The Suicide King Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 3)

by Quil Carter

  The black wall of smoke was all around him and it had now covered the red light that had been lighting his way. Kerres coughed and hacked, spit running down his mouth and his eyes stinging so badly he could barely see. The alarm was still beeping above him as well, and his Geigerchip was angrier than ever.

  I’m not going to make it… Kerres thought to himself, even the voice inside of his head was desperate.

  Then he heard panicked voices below him, but the sounds of them running down the stairs soon followed. Kerres called for them but there was nothing, whether they ignored his pleas or were too far down the stairwell to hear him, Kerres didn’t know.

  Finally he reached the seventh floor. Dizziness took him and Kerres stumbled forward; he crashed into the wall with Jade and dropped to his knees. He gasped and coughed, his head throbbing like it never had before, and looked around desperately for any other person evacuating, to help him.

  But all of the voices he heard were below him. There was no one.

  “Elish?” Kerres choked. “Help… him.” He could see nothing in front of him but black, even Jade’s half-covered face was almost entirely shrouded in black.

  Kerres tried to get to his feet but collapsed. The realization hit him that this was where they were going to die. He had nothing left in him to make it down the last seven flights of stairs.

  Kerres leaned down and buried his face into the crook of Jade’s neck and inhaled a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry, J,” he said weakly. “I tried.” He kissed Jade’s cheek, then slowly, knowing it would be the last time he did it, shifted his lips to Jade’s and kissed them gently. The feeling of his boyfriend, no… his former boyfriend’s lips on his drew out an agony inside of Kerres that overwhelmed him, and he gave out one last disheartened, mournful cry, one that rang out and echoed in the stairwell before it was also enveloped by the noxious smoke.

  “H-hello?”

  Kerres looked up and rubbed his stinging eyes. For a moment he was sure he’d imagined the voice but it was too close, too strong to be a hallucination.

  “Help,” Kerres choked. “Please help.”

  Kerres was astonished to see the smoke start to thin and then a figure take shape. A man filled that shape and stared at Kerres in bewilderment.

  Behind him the smoke was thinner, and Kerres saw that he had his hand raised. The smoke seemed to be repelling from that hand like dish soap dropped into an oil slick, it seemed impossible but yet… but yet it was happening right in front of him. The man was able to clear the smoke away, and though it was still gathering behind him it was noticeably thinner.

  “You have Jade?” the man said breathlessly and his face fell in relief. He picked up Jade and held the limp man in his arms. “Come, walk… you must walk. I have to get out of here before they find me. The doctor’s… they’re behind me, and others too. They know him; they can’t see me.”

  Kerres’s brain snapped back into action; the man who had seemed to have manifested just from Kerres’s own desperate pleas breathing new life into him. He was still weak, his legs shaking and his headache practically blinding him; but he managed to walk behind the man, hearing indeed the sounds of doors opening above him and rapid voices.

  And another odd thing… Kerres realized that his Geigerchip had stopped buzzing as loudly. It was as if this man was able to dissipate the radiation. He must be a chimera but Kerres had never seen him before.

  Kerres struggled to keep up but he did, watching in fascination the black smoke repel from the man’s body. None of the smoke touched him, but in the same vein, the radiation that had been making Kerres’s Geigerchip hum seemed to be sucking into his body like he was a vacuum.

  Finally they reached the emergency exit. Kerres stepped out into the fresh air and gasped. He leaned against the railing but the man who had Jade was pausing for nothing. He looked around with an expression of fear on his face, and ran down the steps.

  “W-wait!” Kerres gasped. He ran after him and they crossed the grassy open area to a grove of trees. The man constantly watching where the front of the building was and Kerres saw why. He was able to witness the first fire truck pull up in front of Olympus, and could hear shouting and in the distance, sirens.

  The man, with black and white hair now falling over his brow, pressed his back against the fence that surrounded all of Olympus. His eyes were wide and his chest heaving. He looked at Kerres and Kerres saw that his eyes were two different colours, one blue and one black.

