Chapter Three

The battle had erupted into chaos. People ran past Maxim, seeming to not even notice that he was there as they left the battlefield. They were running in different directions, some backtracking and going the other way as if not knowing where they should go or what they should do next. There was a sense of terror in the air around him and the panic seemed to have shattered all of the structured, rhythmic control that the hybrids had when they marched into battle. Maxim stood in the center of the field, looking around himself frantically to try to find Aegeus. He had lost sight of him in the frantic reaction to the Meldor and hadn’t seen him since. He worried that he might be one of the men who had been swept off of the ground, too injured to walk, to bring back to the compound for treatment.

Maxim spun around, rushing a few steps in each direction as his eyes took in each of the faces that he saw. Some he recognized, even if their names didn’t immediately come to his mind, and those that he didn’t know he could link to their side of the army by the way that they were dressed or who they were interacting with, helping him to decipher what was left of the quickly dissipating battle. Finally, he saw Aegeus across the field from him. His father turned toward him and their eyes met for the first time. Even from the distance, he could see the flicker of recognition, the slight change in the older man’s face that told Maxim that, at least for that moment, he knew that he was looking into a face that he had seen before. Maxim tried to take a step toward him, but before he was able to say anything or even reach out to him, his vision was obliterated by a surge of flame that seemed to burst up in front of him.

The heat of the flame caused Maxim to take a step back and he raised his hand up to block the glare from his eyes. He had been so startled by the sudden flames that he hadn’t processed the scream that was pouring out of it. It cut through the clamor of the melee around him now, slicing through the thick air so that it rang in his ears. Maxim forced himself closer to the flames that were now creating what seemed like a wall across the battlefield and realized that it was made by three people, their bodies engulfed in flames as the ran frantically back and forth across the desert sand. Maxim’s stomach turned and he felt horror rush up in his chest. He turned around desperately and rushed to the nearest warrior, one of the very few that were left on the battlefield.

“We have to help them!” he said.

“What do we do?”

Maxim dropped his sword to the ground and began to pull off his shirt. The warrior mirrored his action and soon the men around them were doing the same. Maxim took the small pouch of water that he had on his hip and doused his shirt, the sprinkled more on his body. Bracing himself against the heat, he ran toward the flaming figure in the center of the wall. He dove toward him and felt the flames licking at his skin as he passed through the fire. Soon his hands hit the man and the shirt that he held out covered part of his skin. The force of his body forced the man out of the row of fire and onto the ground. Maxim covered as much of him as he could with his shirt and started forcing him to roll, scooping up sand and burying him in it to suffocate the flames.

On either side of him he could see that the other men were doing the same. One of the warriors came to his side and started using his own shirt to continue dampening the flames on the man that Maxim had brought to the ground. His skin was still stinging from passing through the fire but the intense heat had begun to dissipate and he could no longer see the bright light from the corners of his eyes, telling him that the wall of flame was no longer there. He looked to either side of him and saw that the other men were on the ground, rolling and digging down into the sand to try to put out the remaining flames.

Finally there were no more flames on the man and Maxim carefully turned him over to see his face. He worried that he hadn’t gotten to him fast enough, that even with the effort that he had put forth to save him, that the flames were too intense, too quickly and he didn’t survive. Relief washed over him when he saw the man grimace as grains of sand fell away from his face. It was an expression of agony, but to Maxim it was a sign of life. To experience that pain, the man still had to be breathing, his heart still had to be beating, and for as long as that was happening, there would be a chance that he would be able to pull through. For him to truly have a chance, though, he would need to get to the healers as fast as possible. There was no way that they were going to be able to carry them. Their skin was too fragile and the time it would take to get them there might kill them with all of the breaks that they would need to take to change how they carried them. They needed another way to bring them to the compound and to the healers who were waiting there.

“Azra,” Maxim called to the warrior helping another of the men nearby. “Do you know where Jacob is?”

“I’m here. What do you need?”

Maxim turned and saw the human man coming toward him.

“Do you know how to operate the vehicle that Jonah and Rain built?” he asked.

“I can only guess,” Jacob said. “I didn’t know of the technology when they were building it.”

