The laughter of the little boy from the airport echoed in my ears and my heart squeezed. Maybe I was forbidden to create a real family, but I couldn’t stand the thought of innocents having that chance ripped away. I was starting to believe that us gods were more of a curse than a blessing.
Thinking of Cash made me worry for his safety, but he would be okay. He knew how to handle himself. I should be more concerned for the security personnel that had tried to stop him because that cold, calculating fury in his eyes had been directed at them. It had been better for everyone that I went peacefully.
And now I had found out Bruce’s targets.
I made the right choice.
I flushed the toilet, washed my hands in the little sink and patted the excess water on my sweaty neck, still bristling from the close call.
When I entered the living room, a deep male voice said from the doorway, “Are you ready to go?”
“Bruce. Nice to see you too.” The disdain was crystal clear in my voice. “Ready to go where?”
My father smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled into tiny slithers of crow’s feet.
“To see the registrar,” he said.
Chapter 4
When we went back outside to the hallway, I stumbled over a pink suitcase with silver trimming. Ouch! Pain pounded my shin and I squealed, rubbing the sore spot.
“Why is your luggage in the hallway?” Bruce asked, annoyed we had stopped.
“It’s not mine,” I quipped back. “My suitcase is purple, not pink.”
Lincoln read the name tag. “Says right here: If lost, return to La Roux Urser.”
I snatched the tag and read for myself. “That’s not my writing.”
My father sighed and made Squid stash the suitcase back within the apartment before we continued down the hall toward the Ludus entrance. Squid returned to his favorite spot at my elbow and pushed me along. It made me think he was expecting trouble.
It was then something odd occurred to me. “Why are we going to the registrar? I thought I didn’t have to do that for a few months. Training first, registration later, right?”
A grunt from Bruce. “You’re late, sweet-pea. Registration is today.”
Sweet-pea?
“You’re registering with me,” Lincoln said.
“Hang on.” I stopped as a rising sense of panic engulfed me. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.”
“Correct,” Bruce said. “Usually around your eighteenth birthday, your powers awaken and you discover you’re a demi-god. You register around your twenty-first birthday and then the trials can happen anytime between a few days and six months later. You’re almost twenty-four. The circumstances of your inception were suspect and the Tribunal has requested you complete your trials as soon as possible. That means you enter the same group as your brother.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“You’re right. It’s not. They had years of solid education and game preparation before they registered. You haven’t.”
“So I’m supposed to learn three years’ worth of training in, how long?”
“The trials start in a few days.”
A few days!
And if I couldn’t pass the trials… the breeding. This was not looking good for me. But I had a few days. Surely I could come up with a contingency escape plan by then.
So many thoughts whirled through my head as I walked to the Ludus exit, past the creepy admin guy, and to the registrar’s office on the other side. My mind completely vacated when I pushed beyond the registrar’s door to an empty waiting room with chairs along the wall.
I sat down on a vacant chair and inspected the magazine stack on the coffee table. Road Rider. Sweet. I’d barely picked up the book when yelling and shouting came from behind another door. Suddenly, it whooshed open and a woman in green medical scrubs rushed out. I glimpsed the view inside the room. Two more people dressed in scrubs. A reclining chair sat at the center with industrial lights shining down on it. There was a patient in there, arguing with the people in scrubs and someone off scene. When the doors closed again, I caught a whiff of the inside air. Disinfectant.
Just what kind of registration office was that?
The shouting escalated, but Bruce, Lincoln, and Squid didn’t seem fazed. On the other hand, my insides twisted into knots imagining all sorts of dastardly happenings. What were they doing to that poor boy? Was I next?
The women who’d run out earlier returned in a fluster with two companions, both dressed in white. They reminded me of the office people I’d seen in one of the fake windows in the Ludus main thoroughfare. Whereas one person was large, muscled and Caucasian, the other was small and Asian featured. The latter was the scary one. His wire rimmed glasses and small stature presented him as a weak man. He was neither man, nor weak, with a virulent aura that betrayed his genetics. Hostile energy exploded into the room upon their entry and, for the first time since I’d arrived, I felt truly afraid. He had a silver pin on his white jacket lapel that reminded me of the pink-haired lady from the fake window. The oroboros—a snake eating its tail. There was no question that he was a god, and if he was here stuck on Earth, he must be a banished Watcher, like Bruce. Apart from my father and Marc, this man was only other full-blooded Seraphim I’d met.
This man glanced at us, dismissed Lincoln and myself as insignificant, and then met my father’s eyes. They nodded to each other.
“In there?” the man asked Bruce.
Bruce waved at the registration office. “Seems like you have a compliance issue, Felix. Does the Tribunal need my assistance in the absence of the Gamekeeper?”
Felix glared at Bruce.
The air chilled in that minute. If it were possible to sink any further into my chair, I would have. The energy between Bruce and Felix was tangible. Their auras, invisible to anyone but me, sized each other up, testing the other’s strengths and weaknesses like two lions in the wild.
