“It need not be what you are thinking,” he told me, “even a drop of blood could serve our need.”

“I'm just not sure it's right.”

Lord Hassium was optimistic though, so he promised he'd give me more time to think it over, during which I'd remain his guest.

I spent a few more days, touring the city, observing the advanced vehicles the buzzed along the tree-lined roads, and meeting the hybrid men who seemed so diluted in their daily pleasures.

Throughout all this time, I thought more and more of leaving. The last I had seen of my crew was of them flying freely in the rocket, which, it seemed to me, should have made it easy for them to find me again.

I also visited the hospital again and tried to talk to the doctors, but I was prevented each time. I did manage to learn that terrible experiments were practiced with the bodies of the dead that had been retrieved.

The city was a place of horror, I realized, a prison which even the dead did not escape. My resolve increased, yet I kept it subtle so as not to arouse suspicion. However, I could not maintain my facade for long.

One day I walked into a back room of the hospital to see half a dozen hybrid men in silver tights torturing two bound doctors with an electrical device.

Over the horrible sounds of their screams came the laughter of the torturers.

One turned to me and said “Who are these soft elves to refuse the sons of Lord Radon?”

The sight was more than I could stand.

Unarmed, I ran into the chamber and knocked the torturers aside. I made a pretty good account of myself, for two of the fellows did not get up at all. Those nearest the victims paid me no mind at all, they just continued to laugh.

One of them said “Why not shoot this fossil?”

A tall one knocked me back, he was a very strong specimen, and he answered “Why cannot. Hassium wants him intact.”

Although I wished to remain intact, this was an insult I wouldn't let stand. I planted a fist under his smug chin and sent him tumbling to the floor.

I should have ignored what I saw, I should have pretended sophistry and taken my time for a better opportunity, but instead I showed my hand. In fact, the fight appeared to be turning my way.

I grew bold and tried to unstrap one of the doctors.

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The laughing torturer simply turned his electrode my way.

The concentrated lightning ripped through me and threw me back ten feet!

The pain was blinding and it took a moment to recover myself to move.

The torturer went right back to applying his device to the doctors. He said “You need only cooperate, Renford. Do so willingly or we will merely take what we want from you.”

I replied “You're nothing but monsters.”

“Do not forget yourself. In this city, you are the freak.”

Some of them began to get back up from the floor and I saw that I was in a hopeless position. I decided then and there that my goal was to keep them from getting what they wanted from me. I had to remove myself from the situation.

Before they could close in on me, I was on my feet and back out the door.

I ran through the hospital, past confused doctors and beds full of unconscious bodies.

The two guards who stood at the hospital entrance were not ready for me, and I blew through them easily, leaving them both sprawled on the floor.

Through halls and up elevators, I made my way to the platform.

There was the cliff. I still had my falling suit and I figured even if it failed it was better than staying there.

They caught me trying to make a run for it to dive over. There were simply too many, a hundred of them had turned out, their tights gleaming in the light of the sun. They closed in and hauled me away.

I expected to be tortured, but instead Lord Hassium called me into his bedroom and talked to me while slaves massaged and fed him. He stared at the fire in the fireplace and talked to me in a mournful tone.

“You know, Cylas, when I die I won't be remembered as a great leader of Lord Radon's kingdom. It isn't because of the disease or our loss of territory, but for the fact that I have been weak in the eyes of the people. I used to follow the lessons of our lord, doing great evils, torturing for pleasure, rejoicing in excess, but in my later years I have come to question this. I have tired of sadism and started to wonder whether the way of kindness is not better. You are an outsider and sadism is already strange to you, but imagine me coming to hate it when I was born to love it.

“For this, my son hates me. He has run away from me, you see, he lives outside the city. His name is Bowen, he says he has found a way to replenish our race and our former strength. He has told people that we were direct descendants of Lord Radon and that the traits of greatness skipped me and came instead to him. He means to restore the kingdom through unspeakable acts of evil.”

I didn't have much to say to that either. It's hard to watch a bad man coming to grips with what he's done, and Hassium was a bad man many times over, by his own admission.

He looked suddenly thoughtful “Cylas, who was that man you were looking for?”

“His name is Novom, but for some reason he called himself Lord Dromo when we encountered him.”

Hassium sat bolt upright, upsetting the cluster of slaves around him. “Lord Dromo!? It can't be... that means...”

All of a sudden he screamed and staggered forward. When he collapsed on his rug I saw a knife in his back.

I stood up and looked across at the slaves, who spread out to reveal the masked pleasure slave in the center, who's hand was bloody. In the firelight I watched him unmask.

It was none other than Novom!