42
ALBY
“Ah, Ezla. Here for your appointment?”
“Your death, more like,” Tate seethes, and the Showmaster hardly has time to process his presence, eyes bugging out of his head, before my largest brother is on him.
Hand wrapped around Peter’s neck, Tate marches out of the silver lift of the Techtis Council building and drags him back into the lavish penthouse that’s just been revealed to us. Scrabbling at his arms, the Showmaster can only make a wheezing sound.
“Let him breathe, my beast,” Ezla drawls, but she’s obviously amused, and she has a bloodthirsty look on her otherworldly face as she looks Peter up and down in the most belittling way known to man. Through the bond, she reminds us all, We cannot kill him yet. That exciting part will come later.
“But he touched you,” Tate growls, glaring into the Showmaster’s soul, his hold only tightening. “He wanted to touch you again. Did you hear his fucking eagerness when he thought you were here for your massage session?” he seethes, shaking with fury.
Avri suit hugging her lithe figure, Ezla strides towards him, and me, Cooper, Scotty, and Tiger all follow. I gulp as she reaches Tate and places a gloved hand on his huge bicep.
His storm-grey eyes snap to her.
“Obey me, my beast.” In our minds again, she tells him, We will have our fun together when we no longer need him.
I feel the thrill that shoots through him. Together?
Together.
The Showmaster is dropped to the taalk like a sack of potatoes.
While his ragged gasps grate through the room as he sucks in as much oxygen as possible, Tate radiates hunger to match his ravenous growl as he wraps an arm around Ezla’s slim waist and yanks her into him.
She tuts internally. You will have your reward later, Tate.
Expression pure, unbridled greed for our Bonded, he hesitates a moment, hands on her clenching. But ultimately, he does as she wants like always, pulling back to glare maliciously down at Peter.
“Where are the tablets, Peter?” Ezla purrs, and the sound has the hairs on my arms standing on end. I shiver with the chill that runs down my spine. These days, I only love it, but the effect she has when she’s like this can’t be avoided by anyone.
“W-what t-tablets?” he all but sobs, one palm pressed to the glossy floor, the other to his reddened neck. I can’t believe that this is who introduces each Bonding Game.
“Do not play stupid.” Ezla’s voice cracks through the air, her tone turning lethal in the blink of an eye. Crouching down, her hand seizes Peter’s chin, and she yanks his head up so that he’s forced to look at her. “I know you have my Bonds’ citizen tablets.”
His eyelids flare wide in clear alarm. “I-I— How would you know that? Only Joseph—”
“The Game Master is dead,” Ezla cuts him off. “I am your empress now.”
Mouth open, Peter has become whiter than a ghost. After a drawn-out silence, he finally croaks, “You . . . What?”
She sighs heavily. “You are wildly irksome. I despise stupid people.” Then she yanks him right up to her face. “Where are the citizen tablets?” she seethes.
“I-I-I—”
Tate smacks the back of his mousy-blond head. “Spit it out, you piece of shit.”
“I don’t have them!” he cries.
Cooper strides over, fists balled. “Don’t fucking lie,” he grinds out. “Joseph told us he gave them to you.”
“I-I—”
I jolt as Ezla backhands him. “Stop wasting my time with your pathetic stuttering. Where. Are. They?”
“The Avri labs!”
Everyone pauses.
“Why . . . are they in the Avri labs?” Ezla’s tone is terrifyingly calm.
“Because the final finishing touches are being put on them!” He then promptly bursts into tears. Gaping, I can only watch as he sobs, “Please don’t kill me! It wasn’t my idea!”
“What was not your idea?”
“There’s going to be a ‘reset’ button on your Bonds’ citizen tablets!”
***
For a moment, it’s quiet enough to hear a feather drop. All I can hear is the blood surging through my veins too thickly, too fast.
A reset button. A button that would undoubtedly make me and my brothers blank slates.
We’d forget all about Ezla.
Scotty’s the first to break the silence. “How long?” His voice is low, the most tense I’ve ever heard it.
“I-I don’t know! Maybe five or ten minutes before they’re ready? The workers said it wouldn’t take long! It could already be done—”
Ezla’s fist cracks into his temple, and he’s out cold. Dropping him onto the taalk, the single long braid she’s wearing today whips out behind her as she rises and spins to face us. “Follow me. Now.”
