Skinner Luce

by Patricia Ward

  The Nafikh’s face contorts, mouth wrenched wide in a silent scream.

  Or no: She is screaming, it’s just muffled.

  Lucy turns back. “Theo, just tell me how to get Her out!”

  “You should stay with me,” he suggests, quivering, leaking putrid smoke.

  Well, that she didn’t expect. He genuinely thinks he’s making an appealing offer. He shakes and bobbles about in the chair, peering at her suggestively from under his burnt brows.

  “You’re awful,” she whispers. “You’re sick and crazy.”

  “Go to hell, Lucy,” he retches. “She’s dying. You’ll be next.”

  She turns away, unable to stand looking at him any longer. The Nafikh is weakening. Her writhing is slower, more labored.

  There is no way to save Her.

  She can’t help it, she imagines bolting out the door, reporting the Nafikh died, she couldn’t save Her. Who’s to know what will happen? The other Nafikh freaking out about Dara-Lin could get bored with Their own distress, They could give up and leave. Things don’t develop one from another with Them. There’s no pattern, no predicting what Nafikh will do: it’s rule number one. Why should Lucy help Her, when in any other circumstance, Dara-Lin could just as easily strangle her as feed her a strawberry?

  They’ve terrorized her for years, and here she is, conflicted about getting the revenge she’s always dreamed of. It’s enough to make her scream laughing.

  “What are you doing?” Theo cries, craning to look over his shoulder. “No!”

  Her hands hover over the bewildering array of switches and lights on the chamber panel. She starts flipping switches. The Nafikh stiffens, mouth agape. Lucy’s done something wrong, something worse. It’s like the Nafikh is suffocating. Lucy can see blue tingeing the white cheeks, the lips.

  Fuck!

  She grips the edges of the clamped bubble, pulls. Pulls harder. Nothing happens. The Nafikh’s eyes start to roll back, Her body arches upwards.

  Lucy channels all her might into pulling. She can feel the veins in her head popping, and her vision starts to swim, darken. Then there is a faint yielding sensation in the metal. She pulls harder.

  The chamber explodes open, the top flying through space to shatter on the floor.

  The Nafikh’s heat pours out like flames. Lucy seizes the leather restraints and rips them apart, one by one. Dara-Lin’s arm swings out, smashing into Lucy’s jaw, the blow so feeble that Lucy merely stumbles a little. The Nafikh tries to sit up, but Her body crumples, shaking. Her hands fumble at the tube protruding from Her chest.

  “Badel,” Lucy cries, seizing the clawing hands. Wait. Dara-Lin does not resist, or maybe She isn’t strong enough to. “If you pull it out, it could kill you! Do you understand?”

  The Nafikh stops all movement, panting, staring up at her. She seems to be waiting. But Lucy doesn’t have some alternative plan. She stares in mute dismay at the tube, the bandages seeping frothy blood.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers, her hands pulling back, hanging helplessly in the air. “I’m sorry.”

  The Nafikh stares at the ceiling. For a short time, there is only the sound of Her breaths, and of Theo gurgling and moaning, slumped in his chair.

  Then Dara-Lin turns onto Her side, eases Herself into a sitting position. She gazes down at the monstrosity protruding from Her body. Her face is angular and hard-planed, like a perfect sculpture, the smooth skin streaked with pale rivulets of tears through smeared blood and sweat. Slowly, She lifts Her chin. Her eyes are huge pools of black, jarring contrast to the white skin and hair She chose for Her trip to Earth. Lucy cringes, backing away.

  “Aysha arranish,” the Nafikh tells her. “Alee.”

  Stunned, Lucy ceases all movement, the one word she knows drifting into her like a feather, settling, the final touch of it a searing hurt. How many times she said the same. How many times.

  Dara-Lin looks down at Her chest, closes Her massive hand around the tube, and yanks.

  Blood spurts forth, soaking the bandages. The tubing snakes and clatters on the stone floor. In one motion, Dara-Lin swings Herself off the chamber bed and stands up. She towers over Lucy, swaying in place, Her expression blank with surprise at Her continued weakness, then hardening with determination.

