Adam Fenix was in his lush hotel room on Azura, but he was anything but happy. For the past week, he had been held against his will by Locust forces to continue to work on his Imulsion countermeasure so that, rather than harming the Lambent and the Locust, the device would harm the Lambent and the humans.
Adam had some serious issues with making a device to destroy his own species, but it wasn't like he hadn't done it before. But this was so much worse. At least with the Hammer of Dawn, there was a slight chance that some people would live.
The device that the Locust had made him build was designed to completely destroy all traces of Imulsion on Sera, but that would mean killing the Locust too. So instead Adam was instructed to make the device able to destroy all human life on Sera along with all Lambent life.
Adam sighed as he continued to study the Imulsion cells he had managed to trap in a jar and looked closely at his hand. His hand had started to glow just a bit before the cells in his body countered the Imulsion cells he had injected and his hand stopped glowing.
Just as he started to focus again, there was a light tapping on his window that made Adam jump. There was no way that that was an animal, since the Locust had slaughtered all of the animals, and no bird could fly over the Maelstrom anyway.
He looked out of his window and saw a human girl around seventeen years old. This surprised him greatly as he rushed to open the window to let her in.
A human? Reyna thought to herself. How could there still be a human alive? Mother said they were all killed!
"Hello?" the human man asked in Tyran.
"Hello," she said to him, attempting to be bold but just coming off as timid. "Who are you?"
"I could ask you the exact same thing," the human said.
"I asked you first," Reyna responded, getting irritated.
"My name is Adam Fenix. Who are you?"
Reyna's eyes widened slightly at this revelation. Myrrah had believed for several years that Adam Fenix had been killed at the assault on his mansion, but he had been hiding away all these years. Reyna then remembered the human in the Hollow, the one that Myrrah said was Adam's son.
"My name is Reyna," Reyna said, snapping out of her train of thought.
"Hello there Reyna," Adam said kindly. "How did you survive? I thought the Locust killed all of the humans except me."
"I managed to hide from them," Reyna lied. She wasn't sure if Adam knew that Myrrah had a daughter, but she didn't want to risk it.
"I never saw you around the island. Are you one of the scientists' children?"
"Um, yes! I am one of the children of the scientists!" Reyna had a hard time pronouncing that word, but she hoped that Adam didn't notice.
"Then why haven't I seen you around the island?"
Reyna could tell he was getting suspicious, so she quickly lied, "I didn't enjoy leaving our room often."
Adam looked at Reyna from head to toe suspiciously. Luckily, Reyna was just wearing a plain black shirt and a gray skirt. She had left her tiara in her room and she was still wearing her boots.
"Enough about me," Reyna said before he could keep asking questions. "What about you? Why did the Locust spare you? Why weren't you slaughtered like all of the others?"
"The Locust Queen, Myrrah, believes I can stop this whole Lambency thing once and for all. I have been injecting myself with Imulsion to study it over its life cycle."
"Isn't that incredibly dangerous?" Reyna interrupted, knowing what Imulsion could do. Myrrah had always warned her to stay far away from any trace of the substance in order to keep her safe.
"You sound like all of the other scientists," Adam said, smiling slightly. "They had flown out another man to do this, a prisoner from the Slab. He was supposed to be the test subject, but I couldn't stand the thought of doing that to another person."
Reyna became confused at some of these words. What was the Slab? What was a prison? She tried to make it look like she understood, but Adam could see right through her. "But if your device kills people, won't that kill you too?" she asked.
"That seems to be a risk Myrrah is willing to take. I guess I deserve it. I had known for years that the Locust would emerge if something wasn't done, but I never told anyone. I guess this is my punishment."
"But won't that kill Myrrah too? She's human also."
Adam looked at her suspiciously. "I never said that Myrrah was human," he told her.
"Um...I assumed she was human since she talked to you. Most Locust can't speak Tyran, right?"
"I'm not quite sure what her plan is on that. But, I need to keep working."
There was then a loud pounding on the door that made both Reyna and Adam jump. "Quiet!" One of the door guards yelled through the door.
The doorknob then started to shake and Adam looked at Reyna. "Hide," he told her. "If they see you, they'll kill you."
Reyna then ducked under Adam's desk and he spun his chair around so his legs covered what parts of her could be seen. The door then opened and Reyna had to keep from gasping as she saw Myrrah walk into the lab.
"Adam," she regarded coldly.
"Myrrah," Adam said with just as much venom in his voice.
"How are things going?" Myrrah asked. "Are you close to finishing?"
"You don't understand Myrrah. This device was made to destroy all forms of Imulsion, not specific cells. It's going to take me some time before I can figure out how change the calibrations."
"Then hurry it up. My troops have spotted your son recently, and it would be a shame if something happened to him."
"Don't you dare touch Marcus," Adam said, surprising Reyna. She had been told countless times by her mother that all humans had no sympathy towards each other, yet it seemed as though Adam cared for his son.
"If you so much as touch Marcus, I will use my service pistol," Adam said, patting his desk drawer. "I don't care if humanity dies because of it, but if Marcus is hurt, I will shoot myself."
Myrrah just looked at him with a sneer and said, "Hurry up or we'll shoot him. If we do kill him, you certainly won't know about it."
Myrrah then walked out of the room and Reyna moved away from the desk. "What was she talking about?" Reyna asked.
Adam sighed before making eye contact with the seventeen year old girl. "Myrrah has been threatening me for years. The only reason I'm even working on this thing is to keep him safe. Myrrah knows that if she so much as touches him, I will use the pistol in my desk to kill myself and this problem will never disappear."
"But won't your bomb still kill him? This is a waste of effort."
"I'm trying to figure out a way to just kill the Lament and leave the humans and Locust untouched, but I don't think that that's possible."
Reyna sighed and said, "I think I'm gonna head back into the room I was hiding in."
As Reyna moved towards the site, Adam said, "Wait."
Reyna turned towards him and he briefly smiled at her. "You were the first human I've talked to in months that hasn't threatened my life. Would you like to come by some other time and talk?"
Reyna thought about the offer before smiling. "Yeah, I think I will," she said, opening the window.
This chapter was intended to be shorter, but I couldn't find a good stopping point, so I just rolled with it.