by Casey Herzog
“I had never killed before this—” Dante paused. He had killed before. Just not intentionally. “I have only ever used them when in danger,” he corrected.
“What happens when that line that you call ‘in danger’ begins to blur? What if you’re being beaten in a duel and you decide you have an ace up your sleeve? Or a professor makes you feel uncomfortable? What if it’s simply someone lashing out at you with their own gifts? Your abilities can kill, and you may see it fit to hit your opponent harder than they hit you. It could turn tragic.”
Shermont was right, but Dante was afraid of someone intervening on how he made use of the abilities he’d been born with.
“Sir...Those who have tried to put me in chains have failed. I have always worked better with enough care to stay safe, but at the same time, enough liberty to act as I see fit. Nobody knows my powers as I do, and even then, I don’t even know half of my capabilities.” He glanced at the rotten apple core again.
“Dante, understand this: you’re no longer in an underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. There are consequences for the misuse of your powers — people can and will die if you don’t keep a leash on them. Many could die, in fact, if you were so much as to release a fraction of them in a crowded space. Imagine you lost your temper in a packed classroom, or worse…imagine somebody made you lose your temper on purpose, with the sole intention to cause you to kill or maim those around you?”
Dante went cold. He’d never thought of it that way.
“Something like…terrorism?”
“Exactly. How would you go about explaining that? Something clearly happened on that train platform, life-threatening circumstances or not.” Shermont grimaced, and for a moment he seemed human again. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to blow your enemy to pieces. Kill him? Sure, I have no doubt you meant to take his life, but I know you didn’t expect to cause such carnage.”
Dante looked away in shame, nodding in acceptance. And to think he doesn’t know what took place at Ayia, he thought. Dante hadn’t just had a small outburst when he’d watched Frank and Johanna die, he’d freaked out entirely. The sound of ripping metal and collapsing floors returned to his ears, and he remembered how the energy released from his body had seemed limitless and unbound. I could have done so much more damage if I had actually known how to harness it.
The thought was frightening.
“So what happens now? How do we approach this?” I guess I should concede, Dante knew. This is one of the most high-ranking and respected figures of the Universitas Terras. If he can’t get it right, nobody will.
“Quick and to the point. Our conversation until now hasn’t been futile, son.” He smiled knowingly, his eyes glinting. Wrinkles spread on his face, but there was a fire in his brown eyes that showed youth of spirit, if not in body. “Nevertheless, Dante the Healer wishes to know his fate and I have no option but to deliver it to him. Very well…I want to tutor you on the correct use of your abilities. We shall work together, hand in hand, and I think we can learn from each other, yes? I’m not sure what you think about this, boy, but I could even give you privileges to facilitate coming here when class or homework are in the way.”
Shermont paused and tilted his head curiously. “Well, what do you think? All in all, while the other professors will provide you an education, I want to be the one you remember for actually teaching you what you needed to know the most: how to handle your life as something more than a human.”
Dante’s eyes were almost shining with joy as he sat up.
“Of course! I fully accept your terms, professor!” His excitement grew, and immediately he had an idea. Standing from his chair, Dante bent over to pick up the rotten apple, lifting it in the center of his palm. Shermont’s expression changed in an instant from suspicion to amazement. Dante’s gifts were already starting to heal the fruit: the apple’s rot was fading, and although its original gloss didn’t return, the fruit was certainly back to normal within moments.
Shermont smiled proudly and placed a hand on Dante’s shoulder.
“You, my boy, are going to bring about the rebirth of this world one day.”
Dante returned to his quarters feeling hopeful. He had a grin that spread from ear to ear, but he soon hid it from the world to keep the darkness away. Every time I’m happy, something comes at me and tries to put me down. It had happened plenty of times, and not just at the University. It was almost a recurring gag.
He opened the door and peeked inside. He looked around for signs of Webster or anyone else, but it was clearly empty. Dante sighed and crossed the living room towards the sofa, only then noticing something sitting on top of it.
It was a note.
Dante Castello was written on the top of the folded paper, its cursive writing catching the Healer’s eye. Nobody writes like that anymore. He’d read handwritten books, rare relics from the past Johanna shared with the kids in an attempt to keep them anchored to humanity’s origins. Only in those books had Dante seen such a writing style.
“What the…” he began, as he opened the sheet of paper and began to read.
Dear Dante, it read, I have made an important breakthrough in our investigation. The hydra has many heads, but the Sphinx sees all. See me tomorrow at midday. Destroy this note.
Dante looked at the paper for a long moment before folding it half and tearing it in half—
Wait, he thought. His fingers stopped ripping the paper halfway into the process, and he opened the note once more, inspecting every inch of it. There was something else, surely. Why do I feel this certainty? I’ve missed something. The Sphinx would never be this obvious, this blatant. Dante’s eyes darted between the letters, studied the handwriting from several angles. He even turned the page upside-down and turned it around to look at it through the lamp of his room.
