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“Hey… Sam.” Axel’s voice was hesitant. He eyed the older man as he was about to pass Axel in the hallway. Sam turned around, staring down at Axel. The two didn’t have that huge of a height gap, but it was still considerable.
“What,” Sam spoke, more as a statement than a question. Axel gulped, suddenly fearful. He had never really trusted the ex-operative despite his father’s relationship with Sam. What if the ex-operative betrayed them? Sam was related to NP after all (or at least, Axel and his friends thought so. The two looked extremely similar.) and was on the mission to kidnap Axel himself.
Sam continued to stare at Axel, becoming more impatient each second. “Look, I have things to do, so I’d appreciate it if you could hurry up,” he muttered, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.
They were all in Christian’s house for a casual hangout for friends to talk, blah blah blah. So if Sam was here, that meant he was lying. Probably. Axel couldn’t tell.
“If you’re gonna stare at me and be lost in thought, I’m out.” Oh yeah. This was Axel’s cue to talk.
Axel didn’t speak until Sam stopped leaning on the wall and started walking away. “Wait! I, uh, we were wondering—” The ex-operative turned around and faced the very young adult.
“Um, we were wondering if… you could, uh, you know… tell us? About yourself? You know, your backstory and all that?” Axel tried to crack a smile, but it faltered upon seeing Sam’s irritated expression. Sighing, the ex-operative ran a hand through his hair.
“Who gave you this idea?”
“...my dad..?”
“Tell him I’ll be talking to him about this.”
The young adult (hardly—he had just turned eighteen a few months back) couldn’t help but notice that Sam completely avoided answering his question. “Uh, wait, don’t tell my dad!” Axel exclaimed, finally processing what Sam said. The latter gave him a bemused look. Axel quickly said something else to divert Sam’s attention. “So are you going to answer or no—”
“No.”
Oh. Well, that was… blunt. And straightforward. Axel couldn’t help but wonder what his father saw in this guy. All he himself saw was an ignorant, rude, and frustratingly difficult man. It was hard to believe Sam was even a good guy. Well, barely. Sam began to walk away from Axel, before Axel said something that shocked both himself and Sam.
“If you’re truly a good guy, you would tell us. I don’t know what my dad sees in you, but there’s no way he’d be friends with you if he sees you like I do.” His voice was coated in spite and was basically dripping with hostility, showing his disdain for the ex-operative. Axel covered his mouth afterwards, appalled by what he just did. He was definitely going to get yelled at by both his father and Sam himself.
Sam spun around once again to glare at Axel. He crossed his arms, sizing up the younger man. “Watch what you say. I don’t owe an explanation for you. Not any of you. All of you were saved by Cameron with my help, and you should be thankful. Mostly to Cameron though…” he spat, though muttered under his breath the last part.
“So then why’d you help in the first place? If you don’t even like us, why try?” Axel asked.
None of them talked. The silence, ironically, was loud. The distant sounds of chatter in the other rooms were present, though in the hallway, all was quiet. Sam exhaled. His face softened just a tiny bit. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms again. It was a habit he seemed to enjoy doing, or at least that was what Axel noticed.
“I suppose you deserve to know. Not a word to anyone else though. Including your father. He’s a good man, but I don’t really feel the need to have more than one person hear about this.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“He does. Just not to the extent that I’ll tell you. I guess it’s finally time to talk about… myself.” Sam sighed. Axel’s eyebrows raised, his eyes widening as well. This… was not exactly where he had foreseen this going. He had just assumed Sam would completely ignore him, maybe respond with some snarky reply, but not— not this. This was just completely unexpected.
Sam hesitated, his uncertainty and caution evident in his expression. It was rare for him to express any other emotion other than irritation or frustration, or it was completely monotone. (Similar to NP… at least, Axel thought so.) Axel almost thought it was impossible.
Clearly, he should’ve known better.
“Let’s start at when I was a teenager. There’s not much detail or information or anything important here—just some background stuff I think that becomes relevant later on,” Sam spoke. “Before finding my biological family, I was originally adopted by two other families. However, as I found my biological family and was taken in by them, I began to realize how… spoiled they were. They were extremely rich and constantly spoiled my brother NP.”
So that answered the question on whether the notorious scientist and Sam were related.
“Of course, they started doing it to me too—just not to the extent that they were doing to NP. NP was… not exactly a great brother. Nor person in general. He was hostile even then, and encouraged our parents to, uh, ignore me, I guess. In a way, yeah,” Sam continued, pausing at certain parts. Axel listened intently, his thoughts going crazy at all this information Sam was giving him.
The latter went on. “A few years go by, and NP gets an internship at the Department of Metaphysical Sciences. You know what that is, right? Okay, good. Anyway, he suggests a new organization under subdivision four—you don’t need to know what that is—and the officials agree. NP gets to name it and even run it, so that’s the basic history of NullPath. Anyway, since I was of age at the time NullPath was created, the government asked me to join. However, I already knew it wasn’t a fair choice. It was to join or be killed.”
