The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy

by Terra Whiteman

Breathe, breathe, breathe…

  Her eyes widened as an unguarded exit came into view at the end of the hall. She was only one hundred feet away from freedom. Hope gave her a boost of adrenaline, and her wings released as she ran even faster. The hall erupted with the sounds of tearing cloth and feathers beating air as she burst through the door.

  Sanctum’s evening light shined on her face and she closed her eyes, taking flight. Against all odds, she had escaped. She was free! She was—

  BANG.

  I

  CROWN OF THORNS

  SANCTUM WAS UNUSUALLY QUIET.

  At this hour, the streets were typically packed with traffic. Instead, a single aero-craft drifted by every five minutes. Fog had taken to the air, leaving the spires of my city as caliginous black outlines. I found the scenery fitting.

  I waited in the opened doors of an Enforcer military craft, surveying the grain supply factory below. In the wake of gunfire, explosions and screams, my frown was apathetic.

  Fucking angels; they deserved it.

  My pilot, Lakash, looked over his shoulder. “They’re taking too long, Commandant.”

  “Give them another minute. It sounds like they’re cleaning up.”

  “Sir.”

  I crossed my arms, huddling into my coat. It was cold, as usual, but the weather was fine for us. All that sunny, sweaty crap in the top layers was for the whites. I didn’t understand how they endured it.

  Okay, Lakash was right; they were taking way too long. We only had a fifteen minute window. After that, the press would arrive, and I didn’t think they’d like what they would find. But hey, someone needed to take care of this mess.

  The sound of media aero-crafts echoed through the clouds. Lakash and I turned to the noise, sharing dismal looks. “Get some guards down here to fend them off. Arrest them if you have to.”

  “I wonder what your father would think?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes. Lakash and I had known each other since we were boys. He often mistook our friendship for permission to overstep his boundaries on the job. “What my father would think is none of your business. Get those guards down here, now.”

  Right about now my father was probably drunk in his study, drooling on the pages of a poetry book. Like he fucking cared what was going on anymore.

  Lakash reached for his radio, while I leapt from the craft and flew to the vacant lot. When I landed my wings folded into my back, and I removed my radio from my belt.

  “Status,” I ordered into it.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “All clear.”

  I sighed in relief. “How many?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Nope, that was wrong. “The Eye of Akul said there were fifteen.”

  “We only found fourteen, Commandant.”

  My jaw clenched as I tried to keep my cool. My brother was being lazy, and this wasn’t the time for it. “I don’t care how many you found, Ara. They said there were fifteen, so you’re missing one.”

  There came a sigh. “We’ll find them, Qaira.”

  The crafts were getting louder, nearer. Ten minutes had passed, and we still needed to clean up the mess. If we didn’t find that last white soon, I was going to have to pull some serious bureaucratic shit. Maybe an arms deal gone wrong or something. All I had to do was get rid of the—

  A door burst open behind me. I reached for my gun.

  And just as the angel took off, I shot her in the back of the head. From such a close range, half of her cranium exploded and she fell from the sky in a trail of white feathers. When she collapsed, the remaining globs of her brain spilled across the pavement.

  I put the radio to my lips, watching her bleed.

  “Never mind; we’re done. Get the bodies out of there.”

  * * *

  “Hey,” Ara said, removing his mask, “that was a nice shot.”

  We were landing at Eroqam, Sanctum’s military headquarters and also my home. It rose higher than the tallest buildings of the inner city, sculpted from black coua. Coua was expensive to build with, because it was difficult to mine. Only the most important places in Sanctum were coua-composed, as it took forever to erode and was hardy against harsh climates. To attest to this, Eroqam stood long before the rest of Sanctum.

  I watched the lines of armed guards awaiting our landing on the circular roof below us.

  “She could have gotten away,” I responded after a two minute delay, one in which I’d spent debating whether or not to punch my brother in the face for the headache he’d given me.

