by Jinn, Bo
Naomi lifted her head up from the table. Her lips curled into a pout.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” said Celyn. “If you keep starting over, you’ll never stop.”
“But it doesn’t look right.”
“You won’t know until it’s done. Now, stop moving already. This is hard enough as it is.”
The tip of the pastel scraped against the thin paper as she lightly dabbed the fine powder onto the girl’s rose-crested cheeks. Her eyes moved rapidly up, taking snapshots of the girl whenever she found herself in the right position. The feel of slowly bringing something to life was a queer and alien joy she never thought she could experience again.
Naomi sighed, frustrated, and scrutinized her work with a pout.
“How’s yours coming?”
“Almost finished…”
She made three more strokes of yellow and brown down the locks of hair and added four more dots of turquoise to the bowed eyes, then sat back and smiled at her work. “There,” she said, beckoning the girl toward her. “Come. Tell me what you think.”
The girl dropped her pastilles down at once and came beside her.
The little weight pressed against her leg as Naomi gazed down at the pastel drawing and beheld the image of herself: bowed over, crayon in hand, eyes vivid and genial, the light hairs of her bright, gold fringe drooping over her drawing hand.
“Wow… it looks just like me.”
The girl looked up at her, eyes large and wondrous.
“Then, it’s perfect,” she smiled.
She took the fixative and sprayed it over the piece from a distance.
“For you,” she said, presenting the girl with her own portrait.
The little face beamed. A second later, however, the girl’s eyes strayed up over the top of the page, focusing directly on her chest. The wide smile disappeared and the little expression became suddenly sullen.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ah, nothing,” Naomi hesitated. “It’s just…”
“What?”
“…My locket.”
She looked down at the gold pendant hanging from her neck.
“Oh…” She picked the pendant up and held it up in her lone hand. “You can have it back.”
“No!” Naomi exclaimed suddenly. “I-I want you to keep it. I do. I really do.”
The girl hung her head and started to shuffle one foot over the other. “It’s just…”
“What is it?”
“… The picture,” she garbled.
“Picture?”
“Yeah.”
“What picture?”
“Mom and Dad…”
She stared back down at the pendant in the palm of her hand. When she turned it over, she noticed the round seam in the back, pressed it, and the locket clicked open.
“I forgot to take it out before I gave it to Saul,” said Naomi.
“These are your… parents,” she said in an inaudible murmur.
She stared at the two unknown figures in the picture and a ripple of sorrow went through her. She ran her thumb over the dirty glazing and pressed. The small sheet of glass slid out, along with the picture. “Here…”
Naomi took the picture from her hand and quickly tucked it away in the pocket of her dungarees.
“So, you’re supposed to keep a picture of someone special inside. Is that how it works?”
The large, innocent eyes looked up with a shimmer.
Celyn gave a slow, deliberate nod and cleared the loose papers from the table. Something gleamed in the light from beneath. It was the edge of a blade. She took the blade by the grip and folded over the edges of the girl’s portrait, then proceeded to carefully run the blade edge through the bends of the fold, cropping out the excess edges.
Naomi observed her, silent and perplexed.
Once the picture was carefully trimmed, she put the blade back down and took one last look at the image, then at the girl herself. She folded the picture five ways and closed it inside the locket.
“There,” she said, finally, and let the locket drop over her chest.
“That means that I’m special, right?” Naomi grinned happily.
“How about that?” she smiled.
She stood up and turned on the holoscreen.
“Breakfast?”
“Is it gon’a be like Saul’s breakfast?”
“No.”
“OK.”
She chuckled.
The low bawls of singing whales basking in the blue ocean light filled the living area and Naomi sat up and was instantly immersed in the deep blue sea with the migrating pod. The glint of the blade on the table caught her attention from the corner of her eye.
Celyn started the cooker and the big induction cooktop smoked as she opened the fridge and took out the only raw ingredients nestled among the dried and processed food packages: four eggs, a pint of milk and a bell pepper.
The sunlight gleamed over the bright red bell pepper and the knife cracked through the crust and rose and fell with slow thuds against the chopping board. The sunlight was warm against her face, and the back of her hands around the hilt of the knife were rough and scored and the scar tissue shone. She drew a deep breath into her belly and the residual bliss of the previous night simmered in the base of her abdomen on the exhale. In the middle of her delighted musing, she looked up. She stopped in horror.
“Naomi…”
The blade she had left on the table had found itself in the girl’s hands.
“Naomi, don’t touch that-”
Startled by her voice, Naomi flinched. The blade fell on the floor, and a stream of bright red started to pour from her hand.
She dropped the knife with a gasp, grabbed a piece of cloth and immediately rushed over.
Naomi held her own hand just above the wound. Her breaths were short and rapid with shock and she started to whimper.
“I’m – I’m s-s-sorry.”
The wound was deep and the blood was gushing out. The under-flesh was exposed and pink and tender.
“I- it – it – l-looks b-bad.”
“It’s alright sweetie, just calm down. It looks worse than it is.”
