bluebloods

stay classy

[blooblooded]

Jules Hates Blood Magic

The outsiders had been in the Northern Territories for four months, and Jules LaBelle still didn’t like them one bit.

“Marty is happy,” Ivan Kosarin reminded her, as they wandered the rolling pastures of Florence’s estate searching for yarrow root. It was a drizzly, gray spring morning, just cold enough for jackets. The dew clung to the hem of Jules’s thick wool skirts as she walked through the long grass. “I’ve never seen him so happy. I think that he stayed up all night talking with Ayda.”

Jules sucked her teeth, looking around the gentle hills. There were a few sheep grazing nearby, but no sign of any yarrow. Her anxiety had been so bad since the outsiders arrived that she had been nauseated for months. Throwing up nearly every day for four months. Yarrow tea would soothe her nerves and stomach. Nothing seemed to be going right. “Ayda is fine. I still don’t like the others at all. They’re dangerous.”

“Delmont went down to the stables with me again last night.” Ivan rubbed his big strong hands together. Everything about him was big, Jules could not touch the top of his head even if she stood on her tiptoes. The circumference of his biceps were bigger than her waist, if he wanted to hurt her, he could do so easily. It used to terrify her. She used to imagine him snapping and grabbing her. In the beginning she had been so scared of him, scared he might change his mind and hurt her. Now, after over a decade of loyal companionship, she knew that he would rather die than do anything to harm her.

“Eugh.” She bent to pick up a stone and threw it.

“He likes the horses and the dairy cows, he’s very comfortable with them, not like the others. Brought them sugar cubes in his pocket. He was asking me if he could help take care of them as long as he has to stay here. People who treat animals like that are usually very kind.”

“I’m not worried about Delmont as long as he stops looking at Halima like he’s trying to undress her with his eyes. His eye.”

This was a stupid thing to say. Almost every man stared at Halima Tariq like he wanted to undress her. Tony Delmont had it bad. The first time he saw the voluptuous woman dressed all in red, he spluttered and choked like a 12 year old seeing tits for the first time. 

Ivan laughed in his quiet, awkward way. He never smiled with his teeth. Most of his teeth had been either smashed or cracked with the butt of a rifle when he was young, he had been conscripted into the army by Imperial soldiers in Kimanka when he was only 12, when the war first started. The men who did it used to call him Dog, like he wasn’t even a person. Thinking about that still filled Jules’s belly with a helpless rage, but there was nothing to direct it to. All the soldiers who had tried to force a gentle boy to become a violent man were long dead and rotting in the mud. “Flick told me that Cassiopeia has been going down to the barracks and learning how to play cards. Poor Sergeant Pike keeps losing all his money to her in poker.”

“She’s charismatic,” Jules said grudgingly. Charismatic did not cut it. Looking at Casey Agapama was like looking into the sun. “A charismatic hostage. Her father had better listen to the Prime Minister.”

They did not speak of the last stranger from Eden. The sick girl. 

The hair on the back of Jules’s neck stood up. Something was wrong with the sick girl from Eden. She stank of sickly-sweet rotting death and seemed to get thinner and more gray every time Jules saw her. The girl mutilated herself in private and crept around the dimly lit halls of the estate looking hungrier and hungrier. The self-indulgent, narcissistic hatred of dark magic was inherently destructive. She was doing something. Feeding something. The others could not see it. The others could not feel it. 

But witchcraft was drawn to and repelled by dark magic, like a tongue probing a sore tooth.

Jules did not want the sick girl around Marty. He was 23 and there was no controlling him.

They walked. The spring clouds opened up and started a torrential downpour, hurling down fat drops of rain that soaked them within minutes. Ivan pulled his heavy coat off and held it above their heads to keep the rain off. Jules hooked an arm around his waist. She had lived in the fertile Territory of the Strath since she was 19 years old and still was not used to the wet weather.

There was no yarrow to be found, so they turned to make their way back across the fields to the estate. Florence Gauthier’s chateau manor, with its stucco walls and towers stretching to the gloomy sky, could be seen for kilometers. Smoke rose from the chimneys, signaling the busy work of the kitchen girls getting ready to make breakfast for Florence, her staff, and the 50 Partisan soldiers who protected them. 

Protected them from what? The war had been over for years.

“I’ll cut some mint from the garden if you still feel sick after breakfast,” Ivan told her. They stepped over a tiny creek and kept walking. The sun had started to send her light down across the world. Beams of it reflected off the drops of water caught in Ivan’s curly hair. “Or we could ride out to the apothecary in Matane, I’m sure they have yarrow tea.”

“It’s stress,” replied Jules. She crouched to pull up a handful of tiny brown capped mushrooms that she recognized as dream-givers and stuffed them in a pocket. “I’m worried about Marty and it's making me sick. He keeps talking like he wants to go away with those girls.”

Not that the outsiders would ever be able to leave. They didn’t understand that they were Florence’s hostages, collateral in her relentless quest to restore the Northern Territories— the Strath in particular— to power. They didn’t understand how the world worked.

“Maybe he’s in love,” Ivan said hesitantly, not looking at her. “Ayda is wonderful and they spend so much time together. You don’t know. Everyone has needs. When we were that age it was hard for me to keep my hands off you.”

Just when they were that age? It was hard for the two of them to keep their hands off each other now. They had been having more sex in the last four months than they had since they were 20 years old. There was no explanation for it, Jules was just always horny. “You know that’s not it.”

It was a sore subject. Jules had known that Marty was sexually attracted to men ever since he was 16 and had a major breakdown over the death of a friend he had in Eden. He didn’t leave his room for two weeks and all he wanted to do was show her computer pictures of that Kip boy. She remembered staring at a screen covered in pictures of a manic, laughing young man with a big mouth and crazy eyes and thinking that in another world, Marty could do better. But he acted like the dead boy had hung the sun and moon in the sky. Marty still never shut up about him. 

And being in love with a dead boy was safer than being in love with someone here. If he was ever stupid enough to make a pass at one of the young soldiers here, the best he could hope for was disgusted rejection.

The rain had soaked her hair. Jules pushed it out of her face as they walked through the front gates that opened into the estate’s vast courtyard. A few Partisan soldiers with painted faces stood around with their machine guns, looking bored. None of them even nodded at Ivan as he passed. 

Sometimes she hated this pastoral place and its strange people who she was still an outsider to. These people with their silly names like Daisy or Bear, Sparrow or River. They were clearly supposed to be shepherds and farmers, but Florence’s wars had changed them all into a savage people. Now that the war was over, the King was dead, there had been peace for half a decade, and they could not change back.

Why did Florence maintain her army? Why did she feel it was necessary to have men with guns lurking outside almost every doorway? Even the bloodthirsty Field Marshall Anatole Surkhov had allowed his battalions to return home to the marshes of Kimanka. The Partisans were a different matter entirely.

Was Florence really expecting a second war? The first one had dragged on for years and they had all paid unthinkable prices. It began and ended by the time Marty turned 16. Now? What if there was another war? What if she did what she had been threatening to this entire time and decided she wanted to attack Eden? What if Florence decided she didn’t need a young man living at her estate who didn’t contribute and forced him into the army? The thought made her sick. 

“Do you feel well enough to eat?” Ivan asked. They entered the estate through a servants’ entrance in the east wing near the kitchens. The kitchen girls hurried around with baskets of eggs and kettles of teas, giggling amongst themselves and swerving away from the pinching hands of the guards. Breakfast would be served soon.

The smell of cooking eggs made Jules gag. She shook her head. “Maybe toast.”

“Maybe tea with milk and honey?”

She rubbed his back.

The east wing of the manor housed most of Florence’s staff, including Jules and Ivan. They occupied a single room together, with a bathroom attached. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. What else were they supposed to do? Leave? Move into a little house in the countryside in Matane where she was born? Plant a garden? Sell herbs and remedies while Ivan fixed things for people? Raise geese or have a ba— Jules shook herself. She wasn’t supposed to have these thoughts. It was better to stay here where there were men who could protect her.

She couldn’t go home to Matane. It had never been her home. This place was her home now.

It had been over 10 years ago that she had failed to kill the old witch Stasya. Jules hadn’t been able to do it. Even after everything she knew Stasya had done— selling Ivan into the Butcher’s army when he was just a boy, telling Marty’s father to rape Ivy until she was pregnant, harming and murdering dozens of other young women as she tried to create the perfect baby – Jules had been too weak. It took her a long time to feel safe, she always used to be petrified that Stasya would find her and try to use her body to create another marcheur du vide, a void-walker.

Life at Florence Gauthier’s manor was not perfect, but it was a lot better than being trapped in a cabin in the Matane Hinterlands, starving and terrified of what her teacher might make her do. 

They walked into their small room. Jules kept bouquets of flowers up all year-round and their smell combined with the faint scent of cinnamon, which she sprinkled on the single windowsill for luck. Ivan kept his belongings tucked neatly into a chest at the foot of their bed, while Jules scattered her crystals, old bones, sticks of incense, and bunches of feathers over every available surface. She started peeling off her wet clothes as soon as Ivan closed the door.

“I might drive out to Voievar today to buy those cakes Marty likes.” Jules pulled off her socks, then tried to squeeze some of the water out of her hair. It seemed like it was going to be a cold spring. She’d need thick stockings beneath her skirt to stay warm. “Do you want anything?”

Ivan stared at her naked body. A flush was spreading up his neck and over his face. “No, I— Julia, you look like you’ve gained weight, I don’t understand how that’s possible if you can’t eat.”

That was something she had never heard before. Jules was so surprised that she froze. She was tall for a woman, but between scrounging the streets as an orphaned child, to being trapped in a cabin in the woods as a girl, the constant starvation left its mark on her. Her menstrual cycle was irregular and her figure was flat like an ugly boy’s no matter how much she ate. She looked down. Her breasts had seemed heavier lately, but Jules was largely disconnected from her own body. 

“I don’t know. I’m probably just swollen because I’m finally about to get my period.”

Ivan’s watery, downturned eyes got all big. He hovered near the door and did not look like he knew where to put his hands.  “When was the last time you had it?”

Jules shot him a glare and started to pull on her leggings. “I don’t know. There’s no point in tracking it because I’m so irregular. What are you so worried about?”

“You should–”

“I told you I can’t get pregnant. If I could, it would have already happened back when we first met. Think about it. I’m allergic to condoms. It would have already happened. I’m 36 now.”

“But you–”

“I’m not.” She fastened her long plaid skirt and tucked a brown sweater into it. There was nothing she could do about her hair, so she just twisted it into a wet braid at the back of her head. She didn’t look at her face in the mirror. Jules had never been able to stand looking at her own face, at the smallpox and frostbite scars on her cheeks, at her long nose and buckteeth. “We have bigger things to worry about right now than what my tits look like.”

Ivan knew better than to keep arguing, but he did look shiftily around. He did not care about things like having dry clothes, and gave her a damp hug when she stepped up to kiss him. He also squeezed one of Jules’s breasts, which made her laugh and unzipped his pants so they could get a quick one in before breakfast. So much for getting dressed. She always liked it best when he lay down on his back so that she could ride him. 

They finished up quickly and went to the dining hall for breakfast. It was filled with long tables to accommodate all the soldiers and staff. Fires roared incessantly, filling the air with smoke. Near the back of the huge room, the kitchen girls piled plates high with slices of bacon, smeared butter on slices of thick white toast, and stirred endless vats of oatmeal. If the smell hadn’t made Jules feel so sick, she might have thought about how things had changed since the war ended. Only a few years ago, everyone, even Florence, had been living off rations so that all the good food could be sent to the warfront.

The dining hall was not crowded. Jules looked around for Marty and could not see him. The boy liked to sleep in, and always ate in his room anyway. In fact, there were no friendly faces. Beatrice was all the way out in the barren Hinterlands, supervising the send off of a new satellite. The Partisan Commander Reed Kimble refused to eat in the same dining hall as the people from Eden. Flick was still at the hospital recovering from yet another fracture in his crippled leg. Field Marshal Anatole Surkhov had returned to sulk in his marshy homeland in Kimanka. No sign of the Prime Minister either, the air was oddly devoid of cigarette smoke. Jules frowned. It was strange. Something was off.

“We can sit with Halima.” Ivan nudged her, then nodded his head toward a table near the back.

“I’d rather not.” Jules crossed her arms tightly. Halima Tariq was haughty and did not contribute much of anything other than lounging around looking beautiful and bragging about her badly behaved daughter. Legally her name was Olive Vernier, a Strath name, to hide what she really was and the horrible place she had crawled out of. Florence’s provisional government had propped her up as legitimate royalty during the war so that they could draw in more monarchists, but the truth was that Halima was just one of King Jean-Baptiste’s concubines who accidentally got pregnant. Now the child was being used as a way to ensure that any remaining loyalists didn’t get any big ideas. 

“We should probably see what she’s telling Marty’s friends.”

Jules looked around until she saw that tell-tale flash of red. Sure enough. Halima was dressed in a dress made of red silk as she always did, but she pulled a woolen shawl over her shoulders to keep herself warm. She was speaking animatedly with Tony Delmont, who gazed across at her with rapt attention, as if she was the only thing that mattered. Ayda and her sister were not present, probably sleeping in like Marty was. The sick girl, the girl there was something very wrong with, sat next to Delmont and picked weakly at her plate of bacon.

Damn it. He was right, she needed to see what lies that conceited whore was telling them. Her beliefs on certain unspeakable matters involving her peoples’ dark magic were tainted by her traumatic experiences. Jules glared up at Ivan. He smiled down at her and grabbed a plate as they made their way over.

“Are you sure you never heard of what happened in Blagodav?” Halima was asking, in her low and melodious voice. Jules had to squint and focus hard to understand her, since she spoke in English for the benefit of the people from Eden. Her harsh accent was hard enough to understand what she was saying when she spoke French. “You’ve never heard about the Butcher’s massacre?”

“Everyone in Eden thinks this whole place was destroyed 200 years ago during a war with the Lost Colony.” Delmont drank from a mug of coffee. He smiled when Ivan and Jules walked up to sit next to Halima. “Good morning.”

With the exception of the sick girl, the outsiders from Eden all seemed to thrive in the fresh air of the Northern Territories. They had grown brighter, healthier somehow. They all got excited over the existence of mundane things like dirt, birds, and the sun. Marty said it was because they had never seen those things in real life before. Eden was underground, like an anthill. How was that possible? If that was true, all the people there had to be sick due to their disconnection from nature.

“Good morning,” Ivan said politely. Jules did not say anything. She gave Halima a nasty look.

Delmont was a lean, one-eyed man who wore his dark hair long and loose like a girl’s. He sat with his body leaned towards the beautiful woman in front of him. Jules did not think he was dangerous, but she was confused about his involvement with Marty’s friends. Something about dark magic. Marty made it sound like they were hunting for it…

“It’s not a nice thing to talk about over breakfast,” Halima said, with exaggerated sadness. She batted her long eyelashes, which were so black and thick that they made her huge crimson eyes redder than ever. She had the kind of voluptuous body that made every man within eyesight ogle her. Her plate was filled with delectable treats, pastries and fresh fruit. Indulgent as ever. If she grabbed this strange foreigner’s hand to flirt, Jules was going to throw up. “Are you sure you want to hear about it?”

“I’m sure.” Delmont sounded weirdly intense. Jules frowned and poured a cup of tea.

“I was asleep when the Imperial soldiers came down from Kimanka. It was late, and there was a full moon that night. I remember because the light made it so much easier to see.” Halima sounded like she was reciting a story she had told many times. “They were able to rip through the iron gate and started shooting. I don’t know much about the actual fighting. I was 13 so I thought my father and his acolytes would use the gifts God gave them to rip the heathen soldiers limb from limb. My mother took me and my brother Cihad to the temple in the middle of town. We hid there with everyone else who couldn’t fight, all the old people and women and children. I could hear the machine gun fire, but I really believed that God would help my father destroy these people who wanted to hurt us.”

Delmont flinched at something she said and leaned closer. Beside him, Kassidy boredly chewed on a slice of bacon. She raised her eyebrows at Jules sitting across from her.

“The fighting lasted for a few hours.” Halima continued, but her tone turned from attention-seeking to monotonous. Like she was telling a story about something that had happened to someone else. “The Imperials had weapons and war machines. When it was over, the Butcher’s men tore down the doors to the temple and started dragging people out. My mother was trying to keep them from taking us, so they gutted her with a bayonet. Cihad was holding on to me, he tried to keep me from seeing what was happening. They used their machines to dig a pit, they were throwing all the bodies in there. Once that was done, they started lining people up to shoot them, then pushed the bodies in the mass grave. I was lucky because the Butcher thought I was one of the girls pretty enough to carry off as war-brides, but they shot my brother as they pulled me away. If you ask anyone else about it, they’ll tell you that it was a tragic necessity.”

She was right about that. If the foreign demon-worshippers had not been exterminated, the war might not have happened. The mass murder of children was one of the reasons Florence first set her vicious Partisans to attack the Imperial army in the first place. 

Jules sipped her tea and pressed her knee against Ivan’s. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t react. Jules knew this story from a different perspective. She knew it from the eyes of a scared boy who had been beaten and drugged and forced to participate in the slaughter. They had put a gun in his gentle hands and called him Dog! For years, they tried their hardest to make him hurt innocent people! Sometimes Ivan would talk to her about it and sometimes he would cry. Halima, on the other hand, liked to tell her stories to anyone who would listen, as if the act of talking about it made it easier. She never shut up.

