The Cost

by R. W. Holmes

  Deacon looked down at the cafe table before him and scowled.

  “I want to go after her” he admitted. “For revenge.”

  “And what does Aoife think of that?” asked Bernard.

  “She's Aoife” Deacon said with a shrug. “She just wants me to be happy.”

  Bernard nodded thoughtlessly and signaled a waitress. “We're going to get drinks” he said stoically. “And we're going to watch the concourse exit. When this Gael Walsh finally makes his move, he won't have anywhere to hide.”

  Deacon nodded and picked up the drink menu. “Can I get a beer?” he asked.

  “How many teeth did you lose?” Bernard asked back.

  “Two.”

  Bernard sighed. “Better make it a shot.”

  Back in Kennedy's dorm, a freshly washed incubus was donning a suit of trendy, albeit somewhat formal attire.

  Despite the ordering of the clothes and the relative complexity of putting them on, the incubus somehow knew instinctively that the button-down shirt was supposed to be tucked into his pants, and that he also needed a belt to go with his slacks. He knew the hat he was given should be worn at a very precise angle to compliment his facial features better, and he even retied his tie in a dozen different styles of knot before finding one he liked.

  He eventually settled on a Murrell knot.

  “Very handsome” Kennedy said approvingly. “Alright, listen up buddy. From now on, your name is Cypress.”

  “Okay” the incubus said with a shrug. “Where am I?”

  “You've been summoned” said Zinerva. “As in, you know, to Earth. Except we're not on Earth, because humans are really smart, so now we're in a giant metal box orbiting the planet. They are a species that has colonized eight star systems, terraformed three completely uninhabitable planets, and has actually made contact with other intelligent species in their universe.”

  “Okay, first of all, when did you learn all of that?” asked Gael.

  “What do you think I do when you two are talking?” Zinerva replied incredulously. “Just sit here?”

  “Also, that intelligent species thing isn't true” said Kennedy. “Isn't it like, super old or something?”

  “It's ancient technology, and yeah, it's thousands of years old” said Gael. “They say that maybe the species has advanced at the same rate as us and is in a similar position, but that it's almost more likely that they've been wiped out by some cosmic event, or that one of our ancient messages bounced back to us and got garbled up to sound like something else in the process.”

  “This is very boring” Cypress said with a sigh.

  “No it's not! It's extremely important!” snapped Zinerva.

  “Bro, c'mon” Kennedy said to Cypress next. “You gotta know some of this stuff, y'know? How are you supposed to do your incubus thing if you get some shrew who thinks the greatest thing in the world is acting like she's not all about getting to know you better?”

  Cypress nodded back dutifully as he looked about the room restlessly. “I'm going to be perfectly honest” he said awkwardly. “I have no idea what to do with myself. There wasn't a lot to do in Hell, and I'm not even allowed to do those things here.”

  “Zinerva, how did you handle that?” asked Gael.

  “I don't know, I explored” Zinerva replied with a shrug. “I'm not an incubus, so I don't know what he wants.”

  “We should forget about that and focus on the plan!” Kennedy said instead. “We gotta get my boy here ready to go out and do surveillance for us.”

  “Actually, let's just have him go do it” Gael said instead.

  “What!?” Kennedy, Zinerva, and even Cypress exclaimed in unison.

  “Yeah” said Gael. “Think about it, he knew how to put on those clothes without being told. Zinerva is the same, she can somehow just know what sorts of things upset a person. Let's get him a map of the college concourse and have him sweep the area and look for anyone suspicious.”

  “Yes!” Cypress said enthusiastically. “I like this idea. I want to get out and see what this 'Enterprise Island' has to offer, and I want to meet its people.”

  “Fine, but keep conversing simple” said Gael. “No one will believe you if you tell them you're a demon, but if they repeat it elsewhere it might tip off our enemies to your presence. All in all, looking like a tourist who's exploring the concourse will probably help with your disguise.”

