To kill a King with lightning or to die

TW: blood, police brutality, violence.

Xavier had ironed his black and sleek trousers that morning, by himself, smoking to the Rolling Stones.

He had put extra care in choosing his outfit because in those clothes he would have died.

In fact, over the black pants, he had a white shirt, candid like a soft cloud, that smelled like fabric softener, a dark jacket that fit him perfectly and made him look less muscular. He had even folded a red and white tissue to put in his pocket. Then, he had hid seven knives, a bomb, two razors and a pair of gloves covered in rubber under all that.

Hoping nobody would have recognized a traitor of the crown, he went out in the open, the freezing air of December cutting his cheeks. Using a fake electronic ID code, he opened the metal building’s door. A few dozens of officers who would have happily tortured him didn’t even give him a glance.

When the glossy blue doors opened, he entered the elevator.

He was glad he was alone. That way, he was sure none of the King’s soldiers  would have seen him get down at floor 280.

He stood with his hands clasped in front of his body, unmoving, looking directly into his metallic reflection. The light was blue, inside the palace.

His heart was racing in his chest, so painfully he had trouble breathing. He knew whatever he was going to see in floor 280 would have hurt him. Another reason why he had asked Kaneka to go alone on the mission inside the palace, was that he didn’t want any of the boys to see that he was anxious. Of course, since the day he had rebelled against the King, he had known he had lost the opportunity to live peacefully.

On floor 280, he was going to meet Tara again.

The first time he had seen her, she was wearing a neon miniskirt and sending thousands of volts throw the bodies of a couple of the King’s guards. She had let them plummet at her feet, grabbed Xavier’s coat and yanked him out of the battle into a tiny alley.

Her black hair was tied in two braids, and her eyes, instead of being radioactive blue as he expected, where just dark.

“You are human. With powers.”

“Yeah, not a robot. Now,” Tara had said, putting a gun in his hand, “let’s get out of here, alright?”

The last one standing of his group of rebels, he had allied with her. Together, they had gone back into the square where neon billboards made the night as bright as day and the King soldiers shot their power weapons.

At dawn, she, covered in scratches, bloody cuts, and with her hands still sparking electricity, had ripped the last guard off of him.

Tara had laughed a very brief, tired laugh. Her big lips had bent a little, and she hadn’t taken her eyes away from his as she cleaned the blood on her mouth with the back of her hand. “You need to watch out for yourself or you’ll break.”

Xavier hadn’t been able to reply. He felt the same electricity in his veins. His heart raced in front of her, as if he had found something precious and long lost.

Then, she had taken him back to headquarters, and reported the win. Kaneka had half-smiled to him, and he had felt like he had just ended the King’s tyranny.

Tara had walked with him, talking until they reached his room. Then, she had given him one electric bullet to put in his gun. It was bright in the dark, like a deadly diamond or something else beautiful made to kill.

“We’re a great team,” he had told her, his voice no more than a murmur.

“Come to me if you need help,” she had replied.

But Tara hadn’t resisted in the living world for a long time.

She had disappeared again.

Xavier had gone visiting her, once, when the voices about her running away again started circulating. When he had arrived in front of her apartment, he had let out a small, shallow sigh, and then had sunk his hands in his jacket.

The cold, dry wind moved the rubbles on the floor. The place didn’t exist anymore, and so the furniture. He was sure she couldn’t have lived there without a bed, a fridge, or at least a teleport platform to come and go freely. But even if those things had actually been there before, now everything was gone. All that was left of her were rocks on a street that nobody visited.

That day, he had told Kaneka. She had kept staring at the hologram that portrayed the King’s palace’s entrance door, and had told him, batting her eyes slowly, that Everyone dies, if they don’t watch out.

So he had.

And in a couple of months of research on Tara, the King, and the electricity resources he had found three game-changing pieces of news.

First. The City consumed as much electricity as the whole country of Taiwan.

Second. The ways to get electricity fast and easy had all already been burnt and converted into volts centuries before.

Third. The King needed the people to stay calm and nice to him, if he didn’t want to die lynched.

Fourth. Tara was a natural source of electricity.

All of these were clues that led only to one possible outcome, the most realistic scenario, which coincided with the worst one.

Xavier had had to come to terms with the fact that the King had kidnapped Tara to use her as a reactor.

He had told Kaneka. And while she had immediately widened her eyes at the thought that Tara was in the King’s palace, too close and subjected to him not to spit out what the rebels were doing, Xavier could only think about the little lightning in her fingers.

He had seen them, once, in their beauty and not in their deadliness.

