by Quil Carter
We smoked in silence. I wouldn’t tell the boy, but the fact that he was silent and not trying to force me to talk told me a lot about his personality. It seemed that once again Silas had done a good job matching me with my future sengil.
It was I who ended up breaking the silence, and it wasn’t until I was on my third cigarette and he had accepted a second.
I looked over at the boy. I saw him staring down at his cigarette, a distant look on his face. “Why are you here?” I asked him.
Loren’s pulse jumped, like an animal being spooked by a strange noise. He glanced over at me, then his eyes, a dark brown, fixed back onto his cigarette. “He… he’d been visiting me a lot over the past few months. F-Finn had,” Loren admitted. “Training me on some of your quirks… the things you liked and didn’t. I wanted to go to his funeral but Headmaster Harris said it wouldn’t be appropriate considering I was… supposed to be your sengil.” He put emphasis on supposed to be.
Then I saw his lips disappear into his mouth, and his eyes became hard. “I understand if you don’t want me to be… I only wish for you to tell me so I can find another job.”
I sighed. “Another dramatic one… great,” I mumbled.
Loren’s dark brown eyes, the colour of coffee, looked at me and he bristled. I found it amusing to see the small kitten puffing up at me. I knew from his heartbeat that it was just a front however; I believe I’d hurt his feelings.
~
They really really hate being called dramatic.
~
“My apologies, Master Elish,” Loren said, his tone curt but his voice wobbling and raising in octave with every word. “I’ll leave.” And he began to get up.
“Did I not tell you to sit?” I said.
Loren sniffed again, then sat back down on the concrete rim of the fountain.
I was annoyed with this boy already. I didn’t like his dramatic attitude, but I wasn’t stupid and I did know teenagers enough to know he was just misplacing his feeling like all the idiot teenagers did. Once he was inside of my apartment, his real nature would come out, not this dramatic, awkward creature who seemed to want to be near me, yet at the same time, wanted to run as far away from me as he could.
Honestly, I wished to smack him upside the head and tell him to stop acting like an imbecile, but once I remembered who he was, and who I was, I put that aside.
I was his master, even if I wasn’t anywhere near ready for a new sengil, and as his master… it was my responsibility to tend to his needs – even if those needs were ones I wasn’t ready to provide yet.
Then the boy surprised me. He blew the smoke out of his mouth slowly, then said in a subdued tone. “I know I can never be him,” he said quietly. “I don’t even want to try… but I hope I can still be good enough for you, Master Elish.”
I dashed my cigarette, grateful for the warm opiate rush numbing the feelings of loss inside of me.
“You’ll do fine, Loren,” I said. “Finn… stopped being my sengil years ago. It is best you never compare yourself to him.” I rose, but when I turned to make my way back to Alegria, I saw Headmaster Harris walking down the stairs. “Why don’t you tell him you’ll be staying with me from now on.” A look of disbelief, with hints of joy, came to his face, and for the first time, I saw him smile. “He can do his foolish little handing off ceremony once I feel the need to attend such things. Say your goodbye, I hope Finn taught you how to make my tea.”
Loren’s smile grew. He stood shyly in front of me and scratched the back of his neck. “He… he did,” he said, his attitude doing a complete one-eighty. “I’ll be right back, just one moment.” The boy bounded off after that, running like a dog who’d just gotten its favourite Frisbee thrown.
And as I watched him run off, practically skipping like the weird, idiot boy I’d soon realize Loren was… I shook my head, and let out an exasperated sigh.
A worker at Autumnhome came an hour after Loren and I had returned to the apartment with all of Loren’s things. The boy didn’t have much, just a suitcase full of clothes since the boys in Autumnhome wore uniforms, and two boxes full of his personal items. It wasn’t difficult for me to give him Finn’s old bedroom, since Finn had never really used that room anyway. Julian had reappeared and had offered to help me pack the few non-personal belongings in that room and soon we were helping Loren put away his affects.
