She took a deep breath. He was about to find out how difficult she could be when she didn’t have to pretend.
Alina ignored his hand as she stepped out. Without waiting for him, she squared her shoulders and strode toward the front steps of the palace. She released a faint cry as his fingers enclosed her throat, holding her in place.
“No one goes before me,” he growled in her ear, “especially in my own home.” He tightened for a moment before releasing her, and she clasped her neck and let out a wheezy cough. Sampson marched ahead of her toward the stairs. Alina followed.
The porch steps seemed endless. He waited patiently for her at the top, then led her through the towering front doors into the foyer of Gordian Palace. A giant chandelier sparkled in Sampson’s eyes as they walked under the staircase and toward a hallway with thick, velvet carpet. Memories of her field trip came rushing back to her. School kids were allowed to visit Gordian Palace just once during their educational years, at the age of ten.
Gordian officials were too busy to devote much time to palace tours, so every child looked forward to this special occasion. Father Sampson himself greeted the children at the end, answering their questions and shaking each hand. Alina still remembered his coldness when he shook her hand. She didn’t dare look up but sensed him frowning at her. She’d always believed her looks disappointed him back then. Now she knew the real reason.
The grand hallway held the sculpture exhibition she remembered most about her visit years ago, named The Noble and Everlasting Life of Victor Sampson. The first bronze statue displayed him in tattered clothes, kneeling over the lifeless bodies of a woman and child in a pile of rubble. Clenched hands cradled his head. Her teacher told the children to squat down so they could see his face contorted with grief and tears. The name plate in front read The Last Great War of Carthem.
The second sculpture was simply named Hope. Sampson stood in a shabby laboratory uniform with a vial in each hand. He held one up, studying the liquid inside with intense concentration.
He appeared twenty years younger in the next statue, possessing a fine, robust body. The lines of grief were gone from his face. His eyes focused on an architectural plan spread out on his desk. The Birth of Pria.
The display of sculptures continued down the entire hallway. In one he cradled a new baby, another showed him hard at work in his laboratories. Others depicted him holding a sun in one hand and a world in the other, and delivering his Day of Genesis speech, complete with bronze tears on his cheeks. Two significant statues towered over the others, commemorating the hundredth and two hundredth Genesis celebrations. His most recent effigy, marking the three hundredth anniversary, stood outside in the central gardens.
Figure after figure lined the walls, each one handsome, stately, and dauntless. Alina rolled her eyes. This man is remarkably full of himself. But she feigned interest in every statue to slow their progress until Sampson stormed back, seized her wrist and yanked her at his pace.
The grandeur of the palace lessened as he dragged her down several flights of stairs and into a bright corridor with a heavy, bolted door. He tapped a code on the lock-screen, and as the door clanged open, Alina held her breath.
They were entering the notorious Gordian laboratories.
Laboratory workers were sworn to secrecy as to what happened behind that bolted door. In school they learned about manufactured food and babies being formed, but explanations were vague. Sampson did not expose such secrets carelessly. She was entering the laboratories never to leave.
The magnitude of the room overwhelmed her, and she stumbled as she looked up. Shiny machinery stretched into the highest turrets, surrounded by a labyrinth of stairs and platforms. The massive room must be deafening when operators were there, but for now, it was eerily silent.
“The workers have the night off for the Harvest Feast,” Sampson said, as if reading her thoughts. His lips curved into a cruel smile. “Very convenient, as I’d like no one to know you were brought here tonight.”
He guided her onto a steel platform, where she looked down and gasped. The room extended into darkness below her, with more machines and staircases. Rows of doors and lighted windows lined the platform to her left. She glanced into the window closest to her and froze in her tracks.
The room revealed columns of shelves and neatly stacked jars. She leaned in and narrowed her eyes. It’s food. Strange food I haven’t seen before. Maybe it’s for the next celebration. But then something twitched.
The jars’ inhabitants were black, spiny, and quivering violently. She jumped back and screamed.
A chorus of clicking noises started from the room. Alina darted after Sampson, who continued walking as if nothing had happened. Her legs trembled beneath her. Those creatures did not live in Pria. Only beautiful, pleasant things existed here.
She peered into the next window and saw a table lined with silver trays, panels and tools, as if the workers left without cleaning up. Her body relaxed a little. Nothing surprising was stored there. She expected the contents of the next room as well, but the sight stole the breath from her lungs.
A large, transparent sphere filled the room, drifting with fetuses in varying stages of development: some almost too small to see, others full-sized and squirming. Each baby possessed a glowing tube from its navel to a ball of light in the center, like a small sun, providing energy to grow.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sampson whispered in her ear, startling her. “I can create life. Everything you see here are my creations.
