OBO: Spirit of Vengeance

CHAPTER THREE: PATTERNS

I do not experience time as mortals do. For me, there is no clear delineation between moments—only the eternal now and the endless call of unpunished wickedness.

In the three days since Marcus Whittaker felt my judgment, I have been... adjusting. The modern world is a cacophony of suffering and injustice, every cry for vengeance reaching me simultaneously. After a thousand years of forced silence, the sudden onslaught is overwhelming.

I flow through the city at night, a shadow passing between streetlights. Formless, but aware. I taste the air of this new century—metallic, electric, polluted with the residue of human excess. So different from the world I last knew, yet the underlying currents remain unchanged.

The strong prey upon the weak. The powerful silence the vulnerable. The wicked sleep peacefully while their victims lie awake.

This pattern is eternal. And so am I.

---

I have found my next vessel of judgment.

She calls herself Dr. Eleanor Harmon, though the "doctor" is a fabrication—one of many lies she has built her empire upon. From her "wellness clinic" in a converted warehouse, she sells false hope to the desperate and dying. Miracle cures for terminal illnesses. Ancient remedies that modern medicine has "suppressed." All at exorbitant cost.

I watch her now, through the windows of her modernist home overlooking the bay. She sits at a glass desk, reviewing financial statements, a satisfied smile playing at her lips. Nearby, a television plays footage of a gaunt woman with hollow eyes testifying to the power of Harmon's treatments.

"The doctors gave me six months," the woman says, her voice trembling with desperate conviction, "but after just three weeks of Dr. Harmon's protocol, my scans are showing improvement."

The woman on screen will be dead in two months. Harmon knows this. She has the real medical reports—the ones showing the cancer spreading unchecked while her patient foregoes actual treatment in favor of vitamins and meditation.

Harmon takes a sip of expensive wine and makes a note on the financial statement. Next quarter's projected revenue: $4.2 million.

I can see the darkness clinging to her—not metaphorical darkness, but actual stains upon her soul, visible only to me. Two hundred and seventeen lives shortened or ended by her deceptions. Two hundred and seventeen families bankrupted and heartbroken, grieving not only their loved ones but the false hope that consumed their final months.

I feel Amara stirring in her sleep across the city. The scarab rests on her nightstand, the cracks in its surface widening. Her unconscious mind reaches for me, not understanding what she has unleashed, only knowing that something ancient and terrible now moves at her behest.

I answer her unspoken call.

---

Eleanor Harmon's security system is state-of-the-art. Motion sensors, heat detectors, pressure plates beneath Italian marble tiles. None detect me as I seep under her door like mist, reforming in the shadows of her minimalist living room.

She is preparing for bed, performing her elaborate skincare ritual in a bathroom larger than the homes of many who have sacrificed their savings to her schemes. I wait, patient as only something ancient can be. Justice has no deadline.

When she emerges in silk pajamas, face glistening with expensive serums, I allow her to settle beneath her Egyptian cotton sheets. To check her phone one last time. To set her alarm.

Only when she turns out the light do I speak.

"Eleanor."

She jolts upright, fumbling for the bedside lamp. It remains dark.

"Who's there?" Her voice holds more annoyance than fear. Like Whittaker, she believes herself untouchable. Protected.

"Your security system is functioning perfectly," I tell her, allowing my presence to coalesce at the foot of her bed. "It is designed to detect humans."

The temperature in the room plummets. Her breath clouds before her face as she reaches for her phone.

"I've called the police," she lies, though the device in her hand shows no signal.

"You have built an empire on suffering," I say, moving closer. "You have profited from desperation. You have watched them die while counting their money."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says, but her pulse betrays her. It races beneath the thin skin of her neck. I can see it. I can hear it.

"Janet Michaels," I begin. "Age 42. Breast cancer. She mortgaged her home to pay for your 'protocol.' Her children now live with their grandmother."

"My treatments are experimental," Harmon says, her professional mask slipping into place. "I make no guarantees—"

"Michael Torres," I continue, unmoved. "Age 67. Pancreatic cancer. You told him the tumors were shrinking. You knew they were not."

"That's confidential patient information—"

"Sophia Washington. Age 8. Leukemia. You convinced her parents to decline bone marrow transplant in favor of your 'cellular regeneration therapy.' She suffered greatly in her final weeks."

Harmon's face hardens. Her initial fear calcifies into defiance.

"Whatever you think you know, you can't prove anything," she says. "My patients sign waivers. They make their own choices. I simply offer alternatives to a medical establishment that treats symptoms instead of causes."

I extend what might be described as my hand. Where it touches the foot of her bed, frost spreads across the silk duvet.

"I am not here to prove. I am here to balance."

For the first time, true fear flickers in her eyes. "What are you?"

"I am Obo," I tell her, allowing my form to fully materialize—the void bordered by iridescent light, the faces of her victims visible within my depths. "I am what comes when justice fails."

She scrambles backward until her spine presses against the headboard. "Stay away from me!"

"Can you feel it?" I ask, moving inexorably closer. "The despair of those you deceived? The agony of their final moments, when they realized all hope was false?"

"Please," she whimpers, all pretense abandoned. "I'll stop. I'll close the clinic. I'll return the money."

"Too late," I whisper, my voice the collective pain of hundreds. "They begged too."

I touch her forehead with what might be a finger. The contact lasts less than a second, but in that moment, I transfer into her the suffering of every patient she deceived. Every tear, every cry of pain, every moment of crushing disappointment when treatments failed. Every parent watching their child waste away. Every spouse holding a cold hand as the final breath rattled out.

She screams—a sound not of physical pain but of something deeper. The pain of a soul confronted with its own wickedness, forced to experience its consequences.

When I withdraw my touch, Eleanor Harmon is still physically unharmed. But her eyes are wide, unseeing. Her mouth works silently, forming apologies to people who cannot hear them.

I leave her there, trapped in an endless loop of the suffering she caused. Her body will continue, but her mind will never escape the judgment I have delivered.

Justice is served differently for different crimes.

---

Dawn finds me atop a skyscraper, watching the city awaken. In the distance, an ambulance's lights flash outside Eleanor Harmon's home. Someone found her—a housekeeper, perhaps, or an assistant coming to deliver reports of more souls to exploit.

They will find her alive but unresponsive. Doctors will diagnose catatonic schizophrenia or severe dissociative disorder. They will not find a physical cause.

There is no physical cause for the judgment of Obo.

I feel something stirring within me—not emotion as humans know it, but something adjacent. Satisfaction, perhaps. Or purpose.

For a millennium I watched, powerless, as the wicked flourished. Now I am free again, and the scales begin to balance.

But these small acts of justice are merely the beginning. As I spread my awareness across the city, I sense greater wickedness—systemic, entrenched, protected by layers of power and privilege.

The scarab that anchors me to this world grows stronger with each act of vengeance. The cracks deepen, allowing more of my essence to manifest.

Soon, I will be strong enough to confront not just individual evildoers, but the corrupt institutions that shield them.

Justice is coming. And I am its harbinger.