“There’s a lot of… cooking things in this bag,” Julian said. He was looking into a reinforced brown box and when I glanced into it I saw it was full of spices, kitchen utensils, and recipe books.
Loren’s cheeks reddened. “I love to cook,” he said with a nervous laugh. “It’s my passion. I made a list of all of the things I learned that you liked, Master Elish. I thought I could deliver you lunches too, so you don’t always have to order from a restaurant.” He caught himself however. “Only if you want though. You probably like restaurant food… it was just a thought.”
Julian sighed and shook his head. “Already under the control of the blond demigod,” he said with a smile. “I might ask Silas if I can get myself a sengil. Loren… did you have any other Lorens in the running to be Elish’s sengil. Or just you? I could always adopt the rejects, since I was one myself.”
“There was another one,” Loren said. He was putting away clothes in his new walk-in closet. His taste wasn’t as colourful as Finn’s had been. There was no neon pink underwear, no splashes of bright colours that would have me shaking my head. “But he got dismissed when he was eleven. Turned out he was straight! At least that won’t happen anymore with Silas’s new breeding program.”
I looked up from the spice box. “Breeding program?” I repeated.
Loren seemed surprised I didn’t know, and in truth, I was a bit surprised I didn’t know. “Yeah, after what happened with Julian… and the unavoidable issue of some sengils not having the right sexual orientation… Silas has begun creating templates for the chimeras’ sengils. I overheard him speaking to Headmaster Harris about it. Skytech is going to create babies specifically tailored for each chimera and put them into Edgeview or another orphanage until it’s time for them to go to Autumnhome. My group is the last natural born apparently.”
I hadn’t heard of that at all. Interesting. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. Silas obviously didn’t think I had a say in what type of boy I wanted to have as a sengil… but that being said, it seemed Silas already knew my type.
“Interesting,” I said. “I’ve been busy with other Skytech projects; I must’ve missed the announcement.” Loren was seventeen which meant my sengil was either not born yet, or a newborn. The ages that our sengils retired at varied between chimera to chimera. I had originally wanted thirty to thirty-two which I believe I would stick with. Nero had talked about retiring his at twenty-eight since he never did like Keela being the same age as him, but who knows what it would be with Wyatt. Garrett never cared he just liked having a permanent friend and lover around. It interested me that there were other children being created in steel mothers right now, I was under the impression we only had five of them. But, then again, the embryos of the created sengils could easily be implanted in a female, Silas just never wanted that for chimeras.
“Headmaster Harris was happy about it,” Loren went on. “He always feels bad for the rejected sengils; it’s so difficult for them. I remember when Silas told the other sengil that he was going to be a worker instead of a personal sengil. He cried, didn’t understand that it was for the best.” Loren shrugged a shoulder, but then his eyes lit up when he saw what Julian was holding. “That’s my notebook full of recipes!” He walked over and the two of them became engrossed looking through it.
It seemed like he would fit in at least. It was difficult, but I knew that it was going to be difficult for a while. I would continue taking it one day at a time. The salve on my wounds would be the day we razed the Jackson compound and I saw the entire family get slaughtered in front of me.
That night, after Loren had gone to b
ed in his separate bedroom, I sat on the couch with Julian. My friend was staring at me with a nervous look, and he had every right to have one… because I was preparing myself a dose of heroin.
“Elish…”
“You promised you wouldn’t say anything, that’s the only reason I’ve allowed you to spend the night,” I said to him without even glancing up. I was doing the powdered heroin that was called China White. Silas wouldn’t like the fact that I was doing this, especially since I didn’t ask permission, but this went beyond what Silas wanted. That being said, I had decided to allow Julian to stay with me while I did it. Solely because I was inexperienced, and even though I felt the dark whispers to overdose myself, I didn’t want to traumatize my new sengil by having him find my dead body in the morning.
“I know, and I’m not saying anything…” Julian said, a nervous hitch in his voice. “I just… it’s weird seeing you cutting up drugs. You’re the cleanest guy I know… especially considering your brothers and Silas are drug fiends.”
