Adrius tried to keep his fingers still, to keep his legs from twitching. The heart pounded in his chest so forcefully that his head throbbed. A thick sheet of metal wrapped around his skull, covering his eyes completely – or what was left of them. He could move his hands mere inches, and he'd been roughly bound around the waist. He could hardly keep his breath steady from sheer anxiety, and every few hours, something pricked his arm and forced him to become even weaker than before.
A mantra from his brother, given just before all of this started, was the only thing that kept him going, but he was fading fast.
"Give them nothing. You know nothing. You have nothing."
Those were the last words his brother said to him, whispered just moments before Cato's soldiers barged into their home and changed their lives forever.
One minute, the two were sitting with their father and listening to an update about the ongoing efforts to stop the invasion. The next, a group of men sundered the simple fortifications covering the entrance to the place they'd been hiding for months and took them all into custody.
Their father had tried valiantly to fight them off, but he was powerless to stop them. Adrius had been the luckier of the two brothers, and he'd managed to down a soldier with a short blast of azure light from his eyes. His Exception had not been enough to defeat anyone else, and Felixus hissed that mantra just before they were carried into separate rovers and driven away.
Adrius wanted many things.
He wanted to cry.
He wanted to fight.
He wanted to surrender.
He wanted an end.
He wanted revenge.
He wanted escape.
He wanted peace.
It had been days of captivity. Days of separation from his father, from his brother. Days since he'd eaten a proper meal. Days since the skin around his eyes had melted the first time he'd tried to use his Exception to burst the metal covering his only weapon, his only resource to earn his freedom. Adrius had no idea if he'd ever see again, or if he even could if he tried. All was horrific pain, and he doubted they were giving him anything to avoid infections.
He was going to die.
On schedule – roughly – the door to the chamber opened with a slick sound like a ripple across water. Someone stalked inside the room and came to a stop beside him, the pattering of their feet against a metal floor the only sign to him that they'd approached. Adrius tried to resist his bindings out of sheer frustration, but he had no real chance of making it out. If he had the Gift, if he were older, if he were smarter, maybe he could….
No.
He repeated the mantra.
"I don't know anythi-ing," he pleaded. "You can't keep me here forever! I'm just a kid!"
The person ignored him, an odd clicking noise emanating from the place the figure must be standing. He could not tell if that was from some machine or from a person, but it was a really odd sound all the same. It wasn't the first time he'd heard it, and if he weren't in such a panic, he could probably figure it out. His father always said he was the smartest kid he knew.
"We'll keep you here as long as we like," the person said – a woman, maybe. He'd not heard her before during this time. The last person who'd come in had sounded like a man.
"You can't!"
"Oh, but we can," she argued with a tap to his shoulder, an action that forced his body into a flailing panic. "Boy, the sooner you realize no one can stop us, the sooner you'll realize your place."
Adrius didn't understand what she meant, nor what she or they wanted with him. Even his brother's warning was confusing to him – what did he know that no one else did?
"I'm just a kid!"
"True, and that makes you great for all kinds of tests." More clicking noises came from her – was it a language?
Something shifted behind him and prodded him in four different places: one at the base of the neck, one at the base of the spine, and one at the back of each thigh. The pain was immense as they put something inside his body, something that burned as it spread with every second that passed. He cried out in agony, twisting in his restraints as sweat pooled and dripped onto the metal floor.
"P-pl-please don't. No more!"
The woman merely laughed.
Four more pricks – one in each wrist, one in each heel. Blood from trickling wounds joined the sweat on the floor, and his breathing quickened. His heart strummed in his chest to their tune, and whatever they'd injected him with this time was the most excruciating thing he'd experienced, more than even the scorching of his eyes.
"Wh-why?" he cried. "Father! Brother! Please- please help! Anyone!"
"No one is coming. Your parental and fraternal meat are no more."
Adrius grimaced at the sound of that. No more? Does that mean- no. That can't be!
Awareness of his surroundings became a blur as his senses failed him. Smells, tastes, sounds: all became too stressed for comfort. He could only hear the sound of his own heartbeat, faster than it had ever been. Everywhere something touched him was like a burning hot flame – the clothes, the bindings, the beads of sweat.
"You are little more than meat to be exploited for our gain."
