by Quil Carter
My smile disappeared. Sacario didn’t notice, he just smiled out the window… then proceeded to wave at the people below him.
I turned and let him do his thing, and sat down on one of the chairs. I suddenly didn’t really wish to be here anymore.
The always observant Finn noticed my discord and sat down beside me. “He just meant your old look,” he said supportively.
I sighed and rose. “You don’t need to console me like I’m a damn child getting teased,” I said to him coldly. Then I looked towards the exit. “I’m going to stand by the fence while the convicts get executed.” I needed to smell some blood tonight, live vicariously through people who had much more interesting of lives than I did.
Finn didn’t follow me. I was half-hoping that he would, but then remembered that blood always made him nauseas. The boy didn’t like the gory side of life; he didn’t even like leaving the apartment without me.
I approached the end of the hallway I was walking down, the noises from the crowd in the distance adding an electricity to the air that always lifted me an inch off of the ground. This hallway would lead to a small fenced-off area near the place where they sent out the convicts. The prisoners would walk down this narrow corridor, chain-link on both sides with thiens holding rifles to make sure they didn’t try and scale the fence, then at the end of their dead-man-walking trek, they’d find themselves entering the large arena.
“Prince Elish,” both of the thiens greeted me. I nodded at them and stood in front of the chain-link, taking in and enjoying the energetic static that was filling the stadium. There were bleachers nine rows high just several feet away from me, and directly behind them, food stalls that served rat hotdogs and potato fries to the audience. There were always several small children weaving around the bleachers, delivering food to the customers, and underneath the bleachers, stray cats that slunk around like shadows, picking up scraps to consume or bring back to their clowder.
I watched a man walk down the catwalk, the lights from the various neon signs and strings of Christmas lights making rainbows on the tattered suit and tie he was wearing. The man was holding a microphone in his hand and a smile on his face, and when the crowd began to cheer him, he turned and waved to them. That was Oldboy, the announcer and host of every Stadium. The announcers here became quite popular in Skyfall, edging near celebrity status. Silas had even allowed a documentary to be filmed about his life with the weekly games. I’d never gotten around to watching it.
“What can top The Dead Island Lions?” Oldboy said, the microphone making his voice echo all throughout the arena. Earlier in the show, the big cat keeper in the Dead Islands had come to show off his lions’ newest tricks. Keeping the public enthralled with the animals the scientists were bringing back from extinction, or were in the process of breeding for bigger numbers, was an important part of Stadium. Their tax dollars went towards funding these projects and it was always a good idea to have them engaged in the process. More funding meant more animals. “Well, I think I have something that will top the lions and anything else we’re going to see today.” Oldboy turned towards the catwalk, affectionately named death row, and held his hand out towards it. “King Silas, our saviour and quite a handsome man… has someone he’d like to introduce to us.”
The lights above Stadium turned red and blue, signalling the king was about to enter the arena. Then, as if someone had muted the world around me, the jovial cheering and clapping died down and a hushed silence took over.
Silas walked down the catwalk with a bundle in his arms. The king was dressed in his finest: a flowing black cape with the Legion’s carracat emblem on the back, black combat armour with the same emblem hand-painted on the chest, then black military fatigues and matching army boots. The baby hadn’t been forgotten either, the blanket he was wrapped in was black and blue.
There was a reason for this military attire. It was due to the future Silas had already laid out for the newborn. Kessler was destined for the military, just like Nero and Ceph. He was going to be raised in it and his training would start early. Eventually the boy may even become the Imperial Commander like Nero would soon be. All of this really depended on Nero and what he wanted. Since my brute chimera brother was going to become immortal like all of first gen, he may not want to be the leader of the only military in the world for the rest of his existence.
Silas nodded to Oldboy and took the microphone from him. He smiled at the audience, and the brightness in his eyes showed me he was soaking in and loving the reactions he was getting from the hushed and awed crowd.
