by Sarah Stone
“I—" Hayden began, but his throat felt too tight. “I won’t forget it.”
“Where’s Cabal?” Una asked before the air in the room became too heavy.
“He took some fire on his last run, so he’s sacked out somewhere upstairs. He was planning a mission in the city with several others, an attack on E-Bloc, but after what happened with the black site, my people are taking a pause to re-group, I think he is, too.”
Smart, Hayden thought. There would likely be raids in the area as Hirohito tried to sweep up anyone he didn't manage to kill or capture during his initial attack, though it had certainly seemed like Hayden was the target. Maybe it was just his ego, but Hirohito had appeared more focused on him and Una than on those actually standing in his way.
Perhaps they hadn’t been his initial target, but Hirohito had gotten a good enough look at them to identify them both and had made the attempt to bring them down.
If his work on the government attack hadn’t already been linked back to him by the Union, being made by Hirohito would absolutely put him at the top of Asia Prime's hit list.
Hayden sat in one of the handful of chairs in the room, watching Alejandro and Una leaning over a real map making plans. It was rare to see one made from actual paper. It was spread out on a table, Alejandro making marks on it then frowning and scratching them out.
The place seemed to be totally off the grid. If Hayden were to do anything with his rig while he was here, he would have to broadcast from his own hotspot. There would be no piggybacking off another signal, and he'd have to be rather careful to keep his hotspot hidden. Almost more trouble than it was worth.
“Cole,” Una said, looking up for the first time in a long while, to where he sat with the back of his skull leaning against the concrete behind him.
“Yeah?”
“There are beds on the first floor if you’re still feeling that hack.”
He knew a dismissal when he heard one, and he knew he could do with the rest, having only gotten halfway through the meal that Una had brought him earlier. And he’d never gotten that tea. If wasn’t able to recharge with food or meds, he may as well try to sleep it off.
“That doesn’t sound horrible,” he said. He admitted to himself, begrudgingly, that he had nothing to add to the work being done here. It seemed to be about coordinating movements and supplying food and aid to the most needful areas of the city and the surrounding towns.
From what he'd gathered in snippets from the conversation between Una and Alejandro it looked as if Asia Prime had radically stepped up its military presence on the island. There were changes that needed to be made in the network of sympathizers and their various safe houses, supply caches, and black sites. He probably could have figured out their system of logistics, given enough time to dust off his Union counter-insurgency training, but it would take a considerable amount of patience on their part, and they would lose valuable time explaining it.
“Stick to the ground floor,” Una said, "Upstairs probably isn't exactly a safe place for you just yet."
“I think I can manage to avoid climbing more stairs today,” he said wryly, and she gave him an exasperated look in response. There was horror still in both in their eyes, but he knew it wouldn’t last long. They had to let it run its course, not bottle it up, even if that was tough to do. If they didn’t let themselves feel it, they’d end up like Laine or Hirohito, perhaps more efficient in the long run, but decidedly less human for it.
He trudged up the stairs to the ground floor, nodding rather awkwardly at two Akiaten playing cards in the ramshackle kitchen, and headed into the next room to his right. He saw feet dangling off the edge of a bed too short to accommodate the legs attached, another, empty bed, which he made a beeline for, and then, at the furthest corner of the room, something half astonishing and half horrifying that stopped him dead in his tracks.
A woman with a bandana still tied tight around her face, but with it pulled back far enough that her mouth was able to latch onto the neck of the man sitting beside her. They sat on a mattress on the floor, the man’s head lolling back against the rough wood wall behind him. His face uncovered and his clothing unmistakably that of a civilian, completely free of the armor, tactical rigs, and hooded shirts and jackets that Hayden had begun to realize was something of a trademark of the fighters.
In the dim lighting, with the persistent blurriness of his tired eyes and the pounding of his headache, it took him a moment to figure out that the woman was not simply kissing the man or sucking a bruise into the skin of his throat.
She was, in fact, sucking his blood.
A few drops had broken free of the seal of her lips and trickled down, soaking into the collar of the man’s shirt.
Fuck this, Hayden thought, because what else was there to think when confronted with such a sight?
He took a series of halting, quiet steps back until he was standing in the main room again, the few occupants staring at the rattled look on his face.
Shock ripped through him, but compared with everything he’d seen in the past week, it felt almost distant, as though the sight of a woman drinking blood from a man, an Akiaten feeding on a human, was nothing to dwell on in comparison.
That simple reality made him feel unhinged, and in that moment, he questioned his sanity.
His mind drew up the image of the bootlegger skewered on Hirohito’s blade, or Glitch crying out behind him and then slipping into silence, and came to a sort of resolution with himself.
He was in the wilderness now, off the map and completely in the gravity-well of a world he knew nothing about. He had to accept what he saw, or be broken by it. He'd felt some of the same dual sense of revulsion and wonder when he'd seen Nibiru autopsy the Akiaten brought back by Laine, though there was something much more immediate and threatening about the woman sucking blood out the man's neck.
It was a sight that took absorbing, and it was that thought that drove him out onto the porch, he’d half forgotten where he was and thought the feel of fresh air in his lungs might sharpen his thoughts, but the air here remained wet and heavy, hot as coffee in his throat.
