Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1)

by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

  “Hey,” he offers casually, reaching for the entry panel next to the izakaya door.

  The door clicks and he pulls it towards him. Anaiya watches as his sleeve recedes further up his arm, revealing more of the skin pattern – thick, dark lines stretch into twisting ribbons, reaching up to cradle a skull.

  “Hey,” she replies.

  He stands there, the door still grasped in his hand.

  “Going in, butterfly?” he asks, inclining his head towards the activity just beyond the door.

  Anaiya blinks in recognition of the familiar nom de douceur. This Elemental with the interesting ink is the same one who barred her exit from izakaya last night.

  She stares at him, trying to gauge his approach, interpret his intent. His body language is neutral, the smile still dancing at his lips. He is teasing her. Anaiya returns the smile involuntarily, enjoying the moment of levity even if it is at her expense, and ducks through into the Lavoir.

  Inside, the lighting is dim. A score of ancient incandescent bulbs dangle from plastic cables, throwing soft light around the low-ceilinged, narrow space. Music beats and pulsates, bouncing off the wall and blending with the low hum of conversation. The air is rich with smells and noises.

  Anaiya pauses, allowing her limbic brain to revel in the feast of sensations presented before her. The breeze at her back dies as the door to the izakaya clicks shut. She drifts between Air Elementals, slow-dancing a wandering path towards the bar. Her gaze tracks along its architecture; a long piece of graphene, suspended on transparent glass to seemingly float above the polished concrete floor.

  The Earth Elemental behind the bar is two generations older than Anaiya, the lines of hard working and hard living marking her handsome face. Beside her, a now-familiar inked arm reaches out to plug its silver cable into the terminal.

  “Five lyseracids,” he requests.

  He looks over to her, eyes glinting in the yellow light.

  “Six,” he says, amending his order.

  The bartender turns her back to fill the order, leaving them alone in the small space buffeted by the throng of Elementals around them.

  All Air Elementals possess a certain charisma: A freedom, a spontaneity, that sweats through their pores. As a Peacekeeper, Anaiya had detested it – passed it off as an arrogance and independence bordering on Heterodoxy. Tonight, she envies it.

  “Where are you from?” he asks, tapping his fingers against the matte grey surface of the bar.

  She runs her fingers along the graphene in a subconscious response, shadows lengthening and retracting under her fingers – her neocortex feeding her an appropriate response even while her limbic mind surrenders to the tactile and audio sensations assaulting it.

  “Eastern Area,” she says.

  “Yeah, you looked green,” he says, turning back to the bartender.

  Green.

  For Peacekeepers, the adjective is used for pups – inexperienced Trainees who don’t yet understand the way of the world.

  “Why the transfer?” he asks, stacking the shot glasses in a narrow rectangular tray.

  “Hypoxic demotion,” she says, feeding him the standard response.

  He nods, handing her a shot glass brimming with the liquid lys.

  “Bienvenue,” he says, his voice lilting in the pidgin convention of Air Elementals.

  Welcome.

  And with that, he retreats from the bar, never looking back, gripping the tray of lys and walking to the far end of the izakaya.

  Anaiya shoots the dark liquid, a cloying sweetness coating her tongue. To her left, Air Elementals download their wristplate playlists via one of two terminals attached to the bar. A screen embedded in the bartop flashes with the music’s identifier – sometimes a name, other times a visual – before adding it to an updated queue. Bodies sway and dip and writhe in a contorted imitation of Anaiya’s free-running; their movements chaotic where hers were precise.

  Beyond the end of the bar, a small group hovers around a large table. At its head, a young female leans prostate over it. Her left arm stretches out in front of her, propped up on the bright blue poly surface by splayed fingers. A long, slender baton is cradled between her thumb and forefinger, stretching along the line of her body and grasped firmly by her right hand, which hovers high behind her.

  Crack.

