The End Of Life

Sitting down with his hands on his head, Mark took deep breaths continuously to ease the pain he was feeling. Sweat kept rolling down his face and drenching his back, and he could only keep gritting through it. But eventually, he took out the box of tablets from his pockets and swallowed a pill to ease it without water. 

The pill started doing its work immediately, and he sat there on the ground, not moving, only waiting for the pain to ease a little so that he could continue his work. He originally planned to do at least 3 experiments but is now scared from the pain. If he faints on the alleyway, there is no telling how things will go. 

After 15 more minutes of resting, he finally found himself standing by taking the wall support. He dragged his body towards one of the Ac outlets and sat on it. He looked down towards the zombie near his feet and simply kicked it a little. 

'Shit, this pain is too much. The disadvantages are way more than what it gives me. I am not going to use this anytime soon. Damn it, the only powers I got have heavy drawbacks. How do I solve this now.' he thought while frowning and rubbing his forehead. He got more frustrated as he thought about it. 

Eventually, after another 30 minutes of resting, he finally stood up and checked the time. Noticing it was already time for lunch, Mark made his way towards the Jeep parked across the road. Getting into the safe environment in the Jeep, he let out a relaxing sigh and took out a bottle of water from the bag before downing almost half of it in one go. 

He felt very satisfied when he drank water and then felt his stomach ache in hunger. He immediately took out the snacks he packed and started gobbling them down at an insane rate. Before he knew it, 5 bags of chips, 4 energy bars, and 2 water bottles were completely done. Looking at the amount he ate, he felt astonished. He brought extra just in case he would be late to go home and wouldn't be able to find any food. 

As he was thinking, he felt his stomach growl in hunger a bit once again. His eyes went wide open and was thinking about himself as a monster. He could never eat this much in his whole life and just after he properly tested the powers, his hunger spiked up a lot. He couldn't help but curse as he realized another burden this power brought for him, and this one is bigger than the last one. 

Food was now probably the most important commodity humans have. For now, everything is good for their group and they are happy. But he knew how things would go down after a few more weeks or even a month. There isn't any supply, and the stock they have now would eventually become nil. Then there would be a huge fight for food all around the country. That is the reason Mark is trying to get all he could right now. 

Now with the new emerging problem, his decision of not using the power more often solidified. He sighed and then drove the Jeep to an isolated place before he slowly fell asleep. He was too tired by the hunger and headache he got when he used the power.

As he opened his eyes, he saw a similar scene of three balls. Noticing that the balls were similar with slight changes. The grey ball in the middle was a little bigger, not by much, but Mark's keen observation of things caught it. He didn't think much about it and then turned around to look at the place he was in. He called this his 'mind space' and was going to keep calling it that. Then he noticed his surroundings and something caught his eyes. 

There was a border. A transparent border around the balls. He walked up closer and extended his hand. It stopped before it reached the ball. He felt something hard like a wall when he pressed further. 

'Another restriction or something?' he thought, comparing the chains on the light ball to the transparent case. He walked around the balls touching the transparent wall and found it was really restricting the three balls. He thought about something and tried to use his powers. The dark ball slowly expanded and let out a strange fog, but as the fog touched the transparent wall, he felt immense pain once again. 

He closed his eyes and opened them to see his car's roof. Drinking some water, he massaged his forehead. 

'It's all the transparent wall's fault. When that strange wave touched the wall, the pain came back. It's all the damn wall's fault. There was no wall the last time I went inside the mind-space. Why is it there now? Damn it.' trying to figure out how the wall came into being. 

He tried to remember the moment he used the powers on the zombie earlier that day but couldn't remember anything. It was strange, he could only remember the zombie stopping for a second and him taking out the sword to finish it. He couldn't remember things like seeing the bird or any other situation, only the zombie and the sword. 

'Damn, this is messing with my head. I can't remember anything other than those two things. I saw something other than the zombie before I swung the sword. Something which determined that I was controlling the zombie but not stopping time. What the hell was that.' he felt scared as he thought about it more deeply. 

Too many questions started piling on one and another as he thought deeper and deeper about the powers, the transparent wall, and the memory loss. He couldn't help but throw the bottle out of the car window. Only when he thought he finally got something that would give him an edge over the other in survival, enormous problems came with it. Given the current circumstances, he can't use the power at any cost.