The woman gripped his throat with one hand and pulled his chin down. He tried to bite at the deft fingers that held his mouth open and forced him to drink a mouthful of a tangy, sweet substance. He'd not expected the pleasant flavor, and he tried to vomit, to cough, to push it all back up, but the reflex wouldn't come. He howled in anguish.
Someone new entered the room with a sharp sound. Someone must have been pushed, because they tumbled to the ground near his feet. Adrius was too weak to care as the chemicals churned in his body.
"Brother!"
A spark of hope rose in his chest.
"Felixus?" He tried to struggle again.
The door opened as footsteps receded, and he suspected that they'd left the two of us alone unless someone was really quietly watching in the corner.
"I'm here, here. It's me. You – your eyes!"
Tender hands tried to touch his arms, to check his condition, but every touch was like fire. He flinched away. A churning in the core of his stomach began to build, heart stammering in his chest.
"Can yo- you g-g-get us out?"
Felixus hesitated for far too long.
"What? What is it? Are they let-eting us go free?"
"Where would we go, Adrius?" Felixus paced. "When they brought me here, they took me past a viewing deck. We're in space, Adrius – the aliens got us!"
The spark of hope faded. The broiling heat from his abdomen expanded to his torso and began to stretch through his arms and legs.
"Space? How- why?"
"I don't know. They asked me questions, and I gave them no answers. Just kept asking about you and Dad. They did some tests or something on me, but I don't think I had what they wanted. They brought me here, finally, and I don't know what we're going to do next."
"But space?" Adrius asked again, bewildered. "They're ta-taking kids to space?"
"I think they're taking a lot of people to space," Felixus said. "I passed a bunch of rooms like this one, and there were kids, adults, just as locked up as any of us. There were dozens, brother!"
Space. They didn't teach us much about outer space in schooling, and the idea that he'd left the planet was terrifying. He missed his father. Father would know what to do.
"Is Father okay?"
The agitation spread to his throat and began to crawl up his facial muscles. He twitched weakly.
Felixus reached to the space around the back of his head. "Hold on, let me get you out of that."
Several seconds passed until finally, relief. The metal peeled away from his face, and Adrius nearly passed out from the mixture of pain, pleasure, and discomfort that rose from everything they'd put into his body and the irritation around his eyes.
"Oh. You- you-"
Adrius slowly forced his eyes open and met the face of his older brother. Unblemished, but pale. A grin erupted across the other's face, and a swell of emotions released all at once.
Alongside a surge of excitement that finally bubbled to the surface, all of it concentrating behind his eyelids.
An azure flash.
Powerful.
Uncontrolled.
It carved through the metal of the floor as well as it did flesh.
Adrius screeched in anguish and tried to look away, tried to close his eyes, tried to redirect it. Everywhere he looked, carnage spread as metal buckled, ripped, melted.
None of it as meaningful as the initial burst that took his brother away from him forever.
OSMOS V
April 03, 16:24 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE FIVE
"She loved this place as much as anyone did."
I listened to Grandfather's words with a heavy heart and rubbed at the dirt caught between my fingernails absently. This world's equivalent of a flak jacket made the motion difficult, sleeves too long for the length of my arms by a couple of inches. Maximus kept promising that they'd tailor it, but no one at the compound was willing to make the first pass at it. Once they made the precedent, they'd have the opportunity to put more of us to work in the field.
"It was the quiet life," I offered quietly, taking in the view. "They valued it more than anything."
The sands of the Magnus Desertus stretched as far as I could see in many directions, but Sanitas was just below us beneath the ridge. Domed buildings that once possessed character, activity, and familiarity had been replaced with broken shambles of their former selves. Streets lay obscured in sandy piles, and detritus that had not been covered over time still lay visible across its abandoned paths. It was strange to see a place I'd grown to love, even as isolated as I was from it for those long earlier years, to be so empty and void of life.
The ridge overlooking the city was a popular spot, and I'd come here with my parents on more than a few occasions. Taller than most of the buildings, you could see every nook and cranny for miles, and it was so close to the city itself that you could hear many of the happenings above the din of the wind.
