“What do you expect him to say when you’re torturing him, Kale?” I said. “Forcing a lie to make you happy is worthless.”
“I want the truth.”
“You want the truth?” Luxarn slid forward, wincing. “My father and I didn’t even think about getting your people sick. All we cared about was the wealth of Saturn.”
“That’s a lie!” Kale cracked him across the face with the butt of his gun. Blood and two teeth spewed out as Luxarn toppled. Kale wrenched him back upright, and I was about to say something when I noticed my old employer cackling. Blood leaked through the new gaps in his mouth as he did.
“I wish it was. Though I can’t say we complained about what happened. Darien Trass and you people fled Earth-like cowards while the rest of us faced judgment. But it came for you through us, didn’t it? It always does.”
“Liar!” Kale punched him again.
“Was it our fault you Ringers’ pathetic attempt at a new civilization made you so weak? Children of Titan.” Luxarn scoffed, a glob of red dripping from his lips. “We all came from the same rock. Your people just seemed to forget it, body and mind.”
I heard more fidgeting at the door and glanced back. More Cogents were likely planting charges. “Kale, get on with it,” I said. “We don’t have long, and you are not dying here.”
“Listen to the traitor, Trass,” Luxarn said. “You’ve lost. You came here for an apology, but you’ll never get one. We took the trash your people made on Titan and polished it. Made it something humanity could be proud of. The moment your people see that they’ll toss you aside, I promise.”
I could see Kale simmering inside. I’m not sure what he expected to hear, but Luxarn was once the wealthiest man in Sol for a reason. Even if what he was now paled in comparison, he’d always believed that the people of Sol were below him. That was the thing Kale and his followers failed to realize. Luxarn Pervenio didn’t only step on the throats of Ringers to get what he wanted. He did it to everyone. He believed he was carrying out a grand vision for settling the solar system and beyond. For ushering humanity into the next age. Hell, after a while working for Pervenio Corp, I believed in that too, in making sure that humanity’s reach was so vast we could never risk being wiped out again.
“So go ahead, Trass,” Luxarn said. “Kill me and prove what we’ve said about your kind from the beginning. That you’re worthless. Because the only apology you’ll ever get from me is that I cared enough to help your people survive after the Ring was already mine.”
“Are you finished?” Kale questioned. “Good. You can lie all want, but I’m going to make sure you feel what we did. Malcolm, open the door.”
“Do you want to die?” I said.
He shifted his aim towards me. “Open it, or Aria will suffer!”
“Fine! I’ll let more of them in so you can get off on killing.” I moved to the side of the door so I wouldn’t be in the way of the guards outside, then extended my arm to open it. A Cogent strode in, and it only took me a step to realize it wasn’t really one. The man wearing their outfit and eye-lens moved with too much character. I then saw the bodies of a few security officers lying in the hall.
The false cogent removed his eye-lens and tossed it to the side. “He’s here, Lord Trass.” He disappeared around the corner, then threw another man in.
Zhaff rolled once before slamming against the wall. His artificial left arm had been torn from its socket, loose wires dangling from just below his shoulder. His artificial left leg was mangled and twisted, broken open to reveal sparking parts. His eye lens had been ripped off, revealing a metallic jaw through his sinewy cheek and an eye socket that appeared like a hand terminal port.
All they’d left him with was the respirator latched over his mouth, but even it rattled like it had when he struggled for life on Titan. His human handed groped through the darkness as he tried to figure out where he was.
“I’ll make sure nobody else gets in,” Kale’s guard said. “From ice to ashes.” The man resealed the door.
Kale released Luxarn to run toward his battered son. “By Earth. Zhaff, what did they do to you?” Luxarn asked as he helped Zhaff to his knees.
“Kale, you made a promise,” I whispered. Seeing Zhaff had me feeling like I was going to choke.
“And I’m keeping it,” Kale replied.
He stalked toward Luxarn and Zhaff, aiming at them. “You gave the order that got Cora killed,” Kale said. “I’ve listened to it a thousand times. You didn’t even pause.”
