Deadwire

by A K Blake

  “There you are. The blood giver. Come closer.”

  Iona would not have thought she could move. Yet, as if she were watching herself from somewhere outside her body, she realized she was putting one foot in front of the other, until she was standing mere feet away from the Queen.

  Basilla seemed amused. “It is customary to make some show of subjugation when in the presence of a monarch.”

  There was a pause. “Bow, child.”

  Feeling the blood rush to her face, Iona bent forward mechanically, almost until her head touched the floor.

  “Yes, that’s quite far enough. What backwater place are you from, that you haven’t seen an introduction to a royal on some soap opera or other?”

  “Th-the Rasuk Woods. Your Highness.”

  “Dieda take it, those still haven’t been cleared? The Progressives must have blocked that bit of legislation. Probably so they could keep culling the freedman camps to come up with givers like yourself. What is your name, child?”

  “Iona Meranto.Your Majesty.”

  “Iona. Pretty. And your blood type?”

  “Effusis praedulcis.”

  “Ah, quite a gift you are then. I assume the Progressives are paying your fees?”

  “I believe so, Highness”

  “Well let’s hope someone is. Alright, let’s have a drink then. Tezin! A cup!”

  A smartly dressed vampire scuttled in, bearing a glass. He handed it to the Queen with a militaristic crispness and retreated. Basilla turned toward her, and Iona realized the moment had come. She positioned her forearm over the cup, so that her veinguard was at a slight upward angle from the rim, as she had seen Lux and the others do. The Queen depressed the drip button, and Iona felt a sting, but it was quickly dulled. Her arm tingled, as if it had been asleep, the painkillers from the veinguard kicking in.

  Before she knew it, the cup was an inch or so full, and the Queen pressed the button to stop. She felt the Queen’s fingertips against her arm as her hand fell, and the sensation was almost as shocking as the drugs. Basilla did not make a show of smelling or tasting her blood as many vampires did. She took it all at once and quickly, throwing her head back and drinking it down like a shot. But she did close her eyes for a moment, as if it were a strong drink or one she particularly wanted to savor. The look on her face, not quite peaceful, but perhaps thoughtful, was the one Iona thought someone ought to have taken a photograph of. Then she opened her eyes, and the moment was gone.

  “Very nice. It has an undoctored, natural sort of taste to it. So many givers these days take supplements and other concoctions to give themselves some flavor or other, always trying to keep up with the latest trend. I enjoy an authentic praedulcis. It’s been a long time.”

  She stood in silence for a moment, as if mulling the taste on her tongue, before looking up in a snap from her apparent reverie.

  “That is enough for now.”

  The Queen put the cup down on the arm of one of the chairs before turning back to the hologram, dismissing Iona simply by no longer acknowledging her presence. Tezin rematerialized, gesturing in a harried manner for Iona to follow him back out of the chamber. He paid no attention to her, constantly looking at his spore and mumbling things to himself. When they reached the double doors through which Iona had first entered, he swung one open and waited impatiently for her to walk through.

  “The Queen thanks you for your service and commends you on your new position. She will send for you again at her leisure.”

  And with that, the meeting was over. Iona was officially Companion Blood Giver to the Queen.

  Part IV

  Chapter 10

  “Welcome to the pit.”

  Phek swept his arm out toward a row of cement cubicles illuminated by phosphorescent lights. Each housed a convict, a human or vampire awaiting judgement in the arena.

  “There’s a bit of a mess, just try to stay out of the way.”

  Luca had been promoted, if one could call it that. He would like to think it was due to skill, but he knew the real reason was they needed more hands on deck for the jubilee, and he required less training than someone brand new. While he hadn’t exactly distinguished himself in his first month there, he’d at least managed to stop vomiting, learned to tune out the images of blood and the dying screams. Most of the time. When it became too much there was always Mykal with more matra. It made him fuzzy, and he hated the cotton mouth feeling after he came down, but at least it blocked everything out. In any case, he would take extra money where he could get it.

  Phek led him to a closet and flung open the door.

  “This is where the shower stuff is kept. There’s a caddy with shower essentials, and there’s a spigot over on that wall where you can plug the hose in. Then you just take it around to each cell.”

  Luca struggled to hear him over the whine of a drill. They were doing renovations for the jubilee, putting up a few extra slipshod cells to house the additional prisoners. Everything was covered in white dust, and the vibrations from the construction were so strong he could feel them in his teeth.

  “Make sure this gets done every night, it violates their civil rights or something not to get a shower, and obviously we don’t want our convict housing license revoked.”

  He nodded, massaging his jaw. From his pocket Luca felt his spore vibrate, though he was surprised he could feel anything with all the quaking. It was likely Mykal.

  “You’re responsible for bringing them meals twice a day and taking the plates back down to the kitchen. You get the vamps their blood from a tube down the hall, which I’ll show you in a bit. Here’s your food cart. You’ll want to wash it down with the shower hose every time.”

