The Significant

by Kyra Anderson

  Isa merely stared at the woman, waiting for the silence to become too heavy for Dienne to bear.

  “What do you want from me?” she finally hissed.

  “I want to know to whom you sold those prototypes,” Isa said coldly. “Each of those B-Class prototypes were worth sixty-eight thousand credits. Collectively, they were two-hundred seventy-two thousand credits.”

  “Well, then, those bastards certainly got a deal. I only got one hundred thousand out of the exchange,” Dienne said, smiling sickly.

  “One hundred thousand credits was worth the lives of four children?”

  “Children?” Dienne snapped. “They were Elite prototypes. They were machines. You know better than anyone, Isa. No emotion, no tears, no weakness. We drill that into your brains from the day you turn up at the Academy. You are cold, mechanical, and heartless. That’s what you’re built for. You can’t pretend their children when it’s convenient for you and then claim that you’re superior because you’re not human. That’s not the way it works!”

  “Dienne, to me, they were not just machines. I stood on those grounds. I know what it’s like.”

  “Do you, though?” Dienne challenged. “You were always treated special. Special Isa, always able to bend the rules. Trying so hard to save everyone in your little group of friends. Still, that little brat, whatever his name was, you got him killed because of your rebellion. Yet, I bet you never cried for him. The rest of the school went on, as if he had never existed. He was just one of many.”

  “Aren,” Isa said darkly. “His name was Aren.”

  “He got off easy,” Dienne said. “In my opinion, I did those brats a favor.”

  “How do you see that?”

  “They are dead. They don’t have to deal with the Elite Academy anymore. Is it true that you always hated that place?”

  “How could I not?” Isa whispered. “What they made us endure was torture.”

  Dienne smiled.

  “You mean what Remus, your lover, endured,” she said. “I was wondering why your attack dog wasn’t here, but I’m sure you don’t want him close to anyone from the academy.”

  “Was the money worth those children’s lives?”

  “It was never about the money,” Dienne hissed. “I want to see every Elite dead. You motherfuckers are not worthy to rule. We teach you, we program you, we build you, and it’s time we shut you down.”

  Isa started forward, grabbing Dienne’s throat and pushing her head back against the wall. She glared at the teacher, her fingers tightening around the woman’s neck.

  “I will not be threatened, and I will not stand by and listen to you speak so lowly of us. We may be programmed and built, but we feel pain, we bleed, and we die. We have a living body, and we deserve more respect than being sold for one-hundred thousand credits.”

  “Clearly…if I lost out on over two-hundred…fifty thousand on those…fuckers…” Dienne choked, cringing against Isa’s hand.

  “Were the men you sold those prototypes to from Gihron?” Isa growled.

  Dienne gasped, her eyes rolling back in her head. Isa ground her teeth together and released the woman’s neck, immediately reaching for one of the wall restraints. She released Dienne’s right hand and pulled it to her. The teacher struggled, trying to get her hand back from the Elite, or try to strike her, but Isa grabbed her fingers and bent her hand backward, twisting it. Dienne let out a pained cry and tried to move her body to ease the pressure on her hand.

  “This is a very simple question, Dienne,” Isa said, her tone dangerous. “But I understand if you need to take some time to think about it.” She forced Dienne’s hand back further, her fingers tightening around the teacher’s.

  Dienne cringed and ground her teeth against the strain.

  “I’m waiting,” Isa warned.

  “Does it matter?” Dienne growled. “Gihron is not the only planet that hates the Elites and Venus.”

  “It matters to me,” Isa hissed, leaning closer.

  “Fuck off!”

  Isa’s fingers tightened further and four of Dienne’s fingers snapped under the strain. She let out a blood-curdling scream and her entire body shook in pain. Isa tightened her fingers further when Dienne tried to get away, causing the teacher’s scream to echo again in the cell.

  “Why don’t we try that again?”

  Dienne shuddered, her eyes closed tight. She turned her head to Isa, spitting at her, though she missed the Elite.

  Isa smiled and leaned closer, her other hand reaching for Dienne’s forearm.

  “Allow me to explain something to you,” she said quietly. “My patience has been very thin lately, and I am in no mood to play games. This is the only question I have for you, and I am not giving you the option of not answering. Therefore, if I have to, I will break every bone in your body other than your jaw until you answer. The only variable is your schedule this afternoon. Mine’s clear, so I have all the time I need.”

  Dienne stared at Isa in horror, silent.

  “No? Not convinced yet?” Isa asked. She began pulling on Dienne’s broken fingers, her other hand bracing Dienne’s forearm, straining the bone. “I’m sure you know, since, as you have stated, Elites are built, that we have superior physical strength to humans.” Isa looked at the teacher’s arm. “Would you like me to demonstrate?”

  Almost immediately, Isa broke Dienne’s wrist.

  She screamed and collapsed against her other restraints, her body trembling violently.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Yes! They were Gihoric! They were!”

  Isa released her arm.

  “I’ll have you know that, even if I were to let you live, those hundred-thousand credits would not be enough to repair this damage,” she said, motioning to Dienne’s hand and fingers. “Something to ponder in your final moments when you are dwelling on your hatred for those children.”