“I would like Skyfall to meet its newest prince,” he said. “This is Kessler Titus Dekker. He is a brute intelligence chimera and one day this little boy may be running the Legion. He’s going to be smart, tough-as-nails, and will be a force that no man will want to cross. Much like my beloved Nero.” Silas glanced up at the skybox and the audience in Stadium did as well. I couldn’t see it from the angle I was at, but I could imagine Nero was giving all of them shiteater grins and doing something obnoxious or idiotic.
“He’s just a little thing now, but as we’ve seen… my chimeras grow quickly.” Silas handed the microphone back to Oldboy and removed the blanket that was wrapped around Kessler. As the crowd began to roar and cheer, he gently held the boy up for all of the stadium to see; Kessler himself wide awake and taking in the roaring crowd with a perplexed expression. Not once had a baby cried while Silas was doing this. I was never sure why, but I suspected that we were probably just stunned and confused by all of the noise around us. It had become a tradition amongst the family, Nero called it ‘the Lion King thing’.
Silas lowered the baby, the crowd still cheering and applauding the little newborn, then Silas wrapped him back up, said a few unimportant things, and exited the arena.
And now it was time for the bloodshed. This is why I was down here. I needed my mind taken off of the recent spark of comments from my brothers and my sister.
It was when Lietch, the man responsible for delivering the condemned, was bringing out the first convict, that I felt a little hand slip into mine. I looked down and saw that it was Jack, the boy smiling shyly up at me.
“You can see a lot better from the skybox. Why did you decide to wander down here?” I asked. I picked him up so he could see better; I was a little over six-foot-four now and was regularly used by the smaller children as a lookout tower.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, his tone just as shy as his smile. He then leaned his head against my shoulder, something that sparked several women in the lower bleachers to aww. I ignored them. “Why did you wander down here?”
How was I supposed to answer that? It wasn’t like I was going to tell him the real reason so I decided to go with the second one. “I like seeing the bad guys get justice,” I explained to him. I settled for making this into a teaching moment. “If a Skyfaller hurts another arian, or does something to make Skyfall not safe, they should be punished. Remember, the rest of the world, the people and cities you see on TV, it’s all gone now. The only city that remains is Skyfall, which Master Silas worked very hard to rebuild. So since it’s a privilege to live here, and they should be thankful, if they break King Silas’s laws there is a grave punishment.”
Jack absorbed this. I could see his five-year-old brain processing this information. Probably not understanding the majority of it, but then again, I remember understanding a lot at that age.
But then his brow furrowed and he looked troubled.
“What is it?” I asked.
Jack hesitated, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Is killing animals bad?”
“Well, it depends,” I said. “We kill animals for food, just like these convicts will be used for food. If you’re starved and need to eat, it is alright.” Then I added for Silas’s sake. “Except cats. Master Silas will cut off your hands if you hurt a cat.”
Jack smiled and laughed. “No, I like cats,” he said. But then his smile disappeared. “What if someone hurt
s animals because he likes it?”
Well, that was an interesting question. It wasn’t anything that alarmed me however, given the rather bloodthirsty nature of Nero, and similar traits we were already seeing in some of the younger ones. Jack had actually bit a mouse in half when he was two, and I also had that incident with the hamsters. “Well, it depends, Jack. If the animal is a small vermin, like a mouse or a rat. It’s fine. But bigger animals like pet dogs and cats; they’re domestic animals and are to be treated with kindness. If you ever want to hurt one, you’re to restrain yourself and tell me or Master Silas.”
“Oh, I’d never hurt pets. I love pets. I love our pets the most,” he said earnestly. Then he looked around the noisy stadium and whispered in my ear. “Do you know what guts look like?”
I closed my eyes for a second and resisted a sigh. This child had always been the weirdest of the second generation. “Yes, I do.”
“Can I tell you a secret? Promise not to tell anyone?”
“Okay, I promise.” This should be good.