“I– I’m sorry that happened.” Delmont appeared troubled. These people from Eden did not know what war was either. He rubbed his single bright blue eye as if it was strained. “I can’t imagine that. You shouldn’t have had to go through something like that.”

“God had a plan for me,” Halima said simply. She propped her chin in her hands. “I was supposed to be here.”

Jules made the sign against evil, pressing the pads of two middle fingers against her thumb. The god she talked about was a demon of hunger. She remembered the way that Stasya used to talk about it, she remembered her desperation to destroy it no matter the cost, no matter how many lives of young girls she destroyed.

“Were there any other survivors?” Delmont asked. He would not be asking that if he understood the evil that Halima’s people had wrought. He would not be asking that if he knew how the Faceless Priest of Blagodav had mutated the body of the King’s daughter, he would not be asking if he knew about the stinking pits of flesh that poisoned the swamps of Kimanka. 

“Some other pretty girls. I don’t know what happened to them.”

Delmont appeared troubled. He kept rubbing his head. “And— the people who were shot— these soldiers just dumped them in a pit? There could have been more survivors. What happened after that?”

“I don’t know. The marshlanders threw me in the back of a truck. If I had time for anything, I would have run back to the temple to grab our holy Book before the heathens could defile it, but it wasn’t as if I could fight back. I was only 13.”

Delmont’s shoulders hunched. His gaze slid to the side, towards the sick girl, Kassidy. She shrugged and licked a drip of bacon grease off of one of her fingers.

It wasn’t right for them to be talking about this so casually. It was over. It had been over for many years. Halima wouldn’t be saying these things if Florence was around or if Anatole Surkhov was within earshot.  Jules felt Ivan’s big comforting hand rubbing her thigh, telling her to keep her mouth shut.

“What– what season was it when it happened?” Delmont stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

Halima’s thin arched eyebrows furrowed. “It was the day after the summer solstice. We had just celebrated.”

Delmont took a long contemplative sip of his coffee. “It would have been warm then,” he said, gratefully. He seemed to be staring at nothing. Jules could not understand him in the way that she understood the rest of Marty’s friends. What was he doing here? 

Ivan smeared honey on a piece of toast on his own plate, then offered it to Jules, who chewed on the crust. “Did you sleep well?” he asked the sick girl, Kassidy. He was polite and well-mannered, attentive and helpful, the kind of person who had once been ignored for so long that now he could not stand to see anyone left out of a conversation.

Kassidy blinked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Her black, bloodshot eyes ran up and down his big body, lingering on the broken teeth and bulging knuckles. “I kept waking up because I was so hungry.” Her voice was raspy like she had a sore throat. “It’s cold here. The rain is cold. I forgot about the rain.”

A shiver ran up Jules’s spine. She watched the sick girl shove another piece of bacon into her mouth. All she ever did was eat. Every time she saw her, she was stuffing her mouth with meat. It didn’t make sense considering how gray and emaciated she appeared. It reminded her of how she and Marty and Ivy all got tapeworms after eating a sick deer back when they were still trapped in that cabin, how they all started wasting away, how Marty had cried and how hungry she had been. 

“Try a blueberry pastry. The berries grow in the marshland where I grew up.” Without thinking, Ivan slid the treat off his plate and onto the sick girl’s. He had that same thoughtful look on his broad face that he got when he was speaking to the war orphans. Delmont squinted at him.

“I don’t know how I missed out on such a gentleman,” Halima Tariq laughed her low sultry laugh and covered her lips with a manicured hand as she made eye contact with Jules. “He has such good manners, not like the rest of these untrained animals from the army.” What a gigantic whore. Luckily she had never coerced Ivan into infidelity because those red eyes and lips filled him with terror.

“I’m no gentleman.” Ivan was smiling but appeared uncomfortable with the attention. He did not like people looking at him, he thought he was ugly. He kept rubbing Jules’s thigh. “I just care about people.”

“You’re sweet.” If this enormous slut touched Jules’s man, she was going to scratch her pretty eyes out. She started to think about lunging at her.

Delmont readjusted the strap of his eyepatch. What was underneath it? Eden seemed to have unthinkably complex technology, while the Territories struggled simply to maintain enough resources to stay industrialized. “No, you do a lot for us, man, and I’m grateful. You and your wife have welcomed us into your lives and I don’t know how things would be for us up here without your friendship.”

Wife? Jules looked down at her hands, fingers blackened to the second knuckle because of her desperation to use her magic to heal during the war. Yes, she had rings on all her fingers. Surely this stupid man did not think—

“It’s no problem.” Ivan squeezed Jules’s thigh. 

Kassidy finished off all the bacon on her plate. She picked up the blueberry pastry and took a huge bite. Her teeth were brittle and turning transparent. “You’ll make a good father. What do you think, Tony? You know about that. Do you think Dog will make a good father?”

Something fluttered deep in Jules’s stomach. What was happening? Why would she say that? Why would she say that right now? Her ears started to ring.

She had called him Dog! What had Marty been telling these outsiders?!

“What did you just call him?” Jules hissed, lapsing back into French. All the lean muscles in her body had tensed and she learned across the table, knocking aside her teacup in her effort to point her finger at the sick girl. “What makes you think you can call him that? That is not his name, who did you hear calling him that? Who is calling him that?”

“Julia, she doesn’t understand how things work here.” Ivan kept squeezing her gently, but she could tell he was uncomfortable. He probably thought she was going to get aggressive. He was right. Maybe he was incapable of it, but she was not. 

Kassidy rested her bony elbows on the table and propped her chin on her hands in a strange mimicry of Halima’s flirtations. She stared at Jules. There was something wrong about her dark eyes and it went deeper than hunger. She stank, she was rotting from the inside out. This wasn’t sickness, it wasn’t hunger, it was something that was her fault. She was doing something to herself that she was not capable of enduring. “I heard the soldiers calling him that,” she replied in English.

Had she understood what Jules just said? Marty was wrong about these girls. He was wrong about Eden. They spoke more than one language there. On Ivan’s other side, Halima giggled nervously. 

Beside Kassidy, Delmont was drawing himself up and back. He stiffened, turning his head ever so slightly to the side to watch her in the same way Jules found herself watching whenever a wasp made its way into her room.

“Keep your mouth shut about things you don’t understand, girl.” Jules jabbed her blackened pointer finger at the unimpressed looking Kassidy. “Who did you hear call him that? Bedny? Reed Kimble? Anatole or one of the other marshlander pigs?”

“Julia, let’s go–”

“Not the soldiers here,” Kassidy reached over to steal a biscuit off of Delmont’s plate. He flinched away from her but did not otherwise move. Jules could see how hard he was clenching his jaw. It looked like he had nearly stopped breathing. Halima Tariq’s red mouth frowned as she listened. “The ones in the blue uniforms. What are you so angry about? A name? So what? We’re all just animals. You always stink like a rutting animal, by the way, what have you been doing this morning?”

Before Jules could throw something, Ivan was grabbing her and pulling her away. He was so much bigger than she was, she couldn’t fight him. His entire hand could fit around her upper arm. “Keep your mouth shut!” Jules snapped again. There was something wrong with this girl. Blue uniforms? She was talking about the Imperial army. They had not existed for years, the only soldiers here were Florence’s painted Partisans and the grim black-uniformed men from Surkhov’s vanguard.

She was going to beat Marty for telling these outsiders…telling them what?

“You can See why there aren’t many witches left,” Kassidy told Delmont in the same way she might talk about the weather. She talked with her mouth full, leaning close to his stiff body so that her lips were close to his ear. Her eyes were eating Jules alive. “They don’t work well with others. Their selfish powers can only devour and feed on the people around them. They never have to sacrifice anything for what they do, they can only take the energy from others.”

Jules tried to wrench her arm away from Ivan’s hand. Why was he so big? How was it so easy for him to control her? He was trying to pull her out of the dining hall and away from confrontation. Some of the soldiers and kitchen girls were staring at the scene. Some of them laughed, a couple of them barked at her. Blood rushed to her face.

She remembered how she had watched Ivy swallow poison and die by agonizing inches just to try to kill Stasya as she attempted to drain the youth and beauty out of her to sustain her own life. Sacrifice?! This dying girl didn’t know what she was talking about! What did she know about sacrifice?!

“There aren’t many of us left because of people thinking of us like you do!” Ivan got one arm around her waist to prevent her from scratching the nasty girl’s evil eyes out.  

Something black dribbled thickly out of one of Kassidy’s nostrils and she wiped it on the back of her sleeve. “You should be thanking me instead of screaming at me,” she said. Beside her, Delmont actually made a jerky movement like he was going to touch her. “I’ve done you a favor. I can smell the old witch nearby, looking for ways to enter the Void to destroy the slumbering body of the great beast that once lived there. She can’t breed any more monstrosities if you’re growing a litter of puppies.”

All Jules could think was how to shut her up! She had no concept of what the girl was saying, English had stopped making sense. All she knew was that this disgusting outsider who had visibly given her own body over to the slow death and destruction of foul magic was trying to hurt her. Was trying to goad her into attacking. And it was working. When she opened her mouth again to scream profanity, Ivan clamped a huge hand over her face so that no sounds could come out. He practically carried her out of the dining hall and she struggled the whole time.

Everyone was laughing at her. The soldiers. She hated them. She hated their painted faces, she hated their guns, she hated the way they acted when they were in a big group. These men always thought it was funny to see her get upset, they always laughed when she screamed and threw things. 

When they got back to their room, Ivan shut the door and locked it. His sad eyes looked huge in his broad face. He shook himself and took a deep breath, trying to regulate. Both his hands were clenched into fists.

“Bitch!” hissed Jules. She did not know if she was talking about Kassidy or if she wanted to hurt her lover for manhandling her. Probably both. She angrily readjusted her clothing and crossed her arms. “That wasn’t right! I knew Marty should have never invited those fucking people here! That girl will infect all of us with her dirty magic, did you hear the way she was talking about you?! The way that she and that blood magic whore are getting close?! The Prime Minister needs to get rid of them, I don’t care about what she thinks about Eden, what about all of us here! We have to make them leave before they make things worse. Reed Kimble agrees with me, I can convince him to make Florence see that these people need to leave!”

Ivan stared at her. He did not speak, he only tried to breathe.

There was a chunk of rose quartz on their messy bedside table. Jules grabbed it. This wasn’t right. They weren’t safe. That horrible girl was doing something. Jules understood blood magic as much as anyone else did, she knew that they worshipped a hungry god that promoted the destruction of the self, but this seemed…different. Crueler. Kassidy was nothing like Halima. Halima did not look like she was about to fall over dead. It was supposed to bring practitioners control over their bodies body, what was happening?

“Fucking animals.” Jules stuffed the crystal into one of her pockets, then grabbed a bone necklace with protective sigils carved into it and slipped it over her neck. “Animals. I’m going to wring Marty’s neck, he’s been telling those people our personal information.”

“That girl was saying that you’re pregnant!” Ivan grabbed his hair with his hands. He was no longer controlling his breathing. He no longer looked solid and calm, he looked terrified, the way he used to look when they first met, back when he was always hiding himself away in the stables. He kept shaking his head. “The people who worship that god can do things, Julia, I’ve seen what they can do when I was a boy, they can sense a person’s heartbeat and–”

“I told you I can’t get pregnant.”

“What if you are?”

“I’m not.” Jules didn’t even want to think about it! The two of them had started fucking soon after she was kidnapped and dragged to this rainy, pastoral Territory. Ivan was the first and only man she had ever been with. He was the first and only man she trusted enough to touch her, and even then she had a full-blown meltdown the first time he had ever cum inside of her. She had been so sure that something bad would happen, that if she got pregnant, Stasya would return and do something to the baby. She had worried for nothing, hadn’t she? Stasya had crawled off somewhere, she hadn’t been seen since Ivy gave her life to poison her. 

Her stomach flipped. Stasya. Oh no.

“I– I think you should take a test,” Ivan said. He was on the verge of hyperventilating. It was dangerous to be around him when he got upset, he was too big. “I think we should find out. We should find out now.”

He wasn’t a psychic, but he could grab objects telekinetically. Jules had never met anyone else like him, but apparently there were many in Eden. Almost everyone like that here had been wiped out by war or persecution. It was why Stasya had been so frantic at the end. She could not find any more psychics to use in her desperation to create a void-walker, she could not find any witch girls to replace the two (one who was insane, the other infertile) who were stolen from her. What would even happen if someone like Ivan had a baby with a witch? Would it be normal? Or would it be something that suffered all the time like Marty?

Or worse, it might be a girl.

Stasya would come to take her baby if it was a girl.

She remembered the word Ivy had told her about all those years ago. Eugenics. Breeding for certain traits.

This was impossible, wasn't it? There was no way that she could be pregnant.

Jules stiffened her back and made herself harsh. She was going to have to be mean but didn't want to look into his sad eyes. She felt herself harden her heart. “If you’re right, if you ever got me pregnant, you know that I would have to get rid of it, don’t you?”

"No. You told me you always wanted a baby. You used to dream about having a baby." He started to shake all over. Like a dog.

"I do. But I don't want the old witch to take my baby, which she would in a heartbeat if she ever found out."

"We wouldn't let that happen."

"We wouldn't have a choice!"

Ivan burst into tears.

It was going to be a long day.

[blooblooded]

Nickels and Pete Learn that Smiles is Dead

It was rare that Nickels got alone time with Pete. They were both expected to work 5 eight-hour shifts a week. Because they were on a team with two other people, both of whom were assigned the same shifts, it was rare that it was just the two of them in the dorm room. Today was one of those magical days off with no boys. Smiles was still up in the Infirmary after dislocating the metal rods holding the bones in his bad leg together. Johnny was off with his friend BG, who despite being a mouthy dickhead, was always kind to him. That meant that Nickels and Pete had hours to spend together with nobody to interrupt.

They had taken full advantage of their time.

“Can you pop this pimple on my back?” Pete asked. She was all naked and sweaty, steam rising up from her skin, tangled up in the thin sheets in Nickels’ top bunk. It was very hard not to stare at her, and even harder to keep her hands off of her. Everything about her was long and muscular and very very hot. Even her amber-brown eyes appeared to be on fire sometimes, ringed by thick dark lashes.

Nickels obliged. Even Pete’s back acne seemed wonderful right now. How was this real? How could someone as beautiful and powerful and calm as Pete like someone like her? Even her mind was organized and peaceful. Right after she was recruited, Nickels liked to gently nudge her way inside Pete’s thoughts via telepathy, listening to the way she would count from 1 to 10 over and over again as she was falling to sleep. Pete was steady and reliable in this chaotic place. But then Smiles told her that she could never force her mind into any of theirs without permission again, and that if he caught her doing it, she would regret it. 

She kissed the back of Pete’s neck to make her laugh. Smiles always said he didn’t think people on the same team, living in the same room, should fuck each other. He always said it was either dangerous or messy. Well. Smiles wasn’t around to tell them what to do for once. She was sick and tired of him telling her what to do. 

Besides, everyone else was doing it.

And Pete was stuck in her head. Nickels could not shut off her own thoughts. Noisy chatter about Pete, about how amazing Pete was, about Pete’s tits, about Pete’s eyelashes, about Pete’s everything seemed like a never ending cacophony. 

“Do you know what Lady told me last time I had to work Upstairs?” Nickels asked, snuggling herself up against Pete’s warmth. There was not enough room for them both to be comfortable on the bunk. Smoky Pete turned on her side so that they were face to face.

“No, what?” There was a flush all over Pete’s bronze skin. Her eyelids were droopy and she lazily cupped a hand around one of Nickels’ large breasts. “Don’t tell me if it’s something horrible.”

“She said that they kick Bizo out of the room and then basically have a crazy gangbang in there, like all the time. Like, BG is fucking Lady, then Echo is fucking BG at the same time, and then one of Echo’s dupes—”

“That’s horrible!” Pete started laughing. When Pete laughed, even more hot blood rose beneath her skin until her high cheekbones and big straight nose turned red. Even her scalp blushed, she could see it beneath the closely shorn black hair. It made Nickels want to laugh with her. “I don’t want to think about that! Ew, they’re all so disgusting!”

“I know! Why would Lady even tell me that? I didn’t need those images in my head!”

“I guess it’s sweet? They all get along so well. Not like us.”

Why couldn’t it be like this all the time? Why couldn’t the two of them be BG and Lady? Nickels was a psychic, Pete was one of the staff's precious favorites, what was the big difference? Because she was B-Class? Stupid Smiles was keeping them apart because of his ideas about how teams were supposed to operate, and his strange familial attachment to all of them. Johnny wasn’t helping the matter either, since he loved to make himself the center of attention and steal Pete’s focus away from her with his problems. 

Something pathetic reared its needy head inside of Nickels’ heart. She looked away. Maybe Pete was thinking the same thing? Maybe Pete also wanted to get rid of the boys? Maybe they scared her too? 

She looked up at a stain on the ceiling. “Do you want to hear something else?”

Pete had started kissing slowly down her neck, still touching her breasts. Her eyes were closed. “Hm?”

“I think we should put in a request to be partners. Like, just you and me. No more squad.”

That immediately put an end to the gentle caresses. Pete’s mouth tightened, she watched Nickels from the corners of her eyes. Her muscles stiffened. The air became heavy. “No. What would make you think that’s a good idea?”

