“So? Valentin has a hundred pounds on me.”
“And an assumption of absolute superiority. James, do you consider me an ally?”
“No, but you sure as shit can defend yourself.”
“Good answer. Skeptical yet practical. What do you say we run our paces through a few basic maneuvers?”
In a flash, Ignatius stood near water’s edge, where the sand packed firm. He wore a white karate robe with brown belt. He motioned James forward.
Moments later, two peacekeepers took James. When they stepped into a long, shadowed corridor, they intercepted Valentin and the two soldiers marching abreast of him. Like James, his brother was also stripped but for a bonding sheathe across his genitals. The physical mismatch never seemed more staggering.
At some level, James admired Valentin’s perfect symmetry – the V configuration of sculpted, undulating upper torso and a narrow, chiseled abdomen. Terminator. Schwarzenegger. It all fit. More than that, James saw an empty, soulless contempt in his brother’s eyes. James detected no rage, no thirst for victory; nor did he sense any desire for familial outreach. In this moment, he would have appreciated a condescending smirk.
“If he kills me, will he even care?”
Their practice round concluded, Ignatius toasted the sunset.
“He did not know of you yesterday, so if he no longer has to know of you tomorrow …” He sipped champagne from a long flute. “The question answers itself. Make sure he knows of you tomorrow.”
That was the general idea, although James understood he had no shot at victory in a fair fight. Instead, as he marched in silentium toward the inevitable, James wondered what Perrone hoped to gain. Was this vengeance for Christian and Agatha? Did he want to see how far he could push the Jewel before it incinerated Valentin? Neither possibility, nor the theatrics, made sense. The uncertainty frightened James more than the pain about to be inflicted upon him.
The corridor ended at a windowless door. A soldier tapped his stream amp to Perrone’s voice. “Are they ready, Lieutenant?”
“In position, sir.”
“Escort them in. Ten meters and hold for my command.”
The door disappeared, and one soldier led Valentin first. The peacekeeper who watched James strip down leaned in to whisper.
“Your new brother deserves a good smack-around. If you can connect with one smart lick before he tears your head off, I will not be the only satisfied old soldier.”
James had no response. Instead, he turned to Ignatius.
“Why would he say that? Ever since I went on the run, all I’ve seen is Chancellors trying to take each other out. And these people run a galactic empire?”
Ignatius smiled. “Their ancestors did the heavy lifting. These most recent generations are the spoiled remains. They crave solace for their wandering hearts. Now you come along … something new.”
“I’m the entertainment.”
“After a fashion, I suppose you are.”
The stark chamber he entered seemed fit for just such a venue. All it lacked was a hungry audience thirsting for blood. Spotlights from a high ceiling cast narrow beams that intercepted each other, like a continuous Venn diagram. His guard ordered him to stop in a lit circle three shy of his brother, who turned and tightened his stance for battle. Legs extended, arms to his sides, fists balled.
James called upon the moves Ignatius taught him, but he could not decide on an opening maneuver – let alone if it might leave even a bruise on Valentin. The longer they stood without orders to begin, the more James wondered whether the delay might dent his brother’s enthusiasm. They held captive in those spotlights for five minutes before a familiar voice cascaded from above.
“Some say the natural state of brothers is they must try to kill each other at least once,” Perrone said. “Love usually stops them short. You will have no such distraction, yes?
“First Specialist, let me be clear. Slaughter this abomination, and I will guarantee your path to the glory you desire. You will emerge from your father’s long shadow and take a place even he will envy.”
Valentin betrayed the glimmer of a smile.
Perrone continued. “James, I offer you an enormous prize if you annihilate your brother. Not only will I guarantee full and safe assimilation for your two dear friends, but you will be free to pursue whatever destiny brought you across the fold.”
It sounded too perfect. James couldn’t resist.
“And if neither one of us dies?”