I continued cutting up the white powder, using my new black card that had been implemented a couple years ago. The black card system was the same as Interact before the Fallocaust, an electronic system that automatically charged our purchases to a single bank account at the Skyfall Mint. We no longer had to carry around cash and Silas could also keep a closer eye on our purchases. Apollo and Artemis had actually been the masterminds behind the black card system; Silas had given them the task, and with the help of a small team and Garrett watching over them, they’d created it within two months. Every chimera of adult age now had a black card, a card made out of shiny black stainless steel with our full name below and a set of numbers. Every place of business now accepted these black cards; they’d write down the numbers and our name and that would be all we had to do. Apollo and Artemis at first wanted us to be required to sign the receipt, but Silas scoffed at the idea and declared that no shop in existence would try to rip off the Crown, which he was right about.
“Well, I need it tonight,” I said to Julian, the card tap tap tapping against the marble coffee table. I made two piles then slid the card over to Julian and picked up a metal sniffer that Nero had an abundance of. “You can partake if you want.”
“I think I’ll pass… I’ll just have a couple lines of OxyContin,” Julian said, still sounding nervous. “I… I’m worried about you, my lion.”
I leaned down and sniffed the white powder in my nose, then leaned back on the couch. Julian was silent as I let the drugs hit me, the opiate warmth rushing through my body. So much more potent than the cigarettes, and a satisfying bitter taste dripped down my throat.
My eyes closed and I tasted the corner edges of heaven. It relaxed me, from the top of my head, all the way down to my toes. And not only that, the physical rush was only one small part of it, the important affect came when a thin blanket was draped over my troubled, grieving mind, and the edges of my sorrow were sanded off.
It was… exactly what I needed; the relief was so overwhelming I almost sighed with a deep relief. I don’t know what I would do without these drugs, or some sort of medical aid to help me on this long lonely journey of grieving. Perhaps I would’ve just drunk myself into a stupor… I didn’t know.
After an unknown amount of time, I felt Julian sit down beside me. And because I was drugged up and enjoying the tight blanket of warmth holding me in its opiate grasp, when Julian put an arm around me and drew me close to him, I allowed myself the physical company. This went on for quite a while as I escaped inside of my own head. There was an insurmountable relief inside of me that my head was finally uncluttered, that the bees nest had been submerged and my thoughts were no longer racing.
Eventually my eyes opened, and I began tapping the black card against more powder. Julian made an unhappy noise in his throat. “More?” he said. “Are you sure?”
“If you’re going to keep making comments like this, you should just leave,” I said back, even though I didn’t want him to leave. Tonight, I realized, I didn’t want to be alone.
I think I just didn’t want to be alone in general.
“Well, I’m not going to leave… so I guess I should just shut up,” Julian said. I inhaled two more lines and leaned back onto the couch, and I let my eyes droop and the drugs sweep me away to a place I felt like I could stay forever.
This time when my consciousness began to return to me, I was surprised to find my head on Julian’s lap. He was brushing my hair back, the feeling of his touch sending low tremors of pleasure through my body. I liked the feeling, so I didn’t tell him to stop, instead I watched the television, the volume on low, and gave myself to this unique sensation.
Eventually his fingers gently traced along my hairline, then travelled down to my neck and my shoulders, he began brushing them against my arm, then back up to my head.
Some time later, I heard him sigh, then there was a whisper under his breath. “I’m still in love with you,” he said. “I wish I had the nerve to tell you that when you were awake.”
I then heard him sniff, and the hand stroking my hair began to tremble lightly. “It kills me sometimes… knowing you’ll never love me back.”
I wanted to say something, but I realized right away that I was too stoned, too deep inside of my own world. Instead, his words bounced off of the closed gate that surrounded me, and this time when I closed my eyes, they didn’t open until hours later, when Julian himself had fallen asleep.
There was white powder under his nose, and a metal sniffer resting beside his leg.
