by AJ Super
Otis pointed to the cube, or rather to a series of three small cubes attached to the larger ring. Two young men, probably in their twenties, were in the first cube. Both with platinum blond hair, pale skin, and long legs, they were likely brothers. In the second cube, was a middle-aged couple in shabby clothing. Both looked strong, as if they had been working most of their lives. Both had puffy faces, as if they had spent much time crying.
Nyx and Malcam walked into the third small cube.
Otis smirked. “You’re last up, so I guess you’ll get a bit of an education before one of you dies.” He put his hand on the glass and the door slid shut. Nyx shuddered. She couldn’t even rewire the doors. These palm pads were bio-coded into the entire glass wall. The wiring for such a mechanism would be underground in conduit she had neither the time, secrecy, nor tools to hack through. If only Erebus were with them. Erebus could take down this system… Or Nyx could use Erebus’ code and do it herself.
A gas cloud filled the first cube and the two leggy blond men ran into the bigger cube, coughing. Nyx leaned on the glass, trying to get a closer look. The gas had been used to push them out of their tiny glass holding cell. How toxic was it? Would the men have died if they refused to leave the smaller cube?
One man shook his head vehemently. Two guards in black and silver walked into the big cube and shoved a large knife in one man’s hand and an electrical prod in the other’s hand. The men both swung at the guards, who easily dodged them and backed out of the main cube, unharmed. They looked at each other, spoke, and shook their heads again. They both threw the weapons down and stood shoulder-to-shoulder.
The silent play sent chills through Nyx. These two men were refusing to fight. Refusing to fight had consequences. During the Greene children’s time on Yangxi X, they said punishment for not fighting was swift execution, either by the guards, or, if the foreman was feeling particularly vindictive and people wanted a gruesome show, an acid bath. But that was mostly used on fighters too large to handle with just guards, and the Greenes had said the larger the prisoner, the more likely they were to fight… Whether out of habit, survival, or seeking glory, the bigger they were, the greater the fight down in the mines.
The leggy men weren’t that big.
The large cube began to fill with gas, as clouds of mist streamed up from their feet. The two men covered their mouths and noses. They ran to the glass wall and pounded on it, screaming quietly. One of the men’s knees buckled, and he tumbled to the floor choking. His brother pulled him up, trying to get him to stand. But he wobbled with the effort and fell over, back arching in spasm.
The grotesque performance stilled as the smoke rose in diaphanous threads.
The white gas began to clear. On the floor lay the contorted bodies of the two brothers, hands clawing the air and backs arched. Their faces gaped, mouths wide and eyes bulging as they froze gasping for their last breath, a vignette of suffocating terror.
Nyx turned away. There was no telling what that gas could do to her or Malcam. Her nano-medics may not be able to correct that kind of damage, at least, not quickly. Especially now that they needed time to repair and replicate after being shocked by Otis. And it may make Malcam a permanent immortal coma patient. She couldn’t deal with either outcome.
Nyx turned back to the main cube. There had to be a way to beat this. To get out of the cube with both her and Malcam alive and able to take over the area outside the ring as planned. She watched the guards haul the bodies to a dark corner, then turned her attention to the second cube. The couple marched straight into the ring. They didn’t need prodding after seeing the brothers’ deformed corpses. But then, as they stood side-by-side, the man fell to his knees. Tears streamed down his face. He rubbed his hands together, begging. He tugged on his wife’s shirt, trying to get her to kneel with him. His wife, eyes hardening, took a step back and picked up the electrical prod the guards had left behind. The man bowed his head, still rubbing his hands and pleading. He seemed to know what was coming.
With a quick thrust, the wife placed the ball of the electrical prod on the base of her husband’s skull and thumbed the charge on. He went stiff, eyes rolling into the back of his head as she held the prod against him. He convulsed. A thin trickle of blood oozed out of his ears. She pulled the prod away and threw it aside. For a moment, she looked in horror at her convulsing husband, then she knelt and cradled him. She rocked him gently as the electricity stopped his heart, shoulders heaving. She tapped her heart and placed two fingers to her lips in prayer.
