***
In the elevator, the guard pressed a button and then stood beside me in stony silence. My throat cleared itself; if there was one thing I hated, it was awkward silence. My mind reasoned that it would be even more awkward if I tried to speak to him, or if he tried to speak to me. Still, my hands were beginning to fidget in the pockets of my loose fitting black pants, and as the elevator continued its endless ascent, my arms eventually came up to wrap around my middle.
“Don’t stand like that.” He said, so suddenly that I thought I had imagined it.
I looked at him, and for some reason, I took notice of how he was standing, perhaps because I was thinking that he was telling me that I should stand more like him. His muscular arms were at his sides, somehow appearing both relaxed and tensed. I could see his ridiculous muscles bulging beneath the perfectly pressed black fabric of his guard’s uniform, and yet he was not standing with any tension at all in either his ridiculous arms or ridiculous shoulders. Now, he was by no means a bodybuilder; the only one of the gifts from the Dark that the Old Spirits did not punish were the Protectors, or the Herculians, as my dad had told me he had been called “back in the day.” This guard was clearly one of those. Herculians were exceptionally toned, and some of them were massively built, but this man, for his age, was just impossibly in shape. I wasn’t drooling over him, though it sounds like I am, considering I have talked extensively about how large his muscles were and how handsome he was, but his physical age was clearly in the mid-to-late forties range, and to date a man that old would be obscene. I was only seventeen, and physically, he was as old as my dad. Who knew how old he really was?
“What?” I asked him.
“Don’t stand like that. You’re showing that you’re nervous.”
“How should I stand?” I asked.
“Don’t cross your arms over your chest, don’t fidget, and do not, for the love of God, bite your lip like that.” I had been pushing my lip into my mouth with the tip of my fingers and biting into it, but after he said that, I stopped. “Or your nails.” I had immediately begun to bite my nails after I had stopped biting my lip. “What’s your name again?”
“Grace.”
“Alright, Grace. You’re young. Do you want to live to get at least a little bit older? To find out what your physical age is going to be? To meet a guy, or a girl, or whatever?”
“I…”
“Rhetorical question. Of course you do. Don’t stand like that. Don’t show them that you’re afraid.”
“But I am afraid.”
“Of course you are. You’re, what? Seventeen?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I’m a good guesser. So, you’re seventeen, and you have somehow landed yourself aboard the prison ship reserved for the world’s most sadistic, ruthless, rebellious, criminals. Murderers, rapists, thieves, Undesirables, Irredeemables… Those who can be redeemed and have been sent here to get scared straight for a couple of years. That’s you, I presume.”
“Yes.”
“Alright. So, you have fifty or so years that you have to survive, starting the moment these doors open. You’re not going to last a day if you let on that you’re afraid. So, stand up straight, only make eye contact when you’re spoken to, and don’t butt in front of anyone in line. And try to make friends.”
“Make friends? What is this, school?” I asked, and I could not help but chuckle. When he looked at me, though, and was still totally serious, though I could see him displaying very slightly that he was mildly amused, my smile disappeared abruptly.
“Play nice with your friends in the sandbox, lest you wish to get sand kicked in your face. Someone told me that once, and it’s as true here as it was there.”
“Okay.” I said, “So stand up straight, don’t bite my lip or my nails, don’t make eye contact, and don’t butt in line. And make friends.”
“Exactly. That should buy you at least a couple of months.”
“A couple of months?” I asked, and my anxiety spiked again suddenly, reminding me that it must have dissipated slightly if I had not noticed it until it had spiked again.
“Yeah, and hopefully by the end of those couple of months, you’ll be a little smarter, a little stronger, and maybe you can get yourself a few more months. That’s how you survive here, Grace. A couple of months at a time, if you’re lucky. A couple of days if you’re not. A couple of hours if you’re really not.”
I nodded and looked over at him again, even though he was facing forward and had resumed his stony silence.
“Thank you.” I said.
“Sure.”
The elevator dinged, and we had reached our destination. I stared straight ahead, at the metal doors, waiting with bated breath for them to open. I didn’t know what would be on the other side, but this guard had said that my fight for survival would begin the moment they opened. Finally, they broke apart to reveal a long corridor cast in an eerily low, artificial light by the fluorescent bulbs attached to the walls.
