The rickety Pod touched down in defiance of the soaring dust storm that terrorized the surface.
Its features were immediately buried within the blinding dust winds. Its exterior lights were intensified, but to no use, until from the sands the sandy silhouette of a man emerged stumbling with outreached hands towards the craft.
He waved his hands overhead to try and raise the attention of whoever could be inside, before slipping again and falling facedown into the treacherous soil.
As he suspected, Chiana had been watching. She rushed to lower the ladder and allow the man access before the storm would swallow him whole.
He entered coughing and buried in sand which fell to the floor in heaps with every motion he made.
"Did you find it?" Chiana asked.
"He didn't." Rygel said, reading Stark's mood quite accurately.
When he took off his scarf he revealed his scarred features. It had been some time since they'd seen him and although he hadn't visibly aged he still seemed different.
"What happened to your face?" Chiana asked. "Shouldn't it have grown back by now?"
Stark brushed the sand from his long hair.
"Where's Mikra? Mikra!" he shouted and from the cockpit arose a young woman, stumbling with open eyes through the door, because she couldn't see.
"I'm here."
Her glazed eyes tried to find him, trying to detect his every whisper. Chiana took her hand and helped the blind woman find her way past them through the confines of the small Pod.
Stark took her hands and kissed every part of her skin and when she closed her eyes he kissed her eyelids too.
"I've missed you." he said to her. "I've missed you so much."
"Can we go, Chiana?" Rygel spoke and his calm, sad demeanor confused Chiana for a moment, until she swallowed, nodded and rushed back to the controls where they all finally joined her.
"Why won't this frelling thing work?" Chiana shouted after slamming her fists down upon the panel.
"It's the storm." Stark said.
"We're being swallowed whole by this frelling planet!" Rygel cried out. "You! Do something! This is your homeworld, so you must know someone who can help us! Anyone?"
Stark shook his head. "There is no-one."
"Then we're stuck here!" Rygel said. "We're being buried alive!"
"I should've seen this. I should've seen it coming." Chiana panicked.
"How much pressure can the Pod take?" Stark asked. He sat next to Mikra, huddled on the floor, holding her hands.
She started chanting a prayer and Stark commended her. "Yes, yes, that's good."
"Frell! We should be blasting through this frelling muck!" Chiana said.
Mikra gripped Stark's shoulder struck by an idea: "Maybe the engine's exhaust is clogged with sand!"
Chiana immediately checked the console.
"Pressure is building!"
"By Hyneria," Rygel gasped. "shut off those engines before they explode!"
When the engines powered down the Pod stopped trembling and it turned eerily silent, except for the howling wind and buildup of sand that was happening all around them.
"Now we're stuck in this dren!" Rygel snapped at Stark. "All because of you!"
"No!" Stark said, getting up from his feet. "There has to be a way. I need to keep looking!"
"For what?" Rygel said. "You never found anything and you never will! This planet is dead!"
"It is our home." Mikra said softly from the floor. "At least, it used to be."
"Can we access the exhaust pipes from the inside?" Stark asked.
Chiana nodded absently. "Let's find out."
She rushed to the back of the Pod where Rygel found her removing the floor plates and hunching headfirst into a nest of wires.
Stark crouched back down to Mikra's level in the shadow of the control panel and she moved her hand across his face. Was it to make sure it was really him?
"Did you find anything?" she asked.
He was agitated, not able to stand still, moving about the place whilst holding her hand as if there was somewhere else he was supposed to be.
"There was nothing." he said to her. "Why? Why? I can sense them. I can feel them in the air, but where are they? Why can't I find them? Why?"
Mikra calmed him down, comforted him with her touch.
"You are not alone anymore." she said.
His only eye analyzed her curly, brown hair, the same colour as his, the glazed eyes that were never quite empty, the hook nose and full lips and the cheekbones of a goddess. She was his sister. Not through blood, but through kinship. They could be the very last.
"Stykera." she said to him and her eyes started glowing orange. Quickly he placed his hand to close them and he pressed his skin against hers in comfort.
"I'm sorry," Mikra told him. "It hasn't done that since a long while."
"You will learn to suppress your powers." Stark said. "Eventually. You will learn."
He started rummaging through his pockets and the insides of his coat, to reveal the rewards of his journey, even though slight and mostly worthless. Stones and cloth and faded pictures he held aloft proudly, the last remnants of a once mighty race, whilst the Pod shook around them.
Finally he produced a worn, and old, faded book, whose pages did not fit its bindings.
Stark took Mikra's hand and placed it on the cover. She felt the dust.
"It's a book!" Stark said, letting her touch its cover.
"What does it say?" Mikra asked.
"I don't know," Stark said perplexed, looking up from the dusty cover. "I haven't read it yet."
Their thoughts were interrupted by a sudden bang. Chiana had thrown a spanner against the bulkhead.
"Why don't you go down there and fix it yourself?" she yelled at Rygel. "You're smaller than me! You'd fit through nicely!"
"Don't take out your anger on me, girl." he spoke. "It was your idea to descend into the storm. Not mine."
"You're asking me to be both a mechanic and a doctor, or have you forgotten this thing's part alive? You're asking me to climb down its asshole!"
"You've done worse." Rygel said. "Now just do it so we can get the frell out of here!"
Stark got up from his feet when inspiration struck him. At first he looked back into Mikra's eyes feeling excitement rush over him, maybe wondering if she thought the same, but her eyes gazed emptily into the dark whilst he might just have found their way out.
"I could manipulate the signal. Divert the energy to the communicator relay. Find a way to contact Moya. They could find us! They could help us!"
"Even when we're buried alive?" Mikra asked, lifting herself up from the ground.
She joined Stark's side, gripping the console as he did, whilst he ripped off the top panel.
"I must try."
Rygel didn't approve; he immediately tried to intervene in Stark's modifications and fiddling, resulting in a nasty squabble which Stark eventually won, despite Rygel's teeth digging into the flesh of his hand.
"Stop it!" Stark said after he'd pushed him into a corner. "I'm trying to save us!"
"Have you any idea what you're doing?" Rygel shouted back.
"Neither do you." Stark simply said and he continued working.
Mikra felt her way toward the navigational console with her eyes closed, leaving the boys to their fight as she listened to the sweeping winds strike the hull of the Pod with great intensity over and over again. She could hear the sand rain down on the ceiling and dwindle back into the rising soil in which they were slowly being buried.
She didn't notice the lights going out until Rygel started shouting.
