It made no sense, no matter how many ways he tried to think about it. He understood so little about how the Veil and the Third Eye worked that he was pulling conclusions out of the air to satisfy his unsettled mind.
He reworked the situation from beginning to end, starting from the moment he lost connected with the Third Eye. He'd felt how empty it was to be torn away from its grasp. His entire life had been spent using the Veil and the power it gave him. When it was gone, it was the lowest he'd ever been.
He had it back now and he loved it all the more because he'd gone one day without it. If he ever lost it again, he thought he might go insane. He didn't know how others could live without ever knowing the feeling of the Third Eye or ever grasping onto the power of the Veil.
But there had to be slaves who were removed from the Veil. They didn't work for the government and didn't have the privileges he had. The Mekiah had the natural ability to use the Veil's magic in conjunction with theirs and it created problems for the Exteru and Remu.
Any power that wasn't necessary for a Mekiah's life was stripped from them if it couldn't be used for any government gain. A life like that would drive him insane.
He would never say he was lucky, never when he was still chained.
He looked in the direction of the Mekiah. He panted, sweat dripping down his face.
He bit back his words, unsure if he should say anything. He didn't know if they'd seen what he'd seen or if he looked like a complete lunatic to them.
The secrets he had to keep were bigger than anything he'd ever been trusted with. First, there was the Third Eye and now there was the thing that kept coming back to him from the Third Eye.
The bite...it was a fresh wound after the beast's visit though he couldn't really feel it anymore. When its teeth had sunk into him, it was the same as before. The pain was no different.
So, he could tell why he'd screamed or why he'd burst out like that. As embarrassing as it was, he would rather the Mekiah think he was already insane instead of risking others to find out even a smidge of what he was hiding. He couldn't risk someone putting the pieces together, even if most of it didn't make sense.
He was trying to apologize. And it felt strange when he said those words.
The taste it left in his mouth made him scrunch his face, but he hid it. They couldn't see it in the dark anyway, but just thinking they could, made him want to cover it up.
But when all he got was silence, he felt an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The Mekiah didn't even wheeze. Nothing except the white noise plaguing his ears. It was easy to forget that not all Mekiah saw the things he did. Trackers weren't something that could be raised so easily and to lose one would be worse than losing hundreds of ordinary Mekiah. Even so, his outburst probably warranted hesitance if they weren't already scared out of their minds.
The car stopped.
He heard the front doors open and the guards walk out. Their footsteps crunched what sounded like gravel and glass. They couldn't be at the capital so soon, not after driving just a little over an hour. Even that hour felt like a few minutes.
He wondered how long he'd been out of it. How long he'd been locked inside his own head while the beast tortured him with its presence.
The footsteps stopped at the back of the car and the lock snapped open. Just a hint of light shined through, cast by the moon. Cassius looked up, squinting his eyes to get a better look.
His eyes adjusted and he could see the guards standing outside. It was much later than he'd thought, meaning he could already be at the Capital. But he felt no such time had passed. He frowned as the guards jumped into the car and unlocked the chains holding him to the metal bench.
Their rough hands didn't care about the wounds on his wrists or the fact that he wasn't resisting. They grabbed him by the elbows and yanked him from the bench. He gave in to their firm grasp, knowing that he couldn't do anything at this point.
Going with the flow would let him rest for a bit before he would be put to work. Once he got into the Capital he would go back to the old days of tracking that exhausted him to the point of passing out. That work made it easy to fall into a trance, but it also pushed him to the limits he never tested outside of work.
There came an urge over his mind. Something pricked his brain, twisting his thoughts into a jumble. He couldn't quite place the sensation or what it was trying to convey, but all against his own will, he turned to look into the car one more time.
The moonlight showed less than what he saw when he was first put into the car. But even so, he gave him a clear picture he could fill in for himself.
The car was empty. There were no other Mekiah.
Confusion overcame him. His mouth fell open and his heart skipped, dropping to his stomach.
The guards pushed him.
"On the ground," the one to his right said, dragging him by his arm.
He forced himself to look away and to step down. So many things ran through his head then. From the moment he was thrown from the Veil, from the moment he was bitten by the beast, things had been changing for the worst.
His attempts to escape from this hell were diminished and the life he'd built to survive this slavery was falling apart in front of his eyes. And now unexplainable things were happening.
Either he was losing his mind or the beast had found a way into reality.
