FORK’S COMMUNITY HOSPITAL

THE FOLLOWING DAY

Ikaris hesitated to push the door, but after a minute of lingering, a clear decision had to be made. The Eternal spun around and took three steps towards his departure, but when he thought about Charlie and the clear regret on the man’s face, Ikaris knew he didn’t want to end up like the cop.

His life already had enough regrets – millions of years’ worth.

Ikaris’s memories were not all there – not the good memories anyway - but the thickness of regrets in his heart was enough to leave a stain even after his memories had been washed away by the journey to a new universe.

“I need to find out who I am,” The Eternal mumbled in the middle of the hospital’s corridor. “I can’t move forward if I don’t know much about myself… or, I can embrace who I will become.”

It was as if Ikaris’s statement unlocked something in his own mind – granting him new access that came with his sudden, yet subtle, change in perception. All of a sudden, The Eternal was entertaining a new thought – a thought that was slowly forming.

Ikaris sunk into his mind.

The world fell away in blots of painted blurs, and Ikaris was standing in the middle of a vast flowery plain of no end. There were four suns in the skies, each reflecting a decision that made up the Eternal known as Ikaris.

The first sun was his first moment speaking to an Asian woman, overlooking the Earth.

The second sun was his marriage to the mystery woman – now, Ikaris knew her name was Sersi, but he couldn’t recall much else about her.

The third sun was a memory of him leaving Sersi.

And the final sun showed Ikaris’s flying into the sun to repent for the Celestial he had helped meet its end.

‘My regrets.’

Aside from the four suns, there were also weapons in the ground, blood soaking the hills, ruins falling apart and reforming only to repeat the process anew, and most of all, there were statues of victories, failures, and times The Eternal chose not to intervene.

Those were probably his greatest regrets – the times he chose not to act, even though every instinct in his body told him to.

‘Act… about what?’

Though, this was the most frustrating part of who Ikaris is – a shadow swept over him and the next moment, Ikaris saw himself entirely. It was not the image of the man he expected, but the image of a boy – a little under six feet, dark hair with golden streaks, piercing blue eyes, and an abnormally muscular, lithe physique.

‘This is who I am,’ The realization shouldn’t have been great, but Ikaris felt as if he was struck by something invisible when he finally acknowledged it. “I am a new person.”

-----------------------

Ikaris’s mind shot back into reality, and his thoughts grew clearer.

The Eternal was just about to push open the door to Julia’s room when a set of footsteps, too even and well-paced to come from a human, echoed in his ears as loudly as the speakers at the club.

Ikaris’s body tensed immediately and the tranquil Cosmic Energy inside his body started to become denser in preparation for what was coming… but as it turned out, what was coming was not what Ikaris, subconsciously, expected to encounter.

He expected a grotesque creature of some type, but what came around the corner was a doctor – Dr. Cullen to be specific. Dr. Cullen was abnormally beautiful, had pale, translucent skin, and was in the prime of his life.

‘DEVIANT! DEVIANT! DEVIANT!’

Ikaris’s Mahd Wy’ry boomed into his mind, and for a split second, he almost lost control of his sense in favor of attacking Dr. Cullen. But something was indeed strange about the doctor – his steps were too even as if timed to the nanosecond, and Ikaris could detect inhaling and exhale but it almost felt as if the doctor’s breath had no heat.

The Eternal could not control his enhanced senses so precisely as yet, so he was uncertain of these deductions – in the end, it was just instincts edging him towards madness. That was the bad thing about instincts – someone still needed reasonable doubt to act on them.

“Are you okay?” Carlisle frowned as he placed a hand on Ikaris’s shoulder. “You seem in pain. Are you here to see someone?”

The tenseness from before was gone as soon as Carlisle placed a hand on Ikaris’s shoulder. One moment, the doctor was a threat, and the next moment, Ikaris perceived the doctor as a friend and possible ally.

‘deviant… deviant… deviant…’

Ikaris’s subconscious still whispered the unfamiliar word into his ears, but now, The Eternal was certain that he had been mistaken earlier.

