Minerva shook her head. “They killed Aaron — not sent him to die, not subjected him to the Will or whims of the Gods, but actively chose to end his life. How many others? I have a son, eight — will you tell him his mother’s death — or his death — is the Will of the Gods?”
Gal stared at the dirt.
“Don’t give up the fight,” she begged him.
Rayne put a hand on his arm. “I’ve heard you talk about Aaron before. Did he… did they send him somewhere to die?” She looked at Minerva. “Is that what they did to you?”
Minerva nodded.
Rayne’s bony fingers clamped on Gal’s arm. “What do we do?”
He knew all eyes were on him. They were all always on him. But John P was dead. He’d died years ago. Gal was just a cracked, old freightship captain in over his head. “There’s nothing we can do. The Speakers are too powerful. This is simply the way it is, but we can get ourselves to safety.”
A heavy pause hung in the air.
“I’ve seen the files on the general’s computer,” said Rayne, glancing at Sarrin. “They did unspeakable things to those kids, and we, every UEC soldier, supported it. And if what she says is true — that they send people to the colonies to die — then I couldn’t live with myself. Gods, Gal! We ferried them there. We might as well have killed them ourselves.”
“Rayne….”
She crossed her arms over her chest, eyebrows furrowing as she worked it through. “The Gods we Serve, the Gods we Trust.”
“Rayne….”
“It doesn’t mean the Speakers, Gal. It means us. It means the good in this world. We have to trust that there is good. You’ve always said I’m one of the best Tactical officers you know. Well, maybe there is something we can do to help the folk, maybe this is my Path to Serve. Disappearing into the Deep, Deep Black is tempting, but I can’t imagine it now, not with what we know. I couldn’t live with myself.”
He opened his mouth. They were doomed, he wanted to say, but he knew full well the pain of walking away, of making oneself forget. He was willing to do it to himself again for her, but he couldn’t make Rayne life with that pain.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
Rayne turned to Minerva. “Do you know where the rebels are now?”
Minerva nodded. “I think so.”
“Then we'll help them,” said Rayne. "Never give up the fight, right?" She smiled down at him, and then to his shock, quoted the great John P with as much reverence as she had once done with the Speakers: "These eyes cannot unsee. This heart cannot unfeel. I am human, and so human I must be."
A grin spread on Minerva’s haggard face. “Sounds a lot like someone I used to know.”
Gal licked his lips. That’s what he was most afraid of.
Alarms rang in his head—this was getting more and more dangerous—but there was a determined glint in Rayne’s eyes, and he would do anything for Rayne. Anything. He echoed the old litany: “Human are we, human we will be.”
SEVENTEEN
HALUD WOKE AS THE DOOR to the anteroom slid open and immediately braced himself. He expected the commandant to sweep into the room, cape billowing, her eyes filled all at once with stony ferocity and terrible fear, so he was surprised to see a young man, tall and wiry, and decorated as a lieutenant. The lieutenant had none of the commandant’s blatant ferocity, instead his movements were clipped and harsh. He conferred with Halud’s guard, and then ordered the door to the cell released.
“Where is the commandant?” Halud demanded, sitting up on his cot.
The lieutenant barely spared him a distasteful glare before turning back to the guard, a smug smile passing between them.
“Where is the commandant?” Halud repeated himself. “What’s she done with my pendant? It is a symbol from the Gods, it is not to be taken from me.”
With the same quick, precise movements, the lieutenant slipped into the cell, towering over Halud. “Commandant Mallor has been relieved of duty. I am here to escort you.”
“There’s not a chance in the Deep that I’ll go with you. The First Speaker has said what he wanted to say. And I’ve heard all I want to hear.”
The lieutenant reached down quickly, snapping Halud to his feet in one fluid, precise movement. “My orders come directly from the First Speaker himself. It seems he still has some use for you.”
“You’re still listening to that cracked fool?” Halud forced himself to huff out a laugh. “I thought he had suffered a mental break.”
