Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1)

by Mikhaeyla Kopievsky

  “Developer,” he replies with a smile, referring to the Air practice of finding and refining new sounds for music integration. “And recording technology integration. Is Music your competency?”

  She nods.

  “It’s harder after hypoxia, huh?” he says after a while, turning away from her and back to the izakaya crowd.

  She looks at him closer. He doesn’t have the stereotypical look of hypoxia – the heavy-lidded eyes, the slightly slack jaw. But, then again, neither does she. Someone has been sharing her backstory.

  Rehhd or Seth? Each possibility brings its own thrill of possibility.

  “It will heal,” he says, interrupting her thoughts. “Eventually.”

  Eventually. Another period of time with no clear end date.

  “It won’t be the same,” he says without sympathy. “It won’t be better and it won’t be worse. You will heal, but it will be different. You will be different.”

  * * *

  “THIS ONE CAME with a dislocated shoulder and two broken ribs,” Kaide says, pulling up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal a long, pale scar.

  They have migrated from their spot against the wall to a small table nearby. The izakaya has taken on a darker mood, the lighting soft and the music stuck in the lower registers, dense with heavy beats. Anaiya leans forwards, her right thumb running absently along the scar that mars the inside of her left forearm.

  “How long were you incarcerated for?” she asks.

  “Only for three days,” he says, pulling down his sleeve. “Just a minor Unorthodoxy charge.”

  Anaiya tries to think of a minor Unorthodoxy charge that could result in significant injury. She feels her neocortex strain under the nightshade, failing to come up with an answer. Her frown deepens.

  “What?” Kaide asks, smiling.

  “Nothing…” Anaiya begins. “I mean, how do you get a dislocated shoulder and two broken ribs from a minor Unorthodoxy charge?”

  Kaide’s smile broadens into a grin. “Pretty easily, if you’re breaking into a third-level Water lab to get your hands on some copper wire.”

  “You only got three days for that?”

  He laughs. “Well, they got me before I did the breaking in part. So all I got was public nuisance…It was the Protectors’ crude extraction methods for getting me off the third level, and the warm reception I received from the Cell Watchers, that left me damaged.”

  Anaiya’s mind flashes to her recent discussion with Rehhd. Thoughts of Rehhd come with twinges of guilt: she has failed to intercept her again. But the twinges are buried beneath layers of nightshade and apathy.

  “Rehhd showed me the scars from her time in repentance cells,” she says.

  Kaide’s grin fades into something more sombre. “Yeah, Rehhd has had a few run-ins with Fire Elementals,” he says. “They seem to have mutual attraction and antagonism for each other…”

  His eyes lift to a point above and beyond Anaiya.

  “Not boring the butterfly with your theories on sound structures, are you?”

  Seth steps into her vision, standing at the table’s edge between her and Kaide.

  “Regaling her with my heroic endeavours.” Kaide winks at Anaiya.

  “Looks like she has her own battle scars,” Seth says, looking down at the space where her left forearm is defaced.

  “Fire Elementals?” Kaide asks.

  “Peacekeepers,” Anaiya confirms, shifting her gaze between the two of them.

  And, in a way, she is telling the truth. The scar is only four years old, but the memory is fresher. Her race against Niamh to catch the Earth Elemental high on dex had ended with more than a grade three calf tear. Hitting the pavement had carved up her arm pretty good as well.

  Anaiya and the Biomechanics had been too focussed on the leg injury to notice the arm damage, and now the scar was permanent. Strange how her leg had healed almost perfectly, save for a slight tinge when the static in the air grew to peak levels, but her arm was left behind as a record.

  The three of them fall silent, caught in their own thoughts and memories.

  “I’m getting another round,” Kaide says abruptly, shaking off his reverie and standing up from the table.

  “No more nightshade,” Seth says, frowning.

  Kaide nods and heads towards the bar, the void left behind quickly filled by Seth, who settles into the seat across from Anaiya. He sits there, just watching her. She returns his scrutiny, with the same level of interest and lack of intensity brought on by the synth alcohol. She tries to remember his eyes as green, vaguely wondering whether her memory of them in the limbo between the street and the Lavoir is accurate. They are still so dark, rendered colourless in the dull light of the izakaya.

