The Nine

by Molles, DJ

  “Yes.”

  Lux slid one hand—perfectly manicured, Perry noticed, and without a callus to harden it—into a pouch on his belt, and drew out a round metal disk that Perry recognized as his clasp. Lux held this up between thumb and forefinger. “And Uncle Sergio gave you this, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he give it to you?”

  “In the tunnels,” Perry said, wondering how much he should say, and whether denial and deception would even do him any good. His brain was still too muddled to be very creative with his answers, but he sensed that it would pass. When it did, should he try to lie? Was there any point in it? “After Selos’s praetors attacked The Outsiders camped there.”

  Lux gave him an evaluating look, then lowered the clasp. “You’re aware that Paladin Selos was your biological father, correct?”

  Perry swallowed, though there was nothing in his paper mouth to swallow. “Yes.”

  “And yet you chose to kill him anyways?”

  Perry found a little flame of anger still alive in him. That was good. He could use that. “Selos was trying to kill me. I only defended myself.”

  Lux considered this, but didn’t respond to it. “Are you aware that Selos had a wife?”

  Perry’s mouth worked with the words of truth, but he found, right in that moment, that he was capable of lying after all: “No.”

  He wasn’t sure why he lied about that. And who did it benefit?

  Lux searched Perry’s face for deceit, but Perry had lived a dangerous life up to that point, and he was no stranger to lies, and how to sell them. He made his face neither earnest, nor clever, instead choosing to keep an expression of pained blankness, as though he still did not have the brainpower to lie.

  “Her name is Paladin Mala,” Lux finally said. “She expressed some interest in finding you. She is a tall woman with dark hair. Have you spoken to her?”

  “No.”

  “Have you spoken to any female paladins in the course of the last day prior to your capture?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting.” Lux raised the clasp again. “This clasp requires Confluence to operate. What is it that the clasp contains?”

  Perry frowned. “Connect to it and see for yourself.”

  Lux eyed the item in his fingers. “I cannot. Its utilities are closed to me. As is the case with many private items used by the Confluent, it is atuned to you specifically. I can, however, detect that it bears two functions. One, I can reasonably assume to be an energy shield. The other I do not know.” His gaze shifted to Perry. “What is the other function?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Perry said. “It’s private.”

  “Is it the message from your father?” Lux asked, raising one eyebrow. “Yes, Percival, I know about the message from Cato McGown. You don’t need to hide that from me.”

  Perry didn’t respond.

  “What I need to know, is what the message said.”

  Perry clenched his jaw, unwilling to speak.

  Lux pocketed the clasp again, then regarded Perry for a long moment in silence. “I understand that you have no great love of me. Why would you? My people rule over yours, often cruelly. You see others of your race marched off to die terrible deaths fighting in a war that you do not understand.” Lux managed to look regretful. “And you my race, sitting high on their command modules, never shedding a drop of blood for a cause they claim to espouse.” Lux lowered his voice. “It must make you sick to your stomach.”

  “Angry.”

  “What’s that?”

  Perry’s lips trembled with a sudden and unexpected surge of emotion. He raised his face to Lux, defiant. “It doesn’t make me sick. It makes me angry.”

  “Of course it does,” Lux uttered softly. “It would make me angry as well, if our roles were reversed. To see the effects of the war, but never to know why—why it is always your people that have to die, and not mine.”

  “So that you can keep us depopulated?” Perry whispered. “So that you can keep us from rising up again?”

  Lux’s eyes didn’t betray anything. They remained placid. Steadfast.

  “The whole thing’s a lie, isn’t it?” Perry said. “The whole war. The two sides. There is no Truth and Light, is there? There’s just the demigods, living a life of luxury in The Clouds, while humanity fights and dies for a lie.”

  The slightest strain on Lux’s features. A marginal narrowing of the eyes. “And what led you to this particular conclusion, Percival?”

  “People might not be Confluent,” Perry replied. “But we’re not stupid. We know the truth. You’ve just ground us down for so long that there’s not much point in talking about it, is there? It makes no difference if we believe in your bullshit or not. At the end of the day, the pontiffs will make their conscriptions, and we all get sent off to die. And if we uttered our nonbelief, we’d only be hung as heretics anyways. So why not go along with it? We don’t have the power not to.”

  “Is that what you want, Percival? The power to say no?”

  “I want the power to make my own decisions,” Perry snapped. “The power to live my life, and to let everyone else live their lives, without having to worry about dying on a fucking battlefield, or swinging from a rope if we speak our minds.” He leaned forward against his restraints. “I want to take the power from you.”

  Lux didn’t seem offended by this. “Is that why you’re going to the East Ruins?”

  Perry drew back, sensing unstable footing. He chose not to answer that one.

  “Tell me,” Lux looked away. “What do you know about the East Ruins? What is it that you’re hoping to find there?”

  “Answers,” Perry said, because it was the only thing besides silence that wasn’t an obvious lie.

  “You wish for answers. Perhaps I can oblige. What do you want to know?”

  “You only want me to ask questions to see what I already know. And besides, what makes you think I’d trust anything you tell me?”

