… Am I dead?

No. I can feel far too much for this to be death.

I can feel the burning… The agony of my skin melting. I can feel the tears in my vocal cords. The hatred pooling deep in my bones.

What is death, anyways? What will happen when I cease to exist? I can’t go to Elysium, that’s for sure. That paradise is for heroes and those who have done good in their days on Earth. I can’t say I’ve done that…

On the other hand, I don’t believe I have done anything to warrant being sent to Tartarus. The worst offenders are held there, trapped in the bottomless pits of hell for all eternity where they endure torture and torment personalized to their misdeeds in life.

I may not have lived a noble life, but I definitely didn’t do anything to make me worthy of being banished and tortured for eternity.

Maybe when I appear before the triumvirate of the Kings themselves - Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus - will tell me that I shall spend the rest of eternity as a nameless and faceless being doomed to roam the fields of Asphodel.

I’ll have to die to learn my fate, and so far that isn’t happening. Why is that?

A burning sensation engulfs the left side of my face. My cheek feels like it is boiling, the skin pulling itself taut and straining as pain racks my body. The sensation built itself up, adding layer upon layer of pain until I was screaming and thrashing.

Why is my face burning?

That’s right…

I was training with him. He never did take it easy on me in the training ring. Throwing all he had at me, thinking that I could withstand it just because I am his child. That I am special in some way. That maybe I could handle more than the average student because I was his spawn.

But, just like every other time, it was shown that I am just a child and not a perfect creation.

Through the haze of pain, I recall that he used all different kinds of inventions against me in the ring. The worst had to be the fire. Though that doesn’t narrow it down any, anything made by his hands had fire: flame throwers, fire blades, torches.

Those weapons are the ones that I will never forget. The blistering and bubbling of my skin is something that I will haunt me for as long as I live. Nor will I forget the putrid stench of burning hair and clothes.

Every so often I can smell it, it catches me off guard when I start to drift away from whatever task I am working on. This happens even when I have not trained with him in weeks.

The searing pain coursing through my body tells me that it was one of these fire weapons that I was trained with. There was no sharp pain: tells of blades or serrated weapons. There was no dull, yet overwhelming pulsations: tells of blunt weaponry hitting their mark repeatedly.

Just the tightness of blistering skin being pulled taut over poorly wrapped - if wrapped at all - wounds.

No matter how hard I try, though, I cannot remember what happened. What weapon he attacked me with. I can’t remember anything about the training session that would have led to these injuries. I can’t remember anything…

“Icarus?” a soft voice, muffled by the haze I am drowning in, drifts through the air. “Are you back yet?”

I must have been brought back to my room after training. It’s unusual, I am never brought back. I have woken up in the infirmary before, sure. Usually, though, I am left on the floor in the training room. After all, if I couldn’t make it through training then why would I deserve someone taking me to my room? I had to earn that privilege. And that, so far, has not happened.

I groan from the discomfort of pain as I drag my eyes open. Everything hurts. It feels like my bones are hallowed, yet still weigh thousands of pounds.

I fight to raise my arms and use them to lever my body into an upright position. My joints protest the movement, creaking and popping relentlessly. Still, I eventually manage to get myself into a sitting position at the edge of my bed.

My room in the dormitory isn’t large, I can reach the door from where I sit on the bed with minimal stretching. My breath hitches as I lean forward to reach for the doorknob and my swing misses the mark. For a moment I cannot move, cannot breathe, as I try to will myself to push through the blinding pain.

I force myself to take a breath as I readjust, aiming my body more towards the door as I swing for the knob once again. My hand slips, falling uselessly back into my lap. Fingers twitch and spasm as they try to follow the command my brain gives them. I contract the muscles, forming a fist with the hand before reaching back out to again try at the handle.

The door flies open as soon as the latch clicks. In the doorway stands the human embodiment of the sun, a person that I had become very close to in my time here. Someone who seemed to light up any room that he was in with his smile and kind words. Just his presence is enough to ease my pain, allowing my lungs to take in more air as I take in his worried gaze.

He should not be here right now.

“Sunshine,” I say, my voice hoarse and throat sore. “What are you doing here? You’ll get in trouble if you’re out of your room.”

The rules of this place are strict. Even more so when you are the prodigal son of an Elysian, if his experience was anything to go by. They strip away your freedoms to the point that you aren’t allowed to leave your room unless it is to go to training. It’s like a damn prison here.

