Lu meandered into class after he got bored of the pin-prick of sky. Not a single Jane or John lectured him. Several jealous students glared, or offered vicarious fists of celebration at his dismissed tardiness. Lu only plopped heavily into his seat, bored and listening passively, counting the minutes and thinking of Jane Blau calling Adon. He wondered if they left him alone because of Pa, or if they’d simply given up on him despite their educational creed. He’d been left behind since day one, so really, that made more sense. Pa was rude, but he wasn’t powerful enough to intimidate a bunch of Caldera-backed Asylum employees. Yet. 

They used to call on him in class, and Lu couldn’t remember directly threatening anyone, so he concluded that they’d simply given up on him. But what did he need their school for anyway? {a already had a place for him, private tutors, uncles who ran him through unwanted training, and Benny, who walked him through his internship role at The Business as soon as he got home every evening. 

Lu sighed at the maps the Jane pulled up on their desk screens, instructing them to draw and label the continents after the Catastrophe but before the Suffering. Lu had no idea what either of those meant. He sighed and pulled out his phone, smirking at the huff of Jane Teal, who did not attempt to take it, despite all the other student devices and implant antennas locked in the safe beside her desk. Except Taryk’s, but he needed it to hear, so the others understood. Lu settled in his seat, warmed by the Jane’s evil eye glaring at the forced inequality of her classroom.

She thought he was cheating. He was texting Aphro. [how much for the painting?]

Her response was immediate, no way, you’ll burn it.]

[I would never. Promise.] He had certainly thought about it, the lighter in his pocket practically begging to be pulled out just to see if Jane Teal would still leave him alone. If she would yell at him, kick him out, call Pa in for a conference. But then… Benny would show up anyway. Maybe they didn’t even call Pa anymore. 

Lu scrolled through the Navy Layer 1 Academy directory, a long list of staff and students wealthy or smart enough to pass the exam and avoid the chaotic hellscape of the Grounder schools the Asylum had abandoned. The list of Calderas lasted six scrolls, and that was just the currently enrolled and employed. He shuddered, flipping between the small grainy Caldera ID photos of Aphrodite and Adonis Caldera, comparing their traits. 

They were not names for siblings, not according to the stories Benny told him about ancient gods and lovers. But like Pa said, that was what happened when the uneducated were allowed to procreate. The Asylum Eugenics program, Pa insisted, would be the only way to save Caldera from the endless wars that other surviving sanctuaries faced. Lu did not understand this either, but the one time he’d objected and asked how Pa expected to collect uncles for the Flock, Pa had petted his cheek and then hit him so hard it had stayed blue for nearly a month. The other kids thought he got in fights outside, and Lu did not argue, because it was true. Every time he followed Phaios to the track, he ended up fighting someone: the uncles to get out of Pa’s house, Phaios to let him race, or the loser because Lu wasn’t a familiar face so certainly he’d cheated. 

He found the old myths easily on the New Network, the Asylum-controlled internet, which was the only connection he could get at school. He re-read the story of Aphrodite falling in love with a young hunter before he got gored by a wild boar, and Lu sighed again, because he couldn’t picture what gored meant, let alone what a wild boar was. He was tired of not knowing things. Of being overlooked. Where he’d once been proud of his minimal efforts, accepting those admiring cheers, but now he was bored. Lonely. Sick of yawning through each day, tiptoeing between realities. He recalled Pa’s version of the story, how Aphrodite had killed Adonis, her young lover, in order to feel enough sadness and heartbreak to invent the rose. All Pa’s lessons were disguised as bedtime stories, twisted romances that if he thought about for too long, stopped making much sense. 

“Okay, we’re moving on to the era of the Suffering, I need you all to submit your curriculum slips confirming whether your parents want the Clearwater Additions included or not.” Jane Teal called, their desks going dark as she dismissed them with a rush of bags and gravity boots being zipped and locked, helmets being half-engaged, the rail riders trudging out in bustling groups, headed to cafes and rec-rooms. Lu let the crowd carry him, still flipping between the small images of Adonis and Aphrodite Caldera. They were state names, given to orphans, but most had middle names to differentiate themselves. He swiped over to the old stories, remembering that in the legends, Adonis had been born of incest and laughing to himself. He ran into the back of a popular girl who’d stopped suddenly ahead of him, distracted by something on her goggle screen. 

