Myles was still asleep with his head in his lap when Sean began to move. He sat up in the bed and swung his legs over the side, all while his eyes were still closed. Getting out of bed, he stood there for a moment, swaying slightly; as if he didn’t know how to operate his own body.

And then his eyes opened.

Acid green, glowing irises cut through the darkness, sweeping over man and machine alike. With stumbling steps, Sean precariously made his way over to where Myle’s was sitting, and squatted down in front of him; analyzing the threat. Myle’s eyelids fluttered open when he felt the hot breathing on his neck, but they were not the usual chocolate-brown. The pupils seemed to completely overtake the irises and the whites, so his eyes looked like pitch black voids in his sockets.

Myles lifted up his head, assumed perfect posture in the chair, and returned Sean’s stare. They sat like that, just sizing each other up, for a long time. Until Myles spoke with a voice that was not his, “Are we just going to stand here like idiots, or are we actually going to do something useful with our limited time.” Sean’s face split into a demented grin, and he spoke with a childlike voice. “I’m ready when you are, Goth-guy!”

Myle’s eyes narrowed in anger, but he stood up gracefully anyways, crossing the room in three broad steps and entering the passcode into the pad on the door. The lock clicked open and he exited the room, with Sean close behind him. They entered the main area of the base, where a huge machine took up most of the space, and empty man-sized tanks filled with water lined the walls.

The machine’s huge gears turned methodically, lining the tail-like tube that plunged into the floor near the right wall. It snaked up around the room until it reached a large furnace with an ever-burning fire inside. About a meter above the fireplace, a tank, not unlike the ones on the wall, sat imbedded into the metal; the water inside was boiling, bubbles rising to the top in a humongous cloud. Three tubes connected from the tank and spiraled upwards, feeding into three spherical compartments with circular hatches on the side. These rooms didn't look too different from eyeballs, what with the rims of the hatches glowing in the three primary colors like irises. Each of the circular doors were labeled with either a blue snowflake, a yellow lightning bolt, or a red flame. Its purpose was to provide power and heat to the entirety of the acre-long facility; as well as create the atomic power to create the superhumans they had experimented on.
As they made their way around the machine, the water in the tanks on the walls cast distorted light shows on the floor of the moon-lit room, illuminating the back of Myle’s head as he walked. “Do you remember the plan?”

“I don’t do plans.” Sean gazed around in glee at the gigantic machinery around him. A narrow stairway to his left led up the wall to a platform near the ceiling, where the main control panel overlooked it’s unit. Myles scoffed at him, the dramatic lighting creating a sheen on his inky eyes. “And that is why you fail so often. The only reason you made it this far was because of my plans.”

“I beg to differ. I did fine before you were created.” Sean stopped and stood in front of the furnace, where the massive behemoth of a machine got its energy. His green eyes stared into the glowing coals, where flames licked the sides of their metal prison and sparks mocked them by dancing out the vents, before fizzling out into ash. Myles stopped as well, turning to face Sean with a bored expression. “When I first found you, you were bleeding out on the floor.”

“And who said I didn’t like the pain?” Sean glanced up from the crackling fire towards Myles, an insane glint in his eyes. The full moon hid behind a cloud outside the window, coating the already-dark room in silent blackness and adding to the suspense of the moment. The only visible thing in the room was Sean’s glowing irises, narrowed into gleeful slits and bouncing around the room. Nighttime was nothing to a being of darkness, so Sean could see just fine in the dull light. Myles resumed his walking, footsteps echoing around the metal room.“You are a strange individual. We should get going now, Myles is beginning to wake up, so I estimate we have about ten minutes of freedom unless we obtain some form of physical or emotional harm.”

“Now just wait a minute Mr. Guyliner, what if I don't want to go through with your plan. I get nothing out of it, and it seems really far fetched.” Sean hurried to catch up with Myles, a long, misty, unnatural shadow trailing behind him on the floor. Myles stood at the other end of a long, tail-like pipe that went from the top of the three-chambered machine into the floor; distributing heat and electricity to all other parts of the building. He was looking up at the third of the spherical compartments at the top, the one that served as the air-conditioning, with an emotionless, empty stare. “Look, friend, you know me. I am a man of my word, so if I tell you that this plan will work, it. Will. Work. But only if every party involved follows it to the letter, and so far you have not been doing that at all. So believe me when I say, I will do everything in my power to gain permanent control, and if you get in my way…” The sentence was left open-ended, letting Sean's imagination do the rest.

A crow's cry split the silence that followed, and the bird itself flew frantically out the window; desperate to get away from the two shadow-shifters in their home-turf. Both beings’ eyes snapped towards the noise, and the bird fell to the floor; suffocated by the night. Sean walked over to the bird and giggled from his vantage point, still laughing he nudged it with his foot as Myles scowled behind him. “What a waste of time and energy. Myles has started to fight me, has Sean realized it yet?”  

“Not yet, but he has suspicions. The others are trying to warn him, but I locked them up.” Sean strode over to Myles and patted his cheek, a grin lighting up his face at his friend's infuriated look. “They won't be a problem. I'm willing to follow your half-baked plan now, Princess, so what do I do.”

“We don't have enough time anymore to fully put the plan into action, you have already wasted enough of it as it is, and Myles is trying take back control. The mindscape says Sean is fighting more than you are letting on, and he is hurrying to take over as well. The most we can do is research our opponents, and hope another chance like this turns up soon.” Myles crossed the room in four, long strides and entered the small walkway between the tail and the three head-like rooms of the machine. Connected to the side, was a large computer with thousands of files and three monitors. A swivel chair sat in front of it, facing Myles and slowly spinning clockwise. Myles took the chair, and Sean leered over his shoulder, intently staring at the screen.

A little bit of reality-warping on Myles part got past the passcode with ease, and soon they were looking at the medical records for each of their future adversaries. “Oh! Do that narcissistic superhero first! I want to break him at the first opportunity.”