50. Ophelia
OPHELIA
The Educator waits expectantly with the key dangling out of reach.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
He smiles, saccharine. “You don’t?”
The ‘play dumb’ plan is not going to work, but what else is she meant to do?
“Not at all. I didn’t think I’d have the pleasure of seeing you until tonight. But I do think I’ve changed my mind about a tumble now. What the Mothers don’t know can’t hurt them.”
Whoring herself out is definitely a last resort, but if she can get him alone in a room again, maybe she can hit him over the head or something.
“Ophelia, dear, I do think I’ve had enough with the games.”
“What did you call me?” she asks. She never gave him her name.
He steps past her and to the door. “Let’s go in here, since you’re so determined to, and I’ll explain.”
Danger! she hears in her head.
She walks in anyways. The room is full of buttons and switches controlling aspects of the labyrinth as well as a screen on the wall to see everything play out.
A red button in the center of the control board is marked with an emergency symbol.
All she needs to do is wait for the button to glow and press it.
She subtly shifts to remain within reaching distance of it.
“Do you feel that you belong amongst the Priestesses, Ophelia?”
He asks like he knows what her answer is going to be.
“I thought you were going to explain, not me.”
“Humor me,” the Educator says, his expression annoyingly amused.
“I feel that I am a Priestess. And there is no choice for me not to be.”
“Yes, but do you belong there?”
Ophelia glares at him, but answers honestly. “No.”
“I know.” He takes a step closer, and Ophelia doesn’t back up. She can’t lose reach of the button. “You’re too smart for them. Too beautiful, too ambitious, too blessed. You have so many brilliant qualities, don’t you? One could say, too many.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know, when I saw you in the tower a month ago I thought: it couldn’t possibly be. You’ve been right under my nose the entire time, hidden in your Temple.”
“I’ve been a Priestess since I was three months old,” she says.
“And where do you think you were before that?” the Educator prompts.
“The Academy.”
“True, mostly. But you were born to no Guardian, Ophelia.”
“What?”
“Your brother, he didn’t have it quite so easy—”
Her what?
“—She had nowhere to put him, you see. Thought she could hide him in the city like all the other boys that are relegated out of the Academy, but we found him eventually. You, though? We couldn’t have breached the Temple even if we had known you were there. The Mothers would never allow it.”
“I have a brother?” she asks.
“In a sense, yes.”
She’s so sick of this ‘in a sense,’ ‘mostly,’ half-answer bullshit.
“Explain clearly or don’t explain at all,” she spits, trying not to show how desperate she is to know.
The Educator smiles like this is what he was waiting for. “You, Ophelia, would make the perfect Guardian. And I do not say that to be kind, I say it as objective fact. You are the perfect Guardian. You came into this world with that purpose, and that purpose alone. Your brother too.
“Intelligent, capable, crafty. Incredible memory, flawless figure, unbelievable beauty. And your ambition and joy are perfectly complemented by your brother’s realism and calm. Together, you were meant to be unstoppable. The first of a new era of leaders unencumbered by faults and fears.
“I was responsible for the assigning of your attributes, physical and otherwise, and a team of Guardian scientists experimented with DNA and organic matter until they made you a reality. The Uncanny Initiative, we called it, headed up by a true genius from the Producer Class. Then, of course, she had doubts. Questions of morality. She brought them to me, and I reminded her that Morality is not Justice—”
“And Justice is the jurisdiction of a Guardian,” she mumbles under her breath.
“Very good. She did not agree, it seems. She ran off with you both, your brother and yourself. Put your brother in an orphanage where we found him ten years later. Left you with the Priestesses.”
So, she’s what? A designer baby created to be the ideal? A piece of clay shaped for a purpose she never got to fulfill? A single half of a perfect whole?
She can’t even say something dramatic. Can’t shout, ‘my whole life was a lie!’ because it wasn’t. She’s always thought she was meant for more, and now she knows why.
