47 Guess That’s Scene
Guess That’s Scene
T he execution was to occur in downtown Elsidor City, in one of Imperial Broadcast News’ production studios.
Spie climbed a riser and took her seat at the back of the studio.
A low stage dominated one half of the room.
Upon the stage sat a single chair that resembled a raised medical bed.
Sticking out of the chair’s back were a saline drip and IV.
There were no windows, only blinding white walls, bright fluorescent bulbs, and a giant greenscreen.
Bulky cameras flanked the stage, along with a few discreet people to operate them.
Every entrance and exit was heavily manned by imperial guards.
Nicky and Cailin filled in the seats to Spie’s right, Arbora to her left.
They were the only audience members present.
Gracelin walked solemnly to the stage. In the hours since Love Galaxy ’s truncated finale, the emperor had changed from her ostentatious dress into a regal grey-and-dark-green suit.
Spie ground her teeth, doubt festering in her gut.
There was no conceivable way in or out of this room.
Had Arbora lied to her? She glanced at her ex-girlfriend-turned-fiancée.
They hadn’t had a private moment to speak since their exchange in the manor’s cleaning closet.
And Spie hadn’t dared to bridge her—not when their communications could be dredged up by her mother. She had to be very, very careful.
But Arbora appeared calm. Too calm. She sat perfectly still, hands clasped in her lap. When she caught Spie’s searching gaze, she offered a strained smile. A toothless, nervous stretch of lips that did nothing to reassure the silent calamity in Spie’s chest.
You want to be emperor now, Spielin? After your brother has toiled tirelessly to be worthy of the title? After you threw away your birthright like it was an unwanted crust?
To which Spie had said, I would’ve toiled just as tirelessly if you’d ever bothered to mention Nicky’s condition to me. You know how dangerous it is for him to be in such a public position. Now that I know, the circumstances have changed. I’m ready to protect my brother, my family, and the empire.
Her mother had narrowed her gaze. Consider the matter taken under advisement.
It was as close to a yes as Spie had anticipated. Likely, there would be a proving period before Gracelin made any official decisions. Which meant Spie had to play her part perfectly.
Through a hidden door on stage left, Marta Eulogon appeared, hovering a few inches above the ground in her motorized disability chair. She was ancient, a fixture of the imperial court; she’d been Spie’s grandfather’s chief of staff for decades before Gracelin had ascended the throne.
Following after Marta came two visored guards, both wearing arm patches to indicate medical training. In the arms of one was a body in a dirty beige jumpsuit. A white-skinned body with light blue hair.
Spie’s heart hammered against her rib cage. She sensed her brother stiffen beside her.
The guards laid Artemis in the empty chair at center stage. They tightened black straps over her thighs and arms, then inserted a needle into her left wrist. After, they slunk away to the periphery of the studio. Artemis’s head lolled sideways, clearly unconscious.
She looked like shit. A swollen, disfigured nose. A split bottom lip. Yellow and green bruises marring the soft whiteness of the skin around her left eye. And there was something off about the angle at which her right arm was twisted in its strap.
“Excuse me,” Nicky said, standing abruptly.
As he pushed past Spie to get to the aisle, she noted a tear flick off his long lashes. Her heart squeezed painfully. It didn’t matter how angry she was with him; his hurt would always hurt her. Even if this was his doing. Even if he was unwilling to stop it.
“Your Highness, what’s wrong?” Cailin called after him, but he was already shoving past the guards at the audience exit. His new fiancée hurried after him.
Kalvin climbed the steps at stage right. As he approached Spie’s mother, he inclined his head. “Your Excellency.”
“You know I don’t like to drag out unpleasant business, Kal.” Gracelin brushed at his shoulder as though removing lint. “Marta’s running the confession. We go live in two minutes.”
“Wake her,” Marta proclaimed, wheeling off the stage and then, with the assistance of her cane, standing. She stepped sideways and lowered herself into a front-row seat.
Kalvin directed a series of commands at the camera operators. One of the medic guards hopped onto the stage to insert a vial into Artemis’s IV.
She came to, screaming.
“Shut her up,” Marta said, and the guard slapped Artemis silent.
Spie was on her feet, fully preparing to launch herself over ten tiered benches to punch the guard straight in their stupid visor when someone grabbed her wrist. She looked back. Arbora gave a tiny warning shake of her head. Mouthed, Sit .
Tension pulled Spie’s every muscle taut. She was on the verge of full-body combustion but managed to sit.
“We’re live in thirty,” Kalvin called out.
Spie tried not to focus on Artemis but was unable to look anywhere else. The innocent X-er was breathing rapidly, her gaze flitting about the studio until it landed on Spie herself.
Spie sucked in a breath. The plain hatred on Artemis Ialan’s battered face was like an LZ beam to Spie’s heart. An efficient, precise incineration.
