In an instant, the darkness in Grif’s eyes flashed into the bizarre mass of impossible colors that was infrared light. He was now seeing in temperature. Copycat, unfamiliar with the sensation, let out a yelp of surprise as his eyes adjusted to the new wavelength of light.
Taking in the environment, Grif could see the extent of the tunnel system they were in. It seemed to stretch on forever, twisting and curving, and there were strange, glowing lines along the walls he couldn’t understand. His mind was still reeling at the idea of perceiving infrared light, and he still couldn’t get ahold of what the impossible colors he was seeing were.
“What did you do?!” Copycat exclaimed, looking around frantically. “What’s going on?! Why is that so bright?!” He pointed at a bright light on the ground behind them.
Hands still on Grif and Copycat’s shoulders, Saa turned around, and Grif got a look at the light Copycat was referring to. Copycat was right; the light was blinding. It was like looking at the sun in the sky—he couldn’t make out its shape or anything else near it from the brightness.
“You’re seeing infrared light,” started Saa, “and that thing on the ground is the torch the guard was holding earlier. It got knocked to the ground when we escaped.”
Saa began stomping on the torch, snuffing it out until the glowing somewhat dissipated.
“Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?!” Grif exclaimed. “Don’t we need that to see?!”
“Do we?” Saa said. From what Grif could gather through heat, Saa was looking at him with an eyebrow raised. “We can see infrared light now. Would you rather use a torch and let all the guards know exactly where we are at all times?”
“No, of course not.”
“What we’re going to do is sneak through these tunnels, find a guard, and Copycat, you’re going to copy him. We’re going to interrogate the guard’s copy until he gives us answers, and then be on our way. That way the guard never goes missing and there won’t be any trace of where we were. Actually…”
Saa released an arm from Copycat and pointed it towards some rocks on the tunnel wall. All of a sudden, a bright beam of light emitted from her hand and hit the rocks, making them glow brighter and brighter.
“Is that…”
“Infrared light? Yes. I’m heating up some rocks on the wall.”
She replaced her hand on Copycat’s shoulder and led them forward through the tunnel. Both his and Copycat’s eyes were trained on the hot rocks.
“I kind of lied about not leaving a trace. You see, Erril has an infrared camera on him in case of emergencies. If I get separated from him, I can beam IR light from somewhere and he can pick it up and find me. If they make it into these tunnels, Erril should be able to find the hot rocks and follow our trail. As long as I don’t make them hot enough to glow visible light, we should be good.”
“Damn,” Grif said. “You’re a genius.”
Saa just smiled.
They proceeded through the cold earthen tunnels, watching the faint heat signatures of the other prisoners receding. Saa occasionally would let go of Grif or Copycat to heat up more rocks before proceeding, leaving a trail Erril could find. The frigid tunnels made everything appear dark, but they could still make out an astonishing amount of detail in the rocky walls. The one thing that bugged Grif was the faintly glowing lines that stretched up and down the tunnels, sometimes crossing over to the other wall of the tunnel along the ground or roof.
“What are those?” Grif asked curiously. “Those lines?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s check it out.” Saa suggested.
“Yeah.”
They walked over to the wall and Saa examined the lines. She removed her hand from Grif and ran a finger along it, plunging Grif back into darkness.
“It’s a plant root,” She pointed. “It isn’t giving off much more heat than the rest of the tunnel.”
“Why are there roots down here?” Grif asked. Saa replaced her hand and Grif’s strange infrared vision returned.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I can’t think of why the Schisms would need roots along their tunnels. Did they mention anything about it?”
“Not a thing.”
“Huh. Let’s just keep going, then. Nothing we can do.”
They trekked for a while longer, taking the path that moved them higher when encountering splits. Grif was getting intensely cold now, unsettled by the fact that he could see his own skin getting dimmer and dimmer.
“Wait,” Copycat said. “Stop. There’s a guard.” His now clammy fingers pointed towards a warm humanoid figure trekking along a break in the tunnel. The guard’s body heat radiated out, heating up the places his bare feet stepped.
“Go for it,” Saa whispered. “I’ll stay close to give you vision.”
