by Milana Jacks
A knock came on the door. Not feeling like receiving company, I glanced at the door and back at the screen. I sipped the whiskey I’d found when we ransacked Arthur’s apartment. I wasn’t the crying type, but helpless like this, I felt both sad and frustrated. I’d given up on my cyborg future, I realized. The admission burned stronger than the whiskey pouring down my throat. I smacked my lips and read the label. S class, the very best from California. “Thank you very much.” I put the bottle on the floor.
Another knock, then, “Rose, I know you’re in there.”
Gah. My dad again. He was fucking relentless. “What do you want?” Usually, I wasn’t so frank with my dad, but now, I couldn’t summon any fucks to give.
“Let me in.”
“No.” Dad had refused to let me see Arthur. He wouldn’t even tell me if he was alive, kept telling me to mind my own business and keep my mouth shut. For the sake of our reputation. The stakes were high, he said. The Cy had appointed him as the fucking cyborg president or some such. I was pretty sure he’d title himself the emperor of the cyborg nation.
The chip in my brain pinged, and my implant opened up a monitor. Outside, Dad was trying to rig my house. I giggled. Not a chance. He’d set up the security protocol, and I integrated it with my new Cy tech. He couldn’t break in.
“Open up, Rose!” Dad banged on the door.
He’d end up breaking down the door. “Is my brother there? Because I’d consider letting him in so I can slap him!”
Dad banged harder.
“Fine!” I commanded the door to open and sat up. The alcohol swirled in my empty belly, and I gagged, feeling like I might vomit. I leaned my elbows on my knees and supported my jaw with my hands.
Dad stopped when he saw me, then surveyed my living room. Shit everywhere. Empty boxes, papers, and clothes. Saying nothing about the state of my affairs, he took a few steps, grabbed my bottle of whiskey, went into the kitchen, and poured it all down the drain. Whatever, I liked tequila better anyway.
Dad marched back and sat in front of me on the table. His mechatronic fingers flexed, making clicking noises. “Why aren’t you attending classes?”
“I don’t see the point.”
“I see it!”
“Your sight is excellent.”
Dad turned bright red. “You remind me of your mother.”
“I thought I took after you.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
I winced. First time for everything, I guessed. Dad had never admitted I wasn’t his biological child. I must have really pissed him off. Not that I cared. I couldn’t care less about anything. “What do you want?”
“Your brother wants to see you.”
I sobered up in record time, got dressed, and headed out.
In general, inside the habitats, we enjoyed consistency and predictability where there was no such thing as bad weather. Rain or snow, inside the barrier, we remained in stasis. We didn’t have a weather report. We barely had an informative news station. For a decade, nobody paid any mind to the elements. For us, the elements didn’t exist.
On the platform, before we loaded inside the pod, I paused, feeling strange and not just because of the alcohol. I shivered and rubbed my arms. I glanced at the megatron board. Warning: Habitat temperature 59. Fifty-nine! It should be room temperature. I looked around and noticed people wearing jackets. I didn’t even own a jacket. I hopped into the pod, feeling hopeful.
On our way to the military headquarters, Dad said nothing.
I glanced at his profile and saw solid determination in the hard set of his jaw. My dad wanted to win at all costs. He would do anything to achieve what he set out to achieve, to become the…president, and nothing and no one could stand in his way. Those who did would get swept away like fleas.
In a way, my brother and my father were the same. Knight was incredibly stubborn. Knight and I butted heads often, mainly because he behaved in an overprotective manner. I had a good idea of where this meeting would go. Mainly nowhere. The boys in the locker rooms had whispered about Dad and Knight’s confrontation in Pittsburgh, and I overheard that Knight had killed Dad’s previous Elite unit but spared my dad. Knight was a good man. And my dad wasn’t as bad as Knight believed him to be.
Two opposites, my dad and brother, had little to offer as a compromise. The Cy needed to release Arthur immediately. There was no other way. I chuckled. I’d never been good at compromising. Black pods swarmed above the roof of the military building. The plasma flickered pink. Snowflakes fell through the giant hole in the barrier, and as if seeing snow for the first time, I dropped the window. Implant hand outside, I caught a few snowflakes that melted on my palm.
