I hissed like a cornered animal, clutching my brother tighter to my chest.
"I won't give him up! I won't give him to anyone!"
"Dorian, he's going to scream!" Adalin interrupted, tears streaming down her face. "To scream is to rebel. If we are alive today, it's only because our screams were suppressed as infants. Don't do this. We'll take him down to the tunnels, we'll find a way..."
"He's going to die," Joseph said, slapping the truth across our faces like a cold hand. "Drop it, Dorian. You're just torturing the boy now."
My eyes were rolling wildly; as I pressed the pillow harder against Elyrian's face, his small body convulsed in a desperate struggle for life. The unquenchable fire within me was pouring out of my eyes.
"N-no..." I sobbed. "He won't go to the Mountaineers. He won't go to the border!"
Adalin was spreading old maps and rusted stopwatches across the table, desperately searching for an exit. "We could leave him in the Free Zone, with the mountain folk. He could grow up outside the system, in their pens."
I bit my lip until it bled. The screams of my mother and father from that dark night echoed in my ears.
"They tried that when he was a baby!" I hisssed, my voice freezing everyone in the room.
"They left him by the river at the border so he could grow up with the free people... But the drones execute on sight! Elyrian's twin... that tiny baby was riddled with drone fire in the middle of the lake! He was torn to pieces right before my eyes! Do you really think they'd let a baby make it across the border alive?"
In that instant, the atmosphere turned to ice. That soulless, mechanical voice rose from the speakers on the walls:
[SYSTEM MESSAGE: SEDITION AND POLITICAL CRIME DETECTED. ANARCHISM AND DISCOURSE INCITING HATRED...]
I held my breath, waiting for the Sinkhole to open up and swallow me. But the voice was suddenly cut off by static. Dante's invisible hand had intervened, bending the rules to his whim.
[...ACCUSATION CANCELLED.]
[CONGRATULATIONS! SPECIAL ALLOTMENT BY THE MASTER]
[1 Dose Antibiotics, 1 Dose Sleep Medicine, 1 Dose Fever Reducer, 1 Dose Cough Syrup, Fresh Poppy Milk, and Baby Biscuits.]
I collapsed to the floor along with the trembling body in my arms. Dante hadn't just sent medicine; he had sent a brutal act of charity to remind me exactly who my owner was. As the supplies dropped into the slot by the door, I tasted both salvation and eternal servitude at the same time.
In a room that felt like a cave, with peeling plaster and a broken wooden door, a miracle and a life of captivity were happening simultaneously. Elyrian drifted into a peaceful sleep under the influence of the drugs.
When Joseph said, "Thank you, Master," with a mask of fake gratitude, he was jolted by an invisible slap that sliced through the air. The blood trickling from his nose was the price of his submission.
[SYSTEM REWARD: A slice of fresh bread, goat cheese, and a plate of grapes.]
Once the others left the room, I slowly lifted my face from the pillow. The embers of jealousy and abandonment burned in my eyes.
"Where were you?" I whispered, my voice as wounded as the flesh I had shredded with my own nails. "If you had waited a moment longer, the Sinkhole would have taken my brother... Were you watching the others? Were you having fun with them?"
Dante's voice glided through my mind like a chilled wine.
"I had business, but I returned the moment I saw the notification. Why are you so anxious, Dorian. You weren't exactly in a position to start a major revolution while I was away, were you?"