They creeped up behind the guard, staying as quiet as possible, until Copycat reached out an arm and grabbed the guard’s shoulder. Copycat then gripped the shoulder and pulled back, and another identical heat signature to the guard’s was created out of the back of the first, Copycat violently dragging it closer. The first guard hadn’t noticed a thing.
Grif saw the mouth of the copied guard open for a brief moment and cupped his hand over it.
They waited until the real guard walked out of sight, and then Copycat whipped his hands towards the guard’s and restrained his arms tightly. The guard struggled for a moment, but stopped when Grif started to make cracks of electricity. Saa let go of Copycat and Grif and they could see only visible light once more.
Grif tapped his index finger and thumb together with a series of electric cracks until a constant stream of electricity was shooting between them. Holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart, he had his own electric torch. Grif’s electric torch illuminated the guard’s young face. Grif removed his hand from the guard’s mouth.
“It’s the devil child,” the guard said as soon as he could speak.
“Don’t call me that,” Grif hissed in the Schism language. He moved his sparking fingers closer to the guard’s face, which writhed in horror.
Copycat reminded him, “Remember, he doesn’t know he’s a clone. Threaten his life as much as you want.”
“Tell me who I really am. Why am I here? Why did the chief send me away?” Grif demanded.
“I- I don’t know. I don’t know why ch- chief Kirottu sent you away. I don’t know what happened to you either,” the guard stuttered.
Grif moved the electricity closer, increasing in intensity.
“No! Really! I was too young! I don’t remember any of it! We were always told that chief Kirottu’s son had died!”
Grif looked again at the guard’s young face. He’s probably telling the truth. Grif turned back to Saa and Copycat and relayed the information.
“He doesn’t know what happened to me.”
“Really?” Saa exclaimed. “Then, ask him why we’re being sacrificed. Ask him why it was bad for us to have Vals.”
“Why are we being sacrificed?” Grif demanded. “What’s wrong with our Vals?”
“You… you have the devil’s powers. You and your friends. You’re being sacrificed to appease our gods and… and to remove the devil from this world.”
“Why are they devil’s powers? Your people have Vals, too. You probably have one as well.”
“We… why would we? The devil’s powers are different. We… there’s a legend that says we had to imitate the devil to make him stop ravaging our lands, giving us our own version of the devil’s powers. But, by making a sacrifice to our gods, we can purge our sins. Our ancestors had to make devil’s powers of our own… during a time of great calamity. The devil was attacking us. We barely survived only because of our imitation of the devil’s powers. But in doing so, we were cursed. We can only become blessed again through sacrifice.”
Grif could only stare blankly after hearing this. The guard’s clone was still breathing heavily, terrified. But the way he looked at Grif’s electric hands, it wasn’t because he feared for his life—the guard probably didn’t even know what electricity was. He was more afraid of Grif’s “devil’s powers.”
“That’s all we need,” Grif told Saa and Copycat. “We’re done with him.”
Copycat obliged and the clone dissipated into darkly colored dust.
“What happened?” Saa asked. “What did he say?”
“The Schisms have some kind of legend that boils down to ‘Vals are the devil.’ It has to do with why the Schisms have their own Vals and why they’re so corrupt. They don’t even understand that they have their own Vals.”
“Why?”
“Hell if I know. Everything he told me was part of some superstitious legend.”
Grif stopped his electric torch, Saa grabbed their shoulders, and they continued into the tunnels.
Unbeknownst to them, a Schism leader was stationed behind the three, hiding in wait, slowly advancing on them. She was determined to recapture them in time for the sacrificial ritual. And behind her, reinforcements were arriving, materializing from within the roots in the walls, joining her in step.
Saa briefly noticed a slight change in brightness from behind her. She turned around to see the multitude of heat signatures, bright in color, with more appearing seemingly from within the roots, their bodies rapidly warping and morphing into a normal size.
The Schisms grabbed the three before any of them could scream, pulling them promptly into the organic highway of the roots in the walls.
The wire Azer was following had long since abandoned the stream, now leading the group into a downward sloping tunnel inside a mountain in the middle of the island. From the entrance, none of them could see the rocky peak.
