by J D Morganne
Beck’s weight dropped to her knees. Was this a nightmare? Was that Nano? Why was he squeezing Aria’s chin? Or holding her like that? Beck would break his fingers. She’d break every bone in his hand. She looked back and forth between them, trying to assess the situation, but she couldn’t consider a world where her brother betrayed her. Yet, he stood there, in front of everyone, Aria tight in his grasp.
Outside, the sirens quieted to a low rumble. Then, nothing.
Her Lions—every one of them— manned each exit, refusing to let anyone escape. Each one of them was wearing wooden rings, like Jaxon’s celrings.
Beck let this revelation wash over her for only a second. She had no time to wonder why Nano was betraying her and keeping innocent people hostage. She had no time to wonder why her Lions were following his orders, why no one had come for her, why Nano was holding Aria like that. Where was Eshauna?
“Does everyone understand?” Nano’s voice rung through the tunnels and Beck had the sensation of breaking. All over. She felt her skin crack, chip away one porcelain piece at a time. “I said no one move,” he said, for what must’ve been the second or third time. “This ain’t a discussion. Emiir da doh’ah mortad!”
Dead? Nano’s prescient knowledge told Beck that someone was meant to kill her, that all those times he had been sneaking off hadn’t been to see another woman. Cayman had inculcated him from the beginning. To believe that technology would make his life better? To believe that stealing power would save him from her? Beck loathed the idea, but she knew it was possible. Because even though she had raised her brother with the heart and strength of their mother, he was Cayman’s son, too.
She didn’t see Cayman, but he had to be somewhere, lurking in the shadows.
“Today marks a new era for Jerus,” Nano went on. “Today is the first day y’all will learn what it feels like to have an Emiir who cares for you, who puts your needs first.”
At this, Beck thought she might vomit. He can’t butter toast with a specialized butter-knife, she thought, while a chef holds his hand. And what? He thought he was going to lead Jerus, side-by-side with Cayman? A naïve child.
She eased from the crack, but before she popped into the opening, someone clasped their hand over her mouth and pulled her out of the light. Beck didn’t try to fight. Those melon breasts pressing into her back belonged to one person—Eshauna.
“They’re everywhere,” Eshauna whispered and attempted to pull Beck into the shadows.
Beck snatched from her. “What’s going on?”
“Every Lion in the mountains is lookin’ for you. We need to go.”
Eshauna was one reason Beck always had guards up. Now, she was the only one who understood what it meant to protect her Emiir. Her eagerness to get her to safety surprised Beck—if that’s what she was doing.
“We have to go,” Eshauna said again.
But she wanted Beck to run when Nano was right there? She wanted her to leave her people, leave Jerus?
“No,” Beck said, eyebrows drawn low. She pulled away a final time and stepped into the light. She brushed her heel across the floor and shot her arm forward.
The ground rumbled to life, shooting up and wrapping Nano in a tight embrace. Beck had to move faster after that. The roots around her clung tighter as she raced across the antechamber and straight for her brother. He’d dropped his rod, which a child had retrieved and was now holding out for Beck. She snatched it, while dodging a sharp piece of rock headed straight for her face. It nipped her cheek in the seconds it took her to dodge right. She crashed into another, before falling on her ass.
It wasn’t the uproarious cheering from her people that spiked her adrenaline. It was Aria and Eshauna, jumping to her rescue as her own soldiers closed in on her. It was Nano’s sick laughter as he ripped himself from the mound of earth Beck had wrapped him in.
He shook himself off, stomping to Beck, his tongue pinned between his teeth in a fit. He reached past Aria and snatched Beck’s shirt. Aria grabbed his arm at the same time Eshauna reached to. Beck opened and closed her fingers. A lioness shot from the ground and wrapped her large mouth around Nano’s entire head. Dirt chugged into every orifice. He stumbled back, flailing his arms, a muffled scream breaking through the mass.
After that, the antechamber roared with Lions trying to pursue Beck. She took Aria’s hand and followed Eshauna toward the bridge.