She kept her voice calm as she bound the cloth around the deep cut. The blood soaked through the cloth in red blotches. She looked up and when saw the tears spilling down the little red cheeks, she was shot through with dread.
She froze. Her eyes widened.
“Don’t cry,” she whispered.
The girl fought back the whimpers to no avail.
The little face reddened and warped. The tears streamed from the large, enflamed eyes.
“Stop crying,” her voice broke.
A wave of heat swept over her and she recoiled, staring back at the girl.
“Stop crying,” she repeated.
But the weeping and moaning rose to shrieks, shrieks of a long forgotten past.
“Stop,” she repeated between unsteady breaths. “… Stop.”
She picked the bloody blade up off the floor. Her hands started to shake.
“The crying … The crying…”
A scowl furrowed into her brow.
“Saul.”
Roused from his trance, Saul looked up. Pope’s eyes were broad and dark with premonition and he lifted the glass of ambrosia to his lips.
“Saul … what do you know about Martial Knight?”
There was a long pause.
“Not much,” he answered. “Is there something I am meant to know?”
The hollow eyes veered deviously up and surfaced through the glare of the round lenses.
“Are you aware,” Poe asked, “that she had attempted to cohabit with another martial?”
“Yes,” he replied. “His name was Elijah Malachi. He died in Nova Crimea.”
He elucidated the facts as though there was no disputing them.
“The rule of confidentiality should preclude me from telling you what I am about to tell you,” said the neuralist.
; “What happened?”
Pope serenely leaned further back into his seat and delayed his response.
“She tried to kill him.”
There was long, uninterrupted silence.
“What?”
“…Martial Malachi,” Pope clarified, “her former lover, since deceased. She took a knife to him – cut right across his face.”
His immediate thought was that Pope was lying. Then, flashes of Malachi came back to him, and he thought of Celyn’s reticence, her silence about their past…
“You did not know?” asked Pope, stifling his racing thoughts.
He looked up, tried desperately to spy out the shadows of a lie in the cold, blue eyes. There was no way this could be true.
“Why would Malachi remain allied with someone who tried to kill him?” he asked in response.
“Conjectures…” Pope hummed. “I imagine Martial Malachi’s business interests were of more concern to him, especially bearing in mind the neurals would have removed any traces of residual animosity.”
He felt as though he were falling from the heights of all the hopes he had conjured.
“Yes,” Pope whirred. “You might say Martial Knight is a … victim of her former life.” The neutralist delicately removed the pince-nez from his eyes and slipped them into his coat, once more lacing his fingers together beneath his chin.
“Suffice to say, not everyone who comes to our world does so for the reasons we would prefer. Sometimes misfortunes drive us to paths not entirely of our own choosing. Martial Knight is one such person. Unpredictable … Volatile. She is not safe, Saul. I feel you should know that.”
He recalled the feel of thick scars on his fingertips.
What did they do to you?
Memories flashed through his mind uncontrollably until his thoughts stopped on one shocking realisation. His heart stopped.
Naomi…
Pope put down the rest of his drink and lowered his glass.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose there is little need to pursue this formality any further unless, of course, there is something else you would like to discuss.”
“No,” Saul answered hastily.
“Very well,” Pope nodded. “I will forward the report of your attendance to the martial court registry …. Miss Robinson, please take note.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.” Saul rose from his seat at once.
The office doors opened.
“Until next time, Martial Vartanian…” Pope bore a portentous simper. “Good day.”
Saul controlled his pace until he left the office and was back in the lobby. As soon as the doors shut behind him his saunter became a panicked stride and he marched straight out, his heart drumming in his chest. He raced down the paths of East Wing, shoving his way through the crowds, bearing signets. He entered the capsule, the bubble doors shut and the gradual descent was torturous. The whole metropolis slowed with his haste. Something had happened – something bad. He knew it.
The chronometer showed four 1s as he boarded the maglev on Platform 7. Flashbacks of everything Celyn had said and done kept coming back to him throughout the maglev trip and the anger bubbled up inside him. Dark and bloody thoughts ripened in his imagination right until the maglev stopped at Haven Main.
He ran, pushing through the crowded footpaths of the sky city to the next capsule terminal and when the capsule stopped in the second stratum of East Sector at the intersection, he entered the first autocab he could find.
“Fourth Street, Orion Avenue.”
The autocab stopped outside The Grove five minutes later.
He raced up the stairwell bounding two steps at a time.
Please be alright, he hoped frantically.
He mounted the last stair and headed straight for the front door and stopped, suddenly, about three meters away, gasping for air.
The door was open. Strange noises were coming from inside.
His sights veered down, at the trail fading over the brink of the doorway, ending right at his feet.
They were footsteps: Blood-red footsteps.
He waited to catch his breath, then, quietly, approached the threshold.
The door closed soundlessly behind.
“Naomi.”
His call echoed through the hall. He cautiously lurked forward, looking from side to side. The holoscreen was still on. The volume was low. That was the only sound in the house besides a steady ringing of the stove alarm. The hot plate over the stove was smoking white hot. A kitchen knife and half a sliced bell pepper lay on the kitchen counter. The faint line of footsteps diminished right at his feet.
