The hoverpod enters a round-shaped room. Above me, there are tiers of seated Brothers, all shrouded in darkness as they gaze down upon me in my black bullet-shaped coffin. The hoverpod stops. The lid opens. I shift from the interior of the pod as the liner lifts me out by an extension arm and deposits me on a black tufted chaise lounge in the center of their horseless carousel.
Above my head hovers the turning hologram of the brilliant blue star, the symbol of the Alameeda Brotherhood. Beside me on a black table rest the two crowns that I had Kyon design for me. They’re his and hers. I smile at them. They’re so lovely. He did well.
“Kricket,” a voice resonates in the room. It sounds like Kyon’s. I’m disappointed when I lift my chin to see it’s not him. It’s Excelsior. He has an easy stride as he walks toward me; he owns the room, and he knows it. When he nears me, he goes down on a half-bended knee, so he can look me in the eyes. His are a colder blue than his son’s—a soulless blue.
He’s dressed in a dark military uniform with a holographic Star of Destiny on each of his pointed lapels. “Do you know where you are?” he asks me.
I look around. “I’m in a snake pit.” A titter of male laughter rises from the theater-in-the-round.
“You’re in the Universe Chamber in the House of Alameeda.” He snaps his fingers. A hovering pod comes within reach of his fingertips. Lifting a cauterizing implement from it, it’s clear by his easy glance that he’s well acquainted with all of the hideous tools on it.
“It still looks like a snake pit.”
Excelsior lifts a small device and presses a button on it. The metal cuffs on my wrists lift from my sides and slap against the metal T-shaped poles on either side of the chaise lounge by my ears. I try to yank them down, but it’s too powerful.
He shows the long-handled, silver device to me before he presses the glowing trident to the pale skin of my right forearm. The smell of my skin burning is almost as painful as the claws of fire that run down my flesh. The pain is accompanied by a canyon-sized rush of terror that fills my chest. When he lifts it from me, I have a glowing, red wolf scratch.
“That should wake you up a bit,” he whispers near my ear. I bite my lip because it’s beginning to tremble and it’s really important that I not show him the depth of my fear. “You’re going to have to tell me when you’ve had enough. I have a tendency to go too far sometimes.”
I don’t shy from him; instead I force myself to laugh as I pant. “Does that usually scare all the little girls you torture?” Inside though, I know I’m not going to be able to keep this act up for very long. He has a dead heart. It barely beats. I recognize the look in his eyes; he can spin heartache into any color he chooses.
Above us, no one makes a sound. He replaces the silver cauterizer on the tray and picks up a razor blade. Its surgical sharpness gleams in the small spotlight we’re under. He plays with it as he attaches it to a short-handled grip. Taking his time is meant to increase my panic.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asks me.
“I’m here to kill you.”
Hisses of “Treason” come from several places and heights on the tiers.
“Why would you want to kill me, Kricket? I’m your creator. Your Maker.”
“There are so many reasons to kill you, Excelsior. The fact that you think you’re my creator is just one of them.”
“I’m also the one who saved you from him,” Excelsior says. He presses another button on his device. A hole opens up in the floor near us and a tank rises up from it. Inside, Manus, the Rafe regent, sways in the water of the medical stasis tank. His skin is blue-veined and translucent. Paper-thin pieces of it hang from him and float in the water. Gone is the dark, rich color of his hair. It’s now bone-white and has shed in large patches. Curled in a fetal position, his gnarled hands warp, as if his bones have become waterlogged and bent. Whatever his medical tank is supposed to be doing for him, it stopped doing it a long time ago. He belongs in some horror-filled sideshow act, a dreadful curiosity to strike fear into chill seekers.
Excelsior prowls toward Manus. “I sent the Strikers to liberate you from his plan to mate with you. My creation!” He says the words as if he’s disgusted by the very thought. He lifts the device in his hand again, and it gives off a stark, piercing noise that cracks the tank. Water squirts from between the cracks until it shatters the glass and spills Manus out onto the ebony floor. The stench that rises into the air makes me throw up in my mouth. The water quickly drains away into the hole in the floor, but it still reeks of decomposition and death.