56. Chapter 56
Chapter fifty-six
Alex
Alex opened his eyes as they materialized in the staff bathroom down the hall from Danyal’s hospital room. He and Galen entered the hall, where all the chaos was occurring. Several security guards and Dr. Anderson stood outside the room, attempting to talk to Danyal. Alex pulled Dr. Anderson aside.
“What the hell is happening?” he asked.
Dr. Anderson said Danyal’s memories started flooding back; he remembered everything. Alex breathed a sigh of relief––but then asked why Danyal had barricaded himself in his room. Dr. Anderson explained that Danyal started acting aggressivelyafter his memories returned. Danyal had pushed a nurse, causing her to fall and injure her arm. Psychiatric staff had tried to intervene, but Danyal said he’d only talk to Alex.
Alex nodded and motioned with his arm for everyone to clear out and give him space. He approached the door and saw Danyal through the window, cowering in the corner of the room. Danyal was drenched with sweat. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and he was clasping his hands over his ears. Alex knocked gently on the door, but Danyal didn’t hear him. He knocked louder, which got Danyal’s attention.
“Alex, my love, where have you been?” said Danyal as he ran to the door.
“I’m here, Danyal. Please open the door.”
Danyal frantically shook his head. “I can’t. I’ve got to protect you. You need to get away!”
Alex investigated Danyal’s core energy with his mind and saw the energy pulsing like a strobe light. He’d never seen such erratic and uncontrolled energy. Alex told Danyal he was coming in and to step away from the door. Danyal ran and hid behind his overturned hospital bed. Alex pushed the door, breaking the chair obstructing it. He stepped into the room carefully and looked around for any hidden threats. Alex knelt down, sat on the floor a few feet away from Danyal, and extended his arms, offering Danyal a hug. Danyal was agitated, and continued rocking back and forth.
“Make it stop!” yelled Danyal, before violently banging his head against the wall.
Alex grabbed Danyal by the shoulders, preventing him from hurting himself further.
“Please stop,” begged Alex as he held Danyal tight in his arms.
“Why did you do this?” said Danyal through his sobs.
Alex held Danyal tighter and kissed him on the forehead. “It’s OK, Danyal. I’ll protect you.”
“No, you can’t! Get away! I’ll hurt you!”
Alex knew Danyal couldn’t hurt him, and he tried to reach Danyal’s core with his abilities to help regulate his energy. But Danyal stood and pushed Alex backward onto the floor.
“You caused this with your serum!”
Alex stepped back, nearly falling over the overturned bed as the realization hit him. Danyal’s hallucinations might be real. How else could he have known the measures we took to save him?
“Danyal, I need you to take a deep breath.”
“NO!” yelled Danyal as he thrust out his fist and hit Alex in the chest with enough force to hurl him across the room, where he crashed against the wall, smashing the drywall. Danyal moved fast and stood over Alex, tears pouring down his face as his fists pulsed with dark, chaotic energy that flared like coal-black flames.
“I love you, Alex. He won’t stop unless I hurt you!” said Danyal as he raised his fist to punch Alex again.
Alex slipped and fell as he tried to stand. He couldn’t bring himself to respond, lest he risk hurting Danyal. He tried to dodge the assault, but Danyal landed a solid blow to the right side of Alex’s skull that drove his head into the floor, fracturing the concrete and sending a cloud of debris into the air. Alex, dazed, could only instinctively raise his arm in a feeble attempt to block Danyal’s next punch, but the attack never landed. He opened his eyes to see a tall figure standing behind Danyal, holding him in a chokehold until Danyal stopped moving. As the security guards and Dr. Anderson tended to Danyal, Alex could see Galen had saved him from Danyal’s attack.
“Ya right, mate?” asked Galen as he knelt beside Alex. “Yur scalp is bleeding.”
Alex, still dazed by Danyal’s assault, raised his hand to his head and stared at the gold blood on his fingers. How could Danyal have injured him? Alex moved back abruptly to prevent Galen from encountering the ichor. Galen reached down, picked up a towel off the floor, and handed it to Alex to apply pressure to his injury.
