by Quil Carter
“You have us forever,” I said to him softly. “See, love? I promised you years ago… that you would never be alone.”
I closed my eyes as I clutched Silas to me, our hearts making their own musical beats as they knocked upon our chests.
And as I held him to me, a fierce protectiveness began to grow all the stronger, and not only that, I felt a possessiveness as well.
I had Silas. He was mine, and one day this king would be my husband. But even though my heart belonged to him, his heart was not yet mine.
There was someone else that still held it in his skeletonized grasp, someone unworthy to stand beside such a powerful, and wonderful man.
Silas was now mine, whether he knew it or not, and I would protect the man that I loved.
Even if that meant protecting him from himself.
One week later
I stepped off of the Falconer and into the warm May day. I paused for a moment, remembering Silas’s teachings, and I listened to my surroundings and scanned the tall, deteriorating buildings of Kreig.
The city looked the same as it always did, but since the afternoon was so beautiful, even the grey dreariness of time’s forgotten city could not dampen mother nature’s attempt at redemption. The grey sun had broken through its veil of ash and the tall buildings shone with sunlight, as if the gods above had decided to bless the damned.
After making sure there was no one living amongst this large graveyard of civilization, I walked in the middle of the cracked road, restaurants and stores to my left, and a parking lot full of rust-covered vehicles to my right. I then crossed a second parking lot and disappeared into a building that held no dunes of ash unlike its comrades.
The red light greeted me, and with my card key in hand, I slid it down the strip and made it green. I pushed the door open and entered the white hallway, my ash-covered boots making prints of grey on the white linoleum.
Without announcement, I walked down the bleach-smelling hallway, identical to the many laboratories in the greywastes, and the one in the basement of the Skytech building. I glanced through the windows of each room I passed, but the sole man who was guarding King Silas’s most coveted, was nowhere to be found.
Until my ears picked up a noise, a noise that sparked a protective flame, and a validation of my brother’s worries.
It was the low, rhythmic grunts of passion.
I followed the sounds to Kratz’s personal apartment and found the door ajar. I stood in the door way and saw for myself the scientist pounding himself into some unimportant male with a trimmed brown beard. The man was lying down with his legs being pressed back by Kratz’s body. The soles of the man’s feet were filthy; he was indeed a greywaster.
I unholstered a handgun, not my Colt of course, and raised it without hesitation. I fired a shot at the greywaster, my aim being confirmed when a hole appeared in his chest, right where his heart was.
Screams replaced the continuum of moans, and chaos the passion in the air. I watched casually as Kratz jumped off of his greywaster lover, the bearded man clutching his chest and swearing in sharp trills.
Kratz stood naked, his penis deflating as quickly as the blood spilled between the man’s fingers. He at first outstretched his hands with a cry, motioning to give his lover aid, before his thoughts kicked in and he remembered that bullets didn’t materialize out of thin air.
Kratz turned around, and when he saw me, his expression, already of blanched terror, became a convulse of fear.
“Elish!” he cried. His head thrashed back and forth, from me to the greywaster like a ping pong ball in a tournament, before he decided the man with the gun was more important than the lover swearing loudly and pleading for help.
I left the room, my gun still in my hand and immediately I was followed.
“I can explain…” Kratz said hastily, leaving the greywaster to his fate. Whether it was self-preservation or the knowledge that the man would be dead within a minute, only the universe knew. “Jesus, Elish… it… it gets lonely here. Sometimes a week passes before he visits me. Please, for him, don’t tell him. Fuck, Elish, it would break his heart.”
I continued walking, the room that I was looking for in my line of sight. A room that was unlike the others, because not only was in reinforced with bombproof walls, like the exterior of the laboratory, but it was under constant surveillance. There was even a separate keycard needed to enter.
And every keycard swipe was monitored.
“Open the clone’s room,” I said. I glanced up at the cameras watching me, and smirked when I realized that they were all turned off. How convenient, Kratz had done my work for me. I was going to erase the tapes after I left, but from the looks of it, that would be unnecessary. “You’ve already turned off the cameras? The microphones too, it seems?”
Kratz looked behind him, his lips pursing. There was no more high-pitched pleading, Kratz’s bedroom held nothing but silence. “Yes,” he admitted with shame. “I have it on a loop right now… the cameras see nothing but empty rooms.”
I approached the clone’s door and stepped aside. I motioned to it with my head. “Open,” I said.
Kratz cowered down like a dog that had been caught getting into the garbage. Without questioning my request, he slid his keycard through the slider, and opened the door to the room that held baby Keaton.
This room was unlike the others. Instead of plain white walls only broken up with paintings Perish had recovered, and various scientific-themed posters, these walls were blue with decals of kittens, purple, blue, and green sporting bows and playing with yarn. There was also a toy trunk in the corner with soft toys and stacks of children’s books, and a light green fabric swivel chair for Silas to sit in when he wished to read to the child.
The room twinged my nerves, but it was not only jealousy that was sparked, but a disdain for the source of so much of my Silas’s pain.