In an instant, she had gone from lover to superior officer. Suddenly she was acting like she had bombed a school, just for sharing a thought. Great. Another fuck up. She had said the wrong thing again. This wouldn’t be so hard if she could just read her teams’ minds like she wanted to. If she knew what each of them was thinking all the time, she would never say the wrong thing to any of them. What was so violating about telepathy? It wasn’t like she could affect memories or control emotions.

She just wasn’t good with people. It wasn’t her fault. All psychics were like that. 

“Tell me what made you say that?” Pete repeated, more seriously this time. “Have you heard one of the Handlers mention that when you’ve been up there re-conditioning people?”

Jeez, couldn’t Nickels have her own thoughts? She shook her head. “No, no, it was just something I was thinking about. I thought it would be nice. Smiles and Johnny could form a squad with Creedo and Pills, I think they would like that. I want to be together with you without Smiles yelling at me.”

Pete made a noise of irritation, then climbed down out of Nickels’ bunk. She snatched her underwear up off the floor where she had thrown it, then pulled on a gray sweatshirt that belonged to Smiles. She was shaking her head. 

The structures of Pete’s mind were rigid. She saw the world in black and white and never deviated from her path. She couldn’t afford to. Pyrokinesis did not allow her the luxury of a chaotic, wandering mind. The wrong emotion, any lack of control, could lead to destruction and death. Nickels had seen her lose control only a handful of times. Once she had accidentally melted a violent Voorst syndicate criminal who had come up behind her with a gun– he had deserved it. Then there was the incident where she had clamped one hand over that loser Coop’s mouth and  burned him– he had deserved it. Finally there was the time that Smiles made her so angry with his constant badgering that she singed his eyebrows and all his body hair off in a half-second burst of flame– he had really deserved it. But the possibility of harm was too great.

“I really hope you don’t mean that.” Pete gracefully stepped into her underwear. Her face was a blank mask, completely emotionless.

“I have my reasons.” Nickels started pulling on the clothes she had pulled off in bed. She put on her T-shirt inside out. “Do you really wanna know? I think we’d both be safer if we weren’t on a team with the boys.”

“Here we go again.” Pete’s mind was like a line that could not be broken. 

“Smiles keeps having blackouts. We don’t know when the next one will happen. We don’t know if he’s gonna freak out on us like he did last time! He didn’t recognize any of us, he didn’t know who we were!”

“I told you I’m not worried about that. He goes back to being a kid or something when he does that, he’s not dangerous.”

Of course she wasn’t worried. Pete was the one who could melt anyone who blinked at her the wrong way, why would she ever be worried about violence? Nickels sniffed and slipped down off the bunk. How could she make her understand? “Johnny was cute when he was small but now it’s getting harder and harder for Smiles to handle him when he has his fits! I don’t feel safe around him either.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just a little boy.”

Hm. Nickels was not so sure that Pete knew what she was talking about.

Smiles’s last blackout had been terrifying. It had happened in the middle of the night when they had all been asleep. He had woken up screaming and crying for his mother and then panicked. He had been so afraid of the 3 of them, sobbing about how something hadn’t been his fault, begging them to find someone named Lee. It took all 3 of them to wrestle him down, to hold him down and comfort him long enough for him to start acting like himself again. And then there was Johnny. The growth spurt of the last year was the whole problem, he was no longer small and easy to handle. Now that he was 18, had reached 5’9” and was still growing, Smiles had started bubbling him and ignoring him when he had his screaming fits. Or when he started bashing his own head against the wall. Or when he tried to fight him. All that instability made it hard for her to sleep.

Did Pete not want to see what was wrong here? Didn’t she ever feel scared of people she cared about? It was possible to feel scared of someone you loved. Nickels felt that way every waking moment of every day.

Nickels squeezed her eyes shut and tapped her fingers against the side of her head. Stop thinking about it. Stop trying to ruin a nice moment. Why did she always have to open her mouth and say the wrong thing? Why did she always have to talk? Pete never spewed out whatever thoughts were in her head. She didn’t have anything rattling around in there. It was so much easier inside Nickels’s own mind. “Don’t listen to me.” She tried to make her tone light. “I’m just talking. You know I get stupid after we fuck. I’m sorry. I’m just B-Class, don’t listen to me.”

“I don’t like it when you call yourself stupid.” Pete reached down to touch her toes. Her beautiful face was impassive. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? “Look— Nicky— I just want the four of us to be safe.”

“I want that too.”

“And we’re safer if we’re all together.”

Nickels was not so sure about that either. But if that’s what Pete said, she would listen. Pete knew best. Pete was always right in the end somehow. Wasn’t she? Smiles was definitely not slowly breaking down into crumbled tortured pieces of himself without control. Johnny was definitely not going to snap and strangle them all in their sleep at night. What did she know? She was just a telepath.

“Right. Right, you’re right.” She rubbed the stubbly back of her head staring at Pete. Staring at Pete and the strange way she always shut herself down. “Hey, we probably have another hour alone. Do you want to– ”

The door to their dorm room opened without warning. Nickles whirled around, expecting to see Johnny, expecting to chew him out for not knocking after she had told him a million times she did not want him seeing her get dressed. Sure, she had her pants on, but Pete was still only in Smiles’s oversized sweatshirt and her underwear. It was the principle of the thing.

But Johnny wasn’t at the door. It was Pete and Johnny’s Handler Saturday. She was all golden and perfect, like a fascist angel all dressed in heavy black boots and an armored uniform. Saturday’s lovely face was carefully blank except for the big friendly smile that did not reach her eyes. The new staff member was with her too, the tall gangly one with the red hair. Artificial. They were all Artificial. He had only been working in Internal Operations for a week or so and today his pale skin looked almost green.

They were both holding trash bags. 

Fear shredded any ounce of happiness Nickels had inside of her. She went numb all over. Her blood turned to ice water. Trash bags. They were here to get rid of someone’s stuff.

“I’m going to need you to take a deep breath,” Saturday told Pete, who did not cringe back or even attempt to cover her bare legs. Her usually chipper tone had a nervous edge. “Now.”

Nickels saw Pete’s chest rise shallowly. Her mouth was open. She was not breathing through her nose.

“Where’s Johnny?” she said. It wasn’t hitting her. She knew what had happened. She had always known what was going to happen, it was going to happen to all of them. Termination from the Program. Someone had been deemed more trouble than they were worth. Nickels clenched her hands into fists. 

“Take another breath.”

“Jen— Saturday.” The new Handler was called August, although that wasn’t really his name. All of them got to go home to their families and real names. He kept gagging like he was going to throw up. There were a few speckles of something red on the tip of his pointy nose that could not blend in with his freckles. Nickels felt a stab of dread. Blood. Not his blood. “I don’t think—“

“Breathe!” Saturday snapped. Her blonde curls were frizzier than usual. “I promise you’re going to be OK, I promise that you have nothing to worry about, I told you I’m going to get you out of here one day soon, but you have to trust me and breathe.”

The happy flush had drained from Pete’s skin. She was trying to breathe, but her gaze was fixed on the trash bags in her Handler’s grasp. 

“Where is Johnny?!” Nickels asked again, her voice getting louder. She couldn’t take this. What had they done? How could she wake up in the same room as someone and then a few hours later find out that they had their brains blown out?! What had he done to deserve it?! Smiles was going to go ballistic. Smiles was going to do something bad. Smiles was going to lose it when he found out, Smiles was going to freak out and beat one of these fuckers to death, and then they would put him down too.

It was all over. Nickels knew that, somehow. The 6 years the team had spent together had come to an end.

Saturday did not look away from Pete. She only addressed Pete. “We needed to get that one out of the way first. Don’t panic, he’s just up in re-conditioning. I knew that you wouldn’t do anything— you wouldn’t really do anything— it’s just with everything that’s happened— I needed some collateral. Breathe!”

Wait, no? Johnny was on the 3rd floor in reconditioning? Then that meant–

That was impossible. Pete’s eyes were welling with tears. Another impossibility. No, this wasn’t real. This was a bad dream. Nickels was used to the nightmares, her mind had been so opened by repetitive psychic battering that the terror-thoughts of the hundred or so teenagers and young people trapped in this place flowed in and out of her unconscious mind when she slept. This wasn’t real. 

Smiles couldn’t die, could he? Smiles had always been there. All these years, he had always been there to laugh or scream or stomp around, he had been there to train her, to protect and love her, and now he was just gone? That wasn’t right. 

“I–” Pete stood there in Smiles’s sweatshirt. Unconsciously, she shifted her body to the side so that her underwear and long bare legs were on less of a display. “I don’t understand?”

“7135A was terminated this morning.” Saturday said it nervously. She said it like she was trying to believe it herself. Beside her, August gagged again and put a long-fingered hand over his mouth. The little splatters of blood on his nose stood out from his skin in stark contrast. Blood. Blood?!? “So I need— I need you not to do anything stupid. I’m trying to help you.”

“Oh, so helpful,” Nickels whispered hatefully as she heard the worst news of her life. Her throat was closing up. Smiles was gone? No. She hadn’t even used the name they called him, she called him by his sequence. Like he wasn’t even a person? This didn’t seem real. She was cold all over. Cold and dead. All the thick, cold blood felt like it had drained out of her body.

Pete said nothing. Pete just stood there, trying and failing to control her breath. She had started to gasp like a fish out of water.

“You’re going to get out soon,” Saturday told her, completely ignoring Nickles. “Discharge Program. This is the best thing that can have happened to you. You can focus on leadership now, you can train without distractions. I fought like an animal for this.”

“Smiles?”

“I just told you. He’s been terminated.”

August was really pouring sweat now and was greener than ever. Something big must have happened. Smiles must have fought back. Of course he had fought back, he would have never gone to his death like a cow walking down the chute of a slaughterhouse. Smiles must have kicked and screamed and gone down fighting. “S-Saturday, isn’t there a better way to tell th—”

“Shut up!”

Nickels looked down at her fists. It was strange. She wasn’t shaking. She didn’t feel anything, only a cold, dead anger. Smiles had fought back. Smiles always fought back. It was why they hated him so much. It was why they wanted to get rid of him, but he had been too useful for too long. Where was October? Where was the Handler she shared with Smiles? He should be the one to throw all of Smiles’s things into bags, not some nauseated new guy unable to witness violence. It was his responsibility to take care of them.  It wasn’t right.

Pete crossed her hands over themselves and placed them flat on her chest so that she could feel her own respirations. Breath. Nickels knew the intimate patterns of her breath. Listening to her long exhalations used to be as calming as hearing her thoughts. It was difficult to watch. She was trying so hard to breathe, to comfort and regulate her emotions in the only way she knew how. She closed her eyes. A stillness passed over her face, and when her heavy eyelids opened again, her expression was flat. As if she felt nothing. “Since I’m the new Primary on this team, I’d like to personally pick the 4th member. If you don’t want me to wait until the next recruitment, I’ll take Wicker or Rally.”

“You’re not staying on any team.” Saturday, who mistook Pete’s compliance for agreement, shrugged, still grasping the trashbags. The back uniform did not suit her, she should be wearing a flowy white dress to accentuate her buxom figure and golden complexion. Nickels could not think of someone she hated more in this moment. “I told you. You’ll stay in one of the dorms by yourself, but there’s classes you’ll have to take and things to learn before you can go out on your own. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“What about my subordinates?” When Pete said that, in that blank, empty way, Nickels’s heart shattered into bits of ice.

Saturday nodded. Her blonde curls slid forward to frame her doll-like face. Beside her, August stared into nothing with his green reptile eyes. “They’ll be OK. I’ve got everything worked out so that everyone’s happy. Johnny-on-the-Spot will get transferred to a team that better matches his skill levels, he can go be with his little friends, Major and Coop and—”

“Oh, so you want them to murder him.” Nickels couldn’t help herself. She was never able to shut her mouth, she was just like Smiles. Well. Now Smiles was dead. Smiles was gone, and Pete sure as hell didn’t have it in her to talk back. Someone had to say something. Someone had to do something. What else was there to do? She took one step closer to the Artificials in front of her. “You think he’s too distracting for your precious pyrokinetic so you want to get rid of him? Good idea. They already love locking him in their room, why not make it so he can’t get away? I’m glad you’re so smart.”

Maybe she could kill one of the Handlers, she thought. Maybe she could smash this demonic creature’s beautiful face in. Maybe she could really hurt her. It was a strange, cold thought. There was still no feeling behind it. Shock, Nickels supposed. It was shock. She was surprised that she was still standing. Her feet had turned to pins and needles.

Pete’s Handler wrinkled her perfect nose at her like she was something disgusting stuck to the bottom of her shoe. She did not look human. She did not think Nickels was human. She did not think any of them were human, that was the whole problem. “He said he wants to be with his friends. You, on the other hand, you won’t be staying in the dorms anymore. You’re going up to the 3rd floor to work re-conditioning with the rest of the individual psychics. Recruitment numbers are abysmal, we can’t keep up with our demand for TP assets. It’s a waste to send a B-Class telepath on missions.”

“You want me dead too,” Nickels shot back, feeling nothing but cold dead rage. She didn’t care what happened to her anymore. She didn’t care about anything. So what? Smiles was dead. These people wanted all of them dead, all of them except for the special ones like Pete and BG. The rest of them had never been good enough, too wild, too out of control, too dangerous. “Fuck that. You want me up there to torture little kids until my brain starts hemorrhaging and I choke to death on my own blood? You really want me to suffer, don’t you? You can’t stand that she’s fucking me instead of you! How long have you been planning this?”

She shouldn’t be talking to a Handler like that. But this was not her Handler. She shouldn’t be talking to anyone like that, she should be afraid of punishment, she should be kneeling down on the floor, crying and begging for her life. So what? So they were going to try to overwork her until they couldn’t squeeze anything else out and let her die? Nickels already knew what that looked like. She had seen what was happening to Lady, she had seen how insane she was, how she could no longer eat by herself, how her body was breaking down. Lady was 10 times more powerful than Nickels. They wanted her dead. They wanted them all dead and she didn’t care. 

What else could they do to her? What did she really have to lose? They were already planning on hurting her. They were already planning on hurting Johnny. They were hurting Pete, now, right now in front of her, and they didn’t even realize it. They had already murdered Smiles, and all Nickels could think about was how badly she hoped he had taken a big chunk out of October before he went. 

Smiles had never stopped fighting back.

“It’s all already decided,” Saturday said sweetly. Her angelic face was monstrous in its uncaring cruelty.

For a second, Nickels thought about jamming her consciousness into her brain. The unwanted presence of a telepath could be painful, the chatter of another person’s mind could bring instant disorientation. In fights, Nickels would press her thoughts into her opponent's mind so that she could scream insults and profanity. Saturday was familiar enough with psychic assaults to react badly. It was too early to attack her. Was the other one a threat? Nickels frowned, then cast slivers of her mind into August’s.

“It couldn’t have been Kip, it wasn’t Kip, I can’t do this, I can’t work here, what am I going to do? Henry said he’d hurt my family if I told anyone, but I can’t do this, I didn’t know about any of this!”

The Handler’s thoughts did not seem so different from the thoughts of the children trapped in Internal Operations, but Nickels did not feel bad for him. He had a choice to take this job. He could have said no, he could have fought back. He was weak emotionally, probably physically too like some of the pretty Artificials of the intelligentsia class were. He had a stun baton but she doubted his ability to use it. Weak just like Saturday.

Pete shook her head once, as if saying “no”. She did not move her hands from her chest. It looked like it was hard for her to breathe. Nickels wished that she would lose control and fill the room with flame. She wished she would incinerate all of them, she wished that she would burn this whole evil place to the ground and kill all of them. Anything! Do anything, just fight back!

“We’re not trying to hurt anyone, we want what’s best for everyone,” said Saturday. Nickels took another tiny step closer and was able to smell her sugar-cookie scented perfume.

“I…” Pete swallowed. She closed her eyes again, like she didn’t even want to look at her Handler. Was she really going to stick up for them? “I don’t agree that it’s best and would like to stay with my team and work on my leadership that way instead. I don’t want Johnny working with Major and Coop, I’ve made 3 separate reports to you about my concerns about their targeted bullying.”

She had always cared about him a lot more than she cared about Nickels. Whatever. At the end of the day, Johnny might have been Pete’s baby, but everything inside of Nickels’s heart came from Smiles.

“And I’ve investigated your reports and found no concerns. You know that heavily modified Artificials like him are two or three times as strong as the average person, don’t you? If he didn’t like it, he would fight back and make them stop.”

Nickels took another step closer. Nobody cared. Nothing anyone could say could hurt her. Smiles was dead.

Pete was still trying to fight back in the only way she knew how. Maybe she thought if she followed the rules and did everything right, she would be ok, she wouldn’t be punished. That wasn’t how things worked. She was shaking her head. “If Internal Operations needs another psychic to work permanently on re-conditioning, it shouldn’t be a B-Class telepath. They aren’t strong enough, they aren’t even able to wipe memories. Why can’t you take Lady instead? She’s already almost too sick to work in the field, she’s too weak to do anything other than TP work, wouldn’t it be better to take Lady instead? Take Lady instead. Please. You should take Lady instead, it would – it would be best for everyone.”

Even now, she was parroting her Handler’s words.

“It’s already been decided.” Saturday put her hands on her hips. She really was unnaturally beautiful, her skin appeared glassy and poreless and so…Artificial…

They could act like they were better and stronger all they wanted, but Nickels had grown up with an Artificial. Artificials were not so different. There were zero differences in the only place that mattered: the brain. More importantly, Nickels had grown up fighting with an Artificial and she had been able to overpower him almost every time.  For the past 6 years, she had watched Johnny and contemplated this. Size didn’t matter. Physical strength didn’t matter. All that mattered was the will to win and the ability to use their weaknesses against them.

