by Daryl Banner
The door shuts heavily at her back, startling her. Only one of the masked men have stayed, watching with his arms crossed.
“Hello, Cintha,” greets the red-eyed woman, drawing Cintha’s attention back to her. “And hello, Lanis. If you would please change into these robes, drink your vial of protective serum, and then lie down on the table, we can begin the transportation process.”
Cintha wrinkles her face. “T-Transportation? Is it not safe here anymore? Is this because of what happened at the coronat—?”
“There’s nothing to worry about. You can trust me, Cintha.” She smiles her warm smile. Her eyes are red and her skin is smooth and her hair is perfectly in place … and Cintha feels so unsettled.
The dimpled man, Lanis, wastes no time in doing what he has been instructed. He removes his shirt, setting it on the empty part of the exam table, then slips on the robe, underneath of which he starts to undo his pants.
Cintha stares at him, wide-eyed. Am I to be afforded no privacy at all? She has gotten used to the examinations, to changing her clothes in front of the red-eyed woman whose name she still does not know, to even drinking the chemicals that make them ill for a day—chemicals that are supposed to prepare them for testing and treatments. But now she’s expected to change in front of a masked man? In front of another male patient?
Cintha moves next to the examination table, taking the robe in one hand, but then grows still. In her hesitation, she looks up and watches the dimpled man swallowing his water. He squints a bit as he drinks, and then he looks at the emptied vial with a small frown, as if thinking something.
“Nothing to worry about at all,” murmurs the red-eyed woman, and it’s only now that Cintha notices the tightness in her smile.
Cintha, her gaze still on the woman, takes the vial with her other hand. She starts to bring it to her lips.
“No adverse reactions?” blurts the woman suddenly.
Cintha stops the vial at her lips, not yet drinking it. “Sorry?” she murmurs, inches from the glass.
“To your Legacy removal treatment,” the woman clarifies, her red eyes curious. They shimmer with disquiet, and her jaw sets so hard that Cintha hears her teeth grind.
Why would she ask me that? She knows that I … “I was seventh in line,” Cintha reminds her slowly, the vial hovering at her mouth. “I … I still haven’t received the treatment.”
“Oh,” the woman says plainly. “So you still have your Legacy?”
Cintha blinks. She glances at the dimpled man, who seems to be breathing heavily. His eyes look glossed over as he climbs onto the exam table, his hands clumsy, and when he lies back, his head seems to drop faster than he means it to, causing a loud bang. He hardly notices, for the mumble of acknowledgement he gives it.
“Normal reaction to the serum,” explains the woman, giving a glance at the masked man near the door. “Don’t mind the Guardian at the door, either. He is here to protect us during the process. You can’t tell how handsome he is behind that mask of his. I always tell him he should have a wife by now with a face like that, but—”
“Enough,” grunts the masked man.
“Of course,” agrees the woman. “I’m distracting. My apologies. The man hasn’t had a date in months.” She smiles, though even her attempt at humor seems strained. Cintha notices it all, watchful and observant as ever. “You’re safe from the commotion outside, Cintha. Don’t worry. He is even armed with a gun,” she points out.
Cintha glances at the masked man—who she’s now been told is, indeed, a man. An oversexed man, if Cintha follows what the red-eyed woman is implying. But a Guardian? The woman has to know Cintha better than to think she’d believe this masked man is a Guardian. Clearly he is not. So why would she say that?
Is the red-eyed woman trying to tell her something? ‘So you still have your Legacy?’ she’d asked.
Cintha lifts her gaze to the masked man. “C-Can you … Can you turn around, please?” she asks him innocently, setting the vial down undrunk and clutching the robe to her chest.
“I’m here for your protection,” he recites in a monotone.
Cintha glances at the red-eyed woman once more. She only stares back, silent but for her eyes, which seem to say six hundred things at once. Taking a guess at one of those six hundred things, Cintha starts to approach the masked man. “You are very kind to protect me,” she murmurs, smiling, reaching for him with something other than her hands. She feels that other something grip him tightly.
