I'm in the right wing of the house when Rider summons me—excitedly I must add. It's always a joy to hear his voice screeching my name first thing in the morning. I'm tempted to ask what's stuck up his ass before the sun has time to settle in the sky but I figure I won't piss him off until later.
"The General is asking for you. Says he needs to speak about what happened yesterday." His eyes twitch at the end. I'm absolutely sure Rider's hate for me has sunken deep into the depths of his cold heart from my blatant disregard for human life yesterday. Something like regret settles in my stomach. I do know that all lives are sacred. Death is not a joy ride after all. But the selfish part of me screams to not let my guard down, no matter what. Lia was no harm, but then again I act the same as well. We're all our own demons hiding behind pretty white painted veils at the end of the day.
"What does he want."
"He would like to chat." A voice booms from down the hall. Rider struggles to hold in a smirk and I scowl at the way his eyes light up and my being caught. "Is that okay?"
I sigh, flinging my dirty towel at Rider's face, enjoying the way he screeches and swats it like a disease infested piece of scrap. "Sure. Make it quick General, I do have things to do."
I hear a chuckle leave the caged form of his lips; deep and throaty. The mere sound of it sends my stomach plummeting. At this point, my body is the worst betrayer I've had the misfortune of fighting in years. He passes Rider, patting him on his back, then leads us down the hallway. I smile my brightest, sweetest smile at him, doing the same. I smile even wider knowing the heat surrounding us is from his ability to withhold his urge to murder me right here and now.
I follow the General down dozens of stairs—stairs I hadn't seen from the days I've been here. There is a heavy iron wrought door at the end of an extremely long hallway. I think we're underground, but I can't be too sure since there were no visible windows on our way down here. The air is cold and musty, it reeks something horrid and metallic—a permanent, invisible stain marring the edges of the door. It's as if death was given life in these very rooms.
"Where the hell are we and why does it smell like a bloodbath." I slow when he places his hands on the doorknob. His face is calm, a hint of a smile playing on his face. And I have absolutely no idea what kind of thoughts this smile hides. "Finally decided I'm not worth the trouble?"
He smiles wider. The band around my stomach from earlier grows tighter. I write it off as anxiety born from pure confusion. "No, little lynx." He replies, pushing open the black demon portal. "I just want to talk. No one can hear any conversation beyond these doors."
"This...is a torture chamber, General. Do you want me to talk or do you want me to scream?" I manage to thread a hint of amusement through my words. But the truth is an unwanted memory that floods my brain, sealing my feet to the cold ground. I swallow hard, my vision clouding.
"I don't do well with these types of rooms. Is there anywhere else we can talk?" I try not to lose the solidity in my voice. But the memory fights it's way to the surface. I did say Kat trained me in the likes of mercenary work. She had two years to do it. I never said it was easy.
His face morphs into confusion, but he closes them anyway. His eyes seem to see right through me as he stares at me, regarding every inch of my placid features. He seems to know I'm very good at hiding things I don't want him to see and it irks my very soul. But his smile turns gentle, more sincere. More understanding. He doesn't press. Instead he closes the door shut once more and leads us down another hallway.
It's silent for a minute too long and my skin pebbles from the coldness of being underground. So I let my mouth do what it wants. "Seems like there's an entire prison plan down here." I scan the walls repeatedly. Over and over, all I see is the same dreary, dead colour. Maybe a bit of red to add the fun into the mixture.
"The Red General before me...his ways were different. He had this entire system built down here for his own purposes. Stubborn criminals, the likes. When the house became mine, I had that...chamber scrubbed clean of its remnants. It's little more than a room now." He says chamber in a deep, cautious voice, as if to warn me I've nothing to be wary of. He knows what kind of events took place down here. But from the cobwebs in mostly every corner, it hasn't been used since his reign over the region as the Red General. I almost sigh in relief. Almost.
"It still has the scent."
He scrunches his nose in time with mine, and I guess we both have similar thoughts. "Yes well...the stench is the only bad part. I don't like to imagine what horrors happened down here. I didn't exactly seal it off. My members know about it but, I guess it became an unspoken rule to leave it abandoned for good." He stops near the first door since the beginning of the hallway. The doorknob is a bit dusty, meaning no one—especially Arman—had been down here in a while.
The room is pitch black, my eyes take a very long time to properly adjust. The General paces a bit, as if struggling with the darkness as well. A strike against something. A torch is lit. The room is still obscured by partial darkness, but now I can see the solemn look on his face. One half of his face is lit, the other eclipsed by the torch light. I find myself analyzing the soft shape of his cheeks, the length of his lashes. Until he speaks.
"No one can hear you. Say what you need to say."
I take a beat too long before I reply, my words somehow lost in the shadows. "So now you decide to trust me."
He chuckles, his charming smile pasting his face once more. "I never said I did." He steps a bit closer to me, his hair illuminated by the orange of the torch. "Tell me."
I inhale a deep breath. And I tell him what I know. "There's a member of your guard who is disloyal to you. I shall not say the name because...you must understand I am not too trusting of many things. Giving the name of the man who may kill me is one of them. The man I worked for has been giving new orders to different members of our little group. We are to kill each other before we finish "the final" stage of the game. And yes, it is a game. To him there are too many risks at play, too many ways to slip up. He doesn't want that. So he's taken the one resource he has too much of; people, and decided to let them kill each other off. I am one of seven. My life, General, is in danger. Yes, you are the final target. And yes...." I look at him finally, taking another breath. His face betrays nothing, dozens of emotions swarm his dark brown eyes. "Yes...I need your help."
A minute passes. Two minutes. Not a sound from him. I don't even think he's breathing.
Then, "Why am I the final target?"
