Brothers by Force
Emmett Atwater
The rooms we’re given are simple. Bright balconies overlook the distant ocean. We split off into sections designed for three. Jaime claims a bed in the first room. I’m about to follow him in when I spy Alex glancing down the hallway, looking unsure where he belongs.
“This way, man.” I wave to him. “We’ve got an open bed in here.”
I’ve wanted to talk to him for a while. Jaime, Anton, Alex, and me, we are brothers by force. Babel’s final experiment bonded us in some dark, impossible way. It’s kind of unfair that three of us landed together. We got to work and talk through the pain. But Alex landed alone. I’m guessing he talked with Anton here or there, but when Anton launched into space, it left Alex alone again.
Alex is all polite nods. His golden curls toss whenever he walks. He’s got light brown skin that the otherworldly sun has darkened since landing. It doesn’t take us long to start exploring the room like we’re staying at some fancy hotel.
We kick our feet up on the balcony right around sunset. It takes a few minutes of awkward conversation to get where I promised I’d go. I force myself to talk about those dark minutes before we launched down from space.
“I’ve been meaning to talk with you,” I say, sounding more like Pops than I ever thought I could. “I know what Babel put you through. With Loche.”
In a breath he goes distant. His smile retreats. He cracks a knuckle, lips sealed. I know the feeling. “You don’t have to talk about it,” I say. “I get it, you know? But if you haven’t talked to anyone about it, you should. Jaime and I talked about it after we landed.” I nod over to him. “Anton too. He was there. We actually got to talk it out.”
Alex looks up. The bright color of his eyes seems to be fading.
“No one else in my landing party went through it,” he finally says. “I saw their faces after. I thought—I don’t know—that maybe I was the only one shaken by it. Took a few minutes to figure out that none of them had to fight. None of them even knew there were fights.”
“So you didn’t bring it up?”
“With Katsu in my group? Hell no, man.”
I nod. “He makes everything into a joke.”
Jaime grunts at that. He’s been on the end of Katsu’s jokes more than most.
“Not this,” Alex says.
“No, never this.”
He looks down at his hands.
“The worst part is that I wanted to do it in the end.”
“Because you had to do it.”
“No,” Alex cuts back. “They put me with Loche on purpose.”
I shake my head. “Why Loche?”
“We had a history.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Before you launched?”
“Nah, nothing like that.” Alex glances nervously at Jaime. “I’m—well, Anton and I …”
“You go together.”
He nods his thanks for putting it that simply. “Early on. I just … I like him, you know? We got along so easily. He thinks I’m a little too much sometimes, but let’s be honest, Anton needs a little too much in his life. Loche was the first one who picked up on the fact that it was more than a friendship. Anton didn’t like talking about it. He’s from Russia, so I understood. I grew up near Bogotá. It was easier there. You didn’t have to jump through hoops because of who you were. You could just be yourself.
“Anyway, Loche noticed and he kind of dug into us about it. Never anything crude, you know, but he outed us to the rest of Genesis 12. He said he thought they knew, that he’d be the last one to notice. That’s how he was. This tough rugby guy, always so macho about things. Anton and I would be hanging out at breakfast and I’d glance up, catch him smirking at us.”
“I’m guessing Anton fixed that.”
Alex nods. “I told him not to, but that’s Anton. Cornered him one night, and we didn’t see too many smirks from Loche after that. I got over it.”
“Until Babel put you two together,” I say, piecing it all together.
“In the room, he tried to use it against me. Told me that Anton and I weren’t like him and Ida. We didn’t have the connection that they had. He told me that he and Ida talked about having kids. All he really meant was that their relationship was normal.”
I shake my head. “That’s so messed up.”
“He ranted about it,” Alex says. “And the second I let my guard down, he went for me.”
Alex lifts up his shirt. His skin is tan, but slashed white beneath his ribs is a sharp, winding scar that’s healed all kinds of crooked. He lets the shirt drop and shakes his head.
