I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (87 page)

Tigris-Euphrates River Delta

5000 BC

Aesin returns from the mining operations in the Southern Hemisphere the day before the Harvest Festival. He ports into my overseer’s terrace and sits down on a lounger next to mine without saying a word. We sit like this for long minutes.

I’m not required to bow to him. I’m his son, I take orders if he gives them, but I’m not a servant. I’m not some simple house slave who must bend to his whims. There are only six High Order beings on this planet right now: Aesin, Inanna, that geneticist Gib, Rache, Crage, and myself. And we are all equals, no matter how much time one has over the other. I can command the other Archers just as well as Aesin can. Rache can command them if he has a reason. Inanna commands them all the time, even without reason. But we cannot command each other.

High Order beings have free will. It’s a universal gift we receive at birth.

So we sit in silence, playing a game of who will break the stillness. It’s near time for my workers to go home for the evening and men start appearing from far off fields. One in front of the terrace stops to talk to a woman carrying a basket filled with food they will cook for dinner. He leans in and I sit up in my chair a little. “What’s he doing?”

“Playing coy for my benefit, Lucifer?”

I stand up to see this better, ignoring my father. The man kisses her on the cheek. I actually laugh as I turn. “He kissed her!”

Aesin raises his eyebrow. “You’re surprised by this development?”

“Well, yes, actually. I had no idea the natives partook in affection like that. It’s new to me. I’ve never seen it before.”

“The natives do not use affectionate gestures such as kissing. But the genetic stock you authorized your new workforce to be made from do.”

I keep my back to him, still staring down at the couple. They are laughing now. Joking, he’s teasing her. Flirting. It’s… a bit astonishing to me.

When I finally turn to Aesin he’s gone. And then I hear the screams from below. My head whips back to the fields and the couple are lying in a bloodied heap on the ground. My father raises his head and stares at me. “You will pay for this, son.”

And then he disappears.

“Everything OK?” Amelia asks, her soft hand fluttering against my bare shoulder.

“Fine, yes.” I turn to her, trying to hide my uneasiness over Aesin’s actions. I study her pale skin and her brilliant bronze eyes flecked with green. Her lashes are long and dark, her mouth has the perfect lift. Slightly upturned, giving off a soft smile even when she’s not smiling. Her face is heart-shaped and her auburn hair flows down her back, but not reaching all the way to her waist, like most goddesses like to wear it.

I catch myself when I realize I just compared her to a goddess.

“It’s fine, Amelia. But please stay inside tonight. In our chamber. Will you do that?” I don’t want to worry her, but our governing laws are degenerating and there’s no telling what Aesin might do in retaliation for authorizing the genetic changes to the natives.

“Yes, of course.”

“Good.” I squeeze her hand and turn her around. “Let’s walk home together. I’m looking forward to the festival tomorrow and would like to rest, so I will stay home with you.”

This pleases her and her pleasure pleases me. I wrap my hands around her waist and pull her towards me. “Aesin is a bad man. Make sure to stay away from him, OK? Stay in the house, don’t walk the village until I say it’s safe.”

She leans up and kisses me, but the image of the native couple down below steals the effect of the gesture away. I take her hand and we walk together.

The village is busy that night. From my house, specifically from the bedroom, I can see the center square. All the High Order live in vast apartments around the perimeter of the square, with the exception of that geneticist, Gib—where he came from and when he got here is still a mystery to me, but he lives at the genetics plaza. The slaves erect the crosses for the customary sacrifices. Planting and harvest festivals are celebrated with sacrifices to the High Order. The natives are allowed to choose who among them will give their lives. Typically it’s a young girl. They occur at sunrise and I made a point to sleep late on Planting and Harvest Day. I have yet to appear for the killing they perform in my name. I stay away from the front windows and terraces until it’s over.

But tonight I sit on my bedroom terrace and drink a dark ale that Rache’s servants learned how to make after he switched his staff to the new genetic line. It’s quite good.

Amelia is already asleep. I shift in my chair and look past the billowing white curtains to find her form on the bed. Her bare legs peek out of the light covers, and her arms are both above her head, sprawled out like she hasn’t a care in the world. I set the beer down and go back inside. I’m crazy to be out here alone when she is so close. I strip off my clothes and climb into bed next to her, pulling her up to my chest. She moans a little and her lips twitch as she wriggles against me, making me want to take her body. I lean down and kiss her neck, right where the life blood pulsates through the artery under her chin.

She’s so perfect. I have to remind myself every day that’s she’s made, not grown, because it’s quite easy to forget. She has no outward signs that she is machine. Not one. I insisted that Gib do a complete medical workup and explain all the intricacies of her design to me before she came home. He’s genius. Genius. How he got off the home world with that talent, I’ll never understand. They do give us a geneticist, but never one so talented. They do not like them to leave the home world for fear they will create unsanctioned life.

There is no possible way Gib is here under sanctioned orders and no doubt he’s created more unsanctioned life than any High Order being in history.

I only need to look at Amelia to see this. She is creation science perfection.

And she is so illegal. As long as she lives I will never go home, because she would be killed instantly. And I am a rather low rank when among all my brethren. Just another High Order son. Not like here, where I’m afforded all the protections and privileges that only the High Beings receive.

