* * *
Oz saw himself as a young man. He’d been born healthy and strong. He’d grown up in wealth and power and privilege. His parents were affluent, well-connected society types. His mother sat on the board of a hospital, various arts organizations and museums, as well as an Ivy league university. His father was a financier and venture capitalist who’d taken Oz under his wing ever since he was a young child, showing him the ropes of life early, so that he’d always be prepared and in control in every situation, never caught unawares.
Oz had attended society balls, ballets, plays, operas, orchestras, sporting events, and VIP parties throughout his life. He had an Ivy league education due to his family’s generous donations to the university and their position in society. His family mixed and mingled with celebrities, politicians, and power brokers of all kinds. His name was known far and wide. His social calendar overbooked. He was a popular playboy who was a regular feature in the gossip columns and an ever in demand guest at society’s most important and glamorous functions.
Due to his family’s extensive connections, he’d grown even more powerful and wealthy as he got older, beyond all imagining. Ares was his company, just one asset in a vast portfolio. The world was his. Everything he had ever wanted was laid at his feet. There was nothing he couldn’t have. No one he couldn’t hold dominion over. He felt invincible.
Then, as the years went by, he found himself wanting more. Nothing was enough. He got bored easily. Short-tempered and ever more selfish. His various appetites could never be satisfied. He enjoyed toying with people and taking advantage of situations whenever he could. People were pawns to be used and then tossed aside. He became cruel, and sadistic even, increasingly so as the years went by. He made many enemies along the way. He was battling a growing emptiness inside, lashing out, trying to escape the constant pain he felt. He hurt others in a futile and severely misguided effort to fix what was wrong inside and lay the blame for his misery elsewhere. He felt more and more hollow over time. People even seemed hollow. The pain and emptiness he suffered grew and grew. Life itself seemed to mock him—a shallow game, pointless and meaningless, but one he was still trying to win, even though he no longer knew what that even meant.
But then it all suddenly changed. All his riches disappeared. He was alone. He stood in an empty apartment with rags for clothes. He looked around. He recognized it. It was the small, dingy apartment he’d grown up in with his mother. It was cold and dark. No heat. No lights. He was horrified. He knew that somehow everything he had was now lost.
Suddenly he heard a voice. Oz spun around.
His father, once again the man who had abandoned him and his mother, was there standing before him. A beam of moonlight lit his young face.
“Dad?” he asked. To his dismay, his voice sounded meek and small.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Where did it all go? What’s happening?”
“It’s gone. It’s over.”
“But I don’t understand. It was real. I know it was. Can’t I just go back?”
His father looked at him with eyes empty of feeling, devoid of compassion. “You used it all up.”
“No, please, let’s go back,” Oz begged him.
“There’s no place to go back to,” his father answered.
“But can’t I just start over?” Oz pleaded, his desperation mounting. “Why is this happening?”
“There is nothing left there. You destroyed everything in your path and in turn, lost yourself,” his father said, as his image began to fade. “That life was squandered. All hope. All potential. Used up. Now dead. Just like in this life. Just like in the next. It’s always the same with you. You’re like a black hole devouring all energy and light around you. It must stop.”
“No, no, no, please, no... don’t take this away from me. Don’t leave again!”
Just then, Oz heard something behind him. Something scratching along the wooden floor.
He turned around. He gasped, recoiling in horror. It was his own image looking back at him. Old, hunched over, decaying, wearing only torn, filthy rags, with sunken eyes that conveyed a mix of rage, terror, and pain. The creature opened its mouth and screamed.
“No!”
He felt a strong hand clamp down on his shoulder, roughly yanking him downwards.
“You will stay here now,” a deep, rasping, and unfamiliar voice said in a most ominous tone. “It’s all you have proven yourself worthy of.”
* * *
Alpha-4 was growing alarmed. This is madness, he thought.
“Stop this now!” he shouted as he reached out to grab Oz’s shoulder and pull him away.
“No!” Oz suddenly screamed. He spun around, a mixture of rage and horror in his eyes. But what he saw was not Alpha-4. Still holding his gun, Oz took aim and fired.
Alpha-4 dropped to the ground; a bullet wound between his eyes.
Rick took the opportunity and acted on pure instinct. He roared and ran headlong into Oz, grabbing the man’s wrist to point the gun at the cavern ceiling and shoved him hard into the wall of tablets. The gun went off and dropped from Oz’s hand as a shower of sparks flew out in all directions.
Rick let go immediately and ducked, quickly scrambling away from the wall.
“Everyone get back!” he yelled.
Oz now writhed and screamed in agony as the heat built up within him. His skin was fire, his body was fire. The pain was excruciating. His mind fractured, trying to protect him from the horror that had befallen him. In the split seconds before his death, as the flame consumed him, he knew his
