Six Melinoë
Six
Melino?
The live stream is hosted on the Gauntlet portal’s landing page, with a moderated chat room for users so that anyone who watches can leave their comments and reactions in real time. Caerus automatically saves the transcript of the live chat after the stream is over, so I can go back and read the chats from my past Gauntlets.
Azrael uses the transcripts to teach us lessons, because with millions of people tuned in, nothing will escape some eagle-eyed viewer’s attention. The transcripts are the reason for some of the Gauntlet’s unofficial rules.
user1033485234: is it just me or does mel look like sh*t here hahaha
user4435668902: no lmao was thinking the same thing. legit so off-putting looks like she hasn’t slept in days
Most of the uglier comments are censored by the moderators, but occasionally some slip through.
user893045860: idc her body is insane. so f*ckable
It’s three hours before my Gauntlet, and I’m in the holding room in front of a huge, lighted vanity. A Mask leans over me, dabbing concealer onto my face. Their touch isn’t gentle, and I flinch when they start covering up the circles under my eyes. They’re deep and purple, and there isn’t enough makeup in the world to hide them completely.
I steal glances at myself in the mirror while the Mask works. They’ve layered on the palest shade of foundation and have moved on to contouring my cheekbones. I got my new lash extensions last night and lip injections four days ago, long enough for the swelling and tenderness to subside. My eyeliner is tattooed on and permanent.
“I’ve recommended a brow lift,” the Mask says in their hollow, robotic voice. “Azrael says for next time.”
That the Angels have to be beautiful is one of the Gauntlet’s unofficial rules. And if we’re not beautiful when we enter the program, Azrael fixes that right away. Lethe was twelve when she got her nose job.
I used to try to keep track of the changes made to my face and body, as if there were some clean delineation between real and fake, natural and unnatural. But there have been too many now, and I’ve lost count. My cheekbones, high and prominent, are real—at least, I think they are. My nose is my own—or is it? The memory of a rhinoplasty could’ve been Wiped away and I’d never know it. My breasts are my own, but for how much longer? I stayed at Keres’s bedside after her implants were put in. Helped change her bandages, trying not to see the bruises patterned all up and down her chest and rib cage. I held back her hair when she vomited, nauseous from the anesthesia.
We Angels were made to fulfill Azrael’s archetypes: Keres was the maternal one—beautiful, of course, but with softer edges. Kinder eyes. They sent her on all the Gauntlets with young children. Lethe is the fiery one, with her red hair and quick temper. I’m supposed to be the deadliest one, unflinching and emotionless, armored in coldness. The audience likes us better if we fit into boxes.
“There,” the Mask says, after dusting highlighter onto the tip of my nose. “Look.”
I turn toward the mirror. Melino? stares back at me. Long, white-blond hair pulled back into a high ponytail, no strands escaping. I asked Azrael if I could cut it once, but he said the viewers would hate it. He’s probably right. My real eye is so dark, it’s almost black, which makes the prosthetic seem not quite so aberrant in comparison. Wide-set, slightly overlarge; a few years ago, there was a running joke in the chat that I looked like a praying mantis. The comments made me avoid mirrors for weeks.
“It’s perfect,” I say, averting my gaze.
The Mask gives the slightest nod in return. Then they leave without a word, the door to the holding room sealing shut after them.
I only have a few minutes alone before the door slides open again. I expect it to be Azrael; he’s one of the only people who has clearance to come into the holding room.
But it’s not Azrael. It’s Keres.
I lurch up from my seat, sending it toppling to the ground. I can’t understand what emotion overtakes me in that moment, but it’s so strong that my hands start shaking and my stomach goes slick.
“Keres?” I whisper.
The eyepatch has been removed, and a new, more natural-looking prosthetic has replaced the old one. It doesn’t quite match her real eye, though. The shade of blue is wrong, icier and too pale. But the blank, wondering gaze is gone. Keres stares back, and this time, she knows me. She remembers.
“Mel?”
Her voice is so quiet, hesitant, like she’s not quite sure how to use it. A lump invades my throat. “How did you get in here?”
“I don’t know.”
The only thing I can think is that Azrael didn’t erase her biometrics from the fingerprint reader outside the door. It doesn’t seem like the kind of careless mistake he would make, but it’s hard to focus on anything else right now except for Keres. I take a careful step toward her.
She just stands there, mouth hanging open slightly. Her black hair is loose around her shoulders, shorter and more untidy than when she was an Angel.
“Keres,” I say again. “What happened—why—”
My stammering is cut off as Keres steps toward me, close enough that she’s within arm’s reach. Her blouse is sleeveless, exposing the scars that ring her wrists and elbows. The ones that look so ugly on me but never seemed anything less than beautiful on her. Very slowly she reaches her hands up, until she’s holding my face.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and she almost sounds like herself again, with just the faintest tremor in her voice. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t—”
The door slides open, and we both flinch. Keres drops her hands. Azrael is standing in the threshold.
He takes in the scene, and his eyes narrow. It’s rare for him to look truly angry; he’s the one who’s supposed to teach us apathy, after all. So the emotion fades quickly, replaced by his usual cool, unflappable expression.
“Keres,” he says, “what are you doing here?”
Her gaze clouds again. Her brow furrows, and she replies, in that distant, childlike voice, “I don’t know.”
I try to capture her stare, but she won’t look at me. She doesn’t recognize me anymore.
The pit in my stomach widens and deepens. Azrael puts his arm around Keres’s shoulders and leads her gently toward the door. Her steps are clumsy, staggering, like a patient still half anesthetized. She doesn’t turn back. Not even for a second.
When Azrael returns, I’m sitting on the stool with my elbows balanced on my knees, hunched over. I feel sick, but there’s nothing in me to vomit. In preparation for the Gauntlet, I’ve had nothing but intravenous fluids.
