by Joel Ohman
He was easily as big as Grigor, but he moved like a much smaller man. He lifted a battle-ax into the air and gestured to the crowd, soaking in their applause. Charley heard an announcer say the word “czar” quite distinctly.
Grigor, Hank, and Orson arrived at Charley’s side, their eyes glued to the imposing figure. Orson spoke first. “What the—”
“That’s your dad?” Hank asked. “Why didn’t you tell us that he was … like this? I thought he was an old man.”
Orson’s mouth hung open. “I did, too …”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Grigor questioned. “This is like an entirely new person.”
The warrior turned from the applause of the crowd to face them. He lifted his visor, revealing dark eyes that distinctly resembled Orson’s. “Hello, son.”
Orson started visibly. “I—what—it’s really you?”
“It’s really me.”
“What—what happened to you?”
“Never mind that. Why are a bunch of High Scores, not to mention a former Commander of Meritropolis, on top of my volcano, pretending to be Low Scores?”
Charley swallowed. So much for the element of surprise.
Orson’s face whitened. “I—I just—”
The czar whirled, took two quick steps, and stamped on the exposed fingertips of a fast-climbing Circumcellion attempting to lift himself onto the summit. With a scream that ended abruptly, the fingers disappeared from view. Another grimy face appeared, peering over the edge with eyes wide. He was instantly met with a boot to the face. The czar then turned to his vulcodile, lifted his hand like a master falconer, and motioned with his fingers. With a screech the enormous creature flapped along the edge of the summit, tearing climbers off the rock with its razor-sharp talons, before dropping them to plummet to their deaths.
Turning back, the czar looked directly at Orson. “Pardon me, you were saying?”
Charley watched Orson closely. He squirmed, his face contorting into the shame of a small child caught stealing from the cookie jar. A surprising wave of sympathy washed over Charley. “I’m sorry, Father. I—” Orson managed to stammer. He lowered his head, not meeting his father’s eyes. “I just—”
“Enough!” the czar roared, taking a step forward, his armor jangling. “I don’t want to hear excuses and lies! The emperor has told me all about your misguided plans.” The czar gestured behind him, and Emperor Titus appeared with a flourish from behind a large black rock.
He looked directly at Charley, eyes cold. “I do love a dramatic entrance. Come on, did you really think you could throw a spear at me and get away with it? The lot of you would have been dead long ago, but I thought the czar might appreciate me serving you up on a silver platter.”
The emperor curled his fingers lazily in the air, as if summoning a butler to fluff his pillow, and a cadre of heavily armed and armored Meritorium Honor Guard marched into formation behind him, flanking the four High Scores.
Charley felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He shouldn’t be surprised: the emperor had double-crossed his own double-cross.
The czar spat a thick stream of viscous fluid onto the ground and coughed. His eyes bored into Orson. “You lost Meritropolis, and then you set out to find me with these nobodies?” He waved a hand at Charley, Hank, and Grigor. “And now you, what? You want to confront me about something? Is that it?”
Orson dropped his head, his shoulders slumping.
“You hate the System now, too? The same System that kept you alive?” The czar’s eyes burned a strange shade of red. He looked from Charley to Hank to Grigor. “The same System that kept all of you alive.”
Heat flushed up the back of Charley’s neck, sending tendrils of fiery flame licking upward. His vision clouded over, the familiar darkness vice-gripping his head, controlling him, pushing him. He couldn’t refuse to act anymore than he could stop his heart from beating.
“The System killed my brother.” Charley took a step forward, his limbs crackling with rage. “The System stole everyone I loved.” His voice rose. “The System stole our humanity and reduced us to animals.”
The czar turned slowly to face him. He tipped his head to one side, as if deciding whether Charley was worth the trouble. “I don’t know who your brother is.” He enunciated each word very slowly. “And I don’t care.”
The firing pin clicked; the mushroom cloud blossomed; lightning sizzled through Charley’s brain, and magma erupted through his veins. He stepped forward stiffly. “Alec,” he said quietly, his lip curling. “His name was Alec.”