His body stiffens in response. Even through the mask, she hears his breath accelerate. “S-Stand back, patient two.”
Unheeding, Cintha slowly advances upon him. “This robe … it’s so itchy,” she complains, letting it slip from her hands. She hugs herself, feeling her power throbbing around her in all directions, like some unseen energy that pulls at the hairs on the back of the neck.
“B-Back,” he breathes, sucking in air so deeply and desperately that he already sounds like he’s speeding towards an orgasm.
“Is something wrong, sir?” Cintha asks, her voice light, knowing full well what her power is doing to him. “Are we in danger? Maybe you should give me your gun so that I might better protect us? I’m really good with guns. My brother taught me well.”
Suddenly, the man grabs her, unable to contain himself for a second longer. She shrieks once, and then the man is atop her on the cold tile floor. His feral eyes shine through the eyeholes of the mask as he kicks her legs apart, sucking in jagged breaths of need on the other side of that false face.
“Aye, I’ll give you my gun,” he growls. “It’s rock hard.” Gripping her wrists as he pins her to the floor, he leans into her ear. “And I’d love to see how good you are with my gun.”
Cintha clenches shut her eyes, screaming in his face. She feels his weight descend upon her as he fumbles with his pants in his psychotic, sexual rage brought on by whatever foul seed of hunger lived within the man—and the little stroke of her Legacy that stirred it to life.
Then Cintha stops screaming, staring up into the man’s greedy eyes. In an instant, she’s consumed by one very curious observation. You quicken the hearts of men. Rone told her that once, and she thinks it now, calmly pondering the man who’s trying to put himself into her as fast as humanly possible.
‘So you still have your Legacy?’
Yes, I do.
Cintha lifts a hand to the man’s chest, then focuses her Legacy even more. The man stops moving at once, his muscles tightening. A moan that’s nothing human emits behind that mask, muffled and desperate, his eyes wet with animal desperation. She feels his pulse shoot up, up, up. It’s like a drum beneath her hand, a drum that’s rocketing faster than any drum ought to.
The man gasps, humping the floor once, twice, three times, and then he lets out a choking sound, his eyes growing as wide as the eyeholes themselves.
His muscles contract again, and then he rolls off of her and onto his back, clutching his chest. He kicks at nothing—a spasm, a man or woman standing there in his imagination, a phantom—and he sputters in an attempt to cry out for help. Then, there is an awful gurgling sound, a wet and unseemly cough, and then nothing.
Cintha, trembling everywhere, rises to her knees and stares down at the man on the floor in horror. He lies there on his back, dead, with an obscenely erect cock poking straight up at the stars. Without thinking, she grabs his mask and pulls it off in the very next moment. His face is covered by the blood he’s coughed up from his own exploded heart, painting his mouth and nose in crimson.
Cintha’s eyes shoot up to the woman with alarm. The mask still hangs in her hand. “I … I … I didn’t—!”
“Take his gun,” orders the woman, walking briskly over to the table Cintha was supposed to occupy, and swiping the vial of serum. “Now, Cintha. Hurry.”
Her hands trembling so much she can hardly see them, Cintha grabs the gun from the man’s holster and fumbles to free it. The thing is heavier than she expected.
C
intha shakes her head. “What do I do …? What did I just do??”
The woman answers without turning around, still busied at the table. “Change, Cintha. The uniform. Now.”
Cintha doesn’t comprehend until she peers down at the man’s clothes, which look two sizes too large for her. After a quick glance at the door, hearing all the commotion on its other side, she spares no moment in pulling off her own clothes now. She has to flip the man on his side to remove his uniform top, followed by his pants. Standing, she stumbles in her efforts to pull them on, nearly toppling herself into the exam table of patient one, Lanis, who seems to be chemically asleep or dead. Cintha doesn’t want to know which, seeing as she was seconds from swallowing that serum herself.
As Cintha buttons the top, the woman turns around with a filled syringe, to which she quickly applies a plastic cap over its needle. “The mask, Cintha.”