In a hushed voice he responds, “Doesn’t matter, we need”-

“Doesn’t matter? What do you mean ‘doesn’t matter’? You know what they’ll do to you if you are caught here again!”

“That doesn’t matter right now Icarus!” He puts his hands on either side of my face and leans in to rest his forehead on mine. In a softer voice he says, “We need to get you out of here, okay?”

A moment of silence washes over us as I try to process what is happening. Why do I need to get out? Why did I wake up back in my room? What is going on?

I’m not going to get answers sitting here. I take a deep breath, looking up into my sunshine’s eyes and muttering a soft Okay.

Some of the tension in his face dissipates as I agree, his lips tug up for a brief second into a small smile before he pats my cheek and steps back. He turns away from me to head towards the closet. “Cool, I don’t have much time before they realize I’m not in the training room. Are you able to move and help me pack your things?”

The relentless pain I had been ignoring still courses through my body and lets me know that standing up isn’t going to work, but I try anyway. My joints are still upset from sitting up, I can feel my muscles scream and strain with the effort to pull my weight off the bed. I almost make it to a standing position when I feel a stabbing sensation in my side that makes me gasp and fall back onto the bed.

I’m about to try standing again when my sunshine turns back to face me and says, “Woah, birdie. Don’t hurt yourself.” He looks like he wants to come over and make sure I’m okay, but decides to turn back to the closet instead. “Why don’t you stay there and tell me what to pack?”

I nod my assent and make myself as comfortable as I can on the edge of the shitty dormitory bed. I don’t have many belongings, here or otherwise. Part of the ATLAS program is learning to live without attachments. That was a lesson I excelled at.

I give him directions on what to pack of my meager belongings: mostly my hoodies, my blades and other small weapons, and a few keepsakes he had given me over the years. Nothing too big and heavy.

After packing everything, he walks up to the bed. He doesn’t say anything, but I could tell from the set of his shoulders and the slight frown on his lips that there’s no getting out of this.

It’s time to go.

He helps me stand up; my arm around his shoulders and his arm around my torso. It isn’t an ideal situation to have to leave when I’m this injured, but we’re going to make it work.

This entire situation is weird. What happened to me in training? Why do I have to leave right now? Why is my sunshine so anxious? I can feel his rapid heartbeat from where I am pressed up next to his side. He’s the one that stays calm, but ever since he entered my room he’s been frantic and it’s weird. He’s trying to hide it, but he should know that I can read him better than that.

“Why?” I whisper as we round the first corner. Making our way from the room that has been mine for as long as I can remember. It’s not much, just a shitty little dormitory room with a ratty twin bed and barely enough room to stretch in. But it’s mine. It is all I had ever known.

“Why now?”

“Birdie, I don’t have time to explain right now. We need to get you out first,” came the hurried reply.

“What I can tell you is that Daedalus is trying to kill you.” Of course this is about him. I know he went too far in my training but that’s because I’m his progeny! I am supposed to live up to his expectations, so it’s normal. I haven’t managed to impress him yet, but I’m only a kid! I will get better and stronger; I just need time…

I end up being so caught up in my thoughts that I almost miss when my sunshine whispers. “I can’t lose you.” That adds another layer to the whole mess, one that I cannot bear to think about right now.

“Why would he want me dead? I’ve tried my best, I train and study and I’m even labeled as a ‘promising’ candidate for the Elysian program!” I can’t yell, not right now, but I want to. This is all so much. But there’s really one thing that I am struggling with the most in this situation: “I am his child, for God’s sake. He can’t just throw me away…”

Silence envelopes us once again as we continue on our way through the winding corridors of the dormitory. This place is built like a maze, I’ve always thought it was a nod to the myth of the Minotaur. But now, as we are trying to escape the building, I realize that it is more than that. It may as well have been a re-creation of the labyrinth, designed to keep the disciples of ATLAS and the Elysian program in. Designed to confuse anyone who dared to try and leave.

Our reverie is interrupted by a loud BANG - the guards must have realized that my sunshine wasn’t where he was supposed to be. It’s too late for them, though. We have already made it to the exit, the doors looming in front of us. Once we make it through those doors, it’s a short trip to the chain link fence surrounding the property. The fence I had never seen the other side of.

