-a compact usually solid piece of substantial material especially when worked or altered to serve a particular purpose
-a hollow rectangular building unit usually of artificial material
-psychology : interruption or cessation especially of train of thought by competing thoughts or psychological suppression
-a quantity, number, or section of things dealt with as a unit
- a platform (from which property is sold at auction)
The silver wings of our transport sink slower in the afternoon air. This isn't a nightly trip, nor is it exceptionally secretive. The jet is too big for that, and my company readying themselves betrays the former secrecy now.
The dogs are perching right beyond my feet now that I have taken my seat and even put on a belt. A radio sings in static in front. Our pilot announces us- the arrival of the crown. Runt tilts her ears. I catch the announcement of it. Fleet Prime. Who thought I would ever be in a position to be announced as that, in the official company of the latest leader of our country?
He sits in his seat blank and cold, with whatever thoughts circle in his head that wears the crown now again. He doesn't look exceptionally regal to me, because all I see is the bartering boy that lied to everyone, including me. That crown on his head looks pretty, but it is a stolen heirloom. It is placative for power that was supposed to go to someone else. It is placative for the posters and the video feeds of his speeches. And I don't believe any of the lies.
We are similar in that regard, to some degree. I was never supposed to be the leader of House Viper. Loren was raised to take the position. My father was patient just as Elara was.
He catches my eyes. "Are you nervous, Lady Viper?"
I suppress a frown and grit my teeth instead. "Why would I be?"
He barely blinks. "You sat in a cell last year. Will it bring back bad memories?"
I laughed and fought and spit when I was arrested until I had to be restrained with an extra set of manacles. He doesn't need to know that if he doesn't already. "I am on the other side of the bars now."
"You are also responsible for some of those people sitting in those cells," he continues. "Your proposal for hunting New Bloods was eager."
I wonder for a moment, just a moment, and it is purely hypothetical, just as every murder fantasy for Samson and my savage wish to cut a king's hand off in Harbor Bay- if I sicced the dogs on him now, how long would it take everyone to react?
I look back, pry my eyes away from Maven's face.
Asher, Hadrien and Bryce are in the back, perched together with another pair of guards posted to assure that Maven brought, or maybe Ptolemus.
And would my cousin kill me with the same precision that killed the new blood earlier today? Would he ponder?
He has been awfully quiet, but I can't fault Ptolemus. Because as a Magnetron, he feels the whole weight of the metal and machinery that carries us all through the air. If I was in the belly of a whale, underwater, it would make me feel the same.
I feel the weight of my knives, my weapons, and look back at the dogs shaking in the slow descend from the sky. They sit up at my feet. Runt shows her teeth.
I would have to be fast. And I would die before we reach the prison facility.
What a laughable thought. I value my existence too much, and I have no reason yet to attempt and murder him. Where would it leave Norta? Who would be fighting over the crown if the last of the Calore's is dead and gone? Who would take the seat? Would Elara enact her own sovereignty? She is still called a Queen, and she still sits behind her seventeen-year-old son.
They would rip each other apart. More than they already do.
I chuckle out a breath, and next to me, Ptolemus looks over with the same quizzical expression he often carries when he watches me. As if he isn't sure I am not crazy.
"It's not my face and voice projected through every speaker and every screen in Norta."
I stretch and sit up, try to calm myself.
Corros Prison is almost invisible from above. Even as I look out of the window, all I see is barren land, followed by the distant concrete that marks the landing site. The facility lies in a region that was deemed no man's land. Inaccessible, uninteresting, radiated. Nothing is waiting here. No lights search the sky. No towering buildings form watchtowers.
The prison is a stretched out block of more concrete beside the landing site. It is a barren , grey building that fits the desolate landscape. In my monochrome world made of black uniforms and silver blood, it fits in perfectly. It still looks too small from the above.
This is a place where the condemned souls of this regimen are brought. This is a place that contains all the uncomfortable truths, that holds everybody that has dared to speak up or act against the ones in power. This is a place where traitors and defected red-blooded-new bloods put their heads to have nightmares. This is a place of total control. This is a place that keeps all our secrets under lock and key.
"Have you been here before?" I lean over to my cousin.
The jet shakes a little, and Ptolemus face flickers. "No. This is an inspection, Daliah."
I take in the information silently. An inspection and they send him. I don't judge him.
Larentia told me. I never thought my cousin was an innocent creature. He has been formed to be an executor. We are raised to fight. We were raised to serve, to protect, and we were raised to break. And to kill.
In the end, maybe that is why I favor him so much. Because he is what I wanted to be if I was born a boy on another branch of the family.
I take another breath through my nose, keep my mouth closed shut. The transport lands with a last, rutting sigh.
"Will I need the guards and the dogs?" I ask.
"No."
"You heard the order. Stay put until we return."
Asher stands drilled and straight in the back. Bryce sneers a little. "Yes, Lady Viper."
The procession moves out of the jet in row and order, Ptolemus flanking Maven.
"Stay with the dogs," I motion to Hadrien. He only sits down again and pulls out his writing utensils, as if he isn't in the presence of superiors.
"My father will want a report," he informs me, not looking at my face. "Yours too."
