by Darcy Town
“Yeah.”
“Uh, well…” Tasanee scratched at the shaved sides of her head. “Czar’s got things, but it’s mostly space stuff or porn.”
“Space stuff!” Ravil grinned. “Perfect!”
“Okay, I guess it’ll help put you to sleep.” Tasanee disappeared and came back a minute later with ship diagnostics and blueprints. “Boring, I swear. Keto says you’re supposed to go right to sleep, not stay up. I’ll be checking in on you.”
Ravil grabbed the blueprints and papers. “This is great, sure to put me to sleep. Thank you, Rat.”
“No problem.” Tasanee closed the door, leaving Ravil alone in the room.
Ravil looked to the open window. She stared at the field below. She wanted to leave this place and go to Rake. She knew exactly how far away he was and in which direction. It would be simple to find him on her own.
Ravil slipped off the mattress and stood up. She wobbled and fell back down on the bed. She pressed her arm to her forehead. She was feverish and sick. She’d have to wait awhile longer to leave. She hopped back into bed and opened the first blueprint. She touched the design and Russian characters and learned how their machines worked.
***
“Keto, you motherfucking fuck! Let me out!” Rake screamed at the ceiling, his body arched on the bed, drenched in sweat. “Keto!”
Betty waved her hand in front of his eyes. “I’m afraid you’re going to bite your tongue.”
“Keto!” Rake ignored her. “Keto, stop torturing me! Let me go! I don’t want to do this anymore! I don’t want to!”
Betty gave Rake a pinch. He looked at her and snarled. Betty patted his cheek. “Stop gnashing your teeth. They’re so nice and pretty right now, white boy.” She grabbed a pillow. “It’s past noon and I haven’t slept yet. I’ll be back in a few hours or so.” She left and locked her bedroom door behind her.
Rake kicked his heels into the mattress. He could not keep still. The pain and itching drove him mad. He wanted to move, wanted to walk, he wanted to do anything but lie here in this goddamn bed. He smacked his head into the pillows. “Keto!”
He broke into a cold sweat and goose bumps covered his skin despite the eighty-degree heat. He closed his eyes and tried to count his breaths like Keto had told him to. He made it to five. He had only made it to five for the past hour before pain and confusion set in. He screamed.
A cool hand touched his brow. Rake’s eyes shot open. A straw-colored blonde girl sat by his side, smiling down at him. “Hello, Rake.”
Rake trembled. “You’re dead.”
The girl shrugged. “So?” Her British accent came off lighter than he remembered it.
“Go away!” Rake gagged. “Keto! I’m seeing dead girls now! This shit ain’t right! Keto!”
The girl laughed. “I have a name, Rake.”
He glared at her. “You are not real. You are not her. Go away!”
The girl frowned. “Hurtful words, hurtful words. It’s okay.” She looked him up and down. “Why are you doing this? You’re hurting yourself.”
Rake snarled. “Go away! Keto! I need drugs that are more fucking powerful! Anything! Knock me out! Please for the love of God! Keto!”
The girl kissed his neck. “He’s not coming.”
Rake angled his head away from her. “Get off of me.” She ignored him. He gritted his teeth. “Get off of me, Lara.”
Lara looked up. “See was that so hard? Now I have a name. I love you, Rake.”
He pulled on his restraints. They rubbed at his wrists and cut into his skin. “Go away! You’re not her. I don’t want to see her!”
“Don’t you love me anymore, Rake?” She leaned on his chest and pressed down with all of her weight. “Join me, please. Be with me, Rake. I’m so cold.”
He struggled to breathe as he went into respiratory depression. He counted aloud, “One, two, three, four, five.”
Lara smirked and sat up. “You’re not going to last. Keep begging though and maybe one of these whores will crack and let you out of your bonds. You know you can score off of one of the girls downstairs.”
He glared at her. “Stop looking like Lara.”
“But I am Lara.”
“No! She would never have acted like this! She would have helped me get through this, not make it worse!”
Lara kissed his chest. “Really? The Rake she liked got her killed, so why would she ever help you? You were stupid and an idiot. Lara suffered, Sammy suffered, and now all you are is a killer, just as vile as her murderer! She would never have forgiven you.”
