Nicholas laid back and dropped the handgun to the side as he stared at the ceiling of the truck. The cat's body lay still beside him.
'I didn't need to kill it... I could have just released it back to the wild.' He frowned at the thought.
'It would have died anyway. Especially since it lost one of its eyes. Me killing it was mercy.' He tried to convince himself.
'No... perhaps I could have healed its eyes. Kept it with me and fed it.' Nicholas suddenly sat up, his eyes wide.
"Why am I thinking like that?" He frowned deeply.
'Why do I care whether I killed the cat or not? When did I gain such emotion?'
He closed his eyes and focused, trying to remember everything that had happened between now and when he awakened in this world.
For as long as he remembered, he had always lacked something most humans had… Empathy.
It wasn't that he didn't understand what empathy was. He did and even learned to mimic it, he just didn't feel it like others did.
He wasn't born a psychopath, neither was he a sociopath nor narcissist. He was sure of it, and he knew exactly what he was.
He was an artificial psychopath… A subject of Project Homo Novus.
An unsuccessful one.
According to his file, his ventromedial prefrontal cortex had been lesioned when he was nine years old, but he had been a subject long before that, so long that he couldn't remember a life before the white lab.
The first name he remembered—the one he was called for most of his first two decades—was N-1601.
Project Homo Novus was dedicated to creating the next evolution of humanity… A more united, more advanced species of human.
The idea wasn't to create superhumans at least not completely… That would have gone against the united philosophy of the Novus Group.
It was to create a permanent caste system among humans—Just like ants—to enable peaceful and collaborative cooperation.
The caste system was called Variants. And Nicholas was selected for the Logical Variant Program.
Logical Variants were developed as Homo Novus's version of genetically bred strategists, administrators, and policy makers.
The idea was to have humans with reduced emotional influence, exceptional pattern recognition, and rational decision-making make the best decisions without the influence of empathy.
According to his file, for the first eight years of his life, he had showed exceptional pattern recognition and a rather high IQ making him a perfect fit for the division.
Which left the last step… Lesioning his ventromedial prefrontal cortex to remove his empathy.
While the surgery was successful, the result wasn't satisfactory. The objective was achieved, but somehow, some of his other traits were enhanced.
His recklessness, his curiosity, his excitement… were all enhanced beyond normal and it reflected in every area of his life.
Disappointed by his failure, Nicholas was simply moved to another Variant Program.
The Battle Variant Program.
His failure there was just as pronounced. He was as talented in close combat as an eagle was in swimming… Although he did develop relatively good gun skills.
He didn't know what would happen to him then not to mention he found the repetitive environment of the program boring so, by the time he was eighteen, he successfully escaped.
And took up the name Nicholas Blackheart.
***
Now, suddenly, something he hadn't felt in years was sneaking up on him.
The first thing that came to his mind was fear.
'When did I start to feel fear?' He went further back and something else clicked.
The excitement he felt when that mutant almost ripped his head off… There had been something else there.
At that point in time, he had simply pushed the thoughts down and ignored them because he was in danger.
But now, re-examining the sensation, he recognized it.
'Is that the fear of death?'
The fear of death was something he had never known.
He had engineered his own death simply because he couldn't be bothered to keep playing. He had done it without fear or second thought. Because to him, it didn't matter.
Death came for everyone anyway. It didn't matter if he died then or ten years later. Everything still led to death.
But now... He wasn't sure he would make the same decision.
'This is bad.'
He immediately checked other emotions… if it was only fear, it would be manageable but if other things were affected, he was in trouble.
His mind moved to Auntie Penny, Auntie Piper and Tessa.
He thought he had simply been playing a role… something he had always done.
But the more he thought about it, the more he realized it wasn't a role anymore… he was feeling it.
Without realizing it, he had developed affection for them.
'If I have to kill them to escape, will I do it?' He asked himself seriously.
The unconscious answer he reached was 'No'.
'All this is most likely because of the previous Nicholas… But where is he?' He asked himself the question he had been searching for ever since he awakened in this world.
'I have to find someone… Someone that can help me with the issue of my soul. I can't have such weakness like emotion. Not Now. Not ever.'
He looked at his hands… They were shaking.
He clenched them into fists.
He had another mission now.
(A.N: Unfortunately, I am not really good with writing emotional scenes, but I hope this conveys my meaning very well)