Remus lay inside the small room they had prepared, breathing steadily as another contraction passed.
Adam stood nearby, trying not to hover while simultaneously failing completely.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Remus said.
“What thing?”
“Walking.”
Adam looked down.
He was pacing back and forth across the room.
“I’ve never done this before.”
Remus smiled despite the discomfort.
“Neither have I.”
Adam stopped and looked at her.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Adam.”
“I’m asking.”
“I’m fine.”
He nodded and tried to settle himself again.
Zakiti stood nearby, helping where she could.
She had spent centuries studying healing and childbirth, and unlike Adam, she possessed no difficulty keeping herself calm.
Then something changed.
The next contraction came too quickly.
Remus’s expression tightened.
Zakiti immediately moved closer.
“Something is wrong.”
Adam was already beside them.
He could sense the babies.
There were two.
Twins.
He reached out with his perception and immediately saw the problem.
One of the umbilical cords had become wrapped around the other baby’s throat.
Adam’s expression changed.
“He’s losing oxygen.”
Remus looked at him.
“Can you fix it?”
Adam was already moving.
“Yes.”
He placed his hands against Remus’s abdomen and focused.
His perception moved into the womb.
There.
The cord.
He carefully altered the tissue itself, changing the structure enough to make it longer and more flexible without damaging its function.
Slowly, he pulled it away from the baby’s neck.
The pressure disappeared.
The struggling heartbeat stabilized.
Adam exhaled.
“There.”
Zakiti watched him.
“Good.”
The birth continued.
It was difficult, exhausting, and frightening in the ordinary ways childbirth could be, but Adam stayed beside Remus throughout it.
Eventually, the first child was born.
Then the second.
Two boys.
Adam stared at them.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Remus was exhausted, but she smiled when she saw his expression.
“Well?”
Adam looked down at the two children.
“I think I know their names.”
Remus raised an eyebrow.
“Already?”
Adam nodded.
He looked at the first boy.
“Cain.”
Then the second.
“Abel.”
Remus repeated the names softly.
“Cain and Abel.”
Adam smiled.
“They fit.”
For perhaps one perfect moment, everything was still.
Then the children began to change.
Adam’s smile disappeared.
Abel’s skin began losing its color.
At first, Adam thought something was wrong with his circulation.
Then the change spread across the child’s entire body.
His skin became pale.
Then gray.
Then something resembling dead flesh.
Adam immediately began examining him.
“What’s happening?”
Remus looked frightened.
“I don’t know.”
Abel’s eyes opened.
They were purple.
His hair, which had been dark moments earlier, began turning white.
Not gray.
White.
Bone white.
Adam stared.
He could see that Abel wasn’t dying.
That was what made it more confusing.
His biological systems were functioning.
His heart was beating.
His lungs were working.
His cells were alive.
Yet his body looked as though death itself had been written into his appearance.
Then Cain began changing.
The transformation was almost the opposite.
His skin became extraordinarily pale, but not gray.
White.
Porcelain white.
His eyes opened.
Golden yellow.
His hair darkened until it became completely black.
Adam examined him just as carefully.
Cain’s body looked almost unnaturally perfect.
His organs were functioning with remarkable efficiency.
His skin was flawless.
His heartbeat was steady.
His body looked less like a newborn child and more like something carefully sculpted.
Like a doll.
Adam looked between the two boys.
They were twins.
They had come from the same parents.
They had developed in the same womb.
And yet they looked like opposites.
Remus stared at them.
“What did we make?”
Adam did not answer immediately.
He could feel something different in each child.
Something deep.
Something he had never encountered before.
His own biology.
Remus’s mutation.
His modifications.
Something else.
Something neither of them had deliberately created.
Adam gently touched Cain’s cheek.
The baby’s golden eyes followed him.
Then he touched Abel.
Those purple eyes opened.
Adam felt the connection.
Very strong.
He pulled his hand back.
“These aren’t normal mutations.”
Remus looked at him.
“Are they sick?”
“No.”
Adam studied them again.
“They’re healthy.”
He looked at Abel.
“And he isn’t dying.”
Then Cain.
“And Cain isn’t completely normal either.”
Remus smiled weakly.
“They’re our sons.”
Adam looked at her.
For once, he didn’t have an explanation.
He didn’t have an answer.
He didn’t even have a theory.