Axel’s jaw dropped at the last sentence. “The ‘government’ in question was NP, wasn’t it?” He asked, but he already knew the answer.
“That’s up to you to figure out,” Sam answered vaguely. “Anyhow, I joined, of course. And then that’s how I started working for them. I went by NP_zht and only used my first name. NP already knew it, and besides, he didn’t give out his own, either. Only the officials at the M.D.S. and our family do. Then came in your father. He was always moving around subdivisions, so it was inevitable that he would come to ours. And he met me. At first, I assumed he didn’t like me as everyone else did, but he began to talk to me. I guess that’s when we became friends. Soon enough, he trusted me to help him with his mission: free the most subjects possible, one by one.”
Sam’s expression turned to one of guilt, and he looked away. His eyes refused to meet Axel’s curious ones. “That was impossible, of course. I had to tell him multiple times that we could only do the most important ones. It was… difficult. Your father is a stubborn man who will do a lot of things to get what he wants, but alas, this was simply impossible.”
Axel knew Sam felt guilty for prioritizing some people over others. He knew the ex-operative was still haunted by what he had to do. Shawn was a clear example of that. Acadia and Noah too. Axel himself as well.
“All human lives are equal, or so I like to think. It’s not easy to put one life over the other in a situation like that. But it was necessary.” Sam’s voice cracked at the end, and he quickly cleared his throat. He knew it being necessary wasn’t a good excuse, and he hated to be the one that even suggested it in the first place. But it doesn't matter. Now was not the time to wallow in guilt.
Sam cleared his throat again. “I knew NP wouldn’t dare kill me after all these years, so I began to stop being so discreet. This is around the time that Noah and NP made their deal. I knew I could use this against NP, and besides, me and Cameron had long ago planned out NullPath’s demise. We knew you’d be kidnapped one way or another.”
“What?” Axel shouted, his eyes widening. The ex-operative quietly reprimanded him to not be so loud, and after Axel calmed down, Sam went on.
“And yeah. NullPath’s demise came with Starthork’s help. That’s about it,” Sam finished off. He shrugged as if it was no big deal. “Don’t go around spreading this information to anyone, not even Noah. This is private, alright?” The man said, pointing at Axel, who eagerly nodded. “Any questions?”
The younger man shook his head. Sam stopped leaning on the wall and walked off, though he paused. Looking back, he gave a nod to Axel before continuing walking away.
Axel stood dumbfounded. Realizing how wrong he was about the ex-operative this entire time, Axel needed to reflect on this.
Walking back to the living room where his friends Noah, Shawn, and Acadia were, he sat down next to Noah. The other three were playing mario kart, and there was still an unused switch controller.
“Oh hey Axel!” Shawn greeted, grinning widely at his friend. Axel waved back and said hi eagerly. “Just grab the controller and join us, man.”
“Where were you?” Noah asked, glancing at his best friend. Axel contemplated on how to answer that.
“I was having a conversation with Sam.”
“Sam?!” All three of them knew Axel’s dislike for Sam. It was worse than Acadia’s, in fact, though she didn’t show it much and still respected him. Axel, however, outright insulted him on multiple occasions and showed a clear distaste for the ex-operative.
“Sam? Of all people? We thought you wanted to go find Christian or something, not… that guy,” Acadia said, her eyebrows narrowing at the end of her sentence. Axel shrugged.
He didn’t know how to respond, after all the information he had just acquired. Sam had specifically asked him not to leak it, too.
“Well, how was he? Did he do anything bad to you?” Noah asked, checking Axel in case something had occurred.
“I wanted to ask him something,” Axel said, replying to Acadia’s earlier statement. “And no, he was fine. He’s actually… a lot nicer than I expected.” His words were met with a deadpan and everyone’s deep confusion.
Axel thought for a moment. “Sam’s… complicated. That’s all I can say,” he added, glancing at Acadia, who eyed him with a suspicious look, but ultimately nodded. Shawn seemed like he wanted to add something. Noah just stared.
Shawn hesitated at first, then spoke. “He’s a lot like us, more than we realize. Just—older. More… matured. Complex.” Acadia laughed dryly.
“Of course you’d say that,” she said.
“I study cognitive linguistics. Of course I’d know.”
Noah was about to say something before Axel cut into the conversation. “Just— let’s not judge anyone anymore. I think we’re all deeper than we realize. Sam included,” Axel said. “All of us are equal.”
Later, he looked at a frame his father had of himself, NP, and Sam. Axel looked from NP to Sam, then Sam to NP, and realized they were distinctly different. Different in not just appearance, but personality too. Each was their own person.
Axel finally understood.