When Crixus comes for me, it’s to take me to the Emperor.
Does this make me a citizen now? It’d be nice to graduate out of their sick games. “Are you going to explain?” I ask.
Crixus opens my door with a creak of rusty hinges—how have they had time to rust? The Nightmare hasn’t been around that long. Whoever created these cells added the rust for effect. No detail left behind.
“Save your questions for the Emperor.” Crixus smells even more of blood, sweat, and something foul. Maybe they don’t have showers in this place. How are my olfactory senses even working? Isn’t this all in my imagination?
“Will the Emperor answer them?”
“I guess you’ll find out.” Crixus leads me through the training grounds to a double-gated door guarded by four soldiers, tirones.
There is no escaping the noxior indentureship. One can only be released from it. I like to hope that’s what’s about to happen to me. The tirones nod to Crixus as he passes, then lock the door behind us.
We exit from an alleyway into a wide road illuminated by the false sunlight that is really fire on the top of the coliseum walls. The road runs along the coliseum’s circumference inside the wall. Crixus hauls me aside as two chariots, each drawn by four horses, speed by. Racing through the streets? They could kill someone.
“Four horses to one chariot,” I say. “Overkill, don’t you think?”
“It’s called a quadriga.” Crixus resumes our walk.
I give him a side-eye thinking he must be joking. “It’s called Ben-Hur.” He really has embraced this whole Roman Nightmare world. “I don’t know if your knowledge of ancient Roman terms is concerning or just nerdy.”
He stays in character. No smile. No response. One hand keeps its grip on my forearm, and the other holds the hilt of his gladius. It’s not like I’m going to run. I want answers, and so far, it sounds like he’s taking me to them.
Homes and apartments are built into the thick walls of the coliseum, strings of laundry crisscrossing the sky above our heads. Market stalls exist underneath the dwelling spaces at street level. “Who all lives in here?”
“Citizens.”
“All citizens?” I ask. “What about the houses outside of the coliseum?” We passed several on our way here.
“Abandoned. Some people refuse to enter the coliseum. They’re not interested in learning to survive and earn their right to live here. Non-citizens.”
“So you kill them?” I ask, disgusted.
“Tenebra kills them.” Tenebra. This world. “Citizens don’t leave the coliseum unless it’s absolutely imperative. If a citizen leaves the coliseum without permission, they lose their citizenship.”
“How can someone leave while it’s on fire?”
“The fire won’t burn a citizen.”
That explains why Crixus could part the flames for me and why they still scorched my skin. “And yet if a citizen leaves without permission, you kill them?”
Crixus shakes his head. “You keep thinking we want everyone to die. That citizen would merely return to noxior status and have to earn their citizenship again. Earn our trust again.” He gives me a hard look, not breaking his stride. “You saw what was out there.”
I think of the hooded and cloaked people who dragged Erik away as he clawed at the road. Who killed James the Vetter. Who caused our cart to crash and crush a man. “The Spores.”
“You learn quickly.”
“What does it matter? We’re all dying in the Real World anyway.”
“Not all.”
I snort. “What does that mean?” Nole and I studied this Nightmare. We watched people use up their final 22 days and then get trapped in the Nightmare coma, withering away in a matter of days.
“How long have you been infected, Cain?” Crixus dodges my question.
Now that I’m not consumed by angry energy, I’m able to think about other things, though thinking about life in the Real World seems hazily distant. Like an old stew of memories neglected and then vaguely stirred. I try to pull up a timeline of my real life but can’t seem to settle on exact numbers.
I instinctively pat my pocket for my time card, but it’s not there. Obviously. My clothes followed me in here, but not the items in my pockets. Go figure. No sticks of gum either. And here I thought this place couldn’t get worse.
“I believe this is my fourteenth . . . maybe fifteenth . . . time in the Nightmare.”
Crixus shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”
“Now I get to ask a question. Am I in trouble with the Emperor or about to be rewarded?”
I’ve been hauled away for a night in jail a handful of times—mostly for getting caught with Nole when he did something illegal like breaking into research labs or stealing books from important libraries. It felt a bit like this. Except this time I don’t know how I broke the rules of this twisted universe. It’s hard to apologize to the Emperor if I don’t understand my crime.
“Save that question for the Emperor,” Crixus says for the second time.
“So he’s in charge of this place?”
“In a way.”
I’m in the Nightmare that killed my brother. Anyone labeled “in charge” is likely untrustworthy. But the man in charge is also the one with knowledge. How much does this Emperor know about this dreamscape? “He’s got to be the Draftsman.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s the Emperor. The villain is always the guy in power.” He must have some control. Some leg up on everyone else in this cursed place.