Inside the tunnel, the darkness was crushing. Visibility was reduced to the small circle of light from Erril’s flashlight and no more. It was cold and dry, unlike the moist air outside, and it seemed to get darker and colder with every step they took into the descending cavern. Azer relished the warmth of his coat.
As they walked, they noticed another wire traveling along the floor. They all stopped, Erril’s flashlight following the wire’s path until it met up with another running adjacently along the wall. As they proceeded further, more and more wires along the walls of the tunnel connected and traveled deeper into the cave in unison. Azer’s curiosity and confusion grew and grew. Enigmatically, the wires and tunnel all had an inexplicable sense of intense age to them. The wires were slightly buried in the dirt-lain walls, and the tunnel wasn’t round and earthy like a cave. Instead, it was squarish, a shape that became more and more defined as they descended deeper and deeper.
After what felt like hours of walking, the wires on the walls now innumerable, coating one side or another, the tunnel suddenly changed in nature.
With Erril’s flashlight focused on the ground, the three saw a metal stairway just barely poking its way through the earth. And below that another, and another, and another. Each descending stair was covered in less and less dirt. As they went down the staircase, the true identity of the tunnel was revealed.
They had been walking down an ancient, metallic, sturdily-built structure with rivets in the walls and fluorescent lights that had long since been snuffed out. And this staircase was taking them to the end of a corridor, a massive room that became more expansive as they got closer to its maw.
Within a colossal room of finely crafted metal was a gargantuan spaceship, immeasurably tall and hundreds of feet long. Its shape was indescribable by nature, made of some kind of deeply forieign material. Its composition could only be dreamed of. Capsules surrounded the ship’s underside, most missing but some remaining, each large enough to comfortably fit a person. A faint, blush glow illuminated the craft from above, a massive window of clear material surrounding the top of the chamber from edge to edge, letting the three see the heavens with striking clarity. Structures in the room stretched up and down the walls, each as tall as an entire building. The walls had countless lines running down them, coming from numerous entrances into the main chamber. Azer couldn’t place what the lines were yet—until he realized, they were wires like the ones they had followed here. Countless wires from countless places, all funneling power into this one craft.
The ship’s magnitude; the unfathomable technology within every square inch of it; the staggering complexity of the whole spacefaring vehicle; all of it surrounded by the husk of an advanced society–
Azer had seen it all before.
He fell to his knees and collapsed to the cold floor. His skull felt like it was going to split in two, thoughts and visions whirling through his mind, none of them his own. Every time he tried to process the colossal ship in front of him, he perceived it through different eyes. The sense of familiarity with this ship that Azer had felt throughout his life grew stronger and stronger.
Until Erril’s gloved hands tapped Azer vigorously on his shoulder.
At once, the pain and the déjà vu came to a halt, and awareness of his surroundings came back to him.
“Hey, Azer,” Erril said, concerned. “You alright?”
“I- I’m okay. Thanks, Erril. I’m alright now. We can keep going.”
“If you’re ready. But… man. I just… I can’t really describe this thing. That something like this has just… been here. All along. And nobody’s known.”
Azer’s familiarity spiked again before dissipating. Maybe not nobody…
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Rena added. “It’s like… you know how if we were to show someone from the past our current technology, they wouldn’t be able to understand it? That’s how I feel now.”
“And it looks as if some kind of civilization had been using it,” Erril finished.
They all stood and took in the sight for a moment before Erril turned back and began climbing up the stairs again.
“I think I saw another tunnel branching off of ours on the way here,” Erril said. “Let’s follow that one back and see if we can get any closer to Saa.”
With that, Azer turned his back on the ship and began climbing the stairs after Erril. He tried to ignore the beckoning feeling he felt towards it as he left the room.
It was a terrorizing realization for Grif to wake up to scorching air burning his skin and a bubbling pool of lava beneath his feet. Realizing the situation, he began to hyperventilate, only further singeing his lungs, his chest pressing against the ropes that bound him to the metal behind him.