Leaning on Galen to steady himself, Alex stepped out into the hall after ensuring he had safely cleaned up the blood on his scalp. Dr. Anderson was standing beside Danyal, who was now lying on a gurney, having been given a sedative injection. Dr. Anderson turned to Alex and said something was seriously amiss, but that Danyal would be moved to the psych ward for further observation and tests.
Alex didn’t respond to Dr. Anderson as he clung to Galen with a blank look on his pale white face, as he vacantly stared off into the distance. His vision was blurring, and his breathing was rapidly increasing. As he attempted to take a step on his own, he fainted and fell forward as Galen caught Alex’s limp body before he hit the floor.
Dr. Anderson knelt by Alex and shook him by his shoulders before directing Galen to get Alex to a triage room so he could assess him for shock and a head injury.
“No,” said Alex in a weak voice as he turned his head toward Galen.
Dr. Anderson insisted, but Alex ignored him.
“Get me back to PGC,” said Alex as Galen picked him up from the floor and hastily carried him down the hall toward the elevator. Alex lost consciousness as the elevator door closed.
Alex lay in the hospital bed at PGC, while Diana and Galen nervously waited as Veronica carefully sutured the gash on the crown of Alex’s head. He watched a live stream of Danyal’s hospital room on his phone. His legs and arms were strapped to the hospital bed. Danyal looked so peaceful. Alex couldn’t believe he could have exhibited such unprovoked rage.
“Give it to me straight, Veronica––how bad is it?” said Alex as he put down his phone.
Veronica sucked her teeth and shook her head from side to side. “You are lucky, Alex. After Danyal’s assault, your body is not healing.” She agreed with Dr. Anderson’s assessment that Alex had a severe concussion. Since medical imaging was out of the question due to Alex’s electromagnetic field, there was no way to determine the extent of it. Alex knew that he was fortunate that Galen had intervened, but struggled to understand how Danyal had injured him.
Alex’s thoughts were interrupted by Ryo entering the room with Bruno in handcuffs.
As she stepped back from Bruno, Diana asked why he was there. Alex could see the fear in her eyes.
“I asked him to be here,” said Alex. He knew Bruno was the expert on his physiology.
Galen stepped to Alex’s bedside to stand guard over him. Alex nodded to Veronica to proceed as she displayed Danyal’s most recent MRI results on the monitor for the group to view. Bruno stepped closer for a better view.
“Fascinating,” he said, as he told the group the auditory areas and frontal cortex of Danyal’s brain were functioning at superhuman levels. He added this type of activity didn’t cause psychotic behavior before pulling up an additional scan on the monitor. Alex could tell Bruno was holding something back, based on his hesitation and avoiding eye contact.
“We’re all thinking it, Bruno––fucking say it,” said Alex.
Bruno cleared his throat before expressing that the serum had activated Danyal’s dormant god gene. There was no way to know the impact on Danyal’s mind, behavior, or the abilities he may exhibit. Bruno said it was the only viable reason he could injure Alex. Only gods or demigods could harm a god in battle, Bruno added.
Alex’s heart jumped into his throat at Bruno’s assessment. He couldn’t stop thinking that he had also placed Galen in mortal danger by exposing him to his blood when Galen came to his rescue. He closed his eyes and turned his head away so the group couldn’t see the fear on his face.
Alex said, “Danyal’s core energy was going ballistic, like a battle being waged for his soul. He wielded dark chaos energy when he had me on the ropes. I sensed great rage when I touched Danyal’s soul.”
Alex knew Bruno was right. It was how Danyal injured him and why he wasn’t healing like normal. Danyal knew things he shouldn’t, such as the measures Alex had taken to save him. They had intentionally avoided sharing that information with Danyal. Someone commanded Danyal to hurt him. Alex stopped and took a deep breath. He knew what it all meant.
“Thanatos was guiding Danyal.”
Diana audibly gasped before clasping her hand over her mouth.
