Souls of Steel: A Reverse Harem Sci Fi Bully Romance (Chimera Academy Book 1)

by Eva Brandt

  It was a talent he didn’t display a lot, but this time, it couldn’t be helped. If Selene was incapacitated by something as simple as gravitational backlash, there was no way she could pass the qualifiers, no matter what we did.

  A bead of sweat flowed down August’s cheek, and I surmised whoever was controlling the machine had tried to force his way past August. It didn’t work, and in the end, the person gave up. All the other platforms slowed down and settled in a pace similar to our own. At last, they all stopped in a half circle, facing the north side of the stadium.

  A massive holographic stage appeared in front of us. A man dressed in a stern, dark uniform floated above it, his figure larger than the Typhon. It was only an illusion, but even so, the crowd went silent. He might not be as tall in person, but his power didn’t lie in physical strength.

  It was, of course, my father, and he was accompanied by his regular entourage. Penelope’s father was there, but also Knox’s father and younger brother. Pollux’s parents had both come, although I could only catch a very brief glimpse of his mother. It was, naturally, the men who were visible on the holographic stage. The women always stayed behind the scenes, even when they were important.

  My father lifted his hands, a simple gesture, but one that made my hackles rise. “Welcome to this year’s edition of The Grand Tartarus Tournament,” he said. “I will begin by thanking all the brave warriors present here for their constant dedication in safeguarding our planet. Terra owes you a debt it can never repay.”

  It was only a speech, very similar to what he always said at every other gathering. This time, it rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt like another dig at Selene’s Terran background.

  “To all of you out there, please let’s have a round of applause for the members of The Hyperion Star Fleet, The Theia Star Fleet, The Oceanus Attack Corps, The Crius Guard Corps and The Tethys Transport Corps.”

  Following his cue, the spectators rushed to applaud their heroes, the different fleets of soldiers that kept Terra safe. I maintained my perfect parade rest position, waiting for the unavoidable moment when we’d be mentioned too.

  It didn’t take long. “Last, but definitely not least, let us welcome the students of our very own Chimera Academy, without which Terra would not have a future to look forward to. May you all shine as bright as Tartarus’s Gift!”

  Ugh. Could the old man even hear himself speak? He made us sound like children, even if we’d long ago left those innocent days behind. We’d gone into battle too. While the apsids no longer actively attacked Terra, scattered skirmishes still happened in deep space. The Grand Chimeras were occasionally needed. Without us, some of those battles would’ve turned into disasters.

  But my father was nothing if not petty and I suspected his resentment would manifest in ways far more dangerous than a tedious speech. The platform incident had already given us a taste of how this was going to go. I didn’t look forward to his future plans.

  “Today, you will bear witness to the qualifiers of The Grand Tartarus Tournament. Since we have so many talented soldiers, we’ve decided to do something a little different this year. The tournament will bring forth the very first free-for-all battle royale.”

  Fuck. We’d been wrong in hoping we’d have robots and drones to blow up. That would’ve been much too easy. Selene could have used tachyon manipulation against a drone, but with people, it would be a hundred times tougher, if not impossible.

  “The rules are simple. Every competitor is worth a number of points. Whoever hunts down and takes down that competitor wins those points. At the end of the match, the first fifty competitors on the ranking board will qualify to the next stage.”

  Just fifty? That wasn’t a lot, considering how many people there were here. I had a feeling I knew exactly what he’d say next. “As we speak, you’re being assigned random numbers. They will appear on your chests, and you will use these numbers as guidelines. As you fight, your uniform cybernetic links will register all your successes and sum up the points. The number of points each competitor is worth ranges from one to one thousand.”

  Tasting dread in my mouth, I turned to look at Selene. Within seconds, my worst fears were confirmed. The number ‘1000’ now glowed on her uniform, burning crimson, like a brand.