"Look at what you've done!" the Hynerian cried. "We're all going to die!"
Stark struggled to connect two heavy cables together before they sparked and electrocuted him.
"Not yet!" he groaned and a high-pitched signal pierced the silence. Stark's smile widened.
"What happened?" Chiana asked "Did you fire a message buoy?"
"What's a message buoy?" Stark asked.
He dug his hands deeper into the wires of the control panel underneath the grating.
"It's a distress beacon, you clutz!" Chiana cried out, leaping from panel to panel. "What did you do to the lights?"
She pushed Stark out of the way.
"I've rerouted power to the comms array." he tried to explain with waving, uncertain hands, pointing at the places where he'd messed with the inner workings of the panel. "I sent out a signal, see? They'll attract ships. They'll rescue us!"
Chiana restrained herself from ripping apart the console.
"They'll attract squat! They're only short-range, you frelnitz! Now we're stuck here!"
She grabbed the loose panel and pressed it back on top of the console. "Firing message buoy...NOW!"
The ship shook momentarily as a soaring noise was sent out into the storm and faded away.
Chiana couldn't stand looking at Stark now, as he tried to explain he was only trying to help.
"Happy now? Hmmm?" Rygel said to him when Chiana had turned her back.
Mikra held Stark's hand in silence when he turned to her.
"I'm not the best teacher, am I?" he spoke sadly.
Chiana found some flashlights they could use in the dark whilst she tried to get the power back up. Rygel shone them into Stark's eye only once. Mikra was the only one not shivering when the lights went out.
They gathered in the main section of the Pod where they sat on the ground together, waiting for the storm to subside or someone to rescue them, whilst Chiana continued her attempts to fix the vessel.
She finally collapsed on the floor next to them wielding a spanner, too tired to even tell them she was tired. Folding her legs together she threw herself backwards on to the floor with her hands curled up against her chest.
"I found this in the remains of the medical ward, quite by chance, as it had actually been quite well hidden." Stark started telling. "I think it's some kind of journal or log."
"Read it to me." Mikra said.
Stark looked down upon the grey page, discerning the faded letters which seemed hypnotizing in the dark. His flashlight's reflection upon the white page blinded and hurt his only eye.
He scraped his throat and searched for the first words.
I assume this is my punishment. But for how long? They did not mention a possible retrieval date nor is it mentioned in the travel logs. I've checked.
They let me off easy for my transgression, considering the alternative, but isn't this a little demeaning for a Peacekeeper? Aren't I supposed to be of better blood than these filthy slaves?
Ten solar days now I've been treating the epidemic that has spread through the slave population, trying to contain it inside one Hive or at the very least in the underground colonies.
I've been locked inside the city now with a thousand dying slaves and little...
Stark looked up from the page, distracted by a loud noise which turned out to be Rygel snoring in his deactivated thronesled. They left him alone for now. Stark aimed his flashlight back at the grey page.
...and little supplies to cure them with. The vaccin is available, but expensive, and my new slaver overlords are keen not to dig too far into their pockets for the salvation of their slave race. I'm ordered only to save the most valuable ones. The ones that are still strong enough to carry a pickaxe.
I have no choice but to do my job. It's what I've been trained to do and I'll do it, no matter how much it sickens me. I've become a slave to slaves.
At least my quarters are decent. The Warden has been more than kind to me.
I wonder how long that will last.
"Are you cursed, Stark?" Chiana said, lifting her head up from the floor and pressing it into her neck. She looked over the length of her body, lying across the floor, to see the two Baniks sitting there huddled together in the dark. "No, really. We were having a great week. No fights, no robberies, no nothing. And then you come along...what's up with that?"
"Understand that I'm grateful that you've come for me." Stark said nervously. "I consider you my friends."
Chiana backed down.
"This planet means a lot to me. I've been trying to find what's left of my race..."
"Crichton's been asking for you." Chiana said. "Wondering where you left. He's got your mask."
"It was my gift to him. To show that I do not blame him. In fact, Yondolao's knowledge has left a great impact on me, even after it left me completely..."
"Your face?" Mikra asked knowingly and Stark nodded.
"It was a rift in my soul. I was bleeding energy, sometimes I could not control it, but it's healed now."
"But your eye..." Chiana said. "I thought it would grow back."
"No...How could it?" Stark said, surprising Chiana. "I never had an eye to begin with. I was born this way. Like this. Eyeless."
"Stykera." Mikra said and Stark's excitement faded.
"Yes." he spoke. I am that. It is the source of my powers and your powers as well."
"What is it?" Chiana asked. She had heard Crichton mention it once, but he never explained what it was or how he knew it.
"We are Stykera." Stark explained, referring to Mikra and himself. "A subspecies of the Banik race. We are few. Maybe the last."
"And this is your homeplanet?" Chiana asked. "What happened to it?"
Mikra took over from Stark: "Legend has it the Baniks feared the Stykera and killed them all. They tried to keep it a secret, but the Peacekeepers found out, and for their incredible sin they were sentenced to an eternity of slave labour. As for the storm, no-one knows.
"There used to be slaver colonies spread across the surface of the planet and mines deep within the rock. Underground cities holding millions of slaves, men and women segregated into different cities and sold in lots of a thousand across the entire universe for manual labour.
"But It's all gone now."
"Maybe for the better." Chiana said to drive away the silence. "Did the book tell you anything?"
Stark continued reading. The book was written by a Sebacean man called Brinn. A Peacekeeper physician who was sentenced to serve on this dying world indefinitely, for a crime he had committed; the nature of his crime was not mentioned.
He did however mention the same legend of the fate of the Banik race as they had just told Chiana, almost word for word.
"Does it say anything about fixing exhaust pipes?" Chiana asked teasing and Stark said it didn't.
The signs had never made sense. The orders and beatings seem random, but enforced with the butt of a vicious rifle and a finger eager to pull the trigger, it separated man from beast with words that preached no truth, only death. Whenever a man rides the train deep down into the tunnels they abandon all hope, they cast aside all rules and reason and enter chaos.
It is an unwritten rule of natural selection in the Hive that every man stands alone.
I have spent the mayority of my life living amongst them, but they will never accept me as one of them. Don't I still enjoy the benefits of my own status? Am I not a creation of the Peacekeepers? Their very name no longer fitting for their current duties as ambassadors of slavery and death.
I live outside the ghetto. I do not work in the mines. My life is not for sale. I mock them with my very presence, my purpose in life being to sustain their suffering.