I imagined myself as a teenager or an adult, sneaking off with a date to come here. Where I'd grown up in my first life, there was nothing close to a typical "Make-Out Point." It was naive, now, to have become so excited at the idea that this place might be like that when I get old enough again. The town was a wreck, the consequences of the war so high that even smaller towns on the outskirts couldn't escape it.
"They never told me why they settled here. I have my theories, but did they ever tell you?"
Grandfather stood near the edge and reached down to let the sand filter through his fingers. "Like most things in life, there were many reasons for it. Some good, some bad. I tried to convince them to stay near the Capital, but they refused. Horatio had recently broken away from Carnifex at the time, and he needed a place to lie low. He'd met Lucrecia while on one of his last jobs with them, and they'd fallen for each other by then. She'd had a checkered past too, and when offered, they jumped at the chance to come here. You came along not long after."
The information was mostly in line with what I was thinking had happened, and it frustrated me to no end that they'd not shared this story to me before they died. I didn't know the details of how they met, what their life was really like, and they'd kept all of this from me for so long-
…
I admonished myself inwardly. These thoughts were not productive, and I wanted to save every ounce of goddamn anger for the right people.
"Your parents were complicated individuals, Cassian. They both lived full lives before they had you – decades-long careers. They'd established themselves, they'd had their fair share of struggles, and they'd succeeded at something not everyone gets a chance to do with their background: solace."
I scoffed, gesturing to the ruined city, at a nearby building with holes burned right through the roof from acid. "Some solace that turned out to be."
Maximus offered a small pitying smile. "Son, with the amount of attention on your father, they should have been grateful-"
"What did he even do?" I asked pointedly. Everyone at the compound spoke highly of my father, of his past deeds, but they had yet to share anything of substance about those final months.
Maximus considered the question for a long moment.
Too long.
"Forget I asked," I muttered bitterly. "Why'd we even bother coming here? This is a waste of ti-"
"It's your mother's birthday."
The reminder may as well have been a slap in the face.
Her birthday had been all I could think about for weeks in preparation for this trip. The reminder did nothing to quell my mood, and I felt every bit the snot-nosed kid I still appeared to be. Perhaps no one alive had been through as much as I had in these short years, and to still be a goddamn child in the eyes of all those I cared about? Fuck that, and fuck this.
"We scrounged for weeks for supplies for this trip," Maximus continued, frown extending throughout his features. "I used up all the social capital I have. I had Jula pull favors, and I spent hours researching and plotting the safest paths through potential warzones. Don't dare act like this moment wasn't worth it."
It was not worth it.
Not by a longshot.
Risking detection, taking resources, braving the wilds? All for what? Closure?
I won't have closure until Xandros has his head on a pike.
But… Maximus was trying.
The better part of the past two years have been a nightmare, and I was lucky to have him in my corner. Before my parents died, I'd reached an acceptance that they were like parents, and that I should not treat them so distantly. Yes, they weren't my real parents, but they'd acted in all the ways that mattered as a mother and father should. It was difficult to accept Maximus, though, not because he was a bad grandfather. No, it was because I'd put in so much effort trying to wrap my head around having a new set of parents, only to have them ripped away from me far too young and as a consequence of war.
Why bother doing the same with Maximus?
I didn't want to hurt him, so I played along. I bit my tongue. I grew more frustrated.
The only saving grace was that he trusted me to be an active participant in whatever horrors we would face. He couldn't train me the way that his daughter-in-law had, but he offered advice, suggestions, and it was easy to see him as a mentor in this new, changed world. He'd been alive far longer than most, and he had a lot of knowledge to share.
He just had moments where he backslid into a condescending adult.
I couldn't take it personally for long. The stakes were far too high to hold anything against him long term. Without him, I'd be far less active in the war effort.
I took a long breath. "We should get moving."
Maximus glanced back toward me and then slowly nodded, but his face was still filled with pain from the turmoil of the previous moment. I didn't want to upset him, but I was just bloody frustrated. The conversation was not over.
With a flick of a button from a device at his many pocketed belt, one of our borrowed Jula-Drones hovered out of his backpack and began to beep, its chrome-coloration glinting in the sunlight far above us. The oblong object began scanning the environment, and we had to wait for only a few seconds before it finally glowed with a flicker of blue light from one of its sensors. The glimmer of light was set to its dimmest calibration on purpose, to avoid sparking any notice from anyone who happened to be hiding in the ruined city below.