Before we move to open the door, I feel a hand on my face. It’s guiding me to look at my sunshine’ face. When I do, he speaks in a low voice, telling me “You cannot die.” His hand shifts a bit, trying to avoid what I am assuming are some disgusting pits of boiling skin on my face - if the tingling and idle pain are anything to go by. “Icarus. Promise me. Promise me that you will not die.”

Why does it sound like he’s saying goodbye? “You’re going to see to that yourself. You are coming with me, right?” There is a flash of something - sadness, my mind supplies - in his eyes before he looks back down the hall. By this point I am practically begging him, trying to get him to say that he wouldn’t abandon me. “You are coming with me, right? I can’t do this without you.”

Instead of responding, he stiffens and hurries to push open the doors. I can hear the echoing of footsteps down the hall. We don’t have much time before the guards catch up to us. Deciding that we don’t have enough time to have me hobble to the fence, he turns around and picks me up.

As I wrap my arms around his neck, I whisper, “please don’t leave me alone.” If I cannot die, then he needs to be there with me. He needs to make it out, because I don’t think I can manage to navigate such a harsh and cruel world without my own personal sunlight to keep me sane. Especially considering how injured I am right now.

“Birdie…” his voice trails off. He finally looks at me, eyebrows pinched and mouth dipping down. I can feel a thick tension growing between us.

His throat bobs for a moment, mouth opening as if to say something when the moment is interrupted by a shout, “There they are!”

The guards have caught up. My sunshine’s eyes widen; his mouth snapping shut as he begins to run. We have already made it most of the way across the lawn, it won’t take much for us to get to the fence.

How did the guards find us so quickly? Are we going to make it out? A flood of thoughts race through my brain, distracting me until I hear a voice shout, “Icarus!”

The voice snaps me back to the present. We’ve stopped moving, my sunshine having set me down on the ground next to the fence. “We’re here. I need you to climb this fence, okay? Once you get over the fence you have to run, can you do that?”

Still reeling from the sudden barrage of thoughts, I nod. Yeah, yeah, I can run. We can run.

The guards are getting closer, I can hear the rustling of their uniforms from here. My sunshine helps me stand and grab the fence. Thank whatever higher beings exist for adrenaline, because that is all that’s allowing me to pull myself up the chain links.

With his help, I am just barely able to grasp at the top of the fence. It takes me a moment, but I am eventually able to get a good grip and start pulling myself up. No sooner had I flung one leg over the fence did I hear a pained yelp.

Stabilizing myself, I look back to the ground where I just was, to where I expect to see my sunshine climbing up after me. To where instead I see a nightmare come to life: He’s fighting the guards. He’s fighting the guards and he’s losing. He’s hurt, down on one knee. That must have been what the yelp was from, kneecap injuries were a bitch.

And still, he is fighting. He can’t move much from where he is kneeling, but he is still holding back the guards; giving me time to get out.

But I can’t leave him. He is supposed to escape with me, make sure I get out of here and stay alive. He can’t do that if he’s fighting the guards.

“Go, Icarus! Run and never look back!” I can’t. I can’t just leave without him. I need to get down there and help him. I need - “RUN YOU IDIOT!”

I never was good at disobeying orders. Even if I want to do nothing more than stay, I have to leave. Tears start to well in my eyes as I swing my other leg over the fence. Climbing down isn’t an option with my vision blurred like it is, so I just jump. It’s going to hurt like a motherfucker when I wake up tomorrow, but right now the only thing I can feel is the strain in my throat of the tears that want to be spilled.

I can feel blood wending a path down my leg, I must have gotten cut in the fall. I want to look back so bad, but I have to keep going. I can’t stop now, or they’ll catch me and all of this will have been for nothing. All the pain he has been through will have been for nothing if I am caught out here.

I need to run. I need to get to the trees. They aren’t that far away; I just need to run to them. They’ll lose sight of me in the forest then I can disappear.

Just before I get to the forest, I hear another shout from my sunshine. This one is much less pained, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

“I will find you again!” he yells. “I will find you out there!”

I believe him. He will find me; I just have to make it out. I just have to get out of here and stay alive. Then my sunshine will make it out and find me and we will be together once again.

With my vigor renewed, I dart into the woods. I can’t look back, and I don’t know if the guards are following me. I just have to make it out…

Next Chapter: Chapter 1: The Rooftop