“I am here to see Julia.”

“Ah…” Doctor Cullen flipped through the list of names on his chart. “Ikaris was it? Yeah, your name is here. Well, I have some good news for you, but it seems Julia would like to share the news with you, herself.” He stepped aside and gestured for Ikaris to enter the door.

The Eternal did as was indicated, entering through the door and closing it behind, just in case things didn’t go as well as he wanted them to, and he was forced to make a quick escape from the place.

“I hope this goes well.”

It had been a week since he last came to see the woman – the Mahd Wy’ry and partying had gotten the better of him. At some point the previous night, the topic of Julia came up and Charlie mentioned that she had awakened.

Ikaris was a bit startled at first but quickly resigned himself to fate.

Had Julia spilled the beans, assuming she didn’t have amnesia or something, Charlie would have already arrested him, so that meant Julia was remaining quiet. Now, all Ikaris had to do was figure out why the woman was remaining quiet on his behalf.

Humans tended to be greedy so he was hoping it was something like blackmail, since solving such things would be rather simple – ashes to ashes and all.

“You’re here,” Julia glanced up from the newspapers in her hands, her smooth pink lips curling into a faltering small that foretold the complex topics lingering on her tongue. “I honestly didn’t expect you to come back. Not sure what to expect now that you’re here. Are you here to kill me or something?”

“That depends on how much you know… muah ha ha ha,” Ikaris faked an evil laugh, trying to lighten the mood, and from the way Julia covered her mouth to stifle a giggle, it seemed to work.

With the mood lightening, the serious conversation was about to begin.

“I would never hurt you, but depending on how much you said and the result of this conversation – it will affect my respect for you,” The Eternal replied bluntly, but from the tone of his voice, it was clear to tell that there was indeed no hostility in his exhausted body. “I feel like I have done these enough times to tell when someone is lying. My respect is hard to gain and you have it… but whether you keep it is another thing.”

“I can understand some of it,” Julia muttered in a quiet voice, but Ikaris heard it clearly.

“What?” Ikaris frowned. “What do you understand? What can you understand?”

“You came in here looking like a rabbit ready to run for the hills so I was wondering what’s wrong,” Julia carefully removed the sheets covering her arms, revealing her burned skin for Ikaris to see – it would probably never heal. “And the way you winced from seeing my arm tells me that you have been panicking for the past two weeks.”

“And partying,” Ikaris mentioned on instinct. “A lot of partying.”

“Trust me, I know,” Julia raised the phone in her other hand, showing the dozens of charges on the card the lawyer had provided Ikaris. “I always get the bill after you go to a club. Bottles of champagne, gold-flaked ice cream, a kitty massage set, and makeup.”

Goose2 curled her tail more tightly around Ikaris’s neck when that bit was mentioned, but other than that, she seemed perfectly content in her semi-sleep state. She had been sleeping a lot since the previous night.

“My bad,” Ikaris scratched his head sheepishly. “Trust me when I say, the alternative would have been Forks disappearing from the world. As a human, I am sure you wouldn’t want that on your conscience. What’s a couple of thousands of dollars in comparison?”

“Nothing I guess, but why are you so concerned?” Julia wiggled her brows a bit, flicking her screen further down to show the rest of the billings. “You spent a total of sixty-five thousand dollars, then you started singing and made me sixty-eight thousand dollars. You earned me three thousand dollars. You’re not exactly a good thief – not that you would be since I wanted you to spend it anyway.”

Ikaris froze when he heard the numbers; then, he glanced at the cat who was lying comfily on his right shoulder – she was semi-sleeping but still winced a bit under his intense gaze. He had an idea where the profit had gone.

“It seems I was misinformed about the spending for that week,” The Eternal gritted his teeth, finally deciding that it was time to discipline Goose2.

Not now, but soon.

It was one thing to act like a princess and spend money as if she was a little rich girl, but it was another thing to keep thousands of dollars of profit a secret. After all, Ikaris came into the conversation thinking he owed Julia at least ten thousand dollars.

