Ilrica’s eyes went wide with fear. “It’s a viral...”
Ilrica threw her head back, her body jerking and convulsing, electricity playing out from her neck and flowing down her arms and legs.
Trahzi fell to her knees, her hands reaching up to her neck as she screamed.
Daan Nathers collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. A long dreadlock was plugged into the back of his neck. “Hey guys, you’ll never guess who I ran into at the bar in town,” he said cheerfully, oblivious to the screaming girls around him.
The dreadlock disengaged itself, and its owner walked into the room.
“My old friend Sarai. I brought her back with me to meet you.”
“It’s her,” Ilrica gasped, fighting against the invasive programs that were raging through her crystronics. “The assassin.”
The assassin turned to Gerald with her empty lavender eyes. “I have found you at last.”
Zurra wiped the tears off her face and stood up, placing herself between Gerald and the assassin.
“Stop it,” she yelled. “I already had the contract cancelled. You don’t need to come after him anymore.”
“I must kill Gerald Dyson.”
Zurra threw out her hands and released a bolt of lightning, but the assassin was too quick. She ducked under it, crawling along the floor on all fours like a spider and jumping on top of Gerald. Clamping onto his wrists and ankles, her chest opened into a giant syringe and stabbed at his heart.
Zurra stretched out her arm and grabbed the stinger. For a moment, the two struggled against one another, the tip of the needle shaking just millimeters from his skin.
The assassin remained focused on him. While she struggled, her shoulder folded open and a barrel charged up. Then the syringe whined and snapped off in Zurra’s powerful grip. Wrapping her other arm around the assassin’s midsection, Zurra whipped her off of Gerald. The beam from her shoulder dug a deep gouge into the floor, setting off the fire alarms.
Daan Nathers blinked as he lay there, looking around in fear. “What’s going on? Why can’t I move?”
The assassin’s arm flipped open, revealing a glowing blade. She sliced herself free of Zurra’s grip just as she slammed into the wall, breaking through the stone into the adjacent hallway.
Gerald barely had time to lift his head up before the assassin was on him again. Faster than thought, she leapt back into the room, releasing a volley of poisonous darts from a launcher in her thigh. Zurra jumped in the way, the darts puncturing her pink skin and leaving dark trails of fluid within her.
“You have to stop this!” Zurra yelled. “I am the client. Are you going to kill your own client?”
This caught the assassin’s attention. She landed for a second, processing while Trahzi and Ilrica writhed on the floor.
“If you cancelled the contract,” the assassin concluded, “then you are no longer the client.”
The assassin’s arm blossomed open and released a beam of frost that hit Zurra, freezing her solid. She fell backwards, shattering on the floor like pink glass.
The assassin leapt at Gerald, her blade ready to decapitate him, but she had to dodge at the last second as a gout of fire leapt out at her. She kicked off the ceiling just in time, the fire blasting through all forty stories of the palace and streaking out into space.
Fighting against the brain-dive, Trahzi had managed to raise a trembling hand. Electricity playing over her body, she managed to create a second ball of fire, but before she could release it, something clicked in her crystronics, and her eyes went vacant.
“I... I can’t see,” she said, panicking.
“She hacked your eyes,” Ilrica said, fighting a battle of her own for control of her body.
“Trahzi, adjust your aim ten degrees to the right and fire,” Gerald called out as he jumped behind an overturned table just in time. The table was hit with so many poison darts it looked like a pin cushion.
Trahzi followed his instruction and blindly released a second gout of flame, nearly incinerating the assassin as she jumped back into the hallway. Trahzi’s blast punched through five rooms and then blasted out the side of the palace.
Nathers tried to move, but found that he could not. “Have I been brain dived? Trakk, I have, haven’t I?”
The commotion had drawn the palace guards’ attention. The assassin’s forearms folded open into energized shields, blocking a dozen blasts before jumping back inside the room and grabbing Gerald.
Two automated turrets grew down from the ceiling in the hallway. They trained on the assassin, but she sliced through the AI before they could even fire. They turned and began firing on the palace guards instead.
Gerald fought and struggled, but his strength was as nothing before her cybernetic muscles. She squeezed just a little harder, and received a satisfying crunch as Gerald’s shoulder shattered in her grip. As he screamed in pain, she changed her grip, holding him aloft by the throat, her blade ready to plunge into his heart. A rocket destroyed the turrets, and guards spilled in through the hole in the wall. The assassin’s back folded open and she created a defense field around herself and Gerald, the guard’s rifle blasts bouncing off harmlessly.
The assassin’s eyes flashed and two new turrets formed on the wall, firing upon the guards anew.
Gerald looked into her cold, merciless eyes. He could already feel the cold sweat on his face, the icy feeling in his heart, the sickly pit in his stomach. It was a sensation he was becoming sadly familiar with.
He was about to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Mission completed,” the assassin said with a satisfied synthetic tone as she stabbed her blade.
“Wait, you’ve got the wrong person,” Nathers called out.
The assassin paused and looked at him crumpled on the floor, her blade tip hovering at Gerald’s heart. “No, this is Gerald Dyson.”
