Dragon Horse

Date: Di-6 Triakosia

Location: Coliseum, SE

In the eye of the hurricane of the Cetus and Mensa troops, Sklodowska and Aroon – now Naresuan – prop their elbows on the sundial in the center of the arena. Their fingers slot together like a Titanoboa’s jaw re-hinges itself after swallowing its prey.

"You look bright-eyed for someone who's going to lose at arm wrestling for the third time in a row."

"Big biceps won't protect you from a bullet," Sklodowska counters, "and can't I be bright-eyed because the arctols will lose this war?"

"I heard one of them is super strong."

"From whom?"

"The other spies. I heard she took out her opponent with one hit during her examination. I'm so scared of her." Naresuan tightens her grip and the blood leeches from her knuckles. "Aren't you scared?"

Sklodowska flexes her fingers. "I'm a mechanic, not a martial artist, so take this with all the sea's salt, but it's not the enemy that fights from the outside-in that you should be scared of."

The troops around them share in the competitive, but congenial baring of teeth as they pump their weapons towards the darkening sky, watching and waiting to see whose way the tide will turn. Xolani — now kaSompisi — stands behind the sundial, holding up three fingers. Then two. Then one. Zero.

"Go!"

The crowd of recruits roar. Sklodowska and Naresuan push against their opponents’ palms, the former’s right against the latter’s left, their jaws clenching, their knuckles whitening, and their grins widening. kaSompisi pumps his fists into the air, screaming at the top of his lungs. "Naresuan, Naresuan, Naresuan!"

Even Nikolaos — now Wien — waves his bayonet back and forth. kaSompisi is so swept up in the fervor that he doesn't even see the zipper on his collar shift slide lower and lower with every movement, or the burning sand in his scars, but Sklodowska does. Her pupils pull away from Naresuan’s arm and to the lacerations to kaSompisi’s neck. Her pupils seem to dilate like Felix’s does when he throws him a bone. A voice from his genetic code echoes through his cerebellum.

Vau: Coward.

The recruits backing Naresuan snatch rations away from those who bet on Sklodowska, latching onto kaSompisi’s jacket and shaking him while shouting in triumph. They shout in the same way they did when they launched their Chimaera on his fellow Arctoleans, some of them not much older than him. Some even younger. Then he’s not in the Coliseum anymore. He's back in the station, kneeling before a mauled body, holding two burned, mangled limbs in his hands, as he has hundreds of times before. The nails of the Sub-Equatet grabbing onto his sleeve dig in harder and harder.

Alpha: Tear his arms out of his sockets.

kaSompisi shoves the recruit off him, but the hurricane closes – The Titanoboa coils even tighter around him.

Beta: Tear off all their limbs. 

Delta: This is what they made you for. 

Gamma: It is only natural, it is your nature. Survival of the fittest. 

Epsilon: And you’re the fittest. 

Naresuan slams the back of Sklodowska's hand onto the sundial, but she doesn't flinch. When kaSompisi meets her eyes, his fingers fly to his throat, tugging at a scarf that is no longer there.

"kaSompisi," Sklodowska calls, "you wanna arm wrestle?"

"No, thank you."

Vau: Coward!

Sklodowska shrugs, turning to Naresuan again. "That’s all right, I’ll have a rematch with Naresuan. With her other arm."

"Oh, I don't know," Aroon begins.

"Come on, just think of it as evening the odds." Sklodowska's stare sharpens. "Or are you too scared?"

kaSompisi sits in the station, the shreds of flesh from Naresuan’s deltoid, biceps brachii, and brachioradialis dripping through his fingers. Before she can even lift her arm, he's beside the sundial, his hand firmly wrapped around her wrist. "Hang on, I'm in."

The corner of the Sub-Equatet soldier’s cracked lips curls up. "Are you now?"

kaSompisi takes a knee before the sundial and almost props up his elbow on its sun-warmed surface, but then he stands and steps back, motioning for the other Sub-Equatets to widen the circle. The breath of the six Smilodon billows against the back of his neck. "Matter of fact, let's have a real fight."

"You're on." Sklodowska dusts off her cargo pants and holds out a hand to him. When kaSompisi takes it, she yanks him in and hisses into his ear. "The ones who hide their scars are also the ones who hide when the Arctoleans attack. What would the Commandant think of your cowardice? For the sea’s sake, mine are worse than yours, but you don't see me covering them up."

Felix looks down on him, the severed rope between his teeth, his tail between his hind legs. His mother sobs. His father stabs at him with his index finger.

"Maybe you should," he hisses back.

"Why would I? Unlike you, I understand that they're a sign of my strength, of how I survived what others couldn't because they were too weak. Their elimination is our evolution."

Delta eats Gamma in the womb. Vau slumps to the snow. The Titanoboa, the umbilical cord, tightens and tightens and tightens.

Felix shreds his skin as he bites through the rope. kaSompisi grasp hardens, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing so she can't yank away. He could shatter her fingers if he applied the slightest addition of pressure. His upper lip curls back in a scowl, and he spits his own venom at her.

"What would the person you eliminated think of that?" He lets his grasp loosen. Sklodowska recoils from him and sheds her harness, the foam of fury brimming in her glare. His feet remain rooted where they are. 

"What were you two talking about?" Aroon shouts from the sidelines.

"Just scar stories, Naresuan." Sklodowska rolls her shoulders. "Can you be our ref?"