He was thinking about what it all meant and all the things that didn't make sense. He was at this point that had him questioning everything he understood about the Veil and what it stood for. He'd never been a spiritual person, nor would he ever become one, but the Veil meant certain things to each person.
It was his anchor when the world was crashing around him. It was his safe place when all he wanted to do was end his life where it was.
Time changed things but not the Veil. It was the same things it was hundreds of years ago. Back before it was created, if that time even existed, it would have been bleak. A world without the Veil was destructive and more corrupt than the world today.
And that was just the Veil. Something that could not be seen with the naked eye held power over every living creature. Yet, most things about it could not be understood.
That's where he was right now. He was standing in the middle of what he thought was true and what could never be known. It made his curiosity unbearable and he could do nothing to please it.
The guards dragged him around the car. They were parked on the side of the road almost in the ditch. Two other guards stood at the front with Rexton standing between them. Rexton motioned to the guards holding Cassius. They let go of his arms, but they didn't step away.
He looked at Rexton. He was tempted to turn toward the guards, but he didn't look away from those distant eyes. The movement out of the corner of his eye was hard to ignore. Like a bug biting his arm. He continued to hold Rexton's gaze.
This was all too familiar.
It wasn't just Rexton that liked to do this. He and Cassius had done this before. Not in this setting. Not with just guards to watch them. When he'd pulled his last card and ran, he hadn't expected Rexton to be the one to take it personally. A slave fought for freedom, that wasn't much of a surprise.
He wondered if Rexton saw it as a slap to the face. He shouldn't. Cassius had only done the thing that made the most sense at the time and he wasn't going to worry about how it affected the people keeping him in chains. But learning to get into the minds of his captors never occurred to him until now.
Thinking about being them made his skin crawl. Even if it were to help him gain new knowledge and insight, it would be like crawling into a dead carcass.
Rexton could have been dead. It was hard to tell with his soulless eyes.
Cassius's eyes drifted to Rexton's ear. His eyes became out of focus, blurring between Rexton's lobe and his dark bangs framing his face.
"Put him on his knees."
The guards shoved Cassius to the ground. His knees hit the dirt hard. He stifled his voice.
Rexton pulled out his gun. He flicked his finger over the scanner and pointed it at Cassius. The purple symbol lit up, sparkling brightly in the dark.
Cassius hadn't seen it coming. Whatever this was. It didn't seem like the right thing for Rexton to do, but he knew nothing about the outside world except what he heard. He was taught mostly lies and what he learned on his own had to be taken lightly. Rexton killing him made no sense to him.
He stared down the barrel. He wished things had gone back to how they were before Rexton arrived. Even if he was living in a hole, it was better than dying here where he had no chance to escape. Somehow, it seemed like Iza had more brains than this fucker.
The second it would take for Rexton to pull the trigger spanned out into minutes.
The slow slide of his finger and the way his eyes narrowed reminded Cassius of the determination of an Exteru. They were killers born from iron wombs and raised on needles. Rexton was a Remu with a power greater than most Mekiah and a history erased from the Third Eye.
Cassius knew he was in danger. Yet, he couldn't fully focus on the gun pointed in his face. He stared past it, watching Rexton as if there was a hidden secret playing out on his face. He didn't understand the pull or the need to keep looking into those empty eyes.
He didn't know if he should close his eyes or if he should face his death straight on. It was interesting to think he'd almost died the night before by a man that was the pure opposite of Rexton. Both leaders, men with power. Yet, they used them in very different ways. Perhaps it would be revealed in the end, why Rexton was doing the things he was doing, and who he truly was. Maybe there was a reason behind all this mystery.
Cassius glared at the gun.
And I won't get to fucking see it.
All this shit was happening to him and he wasn't going to get to see a fucking thing when it all ended. That was true punishment.
Rexton pulled the trigger.
Blood splattered across Cassius's face. It pooled down the side of his shoulder, bathing him again and again.
Rexton shot again.
The shot was clean this time, straight through the head. The bullet burst through the skull, shattering bone and brain matter across the dirt road.
Rexton tapped the gun once and sheathed it into his holster. He searched Cassius's face. It seemed like he was satisfied with what he found.
"Toss the bodies outside the border. Strip them and burn it all," he said to the guards. He turned back to Cassius and gave him a sharp nod. "Clean him up before you transfer him up front."
The moment Rexton turned his back, Cassius dropped the facade.