She was going to beat the dogshit out of this bitch. That’s what Smiles would have done. That’s what Smiles would want. And hopefully, if Nickels was very lucky, Saturday would kill her. She did not want to exist in a world where she did not have her team. She was willing to die for them. She knew that it wouldn’t do anything, but she was still willing to die.

Smiles wasn’t around to tell her what not to do anymore. Smiles was gone. She couldn’t take it. Nickels plunged her mind into Pete’s, watched as she didn’t even flinch. “Are you gonna fucking do something or are you gonna stand there and take it?”

“Play along.” Pete kept her eyes closed. It was like she was praying. “I have a plan. Please play along so they don’t hurt you.”

“Fuck that.” Nickels bent her knees to lower her center of gravity. 

“Nicky, please,” Pete said out loud. She looked like she was in pain. She started to swallow compulsively as her terrified body overrode her carefully ordered mind. Her hands slid up to cover her ears. She couldn’t take it. She had never been able to take it. Smiles was the one who always had to step in and do the hard shit because she was not capable of it. She always froze up when it came to Nickels and Johnny, she had never been able to see them suffer. 

It was sick, but Saturday was right. Pete would be better off without the rest of them to worry about.

August looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack, he kept tugging at the collar of his heavy black uniform, trying to get it away from his neck and chest. He would be useless.

For her part, Saturday did not seem to realize that anything was wrong. All that she could see was the project she had worked on for so long. The great, long-term project that was Pete. She wanted to give her back her name. She wanted to make her a person again. She wanted to make sure Pete was safe, to get her out of this horrible place. She and Nickels shared the same singular purpose, but for drastically different reasons. “I want to get the paperwork out of the way now. You’re being so good. We can go up to the office. August, you can take the other one to the 3rd floor.”

Suddenly the tiny windowless dorm room with its two bunks and four underbed bins seemed very large. It felt like there were miles between her and everyone else.

The human brain could not be modified. An Artificial with a head injury was no different than anyone else.

Nickels tensed, then breathed out. She was so calm. Time moved by slowly. There was nothing inside of her. She knew what she had to do and she knew what was going to happen to her. It didn’t matter. Only one thing mattered. “Go fuck yourself, you ugly cunt.”

The huge friendly smile on Saturday’s face never dropped, but she turned her head back to face Nickels. Her posture was stiff but unguarded. Her hands were not anywhere close to her stun baton. “What did you just call me, you–”

With her next inhale, Nickels shoved her consciousness into Saturday’s. She was only a telepath, she could not access memories or emotions, but she could broadcast her thoughts loudly. It was as easy as plugging a wire into a speaker. “GO FUCK YOURSELF!” Her own thoughts were as sharp and clear as a knife. They plowed through the narcissistic chatter of Saturday’s internal monologue and obliterated it. Crushed it. No more thoughts. There was only room for Nickels. Saturday, having never been on the other side of a psychic assault, clutched her own head and screamed.

It was so easy, Nickels thought, as she threw herself into the Handler, knocking her off balance. She grabbed a fistful of those golden curls close to the scalp and wrenched her head down. Saturday was still screaming, she did not seem to understand what was happening. Nickels had disorientated her and then snatched her up in less than 5 seconds. She punched her in the side of the head twice before Saturday started to fight back. The second blow made a crunching sound as it connected with her cheekbone.

Saturday was not as genetically modified as she made herself out to be. If Nickels had to guess, she was 4 inches taller than her but over 30 pounds lighter, and not all of that was muscle built from years of brutal training from Smiles. Sure, she was naturally stronger, but that didn’t matter in the light of multiple consecutive brain injuries. Between telepathic scrambling of the frontal lobe and repetitive strikes to the head, it was likely that she had a concussion. Nickels’s tight grasp on her hair prevented her from pulling back, and she punched her in the side of the head a 3rd time as Saturday tried to press her hands against her stomach and chest to push her away.

All that mattered was hurting this woman as badly as she could. She would kill her if she could. Saturday’s angelic face had become a representation of every inhuman staff member who had ever harmed or humiliated Nickels and the only three people she cared about. These people had killed Smiles and were here to throw all his things in the trash! They weren’t any better than them!

As Saturday’s right hand scrabbled towards the stun baton at her belt, Nickels kicked her feet out from under her. She fell gracelessly onto her back and Nickels was on top of her in a second, straddling her and holding her down with her weight. She grabbed her hair again and slammed her head back against the floor as hard as she could. It made a heavy, hollow sound. She slammed it down again. Saturday was whimpering, scratching at Nickel’s face with her long nails. Those puppy dog eyes were full of disbelief, one pupil a pinprick, the other blown huge. Nickels slammed her flat palm down on her nose as hard as she could and felt the cartilage crunch beneath it. Her hand came away with gouts of blood.

She was going to put this bitch into a coma. And after that, they would drag her away and put a bullet in her brain for daring to attack a Handler. It would be worth it. It was what she wanted. It was what Smiles would have wanted.

“Stop, stop!” gurgled the beautiful, monstrous girl. Now she was choking on the blood draining down the back of her throat from her smashed nose. Her body was twitching and jerking in shock and pain, she was no longer scrabbling and scratching. The brain has a way of shutting down to protect itself in the wake of an injury. “Stop!”

That word only made Nickels want to hurt her worse, she wanted to hurt her so bad that she could never speak again. It made her want to kill her and maybe she would if she was lucky, if the panicking new hire August did not come to his senses and do something. She had a sick understanding of why other assets liked to terrorize Johnny so much; it felt so good to take out her helplessness and rage on someone who was supposed to have so much power over her. She put her hands around Saturday’s long golden throat and started to squeeze. “Aren’t you stronger than me? Aren’t you better than me? What, you can’t fight back?”

Saturday was staring up at her with her mismatched, concussed pupils. All the blood vessels had burst in one of them. She was no longer beautiful, her smashed nose looked like raw meat and that perfect complexion turned mottled red. Nickels continued to strangle her, ignoring her hands as they flapped uselessly against her. Wet noises were coming out of her gaping mouth. “Die. Just die. Just fucking die, stop breathing, just die.” It was the one thing she could do, she could be happy if she snuffed out her life.

Nickels felt someone grabbing her beneath the arms from behind. They were trying to pull her off. August? She doubled down, tightened her grip around Saturday’s airway, digging her thumbs in.

“Nicky, Nicky stop!” Pete’s voice. Pete was the one dragging her away and trying to restrain her. The dread of betrayal cut through her anger. “You have to stop!”

“Get off me!”

Pete was too strong. Her movements were too controlled. She wrenched her backwards and Nickels felt something click painfully in one of her shoulders. It forced her to release her grip on Saturday’s neck and they both tumbled back onto the floor. Immediately, Nickels scrambled to get back up so that she could finish her job, Saturday was just laying there, stupid and weak and broken, wheezing raggedly. Pete yanked her back down to the floor and put her hands on her shoulders, forcing her to face her.

In that moment, Nickels hated her. Smiles wouldn’t have stopped her!

Smiles was dead. Smiles was gone. A lump formed in her throat. Don’t fucking cry. Stop being such a fucking weak baby. She wished she was dead.

“What are you thinking!?” Pete was saying, shaking her. It looked like she wanted to throw her arms around her, like she wanted to embrace her, but she could not or would not. “Why would you do that? You want to die?! You want to leave me alone?!”

It didn’t matter. Not now. Nickels looked at her hatefully. Pete never did anything. Pete never fought back. They had made her believe that she could get out of this alive so long as she worked hard and was very, very, very good. She was exactly like BG, and Creedo, and Johnny, Rally and Bunny and all the other morons who believed it was better to be compliant. Smiles had taught her differently. Smiles had taught her to fight back until her last breath. It was better to die than to live like this!

August was stammering into his radio in a panicked manner, still too new and afraid to intervene. Nickels couldn’t understand what he was saying. Probably calling for backup. Probably calling for someone to take her away and put a bullet in her. Good. She hoped that would happen soon. 

She was only 21 years old.

“Just do what they say,” Pete told her. Pete’s amber-brown eyes were glassy with tears, but she fought to keep her expression flat. That was probably what she thought they wanted her to be. Flat. Nothing. Not herself. “Please. You have to do what they say.”

“I don’t have to do shit. They murdered Smiles.”

“You have to do what they say.”

“They murdered Smiles, they’ll murder Johnny and they’ll murder me.”

“No. I have a plan to keep you both safe! We all have to play along! Stop fighting back!”

She could hear hurried footsteps and the jangling of keys. Soon whoever else was on shift would pop into the room to probably beat her unconscious for daring to touch a staff member, then drag her away. Nickels imagined that this might be the last time she saw the girl she loved. If she was a better person, she might have hugged Pete, she might have kissed her, she might have done anything other than sit there feeling cold dead anger.

There wasn’t any point now.

Nickels steeled herself for what was about to happen next. Her fists were still clenched. She looked up into Pete’s flat expression and terrified eyes. “I’m not like you,” she told her. “I can’t do that.”

[blooblooded]

Dana Finds a Camera

6 MONTHS BEFORE THE BOMBINGS

Dana Nguyen returned home to her apartment after yet another soul-killing day at work to find a bouquet of roses sitting on her kitchen table.

She stared at the roses. There were about a dozen of them placed in a vase. The light floral smell permeated the entire apartment, cutting through the usual odors of old food and stinky teenage boy. Their delicate beauty made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. This was not normal. Nobody had ever bought her flowers before, she had barely ever seen flowers before. Her mouth went dry.

“Where’d these things come from?” She asked, approaching the table. The vase was not hers, Dana had never seen it before. The roses were as red as blood. They looked so soft that she found her hand unconsciously reaching out for them before she realized what she was doing and recoiled. “Kip?”

Her son sat on the couch in the living room, jabbering his head off at his friend Esther Bellamy and her siblings. The trio of strange genetically modified teenagers were always at her house on the nights that their parents were unavailable to care for them. It was only them that evening. Kassidy had found a new friend she was obsessed with and was over at her house constantly. Kip craned his head back to look at her. The use of his full name always got his attention. “I dunno,” he said. He had recently turned 18 and had not experienced any sudden epiphanies of adulthood. Dana still had to remind him to do his own laundry. “They were here when we came home from school.”

“You or Kassidy didn’t buy them?” 

Kip scoffed. He looked so much like his birth mother, all huge brown eyes, big teeth, and boundless energy. Looking at him always caused a pang, even though Harry had blown her brains out 12 years ago. Kip was just like her, he could never shut up, he could never stop moving, it drove Dana up the wall. Nothing helped him. Not medication, not talking to the stupid social workers, nothing. He was her wild boy. “Who can even afford flowers? That’s crazy. I thought they were from Vega or something because she felt bad about your TV thing.”

“Maybe you have a secret admirer, Ms. Nguyen,” said Eddie Bellamy stupidly from where he sat on the floor. His sister kicked him in the ribs.

Secret admirer? More like she had an obvious stalker. Dana felt her ears get hot. She knew exactly who had left her flowers. There was only one person she knew who would do something like that. Silas. It always came down to Silas. This wasn’t a thoughtful gesture, it was just another attempt to beat her down and make her feel afraid. Look, the flowers seemed to say. Look, I have complete control over you, I can come into your house, I can do whatever I want. Fucking bitch.

Dana picked up the vase of roses and dumped it all into the recycling bin with a crash. The sudden noise made Esther yelp. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck. She was going to have to tear the whole place apart again. There would be a camera hidden somewhere. Maybe more than one. The first time she found one, she hadn’t known what she was looking at. The thing was the size of her pinkie nail and had been hidden inside of a lamp. She had found them in her bedroom, she had found them in her kitchen. Luckily she had never found any in the 3 bedroom apartment’s single bathroom, because then she would really have to scream at Silas.

There could be a camera hidden anywhere. Dana felt her skin crawl. Watching. Always watching. She could feel eyes on her wherever she went. She was not permitted to touch the cameras in her office at work, she was not permitted to touch the cameras in the Capitol building, she was not permitted to touch the cameras on the streets or in the grocery stores or– or anywhere. Her home was supposed to be different. Her home was supposed to be safe, private, it was supposed to be a place she could let her guard down and not have to worry that her freaky boss was watching her.

How would Silas like it if she had cameras watching her all the time? How would Silas like it if she was the one being observed and controlled?

Unconsciously, Dana’s posture straightened and she combed her fingers through her hair. The performance had to continue until she found the cameras and could relax. She began systemically tearing up the kitchen. She opened cupboards and inspected appliances, she stuck her fingers into cracks in the tiles. Nothing. There had to be something here. Silas would not leave her flowers without doing something to fuck with her. Or maybe leaving the flowers without doing anything else was the way that she was fucking with her?

Was it Silas who left the flowers herself or had she sent one of her secret police agents, masked and silent? The thought of one of those super-human freaks touching her stuff did not make her feel any better. Dana slammed down a container of coffee. Kip and the Bellamy children were watching her quietly. “Was anything moved around in here when you got home from school?”

Kip looked at her like she was crazy. He shrugged. “I don’t think so. Are you OK, Ma?”

She grit her teeth. “Just paranoid.”

It was impossible not to be paranoid after dealing with Silas for the last 12 years. Dana was left feeling like her dog, her pet. What had she really done that was so bad? Silas had never hurt her, she had never threatened her children. She had only elevated Dana into a job she had no training or experience in, she had only trapped her to publicly fail over and over. They circled each other in an endless pattern. Silas would present Dana with a task she knew would be too much, then would watch as the media verbally eviscerated her on TV after she inevitably failed. Dana would confront Silas, ask her if she could quit, Silas would say no. Then, the cameras. Over and over again. It was driving her crazy.

The most recent point of contention occurred 3 days ago. Silas had asked Dana to talk to the press to address public concerns about a violent gang-related incident involving some higher level Agapama goons murdering the shit out of each other. Dana explained that law enforcement was working hard to eliminate the brutal behavior of the syndicates. That hadn’t been good enough for Silas, whose main concern seemed to be that smug bastard West Agapama’s determination to privatize most of Eden’s state-run industries and the fact that the smarmy fucker was challenging Malena in the mayoral election coming up. She got badly chewed out for that one. 

And now, roses? What the fuck? Dana grabbed a beer out of the fridge even though she was trying to cut back. She had teenagers in the house and didn’t want them drinking. Kip was on mood stabilizers, if he drank alcohol it would affect the way they worked, and he had been doing so well keeping his anger in check ever since the…incident with the horrible Prospas boy.

The camera had to be in her bedroom. She needed to find it and smash it immediately, before Silas could watch her any longer. She did not need her private misery to be observed as entertainment.

It had already occurred to her that Silas was definitely some kind of pervert who got off on peeping on her. That was the only explanation for the camera thing. Nasty. Back when she had been a normal cop, she had caught some freak who liked to take pictures up women’s skirts while they were on the metro. It was some kind of fearful control thing. This seemed very similar. Dana cracked open her beer and closed the door to her bedroom.

It was a mess, but it wasn’t like she was bringing anyone home to see the piles of dirty clothes, her unmade bed, or the moldy coffee cups. Sometimes she did not see the point of cleaning. She spent more time at the office than at home anyway, her bedroom was just a place to sleep and store her belongings. The chaotic explosion of executive dysfunction and general darkness made it difficult to see any disturbances. Dana sighed, slugged back a long sip of beer, wishing for something stronger, and got to work.

Fucking Silas. Dana did not want to spend her evening tearing her room apart, but here she was, picking up handfuls of laundry and sweeping her hands up into the dusty corners of her ceiling. She grew more agitated as she cleaned, she could feel herself getting sweaty and overheated. Where was it? Where the fuck was it? It had to be in here somewhere.

“I’m gonna find you, bitch,” Dana said out loud, on the off chance that Silas was watching and listening to her through the hidden camera. Good. She hoped that she was watching. She hoped that Silas really liked the way she was stomping around and cursing. She shook out her sheets and pillowcases. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, just wait.”

What was Silas gonna do, get mad at her? Force her into a high-stress position and not let her quit? Tell her to go on TV to get yelled at again? Creep on her some more? Controlling little coward. There wasn’t anything worse she could do to Dana that she hadn’t already done.

Still no camera. Dana stripped off her uniform’s shirt, leaving only the white tank-top beneath. The air in her room was stuffy, her frantic cleaning made her hotter and angrier. She took off her glasses and wiped them on her shirt. “Where the fuck is it?” she asked her unseen observer, then finished off the rest of the beer. It didn’t help. “Where would I put a camera if I were you?”

If Dana wanted to spy on someone, she would probably want to see them get undressed. Her gaze slid over to her dresser of clothes. She had already checked beneath it and behind it, she had twisted the knobs to make sure they were real. There was one picture on the dresser, with an ornate, looping silver frame. In the picture, she and Harry were laughing on their wedding day. Dana hated looking at it. 

Sometimes— sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t met Silas 12 years ago, if she hadn’t started spending so much time with Silas, if she had spent more time at home, maybe Harry wouldn’t have committed suicide. Dana knew that it wasn’t her fault. Her wife had been extremely mentally ill and using amphetamines daily when she decided to end her life. That had been before Silas changed and forced her into the position of Police Commissioner. But in the awful days after Harry’s death, she had been such a comfort…

That had switched up quickly. No more nice Silas.

