Chapter 15 Judge, Jury, utioner
Judge, Jury, Executioner
Their public executions are merely a confession that they fear us more than we fear death.
Week by week, I adapted to the whims of the Blood Colonel who dominated my Thursday nights.
He gave me chores after he wearied of my poor endurance.
I was to jog every day—“at least thirty minutes, Sophia, and only during the day”—and he wanted me to take time to work out.
I grumbled, but obeyed, remembering how Tekqua had always wanted me to exercise more. This was the least I could do for her.
His information bought the Defiance a distinct advantage, and the NSF brought in recruits trying to manage it all. Theo was thrilled, greedy for Lucas’s intel. He mentioned more than once that we might end this thing.
Yeah, I’d believe it when he got us there.
We failed to kill Jack Miller before he healed, but we got several lower officers in the attempt. Lucas wasn’t surprised by our failure.
“He’s a hard man to pin down,” he said when I told him they’d fallen back.
A few times, Theo or Williams asked me to approach Lucas outside our weekly meetings, and I biked to the house on Evanston to turn the lamp purple.
I’m waiting.
When the light glowed orange—on my way—in response, butterflies fluttered inside. Those meetings were short, and Lucas was always in a rush to return.
Twice, I received a page to meet him at a different time than usual. On both occasions, he gave information that led us straight to a timely win.
During those weeks, Devon tried to approach me many times, but I kept my distance.
I declined Zara’s invitations to chat. People gossiped, especially once I started exercising on a regular basis.
They smiled like they thought I might snap, and the pitying darkness in their eyes made me squirm.
What theories had they developed about the lonely orphan, afraid of human touch and affection?
The only person who didn’t treat me like a fragile china doll was Lucas Scott.
He treated me like a rag doll.
And yet, every spare thought focused on his mystery.
Nothing made sense, and my curiosity would not be slaked.
The day Lily Wyatt was transported from headquarters, paranoia set in.
I spent a solid two weeks spiraling, convinced it was some elaborate ruse to infiltrate us.
Perhaps he was a great actor, winning me over so I’d lead him into the fold, and that’s when he’d strike—literally killing me with kindness.
Those suspicions disappeared on the first of August.
“Remember when they used to use guns?” a man asked as we settled in the TV room to watch the executions.
“I miss those days,” a woman replied.
Brandon Sikes, the anchor of Unified News, announced the event as he usually did, then the feed cut to Unity Square.
My stomach vanished.
It wasn’t his turn.
It should have been Jack Miller.
Why was it Lucas?
Unity Square was a simple gray courtyard composed of concrete and dust. The camera always faced a wall of cement blocks, and a wooden podium stood to the side. Above the darkened bloodstains on the wall, the Brotherhood Cross gleamed on a flag of pristine white.
Only the Defiance flew the US flag anymore.
An audience sat behind the portion we could see, but the camera never panned over them. We only knew they existed from the chanted All hail the Commander that accompanied every execution.
Lucas approached the podium dressed in military finery, as if this was something to be celebrated. His unsmiling face peered at the camera, a mask of ice as he read the verbiage of the executive order that forced him to do this.
To me, the tightness of his mouth and tension in his body were obvious signs of his discomposure, but the people around me disparaged him, told stories of times they’d witnessed him on missions.
“…kills without mercy…”
“…soulless…”
“…cold-blooded…”
“…inhuman…”
Lucas’s calculated ability to steal life with minimal effort had garnered him a reputation of detached viciousness.
“Iced bloodlust,” Tekqua had once whispered when his silver scalpel ended yet another dozen lives. As I watched him walk offscreen that day, not a speck of blood marring his skin, I couldn’t help but agree. The man was nothing but ice and blood.
Now, I knew those eyes, that face—scorched with grief.
Not cold-blooded, after all.
Lucas’s voice whispered through my head. When I close my eyes, I hear voices begging me not to kill them.
The man was a chameleon, able to wear whatever skin he needed to survive in the moment. I turned away as he stepped toward the condemned, the scalpel already in hand, unable to watch him do it.
At the Evanston house that night, I’d barely stepped inside when the color of his eyes caught my attention, gleaming like polished aquamarine. He stood in the middle of the living room, skin ashen, his movements slow and hesitant, like he thought I might be afraid.
Should I have been afraid?
He was dangerous. He’d ended lives not three hours ago. But he stood still, holding himself back, his hands useless at his sides.
No fear surfaced.
Instead, I forced a smile. “I’ve been told remorse is a sign of a healthy mind.”
“Yeah? Who said that?” His voice was different. Strained.
I took a few steps closer. “My father.”
“And where is your father, Sophia? Why didn’t he keep you from running into the house of a murderer?”
A silence passed. “He died trying to cross the Ohio River.”
Lucas’s throat bobbed.
“As did my mother.”
He studied me a moment. “What else did your father say?”
