Chapter 157: A Tense Interaction (Part 3)
The crackling whispers of flames fill the room, overshadowing the uneasy silence.
“I can’t.”
Alex’s brows knit together, “Why, Scar? Why are you so… weak? Hopeless? Defeated? I just threatened to end your life. Why don’t you care? Show a little fight?”
Armaros looks away.
“You killed my sister. And my mother. I won’t allow you just to lay down and die!”
“What do you want from me? You want me to just… say I’ll fight for you? Kill more people that you want dead? Do you want to fight again? One on one? Take me out of these cuffs, and we can. Except this time, you want me to pretend like I’m fighting at my best so you can feel good about yourself when you kill me? And after I’m dead, then what? You’ll move on like nothing ever happened? Stop being naive, Alex. The only reason I’m alive is because your father and Zeris think I’m worth keeping alive, but I can’t even be used as a hostage. I have no value here, nor do I care about escaping. I know I can’t escape. So if I somehow wound up in my homeland again, then that’s what happens. If I don’t and I die, then that’s what happens. And both scenarios are out of my control. So you ask me to give you a good reason why I should stay alive? Well, after logically considering every bit of information I’ve gathered so far… I can’t give you one. If you don’t want to use me as a weapon like your father, you should kill me.”
His face twists furiously, and Alex loathes Armaros even more for his answer. Alex marches back to his bean bag, his flames simmering out, “No. I won’t let you off that easy.”
“Same thing your father said,” says Armaros.
Whipping around, Alex glares at Armaros, dragging his lip back along his teeth as his eyes flicker with fury. After a few seconds of the two eyeballing one another, Alex decides that it isn’t worth it, and before he sits down again, he shoots a scowl his father’s way, too.
After witnessing that tense interaction, Sky finally lets out the breath she had been holding.
“Okay. Can somebody explain what that was all about?” asks Forest.
Scratching the back of his neck, Zeris replies, “Yeah. You see, Scar is from a different country called Racafi. Racafi has a group of so-called heroes called ‘The Six Paragons’, and as we learned the other day, Scar was once a paragon. His operator name is ‘Armaros’, and outside of Racafi, his assassinations have become infamous. And two years ago, Racafi sent Armaros to Iasa for a mission: to retrieve what’s called a ‘pure core’. That’s a whole different topic, though.”
“So the ‘pure core’ was being wielded by General Kane’s wife,” says Ember. “And considering what’s been said, it sounds like Armaros was successful.”
“He had help. Another paragon named ‘Talen’ came with Armaros. While Talen stirred up a distraction, Armaros went to my house,” says Kane. “Their orders were to retrieve the pure core and eliminate the bloodline. So once Armaros got to my house, he killed my daughter and then knocked out my wife. He never saw Alex, so Alex managed to survive, but as my son and I both know, Alex watched how it all went down.”
Armaros looks at Alex, not knowing Alex was at the house, too.
“While that was going on, I was busy fighting Talen. But once Armaros showed up to help, I knew something bigger was happening behind the scenes. After fighting them both for a while, Talen managed to get away to presumably wherever Armaros put my wife’s body. And once I defeated Armaros, I flew over to my house, where I saw Alex and my daughter, Hailey, lying still in the front yard. Hailey was already dead, but Alex had only been knocked unconscious after inhaling too much smoke from the housefire that Armaros set off.”
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Kane pauses briefly, making eye contact with Armaros before continuing, “Armaros was put behind bars, and I just assumed that he was going to be executed. But evidently, the Queen kept him alive and put him in the trials as if he were a normal citizen. Iasa has been feuding with Racafi for quite some time now, so I’m guessing the queen wanted to turn their own weapon against them if she could. After wiping people’s memories, the trials not only help determine the best candidates for society, but with a blank mind, the queen can also easily mold you into whatever she needs. Soldiers, cooks, farmers, you get the idea. I bet she’s planning to launch a surprise attack on Racafi the first chance she gets, with Armaros leading the charge.”
“Are you sure you should be saying these things so lightly?” asks Ember. “Does Racafi know Armaros is alive?”
“No.”
“What if they find out? And come to rescue him? He’ll tell Racafi what the queen is planning.”
“So? It’s like Armaros said: we can’t do anything about it. There were three reasons we kept Armaros alive. The first, in no right mind should Armaros have failed stage one with his power and intelligence. The second, we’re against the Queen as much as he is. In that sense, our motivations align. And the third, when we watched Armaros, Quinn, and Alex battle… there were multiple times during that fight where Armaros could’ve killed my son, but he held back. I don’t know why, and I don’t even think he knows why. However, we know next to nothing about him. Who he is, what his real name is, why and how he became a paragon in the first place. Nothing.”
Everybody turns to Armaros, and he says, “If it makes you feel better, I don’t know the answer to any of those either.”
“How did you get your memories back out there?” asks Ember.
“At first, we thought Quinn had given them back,” says Zeris. "But Armaros has been trained as an assassin. Torture methods, including poison or having his memory erased, probably don’t work on him. Our guess is they came back to him naturally.”
Keeping his mouth shut, Quinn looks back at Armaros to see what he says.
“Yeah. I kept getting visions of my past at night, but once I realized I was a wielder again, it all came back to me.”
“How do you not know your name then? Are you sure you remember everything?” asks Hazel.
“My name has always been Armaros. Nothing else.”
“But–”
“Don’t bother,” says Kane. “He doesn’t know. I bet this isn’t the first time his mind has been scrambled. We could always use the memory gun. It reveals even the most locked-away memories, but who knows what Racafi has implanted into his brain. It's better not to pry.”
“What if he goes to the queen and reveals you two are conspiring against her?” asks Forest.
“While we can’t exactly kill Armaros, the queen knows she can’t kill us,” says Kane. “She needs iris wielders to fight against Racafi; we are among her most powerful. If he reveals we want her dead, Armaros won’t be rewarded for anything. In fact, it’ll expose him more as a double agent than us, and the queen might just eliminate the wild card factor from the equation. And besides…”
Kane meets Armaros’s gaze, “He knows sticking with us is his best and only option.”
After a few seconds of eerie silence, Ember says, “Okay, just to make sure I got things straight. Code is Quinn Larisch, and he once worked for the government and can manipulate memories. Zeris used him to protect Alex during the trials and influence our decision-making. Ace is Alex Marshall, son of General Kane Marshall, and he tried to kill Armaros to avenge his family. Alex teamed up with Zeris, wanting to doublecross him until Alex got his memories back. From that point onward, we know what happened. And Scar is Armaros, a paragon from Racafi, who was sent here to kill Alex, General Kane, and retrieve what you called the ‘pure core’, but things didn’t go entirely as planned. While his associate, Talen, got away with the pure core, Armaros ended up being thrown in prison and pronounced dead. And everybody thought he was dead until he showed up in the trials here, supposedly pardoned by the Queen. Zeris and Kane, you two are now caught between a rock and a hard place, and you are unsure whether or not Armaros should be killed or kept alive for the sake of your motives, whatever those are. Ultimately, you decided to play it safe so the Queen wouldn’t get any more suspicious. How’d I do?”