  In a single, fluid, sharp movement, the baton flicks back before powering forwards to connect with a small white ball. The ball shoots across the table surface, colliding with a red ball and sending it hurtling towards a hole carved into the table’s corner.

  A shiver runs through Anaiya.

  It is well known that Air Elementals, like Earth, are baser in their activities, preferring feeling to thinking. While not eschewing the modern conveniences and technology of Otpor, both groups dengage in more primal activities than their Fire and Water counterparts. But here, in the izakaya, the reverence for the past is palpable. The pidgin slang, the dancing, and the tactile game playing. It is all so far removed from the modernity of Otpor. It appears almost Heterodox to Anaiya’s eyes.

  The connection registers vaguely in her mind, but does not settle. A cool current is tracing its way through her neural maze; the lys dilating her pupils, raising bumps along her skin and attuning her ears to hidden sounds. The light appears brighter, details sharper, noises clearer, textures rougher. The lys has her in its hold, her limbic brain handing over full control of her mind and body.

  THIRTEEN

  THE HOURS PASS by in a blur of lys. Air Elementals hover next to her at the bar, occasionally engaging her in conversation, buying her drinks and entreating her to dance, but she remains transfixed by the table to her left.

  Groups of Elementals flow around it, stopping to engage in the game or merely observe its progression. The single dark baton is passed between Elementals in turn, some players using it to strike the white ball towards one of the red, others towards a yellow, until they run out of a colour and target the lone black ball.

  On the surface of it, the game is a simple demonstration of hand–eye coordination she had thought unlikely in Air Elementals. But deeper than that, there is a complex spatial understanding – a desire to create a pattern of impact from hitting the white ball at a certain angle and velocity. And despite the consistent goal of the game, every player approaches the task differently – some are quick to attack the white ball, and others take their time to assess lines and angles.

  Anaiya watches as the green-eyed Elemental circles around the table and steps up to one of the long edges. She has watched him play for the last few minutes. He is fearless, never pausing between shots, never hesitating before charging the baton at its target. The white ball is a blur, colliding into the table’s edge and sending yellow globes careening off each other into the six holes placed around the table’s edge.

  The table is transformed into a symphony of noise and movement. He delights in it, erupting in a loud laugh, head twisting to grin at his companions. Straightening from his lazy breach over the table, he navigates to his next point of attack, spinning the baton in his palm and engaging in banter with spectators as he passes.

  And then his eyes catch Anaiya’s.

  His grin settles into an easy smile and, just before he lowers himself over the table to take his shot, he winks at her. The simple, entirely missable, action carries a wasteland of emotion and presumed intimacy.

  Deep in her subconscious, where her neocortex is railing against its lys imprisonment, Anaiya is ready to leap over the table and slam him into a clawhold head vice. But something closer to the surface responds to the exclusive familiarity, and she finds herself smiling back.

  One by one, the yellow balls disappear from the table, swallowed by unforgiving pockets. When the table is bereft of them, he stands. The new object of his desire, a lone black ball, sits flanked by four red balls butting against the table’s frame. She expects him to finally slow down, to assess the table and carefully plan the next shot. The crucial shot.
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  Instead, he moves almost imperceptibly. The crack of the baton against the white ball reaches her ears unexpectedly and she watches as it hurtles in a straight line towards the cluster of balls. It clips the edge of the black ball, before ricocheting into the closest red ball. The six balls erupt in an intricate, chaotic dance across the blue surface. Each of them flirts with the corners, bouncing against each other and crashing against the sides, but only the black is consumed.

  He throws the baton down on the table in triumph as his companions laugh and cheer around him. He ignores them. His gaze is on Anaiya, the same twitching smile that greeted her at the izakaya’s entrance playing across his features. He entreats her to join him at the table, beckoning her with the roll of his index finger.

  She pauses. He is distracting. Since she first walked into the izakaya, she has remained consciously and subconsciously aware of him. She should have left an hour ago, having still not sighted Rehhd or any of her Lavoir companions. But something draws her to him: a recklessness to him that hints at her past as a Peacekeeper Trainee; a carelessness that shouts the spontaneity of Air.

