The Nemesis

by S. J. Kincaid

  He was insane.

  His mind had been broken.

  He had lost his mind!

  This was the answer. This was the answer to every single question and doubt that had tormented me these last months.… For he had loved me. I knew that was not my imagination. He had loved me and then he had lost himself utterly, and… and it wasn’t his own doing.

  Pasus had done this to him.

  I had done this to him.

  Tyrus’s star-shaped security bots swiveled around, noticing me. They must have flashed a warning straight into his mind, for he whipped about and froze at the sight of me, all expression dropping away from his face.

  Yes, even that mad smile.

  “Please, Nemesis!” Neveni’s voice was hoarse, frantic. “End this! Kill him!”

  It was the look on his face that undid me. A strange sort of unguarded wonder, something I had never expected to see from him again. “Nemesis…?” he said tenderly, in disbelief himself now.

  “KILL HIM!” screamed Neveni.

  I loved this man. I loved him. And here I was before a ruin of him, because this was not Tyrus. This had never been Tyrus. He had been imprisoned and his mind had been mutilated, destroyed, taken from him. He’d never meant this to happen; he’d had such beautiful dreams and plans once, and now here I was, come like a monster to destroy someone I had reduced to this.…

  You’ve been the joy of this sun-scorned existence. Every moment of unhappiness I’ve had, I’d relive a thousand times just for the heartbeats I’ve passed with you. Now by the light of the stars, save yourself!

  Those were the last words the true Tyrus had spoken to me, that day on the Tigris when he’d accepted his imminent death and pleaded with me to let it happen. All he’d wished was to escape Pasus with his mind and his soul intact—and I had stolen that choice from him.

  We both knew it.

  I made my choice, he’d flung at me that final day, with our swords drawn in the ball dome. I would free the woman I most loved and serve those people of my Empire, and it was all I wanted. I trusted you to let me decide, and you knocked me unconscious and left me with them. I chose and you took that from me.

  This wasn’t who Tyrus truly was. This wasn’t who he was supposed to be. A thousand moments flashed through my mind in an instant…

  His lips meeting mine; his tongue tasting me; his hands firm and clever, drawing me to the heat of his body. I remembered the warmth of his voice as he spoke my name, as he called me “my love.” And then it became “my wife.” Tyrus standing in coronation garb, offering me his hand, for all the galaxy was meaningless without me by his side.…

  I suffocated on the sweetness we had lost, and then a flash appeared in the periphery of my vision.

  The sniper.

  The sniper!

  NO!

  I threw myself at Tyrus, intent only on shielding him from the lethal ray. The shot blazed past me, sizzling the air, and I… I hurtled right through Tyrus.

  For it was not Tyrus.

  It was a figment of light.

  As I crashed to the platform, winded, I realized that Tyrus had never truly been present. This was the Empire’s most sophisticated holographic technology—so seamlessly real the eye could not pick out its fakery.

  I stumbled to my feet and became abruptly aware of a change in the crowd. Even amid the panic of the malignant space aglow overhead, the crowd had seen me, and now they called for me, my name traded from mouth to mouth. “Nemesis. It’s Nemesis!”

  But all I saw was that holographic projection of Tyrus, standing before me with his haunted eyes upon mine, and I could not look away from his face. Then reality registered in the form of Neveni’s bitter, poisonous voice in my ear: “I knew you’d save him.”

  The Arbiter rose over the buildings in the distance.

  “If we can’t use you alive, Nemesis, then at least I know exactly where you’re standing!”

  A bloom of light swelled from the Arbiter’s laser cannon.

  I realized then that Neveni was going to fire on me. To fire on me, regardless of the massive crowd around me, all the people who would also be torn to shreds by her weaponry. Neveni was going to kill me.

  Did Tyrus say something to me, in that last moment? I believed sometimes that he might have, but all I knew then was that there was no escaping this. There was no saving myself—but I could get as far from this crowd as possible. I hurled myself through the air, aiming for the fringes. The explosion blasted my ears as a wall of heat slammed into me.…

  That was the last I remembered until Anguish found me.

