by Adam Thielen
“Just doesn’t care anymore?”
“It’s his scrying,” she said. “He’s been trying to h-help me find leads on Haven. Him and Drew, it’s all they seem to do.”
“Drew?”
“Drew is an AI… partner of ours,” said Kate. “You may see him around here in one of his robot bodies.”
“I think I did, actually,” realized Cho. “How does he help?”
“In lots of ways. He is as knowledgeable as anyone at neuroscience, and he is able to crunch numbers, analyze signals… and more,” said Kate, stopping herself from discussing the top secret neural hub technology.
“Sounds interesting,” said Cho. “Do you think he or Taq would mind if I said hello?”
“Let’s go,” said Kate, waving open the door and leading the way. They went back down the curved staircase, and Drew stood not far from where Tsenka had seen him. He faced a nearby wall. Both hands were in the air in front of his face, fingertips moving almost as if playing the piano.
The AI became aware of footsteps approaching and halted his algorithm construction, then turned to face the visitor and Kate Jones. He scanned the visitor’s face but came up with no exact matches. He loosened the parameters slightly.
“Good evening, Ms. Tsenka Cho,” said Drew with a jerky bow of his head. His voice was clearly artificial, but smooth and in the range of a tenor.
“Hello, Mr. Drew,” returned Cho, curious as to what his response would be.
“Mr. Drew is my father, please just call me Drew.”
Tsenka stifled a giggle. “Certainly, Drew.”
“And how is the lovely Kate Jones?” asked Drew.
Kate smiled. “I’m just peachy, Drew.” She gestured to Cho. “Tsenka and I are starting a bit of a venture, and I think you may be able to help us out.”
“Anything I can do,” he replied while attempting a polite smile.
“I’ll give you the d-details later,” she said. “Now Tsenka would like to meet Taq.”
Drew’s eyes darted down away from Kate’s, then vibrated left and right for a moment. “Should I… prepare him for a visit?”
“Thank you, but no,” said Kate. “He’ll be fine.”
“Very well. It was nice to meet you, Ms. Cho. Please come back sometime. Kate could use a little company.” Drew bowed again and then turned to face the wall.
Kate and Tsenka looked at each other, grinning, then followed an eastern hallway down a flight of stairs, and then back up into the southeast wing of the triad.
“Was he flirting with you?” asked Tsenka.
“No,” said Kate. “Yes… I don’t know, actually. He has developed a surprising amount of personality the last couple years, and I don’t fully understand how or why.”
“Did you create him?”
“No, by the time I met Drew, he was his own… entity. His creation happened before the Collapse, but I’m not sure if he was conscious before then.”
“How does one just meet an AI?” asked Cho.
“It’s a long story,” said Kate.
At the end of a long hall lined with what looked like apartment doors, a small entryway transitioned into a large open area with various pieces of furniture. Some computer terminals lined one side, with a few vendors on the other. The two women turned right and walked across the waxed wooden floor to another door.
Kate waved and a light where a door handle might be in a less advanced building blinked red. She waved again, and Tsenka picked up the sound of a quiet chime playing from inside the room.
“Something y-you should know,” said Kate. “Taq overworks himself.” She stood at the door and knocked on it. The sound was loud enough to map the interior for Tsenka. A man sat slumped over in the middle of a small room with his legs folded. She could also see a small cot, a sink, and a fridge. There was also some sort of cord or tube extending from his neck to a box mounted on the wall.
As the sound echoed off the walls, the image continued to update. It lasted only a split second, but Cho saw the head move and heard a noise from inside. A few seconds later, the door slid open to reveal a man with a mostly gray beard and shaggy hair falling around his ears. He wore a morning tunic and loose pants with no shoes. If this was Taq Jones, then he had not aged as gracefully as Kate had.
The man’s eyes lingered on Cho for a moment then traveled to Kate. His weary skin seemed to lift itself upward and he smiled. “Kate.”
