Most people think power is about money or influence. They are wrong. True power is the ability to operate a parallel worldwhere the laws of nature and morality do not exist. The Elite do not just buy politicians; they buy souls.
I open a drawer in my desk and pull out a leather-bound ledger, the physical record of the "Service Agreements."
The Elite thirst for things the surface world cannot provide. It starts with the flesh. Auctions where girls are sold not just for their beauty, but for their psychological resilience. The longer it takes to break them, the higher the bid. I have seen men in custom-tailored suits bid millions for the right to be the first to "initiate" a Subject. No names. No consent. Just a number and a price.
Then, there are the rituals. The inner circle believes in the purification of pain. They organize gala events in underground cathedrals where the entertainment is human suffering.
They use designer narcotics, chemical cocktails I helped refine, that magnify every sensation until a single touch feels like a lightning strike. They strip a human being of their identity, replacing it with response to the whip and the needle. Torture is not a means of interrogation in our world; it is a form of high art. They call it "The Deconstruction."
Madeline believes she is a forensic pathologist. She does not realize that to the men I am selling her to, her medical degree is just an added layer of irony. They will use her knowledge of the human body against her. They will force her to watch as they systematically dismantle Lucy, and then they will ask her to explain the physiological response of her best friend’s terror.
And Lucy... my sweet, fragile Subject Beta. She is a blank canvas. They will drug her until she cannot remember her own name, until she sees her captors as gods and her brother as a myth.
The drugs are the key. We have substances that can induce permanent amnesia or absolute, chemical devotion. We can turn a brilliant surgeon into a mindless thing in less than a month.
I look at the figures in the ledger.
The bid for the "Friends Package.” The Doctor and the Paramedic, is already astronomical. The Elite are eager to see the "Arbiter’s" women reduced to wreckage. It is the ultimate insult to my son. I am not just erasing his work; I am auctioning off his heart to the highest bidder.
I close the book with a satisfying thud.
The transfer is in ninety days.
The auction is now over.
The goddesses have been sold.
And as I look out over my dark kingdom, I realize that I am the only one who truly understands the beauty of a human being: they are worth so much more when they are broken. Or when they are ready to be broken even more.
I finish the last sip of wine. The taste reminds me of the blood I had to spill to build this empire. Most people see a monster in my son, but they forget who wrote the first chapter of his life.
I remember his mother. She was beautiful, but weak. So incredibly sentimental. Deimos was tethered to her from the moment he was born. That pathetic closeness disgusted me.
While I was building the hierarchy of the Elite, while I was trading in the lives and destinies of entire cities, she was teaching him empathy. She taught him to cry.
I had to root that out of him.
I began to break her. Slowly. Psychologically and physically. The more she was tormented, the more she retreated into fanatical faith. She would kneel, clutching a crucifix, begging for forgiveness, while I punished her for her inability to be a wife worthy of my name. Deimos saw it all. The child stood in the corner with wide eyes, torn between love for her and terror of me.
Then came that evening. The "test of loyalty."
"Hand me the box, son," I said to him back then, calmly. I remember how the small, confused child looked up at me. He trusted me. He thought it was a game. That if he obeyed his father, everything would be alright. He handed it to me. The blade caught the candlelight she had lit for her prayers.
I killed her right in front of him. I wanted him to see the life draining out of her. I wanted him to understand that love is just a biological error that leads to extinction. Deimos screamed back then. He cried until he lost his voice. From that day on, I began to forge him. I trained him in coldness, in pain, in the total absence of feeling. But he didn't know that while I was making him into a weapon, I had another project elsewhere.
I found another woman. Another family. Someone who knew nothing of my darkness. That was how Lucy was born. My little princess. She was my private laboratory on the other side of the city. I wanted to see how a child would grow if I granted them the illusion of normalcy, only to snatch it away from them one day.
After a few years, I abandoned them. Without a word. I left them in that illusion of safety, while I watched Lucy grow from a distance. It wasn't out of love. It was out of ownership.
My mind drifts back to the years of silence. The years after Deimos broke his leash and vanished into the city’s grey veins. He called it an escape. I called it a betrayal.
I spent a long time carving him into a man, only for him to turn his back on the hands that shaped him. He severed every tie, disappearing into the underworld like a ghost seeking vengeance. But he forgot one thing: I am the city. I am the shadow he was trying to hide in.
I watched him through every satellite, every silent informant, every grainy security feed. I watched as my son, the boy who held the knife for me, began to build his own legend. He started working for the Elite. Not as a member, but as a tool. A hitman.
He was efficient. Bloodless. He systematically eliminated key players for the Elite, climbing the ladder of their trust one corpse at a time. I knew what he was doing. He thought he was playing a long game. He thought he was gathering enough leverage, enough proximity, to eventually put a bullet in the heart of my entire empire. He wanted to burn down the house I built.
But then, he found Madeline.
