Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One

by Adam J. Smith

  “Does that sound like Caia?” asked Calix.

  “Probably. I don’t want to move.” She groaned as Calix slid away from her, leaving her right side cold.

  “What do you want?” Calix called out.

  “Quickly, open up!”

  “All right, all right.” Calix picked up his underwear and pulled them on, then opened the door. He winced at the light as two silhouettes rushed past.

  “What’s going on?” asked Annora, raised up on elbows.

  “Grab your clothes. Grab a bag. Fill it with anything you think you might need. We’re getting out of here.” Caia knelt and began throwing clothes at Calix. “Haven’t you washed yet? Geez.” She frantically began opening cupboard doors.

  “What do you mean we’re getting out of here?” asked Calix. “What’s happened?”

  A stranger stepped into the room. She looked at Annora and raised her hand, a half-smile on her face. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Elissa.”

  Annora nodded back.

  “Kirillion is gone,” said Caia.

  “Gone?” Annora sat up in bed, holding the blanket to her shoulders. “Gone how?” Everything in Caia’s tone had said ‘He’s dead’. But she needed to hear it.

  “He’s gone. For good. And now my friends, we need to make our escape.” She flung a bag through the air that landed on Annora’s bed. “Get dressed, fill it, and let’s go. We’ll be waiting outside.” She left the room with Elissa, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  “Shit,” said Calix, stretching it out. He looked as perplexed as she felt as he pulled on his clothes with an absent look on his face.

  This... is this really happening?

  “Cal?”

  He met her eyes. “Yes?”

  “I… I’m scared.” Why? If Kirillion is dead, you’re free…

  He rushed to her. His lips found her forehead and the top of her head and finally her lips and he said: “We can be scared later.” He finished clothing himself and then grabbed the bag from the bed. While she got dressed, still half-asleep and very much in a daze… Is this not another dream?... he filled the bag with clothes from the open cupboards and drawers and then zipped it up.

  She hadn’t even used that bag before. It had sat in the cupboard waiting for a sunny day.

  That day was now.

  As soon as her shoes were on, Calix grabbed her hand and they left the room. She didn’t even have chance to look back and say goodbye, or have one final look at that view.

  They followed Caia and Elissa down corridors she had become familiar with over the last few months; where having Calix at her side seemed particularly erroneous. Would that ever stop, she wondered? For the rest of her life would she constantly question how Calix had returned? How he was washing himself in the sink besides her, or holding her as they danced, or mourning her when she died?

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Back down,” said Caia. “We’ll hold up in the dark tower, at least until services resume.”

  Annora didn’t know what his meant, and didn’t ask. The walls flew by in a blur. First one foot was there, and then another; each moving forward of their own accord. Calix held fast to her hand.

  They broke into the night of the platform with an audible hiss, which was probably just the gas-compressed hinges, but felt like the ring finally expelling her, as though she was something poisonous that needed ejecting. They raced across the bridge and then across to Kirillion’s drone. She knew it was his – it had a giant ‘K’ on the door, which she had thought was ridiculous. Totally against everything he was.

  Maybe she’d just never really known him.

  They climbed in, with Caia taking the manned seat. “Buckle up,” she said.

  Outside, a man appeared at the doors, looking out with his hand raised to his brow. The higher they rose, the faster he ran, waving at them with both hands.

  “So long,” said Caia, banking the drone into a dive between the platform ramparts.

  ***

  The four of them stood on the top level of what Caia had called the ‘dark tower’. Above, the manned drone rose, autopiloted back to the ring high above.

  Without Kirillion, Annora wondered what that place would become…

  “I’m sure there will be some superficial search for us,” said Caia, “but they have their hands full at the moment just trying to get this place back up and running. We should be okay for a while.”

  Calix had explained in the drone what had happened to the tower. It was unbelievable that one man had caused so much chaos.

  She checked herself… Come on, Annora… you don’t believe that… not with everything you’ve seen.

  She didn’t say anything as they made their way down through stairwells lit by Caia’s torch. Elissa kept looking at her, and smiling, and she wanted to ask what her story was – how she had ended up here with Calix – but that could wait. Everything would come out. How much did Calix know?

  Everything would come out.

  ***

  “Okay,” said Caia. “If records were correct then this apartment was free, so you should be okay to stay here for a while. Even if all the power comes back, no-one will be coming here.” She flashed something at the lock and it disengaged, and they entered. She switched on the lighting, which was at about five-percent luminosity. Annora had noticed patches of emergency lighting up and down the halls. They even passed a few people with torches of their own, bemoaning how cold it was outside, and that it was better to be inside and warm without the link, than outside and cold with it.

  She felt the neural link just behind her ear, as she often had the past few days. It was part of her now. It no longer felt alien.

  “I was gonna ask about that,” said Calix.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I think so… I’m picking things up here and there.”

  She shook her head. “It’s another world. Another you. I can’t describe it.”