  “And no seducing” added Kennedy. “Well, no. I mean, you can seduce people, but no sex. No seducing people for sex on the job, but you can seduce people to get information! Yeah, that's how we're wording it.”

  Cypress nodded and looked about Kennedy's dorm confusedly. “And how do I leave this place?” he said uncertainly.

  Gael dropped his head into his hands and shook it. “This is a terrible idea.”

  “But it's your idea” said Zinerva.

  “I know.”

  Cypress emerged from Academy Nine's entry gates ten minutes later. Walking through a hallway filled with other people and knowing they wouldn't harm him simply for being had been an interesting experience for the incubus, but stepping out onto the college concourse was something else entirely.

  There were dozens of people before Cypress now, and dozens more crowded around the building directly beside the academy's entrance. It was Tennerman's of course, and the people crowding around it were police officers and firemen, but Cypress knew nothing of that.

  Continuing on, Cypress allowed himself to dissolve into the crowds of the concourse. They moved like an ocean current around a great, central fountain, which itself was ringed by the structures of the various businesses that peddled their wares to students and passersby alike, but again, Cypress knew nothing of this.

  Instead, Cypress saw people sitting at wire-frame tables, in wire-frame chairs, and drinking drinks from overly fancy porcelain cups. He saw people perusing clothes, or furniture, through the great glass windows lining the front of other structures, and he saw them take down numbers from the clothes and bring them up to a counter manned by a uniformed human who matter printed the item for them. Cypress even came upon a structure where the people inside did nothing but lift heavy objects, run in place on pathways that moved against them, and ride immobile bikes.

  Cypress was not an ordinary demon, though. He was an incubus, and because of it he had a sense of empathy that was only matched by his capacity for meting out cruelty.

  “So this is what society looks like” he thought aloud in amusement. “The others were right. I need to have a hobby if I'm going to enjoy anything other than the people... These delicious little creatures have come up with so much to do.”

  It was then, as Cypress immersed himself in a world built on something other than lust and chaos, that the unfamiliar reached out and drew him into that very same world.

  “Um, excuse me?”

  Cypress turned and smiled at the woman who had approached, and at the flash of his pearly whites he immediately recognized a certain weakness in her knees, and almost felt the flutter in her heart.

  She was short, standing just under five and a half feet tall, with brown hair and pale, hazel eyes. She was also very pretty, as were the two women waiting off to the side, and dressed in equally pretty formal-wear that Cypress immediately noticed from how it stood out in the crowd of casually garbed people around them.

  “Yes?” he said through his smile.

  “So, my friends and I...” she started, before looking back over her shoulder at her friends standing nervously behind her. “We're on our way to an art show. My invitation says plus three, but we couldn't get anyone else to go, but... You're like, super presentable right now. Do you maybe, like, wanna tag along? It's very trendy, I promise. Only the most exclusive people are going to be there.”

  “It sounds wonderful” admitted Cypress. “Unfortunately, I'm busy with work.”

  “Oh...” the woman said disappointedly. “What do you do?”

  Cypress smirked ran his tongue over his
left fang nervously. “It's also very exclusive” he said carefully. “Maybe you can find me another time? I'm staying with family right now, my nephew. He's in college, in the dorms.”

  “Oh. I didn't know they let family visit in the dorms like that” the woman murmured confusedly.

  “Exceptions are made for the Adams's” Cypress said with a shrug. He turned to go then, and grinned knowingly as the woman ran back to her friends and they erupted into a cacophony of excited, hushed whispers.

  'Kennedy and Gael will thank me for this' he thought knowingly. 'Just as they have shared their world with me, I will share my world with them.'

  Cypresses outing became more purposeful as the novelty of the new world around him began to wear off. He had a job to do, and orders spurning him forward to do it. But as it turned out, a world as foreign as the one he'd been dropped into made spotting something distinct or out of the ordinary difficult.

  Because everything was anything but ordinary.