She stares incredulously at the woman. “H-He coughed his last blood all over the inside!” Cintha exclaims, lifting the mask to show her. “I can’t—!”
“It’s a matter of your living or your dying,” the woman states plainly. “And if it was up to me, I’d much rather you live.”
Cintha stares at the woman as if the whites of her eyes had gone red too. “Why??” she blurts. “Why are you helping me at all??”
The woman comes up close to Cintha, nearly nose to nose. “The King has died today. Sanctum is upending itself. The existence of this facility is a secret only held by two individuals in this world: Ruena Netheris and Greymyn Netheris. One of them was just assassinated before the world. The other has fled the throne. The instructions are simple. If both are removed from their power, then we must dispose of all evidence of our work here.” The woman’s eyes narrow. “The patients are part of that evidence.”
Cintha nearly drops the mask. “You … You mean …?”
“Mask, now. Hurry.”
With due reluctance, Cintha brings the thing to her face, slipping its bands behind her ears, keeping it in place. The mask is too big for her, but the cheeks of it still touch her own, and the scent of blood fills her nostrils. “I’m gonna be sick,” she mumbles behind the white thing.
“Help me lift the man to the table. Now, Cintha, now.”
Cintha crouches next to the man and, after staring through the awkward eyeholes of the mask to judge where the woman is, picks up the man’s legs while the woman bears his upper body. After a few grunts and a couple paces, the man is dropped onto the table with a resounding metallic thud. The woman throws the robe that Cintha was supposed to don over his body.
“We were all going to be killed?” Cintha can’t help but ask. “You mean that serum was—?”
“Follow me. Now.”
The woman moves to the door. Cintha thrusts her gun into the holster attached to her new pants. It hangs heavily on her loose waist and nearly feels as if it’s going to pull her pants down. Following the woman, Cintha self-consciously clutches at her waistband to keep her pants from falling. After a moment’s breath, the woman opens the door and moves with the same hurried stride of the others in the hallway. Cintha heads out after her, letting the door shut at her back.
“I can’t leave my friends behind,” whispers Cintha as they hurry down the hall, the warm breath of each of her words beating back against her face from within the mask. “My friends Kirin and Aryl … Aryl, she’s just a girl! They’re going to kill a girl!”
“No talking until we’re out of the facility,” hisses the woman as they round about a corner. The bodies keep moving past them, both doctors and masked individuals.
They reach an elevator lift. The woman touches the button, and then the two of them wait.
Cintha glances over her shoulder. She sees no other patients being brought to other rooms. For all I know, Aryl and Kirin already drank their vials. They’re lying on tables right now, as dead asleep as that Lanis man. The thought chills her. She feels so alone suddenly.
She finds herself thinking of Aryl pointing at the wall where she saw the big flashes of red during Ruena’s coronation. Suddenly, the realization rushes to her.
“We’re in the Lifted City,” Cintha blurts out.
“Yes,” mutters the woman.
She can’t believe she’s been in the Lifted City this whole time. For some reason, she’d pictured the facility to be in some corner of the slums. She wonders how in the world they’re going to manage safely passing through the Lifted City undetected, if that’s the plan at all. And that’s assuming this woman even has a plan.
Of course she does. She orchestrated this whole setup to free Cintha from this place, didn’t she? But why? “Why’d you save me?”
“No talking.”
Cintha takes a deep breath. Through the corner of her eyehole, she sees the syringe in the woman’s grip. “What does the serum do?”
“I said no talking.”
“Tell me. Please tell me something.”
The woman’s face tightens. Then she turns her head slightly, her eyes still fixed expectantly on the chrome elevator door. “It is a failed prototype of our Legacy neutralizer. It only works nine percent of the time. When it doesn’t work, it results in a final sleep.”
A final sleep. “It kills them,” she states, as if needing it to be said outright, as if needing it confirmed.
“To those who drink it. But for those who are injected with it,” she says, flinching, “much worse.”
The elevator doors open. The two women step inside, and then the doors shut. Silence swallows them as the lift slowly moves.
