The Nemesis

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The Nemesis Page 25

by S. J. Kincaid


  His face slackened as he realized his own error. “Nemesis,” he said in a defeated voice. “Please. Don’t do this.”

  “Last chance,” I said very softly. “Where is he?”

  Anguish slammed his fist into the nearby shelf, knocking over an antique bust of the Roman Emperor Claudius. “His mind is intact, Nemesis! Undamaged! We scanned it with the medical bots—the Venalox did nothing!”

  Some complex, unnameable emotion blasted through me. I heard myself as though from a great distance, cool and flat: “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

  “He did everything!” Anguish glared at me. “He’s not some victim, some tragic figure—he chose this course of his own volition!” His eyes spat fire. “You loved a tyrant! And now—what, you mean to save him? There’s nothing to save! Don’t you understand? The rot is inborn!”

  “Brother,” I said. For I had looked on him so. I had imagined us alike, united by nature, honed in the same cruel forge, tested by the same strange human tribulations.

  But Tyrus’s mind had not been damaged by Venalox. He’d not been destroyed by Pasus. He was alive. And he was mine. Mine to kill all over again if I still felt in this thunderous mood when I beheld him.

  He was not theirs to torture.

  “Brother,” I said, “our paths diverge here. Tell me where he is. Or she is dead.”

  “Nemesis, see reason! He chose every evil you saw him commit! You are better than him. And he’s dying, I tell you. The second we control the ship, he’ll be—”

  “Time’s up,” I said as I raised my weapon.

  At the same moment, his hand flashed forward, hurling the stone bust at my head.

  My shot burst it apart midair, but Anguish was already springing forward, leaping over the desk in a mass of muscle. His feet slammed into my chest, knocking me back against the wall. My hand plunged into the fire. I tore out a flaming log and swung it into his temple.

  He seized me with an unbreakable grip, throwing me into the desk. It toppled beneath the impact, spilling me and Neveni to the floor.

  She moaned weakly. I rolled out of the way of Anguish’s stomping foot, then dragged her limp body up and took her neck in my hands.

  Anguish froze, crouched on the floor, his chest heaving with exertion.

  “Don’t,” he panted.

  “Humans are fragile,” I said. “Save her or don’t. Decide now.”

  “Nemesis, please—”

  “Slam your head into the wall. Knock yourself unconscious. Or watch me break her neck.”

  “This is a mistake,” he panted. “The gravest mistake you’ll ever make. Whatever you think you’re planning, it won’t—”

  “Decide.”

  “Nemesis, please,” he said. “I am your brother.”

  “Yes. So stop begging.” I met and held his eyes. “Remember: we are Diabolics.”

  I hurled Neveni at him.

  A Diabolic would have let her fall. But Anguish did not.

  As he rushed forward to catch her, I whipped the weapon up from the floor and shot him in the shoulder. Then I hurtled forward and delivered a roundhouse to his head.

  He slumped to the floor beside her, unconscious.

  Thrumming with adrenaline, I stepped outside the chamber. “Seal the door,” I said breathlessly to the air, before remembering I could give no such order: the ship was not under my command.

  Nevertheless, I knew where to go. He’s dying, my brother had told me.

  I lifted up my weapon and sprinted toward the one place that would best support the interrogation of a dying man: the medical bay.

  Bored Partisans were stationed along the approach. For a moment, I earnestly considered fighting my way through them. But direct combat would draw reinforcements, most of which I’d likely end up killing. There had to be a better way.

  I tore off a strip of garment and set fire to it with my weapon, then ducked into an empty chamber to wait.

  As the smoke curled up, an alarm went off. Partisans rushed past the door to quell it.

  I waited until their footsteps receded, then dashed out. One Partisan, a slower runner than the others, rounded the corner just as I appeared. My fist collided with his face before he could make a sound.

  I dragged him into the nearest empty chamber, then charged back toward the medical bay.

  I’d anticipated needing to barrel through locked doors. Instead the doors sensed my approach and slid open, causing me to skid to a startled stop.

  And there, sprawled out on a medical bed, ringed by med bots, his arms and legs bound to the cot, was Tyrus—unconscious.