As he sat there, seeing only the dim light of a cold LED tube on the other side of the paper, he noted one of the words in particular. It had seemed little more than an order to keep the note from falling in the wrong hands, but the Sphinx had stressed it in an important way. ‘Destroy this note’, it said.
Anybody else would have simply torn the paper apart — even Dante, for a moment — but it just wasn’t like the professor. I’ve only interacted with him briefly, but he’s not this straightforward. He has earned his nickname. And I know what he truly wants me to do next.
Dante thought of the killers, of Roberto’s untimely death and the consequences the attack had had on his psyche. When alone he felt fear and desperation, the feeling of being watched or followed wherever he went. In truth, as he began to think of those things, Dante realized he didn’t need a reason to feel angry.
It was always there in his mind, a permanent rage that gave him reasons to wonder why his life had been so tragic and unfair. He constantly kept it in the back of its head, but it was there all the time. He released it now, concentrating it in his hand, an invisible energy that felt like the air in his lungs. Dante’s fingers trembled and burned, and he realized in that moment he’d made a mistake: he’d summoned too much of it. Shermont was right — he had to learn.
Boom.
He fired it into the back of his room, blowing apart the wall that led to his bathroom and bursting a series of pipes in the process. Water gushed out, and tiles came smashing down, but Dante’s eyes were looking elsewhere in shock.
His release of energy had destroyed part of his room, yes, but he’d also disintegrated the piece of paper in the process. Now, a small flame-like specter hung in the middle of his quarters, a whispering voice beginning to emit from its form. It was the Sphinx speaking through some sort of energy form.
“Dante, if you’re hearing this, you’re a smarter boy than I thought. The enemy is no fool either, however, and I wished to avoid all risks. Do not see me tomorrow at midday like the note said, it isn’t safe. I have discovered signs the enemy is closer than we think, and it is most likely not just a clandestine group of killers like I’d initially believed. There is
someone big behind this, someone who might turn out to be a terrible revelation for us all. You need to be careful, Dante. I can’t tell you more for now, but this is huge…”
What followed was silence, and Dante looked at the wreckage of his room. Only then did he hear the intake of breath and realize there was something yet to be said.
“Dante, it’s not going to end soon. There are some who believe you would be better off dead than risk the enemy laying their hands on you. The Coalition…I believe they’re involved somehow. This isn’t ending soon, my boy. It will only get worse. I’m so sorry, child…stay safe.”
The specter disappeared, as did the voice, and Dante was left standing there, alone and afraid.
Just like I’ve always been whenever I think everything is going to be okay.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lords
Russell dropped the guard and shook the steaming blood off his fist with a crooked grin. A loud cheer rose from the crowd of prisoners around him, and the killer closed his eyes for a moment, allowing the bloodlust to spread through him. They shot open again, and he roared a wordless scream of release soon echoed by his new soldiers filling the cavern. Dead guards lay at their feet and both their armor and their weapons had been claimed by the quickest and most savage of the captives.
“How did that feel?” Russell growled at them, taking in their emotions and enjoying every minute of it. Two of the guards had escaped back down the corridor they had come from as ‘reinforcements.,’ but Russell was content with the damage done to the Coalition sentinel force. He was unaware of the size or layout of the mines, but it wouldn’t take long for him and his fellow prisoners to pass on the virus of rebellion to those in neighboring sectors. Sooner or later Zverev, the bastard who stole my sword, will cross my path, and I will get the chance to kill him with it. Russell could already imagine the sweetness of looking into the man’s eyes as his blade sucked the very essence out of the man’s body.
As Lord of Ayia, one of his largest goals had been to find all of the relics lost to the dust and rubble of the new world. The walls of his throne room had been covered with ancient weapons and filled with treasures rich men and women would have once paid millions for. I was so naïve back then, believing myself on the peak of the world, thinking I was untouchable. In that, Russell had to thank Callum Thorpe and the kid. They had given him a wake-up call, the rude awakening he had needed all along. He was not as powerful as he thought, and there was still room for improvement. In truth, his fear of death had dissipated within the walls of his tower. It was as if he had been certain no man could bring his life to an end as long as he’d sat in his throne room.
I’m glad to have become aware of how wrong I was. It will make me a stronger man to have come so close to death.
Now, he took the first step forward and looked back over his shoulder, flashing his new followers a grin.
“We move forward.”
The prisoners lifted their weapons and marched after him, their admiration and respect towards the enhanced killer growing with each passing moment. Quite a few of them had heard of Lord Russell of Lawlessness; some had even made plans to kill or abuse him once they heard of his arrival at the prison, but he was showing how and why he had terrorized the lands in and around his huge city.
