Mega Man Fan Fiction ❯ Mega Man X: The New Mavericks - Arc 1: Outbreak ❯ Motivations and Memories ( Chapter 3 )

 

Having declared the gathering ended, Kiloh excused himself from Molli and the three reploids. He felt tired, wanted to rest some before resuming his research, and yet knew that sleep would be the last thing coming to him. Molli seemed concerned, but if she had any doubts, she refrained from expressing them as he took his leave.

 

It turned out he was right. When he stepped into his room, Kiloh knew he would not be sleeping. There were too many things on his mind, both current and past, that were preventing him from sleeping. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and surveyed the room, as he did every night to see if that would bore him into falling asleep. His eyes fell on his desk, fixated upon the message sent to him by Dr. Dien. He sighed wearily, remembering it contained little news regarding the virus, except a vaguely worded promise to “monitor suspicious activity” that was taking place somewhere.

 

Beginning to move his eyes away from the desk, they came to rest on an old frame. Standing up, Kiloh crossed the room and lifted the frame from the shelf it resided on. Brushing away the thin covering of dust, he felt his eyes smart with tears as he looked at the digital image stored within.

 

He hadn't allowed himself to think too much about his wife since her death fifteen years earlier. They had married young -he had been twenty, she eighteen-, but they were a happy couple. She was also a reploid researcher, but was more interested in the design of new reploid creations; indeed, the designs of Rei and Nami were directly influenced by her work.

 

The attack that had taken her from him was a quick, brutal one. A small army of Maverick Reploids had commandeered the transport she was riding home from work, and were threatening to “eliminate” their human hostages. When every other means of disabling the transport had failed, their prisoners came up with their own plan. Led by his wife, they fought against their captors, forcing the transport to crash into a tall building. Though they were beaten, the group of Mavericks earned their revenge in the end when one of them put a shot straight through the heart of his lovely Luniya. If he took any small comfort from her death, it was that she was hailed a hero whose untimely death was quick and painless.

 

“Luniya…” he whispered. Tears streaked his cheeks and make tiny transparent dots on the frame. Carefully, he wiped them away with his sleeve, as though he might damage the digitized picture by being too rough with it. His heart still ached with the agony of that day, the day he was told his wife would not be returning to him. For the next several months, he felt as though he was in a daze, doing everything by a combination of automation and sheer force of will.

 

Her death was especially bitter for him because they had been talking about improving their marriage outside of work. A few years prior, Luniya had expressed an interest in starting a family and settling into a pattern of work and child rearing. He, not sure if he wanted to give up the freedom he had had up to that point, was quick to negate the idea. Now he would give anything to go back to that day and agree with her. He would give up whatever he felt he had to if it meant she would still be alive and by his side now.

 

But he knew that wishing for the past to be different was useless. He had refused to consider her wishes above his, she was dead, and he responded by walling himself off in his labs and throwing himself into his research. He didn't know why he worked so exhaustively on his research, but he suspected a part of him hoped to keep her memory alive by promoting peace between humans and reploids. It might be a fool's hope in the end, but a fool's hope was better than no hope in his mind.

 

Three years after her death, his routine of grieving and working was interrupted by an unexpected arrival. Even now, he still wasn't sure what to make of it. A child, brought by her mother to stay until the mother chose to return. Not having been around children much, he did not know how to care for the girl, and mostly left her to her own devices as he worked. Too late, he now knew that that was a serious mistake on his part. She grew up intelligent and curious, but with ice for a heart and acid for an attitude.

 

Maybe that's why Trysta turned out the way she did. He thought to himself miserably. If I had only bothered to spend more time with her…

 

Hoping to distract himself from the memories that tore at his heart, he turned his thoughts to Dr. Dien, and the message he had just received. Along with the news regarding his research, Dien had mentioned a troubling new development in the infection patterns.

 

Namely, he mentioned his own sister and nephew falling ill. Kiloh could read the pain in the written words, could feel his friend's anguish at having to report the news. It was never easy having to talk about the illness or death of a loved one, as he discovered first-hand so many years ago. But it must be agonizing for Dien, to watch them die of an illness that no one had any knowledge of.

 

Kiloh sighed again as he returned to his prior seat on the bed. So many memories, and so many current heartaches. How humans ever learned to cope with their negative emotions over the millennia he did not know. Yet he knew that wallowing in sorrow and self-pity would accomplish nothing. He had to get his mind back on his task and research, or else he would never be of any help to Dien.

 

After several minutes of sitting silently on the bed, he felt himself yawn. It was the first time in many years that he had felt tired this early in the evening. Removing his glasses, he set them on the nearby table before laying on his back on the bed.

 

“Nage, you really need some sleep.” He told himself. “A clear head will…permit…clearer…”

 

As he drifted off to sleep, a rare sort of peace entered his mind for the first time in many years. He didn't feel anger, or sadness, or even happiness. He just felt, in a way that defied both logic and explanation.

 

 

*****

 

Dien had always been a night owl. He worked long days and rarely slept at night, unless he was about to drop from sheer exhaustion. Now was no exception. He hadn't slept in four days, had drunk so many energy drinks that he could taste their sticky sweetness in his mouth, and was amazed he could even stand upright and read numbers correctly.

 

But he had to keep himself going. Ever since Sasha and her son Tyren had been brought to him with symptoms of the illness, he had worked tirelessly to figure out more details about the illness and its origins. He still had learned precious little about it, and that fact alone nearly drove him out of his mind with frustration.

 

He refused to give up, however. He knew that giving up would only break his heart, and theirs when he told them there was nothing he could do. He would kill himself before he would let them give up hope. Unless his friend Kiloh, Dien had never seen the need to take a wife; as such his sister and her son were the only family he had in the world. He would do anything in his power to protect them.

 

Analyzing the data patterns, he was struck by an odd anomaly. It appeared the heaviest concentration of victims was coming from the area around an old, decommissioned base on the edge of the ocean. He wasn't sure how the virus was being spread, but a few days' worth of analysis would likely give him some hints. He transmitted a message to Kiloh, keeping him updated on his progress and telling him he would be in contact when he learned more.

 

With that out of the way, he decided a rare bout of sleep would be best for him, considering the circumstances. He didn't even bother shrugging off his lab coat, merely shoved the covers to the foot of the bed and lay on it.

 

Within moments, he was sound asleep. A sleep he hoped would not be interrupted with frivolous dreams.