Midnight Hollow, Administrative Quarter

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.11 Interstellar

The first indication Janus had that things were worse than he imagined was when large sections of the crowd started following them. It was only one or two at first, but then it was dozens, like they were leading a procession.

“Boss,” Mick said.

“I know,” Janus answered.

More people started coming out of tents, out of alleys between tents. They came from all the clans and families, as well as a lesser number of coldsiders. The one thing they had in common was the binary tree, a simple splitting of paths, two by two, forming branches, the symbol of the Cult of the Survivor.

“Friends of yours?” Janus hissed at Ryler.

“Take it slow,” Ryler said. “The Cult isn’t unified, but it has rules.”

There were other observers closer to the tent. Most were around Janus’s age, and they were physically fit to the point only professional athletes could reach. It wasn’t hard to determine that these were other aspirants or aspirant candidates.

They were all from clan Pugarian. They’d come to watch.

It was quiet. Dead quiet.

The compartmentalist team came out of the registration tent.

The first was a coldsider—the one from Cold Haven, a northern settlement near the true-dark boundary. It was hard to see the person under her vacuum suit, but the medium machine gun that connected to a metal frame that ran down her legs made her role all too clear.

Next came the three sun-siders.

First, the Motragi, a whip-thin man who carried an assault rifle.

Then, the Pugarian, a large woman whose ample body and pack were hung with gadgets, grenades, and traps.

Third came the Verazlan, but he was like no man Janus had ever seen. He had to turn sideways and duck to get through the entrance. He must have been two meters tall and over 130 kilos of muscle and bone, with a prominent brow ridge that was almost ape-like.

“Brago Tlali-Acamatl,” Copecki said breathlessly.

“You know him?” Janus asked.

“He’s my grandfather,” Copecki answered.

The three sun-siders didn’t look like grandparents. They looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties, although Brago was the oldest of the three.

A Cult wayfinder followed after them. He was older, maybe in his sixties, from the weathering of his skin, although Janus knew that, too, could be deceiving. The cultist’s entire left arm was mechanical, including the shoulder, and not in an elegant way. It was as if the wayfinder had wanted everyone to see how unnatural he was as a statement of faith. “Abraxxis,” he said, glaring at Ryler.

“Tiersen,” Ryler said. “This is a flagrant breach of the rules of arbitration agreed upon on Lumiara.”

“Tell that to Nikandros,” the wayfinder said. “He killed an entire recovery team back on Irkalla.”

Ryler gave Tiersen a smile as cold as the Void. “If you could prove that, we wouldn’t be here, but if he did, I’m sure it was your fault.”

Janus put a hand on Ryler’s shoulder. “We need to get registered. They can’t attack us once we’re officially part of the race.”

“They can’t attack us anyway,” Ryler said, his tone mocking. “Not with so many witnesses.”

Janus glanced at the people with the binary trees woven into their clothes. Some looked hostile, but some less so.

“Enough of this,” Brago, the massive Verazlan on the comp team, said. “You all talk too much. Grandson,” he said, lifting his chin toward Copecki, “leave these offworlders and join me. We have much to discuss.”

“This is interference,” Ryler said warningly.

Wayfinder Tiersen smirked. “Oh, we can’t kill you, Abraxxis, but it’s not our responsibility if your side forfeits the race.”

Janus clenched his fists. He looked at Copecki.

“I won’t leave them,” the Verazlan said calmly. “It’s a matter of honor.”

“It’s a clan matter,” Brago retorted. “Would you put your own interests before those of your family?”

“You abandoned us, grandfather. You abandoned father, and it made him weak. I take after the other side of the family.”

Brago sneered. “Is that a challenge, grandson?”

“It is,” Copecki said, taking off his poncho and vest.

Brago grunted and did the same.

“What’s happening?” Janus asked Lira.

“They’re from the same family line,” Lira said. “Copecki is challenging him to determine who can order who around.”

