His knuckles stung.
Probably not as much as Rohen’s blackening eye. He stumbled back into his chair and nursed it. “I should lodge a complaint with the Matriarchs, but they don’t give a shit about male-on-male violence,” he laughed. “They’re more shocked when there isn’t any. I could kill you now and get nothing more than a few months in solitary. Probably be out in time for the trials.”
“Why don’t you then?”
“It would be fun to finally break Elissa, for she would snap for sure. But who needs that bitch breathing down their neck? Had enough of that already.” He did that smile again and laughed for no reason that Calix could determine except madness.
“What is wrong with you? Why would you put yourself through this over and over?”
“Oh, it’ll all be over soon.” His laughing continued. “Just a few more weeks.” And continued.
Tatto
o
How did I end up here? Whisper thought, looking up at the main orphanage. The last few days had been spent in her bed in her old room in her grandmother’s home, without love or pity or words. Silence draped the windows of the house and only flapped occasionally with the opening of doors and the pattering of footsteps between rooms, like wings spreading from the tower balconies. She’d lain in bed drifting in and out and dreaming of those wings, jumping as though she had a pair, falling when reality set in. At night she went for walks because it was cooler and there was no one around except perhaps the hand of fate with a knife in it. She hadn’t been cut open yet. There was still time for that.
She stared at the imposing wall with its cell-like windows and wondered what it would be like to work here. She shivered, and pulled the jacket she had found in the laundry room tight around her shoulders. Finders keepers. She thought if she put it on it might make her someone new; who didn’t miss the towers, miss being a train-girl, miss her friends and miss the midnight meetings. This new skin wasn’t really working though. It wasn’t her size. It wasn’t her.
She was a train-girl and that was all she’d ever wanted to be. Her blood mother had barely looked at her as she announced her punishment. Now she’d missed her chance for sundown, and right in front of her Grace’s face – she would have remembered her then, years and decades into the future. Even now she couldn’t hate her. She loved her – my mother, Quintessa – but had no idea how she could find her way back.
No excommunicated girl had ever found her way back.
She looked around and then took the steps up to the front entrance.
The glass in the door was cool to her cheek as she pressed them together, searching for signs of life. A glow drifted down the staircase from above, and beyond, far rooms were lit but their light did not travel far. All was dark and silent. She considered knocking. She could talk to the night guard, if there was one. She could be the night guard, if there wasn’t one. But a night guard couldn’t hire her. Best to come back tomorrow.
Was this what she wanted?
She thought of all the boys sleeping inside and wondered if she had what it took. The older Matrons all had hard stares and thin lips – Is that what she would become? Could she cane them? Could she puncture their arms with needles and drain their blood? Could she watch them go white? Pour water over their faces if they stepped out of line? Lock them for hours in a small cupboard? She’d heard the whispers.
They were boys, but they would become men. Men who needed to know their place in this world. So yes, she could.
She could also teach. If the Matrons gave her a book to teach from. She sighed and her breath fogged the window. She had nothing special that she could teach. Her finger trailed the tribal tattoo of the bloodline of Quintessa on the window, and she turned back down the steps. Tomorrow.
***
Whisper was hired as a tattooist apprentice, and before long she was inking the eyebrows of the toddlers when it came to name them. The nurseries were loud with screaming and stamping feet, and boys asking the same questions over and over in their toddler-talk. “Aye turn, aye turn, aye turn.” She’d touch the screen set up on a high table, away from small fingers, which would generate the next name and number. She’d grab the nearest boy and plant them in the chair and lock their wrists to the arms and whirr up the needle. Each one screamed with pain. Before long the screams became as singular as the faces. These boys weren’t individuals. They were a single entity.
Giving them each a name of their own didn’t help: it was Gage the Twentieth, or Pawl the Thirty-Eighth – hardly original distinctions. Your habitual déjà vu.
She still dreamed of the towers. Of her old room. Her old work. After a few days tattooing boys she began adding flourishes to the letters, remembering the calligraphy classes she took as a train-girl, and the artistic outings into town. As soon as Matron Weebly noticed however, she put a stop to this practice. “Just tattoo their names,” she said. “They won’t want to be walking around with flowers on their head when they’re older.”
At age ten, the tattoos were reskinned. The boys here were more rowdy; “Where’s Weebly? You’re prettier. Can you do more tattoos? Can you tattoo me again when I’m older? Can you do birds? Can you do trees? Can you do the city? I want a hoverbike blowing dust out from behind it.”
She’d smile at all the requests and say simply, “I’m not allowed. Maybe when you’re older.” Then she thought about how great it would be to open her own parlour, so she began practicing on herself; blending colours and creating sharp lines, and before long her thighs were covered with shapes ready to be filled in. A little later and the boys were calling her “Matron Needleheart.” A rather odd name, she thought, but she rolled with it.
Staying late in the art room on the ground floor, the whirr of the vibrating needle echoing down the corridors until early dawn.
Walking through the halls in the hush of the morning, back to her room.
Trying to ignore the growing bank of blood in the Blood Store, the red glow oozing out as if the glass was stained.
