by JA Huss
The stage has been reformed from last night and is not deep at all. It only allows enough room for the prisoner to stand plus a foot or so of extra space for the executioner.
Which is now me.
I reach under my shirt and hear the crowd gasp as the SEAR comes out. I take a deep breath and power it up, wincing at the hissing loop of genetically enhanced plasma as it comes to life in my hand.
I look over at Kush who has seen me kill with this before and he nods. Then I dial it up a little to a medium length dagger and fly over to the first prisoner. The guy is a mess, his hair matted with sweat, his bowels vacated and his body smelling like shit. His eyes are alert now that the time has come, they dart back and forth as he desperately tries to move away from the inevitable final justice of my weapon.
The crowd is almost silent for a second, almost a hush, but then I raise the knife and begin the smooth cut through his neck and they stand up and cheer wildly.
If I was alone, I'd puke.
Not just from the smell of the SEAR cutting through flesh, although that is enough to make anyone hurl. But because these people make me sick inside, in my heart. The thirst for killing the avians have displayed since I came to live with them is the farthest thing from human I can think of. Only the most disturbed individuals on Earth would participate in an event like this.
At least I tell myself that.
Because I don't want to think of what reality I might have to face if this was the true nature of all sentient species. To kill, to punish, to make people pay. And then have to extrapolate that same inhuman, barbaric characteristic to myself. I've killed more people than I can count, and today I will kill twenty-one more.
I move onto the next guy and it's the same shit all over again. The stench from him, combined with the smell of flesh on fire, sticks to my olfactory receptors, imprinting that molecular signature into my memory forever.
I repeat this eight more times to the undulating cheers of the masses in the arena that ebb and flow, rise and fall, as I cut and withdraw.
I complete the tenth guy and pause briefly to look at Tier.
The crowd calls for his death as he struggles to lift his head, and then lets it drop back to his chest as he realizes he hasn't got the strength. I don't worry about his judgment of me, of what he might think of who I really am at this moment. Because in a few minutes it won't matter.
I pass him by and move on to number eleven. From there the killing, the smells, the screams, the cheers – they all merge together. I'm lost. Just utterly lost in the buildup of death that surrounds me.
When I finish the twentieth guy I fly back over to Kush who looks at me with a pained expression. Something I don't really need at this particular moment is his righteous judgment, but if anyone has a claim to righteousness, it's probably Kush.
He drops the look and walks towards me, then takes me in his arms and squeezes. The people, impatient to see if they will win money, to see if I will kill Tier, or cut him loose and stand and fight against my own team of Aves warriors, begin jeering at me, calling out names, and stomping their feet.
I look down to the far side of the arena and find Lucan. He's standing, his palms pressed up against the transparent barrier. Then my gaze sweeps around the arena and I find each of my 039 teammates, minus Braun of course. One by one, as my gaze passes over them, my brothers shake their heads at me, telling me no. Even Ashur shakes his head and when he realizes I'm paying attention, he says it out loud, then begins to scream it.
I look back at Lucan and I hold up my hand to make people shut up so I can speak. It takes the better part of a minute, but they finally calm down.
"Please," I beg the Archers on the far side of the arena. "Don't make me go through with it, please pardon him. Please don't make me go through with it."
Chapter Forty-Five
Lucan sits down without answering. The crowd resumes their jeering and screaming as I turn to Kush and swallow hard, refusing to let the tears flow for such a selfish emotion as fear.
"Kush, I want you to know…" I look down as he comes towards me. "I want you to know that you're a good friend." I look up and the tears begin to fall. "And you're a good warrior, too. I've got no regrets."
He smiles and takes my hand. "I'm here for you, OK?"
"Yeah."
I turn and walk over to the edge of the platform and look down. There's a long shadow reaching out across the floor of the arena. Broad at one end, slim at the other. I breathe in, then out, and collect myself for what I have to do.
I fly over to the small platform that holds the man I love and I reach up with my SEAR and cut one of his hands free. It falls to his side, limp and dead, as Monk leaves his post above the prisoners and flies down towards me, shaking his head.
"Don't do it, Junco. I don't want to see him dead any more than you do, but you're not gonna set him free. The time for pardons is past."
I nod and this makes my tears fall down my face a little quicker. "I just want to feel him hold me one more time, Monk. Just the one hand, wrapped around me one last time."
I look up in his eyes as they glow orange and he nods. "OK, just the one though."
I take a deep breath, pushing down the fear and the cries for vengeance and pain, so that time stops for us. I take his hand and place it on my waist and he gathers the strength to look me in the face. I smile as I power the SEAR back up, a short dagger this time.
"Junco!"
I turn and Kush is behind me hovering. "Stop, I know what you're going to do, Junco. And I won't let you."
"No, Kush – it's a done deal."
He grabs me by the waist and flies me back over to the stone gravity slab as the crowd screams with rage at the interruption. We struggle for a few seconds and then I pull away and stand opposite Kush. "What the fuck are you doing?"
He makes a grab for my SEAR. "I won't–"
I jerk it back out of instinct.
The loop passes ever so slightly across Kush's arm.