  The Scarlet Letter

  Selene

  When the king announced the structure of the tournament, I wasn’t surprised at his words. Truly, I’d have been more surprised if Brendan’s original guess about the qualifiers had been correct. Drones were much too simple. By now, the teachers knew I could destroy them without too much trouble. If the purpose of this tournament was to eliminate me, the king would naturally try something different.

  Still, a strange numbness invaded me when I realized it wouldn’t be a tournament at all. It would be a shameless hunt—a way to give me a lesson.

  I didn’t know why the king had chosen this method instead of expelling me outright, but it was clear I was in trouble.

  “What the fuck?” Knox growled. “Is he serious?”

  “You know he is,” Brendan replied. “He doesn’t joke around with stuff like that.”

  “Random numbers, my foot,” August snapped. “If this is random, I’ll eat my chimera.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s physically impossible, August,” I offered with a weak smile. I felt dazed and lost, as if the weight of the number I carried was physically dragging me down.

  “Don’t worry, Selene,” Pollux tried to reassure me. “We won’t let them—”

  “If they are within twenty feet of one another, competitors have to fight,” the king cut him off. “Should they not do so, they’ll be disqualified.”

  My lovers’ expressions twisted into a mix of shock, anger, and horror. “What the fuck?” August repeated, echoing Knox’s earlier words. “This is a joke.”

  It didn’t take a genius to realize the reason behind this rule. Of course the king would know Brendan and the others would want to protect me and he’d take steps to prevent that.

  Brendan took a deep breath, seemingly struggling to calm down. He wasn’t very successful. “One of these days, old man, you’ll go too far,” he mumbled, “and The Grand Judiciary will be—”

  I knew without being told how that sentence ended and I grabbed his elbow before he could finish it. I understood his anger, but talking about patricide and treason in public was a recipe for disaster. We were on the same platform as the people from The Harpy Squad and they weren’t our biggest fans.

  “Don’t worry so much,” I said with fake cheer. “This is perfect. It works great for my skills. We just have to split up and make sure we all get enough points. Besides, I doubt they’ll dump us together in clusters. That’d just cause chaos and no one will see a thing. We’d have been separated anyway.”

  They didn’t answer, but I knew what they were thinking. Even if we’d been separated, they would’ve been able to find me. We all had trackers in our suits and with our chimeras in the stadium, we could communicate indirectly, even if our com-links were shut down. Granted, I’d have trouble with that, because the Sphinx couldn’t stay in constant contact with me. My lovers could have compensated for it had we stayed together. That wouldn’t be an option now, because if we ran into one another, we’d have to fight.

  Sure, if push came to shove, one of them could surrender to me. I’d never be able to win fair and square. But if that happened, it could be a problem in the long run for them. The position of the Grand Chimera Unit was unique and for that reason, tamers from our squad weren’t well liked. If my lovers threw the fight to me, someone could decide they weren’t proper pilots for their chimeras. It would be crazy, but stranger things had happened.

  My lovers’ panic didn’t go unnoticed. The rest of the students from the academy stepped in. “Well, there you have it, little Terran whore,” Jared Glass said. “You might as well get ready for it now. Maybe you should just go back to the shuttle and start preparing for the unavoidable. Jus
t so you know, I won’t bother with fingers when I fuck you, so you’d better be ready beforehand.”

  “You really have a death wish, don’t you, Glass?” Knox asked. “It’s fine. I think I can fulfill it.”

  This time, he sounded completely calm, his voice as icy and level as Brendan’s. For some reason, it was more alarming that his previous outbursts of temper. I tensed and stepped between the two of them. “Knox, it’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.”

  Jared laughed, completely oblivious to the fact that he was seconds away from dying a horrible death. “Of course it doesn’t. In fact, I’m sure you’ll—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, another Harpy tamer intervened. If I remembered well, his name was Scott Argyle, and he piloted the Ocypete. “Can you not?” he hissed, grabbing Jared’s arm in a tight hold. “Taunt them later. The king’s right there.”