  They walked past a row of cells on their way to the kitchen. Phek nodded to the human guards posted at the exit. Luca thought he could feel the prisoners’ eyes on him, but when he flashed a furtive look in their direction there was nothing to see. Most of them slept or read a book. A few just stared at the ceiling. They all looked the same in their loose, gray uniforms, their faces haggard, devoid of makeup or other niceties. It was hard to imagine what they’d looked like on the outside, hard to picture them owning normal clothes and going to jobs, living in houses where they owned things they’d picked out themselves. Here they had nothing to identify them, nothing to show for their lives.

  “Don’t let them get to talking too much, or you’ll regret it. Trust me, just keep it impersonal, and you’ll be much better off.”

  Luca looked away before one of them could catch his eye.

  When he checked his notifications in the bathroom, it turned out the message wasn’t from Mykal. It was his mother. Seeing the sender, Luca had a sinking feeling.

  Maris Vorbith was an old-fashioned woman with impeccable morals and a self-righteous hatred of technology. She never contacted her son herself, preferring to go through his father, to send her missives via a third party like some kind of empress. This led to unnecessary confusion more often than not. But if the message was from her directly, it couldn’t be anything good.

  Need to talk, important. Call me ASAP.

  Luca shoved his spore back into his pocket, delaying a response. His mind jumped to the worst possible outcomes. They needed money, a relative had died, they knew he was on drugs. His foot had started up again with a now familiar tapping. Tweaking, he corrected himself.

  Thinking again, he took his spore back out and messaged Mykal. In truth he’d been meaning to wean himself off of the matra, but something particular always seemed to come up. Just now, he had a feeling he would want to be far from sober when this conversation was finished. Luca put his spore away again and exited the bathroom.

  “Took you long enough,” Phek said. “No time to waste, let’s get you started.”

  ***

  Mykal wasn’t there yet when Luca got home from work. Feeling a sudden panic, Luca scoured his tiny apartment, even overturning his mattress and checking in the trash. He felt the panic release a bit as his finge
rs closed on a bag of matra dregs at the back of the last kitchen drawer. It wasn’t much, but it would take the edge off.

  He stuffed it into his mouth, chomping down on the earthy, loam taste, followed by a hint of sugar, a flavor with which he had become familiar. After a few moments, when he opened his eyes, the world looked at little softer, everything a bit smaller and further away.

  The call rang three times before she answered. He stared at the default, person-shaped image where her picture should be. His mother never updated her profiles. When the video clicked on, she looked in a huff, wisps of her graying hair come loose around her head in a sort of halo, her deeply lined face frowning in disapproval. She wasted no time.

  “Your father is sick.” The words were blunt and tired, almost accusatory.

  “...sick how? With what?”

  “He’s got a malignancy in his stomach.”

  Luca felt distress hovering outside of him, a thin tail of worry making its way into his addled brain.

  “Well...what are they going to do?”

  “Nothing to be done. The doctor said the treatment would cost more than our life savings. Best thing to do now is just keep him comfortable.”

  “Comfortable? So...they’re just going to let him die?”

  “Doctor says it’s the difference between a year or two now or a few more years of old age. Probably doesn’t seem much different to them, seeing how long they all live.”

  His mother shrugged. Luca tried to concentrate on what she was saying, to focus, but he found himself distracted by small things around the room. The grains of his sheets looked like pieces of rice stacked perpendicularly. His reflection in the screen of his spore was rippled like an old mirror.

  Staring at the screen, he realized the wrinkles on his mother’s face looked deeper than he remembered them, the bow in her shoulders more pronounced. She was getting old, and he hadn’t been there to see it. Now his father was dying, and he was too high to even feel the weight. She looked at him hard, like she was expecting him to say something. He tried to sort out what it was, but nothing came to mind. Finally his mother sighed.

  “Anyway, I think you should come home. You look skin and bones, and you should be with him before...He should get to see his son.”

  “Yeah, right, of course I will.”

  “Dieda knows we’ve barely seen you the last few years.” Her voice was starting to rise now. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you come spend some time with your father every once in awhile, especially now he hasn’t got so much time left.”

  Luca grimaced. “Yeah, ok, Mom. I know. I said I’ll come! I will, I promise.”

  She grunted. “Well we’ll be looking forward to seeing you. Message me if you don’t remember how to get here.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, in case you're not—"

  “I remember. Love you, Mom. Bye.”

  He breathed out all at once as his mother’s face disappeared from the screen, replaced by an ad with an happy pig selling frozen pork cutlets in cannibalistic fashion. Luca dismissed it.

  He wasn’t sure how much later, but the doorbell rang. It was Mykal, leaning against the doorframe, a look on his face that made Luca woozy. He flickered forward, shutting the door and sweeping Luca backward for a long, deep kiss. His arms were hot, and Luca felt himself relax, falling into the embrace. Unlike with human lovers, Mykal had no give as Luca leaned into him, no need to adjust to the weight. His arms were immovable and constant, and in them, Luca felt finally safe.

  After a few moments, Mykal moved them to the bed, their lips still locked. Luca could taste him as he probed gently with his tongue, the familiar bitter ash and the lingering copper aftertaste of blood that he sometimes caught just after Mykal had fed. Mykal reached for the edge of Luca’s shirt, but Luca stopped him.

