order versus chaos," Kraid said.

"And chaos always wins."

"If chaos always wins, isn't that order?"

"Don't get pedantic, Marsh," Kraid said.

"I'm about to do you a favor." Helena tilted her head as far as her limited mobility would allow.

"Oh?'

"Yes. Vell's victory isn't a problem, but he's getting confident," Kraid said.

"I don't like that. It's time to put myself back on top." Helena smiled so wide it started to hurt her cheeks. Kraid had been intending to save that little scheme for after everything had wrapped up on campus, but Helena was more than happy to change the schedule. Kraid sat by the sidelines and started writing up his schedule for tomorrow. Being the richest man on Earth (again) was a special occasion, made all the more special by the fact it would be taking Vell down a notch too.

Kraid loved the saying "pride goeth before a fall", but when he said it, it meant his pride going before someone else's fall. Far away, oblivious to any pride or any falls, Vell Harlan was looking for someone. Yuna had run out of the room only seconds after shutting down her experiment. Rather than track down Kraid, Vell had gone looking for her. Thanks to a trail of passers-by who had definitely seen a young woman crying her way across campus, Vell tracked Yuna down easily.

She hadn't even closed the door to her dorm all the way.

"Yuna? You in there?" Though he usually waited for an invitation, the sound of something being thrown across the room compelled Vell to investigate. He stepped into the dorm and narrowly avoided a book being thrown towards a box. Yuan was on the other side of the room, grabbing her academic supplies and tossing them violently across the room.

"Yuna, what are you doing?"

"Packing up," Yuna snapped.

"Apparently my entire academic career-" She tossed another book at the wall.

"-is a complete waste of time!"

"That's not true," Vell said.

"Of course it's true," Yuna said.

"I have spent my entire life under the delusion that all human behavior is ultimately logical. That there are causes to the way we act, and if we can find the cause, we change the acts. But I was wrong!" Yuna grabbed one of her neurology textbooks and stared down at the image of a brain on the cover.

"I was wrong," Yuna whimpered.

"Sometimes people are just evil. And there's nothing I can do about it." She tossed the book down gently, letting it fall at her feet with a dull thud.

"How do you do it, Vell?" Yuna pleaded.

"How do you go on knowing that evil is just... inevitable? That even if we do nothing wrong, it can just happen, anywhere, any time, from anyone, and you can't stop it?"

"You just go on, because there's not really any other option," Vell said.

"Our ability to do evil is part of being human, and once you realize that, you've pretty much got four options. You can do the cowardly thing and join it, you can do a different cowardly thing and ignore it, you can do a stupid thing and convince yourself you can fix it, or you can do the stupidest thing you can possibly do." Vell took a seat on a couch and picked up on of the books Yuna had thrown across the room.

"You can fight it," Vell said. The tone of his pep talk was so bewildering Yuna had to sit down too.

"Why is that the stupid option?"

"Because it is one of the only fights you cannot possibly win," Vell said.

"But you have to do it anyway. You have to fight evil every day, even if it's just the evil inside yourself. We can't make the world perfect, Yuna. But we can always make it better." Vell turned the neurology textbook over in his hands and gave it back to Yuna.

"That machine you built was amazing," Vell said.

"And I really appreciated the chance to look back at some of the shit I'd been through and get perspective on it. Maybe you can't fix everyone, but you can help some people, and that's worth it." After a few seconds of silent thought, Yuna took the textbook back. She had bent a corner of the hard cover by throwing it at the wall, and though she tried to straighten it out, the bend remained.

"Vell. Why do you think you are the way you are?" Yuna asked.

"Looking through some of your memories... god, you have every reason to be bitter, angry, vengeful. Why aren't you?"

"I don't know," Vell said, shrugging.

"We've clarified people don't need a reason to be evil. Why do I need a reason to be good?"

"I think having reasons certainly helps," Yuna said.

"But you're right. If people can choose to be evil for no reason, then they can choose to be good for no reason."

"Exactly," Vell said.

"So, can I trust you to pick up all these books and get back to work?"

"Absolutely," Yuna said.

"I have a lot to work on. Exit path stability, projection integrity, working out side effects-""Side effects?"

"Oh, of course," Yuna said.

"Nothing serious, naturally, worked all that out already, but there is a small chance you might be unable to see the color purple for several hours." Vell looked around.

"Is anything in this room purple?"

"The curtains, yes." Vell stared at the curtains for several seconds.

"They look brown, don't they?"

"Yep."

"If you drink some water and lie down the symptoms will clear up faster," Yuna advised.

"Eh, I'll be fine," Vell said. He wasn't particularly attached to the color purple.