  * * *

  The mind had a way of playing cruel tricks, for even now, two years later, as I walked away from the men in that alley, my thoughts sprang back to the look Tyrus sent me just before the blast.…

  And I cursed myself for still wondering if that had been fear on his face. For it couldn’t be fear for himself, not when he wasn’t actually there.

  Fear for me.

  The curse of being involved with Tyrus was his visibility. The galactic Emperor was visible everywhere, reminders were everywhere. As I left the men behind in the alley, I passed a Tributary Image, one of the holographics liberally spread throughout the Empire. The current sovereign always had such depictions everywhere, and this one was a generic image of the Emperor Tyrus in full imperial finery. His hair was set in the halo style of his coronation, his body adorned in liquisilk and crystal.

  I stared at it unwillingly, as miserably riveted as a fish speared on a hook. Damn him. When would the day come that I felt nothing at all when seeing his face? The worst part was that I could not even rage. I would have welcomed anger, embraced it, for anger was simple—so much simpler than this hideous sorrow I felt at the sight of the broken, destroyed soul I’d once loved.

  I remembered those cool blue eyes and that carefully controlled smile he wore in the weeks following the events on Corcyra. The Eurydicean media deemed it a “Partisan Terror Attack.” They claimed rumors of my appearance were but a lie, and there was Tyrus filling the transmissions to give credibility to that lie.

  The galactic rumor mill whispered another story entirely. Many decided the attack had been perpetrated by the mad Emperor himself. He’d opened malignant space so close to Corcyra, the planet had but a decade left of safety. He must have blown up the crowd as well. The rumors spoke of me, of those who had glimpsed my face in person—and many swore they had seen me on the public feeds before the blast. I was more beloved in death than ever in life, and the Excess had long cherished my memory.

  Soon the public imagination seized upon the idea that I was alive.… That I had been dead, but now I lived, and a ludicrous notion grew that I had defied mortality, that I had returned to seek revenge upon the Emperor who presumed to declare himself a god. That the Emperor himself had been the one to blast the crowd and murder thousands to hide evidence of my return.

  No planet dared to laugh at the self-declared Divine Emperor Tyrus after that fateful day. Wherever Tyrus went, he was met with full-throated cheers, and in return, he showered those who worshipped him with imperial largesse… He flooded the coffers of his most ardent believers, and the example of Corcyra silenced those who might have dared to doubt.

  But the few, those restive few who stuck by their convictions—they’d learned a new hope that day.

  Protests were few, but when they boiled up, the words “Nemesis Lives!” were screamed by the defiant. My image offered terrifying warnings on walls across the galaxy. The Excess called the words as their sacred images were desecrated, as they faced the threat of malignant space, as a tyrant who held total power over them demanded that they bend to him in worship.

  These humans wielded my name as a threat against a man who had declared himself a god.

  I could not stop what Neveni had set into motion that day on Corcyra.

  My name was their invocation, their prayer of hope.

  Nemesis Lives. I hated those words. I’d begun to loathe my
own name. I hated the image glowering at me from the wall of that alley, for it was a lie. It promised them a savior, a legend, a myth—and I was but a defeated ruin of what I’d once imagined myself.

  Everything I had loved, I had managed to destroy.

  As I gazed at the holographic, another rumor swam up from the back of my mind.… That the “Divine Emperor” had implanted his Tributaries with surveillance cameras, ones he used his godlike ability with machines to peer through every so often. According to hearsay, Excess seen offering fealty and worship and gifts to his Tributary Images sometimes found themselves unexpectedly rewarded with largesse; those who defiled the Tributaries faced the strictest of punishments.

  My burn scars concealed my features, but a skitter of anxiety passed up my spine. Not at the thought of his eyes peering back out at me through the empty holographic face before me…

  But because—stars curse me—some part of me was tempted to march up to it and stare into them until I felt him looking back.

