42 #3
“They healed Father perfectly well when he would slash up his skin and break his bones during his episodes.”
She makes a strangled sound.
Everyone else stares, dumbfounded.
“You expect us to believe he self-harmed?” a dark-haired man asks sceptically. “The Game Master had everything—”
“Use your brain, you fuckwit,” Tate growls behind me. “Why else would he want special pills made, huh? Why would he only want them for himself and keep it a secret? Fucking idiot.” He mutters the last part, and the man’s neck flushes in what appears to be both embarrassment and anger.
“I-I’m sorry. I—I didn’t know. I would have tried to get him help.
” The woman from before appears close to tears, and I try not to wince.
She’s clearly innocent in all this, but I have to remember things like this are necessary for our success here, and I’d do anything, take on any amount of guilt, for my Bonded.
“You could not have helped him,” Ezla replies, point-blank.
“Especially not over the past weeks. He was losing himself more and more. Which brings me to the tablets.” Her eyes come to settle back on the man who’s been doing the altering of them.
“You even said yourself you did not agree with his wishes.”
“I didn’t.” He grimaces, hand pressing harder to his side where he continues to bleed.
I don’t think it’s as bad as Ezla made it out to be—she wouldn’t have struck him anywhere fatal when she needs him to fix our citizen tablets, and she definitely wouldn’t be taking the time to say everything she is now if it were—but it still doesn’t look great.
His eyes lower to the tabletop before him as his voice drops.
“But I have two little girls of my own, and I might have had a similar reaction if I were so scared for their safety.”
“But he was lying,” Ezla hisses, then works to level out her tone when the tension that I now notice had somewhat decreased in the room climbs back up to the roof.
“He could not handle my growing absence. He could not handle my growing feelings for my Bonds.” Truth.
“As I have said, he was too reliant on me, too attached and lonely. I was still there for him in the end, but I cannot be expected to stay with him forever, and even if you do not have Bonded yourself, you are aware of how special they are. Father knew this too, and yet he could not handle it. And so he came after my Bonds.” She has to pause there, and I feel her fury at the memory through the bond, making my breath hitch.
“The recent attack on the Neutral club? Those Exots were not a random group; they were employed by him and had been in his service for years, sent to kill my men.” That attack, undoubtably by the Game Master’s doing, was kept pretty quiet, and yet there were no doubt other people out that night and those over the following days with the reconstruction the club would have had to undergo that have evidently witnessed enough to cause speculation, enough for them to gather snippets of what went down and for Ezla to have known that no one would be shocked by that part of the revelation, only the bit about the assassination attempt on us.
“But even if you did not believe that, the fact that he then had you put those buttons on their tablets should be evidence enough. I would not be so blind as to not see unstable men when my father was one of them.” A pause before she continues, “Furthermore, he recently slaughtered many of you, some of whom were your friends, I am assuming.”
The mood in the room becomes even more sombre, and there’s a few wordless nods.
“This is proof of his lack of sanity: None of those workers hurt me, and yet he thought they did for no reason at all. I was simply in a bad mood that day, as I often naturally am unless I am killing”—a few workers take subtle steps back at that, even though they’re all already far enough away—“but I had only come down here to learn more about the Avri you work on in attempt to find a more peaceful way to de-stress.”
The silence deepens.
Then the same man closes his eyes and blows out a slow breath. “I apologise.” My brows dip in confusion before he continues, “I will remove the buttons at once. Both of them.”
“I thought you said—”
“I lied,” he cuts Scotty off with a wince. “I’m sorry. I was told to make their presence on the tablet irreversible, and with you being the Game Master’s daughter . . .”
“You thought I would inform him of your disobedience,” Ezla says, and I can feel her imagining slowly slicing into him.
“Yes,” he says quietly.
Her eyes narrow. “And if you were not afraid of him, why would that be an issue?”
“He might’ve been kind, but he’s still in power and stern when he needs to be. Just like most people, I can’t afford to lose my job. Employees all around Techta are strict about our performance, and it would be hard to find another job so quickly to support my children.”
Silently seething, Ezla’s gaze remains slitted.
“What about the helmets?” Tiger asks then, and I glance over at him before looking at the blonde woman who answers almost immediately.
“That was another recent request made by the Game Master. He wanted things to be harder this year, more exciting for the audience.”
“And you just did what he wanted?” Tate growls.
A fine tremor runs through her, but she somehow keeps her voice steady. “One does not disobey the Game Master. And Final Battles—”
“Is cancelled,” Ezla finishes.
Several mute blinks.
“The Showmaster will announce this to the public soon. He will announce a great many things.” With Ezla’s words, I can already feel the speed in the room picking up.
The time for talking is over. “Now, we have already wasted enough time—my Bonds’ tablets need fixing.
But I trust that when the time comes, you will support the facts shared with the globe. ”
There’s not a moment’s hesitation, and I let out a slow breath of relief in time with the nods and murmured yeses that fill the lab.
I can feel the cool, refreshing breeze mirrored in my brothers through the bond as we take in the fact that this worked, that this has all gone—mostly—smoothly.
We really needed that after all the madness lately.
“Of course, Miss Zefron—Champion. But what . . . what are our next steps? Who is . . . Who do we work for now? Will we receive direction from The Council?” one of the Neutrals in here asks.
Her eyes slowly slide to him, and her glee swishes through me on velvet and sin.
Her expression gives none of what she’s feeling away when she replies emotionlessly, “You will.” But she can’t keep her wicked grin in on her next words, and there’s many gulps to rival the loudness of my own when she says, “And you will work for me, of course. I have many new and exciting ideas. Rest assured, you will like them. I would not want my Bonds to live in a horrid place.”
I think everyone’s at a loss for words, struggling to process the volume of information they’ve received in the past ten minutes.
“You want to change things?” The man from before speaks up again.
Ezla hums. “Of course.”
“My two girls . . . they . . . I don’t want them in the Games. Like me, I think they’ll turn out to be Exots. I can’t lose them.”
“You will not lose them,” Ezla says simply. “Under my rule, the Games as you know them will no longer exist. There will be no more training schools.”
Multiple gasps are sucked in around the room, and I scan over the faces of all the Evots, Exots, and Neutrals in the room.
Over the time we’ve been in here, I’ve counted ten in total, and it’s not many people to be telling all this to, but it’s a start.
And some are wary, but most I could swear seem hopeful.
“But what about the people who like the Games?” an Exot asks, and it’s very obvious he’s talking about himself.
“There will still be a Bonding Games, but it will be voluntary,” Ezla shares, not giving anyone time to ask anything else before she says with impatience leaking into her sharp tone, “Now, as I have already stressed, I am impatient to fix my Bonds’ tablets.
You will find out more about my plans when I reveal them on live TV.
” Grabbing the box of citizen tablets, she places mine back on top before she marches for the man, and I hurry to follow her with my brothers.
The father we’ve been speaking to turns around and starts to make his way painfully across the room, leading us to whatever lab all citizen tablets are made in, I’m guessing, and as we tail him, Ezla calls back to the room without turning around, “And it is no longer ‘Champion’ or ‘Miss Zefron’—it is Empress from now on.”