Red Rising(71)

“How many of House Ceres did you kill in your raids?” I ask.

“Suck my balls.” He spits bloody phlegm. I dodge.

I resist kicking him there, barely. Already got Pax for the day. Titus has the gall to ask what has happened.

“I rule House Mars now.”

“Outsourced your dirty work to the Minervans, eh? Didn’t want to face me? Typical Golden coward.”

I am afraid of him. I don’t know why. Yet I bend on a knee and stare him in the eye.

“You are a pissing fool, Titus. You never evolved. Never got past the first test. You thought this whole thing is about violence and killing. Idiot. It’s about civilization, not war. To have an army, you must first have a civilization—you went straight to violence like they wanted us to. Why do you think they gave us of Mars nothing and the other Houses have so many resources? We’re meant to fight like mad, but we’re meant to burn out like you did. But I beat that test. Now I’m the hero. Not the usurper. And you’re just the ogre in the dungeon.”

“Oh, huzzah. Huzzah!” He tries clapping his bound hands. “I don’t give a piss.”

“How many did you kill?” I ask.

“Not enough.” He tilts his large head. His hair is greasy and dark with dirt, almost as though he’s tried to black out the gold. He seems to like the dirt. It’s under his fingernails, coats his burnished skin. “I tried to bash their heads in. Kill them before the medBots came. But they were always so fast.”

“Why did you want to kill them? I don’t understand what the point is. They are your own people.”

He smirks at this. “You could have changed things, you bastard.” His large eyes are calmer, sadder than I remember. He does not like himself, I realize. Something about him is too mournful. The pride I thought he had is not pride; it is just scorn. “You say I’m cruel, but you had matches and iodine. Don’t think I didn’t know even before I smelled you. We starved, and you used what you found to become leader. So do not lecture me on morality, you backstabbing piss-sucker.”

“Then why didn’t you do something about it?”

“Pollux and Vixus were frightened of you. So the rest were too. And they thought Goblin would kill them in their sleep. What could I do if I was the only one who wasn’t scared?”

“Why aren’t you?”

He laughs hard. “You’re just a boy with a slingBlade. First I thought you were hard. Thought we saw things similarly.” He licks a bloody lip. “Thought you were like me, only worse because of that coldness in your eyes. But you’re not cold. You care about these pisspricks.”

My eyebrows pinch together. “How’s that?”

“Simple. You made friends. Roque. Cassius. Lea. Quinn.”

“So did you. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus.”

Titus’s face contorts horribly. “Friends?” he spits. “Friends with them? Those Goldbrows? They are monsters, soulless bastards. Nothing but a bunch of cannibals, all of them. They did the same as I did, but … pfah.”

“I still don’t understand why you did what you did to the slaves,” I say. “Rape, Titus. Rape.”

His face is quiet and cruel. “They did it first.”

“Who?”

But he’s not listening. Suddenly he’s telling me about how they took “her” and raped “her” in front of him. Then the slaggers came back a week later to do it some more. So he killed them; bashed their heads in. “I killed the bloodydamn monsters. Now their daughters bloodywell get what she got.”

It’s like I’ve been punched in the face.

Oh hell.

A chill spreads through me.

Bloodydamn.

I stumble back.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Titus asks. If I were a Gold, I might have not noticed, might’ve just been befuddled by the odd word. I’m no Gold. “Darrow?”

I pull my way into the hall. I move in a haze. It all makes sense. The hate. The disgust. The vengeance. Cannibals eat their own. He called them cannibals. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus—who are their own? Their own. Golden. Bloodydamn. Not gory. Titus said bloodydamn. No Gold says that. Ever. And he called it a slingBlade, not a reaper’s scythe.

Oh hell.

Titus is a Red.





29


Unity



Titus is what Dancer did not want me to become. He is like Harmony. He is a creature of vengeance. A rebellion with Titus at the helm would fail in weeks. Worse, if Titus continues this way, continues unstably, he puts me at risk. Dancer lied, or else he did not know that there are other Reds who’ve been carved, other Reds who have donned the mask of the Golds. How many more are there? How many has Ares planted here, in the Society? In the Institute? It doesn’t matter if it is a thousand or just one. Titus’s instability puts every Red ever carved into a Gold at risk. He puts Eo’s dream at risk. And that is something I cannot abide. Eo did not die so that Titus can kill a few kids.

I sob in the armory as I resolve what must be done.

More blood will stain these hands, because Titus is a mad dog and must be put down.


In the morning, I pull him into the square in front of the House. They clear away the remnants of the night’s feast. I even have the slaves there to watch. A few Proctors flicker high above. There is no medBot floating beside them, which must stand as their silent consent.