And the root of that source, was in the middle of this room.
He was the size of a tennis ball, curled up small with his eyes nothing but dark shadows behind still sealed lids. He had small stick-like arms, a torso that seemed disproportionate to his body, and small nubs for ears.
He was Keaton, and he was the future source of a great deal of pain for the man that I loved.
And also a thorn in my side.
“Silas was here several days ago… checking up on him,” Kratz stammered beside me. “He told you about the fluctuations in Keaton’s heart rate?”
“He did,” I said bitterly. The baby’s heart had started to race, before dropping to a dangerous level. Silas had come home inconsolable, screaming that the baby was going to die and that Kratz had failed again. It had taken me the entire night to calm him down, Silas was hysterical.
And there would be another month or two of this before the child reached the age that most of them died.
Possibly two months of my master becoming more attached to this child. Two months of hearing him speak of the boy with love in his tone, and a desperate hope in his eyes.
Both of my fists clenched, one tightening around the gun I was holding.
“He’s stable now at least,” Kratz said. Then he inhaled a sharpened breath. “Elish… Garrett will be heartbroken… please.”
I glared at the child, surprised that the heat of my gaze wasn’t making the water he floated in simmer.
Then I turned to Kratz.
The scientist stared nervously back at me, his tongue licking dry lips. He shifted his weight, then his eyes deflected, and looked everywhere else but my own.
“Garrett will be heartbroken,” I agreed. “And not only must I protect the man I love… but I will protect my brother with every last breath I have.”
In a fluid movement, one so quick the scientist had no time to react, I put the gun underneath his chin, and I pulled the trigger.
A loud crack bounced off of the blue walls. And on the ceiling, I watched a blood splatter pattern form, with chunks of brain as an accent. And what of Kratz?
His eyes protruded from his skull due to the force of the bullet, his cheeks rippled from the velocity, and an explosion of blood and brains erupted from the top of his skull like a macabre volcano who had awoken from slumber.
Kratz remained standing for a moment, a river of red pouring from his mouth with chunks of meat and teeth, then he collapsed onto the ground, the impact of his head on the linoleum making another splatter pattern, as if someone had shaken a paint brush against a canvas.
A pity Jack wasn’t here to observe such beauty. This was right up his alley.
“Suicide is a terrible thing,” I said out loud. “I would know, Dr. Kratz. I’m sorry the pain of failure was too much for you.” I pinched the barrel of the gun, then wiped my prints off with my jacket, and placed the handgun in Kratz’s hand. I even made his hand clench it, just to get his prints transferred. I wasn’t expecting an investigation, but when it came to my underhanded plans, I couldn’t be careful enough.
After placing the handgun to my satisfaction, I rose, then turned around to the child in his steel mother.
And I reached into my robes and pulled out a syringe. An almost non-existent amount of pink liquid in the barrel.
“I know this seems cruel, little one,” I said to him. I walked to the front of the steel mother and watched the boy in the cloudy liquid. “But even though I do this to protect the man I love, and to reinforce my place beside him by helping him through the grief of your passing… this is, in all honesty, a mercy.” I put my hand against the tank, it was warm, and I could feel it vibrate just slightly from the machines that were keeping the fetus alive. “In two months, your brain will be more developed, you will feel pain, you will feel the discomfort as your heart struggles to sustain your life. No child should have to go through such a thing, before death takes them anyway.” My head shook back and forth. “I will protect the ones I love from hurt. I will secure my place beside my king, and I will do the nicest thing to my lover’s clone… I will give him mercy.”
I removed my jacket, and rolled up my sleeves, then I reached into the warm liquid and gently grasped the little child and pulled him to the surface.
He was warm in my hand, his translucent skin so thin I held him with care. I could see his rapidly beating heart pulse through that skin, and it was into that heart that I pierced the needle.
“It will be instant, little one,” I said to him as I pressed down on the plunger. “All I can promise you… is that I will do everything in my power to prevent this from happening again.” The brain matter was priceless to Silas, and with the right amounts of love and manipulation, I will stunt further clone research, and delay the process at every turn.
Silas was mine, and I now had thirteen years to make it so he only had eyes for me. I had thirteen years to plant my seeds, to gently control my king from behind the scenes. Julian had taught me it was smarter to work with Silas, and not against him, but instead of controlling Silas for my own safety and the safety of the one I loved, I was now doing it to make sure my future husband realized as the years went on… he couldn’t live without me.
I would make it so he couldn’t breathe without me, and if that meant making it so I was the only man who could give him oxygen, so be it.
Silas would be mine; I would be his.
And in turn…
King Silas and King Elish, would rule the world, hand in hand.
I slipped the now dead fetus back into the water, then I removed my hand, and put on my jacket.
I stepped over Kratz’s askew legs, and walked through the door and into the hallway.
And without a look back, or a parting word spoken to the now empty laboratory, I stepped into the bright May afternoon, and smiled when the sunlight hit my face.
Life was good.
Finally, life was good.
