The Phenomena of Fireflies and Star... - Chapter 18: Chapter 18

8:37 PM
It had only been two weeks.
Two weeks only.
Max sat on the sofa with his legs curled up on the cushion. He was just about to go to sleep, but he wondered if he could get a better one tonight. There was still the problem of needing to tell Ames about the truth that connected them to Malign.
The bedroom door opened.
Max looked up to find Ames leaning over the mezzanine railing, as if wanting to tell him something.
"Your brother intimidates me," Max commented, hoping to lighten up the start of the conversation. "He's very composed. Very sharp. You take after him."
"You can fly, lift cars, laser-thingy your way through a riot, and tip over enemy hideouts," Ames replied, a smirk on his face. "And you're intimidated by a guy who's messing with you."
"It's more of a respect thing than a power thing," Max pointed out. "Guy obviously is protective of you. I'm sorry if I made it awkward."
"Overprotective," Ames corrected him. "And when were we ever really not awkward?"
Max could only nod in agreement with that. That had become very integral to their dynamic.
Ames then pushed off the railing and gestured for him to come up.
"What's on your mind?" Max asked curiously, standing up from the sofa.
"You're not sleeping on the sofa anymore," Ames replied, disappearing into the bedroom.
'What does he mean by that?' Max wondered, going up the stairs and into the bedroom. 'What is it this time?'
He found Ames waiting for him.
"From now on," Ames spoke, walking aside and showing the thick cushion on the floor next to his bed. It already had its own sheet, folded blanket, and pillow. "We take turns on these."
Max scoffed in amusement.
"Your brother is going to kill me for sharing your room," Max remarked, leaning on the wall by the doorway.
"I know you won't hurt me, Max," Ames said confidently. "I know you won't disrespect me, either. I've been telling you for weeks. We can share a room."
"Who's gonna' guard downstairs?" Max pointed out.
"Us from upstairs here," Ames replied stubbornly. "You have your superpowers. I have a gun."
"Okay..."
"You're not just a guest here. You live with me. This is your house, too."
"The title has your name."
"My house, my rules. Now, retrieve your sleeping stuff from below or I'll get them myself."
"I think I'll go to sleep now," Max teased, slowly making his way to the door. He really didn't want to leave a bad impression on Tyler. He'd listened in earlier, and he knew the man's concerns.
"I'll get them myself, then," Ames replied, hurrying for the door.
Max caught him by the shoulders just in time.
"You know I have super speed and super strength, right?" Max asked, giggling as Ames playfully tried to break free. "You can't outrun me."
"Oh, that sounds like a threat," Ames taunted, finally managing to slip away with an admittedly slick move. Max wondered how Ames had thought of that move so instinctively. Then again, he probably had just answered his own question. "I should tell Tyler that..."
"No," Max jumped between Ames and his work desk. "I'm—Don't tell Tyler."
"So, what's it gonna' be?" Ames demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Fine!" Max put up his hands in surrender. "Okay. Okay, okay. I think you're trying to prove a point to him that you know what you're doing..."
"Don't I?" Ames asked, tilting his head.
"Yes, you do."
"Mhmm."
"So, okay. I'll sleep here from now on."
"Good. Don't put yourself out of place."
"But I'm taking the..."
"No."
"What no?"
"I know what you're gonna' say," Ames got ahead of him, pointing at the bed next. "But tonight, you're taking the bed."
"That's a stretch," Max pointed out. "I can sleep on the floor every day, if you want."
"No, you're taking the bed," Ames insisted, not breaking off eye contact.
"Why don't you want the bed?" Max wondered aloud, gesturing toward the bed. "It's comfy!"
"I wanna' sleep on the floor!" Ames replied, hands out to his sides. "Can't I want to sleep on the floor?"
"It's, um, not good for you."
"What?"
"It's not good for you to sleep on the floor."
"If it's not good for me, it won't be good for you. So why am I offering you the chance to do it?"
"Um, I'm built differently!" Max said, shrugging his shoulders. "If I sleep on the floor, I'll be okay. It'll still be, um, good for me."
"Yeah, okay," Ames said, scratching the side of his head stubbornly. "Okay. I don't wanna' sleep on the bed. Right?"
"Yeah."
"And you don't either. And I don't think we can share that space. I don't think you'd agree."
"Yeah? Huh?"
"Okay," Ames said, nodding mischievously. "I'll sleep downstairs."
He didn't.