  “It’s harder these days to escape the melancholy,” he says, eventually, maintaining his steady gaze. “Even without the nightshade, the world is shifting to a darker place.”

  Anaiya hears the truth in his unfamiliar words. She has never known melancholy, is unsure of the word itself and what it feels like. But the way he says it reminds her of weight. Reality appears like a mirror glass and she is on one side of it and Seth is on the other. Both seeing the same truth and feeling the same weight, melancholy, but from different worlds and with different understanding.

  “The Heterodoxy…” Anaiya begins, and then falters. “It just seems to…suck…the life and order out of everything.”

  The admission emerges from a deep place within her, surprising her with its presence. A sense of dull panic registers under the layers of her mind, warning her to be more circumspect. Reminding her of her mission.

  Seth sounds a short, anaemic laugh, stripped of mirth and joy. “That’s not Heterodoxy, butterfly.”

  Anaiya wants to ask him what he means, but Kaide returns with a tray of small glasses brimming with tequila, and the moment is lost.

  Anaiya hasn’t drunk tequila since the heady days of her Traineeship. As the last organic alcohol available in Otpor, it is a rarity, with a price point to match. Limited batches are sprinkled through a few of the city’s izakaya, a fading reminder of Otpor’s organic past. The base plant, a blue spiky-leafed specimen, is one of the few things to eke out an existence in the Wasteland’s solitary and sandy environment. But, with Wasteland patrols less frequent, Border Watchers are harvesting it less and less. Soon, tequila – like trees and butterflies – will be nothing more than a memory, a concept for romantics, an unfamiliar reminder of a past never lived.

  Anaiya gently reaches out and pulls a glass towards her, upsetting the tenuous balance of the liquid and setting a trickle down the frosted glass and onto her hand. She pulls at the spill with her lips, bracing herself for the raw alcohol’s assault. Unlike synth alcohols created to perfect standards in Water laboratories, the tequila distilled by Earth Elementals has a rough aroma that sets pins in your nostrils, and a taste that runs jagged spikes down your throat.

  But the assault never comes.

  “Salut,” Seth says, raising his glass to the middle of the table.

  Kaide mimics him, his glass chiming against Seth’s, and Anaiya follows suit.

  Anaiya lifts the glass to her lips, throwing her head back and letting the liquid sing down her throat. Her belly warms immediately and her tongue lights up with a symphony of flavours from sweet to spicy. A slight stickiness cloys her throat and she can almost believe she will exhale flames at her next breath. It is so different from the tequila she has had before. It is smooth and fiery and delicious.

  She looks to Seth and Kaide, who do not seem surprised by the liquor. Kaide is reaching for another glass and Seth picks up two, handing the second to Anaiya.

  “Salut!” Kaide shouts, his voice breaking through the frenetic music that now plays over the izakaya sound network.

  Anaiya pauses before she shoots the contents of her glass. “It tastes…different,” she says, a slight slur entering her words on the back of the natural ethanol.

  Seth laughs. “Because Earth Elementals
haven’t had a chance to spit in it.”

  “It’s not Earth-distilled?”

  Kaide shakes his head. “Yve, Rehhd’s girlfriend, distils it offsite and supplies a few of the Precinct 18 izakaya. Being so close to the Wall, it’s easier to negotiate with the Watchers before the official trade takes place.”

  The Unorthodoxy registers with Anaiya, but doesn’t surprise her. She briefly wonders if the Northern Area Command Peacekeepers are monitoring the minor transgression or taking their cut. The thought wobbles in her mind, balancing on that precipice that divides the part of her mind consumed with her mission and the part that is rebelling against all thoughts Orthodoxy, Peacekeepers and duty.

  “My shout,” she says, rising from her seat on unsteady feet.

  Anaiya pushes gently against the tide of Air Elementals that crowd haphazardly in the space between the table and the bar. The warmth of the tequila surging through her seems to attract the warmth of the bodies surrounding her, and she crashes lightly into them as a synthfly into fluorescent globes.