“Melino?.”
I don’t look up.
He steps toward me. “That was a mistake. Keres should never have been able to get in here. I’ve removed all her biometrics now. It won’t happen again.”
I still don’t move or speak.
“She shouldn’t have been able to get to the basement in the first place. I’ve asked Karl to keep her on a tighter leash.” He must mean her husband. More gently, Azrael goes on, “You know how it is sometimes, with the Wipes. They don’t take completely. The old memories are stubborn. She seemed to be slipping in and out of awareness. I’m sorry if it alarmed you, but there’s nothing to worry about. There will be another Wipe, and then another, if need be.”
I look up. “No.”
Azrael frowns. “What was that?”
“You lied.” I can only manage a whisper. “You said she chose to be decommissioned, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t . She wouldn’t leave me.”
Azrael’s gaze doesn’t shift. His gray eyes look frozen solid, like chips of ice. And that unflinching silence is my answer.
I’ll never know how many times he’s lied to me. How many memories of mine he’s stolen. Maybe I watched him haul Keres from her room, latch her to the table, jam the syringe into her throat. Maybe I saw it all, heard her screams echoing through the empty halls. And maybe then he slammed me down onto the table, shoved the needle through my skin, and took that memory, too.
We stare at each other without speaking. Moments tick by, like droplets from a tincture.
And then, at last, he says, “It was for her own good. Keres was compromised.”
I think my body is collapsing in on itself. I feel pressure on my throat, as if someone is crushing my windpipe. Is this a memory? The slow squeezing of my throat by strange hands? Has it happened to me before? It seems familiar, somehow, just like the desperate, gasping breaths I have to take so I can stammer out, “W-why?”
Azrael regards me without emotion, but when he speaks, his voice is gentle.
“She could no longer cope with the rigors of the job,” he says, and this is corporate talk, boardroom talk. He even switches to Damish. “It was better for everyone that she was able to retire gracefully and discreetly.”
“Better for you .” I shock myself with the venom of my words.
The Angel program is Azrael’s invention, his brainchild. I don’t know much about his past except that he was once a midlevel Caerus employee, and it was this idea—the Lamb’s Gauntlet—that propelled him upward through the company’s ranks. The CEO has always been a big fan of the Gauntlet, considering how much ad revenue the live streams bring in, but even more for the message they send. They keep New Amsterdam both riveted and cowed. Entertained and subjugated.
But Azrael’s position is dependent on the Gauntlet’s success. On our success. The CEO hears dozens of pitches every day. He’s equal parts capricious and unsentimental. He could choose, at any point, to pull all his funding and support. And after my last performance, I’m sure it’s more than crossed his mind.
Then, astonishingly, Azrael lowers himself to the ground. He kneels, so we’re at eye level—I think it must be for the first time in my life.
“Keres was good,” he says softly, “but she was imperfect. Over the years, I’ve refined my technique and made each successive Angel better than the last. It has been the work of my life. And all of it, leading up to this. To you, Melino?. You are my perfect creation.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he goes on. “I was the one to fail you, not the other way around. You never should have been on that Gauntlet. But I’ve learned from my mistake. This is my chance for redemption. You won’t fail again.”
He slips from the first person to the second person so fluidly I almost don’t notice. My throat feels too thick to speak. I can’t move a muscle as he raises his hand, cups my face, and tenderly strokes my cheek. The hand that has whittled me, carved me, shaped me, made me, in every sense of the word. When I was little, I always wanted to call him Father .
The same childish impulse rises again, along with an equally childish question. Why are you doing this to me?
But I keep the words tucked down deep. And when Azrael stands, I stand, too.
“Get in the helicopter, Melino?,” he says quietly.
And I do.
From ten thousand feet, the land is scraggly, half drowned. The outlying Counties of New Amsterdam are green with veins of brown, muddy rivers flooding down thousands of tributaries, overflowing their banks, creating lakes and ponds where there were once valleys and gorges.
The white specks, like lichen on a mossy log, are Caerus pod houses. I can’t see any other buildings until the helicopter dips closer. Then tumbledown wooden structures come into view, partially camouflaged by the damp woods around them. We pass a hundred identical towns that are barely more than a scattering of these houses, clustered together like bodies around a fire.
The North River lies against the land, a length of filthy rope, weaving through the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains. I tap my temple to activate the comms chip, and information scrolls across my vision. A map of Esopus Creek. The photos of the Lamb and her brother. And her tracker, a pulsing red dot on the map. It has an electric hum to it, like a live wire.
As the helicopter starts its descent, Azrael reaches out and grasps my arm. The wind and the whirring blades make it impossible for me to hear him, but I can read the shape of the words on his lips.
The Lamb has to die.
His grip on my arm is tight enough to hurt. I mouth back: She will.
Then he lets go.
The helicopter doesn’t land; it hovers about ten feet off the ground, a rope ladder is unfurled so I can climb down. The propulsed air from its blades blows back the trees, sending dead leaves fluttering off limp branches. And the noise draws the inhabitants of Esopus Creek out of their houses, onto their porches, squinting through the wind to watch me drop.
I’m required to start my Gauntlet at the Lamb’s legal residence, which means she’s had a head start of several hours. My hair blows around my face, partially obscuring the sights around me: the anxious faces of the Outliers, their precariously perched houses, the muggy smell of the churning water below. All these outlying towns are the same, more or less; I’ve seen half a hundred of them.
But as I look around, a powerful sensation shoots through me. An image flashes through my mind, just a brief burst of light. My limbs quiver and my cold blood runs hot.
There’s no proof of it, no proof except that full-body shuddering, that burst of light, but somehow I know , down to the very marrow in my bones—Esopus Creek is not new to me. The memory isn’t false familiarity.
I’ve been here before.