For some reason, Max had managed to convince him that they could just share the floor, just that they would sleep on different cushions. Ames found that simultaneously funny, awkward, stupid, and cute.
Ames lay down on his cushion, blanket up to his chest, watching the light of the moon pouring through the windows' glass above him. They had decided not to bring the curtains together.
Max lay down next to Ames on his own cushion, also still very awake and comfortably blanketed.
"Cloudy skies tonight," Ames said, cutting the awkward but ultimately pleasant silence between them. "Just the moon and the clouds up there."
"You know," Max broke off for a while before continuing. "When we look at the stars, somewhere in the world, the people meant for us will most likely be looking at the same stars."
"Too bad it's cloudy," Ames commented, snorting as he turned his head toward Max, who was still preoccupied with the moonlight beam above him.
Max was silent for a while there. Ames was about to wonder if his humor had been off-beat.
"Well," Max finally spoke. "Cloudy or not. Stars are where they are, and they shine even if we don't always see them. Even if the clouds hide them."
"That's deep," Ames commented. "Kinda' like the sound of that."
Ames could tell that Max was invested in his own words. The man turned over sideways in his position so they could look at each other better.
"Really corny, huh? I mean science can back that up..."
"Yeah, yeah. Science."
"Stars are too far. Unbound to us..."
"Okay, brainiac," Ames said, pulling the blanket even higher up his body and giving Max a telling nod. "Not gonna' lie, hero Max is awesome, but I think smarty Max is cute."
Max looked surprised there for a moment. Ames was pretty surprised, too. Then again, he'd already openly admired the man's face. There was nothing wrong with it.
But that was it. At least, Ames thought it was. For now, he knew for sure it was just that. He didn't have to forcefully look through one layer to see what was on the other side, in this case.
"Good night, Max," Ames said, turning over to his right.
"Good night, Ames," Max replied. "Um, I think smarty Ames is cute, too."
Ames couldn't hold back the chuckle that broke out of him. Funnily, it was the last thing he'd said—if that even counted as saying anything—before he drifted off to sleep.
Battlefield
'I can't do what they want me to do...'
'I don't think I belong here...'
'Why aren't we joining the military like the others? We can train. We can do that...'
'What do you mean by "a little differently"?"
'I'm hungry. I want to eat. I will eat...'
'I will eat anything...'
'Please...'
'I don't think...'
'I don't think I've ever coughed blood in my life.'
'This isn't my blood! This isn't my blood!'
'D-Did I do that?'
'What have I done...'
'What have I done...'
Lights flashed in the darkness.
His back felt rough.
The ground was moving beneath him. Scraping. Cutting.
He felt something—someone—pulling him away.
He heard the sounds.
There were so many.
So many. Like thunder. Lights flashed when they did.
Thunder sounded fast. Sometimes slow.
And then it was loud.
"Gaaah!" he cried out. He never stopped after that. Everything hurt. Something was missing, too. His legs felt missing. His back felt like it was being ground by hundreds of rocks. The sharp sensations tore through his skin as someone continued to pull him, dragging him.
He couldn't fight off the fear and the pain that he felt all over him.
Screaming hurt. It was like he was shredding his own throat. He coughed again and again, and each time, he could feel liquid bubbling in his throat.
And then it popped, bursting out of his mouth and into his eye. It stung. It was dark. He knew it was blood.
He couldn't wipe it off. He couldn't.
The drops of rain felt heavy, much like an angry waterfall from a raging river. They fell on him, on his eyes, in his mouth. They would choke him, and his coughs blew them back out.
"Oh God! Agh! Ghrah!"
"Come on, Gab! Come on!"
The pain that enveloped him also flowed through him, and it pulsated through him like crashing waves of death that refused to kill him but brought him to the apex of its throes on repeat. It mocked him with a shot at the dark relief of death and refused to bring him there.
The thunderclaps he heard weren't thunderclaps.
They were gunfire. They were bombs exploding.
He was wrong. Thunder clapped in the night sky, too.
He didn't know anymore which was thunder and which was explosive.
They sounded the same.
The lightning strikes were lightning.
The lightning strikes were also pillars of fire bursting from the ground like demonic fingers, thundering as they broke free from the soil.
There were flames that rebelled against the darkness of the night. They were tall when they came.
He knew, with dread disrespectfully harmonizing with his unstoppable pain, that he was in hell.
He had to be.
"I got you! We're almost there! We're almost there!"
It was Dicoy's voice. He knew it had to be.