“Have you seen that guy?” Janus asked. “He’s a Void-sucking mountain! Ryler, stop this!”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I can’t,” Ryler said. “This isn’t about the Cult or the Trials. It’s a Verazlan matter, and what they’re doing is legal.”

“Copecki might stand a chance,” Mick said. “If he fights fast and dirty.”

The two Verazlan squared off as the crowd formed an oval around them, crowding in to watch. Janus felt helpless.

The compartmentalist team looked bored, the Motragi soldier chatting with the Pugarian trapper while the Havenite stood motionless, her tinted visor unreadable.

Copecki moved first, lashing out with a fast right hook and a kick to Brago’s groin.

Brago blocked the hook simply by raising his left elbow and intercepted the kick with his foot. He barely moved, but Copecki had to half-hop back.

“You’re fast, old man.”

“This isn’t a game, grandson,” Brago rumbled.

Before the older Verazlan was done speaking, Copecki darted in like a snake, switching his stance and throwing a left cross. Brago ducked his head, taking the punch on the forehead, and Copecki yelped as his knuckles cracked. Brago wrapped his arms around Copecki, lifted, and dumped his grandson on the ground.

“Stop playing with him, Brago,” Wayfinder Tiersen snapped.

Brago ignored him as Copecki tried to kick at his knees from the ground. The older Verazlan just took a step back, calm, like he’d seen the whole fight play out before it even started. “Give up, grandson. Come with me. There is no dishonor in listening to your elders.”

Copecki rose fast, undeterred, trying to tackle his grandfather, but Brago grabbed him by the armpit, lifted, and smashed his other fist into Copecki’s body. Janus winced at the impact, and Copecki staggered away.

The younger Verazlan was in pain, gasping.

“I just broke two of your ribs,” Brago said, stalking after him.

Copecki aimed a kick at the inside of the bigger man’s knee, but Brago turned into it, taking the hit on his shin, then twisted the other way and smashed his fist into Copecki’s face. Copecki fell back, but Brago reached out, moving faster than a man his size had any right to, catching Copecki’s arm. Copecki, still in the fight, tried to headbutt the other man, but Brago leaned his head to the right and caught the hit on his open palm. He shoved Copecki back.

Copecki yelled and charged in, throwing an out-of-control haymaker, and Brago just took it on the arm again before open-hand-slapping his grandson so hard that Copecki almost fell.

Brago still had hold of Copecki’s arm. The colossal fighter stepped, twisting and slamming Copecki face down in the dirt. Copecki tried to push himself up, but Brago had one foot on his shoulder, and he cranked on Copecki’s arm, popping the shoulder out of its socket.

Copecki screamed, rolling away and holding his arm.

“Stop it!” Janus yelled. He tried to stop in, but both Ryler and Mick held him back.

“If you interfere, the crowd will tear you apart,” Ryler hissed.

Brago rested his boot on Copecki’s ankle and said, “Submit.”

“No,” Copecki said.

Brago leaned his full weight on Copeck’s ankle, and it snapped.

“Gaaaaaaaaaaah!” Copecki screamed again.

Brago walked back toward his team. “He’s broken. He can’t run anymore.”

Copecki was trying to get up on his left knee and elbow.

“Stay down!” Janus told him over the comm.

“I can still fight,” Copecki said to Brago’s back, ignoring Janus. “I am Copecki Atl-Verazlan, and I have never run from an enemy! I will run in the Trials! If I cannot run, then I will still sponsor their team!”

Brago’s shoulders rose and fell, then he turned around.

“Give up, grandfather!” Copecki said, now up on the one knee. “I’m your legacy! You can’t kill me without killing yourself.”

Brago nodded to himself. For a moment, Janus thought it was over. Then, Brago said, “My daughter can have another son.”

Copecki’s right shoulder was still dislocated. He couldn’t block the punch that knocked him to the ground. He couldn’t stop his grandfather as the big man kicked him onto his back and climbed on top of him. Brago’s fists rose and fell, splitting Copecki’s eyebrow, breaking his cheekbone, and smashing his nose. Another hit broke Copecki’s jaw, popping it right out of the socket, and a second had Copecki choking on blood and teeth.

