Chapter 81 Gedeon #2
I flicked a crust of blood off my sleeve.
But it didn’t really help. The material was saturated beyond laundry.
“You tried to kill us at the Spire. You arranged the explosion with Ezra,” I listed, my tone the epitome of collectedness, my exterior hiding the havoc my emotions were wreaking inside me.
Ardaton’s ruler shrugged, as nonchalant as a person could be.
“It was part of my deal with Ezra. An opportunity to take you three out in exchange for his support.” Leaning against the glass, the City Head blocked my visual of Kali.
“But why do you think the Spire stood? I chose how powerful the explosives would be.” He looked me up and down. “I hoped you would survive.”
It didn’t take much to figure out the reasoning behind his hopes. “So I could work for you.”
His chin dipped. “Yes.”
“What’s in it for you?” I zeroed in on the minuscule Ardaton emblem embroidered in the collar of his button-up shirt. “Up until now, the cities had always supported each other.”
“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you,” Adder mused.
From the brown shade of his skin, one could think we were more related than my actual father and me.
“We have been failing to expand our population. Ardaton’s birth rates have been steadily declining for the last two decades.
The Matching system isn’t producing the results we seek.
Our doctors have confirmed our green-banded citizens are experiencing too many complications in their efforts to conceive and carry our pregnancies until a survivable-outside-the-womb state. ”
When I didn’t provide a reaction, he continued. “We have asked, begged, Ilasall and Coriattus to help by sharing their supply of able-to-reproduce residents. Both cities refused. Every single year in my and my predecessor’s terms of service.”
So that was why Ardaton had been so quick to invade Ilasall. They had been waiting for an opening to sneak in and steal the city’s fertile folk.
“You want us to repeat what we have accomplished in Ilasall. To crush Coriattus,” I concluded.
The Head of Ardaton smiled. “See? We think alike.”
“I’m not going to agree to it, Adder.” This couldn’t possibly work out. He would simply use our people as his personal army, keeping his own citizens at the back lines, and after occupying Coriattus, find a loophole in our agreement and wipe us out or coerce us into serving his city.
He pulled out his tablet. “I thought you might say that.” Half a dozen swipes later, the doors to both Zion’s and Kali’s cells opened, a…doctor striding into each.
The two individuals were dressed in white pants and tunics, but the way they stopped at my partners’ sides screamed of wrongness.
And from how Kali curled her lip at the slender man looking down on her, whatever was about to go down was not going to be good.
“Pick one,” the City Head at my side said.
My frown deepened. “Pick what?”
“One,” Adder gestured to Kali, then to Zion, “or the other.” Returning the tablet to its place under his armpit, he explained, “I’m not above employing battle tactics. I know how to persuade. So pick one of your partners.”
A chuckle vibrated through me. I was not one to heed threats. “And if I do not?”
He shrugged. “Then both will be subjected to whatever I choose.”
My mouth dried out. Based on our short interaction, Adder seemed more than capable of playing my weak points.
Pressing a palm to the glass, I pushed past the rush in my ears. Seeing Kali gulp at the man standing near her, yet square her shoulders in a soundless protest, thickened my throat. She had endured so much in Ilasall; it would tear me apart to subject her to more.
But the sight of Zion passed out, slumped in his chair, bound, with his tattooed arm broken and the undamaged one marked with the burn scars I’d forced him to inflict on himself, drove a knife into my stomach.
Your death belongs to me and her, Zion, only me and her and no one else. Don’t you give up, I chanted in my mind.
Like Shadow, Zion had made his home in my chest. And all I could do was consider the possibility of adding more bones to my rib cage to lock him in, to shield him, keep him happy and protected, and never expose him to the cold—my constant companion for years.
Kali had unlocked that part of me, and now it held seats for two.
I wanted to strap Zion next to her and carry them with me down the roads our lives took us on.
So no, choosing one to sacrifice and saving another was not an acceptable option.
I loved them like the dawn loved the stars, both burning each other, not able to coexist for long, but when they did find their peace, forged a truce, it was as if time stood still.
I licked the dried blood off my lips. “Me.”
Adder tilted his head aside, the movement tugging on a short, jagged scar at the bottom of his neck. “Explain.”
Leader to leader, I laid out my pick. “I choose me. Torture me instead of them.”
His slow-to-spread grin sparkled in the bright lights. “Now, where would the fun be in that?”
“You would have the leader of the resistance in your hands.” Granted, we didn’t call ourselves that, but for him, that was who we were.
