Chapter Nine

And now here.

The voice around him always. Never leaving him. Never allowing him to sleep.

Ryan’s voice. Taunting him. Following him through the years, its changing a way to mark the passage of time.

What had once been the voice of a young man, only just away from being a child, was now deep and ragged, the voice of a man.

His own years had left him. His youth was gone. Aegeus, the Great One, was no longer the young warrior he had been when he walked into that battle. He was aged. He was changed. But he was still strong.

Ryan hadn’t been able to stop him, to take away all that he was, no matter how hard he tried. Aegeus had tried to escape. The bloodied clothes and woven, hardened scars proved it. When it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to get out, he turned his attention instead to what he could learn from being there. He listened. He absorbed all that he could. He crept into the mind of the darkness and madness that dwelled within Ryan and sought to understand as much of it as he could. One day he would get out, and when he did, he would carry with him a deeper knowledge of this man than anyone knew.

He knew that the fighting wasn’t over. It had never ended. Uoria was alive and thriving. His kind was still going on. They were no longer alone on Uoria, but the aspiration to overtake and control the planet on his own was no longer what drove Ryan. His focus had shifted back. He had returned his energy to breeding his army. Ryan still had control in the Order and that control was growing. Aegeus knew that the lull that had happened in the years that he spent imprisoned was over. The quiet time had come to an end. War was near and the end was looming. He just had to fight.

There were others now. They were there. They had come.

Aegeus fought to get out of the darkness, to get to the thick wall that kept him from the rest of the laboratory. He knew that Ryan was standing out there. He was right there, holding a child. Aegeus could hear the baby’s cries. He didn’t know whose baby it was or why Ryan would have it, but he knew in the very depths of his soul, the place of him that had been tormented and tortured nearly beyond recognition and taught in a way that he never could have imagined that the cruelty that had befallen him at the hands of this monstrous scientist was only the beginning of his capabilities, that the only reasons he would have a child were to further his horrific plans.

"Here!"

A woman’s voice cut through the sounds of the baby crying and Aegeus felt a slight boost within him. She didn’t sound injured and rather than her voice fading as though she were trying to run from Ryan, it was getting louder and stronger. She was coming toward them. For the first time in however long it had been since Ryan had held him, there was someone who was coming toward them who didn’t sound like one of Ryan’s followers.

Beyond the sound of the voice, Aegeus heard footsteps. They blended and overlapped until he couldn’t decipher them individually, telling him that there were more, many more, than just the woman he had heard shouting. They were rushing down the corridor toward where he was chained. A door opened in the distance and Aegeus felt his heartbeat rising. Anger and aggression were starting to build within him, but he fought them, pushed them down. He wouldn’t allow them to take over. Not now. Not when he might have a chance.

Another door opened. Close this time. Aegeus tried to remember when he had been brought here. It had been weeks, maybe months, but there was a hazy memory of the brief moment that he spent without the hood on his head. He was being led through a laboratory and into a tank where he was chained, able to move only inches to either side. The tank around him was darkened so he could barely see anything, but he remembered the door. She had gone through the first room and was now in the lab where he spent every moment fighting the urges inside of him that he knew Ryan wanted, while still dreaming of ways that he was going to get out.

"Ryan!" the woman shouted.

She knew Ryan. She knew this abomination of a man, a creature far worse than anything that he could create from those he destroyed.

"Well, hello, Eden. How nice of you to drop by. And I see that you brought friends with you. I'm delighted to meet you all."

The sound of Ryan’s voice made Aegeus’ stomach turn. It was high-pitched, almost lyrical in the way that he murmured the words to her. It was only further manipulation, continued control as he forced her to both strain to hear him and to cope with the imbalance he created. There was fear and anger in the air, yet he spoke as though they were friends that had long been parted and were now being brought back together.