The dark, narrow path that led away from the cavern was quiet and empty, but the impending threat of violence and death was there, and every one of the prisoners knew it. The Coalition would commonly use deadly force over communities of innocents — what stopped them from just bringing the whole mine down to kill a few hundred rebellious prisoners? Russell knew he and his men had to make it out of the tunnels soon if they didn’t want to end their glorious insurrection as crushed corpses under several tons of rock.
His bionic eye whirred and focused, and tactical data began to feed into his mind. Something was approaching. It wasn’t a squad, it was—
“Fuck! Everyone start running now! Now!”
He cursed loudly and shoved several prisoners forward as a booming rumble erupted from beyond the tunnel walls.
It burst through the rock with an eardrum-splitting screech, a massive piece of machinery ripping through the wall to the right and crashing through a section of Russell’s provisional army. Men were ground into pulp by the huge drills that ran into them from one side, the screams of those who survived the impact echoing in the air.
“Keep running!” Russell roared, turning to look at the metal beast which had emerged to destroy them.
“Zverev’s men,” a prisoner croaked fearfully, pointing at the thick glass of the cockpit. Russell looked up to see who was inside the machine’s control cabin, but four powerful lamps fired on and shone down on the prisoners.
“You are all so fucking dead!” a man’s voice barked from several speakers at once. A horn screamed from the front of the vehicle, its crowd control function blatant, yet effective. Prisoners cowered and stumbled back, a mechanical arm stretching out from the digger and impaling one of the rebellious captives on its sharp, three-pronged claw.
Most of Russell’s force had been cut off from him by the machine. Only a dozen fearful prisoners stood around him, and he knew retreat was not an option after all.
“We fight it lads,” he barked, stepping towards the machine with a baton in one hand, a rock in the other.
“W-what?” a prisoner stammered. “How can we—”
“What other option is there, Nem?!” Another prisoner cried, grabbing his friend by the shoulder. “There are not enough of us here to make a difference if we escape. We’re already dead if we move forward, might as well go down fighting that beast!”
Russ stared at the second man and remembered his face. This guy has potential.
“You’re right, my friend,” he said softly. “We deal with that thing, and we continue, or we may as well kneel down and let them kill us now. So get your weapons ready, you scum of this forsaken world, we’re not just going to fight it; we’re going to kill it.”
The guard approached Fillmore with no pretense of discretion, pulling him away from the other prisoners and leading him to a more secluded part of the yard. The guards were letting fewer and fewer prisoners out of their cells now, and Callum was already under suspicion for the murder of another captive. The patrol officer felt lonelier and more exposed than ever, especially after the assassination attempt.
“Hey, hey!” he hissed, realizing how obvious this looked to any other prisoner or guard, “This is supposed to be done in a discrete manner; you can’t just pull me out of—”
“Captain, silence.” The sentinel’s words gave Fillmore pause. He could see the man’s worry clear on his expression.
“What’s wrong?”
“Forgive me, sir. It’s Russell, sir. He’s gone mad. He’s started a full-blown riot in the mines, killed a dozen guards and has formed an army. It’s savage stuff; they’re killing the guards and claiming their gear. This shit is going to cause shockwaves. We need you to be safe, captain, you have to let us take you elsewhere in the prison.”
The captain stared, giving the man a shrug and little else.
“Do you think I fear him?”
“You will, sir. There are vehicles in the mines, guns and explosives as well. Look, this insurrection might not amount to anything, but it would be better if we plan for the worst.”
“And then what, soldier?” Fillmore asked, tilting his head to one side. “Let’s say he doesn’t make it here. How do I explain you coming up to me like this and then my disappearance into the guards’ quarters? The prisoners will call me a snitch and a traitor, and I’ll be beaten to death. If he does make it here, they might still have me killed for betrayal once they’re done with all of you. Believe me, I wouldn’t mind dying in battle, but being tortured by a bunch of lowlifes isn’t on my list of things to experience in the near future. Leave me be; I can defend myself with what I have.”
“Captain—” the guard began, but Fillmore shook his head. The c
aptain knew he had to find Callum and get organized if what the guard was saying was true — which it surely was. They needed to be ready for their enemy. But how? “Well, soldier, there is something you can do for me.”
“What’s that, sir?” The guard was clearly eager to impress. Captain Fillmore’s name meant something to him, clearly.
“I want you to release and protect a prisoner who has been locked up under surveillance.”
“Oh, the ex-soldier? Why would we want to do that?”
“Because, my friend,” Fillmore said, as he put an arm around his ally, “He’s the only one here who has successfully defeated Russell in head-to-head combat…and it looks like we’re going to need him to do it again.”
The prisoners edged back in fear, already having seen what the vehicle could do when they saw an entire line of their fellow captives getting turned into minced meat by the machine’s drills.