  “Do you have a place?” the man asked through his gasps. “I can’t let them find me. Please, please take me some place safe.”

  Kerres wiped his mouth and nodded. He didn’t know who this person was, but he had saved him and Jade. With what he could do with the smoke and radiation, he had to be a chimera, or a born immortal like Silas.

  But that was irrelevant in that moment. Kerres turned and started walking along the fence, so close to it that his shoulder was rubbing against it, and brought the man to the hole that he had made over the last several months. It was originally made so he could be as close to Jade as he could, and with Silas ordering the thiens to look the other way with his loitering, he’d been able to spend many days and nights in these sparse trees of Olympus. Something that had given him comfort after he’d left the Crimstones.

  Since killing Meirko, and leaving Reno and the cicaro Trig, he had wandered Skyfall seeking a purpose to his life, but in the end his feet always took him to Olympus where Jade was. Admittedly, he was happy when he’d seen Reno on the television with Garrett, and his heart had hurt when he’d learned from lurking in bars that Trig had died. The anger that had been so strong for the Dekker’s, and especially Elish, had fizzled to intense sadness and depression. He no longer felt like he wanted to live, but until loneliness killed him he’d stay in front of Olympus and watch the top floor. Seeing glimpses of Jade gave him a brief moment of happiness, though when his shadow would disappear, or when he’d see the tall silhouette of Elish beside him, the depression came back worse than before and his own damaged brain would throw him into manic rages.

  Kerres grabbed the wooden board that he knew was loose and pulled it up and to the right. He stepped through, and held a hand to the back of Jade’s head to protect him from the boards as the man slipped through with him. A parking lot and a one-level building was in front of them, then an empty street and further on, more abandoned buildings that stretched out until you reached a small pocket of active area that surrounded Artemis and Apollo’s shared skyscraper.

  “It’s five blocks up,” Kerres said, but when he glanced down at Jade, another twinge of pain and sadness swept him. “I’ll take him now… I have to get him to a hospital. He’s… I can’t keep him this time.”

  “This time?” the man asked curiously. He didn’t let Kerres take Jade, he walked across the parking lot and glanced back only once. Kerres looked back too and was taken aback with what he saw.

  The top of Olympus was on fire, flames shooting from the windows of one of the upper floors and sending the noxious, poisonous smoke up into the sky. The tall and looming building that had been an ominous shadow in his mind now looked like a lit flare, a glow of red and orange showing in the floors below the inferno, and quickly travelling up as well.

  “He is…” Kerres paused to cough violently into his hand. “He’s my boyfriend. I’ve known him since he was just a kid.”

  The man gave him a puzzled look, the same one that everyone did when Kerres said that, and he knew what was coming next so he shook his head. “Elish stole him from me. He… he abused him and tortured him. He brainwashed him until he forced Jade to fall in love with him.”

  Kerres saw the man’s eyes widen. “Really?” He picked up his pace, and the two of them ran across the road. Kerres’s lungs were screaming with pain and his brain felt like it was trying to push itself out of his skull, but he kept up his pace. “We – we have him now,” the man said. “Elish won’t get him back. I can fix him. I have… things I can do. I wi
ll help with the radiation you’ve absorbed too.”

  Kerres almost cried out with relief, but instead he used the man’s reassurance to push himself to run faster.

  There was silence between the two of them as they made their way to Kerres’s small house. Every time Kerres looked behind him he felt a churn in his stomach at how quickly the fire was consuming the upper floors of Olympus. In this moment Elish was either dead, trying to escape, or on the ground looking at the same flames Kerres was.

  Kerres felt a faint feeling of satisfaction at this. Elish Dekker was getting what he deserved, and he was also getting what he deserved: Jade back.

  And then suddenly Kerres stopped, his mouth opened and his heart gave a hard thump against his sore rib cage.

  Elish was going to think that Jade was dead.

  Kerres looked ahead, the man still sprinting with Jade. His boyfriend was limp in his arms but his eyes were half-open and his chest still rising and falling. He was sick, but the man said he could make him better. Could it be true?

  Could this be… my second chance?