  At the bar, she waits patiently for an Earth Server to take her order, content to watch the eclectic assortment of Air Elementals mill around her and to listen to the strange music they plug into the bar’s sound system queue. After a short silence, the next song begins its domination of the air waves, its rhythm seeming to sync with the intermittent flickering of the lightbulbs above the bartop. Beat, flicker. Beat, beat, flicker. Beat. Flicker. Beat. Flicker.

  “You like it?”

  Anaiya turns towards the voice. Seth leans against the bar, separated from her by the few Elementals who wait to be served. He extricates himself and joins her at the far end of the bar.

  “You’re Music too?” she asks, surprised.

  “Lover, not a player,” he replies. “My competency is Literature.”

  It is a perfect fit for him. Echoes of the past seem to accompany Seth – dancing, pidgin, tequila. These days, literature is so overlooked and unappreciated, it is almost a relic itself. Elementals watch stories, listen to stories. But no one reads stories – at least, not anyone Anaiya has ever met.

  “But it is from my playlist,” he confirms.

  Anaiya plugs her lifeline into the terminal, swiping across her wristplate to bring up the download options. The name of the song displays prominently, but the name of the artist is noticeably absent. She taps the download icon, confirming that she wishes to purchase the anonymous track.

  “Do you know who the artist is?” she asks, disengaging her lifeline once the download is complete.

  “They prefer the anonymity to the money,” he says cryptically with a shrug, before waving over a bar server.

  “Eight Air tequilas,” he orders, swiping his wristcuff across the terminal to pay.

  Eight?

  Anaiya looks over her shoulder, leaning sideways and craning her neck to get a better view of their table. Kaide sits there with his back to her. Next to him is a female Air Elemental. As if feeling Anaiya’s eyes on her, she turns in her seat towards the bar.

  Rehhd.

  FIFTEEN

  “ANAIYA!” Rehhd exclaims as Seth and Anaiya return from the bar.

  Anaiya smiles and nods her greeting. On the outside she is calmly watching Seth unpack the shot glasses from the tray; on the inside she is trying desperately to pull her brain out of the izakaya’s stupor and in to mission mode.

  “To Liberty,” cries Kaide, raising his shot glass.

  “Egality!” Rehhd laughs at the wobbling glass in her fingertips.

  “Fraternity!” echoes Seth.

  Their eyes turn to Anaiya expectantly.

  “Or Death,” she finishes roughly, completing the national motto and drowning her faltering voice in a river of tequila.

  Closing her eyes, she allows the tequila to take a firmer hold, feeling its warmth reach the depth of her belly and shut down the last of the raw nerves firing in her brain. In the darkness, the sounds of the izakaya fade and she finds herself cocooned in the echo chamber of her mind.

  Remember. Remember why you are here. What you have to do.

  Rehhd’s presence has splintered her joy, casting it as recalcitrance and lazy disobedience. She is an undeniable, tangible reminder of Anaiya’s mission. A call to duty.

  Niamh’s voice floats to the surface of Anaiya’s consciousness and she can once again hear the eagerness in it, hear the delight at the thought of drawing closer to the source of Heterodoxy. His face flashes in her memories, the angles of his face softened by time and the romanticism of her new Air alignment. And now, in the drunken haze of her Air mind, she wants him. Not what he can give or what he can take away. Just him. It is a silly thought. Frivolous and impossible. But it settles in her mind.

  The sounds of the izakaya come back to her and she opens her eyes. It has only been a few seconds, but it feels like hours. Rehhd is deep in a conversation with Kaide and Seth is reaching for the next tequila.

  “For you, butterfly,” he says, handing her a shot glass.

  She holds it steadily, watching the tequila take on a richer colour under the light. She fixes her concentration on the glass, until the rest of the izakaya blurs at the edges. In this moment, she can almost trick her mind into thinking it is Niamh that stands close to her.

  “To success,” she says, raising her glass higher.

  “Or death,” comes Seth’s reply, sombre as he taps his glass against Anaiya’s and drains it dry.

  Tequila glasses empty, Rehhd spins to regard Anaiya and Seth. “Kaide and I are going to head over to Scythe’s party,” she declares, orange eyes sparkling. “Wanna join?”