  Being the smart, socially minded person he was, Cypress instead stopped looking at the world around him and began looking at where the people around him were looking instead.

  'What catches your eye, Enterprise Island?' he thought curiously to himself. 'What do people from this world of wonders find wondrous?'

  The myriads of micro-expressions Cypress instinctively knew how to read, and the ways people let their attention be drawn for mere fractions of a second flooded the incubus with a wealth of information, and almost instantly he had a mental map of how and where people were looking about themselves. Like a grid, the concourse became an image in his mind that heat-mapped where people put their attention, and where people actively ignored what was going on.

  Among all of this free flowing information, one spot, moving rapidly through the crowd, repeatedly drew looks, but was then quickly and quietly ignored.

  'Interesting' Cypress said as he turned his eyes on the source.

  Before him was a young woman, her clothes singed and her eyes alight with fear and fury alike. It was Jacky, and the way she appeared to be clutching nothing to her chest told Cypress that not everything was as it seemed.

  Quietly, cautiously, and with a haste that made the crowd's impassable presence seem nonexistent, Cypress pressed on after Jacky to better investigate what she might be up to. Eventually, she ducked into a store with a strangely industrial appearance that was littered with hints of camouflage patterns in the letters of its title sign.

  “Enterprise Gun Club” Cypress murmured thoughtfully, before turning his gaze to the stark and militaristic interior. “What would bring a panicked young woman to a place like this?”

  Next, he turned his gaze to a large, red sign with the words “WEAPONS MAY NOT LEAVE THE PREMISES” written on it in big, bold, and extremely threatening letters.

  Cypress frowned as he spied Jacky stepping up to the counter within, but his talented ears picked up mention of renting for a 'shooting range'. He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of dollars Kennedy had given to him, before silently hoping it was enough to also get him into this 'shooting range'. He arrived at the counter just after Jacky disappeared through a side door beside the left end of the counter.

  “Hey, pal” the man working the counter said lazily. “What can I do for you?”

  Cypress smiled back at the man in his usual disarming way, but received a cold indifference that seemed to match the refined, militaristic aesthetic of the establishment. Friendliness, it seemed, was not what got ones foot in the door...

  “You know, I was passing by, and it just suddenly hit me how silly it was not to know how to use a weapon” said Cypress. “The world is an uncertain place, and I can't help but feel like I've done a poor job learning how to protect myself.”

  The man working at the counter perked up slightly as Cypress's words, words that held legitimate weight with the man, spurned him to interest. Because of this, Cypress finally caught a glance at his name tag.

  “Don!” Cypress said with a chuckle. “What an extraordinary coincidence, my grandfather's name is Don. He's the one always telling me to, uh, get informed.”

  “You mean take a safety course?” asked Don.

  “That's the one!” Cypress said appreciatively. “I'm still horribly uninformed though, what's the cost of a thing like that these days?”

  “Not much,” Don started with a shrug. “Weapons have changed a lot, so people don't realize how advanced their safety features are these days. For forty bucks I can have you in and out with a fresh General Carry Permit in under an hour.”

  Cypress quickly slipped out a fifty from among the roll Kennedy had given him and slammed it down on the counter.

  “What are we waiting for?” he said excitedly.

  What had initially seemed like a small building proved to be anything but for Cypress when Don took him through a back door to the shooting range hidden within, but it was the sight of Jacky firing several rounds into a distant target that stole a gasp from him.

  “Yeah, it still gets me sometimes too” Don said with a smile. “I don't know man, some people look at guns and see evil, but it's different for me. Everyone here has a weapon that could kill another person before they could blink, but do you know how many deaths I've seen at a shooting range? Zero, and I practically live here. Seeing that kind of trust shared between people... it really helps when something makes me question my faith in humanity.”

  Cypress merely smiled back at Don approvingly. 'Do not, under any circumstances, shoot someone else' he thought furtively to himself. 'Even if the fact that they stay dead kind of makes it more fun. I mean, come on! All the killing with none of the revenge...'

