Synthetic: Dark Beginning

by Shonna Wright

  Ruby pursed her lips as she turned this information over in her head. “Is that all?”

  Joshua shrugged. “That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “Plenty. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on with my work. You’ll find your own way out?”

  His crooked grin disappeared. “I can do that, but it would be great if I could use the front door.”

  “We haven’t used the front door in ages. I’d prefer you slither out the same way you slithered in.”

  Joshua shivered as he nodded his head. Then he disappeared down the hall, leaving a trail of wet footprints. Ruby swept her script off the desk sending an explosion of paper into the air. She stormed down to Kora’s lab where she found Gus meticulously cleaning the coffee machine with an old toothbrush.

  “Back to your cage.” Ruby’s heels clacked across the floor. Gus yawned and stretched as if he’d just put in an arduous day.

  “But it’s still light out,” said Kora.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Ruby waited until Gus was gone before sinking onto the couch against the wall. “They all lie to me. Darius—that little shit. I’ve felt guilty for years because I missed his funeral but now I hope he’s in hell.” Ruby’s shoulders slumped as if her anger was the only thing holding her up. “I’m sick of growing old. I have no patience with it. There’s no wisdom—no epiphany. I’m just rotting away…surrounded by idiots.” A smile lifted her sagging cheeks when she raised her face to Kora. “At least I still look better than you.” A laugh rumbled up her throat.

  Kora seemed confused by this insult. “We all get old and eventually we die,” she said in the disconnected tone of a physician.

  “Not me. My existence will be linear and never ending.”

  “Nothing lasts forever.”

  “You and I will.”

  Kora pretended to repair one of her machines. “You should go lie down. You’ve obviously experienced some kind of shock and you’re not making any sense.”

  “You think I should stay human, don’t you?”

  Kora paused and Ruby could tell she was choosing her words carefully. “I’ve never performed this procedure before. If I do it, I know you’ll die.”

  “I’ll take my chances. It’s better than waking up every morning to see my flesh has moved a few inches closer to the grave.”

  “I’ve done some amazing cosmetic surgery on Randall over the years. Why don’t we try that instead?”

  Ruby felt a wave of loathing crash through her. “Your work on Randall makes me want to puke. I would rather die than end up looking like that moron—an old man sliced up and stitched back together into a caricature of his young self. I never made a mutant that disgusted me, but every time I see Randall I feel sick.” She shoved herself up off the couch. Her feet hurt and she wished she could just spend the rest of the evening in bed with Ivan massaging her legs, but there was too much to do. “Keep working. I'll check on you in the morning.”

  Ruby swept down the hall, her mind racing ahead of her. “Ivan—meet me in the garage,” she said into the air as she scraped her nails along the side of a large stone. A panel jerked sideways, revealing a narrow slot. Ruby crammed herself through the opening and barreled down the curves until she reached a tunnel marked by a large gouge in the left wall that vaguely resembled a car. A heavy rock wall loomed at the end with several stones jutting up from the floor, one shinier than the others. Ruby gave this stone an impatient whack and the wall slid aside to reveal Ivan dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform with gold driving gloves and a little feathered hat perched on his head.

  “We’re not going for a drive. I want to see the car Vaughn drove off the property today,” said Ruby.

  Ivan sputtered before he was finally able to speak. “Car Mistress?”

  “You heard me.”

  Ivan slouched through the maze of cars and stopped before her luxury row.

  “Let me guess.” Ruby waved a finger in the air that finally landed on the battered Aston Martin. “He drove that one.”

  Ivan scanned the demolished frame. “That bastard. I’ll kill him!”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I arrived here right before you so I didn’t have time to inspect.”

  “Where did he go?”

  Ivan paused, but then his eyes narrowed on the smashed door. “To Santa Barbara.”

  “Why?”

  “To see someone named Kimura. I don’t know why.”

  Ruby’s back stiffened. “He knows everything then. That woman is a notorious spy incapable of keeping her mouth shut. How did he find out about her?”

