by Quil Carter
There were workers everywhere too, most giving us nervous looks as the children crawled all over the bits and pieces of their rides. I knew that they were worried they’d be blamed if the children hurt themselves, but in this family, we had the simple philosophy of ‘We’ll tell you not to do it once, but if you do and you get hurt… it’s your own fault’. This belief had worked out quite well; Valentine once had a habit of standing on a bar stool and making it rock violently back and forth with his feet.
Guess who doesn’t do that anymore?
“Can you imagine Elish in one of those rides?” Julian teased. He grabbed onto my other bicep and together Silas and Julian clung to me like leeches. “He’d just be sitting on it with that unimpressed cold look as everyone else cheered and laughed. I swear he thinks having fun hurts or something.”
“Mmhm,” I said. I could see Finn to Silas’s right, not looking happy at all that I was the butt of their jokes. It was certainly nice to have him in my corner. He didn’t gang up on me like the others.
“He’s so serious,” Silas said with a cluck of his tongue. “He was like that as a child too, you know. He was such a grown up little man, and the complex little thoughts he had. It was quite precious.”
My jaw locked at that comment. If today wasn’t such a good day for me, I would’ve started something with Silas. He knew, just like all the others, that I didn’t like them discussing me when I was a child. My childhood had been filled with torment at the hands of King Silas, and I hated how that, as time went on, Silas seemed to forget about what he’d done to me.
He’d never mentioned the horrible abuse that had gone on during my upbringing. Whenever the topic of our childhoods came up, he happily glossed over the torment and the torture and only mentioned the happy events.
It made my blood boil, but to point this out to Silas would set us back, and I had learned years ago that confronting Silas just did not work.
So I passively destroyed him.
“Look, Master Silas! Look!”
We all turned to see Ludo in the process of trying to climb the track that the buckets of the Zipper ride (which was basically like the Ferris wheel on meth) would be attached to. The boy, with silvery-coloured eyes and black hair, was a good fifteen feet up into the air, a swarm of distraught workers underneath him glancing up.
“Very nice, lovely boy,” Silas called up to him. “But how are you going to climb down?”
Ludo’s smile faded. He looked down at the ground and suddenly it seemed he realized how far he was up. The boy clung to the metal rungs that connected the tall oblong-shaped track, and let out a faint, but audible, whimper.
Silas waved at him. “Hurry up now, love. You wouldn’t want to walk home by yourself, would you? Dzunukwa will get you.”
The rest of us chuckled. Silas had been reading the children old aboriginal stories centered around the natives who inhabited this area long before the Fallocaust. One of them was about a giant woman who lived in the woods. She would pick up children who’d strayed into the forest and put them into her basket, and then she’d take them back to her house, put melted pitch into their eyes to seal them, then smoke them over the fire to eat. Silas had taken great joy scaring the younger children with these tales, and it had helped make sure the boys didn’t stray too far from us during outings such as these. Silas had even gone as far as to tell the children that Dzunukwa lived in Skyfall and hid in abandoned buildings and alleyways waiting for them to walk by all alone.
Garrett gave an animated shiver. “I’m glad you didn’t tell us such stories when we were little,” he said, glancing around as if expecting the giant woman to be hiding behind one of the rides. “We lived surrounded by forest.”
Silas chuckled, but before he could say anything, his remote phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and glanced at the number.
He looked at the phone and became puzzled. “It’s… Nero’s remote phone,” he said with a furrowed brow. My heart dropped. “He said he was busy in Cardinalhall. I wonder what this could be about.”
I didn’t say anything, but inside the binds of apprehension were tightening around my chest. My thoughts ranged from Nero forgetting to call me instead of Silas, to it being Ivan calling as he stood over my dead brother.
Neither of these conclusions, or the dozen more I was being mentally bombarded with, were good ones, and as Silas held the phone up to his ear, I could only stare with the breath being snatched from my throat.
“Hello, love…” Silas’s voice faded, and his face paled.
The sounds from the world around me became muted, all eyes, all attention, was on Silas.