His face and shoulders fell under the weight he'd been holding up during those few seconds. The blood was all over him. He tried to wipe it away, but he ended up smearing it more. His racing heart hurt in his chest, almost burning it hurt so much.
The blood was everywhere. Caked on his face, drying to a crust that cracked below his eyes. The deep red was close to black ink, staining the ground and his clothes. The shock was subsiding. It was no longer hard to hide it.
He hadn't seen this coming. Not in the slightest.
Those guards...they had been from the base. They were Iza's.
Cassius could barely register his surroundings. He stared at the ground, eyes wide and his heart heavy in his chest. The moment was suspended in time. A slow ticking of the clock which moved farther away from reality. He could feel the air around him changing, but it was all the same.
There was genuine fear now. His shaking hands couldn't be hidden and his lost breath was making it hard for him to think about what he should do now. His next move wouldn't matter if he couldn't think. Nothing mattered if he couldn't pull himself together again.
The guards working for Rexton pulled him by the chains that locked his hands together. They dragged him from the ground to the other side of the car.
His shock began to wear off the moment one of the guards unlocked the chains and tugged at his shirt. It took him a second to realize they wanted him to strip. He wasn't fazed. He stripped off his shirt and pants. He hesitated on his underwear but took them off as well.
The second guard pulled out bottles of water from the front of the car and a rag.
His shoulders stiffened as he watched the guard unscrew the caps of the bottled water and throw them to the side. Then, he dumped the water over Cassius. It was stone cold to the point it felt hot.
The water fell over him in the same way the blood had, almost mimicking it in every way. The only thing different besides the color was the smell. The water washed away the stench and the stickiness the blood had left behind. But the crusty flakes had to be scrubbed away. He could barely move his shaky hands.
The first seconds of the surprise shower was awkward with him standing before the guards. He wanted to hide and crawl inside himself, just to get away the guards' eyes. It was a feeling he didn't know what to do with. He scratched at his body, peeling away the dried blood that had crusted in minutes.
The more he scratched at himself the more he felt like he was peeling away a protective layer. He was naked and being doused with cold water outside the Capital. It almost didn't feel real, like he was dreaming. But none of this was in his head. The smells and sights were too vivid to be passed off as a dream or something he'd made up in his head.
A shallow puddle formed at his feet. He shook the water from his hair and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. The guard tossed the empty jugs back into the car and slammed the door shut. In the guard's hands were folded clothes. They were a black military dress with gold trim and silver buttons. It wasn't too different from the uniforms the guards were wearing now, but the cut was slimmer and not typical for the army or guards.
The guard handed him the clothes.
He waited for them to lash out. They didn't.
The first guard walked to the back of the car and back, watching for anyone coming down the road. The second guard kept his eyes on Cassius, watching him with stern eyes. That actually helped him gain some control. He didn't know why he reacted like that.
As he slipped on the pants and the thin undershirt, he focused on the guard's hard gaze.
It was like he was back at the base, just going through his morning routine. Though these were Rexton's guards, they were all under the Exteru influence. Xtavia was the same throughout, corrupted to the core. Whether there was some power struggle going on here, a revolution of some sort, it was all in the same.
It was all coming back to him. The fact that his magic came back after the visit and the strange occurrence of Rexton coming to the base. Things didn't add up. He'd been saying that since the beginning and it wasn't until now that he saw how this wasn't going to be an easy thing to get out of.
He saw Rexton kill two guards. They weren't his, but they were part of Xtavia's military. Was it treason? No doubt it was murder. No fucking shit. But was this deeper than some Remu trying to one up another general?
He didn't know shit about Rexton, but it didn't seem like something he would do just because he could.
The jacket was thicker than he thought. The silver buttons were embossed with the Xtavia symbol. His hands shook as he buttoned up the jacket. When the last button was done up, he pulled on the socks and shoes. Everything was a perfect fit. Each seam and each hem had been placed with delicate hands. The handmade uniform could have fed an entire neighborhood for a week.
"He looks good."
Cassius's head shot up.
Rexton stood at the passenger door with his arms crossed. He looked Cassius up and down. His brown eyes shined as if they knew more than they were letting on.
Rexton was an enigma. A strange occurrence that had wrecked the remainder of Cassius's life to shreds.
When Rexton smiled, his entire face changed from a moody general Cassius could deal with to a poisonous snake ready to strike.
"It's time to go."