We followed the path as quickly as we could in relative silence. Descending the ridge to return to our vehicle was easier than climbing it had been, and I wished that we did not have so long to go. I wished we could head into the city, look for survivors, look for any evidence that anyone I knew had lived here. My teachers, my friends from school, anyone – but we had a job to do. This was the only reason that they had justified our trip here, and honestly, probably the only reason it had been worth coming.
Closure was not going to come from here.
Our home on the outskirts came into view after a short rover drive, and it was clear that the place had been looted long ago. It had been more than a year since anyone had lived there, and as I stepped out of the vehicle and walked a familiar pathway to the front of the building, I couldn't help but feel connected to its sights, its smells. I wouldn't even mind coming back here when all of this is over, settling down, and building back this place from the ground up.
"Are you okay to go in with me?"
I nodded at the question but said little else. My voice caught in my throat at the sight of my once bedroom window, glass still standing but with spider-webbed cracks running through its surface.
The place was ransacked. Anything valuable had long been stripped away, sold or bartered to anyone who might need raw supplies. We hadn't had that many worthy possessions, but it still hurt to see much of what I remembered gone at worst, or out of place at best. Even the cutlery was gone, including the too bent spoon-equivalent I'd used as a toddler.
The office – Father's bunker – was the destination. A door that had ultimately spiraled me into where I am today, I still remembered the faces of my parents when they realized what I'd done. The months of punishment afterward had been brutal, but the satisfaction that I'd learned some of the family secrets at the time had made it all worth it. I still didn't know everything, but what child does learn everything about their parents?
The door was relatively undisturbed. It was clear someone had tried to open it and had failed. It pleased me to know that Mother and Father had increased security and that it had worked to stave off looters. A not insignificant amount of pride swelled in my chest.
Maximus bypassed the protections, and the dust-filled room opened. We descended down, and the Jula-Drone began to hover throughout the room. Father must have taken many of the items with him, like the blaster that had typically rested on the shelf for easy access. The computer terminal remained untouched, and various other tools were present, but it was difficult to know how useful they might be. The two of us began to collect as much of it as possible, while the drone accessed the computer and began to take everything.
"You think he had anything useful to us now?"
Exactly why Father had gone missing was still a mystery, though after what happened with Mother and Gabriel, I strongly suspected that he had poked his head into the wrong place and gotten killed or taken. Other former members of Carnifex had similarly gone missing, and I suspected that it was his reconnection with them that led to his downfall. It pained me to believe, but no one stayed missing this long and reappeared in one piece. He was gone.
"Most of any intelligence he gathered would be out of date," Maximus explained. "Still, Carnifex needs to compartmentalize."
I understood their reasoning. The organization had – before the invasion began – involved splinter cells and agents spread throughout the Triarchy, in its many corners, rather than the war force it had become today. Father had effectively left the organization when he came to Sanitas, but he'd still established a bunker in our home, as an inactive solo act. Old habits. Given the way that information security was kept, it was only a matter of time before any base like this of a Carnifex agent became a target to ferret out the truth of our movements, our numbers, and our resources.
Everything was at risk of exposure if this place stayed.
When we were finished gathering anything of value, Maximus handed me the charge but said nothing. Face resolute, he turned and began to leave, gesturing only once to his belt to collect his Jula-Drone. His retreating back disappeared around the corner as he climbed back outside.
With a heavy heart, I placed the metal casing beneath the now depleted terminal, nearest to a thick support beam. I pressed a single finger against one end and felt a small rush course through my body. The foreign energy left the device and became mine. Excitement, irritation, exhilaration filled the core of my mind, and I allowed myself to bask in its thrill for but a moment. A finger of the other hand became the vehicle to unleash the borrowed energy, a spark cascading visibly into the device.
I booked it from the house and joined Maximus by the rover, parked nearly three hundred yards from the building. I turned to watch as the chain reaction built to its crescendo, but Maximus cleared his throat. "We can't afford to stay."
I said nothing, and I did not budge.
Maximus did not press the issue.