  Theo falls out of his chair with a thump. He inches along the floor, a smoking heap of bloated meat, emitting soft moans.

  Dara-Lin turns. She approaches Theo, peering down at him. He’s positioned so Lucy can see his face, the slanted eyes so swollen they are slits seeping smoke, his mouth sagged open. He’s already dead, she thinks, but then he moans again.

  Dara-Lin bends down and grasps him by the neck. She lifts him into the air. His legs hang limp, dripping blood and piss.

  “Angh,” he moans.

  The Nafikh’s body tenses, all the muscles in Her back rippling in waves. Then She flings him aside. He whirls through the air, smashes into the wall with a crunch, and thumps to the floor.

  Silence.

  Lucy looks away, gulping bile.

  “Annyeh tajjak,” the Nafikh pants.

  “Osh een,” Lucy manages to say. Not here. “Osh tajjak een. Outside,” she points at the ceiling.

  This is received with tightened mouth, flared nostrils. The black eyes swirl with what Lucy reads as mounting rage. The mouth hangs open, saliva dripping down Her chin.

  This, Lucy recognizes.

  She stands taller, hardening herself. “Please, this way,” she says firmly. She indicates the path beyond the shallow water. The Nafikh approaches. Her hand lifts, and Lucy takes it, unconsciously mimicking the actions she has seen sentries perform during Service.

  She leads Her through the shallow pool and onto the rocky path on the other side. The door stands open, Coutreaux already having gone this way. The tunnel ahead is pitch black, and she suffers a moment of panic, only to discover, utterly absurdly, a tidy row of flashlights on a nearby ledge. She takes one and lights it. They enter the tunnel, which is broader and higher, not man-made, but a twisting, turning passage over rock piles that requires some effort and climbing. She keeps checking on the Nafikh, whose labored breathing sounds awful. Blood streams out from the hole in Her chest, sweat forms a sheen across Her skin. Despite Her wounds, She carries on steadily, making Her way over the obstacles. The air grows colder, blowing hard and fresh and damp, and it tastes delicious, dizzying. At last, they emerge into a stand of trees. No wonder Gabriel and the rest didn’t find this entrance. The farm lies in the distance across a snowy field, a cluster of buildings on fire. She catches sight of a lumpy shape steadily moving across the field in that direction: Coutreaux, with the doctor on his back.

  The trees creak in the wind, shedding clouds of snow that sprinkle needles onto her upturned face.

  “Annyeh tajjak,” the Nafikh whispers.

  Every breath is massive, Her whole body lifting to support the effort.

  “Tajjakah,” Lucy says. “Aji, tajjakah.”

  Dara-Lin’s eyes pass over her, barely seeing. She starts to lift Her arms, and Lucy turns and runs in the only direction that might save her, back down below.

  V

  LUCY BECOMES AWARE FIRST of a soft ticking sound. Her eyes flutter, still closed. She feels herself gradually being dragged from the deep heaviness of sleep. There’s the pull of a blanket against her legs. The ticking sound. Slowly, her eyes drag open, focus through the dim light. She’s in a bed. The ticking is from a clock on the bedside table. It reads 12:17.

  Memory flits up through the mud: someone bending over her, the prick of a needle. Go to sleep now. The noise of her own weeping, from exhaustion. Or, was there an argument? She thinks there might have been. Gabriel was there.

  The events come back slowly, in pieces. The roaring flames, the walls tearing apart like paper. The dark, damp tunnel, and what lay behind the iron door.

  She went back into the lab and waited there. She sat for ages against the rock wall hugging her knees, staring at a spo
t between her boots so as not to look at Theo’s bloated corpse. Then Gabriel came.

  What did they fight about?

  She sits up slowly, brings her bare feet to the floor. Someone must have removed her boots and socks. Or maybe she did. Her clothes feel grimy, damp with sweat. She’s sore all over, especially her right side. She pushes up her shirt, finds her skin dark with bruises, as if she was kicked around by a Nafikh.

  But it wasn’t one of Them. It was Gabriel. Flashes of herself screaming, beating on him. They were in the lab down below. Where he found her.