I’d killed my brother. I’d fucking killed my brother.
“Okay,” Silas said, his voice low and his eyes wide. “When will they be in Skyfall?” I allowed my heart to beat its extreme levels inside of my chest. There were no attempts to stop it, my brothers’ safety trumped my need for controlled calm. Every other instance I would remember myself, but not when it came to my first generation siblings.
“We’ll be waiting with Liam and Kirrel,” Silas said, and he hung up the phone.
For a moment that seemed like an immortal’s life time, Silas just stared at the remote phone.
When he finally spoke, his voice was against such silence it echoed throughout the park. Not even the children were talking, nor the workers assembling the carnival rides around us.
“Nero, Ceph, and a team of others ambushed Marcel’s men,” Silas said, there was nothing behind his voice, it was robotic. “They… they had a rocket launcher, one that had been reported missing months ago…”
“Is he alive?” Garrett cried, his hand covering his mouth. Behind him my younger siblings began making noises of fear and confusion, but when my hand rose, they quieted down.
“Yes,” Silas said. He was still staring at his phone, he hadn’t moved. “He’s burned, and he was shot. Ceph was shot as well… non-fatal. They lost… all but three men.” As Silas said this, his tone rose, his shoulders began to tremble and the phone slipped from his hand as that hand rose to his mouth. “My babies,” he choked, then he fell to his knees.
There was no guilt or horror inside of me, not yet, that would come later. Instead, my mind switched me to leader-mode, because I knew Silas wouldn’t be able to lead the family right now.
“You heard what Silas said,” I said to Garrett, Ellis was behind him looking the colour of tallow. “Garrett, get Liam. Kirrel isn’t trained enough to deal with such an emergency. Ellis, contact Talbot and have thiens guarding Alegria. Apollo and Artemis, you’re responsible for getting the children home.” I leaned down and encouraged Silas, who seemed to be in a state of shock, to stand, and when he did, I picked him up.
Then I turned to Jack who was standing by Valen, looking horrified. “Jack, pick up Silas’s remote phone and call the black car back for us.”
The young man nodded and grabbed Silas’s phone. I turned then and headed towards the edge of the park, where the car would be picking us up.
I could analyze the consequences of this later, for now, I had to take care of my family.
The Falconer landed above us just as the family was getting out of the black cars. Silas waited for no one and ran ahead. I instructed the others to get the children inside and I followed Silas.
The elevator up to the medical floor was a long one. Silas didn’t speak the entire time, but his composure had changed. Once again, the mental shapeshifter had stayed true to his name, Silas was glaring at the elevator doors, his fists locked and his shoulders knitted.
My first response to this, an automatic response for the last six years, was to comfort him. I put a hand on his shoulder and clenched it, his skin feeling like steel underneath my palm.
Still he said nothing, Silas didn’t even look at me. Once the doors opened to an explosion of frantic sound, Silas stalked through them, leaving me to stand in the elevator watching him leave.
When I went to follow however, Silas whirl
ed around, his eyes volcanic pits. “Stay,” he barked, as if I were a dog. Then he turned and walked into the medical room.
Anger rose above the sea of different feelings, and there it rooted itself and grew with every passing moment.
It would be in your best interest to treat me nicely, Silas Dekker, I said with venom. Lest I take away what I’d been nice enough to give you.
Like the obedient dog he expected me to be, I stayed in the hallway and took a seat in one of the several chairs lined up against the wall. I could hear Liam and Kirrel talking quickly to each other, and the voices of several others who must’ve been doctors too. I did also hear Silas’s voice, but it was quiet and easily drowned out.
How the hell did this happen? Was Nero that fucking incompetent that he couldn’t take out a handful of men on a bosen-pulled caravan? The answer, of course, was obvious. Ivan hadn’t only betrayed me by fleeing Skyfall before his last mission, the motherfucker had also robbed the personal armoury that I’d acquired for him and his family. Including that rocket launcher.
The man better be dead.