“Take this.” She shoved Nano’s rod into Aria’s arms and grabbed her face. “Get loose, yeah?” She kissed her cheek, possibly the last time she would do that.
Aria gripped Beck’s shirt, refusing to let go.
“Robot’s still down in the Ulai Chamber.” Beck had left him. There were Lions and Torchers searching for him and she had left him. “Find him.”
“And then what?”
“Beeline your asses to Edie Garden.”
“Why would we go to”—
“Does it look like you have time to ask questions? Feendi rrobota.” She shoved Aria toward the only tunnel left unguarded, the one they had come from. Her energy seeped from her like water from a tiny hole. She had used most of it, and no doubt her manipulation would be inoperable if she got out of this alive.
“I’ll find you.” Her words were a broken vow and Aria knew it. Even as she ran past Beck, past the mob of Lions and where Nano was flailing less.
Beck took a deep breath, drew a circle with her foot and tapped her heel on the ground. The Koloberry twisted and cracked as its limbs shook to life. She had never moved anything as big as the Koloberry. The weight of it blazed in her veins, fought against her.
Empty limbs sprung to life, propelling fruit in every direction. Beck shoved thin branches into the chests of any Lion who tried to touch Aria. They crashed against the screen walls of the antechamber, backs arched against the bulbs. There were only a few left alive, but their screams carried to the peak and out into the world.
Beck released her hold and fell to her knees. Aria’s dreadlocks flopped on her shoulders as she ran, her path finally clear. She held Nano’s rod close to her heart and didn’t look back. She would have to be clever to get to Jaxon first.
A cloud of dust puffed around the rocks Beck used to close the opening. The last bit of her energy died with the dust.
Earthens trembled the antechamber when panic ensued again.
Eshauna bent to Beck’s side. “You good?”
She almost sounded like she cared. “Stop them.”
Eshauna asked no questions. She turned to do as Beck told her, waving her arms and screaming for everyone to calm down. She would get lost in the panic, too.
A group of dancers were screaming, while another lay dead, a chunk of celecomb sticking from her stomach. The screen-walls groaned, the same sound Alasta had made in the seven days it had taken Alastans to rip it out of the earth. Beck shook off the eerie nostalgia.
On the bridge, rocks bounced around her fingers, impending doom pulsing in her feet. “Stop them.” Eshauna was too far to hear her. Before the bodies started to pour from the walls, before the wet-laundry sound of them smacking ground engrained in her memory, she knew what this was. Moving the tree had disrupted the antechamber’s stability. If they continued this hysteria, the whole mountain would cave.
Splinters of wood pricked Beck’s fingers, but she used the ground as an anchor to stand. She wobbled, managed to hold her weight. She took a deep breath, before screaming, “Everybody freeze!” As far as she was concerned—while Nano lay twitching on the floor—she was still Jerus’s Emiir. “Fria’yl!”
The chaos stopped at once, though wonder glittered in their vacillating eyes.
“Okay,” Beck said, thinking she could pull this off. She could get them out of there alive. “We can’t rush. We need to move orderly or the mountain…” She gestured above to bring attention to the tilted screens, stretching down like stalactites.
When her life couldn’t get worse, Cayman appeared through the tunnel opening across from the bridge. The only t
hing stopping Beck from stabbing him through the heart, was literal imminent danger. And… he had Zo with him.
Zo’s hair hung in two braids at his shoulders, over a suit like Cayman’s devil, red suit. The years had aged him, lengthened his legs and neck. He was almost as tall as her at… how old was he now… eleven-years-old? He had donned black warpaint on his cheeks and hands, but she knew her brother when she saw him.
The team of Torchers behind him lifted their flame rifles to their shoulders and pointed them at the crowd. A few of them began to barricade the openings that the Lions no longer could, while Cayman sent others to retrieve Nano. His arms flopped and his legs dangled, but he was chuffing, which had to mean he wasn’t dead.
Screens tore the air, like lightning, whipping to the ground in what felt like a never-ending loop. Everyone went wild again, pushing themselves toward the exits.
