by K. T. Hanna
Deign sighs and takes a seat. “I apologize. Selwyn apparently thought he could commander my little Nimue. I wouldn’t have sent her, Bastian.”
Selwyn? So when Nimue said it was only sort of spying, she wasn’t kidding. Bastian takes his time buttoning his shirt. It was the first thing he’d grabbed, but it’s good for an excuse to mull things over in his mind. Bastian knows Deign needs him right now. Which means he doesn’t have to worry about her probing deeper, so he looks up and nods curtly.
“Apology accepted. Just know if she accidentally touches me, I’m on a hair trigger. You don’t want your protégé dead.” He doesn’t try to elaborate on the previous night. If Selwyn sent her, then Deign really won’t care.
“Message received.” Deign nods, a smile tugging at her lips. “Sometimes I forget you’re so young.” She says the words in a wistful tone, her gaze raking his body up and down.
Bastian fights the urge to snap at her and instead raises an eyebrow. “Are you quite done?” He’s only a decade her junior, but she’s right about one thing. He shouldn’t be in his current position because his father shouldn’t be dead.
Deign sits up taller. “We’re going to have another round of meetings today and tomorrow. I trust I can count on your support?”
He can hear what she doesn’t say. The silent plea that she can’t bring herself to say out loud: I need you to back me up. With difficulty, he coaxes a smile back onto his face. “Of course you can.”
Her answering grin is real, just for a moment. Perhaps that’s the actual reason she came to visit him so early. She continues as if she’d never asked the question. “Selwyn seems to be feeling out of sorts. You’ll have an email to that effect, too. Coward. Probably just doesn’t want to see you while you’re angry. Not that I blame him.” She laughs—a pretty, yet hollow sound. “I’ll see you later.”
“See you in a bit,” he says.
Nimue trails behind her, a quick glance and a grin over her shoulder at Bastian. One thought to trigger the door’s closing mechanism and he walks back into his bedroom, ripping off the buttoned shirt in irritation. “Damn it.”
He’s out of options to stall the launching of the Damascus reboot. Regardless of what he tries, he knows it won’t succeed in the end. He showers, overriding its settings so he can have a long one. It works out the kinks in his neck and soothes the frustration that tenses up his back. He steps out and pulls on a full suit of fresh body armor. No more of these naked chest mistakes.
Lacing and buckling his boots, he glances at his wrist. Has Dom already left for the Exiled? Bastian frowns, something niggling at the back of his mind as he checks his email with the fifteen minutes he has to spare before the meeting.
“Checked your email yet?”
Bastian jumps. “Don’t sneak up on me like that Where have you ...” But then he looks—really looks—at Dom.
There’s a brown and flaking coat of something obscuring some of the gentle strobing going on underneath. His face doesn’t have the usual appearance, but instead seems to sort of be leaking into itself around the edge, his control slipping by the second. Bastian’s gut clenches, and he stands up, the sense of foreboding threatening to strangle him. “What have you done?”
Dom grins, and the expression is more alien than ever. His mouth opens to a gaping black maw, like it’s trying to suck all the color and life of the world into it. “I didn’t do much. But you’re safe, for a while.”
Bastian’s spine convulses slightly, sending a shiver throughout his body. The words are so ominous. “What do you mean?”
Dom shrugs, and it’s a liquid movement, rippling through his entire, hard-to-look-at form. “Have you ever found it odd that no one but you can handle my real self?” There’s an echoing, metallic tone to his voice, filled with an odd sort of regret.
“I think people are just scared of what they don’t know. Because you can be what and who you want. Most people don’t have that sort of courage.”
“I see.” Dom’s eyes cascade through a rainbow of colors as red and silver war with each other. “Why would I bother with that when they’ll never see me coming?”
And Dom vanishes.
A resounding bang on the mostly open door startles Bastian from staring the space Dom had filled but moments before.
“What?” he snaps before his eyes rest on the figure standing in the doorway. Suppressing a sigh of irritation, Bastian motions for the man to come in. “What can I do for you, Zacharai?”