“Hmm. Defiance. I am taking to you, James. If no one prevails, my officers will make sure to dispose both your bodies. So, let’s begin. Yes? First round will be hand to hand. First Specialist, you are to disregard kwin-sho launch techniques. This will be a fair fight.”
Valentin did not show disappointment. Rather, he mumbled, “I don’t need to waste art on you.”
The officers backed away and Perrone gave the command.
“Kill.”
As Valentin crouched, positioning himself to lift off in a dead sprint, James envisioned his own defense and recalled Ignatius.
“Stand and block. At the last, diamond formation.”
He firmed himself against the inevitable, but James knew his odds. He might as well have brought a knife to a gunfight. Perhaps he’d scratch Valentin, even draw blood or a halting look of surprise. But victory? No, not like this.
His bones shattered and his nerves unleashed cold agony before Valentin took even a step. Yet, James did not sense terror or retreat.
Instead, he unburdened his heart. He took himself back to the stone outcropping where, not twenty-four hours ago, he surveyed the world for what he believed would be the final time. So pretty … He lifted the pistol and placed it against his temple. A millisecond of pain then a nightmare disintegrated. A dream devoutly to be wished. He was prepared to die, to escape all the pain. But now …
Let it come, he thought. Tear me to shreds. I’ll win.
The music of the future sang a rising tune, and the shifting tide chased through his veins. James did not understand the vision, except that it must come to pass.
The Jewel told him so.
“Hurt me,” he whispered as Valentin launched.
16
J AMES BRACED AS VALENTIN KICKED HIGH, SWEEPING THROUGH the coupled fists at the center of James’s diamond defense. Every bone in his right wrist shattered. Simultaneously, Valentin’s other leg kicked low, landing in James’s gut like a steel mallet.
Even as he convulsed in sickening pain, James flew on the instinct of the Jewel and hurtled his left arm into a blocking maneuver that caught Valentin’s left leg before it retreated from James’s stomach. He allowed his mind’s eye to repeat the motions Ignatius taught him on the beach. Grab, spin, flip. The proper pressure applied quickly, nimbly. Valentin’s feet came out from underneath him. He crashed on his back, his head smacking the floor.
Valentin grunted, recovering in an instant as James fell dizzy with agony, his right hand limp. The peacekeeper winced as he touched the back of his head, a small patch of blood discoloring the floor. His brother’s disorientation lasted a second; he leapt, fists at his vanguard. He attacked first where James had no defense. Valentin’s sweeping left hook landed in the jaw, snapped back, repeated the blow.
Warm blood surged inside his mouth as James drove his left arm upward according to design, catching Valentin at a vulnerable spot at the base of his ribs. He’d bruise the soldier, a minor blow to ego. Yet this was all the hope he ever had for direct combat. Ignatius never said it, but James realized: The first blows served only to enrage Valentin, to motivate him toward maximum brute force. The peacekeeper threw relentless fists at his brother. Left, right. Both jaws cracked, nose deformed, blood spraying.
James stumbled in silly retreat, amazed when he did not fall right away. The pain became less defined as his disorientation blossomed. James sensed no difference when Valentin grabbed his right arm and snapped it at the elbow. He did not offer resistance when the soldier w
rapped both arms around him, lifted him skyward, and carried him toward the nearest wall.
“Abomination,” Valentin shouted. “You have no place here.”
James flew. The air was light, his flight path steady and certain. He could do nothing to stop the inevitable. Ignatius already warned him of this moment, of the decimation he must face. James closed his eyes a split second before he crashed full-on into the wall and fell limp to the floor. He grabbed on to the tiniest flicker of life, his lungs crushed and his desire to breathe all but surrendered.
However, his ears worked. He heard his brother’s feet close in. How far might Valentin go? Would he dare check to see the job was done? Dare risk a final, desperate twinge from the interloper who could kill with a touch? Or was he as sadistic as James imagined?
James remembered himself a daily earlier, standing on the outcropping of rocks, freeing himself from life as Agatha Bidwell aimed and fired. Those eight bullets tore apart his innards, and James recalled dying before he fell into the brush down below.
