Sirocco

by T Hearts

Nitro it would have to be, and the repercussions would have to be everyone else’s – or more likely Mykonos and Nico’s– problem. If it didn’t kill her first.

  Where were they?

  Footsteps approached her, heavy and stomping. Her hopes rose and fell immediately.

  Not Nico, too light to be Mykonos. Someone else.

  She took a painful breath. “Hello Darling.”

  “Do not call me that.”

  “Don’t call me Fairy then.”

  She opened one eye blearily as he stood in front of her. He had his heavy sidearm aimed and ready to fire. There was a tremble in his arm and his diamond pupils were narrowed to a strange beaded line; he was angry and afraid.

  “You’re a terrible shot.” She scoffed, “Your Quetzal has better aim than you.”

  “I was trying to miss.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “I didn’t want to fight you. I gave you the chance to walk away, and you had to go and just-” He yelled angrily, skin becoming ribbon striped with black and yellow lined with white. “Just, walk away and there would be no trouble!”

  “You know I couldn’t do that. I’ve got to bring you in.”

  “You’re right…you couldn’t.” He shook his head, lowering the gun. “All I wanted was to have a chance to be the one in control and to change things! I could have fixed everything! Why did you go and have to ruin everything?”

  “Because what Hasekura is doing is wrong. What you did was wrong.”

  “Like ARCDA is so perfect? Like Core never does anything wrong?” He cocked his head to one side and laughed. “Like Delta doesn’t ‘recycle’ those that Core doesn’t need or want? Or how Atlas kidnaps the most vulnerable populations of humans to shape up into Preters and other synths?” The furious ribbons of black and yellow spread his arms becoming red. A golden tiger.

  “How is what I did worse than what they have done?”

  That sounded familiar to Griffin’s jumbled thoughts. A dizzying déjà vu, but where had she- oh.

  Oh yeah.

  She’d screamed those exact words at Nico and Mykonos before she’d been demoted. Right after Nico had hauled her back in.

  “It’s not…but you out here. Out here and free, you had the chance to go elsewhere, do something else, disappeared completely. You wanted to be more, but all you’ve done is just kept on being what they made you for.”

  “That’s not- that’s…” His skin shifted from angry and striped with to a terrible shade of marbled pearl white and he staggered where he stood as if dizzy. Scrunching his face in pain, he gripped at his shoulder and hissed out a string of swear words, letting the gun drop to the ground.

  With the intense throbbing pain throughout her body, she only just started to realise that her head had been tingling the entire time he was near her. The reeling thoughts echoed back, mixed with the pain of the present as he mused upon her thoughts.

  Angry and afraid–The trickle of blood on the back of my neck– “You abused your training and for what?”– don’t think about the blood, don’ think about the blood– right knee twisted – I should have waited longer– no longer afraid of the dark– box to box to box- it hurts to breathe, it stings, but I won’t stay quiet any more – they never saw her coming – I should have vanished – Who’s thoughts are these? Are these mine?

  “Disappearing?” He gave a pained laugh and took several steps backwards to get away from her. He must have seen- must have felt- everything and he looked horrified. There was no way he could hide it, his skin was rapidly pulsing between striped yellow-black, mottled white, and neutral honey brown as he struggled to bring himself back in line. The colour changing was dizzying in its fluidity, hypnotic even, though with the concussion it made Griffin want to throw up.

  “Where’s the fun in disappearing?”

  “It’s probably as fun as setting a baby Quetzal loose on two Avios who are pissed as hell.”

  As if to respond to its name, the Quetzal above screeched.

  “They’re pretty fast. It’ll be close.” He looked up at the girls and Griffin hit the Nitro patch against her inner arm. “One hundred on the Quetzal. What do you say?”

  “Two hundred on my girls. Quadruple that if they bring it crashing down on your ass.” She could already feel it burning in her veins. It only took twenty seconds to circulate her system. Twenty seconds to kick in, and less than a minute to use it all before it burnt up. If she didn’t bleed out before then.

  Xavier looked back to her with a little laugh.