“I’m telling you, you have the wrong person,” Nathers insisted. “If you eliminate him instead of the target, your reputation will be ruined.”
More blaster fire bounced off the assassin’s barrier, but she ignored it. “You are trying to trick me.”
“No, he’s one of my students, and I’m telling you that is not Gerald Dyson. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
The assassin retracted her blade. “Very well.” Her hand converted itself into a retinal scanner, small pincers forcing Gerald’s eyes open. “Confirming identity.”
Nathers grinned triumphantly.
The assassin scanned Gerald’s eyes with a beep. “Target confirmed, this is Ger...”
The assassin screamed as a computer virus attacked her from within her own prosthetics. Her eyes rolled back into her head, her jaw fell down. Circuits and motors all throughout her limbs popped and fizzled; her spine overheated, smoke pouring out.
Her body shook around like a marionette on strings. Horrible noises came out of her. A thousand disembodied voices screaming random words. Her dreadlocks caught fire, her hands and feet exploded in a shower of dismembered metal fingers and toes.
Gerald fell from her grip and she collapsed to the floor, a broken mess of metal and wires.
Her digital attack neutralized, Ilrica and Trahzi were able to restore their control and reestablish their defenses. They stood up slowly, a little worse for wear, and embarrassed at having been so wholly caught off guard.
Gerald tried to sit up, but the pain in his shoulder overcame him, and he lost consciousness.
Chapter Thirty-Five
While standards of beauty vary wildly, from the Esselonians who value a long neck and a bulging egg sack, to the Urians, who believe that the only trait that really matters is the depth of one’s navel, one fact remains equal across all cultures. Beautiful people have it easier than the rest of us. Beautiful men and women have greater success with less effort in every field without exception. From business, to art, to engineering, to acting, to law enforcement, if you are extremely attractive you have a huge advantage
over your peers. Many worlds have tried to combat this inequality by imposing an additional beauty tax upon the most attractive people. This almost always backfires, as politics and news reporting are bastions of people whose only real job is to look good and read teleprompters, so the law usually gets really bad press and fails to pass muster. One of the most successful entrepreneurial businesses in this regard is RelocBeauty, which helps clients find a planet where their particular body type is considered to be the most attractive, and helps them find a job and relocate there. Consequently, planets like Jur’Inta, whose inhabitants really take a shine to overweight introverted feminist film critic bloggers, have experienced such a surge in population as to destroy their ecology and force them to close their borders.
-A Quick and Simple Guide to The Galaxy, page 374, Tongzen Press
Cha’Rolette struggled with the clasp on the collar of her uniform, it was small and tight and required a precise touch, and she just didn’t have it anymore. After several attempts, she finally managed to dress herself without the aid of the nursemaid robot. She looked at herself in the mirror and tried to look confident, but she just wasn’t feeling it. She rubbed the cramping muscles in her left hand, forcing the fingers to open and close. They did so reluctantly.
She took out her automated compact and finished applying her makeup, then walked over to the door. When it slid open, a Ssykes man stood there, blocking her path.
The doctors have cleared me to leave.
“I’m sorry, madam, my orders are quite specific.”
Cha’Rolette sighed. She was sick of this place. She was sick of what it had come to mean to her. She felt like she was surrounded by failure. It seemed to be everywhere. In the air, in the food, in the water. She felt like it had seeped into her very bones. She wanted to leave so bad she could almost taste it, but she reigned in her temper. The last thing she needed now was to give them an excuse to sedate her again.
Very well, then I order you, by my own authority, to stand aside.
“I’m sorry, but your title has been revoked.”
She stepped back. Her hand came up over her chest. It felt like she had been stabbed through the heart. What?
“I’m sorry you had to learn about it this way. You must stay here.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. But... my mission... my schooling.
“You cannot go back to the Academy.”
But... why?
“Your father’s orders. If you drop out now, you will have dropped out at the top of the class. If you return, you will quickly fall behind the other students.”
So, I am an embarrassment to the family now, is that it?
“You will still be allowed to attend public functions to keep up appearances. The rest of the time you will be comfortable. Your father has a nice little villa set aside for you on the western continent.”
Comfortable? Sounds more like a prison.
“You’ll have more than most people ever dream of.”
Except my freedom.
He shrugged.
The full weight of the situation came down on her. She tried to steady herself, but her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees. All of her hard work, all of her years of blood and sweat, of sacrifice and self-denial... all of it was for nothing.
It scarcely seemed real to her, yet she knew it was all too true. No made-man would joke about such a thing, and no heir would be stripped without the approval of the lead families. The vote needed to be unanimous, meaning she had not a single ally, not a single person in the family council who would stand up for her.
Cha’Rolette curled up her knees to her chin and wept quietly. She had dreamed of soaring with giants, of carving her place in the rock of history, of rising above the clouds themselves. Now, she was just a bird in a cage. Her wings had been clipped; her ambitions dashed. The only real advantage she ever had in life was her mind, and now that was dashed along with her dreams. Without it, she was nothing more than a pretty trinket, something to be placed on some shelf and ignored until dust and old age overtook them.