He followed the trail to the living area and his pulse raced again when he saw the bloodstains on the table and the blooded blade on the carpet. He picked up the blade. A trail of blood drops led across the floor of the living area to the adjacent corridor, and where the thick blood blotches passed the edge of the carpet and smeared onto the parquetry.
He turned the corner of the corridor and charged forward along the blood-smeared trail.
The door to his room burst open.
“Naomi!”
Naomi was lying up against the bedside. Her hand was bound with a bloody cloth, her clothes stained red, her head wilted, her eyes closed and her face very pale. He rushed over to her and lifted her head gently by the chin, brushing the hair away. He could see her small chest slowly rise and fall.
She was breathing. She sniffled and her eyelids twitched apart and closed again.
“Dad...” Her voice was semi-conscious.
He could feel the tears still wet on her cheeks. Her skin was pale from blood loss.
He remained staring at her, trying to unravel what had happened in the drooping, perplexed eyes. The furrows in his frown deepened.
“Where is she?”
The little mouth stirred but no answer came.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
Naomi’s eyes shut and the little head hung. She was gone.
C. 5: Day 613
“The number you are trying to reach is unavailable…”
Three high-pitched beeps repeated over the receiver. He pressed the “end call” button, tucked the cell away and lit the cigarette in his lips.
After Naomi had retold the same brief and bizarre testimony in almost precisely the same way upwards of half a dozen times, he was no nearer to understanding why Celyn had disappeared the way she did. He had made several attempts to contact her over the intervening days. On the first day, the cell would ring out. On the second and every other day following, the same automated voice message would respond without fail.
He looked up at his reflection in the overhead mirror. The dark circles around the orbitals and the thin red lines in the whites of his eyes were re-emerging. The light of a new dawn shone in through the windshield over the cracked dash as they approached the limits of the inner-metropolis on Highway Route 7, South Sodom. The low, striving trundle of the old hydro-engine flowed with his brood and the cockpit refrigerated with the early morning chill.
As he looked out through the dew-drizzled passenger window, the loud rumble of a passing big-rig grew and declined, a “Bronson Wartech” ad blazoned along the vast starboard. When the truck passed, a long stretch of vales, woodland and high ridges came into view, ending in the remote and awaking mountains beyond. A gruff voice from the driver seat called his attention:
“Oi… lad.”
He turned.
“Git thee waukin,” said old Duke, “we’re comin’ up to the checkpoint.”
The lanes on the broad motorway branched out into the mouths of separate tunnels. The next moment, the sky and the land disappeared behind a wall of black and the light of the sun became feeble, sallow twinkles, flashing intermittently through the windshield. The tunnel traffic steadied and became a single long line, approaching the checkpoints. Further up, curtains of intense light beamed down over the lines of vehicles.
&n
bsp; “Here we go,” sighed Duke.
Three bright flashes of green signaled that they were passing through the scanning section. An uneasy wait followed.
Half a minute later:
“Attention: Please proceed to security deviation lane for inspection.”
The automated pronouncement came through an intercom speaker on the dash.
“Nae fence ‘gainst ill fortune,” said Duke, with a disgruntled growl.
The tunnel split off to the right where an arrowed sign was alight with the bold words “SECURITY DEVIATION” and the insignia of Sodom Guard. They broke off from the main line of traffic, and down the narrow, empty, sloping tunnel.
When they came to the end, the tunnel opened into a vast space. The whole width was barred off by an endless line of security gates: lights swapping from red to green, and rows of deviated vehicles on either side were lined up for searching; SGs in full gear, barring off checkpoints. Two lights winked thrice just ahead, guiding them to a vacant checkpoint gate. The truck slowed and Duke turned the wheel sharply to the right, then to the left and the truck straightened out. The wasted brakes let off a high-pitched squeal as they came to a gradual halt, then a spurt of decompression and the engine shook until a dead stop and a hiss like a burst valve.
Duke took a deep breath. His heavy pale hands slipped off the wheel and tugged on the parking brake. The window on the driver’s side lowered, and the sounds of a thousand idling engines, sirens signaling clearance, the roll of the big-rigs passing through the gates and hydraulics pumping motion into the un/loaders spilled into the cockpit.
A red light shone over the closed gate ahead and torchlights blinked from below as two heavily armed figures in blue approached from either side of the truck.
“Top a th’ mornin’,” called Duke.
“Exit the vehicle,” was the sharp response from outside.
The old, disgruntled ex-patriot looked away; his heavy, tattooed arm swung over to unbuckle the seatbelt. “Keep the heid, lad,” he whispered as the buckle came loose.
Two strong jolts forced both doors open, and both men descended. He stamped the cigarette out on the oil-stained floor, leaving a trail of smoke in his path. Humidity choked the air and there was clamour all about as the vehicles lined up, thorough searches ongoing. The rumble of the traffic in the overhead and underfoot roads added to the chorale.