43 #3
He hesitates another moment too long before blurting, “I want to stay the Showmaster! That’s all I care about! What’s the point in living if I don’t have that?! You’re trying to take the Games away—”
“The Bonding Games will not be over. I said they will not be as they are now,” Havoc cuts him off, tone icy cold, and he freezes.
“So . . . so, I can continue to be the Showmaster?”
Her head tilts as she puts on a show of considering. “Will you speak for the globe and support me as you have been told to?”
A beat.
Then his head frantically bobs. “Yes. Yes, I swear it. You keep me as your Showmaster, and I’ll do whatever you ask.”
Peter’s probably too thick to see the truth in Ezla’s devilish smirk. “Excellent.”
***
Other than my Havoc, not much can affect me. But when we stepped back into this fucking penthouse earlier, a shiver of fury and revulsion wracked through my entire body.
Like the rest of my brothers, I’m glued to our Bonded’s side, and I can feel her irritation as we move through the place, especially since we all know Joseph’s not even in here anymore.
We saw his total elimination just minutes ago.
For her satisfaction, Cooper has shown Ezla Joseph’s death from his perspective, all up close and personal, and so she knew how well and truly gone the disease was even before he was turned to dust right before our very eyes: With the second fuckface’s (aka Peter’s) unfortunately needed help for quick believability with the story we’re selling, there’s now not a body in sight, not even a foul smell to indicate where they’d been.
Neutral guards were brought in to do the task with their eliminators, and that’s that.
The Game Master and all his Evots are ashes now, just as every other person is who dies in Techta, their Avri clusters in the process of being returned to the poles they came from. No special treatment, no nothing.
The extraction process isn’t too difficult to grasp; an individual’s death allows for it: An entire Avri cluster is always given specific instructions upon its original coding when dedicated to one person, and upon the owner’s death, one of those orders ensures all other commands given to it are to be forgotten, restoring the family of pixels to what they once were: iridescent and without any specific task.
It doesn’t happen immediately—Avri’s phenomenal, but it still needs time to work and return to its original state—but over time, usually over the course of a few hours, and more or less depending on how much of the cluster was commanded for use and how intricate those commands were, the energy will be drawn back to an Avri pole with no orders to keep it from its pull, unable to be seen by the naked eye.
That energy will be completely neutral, no memory of its previous owner, simply ready to be commanded for a new use.
The air seems to cool further as we approach the home theatre, and the doors are open all around as they were when we were last in here, that setting left on, though it would’ve looked the same even if Ezla’s fingerprint wasn’t stored in the biometric scanners—the ones these days recognise death just like Avri, and with no way to enter many places without a scan of a thumb with taalk all around, they’ll disable unless another person whose fingerprint is stored on them is still alive.
“Let me go first, Love.” Scotty speaks softly, soothingly, as we slow at the cinema’s doorway, shifting as though his instincts are screaming at him to step in front of her and stop her from entering the room just like I did previously.
He’s unable to hide his emotions without hurting Ezla by blocking her from his mind as we recently learned to do in our horror and panic—and that I will absolutely never fucking be doing again, because that was worse than agony to cut her out like I did, and my Havoc doesn’t ever deserve to be shut out—but I can tell he’s still trying to keep a lid on those lingering feelings that find him now as memories bombard us, drowning them out with his overpowering need to take care of her that’s increased as a result of the tumult within him.
This fucking room.
I’ll destroy everything in here that’s not made of taalk. That’s a fucking promise.
Pursing her lips, Havoc doesn’t bother to hide her fury, but even my body knows now is not the time to light up at it.
This entire situation is devastating. “I can handle this,” she grinds out.
“I can feel all that you are, but I am not weakened by the memories the same as you. I do not process things as you do. I would prefer you be at either my back or my side.”
Scotty looks torn. One second passes, then another, before he sighs and dips his chin. He offers a smile, but sadness seeps into the gentle reassurance he tries for. “We’ll be right beside you.”
Ezla’s eyes scan over every inch of his face, expression smoothed back out.