Xavier and Tara were sitting on the headquarters’ roof. The night was shiny and bright like a crystal, blue and black and full of city lights. Her feet dangled in the void. He was scared to death of her, who always looked like she had done something more dangerous than what she was facing, and of the height. She had smiled like a fox to the City and spit on the ground. Her saliva made a jump of a few hundred feet.

“We will own this place.”

Freezing, with his legs against his chest, he had muttered something that meant he agreed with her. She had chuckled and given him her hoodie. He hadn’t put it on.

She had sighed. “God of electric sheep, Xavier.”

He had put it on.

After his head had popped out of the fabric, he had noticed that thin, blue wires where shining around her fingers. She was playing with them, letting the energy sting her skin. She laughed, her small lightning cracked. He looked at her a little scared, but feeling safer on that roof with her than he had felt in his room in the headquarters, manned 24/7.

She had closed her hand.

“You know what’s worse than being wanted dead, Xavier?”

She had said his name, but her eyes were on the City’s blue skyline.

He hadn’t said anything.

“Being wanted alive.”

The elevator reached floor 8 and stopped abruptly.

Under his breath, he muttered to himself: “What the fuck?”

The lights went off, the temperature seemed to drop.

He tried to touch the buttons, but even if they were clicking under his fingers, nothing happened.

“Come on.”

He took a deep breath. The sign said he was on floor 279, so close to her.

“What the hell are you doing, Tara?” He put his hands on the cold metal and waited.

He tried to calm himself.

Xavier was scared of small places, because they reminded him of when the guards had imprisoned him for stealing water from the nobleman’s table. Somewhere, his skin still carried the long, slender wounds of their clawed gloves and the electric shots that they sent through his body. Later on, when he had joined the rebels, Heko had stared at him like he was Jesus resurrected. “Sweet Jupiter,” he had said, in his monochromatic tone, “how are you alive?”

He didn’t know. He only remembered his young skin breaking under their gloves and being dragged out and thrown in a dirty street.

Now, Xavier reminded himself that he was fully clothed and armed like a fucking soldier from World War IV.

He also started thinking that they had killed Tara. Or she had tried to escape and they had decided to execute her. No, this was stupid. The whole City would have stopped breathing, food would have gone bad, people wouldn’t have been able to work, the King himself would have been just a kid in silk sitting on a bed in a small room in a silent palace. And all the doors of the prisons would have been open.

Xavier got up from the wall and tried to open the gate of the elevator. He slipped his fingers in the small cranny between the two metal panels and pulled. His muscles flexed, he got closer to apply more strength, but nothing happened.

He let himself sink on the floor. The metal box moved slightly.

In the dark, he began seeing a starry sky.

His father had told him that before the world was completely urbanized, in certain parts of the globe you could see the galaxy. He had shown him pictures of the stars, and Xavier had started drawing them.

There, curled up with his knives pressing against his ribcage, he counted and named each of them under his breath.

He reminded himself of his humanity, that he was a beating heart, even if nearly everything in the world was a metallic machine, even if the door of the elevator was pressing against his body and trapping him in.

When he started feeling breathless, he got to his feet.

There was violet and blue in front of him, just like the day he had got into the rebels’ group. Kaneka was a woman all black and red, and was taking clothes off him. His face was masked and he could only see reality in spots. He felt the last piece of fabric been thrown away.

“He’s shaking. How can he fucking go killing a King if he shakes in front of you, Kaneka?”

Heko’s voice had made him go red.

Xavier had heard Kaneka close, very close to him. “He’s a boy who bends only in front of who he knows actually rules. Now, kneel.”

He had obeyed. And she had beaten him and he hadn’t said a word. She had put him in the dark and let him starve and choke. And after ten days, his skin was just as thick as she had wanted.

Perhaps, he thought to himself in the dark, to beat a bad thing, you had to become worse. Some do. Some are Kaneka. Some don’t, like Tara, and run and fight and disappear.

But in an elevator where you’re alone and the source of life of the City is gone, you need to set your priorities straight.

It was at that point, that he started hearing the explosions. It was like fireworks going off.

Xavier backed off, chuckling. His breath came in short and shallow. His head was spinning.

He prayed to a God he knew was dead and asked them to please, let her enemies die horribly.

A fierce song started playing in his head and he was one with the dark.

The smoke started coming in the elevator slowly and he breathed it. He didn’t know about it until he was dying. But at that point he could do nothing. He just sat down and waited.

He prayed again to that God to let him find peace somewhere else, even if the afterlife was a joke.

Then, the doors opened.

A blade of light cut his face gently. He took in a long, pure, soft breath, and let himself relax. Out of the elevator, an angel was coming with the smell of burnt metal and blood.

She knelt to carry him out.

“You’re okay.”

Tara laughed. Her chest vibrated. “We’re both still alive. Disappointing.”