by Terina Adams
A hard shove at my back and I was falling, leaving a scream behind.
Falling, falling, falling, but it was over in the blink of an eye as I shot through the roof of Descaros and into a world of chaos. My feet hit something that wasn’t the floor. Underneath all the sounds of fighting came a clatter and tinkling, which sounded like cutlery hitting the floor. I was on a table, messing up the dinner setting. An avatar flashed past my vision, then another, and I was knocked into action.
I unclipped from the line and placed my hand down to steady me, but I felt a sharp pain and I sprung my hand up again, a shard of glass lodged in the soft fleshy part. This wasn’t real, but my mind didn’t agree.
Wasting time. I scanned the room while I flicked the shard of glass from my palm, eyes searching for my target. Avatars everywhere, total chaos, too many to discern one from the other. Friend or foe. Along with the digital displays to indicate an NPC, there were plenty who wore no digital display at all. Wound like a spring, the humans scared me the most. NPCs were easily dealt with; PCs took caution unless I released my factional nature.
Aris would get the senate members out of Descaros. I kept low, searching for possible exits, and my eyes landed on Holden, fighting his way toward the far-left corner of the room. Three Persal moved with him, cutting through the swathe of Aris. As I’d expected, I found the senate members being hastily ushered to opposite doors. My eyes landed on the word Persal dancing above an avatar dressed in what resembled something like a suit. The clothes screamed importance as did the way four Aris STU surrounded him, one of which was human.
I was off the table and running only to be blocked by a female Aris PC, her sword already in her hand. I ducked low, dodging to the side as she swiped down with, what appeared to me, a lethal blow. The strength in her swing would’ve gutted me had it made contact. Could she not tell the difference between NPC and PC? Or maybe she was locked up in fear, her actions beyond her.
Swiftly she corrected her wild swing, bringing her second weapon, a dagger, out of her belt with smooth efficiency—not a newbie like me. Eyes sawing into me, no way was she letting me go. I wheeled around, bringing my tri-blade up, releasing it before my arm was halfway, before she could calculate my aim. The tri-blade came up low, spinning through a dozen rotations before embedding just below her knee. I fell with her, turning my head from the pool of blood gushing from the wound. Not real, Sable, not real. She would feel it though. Maybe not as intense as a real wound from a blade penetrating the flesh, but close enough. Horrible as it was, terrible as I was for daring to do it, I had to finish the job or I’d lose my tri-blade. I crawled across to her as she clutched her wounded leg, screaming her pain, reached for one of the flat black discs, and slammed it into her chest. Her eyes flicked to mine.
“Sorry.” I breathed the words but she was gone, taken from the game.
A thud beside me and another avatar hit the ground, an NPC writhing in pain, but with no apparent injuries. In a blink he disappeared. My arm was wrenched from my socket as I was dragged to my feet. A woman, Marijane, shoved her face into mine.
“The Persal senate.” I caught a quick glance at the tattoo behind her right ear as she shoved me in the direction I’d been heading, something like a fork with three wavy lines radiating outward from the ends of the prongs—Negal, pestilence and fire.
I staggered forward on my way, pulling my blade from my belt so that I carried both weapons in my hands. In my periphery, someone shot upward through the roof of Descaros. I spared a glance to see a slumped Aris senator harnessed and heading out. Holden had succeeded. A quick look to the digital clock. Fifteen minutes remained.
Two steps and I was forced to engage again. An NPC this time, worse, he was STU. Without thought, I unleashed my factional nature, a slither to reduce the area of effect. The stream of it came naturally, the control like silken thread sliding through my fingers. The NPC disintegrated in a shower of… I doubled over as I ran on, feeling the wetness rain down over me. The bile in my stomach rose quickly. I palmed my mouth. Carter was going to pay for what he was doing to us.
Surrounded by four STU, one a PC, how the hell was I going to succeed? Thirteen minutes, that’s all I had.
