55. Alexander
ALEXANDER
Kallias hasn’t spoken for their entire walk through the escape tunnels. Alexander is cracking jokes and making stupid comments to get something out of him, but Kallias just keeps on, step after step.
Eventually, Alexander can’t take it anymore.
“Are you okay?” he asks, point-blank.
Kallias walks faster.
“Are you hurt? What’s wrong?”
When Kallias finally meets his eyes, Alexander almost flinches at how distant they are. It looks like his soul has flown from his body, leaving only a beautiful husk behind.
“Kallias—”
“I hate you,” Kallias says. Not fondly or in heated anger. He says it like it’s true.
“Oh yeah?” Alexander tries to joke.
“Yes.”
Alexander continues to walk and, true to form, doesn’t leave well enough alone.
“I don’t hate you,” he says.
“I know,” Kallias sighs, the first ounce of emotion Alexander has seen from him in the tunnels.
“Oh, good,” Alexander says. Then he opens his mouth again to make what might be the greatest mistake of his life. It’s awful and stupid and he can’t help it. For some reason it feels like this might be his last chance. “I think I might lo—”
Kallias cuts him off. “The door,” he says, and yes—there in the distance—an imposing metal door.
Alexander wishes that door could have waited a second so he could finally get those stupid three words out of his mouth.
They break into a jog toward the exit. When Alexander glances over, Kallias looks like he’s being marched to the guillotine and he doesn’t have it in him to fight anymore.
Alexander doesn’t know how to make it better.
I love you, he says in his head, hoping maybe Kallias will hear.
Once the door is only steps away, he puts his worries out of his mind. He can practically feel the California breeze in his hair, hear the sound of the gentle waves, relish the warmth of the boy he’ll always love and the life he’ll always want.
And then everything comes to a screeching halt.
“Where do you think you’re going, boys?” a voice asks behind him, and just by the way Kallias tenses, Alexander knows who it is: The Educator.
Alexander barely contains a groan of frustration, but he still wants to scream and cry and stomp on the ground like a child. Because this should have gone without a hitch. It was going without a hitch!
He breathes through his anger. There’s only one thing to do now. He turns on his charm offensive and spins around to face the Educator.
“Fancy meeting you here, sir,” he smiles, but the intensity with which the Educator stares at him shocks him silent. It’s hatred—real, personal hatred—in the Educator’s eyes. But Alexander has never even spoken to this man before.
The intensity doesn’t melt even when his lips form a saccharine smile. “Isn’t it quite, Mr. Alexander Jameson.”
For a moment it doesn’t register that the Educator has just said his full name, first and last. And then his heart sinks.
“Son of James Jobson and Miriam Helena, both deceased. Brother to Cain Jameson, though he couldn’t wait to get you out of his hair, I’m sure.”
Every syllable of his family’s name coming out of this unsettling man’s mouth is a punch in the gut.
“What?”
“You are a very interesting young man, Mr. Jameson. Because I find it hard to believe that you didn’t notice that everything was just a little too easy.
That our world melted around you and allowed you to slip in unnoticed.
That your plans managed to go just your way.
But you basked in purposeful naivete so absolute that I was almost impressed.
How can someone so smart be so, so stupid.
And now you have the nerve to act surprised when all of this—” he gestures casually to the door “—doesn’t work out how you planned. ”
It must have been Lazarus. He told the Council everything and led them to their deaths. Alexander knew they shouldn’t have trusted him, the little rat—
“I noticed you on our surveillance cameras the second you washed up on the beach. I let you through the walls. I brought you to the Academy.”
“Why?”
“I needed to know who you were. Whether there were more following you. Imagine my surprise when I found out that you were just a sad, lonely boy crying for someone to love him.”
“Fuck you.”
“I even went through the trouble of giving you a guide. Though I suppose he’s more of a spy than anything else.”
What?
“Come along, boy.” The Educator smirks like he’s been waiting months to do this. But he’s not looking at Alexander. He’s looking at—
No.
Kallias doesn’t glance at Alexander as he walks toward the Educator with his head down.
He wouldn’t.
“I do enjoy a good reckoning,” the Educator says.
Kallias.
The Educator looks smug, smug, smug and Alexander wants to rip his head off.
But it’s not his fault, is it? Alexander shakes violently—the voice in his head has changed. Cain is back again to mock him. You fell into this trap. You let Kallias trick you. You assumed that he would love you without leaving. Newsflash, Alexander: you are not worth sticking around for.