The two guards, one sitting atop the nearly rotten porch rail and the other leaning against it, guns still held, turned to look at him. They both wore bandanas, and he found himself wondering what their teeth looked like beneath them. He’d noticed nothing odd about Una aside from her eyes, but then, he hadn’t exactly been looking at her teeth. Perhaps there was a second set, hidden fangs that let them pass for human. Could they be what he was starting to think they were? Was this reality or had he finally gone the way of Lunatic 8 and fractured himself with a combo of hard hacks and equilibrium withdrawls?
“Is it safe to walk to the river?” he asked, trying not to let his voice showcase his current state.
The one on the left, yellow bandana, gave him a shrug. “Corporate and Manila Army patrols don't come out this far. All the activity’s staying confined to the city, at least so far. You and Una must have gotten them pretty turned around,” the guard answered, his voice friendly by the end, despite his unfamiliarity with Hayden.
The simple fact that Alejandro was willing to vouch for him now seemed to be enough, or perhaps the relative success of the hack had spread through the ranks and lifted their opinion of the slinger in the time since he and Una had arrived.
A few minutes ago, Hayden might have been glad enough to shake off the tiredness and the headache and see if the two were actually receptive to conversation; he no longer felt brave enough to do so, and, more than anything, wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Wanted to think over exactly who or what he had signed on to fight alongside.
He walked down the steps and started to walk straight ahead when a whistle from behind him caught his attention. “There’s a path to the left. You’ve got to squint to find it and it’s a little rocky, but better than sliding down the bank on your ass. If you see any movement that ain't birds or bugs, even far off, come straight back if you like
your chest free of bullet holes and your meat on your bones.”
The guard's hazing aside, the comment reminded him of the armor piled up in the house, he’d have to grab some soon, whatever else he did. Whatever else this came to.
She was drinking his blood.
He started down the rocky path. It was a steeper descent than he’d expected, even with the warning from the guards. He had never been much for the outdoors, even the carefully manicured parks maintained by the Union, much less hiking through raw natural terrain. He found himself wishing for sturdier shoes as he rolled his ankle painfully, slick sand and loose rocks not helping his footing in the slightest. Further down, the rocks acted as stairs of a sort, letting his descent become more gradual.
He eventually reached a good spot to sit down and gather himself, his thoughts spinning wildly through his head, and devoted himself to making sense of the scene he’d glimpsed in the bedroom.
The water looked more grey than brown as it rushed over the smooth stones. The weeks of his life cascaded over his awareness like the river itself, and though he wanted to focus on the Akiaten, he found himself drawn to the events of his time here on the island.
He lost track of time there at the river's edge, and when he heard steps on the path behind him he wasn't sure exactly how long he'd been gone. They felt purposeful, heavy, as though they meant to draw his attention.
He was not surprised to see Una standing behind him.
“Hey,” she greeted him softly, the unspoken questions hanging in the air between them until he threatened to suffocate.
“Hey, yourself,” he said back halfheartedly, tossing a pebble into the swirling water. “You didn’t think the fact that you guys drink blood was worth mentioning in your recruitment speech?”
She sat down beside him, hugging her knees to her chest and picking at her boot tip absently. “If I recall, it was Kapre who gave you the speech. He was pressed for time.”
“I wouldn’t have needed some long, drawn out line of scientific bullshit. Pretty sure you could squeeze that into a couple of sentences without it getting too complicated.”
She took her hair down from the disintegrating bun it had been in and ran her fingers through the tangled strands, before saying nonchalantly, “I suppose he thought he’d scare you off if he jumped right in. Better to let you figure it out on your own, or at least, gradually. To form your own conclusions.”
“Well,” he gestured at the mud and river, the slight tremor in his hand evident when he did so. “As you can see, forming my own conclusions freaked me the hell out.” His voice was rising as the full magnitude of his situation sank in. This changed everything.
He had thought he was beginning to understand the Akiaten, that he could gladly champion their cause and protect their people, but things had suddenly become much less clear. What if they didn’t want what he thought they wanted? What if he was just a pawn for some unknown cause? Suddenly he wasn't so sure his dream about Una's monstrous transformation was a wine-soaked dream after all.
Una’s face looked cool as always, her features smooth and calm, but after two days of staring at her expressions, and several days prior to that of simply thinking of them privately, imagining them in varying scenarios, he thought that he could recognize a touch of something like guilt or regret. He kept his voice even when he spoke again.
“Explain it,” he said, and then added, “Please. My brain isn’t going to good places on its own.”
“You already know that we are different,” Una said. “This is just another part of that. A few more of the details you were lacking, and maybe Kapre left them out on purpose. I guess I kind of enjoyed the comfort of you not knowing for a little while, but here we are. The Akiaten. In Tagalog the word means "climbers", considering how we move, how we fight, it seemed to fit nicely. That is the name we have chosen, the name both our allies and our enemies call us by. But we climbers are not a new phenomenon, and in earlier years, in stories and legends, we were the Aswang.”
