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“Original” I lean back and crossive to the Reaper when he gets home? Or will it be chemical torture? Experiential? Lock me in a holoimmersion for a relative century? Or do I have a one-way subaquatic ticket to Deepgrave?”
“This is the part where you tell us where the children are,” Holiday says “Then you tell us who you sold them to What you know about the Pink with the cane And hoe can get theh to spare yourself being booked for treason”
“Fortunately, capital punisher an option,” I say
“We ht make an exception”
“How noble”
She leans forward “You’re gonna have to get used to the idea that you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cell, Ephrai that cell is depends on what you tell me”
“Holiday, you’ve spent too o at a man like that Give hiion? You were there The Golden Basilisks” She remembers “What happens if you surround an eneht to the death And that’s not good for anyone Trapped by that da into theht hours to kill fifty thousand men because we didn’t want to break the da? I never saw the Reaper’s face after that But you must have Did he like it?”
“This isn’t a game, Ephraim,” she says “If you hate life so ive you the bullet to eat But don’t take two innocent kids with you”
“Innocent? Everyone keeps throwing that shit around Their parents put them on the board They didn’t have to attend functions of state They didn’t have to parade theress But they did They ets, not me How many little kids do you think died in the Battle of Luna? I sahole blocks disintegrated by Valii-Rath particle beams Schools turned to dust by termite munitions with Republic stae of war Don’t co to me because the man and woman who started this don’t want to pay out of their own pocket like the rest of us”
I’ve never seen her look at ust “What happened to you?”
“Life Same shit that happens to everyone else”
“Trigg would spit on you if he could see this”
“Well, he died on your watch Not mine”
Holiday looks blankly at me as if I’ve slapped her across the face
All the days webetween us, unspoken like some weapon of mutually assured destruction And now that I say it, I taste ashes inlike this, as a weapon, is the ultimate perversion of who he hat he meant to the both of us But he followed her everywhere And she led him to his death for a cause that doesn’t even remember his name Holiday can’t meet my eyes But Lyria shakes her head