“Through the door at the end of the hall.” He said, “And Grace?”
My legs had carried me out, and my body turned around by its own accord to look at him.
“This conversation never happened. Understand?”
I nodded, and more quickly than they had opened, the doors shut, cutting me off from him, leaving me alone. I turned around, my heart pounding again, my palms shaking, and all I wanted was to wrap my arms around myself as I walked or better yet, to slump down there in the hallway, close my eyes, and hope that maybe I would slip into a coma and wake up when the world was alright again. But my arms stayed by my sides, my back stayed straight, and my hand did not shake as I reached out to push open the door at the end of the hallway once I had reached it.
The huge light at the top of the room hurt my eyes, and I wondered as I covered them if I was appearing weak. For a second, I stumbled backwards into the hallway, my hands still pressed over my tearing eyes, and my mind wondering when the last time I had been in bright light had been, even as my ears acknowledged that the din of conversation that had been whirring consistently before had died away, and my skin prickled with the feeling of one thousand eyes upon me.
I looked, finally, and there were hundreds of them crammed into that room. It was a more than sizeable space, with a ceiling that rose to about one hundred feet and enough space between the walls that if I stood with my back against one, I more than likely would not be able to throw a stone and hit any of the others. The wall directly in front of me, on the other side of the room, though, was a window, one that rose to the top of the ceiling and stretched all across that seemingly infinite room. Well, the room would have seemed infinite, if it weren’t for all the people crammed into it. They were consuming every table, covering every tiled space of the floor, standing along every inch of the walls, and every single one of them was looking at me. My stomach plummeted, my hands began to tremble very slightly, and my teeth began to pull my lip into my mouth so I could bite it, but I stopped myself. Somehow, despite this new surge in my anxiety, I managed to walk slowly forward, trying to keep my head up as the silence seemed to grow even more tense. I heard one guy whispering to me breathlessly in another language, and I wanted to cringe but I did not, nor did I look at him. A few other men and even a few women cat-called me, and one girl slightly older than me stuck her foot out to trip me as I passed, but I managed to dodge. It would have been better to just trip, fall, and look like a fool, or maybe that would have gotten me killed, because it would have shown weakness. But this girl had stood up, and even though I was not facing her, and I could barely hear her, I could feel her storming towards me. Everyone had been watching her, too, thinking, she thought, that if I fell, she won, and if I didn’t fall, then I won, and since I had won, I had made her look bad. Her hand reached out, going straight for my hair, and somehow, I managed to anticipate that, so I dodged my head out of the way, whipped around, grabbed a handful of her hair, and promptly slammed her face down i
nto the table. My heart surged again, but this time, there was utter horror mixed in with the usual plaguing anxiety, but, I must admit, adrenaline coursed through me, warmed me, and made me feel like my attack was justified, which, of course, it was.
In a gurgle of blood, the girl dribbled out one of her teeth, and just as quickly as I had appreciated this really random but totally awesome moment of strength I had displayed, I felt badly for hurting her. She had probably been gearing up to do worse to me, because she had been trying to assert her dominance over the scared, weak newcomer, and I had stood up to her, but I hadn’t really meant to slam her down that hard. In fact, I hadn’t meant to slam her down at all. The adrenaline rush had taken hold of my arm, holding it in a grip as fixed as rigor mortis, and then, in a sudden moment that shocked both her and me, it had slammed her down.
Several of the people she had been sitting with, both men and women, stood up and began to walk towards me, their eyes blazing, but suddenly, there was the sound of shattering glass and an ear-splitting scream.
“OH, SHIT!” Several guys near me exclaimed, and when I looked at them, I saw that they were laughing and high-fiving each other. Just like that, my fight was over, because everyone, including the girl I had slammed down, was charging the window to see who had just jumped through it. I was still reeling from hearing the word “shit,” because where I was from, profanity was very seriously frowned upon and punishable by public lashings if it persisted for too long. It was considered a corruptible influence, only something that dirty and uneducated people did. Lots of kids got punished for it, because obviously, kids love to push that boundary, but I had never said anything like that, and even hearing it was shocking to me at the time.