  “It’s not real,” said Caia. “What you have is real.” She looked between Annora and Calix, then rolled her eyes. “Here,” she threw a card down onto a table. “On there’s enough credits to keep you fed for a year, or for a day, depending on where you go. For now I’d lie low. I’m going to take advantage of the chaos around Negative One – that’s down near the base of the upper tower – to try and find someone who can help us with identity chips.” Caia looked at all three of them. “I am assuming you want to remain here, and not go back out there. If you wanna go back out there, I’m afraid you’re on your own because this place is locked up tighter than my ass.”

  Annora’s heartbeat picked up pace. “What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “They’re not gonna just let me escape.”

  Caia’s bottom lip pushed out, and she raised her eyebrows, a smirk appearing. “I don’t know what they’ll do; all I do know is that the only person who truly gave a shit is dead. Maybe it’ll wake some of them up, maybe it won’t. They’re so doped on luxury they can barely muster a piss.”

  “But what about me?”

  Calix slipped his arm around the small of her back and pulled her close. “We’ll work it out,” he said.

  Caia shook her head and pulled her coat jacket together, even though it was already zipped. “Okay then, get some rest.” She nodded at Elissa, something unsaid between them, and then she left in a hurry.

  Annora found the nearest seat and sat down, hunched over, breathing heavily. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand. “Oh, Cal,” she said.

  He sat beside her while Elissa explored the apartment. She was grateful for his arm around her, and fell into him.

  “Do you know what I am?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s crushing me.”

  He pulled her down with him onto the sofa.

  She was so tired. “I just wanna sleep. Will you hold me?”

  “Always.”

  ***

  Kirillion freed her, for jus
t a few hours, so she could go wherever she wanted. He had to stay a distance behind her. She’d heard enough from him to last a lifetime. She looked back and there he was, one hand on the pistol he kept holstered beneath his jacket. She couldn’t sense any danger – the path was wide and everybody seemed to be interested only in the business of getting from A to B. What he called autocars flew past in the road with their inhabitants staring anywhere but out the front window. They seemed safe enough, on set courses, and weren’t likely to careen off-road and crush her. Inset into the side of both sides of the road was a rail, and every now and then a raised platform swooped by overhead, ferrying passengers by the hundreds from one end of the city to the other. Or simply from one stop to the next. A constantly moving painting, with light that changed with the time of day. Overhead, the sky she knew to be blue for she could see it from her bedroom window, was instead a sliver of silver that barely registered at street level. There was certainly no glare on windows like there was up in the ring. But then she supposed the sun was only visible per street for a few minutes every day, if at all.

  So much was so similar to the archival films they used to watch in Sanctum that she wondered if they were just straight up filmed here, and not from some historic past when cities ruled the planet.

  It was one thing looking down on it; something else to hear the humming of those autocars, the way the platform whined as it rolled by in its rail, the silence of the people. Sure their footsteps resonated as they migrated down the streets, and there was the occasional greeting – perhaps a work colleague, or perhaps a purchase of some food or drink from a vendor, but otherwise where was the chatter? Already, she must have passed hundreds of people, and not one person had looked at her, spoken to her, or said anything of note to anyone.

  They must be so focused, she thought, on whatever it was they were doing; wherever it was they were going. She slowed her pace instead to walk closer to the tower, passing by shop fronts and restaurants and bars, every one of them enticing and warm on the inside; each with its own escaping smell. Or doorman. At a clothes shop called Gracy’s a tall man in a blue suit looked at her, smiled, said “Good day, Ma’am,” and then opened the door for her. Inside, and she couldn’t believe it, it smelled like rosewater; the faintest wisp in the air that seemed to emanate from the racks of clothes themselves. Just like the hemp factory. But that’s where the comparison ended. She buried a hand in a collar of white fur, attached to a white, long-sleeved coat. She imagined how it would feel against her cheeks. What kind of animal did they have here that could produce such material? she wondered. This had not been some pig. A store clerk appeared and asked her if she’d like to try it on. She would. Its warmth enveloped her. Her bare arms felt as though she’d been dipped in a bath of downy feathers. It was childhood; pillows thrown around until the feathers escaped, landing everywhere, starfishes appearing from bodily splaying.

  Kirillion bought her the coat.

  It was too warm to wear, so she ended up carrying it.

  She heard children’s laughter and walked towards it.

  There were trees. Grass. A pond. All encased by a waist high concrete wall. The park itself was attached to the front of a district school with its glass doors wide open. Inside, she could see row upon row of desks within a classroom of plain grey walls.

  The children played in the park on swings and slides, running around, tagging each other, falling over and getting back up again. Two teachers watched from a table just outside the entrance. One teacher had her arms crossed and her back straight, staring at the children but Annora sensed she wasn’t watching them at all. There was nothing on that face. The other teacher was slumped over with a cable dangling from the back of her head.

  “Nice coat, miss,” said a little boy, hair dark and cut in a bowl-shape. He had deep brown eyes and a wide smile, and had bounded over towards her. She smiled at him and said thank you, and then the teacher who had seemed distant shouted, “Jake! Get away from her! Back to playing!” His eyes dropped to the floor and he turned and ran back towards the others. The sadness in his eyes had been unmistakable.

