August 9th, 2458 - Planet Sanctuary, Sanctuary City - Millionaire District - Teqaku Tower, 78th floor

The girl held her father’s hand, and pressed her forehead to the glass, drinking in the innumerable possibilities below with her wide green eyes. The city that spread out below, with its small towers that wilted below skyscrapers, its fast food restaurants that punctuated each neighbourhood and its millions of people each dreaming of their own possible future, was intoxicating. They stood on a glass walkway, and gazed down at it all; and all of it belonged to them.

‘Look, and remember well, my darling’, her father told her. ‘The Teqaku family are not criminals … we are Emperors! If we weren’t, how could we have built all of this? Common thugs don’t build, or rule, empires. Be proud of your lineage, my darling … for you stand on the shoulders of crippled old men and women—who were crippled carrying the weight of their responsibility to you, and to your children, and to their children. If you ask for the stars, my darling … I will gladly give them to you.’

The woman with blue skin came in, wearing her black and white uniform, and pottered about the room behind them, cleaning her father’s office. The bodyguard stood by a bookshelf, the grizzly scars on his green face contorting seriously as the woman passed him … his hand reached into his jacket, and hovered there for a few seconds. It was a hot summer’s day, and the woman was sweating; but tirelessly, she continued to work. The girl looked into the woman’s eyes, and caught a glimpse of an emotion that she could not understand.

‘That, my darling, is fear’, her father told her. ‘You will understand this feeling well, one day … but for now, you must ignore it. For you, everything must be perfect … I have made it so.’

A tug of the arm, and her eyes wandered back down to the empire beneath.

December 20th, 2458 - Planet Sanctuary, Sanctuary City - Koltura District - The Teqaku Family Mansion

‘Everything … everything is gone … everything …! We’ve been sold out! Who—’

A gunshot cut his hushed fretting short. The girl did not scream. She had been trained not to do so. Her father fell on the door, forcing it open, and she hide under her queen-sized bed as quickly as she could, curling up into a ball. Her father did not look like he was sleeping; his eyes remained open, unblinking. The woman with blue skin was there, holding the gun, her hand pressed to her ear. She stepped over what was once a father, and surveyed the room.

‘… Confirmed kill, the boss is dead’, the woman told the sleek black object in her ear. ‘The wife’s in an ambulance? Well don’t ask me—just see that it doesn’t reach a hospital. President’s orders are to kill the kid as well … no sign of her though … didn’t go through the academy for this. I’ll call you back.’

The ground shuddered. The woman muttered an expletive, whirling around with the gun raised. She flew suddenly, backwards, colliding with the wall, shrieking. There was a loud snap, and then a sound like a sack of eels hitting the floor, its contents spilling out in a slimy explosion. She could not look.

‘Are you alright little girl?’ asked the bodyguard, the scars on his face seeming nastier than usual in the darkness. ‘Don’t look there—close your eyes and follow me. You’ll be safe, I promise.’

They travelled through the mansion’s winding hallways, down to the kitchen, wreathed in darkness. The clock chimed. Eventually they came to the cellar, which they entered. A trap door gave way to a vast cavern, an enormous metal door, and a shiny, black spaceship. They passed it, continuing through the dank, dark passageways until they reached another door. It opened with a kick, and the bodyguard ushered her out into the chilly night air. The stars blinked, and the lights of the city blinked back.

December 21st, 2458 - Planet Sanctuary, Sanctuary City - Razzeh District - Razzeh Children’s Home

‘Treat her like the rest. No special treatment you hear? Just make sure she grows up healthy and tough.’

Those were the last words that she would hear the bodyguard speak for a long, long time. He left her at an orphanage in the early house of the morning, only a few hours after her father had died. He left her in the care of an old woman with a permanent scowl, and then he disappeared into the gloom. The street lamps shone brightly, the bulbs recently changed. As the days passed, and the nights returned, she sat at the windowsill, and every now and then thought that she saw a glimpse of the man who had saved her life. She learned to abandon hope quickly under that strict regime. No one was coming to take her away, and everyone knew whose daughter she was … and they treated her like dirt for it. All hope faded when she saw the tower burning in the distance. Even miles away, it lit up the city skyline. It was a message; it was finality, and it stung.

February 14th, 2459 - Planet Sanctuary, Sanctuary City - Razzeh District - Razzeh Public School

‘Stay away from us!’

The girl recoiled, and raised her hands to cover her head reflexively.