That is not the creed I live by. Not anymore.
"What happened to this man?" Mikra asked. "Did he die?"
Stark was afraid to skip to the end of the book and find out.
Yesterday the new rule came into effect and I stood by as it happened. Speechless.
Why could they not have told me about this? They must not trust me. Maybe they know.
Last night the Voice bellowed through the cavern when they took all the women. They took them away and I alone have been given an explanation. I was the only one who asked.
They were taking them to a different city. Men and women were being separated, segregated, to further control the growth of the population. I objected, but the Warden wouldn't listen. Why did I even try?
Last night a young couple came to me begging for help. The woman was pregnant with twins, as I rightly predicted, but there had been complications. I
There were several missing pages, apparantly torn from its bindings. Had Brinn taken out all incriminating passages himself, or had someone else found his journal and tampered with it? Could they have been taken by the storm?
They would never know.
Only the Voice is allowed to speak up. Every day his voice resounds across the PA. Sometimes a recording, but I can tell when it's really him.
I think I've seen him once. During one of my meetings with the Warden I think I heard him laugh. I never want to hear that laugh again.
The Voice is everywhere. The slaves don't know his name so neither do I.
He's there when the fresh batch of boys arrives to fill in the gaps of the perished or the sold men and he's there when the dead step into the tubes on their final day of life.
He reminds me of my commandant on my first field mission so long ago. He had a booming voice and nobody dared to oppose him. He died face down in the mud like all the others.
Then came another gap and an apparant change in tone. Stark wondered how many cycles they had skipped, leaping from page to page ignoring the missing parts that might've held vital information.
I never caught his name. I don't think he was either Peacekeeper or Nebari. He was the one who told me about the Stykera and how to spot them from the crowds.
Every solar week he comes to me, examines my progress and makes sure I know I'm being watched closely. I intend to make sure he will never find this diary.
I spoke to the Warden today. He never mentioned my wounds, but I could see it in his eyes that he already knew. It had been unnecessary to rough me up. I know my place in this hierarchy of death.
From the bottom I will never see the top. I can only see three players, three cogs in this mighty machine, this institution or corporation that spanned the entire planet. There was the Warden, the Voice... and there was Him, experimenting on the ones the Voice found too weak and unvaluable to sell.
I watched him treat slaves without anaesthetic, experiment on their bodily functions, trying to extract the gene that might create the Stykera mutation from their bodies. He told me so.
He once experimented on twins, made one watch the other be stripped and sliced open in front of him, knowing he'd be next. And I said nothing.
It's because of him that I
He made me do it. They made me do it. I keep telling myself that, but I know it's a lie. They were not there when it happened. The responsibility lies solely with me. I did it. I'm no different than Him. I try to save lives. Does that make me any less than a
Murderer?
"Does it say who he killed?" Mikra asked. She pressed her head against his shoulder. Stark knew how she felt for he felt the same. Stunned. No matter how many times he's encountered suffering in his life, it never left him unaffected.
Maybe it's because of his Stykera powers. Maybe it's because he's just sensitive. Always has been. He felt the pain all over past alive in him.
"Do you want me to continue?" Stark asked Mikra and she nodded quietly.
She had to know.
Chiana tried not to imagine Stark's past, she tried not to listen to the storm raging outside, but she did anyway. She couldn't focus on her work.
Piece of dren fell apart just when they needed it.
"Frell!" she whispered to herself, giving up on the controle panel Stark ripped apart.
"It doesn't sound like he had a choice." Rygel suddenly said, surprising Stark and Mikra. How long had he been listening to their story? Had he been merely pretending to sleep?
Mikra's glazed eyes looked out into the dark, focusing on the Hynerian's deep breath. She could hear him lick his big, dry lips and scratch his big eyebrows.
He restarted his hovering thronesled and started humming, lifting the sluggish, small creature a metra into the air, where it hovered to a standstill. Rygel yawned.
"When I was Emperor I had many slaves." Rygel began telling them. "I had concubines and manservants and personal guards. I had a wife before I was old enough to even understand marriage. Ha! Yes, those were the days."
"Did they grovel at your feet?" Stark said sneering. "Did they beg for mercy as you sent them to the gallows? Your loyal servants?"
He peered across the room through the dark from behind his book watching the Hynerian find his balance.
"I was -and always shall be- Dominar!" Rygel exclaimed. "I don't need to apologize myself to you!"
"Yes," Stark said observant, almost piously. "You have already been punished for your crimes."
"Punished? Do you think those slaves have thrived better under the rule of my accursed cousin Bishan? Hmpf. Unlikely. In any case, I always made sure I imprisoned the guilty ones. I never sent anyone into slavery that didn't deserve it!"
"Would you condemn Bishan to slavery, to grovel at your feet like a servant for the rest of his life for his actions?" Stark asked.
Rygel took a deep breath, pondering the question in silence.
"Yes." he said.
"The Baniks killed thousands of their own people." Mikra interjected, jumping to Stark's aid.
"Did they deserve this fate?"
Rygel lingered in deep thought again.
"Maybe."
Stark hissed and would've nearly assaulted Rygel then and there.
"I don't know! What kind of question is that?" Rygel said. "Blame the Peacekeepers! Not me! I never heard of the Baniks until I met you!"
Stark closed the book and handed it to Mikra for safekeeping.
"They were called a race of secret keepers. Masters of spirit. One with the soil that brought them life...now they're all gone. Lost in the storm."
Chiana was determined not to share their fate. She heard Stark dreaming out loud again, like she remembered him doing very long ago. It was kind of soothing, but not enough to quell her unrest. Something had to be done.
"We're down here dying and you're reading a book. No, that's great. That's frelling fantastic."
She cocked her head like she always did and Mikra could hear her internal hiss.
"Why don't we just blow this place up?" she suddenly said to the others. "Yeah. Seal off the forward deck and rig the engine to explode. If we're lucky, we could ride the shockwave straight out of this storm."
She felt out of breath and out of place. Why did she have to be the one to come up with the plan?
"Shockwave? What shockwave?" Rygel asked, pointing out the fatal flaw in her plan. "We get blown to pieces! Is that your plan?"
"You've got a better idea?" she snapped, grabbing the Hynerian's waistcoat, but quickly letting go without following up on her threat.
"I could fart a better idea than that!" Rygel barked.
"Please don't." Mikra said.