“Who the hell is Cora!” Luxarn snapped. The volume of his voice startled Zhaff, and his artificial knee gave out. Luxarn scampered to lift him again.
“She was everything to me! And you ordered her to be spaced just because she was a Ringer. So before I pull the trigger, I’m going to make you see what it’s like to lose everything. I know about Zhaff, Luxarn. I know how he was left to freeze on the surface of Titan. And I know who killed him.”
“He’s not dead,” Luxarn said.
“He might as well be!” Kale shouted.
“Kale, don’t,” I said, teeth clenched.
Zhaff’s head perked up upon now apparently recognizing my voice. He used Luxarn like a crutch to try and rise to his feet. His artificial leg wobbled, and his respirator hissed as he exerted himself. He turned his right ear toward me, and it was then that I realized his new eye-lens had also been hooked into an artificial right ear, which he also now lacked.
“Malcolm Graves,” Zhaff said, his voice tinny and weak. “Why.” He took a hard step at me with his human half. I instinctually raised my gun, and it felt like we were back on Titan all over again. Me and him, with Aria’s life hanging in the balance. Then he took a second step on an artificial leg just like mine, and it gave out, causing him to collapse.
“It’s him, my son,” Luxarn said, grabbing his son, who dug into the floor with his only hand to try and pull himself toward me. “Tell him to help us. He’ll listen to you.”
“I wish it was me who’d done it,” Kale continued, ignoring my pleas. “Executing Sodervall felt good, but robbing you of your only son would have been so much better. Only I didn’t have the pleasure. None of my people did.”
“Kale, I’m warning you.” I aimed at the back of Kale’s head, even though I couldn’t look away from Zhaff while his father struggled to stop him from crawling at me and wheezing. Kale didn’t react to it at all.
“It was your own collector who put down the freak to save his daughter, my ambassador.”
Luxarn’s arresting grayish eyes spread wide, directed straight at me. I’d meant to shoot someone first to keep my secret, anyone, but I locked up again upon seeing his anguish. In that moment, my betrayal of Pervenio Corp was complete. I realized why Kale wanted me at his side for this more than anything else. He knew he couldn’t break Luxarn without showing him the truth. And my expression had the truth written all over it, enough for Luxarn to know with his final breaths that Kale wasn’t lying. That he’d won.
“Now he’s going to finish the job,” Kale said. “You’re going to watch as your son dies, just like so many of my people. Shoot him, Malcolm.”
I froze. Luxarn lost his grip of Zhaff, which allowed him to continue crawling toward me. Every breath he drew sounded like an air recycler failing. And the boy who could not show emotion for so long had rage inscribed upon his eyeless, half-missing face.
“Do it, Malcolm,” Kale said. “I made you a promise, and now you get to make sure it’s kept.”
“Graves,” Luxarn said, breathless. “Whatever he has on you, I know you care for my boy. Shoot the Ringer bastard, and we’ll forget about all of this.”
Muted gunshots echoed outside in the hall, followed by screaming. There was a thud against the door, and somehow I doubted it was Kale’s single guard mowing down Cogents and security officers. They’d break in soon.
“You did it once already,” Kale said. “You saw my people beneath the Quarantine. You saw what he did to us. Your d
aughter gave everything to help, now you can do the same for her.”
“Thirty years, Graves,” Luxarn said. “Don’t throw it all away!”
Zhaff’s cold finger wrapped my artificial ankle and squeezed. He slowly drew himself to his knees, every part of him shaking.
“Family…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Right, Zhaff?”
“Malcolm, end this!” Luxarn screamed.
For months now, I’d allowed the Ringers to use me in the name of protecting my daughter. I let them force my finger around the trigger so I could end the life of a man who didn’t deserve it and feed their lies. But even I had my limits. Luxarn earned plenty of pain for how ruthlessly he’d played his corporate game. He’d earned it for how he’d treated Zhaff. But no man deserved to watch those he loved be taken from them. If anybody should have understood that, it was Kale.
“Make him feel our pain!” Kale yelled.
