Page 46 of Burning Ice
Zimeon smiled. "You do. You were gifted with one when your biological parents sold you to us."
Ludo and Celia Fandi. Cyprian had mentioned some of this. How their father had preferred money over a son. But he still didn’t understand what had happened to those babies.
"We used those babies for our clinical experiments. To give Helions what they truly desired." Zimeon looked around him. Mirel followed his gaze, took in every single person present.
"W-what was that?" he managed.
"Heroes, Mirel. The people want heroes. They want to believe there’s a reason for everything that happens in their life. Call it religion. So we wanted to give that to them. We bought babies and placed them in our lab. Inserted them with artificial injections we believed would give them superior gifts. It would also make them return to Helion when the time was right. Then we shipped them off planet to live with their respectable foster families."
Mirel didn’t answer at first. The wordsinjected,sold,giftedblurred into one long hum that drowned the room. He felt every gaze settle, curiosity pressing against his skin. His palms were cold. Not the clean cold of frost, this one came from inside, a slow crawl that started behind his ribs and spread outward.
So this was what they had put in him. A relic. A lie pretending to be light.
He remembered nights in the graveyard when his breath came out white though the air was warm. When the ground froze under his hands and the children whispered that he was cursed. He had thought it was punishment. Now it had a name.Dariux.
The word sat heavy in his chest, pulsing once, twice, like something alive that had waited years to be spoken.
Zimeon kept talking, about success rates and outcomes, but Mirel listened to his own heartbeat. It sounded wrong. Too strong, too deliberate, like it didn’t belong to him. His fingertips ached, stings blooming where blood met cold. The ice wanted out. It always did when he was afraid.
Heat brushed his back. It was Kylix’s hand, steadying. It should have calmed him. It didn’t. It only reminded him how different they were. Fire born perfect. Frost made in a lab.
Memory cut clean. The house he’d grown up in, too clean for laughter. The foster mother who left food outside his door and never stayed. The small bedroom that locked from the outside. The way people’s breath changed when they realized he nevergot sick, never shivered, never fit. He had been the boy they kept for the subsidy, not the son they wanted.
He saw the morning they sent him away, how the air froze around the car and cracked the glass. They called him dangerous, temperature wrong, and drove until there were no more houses. After that came the graveyard, the tarps, the silence that finally accepted him.
“So we were made,” he said. The words came raw, a voice unused. “Not born.”
Milanov smiled, pleased. “You were refined.”
Refined. The word turned his stomach. It made what they’d done sound elegant, almost merciful, when it had cost him every human thing.
Across the room, Cyprian’s glass trembled. The sound was small but sharp enough to cut the quiet. Moargan caught his wrist, but Cyprian didn’t look down. His gaze stayed on Mirel.
“No,” Mirel whispered, though he wasn’t sure which part he denied. The word, the fate, the map under his skin. “Does it ever stop?”
Zimeon tilted his head. “The calling? No. The body remembers where it was made.”
The answer sank deep. The Dariux wasn’t a serum. It was memory written into flesh, a map pointing home no matter how far one ran.
Frost cracked faintly at his knuckles. He started to wipe it away, but Kylix caught his hand and held it still. Heat folded over the cold. For a breath they balanced, trembling but unbroken.
“That,” Milanov said softly, watching their hands, “is what the Dariux intended. Fire and frost, opposites made to complete the same equation.”
Mirel couldn’t tell if it was praise or prophecy. The warmth began to hurt. He didn’t know if he wanted to pull away or lean closer.
He looked at his hands. Touched his face. He’d always known he was different. A monster. He had abilities he shouldn’t have. Because he’d been injected with them. It was a lot. "More Dariux have ice?"
Milanov shook his head. "So far, you are the only one. But we have found that all Dariux have certain gifts in common. Can you see in the dark, Mirel?"
Mirel shook his head, then hesitated. He’d always been the one guiding the other Wastelanders back to the graveyard after the sun had set.
Milanov looked amused. "Over the past centuries, the Imperial family has become the perfect type of predator to keep the balance between right and wrong, artificially insinuated. We have become the heroes our people need. And although they have been kept in the dark as to how we have obtained those skills, they love them. Love us. Because they need to be kept in line."
"Are there m-more babies?" Mirel managed.
Zimeon shook his head. "We had to stop after one group of babies all died after having been injected. The drop went wrong. Cyprian was part of that group, but he miraculously survived."
Mirel’s lips parted in shock. The horror of the truth only trickled slowly to his awareness, but every drop felt like poison. He turned to Cyprian. Words didn’t come.
