“What happened?” Val asks, looking at me with wide eyes. It’s hard for him to imagine what could put me in a wheelchair. I’m almost flattered.
“I need you here till I get better, then Sabetha and I are leaving for a while,” I tell him.
“You sure? Maybe you should, you know, hide, till you heal up and figure out what the hell’s going on.”
“Hiding won’t do any good, so I might as well be comfortable in my own home. I’ll be ready to leave by day after tomorrow.”
“What about Sabetha? She okay?”
“Yeah, she’ll live. I’m having a bloody stop by after sunset.”
“Takeout, huh? Poor interns.”
“Our voucher at the hospital is named Zoe. I notified the puppies outside too, they’re our backup should something happen, and if I’m not up by then you’ll hear a knock at the door. Check the camera and use the intercom.”
“Delano, I got it,” he says confidently.
I continue anyways. “Make sure the bloody runs through the full procedure with a phone call confirming his ID. Only then can you let him in. Understood?”
“Like daylight.”
“Good. I left a thousand on the end table by the couch for payment.” I wheel back to my room and then, before closing the door, look over my shoulder at him. “Thanks.”
My body lies flat on a mound of circular silk pillows. Incense burns nearby, infusing the air with lavender and sage. An army of very special candles, providing a wealth of kharma, aid me in various mental tasks as I attune myself. After several hours I will reach a deep state of consciousness known as séance and when I wake, roughly a day after that, my bones will be more or less healed.
At the level of séance, I am essentially in a state of kharma, a second spectre-like version of myself separated from my physical form and able to fly through the city and sky, unseen by all but the most kharmatically sensitive. This ability is invaluable for certain tasks but also unimaginably dangerous. No one, save a captain, would ever attempt séance alone.
I drift out of my body and float over my room, the building, and then Gothica itself, though it doesn’t look like Gothica would through an ilk’s eyes. Instead, I see it in a state of energy and it’s not easily described. I go higher and higher, deep into the smoggy, uniform, and featureless stratus clouds which hover and swirl around the entire city. Deeper into the gray haze, I begin to feel the essence of others, their thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I am entering the collective consciousness, a thriving mass of energy and a replication of the city in thoughts and memories. In my séance form I draw tremendous power, using it like a straw to suckle manna from heaven and heal my broken body.
In this place, as on the physical ground below, there is a constant struggle. Yet even for all the evil of Gothica, there is some sort of balance and order. The chyldrin are subject to the sun just as the gazers' are to the moon. Without some sort of balance, no matter how warped it may be, the city could never maintain its stagnation.
Gothica has gone unchanged for a thousand years that I can personally attest to, and our records say it has been like this for much, much longer. Yet the masses of undarkened don’t notice. The ones that survive are the ones that keep their blinders on and go day to day without any real understanding of the world around them. As for those of us with an understanding of the world – there are surprisingly few answers. Lots of studies and data. Not a lot of answers. There are theories, probably better termed hunches, but they inevitably fall short when trying to explain Cycle.
As for social culture, things move in perfect tri-generational pendulum swings with predictable cycles of conformity, rebellion and unabashed-consumerism. A vague notion of Christian tradition dominates conceptions of morality, but in actuality, only serves to legitimize the whims of the individual. Empirical academia is marginalized when it conflicts with corporate talking points and the media are merely the bully pulpits of big business. Cynthecorp, what amounts to our central government, retains its monopoly and power over everything despite just one in ten people knowing it exists.
I used to think, if only everyone knew… things would change then. I’ve since come to believe that even if everyone did know the truth, half of them would reject it anyways. Because what is truth? A matter of perception. And one of the truest things I’ve come to learn about people while studying them for just over ten centuries is this: people believe whatever they think will keep them alive longest.
The truth is too overwhelming and so people filter it to keep some sense of control and sanity. That’s the whole mystery of Gothica. I’ve figured out the why, anyways… still haven’t figured out the how.
As the day grows old and the balance shifts to night, I prepare to descend back to my body. I have collected all the energy I need to regenerate my wounds. But suddenly, it grows cold. The temperature does not change in this state of existence – it’s more like the idea of cold envelops me. In the distance I can see a strange green lightning flash within the fog, but just as soon as I begin to look further, the phenomenon is gone. It’s nearly nightfall, and I have to see to Sabetha’s recovery.
Someone knocks on the outer door. Behind me Val opens his suitcase and takes out a sub-machinegun brimming with tactical additions. I hear him slap the bolt and send it sliding forward, chambering the first round. Stealthily he slips into Betha’s room to check the monitors.
I already know who it is, but by the time I can waddle over to the door with the use of my cane, Val has emerged from Sabetha’s room with his weapon at the ready.
“Dnnahno?” comes a muffled Nigel, my secretary, from behind the door. He can see through the walls enough to detect Val approaching.
Val is to the right of the door frame with the gun butt pressed into his shoulder and the muzzle pointed down. He looks back and forth from me to the inner door.
“It’s okay,” I say to him and open the outer door. “It’s my secretary, Nigel.” A red laser sight goes from my back onto the forehead of a bloodied Nigel and dangles there for a moment. He looks down the length of the small security room at Val’s gun and the red laser sight leading to his nose, then puts his hands up. “Delano?”