Shucking the jacket off her back and throwing it on the bed.
Sleeping through the rowdy noise of morning boyhood.
Dreaming of her old life.
Routine
Calix followed his instincts and Rohen after the first conditioning program, finding it easy enough to keep up with the slow-moving rickshaw. The guy was like Kirillion times a hundred, completely unable to hide his madness. Later that night when Elissa came home, he told her about the session and Rohen’s meandering path back home, stopping at hardware stores, WellWorks and the orphanage.
“He could be up to something,” she said. Together they wondered what and why – surely he wouldn’t squander one final chance at the trials. “Maybe you should try and keep an eye on him. And I’ll check the trials register to see if he’s signed up for the next one. And add my name to it for that matter. If he has, and he starts going around the garages and salvage yards, we’ll know he’s probably just fine-tuning his hoverbike.”
“Sign me up too while you’re there.” It seemed like ages since he’d stepped off his own hoverbike, abandoning it the other side of the sand mountain.
“I don’t want to have to kick your ass, but I will,” smiled Elissa. There was something wholesome about her which he liked, but she also had a hard edge, one that took no shit.
“I’ve ridden the sands. These plains will be a walk down the street in comparison.” Truth was he was itching to get a hoverbike. “How soon after registering do we get one?”
“A week or two. You can borrow mine if you like.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you are planning on making yourself useful by keeping an eye on him, keep your distance. I don’t trust him.”
As caring as she was, she was also born and bred in this town, one that consciously or unconsciously condescended men. “I survived the sands. I think I can handle this guy.”
***
It packed a punch. Elissa’s hoverbike would have eaten great gulps of sand and spat it bac
k hundreds of feet into the air had it been outside this bowl. He was careful to take it easy until he had it pointed in the direction he wanted to go, without obstruction. And then full throttle.
The dome stopped being a dome after a certain point. It was just a wall that filled the horizon and the sky, so temptingly opaque he felt he’d be able to just keep going when he got there. Burst through into the lush, green canopies of the forest and begin swerving between the long fronds and vines that hung down from the boughs so tall they hid the skyscrapers from view. As he neared, his heart began to race because inside was Annora, but also inside were things he’d never imagined he’d ever see. What if those archive videos weren’t archive videos at all, but shots taken from within this dome? He imagined the patter of rain and the wet splashes of puddles as he walked under neon lights down blocks lined with theatres and bars and diners. Others pattering away under umbrellas or huddled in doorways. Dark alleyways like mazes without ceilings. Monorails and trams whining to a crescendo and then echoing away as they passed. Standing hand in hand with Annora and letting the rain drench their bodies on some apartment balcony overlooking a future they never thought possible. His heart was racing because suddenly this was something that could happen.
On his bed back at Avery’s sat his backpack with its flap open and the contents spilled across the mattress. Kirillion’s drawing of Annora was exquisite. Had she sat there as he drew her, he didn’t know. The thought made him sick. Dwelling on this whole situation made him sick. He had to put it from his mind and focus on what needed to be done.
And first was getting in. He stopped the hoverbike just short of the dome and walked the rest of the way, the ground dipping slightly to meet it. Hexagonal shapes twenty or thirty feet wide interconnected the panels, riddled with a webwork of tiny threads that could have been cable or wire of some sort. The panels were thick and solid when he knocked. The scale of it struck him, sending him to his knees with his forehead pressed against the coolness. Did he really think it would be so easy? His last nail of uncertainty was well and truly hammered.
So dense was the foliage that looking through the glass was like looking out into the night from the comfort of Sanctum’s watchtower: black beyond a few feet.
The sand mountain.
The wall of the dome.
Force had got him through one obstacle. The second would need guile.
***
Rohen hadn’t registered, at least not when Elissa checked earlier. Calix listened to her as they relaxed in the northern district pool. It was her day off and she enjoyed nothing more than cooling off here: as she was female she had an automatic pass into the clubhouse, but Calix would have to wait until his application with her recommendation had passed through checks. “And you’ll need one,” she said. “We’ll probably be spending a lot of time here as the summer goes on.”
“Why aren’t there more pools?”
“There’s one for the palaces. Other than that – probably lack of water. I’m not sure really.”
“Seems to me that a segregated pool would have been made.”
“What? And miss enjoying the view?” She let out a laugh. They were lying in the shallow beached end with the water just about covering their bodies.
Calix had to admit this was nice. Where’s the rest of the town?
He looked down his body and across the water’s surface; his ribcage only hurt occasionally now and the wound was almost completely healed, on the outside. He’d also regained some of his strength from Elissa’s cooking. The heads and bodies of bronzed swimmers and players bobbed across the water, almost obscuring the far end.
“Do you think he’s going to race in the next one?” asked Calix.
“Maybe his injury is worse than we thought and he’s gonna skip one. No skin off my back.” Her slick wet hair dangled back into the water as she tilted her head.
Calix mirrored her, and sighed – this water really was like luxury, better than the air-co in some of the buildings.
“You alright?”
He laughed. “Yeah, just thinking about everything. Have I said thank you enough yet?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
He gave her a smile and then squashed his body under the water as far as it would go.
