The Catalyst

Chapter 19: An Issue of Trust

Chapter 19: An Issue of Trust

The door slammed shut behind Cyrus, and utter silence fell upon the small gathering. Dameon had to struggle to not let his mouth drop open, and felt his hands twitch with the effort of suppressing his bewilderment.

"Well that was odd." Phaedra finally said. She spoke absentmindedly, still staring at Dameon as though he had given her a particularly extravagant birthday present.

Gloria shook her head, "Not really," she looked meaningfully at Dameon, "to be honest, you should have known that he'd take it this way. You saw how he reacted to Phaedra's 'offer' yesterday - he probably sees this as nothing short of betrayal, especially since now he finds out that he was helping without even knowing it. I mean, you basically used the poor guy, and he takes friendship and loyalty and stuff like that seriously."

Dameon clenched and unclenched his jaw, willing himself to stay calm, yet regret was already welling up. In the heat of the moment, and probably also because he was so tired, he had completely lost his mind to passion. Letting emotion rule his decisions - Tenebris had always warned against that...

He pushed the thought away to that small, secret place in his mind where he always deposited these thoughts of his father. Admittedly they came quite often considering how invested he was in the Enhancement Solution, but he knew that that was different. I am not Tenebris. He thought firmly. He would be able to work for the greater good without finding himself on that dark path of insanity - he would.

Nevertheless, carried away in the heat of the moment, in his sudden need to make Gloria, Cyrus, and Phaedra understand, he suspected that he might have revealed too much. Why else would Cyrus have looked at him in that strange way - like he was seeing his best friend for the first time, and was both shocked and disgusted by what met his eyes?

Why else would he have left in such a sudden, melodramatic manner - as if he could not bear to be in the same room as Dameon anymore?

"Maybe he was just really tired," Dameon said doubtfully.

Or maybe he suspects that I'm lying to you all.

No, not a lie, Dameon amended, mentally correcting himself, an omission.

Because in all of his explanations of the Enhancement Solution, he had carefully left out saying how he managed to control the Death Factor. He had stressed the idea that the deserving would be rewarded...and not said anything about his intentions regarding a purge, to rid the world of the undeserving.

After all, it would not do to put all of his eggs into one basket - to confide all of his plans and secrets into others. Through the years, Dameon had come to the general conclusion that people as a whole were largely unpredictable and volatile. No matter how close he was to Gloria and Cyrus; no matter how much he trusted them, he still remembered how Milo, Cala, and Brendan had found him all those years ago. Trust was a useful thing, but only up to a point.

If he was really going to shoot for the stars and try to make his plans work, he needed to take every precaution possible. And if that included manipulating his friends...

Gloria snorted lightly, but she looked worried, "Don't worry. Cyrus is stubborn, but he'll come around. I guess we just have to remember that from his point of view, there isn't anything that needs changing. This isn't some kind of oppressive, dystopian regime we're talking about. It's not one of those cases where there's a corrupt government that makes everything look pretty, but the ugliness is glaringly obvious. The divisions...well, it's the subtleties that count. Cyrus never grew up looking at those subtleties, he grew up looking at the big picture, from the safety of an actual division."