He bucked. “We were seventeen!”
Lara smirked and scratched her fingernails down his stomach; she dug them into his flesh. He screamed in pain. She stabbed her fingers into his leg muscles. “Do you think she cared that you were seventeen? Or do you think she hoped, even to the last second that you’d be able to stop him?”
“I tried!” He wailed until his voice was hoarse. “I tried! Oh God! I tried, Lara!”
She gnawed on the scar that ran the length of his leg, her teeth pinched where the knife had nearly severed his artery. He felt the lacerations up and down his body; he saw blood pumping out in the same throbbing drain from that night. He kicked.
Lara grinned at his efforts. “Should I look like Sammy instead? Would that be better?”
“No! Don’t!” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Please just go away!”
Lara dug her elbows into his stomach. Rake puked up the water he’d been given to drink. She laughed. “Look at you now, Rake. Tied to a bed in fucking Bangkok. Why are you even still alive? You have nothing to live for.”
“Fuck you,” Rake’s voice trailed off. “You aren’t Lara. You don’t know anything about me. You’re just a hallucination.”
“Of course I know you, Rake. I am you.” She sat on his chest and pressed her fingers into his throat. “You know what you should do. You should score big, real big and overdose. Go out in one go of it, just like you wanted to in the first place.”
He shook his head and struggled to speak through the pain, “I have to pro—protect Rav—Ravil.”
“So you think if you protect one teenage girl that makes up for the two whose lives you ruined!” She punched him in the jaw. “You can’t make up for it, Rake! Never! You should have died with me! Why didn’t you die with me, Rake? Why didn’t you love me enough to let go of your life when I let go of mine!”
He snapped his teeth towards her face. “I’m sorry! But not to you! I’m sorry to the real Lara!”
“She can’t hear you, Rake, because she’s dead! Soon that stupid bitch you have hidden away will be dead too! All you do is hurt people, Rake! You fail at everything you try to do!”
He stared at the ceiling. “I can protect Ravil, I can, I will.”
“She’s not me, Rake! You can never make up for what you did! You never should have lived past that night! You always got all the luck in life! Why couldn’t you have used it to save me, to save Sammy! I’ve been in the ground for years, while you’re up and around doing nothing! You stole my life and then you wasted it!” Lara screamed at him and her eyes faded to dead, cold blue. Her skin lost its tan. Strangulation marks appeared around her neck, the flesh bruised and dark.
Lara pressed her icy limbs into his flesh, pulling the warmth from his. “You’re still a little boy inside, Rake. Bleeding out and crying in the grass! Caring more about yourself than anyone else. Selfish!”
“No.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. “I loved her. If my dying would have prevented hers I would have done it.”
She planted her icy lips on his, the smell of rot on her breath. “Are you going to sleep with this Ravil girl too? Try and recapture the experience of young love again? Something pure this time, uninterrupted by an untimely death? She’ll die if you do, you know. You only keep her alive by keeping her as she is. She’ll die as soon as you touch her, just like Lara did. Sex kills, Rake.”
“I don’t want that with her or with anyone!” He st
ared into her dead eyes. “I haven’t wanted anyone since Lara.”
“Stop lying to yourself, you’re sick. You’re still seventeen in your fucking head. You got stuck back then, Rake. Stuck like I got stuck. I don’t get to age, Sammy didn’t get to age, and you never did either. You’re damaged inside, Rake. Broken, unworthy of love. You’ll hurt her, Rake.” Lara fell to pieces on top of him.
He screamed.
Keto shook him. “There’s no one there, Rake! Rake! Focus!”
Rake’s eyes snapped open. He heaved and threw up on Keto. “She was here. Lara! She was on the bed!”
Keto pulled towels away from Rake and replaced them. “No she’s not, Rake. You’re alone. You’ve been alone for hours.”
Late afternoon light peeked in from the windows. Rake looked down at his body, but besides the sweat and bruises he’d accrued on his own, there were no new marks. He struggled to breathe. “She was here. I saw her.”
“She’s only in your mind, Rake.” Keto washed his brow. “A side effect of the medicine, that’s all, it’s just in your head.”