“Tell me what you know,” Maxim said. “Hurry.”

Maxim listened intently as Jacob told him the basic way that he thought that the vehicle was used. He nodded.

“Thank you. Is it close to here?”

“It shouldn’t be too far.”

“Help Azra watch over the men,” he said. “Find any water that you can and pour it over their skin. Don’t take their clothes or robes off of them. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Maxim stood and started running in the direction that he had seen his father coming. He pushed his feet harder and harder with each step, reaching inside of himself to find the power that his kind had given him. He rarely used the impossible speed that flowed through him, never finding the opportunity when he had truly needed it. Now, though, he knew that it was the only thing that was going to give those men the chance to live. He forced himself faster, finding the limit to his speed and breaking it, pushing his muscles beyond the boundaries that they had ever reached, until the world around him blurred with his speed and he barely felt the ground as he ran. He had to get to the vehicle that those who had come from Earth had left behind. It would bring them to the compound far faster than their feet could, not just helping them to save those men but also getting the vehicle out of the reach of the hybrid army.

****

Aegeus felt his mouth go dry and his pulse pounding in his temples. He tried to process what he had just witnessed, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around it. For a moment, he thought that he had been looking into the eyes of his son. The man had been standing several yards away from him and he only had the chance to see him for a brief moment, but there was something within Aegeus that told him that he had just seen Maxim, though he couldn’t be sure. He tried to calm the burst of excitement that he had felt when he first saw him. He didn’t want to build himself up too much only to find out that the man who he had seen was not actually his son.

But his face had been so familiar. It had seemed so right. In the young man’s eyes he had seen the eyes of his firstborn. Aegeus still remembered the first time that he had seen those eyes, just moments after his wife brought him into the world. He had prepared for a baby that was screaming, angry at the sudden change in its existence. Instead, he saw a face that was serene, disciplined in a way that usually only came with many years. Those eyes had stared up at him, reaching out to him in a still, unwavering way that connected with Aegeus instantly, and overtook everything within him. He knew in that moment that he had a son, a gift that was unlike anything that he had ever been given, anything that he had ever experienced. This child was his legacy and would be the greatest pride that he had ever felt. When Kyven was born, he loved him deeply and was proud to have another son, but Maxim was set apart. Those eyes were like his father’s, as if the gaze that Aegeus had seen the moment that Maxim was born had spanned the generations and linked him to the greatest man Aegeus had ever known, a man who Maxim would never have the opportunity to meet.

It hadn’t just been the young man’s eyes that had reached out to Aegeus and told him that he had finally found the child that he had longed for for the years that they had been apart. The curve of his face was stronger, sharper now that it had the years of a grown man on it, but it was still the face of the little boy who had waited for him at the window until he returned home from battle and watched him with rapt attention as he told him of what he had experienced. Aegeus had always been so careful not to tell Maxim too much. There were details that he was never to know, things that happened that Aegeus had to simply pretend didn’t happen at all. Instead, he would take simple moments and expand them, making them more important and more impactful than they had been so that he could make his son feel as though he had been there with him, that they weren’t apart for all of those days that the battles brought him from their home. He had never wanted Maxim to go through any of the things that he had. He had hoped that the harder that he fought and the more that he put into his service to the Order, the less turmoil and conflict would exist by the time that his sons were old enough to fight. As soon as his plan for the final battle on Uoria had gone awry, though, he knew that that had been a naïve and futile aspiration. He had failed them and the rest of his kind.

Now as Aegeus watched the man run from the battlefield, he knew that he was seeing Maxim. All of the men of his kind were incredibly fast, but there had been none like his son. From the time that he was a tiny child he had run with a speed that rivaled even the men, and he knew that the older he got, the more potent that capability would be. In the few moments before he disappeared into the desert, though, Aegeus noticed that Maxim didn’t look completely sure of himself. His steps seemed hesitant, as if he hadn’t run in some time. This was a painful and sad thought for Aegeus. He knew that he had missed so much of his son’s life. He had missed him growing tall and his face becoming so much like his own. He had missed him training for the army and serving under the King. He had missed all that he had learned and all that he had accomplished. Somehow, though, knowing that Maxim didn’t run anymore like he had when he was younger cut into Aegeus more deeply. It underscored all that had changed and all that could have been had he not been captured that day on the battlefield.