"There aren't refs in war," Naresuan snorts. "How about no weapons for the fun of it?"

Sklodowska circles him. "A victory rally to my ears."

Naresuan lifts one Mai Sok San into the air.

"Three…"

She eases a finger onto the switch.

"Two…"

The Sub-Equatets and Smilodon slink in behind her, behind kaSompisi.

"One…"

This time, when their breath billows on the back of kaSompisi’s neck, they aren't surrounding him, they’re flanking him. The Mai Sok San erupts into white flames.

"Go!"

Sklodowska strikes the second Naresuan’s thumb goes down. kaSompisi deflects her kick and socks her in the nose, then he jumps up, kneeing her in the chest. When she doubles back, he spins around, striking her square in the chin with his elbow. His leg swings around next, clipping her jaw with his heel. The gene speaks through his synapses.

"Who’s weak now?"

In kaSompisi’s peripheral vision, Wien taps Naresuan’s arm and jabs a finger at him. Her eyes narrow and she shakes her head.

"I didn't teach him that."

Sklodowska coughs as she staggers back to her feet, but kaSompisi’s knuckles jab her in the trachea. He stomps into her diaphragm, then slams a heel towards her solar plexus. She dodges and knife hands him in the intercostal muscles. He throws cross after cross. Low kick after low kick. Every one of them misses. She’s adapting. Wien signs sharply to Naresuan.

"I can't understand you!"

"Stop the fight!" Wien mouths at her.

"They’re too fast, there’s no opening!"

Sklodowska grabs kaSompisi by his collar, but she’s not as evolved as him. This time, when he hits her in the jaw, he punches until the skin on his knuckles splits. When she drops to the ground, he doubles back and picks up one of the pistols connected to the gas canisters, dragging the harness behind me. He aims the muzzle between her scaled eyes.

"kaSompisi, don't do it!"

He slides his finger over the trigger, but a split second before he pulls it, he sees the damage he’s done. Her left eye has swollen shut. Sickly, gray-purple bruises blotted her face. Blood trickles out of her mouth and nose. He crouches beside her and checks for a pulse, not knowing if he’s whispering to her, or to himself.

"Breathe, breathe, for the sky's sake, breathe–"

Wien pulls the pistol out of kaSompisi's hand, wrenches his arms behind his back, and pulls him away. Naresuan puts Sklodowska’s arm over her shoulder, hurrying out of the Coliseum with a squad of Fornax soldiers. Wien turns kaSompisi around, forcing him to face him, mouthing to him through bared teeth.

"What are you?"

kaSompisi breaks away from him and dashes up two flights of stairs, racing up and down corridor after corridor and hallway after hallway.

Vau: You proved me wrong.

kaSompisi reaches the third level, curling up in the nearest corner, the shadows of the rafters branching over himself and the barbed-wire kennels circling him.

Vau: You’re not a coward, but they still should’ve left you in the womb. 

Vau latches onto kaSompisi’s neck with his claws, which then become branches of solar panels. His slitted pupils pierce into his, a forked tongue flicking out from between his incisors. He scratches and scratches and scratches. Squeezes and squeezes and squeezes. An archaeopteryx soars over the painted sky, blocking it out with its wings. kaSompisi coils in on himself in the grass. He notices that it’s no longer Vau, strangling me, it’s himself. Then someone waves a hand in front of his eyes. The Archaeopteryx, the branches, and the Smilodon scatter. Wien squats in front of kaSompisi and seizes his wrists. Soft, but steady, like silicon restraints. Before kaSompisi knows it, he’s Xolani again, choking up the leaves in his trachea.

"They shouldn't have made me."

Nikolaos slides his fingers off his wrists ever so slightly, too smart to let go of him too soon, his stare is as sharp as the edge of the bayonet on his belt. Then he pinches his lips together. Xolani doesn’t need to know sign language to understand that.

"Shut up." 

Nikolaos rummages through his rucksack and passes Xolani the pen and notepad. He’s already written on one of the pages.

Who taught you that?

"My programming."

You’re a program? 

"A near-failed experiment."

How?

"I got suffocated by my umbilical cord in the artificial womb, but my mom cut me out."

What you did to Sklodowska…that's what they made you for?

The Archaeopteryx swarms over him, but before the shadow suffocates him, Nikolaos puts those soft, steady hands on the back of his neck, holding him still, holding the forest at bay.

"That’s why they shouldn't have made me."

Nikolaos underlines the next sentence so sharply that it rips the paper.

And you think that what they made you for is what you are? If you weren't made, who would’ve stitched up Aroon’s arm?

Xolani is six years old, laughing as Felix licks the soil off my cheek after he fell off the saddle while trying to ride him. He’s nine years old, cradling Uni against his chest because he couldn't feed her to Felix. He’s thirteen years old and his umama ubaba have their arms around him, and he forgets he has a cervical collar. He’s sixteen years old, in the laboratory with his father, telling him to put the needle down so Osiris won't hurt himself thrashing around on the cot. Then he’s in Stockade Theta with his Mama, explaining why he’s calling the antidote Polycarbos.

Evolution is the elimination of weakness.

And the sharing of strength.

Xolani chokes up the last of the leaves. "No."

Then who are you?

"I’m Xolani."

Nikolaos grins, then it widens when Xolani presses the fingers of his right hand to his lips, bringing them out towards him.

"Thank you."