Dana grabbed the picture frame. Sure enough. A tiny camera had been glued inside one of the silver whorls. Dana’s hands started to shake, she put the frame back where it had been sitting like it had stung her. Fuck. There it was. What if Silas was watching her right now? There was no way of knowing. 

What was wrong with this woman? What was going on inside her brain? Dana could never tell what she was thinking just by looking at her cold face and unflinching body language. What she wouldn’t give to see Silas upset, sweaty, and disheveled like she was. Most people would understand that they needed to stop at a certain point. 

She stared at the camera. It looked like a tiny unblinking black eye. Dana crossed her arms.

Silas probably wouldn’t like it very much if Dana stopped playing her games. If she stopped feeling scared and paranoid, if she stopped tearing her room apart every time she came home and felt like something was wrong. Silas was so bottled up and repressed, she probably wouldn’t even know what to do with herself if Dana did what she wanted. She imagined what Silas’s face might look like if she left the camera there, then brought home some woman to fuck. Silas probably wouldn’t like that at all.

Was it possible for Dana to make Silas feel uncomfortable? What’s the worst thing that could happen? She could claw back some control?

Dana smiled at the camera. She imagined Silas sitting in front of her wall of screens, watching her. She imagined the light reflected off of Silas’s glasses, and her eyes getting all big and confused. “What do you think?” she asked the camera. She wasn’t going to do anything. She just wanted to make her a little nervous. Wouldn’t that be funny? If she could make cold, self-conscious Silas a little nervous?

She started pulling off her clothes. Not in a sexy way, Dana didn’t have the coordination for that. Her tank top snagged her glasses as she was taking it off. Her pants got stuck on her shoes, and she had to kick them all off, almost falling over. She wasn’t shy, her body was good for a sedentary woman in her 40’s, and she was naturally lean and muscular. Maybe her tits weren’t the greatest and maybe she had started to carry her weight in her stomach and thighs, but she had never received any complaints. She stood in front of the camera wearing only socks, her underwear, and a sports bra that was older than Kassidy was.

“Is this what you wanted?” Dana waved her arms at the camera, then squeezed her own breasts. She probably looked insane. Look at me, Silas. Look at me. “What do you think? Do you like what you see?”

The camera said nothing. Maybe Silas wasn’t watching. Maybe she was losing her mind in here for no reason and that was what Silas wanted. She put her hands on her hips. She wished she could grab Silas and shake her. 

“Do you like watching me?” she asked. Why hadn’t she grabbed another drink from the fridge? “You like watching, but you’re too scared to touch, is that it? Why is that? What are you thinking when you look at me?”

Maybe once she had enjoyed the idea of being desired so fiercely that someone was willing to break into her house and violate her privacy. Now it was just anxiety inducing and frustrating. What did Silas want from her? Was she scared of her? Dana would gladly fuck the unnapproachable coldness right out of her if she asked, if only because she wanted to see Silas get sloppy and uninhibited. 

The camera said nothing.

“I bet you’re getting off on watching me,” said Dana, braver now that she wasn’t getting any response. What had she expected? That her boss was actually attracted to her body? That she was so irresistible that it would make the bitch who had been harassing her for over a decade fall in love? Silas was incapable of love. “ Nasty slut. I bet you’re touching yourself right now, aren’t you? I bet you’re so wet that–”

Her phone started ringing. Dana flinched violently and crossed her arms over her chest. Thank god it had not made her yelp. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. She had been wrong. She had been wrong and now Silas was going to be mad at her. Silas was going to put her back in her place. What was she thinking? She couldn’t just talk like that to the most powerful person in Eden! She was one of only a handful of officials who even knew who Silas was! As far as she knew, the only person who knew about her existence was Mayor Malena, the members of the Central Committee, and Internal Operations!

Dana’s contact information for Silas was just saved as “S”. She grimaced and looked back at the camera. The phone continued ringing. At least it was not a videocall, at least there was no blue holographic image popping up, but what was the point of a video call if Silas was already watching? How much trouble would she get in if she just ignored the call with Silas watching? Not worth it.

Cringing like a dog that had been caught pissing on the carpet, Dana picked up the call. She turned away from the camera so that Silas could not see her face. Shit, that meant that she was getting a good look at her ass in plain white underwear. Fuck. Why had she been compelled to strip off her clothes? “Nguyen speaking,” she said, grimacing.

“What makes you think you can talk to me like that?” asked Silas. Her voice had a little more edge to it than usual. Always with the fucking questions.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Dana.”

She could feel herself getting annoyed. “Maybe don’t put cameras and listening devices in my bedroom if you’re going to start feeling sensitive about what I say in the privacy of my own home. Did you get your feelings hurt? You can dish it but you can’t take it, huh?” She could ask questions too.

There was a beat of awkward silence and heavy breathing. Damn. Dana imagined Silas’s face getting all sweaty. She glanced back over her shoulder to quickly look at the camera so that Silas could get a good look at her face. 

“Did you like the roses? I grew them myself.”

What the hell? “No. I don’t like it when people come into my home when I’m not here. It’s creepy and uncomfortable.”

Another awkward beat. “Would you like to come over?”

Dana’s fingers squeezed her phone so tight that she lost circulation. Was this really happening? Was Silas inviting her over because she wanted Dana to fuck her? If she ever thought it could be the other way around, she had another thing coming. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Who didn’t want to bang their up-tight boss and switch the power dynamics up? 

Or was Silas inviting her over there so that she could tell one of the secret police fuckos to shoot her in the face for calling her a slut?

It was a risk she was going to have to take. It was a risk that was completely worth it.

“I can be over there in an hour.” Shit, she didn’t have anything to wear. It wasn’t like she ever left the house outside of work, she had no need for anything but lounge clothes and her uniform. It wasn’t like she had time for dates— not that this was a date. This was just a way to finally get rid of the tension between them.

Maybe her black jeans and a clean tank top? Sneakers instead of flats? Maybe her shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail? Maybe she would wipe off her make-up? Maybe she could finally dress as herself, instead of the person Silas wanted her to be. It wouldn’t be a surprise, not if Silas just sat there watching her get dressed. 

“I–I’ll see you in an hour.” Silas was breathing weird again. Nasty. 

“I can’t promise I won’t call you names.” Dana located the jeans and clumsily pulled them on one-handed. She stopped caring about facing the camera. So what if Silas could see her flat tits and unshaved legs? Whatever. Just wait until she got her hands on her. “And I don’t want you to touch me. I’m in charge here, I’m the one touching you. But you like it that way, don’t you?”

“That’s fine.”

Dana rolled her eyes. Something about this was emboldening her. Was it really this easy to push Silas around? Or was it only in the context of sex? She knew that she was a painfully shy control freak, but this was ridiculous. Was her whole problem that she was repressed and horny and obsessed with Dana, or was there something seriously wrong with her? “Don’t even think about hiding any cameras at your place, I don’t need to be in any sex-tapes.”

“We can talk about that.”

She really was a creepy pervert. It made Dana wonder about Silas’s wedding ring. What kind of person could ever marry someone like that?

"Don't even think about watching me get dressed,” said Dana, and she ended the call. Maybe Silas would listen to her. Maybe she wouldn’t. She didn’t care. She was finally going to get laid. Maybe for once in her life, she would feel some control. 

At the end of the day, Silas was still her boss. Silas still had complete power over her, she could put cameras in her house if she wanted to, she could throw her to the media just for fun. But Dana had a sneaking suspicion that she was a completely different type of person within the context of a private space. 

She stretched and smiled. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Silas would give her a little more leeway, keep her on a longer leash if she fucked some of authority out of her. Maybe this would be good.

Their whole affair lasted for 6 months, during which time Dana returned home late nearly every night. If she had known what her children and their friends were up to and who they had been bringing into her house without her knowledge, maybe things would have been different.

But Dana would have to live with the consequences.

[blooblooded]

Marty and Kip Try to Have Sex

Somewhere During the Beginning of Book 4

The day that Marty decided he wanted to have sex for the first time was chosen for one reason: everyone else who lived in the safehouse was gone. Kassidy and Casey were looking into something at the Bellamy laboratory. Tony and Ayda had gone to visit Cihad. The little three-bedroom house on the Lower Levels was completely empty except for Marty and Kip Nguyen. Nobody to disturb them for hours.

He was so positive that he was going to lose his virginity that day, that he took an hour long shower to excruciatingly clean himself from head to toe. He moisturized, he combed product through his dark wavy hair, and even picked up a razor and considered shaving his body hair before getting scared and deciding against it.

Marty felt positively giddy about it. He would finally be rid of this burden he had carried around all his life. He would no longer be a virgin. He was going to get fucked. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but when he had proposed doing it the other way around a week ago when they first started messing around, Kip had balked like he had just said he wanted to murder a puppy. He told him there was no way in hell he would know what he was doing back there. Fine then. He would have to wait. This was just as good. This was good. 

It was good except for the fact that Kip Nguyen was one of the most annoying people he had ever met. When Marty told him that morning that he was about tired of getting his dick sucked and that today was the day for actual fucking, Kip’s eyes got all big and crazy and excited and he chased him all around the safehouse until he was able to wrestle him down to the kitchen floor.

It really wasn’t fair. Marty was strong now from the half-year he spent wielding his axe as he wandered the wilderness between Eden, the Northern Territories, and The Lost Colony once known as Asilo. Most of his body had turned to hard thick muscle. But Kip had spent countless years having his body twisted into a killing machine while he was forced to be a part of Eden’s secret police force. He was no match when they pretended to fight like this. Kip had him pinned down on his back in a matter of minutes.

“That was fun,” Kip said brightly, holding him down. Marty allowed this because it was part of a game. “Chasing people down always turns me on.”

“That’s sick.”

Kip bent to plant a kiss on his mouth. He was all slobbery and used a lot of tongue when he kissed, which Marty liked. Not that he had much to compare it to. Who was he supposed to use as a metric? Lee Harlan? When Lee had tricked him into kissing him, he had shoved his tongue down his throat just like Kip did. Actually, that made sense in a fucked up way that made his blood boil if he imagined Lee teaching Kip how to kiss him all those years ago. 

But Marty was getting tired of kissing. He was getting tired of blowjobs, he was tired of wrestling around until they both got hard, and most of all, he was tired of Kip taking so long for everything. Like he was worried or something. He stared up at Kip and got an unflattering angle of his chin and nose. “Are we really going to have sex on the dirty floor?”

“I told you I don’t like beds. Beds are for sleeping in, I can’t lose any more sleep.”

“The couch.”

Kip grimaced. “No, I’m pretty sure that my sister has been fucking that nasty Artificial in the living room. I don’t need any more trauma.”

Marty snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Funny, Marty, oh you’re so funny.” Kip sounded like he was about to laugh around the sarcasm. He tried to tickle Marty and got slapped.

“Go fuck yourself.” He took the tickling thing personally. He did not like that.

“Fine.” Kip shrugged. He held up his hands, unpinning Marty’s wrists. “It’s just your whole idea was for me to fuck you. We can stop if I'm pissing you off that bad. I won’t touch you unless you tell me you want me to.”

Marty groaned. “Why can’t you ever shut the fuck up?” He twisted over onto his belly and hid his face in his arms so he couldn’t see Kip. Was this really happening? He didn’t want to look at him. “Yes, I want you to touch me. You’re so annoying.”

“You think this is annoying?”

Marty should’ve just punched him in his stupid nose when he had the chance. “What if I made you shut up?” he asked.

Kip kissed the back of his neck. The skin on Marty’s back tightened like he was a horse that a fly had landed on. “Later,” Kip said. He tugged Marty’s shirt out of his pants and slid his hands up underneath. His palms were warm and rough and very sweaty, and made Marty’s skin tingle. He kissed the back of his neck again.

Marty squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Am I making you feel good?” Kip asked. He bit lightly at the skin behind Marty’s ear. “Do you like this?

Marty closed his fists on nothing. He was so fucking warm. This was happening. He was 26 years old and this was happening.

Kip stroked his shoulders. He massaged his back. “Are you hard?”

Marty said nothing. He had started getting hard the moment they started play-wrestling.

Kip patted his back. “You are. Are you gonna show me?” His voice sounded excited. He pulled one of his hands from under Marty’s shirt and pressed it between his thighs, over his pants. “Come on, Marty,” he said. “Aren’t you gonna open your legs for me?”

This was too embarrassing. This motherfucker. Did you have to feel embarrassed to have sex? He kind of wanted to curl up and die. Kip was probably going to laugh at him, what if he made fun of his body hair? Did he think his penis looked gross because he wasn’t circumcised? What was the problem? Kip had seen his dick before, he had touched his dick and made him cum like 8 times now and even went down on him and he hadn’t laughed at him or made fun of him. Maybe it was the vulnerability. He was not used to it.

He spread his legs. He raised his hips giving Kip better access to his cock.

“OK.” It sounded like someone had punched him in the stomach, like all the air had left his lungs. Was he nervous too? Could someone experienced like Kip even get nervous? Kip slid the palm of his hand under Marty’s body hurriedly, like Marty was going to change his mind. His fingers closed around the bulge of Marty’s cock. “Fuck.” He sounded breathless.

Marty’s face was on fire. He hadn’t expected Kip to sound so excited. Was this really happening?

Kip snuggled into Marty’s back and rubbed him through his pants. “I’m going to make you feel good.” He kissed him on the side of the neck again and this time actually bit the delicate skin there.

The pain-pleasure shot right to Marty’s cock. He bit his own lower lip.

“So good, Marty.” Kip stroked him. “I promise. You’ll like it.” The heel of his hand pushed against Marty’s balls.

Marty was painfully aware of how vulnerable his position was. He was on his belly, with his shirt tugged up, his legs open, his cock and ass available, but he kept still. This willingness, this sudden frantic need to give everything to Kip confused him. “Hurry up,” he said. He felt like he was dying. It wasn’t fear, it was anticipation. He wanted to cast away his virginity like an old blanket, but the actual act of doing it was different than he had expected. 

Kip kissed his neck, right below one of his ears again. His breath was hot. The stubble on his face and chin was scratchy. “I really like you.”

Hearing that made his eyes actually prickle for some reason. Nobody had ever told him that and meant it. Sure, Lee Harlan had told him he liked him before to try to manipulate him, but Lee was about one unattended drink away from being an actual rapist instead of just an attempted rapist, so his opinion on relationships did not count. It wasn’t like he thought Kip loved him or anything, simple liking was enough for someone who had never been wanted from the moment of his conception. Marty hoped that Kip would not see or else he might think that he was hurt or upset instead of…emotionally overwhelmed.

Kip guided Marty’s hips up, then pulled down his pants and underwear. They bunched at his feet after getting snagged on Marty’s shoes. Marty frowned and kicked off his shoes, suddenly feeling trapped and constricted. He let Kip pull his shirt over his head and it got stuck too because he was laying on his stomach propped up by his elbows. 

Now he was completely exposed. It was really happening. This was happening. He had dreamed of this ever since he was a chubby little teenager falling in love with a boy hundreds of miles away. It seemed so safe back then to be attracted to the unattainable. For years after that. Marty considered himself in love with a dead man. Now? Here was Kip. Back from the dead. Completely fine. And— his? Kind of? At least his friend with benefits? He didn’t know how that worked.

Kip pulled back and stopped to admire Marty’s naked body stretched out on the floor. He stroked a gentle hand from Marty’s neck to the back of his knee, then inside his thigh and between his buttocks. “I really like your body.”

“Shut up.” Why was Kip talking to him like he was an insecure girl?

The snippy tone got its point across. Kip must’ve heard it, anyway. He pulled himself up. “I’ll get the lube. Wait here.” He patted the middle of Marty’s sweaty back and got up.

Marty hid his face in his arms again, shivering slightly. Why was he so embarrassed? He became acutely aware of the hard floor under his skin, he was aware of how naked he was, how exposed he was. His cock was so hard and hot, its tip sticky and sensitive from his foreskin retracting as he got hard. The nervous anticipation was causing the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.

He could hear Kip’s footsteps. Then he heard Kip’s knees pop as he knelt back down on the floor. “You didn’t even move.” Kip started rubbing the knots in his back and shoulders again. What was up with that? He liked giving back massages or something? “Submissive.”

“Kip, I swear, fuck you, that’s not fucking funny, I’ll actually break your nose.”

“Fine, fine, OK.” Kip stroked his hips, then his thighs, then between them again. Marty tried not to tense.

What if it was horrible? What if he didn’t like it? What if after it was all over and done and he had finally lost his virginity, he would have to look Kip right in those big brown eyes and say that no, it wasn’t good at all, and that he didn’t like it? What if he had to watch that brief shadow pass through Kip’s face, that tiny flinch which meant Kip’s feelings were really hurt and he was desperately trying to hide it?

If this was horrible, Marty wouldn’t be able to lie to his face about it.

There was a scratchy face and hot breath at his cheek again. Kip. If he thought about it, it was a miracle by itself that Kip was breathing at all instead of shot dead by the secret police. “Hey. Relax.”

Marty made a sound somewhere in between a whine and a whimper and was instantly mortified that such a noise could come out of his mouth. Fuck. He didn’t want to make sounds like that when he was turned on. What was wrong with him?

“Hey. It’s fine. I’ll st—”

“No.”

“What?”

“No, just…” Marty tried to think of something to say. His brain was emptied of everything but self conscious horniness. “Just...” He wrapped his arms around his head. “Do it slow, vous savez?”

“Sure.” Kip’s voice was so breathy and quiet that Marty could barely hear him.

