The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

The more Nef helped Nira test and train her powers, the more hesitant he got about the whole thing. And also kind of insecure since he was now the only one without fancy powers aside from Kara, but that was besides the point.

It wasn’t even that Nira could now bend metal with her bare hands. He actually found the powers really badass, but the way Nira went around trying to get better at controlling them was...concerning.

She didn’t need to eat or sleep now, so she didn’t, and instead just kept trying to lift something with her mind or punch a hole through a wall with as little use of energy as possible. Nef had constructed a device in the form of a headband to help monitor that, though it still had its bugs, and he’d been happy to help with that, but unlike his girlfriend, he was still pretty damned limited.

She hadn’t actually said anything, but Nef could tell she was always disappointed when he reminded her he needed a break. And maybe a bit annoyed, too. And that would probably be fine if this wasn’t Nira. She’d never acted like this towards him. She seemed to be completely disregarding what Nef might want or need, and the one time he’d tried to imply he wasn’t all that thrilled about this attitude she reminded him that the fate of the world was at stake, to which Nef had no comeback.

And sure, she was right about that, but again, Nira hadn’t really acted this way towards him before. And given how much more openly irritated and resentful Kaleth had gotten over the months Nef had known the guy, he was starting to think this was all due to Nira and him absorbing all that energy. But at least Kaleth listened to Mel when the guy scolded him—Nira didn’t want to listen to Nef about any of this at all.

He was just scared this whole thing would change her and not for the better, and he didn’t want her to lose herself in what he was pretty sure was just about revenge. She kept saying that she had to do this to save her country, but Nef was having his doubts.

And while his mother had been mostly keeping to herself for the last few days, which was odd in itself, she had implied that she agreed with Nef’s sentiments for once. He was glad that at least he didn’t have to keep fighting with his mother over his involvement here, anymore.

Nef was brought out of his thoughts as the sword Nira had been making float with her mind clanged against the concrete ground. He watched her sigh and shake her head as she ran a hand through her hair.

“How long was that?” she asked, looking over at him. She looked really tired, but like hell was she going to listen to Nef if he bothered telling her to take it easy.

He quickly checked the computer screen that was showing him data from Nira’s headband. “Um, a bit over five minutes.”

Nira sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “That’s worse than yesterday.”

“Realistically, why would you need to know how to make something float in the air for several minutes?”

The scowl Nef got for that was kind of harsh. Sure, he knew that he’d been joking a bit, and Nira clearly wasn’t in the mood for that, but still a bit uncalled for.

“It’s not about the telekinesis,” Nira said, folding her arms.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Nef sighed, sagging in his chair. “Sorry.”

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Nira said as she walked over to Nef and took his hand into hers. “I’m just...frustrated.”

Well, at least she was aware. Nef was about to automatically assure her that this was all fine when he heard someone clear their throat behind them.

He turned around to see a very annoyed looking Kaleth. Though that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. The thing that stood out was the blood splatters on his face, and as ever, it made Nef feel sick.

“I need you to take a look at this, if you could,” Kaleth said, walking up to Nef and giving him...something. Nef wrinkled his nose as he studied the device, noticing the dirty needles sticking out of it.

He was of course excited about a new piece of clearly Eternal technology to study, but why did people keep exposing him to blood? He needed to wash this first before he got too into studying it. And be mindful of those needles. Even disinfected, this looked dangerous.

“Did something go wrong?” Nira asked, actually sounding concerned. She’d been pretty mad at Kaleth these past few days due to him prioritizing Enoria over Irithara. Nef agreed with him, but he’d obviously said nothing to her.

“Not wrong,” Kaleth replied. “But Enor seems to have figured out a way to make life harder for me.”

“With this thing, huh?” Nef asked, holding the device up. He was already pretty sure he understood the basic way this device worked. There seemed to be a tiny sliver of Eternal energy in the tube attached to it. And with those needles, it was easy to come to a conclusion.

“Yes. Apparently.” Kaleth raised an eyebrow at him, which Nef took as an invitation to start talking. Not that he had that much to say right away, but he would share his theories.

“Well,” Nef drawled as he sprung up from his chair, “given that both of you guys seem to be able to absorb Eternal energy, and Relioth did that too to some extent if I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure this injects energy directly into an Eternal.”

“That would make sense, I suppose.” Kaleth finally moved his goggles onto his forehead. Which made him look even more irritated somehow. “Though they were stronger than me. I’m not sure a little extra power would manage that.” Kaleth shook his head. “Anyway, we are about to go over what we found, if you’d like to join.”

Nef would be fine just figuring out how this thing worked, but he knew Nira would definitely want to take part, and he should know what was going on too, he supposed, so he followed behind her, only making a short stop to the bathroom, which was thankfully a part of the base, to clean the device off.

When Nef walked into the meeting room, everyone was already there, sitting at the round table with the built in display showing a map of Enoria with dots all over the place. When they’d talked about the locations of the places used to make Eternals, Nef hadn’t thought there would be this many.

Sure, with how many soldiers Enor seemed to go through per day, it made sense to have a lot of these, but this felt like overkill. Unless some of these weren’t in use anymore, which would still raise questions, but at least it would make more sense from this point of view.

“Where do we even start?” asked Rayni as she scowled down at the map. Nef took a seat between Nira and his mother, staring at the Eternal technology in his hand rather than actually taking part in this conversation. He would hear enough anyway, he was sure.

“Wherever, I guess,” Relioth said, folding his arms. “It’s not like it will take that long to shut these down if we teleport around a lot.”

“Yes, which you seem to forget I can’t do more than five times within a short amount of time,” Kaleth grumbled.

