Erik looked at the person coming through the door with incredulity. The last time he saw the man in the flesh was two years prior. His face was exactly how he remembered it, but a long black beard adorned it instead of shaved skin.
There was something else weird, though; Lucius looked in a hurry. His movements were quick and full of anxiety; his eyes darted left and right, scanning the room and searching for anything suspicious.
"Dad?"
"Erik..."
An uncomfortable silence hung over them; the tension could be felt, almost touched. A sense of unease permeated the air that evening.
Lucius returned from whatever he was thinking about by looking up at his son and saying: "I'm sorry I haven't been around much."
Erik didn't reply, he would have liked to say some things to his disgrace of a father, but he was unable to. The young man's breathing became rugged; his eyes threatened to make tears flow out. But he refused; he didn't want his father to see him in that state.
"What do you want," was all the young man could utter.
"I don't have much time to explain. I came by to drop something important, Erik. You have to hide it somewhere safe and make no one gets his hands on it."
"What? You came here to dump me more problems?" Erik angrily replied. His father, in the meantime, took a big glass container from his backpack; a strange liquid was inside of it and immersed into the liquid, a weird creature. It had a sort of arachnid body, with a long tail ending up in a hook and eight disgusting and long legs. There was also what the young man assumed was the mouth. It resembled a mussel, but it had some weird pointy tooth.
"A thaid?" Erik asked. Did his father just bring a deadly creature to his battle-impaired son?
"No," Lucius replied.
"Then what is it? You have to tell me at least..."
Lucius looked at his son with a serious look. The young man stared back at him intently as well.
"This is the cause of the sinister cold," Lucius replied.
After hearing Lucius's words, Erik turned away from his father and started walking toward the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of water and drank it in one gulp; he wiped his mouth off with his hand, threw the glass into the sink, and then returned to his living room.
His dad followed after him.
"You're not taking me seriously."
"How am I supposed to take this?"
"Erik, look at me. This is not a joke, and I can't stay here any longer. Put this in a safe place where no one can find it. I will come to pick it up later; until then, you have to say no one I was here."
"Why? And why are you being so secretive? If you did find the reason for the sinister cold, why don't you simply give it to the militaries?" Erik asked.
Lucius sighed. "It's complicated," he said.
"Come on, Dad! Just spill the beans!"
Lucius shook his head. "Look, I know you're scared."
The young man couldn't believe his ears. It was like his father, the proud Lucius Romano, was pleading to him, something he had never heard of. He had never seen his father look so weak before.
"But I assure you, there's nothing to worry about," Lucius continued. "This, unless you tell someone about this." Erik stared at his father in disbelief. His rage didn't stem only from the fact that he left him alone for years while searching for whatever he found, but he was also giving him the hot potato.
What would happen if the military found this thing inside his home? Countless thoughts flashed inside the young man's mind, but none of them was comforting at all. He imagined being tortured by the military just to get information about this weird creature, the cause of the sinister cold, as his father was saying.
Erik didn't know if he had to believe the man, but everything pointed out that he was telling the truth. His look, his tone, his eyes even.
"Okay, okay," Erik finally relented. "I'll keep it hidden. Can I ask you something else, though?"
"Yes, anything."
"Why are you doing all this?"
Lucius frowned. "For both of us. And to protect what remains of our world."
"Protect our world? From what?"
"From something worse than the sinister cold." Lucius heard a noise, and he hurriedly went to the window.
"I can't stay here any longer," he said. It looked like he saw something outside the window.
" Will you leave me again?" Erik asked. He felt betrayed and abandoned again by his father. A surge of emotion swelled inside of him, but he didn't know what to do about them. He was close to yelling at his father to go fuck himself, but he gave his word he would hide the glass contained, and whatever was in.
"Don't be stupid. I'm coming back. But I need to go for now. Stay here, and I promise I will return to pick you up."
And with that, Lucius disappeared. In a blink of an eye, he was gone.
***
Erik stood still. After his father's departure, he sat on his desk chair and placed his face between his hands.
He was starting to feel dizzy, and his heart started racing.
"Dad... I hope you come back soon," Erik muttered. Despite being angry at him, he could do nothing but hope that Lucius would come back and take care of him. One thing was sure, though, by agreeing to his father's demand, he got himself at huge risk from what or whom Erik didn't know.
Erik looked at the glass container on the table; close to it, there was a clock, and it displayed 03:00 PM.
"Fuck, I'm late for work!"
The young man rapidly changed to more fitting clothes, the ones he used on the farm. Thanks to his power, he was able to make crops grow faster. It wasn't a useless power but could do nothing in battle. He was expected to join the military academy in three months, and he didn't know what to do then, and the thought of more bullying scared him a lot. People were stronger and older there; what if they ended up killing him?
After changing, Erik went to his room and grabbed his backpack. He glanced at his computer monitor, which still showed the article he was reading. He didn't want to join the militaries if he could; the mere thought of having to help this rotten country survive against the Hinians disgusted him.
Erik picked up his jacket from the wardrobe and then went toward the table to pick up his house keys with his jacket on his left arm. As he walked beside the table, the jacket hit the glass container, which crashed into the ground. The container shattered into countless pieces, and the liquid poured over the ground and the creture inside of the container fell to the ground with a sonorous thud. Erik didn't know what the hell it was, but it was certainly dangerous, being related to the sinister cold.
"FUCK!" the young man shouted.
Erik observed the creature; it didn't move and stayed immobile on the ground.
<Maybe its dead...> the young man thought.
All of this was a big mistake. Agreeing to his father's request, breaking the container, everything. The creature was meant to be locked inside that container and not to find its way out. Erik trembled at the implications of what just happened. Did he just mess up what his father had worked on for years? Did he ruin the chance to find out what the sinister cold really was?
"Shit! Shit, shit, SHIT!"
Erik turned around and ran to the bathroom, searching for where to put the creature's body.
"Dammit!"
Erik remembered the plastic bags he had bought some days ago. He found them in his closet and took them, but once he returned to the living room, the creature was nowhere to be seen. Dread filled the young man's mind.
"SHIT!"
Erik then dropped his backpack and searched everywhere for the damn thing. He couldn't believe what he had done, and his father had left the house not even ten minutes prior. If it wasn't bad enough that he dropped the liquid, which was now staining the ground, the creature previously contained in it now roamed his house. The young man went to the kitchen to grab a knife and defend himself.
"I have to get rid of it now..."
There was no time to waste.
As the young man turned to search for the creature again, this time with the knife, he heard a noise behind him. He turned to look what the source of the noise was, but it was then that the creature suddenly shot up from the floor, its mouth opening wide. With weird legs extended and teeth showing in its jaws, it lunged at Erik and attached itself to his face.
Erik gasped in pain as he fell backward onto the wooden floor, unable to do anything to stop the creature. His eyes widened when he saw the creature on his face.
Erik tried to scream, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he felt the creature inserting something into it.
Then a stinging pain hit the young man on the chest; the creature, or whatever it was, stung him with its tail, injecting something inside of him. Slowly, as the young man was losing consciousness and falling to the floor, he started seeing something.
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