All this while, the cat had probably been showing him some old bank records.

“Aside from that,” Ikaris pierced Julia with his blue eyes. “How are you doing? Are you okay? I am pretty sure you have a lot of questions.”

“Thank you!”

“What?”

“Thank you!” Julia repeated, tears bursting from her eyes. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

At some point, Ikaris had drifted closer to Julia and she clung to him as she cried desperately, holding him as if he was the most precious thing in the world. There was no lust, attraction, or love – just a woman grateful for something Ikaris didn’t know.

But he used all his mental resources to think of a reason.

And then it became clear – the instances added up to a startling conclusion. Julia was the type of woman Ikaris didn’t expect to date someone like Thomas, that was inconsistent. She worked at Fork’s high school, but she is clearly accomplished, that’s another inconsistency.

When Thomas was about to assault her, she almost seemed as if it was her fate – the thing being that she had given up on herself. When they slept together, she seemed too willing to submit to something she clearly knew was wrong.

Julia even placed Ikaris in her will only a week after meeting him for the first time. All of this information had accumulated to paint a specific picture, something that answered Ikaris’s question of why his Cosmic Energy behaved as it did.

“You were dying?”

“Bingo!” Julia wore a small, relaxed smile and tapped his nose. “I shouldn’t be alive right now. They’re calling it a miracle.”

“What was it?”

“Cancer – very aggressive cancer.”

Ikaris rubbed his head and drew the parallels – cancer could be mistaken for specific Deviant DNA strands so The Eternal could more or less understand why his Cosmic Energy rampaged out of control, but that couldn’t explain everything.

‘Then again. Not everything is meant to be explained.’ Ikaris sighed. “And there is nothing you want to ask me?”

“There are things I want to tell you first,” Julia sat up in her bed, disconnecting the tubes connected to her hands and legs. “I have a husband and a child – that’s not very important. I was a very accomplished Biochemist – my group of researchers were the first to propose, implement and accomplish a 3D printed organ. I was on top of the world until cancer came and I became more daring. I had a reputation of gold and my money was my reputation, but that also acted as a constraint. There were papers I couldn’t publish because I needed to be 100% sure, and not 75% sure and dare to dream. I lost something when I made it to the top and got royalties from one successful research after another. I was dying, I started to publish papers that pushed the edge of the scientific. My husband wanted a future for our child, so he wanted my reputation to be of a genius and not a madwoman after I died. He didn’t understand I was the most genius now that my life was coming to an end. I dared to push boundaries then. Long story short, I was refining the DNA codex for a presentation when I saw a set of 24 chromosomes from a sample in Hawaii. That was amazing – a human sample with 24 pairs of chromosomes, that’s far from normal.”

“24 pairs of chromosomes?” Ikaris frowned since the range of what such small DNA alterations could cause was vast. “Becoming something completely separate from humanity only requires a single chromosome, much less a pair of them. Did you ever find out what you were dealing with?”

“I published the paper, got divorced because my husband only ever wanted my reputation… or maybe, he wanted our child to have such a reputation growing up. I am still not sure which it was. Then, I got pushed out of the scientific community and thought I could win back my reputation before I died so I came to ask for help from one of the hidden investors in my company. They reside in Forks, but I haven’t even been able to glimpse them as yet.”

“But you found even more amazing,” Ikaris concluded the story, peering into Julia’s eyes to see what she would do with his secret – the existence of an Eternal. “And what you will do with that knowledge is my main concern.”

Of course, Julia didn’t know what Ikaris was, but she would be a fool not to notice he was definitely something else. After all, the kid had literally burned cancer out of her body with weird golden flames that may very well be the next alternative energy source humanity needs.

“I – I… I…” Julia hesitated to form a sentence – she wasn’t sure what was the right thing to do.

“I understand,” Ikaris placed a finger on Julia’s lips, silencing the woman. “I understand your answer… I hope you take a bit more time to consider it.” Then, he turned and exited the room.