He ignored my instruction and directed me to into a hallway and to the left.
“I swear, if a hair on his head is hurt, my agreement with my father is over.”
“He’ll be fine.”
The area we walked into—the thoroughfare—was a long corridor that curved to the right and to the left. All surfaces were white. Lights shone from little specks in the ceiling like stars during the day. Along the outer wall of the corridor were sporadic doors with plaques overhead. Between them, hung media screens spanning from floor to ceiling. Each looked like a window and displayed an image of beautiful scenery beyond. I marveled at the snowy landscape in one and, at what I believed, was a picture of Mt Fuji on another. As we walked by, to my surprise, the scenery moved with the change in perspective. Almost as if it were a real window. Impossible. I stopped, did a double take, and started again, never taking my eyes off the screen. It couldn’t be a window to actual scenery. It was a trick of the mind. But I knew there were things Marc had done that I couldn’t explain. We had traveled through dimensions together. Would it be any stranger if I could see through that dimension to another spot in the world?
I slowed down to stare at the next window, a scene of an open plan office space where many workers dressed in white and worked at desks. One in particular captured my attention. A stunning, tall woman with baby pink hair cut in a bob spoke to a brunette sitting at her desk typing. She wore a silver brooch over the breast area of her dress. On closer inspection, it was the same snake eating its tail that I had seen over the entrance to the Ludus. I wanted to see more but was prodded to keep moving by Squid. I sighed, glanced around the hallway and noticed I wasn’t the only one staring.
There were a few blond haired people giving me the evil eye. One had a purple and blue star-map etched over his right arm, the other, a girl, had a star-map covering half her face. When I caught their gaze, they shirked backwards. I checked to see what Squid was doing; perhaps it was him they were afraid of. But no, they were looking at me.
“They are afraid of you because of what you are,” Squid said.
“A Soul-Eater?” I asked, shoulders drooping. “Does everyone know?”
“Not just any Soul-Eater, but the one who stole the chance to pilot a royal body.”
I chewed the inside of my lip. So my reputation preceded me. A little while ago, I’d discovered I was a contender whose origins were a mystery. Someone else’s soul had been scheduled to download into this body—a warrior princess called Ava, Marc had told me. Initially, Bruce kept me, thinking that I must be a ruthless and powerful soul to have ousted someone like Ava. But when my witch-like powers manifested, and my star-map failed to appear, he’d all but abandoned me as a failure, a witch. From the start, I’d been breaking the rules. Was I entitled, or just stupid?
“How do they know it’s me?” I asked.
“Your hair. In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t too many redheads around here.”
He was right. Most people were blond. Like I’d predicted weeks ago when thinking of the Ludus for the first time. Most Players I’d come across were blond or a shade of it. It was a genetic anomaly that occurred from the interbreeding between Seraphim and human. Even Jed said he dyed his hair so he looked different and I’d bet my bike the guy walking next to me had some fake coloring going on—the tips of his lashes looked light and his eyebrows were a peculiar shade of brown.
“We’re here.” Squid said.
We stopped at a door that had the name “Urser” engraved on a gold plaque. Underneath it was the symbol of a bear and the Latin words Victoria Aut Mors—Victory or Death.
Squid opened the door and ushered me in.
I took two steps inside and then realized someone arrived immediately after. I turned to find a boy with blond ringlets staring at me. He looked a few years younger than me, but not too much. Maybe late teens. His body had reached past puberty but was shy of manhood. His gangly arms and legs held the promise of burgeoning muscle. There was no doubt he would be a force to reckon with in a few years. Upon seeing me, he froze.
“It’s you,” he whispered, blue eyes flaring.
“Hi.” Could this be…? Already feeling despondent in the limelight, my nerves coiled tightly. I held out my hand. “I’m Roo. And you are…”
“Oh.” He wiped his palm on his jeans before shaking. “I’m Lincoln.”
A goofy grin broke out on my face. “Lincoln, my brother? Stuff the handshake, get in here.” I pulled him in for a bear hug, then held him at arm’s length to inspect, trying to see the family resemblance. I studied his dubious face with narrowed eyes. Nope. We looked nothing alike.
“I’m so happy to meet you Linc—can I call you Linc? I’ve only known about you for two weeks, have… have you known about me? I’m rambling, I know, but I do that and I’m nervous. Hey, nice digs.” I glanced around the room, deflecting.
Great job, Roo. He has no idea you’re a maniac.
He darted a glance to where Squid settled at the front door like a security guard. So much for my not being a prisoner.
“Come with me,” Lincoln said, and I followed him further into the apartment.
The place looked like it belonged on a Hollywood movie set. It had a large living room with opulent furnishings from brocade silk couches to ornate golden frames housing famous artwork on the walls. Everything was white, cream or gold. There were two hallways splintering off the main room. Each hallway had a few doors, perhaps leading to sleeping quarters. There was also a kitchen to the side, and a formal dining room on the other. The kitchen had one of the fake windows along its far wall. Totally impractical. It would get grease and filth all over it.
Lincoln grabbed a piece of fruit off the kitchen bar and returned to the long three-seater couch to sit down. I parked myself next him. Blue eyes peeked at me from over a green apple.