  After that, everything goes black, and now this.

  She looks around. Plywood walls, bare wood door, like an unfinished project. It’s one of those rooms in the warehouse. She stands up with some effort, makes her way around the bed to the rectangular cutout overlooking the Gate. She’s one level up. All is quiet, the space dim as a tomb. A sentry across the way sits on a scaffold, smoking. Some towels hang from the rail next to him. Murmurs carry from here and there, someone coughs. She can see Eric’s office down to the right. The lights are on.

  She backs away, sinks onto the bed, numbed by the possibility that this is where she’ll have to live from now on. It can’t be. She’s going to wake up and discover herself in bed at home, and Eva will be downstairs with the radio blaring, whipping up omelets. She was supposed to be bought out. It was supposed to be over.

  It’s not real. It can’t be real.

  But it is. She’s here, at the Gate, and she’s been boosted. There’s a strange, heavy potency deep in her body, as if she could kick down the wall with one blow. It’s all she can do not to give in, not to rage against the walls, the shitty metal bedframe, the bare floor.

  She wonders if Bedrosian’s gotten his money back. He’s probably leafing through Alaskan cruise brochures, and meanwhile, she’s stuck in this box of a room, staring down the bleak reality of her future.

  He’d better still do Eva’s loan like he promised.

  A memory comes floating up out of the mess in her head. She digs inside her pocket, finds it. The tiny ampule, amazingly, is unbroken, filled with shimmering mist, sparks glinting within.

  She balances it on her palm: it weighs nothing. She wonders if it’s the last one, or if a larger stash was found. Probably not. There was something about the way the doctor was holding it, like it was the most precious thing in the world.

  The last of Theo’s grabs, the last spark of the last arrival to end up in his hands.

  Not necessarily him.

  But it’s so small, so fragile and weightless, calling up his slender shivering frame, his feet going blue. Her throat thickens up inside. It’s over now. It’s all over, and she just needs to get the hell out of this claustrophobic room, find out what she’s meant to do next.

  She tucks the ampule back into her pocket. She listens at the door, nervous of stepping out, running into someone. There are voices, but not close. Murmurs, footsteps, the scrape of chair legs. She turns the doorknob, trying to be as quiet as possible. Pulls it open just a crack. The corridor is empty. Gray light filters in through the tall windows, and she stares up at the sky with a feeling of amazement. She believed, in those last moments, that she was going to die: she ran so hard, plunging over the rocky terrain towards the black hole of the tunnel. She unconsciously reaches for her shoulder, recalling how she slammed into the rock wall, the flashlight lost, the way pitch black. How the fire rolled in behind her.

  And now, the ordinary gray sky through dirty windowpanes, the silence and the calm.

  “Hey,” someone says, and she starts.

  A sentry’s leaning in a doorway down the hall, arms crossed. Lucy approaches, recognizing her from past Services. Em, her name is. She’s dark black with close-cropped hair, bright green eyes. A ragged AC/DC tee shirt hangs over her sweatpants. An image comes: Good Harbor Beach, the moon hanging low over the bay. Lucy on her knees, Em guiding the Nafikh away across the sand.

  “You’re Lucy,” Em states.

  “Yes.” Lucy’s voice comes out a dry crackle. She tries to swallow spit, clears her throat. “I know you. You’re Em.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Em lifts her chin, eyeing her. “Look. Even if you got Dara-Lin out, there’s a lot here that are pissed you got a boost after all you did. And that you came back, but Sina didn’t. You should know that, up front.”

  Lucy flinches at this speech, delivered like something set down hard between them. She curbs the urge to spit out some retort. They have a right to be angry. She was supposed to be dumped on the sets, not be here with them. She says, “I understand.”

  Em acknowledges this with a nod, closing the topic. “How’d you end up working for a prick like Theo Elander, anyway?”

  “Who isn’t a prick, that servs get to work for?”

  “Fair enough. Is it true you grew up with people?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is some crazy shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, then,” Em says, when Lucy offers up nothing more. “You should get cleaned up. Come on.”

