City Without Suns by Wade Andrew Butcher Read Free Book Online Page B

order?  I cannot comprehend a situation in which he wants her dead.
    Charged with bringing them to the gas chamber, I performed my duty while struggling to think of a way out that would preserve my honor.  To fight my fellow patrols would be a heinous act of treason, but to allow Isla to be taken was a cowardly deed. There was no righteous course of action.  I escorted Isla and Eon to their imminent doom, her hand in mine, with tears rolling down my face.
    I escorted them in with the others and gave her a final kiss.  She has aged well and survived many years here, but she will always be that sweet Island girl like a little sister to me.  There was nothing to say.  I exited, not knowing whether to look through the glass or leave.  I watched as the oxygen was purged from the room by the nitrogen-rich haze permeating the space.  After some minutes, the lack of breathable air began to claim its victims.
    Thirty minutes passed.  The small chamber was littered with asphyxiated bodies.  Isla and Eon sat against the wall next to each other hand in hand.  They had their eyes closed preparing for the inevitable blackout, but it did not come.  The lone pair of survivors sat there and continued to breathe, and breathe, over and over again.
    I do not know what emotion forced me to do what I did.  Whether confusion or rage, it boiled to the surface and obliged me to throw my fellow patrol to the ground, clearing the door for me to reenter.  My once mighty wings expanded from my back, tearing the synthetic fibers from my body.  My concealment had come to an end with the reflexive expansion.  My physique was exposed before I realized, but I did not waste time with my own mere embarrassment.  I removed my friends and returned them way down below to their room.  I resigned to seek forgiveness later rather than permission for this act, justifiable by the inexplicable survival of my friends.  I would make the case that there should be an investigation into their ability to breathe nitrogen to buy time for their survival. 
    The gift of flight given to me by the genetic engineers of Bishop Islands was nothing but a curse in the tight confines of Gambler.  After twenty-three years, I revealed in public that I am the only one of my kind here.  The webbed wings normally folded under my garments usually looked more like a deformity than a mutation.  Before my revelation, I was generally hated as a patrol, and now I am known as both a monster and a police member, disliked almost equally by my own. 
    Leonidas knew me from birth, so my secret was not a surprise to him.  The mysterious immunity of my friends to the gas chamber, however, was unexpected by both of us.  I knew she was special.  I knew she could see in the dark.  I knew she had uncommon bacteria festering in her lungs, but the purpose was unknown until now.  I wonder if she even knew.  Had she kept it a secret from me?  I had a chance to speak with Leonidas, and my plea was accepted without much conversation.  He was in the pilot bridge room when I revealed the sequence of events.
    “Commander, I have news,” I approached with my massive unfolded wings visible to all.  It was soothing to have them out, although it was not uncomfortable to have them folded.  Leonidas looked me over with his eyes opened wide.  He looked around to gauge the reaction of the pilots to the visage of a Bauvat on Gambler.  They did not outwardly react. Rather, they waited to follow the lead of their Commander.
    “Salazar, my friend.  What is it Islander? And why are you half naked?”  Leonidas replied with more of a whimsical tone than one of concern.  Some of the pilots seemed to want to laugh but stifled the urge.
    “Isla was on the extermination list.”
    “Yes, I know.  Very unfortunate and sad.  We just can’t sustain everyone who isn’t maintaining a function on the ship,” Leonidas replied.
    “I’m not here to protest the extermination, although I should.