Chapter 4: The Price

The Doge's men, or women, Kai still couldn't quite tell, swept for bugs and disabled all monitoring equipment except for the Emperor's bio-data probes. The speed at which this was accomplished stunned the Prince. They seemed to have been prepared for everything, their suits were even bio-hazard rated so they didn't waste time donning the ones from the palace research team. This gave Kai's hope some solid ground that the Grand Doge knew what he was doing.

Soon everyone was shooed out of the viewing area, leaving the Emperor alone with the Grand Doge and the shortest attendant. Kai hurried to the preparation clean rooms to don a bio-hazard suit, if he only had five minutes to have an intelligent conversation with his father, then he wasn't going to do it behind a glass wall. The time ticked slowly as Kai watched the clock, the numbers grinding their way through the hour.

Finally, the doors to the decontamination chamber opened and the Grand Doge stepped out. He gestured to the doors with a bow and let Kai rush by him to the decontamination chamber doors. The doors slid behind Kai sealing him in and the cycling of air from his father's isolation room began. It wasn't a long process, not as long as coming back out will be with the sterilization procedure added in to prevent the disease getting outside.

The doors open and Kai entered the isolation room. The sight that greeted him was so familiar, but different. Before him stood his father, Emperor Rikan, and he was smiling. It was so much like it had been before the letumosis, but the disease was still there, marring the emperor's features but not consuming them as they had when Kai last saw him. When Dr. Erland had informed Kai of the sudden improvement in his father vital signs bordering on the radical, Kai couldn't move himself to more than a half belief. It was full now.

Arms open, Kai ran to embrace his father, ignoring all protocol, not that had mattered that much between them. His father's hug was strong enough to squeeze the air from Kai's lungs. So unexpected was his father's strength that Kai began cough to recover his breath. His father looked at him ruefully and helped Kai to his bed.

"I'm sorry son, it seems that I don't know my own strength." The Emperor apologized.

"Funny," Kai said once he had recovered. "You help me to the bed while you're the one who's sick." His father let out a hearty chuckle, something Kai never thought he'd hear again. Then the Emperor became solemn.

"Kai, I have to be quick, I don't have much time." He started.

"I know dad," Kai tried to sound confident.

"No, you don't." Rikan denied. "The Doge told me everything. He lied to you, that solution he gave me, it reverses the outward symptoms of letumosis but accelerates the disease." It was so sudden that Kai wasn't sure what to make of the explanation, until his father spelled it out. "I'm dying Kai, in three minutes it will be over."

Precious seconds passed by as Kai came to grips with what he was hearing. Anger was the first thing that burst forth.

"THAT..." He started but unexpectedly, the Emperor cut him off. Gripping the side of his son's head and turned the boy's eyes to face his own. Stern and unyielding, an emperor resolute in his decision, the prince's angry quelled.

"Don't waste your breath on that man. If you want to be angry, be angry with me. The Doge gave me the choice without the deception. I knew what I was doing Kai, I chose to die strong as I had lived rather than waste away hoping in vain for a cure that will never come in time." His eyes softened. "Let us not waste anymore time, we have so little left.

"Son, I am proud of you. You are everything your mother and I hoped for, my only, ONLY regret is not being able to see you become the man I know you will be. The emperor you will make. I only have one request."

"Anything dad!" Kai replied quickly.

"Kai, I want you to consider a political marriage," Rikan hesitated for a moment and Kai almost thought he intended Levana. "to the daughter of the Grand Doge."

Kai had started to pull away but his father's grip held him in place. Thinking of the Grand Doge stirred Kai's ire. How could his father request something like this after what the Doge had tricked him? What had transpired during their meeting? His father shook him back to reality.

"Kai! Focus!" Desperation was creeping into his father's voice. "I won't ask you to marry her, just think about it."

"Why?!" Kai pled.

"The Doge has a plan, he laid it out to me and I agreed it was best. The Doge will handle all the details, but you have to declare your intention to pursue his daughter's hand." Kai said nothing, mulling over what his father had requested. His father spoke once more. "Kai, do you trust me?"

"Of course!" Kai replied eagerly. "You're my father!"

"Well then..." The emperor left a painful pause, heavy with yearning.

"I..." The words came slowly, but they came. "will consider it." His father smiled and pulled Kai into his arms with that crushing embrace that he had welcomed Kai with.

"I love you Kai, so much. Only your mother loved you more. When I see her, I'll tell her all about her boy." They simply stayed there, not speaking, just feeling. It was as if time did not exist. Then his father's arms loosen and leaned back, Kai thought he was going to say something more, but no. Too late did Kai realize his father's strength draining away, his face becoming lax as his eyes rolled back and closed.

The Emperor was dead. Kai didn't care, he cried his father's name, pleading him to return. When that didn't work he cradled his father and wept silently. Loneliness and loss consumed Kai for, he didn't know how long. Minutes, hours? Did it matter? He was alone, the man he trusted most, loved most, was gone. What mattered to him now?

Finally he came out of that dark world and saw a light in his blurry eyes. No two lights, eyes, glowing eyes. Glowing eyes on a shiny, metal face. The mask of the Grand Doge, he realized.

Then it hit him. The anger, the rage, the simple desire to tear a man to pieces out of revenge. All founded on that bitter earth of despair and fear, he was quite simply mad.

"YOU!" Kai screamed as he vaulted from his father's lifeless body toward the observation window. His hands, as if with minds of their own, snatched whatever they could lift and launched them at the Doge. Silk pillows bounced off, vases fill with flowers shattered, spilling their contents on the floor, and, surprisingly, a wheeled metal tray crashed on the window then to the floor. Yet he still stood, unfazed, with that cursed mask showing nothing but indifference to Kai's twisted face.

"YOU KILLED HIM!" Kai's screams continued. "YOU PROMISED TO HELP! LIAR! MURDERER! I...I trusted you!"

"Kai!" Torin's voice entered into Kai's enraged consciousness. The warning was unnecessary. With the emotion of his anger spent for the moment, Kai regained control and stood silent. Then he raised his head to face the Doge and spoke slowly with a clear, threatening voice.

"I will give you until I get out of Decontamination to leave the palace and be on your way to the Belt. If not, Diplomatic Immunity or no Diplomatic Immunity, I will have you arrested and executed by sunrise." Torin, horrified at such disrespectful threats being issued to a foreign sovereign guest, tried to demand that Kai apologize. Before he could though, Kai, for the first time in his life, cut off Torin's protests with a withering look of his own. Silently, Kai returned his gaze to the mask. The mask spoke as he bowed, voice as before, cool without arrogance or emotion.

"As you command, Emperor Kaito."