"We'll just have to wait for Moya to pick up our distress beacon." Rygel continued calmly. "Crichton and Aeryn will drag us out of this mess."
"As usual." Chiana added under her breath.
"We have enough supplies! Enough oxygen! Get a grip, girl." Rygel spoke to Chiana. "If you want out of here, you'll have to think of something else. Something that doesn't involve blowing us all up!"
"I don't see you coming up with anything." she said to him. "Keep it up and I'll have you fart helium."
Mikra's shaking hands felt in the dark for Stark's touch, then handed him the book.
"Maybe you should continue reading." she said and there was something in her eyes that made him pick up the book, but he set it down and gently kissed her forehead. There was something he had to do first.
His robes felt a bit oversized, sand itched everywhere and his face had never felt so exposed before. He hunched instinctively in Chiana's wake, following her, watching her check the status of the atmospheric scrubbers, whilst he said nothing, sometimes even looking back to the comfortable spot in which he'd sat in Mikra's loving touch. She pretended not to know he was there.
"Chiana," Stark said. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Just read your book, okay?" Chiana snapped slightly. He could tell in her eyes that she hadn't meant to. "I'll keep the Pod running as long as I can."
"But I should help." Stark insisted.
"Then help her. Mikra's been whithering away on board Moya since you left her there."
He remembered the day not long ago when he sent her away. It had been a tough decision.
Stark wanted to say something, but Chiana put a gloved finger to his lips.
"No buts." she whispered. "Get over there. Read your book. I want to know how it ends."
Stark nodded cautiously, winning Chiana's secret smile.
Rygel's brooding presence hovered past Stark as he set himself down in Mikra's arms again, certain that he knew the tragic ending of Father Brinn's story and so he stopped caring. But he was wrong.
The Banik Terra and his men brought a peculiar case to my attention today. They found a young man bruised and unconscious in the upper cavern. They thought he'd been beaten by the guardsmen, but his wounds were consistent with my initial observation. He seems to have fallen down the rocky north stairs, but I can't tell if he was pushed.
His body odour caught my attention at first. I don't know why my nostrils are still affected after so many cycles of this putrid dren in the Hive. I can remember the smell of morning dew on the petals of a Symille plant. It's poisonous, of course, or else the Peacekeepers would never have me study its features.
When I rolled the patient over I made my discovery. I now have a secret to keep that I can only share in this personal log.
He is Stykera.
Stark shared Mikra's hidden excitement as he turned the page, but disappointment struck him when he found more deleted passages there. Puzzling, he read the untouched sentences beforehand with a swift eye skimming the page. Mikra urged him to keep reading.
There never had been a true record of a real Stykera before. Stark only knew because of the legend his parents told him, even though neither of them had been Stykera.
It was written in his blood, it shone through when activated, an explosion of light in a single droplet.
I thought the marks to be a wound at first, perhaps some sort of facial disfigurement, but it was much more. I did not dare touch it. It was remarkable.
I couldn't believe my eyes, looking upon the morping liquid moving inside his soul, hidden beneath the bronze mask covering the wound, bound to his skull with leather straps.
Stark felt a shiver run across his back.
He did not have the implant. He was not born of this world. At least not in the last 100 cycles since the technology was installed.
Where did this Stykera come from? And why come here? Why would this man willingly enter this hell? Alone?
Has he come to save them? The mines are no place for men of hope. He will forget his ideas in time. He has to. I think I won't be able to convince him to turn back.
There was silence at turned the page, but his mind's eye lingered on the passages he'd just read.
"Stark..." Mikra spoke hesitantly and somehow Stark felt her ease away from him even though her hand never let go of his. "That's you..."
Stark touched the side of his face that used to hold the scar, spilling his energy and burning it right through his physical form. The mask had always held it in place before and he'd had it for so long. When the rift finally healed, the voices found their peace and he felt freed, unbound...
He remembered the first time he held the mask in his hands. It was his and his alone, cast to the shape of his face by a blind artist much like Mikra was.
You are like a dear friend to me, diary, someone I can confide in, but there are some things I don't even tell you.
I don't know what would happen if anyone were to get their hands on this book and read my thoughts. I don't even think there's a chance of that happening. Maybe. I'm not sure anymore.
The last few solar days have been strenuous and terrifying, but also exciting in a way. How long will it last? How long until they find out?
When the man in the white coat visited me I lied to his face. I told him he was my assistant, a brilliant yet fallible lie, knowing what had occurred in the tunnels this morning. One of the drills exploded causing the tunnels to collapse, trapping many slaves, killing most of them.
I needed Stark's help.
I know they're still watching us closely. Next time they won't just send me a list of everything I ate for the past three cycles. They'll send in the squad instead.
Feed me into the tubes like they did to Terra.
Mikra gasped. "It said your name! It's you, Stark!"
"That's impossible!" Rygel grumbled, wheezing his thronesled above them with a shuddering hover motion moving the air beneath it. Stark immediately leaped to his feet to protect the prized pages.
"Get away!" he cried, pressing the book against his chest.
"It can't be you! You'd have to be at least, well, at least as old as me!"
"Who says I'm not?" Stark said.
Rygel had to admit, at least to himself, that he'd never actually asked.
Stark's gaze fell down upon the book held up against his chest. The edges of the delicate, fading paper was crumbling like dust as it rubbed against him and fell to the ground.
Stark quickly readjusted himself to hold the book as careful as possible.
The sound of the storm outside had faded away. For all they knew they could be completely buried within the sand by now.
"If it's you, why don't you remember?" Mikra asked.
"I don't know." Stark said.
"Maybe it's not you." Rygel said. "It would be the simplest and most likely explanation."
"Which is usually wrong!" Chiana added.
The metal bulkhead above them in the ceiling croaked under the increased pressure.
"Something happened." Mikra concluded. "We already knew this. Something caused the storms, something made all these people disappear without a trace."
"Then skip to the end you fools!" Rygel said. "If we can find the cause of all this, then we might find a way to end this insanity! Get us out of here for instance!"
"No!" Stark cried, protecting the book.
"Leave him alone!" Chiana said, stepping in. "Tell us what's going on Stark. Mikra?"
Stark looked down at the woman at his feet blindly feeling for his leg. She had never really truly recovered from her wounds. She could not stand for long and preferred to sit. Every time he caught her itching her bare right foot. It was paler than the other leg, even in the dark.
"My name is in the book. My mask. He mentions me yet I don't remember it. I've never been there before!"
"You said it was your homeworld..." Chiana noted.