She sighed obnoxiously, rounding on him, long blonde hair tossed over her shoulder, then stopped. She glared and shouldered past Lu, the opposite direction she’d been going. 

Lu scoffed, confused that even Sophia Silver, eldest daughter of the Silver Family, one of the Quartet, would be intimidated enough not to bite his head off. He made a note to himself to figure out what Pa had been up to, then skipped happily toward the rail. He passed the lines of kids waiting on cars, to the private track, where Phaios and the uncles waited. 

Over dinner, Lu excitedly told Pa about the siblings called Aphrodite and Adonis, listening raptly as Pa ranted about the ignorance of the poor and the necessity of eugenic policing and controlled birth centers. Pa laughed as Lu agreed, clapping him delightedly on the shoulder and stearing him fondly through the maze of halls to the basement training rooms, past gang members disguised as construction crews, all of them with Flock tattoos to claim their place beside Gideon, and Lu slowly relaxed. Pa was in a good mood. 

“Well, if it isn’t our little prince,” Benny ruffled Lu’s hair as he entered the training hall.

The pungent odor of sour sweat assaulted Lu as he followed Pa through the doors, but he did not wince, “hi uncle Benny.”

The round man squashed Lu in a viper hug, every Asylum tattoo flexing with the force of his deceptive strength as he lifted Lu. 

Lu struggled to breathe, kicking at Benny’s shins. 

Benny laughed, setting him down, “been a while kiddo.”

Lu’s eyes shone bright as he nodded and hugged Benny in a normal welcome, “what’s the new one?” He surveyed Benny’s exposed skin, searching for the new tattoo that would mark his most recent stint in the Asylum, marveling at the new grey along his temples, the thinner skin under his eyes. “You got old, man.”

Benny folded Lu into a headlock, “what are you even doing down here, Lu-Bird? I don’t have you on schedule ‘til tomorrow.”

Pa set a warning hand on Benny’s shoulder and he released Lu immediately, fixing his hair, “I brought him down to see the show.” 

Pa winked, wrapping a heavy arm around Lu’s shoulders and dragging him along. Lu shuffled beside him, swallowing his dread and covering it with a smile, awkwardly growing taller than Gideon by the day. 

“You think that’s okay for a kid, G?” Benny called.

“I confirmed with the conductor, Benjamin.” Pa waved without turning around. 

“Nah, Boss, I mean up here,” Benny tapped his temple, chasing after them. 

Pa turned swiftly, a knife pressed to Benny’s eye faster than Lu could blink, “you’ve got a lot of questions lately, Ben.”

“I only got out yesterday, boss.” Benny straightened.

“Adapt faster,” Gideon cocked a challenging brow. “Stupidity is for the Dusters and boys we send to die, understood?” Gideon stepped back, tucking his knife back into a pocket. 

“I just thought… he would have a better life than us,” Benny sighed.

Lu watched, wide-eyed, certain he was about to witness a murder. 

Gideon only laughed, taking Lu’s hand like he was still a toddler, and leading him down the hall to the access tube doors. They walked down the massive wind pipes toward a roaring stadium, Benny following along, stiff and watchful. 

“He’s a spectator tonight, Benjamin,” Gideon threw his arm back over Lu’s shoulders, pressing hard so his son crouched beside him, leading them to their honorable seats in the Conductor’s section. 

Lu watched the Pit fights proudly. He bet on lives and cringed with the crowd as fighters removed chains from their defeated corpses and demanded trophies from their sponsors, showered in blood and wine, sand still caked in every crevice, until they were ushered out, walking, limping, crawling, or dead. Lu winced with the crowd as ankles snapped and ears were ripped, he placed his betting card at the tents between Pa and Benny’s, following their chants and jeers, singing with the chorus, and watching Sophia Silver dump a bottle of wine on one of the Silver family’s sponsors before smashing his face in with the bottle. Her old father and the conductor laughed approvingly and Pa nodded beside Lu, eyeing the contestants like race horses. Lu understood his purpose then, a tool. A pet. An accessory to draw the Conductor’s eye. He relaxed and played his part, smiling and repeating the same words Benny and Pa exchanged about weak fighters and bad calls and old rules that should be changed, despite his understanding that there were absolutely no rules. 