Knight stood on the roof next to a short woman with gray eyes and platinum hair. She reminded me of a doll. Clementine, Knight’s spirit, I presumed. With his short black hair, dark skin, and a terminally brooding expression, he looked massive.
Our pod landed on the opposite side of the roof, and my dad gripped my hand and turned to me. “Pick a side.”
Stunned, I widened my eyes.
“Now!”
“Knight is my brother.”
“I am your father. I raised you, I fed you, I made you into who you are today. Not your mother. Me. You’re alive because of me. I could’ve snuffed the life out of you the moment you came out of that whore’s belly. But I didn’t. I held you for the first time, and I…”
“I love you too, Dad.” I hugged him and patted his back. “Let’s see what Knight has to say. I’m sure we can work it out.” Not in the slightest.
Dad grunted, and I let him go. “Decide or go home.”
I bit my lip. Dad really would send me home. “I’m with you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
My father stepped out of the pod. I did the same. My ponytail swung as I walked toward Knight, shoulder to shoulder with my dad. Knight’s gaze traveled from my face to my implant. I didn’t tuck it behind my back. I flexed my fingers. My brother snapped his gaze back up to my face. I’d never gotten this cold hard look from my brother, but there was a first time for everything. We faced off, sort of like cowboys faced off just before a duel. I glanced at the girl next to him.
She smiled. “Hey, Rose. Happy to see you’re feeling better.”
Knight grabbed her hand. “This is Clementine, my…girlfriend.”
My sister-in-law. If they had babies, I’d be an aunt. It warmed me to think my brother would have kids, and I wondered how her striking white complexion would mix with our dark one. Or would they make more dragons? I imagined meeting her under different circumstances. For now, I nodded.
“You called for a meeting,” my father said. “So speak.”
I braced for Knight’s equally harsh words. “Release Arthur.” A gust of wind blew over the roof, and I spread my legs wider so as not to fall. My ponytail whipped my cheek. Though half my size, Clementine didn’t sway on her feet and her hair stayed still. She looked peaceful, but the glow in her eyes gave her away. Looks could be deceiving.
My father seemed unaffected. “The Cy have taken Arthur. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“I have it on good authority you measure the Earth’s stability. You’ve noticed the core is unstable,” Knight said.
“How do you know this?”
“I crashed the Cy ship, remember?” Knight smirked. “We’ve captured the Cy inside it, gone through all their tech, and we have more shit on you and the Cy than I know what to do with.”
To placate the restless cyborgs in Detroit, Dad had kept quiet about the crashed ship in Pittsburgh. He’d evaded questions about Pittsburgh or other dragon-attacked habitats.
Knight continued. “Here are my conditions. Arthur’s immediate release and the departure of the Cy aliens. They must move away from Earth’s orbit. And I will know if they have. Again, I have their frequencies mapped, and the captured Cy are willing to translate for me.”
“Are you blackmail
ing me?” Dad asked.
“I’ll do what’s necessary.”
“And if I refuse?”
A rumble in the sky. We looked up as the winds gained strength and spun into a tornado.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Knight, if that thing lands, you’ll kill everyone in the habitat. There are civilians here.”
“I will do what I must. If Arthur is harmed, there’ll be nobody left anyway. Return him to Earth immediately.”
Dad watched the tornado spin and stay in place as if awaiting a command to touch down. “You’re doing this,” he whispered. “You manipulate…storms.”
“That’s right.”
Dad smirked. “But you’re bluffing. The humans on the ground level are important to you, so here are my terms. Surrender to the Cy and let them study you. No harm will come to you, I guarantee. They’re simply curious. If you captured some of them in Pittsburgh, then you must know they aren’t violent.”
“Once Arthur is released, I’ll return the Cy to their people.”
Dad stepped dangerously close to Knight. Knight didn’t back off. Chest to chest, the males stared at each other.
“Who do you think you are, hm?” my father said.