  Ara scoffed. “Not with you standing there.”

  Our craft touched down and the thirteen of us walked in single file toward the Commons. My men would get unsuited and go home. I would go to my room and make a break for the stash of malay in my dresser. I began to itch a little while ago; it was far past due for another dose.

  My brother followed me to the living quarters, a good fifteen minute walk from where we landed. Almost every trip from the Commons to the living quarters consisted of Ara talking my head off, while I (barely) listened. But this time, both of us were quiet as we traversed the long, dark walkway. It was after dinner, so most of our staff was gone.

  “You alright?” I asked after we’d reached the halfway point.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know why we’re waiting for them to attack us all the time.”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. “I’m working on that. You know how the Council is.”

  “Ceram said grocers are running out of food in the lower districts. We can’t stop every supply factory from being destroyed.”

  Ceram was my brother’s girlfriend who, despite his previous statement, had everything delivered to her on a silver platter. That was the lifestyle of a woman promised to one of the Regent’s sons. But he was right; Sanctum couldn’t hold the fort forever. Eventually we’d become as weak and starved as the Archaeans.

  “Patience, please,” I muttered. “And while you wait, why don’t you work on getting your priorities straight?”

  He lifted a brow. We looked similar whenever he did that. “Excuse me?”

  “What’s more important, Ara? Eliminating all fifteen targets or getting your dick wet?” When he only glared at me, I elaborated. “I saw the bodies. You could at least try some subtlety.”

  “I didn’t fuck any of them. Garan and Uless did.”

  I stared ahead. The dim light of our quarters could be seen across the hallway. “From now on, get the job done and get out. Do you understand? You don’t need to beat the angels to death. That takes too much time. Just shoot them in the back of the head and move on to the next.”

  I blocked his path with an intimidating look. I wanted to make sure he understood that I meant business.

  He looked away, sheepishly. “Right.”

  Ara’s malice wasn’t what upset me. I understood what happened to my soldiers on the field. Why wouldn’t they want to tear the heads from their enemies? The Enforcers’ brutality toward the Archaeans symbolized their hatred. They needed that hate to win the battle. I didn’t respect the life of any angel, so I didn’t care if one of my men put a bullet in an angel’s head and then fucked the gunshot wound. I just didn’t want them doing that when it compromised our operation.

  Civility was useless against the Archaean Forces; my father had tried that for years. Our actions kept them scared. It made their soldiers question whether they really wanted to blow up one of our buildings if the chances of getting tortured, raped and shot were high enough. We kept their morale crushed beneath Sanctum’s heel.

  At the end of the hall we stopped at a sealed metal door. I punched some numbers into the keypad on our right, and it slid open.

  The smell of food wafted through the air. Ara and I walked up the carpeted steps of our estate to the sound of strings music. Tae was cooking again.

  As I put my briefcase down in the lounge and loosened my tie, my sister pranced through the doors, holding up a plate of bread and wearing
an ugly, flowery apron.

  “Just in time!” she chimed.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.” My hands were shaking.

  My brother expressed much more enthusiasm about dinner and followed Tae into the dining area. I darted to the west wing, toward my room. Once there, I scrambled to my desk and grabbed a container of purple liquid from my drawer. I filled a syringe with it. I sat on the edge of the bed and rolled up my sleeve, injecting the contents of the container into my arm. The rush came near-instantaneously, and I closed my eyes.

  Along with the other three fourths of the Nehel population, I was a malay addict.

  At first the drug was legally distributed as a form of performance enhancement. It made us more alert, and although our strength probably didn’t change, it sure felt like it. Aside from that, it gave off a euphoric effect for a while after administration. That was what I got addicted to.

  After only two decades, studies at the Sanctum Research Center found that malay was highly addictive if used too frequently, and the withdrawals were almost always fatal. Unfortunately, that was long after nearly everyone in Sanctum already took it daily. The Council made malay distribution illegal, but looked the other way for our military. While thousands of people died from malay withdrawals and others became practically homeless trying to buy it from black market street merchants, we received as much of it as we liked. Eroqam couldn’t have their soldiers dying off, after all.

