{Gait}
Cagey. No amount of running in place, push-ups, or pull-ups could relieve this pent-up frustration. This sedentary uselessness. Korac paced the halls of Infernus block while the other war criminals slept, read, or indulged in their Lamia porn. And he thought he’d seen it all.
Atheneum. A forgotten curse. A word whispered in his nightmares. They held him down. They hurt him. And all the while they asked him for the Atheneum. His muscles too weak, limbs too short, and mind too young to fight them off—
Korac flexed his fists. He chewed on nothing to pop his jaw. Rotated his neck and shoulders. Relax. His control waned, and the mask slipped. Prison wasn’t exactly the ideal place to advertise his vulnerabilities. But Pehton needed context to understand why he forgot so much of his past. He never wanted to relive that shit after spending his entire life running from it. The titles, the clothes, and the dominance to overcome his personal history. Admittedly to compensate for—
His fist went through the nearest corrugated panel. It narrowly missed a suspicious control box. The wires no doubt alive and happy to electrocute him.
“You tire yourself out, yet? Eternity knows you’ve worn me down keeping up with you.” Remorse called from around the corner.
As the Icarean General fought with the panel to relinquish his hand, he considered his blockmate. The man always slept when Korac wandered the halls. This was his first opportunity to glimpse his appearance. What race he hailed from.
Fucking circuit box.
Korac kicked a foot on the wall to pull with everything in him. “While I correct this minor concern, tell me about the big cell again.” What the hell was this panel made from?
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Remorse chuckled as if he caught the show from way over there. “I’ll be happy to divulge the rest of my knowledge in exchange for a picture of our girl.”
With a groan of mason and a shriek of metal, Korac peeled the circuit box, panel, and electrical channel from the wall. He rushed on black wings to the blockmate’s cell. Someone called for an execution on Infernus block, and the Icarean General would gladly deliver it—
Stopped. Halted. The shock froze the blood in his veins. In a voice of three pitches, Korac remarked, “Remorse is an unusual name for a Tritan.”
His blockmate spread his arms wide as if caught and unashamed of his crime. Mostly, he stared amused at the Icarus as he examined his wings.
Korac pressed, “I thought they kept your kind on Enki. Rather dangerous to leave one of you here.” Deadly. It made him a target for more than one reason.
The Tritan referring to himself as Remorse approached the nacre-resistant barrier with his hands clasped behind his back. “Hence, Infernus block. I was originally in the big cell. But they migrated me up here a few months ago. After… say, how old are you, son?”
Korac retracted his wings and let his eyes return to normal. In his usual tenor, he answered, “Three million. Give or take.”
“That sounds about right. Yes. You and the Executive Warden are investigating Inanis? You won’t find anything. You certainly won’t find those children.”
In the light, the war criminal memorized the other man’s features. As distinctive as features came on a Tritan. Seven-feet tall. Special jumpsuit. No way to see a compression orb, but all the Primaries were presumably accounted for in Enki. His skin a pale blue with darker navy scoring the striations of every sinewed muscle. He blinked dull black eyes, almost gray. Old. Older than Eminent Wiw, even.
The General wanted to know why the certainty—the absolute conviction—in those words. “What happened to the children that we won’t ever find them?”
Remorse shrugged casually. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the last person to see them.”
This was like pulling teeth. He disliked the gleam of anticipation in the Tritan’s eyes as Korac asked, “And who would that be?”
“The Prince of Cinder.”
Xelan.