“You may have sway with Octavia, Urser, but you have no jurisdiction when it comes to Tribunal law,” Felix said.
Octavia must be another Tribunal member, and if he had sway with her… then no wonder my registration had been moved forward. What else could he get the Tribunal to agree to?
My father’s nonchalant shrug broke the tension and I breathed again.
The door to the registrar’s office opened and Felix and his soldier went inside. The door closed behind them.
I heard a lot of shouting. Felt a lot of auras becoming erratic with anxiety. Some banging followed a flare of metaphysical energy and then… quiet.
When the door reopened, Felix and the soldier stalked out followed by the woman in green scrubs. They all left the waiting room without a further look our way.
A glance inside the surgery showed the disgruntled patient was gone.
I never found out what had happened to him, but I could only guess. His aura was there one minute, and not the next. In an instant, he’d been canceled.
That could be me.
One wrong word. One false move. Piss off the wrong person, and I was done. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
After a few minutes, we were called and went inside.
Too many medical tools, monitors, and computers were in the room. It reminded me of the sterile place the Inquisitor questioned me in, long ago. Except, instead of buckets of water on the far shelf for my head to be dunked in, there were large glass containers about the size of a melon, full of pearlescent fluid. Eight containers in total.
A tall lady with silver gray hair tied at her nape, sat with her back to us scribbling in a notebook. When she heard the scraping of the door as it opened, she turned in our direction. She had a long sharp nose, high cheekbones, and wore aubergine lipstick. She took one look at my father through deep heavy set eyes, put her pen down, and bowed reverently.
“Sir,” she said, and then waved at her two male co-workers who were busying themselves on the far wall, checking various instruments and medical parap
hernalia. Metal clinked in the silence.
“Prep the chair,” she added to her colleagues. “We have two today.”
“Wait.” My heart leapt into my throat. “Shouldn’t my mentor be here?”
No one answered me. I hoped for any distraction to stall the process. The needles didn’t look good. The woman’s flat lining aura didn’t look good.
“I’ll go first.” Lincoln offered and moved to sit in the chair. “It’s no big deal, really, Roo. Just a few blood samples.”
I looked over my shoulder to inspect the exit. Squid remained outside to guard the door. I inched backwards away from the chair and intended to run out, to find Cash, someone. I desperately wanted to get away, but the thought of being canceled kept my feet glued to the floor. My skin went clammy. A pressure began to build, starting in my middle and spreading to my prickly palms. If I looked down, I would see my hands fashioned into claws, the tendons in my arms bulging out. But I didn’t look down. I couldn’t pay attention to the fear. If I did, it would have power over me. I could do something I’d regret. Like explode.
I tried to focus on something in the room that was not frightening.
Why are there so many people here for a few blood samples? The Others asked.
Something wasn’t right.
Lincoln sat back in the reclining chair and had the crook of his arm swabbed, belted and a vein tapped. While the attendants discussed something, the lady—who I assumed was the registrar—flipped her book to a particular page, picked up her pen and looked down her long nose at my brother.
“What is your Player assigned name?”
“Lincoln Caleb Urser.”
She scribbled down a note.
“In the absence of the Gamekeeper, who will witness this registration?”
My father stood forward.
“I will,” he said. The woman held out a pen.
“Do you solemnly swear that you are a Watcher among the people—not a Player—and do so have the right to make an impartial judgment in the Game be it for truth, justice or in the essence of integrity?”
“Just give me the pen.” My father snatched the pen from the registrar’s hands. He used his large body to shepherd the lady away from her precious notebook. He pushed a button on the pen and jammed it into his forearm where it gathered blood in the nib. He didn’t flinch.
“Okay. Now, I’m assuming you're his mentor. Yes? Good. As his mentor, do you swear that this soul is the one he claims to be and that you are responsible for his education, results and welfare for the duration of his trials?” Her voice trembled and she leant away from my father. “And in failure to complete the trials to a satisfactory level, you are the one responsible for seeing the participant’s game canceled and returned to Purgatory?”
Bruce glared through slitted eyes and signed on the dotted line.
Cash should be here.
It was a cry of certainty from deep within my soul.
“Take his blood. Two vials,” she ordered the attendants.
They complied, pulling thick red blood out of his arms and into awaiting glass tubes. One green sidekick injected the blood into another larger vial, then added some pearlescent liquid from the jars beyond. He took the resulting concoction over to the computer and proceeded to test it with a machine. The other sidekick moved with clinical precision and swabbed Lincoln’s wound, taped it up and held pressure to it. Then he swabbed the alternate arm, strapped it and tapped a vein.
Lincoln’s brows drew together and he shifted in his seat.
“Are you taking more?” he asked.
Without answering, the registrar closed her notebook with a snap and stood up. She peered at the blood concoction near the computer and once satisfied with whatever readout flashed across the screen, lifted a glittering hypodermic needle and sucked up the pearly red mixture of Lincoln’s blood from the vial on the machine. She gave the needle a little squirt to remove excess air. A line of sparkling fluid shot into the air and landed on the floor in front of me in a blob. She approached Lincoln.