Zach tosses his head enough to make the oily mess of dirty-blond hair he has flip over the top. “So formal, Bastian...” He grins, and the hair he flipped slowly begins its descent, like the gooey cheese on a pizza when you lift up a freshly cooked slice.
“Formal?” Bastian shrugs. “More like running late for this meeting, tired, and not up for your usual crap.” He fingers a small pouch of Shine in his coat pocket, wondering if his dosage is okay or if it’s wearing off. Zach can usually detect power at ten paces. Hedging his bets, he dips a finger in and bows his head as he stands, concealing his face for the moment he needs to ingest some of the bitter-tasting disguise. “Sit...”
Zach crosses his arms, mimicking the gesture with his ankles as he stretches out in the chair. Bastian seats himself again and resists the urge to blink rapidly as the small dose of Shine travels down into his system.
“You’re always busy, Basty.”
If Bastian isn’t mistaken, those blue eyes are murkier than usual, clouded and secretive. “Hazard of the job.”
Zach rolls his shoulders, grin still affixed to his face, oily pizza hair hanging limply, like the cheese has already dried. “We need to go over the Damascus activation.”
Bastian raises an eyebrow and keeps his face as still as possible. Just like he taught Sai, never give away your emotions. “I could have been having a nightmare, but I’m quite certain we had that meeting in this very office only a short while ago?”
Zach laughs, and the slight edge of hysteria in it sets Bastian’s teeth on edge. “You’re hilarious. You know what I mean.”
Bastian blinks. “No, sorry, you’ve got me.”
Suddenly, Zach leans forward and reaches for Bastian’s hand. The dean only narrowly pulls it out of the way, reaching up to adjust his collar.
For a second their eyes lock, and Zach leans back, an undecipherable smirk tugging at the edge of his lips. “You’re still as skittish as ever, Bastian. Are you sure you’re okay? You feel different today. Your...” He steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “Your aura is muddled. I’ve never seen you this way before.”
Bastian swallows the sudden lump in his throat—or tries to. He opts for as close to the truth as he can get. “I’m exhausted. Could probably do with some sleep.”
“No,” Zach shakes his head. “I know what exhaustion feels like. It’s more like...you’re drained?” And he leans forward again, so close that Bastian can almost taste his curiosity.
“Drained would work. Do you have any idea how much energy I have to expend to keep my shielding up? There’s a reason you all came here to discuss the Damascus, you know.”
“Mmm.” Muddy blue eyes never stray from Bastian’s face. “You should be careful, or you’ll end up in hospital. Can’t have Deign’s little assassin crippled, now, can we?”
Bastian barks out a laugh he doesn’t feel and forces a smile onto his face, hoping it doesn’t look as fake as it is. “Deign’s? Really, Zach, you know better than that. I’m everyone’s little assassin.”
“I’ll have to remember that.” Zach returns the laugh, but Bastian doesn’t think he wants to know why it sounds so joyous.
By the time he gets back to his quarters, Bastian’s brain is on autopilot. Damascus to be activated within the week. Hounds lined up close to Central in order to assist when they’re reawakened. Blah blah, kill everyone and take back what’s ours.
“If the Damascus don’t kill us all first,” he mutters under his breath as he throws himself into his chair
. “No one ever says what we’re all thinking out loud.”
There’s no answer to his musings, and the slight disappointment that winds its way down his esophagus is unexpected. With no Sai to train anymore, the moments of brightness in his day have been severely limited. Add to that the security increases since the infiltration meaning less contact with Mathur, not to mention Dom’s reaction to his last reset... If he really wanted, Bastian could spend hours wallowing in self-pity.
Instead, he allows himself only a moment, staring up at the ceiling. He’s done so much talking these last few days. Most of it has been purely to stall the Damascus reactivation without appearing too obvious. Constantly having to swallow his impatience at the people around him because they fail to realize the GNW is no longer about pushing boundaries and trying to find the commonality between the human brain and psionic abilities. It hasn’t been for decades now.