  Seth turns to Anaiya to gauge her response. He stands closer to her, his shoulder resting lightly against her own. This close she can see the shadow of light stubble that grazes his jawline and a slight crookedness to his nose. Details she would have once considered irrelevant now trigger questions and imagined histories in her mind.

  The hint of a smile plays on his lips; he is keen to go to this party. No. He is keen to go to this party with her. The thought sends another heavy flare of warmth through her, fainter than when she remembered Niamh, but strong enough to remind her of the attraction she felt for this strange, pidgin-speaking charmer just hours ago at the pool table.

  She nods, letting her own smile break out across her face. A bubble of guilt begins to rise in her mind, threatening to burst and destroy her uneasy confidence. She pushes it back down.

  Niamh told me to engage with Rehhd. I’m engaging. I’ll be able to maintain surveillance. Gain exposure to her networks.

  The words ring true, but are tinny, lacking depth. But she doesn’t have time to dwell on them – Seth’s hand is sliding into hers, pulling her behind him through the izakaya crowd in a casual pursuit of Kaide and Rehhd.

  * * *

  THE FOUR OF them skip and weave through the crowds on Ravignan Strip, heading west, closing in on the border with Precinct 17. Seth’s hand is still linked in Anaiya’s. The air outside has not cooled, despite the darkness that has descended on the city. The close contact of skin on skin ratchets the heat up higher, feeding off the night’s temperatures and the strange new fire building in Anaiya’s core.

  Ahead, Anaiya spies a tall stone wall rising from the street and bathed in shadows. For a moment, she is disoriented – certain that she is distant from the River Syn and its walls, but unable to account for the ancient barrier that looms up before her.

  “Deep peace of the running water to you, deep peace of the flowing air to you,” Rehhd’s tremulous voice comes to Anaiya, amplified by the reverberations off the stone wall. “Deep peace of the quiet earth to you, deep peace of the warm fire to you.”

  Anaiya recognises it as an ancient prayer of the Air Elementals. A supplication to their Creator god, recited mournfully at the death rites ceremony of fallen Elementals.

  “Deep peace of the life force to you,” whispers Seth into Anaiya’s ear, his eyes still sparkling with the tequila, his hand still warm
in hers.

  And she realises that the wall, whose shadow she is now passing under, is the border to the city’s necropolis.

  For Anaiya, the cemetery is nothing more than the place dead bodies are treated, burned and disposed of. It is the same for all Fire and Water Elementals, who view life and death with a cold, hard logic. But for Air and Earth Elementals, who create bonds, who indulge in affairs of the heart and root, the cemetery is the final resting place of friends and lovers.

  She looks over to Seth, his green eyes brighter under the street lights and still focussed on hers. She tries to imagine him as a lifeless, crumbling mass of carbon, disintegrating to an absolute nothingness, forgotten by the world and by her.

  And she feels it: a softer, more insidious sadness. Melancholy.

  Without warning, he pulls at her hand. She falls towards him, submitting to the laws of motion, her other hand bracing for the inevitable collision with his chest. And then his hand jerks upwards, pulling her arm up with it. And she is spinning. The rush of air against her bare skin at her wrists and neck sends her mind tingling and achieves what moments before she could not. Her dark thoughts evaporate.

  She laughs. It rushes from her, unfamiliar and unexpected. It reaches her ears as music, rippling through her chest and the Otpor air. And just as suddenly it is silenced. Seth has pulled her into him, her body crushed up against his chest. The two of them drift in the almost-deserted street, Anaiya’s hidden Peacekeeper allowing her to walk backwards in his grasp without stumbling.

  He is only inches taller than her and he looks down, green eyes meeting hazel. Her heart careens at a hectic tempo; her feet feel light like they have lifted in a dash vault. She lets herself be cradled by his arms at her waist, encircling her own arms around his strong frame to pull him in tightly. He lets out his own short laugh and she catches its hint of breathlessness. And then all thoughts are obliterated. Her limbic brain and neocortex are both silenced as his lips crash into hers.

  This is not the frenzied kiss of a Fire Elemental, who yields only to the adrenalin and release of physical need and desire. It is heady and complex – playful yet hinting at a strange desire and unexpected intimacy.