The last time Rhea and I were alone in the dark, she’d nearly killed me, and now years later, I could just have easily paid her back the favor. We work in pairs where we’re from, and are nearly trained from birth to always have each other’s blindspots checked no matter the situation. It’s a way for us to get closer, close enough to know how to fight without having to say much of anything. To my surprise (and I guess to everyone’s), the Emperor had given me a chance. One chance to get this shit right. I could prove that I wasn’t weak, or I could die knowing dad’s bloodline got tainted because of me. Rhea was supposed to be on my left, always there just like our fathers were for each other.
That went as smoothly as you could imagine. Our first ‘mission,’ if you could call it that, was simple: there are several creatures scurrying around on this planet, no point explaining what they are, because they’ll be dead soon if you get this right, so go down there and kill three—strip one for its fur and meat and flesh, and bring back the two others as trophies. Simple, right? Everyone’s done it before. So you’ll have to ask my cousin why she had the idea of trying to gut me and leave me alone in some frigid cave system. Dad had found me, or whatever little he found that hadn’t bled out onto the rocks. Explaining what happened was pointless, because of course Rhea made it back, and the half-breed was dead in the caves. I’d failed, and I’d nearly died, and I had watched my cousin receive applause and cheers because she had come back with three creatures all by herself, draped in the flesh of one, with the two others in her arms. Sometimes I liked to think that Rhea had done me a favor, because it hadn’t taken long for us to run away soon after. Maybe dad felt pity for his weakling of a daughter. Maybe mom convinced him that she couldn’t keep watching over the bundled bony body of bloodied rags she was trying to keep alive.
I sometimes wondered, when the nights were long, and the crimes were too petty for me to care about, what would have happened if she hadn’t had such a large chip on her shoulder. Maybe I would have stayed there. Maybe Earth would have been our first planetary assignment for the Conquest. In some other life, we were actually friends.
But now, walking beside her in a darkness so pure it felt choking, I wanted to kill her.
Several things were stopping me, common sense for one, but her state was another. The girl was beginning to stagger every other step, with a sheen of sweat glistening on her cheeks and trickling down her neck. She reeked of death, of the kind of sickness that started in your lungs and festered deep in your chest, eating you inside out.
I might not be very much like my people, but if there was one thing I wouldn’t have liked, it would be to kill her when she was in no position to fight me. To at least slam her knuckles into my jaw hard enough to make me bleed. We were trained to love the thrill of the fight. We were taught to embrace death, but only if it came from a species greater than us—unfortunately, in their eyes, there would never be anything else similar to us that wasn’t our Pantheon. The only other way death would be honorable for any of us (myself included, who am I kidding?), would be to die by the hands of one of our own. It was fitting that dad and Titan went out together. Rhea, though, just kept bringing back Dennie’s words to me every time she coughed up blood: don’t give ‘em the satisfaction. Kill them slowly, and kill them the way superheroes should kill them: with love and kindness and healing my cousin up to the point she’s strong enough to feel how hard and violently my fist would rip right through her fucking guts.
But at the pace we were going, she would probably cough up her insides before that.
“Let’s take five,” I muttered, stopping. I had to admit that I was sweating, too. We had gone deep, deep into the hole beneath the hexagon, because saving the Earth was one thing, but the only people who knew how to run the machines couldn’t die before that happened. It was a simple job, like jump starting a car, except I was going to be the battery, and the car was probably going to be pieces of ancient machinery scattered all over the planet. After that would come the part I wasn’t looking forward to: siphoning my blood so the medical bays could synthesize some kind of cure to whatever was killing them. What came after that solely depended on if they weren’t lying.
In short, turn on the machines, save them, and then protect the Earth. But with my luck…
Rhea walked several more steps, then glared over her shoulder at me. “Too exhausted to continue?”
I sat on my haunches and dragged my forearm across my face. “Yeah, Rhea. I’m puking with exhaustion.”