“Come in.” I lift a hand to calm Val. After a moment he lowers the gun, Nigel passing by him and heading into the kitchen.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
Nigel is strung out, his glasses are cracked and his clothes ripped. Smudges of dirt and blood have just begun to dry on his face. “Some kind of creature. I was on my way to see you and I thought I’d meet a new contact. He didn’t tell me who he was over the phone, just that he was from an organization that had a lot of secrets – secrets we needed to know about.”
“A cynsidiary?” I ask skeptically. Darkened between forty-five and fifty-five are always calling us sentiners, usually the lower ranking cyperas, trying to blow the whistle on the evil practices of some corrupt business under the umbrella of Cynthecorp. As I mentioned before, the city usually kills them but not always before they find our phone numbers.
“I don’t know – I told you! When he got to the meeting place – I was already there, waiting for him – this tunnel dweller thing, dripping with water and mud and all sorts of nasty grime burst out of a sewer grate and just tore him apart.”
“And?” Val groans.
“It was all green and grey like a rotting body or something. But it wasn’t after him. The informer was just between us. It was after me.” I get a cold chill. “I swear, Delano,” Nigel continues, “I never interfere. I just stick to the shadows and do my reports.” He opens the fridge nervously and starts pawing through it.
“What happened?” I prompt nervously, as he takes a long chug of milk from a carton.
“What happened?” he fixes his glasses but the ruined frames fall back down his nose. “We got hit by a car!”
“Did the creature disappear?” I ask quickly.
“Oh, thanks Delano - I’m fine.”
“Just answer him
,” Val snaps.
“Of course it disappeared! Why do you think I’m here?”
“What?” I demand.
“The thing that attacked me. It disa-fucking-peared!” He makes a poof noise and complementary hand gesture. “Like the ones that attacked you.”
There is suddenly a knock at the door. Nigel hides behind the side of the fridge while Val moves silently and swiftly to a firing position near the couch.
“Calm down,” I scold them. “It’s a bloody from the hospital.”
I press a button on the wall and the outer door buzzes. A young man in scrubs enters the chamber. I use the intercom and tell him to hold his ID up to the camera. He looks around for a minute then finds the lens and hold up his driver’s license. We run through the rest of the procedure and he enters.
“See to it,” I say to Val who takes the bloody to Sabetha’s room.
Still in the foyer I call out to Nigel who reluctantly emerges from the kitchen in the process of eating a pastry. “The man over there is Val,” I say. “He’s a darkened ilk and he’s here to help watch over the house. There are two gazers in the area should anything happen. You can stay here as long as you like but you’ll have to fight Val for the loft, he’s already claimed it.”
Nigel makes an erasing movement with his hands, unconcerned with the formalities. “Delano, Delano. There’s more. I was only seeing this guy tonight because he was in your part of town. I was hitting him on my way to see you. I looked into the latest round of reports and just last night, while you were recovering, I received word that this sort of attack has happened to at least six other sentiners. Delano, something is happening.”
I hold my breath, thinking of a great many things over the next few seconds. Finally I respond. “Try and stay safe, Nigel. We’ll fix this soon enough.”
I leave Nigel and his shocked look in the kitchen and head into my room. Inside, I pick up the phone and spin the rotary. I need to arrange a meeting. A secret one. As soon as the other end picks up the phone I begin to use an ancient language only we sentiners and our auxilias know to schedule a rendezvous.
Afterwards, since my recovery is not yet complete, I slip into bed and try to sleep, not willing to dwell on what I’m fairly certain Nigel’s recent news means. Twenty-four hours pass in which the bloody, and later, Nigel, leaves. By sunset, Val is in the loft dozing and Sabetha is in the kitchen. She looks better, nibbling on some chocolate cake. “What’s the plan for tonight?” she asks, seeing that I am healthy again, despite a subtle limp in my gait.
“We’re taking a trip. Pack your things.”
Eight
Sabetha looks at me with a slight smirk and a raised eyebrow then heads off towards her room.
“Val?” I call up to the loft.
A head pops up from the bed, just woken. “Yeah?” he asks, breathing more than speaking.
“You’re free to stay here for the next few days but it might not be safe. Sabetha and I are heading out in an hour or two.”
“Have fun,” Val waves, then resumes his sleep.
I return to my room and begin to pack. With my sword and the rest of our weapons collected, I meet Sabetha in the living room where she has amassed her belongings. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.” It’s not a big secret, but after a thousand years without them, you start to pretend.
With Rolla fully loaded, I uncharacteristically take the driver’s seat. Sabetha gives me a challenging look.
“Really?” I reply to it.
“You doubt my driving abilities?”
“Constantly.”
She sighs and capitulates. I can’t do anything more about Nigel’s news than I already am, I tell myself, so best not to dwell. I pull out a CD and push it into the console. As we slowly pull out of the back parking lot and head northwards, a darkly-themed classic rock song begins to blare on the enhanced stereo system.
