by Lizzy Ford
The protected zone is shrinking, I said carefully.
I am weak, Alessandra. If you do not help me, I will not survive much longer to assist in protecting what’s left of our people.
And this time when she spoke these words, which I’d heard many times, I couldn’t believe her. Adonis’ words returned to me, as did the vision of the future where I stood here in this chamber, frozen in some sort of altered state, while Lantos and Tommy looked on. Cleon hadn’t been in the vision, but nothing else about it gave me any hint as to what was happening, when, or why.
I didn’t know whom to believe, but I was leaning towards the lying asshole politicians who manipulated and trapped me, not because I had any faith in them, but because of the information Adonis provided about the gods dying. I replayed the visions I’d experienced over and over.
The apocalypse and ghostly Adonis.
Lantos and Tommy standing here.
The Silent Queen going into labor outside the walls.
Adonis appearing to me in Hades.
Were they even in the same potential timeline, or fragments of multiple paths leading to multiple potential futures?
I don’t know what to believe, I said, in case Cecelia was reading my mind.
Give me strength, so I can save us all, was her reply.
I had touched her in one, and I’d been frozen. Was this vision a warning of what not to do?
My heartbeat was racing, my palms sweating. Cecelia had a quantum computer to help her sort through her visions and powers. I had martial arts training and … Cleon. While he was brilliant in his own twisted way, I didn’t think he could offer the type of support I needed right now.
“I can’t hear your thoughts.” Cleon joined me at the railing, his gaze sharp.
“Maybe it’s the cavern,” I mumbled.
“She’s talking to you, isn’t she?”
I tried not to react. Being a shameless liar, Cleon spotted my tells.
“Do not do anything without me,” he said quietly. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Alessandra. You may hate me, but you know I know how to handle power and those ambitious enough to do anything to get it.”
He was right. It took a psycho dictator to know one.
“What is she saying?” he asked.
“She says she’s weak.”
He left the railing to check the readouts on the screen on the wall nearest the glass petri dish. “According to this, she’s still in a coma. She shouldn’t be talking to anyone.”
“Well, she is.”
What can I do to help you? I asked Cecelia.
What we planned, the last time we saw each other when I was fully awake, she replied.
I gripped the railing.
“What’s she saying?” Cleon asked, watching me closely.
“Nothing really,” I lied.
“Now is not the time for games, Alessandra.”
I can get rid of him, Cecelia said. Permanently. I can free you.
My eyebrows went up.
“She’s not to be trusted,” Cleon said.
“Neither are you.”
“I want to protect humanity.”
“You want to rule a select colony of approved humans!” I retorted. How can you free me? I asked Cecelia telepathically.
He’s bound to you, but I can break the connection, after I regain some strength.
By an energy exchange, I said, recalling what she asked me to do before.
Why do you hesitate to help me? You once were eager to, she said, sounding disappointed.
“Because I have no idea who to trust.” I looked pointedly at Cleon. “He says you started the Holy Wars and Zeus is safeguarding the protected zone, not you.”
You believe the man who stole your mind?
“No,” I snorted. “But I have a reason to believe there might be a different version of events.”
They have polluted you. This was prophesized.
My pulse raced. I didn’t know if what she claimed was true or not. I could think of one person to ask, but I wasn’t risking Cleon stealing my body, if I dropped into the alternate world to find the first Oracle again.
“Did you have anything to do with the Holy Wars?” I asked.
I closed the gate to prevent a worse fate.
“So you were protecting us,” I said. “Right? You didn’t launch the fireballs five years ago and wipe out humanity. You reacted when the gods tried to hurt us.”
I acted to prevent a worse fate, she repeated.
“I don’t understand. You closed the gate to prevent a worse fate, destroyed most of humanity or … you did something else?”
The deaths of billions were unintended. I did what I had to.
Coldness settled into my core. “That’s not an answer!” I retorted. Herakles and Adonis would probably tell me that this really was an answer, an indirect confession. She wasn’t denying anything, as I suspected she should be, if she were innocent. Growing alarmed, I gripped the railing harder. “Did you hurt all those people?”
Cleon waited expectantly, and I ignored him.
Cecelia was silent.
“You didn’t. You wouldn’t,” I reasoned aloud. “I mean, how could you?”
I glanced at the monitors, unable to tell if she’d fallen into her coma again or if she’d ever really been in one.
“She’s gone. I can hear your mind again,” Cleon said.
“I don’t understand,” I said, looping the conversation around in my head again. “She didn’t admit to anything but she said whatever she did was necessary to save us from a worse fate.”
“There is no worse fate. If Zeus loses his grip on the protected zone, chaos will rule briefly, the gods will die, and all this will be followed by permanent darkness,” Cleon said. “You’ve foreseen this.”
“I don’t know what I’ve foreseen! My visions are incoherent.” I sought some explanation, some reasoning behind whether or not Cecelia had done this. “She said the deaths were unintended. Maybe she had a vision about what was coming and couldn’t, or didn’t, stop it.”
“Or maybe she didn’t try, or she was the one to burn the world to the ground,” Cleon said.