My attention was caught by another senator going through the roof. Negal, Marijane’s catch. Two down, two to go. Dammit, I wasn’t going to make it.
Never had my skills status bar looked so good, but my eyes couldn’t help but wander to the digital clock. Hands now shaking with adrenaline, I rushed into the crowd, releasing my tri-blade with timed strikes, slashing up and out with my dagger from the other hand as I went. My kill quota flipped up as fast as the clock flipped down. Was this what it was like to play the game to win? Was this what it was like to become Carter’s tool? I couldn’t help but crave the feeling, the adrenaline of the fight, the power of making a kill. But each strike was also like an incision made into the heart of my soul. Slowly I was losing myself; slowly destruction was winning through. I could feel it as an energetic wave rippling through my body, pressing up against my skin with every strike I made, tantalizing my desire like a drug. I felt taller, stronger, no longer the girl who’d entered Dominus less than two months ago. This was me, who I was really meant to be.
Something hard thumped me in the stomach. I bent forward with a groan as my body sailed backward, colliding with a table behind. I tilted over the top, legs going up over my head, then shoulders first onto the ground. Before I could roll to safety, a hand grabbed my fancy warrior bikini top and lifted me off the ground. The Aris guy who’d formed part of the STU guarding the Persal senator shoved his face in mine, ran his tongue down my cheek like a dog, then hurled me away. The wall caught my fall, taking the wind from my lungs. I staggered, gasping for breath, getting nowhere when I was slammed back against the wall.
“What do you want, Persal?”
The guy was in my face again, leering down until we were nose to nose.
“According to my clock, you have ten minutes to get the senator out.” He backed up, giving me a foot, curling his fingers up as a taunt. “So what you gonna do, Persal? Show me what you got.”
He was a PC. I couldn’t use my powers. Keeping my eyes on his face, I reached for my tri-blade to find it gone. So too was my blade.
“Looking for these?” he sneered, holding up my weapons.
I darted a look to the left. Where were Holden, Marijane, Persal, anyone friendly? Where were my fighters helping clear a path to my target?
A sharp sting to my cheek and the sound of smacked flesh brought me back to his face.
“No good looking for help.” His stride ate the distance between us. In my face again, he said, “It’s you and me.” His lip curled. “Take me on, bitch.” His breath the foul metallic aroma of blood, his eyes the reddening of Aris.
Something pressed into my stomach, harder, harder until I felt the smooth, cool edge of a blade pierce a line across my stomach.
“And with your own weapon too. Humiliating or what?”
Snapped around my neck like a vise, his hand squeezed tight, pressing my windpipe slowly to the back of my throat. I couldn’t even cough.
His mouth pressed against my cheek. “Beg for mercy while I drip your blood at your feet.” He licked my face again, his hot breath and warm tongue running over my nose and down my lips to my chin.
“It would be so easy to take a bite.” This time I saw the red stain of his teeth.
I clenched my teeth, clenched them until I felt they would shatter, clenched them to keep my factional nature in. The sight of him, the smell of his Aris lust and destruction bled through my eyes to be the only sight I saw. It was filling me, swallowing me, drowning me, becoming the only thing I was. The force… I thought I would fragment while releasing the power through the open seams.
I stared into his eyes, his craziness, his desire to be what he wanted to be, bloodlust without restraint. And through my eyes, I poured myself out, the deep fear, the deep power, the well of destruction. It ca
me out and went into him so easily, so readily, straight in through his eyes, pouring, pouring in a solid stream. Soon his eyes rolled back inside his head, his head arced back, back, and back, in an unnatural bend. His grip on me loosened, but as it did, someone wrenched me around.
“Sable, stop it,” Jax shouted at me. Hands digging into my shoulders, he shook me. “Let it go.”
With a sudden gasp, I sucked the air into my lungs, sucked destruction back inside too. It snapped back like an elastic band, slamming me into the wall. Dazed, it took me seconds to come back from where I’d been, lost on the precipice of my true self.
