Piece Simul ✔

Chapter 23-Cleanse

--D.T.S.: During the Storm

--Dura-Chamber Archive Scan * 098254

The boy grew into a man. Unlike the ashen-filled flumes he had once envied, he changed.

With his new family to support him, he trained to be the best. Society labeled his family as monsters, but he knew better. They helped him overcome hunger, insecurities like his fear of laser pistols, and other things he hadn't known were possible.

Before, he hadn't thought himself smart enough to join the Institute. The training strengthened his resolve, hardened him. He passed the entrance exam without missing a question, and was placed in the engineering program. All of his instructors were kind, but punishing. They expected nothing but excellence, and so the boy happily rose to their expectations.

At lunch, he sat with three other engineering students, one of them an old acquaintance from his life before. She was intensely beautiful, and he thought she was strong, like him.

Even though he bunked at the Institute dorms, he often visited his real father, who reminded him under the glow of luminescent eyes:

"Remember where you came from."

Like his scars, the boy, now a man, would never forget.

He was especially reminded of his true home when the first vaccine trials began. Posters floated around the hallways in between classrooms, inviting students to "be a patriot" by volunteering. The boy knew it was a trick, and that volunteers would be harmed, or worse, killed.

Three months later, rumors abounded about a failed trial. Several of the man's classmates never returned, and weren't spoken of. This sparked more rumors that they were dead. One young lady organized a protest, but only a handful of students participated. They picketed in front of the admin building, with signs reading:

You say vaccine? We say DEAD.

Where are our brothers and sisters?

The next day, this small group of protesters could be added to the list of "never seen again." At lunch, the man tried to talk to his friends, but they quieted him. Even the beautiful girl, the strong girl, looked away when he pressed them to care. They ignored him.

In a panic, the man rushed to his father. He was required to bunk in the dorms, but he babbled on about how he couldn't stay there. Not anymore.

"The Institute pretends they care, but they're murderers," he went on, picturing his friends.

They aren't your friends, he reminded himself. It's what his father would've told him. He was too embarrassed to divulge that much. To divulge his failure to convince them.

Tears stung his eyes, but he refused to let them fall.

His father hugged him. Closeness was a strength, and affection never waned among the Green-Eyed. After years of isolation and stilted contact from others, the man always welcomed the change.

A moment later, at arms length, his father tilted his head and said, "The humans pride themselves on their complexity. It's what keeps them going. They never quit." He gestured at the interface, the latest news story flashing on the screen:

StarCore Crew Unresponsive. Second Mission Deemed Bust

"Another chance to get it right, and still, they can't." Here, his father's luminous eyes that had once scared the man now calmed him. "Though you live among the humans, that does not mean you must take part in their failures."

Quiet stretched between them as the man chewed on this information.

Finally, he asked, "Then, what do I do?"

"You can rise above them. You can Cleanse."