The Genesis Saga

Adrian was closed off when he returned, lost in thought. The others left him well enough alone. Later that evening found him sitting by the fire, alone. He stoked the flames with a long metal poker as he heard footsteps approach. Looking up, he spotted Reya making her way over to see him with a steaming mug of tea in her had.

She plopped into the chair next to him, taking care not to spill her drink. For a moment, they stared at the fire, neither one of them saying a word. “Are you alright?” Reya asked, breaking the silence. Rann had prevented her from chasing after him earlier to give him some time alone. Reya judged that enough time had passed that she could safely talk to Adrian about it. “I’m worried about you. You weren’t acting like yourself when the video was playing. I wanted to come after you earlier, but instead I decided to give you some space.”

“No, I’m not,” Adrian said. “I’m sorry about my outburst. I showed you all something rather unsightly. To say I was caught off-guard is an understatement.”

Reya took a long drink from her mug before responding. “You seemed so angry. I’ve never seen you like that before.”

“I thought I was done with my time on Earth. That I would never see anything related to it again.” Adrian said. He’d always known that the two facilities he’d been experimented on were connected. It shouldn’t have come as surprise to see Connor and Ellie appear onscreen. Yet it had. “They were the first ones to ever experiment on me,” he said softly.

Reya listened intently, not wanting to interrupt. It was rare that Adrian talked about his past, and she wasn’t about to let the moment slip by her. Perhaps his story would shed some light on the answers she was looking for.

“When I was abducted,” he continued, “I was brought to a building out in the middle of nowhere. I was forced to wait in a small little room with no food and barely any water until a large truck came several days later. Inside were other captives, like me. Each of us were bound in shackles on our arms and legs.” Adrian paused. “None of us knew each other. One person tried running when there was an opportunity. He didn’t get very far before he was shot in the back.”

Reya sucked in a sharp breath. “What happened next?” she asked. “What about the person that got shot?”

“The person that got shot was left there to die – which he did, my captors checked. The rest of us were loaded onto the truck and we traveled for ages until finally, we pulled to a stop. We were in the middle of a desert, right in front of a large mountain. That’s where I met Connor, the male researcher you saw in the video, for the first time. We were escorted under armed guard inside the mountain and then processed. Next, we were separated into five-person rooms. And then the experiments began. The two people in the video were the ones in charge of mine.”

“How long were you there for?” Reya asked.

“I’m not sure exactly. Probably several months. I definitely spent far less time there than I did with the gru’ul. It was there that I learned how cheap a life was. The people that came with me dropped like flies, one after another. I became accustomed to constant pain and hunger while there. The food they fed us was horrendous and never quite filling enough. I was weak. I was vulnerable.”

“Then they put you in that pod,” Reya said, recalling their previous conversation on the topic, “and you woke up in the gru’ul facility.” She still remembered their conversation that they had the night of the campfire, where they’d both gotten drunk together for the first time. The only time, actually, as they hadn’t had another night like that since. There was no chance of something similar happening again with the Elders present. Perhaps they’d have another chance after they left.

“That’s right. As one of the only survivors, my reward was to be another test subject. I hate them, Reya. Those researchers treated me as if I was nothing more than a bag of meat. To them, I wasn’t a person. I was a thing to be used. Used up until they couldn’t wring anything else out of me, and I finally bit the dust,” Adrian said bitterly. The resentment he felt towards his old captors had been buried long ago, only to resurface again now that he’d seen them alive and well. “They didn’t need to do any of that to us. Yet they chose to. Those people did horrible things to others in the name of science without batting an eye. I hate them for it. I hate them because they did it to me.”

“You didn’t deserve to be treated like that,” Reya said sadly. “Not by them, nor by the gru’ul.” Adrian’s eyes glistened in the firelight as he regarded Reya. Her gaze contained neither pity nor sympathy. It was filled with the empathy of someone who’d been treated the same, for she too had been an experiment for the gru’ul as they refined their neurotoxin. It was the gaze of someone who understood. Perhaps not all of his ordeal, but to Adrian it was enough. It was more than he ever expected to find.

