“Flawless. I designed him that way.”
I turn to him.
“So I have your attention now?” he asks. “It was inevitable that a culture so obsessed with physical prowess would eventually break its outdated moral code. An entire race that invented an entertainment based on principles of evolution, the genetics of a thousand years of environmental pressure at my fingertips. How could I say no?” The man curls his long nails in the air. “A champion gray, old, and wanting a son. A snip of adenine here, a tuck of cytosine there. I take the extraordinary and make it beyond human. The result is more than a copy. It’s a demigod.”
By the twisted star! The truth of what he’s saying sinks in. Phaestion is a clone. He’s not even human. If the people knew the truth . . .
“Others have tried with more and achieved less. Still, I was able to introduce a few of my own little inventions. You two were very close once. Brothers? Lovers?”
Get to the point, serpent.
“I created several of his designer genes from scratch. A pheromone that makes him all but irresistible, and a neural enhancement, a precognition of sorts.” The alien smiles coldly.
Phaestion can see the future?
“Speed and agility are augmented, of course, but his mental faculty works subconsciously. He reads body language. He calculates probable outcomes without thinking.”
I suspect it’s more than that. Phaestion saw things that were far beyond body language. He knew our friendship would lead to disaster the day he pressed his forehead to mine. He foresaw the sword I carry now years before my father robbed me of my voice and gave me its siren steel. Whatever this alien thinks he did, the outcome is far worse than he could have imagined. I grab the man’s robe and hoist him off the ground. I slam him into the wall so hard it knocks the wind from him.
“Seven Mothers!” He laughs. “You surprise me. I remember you as a boy—weak, dying. But I knew it was inside you, Edmon. I just had to unlock it.”
I lower him to the ground and back away, horrified. This strength is not strength. My mother was strong, Nadia was strong, and The Maestro who wrote songs of rebellion—he was strong. All my physical capability is nothing compared to their love.
“All your abilities were there from the beginning. All I did was switch them on. Pain and trauma created the precise conditions. The torture you endured conditioned you beyond the limits of normal men.”
You made me a freak! I want to scream.
“Because of me, you live to bear witness to the next stage of human evolution. Phaestion is the future. I envision all humanity becoming a race of such supermen like him and then perhaps even greater than him.”
In the aquagraphic, Phaestion climbs to the top of a massive tower of steel pipes. He runs along girders to face his final opponent.
“You know why your Pantheon identifies themselves with sea creatures? They spliced their own DNA with those animals. Hybrids, you called them.”
I know this tale. Under the rule of Empress Boudika Wusong, the Pantheon put human DNA into the creatures of the oceans and created animals with intelligence. They did it for profit but also for fun. It was a disaster. The creatures’ increased intelligence caused them to turn on the humans who had created them. They wrecked harbors, hunted fishing vessels, and murdered their crews. They destroyed Meridian’s kelp farms, cutting off a major food supply for years until it could be replenished. The Pantheon acted swiftly to hunt the creatures down, but politically the damage was done. The empress was forced to abdicate, and the High Synod came to power. Genetic experimentation was banned for all time.
“A people’s history is written in its genetics. Tao spliced human DNA into the animals, but also spliced the genes of animals into themselves.”
Edric calls himself a leviathan. Phaestion had dreams of being an orca. The monster speaks to me in my dreams . . .
“The connection has been diluted, but traces remain.”
I am the leviathan.
“Is it so hard to believe? Perhaps such genes may prove key to survival in the future.”
I turn back to the aquagraphic and see Phaestion standing triumphant. The crowd chants, “Phaestion, Phaestion, Phaestion!”
“I even tested some of your underclass with illuminating results. You met one once. A little girl. It was broadcast as part of The Exploits of the Companions program when you were a boy.”
I remember the girl who moved so fast, who helped me and Edgaard during the war games. How far does this man’s sick machinations extend?
“Humanity is something beyond what we were, preceding what will come. Cyborg, mutant, modified, designed, refined. I’ve traveled the ends of space, but seen none so beautiful as the work of art I envisioned. So I created him. Soon my new Adam will meet the rest of the Fracture.”
Phaestion climbs down from the giant metal structure.
“Winner, Phaestion of the Julii!” the announcer hails. My old friend walks toward the dais and raises his arms in triumph. The garlands are placed around his neck.
“I’m your father, just as much as I’m his,” he says. “Like any good father, I don’t want to see my children come to harm. Join him, Edmon. You can’t win.”
The spypsy’s face is shrouded by the hood, but I sense a tremble in his voice. If I can’t win, why is he afraid? The announcer calls for the next trial, and I walk past him to take my turn.
The bout is over before it begins. All fifteen of my opponents, scions of noble houses or professional combatants for hire, are paralyzed within minutes of the chime. No showmanship, no acrobatics, just cold efficiency.
The crowd howls in derision. The only thing the mob prefers to cheering champions is reviling villains. I was expected to win, but not so quickly, not so dully. I flash my teeth, and I hiss back. The camglobes pick up every last detail of my flagrant disgust. Through the noise, I pick out the sound of one steady clap from the skyboxes above. Phaestion stares out a window. Our eyes meet, and he nods. Tomorrow, thirty-six finalists will enter the arena, but the number doesn’t matter. It’s him and me. Winner take all.
Later, I am alone in the competitor’s steam showers, scrubbing the mud and sand from my body. Tomorrow, it will be blood. I sense movement beyond the entryway. Two men, heavy, strong. They’re armed. Knives and something else . . . guns? I dive to the bathroom floor as a bullet ricochets off the tiles. I leap into a cloud of steam that obscures me from view.
“I can’t see him!” one cries out.
“’Ere he is!”