“Aswang,” he echoed, the word new to his ears. He couldn’t stop thinking about the bit of blood he’d glimpsed under Una’s nail or her grisly appearance in his dream.
“Shapeshifters,” she continued. “Of a sort, or at least that's the closest word in your language I think. We look human enough, though have certain abilities, many of which you have seen, but even we must replenish ourselves after such intensity, we must take in power, lifeforce,” She looked at Hayden then, instead of at the rushing water, his reflection upside down in the glassy pools of her eyes. “And what is more powerful than blood?”
He scrubbed a hand through his hair roughly, fingers catching in knots that had formed during all the running he’d done that afternoon, and he couldn't help but move his fingertips over his dual jacks.
Technically speaking, he, too, could be considered something not exactly human, his augmentations making him a cyborg in the strictest of terms, and for every feat of daring and skill in the datascape, he also had to find ways to, as she put it, replenish himself.
“So, he, ah, that man in the room, he wanted to be there, right? You guys don’t just go around taking advantage of…”
“That’s part of why regular people are so important to our movement. No insurgency or resistance can survive or achieve victory without the support of everyday people, ours is no exception, even if some of our needs are extraordinary. Sure, they can keep us informed of the troopers’ movements and provide us with shelter, but they can also provide us sustenance, and without it, most of our fighters will grow weak. If they go too long without feeding, they start growing, what is the word?-feral, and eventually, they will take what they need regardless of consent.
There are those, far fewer now than in ages past, who take from the unwilling. That is the old way. They have no place in our movement and are just as much enemies as the corporate conquistadors. Our relationship with the people is a complicated one, but in the end, we all want to do whatever we need to, whatever we must, to defend our home and the people who live here.”
“If it comes from the pulse,” Hayden asked, struggling to make sense of it, his lifetime of hard science and binary systems proving difficult to shed in the face of such strange and apparent truths, “Then why isn’t everyone here Akiaten? Why are only some of you Aswang and not the entire population of the Philippines?”
“We don’t know,” she replied, her face lightening a bit when she realized he hadn’t yet run for the hills, seemingly pleased that he was at least trying to understand. “Kapre pretends to know, but personally, I think he makes up half the stuff he spews out. He has a talent for it though, so at least it sounds good.”
Silence persisted for a few long moments.
“I was planning on telling you if no one else did. It’s just,” she half smiled. “We haven’t exactly had a moment to slow down before now.”
They hadn’t. He could agree to that easily enough, and the thought of last night's escapade gave him cause to return her half-smile. And it made a sick sort of sense. If the energy had changed them in such a way, given them speed and strength and innumerable advantages, there had to be some drawbacks.
He nearly laughed at himself.
Drawback didn’t seem to encompass the enormity of what he’d seen. But he trusted Una. Fuck knew why, but he did. She’d had ample opportunity to slit his throat and bleed him out if that was what she was after. But she’d gone out of her way several times now to keep him from harm, and it was plain from the manner in which the others treated him that while they might not have warmed to him yet, they considered him valuable as a slinger.
“I believe you,” he said. “It’s just, jungle island vampires,” he waved his hand. “It’s kind of a lot.”
He looked at her, afternoon sunlight making her skin look brighter, warm. He wanted to kiss her, but saw no such want in her eyes and thought better of it. She’d as yet to show any indication that she wanted anything more, and until she did, he wasn’t willing
to engage her. This wasn’t the time to get tangled up in feelings, especially knowing what he knew, but he would have welcomed a release of the tension that had been building between them each time they shared a look. She seemed to have felt it too and turned away to angle her head back up the path he’d traveled down.
“If you’re too keyed up to sleep just yet, Cabal has awakened. He asked to speak with you when you’re able.”
“You mentioned him earlier?"
A quick nod. “The Akiaten leader,” she paused. “Or at least the leader of our fighters. Kapre pretty much does whatever he wants.”
There was an edge of nervousness to the introduction, but he followed her back to the safe house all the same.
The brief seclusion of the river hadn’t given him the peace he’d sought, even if Una had given him some degree of knowledge and he was uneasy as he crested the steps to the interior of the house again.
The vibe of the people there had changed, subtly, but noticeably, and he was decidedly on edge once inside. It was as if his instincts understood that there was an apex predator lurking inside, and yet he was walking straight into its lair.
The Akiaten leader was waiting for him in the central room, removing his hood as Hayden entered to reveal a face covered by an armored ceramic facemask, decorated in the same fashion as the bandanas worn by the other fighters.
Cabal wore dark mesh armor laced with red that appeared every bit as stout as what Laine often wore underneath the heavy plate of her combat outfit. Hayden was positive that the armor had been taken from a fallen enemy, and judging by the quality and design of it he began to suspect that Asia Prime had sent operators to Manila before, and it was unlikely they'd returned to tell the tale.
Cabal was taller than most of the other Akiaten that Hayden had seen, but still somewhat narrow through the shoulders in a way that reminded Hayden of a panther or mountain lion.
“I heard you got a little spooked by witnessing a feed,” the man greeted. The voice coming from the fully armored figure was disconcerting—the noise coming from his helmeted face with no visible sign of his lips moving, made Hayden feel as though he were watching a shadow speak.