Errend rolled over onto his other side. It wasn't because he couldn't get comfortable though. Even if the beds in the roomettes were a bit on the small size, especially for his six-foot-eight frame, they were surprisingly comfortable.

The problem was his brain. Why had Aiya's eyes been emanating bright light? He had seen it before, but not here on this planet.

Had the Rakshasa's wormhole brought more than just them? If it was the same one he had travelled through with his team it had been open far too long. Who knew what had found its way through after all these years.

Errend rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling of the train. The smooth metal curved slightly as it travelled towards the outside wall. The rhythm of the wheels of the train sliding down the track should have put him to sleep by now.

He remembered his involuntary smile at Aiya and once again found his mind running through thoughts at the speed of light.

How had it even happened? Closing his eyes tight he pictured Master Choa sitting quietly and calmly in front of his small fire, brewing tea and burning incense.

Errend had been sent to Master Choa at the age of eight. By the time Errend had been twelve emotions were a distant thing. A faint tugging at his mind he could easily ignore.

By the time Errend turned fourteen emotions passed through him but never found root. They never elicited unwanted or unplanned reactions.

He had mastered a perpetual state of awareness of himself, effectively abandoning all his qualities that got in the way of his focus, his purpose. According to his training, that purpose was to be the hand that enforced the will of Vishnu.

So how had his well-ingrained training, which had never faltered in all his thirty years of life, suddenly fail him?

Fuck! Swearing silently he carefully left the roomette he shared with Derek.

Once outside with the door shut quietly he strode towards the dining car. Perhaps he could find somewhere to sit and read.

He kept a small tablet-like device Marvin had gifted him for this purpose. It seemed to have countless books stored inside its tiny processor. He just prayed he had a charge left in his solar battery in case the tablet died.

As Errend walked into the dining car he stopped dead in his tracks. Grayson was sitting at the dining table closest to him, looking at him expectantly like this had been a meeting he'd requested.

Sighing heavily and putting his half charged reader tablet in one of his inside coat pockets he sat down.

This should be interesting if not informative, Errand thought as he quickly took in the man before him.

Grayson's eyes were bloodshot, most likely from not sleeping. However, Errend wouldn't rule out addict of some kind just yet. People handled stress in their own fashion and sometimes it was the people you least expected that had the biggest problems.

Grayson's hair looked a little bedridden, possibly from tossing and turning, his clothes hadn't changed since the day he'd met them at The Sloppy Dish and Errend was willing to bet it had more to do with the man's state of mind than a lack of clothes.

His face showed deep lines around the downturned corners of his mouth and between his brows. He carried dark circles that hung low under each eye. This wasn't the Grayson he'd encountered a few days ago. And definitely not the Grayson from six years ago.

The synopsis of the man was that he was seriously stressed. Unfortunately, Errend had an unsettling feeling he was going to find out why.

"Errend. Glad you're here. There's something I have been meaning to talk to you about."

Errend had no idea where this was going or which one of the hundred things that Grayson should address with Errend might be bothering the man.

Errend knew an apology from Grayson wouldn't do much to make right all the wrongs that had been done to him, but knowing the man had a conscience would ease his mind.

Not having anything of value to say Errend simply just stared at the man and patiently waited for him to get on with it. Grayson looked at him expectantly but Errend had no idea what the man could be expecting. Finally he continued.

"Just want to put it out there that I never agreed with how they treated you. Hell, I spent a solid month submitting petitions and arguing with white coats that you'd have served us better as an ally, or informant, then whatever they had hoped to discover." Something flickered across Grayson's eyes then, making him glance away to stare out the black train car window.

Errend wasn't positive but it looked a lot like anxiety mixed with nerves. A sick feeling started to twist Errend's stomach. Whatever was coming would be something that was going to test all his willpower, he could tell.

"After you escaped, my failure to stop you when clearly I could have, came up in more ways than one. I got kicked out of the central hub of things so to speak. Got the title President of United Nations Confederate Recruiting Command. Bullshit. They just wanted me off base as much as possible. My team consists of myself and ten other people. It's all bullshit. We've been sent to recruit four people in the last five years. Four!" Grayson looked disgusted and shook his head.

Errend agreed, it sounded like bullshit. But Grayson was stalling. Just as Errend felt enough was enough, not able to wait any longer to hear whatever horrible thing Grayson felt he need to confess, Grayson, unloaded the news like a hot grenade.

"They found someone else when they found you. They made sure that neither of you became aware the other existed but you weren't the only one to come through and survive Errend."

Errend's stomach dropped. He felt the world shift around him, tilting on a funny angle. Who had survived? Why had he not known? Hadn't he seen them die?

Errend was gripping the table so tight his fingers lost colour. Grayson must have seen something in his face because the sweat started to pour off him as he rushed to get the rest out.

"I didn't even know until you escaped. I was head of security for the whole medical facility and I didn't know she was there. Apparently, she had been in a coma for six months after they found her, then another two months induced coma due to injuries and her condition. They didn't want undue stress causing any issues with the infant's development. They had to wake her before they delivered the baby though. They needed to know if she was going to be stable enough to help care for the baby. Guess someone realized waking her after delivery and saying 'here's your baby' might not have gone over well."

Errend's face went white and his ears started to ring. Inta! And she'd been pregnant when they had deployed. Probably just, hell could have been the day before for all he knew. But they had both survived. And he'd left them there to suffer through Vishnu knew what.

A strange mixture of never-ending despair, grief, and rage started to swirl around inside him. He felt the energy crackling around him before he realized what he'd done. He'd lost his control.

Staring coldly at Grayson he whispered, "Run."

Grayson knew what was coming and left as fast as he could short of sprinting from the dining car.

Grayson had seen Errend lose control before after the doctors had screwed with his body chemistry enough, loading him with drugs on top of drugs. This was why Errend had been sent to Master Choa. He couldn't afford to lose control.

According to the many books he'd read here on Earth, his people should have expected some sort of adaptation to emerge over time, after spending so many decades fighting the Rakshasa. Survival of the fittest Darwin had hypothesized. Those who have the best chance at successfully reproducing in their current environment.

Before people like Errend started to be born his people had been a dying species on his planet. They had desperately needed a new advantage against the Rakshasa, yet they had rejected it when it finally came.

It was discovered quite quickly that with strong emotions came immense power, so those born with the ability to wield these strange new powers of destruction, because that is what they caused, destruction, were sent to the Holy Houses for training.

In reality, they should have been helping the children learn how to harness and control their new skills. Skills that could help defeat the Rakshasa. But instead, the children were taught to feel nothing.

Yet wouldn't letting the emotions to help kill Rakshasa serve his purpose? If the will of Vishnu was to bring balance back to the Universe, sending the Rakshasa back to their homeworld, shouldn't have the Holy Masters seen how their new students could be trained?

Errend had been conflicted on this topic since he'd begun to search for answers, reading everything he could over the last six years, and still didn't know what to think.

But this wasn't the time to let his kinetic powers supercharge. He would end up destroying this entire train if not miles of land around him, killing his new friends and Vishnu knew who else.

So Errend fought with himself, like trying to control a limb that had been left too long in a pinched position, "falling asleep" and losing feeling for a while, it now tingled almost painfully as it woke again and wouldn't quite listen to his brain's commands.

Squeezing his eyes tight and sucking in a mouthful of air he almost cried out when he heard Aiya.

"Errend? You ok?"