by J D Morganne
“If you kill him, I’ll never forgive you,” Naomi screamed. “Daddy. Do you hear me? I’ll never forgive this.”
Jaxon couldn’t understand how a kiss warranted a penalty like this. He felt like an android, like all his systems needed to reboot. His brain wouldn’t allow it. If he was free of the cuffs, if he could use his fire or even his fists, he would protect himself. He was a soldier. He had the training to.
A heavy boot struck his jaw, jolting him back to reality. It took a few seconds for the pain to absorb the initial shock. Tangy blood seeped through Jaxon’s locked teeth. Another soldier kicked him where Dasher had burned. Jaxon’s breath rushed out and back before he hit the ground again.
“Enough.” King Dasher’s voice should have spared him, but it came too late.
The soldier’s boot slammed into Jaxon’s left eye. Jaxon shut down, what his body had begged for from the beginning.
―
Jaxon cut his hands with his nails. Clenching his fists had been the only thing to take his mind off the pain, but now that hurt, too. Farah would’ve given one of her Danes a better cell than this. He had to press his stomach flat against the floor to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling. Sticky pus where Dasher had burned kept his shirt clung to him. And days had come and gone. Maybe even weeks.
“CO3?” Kenner’s voice was a pleasant surprise.
Jaxon pined for interaction. From anyone. But what would Kenner think about him now?
Kenner pressed his cheek against the floor to see him. “Can you hear me? I brought you something.” He scooched forth a bowl of creamy mashed potatoes, but it wouldn’t fit through the bars. He scooped some onto a gloved finger and cramped his hands between the floor and opening.
“Dump them,” Jaxon said. He would eat off the devil’s shoe right now. The buttery and sweet fumes did nothing to mend his own sickly stench. He licked every drop and Kenner watched with remorse. Jaxon wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t be there, helping him, or trying.
“Did you kiss her?” Kenner dumped more potatoes.
Jaxon cringed, stumped by how much his accusation hurt. “Ken. Serpents lie. Always remember that.”
Kenner froze, wise beyond his years. “I won’t forget. When’re they letting you out?”
They weren’t. Jaxon couldn’t tell him that. Farah’s voice in this was louder than Dasher’s. Farah’s voice in anything was louder than Dasher’s. Kenner gazed at him with the hope only a child knew, but Jaxon wanted him to go away.
“CO3.”
“You don’t have to call me that. I’m not a soldier anymore.”
“Yes, you—you’re still a soldier.” Kenner paused like he was waiting for something. “Right?”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. Peace be greater than your sins. Kamiaka will see you through.”
Jaxon snorted. If Kamiaka existed, She wasn’t going to save him from his fate. She wasn’t going to make Farah a decent human being. She had no power to stop this. Jaxon was an only child, but his mom had made sure he never felt alone. Now, with Kenner there and around people he couldn’t trust anymore, he felt alone. Kenner stayed with him until he’d eaten every scrap of mashed potatoes.
When he was gone and there was only silence to crowd the void, Jaxon prayed until his tongue dried up.
6
It was past curfew, but for tonight Farah granted everyone permission to watch the disobedient soldier be sentenced to death. Not a single voice could be heard—only the buzz of white streetlamps. Jaxon was ashamed to look in their direction. This wasn’t the example he’d wanted to set. As the soldiers walked him past Kami Square, he caught a glimpse of The Executioner in the peripheral of his swollen eye. Next to him, hanging from a cross was what was left of the thieving girl.
A sickly nausea wrenched in Jaxon’s stomach. Crimsons had done this to a child and now they were doing it to Jaxon. And his mom. Dear Kamiaka, his mom! Vision waning, he scanned the crowd for her. She hated the scaitren and it would take hours for her to get to Naruchi. If she wasn’t there, she wouldn’t know. And it was normal for her to not hear from him in months.
Soldiers poked him forward, whispering the same prayers that had begun to spark up from the crowd. Kamiaka, bless those who obey your rule. Bless the mother who gives her child to your rule. Bless the father, who protects the mother. In your name, we obey. In your name, peace clothes the land, our hearts and our minds. You give us life and we give life to you.