I didn’t want to listen to him, didn’t want to believe Cecelia was capable of doing what they thought she was. I was starting to panic internally, to question everything I’d ever been told by Cecelia, to review every word Cleon and Lantos had said to make me doubt her. Artemis hadn’t spoken out against the Oracle when she advised me to use my power, but wasn’t her encouragement yet another nail in the coffin of what I was beginning to believe was the truth?
“The thirty nine hundred deaths under your belt were unintended, too,” Cleon pointed out. “As were the deaths of your parents. But someone killed all those people. Someone collapsed the buildings around them while they slept, and someone pulled the trigger that took your parents’ lives away.”
With the scents of the cavern, and Cleon in my head, I was starting to feel ill. It was impossible not to listen to him; his speech was echoed in his thoughts, which were my thoughts.
“Those deaths were your fault,” I said through clenched teeth. “You forced me to hurt them.”
“You chose to hurt them for some higher purpose,” he replied calmly. “Cecelia did the same.”
He was right. I had a choice between becoming a monster, and surviving another day to help what people I could, or being chopped up and ending up on the wall where Cecelia was now, where I couldn’t help anyone I loved.
“The only difference is we don’t know what Cecelia’s higher purpose is,” Cleon concluded.
“Maybe she was salvaging what part of humanity she could, so we weren’t all destroyed.”
“Justify it however you please,” he said. “As long as you believe me.”
“I don’t …” But I did. Or more accurately, I had enough doubt in my mind not to believe Cecelia over Cleon as I had before.
“I can feel the difference.”
I said nothing, not wanti
ng to admit the truth. It was harder for me to deny Cecelia was not the innocent party I had assumed her to be. I wanted to know more about what Adonis told me, about what was happening outside the walls and why and how the gods were dying.
“Listen to them. They’ll tell you,” Cleon advised.
At times, I heard the urgent whispers at the back of my mind. At sunset and sunrise, they became clearer, until I could distinguish individual voices among the murmuring.
I didn’t trust them any more than I would Cleon. I believed Adonis, and I believed Pythia, which was what I’d started calling the first Oracle. The only way for me to see her, though, was too dangerous.
“We could make a deal,” Cleon said.
Gods, I hated this! I had no privacy anymore!
“If talking to her is what it takes for us to become allies, then I’ll agree to behave better in the alternate world than you do in this one.”
I rolled my eyes at him. And then his meaning struck me. Studying him, I saw no deception in his features and read none in his mind. We were connected, but I was convinced one day, he’d find a way to hide his thoughts from me, because that was how good of a sneaky politician he was.
“Seriously? You won’t steal my body and go on some crazy Cleon rampage?” I asked cautiously.
“The longer it takes me to sway you to my side, the worse off the world becomes. I will cut you a break. Once.”
“Why didn’t you offer this sooner?”
“Because you had to be near the tipping point, or nothing anyone said would ever convince you. As displeased as I am about the reappearance of Adonis, he managed to open your eyes, when nothing I ever said would.”
It was a lot, coming from him. He believed what he was saying. I hesitated a moment longer, a little too freaked out by the idea of him tricking me and taking over my body.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I need to know.”
“Not here. I don’t trust her.”
I walked towards the elevator, chewing on my lower lip in consternation as I juggled all I’d learned today.
Cleon was quiet as we left the caverns and returned to the balmy afternoon. He left me at my villa’s doorstep, along with four soldiers. Surprised he wasn’t confining me to the House again, I eagerly climbed the stairs.
“Give me ten minutes,” he directed me.
I was tempted to drop into the alternate world as soon as I entered the house but decided against it this time. We had a lukewarm truce, and I didn’t want to aggravate the perpetual tension between us.
My bedroom was as I left it and clean, as if the maids had been contacted ahead of time about ensuring it was ready for me. I stopped in my doorway to gaze at the memorial wall.
Choice. Cleon had claimed I chose to murder all those people. It was true, in a sense. I had blamed him for forcing me to hurt them, but was he to blame at all? Obviously, if I hadn’t been placed in that situation, I wouldn’t have done it. Would someone else choose differently? If I were a better person, would I have chosen differently?
I closed the bedroom door behind me and crossed to my bed. It was too quiet for me, too calm. Even Cerberus was gone, though the window to Hades remained no matter where I went. I had seen Adonis there twice in my visions and still didn’t know what I’d done to send him there.
Cleon was soon ready.
Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply and slid into the alternate world to find Pythia, accompanied by a man I didn’t want anything to do with.
As usual, I ended up on the wrong side of the mirror and waited for Cerberus. He emerged from the underworld. I waved and braced myself, and he knocked me into the alternate world filled with blooming color.
“I’ll get it right some day,” I called to the beast. He sat on his haunches, glaring at me with all six eyes, as if he didn’t believe me. “Thanks in the meantime.”
“Are you talking to that thing?” Cleon sounded irritated already. “Let’s go. I have something to do tonight.”
With a long look at my body, I led Cleon away. Using the travel ability that let us cover great distances quickly, we were soon in the forest at the edge of the compound. No flashes of light caught my attention, and Pythia didn’t emerge.
“Let’s start looking,” I said.