Through kinship. Through blood.
Today had been the first day he'd set foot on this mystical planet. Or so he thought.
"The answer is in the book!" Stark said, tears welling up in his manic eye. "It must be!"
He pressed himself upon the pages, searching the text knowing there were few pages left.
"Here! Here!" he cried.
The young Stykera's delusion is inspiring, but foolish. He will die without my help. He won't listen to me!
With every beat of his heart his breathing became more manic and uncontrolled. The whispering voices turned into a screaming mess. Veins were throbbing on his forehead and neck and he couldn't stop his fingers from trembling. The muscles in his upper arm started twitching for no reason. Letters were spinning.
He's gone. He left my side. I let him out of my sight for a mere microt and it all went to hell. Terra's gone. I cannot rely on him anymore. I've tried searching the ghetto, but they won't let me.
I am not one of them. They shun me as if I'm nothing but a pillar of rock and I understand.
"Stark."
His name. Why didn't I see it earlier?
"Stark!" Chiana started shouting, but he wouldn't stop.
His proposal made sense now. It is my only chance.
"Stark, stop it." Chiana said, gripping his arms, but he fought to keep reading. "Stark, let go of the book! Frell you, Stark! Let go of the book!"
I must help him. The quality of redemption is not strained, nor should it ever be, nor will it ever erase my greatest sin.
But I shall try.
"Stark, you have to stop reading!" Chiana said, ripping the book from his hands and Stark's eye turned glassy, as if he'd just turned into someone else.
"Why don't I remember?" he asked Chiana, who for a quick moment examined the book's front and cover. Rygel said nothing.
Something had happened, and something did happen, as shapes appeared inside his head, flashing in and out of the dark, whilst Mikra's hand was gliding up the side of his leg, across his gloved hand and sandy stomach, across his chest and shoulders and neck, until two soft hands turned his neck and he looked into two blinding lights.
She pressed his forehead against his whilst he cried.
Their surroundings faded away, the golden darkness of the Pod dissolving into oily black, and the last things to go were the reflections in Rygel's envious eyes.
"I see it." Mikra said, but that was only the beginning. No, it was the end.
She saw how Stark found his way underground a second time, not knowing that it had been exactly like the first in many ways.
His hand slipped inside his pocket to dig into the goo that stained the inside, making it moist.
The goo was slightly green, but cleanly transparant and sticky and Stark smeared his nostrils with the stuff. Its burning smell overpowered the hellish odour emitted from the fuming pit below.
He pressed his sleeve against his mouth and jumped out of the shadow of the cave, into the trench of sand. Every pebble that he touched burned, sizzling in the hot sun. Across the desert in the distance the air rippled like water.
The goo's smell seared his sinusses, but its effects were swiftly fading, letting the poisonous fumes in. He coughed. His skin was burning.
In the distance he heard the sonic boom of a Marauder descending into orbit. He had to move quickly before the patrols would catch him. He could feel their eyes falling on him like a shadow.
He ducked instinctively when he felt the ship fly over him. He knew there was only one way to avoid being detected.
He dropped down to the ground in a clumbsy dive, rolling further down along the gritty hill until he came to a full stop with his face buried in the hot stones, scorching his flesh. He had to remain perfectly still to avoid being detected by the scan.
He squirmed, clenching his jaws, whilst his body trembled with balling fists and the scream was building inside. He had to bear it.
Mikra pressed on.
He believed he could almost feel the scan and he had to believe it otherwise enduring the pain would've been for nothing. He blocked it out like everything else and waited.
Tears of pain were welling in his eyes, his face turned red, as the Marauder grew closer. The hot stones burn did not fade or grew bearable. His squirm turned into a scream, almost drowning out the noise of the swerving ship, before it faded into the distance.
Stark rolled and kept rolling, his worn, brown clothing giving off smoke in the burning sun. He fell down to the bottom of the trench whilst the layer grit and sand rolled down with him, until he got back up to his feet and scurried across the next hill without a breath in his body. This hill was shaped differently than the others and Stark could feel the strange and hard composition underneath it, the walls of the mines.
He ran all the way, slipping in the sand, stumbling and screaming until the pain turned into excitement and adrenaline. Then the floor gave away, a sudden drop where the sand grit fell down like he did, flapping his arms through the air in fright. He fell to the ground with a scream and a flat crash upon unbreakable wood.
He had fallen through a projection, a real life mirage made by technology. It was still active, never turned off.
His planned entry wasn't as graceful and clever as he'd planned it out, he realized when he was brushing sand from his hair with a nearly collapsed lung. His face was burning, whilst he sat there in the dark at the bottom of the structure he'd just climbed, wondering how he'd ever get out again. At least he was in. It was cold here.
He moved slowly, every motion shook sand off his clothing in heaps, analyzing all pains in his body as he stretched it, embraced it and learned to cope. He was finally inside. He hadn't slept for days thinking about this moment.
He looked around. There were stairs, scaffolding and he quickly climbed down the construction and into the darkness underneath the desert soil.
The further down he went the more he got chills.
His itch got worse and started tingling coldy. He felt connected to the grunts of a thousand labourers in the dark.
His wandering eye scoured the surface of the wall, he lost track of how many steps he'd went down, feeling the marks of pickaxes with his fingers, the places were the blood had seeped into the rock.
He could feel their presence in every step, every stone, every breath of air. This was the place where the lives of millions of Banik slaves had come to their end. The Caton mines.
"The storm? Where is the storm?" Mikra said. "The memories are overlapping."
His escape pod had crashed down through the raging sandstorms following the voice of an angel, the whisper of a Goddess. Who was she?
Death. He could smell it. He could almost touch it in the air, the feeling was so dense, it opposed him like a wall, a wall that was eager to swallow him whole.
With a silent scream he let himself be swallowed by the beast and he was now inside it. In total darkness, the next light was somewhere in the distance, one tunnel too far, a flickering candle that would shrink whenever he reached for it in his mind.
For a second he doubted himself when he saw the first guard and frightened he threw his back against the wall and waited for him to pass. The guard was a mercenary, possibly a Tavlek, judging by the size of his silhouette and weapon of choice. A slave-driver with the blood of Baniks on his hands.
The guard loudly complained, spitting on the ground whilst blood dripped from his large whip.
Stark followed him into the tunnel, down a few steps possibly carved by the hands of many perished Banik slaves. He hesitated to walk over them until he simply did harmlessly.
The Tavlek headed towards a door in the tunnel wall.