Then he whispered quickly in my ear, “I like trapping mice and rats in the basement… then I stab them and I kill them, then I cut them open and I make pretty paintings with their guts and their blood.”
“Do you now?” I said. How… creative of him.
Jack pulled away from my ear and nodded, his black eyes grave and serious. “I like all the different shades of red and I like… I like… hearing them scream and watching them die. And I like making different arts.”
“Art, you wouldn’t say arts,” I corrected. “Well, as long as you clean up afterwards and you’re not leaving such projects in the basement for the poor maintenance sengils to stumble upon… you’re welcome to continue. But you’ll not kill anything besides rodents, am I understood?”
The boy looked relieved. It seems that this was something he’d been worrying about. “Thank you, Master Elish,” he said and he laid his head back onto my shoulder. “I was worried I’d get found out and sent to Stadium.”
I was about to tell him he didn’t have to worry about that, but behind me I picked up the sounds of familiar steps. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Silas walking down the hallway, the thiens guarding the doors both bowing lowly to him.
“Master Silas,” I said and bowed too. It was then I heard the background music of Stadium begin to play, and the distinct pleas of a convict who knew he was going to be killed in the most gruesome way possible.
Silas smiled at me, but his eyes then went to Jack. “You’ll never have to worry about going to Stadium, little love.” He stroked Jack’s silver hair away from his eyes, a prideful smile on his face. “My chimeras can kill whoever or whatever they want. You’re not a normal arian, my diligo, you’re a chimera and a prince. You’re above all laws.”
I disliked him telling the boy this. The fact that we were above the laws of the world was something we explained to the children once they were older, old enough to understand that this power shouldn’t be abused.
Jack’s eyes widened. “Wow,” he whispered. The boy seemed awed by this. But a second later, our attention was turned when the spectrum of lights dotting the arena like prism rainbows, suddenly turned deep red. This signaled the spectators that a kill was about to happen.
The three of us turned and watched the scene that had been happening behind us.
And it was quite the scene.
The Gladiator, who was dressed in a special piece of combat armour, one that protected him but not enough to make it unfair, had the convict on the ground with his army boot firmly planted on his chest. The convict in question was bleeding profusely from the mouth and one of his eye sockets had been shattered.
Behind me I heard Nero’s steps but ignored my brother so I wouldn’t miss the bloodbath. My attention remained on the scene as the Gladiator motioned to the crowd to cheer louder.
I decided to put Jack on my shoulders so he could see better, and the boy began to cheer enthusiastically. The Gladiator looked in our direction and smiled, and I realized I recognized who it was.
It was Vinski Romanoff, the greywaster immigrant I’d met ten years ago, after convincing him to turn on his fellow greywasters and murder them for money. He’d told me offhandedly that he was wanting to join the Legion, and I’d directed him to the Skyland base.
Apparently, Mr. Romanoff had done quite well for himself. The man with the brown-haired buzz cut and pale eyes, now had a build that was almost as impressive as Nero’s, and if he was good enough to become one of Torren’s Gladiators, he’d obviously risen up the ranks in the ten years since I’d seen him.
Jack gasped and let out a squeak when Vinski drew a hunting knife from his belt. He held it up into the air, and as the blade shone in the red glow, the convict began to plea for his life.
The convict’s pleas got louder with the crowd’s bloodthirsty cheers, but of course the begging fell on deaf ears. The Gladiator gave the surrounding audience one last showy smile, then he plunged the blade into the convict’s chest.
The convict fell to his knees and screamed a gurgled scream. Vinski then sliced the man’s chest open, the sounds of the bones snapping easily heard over the screaming. Those low-toned noises always seemed to have their own frequency.
I smiled to myself when I saw the blood spill out of the wound and down the man’s greying chest, then I inhaled a large breath and was content to smell the blood that was heavily saturating the air. The smell of blood I loved, but the aroma of it was elevated to an entirely new level when it was in large amounts. It was a guilty pleasure of mine, and it made my mouth water.