“I think you’re the only one here who sees me as person. The Elders see me as a tool. Your friends see me as a job. Jyn,” he trailed off. “I don’t know what he sees me as but some days I’m afraid he’ll shoot me if I go too far past a line only he knows. You’re the only one who sees me for me. That means more to me than you will ever know.”

“Of course I see you as a person. That’s what you are, Adrian. Don’t let anybody tell you or treat you otherwise. I’m glad you stood up to the Elders to become a citizen. It makes it much harder for them to do anything to you.”

“On paper,” Adrian said. “The reality is that they could still go back on their word and just use me anyway.” It was nice to have some layer of protection, but Adrian knew that as long as his existence was kept a secret, then so was his citizenship. The Tribunal could simply void it without anybody ever knowing and treat him how they saw fit.

“Hopefully they stick to their word. You should be getting your papers once Tassie and Rann return from delivering the Elders and the General back to base tomorrow. I don’t think they’ll leave tonight, but tomorrow definitely.”

“You think?”

“They have no other reason to stay here, unless they’re hiding something from us and there’s something else they want. But I’m sure we would know by now.”

Adrian hummed in thought. “They’ll probably have another meeting to discuss the contents of the video before leaving.”

The fire crackled in the cool mountain air as the pair continued to converse. The conversation changed topics, and Adrian’s past was largely left untouched. After hearing from her that she wouldn’t talk about their private discussions to even the Elders, Adrian was more comfortable confiding in her small pieces of his past. He wasn’t ready yet to talk about heavier topics, but perhaps one day they’d share with each other the full extent of their time spent in captivity.

Slowly but surely, Reya was filling his broken, empty heart with a gentle warmth that he’d lost along the way. The long forgotten emotions he had when he was around Reya felt new to Adrian, as if he were experiencing them again for the first time even though he knew that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t quite sure what he felt, but he sure of one thing.

He quite liked it.

“She’s out there with him again,” Jyn muttered. He and Beor had left the house to tend the ship while Reya had gone out back to check on Adrian. “Why does she always choose him?” He was on the bridge sitting in the captain’s chair. The screen in front of him showed a log of everything the sensors had picked up during the day. Going over them manually ensured that nothing was missed. It was a chore, but somebody had to do it.

Beor was the unlucky volunteer that night that had been chosen to help him. “Does it matter? I heard about what happened earlier today from Rann. She’s probably checking in on him to make sure he’s alright,” Beor said as he scanned the data displayed in front him line by line. “Somebody has to. Who better than her?”

“Nobody needs to check in on him, he’s a grown man,” Jyn said. “I don’t understand why she feels the need to play into Adrian’s melodrama. It’s all theatrics. He just wants the attention.”

“I think attention is the last thing he wants. If he wanted attention, he wouldn’t have spent so much time alone away from prying eyes.” Another data set finished. Beor sighed as he looked at the shrinking list of work left to do, discouraged at the amount remaining. At this rate he was going to be there for hours.

“He’s being overdramatic. Who cares if he recognized the people? It’s not like he’s ever going to see them again. He should’ve just translated the video like a normal person instead of getting mad and storming off.”

Beor snorted at the irony. “You mean like you do?” he said, calling Jyn out on it. More than once, Jyn had left arguments in a snit, retreating to the ship only to return hours later once things simmered down. Jyn shot Beor a glare from where he sat.

“That’s not the same,” Jyn said. “I could tell I wasn’t wanted, so I left and gave everybody else what they desired.”

“In a dramatic fashion, after dramatic arguments that could have easily been avoided. Face it, Jyn. If Adrian’s a source of drama, then you’re an even bigger one.”

“It’s not my fault people take what I say the wrong way. It’s not like I intentionally try to create arguments. Everybody else gets emotional over mundane things and suddenly I’m the bad guy. How does that make sense?”