The czar unslung the battle-ax from his shoulder, his eyes never leaving Charley. “I have no idea who you’re talking about, but I’m not sorry for your loss. I stand by every decision of the System—my System.” He lifted his chin. “If the System said your brother had to die, then he not only had to die, he deserved to die.”
“No one deserves to die just because they have a low Score, just because you deem they aren’t useful.” Charley took another step forward. “But you deserve to die for what you’ve done.” His voice quavered. “You deserve it.”
The czar strode forward. “I’m tiring of this conversation. We all make sacrifices, for the good of us all.” He stopped and glared down at the top of Orson’s head. “Son, look at me. Now!” He slammed his battle-ax into the ground, so that it stuck in at an angle. “I want you to see this.”
Orson lifted his head slowly, his hair falling in front of his glistening eyes.
The czar shook his head. “You disgust me.” He lifted his hands to his helmet and slowly peeled the faceplates away in sections.
Orson’s eyes widened, and he fell to his knees. Grigor and Hank tugged back on his shoulders to keep him from falling.
Charley, meanwhile, took two quick steps backward, and he heard something like a small moan come from the direction of the emperor and the clanking of armor as the Meritorium Honor Guard collectively collapsed inward.
“What have you done?” Orson asked.
The czar threw the pieces of his helmet on the ground, and lifted his head with pride. Long dark hair, thick like Orson’s, coated the top of an immensely broad forehead, from which sprouted two bull horns. Charley had thought that the horns were a decorative element of the helmet, but now he saw clearly they were a part of him. His face was reddish-black, coated in sleek fur, and had the wild, red-eyed grotesque features of a bion.
“I am the first animal-human combination!” he bellowed, nostrils snorting. “I told you we all have to make sacrifices for the good of us all, and look at me.” He rolled over his forearm, revealing a Score of 211. “Look—the highest Score ever.”
Charley remembered when he had thought his Score of 153 in Meritropolis was high. He frowned, not able to stop from asking out loud: “You—you experimented on yourself?”
“That’s right. Of course these weren’t the first human experiments we’ve done—far from it. In fact—” a wicked smile played across his garishly animalistic features—“that anger you feel inside, that aggressiveness, do you think that’s natural? I wouldn’t be so quick to judge if I were you—maybe you’re more of an animal than you realize.”
Charley faltered, stepping sideways and stumbling before catching himself. Had he understood the czar correctly? The rage, the uncontrollable fire inside of him every time he thought about Alec, that was just the result of some kind of science experiment in Meritropolis? Had he been engineered to be aggressive like the animal combos? He looked at the czar, a haughty smirk plastered across his humanoid face.
The czar was a monster; Charley was nothing like him. Only now he wasn’t so sure.
“You experimented on us? In Meritropolis?”
“Not all of you, just the special ones. I’m in control, and don’t you forget it.” The czar made another hand motion, and his vulcodile swooped next to him. “I even control
the beasts. It’s the future for mankind. Forget Meritropolis and Meritorium, I’m building a new city: the crown jewel of the new human race.” He paused, before adding with a flourish. “I’m calling it Meritopia. Soon, if you’re not a hybrid, then your Score won’t be enough to keep you alive. You will be obsolete, no good for the human race.”
Charley swallowed, envisioning an army of miniature czar-like Minotaurs on the warpath. “You’re experimenting on more people to make them look like … like you?”
“Oh, we’re done with the experimenting, now we’re creating. I’m creating.” The czar’s massive chest swelled. “I’m creating them in my image, and I say it’s very good.”
“But that’s not—”
“Not what? Not natural? Not moral?” The czar laughed, throwing his head back, his dark hair billowing in the wind, causing him to look like a horned maniacal Orson for the space of a moment. His red eyes zeroed in on Charley, and he stopped laughing. “Actually, laboratory control is even more human than regular sexual reproduction—it’s planned, purposed, prepared for. Contrast that to regular sexual reproduction, where it’s all just a roll of the dice. So what if we lose some Low Scores in the process? It’s all for the greater good.”
