Golden Son

I look stonily at the three of them, thankful they cannot read my thoughts. They know nothing. I can barely conceive of what they must think of me. They’ve such small perspectives on what I’ve done, on what I’ve become. I thought there was a plan, a long, large reason for all my toil. But there was nothing. I know that now. Even Dancer was just waiting to see what happened. Hoping.

I expected to be welcomed back with open arms. I expected an army waiting. A grand plan. For Ares to take off his infamous helm and dazzle me with his brilliance and prove all my faith warranted. Hell, all I wanted was to find them again so I would not feel alone. But I feel more alone than ever sitting here in a concrete room with these three pale people on rickety plastic chairs.

“A Gold named Cassius au Bellona killed him,” I say.

“Was it a good death?”

“By now, you should know there’s no such thing.”

“Cassius. The same one you have a bloodfeud with. Is that why?” Evey asks eagerly. “Is that why the Bellona want to kill you?”

I run a hand through my hair. “No. I killed Cassius’s brother. It’s one of the reasons they hate me.”

“Blood for blood,” Evey murmurs like she knows what the hell she’s talking about.

“We hit them hard today, Darrow. Twelve blasts across Luna and Mars. Dancer and Titus have been avenged,” Harmony says. “And we’ll hit them harder in the days to come. This cell is just one of many.”

She waves her hand at the desk and scenes rise as the holoDisplay comes to life. Violet news anchors drone on about the carnage.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I ask. “You’re as bad as them. You know that, yes? Never mind the strategy of it. Never mind you’re taunting a sleeping dragon. Evey herself killed over a hundred lowColors just hours ago.”

“There weren’t Reds,” Harmony says, and then adds, in an amazingly insincere afterthought, “or Pinks.”

“Yes, there were!”

“Then their sacrifice will be remembered,” Harmony says solemnly.

“Vox clamantis in deserto,” I exclaim.

Mickey sits quiet, but he allows himself a small smile.

“Trying to impress us with your Gold fancy talk?” Harmony asks.

“He feels like a voice crying out in the desert. Shouting all in vain,” Mickey explains. “It’s simple Latin.”

“So you know what’s what,” Harmony says. “Become a Gold and suddenly you have all the answers.”

“Wasn’t that the point of me becoming a Gold? So we could see how they think?”

“No. It was to position you to strike at their jugular.” She balls her fist and strikes the palm of her metal hand in emphasis. “Don’t act like you were born better than I. Remember, I know what you are inside. Just a scared boy who tried to kill himself when he was too weak to save his wife from hanging.”

I sit speechless.

“Harmony, he’s just trying to help,” Evey says softly. “I know it must be hard, Darrow. You’ve spent years with them. But we have to hurt them. See, that’s all they understand. Pain. Pain is how they control us.”

She continues slowly.

“The first day I served a Gold was the greatest pleasure I felt in all my life. I can’t explain it to you. It was like meeting God. Now I know that it wasn’t pleasure I felt. It was the absence of pain.

“That is how they train Pinks to live a life of slavery, Darrow. They raise us in the Gardens with implants in our bodies that fill our lives with pain. They call the device Cupid’s Kiss—the burn along the spine, the ache in the head. It never stops. Not even when you close your eyes. Not when you cry. It only stops when you obey. They take the Kiss away eventually. When we’re twelve. But … you can’t know what it’s like, the fear that it’ll come back, Darrow.”

Evey plays with her nails. “Gold needs to feel pain. They need to fear it. And they need to learn they may not hurt us without consequences. That’s what Harmony means.”

And I thought the Golds were broken. We’re all just wounded souls stumbling about in the dark, desperately trying to stitch ourselves together, hoping to fill the holes they ripped in us. Eo kept me from this end. Without her, I’d be like them. Lost.

“It’s not about hurting them, Evey,” I say. “It’s about beating them, Eo taught me that, Dancer too. We’re swinging at the apples when we should be digging at the roots. What will bombing them do? What will assassination accomplish? We need to undermine their Society as a whole, erode their way of life, not this.”

“You’ve lost sight of your mission, Darrow,” Harmony says.

“You say that to me?” I ask. “How could you possibly understand what I’ve seen?”

“Exactly. What you’ve seen. Dine with the masters and forget the slaves. You can afford to live a life of theories. What about what I’ve seen? We’re down in the shit. We’re dying. And what are you doing? Philosophizing. Living the plush life. Bedding Pinks. I had to listen as Dancer died. I had to hear the bloodydamn screams rattle over the coms as the lurchers came to kill. And I could do nothing to save them. If you had lived through that, you would know fire can only be fought with fire.”