“If everybody takes it the wrong way then you’re saying the wrong things. You need to learn to read a room. You’ve caused your fair share of tension in the group. More so than Adrian, I would say.”

“Adrian’s the reason any of this happened to begin with!” Jyn exclaimed.

“You can’t seriously believe that everything is Adrian’s fault.”

“If Adrian hadn’t been at the facility, they wouldn’t have needed to torture Reya after Tassie didn’t listen to me. If Adrian hadn’t been so self-conscious, the scar debacle wouldn’t have happened. If Adrian hadn’t been so emotional, he’d still be sitting in a cell like a normal person, not causing any trouble. If he wasn’t so melodramatic, then Reya wouldn’t need to be consoling him right now.”

Beor stared at Jyn, his work long forgotten. “Wow,” he said, at a loss for words. “You need a reality check. Reya being captured and tortured wasn’t Adrian’s fault. Tassie probably saved all of our lives –”

“At the cost of Reya being tortured for a month,” Jyn interjected.

“We were going to die if we tried to fight! Tassie did the best she could.”

“And it wasn’t enough! Look at what happened to Reya. She’s going to be damaged for the rest of her life,” Jyn shouted. “If we’d stayed like I ordered, we would have been able to save Reya before anything happened to her.”

“Damaged!?” Beor said incredulously. “Is that really what you think Reya is? After all she went through, I thought you of all people would have been the one trying to help her the most. Instead, you barely visited her in the hospital and even called her that to her face. Don’t think I don’t know about the argument you two had. How could you say that to her? I thought she meant more to you than that.”

“Because that’s what she is, Beor. Look at her! Do you remember what she was like lying on that hospital bed? And then the months after? Because I do. She’s a shell of who she once was, and she’ll never go back to the person she used to be.”

“Your feelings for her are clearly shallow if you can’t stand to be there for her when she needed it most and help her recover,” Beor said coldly.

“My feelings are irrelevant. The only thing that matters here are the facts. And the facts are that it’s Adrian and Tassie’s fault that Reya got tortured and disfigured.”

“Bullshit,” Beor roared. “That’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard. Do you even hear yourself right now? You’re blaming them for impossible situations beyond their control. That’s entirely unfair to them.”

“But it is!” Jyn shot back, adamantly defending his position. “All Tassie had to do was listen to my orders. She disobeyed me and look at what happened to Reya.”

“You gave us a suicide order, Jyn! Your judgement was clouded because you were too focused on Reya. Your feelings almost got us all killed! We would have been able to go back after escaping, but first we had to actually escape. If Tassie hadn’t disobeyed you, we’d be nothing more than the charred remains of a smoldering wreck!”

“My judgement was not clouded,” Jyn said hotly. “We could have gotten to Reya before her vitals dropped if we had stayed.”

“You’re delusional if you think that’s true.”

“Even then, the real problem here is Adrian. He’s the real reason any of this happened to begin with.”

“Face it, Jyn. Your only beef with Adrian is that he’s the one winning Reya over and you’re not.” Beor instantly knew that he’d gone too far. He watched Jyn turn stone-faced as his expression morphed into something neutral. Beor knew he couldn’t take his words back and waited with nervously for Jyn’s reaction.

“I don’t like Adrian because if it weren’t for him, none of this would have happened. There would be no facility. There would have been no mission. Everything would be as it had been, and he took that away from us,” Jyn said coldly.

“You can’t possibly believe that,” Beor said, dumbfounded by the twisted logic. “The facility would have had to exist long before Adrian was put into stasis in order to have the facilities to accommodate him.”

“We don’t know how long he was in there for. He could have been somewhere else first.”

“The odds of that are slim. No,” Beor said softly. He’d shot himself in the foot once, might as shoot himself in the other one while he was at it. He aimed his next comment directly at the heart of the problem. “You’ve seen Adrian as a threat to your perfect little kingdom since we first found him. At first, I thought you were on edge because of the events that happened at the facility. There was a lot of pressure riding on you to save Reya and investigate the compound. And I bet that’s what it was at the time. Now, however, that’s changed, and we both know it.”