  Sometimes I wondered what the public would think if they knew the face of Sanctum, the oldest son of the Nehelian Regent, was really a junkie. The thought brought a twisted smile to my lips as I sat there with the needle still in my arm. Curling my fingers into a fist, I let out a long sigh as my stress escaped into the open air. All better.

  Now it was time for the circus.

  Everyone was already seated when I returned to the dining room. I frowned at my father, who sat with a napkin tucked around his collar like a toddler. I felt a certain sadness whenever I watched him. I still remembered the man he used to be; the one who taught me everything I knew. His rapid decline depressed me. Even strong, great men withered and waned at the end of it all.

  I took my seat next to Ara and looked down at my plate. Tae didn’t have much to do during the day, so she tried to perfect being a homemaker. I didn’t really understand why, considering she was just going to be the mate of some wealthy Nehelian one day. Tae would never have to cook again after that. She didn’t even have to cook now.

  I pushed food around with my fork to make it look like I was eating. The malay made me a little nauseous.

  “Qaira knows what I mean,” Ara continued a conversation from before I’d arrived, and I glanced at him in question.

  Tae shook her head, cutting up her food. “I think all of those places should be shut down. The filth they dredge up only makes Sanctum even more dangerous.”

  “Uh, what are we talking about?” I asked.

  “Sapyr.”

  “You’d talk about that at the dinner table, in front of our father?” I almost shouted, casting my younger siblings a disgusted look.

  Tae rolled her eyes at me. I didn’t intimidate her at all. “As if Dad cares.”

  My father waved a hand, having finished his meal and now drinking a glass of wine. “I don’t. Naked women bring in some of Sanctum’s top revenue.”

  “This is fantastic,” I muttered. “A family discussion about brothels.”

  “You act as if you don’t go there as often as your brother,” my sister chided. She turned to our father. “Use your napkin, Dad. There’s food all over your face.”

  I didn’t respond. I wasn’t going to converse over my trips to Sapyr. I was a man; enough said.

  Tae and Ara continued to talk about other nonsense, and I just sat there picking at my plate. My father wiped his face with his napkin, and then blew his nose. I grimaced. Any appetite I’d had was officially gone. I’d only taken about four bites before I stood.

  “You’ve barely eaten!” cried Tae.

  “It was gross.”

  She looked at her plate, stung.

  I hadn’t meant to say that; it wasn’t gross, but it was either that or argue with her for fifteen minutes, and my time was priceless. My father and brother stared at me, their disdain mutual. I left the dining room without another word.

  * * *

  I spent the night in my room trying to devise a plan to get the Council to agree to search the Archaean refugee camp. I was certain that that was how the rebels got their intel. Someone in that camp was sending information to the Archaean base ship orbiting our gravitational field. Tonight’s raid on our grain supply facility said it all.

  About seventy years ago, the Archaeans showed up on The Atrium seemingly from out of nowhere. Their home world, Felor, had been destroyed and there were over a million angels on board looking for a new home. Their leader, an angel named Lucifer Raith, demanded that we let them stay.

  My father spent almost fifty years trying to negotiate with them. At first he ignored their demands, arguing that we couldn’t hold so many and sustain our world’s resources. That was true. The Atrium wasn’t a huge planet. But the Archaeans didn’t leave, and eventually wore my father down with unrelenting pleas. He reserved a place in the upper layers for them to take refuge. It wasn’t much, and it could only hold about fifty thousand, but that was fifty thousand angels able to eat.

  The Atrium was only supposed to be a way station until they figured out what they were going to do. Yet to this day they hovered over us, demanding that more and more angels migrate to our world.