“Well,” she said, coughing once, twice, pausing, then straightening from how bent they had gotten her. “Swallow your fatigue and stand. Time isn’t on our side, and if you recall, it’s you who wanted to save your planet.”
Why are you so hard-headed about this?
“In case you forgot, your friends kinda abandoned the Empire. They’re just as keen as I am playing hero”
Rhea tensed. “They are simply fooling you into believing that so you can heal them.”
“We’re not known for lying, since we’ve got no point.” I rested my back against the veiny metal pipes that snaked down the hallway, feeling dirt and metal and materials the humans probably wouldn’t be getting for another few decades. Plants had begun growing down here, sprouting like thin fingers around the metal. “Just sit down for a second and catch your breath. I can hear your lungs wheezing and rattling, and your heart sounds like it’ll stop.”
“You’re too proud associating yourself with us on a level of thinking we’re too proud for anything.” Rhea shook her head, her eyes narrowing, making her glow sharp. “Funny, considering how much you hate all of us.”
I chewed my tongue and looked her dead in the eyes. “I was around long enough to know exactly how proud you can be. Lying isn’t in your vocab, and yeah, I do hate you, but I’m also proud to have dad’s blood.”
She scoffed, and I smelt blood on her tongue. “You were locked away, what do you know about us?”
“I know, Rhea, that you should probably stop wasting energy arguing with me and sit down.”
“What I need to do is continue my march forward. It’s the only way my body will continue to fight.”
“You’re gonna die without some rest, you know.”
Rhea spat saliva next to me. “Stalling to kill me? To tell them all that I collapsed and perished?”
Keep thinking I’m out to kill you, cousin, and I might just grant your wish.
I tilted my head to look at her, the loose strands of my hair falling free and hanging over my face. “Why are you like this?” I asked her quietly. “I don’t want you dead right now, Rhea. I’m not like you. Hell, I would rather wait until you’re strong enough to clench your hands without them shaking before I even try to kill you.” I looked away from her, because I didn’t quite like staring at the gaunt, fragile body of someone who I knew was probably powerful enough to change the structure of the entire coastline. “I’m not as cowardly as you, so just sit down and rest, because I also know you’re too proud for me to carry you, and Gods knows I’m also not gonna drag you, too.”
“Cowardly?” she whispered, stepping closer.
Here we go. “Just sit down and rest a little.”
“I am not the one who ran away. I am not the one who left me alone on that planet.”
I sighed quietly. “You think I give a shit that you were alone? You made my life hell. You nearly killed me when I trusted you to take the way. I don’t care if you hate me, or think I’m a coward, but just sit the fuck down.”
“I will not take orders from half-breed filth,” she whispered venomously.
I relaxed my hands and made sure I wasn’t glaring at her, but Gods, I guessed some things just don’t change no matter what. “I could force you, and that would be even more embarrassing than taking orders, Rhea.”
“Your threats don’t phase me,” she spat. “They’re as meaningless to me as they were years ago.”
“You’re a piece of fuckin’ work,” I muttered. Slowly standing, I walked past her, not bothering to check if she was keeping up with me or not. Her bare feet slapped against the floor, harsh and methodical at first, but slowly, they became uneven, staggered, and eventually, all I heard behind me was her labored breathing and the shushing sound of feet being dragged along filthy metal. I stopped again, chewing my tongue, waiting for her to scold me for stopping, but then I heard coughing, the very harsh kind of coughing that sounded like supersonic gunshots in this tiny tunnel. I shut my eyes and waited, because when I did try to look over my shoulder, she spat saliva, glared at me, tried to walk forward, but ended up stumbling against the wall again. It was one thing killing them slowly, like D would have wanted, but hearing Rhea, someone who had terrified me, someone who had…hell, between you and me, she’d been the one to show me what the sky looked like at night, because that’s a privilege that you earned, not something you deserved—she’d snuck me out, dragged me along, and Gods, she’d smiled so large you would have thought that she’d pull a muscle in her cheeks. She had shown me the stars because that’s what she had always wanted. The kind of honor and glory and blessings from the Gods that would come by aiding the Empire in its goal.