After a prolonged silence, Galen asked, “is he as strong as ya?”
Alex weakly said he didn’t know and was thankful that the sedatives seemed to be working.
Bruno stated that they had underestimated the Sons of Enyaluis. He hypothesized they were intentionally trying to activate Danyal’s dormant god gene, but the ichor they had was degraded. He further speculated the Sons of Enyaluis wanted a god or demigod under their control. Nyssa was their primary option, but Danyal was their backup plan.
Ryo interjected that Bruno may be right. His Interpol contacts had been hearing whispers in terrorist channels that all the major insurgent groups feared the Sons of Enyaluis. They had likely gone rogue and broken away from Thanatos’ agenda. Word was they were trying to create a super soldier, and either Danyal or Nyssa would be a tremendous asset. Ryo paused briefly before saying he had something that Alex needed to see. He pulled out his phone and cast a video to the large monitor in the room.
From the surroundings in the video, Alex recognized the fa?ade of Excalibur Café. “What are we looking at, Ryo?” he asked.
Ryo said that the video had been recovered from the cell phone of Douglas Austin, who Interpol apprehended in Ireland as he tried to sneak back into the country.
Alex watched impatiently as the video shifted to viewing Danyal through the café’s front window. “So what,” said Alex, “they were casing Danyal at work?”
Ryo raised his hand for Alex to stop talking. Alex watched as Danyal greeted a group of three men sitting at a table. He sat and entered into an intense discussion. When the conversation ended, Danyal hugged a tall man with dark hair and a goatee, wearing a white shirt and khakis. The stranger kissed Danyal on both cheeks before Danyal took off his apron and left the café with the group of men.
Alex grew impatient and didn’t understand what Ryo was getting at.
“What’s your point, Ryo?”
Ryo turned to Bruno and said, “Do you recognize the man Danyal hugged and left with, Bruno?”
Bruno hesitantly nodded yes.
“Who is he?” said Ryo.
Bruno didn’t answer.
Ryo said in a louder voice, “Who is he?”
Bruno looked up, visibly shaking. “He’s the leader of the Sons of Enyaluis.”
Alex’s head began to pound like a jackhammer as he processed this revelation before yelling, “You’re fucking lying!”
Bruno, still shaking, shook his head.
“What are ya trying to prove, Ryo?” asked Galen.
Ryo calmly replied to look at the time stamp on the video.
Alex gathered his composure to focus again on the video; the date was the day before Danyal was abducted.
“This proves nothing,” said Alex. “So what if Danyal left with these men? They are master manipulators.”
The room remained quiet until Ryo said the video proved Danyal had been in contact with the Sons of Enyaluis before his abduction. “We don’t know Danyal’s relationship with the terrorists, but it can’t be denied that Danyal is a threat to your safety, Alex.”
“He was manipulated,” said Alex as he locked eyes with Ryo.
“It doesn’t matter if Danyal met them; he severely injured you today. He’s a threat and should be treated as such,” said Ryo.
Alex closed his eyes and took several deep breaths before asking the group to give him some space. Veronica, Diana, Ryo, and Bruno promptly left the room. Galen stood by Alex’s bedside and touched his shoulder. Alex placed his left hand on Galen’s hand.
“Ya need me to stay, mate?”
Alex shook his head. Galen couldn’t know how much strength his presence gave Alex and how grateful he was that Galen had stopped Danyal’s assault. Even though he wanted Galen to hold him, having Galen’s arms around him at that moment felt wrong and fueled Alex’s guilt over his attraction to him.
“Promise me you won’t leave,” said Alex.
“Promise. Will stay to protect mah unicorn,” said Galen, winking at Alex before he turned to leave the room.
Alex burst into tears as soon as the door closed, and his mind began to race. What the fuck was happening? Was Danyal connected with the Sons of Enyaluis? Was everything in their relationship built on a lie?
Alex promised himself Thanatos and the Sons of Enyaluis were going to pay: his retribution would be swift and merciless.