“I know it’s my fucking mind, you fuckwad!” Rake snapped at him. “That doesn’t make it any better. Not when she looks the same, sounds the same.” He shuddered. “She told me to kill myself.”
“Lara wouldn’t really want that. You want to kill yourself.”
“I used to.” Rake’s muscles twitched uncontrollably. “I don’t want to anymore, Keto. I don’t want to die.”
“You have something live for now, hold onto that.”
“Ravil? Is she okay, Keto?” Rake looked desperate. “Please tell me she’s all right!”
“She’s doing just fine Rake, she’s okay. You need to think about you.”
Rake shook his head. “As long as she’s fine…as long as she’s fine. I’ll be fine as long as she is fine.” He nodded to himself. “Ravil will be okay.”
Keto frowned. “Rake, focus on your healing.”
Rake nodded. He tried to curl into a ball, but could not move his legs. “Please untie me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Please!”
“No.”
Rake strained towards him. “I’ll kill you, Keto!”
Keto nodded sadly. “Perhaps you would right now, but you’d regret it later, so how about we keep you tied up.” He checked Rake’s wrists. “I am going to up your dose, it might make the visions worse, but you’ll sleep through most of it, I promise.”
“Fuck you! I hate you! I’ll never forgive you for this!” Rake spasmed.
Keto sighed and readied a new syringe. “I’m treating you for the nasty shit you’ve picked up as well, so by the time you wake you’re going to be clean, Rake, from disease and this junk. Just focus on that. You’re going to be free.”
“But it hurts, Keto.” Rake wiped tears off on his pillow and looked at the wall. “It’s fucking torture.” He looked back, but Keto wasn’t there. He gazed at the windows. It was dark outside. The sun had gone down. He looked towards the ceiling. “Goddamn it! Keto, were you even here?”
There was a hiss of laughter. Rake looked at the foot of the bed. A man he did not recognize sat on the end of the mattress. The man licked his hair, grooming it as he wove it into a braid. The stranger took his sunglasses off and slipped them into a pocket at the front of his jacket. His eyes flashed yellow in the dim light of the room.
Rake frowned. “Now what? Hallucination rodeo, I don’t even know you!”
The man shrugged. “Who are you?”
“Han-fucking-Solo!” Rake tried to kick him. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I am called Marx.”
Rake laughed. “Karl Marx, sweet Jesus! Nice to meet you! You’re popular around these parts.”
Marx slipped off his gloves and his claws slid out. “You are addled.”
“Damn fucking right I am!” Rake bucked against the pain. “Real addled. How about you untie me? Please, please, please?”
“Mr. Solo, I have some questions for you.”
Rake sank down into his pillows. “Ask away my good Mr. Marx.”
“Have you killed any marines recently?”
“Who hasn’t?” Rake burst into hysterical laughter. “It’s pretty much my number one hobby besides tying myself to beds and hallucinating!”
Marx smiled. “Have you spent time with a child as of late, a girl?”
“I was hanging out with a dead one named Lara earlier. Is she still around? Lara, zombie baby, someone wants to meet you!” Rake looked around the dark room. “Nope, not anymore. She’s shy. Just hang around. I’m sure she’ll be back.”
“Are you currently involved with one that goes by Ravilaea Langone?”
Rake laughed. “Do you see anyone else here?”
Marx crawled up the length of the bed and looked down at him. “Are you ever called Rake?”
“Call me whatever you want. Do you have any junk on you?” Rake licked his lips. “May I have some? I can be real nice. I can make you feel good, wanted.”
Marx frowned. “Junk?”
“Smack? Needles? Please? Do you have any on you?”
“No. I do not need needles.” The Hunter waved his claws in front of Rake’s face. He leaned down and scraped one across Rake’s cheek, drawing blood. He filled the hollow claw and retracted it into his finger, keeping the sample for Kennedy to taste.
“Hey!” Rake bit Marx’s palm, tearing through skin. He got Hunter blood on his lips and licked it off. “Fair trade.”
Marx eyed his hand, then his claw. “I suppose.”
Rake spat out saliva and blood. “Gross! My fucking tongue tingles! Why is my tongue goddamn tingling?” He eyed the Hunter. “Fuck off with your carbonated blood!”