The man stopped convulsing and went limp. She stood back up as the guards came in and allowed one to escort her out while the other collected her husband’s body.
“We’re not getting out of here unless one of us dies,” Nyx whispered.
“Me,” Malcam rumbled.
A door slid open to a clear set of stairs leading up to the larger cube.
Nyx shook her head. Her initial assessment was right. “I have to bleed for this to work, anyway. I need it to get up there.” She glanced up at the translucent gallery.
“Just because you’re bleeding doesn’t mean you die.”
“I’m going to need a lot of blood.” Nyx motioned lightly with her head. “I need to get up into the gallery…” She took a breath. “With enough for a massacre.” Because that’s what it was going to be. Those unsuspecting donors were going to be cut down by her and Malcam.
He bit his lip.
A small hiss of gas began to enter their holding cell.
“Looks like it’s time to go.” Nyx turned to the stairs.
Malcam grabbed her wrist. “I’ll do anything but this.”
Nyx smiled. “No. You’ll do this, too.” She eased his fingers off her arm and climbed the stairs, letting Malcam follow her at his own pace. She got to the floor of the ring and spotted the prod, walked over to it, and scooped it up. She flicked the switch, letting out a burst of electricity as she swung the baton. Across the cube, Malcam toed the large knife on the ground. He shook his head.
“How long has it been since we sparred, Malcam? Since we were kids? When father had us training with that martial arts master on the Medusa for a few tours?” She grinned at him. “Just think of this as that. Remember the old times. The strong rise.”
He took a deep breath and nodded, then bent over and picked up the knife, flipping it around to get a feel for the balance.
Nyx crouched. “That’s the Malcam I know.”
He walked up to her and swung the knife experimentally. She dodged to the left, then right, letting the blade cut through the air, not bothering to counter yet. He switched his grip and stabbed at the air near her head, and she spun out of the way, whipping the prod to his right kidney. He brought the knife down and blocked the baton with the rubberized handle of the knife. He turned easily out of her range and put both of his hands up, knife blade under his right forearm. Malcam stepped in with a quick left jab, followed by a hard right uppercut, the blade slicing after his fist.
Nyx leaned back, blade missing her chin by a hair’s breadth. She swung the electrical prod around, stabbing it at Malcam’s solar plexus. She hit him hard and pushed him back. Thumbing on the charge, she braced herself. This was not how it was supposed to go. She wasn’t supposed to beat him.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered as she pulled her arm back.
Malcam’s eyes softened, and he frowned. He hesitated.
“You have to.”
He shook his head lightly.
“Malcam.”
He pursed his lips as they circled each other.
“Do it.”
The hurt in his eyes echoed in Nyx’s chest. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this.
“Fine.” Nyx lunged and let the charge zip up the prod, aiming for his gut. “Then you’ll die. And I’ll find another way.”
Malcam grabbed the prod as it lit too slowly and yanked Nyx to him, spinning her around, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and lifting the knife in front of
her.
“Make me bleed,” she whispered.
“Whatever you want, princess,” Malcam said hoarsely in her ear. Then, he plunged the knife to its hilt into her abdomen.
He pulled the knife and ripped the flesh wide.
18
Pain burst through Nyx’s gut, and she arched against Malcam’s broad chest. Then a small numbness passed across her stomach. Her muscles relaxed, and her legs deadened. She slid slowly down Malcam’s body, breath stuttering, hands around the knife as blood cascaded from her torso. She pulled at the knife, her hands slipping, arms weakening. Malcam had made her bleed. A lot. Too much. She was getting too weak, the edges of her vision blurring.
The world shaded crimson. Echoes of the guards entering the cube vibrated through her dimming thoughts. Someone picked her up and, after a short walk, threw her on a lumpy pile that smelled of iron and urine.
