Authority
“That was a good one,” said Clarisse. “I can’t believe how many people turned up. Word is getting around.” She rested against the headboard in a seated position, and Corbin could feel the heat of her skin beside him. They were each particularly warm after this session. The blanket had been thrown to the floor.
She was right. It had been excellent. Hundreds of new recruits, strewn throughout the city, were right now tossing and turning in their own beds with the knowledge that someone, or multiple people, from the outside, could be roaming around beneath the city lights right now. Right outside their door.
The video footage of the submersible really nailed it.
“The idea to extract the visible forms was great,” he said, quietly, turning onto his side and placing his cheek against her bare thigh.
“It helped,” she said, smiling down at him as he kissed her skin.
He felt the blood pumping through him; the exhilaration and the excitement – the more he’d spoken the higher he felt. The room grew taller with every word. His dominion over them seemed widespread – if he’d reached out, he could have embraced them all at once.
He’d never felt power like it.
He kissed higher.
“Don’t you want some water?”
He continued without a word.
***
“Things would be so different if we could find them. I know, I know; they’ve probably already been taken care of – disposed of by the authority. We’ll never find them. But just imagine if you’d been a few hours earlier on your rounds and seen them come in. Imagine if we had them with us. That kind of proof – it would tear a hole in society. Not just a brick here or a brick there. The hole would be so wide that it would wake everyone up for the daylight shining through it.” He gulped a mouthful of cool water.
“Daylight.” He glanced up. “It could shine even through these walls.”
Clarisse swung her legs out of the bed. “There’d always be someone preferring the walls and the daily sweat upon the glass.”
“I miss a window.”
“I could smuggle you out.”
He shook his head. “Not worth the risk. Routine. Any deviation and it’ll be flagged.”
“True. If you got a new pad I’d miss not seeing you.”
“You’d miss this place. Your locker room romance.”
“I like what you’ve done with the place.”
Corbin stretched, tired, and spread-eagled himself on the bed, feeling their residual warmth beneath him. Falling into it. Allowing his eyes to close and the banter to fade into a comfortable silence.
He listened to Clarisse’s movements over by the sink where he had often stood and gazed at his reflection for minutes at a time, one hand holding the handle of his shaving razor. Why fight a battle that’s destined to destroy him? He’d asked his reflection that many times. Even if he could begin something meaningful, he knew the task ahead of him was monumental. Here he was, beneath the pits and at the literal foot of this city – even if he could ascend and go aboveground, then what? What could he – one man – do exactly?
These depths were his friend. All earthquakes shook from the ground up if the history lessons were to be believed. Remove the lowest brick and watch the rest fall. Feel the tremors reach the furthest edge. Place the first foundation of doubt in people’s mind and let others lay layer upon layer upon that doubt until it becomes an obstacle to be overcome. A will of the mind to ignore.
And sure, some would carry on ignoring, staring at the face of it, but not seeing through or over.
But many would peer around or climb over.
The water in the sink stopped running and Clarisse’s feet pattered over to the kitchen area. He heard the beep of the coffee machine.
“You give me strength,” he said.
“Me, or the coffee?”
“Without you, I’d be doing this alone. I’d be making mistakes. Trying too hard to hit too hard.” He rolled over and opened his eyes.
She was still naked, full of curves as she stood with her back to him, cleaning two cups in the sink. “I believe in you, Corbin. You’re a brave man. A little stupid. But then it takes stupidity to take it to the authority.”
Somewhere, a vent opened, and air whooshed down the ventilation shaft adjacent to the locker room with an ebbing hum. Clarisse walked over to the vent high in the wall and stood beneath. “You should come over,” she said.
He rolled out of bed, unsteady on the legs he hadn’t used for a few hours, and walked through treacle heat into the oasis of cool around Clarisse. He held her hand and while they were both lost in their bubble of bliss, the entrance opened behind them.
His arm hairs prickled.
To be expected, stood beneath the fresh air gushing in.
No, something was not right.
There was a competing draught.
He turned his head – No, no, no. This can’t be. How did they get in? he wondered, naively, before understanding that of course, they could unlock any door they wanted in the city.
“What–?” said Clarisse, turning.
“Identification confirmed,” said an anonymous male voice, its owner hidden behind a black visor. The security personnel stepped inside, rifle raised at his shoulder. Corbin watched as red dots on the open door behind the man swooped inside the room, followed closely by the men aiming them.
The leading man put a hand to his ear and then nodded. “Despatching.”
Corbin Wardle raised an arm and moved to block Clarisse from the bullets, but the storm was too sudden, and besides; the bullets ripped him apart and would have had no trouble causing equal damage to Clarisse had he shielded her. The force of the shower flung them backwards into the cooling oasis. Into a calmness, unaware of the violence unleashed on their bodies.