Rhea had always wanted the universe, because it’s what she firmly believed could be hers. Ambition didn’t run short in our family, because it was all or nothing. I had once thought she meant freedom, that she was looking for an escape in the stars, just like I was, but no, Rhea had wanted to have all the stars she could find in her hands.
I’d been too distracted by how much the night sky looked with all those shining stars to listen to how badly she wanted everything to be hers, and eventually, she had stopped waxing lyrical about the Conquest, about how great she would be one day (about how great we would be one day), about how her father would drape his regalia over her shoulders some day and everyone would be there to watch her lead them all into battle. Then she sat there with me, and we kept quiet for nearly an hour before I asked her one question. Just one damned thing.
“What’s wrong with just seeing the stars instead of killing them?”
“Do you not want to be great? To carve our names into the stars?” she had whispered.
Just like our fathers have millions of times over, was the silent end to that question.
I hadn’t answered, because there had been a comet carving through the night sky, illuminating the dark and making my pale skin glow, shine, make it seem as if we were both stars of our own, too, and for once on that damned planet, it was silent. Silent enough for me to hear the songs that space sang to those two little girls alone.
And now all I could hear was my cousin hacking up pieces of her own lungs behind me.
Never made it past two quadrants. Never saw true battle. She found her father dead here.
Now you’re dying, you failed those who believed in you, and you probably can’t even remember what the sun looks like, what it feels like, or what it even tastes like. It would be very easy to take advantage of this situation.
And I’m guessing a part of myself wanted to make that decision. Another part wanted to rub salt into the wounds and ask her what was wrong, or if she needed any help from the same half-breed strong enough to stand. Instead, I took several steps, paused, and waited for Rhea to stagger past me, sometimes leaning against the wall, sometimes leaving bloody hand prints smeared all over the metal pipes and the wilting flowers. But she walked, and she stumbled, but she never fell. I said nothing, and I guess that was almost as bad as saying something, but what could I say? We shared the same blood, and I knew what was going through her mind. Being weak wasn’t something we were used to, and knocking on death’s door might have been common, but having one foot in her house was something else altogether. But if there was one thing we had in common, it was that we were too proud to ever admit that we ever needed help, so I walked behind my dying cousin, and watched as she didn’t falter once.
It took a while, but we eventually got to the part of the tunnel that would lead us directly to the core of this place. I had never been taught much about this tech, but I knew that turning one of them on would mean giving the entire system a good kick of energy. Maybe not every hexagon (they had a name, but I’d forgotten it as soon as the skinny guy said it) would turn on immediately, but every bit of machinery still connected to them would get something. As long as I had enough juice inside me, then this would be a piece of cake. Fuel the system, protect the Earth, and be back in time to figure out that Kaiju problem with one less problem to worry about, too. Like a walk in the park.
Or time and wear could have left most of the machinery in bad shape, and this would all be for nothing. I had enough faith, and a bit of desperation, to hope that this was going to work. I had been starting to get nervous, with a drier throat and tighter shoulders, and the constant thought of what if circling my mind. I hadn’t doubted myself in a very long time. Long enough now to know that my powers would always be enough. I’d fought Adam and ended up looking like dad, like I’d just had an Awakening all over again. I didn’t know how much of myself was still human, but I guess this was where we found out. We usually had enough power inside us to almost seem otherworldly to the Normals, and most of our tech ran on energy cells that, turns out, had been stolen, right along with a few of the other people here, so what that meant was the half-breed human girl had to act as one for this entire thing to work. Easy. After Cleopatra and her Nectar, I’d been feeling better, flowing with much more power, and finally had the eyes of someone who was from our side of the galaxy. I had enough power inside of me to do this.
Because I didn’t really have a choice of failing otherwise.
“It should be below us,” Rhea said, her voice raw and hoarse. “Icarus told me the system will be able to operate for several hours, long enough to synthesize a cure.” She glanced at me. “Unless you aren’t capable of it.”