The soldier twisted Halud’s arm behind his back, stressing the shoulder joint until Halud cried out. He wasn’t as strong as the commandant, but was just as mean, and not quite so even tempered. Half bent, Halud was forced out of the cell and down the hall.
“Let go of me,” Halud wheezed through he pain. “Hap won’t want me injured, I’m still the Poet Laureate. And I’m already coming with you.”
The grip eased, but the lieutenant still pressed his arm into his back.
Halud climbed the stairway, a sticky sense of distaste burning the back of his throat. So many times now Hap had called him to his office to do nothing more than gloat. This would be more of the same.
At the top of the stairs, Joyce smiled at him, seeming not to notice the lieutenant or the forceful grip he had on Halud’s right arm. A silly grin spread across her face that made her look half cracked.
Halud rolled his eyes and returned some of the smile. She was sweet at least. Idiot. But harmless.
Her manic smile relaxed. “The First Speaker is expecting you, Master Poet.” She reached up to rub her chest, and the fabric of her grey dress bent back, revealing a colourful lining. The blue caught her pale skin tone and made her look almost pretty. Except there should be no colour on her at all — it was a thing for the Gods, such beauty for them alone.
He stared, wide eyed, and just for a moment her face slipped out of its silly facade. The smile became serious, the look became hard. Just for a flash.
The lieutenant pushed Halud forward, up the great twisting staircase and into the office of Hap Lansford, dumping him inside the door.
Halud aimed for his usual chair at Hap’s desk, but the office’s layout was not the same. A chair had been set in front of the long wall of unsettling exotic and extinct animal heads. Before it was a camera with its cinematographer. A producer stood nearby, and she grabbed Halud and thrust him into the chair. A type of restraint was fastened over his lap, his wrists bound to the chair behind him.
“What is this?” he snapped, looking to the desk and Hap Lansford’s silhouette turning from the window. “If you think I’m going to do an address for you, you’re cracked.”
Hap only grinned.
The cinematographer went through his usual checks, touching Halud’s face, adjusting the lighting, adjusting him.
“What are you doing?” he demanded again as the huge Speaker strode towards them.
“You know what I need from you.”
“I told you I wouldn’t do it. I won’t say your words.”
Hap shook his head. “That’s not what I need. I need your face.”
“What?”
The Speaker thrust a tablet at him, a vid already playing. “Things have moved… differently than anticipated. Your sister walks freely in the city, and I cannot have it.”
“Sarrin.” He glimpsed her on the screen, just a flash before she scaled a building and disappeared. Then he looked to Hap, realization soaring in his core. “You don’t know where she is.”
Hap ground his teeth.
The video continued to roll, a busy city square, but there was something about the folk: they all wore colour. They all wore hints of blue.
A protest.
His mind flashed a picture of Joyce and the strange slip with her dress.
The realization hit him: “You’re losing control of them, Hap.”
The Speaker pressed his lips together. His eyes looked almost wild, desperate.
The brief flash of hope he’d felt at the r
ealization fell away to dread; there was no telling how far he would go, what he would do as the folk slipped away from him. “Let my sister go, and I can help you contain them.” Halud lurched against his restraint. “You know I’m the only one who can. You need me.” He licked his lips. “You want me here so that Sarrin sees me and comes for me, but if you put me on that screen, I will stir up a riot the likes of which you have never seen. The Poet Laureate, in chains! What will the folk think? What will they do?” He could see it now, the confusion, the outrage. What he said was true, he felt the power rise in his chest. “I know how to talk to folk. You can keep me in the dungeons until I’m grey and dead, for all I care, but let her go. She’s one girl, it’s no matter to you. I can tell you how to stir the folk, how to bend the entire world to your will. I’m the one they listen to, Hap, you know that.”
“Blasphemy.”
“The Gods don’t speak to you anymore. It’s me the folk trust.”
