by Quil Carter
“I believe I am,” I said, although that was a straight out lie. Yes, I had theories and I had plans to test them out, but all my mind kept repeating to me was that I would never find out Sky’s most valuable secret.
Silas turned from the computer screen. He looked at me and I clucked my tongue when I saw a miserable look on his face. If we were alone, I’d take him into my arms like the supportive prince I was determined to be for him, but since there were others around us, Ceph especially who was at an impressionable age, I would not. The boy had to see Silas as a strong king and a leader, and he had to see me in the same light.
So all I did was pat his arm and then I gave him a supportive smile. “I’m close,” I reassured. “Before you know it, you’ll have us forever.” When Silas’s downcast eyes closed tight, I looked behind the king and motioned with my chin for Nero to leave.
Nero nudged Ceph and pointed to the door. The boy got the hint and turned to exit the laboratory, but before Nero himself left, my brother looked up at me and gave me a quizzical look.
I said nothing, and after staring at me with confusion, Nero shook his head and took his leave as well.
So it was just me, Silas, and Perish. This allowed me to comfort my master without the hesitation of us both being judged, so I shushed him as he sniffed and rubbed his back. “You’re worrying so much,” I said quietly. My voice was soothing and assuring, but inside I was yelling my victories. Here was Silas in my arms, and I was being the supportive one to him. Silas was coming to me for comfort… I was on the right track.
I couldn’t wait to tell Julian. This was the biggest breakthrough yet.
“You don’t understand, Elish,” Silas said, his voice breaking from emotion. “My babies are twenty-six now. They’re older than me, they look older than me, they’re getting grey hairs on little heads that once held soft strands of black and blond hair.” Silas pulled away from me and looked up, his watery green eyes floating in twin pools of sadness.
And when I smiled back, his face crumpled like my smile was a rock crushing him from above. “I’m going to bury my babies,” he choked, and this choke was followed by the first sob. “I’m going to bury my fucking babies!”
“No, no,” I shushed. Perish, who was behind Silas standing awkwardly near one of the empty steel mothers, made eye contact with me, then motioned towards the door. I nodded, and he left as well. “You won’t, my king. I’ll find a way, Perish and I both will find a way.”
“When? When you’re forty? Fifty?” Silas cried. “When you’re eighty years old with your brothers and sisters rotting in graves?” His lungs began to hyperventilate, and even though I tried to calm him, he was working himself up into too deep of a frenzy. “Twenty-six. My babies are twenty-six! Ceph and our twins are almost men… you’re all getting older, and here I am doomed to forever stay the same. I will watch my family grow old and die; I will bury the boys I pulled from their steel mother, and I will do that until the earth is swallowed by the–”
“Shhhh….” I hushed as I shook my head. I pulled him back into my arms and squeezed him tight. “You’ll never be alone. I promise you, Silas. I’ll make sure you’re never alone.”
Silas said nothing more after that, he cried in my arms and I held him. I loved every moment that I had to experience it. The king was submissive in my arms, his masks were forgotten and treaded-on on the floor beneath my shoes, and the many layers he’d wrapped around himself, were shedding off in translucent sheets.
And there in front of me stood an emotionally naked king. A man who I had once feared and now despised, was lost in my protective arms, allowing himself to be shielded by the boy he’d tortured, and the man who he’d broken bone by bone.
Where was his logic, I did not know. The mind of Silas Dekker was a maze of black thorns that switched position every several minutes. To understand just why he was allowing himself to be comforted by someone he’d tormented in such horrific ways was both easy and impossible. The answer, I guessed, was because, unlike me, Silas had no ulterior motives when it came to his emotions. Silas wore his emotions on his sleeve, bright colourful bands that told you to either come closer or stay away. Silas was Silas, and he did whatever he wanted to do at the time with no fear of repercussion or consideration of the impact it would have on how others viewed him.
Silas, quite frankly, didn’t care. And I both admired and hated that fact about him.
But inside both that admiration and hatred, was a realization that brought a wan smile to my lips.