  The thought was like a lighthouse in the middle of a raging storm. Kerres ran to catch up with the man, and for the first time in years, his heart held a flicker of hope.

  Chapter 20

  Jade

  The inferno was back, and because the grey matter and the synapses in my brain had now been activated through the intense heat, I could now feel the pain and pressure from his touch.

  I closed my eyes tight and bit down hard on the book that had been put in between my jaws and squeezed the hand that was holding mine. I tried not to scream but the pain was like a trash compactor squeezing both sides of my skull, pressing the bone into the soft sponge and constricting it so tight I was sure I could feel my own brain leaking out of my ears.

  But in that pressurized oven I also continued to feel the light switches get turned on, and it was because of that intangible awareness, I held on and endured the pain. The pain might’ve been consuming and blinding, but through it I could feel my life rush back into me. Emotions I had forgotten, sensations, knowledge, and memories.

  My memories.

  Elish.

  The hand in mine shook from how hard I was squeezing it, and I could feel my metal incisors bite through the hardcover book and touch the paper inside. And like his hand was a trigger, the pain and pressure suddenly multiplied to the point where a scream did finally break my lips.

  But then I felt it dissipate, before it faded completely and left my closed eyes, not seeing white, but darkness.

  Beautiful darkness the colour of black… I had missed you.

  Yes. My thoughts were back. My thoughts were finally back, and when I dove deeper into those thoughts I found my memories. I found my past, I found my time in the greywastes, my adventures with Reaver, Killian, and Perish, and… and…

  My master.

  My heart pulled to him and filled with a profound love. The memories of what had happened after my brain had failed me were scrambled, wisps of recollections on a ribbon wrapping around me so quickly, I couldn’t focus on one thought for long. But the feelings I drew from them were there, and those feelings held inside of them a love I hadn’t thought I was capable of feeling. I had loved Elish for years now, but sometime in the last several months of him taking care of me that feeling had grown all the more vibrant and intense.

  Then to my embarrassment, the emotions overwhelmed me. I opened my eyes, everything blurry in front of me and the room spinning, and I felt my face crumple and my heart give a painful surge. I wanted Elish. I needed Elish.

  I started to whimper, and heard a familiar voice cry out and throw his arms around me. I was confused as to who it was, my mind was still reeling, still recovering from this onslaught, but everything was so overwhelming, I needed a hug. So I hugged the person back. I was desperately seeking comfort in this confusion I’d woken up to. It felt like a lifetime of memories, emotions, feelings, a lifetime of living, was getting poured into a single empty glass.

  “His mind is overwhelming him. His brain… it was completely dead,” I heard someone say. “It’s a lot for him to take in right now, and it’s all rushing back. Give him some time to get himself straight.” This person was speaking aloud exactly what I was feeling. Who was he? How did he know what I was going through?

  “But he’s okay?”

  My eyes opened wide and they started to focus. I pulled back from the person holding me and stared at him, not believing that he was right in front of me. How was that possible?

  “Kerres?” my voice was hoarse and raspy. It felt like I had swallowed a hot iron bar, I could barely speak.

  Kerres choked, tears running down his face. He looked awful, like he’d taken ill, and the relief mixed in with agony on his face didn’t make him look any better. But he managed a nod and hugged me to him again.

  “My J. I have you,” Kerres’s voice was just as scratchy as my own, but the intensity of his emotions made it several octaves higher than mine. “I missed you. Fuck. I missed you.”

  I swallowed hard and felt a lump form and press against my Adam’s apple. Kerres being here offered me none of the relief and joy that I could feel radiating off of him, it only drew up a feeling of queasiness. I had resolved my feelings for my boyfriend long ago, and I had continued to hope that he would as well. That fool’s hope had been dashed many times, including just last year when he’d kidnapped Reno Nevada and some cicaros to try and get Elish and, in turn, me, but I had still hoped that… that he’d get over me.

  Or at least that King Silas would grow tired of letting him live just to stick it to Elish… and he’d just one day disappear.