  Ivan fidgeted with his uniform.

  “Ivan!”

  “I found her card in your trash…along with a letter that said she’s writing a book. Sounded very interesting and—”

  Ruby smacked Ivan hard across the face. “You root through my garbage like a rat?”

  “Yes, Mistress,” said Ivan. He removed one of his gold gloves and rubbed his cheek.

  “Do you remember how you went mad years ago?”

  Ivan’s voice cracked. “Yes, mistress.”

  “I can do worse that that. If you hide anything from me again, I’ll press the button and tear your brain to shreds.”

  “Like Kora?” Ivan trembled as he gazed up at Ruby.

  The imp was fishing for information. Maybe Kora had asked him to snoop in exchange for some horrid sexual favor. Ruby's head already pounded enough without contemplating Ivan's perverted dealings around the castle. She needed Kora working, not listening to sordid rumors. “You think I had anything to do with that?”

  “I assumed—”

  “You assumed wrong. Her memory loss has been a great inconvenience to us. That won’t be the case with your puny brain.” A slight twitch lifted the side of Ruby’s mouth. “Speaking of Kora, she thinks you and Caleb are disgusting mistakes and I should put you both out of your misery. Maybe she has a point.”

  Ivan curled his tiny hands into fists. “I hate that girl. What a load of garbage. Without Caleb and I, this place would be a disaster.”

  “True. But I think she was speaking from more of an aesthetic point of view.” Ruby leaned down and pressed her nail against Ivan's tiny nose. “Make me want to continue seeing your ugly face around here, Ivan, or I might take her up on this advice.”

  Ivan shuffled in place, his eyes fixed on the toes of his polished boots. “Please mistress, I won’t let anything like this happen again. From now on, I’ll keep you well informed.”

  Chapter 9

  Caleb broke Kora's deadbolt without even noticing and clomped through the door in his pajamas as if wandering in for a late-night snack. She expected to see Ivan appear at any moment, but he never did. “What are you doing here? Where’s Ivan?”

  The giant sank down onto a chair like a trained elephant. He reached out a long arm and though Kora tried to scrabble beyond his reach, he dragged her across the mattress onto his lap.

  “Leave me alone, Caleb! I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  He dropped her and then curled his fingers into a powerful fist. Kora reeled back, relieved when he pressed the weapon over his heart and moved it in a slow circle as if he were some grisly automaton winding himself up. Caleb was telling her he was sorry.

  “I don’t understand—what are you sorry for?” she asked aloud. Caleb tilted his head like a great mastiff and Kora, accustomed to communicating with Ishmael, signed the words as she spoke them. Caleb’s tiny eyes widened beneath his huge brow and though she felt sure he understood, he rose from the chair and backed away without answering. “But why?” Kora repeated, signing more quickly. He grunted and swung his head from side to side. It occurred to her that Caleb was experiencing some kind of shock: he hadn’t expected a reply to his sign and he certainly hadn’t expected to understand it. He stomped back through the door and paused to repeat the sign that he was sorry one last time before fleeing down the hall.

  Kora looked down at her hands. She'd always ass
umed that she'd learned to sign in order to talk with Ishmael, but maybe she'd always known how. She opened her door and looked both ways to make sure the giant was gone, and then snuck down to the lab. Ishmael arms were probing the hall for anything she might have stacked for Ivan to take away. He was trying to be stealthy, as if only seeing his eight massive arms pouring through the door was somehow less shocking than his whole body. She gazed around in irritation at all the clutter the squid had restored to the lab floor after she’d spent hours getting rid of things so she’d have room to work. As nice as this temporary lab was, it wasn't nearly as big as the one at Mirafield.

  “That crazy huge mutant, Caleb, came for a visit,” she signed after washing her hands in the sink. She felt dirty everywhere he'd touched her. She needed to do laundry but she didn't know how. Her staff always did these things for her automatically. She wondered if she could pay Ivan to wash all of her clothes and sheets for her. He'd probably just spit in her face.

