New Manhattan
Charlotte Amelia Poe
PART ONE
“Hey kid!” Gabe calls out, and the kid stumbles backwards, away from the pile of books he was about to riffle through. The kid looks up to see Gabe, with long white hair pulled back into a messy bun and bruised eyes that look wrong – the colour is missing, all that remains is the black of the pupil. Gabe smirks, because sometimes it’s fun to play the monster. He lets his fangs protrude slightly over his bottom lip, pressing into the plush of the red skin there. Mostly though, he’s just glad the kid got away from those books.
Okay, and shit, because said kid has just pulled a gun. Gabe fucking hates being shot. It’s been over two hundred and fifty years and it never gets old. Much like himself, he thinks, and mentally applauds himself. Oh! Okay, yeah, kid with gun, pointing at Gabe’s head.
Not that that would kill Gabe, but it’d certainly knock him on his ass for a while.
The kid’s breathing heavy through his mask, finger twitchy on the trigger. Gabe raises his hands in surrender, a gesture, because he could still move fast enough to rip the gun from the kid’s fingers and break his neck, but, hey, he’s not in that kinda business.
Any more.
He raises an eyebrow.
“Jus’ sayin’,” Gabe drawls, “you were about three seconds away from Splitting yourself right there. Those books? Older than me. You should feel the energy comin’ off ‘em.”
The kid tilts his head. Lowers the gun slightly, still pointing at Gabe, but at more soft, squishy, stomach-y parts now.
“An bhfuil tú ag dul a mharú dom?” The kid says, and Gabe just looks at him for a moment. Gabe knows a lot of languages, largely dead ones, given the current situation, but this is a new one on him. It doesn’t sound like the New American he’s gotten used to. It sounds old. Older than Gabe. Ain’t that a thing?
This could be tricky. There doesn’t seem to be understanding in the kid’s eyes, just fear. Gabe really doesn’t want to be shot today.
“Ĉu vi komprenas min?” Do you understand me? Gabe tries, using another old language, hoping that some culture has remained in that putrid bubble they call New Manhattan.
The kid wavers, and Gabe can see it in his eyes.
“Iuj,” he says, and Gabe nods. Some.
They’re outside of the dome, so the kid must know the risks, know that touching the wrong thing can end up real bad for a human. He steps closer and looks down at the titles of the books. They’re all written in Old American, or English, whichever you prefer.
“The fuck? You can read this?” He mutters, shooting a glance at the kid. The kid shrugs.
And then shoots Gabe in the stomach.
In the movies (hey, remember them?) Gabe would have been flung across the room with the force of it, landing heavy on the ground. Instead, he’s two hundred pounds of dead meat and so he just lets out a gasp before surging forward to unarm the kid, taking care not to actually hurt him.
You meet a Shade, you shoot a Shade, those are the rules. He doesn’t blame the kid.
Shades are the monsters under your bed, after all.
They eat you up.
Or worse.
They make you one of them.
“Fucker,” Gabe snarls, holding his stomach, tempted to crush the gun with his left hand, but no, guns are a rare commodity and getting rarer, so he turns the safety back on and shoves it in his belt. The kid looks up at Gabe from where Gabe has shoved him, and there’s a challenge in his eyes.
“You speak English,” Gabe says, and the kid just raises one eyebrow. Fucker.
Gabe pulls his jacket off and lifts his shirt to see the damage. Straight through at least, single shot, already closing up. He’ll need to feed tonight, but it’s nothing too debilitating. Stings though.
As he pulls his top back down over his stomach, he notices the kid’s eyes following the movement. Interesting. In another life, Gabe could have had some fun with that. In this life? Gabe gets shot and it just makes him mad.
“You gonna kill me?” The kid asks, voice muffled through his mask. Gabe looks at him, tilts his head as though he’s considering it. Runs his tongue over those sharp fangs of his.
“You got a low opinion of me, kid,” he says, shrugging his leather jacket back on. He’s going to have to patch that bullet hole, or beg Caleb to. He’d ask Aubrey, but she might actually end him. He’s not sure he can die, but she’d find a way.
