“I am too old for this,” he said aloud.
The rhythmic breathing of what sounded like two people he couldn’t locate were the only sounds Aurik heard other than his own voice. He hadn’t seen light since the kidnapping.
Had it been a kidnapping? The details were still cloudy.
“I was speaking with the Tribunal members,” he said. He had already yelled himself hoarse calling for help. He spoke out loud now just to hear something real. “The light went out. There was a sharp sting in my neck.” His hand the found the lump that still protruded from his skin. “And I woke up here, buried alive …” He trailed off. “I am way too old for this.”
His hands swept over the dimensions of the cell again. Metal bars lined one of the walls; the other three were dirt. When he had first been elected Head of the Tribunal, he was shown a small portion of the ancient maze located under Tribunal Hall, engineered eons ago during a much darker age. He remembered the stifling heat and caustic smell of rotting metal. Without a doubt, that’s where he was now. But knowing he was in the tunnels helped very little. They stretched unendingly underneath the city.
A deafening bang tore through the silence, followed by a mechanical clicking and grinding of gears. Then there was light, enough to illuminate the room dimly, and a rush of cool air that carried the sound of voices with it. Someone was coming.
“Sometimes I’m not sure Emani is as good a chemist as she believes herself to be. How long has he been unconscious?”
“She probably administered too much. He fought hard for an old man,” a second voice answered. That shook a memory loose in Aurik’s head. Although he hadn’t been able see, he’d put up a great struggle. He remembered a man’s voice—and a woman’s.
Two figures finally came into view.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Uncle. I was away on unavoidable business,” Gideon said. He carried a thick parchment scroll in his hand, which he fitted into a carved niche in the wall.
Aurik barely recognized the man in front of him.
“Gideon! What has happened to you?” he cried. Gideon looked skeletal, worn away and white as chalk. “You need a healer immediately! Call for Zio, he can help you!” He reached out to touch Gideon’s shoulder.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” Gideon spat, his mouth twitching involuntarily. Without thinking, he reached back and scratched viciously at his neck, where Dai had marked him.
“I thought you and I had reached an understanding, Gideon. Do you know what you have brought upon yourself?” he asked sadly. “You will lose your tribal marks and become Unnamed. There is nothing that I, either as your uncle or as Head of the Tribunal, can do to save you from exile.”
“Your worry is misplaced, Aurik. No one is going to find out about this, because you won’t tell them.”
“Dear boy, I am bound by a sacred oath to tell the absolute truth. Not even our family tie can negate that.”
“You don’t understand. Listen carefully—”
“You had such promise. You could have brought great peace to our society. Your parents, your beautiful mother, what would they say?” Aurik asked as he reached out to Gideon again.
“Enough!” Gideon stepped back. The voices in his head echoed Aurik’s words back at him, amplified. “Do not speak of my parents. You’ve driven me to these extremes! You have turned me, your blood, into an enemy.”
“My job is to protect my people and preserve peace. Your plan comes with an unconscionable loss of life. I did what I thought was right.”
“That choice is no longer yours. I have enough support to push my initiative through. The Tribunal has given me their vote.”
“Have they? At what price?” Aurik asked. “I don’t know what you have offered them, but let me tell you something I have learned in my long years. Bought support will never weather the storm. If they do not follow you with their hearts, they won’t follow you for long.”
Gideon glanced at Dai, who smiled back. Maybe Gideon just imagined the flash of mutiny burning behind that smile.
“They will follow me as long as I need them to, and then I will do away with them, as well,” Gideon answered.
“God will not look upon your actions without judgment, son. I’ll ask you again to repent of your actions.”
“You stand there, half naked, starving, inside a cell, and lecture me about God and repentance? You should be down on your knees begging me to spare your life!” Gideon yelled.
“My life means very little in the larger sense. I will only beg you again to reconsider your actions,” Aurik said simply. “Mailah wouldn’t have wanted this path for you.”
Gideon flew at the bars that separated the two men and shook them angrily.
“Do not speak my mother’s name! She’ll hear you!” he stammered, his eyes boring wildly into dark hallways.
“Son, what are you talking about? Please call Zio for help. You aren’t well,” Aurik implored, placing his aged hands over Gideon’s.
“Don’t touch me!” Gideon screamed. He ran from the chamber down the black, twisting halls, getting more lost with each step.
“His parents have been dead for years,” Aurik murmured to himself. “Dai, he is not well!”
“He truly isn’t,” Dai agreed with a satisfied smile.
Dai stood very still, closing his working eye. After a moment of meditation, he felt the shift, his brain making connection with the extensive machinery in his empty eye socket. His mind melded with the mechanisms, bringing them whirring to life.
He concentrated, reaching out into the darkness, through the walls, scanning for the chemical signal the mark on Gideon’s skin emitted. He found his target easily.
He concentrated harder and the earthen walls started to form in his mind, filling in the darkness completely. He walked down the black hallways until he reached Gideon, huddled in a corner, mumbling.
“I found you,” a female voice called menacingly. Dai projected Mailah’s frighteningly disfigured hologram inside the antechamber where Gideon was hiding. Gideon cried out, clawing uselessly at the walls to get away from the ghost.
“Dai! Help!” he shouted. “I need more!” Dai smiled at the crumbling shell of a man as he dug inside his robes for the syringe.
He was never as strong as his ambitions. But I am, thought Dai.
“I thought I took enough. But the ghosts … Just give me a little more.”
“Of course, Master,” he said comfortingly, pushing up the robes on Gideon’s arm to expose his gray skin. He smoothly injected the drug into Gideon’s protruding vein. He slowly let the hologram of Gideon’s mother evaporate as the drug took effect. As it did, the irrational light in Gideon’s eyes calmed.
After a few somber breaths in the bleak hallway, he stood and floated serenely behind Dai, who led him back into Aurik’s cell. Aurik observed the changed Gideon with apprehension.
“Dai, please get him some help,” Aurik urged.
“Don’t say any more words now,” Gideon said calmly. “Listen to your future, because time is running out.” Aurik said nothing, but folded his arms patiently across his chest.
“You’ll follow my every direction, you’ll say what I want you to say, and then you will die,” Gideon said. Aurik opened his mouth to speak, but Gideon cut him off.
“Please do not fight me on this. I need your body in working condition.” Dai threw a small satchel filled with food and water into Aurik’s cell.
“Soon your mind will belong to me. So, Dai, if you will be so kind, tend to my uncle. Make sure he eats. Give him light, books, whatever he wants,” he said. Dai nodded and smiled. “It’s all very exciting. You should feel privileged to be a part of such historic times. I can’t wait to hear all of the Head of the Tribunal’s secrets.”
“I would never share these secrets, even if I were allowed to do so.”
“It’s really up to you. If you don’t want to tell me your secrets while you are alive, you’ll talk when you are dead.”
“Gideon, I don’t understand what you are saying,” Aurik said, less patiently this time.
“Why does everyone keep saying that to me lately?” he asked, cocking his head to the side, dazed. “Get me out of here, Dai. I’m getting dirty.”