“Stop it,” Alexander says to Cain, and at the sound, Kallias turns to face him.
His mind goes quiet when their gazes meet, and he suddenly understands why people say Kallias has dead eyes. But they just aren’t looking close enough. Because right under the glass of his irises there is passion, desperate to get out. It’s banging on the walls and screaming in its bonds.
He wants to scream back. Because why? Why did Kallias give him something he knew neither of them could keep?
He wants to shake Kallias by the shoulders and tell him that they weren’t meant to end like this.
They were meant to end four thousand miles away on a warm California shore with water lapping in front of them.
The last time they were supposed to see each other was tangled in an embrace sixty years from now, when one of their hearts simply had to stop beating.
But he can only find it in himself to whisper.
“Kallias?”
The Educator smiles and places a harsh, possessive hand on the back of Kallias’ neck.
“Don’t touch him,” Alexander barks.
Kallias has ruined everything. He gathered all of Alexander’s carefully crafted personalities and pushed them into one—made him feel like he was worthy of the love that he always craved, and now… Now he’s ending it all with a deep stare and a silent grimace.
Alexander wants to tear his own heart out right here and throw it at Kallias’ feet, just to make it clear who it belongs to. And then he wants to watch Kallias break it with his own hands, not with this quiet betrayal that he should have seen coming from a mile away.
In fact, he did see it coming. It was ludicrously obvious.
But he let Kallias consume him and draw him away from any semblance of truth he formulated.
And now?
Now, Alexander stands on the precipice of his own ruin, unable to stop loving him.
“He really did a number on you, didn’t he?” The Educator laughs, tightening his grip. Kallias doesn’t say anything, but his eyes don’t leave Alexander.
Kallias told the Educator every button to press, every sob story, everything. But somehow it doesn’t matter. Because when the Educator says, “Make no mistake, Alexander Jameson. This boy is not yours,” Alexander wants to kill him, take Kallias, and run.
“He’s not anyone’s,” he growls instead.
“Wrong again.” The Educator pulls Kallias’ chin sharply to the side, baring his neck. Faint bruises make their way down Kallias’ throat and end in a bite mark. “He’s mine.”
Kallias winces and grits his teeth.
Alexander hardly notices. All he sees is red.
“Get away from him.” He barely recognizes his own voice.
“You truly have the arrogance of a prince, don’t you? You think the whole world is yours? I’m afraid it’s not.”
Alexander steps forward, hand tight on his sword. “Get away,” he grits out.
The Educator tsks. “You’ve already forgotten all about your friends, haven’t you?”
Oh God.
“You think I don’t know your little plan?”
The others need him to get to the hovertrain from the docks. It was Kallias’ idea, using a boat as a decoy. It was Kallias’ idea to keep it from everyone but the two of them.
“You don’t think I have men waiting at the Academy, ready to run down to Arc Eight right now?”
But it doesn’t even matter anymore, does it? Because Kallias has never been on their side. The Educator knows everything.
“You don’t think I know about your pathetic little boat? The one your friends are waiting on right now? I’ve left the ports open, you know. Just to give them hope.”
He’s going to kill all of them. Zeno, Eudoxia, Lazarus, Ophelia, Arete.
Except the Educator doesn’t continue on about the fact that the boat is a decoy, or about their real plan to take the hovertrain to a different port in the countryside.
What?
When Alexander finally brings himself to look at Kallias, he’s met with desperate eyes. They’re trying to say something to him. And when he looks down at Kallias’ hands, he realizes what.
He taps on his leg in repeated, steady increments.
--. ---
G. O.
Go?
Go.
With that one word, everything comes together.
Kallias didn’t tell the Educator everything. He doesn’t know their full plan, which means it could still work. Kallias was never going to leave with them. He helped them, he lied for them, he stole for them. And now he’s sacrificing himself for them. For no fucking reason.
“No,” Alexander says.
The Educator shakes his head as if Alexander is talking to him. “Yes, boy. I’ll give you a chance to warn them, if you like. We won’t ambush them until you’ve made it there, for the sake of fairness.”
“You want to publicize it, don’t you?” Alexander asks the Educator, eyes not leaving Kallias. “You want me to be there, to take us down in one fell swoop. To show the world your regime is not to be trifled with.”
“I suppose you’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”
--. ---, Kallias taps out again, eyes gleaming in frustration.
“No.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Don’t do this, Kallias. I’m begging you.”
Kallias’ face hardens when the Educator turns to him. “I already have. He’ll treat you with more kindness if you do what he says. Go to your boat.”