There were other voices, other guards, beyond that door, With his ear to the wall, sliding across the worn rocks with the gloved palm of his hand, he heard them belching, so he stumbled back up the steps, startled to find himself in a patch of light.
He had escaped the storm. No, the storm was here.
"This isn't it." Mikra said. "Help me to find it, Stark. Remember."
The rocky corridors whizzed past in his panicked haste, the steps, the tunnel, the dark, except the candle which took longer to reach.
Cracked candles beneath his feet and jagged rocks under his skin bled him like barbed wire and he fell, rolling through an endless staircase in the dark carved by the hands of many perished Banik slaves, seemingly forever...All the way back home.
No. There was a gate. There was a door control he could not swipe with his own hand. He knew it would not accept his DNA, the blood of a slave, an animal. He reached inside his pocket for a device. It fit neatly in his hand, because it was of his own design, made by mostly scrap metal and spare parts. He hoped it hadn't been damaged in the fall.
He put it to his ear to try and hear the familiar, expected buzz, but there was none. Why wasn't it working? The power meter failed to peak.
Instinctively he stepped away from the gate and cracked the fallen candle with his sandal. It was the last straw.
Stark kept trying incessantly, when a rush of cold sweat drowned his senses, to push the button, aiming the device at the gate, but when nothing happened he cried out angrily and threw it at the gate.
The device flew through the bars and landed far out into the corridor. The second it bounced Stark flung himself against the bars to try and stop it, but it was too late and too much.
He couldn't reach for it.
"No!" Stark screamed, attacking the gate's bars, shaking them like a madman as he stared down the tunnel in front of him.
"No!"
Instead of the bars he was now choking a man, pushing him over and over again to the ground until his face turned blue.
"Give it to me!"
Mikra almost let go.
He was wailing on his knees in a corridor on Moya, scratching the sides of a door that wouldn't open.
Finally there was a pale man in complete leather armour that covered his entire body eyeing him from across the room, even if there was no room. Stark shouted at him, spitting on the straps that held him down into his chair whilst giant cables were attached to his head.
"Do it again, Scorpy! Do it again!" he cried out.
"Focus, Stark." Mikra begged. "Please. We have to find them."
Mikra pressed on, straining the muscles in her head.
Scorpius raised his hand and his assistant upped the level of pain that surged through his mind, shocking every muscle in Stark's body to a gripping standstill whilst he screamed his lungs out.
"No!"
He was strangling the wide-eyed man again whose face was turning blue. He was old, his hair had all but turned white and he stretched his normally defined large jaw to escape Stark's clutches. His normally beady eyes had widened into a silent scream.
"Please don't." he could barely whisper.
Empty caves, empty tunnels, empty carriages and funnels and rails, abandoned silos, forgotten giant drillheads and caverns and lost shoes. These were the halls of the dead.
He had been drawn to this place. He'd felt it then, he'd felt it every day he spent trying to rescue his people from the chains of slavery and oppression. He realized that now. Something was drawing him back to this planet all this time. Or did he only think he felt it, now in hindsight?
Did he just want to feel special?
"The Stykera enjoy a certain messianic position amongst the ranks of the slaves, since their very existence has been reduced to being nothing more than myth."
"There it is." Mikra said. "Follow it."
"They're not even rumors, not even whispers." Brinn spoke. "No-one sings deep down in the mines. No-one speaks a word."
Brinn was rubbing his hands, washing them almost obsessively. He did not lose his calm, nor lose his focuse, instead acting as if this manual and obsessive task was standard procedure. He wiped his hands on his lab coat with the motions of an artist.
"Tell me," he said to Stark.
When he was done his hands kept dripping, yet he waited for them to dry naturally.
Brinn's thin lips were patient as his old eyes found their target. Stark watched his jaw muscles clench awkwardly, as if his mind was contemplating the right words.
Stark recognised the hesitation in his step, but found no need to distrust him. His mind was busy elsewhere, analyzing through the tentflap, listening to the sound of slaves dragging their feet through the rocks.
"What did you expect?"
Stark balled his hands into fists, knowing what they had done, and what they were about to do; strangle this man. This was Father Brinn.
"I remember!" he cried out excitedly, his smile quickly twisting into wordless pain.
"No, I don't want to. Let me go!"
"HOLD HIM!" Mikra shouted grabbing hold of his skull with both hands.
Rygel motioned to step in, but held back in that very same moment as Chiana jumped in to keep Stark's connection with Mikra intact.
"I'm sorry."
Stark was forced back, slowly falling down on his back as if he were merely losing consciousness, yet he never stopped looking into Mikra's fiery eyes, glowing orange like two powerful twin suns.
Chiana held him down and he finally surrendered. When was over Chiana immediately let go, stumbling backwards into a bulkhead with paranoid glances. She was ashamed of what she'd done and she didn't even know it.
Stark was crying. The book had fallen on to the floor, ripping corners from several frail pages. Chiana picked it up and shut it before holding it tightly against her chest, safeguarding it.
Missing pieces of the puzzle were scattered across Stark's mind and locked away in his subconscious, but not intentionally. They felt more like the shards of shattered glass.
His mind was broken.
"Show me how it happened." Mikra said to him. "You can trust me, Stark."
He showed her the Hive. Hundreds of metra underground, he walked alone in whithered rags of clothing, leaving behind a trail of sandy footprints on the bare rock as he entered the lowest point. The pit.
Through narrow streets, a maze of eroded stones, he walked through the empty ghetto under the threat of the hanging stalactites on the cavern's ceiling the size of small mountains. They hung above the city like sharpened swords ready to fall and destroy everything without warning, yet the city was empty and they were still hanging there.
Their threat was empty. The danger was ever-present.
The locks had all rusted. The water had turned poisonous.
The Hive was a crooked place, immense with windows in every rockface, openings without doors and slums carved out of vast rock.
The silence was...
Stark held his breath at the centre of the city.
A single drop of blood fell from the ceiling and dripped on to his face and bronze mask.
In his mind he was still wearing it. He could never take it off.
"This is where it happened." Stark said to the empty space, knowing Mikra was listening. His voice echoed through the cavern.
He remembered speaking up and the words came from his mouth as if he breathed fire.
No. There was no fire. There was pain.
Stark could not stand by and watch mere men step willingly into those cold, steel tubes. A Banik would've been ripped apart and sucked up into the furnaces for further process, where their bodies would turn to ash and smoke. He tried to speak up, but the snipers had their eyes on him the second he stepped into the crowd.
