Episode 7 - The Horned Hare

  Chapter 60 - Turbid Smoke

  “Oi, lunch is here!” quips Nessa as she unbolts my door.

  Pooka lifts his head from his paws, pricking his ears forward as Nessa enters. Her own symbiont winds between Nessa’s legs as she shuts the door behind her, and I hear the bolt slide back into place. She’s wearing a thin white button-up shirt and shorts, which reveal almost everything. I don’t know if she’s consciously showing she’s unarmed every time she comes to visit.

  It’s not the first time I’ve been exiled to a holding cell. This stay ?so far has lasted for a little over a week.

  I drop the tablet I was browsing onto the table next to my cot and sit up in the bed as Nessa turns, putting down the tray for me on my side table. One hand hangs from my neck as I watch her, fingers carefully pressing the bandage over the wound in my collar where Regina stabbed me with that needle. It’s not wide, but it is deep. Aquila’s medical care is top-notch, it’ll heal. The tablet isn't mine, Adrian snuck it in for me. I never even got to catch up on my messages from Murasaki after a month in the field.

  “Ta. Who’s outside?” I ask. There is a bowl of some vegetable soup and bread, and some leftovers from dinner the night before. My stomach has seldom been up for eating, but the thin broth of the soup seems like it might go down.

  “Who do you think? Blake’s been stuck down here on guard duty with you almost full-time,” says Nessa. “I have two presents!”

  First, a cookie wrapped in some reusable wrap, which she draws from her pocket, and she gives me a wink as she puts it down on the tray. The second, a Vespa, who crawls over the crown of her head from within her short blonde hair. She raises a hand, and the insect crawls onto her wrist, then holds her hand out to my ear letting it step off onto my lobe. Finally, she slumps down next to me and heaves a big sigh, leaning backwards and staring up at the ceiling as if she might stop to take a nap on my cot.

  Her symbiont continues to stream between her feet, tail almost vibrating with excitement at something and yowling loudly as he looks up at Nessa. I pointedly refuse to look down at him, but Pooka draws his lip back in a snarl of disdain.

  Some brothers are as stupid as humans.

  “Adrian was sick of you sending me back with riddles,” says Nessa, patting her symbiont with one hand to calm it. “He wanted to come talk directly.”

  I give a dismissive snort. It has been hard trying to communicate what I’ve been wanting to say with only go-betweens.

  “It is much simpler. Hello again. How have you been?”

  “Fucking shitty,” I declare aloud. “What did Regina put in me?”

  I pieced together that I had been out for about a day. In that time, a medical team was called in. On my back, about as high as my navel and just around the curve of my waist where my eyes can’t see but my fingers can feel, is a slight wound held closed with surgical glue. I’ve pressed the site enough with my fingers to know whatever they placed is deep in my innards, far too deep for me to dig it back out at the wound site before it closes. I can even feel the dissolvable stitches beneath my skin on my inner layers of flesh where they closed the body wall. It is uncomfortable, but clean and healing quickly. I’ve been in worse pain.

  I woke under the supervision of a nurse in my holding cell. Given the topic of the conversation that led to my present circumstances, I’d been terrified that other things had been planted inside me ‘til a day prior when I had to bang on my door and demand some sanitary necessities.

  “Guess.”

  “I don’t want to play a mank-ass guessing game. Is it a bomb?”

  Nessa raises both eyebrows. “That’d be kinda fucked up?”

  “And unnecessarily messy. As I understand it, it’s an internal tranquilizer. A few of us have access to the control modules.”

  “Us?”

  “All owners voted unanimously for its placement.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “It was that or submit you for culling and recycling, Conrada. This was bad.”

  “I heard you blew the Queen clear across the room,” chimes in Nessa, surprisingly upbeat given the subject matter. “Wish I were there to see it. Bruised her up something wicked. Almost everyone has one wound or another they are nursing…”

  I drift into moody silence, looking at my palm. It was certainly the most of Pooka’s power I’ve ever channeled. We can effortlessly control the other’s body; every other human must control their symbiont's powers through their bonds. It just made sense that I could control his powers too once I thought about it.

  But moving muscle and flesh has been something I’ve been able to do my whole life, symbiont free-energy magic not so much. It’s the first time I’ve ever been able to generate so much electricity in one go. I’ve tried to move heat like he can, or ‘call’ to elements and matter around me telekinetically, and had no luck. I suspect I just have to ‘do it’ once to give my brain an idea of what it feels like before I could reliably reproduce the use of his power. I’m very certain I could not change shape like he does; I’m not made of the same things, and it feels like that would be important. At least I don’t think I’ve ever turned into black mist.

  I lift my bowl of soup and take a sip. “So what do you want?”

  “We can talk once Nessa is out of the room. I need to ask ?more direct questions than we’ve been able to pass so far. Have you been going through the footage I sent?”

  “Yes, not much else to do.”

  “I bought a pack of cards?” offers Nessa, digging into another one of her pockets. “We could play a round of trump. I don’t need to be back upstairs for a few hours; I've got dinner duty on the chore roster.”

  “I guess. You think you could get my drawing supplies?” I ask.

  Nessa rolls her head from side to side within my blankets. “I can’t get into your room to get ‘em.”

  I groan. “Yeah, I have no idea what they did with any of my devices. I’d give you my credentials if I could. You gonna play cards then?”

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  Nessa rolls upright again, picking up her symbiont and dumping it on the bed behind her. “Yeah, alright.”

  “Sounds like it’s been getting serious already. It’s been what, like eight months?” I reply as I shuffle a new hand onto my blanket, which we are both using to pad our bottoms on the hard floor of my cell.