The metal—what was he bound to? Grif looked up and down the structure he was tied to by scratchy, bloodstained rope—only to see a towering steel cylinder stretching up as far as he could see and down into the pool of lava beneath. Countless pipes and wires stretched into the walls of the chamber and down the massive steel cylinder. Grif recognized the structure as an ancient geothermal power plant. To his left and right were Copycat and Saa, both awake, also tied to the structure with blood dripping down their heads.
“O devil-possessed child of mine,” Chief Kirottu boomed into the sweltering cavern. “Today you will meet your end for the greater good of this society and to appease our great God Ydin. He will bear the blood of our sacrifices for the benefit of the world.”
Grif squirmed within the ropes around him, but they didn’t budge. His arms were tied tightly to his body. The way Kirottu spread his arms out towards the massive geothermal vent—did he think the structure was a god?
As Kirottu continued, Grif frantically surveyed the scene for a plan of escape. The entire Schism tribe appeared to be standing behind the scarred figure of Kirottu, the majority armed with spears. Grif assumed that most, if not all of them, possessed the Val that let them travel through the roots in the tunnels and absorb into organic matter, like Copycat’s hand. It was as if they could pull other organic matter “inside” as well, which would explain how the three of them had gotten dragged here in the first place.
“With these spears,” Kirottu continued, with Schisms beside him picking up three colossal spears with razor-sharp tips. Stains of blackened blood colored the iron shafts. “We will impale the sacrifices all the way through their cursed bodies, snapping the rope behind them that keeps them tied to Ydin’s holy shell. Then, they will fall into his burning cauldron below, and the smoke they leave behind will cleanse our people.”
Grif became acutely aware of the knotted rope behind his back, keeping him from falling into the lava beneath. He shivered at the idea of meeting such a gruesome fate. Seeing the executioners with their massive spears move closer to the rocky ledge, eyes fixed on where they would stab him, Saa, and Copycat, Grif made a last-ditch attempt to stall.
“W- wait!” he cried in the Schisms’ language. “Chief Kirottu, you never explained what happened to me, your son! Why was I sent away? Why am I being sacrificed now?”
Chief Kirottu’s face hardened, his remaining eye reduced to a scrutinizing glare. His partner beside him, who Grif presumed to be his mother, flinched at the question but stayed resolute.
“You were my beloved son, up until the devil took you from me. Since you do not remember, I shall detail to you the chance I gave you when you were young, before you foolishly returned here. A year after you were birthed, during a terrible storm, a bright light from the sky, the sun itself, decided to strike you down. This was but a terrible calamity at first, until it happened again. And when it happened a total of seven times, over seven different storms, I knew that God was striking you down because you had the devil’s curse. God tried so hard to kill you, but yet you survived each time, until the seventh, when the heart within you stopped. Desperate, I tried to save my son. I instructed the members of our tribe to replace your faulty heart with a sacred stone, passed down through generations. My father told me that the stone had come from another world. And after the operation was complete, the light above struck you one final time, and you breathed again. Your heart had been replaced by the stone, but we made a terrible realization.”
“The power of the sun that had struck you down during those fateful storms still resided within you, and at your fingertips you were able to create sparks of light that I knew only a God and the devil himself were capable of creating. I should have killed you then and there, but the compassion within me couldn’t bear to do it. So we took you to another of our gods, Kaari, within a massive, sacred site within our mountain, and prayed for her boon. The prayer was answered and we received a better fate for you. With Kaari’s holy blessing, we took you away from the land of the Schisms and into the heavens. We had hoped that by doing so, God would remove the devil from your body. But, alas, you have come back here, the devil only stronger within you. Now you must die, and be retaken by Ydin’s jaw and sent into the gates of the underworld where you belong.”
The cavernous walls rung out with the last word Kirottu spat, not a soul making a sound. The lava below bubbled, as if beckoning Grif to his fate.
“Make no mistake, Grif,” Kirottu growled again. “You are cursed. The world will be better without your presence tainting it. And I realize now the mistake I made in saving you from God’s will, who tried to strike you down when you were young.”