“Four, three, two, and—” Kalvin leapt off the stage.
Gracelin took seven measured steps to center stage, her movements tracked by the cameras.
“Dearest citizens of Expan, of our united humanity.” She paused tactfully.
Spie was a good actor, but her mother was even better.
“Today is punctuated by polarized extremes. The joy of your beloved prince and princess finding their perfect matches, and now the tragedy of a necessary death.”
One of the cameras panned right, showing Artemis’s hate-filled expression.
Gracelin continued. “You all might be wondering why I would condone an engagement and an execution mere hours from one another. I could’ve waited.
But there’s important symbolism here. In life, no amount of joy can erase tragedy, and no amount of despair can forever silence hope.
We are creatures living constantly in this inescapable duality.
So, let us feel it all together. The joy and the pain.
The grief and the hope. You’ve heard the undeniable evidence against Artemis Ialan, have seen her hateful confession.
You know what she did. Three brave, accomplished, beautiful women are no longer here because of her.
Their deaths were painful, brutal affairs.
But I am a merciful woman. I recognize that even my enemies deserve the best of my humanity.
So, I will offer Miss Ialan a humane death.
Let her slip from this world in a peace that evaded her hate-filled existence. Mercy is an important part of justice.”
Gracelin slowly approached Artemis’s execution chair.
Spie half-expected Artemis to cry out, to curse, to spit, but the X-er remained as silent as the grave to which she was heading. Spie glanced desperately at Arbora. Grabbed her elbow. Mouthed, When?
Soon, Arbora mouthed back, slipping her arm out of Spie’s grip.
On the stage, Gracelin draped a regal hand over the switch box that would release whatever euthanizing drug was in the saline drip.
“May we all take a moment of silence for the lives Artemis took and for the life she could have led, had she not chosen to betray her own humanity.” Gracelin closed her eyes.
Spie counted her heartbeats. One, five, nine—
Gracelin flipped the switch.
Spie didn’t have time to stare, didn’t have time to scream, didn’t have time to feel her heart plummet to her feet. Because the second her mother flipped the switch that should’ve killed Artemis, the entire green-screened wall backing the stage exploded outward.
Everything happened all at once.
Spie’s ears rang; instinctively, she slid from her chair to the narrow slip of floor between risers.
On the stage, Gracelin Expani dropped to her knees.
A throng of armed guards stormed up the steps.
A previously invisible hatch in the stage floor dropped open.
Two guards grabbed the emperor and jumped through it.
A roaring sound ground through the studio; wind whipped through the gaping hole in the wall.
The black metal exterior of a fighter jet appeared, hovering just outside, twin guns spinning, engines spitting.
The jet nudged its sleek nose inside the studio, the engine growling so loudly that Spie couldn’t hear herself think.
Every imperial guard had their LZ blasters out; they shot at the jet, but the vehicle must’ve been military-grade, because it deflected every attack.
The jet retaliated, spinning guns inflicting a barrage of blue laser light.
Within seconds, every guard was reduced to a sizzling mass of burned flesh on the stage floor.
Sick boiled up Spie’s throat.
Two men in black facemasks dropped out of the jet, landing in the dust left over from the explosion.
They jumped over the dead bodies, moving quickly.
One pulled out a knife and began cutting Artemis free of her execution chair; the other hopped off the stage.
Something tickled the back of Spie’s neck—she looked up.
A splintering, smoking ceiling panel was about five hundredths of a second away from dropping on her head.
She dove to the side just as it crashed between her and Arbora, dust and debris exploding over her face and into her mouth.
Her eyes stung. When she blinked away the dust, it was to see that Artemis was gone.
The jet’s engines flared. The flying monstrosity tore through more studio wall before accelerating out of sight. The whole of Expan Proper’s air force would be on its tail in seconds.
Spie didn’t know if Artemis was alive or dead.
Somehow, more than one of the cameras were still on. Still broadcasting. Had the entire ordeal just been broadcast to every citizen in the empire?
Ears aching, probably bleeding, her heart in her throat, Spie brushed debris from her shoulders and, tentatively, rose.
In shock, she surveyed the crumbling studio.
Camera operators began rising from where they’d hidden on the floor.
Bits of drywall flaked from the gaping hole in the wall, crashing forty-six stories to the city streets below.
Sunlight blared its way inside. The burnt-flesh scent of dead bodies was cloyingly thick.
Spie turned, eyes wide, to look for Arbora. Her fiancée was still crouched behind the risers, her whole body trembling, her hair and skin flecked in white dust. She looked to be in shock herself.
Seeming to notice Spie’s gaze, Arbora glanced up. She closed her mouth, swallowed, then opened it again. “Guess that’s scene,” she whispered.