  Finally, someone with sense. I didn’t expect them to like me, but the least they could do was pretend while we were here, surrounded by spectators.

  Jared sulked, but obeyed. He returned to his fellow students, leaving us alone. Knox watched him go, but the tension in his stance didn’t fade. “I’ll still kill him, Selene,” he said. “I’m tired of this bullshit.”

  His words were low enough that August and I were the only ones who heard them. August showed no reaction and I followed his cue. Even if it was true, even if Knox ended up killing Jared Glass, it wouldn’t be today, in front of all these people. He knew better.

  “Let’s focus on the qualifiers, for now,” I told him.

  As I finished the sentence, the platform beneath us started to fall apart, cracking in individual pieces, like a puzzle. I returned to my spot, guessing this was the moment when they’d split us up. It was. The small metallic platforms swirled around in a dizzying whirlwind, making me lose track of my lovers. The next thing I knew, the metal beneath my feet vanished and I dropped to the ground, into a labyrinth that hadn’t been there before.

  Labyrinths were a favored theme in tournaments, so that, at least, was familiar. The Minotaur was one of the dormant, lesser known chimeras, but he had been very important during the original war with the apsids, and his contribution was always honored like this.

  Whenever a tournament stage involved a labyrinth, competitors were always given points for finding their way out. The king hadn’t mentioned that part until now, but he would. I was sure of it.

  “Whoever finds his way out of the labyrinth first will get a bonus of one thousand points,” the king announced, confirming my guess. “Good luck to all competitors.”

  Perfect. If I could reach the exit first, I’d get plenty of points. But would they be enough to rank? I wasn’t sure. There were a lot of people in the labyrinth and some of them were worth hundreds of points.

  Either way, it was my best chance. I pulled out my sword and held it in my right hand. At the same time, I kept my free hand on the left wall and started to walk. If I kept going like this, I’d find my way out eventually. It might take me a long time, but it would be better than going at random. I’d run into someone eventually, and if I defeated them, I could start adding points.

  It didn’t take me long to find the first person. He was young, but not a student of the academy. He was wearing the uniform of The Crius Guard Corps, and the number 42 glowed on his chest.

  “Oh, hello, there, sweetheart,” he greeted me with a smirk. “Let’s—”

  I didn’t wait for him to finish the sentence. Instead, I pointed my sword at him and forced my new gift through the metal.

  It worked better than I expected. The tungsten channeled the tachyons I’d been unable to control in the past. A powerful blast emerged from my blade, hitting him straight in the chest.

  Maybe I should’ve been worried about his injuries, but the uniforms would be enough to temper the impact. Unless I lost control, I wouldn’t kill him. I didn’t have the juice right now for something like that.

  The left wall parted and a drone appeared in the labyrinth. It scanned the injured man, levitated him in the air, and reported, “Mild burns, broken ulna and concussion detected. Retrieving for treatment.”

  The drone’s arrival gave me an idea, but it was a little too bold to try now. For the moment, I kept walking, sticking to my previous strategy of always going left.

  The second man I ran into was a student from the academy, although not a tamer. He took one look at me and smirked. “Oh, this is my lucky day, isn’t it? I’ll—”

  With a mental sigh, I did the same thing I had earlier. He was so busy insulting me that he didn’t see the blast coming. It was a little ridiculous. I’d hated being underestimated, but it might turn out to be one of my best weapons.

  Time seemed to slow as I moved through the labyrinth. Sweat trickled down my temples and the back of my neck buzzed where it usually connected with my chimera.

  My grip on my sword tightened. My heart hammered and my breathing accelerated. The labyrinth was so quiet, isolated from the sound the spectators were undoubtedly still making. And yet, the silence seemed so loud, grating on my tight nerves.

  When I stumbled onto the next person, I narrowly managed not to scream. Taken by surprise, I couldn’t conveniently get rid of him before he could do anything about it. He directed a phaser blast at me, but I dodged and the shot went wide. Unfortunately, I was close enough that he didn’t need to resort to the ranged weapon again. He lunged at me like a savage animal and I went down under his bulk, falling to the ground with a pained grunt.