Jaxon’s toes scraped smooth ground. For a second, he thought a soldier had put a bag over his head, but it was The Forbidden Door’s shadow looming over them. His panic granted him strength in spurts, and he backed away. The point of a stun baton struck him with the rage of fifty-thousand volts. He stiffened and crumbled to his knees.
Following rules had gotten him nowhere. His king was pathetic, and his queen was evil. His best friend had manipulated him and the kid who looked up to him would think he was weak.
“Great Kami,” a young Crimson whispered. “I don’t want to get that close.”
“She wants him inside,” another said.
Jaxon tried to speak, but his jaws were still rigid, his mind still catching up with time. The Forbidden Door? This was his punishment? How could Dasher treat him this way? No one knew what was in the that Door. These soldiers could throw him into a bubbling lava pit. Or off a cliff. Dasher had met with the Emergence Council. They planned to bring in Aerials to close it. If they closed the Door, he didn’t have a chance anyway.
“Follow your orders. Forward, Boy!”
The first soldier disabled Jaxon’s inhibitor cuffs and a sensor flashed before fading. Jaxon knew before he snapped that his flames wouldn’t come back to him at once, but he did it anyway. When nothing happened, he held his laugh back with a grunt. If these men thought he was pitiful, they were right. He was a soldier that couldn’t defend himself against the men he had trained aside.
“Peace in sleep, Brother,” the second soldier said before shoving the baton into Jaxon’s chest.
Gravity took him after that, sucking him through the Door, through the sky, until he crashed onto solid ground. The world spun too fast for him to take it in. The adrenaline that had kept him awake vanished and, against his will, he shut his eyes.
7
Jaxon breathed, but his throat was as constricted as a bitten straw. It was like someone was trampolining on his lungs, providing him only pinches of air at a time.
Nothing felt broken, but brisk air sizzled where Dasher had left his mark. Then he was choking on more than air. Before he could find where he was, blistering water gobbled him up. He tried to make out anything in the literal blackness, determined not to die there. One thing the academy had no need to teach was swimming lessons.
Without Naruchi’s bright streetlights to guide him he had to rely on auditory senses. He heard rushing water, not like a torrent, but it wasn’t rocking him like a baby either. It was shoving, shifting left. And down? Green finally silhouetted the black in unfamiliar shapes. One of those shapes jutted from the water beside him. His fingers trembled over it. Solid and rigid. A stone. He held to it dearly, praying the water’s force didn’t sweep him under again.
Okay. He blinked several times, willing his eyes to adjust.
Sour air came on a thick fog, which stabbed the back of his throat and brought on a bout of coughs. He thrashed his arm until the air was clear. At least it was breathable—on his cracked lips and on the dry clots of blood on his head. Unlike Obedience’s filtered air, this air was genuine and crisp. He would find out later if it was toxic.
He sunk in the middle of a black void. The chin-high water was steady despite his trembling. Rattling chirps and loud clicks sang like a choir. He didn’t want to run into whatever was making them. Stumbling through the darkness was no Sunday jog. Only minutes had passed, but it felt like hours before those stones led him out of the water and onto dry land.
His dad would have a good laugh now. He had ma
de him proud by failing. When they talked about him, his father would smile and say, “Yup, the only good thing he ever did.”
It wasn’t true. The best thing Jaxon had ever done was stand up to him the other day.
“Ah-sss!” His homemade torch singed his fingertips, but he flicked a new flame. The light lit a path, a steep slope where he’d fallen at least forty feet. But the Door was there. Home was right there. He only needed to get to it.
The thought of him climbing exhausted Jaxon. He’d felt worse pains, but that hill had been full of sharp rocks and twigs. His open wounds, scrapes and bruises were enough to keep him asleep for days.
Shivering, he tapped his celrings. If anything could get him out of there, it was his AI. “Aicis.”
He waited, but the AI’s voice didn’t come. He tried again. “Aicis?” Nothing. Jaxon hadn’t questioned why they let him keep his rings, cornea tabs and celbuds. Now, there was no need to. The best tech in Obedience and the junk didn’t work.