"It hurts!" In his mind, those were the words. He knew he was screaming. He felt it in his throat as it threatened to tear apart what was unleashing it.
But he didn't know if anybody could hear him.
So he screamed.
And he screamed.
He screamed as hard as he could.
"We're almost there, Gab! Don't fall asleep! No matter what happens! Don't fall asleep!"
He knew it was Dicoy.
His neck hurt so much. He thought his head would break off. Everything hurt.
But he had to say it.
He had to say it if it were the last thing he could say.
Even if it killed him.
"Dicoy!" he shouted, his eyes shutting in the pain. He was in darkness again, but everything remained. The throes, the explosions, and the rain. They all remained unchanged.
"What?! Just stay awake! We're so close!"
"I-I love you..."
There came a sudden clap of thunder. Sudden. Loud. Close.
Not thunder at all.
In a split-second, everything was pure white.
And then everything was pure black.
Uwak Headquarters
Recovery Room
"This one wants to live."
"Do we have a family on record?"
"Long evacuated. They don't know what happened."
"I think we should let them know..."
"No! Nobody must know."
"Are we really going to do this to a man one more injury away from death?"
"You know what we are here for, Doctor."
"What if it doesn't work?"
"It has always worked."
A cold white light shone above him, foiling his attempt at sneaking a peek and forcing his eyes shut again. He'd been pretending to be asleep for a while now, struggling with the endless soreness of his legs. He listened to the voices from around the room, but he couldn't see where they were coming from. In fact, he didn't know where he was, but he knew he was being taken care of.
He heard one of the people in the room come close. He couldn't see where they were, but he could hear the footsteps approach.
"This poor man..."
"He's an Uwak. Barely three months of training and already on the battlefield."
"Why the hell was that? That's a sure fail."
"I don't know about those scientists. Put these Ravens through hell and back, day after day. Brought the predators out of them and then retrained them to society."
"Dressed them up like soldiers a little too soon, don't you think?"
"I agree, but they're assassins. Forged by brokenness, desperation, and blood. They were prepped to be killers on the battlefield. Their only code is to kill the target. For the most part, the killers they created carried through. They hunted while the others fought. Nobody saw them coming."
"But this is war, Doctor. We're still covert?"
"Still useful. Even more useful, in fact. Unless they break."
More footsteps, coming from what sounded and felt like the other doctor, came close.
"How do you explain this one?"
"Him?"
"Mmm."
"This Raven forgot he wasn't an eagle. Tried to carry a boa with his talons, and that broke off his legs."
That triggered a loud alarm in his brain. He remembered how he had felt back in the battle. Death had felt like the only solution back there. The only relief. His pain had reached heights it had never reached before, and it had made him beg for that cold blackness. That relief, he'd been mocked with and deprived of. It could've saved him from the pain that had threatened to tear him apart.
'Apart.'
'Pain.'
'Did I--,' he couldn't finish the thought as his breathing picked up. 'Did I lose..'
"Oh...," one of the voices said. "He's waking up."
He didn't know what he would find, but he felt his heartbeat picking up speed at the sickening thoughts that flashed like lightning in his head
"What...," he gasped, opening his eyes and sitting up with all of his might.
"Ah!"
"Oh god!"
The doctors beside him jumped back in shock. He didn't look at them. He didn't care.
He felt so heavy. So heavy. It was as if somebody had sat on him.
Everything hurt. On the inside. Every move came with the sharpest pain.
The soreness in his legs skyrocketed in an instant, making him yelp at the sudden stab of pain.
"Ackh!" he shouted, grimacing at the shooting pains that had taken over his body.
And then he saw nothing.
There was nothing where his legs should be. He froze, feeling an indomitable coldness wash over him as the reality dawned on him.
His legs.
They were gone.
"No!" he shouted, feeling the world around him turn as the weight that burdened him crashed down on him like a tidal wave. He fell back on the bed, his tears flowing out of him like earthworms from the ground. His head tipped to his left.
He saw the frightened face of the young doctor that wordlessly watched him from a distance.
And he saw a familiar face on the next bed.
It was Dicoy, unconscious and wrapped in big bandages.
Before he could process it properly, he fell back into the grim comfort of the darkness in his subconscious.
Creaton Candidate Evaluation Center
He saw the white lights flash by above him.
He could hear the squeak and the roll of the wheels of his bed as he was being moved.
At the sides of his bed, there were about four people in what he figured would be laboratory suits. He didn't recognize the suits, however. They were pretty heavy-duty for doctors' wear.