  “I like her,” says Nessa, picking up each of the cards I deal in front of her and beginning to arrange them in her hand. “She’s fun, she’s smart, she’s cute. I’ve never” - she takes a nervous breath - “I’m a little scared honestly.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, how do I bring it up to Regina?”

  “Fuck. Don’t. Definitely don’t.”

  “What if…”

  “Don’t. You’ve been here longer than me, and even I know that’s a bad idea. She’ll use you for experimental surgery next.”

  “It wasn’t experimental. I’m sorry but-”

  “I’m not talking to you. Fuck off. Stop listening.”

  “I’m hoping I might be able to introduce her to my mum…”

  I pause suddenly, my mouth dropping open. “You’re in contact with your parents?”

  Nessa nods. “Have I never mentioned them? They’re here in Apex City. We were local purchases.”

  “Huh,” I reply noncommittally, picking up my hand of cards. “Are most folks in contact with their families?”

  “Everyone that is local enough to be on the intranet and within the Apex firewall. One of the armory technicians visited their family over at Kaidou late last year.”

  “How?”

  “Good behavior, I guess. The Queen or someone else in management signed off on their leave. Anyway, the point is that it's not unheard of to have relationships with people outside Aquila. I was hoping that there might be a way we could be something more,” says Nessa wistfully, playing the first card.

  “Have you brought her back here?”

  “A few times now.”

  “You ever seen her place?”

  “She says she lives in a shared dorm. Too hard to get in and out unseen.”

  “Not for you, surely,” I mutter.

  “Maybe, but I’m not telling her what I do. I’m not stupid. I just said I work as a data entry clerk.”

  “A data entry clerk with a private room?” I question.

  Nessa gives me a sly grin. “She’s smart. I think she knows when not to ask too many questions. You’d like her, I think.”

  “Hmm. I win,” I say, playing the last card and gathering the deck up again.

  “I’m seeing her later tonight. We’re gonna try having an actual date. I’m wine-ing and dining her with all my data entry clerk pay.” Nessa grins to herself as she leans backwards on her palms. I can’t help but return her smile. She seems so carefree and hopeful.

  “Sounds fun. Better than here,” I raise my voice on the final words, hoping Adrian or Blake hears me.

  Nessa frowns as she returns to her previous thoughts. “You reckon I could bring it up with Rhett or Shion? See what they think my odds are of getting approval to have an external relationship?”

  “Shion maybe. Fuck Rhett.”

  Nessa giggles. “I heard you wouldn’t let him through the door when he stopped by after you woke up.”

  I glance at her sternly, shuffling the cards in my hands to keep them busy. “So?” I sniff. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Maybe. He’s been moping in the gun range chewing the technicians out.”

  “Good.”

  “You should talk to him.”

  I toss one card across the room, watching it slice through the air like a knife, then pivot on a puff of air and drift back and forth as it flutters chaotically to the ground near where Pooka is resting and watching us with unblinking red eyes. Nessa’s symbiont quickly went to sleep in the sheets of my cot. “I don’t really want to.”

  “Why?”

  “He put a gun to my head,” I spit.

  “Not the first time.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” I groan, tossing another card and watching land halfway across my cell. “You weren’t there.”

  And she wasn’t there when he let it go as well.

  I know he has no ownership stake yet, so his vote was not among those that violated my autonomy and planted whatever now lives in my back. I know he did exactly what I’d expect him to do, always striking unerringly for the kill, unflinching in his path to the fastest solution to any situation. It was his own mother…

  And yet I fucking hate his guts right now. He just stood there and let Regina walk all over him, all of his command and confidence a shadow of how he is when she isn’t in the room. And he just fucking agreed to see whoever these random women are that she’s been setting him up with, not the first time to by the sound of it.

  I’d finally stopped looking for the gun.

  I almost hate him more than I hate Regina. More than we hate Adrian for just putting up with all the fucked-up shit that happens here in the shadows, like it’s just some unavoidable cost of doing business. It doesn’t matter that I know how weary he is, his thoughts stretched so thin in so many directions he barely has a thought to give for himself, let alone another. We almost hate him more than fucking Shion for claiming Regina just gets to be the way she is. What the fuck did she ever do to deserve something as forgiving as grace? It doesn’t matter that I’ve heard the whispered secrets - that her relationship with Owen is a sham to keep him bound as Aquila’s silent benefactor. That the child she tried to tie him down with never made it. That her ?habits with drink became worse after. I don’t fucking care what toll selling herself extracts. She made her fucking bed, she can sleep in it.

  I would rather grip my newfound hate, hot and wretched in my gut, than face the fearful side glances I’ve seen as people pass my door to bring me food, like I’m a live grenade on the floor.

  I’m already alone more than I am working as a team anymore.

  We need not be here. We could destroy them all.

  The temptation is strong. It’d be so easy. This mank cell couldn’t contain us. We’re here only because I have not decided what to do with myself. We’d call the metal in the door, the bolt would tear right through, bending like liquid to our summons. Heat would come spiraling, leaving behind a trail of translucent ice.

  We’d boil through the halls. We’d dance and sing. Turbid smoke and crackling lightning.

  And below the city is sick water. So much water. The waves would come climbing to us, the tide rolling into our summons. How far could we reach if we called? I’ve never truly tested Pooka’s limits. I’ve never wanted to. Before now.

  And I’d keep on being alone.

  I throw another card. This one spins and juts off to drift under my cot.

  And we’d never get that far. A different kind of trap has been planted inside me. I have no idea what controls it? What sets it off? What happens when it snaps shut? And when I go down, Pooka goes with me. I am the soft, squishy, weak-link.

  I’ve never felt so much pure, restless hatred in my life.