  ***

  The apartment had a balcony, of sorts. It was still walled in but the window could be slid across to give the illusion of open air. It had a small table and some chairs and Elissa had prepared some food for them all. They sat around, eating and every now and then peering over the edge of the window. The sun was out… somewhere… and the day was alive in the street below, and in the air. Large drones with temporary routers hovered still at intervals around and up the tower. Elissa and Calix had no idea what they were, but Annora knew. She could hear the bustle of feet through the internal walls and knew people had returned to their homes, and that they would have done so only with the advent of re-connectivity.

  She looked across at the future she would never have, trying to figure out how to tell him. This breakfast, this apartment; any life she could forge here, or out there, with Calix, would forever be shrouded by guilt. But not just guilt. Remorse.

  “So you gonna tell us what happened, now?” said Calix. He was looking towards Elissa – he’d explained who she was, and she was grateful that she’d saved his life. There were sure to be more stories to tell – she wanted to hear about this town outside the dome, for instance – but she knew it would all be distraction. A delaying tactic on her part.

  “I guess it’s okay,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure Caia won’t mind. I’m not sure how much the truth even matters in this place.”

  “It matters when it matters,” said Annora.

  “Well,” Elissa sat down on her chair. “Caia told me what happens to the trials winners. They… never make it.” Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Then… what happens to them?” asked Calix.

  Annora knew. She’d seen firsthand what happened to them. “They’re used as a scare-mongering tactic. They’re murdered by soldiers; only, to the people watching, it looks like they’re killing mutants from the outside. It’s saying: never attempt to leave, or else the mutants will get you.” She took a deep breath. “I guess it works.”

  “No… but then… shit. I’m sorry, Elissa.” Annora noticed how he perched on the edge of the seat, on the verge of standing. If she hadn’t been there, he would have consoled Elissa. Held her. She felt a warmth swell within that swept through her body to her fingertips. It wasn’t tempered by jealousy. She just felt love for him. He reached out and put a hand on Elissa’s knee and held it there for a few seconds before retracting. She held his hand under the table.

  “I just keep thinking about all those families, over the years, you know. All of them…” It was Elissa’s turn to take a deep breath. She wiped at her eyes and nose before continuing. “So there was that. And Caia asked me for help. She talked about Barrick, how she loved him, and how she couldn’t forgive Kirillion for what he had done. She also knew she’d be looking over her shoulder her entire life if he were kept alive. So we lured him to the top of the ring and while they were arguing…” Suddenly, Elissa’s eyes began to dart around the balcony. “I pushed him. Caia made the opening, and I pushed him. I… killed him.” She shook her head and then looked at Calix. “It’s funny. I saw Rohen’ face, just before I pushed him. He was Rohen. Is that strange?”

  “Doesn’t sound strange to me. He was not a good man. Neither was Rohen.”

  “I know he wasn’t directly responsible for Leora and her family, or any of the other families, but up there, I seemed to be able to rationalise it all. He was responsible. He’d also killed Barrick. He’d kidnapped Annora. And he’d kill me, given the chance.”

  Annora crossed the balcony and knelt down beside her. “You did nothing wrong. You made our lives safer, and you saved people from whatever misery he would inflict later.” She put her arms around her and held her.

  ***

  Out of breath. Every inch clammy with sweat. She watched as her stomach rose and fell, rose and fell, and how her ribs accordioned from her skin on an exhale. Her
legs shook, and when she reached out for a glass of water from the bedside, the water within nearly spilled out, arms weak. She collapsed back into the softness of the bed, breathing heavily. Breathing deeply. Breathing with control.

  She tilted her head towards Calix and laughed, the sharp waves of pleasure now an ellipsis between her legs. She kissed him. “Why did we wait so long?” she said, not as a question but as a statement.

  “My thought exactly.” He rolled back on top of her, pressing his lips to hers. His smell had returned after the long shower he’d taken, and she lapped it from his neck.

  ***

  She’d heard that it could be like that in the link. That it could be even more than that: in the link, orgasms were not limited by the body. She hoped that this was true. It wasn’t the most worrying thing, though. She hoped that afterwards they could still hold each other, like this; that it would still feel real. That she would still be able to smell him, and find every curl of hair; that his lips would still taste the same: that he would still feel like home.

  ***

  “Cal.”

  He stirred. “Yes?”

  She kissed the top of his shoulder. “I have to say something.” It was still daytime outside. Inside, with the curtains drawn, and the light still dim from emergency power; it felt a little like the middle of the night. They were warm – almost too warm – beneath a thin blanket they’d found in the store cupboard.

  “Nothing good ever came from those words.”

  “I have to go back.” The words were out. She could almost envisage them hanging from the ceiling on a loose thread, ready to fall on top of them.

  She felt his chest pump harder.

  “I have to let Panette finish what Kirillion started. Even if she turns around and says ‘Go, be free’ – she never really had her heart in it – I have to make her. I have to make the lab assistants who have been experimenting on me all this time, finish the job.”

  Calix rose against the headboard. “I don’t understand. What exactly does that mean?”