“When you’re faced with a choice between two bad options, you can only choose the better one. Remorse is a sign you understand there’s a wider context to your decisions than the obvious right or wrong.”
His face drained of color. “Are—are you trying to absolve me, Sophia?”
“I could see you didn’t want to do it. I can see the pain on your face now.”
He shook his head. “You’re reading into things.”
I’d considered that. All afternoon I’d argued I was excusing his actions to make my time with him more palatable, but my instincts told me otherwise. I took another step closer. “It wasn’t your turn. Why’d they make you do it?”
His unblinking gaze was so intense, I fought the urge to look away.
“I volunteered,” he murmured.
My heart skipped a few beats. “What? Wh-why?”
“Because there was a kid.”
I froze.
“A boy. Thirteen.” His hard expression turned curious. “Didn’t you see him?”
Too busy watching Lucas, I hadn’t paid attention to the prisoners lined up to be executed. In truth, I hated looking at them. It engendered too much pain.
“You killed a kid?” I whispered. Not only killed him, but requested to do it. How could the NAO possibly have justified the execution of a child? A myriad of emotions sped my heart—disbelief, disgust, horror, sadness, fear.
He studied my face carefully, and his voice lowered. “Still want to absolve me?”
There had to be a reason. Maybe I didn’t understand it, maybe I would never understand it, but there had to be a reason.
Still, a poisonous wave of anger washed over me, hot enough to make me reckless.
My feet moved before I knew what I was doing, flying toward him.
My palm connected with his face in a vicious smack, the sound like the recoil of a rubber band.
Scarlet bloomed over his cheek, not unlike the patch he wore on his shoulder when he’d committed those murders.
Wrath exploded inside me.
I attacked, using all the training he’d bestowed upon me. My fingernails clawed at his face, scraped gouges into his skin. I tightened my hand into a fist and slammed it into his jaw, flinching at the pain that bloomed in my knuckles. Still, I kicked, punched, screamed.
He could’ve gotten away. Stronger, bigger, faster—if he’d wanted to hurt me, to kill me, he could have done it. But he didn’t fight, not even like when we sparred.
I hit him as hard as I could, ignoring the throb in my pinky as a gash opened at his mouth. I grabbed his neck and hair, trying to cause as much pain as possible, to leave marks others would see. His lip bled freely, staining my skin. It fueled a blind fury inside me.
How dare he bleed? As if he were human enough to do it. As if he possessed a heart.
I shoved his shoulders. He slammed into the wall beside the brick fireplace. At his throat in a flash, I didn’t fumble when I wrested the weapon he’d given me from my pocket. The sharp points of the knuckles balanced atop his carotid.
He lifted his hands to either side, slow and submissive, and we stared at each other. My chest heaved, but his barely moved. Something in his eyes screwed confusing tendrils of ice into my chest. Something like…a plea.
A breath escaped him, and with it, I thought I heard a single word.
Please.
Was he pleading for leniency or begging me to kill him? Maybe the greatest mercy I could give him was ending his miserable life.
Did it matter which it was?
He’d surrendered to me. To me. This predator stared at me with no plan to attack, no recourse for escape. If I desired, I could end his life, and he’d let it happen.
Do it, I told myself. Just do it!
But I couldn’t.
The rage inside me buckled and broke. Sparks exploded in my head, showering over every preconceived notion, burning them to ash. He wasn’t the man I’d originally thought, but he also wasn’t the man I thought I’d begun to understand.
He was an enigma.
One thing I knew for certain. Hidden beneath layers of mystery and snark, there was a reason he’d turned traitor. A profound one.
A reason he killed like a robot.
A reason he volunteered for executions.
A reason he’d asked for a woman, but wanted me safe.
A reason he wanted to die.
And I needed to know it.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice was laced with desperation, begging for an answer.
But I didn’t get it. At least, not the one I wanted.
“They hurt my sister.” He said it so softly, and I—
I believed him.
I could find no other motivation. He didn’t want me. He didn’t want clemency. He didn’t want to live. He only wanted vengeance.
Breathing too fast, I studied the silvery scar above his eyebrow. No fury, no ice. Instead, pain engulfed him, suffused by a cloying, hopeless exhaustion, the bone-deep kind that couldn’t be relieved by rest. It radiated from him like the heat that burned in his touch.
“It’s what I deserve,” he whispered when I hesitated.
I yanked my hand back and dropped the knuckles to the floor. Did he deserve to die? What was I missing?
It didn’t matter. His death wouldn’t be at my hand, not when he offered it to me freely. I wouldn’t play judge, jury and executioner for him. If he wanted to die, he could do it himself.
I backed away. “Tell me your information. I want to leave.”
A brief silence passed in which he stood motionless, staring at my face with flagrant disappointment. His mouth opened, and words fell out—the precious information Theo wanted so much that he’d been willing to let me die for it. I memorized it and left.
Only after I returned home and gave the information to Theo did I realize I still had Lucas Scott’s blood on my hands