So, I did. I lifted my gun, screamed, and fired. The back of Luxarn’s head blew open, splattering blood and brains all over the wall.
“No!” Kale screamed.
He lunged to catch Luxarn’s body, then stared into his eyes as the very glimmer of life fled them.
Luxarn Pervenio, the man who took control of the ring after the Great Reunion, used his riches to build a corporate machine the likes of which humanity had never seen. His relentless dedication to advancing humanity at any cost helped set up the foundation of our interplanetary civilization. And now he was dead.
Zhaff rose to his full height before me. He grabbed my arm to pull himself upright, but I let him, until his fingers wrapped around my throat. I stared into the face of death incarnate—of my friend Zhaff turned into a monster. I knew now that neither of us was getting off Undina alive.
“I trusted you…” he wheezed.
“I know.” I craned my neck so his hand fit easier. I didn’t fight it as he began to squeeze. “He should have done what’s right and let you go.” I imagined Zhaff as a child, being beaten by his classmates for being different. That was the reason his father pulled him out, created the Cogent Initiative, and turned him into a killing machine.
But the Zhaff I knew wouldn’t have let life destroy him. Maybe, with someone better than Luxarn caring for him, he might have wound up using his brain to help an investor like Basaam change the world. Perhaps if I’d turned my daughter over to the USF, she’d been the head of some hospital somewhere saving lives.
“I should’ve too,” I grated. Even broken as he was, Zhaff’s grip was strong as iron. I let my gun fall from my grip and whispered, “Do it.”
Twenty-One
Kale
I watched the life drain from Luxarn Pervenio’s eyes. I thought the sight of the man who’d spent a lifetime grinding my people under his heel dying would make me smile. I thought it’d make me feel something.
It didn’t.
Luxarn’s cold body slumped onto the floor, dipped in a pool of his own blood and excrement. I whipped around and saw Malcolm being choked by Luxarn’s son. A twitch of regret plagued his features as his air was cut off. He looked like he’d aged years since he loaded me into the sleep pod and presented me to his former employer.
“He was supposed to watch just like I had to!” I roared. I charged across the room and smashed Zhaff across the side of his half-metallic head with all my might. The Cogent somehow remained choking Malcolm even as he fell unconscious, dragging the defiant collector to the ground with him. I pried Zhaff’s cold fingers off Malcolm’s throat, leaving him gasping for air. Then I aimed my pistol right between Malcolm’s eyes.
“Do you know what you’ve done!” I screamed.
“The right thing, for once,” Malcolm said, coughing.
“I should kill you right here.”
“Go ahead. I said I’d help you deal with Luxarn, but you didn’t say anything about this. He was already beaten. I don’t care what he’s done, nobody deserves to watch their child die. You should know that better than anybody. You’re going to be a father, for Earth’s sake!”
I pressed the barrel of my gun against his forehead, my finger itching to pull the trigger. Luxarn had made so many of us watch our families wither away in quarantine, unable to help them. I’d watched the footage of Cora dying at Luxarn’s orders a thousand times, listened to him give them a thousand times more. Now he was dead, but he would never experience what we did. That crushing pain. I knew that was why I barely felt a thing as I watched the life flee his body.
Then I heard the commotion outside the door of his office. My guard had given his life, and now Luxarn’s servants were preparing to breach the entry and take me down. Maybe I was going to die on Undina, but I refused to give Luxarn the satisfaction. Even in death.
“You’re lucky I still need you, Collector,” I said, pulling the gun away. He barely seemed relieved not to die. “Get up. We’re getting out of here.”
“He didn’t have to know what happened,” Malcolm growled, a harsh edge entering his tone.
“He deserved the truth,” I replied.
“Not from you.”
“Protecting your child is nothing to be ashamed of. He sent his to die in the name of credits.”
Malcolm snatched his pulse pistol off the floor and leveled his aim at me. A film of tears glazed his eyes in a way I hadn’t seen before. I knew he wasn’t going to shoot.