Silas may be game player, but when it came to his emotions… he was the most honest person I knew.
And that fact was rather valuable to me. It was valuable because I was not honest when it came to my emotions, I myself was now wearing my own masks, and the layers on my body were wrapped tightly and secured through decades of mental abuse. Since I was the one now playing Silas like a rare instrument, it would only be me learning how to play him. I could learn this king without fear of misdirection and take full advantage of his freely expressed emotions. Silas was mine to learn, and mine to master…
… and also mine to manipulate and control, all without his knowledge. To him… well, to him, I’d only become the obedient, loyal second-in-command that he’d always wanted. So, in a way, we were both winning.
Then Silas pulled away while I was soothing him. My master looked up at me, a strange expression on his face.
“I don’t know you… Eli…” he whispered and then he took a step back from me. “I don’t know you at all… do I?”
My smile faded; I flipped a coin and decided quickly to show slight offense at this. “What do you mean?” I asked, injecting just the bit of injury into my tone.
Silas didn’t break his eye contact from me. “I want Perish to do a scan of your brain,” he said. “I want to make sure you didn’t suffer brain damage.”
My heart jumped, and I condemned myself for not stopping it. Quickly though, my mind reassured me that this would be a regular reaction to what Silas was saying anyway, but I still put myself on guard.
“You don’t like me?” I said, my voice dropping. My lips tightened and I turned from him, but Silas grabbed my arm.
“It’s not that,” he said quietly. “I’m just… I wasn’t expecting you to be like this, Elish, not after the trouble I had with you as a teenager. I want to know what’s going on in your head before I get used to you being this way.”
“What way?” I said stiffly. I didn’t want him to do this scan… What if he saw the signs that surgery was performed on me? I may have to ask Julian who it was that did this surgery so I know how it was done and if he left any evidence behind. If it had been Perish… he could lie, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted it was him. Perish’s moments of lucidity came and went swiftly, I don’t believe he’d be able to hold onto his old self for the whole duration of the surgery. And even past that, he would’ve had to be himself while speaking with Julian too.
“What do you mean what way?” Silas said. He pulled my arm and I turned around to face him. “You don’t hate me like you did before… that, Elish, that. Where is your anger? You were full of anger as a teenager.”
“And where did anger get me?” I said, my words as rigid and cold as a corpse. “What use is it to be angry at you? Look where it got me.” I pulled my arm from him, and realized with a bitter dread that I was perhaps tapping into a vein of true emotion. “Maybe I just don’t want to…” No, shut up and twist this to your advantage, Elish. This isn’t a problem; this is an opportunity. “Maybe… I look back on everything I did… and I see that you were right, and perhaps if you weren’t right, everything you did for me was out of love.”
I managed to keep my heart rate down, but inside my blood was boiling and my mouth was filling with a sour liquid, as if my own words had turned rancid. Did I really just say that? Truly? Oh, this is going to kill me having to do this. I knew I was going to have to swallow my pride, but I wasn’t warned that it would be c
overed in needles, glass, and razor blades.
“You… really think that?” he said, his tone and face unconvinced.
My teeth clenched hard enough for me to hear a squeak in my molars. I took in a deep inhale and forced my mouth open, then mentally cleansed myself of the anger poisoning me from the inside out. “I had a lot of time to think when I was kidnapped… and I talked a lot with Julian while I was recovering,” I said quietly. “This isn’t just… my mind coming back, I searched myself during that time.” I turned from him but since there were reflective surfaces everywhere, I maintained the appropriate look on my face. “You’re an incredible person… and instead of hating you… I wish to… I wish to learn from you. I want to not only learn how to be a good leader to our people, but I want to… repair what you’d started to mend when we took that trip to your hometown.”
I turned around, and although I was shaking internally from the rage of having to say that to him, I showed nothing on my face. I was calmed, collected, I was completely in control.
I had the power this time.
When I looked at Silas’s face, I hissed an internal victory seeing the shock and love in his eyes. I’d done it. Hook, line, and sinker, I’d done it.
