“How?” asked a trembling voice.
“I don’t know.”
She dropped her head onto his shoulder and he carried her as she cried, into the room, kicking the door closed behind him. Over her shoulder, he scanned the room for her bed and placed her gently above the covers, lying down beside her.
“I climbed that sand mountain after you were taken. Nearly died from dehydration.” He stroked her cheek, shaking his head. “Someone saved me. From that point... I was in the hands of fate... a little bit of luck... here I am.”
“I can’t believe it.” Her fingers caressed his face and brushed his beard. “I never thought I’d see you again. I didn’t know if you knew I was here... or dead under the sand.”
“Oh, I knew you were here. Barrick and I... we chased Caia... we got to you... but Kirillion got in the way.” He could tell her the rest later. Barrick deserved to be honoured. For now, he left it there and closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. They lay in silence, listening to the sound of breathing and feeling that breath brush softly across the skin of their cheeks. With his arm pressed into the small of her back, he squeezed and marvelled at the reality of her body as he pulled her into him, and she squeezed back, and her stomach quivered against his as she softly cried.
***
They dozed. Calix dreamed of the day he’d find Annora, of all the things he’d say, and how he’d kiss her and never stop. Then he’d jolt to reality with a stomach lurch – the lucid dream over – and he’d be back in the grace-forsaken hole of the pits, thick with dirt and sweat, but no...
... she was in his arms.
He touched her lips with his and she kissed back, drawn to reality from whatever half-dream she was living.
His fingers travelled through her hair. What is that?
***
He sat up and swung his legs from the bed. He stood and turned and looked down at her. He removed his jeans and socks, shirt and underwear, and watched as she sat up too and pulled the gown over her head and let it drop to the floor. Then he slid in next to her and lay down, staring at the ceiling as she settled against him and put her head next to his, arm across his chest.
Command
“Sharp,” said Kirillion. “How goes the clean up?”
The soldier appeared on the screen before him, the image rolling around as he adjusted his wrist, the camera not yet fixed on his face. Now that Calix was here, the small matter of a municipal explosion didn’t feel all that important. He could give it back to Panette, who herself could try to find someone else to offload the responsibility to.
Once more his hatred for the people here flared in his gut.
Deep breath.
Fools.
“This may take a while to clean up, sir. An emergency maintenance crew is currently on site. Their main priority of course is to get the link back up. They’re also looking into rerouting the exhaust.”
“Alright then. I’m going to be handing over responsibility to Panette, and she’ll be in touch. For the meantime, increase the presence at Negative One and make sure no-one can cross the border, whether they have papers or not. Without the ability to scan, you just can’t be too sure. You’ll have forgers from around the city zoning in on the area.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep everyone calm.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do we know how it happened yet?”
“We’ve tapped into the local security camera system but they were sabotaged. A man named Rylan Preece was meant to be on shift though, and he is yet to turn up.”
Of course.
“Okay. Carry on.” He disconnected. His room was cool – since acclimatising to Sanctum he found the usually high heat of the ring cloying, and had it set lower in here. He looked at his red flushed face in the bathroom mirror and grabbed a medical stabiliser from the shelf. After injecting himself, the rising fever began to dampen. The colour drained from his face. He splashed water across it and cupped some for drinking. He walked away, cracking his knuckles.
Quickly, he left the room and started down the corridor towards central command. The city through the window far below to his right barely registered; he’d long become used to the blanket of lights. Turning left, he ascended steps towards the High Ring. He grimaced at the sickly low light of this level, where it forever remained diffuse, lest it hurt their precious eyes or soil wrinkles upon their skin. The heat was even more cloying. He’d remove his coat but didn’t want to expose his skin to it, as irrational as that was. A smile rose as he trampled the long shag fibres of the carpet with his heavy boots. Maybe January would pass this way and catch a little grime upon the soles of her bare feet, he thought. One can hope.
The doors to central command parted. Inside; here they all were, lounging in their plush chairs and circular sofas, buried beneath purple and blue cushions. Spotlights dappled the tops of their heads with deep blue lights, turning purple, then pink, then red; rotating through the rainbow in nauseating fashion.
The circular room had no walls.
Where the walls should have been were floor-to-ceiling screens without borders, and here; they could cut and paste and manoeuvre the feeds from across the city, watching every moment that transpired. Keeping tabs on uprisings, or simple larcenies.
Kirillion shook his head.
Not one surveillance feed.
Instead; nothing but entertainment shows and pornography.
Only Panette actually seemed to be paying any attention. Everyone else lay on top of one another with their eyes closed and their neural link cables dangling from their heads.
What a fucking state. Call this central command.
For a while, the diary had been kept here, safely locked behind glass cabinets rising from the centre of the room. Artefacts from the past. Now he could barely remember the items that used to be encased inside; remembering only that one day he had entered and found the diary being used as a plate for orange peelings.