THE END
EPILOGUE
“Wow,” I stared at the last page for more than a few moments, my mind reeling over what I had just finished reading. This book had been a rollercoaster ride of both my emotions and my mind, and I felt like I’d been holding my breath since I’d read the first sentence on page one.
I closed the book and stared at the cover, the impressive weight of the volume trumped only by the heaviness in my heart.
When Elish finally gave me permission to read his book, I was overjoyed. I was excited that he trusted me enough with something he guarded almost as closely as me, and I was humbled to the point of tears that my husband wanted to share such a personal side of him. It had been a long time coming, and for what seemed like a lifetime, I thought he would never put that mysterious book in my hands. But here I now was, I had reached the end, and my heart was broken knowing what my master would eventually go through.
Because we all knew… there was no happy ending for Elish and Silas. There would be no wedding between the two of them, no two kings ruling side by side, things would happen, people would change, and thirteen years after Silas made that promise to my master, he would viciously get his heart ripped out. My husband would get humiliated, he would get rejected with such a cruel force, his love for Silas would turn into a vicious, dark hatred.
And then… and then my love would find me.
I wiped my eyes, my chest aching for the master trapped inside of this book. I wished I was the same age as he was. I would’ve cut Julian’s throat the moment he began to follow him. I would’ve protected that innocent teenage boy with such ferocity, from Silas and the world.
I know if I’d done that, he wouldn’t be the man that I know and love today, but I still felt helpless as his husband that there was nothing that I could do.
With a sigh, I ran my fingers along the cover of the book and rose from where I was sitting. I put the book down on the coffee table, gave our cat a scratch on the head, and walked up the stairs and into my and Elish’s bedroom.
My master had been up the entire night after we both had to go to the greywastes for an important venture. I’d slept while he flew, and even though I’d asked him to wake me to take my shift at the Falconer’s controls, I only woke when he was picking me up and carrying me down to our house on top of Olympus. I wasn’t impressed, so I browbeat him into taking a nap and that was where he was now.
I opened the door, and for a moment, I stopped and just admired this husband of mine. He’d been an irritable ass for the past two months while I had been reading his book. And not just normal Elish irritable. In the beginning, Elish would walk behind me and peer down to see what part I was at, then make up some excuse for me to get up and do something. This behaviour had only gotten worse the deeper into the book that I got, until one night he realized I was reading about Ryan the pervert teacher and he outright took the book out of my hands and hid it somewhere I couldn’t find it. It took several days of complaining, whining, begging, and when I finally got the book back with a disgruntled hiss, I’d decided to only read it when he wasn’t in the room.
I loved him. My husband was just… he was just amazing.
My chest gave another surge of pain and my eyes burned. He didn’t deserve to have such horrible things happen to him. Fuck, his life, from five to thirty-three was just… it was heartbreaking. My poor man.
And to know that this book wasn’t the end of what he’d had to endure… in a lot of ways, it was only the beginning. He had those thirteen years of being in love with King Silas, then from age forty-seven to the present, decades of fostering that hatred for the king, and denying almost all love that came to him.
Until me.
Which was a mystery in itself.
My brow furrowed as I thought of this and I stared at my resting master. He was sleeping on his back, wearing only a white undershirt and cloth pants, with a thin blue blanket covering half of his body. There were no snores coming from him, Elish never snored, but his breathing was light and steady.
Sorrow took me as I watched him, the flashes of his past running through my head. I could feel his pain radiating off of those pages, the hopelessness he
must’ve felt, the guilt and despair, the frustration over realizing he was in love with the man who’d hurt him the most.
When you read books, you never got the chance to comfort the character you loved. You never got the chance to talk to them, or talk to them about what you’d just finished reading. But I did.
With my heart hurting and my eyes stinging, I crossed our bedroom until I got to our king size bed, then I crawled onto it. I snuggled up to Elish with a whimper, and buried my face into the crook of his arm.
I heard him inhale a sharp breath through his nose as he woke. “Hm?” he mumbled sleepily. “What’s wrong?”
I sniffed and slid my arm over his chest and squeezed him to me. “I love you,” I whimpered, my face pressed still buried. “I love you so much.”
Elish slowly shifted away from me. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, not in an annoyed way, but almost curious. “You usually only get this clingy when you’ve had a night–” He paused, and I looked up at him to see his expression turn from questioning to one of grim realization. “You were reading that damn book, weren’t you?” he asked in a tone bordering on exasperated.
I nodded. “I finished it,” I said. Elish let out a breath, I could tell he was uncomfortable.
“I see,” he said. “Well, now you don’t need to mention it ever again. You got your wish, I relented, now you can just… forget about it.” He rose, but I grabbed his wrist and let out a whine.
“Hold me?” I asked. “Please? I just want to be close to you right now.”
Elish sighed. “Okay,” he said. He sat back down on the bed, his back resting against the wooden headboard, and I crawled into his arms. My heart swelled when he drew me close to him, and it exploded when he kissed my cheek and tilted his head so it was resting against my own.