And strangely, he didn’t mind.
He picked up Cain carefully.
Remus held Abel.
Adam looked down at his son.
Cain’s golden eyes stared back at him.
Adam smiled.
“We’ll figure it out.”
Across the room, Zakiti watched the two children.
She had spent centuries learning how to protect Adam.
Now she had two more people to protect.
And although she did not yet understand what Cain and Abel were becoming, she already knew one thing.
Whatever the world eventually made of these children, it would have to get through their family first.
The birth of Cain and Abel changed everything.
For the first time in centuries, Adam had something he could not simply walk away from.
He had sons.
Two children unlike anything he had ever encountered, carrying within them a combination of his own strange biology and Remus’s mutant heritage that neither parent completely understood.
Cain possessed an unnatural perfection, with porcelain-white skin, golden eyes, and black hair, while Abel seemed almost touched by death itself, his skin pale and lifeless, his eyes a deep violet, and his hair white as bone.
Yet both were healthy.
Both were alive.
Both were unmistakably his.
Their existence did not remain a secret for long.
The Greek king became fascinated by them.
At first, his interest appeared to be curiosity.
He wanted to see the children with his own eyes, to understand why they looked so unusual and why Adam, the great sage, had suddenly become so protective of them.
But Adam knew what curiosity became when combined with the kind of pride he had already seen spreading through Greece.
Zakiti knew it too.
“They cannot stay here,” she said one evening.
Remus looked toward Adam.
“He’ll keep them distracted.”
Adam gave her a tired smile.
“I’ve had years of practice distracting Greeks.”
That earned a small laugh.
The plan was simple.
Zakiti and Remus would take Cain and Abel away from the city while Adam remained behind.
He would keep the Greeks occupied with what they had always wanted from him: knowledge.
He would answer questions, explain techniques, discuss history, and give them enough information to convince them that he was still willing to cooperate.
Remus kissed one of the children’s foreheads before leaving.
“Be careful.”
Adam looked at her.
“They’re the Greeks. I’ll be fine.”
She smiled.
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s usually true.”
She knew that it was more than true.
Adam could not be meaningfully harmed by anything these people possessed.
Even if they managed to injure his body, he would not experience the pain as another human did.
His connection to humanity distributed his pain across the species, turning his individual suffering into something shared by countless people.
Remus knew this.
Zakiti knew this.
Adam knew this better than either of them.
That was why none of them expected what happened next.
Adam stayed.
He sat before the Greek king and his advisers and did exactly what he had promised.
He answered questions.
He explained ideas.
He demonstrated principles.
He spoke with the same patience he had developed during his years as a wandering sage.
Eventually, however, the questions stopped.
The king leaned forward.
“We do not want your knowledge anymore.”
Adam blinked.
“You’ve spent years demanding it.”
“We know.”
“Then what changed?”
The king’s expression was strangely solemn.
“You are cursed.”
Adam stared at him.
“Cursed?”
“There are those among us who have revealed the truth. Your knowledge is not a gift. It is a corruption.”
Adam almost laughed.
Instead, he looked at the men surrounding the king.
“You spent years begging for this same corruption.”
“We were deceived.”
Adam leaned back.
“By whom?”
No one answered.
Whatever had convinced them that Adam’s knowledge was a curse, they believed it completely.
The pride that had once made them think they deserved everything Adam possessed had now transformed into fear.
They no longer wanted to learn from him.
They wanted to make certain that nobody ever could again.
Adam stood.
“Then I’ll leave.”
The guards moved.
Adam stopped.
More guards entered.
He looked around.
“Seriously?”
The king answered quietly.
“We cannot allow you to leave.”
Adam sighed.
“You realize I can just walk through them.”
The king shook his head.
“You will not.”
Adam did not understand what they were planning until the first pieces of iron were brought in.
They had constructed a massive iron enclosure.
It was crude compared with the technology of Avalon, but enormous enough to contain him completely.
Adam stared at it.
“You built this for me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think you understand the problem.”
The king gestured.
The guards attacked.
Adam could have fought them.
Instead, he allowed them to take him.
Partly because he wanted to understand what they thought they were accomplishing.
Partly because he was simply tired.
And partly because he still believed he could get out whenever he wanted.
They placed him inside the iron structure.
Then they sealed it.
Adam sat down.
“Now what?”
No one answered.
