“And look at you now, Mr. 30-something OKC. Wake up, Liam. We’re exalts. We kill people. That’s the name of the goddamn game and let me tell you something—we don’t get to leave until either Chrysid’s satisfied or we break the system.”
James gestured to a small camera fixed in the elevator’s corner. It recorded their every move through a singular scarlet lens.
“Liam, we’re too far in. We know too much. We’re lucky that they didn’t kill us right after Jove.”
“Why is that? Why did we get to live?”
“Who knows… but that was their first mistake. Their second mistake was thinking we’d just cower and hide in silence.”
Liam had a feeling he already knew the answer.
However, pursuing that answer was a rabbit hole with no chance of return.
The truth is, I think I’d rather not know. I think I’d rather put it all back than know.
“Besides… you think Chrysid would really just let you walk? There’s too much hype and money in the narrative they’ve woven around us. Even if you walked now, ran back home, tried to assimilate back into a normal life… they’ll come knocking on your door one day. They’ll be asking for that debt. Whether it’s paid in your blood or that of your own kid when Exaltation comes… Chrysid will be there, waiting. They’ll always be waiting unless the cycle’s broken.”
A blanket of fatigue weighed upon Liam.
James wasn’t wrong.
“There’s only one way to put a stop to this, Liam. We might die if we fight… but we’ll die for sure if we run. If we die either way, we might as well die fighting.”
James made a disgruntled snort in response to Liam’s lack of a response.
He stepped away and cleared Liam’s path to the control panel.
The choice was in Liam’s hands at that point.
James had said his truth and Liam knew that his brother’s words were fact.
Giving up and settling back into society, keeping their heads down, it would be the complicit cooperation that Chrysid wanted.
Hell, maybe even this trek to the Chevalier was part of the “script” in Chrysid’s eyes.
All I can do in these waning moments is consider the numerous alternate realities running parallel to my own.
One where I pursued my studies and let James run off with Jove to finish Exaltation alone… in that timeline, he almost certainly died with Jove in combat.
In hindsight, my presence has consistently been an intervention which stood between him and death.
In hindsight, I sense so many times where I shouldn’t have been there—and by chance, I was.
In those timelines, James dies, and I never see him again. Neither would Alyssa.
Alyssa’s child never meets their father…
Alyssa’s child may not even exist.
Yet here I am, having chosen this timeline, this point as the sum of my actions.
In another possible timeline, the world lacks Exaltation altogether.
As simple as that sounds, I can’t imagine the structure of our society without this exchange of violence for entertainment. People always want an excuse to kill one another.
Even the most powerful figures of Chrysid feign altruism in the face of senseless deaths—survival of the fittest, they say.
Actions to preserve and cultivate the most optimal future for an endangered species.
“This world shall not suffer peace to live,” Liam sighed.
James quirked one ashen eyebrow at Liam. “What?”
“Repair sequence complete. Initiating combat mode,” chirped the AI within James’s suit.
“Look, man. Just tap out and get the hell out of here. I’ll do it alone. Besides, I’ve got an element advantage over her. She’d just fry your ass like a human lightning rod.”
Liam glanced sideward.
Of all the probable outcomes running through my mind, the fact remains that two bodies are better than one.
My elemental disadvantage aside, I realize what I can offer in this fight.
A contingency plan.
“No… I should go with you,” Liam said.
“No. You’re done, Liam. I’m gonna need you to walk your ass back down to Euclid. Go get your head on right. I’m finishing this myself.”
“And what do I return to?” Liam faced James. “Alyssa’s waiting for you. If I return alone, she’ll break my neck. I’m in a lose-lose situation, James.”
James chuckled softly.
“Yeah, she probably would do that, wouldn’t she?”
A ding and a stop pulled their attention away. The brightly lit panel above the elevator door marked the 49th floor.
The doors slid open and a long, sunset-lit corridor with a chessboard-patterned floor lay beyond. Massive windows lined the corridor, reflecting light from the scarlet sea of clouds over a seemingly infinite horizon.
James took a breath and stepped ahead of Liam. A long shadow cast across the corridor, reaching from a hovering vespid drone outside the tower. Another stalking eye.
Statues lined both sides of their path. Angels in various states of what looked like either worship, groveling or agony. Liam couldn’t tell which—the head of every statue had been smashed off.
Little more than piles of crushed marble remained, piled around the feet and knees of each winged figure.
“Someone smashed all the heads off…”
“Maybe Lucienne did it?” James suggested.
“Bored and partying too hard in the Chevalier’s tower…”
As they approached the end of the corridor, a shrill and wretched noise emanated from beyond closed doors.
James looked to Liam perturbed.
“The hell is that…?”
“I don’t know. I’m not getting any map data up here.”
“Makes sense, I guess. Vespids don’t follow exalts through the Chevalier’s Trial. We all go in blind.”
After a moment of silence, James leaned a little closer to the door to listen. Liam muted his comms and inched closer to the door. With the soft static of the comms silenced, he listened.
Something about that wailing voice had an ethereal quality to it—a sound that Liam could only described as simultaneously whispered and echoed despite its volume. A noise