Ryan took a slight step closer to the tank and Aegeus could see his form in the darkness. He stared beyond the glass of the tank, forcing his eyes to focus. They had been in darkness for so long that they were beginning to fail him, but he couldn’t let that happen. It was another part of him that Ryan had tried to claim and take from him, and Aegeus wasn’t willing to give it over. He fought against the betrayal of his body to see beyond the darkness that surrounded him into the light of the laboratory. It was dim even there, but he was starting to be able to make out the forms of people in the lab. He could see Ryan close to the tank and the form of a tiny baby in his arms. Ahead of him, he saw a woman coming across the room. In an instant she stopped, her body slamming against something that couldn’t be seen. The years that Aegeus had spent with Ryan told him that he had created a forcefield, preventing the woman from getting past the center of the room, disabling her from being able to get to Ryan or the baby that he was holding. Aegeus could only guess that the baby was hers.

Ryan’s vicious laughter filled the lab, all the pretense of kindness gone. The woman he had called Eden turned around to face the group of other people who had come into the room, but Aegeus saw her lift her hands and touch the air in front of her. They stopped as if the air had become solid, and he knew that there was another forcefield in place there, keeping her from getting to those people either. Eden starting turning around frantically, looking around her as if trying to find something, anything, that would help her to get out of the blocked area and to her child. Suddenly her eyes fell on something and she stopped moving. Aegeus followed her gaze as much as he could and saw that she was staring at another of the tanks positioned along the laboratory walls. He couldn’t see what was inside it, but whatever it was, it obviously upset Eden.

She gasped and pushed forward against the force field, trying to look closer at what was inside the tank.

"No," she murmured.

"Don't worry," Ryan said viciously. "They're still alive. Barely just, I must admit, but they are alive. I took them as a failsafe. I figured that if I couldn't get my hands on your offspring and you and your mate were stupid enough to try to fight and we had to kill you, that at least I would have a breeding couple that I would be able to use."

Who was he talking about? Aegeus vaguely remembered the sound of the tank door slamming closed earlier in the day, but he hadn’t seen who or what was put inside. Now he knew that it wasn’t just one, but at least two other prisoners. That thought made his stomach sink even deeper. There had been others in the space with him, others being held and tormented, and he hadn’t even known that they were there. Had he known, maybe there was something that he could have done. Somehow, they could have worked together to do what he had never been able to do on his own, no matter how hard he had tried.

"He's human," Eden said, her voice bordering on desperation. "He isn't like me. He hasn't been changed."

Hasn’t been changed. The words resonated with Aegeus. What could she mean? Though he couldn’t see her fully, from what he could see, she looked human. Small but fiery, she didn’t seem to be anything more than one of the human women that Aegeus caught brief glimpses of during his imprisonment. But there had been a time, long before now, when the outside of his body didn’t reflect the changes that Ryan had already started, but he knew that they were happening. Now it was the opposite. The outside of his body was completely changed, beyond recognition even by those who knew and loved him the most, yet he could still feel who he had always been inside. He hadn’t seen himself yet. He didn’t know what he really looked like, but he could imagine it. He had seen many Klimnu when he was at home on Uoria and when he looked down at his body he could see the gruesome pale skin and skeletal frame that define the monsters. This had taken from him the body that he had crafted through his years of service to the army and the Order, the body that his wife had held and touched and loved, the body that had created his two sons and then cradled them. But he had fought against the mutation, fought for as long as he had been there, to preserve his mind and hold his wife and children within him in a place safe away from anywhere Ryan could reach.

"That doesn't matter," Ryan snapped, unimpressed by her apparent plea for whoever the scientist had trapped within the other tank. "After all, this child is half-human. Even though you are Denynso now, you conceived him when you were human. He is a hybrid just as any children that I could produce out of those two would be. They might not be as powerful getting their Denynso blood only from their mother and not the most feared warrior in the galaxy, but I'm sure once my army recovered Pyra's body we could do something to fix that."

"What do you mean?"