The first thing I saw was my stats, excellent, the clock. Oh, god. One minute to go.
Then I looked to my feet. Jax was on the ground, lowering his head toward the guy who’d pinned me to the wall, now flat on his back. I sagged, my legs giving out with the memory. I palmed my mouth, frozen for a terrible heart-shredding moment. It was like I was back on the Adolphy Tower cast into the abyss of nothingness from Jax’s dive. The chaos around me died as my attention shrunk inward to what was immediately in front of me, to the guy with his listless eyes staring to the ceiling, his body unresponsive to Jax’s attention.
The room evaporated, the chaos stilled. Whiteness filled my eyes.
Game over, we were out.
I inched my goggles down to find myself crumpled on the mat. Jax was close in front, the guy too. Unmoving, unblinking eyes to the ceiling filled with a hollow emptiness, the vacancy of death. Next I looked at my stomach. There was nothing there, no bloody mess. It had been all in my head, a fabrication of Dominus. But his death was not. That was very real.
A piercing pain shot through my head. I clutched my temples between my palms and collapsed sideways to the mat. This was the consequence of losing. Around me, Persal and their allies fell to their knees, crying out the agony that was our punishment for not winning. I curled into a ball, knees up to my mouth, embracing the agony and wanting more, needing the torment to erase the understanding that I was a killer.
Chapter 35
The dark found me with my back against the waist-high brick wall, legs folded to my chest, forehead on my knees. Solitude and darkness were my escape. I could pretend I’d already fallen into hell. The blissful empty space of numbness left me long ago, about the time the headaches tormented me for real. Which was good. Pain was my due. The fact I did not feel it now was no mercy. My heart was tortured; my body should be tortured too. But I felt good, strong. Destruction flowed beneath my skin, a lost part of me now found. Rather than loathe the invasion, I felt united, whole. It would take nothing to touch that part of myself, to unleash it and revel in the strength it gave. And this was my torture, for I’d become what Carter had desired to make, and I wanted more.
I’d questioned what I would do when the game turned to us and them. Where them was no longer NPCs and the stakes were defend or death. I’d thought I was moral enough to find another way, an escape from the devastating choices, but in the end, I didn’t. Faced with my own mortality, I panicked. I chose me over someone else.
The clunking echo of boots on the metal grille reverberated through my head, but I kept my forehead buried, shutting out the intruder, nor did I look when he approached, but I followed the sound of his shoes across the cement roof until he was close. Eyes closed, I felt more than heard him sliding down the wall. I could feel the warmth from his body, the soft disturbance of the air around me as he took up space alongside me.
Little had been said between us. Mind emptied, I had nothing to say. Hours later, I still had nothing to say. I was burning with shame and the horrible understanding of what I had done, filled with feelings too ugly to share.
“No one blames you,” Jax said.
“They should.”
“We’re all guilty of the same crime.”
I whipped my head up to stare at him. “Are you really?” My words were cruel, I was cruel. I was a killer.
“I saw how it played out. I saw the blade he held against your stomach.”
“That didn’t happen. Not really. I’m not hurt, but he’s dead.”
“He had you by the throat. I saw him lick you.”
I hid behind my palms. “It was nothing. Not something that could kill me.”
“Sable, you can’t bury yourself in this. You acted on instincts. Everyone would.”
“That doesn’t excuse it or make me innocent.”
“No, you’re not innocent. You’re not guilty either.”
“Don’t say that. There should be no excuses. It just gives a person leeway to do it again and again.”
“You were always going to experience your factional nature at some point, you and everyone in the game, Dominus or no Dominus. It’s the way it is.”
“But without Dominus, I would not have used it to kill someone.”
“You’ve felt the compulsive pull your factional nature can have over you, so don’t be so sure.”
“Dad would not have allowed that to happen. He would have guided me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
When the silence came, it wasn’t gentle. I dropped my head to my knees. Jax finally said, “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said that.”
