"The Zieffer Meird Incident"
Nexus has accepted Sutta LeBerq's request to kill the notorious Zieffer Meird. Sutta has promised in turn to perform an operation that will relieve Nexus of the dreaming that drives him to acts of vengeance. Meird has been made aware that Nexus approaches, and listens as his statistician keeps him abreast of the rising odds that Nexus has come for the Zieffer's head. Meird takes it nobly, releasing his warriors to save themselves, spending an intimate moment with his wife, who promises to meet Meird on the other side and takes a cyanide capsule. Sutta smugly follows Nexus as he approaches Meird, but faced with Meird's humanity, Nexus decides he will not kill him, that the punishment of facing his mortality and losing his wife was enough. Sutta is irate, but has a backup plan to get Nexus under his control. His men back at Ylum launch an armed search for what they believe must be the hidden source of Nexus' power. Many lives are lost as Nexus' friends put down the intruders. Nexus arrives, and is disheartened. He agrees to tell Sundra what she wants to know, his origin.
Nexus' father, General Theodore Hellpop, was a war hero who became a Viceroy of the planet Vradic. He met Nexus' mother when she came to plea for her brother's release. Her brother was a priest with ties to the rebels. They fell in love, married, and she became pregnant. Her brother placed a curse on the unborn child, that his life would be a nightmare from which he would beg release. Vradic was falling to the rebels, and General Hellpop gave the order for the planet to be destroyed. He and his wife boarded a transport in shame and headed into a black hole, reappearing at an unknown area of the Universe at a planet that seemed like paradise.
40 pages, b&w, oversized.