A small, barely noticeable tendril of flesh smoke seeps up into the air and my chest begins to heave in and out as I scream. "No! No, no, no, NOOOOOOOOO!"
His arm immediately begins to disintegrate from the inside out, his skin melting like wax on a candle as the alloantigen repressor makes its way into the DNA to fuck up every new collagen transcript from here on out. I can see in real time how the biocode invades his current extracellular matrix and begins to disrupt the scaffolding system that holds the entire body together.
The crowd is quiet as I watch my friend realize what has happened. "Oh, Kush. Oh my God, Kush! No!"
The disruption climbs up his arm and when it reaches his neck he screams, a noise that is neither human nor avian, but pain. Unbearable pain.
"Kill me," he blurts out, "Junco – kill me, now!" The resulting shriek jolts me into action and my hand drags the SEAR across his neck, ending his life.
It's all over in a matter of seconds and I drop to my knees beside the man who gave me every tender gesture he could think of just to make sure I didn't regret our night together.
Gone.
I turn up my head and scream into the roar of the spectators and sit there for a few minutes, letting my eyes and nose drip onto the cold hard slab of stone. I look back up to Lucan one last time. "Please," I beg again. "Please make it end, Lucan. Don't make me do it."
But he shakes his head and my fate is settled.
I pull my body back up and look down at the edge of the slab once more to find the shadow, then fly over to Tier. His head is up and his eyes are glassy with drugs. "I'm sorry," he croaks.
I smile at him and wrap his free arm around me. "Just hold me one more time, OK?"
He nods, but his head falls back to his chest and his arm can barely maintain a grasp on the belt loop of my pants. I reach around and pull his hand to mine. "Tier, look at me, now!" The sharp command forces him to obey and I smile. "Whatever you do, do not drop it."
He screws up his face in confusion as I cla
sp his hand over mine, then withdraw all but my thumb.
The SEAR springs to life in his palm and I drag it down my chest, eviscerating myself from heart to belly.
I sway slightly and he is too weak to hold me, but I watch his hand to make sure the knife is still clasped tightly in his palm, visible to all watching.
I swan-dive backwards, facing out towards the crowd, and fall into the depths of the arena's floor, into the waiting arms of my shadow.
Braun catches me midair and I have a fraction to stare up in his eyes and whisper thank you.
And that's that.
Tier has completed his mission and I am dying by his hand, just like I should have back on Earth.
He's no longer guilty.
Chapter Forty-Six
Picture yourself standing on the edge of a dock...
Holy shit, it's cold here now.
I look around. "Charlie? Charlie, you fuck! Where the hell are you?"
My boots crunch over the ice and snow that lines the dock and I make my way back to the cabin, breathing into my reddened hands to try and warm them up.
I jog across what was the lawn the last time I was here and push the front door open and step into the dark cabin.
It's empty.
The furniture is covered with white sheets and there's barely a temperature difference between the mountain cold outside and the frigid air inside.
"Charlie?"
Silence.
I let out a long sigh. Fuck, how the hell did it get to be winter? He programmed it to be tropical, I'm sure of it. I chuck some wood into the fireplace and light it up, standing there to thaw for a few minutes. Eventually I lower myself down onto the coiled rag rug and fall asleep in the warm orange glow.
Days pass. Weeks maybe. Years for all I know. And still I wait. If he was here before, he's still here now. He just doesn't know I'm back, that's all. The temperature never grows warmer, the sunlight never grows brighter, the days never grow longer.
I'm stagnant.
And that's OK with me.
I pass the time ice-fishing, cooking, and sleeping. It's not a bad life, really. Occasionally, when I'm starting to think I might be bored, I remind myself that an exciting life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I can live without excitement for a while.
Forever maybe.
There are books to read. I've read them all, but I read them again.
There are birds to watch outside the window. I can't name all of them, but I do recognize the juncos. Both the regular and the pink-sided varieties. Little sparrows looking for food. I collect stray pine cones from the forest floor and turn them into bird feeders using the peanut butter I retrieve from the secret pantry. I hang them up in front of the picture window.
I cook dinners and I watch life from the living-room couch.
I go to bed early and wake up late.
And finally, after what seems like years of living in this cabin, waiting for Charlie to come find me, I'm out of things to do.
So I just stay in bed and never get up.
Not even to eat or go to the bathroom.
And guess what? I never needed to eat to go to the bathroom anyway, I'm not real! So I don't even get a rumbly tummy or the pain of a full bladder.
I am in limbo.
I'm on my way to hell for all the killing I've done, but for some reason I'm stuck in limbo. The Church would like you to believe that limbo is bad, not a place you'd like to be. But consider the alternative. Am I right?
In the end I'm OK with limbo.
And so here I am.
Lying in bed, neither awake nor asleep.
The banging of pots and pans from the other room jolts me out of my stagnation. I throw back the covers and race out to the kitchen in my pajamas.
"Well, good morning, Junco."
Sera is cooking eggs on the wood stove and percolating coffee using something that requires electricity, so cannot possibly work here in this cabin. Her red hair is messy, like she just woke up too, and her red dress is MIA. In its place is a pair of patterned night clothes that look like they might belong to me.