“You don’t know half of what I’m capable of,” I muttered, swallowing saliva that only nervousness can make bitter. “How did those guys who attacked you get all the way down here, anyway? You just let them in?”
“No, we did not just allow them in,” Rhea said, her hand still on the tunnel wall for support. “They incapacitated us and raped this place of its use. It was as if they knew where to look and what exactly they wanted.”
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I paused, then quietly asked, “You think that one of them—”
“I’m tolerating you, so do not change my mind.”
“I’m just saying that—”
“You used to be timid and quiet.” Rhea looked me up and down. “Now you talk too much.”
“Listen,” I said. “I just want to figure out what happened down here, ‘cause it’s hard to believe that a bunch of young, unranked Legionnaires could get done over by some human with a drug. Doesn’t make sense to me.”
“It’s the truth,” she said icily.
“Then why didn’t they just kill all of you? Or take all of you?”
“They took the ones who knew most about the technology,” she said, growing frustrated.
Hand on my hip, I asked, “Then why not just take more, and destroy all of this? Why risk it?”
“I don’t know, Ry’ee,” she snapped, then rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Gods above, you talk so incessantly it’s given me one of these headaches your species always speaks about. All I know is that they came here with a purpose, and left here with what they wanted. They left us and the rest of the technology here for a reason, or maybe it was an oversight. It wouldn’t be the first stupid decision that your people have ever made.”
“Yeah, and what was the first?”
“She stands beside me.”
I laughed dryly. “Stay on Earth any longer and you’re gonna start telling me real jokes, Rhea.”
“I pray to the Gods for any other kind of eternal punishment.”
I looked down below me, and I’ll admit that I had been stalling that little bit more than I probably should have. The telltale signs of something violent happening down this tunnel, and further than that down the gaping hole below me, told enough of a story about what happened. The metal here wasn’t normal. It was built to withstand a lot more than what the humans could ever come up with, no matter the Superhuman grade. Space couldn’t batter and beat it into shape, and I doubted any kind of weapon here could do that either. And yet it was warped, bent, broken and melted into solidified slag heaps all over the floor. Chunks of debris littered the hallway behind us, and there was even more filling the hole below me. Whatever had happened, and whoever had gotten their hands on this tech had a goal in mind, and knowing supervillains, they probably figured that these people wouldn’t be enough of a threat for them to worry about. Or it could be something else. At the end of the day, I was going down there.
The only reason Rhea came along with me was to talk me through all of it. On Earth, that usually meant moral support, but it was my cousin we were talking about here, so that meant nothing but cold instructions for me.
“The cooling chamber is found at the bottom,” she was saying. “I’m not sure how much of it was damaged, but it’ll still be cold enough to ensure your death if you remain there for too long, no matter your blood. From there, an object that looks similar to a gauntlet will be in the center of the chamber. You’re not metallic, and neither am I what you call a scientist, so the wiring will have to be forgone. You’ll have to wait ten seconds for the chamber to seal before beginning, because if you begin any sooner, it could mean the chamber and its architecture fractures, and there’s no hope for the energy you output to be stored correctly.” She stared at me, making sure I understood what she said next. “If you fail, or if the chamber breaks, then your precious little planet will perish like the rest.”
“And how long do I have to stay in the chamber for?” I asked her quietly. “Not for several hours, right?”
“Afraid, cousin?”
I snorted, only to throw her off my tail. “I’m just worried the damned thing can’t handle me.”
“You might not trust them, but the best minds of our people built this technology. Have faith.”
I was forced to swallow the lead ball of nerves sitting in my throat. “What if the chamber is already—”
“For your sake, let’s hope otherwise,” she said. Then, quieter, as her hand slipped off the wall and clenched by her side, shaking as she did so: “I have already tried. The damage was evident, but…if you are incapable—”
“I’ve got no other choice than to be capable, Rhea,” I muttered. “Been like that my whole life.”