My jaw tightened. Yes, he better be dead, because now he knows that I sent the Imperial Commander after him. If he isn’t dead, I’ll have a grave problem on my hands. Not only would I have pissed off a family I’d personally helped become powerful, but I’d have pissed off a man who knew what my true motivations were.
Silas had known about the Skyfall Rebels and the Bratvas’ hatred for each other. But Silas, all of Skyfall rather, had thought the Skyfall Rebels were greywaster immigrant who had risen up to kill the Bratvas for giving other immigrants a bad name. They’d been hailed in the media as heroes and after some gentle urging, Silas had embrace the concept and had been quite content with the propaganda. The thien force had been instructed to let this family do as they will un-molested and everyone was happy. It was great for the Crown because the thiens were also involved in crushing the Bratvas, and the royal family’s approval rating was higher than it had been since the first generation was born.
Silas was under the impression this was still Marcel’s men and it had to stay this way. If they were all dead, my secret would be fine.
But if some escaped…
I would be busy, very busy. I will have to root out any man and woman that knew my secret and slit their throats in the cover of darkness. I would let no spiders to creep into my garden, the only spider allowed was me.
Oniks, however, would be allowed to live. She would be thankful for what I was going to do for her child. If I hadn’t had a guaranteed way of making sure Oniks kept my secret, her blood would be on the end of my knife.
Let’s just hope she’s understanding of her family’s slaughter. As it stands now, the Legion had every right to kill them. Ivan had a rocket launcher stolen from our armoury, and firing it on the Imperial Commander and his apprentice, both of them being princes…
The frantic sounds in the medical wing quieted down and all I could hear was low talking and the steady beeping of the machines that I assumed Nero and Ceph were hooked up to. No one came out yet, but twenty minutes after Silas left, when I was deep in my thinking, the elevator doors opened and Garrett, Ellis, and Apollo and Artemis came through them.
All four of them looked terrified. “Are they okay?” Garrett said in a timid voice drenched in worry.
I nodded and their tense bodies slacked with relief. “I haven’t heard anything,” I said to them. “But if Nero or Ceph were dead, I would’ve heard Silas.” Garrett and Ellis sat down beside me, and Apollo and Artemis stood to my left beside each other.
“I spoke with Zhou,” Ellis said. She ran her hands down her stressed face. “Elish, they think they knew about the ambush.”
I kept my composure, but inside I’d just torn out chunks of my own hair. “Interesting,” I said. “If they knew the Legion was going to attack them, that would explain the rocket launcher. Did General Zhou mention any survivors?”
“Nero ambushed them on top of a cliff face,” she explained. “There was forest and rock surrounding, but it appears they got all of them.”
I nodded, relief flooding me, but my face remained its cold calm. I needed to make sure that the entire Jackson family was gone from Skyfall, minus Oniks. If they were, I would be safe.
Our attention turned to the entrance when we heard Nero’s voice. It held none of the strength it usually did, but it wasn’t weak and helpless either. He was alive and speaking, that was a relief in itself.
But that relief was short-lived. While all of our eyes were fixed on the door, Silas burst through it like a bat out of hell…
… and his eyes were fixed on me.
“You!” he snarled. I rose as he stalked towards me, the first thought coming to my mind was that Nero had betrayed me, and Silas knew I was the one who sent my brothers on this apparent suicide mission.
Silas raised his hand and backhanded me across the face. I braced myself for it which was the only thing that kept me standing, but the second one did knock me off of my feet.
My brothers and sister became panicked, and when Silas kicked me in the ribs, knocking the wind out of me, I heard Garrett and Ellis plead with him to stop.
But I knew he wouldn’t stop. Silas knew, Nero had told him; Nero had sold me out, and I was going to be beat within an inch of my life… again.
All the years of working up trust with Silas, was now spiralling down the drain.
“He almost died because of you!” Silas screamed above me. I was kicked again and I felt tears drop onto my face and neck. “He could’ve died! They could’ve both died!” He started to sob, and the blows stopped. Then I saw him sink to his knees, tears streaming down his face.
“I can’t lose them,” he choked. A trembling hand cupped his mouth, his eyes orbs of agony that seemed too large for his head. “It’s not going to work, is it?”