"What are you doing here?"
She smiles. "Making you breakfast, of course. You really should learn to eat properly."
This comment tugs at me and I screw up my face. "I don't have an eating problem. I just don't need to eat here, that's all."
She gives me an exaggerated nod. "Right, but giving up on life in here means you're giving up on life out there."
"What life out there? I'm dead. I'm in limbo, waiting for God or someone to judge me."
She scoops the eggs out onto a plate and drops on a few pieces of buttered toast and several strips of bacon to round it all out. "Sit, eat."
I sit and she pushes the plate over to me. I feel a rumble deep inside and I stuff my face so fast she laughs.
"Don't need to eat, huh?"
I shrug with my mouth full. "Shit, I am hungry."
"You'll need to eat again when you wake up. This isn't real, after all. Just a virtual."
I stop and ask through the food. "What do you mean wake up? I'm dead."
She shakes her head. "No, Junco. You won the Deliverance fight. So your wish was granted."
"But I gave my wish to Esta, I don't need a wish when I'm dead."
She smiles at me as if I'm a toddler. "Esta had quite a wish, Junco. Seems like all that secret studying of the avian culture, history and myths really paid off. For you, anyway."
"What do you mean?" I stare at her, my bacon halfway to my mouth.
"She wished for your Resurrection. A long-forgotten rite that can be performed by the Archers."
"Oh, fuck. I bet that went over well."
"Well, better than expected, really. The public outcry from that fight was," she pauses to find the right word, "almost unimaginable. They had riots over you and Kush. And Tier."
I push the memory of Kush away quickly. "They did?"
"Yes, so the Resurrection was a panacea that pretty much everyone got on board with immediately. It's just…"
I stare at her, waiting for her to finish. "What?"
"A long and complicated process that has never actually worked before."
"Oh. Well, I knew it was too good to be true." I shrug and continue to eat my food, but the taste has faded.
"I'm not saying it can't work, it can. But you need to decide what you're going to do. And make me a promise if I intervene and help you return."
I stay silent and weigh the words in my mind.
"You're ready to go back? Rested? Whole again? Sane?"
"No, no, no, and no."
She smiles. "Liar."
"I'm not ready to make a deal, that's not a lie."
"Oh, you are, Junco. Because I want very little from you now. You did so well already, the rest is small in comparison."
"Really? That was job well done? Shit, I'd hate to see what failure looks like."
"You restored Tier's status, you got Isec to make his sacrifice, you got Kush to make his sacrifice, and you made your sacrifice. All of my goals for you accomplished. So now," she beams down at me, "I require one tiny thing, Junco."
I sit there quietly, my lips falling into a deep frown as I lean my head into my hands. "Why did they have to die? That doesn't make sense."
She looks away for a few moments, out the window in the kitchen, maybe distracted by a bird on my pine cone, or maybe looking for words. More likely she's about to tell me something she'd prefer not to.
"When Inanna went to the world down under and was trapped, how was she able to escape her death, Junco?"
I reach back for the night Tier told me the story, when we were soaking in the hot spring. "She got people to stand in for her," I answer finally.
Sera smiles. "And that's exactly what Kush is doing for you now. Standing in for you so that you can return. He chose this, it was his sacrifice."
My heart wants to shrivel up and die and my frown pulls my entire face down in my sadness.
"And tell me, why did you give your wish to Esta, of all people? I mean, you could have just given that wish to Tier, he could have saved himself. So, why Esta?"
"I could've given the wish to Tier? Would that have worked?"
"Do you think it would've worked?"
I look away and study the view out the window. "No, that's way too easy."
"So, why Esta?"
"I felt bad for her. I wanted to make her happy. Give her a chance to change her life."
"And why did you feel bad for her? You haven't thought about her in weeks, so why that day?"
"She thought she was the one who killed–" My voice trails off.
"Because Isec was dead and she felt compelled to come apologize to you for killing him."
My chin shakes as the tears fall down. "Is it all predetermined? Everything?"
"No, Junco. Not all of it. Destiny is fixed, but fate can shift and you've done that. So well I can hardly comprehend the consequences. If you gave your wish to Tier and made him sacrifice nothing, what would that have accomplished? Nothing, that's what. But you caused a ripple through the entire Band, millions of people, Junco. They all shifted because of your desperate act."
She waits for me to say something, but I can't. I just sit and think.
"I am not asking for much now, Junco. Just a trip back to Earth, which you were going to make anyway to find the remaining Siblings. And a snippet of code, just a small snippet of information."
"You're going to clone me, aren't you?"
She shakes her head. "Never, Junco. I would never dream of cloning you. You are perfect."
I swallow and shake my head. "Don't say that." I look up at her, serious. "Don't fucking say that, because I'm a monster and there is no redemption for me."
"You couldn't be more wrong, Junco. You've attained the purest form of forgiveness, the kind that only comes from self-sacrifice. Fate, Junco, the prayer card you carry with you? Is something you can change. That's why the prayer ends with hope–
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.