Hap’s face turned red, and for a moment, Halud thought he had him, but he turned back to the cinematographer. “Is your machine set?”
He nodded, “Yes sir, set to broadcast live.”
“Good. Leave.”
The cinematographer nodded, spinning on his heel. The producer followed.
“Don’t do this,” Halud tried again, straining against his restraints. His heart raced wildly. Because Hap was right; if Sarrin saw his face, she would come here, and Halud needed to not let that happen. Not after everything, not after what he’d sacrificed. “It’s a mistake. Let her go.”
A row of people watched from the opposite wall: all the Speakers and their Generals. Joyce and her scribble pad. And her flash of blue.
“All of you too,” snapped Hap.
The Speakers and their generals paused, uncertain. Angela Ashbury, speaker of Knowledge opened her mouth, but seemed to think better of it. They filed from the room silently. Joyce waited idly, checking a note on her pad, the last to leave. She sent him a subtle shake of her head completely devoid of her characteristic smile — a warning — then turned, skipping out of the room, notepad clutched to her chest.
The wooden door closed with a heavy thump.
Everything was moving too fast.
Halud looked back to Hap, and was met with his fist. The blow sent him sprawling across the floor, still tied into his chair. Such violence was against the Gods, but here they were. The Speaker lifted him up, stool and all, setting him back in front of the camera.
“You’re a fool, Hap,” he growled.
Hap moved out of the frame, pressing a control on the camera so that its little recording light began to flash. “Now tell the folk what you’ve done,” he growled. “Tell them your defiances against the Gods, you sick, pathetic creature.”
Halud spit out a mouthful of blood. “Do what you will to me, Hap. The Gods protect the folk, not the cracked Speakers.” He took a deep breath, staring Hap defiantly in the face. “The Gods protect the folk!”
The light on the camera blinked off, Hap’s facing burning a deep red.
Halud glared. “The Gods will never smile on you again.”
* * *
Amelia wiped the sleeve of her shirt across her forehead, careful not to lose her grip on the laz-rifle in her hands. The jungle heat was oppressive, and she took a moment to rest under the cover of the broad leaves of a Colocasia bush.
Colocasia: broad leaves that provide rain and sun shelter, root edible only after soaking.
Under the thick cover, she was entirely non-visible. She could rest.
Except.
Except.
Her heightened hearing picked up the clunk of a boot, then the sharp snap of a laz-rifle being reassembled quietly and quickly.
They were out there.
Who?
It didn’t matter.
Amelia threw herself out from under the elephant ear, sprinting over the terrain. She launched herself just in time. The laz-bolt seared across her abdomen.
The commandant bolted awake on the narrow medical cot. The monitors started to alarm, and she strained against the bonds that held her wrists and ankles.
The singular door to the cell cracked open, a smooth panel on the wall moving out and to the side. She forced her heart rate to slow, as the doctor stomped forward, peering down at her. She held her eyes shut, forcing her body to mimic the deep relaxation and unpredictable twitch of a REM cycle.
He prodded her a few times, pressed the silencer on the alarm, and left, satisfied that she was still asleep and that the alarm had been nothing more than a bad dream.
Amelia recited prime numbers to one thousand.
When enough time had passed, she unclipped herself from the restraints, programmed the monitors, and slipped from the hospital cell into the spaces between the walls. Her legs and arms moved of their own volition through the maze of support beams, and almost by surprise, she found herself looking down on the guard outside of Halud’s cell.
Lazy, the man had fallen asleep, snoring gently as his laz-rifle sagged in his grip.
Silently, she dropped down behind him, twisted the trigger points to push him into a deep sedation, and let him slump to the floor.
Halud watched her from where he laid on the bed. They stared at each other a long time. Silently, he rose, coming to the edge of the glassine wall. His face was bruised and swollen, blood seeping from a crack on his lip. He pointed to the control panel.
She flicked on the two-way communication between the anteroom and the cell.