‘Your father was a murderer! We all know who you are—what are you doing, don’t come near us!’

She fled, ducking and weaving as they threw bits of food at her.

*

When she reached the orphanage, it was already dark. The girl had loitered around the school for a few hours, once her detention had ended. The bruises on her arms where the ruler had landed still stung, and one had gone purple. She wouldn’t have hit Mavagan from Class B if she’d just stopped throwing food at her.

The boy who sat next to her on the windowsill had violet skin, and a bruise on his chin. He sniffled, his four eyes gazed at her curiously, and at the bruises on her arms. The night air, though recycled and filled with pollutants, was beautiful tonight, and moths danced under the light of the street lamps.

‘‘Name’s Cosmopoh’, the boy said. ‘They throw things at me too—they don’t like my mom ... not that I’ve ever met her. I heard that she was in the Galadali Mafia though … so I guess I can’t blame them, even if the Galadali Family is gone … and my mom is…’

She turned suddenly, her cheeks flushed and green eyes narrowed.

‘You are not your mother’, she told him. ‘… but you should never be ashamed of her. She’s not here now… but if she was, she wouldn’t want you to be sad ... or scared.’

The boy named Cosmopoh did something that the girl did not expect. He smiled, sniffling loudly.

‘Hey’, he began. ‘You seem nice. If no one wants to talk to us, why don’t we talk to each other?’

She felt something. Her throat was becoming tight, her head ached and her eyes watered. She nodded, curtly, and turned her head away quickly to hide her growing smile.

‘Okay then!’ Cosmopoh said, grinning earnestly. ‘If we’re going to be friends then you’ll need a name … what should I call you?’

She turned again, and looked him in the eyes. For a moment, she said nothing, and then it came to her. A true friend would be just as proud of her lineage as she was.

May 5th, 2464 - Planet Sanctuary, Sanctuary City - Razzeh District - Razzeh High School

The bell rang. The headmaster had a long, hooked nose, thin lips and long, white antennae that swirled around his balding grey head and draped over his shoulders.

‘Tell him Boss’, Cosmopoh said. ‘We didn’t do nothin’, did we?’

‘Yeah Boss, it was self-defence, we didn’t mean nothing by it’, Amarat sneered.

The three teenagers sat across from their headmaster; Cosmopoh with his fists clenched in his lap, Amarat with her legs crossed, and she was sat front and centre; the Boss, green eyes narrowed and defiant. Dust particles floated in the orange glow of evening light, and it settled on the polished oak desk on which the headmaster’s hands fidgeted relentlessly. They made him uncomfortable, and the Boss knew it.

‘The other two I understand ... but I expected better from you’, the headmaster said with a sigh, massaging his brow. ‘You’re a gifted student, but you’ve also been a problem since you arrived in this district; a record of bullying since you were still in grade school, and so on … It’s no secret who your father was, but you are not your father. I would have thought you’d want to escape the fate his mistakes have predetermined for you.’

For a moment, the Boss was silent, but then she leaned forward, and found herself smiling almost imperceptibly as the headmaster flinched.

‘We all make mistakes headmaster’, she told him. ‘They are nothing to be afraid of. Those four, very rich, very smart boys with their broken jaws, who were rushed to hospital an hour ago … they made the mistake of starting a fight they couldn’t win. I do hope they’ll learn from their mistake, as I have.’

The headmaster broke out in a cold sweat, and Amarat snickered. Cosmopoh let out a satisfied huff. They had plans for their suspension already, the Boss had decided on them as they waited outside the headmaster’s office for interrogation. Under-City Kings were playing on Saturday, and someone had to resell their concert tickets for an absorbent price.

September 4th, 2469 - Planet Sanctuary, Sanctuary City - Razzeh District - an abandoned house

The girl had become a woman. Her days as ‘the Boss’ where over. One little mistake, and she was left with a problem that she couldn’t handle alone … but she was too ashamed to tell her High School comrades about. She leaned her head back against the cold wall of a ruined kitchen, and gently rocked the baby in her arms. She had her eyes. A fly buzzed in the building. She tried to follow it with her eyes, as she scanned from a cracked countertop to a shattered window. The front door creaked open. The woman’s eyes darted to it, as the sounds of traffic spilled in to the room. A man stood in the doorway; a man whose grizzled face she knew was adorned by scars, scars which were hidden beneath a short, white beard. Her bodyguard had returned.