“I know who I am. You’re nothing but a servant to an alien race that thinks of you as their pet. I’m nobody’s fucking pet.”
Dad’s thigh twitched. I stepped closer before he could pull out a gun. “Dad, listen.”
Both males stared at me, and Clementine stepped away and spread her arms. Her eyes were pale white.
“The dragons are elementals,” I said.
Knight sucked in a breath, shock and betrayal evident in his expression.
I pressed on. “Arthur is an earth elemental who caused an apocalypse.”
“How do you know this?” Knight asked.
“I don’t know how I know, but I remember it as clear as if I saw it back a decade ago. If he isn’t returned to Earth, we’re doomed. Knight is right, the Cy have to release him.”
Dad narrowed his eyes and stepped back. I prayed he’d trust me on this one.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Son, I’ll have an answer for you at nightfall.”
“You’ll answer me now,” Knight said.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sakes, Knight. The Cy briefing is after lunchtime, then the military council goes into session and decides. So fucking wait.” I spun on my heel and walked away to the nearest exit, where a tube awaited my departure to the lower levels. Knight and Dad lingered there, measuring each other, until Clementine took Knight’s hand and they lifted off the ground. I stared, having never seen people levitate. They flew out of the habitat in their human form.
Dad would find a true adversary in Knight. He joined me in the tube, and it plunged. My belly rose, and I swallowed as the transport stopped. “Was this how elevators worked back in the day?” I asked.
“No.” A terse reply.
Dad marched into his office, sat down, and called up surveillance. Hundreds of mini-holograms populated the wall from the pods in the vicinity that provided the habitat’s view. Holograms from several level fives’ eyepieces popped up at the bottom. Dad scanned through them, canceling the ones he didn’t want, keeping the ones beyond the habitat.
“You’re trying to track Knight?” I asked.
“Brief me on the elementals. What does it mean, and what am I dealing with?”
“Answer me first.”
He snapped his gaze my way.
I sat and crossed my arms over my chest. “Tit for tat, Dad.”
“You do not command me.”
“This is an exchange. You tell me why you’re hell-bent on tracking Knight, and I’ll tell you all I know about the elementals.” Which wasn’t a whole lot, so it seemed like a good bargain for me.
“The Cy want the dragons.”
I suppressed an eye roll. I knew that. “Yes?”
“One is up there already, and the second one will join him.”
I leaned forward. “Have you lost your mind? Didn’t you hear what my brother said? Even if you ignored him, you must’ve seen him lift off the platform and fly. He and his girlfriend fly because they control the air element. The New Orleans habitat burned because that dragon controls fire. The LA habitat flooded because the blue dragon controls the water. Arthur is earth. If something happens to him, we’ll face major disruptions. We’ll die. You have to release him.”
“Let’s say all this is true. I’m not holding dragons in captivity.” He pointed up. “The Cy hold the dragon.”
“Convince them to let him go. And by all that’s holy, don’t go after Knight. He’s overprotective, and that woman is his mate. If you go after them, we die, Dad. We die. This isn’t a fight we can win out on the battlefield.”
Dad snarled. “I will destroy the damn dragons if it’s the last thing I do!” He banged his fist on the table.
I didn’t startle. “You can’t fight them. They’re elementals. If Arthur isn’t released, we’ll face another apocalypse. Please understand this.”
Dad examined the dent his fist made on the metal table. “The Cy will release him after they find a way to implant him and make him a level five. Then they’ll hand him over to me.”
My eyes widened. I must look like a meerkat. “You have lost your mind. They can’t implant Arthur. He’s been touched by Mother Nature. None of us who have been touched by her can be implanted.” I remembered Mother Nature coming to me and offering me memories, stories, and truths about the elementals. It explained why she’d taken my spirit away before my implant. So that I might live. For a brief second, a thought occurred to me. Could a cyborg receive a spirit? Now that I’d been implanted, could I get a spirit? Was I considered unnatural because I was a cyborg?
“Us?” Dad asked.