“Then let’s pray to the Gods that you are more Arkathian than you are human now, cousin.”
For everyone’s sake, let’s hope that.
I waited half a second before jumping down into the chasm beneath me. I hovered my way down, the chunks of debris and the shattered metal pipes making it a maze of sharp edges and twisting mid-air somersaults to even reach the bottom. Eventually, what little light I had was snuffed by overwhelming darkness. I limited myself on flying, using my body and balance to leap from metal to metal, chunk of concrete to outcrop of rock until the air became frigid and my breaths steamed out from my mouth and nose like smoke. Before I even reached the cooling chamber, my body was already complaining about the cold. My joints began to ache, and my breaths became dry and raw, with each panting inhale of oxygen being a little harsher than the last. Eventually, the debris eased enough for me to squeeze through a gap tight enough to force me to breathe out and force myself through. Then it was free fall, a short tumble through the air until I righted myself and landed in a pool of frigid water. Very, very frigid water. I could feel it soak through my boots and my socks, curl around my toes and threaten to make me freaking yelp.
I slowly stood from the crouch I had landed in, panting from the bitterness of the cold alone. Fuck. I couldn’t remember the last time I shivered, but I couldn’t stop myself now. Sliding into the rest of my costume felt like slipping into clothes you left outside in the rain, but it would mean a little bit of warmth. Enough to keep me alive and conscious enough to know if this was going to work or not. A quick look around me told me everything I knew about the attack, because they’d gotten down to even here, too. Bullet casings floated on the water around me, and the machinery down here had been melted and warped into the same piles of dull slag that sat in the water like chunks of flesh. They’ve got firepower, I thought, because the only thing I know that the humans have that can do this, that does have this kind of firepower, were a dozen rifles that Ava had been eyeing months ago for herself.
Whether or not Aegis Tech had gotten their hands on Arkathian weaponry or had just copied it, who knew?
But it made me sick to think about either option, because neither spelled anything good for me.
“Have you located the cooling chamber?” Rhea asked, her voice an echo far, far away from here.
“Not yet,” I said, forcing my tongue and jaw to act right in this cold. The water sloshing around my feet, I realized, wasn’t actually water, but a kind of pasty substance, like liquid-like plasma. It stuck to my boots and soaked through the tights I wore underneath them, and Gods it sucked. It almost felt like glue, except it also felt like bits of frost were forcing themselves into my bloodstream the longer I stayed here. “I’m gonna go deeper, and maybe find it through the debris down here. It’ll get hard to hear you, so…I’ll figure something out. If you hear me banging against some metal twice, then just know I’ve found it. Once, and I’m still looking for the chamber, ok?”
Silence. A very long silence that stopped me from walking. I heard the dull sound of coughing, of coughing that didn’t stop for longer than it should have gone on for, too. I tilted my head to look up, to try and hear if she’d collapsed. We were working against time, but I didn’t know how much time we had. Icarus knew how to work these machines. Knew how to set up the smaller labs and the system that operated throughout it all. If Rhea was out cold, then he wouldn’t be much help either. And, truth be told, I couldn’t read our language, and, well, it wasn’t designed for people like me to solely operate. ‘Special Breeds’ aren’t meant to be warriors or hunters or servants to the Emperor and his throne, because we’re the brunt, the laborers, the creatures that built their castles and their homes, tilled their fields and fed them if told. Fuck me, if a Legionnaire even caught me down here, they would have probably done my head in against a slag heap for tainting it with my eyes. So if they all died soon…
Earth is as good as fucked.
“Rhea?” I called. The debris groaned above me, showering me in dust and shrapnel. “Are you—”
“Just…resting…” I heard, broken by heavy panting. “Two for I’m okay, and none for death. Hurry.”