“I am aware,” she replies evenly now. “And I am not at all opposed. We should not be long. I am quite certain Joseph would not have stored many recordings across different devices. He is not completely daft; he would have wanted to minimise the criminalising evidence as well as keep what he believed to be his hidden from all other eyes.”
“He certainly didn’t keep it from us,” Cooper mutters bitterly.
But then he’s shaking his head and scrubbing a gloved hand over his face before anyone can comment on that—I’ve hardly managed to ball my fists and narrow my eyes in preparation to tell him to watch his damn tone as he moves closer to Ezla’s left when he says in a much better manner after blowing out a breath, “Sorry, HC. That anger wasn’t directed at you.
And I completely agree with you: that sick fuck wouldn’t want anyone else seeing you like that.
It was a unique situation with us—our intimacy and his jealousy and need to assert his ownership.
” His nostrils flare on that to mirror the emotions that surge up from all angles in the bond before he inhales a steadying breath.
Cupping the back of Ezla’s neck, he so effortlessly pulls her in to press his lips briefly to her forehead, emphasising his apology, as if he didn’t struggle with the casually given affection just a couple weeks ago.
“I am aware,” she repeats, then muses with a twitch of her lips, “That was quite praise-worthy temper control. Maybe I should start handing out treats. Then again, I may begin to miss those sparring matches too much.”
Scoffing, his hand gently squeezes her nape in response, and I catch just a subtle twitch of Havoc’s fingers as they remember and no doubt long for the ability to disagree with her heart and throttle him.
I can tell Cooper’s still in too much of a mess like the rest of us to bite back with a quip, even before his next words come out solemnly: “Are you ready to go in?”
“Of course. I do not need preparation.” There’s nothing but blunt honesty in Ezla’s words.
Cooper’s expression firms, and he dips his chin. “Right. Then let’s do this.”
***
With Ezla here to know how to find and remove the device connected to the big screen, our task isn’t at all difficult.
At least not physically. Emotionally, I don’t think anyone’s coping well.
And yet, all things considered, I could say we are as Havoc opens a discreet section in the glossy black chest-height rectangle that stands up from the floor.
It’s one of the only noticeable things in here and what Tiger had accidentally turned that horrid video on with.
On its flat top are four onyx buttons, each reading a different thing in that familiar blackish crimson: OPEN/CLOSE, ON, PAUSE, and OFF.
The boxes are common these days, and you can find them in most or all houses, allowing you to play clips from any device or disc if you only put them in the space provided, allowing it to connect to the screen.
I’m not sure why we weren’t able to turn the video off that day, but I’m thinking that remote Joseph held was completely in control once Tiger turned it on and that’s why he couldn’t get it off the screen despite the obvious buttons right there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the insane piece of shit had rigged the control point so that it alerted him through the remote if someone other than him were to press one of the buttons, specifically us, because it was clear he was expecting us, even if he didn’t know when we would come.
“It is his phone,” Ezla tells us as she takes it from the slot in the control point. “I have not been on it before, but I am sure I can guess his password.”
“Why not just destroy it?” Tiger asks, brows furrowed as he looks at the screen over her shoulder.
I move closer too as she replies while typing, “Because there could be information on here that I would like to know. Things he may have been planning that he did not yet mention. And let’s not forget the cameras.
No doubt, he was watching the footage through here.
It no longer matters if there is a camera with us right now if I have the device, but the idea of one lingering is irksome. ”
“That makes sense . . .” Alby says quietly as he also crowds around our Bonded, who lets out a quiet growl as the second password she inputs is wrong.
“How ridiculous. We should have kept his finger for a little longer, at least,” Havoc mutters under her breath.
“Don’t worry, Wifey. You’re too intelligent to not get in without cutting his finger off.” Tiger pops a kiss on her cheek, and she shoots him a brief narrowed-eyed look before focusing back on the screen.
“I know that.”
“Of course you do. You’re too intelligent not to recognise your own intelligence.”