***
As the images flashed by on the screen, Rohen stared vacantly. He had come to enjoy the sessions, even if his partner in crime apparently didn’t. He heard Calix moan to his left. What was there to moan about, he thought? A comfortable seat. A cool breeze. Certainly beat being stuffed inside his swelteringly hot shack. His weekly trip into town was becoming a highlight, and happened to coincide with his plans.
With another session finished, he ignored Calix when he asked him if it had sunk in yet, and left a few minutes after him. He ignored the program co-ordinator who asked him how he was doing. He ignored the doorman. He ignored the people walking up and down the street (or maybe they ignored him – didn’t even notice him), and then stepped into a waiting rickshaw, placing his self-fashioned cane beside him. It helped with the walking. He gave instructions for the pool and sat back, arms crossed behind his head. This was becoming quite a pleasant and regular thing now; first the session, then a dip in the pool, then to the workshops to ask for work (they never had anything, which was just fine by him), before heading back to his shack.
At the pool, he ignored the receptionist and hobbled with his cane through the male entrance. The lifeguard saw him and he nodded to her. He made for the far end. It was always so quiet here. A lifeguard would do the rounds every now and then, but it was almost as though they didn’t care about the (mostly men) people who relaxed at this end. Which was just fine by him too. He stripped off his clothes to his underpants and sank into the pool, sighing and closing his eyes, and then nodded to another couple of brothers also resting at the side. There were a couple swimmers doing widths, going at it leisurely, perhaps training for the Liberty Trials endurance swimathon. He opened his mouth to the taste of chlorine.
He let the water lap over him, the simplest of pleasures.
Not to be outdone by the carnage to come.
And not a pleasure worth living solely for.
He dozed and dreamed of Nya.
***
The water painted the side of the pool dark as he pushed himself out. The sky was deepening and this end of the pool was empty. He made a show of struggling to stand, using his cane. The painted shadows trailed behind him as he dripped towards the pumphouse. Behind it, a tall wall stood, and beyond that was the ramshackle tenting ground.
He was hidden from the view of the clubhouse and lifeguard, and if anyone had seen him, they’d presume he was getting changed. Which was half right.
He unscrewed the top of the cane and pulled out a lockpick he’d crafted himself over many days and nights, sweating away inside his shack while testing the pick on various locks he’d scavenged from blown out discarded doors and disused padlocks.
He quickly unlocked the pumphouse and entered the sauna inside. From his bag he pulled a sealed container and a face mask, which he held over his mouth and nose. He put the container between his legs and untwisted the top, before unsealing it. Delving deeper into his bag, he retrieved a funnel and then set everything up. Inside a blue, unlocked cage stood small barrels of sodium hypochlorite and chlorine granules. For the third time in as many weeks, he transferred the sodium hypochlorite into his container, filling it. He then took another, small container, and transferred some of the chlorine granules into that. He moved with care, daring not to even let a drop of his sweat drip into the combustible materials. When it was all over, he began to breathe again, and put everything back the way it was.
He relocked the pumphouse and got changed.
***
The most nerve-wracking part was the rickshaw ride. The thought of the materials jostling around in his bag. He clutched it tight to his chest. If he was to blow, they could well and truly clean him from the rooftops.
Georg
often accompanied him on these rides, sitting opposite with bloody eye sockets and toothless gums, dribbling, speaking by osmosis, burrowing his words into his mind: Are you really going to do this? What did my brain feel like at the tips of your thumbs? I thought you were mad but I didn’t know you were this crazy.
And thank you. Thank you for putting me out of my misery. It was what I had wanted, and if the others can’t understand this – that bitch, Elissa – then fuck them. You show ‘em, Rohen.
Georg was fast becoming his biggest cheerleader. Rohen began to seek him out; by the pool, on the vacant chair on his porch, sitting at the table as he fell to sleep.
Georg could be trusted.
Georg liked him.
Georg couldn’t walk, but he met Rohen at the entrance to the workshop. And when inside, he was on the seat next to him as they waited for Grease McNeil to live up to his name and swipe oil into Rohen’s palm with a firm handshake, followed by the words “I’ll go check with the boss again. You never know!”
As Grease McNeil went to talk to Bitch Whoever, Rohen asked Georg to keep a look out and pulled at blue plastic drawers beside the reception desk until he found what he wanted. Unscrewing the top of the cane, he grabbed handfuls of bolts and screws and poured them into the hollow casing. Careful not to empty an entire drawer. He was finished well before Grease McNeil returned to tell him that his services were not needed at this time, thanks for checking by.
“Maybe next week,” said Rohen, taking leave. Georg would be waiting in the rickshaw. Descending the steps, Rohen was careful not to rattle the now-heavy cane too much.
Unit
e
“He doesn’t even speak now,” said Calix. “He has his little routine that keeps him out all day, and then he heads home.” The Crank was busy tonight. Calix had begun helping out in the kitchen, washing the pots and pans and cleaning the glasses to a squeaky finish. A million miles away from the crawler galley.
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 35