“What is that?” Lincoln shuffled a little more in his seat. “What did you mix it with?”
“Now Mr. Urser, you may feel a slight pinch as this goes in. Please relax and it will all be over in a minute.”
“What is that?” Lincoln’s voice took on a tightness, his eyes wide.
The registrar nodded to the two attendants and they held down Lincoln’s arms. He struggled, so they pulled out straps from underneath the chair and restrained him.
“You need to tell me what that is,” he said, pulling back from his captors.
I turned to my father, but he stood there with his arms folded and a bored look on his face.
The registrar shoved the needle into my brother’s vein and pushed the glowing liquid into his arm. Lincoln froze, seized more like it. His eyes rolled back into his head and he convulsed.
“Stop.” I stepped forward but my father placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“He’s been injected with nano-transmitters. They are essential for us to monitor vitals during the trials. Don’t interfere,” he said.
The shrill sound of a phone ringing filled the air.
It was Bruce’s. When he answered, his expression darkened. He turned his back on me and walked to the corner of the room to speak quietly. In two steps I was by Lincoln’s side.
“Lincoln. Are you okay?” I placed a hand on his hot cheek.
In the background, I heard Bruce’s voice take on an aggressive tone and his aura buzzed with irritation.
Lincoln murmured something. He looked so innocent with his eyes closed, long lashes splayed against his cherub cheeks.
“Are we receiving data?” the registrar asked.
“Yes. Loud and clear.” The attendant who answered her had removed his mask and gloves. He touched the screen in front of him and various boxes of data blinked at us. Lincoln’s face popped up too.
“Good. Lift him off and put him in the waiting room.” The registrar spouted orders to her crew. One of them helped a dazed Lincoln out of the room.
“La Roux, you’re next,” she said.
In a knee jerk reaction, I backed away and bumped into my father.
“Roo-Roo. The quicker you get this over with, the quicker you can go back to our rooms.”
“Our rooms?” I turned to face my father. “I never agreed to stay with you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t have a choice. You said you wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. Are you making a big deal?”
“I meant I would not make a big deal about coming here, to the Ludus. And I haven’t. I’m here. I never said I’d live with you once I got here.”
“You said, and I quote ‘I won’t kick up a stink about the rest’.”
“I didn’t say what the rest was.”
“Don’t be obtuse.”
“Oh, you mean like how you said I had six months to train, now I suddenly have days?”
Animosity boiled in his eyes. He glanced over my shoulder and motioned to the attendants.
“I don’t have time for this. Strap her down.”
There was no need to gather my energy, all I had to do was pull on my offender’s aura with my will and let it snap back like a rubber band. He jerked as though stung and rubbed his shoulders with alarmed eyes and looked to my father for help.
“That’s enough Roo,” my father barked, eyes burning with fury. “You have to be registered; otherwise your game will be over before it has begun. Just like the boy you saw before us. Is that what you want?”
We stared each other off for what seemed like an eternity but in the end I caved. He was right. I needed to be registered otherwise I would be canceled. Dead. I was only here to play the Game. If I didn’t want to do it, then I’d be killed. My soul would float to wherever the hell Purgatory was and wait until Marc decided he felt like taking a trip back to the Empire. I tapped my finger on my thigh. Register, or die.
“Fine.” I sat in the chair.
“La Roux Elizabeth Urser.”
She scribbled down a note.
“I want my mentor here.”
“I thought Urser was your mentor.”
“Nope. Cash Samson.”
Her expression changed from condescending to downright comical. Her mouth opened wide and her brows winged up high. When she gathered her composure, she gazed down at her book and paused.
“We need the Gamekeeper here.” Her voice was shaking and she refused to look up. “I hereby declare this registration postponed until he is back from the Empire.”
A growl emitted from the base of my father’s throat and the room shook. I swear, the room actually shook. The air thickened until my eyes stung and it became hard to breathe.
Bruce grabbed the woman by the scruff of her neck, spinning her until she faced him. He jerked her chin up so their eyes met.
“Look at me woman.” He shook her like a rag doll.
She looked at him.
“I decide who gets registered. Not the Gamekeeper, do you understand, Andrea?”
“Yes, sir. You decide who gets registered. Not the Gamekeeper. I understand.” Her eyes glazed over, all zombie-like and her voice was monotone.
Bruce let go of her and took a step back. “Now take her blood.”
Andrea nodded and indicated to the remaining attendant to take my blood.
Everything inside me tensed. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. And this sure as hell wasn’t Oz. I sank in the chair.
Note to self: Do not look my father in the eyes.
Before I knew it, two vials of blood were removed from my right arm and mixed into another waiting vial of pearly liquid.
Andrea picked up her notebook and looked at my father’s chest. “Do you solemnly swear that you are a Watcher among the people, not a Player and do so have the right to make impartial judgments in the Game be it truth, justice and in the essence of—?”
“For fuck’s sake.” My father picked up the blood pen and stabbed himself in the arm.
The Game of Gods: Series Box Set Page 49