“Y-Yes, dear,” she returned. “Tell me you haven’t been at it all day.”
“I am just taking a little nap,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“How am I f-feeling?” she sighed. “I’m fine, dear.” She swiveled her head to face Cho. “This is Tsenka Cho,” she introduced. “I may have mentioned her before. A work colleague.”
“Ah,” said Taq. “I’m glad to see you up on your feet. Kate was very worried, we all were.” Taq turned back to Kate. “What is she doing here?” At this, Cho shifted her weight and raised her brow almost imperceptibly.
Kate shook her head while staring into Taq’s eyes. “Taq, we need to help her, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“Right,” nodded Taq with a smirk. “Revenge. They say you should dig two graves.”
“Taq!”
“Already have,” Cho stated. She stared at the legendary mage. His eyes were bloodshot and the irises strangely dark. She tried to look behind him to examine the room, but he blocked her vision.
“See, I’m helping, too,” said Taq.
Kate reached forward and grabbed a chunk of shaggy hair above Taq’s left ear. Cho flinched, but then noticed it was a gentle motion.
“Hon,” started Kate. “I love you, but you need to adjust your attitude.” Perhaps it wasn’t that gentle.
“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s been a long day. Love you too.”
“I think you can take a b-break from scrying to lend a little help to Tsenka,” she said, still holding on.
Taq closed his eyes and inhaled. “Let’s talk about this later,” he said. “I’ll get cleaned up and we can have some fun.”
Kate released her grip. “Kay. Don’t be long.” She turned and made for the door to the hallway from where they had come.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Taq,” said Cho.
“Kate says you’re a good kid,” he whispered. “I know what it’s like to chase things. Take my advice: never chase.”
Tsenka frowned. “Right.” She turned away and followed after Kate.
“Was nice meeting you too,” he called after.
The walk back to the greeting room was silent. Kate touched Tsenka’s arm before she left.
“He wasn’t always like this,” she said. “We’ve both had some rough years.”
“Why not hide him from me?” asked Cho.
“I don’t know,” said Kate. “You wanted to m-meet him, and I thought m-maybe seeing a new face could wake him up a little. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” said Tsenka. “Please let me know when you can give me a destination. I’m ready.”
Kate nodded. “I will. Be well.”
Drew tracked Tsenka’s movement as she walked through the room and out the door.
* * *
“I still think I should get to try more than once a week,” Tsenka Cho complained. She continued to stretch under the dim light inside the storage building, pausing to drink orange juice.
“I don’t think I have the heart to beat you senseless any more often than I already do,” said Matthias. He wore a pair of satin shorts, latex foot gloves, and nothing else. He had become much bulkier in the weeks since they began training together and had forgotten what such strength felt like.
Tsenka held up a small plastic bottle filled with red fluid. “How about we make this interesting?” she enticed.
Matthias puzzled at the vial. He had beaten her soundly in her first attempt, and it wasn’t something he enjoyed doing. On the outside, he pretended to want to give her a chance to succeed. On th
e inside, he knew he only wanted her to stay. If he had to beat her up in order to accomplish that, he found himself willing, though just barely.
“I don’t think that’s going to help you,” he said.
“Scared?”
“I swear,” he started. “If you bawk like a chicken, you will only make this worse for yourself.”
“Come on,” she pleaded.
“Fine. I just don’t see how it’s going to help, and I better not have to take you back to the hospital.”
Tsenka tossed him a second container.
“Wait, I’m going to drink, too?” he scoffed. “You have lost your mind.”
“Enough talk,” she said, popping the cap off her blood and quickly downing it. She threw the empty vial aside and activated her perfect recall.
“As you wish,” said Matthias, mimicking her action. He immediately felt the rush of fresh life flow through his veins. He put in his mouthpiece and nodded enthusiastically.
Tsenka, however, whimpered as pain struck her abdomen and radiated outward. Her skin felt like it was tearing apart. She did her best to stand up straight. Come on, she thought. Hurry up.