The Voice boomed across the PA, reverbating across the cavern walls, ordering all slaves to cease their activity and drop to the floor. Stark cried out for a revolt, but the slaves slowly sank to their knees, until Stark was the only one left standing in this cesspool of fear.
He tore the gravel with his heels as they dragged him through the crooked streets, leaving behind a trail of blood and memories. The flesh side of his face was almost completely torn open by the fists of the violent Tavleks.
They took him to see the man in the white coat. Now it was Mikra's turn to cry.
They took him into a dark room, handcuffed his legs and feet and closed the door, leaving him there for arns, squirming on the floor, writhing from shoulder to shoulder because it hurt too much not to.
They had taken his mask. His inner light pierced the dark, exploding uncontrollably, burning his skin away.
When the door finally opened his light had retreated inside him and with his back turned to the door he could only see a shadow approaching him whilst he lay there in a meditative state. The handcuffs sliced his wrists.
He watched the silhouette move on the wall in turn as it watched him, and without a word two more silhouettes passed him to take Stark from the room. He objected.
He recognised the voice.
"Let me have a word with him." Father Brinn said. "I beg of you."
The mercenaries relented and left the room whilst Brinn's silhouette approached him and kneeled beside his own shadow.
He rolled him over so he could see his face and Stark rejoiced silently. The first time he'd ever been glad to see a Peacekeeper.
Brinn pressed a piece of cloth into Stark's morphing face and he muttered a wounded "thank you, thank you". Brinn examined his wounded wrists and beaten face.
"The pain..." Stark whispered madly. "It's everywhere."
"I'll help you." Brinn spoke gruff, but Stark shook his head when he tried to clean his wounds and resisted his touch.
"I can hear them." he said in the dark. "They're screaming at me. Thousands and thousands dying, thousands and thousands dead!"
"What did you expect, Stykera?" Brinn asked. "This place is not entered lightly."
He'd tried to tell him, but Stark wouldn't listen.
Brinn dabbed his bruises with a wet, cold piece of cloth.
"It's all I know." Stark said. "It shouldn't be like that. It needs to be different. The voices are shouting. They want you to die."
"I asked if you were here to save them." Brinn said to him. "You asked me that, if that were the case, if I would help you."
Stark nodded.
Brinn's lower lip was trembling.
"Yes," he then said. "I will help you."
Stark lamented what had become of his kind. Brinn carried him on his back down the facility's steel corridors. Cold walls, advanced doors and metal railings, nothing like the barren rock the Baniks were forced to live in.
Stark did not see how he incapacitated the mercenaries, but he assumed as such when he saw the old Sebacean man put a steel syringe back in the pocket of his white coat.
The alarm was soon raised and the Voice bellowed orders that had to be followed immediately. A Stykera was an invaluable asset to lose.
The old man's back was failing him, so he sought refuge in a remote service elevator, programmed to go up.
Their surroundings phased in and out of darkness as Stark kept losing consciousness, until a sudden increase in heat kept him vitally alert at all times. Brinn had taken him to the furnaces.
Stark had to trust this man completely as they passed many open furnaces, through which inside he could see a fire and a hint of a burning shape becoming ash.
Everything they ever were, everything they could be, burned, and was forgotten forever in the prayed for their souls.
The fuming blaze was blowing into their faces and scorching the air, burning hotter than any desert wind ever could.
In desperation and anguish, Brinn collapsed, gasping for air, and Stark fell on top of him.
There were no men programming the furnaces. The system was perfect.
A fully automatic death machine cleaning up the mess of the slavers and erasing lives as their remains were dumped into the planet's atmosphere.
Stark begged to be gone from this place, suffocating in the billowing ash, so he helped the old man reach the door.
A great beam blinded them and Stark's sandal sank into sand. They were in the desert.
The service lift had brought them higher than they had anticipated.
Brinn looked up in delight, for he hadn't felt true sunlight for as long as he could remember, being the child of a Command Carrier and a victim of fate.
Stark stopped enjoying it when he remembered the suffering of his people continuing beneath his very feet.
He staggered back towards the door only to fall into Father Brinn's hands. He held him back, whilst he pummeled his chest with his fists, finally hissing the greatest insult to the man who'd just saved his life.
"Peacekeeper!"
Then he fell down into the sand at his feet.
"Run, my son." Brinn spoke. "Get as far away from this place as you can. Sneak aboard a slaver ship and forget this place of misery. Stark! You cannot save them.
"Please. I beg you to leave."
"Why me?" Stark asked. "Why save me and not them?"
"I have no choice." Brinn said.
Their were voices shouting from the dark and figures pointing at the open door.
"Quick!" Brinn spoke and he told Stark to hide. "They are coming!"
Stark jumped down the hill and dug himself into the sand until he was completely immersed and indistinguishable from the desert itself.
He heard the voices grow louder. He heard an old man gasp as he was knocked down.
Brinn hadn't hidden himself, nor had he run away, and Stark was unable to move or do anything but listen.
The mercenaries searched the dunes and stumbled upon Stark quite easily. He struggled, but could not resist their vicious clutches that awkwardly dragged him back into the dark, screaming.
But on some level, Mikra realized, he was welcoming their violent touch.
The unity became too much to bear, so she let go. Drained, she fell to the ground drenched in cold sweat, reaching for Stark's hand, but he did not do the same.
He was staring at the ceiling and looking beyond.
Chiana couldn't hear the word he mumbled.
"What did you do to her?" Chiana said, crouching beside Mikra to see her glowing eyes sound asleep. In fact, her entire skin seemed to be glowing, not just because of the sweat.
Chiana recognised the glow. It's like she just had sex. But there was something wrong.
Something was horribly wrong. About everything.
"Stark!" Rygel said. "What are you doing?"
Stark had leaped to his feet and approached the escape hatch to fiddle with its controls.
"Stark!" Chiana shouted, like the disappointed older sister she could sometimes be, but who she didn't want to be.
"I have to do this!" Stark said, resisting Chiana's outreach, until she ripped him away from the hatch.
"If you go out into the storm, you'll die." Chiana stated. Her heart was racing in her chest.
Stark clenched his teeth together. "I don't care."
"We're your friends, Stark! You said so yourself!"
"This is not about you! This is about my people!"
Chiana pushed him away, just because she was tired of his crap.
"You know what? Frell you and your people. You send Mikra to us for protection, then you call us up like we're your taxi service?