“He’s responsible for what happened to Reya,” Jyn maintained, a hard look in his eyes. “I refuse to let him make her think she’s happy when he’s the reason for her misery. I want Reya to go back to the way she was more than anyone, but with him here that’s never going to happen.”

“The person you’re in love with doesn’t exist anymore, Jyn!” Beor spat. “She died in that facility. Adrian has done a far better job at being there for her than you ever will. He’s the one out there making her laugh and smile again. He’s the one helping her accept what she went through. He’s the one standing by her side and accepting her for the person she is now and not the person she used to be. You? You reject her. You’ve made no effort to help her. You only cause her pain and purposefully attacked her when she was down. You don’t deserve her. Maybe you did once, but not anymore. All you love is the idea of Reya.” Jyn looked like he was about to reply but Beor cut him off. “The minute things don’t go your way, you shut down and blame others. You had your chance. You had plenty of chances before Adrian ever even came into her life, yet you threw them away. That’s on you, not Adrian. Only Reya gets to decide what makes her happy and she’s chosen Adrian.”

“So what am I supposed to do then?” Jyn said loudly, the frustration in his voice clear. “Am I supposed to just let that freak waltz in and steal her? I can’t see how she can possibly find somebody who’s the wrong colour and full of those hideous scars attractive.”

Beor looked at Jyn sadly. “And this is why you’ll never be with her. All you see is what’s skin deep. Reya looks past that and sees Adrian for who he his, like he does to her. I’ll admit, I don’t know who that person is yet, but Reya’s learning and clearly likes what she sees. Maybe if you put your prejudice aside, you might come to actually like Adrian. He’s not as bad of a person as you’re making him out to be.”

“Why is it that everybody thinks Adrian is this perfect person? He’s not! He’s an unknown that can’t be trusted. He’s keeping secrets from us. He’s dangerous, that’s what he is.”

“I never said Adrian was perfect. He has his share of flaws but Reya accepts those, unlike you. We all have our secrets, Jyn. Adrian just has more than most because of what happened to him.”

“He should tell us!”

“For fuck’s sake, the man is clearly traumatized!” Beor shouted. “Can’t you see that? Reya’s the same. Have you noticed that she doesn’t talk about what happened to her either? She clamps right up when we ask her. When she does talk about it, she glosses over everything. We have an idea of what happened to Reya. We have no idea what kind of horrors they did to Adrian.”

“Trauma or not, he’s hiding information that we need to know.”

“By the gods, you’re insufferable! Leave the poor man alone. We don’t need to know what happened to him. It would be nice, but it’s not necessary.”

“His refusal to speak is interfering with our job.”

“Our job is to protect him and Reya, not extract information from them like they’re prisoners of war. Locking him up and threatening him was never part of the mission. Don’t you dare act like it is. You’ve been treating him unfairly since we first found him.”

“I’ve been treating him exactly the way he needs to be treated.”

“And that includes shooting at him and later threatening him at gunpoint? That includes locking him up needlessly and starving him?”

“I fed him food!” Jyn protested. “I’m not a monster.”

“You knowingly fed him less than he needs,” Beor said flatly. “That’s the definition of starving someone.”

“I gave him an entire ration bar, that should have been more than enough.”

“You knew it wasn’t. What you did was petty and you know it.” Jyn remained silent, unable to refute Beor’s accusation. Beor looked over at his long forgotten holoscreen filled with lines of data. The desire to continue his work after the argument had officially dropped to zero. He stood up.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To bed, where Rann is waiting for me.”

“We’re not finished here.”

“Yes, Jyn, we are. I’ve said my piece. I’m done here. You can finish up my share of the work, since it’s so important to you. Sleep on the ship for all I care if that’s what it takes for you to finish.”

“You can’t just leave me here,” Jyn said petulantly.

Beor didn’t reply as he walked off the bridge. Jyn could do nothing other than watch his friend’s receding figure, cut off by the doors closing.