  “You alright, fella?” said Don.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes, of course” said Cypress. “Your words from earlier, they just... got to me.”

  “Right, well...” Don said as he continued leading Cypress down the range. “You'll see everyone here has their own boxed in area to shoot from. It's bulletproof, so even if someone's weapon went off by accident you'll be fine. Loaded weapons are not, under any circumstances, supposed to leave the booth. If you want to switch your weapon out, or return it, you go to the cage on the other side of the range and Randy will get you sorted.”

  Cypress leaned back to get a look at Jacky as Don stopped at the shooting 'booth' furthest from the door they'd entered through.

  “I keep a lock box here with a Glock in it, which for just about as long as anyone can remember has been one of the safer, simpler weapons to operate” Don said as he fished out his key ring and unlocked the lock box. “It's not fancy, but it has everything we've come to enjoy in this modern age: a smart trigger, a shot-sensitive safety disabler, the classical iron sights, and a reload buzzer.”

  “I have no idea what any of that is” Cypress replied honestly, before stealing another glance at Jacky. As far as he could tell, she was merely taking practice shots with her own, six cylinder weapon, which he bitterly admitted looked a whole lot more impressive than the one he was about to shoot.

  “What, you eyein' that forty-four?” Don said with a chuckle. “Listen to the sound it makes, friend. You gotta walk before you can run, and I can tell by the way that little lady is shootin' that she's been running for a long time.”

  Cypress exhaled sharply and picked up his own gun to look it over.

  “So, the handle vibrates when the magazine gets low” said Don. “That's what you load the bullets in with, in laymen terms. That's the reload buzzer, while the smart trigger differentiates between something getting caught on the trigger and your actual finger, which keeps the gun from going off, and the safety disabler is for when the little computer inside the pistol recognizes the sound of another gunshot and gets it ready to shoot for you. Self-defense is the purpose, after all.”

  “That all sounds very handy...” muttered Cypress. “Do I do anything else special to make it shoot, or...?”

  “Nope, Glocks don't need those extra steps” said Don. “A revo
lver, sure, you have to cock the hammer back, or another model might demand you do something similar, but that model in your hands right there is ready to go the moment you load it.”

  Cypress nodded as Don continued his speech, and even loaded the pistol for him. Comments on 'trigger discipline' and knowing when it was right to pull out a weapon were exchanged, but Cypress kept the bulk of his focus on Jacky as Don ran him through the safety basics of using a firearm.

  “Alright, now what I need you to do is point the business end of that piece downrange and line up the front sight so that the top of it is aligned with the back sights” said Don. “And then get the little white dot in the front site pointed right at the center of the target.”

  “Okay...” Cypress murmured as he did what he was told. “Why, exactly?”

  Don laughed and said. “Squeeze the trigger. Remember what I said there, alright? Squeeze, not pull.”

  Cypress obliged, and almost leaped out of his own skin when the gun went off and sent a round directly into the center of the target.

  “Ho boy! I know, right?” Don said as he broke out into hysterical laughter. “You see 'em, and you hear 'em, but it's just not the same until you feel 'em!”

  Cypress stared down, dumbstruck, at the pistol laying in his hands. He had, in a very short amount of time, decided he hated everything about Don.

  But Don was right about guns.

  “And hey, that's not a bad shot for a first timer” Don continued gladly. “Tell you what, there's another couple magazines in the box. You go ahead and shoot it all now, and then we'll talk about what your membership and purchasing options are in the front.”

  “Yes, I think I'd like to own one of these immediately” said Cypress.

  “Well, you're gonna have to wait no matter what” Don replied sadly. “A carry permit for an Island like this takes several days and a background check to go through, assuming you're clean. Shooting at a club like this is different, though, and it's much easier to get a permit to own a weapon like this planet-side. That's the General Carry Permit I was talking about earlier.”