Unknotted

Epilogue

Glark

Glark leaned intently forward, rewound the surveillance video streamed to him from a small portal station near the edge of the hemisphere in southwestern Keadan, and played it again. On the screen, the target offered her wrists to Rokan. The video didn’t have sound, but Glark could see Rokan say something and put his handcuffs away. They exchanged words for several moments, then Rokan, eyes calculating and face intent, took a hesitant step toward her. The target, masked as always, mirrored his step.

Glark rubbed at his face. He didn’t know what was said or what made Rokan, his favorite soldier, disobey an order, but there was something so intimate about the exchange that made him feel as though he was intruding on something he should not. It rang a discordant twang of sorrow through his chest, a reminder of younger days when he had looked on his own pragmora with such intensity.

“Should we report this to Ultra Metallia?” the troll who had sent him the footage asked over the phone pressed to Glark’s ear. “Dozens of undocumented hybrids were move. Despite Officer Angevin’s clearance, I suspect the transaction breaks Keadanian law.”

It certainly did, but not on Rokan’s part. Glark and Metallia were the real criminals. Every time he signed the approval for the transfer of prisoners, disguising it as some sort of reputable exchange, his blood had colored the ink. How much more blood did he have to give before he could bleed no more?

Selling off hybrids to the Shadow Market had started off as a way of revenge, to punish those who had slaughtered so many Keadanians. It evolved into a means of purchasing supplies to defend and expand his territory. Over the last few years, it was all about money and no hybrid, even children, were exempt from Metallia’s greed.

Core between, he had tried to stop her, to convince her that they had gone too far, to explain they had lost focus of fulfilling the prophecy. She had stopped listening. The cords knotting them together grew thin, as strong as threads. Each day another thread snapped under the tension. Breaking a little more of his will to live.

Keadan deserved more than him. He touched a finger to the screen, to Rokan’s upturned face as he watched the target fly away. Keadan and the whole blasted hemisphere needed a hybrid who was better, stronger, purer than Glark could ever be again.

But how to force someone as loyal and submissive as Rokan to challenge him? He would have to force Rokan’s integrity to stand against the evil he and Metallia were committing. To stop hiding the ugly truth from the closest thing Glark had to the child he had always long to for. That thought—the mental image of Rokan’s disgust when he would finally learn the truth—made Glark sick.

Rokan would hate him.

For the sake of Keadan, for the prophecy—blast—for his own filthy soul, he would have to do it. He only had to ensure Metallia didn’t kill his boy before he could.

Glark cleared the emotion from his throat and spoke to the troll through the phone. “Destroy the footage.”