Mindee Arnett - Avalon

“Hey, are you okay?” Jeth asked.

He regretted the question at once. This man was far from okay. Even in the dim light he could see that. The man looked like nothing but bones held together in a bag of human flesh. Jeth had never seen someone so emaciated before in real life. He’d seen a couple of photos of severe starvation in history textbooks, but the images were little more than vapor compared to the real, visceral presence of such suffering. The sight made Jeth’s knees tremble and his muscles contract from a terrible mixture of shock and pity.

The man stirred on the bench, his eyes opening to narrow slits. “I’m hungry,” he said, each syllable strained from the effort it took him to speak. Even in the dim light, Jeth could easily count the bones in the man’s chest, exposed by the shirt barely clinging to his frail shoulders. Blue veins were visible in his forehead beneath his ashen skin.

Jeth took an involuntary step back, suddenly aware of how much the man smelled. Like piss and shit and death. Every instinct Jeth possessed screamed at him to run away. But he managed to stay put, body tensed from the effort.

“Hungry,” the man repeated. “Please.” Only a few teeth remained in his mouth, those black with decay as his body ate itself in an attempt to find the nourishment it needed to stay alive.

“I don’t have any food.” Pity choked Jeth’s voice, tinged with inescapable revulsion. The only thing in his pockets was Renford’s calling card. There would be food on board Avalon , though.

Then Jeth noticed the mark on the man’s forehead, two thin black lines in the shape of an X. The mark was so faded, Jeth at first thought it was simply more veins showing through. Now he understood. That mark had been placed there by Hammer’s order.

It was a fate reserved for the worst of offenses—betrayal. This man must’ve been one of the Malleus Brethren, the elite of Hammer’s soldiers. Jeth knew it because the lower order of soldiers, the Malleus Guard, were incapable of betrayal. The Guard were little more than slaves, all traces of identity and self-will erased by the brain implants they wore. Membership in the Guard was involuntary, a punishment Hammer reserved for offenders.

The men who filled the ranks of the Brethren, however, were handpicked by the crime lord himself and entrusted with his secrets and personal faith. To betray that faith meant death. But not an easy, graceful one. The X on the man’s forehead served as a warning. He was an untouchable. To offer him charity or help of any kind would be to risk becoming an untouchable, too, as if the man’s crime against Hammer were an infectious disease.

Cruel. And very effective.

The man sat up, his limbs shaking from the exertion. “Please,” he said again.

Bile burned the back of Jeth’s throat. Why hadn’t he gone around? How could he just walk away now? You have to, a voice hissed in his mind. If Hammer finds out you helped him, this is what will happen to you. And Lizzie. And the others .

Jeth closed his eyes, wavering with indecision. He knew what he ought to do, but terror held him in a paralyzing grip. As long as he and the others were at Peltraz, they were completely at Hammer’s mercy. He controlled everything, monitored everyone. Even away from the spaceport, they had reason not to defy Hammer. The man’s reach was long and deadly.

Don’t be a coward. Nobody will see. No one will find out .

“Please,” the man croaked.

Jeth opened his eyes, but he didn’t respond. It was better if the man not know that he planned to help him. Then there was no risk of him telling somebody. Still, guilt squeezed the breath from Jeth’s chest as he turned and hurried away, the man’s pathetic cries following after him like an accusation.

By the time he turned the corner toward Avalon ’s dock, he was almost running.

He slid to a stop at once, his heart clenching inside his rib cage. Three men wearing long black coats trimmed in indigo silk stood outside the entrance to Avalon . The Malleus Brethren. Dread pounded in Jeth’s temples. They were waiting for him. Bentley had sent the damage report to Hammer already.

And now it was time to pay.

JETH RECOGNIZED THE NEAREST MAN AS SERGEI CASTILE, Hammer’s general. Like most of Hammer’s soldiers, Sergei was massive, with arms the size of support beams and a body nothing but muscle and sinew. His short-cropped haircut didn’t suit his broad face. It left the black brain implant attached to the back of his skull clearly visible, its tentacles curled around the sides of his thick neck like a rubbery vice. Unlike the identity-erasing implants forced upon the Guards, the Brethren’s implants enhanced their physical and mental abilities, turning them into super-soldiers. They were not a force to be messed with.

Screwing up his nerve, Jeth approached. He swept his gaze over the other two soldiers, taking in their implants, too. The sight of them always creeped him out. Having that thing imbedded in your skull had to hurt , for one thing. For another, there were times he could swear he saw the tentacles moving, as if the implant was some kind of giant parasite that fed off brain matter. Rumor had it the implants gave the wearers a form of swarm intelligence, enabling them to act as a single unit and to communicate with each other and with Hammer without speaking. True or not, Jeth didn’t want to know.

“Hammer wants to see you,” Sergei said, his voice a low grumble.

“No kidding,” Jeth said, unable to stop himself. He felt reduced to a jumble of nerves, his brain temporarily inoperable.

Sergei glared at him in a way that suggested how much he would like to break Jeth’s fingers. The other two soldiers fixed malevolent gazes on him. Surprisingly, Jeth took comfort in their response. At least the Brethren were mostly normal to be around, unlike the Guard, with their vacant, eerie expressions that made them seem less than human.

Not bothering to comment, Sergei turned and headed down the hallway in the opposite direction from where Jeth had come. Jeth fell in step behind him, letting out the breath he’d been holding. He was glad they were going this way. He didn’t want to know what the Brethren would do if they discovered the man on the bench. Openly mock him perhaps. Or initiate a semipublic beating.

They walked along in silence and then entered an elevator. Jeth stood in the rear of it, the safety bar pressing against his back. The Brethren stood semicircled around him, ignoring him completely.

The elevator doors opened moments later onto the expressway deck, and they climbed into a shuttle. Fifteen minutes later they reached Hammer’s private estate. Leaving the other two Brethren behind, Sergei and Jeth entered through a side entrance, out of sight from any late-night tourists.

The upper level of the estate sat like a castle in the middle of the city, surrounded by extensive gardens full of statues, fountains, and real live flowers and plants, all carefully grown and maintained by an entire army of gardeners. Even among interstellar crime lords, the place was beyond decadent. Far as Jeth knew, Hammer was the only crime lord based out of a spaceport; most of them preferring dwellings planetside. The obscene display here was just an attempt to one-up the competition.

They entered the estate, navigating hallways as lavish as the garden outside. Jeth had been here often enough that he found it easy not to gawk at the floor-to-ceiling paintings and row upon row of ancient First-Earth vases stuffed full of fresh flowers. Plush, indigo-colored carpet covered the floor.

Sergei led him past two Malleus Guards standing watch outside a large sitting room. Jeth didn’t have to see the clear implants on the backs of the men’s heads to know they were Guard. The vacant, frozen expressions on their faces, like upright corpses, were enough.