My army trickles in, slowly at first. But more are coming every six minutes. I’m nervous. It isn’t fast enough. Jupiter could destroy us, as could Pluto and whoever else is left. My army is exultant because they have me; they think me immortal, unstoppable. Already they’ve heard that I killed Apollo. I hear nicknames rippling like currents through the army as we swarm through the gilded, vast halls. Godslayer. Sunkiller, they fancy me. But the Proctors hear these things too. The ones we’ve captured, even the ones a little bemused by the idea of students invading Olympus, now stare at me with pale faces. They realize they’re part of the game they thought they escaped many years ago, and that there are no medBots directed toward Olympus. Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.
I send out dozens of scouts through the palace, telling them what I need. Already I can hear my plan being unwound in the halls beneath me. Jupiter, Pluto, Mercury, and Minerva remain. They are coming for me. Or am I coming for them? I do not know. I try to feel like the predator, but I cannot. My rage is calming. It is slowing and giving way to fear as the halls stretch on. They have Mustang; I remind myself of the smell of her hair. These are the Scarred who take bribes from the man who killed my wife. The blood pumps faster. My rage returns.
I meet Mercury in a hall. He is laughing hysterically and calling out bawdy drinking songs from the HC as he faces down a half dozen of my soldiers. He wears a bathrobe but is dancing like a maniac around the swordthrusts of three DeadHorses. I’ve not seen such grace beyond the mines. He moves as I mined. Fury balanced with physics. A kick, a crushing elbow, an application of force to dislocate kneecap.
He slaps one of my soldiers in the face with his hand. Kicks another in the groin. And does a flip over one, grabs her hair when he is upside down, lands and slams her into the wall like a rag doll. Then he knees a boy in the face, cuts off a girl’s thumb so she can’t hold her sword, and tries backhanding me before dancing away. I’m faster than him, and stronger, despite his incredible gift with the razor; so as his hand goes at my face, I punch his forearm as hard as I can, cracking the bone. He yelps and tries to dance back, but I hold onto his hand and beat his arm with my fist till it breaks.
Then I let him spin away, wounded.
We’re in a hall, my soldiers sprawled around him. I shout the rest back and heft my slingBlade. Mercury is a cherub of a man. Small, squat, with a face like a baby. His cheeks flush rosy. He’s been drinking. His coiled golden hair droops over his eyes. He flips it back. I remember how he had wanted to pick me for his House but his Drafters had objected. Now he flourishes his razor like a poet with a quill, but his off hand is useless after I punched it.
“You’re a wild one,” he says through the pain.
“You should have picked me for your House.”
“I told them not to push you. But did they listen? No no no no no. Silly Apollo. Pride can blind.”
“So can swords.”
“Through the eye?” Mercury looks at my armor. “Dead, then?” Someone shouts for me to kill him. “My, my. They are hungry. This duel may be fun.”
I bow.
Mercury curtsies.
I like this Proctor. But I also don’t want him to kill me with that razor.
So I sheathe my sword and shoot him in the chest with my pulseFist set to stun. Then we tie him up. He’s still laughing. But farther down the hall behind him, I see Jupiter—a titan of a man in full armor—storming forth with a crooked pulseShaft and a razor. Another armored Proctor is with him, Minerva, I think. We retreat. Still, they decimate my force. They come at us straight on in the long hall, knocking boys and girls down like boulders rolling through grain. We can’t hurt them. My soldiers scamper back the way we came, back up the stairways, back to the higher levels, where we run over new packs of reinforcements. We scramble over each other, falling on the marble floor, running through golden suites to flee Jupiter and Minerva as they come up the stairs. Jupiter bellows laughter as our simple swords and spears ping off his armor.
Only my weapons can hurt him. It isn’t enough. Jupiter’s razor goes through my pulseShield and slips my recoilArmor on the thigh. I hiss with pain and shoot the pulseFist at him. His shield takes the pulse and holds, but barely. He flicks a razor at me like a whip. It grazes my eyelid, nearly taking my eye. Blood sheets from the small wound, and I roar in anger. I fly at him, past Minerva, breaking my pulseFist against his jaw. It ruins my weapon and my fist, but it dents his golden helmet and sends him reeling. I don’t give him time to recover. I scream and hack in swirling arcs with my slingBlade even as I stab clumsily with my razor. It’s a mad dance. I take him through the knee with the unfamiliar razor. He cuts open my thigh with his own. The armor closes around the wound, compressing it and administering painkillers.
We’re at the end of a circular stairwell as I push him back. His blade goes limp, then slithers around my leg like a lasso, about to constrict and slice my leg off at the hip. I push fast as I can into him. We go down the stairs. Then he rolls up and stands. I tackle him backward. Armor on armor.
We smash into a holoImmersion room. Sparks fly. I keep screaming and pushing so he cannot rip off my leg with the razor, still limp and looped around flesh and bone. He’s backpedaling, off balance, when I take him through a window and we spill out into the open air. Neither of us have gravBoots, so we plummet a hundred feet into a snowbank on the mountain’s side. We roll down the steep slope toward the one-mile drop, toward the flowing Argos.
I catch myself in the snow. I manage to stand. I can’t see him. I think I hear his grunt in the distance. We’re both muddled in the clouds. I crouch and listen, but my hearing still hasn’t recovered from Apollo.
“You’ll die for this, little boy,” Jupiter says. It comes as if from underwater. Where is he? “Should have learned your place. Everything has an order. You’re near the top. But you are not the top, little boy.”
I say something pithy about merit not meaning much.
“You can’t spend merit.”
“So the Governor is paying you to do this?”
I hear a howl in the distance. My shadow.
“What do you think you’re going to do, little boy? Going to kill all us Proctors? Going to make us let you win? It’s not the way things work, little boy.” Jupiter looks for me. “Soon the Governor’s Crows will come in their ships, with their swords and guns. The real soldiers, little boy. The ones who have scars you can’t dream of. The Obsidians led by Golden Legates and knights. You’re just playing. But they’ll think you’ve gone mad. And they will take you and hurt you and kill you.”