Aegeus could only assume that the massive man he saw behind Eden was Pyra. He knew that this man was Denynso. Though most of the Mikana still thought of them as legends, as a member of the Order, Aegeus knew full well that the fabled warriors were very real. It had been a long time since the Denynso and the Mikana had cooperated openly, but he and the others of the Order still engaged with them. He knew of Creia, the powerful King of the warriors and wondered why Ryan would desire the blood of this man rather than of Creia. This thought brought his mind to Valmont, the Mikana King who had been in control when he was younger. He was the last of the Kings who knew of the Order and had been replaced by someone younger and softer, a man who didn’t know of the Order and was never intended to. If he had, there was a chance that things wouldn’t be this way. If Rey knew of the Order and what Aegeus had learned about them, perhaps he would have been able to trust him with being a part of the plan that he had had in place and Aegeus wouldn’t now be trapped in this tank.

"It's so simple," Ryan said. He gestured at the tanks with the arm that wasn’t holding the baby. Aegeus pulled toward the glass wall in front of him, but Eden didn’t seem to be able to see him. "Hybrids. The future of armed combat. When Eden was here working with me she thought that I was creating some kind of mechanical weapon. She thought that I wanted Pyra's blood so that I could synthesize it and put it into those weapons. That was partially true, but it had nothing to do with mechanics. I was creating the weapons themselves."

She worked with him. Something that Aegeus had heard months before came back to him. Ryan had been screaming at some of the Valdicians who served him, shouting at them about his assistant going to Uoria and not coming back the way that she was supposed to. He hadn’t known that Aegeus had been listening, but he hadn’t elaborated any further. Aegeus now knew that this was the woman who Ryan had sent to his home planet. This explained her connection with the Denynso and the baby that Ryan had said was half-human. It also made Aegeus even more desperate to get out to them. These people knew of his home, they were connected to the planet that he loved and had tried so hard to defend.

They might know his sons.

Eden paused for a few moments before she spoke again.

"Why hybrids?" she asked. "Why did you want to blend Denynso and human? Why not just find a way to enslave the Denynso so that they could be militarized?"

Her voice was slightly different now, as if she wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying, but more about what the scientist would say back to her.

"The Denynso will never be enslaved," Pyra growled, the volatile anger of the Denynso obvious within him.

Ryan laughed and left the side of the tank. Aegeus watched as he carried the baby over to a table and placed him into a basket, turning his back on the tiny child even though he was still screaming. Though he hated to hear the sound of the baby crying, it was a relief to see that Ryan was no longer holding him. As long as his hands weren’t on him, the child was far safer. Ryan crossed the room to the forcefield and stood close enough to it that Eden would have been able to grab him by the throat if the invisible block hadn’t been there.

"You truly believe that, don’t you?" he asked, staring at the massive Denynso warrior.

Pyra took an aggressive step toward Ryan, but the forcefield kept him from being able to get to the scientist.

"The warriors would die before being captured.”

The group of warriors behind Pyra let out battle cries in agreement, but Ryan didn’t even take a step back from them. The forcefield was giving him confidence.

"You've been captured," Ryan pointed out, his voice high again. "I have you right here and there is nothing that you can do about it. I could do whatever I want with you. I think that I will wait, though. Why spoil the fun? Soon all of the warriors will be here and I will be able to create everything that I have ever dreamed of."

"You never answered me," Eden pointed out, taking a slight step toward him, her voice getting slightly louder. Aegeus realized now that she was trying to keep Ryan talking, but he didn’t understand why. "Why hybrids? Why blend the humans and the Denynso?"

"It's not just them," Ryan said and Aegeus felt his stomach turn.

He knew what Ryan was talking about, but he didn’t want to hear any more about it. He had witnessed enough of the horrific plan that the scientist had and he didn’t want to have any more of it in his mind.

"I don't understand,” Eden said.

"You have no idea who I am," Ryan told her, the lightness gone from his voice, replaced by aggression and arrogance tempered with a hint of desperation for acknowledgment and approval. "My great-grandfather was the general of the Valdician army that controlled the prison colony before the Nyx 23 mission came. I spent my entire childhood listening to the stories that my parents would tell me of him and watching his banked memories, reliving every moment of what he went through."