Chapter Sixteen: Mercenary
“C’mon, kid.”
I paced in the small bay in the basement of the House, where Theodocia was stored with stacks of boxes in a little used cell in the prison. She showed no signs of life, and was therefore not an escape risk. As a result, she’d been locked in a room consisting of shoddy lighting, no cameras, rusted hinges on the door and the moldy scent of cardboard from boxes exposed to the leak in the corner. She was propped up against one wall.
Her creepy condition was something out of a haunted house and did nothing to make the trip down to the torture chambers and prison area any more appealing.
Perhaps my discomfort came equally from another source. I was acutely aware of how I could very well wind up here permanently in one of the cells reserved for those people Cleon held a personal vendetta against. I never challenged any of his orders to round up random people and bring them here. Ambassadors and political elite, I understood. The teen boy I dragged down here from the inner city? I had no idea what he’d done to piss off Cleon. Angering the politician often resulted in a life sentence.
My skin crawled with the awareness of my potential fate as I stood in the prison. My choice was made long ago. I’d jump ship when Cleon was no longer the man I thought he was, capable of protecting the only thing that mattered to me. With Alessandra’s growing powers, and Cleon’s increasingly erratic behavior, I saw the writing on the wall. The protected zone wasn’t going to be protected much longer, and Cleon had no power to change that. In addition, the only people I needed to be cautious of, who I couldn’t battle physically, were corralled on this compound. I could survive anything outside the walls, and I wasn’t going to risk Tommy disappearing in a poof of Oracle-created smoke or Cleon’s lunatic magic.
This compound, and everyone in it, was doomed. I wasn’t about to stick around to see how bad it got.
I listened to the endless chatter of security teams through the earpiece I wore. Accountability of all military assets was the last consideration, once all hell broke loose and Cleon ordered people to hunt me down. As his chief of security for five years, he wasn’t going to take my betrayal lightly.
“Any day now,” I muttered to the Oracle confined upstairs. Adonis gave his word. I’d never trust him with a weapon, but I knew him to be compromised in judgment when it came to Alessandra with a reputation for following through on his promises.
I wasn’t interested in gods or magic or Oracles, and Theodocia’s state reinforced the belief I wanted nothing to do with any of it. Allegedly, she was alive, but her skin, clothing, hair and everything else – down to the blood on her battered face – were cool and had the resiliency of gummy candy.
Checking my weapons again with light touches, I paused to gaze at her. It was rare when I experienced any sort of internal disquiet. My window to free her was narrow, and I couldn’t exactly carry her out like this. As a gummy statue, she was twice as heavy as usual, not to mention awkwardly stiff. I couldn’t carry a three hundred pound log out of the basement without disabling my ability to fight.
Impatient, I began pacing again. I always hesitated to place pieces of my plan outside my control, such as by asking Adonis to have the Oracle free Theodocia. There was too much potential for things to go wrong. Perhaps the Oracle was completely insane, thanks to Cleon, or Cleon reacted before Adonis had a chance to reach her. That whole mess wasn’t predictable, but it was also my best chance of undoing what had been done to Tommy’s mother.
I reached up to tap the earpiece and ask one of the guards on the top floor what was happening, when I heard a groan.
Theodocia wobbled and then collapsed.
Good girl, I thought. I didn’t give myself time to feel relieved and cro
ssed to her. “Can you stand?” I asked and peered into her face.
As if she hadn’t been frozen as a statue, blood oozed from several cuts in her face and one place in her abdomen. She appeared dazed.
“Never mind.” I stood and pulled her to her feet then slung her over one shoulder. She groaned again, this time in pain. I didn’t have time to assess the damage. I had to get her out of here before we were both in trouble. Drawing one weapon, I eased into the hallway. As the commander of the military, and temporary commander of SISA, I had unprecedented access to the security systems on the compound and had created a blind passage starting in the hallway and leading off the compound by turning off or rerouting the cameras along my path. No one would see me leave from the tightly monitored security stations, and I had a short buffer between now and when Cleon reacted to my betrayal. If anyone else crossed my path, I had enough weapons to take care of the job.
It was a perfect plan.
Which was why I was waiting for something to go wrong. One of the many life lessons I’d learned the uselessness of good planning, when so many factors were outside my control. I didn’t make mistakes – but the rest of the world did.
“All security personnel to their posts!” shouted someone into my earpiece. “Find General Niko ASAP. Use whatever force is necessary to prevent him from leaving the compound.”
“I see him! North entrance!” someone cried.
“All response teams to the north entrance!”
I smiled. In my preparations, I’d paid off a few of the mercs-turned-soldiers to cover for me. I didn’t need much time, and their assistance had been bought with one of the bars of gold Alessandra had paid me to deliver the cryptic message about the apocalypse to the Silent Queen’s camp.
“No! He’s on the east side!” claimed a second familiar voice of one of the men I’d paid off.
Moving faster, I went to the back stairwell known only to those who worked here and ran up the metal stairs to the ground floor. Whipping open the door, I continued down the path leading to the backside of the House, where the staff break and restrooms were located, along with the kitchens. The halls were vacant.