Page 49 of Twins for the Barbarians

“Oh, no,” I mumble.

“What are they doing?” Kingo asks.

“It’s none of your business,” Neya replies bluntly, but she doesn’t look away from the scene. The hardness in her voice tells me she has also seen this before. “Hold still, don’t say a word, and it will be over soon.”

We watch helplessly as the young man is thrown against the wall, crying and pleading for his life.

“Please…I just wanted to see what’s out there. You can’t keep us locked in the city for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair!”

“The law is the law!” the same soldier insists, now tying a rope around the young man’s bony wrists. “No one is allowed to leave the city unless it’s been approved by the king or the Hunters’ Guild. You are not allowed to leave, yet you tried to anyway.”

“Did you really think your own mother would keep your plans a secret from the king himself?” the second soldier scoffs. The third one stands across the street, his weapon loaded and ready.

The young man stares at the soldiers in disbelief, shock glistening in the teary, red pools of his eyes. “My mother? My mother gave me away?”

“She sought an audience with the king late last night,” the first soldier said. “Of course, she wanted to protect you, to keep you safe. She wanted the king’s men to stop you, but the king knows better.”

“The king knows that even if we stop you now, you’ll only find another way to try again. You’ll continue to defy his laws and put us all in danger,” the second soldier adds.

It sounds as if they’re reciting something from memory. It’s the same thing they’ve probably told others before delivering punishment. It makes me sick to my stomach, but I cannot look away. This is the ugly truth Kharo and Helios have been warning us about. This is the nasty side of Opal City; the king and his army have been trying to hide from us. I suppose Neya understood that she couldn’t pull the wool over our eyes forever. She could have told us to turn around when she saw what was happening, but she chose to let us witness this scenario, and I can’t help but wonder why.

“Please, don’t kill me,” the young man wails, falling to his knees.

But the third soldier points his weapon at the man’s head. “The law is the law,” he says, and the words hit me in the solar plexus like an iron fist. He fires a single shot, and just like that, the young man is dead. The smell of burnt flesh fills my nostrils, and dread fills my heart. I hear Kingo’s horrified gasp.

We quietly wait for the soldiers to drag the body away and out of sight. The silence that follows is oppressive as Neya resumes walking down the alley. We follow, but we’ll never be the same again. What we saw is but a glimpse of the real Opal City.

Solomon’s utopia is built on lies. The first generation may have believed his stories, but the generations since aren’t as easily fooled. They want out to see what’s beyond the city’s walls. They want to see things for themselves. And fear should never be the weapon of choice for a ruler. Eventually, it will come back to bite him in the ass.

No despot can ever hold on to power too long. Others will take his place. Revolutionaries will rise against authoritarians. They always do. The people, regardless of their species, will always push for the truth.

We’re not cut out to be sheep, to follow blindly until the end of days. And when we start to open our eyes, when the veil is lifted, and the truth stares us right in the face, we have no choice but to get angry, to get up, and to take our fight to the palace gates.

If Solomon doesn’t wise up, if he doesn’t tell his people the truth, the truth will find its way to them. I pity this so-called king when it finally emerges.

Until then, however, Kingo and I must keep a low profile. We keep our heads down and our mouths shut, though nausea rises in the back of my throat and cold sweat drips down my temples. I stick to my daily routine and obey the king’s laws, following Neya through the back door of the central hospital and down the stairs into the basement.

Here, I will continue to do my work, to read and investigate to the best of my abilities. When the day is over, either Neya or one of the other wives will come to take us back to the palace. There, I will relay my findings to Helios and Kharo. I’ll find comfort and love in their strong arms. I’ll spend my night with them, devouring every second as they claim me. For a minute or two, I will forget what I saw today.

Come morning, we’ll start over.

And so, this wheel will keep spinning until we find a way to break the cycle.

When evening falls over the city, Kingo and I are greeted by a distraught-looking Leela outside the hospital. The red around her crimson eyes is darker than usual, and she can’t bring herself to smile despite the visible effort to appear warm and pleasant. She’s been crying, and she can barely keep it together.

“Come, let us return to the palace,” she says, her voice breaking with every word.

The guards walk ahead of us this time while Leela moves slower at our pace. Kingo stays quiet, his gaze scanning our surroundings while he inwardly processes all of today’s findings—we have irrefutable proof at this point that the original viral strain was systematically released around Kaos and Red Rock before it spread.

The Kaos cluster was almost fully isolated when the government tried to wipe out Opal City’s inhabitants shortly after leaving its people behind. But whoever started it wanted to make sure it wouldn’t stop there.

It took some digging, some knowledge of virology and logistics, some putting two and two together, but we’ve managed to gather enough evidence in a coherent folder, which we’ll present to the higher-ups of both the Fire and the Sky tribes when the time comes. It’s not enough, though.

Kingo and I agree that we must see what was left behind in the Kaos Volcano research stations and surrounding towns. There were enough memos in those hospital archives to point us in that direction repeatedly. We’d be fools not to try, at least.

I can’t stand the silence, though. And the look on Leela’s face tells me there is something she wants to get off her chest. She’s shaking like a leaf beneath her red silk cape.

“Leela, what happened?” I ask in a gentle voice. “You seem distraught.”

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