  My father went crazy, and I took over. After years of passive defense methods of keeping the Archaeans from taking over, I was more than ready for a conflict. On my first day as stand-in Regent, I declared war on the angels. I also declared that there would be no more migrations, and the refugees could either go back to their ship, or stay while the rest of them found greener pastures.

  Needless to say, Commander Raith didn’t like me much. Their entire plan from day one was to force migration on us over time. However, the moment my soft, soul-loving father cleared out his desk, their plan went to shit. We’d spent the subsequent years at war.

  Currently the Archaeans were trying to destroy our storage facilities so that we’d suffer food shortages. I wasn’t able to retaliate because we couldn’t reach their ship. Their technology was staggering, and from what I’d heard, it was what destroyed Felor in the first place.

  We needed to raid their refugee camp. If anything, it would clog enemy communication for a while. A raid would also let Raith and his forces know that any time they felt like coming down to Sanctum, we were ready for a showdown.

  The angels scarcely faced Nehel in physical combat. They feared our strength. We were warriors; they were scientists. Most of Archaean military training revolved around how to evade and defend against us. Trying any sort of offense was a death wish, and they knew it. Despite our superiority in combat, the fact of the matter still remained: we were stuck.

  So there I was, writing down arguments that I’d use on the Council tomorrow. I couldn’t believe I even had to convince them that we needed to engage. But, like my father, they felt civility was best. The only thing civility gave us was the early symptoms of famine. We could sit here and twiddle our thumbs all day; Lucifer Raith wouldn’t stop until The Atrium was his.

  And I wouldn’t stop until he was dead.

  There was a knock on my door, and I looked up. “Yes?”

  My father came in and I glanced away, trying not to roll my eyes. I didn’t have time for him.

  My father’s name was Qalam Eltruan. Until twenty years ago, he’d been the Regent of Sanctum. To the public, he still was, but I’d taken most of his roles behind the scenes. I played the good son and let him keep his face on bulletin boards so long as he didn’t become a blabbering idiot. It was getting really close to that point, though.

  But it seemed tonight he was lucid. He didn’t have that f
amiliar, clueless look about him that signified he’d wandered off for the thousandth time.

  “How did it go today?” he asked, sitting down on a chair across from my bed. Physically, he appeared like an older version of me. All of his children looked like him, with brown hair and slender noses. But Tae, Ara and he all possessed green eyes. Mine were silver, like my mother’s. Perhaps that was why I’d always been his favorite.

  He wore a suit every day, even though he hadn’t been to his office in ten years. He showed up at Council meetings and spoke to the press, but he hadn’t made a military or political decision since his physician diagnosed him with dementia. I often wondered if the same would happen to me one day, since dementia was genetic. Personally, I'd rather a bullet in the brain.

  “Not good,” I sighed. “This was the fourth attempted bombing this month. It can only get worse from here.”

  My father frowned, emphasizing the wrinkles on his weathered face. He said nothing, however. It seemed he was just as useless as everyone else. Eventually, he nodded toward the pad of paper on my knees. “What are you working on?”

  “I’m going to stand before the Council tomorrow and argue the right to raid Crylle.” I might as well tell him; he was going to find out tomorrow anyway. Besides, he probably wouldn’t even remember what I said two hours from now.

  “The refugee camp? Whatever for?”

  “The Archaeans know of places and people that they couldn’t possibly have learned from their ship.”

  “The media will spin it as a hate crime. Some of our citizens want us to let the Archaeans in.”

  “Yeah, and some of our citizens haven’t a fucking clue, Dad. Where are we going to put them?”

  “Profanity, son. Can’t you tone it down in front of your old man?”

  “Sorry, but still.”

  He sighed. “I don’t have the power to make those decisions anymore.” He stood and put his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  His words made me shiver. My father thought I was such a good boy. It’d crush him if he knew about the things I’d done, all in the name of Sanctum. There was no such thing as doing right. For the Regent, or at least the guy playing the part, the only decisions I ever faced were bad, or worse.