The bottle of lube clicked open and squeezed, and then a slick, warm finger slid between Marty’s buttocks and then inside of him.

Marty shuddered. Shifted. Squeezed his eyes tight shut. Clenched. This was happening. Was this really happening?

“OK?” Kip asked.

“Ouais.” Suddenly unable to speak English. What were the words in English? It was all blurring together. Marty gulped. “Eh, tu— I mean, you can—”

Kip pushed in deeper.

The sensation was instant and unbelievably intrusive. He was too tense. It didn’t hurt, not really, only the slight burn, opening him up and requiring his entire focus, every single thought. He felt exposed and slightly violated, which would’ve been very bad if it was anyone else but Kip. The discomfort was not entirely unpleasant. Maybe it was a little bit good.

He was giving himself to Kip. Marty’s face burned. He wanted that. He wanted to give. “You can do whatever you want,” he said. His voice squeaked.

Kip pushed in a second finger. “Yeah?” he asked. “Are you sure?” His thrusts sped up. “Do you like this? Do you feel good?” He worked his fingers faster and faster. “Do you want to keep going?”

“I trust you.”

Two fingers as deep as they could go. Kip leaned down between Marty’s shoulder blades and kissed him there. Marty lay under him, squirming and on the verge of being deathly mortified and terribly aroused.

Porn was nothing like this. Marty was used to skipping through the beginning parts to get to the hardcore pounding. He had learned vaguely that he was supposed to shower and make sure his ass was clean just as he was vaguely aware that it was impossible to skip all the middle parts and get to the hardcore pounding that he liked to watch so much. He used to jerk off to gay porn from Eden constantly, scared out of his mind that Jules or worse, Ivan were going to burst into his room and see him. Kip didn’t have a frighteningly huge monster cock like the guys in the pornos did, but it was big enough to make him nervous. The first time he blew him had been mind boggling. Was it going to hurt? Kip would never hurt him.

“Yeah, OK.” Kip spoke shakily. “OK.” Who was Kip trying to reassure, that was anyone’s guess. Why the fuck was he so nervous? Kip had fucked tons of people before, surely he had cared about some of them, surely he had liked some of them the same way he liked Marty. He wasn’t any different. “You can relax for me. Good, OK, like that, just like that, yeah, OK.” Kip was babbling awkwardly like an idiot and Marty could barely think in English. “I want to be inside of you. I love your body.”

What the fuck. Where did love come from? That wasn’t right. They barely knew each other. Did they? Not really? This was not the dead boy he had fantasized about for years. This was someone better. Marty couldn’t talk. 

The muscles in his stomach were still tensed but everything below his waist, between his legs, turned loose and willing and accommodating. With every thrust of Kip’s hand, Marty’s hard cock slid through a tiny puddle of pre-cum gathered under him. His balls felt heavy and way too full and…existing?

He wondered if he was going to have a seizure. That was all he needed. To have his consciousness fucked out of his body and into the Void where that freak Lee Harlan was waiting.

What was Kip talking about, saying he wanted to be inside him? He already was inside him! He was moving. He pressed and stretched and touched. He curled his fingers into embarrassing pleasure that stabbed into Marty’s brain, then reached deep into sensations he had never even imagined back at home. He expanded the horizon of possibility, pulling one sensation out, then in, then out again.

This seemed like it was taking forever. He couldn’t stand it. Pressure started to radiate through him. He wanted to cum. How much longer was this going to take?

“Kip, please.” His own voice sounded whiny and needy and it made him flush more. Panting? Was he already panting? He realized he was already getting fucked. He couldn’t think.

Kip slowly removed his slick fingers. “Do you want me to fuck you?”

Marty groaned. This was getting annoying.“Will you stop asking me, for fuck’s sake?”

“No.” Kip pinched him on the arm but Marty was too wrapped up in other sensations to even squeal. “Tell me you want me to fuck you or we stop.”

“Yes.” Marty covered his face with his hands. “Yes, OK, yes, yes!” His skin burned, he was covered in a sheen of sweat and he was stark naked. “Will you hurry the fuck up.”

“Aw,” Kip laughed very softly, not meanly at all, not like he was laughing at him. Marty was thankful. He would have died if Kip had laughed at him in this vulnerable position. He would have died if Kip acted like he was ugly, or worse, stupid and inexperienced because he was so old and had never done anything like this before.

Kip slowly lowered himself over Marty’s back, every move and shift deliberately careful. Marty realized Kip was also naked, maybe had peeled off his own clothes when he went to get lubricant? How had he done that so fast? His bare skin also was hot to the touch. His body was so different from a girl’s, it was bigger and harder and rougher. The weight of him was comforting as Marty tried very hard not to panic at the thought of defloration at 26 years old. The thick curly body hair on Kip’s chest and groin and belly rubbed Marty’s back and ass and thighs. 

Something hard grazed the space between Marty’s legs, very very hot. Marty jolted. Here it was. This was it. He hoped he liked it. Would it be so bad if he didn’t like it? Would he be doomed forever if he didn’t like it? It wasn’t like there was anyone else willing to fuck him who was not a perverted demonic sex freak like Lee. He had a strong suspicion that Lee had never asked anyone if they felt OK while he was fucking them. If Marty wanted to he could probably get Rome Prospas to let him fuck him, but he had found out that some Artificials had nasty pleasure modifications that he did not want to find out about. And he would feel bad about using a close friend like that. Well, Kip was his friend too. Kip was a closer friend. Kip was a better friend. Why did—

“Shh,” Kip’s mouth was next to his ear. “I’ll go slow.”

Marty swallowed. He swallowed again. “You can just, ah, do it,” he said. He would not open his eyes. This was the part in the pornos where the hardcore fuckpounding began. He was probably going to die. 

“I really don’t want to hurt you.” Kip was doing something that made Marty’s cock twitch. 

The— the other cock between his legs, Kip’s cock, inched inexorably up in a slow and cautious slide, careful not to spook him. Its hot wet head rested against Marty’s body, then Kip shifted his hips and found his goal. He started pressing in with tiny jerks and twitches.

Fuck, it was happening. He was about to get fucked. He was about to take another man inside of him. Kip. He was taking Kip. Kip was alive, Kip was going to take his virginity. This was fine. This was what he wanted. This was what he had dreamed of for so long.

But something— something was wrong?

Wait, no. The intensity of new sensations were too overstimulating. The taste of copper filled his mouth, his ears rang with a high pitched buzz. His head started to pulsate with pain. Marty did not know what to focus on, his throbbing cock, the slow pressure of Kip pressing into him millimeter by millimeter, or the sharp pain in his head. The light in the safehouse was suddenly so bright that he could feel it through his eyelids. Marty choked.

Was he about to have a fucking seizure?

“Stop,” Marty gasped. He opened his eyes, the light penetrated his brain like knives and he twisted himself into a knot of pain. His erection went limp immediately. Not now! Why now?! “Wait, wait, hold on.”

Kip made an ugly squeaky grunting noise and pulled out. “Shit.” He was breathing in ragged wheezes. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong was that Marty was buck naked and about to have a seizure. His body was trying to send his consciousness to the Void. Hell no. A wave of pain came over him again and he bit the side of his tongue until he tasted blood. One side of his face was slack. “I’m gonna have a seizure. I need to lie down.”

“You’re already lying down.” Kip was on his knees now. He sounded slightly panicked, slightly in pain because he was still aroused. “What do I do?”

Five seconds of nothing, of absence. What was it? Usually he could feel a seizure coming half an hour before they hit. It was not true epilepsy, not really, just a curse his misguided mother had put on him in order to save him from the witch Stasya when he was just a baby. Jules had never been able to do anything to stop the seizures, but the medications and technology in Eden surpassed the imagination. “Get the medicine Tariq got me, it’s in the bathroom.”

“English?” Kip asked shrilly. 

Had he not been speaking English? Marty rolled onto his back and started at the ceiling, willing the pain in his head to go away before he lost consciousness and started flopping around pissing himself without any clothes on. Hopefully he would not vomit. Sometimes it went away on its own. Sometimes, if he breathed the right way, if he calmed himself down. “Medicine is a nasal spray in the bathroom.”

Kip scrambled off and was back in less than 45 seconds. Fast. Really fast. He knelt back down next to Marty’s head, which was less than ideal because his nasty hard dick was pointed right at his face. Marty tried to ignore this. He felt Kip tilt his chin back with his big gentle hands, then sprayed it up each of his nostrils in a rapid, matter of fact fashion. It had an immediate sedative effect, but did nothing to ease the splitting headache.

He would not be going to the Void today.

He would not be getting fucked either. He really had the worst luck. Hopefully this would not happen when they tried again later.

“Are you OK?” Kip asked, after a beat of watching him lie there on the floor like a dead fish. 

“Just throw a blanket over me.”

“Are you sure?” Kip did as he was told. The blanket in question was a quilt from his own bed. “I could pick you up, but you wouldn’t like it.”

“I’m good.” This was mortifying.

“I’m going to go take care of myself,” Kip said with another strangled wheeze, trying to cover his erection. “Really quick. In the bathroom. Very, very fast, you’ll be surprised. I’ll be right back. You– uh, you keep lying still on the floor. I'll turn on the kettle for tea, it'll be ready by the time I'm done.”

Maybe a second chance? “I could j–”

Kip’s strained face softened for a moment. He gave Marty’s leg a little kick. “You just lie there. I’ll be back in a minute. Two minutes– I’m completely serious.”

Marty did as he was told in turn.

Two minutes? Two minutes was crazy.

[blooblooded]

The Book Starts Seducing Tony

THREE YEARS BEFORE BLUEBLOODS The morning that Tony Delmont was fixed by the gaze of a hungry god from beyond the edges of the universe, he woke suddenly from a night of uneasy dreams.

The strange thing was that he did not dream much. Or, if he dreamed, he could not remember them. Sleep was the one thing that came easy to him and he always welcomed the comforting nothingness. A dreamless sleep was like being dead, only better because he could experience non-existence without permanency, then wake up next to the man who loved him. In this way, Tony could experience both his desire for self-annihilation and his desire to be present in the world and loved.

He jolted violently out of his sleep, heart pounding so hard that he could hear each pump of blood. The room was dark. Tony tried to breathe evenly but found himself nearly gasping for air. His t-shirt was trenched in sweat on his chest and beneath his arms. He swallowed hard, then pulled up his shirt so that he could see his stomach. The skin there was smooth and brown and normal, his stomach was flat. Tony pressed one hand against his belly. No wounds. No pustules, no bumps or stings. Normal. Everything was fine. It had only been a dream.

It had just seemed so real.

Tony took his hand from his stomach and pushed his dark hair away from his face as he kept trying to slow his breathing. A trickle of sweat ran down his neck to his collarbones. The clock on the bedside table read “4:00 AM” in glowing blue letters, the only light that illuminated his bedroom. Beside him in bed, Cihad lay on his side snoring softly, turned towards him like he always did. For a moment he considered shaking him awake so that he could tell him his dream before he forgot it. But Cihad woke up at 5 every morning so he had enough time to work out and cook breakfast before going to be the boss nurse at the state hospital. He needed more rest. Tony would keep the dream to himself.

In the dream, Tony had been outside of Eden. He did not know how his brain could imagine what the sun looked like or what clean air was like or how blue the sky was when he had lived nearly 36 years beneath the ground. He only knew how good the light and warmth felt, he only knew that the air was so full of oxygen that it made him feel dizzy. In the dream, he had looked down at his body and seen that he was not a man at all, but a white cow. Not a bull, a cow, grazing in an endless sunny field of sweet grass. And he had been happy.

In the dream, he wandered, rolling in the grass and soaking up the sun, until he was approached by an enormous wasp. Tony had seen cattle before, he worked with cattle (or at least their carcasses) and in the dream it seemed perfectly natural that he was a cow. Wasps, however, were a thing that only existed outside of Eden, he had never seen one either. This wasp was huge and black, as large as a human forearm, its stinger the length of a finger. Buzzing, it circled the air above him, then divebombed. Tony-as-the-cow shivered his skin, twitched his tail, tossed his horned head back and forth. The wasp kept coming. Each time it dove out of the air to land on him, he shook it off, again and again, but the insect was relentless. He could feel its legs crawling all over him! It wanted to sting him! Tony-as-the-cow took off running across the green field.

In the dream, the monstrous wasp pursued. Tony ran until he couldn’t run anymore, the wasp would catch up, and he would run again. Over and over. The drone of the beast’s wings as it flew worked Tony up into a frenzy. There was no more sun, there was no sweet grass, there was only the insect that was pursuing him and the inevitability of being stung. Then, as an exhaustion that even having four legs could not prevent overcame him, Tony-as-the-cow thought: what is the point of running? Why am I so scared of a little sting?

In the dream, everything seemed to shift and change and he was a man again. A man who had stopped running. The gigantic wasp circled above him, then landed on Tony’s right arm. He shivered and flinched, staring at it. The light of the sun reflected off its iridescent wings. Its delicate segmented body shone with hard black carapace. The wasp started to crawl up his arm and then down his torso. The touch of its legs were scratchy but it had stopped buzzing. Tony started to breathe heavily. What was it doing? Was it going to sting him? The anticipation was too much. It stopped crawling when it reached his stomach. The wasp sat there. What was it–

The wasp contorted itself and plunged its long stinger into the soft flesh below Tony’s belly button. The venomous pain that followed was at once excruciating and exhilarating and in that moment as Tony was pulled from the sunny dream into the darkness of reality, he felt an overwhelming sense of curiosity about the beast that had stung him.

Strange. What right did he have to dream about the sun or grass or insects? He didn’t even know what any of those things were. 

If he wanted to, he could go back to bed. What was the point? He would just have to get back up in two hours and he didn’t want to have that dream again, did he? Tony shivered and patted his stomach. The dream had been so real that he was sure he would see some mark of the wasp’s sting. 

Tony carefully pulled back the blankets so that he would not wake Cihad. He was laying there, not moving, lost in his own dreams. Tony wondered what Cihad dreamed about. Nothing good, he knew that for sure. It was rare, but he could remember a few times that Cihad had woken up terrified,  screaming in a language he could not understand. Tony had been unable to help him. He had been unable to give back the love and comfort and Cihad gave so freely. When he tried to ask him about it, he shut down completely like he always did, flipped the script back on Tony just like he always did. He was a locked door when it came to communication and Tony did not have the key. He could not See the truth of Cihad’s secrets in his mind like he did with everyone else. At first, especially during the most chaotic parts of his recovery from alcoholism, Cihad’s lack of overwhelming personal stimuli had been a comfort. Now…was it too much to ask for?

Another normal day. He was stable and he was happy. He had a job. The ongoing battle between himself and social services caseworkers who did not think he was good enough as a father was almost at an end. Life was good. He kept telling himself life was good.

Sobriety was supposed to be about growth. That was the whole point. “Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.” Sure, Tony had changed. Sometimes he was not so sure he liked it. Sometimes he missed the comforting chaos of self-destruction. His happy, stable life had a touch of stagnation that he could not put his finger on. Self-hatred with nowhere to go? He was not sure. All he knew was that it had been 6 years since he met Cihad, 6 years since he decided to take his life back into his own hands, 6 years of fighting what felt like a demon bent on killing him. Now he was on the other side. Now what?

It was best not to think about it. But Tony’s mind gnawed on old hurts like a dog with a bone. Happiness and stability were so unnatural to him. It had been easier to be unhappy. 

He took a long, luxurious shower. The bathroom that they shared in this house was nicer than the one he used to share with Cynthia back when they lived in one of the subsidized apartments in the Lower Levels. The water that came out of the showerhead in that apartment was always brown and sludgy from polluted pipes. Tony used to scream at the slummy landlord who sat there getting rich off of government checks from impoverished people who would never be able to afford to move out, he used to scream about the dirty water and how it wasn’t right for a little girl to have to bathe in it! The landlord never did fix the water problem because there was no way to fix the water problem in Eden. What choice did he have at that time? It was either bathe his daughter with dirty water or go back to living at the shelter.

After scrubbing off, Tony slipped into Cihad’s big bathrobe and stared at his own brown eyes in the mirror. Aging. He was aging rapidly. The years had not treated him well. The dark skin on his face was still smooth, but there were deep lines beneath his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Tony tried to smile at himself, then stopped after seeing the big chip in one of his front teeth. Gray hairs had started to spring up on his temples and last week he had found a gray chest hair. What did Cihad even see in him? He looked like shit now. He sighed heavily, squinting at the stubble on his chin and upper lip.

His razor sat beside Cihad’s on the kitchen sink. Tony grabbed it to make quick work of the growing stubble. Downstairs, something crashed and then squealed, and the blade nicked him on the side of his jaw. He had always been a bleeder. Tony cursed softly and pressed one hand to the little wound to stop the flow of blood.

“Anthony?” Cihad’s sleep-thick voice from the bedroom. “Was that Billy?”

Tony checked the time on his phone. 4:30. He rolled his eyes. “Go back to bed. I’m going downstairs to check in a second.”

Mumbled grumbling. He really did need to sleep more. Cihad went to bed around midnight and woke up at 5:00am. Tony did not understand how or why he did that to himself. He did not understand how he was able to do all the things he did. The big strange man’s energy was constant and stable, it did not ebb and flow like his. Maybe 5 hours of sleep was enough for him?