Beck tore her eyes from Zo, just as he met her gaze. “Stop moving.” A stabbing pain shot through her stomach and she fell to her knees.
The antechamber roared its final warning. Celecomb crashed through the bridge, sending it cracking into the water. Beck snatched the gate, but her leg had already cascaded into the toxic pot. It sizzled like frying fish and cooked still when she shuffled herself onto land. She screamed and tore away her now tattered pants, but she couldn’t get to the acid already boring through flesh. She was damned to feel it sear through every layer.
Through her panic, she caught a glimpse of Eshauna racing in horror to her.
Beck cocked her head and scanned the disorder, the hopeless— stiff as planks, holding dear to those they had left. Hundreds, thousands more dispersed throughout Jerus, hiding, fleeing, dying. “You’re… gonna… kill us.” But no one heard her.
“Bring her to me.” Once again, Cayman’s blind ambition had lapsed his judgment. His Torchers marched for Beck and the mountain collapsed with a fury, as if shouting that it had warned them.
Eshauna snatched Beck and threw her across the bridge. She landed on top of her, crushing her ribs and knocking the breath out of her. “Move!”
Beck was frozen. Celecomb and rock were crashing around them. She was afraid to move an inch. Eshauna threw her arm over Beck’s head. The whole tunnel shook, as if suspended on rope in the air. Muffled screams cut through where rock, glass and branches, thick as trees themselves, surrounded them.
Eshauna slammed her fist on something solid.
“No!” Beck screamed, but it was too late. Her stomach dropped at the sensation of being buried, six feet… eight… ten feet under. Slimy dirt and roots poured into her bare folds. “No!” What about everyone else? Her people! Aria. Jaxon.
Her nostrils flared, filling with a putrid manure stench. A solid barrier formed above Eshauna, closing them inside an earthly casket. They couldn’t see beyond it, but the screams carried on above them. Beck shut her eyes tight.
Roots hugged her in a motherly embrace. The mountain continued to crumble inward, and they were stuck deep within it, waiting for the pressure to crush them.
37
Jaxon’s eyes wandered from the white curtain over the window to the holoscreen between him and the doctor. He wondered why everyone thought children were stupid. Children weren’t inhibited by their own deleterious thoughts and actions. They weren’t hindered by years of poor decisions. They simply had trouble processing certain situations. Most of Jaxon’s trouble came from his lack of control. And he imagined that was the case for most kids his age in this crazy place.
His doctor swiped something on the holoscreen and his skinny face appeared between them. Is that what he looked like now? So sick, so ghastly? Eight-years-old. He had been seeing this silly woman for months now. She was supposed to be making everything better so why was it that he looked worse, felt worse?
“State your name for”—
“Jaxon Fletcher,” he said. He knew the routine by now. He was Jaxon Fletcher, eight-years-old and he was seeing her because they said he had no control. Because they thought he would hurt someone or himself. He didn’t understand why that would be a bad thing. It was better than living in that oppressive Door. He could think of a million things better than living there.
Now, she would ask him how he was feeling. She always asked him how he was feeling. As the question formed on her lips, Jaxon turned his attention to the window. Where are the other children? he thought. How come he couldn’t hear any of them playing outside? How come there were so few parks? Back home, there was a park on every corner. Or… there had been. Before… before the war.
“Did you hear me?” his doctor said.
Jaxon faced her again. “What did you say?” No, he knew what she had said. How was he feeling? “Fine.”
“What were you thinking about just then?”
None of her business.
Jaxon knew she didn’t care. She was only asking because she had to. It was her job. She was asking so she could record it in his file and later, when they forced him to become someone he wasn’t, they could open his file and use everything he had told them against him.
“Do you”—
“I don’t feel like talking today,” Jaxon said with a sigh. He felt like an old man. He felt like he’d lived this life already, and a hundred before this. He wanted to go to a park, the one in his hometown with the slide that made him feel like he could touch the sky. With the monkey bars that calloused his fingers, with the swings that made him dizzy.
