Three years before, he'd attempted to assasinate Leonard McCauley as part of a campaign against the corporate greedmongers who practically ran society these days, of which McCauley was one of the worst examples - even in that rotten set. Ever since, he'd been paying the price for his failure.
At first, McCauley was content simply to have him tortured. But then another option had opened - his fledgling program to create and control metahumans. He'd begun experimentation, but subjects with activatable metagenes were few & far between. Most of the victims simply died slowly and painfully in agony, and many of those with actual metagenes ended up heavily deformed or even killed by their own "power." McCauley didn't hesitate to throw Mano in.
To his shock and horror however, not only did Mano prove metagene-positive, he became the most sucessful subject to date!
He produced small organelles all over his body, which generated a disruption field which surrounded his body. This field absorbed all light, making him appear to crackle with jet-black energy, but it's primary function was to steal energy directly from the atoms of the air, most of which were merely slowed, but some had electrons ripped from their orbits, converted to pure energy which was absorbed by the field, and molecules were broken into their component atoms by the disruption.
As a side-effect of this process, he no longer needed to eat or breathe - the energy provided by the organelles being sufficient to sustain him. Indeed, as his breathing reflex was intact, normal air was moderately dangerous to him, as the oxygen levels improved the efficiency of the organelles' energy uptake enough that the surplus of energy left him in a state resembling drunkenness.
What had given him his current name though, was that the highest concenrations of organelles were in his hands. For an animal or human to touch most of Mano's body left them weak and dizzy. If his left hand, which had a tenfold concentration of the organelles, touched them briefly, it left them unconcsious for hours, with prolonged contact leading to a coma. But his right hand... his right hand had a hundred-fold concentration of the organells. His right hand was Death, disintegrating all it touched bar Inertron, the strongest, most durable substance known.
On seeing these results, McCauley, in his panic, had him sealed in an intertron-lined suit in an intertron-lined cell, with bars of interton, with hyperoxygenated air pumped into the suit to keep him sedated. Lying barely-conscious but never unconscious, always looking at the same section of silver-coloured wall for almost three years. Three long years. Only his thoughts of vengence on McCauley had kept him anywhere near sane. And now, now he knew he could never act upon them.
He looked around his new, opulent cell. At the thin silver, interton-fortified gloves that had replaced the suit through the oxygen-filtered helmet he now wore. At the endless luxuries scattered about the room. Luxuries he swore he would never use. Which was probably why they were there.
He remembered the pain of the brainwashing, the surprise of the techs that he realised he had been brainwashed... and the commands he could no longer disobey.
In despair, the first time he'd been alone he'd attempted to remove the gloves and destroy himself, leaving nothing of himself to be mocked, only to find that he couldn't remove the gloves. He couldn't even make the attempt. Other attempts at suicide failed the same way, and he'd heard McCauley's laughter. He'd watched Mano's whole performance.
Now, he was supposed to be the leader of McCauley's death-squad. His own, true name forgotten at McCauley's command, forever to be known solely by the Spanish word for hand. McCauley's final little revenge on his new pet.
Mano hated what he'd become.
-------------------- My views are my own and do not reflect those of everyone else... and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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