  Isa swept from the cell, leaving the wounded prisoner half-hanging in her restraints, sobbing in agony.

  When Isa returned home from work the next day, she had to search the level for Kailynn. She finally found the younger woman in the entertainment room, watching a news broadcast.

  “What are you doing in here?” Isa asked. “You never watch the news.”

  “There was a lot of talk around the Intelligence Agency today,” Kailynn said.

  “Talk of what?” Isa asked, sitting next to Kailynn as the Significant muted the sound of the report.

  “That the Elite kids were sold by one of the teachers at the Academy,” she said. She looked at Isa seriously. “Isa, you haven’t been eating, and you aren’t telling me what you’re dealing with at work, and that scares me. So, I wanted to see if I could hear anything on the news that would explain what seems to be bothering you.”

  Isa gently passed her fingers of Kailynn’s cheek.

  “Isa, I just want to understand what is going on,” Kailynn murmured, leaning into the touch.

  “It was a young teacher at the Academy,” Isa said, looking over Kailynn’s face, taking in every detail. “She harbored an immense hatred for Elites, and she wanted them dead. So she sold them for one hundred thousand credits to some people from Gihron, who killed them to make their statement.”

  Kailynn sighed heavily.

  “The Academy beats the Elites, and even kill them at times, and now have sold them to the enemy…” Kailynn shook her head. “And the news said something about it not being the first time that a teacher has done something like this. Is that true?”

  “The teachers at the Elite Academy do horrible things to the students,” Isa said, her hand dropping as she turned her eyes to the floor.

  “They mentioned Remus,” Kailynn pressed.

  “Yes,” Isa said with a nod. “Remus was a spectacle for over a year due to a horrific event that happened between him and a few teachers.” Isa said. “Remus…is a degenerate.”

  “I gathered that, but I don’t see how. He seems like he’s a normal Elite.”

  “Wel
l, for the most part, he is,” Isa agreed. “Remus has managed to overcome some incredible obstacles, far more than most realize. I’m not sure if you know this, but Elites, when they are created, are already determined to be part of a class.”

  “Yeah, the Gold, Silver, and Bronze.”

  “Yes, A, B, and C class,” Isa clarified. “But, as always happens, some prototypes do not turn out as expected. There are errors that occur, or spontaneous mutations…in any case, some prototypes that have these problems are killed immediately. Others are tested for degeneration, and if they’re degeneration level is deemed safe, they are kept alive for…I guess you could almost call it spare parts for the other prototypes.”

  “Wait, really?” Kailynn asked, her eyes going wide. Isa nodded.

  “Yes,” she sighed, “the X-Class. They’re the mistakes. And that was Remus’ class when we started at the Academy,” Isa explained. Kailynn’s eyes went wide again, surprised. “His level of degeneration was deemed safe. I have to admit, I do not know exactly how this works, but, apparently, his brain can only react to certain stimuli, which evokes an angry response. His temper is…” Isa shook her head, trying to find a way to explain. “He has worked very hard to keep it under control, but under the right circumstances, he can cause an incredible amount of damage.”

  Kailynn blinked, surprised that the Elite she had seen remain relatively calm was a degenerate Elite that could feel only anger.

  “Remus and I are the only class-jumpers in history,” Isa murmured. “But it was a very difficult transition for Remus. To go from X-Class to B-Class was something that no one else in the school deemed acceptable. One of the teachers and his wife, another teacher at the Academy…they believed that Remus needed to be terminated.”

  “They tried to kill him?”

  “No,” Isa said, shaking her head. “They tried to break him. They psychologically tortured him for several months in an attempt to reverse the decision that he would jump to the B-Class.”

  “How?”

  “They provoked him intentionally, and then told him he was broken, and wrong, and he would be killed if he continued to act out. Then they would provoke him to act out again as evidence of the severity of his degeneration. They even told him that, if it wasn’t for me, he would have already been killed.”

  “Is that true? That’s what Maki said.”

  Isa sighed heavily. “I guess it is,” Isa said slowly. “I do not like to think of it that way, though.”

  “What happened with the teachers?”

  “They took Remus from his bed one night and locked him in a mechanical room where they…” Isa hesitated. “They beat him, and raped him. They kept him in there for almost three days, continuing the torture.”

  Kailynn was stunned into silence, the words bouncing around her skull for several long moments before they finally absorbed.

  “How did…I mean…did no one else…”

  “When it came to the X-Class,” Isa said slowly and carefully, “the teachers took it upon themselves to test the level of degeneration in the prototypes. Remus told me, when all that was happening, they continued to tell him that, if he was really an Elite, he would take the abuse and rape without complaint and without a fight.” Isa closed her eyes. “But how can you ask anyone to comply with that?” she whispered.

  Kailynn did not respond.

  “The incident became very public,” Isa said. “It seemed that the more the school tried to downplay the incident, the more interested the public became. After nearly seven months of constant attention and scrutiny, the two were finally sentenced to death,” Isa let out an exasperated chuckle, her face becoming pained, “for sabotage and irreparable damage of government property.” Isa looked at Kailynn. “That’s all he was—property. And they saw him as damaged.”