"I do not know."
"Why don't you just kill me then, if I'm the final "boss"."
"There are...rules to this horrid game. Each of us are given a supervisor of sorts. The rule is none of us are allowed to touch you until the others are dead. The last one standing is the only one who is qualified."
"How do you even know if you're the last one?"
"I suppose that's the fun in the game." I breathe out a long breath and flail my arms in a shrug. I almost smile at how ridiculous all of this sounds. A game of killing? Supervisors of torture? Madness.
"And you believe this? That, what, if you were to kill me when you're not the last one standing—"
"They will find a way to murder me. Slowly. They'll take my aunt with them. Anyone I know and love will die. Those are the rules to the game. I know this sounds absurd—"
"It's absolutely ludacris—"
"But we have no choice General. I've already been told that that girl, Lia Dolman, is going to be executed tomorrow. Regardless of a prison cell, or whatever you decide to do with her. She will die. It's the rules of the game. We're to do this alone. She cheated."
He holds his head and paces the room. I can no longer see the expression on his face but his body is tense, rigid with inner conflict. I can tell he doesn't know whether to believe me or kill me where I stand. And I flinch when he laughs. A giant, bellow of a single puff of something like laughter leaves his throat. Soundless chuckles follow.
"Have you gone mad Red?" I'm now concerned by the way he doubles over. A whistle leaves his throat. My gods, the Red General wheezes when he laughs. It would be almost adorable in another situation without discussing both our deaths and the betrayal of his men.
"I don't know if I believe you or not, girl. It's too mad a tale for you to spin."
"I promise you General, on my life, this is not a lie."
"All you people...all of you are insane," He whispers. I snap my head towards him, finding some sort of amusement in his voice. Is this moron really amused by this? Is he really that thick in his head?
"Look, it's real as you and me. I didn't want to believe it either but there is an injured girl upstairs who tried to kill me, and another one is already dead. As much as we want to laugh, we can't. Because this is the sick reality we live in."
He shakes his head, stares at me as the logical part of him takes the winning lead. "I should just lock all of you in a cell then. Maybe nobody dies."
I scoff, an involuntary smirk painting my face. "Is that all you're good for? Throwing people in cells? I came here for your help and to help you. For you to hear me out. You don't think I'm confused too? That I'm not scared? But... I guess you're no different from the others."
He takes a step forward, his neck tilting to meet the best of my gaze, "You haven't even met the bad ones. Don't place me with them."
Just then, I can't help the outburst of pure anger flooding through my veins. It's an all consuming fire, a single memory of a young boy and his sister. Of Red men taking them away. I can't help but wanting to shove guilt down his throat. "I have. I've met the men who would drag a poor, homeless boy away from his sister." I take a step forward, my mouth curling, "As he screams for them to forgive him. To let him go. For someone to save him because the people who're supposed to...are taking him away." Another step. "I met the little sister who cries for her brother, because all he did was take a loaf of bread from the bakery earlier that day. She told him not too. But he was so hungry, he couldn't help himself." I crane my neck to look at him, his heavy breaths fanning my face. "People like you took him away. Because it's never what could have been. It's always whether it's black or white. But you're just too colour blind to know the damn difference." I point a finger at his chest, when all I want to do is take that same finger and shove it through his rib cage. "Do you know what happened to him? They said if they discipline a young child for a crime not even worth it, people would fall in line. So they did. They murdered him in cold blood, a mask over his face, his limbs cut from his body. His sister lost the only family she ever had the next day."
Silence. Pure, deafening silence. His eyes soften, and I don't realise my eyes burn with unshed tears until his hand comes up to my eyelashes. I slap it away and gather myself, forcing the well of unwanted emotion back down. "You call me the villain. Well I'm sorry to break it to you when you wrote the damn book."
"I'm sorry." He says. Abruptly. It's as if I hadn't been speaking this entire time and sound had just re-entered the room as his voice echoes off the walls.
"What?"
He sighs, a tired whoosh of breath that I feel from the bottom of my soul. I don't realise that I feel the same way until the hollow in my stomach deepens. Then again, no amount of sleep can fix this. Not right now.
"That little boy...I...." He glances at me, as if true sorrow and guilt had really been shoved down his throat. As if I'd hit a nerve that was sealed off some time ago. I take a step back. Realisation hitting me the minute his eyes upturn. Apologetic.
"You...you did that?"
His eyes are downcast now. As if my pointed look of accusation is too much for him to withstand. Deep down, a part of me wants to make him look at me. See the pure look of hatred for this entire monarchy on the surface of my being.
"I guess Ansel was right," I whisper listlessly, "there are no heroes in our world."
I turn to head back upstairs. For now, I have no idea what to do. The General knows the plan. He knows what the game is about. I had no idea what I was thinking when I told him. Maybe I wasn't thinking at all. I wanted him to see through my actions. See through the lies the world has spun into our delicate, pliable minds. To see that I'm trying to save my life...and possibly his in the process. I wanted his help to remove Arman from the equation, long enough to move my piece across the board in the direction I want it in.
I place my hand on the doorknob and —
"I'll help you." The words echo in my brain, bouncing off every possibility that has now taken rise without my permission. "We'll help each other. At least...until a visible enemy rears it's head."
"Okay." Is all I can muster. His voice sounds a little more enthusiastic, and I have no idea what spurs it on.
"What happens if you're the only one left? What happens if you're the last man standing?"
My hand tightens, the dust around it sticking to my hand, making it sweat. I inhale deeply, turning my neck just to see the outline of his body. My heart tells me one thing, but the organ is a system of lies and pain and betrayal. So I go with what my brain tells me; "I guess we'll see when we get there."