“So, Linc,” I said, “what have you been doing with yourself for the past—jeez, I don’t know—twenty-or-so years?”
“You’ve got no idea what’s going on here, do you?”
“I’m not completely ignorant.”
He inspected me in silence. “I honestly didn’t think you’d come.”
“I have to, don’t I? The rules state I must be registered or my time here is canceled.”
“No I meant come here, to Urser House. I was under the impression you were someone else’s progeny now.
I stood and surveyed the room as if my father were hiding behind a chair or something.
“So where is the S-O-B?” I asked.
Lincoln gasped at my inference. Then hurriedly stood up too.
“He’s probably on his way,” he said. “You should watch what you say in here. His eyes and ears are everywhere.”
“I’m not afraid of him.” I stuck out my chin. “He knows that.”
“You should be. He’s got more power than you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Look, you’re new, you’re inexperienced. I feel like I should warn you about the breeding program. You know about that right?”
“I know that’s only if you fail the trials and I don’t plan on doing that so it doesn’t apply to me.”
“If you say so, but I’ve got a handful of betrothals already.”
“Betrothals?”
“With Nephilim, the biology is planned so we have just the right amount of human and the right amount of god in each newly created body—”
“You mean baby.”
“—right, whatever. Since our father is a full blooded Seraphim Watcher, and he mated with a human, we’re exactly half and half. We’re first generation. If we don’t create more Players, the Watchers have to, and let me tell you now, none of them like doing it, especially the women.”
“What exactly are you trying to tell me?”
He shrugged. “Consider yourself warned.”
“There’s no need to warn me. I’m not going to fail.” I screwed up my face. This wasn’t going acc
ording to plan. In my mental simulations of meeting my brother, we’d hugged, chatted, bonded over our mutual disdain for our parentage and then become the best of friends. But I felt no kinship with this boy. And his warning…
He’s hiding something, The Others said.
He just warned me about Urser, I mentally replied.
But why would he do that when he’s just met you?
“I should never have agreed to come here,” I muttered. “I should have said for him to stick his royal responsibilities where the sun don’t shine.”
Lincoln snorted. “I still can’t believe you shafted Dad like that. Having the hunter mentor you was a gutsy move. You might be right about not needing a warning. I wish my balls were as big as yours. Anyway, speaking of balls, I need to go to the john. Be right back.” Upon seeing the frown on my face, he added, “If you need to go too, there’s a guest bathroom down the other hall. Just don’t open the last door at the end. That’s Dad’s room. Off limits.”
He left, and I turned to face the opposite direction; the one with the big red metaphorical sign saying “Come here and go into the last room” because that’s what my brain thought.
Cash was certain Urser House was behind the dark serum that had infected the boy, James in Houston. This could be my only chance to do a little spying.
Anticipation zipped up my nerves and I glanced at Squid. He lifted his finger to his ear and then spoke quietly into the comms speaker at his sleeve. Something was happening and, if my father on his way, I needed to move.
I shot up and mumbled something to Squid about going to the toilet, then slipped down the hallway.
Three doors.
Before I picked a door, I cast my energy out as a warning system. If I sensed anyone’s aura getting close, I would know, even Squid’s. But he was still at the door, distracted by his comms.
I let myself in my father’s room. A massive, pristine bedroom fit for a king sat before me. Brocade curtains matching the decor in the living room covered a fake window on a far wall. A giant bed sat before it, and to the right, a wooden and leather desk with papers strewn about it. It was the only messy thing about the room.
I rushed over on quiet feet and sifted through the mess. Notebooks, loose paper, folded newspapers. It would take forever to sift through. I shifted a notebook to reveal another left open. A strange list had been written on the paper. The title said “Serum 154-X, Attempt 45”. Subject names with a number and the words “positive” or “negative” were next to each. There were a lot more positives than negatives. The word serum snagged. Could this be tied to what happened back in Houston?
I lifted the page and found more names with nothing written next to them, but marked with a future date. Names. So many names. A quick scan of them showed most unrecognizable to me. Maggie. Paul. Jamieson. Cygnus. Wren. Amy. Victoria. Val. Rus. Lincoln… It went on and on until I read the last name on the list and gasped.
Cash.
Right there on the bottom, hastily scrawled and with a big circle around it, almost as though an afterthought. As though Bruce heard about our arrival and adjusted his plan to accommodate the one person standing in his way. Maybe. Maybe I was reading too much into it.
But that future date. Whatever experiment was planned for this group hadn’t happened yet.
A cold shiver ran down my spine and I sensed movement in the living room. Lincoln had returned. I shifted paper to cover the open notebook in the way that I had found it and then hastened out the door.
The second I clicked the latch closed, Lincoln was there.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I spun to face him. “Just looking for the bathroom. You said it was here.”
“Wrong door. It’s that one.” He pointed the door closest to the living room.
“Great. Thanks.”
“You better hurry. He’s almost here. I heard Squid talking to him on the comms.”
I nodded then locked myself in the bathroom. I closed the lid of the toilet and sat down until I caught my breath. That was close.