He searched through the dark but couldn’t see anything in any direction. Croaks came in threes. They were nowhere near him, but Jaxon swatted at the air. Did he want to see? Did he want to know all the things in this place that could kill him? Well, he knew he didn’t want nocturnal animals enjoying him as a snack. He dug his nails into the ground and forced himself upward. The shock surprised him at first, quelled by his urge to get home. If he could get to Dasher, get him alone, he could explain everything. But first he had to get back to Obedience.
He climbed. He climbed until his muscles screamed for relief, until his whole body begged him to stop. Finally, he found his way onto flat land and, panting, collapsed onto his stomach. He smashed his face into the dirt, breathing in the scent of wet earth, like spring rain. The cold moisture soothed his eye, but it was a mistake to fall. He wasn’t sure he could get back up, and his straw was smaller now, breathing nearly impossible. The Door was right there, the gap between this world and his.
Breathe, he told himself. Relax. Breathe. Relax.
He needed one or two minutes to recuperate. That’s all. One or two minutes of rest. He’d dropped Naomi’s book into a tangled mass of twigs and leaves. It was within his reach, but it took him a while to grasp it. He tucked it under his head and closed his eyes.
King Dasher had intended for him to die in there. To lose everything and everyone he loved in an instant? In the mysterious Forbidden Door, he didn’t even know all the ways he could die yet. If the rumors were true, he was waiting to join a dead fool’s club. No. He couldn’t stop. He had to keep moving to prove his innocence.
He climbed to his hands and knees and, eventually, his feet. But before he could take the first step, a firm breeze yanked the Door shut with a thunderous bang, parasailing Jaxon into the air again. He landed with his left arm under some part of him and it popped. A jolt of pain rocketed through him. He bit through the shock and instinctively tumbled onto his knees.
He reached out like he had for his mother after his first “no touching” lesson at five-years-old, but the Door had already closed and unless someone who could manipulate the air appeared out of nowhere, it wasn’t opening again.
“No,” he said to no one. “Ai-cis?” Still, no answer came.
For a long time, because he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t move. Logically, he knew as much as he wanted to get home, he couldn’t stay there. Beautiful chirps transcended the croaks, before apricot and pink hues set the sky ablaze. Jaxon tried to blink the light away. Was that magic or was the sky on fire? It faded to a cotton blue and for a moment he felt at peace.
Sunlight revealed genuine forest everywhere he looked. Shadows towered over him like Kamiaka’s arms reaching from the ground. Jaxon erupted with wonder, feeling the need to record every new color unknown to his sight. He couldn’t see where these silhouettes ended, but he knew what they were. Trees. Tall, girthy trees were growing from the earth, vibrant blue leaves touching the sky.
“Ka-mi-a-ka.”
These circling trees were different from the ones below. It looked like a hulking animal had taken bites out of them.
Jaxon’s green flames burned stronger than his blue, but he didn’t have the energy to light them against the Door’s shadow, which loomed over the entirety of this grove and beyond that.
Besides, his arm was a chimney of embers and he couldn’t keep his eyes still as he searched for anyone or anything that could’ve heard the Door close and come running. There was no one. He forgot about the cold. He forgot about his arm. He forgot about King Dasher, Queen Farah and everyone else. For only a moment, daylight ignited a new curiosity in him. The world before him wavered with his vision. With no clue where to go, he started down a straight path through the grove.
Great. Just great. All his years of training to discover none of it was sufficient. Not for this place… or any place like it. The first hour was the hardest. His feet knotted where he’d stepped on sharp rocks. Working with one arm, he pushed aside overgrown, purple leaves. The tumultuous land had him stopping to catch his breath every five minutes. He climbed and slid until scrapes and bruises covered half of him. Dried blood and mud formed a sticky clay over the rest of him.
Jaxon’s interest suppressed his fears. He hadn’t seen anyone since he got there and this peaceful quiet was nothing like Naruchi’s. There, he shared his quiet with buzzes and the soft metal-scraping dying holograms made.
His ears twitched. He thought he heard a whistle, but he didn’t see anything in the trees. This wasn’t his world. He had to assume nothing welcomed him here. All those years of speculation… he would finally find if people existed. Animals. Anything. He had learned about a few wild animals in school. He couldn’t remember what they were. There was one thing he did know: anything described as wild had to be dangerous. The only wild thing in Obedience was Farah.