“Been there. Done that,” he told Ignatius when warned of what would happen at the edge of Valentin’s victory.
“Yes, and you defied the laws of nature,” Ignatius said as they practiced maneuvers. “You found fuel in your love for Samantha and Michael. This time, you must be selfish. You will never finish your mission unless you show Perrone exactly what he wants.”
“Do you think Valentin and me ever had a chance as brothers?”
Ignatius looked away into the fading sun. “You ask an unnecessary question. Think only of yourself, James. Allow the Jewel to consume you as intended.”
“What of the dark? The hunger will never die. The things I’ll do.”
“Will be justified if your mission succeeds. You have the luxury for neither conscience nor morality. Kill Valentin and give yourself the benefit of another day.”
James lay on his side, his body mangled, bones turned to shards, organs hemorrhaging. A sharp kick to the spine – Valentin delivered more insult than injury. Now two kicks, now three. James surrendered to the Jewel’s peculiar rhythm and waited to live again.
The moment began as a tremor. His bones rattled and his muscles tightened, as the bow extends before the archer releases. Unnatural undulations twisted, curled, and repositioned his body’s skeleton and connective tissues. A protective sheathe wrapped itself around his damaged organs and invaded them at a cellular level. All inside him took orders from a reconfigured DNA, falling in line to the lyrics of the Jewel of Eternity’s everlasting song.
They struck all at once; invisible flames raged through his long, sinewy frame, blinding James. The earthquake left him writhing about the chamber floor like a dying animal in agony. It so consumed him that James lost all sight and howled a long, low, and barbaric screech. In this sudden darkness, James saw the Jewel at work, stretching his muscles toward more real estate, snapping his bones back together and pushing into new cavities. Yet even at the height of this staggering pain, he remembered Ignatius.
“You’re becoming, James. Almost there. When your eyes open, do not hesitate. He will not understand what you are.”
It was over seconds later, and his sight returned. The unfathomable pain vanished, replaced with a vigor and a thirst he never experienced together. He sensed Valentin but a few steps behind and wondered how confused his brother might be. James left nothing to chance.
He bounced up, balanced himself on one hand, and swung both feet around in perfect symmetry. He cut Valentin’s legs out, and his brother smacked his skull against the floor a second time.
James smelled the dismay, even the slightest twinge of peacekeeper fear, and pounced wolf-like upon his brother. He returned an earlier favor and leveled a pair of driving hooks into Valentin’s cheeks. The soldier retaliated, but those hits into his side barely registered. James kept no compassion, no limitations, no moral ambiguity as he pummeled his brother. Blood from the nose, the ears, the busted lips and there, in sight, the target.
James wrapped his hands around Valentin’s neck and squeezed with an unbridled fury. A hunger to fuel the dark. Another day to survive.
But Valentin did not surrender so easily. Calling upon kwin-sho techniques, Valentin twisted his legs around James’s torso and flipped his brother. They rolled. Jamie lost his grip on the neck.
Amid the grunts of fighters battling on a leveled field, Perrone’s voice commanded the chamber.
“Round 2.”
Metal clanked against the floor, feet from the struggle. Valentin broke away first, wheeling about until he grabbed a 10-inch-long, curved blade that gleamed in the spotlight. James sensed the other knife lay just beyond his reach. He angled to Ignatius, who nodded.
“I should have known. Perrone expected the change. He knew you would survive. When this is done, demand answers. But first …”
“He’s already dead,” James said. “I wish I’d gotten to know him.”
Regrets did not interfere with the moment. James allowed the Jewel to show him the geometry of the chamber, to diagram distance, velocity, and maneuverability. He saw the endgame before Valentin took the first step forward, his knife gripped at shoulder level and ready to plunge. Jamie flipped, grabbed the blade, rolled again, and tossed the knife underhanded. He listened to its whisper and followed its upward trajectory. Valentin moved to defend, but the throw was lightning-fast, the blade true to its target.