“Injecting this failed serum induces a coma,” the woman says, her voice quiet and detached, “which traps the victim in a permanent nightmare. It awakens your deepest fears and unleashes them on your vulnerable, altered mind. Only with an antidote—every vial of which has been destroyed—can the victim be brought out of the state. Unless they are one of the nine percent upon which it does work, in which case they will awake after a matter of hours … or days.”
“It … It seems so random,” whispers Cintha, terrified by the idea. Is that dimpled man Lanis lying on that cold metal table right now, trapped in a vivid nightmare of his own brain’s making with no means to break free or ever wake up? No, she said it only works that way when injected. If imbibed, it means death. The Lanis man is dead, and you were a second from following him to your final sleep, if it wasn’t for this woman. “W-Why the nightmare?”
“To eliminate one’s Legacy, the serum must access specific parts of the brain and awaken the parts that are used in your Legacy. Each person’s mind is different, so the serum must be potent enough to probe deeply. It activates your emotions, personality, memories … it must stimulate them in order to anesthetize them. This failed serum stimulates the darker parts of the brain—fight or flight responses, primal instincts, fear—but doesn’t always succeed in reaching the Legacy. Only nine percent of the time.”
“But you have a serum that does work? To eliminate Legacies? Isn’t that was I was seventh in line for?”
“Yes. And all that serum will be destroyed, too. All our work.” The woman sighs. “I really shouldn’t be telling you all of this. These secrets are the very reason we are destroying the evidence, now that Greymyn is dead. But I can’t stomach losing what we’ve gained.”
“You have learned so much about Legacies here,” agrees Cintha, wondering what else they’ve discovered in this strange, secret place.
“This failed serum—as well as the successful one—is a result of the greatest discovery Atlas has ever made,” the doctor explains. “Can you imagine that? This little thing,” she says, lifting the syringe in her palm, “is created from the cells of the only known Meta in all of Atlas’s history.”
“Meta?”
“It is a special type of Legacy,” she answers. “A type that is not known to the public because, well, it could easily be identified as Outlier. It is a Legacy that affects other Legacies.” The doctor lifts an eyebrow. “You are listening to m
e, aren’t you? We have to keep this knowledge alive—and secret. It won’t exist in a database of any kind after today. Just in the palm of my hand and in your brain and mine.”
“Yes,” promises Cintha. “I’m listening. I’ll remember.”
“This serum was created from that Meta. Its effects are harmless to the Meta and to any who is of direct blood relation to the Meta, as they would share her genetic makeup.”
“Her?” murmurs Cintha, having caught that word. “The Meta is a her?”
“A mother,” answers the doctor, her face tightening. “A very brave, very foolish mother.”
The lift jerks to a stop. The doctor slams a finger into the button, keeping the doors closed, and then she faces Cintha importantly.
“When we get off the lift, you must make your way straight to the Sky Rail out of the back exit. They’ll be boarding masked folk like you and doctors like me, but you must go alone. I have other tasks to do before my time. That train—”
“W-We can’t separate,” Cintha blurts.
“Listen. That train will take you down to the emergency refuge for Sanctum survivors where you will be given a safe place to stay until a proper King or Queen is returned to the throne.” The look of fear must be evident on Cintha’s face, for the woman rolls her eyes impatiently and says, “You and I share a secret of Sanctum, don’t you understand? You’re one of the Nether, now. The folk in the masks. You are one of them. Go and survive. Your time with me is done.”
“What about the others?” murmurs Cintha, trembling. “I … can’t just leave them behind. I can’t.”
The doctor stares at Cintha as if she’s Atlas’s greatest idiot. “So you wish to throw away this opportunity I’ve given you?”
“N-No. I just … I just wish to share it with someone else.”
The woman shakes her head, irritated at once. “The reason I saved you, Cintha Two of the ninth, is because I trust in your spirit. You are quiet and calculated. You are watchful. And—”
“I just made a man’s heart explode,” Cintha murmurs back.
“Yes. That was my next and final point.” The woman squints at Cintha knowingly. “You have what it takes … to survive. So please, for the sake of our friendship, respect my wishes and survive.”
