My stomach tightens. Maybe I am weak. The sweat pours off of me. Grit and sand pummels and stings like a thousand tiny chiggers on my skin, cruelly painful for such insignificant grains. I’m pathetic. I care about animals, weak women, the lowest class people on the planet.
I’ve been trained to believe that less Caturs mean more resources for the Eka and the other higher ranks. Sure, we needed Caturs for hard labor, but it was good to teach them lessons, remind them who held the power. Remind them that they owed their very existence to the Ekas and Romulus. It’s a sick system, but it’s always worked. Why should I question it now?
I grit my teeth and press my eyes shut. I can pass this test. This will not be my first kill by a long shot. I’ve been stalking and fighting since I was just a kid. But this would be the first cripple. This would be the first unarmed girl. Scaeva holds his gun out to me, but I can’t take it.
My brain snaps and fizzles, the images of pain and blood I’ve witnessed from Scaeva’s hand sear through with blinding quickness. I push a hand over my eyes and blink hard, wishing that they would have run away by the time I look again, but they’re still there, and I know there will be more blood today, more violence I can’t erase.
I can’t do it, not even with my life on the line.
She’s a nobody, but something inside me stops before I can reach out and take that gun.
I wonder if I do have tainted blood.
I can’t believe I’m about to die over a damn blue thread on my uniform and my soft spot for this girl. I push back the bile that presses my throat and fist my hands to stop the tremors rioting through me. I’m not ready to die.
Scaeva looks happy. I’m sure he never relished the idea of going back to Romulus with me by his side, worried about what I might tell.
“Honestly, I would have thought a great warrior like you with all the teachers drooling over your scores and records could handle offing some piece of crap Caturs,” he says and shrugs. “Just goes to show that you can be amazing in training and not have what it takes on the field. Oh well, these two bastards first, then your death march, frat.”
Everything feels like it’s happening underwater, the movements slow and too smooth. Sand and grit pushes up off of the ground and temporarily clouds the bank, but when it calms down, they’re still there. My eyes follow his arm as he raises his gun, and I see girl look up. Her face makes my breath catch from across the river. She knows exactly where we are, sees us plain as day, but she doesn’t look worried at all, even with the gun pointed directly at her. It’s bravery like I’ve never seen on the face of an Eka. It’s bravery that snaps me out of my robotic state and fills me with a need to stop this, no matter what the cost.
Scaeva is about to make ground meat out of her graceful body and she puts her good arm out, pushing the boy back into the reeds, ready to accept her death. What she doesn’t know is that it isn’t coming. I’m not going to let Scaeva’s reign of terror continue. I’m stopping him.
As soon as I make the decision, my mind clears and my body focuses.
Scaeva positions the gun and is about to pull the trigger, and my years of training take over. I instantly turn into the killing machine they’ve trained me to be. I flip the knife out of my shirt sleeve, grip the handle, and take aim to sink the blade deep into his back with one quick, hard thrust. As the blade slides in, the adrenaline pumps through my body, right and wrong disappear and all it becomes is a primal fight to the death. I scream as my knife makes contact, the sound lost in the explosion of wind and grit.
But Scaeva’s been trained by the same leaders who trained me, and he deflects the hit with a defensive twist of his body. The knife should have gone straight into his spine and severed it, but he moves too fast and I wind up hitting a rib.
There’s a crunch of bone and the back-splatter of blood on my face when I pull the knife out. His lung is most likely punctured. It’s the gush of his blood that stops me before I can jab at him again. His blood runs over my hands down along my arms and pools at my feet. He’s not dead yet, but he will be, and I’ll be the one who killed him in cold blood.
My comrade, my blood brother, the one person who was my equal out in this desolate nowhere, dead by my hand. The full impact of what I’ve done doesn’t have time to hit me, because something more primal takes over and shakes me back to my senses. No matter how much I regret murdering my blood brother, I’ll regret it more if I go weak and let him kill me.
I’m primed to stab again when he rolls over, gun in hand and lets off a spray of bullets that starts at my hip and tears through down to my knee. Blood sprays out and my leg crumples under me, sending me to the ground with a crash.