Infinitely more than the heat below scorching Grif’s bare and torn feet, Grif burned with rage, visceral and blinding. His own father wished him dead. The father and mother he’d been seeking for as long as he could remember wanted to burn him alive, seeing his powers and who he was as a curse. Grif wanted to make Kirottu see who he really was. Show his parents the real him.
Kirottu gestured to the spear-wielding Schisms to begin the ritual, and they approached the sacrifices, ready to strike.
Rage filled Grif’s entire being, every molecule in his body, until the molecules themselves began to split apart, dividing into their essential components, protons, neutrons, electrons. All of Grif’s body and soul slowly reduced to electrons, a conscious flow he could control. And in this refreshing new form, he slipped out of the bindings of the ropes around him, weaving between their atoms and moving around the polymers.
Grif had become electricity itself.
And he had never felt more alive.
In an instant, he arced to the iron tip of the spear that had intended to impale him, letting himself flow through the metal, down the handle, and into the hands of his to-be executioner. He electrocuted the guard from his hands to his arms to his head, who collapsed with steam emitting from his mouth. Grif then shot through the air at 1/7th the speed of light to the next guard, then the next, before promptly returning to a corporeal form in front of his father.
“Go to hell,” Grif spat.
Grif reared back an arm, clenching his fist, and punched Kirottu in his battle-scarred face with all he had, breaking his nose beneath Grif’s fingers. Using the confusion to his benefit, Grif rushed over to Saa and Copycat to untie them. At a glance, Grif couldn’t tell who was more shocked—his fellow sacrifices or the Schisms.
Every single one of the Schisms—man, woman and child—was dead set on killing the fleeing sacrifices. With the ability to freely move through organic matter or take organic matter into themselves, each had a formidable power that made it impossible for Grif and his friends to defend themselves.
Grif became electricity again, zapping between the bodies of the attacking Schisms one by one, clearing a path for Saa and Copycat to escape. He became corporeal again, standing in front of his two comrades.
“We gotta escape! Focus on getting out of here!” he yelled over the chaos. They nodded, making a beeline for the path, but–
The corpse of a Schism guard, a bloody hole in his chest, flew through the air and onto the ground in front of Saa and Copycat. Kirottu emerged from it, his arm soaked in the guard’s blood, lunging at one of Copycat’s clones. When Kirottu touched it, the clone withered away into nothing, becoming a shriveled husk.
“A clone,” Kirottu growled.
Their path out was now blocked from all ends, Kirottu blocking their way and the rest of the enraged Schisms behind them. What Kirottu did to the clone was different, Grif noticed. It wasn’t the absorption of organic matter—it was something far more sinister. The original Copycat looked at the defeated clone with horror.
Grif gazed at the corpse Kirottu had hidden in, his bloodsoaked arm the telltale murder weapon.
“Why did you kill him?” Grif asked the chief.
“Corpses struggle less. Better for transportation.”
The fallen Schisms were being used as transportation too, the living jumping from corpse to corpse with no regard for their fallen brethren. It made Grif sick to the stomach.
“What will you do, Grif? Will you abandon your comrades to escape? Or will you stand with your friends and be tortured to death?”
Grif looked between Kirottu and the approaching Schisms, still traveling from corpse to corpse to get closer. Time was running out…
“I barely found it in time!” Erril gasped, sprinting down the tunnel. “Saa, I’m coming! I found the heated rocks!”
“Erril!” Rena shouted as they ran. “If there’s an enemy, will you give me permission?”
“Permission to do what?!”
Rena looked seriously at Erril, a grim hint of malice in her eyes. Erril’s jaw dropped. Would he?
In a quick movement, Grif shoved Copycat and Saa past Kirottu, into the tunnel, but before Kirottu could reach out to touch them, Grif grabbed Kirottu’s arms, holding them tightly. Saa and Copycat fell past him, out of harm's way.
“So be it,” hissed Kirottu.
Grif felt the most peculiar sensation in his hands. It felt like his hands and wrists were dying before his eyes. Kirottu was the harbinger of decay, and Grif was his target.