"Where am I?" he croaked. The pain in his throat wasn't there anymore, but for a while, it had felt like it hadn't left.
"You're going to be okay, soldier," one of the people moving his bed said. It was a woman, and the woman's voice was muffled by the heavy covering over her body and her face. "But it'll hurt."
Creaton Exposure Lab
There it was: The Creaton.
He could see it through the rectangular window at the center of the large metal sliding doors before him.
What Gabriel had set out to do for his family, he was now facing the base of the steepest climb of. He would have to live through it. He'd been reread the contract that he had signed, and he knew he had already been hooked. It was a form of imprisonment that he had chosen, knowing fully well the darkness of a world at war, specifically a country desperate to survive.
Dicoy had already had his exposure procedure, but Gabriel had neither heard of nor from him since. As much as Gabriel wanted to hope for the best, he couldn't help but feel that all hope had been lost.
"This will be your most important mission yet, soldier. Remember what's at stake here."
"I'm an Uwak, Doctor. I'm not a soldier."
"That's not what the world will remember you for."
Tears streamed out of his eyes, and his vision blurred worse and worse by the second. He couldn't tell why he was losing sight of where the tears came from and why they still had the energy to break out, but they were there.
When the doors parted open, it was as if Gabriel was staring at the vision of his own demise, but in its most hauntingly magnificent.
His attention was now fully bound to the large crystalline object that glowed in the most alluring and most otherworldly colors. The Creaton was suspended in the central underbelly of a large metallic machine that resembled an octopus.
It was easily the most captivating and most intimidating thing that Gabriel had ever gazed upon, and it pulsated with a peculiar electricity and heat that stuck on his skin with every ripple. It had a soft sizzle to it, detectable from where Gabriel was.
"Thank you for your service, soldier."
With that, Gabriel felt his bed being moved into the room, closer and closer to the Creaton.
The closer he got, the stronger the sizzle of the energy that pulsated onto him.
And then it began.
Gabriel's eyes bulged as the pulsations began to burn. On the inside.
His mouth gaped open, lips parting to let out the groans that were being pulled from inside him by the increasingly incomprehensible pain.
It was as if his blood was starting to boil. His muscles began to cramp and stretch. He felt his bones expand, pushing against the walls that contained them. They crackled as they moved about, and as much as Gabriel wanted to scream, he couldn't.
The sounds that broke free from him were out of his control, and he had never wanted to die more desperately than he did now.
'I'm going to blow!' he thought, his body arching up at the pain that continued to worsen, threatening to shatter him to pieces. 'Please stop! Please stop! Make it stop!'
And then he felt his bones burst out of the stumps that had become of his legs.
A gasp blasted out of his mouth, and it was wet.
Wet. Disgusting.
Flavored.
There was a potent flavor of iron in his mouth and in his throat from the wetness.
Gabriel was starting to see red, and then hot white, and his involuntary groans slowly transitioned into the most painful scream that he'd ever heard himself unleash as he got closer and closer to the radiating rock that hung above him like an angel of death.
"Hnnnnnraaaaaaaaaaahhhh!"
Everything was white.
Gabriel felt as if he was walking in the middle of white emptiness.
The white had come upon him like a collision of two tsunamis, and it now surrounded him. However, he could feel something solid under his feet.
'My feet...,' he realized, looking down and gasping in awe at what came to him as a miracle. The first sob burst out of him, accompanied by the streams of tears that had since exhausted him, but that he couldn't stop. That he could make sense of again.
He fell onto the ground, onto his buttocks, and he folded up his legs against his chest. He embraced them as selfishly as he could.
'My legs!' his mind shouted jubilantly. 'I have legs! And feet! Oh, God! Thank you! Thank you!'
He felt good. There was a pleasant and stable warmth inside of him.
In the distance, he could see a silhouette walking through the white light toward him. He couldn't make it out clearly at first. He wiped his eyes dry, fixing his vision well enough for him to see the silhouette better. It looked strangely familiar. It felt as if it didn't belong, as if it wasn't supposed to be there, but there it was.
He attempted to stand, surprised by a sudden flow of force that came from his body, pushing downward and pulling him up to a standing position.
"Oh," he uttered, balancing himself on his feet with his outstretched hands.
"Max...," he heard a familiar voice call out. It had a dreamily faint echo to it. It was the silhouette.
"Max, if you can hear me, I need you to listen. I'm right here, and I'm scared. I don't know how to help you."
As it got closer, the silhouette became clearer.