I’m throwing the car around turns and standing on the pedal on straight-a-ways but Sabetha manages to grow impatient anyway, still feigning curiosity about our destination. We drive a good three hours before she gives in. “Neo Gothica,” she smiles, then suddenly thinks of what that means. “Are you going to the Hyperion about this?”
I withhold Nigel’s information. She’ll only obsess over it till I get back from my meeting. “Not yet… But maybe,” I admit after a second, then give the radio knob a sharp twist and allow the wailing guitar solo of the next track overtake us.
Traffic gets heavier as we near areas where the ilk still wander the night. On the third mix disc, a more modern, urban beat, mostly thudding percussion and a soft angelic soprano hits the speakers.
Lights from shops and billboards illuminate the night and make it softer, more inviting and romantic… at least on the surface. There are still influences at work in the shadows, but they are more organized, more controlled, some might even make the mistake of saying civilized.
There are darkened all around us but they are mostly ilk. Some of them know who we are by our vehicle and watch us as we stop at lights to let pedestrians cross or traffic pass. I haven’t been here in close to three months, my responsibilities as Captain of Central Gothica needing me elsewhere, but I guess I could have made an appearance since then. This peaceful and relatively uneventful area just doesn’t warrant the same attention as our neighborhood beyond the outskirts of Neo Gothica.
I drive deep into the capital until we are hovering just outside Neo Square. Neo Square is about fifty blocks squared, ringed in by a the three-foot-high, black metal fence in the middle of a green lawn. If it were water and not grass it would be the castle moat. Inside that barrier only ilk and sentiners are allowed. It is also beyond that fence, in the shadow of Cynthecorp Tower, that Pantheon Theatre sits. Once every three years, the Hyperion meets at Pantheon, our headquarters, and reports on any new changes or discoveries. If the need arises, we Captains may approach the council’s secretary and request an audience with them before a reckoning, but they never grant it.
Since there was less traffic than usual, and my meeting is scheduled for the day, we decide to stop by one of the many safe houses in the area. They’re provided for by the Hyperion who keeps them stocked with provisions. Most often they get their use by auxilias like Sabetha who are not allowed inside Neo Square, even during a Reckoning. Betha should be safe here after I leave tomorrow, even without cyncurity agents contracted by the Hyperion. People we can do without.
In the morning, I button up a dark green shirt, and roll up the sleeves to my elbows. My jacket is a little too roughed up from the subway attack to wear on a stroll down Manuel Boulevard so I’ll go without it despite the chill. After running some product through my hair and tossing on my sunglasses, I’m ready for my walk. Uncharacteristically unarmed, I venture out into the bright world. I’m not too worried about being attacked though; Neo Square is the bastion of ilk power and as such is very tightly secured. No supernaturals, with the exception of sentiners, have been over the fence in five hundred years. It’s the safest place in the city.
The streets of Gothica are more depressing during the day than on any night. The night always reaches its fullest potential; it has a darkest hour and it feels fulfilled each time. But the day… the day never reaches a pinnacle. It just sort of exists in a pale, strangled haze. The sun is never seen through the ever present clouds and sunrise might as well be noon or sunset – it all looks the same.
I think it’s the gray that makes my step falter. Such bland, artificial days are nearly insulting. The precious light is so horded by the upper clouds that the sun’s energy is more of a tease or torture than a source of nourishment. It’s a drop of water for a man dying in the desert; some would rather go without.
As I leave the safe house, I squint up at the harsh radiance of the backlit sky and then make my way into a crowd of people. The ilk have gathered en masse for the cattle drive to the office and I join them in the rush. It’s a sterile process where elbow roo
m is maintained, eye contact is avoided, and generally the presence of everyone else is ignored, especially the homeless. No one has the slightest idea of the others’ purpose and few stop to care. Their own tasks beckon, a new crisis each day to divert attention ever sideways.
These people sacrifice themselves to be human gears, and the machine runs hard and fast here. It sucks people up and demands them to devote their entire existences to the betterment of the company and the city. Even though Cynthecorp owns everything, all the business cynsydiaries are trying to outdo their clones. Ruthless competition breeds happy consumers and a work force without basic human rights or protections. These people have willingly given up everything in their lives that could be meaningful in the pursuit of obscene wealth but in reality, only so that the man at the very top can continue to live in luxury.
But in a world of survival, what choice do they have? To recognize the absurdity in it all would only burden oneself with the knowledge that submission to the system is the only option left apart from death. Believe me, I know; I used to be one of these people. Ignorance and denial are not only strong presences in this lifestyle, they’re preferable. But walking among them again, feeling their kharma, I wonder how much better my position as a sentiner really is… or even how different.
The few who actually “control” Gothica are immortals, but not like Sabetha or me. Technology has allowed these suits to get new bodies when the old ones wear out. At first, I thought that their continued existence would make them more empathetic to the city’s suffering. For a regular ilk in this area – a cog as sentiners call them – crushing anyone in his or her way is a matter of survival, fit to very tight time-frame since most only live to a ripe old age of sixty. But not for the guys who run the city. They’re around forever. Shouldn’t they care about policies that exploit the city and its people? One day they’ll have to face the consequences, right? I’ve since come to realize that they don’t quite see it that way.
Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) Page 7