“And I keep telling you that I can teleport you if you need me to,” Relioth replied, sounding equally irritated.

Nef frowned at the inside of the bracelet, bringing it up closer to his face to study it. There was something carved into it. Was that writing? Some kind of message?

“Could you wash that blood off your faces, guys?” Rayni said, interrupting their glaring. “It’s distracting.”

Nef looked up then to see Kaleth glare at her. With way more irritation than was reasonable, in Nef’s opinion.

“Don’t you think we have better things to do right now?”

“Well—”

“You’re right, I should do something about that,” Relioth said, staring at his reflection in the metal table. “Be right back.”

Kaleth just shook his head in disbelief at Relioth as he left the room and then turned back to the map. “We need to separate and start taking these out. The longer we wait, the more Eternals Enor creates.”

“Yeah, unless we figure out how to break that brainwashing,” Rayni added, to which Kaleth nodded thoughtfully.

“Right, we should capture one of the soldiers and try to figure out some simple way of helping them overcome Enor’s control. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t let Enor make more soldiers either. So—”

“Also, you and Relioth can’t go on missions alone anymore,” Rayni interrupted him, folding her arms. And Nef was back to studying the bracelet. He didn’t want to be a part of what was probably going to turn into a fight.

“What?” Kaleth sounded utterly confused by this, even though it was pretty obvious why Rayni had said that. But what did Nef know.

“You two keep bitching at each other,” Rayni said, making frustrated gestures with her arms. “Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about just killing him and telling everyone that Enor did it.”

“No,” Kaleth replied. “But I have thought about doing it and admitting to it.”

“Everyone who’s spent at least five minutes with Tharos has fantasized about that,” Mereria deadpanned from where she was sitting next to Mel.

Rayni sighed. “Well, my point is you should be kept apart if possible.”

“I have no problem with that idea.”

The conversation continued, with Nira joining in a few times as well, but Nef barely took any of it in as he turned the bracelet over this way and that as he tried to figure out what it could possibly say. It was just a lot of lines and dots in a row, so what language could that possibly—

“Oh, I am such an idiot,” he muttered to himself, quickly translating the binary code.

“What is it?” his mother whispered to him as Kaleth and Relioth argued in the background. Oh, Relioth had come back, looking unnaturally groomed for what the incredibly basic bathroom that was here.

“It says….” Nef frowned at the writing and read the message loudly, “‘Sorry. Yorin.’?”

The whole table had gone silent now, with everyone staring at him. Given that most of the people were insanely powerful, immortal beings, it was actually pretty damned intimidating.

“Are you saying this was made by Yorin?” Kaleth said, looking like he was unsure how to feel about it. And neither was Nef. Though it made sense, he supposed. Enor could have made this, but having Yorin as a prisoner, why not use him?

Next to him, he saw Nira tense up, no doubt thinking about her dad. And so was Nef now. Was he even alive still? If Nef were in Enor’s place, he couldn’t think of a reason to keep the king alive, but Enor had taken him prisoner for no apparent reason as well, so there was probably nothing to worry about.

“I...guess so,” Nef said, putting the bracelet on the table.

“And so Enor does it again,” Mereria commented, her flat tone clashing with her furious glare she was aiming at the piece of Eternal technology.

“Yeah!” Relioth joined in, sounding offended. “I’m the one who was going to use Yorin to make me things.”

This made everyone turn to look at him with various degrees of irritation, aside from Kaleth who just pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What?” Relioth folded his arms. “The guy’s really smart. My spaceship engines aren’t exactly perfect yet.”

“Funny how you liked to claim otherwise every time you told me about it,” Kaleth snarked at him. Nef was already preparing himself for yet another argument when they got interrupted by the least likely source.

“Would you two please stop fighting?” Mel said in the most stern tone Nef had ever heard him use, but that wasn’t saying much. However, the shock of not even Mel putting up with this anymore was enough to make everyone shut up and stare at him.

Mel promptly blushed and ducked his head, choosing to stare at the table instead, soon joined by Kaleth who stroked his shoulder awkwardly as he scratched the back of his neck. They were probably having a mental conversation, which Nef had to admit was better than having to witness the angst.

Kaleth cleared his throat after a few seconds. “It’s...regrettable that Yorin is now presumably being forced to help Enor. But we couldn’t afford to rescue him, and we still can’t. We don’t have the luxury of the element of surprise anymore, and I also doubt it’s possible to get onto Enor’s ship without teleportation anymore, which I assume he very well knows and is prepared to turn it against us and into a trap.”

Nef sighed. Yeah, Kaleth was right about all of that, unfortunately. Still, Yorin was really smart. Like really smart. Just a few days of hanging around the guy had proven as much. So him doing Enor’s bidding was definitely bad news. But they really had no choice here. If Enor captured Kaleth, it was pretty much game over because there would be two Enors then.

“So, we’ll stick to the original plan,” Kaleth continued, looking down at the map. “We capture one of Enor’s soldiers and try to break their brainwashing while we start taking out these facilities one by one.”

“It would make the most sense to split into two groups,” Mereria added, leaning onto the table to peer down at the map more closely. “One with you, the other with Tharos.” Kaleth gave her an annoyed look, which Mereria returned. “For portability.”

Kaleth looked down at the map. “Yes, good point.”

“And we’ll need some explosives I bet,” Relioth joined in, grinning a bit too sharply for Nef not to get disturbed by it.

“You won’t be setting them off,” Kaleth immediately snapped at him. “But yes.”

“Awesome.” Relioth’s unsettling grin got somehow even more so. “Let’s roll, then.”