  Em heads off down the corridor, giving Lucy no choice but to follow. She hears music, the slap of cards, low laughs coming from the open doors ahead. She’s conscious of other sentries watching her go by, and she holds herself tall, nodding casual greeting and ignoring the bland hostility in their expressions. Maybe she deserves some of it, fine. But she can’t help resenting that her rescue of Dara-Lin seems to have no value.

  They come to the shower room. Six stalls in a row, sinks opposite, bathroom stalls adjoining. Gray tile walls, unframed mirrors. Em asks her size and digs around in a closet. She comes up with a change of clothes, along with a folded towel and a bottle of combo soap and shampoo.

  Lucy takes what’s offered, saying thank you. Em leaves without reply. The shower is a long, slow tamping down of hurt and anger, her head bent under the stream, hands splayed on the tile wall. It is how it is, she finds herself thinking, over and over. It’s a serv truism she always found pitiful and cowardly, but it’s coming in handy right now, as a means of tolerating the magnitude of where she has landed.

  She is going to be here for a long, long time. Way longer than she can grasp, yet. She needs to lay low, take stock, not get on anyone’s nerves.

  She dries off and changes into the tee shirt and sweats Em gave her. They don’t fit too badly. She wipes the steam off the mirror. There’s something different in the reflection staring back. It’s unsettling, subtle. She turns this way and that. She looks harder, is the only way she can describe it, even in her face. Hard, and strong.

  She pictures herself arriving at the house, Eva coming to greet her. She’ll see something’s different right away. What the hell is she going to say, now? That she got a new job? She’ll be canceling visits last-minute and missing holidays, the same as she always did, and they’ll assume the worst.

  The door opens and someone comes in. A serv, a guy. “Hey,” he says, a little embarrassed.

  “Hey,” she replies.

  He ducks into the bathroom area. She gathers up her towel and dirty clothes and steps out. Gabriel is a little way down the hall, in conversation with Em. He sees her. “How’re you feeling?” he asks.

  “O.K.”

  Em nudges him goodbye, enters her room and closes the door. Gabriel comes up to her. “She told me what she said. Everyone’s still pretty raw, Lucy. It’s only been a few days.”

  “A few days—?”

  “You’ve been out since Saturday night. It’s Tuesday. I kept you dosed,” he explains, noting her confusion. “You weren’t in any shape to ride out adjustment. Sorry about that, by the way,” he gestures.

  She realizes she’s holding her injured side, drops her hand. Three days lying there, for anyone to see. Theo Elander’s cohort, the one that grew up with people. “What happened, anyway?”

  “By the time I got to you, you weren’t very reasonable, is all. It was the boost. Too much, too fast. You went a little wacko.”r />
  “I don’t remember.”

  “It’s normal.”

  She hesitates. “If everyone’s so pissed—the Qadir were going to stick me on the sets, before. What will they do to me now?”

  “Nothing. Unless you refuse to do your duty and cock things up for the rest of us, you’re here to stay.”

  “Just like that?”

  “The Gate can’t let a sentry go to waste, even in good times. As things stand, we lost Sina, and we’ve got five out due to injuries. That means everyone on back-to-backs till the end of the season, yourself included.”

  “No wonder they hate me.”

  “Yeah. It also means you’re bunking here for now. We’ll set you up in one of the rooms in town when things get back to normal. After that you’ll be on rotation. Come on, Eric’s waiting.”

  A room in town: Thank you, thank you.

  She falls into step. “I’m sorry about Sina.”

  He stiffens a little, shakes his head like it’s not something to discuss. She feels like a fool for bringing it up. She didn’t even know Sina, she’s got no right. Sina came back for her, and Lucy felt moved by that, but after all, she was just doing her duty.

  She clutches the lump of her dirty clothes and wet towel tight to her chest, wondering how she’s supposed to fit into this place where she isn’t wanted and doesn’t belong. Then again, she’s never really belonged anywhere, she reminds herself, the voice in her head harsh, drumming at her. Julian said as much, all those years ago. The thought of him brings a sharp lurch of hurt. And Ernesto. They’d fall over laughing to see this, of all things, Lucy-goosie a sentry.