  Her first steps towards him are leaden, anchored by responsibility, weighted by indecision. Air Elementals move in waves between her and the table, creating a static vision of her destination. Her neocortex screams at her to remember her mission; her limbic brain argues that fraternising with Air Elementals is her mission.

  “Care to challenge, butterfly?” he asks, twisting the baton towards her.

  “Anaiya,” she says, taking the baton and balancing it lightly in her palm.

  His eyes shine with that familiar amusement, infuriating and endearing. “Seth,” he says, stepping to the end of the table where the yellow and red balls congregate with the black in a subterranean opening.

  He gathers them by the handful, arranging them in an alternating pattern within a hollow triangle laid flat on the table’s surface and slotting the black ball into the centre gap.

  Looking up, he tosses the white ball towards her, eyes still shining with anticipation. She plucks the ball smoothly from the air and strides to the opposite end of the table. Leaning over the table, she replicates the motions she has witnessed from him and the other players at the beginning of each game. The white ball runs gently down her fingers onto the azure surface of the table, rolling to a stop on the thin, dark line.

  Seth pulls the triangle away from the table with a flourish, the multi-coloured spheres keeping their position on the table.

  “Apres vous,” he says.

  Anaiya positions herself above the table, running her glance along the tapering length of the baton to the white ball and beyond – to the triangle of targets, to Seth’s casual stance and intense eyes.

  The anticipation and curiosity – the challenge – in those eyes connects with something inside Anaiya. She feels a smile spread across her face and, just before she strikes at the white ball for the first time, she surrenders fully to her Air identity. The doubts and internal debates dissipate and she allows herself to be fully consumed by the table and the tinted globes and the attention of an Air Elemental named Seth.

  * * *

  THE TABLE IS a minimalist graphic of three red balls fighting against two yellow, one black and one white.

  Anaiya is suspended motionless above it, entirely focussed on the white ball and its projected trajectory along the table. She clumsily future-searches, the lys still travelling in her bloodstream and bouncing between her neurons, anticipating the point of impact where the white ball will collide with the red.

  Her right arm draws backwards, ready to follow through with the baton, when a new sensation alights on the skin of her forearm. She slowly drops her arm and straightens, but Seth’s hand remains connected. She stares at him, but his eyes remain downcast, captured by her exposed skin.

  His touch shifts something inside her and she is grateful for the lys, which has heightened her senses but dulled her physical responses. She watches as his finger runs up along her arm, pushing the sleeve back with its advances.

  “New?” he asks.

  In the warm light of the izakaya, red shadows accentuate her skin ink, highlighting its rawness.

  “Retouched,” she says, the lie thickening in her throat.

  His fingers linger a moment longer before he removes them, letting gravity pull the sleeve back down.

  They stand there, silently facing each other. The pause becomes too heavy for Anaiya, who breaks the gaze first, returning her focus to the table. She takes a deep breath and resumes her game stance. Her eyes narrow, drawing an invisible line along the angle tracking between the white ball, the far corner pocket, and a lone red ball that sits isolated from the others.

  As a Peacekeeper, narrow, rigid focus came easily to her. She could isolate a target – a fleeing perpetrator, a free-running prop, an Unorthodox disturbance – and zone immediately in on it, rendering everything else irrelevant. So she waits, giving more time for her neocortex to ascend and take responsibility. But the lys maintains its hold.

  She strikes at the white ball. It careens off course, colliding with the cluster of yellow balls and sending them spinning into the cushioned rails. The red remains untouched. She slowly straightens, never taking her eyes off the red ball.

  “It’s not going to move, butterfly,” Seth says from behind her.

  She feels the baton grow heavier in her hand as he tries to take it from her. She holds on to it and turns to face him. The tension between them grows, the silence stretching further than the last, but this time Anaiya doesn’t look away. She sees herself reflected in irises that appear black and, for a moment, she is lost in them.