Then the molten iron came.
Heat engulfed him.
The iron hardened.
Adam’s body was completely trapped.
He couldn’t move.
Not because the iron was stronger than him.
It wasn’t.
He was simply enclosed by hundreds of layers of metal with no room to gain leverage.
He tried to shift.
Nothing.
He could not even turn around.
For the first time in a very long time, Adam became genuinely still.
Then he felt it.
Pain.
Not his own.
Humanity’s.
Millions of lives connected to him.
The pain that the iron should have inflicted upon Adam spread outward through that connection.
A farmer thousands of miles away suddenly collapsed.
A child screamed.
A soldier fell from his horse.
A mother clutched her chest.
People across the world began suffering without understanding why.
Adam knew why
Every injury.
Every fragment of pain.
Every body struggling to understand what was happening.
His eyes closed.
“No.”
He tried to separate himself from it.
He couldn’t.
The harder he struggled against the prison, the more suffering spread.
Adam understood.
The people who had imprisoned him had not intended to create a catastrophe this large.
They had simply believed they were trapping one man.
They had not understood what Adam was and his connection to all of humanity.
And now humanity was paying the price for his imprisonment.
Adam desperately searched for a way to stop it.
He could not.
He could not break free.
He could not stop the pain.
He could not prevent the suffering.
And he knew exactly whose fault it was.
The Greeks had done this.
He had allowed himself to be put into the prison.
And his own existence had made the consequences far worse.
Adam’s mind wandered to Avalon.
To Egypt.
To the Hittites.
To every civilization he had tried to help.
He had spent centuries believing he could strengthen humanity by giving it knowledge.
Then he had learned that knowledge could become greed.
He had learned that progress could become envy.
He had watched his biological improvements make warfare more brutal.
He had withdrawn from humanity to avoid making more mistakes.
And still, somehow, he had ended up here.
An iron prison.
Humanity suffering because of him.
Adam opened his eyes.
“I can’t keep doing this.”
For centuries, he had tried to restrain himself.
Now he realized restraint was not enough.
He needed control.
Adam focused.
Instead of allowing the pain to spread through every human being connected to him, he began pulling it back toward the source.
Greece.
He narrowed the connection.
One person.
Then another.
Then another.
The sensation across the rest of humanity began to fade.
Adam concentrated harder.
The pain stopped spreading.
Every ounce of it was redirected toward the people responsible.
The Greeks began collapsing.
First in the streets.
Then in homes.
Then inside temples.
Strong men fell.
Priests dropped to the ground.
Soldiers collapsed where they stood.
The king staggered forward, clutching his chest.
“What is happening?”
No one could answer him.
Adam could.
Somehow, through the iron, his voice carried.
“You wanted me isolated.”
Another wave of pain struck the Greeks.
“You wanted to make me helpless.”
The king screamed.
By the time the process stopped, Greece had lost roughly half its population.
Adam did not celebrate.
He did not feel victorious.
He simply sat inside the iron prison and listened as the screaming gradually disappeared.
Then he heard something different.
A tremendous impact.
The iron around him exploded outward.
Adam blinked.
A figure stood amid the shattered metal.
Zakiti,
Adam slowly climbed out of the wreckage.
He looked around at the devastation.
The Greeks who remained alive were terrified.
For once, they did not see Ittasal as a sage.
They did not see him as a source of knowledge.
They did not see him as a man who could make their dreams come true.
They saw what he had always been capable of being.
Something they could not control.
Adam stood among the broken pieces of iron.
Zagreus looked at him.
“You alright?”
Adam nodded.
“I’m fine.”
He looked toward the city.
People were hiding.
Doors were closing.
No one came near him.
Adam understood why.
They were afraid.
He looked down at his hands.
For centuries, he had been afraid of what would happen if he used too much of his power.
Now he had finally seen it.
He had not destroyed Greece because he wanted to.
He had done it because he had been desperate to stop hurting everyone else.
But the result was still the same.
Half the population was gone.
Adam looked toward the horizon.
He had wanted humanity to become stronger.
He had wanted to help.
He had wanted to understand himself.
Instead, once again, humanity had taught him something.
Power did not become less dangerous simply because its wielder had good intentions.
Adam turned away from the ruined city.
For the first time, he wondered whether perhaps he had finally reached the point where even he needed to stop trying to save everyone.
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