“You’re a Shade,” the kid says, and well, yeah, white hair, white eyes, the bruises around them that make him look like he hasn’t slept a wink in centuries, the fangs, and oh, being able to breathe without a mask in an environment full of time energy and not get Split across millennia. There’s that.
“I’m Gabe,” Gabe says, “I was a human before I was a monster, ya know?”
“A long time ago,” the kid points out.
“Betcha don’t even know how long, do ya?” Gabe smirks. History is very much told by the winners these days, and the winners sit snug in the glass towers of the domes, and the losers? Well, they prowl around with limitless years to spare, watching the world slowly disintegrate.
“Forever,” the kid says. Gabe shakes his head.
“I was made by man. A man. We all were. What they tell you about us – we ain’t like that. In the beginning, maybe. But you gotta imagine what – what they put us through weren’t pretty. They were paid back in kind. If some of us ain’t over that, that’s none of my business. Me? I’m through with revenge. You get that way, after a while. I got good friends, a place to live, and forever to while away. You, on the other hand, look like you’re one missed meal away from keelin’ over.”
The kid bristles.
“Fuck you.”
“Hey, kid, no offence meant. That hunger in your gut? Believe me when I say I’ve felt that. I feel that. And if you’re out here, you’re lookin’ for something. Guessin’ books weren’t your first option. What, you hopin’ to find food out here? You know you’d get Split, right, second it touched your lips? You want that?”
“My name is Matthew,” the kid deflects.
“Sure, Matthew, okay. But you’re not answerin’ my questions. You wanna be ripped apart out here?”
Matthew pulls himself upright, glares up at Gabe.
“It don’t work like that,” he says.
“Oh yeah?” Gabe asks, because he knows exactly how it works, knows exactly how hard Aubrey worked for a long time for some semblance of continuity.
“You go back in time. And forwards. You don’t get ripped apart,” Matthew insists.
“You think time is really that forgiving?” Gabe looks at him carefully. “Take off that mask if you really believe that. Here, I’ll help you unhook it.”
Gabe reaches out a hand, as though to undo Matthew’s mask. Matthew steps back, away.
“Nah, I didn’t think so. You get Split, you don’t have the luxury of turnin’ up where you please. It’s violent, and endless and maddening. You’ll lose yourself a thousand times over. Nah, you don’t want that.”
“How do you know?” Matthew’s voice seems smaller now, and his brows are furrowed. He looks sad. “You’re not – you’re not Split.”
“Nah, I’m not. But I know someone who is. Known her a long time. Longer than she’s known herself. One moment I’d be talkin’ to her, the next she’d be gone. I wouldn’t see her again for months. Then she’d be back, and carryin’ on her sentence like nothing had changed.”
Matthew is silent. Gabe shifts his weight slightly and watches him. The air around them thrums with time energy. Gabe can feel it. Matthew can’t.
Matthew’s stomach lets out a gurgle of hunger. Gabe cocks his head.
“You’re real hungry, ain’t ya?�
� He asks.
“Some,” Matthew backs down.
“I know a place that has food. It’s safe. Dome-grown and all that shit. Transported by the finest time-proof trains across this fair land,” Gabe offers.
“Why do you have it?” Matthew asks, which is a fair question.
“Visitors. Humans who like to live outside the domes. Nomads, ya know? Plus, kinda got sticky fingers. And ya know, it’s fun to outrun a train.”
“People visit you? Is it – how many of you are there?” Matthew asks.
“Shades? At the moment? About half a dozen. We move around a lot. Familiarity breeds contempt, and after a few years, you get real familiar, ya know? And we got Aubrey, she’s real special.”
“And people?”
“A group left about two months ago. But we like to be stocked up. You never know who’s gonna show up at your door.”
“How far is it?”
“Coupla miles. We could walk it, or I could piggyback you, be faster.”
“I can walk,” Matthew insists.
“I can run.”
“We’re walkin’.”