  Her grip on the baton loosens and she lets him steal it. He pauses, maintaining the connection between them for a moment longer, before turning his back on her and moving in to take the shot.

  The remaining two yellow balls disappear into the nearest holes, leaving only the black, perched precariously on the edge of one of the corner pockets. He strikes again at the white ball, softly, sending it on a gentle trajectory with the black.

  As it gets closer, the movement becomes less independent. To Anaiya’s eyes it is as if the black ball is pulling the white towards it.

  The impact sends both balls into an intimate dance, each of them rotating to pull the other closer. The black shifts in its position to present a gap for the white ball to fill. Its centre of gravity passes over the pocket, its mass falling to the black hole below. The white ball takes its place, filling the void on the table and shivering as its hangs balancing over the pocket’s edge. And then it drops.

  Seth turns to look at her. Subconsciously, Anaiya knows that she should feel a kind of elation – some sort of satisfaction at winning the game, even if by default. But all she feels is the weight.

  FOURTEEN

  ANAIYA LEANS against the far wall of the izakaya, watching Seth and the other Air Elementals from a distance. No one interrupts her self-imposed isolation. She is not alone – there are other independent Elementals sitting with heads bent over screens or with eyes closed to revel in non-visual sensations.

  She checks her biochemical reading again. All synth readings are normal – the lys left her system more than an hour ago, but her heart rate is still accelerated and the jumpiness in her stomach tells her that adrenalin and norepinephrine are coursing through her body.

  After her game with Seth, she hurriedly excused herself, concerned that the same overwhelming chaos that had attacked her at Lavoir would take hold again. For a moment, it looked as if he would protest, but a group of boisterous Elementals surrounded him and Anaiya took the opportunity to retreat.

  He is charismatic, like Rehhd – attracting a large and ever-changing collection of Elementals who clamour for his attention. She watches him now, his smile beaming at the Elementals around him, his laugh occasionally rising above the music and chatter. It is a sound that calls to her, distracts her. She stubbornly shoves her hands in her jeans pockets, keepi
ng them from fidgeting.

  After a while, a familiar-looking male Elemental catches Anaiya’s gaze and peels away from the group. Minutes later he arrives at her table, proffering two short glasses of a clear liquid.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asks, filling the space between Anaiya and one of the heavy iron struts that rises from the floor to the ceiling. “Nightshade,” he adds, handing Anaiya a glass. “Seth prefers the amp-up factor of lys, but I like my alcohol to dull the edges rather than sharpen them.”

  Anaiya raises the glass to her lips, tasting the clean, sweetly spiced liquor.

  “You were at Lavoir the other night, weren’t you?” he asks.

  Anaiya swivels her head to look at him. His profile presents high cheekbones and a strong jawline offset by dark hair that falls in thick waves just short of broad shoulders. His face tickles at her memory, but she can’t quite place him.

  “With Rehhd, yeah?” he clarifies.

  And she remembers him. The Elemental that Rehhd had joined just before Anaiya’s meltdown.

  “Kaide, right?” she confirms, recalling the name her target had yelled out in greeting at the izakaya.

  He nods.

  “Anaiya,” she offers in return.

  “I saw you playing pool with Seth earlier,” he says, turning his head back to face the crowd. “You were pretty good. How often do you play?”

  Anaiya takes a long drink from her glass, giving her time to weigh up her response. Without knowing how prevalent the game is, she is unsure of how many opportunities are available for Air Elementals to play. If it is a game confined to certain precincts or local areas, her answer may contradict her backstory of coming from Precinct 12 in the Eastern Area. But she knows that unless she can offer up some previous experience, she will be unable to explain her sudden competency without attracting suspicion.

  “Often enough,” she finally responds. “Do you play?”

  Kaide shakes his head. “Music is more my thing.”

  “Composer or Creator?” she asks, surprised to find herself genuinely interested.