“Well, very good.” A woman’s voice said behind me, and I turned around to see a woman with freakishly large, weirdly bluish-purple eyes looking at me and smiling slightly. Her accent was distinctly Pangaean, but there was something else to it. I had heard Tyre and his people talk a million times, and there was something else to her accent that they did not have, which made me think that she must have been from the far end of the world.
“Very good?” I asked.
“Yes.” She said, and her smile widened, “You hit back. Did you find yourself asking if you should allow her to lay you out flat or if you should fight back? Because you chose the correct answer. You always hit back.”
“Her friends didn’t seem to think that was the right answer.”
“And then look: some kind soul decided to plunge to his or her death, and your life was spared. What is your name?”
“Grace.”
“Oh, an Old Spirit girl, through and through. Grace. Are you amazing? Has anyone ever made that joke to you?”
“No.”
“Do you know the song?”
“No.”
“Good. It was quite over-sung in Tyre’s cities once Mary and Rich Bachum came around. They brought their hymnals and shared them, and Tyre shared his, and just like that, we had multicultural religious karaoke. Anyway… why don’t you come sit?”
She gestured over to one of the few groups that had remained in their spots, and maybe they had remained in those spots because they were nice spots to be in. The people in this group that this woman was from were sitting together on large pillows in the farthest corner of the room, hidden away from the harsh light and boxed in by all the other people in the room.
“Everyone, this is Grace.” She gestured to me elegantly, flipped her long, perfectly smooth black hair, and eased herself down onto one of the large pillows.
“All together now.” A guy whose lack of accent told me he was from Earth said, and together, they all said, “Hello, Grace.”
“Look at Mama Rohanna.” Another woman, slightly younger than Rohanna, who was my rescuer, said, “Taking in the strays. It was fine hit, honey. A lovely hit. What are in for? Jousting with an Old Spirit commander? Did you bite his face off?”
“No.” I said, “I ran away from the husband they wanted to marry me off to.”
“Aren’t you like, twelve?” A girl who literally looked to be my exact same age said.
“No. I’m sixteen. I’m going to be seventeen soon.”
“So it is totally acceptable that they would want to marry you off. Come on, Grace, you’re mature enough to marry an old man and bear his children, right? You’re a strong enough young woman to know that you couldn’t possibly make that decision on your own. Only the Old Spirit nobility could ever decide for whom you should spread your legs.” The woman who was slightly younger said.
“Yumi!” Rohanna said, and she whacked her lightly in the leg. “Here, Grace. You look ravenous.”
“Ravenous.” Yumi repeated with a roll of her eyes, “All these books you read, they are putting words that are too complex for your female brain into your head. I am surprised you are not succumbing to a terrible migraine, what with all that intelligence you cram into your tiny, simian-like, female skull.”
“Simians actually have quite large brains, as I have been told.” Rohanna replied, and her hand, I noticed, had not left Yumi’s knee after she had smacked it. In fact, as they continued to talk teasingly in what I could only assume was Yumi’s language, because it was no Pangaean language I had ever heard, they were leaning into one another, and when their lips touched, my eye widened and my mouth dropped open slightly. They… They were…
“I think I should go.” I whispered, and the girl who was around my age laughed somewhat raucously to herself, but there was a rude edge to it that told me she was making fun of me.
“Could the lesbian party please straighten up?” She said, “Your stray is ready to bolt, Rohanna.”
“Oh, sweetie, I am sorry.” Rohanna said, and when she reached out and touched my knee, I startled so terribly that I kicked over a bottle, causing water to pour over a tray of half-eaten food in front of the young man who had told them to greet me.
“Oh, no, my slop!” He exclaimed loudly, and I began to apologize profusely as he threw gray paper towels into the mess.
“I am so sorry, and I am not going to bolt, I just don’t know… I’ve just never seen… I’m from Shadow Village, there is no… there are no… We don’t learn about…”
“That’s no excuse.” The young girl said, still filing her nails.
“Oh, you just hush, Illa.” The last man, a black man with muscles even bigger than the guard’s had been, and eyes that stayed red, said, and his voice held the Purissimissian accent with which I was most familiar. He must have been from around Shadow Village. “Stop being such an angry red-haired woman. It is too much of a cliché.”
I was a red-haired woman, and I wasn’t angry. Her hair was significantly darker than mine, closer to maroon, whereas mine was light red, so maybe that was what made up the difference in our personalities.