She could still remember being homeless on the street, using her powers to influence passersby into giving her whatever cash they had with them. Had she not been a telepath, she would surely have starved, or been kidnapped and sold into some brothel, or killed by a random misdirected, drunken act of rage. It had been a hard life, one she had tried hard to forget. But at that moment, sitting there on the floor of her cold recovery room, she envied that life. At least then, she had been free.
Only one thing remained. She wanted to see Gerald again. She wanted to tell him how she felt. She wanted to take the risk, on the chance that he might come to feel the same way for her. If she couldn’t have wealth or power, maybe at least she could have companionship.
So, tell me, my prison warden, she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. May I at least have visitors in my jail cell?
“Anyone except Gerald Dyson.”
So, even that is denied me.
She felt her heart break. She dropped her head and sobbed. It was so much harder to control her emotions now than it used to be. Inside, she knew she was the same person she had always been, but it couldn’t get out anymore. She was trapped inside a damaged body and a damaged mind. A flawed shell that constrained her and contained her. For the first time, she felt like she really understood what Gerald had meant all those times. She cursed herself for having been so cruel to him, for having so easily dismissed his feelings. She wanted to tell him what she had learned; she wanted to make things right, she wanted to be with him. Being damaged together would be better than being damaged alone. But in her heart, she knew her father would never let that happen. Only the heir to the family had the freedom to countermand his wishes, and she no longer had that authority.
She didn’t know how long she cried. She was vaguely aware of nurses coming in and out, walking around her like some sort of embarrassing obstacle. She didn’t care who saw her. None of that mattered anymore. There was no face to save, no honor to uphold, no tradition to maintain. She was just a girl with a broken heart, and nobody was coming to save her.
Eventually, her tears cut through even the Ssykes man’s rock-hard exterior, and she felt him place a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Look,” he said. “I know it’s not my place to disagree with your father, but the rest of the family was right. They never should have pulled you back into our world. It was unfair to you, and it was cruel for them to lead you on, making you think you could do it. In reality, it’s not your fault. You never had a chance.”
Cha’Rolette balled her fists and looked up at him, fire in her eyes.
* * *
Zurra had the sensation of someone gently stroking her brow and hair as she lay in her hospital bed. She opened her eyes, and found Gerald gently holding her, humming a little song.
It was the same song he used to sing to her when they were kids. When the nightmares would come. When she was too afraid to sleep.
Tears filled her eyes, and said the thing she had said a million times in her mind already. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Gerald wiped a tear off her pink cheek. He was so gentle with her, so tender. It made her feel even worse for what she had done.
“It would help if I understood why you did it,” he said, struggling with his own emotions. “A lot of people were hurt. Cha’Rolette was put into a coma. I know why you were mad at me over the marriage contract, but this... this is just hard for me to even begin to understand.”
Gerald turned to her. The pain in his eyes was like a dagger in her heart. “Can you tell me why it was so important to have me killed?”
“Well, I found out...”
Zurra put her hands over her mouth. “If I tell him the real reason,” she thought frantically, “if I tell him that he used to be the ArchTyrant, it will destroy his life. He’ll never be happy again.”
Zurra looked up at him, her eyes swimming. “I... I can’t tell you.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“I can’t tell you that, either.”
Gerald turned away in frustration. “So, you want me to forgive you, but you can’t tell me why you did it.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I know it’s unfair to you.”
“That’s putting it lightly. How can you ask me to trust you like this? How can I know it won’t happen again? If I don’t know what caused it, how can I avoid repeating whatever triggered it? It’s like you’ve tossed a time bomb into my lap, and I’m just supposed to stay calm and not worry about whether or not it’s going to explode.”
Zurra began sobbing. “I know. It’s all wrong. I ruined everything. I took the one real friendship I had and I destroyed it forever. I love my father, and I would never say anything bad about him, but he’s so focused on his career right now, I feel like I don’t even matter to him. He didn’t even remember my birthday. The staff forgot too.”
She looked up into his eyes, her heart broken. “You were the only one who did. I’m so sorry.”
Zurra collapsed into his broad chest and began crying bitter tears. He had sat in many many confessionals over the years, and he had never seen anyone weep so completely.
Watching her tiny frame shake, feeling her tender little tears fall on his lap, he wanted so much to be able to forgive her. He wanted to just let it all go, but he had scars, and they ran deep. He recalled how bitterly he himself had wept watching Cha’Rolette lying in her hospital bed. He had blamed himself for all that, and in a weird sick way, he still blamed himself, even though now he knew that it was Zurra who had hired the assassin that hit her.
It was the oldest instinct there was. She had hurt him, she had hurt his friends, and a part of him wanted to hurt her back. In the back of his mind, where his primitive instincts dominated his imagination, he could think of a thousand ways to really twist the knife right now. Perfect little phrases that would injure Zurra far more than any bullet or laser ever could. Little slivers of venom that, once uttered, would work their way into her heart and poison her forever. A part of him relished and basked in the power he had over her in this instant. With one little sentence he could destroy her. Gerald knew what that felt like. His own mother had planted such a shard in his heart the day she wished she had never given birth to him.
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