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Luka took a deep breath. For the last time, he pressed his hand to his left wrist. Pulse steady. His heart calm. He glanced toward Heperu. The owner’s gaze carried the promise of pain. Winning wasn’t enough. He had to crush the competition. Reach the finals and defeat Hyuna. If he failed, he would lose his life — in suffering unlike anything he had ever endured. He had no doubt the alien had plenty of ideas beyond surgeries without anaesthetic and stopping his heart. Not that Luka even considered losing. Who (or what?) was he without that pulsating, cosmic crowd? This was his sole purpose in life. The reason he existed. A perfectly engineered idol.
Tick tock.
He stepped onto the stage with steady strides through utter darkness. [Reader] was here too. He couldn’t see her, but he knew where she was supposed to stand. He allowed himself a thoughtless glance toward the spot where she should be. A familiar shadow moved gracefully across the dimmed floor. For the time she had been given to him, she had been intriguing. Fate had it that they always missed each other. Be it in the Anakt Garden or during the Alien Stage. And now she had made it to the semifinals.
He put on a wide smile. You can’t win without knowing your opponent. And he had already gotten to know [Reader] intimately, in every sense of the word. She was the one who slipped away into the Garden at night. The place where future stars grew and bloomed frowned upon insubordination. Luka tried not to rebel, but sometimes he gave in to weakness. They met fleetingly, sharing a space unobserved — something scarce beneath the artificial dome of the sky. At least, not enough for all who desired it. The girl would stare at him with a curious expression, while he ran his fingers through the artificially green grass. She existed somewhere beside him. Luka broke the silence less often than [Reader]’s owner broke bones. She hadn’t managed to draw much from him, and objectively speaking, someone might have said they didn’t know each other at all. But Luka didn’t need words to understand what motivated others, so he considered he knew her quite well. Even if, in choir practice, they stood side by side like strangers, their high voices singing hymns to the Great Anakt without sharing so much as a glance.
The lights flashed. In a second, Luka felt them flood his figure. He knew that on the big screen, he appeared like a star in the darkness. His white robes billowed in the artificial wind. His hair had been bleached so harshly he still felt pain at the crown of his head. A diamond-studded collar gleamed — the very thing the segyeins fought over. “He must look this way. Submissive, yet above the rest of the pets,” they had written in media. “Let them get something out of it,” Heperu repeated, speaking of potential support.
Beyond the performance itself, much of it came down to marketing. Luka’s owner knew this well. That’s why he had made him take part in those extra photoshoots and commercials. The very same ones [Reader] had participated in. Then everything had to be spun, veiled, enchanted. And Luka was good at that. The media immediately seized on the red thread tossed their way. They stoked what he could no longer sustain. Alien Stage buzzed with rumours, with him at the centre. He soothed them because that was what was expected of him. He had to appear natural, innocent. When [Reader] grabbed him by the collar in the dressing room, he had only laughed brightly. Whether it was anger or a hidden feeling, he hardly cared.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
The crowd began chanting his name. He tilted his head and reached for the microphone. The air split with the first note. Perfect. Polished to flawlessness by throat-tearing training. A note that would have earned him an S+ pinned to his forehead back in the Anakt Garden, with others falling to their knees. He swept his hand toward the audience. All those disgusting, imperfect bodies — they were potential votes. He wondered how they saw him. Probably as nothing more than a worm crawling across the earth. And he had crawled, in pain, more than once. Too modified to be human; too human to stand as an equal among aliens. He needed more votes.
He knew what he had to do. He closed the distance to [Reader]. She allowed it, too absorbed in her own part of the song. His body gave everything it had. One more step. His hands moved like two swans, gliding through the thick air. He was grown in a test tube. Perfect. Unlike her, he didn’t sweat. His breathing never quickened. He danced, cutting through the air like a flawlessly honed blade. And she was so disgustingly… human.
Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.
The angel of death’s kiss was bland. Luka felt lips soft as a decaying corpse. Then came the stench of rot. In [Reader]’s eyes lay boundless shock. Luka lingered for only three heartbeats. That hesitation would cost her life. He knew it as he turned his back on her. One. Two. Three. Spin. Another verse. Meanwhile, she faltered. For a second. The stage erupted around them. The aliens had noticed. This was the 49th Alien Stage. They would accept nothing less than perfection. She had missed a step. He didn’t need to look. Her heel struck off-beat. She couldn’t keep up with the murderous tempo he had set.
He already knew he had won. The segyeins screamed, rising to their feet. He didn’t even glance at the other races. Heperu was probably nodding in minimal approval. You don’t reward a dog for obeying its master. Was Hyuna watching him, analysing every move? Has she been waiting eagerly for their meeting?
“Shame about the dress,” crossed his mind. Not long ago, he had stripped her of a nearly identical one, and now it would be ruined in blood. Red did not suit her. He had tested it when he sank his teeth into her neck. The bite mark was gone now but he had noticed hidden bruises on her thighs, carefully concealed from the public eye. So her owner had caught her. “Idiot,” he concluded silently, singing the final verse.
He stood at centre stage. The lights blazed down on his back. From his shoulders sprouted snowy wings. The performance he had given the aliens brought a storm of applause. But [Reader]’s expression was a spectacle reserved for him alone. He knew what would happen next. He shut his eyes for just a second.
Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.
He blinked and she was gone.