“Rael.” He said, and his red eyes met mine. When our hands touched, those red eyes narrowed slightly, and he smiled, “You are very, very afraid, but it shows not on your face. That is very good, my dear. Keep it up.”
With that, he slunk backwards, turned sideways, laid back down on his pillow, and placed his feet up.
“And I don’t actually care about my slop.” The boy told me, “In fact, you accidentally kicking water onto this sad excuse for lettuce probably made it cleaner than it has ever been. They poison the food here, you know.”
“Oh, here he goes! Jason, the perpetual conspiracy-theorist.” Yumi said.
“Can you blame me for being a conspiracy-theorist?! That’s what they called us back on Earth, and we were right! About everything! The world ended! We were right! If only my end-of-the-world-internet-forum brethren were alive to see our victory, because, let’s be honest, the end of the world was a victory for us but a loss for the rest of y’all.”
“Oh, Jason…” Rohanna sighed heavily and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
“Millions dead, thousands still crawling around, more than likely, trying to survive after being le
ft behind. Hell, they’re probably fighting and killing and eating each other, but it’s alright, because you were right about all your conspiracy theories. Nice, Jason. Very nice.” Yumi said.
“It is nice! It happened like, almost thirty years ago. Move on! And don’t look at me like I’m so crass. We’re in prison, for God’s sake. I’m allowed to be crass and awful. I’m a criminal.”
“Live up to the role.” I said, somewhat randomly, “Play the character.”
They all looked at me, and Rael was smiling. I seriously wondered why his eyes never turned back to their normal color. They weren’t supposed to let it happen, but the native people from Purissimus and the people from Earth sometimes lost control and let their eyes turn over to betray what they were feeling. A darker blue or green, or a lighter brown, meant sadness or worry. Red meant rage. White meant attack, feeding, nourishment, indulgence of adrenaline. Black meant loss of soul.
Jason extended his fist to me, and I stared at it, confused.
“Sorry. Old Earthean custom done between two badasses who totally get each other.” He explained, “Hold up your fist.” I did, and he bumped his fist into mine, “Now the explosion.” He opened his fist, and at the same time, he puffed out his cheeks and expelled a breath noisily, to sound like an explosion. “See? It’s simple. I take it you were born here. You’re a first generation?”
“Yes. I was born in the fourth year after the Landing.”
“So your parents were Earthean?” Yumi asked.
“Yes.”
“Recovering Red Anarchy, or always Old Spirit?” Jason asked.
“My parents were formerly Red Anarchy. I guess I’ve always been an Old Spirit, except I don’t really want to be, and…” I stopped, my face flushed red, and my heart beginning to race again. No one who spoke out against the Old Spirits lived. In the camp, if anyone said anything critical about them, that person disappeared or was publicly shamed. Sometimes, if what they had said was bad enough, they were publicly killed.
“It’s alright, Grace.” Rohanna told me, and she gently grasped my hand. For a second, I jumped, because I was still unsure of her simply because I had never meant anyone… of her persuasion before. But her hand over mine actually did comfort me; I distinctly felt the pounding in my chest calm slightly.
“You want to know the best thing about being here?” She asked me, and her purplish-blue eyes were alight suddenly, “You don’t have to pretend anymore. You can say whatever you want, and as long as you aren’t shouting it, they don’t care. They’ve already done the worst that they can do to you for acting out against them. They’ve put you here, and as long as you’re with us, you’ll be fine. Alright?”
“Well, if the wrong people hear her talking critically about the Old Spirits…” Illa said.
“Well, luckily, we know who those wrong people are, and we’ll make sure that she won’t say anything too harsh around them. Do you see any of them around, Illa?”
“No, but…”
“Exactly.” Rohanna said, “She’s fine.” Her eyes turned back to me, and her grip on my hand tightened, “It’s strange, Grace, but you’ll find that you’re actually more free in here than you were out there with them.”
“It is true.” Rael said, “The greatest blessing they and their God could have bestowed upon you is this place. Yes, if you speak to or even look at the wrong person in the wrong way, you could die a terrible death. Yes, there are men and women who live to kill, and will kill you simply because you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes, you will have to fight every day to stay alive, but if you think about it, haven’t you been doing that your entire life?”
