by Jinn, Bo
“I can’t do it,” she broke with a barely audible murmur ,“I can’t…” and then immediately, she went quiet again.
She lowered her head and started to laugh a low, unsteady, possessed laugh that half-sounded like sobbing. When her head rose again, the bright centres of her inflamed eyes whirled in the shallow film of suppressed tears. She clenched her teeth and her mien became suddenly indignant.
He set the canister back on the table and the silence of his glower made it clear that he would not ask her the same question again. Why had she come? If there were even a reason, she appeared to have presently lost all sense of it. She was on the edge. He could sense it. The leap was all there was left.
“We’re martials,” she whispered. “We kill. We die. We disappear. That’s all there is.”
“That is all you know.”
“That’s all we are.”
“And as long as you believe that, you will remain their slave.”
“We’re all born slaves.”
“I am through being the pawn of the war corporations.”
“You don’t know.”
“Do not tell me what I know!”
His fist rattled the table and sent the glass toppling with a clink and a smash. The blood built up within him. After a long silence, his voice settled again: “Fear loves power,” he said. “The PMCs profit off fear. Fear is what drives nations to war. Fear is what created the martial world.”
He paused.
“Martials are the agents of fear,” he added, darkly. “As long as the Commission keep us believing that we are all flawed machines, the real machine will not stop growing. The real machine is the war economy. Unless the parts defect, there will be no stopping it.”
“You can’t stop it…” Celyn shook her head resignedly. “No one can stop it.”
There was silence again.
“No,” he said, sullenly, “…perhaps not.”
He could feel her within his grasp, and would not allow her to slip through his fingers. Not now. He measured his words carefully. “The martial world grows every day, consuming everything in a fire. Soon, that fire will be all that there is. There will be nowhere to run from it.”
“It already has us.”
“True,” he nodded. “I thought that I could escape and I was wrong.”
“Then why?” she whispered. “Why are you doing this?”
He gazed at her mutely.
“You would not be here if you did not already know the answer.”
Their eyes remained locked; the silence disturbed only by the ripple of the blue flame swaying in the glass vessel. He saw the crazed passion allay in her.
“The girl…”
She looked away.
“I cannot let it take her too,” he said. “I will not.”
Silence fell again. He waited for her to speak, but by the frown lines forming above her eyes he could see that she was slipping away from him. It was too much. Too soon.
Celyn quietly stood up.
“Where are you going?”
She didn’t answer.
“Do you even know?” he asked.
She took the canister off the table, tucked it back in her coat and turned away. Just as she turned, he shot to his feet and seized her by the arm, causing her to stop and turn back with a scowl.
“Do not do this…”
“Get – off – me,” she snarled and shrugged off his grip.
Seeing her walk for the door, the fire beat up in him again. He could not let her go. He would not.
He lunged toward her and made to grab her again, and as soon as his hand made contact, he saw her body turn sharply and that was the last image he glimpsed before the blow struck. What followed during the succeeding second happened in an unconscious flash of white, and when he came to a split-second later, blood was issuing from an opening on his temple and streaming down the side of his face, and onto the hand … clutched around the blade.
He had Celyn pinned to the wall. The tip of the blade’s edge was pressed over her neck, his breaths rabid and juddering. His face was inches from hers, so that his own feral eyes scowled back through the reflections in hers. The instant before the blade would have torn through the jugular, a thought that flashed through his mind that percolated into him like a chill: He would have sooner killed her than let her go.
He clenched his jaw, stilling the sudden rise in fury. The blade shook in his lowering fist, dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor. He stood before her, never breaking his eyes from hers. Then the wave of pain settled. He looked away, disconcerted, as though waking from a trance, palmed the point of the throbbing over his temple and regarded the blood on his hand, then looked up at her again, wanting to say something, nothing left to say. He clenched a blooded fist and turned away.
The instant he turned, he felt a hand latch around the back of his neck and pull. There was another flash of white and next thing he knew, her mouth was pressed against his and the rest of her body followed.
Their teeth ground under the force of new passion, and the visceral mind took hold once again. He flowed with her rhythm, equalled her force, brought his arm around her, one hand clawed the flesh on the small of her taut back and the other dug into the roots of her hair. He bent her to his will. The blood smeared his face, neck and chest, wherever her hands strayed, and he tasted the blood on his mouth and hers, and tussled with her until the clothes pried off.
They fell together – him upon her – under the firelight, his groin thrust into hers, his body hard for her. When he felt her nails dig into the lines of his back, the sting of it roused him back to consciousness. He stopped, inclined and stared at the shining eyes, wide with ravenousness, through the dark of his own heaving shadow. The flame danced over them.
A last drop of blood fell from his brow onto hers, blending with his breaking sweat. And when he sobered and noticed that she had stopped too, he saw that he had her exactly where he did not want her – in his power. Her breasts heaved furiously and he waited for her breath to yield before he yielded with her. Her hands glided softly over the lines of brawn from the base of the abdomen up to his chest, around the bulge of muscle over his neck. She drew him in and he lowered and kissed the blood away.