Pain
Rylan drifted through the nothing, landing on spinning rocks and then kicking away from them; hopping from one to the next in a slow, dreamy soup. A long drawn-out side effect he’d never shaken. His brain uncoiled. Free to wander. And it wandered. Always aimlessly. It should have been calming, if not for the emptiness and the sense that it had no edge. An infinite void. Sometimes there’d be soundscapes taken from the day, or whatever he’d heard within the link, on loop, as if some part of him wanted to dig deeper and analyse the shit out of every little word. He heard his voice say “I’m going.” Heard Clarisse – her ghost – call out “Stay! You’re here.” Heard the breathing of a hundred men and women inside his head from the room where the acoustic modulator was set to a distance of only a foot. It was a heavy soundtrack to listen to – each hop and bounce was a leap to escape it. But it always followed. It would keep on following until one rock felt a little softer. Until he knew his arm was trapped between his body and the bed. Until he could feel the weight upon it. The side of his face against the pillow. The sharp pain in his crooked neck. The headache that always followed one of these after-link dreams.
He rolled onto his back and clamped his hands to his temple, almost feeling the throb like a trainlink vibration in his arms. It felt like his head was pressed against the monorail and he wished it was so that soon the pain would be over.
He fell out of bed and nearly hit himself on the window, managing to brace himself at the last second. He leaned his arm against it, and his head followed. The glass was cool. He let his arm drop and placed his forehead to the glass, and only after he felt some respite did he open his eyes.
His world of metal and lights stared back. Staring, but not watching. A thousand lives hunched beneath umbrellas like the ants in the insect museum, hefting leaves fifty times their weight. Only not ants, but sun-starved servants; their arms thin and their skin as white as the ash it’ll turn into when their turn is over and the fire burns their flesh. My flesh. His pain returned, though it had never really gone – one of those strange situations of mind over matter. A distraction of thought. More of those, please.
He turned his back to the l
ights and slid to the floor. He remembered the glass of water and reached out for it. It was still there. He downed it in one.
Half his blanket lay crumpled on the floor, while the other half clung desperately to the mattress. The darkness across the room hid nothing – the walls and shelves were bare, as bare as the top of his bedside table and the sideboard with his few clothes inside.
He squeezed his eyes and held his head between his knees, breathing heavily.
In pain, came clarity: the dull reality of his life, sitting here without an arm to comfort him, the only arm interesting him being his own, reaching up, and out into the other side of the apartment where he could grab some alcohol. What kind of story could be told about him? A life of obedience. Even as he fought tooth and nail against all that was bright and shiny, he did what he was told. He may not socialise much. May not settle down in bed next to someone he loves to enjoy the latest show in the link. May not have children or play-dates. Yet here he was, being a good little worker. His story would begin and end with a spanner and a glass of synth – no ellipses of surprise.
He wanted to reach out for something to grab, but there was nothing. He crawled around the bed, still seeing those spinning rocks every time he closed his eyes, and for once, they were islands of fortitude as he hit one and stabilised, before swimming to the next one. At the sink, he pulled himself up and turned on the water. White noise drowned out the silence.
The water on his face cooled his fever and tarnished the power of the headache. Things looked a little clearer, especially the clock flashing in the corner of the mirror. Just twenty minutes before his shift.
“Fuck,” he mumbled.
“Fuck it,” said the reflection. “Call in sick.”
He rubbed his forehead. “You’re right.”
He dialled-in from the mirror and left a message, saying he had a migraine, and terminated the call. He blanked the mirror and ordered the blinds closed on the window, and lay down in the complete darkness.
“Fuck the link,” he thought. “I am not going through this again.” Through the skin of his eye-lids was light, distant and round. Not the sun. Never the sun. He lifted a hand to it and it turned into an advertisement for Radio Xtreme – a remnant that he’d seen playing just five minutes ago outside his apartment. They’d even got him here, where his dreams and thoughts were his own. What would their story be?
What would anyone else’s story be?
He moaned and turned over onto his stomach, relishing the pressure of his weight against his forehead with it pressed into the pillow. Wishing darkness would wash in. Instead seeing rolling rocks of city towers, spinning, spinning; the lights and lives within all the same, all the same. Gravity bringing them all together. Gravity sending them all in the same direction. From darkness, into darkness.
What would this city’s story be?
For a moment, Rylan felt sorry for any storyteller trying to weave a tapestry of this city. With no rich history to delve into and exploit – just a history of oppression and murder without explanation or cause. It would be dark, this story. Little glints here and there of something tangible, like a transport network system or the farmland in the outer dome – but so much shadow where only omniscience could fill the blanks. So much mystery – and no characters to ask the questions that no character would want to answer anyway.
All just so much... what... what... go away.
Prison
It was good to be moving again. Calix felt as though he’d done nothing but rest ever since arriving on the plains. Of course, much of that had to do with the dehydration – and that closely following his broken rib. The pits were no place for a man on a mission, unless that mission was dissolution.
They’d scavenged a backpack each from a lost and unclaimed pile of provisions near the back of one of the pits, a pile likely made up from the leftovers of a left over life now gone. Into their backpacks went rags of clothes and other sundries, and food from the charitable donations that came from above every evening. The one good thing the pits had going was that you could never starve. Its inhabitants were like rats picking at the scraps in the corner of a cupboard – a living waste disposal unit.