The spread of decay reached further and further up his body, reaching his chest, then his neck. Then the decay crept up Grif’s face at a terrifying rate, numbing his lips—it was becoming hard to breathe from his now rotten lungs. But just before the decay reached his eyes and killed his brain, he saw a haunting sight. Kirottu had finally let go, gripping his own stomach with agony. He coughed and gasped, and every time his mouth opened Grif could see a reddish glow within him. Kirottu began to shake, training his one bloodshot eye on Grif.
“CURSE YOU!” Kirottu screamed, lunging at Grif’s face.
Then, he exploded. Kirottu disappeared, and in his place there was a colossal explosion of fire and the dustlike remains of his body. The shockwave echoed through the cavern, reverberating over and over. The only evidence left of Kirottu was the occasional fleck of blood on nearly every surface of the cavern.
Grif breathed heavily through his dying lungs, terror and shock clouding his mind. Was Kirottu… gone? Grif turned around, most of his face decayed, drops of Kirottu’s blood on his body.
And he saw his friends.
There was Rena, her arms extended towards where Kirottu had just been, her eyes shining with malice. There was Erril, a look of mortified disgust on his face, and Azer without one.
They were finally here.
Grif turned back towards Copycat and Saa, also covered in blood, and motioned them back towards their rescuers. They wordlessly obliged, but Grif found his body unable to move.
The Schisms toppled or killed their fellow people to try to reach the escapees, using their corpses as means of transportation. Their hands would claw and snatch at the fleeing teenagers, screaming and cursing at them, enraged at their lost chief. Just before Grif could be pulled into the wave of wrathful Schisms, Azer grabbed his hand.
Azer’s arm began to smoke with his S.R. Grif felt the energy of life flow into his afflicted limbs, liveliness filling his chest and healing his dead internals. And as quickly as Kirottu had almost killed him, Azer had undone all of Kirottu’s work, and then some. Grif felt like he could run faster than anyone else, hyper-aware and filled to the brim with adrenaline. They raced past the Schisms and through the ascending tunnel, following the moving illumination of Erril’s flashlight up the labyrinth.
“You’re better,” Azer pointed as they ran, surprised.
“I am,” Grif said. “How did you do that?”
“Don’t worry about that right now. We need to get out of here!”
Now deeper into the tunnels, the Schisms were utilizing the roots that ran along the cave walls to get ahead of the escapees. The six of them barely threw the approaching Schisms away, some Schisms able to grab on to someone before being shook off. Grif ran towards a wall as another Schism was emerging from the root, and he touched the root with his index finger. Electricity jolted through the root, shocking the Schisms within.
“I’m destroying their means of travel,” Grif told the others. Erril, Azer, and Rena were confused, but Saa and Copycat gave him an approving nod.
Now that the Schisms couldn’t use the burnt roots, they had no choice but to chase the escapees on foot. The tunnel weaved higher and higher, the Schisms growing closer and closer, before the light of dawn was finally visible from afar.
“We’re almost there!” Erril yelled to the others. Running on nothing but pure adrenaline, they could only nod in response.
Finally, they emerged. They had entered the Schism camp again. Grif realized there was a network of tunnels throughout the camp.
Hardly processing his surroundings, the group blindly sprinted into the dimly lit forest. They weren’t even looking at the markings. All they had time to process was the light of the sun—towards the ocean.
Now, the Schisms were shrinking into the trees and materializing from the trunk’s other side, before leaping back into another tree. They never touched the ground. They just hopped from tree to tree, racing after the escapees with astonishing speed.
“That’s why the leaves were untouched!” Erril yelped at the sight, gasping as he ran. “They don’t even touch the ground!”
Just then, a Schism leapt from a tree next to Erril and scratched his face with overgrown nails. Erril winced with surprise and faltered in his step. The Schisms had caught up now and were striking at the escapees without mercy. Saa had part of her shoulder cut by a knife-wielding Schism, Azer’s head was hit with a club, and even Grif couldn’t avoid the grasping hands of the attackers.
Then, finally, they ran into the light of morning, out of the trees and towards the glistening sea, running as fast as their bodies could take them on the cool sand. The Schisms could utilize their powers no longer. The beach was a sanctuary.
The Stormbreaker came into sight. They ran further and further from the snarls and screams of the malicious Schism tribe, until finally, Erril pressed open the hatch.