And so I hurried, wading through the dark blue plasma that only got higher and higher as I got deeper into the tunnel. Every other minute, the dull beat of a fist banging against metal twice would reach my ears, and I’d respond with one solid knock back. Every so often, I wouldn’t get anything in return, and my heart would stutter until I got something back. Not because I cared about Rhea, but because of what she was worth to the planet at large. The girl I hated most would save a girl I kinda had a crush on (and the world too), and as soon as the system got booted up, then she would be the one to make sure that Icarus got the signal to get things up and running soon.
But I also found a little bit of comfort in her knocking as the air grew colder, my movements slower, and the plasma got high enough to crest my waist. I forced myself through it, past debris, past what I could only think were body parts of people who had been slaughtered and left to rot down here, except the cold and the plasma wouldn’t give their carcasses that mercy, and would keep them as they are for Gods only know how long. Passed fetid meat and hollow faces. Passed other branching tunnels fat with debris and even more so with plasma and darkness and this growing sense of being alone in a place so painfully cold that it was getting hard to keep moving. Rhea’s knocking kept my mind focused. Kept it here. The tunnel around me groaned and ached, sounding like it would collapse if I got deeper. As if it was warning me of doing this. The thing was, I could turn around at any time.
I could forget any of this happened. I could lift myself from the plasma that was now at my chest, and choose not to suffer anymore, or even bother with the rest of them. I could protect Earth myself, because what kind of daughter, no less the daughter of a man like Zeus, had to rely on other people for help? I had been doing just fine on me own—fuck, Rylee, keep going—and the last time I checked, I didn’t need Lucas—stay awake, don’t fall, fuck Rylee don’t stumble and fall now—or mom, the SDU or anyone to mentor me, because I’d been doing this shit long enough without anyone being there to guide me! I was good enough—is that the chamber?—to be great, and great enough to have my own statue. Who needed technology from the same people who would—it’s the chamber, Gods, don’t stop moving now; fuck, hold your breath and don’t let the plasma touch your mouth; when was the last time Rhea knocked?—rather rape this planet for everything it was worth rather than help it? Or maybe they would—
I reached the end of the tunnel, and the entrance to the cooling chamber was sealed shut. The fat metal doors were melted together, fused by the heat of people who didn’t want this place being used ever again, too.
That’s why they’d left them down here, because they wanted them to suffer. To give them the false hope of knowing that if they fought, if they struggled, they could maybe get to the chamber, past the debris, and fix it all.
That was a lie, because there was no way to get through this metal. Metal strong enough to make weapons that could cleave anything—species or otherwise—clean in two. I could punch all I wanted and get nowhere.
I figured it didn’t matter—you’re falling—anyway, because my joints ached—don’t fall—and my fingers couldn’t curl up into a fist—you piece of shit—and when they did tighten, my entire arm shook with cold agony.
My fist rested against the warped metal, a silent tapping echo ringing through the silence. I panted heavily, my head woozy and my body so tense with cold that I could hardly move or breathe or barely think. Thoughts came as fragments, slideshows, and I’d like to say Bianca came to my mind, or dad, or hell, even mom, but I saw nothing. Nothing special. Nothing heroic and nothing motivational, because my fist beat against the metal again, if only that little bit harder, like I was politely knocking against it, and when I pulled it away, my flesh ripped free of my hand and stuck to the door, taking my thoughts with it. I hadn’t heard Rhea in several minutes now, maybe because of the blood rushing past my ears, droning out the quiet, but maybe because my heart was slamming against my chest so loudly that it hurt. Hurt to hear, hurt to feel, and again my fist hit the metal, and again and again, not much harder than the last, but hard enough to hurt me—hard enough, though, to leave the flesh of my knuckles on it.
Blood soaked through the shredded spandex of my suit, oozing down my arms and dripping down the metal that still clung to my flesh. Each breath a huff of wispy air. Each inhale a rattling whistle of cold oxygen.
All of it interrupted by the sound of meat and bone and human muscle slamming against metal.