  “A valid concern,” Lux allowed. “But let me tell you this: There are two people in this room. Only one of them has told the truth this entire time. Who do you think that is?”

  “Hack,” Perry said.

  Lux frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re a hack. You think I can’t see through your mindgames? You ask me this clever question, assuming I’m so godsdamned dumb I won’t realize that I’m fucked no matter how I answer.” Perry smiled savagely. “That’s the problem with you demigods. You really think you’re deities. You really think you’re better than us. But you’re not. You just have Confluence. That’s all.”

  Lux considered this for a long time. He appeared genuinely thoughtful about it, but Perry was growing more certain that this was all just a part of the demigod’s game. Did he really think that he could convince Perry to talk by acting like he gave a shit about humanity?

  After a time, Lux shifted his weight. Brought his hands around and rubbed them languidly together. Inspected his perfect, unblemished palms. Hands that had never seen hard labor. Hands that had never scraped dust from under their fingernails after working to claw some sort of life out of a scorched land. Hands that had never been knicked and scraped and bloodied by years of toil.

  Lux could try all he wanted, but he would never understand.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Lux began.

  “Oh gods,” Perry slumped.

  “Don’t be insolent,” Lux snapped, betraying the first modicum of emotion that Perry had seen from him yet.

  Perry raised his eyes, and he let the demigod speak, though he made sure to keep his expression as insolent as possible.

  “Your ignorance abounds,” Lux said, standing tall over Perry and staring down at him with a slight sneer upon his lips. But then his expression softened. He took a step back from Perry. “But it is something you were born into. A result of the lies you’ve been taught all your life. How could I expect different?”

  Lux gave a long sigh throug
h his nose, as though settling himself. “In the days that followed the destruction of the world, the gods that we call the All-Kind banished the Ferox into the Outer Darkness. The Ferox were the soldiers, and they had tamed the universe for the All-Kind. The All-Kind did not have need of them any longer, but, being wise, they understood that they might have need of a soldier race sometime in the future. But now, the gifts of the Ferox—Confluence—had been imparted to Primus’s nine sons.” Lux looked briefly pensive. “Those first demigods, the nine sons of Primus, they could do things that we no longer can. They had Confluence, but they didn’t need the crude technology that we must use to harness it. Their Gift was pure. Unbridled. Over the many generations since, that Gift has become adulterated. Washed out, by too much human genetics. Which is where we find ourselves today.”

  Lux seemed to stir himself out of his thoughts. “The All-Kind saw us—this new race of demigods—as being the soldiers that might one-day replace the Ferox, if the need should arise. But the need was not current. And so, though they had considered destroying us, they decided instead to leave us to our own devices, on the condition that we never attempt to go to the stars again—until they returned for us, if and when they saw a need.”

  Lux made eye contact with Perry again. “I tell you this now, because they left certain…insurances behind. Insurances that, should they be meddled with, would cause the All-Kind to return, but not in order to claim us as the replacements to the Ferox: They will return to destroy us.”

  Perry felt the silence grow. An invitation for him to say something.

  “And why,” Perry murmured. “Do you think that I would care if the All-Kind returned and wiped your entire race off the face of the earth?”

  Lux’s face twitched. “You think the humans would escape their wrath?”

  “I think you’re scared,” Perry returned. “I think you’re terrified of a coming extinction. And I think you’re trying to rope me into that.” He shook his head. “But I don’t care, Inquisitor Lux. I don’t care about your people, just as they’ve never cared about mine.”

  “You are Confluent,” Lux said, controlled anger simmering below the surface of his words. “Even if the All-Kind saw fit to allow the dregs of humanity to survive their wrath, you yourself would not escape it. In their eyes, you’d be one of us.”

  Perry leaned back, his face serene. “One man’s life is a small price to pay for the rest of humanity to be free of you.”

  Lux’s nostril’s flared, but no other emotion came from him. “Very well. I had hoped not to resort to baser means of getting what I need, but you seem determined to make me do so.” He raised his hand and flicked his wrist, and the massive metal slab of the doorway slid open, receding into the wall.

  A mech stood on the other side. Perry knew that it was a mech, because it did not bear the full-bodied affectation of humanity. Only its face looked like a human’s face, and the rest of it was steel and wires and servo motors.

  It stepped inside the room, regarding Perry with a face so unwrinkled and smooth, that it gave the impression of a young child, though the structure of it was clearly adult. Perry found the combination discomfiting.

  Lux stood, looking sidelong at Perry. “We captured your friends along with you. We have seen to their wounds. They are made whole again. But they will each now suffer greatly because of you. When you wish their suffering to end, you need only tell me two things, Percival: What the message on your clasp says; and who else you’ve revealed this information to.”

  “Why not give me the clasp and let me play it for you?” Perry tried, in a desperate gambit.

  Lux scoffed. “So you can activate the shield? Please. Who’s insulting the other’s intelligence now?” Lux turned to the mech that stood smiling sanguinely at Perry. “You may proceed.”

  Lux swept out of the room, the door sliding closed behind him.

  The mech with the child-man’s face took a step towards him, its right hand raising up.