"You show up and now what? You want out again? You got us stuck here!"
"You got us stuck here." Stark emphasized, too agitated to realize it was the worst thing to say.
"Frell you, Stark. If Zhaan could see you now..."
"Zhaan's dead!" Stark shouted. "They're all DEAD!"
Chiana cocked her head to the side. "You want to join them?"
Stark couldn't stay still, always hopping from one foot to the other, groaning like a small child denied its candy. His face had turned red, but now it was fading again.
"Tell us what happened, Stark." Chiana asked, looking down on Mikra. She was waking up.
"Did you strangle him?" Chiana resumed. "Is that what happened?"
"No." Stark said, finally keeping himself in one place. "I forgave him! HIM of all people!"
"Brinn?"
"We were thrown together in a cell. They knew he was going to betray them eventually, so they watched him. They watched him for years, and they lashed him, beat him, to the brink of death, and I helped him! I helped his soul cross over! While he begged me not to."
Stark was heaving, gasping for air between every word, his rage restrained behind his grinding teeth and the absent glare of his manic eye.
"Is that it?"
"It's everything!" Stark cried. "He begged me...Can't you see? He didn't want me to know!"
"Know what?"
Stark paced from shadow to shadow.
"Know what, Stark?"
"That he KILLED MY SISTER!"
Rygel hovered silently toward Chiana, jerking his thronesled to a sudden halt when Stark finally let out the words.
A young Banik couple came to Father Brinn's ward once with difficulties. She was pregnant, but they could tell something was wrong.
They dared not tell anyone else. They only trusted him.
He soon found out what was wrong with her baby after the ultrasound. They were twins, undeveloped and still partly attached. He would have to monitor her condition for days until the pregnancy, but in secret, because there was more to it; one of the babies was glowing, emitting pure, white unspoiled energy, the spark of life. The purest Stykera he'd ever seen.
He was still sporting the limp from the days before, when the mercenary squad had visited him with brutal flair. It was impossible not to have their parting gift lingering on his mind when he faced this couple's troubles.
He'd hoped the firstborn wouldn't glow as much as it did on the scan, but it was even more blinding when it saw the light of life.
Brinn helped the woman give birth and the two children separated almost instantly, but not without leaving its marks.
The firstborn had been a girl and her energy had rubbed off on her twin brother; the entire area surrounding his cheekbone and eye were glowing just as brightly as his sister did, spilling energy into their dimension.
The Banik couple didn't know what to do. Brinn imagined the future for this beautiful pure Stykera child. An angel becoming the victim of a monster.
He'd seen what had been done to the children in the surgery rooms without remorse.
Brinn held the child in his hands and shed a single tear which immediately turned to crystal dust in the vicinity of this beautiful energy being. She did not cry, but she seemed to smile.
The boy's face could be hidden. He could survive unaffected, unseen, undiscovered.
But the girl...He could not hide the girl. Her beauty would be tarnished. Her life would be torture. Dissection. Pain.
They were coming.
He distrusted the nurses. Every sound made him jump. They could enter any second. Catch him with the child in his hands.
She would have no life here, and in the end, Brinn made sure of that.
When he re-entered with their newborn son in his hands they saw the grim expression on his face.
"He's a strong boy. He'll live." he said to them as he handed him over.
"Where's the girl?" the father asked.
"There was no girl."
Stark remembered it. They were his memories now. It was like he'd said those words himself. It was like he smothered her with his own hands.
Stark screamed, louder and louder, until cracks appeared in his face and his skin crumbled.
The light exploded from within him, incapacitating everyone in its wake. Rygel's hovering throne fell to the ground and Chiana was blown into the bulkhead in front of which she passed out.
The rift had re-opened with the return of the pain. It had never healed fully, nor would it ever again.
The day his homeworld died was the day he channelled all that pain. He stood at the centre of the pit and he screamed. The spirits emerged from his body like a whirlpool of lights shooting from Stark's mouth and burning a hole in the ceiling of the cavern.
For the first time in a thousand years the Banik race saw the sun again.
Mikra was the first to wake up.
"What happened?" Chiana said. "Did we die?"
"My head..." Rygel complained.
"Where's Stark..." Mikra asked and Chiana leaped to her feet once more. She spotted light.
Light was coming through the forward view portal once more. Somehow, the storm had died down, and when they looked out into the desert they could see why.
Stark had ventured into the desert alone, defying the storm alone, and he was there now underneath a clear blue sky, where a shower of sand fell down around the entire planet.
Chiana thought she still had to be asleep, because she could see the sand becoming shapes and the shapes becoming people, millions of people who appeared in the desert, seemingly out of nowhere, like ghosts.
"Stark did something." Chiana said. "He's doing it now."
Chiana started up the Pod. "Something bad's going to happen, I can feel it."
Stark reversed the process he'd started all those cycles ago. That which he had forgotten. That which had drawn him back here in the end.
That day the spirits he channelled imposed their wrath upon the living and they made no exceptions. They devoured all races, all genders, all ages, all individuals, the hated, the suffering, the poor, the violent, the benevolent, the intelligent, the guilty and the innocent.
They devoured all. They devoured the entire planet. They were the essence of the never-ending storm that terrorized the planet ever since. They were the dead.
Stark had opened up a portal that day, how he survived it he would never know, but he had never finished it. The spirits had been stuck in this realm for cycles, until Stark remembered.
He was the link and he would bring them at peace. And they were all there.
The millions of slaves; generations after generation of Baniks manifested and covering the entire surface of this planet. The Warden. The nurses. The mercenaries. The Voice. The man in the white coat. Father Brinn.
They were all staring at him, surrounding him, leaving him no way to escape.
They opened their mouths and lunged at him.
The Pod had escaped the sinking sands and hovered high up in the air from which they could see it all take place.
They tried to save him, but it was too late.
They tore Stark's body limb from limb, drank his blood, sank their teeth into his flesh, devoured his bones.
Not a single cell of his body was thrown away.
When it was all over the spirits sighed and turned to dust. The link had been severed.
It was over.
"Good riddens." Rygel spoke when he turned away from the forward portal, but Chiana knew he was saddened deep down.
Chiana handed Mikra the book when she started crying. Her tears were glowing gold.
"Here," she said, placing her hand on the cover and that's when she noticed something had been scribbled at the bottom there. A single word.
"Remember."
Chiana wiped away her tears. Stark wasn't dead. Somehow, she just knew.
THE END