My fists moved, and my body reacted, but my hair hung low and my eyes drooped shut, but I didn’t stop beating against it, didn’t stop when my own blood splattered against my face and freckled my cheeks and smeared the metal a dark crimson in the dim glow of my eyes. It was almost like watching someone else move, someone else swing their bloodied fists harder and harder against dense metal until it bent, shuddered, and then their mouth was moving, bearing down hard on their teeth, clenching so tightly you’d think they would shatter in the cold. Why keep going? Why bleed for people who don’t care about you? The thoughts came and went, because there wasn’t an answer, but…no, there was an answer, and it was right there on her chest, covered in blood and plasma and the filth of countless nights she’d stayed amongst criminals and heroes, trying to do the one thing she thought she was doing: the right thing. The thing that everyone wanted from her. The thing that everyone wanted her to keep being.
Earth wanted their superhero, and she…I…was gonna give ‘em one, cold be damned, and death—that bitch, I swear—could fuck off with it, too, because when the door buckled, and the heat from my electricity melted through the heaps of slag sitting in front of me, then I could force my hands into it, deep into the liquified metal and rip and tear and force myself through into the cooling chamber, stumbling, but not falling, until I could stand.
My body steamed with tendrils curling around my arms, seeping out from my pores. My hands bled. My fingers were bent and crooked. Gods, I wanted to scream, to let the burning fire of agony simmering in my hands to soak into my bones and muscles and deep into my flesh, but I couldn’t yet. The blood flowing from my wounds would heal, but only if I moved my feet and raised my head and stopped my arms from dangling uselessly in front of me right now. The gauntlet Rhea had been talking about was in front of me, just a few steps away in a cavernous room filled with the rotting bodies of skeletons that looked nothing human-like in the slightest. There were other half-breeds down here. What that meant to me was filed away for later, for when I was back on the surface and could ask Rhea why the fuck a dead body was slumped over the gauntlet, it’s hands emulsified in golden metal, and a sizeable chunk of its skull missing. Its brain had been fused with its skull from the sheer heat of the blast that must have ripped through its head, turning the meat black and hard, and making everything reek of rotting lonely death.
But there wasn’t only one gauntlet in the room—several stands, like a speaker’s podium, stood around the chamber. They were all short, broken, meaning the corpses were hunched over them, as if cowering from the dark.
I was forced to remove the creature, whatever it had been, with its four arms and large muscular back, from the gauntlet, ripping its hands free from the cold metal gripping to its muscle, coming away with nothing but fetid meat and bone, heaving its body against mine, and then laying it in the plasma at my feet. Fuck me, what the hell even are you? With eye sockets filled with solid balls of shrunken orbs, and a mouth hanging loose from the rotting muscle that kept its jaw intact, it was a creature that had probably been right there in those Culling Rooms with me, but had never gotten out. Had never escaped. Had never had anyone in its species, or a scion who cared enough about it to even bother trying to keep it from being used this way. It was hard enough to lay it down gently with hands as fucked as mine. Harder knowing that there was never going to be some kind of fairytale ending for me, or that Rhea and I were ever going to be paired together in the Conquest of Earth or anywhere else. I would have been her mule, her slave, this very creature, and every other creature that floated dead in every other gauntlet station surrounding me, to her. To them. You see, the thing about our species was that we were never entirely the same.
Like humans, we were all different, and so were our powers.
It just so happened to be that my kind could pulsate with energy. Use it, harness it, almost charge us up with it, and now, as I stood over the thing floating on the water, missing its arms, its dignity, stripped to nothing but its bones and its flesh and the cloth that still hung around its groin, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a blessing to the people waiting for me to save them. I could charge their machines, power their system—hell, I could energize an ecosystem of technology around the entire globe for them, and all because none of them could do the same thing. Not only because of how much the Ambrosia had weakened them, but also because they weren’t anything like me.
I couldn’t help but think one single thing: Is that why Rhea said I should wait for the chamber to shut?
Did she want me dead and rotting, used as a battery down here, too?
Some things just didn’t change, because Rhea still wanted me dead.
And I was really starting to hate getting fucking lied to.