“I already do,” he stated. “But I want you to work for me, not play childish games.” Taking a step back, he took out his tablet.
“I think you are in need of the right type of motivation.” Drumming his fingers on the screen, he scrolled through the records.
“As he—I believe his name is Zion—is unconscious, we’ll start with Kali. ”
He tapped a button on the device, and the speakers crackled.
Raising his voice, Adder instructed, “Please escort subject number thirty-thousand-and-fifty-four to our guests.” Finished, he flashed me another smile.
“If I have mispronounced Kali’s or Zion’s names, I sincerely apologize.
When I was a teenager, I had to get larynx surgery.
Long story short, it’s harder for me to vocalize certain syllables. ”
I wished to punch those syllables off his tongue and make him choke on them.
But before I could act on it, the lanky man began unchaining Kali. She didn’t resist when he freed her ankles, didn’t let out a sound when he removed the last of the restraints and accidentally brushed her breasts, didn’t combat him when he grabbed her.
But when he maneuvered her arm to lay over his shoulders to haul her up, my patience ran short.
My jaw creaked from how hard I was clenching it.
Kali could barely walk. Supporting her weight, the doctor had to drag her out of the room—out of my sight.
“Where are you taking her?” I demanded.
Adder moved around me. “I’ll show you.” Opening the door, he waved me through.
The walk down the hallway stretched into eternity as the strip of the same glass stretched along one wall. Adder entered something on his tablet, and the screen became clear, giving a glimpse into what was happening behind the wall.
The male doctor was practically carrying Kali as her feet failed to find purchase.
“You can see her, but that’s it,” Adder pointed out. “For her, it’s a mirror.”
Once we reached the end of the passage, he paused by another white door and entered a code into a keypad. “This is the observation room.”
Reluctantly, I followed him inside. Like the others, this space too had one wall made out of glass, which Adder immediately turned transparent.
One look was enough for the dread slumbering in my gut to explode.
On the other side of the barrier, six men from the broadcast lounged on the cream suede couches. The amber-colored liquid in their glasses sloshed as they raised them in a toast and sipped on what probably cost more than what a black-banded citizen made in their lifetime.
“Those are my colleagues,” the Head of Ardaton explained. “Our government.”
The six Heads who led the half a dozen divisions that owned and controlled everything in the city, from shops to service points to hospitals to apartment buildings.
Playing with his tablet, Adder murmured, “Let me see if I can— Oh, here it is.”
The static settled, and the voices from the dripping-in-opulence room flowed in through the speakers.
“Will Gedeon agree? That’s the question we should be asking ourselves.
” The youngest man of all, of a similar age to mine, rested his elbow on the couch’s armrest, the sleeve of his black button-up shirt rolled to his elbow.
“Or will we have to fight on two fronts? Their…compounds and Coriattus? Our resources are highly limited. It won’t be a feat easily achieved. ”
So he was probably their Head of Military.
“That’s why we don’t allow the Matches to raise their children.
There isn’t much a man wouldn’t do for his family.
” The oldest, boasting a sun-spotted complexion and graying hair, refilled his glass from one of countless crystal decanters lining the bar.
“But once he learns what we plan to do to his partners, he’ll do whatever we want to—”
A black door retracting into the wall cut off whoever had been speaking. Without stepping over the threshold, the male doctor shoved Kali inside.
As she collided with the floor, so did my palm with the glass. Her whimper accompanied the sparks of ache radiating in my hand.
“Ah, finally. Our doll has arrived.” Looking straight where Ardaton's ruler stood beside me behind the glass, a middle-aged blond nodded. “Thank you, Adder.”
“What have you done?” I growled at the City Head.
He clapped my shoulder. “I gave you the motivation you lacked.” His footfalls quietened as he strode toward the exit. “We’ll talk more in an hour,” he said before closing the door and leaving me alone.
The lock beeped as it engaged, caging me inside the observation room, as Adder had called it.
“She’s not the prettiest we’ve had,” someone remarked, but I didn’t spare a glance to figure out who. I was too busy tracking how Kali gathered herself up, how she attempted to stand up.
She teetered and swayed, yet straightened her spine, not a bone in her willing to yield.
As she surveyed the room and the six men, the Head of Military said, “If you look past her missing fingers—which someone will pay for. I told them no permanent injuries—I think those healing cuts on her jaw are at fault. They soil her looks.”
“They’ll heal.” The blond popped the button on his gray slacks. “But it’s a good thing her mouth isn’t required for reproduction.”
My fist connected with the transparent wall.