Malcam. Where did he go?
Nyx tried to sit up, the gash in her stomach had barely knit together. She turned and vomited bloody bile onto the platinum hair of one of the brothers. She pushed herself up and had little energy to roll herself from the pile of bodies she rested on.
Wet blood oozed down the front of her Thanatos uniform, a huge gash in the fabric where there should be one in her abdomen. She grabbed the rock wall and stood, steadying herself. She took a few shaky steps and looked around the cavern surrounding the ring.
Voices. The bare hint of voices arguing… She pushed herself into the shadow of an outcrop of red stone and curled up, willing her nanomedics to do their work faster. Malcam had been too heavy handed. The voices were getting louder. Coming closer to the… She took a breath and looked into the dim-lit cavern. Pile of bodies next to a furnace. Not terribly efficient for disposing of evidence, but she supposed it worked, especially if they disposed of the ash in the black.
The voices stopped just ahead of her hiding spot.
“And why exactly do you want to see her body?” The Warden was clearly annoyed.
“You can see what she did to my face! I want to mess her up a little too. Even if I can’t do it when she’s alive, it’ll make me feel better.”
Nyx cringed. The foreman.
“Just let him have the body for a few minutes, Warden,” an oily voice agreed with the foreman.
“Thank you, Otis.”
Nyx felt the heat of anger rise in her gut, as the nanomedics worked. They wanted to defile her corpse? What kind of place was this? She stood, still a little shaky, and squared her shoulders. These people were horrid. These people didn’t deserve to have purview over human life, let alone purview over their own lives.
Feet shuffled as the foreman and Otis manhandled the Warden.
“Just stand there and wait. I won’t take long at all…” the foreman said forcefully. “She’s on top of the pile, right?”
Holding her half-healed gut with bloody hands, she shuffled across the expanse of the cave to the men standing side-by-side with their backs to her. She paused behind them, then stretched out her bloody hands and grabbed the backs of their necks, leaning in like an old friend. The Warden stood across from the three of them with his eyes wide. “You want to do what to me now?”
The foreman and Otis flinched and turned quickly away from Nyx, blood smeared on the back of their necks.
The foreman paled. “You’re dead, though.”
She shrugged. “Hard to kill, what can I say?”
His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Otis pulled his electrical prod from his belt and stepped to Nyx. Nyx let her white tendrils swirl around his puce wall of light as the little white flame connecting them grew brighter. She sneered and snarled her energy in his, freezing his limbs and slowing his heart. “Stay,” she ordered and pivoted to the foreman.
The foreman looked at Otis quizzically. “What’re you doing? Grab her.”
Nyx tipped her head. “I promised myself you’d be the first to die. And here you are… The first in my way.” She sent her wisps curling around his beige smoke, caging it in a net of white. She pressed his aura into a whirling ball of dirty snow surrounding the pure white flame creating a path of energy between the two of them. He shuddered, muscles tense and unable to move. She compressed his energy around the flame, smothering it. She bit her cheek. This was an interesting little experiment… She’d never used an infected’s energy to snuff out their own flame before.
The foreman’s eyes rolled back, and he stiffened, convulsing where he stood.
The flame grew smaller and smaller.
The foreman urinated and blood trickled from his mouth where he had bitten his tongue.
The flame went out. The foreman collapsed.
Nyx turned to Otis and wrapped her tendrils around his lime wall. She leaned into the paralyzed man, smiling. “Haven’t figured out who I am yet, have you?”
Otis’ eyes widened. He tried to shake his head.
“I should at least introduce myself.” She paused and straightened her shoulders, her gut healed. “I’m the Star of Nyx. Did you think you could hurt me? Defile me? And get away with it?”
She released Otis’ facial muscles.
He worked his jaw and stuttered, “Th-th-the Star? Nyx? How? Tap my heart I didn’t know.”