Valentin gurgled as the knife pierced his larynx and sliced through his neck. Only the hilt remained visible as blood poured from the wound. Valentin dropped his own blade and flailed at the merchant of his death, his eyes locked on James in stupefied wonder.
James saw unexpected beauty in his dying brother. He remembered all those who ever mocked him or beat him, all the bastards he once called friends who tried to kill him. In Valentin’s blood he saw their blood.
In this moment of victory, he no longer cared about his humanity. The dark told him to relish the vision, to go forth and seek more and better, to teach all of them a new and painful truth.
He stood eye-to-eye with Valentin when he grabbed the hilt and pulled out the knife. Blood spurted from the wound, and Valentin coughed blood on James while drowning in it.
“You’re the abomination,” James whispered as Valentin collapsed and died. “All you people are.”
The crumpled corpse struck James as a diminished version of the monster he met outside the interdimensional fold. Human. Fragile and ordinary. Valentin’s glassy eyes, which stared into a void, no longer betrayed the boy’s age. For the first time, he looked like someone Jamie Sheridan might have known at Albion High School.
When he turned to face the other peacekeepers, they took several steps away, both reaching for sidearms. I could do you now, he thought. One hand for each of you. I’ll watch you burn.
He didn’t advance because he didn’t need to. The door from which they first entered slid open, and Perrone’s giant frame entered. He ordered the soldiers to lower their weapons and stopped just beyond James’s reach. The general smiled.
“I doubt you can grasp what you have accomplished today, James. All those theories about blending the Jewel with Chancellor DNA … I considered the lot of them mad. Even my late wife. But they were right about all of it. Look at you.”
James did not take his eyes off the general, who tapped his stream amp. You’re gonna tell me everything, you bastard. Perrone raced fingers through a holocube then tossed a three-dimensional rectangle in front of James. It morphed into a full-length mirror.
He was a different man, unrecognizable. His brother’s blood stained his chest and stomach like grotesque tattoos, but he looked past and through the blood to the monster who filled the mirror.
Taller, wider, harder. As big and as mountainous as Valentin before the fall. A terminator. A Schwarzenegger. And just beneath his steeled features, traveling islands glowed a soft blue. Still repairing the damage, still growing, still building toward an uncertain end.
Perr
one swiped away the mirror.
“Needless to say, you and I have much to discuss. But first, how about we clean you up? Some evening clothes, perhaps. And then … dinner. I have a suspicion you are starving.”
17
New Stockholm City
North American Consortium
M ICHAEL COOPER CONVINCED HIMSELF the past thirty-six hours were an elaborate dream. Then someone slapped him awake.
He was attached to the still-seat that carried him to a deep sleep.
“Flex your fists and push away,” the pilot Rikard insisted.
“Dude. What the hell? Feel like I’ve been asleep for a week. What’s going on?”
“We are here,” Rikard said, a frown framing his words. “You have only been out for two hours. The still-seats have that effect.”
“Where’s everybody else? Where’s Sammie?”
The ship was empty save for Brey working at the forward deck.
“Making plans to keep us alive. At least, that appears the idea. Chancellors tell people like us what we need to know. Never more. The girl left with Tomelin and the Chief. Said you needed to sleep.”
Michael stepped away from the still-seat refreshed.
“What you mean, ‘people like us.’?”
Rikard rolled his eyes. “Fresh out of the cradle, aren’t you? This will be a difficult ride, Michael.” He sighed. “By us, I mean anyone who is not one of them. A Chancellor. Not me, not you.” He glanced toward Brey, whose back was turned, then leaned in to Michael.
“Dr. Tomelin says she’s going to do everything to protect you, but you need to be careful. We have a simple hierarchy: The Chancellors and the Solomons.” He pointed to the triple-crest logo on his shirt. “They pay us well for our skills but make no mistake: We exist at their pleasure. It’s bad enough you’re proto-African. If their plans take a wrong turn, they will see you as dead weight.”
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