Angels of Darkness

his ribs. “If he really pushed, you’d see bone shards puncturing the skin.”
    She stared at him in horrified silence. He sank back down and closed his eyes.
    â€œWhy do you fight like that?” she asked.
    â€œThere’s no single reason. Sometimes he doesn’t like something I’ve done. Sometimes I do it because he annoys me.”
    â€œWhat about today?”
    Lucas sighed. She wouldn’t let him be. “Today we fought because Daniel argued with Arthur. Daniel wants to evacuate. Arthur doesn’t. Daniel insisted and Arthur bruised his pride. I took Arthur’s side. Evacuating the base is costly. One scout isn’t reason enough to do it. It’s a bad sign—we had seen scouts before in the neighboring fragments, but never this close. But we can’t just run at the first hint of trouble.”
    She frowned. “So twisting bones out of your sockets is the way he demonstrates his displeasure at being pushed around?”
    â€œPretty much. Daniel wants to be taken seriously. So I treated him as a serious threat and made a big production of it. I was a substitute fight. What he really wanted was a shot at Arthur, which I can’t let him take, because Arthur will kill him.” Lucas thought of leaving it at that, but something nagged him to explain. “It’s complicated. We live by different rules. In your other life, people undergo strict social conditioning that evolved over hundreds of years. They grow up in relative safety and under constant supervision. Parents, schools, peers—all of their interactions fine-tune their behavior until they are . . .”
    â€œSafe?” she suggested.
    â€œSocialized. But Daniel and I grew up as outcasts, with only the extremes of our behavior corrected—so we don’t murder someone whenever the urge strikes us. Our interactions are simpler than yours, less layered and closer to . . .” Lucas grappled for the right word. When it came to him, he didn’t like it. “Animals. Both of us reached sexual maturity a while ago. We have a strong urge to mate and have our own territory, our own families, and separate lives. Instead we’re stuck with each other, in this house, with an illusion of privacy and an excess of aggression. And now there is you. Daniel doesn’t really want you for your own sake. He wants you because he views me as competition and now I have something he doesn’t. I am the only consequence he fears. He’s hostile and defensive, and Arthur made him sit down and shut up today. Daniel had to vent and I’m the only one who would put up with it.”
    â€œWhy?” she asked softly.
    â€œBecause he is my brother.”
    There was a tiny pause. “But he is not a Demon like you.”
    â€œDifferent fathers,” he told her. “All of us within the House of Daryon carry genes from many different subspecies. Our mother was a Demon. My father was a normal human. Daniel’s father was a powerful Acoustic. We both played the genetic lottery and got different prizes.”
    He left out rape, imprisonment, and murder. It sounded much better this way.
    â€œDid Daniel hoard food as a child?”
    She was perceptive. He would have to remember that. “Yes.”
    â€œAnd you took care of him?”
    â€œYes.” Because nobody else would.
    â€œWhy doesn’t he just leave?” she asked. “Why don’t you? You don’t seem to like living here.”
    â€œBecause we have a job to do. We guard you from genocide.” The mission overrode everything. A logical part of him assured Lucas that life outside of the original mandate existed. He just couldn’t picture himself living it. “As long as we exist, you survive.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    He sighed. This was another long explanation and he had no energy for it today. Nor did he want to shock her again. She’d been through enough. “Monsters exist. They call themselves Ordinators. They want to kill people like you. Normal ordinary people. We exist to keep them from succeeding. That’s all there is to it.”
    â€œBut what do they want?”
    â€œThey want you to die.”
    â€œWhy do they hate us so much?”
    He sighed. “They don’t hate you. They simply want you not to be. It’s a genetic cleansing, a mass extermination. They view the current situation as a mistake, which they’re trying to correct.