I had to tell Cash. He knew more about the serum than I did. He might know the significance of my discovery, after all, his security company investigated the serum incident with James.
When James had become infected by the serum, I used my abilities to purge the dark, twisted liquid from his body. He returned from a rabid beast back into a teenage boy. The transformation took minutes, but the strain on my energy was massive. I couldn’t purge every name on Urser’s list. With his immunity to most powers, I wasn’t even sure I could do that to Cash.
James had been human and alone—an orphan. Players and Watchers weren’t allowed to cause direct suffering to humans. It was another question if the choices humans made caused their own suffering. Whatever my father was doing, it wasn’t restricted to Players and not only was that a breach of the rules of the Game, but a severe crime against humanity.
The laughter of the little boy from the airport echoed in my ears and my heart squeezed. Maybe I was forbidden to create a real family, but I couldn’t stand the thought of innocents having that chance ripped away. I was starting to believe that us gods were more of a curse than a blessing.
Thinking of Cash made me worry for his safety, but he would be okay. He knew how to handle himself. I should be more concerned for the security personnel that had tried to stop him because that cold, calculating fury in his eyes had been directed at them. It had been better for everyone that I went peacefully.
And now I had found out Bruce’s targets.
I made the right choice.
I flushed the toilet, washed my hands in the little sink and patted the excess water on my sweaty neck, still bristling from the close call.
When I entered the living room, a deep male voice said from the doorway, “Are you ready to go?”
“Bruce. Nice to see you too.” The disdain was crystal clear in my voice. “Ready to go where?”
My father smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled into tiny slithers of crow’s feet.
“To see the registrar,” he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN WE WENT back outside to the hallway, I stumbled over a pink suitcase with silver trimming. Ouch! Pain pounded my shin and I squealed, rubbing the sore spot.
“Why is your luggage in the hallway?” Bruce asked, annoyed we had stopped.
“It’s not mine,” I quipped back. “My suitcase is purple, not pink.”
Lincoln read the name tag. “Says right here: If lost, return to La Roux Urser.”
I snatched the tag and read for myself. “That’s not my writing.”
My father sighed and made Squid stash the suitcase back within the apartment before we continued down the hall toward the Ludus entrance. Squid returned to his favorite spot at my elbow and pushed me along. It made me think he was expecting trouble.
It was then something odd occurred to me. “Why are we going to the registrar? I thought I didn’t have to do that for a few months. Training first, registration later, right?”
A grunt from Bruce. “You’re late, sweet-pea. Registration is today.”
Sweet-pea?
“You’re registering with me,” Lincoln said.
“Hang on.” I stopped as a rising sense of panic engulfed me. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.”
“Correct,” Bruce said. “Usually around your eighteenth birthday, your powers awaken and you discover you’re a demi-god. You register around your twenty-first birthday and then the trials can happen anytime between a few days and six months later. You’re almost twenty-four. The circumstances of your inception were suspect and the Tribunal has requested you complete your trials as soon as possible. That means you enter the same group as your brother.”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“You’re right. It’s not. They had years of solid education and game preparation before they registered. You haven’t.”
“So I’m supposed to learn three years’ wort
h of training in, how long?”
“The trials start in a few days.”
A few days!
And if I couldn’t pass the trials… the breeding. This was not looking good for me. But I had a few days. Surely I could come up with a contingency escape plan by then.
So many thoughts whirled through my head as I walked to the Ludus exit, past the creepy admin guy, and to the registrar’s office on the other side. My mind completely vacated when I pushed beyond the registrar’s door to an empty waiting room with chairs along the wall.
I sat down on a vacant chair and inspected the magazine stack on the coffee table. Road Rider. Sweet. I’d barely picked up the book when yelling and shouting came from behind another door. Suddenly, it whooshed open and a woman in green medical scrubs rushed out. I glimpsed the view inside the room. Two more people dressed in scrubs. A reclining chair sat at the center with industrial lights shining down on it. There was a patient in there, arguing with the people in scrubs and someone off scene. When the doors closed again, I caught a whiff of the inside air. Disinfectant.
Just what kind of registration office was that?
The shouting escalated, but Bruce, Lincoln, and Squid didn’t seem fazed. On the other hand, my insides twisted into knots imagining all sorts of dastardly happenings. What were they doing to that poor boy? Was I next?
The women who’d run out earlier returned in a fluster with two companions, both dressed in white. They reminded me of the office people I’d seen in one of the fake windows in the Ludus main thoroughfare. Whereas one person was large, muscled and Caucasian, the other was small and Asian featured. The latter was the scary one. His wire rimmed glasses and small stature presented him as a weak man. He was neither man, nor weak, with a virulent aura that betrayed his genetics. Hostile energy exploded into the room upon their entry and, for the first time since I’d arrived, I felt truly afraid. He had a silver pin on his white jacket lapel that reminded me of the pink-haired lady from the fake window. The oroboros—a snake eating its tail. There was no question that he was a god, and if he was here stuck on Earth, he must be a banished Watcher, like Bruce. Apart from my father and Marc, this man was only other full-blooded Seraphim I’d met.
Playing God Page 3