Matthias did not wait. Excited by the blood, he rushed at Tsenka. She rolled out of the way, kicking outward as she stood. Matthias leaned back to avoid, then continued his pursuit. On her feet again, Cho continued to backpedal away, jabbing Matthias in the nose. Frustrated, he leapt at her, catching her around the waist and tackling her to the ground.
Tsenka tried to grab his arms and tie up his waist with her legs, but Matthias’s strength was too much. He freed his arms and postured up, then slammed his fist onto the floor where her face had been a split second earlier. The cement fractured under his knuckles, and his blood splattered on the floor. She didn’t know if he had broken his hand, and Matthias didn’t seem to care, winding back a second time. Cho pulled her legs in, turned over, and kicked off of Matthias’s torso, somersaulting to her feet.
As she turned to face another onslaught, she realized something was different. The pain was gone, and time seemed to move slower around her. She looked down at her forearms, which were slick with a thin layer of blood. Yuck, she thought.
As Matthias came at her a third time, he threw a looping right hook. Tsenka easily moved out of the way, then hit him with two lefts and a right before he pulled back. He loaded up his next strike, but before he could throw it, Cho kicked his calf, pushing his feet out of alignment. His arm went limp as he attempted to recover his balance, and Tsenka took the opportunity to turn her body, putting the full force of her mass into a diagonal uppercut that collided with Matthias’s jaw.
Her optics alerted her to a slight buckle in Matthias’s right knee. She had rocked him. He flailed in response, forcing Cho to back away, but his posture was poor, and he was leaning too far forward to keep proper balance. Sure enough, after a third swing, he stumbled. It was a movement that lasted only a fraction of a second, but in that time, Tsenka shuffled forward and threw a straight into his chin.
This time both of Matthias’s legs buckled, and as his body lowered, Cho followed up with left and right hooks to his temples. In Matthias’s confusion, he thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the fight. He tried again to grapple, ducking down and rushing toward Tsenka but had misjudged the distance to his target. She lifted her leg and kicked upward, connecting with Matthias’s neck. His forward momentum sent him falling past her, and he face-planted while grasping his throat with his hands.
Matthias’s rules were clear. No one won until the other one was unconscious, dead, or surrendered. It’s possible that Matthias wanted to surrender, but his hands were too busy trying to reopen his airway to tap, and his voice didn’t work without a functioning larynx. He was certainly still conscious. And so Tsenka followed him as he fell and unleashed a flurry of straight punches, tenderizing his face without mercy.
“STAWP!” he choked out. Blood flowed from cuts on his cheek, forehead, left eye, and mouth. His vampire physiology had already taken action to protect those parts of his face with almost comical swelling.
Cho stood up and screamed a ferocious scream, as if putting the world on notice. The corrugated metal siding rattled in response. Tsenka was in disbelief that she had really won. She had beaten the most fearsome vampire known to man, and she had made it look easy. The entire fight was over in a matter of seconds.
Coming to her senses, she knelt beside her mentor. He sat up, and she put her arms around him, hugging him tightly and getting her diffused blood all over him. He coughed in response. She sat down beside him and waited.
After a few minutes, Matthias cleared his throat again. “Not the way I expected that to go.”
Tsenka’s face was stuck in an expression of glee, and her mouth refused to straighten. “I got lucky,” she said.
“No,” he said, his voice still raw. “No one should have beaten me like that, but you did. You were prepared. Make sure you always are.”
“I will be,” she said, hugging Matthias again.
Matthias frowned and turned away from Tsenka. “Is there nothing I can do to keep you here?”
“In this creepy warehouse?”
“You know…”
“Matthias,” she said, her smile breaking. “I have nights where I’m almost normal. Nights when I think I could stay here and just be me. You were right, the turning changed me. I feel calmer, more in control. But I also have nights where the only thing that convinces me not to… give up is the thought of destroying him.”
