Maybe that was the only time the authority had acquiesced. They sure as shit wouldn’t give a damn if someone fell to their demise in the pits. Fuck, take a few beggars with you, they’d think.
You should drink more. It clears your head.
“Fuck off, Clarisse.”
He looked around. No-one was watching him. The circling drones were just repeating the same old pattern. “Okay then.”
If they wanted him dead, he’d be dead by now. Maybe they’d broken into his apartment while he was passed out and taken pity on him as they pointed their guns at his sweating, prone body.
Or maybe not.
Maybe he should give the authority more credit, for knowing who was truly a danger, and who was just caught in the net. The fisherman and his prey. He’d been prey alright. And he hadn’t bitten.
He had that going in his favour.
Maybe that was where the authority had made one giant, fucking mistake: giving him the bait he needed.
***
He knocked on Caia’s door, but there was no answer. He knocked again and waited. “Answer the door, damnit.” He didn’t want to see her – even if she was innocent in all this – but he hoped to see her, so it would mean there was a chance she hadn’t played him. With every second that seemed more and more remote.
She was listed as offline in his contacts. He thought about leaving her a message, but decided against it.
Slowly, his stomach sank. If she had been home, and innocent, perhaps her arms could have provided some respite. Now he knew he was in for a restless night, sat with his back to the corridor wall, waiting to see if she’d come back. Please come back, he thought. Don’t make this all my fault.
Run
“Leave it alone, Rylan,” said Caia, watching the camera feed. “Move on.”
She watched him knock on Clarisse’s door. Watched the neighbour tell him she’d moved out. Watched him head off down the corridor with rockets on his feet. “That’s it. Forget about it. Forget everything.”
Don’t give me a reason to report you.
She was in Corbin’s hole; what remained after the team had ransacked it, tearing every metal board from the walls, revealing the framework beneath. On the wall, she had the display programmed to follow Rylan, and she kept a close eye on it as she walked around, investigating the mess.
She made sure to step over any blood.
It was an odd sense of power that she couldn’t quite handle: one word and he’d be dead. She’d already killed over a hundred people – those who had attended Corbin Wardle’s final speech. Luckily for Rylan, he’d left before it had begun, so she could legitimately let him go. Though he remained a person of interest.
Given his habits the last two days, he’d likely retreat further into himself. Like his father. Die too young from cirrhosis of the liver, or get into a drunken fight and crack his skull from a heavy fall. Yep, she thought. Just drink yourself into oblivion.
She felt sorry for him.
She even had feelings for him; slightly confused and curdled in a soup of obligation, regret and pain. All those people who just died because of her: they were anonymous. Rylan was not – fuck, she’d kissed him.
Then spent rest of the night watching Barrick as she huddled beneath a blanket, shaking from the orders she’d just given. Barrick, because he always had a way of cheering her up. He’d feel sick to his stomach if he knew what she’d done, and for good reason.
She came across recordings she’d completely forgotten about; moments of intimacy with his face above hers. Remembering the bristle of his beard around her lips and down her neck. The broadness of his shoulders as she clung to them.
As the memories rolled by, she knew she was getting closer and closer to the one that would break her completely. She stared, transfixed, too scared to convert the memories to a linkmem file so he could relive them inside the link. These were between her and Barrick and going online with them could compromise that – with the thought about potentially revealing the sands somewhere near the back of her mind.
“Alright, Caia,” said Barrick. He had the look of an untamed animal in his eyes as he entered the changing room and locked the door behind him.
She heard herself say; “You can just go ahead and unlock that. I’ve got a beach-worth of sand up my crack and I don’t see the waves a-rolling. That is to say – there ain’t no water.”
Barrick released such a laugh it had Caia smiling, even now. “I ain’t one for falling in love, but damn it if you couldn’t be the one to break that.” He raised his hand to the lock and gave her a look that crumpled her. “No fooling,” he said. “But you can have my ration. I’ll only smell like pigshit again in two hours anyway.”
That moment, so fleeting, had kept her up that night in the crawler, just like it kept her up a couple nights ago. No-one before or since had come so close to telling her they loved her – she wasn’t the loveable type, she knew. Out there; she walled herself off, too full of secrets to be able to give herself over completely. And in here it wasn’t much different.
The following morning, she’d packed up everything and left. She booked in to a hotel a ten-minute ride away and spent the next few hours in a darkened room, keeping an eye on a few people to see if there’d be any repercussions from the purge, including Rylan. Seemed Rylan had the right idea. Drink and sleep it off. Unfortunately, she had work to do.
Into the night, though, she replayed more of her memories, and before she knew it, she’d ran out – that final one happening off-screen, for she hadn’t been able to watch as Kirillion kicked Barrick’s body into the swirling water. She replayed the sound of the splash over and over. The final sound Barrick ever made. Unless you counted the quiet sniffles, and the tears she allowed to fall from her eyes.