“Gutted me,” he says. “Made it easier to gut him back as he fumbled through my pockets for the key. The part that gets me, man, is that Ida still doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that he’s dead, and she doesn’t know that I’m the one who killed him.”
I shake my head. “Knowing wouldn’t do anything but make her aim at the wrong target. Give her time. She’ll realize Babel is behind all of this. Not you or me or Jaime. It’s Babel.”
“Maybe,” Alex hedges. “But it was easy in the end. Easier than I expected it to be. I know Babel set it up and all that, but I’m the one who did it. My hand drove the knife in. In the end, it wasn’t even hard to do.”
“Except it was,” I say after a few seconds. “Listen to yourself. The fact that it’s eating you up is proof enough. You didn’t want to do it. If you had the choice, you never would have done it. But you didn’t have a choice ’cause Babel took it away. That’s not your fault.”
Alex nods, but his eyes are proof he doesn’t completely buy what I’m saying.
“Still. I killed him.”
It’s the simplest, cruelest truth. Still. I killed him. Beneath all the justifications and rage, beneath Babel’s forceful hand and their own desire to stay alive, is the simple fact: Alex, Jaime, and Anton are killers now. It’s a clean, twisted kind of truth. I glance over at Jaime.
“They made us this way,” he says simply. “They can face the consequences now.”
It’s a brutal stance, but it’s talk I’ve heard before. In the hallways of my school. On the streets of my neighborhood. Answering like for like, taking blood for blood. Travel across the universe and some things just don’t seem to change.
“My pops used to tell me to be good.”
Alex looks up. “Huh?”
“I don’t know. Whenever I messed up—and man, I messed up all the time—he wouldn’t even talk about the bad thing. He’d just tell me to be good. Like, hey, next time, be good.”
“I like that,” Alex says.
“Maybe we can be good. The next time. Maybe there will be a way to be good again.”
He runs a hand through his golden locks. The motion makes him look twenty years older, twenty years a wanderer. “You mean like what you did for that beggar, Axis.”
“You were the first one to join me,” I remind him.
“So what, we just keep doing that? And maybe one day all the little things will take away the big thing.” He hitches on the thought. “Doubt it, but hey, it’s worth a shot.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I agree.
I reach out and offer him a handshake. He clasps my forearm, and just like that, he sees me as a brother too. More than what Babel would make us. We both glance over at Jaime, but he waves the idea away. “They’re the ones who changed the rules. Now that I know what game they’re playing, I’m going to make my own moves. I’m going to take what they took from me.”
Alex nods his respect at that. It’s such a dark promise. I decide to keep working on Jaime, to keep pulling him back to something better.
Speaker interrupts, knocking on our door to remind us we should sleep. He tells us the Daughters will host us in the throne room early the next day. We start claiming beds around the room, but Morning appears in the entrance and waves me over. “Isadora,” she whispers. “She’s here, you know?”
“She wanted to use the Daughters against me,” I remind her
. “But the whole pregnancy thing. It’s not worth as much as she thought it was, is it? I guess if I’m in danger, we’ll know tomorrow when we meet with them.”
Morning frowns. “I’m nailing your door shut.”
“Seriously?”
“Just for tonight.”
She squeezes my hand before closing the door behind her. I can hear her messing with the lock as Jaime turns the lights off and we settle in for the night. We talk a little bit about home, a little bit about nothing. It has the taste of a normal conversation, the kind we would have after school or eating burgers on a Friday night.
It’s almost enough to forget the dead, and all those we’ve left behind.
Chapter 39
King David
Emmett Atwater
But the dead rise sometimes. Revenants from graves.
I wake to pressure. Just a hand on my chest. I confuse it for Morning, but the face that looms in the darkness doesn’t belong to her. It’s not Jaime needing to be helped to the med bay, either. This face has walked out of my nightmares and into real life: Isadora.
“Do not move,” she whispers. “Do not speak.”