A straight punch to the temple killed him, but Brago kept laying into the corpse as the silent crowd watched, and tears ran down Janus’s cheeks.

The left side of Copecki’s face was unrecognizable when it started to rain, and still, Brago’s fists continued to fall.

***

When Brago Tlali-Acamatl returned to his quarters under the chapel dedicated to the survivor, he went straight to the sink to wash his hands. He turned the water on to steaming hot, almost scalding, and shoved his bloody fists into the flow. The skin over his massive knuckles had broken and split, and the water hurt, pain radiating up his forearms.

He was grateful for it. He’d just had to kill his grandson.

Brago had never met the boy. He’d been thirty-one when the Cult made him the offer to join them and be one of their emissaries to Survivor’s Refuge. He’d refused at first. His family had always been dockworkers, and for two hundred years, they had believed that fortunes and reputations were built on hard work and promises kept. They were not wealthy by any measure, but there were many of them, and they’d had many more people who were glad to do them favors, knowing those favors would be repaid in full.

Brago took some of the stinging antiseptic soap and started scrubbing. He got the bulk of the blood off by rubbing his palms together, then rubbing one palm against the back of the other hand. He scrubbed past his wrists, halfway up his forearms. Head wounds always bled more, and then there had been phlegm, spit, vitreous fluid, and brain matter.

The boy had had Citlalmina’s nose and ears and her defiant temper. It had been like murdering his daughter, his star, and that’s the way it would feel to her when she found out.

He used his thumbs to clean the blood out from the skin between his knuckles, pinching hard to distract himself.

He remembered the feeling of being a father. He’d wanted to call her Citlal, his star, but the baby had colic, and after an exhausting first six months, the two weary parents had settled on Citlalmina. Brago remembered the glow of feeling like he had a treasure that surpassed any other in this world mixed with the fear there was something wrong with her, that she was sick, that his daughter might die at any moment, and the doctors couldn’t tell him why.

The Cult had examined her after he won his first Trials, and they had told him there was nothing wrong. She was a healthy child. Her bitterness would go away on its own.

He’d been grateful.

That was when they’d first gotten their hooks into him.

He rinsed his hands and lathered up again.

The door to his quarters slid open, and Wayfinder Tiersen walked in. The priest had a peculiar limp due to some problem with the prosthetics under his robes. The slip-thump of his gait irritated Brago.

“We haven’t found her,” the priest said.

“Then why are you here?” Brago asked him, locking eyes with the priest in the mirror.

Six years doing missions for the Cult, and in that time, he’d only been brought out of cryo when they needed him. He’d woken from the long sleep, been given a target, and returned to the pod more times than most soldiers did in a lifetime, and he wasn’t even halfway through the time he’d agreed to serve. They gave him no time to bond with his teammates, and the handlers changed every time. Brago had very little patience left for his minders.

“It might be time to consider more direct options,” the priest said, slip-thumping up to Brago and reaching to put a hand on his shoulder.

Brago turned with the speed and grace of the killer he was and seized the priest by the throat, driving him across the room. The priest’s ugly prosthetic arm reacted like a viper, striking back, but Brago caught it by the wrist and slammed both the priest and his mechanical arm across the wall.

“I agreed to help your masters save the people of Survivor’s Refuge, and I will, priest.” The priest’s face was turning bright red. The mechanical arm whined as it fought his natural strength, but he kept it pinned to the wall. “Do not touch me. Do not attempt friendship. I have done what was required of me. Do the same. Find Koni Atl-Verazlan, and I will end your dispute before it begins, or be prepared to face the Trials with us. I am not here to give you permission to do something stupid or soothe your fears.”

Brago released the priest without warning, and the man dropped heavily to the ground, choking and gasping.

Brago returned to the sink. He’d spilled blood for the Cult more times than he cared to count, but this time was different. He needed to be clean.