He’d taken that diary.
Everyone knew what it said. Had known for many years. And no-one, including himself, had cared.
Still, no-one cared.
Slothful.
Apathetic.
When you could live forever, your capacity for caring about anything ran out; was what he had thought for a long while.
He’d seen himself falling down that hole; draped naked over cushions while lost in the Seas of Abascus, or soaring through the Skies of Shogun. If he hadn’t changed, no-one else ever would have. And with the genetic controls in place across the city, no-one else ever could. Not from above, and certainly never from below.
It was quite ironic really that Calix had been thrown out for having a defective Sierra genome, and now here he was up in the ring. I guess it did his job – he never just lay down and quit. Never gave up. Subservience is just not in his DNA.
So he’d taken the diary to Sanctum with him.
There had been a while there where he’d almost just given up and gone to plan B. Sabotage the purge. Let the city breed without limitations. Let the mutations spread. Eventually, a true uprising would have occurred. Eventually, humanity would have moved on from this self-imposed malaise.
He was glad he had waited a little longer, for the changes needed could happen over the space of a couple generations now; not the seven or eight that waiting for the Sierra genome to lose impetus would have meant. Now humanity had a chance again. He just had to extract everything from Annora before she died.
***
“What’s Caia’s location?”
“Last known location: Outer E lock,” replied the computer.
“What’s she doing there?” He hovered outside central command, confused, and a little angry. Caia was one of the few people he could rely on to see things from his point of view; that she had disobeyed him was actually a good – no, a great thing. It showed that escaping this city and not being exposed to its daily barrage of mind-numbing entertainment and hypnotic suggestion could unsha
ckle the chains of freedom. That she knew his plan and still wanted to go her own way, and not help – that was what angered him.
No… just disappointed him.
She’d done a good job exposing that Corbin Wardle. A man before his time. It was a shame that he’d had to die. But there was nothing to be gained from an uprising at this time besides chaos; not when the city and its inhabitants would just absorb it like a flea landing upon a pillow. It was no good to crawl against a horde running in the opposite direction. You’d only get trampled.
However, Caia had not dealt with Rylan, it seemed.
He returned to his room to grab a coat and headed for Outer E. The corridors were unpopulated; all the servers now retired for the night and quietly tucked up with their families. It was a nice concession that they could now bring their families up here; before heading out to Sanctum, the servers were little more than slaves. It was a pleasant surprise when he returned to find that there were children running around – within limits, of course. Panette mentioned something about the ring being a ‘ghost town’ and that allowing families had livened it up.
To an extent, it had.
It was still the city’s cancerous heart, though.
At Outer E, he grabbed the ladder that lead up and climbed. At the top, he twisted the lock and pushed the hatch up, letting the weight drop back against the top of the ring. A breeze scythed against his neck as he popped his head out, looking around. He saw the backs of two women sitting near the edge, and walked towards them. The breeze was strong, but he kept his balance. Above, the dome ceiling was still many stories above them. Through the glass, stars dotted the sky. At intervals along the top of the ring were low-walled gardens and relaxation areas where sometimes they’d gather for barbecues and parties. At night, they were usually deserted, on account of the breeze and the cold, so the lighting was sporadic. Some lights worked, others didn’t. Those that did were neon-bar fixtures embedded into the surface, lighting maintenance sections, and were not designed for general use.
“Ladies.”
They turned and looked at him. They looked tired: Elissa in particular. How strange it must be for her. He wondered if Caia had told her about the mutants.
Or if he could tell her now.
“What are you doing up here?”
“I needed some fresh air,” said Elissa.
“She was sick,” said Caia.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” He loomed over them, not wanting to sit. He wasn’t the sort to just sit. “Was it something you ate? We have the best medical team down below. I’m sure they’d get you feeling fit as an elite in no time.” What am I to do with this lowcase?
Perhaps nothing.
I have what I most want.
“I’ll be alright in a bit.”
“Okay. Well, I need to speak to Caia a minute.”
Elissa stood. “Is Calix okay?”
“I’m sure Calix is having the most wonderful time. Do I sense a hint of jealousy?”
Her face remained rigid. He didn’t like the look she gave him. It was glorious. Some strange part of him knew that while time had not yet made him complacent, he’d seen so many faces born and die that his compassion had all but vanished. The highlights of his day included twisting the knife into people, and watching them squirm.
“Why are you always such an ass?” asked Caia, standing. “And you wonder why I want to get away from here?”
“What?” he laughed.
Elissa walked past him towards the hatch. That wasn’t so difficult.
“What is it, Kirillion?” Caia crossed her arms. “I mean it. Anything happens to me, and my memories get the upload treatment. Automatic.”
“You got rid of the failsafe then?”
She nodded. He should have kept a closer eye on her and her subterranean adventures.