I did think about it, and I realized that he was right. In Shadow Village, I was constantly keeping my thoughts to myself, constantly wishing for a life outside the confines of the village, constantly wanting to learn more, do more, be more. It was only a matter of time before I spoke out and got myself publicly tortured and humiliated or killed. If I thought about it, I realized that it really had been only a matter of time before my parents met the fate that they did. I knew by the looks we sometimes got and by what my mom had said about the Queen that they had been very close to the Red Anarchy leadership. Plus, Tyre, Mary and Rich Bachum, Paul, and various others in charge were always out for blood. They always wanted to see people being humiliated, tortured, and killed, and they said that it was because those people spoke out against their God when they spoke out against them. But I had known, from the time I was very young, that they simply loved to witness pain, but to be fair, they truly thought that they were serving the One God when they inflicted that pain. So Rael was right; there on the prison ship, I was enjoying freedom for the first time in my life. As we stood up to clear out of the cafeteria, I found myself smiling slightly. I could not believe that the smile was there, considering my parents had just died, I was far from home, aboard the most dangerous prison ship to be built in either world, with the most sadistic and dangerous people of either world, and I was smiling.
“You’re not mentally unstable, are you?” Jason asked me, and the smile immediately vanished.
“No.” I said instantly, and I was shaking my head rapidly back and forth to show how emphatically I knew that I was not, in fact, mentally unstable.
“Good.” He replied, “It’s just… The smile. A little weird. A little creepy.”
“I’m sorry.” I said.
“Don’t be. It’s fine. It’s just rare for a newbie to be smiling on the first night. In fact, it’s rare for anyone to be smiling, unless they’re in their groups.”
“I am in a group.” I said, but then, I wasn’t sure if I was one of them yet, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that, because I was ingratiating myself with them too soon, and that would make them want to expulse me from their group, because I looked needy and too desperate to attach…
“I mean… I guess I am in a group…” I said.
“Don’t worry, slick.” Jason wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and my eyes widened when he squeezed me tightly against him. “You are. Rohanna gets good vibes from people and takes them in. How do you think I got here?”
“I don’t know.” I said, and he laughed rather hard at that.
“Rohanna, I like this one. She’s got sass!”
“Do I?” I asked.
“And she’s totally unaware of it!” He added, “Oh, we’ll make a hardcore badass prisoner of the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship out of you yet.”
I couldn’t help but laugh softly to myself, because the thought of me ever being anything close to a “hardcore badass prisoner of the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship” seemed as unlikely as me becoming a diehard supporter of the Old Spirit ways, which is what I was there to do. I was there to repent for my crimes and become a submissive follower of their laws and their rule, and I knew that I would never become that, either.
So, I guess if I had to choose, I would choose to be a hardcore badass prisoner.
“So, who was it? The jumper?” Rohanna was asking a woman from another group.
“It was Rocky. One of the Warden’s.”
“The Warden’s?”
“Yeah. He was fine, and then he just turned around and jumped. Without a word or anything, they said.”
“It was you!” I heard a voice shouting, and just in front of us the crowd parted, and a man built like an army tank stormed towards someone who, to my horror, was a girl, about twenty-one or twenty-two, her hair long and auburn, pulled to one side of her head and cascading down to her waist. She was maybe one hundred and five pounds soaking wet, as my mom would say, and yet he charged her like an angry bull, storming forward at that impossible speed that only those who had allowed themselves to be taken over by the Dark Powers could reach. I didn’t blink, but she had moved from the place where she was standing to a spot about a foot beside it in the amount of time it would have taken me to blink. Even with his impossible speed, he couldn’t adjust the direction in which he w
as going to actually tackle her, because he had been right upon her when she had moved in that fraction of a second. He charged into the crowd, which had formed into a circle around them. More than a few people fell to the ground when his colossal body collided with their comparatively tiny ones, and those who didn’t fall to the ground banded together to shove him back into the circle. I watched as the people who had fallen rose to their feet, wiping away blood from their busted noses or lips before filling in the space of the circle that he had punctured.
“Oh, boy…” Rohanna sighed, “She’s got fire in her eyes tonight.”
“More like bleach.” Jason said, “Both of them are white now, not just one. Still badass.”
“Way more badass.” Illa said.