The rover's engine ignited behind me just as the explosion rippled weakly from beneath the building. It cascaded in its destruction until debris was all that remained of the person I had become in this world. I had other family, other connections, but this place was the last link to years of an upbringing that had been as frustrating as it had been rewarding. In many ways, I hated this place because it had felt as much a cage as my age had been – still was.
As I settled into the rover next to Maximus, I turned my back on a smoking crater and promised myself that nothing would ever cage me again.
OSMOS V
October 07, 09:47 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE FIVE
"I have a son."
The words were like ice in the man's veins as he heard them, barely audible above the din of manual labor. He wished he could filter the conversation out, but the implants had long since resorted to only auxiliary power. He barely had enough to translate the language these days, much less do anything more complex. Much like the rest of his human body, his cybernetic implants would fail without access to the proper resources, and then he'd be dumb and dead.
"My daughter moved abroad to Vincendis a few years back," another offered. "Last I heard, she had my first grandchild on the way."
"They took me away during my friend's wedding. Last good meal I'll probably ever have."
"Don't say that – we'll get out."
A small group of middle-aged Osmosians – though how was Gabriel really to tell their ages apart? – huddled together and commiserated over the friends and family that they'd left behind when they'd been captured. It was not the first time he'd overheard a conversation like that, and it pained him every time. Even before his station in this Frontier Sector, he'd heard plenty of people of all shapes, sizes, and origins lamenting the distance from their loved ones. He should be used to this by now, but he understood now on a fundamental level exactly what they were feeling.
A small touch to his shoulder pulled him from his reverie. "What about you?" the Osmosian woman asked as she tried to include him through sheer proximity alone. He was only taking a long enough break within this damn mine to catch his bearings, and now the whole thing was ruined.
"We should get back to work."
The woman scoffed, and the other group were in agreement with her. "They can wait a few more minutes."
Gabriel glanced toward the observation deck at the top of the cavernous space. A gaudy, metallic contraption that contained enough automated turrets to dissuade anyone from trying anything stupid. If he had access to any of his tech, he could spare them all from forced labor and get them back to the people they loved. To get himself back to those he loved.
As it was, he was biding his time. For the first few weeks, he told himself that the Plumbers would notice and would send help. Weeks turned to months, months turned to years, and he abandoned those thoughts. No – Osmos V would not get any outside help, unless he found a way to ask for it directly. He was the only outside help they would likely get, and he had no real ability to fight an army of colonizing insects and their superpowered sycophants, with or without all of his tech.
They would have to seize the moment and drive the Reach away. Not an easy task. Perhaps not a possible one.
"Focus on the present, not the past," he finally answered them. "We all have people out there. The memories might comfort you, but the only way you'll make it through this is to go with the flow. I've been here longer than many of you. The last group that tried to skip out on work became food for a lepidopterran hive."
Word of that sparked fear into many of their eyes, and most began to renew their efforts.
This horrific time in captivity had all but confirmed to Gabriel that the Reach were violating several intergalactic laws. There were intensive regulations against the integration of foreign species into a planet's ecosystem. On Osmos V, it was happening en masse, something that would forcibly wreck the fragile stability of the planet's biosphere within a generation. Those species that managed to survive their forced migration and leave behind enough offspring? Well, Osmos V would be changed forever.
Why all of these different aliens – some of them known for their sentience or even sapience – would agree to work with the Reach was a conundrum he had not quite solved. Perhaps they'd forced it to happen. Maybe they'd gotten the aliens to agree to favorable terms. Or, worse, maybe they'd found themselves in danger.
Gabriel wished he could prove it. Wished he could bring the information to his superiors and indict the Reach on formal charges of wrongdoing. As it was, he had no ability to get the word to anyone, not even to the artificial intelligence within the Sector House. He wondered if he could-
"Who is it?"
A man lingered near him while everyone else started to work. A man whom brought back every uncomfortable feeling about this entire situation. They'd spoken at length about it all before, shared details about what had transpired. At the end of the day, seeing Horatio forced to work in the same prison camp – two years and some change later - felt a bit like God was playing tricks on him.
"Who did you leave behind?" The man repeated the question softly, and Gabriel frowned as every impulse he had to keep his mouth shut failed him all at once.