The battle around Aegeus was nothing more than a loose scattering of people across what had been their battlefield and he could see the two armies splitting and heading in their own directions, leaving each other as if they had lost their determination and the drive to fight, at least for that moment. It was a strange sight, something that he knew in the back of his mind that he had witnessed countless times before, and yet he felt disoriented and out of balance watching it now. He searched his mind, trying to think back to the other battles that he had fought and how they had ended. He remembered the hardships of the battles that had resulted in horrific injuries and escaping from the fray to help those who were wounded, or to be helped himself. He remembered chasing the enemies away from the center of the clash, forcing them away until they had run, leaving only his army in place. Though he knew that there had been times that were more like this, the battle ending in both sides exiting, their energy depleted and their determination shifted to regrouping and rebuilding so that they were prepared for what they knew would be another fight on another day, it was difficult to actually recall any of those battles happening. He wished that he could now. There was so much that he wished that he could remember, that seemed to have been taken from him by the years that he had spent in Ryan’s laboratory.

During his captive years Aegeus had survived by disappearing into his thoughts. He had lived within the moments that he had already had and the times that he had already spent, choosing to forget that life was continuing forward and preferring to borrow what he had already experienced to carry him through. This was far easier for him when he was first captured and Ryan held him only as himself. The scientist, so much younger then, had held him and taunted him, so pleased with himself for finally getting his hands on the powerful and aggressively hunted Aegeus. Those were the times when it was easy for Aegeus to lose himself in his own thoughts. They were still fresh and new in his mind, and he was able to access them unfettered. Whenever he pleased he could simply sink into his mind and relive the moments that he treasured the most. He would pretend that he was in Ellora’s arms again. He could feel himself embracing her and the touch of her lips on his cheek. He would imagine himself playing with his sons, their laughter filling his ears and blotting out the sounds of the lab and Ryan’s voice.

The longer that he was there, though, the harder it was for him to access some of the memories that he held within him. His focus narrowed and he was only able to truly experience some of the strongest and most powerful of his thoughts. This only worsened when Ryan decided that he was going to use Aegeus not just for the Mikana DNA that he offered, but for the mutated, transformed DNA that he would be able to extract if he was able to turn the man into the thing that he hated most ferociously. The transformation from being Mikana to being Klimnu was excruciating beyond anything that Aegeus would ever have expected. He fought the toxins that tried to make their way through his veins, struggling against them as if he could control the blood that beat from his heart and swept the virulent compounds through him until they were able to take over his very cells and change them. He remembered the feeling of his soul clawing for the surface, pushing through the corruption and evil that tried to take him over, fighting to keep him, at least part of him, as he had been. During his time as Klimnu, Aegeus had been blocked off from many of his thoughts and memories. He knew that the alteration affected not just his body but also his mind, amplifying the anger, viciousness, greed, and sadism that existed, if even in the tiniest of flickers, within all living creatures. If he allowed himself to reach out to those thoughts, he made them vulnerable. They could be exposed to those changes in his mind and soon he would lose the love and strength that he got from them. He would no longer be able to think of them in the beautiful way that he had, but would be bitter and angry toward them. This would allow even more of him to slip away and he feared that if enough of that happened, he would soon be beyond redemption. Aegeus was forced to surrender himself, at least partially, to the change that Ryan had caused in him. He had to give up drifting unchained through his thoughts and instead survive on only a few of his memories, reliving those days over and over again to stop him from giving up completely.

Now that Ciyrs and Elianna had brought him back, returned him to his full Mikana state, he was able to reach those memories again. He could feel himself coming back to life, restoring what he had sometimes feared was dead, and resurrecting the determination to fight against the Order and the corruption that had started there that had shifted into determination only to not let Ryan win.

Aegeus fell into step behind those who were starting across the desert, presumably toward the compound. He didn’t know what would happen when they got there, but it was a step. This was the first time in so many years that he had been able to fight for what he believed, and Aegeus knew that he wasn’t going to stop now. This was just beginning and there was far more to be done.