One hand is on my chest. The other dangles a knife over my throat. My eyes roam to the door. It’s closed, sealed. But another glance shows the curtains by our balcony entrance rustling in the wind. We actually left it open. I can’t believe I left it open.
“Have you ever read the Bible?” she whispers. “There’s one story I always hated. King David? You know him?”
I nod carefully.
“He’s being chased by Saul. What an awful king. He promises David a good life but betrays him, then hunts him across the wilderness. Do you know the story?”
A whisper shakes through my lips. “No.”
“David hides in a cave. It just so happens that Saul goes to that same cave and falls asleep outside of it.” Her eyes glint down at me. Moonlight frames her. I am about to die. “And I hated this story, because it was the perfect moment for David. His greatest enemy made weak. Delivered at his feet like a gift. But what does David do?”
Isadora’s off hand moves down to my waist. She pinches the fabric of my shirt up. I swallow as she slides the knife away from my throat and starts to saw through the hem.
“He cuts off a piece of Saul’s robe,” Isadora says. “He doesn’t gut him like he should have. I always thought, ‘What a fool.’ If I had the chance, I would punish my enemy. But now I understand. David needed proof of who he was. Later he took the piece of robe to Saul and explained. He could have killed him, but he didn’t. Saul was in his hands, but he showed mercy.”
Isadora finishes sawing. She rips at the dangling threads before holding up a patch of fabric no bigger than a fist. I can see her jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed.
“If I kill you, Morning will come for me,” she says. “If I hurt you, the group will turn on me. I can’t afford this. My baby needs to go back to Earth. So tomorrow I’ll show this to Morning and you’ll explain to her what happened. This fabric is a promise that you won’t come to harm. When I attempt to rejoin the group tomorrow, you will support me.”
It takes me a second to realize she’s waiting for me to agree. I nod in disbelief.
“I will not be left behind in this world,” Isadora says softly. “My baby will go home.”
She waves the fabric once before retreating into the shadows. I watch as she heads for the balcony. I follow her movements until she disappears down one side. It’s all I can do to roll out of bed. My legs aren’t working. My lungs won’t take in oxygen. I gasp my way to the balcony entrance and slam the doors shut. Jaime rolls over in his bed. Alex groans awake.
“Anton?” he asks. “Is it already time to go?”
For a while, I don’t respond. My back is pressed against the glass. My mind is racing through the details. Isadora. We let down our guards for a night, and she could have killed me for it. But she didn’t. She spared me. Alex rustles again, sitting up.
“Emmett?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Get some sleep.”
He nods those golden curls and turns back over. At some point, I force myself to walk back to my bed. I lie back down, but sleep never comes.
Chapter 40
The Best-laid Plans of Imago and Men
Emmett Atwater
The next morning we gather in the main sanctuary. Morning winks at me, but I’m still lost in a dream state. Did last night even happen? Is there more to Isadora’s plan?
Speaker enters. Isadora and Ida trail him.
Their presence echoes through our ranks. Morning reacts immediately. She cuts across the group until she’s standing between Isadora and the rest of us. I have to crane my neck to get a look at the piece of torn white fabric Isadora is holding in her hands. It’s proof that last night wasn’t just a dream. She waves it like a white flag.
“We come in peace.”
“No,” Morning says. “You don’t get to walk in there with us. You left this behind. You promised one of ours harm. We don’t forget that easily.”
Isadora just waves the shirt again. “Take this as a token of my new intentions.”
“It’s fine,” I say, startling Morning. “Let her come with us.”
Morning stares back at me. “Fine? She—”
“Could have killed me last night.”
Those words ice the room. Everyone except Morning. She stares her fury at me before whipping it back in Isadora’s direction. I take a step forward and set a hand on her shoulder. She tries to shrug it off, but I pull her closer, doing my best to be a calming presence.
“She didn’t, though,” I explain. “Last night she could have killed me, but she didn’t.”
Isadora shows the fabric again. “I don’t have to like him to know you’re my best way out of here. If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead. Keep the fabric if it helps you remember that.”