"Banked memories?" Pyra asked, obviously not understanding what the scientist was talking about.

Aegeus saw Eden nod.

"Some people can't handle the thought that what they have done in their lives won't be remembered when they die, so they have their entire consciousness preserved. This allows others to watch through their memories. Sometimes it is very important people who are banked so that future generations can know of the amazing things that they accomplished. Usually, though, it is just self-obsessed people who are too afraid of disappearing and think that everything that they have done is too noteworthy and impactful to ever be forgotten."

Aegeus felt a glimmer of vindication within him at the fierce, mocking tone in Eden’s voice. Ryan slammed his hands against the forcefield, but Eden didn’t respond. She glared back at him, holding the intensity of his stare for several long seconds before her gaze finally dropped and then flickered to the baby on the table. Aegeus knew that the woman wanted to fight against the scientist, but she was thinking of her baby. He knew all too well the power of a parent’s love. They would endure anything if they believed it would protect their child.

"What my great-grandfather did was more impactful than anything that has been done since. Odan created something powerful and impressive, something that no one else had ever been able to create, and he was going to revolutionize the entire galaxy. He is the one who came up with the plans to have the Denysno captured from the compound and brought to Penthos. There he was training them to be slaves. He lured Nyx 23 to the planet knowing very well that the humans of Earth can't tolerate anything that they don't deem appropriate."

Ryan’s voice sounded fragile, as if it was right on the brink of shattering. He was starting to lose control, starting to feel as though he was slipping in his supremacy.

"What is appropriate about enslaving an entire clan?" Eden asked.

Some of the anger was creeping back into her voice, but she was fighting hard to control it, forcing herself to remain calm.

"It wasn't just them," Ryan said. "Nyx 23 was going to be the next step. They lured them to the prison planet with the intention of sending them to Uoria where their allies were waiting to imprison them in the compound now left behind. There they would be trained as enslaved soldiers and used to take over Uoria. The Valdicians and the Covra would then continue until they had the entire galaxy at their mercy. That plan, however, didn't work out exactly as they had envisioned. Nyx 23 came, just as they knew that they would, but when they sent them to Uoria, the ship somehow went just slightly off course. They ended up crashing in a different area of the planet than they were supposed to, so instead of them being captured instantly, there was confusion and they were able to escape the grasps of the Covra for a time. That is when it all changed."

"Earth sent the military," Eden said.

Aegeus stilled. He might finally get answers to the questions that he had had since before he had even fallen into Ryan’s clutches.

"The humans swarmed the planet and there was a brief but bloody battle. The humans destroyed what my great-grandfather had built. Everything that he had worked so hard for was now gone. The mission of the military was to come and kill off all the Valdicians, and then liberate the remaining prisoners back to their original home. Of course, that didn't happen."

"The Denynso never returned to Uoria," Pyra said.

It was clear how much it hurt the warrior to say these words, to put voice to a mystery that had plagued all who lived on Uoria for many years.

"No," Ryan said. "That's because they came here."

"How?" Eden asked. "I don't understand."

"A rogue member of the military immediately recognized the power and potential in the Valdicians. He went to my great-grandfather and asked for his cooperation. Odan obliged and together they brought the rest of the Valdicians and the surviving Denynso back to Earth. That man's name was Richard and though he served in the military, deep in his heart he was a scientist. As soon as he saw the Valdicians and the Denynso, he knew that he wanted to be able to use the incredible capabilities of both to breed a master warrior race. Odan told him of the plan to take over Uoria and they agreed to work together, shifting their focus away from just taking over Uoria and working from there. Instead, they would breed warriors powerful enough to take over Earth, the greatest conquest in this and any neighboring galaxy. From there, nothing would have stopped them."

"But something did," Eden said.

