“Cancer,” he said. “Gastric.”
“That’s curable,” I stated, confused as to why he hadn’t simply applied for the cure from the government like everyone else.
“My father was not a rich man and couldn’t afford it. He hadn’t told me about the diagnosis. I found out after Spartan brought the cure to our home, on base, and forcibly rammed it down my father’s throat.” Jobe attempted a weak laugh.
“I thought Spartan was poisoning him. I jumped on his back like a cat to claw him off.” There was a humorous glint to Jobe’s almost wet eyes.
“I would have paid to see that. Why didn’t the cure save him?”
“By the time he ingested the cure it was too late. That’s why my father fought it. He wanted to give it to a friend’s daughter; he knew his time had run out. All his major organs had eroded and were in early stages of failure.
“I agreed to my father’s wishes but made it a condition that Spartan make the cure available to me for Thalia. I’d grown up moving from base to base with my father after my mother died and Thalia had been a short term friend at one of them. I wanted help for her,” he shrugged. “Spartan agreed.”
“I hadn’t realised the cure was so unattainable,” I said, shocked at our corrupt government. I really had been insulated inside our fortress growing up. Yes, machinery and electricity malfunctioned but I never felt poverty after leaving Heart’s Hope. I also never saw sickness or deterioration apart from mortal wounds. Certainly no slow suffering of a loved one. It sickened me to think of any of the people I knew dying that way.
“Well what did you bring me?” I asked.
“Colin Ardman,” Jobe said, straight back to business – and glad for it, I thought. “He worked under the guise of an accountant for the Sector Governor – R.G. Milligan. But he was basically a bookie and a greasy one at that. He took bets for the fight nights and extracurricular events. His ‘surface’ businesses were real estate and financial management. Maybe the man who killed him got a bad deal on a fight?” Jobe suggested.
“I doubt it.”
“The man who killed Ardman was one of you?” Jobe asked gently.
“And what do you know about that, Jobe?” I thought we’d already discussed what he knew.
“Nothing officially,” he replied offhandedly, “but I’m not without a brain, General.”
“Good for you. And don’t call me that.”
“Only a man with Spartan’s build and strength could have inflicted the wounds I noted when uploading those files for you,” he admitted.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Ardman was killed by one of ours and I suspect the assaulted female is either an accessory or kidnapped by the perpetrator.”
“Did Spartan send someone to delete the hospital’s files?” I asked.
“Not that I know of, Why?”
“No reason,” I lied, making sure my tone conveyed finality. He’d take that straight back to Spartan. That Gen 2 embroiled himself in his machinations and a little spanner, a doubt, that if he hadn't (he’d enlisted me for that), who had? It would keep him not only invested due to his micro-managing nature but also left a tiny crevasse open for him to slip.
I pinched the DEP between my thumb and forefinger my attention completely unfazed by the mental notes Jobe took.
“Attachment one has Ardman’s Bio. Two has Milligan’s. There is an unofficial business gathering in three days’ time. It would be the earliest convenient time to ‘borrow’ any files from the Sector Governor,” Jobe suggested.
“Or meet him,” I said boldly.
“I’ll leave that to you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Kuroyuri.
Karyūkai. I must dream, I reflected. Floating through my past, a ghost in the Flower And Willow world called Karyūkai.
A flash of white sped by. A mote of laughter on the wind. The fallen ruby flowers of the Sakura trees crushed under a playful foot.
“Ah, Onee-san” - Sister – I likened the tree. “Truly, we are sisters in this, our petite lives. Your flowers drop like blood to the floor, forever wounded. Mine bleeds out, the season cut short by a gash.”
The dream dissipated momentarily. The reality of sweat beading from my forehead, rolling over my closed eye, falling like a tear, tickled. My hand, too heavy, disobeyed the tall ask of brushing the salty wetness away.
Coolness rushed over my balmy forehead suddenly, throwing me under the current of the dream once more.