CHAPTER 63
I stood in the door frame of the cockpit and looked out into the greywastes in front of me. We were high in the sky with three Falconers, including the one that was carrying me and my family, and three CF-188 Hornets, a versatile fighter aircraft that had been used in the Second Cold War, the one that would trigger the Fallocaust.
Yes, it was a bit overkill, especially considering Nero had five hundred legionary soldiers on the ground, closing in on the Jackson family compound and a town several miles away called Cormorant. But Silas was neurotic about his family staying safe, he wanted the Jackson family dead since I insisted on touring the carnage myself once Nero was done with them.
Apparently, Nero, the Imperial Commander, or the Imperial General as he was also called, took great umbrage at the thought that greywasters had the idea that they could outmatch the strength of the greatest military force on the planet. So perhaps he also was the reason why the Jackson family was about to be taken down by jet fighters.
Below us, I could see the compound which was an old military base about a hundred miles from Skyfall. It was nothing spectacular, just a bunch of grey buildings surrounded by broken roads and black trees, but with a concrete wall that appeared to be half-built. I would bet my life that I had been the one paying for that wall; I also knew I would’ve paid for the military equipment that the Jackson family would be using to bring down the Legion.
“Ready the Hornets,” Nero said. He was flying the Falconer with one hand, and the other was holding the cb radio’s microphone to his mouth. “We have the target in sight.”
“Ready,” a crackly voice spoke over the cb radio.
“Ready.” “Ready,” a second and a third said. One of them was my sister (or the stupid lucky bitch according to Nero, who had lost the rock, paper, scissors that determined who’d get to fly one of the Hornets). Nero cackled to himself, making Silas, who was sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, smile, and I watched as the three Hornets flew ahead of the Falconer, then dipped down towards the military base.
“I can see the ground crew,” Ceph said, appearing behind me. Like the rest of us, Ceph was dressed in heavy combat armour, including a black helmet with the blue snarling carracat that was the Legion’s emblem. My combat armour had been custom made for me: a black reinforced bullet proof vest and shoulder guards, elbow guards and thick gloves, then black fatigues full of grenades, an ammo belt across my chest, knives on my belt, and o
n my back was an automatic rifle, whose name I had forgotten. We all also had black capes trimmed with midnight blue, the same legion emblem on the back. Only the family was allowed these capes, a sign of our status as royalty.
Silas had us armed to the teeth, and to be honest, I felt like a vengeful god in this get-up. I quite liked it, and my chest filled with pride over being able to avenge Finn’s death.
I watched the Hornets fly down to the compound, and smiled with my brothers and Silas as sparks of light and smoke appeared on the grey buildings below. The Hornets were opening fire, but the best was yet to come, as they swooped down to the compound, I saw black specks get released from the jet fighters, then an explosion of smoke and fire, followed by a low boom, was heard.
“And we have contact!” Nero exclaimed. “I need to get my guns out… I can’t just fly around useless. I want to shoot!” He dipped the Falconer and began heading towards the compound, explosion after explosion sending smoke and debris flying up into the air.
Silas made a nervous noise in his throat. “You’re getting too close, bellua…” he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled at him. I knew my smile would help change his mind, if he saw how happy this was making me… he’d be more inclined to let us fly closer to the compound. I didn’t want to be high up in the air and useless as the Legion massacred the Jackson’s. This was my doing, the Jackson family had strengthened under my watch, and I wanted to be there when, not only the mess was cleaned up, but when the family who had murdered Finn was wiped off of this grey earth.
There was also the small glaring detail of making sure no evidence of my underhanded dealings was ever found.
“He’ll make sure we don’t get close enough to be shot at,” I said to Silas. “Our danger will be minimal.” He frowned, but I rubbed his shoulder. “Please, my king? I want to see them burn.” Then I wanted to land in the middle of this smoking war zone and pick off the last of them myself. I wasn’t going to remain safe as the Legion fought my fight. I had to kill some, my bloodlust commanded it of me.