  Ishmael lifted her up and sat her on the counter. She always felt like a child when he did this, but it meant he wanted her full attention. He made a series of quick signs and Kora shook her head. “If Caleb is sorry for something, I want to know what it is,” she said. Ishmael started to sign again but Kora cut him off. “I'm not a little kid anymore. I know that's how I acted when I first woke up with amnesia, but I can face whatever it is you're trying to hide from me.” Ishmael gazed at Kora for a long time, and she knew that even if she lived to be a thousand, she’d never see eyes as clear and deep as his. She lunged forward and pasted herself against him and Ishmael wrapped all of his arms around her, so not even an inch of her body was exposed. “Forget about this. I don't want to fight with you. Let's go out and look at the ocean. We've never done that together before. We need to make this feel a bit more like a vacation.”

  Kora trudged up the black lava corridor with Ishmael squiggling along behind her. They found the iron service door she’d arrived through the morning before, and she pushed on the handle, relieved to feel it swing open into the cool evening. The sky looked too vast without Mirafield's dazzling lights to wash it out, and Kora felt like the moment they stepped outside, it would suck them up and carry them off into emptiness. She and Ishmael skirted around to the back of the castle where stairs in the cliffs led down to the water.

  When they reached the sand, Ishmael pointed at a dark object cutting through the waves. She saw little detail, but something about the heavy arms looked familiar and she soon realized it was Ruby on a nighttime swim. They both retreated to the shadows at the base of the cliffs and waited until Ruby staggered out of the water and stomped up the stairs, muttering to herself about Vaughn.

  Finally alone, Kora walked down to the water and gazed at the shimmering surface. She felt something wind around her waist and turned to see Ishmael. “We just came down here to look at it, remember?”

  Ishmael lifted her into the air and plunged into the waves. Kora wanted to scream, but she was afraid of drawing Ruby back so instead she just beat on the squid's steely arm as he carried her out to sea. His eyes, which always looked semi-bored, were bright with mischief. The only thing that distinguished him from a wild animal was a small monitor attached to one of his arms. Ishmael always wore some kind of gadget, and right now he was pointing at the glowing screen.

  “What do you want to show me?” she asked. The air was getting cold and she wanted back onshore.

  He underlined a series of numbers with an arm tip and when Kora peered closer, she nearly threw up. “This water is totally polluted! Take me back to the beach, Ishmael, now!”

  Ishmael twisted his odd face into something that only she could recognize as a smile, and he slowly lowered her toward the water. Kora struggled and screamed, but she was helpless against him. “No please,” she cried as her dangling feet neared the waves. Ishmael lifted her higher and then dipped her so low that her toes skimmed the surface. Kora screamed again and then burst into laughter. “I am soooo going to get you back for this.”

  Finally, he took pity on her and rocketed back to shore. Kora had only ever seen Ishmael lounging in his tank but out here, he cut across vast distances like a master. He carefully set her on the sand and retreated back into the deep. She waved at him as he disappeared below the surface, one last tendril swirling above the surface before it sank. She felt strangely helpless as she stared at the empty waves, imagining all of the terrible things that could happen to him out there.

  Kora grabbed her clothes and headed for the steps leading back to the castle. When she was halfway up, she turned around to stare at the dark sea. She hated to admit it, but Ishmael was happy out there. She could feel it. This was his home. So why had he followed her to Mirafield in the first place? Randall had mentioned that he just showed up in her lab a few days after she arrived. No one knew how he got in and when they tried to remove him, he suckered himself to the floor. It must have been sad for him to leave the ocean. He'd sacrificed a lot for her and what had she given him in return? Nothing but constant work. Poor thing.