As for the here and now, she wasn’t sure why she was here, rifling through the remains of the authority’s search, stepping around the sticky black-red pools of dried blood. Rylan continued to walk the streets and gangways, heading roughly for his own tower, it seemed. She kept glancing up to the screen, but was sure he’d received the message and would leave well alone.
There was nothing here for her, in this room. Calix and Elissa were still here somewhere, and she couldn’t go back until they were found. No bad thing, really. She felt more at home down here. Maybe she’d look into a permanent suburban apartment.
A notification alert blared from the holo-comm on her wrist, so she brought it up, expanding it to full view because there was no-one else around.
“Well, well, well.” She shook her head. “I was just thinking about you – strange that.” The surveillance algorithm had returned a hit: the video frame result gave a 95% certainty match, but she could see it was Calix through his beard and beneath his hood. Elissa was less distinguishable, partly because she didn’t really know her, but together they made for a compelling hit.
Beggars
Certain dreams brought nothing but pain. Calix knew those dreams all too well. He’d be worse than a wanted fugitive; a shell, a ghost: nothing. A speck of dust in the city’s air that could only been seen in a shaft of light, easily ignored by a turn of the head, or the dimming of a light source. For years – and he understood somehow that it had been years, with his fingers thin and thickly veined and the hair on his head almost gone – he’d searched the streets with a placard feeling like some portentous effigy, spouting truths no one believed, shaking a drawing of Annora’s face in the face of others until they were forced to look. And smile. And shake their head. And move on to the next empty thing. The pain came from the deaf ears and blind eyes of everyone who walked by; of the officers in blue who didn’t care who he was. The pain came from being so small that he could poke and poke all he wanted and Kirillion and the others just like him would not even feel a tickle. The pain came from giving up. Goodbye, Annora. I tried my whole life, but in vain.
As he travelled further ‘north’ through the levels of the towers, the fear set in that maybe this particular
dream would come true.
After another two trips in the trainlink, during which they ascended two street levels – approximately forty stories, Elissa estimated – they rested up inside a quiet bar where patrons sat rigid at stools, staring at a game of basketball on the rolling holographic facade high on the wall. Every now and then someone would turn and comment to a neighbour about the shot that had just been made or missed. Sometimes there’d be clapping. Sometimes there were even enthusiastic cheers and demeaning jeers from across the other end of the room. At no point did Calix think that anyone had the slightest idea what their neighbour’s name was.
“It’s not that uncommon,” said Elissa. “This is sport. It’s the same for the trials – people just get tranced. It’s like some kind of hypnotic state. They’ll be back to normal once the game ends.”
It wasn’t just that though: commuters were either silent or talking about shows they were watching in something called the ‘link’; street vendors gave out food with mechanical scoops of the ladle, or slice of knife through meat, in near silence, looking like they needed to wipe sleep from their eyes. No-one paid them any attention as they wandered down the streets. It made Calix think all those weeks down in the pits had been a complete waste of time. Waiting for the heat to die down all while the burner wasn’t even on. If there hadn’t been cameras on every corner, he’d have de-hooded and been in the face of everyone he came to, asking: “What are you doing?” “Why do you look so miserable?” “Do you know who I am? Where I came from?”
Elissa felt the same. “It can’t be good, being cooped up down here like chickens. Without sun, what do you look up to? Where do you get your light?”
The most unnerving thing was the lack of confrontation so far by what those in the pits had called the authority.
Once or twice he’d noticed a drone hovering nearby and wondered if it was watching them. But they all seemed to be on a rotation, so it was impossible to tell if one was following them, for turn around and there was the next one. The foresight of his dream where no-one cared and he never went captured was looking more and more likely, and he hated the thought.
At the bar, Calix asked; “What do I have to do to get a drink round here?” Elissa had gone to the restroom, leaving him restless in the booth.
The woman behind the counter, who looked as though she could model clothes for a living, the way her shoulders jutted out, said “Umm, I didn’t go anywhere.”
“No, really. I’m not from around here. Can I just get a drink or is there some kind of transaction?”
“If you’re looking for handouts, you’re in the wrong place, mister. If you’re gonna pay, what do you want?” She leaned forward with her arms locked rigid.
What are you doing, Cal?
“Like I said, I’m not from around here. I don’t have anything to pay with.”
“Then beat it.” She swatted a handtowel into her palm and began rubbing furiously at the countertop. “We don’t cater to beggars.”
“Don’t you even care where I’m from?”
“The fucking nuthouse by the sounds of it. Which is it? Claremont’s or Dorridge? Though you’re not from around here, you say? Maybe you’re an escapee from some other fancy sounding nuthouse.”
“A little further afield, I’m afraid.”
The bartender stood back a little and then looked down at something on her wrist. A frown carved her forehead between the bangs hanging from her scalp. “Have you deactivated your chip?”
“You what?”
“I’m not reading you in my immediate radius,” she said, and then muttered “Benji. Lacroix. Simmonds.” She looked back up. “Where are you?”
“Umm, I’m right here?”
“Not according to this. Do you need to get checked out? Your chip must be faulty.”