  But alive.

  38

  “NO. NO, wait!” cried a man’s voice.

  I wheeled on him, weapon raised.

  But he was not armed. In fact, he positioned himself between me and Tyrus, his arms outstretched, as though to protect his prisoner from me.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” he said desperately. “We’re only keeping him alive for the command authorizations—I swear it!”

  Why, he believed I’d come here to kill Tyrus. Again.

  A laugh boiled up in my throat, but I managed to restrain it.

  “How is he?” I demanded.

  “Alive, but not for long. I have the kill dose right on hand.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder to indicate its location. “Once he’s strong enough to answer questions, he’s done for, I swear it. Please…”

  I realized I still stood in the doorway. One step forward allowed the doors to slide closed behind me. “Have you tried to wake him recently?”

  “No.” He hesitated. “It’s really not a good idea for you to be here—”

  “I won’t kill him.”

  I’d already done that. Now I needed answers.

  The man relaxed a touch, eyeing me uncertainly. After a moment, he eased back toward his worktable, which was encircled by computers, the screens dark for want of access codes to activate them.

  “He has no control over the machines anymore,” he assured me. “Look. All the security bots are like this.” He kicked something beneath his desk, and a security bot skidded across the floor, rolling over with a clatter.

  “Fascinating.” I fixed my gaze on Tyrus again, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. His cheeks looked sunken, his skin clammy and pale. I wanted to inspect him from head to toe, to run my hands over his skin and make sure all was intact. To kiss his brow, to draw his breath into my lungs and bury my face in his throat, to smell his skin and—

  No.

  The rage was safer. The rage was the only thing I could trust.

  “So the shock neutralized his power,” I murmured.

  “It seems so.”

  My thoughts traveled back to the holographic of Tarantis, and that reference to being stripped of power. The Interdict had mentioned the same thing to me. Electrical shocks to stop the heart had stripped Amon von Domitrian of his power. It had done the trick with this Emperor as well.

  “What do you intend to do?” I asked.

  “We have Liar’s Bane ready.” The healer, if that was his calling—for all I knew, his specialty was interrogation—lifted up a phial of reddish liquid. “It requires dilution, of course. Once he’s strong enough, we’ll figure out the proper dose. He’ll spill the authorization codes, and we’ll put him down.”

  Put him down. I would put this medic down, before I left this room. “Give it to him now,” I said.

  He looked startled. “But we have to wait for—”

  “Now,” I said. “Or should I?”

  The healer still hesitated, his glance shifting toward the communications port on the wall. “I don’t think—”

  I lifted my weapon. “Now.”

  The healer shrank into himself, then nodded. He carried the phial to his workstation, where a dropper and a flask waited. “But this… it could kill him if it’s too soon.”

  I had no choice. The fire would be put out soon enough. Then the guards would return. I was stronger than a hu
man, but not a ship full of them, well-armed.

  “I have killed him once already,” I said.

  My voice sounded indifferent. But inside me, a turmoil was stirring, unsettling my anger and causing my throat to tighten. I looked away from the healer, who was busy titrating the first dose.

  Tyrus looked peaceful where he lay, the sheet draped high over his chest, his palms limp and loose at his sides. His lips parted slightly on his indrawn breath. He looked very young, and thoroughly helpless.

  The sight of him arrested me. How many times had I watched him sleep? I required much less sleep than a normal human, yet I had been content to lie awake watching him, just as with Donia in my youth.

  Donia had slept like a child, sprawling with an abandoned sort of innocence, as though no evil existed in the world. Not so with Tyrus. Even before the Venalox, he’d been tormented routinely by nightmares. I never saw him sleep for a decent stretch without tossing violently and then gasping awake, usually in reaction to some tiny noise: a shift of the pressure from the air ventilators, a purr of distant engines.

  I’d understood the difference. In her childhood, Donia had been protected—by me.

  In his childhood, Tyrus had been hunted—by everyone.