“Look… you can have your freedom. I don’t care. Really, I don’t. You know what I’m working towards… if I need your support in the future, can I count on it?”
She shrugged. “You have what you need, now. What more support do you need?”
“When I tell you to get a job done, you do it.”
Turning her back on him, stifling a laugh, she said; “I’ve done all the jobs for you I’m ever going to do.”
“And Rylan? You think I should send someone down to find him in your place?”
She span back round, hands on hips. “So it was him, then?”
“Looks that way. If you’d have dealt with him, then there’d be no mess to clean up. Damn, you wouldn’t even be here. What was your plan, anyway? Smuggle them in? Smuggle them out?”
She shook her head. Her face was hard to read in the dull light. “I don’t know. Rylan…” She met his eyes. “Rylan was a good guy… driven to the extreme. He left Wardle’s rant, so I didn’t think he really posed a threat. As for Calix… fuck, man. It’s one thing to kill a stranger, by proxy… something else entirely to be the one to pull the trigger on a friend.”
She jabbed his chest. “I’m not like you.”
He rolled the word around in his mind: friend. That word had never occurred to him when he’d given the kill order. Off she’d gone, leading her small team of assassins. She must’ve sent them to distant districts, hoping Calix would show up near the site of the dredged up sub, so she could get him for herself. To what? Save him?
“Do you even know what that word means?”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have; when you’ve lost so many ‘friends’… none of that matters.” He took a step towards her, wanting to put his hand on her shoulder, for reassurance… for dominance. But she stepped backwards. “Caia… you. You are the closest thing I have to a friend.”
And this was true. That it was true was a fact. A fact that did not register an emotion.
“Well ain’t that just the saddest fucking thing ever. What’s the point in living forever if all it does is turn out elite like you, or elite like those long-nosed assholes down there?”
“That’s why I need you,” he said, taking another step forward. “Don’t you see I’m trying to change things?”
“You’ll never change.” She batted away his arm. Then she put her hand on his upper arm, and squeezed. “They’ll never change. Maybe the city will change, one day, but not while the elite are micromanaging every last chromosome. Not while this is still a prison.”
He was already tired of this conversation. Tired of the interaction and the overthought. If he could, he’d just push her over the edge. Damn, they were close enough by now. One little push and she’d be out of his hair and he could always head down to the orphanage, whip up some other protégé, or a number of them, like before. Only keep them close, instead of sending them out into the sands.
If only he could push her in a way that would stop the memories from getting released. They probably wouldn’t have a major impact… yet. But it could begin a snowball. And the city just wasn’t ready for that yet. The city had to remain under control, for now.
He realised the pressure on his arm had increased. She was only a foot away, staring up at him. Now, by the starlight, he could see the anger in her face; from the sharp furrows of her brow and her piercing eyes, filled with silent tears.
“Have you ever loved?”
He grit his teeth. Over the top of her head he could see the black chasm of the drop towards the city. This was getting infuriating now.
“Because I have…” she pinched his arm. “His name was Barrick.” She stepped aside, and he felt a force from behind, like a shove from a shoulder barge, batter into him. He fell forward, head-first, reaching for the hand that Caia had been pinching him with but finding only air.
This can’t be, he thought. As he fell, he assumed he’d fall on something solid, even though it was that black chasm he was heading for. His legs, yes. His feet… they would catch on the lip at the edge of the ring, and he’d be able to pull himself up. But they’d better hurry up if they were going to do that, because the ring was alre
ady high above him, with Caia and Elissa peering down. They’d better do something quick, because it was the city now below him… or above him… or below him… he wasn’t sure, in a spin. He settled into a flat position that seemed to last forever – much longer than any man should have to withstand with death at the end of the last breath. A breath he had already taken, it seemed, because the wind against his chest forbid any further breaths from taking place.
Tower walls flew past either side of him and then he was gone.
Escape
Annora woke; first to the sound of knocking on her door, and then to the sound of Calix’s deep breathing. His heart… so strong… unlike hers… beating within his chest just inches from her ear. She kissed his chest with his chest hair brushing her nose. Having him here, like this – unwashed and naked – it was like sharing a bed with his very essence. With every lungful of air she breathed him in. She could smell his sweat, and how the space beneath the crawler arch where he would sleep began to smell after a few weeks out on the sand. She could smell dirt. And meat. And if she let her mind wander: every place he had visited between here and the sands, even though she was yet to hear the stories. His aroma did all the telling. She traced a finger across his ribs. Each rib had a story of its own. The broken one in particular. A white scar stretched up his side from where he had fallen.
The knocking repeated. “Hey! Wake up!” came a voice from the other side.
“Come on, guys. Get your clothes on.”
Calix groaned. “Is there someone at the door?” he mumbled.
“Sounds like it.”
“Tell ‘em to go away.”
Knock-knock-knock. “Calix! Annora!” The door handle rattled. “Open up, damnit!”
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 54