Nyx grinned sweetly. “And that’s why, you weasely little sycophant, I’ll kill you quickly.”
Otis’ eyes went blank as she squeezed his energy tight around the flame and suffocated it quickly. He crumpled where he stood by the lift to the gallery.
She turned to the Warden, who had fallen to his knees.
“The Star of Nyx.” His awed voice was quiet. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Nyx took a step back, hand wet in her gut-blood, ready to take the third man. She wasn’t ready for someone to fall before her.
He tapped his heart. “Your friend…”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. Malcam. Where was he taken?”
The Warden turned at the waist and pointed at the translucent windows above the ring. “The winners all go up to the gallery. The donors want to hobnob with the strong.”
Nyx sneered. “The strong rise. And they probably hope some of that strength will rub off.”
“More like whether or not they can buy it. It’s a chance to vet bodyguards and fighters for their own purposes.”
Nyx’s stomach churned. She looked down at the gash in her jumpsuit, still wet with blood. It was now or never. She had to take that room to take the asteroid. And if she waited much longer, she wouldn’t have anything but dried blood and her fists.
Nyx glanced at the translucent windows. “Time to get this over with. How do I get up there?”
“I’ll get you on the lift.” The Warden stood and led her to the single-person lift hiding in the umbra of the cubed ring. He leaned over and placed his hand on the glass at the back of the lift as she walked on.
“Thank you.” She nodded at the man.
He tapped his heart. “I’m just a guard. No one special. I exist only to help you.”
The lift began to rise. Only to help her… Unfortunately, he’d have weeks of disposing bodies in his inefficient little furnace, then she’d have him scatter the ash in the black if he wasn’t already doing that, after all was said and done. She didn’t want any of these people to come up as missing or murdered on Yangxi X. They had to disappear in their entirety.
She looked up at the security door as it slid open above her. Her head rose slowly above the floor, and she stared at the patrons’ shoes. Malcam would be ready for her, right? The Greene siblings’ guard count was moot now. She didn’t know how many armed spectators there would even be.
She wet her hands in the blood on her uniform. She’d just have to be quicker than everyone else. No one but Malcam would be expecting her. Hopefully, he had set himself up somewhere strategic.
She glanced around as her head pushed higher, looking for Malcam. Knees, hips, shoulders, faces. Nyx found him, staring her down from the opposite corner
of the room by one of the… Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept. Sept guards. And at least two dozen donors mingling and chatting.
The wife who had slaughtered her husband had a drink in her hand and laughed at a woman plastered with so much iridescent makeup Nyx couldn’t see her real skin-tone or decipher the real ridges of her cheekbones. Was it a disguise? Some people wore elaborate masks. Others didn’t seem to care if they were recognized and were blandly dressed. Or maybe that was a disguise, too.
Nyx clamped her mouth shut. These people were people who took joy out of seeing death. Joy from torture. From seeing family members kill each other. They condoned the Protectorate’s states selling their debtors into indentured servitude that would never be paid off.
She stepped off the lift and slapped the hands of the two guards standing next to it. She didn’t even register what color their energy was. She just took the burgeoning flames and snuffed them out before the infection could even take full hold. They crumbled to the floor.
Malcam sprang on the guard next to him, pulling the electrical prod from his belt, electrocuting the man as he stood pinned against the wall.
Nyx walked up to a group of three socialites hobnobbing with drinks in their hands. She reached out and smeared each of their bare arms with her bloody hand. The two women looked down and shrieked in shock, and the man opposite Nyx tried to grab her arm as she turned to the couple chatting near them.
Nyx’s tendrils wrapped around their young white flames and suffocated them. The shrieking women dropped to the ground and the man toppled over them. Nyx reached out a bloody hand to another couple as they turned to notice the group next to them fall.
Commotion from the opposite side of the room added to the chaos, and the couple took a step towards a door. Nyx paused, taking a breath of white flame, and the couple faltered, crumpling to the floor.