"It feels strange to be telling you of all people about it," he said finally, kicking lightly at the stony floor of the cave. "I have a son too, named Kyle. The thought of getting back to him? Keeps me going."
Horatio considered it for a long moment, until a distant horn blared. "That's not what you told the others a couple minutes ago."
"Yeah?" he asked. "I'm a hypocrite."
The elder man laughed. "How old would he be now?"
"Around ten," Gabriel added. With each word, it was becoming easier to explain his thoughts. "Looks more like his mother than me – at least, he did. Haven't seen him in so long that he might end up looking the opposite."
He'd never see his son as an adult.
Kyle would probably not have anything to do with him now. He'd been gone too long, much longer than even his usual Plumber assignments. What would he even say to Kyle now, if he could?
"Cassian's age," Horatio said with a surprised smile. "We're more alike than you know, then."
"Yeah," Gabriel muttered. "Both shitty fathers who wound up stuck in an alien prison camp together, with sons around the same age who have no idea that we're still alive, that we're still out there. No way to contact them, no way to ask for help, no way to break free easily."
The horn sounded again, this time in a warning tone, and Gabriel shifted into work mode. Horatio found a comfortable pace beside him and said little else, biting his tongue until a more appropriate time. Something seemed to occur to him, several minutes later, and Gabriel could only smirk.
"Break free 'easily'?"
Gabriel scoffed. "If it were easy, I'd have already done it."
LOS ANGELES
October 29, 14:02 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE FIVE
Fourth grade was a nightmare, even on the last school day before Halloween.
This annoying girl, Alexandra, recently moved to the city and just had to come to his school, to be assigned to his class. She thought she was so special, and everyone else seemed to think so too. A lot of his friends were trying to talk with her all the time, and all the girls liked her. Mrs. Rasburn treated her differently too and gave her special attention.
He was the one who was supposed to get special attention!
The whole thing was just unfair.
She'd come to school with the best costume too. Dressed like a miniature replica of a blonde Wonder Woman, her costume was well-made and looked the spitting image of pictures he'd seen from World War II in their history textbooks. And then, to top it all off, her dad came to their party dressed as Batman.
Batman!
He sulked in the corner as he watched them interact. Their costumes were so cool, they were probably custom made. His mom bought his Green Lantern one from the store, but it didn't even come with a cool ring prop. Instead, she'd bought him a green apple Ring Pop, but he'd eaten that hours ago.
His mom couldn't get off work.
Ms. Rasburn wouldn't leave him alone.
Mr. Dewitt was too cool.
One of the kids he thought was his friend ripped up one of his sketches of a Jack-o-Lantern and tossed it in the toilet.
The whole day was basically ruined.
GOTHAM CITY
October 31, 19:49 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE FIVE
Jinx had always loved stories of Halloween. Dubbed Disney movies and other little cartoons were like her only snapshot into what that holiday was like growing up, though the fact that the voices didn't match up to their mouths always bothered her.
The games, the prizes, the candy, the costumes, the caramel, the dances! All of it was so much fun to see, and she had always wanted to experience it for herself. No one had ever really made an effort to celebrate in her corner of the world.
But, she jumped at the chance to come to America on a job during the weekend of her favorite holiday. The city streets of Gotham were abuzz with celebration, darkness, atmosphere! If not for her handlers, she wouldn't have gotten the chance to come here, and she had to silently thank them for the opportunity.
She threw herself at the biggest street fair and abandoned her disguising features, proudly displaying the pallor to her skin that would normally intimidate anyone. Monsters, fiction, and celebrities were a healthy mix of identities for people to don, but on a day like today? She would just wear herself and be proud.
She made a point to laugh with two kids dressed as princesses, a boy dressed as Indiana Jones, and a pair of triplets who each wore a different red ranger outfit. She danced with a Mulan and a Pikachu. A Master Chief won a competition of bobbing for apples and shared the reward with her. When he tried to compete again, she nudged the water only slightly with her magic to help him win a second time.
Jinx was halfway through a street-side showing of Invasion of the Body Snatchers when her pager buzzed at her waist. She frowned as she read the message.
"Time to get to work."
When Jinx began to work her magic, hardly anyone noticed over the atmosphere of Gotham City on a night like this. Wayne Enterprises won't even know what hit them.