C. 5: Day 600
The azure mantle was drawn from the firmament. From the saddle of two great mountains, a sparkle of amber began with the looming sun, and the sparkle ripened to flame, diffusing in rising hues from east to west, from saffron to cerulean. Saul sat on the edge of the bed and watched the early light swell from twilight to dawn until the darkness was cast out of the sky.
There was a gentle shift in the bedding.
He looked over his shoulder just as Celyn turned onto her side with a slumbering groan. The white sheet slipped off the bare, scarred back down to the deep curve of her hip.
Were it not for the rise and fall of the sun, time would have lapsed from existence along with the rest of reality, his soul unchained from earth and flesh, soaring ever higher into new and untold bliss. As he gave himself to her -- and she to him --with each rise, fall, thrust and pull, he could feel himself immersing himself ever deeper from the body to the isolated essence of her, where he found that sensuality ascended to something far removed from what he had previously thought of as mere “intercourse.”
Intercourse…
Such a clean, mechanical word: A Commission word.
The red sun breached the line of earth and sky and the morning light beamed in warmly through the glazing. When he felt the bedding shift again, he gently turned, lowered and brought his arm over her. His hand glided up the strong core to the soft breasts and he put his lips lightly against the arch of her neck. A sleeping smile came over her, and the texture of the skin against his lips changed when his kisses strayed to the edge of a scar.
He lifted his head and regarded her back, ran his fingers down the thick lines of scar tissue. Her skin twitched.
“What are you doing?” she moaned wearily.
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The sides of the scars were dotted with puncture marks. The wounds had been stitched. It was an old form of suturing, and badly done at that.
“These do not look like battle wounds,” he said
“No…” she said.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They’ve been there as long as I can remember… and longer.”
His finger stopped on the base of her back. He lowered again, bringing his lips to her shoulder, then settling his head gently against hers.
“It is different than the first time,” he said. “Do you feel it?”
“Yes,” she smiled.
“Was it the same … with Malachi?”
Her smile softened with a sudden forsakenness.
“No,” she said, turning away. “Eli was … complicated.”
“I did not mean to…”
“It’s alright.”
She turned over on her back and drew him gently into a kiss, ran her fingers down the dents of muscle to his loins and regarded him.
“This has been going on for a while, now,” she said. “The Commission will find out sooner or later.”
“It does not matter,” he said, shaking his head. “The war is over for us. Let them judge us defected. It makes no difference.”
“We’re still part of the system. That’ll never change.”
“We do not need them or their blood money.”
“We’re dregs,” she stated, categorically. “Money runs out. Signets fade. We’ll lose everything, including our castes. You already know where that road ends.”
“Things are different this time.”
“…What about Naomi?”
At this, he went silent…
They were interrupted by a high-pitched hum.
He looked over his shoulder. The cell was ringing on the bedside.
He reached over and sat up, opened his inbox. It was a reminder about the court-ordered appointment. The meeting was in less than two hours in Milidome East Wing. He re-read the address and put the cell down.
“I need another favour,” he said.
Celyn rolled over with a tired sigh.
“What is it?” she asked
“I have to be in Durkheim in less than two hours.”
She rubbed her eyes and squinted through daylight. “How come?”
“It … is a long story.”
After the brief and uneasy altercation about Malachi, he thought it best not to bring up the subject of Nova Crimea. “I have to go.”
“I’ll take care of her,” she said.
He rose from the bed and got dressed. She was asleep again by the time he left the room.
Naomi’s head was bright in the light of the morning as he approached, quietly, and leaned over her, drew the golden hair back over her eyes. She turned over, sniffled, her eyes parted ever so slightly and she murmured, drearily: “Saul…”
“I have to go, little one,” he whispered.
“Where?”
“I will come back. I promise.”
“Celyn…”
“She is here.”
The little head nodded in a daze and she fell asleep again. He drew the cover back, stood and left, keeping his eyes fixed on her until the front door shut behind him.
When he emerged back onto the streets of Sodom, he was overwhelmed by estrangement from the mechanical flow of the metropolis. A whole era had come and gone since he had last walked Sodom’s streets. The capsule stopped at Haven Main and the flyovers were teeming with martials making their morning rush for the latest contract. New day, new wars: fresh lives for the harvest.
The maglev filled and the chronometer over the platform showed 0833 as the maglev pulled out of Haven Main, northbound to Milidome station: Durkheim. He pressed up against the glazing, looking over the skyline, along the bloodstream of maglev rails and highways, down to the dark streets of the lower city.
Though he had been forced back into the flow of the war economy, he felt light-years away from their world, and the anxiety of it gnawed at him all the way through the voyage, and the 30 minutes he’d spent waiting in the lobby on floor 235 of Milidome, West Wing. When the white-suited receiver at the desk admitted him and lobby doors closed, everything outside was closed off.