  I had wished, as his wife, to turn back time. To meet him as a small child, and to persuade him of his safety, so he might sleep as Donia had. With Donia, I had lain awake out of pleasant boredom. With Tyrus, I had lain awake on duty. When he tossed and turned, my hand found his forehead and smoothed back his hair. Sometimes that was enough to sweeten his dreams. Sometimes he would clumsily seize my hand and graze his lips over my palm, or catch me by the waist and draw me nearer.…

  Regardless, he’d never slept as he did now—peacefully, without a single flicker of his lashes or some contortion of limbs.

  As for noise, I found myself listening to the Alexandria’s sounds. I heard the distant ruckus of the Partisans putting out the fire I’d set, the purring of the atmospheric vents, the humming of the lights.

  This was not a quiet ship.

  My eyes narrowed.

  The healer stepped up to the bedside, the injection in his hand.

  Tyrus’s eyes snapped open. Somehow he’d freed his arm. It lashed up, snaring the man about the neck and dragging him down into the sheets.

  “Release the restraints!” bellowed Tyrus.

  I could have stepped forward. Instead I laid down my weapon and watched as the healer, frantic for lack of air, slapped his hand out to release the other three bindings.

  With a roar, Tyrus flipped them both off the bed, onto the floor.

  When he rose again, he held the healer in a headlock, a laser scalpel pressed to the man’s throat. Tyrus’s wild, bloodshot eyes found mine.

  I had not thought it possible for him to grow paler. His freckles stood out lividly against his bluish skin. For the length of a heartbeat, his eyes softened. “Nemesis,” he breathed.

  And then his jaw tensed, his forearm flexing as he strengthened his grip on the medic.

  “No closer,” he warned me, “or he dies.”

  I stared at him disbelievingly. “Tyrus, I don’t even know the man’s name.”

  The healer moaned. “Ciprian! It’s Ciprian!”

  My eyes remained locked on Tyrus’s. “Kill him or let him go. We have business, you and I.”

  Tyrus’s bloodless lips quirked into a fleeting smile. “True enough.” Then, baring his teeth, he shoved the man hard toward me.

  Ciprian thought, perhaps, that he was stumbling to safety. Before he could bolt past me to the doors, my fist lashed forward and knocked him out cold.

  Put down, indeed.

  I stepped back to the doors and sealed them shut, then rounded back on Tyrus. He straightened to his full height—then sagged back against the wall, panting. The panting sharpened, turned into a ragged, hitching laugh.

  “Try, try again.” He opened his arms—and then, when I hesitated, straightened with visible effort, saying, “Come, now—no weapon? Use your fists instead.”

  I understood suddenly. He, too, thought I’d come to finish the job I’d begun by the power core.

  I picked up my weapon from the floor and watched his laughter die. “Don’t tempt me,” I said softly.

  But my hands were trembling, causing the weapon to shake. He noticed. The tight line of his mouth loosened, and he looked back into my eyes, a question on his face.

  “So,” he murmured.

  How strong was he? Could he walk on his own power? How thoroughly had they healed him? Did he require med bots’ attention?

  “I should kill you,” I said through my teeth.

  “All those images that Neveni sent me—the tortures I watched you endure…” He took a hard breath. “Those were lies. Fine acting, Nemesis. You know how to dagger the heart.”

  I drove my hand into my pocket and unsheathed my own accusation: the hair clip. “Nothing I did to you was as cruel as this.”

  Tyrus recoiled, then caught his balance by grabbing the bed frame. It was taking him a great effort to remain upright, I realized. “You saw it?”

  The answer was obvious. I did not respond.

  He remained staring at the hair clip. “I was dead?” He sounded dazed.

  All of a sudden, rage overwhelmed me. “Yes.” Had he imagined himself immortal, untouchable? Did he not remember that his divinity was a lie? “Your heart stopped. As any fragile human’s might. I killed you.” But I no longer needed to feel guilty—for he was alive, and in his beautiful, accursed eyes, I saw the resumption of that calculating intelligence that had deceived me, manipulated me, reduced me to a grieving, sobbing heap. “Is that not what you wanted—an enemy? Is that not what your secret plan was all about?”

  His face, when he lifted it, was hollow and ashen. “I never wanted any of this.”

