“And the boy wanted to change that?”
“He wanted to try, at least. See, he’d realized something through all this … that he was just one of many, in a line that stretched back hundreds of generations. That it wasn’t his burden, but his responsibility. There was more at stake. And to change things, he’d have to root out the festering tumor at the heart of it. He needed to dethrone the shithead.”
“And how’d he plan to do that?”
Cavalon shook his head wearily. “To be honest, there wasn’t much of a plan. For a time, he tried to forge alliances, garner some respect so he might be able to replace the shithead on the Allied Monarchies’ board.”
“I’m assuming there’s a ‘but’？” she asked.
He nodded. “But he was railroaded at every turn. The shithead knew the boy’s plans opposed his vision for the future of the SC. He wouldn’t have him taking over, wouldn’t let him tear down everything he’d built. So the boy responded the only way he thought could make the shithead listen…” His jaw tightened, and he rolled his neck side to side a few times as he let out a breath through his nose. “By blowing it up.”
Adequin threw him a surprised look. “Wait … literally?”
“Quite. The boy picked a location where it’d hurt the most. He went for the jugular, as his father would have said. Then he built himself a couple hydrogen bombs.”
“He built them himself?”
“He built them himself,” he confirmed. “Because the shithead had eyes and ears everywhere. The shithead owned majority shares of every weapons manufacturer in the Core. The shithead’s fingers were in every fucking proverbial pie. He was infallible.”
“Until…”
He shrugged. “I guess, until his spawn spawned a halfway intelligent kid who also came with a backbone and absolutely zero sense of self-preservation.”
She blinked at him for a few long moments, then had to forcibly close her gaping mouth. She’d imagined a whole slew of immature stunts he could have pulled that would have sent Augustus Mercer over the edge once and for all … but this? She’d have thought he was lying if he didn’t look too exhausted to be deceptive.
“What was the jugular?” she asked. She hadn’t caught this bit of news from the Core yet. Though maybe it’d been conveniently removed from the headlines.
“A state-of-the-art Drudger-cloning facility,” he answered. “Set to be unveiled and opened the following week.”
“Before it was occupied?”
Cavalon gave a small shrug. “The boy’s not a murderer.”
“This facility … It was meant to clone the Drudger army?”
“Right. The Guardians, as the shithead so modestly coined them.”
“And how’d that work out?”
“It didn’t. It slowed things down, hindered progress. And it pissed the shithead off, which was almost worth it in itself.” Cavalon closed his eyes and his voice faltered as he continued. “But it changed nothing. The shithead is still on his throne, and now the boy is at the edge of the universe, where he should have already died, but … didn’t. For now.”
“Well…” Adequin sighed. “That story’s kind of a downer.”
“I said it got interesting, not that it had a happy ending.”
“I gotta say, Mercer…” she began, blowing out a long breath. “I didn’t expect you to be a revolutionary.”
He coughed out a nervous, brisk laugh and threw a furtive look around the small washroom. “Void, don’t say that too loud…”