“Are you sure about this?” She asked him in a calm, loud, clear voice, so that all could hear her.
If I was shocked at my own ability to smile in my less than ideal circumstances, I was way more shocked to see that this girl was smiling, too. The man was scowling, huffing and puffing through his nose, sounding like an angry bull now as well as looking like one. Her head tilted on the side, and she studied him, still smiling, and I thought that she was trying to anticipate his answer or his next move but really, she seemed to already know it. She turned around to the people behind her, said, “Ready?” and then turned back to face him just as he began to storm towards her again, faster this time, and with a roar of rage that sounded more animal than human. Easily again, she dodged, but this time, she also spun around and kicked him forcefully in the back, sending him hurtling with mighty force into the crowd whom she had just addressed.
“Send him back to me!” She said, her arms out to her sides, her smile wider, and gleefully, they threw him back her way. One of her outstretched arms jerked forward, the pronounced muscles of her upper arm flexing into a perfectly chiseled though small bulge, and the muscles of her lower arm pulling even flatter to the bone. It was a hit that would have only knocked him down, if she were human, but since she was more than that, the hit sent him flying back into that crowd, who, with even more glee, pushed him back to her again.
A rumble of sound was beginning in the crowd, starting at the back and working towards us.
“Again?” She asked them, and for the third time, she hit him, this time by punching him squarely in the face with one fist, and then punching him squarely in the face with her other fist, and then planting her foot in his chest, and kicking him backwards with a slight roar of effort. Once again, the crowd threw him back joyously.
The sound was growing louder.
“Reine. Reine. Reine.” They were saying, and it was a foreign word, one I did not know, but I could gather from what it sounded like what it must have meant.
“What punishment do I bestow upon this man?!” She shouted over the roar of the crowd, who only roared that word louder. “What is the only consequence for stepping to me?!”
“DEATH!” They shouted unanimously, deafeningly.
They were wild. They were animals. Fangs were out, eyes were white, people were roaring like beasts. Those closest to the front of the ring were crouching, smacking the floor in unison, and those who were standing were stomping their feet along to the beat of the smacks.
“What is it?!” She shouted again as she moved around the circle, getting them even more riled up. People were reaching out to her, even people who were not standing directly in front of her. Those people were reaching between the heads and bodies of those in the front, and she was grasping their hands, squeezing them. “What is it?!”
“DEATH!”
The man was doubled over, his hands on his knees, blood dribbling out of his mouth like drool. He spit, a wad of blood splattered onto the ground, and to my horror, I could see several of his teeth in that puddle. Suddenly, I pitied him. I could gather from when he had said, “You did it!” that maybe he knew the man who had jumped to his death. He was grieving for him, so he was lashing out at her. Though how she could have done it, I didn’t know, unless she really was who I thought she was.
“REINE! REINE! REINE! REINE!”
The crowd was screaming it now, and their screams and stomps and smacks on the floor grew louder as the man, clearly exhausted, clearly done, started towards her, walking now, dribbling blood out of his mouth, his nose broken and gushing all down his front, his eyes beginning to droop closed as his breaths heaved in and out.
Her only injury was bloody knuckles.
Standing right in front of him, facing him now, she jumped high, so high that she was able to flip backwards in midair while throwing her legs up to wrap around his neck. Once they were locked around his head, she swung backwards in a downward motion, and then she flipped underneath of his arm at his side to pull his body forward. As he came crashing down, she flipped off of him, allowing him to crash, face-first, into the concrete floor, where more blood and more teeth spewed from his mouth.
With one foot, she easily flipped his gargantuan, three-hundred pound, muscular frame over, and then, fangs out, she ripped open his shirt, revealing his rock-hard chest and stomach, his muscles there seemingly cut with straight lines, they were so defined. Her white eyes ran down his body along with her small, slender hand.
“Such a shame.” She murmured, though she knew we all could still hear her. “Such a pity.”
She threw the shirt into the crowd, and I kid you not, two women started fighting over it. They were not fighting over it because it had previously been on an attractive, impossibly muscular man; they were fighting over it because she had ripped it off, because she had thrown it.
“What do I take, my lovelies? Heart? Tongue?” She looked down his body and gestured to his mid-section. “I haven’t taken one of those since one of his friends said he would rape me and any woman who follows me. Granted, that one was quite hard to find.” She was standing over the man’s head, “Will yours be hard to find?”