The audience exploded when Vinski held up the convict’s heart. He stood up over the man, now dead, and took a bow as the people who surrounded him cheered and filled the room with a low but powerful roar.
But he wasn’t done. To our shared surprise, Vinski began walking towards us, heart in hand. He smiled as he approached us, but I realized his eyes were looking past our small group.
I glanced over and realized Nero had snuck in unnoticed. My brother was grinning at Vinski, and amusingly, he almost looked shy.
Vinski jumped up onto the chain-link fence, and with his showy smile, he leaned down and offered the still-warm organ to my brother. “For you, my handsome prince,” he said with a wink.
Nero’s already shy grin deepened. I believe he was blushing too. “Thank you, Gladiator,” he said, his cheeks reddening like a school girl’s. I would never let him live this one down. “Good work out there.”
The spectators loved this as well. Vinski jumped down off of the fence, the permeated aroma of the blood now a hundred times greater with the twitching heart in my brother’s hand, and with one last smirking look behind his shoulders, he walked back towards the arena to soak in his accolades.
Nero looked at me and Silas with his blushing grin. He was absolutely giddy. “Did you see that?” he hissed through his smiling face. He looked down at the heart and let out an excited squeak. “I got a present. I’m so fucking special.”
Silas laughed which made me smile. When Silas was happy, the family was happy. “Your last boyfriend was that horrible little twink you practically fucked in half. Perhaps it is time you go back to the military brats.” He touched my arm, signalling for me to follow him, and the three of us began walking back into the building. I, however, had to take Jack off of my shoulders, all chimera children had had to endure sore faces from us accidently letting them smack into door frames. It was occasionally inconvenient being so tall.
“Really? You’re not going to torture me first before you let me date him?” Nero said, still grinning. “Can you imagine what he’s like in the sack? That’s why I have your permission, ain’t it? You want us to tag team you, Kingy?”
“What’s tag team? Can I tag team?” Jack asked.
“Not until you’re older, love,” Silas said back.
“Speaking of older…” I put a hand on Nero’s shoulder, spotting something interesting in his mohawk. I smirke
d and grabbed the small silver strand of hair, and quickly yanked it out of Nero’s head.
I held up the strand. “You’re going grey, old man,” I said with a chuckle. “I suppose we wouldn’t know if premature greying run in the family, would we?”
“No fucking way!” Nero gasped. He held the back of his head with his hand and peered closer at the hair. “I have a fucking grey hair? What the fuck, Kingy? You make us demigods but you can’t take out the premature greying gene? You dick.”
When Nero outstretched his hand to collect the assaulting hair, I glanced to Silas to see if he was finding this just as amusing as me.
But Silas wasn’t smiling. My master was staring at Nero’s hand, his face the colour of a corpse.
“What’s… what’s wrong, Master?” I put Jack down onto the ground and walked to him.
Silas took a step back and his hand raised to his mouth. He cupped it, then turned and quickly sped down the hallway.
“That was weird,” Nero said.
“Yeah…” I said. I debated following him but decided it would be best to let him get back to Alegria. If he was in a sensitive state, there was a high chance he was going to lose it on one of us, and I didn’t want that to happen in view of the public. I was also the PR manager for the royal family and it wouldn’t be good if they saw Silas in such a way. It would be better for him and Skyfall if I let him get back to the comforts of Alegria. I’d talk to him then.
I gathered up the family once the last convict had gotten their justice and we were driven home in the limo. Once we were in Alegria, I sent the little chimeras off with the sengils, and then Garrett, Nero, and I took the elevator up to Silas’s apartment.
We found Silas in the sitting room, a room tucked into the right-hand corner when you first entered into the apartment. It was made to look like a small nook with bookshelves that separated it from the rest of the apartment, and inside a couch and four chairs were situated around an electric fireplace.