“I say you’re just a twisted freak.” A shock of dark hair appeared over the edge of the summit. “Look at me, you wannabe Minotaur.” The czar turned around quickly, jerked his battle-ax from the ground, and backed toward the emperor and the Meritorium Honor Guard to keep them all in his sights.
Sven clambered over the edge with a surge of irascible energy, his face contorting into a look of crazed fury. He drew himself up to the fullest height his small stature could afford, thrust his shoulders back, and pounded his chest. “I’m a real Low Score.” He pointed to Charley. “I’m not a High Score masquerading for jack. I am who I am.” He looked directly at the czar, his lip curling into a deranged sneer. “And I don’t give a flying rip what you think.”
The czar took a step toward Sven, the battle-ax dragging slowly, leaving a trail of scored rock behind him.
Sven wobbled forward, unsteady on his feet. “This is for Alec, and Bree, and my parents, and everyone who has been looked down on, spit on, forgotten. This is for the Low Scores, the broken, the outcasts, the nobodies!” Sven screamed, a wild unhinged shriek that set Charley’s teeth on edge and sent a tremor into his bones. “And this is for me! Because I matter!” A tear streamed down Sven’s grimy cheek. “I matter too.”
The czar lifted his battle-ax.
Sven reached into his pocket and withdrew a small black rock.
The czar laughed. “You think you can come against me with—”
Sven threw the rock.
Spinning through the air, its rough vesicular edges picking up the sun and glinting like flashing crystals, the little chunk of scoria seemed to slow time. The screaming crowd, standing as one, receded into the background, the noise fading.
Sven fell forward, pulled along by the force of his arm, his eyes remaining fixed on the czar.
The rock struck the czar directly between the eyes, pulling him up short. He blinked once. Twice. His snout twitched. Then with a shake of his head, the black hair flowing akimbo around the massive horns, the czar bellowed in rage.
Sven stood up, his face transformed into a picture of composure. He lifted both hands into the air, morphing from David to Moses, and then brought them down abruptly. “Now!” he screamed.
The mouth of the volcano erupted, belching out a mass of bodies: Low Scores throwing rocks; Circumcellions foaming at the mouth, throwing themselves at the Meritorium Honor Guard with no regard for their own lives; Sandy, Marta, and scores of high-Score warriors shouting battle cries.
Charley turned to the nearest armored guard, desperately fighting off three wild-eyed Circumcellions, and chopped him in the throat, the flat edge of his hand sliding into the unprotected area between helmet and breastplate. The three Circumcellions took him down like a pack of wild hyenas. Darting in, Charley yanked the sword away, and took a few quick steps backward.
Whirling his way into the center of the fracas, fiery energy laced through his extremities. Chopping his way through the masses of armored guards, each weighed down by multiple clawing, biting Circumcellions, Charley tried to keep the czar in his sights.
The czar was fighting his way to his vulcodile under a hail of volcanic rock thrown by dozens of chanting Low Scores. With a roar, he swung his battle-ax like a scythe and felled three rock-throwers with a single strike.
The vulcodile, were it not for the absence of fire-breathing, looked every bit like a fairy-tale dragon. Its long, curved talons and rows of spiky crocodile teeth ripped and gouged anyone that came near. It roared, attempting to fight its way to its master.
A great cry of surprise exploded from the crowd as the Meritorium Honor Guard spread outward like water slicking from an oil bubble. The Low Scores cheered. The emperor lay motionless on the ground, blood spooling outward in dark burgundy waves, his head twisted to one side, an arrow extending from his ear.
Dead.
Charley’s eyes traveled along the point of the arrowhead to the shaft, to the familiar three-feathered fletching and red-tipped nock. His eyes jerked back along what he imagined to be the arrow’s trajectory and came to rest on a solitary figure standing with shoulders slumped and a bow in her hand.
Sandy met his gaze. Motionless, they held each other’s eyes, twin lighthouses amidst the raging dark current that swirled around them. And then she was gone, swallowed by the ebb and flow of the crashing, smashing battle.
