Page 65 of Failed State

His handsome features are fixed in a very sympathetic expression when he enters. It makes me feel silly, despite knowing that he’s not trying to be a jackass. So I stomp over to my bed, flopping myself on it with a huff. “Now, Vicious, that’s almost pouting. I find it quite adorable, but I doubt it reflects how you really feel.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Rory rounds the other side, sitting on the edge carefully. “I’ve been trading bits of myself since capture to stay sane. Sure, I could have lived as rough as everyone else and not died. But the tiny illusions of comfort I’ve bargained myself for are what kept me going, Sydney. I sacrificed myself purposefully so I could stay deluded.”

“I did the opposite; I guess,” I mutter as I wrap my arms around my chest, hugging my torso. “The jack-booted fuckheads took everything away from us, but my own body. I mean, someone could have and I bet they did to a lot of girls, but it’s what I had left. You know?”

Rory tilts his head. “So you made that part of your identity? Seems risky in this environment, Vicious.”

“I know. But that was all I had, Rory!” I cover my face with my hands, feeling emotions and weird vibes shooting around inside of me. “My dad was gone; the world was upside down. The absolute only thing I could mostly control was me. So I just did everything I could to learn stuff, to stay healthy as much as I could, and to keep people the fuck away from me.”

I will not admit the truth to him; it will be way too annoying to get knowing looks from him.

“I get it.” I hear the bed creak a bit as he scoots to lean back against the headboard—I think. “But that’s kind of a dangerous thing to hang all your… strength on, isn’t it? We’re not safe from anything in the camps, and the fucking humans can do a lot of awful things just by accusing supes of random offenses. They don’t have courts or appeals—anything could have destroyed this image you built at any time, Sydney. You know that.”

Lifting my hand off of my eyes, I look over at the mage sadly. “You’re right, but I guess I figured I could keep myself safe. I mean, to be honest, I did until now. That’s nothing to wag your finger at, you know.”

He snorts, crossing his legs at the ankles. “The bear and the demon probably helped. That’snotme saying you didn’t do a good job, but those two have definitely been running interference behind your back the whole time, Vicious. If you’re having a ‘come to Zeus’ moment, you might as well go whole hog with it.”

I blink, blanching as his words sink in. “What? Seriously? Those dillholes were running around threatening people when I wasn’t looking?”

“Fuck if I know for sure, but I would have in their place. They’re both guys and they care about you. It’s no stretch to assume they wanted to make certain people didn’t break you simply because they could.” His lips quirk as he shrugs, then puts his hands on his toned abs. “I’m not saying no one respected your choices without their meddling, by the way. You definitely seem like the type to reinforce your own edicts in a pretty firm way when crossed.”

His words make me smile a bit, and I sigh. “Well, yes. But I hate thinking that I didn’t earn my reputation. How many things can this fucking timeline take from me? After this… modification, I thought I’d lost the last bit I kept for me. Now you’re telling me I could lose more.”

Rory gives me a sour look, then rolls to his side with his cheek in his palm. “Self-pity doesn’t look good on you, Vicious, and I thought everything did.”

Ouch. That one hit me where it hurt—my pride.

“Not pulling punches tonight, huh?” I say ruefully. Rory winks at me, and I bite my lower lip. “Okay, maybe I am being a bit self-centered and definitely kind of whiny. It’s just that I feel rocked by this ‘vampires aren’t all evil’, followed by ‘the leaders aren’t lazy; they’re imprisoned’, then we got shuffled in classes and basically transformed into living Barbie dolls. I’m not great with change as it is, and my world is completely off-kilter now.”

The mage nods, tapping the fingers of his freehand on the bed as he thinks about what I said. “Yeah, that’ll do it. And I’m not saying you don’t have arightto be upset, Sydney, but… We also don’t have the luxury of indulging in our pain anymore. No supe has since the sweeps, and being put into these damn games makes that even less possible. The only way out for us in thisscenario is through it—which you can’t do if you’re mopey and self-pitying.”

“Your pep talk needs some work, Stormbringer,” I chuckle softly.

He shrugs, giving me a smug grin. “I think too many people have been coddling you as it is. You don’t want me to do it, too; that much I know.”

Rubbing my fingers over my lips, I nod. “You’re right, but that doesn’t make this any easier. Being so attached to my previous beliefs is making it really hard to process this stuff, especially all at once. I spent so long using it to help me survive and protect myself that I’m just… struggling.”

Rory nods, his fingers drumming on his tight abdomen. “I get it. When I got to my first camp and I figured out how everything worked, I had to do some serious soul-searching to decide what I would give up to survive. It wasn’t like I immediately flipped a switch and became a character of ill-repute, you know.”

My grin is tiny as I ask, “No? You seem like the type to make rash decisions.”

“Look, I will not claim I enjoyed nothing.Of course, there were liaisons that were…tolerable and even some that were enjoyable. Not every ‘supporter’ of my lifestyle was a shitty sadist or a creepy asshat—in fact, I had some regulars who were quite kind and actually treated me like a real person. That didn’t changewhyI had to do what I did, but it helped balance out the less pleasant relations.”

I frown, not liking the sound of this at all. Knowing Rory had to give up so much of himself to survive when I walked around being a naïve dumbass while people cushioned my mental health behind my back makes me realize I’m luckier than I thought. “I’m sorry, Rory. Having people fuck around with my body clinically isn’t nearly as bad as what you had to go through.”

“Violation is violation, Vicious. It’s not a contest.” He scoots closer, wriggling across the bedspread until he’s within reach. “Whether I gave up sexual favors for an easier lifestyle or you gave up the sanctity of your body to this damn game is irrelevant. The humans running the FHSA see usallas cattle, much like the dictators in their checkered past. It takes long-term planning and a lot of strategy to create a timeline where the masses in this damn place forgot how horrific that was simply because they want to feel superior.”

Rolling onto my side, I look at him earnestly. “It was decades in the making, I think. They don’t let us study that kind of information anymore, but I vaguely remember world history being taught with an eye to this kind of fascism when I was in lower schools. Our leaders made desperate decisions, I suppose, hoping to save everyone by rallying the rest of the world.”

He presses his lips together for a moment, then says, “If the rest of the world actually gave a shit, there was a lot more they might have done. That’s my opinion, of course, but I’m far older than you. You could ask the demon, the dragon, or even the vampire. The power of the global clans, covens, sleuths, what-the-fuck-ever… all of it was greater than what any powerful human military could achieve. They let us be subjugated because they feared humans across the globe joining Taterman.”

“This is such a depressing fucking mess,” I groan. “We’ve gone down a conspiracy rabbit hole now, but the further we go, the clearer this shit becomes. Is that dangerous? I don’t know. What I know is thatno oneis coming to save us, Rory. Even with this damn show, even if we court a worldwide audience who loves our team—they’re not coming to help.”

“Duh.” The mage chuckles roughly, shaking his head. “I’ve never believed that anyone—supernatural or human—was coming to save the folks here in Dick-Tater-Land. I made bargains with myself because I knew better than to expect it.But…I believe it’s possible to use them all to save ourselves. If I didn’t believe it was possible, I wouldn’t be doing my damndest to get this team’s shit together.”

The sincerity in his voice is comforting, and while I still feel gross from head to toe after letting them breach my final boundary, I know that he’s probably right. No matter what we do in the Games, the revolution will have to come from within the communities here in the camps. All the species will have to believe what Rory does—that our combined power is far greater than Taterman’s weapons and enforcement squads. We will have to save ourselves when the time is right, instead of praying for others to don a cape and fly into battle.

---