The whistle came again, louder and closer. Jaxon spun. There was nothing behind him. Only strange colors and shapes. Everywhere he looked. He squinted. The sunlight breaking through the trees was the only salvation he had. He had to make it to that light. Kamiaka had guided his feet so far and maybe if he believed, she wouldn’t let him fall.
“Shhh.”
Jaxon spun toward the noise.
“Don’t move, bait.” Thick, green paint splotched a man’s climbing gloves and sharp jaw. He smelled godawful, like he had spent his night bathing in tomato soup. Unlike Jaxon, the brown on him wasn’t from mud. His face. His hands. He was the color Enkindler women used to stitch intricate designs into their headscarves.
No one in Obedience had skin like that. Jaxon tried to process there was another person there. A man. Who understood him. A person. Holding his broken arm, he backed away.
The man cocked his head at Jaxon, his eyebrows drawn low. “You wanna die?” His voice was as rusty as the steel rod he clenched, and he didn’t finish any of his words, but he spoke Old-World English, like Jaxon. “Don’t move.” The man lifted the rod, which was longer than his own body, like an arrow ready to plunge.
Don’t move? He didn’t know this man or what he was capable of. What he saw was the man’s rod slide an inch. Then, a deafening roar made him clench his teeth and toes and a heavy wind pushed him a few steps forward.
“All right, it’s all right.” The man put his hands up. “Ka nah.”
Jaxon stumbled on his feet, spinning around. Naomi’s fairytales had given him enough knowledge to know this was a beast, and enough sense to know it was not all right.
Its thick stone claws punctured the ground. It cast a dark shadow over them for what seemed like miles. Bulky, sharpened rocks poked from its back, swimming in a sea of brown fur. Thick blood stuck like glue to the fur around its mouth. It had ripped something to blood and bone and this man wanted Jaxon not to move?
No. Jaxon reeled. He abandoned all rationality and took off.
“Yo, bait, I said don’t move.” The man chased after Jaxon.
Now, the beast pursued them both. The man outran Jaxon
and jumped in front of him to grab a fistful of his shirt. He shoved him aside. “Get outta the way.” He brought his rod above him and struck it against the ground. The ground rumbled to life, cracking and popping, until sharp spikes sprouted and wrapped around the beast. The man, with his rod, dragged its roaring and writhing body under.
Jaxon put his arms out to steady himself against the quaking earth. That thing was alive down there, fighting to get out.
“What the hell is wrong with you? You tryin’ to get us killed?”
He wanted to run. He wanted home. His bed. He wanted nothing to do with this man—who had lifted the earth without moving a finger—or wild animals or anything in that place.
The world swirled in blurred colors, sending him into a haze. “Stay… stay away from me.”
“What is”— The man reached to snatch Jaxon’s shirt, but Jaxon retreated. “Why would you run from an unbison? I told you to stay still.” He paused, taking Jaxon in completely. “You ain’t from around here, though, hm?” He waited for an answer. “Ey, look, let me help you.”
“Don’t touch me.” Jaxon’s vision waned.
“You don’t look good, is all I’m sayin’.”
He smacked his head as if this would somehow reduce the thumping.
The man laughed. “What happened to you then? And where did you come from? Whoa.” He reached to steady Jaxon.
“Don’t touch me.” Jaxon whipped his open hand before him and staggered away from his clumsy spray of blue flames.
“Whoa,” the man stumbled away, but caught his fall with his rod. A wicked smile transformed his whole face into something sinister. “Oh hell. You’ a Torcher? And here I am, thinkin’ I’m savin’ you. Thanks for puttin’ me back in good graces with big sis.”
It was the last thing Jaxon heard before something pinched his neck. He yanked free a yellow-feathered dart, but it was too late to stop the poison it introduced to his bloodstream. His body was grateful for whatever in that dart had debilitated him, but his mind would’ve kept fighting. He fell to his knees. His face went numb first so he felt nothing when his cheek slapped the dirt.