The pain is so dense and hot, the first thought that jumps into my head is that I hope that I’ll die. I hear Scaeva moan and curse in the cracked mud next to me. Dust and sand pulses in the push and pull of the wind, burying us both before we’re actually dead.
I lose my grip on the knife and it falls to the ground, useless. I can feel the blood gushing out of my body in time to my thumping heart. I’m losing blood so fast, I’m going to be swimming in it soon. I know how this will wind up playing out. I rip my respirator off, close my eyes, and thump my head against the ground as the cold reality hits home. Sand closes over my nostrils and claws at my throat. I’m dead already.
I’ll lose too much blood; the cold will set in. I’ll keep my eyes open wide, sadly hoping that if I can see the world around me, I can still live in it. But it isn’t that simple. You can hold your eyes as wide as you’re able to, but in the end you’re just a bug-eyed corpse.
It had always seemed really desperate when I was digging guys into the fields. Burying dead trainees was a part of corps training, just like kitchen or latrine duty. I always thought that when I died, I wouldn’t be so desperate. I thought I’d be able to lie back and close my eyes, let death come. It’s easy to think of how brave you’ll be when there aren’t a dozen bullets ripping your body to shreds.
Now, with death’s icy hand on my back, I want to live. I want to see the world as long as I can, even if all I am seeing is blood and slushy, muddy river slime shrouded in a fog of sand.
Scaeva has crawled over to my body and has the barrel of the gun pointed directly at my face with one shaky arm. “This Nex is completed.” A blood-tinged smile spreads over his pale face and he wobbles on his feet, his gun jerking in his hands as he fights to stay upright. “It will be a nice change back at base, frat. Not hearing you run your mouth will be worth this trek through the mud.”
His voice changes volume, surging loud then going dim as the wind picks up. I want to say something, anything, but I don’t have enough blood in my body for speech. Even if Scaeva doesn’t put a bullet in my skull, I’ll be dead in a few minutes.
I wish his gloating face wasn’t going to be the last thing I see on this filthy planet. I let my eyes close for a minute and the pulchra girl’s face flashes in front of my eyes.
Since I’m dying, I admit that she’s beautiful despite her missing limb. I’m glad her face is the last one my mind pulls up for me.
But a thwack and a wet burst shock me out of my morbid thoughts. When I open my eyes, my lashes are sticky with blood that isn’t mine. Scaeva is lying face down in the mud. The back of his skull is split and oozing. There’s a rock the size of a child’s fist lodged in his dark hair. Scaeva is dead, and I wasn’t the one who murdered him.
He never got to complete his Nex, if there ever was one on me.
Now that I don’t have to stare at Scaeva’s face before I die, I keep my eyes open and my weak mind wanders, bringing up the face of the pulchra girl, blurry and gritty. Strangely, my daydream gets clearer even as my brain fuzzes over. It’s like I can see her standing over me, leaning so close she blocks the blinding heat of the suns and the sting of the sand.
Her eyes are lighter than mine. She has dark spots on her face. I’ve heard of them. Freckles. I reach a bloody hand up to touch her cheek, but she bats me away. I can
’t believe that my last fantasy girl is going to fight me off. Death is an evil woman.
Then I hear her speak. Unexpected last words. She says, “I owe it to him. He tried to save my life. He’s worthless to them now. Let’s take him to Babka. Maybe he’ll want a new life here.”
I hear a male’s voice, but I can’t see him. The boy? “He’s an Eka, Rilka. He’s not going to be happy to be a Catur.”
“Then he can blow his brains out when he comes to,” the girl says and shrugs. She ties a bandana around her mouth and nose and picks up my respirator.
I’ve never seen hair so bright. This time when I reach out to touch her, she lets me, sitting quietly while I rub blood from my fingers onto her hair.
I’ve ruined what is most beautiful about her. “Sorry,” I say.
She looks at me for a long minute, then puts the respirator over my mouth and nose. It’s easier to breath, but the pain bites through, sharp and intense. “Probably not as sorry as you’re going to be,” she says, and then the whole world goes deep and dark and black.
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