The Boy from the Bunker - Season 8

Episode Five, Part 1:

Episode Five, Part 1:
Oikogéneia 

I'm sorry for the absence. 
I'm sorry for the pain I caused you. 

Kodiak sighed heavily, reluctantly standing up from the bed and positioning himself in front of where Elara was sitting.

"Ell..." He murmured, hoping she would understand without him having to say what he needed to.

"What, Kodi?" She whispered, knowing something bad was coming. Her eyes flickered down to the space between them, watching as his hands rested on her legs; her own hands clinging loosely onto his arms.

"You have to go back now."

"I'm not ready to leave you," she said. "I still don't know what's going on around here, what your plan is, and... And what happened to Wynn," she frowned, suddenly remembering that the last time she had seen him, he had jammed a sedative into her neck.

"He'll be fine. He knows what's going on; he'll make smart choices."

"That doesn't sound like my brother," Elara rolled her eyes, smiling up at Kodiak to see him chuckling at her remark.

"Well," he laughed. "He doesn't have a choice this time."

"He seemed to know what he was doing when he used that medicine thing on me," she said.

"A MediPen," Kodiak informed her. "The sedative, and yeah, he did."

"Why?" She asked. "And what happened after you took me here?"

"He was probably worried that you would say the wrong thing," Kodiak said. "That you'd blow my cover..."

"Did it also have something to do with the tests?" Elara searched, trying to get her answer from his reaction.

"...The trials?" He asked. "How much do you know about them?" Kodiak dropped his voice, taking a step closer to her; refusing to break eye contact.

"Nothing," she replied. "Athena was taking me there when I found you. She said she wouldn't tell me until it was about to begin. Why? Kodiak, you're scaring me a little..."

He let out a deep breath, squeezing onto her hand for his own relief. This was exactly why he didn't want her caught up in his mess; now she would have to find out what Neptunum were doing to her family; to relive the same demons she thought had died when she killed Rhea.

"Kodiak, talk to me," Elara said, moving her free hand up to the side of his face, forcing him to look and focus on her. "What's wrong?"

"Neptunum are putting everyone through trials," he said. "Pain trials, mind trials... They get in our heads and use our memories and losses and the people we love against us so that they can find a cure; a reversible effect when the brain has suffered too much damage."

"Our memories?" She whispered, figuring it out.

Kodiak nodded, trying to think of what to say to her.

"Like... Like the phases from The Alteration? What happened when we were in the labs?"

"Yeah," Kodiak said. "But I'm not going to let you go through that again. That's why Wynn and I-"

"Wynn's going through it!?" Elara panicked.

"It's okay," Kodiak hurried to calm her, worried that somehow, someone would overhear them. "I talked him through it and he wanted to do it. For you. He caused trouble with one of the guards at the end of rations last night and got taken to the medical wing - which is where Athena was trying to take you to. The trials didn't work on him which has never happened before; I have a gut feeling about why it went wrong, but I don't know for sure. I just needed to know that it was possible."