Crimson, unfinished lips smiled modestly. “Perfection Kuroyuri - little curse. Perfection must be the only outcome.”
“Death is death, Okaa-san. He did not die well but such is not my burden.”
“Did the first die well?” Okaa-san asked knowingly.
“Oh, yes,” I said happily. He did indeed die with honour.
Consciousness returned in the guise of remembering this actual conversation. My first had brought much shame to his home. Redemption was asked for. I gave it willingly after my Mizuage.
The flower to my willow, my grace and strength, my patron lay with me. Perfectly reverent as he exposed me slowly and enticingly to the art of intimacy. Rocking above him as a wave upon the sand, I was glorious. My body held the wicked thistle, his face contorted in pleasure and torment but wiping the hard to remove mask of persecution from him. I felt powerful, in control, elicit and enlightened. Everything my Onee-san had told me I would. Though I presume my pleasure differed vastly from the physical one my patron endured.
His sun warmed face, those ready brown eyes. Perfection, I mused. Yes I found perfection when that sun warmed face slackened, turning a pallid grey and those ready brown eyes glassed over in death and accomplishment before his head slid from his neck. My blade, the colour of a blossom, the colour of death. His dagger ripped towards his sternum, dug in, glinted, golden, in the waxed light.
A perfect death. My first time: perfect. Not many had compared.
The dream floated about- whispers in the mind – but I had awakened now even if my eyelids lay heavy.
My nose was still broken. And running slightly – or bleeding slightly. I willed my weak flesh to do as it was told. Thank the Sun Goddess, it worked. My fingers numbly brushed gently under my swollen mushy nose. I sniffled.
Big mistake.
I felt the crack.
“Broken,” a bored male voice offered.
I stilled. I never slept unless alone. I slept aware, taught well not to disturb the rice around me. I was definitely not alone now and I was too weakened to push a fly from my shoulder.
Panic beyond me, I recalled my last coherent memories.
Getting my arse handed to me at that cock wallop’s house, Ardman. The memory brought the sharp sting of cuts lashing my cheeks. I ignored them.
Woken at a Normal hospital, I knew I had to get out no matter what internal bleeding I felt trickle. I recalled the immense effort it took to force my body off that gurney. To gain freedom from those scalpels and masks, the flashes of light.
I remembered the crunch and momentum as my nose shattered and my naked back bounced on the scorching tarred parking lot. Shadow failing me.
I remembered seething venomously! Before I passed out. Again.
Weakness tugged at my body and mind. A link grabbed at me and I tried to shy away from its hold. It was unpractised and invasive. It managed the connection despite my aversion. It tried to sift through my life. I wouldn't let it. I wouldn’t let him.
Raw, agitated claws scraped at those memories as if they were the life-breath he suffocated without. I’d not let him have me. I gave him my first look at him. Put a mirror in the face of a monster. What would he see?
Raindrops pitter-pattered, landed heavy, spiking my dark eyelashes. They fell as heavy as they had outside the dream.
“Of course it’s raining,” I’d muttered. Visibility was hindered and the fence was high, circling the two-story home of Colin Ardman; a colleague far removed from any friendly association.
My head snapped up. The
black Tenugi covering my lower face like a second skin, moved with me. A large shadowed mass slithered across the ambient light glowing from the office windows. Could have been Colin. Only I knew it hadn't been. I’d half sighed in resignation.
Toad like, with a high opinion of himself, the panic button had been his idea. It had been granted for practical reasons, primarily because Ardman was a high risk liability that showed high returns despite said risk.
He’d probably – hopefully - slipped arse up in his office and, like a turtle on its back, was having trouble heaving all that weight up, off the floor. Cockroaches succumbed to this malady as well. I’d snorted inelegantly. Colin definitely fell into to category of: canny enough to survive nuclear fallout but unable to save himself if toppled over. He did limp slightly also – an old injury caused by his arrogant and reckless younger years and perhaps it was just an animal rescue.
As I’d had the thought, the shadow above smothered the day’s last rays before it seemingly dispersed like zephyr.
