“One minute remaining,” the mechanical voice announced.
By the way Ezra suddenly perked up, an idea had popped into his mind.
I cursed my luck. That was my relationship with fortune—a fluke, non-lasting, and fickle. Utterly unreliable.
“Perhaps some feedback would be nice,” Ezra mused. “How did you like the show?”
“That’s not what Gedeon meant,” Sadira said, her tone dripping with disdain.
You had to leave it to her to be able to shake the ground with solely her intonation.
“Under my rule, nobody will be allowed to speak to their superiors like that.” Looking past her, Ezra gave a sign, and a soldier moved toward us. “But what I want is to see you kneel.”
Sadira scrunched up her curved nose. “Gedeon kneels for no one.”
“Not I, nor my people, will kneel for the enemy,” I corrected her. A small gust of wind slithered under my shirt, chilling my sweaty back, lowering my voice. “And especially not for a lowlife.”
Ezra smiled. “Soon, you’ll sing a different tune.”
The speakers blared an update, “Thirty seconds remaining.”
An as-tall-as-me Ardaton’s puppet came to a halt at Ezra’s side. The color of the emblem printed on the soldier’s helmet matched the red thread on Ezra’s shirt’s front pocket.
“Why don’t we play for a bit?” Ezra proposed. “In your basement, when you had unleashed Zion upon me, he came up with a game. He would cut, peel, or rip off one of my body parts for each question I declined to answer.” The thin set of Ezra’s mouth mimicked my own. “Let’s?—”
“Fifteen seconds remaining,” the recording interrupted Ezra as it issued the final warning.
“Let’s adjust it to fit…your situation.” His gaze traveled down to my legs. “Kneel, or each time you refuse, one of your people will die.”
I took a steadying breath to gain control in the war of my emotions. I didn’t want to think about the consequences if I resisted his demand. I already had too many tattoos on my back to mark the deaths I was at fault for.
But if I complied and sunk to the sidewalk, it would set a terrible example for everyone who had followed me for countless years.
Ezra sighed. “This is taking too long.” He waved at Sadira, and?—
A dull pop, and her weight fell fully on me. I stumbled, catching her…corpse. The hole in the center of her forehead couldn’t lie. My ribs contracted so painfully, I prayed for them to puncture my lungs.
The soldier lowered her handgun, her round face set firm, her expression void of any hesitation or regret.
Unlike mine.
I could remember the day Sadira had entered our compound like it was today. How she had held her head high despite the green band on her wrist. How she wouldn’t allow anyone to help her settle and instead found a new opportunity to prove herself by lunch every day. How three months later, she had already been leading our tech team. How she had befriended Eislyn and Jayla and the three of them had started a weekly dinner night. How she had punched me with the statement ofSpending time with our friends is part of your duties, Gedeon. You can’t bottle everything up. You have to let some steam out.
For years and years, she had worked with me.
And now, she had died beside me.
Because I had refused to kneel.
“Sadira,” I whispered, lowering her body to the ground. Her head lolled aside, her chest frozen, her diaphragm no longer receiving signals to pump air. The dust covering the sidewalk stuck to her black, thin braids, creating a grayish film, coating her in death.
“This doesn’t count, you know.” Ezra waved at me kneeling beside Sadira. “Either beg me to accept your surrender, or get up and drop to your knees again.”
“The time has run out.” Ardaton issued the declaration via the public address system. “Good luck with the choices you’ve made.”
Pushing through the heat darkening my peripherals, verging on consuming me, feeding the wrath razing my insides, I got to my feet.
Screams from the intersection at my back enfolded my throat like a noose, choking me with whimpers and howls. The barks and orders the military doled out pierced my chest like knives, slicing and carving.
