Page 14 of Fable for the End of the World

“So,” I say, my voice cracking a little, “is there a father?”

Azrael gives me a grim look. He taps around on his tablet until the screen shows a man’s face. He has echoes of Inesa’s features, only harsher, leaner. Black hair. Scornful, angry eyes. A sneer pulling back his lips. It looks more like a mug shot than an ID photo. When his vital info appears on the screen, the text is red.

“Dead?” I ask.

“Unclear,” says Azrael. “Our last records of him are from two years ago, but no one in the family ever registered his passing. They would have good incentive to, because a death certificate qualifies them for welfare benefits. But there’s nothing in the system.” When I don’t reply, Azrael goes on. “I suspect ugly business, probably with the mother.”

Domestic abuse is more common in the families of our Lambs than not, and it’s easy to imagine that’s theugly businessAzrael means. I try to bridge the distance between the waifish, sickly looking mother and the angry-eyed father. But the connection fizzles out. The more I look at the photo, the father’s gaze seems turbulent, not hostile. It’s the mother’s eyes that have a sheen of malice in them, glossy and cold as water under moonlight.

But none of this matters. Not really. As much as people like the Soulises want it to be, anger isn’t strength. Hate isn’t power.

“The parents won’t be a concern, then,” I say.

“No.” Azrael taps away from the father’s photo. Inesa’s face reappears, and Luka’s beside it. “And there’s nothing to suggest the Lamb herself will be capable of putting up a fight. The brother, though...”

I stare at Luka’s face on the screen. He’s a hunter—like me, I suppose. I measure myself beside his vitals. He has six inches on me, and more than fifty pounds. But he doesn’t have state-of-the-art Caerus rifles, a prosthetic eye that sees in the dark and can follow heat signatures like a hawk, and other enhancements that are under the surface, invisible. Still, brute strength shouldn’t be underestimated. And in terms of sheer numbers, I’m sure he’s killed more than I have.Hissurvival means making new corpses every day.

Animals, though. Deer and rabbits. Not people. In that, I’ll always have the upper hand.

“He’ll help her,” I find myself saying. “He’ll do everything he can to save her.”

“I expect so,” Azrael says. “Be prepared.”

There are no rules against having help during a Gauntlet—for the Lambs, at least. They’re allowed to do whatever it takes to survive. Still, help usually isn’t enough to level the playing field. It just gives the illusion of hope. Of choice, of freedom. Although having another player in the Gauntlet can make aiming trickier—Angels aren’t allowed to harm civilians. That will be Inesa’s advantage.

Azrael selects his Lambs carefully. Every day, dozens of people reach the limit of their credits, but if we gave them all a Gauntlet, it would become too mundane. More a snuff film than a riveting spectacle. It’s important not to let the banal barbarity of it all settle in. So every two months, Azrael chooses Lambs that he can build a narrative around, something that keeps eyes glued to tablet screens and fingers typing furiously in the live chat. At the CEO’s instruction, he coordinates the timing carefully to coincide with productreleases and key marketing moments.

It’s easy to see the narrative he’s building around Inesa. Her relationship with her brother, her embittered mother and absent father, her traumatic past—huge entertainment value. It doesn’t hurt that she’s pretty. My skin prickles at the thought; I’m annoyed at myself for noticing. But it’s just a fact, like her height, or the color of her eyes. That elusory brown-green.

It has all the contours of a good story, and I have my own role to play in it. This is the sort of Gauntlet I was made for. The kind where my legendary coldness contrasts with the warmth and spirit and unaccountable hope of the Lamb. Inesa Soulis’s vitality seems to pulse through the screen. It will be something to watch, when I drain that life from her.

Thisis my territory; my act. I wasn’t created to kill the hopeless, the helpless, the utterly innocent. That was always Keres’s purview, and she was skilled enough that she could make murder seem like mercy. I kill the ones who seem like they might have a fighting chance.

After my last Gauntlet, someone hacked one of the holoboards in the City. It showed me in a clip from the live stream, the camera roving around for a 360-degree view. Beside it were words in a harsh red font:The most hated face in New Amsterdam.

Caerus had the image taken down instantly. I don’t know what they did to the hacker—probably something too hideous to imagine. But enough people had seen it, and I couldn’t exactly argue the fact. I read all the chat logs from the live stream. I searched my own name and found message board upon message board, pages andpages and pages of vitriol and rage. There was even talk of boycotting the Gauntlets, which provoked an irate threat, directly from Caerus’s CEO, to cut off power to the Valley if they went through with their plan.

If it were any other Angel, they would have been decommissioned immediately. They would be more trouble than they were worth. But I’m not just any Angel. Not to Azrael.

“The CEO will be watching,” Azrael tells me, and the words break my reverie. “Give him a good show.”

The remark is a veiled threat. I know the CEO wanted me gone after my last Gauntlet. I know Azrael fought for me to have another chance, a chance at redemption. And I know what fate awaits me if I fail this time. The memory of Visser’s hand on the small of my back makes me shiver. And Keres’s blank, empty eyes—

“I will,” I say, lifting my chin. “I promise.”

“Good girl.” Azrael rests his hands on my shoulders, and they feel inexplicably heavy, as heavy as steel. Then he moves them up to cup my cheeks. His flesh is warm where mine is cold. “You’ll do well, Melinoë. You’ll do perfectly.”

I return to my room and find Lethe standing outside the door. I stiffen, my shoulders going up around my ears and my black-gloved hands curling into fists.

“You’reon the next Gauntlet,” she says, before I can utter a word. “Azrael pickedyou.”

Her voice drips with poison. It’s almost enough to make me flinch. “Yes.”

“It’s not fair. It should be me.”

Lethe’s eyes gleam like knifepoints. She can’t disguise the anger in them, or the hate. Our natural tears have been replaced with a synthetic saline solution that our eyes only release when we need to flush out foreign matter, never when our emotions reach a pitch—but Lethe looks about as close to crying as an Angel can.

“It wasn’t my decision,” I say. It’s true, and she knows it. Azrael plots out every aspect of the Gauntlets, maneuvering us like game pieces. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t refuse him.

---