They clambered inside frantically. Not an instant after the last person’s foot entered the ship, Erril slammed the door behind them. Erril ran to the cockpit, and soon the Stormbreaker ascended with furious pounding on the hull, until, finally, the ship was out of reach. Out of the window, as the Stormbreaker flew higher, the remaining Schisms were furiously gathered underneath them as if they would come back.
Finally, all was quiet. Copycat coughed somewhere across the ship.
As the ship accelerated and rose into the atmosphere, and Arcus Island shrunk to become a speck in a bluish-green sea, Azer noticed something haunting underneath the water’s surface.
Between the planet’s continents and islands were the sunken remains of a colossal bridge, hardly visible under the water’s surface. But the craftsmanship was there, the engineering and genius of a long-lost society, sunken under the ocean and gone from sight.
Forever.
And Azer’s head ached with familiarity once more.
Dr. D could hardly believe the recounted experiences of the disheveled boys and girls, having returned from their misadventures far sooner than anticipated.
“All of this… really happened?” he uttered.
“Yes. It’s… impossible to believe, really,” Azer said. “Grif’s own father was the leader of the Schisms.”
“And you think the guard you interrogated was telling the truth? About the legend?” Dr. D asked.
“I’m certain,” Grif affirmed.
Dr. D looked nowhere in particular for a moment, the gears turning in his head. His face looked simultaneously hopeful and haunted.
“What this leads me to believe…” he started, “is that we might be dealing with a Val.”
“What?” asked Grif.
“The Magna virus. It’s a Val. It’s a Val-based virus. That’s why it can’t be cured, the virus itself is a Val, no modern medicine can beat a Val.”
“Then what can?”
“Another Val. The cure has to be Val-based as well. Grif, you said that in the legend, the Schisms were ‘attacked by the devil’ and ‘had to create their own devil’s powers to survive?’ And we already know the Schisms think Vals are the devil, right?”
The answer was dawning upon Grif now, too. His face twisted with shock.
“Then they must have tried making their own Val-based cure to fight the Val-based virus. And I think I know just the way to do the same.”
After months of tireless engineering, Dr. D held in his hand a small vial of darkly colored liquid. The entirety of Team Virga had gathered, each of them standing or sitting, eyes trained on the vial. Mrs. Korca was jittery, Okta’s stoic expression had been replaced by a determined glare, Delvin looked disheveled as ever, and Azer and Grif sat down in front of the vial with cautious hope within them.
The number of infections had risen since their return from Arcus island. The first deaths had already occured. The virus took over a month to kill each of its victims, and dozens had died in the time it took to develop a cure. But, finally, there was hope.
There had been no recorded instances in Zysti galaxy’s history of a manmade Val up until now. An ancient group of Schisms had done so—but their cure was imperfect. Bodies not suited to handle Vals were damaged and corrupted by the Val-based cure. Dr. D’s cure aimed to avoid that problem.
Like its ancient counterpart, the new cure used a synthetic Val to destroy the virus. But there was a clever exception to the rule of the body giving something up in order to contain a Val. A small amount of corvyte, the revolutionary material that made up the majority of Nur’s exports, was injected into the body alongside the Val-based cure. The corvyte mimics an organ within the body, acting as a buffer against the negative effects of the injected Val. Instead of a vital organ or bodily function ceasing to work, the corvyte organ acts as a sacrifice. The body gives up the corvyte organ to hold the Val instead of damaging anything essential.
Dr. D held the vial to the light above them within the room. The liquid was translucent, a grayish color with a hint of blue, and appeared to glow and move within itself. He prepared the vial within a syringe and held the needle up to the light.
“You all know why you’re here,” Dr. D said. “The cure is done. But before that, I have an important revelation for you all.”
Dr. D’s ghostly eyes trained on Azer.
“Azer.”
Azer stood from his seat. “Yeah?”
“I analyzed this thing last night, to double check its composition. To make sure it’s safe for consumption and all. And I found that, minus the corvyte, this Val-based cure… it has an identical composition, down to the very molecule…
…to your S.R.”