But there’s one part of it all that she can’t shake.
“Where are they?”
“The scientist? Dead.”
“And my brother?”
The Educator’s eyes wander to the screen next to them, and he speaks slowly, like he wants her to figure it out herself.
“You and your brother are perfect opposites, at least in your faces and demeanors. Though, I do wish I had found you instead. He’s gorgeous, your brother, but he needs your spark to make him real.
Just as I imagine you need his weight to keep you grounded. ”
Alexander appears on the screen, attaching mirrors while Kallias follows behind, checking each angle without breaking stride. The subtlety and speed of it are incredible, like it’s hardwired into him.
Oh.
She should have noticed it before.
She and Kallias are the same in too many ways to be natural. And, more importantly, they’re different in ways too uncanny to be a coincidence. Her skin dark where his is pale, her eyes gold where his are black, her hair black where his is gold.
“You see it now, don’t you?”
Her brother.
Her brother who is now ducking under shortening ceilings to escape what feels like his hundredth booby trap today.
Her brother who is quiet and subdued and angry in a way that she never had to learn how to be.
Her brother who she needs to get ahold of right now.
Which means she needs the plan to work.
Which means she needs to stay in this room until the exit button lights up.
“Does he know?” she asks, half because she’s stalling and half because she’s curious.
“No, he doesn’t. He’s never needed to.”
Not surprising. But enraging. Maybe if he’d known, he would have found her.
Or maybe he would have done nothing and let us both rot.
“Do you not see him as your son? Does he have no right to his past?”
The Educator’s menacing laugh sucks all of the air out of the room. “He is not my son. He is my creation. And so, my dear, are you.
“But I do fear,” he continues, “that I’ve told you enough. I just wanted you to know.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to understand that I have a claim on your life before I take it.”
“You’re going to kill me?”
The Educator shrugs like it’s inconsequential. “I wish I could spare you, but you’ve been out from under my thumb for too long. I know what you’re capable of, and I can’t control you like I do your brother.”
She wants to scream at him that her brother is not being controlled. He’s rebelling, leaving, with no remorse.
All of this makes the plan more urgent. Somehow the threat of losing her life doesn’t scare her nearly as much as the idea that Kallias might have to spend the rest of his life here.
“I really am sorry, sweet Ophelia.”
She turns for the door, pulling the handle, but it’s locked.
“I wish you luck on Er’s journey.”
He grabs her by the back of her hair and yanks her away from the exit, dragging her even as she thrashes and writhes.
“Let go of me!” she screeches.
“No.”
He wraps his hands around her throat and pins her up against the far wall. She claws and scratches and kicks, but it’s no use. She’s running out of air already and the Educator is strong. He’s enjoying this.
As her vision glazes over and her strength fades, she sinks into a memory.
In the training room, with Zeno out for the night, she and Eudoxia stand face to face.
She asks how anyone as short as they are could possibly take a larger opponent.
Eudoxia smirks. “You might be small, but everyone has tiny parts of them. Fingers, toes, wrists, noses, eyes. And anything between the legs, of course.”
They both laugh.
“If they’ve got you where they want you, don’t try to fend them off with big kicks and punches. Instead, go for somewhere that seems insignificant but hurts like a bitch.”
Her whole body protests when she relaxes under the Educator’s grip. She grabs his right arm to keep it stable, then she brings her free hand up like she’s going for his face again.
Instead she finds a single finger and, holding his arm in place, jerks it away from her with a satisfying snap.
The Educator pulls back and curses, hand cradled to his chest.
“You broke it, you little slut,” he growls, charging at her again. She ducks under his charge and uses his momentum to slam his head against the wall. It makes contact with a loud thud before he crumples to the ground.
“Sleep tight, asshole,” she says before—probably gratuitously—kicking him in the head with her dainty little slipper.
Then she turns to the control board to wait for her signal.
Everyone is going to make it out of here, whether they like it or not.