“Sure, Matty, whatever you want.” Gabe shrugs. Matthew hunches and unhunches his shoulders, and shoves past Gabe walking towards the exit. Gabe grins and follows him. The thing about people who venture outside of the domes? They’re very rarely boring.
And Matthew?
If Gabe didn’t know better, he’d be believing Aubrey’s babblings. ‘Cos the pull Gabe feels towards Matthew is insane.
Shame that sorta thing always ends badly.
*
“We didn’t volunteer for this, ya know,” Gabe says after they’ve been walking for a few minutes, Matthew sneaking glances at him when he thinks Gabe isn’t looking. “I know they tell ya that – that we formed an orderly queue and just begged to be this, but it weren’t like that at all.”
Matthew looks at him like he doesn’t believe him. It’s all in the eyes, the rest of his face obscured by the mask he wears to keep the time energy from royally fucking him up.
“They took people who they thought wouldn’t be missed, ya know? Veterans, homeless folks, fuck – the kids junkies couldn’t look after. They experimented on kids. That’s how fucked up it was. Trust me, nobody was volunteering.”
“Kids?” The word catches on Matthew’s tongue and Gabe hears it.
“Yeah. They don’t tell ya that, do they? How they tortured kids. Sure, it’s bad enough what they did to me,” Gabe waves his left arm carelessly before allowing it to swing back down to his side, “but watching them vivisect kids – you don’t forget that. Not ever. Thing is, these kids, the ones I’ve met, they ain’t like us, ya know, the grownups, the ones who raged and sought out revenge. They just – carried on. After all that shit, they didn’t lose their innocence. They’re still kids. They don’t understand. There’s someone I want you to meet, you’ll understand then, that we’re not monsters. It took a long time for me to find the word to describe it, despite everything, because it was easier to abide by their narrative, that I was a monster, but no – the kids, all of us, we were victims. What they made us into, we’re victims of that an’ all.”
“Why?” Matthew asks, and it’s plaintive. “Why did they do that? I don’t – they don’t tell us. Didn’t tell us, growin’ up. Just that you guys were evil. And we were safe in the domes. Long as we didn’t step outside, you couldn’t get us.”
“We can get you in the domes, Matty,” Gabe says. “The domes are made of time energy, and time has a very strange habit of not working properly on the dead. We can pass through them like stepping through a waterfall. There have been Shades inside the domes since day one. They never tell you about the massacres early on?”
Matthew shakes his head.
“Early days, we were angry. I mean, you gotta understand, we were hungry. Starved. They’d made us powerful and invincible and so fucking hungry. It gnaws in your gut ‘til you can’t ignore it any more. The urge to bite down and just drink, and fuck the fact it’s a human being you’re killin’ with it, because it feels so damn good to be able to sate that, if only for a day or so. It ain’t pretty, but it’s true. Hell, if I’d’ve met you back then, you wouldn’t be breathin’ right now. Just the way of things. Funny thing is, they created us by accident, created monsters by accident, and then Doctor Frankenstein’d their way through the various stages of denial until they could justify blamin’ us for it all.”
“So why?” Matthew asks again. “Why did they do it – all of it?”
“Matty, what’s the most base human fear?” Gabe asks, watching Matthew carefully.
“I don’t know,” Matthew lies. Gabe understands why he lied, because Gabe is the epitome of that fear.
“It’s death, Matty. The ultimate unknown. The ultimate loss of control. Back then, nobody knew what was on the other side of a stopped heart. Hell, they still got their beliefs even now. Thing is, my heart don’t beat. So I know the answer to that one, at least. But that’s what they wanted to defeat. Humans – man, the things they fear and the things they love to run up to and poke, one and the same more often than not. It’s the reason you’re walking beside me right now, so ya know. Any other creature woulda run first chance they got. But you’re human, and you want to figure me out. Even if it comes at the ultimate cost. You’re afraid of death, but you guys love to play with it. Tease it and try to turn it into something you can use. So. They rounded us up, and started playing god.”
Matthew’s eyebrows are scrunched, like he was deep in thought. It was cute, and Gabe feels another pang for the kid at his side.
