I was returning to my room after giving Calder a lecture on tactics. He is most in danger… whenever he is far away. Boris’s abilities are a weaker version of Calder’s, but Boris doesn’t melt a gun every time he tries to hold one.

  I had not accounted for that when I had first thought of Calder's weakness. I had felt so stupid when I realized it earlier. Of course Boris had the advantage when the match started. Everything always goes his way; why not the most important match of his life?

  “Stupid civvie,” I growled as I entered my room… only to find Stoyan standing there, cleaning my equipment before he turned around with a raised eyebrow.

  “Hello again, Sofie. Am I a stupid civvie?”

  I stood there, rooted to the spot. Before I ran forward and tackled him with a hug.

  “Ow, watch the ribs. You’re blessed too, now remember?”

  “Explains why you sound normal for once. Why are you here? I thought I was only allowed to speak with you after the tournament?” I asked as I pulled away.

  “I mean, sure, technically, but your Mother asked me to relay a message.”

  “Which is…?”

  He cleared his throat and pushed his imaginary glasses up his nose. “Ahem. Tell Sofia to come see me tomorrow before the match starts. I wish to discuss something with her.”

  I snorted, “You do a terrible impression of my mother.”

  He sighed, “I know. But it's close enough. Anyway, I am going to fetch you tomorrow at around eight AM. Try to be dressed, you hear?”

  “Will do.”

  He pushed a bar of chocolate into my hand as he walked past, “Great, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I rolled my eyes at his back. When we first met, I was ten years old. I had prepared everything down to the last detail... except for the chocolate ice cream staining my entire face. Now, whenever he was assigned to escort or guard me, he would give me a chocolate. I smiled at the memory as I prepared for tomorrow.

  At eight AM on the dot, I heard a banging on my door and Stoyan shouting, “You better be up sleepyhead! I don’t want to be in trouble just cause you're late!”

  I opened the door, his hand mid-knock as surprise crossed his face. “I didn’t know you could even get up this early.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I always get up early. Come, let’s go see Mother.”

  He cringed as he lowered his hand. “Yeah… sorry, Sofia. But this time she wants to speak to you alone.”

  “What? Why?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I do as I’m told. You’ll figure it out. Come on, we can’t be late.”

  Twenty minutes later I was walking into my Mother’s office, with no idea why I was here in the middle of my tournament. I walked through the open doors, Stoyan slamming them shut behind me.

  Mother’s office was neat to a nauseating degree. She was sitting at the large desk in the middle of her office, my father’s statue behind her as she stared at me. Unlike every other time I had seen her, the desk was empty. Not one paper or pen in front of her.

  This time there was only a pistol, lying on its side.

  “Hello, Mother,” I said, approaching her desk.

  She just studied me, not uttering a single word. The silence stretched between us, filled only by the ticking of the clock on the wall. I started counting the ticks in a vain attempt at distracting myself from her gaze.

  On thirty-eight, she spoke. “I assume you must have questions as to why I so openly favor Boris in this tournament?”

  I flinched at her words but dared not open my mouth to speak. I knew when she was testing me, and the only answer I had now was a direct insult. She was making a mistake. Whatever bravery or supposed kindness she saw in him did not exist.

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  “Your silence is an answer too, child. If you won’t answer that question, here's a simpler one. Which one is more dangerous, weaponry or abilities?”

  “Abilities, and it’s not even close. The versatility of abilities makes it head and shoulders above anything man has created. And that is before we account for how dangerous a singular ability could be, let alone all of them.”

  She watched me, her mouth in a thin line. “...Interesting. I held the same notion until I was well into my twenties. Unfortunately, child, that answer is wrong.”

  I bit my tongue before I chose my words like any one of them could have made Mother pick up that gun and use it on me. “My apologies, Mother, but that… I do not understand how you have reached that conclusion.”

  She picked up the pistol, grinding it against the desk as she got out of her chair and walked towards me. “Alexander is by far the most powerful human being that has ever walked the face of the earth. When America tried to nuke us, I saw the height of his power. When thousands of the worst weapons humanity has ever created were racing toward us, he stopped them with a wave of his hand.”

  She was right in front of me; the unaged side of her face looked... regretful. As if she wished she had known this before the events of her story took place but was unable to do anything about it now.

  And she had never spoken about the day my father died. Not once.

