Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

and legs and the cold sheen of sweat on his face. He scowled, breathing deeply. He'd built his muscles as a gladiator in the Arena, and despite his recent enforced absence from the killing sands, he prided himself he was still in damned good shape. The climb alone would have killed a lesser man. He flexed the muscles in his arms and legs, blocking out the pain. He was almost there. Just a little farther. He swung carefully out and around the stone statue and made his way slowly across the face of the tower, finding hand and footholds where he could. Forget the pain building in his muscles and back. Forget the precarious holds, the gusting wind, and the long drop down. Just climb, foot by careful foot, and concentrate on his mission and the kill at the end.
    For most of his adult life, the world had known Finlay Campbell only as a fop and a dandy, highly visible at Court, and a constant disappointment to his renowned warrior father. No one knew of his secret second life as the Masked Gladiator, undefeated champion of the Golgotha Arena, except for the man who trained him and the woman who loved him. When circumstances forced him to flee for his life, Finlay had been forced to reveal his prowess as a fighter to the underground. It was the only coin he had to buy their acceptance. There was no room among them for passengers; particularly, if you were neither clone nor esper but merely only human. They sent him on a mission, alone and unsupported, to prove himself or die, and when he came back trailing blood and victory, they
    shrugged and allowed him his place among them. But though they knew him as a fighter, he never told them about the Masked Gladiator. They didn't need to know that.
    He also hadn't told them about his need, the constant burning need for action, violence, and sudden death that had driven him to the Arena in the first place.
    There were times when it seemed to him that he felt really alive only when he was killing someone. Evangeline Shreck had silenced or at least pacified the need when she was with him. Their love had been all he needed or desired, but their time together had only ever been one of snatched moments. Their Families had been at daggers drawn for generations, and both young lovers had always known that they could never hope for a future together. Somehow that foreknowledge fanned the flames of their love rather than diminished it, and the man who once lived only to kill lived instead for the moments of peace he found in her arms.
    But now he lived down below, in the underground, and she had returned to the world above, to Tower Shreck and her awful father. Her position and connections among the occupants of the pastel towers made her too valuable for her to be excused for long. So they held each other one last time and tried not to cry, and said good-bye in choked voices. He went with her as far as he could, and then stopped and watched her walk away until she disappeared into the distance.
    They'd promised each other they'd be together again, but neither of them really believed it. Happy endings were for other people. Finlay Campbell walked back to the underground alone, and if a part of him died that day, he kept it to himself. It didn't interfere with his being the killer the underground needed for their ongoing struggle.

    He'd never thought of himself as a rebel. Never thought about the society he moved in, any more than a fish considers the water it swims in. He took its delights and perquisites for granted, and never knew or cared whose work and suffering provided them. He had been an aristocrat other aristocrats bowed to, heir to one of the most powerful Families in the Empire, possessed of power and wealth beyond counting.
    Then the Wolfes slaughtered and scattered the Campbells, and he was suddenly just another face on the run, with any number of Wolfes and their hired swords snapping at his heels, ready to kill him on sight. His only safety now lay with the underground, whose rationale he distrusted and whose ideologies mostly left him cold. He understood their hatred for the way things were. What had been done to the espers and clones in Wormboy Hell was indefensible, for any reason. The torture and suffering he'd seen had turned even his hardened stomach. It took him a little longer to realize that espers and clones faced similar, smaller horrors every day of their lives, in or out of Silo Nine. They were non-people.
    Property. Their owners could do anything with them they