“Why are you here?” he asked, his speech slurred by the fat face.
“What happened to you?” she asked. But she already knew.
He looked away. “Do you know where my friends are? The rebels I was with when you captured me. I need to get a message out.”
She shook her head. “Gone.”
“Gone? Where?”
“One of the colonies,” she said quietly. “They were dispatched almost immediately.”
“What?” His hands banged on the glassine.
She stepped back, startled. The words, ‘I’m sorry,’ caught on the tip of her tongue. Then a surge of anger coursed through her — like he was the only one who had lost someone. The Augments had kil— … the Augments had what?
“Hap’s lost his mind,” he said, pacing, agitated, across his cell.
The anger swirled again. “The First Speaker is descended from the Gods,” she snapped, her mouth answering automatically before her mind could comprehend what she was saying. “You will show him the proper respect.” But she finished the sentence, the words trailing off, and a sinking sense of something forgotten causing her breath to catch. She brought her hands to her chest, bracing for the pain that she inexplicably expected to come next.
Halud stopped his pacing directly across from her. He looked on with weak eyes — doleful, pathetic. Strong and intelligent. “It looks like they’ve captured you too, Commandant.”
Her crumpled hospital gown swayed around her shins, her legs embarrassingly bare. She held her chin high, growling, “I am in medical treatment.”
“For what?”
“For—.” She didn’t know. But it must have been something. It felt like a war was playing out in her head. Voices and sensations jumbled around, none of it making any sense. She started to pace.
The Poet watched. “What are you doing here, Amelia?”
She glanced at him, her foot paused in midair as she contemplated answering him. He was the traitorous Poet, there was no reason for her to be here. The sight of him made her sick.
But he was the only one, wasn’t he?
The only one who what?
Who understood.
She drove her hands into the side of her head to stop it from spinning. “My mind is breaking. It’s like a thousand glassine shards shattering over everything.”
His brow knitted together.
“I’m not cracked,” she said. But she was thinking and talking like she was.
His voice was calm a
nd steady as he watched her interest. “Yes, you are. We all are.”
The anger flared again, and she rushed the glassine, slamming into it so hard that it shook with a a low vibration.
To his credit, he didn’t back away. The pathetic fool knew he was protected. It took an incredible force in just the right place to shatter a window and leap through to the other side. Not that it couldn’t be done. She’d seen it done.
Where? When?
“Do you know what they call you?” he asked. Of course she did, but he answered anyway: “The Augment Hunter. You hunt children — helpless children who’ve never done a thing wrong — and you destroy them. Destroy their lives, their families, their hope.”
Her hands smacked the glassine. “Why would I destroy them?” she shouted. But the emotion wasn’t anger. “I—.” Her limbs shook, voice quavering as the air rushed from her chest, leaving her empty and gasping against the glass, like a gravity trap had been set to high and was near to crushing her. “You’ve got it all wrong.” But she was the one who was wrong.
She fell to the ground, her legs crumpling under her. She was the thing that he said: she lived to destroy the abominations, the Augments, and their sick, twisted hatred for the Gods. That was her purpose. The Gods she Served. The Gods she Trusted.
“Commandant,” Halud said quietly, squatting down in front of her. “Why do you keep coming here?”
She stared at him, trembling on all fours on the ground.
Because he understood. He understood what?
“Your eyes are blue. Crystalline and pale.”
She knew her own appearance well enough. “So?”
“You of all people should know, Xenoralia nervosa pulls the pigment from the eyes.”
Her heart slammed into her throat. “You’re cracked.” The Poet was insane.
“I watched a child’s eyes change instantly as he was injected with the virus. Only an Augment would have blue irises like yours.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your eyes are blue too.”
He shrugged. “Yes, they are.”
A familiar fury caused her fist to clench at her side, some unnamed killer instinct welling up inside her. “You’re an Augment?” She was the Augment hunter. Augments were an abomination. She would seek and destroy them all.
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