“You really do…?” he whispered. He was searching my face, picking apart every last detail to find the falsities lying inside. But he would find nothing, my true feelings lay underneath my own mask… a mask that was so similar to my face, my own king and creator wouldn’t know the difference.
I nodded. “If you’ll let me.”
Silas walked to me, and threw his arms around my chest. He hugged me tight to him, and the all-too-familiar sniffing sound was heard.
“Oh, my baby,” he whimpered. “That’s all I ever wanted. I missed you.” He pulled back, framed my face, then kissed me on the lips before hugging me again. “I missed you so much, golden boy.”
I smiled and squeezed him back. “I missed you too, Master,” I whispered. “When I was little… I always dreamed of being like you. We may have had our differences but… I got my reality check. I think… I think being kidnapped may have been the best thing that has ever happened to me.” And it was, but not for the reasons he thought. “It made me realize a lot of things.”
Silas nodded and sniffed. “It made me realize a lot of things too, lovely boy,” he said quietly. “Just how much I love you… and how much I dearly wished our relationship had been different. We’ll work on it together, you and I, love.” He pulled away and gave me a tearful smile. “You’re too old to shadow me, but still I will teach you all that I know. It’ll be just like how I always wanted it.”
This time when Silas hugged me to him, I saw movement in the doorway. I looked up as Silas continued his gushing talk, and saw Nero standing in the doorway alone.
He was staring at me, and not only was there confusion on his face, but also a distinct look of suspicion as well.
Then he turned and left the doorway.
That evening was Sunday night dinner and it was chaos in our household. All of the little chimeras were running around Silas’s apartment howling and shrieking as they played noisily together, and the older ones were dealing with it by drinking or by sneaking off for lines of drugs. Even Silas was partaking in the occasional rail of opiate powder; he was the only one besides Perish who was allowed to mix alcohol and opiates, since that was a good way for you to wake up dead.
“It’s nice to have the family together again,” Silas said with a glassy-eyed smile. He watched as five-year-old Ludo and six-year-old Rio wrestled on the ground, Jack, Felix, and Valen chanting fight fight fight around them. It was noisy and hectic in the house, not only from the sounds of the boys’ playing, but Nero was also playing Xbox with Vinski and Ceph. “But I do also enjoy it once they leave…”
“It is a hell of a lot quieter,” I agreed. I was sitting opposite to Silas on the couch, Finn to my right and Julian was on my left. I’d asked Silas’s permission for Julian to attend and was surprised at his agreement. I knew Finn wasn’t going to like it, and he most certainly didn’t, but I wanted to get the family used to having Julian around. “How are their foster families holding up?”
“Perfectly,” Silas said. He raised his empty glass when Kirrel walked by and his sengil took it from his hand and started towards the kitchen. In the background, Ceph bellowed and swore at the video game, which was followed swiftly by Nero and Vinski’s mocking laughter. “Rio and Ludo have both started accompanying Dr. Temoran to the Skytech lab. They’ve been progressing quite well. You know, we don’t see any physical differences with this generation, not like we have seen with Jack and Sanguine, but the genetic differences are there plain as day. This generation is wonderfully advanced and I believe once they’re older, we’ll be happy with the results.”
“I hope so,” Garrett said. “It’s taken you forever to give me another science brother. Nero got Ceph, Elish got the twins. Once again Garrett gets the short end of the stick.”
“Well, now you have two as well, lovely boy,” Silas said. He reached up as Kirrel returned with his full glass and put the rum and ChiCola to his lips. “And they’ll be raised under the feet of scientists and once they’re older they can start shadowing you and Perish as well.”
“Master Silas?” Jack appeared beside Silas. The boy was dressed in a custom made black tailcoat suit with a white shirt underneath and a black bowtie. It was given to him for his birthday back in March and several times he’d even requested to wear it to bed.
“Yes, love?” Silas responded. He reached over to the coffee table and grabbed a chocolate from a crystal bowl that was half-full of them. He handed it to Jack whose eyes lit up.