  “Griffin, I…” He hesitated, eyes dropping down to her arm with tense panic. “What did you do?”

  There was no chance to respond smarmily. An explosion of dust behind them snapped Xavier’s attention away. The Quetzal was no longer in the sky, but neither were the girls.

  Her heart hammered loudly in her ears, a rising tempo that built with an enraged beat, exaggerated by the Nitro.

  If that critter had hurt them in anyway, then she was going to rip its gizzards out and Xavier’s soon after. Without thinking, only feeling the amplified anger, Griffin struck out at him, fist catching him straight in the jaw.

  Nitro boosted, she could feel no pain, no ache in her bones or tiredness. She was quicker, rougher, and downright feral as she landed on all fours and pounced like a cat. Xavier ducked and dodged as best he could, but Griffin had him beat. Fist striking him in the face, blood gushed from his nose and lip, then with an upward strike her short talons sliced thin marks across his neck and cheek. He yelped and he shielded his face to defend himself from any more attacks, giving her the chance to snatch at his arms and throw herself upon him, trying to force him down. With his arms pulled away from his face, the sight of blood sent terrible shocks of abhorrence through her, piercing through the nitro-rage.

  ‘Please don’t! Don’t do this!’ she heard him muse at her, coloured by a mix of fear and the sudden image of her own appearance flashing across her mind. Bloodied and fierce, eyes black from the drug, short fangs bared, the exposed feathers across her back raised like the hackles on a dog. It wasn’t her. This was a feral.

  She let go of his arms, horrified by the image she saw through his eyes. Xavier took the chance to throw her off and scrambled to his feet run.

  She gave chase as fast as she could. Her wings were beating hummingbird-fast, her heart beating faster. The world span and her legs gave out beneath her as he forcibly stopped her from moving, but it didn’t last long. As he ran from her, he snatched up his gun and tossed it far away so that she wouldn’t be able to use it on him. But she didn’t need a gun to be dangerous.

  With one huge raptor leap, she pounced upon him, slamming him face first into the ground and pinning him down enough to grab for the maglock cuffs at her hip.

  ‘Please! Listen to me!’ The thoughts were confusing. A terrified blend of restraint and fear. He didn’t want to fight back and hurt her, but he didn’t want to let her win. ‘Let me go. Please!’

  ‘No!’

  The nitro flared for a final moment of fury as she pulled his arms behind his back and clicked one of the maglock cuffs around his wrist, then it snapped out in an instant.

  There was nothing she could do to stop the sudden paralysis it brought after. She crumpled and Xavier quickly turned the tables with her sudden loss of strength and energy. Throwing her off his back, he pulled her arms behind her and held them tight, waiting to see what she would do next.

  Her entire skull tingled, pain returning in a tidal wave. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even open her eyes. It felt as if she was drowning in icy water with her ribs collapsing in on itself, her chest so tight she couldn’t even breathe.

  Xavier let her go immediately.

  “What did you use?” He sounded panicked and she felt the patch rip away from her skin. “What did you use? What is- Nitro? Shit! Griffin!”

  Chapter 25

  IO didn’t want to have to hurt the Quetzal – it was no different to what she was, despite what it was capabl
e of– but she wasn’t going to let it eat her or her sister.

  Stooping down upon it, she kicked the critter as hard as she could, feet catching it in the shoulder and throwing it sideways before it could land. Screeching it thrashed in the air, bewildered at the strike, its tail swiping across the ground.

  Rounding upon it, she pulled herself into a shaky hover a hundred or so feet above the Quetzal. Hovering was painful, especially after so long being stationary but she had to keep it together. With a piercing whistle to gain its attention she hung in the air, posing herself as a better target before it remembered what had happened and descended upon San.

  The huge beaky head looked up and it rolled in the air to realign its flight path. Big yellow eyes stared at her and with an angered hiss it powered its wings up to catch her. IO rose, gaining as much height as she could. Effort set her chest and back ablaze, the muscles straining and tiring, but she could not slow down, not even for a moment.

