Page 3 of Because I Killed Him
“Don’t look away, Loredana,” Dad says.
“I won’t,” I reply, knowing it’s not really a choice. He’ll accuse me of being unprepared if I’m unable to watch. His rough, gritted hands are unrecognizable from the ones that taught me to use a fencing saber, cleaned my scrapes after I fell off my hoverboard, and played moody jazz on the saxophone after family dinner.
I changed Dad’s hands. My sisters did, too. The scars and calluses came from years of training, during which he pushed us to the edge and then kicked us headfirst over. “The day you don’t need my protection is the day you can consider yourself strong,” he used to say.
The broadcast drones zoom in on the Heretic father’s face. His lips curl into a defiant sneer as the executioner rests a hand on the release lever. For a moment, I imagine myself in the Heretic father’s place, my head strapped into the cold yoke and my spine pressed against the hard bench. Would I resist? Would I plead for mercy? Or, as a last-ditch effort to preserve my dignity, could I die just as bravely?
I hope I’ll never know the answer.
“Justice is rendered,” the executioner announces. “Let its echoes be heard.”
The blade falls with a sickening thud, slicing through the Heretic father’s neck with a spray of orange blood that makes the acid in my stomach pitch up my throat.
Two.
Now I’ve seen two people die.
Adrenaline surges through me like a second heartbeat. My visionnarrows, and the room’s lights spin dizzyingly along the walls. I feel for the anti-vomit pill in my pocket and grip it, fighting the urge to swallow it dry.
From the corner of my eye, I notice Dad assessing my reaction to the decapitated body and to the roar of the crowd as the executioner catches the rolling head and raises it toward the high-citizens like an offering. I know what he’s thinking. He’s wondering whether the violence is enough to make me change my mind about becoming a Public Person. I wish it were. I wish I could drop out of Grandmaster University and stay home until I turn twenty-one, when citizens are required to become Public People. But I can’t.
Because what happened last year changed everything.
“You doing all right?” Dad asks softly.
I nod.
And it’s not a lie.
Somewhere beyond my horror, a growing calm and even a sense of relief emerge, because there’s a difference between this death and the first. With this death, I watched from a distance as someone else’s blade took a life. But with the first, the blade was mine.
I refocus on the broadcast, where the crowd has erupted, boiling in the stands like insects driven mad. Their cheers rise and fall in a joyful, undulating rhythm until a fierce scream cuts through the noise. The broadcast drones pan to the Heretic daughter, who’s broken free of the lineup. She stumbles full tilt toward the executioner, her face torn between grief and rage. Her fist punches the air as she yells, “Without the freedomto, I choose freedomfrom!”
The crowd gasps.
Dad’s hands curl at his sides, knuckles whitening. “Shit.”
The moment I recognize the banned Heretic slogan, I tense up, too. “Has this ever happened before?”
“Once every couple of years.” Dad rakes a hand through his light brown hair. “It never ends well.”
The executioner throws the severed head off the platform. As it rolls across the grass below, the Heretic girl begins to sob. The executioner charges her, and she drops to her knees, covering her face with her arms.Five more Heretics break from the line and scramble to form a shield around her until their motion-triggered handcuffs activate. The electrodes deliver violent currents through their muscles, and all at once they collapse, their bodies locking up and jerking uncontrollably.
The executioner seizes the Heretic girl by her hair. He drags her, screaming and thrashing, toward the guillotine until a voice resounds from above.
“HALT.”
The executioner tenses like a wire, and so do I. I can almost feel the floor slipping away beneath me as the broadcast drones rise from the low-citizen tiers to the fourth level and focus on a wrought-iron balcony adorned with intricate scrollwork.
It’s empty except for a man.
He’s taller than most Blues, nearly seven feet. His face is chiseled like a cliff edge, and his single-breasted suit stretches over an enormous, muscular frame. The pomade in his well-groomed blond hair gleams under the stage lights, but it’s his expression that draws my attention: calm, entirely detached from the chaos below, his mouth set in a firm line. His eyes, blue as a bruise, scan the scene with authority.
Perched beside him is a live two-headed eagle, as large as a battering ram, with a pair of rustling white-and-brown wings. Both hooked beaks click as the bird tugs at the jesses binding its leg. Its movements are taut and restless, as if it senses prey out of reach.
I’ve seen a few Blues in person, and just as a lightning strike shocks and awes, so do they. Beauty. Intelligence. Strength. The high-citizens were once engineered solely for endurance, but now they have access to all our genetic enhancements and more. Some low-citizens believe they’re perfect humans, while others think they’ve transcended humanity itself. But if Blues have truly become gods, there’s one thing they don’t share with the gods people used to believe in.
They’re unloved.