  Perry lashed out at it. “Stay the fuck away from me!”

  The mech halted, but the smile never left its face. It spoke in a smooth, airy voice. “Percival, this will be much easier if you cooperate. If you fight, it will become painful.”

  Then, without waiting to see if its words had any effect, the mech reached forward again, its hand stretching out to Perry’s head.

  Perry groaned and strained against his bindings, but he could not get any farther from the hand, and gradually the thumb and middle finger gripped him by the temples, and his reality shifted, like being sucked through a wormhole.

  His eyesight opened again on the otherside of that dark tunnel, and when it did, he found himself in a room, unable to move, unable to look away, unable to even blink. His eyesight was fixed upon a figure lashed to a table, and a sound like an animal fighting for its life filled his ears.

  Stuber, Perry tried to cry out, but he had no voice in this place.

  Stuber could not see him. He lay flat on his back, his eyes wide and savage, his teeth bared. A scream ripped deep through his throat, though he refused to open his mouth and let it out, as he stared down at the torture that was being done to him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BASER MEANS

  Mala watched as Inquisitor Lux entered the holding cell. She stuffed down the physiological effects of adrenaline as it pounded through her, tamping it to a dull roar in the center of her being.

  Mala stood as Lux entered. She was not restrained, though she wasn’t free to leave either. It was a delicate balance that Inquisitor Lux rode at the moment. To keep her for a brief questioning could be explained away—putting her in shackles would end badly for him.

  House Batu was the most powerful house in The Clouds at the moment, and messing with any of its members bore consequences. If Lux wanted to imprison her, his proof of her wrongdoing would have to be ironclad.

  And the second that Mala saw his face, she knew that it wasn’t.

  She let out a breath that had been clenched in her chest—but slowly, so that Lux wouldn’t notice.

  She held Lux’s gaze with triumph in her eyes. “Come now, Lux. You look as though someone’s stolen your longstaff. Had you really wanted to imprison me so badly?”

  Lux regarded her. “I have no desire to imprison you, Mala. I only want the truth.”

  “You look very put-out for having received it.”

  “Because I’m afraid it’s not the truth.”

  Mala sighed. “You had your mech scan the halfbreed, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “And was he lying?”

  “The scans are not always accurate.”

  Mala smirked at him. “So he was telling the truth.”

  “The scans were inconclusive.” Lux narrowed his gaze. “Specifically when I questioned him about whether or not he spoke to you.”

  Mala lowered her chin and stepped toward Lux, closing the gap between them. Her voice became quiet and deadly. “Careful, Inquisitor Lux. I already told you that I had no interaction with the halfbreed. I was willing to entertain you while you corroborated my story with him. But now that it’s been corroborated, you seem unwilling to let it go. Others might call such a vendetta against me fool-hardy.”

  Lux’s brows twitched together. “Why are you hiding the truth from me, Mala? What reason could you possibly have for doing it? Why would you not kill the halfbreed when you had the chance?”

  Mala sneered. “Your stabs in the dark are becoming increasingly haphazard. You may end up stabbing yourself.”

  “Explain to me how his shield was depleted.”

  Mala leaned away from him. “I can’t explain what I don’t know. And how could you know that his shield was depleted? More jumping to conclusions?”

  “If his shield hadn’t been depleted, he would have had it activated when he arrived,” Lux asserted.

  “Perhaps your praetors managed to drain it. You did send ten squads. That’s a lot of firepower.”

  “None of
my praetors reported firing on anyone with an energy shield.”

  “Perhaps he killed the praetors that fired on him.”

  “None of the dead praetors bore wounds from a longstaff.”

  “Then your guess is as good as mine,” Mala snapped. “Perhaps he extinguished his shield to take a shot at you. Primus help me, are we partners in this investigation now? Are there any other theories you’d like me to help you with?”

  “Enough,” Lux said, turning away from her. “I have no further questions for you. Thank you for your…cooperation.” He waved his hand and the door opened.

  Mala straightened, hefting her longstaff. “Am I permitted to see the prisoner?”

  Lux looked over his shoulder but didn’t meet her gaze. “I’m assuming you mean the halfbreed.”

  “He is the one that killed my husband.”

  “He is indisposed at the moment.”

  “You’re not going to kill him, are you?” Mala said, her grip tightening on the longstaff. Then she hurriedly added, “It is my right!”

  “I gave you a chance to exercise what you perceive as your right, though no official right exists to you. For that, you are welcome. I will not give you another chance. He is in my hands now. I will do as the inquisition sees fit.”

  Mala turned towards the open door, but stopped. She stared at the empty space before her, those feelings threatening to rise up, threatening to blot out her Confluence, though she’d long ago learned how to control them. It was a testament to how strong they were—how pressed she felt—that she struggled with them at all.

  “I want you to know something, Lux,” Mala said, her voice softer, still facing the door. “No matter what you might think, we are both of us on the same side.”

  “The fanciful ideas you imprudently voice about the humans leads me to believe that’s not the case.”

  “Ideas are simply ideas,” Mala said as she stepped for the door. “Pragmatism and survival will always take precedent.”

  ***