Page 5

“At the beginning of the Revival Project, we needed not only DNA from the old gods, but also the genetic material to create a human being. So, we looked around for healthy men and women, and took their eggs and spermatozoids. The soldiers who were working to protect us were a good gene pool to use. Of course, we never told any of them which material ended up being used. We grew the embryos in our labs, in tanks. But some of our mutant children looked so familiar, there was no hiding their origins to our teams.”

Testimony from Allan Rickford, a scientist who worked on the Revival Project, 2056.

Panic explodes in my chest as I fall into the cold water. My genes might want me to like dark and humid places, but they’re not strong enough to ignore past trauma. I fucking hate being submerged. It reminds me of all the times the scientists dropped me into the jellyfish tank. My arms thrash feebly, but I’m too weak to swim. My gills start working automatically, allowing me to breathe underwater.

Without my electricity, I can’t see a thing. But thirty seconds later, Jude joins me in the water. He pulls me to the surface and sits me on a rock, half immersed. I offer him a glare full of hatred.

But my eyes widen when I realize he’s naked, too. The solar lamp’s blue light outlines his body in artful lines. Water drips from his short ginger hair, then slides down his freckled shoulders and slim body. He’s fucking beautiful.

He’s similar to the jellyfish who haunt my past and my dreams, I realize. Beautiful but deadly when you get too close.

“Who’s ogling now?” he says with a wicked smile.

I send him a weak punch, and he dodges it easily. He laughs and bends over the side of the natural pool to grab the soap. I get a premium view of his backside. The hateful bastard is gorgeous, and I hate him even more for it as I feel my cock give a happy twinge. It’s certain now, I’m not on death’s door anymore.

Without asking for consent, Jude rubs the soap all over my chest, arms, face, and hair. It stings like a bitch. My eyes are burning.

“Look at us,” he says. “I’m giving you a fucking bath in a cave. Who would have thought?”

I try to bite his hand as it gets close to my face again. He swats me away easily.

He washes me in silence for a while, and I stop resisting. I won’t lie, it feels good to be finally clean.

“Your wounds are closing up. It must be nice to be a mutant. And you’re in luck; I’m taking care of you better than you ever did your slaves,” he says.

His voice has turned cold. Without warning, he pushes my head underwater. I try not to show fear as he rinses my hair. He’s taking longer just to be mean. Now the soap stings my gills. They’re hidden behind my ears. He touches them with his fingers a few times without noticing.

He pulls me up at last, higher on the rock, and slides the soap to my dick. I gasp against my will.

“What?” he asks with a little smile. “You don’t like being touched without consent? Strange. I thought you were into it, considering how you abused Helios for two years when he was a kid.”

His words echo in the cave, and they bury themselves in my mind like claws.

“He—he told you that?” I whisper.

Helios thinks I abused him sexually. Somehow, somewhere down the line, our experiences of the same events diverged completely. We were both teenagers, but where I remember love and intimacy, he remembers something else entirely…

There’s a buzzing in my ears.

“Oh, yes. I’ve also seen the scars,” he points at his fern-like scars, so similar to the ones I gave Helios a few times.

I always hated myself when I hurt him. I couldn’t control my electricity for years. It burst out of me with some emotions. Rage, jealousy, fear…

“It’s okay… Oliver. I’m okay…” Helios repeated when I cried for forgiveness.

But he never cried when I hurt him. He never complained, called me a monster, or pushed me away. Maybe he should have.

He didn’t just run away because he didn’t love me anymore. He ran away because he hated my touch. He hated me.

I’m the fucking monster in his story.

“Come, now. Tears? Really?” says Jude.

I didn’t realize I was crying. I wish the solar lamp wasn’t so bright. I wish I was back underwater and that I could drown.

Jude throws the soap at my chest, and I catch it out of reflex. “Clean yourself down there. There’s still crusted blood everywhere.”

He climbs out of the pool and leaves me to fend for myself with the soap. I clean my intimate parts and legs slowly and mechanically, as best as my weak body lets me as my thoughts rage like a hurricane.

I sit in the water for a long time. Jude might expect me to suffer from the cold, but I don’t.

I suffer enough with the harsh reality he has painted around my memories, anyway. My love story—the foundation of my adult life and my reason to live for years—dissipated like smoke under the sun.

It’s somehow worse to know Helios was right to leave me for his devil. I can’t blame him and pretend he’s just a callous person. He didn’t abandon me. He ran away from me.

At some point, Jude realizes that punishing me is not worth risking my death and losing control of the Firefly, and he pulls me out of the freezing water. He wraps me in a blanket and drags me to the fire he has built. The cave is so wide, the smoke disappears far above our heads. He helps me get into a new pair of cargo pants he brought back from the Firefly—certainly given by Stellan and Perri with the rest of our new supplies—and the Hawaiian shirt.

I lie over the sleeping bag and close my eyes.

Later, when he tries to feed me, I pretend to be asleep, no matter how many times he stabs me in the cheek with a fork.