I stared at him, confused and in a great deal of pain.
Silas screamed and hit me. “Thirty-two! They’re thirty-two. You’re thirty-two, Elish!” he cried. He kept hitting me, in the face, neck, shoulders. I didn’t understand what was going on. I don’t think… I think he’s upset for another reason. “You’re thirty-two. I’m going to bury my babies. I’m going to…”
Then I understood. Nero didn’t betray me… Silas was in turmoil because Nero wasn’t immortal. It was my and Perish’s task to learn how to make us immortal, and we were thirty-two now… and it still wasn’t done.
I knew Silas’s genetics inside and out. I’d studied his brain, also inside and out, but still… I still just couldn’t fucking succeed.
I’d succeeded in so many other facets of my life, but this one, arguably the most important, escaped me.
I struggled to my knees, but before I could stand, Silas put his arms around me and began to sob in my hold. I comforted him, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but I did, and watched the blood from my nose soak the shoulders of his green button-down.
“You’re not going to find a way, are you?” Silas croaked, his voice a high-pitched whine.
“I will,” I whispered to him. “I’ll find a way.”
“I’m going to bury you…” His voice was a feather lost in the wind, blowing this way and that, waiting for someone to snatch it out of the air and hold it tight. That person was me; this was my job now, even though my brain boiled in my skull from his actions.
Comfort him on the outside, hate him in the security of shadows.
“You won’t,” I whispered. It had become silent around me, each sibling standing around us, seeing this display in its raw form. I wondered in the beginning if they thought I’d gone insane. Even if they did, I could never tell them different.
Six years later and I was safe, my mind intact with not even a veiled threat from Silas for him to activate those implants. And most importantly, six years and he’d never laid a hand on my Finn.
My pride was his to crush, but I regained that pride in secret. Silas was mine to control – all of Skyfall
was mine to control.
And right now, more than ever, I had to make sure that control was absolute.
After I’d calmed Silas down, I was able to accompany Silas into the medical room. I saw my two brothers lying on hospital beds beside each other. Ceph was awake but groggy with his arm heavily bandaged and his combat armour lying in a dusty pile beside his bed, and Nero’s head and neck were bandaged, and what skin was still exposed was covered in burns and abrasions.
Nero’s eyes opened when I approached. He tried to smile but there was a red burn on his lips, to the point where there was a blister forming on one corner. “Hey, Eenie Meenie,” he rasped. “Those rebels had a rocket launcher. They’re not as fun to have around when they’re on the opposite side.”
I frowned, anger and guilt fighting bare knuckle against each other. “Did you leave any for me?” I asked. “Or were you selfish and left me no one to get revenge upon?”
Nero tried to laugh, but it was weak and dry. “I think I got all of them, puppy,” he said. “There were a lot of explosions, lots of smoke and ash, but we won… I killed the big one, I saw that.”
The clawed hand that had been squeezing my heart released and relief flooded me like new blood was getting pumped into my veins. “Good,” I said. “You succeeded in your mission then. I’ll clean away the rest of the rebels and have Skyfall rid of them once and for all.”
“Yes,” Silas said behind me. He appeared on the opposite side of Nero’s bed and he laid a gentle hand on Nero’s head. “No more rebels versus rebels. I want the Bratva dead, and if the Skyfall Rebels don’t disperse, they’ll be in Stadium.” There could be no better thing for him to have said, that was perfect. “I don’t need those parasites approval bad enough to leave Skyfall’s problems to filthy rebels. Fuck approval ratings. No propaganda. No more Bratvas. No more rebels. I want an announcement tomorrow that the game is up.”
I nodded along with Silas’s barely coherent rant. He was saying what I wanted him to say, that was what was important. “Yes, Master,” I said. My body was throbbing with pain and my nose dripping blood. I hated him even more in that moment. “There will be no more rebels in Skyfall a week from this day. Once the birthday festivities are over, my full concentration will be on making my brothers and my sister immortal. If it is your wish, I’ll take a leave of absence from the council and my other duties.”