  She snapped out of her reverie when she heard drums pounding. Kora pulled her clothes back on and ran toward what could only be the ritual Gus had described earlier. The smell of roasting meat filled the air. Kora snuck up a hill behind the party where she could spy on a dozen Bedouin-style tents, each with two or three spires topped by bright flags that flapped in the breeze. These tents squatted on a series of broad wooden platforms just beyond the reach of the surf. Several had open flaps that allowed a glimpse into the sumptuous interiors where members of the Food lounged on low couches as they ate and smoked like ragged sultans. The entire camp glowed with soft lanterns that shimmered against the dark water where Kora spotted shapes riding the waves like ghosts, their boards reflected in the moonlight. She wondered if this was where the Food lived until she noticed a group of horses galloping across the sand from the direction of a large compound that blazed on the hills above the highway.

  Three women jumped down off their horses and tied them to a post behind one of the tents. They were all dressed in tattered swimsuits and one of them, a buxom blond, had decorated her body in a pattern of bright war paint like a showgirl Indian. She cupped her hand to her mouth and called out into the darkness. “Berta, hurry up or we’ll steal Vaughn before you get here.”

  They laughed and rushed up the steps onto the platform where they melted into the crowd. A shadow emerged on foot from the same direction and as it got closer, Kora saw it was a beautiful woman with long dark hair and skin as brown as her own. She also wore a bikini, her face and body painted in artistic swirls. Berta panted as she climbed the same steps as the previous group and Kora skirted her way down the hill, rounding a large tent to see three fires roaring in stone circles built into the broader sections of the platform. Over a hundred people moved to the sound of a motley band composed of guitars, a concert grand piano, an accordion, violins, and a range of drums that were all so different Kora felt sure everything had been looted from surrounding mansions. The smooth voice of the young singer soared over the rhythmic pounding, his lyrics shifting from Spanish to English and back again as he whirled across the platform like a dervish in a drug-induced trance.

  The thick smell of pot smoke, mixed with exotic cuisine, sent Kora’s stomach into a hungry rage and soon she was treading dangerously close to the nearest tent where a table teetered near the edge stacked with discarded plates. She shushed a group of horses that let out alarmed whinnies and slid a plate over the edge, savoring each bite as it slipped down her throat. Nothing she’d eaten at Mirafield came close to the wild flavors that now lit up her mouth like a slow fire. Someone here knew how to cook.

  When she was done, she pushed the plate back up onto the table. The brunette was gazing up at a tall figure with his back turned. Kora watched, fascinated, as the girl slipped her hands over his shoulders and clasped them behind his neck before pressing her slender body against him. Kora tried to imagine doing something this seductive with R
andall, but the thought made her ill. To her surprise, the man pried the woman’s hands off of his neck. Then he turned around to face Kora and she he nearly choked on a piece of bread that was still in her mouth. It was the vampire. Her vampire. She ducked beneath the table, hardly able to swallow her throat felt so dry. His face was somewhat like the drawing in the notes except even more handsome due to the messy tumble of thick, wavy hair around his tanned face. He looked in his early twenties and was tall and elegant despite an old-fashioned coat that hung over a pair of faded jeans and bare feet.

  The brunette caught up with him, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the crowd. Kora scrambled over the sand to keep the pair in view. They passed a group of men and one of them called out in a raucous voice: “Don’t keep him long, Berta. Vaughn won a hundred bucks off me in poker last night and I want it back.”

  “Shut up, Ramon,” snapped Berta, and laughter rose into the air.

  Kora crawled up a hill and dropped to the ground behind a thick patch of brush just as Berta swung Vaughn around to the back of the platform where she stood facing him beneath a lantern. “What is your problem?”

  The vampire brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t want things to end between us like this—”

  “Oh-my-god.” Berta pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re not going to feed me some bullshit about how we’re friends because we’re a hell of a lot more than that.” She reached out to him but he took a step back so her hand hung in the air. “You want to go back to your old life, don’t you? Screwing every girl in the clan like a stallion.” Her voice rose then cracked. “That’s why those bitches are all circling you.” She lunged at Vaughn but he caught both her wrists and she collapsed against him.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” he said in a voice so low Kora almost couldn’t hear him.

  Berta tipped her head back so she could look at his face. “What do you want then? Tell me and I’ll give it to you.”