The crowd was moving abruptly in various directions to the left of me, and within a few seconds of the sudden movements, I saw that four guards had broken into the circle just as the girl pulled what would surely have been her killing move. A gun fired into the air, and the girl froze and turned around.
“Alright.” The guard who had fired the gun said. “That’s enough.”
I recognized his voice, and sure enough, when I moved forward far enough to see who it was, I saw that it was the guard who had coached me in the elevator. Already, I felt calmer, because I knew that he was going to stop this girl from killing the man.
“Well, hello, Officer.” She purred at him, because clearly, she was as enamored with his physical attractiveness as the rest of the women in the crowd seemed to be. I had not been enamored with it, I had merely noticed it. But the women in the crowd were whispering amongst themselves, looking in awe of him. There was something else in their gaze, too, and when I looked closely, I saw that with their reverence was a very potent, very obvious fear.
“Am I under arrest?” She asked him seductively, and the crowd laughed.
“You’re making it worse for yourself.” He told her, too calmly. “You know that, don’t you?”
The other guards were spacing out slowly, surrounding her, but the handsome guard was standing right in front of her, preparing to take her down if she sprung towards him.
“You like it when I make it worse for myself. I know you do.” She said, “So, why don’t you let me finish him off? Will that make it as bad for me as it could possibly be?”
“Brynna.” He said, “Mrs. Elohimson. Reinepremier.” He said the last word with such sarcasm, I am surprised she didn’t charge him. “Let’s not play this little game tonight.”
“Not in the mood? Manly trouble?” She asked, and now she was the one speaking so sarcastically that I was surprised he didn’t charge her.
“Now.” He said, still too calmly, and he gestured for her to walk. For one moment, one intense, endless moment, they stared at each other. The crowd was silent, holding th
eir breath, wondering if she would give in and wondering if he would just reach out and grab her.
“You know you are my most favorite officer, don’t you, Officer James?” She asked him softly.
“Brynna.” He said, and for a moment, his impatience and anger broke through.
“I love our time together.”
She threw herself down onto her knees beside the man she had been fighting, and with one hand, she broke his chest cavity, sunk her hand down into it as blood splattered upwards like an erupting geyser, and pulled out his heart. My head spun as the horror I felt took complete hold; his heart was still beating in her hand, and the man was convulsing on the floor, his legs and arms flailing, and his eyes rolled back. She strode to the front of the crowd, showing them the beating heart as she walked, until she reached a beautiful, raven-haired woman with large green eyes, whom she kissed gently on the lips just before she dropped the man’s heart into her open hands.
And all the while, the crowd stomped and smacked and roared.
Officer James was behind her, and he slammed the blunt object in his hand across the back of her head, and the woman to whom she had gifted the beating heart did not scream or cry but instead merely caught her. Officer James pulled her away, slammed her into the river of blood on the floor, and cuffed her hands behind her back so hard that her wrists began to bleed, but that was not why her feet were suddenly kicking and her teeth were biting into her lip so she could stifle a scream. It was his hands. When he touched her, she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. His hands were wrapped around her upper-arms, and he yanked her onto her feet and began to drag her across the floor towards the stairs.
“Don’t struggle!” He bellowed at her over the roaring crowd as she fought his grasp.
“Well, now you’ve seen the royalty.” Jason told me.
“What?” I asked, “She really is the Queen?”
“That she is. I know, I know. She’s more rabid, beastly, cave-queen than prim, regal castle-queen, but she’s got that fire, doesn’t she?”
“Oh, look at you.” Illa said in fake regret, “You are so disappointed.”
And I was. The Queen I had pictured as a benevolent ruler capable of saving us all from the tyrannical reign of Tyre, Paul, and the Bachums was actually a monster. And the guard who had helped me was just as monstrous.
Officer James slammed the door behind him and Brynna, but not before he had delivered a slap across her face that sent her nearly to the ground.
“Lesson Number One,” Yumi told me softly as she linked her arm with mine, “The Queen is dangerous and deadly. Count yourself lucky if she notices you, and for the love of whatever God you worship, stay off her radar. No one who gets on it…” Yumi turned my head so I was looking at the man, “…lives for an hour after they appear.”