  Reaching the upper side of the clouds, she hung in the air upon a gust of cold wind that whipped through her pyjamas and twisted her poncho up into a tangle. With the sun at her back, she had no idea what she was doing, but she was going to try her best no matter what. Taking a deep breath, she readied herself.

  The Quetzal burst out below her, its huge wings whipping the cloud top into whorls as it struggled to continue gaining altitude. It bellowed at the sun as the light blinded it and taking the opportunity, IO twisted in the air, and fell past it.

  Wings and tailfeathers tucking in, she formed a tear-drop shape in the air and began to speed up towards the ground.

  The Quetzal followed quickly after her in hot pursuit. Thunder echoed behind her in its wings. The ground below was racing up to meet them, but the Quetzal was entirely focused upon the cherry and cobalt markings of her wings. Its forelimbs reached forward, talons wide to prepare to snatch at her and strike her down.

  With a single flick of her tailfeathers and the sudden flicking out of her wings, she spiralled sideways, leaving the Quetzal to plough into the dune below with an explosion of sand.

  Breathing a shaky sigh of relief, she angled her wings towards where San lay and landed as quickly as she could, stumbling in the process and falling upon her knees. Stumbling across the ground, she reached San’s side.

  She let out a relieved laugh as she found her sister awake and angry as ever. Her body and wings were dust covered and a few of her feathers had been torn out upon the impact, a few of the longer tailfeathers were bent, but she was alive and that was what mattered.

  “San! San!” IO yelled throwing her arms around her sister and holding her tight. Her wings curling up around them both, she kissed her sister and cried happily, drowning out San’s protests and complaints with her relieved sobs about how it was all her fault.

  “You’re alive!”

  “Baby- OW! That hurts Babybird!” San loudly snapped, nudging IO back with her wing. “Let me go already!”

  Her face scrunched up in pain she was groaning, clutching at her left arm. With the ugly way it was angled, IO didn’t need to be a doctor to know it was broken.

  San peeked at her, ignoring the panic on her face.

  “Did you kill it?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Okay. Help me up and I’ll finish it off. I’m gonna strangle that bloody snake with its own tail.”

  “Don’t be stupid San, you’re hurt!”

  “I’ve still got one other hand.”

  IO scowled and held her tight. “No. No more.”

  San tensed, prepared to argue, then with a sigh relaxed and curled her wing up around her sister.

  The Quetzal screeched, bursting out of the dune and shaking the debris from its feathers. Blood smeared the nostrils behind its beak with a bald patch of feathers also dripping blood from the impact. With a hobble it rose up onto its forelimbs, one snapping beneath it and causing a sky-splitting scream to erupt from its beak. Its eyes fixed on the two huddled girls who stared at it in terror.

  Curling the broken limb up against its side, it began to slither towards them both.

  “IO. Fly.” San hissed out the corner of her mouth, too afraid to move. “IO!”

  IO’s wings wouldn’t respond. They were heavy with exhaustion. There was no hope of a vertical take-off, and even if she could there was no way she would be able to drag the injured San into the sky with her.

  The Quetzal drew closer, its toothed beak agape with exhausted and angry breaths. There was a faint noise in the air, growing louder with every beat. Or was it beats.

  Tearing her eyes away from the Quetzal, IO looked to the sky, and gasped.

  -x-

  Her chest burned with pain. Dull throbbing pulses followed by sharper, heavier, and more agonising ones. But it wasn’t just her chest. Everything hurt. Even thinking hurt.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Her eyes slowly and blearily opened to a bright and out of focus world. Her head buzzed fuzzily, and everything was clouded in confusion and echoes of thoughts. Xavier was…giving her chest compressions?

  “Yes.” He said firmly, leaning over to feel her breath against his cheek and checking along her chest that she was breathing normally. He had wiped his bloody lip and nose as best he could, leaving smears across his face that were streaked by dirt and sweat. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious for but all of the injuries she had caused him looked healed. The scratches were now little more than thin scabs and the bruises on his nose were already yellowing, though the dirt and smears remained.

  As much of a mess he looked, she was sure that she looked far worse.