He crept back into the bedroom so that he could pull on a clean T-shirt and some pants. When he took his hand away from the nick on his face it came away tacky with blood. What did it matter? He would be covered in animal blood at work soon anyway. It appeared that Cihad had fallen back asleep within seconds. Tony strained to see him in the dim light. Cihad had subconsciously curled his enormous body back up into the fetal position, one arm bent under to support his head, the other held over his face to protect it. It was almost sweet. Tony wished he  could See why he did that but Cihad was completely closed off.

It was no use dwelling on it, just like it was no use swelling on the wasp dream. One step at a time. One step at a time. All that mattered was this present moment and his choice to keep moving forward.

Careful to walk quietly outside of Cynthia’s bedroom, Tony headed downstairs with his hands in his pockets. He knew what was making noise inside his house. It was the thing that was always making noise inside his house: Cihad’s little…child-pet. 

Neither of them knew what to make of it. Billy was the same sort of goopy black invertebrate creature that lived by the hundreds in Eden. Until Cynthia’s birth, Tony had figured he had been hallucinating when he saw them crawling around the metro tunnels or lapping up the puddles of blood on the  kill-room floor– nobody else could see them! But no, his daughter could see them too. So could Cihad. It had to have something to do with their psychic abnormalities.

He flipped the lights on in the kitchen. Something yipped and jumped in surprise underneath the table. Tony had to suppress a shudder– he couldn’t stand it when the thing did not try to make itself look human. He frowned, then squatted down so he could peer at it. Billy didn’t have any shape at all. It looked like 35 pounds of quivering black jello.

“Are you OK?” he asked it, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice. It was….very, very hard to love a thing like Billy, but for Cihad he tried his best. It really was like his kid. It was exactly like him, down to the irritating lack of psychic information around it. Unlike the others of its kind, it knew how to speak. In the beginning it had seemed to only mimic human speech. Now? It understood what he was saying to it. It understood very well. “What was all that noise?”

Billy jiggled and pulled itself together into a simplistic body with a head and four stubby legs. Like the rest of its kind, it could grow and shrink the gelatinous ooze of its body into different forms, although it seemed most comfortable looking like a crustacean or cuttlefish. The face it grew this time was surprisingly good: only three cat-like eyes and a mouth that almost looked human. It was better when it tried to look human. It blinked its eyes at Tony, then sniffed, which was funny because it had gills. “Just a nightmare,” it said, in a childlike voice.

A chill went down Tony’s spine. This thing could dream? Why was it so different from the others? Where had Cihad found it? “Yeah?” he asked, remembering the wasp and its stinger plunging into his body. “I didn’t know you had dreams.”

“Why wouldn’t I dream?” It seemed to be genuinely asking. 

What was Tony supposed to say? Because it doesn’t appear that you have a brain or central nervous system to create thoughts? He touched the shaving-wound on his jaw to make sure it was not still bleeding. “Because I never dream. So– so you had a nightmare and jumped out of the sink? Uh, fell out of the sink?” 

“It wouldn’t happen if you would just let me fill up the bathtub at night so I can sleep in–”

Tony swerved by that suggestion. He would never allow that to happen in his bathroom. The thought of stepping in slimy water that this thing had been floating in was a bridge too far. A sort of curiosity emerged in him. What was so bad that it gave this weird inhuman thing nightmares? If Cihad wouldn’t talk to him about…where he had come from, maybe this thing would. Maybe this thing was different because it came from wherever Cihad was from. Maybe this thing understood why Cihad curled into himself at night, why he screamed in a language Tony could not understand. Did it even know? Could he get it to tell him? “Do you want to talk about your dream?”

Billy grew two forelegs with grasping paw-like hands and used them to wipe at its face. “I dreamed I was back in the ocean on my home planet while it was being destroyed. But I was just a larva back then. I shouldn’t be scared of it happening again.”

The words ocean and planet were vague concepts in Tony’s mind. Earth’s atmosphere was completely toxic due to pollution from the Rift, so he understood what space was better than he understood the idea of an ocean. Going outside Eden without a respirator would result in physical mutation, tumors, and death. The word larva made his skin crawl. Planet? What was this thing talking about? How could something come from a planet? “Destroyed? Your home was destroyed?”

“All the water turned black and hot when the Planet-Eater came to feed on us.” Billy twitched its small-mammal face, then looked down at the floor. “It was so big that it blotted out the stars. The drone-priests ripped open a hole in the universe to send all the larvae somewhere safe, but It followed us here. Papa says I shouldn’t be scared because It doesn’t even have a body anymore and it’s stuck in his Book, but tonight I felt it move in my dream…”

This was completely beyond Tony. So these crawling shapeshifting things that had tormented him in the past were children from another planet? He could barely wrap his mind around the idea of an ocean, although if this was true it would make sense that something that used to live underwater would want to sleep in a bathtub. The gills made more sense too. Planet-Eater made no sense. The thing about Cihad’s precious old book keeping it stuck made no sense either. This sounded like religious superstitions that Cihad had imparted on this thing, and Tony, as a staunch atheist, had no tolerance for contemplating god-things without bodies. 

He gave it a tight lipped smile, deciding not to think about it. “Do you want to try to go back to sleep until Cynthia wakes up?”

“Can you take the Book back upstairs so It’s not around me?”

Tony nodded and shrugged, pulling himself up from his squat. His knees popped. Taking Cihad’s book back up to their bedroom was not a difficult thing for him to do, and he did genuinely want Billy to like him more. Well. As much as something made of slime was capable of liking him. He walked over to where Cihad had left the book wide open on the table in the front hallway and picked it up without a thought.

There weren’t many books in Eden. People read everything digitally because paper was an unthinkably rare resource and the only trees that weren’t outside the Dome that kept them all safe grew in the Upper Levels greenhouse parks. Most books came from before the Rift opened, they sat behind glass cases in the state history museum. Tony used to stare at one big, beautiful one called “War and Peace” and wonder what it was about. 

Cihad’s book was bigger than War and Peace. It was as large as a laptop and weighed 15 pounds. The cover was made of creamy tan leather, as smooth as a woman’s skin. When they first started dating, Cihad let him flip through it, but the words were written in a spiky alphabet he could not understand. The book had been the first indication that Cihad was hiding something, hiding some terrible secret, but at the time Tony had been too narcissistically wrapped up in not dying from liquor induced organ failure to investigate. 

Some of the sticky blood from Tony’s fingers smeared the soft cover of the book. He thought nothing of it, returned the book to its proper place on his partner’s bedside table, and went about his morning.

At this point, it was already too late. 

He went about the boring activities of daily life. Cynthia woke up, excited to finish her final few months of high school and to start her media studies course next semester. He went to work and spent a grueling 9 hours splitting beef carcasses with a bone saw. It was hard not to not think about how badly his arms hurt from holding the heavy saw for hours, it was harder not to think about the coppery smell of blood and the stench of death all around him. Tony fell into a distracted automation. He thought about his dream. He thought about the wasp driving its stinger into him and filling his body with venom. 

Why was that on his mind?

That evening, Cihad came home in a foul mood. One of the student nurses he was supposed to be supervising had mixed up the amount of medication she needed to give to a patient and almost caused a disaster. Tony listened to the boring details of his day and wondered if this clumsy girl was really the reason he was so upset. He sucked his cock but Cihad just seemed distracted the whole time and went to take a shower immediately after he came.

Was something wrong? Tony eyed Cihad in the bathroom as he brushed his teeth and combed conditioner into his dark wavy hair. With almost everyone else, he could just look at them and sense what they were thinking about. If something was wrong, would he even tell him?

“You look upset,” he said awkwardly. He leaned against the bathroom door.

Cihad gave him a quick red glance before picking up the floss. He was only wearing his pajama pants. It was hard not to stare at his body, his clear tan skin and thick chest hair, 260 pounds of muscle beneath a soft layer of fat. Tony had never met anyone as big as Cihad who had not had their genes genetically altered. It was not normal for men in Eden to get over 6 feet tall since they lived underground and subsisted on processed sludge. “I’m not upset. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“Like you and how amazing you do.” Cihad closed the distance between them and gave Tony a quick kiss with closed lips, then embraced him with the arm that was not holding the floss. “I’m so proud of you.” The warmth and strength in his body was comfortable, impossible not to press into.

All Tony wanted was to be close to him. Why did the conversation always have to circle back to his problems?  If he couldn’t talk, he could at least feel connected to Cihad physically. He slipped a hand down his pajama pants to fondle his cock. The two of them used to be able to fuck all day for the first few years they were together, especially after Tony got out of treatment and was bored out of his mind.

“I just showered. I don’t want to get dirty.” Still smiling, Cihad gently took Tony’s hand out of his pants. He grabbed the back of his head and pulled him close to give him another kiss on the mouth and a second on his forehead. “Maybe tomorrow?”

Tony sighed. Dirty? Did he mean he thought he was dirty or was he talking about sex? “You always come home late on Fridays. And I have court tomorrow for the last child support request before Cynthia turns 18, remember?”

“You’re never getting that money, Anthony. You have full custody.”

He didn’t like the use of the word “you” instead of “we”. Tony pulled away sharply so that Cihad was no longer touching him. He grabbed the doorknob hard. “I know. I’ve been trying to get Deja to fucking help pay for her kid since we were 17 years old, but I’m not giving up now. I’m going to a meeting afterwards too, if that’s what you’re going to start lecturing me about.”

“Why are you acting so–”

Tony slipped out of the bathroom before Cihad’s fat ass really made him angry. He crawled into bed and scrolled mindlessly through messages from work. Everything was fine. They were both just in bad moods. Cihad wouldn’t hide anything from him. Not really. Not the things that mattered. Cihad would never lie to him, would he?

Was he losing interest? Was he fucking someone else? The thought made him want to die. The thought filled Tony with a terror he could not express. Life without Cihad was an abyss, he had been trapped in an abyss. Life without Cihad had been a pathway to nothingness.

The leather bound book still sat on Cihad’s bedside table. Tony rolled over to grab it. After getting snapped at, Cihad probably wouldn’t come out of there for another hour, he liked to sit alone stewing in the secret caverns of his mind. The book’s cover was warm in his hands. Tony ran a finger down its spine and cracked it open, holding it on his lap.

The words still jumbled together. The spiky letters reminded Tony of the pictures he had seen of lightning bolts. Whoever had written it– and it appeared hand written, with mistakes and scribbled out words– had a shaky hand. Cihad claimed that it was a religious object, and must have realized he had slipped up by saying that, since 70% of Eden’s population followed state-atheism and the rest worshipped strange numbers and geometry at the Weil Churches. It didn’t make any sense. How could Cihad have such a rare item in his possession? It could not have come from Eden. 

Cihad must have been born outside of Eden. It was why he had this book. It was why Billy was different from the other gooey invertebrates. It was why Cihad’s voice sounded funny sometimes, why he sometimes pronounced “th” sounds all wrong. He tried to claim he had a speech impediment, but Tony knew that was a lie. As far as Tony knew, the only other habitable places on Earth were the Colonies of Serenity and Green River, both of which were far away and barely even traded goods with Eden. But the people in Serenity and Green River spoke English, he had seen it on a brand of imported applesauce. 

If he could read this book, maybe he could finally understand his partner. 

Even after Cihad slunk out of the bathroom and got into bed without saying a word, Tony flipped through the book. He liked the weight of it in his lap, but that was all he got out of it. There weren’t even any pictures. As he neared the end, the writing became more cramped and frantic, trailing off at random intervals. He scratched the edge of one fingernail against one of the words to see if any of the red ink would flake off. It looked like dried blood.

That was funny. He had been so worried about smearing his own blood on it that morning. 

Tony fell asleep holding the book that he was sure came from…somewhere else. And he dreamed.

He was back in the green field under the blue sky and warm sun. Tony turned his face up to it, smiling. He was still in his own body, but there were cattle grazing all around him. It was strange. The cattle that Prosperity Inc raised in protected concrete feedlots next to Eden were all light brown, genetically engineered and overbred to be hornless, hulking monstrosities that bellowed their death-screams on the kill-floor. These creatures were smaller, more docile, with black curly hides and a white stripe around their bellies. Tony held his hand out to one and she ambled peacefully over to him, nuzzling at him for affection.

“Hey, pretty girl,” he told her, rubbing her furry head. He felt bad for the cattle at work, he hated the cruel way that they were treated only to get killed and strung up on meat hooks for people like him to butcher. The cow sniffed him, blinking her big brown eyes with their long curled lashes. “Hey girl.”

The cow blew out a huge sneeze and went back to grazing. Tony laughed.

“You like animals?” A man’s voice. It was deep and friendly, with a slow twang of another accent Tony had never heard before. He turned to look for the source of the voice. A man stood there, watching him among the herd of cows.

The man was an inch or two shorter than Cihad, but broader around the arms and shoulders. His skin was the same dark shade as Tony’s, his coily black hair was cut close to his scalp. The man stood with a comfortable, relaxed posture that was more easy going than Cihad’s. His heavily lidded eyes gave him a look of perpetual sleepiness, but he had a wide mouth and a gentle smile. He wore dark blue jeans and a turquoise bolo tie over a button up. 

Tony was aware that this was a dream. He was at home asleep in the darkness next to Cihad, not talking to this stranger outside in the daylight. It wouldn’t hurt to answer this figment of his imagination. “I don’t know anything about animals other than how to cut them up.”

“Aw.” The man reached over to scratch one of the cows and she switched her tail at him. “That don’t matter. The way I see it, animals ain’t no different than humans.”

“I guess.” Tony thought about the screaming cows trampling over themselves in the chutes that led to the kill floor.

“You can call me Jerry. Jeremiah.”

“Tony. Anthony.”

“I know. We’re in your mind right now.”

A dream that understood it was a dream? Tony laughed, shook his head. He walked over to where Jerry stood watching him. “So what? This is my subconscious, right? You represent a part of my brain that’s trying to tell me something? I don’t see how someone who looks like you could represent any part of me.”

Warm breeze blew through the pasture. One side of Jerry’s wide, sensuous mouth tilted up. He looked down at himself and brushed dirt from the front of his button up. “So you like the way I look right now? You find me attractive?”

OK, so this was the horny part of his brain. He was probably just hurt and frustrated that Cihad hadn’t wanted to fuck him before bed, so he had imagined some enormous cowboy who was exactly his type. Tony almost groaned. Why was he such a degenerate? What was this, a lucid wet dream? He had never been able to remember anything or actively make choices in his dreams before. 

He sat down in the thick grass, drawing his knees up to his chest and looking up at the sky. White fluffy clouds passed lazily above him. He had never seen clouds, how was it possible for him to imagine them this clearly? All around him, the cattle were moo-ing and ripping grass up out of the soil. This was the second vivid dream in two days. Again, Tony contemplated the dream of the wasp stinging him. He was no analyst but the imagery of something thrusting a hard length into his body was not lost on him.

What was Cihad’s problem anyway? It wasn’t like he was pushing him away, but he wasn’t letting him in either. There was no way of knowing if it was Tony’s fault or just another case of his brain working fucking wrong.

Jerry’s shadow blocked out the sun. Tony squinted up at him. The dream man moved with the predatory leisure of a big cat, muscles rippling in his long arms and legs. He put his hands on his hips, looking down. “What do you find attractive about my body?”

His subconscious was definitely trying to tell him something. This was Tony’s mind. What was the big deal if he played along and learned something about himself? He let his gaze drift slowly up and down Jerry. “You’re big. You probably have a huge dick. But you have a gentle face.”

“It ain’t really my face,” Jerry said, in that strange twang. He extended a callused hand with short clean nails. Tony took it and allowed him to pull him up to his feet, feeling the strength in his grip. That generous half-smile never left him. He smelled lightly of body odor and something oily and insectile that Tony could not quite describe. 

Jerry did not let go of his hand and Tony did not pull away. His heart started to beat faster, his neck started getting hot. He was so close that he could see Jerry’s short curled eyelashes. Blood pulsed where their skin met, but Jerry’s body temperature was cold, almost clammy. He watched the other man’s realization of this, he watched Jerry’s eyes widen and felt his big fingers squeeze against his own warm skin.

This was something straight out of a fantasy. Big strong cowboy, working with his animals in the pasture. Except there were no cowboys and there were no pastures in Eden. What sort of dream was this?

He did not want to stop touching Jerry. It was difficult to keep himself from lurching forward to kiss the man his mind had created for him. Tony tried to breathe. Fuck, was he getting hard? He could barely remember his last sex dream, just like he could barely remember any of his dreams. The hazy images of his last one involved Luis Valencian from work fucking him in the breakroom, and then something happened with his shoes turning into sandwiches. Which was to say, it had been dream-like nonsense. This almost seemed…real. 

Not that Tony thought it was cheating to mess around in his own dreams. He wasn’t worried about that. He loved Cihad and Cihad loved him, Tony would never willingly betray that trust in his waking life. The only subconscious desires that frightened him were ones of relapse and death.

As if reading his mind, Jerry used his other hand to grasp Tony’s chin and tilt his head up so that they were staring into each other's eyes. Tony licked his lips but did not avert his gaze like he usually did. Jerry kept smiling at him. The oily smell grew stronger.

“I’ve felt your mind callin’ out to me for years,” said Jerry. He bent and moved his face closer until their noses were almost touching. One of his fingers ran down Tony’s jawline. “When you’re alone with your thoughts. When your thirst for your own annihilation is tryin’ to pull you away from the ones you love. I’ve tasted your blood and know your desire. We share an appetite for destruction.”