  My eyes closed and I let out a long breath. At least it didn’t seem like I was a prisoner, but how I was going to get back to Olympus without destroying Kerres’s heart… I didn’t know.

  “Hey, K,” I whispered to him. I pulled away from him a second time but he immediately framed my face. He stared at me, his chocolate brown eyes full of love, yet looking so weary and unhealthy. He hadn’t been taking care of himself at all, he looked just awful.

  Then Kerres smiled and rubbed my cheeks with his fingers, my stomach twisted at this, my body confirming what my mind already knew, that no lingering feelings for this man remained… and that my heart belonged to my master… my husband.

  “I think he is back,” Kerres said to the man kneeling beside me. I realized that I was in a bed, and the bed smelled heavily of Kerres; the unkempt room that surrounded me did as well. “He’s finally… finally not brainwashed. You cured him, Gage. You brought me back my J.” Kerres removed his hands from my face and hugged the man beside my bed.

  But when I made eye contact with the man named Gage, I realized he wasn’t a complete stranger. I had seen him before, but briefly. I remembered his odd-coloured eyes, and the tuft of white that erupted from his black hair like a glacier in the dead of night. He had loomed over my bedside before; I had completely forgotten.

  The man put a hand over Kerres’s back and patted it, and without breaking his gaze he said to Kerres. “Yes. He’s back,” he said slowly, and his lips pressed as if wanting to say more but knowing he shouldn’t. “He’s back, Kerres.”

  I was going to have to play this carefully. Kerres’s brain had been altered and damaged and I knew he wouldn’t be able to make rational or logical decisions. The Crimstones had done a number on him, and not just physically drilling into his brain like they had me, but also brainwashing him constantly to hate chimeras.

  And I was a chimera, as much as Kerres didn’t want to admit it to himself. He hadn’t spent time with me in years; he didn’t know just how much I had grown to love my family – and love my master.

  “Jade, this is Gage,” Kerres said when he pulled away from the man. “Olympus was on fire and one of the chimeras wanted to kill you. I overheard them and–” Kerres smiled. “I saved you.” Then he put a hand on Gage’s shoulder. “Gage healed you. He’s special like King Si
las, but more powerful than even he is.”

  One of my brothers wanted to kill me, which one? I filed that in my folder of questions for later, right now I wanted to know how this man named Gage had healed me. “What do you mean? I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”

  Gage dropped his gaze and shrugged one shoulder. I could already tell that he was shy and reserved just from his body language. “I had been locked away for quite a while. I was freed by one of the chimeras, a man named Sanguine.” My eyebrows raised at this but I let him continue. “I hurt him, and I hurt the two men he was with. I hid inside of the skyscraper and was found by another man… Drake.”

  “Drake?” I repeated. “Really?”

  Gage nodded. “I wanted to heal Sanguine, repent for the damage I’ve caused, but my description of him matched you, and Drake got confused… Drake helped me sneak into Olympus and I healed you, or tried, but the blond-haired man, Elish, he caught me. I found out you were not Sanguine but you were so ill… I don’t like seeing people sick. I attempted again, but while I was healing you, the power shut off.” Gage looked to Kerres who was gazing at me with eyes full of love and devotion. The gaze alone made me feel nervous. I felt like I was rock star and he was my biggest fan, only if I tried to leave he’d break my legs.

  And I had a feeling that was what was going to happen when I left to be reunited with Elish.

  “Elish was chasing me,” Gage went on to explain. “And when he cornered me…” Gage ran a nervous hand over his hair, the white tuft getting slicked back before it bounced forward and fell over his odd-coloured eyes. “… you see I have this problem with sestic radiation.”

  “S-sestic radiation?” I said loudly. Gage slunk down at this and stared at his knees. I quickly got up but Kerres grabbed my arm, and the only reason why I didn’t stumble forward and fall on my face from my buckling legs was because he had my arm. Kerres pulled me back and I fell back on the bed, now in the sitting position. “No, Kerres, I–” I was about to tell him I had to go back to Olympus, but I caught myself just in time and said instead: “I need to see what’s going on.”