  “Do you have the stuff?”

  “Sure, I brought some.” He grinned. “Had a little on the way over to celebrate. My fighters covered the spread, so you could say I’m a pretty happy son of a bitch right now.”

  “Nice one. Let’s smoke up first.”

  Mykal opened his bag, pulling out the clear bong and a plastic bag full of matra. He flashed to the kitchen to add the water and turned on the heater, the powdery clumps exploding inside the bowl. Luca breathed it in deep—he had long since stopped coughing—and leaned back against the wall. Mykal took a pull as well, falling back onto the bed with his calves hanging off the side. His shirt was slightly drawn up, the edges of his sculpted hips exposed, like the snowy peaks of a perfect mountain range. They passed the bong back and forth in contented silence.

  Watching Mykal lying there, the drugs kicking in, Luca felt strange, like he was floating out of time. It felt like an eon had passed since the call with his mother, entire nations rising and falling, the oceans drying up and filling back to the brim. Time ceased or grew larger. Yet when he looked at his spore, it had only been ten minutes. He might have had too much.

  “Hey, what’s up with you tonight?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You seem off.”

  “No, I always want to smoke.”

  “Yeah, but most of the time I have to talk you into it a little. Tonight you don’t even want to have a conversation. You don’t even want to have sex, you’re so into it.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Something happen at work?”

  “No…”

  Mykal waited. This was the side of him Luca liked best, the patient, undemanding side. He looked at Luca with those caramel eyes, concerned but not anxious. He didn’t need for Luca to be fixed, only for him to be heard.

  Mykal was lying diagonally away from him, but with the hand closest he gently encircled Luca’s ankle. It felt good, warm and heavy. When he was like this, Luca thought he could stay with him forever. When he was like this he felt the word love begin to surface at the top of his mind, like a secret message rising from the depths of the sea.

  “It’s my dad. He’s...I have to go see him.”

  “What, is he sick or something?”

  Luca nodded. “A malignancy in his stomach.”

  “Wow, I’m really sorry.

  “Yeah, well. The doctor said it’s too expensive to fix. Assholes think he won’t live long enough for it to be worth it.”

  “That’s terrible. My grandpa died from a malignancy in his brain. They tried everything, cost my dad a fortune, but it didn’t work.”

  “Yeah, well at least they tried.”

  Luca found himself suddenly angry, though he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. He heard the spite in his voice even as he tried to stop the words from coming out, to reel them back in before they reached Mykal's ears. Mykal frowned at him, a sort of pained look, but said nothing.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just a little on edge right now.”

  He nodded, but the hand that has been around Luca’s ankle slowly retracted, drawn back to its owner’s side. The space where his fingers had been felt cold and exposed.

  ***

  They fell asleep later watching Lively Nights. Mykal had his arm around Luca, but he still couldn’t seem to get comfortable. He realized he hadn’t gotten a chance to open his sphere that night. He still hadn’t said anything about it to Mykal, and opening it was made harder by the fact that he almost lived there. He’d been crashing with Luca several days a week. Luca didn’t mind, it was nice having someone to curl up with.

  But still, something stopped him from mentioning the sphere. While he hadn’t resolved yet what to do with the information he’d discovered, he continued to open it when Mykal was not around and had even begun to memorize some of the characters. Something about those gleaming lines of light, a secret power that only he knew, was mesmerizing in a way that he couldn’t shake. It had become almost spiritual for him, like mediating. Just basking in it made him feel slightly at peace. He could not unlock its full power without access to a GroundCom terminal, but just being near it lent him some of its glow
.

  He’d thought, though not seriously, about trying to find a terminal, but he had no idea where to find one or how to access it, much less how to properly use the language. This was not to mention that unauthorized access was illegal (if the vampires had a secret guild dedicated to deadwire, they were hardly going to grant a lowly human like Luca access to it), and he had no real plans for what he would do even if it weren’t. Every avenue his brain traveled down ended in the same answer: he should do his best to forget the contents of the sphere had ever been found. Yet, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to stop turning the idea over in his mind, picking at it like a scab.

  ***

  The drilling at work the next night was even worse than before as they tried to push through construction in time for the incoming wave of new prisoners. Luca kept coughing from the dust they kicked up. Phek had given him a face mask, but he felt a bit ridiculous in it. Then again, he’d just been told there was a convoy with thirty convicts arriving within the hour, all of whom he would be expected to feed and wash. Some of them were going to be in very cramped quarters until the construction was finished, and he’d rather not look them in the eye. Don’t let them get to talking too much, or you’ll regret it. Luca put on the mask.

  The first prisoner was an old man with a long beard and deep pouches under his eyes. It said on the paper display that his prisoner number was 138392, name Zaan Ailbhe, aged 37. He’d been arrested for killing a co worker in a brawl, and he was set to face another human in a maritus match the following week. Luca wasn’t particularly familiar with maritus, though he knew it involved special gloves. Nodatu kept adding new game segments, many in styles that had fallen out of use in recent decades, in an attempt to generate interest for the festival.

  Luca lugged the water hose and caddy to the barred door, banging on it as a sort of wake up call.