  His hands went to my throat and he squeezed, his eyes glinting red with Tartarus’s power. His fingers burned my skin and my vision started to grow fuzzy. “You know, I’ve heard about you,” he whispered. “You’re quite pretty. I’ll make sure to visit Persephone’s Plaza when I’m on leave.”

  He didn’t sound insulting. His voice was mellow and calm, like he was talking about the weather, about something natural. He truly believed that the only role I could ever have was that of a whore.

  It pissed me off more than Jared Glass’s ugly words had, and that anger gave me strength. I grabbed his wrist and summoned the flickering traces of my tachyon power.

  The outburst wasn’t controlled, not like the others had been. I didn’t have enough focus. Still, it did the job. The man let out a sharp cry. His hold on me loosened and he fell back, clutching his head.

  I took advantage of the opening to shoot to my feet and knock him out. A solid blow to the head took care of the biggest threat I’d run into so far.

  “Fuck you very much,” I croaked out as he fell. My voice sounded raspy and I rubbed my aching neck, grimacing. “I hope your dick falls off and never gets to touch another woman.”

  The more I stayed here, the more disgusted I felt with everything I saw. But people like this guy, like Jared and every other man I’d fought just reminded me why my battle was important.

  Once upon a time, when I’d been a child, my mother had found an ancient chest during one of her terra-forming digs. Most literature had been lost in the wake of the destruction left behind by the original attacks of the apsids, but some books had survived in underground bunkers where our ancestors had taken refuge. This particular book told the tale of a woman carrying a brand of shame on her chest, a brand in the form of the letter A.

  I hadn’t been able to understand the book at the time, as it had seemed so distant and alien to me that most of it hadn’t made any sense. In hindsight, that had been stupid of me. I was carrying a brand today too, one that was supposed to shame me for being a woman, for being a Terran, for daring to defy convention.

  They’d gotten it wrong. I would never be ashamed of my background or of my gender. If anything, they were the ones who should feel the burden of that feeling. They were the ones who abused people who couldn’t defend themselves and pretended they were superior just because they’d been born with different genitals. The numbers that burned on their chests marked them as much as my ‘1000’ marked me.

 
Whether they’d intended it or not, they’d given me a higher value. I’d prove to them that they hadn’t been wrong when they’d deemed me a threat. They just hadn’t realized I could take them on and win.

  What concerned me most was the possibility of running into Brendan, Knox, August, and Pollux. In the book I remembered, the woman’s lover had ended up dying. It was too easy to imagine them in that position. They weren’t prone to giving up the fight out of shame, but my presence had obviously caused them trouble.

  I had to find the exit to the labyrinth, fast.

  “No, you don’t,” Sphinx whispered in my mind. “Breathe. Focus. Don’t panic. You have this in the bag. All you need to do is use the talent that’s at your fingertips.”

  She hadn’t spoken to me much today out of the desire to not put too much strain on my mind and body, but apparently, she’d deemed her intervention necessary. I could see why and felt stupid for not coming up with the idea myself.

  My true talent wasn’t in tachyon manipulation. The explosions were nice, true, and I’d managed to use it against my opponents so far. But the Sphinx had given me another gift, the same power that had allowed me to see my lovers’ plans. Using it, I could track down everyone near me and avoid Brendan, Knox, August, and Pollux at the same time.

  “Be careful. Touching the minds of other people won’t be as pleasant as your experience with your lovers. Don’t prolong it. You’re not ready for extensive use, so don’t push yourself. Slow and steady is the key here.”

  Slow and steady. All right. I could do that. I could pace myself. Sphinx was wise and her advice had never failed me before.

  Taking a deep breath, I stopped walking and allowed my mind to drift. I moved slowly, seeking any nearby presences. I needed to keep going left to find the exit, so I had to press forward in that direction.