  ‘Why?’

  “Because you’re an ass who used Nitro!” The diamond pupil constricted to a beaded line within his eye. “This could have killed you! It nearly did! You’d have had better odds against the Quetzal.”

  He was angry, she could feel it, but not angry in a way that made his skin change colour to the yellow and black ribbons that she’d seen before. Concerned. Outraged. There were other feelings, too fast and flighty to understand. Flickers of memories and thoughts all muddled together into a mess that her cotton clouded head couldn’t see through.

  ‘Damn. And I was all nice and ready to fly into the light.’

  “And here I thought you were an Avio, not a moth.” Xavier laughed coolly, helping her sit up, he propped her up against a rock and checking her pulse with his fingers to her wrist. Despite the roughness of his hands, he was being extremely delicate with her.

  ‘Weird’ she mused to herself between dazed thoughts. ‘Why?’

  Wincing, she looked down at herself with a confused frown. Her uniform was undone and the deep gouge in her chest was already patched with stitches, the blood around it having been cleaned away. Even the talon stabs and grazes were cleaned and patched with bandages. There were several small medical patches around the injuries but she struggled to see what they were, and the harder she focused the more the colours and writing blurred and shimmered.

  Off to one side, something silver shined in the dirt, drawing her eye away from the blurry patches. It took her a moment before she realised that it was the metal armband that she had been wearing. He’d somehow taken it off and smashed it to pieces.

  “Stable.” Xavier noted then with a tilt of his head looked at her apologetically as he saw her examining herself. “Sorry I didn’t have any more stitches to get your back, but your head and chest were the priority.”

  She was very confused. He’d used his own medical kit on her? What was going on?

  She tried to speak but no words came out. The world slipped and shifted around her and nausea rose in her throat.

  Scowling to herself, she instead resorted to basic musing, keeping her eyes half shut to lessen the dizziness.

  ‘Did I punch you in the head so hard you forgot we were fighting?’

  “No.”

  ‘Then why…why is there bandages?’

  “Because you’d bleed to death.”
<
br />   ‘Jackass that’s not what I mean.’

  She twisted slightly and white hot agony screamed across her chest and back and across her right wing. Her stomach rolled, even though she knew it wasn’t there, she could feel it, right beneath the alula feather all the way up to her bicep.

  Glancing a look, she nearly vomited at the sight. The mirage of one of her wings lying several feet away from her, twitching with every movement of her back muscles. The beautiful transparent glassy feathers, edged with a smoky vignette of midnight and pearlescent blue, shimmered like strange butterfly wings in the sun.

  She had cheated the first punishment of Nitro, now the second punishment of Nitro was upon her.

  A painful sob was strangled in her constricted throat as the hallucination blinked from existence. The world rolled backwards, and she was sure that she was falling upwards through the sky. She slammed back down, only avoiding another smack to the back of her head through Xavier being quick enough to catch her.

  “Slow down.” Said Xavier, applying more morphine patches. “wait until the dizziness stops. I don’t have enough stitches left to patch up another head injury.”

  The haziness increased again, a warm light golden feeling muffling the pain and her thoughts again.

  ‘You’re so weird.’

  “And you’ve got substantial blood loss. And a concussion.”

  ‘You’ve seen an Avio use nitro before, haven’t you?’

  He looked away quickly, the colours changing with a suddenness that made her eyes blur. Head spinning, she clutched at her eyes, trying to stop the kaleidoscope afterimage from making her throw up.

  “No, I…”

  Confusion– chaotic and calamitous, cruel, cutting, clawing, and complex– I can’t go back I can’t I can’t– I don’t know what to do but I know what I don’t want to do- bone-deep terror- what would they do to me? – watching them work the Synths and Critters to destruction – “You can’t have a feral Preternatural, that can never happen.”-“destroy them all if you must.”- No one is listening, no one will listen ever – we’re not real to them. Products. Pets. A step up from critters at best being tested until they break, then made anew and tested all over again until they get what they want – No one owns me but me– longing loneliness of the loveliness of light upon the horizon –