The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

Gerome stopped at the foot of the stairs, and the way he snapped his heel against the floor made it clear that I was meant to halt as well. I did so, wondering if I had gone too far. Gerome hated sarcasm like a cat hated water.

“Lord Scipio spared you,” he needlessly reminded me in that soft patronizing tone I got from nearly everyone. “You were a second-born twin, illicit and undeserving. Your parents yielded your life to his judgment, and he deemed that you would live. Must you continue to throw these… tantrums?”

My face grew hot and I curled my hands into fists, feeling my nails biting into my palm. In a way, he was right. Each family was allowed two children by law, but my parents had given birth to my older sister Sybil before I was born, and even though it was by seconds, I was younger than my twin brother. My mother, overflowing with maternal instinct, had been willing to kill me right then and there. Excise the excess, so to speak. Scipio, however, ordained that I would live. For a time, my parents had thought that made me special. A chosen child, destined to lead the Knights into a glorious new era.

When Sybil died unexpectedly when I was five, grief only inflated their opinion of me. As I grew a little older, I began asking questions about Sybil’s death, trying to make sense of it. It came to a head when, at the age of seven, I made the mistake of asking why Scipio hadn’t prevented Sybil’s death, and my mother had responded by slapping me across the face and hissing words I would never forget.

“He chose you over her,” she had spat, her eyes glittering with tears. “You have a destiny—but when you ask questions like that, it makes me wonder if he made a mistake.” Her number had dropped to a nine that day—the first and only time I ever saw it happen. Of course Scipio didn’t choose me over Sybil; the computer couldn’t prevent death and Sybil’s demise had nothing to do with Scipio having allowed me to live. But that was the day I learned to never question Scipio’s decisions out loud.

Eventually my parents’ grief faded, and they turned their attention fully on me and Alex, trying to make us into carbon copies of them, essentially. They wanted so badly for us to carry on the family tradition. Which was why they were astounded when Alex, upon turning fifteen, defected from the family profession—he was recruited from school into the Eyes, Scipio’s private order of engineers and residents of the Core. After that, all expectations fell firmly on me.

As for the destiny my parents had hoped for? Well, I found out a year after Alex defected that it wasn’t even true. The only reason I was alive was because another child had been stillborn. I wasn’t special. Scipio hadn’t cared about me; he had been correcting a population imbalance.

“I can’t help how I feel,” I muttered.

Up at the access hatch, Dalton had turned and was shooting fiery looks in my direction. I found myself suppressing the urge to throttle the man.

“You can,” Gerome said, his tone firm. “You just won’t.”

When we finally topped the stairs, Dalton was practically frothing at the mouth with impatience. He muttered a few words in the Mechanics’ tongue, a language unique to his department, as we stepped out onto the landing. I stared at the massive staircase heading down, the ensconced lighting making the stairs appear to extend for eternity into the darkness, pressed between the scorching heat outside and the confines of the Tower.

“Are you quite ready?” Dalton asked in the common language.

I tried not to glare at him. Really, I did. I concentrated every ounce of effort I had on keeping my face still. But I could feel my lips twisting, my eyebrows shaking. Before my expression could grow any more gruesome, I turned away.

Gerome gave me a disapproving look as he gently set down a bag he had been toting on his shoulder. “Squire—can you please help Dalton into the lash harness and give the safety briefing?”

I nodded and squatted down to open the bag, pulling out the harness with its heavy black dome set on the back. Locating the top, I picked it up carefully and turned, holding it out to Dalton. The man screwed up his face in the now familiar look of disdain—but because Gerome had ordered me to do it, he had no choice but to obey. He held out his arms and allowed me to help him put the lash harness on.

“These are the lashes,” I said as I helped him settle into it. I began pulling on straps, tightening the harness around his shoulders and chest. “When used correctly, they can prevent you from falling. Where would you like them fed through—your arms or your waist?”

“Arms,” Dalton said bitingly, and I blinked but wisely kept my mouth closed. Arms were fine, but only if you needed to move fast. The waist was better if you had work to do, but it wasn’t my place to question a seven, so I didn’t.

Coming around behind him, I felt around the base of the case and grabbed one of the two metal ends at the bottom, pulling out a long line and threading it through the small loops in his uniform, underneath his arm, and finally through a small eyelet at the bottom. I repeated the process on the other side and then began double-checking each strap, to make sure the harness was secure.

“Okay,” I said as I worked, not wanting to waste any time. “The tip of the lash is designed to absorb ambient static electricity as it flies through the air, building up a charge so that it will bond with anything it touches—metal, glass, you name it. To use it, simply—”

“I know how to use it, Squire,” Dalton practically spat, his patience apparently coming to an end. “I’m a seven, and the Cogs designed and built them for the Knights, if you’ll take a moment to remember.”

“Of course,” I said, trying to remain patient. “But I’m supposed to—”

“I’ll be fine.” End of discussion, apparently. I took a deep breath in, trying to calm some of the resentment that had boiled up in my gut.

“Ready when you are, Cog Dalton,” I said, trying to make my tone as cheerful as possible.

Dalton sighed, then looked over at Gerome, who had rethreaded his own lash to come out from the small eyelets over his hip, just above his belt. Lashes were standard equipment for Knights, so our harnesses were worn under our suits, the lines running through internally designed channels. I had configured mine that morning, knowing we were going outside, in an attempt to prepare beforehand. Apparently that effort was going to go unnoticed.

“Does she have to come?” Dalton asked as he approached the exterior hatch—the only one that led onto the branch. “I would feel much better if it was just you, Knight Nobilis.”

And I would feel better if you slipped off the branch, I thought, then flinched. Bad thoughts. I was having a really hard time controlling them today. Well… every day, really.