The distant noise of the street filtered up and settled between us.
“His name was Harris. Thought you would want to know.”
“Thanks.” It did help to know at least his name, but it didn’t rewind time, change what I had done, didn’t stuff destruction back inside the cage. “It’s out for good.”
Maybe it took him awhile to find any meaning in what I’d said. I didn’t help him because the rest was too ugly, too shameful to share.
“I know.”
Did he have to be so understanding? Did his words have to be so gentle that they felt like a loving arm slipping around my waist? Why couldn’t he hate me like I deserved to be hated for desiring the destruction inside of me?
“Don’t loathe yourself for what you are. Trust me, it will twist you.”
I found the courage to surface from behind my knees and found us in nothing but shadows under the half-moon light. Jax mirrored me except his head rested back on the brick wall. He looked straight ahead to the small strip of light running horizontal at the bottom of the door that led inside.
“What else am I meant to do when all I want to do is destroy?”
“It doesn’t matter what’s inside of you. It’s your choices that define you.”
“Don’t give me platitudes unless you really believe in them.”
He dropped his head forward and allowed the noises from the city below to fill in the gaps. He believed in what he said as much as I believed in it, and I had no belief in innocence anymore.
“Do you still plan on following Carter?” I said.
The dark shared little of his features. His eyes looked like sunken pits. “Why do you ask?”
Did I reveal what Holden and I planned? If I didn’t, I would be the same as all the rest, enforcing the belief in factional loyalty over everything else. “What do you want, Jax?”
A light would be good. Having a conversation in the dark robbed me of the precious ways people communicated beyond words. In many ways, not seeing Jax clearly made it easy, less personal, less confronting.
“Truth? I want this over. I want to return home.”
“And see your world destroyed? That’s what will happen if you don’t stop Carter. He’ll see to it.”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” I couldn’t see his features, but there was no mistaking his hand rubbing along the tattoo at his wrist. “If you loved your world, then you wouldn’t want this. Where is the justice in one faction suppressing all others?”
“I’m in too deep.”
“Look what he has done to me.” He didn’t deserve the harshness in my words, but I couldn’t keep it in. “No one is ever in too deep.” I swiveled on my ass to face him.
“We’re too far along. There is nothing that can be done now,�
� Jax said.
I pushed back against the wall again. If I told him our secret, he could ruin everything. Did I dare continue? Of everyone, I wanted to trust him the most. But could I? “There is.” One more breath and I blurted out, “I have to free Dad.”
“I won’t help that man. Besides, it changes nothing, just the faction ruling.”
“No, it does more than that. Dad will never suppress your people. It would be how you want it.”
“Don’t be so naive, Sable. I understand your loyalty to your father, but the only difference between him and Carter is Carter beat him to it. Your father had no intention of sharing the power just as Carter didn’t. At some point, he would’ve disposed of Carter as Carter did him.”
“But Dad’s not interested in their plans anymore. That’s the real reason Carter made sure he was out of the way. Dad was happy with his life here, his family. He wasn’t interested in overthrowing the senate anymore.”
“If that’s true, then why has he allowed Dominus to continue for all this time?”
I had no answer because it was my question too. “I can’t leave him there.”
I was on my feet, unable to stay still any longer. “There is no other way. Dad will be able to stop Carter. He’s the only person I can think of with the power to do it.” I stopped my erratic pacing. “I won’t go back inside Dominus. I can’t.”
“You don’t have to. You’re your factional nature now.”
The truth was consuming. I was destruction. I was my real self, no longer hidden, no longer contained or suppressed. I was more than what I’d ever been before. I was capable, powerful. I was a killer. “Carter will force us in again and again until he bleeds the humanity out of us.”
Jax rubbed the tattoo on his wrist, withdrawing into himself. The force of my conviction ran through me like a thousand volts of electricity, and I was wired to argue with him, wired to throw some destruction around. No way would I allow him to go silent on me; no way would I let that beast out.