“We don’t have to talk,” his doctor said and leaned back in her seat.
She wasn’t serious, Jaxon knew, even as he observed her. She was only saying what he wanted to hear. No way was she going to let him get away with not telling her all his deepest fears, his longings for home, his secrets.
She’s powerful, Jaxon thought. And pretty. Even without the red lipstick his mother embellished. Even without his mother’s glossy fingernails and curly hair. His doctor’s hair was dark, like his mother’s, but it was long and hidden behind a gray, lace veil. She had a motherly disposition, but she was no mother, especially not Jaxon’s. And he’d heard she couldn’t even have her own kids. He didn’t know what that meant, but if him being there had anything to do with that, he hated her even more.
“Sometimes, I like to stare out the window too,” she said—even though a moment ago she’d said she didn’t want to talk. “It helps me think.”
How could staring out of any of those windows help her think? There was nothing to see. Nothing but white lights and labyrinthine buildings. Nothing but soldiers walking around, barking orders. There was nothing worth seeing in that place.
“I want to go home.” He’d said those words a million times since he’d been there, but no one ever listened. It never changed anything. He was still there. Stuck. Without his mother. Without his brother and two sisters. He was still there, and no one would let him leave. “Why won’t you let me go home?” He’d followed all their rules. He’d done everything they’d asked of him. He’d even let them call him Jaxon, which, he admitted, even though it wasn’t his name, it had grown on him.
“Listen…”
“I want to leave.” He was done listening. He’d been obedient, just like they wanted. She and everyone else in that facility had promised he would see his family again. They’d sworn it.
“If you were to leave, where would you go?”
The words sent a shockwave through his system so powerful he found himself panting. His eyes trailed to the shackles around his ankles and the restraints keeping his skinny wrists trapped to the chair.
“Kurohi City is gone,” his doctor said. “Your family is dead. You have nowhere to go.”
Her words were harsh. And lies.
“Don’t you remember?”
Jaxon stiffened. She was lying. Lies! She was a liar. His mother was alive. His family was alive and still there. Kurohi City had taken a hit when Obedience’s queen had invaded, but it would recover. He’d believed his dad when he’d called her impeccable and explained just wh
at that word meant—that she was the strongest one in their family, that she could survive anything. Jaxon was eight years old and he knew that. He believed it with all he had.
“Jacky… can I call you Jacky?”
No! She couldn’t give him another fake name on top of the one she’d already given him. “Jinshi,” he said, coldly. His name wasn’t and never had been Jaxon Fletcher. “Kurohi Jinshi.”
She smirked and swiped the holoscreen from between them. Then, she leaned forward, her face rife with humor. It was as if she was at a circus, watching Jaxon from outside a cage. “You’re the last of that kamiawful, disobedient city,” she said. Then she leaned back with a hard shrug. “And, honestly, it was for the best.”
She was sick. This whole place was a sick joke. Jaxon tugged on the restraints, but they didn’t budge an inch. Instead, the force sent a pulse of electricity through his whole body, shocking him motionless.
“You’re here. You’re going to live here. You’re going to die here. But you can have a great life here, Jaxon, as long as you forget about your life before.”
Jaxon’s blood ran cold. She said it so casually. She said it like her queen hadn’t slaughtered hundreds of people. Jaxon wasn’t a prince, but back home, many considered him regal. His father had been the formidable leader of Kurohi City, after all. He opened his mouth to say something, but his doctor didn’t give him the chance.
“Control, commandeer Jaxon Fletcher’s AI system.”
“Confirmed.”
Jaxon slumped against his will. His head ignited with the fury of a thousand suns. He whirled with the sensation of tiny fire ants moving around in his brain.
“Purge all memories.”
“Confirmed. Working.”
No! Jaxon thought, eyes widening, heart racing. He couldn’t move! He couldn’t move! She was going to erase all his memories. How could she do this? Why would she do this? Why couldn’t he stop this? Please, he screamed in his head. Please… please…
