Hexus: Neo

}27{ Mutant

"Adam?" he called as he walked in. Adam was leaning against a toilet stall, his eyes squeezed shut as beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Damilare frowned. The time-halting spell had been on for what felt like less than a minute and yet Adam looked like he had already pushed himself to the limit.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Adam said as he took deep breaths. "Just a little tired."

"Is this because of the Grapevine thing?"

Adam nodded towards Damilare's hand. "What did you find?"

The sudden change of subject felt suspicious, much like Adam's snippy attitude, but Damilare chose to drop the topic and examined the millions of bacteria moving across his contaminated fingertips.

"It's definitely Corynebacterium," he said. "It's been magically augmented to reproduce faster, but I'm not sensing any differences in their metabolic behaviour."

"Meaning?"

"It might still be curable. But it will take some time to figure out exactly how the augmentation was done and-"

"We don't have time," Adam spat as he tried to stand straighter. He winced and reached up to hold his shoulder. He was still bleeding, which Damilare found unusual, but with the reduction of his powers, it was understandable.

"I'm sorry," Damilare said. "I messed everything up. If I had better control over my body, we wouldn't be here right now."

"I already factored that into the plans," Adam sighed, a defeated look settling across his face. "I was hoping against it, but it seems your morphologic discordance has really entered the erratic phase."

Damilare frowned. "Wait...you already knew about my problem?"

Adam gave him a tired stare that seemed to say duh.

"How long have you known?"

"Since you joined Hexus."

"What? How?"

"Research. And my findings led me to theorize that you'd have this problem, and that in your case it would quickly get worse with time."

Damilare blinked and cocked his head. "I don't understand."

"Did you ever find out who your father is?"

Damilare's frown deepened. He wasn't sure what Adam was driving at, but Adam was looking at him expectantly, so he shrugged in response. He knew intuitively that there was something supernatural about his origins, but he never returned to his village to gather the facts. It wasn't like anyone had been willing to discuss his paternity at the time he lived there.

"That's where we differ," Adam said with smug smile. He tapped the side of his head with a finger. "Refusing to speak does not keep any answers from me."

Damilare was confused by the statement until he realised Adam was responding to his thoughts. "Wait...you went to my village?"

"Like I said, research. Besides, I always do a background check on anyone I might end up working with. And your backstory is almost as tragic as it is fascinating."

"Really? How?"

"Your mother was a teenage virgin who taken to the sacred forest as a sacrifice for the gods in order to save the village king's only heir from an terrible illness. The prince eventually died, and she returned after a month, pregnant. The villagers formed rumours, claiming that she must have consorted with a secret lover, and so the gods refused their prayers because she was an unfit sacrifice. She was seen as tainted, rejected by the gods, and they believed her child was equally cursed."