Calix was impressed that even here, people served a purpose to their city. Or was it their city? Did the city own them?
When he looked up, all he saw was a freedom he could only have dreamed of in Sanctum. To hear the ramblings of the homeless, they were all imprisoned.
He’d come so close to telling them they didn’t know how good they had it, that Elissa had had to place an arm on his shoulder on more than one occasion.
They had to get out, if only so their secret didn’t get out.
Wearing baseball caps nabbed from the lost pile, they ventured towards the edge of the city. Elissa tried wearing a makeshift mask but found the unwashed cloth too much for her nose to take, and dousing it in water didn’t seem to help. Calix didn’t mind – the water did help, and it kept him cool.
Block after block, there was always a tower ready to erupt from their feet in a cacophony of light and shadow; gridwork bridges and trainlinks slicing through intermittent mist and fog, or else steam pumping out from the factories beneath their feet. Step after step they felt the vibrations of the city at work as oil was turned into plastics and the city’s waste was incinerated or recycled or sent out of the city. One homeless guy, although perhaps it was unfair to call him homeless since he very much had a home in the pits, had described the underbelly workings quite intricately. An ex-employee of Green Green Grass, apparently, who had spent half his life creating fertiliser from the dead that would be chuted topside to the farms and the soil. “All those chemicals sent me a little nutso,” he’d said. “For the longest time I wouldn’t eat anything the farms produced – strictly a cheese and cracker diet for me. But now I’m already crazy so what does it matter.” Calix marvelled at how this was not a million times different from Sanctum, just on an industrial scale. From ash to blood to ash.
Calix had a Raiders hat with an abstract, circular design on it. Elissa’s was black with Marvellous Creatures of the World – Tour Guide stitched across the brow.
It was more difficult to see the sweat and dirt marks on the inside of the hat, since it was black, she’d reasoned.
“Let’s hope no one asks you any questions about any long-lost animals,” Calix said.
How long ago had he said that? he wondered. Surely they must be reaching the edge by now. They’d walked for hours.
Rain had fallen and stopped, fallen and stopped, and they’d drank half their water. “Do you think it’s much further?” He knew it was a stupid question, but it broke a long-held silence.
“I hope not. Maybe we should ask.”
“Purpose seems to be a dangerous trait down here. Gets people asking questions. Maybe we should just go up at the next junction.”
Elissa continued walking by his side, silently. He didn’t know whose pace they were keeping with, but they seemed in sync enough. It was odd to walk so far and not yet arrive at a destination.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Legs are a bit tired. Bit of stomach cramp. I may need to stop at the next toilet.”
If two years in the crawler had taught him anything, it was not to get in the way of a woman and her needs. Education had been slim to none in Sanctum, until he’d finally asked Annora what was up around fifteen or sixteen years old after years of noticing red-spotted towels hanging from washing lines, or discarded, stained with blood that would no longer wash out. “I bet you wished you stayed now.”
“I’m in the city, Cal. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“I’m sorry, that it’s like this.”
“You don’t need to say sorry. Nothing to be sorry for.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”
“No, I’d be dead from trying too hard in the trials, or else dead just waiting on tables the rest of my short life.”
He smiled, but there wa
s something more. Something... “Our bonding. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we... became a couple. In the old films we watched they called it marriage. Two people connecting for life.”
“It was just a piece of paper and a means to an end,” she said, aiming for a nearby outhouse that had been fashioned above a running rivulet. You never washed or drank downstream from one.
For a while, Calix allowed the silence to boil, tempted to burst the bubbles with words he knew he should probably keep to himself. If crawler life had taught him a second thing, it was to know, in a facial expression or an extended period of silence, or a flurry of activity to keep the hands busy, when something was off. There was nothing ‘off’ right now, but there’d been a time before the explosion at the orphanage when Elissa’s touch was more warm than cold; her gaze one that asked questions instead of stopping them dead.
You always did have a run-away imagination, Calix, he heard Annora say. Seeing things that aren’t there. Ignoring the things right up in your face.
“After you’re done here,” he said, “let’s head up there.” He pointed to a set of rungs set in a rust-coloured pillar, ten-foot in circumference.
“You sure?”
“I don’t know about you, but this is almost worse than the plains.”
“Nothing could be worse than the plains.”
***
They stepped down into... what? A street? Concrete beneath their feet; it lead up towards the base of the nearest tower. Well, the visible base. It was more of a giant promenade, thought Calix, not too dissimilar to the area outside the three towers on the plains. Steps lead up to a higher street where the tops of people’s heads nodded into and out-of sight.
He checked Elissa was close behind and then began to ascend, the bottom of the tower coming more into view with every step. It was difficult to peek, as keen as he was, with the bill of the baseball cap kept low. With his hand casually covering the lower half of his face – the cloth he was using as a mask turned out to be unbearable. The tower walls disappeared, and an arc grew in its negative space. When at last he was at the top of the steps he saw that the arc stretched for over half the tower base, and inside, inside the tower – was nothing. It was empty. A light shone from its centre where a shaft shot up out of sight, but that was it.
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 46