Jack took the chocolate and held it in his hand. “I had a question… I was wondering since I’m going to be a Grim Reaper, and Felix is going to be a legion chimera, and Ludo and Rio are going to be scientists, and Valen’s going to be magic like you, and Ceph is going to be a legion chimera and Apollo and Artemis are going to be running Skyfall like Master Elish… I was wondering what my greywaster brother is going to be when he comes home?”
Silas’s smile widened. He reached over and pulled Jack onto his lap. We’d decided to stop mentioning Sanguine’s name to the younger children due to the real fact that Sanguine’s survival in the greywastes wasn’t guaranteed. He’d been left with a battle axe of a woman though, Lydia Hawkness who had helped the Legion during a raver raid on one of the military bases. She’d been pregnant at the time and as thanks for her help, had been invited to stay at the Legion base with full prenatal care until her child was born. Her boy was now living in Edgeview, and the red-eyed, black-haired baby chimera was given to her instead. Apparently, Lydia thought nothing of her child’s odd birth defect and left a week after the baby’s birth. No contact had been made with the boy or Lydia since then, but that was what Silas had wanted.
“Your brother is going to be Master Silas’s bodyguard,” Silas said. He helped Jack unwrap the candy, then put it into his palm. “He’s gone to the greywastes so he can grow up big and strong. He’ll be a powerful man ready to fight to the death for his family.”
Jack grinned. “And he has teeth like me, right? I can’t wait to meet someone with teeth like me.”
“That’s right, my little Grim. I bet you two will be best friends when he returns to Skyfall.”
“When will that be?”
“Oh, not for many years.” Jack frowned as Silas said this. “But you’ll be immortal one day. You’ll live to be millions of years old… so ten years isn’t too long to wait, right?”
Jack, looking disenchanted with the chocolate squished in his hand, nodded. “I guess so,” he said sadly. “But I wish I could meet him now.”
Silas slid Jack off of his lap. “It’ll come soon enough. Now go back to playing with your brothers but clean your hands first. If you get any chocolate spots on the furniture, Master Silas will make you clean it up with your blood.”
Jack laughed, all the children u
sed to his violent threats, and he ran off. The younger chimeras thought it was hilarious when Silas made such threats towards them, they had no idea just what kind of person Silas really was.
But I did, and unlike my older siblings… I wasn’t going to forget it either.
“It’s insane how old they are now,” Julian said beside me, and as soon as he spoke, I felt Finn’s leg, which was touching mine, stiffen up. Whenever Julian spoke, Finn acted like an inside cat who just heard a dog in the house. “Silas, Elish has been boasting about you. He tells me you’re planning on building a pre-Fallocaust museum?”
I was sure that if I listened hard enough, I could hear Finn’s teeth grinding. Since everyone was paying attention to Silas and the conversation he’d begun to have with Julian, I put a hand on Finn’s knee, just as tense as I’d guessed, and patted it.
Finn didn’t do anything at first, and when I looked to my side, I saw him glaring at the coffee table with his drink in his hand. He should’ve been enjoying taking a break from being a sengil, but it looked like he wanted nothing more than to just go back to our apartment.
Silas and Julian were engaging in conversation over the museum and some areas of interest Julian had visited in the eastern greywastes, and my brothers were soon joining in to offer their two cents. I decided to get up to have a smoke on the balcony. The opiate cigarettes were a nice way to discreetly calm one’s nerves, and it looked like Finn needed it.
Finn followed me, which I knew he’d do, and I closed the sliding glass door behind him and lit us both cigarettes.
“He seems to be getting along quite well with Silas,” Finn said stiffly behind me. I handed him his cigarette and he placed it immediately into his mouth.
“He’s doing it for me,” I said. I knew this wasn’t going to make him happy at all, but it was the truth and I needed Finn to see why I was doing this. “He’s talking me up in front of him, letting Silas know that I speak positively from him. It’s all part of this game.”