Matthias sniffed, swallowing down some of his own blood. “And what about when there’s no more him to destroy?”
“I’ll know when I get there.” Tsenka stood. “I should get back to the house. I have plans to make.”
She moved away and Matthias grabbed her hand to stop her. “If you are going to go, I have some things for you first.”
“First, as in here?”
“Yes,” he said, slowly rising to his feet. “I own this building and have for a while. My house has only so much room.” He started walking to the far end of the empty warehouse.
Cho followed him, still high on blood and glory, until he stopped and bent over, grabbing a small handle embedded in the cement floor. Matthias grunted, lifting a large foamcrete slab off the ground. It was hinged on one side with cement stops protruding near the base so when he let it go, it didn’t fall all the way back. Underneath the slab was a set of stairs.
“Whoa,” reacted Cho. “You have a secret lair.”
“Not exactly.” Matthias descended the stairway.
Tsenka followed. “But is a simple slab secure enough?”
“No,” he replied, pointing at a secure locked gate. “If someone knew where this was and had the strength, they could find a way in. But it never concerned me.”
As they moved into a tight stone passageway, thin lines of light appeared along the sides to illuminate their path.
“Tsenka,” Matthias said as he walked. “Have you considered the fundamental flaw with your plan, your goal, whatever it is?”
“You mean that it won’t fix what’s wrong with me? Of course.”
The passage opened into a small room with shelves embedded into stone walls and a cement bench in the middle. Matthias sat. “When I was young, some crazy people crashed planes into buildings.”
“You mean nine-eleven,” she said.
“Yes. Thousands of people died at the hands of a small group. Had any of the hijackers lived and been put on trial, they would have been executed. Either through suicide or sentencing, they would have died, just as they had on that day. But real justice was never an option.”
“If they are tried in a court, that isn’t justice?” asked Tsenka, sitting beside him.
“In some definition of the word, perhaps,” he replied. “But the human brain has its own ideas about justice. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. But people have the ability to create a debt of evil that is impossible to repay, at least by tradition
al punishments. And the need for justice after that attack left a vacuum that people filled with war, hatred, and persecution.”
“Right,” said Cho. “But what’s that have to do with me?”
“This man hurt you in a way that some would say is worse than death,” said Matthias. “He killed your friends. He created a life for you that you don’t want, put you in a cage you will never be free from, no matter how nice you furnish it. He’s created a debt he can’t repay and you cannot extract.”
“Jesus, Matthias, why are you doing this?”
“Because,” he said. “I felt some of what you felt when I drank your blood. I know a little of the debt he owes. But I also understand shame. Killing someone is easy. Making someone ashamed of what they’ve done is not.”
“You sound sort of like the therapist,” said Cho.
“You want to off him, that’s fine,” said Matthias. “But have something to say to him if the occasion permits. You can tell him the truth, you can tell him lies. It doesn’t matter. Just make it count.”
“Matthias, come on. How would I even know what to say?”
“Look inside yourself,” he said. “Find the fears you’ve buried so deep that you have convinced yourself they don’t exist. Somewhere in there, I think you’ll find the words. Write it out, practice it in front of a mirror.”
Tsenka chuckled.
“I mean it,” chided Matthias. “Then when you need it, it will be there. This might be the most important moment of your life, one that you won’t get a second chance at. Be prepared.”
Tsenka looked around. “Is that why I’m in your dungeon? For the weirdest pep talk in history?”
“I said I would make sure you were ready, and that’s what I’m doing,” said Matthias. “After the turning, I made some calls, got my hands on something not exactly legal.”
“Oh, now this sounds intriguing.”
“Here,” he said, handing what looked like a small pen to Tsenka. “It’s an injector with a special drug inside. It was used for interrogations, torture, and treating psychopathy. It has some nasty side effects that keep it far from any sort of official approval. Make sure you aren’t the one that gets stabbed with it.”