“Zhaff was a good kid,” he said. “His death didn’t deserve to be used as a weapon.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it.” I pointed at Luxarn’s slumped body, the blood continuing to pool beneath it. “We made a deal, Collector. You get me in to kill Luxarn and out, and she walks.”
“Yeah, well, me killing Zhaff in front of his father so you could prove a point didn’t really figure into that.”
“Consider us even for you taking Luxarn from me. Now you want Zhaff dead, you’re free to take care of him. Then you’re going to get me out of here.”
He looked like he wanted to explode. He bit his lip, and his free hand squeezed so tight his knuckles went as white as a Titanborn’s. He jumped to his feet, rushed over to Zhaff’s unconscious body, and aimed at his head. He stared down at him, hand quaking, but he never fired.
“We don’t have all day, Malcolm,” I said. “They’re coming.”
His hand shook harder and harder, and then his gun-arm fell to his side. “We made you into this, Luxarn and me,” he said. “But you’re alive. I shouldn’t get to choose where your story ends.” He crouched and whispered something in Zhaff’s ear.
“I won’t ask again, Malcolm,” I said.
He glared up at me, then he exhaled through his teeth. “I can’t do it.”
“That’s your choice, then. I doubt he’ll get off of here alive anyway.”
“He tends to surprise you.”
“Good for him. Now let’s go, Collector. Think of Aria.”
“Right, I need to get you out,” he said, simmering. “Sure, why not. I’ve already come this far; why not keep helping a murderous psychopath who can’t deal with a broken heart? What’s a few more dead Cogents?”
Malcolm turned and positioned himself in front of the door, a mad look in his eye. Someone banged on it from the outside.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Don’t worry!” Malcolm announced to whoever was on the other side of the door. “We’re coming out now.” He reared his artificial leg back with no warning and kicked the door with all his might. A group of Cogents was crushed against the wall on the other side. It partially missed one of them, squishing her arm only, but Malcolm plugged her between the eyes without hesitation.
“Let’s go,” he growled back at me. He moved into the corridor so fast that I had no choice but to follow. Another Cogent waited around the next corner.
“Malcolm Graves,” the young man said. “What is happening?”
Malcolm blew the Cogent away without a second’s hesitation. He passed a medical office, and a Cogent hiding ins
ide wised up and shot Malcolm in the thigh. The force sent him into the wall hard, but his artificial leg absorbed the blast with barely a scratch. Malcolm rolled over and put a bullet through the shooter’s eye lens. He was like a force of nature. A doctor inside squealed, but Malcolm shoved her onto the bed for her own safety.
“Keep up, kid,” he glanced back at me and said.
A shot reverberated down the clean, metallic halls. Blood spurted as it clipped the top of Malcolm’s shoulder, but he didn’t go down. I fired around his hip and hit the Cogent in the leg. Malcolm finished the job. I’d never seen anyone recover from a pulse pistol shot so fast.
He wedged his artificial foot under the corpse of his most recent kill and hurled it at the shooter. It crushed the Cogent, and another one rounding the corner was knocked off his feet by the tumbling body.
Malcolm charged forward and barreled into him. By the time I caught up, he’d already shoved the Cogent against the doors of the lift out of the facility and was bashing him across the face with the butt of his gun. Once, then again, until his Earther strength had the young man’s eye lens literally sunken into his eye socket.
Malcolm turned back to me, cheek doused in red. “Go,” he rasped as he signaled the doors to open.
Zhaff appeared back down the hall, across Malcolm’s swathe of death. He dragged his broken body along the floor with his elbow, and in his grip held a pulse pistol taken from one of his fallen brethren. He had no eyes, but the first shot he took missed us by a hair before clanging against the wall. I rushed into the lift to find cover.
Malcolm didn’t move. He closed his eyes as if he hoped one of the rounds would blow out his skull. Like his job was finished. I grasped him by the back of the collar and had to push off the wall with my feet to haul his heavy body inside. The doors sealed, and somehow he remained unscathed, even though the back of the lift was riddled with holes. His legs started to give out.
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