  Instead, I turned on my heel and left the Tributary and the alley far behind me.

  3

  MORE THAN TWO YEARS AMONG the Excess had dimmed my memories of life among the Grandiloquy. The masses did not live in sleek and polished corridors that looked out upon the stars, nor did they have humming service bots ready to satisfy their every whim. Excess were bound to their planets, with varying gravital conditions, climates, and smells.

  Devil’s Shade was a mining colony. The rogue planetoid had been flung from its parent star by the great supernova five centuries ago, and solar sickness was almost as common as a cold. Most of the locals were trapped in a perpetual cycle of working in the mines to pay off medical debts incurred while… working in the mines.

  I’d chosen Devil’s Shade because so many were sickly. I’d meant to take advantage of the public medical bots.

  I’d hoped they might help a Diabolic, even. Anguish grew frailer by the day.

  The mercy in the alley imperiled not just myself.

  Neither Anguish nor I had any reason to fear street violence. We were what should be feared on the street, and so we’d found dwellings on Harvester Row, the most dilapidated area of an already hopeless province. The entire colony was underground; the interior-most level was Sector 001. We lived closest to the surface, on level 203, the sector most exposed to cosmic radiation.

  I passed through the familiar causeway where miners ambled home, drillers floating behind them. They traded quips and curses, as street-side vendors called out their wares. The scent of waste and sulfur and scorched rubber reached my nose.

  As I drew closer to our apartment, I reached the most crowded areas of Harvester Row, where hollow-eyed beggars scrabbled for handouts, though there was no use in offering them anything but food. They spent offerings not on the necessities, but on the drugs that had already reduced them to penury. These people wore their misfortunes on their faces, their weeping sores left unattended, their children forgotten, their minds consumed by chemical need.

  The Grandiloquy had indulged in the same substances, then wiped away physical consequences with top-grade, private medical bots. They condemned and imprisoned the Excess for drug addiction. But in their own circles, a varied selection of chemicals was as necessary for a party as a fine gown and jewels.

  Creating these chemicals was not so fashionable—especially those that could not be produced by a synthesizer, but had to be grown and harvested instead. The Grandiloquy looked down to the Excess for such manufacturing. They looked to places like Harvester Row, where I now walked. It was a scene of miseries that made the mines look pleasant. Desperation and urine perfumed the air. I passed a crunch of trembling bodies, all pressed close together, waiting in line for a turn at the Harvester’s chair.

  There were two different substances that Devil’s Shade specialized in. One was Cosmic Ray, a popular psychedelic among the Grandiloquy.… It was a fungus that on Devil’s Shade was known as “desiccating rose,” and the optimal growth environment was within human subcutaneous tissue.

  I passed first those people with dimpled skin, their faces twisted with a low, constant pain, waiting their turn at having the desiccating rose extracted from their flesh, and likely a new set of spores implanted there.

  The other group of Harvesters were the more richly dressed ones—who used the Excess to produce Novashine.

  “Hold him still. Help me,” one Harvester called briskly to an associate as I passed the chair where a young man—strapped down—had broken his bindings in his panic and freed his arm.

  His eyes were wild with terror, and guttural screams issued from his lips. His fear was potent, which meant the Novashine would be strong. It was prized when drawn directly from the veins of a terrified human being. Excess lined up to be stimulated by a diode that catapulted their brains into horror, terror, pain, and caused their bodies to dump adrenaline into their systems. Light-years away, Grandiloquy would receive genuine, human-produced Novashine to enhance their mental well-being… and the hapless Excess would earn a week’s pay in five horrifying minutes.

  The Harvesters pinned the man down, held his arm still with both their combined strength, and fixed their eyes on the blood funnel drawing a red stream from the man’s veins. By the time I passed out of sight, the Excess no longer struggled, his draining complete.