Two days fly by without us sharing even a word. Jude is content to talk to Fyfe, as fruitless as those exchanges might be. Twice a day, he leaves a plate at my side with food. I don’t eat. I’m not hungry. And yet, against my will, my body is slowly healing. I can feel a spark in my chest, a sign that my organs are building electricity anew. I can move again. At least, enough to crawl a little farther away in the cave to relieve myself when needed. Jude watches my every move but doesn’t say a word.

It’s on the third night that he finally breaks the silence.

“There are faster ways to die than starving yourself,” he says over the fire.

I hesitate for a moment, then say, “As if you would let me die.”

“You’re right. I can’t afford to let you die. So, eat. I promise you that as soon as I have full control over the Firefly, I’ll bury a bullet in your brain.”

“How kind of you.” My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears.

I wouldn’t kill myself. I’m not such a coward as to give up entirely. Or just not brave enough to end it. I’m just… not hungry. Feelings like hunger, pain, discomfort are overshadowed by the vast emptiness of my life. I’ve built sandcastles after sandcastles, trying to pretend that all this mess has a meaning.

I’m the little monster that should have never escaped the lab.

“They tried to kill me, you know?” I say.

“Who did? Because I would like a word with them. They obviously failed miserably,” Jude jokes.

“The scientists who created me.”

That seems to take the wind out of his sails. “When?” he asks after a pause.

“When I was five. Well, they tried before, but with no real intent. But when they announced that the Revival Project had been abandoned, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me. They couldn’t approach me, thanks to my electricity, so they asked one of the soldiers for his gun. Instead, Sergeant Kang killed them all. Then he sedated me and carried me out of the lab, and into the wilds.”

Jude frowns. “Why?”

“Because I was his son. Or at least, partially. He was the only Asian in the lab, and he had been one of the people they had asked for the gene pool. I looked too much like him to be ignored. And he saw some legacy in me. He kept me alive for years.”

Years that hadn’t been much better than the ones in the lab. Sergeant Kang Jae-Sun was another kind of monster. A cold man, with a soul that never saw the light.

“What happened to him?” Jude asks.

“I killed him.”

I never told this to anyone. Especially not Helios. When I found him in the wastelands, starved and alone, he had just lost his mother. I couldn’t tell him that I killed my only parent.

Jude hums. “So, patricide, too. You have quite the set of skills.” When I fail to comment, he continues, “Not that I can blame you. I regret not having done the same for mine. My whole family, to be honest.” I sense a story there, but he’s not inclined to share as he says instead, “Eat. Don’t make me force you. You know I’ll enjoy it.”

But his threat, for once, has no real bite.

I grab the plate he left near my sleeping bag. It contains beans and meat from one of the jars in the Firefly’s pantry. I chew slowly and mechanically.

I dream of Sergeant Kang. It was only a matter of time before he invaded my nightmares, like the rest of my demons.

He wasn’t scared of me like the scientists. If I lost control of my electricity, he would beat me senseless. But he also taught me how to survive in the new world. He taught me what to expect from people.

‘Always expect the worst, and you won’t be taken off guard.’

He was the worst.

Nails dig into my arm and I jolt awake. Jude is on the mossy floor. His sleeping bag is tangled around his feet. It looks like he has crawled toward me. He has one finger in front of his lips, urging me to keep quiet.

Real dread replaces the uneasy feeling left behind by my nightmares as I look at where he’s pointing, deeper into the cave.

An old god is drinking in the natural pool. The blue light emanating from the solar lamp barely reaches the monstrous creature. They’re smaller than most gods, which allowed them to enter the cave. But they’re still bigger than the Firefly.

They walk on four legs, their body like one of a giant rodent.

Once the creature has drunk their fill, they walk to us, incredibly quiet for a monster that size. Their feet have long claws, made to dig into hard soil, and their body is covered in golden fur. A scaly snout appears in the light, sniffing us, followed by a face with no eyes. The old god is blind. A giant, nightmarish mole.

As he—or she, you never know with old gods until you’ve tested their DNA—gets closer, I realize that one bite is all it would take to end me. Jude might get a chance to survive, if he can reach the Firefly. But Fyfe won’t start the engines if I’m dead, so his chances at survival are slim.

I dig into all my feeble strength and rise to my feet slowly. My legs almost give out halfway through, but I soldier on. I stand tall as the god smells me. Their giant nostrils flare and their breath warms my clammy skin.

They seem to hesitate for an eternity. But at last, they disappear deeper into the cave. So, they haven’t arrived from outside. They came from the ground. Another god that dwells under our feet.

“Holy shit,” whispers Jude. “How are we still alive?”

I fall to my knees, spent. One of my wounds is oozing fresh blood, as dark as oil.

“Most gods are territorial,” I say, “but others are content to avoid confrontation. I think they could smell that I was a…little different.” I almost said a monster. “That I could mean trouble.”

“For once, I’m glad you mean trouble,” he says. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I let him haul me inside the Firefly like the rest of our things.