"Something that's not redacted maybe," I assure him, my head is somewhere else entirely. "About New Bloods, probably."
"Fine."
I stay in the back of the procession. The dogs twitch and whine low after me.
"-a little thing that is interesting," I can hear Hadrien's voice low as I leave the guts of the plane.
"Suddenly he talks," Bryce mocks louder.
"Just a question to discuss. Now that we have a moment and you have nothing better to do than stare at the ceiling."
"I don't want to."
"Tell her to put the gun down, stoneskin."
Asher huffs. "Stare into your book again, Viper."
"If you give it a chance of 1 to 100 to mutate, that means a certain percentage of the population has the possible reoccurrence of unknown powers. Thousands of them, possibly. Although I only saw five so far, the youngest was a toddler, the oldest around fifty, and none of them shared necessarily even the same blood group as Lady Viper told me. There is no known correlation in history. So what causes the mutation and is there a certain reason it triggers powers?"
"Make him shut the fuck up, Asher."
Runt howls. One Ear joins in. The singing voices of the dogs form a symphony of dread in my ears when my feet step over the concrete. It is our fanfares and trumpets because a small line of soldiers expects us.
At the front row, one figure is clearly superior. Clean cut, dark-skinned Iral, a man with the eyes of a seasoned officer. I study the badges at his shoulder.
I should have known that they were in this too. Nothing goes over the financial and military structure of Samos and Iral. The bunch of assembled family colors speaks for themselves. Eyes, nymphs, stoneskins, magnetrons. The usual guards and jailers. Much less than I thought. But if this is an inspection of a newly built facility, I shouldn't be surprised.
They click their heels in attendance and salute. I stare at the broad doors that lead into the concrete building. A fence behind me clinks in the winds that breeze over us at the landing site. The wind carries the howling of the dogs far away into the barren lands of nothingness.
"Welcome. Your Highness, Lord Samos," Iral's eyes glider over to me. I don't wear any color on my black uniform, and for a moment the military sharpness in his face screams about a demand for me to identify myself. "I didn't expect anyone else, this is-"
"Someone with clearance, Captain," Ptolemus clarifies sharply. It screams about respect. I'm grateful.
"Lady Viper is the one that brought in most of the prisoners this week," Maven adds, studying the eye of a camera that points at the landing site.
The Captain bows only half as low for me, but his eyes still watch me. "Lady Viper," he adds. "A pleasure to meet you."
"Likewise, Captain. Are you the warden of this prison facility?" I ask.
"I am."
The formalities are short-lived. The whole deal clearly has been scheduled and planned.
"Let's discuss the rest inside," Maven states.
The door doesn't just open. It is a Magnetron door. It takes a flicker of silver shards and the whole shuddering metal flutters open, a bravado as screeching and dreadful as the howling of the dogs.
"What is the status?"
The Captain leads the convoy inside. I stare at the blank hall inside the concrete. More cameras, four walls- Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing exceptional. "The technical problems reported have been fixed, the works on the first rows of the cells has been rectified, block A and C are fully functional. D is orderly but still in a process to be finished. All in all, the process of building is finished, Corros Prison stands at service. We only need to perfect the processes and whatever you deem necessary as improvement."
My ears peek up like the dogs at that information. He didn't just order, but he helped to build this prison, after certain designs.
The Captains moves his hand and some of the guards scatter through the hall. Behind the next set of doors, the light is blinding.
The concrete was grey. The uniforms are black. The halls here are white. Everything is bright, sterile, soaked in tiles. Easy to hose down and clean, easy to maintain as more doors on each site branch out. They are lettered and color-coded. One is silver. One in the front catches my eye because it is pure red.
My heart pumps blood fast through my system. I put my hands to fists at my sides to stop myself from moving my face. Neither my cousin nor Maven are as much as blinking.
"The command center is this way," Iral proceeds to lead.
"Will we see a cell block?" I ask, and luckily my voice sounds stronger than my stomach feels.
"We will have to walk one to acess control," Iral explains. "This way."
He has a key to unlock one of the colorcoded, locked doors.
I peek into dim light and a flickering hole beneath the door. On either side of the fray, cells spread. They scream in colorless pain, made out of stone and metal.
"We need a magnetron to access the runways," he proceeds to explain to me. "The ramps and runways are built to get lost or reform under metal bending."
"Well," I mutter. "That is certainly out of my expertise."
His eyes wander off my scars back to my cousin. "Should I call over the guard or do you wish to lead, Lord Samos?"
No one gets called over. The first plates and bits rise up from below the abyss of dim grey light and nothingness. The hallway reminds me of the chasm I fell into.
"Everything has been prepared for Her Highness' arrival and stay in the facility," Iral explains to Maven as they walk behind Ptolemus. His radio chimes in on a frequence, voices talking. Status reports maybe. "The control center has been updated and we await more orders and charges to hold."
I look at the faces in the tiny spaces in the rows. My heart stops and my blood freezes, until it feels like I am made of the same white and grey stone that forms these cells. Silent stone, bars, manacles. And mangled, lifeless forms in rags that are broken and on the bottom of their cells cut off any source of daylight.