In its clarity, Gabriel saw that the silhouette truly was a silhouette. It had no face. It was as if it walked with a translucent curtain around it.
But he truly did know that voice.
'I'm Max?' Gabriel thought to himself. 'I-I think I am...'
"I don't know how to help you, but if I'm getting to you, I need you to know it's me," the silhouette spoke, stopping a good meter away from Gabriel. "It's me. Ames."
'Ames?' he thought, a sudden bloom of heat in his chest and in his mind distorting the whiteness that surrounded them. The film that obscured the silhouette's face began to glitch, revealing glimpses of the person within it.
'Ames...'
He knew that name. He knew that name very well.
"Ames?!" he exclaimed, his confusion spiking. "What are you doing here?!"
The translucence began to glitch again, much stronger this time.
And then it was gone.
There he was. Ames, dressed in his oversized sweater and pajamas. There was a strong look of anxiety in Ames's face, but there was also perseverance.
"What are you doing here?!" Gabriel repeated.
"Max, if you can hear me...," Ames said again, taking Gabriel's hand this time and putting it firmly against his chest right after. It was quite a gesture. Gabriel gasped a bit the moment his hand touched Ames's chest. He could feel warmth pulsating from inside of it. It felt pleasant. "I need you to use your empathy right now. I don't know if you can. I've tried everything. Please..."
'My empathy...,' Gabriel thought, clearing his throat as he allowed himself to open a receptive channel via his hand. He blinked in surprise, wondering how he had thought to do that. He didn't understand. It had come to him like an instinctive action, and Ames was making it easy. Somehow. He kept the channel open, allowing the pulsation that came from Ames's chest into himself.
"Focus on what I'm feeling, Max," Ames instructed, walking closer to him. The pulsation consequently grew stronger. Gabriel watched intently as Ames leaned forward, closer to his face. "I need to wake up. Now."
'I need to wake up...,' Gabriel thought, feeling the pulsation much more precisely now. He felt it. He needed to wake up. He needed to. The whiteness around him began to dim, and it was dimming fast. 'Now.'
October 8, 2023
"Argh!" Max gasped, trying to inhale as much air as he could as his mind desperately tried to process that he was now awake.
"Oh my god!" Ames cried out from his side.
Max found Ames kneeling down beside him, holding on to his wrist with both hands. He found his hand pressed against Ames's chest, still picking up the pulsation that had guided him out into consciousness.
He'd just had another terrible nightmare, another precise reliving of a dark chapter in his past just like last night, albeit more torturous and more unforgiving this time around.
Max could only stare apologetically at Ames, who stared back at him in both relief and disbelief.
"It goddamn worked...," Ames whispered hoarsely, dropping himself on top of Max into a tight embrace.
Max couldn't move. Ames had never hugged him like this before. Definitely not with the both of them lying down on the floor.
And yet Max needed it, and with all the troubles he had caused Ames, he knew the guy needed it, too.
Max detected a familiar warmth of sincerity in the embrace. He hadn't been hugged like this in decades.
And it felt so good.
Max hugged Ames back, holding him in place with a careful hand at the back of his head.
"I never would've thought of that," Max whispered, his fingers gently rubbing the back of Ames's head and feeling the soft scratch of the guy's hair. "Thank you for waking me up. Thank you. Thank you."
"Shut up," Ames protested, voice muffled in the embrace. "I'm so over this."
Max laughed out his relief, making an annoyed and shaken Ames pinch his shoulder sharply.
"Ow!" Max cried out, still laughing in relief at waking from what had felt like a near-death experience of a dream. "That was some good thinking there. Using my empathy on me to wake me up."
"I'm gonna' need to get paid for this," Ames remarked before erupting in his own muffled laughter. Max no longer held back his own. "This is starting to feel like a job."
Max didn't know how they would manage to fall asleep again that night.
But nobody was letting go of the embrace.
Frankly, for what it was about, Max didn't want to let go. Based on the pulsation he got from Ames, neither did the guy.
He continued to lay awake there for a longer while, his eyes on the beam of moonlight above him. Ames seemed to have fallen back asleep, still wrapped in his arms. Max didn't mind. His hand continued to massage the back of Ames's head.
'Tyler's gonna' kill me for this,' he thought as he continued to stare at the moon's faint light. 'But I did promise to take care of his brother.'
'Ironically. Ames has taken care of me more times than I can count.'
He eventually stopped massaging the back of Ames's head and just let his hand gently lay on top of it.
'And this feels nice.'