I stared at it unwillingly, as miserably riveted as a fish speared on a hook. Damn him. When would the day come that I felt nothing at all when seeing his face? The worst part was that I could not even rage. I would have welcomed anger, embraced it, for anger was simple—so much simpler than this hideous sorrow I felt at the sight of the broken, destroyed soul I’d once loved.
I remembered those cool blue eyes and that carefully controlled smile he wore in the weeks following the events on Corcyra. The Eurydicean media deemed it a “Partisan Terror Attack.” They claimed rumors of my appearance were but a lie, and there was Tyrus filling the transmissions to give credibility to that lie.
The galactic rumor mill whispered another story entirely. Many decided the attack had been perpetrated by the mad Emperor himself. He’d opened malignant space so close to Corcyra, the planet had but a decade left of safety. He must have blown up the crowd as well. The rumors spoke of me, of those who had glimpsed my face in person—and many swore they had seen me on the public feeds before the blast. I was more beloved in death than ever in life, and the Excess had long cherished my memory.
Soon the public imagination seized upon the idea that I was alive.… That I had been dead, but now I lived, and a ludicrous notion grew that I had defied mortality, that I had returned to seek revenge upon the Emperor who presumed to declare himself a god. That the Emperor himself had been the one to blast the crowd and murder thousands to hide evidence of my return.
No planet dared to laugh at the self-declared Divine Emperor Tyrus after that fateful day. Wherever Tyrus went, he was met with full-throated cheers, and in return, he showered those who worshipped him with imperial largesse… He flooded the coffers of his most ardent believers, and the example of Corcyra silenced those who might have dared to doubt.
But the few, those restive few who stuck by their convictions—they’d learned a new hope that day.
Protests were few, but when they boiled up, the words “Nemesis Lives!” were screamed by the defiant. My image offered terrifying warnings on walls across the galaxy. The Excess called the words as their sacred images were desecrated, as they faced the threat of malignant space, as a tyrant who held total power over them demanded that they bend to him in worship.
These humans wielded my name as a threat against a man who had declared himself a god.
I could not stop what Neveni had set into motion that day on Corcyra.
My name was their invocation, their prayer of hope.
Nemesis Lives. I hated those words. I’d begun to loathe my own name. I hated the image glowering at me from the wall of that alley, for it was a lie. It promised them a savior, a legend, a myth—and I was but a defeated ruin of what I’d once imagined myself.
Everything I had loved, I had managed to destroy.
As I gazed at the holographic, another rumor swam up from the back of my mind.… That the “Divine Emperor” had implanted his Tributaries with surveillance cameras, ones he used his godlike ability with machines to peer through every so often. According to hearsay, Excess seen offering fealty and worship and gifts to his Tributary Images sometimes found themselves unexpectedly rewarded with largesse; those who defiled the Tributaries faced the strictest of punishments.
My burn scars concealed my features, but a skitter of anxiety passed up my spine. Not at the thought of his eyes peering back out at me through the empty holographic face before me…
But because—stars curse me—some part of me was tempted to march up to it and stare into them until I felt him looking back.
Instead, I turned on my heel and left the Tributary and the alley far behind me.
3
MORE THAN TWO YEARS AMONG the Excess had dimmed my memories of life among the Grandiloquy. The masses did not live in sleek and polished corridors that looked out upon the stars, nor did they have humming service bots ready to satisfy their every whim. Excess were bound to their planets, with varying gravital conditions, climates, and smells.
Devil’s Shade was a mining colony. The rogue planetoid had been flung from its parent star by the great supernova five centuries ago, and solar sickness was almost as common as a cold. Most of the locals were trapped in a perpetual cycle of working in the mines to pay off medical debts incurred while… working in the mines.
I’d chosen Devil’s Shade because so many were sickly. I’d meant to take advantage of the public medical bots.
I’d hoped they might help a Diabolic, even. Anguish grew frailer by the day.
The mercy in the alley imperiled not just myself.
Neither Anguish nor I had any reason to fear street violence. We were what should be feared on the street, and so we’d found dwellings on Harvester Row, the most dilapidated area of an already hopeless province. The entire colony was underground; the interior-most level was Sector 001. We lived closest to the surface, on level 203, the sector most exposed to cosmic radiation.
I passed through the familiar causeway where miners ambled home, drillers floating behind them. They traded quips and curses, as street-side vendors called out their wares. The scent of waste and sulfur and scorched rubber reached my nose.
As I drew closer to our apartment, I reached the most crowded areas of Harvester Row, where hollow-eyed beggars scrabbled for handouts, though there was no use in offering them anything but food. They spent offerings not on the necessities, but on the drugs that had already reduced them to penury. These people wore their misfortunes on their faces, their weeping sores left unattended, their children forgotten, their minds consumed by chemical need.
The Grandiloquy had indulged in the same substances, then wiped away physical consequences with top-grade, private medical bots. They condemned and imprisoned the Excess for drug addiction. But in their own circles, a varied selection of chemicals was as necessary for a party as a fine gown and jewels.
Creating these chemicals was not so fashionable—especially those that could not be produced by a synthesizer, but had to be grown and harvested instead. The Grandiloquy looked down to the Excess for such manufacturing. They looked to places like Harvester Row, where I now walked. It was a scene of miseries that made the mines look pleasant. Desperation and urine perfumed the air. I passed a crunch of trembling bodies, all pressed close together, waiting in line for a turn at the Harvester’s chair.
There were two different substances that Devil’s Shade specialized in. One was Cosmic Ray, a popular psychedelic among the Grandiloquy.… It was a fungus that on Devil’s Shade was known as “desiccating rose,” and the optimal growth environment was within human subcutaneous tissue.
I passed first those people with dimpled skin, their faces twisted with a low, constant pain, waiting their turn at having the desiccating rose extracted from their flesh, and likely a new set of spores implanted there.
The other group of Harvesters were the more richly dressed ones—who used the Excess to produce Novashine.
“Hold him still. Help me,” one Harvester called briskly to an associate as I passed the chair where a young man—strapped down—had broken his bindings in his panic and freed his arm.
His eyes were wild with terror, and guttural screams issued from his lips. His fear was potent, which meant the Novashine would be strong. It was prized when drawn directly from the veins of a terrified human being. Excess lined up to be stimulated by a diode that catapulted their brains into horror, terror, pain, and caused their bodies to dump adrenaline into their systems. Light-years away, Grandiloquy would receive genuine, human-produced Novashine to enhance their mental well-being… and the hapless Excess would earn a week’s pay in five horrifying minutes.