“He’s alive for now,” Morning says. “Right? As long as it serves your purposes, but what about twenty days from now? Or two years from now?”
“If there’s a two years from now,” Isadora replies, “we’ll all be thankful to be alive.”
Morning’s not convinced. “I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your right.” Isadora sets a protective hand on her stomach. “But I started feeling kicks last week. It’s a boy, I think. Just a feeling. I’ve had morning sickness too. Some cramps. The more the baby—I don’t know, the more real the baby gets, the less I care about Emmett. I don’t like him and I don’t like you, but I’m going to get my baby back to Earth. If that means swallowing my pride and my hate, go ahead and pass the bottle.”
There’s a second where Morning looks ready to fire back, but I squeeze her shoulder. She looks up at me, and Parvin takes advantage of the hesitation.
“I’m convinced,” she says. “Welcome back. Speaker? We were heading somewhere?”
He nods. “The Daughters wait in the throne room.”
And just like that we’re back on the move. Morning stays tight at my side, but I think these are the first steps toward something necessary. We have one less thing to fear.
Everything around us is old stone. Absurdly wide and absurdly high, as if monsters made the castle so they could slouch through every door and into every hall. A basic slate colors the walls and floors, accented only by an occasional painting. I stop short as we pass by a vase of sunflowers etched against a baby-blue backdrop. The piece almost looks like a Van Gogh. My mind skips back to middle school art classes, most of which were spent pretending I wasn’t looking at Sherry Taylor. Everything about Earth feels like it happened in another life, to someone else.
The real masterpieces wait in the next hallway, speckled by light from stained-glass windows. Speaker pauses us before the series of portraits. Fifteen of them hang from the walls.
Our own portraits stare back at us. Rendered with delicate precision. Our features look a little exaggerated, even a little heroic. I find mine and smile. My eyes l
ook harder than I remember, like they’re carved out of stone. The painter took my skin a shade too dark, but also left my hair looking a lot neater than it’s ever looked. I couldn’t ever afford the twenty-dollar artists at the fair, so to see myself in a portrait is stunning, unimaginable.
“Who painted these?” Azima asks, standing before her own.
“Feoria’s work,” Speaker answers. “She has quite an eye, doesn’t she?”
I glance over. Red flushes up his neck. I smile at him and he can’t even hold the look. Feoria must be his favorite. She’s one hell of a painter. Anton grins down at us from the far right. He looks like he’s causing trouble, and I say a silent prayer that he is, that he’s still alive and an unpleasant thorn in Babel’s side. Longwei’s looks the most badass, of course. Somehow Feoria’s adjusted the painting so his right eye glows out from the black nyxian scar.
I tap his shoulder and nod to it. “That’s a framer.”
He shakes his head and smiles.
“How’d she paint these?” Alex asks, staring up at his own face. “The other day was the first time she saw us, wasn’t it?”
Speaker smiles. “Thesis captured an image of you all waiting in line at our first encounter. It was a moment our people wanted to remember. Feoria decided to take things a step further. She wanted to complete these portraits before you arrived. I believe yesterday’s meeting with you was the first time she’s left her studio.”
We stand in front of our portraits a while longer, long enough for me to start thinking about the faces that aren’t there. Kaya and Bilal and Loche and Brett and Roathy. Faces the Imago will never see because Babel chose to play God. They deserved portraits too, every single one of them. A darker thought follows that one: the Imago started all of this.
Katsu nods up at his portrait and grins. “She got my good side.”
Morning rolls her eyes before turning to Speaker.
“Thank you. These are wonderful.”
“Come. The Daughters await.”
We follow him through the endless halls. Our path wraps back around the building, descending a generous staircase, and directing us toward a gaping hole in the distant wall. Only when we’re twenty meters away do we notice that the hole is actually a mouth. Flaming eyes hover above the black. Scales ripple out from the gleaming pits, forming a long snout above twisting teeth. Speaker gestures to the doorway.
Nyxia Unleashed_The Nyxia Triad Page 25