  “Nova blast you, Tyrus!” I hurled the clip at his head. Dodging it, he staggered to his knees.

  I lunged forward, looming over him. He hurled himself back against the wall, his shoulders drawing up as he prepared to defend himself from me.

  But it would be a futile effort. We both knew that in his weakened state, I could kill him easily.

  “Why did you do this to me?” I demanded.

  He had never lacked courage. He showed it now by returning my look with determination—making an effort to conceal his weakness, his labored breathing. A bead of sweat snaked down his temple, and I curled my hand into a fist, fighting the urge to brush it away.

  “You know the reason,” he said raggedly. “If you have seen what you say.”

  “But why lie to me, Tyrus? Hadn’t I proved myself trustworthy?”

  “A thousand times,” he said steadily.

  “You deceived me. You manipulated and used me. You made me think—”

  “I made you think I was a monster.” His jaw squared mutinously. “I know exactly what I did. I sent you away when you put me in an impossible position. I ensured your survival when you tried to force me to leave this Empire or take your life.”

  Slowly, painfully, he began to shove himself back to his feet.

  “You—” He panted with effort. “You were the only one who mattered to me, and I couldn’t have you near me for this. And I—” He blinked, then visibly startled. Looking up and around, as though in search of something, he muttered, “They’re gone. I can’t—I don’t feel the machines.”

  “No.” My satisfaction felt bitter. “The discharge stopped your heart and disabled the machines in your blood. Even if you escape, you’ll find it quite difficult to play the Divine Emperor now.”

  A bleakness passed over his face. “Nemesis.” With new urgency, he stepped away from the wall. “Listen to me.” He took hold of my arms, stepped close enough that I felt the warmth of his body. “The time for lies is past.”

  I wanted to lay my face in the crook of his neck and breathe him in, and I scorned myself for it. “How convenient for you” was all I said.

  He caught hol
d of my face with urgency. Surprise twisted through my belly. His expression was vulnerable, naked of defenses.

  “I know I have wronged you.”

  “Beyond the speaking of it,” I said hoarsely.

  “But I cannot undo what I have done. It’s too late. You know what I mean to do. I have to finish this.”

  I gritted my teeth and held myself rigid as his hand slipped across my throat and down my arm, as light as a caress. His fingers entwined with mine, and the stroke of his thumb over my palm loosened something—the weight of my grief, the nightmare of my guilt, breaking away and dissipating.

  And I could not lie to him. “I love you,” I murmured. But even as he drew a sharp breath, his grip tightening, I added, “I’m not sure it makes a difference.” My love for him did not outweigh my anger. “I can’t trust you, Tyrus.”

  He exhaled. “I’ve given you no cause to trust me. And this”—he glanced quickly around—“is no place to persuade you differently. I’m powerless. Trapped. And I need to get out of here. I need your help.”

  “You need me now.”

  “Yes.”

  But anger was wiser than love. “You may need me,” I said. “But you don’t deserve me.”

  He laughed—a startled, swift, delighted laugh. “You finally realized that.” And then, brows arching, he looked toward the unconscious medic.

  Stiffly, like an elder, he knelt to retrieve the injector filled with Liar’s Bane. “Here,” he grunted. “A truth serum.” He pressed the device into my hand. “Use it on me. Later. Give me the dose. Ask me anything you care to know then. But first—first, we need to escape.”

  Abruptly, the doors to the medical bay shook. Voices rang through the Alexandria’s corridors, and my urgent gaze remained locked with Tyrus’s.

  We were trapped in here.

  A scorching smell pervaded the air. The Partisans were using a cutting laser.

  “Up,” Tyrus said, his gaze flying toward the ceiling. “We have to go up. I’ll show you.”

  He heaved himself clumsily up onto the medical bed, stopping to draw in ragged breaths. Then he unsteadily swayed upright and pawed open a door in the ceiling, unveiling a darkened crawl shaft. Then, another pause to gasp for air.

  He was too weak. This would be easy for Tyrus normally, but he could barely hold his balance right now as he groped for the frame of the vent.

 

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