Aesin could kill Amelia—he has the right to try. But because she is mine, if he should kill her it would give me power to take something equally important from him.

This is how we check each other’s power. Aesin is not supposed to dictate. And for the most part he does not. He does kill my workers, and I could fight him over it and get retribution from Rache, but it’s not worth the effort. Pick and choose your battles carefully. That was our clutch motto and those who survived took it into Fledge and then out into the population. If you fight, that fight had better send a message. There is no room for blind violence.

What message is Aesin sending with these slave killings?

It’s never made any sense to me. Why bother?

Amelia pushes her ass up against my thighs and I growl a little. “You’re asking for it,” I whisper. But she’s completely asleep, she’s not asking for it at all. She’s just trying to get comfortable. I lie on my back and tug on her until she slips her cheek against my chest. My fingers thread through her hair and I pull the long strands high above her head and then let them fall.

I could live like this.

I could live like this for a very long time, I believe.

Amelia is the definition of content for me.

I am in love.

I fall asleep with her on my chest… satisfied.

When I wake, the bright morning sunshine of Harvest day is pouring through the open terrace door and the sound of people gathering outside filters in.

Amelia is gone.

A figure moves on my terrace and I sit up. “Amelia?” But I already know it’s not her before the whipping sheer white curtains flutter open in the wind and reveal my visitor.

“No, son. The machine is gone.” And then Aesin steps into my room, his fangs fully extended, his blades fully extended. “But don’t worry,” he says with a gleam in his eye, “I’ll make sure you see her one more time.” He laughs as his razors morph into blades.

I’m so stunned that he’d pull out that weaponry on me, I actually hesitate. And then I’m pinned to the floor, completely naked, my father’s knee pushing down on my back.

I hear it, not feel it, when he cuts my wings off. It’s a slick sound, a displacement of tissue and blood, and then a quick snap as the blades sever my posterior humerus from my scapula. The heat of rushing blood pours out of my body and my vision screen compensates and initiates healing processes before I can stop it. It grows before I can prevent the new limb from replacing the old.

The pain as my other wing is removed is canceled out by the thrusting of new bone from the healing centers in my back. My father removes his foot and raises my black wings over his head, his maniacal laughter filling the room and spilling out into the commons. People begin to cheer as he appears in the window, still holding my wings like they are a trophy.

The wing regeneration process momentarily takes my mind off the barbaric reality of what just occurred and I scream as the new bones thrust out of my back.

He took my wings. He cut them off!

My next moment of complete consciousness might be minutes or seconds later, I can’t tell. People are still cheering, even more wildly than before, but Aesin is no longer on my terrace. I pull myself up, still naked, and look over my shoulder.

The bat wings unfurl and the pain is so visceral, so acute and sharp that I vomit on the floor of my bedroom.

Gone are the black feathers. In their place are the membranous stretched-taut skin of a criminal.

I fall to the ground on my knees as the revulsion overtakes me, but the scream from the plaza has me on my feet and out on the terrace.

Amelia is laid out on the sacrificial slab of rock in front of the crosses, Aesin leans over her, my wings in his hand. He leans down and says something to her and she screams again. I port to the cross and stand over him, the entire city gasping at my wings as they stretch out and flap of their own volition. “Stop,” I growl, low and deep. “She is mine. You may not!”

Aesin slashes Amelia’s back with foot knives and her skin opens up and spills out crimson blood and sparks of circuitry.

“Blasphemy!” Aesin spews to the crowd. “He created a living machine! He has violated the cardinal rule.” And then he looks over at me and I attack. My knives come out of my foot and swipe him across the face. His screech has my ears popping and the hot blood trickles out from the damage. I spin as he rushes me and drag my talons across his chest, but this time there is no sound from him except the static that comes from a port, and then he’s behind me, his hands around my throat. Choking. My eyes begin to blur and then everything goes black.

I wake a moment later, the energy restrictor attached to my spine, neck, and cranium. The pain is almost intolerable, calling me back to the darkness, but Amelia’s whimpers pull me back to reality. I’m hanging upside down, I realize, and so is she. We are on the crosses in the plaza. My Archer wings have been sewed onto her back and they fall to the side, limp and lifeless. Dead appendages.

“You see, Lucifer? She is avian now! Perfect, don’t you think? Your Gib could not have done better.” And then the blades on his hand slice through her neck in one clean swipe and her face bobbles to the ground, her hazel eyes wide and looking up at me, her perfect lips forming an eternal scream.

“I’ve collected her soul, Lucifer. And I will punish her for eternity for your betrayal. There are always worse things than death, my son.”

Chapter Thirty-Two—JUNCO

Lower Dallas, Texas

I watch Cora walk off down the dark street, the wind from trains hanging from the ceiling of Low Dallas blowing her pink hair around. She stops when she gets to the corner of the next block and I dial up the vision enhancements on my screen to catch her expression. She salutes me, her mouth a straight line across her face, and then she pivots like a cadet and disappears around the corner of a tall building.

I blow out a long breath. “Well, Junco, now what?” It’s been a while since I’ve had a moment to myself, it seems. I had all that time when I took off from Sargassum, but I was on a mission back then. Now what? I’d like to see Tier but I’m not really sure where he might be at the moment.