***
I don’t know how we make it to the Avri labs, but I can’t actually take in my surroundings to know more than our current location when I’m close to hyperventilating.
Black splotches crowd the corners of my vision, and I have a headache from the pounding of my heart echoing through my body.
Worse, I have so little oxygen in me that I’m more than a little worried I’m about to collapse any moment now and cause another issue that my brothers and Bonded really can’t be dealing with right now.
“Where are my Bonds’ citizen tablets?” Ezla hisses, and through my foggy eyes, I can make out the sight of her dragging a man in a white lab coat into her, the inky-crimson of her Avri dagger spilling its glow onto the material as she digs the curved blade into his neck.
Horrified screams slice through the room, and a handful of the workers in here rush for the door behind me.
Calmly, Tate steps to the side, blocking the entirety of the doorway and staring down every Evot, Exot, and Neutral until they’re all scrambled right back to where they were before. “Answer my empress before she has a party with each and every one of your organs,” he rumbles.
A thump has me thinking someone might have just passed out, but I can’t pinpoint who.
“E-Empress?”
Ignoring the man in her arms’ quivering question, Ezla repeats in the voice of death, “Where. Are. The. Tablets?”
“I-I-I—”
Hissing, she brings her arm back, pointing the tip of her dagger directly at the older man’s throat. “What is it with everyone lacking the ability to speak this morning—”
“Wait!” he shouts, undiluted terror pouring off of him in heavy waves. “Just wait! They— They’re just here! I have them here! But—but th-they’ve been altered—”
When Ezla slashes the Evot’s throat and throws him to the side, I feel more than just her crushing, overpowering wrath—her fear is almost just as prominent in the bond.
Trembling all over, I’m frozen in place for a moment, watching the blood pool on the once-pristine white floor as muffled sobs sound out through the handful of staff around the room.
Guilt hits me even though it wasn’t my doing, along with the sadness I feel with every death.
And I know none of my brothers like it either .
. . well, excluding Tate, who’s just . .
. turned on. This is the first time we’re seeing our Bonded kill like this.
This isn’t in her memories of her training.
This isn’t a Bonding Game, where death is all around us, everyone fighting to survive.
This isn’t out of necessity like it was to protect ourselves from Joseph and his Exots, both the old group and the ones from yesterday in that home theatre.
No, this is simply Ezla being Ezla. This is who she is.
And I love every part of her.
If I didn’t already know that, it would have been very clear to me in this moment.
Nothing about this changes how I feel for her.
I’ve always known who she is. And I can tell that the others feel the exact same as me.
Again, excluding Tate, none of us like the sight of that dead innocent, not at all, but that ever-present love from all of us that’s pulsing in the bond is unwavering.
Still, we do want as little death as possible, and Scotty heads over to Ezla, not saying anything but standing like a soldier beside her for support.
Even in the bond, he’s not about to present anything but a strong, united front for everyone in here, and I think him gently suggesting in her mind that it might be better not to kill everyone down here would be risky in maintaining that.
“Give them to me! Now!” Ezla barks.
This time, there’s no hesitation.
The room’s in motion in a heartbeat.
My heart is still hammering at a painful tempo, but I can see clearer now, the events gripping and holding my attention captive, and my legs carry me towards Ezla and Scotty without my permission as a medium-small box of blinding-white taalk is brought before them and placed on the nearest desk.
“Open it!”
The woman holding the box jumps out of her skin before bringing her shaking thumb to the centre of the lid where I can just make out a tiny biometric scanner in an oval shape.
Ezla tenses when Scotty places a soothing hand on her lower back, but she doesn’t push him off, only keeps digging her penetrating stare into that white box.
Cooper and Tiger are to my left now as I stop beside Scotty, and I can feel the anxiety trickling from them as we all watch the lid rise and slide away to reveal the box’s contents.
There’s been pictures in school, of course, but I’ve never actually seen a citizen tablet in person before—they’re extremely well protected and only ever in the hands of The Council and their workers—and I lean forwards to get a better look at the five four-by-seven-inch devices revealed inside.
On first glance, there’s nothing to separate them from our everyday tablets; turned off, the one I can see on top, perfectly fitting the box, is simply black all over, the screen polished to perfection, not a scratch or fingerprint in sight.
But the sight of it still has my heart rate reaching new, concerning levels, even before the red-haired woman, who I note is a Neutral by the glowing white strips on her lab coat, reaches in and picks up the one on top.