Rake shook his head until the tingling ceased. He opened his eyes and the Hunter was gone. He laughed and kept laughing until he cried and his cries turned into screams and howls of pain and desperation.
***
Ravil woke feeling uneasy. Someone touched her. She batted at the person with her mitten hands. There was light laughter. Ravil opened her eyes and looked up.
Katarina sat beside her on the bed; her long dreadlocks were tied back into a ponytail. Her low-cut white tank top showed off an impressive amount of cleavage, and a short jean skirt displayed her long tan legs. She mopped Ravil’s brow. “How do you feel?”
Ravil calmed. “Much better.”
Katarina checked her arms. “Your spots are going down.”
Ravil pulled up her shirt and stared at her stomach. “Good.” She sat up with a little dizziness and moved the blueprints to the side. Her eye caught on the window. “Night already?”
“Just a bit past sundown.” Katarina gestured to the documents on the floor. “How do you know Russian?”
Ravil frowned. “It was one of the first of your languages that I saw and learned.”
“Huh.” Katarina pulled off Ravil’s mittens. “Why is your hair growing so fast?”
Ravil touched her hair; it had grown to half a foot in length. She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
“Where are you from?”
“I don’t know!” Ravil jumped out of bed. “I don’t know!” She panted in the evening heat. The movement made her light-headed. She leaned on a desk for support. “I don’t know.”
Katarina went to her side. “I’m sorry.” She helped Ravil stand up straight. “I won’t bug you anymore about it.”
Ravil took her hand cautiously. “May I use the bathroom again?”
“Of course.” Katarina smiled. “You don’t need to ask. Just knock and make sure Danny isn’t in there.”
“Danny?”
“Older, gray hair, our commander, he helped you in the bathtub.” Katarina tapped her forehead. “You were pretty sick.”
Ravil nodded cautiously. “Yes.” She took a step towards the door, looked back at Katarina, and then hurried out. She ran up the stairs, fighting through the wooziness that threatened to send her to the floor. Danny’s doo
r was open so she ran in.
Danny looked up from his bed. “Oh hi Ravil, glad to see you—”
Ravil ran into his bathroom, slammed the door behind her, and locked it. She ran her fingers through her hair. It was red on the ends where Rake had dyed it, but the rest was snow white. She jumped on the counter and looked at her pupils in the mirror; the irises blood red. She pulled her shirt over her head. She covered a breast with her palm, not handfuls like Katarina’s, but definitely noticeable. “No more pancake.”
She examined her hips; they were wider than they had been, but not by much. She touched her stomach, the small layer of fat that had been there was gone. She poked her toned body; the faint outlines of the muscle visible beneath her skin. Her fingers had grown longer, tapered. She looked down, her toes and feet had grown as well, she was several inches taller than she had been a day ago.
She closed her eyes; she struggled to remember what the adults of her subspecies looked like. She had not seen another Navigator since she was a toddler. She was still short; too short, she thought to be full-grown. Ravil nodded. She had least another stage or two before that.
Danny knocked on the door. “Are you okay, Ravil?”
Ravil jumped off the counter and put her shirt back on. “I need a girl.”
“A girl?”
“A girl, I have girl issues, I need a woman, a female.” Ravil gulped, she needed to compare herself to someone and those here were the only ones she had.
He stifled a laugh. “Oh, oh, all right. Just hang on.”
She curled in a ball against the wall and waited. A knock followed a minute later. “It’s Katarina and Rat.”
Ravil threw open the door and grabbed at them blindly. The pair watched as she locked the door behind them. She looked at her feet. “I, uhm...”
Katarina sat on the counter. “Danny said you had girl issues. Did you start bleeding?”
Ravil stared at her hands. “Bleeding? No, uhm.” She pointed at Katarina’s ample breasts. “I’m getting those.”
Tasanee grinned. “How old are you, cupcake?”
Ravil frowned. “Now I am the equivalent of your sixteens I think.”
“Huh?” Katarina shook her head. “Rake said you were fourteen.”
“I don’t really know how old I am.” Ravil bit her lip. “Uhm.” She drove her fingernails into her palms. She looked at herself in the mirror, she should be halting soon. She wouldn’t make another leap for a while. “I, uh, lied to him, I’m sixteen.”