Thousands of people dying in the name of research, under the guise of caring. There has to be a line, where lives mean more than scientific evidence. He sighs and swivels his chair as he closes his eyes, letting the room swirl around him.
People should mean more to the company who came to power because of them.
She coughs up bloody spittle, which stains her beautiful lips red. Some of it catches on the side of her mouth, marring snow-white skin. She reaches out and Bastian thinks, at first, she’s reaching for him, but all she wants is that vial on the side table, glistening and shiny, a fine glitter dust that she’ll liquefy and shoot into her veins to make herself endure the pain in her body.
He blinks his eyes open. It’s been a long while since he’s remembered his mother on her deathbed. More than a decade ago now, he’d been such a mommy’s boy. She’d never recovered from the wounds she’d received protecting him and his brother from the Damascus.
And his father? Barely there.
She’d still be alive if the GNW had taken the responsibilities they’d inherited seriously. Maybe they’d have realized sooner...
Doubtful. Bastian stops the spinning, his head a little light, and maneuvers himself around to the desk to rest his head on the cool glass of the surface. If only Dom were here. His friend since just before his mother’s death, the domino is more human than most people he knows. But there’s something wrong with him, something not right...
“Why have I not been ...quite right?”
Bastian lifts his head up, too exhausted to be shocked, and raises an eyebrow before resting his chin on his hands. “Thanks for knocking.”
“Since when do I knock?” Dom is fully visible now, still fluid, still beautiful, still dangerous.
Bastian checks himself and pushes his body up straighter. “Sorry, Dom. Just...you’ve changed. Colder, harsher, less human.”
“But I’m not human.” Dom’s tone is strange, not quite threatening, but as if he doesn’t comprehend the difference.
“I never know what I can say to you these days. You’ve killed two people, and while the motivation for anyone else would make sense to me...” He pauses, unsure of how to proceed. “You—you’ve never been what they made you to be. You’ve always been more human than them.”
Dom moves a step closer, his eyes finally settling on silver, the rapid movement rippling across his form slowing until it’s a sluggish leak. “Am I...human?”
The tone in his friend’s voice breaks Bastian’s heart. Uncertainty mixed with the usual warmth he remembers, only vaguely accented by a hollow undertone. Maybe now he’s really more himself. Maybe, if Bastian handles it well. “You’re more human than most of us. Always forthright, always honest...usually dependable.” He stands up to move to his friend, but has to grasp quickly at the desk to keep from swaying to the ground.
“Bastian!” Dom is there, at his side, with a now-solid hand under his elbow and concern mirrored on his strangely matt face. There’s a crinkle where his brow should be, and Bastian focuses on it.
“I’m okay. I’ve just been so focused, trying not to misstep. It’s like there’s a minefield on every second square, and sometimes they’re placed together.” He tries to hide his joy at the fact that his friend doesn’t seem completely beyond help. It’s not as difficult as he thought. Fatigue creeps slowly into his brain, making it almost impossible to think.
He blinks at Dom. “I feel like crap. I’m not sure what’s wrong.”
Dom’s grip is so firm as he guides Bastian toward his quarters, it feels like he’s floating across the floor. The domino doesn’t answer as he coaxes Bastian into bed and positions pillows around him. “You’ve been taking too much of that drug. That’s what it is,” he says, his voice warm, worried.
There’s no trace of that strange and dangerous Dom, not right now when Bastian actually needs him most. “It’s not...” But he tapers off as the fog around his mind gets thicker and thicker. “I haven’t been doing it that much.”
Even as his heavy eyelids blink in what seems like slow motion, Bastian can see the reaction on Dom’s face. The blank, almost annoyed look that would pass for disbelief in normal people. “You’re doing too much, taking too many risks, Bastian. If you slip up because I can’t be here, how will I live with myself?”
Bastian reaches out and pats Dom’s hand where it rests on the bed. “You’ll live because others need you. But for now?” He struggles to get the words out. “Watch for me? Make sure no one...” He leaves it hanging, knowing by some strange impulse that his Dom is at least momentarily back and no one can get in to harm either of them.