“What?” Perhaps Mother kept it until I was ready. A new hope surged. Surely she wouldn’t leave me hanging when she’d given me all those memories while I’d been sick. Surely she suspected I’d have to take an implant eventually.
“You are a cyborg,” my dad reminded me.
Because I’d lost my spirit. And I never fought for it. I never tried summoning Mother Nature and demanding she give it back. If she could make fucking dragons, she damn well could give me my spirit back.
“Rose?”
“Yes?”
“Are you listening to me?”
You bet, Daddy. “Return the dragon or die.”
“I would rather die.”
He might not be my biological father, but we sure shared something in common. We never gave up on our dreams. The Cy, bless their hearts, had equipped me with the latest and greatest of their tech. For the Cy, a sense of touch for the purpose of intimacy wasn’t necessary, but if they could find a higher purpose for it, then they’d find it necessary. And so they’d found a purpose. One advanced feature I’d learned about was that I could connect with the tech around me. It was how I’d commanded Jordan’s pod without losing my sanity like level fives.
I wondered how far this feature extended. After all, my dad was made of tech. I rounded Dad’s desk and hugged him, put my hand over his, and hoped the data transfer worked. I couldn’t tell if it had worked until I projected the coordinates of the Cy ship onto my bedroom wall. Then I stood at my window and searched the sky for a dove creature. An eagle landed instead.
15
Arthur
After speaking with the Cy, I fell asleep in my human form. A mistake. They’d moved me into a room with a bed and a bathroom. It was clean, white, and bright as fuck. When they came around with a tray of something they believed I’d eat, I asked for sunglasses. They took me seriously and provided me with shades. Shades on, I lay on the bed, kicked back my legs, and stared at the bright ceiling. No lightbulbs. The ceiling itself provided light, and, they’d said, I could voice-control the intensity if I ate all my food.
Seeing as I’d spent many years in prison, I had some training for this, though if they kept me here for
a few days, I’d go stir-crazy. For now, they’d need to force-feed me. The Cy hated forcing me, but they’d do it if they deemed it important. I was important to them. They’d love to have me turned into a level-five dragon. And looking back at their actions throughout history, I realized that the Cy investigated all claims, so I presumed they’d investigate my doomsday predictions, then decide on what to do with me.
I stretched my aching body and cracked my neck, wondering how long I’d been on the ship. I wondered if my dragon brothers searched for me or if they’d even noticed I was gone. Seven would notice, so at least I had her going around spreading the news. Knight would throw a fit and demand my release. I knew that as sure as I knew Rose would have to move on when the demand went unmet. If she hadn’t moved on already.
My chest hurt, and I struck it with my fist, as if trying to raise my beast from slumber whenever I thought about Rose. “Why haven’t you claimed her, motherfucker?” I couldn’t care less about the dragon-spirit thing. Rose was mine, and talking to myself was a great way to pass the time in prison. I foresaw I’d be chatting with my dragon quite a bit.
The room tipped.
I slid off the bed, rolled, and slammed into a wall, then rolled back and whacked the back of my head on the metal foot of the bed. I sat up and put my palms flat on the floor to brace for another tumble. This must be some kind of turbulence. It reminded me of the last time I’d gotten on a plane.
I still remembered that one night I’d called my mom and found out they’d fostered three boys. Immediately after we’d hung up, I flew back home from New York to see my folks. I’d found my dad slumped in his usual chair with the boys and Mom in the rooms upstairs. I screwed on my silencer and shot him point-blank in the forehead. If he wanted to fuck his own son, I couldn’t imagine what he’d do to those boys. So I’d dealt with him the only way I knew how.
The white lights flickered, then went out. Above the door, a single red light blinked. Beyond the door, the Cy spoke, and it sounded urgent. But then again, any foreign language sounded like an argument to me. I crawled to the corner of the room in case the shit hit the ceiling and we started spinning out of control. I contemplated changing into a dragon and tearing out of this place, but I didn’t want to injure my giant body, get metal stuck into it. I would attempt to live. If possible. And if not, that was fine too. Living without my Rose, not waking up next to her made me want….