  Isa leaned her head back on the couch.

  “I never understood why everyone was so hateful toward Elites,” she whispered. “This whole thing with Gihron…they talk to us like we made the decision to be this way, like we chose how to be born and how to be raised. We’re products of the government, the government that humans built. And then, we’re raised and damaged by humans, and they still blame us.”

  Kailynn leaned forward and ran her fingers over Isa’s cheek, tucking some hair behind her ear.

  “Sounds a little similar to Trid.”

  Isa smiled slightly.

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “It does.”

  “So…maybe we’re actually not so different.”

  Isa smiled and Kailynn leaned forward and kissed the Elite.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Isa tried not to let her feet drag as she walked out of the elevator to her office. The doors opened automatically and the lights came on, but she shied away from them, reaching to shut them off. She stumbled, falling against the wall and resting her hand over the light controls. The lights dimmed immediately.

  The Golden Elite put her other hand over her eyes and sighed heavily, gathering her strength to stand straight.

  The five-hour meeting with Venus had been brutal. The hot room had dehydrated her considerably, and the tension that always wracked her body when she was in conference with the artificial intelligence had worn down her already-weak body.

  She could feel herself slipping back into very destructive habits.

  She had been unable to eat, her sleep had been plagued with half-awake hallucinations that had her too terrified to close her eyes at night, and she could feel the tension in her shoulders and belly that she remembered too well from five years previous.

  Isa’s head began spinning, her world whirling around her. The fuzzy feeling in her head was also very familiar.

  She forced herself away from the wall, trying to get to the couches in her office before she passed out.

  She only made it half-way.

  Remus, in his office one level below Isa’s, finished looking over the Intelligence Agency’s report on the location of the Gihron men who had killed the Elite prototypes. He ground his teeth together in frustration. They still could not find the men. They managed to find the prototypes, but they were not in the bunker where they had been killed. They were thrown carelessly into quarry and found by the machines four hours after their disposal.

  The attack on the prototypes had hit everyone in Isa’s Syndicate far harder than they were willing to admit. Most of them remembered their own beatings, the way the Elites were used and tossed aside carelessly. They recalled what happened to Aren, and they remembered what happened to Remus. With the wound of Maki’s death still fresh, they were struggling not to let their past experiences dictate their actions. However, they were working slower than usual, and Chronus had not been to work since the transmission of the prototypes being murdered.

  Remus glanced at the schematics of the building, entering his biometrics to see the status of the audience room for Venus. When he saw it marked as inactive, he sighed, rolling his eyes, thrilled that Isa was finally out of the meeting.

  He got out of the NCB chair and went to Isa’s office, only to find the Golden Elite passed out on the floor.

  Somewhere nearby, Isa could hear voices. They were muffled and incoherent, but she tried to find them and figure out what they were saying.

  “…can’t use that as a reason,” Remus’ voice finally floated to her. “No one else knows what happened to Colonel Amori. The Alliance will not stand behind us if we try to attack Gihron.”

  “You know that, if they attack, she won’t be able to handle it,” Dr. Busen’s voice responded. “Her body is not able to handle this type of stress anymore.”

  “Her mind, either,” Paul agreed.

  Isa’s eyes fluttered open. She recognized her the ceiling in her office, but it took her a while to focus on the three figures standing next to her in deep discussion.

  “She has to handle it,” Remus murmured. “She’s the Golden Elite. If she’s unable to perform her duties, she’ll be replaced, which means she’ll be kil
led.”

  The two doctors remained silent, their heads dropping.

  Remus turned his eyes to Isa and saw her conscious.

  “Isa,” he breathed, stepping forward and kneeling at her side. She moved slowly, her head pounding painfully. She looked around, her eyes meeting those of the three men in the room.

  “What happened?”

  “I found you passed out on the floor,” Remus explained. “You were dehydrated and you’re malnourished.”

  Dr. Busen stepped forward, sitting on the coffee table next to the couch where they had placed the Golden Elite.

  “Isa,” he started seriously, “we really need to discuss this.”

  “I’m fine,” Isa insisted.

  “People who are fine do not pass out on the floor like that,” Dr. Busen told her.

  “I was dehydrated,” she said. “I spent five hours in the furnace of the audience hall.”

  “Five hours is not long enough to starve to the level you are now,” the doctor murmured. “You haven’t been eating, have you?”

  “I have not had an appetite.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” Paul said, standing next to Dr. Busen. Isa sighed and placed her head back on the couch, closing her eyes.

  “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” she whispered.

  “I’m sure,” Paul said quietly. “And I’m sure that everything that has been going on lately has brought up painful memories about Colonel Amori, and the damage he caused.”

  Isa did not open her eyes, trying to keep her mind from racing at the name.

  “Isa,” Paul said, crouching next to her, “open your eyes and look at me.”

  The Golden Elite did not comply.

  Paul reached forward and gently placed a hand on Isa’s cheek, turning her head to the side.

  “You’re safe,” he assured. “Open your eyes.”

  Isa took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

  “Name every person in this room.”

  “Remus, Dr. Busen, and you,” Isa said quietly.