“And ya know something? Same as how god had a habit of raising the dead, so did the so-called scientists who run us through their mill of ‘for the greater good’ torture chambers. Except, well, they wanted it clean. Still human. Not a kinda uncanny valley mockery of humanity. They’d changed us, created us, an’ they’d fucked up,” Gabe shrugs to punctuate his sentence and took a moment. “Look, kid, I’m not sayin’ we’re innocent in all this, we killed a hell of a lot of people after – and maybe some of us still do, but hell. Do you know how it feels to be awake as someone saws your arm off? Just to see if you can regrow it? To test the limits of what you’re capable of? You can’t black out any more, your body won’t let ya, so you just scream, ‘cept they won’t even let ya do that because they got ya gagged. So you just watch. And then your arm’s on the other side of the room, and, well, it ain’t growin’ back.”
“But – ” Matthew nods at Gabe.
“I got two arms, I know. Didn’t grow one back though. This thing,” he wiggles the fingers on his left hand, “this was just another of their experiments.”
“How?”
“It’s metal. They thought maybe they could salvage something. Figure out a way to put us down after, like, but in the meantime, figure out prosthetics once and for all. This thing is top of the line shit. Only problem is, you attach it to a human, and it rips their spine clean out.” Gabe winces at the memory. “Yeah, that was nasty. Too heavy, ya see? So I got a fancy robot arm as well as immortality, and they got jack shit to show for it. It weren’t long after that that everything went completely tits up.”
“Gabe – ” Matthew starts, and then stops himself. “I’m sorry.”
Gabe feels jolted, knocked off centre. It’s been two hundred and fifty some years and nobody’s ever apologised before.
“Wasn’t your fault,” he says carefully.
“Didn’t mean it like that, Gabe. Meant it like, sorry it happened to you. Sorry people did that to you. Sorry for everything.”
“You apologising to a monster?” Gabe asks.
“I guess I am,” Matthew shoots back.
“Then what does that make you?”
Matthew stops in his tracks, fixing that intense blue glare on Gabe. In another life, Gabe would have felt hot under that gaze, but instead he just feels hunted. Like Matthew can actually see him. Not the exterior, the bleached out shell of himself
, or the gooey insides, but his thoughts, the deepest parts of himself.
“Makes me human, far as I can tell. I know you could kill me. I know you still might – ” he holds up a hand to silence Gabe’s protests. “No, see, you’ve been talkin’ and I’ve been listenin’ and it seems you got a handle on humans better than most. You’ve seen the worst of us and you’re still here. You think you don’t have a choice in that, ‘cos you can’t be killed means you gotta live. But the life you choose? That’s on you. You stopped me Splitting myself before you even knew my name. I shot you and you didn’t kill me then. I guess you were right when you said us humans like to poke the things we fear the most with sticks. I’ve been afraid all my life, wonderin’ where my next meal’s coming from, whether I’ll end up in a work house, and then, when I found the crack in the dome and started sneaking out, whether I’d Split myself. And you know? I don’t feel afraid now. I feel like I should. But whatever happens, from here on out, it feels inevitable. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with inevitable.” Matthew starts walking again, leaving Gabe a few paces behind.
Gabe trudges along behind him in silence, the word inevitable fire hot across his brain. And he thinks about Aubrey, and fate and wonders if he should have just let the kid Split himself. Because the way he understands it, though he’s never believed it, is that there’s a certain certainty to inevitable.
Gabe knows time, can feel it around him at all times, knows the debt he owes it. His existence is at odds with the laws of the universe. He has been at war with those laws for a very long time now.
And inevitable feels like Matthew’s going to get caught in the crossfire.
*
“I’m going to get my gun back, ya know,” Matthew says out of nowhere. Gabe smirks.
“Sure, kid.”
“When you least expect it.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m not a kid, ya know. I’m twenty four next month,” Matthew points out.
Gabe looks him up and down.
“But you’re all short and shit.”
“Yeah, amazing how malnutrition stunts growth, huh?” Matthew spits back, angry.
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