Charley turned to see Grigor plowing through the Meritorium Honor Guard like a wrecking ball, Hank and Orson trailing in his wake. Even more disconcerting than the violence of the battle, Charley watched Orson closely: he didn’t even have a weapon in his hand. The dejected commander followed Grigor listlessly, a dazed expression on his noble face. Hank chopped furiously with a large blade, the clean-up crew for Grigor’s steady bushwhacking. Sven stood in front of the pretty dark-haired girl, shielding her with his body and throwing rocks at anyone who came near.
The czar’s battle-ax was a blur, flashing in the sun with sickening efficiency. In mere moments, he had cut his way through the rock-throwing Low Scores and to his vulcodile mount. Turning, he screamed out, his face bruised and bloody, a large mark in the center of his forehead: “This place can burn for all I care, I’ve got Meritopia! You deserve what you get!”
Orson lifted his head, his normally perfectly coiffed hair falling in front of his widening lost eyes, and cried out. “Father, wait! Don’t leave me!”
The czar paused, his boot half-raised to the vulcodile’s scaly back. He looked back at Orson, shook his head, and spat on the ground. “You’re dead to me. You are no longer my son.”
“Father, please!”
The czar turned his eyes away and hopped onto the vulcodile. Charley thought he saw a tiny flicker of sadness in those red bion eyes, but it could have just been the light.
Orson collapsed to the ground, weeping.
Charley charged, hacking wildly with his blade to clear a pathway. He was so close. But the czar was getting away, taking to the air, the one place Charley couldn’t follow.
Suddenly he had a thought and he screamed out, “Shooey! Shooey!” His eyes scanned the clouds, hoping against hope.
The vulcodile’s leathery wings pummeled the air, causing a downdraft that plastered back Charley’s hair. The czar, mounted on the vulcodile with a look of supreme confidence, surveyed the landscape and then looked directly at Charley, extended his battle-ax and roared, “Your brother deserved to die.” He smiled, his ugly snout twisting into a sneer to reveal sharp canines and wicked incisors. “And you do, too. I’m coming for you next.”
The vulcodile lifted to the air and the crowd applauded.
Charley’s stomach roiled, his mind a whirlwind. So th
is was it, he had seen the czar face to face, and now that murderer was just going to fly off into the sunset. Hot molten rage coursed through his veins, and even if that made him an animal, he didn’t care; he didn’t want to fight it. Charley took a javelin thrower’s stance and hurled his sword, but it flipped through the air ineffectually before tumbling to the ground, pressed back to the earth under the pressure of the downdraft caused by the great beast’s flapping wings.
Charley cast his gaze around. Where was Sandy? Why wasn’t she shooting arrows?
As if on cue, she walked unsteadily up next to him, and gestured to her empty quiver.
Still in shock, Charley hugged her close. “I’m here—I’ve got you. You’re okay now.”
She pulled away, as if touching an electric current. “I’ve been okay,” she said stiffly. “I don’t need saving.”
Charley let his outstretched arms drop slowly to his side. He managed to falter something out, a stunned look on his face. “Oh, okay.” She had changed—was she now just fine without him? He swallowed. He needed to say something, but she was just standing there, her auburn hair blowing in the wind, eyes shining, refusing to turn away from his shocked gaze. His tongue failed him. “Good, well, I—”
“Father!” Orson stumbled forward, pushing past Charley and Sandy, the downdraft wicking away the tears from his face. “Please, don’t leave me!” Gaining a burst of energy, Orson took a running leap and hurled himself off the volcano’s rim, grasping desperately for the vulcodile’s talons. Finding purchase, he latched on, causing the vulcodile to veer wildly down and to one side, erratically trying to correct its course.
A primal screech pierced the air. Instinctively, Charley ducked, throwing himself to the ground.
“Charley, look!” Sandy pointed. “I think your ride is here.”
Shooey landed lightly, his wide webbed feet curling around the black volcanic rock face. With a coo, he nuzzled against Charley’s back.
Sandy backed away respectfully, her eyes wide. “You better get up. Please, just—”