Cautious, more than I usually warranted, I sprung, finding purchase on the fence’s ridge. In one smooth movement I’d pivoted one handed over it and landed in a soft crouch on the balls of my feet, rocking comfortably as if testing for a sprint. The obsidian patches, surrounding the beams of light emanating from the second floor, caught me, held me. I slid silently across the slippery, dewed grass to the house on split-toed socks and soft boots.
Throwing stars danced up the outer-skin brickwork, piercing it in a zigzag of stairs for nimble feet. Air appeared to levitate me as I’d scaled at a pace most wouldn’t see, let alone duplicate. Once rested upon the bull-nose verandah I’d padded delicately forward.
Here the dream faulted. I knew what came. That didn’t stop it, couldn’t alter it.
Terror unexpectedly flashed the whites of his eyes, smacking me off my careful trail. The encroaching darkness outside, and in another’s mind, clouded like murky waters. It’s not here, a raspy masculine voice whispered with hopelessness.
Recovered smartly, the iron dutifully carried me inevitably forward until I’d stood below the first floor balcony. Braced with experience and substance, veins monopolizing my drug of choice, I’d squinted through the balcony bars, my eyesight focusing into the office. The brightness from the light spilling out shocking my eyes momentarily so I circled the balcony from below, sure to catch all available viewpoints inside.
No movement.
Decided, I swung up, brazenly hurdling over the railing two feet first.
Airborne, my peripheral vision caught a pair of steel caps balancing on the railing in the corner, hugged close to the wall. Without recourse in that spilt second I’d hesitated and fumbled.
Anticipating an awkward landing I formed a roll position, but millimetres away from the floor a granite hand tangled in my thick hair, flung loose from my hood, and hurled me into the sliding door. My face smashed the glass door.
Large shards of that glass sprayed into a pool of cold congealing blood, splattering me with the clotted, stringy arterial sludge. The glass sliced and tore my hands and knees as I landed.
I’d gasped and dug for a large shard penetrating like a new mountain from my thigh. The skin bleached before technicolor spilt out.
No time for the yes-you-have-my-attention pain!
My head snapped around, jolted out of seeing stars by a hallucination of a raging Karasu-Tengu Demon-man careening straight for me.
I skittered, and then rolled.
My assailant too fast; a blur of mass barrelled into me.
Chapter Seventeen
Delilah
Since leaving home my outdoor exercise had been greatly missed. In the pre-dawn hours it was reasonably easy to skirt any unwanted attention as I blasted through the misty, rubbish strewn streets of my Burrow on soft soled slippers.
The sweetly rose scented subdivision of the upper middle class fell within the boundary of my Sector and took close to an hour’s run. An easy work out.
I came upon Ardman’s house comfortably, the navigation in my glasses leading a route planned in advance that twined about in a ball of a mess. But the home, I discovered, was being guarded by a patrol, circling the grounds and fence line. It was not Sector Police, nor had they anyone stationed at the property that I’d noticed. The patrol had to be Ardman’s employers’: the Sector Governor, a pithy title that had nothing to do with the law. Were they guarding against further attacks or something more vital?
I, myself, circled round the two-story house’s exterior, following the guards’ path. I padded across dewed grass until I came by a brush-covered spot where a second story balcony door was visible.
Hidden in the foliage I used genetic skill enhanced by my wearable tech to pan in and scrutinise the door. It was locked and the palm scanner had been disabled to accommodate a new lock system. An old fashioned lock.
My mood scuffled over the set back. Breaking it with force would engender noise and confrontation. Something I’d been trained to avoid at all cost. I’d have to find another entry.
I waited for two guards to pass by me, one of which passed by not more than a foot away smelling of breath mints. He crunched them as he strolled as if he’d already conquered this trail a thousand times tonight. With my hood pulled down, my dark clothing and my capability to remain motionless, I was unconcerned I’d be spotted but I held my breath anyway.
