Omega by Lizzy Ford

government is after you. Although …” He drifted off, gaze going
to the west, as if he could see DC from here. “It might also be the
best place to be. SISA won’t expect us to go there.”
    I didn’t care what reasoning he found in it.
I was going to find Herakles, the only man in the universe who
wouldn’t abandon me at the first sign of trouble like the priests
did. The cracking of tree trunks sounded behind us, followed by the
faint tremble of the earth.
    “ Won’t matter if we don’t
get out of here. I hope you can run as far as you can fast. We need
to move.” Niko took off running towards another thatch of forest
lining the opposite side of the lake.
    I followed, unable to shake the sense of
guilt, unease and fear churning in my belly. The destruction of our
home was all my fault. Maybe that was the real reason why the
priests abandoned me – because I destroyed everything they
loved.
     

Chapter Four: The Grotesque
     
    Not even the gods fight
against necessity.
    – Simonides
     
     
    “ What have your prisoners
revealed?”
    I glanced up at my master and friend as he
entered the isolated apartment where I lived on a compound in
central DC. The compound housed little else than my quarters; there
were too many secrets for me to live among normal humans.
    “ Nothing.” Washing my
bloodied fists in the sink at the bar, I dried them and poured him
his favorite drink. Unlike most men, the Supreme Priest preferred
fruity drinks with umbrellas to shots of hard liquor. “They won’t
say what’s in the forest.”
    “ But you felt
something.”
    “ I did.” Something …
familiar.
    “ It bothers
you.”
    My hands paused as I finished his drink.
    Lantos sat on a stool at the bar. He removed
the mask he wore in public to reveal the face of a man in his
thirties with sparkling green eyes and a smile that seemed out of
place for someone with such a stately position as the gods’
advocate to humanity.
    “ I know you, Adonis,”
Lantos chided gently. “Better than you know yourself. What did you
sense?”
    It was unlike me to hesitate to share any
thought with the man who saved my life, yet something about what
I’d experienced made me balk at the idea. I closed my eyes and
tilted my head, bringing up the memory from the night before, of
the calm lake reflecting starlight, the scent of pine and other
trees in the air, and the peace that always came with leaving the
confines of the city to hunt.
    Beyond the pleasures of nature, I’d sensed …
a flicker of awareness, an instinct buried so deeply, it shocked me
to feel it. What I’d experienced had nothing to do with the lake or
what might’ve been present. Something inside me was awakening, and
I wasn’t accustomed to such mysteries or surprises about
myself.
    “ I don’t know,” I said.
“Whatever they hide there, it’s familiar to me on a level I should
know.”
    “ Your memories have begun
to return?”
    Opening my eyes, I shook my head. “Not at
all. There is nothing before the night you saved my life.”
    “ Your beast
instincts?”
    “ Baffled.”
    Rustling from below me drew a smile. The
tiny creature at my feet – an animated stuffed koala bear – was
pawing my leg like she did every time I returned to the apartment.
I had no memory of obtaining the toy, no idea how she’d come to
life. I only recalled waking twelve years ago to find her and
Lantos hovering over me in worry and the life-threatening wound in
my side healed by the magic of Lantos’ Titan father.
    “ Hello Mrs. Nettles,” I
greeted the toy and picked her up. I didn’t remember how she came
by that name either, but she insisted I call her this.
    Pink. She said and shuffled over to the Supreme Priest. At times
uncannily wise beyond her years, she was at other times nothing
more than a moth drawn to sparkly or bright things. She was
currently fascinated by the umbrella in his drink.
    “ For you, Mrs. Nettles.”
Lantos handed her the umbrella. “How are you