Page 108 of Xerxes Ascendant
“Sir, thank the stars you’re finished-”
“Can I get your help with-”
“Is it too-”
“We really need-”
The chaos downstairs seemed to be replicated up here, but at least the demands were coming from familiar faces. Kyle worked through each staff member’s request with calm competence, half of them needing no more than a quick answer or reassurance from him, but there were two issues that brought a frown to that perpetually cheery face.
The first was that Mr. Employee-of-the-Month Mackenroth hadn’t turned up to work tonight. Akira would have said ‘good riddance’ and not thought anything further on the subject, but Kyle looked worried.
And when Akira heard the second of the genuine issues plaguing House Epsilon’s staff tonight, he started to feel the same.
Because Misha was missing.
He’d been helping cover for Miles’ absence, Deacon and Casey were saying, and had last been seen taking dirty bed sheets down to the laundry. Akira wasn’t sure what was more surprising: that Misha was voluntarily doingwashing, or that he hadn’t been the first one complaining about Miles not showing up.
“That was over an hour and a half ago,” Eric pointed out in his deep, sombre voice. “Mish missed his last appointment.”
Shit.Thatwas the surprise, for as much as he bitched and teased, Misha would never let Akira – or Kyle – down like that.
Fear churned in Akira’s gut.
He immediately headed down the stairs, unsurprised to find Kyle at his side. They took the House’s back door instead of the front, avoiding the thinning crowd of admirers and rushing to the small laundry room accessible a few metres up the alley.
If Miles had done something to Misha...
Kyle abruptly stopped, making Akira have to skip aside to avoid bumping into him.
“By the stars,” the blonde swore. Something choked his voice that sounded a lot like fear.
Akira followed his boyfriend’s horrified stare. There, on the laundry door that was layered in years of street graffiti, a fresh symbol had been daubed over the top in tacky-wet white paint.
An oval crossed with a horizontal line. The eighth letter of the now-defunct Greek alphabet, used in long-ago Athens as a symbol of death. Thanatos.
Theta.
There's a myth circulating on Level D that says once, before the sky cities launched, someone tried to build one in the ocean.
A prototype. A self-contained utopia.
But they say it failed...not because of gravity, but because people brought their weight with them: their hierarchies, their cruelty, their hunger for control.
Maybe that’s all we ever do.
Take paradise and infect it until it becomes a prison.
-Anonymous musings
CHAPTER 32
Kyle
Akira yanked his runepad from his pocket, and Kyle saw the display was littered with missed calls that must have come through during the earlier demonstration. The man’s poised index finger trembled slightly as he redialled the code, but it was fury rather than terror that carved the severe set to his jaw and the hardness in his gaze.
The face that appeared on the device’s screen wasn’t the House Master Kyle had been expecting.
“Epsilon,” acknowledged Omicron, looking equally as grim. “Theta says you’re finally willing to tell us the truth.”