As soon as he had continued to a reasonable distance I manoeuvred to review the property’s other entry points and found myself back at my place of origin.
It was as budding as my idea unfurling, but perhaps my new dis/ability had some practical uses.
With the patrol just passing one another I had a few seconds of clearance. I flew out and bounded over the fence where I caught the spider web feel of something clinging across my face. I hadn't the time to stop.
At the edge of the bull nose veranda I swiped at my cheeks, trying to pluck the offending web.
Against the pale glow of the moon I held out the dark billowing hair, a hair that was shorter than mine but the exact shade. It had been caught on the fence and became disturbed by my weight as I jumped the obstacle.
I brought it to my nose and breathed deeply. I knew immediately it was my sister’s hair, her scent. She almost certainly entered through the door that had the new alarm.
From my jacket pocket I rescued a self-sealing bag and carefully coiled the hair in it, while keeping a constant roving eye on my surroundings.
Footsteps rounded the building. Pura-smoke drifted ahead of another guard in a cloud of minty air. Fifty metres to my other side a dog barked. I realised very quickly that I had better be off the ground before that dog veered any closer and picked up my own scent.
I raised my head, gripped the beam above and swung my body up, over and around, landing on my belly on the veranda’s roof with practised silence. I waited mutely for the closest guard to pass once more and triangulated the dog’s position.
Good. I was still up wind of it.
Lightly, I stood. Balancing up the veranda, along the rafter - limiting the creaks in the iron - to the brick veneer wall. I stood directly below a second story balcony. I slinked up and over it and into the shadowed corner by the locked door. Palm scanner definitely removed purposefully. Did Milligan know to suspect a Variant, had some idea of their ability to bypass such measures?
Time to put the defect to work.
Concentrating on the old fashioned padlock, I imagined it’s inner workings.
A dog barked once more. “Okay Ella, help me out here,” I whispered. Ella had once explained to me how to approach a lock telekinetically. I coaxed my memories from hiding and fiddled with the lock, tinkering to picture the components and their purpose. The dogs would have my scent very soon and I had to be on the wind by then.
The hasp was housed in a carbon fiber shell, and was shackled together by a simple design but it was a belly of twisted intestines I couldn’t physically handle from outside the lock.
Click.
Then another.
The steel loop on the lock popped free of its detention.
With no time to jump in the air to praise myself, I slid the glass door open as noiselessly as possible but stopped short once inside.
A faint buzz rang in my ear as I exhaled. The sound of an electrical current, pinging off my cheek bone. I squatted and scanned the office to pinpoint the motion detected lasers spinning around the room, invisible to the normal naked eye.
My head spun side to side, following the separate buzzes that led to their plastic sticker homes on the walls. Five were strategically placed around the room. Each laser overlapped the other. Normally in training I would dance over each invisible beam to destroy it’s base, ripping it from the wall but this was not a training simulation and the consequences of a loss of anonymity were bleak when it came to our company policy… and a dog biting the pants off my arse was not a happy repercussion. I did not much like dogs, or their teeth, or their emotions. They jumped around like a metaphorical puppy pissing about an apartment.
I reached up to physically touch where my temporal lobe hid and hoped with severe concentration I could pull the stickers down and squash them without touching them. If I couldn’t, well plan B would attract attention. Attention that would lead to Onyxeal validating my retrieval.
Sticker One gained my full attention. A slight tear pained inside my head, I pushed through it. Telekinesis was a new concept for learning, like a new language, it taught the brain to think differently. An altogether new path for the brain to forge.
As I found a modicum of competency, my stress level dipped and the skill compensated, asserting its prevalence. A corner plucked free from the pastel green paint taking a fleck with it. I closed my eyes, trying not to get cocky and let my mind rip a little wider.
Just a little more…
The split tore slowly, akin to skin tearing from muscle fibres. The pain was acute and asked me to halt, a haunted house warning me not to come closer.
Variant: A Sci-Fi Romance (Variant Trilogy Book 1) Page 11