Pa and Benny escorted him home between them, all three staggering, only Pa and Benny because of drink. They’d lost a small fortune, but Pa had a shipment coming in from Vice and Heranika was always a reliable backup, so his mood remained consistent and Lu practically carried them through the wind tunnel until they made it back to the training hall. The uncles took over from there, congratulating Lu on his first Pit match like it was a rite of passage. 

Lu smiled, retelling the stories of their losses and near-wins, and wondered if Gideon brought Heranika’s kids to the Pits. The Flock uncles patted his back and raised glasses as he passed, taunting proudly that they wouldn’t be so easy on him in the sparring ring anymore.

In the quiet of his room, Lu did not sleep. He listened to the shuffle of uncles stationed outside his door to keep Pa’s enemies out, laid in his soft bed and waited for dreams of taking over the Flock to emerge, but only the hoving darkness sat over him. 

He threw up four times, then sank to the cold tile of his bathroom, confused. Unable to stop replaying a strange moment of horror from the night. He’d been happily sitting between Benny and Pa, mirroring their every move and expression, watching the brutality of humans pitted against each other to entertain Calderans who sat atop the world or under it, seduced by a lie about the ruthlessness of human nature. He’d been smiling tightly, his cheek quivering, when a small projectile was launched from the pit, the audience roaring with laughter, jostling to reach for it as it lobbed over Pa and Lu had realized it was a finger, flying high into the shrieking crowd, reaching to catch it. 

The secondary horror was the realization that he’d experience the highlight of the Pits, the joys of the Ground, his inheritance he spent all day training for or imagining, where Pa was a king, better than the bustle of Arcade clubs and casinos. Gideon was a meager builder sidled up close to the Quartet. They belonged to the Wells as much as any Grounder, but without the long list of rules of conduct the Conductor demanded. They were free to follow their own strange ways, a clash between old Clearwater myths and whatever Gideon found useful enough to implement, insisting there was evidence and research. 

Lu had suspected the uncles ran a cult for years, even before the Conductor gave Gideon the construction company. Lu didn’t quite understand how someone could be given a company. He didn’t like the Conductor, and the Quartet felt suffocating. Lu’s promising future seemed suddenly more like an enslavement by the mask he kept so carefully in place, and any privilege he’d felt in his academy loneliness, any superiority or pride at the way the Janes and Jons rolled their eyes at him, drained out of him, replaced by an enormous loneliness. He flushed the toilet just to hear the sound, to match it to the hope draining out of him. 

He wrapped his fist around any remaining feelings of belongingness and pulled, constricting any momentary grief within the knots, stifling his weak heart, wrapping it in chains. He’d had fun. Pa hadn’t gotten mad. Benny had laughed with him all night. It was what the flock did. He’d seen the violence for years, fights between uncles, against rival gangs vying for the Conductor’s attention. The Pits were the same, he convinced himself. It was all the same, and it was fine. It was just a finger. Most people had ten to start anyway. 

He crawled back to his bed and tried to go back to sleep. Again, the jeering crowd invaded his dreams. He sat up and sighed, rubbing his eyes in frustration. He just wouldn’t go to school in the morning. He would sleep when it came. He grabbed a sweatshirt and his sketchbook, tossed a pencil in his pocket, then padded barefoot toward the basement greenhouse. Pa said his mother demanded it when she moved in with them, but Benny said it came with the house, and Lu never knew who to believe between the two of them.

He glanced around the dim greenhouse hall, a vast library of shelves lined in pots of heirloom vegetables, a cobblestone path wound around guilds of fruit trees and smaller plants, all of them overgrown since Benny’s short stint in the Asylum had turned a bit longer when he killed on of the Sec-Offs, but everyone knew the security officers sent to serve in the corrections department were considered expendable anyway, and Benny had only been given a few extra months in compensation time used to charge the officer’s family AI plan. But somehow, in that short time, Lu had grown half a foot, the uncles had gained five and lost three, and the greenhouse had turned into a jungle of vines choking out rope lights. 

He looked around for anything interesting to draw, frowning at the dark monotony of shadow and wilting leaves. He turned in a slow circle, then smiled at the line of grafted fruit trees. He curled into a rickety chair he’d dragged in months ago and began to draw. When the solar lights brightened, he yawned and pulled on his uniform.

☆