"Breeding warriors takes time," Ryan growled angrily as if her words were a personal assault against him, an insult to his very being and all that he had put into it. "They had to create the hybrids and then further hybrids from there. Richard's wife agreed to be the first human incubator. She gave birth to a half-human, half-Valdician. At around the same time, a Valdician woman delivered a half-Valdician, half-Denynso. These were the first two hybrids, but Odan and Richard weren't satisfied. They knew that they could do better, make even more incredible combinations to build armies that were stronger, more powerful, and more fearsome than anything that the universe had ever seen. They raised these children, grooming them always to be their next breeding couple. When they came of age, they bred and had a son. That was my father."

"You are a hybrid?" Pyra asked, the word heavy with judgment.

Aegeus saw Ryan turn sharply to the warrior.

"Yes," he said bitterly, "but my father fell in love with a human woman. Rather than breeding with one of the other species, he bred with her and had me. I ended up with none of the traits of the other species. That didn't stop me, though. I spent my entire life watching my great-grandfather's memories and listening to the stories that my grandfather and father told me. I knew that one day it would be my chance to continue their efforts. I would take everything that they had learned and expand on it. I wasn’t satisfied just to stop with those combinations that they had been working on. By the time that I was old enough to start with the experiments, the original Valdicians and the Denynso we had brought here had all died out. Though there were some Valdician children that had been born pureblooded, they hadn't had the foresight to have any pure Denynso bred. All I had left were children of various degrees of diluted blood. I knew that I needed more Denynso to work with. I am the only one left in my bloodline. My family is now gone and I have no children. It is up to me to complete what my family started and created the ultimate race of warriors."

Rage surged within Aegeus. Hearing Ryan admit the horrific, brutal truth of what he was planning and what he his family had put so many through was far worse than just knowing it. He had always known, even before he left Uoria, that it was the creation of hybrids that had motivated the Valdicians, and over the years Ryan had ensured that Aegeus knew that he had failed, that he had left his planet, his kind, and the Universe unprotected from the cruelty that Ryan had planned for them. Hearing him admit it so casually, seemingly without remorse or concern, pushed Aegeus to a degree of anger that made him feel like he could tear the chains from the walls. None of the torture that he had endured over the years mattered. He would go through it all again for one more chance of escape.

"But why did you send me after Pyra's blood?" Eden asked. "I know that you just hoped that they would kill me off, but you had to have some kind of contingency plan just in case I did manage to get it and bring it back to you. You couldn’t have intended to use it to further your experiments. That would require cloning the DNA from the blood and you would have to use a human woman as a carrier. That child would have been just as much a hybrid as the ones that you already had."

Aegeus knew exactly why. He knew exactly what had motivated Ryan to send Eden to Uoria, leading her to slaughter. The torment and death that she would have faced at the hands of the Denynso should they have discovered that they had been betrayed would have been only amusement for Ryan. He still would have been able to access the blood of the warrior, and use it for the purpose that was now sickeningly clear to Aegeus. This had always been the intention. His suffering wasn’t coincidental. It wasn’t a response to what he had discovered or to what he had planned. He had fallen into exactly what Ryan had wanted.

"Yes," Ryan said. "That's true. The blood was never meant to be used to clone, though. It was for something much more powerful. You see, my family was brilliant. They focused on the Valdicians, the Denynso, and the humans at first, but they had never forgotten where this all began and what opportunities awaited them. They continued to use their alliances on Uoria to collect other species to integrate into their experiments. Some bred more easily and willingly than others, while some turned against their own kind to offer up members into our experiments. My father, the last of my family, died when I was 16. That is when I took over. Within a year I had something in my possession that none of the others had ever had, something that would make my hybrids beyond anything that they were capable of creating."

Ryan walked back toward the tank. Aegeus struggled against the chains, thrashing against them with all his strength. The intensity of his anger, his hatred coursed through him like acid in his blood. He gave himself over to it fully. He offered himself over to the violence, the rage. He entrusted the perseverance of his soul to the memories of his wife and sons and as Ryan turned on the light within his tank, nearly blinding him with the bright flood of illumination, he let out a roar and allowed himself to fully become what Ryan had manipulated him to be.

"Klimnu," Ede whispered.