He saw Elissa leaving the restroom from the corner of his eye, and leaned in to whisper. “Or maybe I never had one.” He pushed back and turned for the exit, leading Elissa by the waist.
Outside, she asked; “What was all that about?”
“I dunno. Just getting tired of keeping my head down. Looking for answers. Bored. Take your pick!”
“Calix. We’ve come too far to just mess things up now. Come on, we’ve gotta keep low, not draw attention to ourselves.” She tugged on his arm, leading them through a throng of coats with arms and hanging umbrellas (the rain was a little more forceful the higher you went, it seemed).
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” she whispered.
“You didn’t keep me ‘low’ back in town. You had me air my story for everyone to hear.”
“That was different. Don’t –” she pulled him to the side of the street, exposed to the full force of the rain. It dripped down her hair and face and flicked from the ends of her eyelashes when she blinked. “Don’t ask ‘how’ it was different. I knew what the repercussions would be. We can’t be sure here. That bartender could be reporting us right now, for all we know.”
He shook his head, beads of rain falling from the tip of his bill. “She was clueless. They’re all clueless.”
“That doesn’t stop them from being dangerous.”
It was his turn to pull Elissa in close. He held her by the elbow, his lips just inches from her tilted forehead as she looked up at him.
A drone circled by overhead.
“We should’ve grabbed an umbrella from somewhere,” he said, looking sidewards.
“We don’t have to stand in the rain if we don’t want to.”
“Okay, look.” He met her eyes. “The more I think about this whole situation, the more I wonder if the only way to get to Annora – the only way to get to her quickly – is to let myself get caught. See what they do with me. If those in charge are anything like Kirillion, maybe they’ll let me see her, just for the fun of it. Maybe we’re going about this whole thing the wrong way.”
“You’re shaking.”
“So are you.”
“Because I’m cold.” She pulled him close, into a hug, and then walked him towards the building and the shelter of a doorway. Green light filtered through a thick, ornate light fixture shining down upon them.
“Do you understand?”
“I understand, Cal. You’re desperate, and tired, and anxious. You’ve spent months trying to get this close, and now that you see the finishing line, you want to sprint. I’ve seen it before. In the trials. Riders get cocky, thinking they’ve won. They’ve got their eyes on the prize. Only, they don’t see the hail storm of rockets riding their dust-trails. And they get caught out. That’s it: game over.”
“What if I’m already too late?”
“Then it doesn’t matter.”
Some part inside him wanted to bite. It was irrational; he could feel his fingers turning into talons that just wanted to squeeze and dig into Elissa’s flesh. Transfer the pain into her arm. And then he breathed out. She was right. Of course she was right: it wouldn’t matter.
“But you have to go on as if it does.”
Mercy
“Getting kinda cosy there, Calix,” Caia said aloud, rubbing her fingers in her palm. “You sure Annora’s the one?” On the monitor, it auto-flicked to a new perspective as one drone left the field of view and another one entered.
She watched as they danced in the artificial daylight, rain pouring and turning the image into a cracked mirror of colour and shadow. After a small exchange, they found shelter beneath a doorway, and Caia thought they might kiss, or at least hug again, but instead they sat down and huddled their arms around their own knees.
He looked so different now, and it wasn’t just the beard. The last time she’d seen him in the flesh had been beneath Sanctum; his head popping through that square hatch above from where... he had jumped.
She swallowed, hard.
The last time she’d seen Calix other than in the flesh had been the previous night, playing her memories of Barrick, from where Calix had inevitably made an appearance, looking so boy-like,
so young. So innocent.
Yet the man on the screen sitting in the doorway had a fierce expression on his face, and looked far from innocent. She wondered what they had been talking so passionately about, but only briefly. The longer she stared, the more scared she felt.
For she understood where Calix had come from.
And what he had done to get this far.
It was miraculous, really.
Kirillion would want an update soon. Could she lie to him? Did she want to?
“What are you doing here, Calix?” she asked – rhetorically. Dejectedly, even. She imagined him out on the sands and couldn’t shake a deep respect, rising from depths that surprised her, for the man who had climbed that sand mountain.
The sand was a fucking nightmare that had almost killed her. It seemed like another lifetime already; finding it difficult to believe that they’d spent so much time trying to conquer it, and all the while respecting its power.
That no-one else had climbed the mountain was actually quite surprising, when she thought about it, considering how resilient you had to be just to live with it.
His muscles must have screamed in pain; two steps forward just to slide further back, with no idea what you’d find on the other side. Constant agony, most probably.
She suddenly wanted to ask him how he’d done it. How he’d felt when he first saw the sun.
“I bet you couldn’t believe your eyes.”
And not only had he climbed it, but he’d made it to the town too, albeit rescued by the sound of it. She zoomed in on Elissa’s mismatched face, hair straggling her eyes; she could imagine the excitement there must have been to race in those trials, despite the futility of it. Count yourself lucky you lost. This woman was probably not unlike her; someone who craved adventure and wasn’t afraid to fight.
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 48