  “Alexander was… not well at the time. But even then, he stopped death itself in its tracks. He saved the entire island. Millions of people owe him their lives. Perhaps billions. He gave us a chance to avenge Paradise City. To avenge the injustices the world placed upon us.”

  She shoved the pistol against my chest, tears in her eyes as she looked at the weapon with hate. “And a moment after he saved us all, an American killed him with this pistol.”

  I stopped breathing. How could… she said he stopped the nukes? How could a bullet kill him? No… she was lying. She was wrong. There is no possible way she is telling the truth.

  But why would she lie?

  Mother took a step away from me and took a remote out of her pocket, pressing a single button toward an innocuous part of the far wall. A moment later a projector slid down, white and clean, before an image of Kaleidos appeared. In its center stood Goudstad, and to the right stood Johannes’s factories, hemmed in on all sides by shacks. An entire city made with scraps.

  To the left of Goudstad stood the township I suppose Boris had come from. It was smaller than the one surrounding the factories, almost equal in size to Goudstad itself.

  “The other day you said something that bothered me. Deeply. You called Boris a ‘civvie’, a slur your generation has decided to call the people living in those shacks, the people who live without powers. And that has made you underestimate him. Devalue him. You almost ruined one of the luckiest gifts the high rank… not just high rankers. All the blessed will benefit from his ascension.”

  She clicked a button on the remote, and the view changed. We were now looking at Alexander’s bastion… and I could not believe what I saw. There must have been hundreds of people there. No, thousands. And even then I might be underestimating the number of people appearing before me. It seemed that almost every civvie on Kaleidos was standing there. Large banners with the words “WE ARE WITH YOU” and “THE TOWNSHIPS SHIELDMAN” littered the landscape. Through the dense mass of people, I was able to spot children running around with sticks and scraps of metal, which they were using to imitate Boris.

  The worst thing the crowd did was spray paint a picture of Boris on the side of a skyscraper mid-speech when he was shouting obscenities at my mother after he won the tournament.

  “They… what is this?”

  My mother had a gleam in her eye that I had never seen before. “When you called Boris that slur, I realized I have made a terrible mistake. I have been too engrossed with expanding upward, forgetting that power must be consolidated down here, too. To win the war against America, I will need every man, woman, and child on Kaleidos. Whether they are blessed or a ‘civvie’ is irrelevant.”

  She pointed at that spray-painted picture like it was the answer to all our problems. “And he is the key to fixing that. Our weapon. Our answer.”

  I managed to squeak out a whisper, the words sounding foreign to me, “But he’s a monster.”

  She snorted in contempt as she let go of me, turning to the crowd, “That he may be. But with the problems on the higher floors and the problems down here, we may need a monster. Take your subordinate, Calder, for instance. You complain about Boris’s brutality, yet look at his match the other day. Should I remove his black cloak? Make him a B ranker?”

  I felt my spine leave me as my blood ran cold. I… I had meant to speak to him about that. I had meant to change his behavior.

  But I hadn't.

  And then a thought struck me: a hole in her plan. I didn’t even realize I spoke until the words fell through my lips, “...after?”

  “Speak up, child. I don’t like it when you mumble.”

  I looked up at the aged side of her face. “Boris will face Calder tomorrow, which means Boris will lose. If he is as important as you say, how will we deal with the aftermath?”

  She turned and looked at me. I didn’t see it coming. The slap landed on my cheek, sharp and biting, and I felt my teeth go through my tongue. I tasted iron after I recovered from stumbling, the blood swelling over my fingers as I tried to keep it in my mouth.

  I looked up at her with wide eyes, only to see a furious glare on her face. “Did you not listen to a word I just said? Do you honestly believe, after everything I just told you, that Calder even has a chance? I did not raise my daughter to be a fucking idiot.”

  I glanced at the pistol trembling in her hand. “But… Mother… Calder is an A rank—”

  “Shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you. And get out. I will not talk to you if you will not listen.”

  I… what was the issue? Why was she angry? I had asked a reasonable question. I hadn’t done anything wrong… Had I?

  “Mother, I—”

  “Get. out.”

  I sprinted through the door, the tears coming long before I had left the room. But I could not run to Slava this time, and Stoyan would not leave his post.

  I was alone. And the tears fell without resistance.