For now.
The smooth surface of the lake is black. Bastian isn’t sure why, but Dom stands next to it, gazing into its depths, his eyes a strange mixture of red flickering with silver.
“A black lake is never good, Bastian.” Dom’s voice is distant, detached, hollow. “Never good. We’re all going to die.”
Dom points at something Bastian can’t make out through the fog on the far side. “See it?” he whispers. “Do you see it?”
Bastian strains against his limited eyesight. He can’t switch vision types like his friend. “We’ll die if we’re not careful. I know this.”
Dom shakes his head. “No, not if we’re not careful.” And he points to the lake again, but this time the surface is bubbling. Sluggish, popping bubbles, like liquid tar. Almost like Dom’s body when he’s not controlling the flow of the adrium. “We’re all going to die if we don’t succeed.”
Bastian shivers at the sight, and the words send a sense of dread straight through him. “Succeed?”
Dom nods, spreading his hands to the surroundings, the fog closing in on them, thick and white as the now boiling lake wriggles and pops enthusiastically. Bastian can’t tear his gaze away from it.
“You already know what you have to do, Bastian.” Dom takes a step toward him and holds onto his arms. “Not even I can get past them.”
Bastian panics—at the confining grip, at the mist now thick and tangible, like a cloak keeping the boiling lake safe to do whatever it wants. “I can’t flip that switch, Dom. I can’t get to it”
“But you don’t have to.” Dom smiles, and his mouth widens like a cat, revealing that gaping maw briefly again. “You’re the son of the inventor. I don’t understand why you don’t just pick your father’s brains.”
“He’s dead!” Bastian squirms and Dom drops his grip, eyes flickering to solid red again.
“Death isn’t much of a barrier, Bastian. You of all people should know this.” He grins and opens his arms wide as the mist and fog run away from his touch. “See?”
And Bastian does see—broken skulls wash up on the shore, tar dripping off them. But it’s not tar at all. It’s flesh and fat peeling away as brain matter leaks through the eye sockets.
Bastian sits up in bed, gasping for breath as his thoughts sort through what his overtired subconscious was trying to tell him. There has to be a way to access his father’s research.
He glances over at Dom, who is slumped in the chair, staring at the ceiling
. “You could have just spoken to me,” he grumbles, blinking to get used to the low levels of light in his bedroom.
Dom looks over and shrugs, the rippling movement only affecting his shoulders and not the rest of his body like in recent days. “Don’t get me involved in that brain of yours. That freaky dream was all you.”
Bastian thinks for a moment. “But you were in it.”
“No, I watched from the outside. You were tossing and turning, mumbling in your sleep. ‘Black lake’ caught my attention.” Dom’s eyes cloud over slightly, the silver receding to a milky white before he speaks again. “After all, I’m like your only friend.”
“I have friends.” Bastian doesn’t like the defensive way the words come out, not a bit of truth to them. “I do have friends, just none of them are here when you’re not.”
Dom stands and walks over to sit on the end of the bed. “I’m not always here either, but I’m trying to work through this, okay?”
Bastian nods. “Yeah. It’s all going to be okay, right?”
Dom laughs, and even though the hollowness to the sound is mostly gone, it still seems forced. “You know you could go over his things, check out his mementos from his work?”
“I think they’re in storage. Way at the back of storage.” Bastian runs a hand through his hair and leans back against the padded headboard. “Waaaaay back.”
Dom smiles, a sad sort of shine to it. “Way back is better than no starting point at all.”
Sai frowns, watching Mathur tinker with one of the dominos. So similar to Dom and yet wildly different. And it’s lifeless, like a corpse. “You’re saying they’re not really off, they’re just sort of in...stasis? Like the Damascus?”
Mathur starts to nod but stops, hands paused. “It is sort of like sleep or forced hibernation. You have to remember they are not fully human, and there are just things they can do that we cannot and vice versa.
“So...” She stops, trying to piece it together in her mind. “You’re saying you can force them into a type of domino coma and fix them?”