  Afterward, he’d be allowed a few minutes to rest up and would be given a mug of hot chocolate in consolation. He’d likely have nightmares until the next harvesting. Indeed, the terrors would last until his adrenal glands, exhausted, ceased to react to the stimuli of horror. The Harvesters would then deem him “tapped out,” unable to supply quality product for the Grandes and Grandeés at the center of the Empire, whose evenings were so pleasantly spiced with the by-products of terror.

  The universe was cruel. I didn’t understand how anyone could live somewhere like this and think otherwise.

  As I descended into our small corner of the Obsidian Tower Dwellings, I braced myself to tell Anguish what I had done. He would insist on relocating at the next transport window, although in his weakened state, such a journey might kill him.

  But when I saw him, my words died on my lips.

  Anguish dan Domitrian was out of bed. Standing without support, gazing out the faded window at the view: a causeway swarming with dirty crowds of workers. Some alert quality to his posture, the straightness of his back and the tilt of his head, made him appear both engaged and prepared for whatever he might see.

  “You look well,” I said in amazement.

  He cast me a quick, slashing look. “Of course.”

  There was no “of course” to it. Not anymore… Yet even his voice sounded stronger. I swallowed my news and gently laid the morning’s rations on the table. I would not ruin this small miracle by mentioning the skirmish. He would be alarmed that I’d left one of them alive, perhaps would insist on testing his strength by going to finish the job.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, peering suspiciously at the satchel slung over my shoulder.

  “At the synthomat. I have to work, so I fetched our rations early. They’re ready for the heater when you get—”

  He swung fully around. “Wait. You’re alone? But… Where is she? Is she still out there?”

  The words pulled me up short.

  “Who…?”

  “You should not have left her on her own,” Anguish said gruffly, shoving back from the window. “Tell me where you left her!”

  Her. Oh.

  He meant Neveni.

  After everything, his mind still lapsed back into thoughts of Neveni.

  They’d argued often as their relationship decayed. At first she just disliked his well-meant interference, when Neveni tried to show me the latest transmissions of Tyrus’s doings—the laws enforcing state-sanctioned faith in him, the brutal repressions of riots, the crackdowns on dissenters. They were all her not-so-subtle attempts to keep my wounds fresh, and revenge at the forefront of my mind.

&n
bsp; “Leave her be,” I’d heard Anguish advise her.

  “Stop telling me what to do,” Neveni would shoot back at him.

  They’d found each other when they united against me to take the Arbiter and strand me in the Sacred City. Now, as Neveni grew on edge, almost manic in her desire to weaponize me, Anguish moved to shield me.

  Their disagreements grew more heated. I neared my sleeping chamber on the Arbiter one evening to hear their voices inside, and my ears were keen enough to pick out the substance of what they were saying.

  “You don’t motivate her when you rub salt in her wounds,” I heard Anguish chide her. “You merely hurt her.”

  “I don’t need her sad and moping, Anguish. I need her to remember what he did to her.”

  “She does. She remembers.”

  “She can take care of herself.”

  “We are Diabolics. We are not invulnerable.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Her, or you? What is this really about?”

  “I have told you—”

  “Did I hurt your feelings and you don’t have the guts to say it?”

  “This is about Nemesis.”

  “Then leave it be,” she snarled. “I know what I’m doing.”

  And then I’d stepped into the chamber with them and they both fell silent.

  I had brought them together, and now I drove them apart. Her irritation with him swelled. All the small gestures Anguish made to show he loved her seemed to go awry. She was no longer charmed by the protective instinct behind his offers to beat the crewmen who challenged her authority.

  It didn’t help that her crew feared and distrusted him. They fell silent and shrank back when he strolled past them. None who saw him could have doubted his Diabolic nature—his vast size, his fierce demeanor, announced it plainly. He had never learned to blend in with humans as I had; he’d never had a master like Sidonia, who treated him as an equal, who might have taught him to be more human. As Neveni’s hostility grew, Anguish’s befuddlement did as well. He did not know how to fix what was going wrong.