The lobby room was windowless, white-walled, and red-carpeted and a sallow light shone from the low ceiling. All the other seats in the lobby were empty and the holoscreen in the middle of the room showed a recurring infomercial from the Commission Neural Section about the wonderful psychosomatic advantages of neural reprogramming; the latest in the Commission’s bid to perfect the martial race. His will to perjure himself through the next hour was rendered that much stronger for it.
The volume of the infomercial declined and an AI voice sounded through the lobby: “Patient number1,” the AI voice called. “…Martial Vartanian.”
Saul looked up.
“Please proceed.”
The doors opposite opened.
He lingered a while before he stood up and walked over the final threshold. The ominous grey figure stood at the back of the white-walled office across from the heavy desk, arms crossed at the lower back.
“Thank you, Miss Robinson…”
Pope turned to face him as soon as the doors closed. Behind him was a wall of clear blue sky, and the light’s glare was filtered through the photochromic glazing so that the morning sun was a smooth red dish over the crescent horizon.
“Good morning, Saul,” greeted the augur voice in a heavy bass.
He let thoughts of battle deaden him till his blood cooled, then held on to that feeling and reciprocated the cold, blue stare.
“Good morning,” he said
A quiet smile appeared on the neuralist’s face.
“Please, have a seat.”
Saul stepped toward the black desk. The automated chair pulled back by itself and he sat.
“So, how are we these days?” asked Pope, taking his seat across from him.
“Well,” he answered, surely.
“Good to hear.”
Pope nodded slowly, then reached under his desk and took out a bottle and two glasses. The clear liquid was poured and the neuralist kept his eyes on him through the opaque lenses as the glass filled.
“It is early, but might I tempt you?” asked the neuralist as the last drop trickled out.
Saul waited a moment before he reached out for the glass. The ambrosia was warm, smooth and sweet and burst with warm sweetness in the gut, then Pope raised his own glass.
“Incident?” said the neuralist as his lowering glass clinked against the table.
The hollow eyes gazed at the blackening blemish over his left temple.
“Yes,” he answered. “…Intercourse.”
Pope nodded slowly again and breathed in through his nose. He could smell the scent of jasmine on himself. The dissecting eyes veered down to his hand, around the glass.
“I see you have cut down on tobacco,” Pope noted.
“I have.”
“We adjusted your last prescription to replace the neurochemical pleasures you used to derive from smoking,” he explained.
“Thank you, for your help.”
“The pleasure is always mine, Saul.”
There was a stalemate silence as Pope took another sip of his drink.
He sensed a darker purpose looming somewhere behind the hollow eyes. He’d assumed that he had been summoned for evaluation, but the neuralist just sat there staring at him.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, boldly.
The question appeared to intrigue Pope. His head declined and his lip curled. There was a glint of anatomy in the cobalt eyes, and the harrowing smirk flashed across the ashen visage.
“There is a matter of some importance I would like to discuss,” said the neuralist. “Something brought to my attention not long ago.” Pope paused and was as still as stone with his hands flat on the table op. “I understand you have not left your home in
quite some time – before today, that is.”
That meant he was being surveyed. He made a mental note of it.
“Yes,” he answered. “I have not had much reason to leave.”
“Assignments?” asked Pope.
“The last one paid well enough,” he replied hastily. “I would like to rest for a while. I am in no hurry to return to fight again. A man can only fight so long before his luck runs out.”
“It is a free world,” Pope replied with a nod. “War is a free market.”
Pope drank again and Saul did not, and the silence continued awhile before the neuralist put his glass down and leaned back in his seat, fingers laced under his chin.
“Martial Knight,” he pronounced, abruptly.
Saul took up his drink again, thoroughly suppressing the jolt that suddenly rose in him at the mention of Celyn’s name. He feigned apathy as he drank.
“I am sure you recall the name.”
“Yes,” said Saul. “We intercourse on occasion.”
“Every tenth day without fail.”
“… I enjoy her,” he replied.
“She is a remarkable beauty, particularly for a martial.” The neuralist’s eyes flashed when he inclined his head. “But, then, therein lay the problem.”
Saul sensed the “darker purpose” breaching the surface.
Pope took up the bottle, refilled both glasses and leaned back again. “Intercourse between martials,” he continued. “It tends to create complications, which is why we generally encourage copulation with walkers. Mutuality tends to be a more fertile seedbed for emotional connection – very dangerous, especially given the woman in question.”
Pope drank and was silent.
“What are you talking about?” Saul asked.
The neuralist exhaled deeply. “Martial Knight,” he said, putting down his glass with a clink, eyes raised to the ceiling. “She is…”
The silence was agonising.
“She is what?” asked Saul.
The insidious smirk reappeared.
“She is … unstable.”
“I don’t like it.”