“S-sure.” Tony’s breath hitched. His thumb stroked the back of Jerry’s hand, moving faster as he grew more excited. The things people said in dreams never made sense. This was just his subconscious vomiting up his fear of relapse. He didn’t care about what Jerry was saying, all that he cared about was Jerry’s body.

Stupid Cihad. This was his fault. 

“You’re different from the others. You’re goin’ to willingly give your body to me.”

Hell yeah he was. Tony parted his lips and pressed his mouth into Jerry's briefly to taste him before pulling away again. He felt Jerry’s hand move to twist in his hair, then they were kissing again. Jerry moved hesitantly at first, slowly as if he was curious, Tony more insistent. Tony opened his mouth, moving his body against his, running his hands down his back and into the waistband of his jeans to pull Jerry’s hips closer. Now, he needed this now. Something, human touch, connection, anything. Jerry’s wet tongue entered his mouth for only a tantalizing moment before he pulled back again.

Please don’t wake up, please don’t wake up. When Tony woke up, he would have to face a brutal day of sitting in court, listening to his attorney argue about why he deserved child support backpay. He would have to suffer through it without relief, without distraction, without the option to go home afterwards and drink himself into complete obliteration. Here? In the dream there was a hot figment of his imagination that wanted to dick him down.

He was hot all over! This wasn’t like Cihad, whose kisses were soft and gentle one minute, then bursting with animalistic lust the next. This was a fresh curiosity. Jerry’s wide mouth seemed to consume him. 

If this was a figment of Tony’s desire, he had to have a huge cock. Tony sank down to his knees in front of him. He realized that he was shaking. His skin was on fire, his own groin was throbbing with need with every pounding heartbeat. Nothing mattered but closeness, his hunger.  He needed this. He wanted this. He wanted him! Tony looked up at Jerry, smiling, and reached up to–

“Not yet.” Jerry grabbed his wrist. He licked his lips, hovering above him. His shadow continued to blot out the sun. “Not until we meet for real.”

“I want you now.” He would beg for it if he had to.

“I’ll ask you to give yourself to me three times.” 

“I’ll give myself to you.”

And Jerry laughed and laughed as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world, running his hand down Tony’s jawline again, lingering on the spot where he had nicked himself with the razor. Jerry’s skin no longer felt cold, it was as warm as Tony’s. The insectile, oily smell coming off him was no longer off-putting, it was tantalizing. How was his mind capable of creating this? How was his mind capable of creating him?

The dream ended just as he leaned in for another kiss. Tony returned to his waking life with a shock as his phone screamed its alarm.

He wiped at his sweaty face and sat up, panting and aroused. Another dream. Jerry had only been a dream. His touch, his smell, would only exist in Tony’s memories. Fuck, what was happening to him? He couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up hard. Tony brushed away the strands of hair that were falling into his face and kicked away the blankets that had tangled around his legs.

The house was quiet. Cihad had already left to go to the gym. Tony hurried to the bathroom so that he could shower and jerk off to the thought of Cihad lifting weights, but when he came, the image of Jerry’s wide mouth came to his mind unbidden.

Time blurred together. Days passed. Court. No child support backpay. Screaming at Deja’s lawyer. Another AA meeting. Work. Covered in cow’s blood at work. Fantasizing about drinking. Another AA meeting. Cihad handing him coffee. Cihad fucking him. Work. More work. Begging for crumbs of assistance from social services. Getting ignored by social services. Getting ignored by Cihad. Work. Fantasizing about drinking. Skipping AA meetings. Cihad handing him coffee. Cihad fucking him. Fantasizing about Jerry.

Some sort of lens seemed to have come over Tony’s vision. Light hurt his eyes. The nebulous information he saw floating around people, the secret thoughts and truths, became more intense, overwhelming. Information started pouring into his head without warning. Migraines began to plague him relentlessly, rendering him weak and helpless.

“I want you to get a CT scan,” Cihad told him one night, as Tony helplessly moaned and writhed on the floor of the dark bathroom, holding his head. “You need to go to the ER.”

It felt like someone was driving spikes into his brain through his eye sockets. Even the smallest sound or stimuli from light caused blinding shocks of pain that rippled through his head and down his spine. Tony pressed his burning face into the cool tile floor. “No hospital. I already told you no.” Bile rose in his throat but he did not have anything left in his belly to throw up since the onset of the migraine. 

What had he done to deserve this? The vomiting and suffering on the bathroom floor chapter of his life was supposed to have ended when he got sober! How was this fair? He would be better off if he was still drinking!

Cihad had a cool wet rag that he patiently held to the back of Tony’s neck. He sighed, clearly trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I can’t stand seeing you like this. Please, let me take you to the ER so they can help you.”

“You’ll just tell them not to give me painkillers.”

The wet rag pulled up and left him without comfort or relief. Tony winced. Had he said that out loud? The pressure building behind his eyes made him want to bash his head against the floor until it stopped.

“How can you say that?” Cihad’s voice took on that wounded tone that made him unable to say ‘th’s’ and mess up his sentences. Absurd. His big red eyes were probably welling up with tears. “You think I want to watching you suffer? Do you like to suffer? You would rather laying here in pain than do something about it? Get up. You’re getting up now, I am taking you to the hospital.”

“I told you I don’t– just leave me alone!”

There was no fighting it. He was manhandled onto the metro, where he vomited all over himself, nearly screaming from the way the bright lights jabbed knives of pain through his eye sockets. Cihad forcibly dragged him to the ER, where the doctors found nothing on the CT scans. No cause for the migraines. No solution, except to pump him full of morphine for the pain. Tony’s heart fluttered nervously as he watched Cihad’s mouth tighten as they hooked up his IV.

The warm, cloud-like obliteration of the opiate opened up the old addiction pathways in Tony’s brain that had been closed for the last 6 years. It took away his pain. It took away his self-hatred. It took away his fear and anxiety. Comfortable nothingness. His consciousness floated away while his body rested in his hospital bed, Cihad stewing in hateful silence beside him. 

In the haze of annihilation, Tony returned to the man-of-his-dreams.

This time, Jerry sat at the kitchen table in his house. Tony was not shocked to see him there. It was like Jerry had been living with him this whole time. Jerry’s clothes were different. He wore the same tight green scrubs as Cihad did, the same white tennis shoes. There was a plate of food in front of him and another in front of an empty chair. He smiled at Tony as if he had been waiting for him to come to dinner.

“You’ve had a hard day,” said Jerry. “I thought you’d be hungry.”

It was strange, wasn’t it? It was strange for him to dream of the same man twice. As far as he knew, he had never seen anyone who looked like Jerry. Perhaps his appearance was a hodgepodge of different people his mind found sexually attractive. Tony wasn’t complaining. At least he was no longer in pain.

And he was hungry. Upon each plate was a large ribeye steak, still warm from whatever pan they had been cooked on. The smell of warm flesh made Tony salivate. He knew meat. He knew that a real steak cost an entire day’s worth of pay. Nobody who worked in the Prosperity meat packing plants could afford to eat the products they produced. There were days that Tony pretended not to care about this and there were days when the thought of eating flesh made him ill, but this was not one of those days. He nodded at Jerry, then sat down at the table across from him.

The light in the kitchen was dim, almost romantic. There was no sign of Cihad, Cynthia, or Billy inside the dream house.

“Thanks.” His stomach growled. Tony began cutting into the steak. It was rare and pink fluid leaked out from it onto his plate. His hands started to shake and suddenly he was ravenous, like he had not eaten in weeks. All that mattered was the flesh in front of him. The first bite was so tender, coppery and metallic with the taste of blood and absolutely delicious that Tony had to close his eyes. The knife dragged across the plate. Hungry. He realized that he was eating too fast, that he was shoving it into his mouth, that he was barely chewing, but he did not care. 

Jerry was not eating. Jerry was watching him with hungry eyes. “You’ve got a big appetite.”

“I’ve got an appetite for your dick,” Tony said with his mouth full. There were no napkins on the table. “You gonna fuck me this time or am I gonna wake up before we get to the good part again?”

He couldn’t stop staring at Jerry’s wide, generous mouth. The dream man sat in the chair Cihad usually sat in, as comfortable as a big cat. His hands were folded in front of him on the table and Tony noticed that he had a gold wedding band on his ring finger. It was a strange detail for him to have dreamed up. “Not yet. You haven’t let me all the way in yet.”

Sure. Whatever that meant. Tony shoveled another bite into his mouth, hunching over his plate. He could not remember the last time he had a meal this good. 

“How bad has your head been hurtin’?” Jerry leaned back, his eyebrows raised appraisingly. A bottle of red wine and two silver glasses materialized out of thin air next to his plate. 

“Bad enough to make me wish I was dead.” He was surprised he said it out loud, but this was his own mind. If Jerry was a part of him, he already knew how bad the migraines were. He already knew how Tony would do anything to make the pain end. 

“It won’t last much longer.” Jerry did not sound sympathetic. He started to uncork the wine bottle. The hair on the back of Tony’s neck prickled and he watched Jerry pour at least 6 ounces of red liquid into the silver glasses. “I just need to open up your eyes. Take this.” With careful grace, he picked up one glass by the stem and held it out to Tony.

Tony took it without hesitation. Yes. That was exactly what he needed. Why had he always been so worried about dreaming about relapsing? This was only a dream. It was his dream, it was his mind, and he was allowed to get some relief. Jerry was part of his subconscious and understood what he needed. He could take the edge off. It was all he wanted.

What would Cihad say if he told him that he was having relapse dreams about drinking with some strange man he wanted to fuck? Cihad didn’t need to know. He could have his secrets too.

A very small part of him was screaming that this was all wrong. He needed to wake up! He needed to wake up, now! Tony smothered it.

“Drink,” said Jerry. He did not take his heavy-lidded gaze from Tony. There was...there was something behind it. Something old. For a second, those tired eyes appeared as faceted and compounded as an insect’s. 

Something was buzzing. Or beeping? Beeping.

Tony lifted the cup to his lips and did as he was told. That very small, scared part of himself disappeared. Oh, he remembered the bitter taste of wine. He drank deeply. It burned going down, but he had never been so thirsty in his life. 

“Are you happy?” Jerry asked him. “That stuff was killing you. Your organs were shutting down when I first saw you. It made you weak. It made you choose it instead of your own offspring over and over again until you wished you were dead. You still want to drink it?”

He finished the glass and set it down, breathing heavily. Tony’s head reeled. His body burned, inhibitions floating away. There was a big sexy man in front of him dressed exactly like Cihad and all he could think of was how he wanted to rip those tight scrubs off his muscular body. He shifted in his chair uncomfortably to settle himself, crossed his legs. “Yes,” he said. He swallowed the taste of wine. “Yes, I want it.”

“Will you give yourself to me?” Jerry asked him for the second time.

“I will,” Tony answered. He meant it. He had never wanted something so bad in his life. His mind was trying to comfort him by putting him in these dreams. He knew he was unhappy.

They sat there in the dark kitchen, Tony’s head swirling, Jerry watching him from across the table. Neither of them moved, caught by each other’s gaze. They didn’t need to move. They did not need to speak. It was peaceful. For a while he existed free from pain. For a while he was completely desired. 

Slowly, the beeping noises in the background of the dream grew more obnoxious until everything faded and Tony found himself back in the land of the living. The piercing pain was back. He closed his eyes and sank back into his hospital bed, Cihad hovering nervously beside him.

They gave him a prescription of painkillers and told him he could go back to work. If the doctors couldn’t find the source of the migraines, at least they could stop the pain. They could give him something to make him functional. Cihad said nothing when he saw Tony with the bottle of opiates, he just got all grim and quiet like he was judging him. Like he was waiting for something. He could never understand.

It was too late anyway. It had been too late for weeks.

It was like clockwork. Tony went to the liquor store after work the next day and bought four shooter bottles of gin, drank one of them on the metro home and followed it with one of the painkillers. Tony did not plan for this, it was not thought out. His body seemed to move on its own, it was the natural thing to do. The wine that Jerry had offered to him in his dream seemed to call out for him.  Why not? Why not? He was in pain. He was tired, frustrated, and in pain. 

And more than anything else, he wanted to be unconscious. He wanted to be next-to-dead. He wanted to be lying there in bed limp while his mind wandered. He wanted to dream. He wanted to see the man-of-his-dreams. Jerry told him that he would ask him to give himself three times, and he wanted to know what would happen next. Tony wanted to get fucked, and Cihad certainly wasn’t going to be doing any of that tonight.

Friday again. It was Friday again, which meant that Cihad would not be home until after midnight, and when he returned he would be sullen and hostile. What was it he did on Friday nights? Tony knew that the hospital did not need him to be there for 18 straight hours every Friday. Where was he going? What was he doing? Was Cihad cheating on him? It was the only thing that made any sense. Who was he fucking? What else was he keeping from him?

Being unable to know his lover’s thoughts made Tony feel insane!

His thoughts became jumbled and Tony’s body felt like he had just slipped into a warm bath. Everything became slow. How did he get off the metro? How did he get home? All he knew was that the opiate and the liquor combined had totally numbed the unbearable pain in his head. He remembered opening the front door and struggling to get his shoes off. Billy shrank to the size of a kitten and skittered under the couch when it saw him. Tony laughed at it and headed upstairs.

It was going to be a good night. Six years of sobriety meant that his tolerance was low, so he would have to be careful. He would have to time it out so that Cihad wouldn’t suspect anything when he got home. Cynthia was at Rachel’s house (why did it seem like Cynthia was always gone? Was something wrong?) 

If he wasn’t careful…how long could a dream last? 

Tony swallowed another two painkillers, then followed them with the rest of the gin. His vision started to blur. The bottles were a problem. Had to make sure he found somewhere to hide the bottles so that Cihad wouldn’t see them and get upset. He shoved them clinking into the drawer of his bedside table, hesitated, then stumbled to the bathroom to swish around some mouthwash to get rid of the smell.

See? He thought, as he stared at his own face in the mirror. His eyes were glazed and unfocused. Tony practiced a smile. He could have his secrets too. Cihad didn’t have to worry. It wasn’t like he was relapsing, it wasn’t like he was really going to start drinking again. All he wanted was a little relief and one night of extended unconsciousness. This was a one time thing. This wouldn’t happen again. This couldn’t happen again. This could only happen on Fridays when Cihad was gone. That was fair, wasn’t it? He could control it this time. 

As he watched himself, half a second of terror exploded in his mind. What was he doing?? He was ruining everything he had worked so hard for! He needed to stop before it was too late!

The comforting numbness was too pleasurable. Tony's arms and legs grew heavy. His respirations slowed. All of his worry leaked from his mind and there was only the desire to sleep, to dream. His clothes seemed to be constricting his movement so he stripped down to his underwear and crawled into bed. 5:45 pm. It would be enough time to dream. It would be enough time to answer Jerry for the third time.

Everything was soft and warm and peaceful. Tony closed his eyes. This time, he did not drift away into an easy sleep. This time, he plunged into the darkness as the chemicals he had ingested brought his mind to a crashing halt and froze his body so that he could not move. 

Blackout. 

In the third dream, Tony woke up alone on the kill floor. The Prosperity slaughterhouse was located in a vast warehouse in the Industrial quarter of the Lower Levels. It was just as cold and bright as it was in his waking life. He stood in front of the metal chutes that the cattle walked down until they came to the circular slaughter bay, where workers would casually stun them with a blow to the head with a captive bolt gun. After that, the cow’s hind legs would be chained and attached to a meat hook, dragged up into the air to hang so that another worker could slit its throat with a sticking knife and let it drain until people like Tony could reduce it to piles of useful parts. Sometimes the cows were still conscious when they were hooked, they would always buck and scream until they broke all the bones in their hind legs. 

He did not like it there. He hated it. He hated the casual cruelty he was forced to witness. After his dream of Jerry in the sunny pasture with his happy herd of cattle, all this just seemed…wrong.

Strangely, he was still only wearing his underwear. Tony crossed his arms and shivered. The kill-floor was always kept under 40 degrees so that the meat wouldn’t spoil. 

A piece of metal machinery clanged somewhere. Tony flinched. He did not want to dream about work. This was not his fantasy.

On a metal table next to him was one of the sticking knives with a six inch blade. Tony frowned at it. 

“I thought this would be familiar enough for both of us.” Jerry’s voice came from behind him. Tony turned. He had appeared out of nowhere, just like the wine bottle had in the last dream. This time, he wore a rubber apron, big rubber boots, and plastic gloves that came up to his elbows. The same things Tony wore at work to keep the blood off his clothes. He tilted his head, smiling like he always did. His eyes crinkled up.  “What do you think?”

“It’s--” Something clanged again. Tony looked around. The bright fluorescent lights made everything seem white and cold. They seemed to hum. Everything smelled like blood and harsh cleaning solutions. 

Jerry slowly approached him. He leaned in to kiss Tony, pushing against him, sliding one of his gloved hands up the side of his body. Heat flowed off him in waves, the only heat in this wretched place. Jerry opened his mouth this time, kissed him harder, less curiously. He slipped his tongue in to work against Tony’s. Their teeth clicked together. Jerry was grabbing the back of his head again, holding him still. He licked a long line up Tony’s neck, then pulled back again to stare hungrily.

The uncomfortable setting and the fact that he was almost naked unsettled Tony, but his growing arousal and excitement shoved those feelings aside. He pressed his hips against Jerry’s, almost grinding against him for relief. Again, he reached to try to slip his hands into Jerry’s pants to get at his cock, and again Jerry restrained his wrists so that he couldn’t. 

He gritted his teeth, panting, his only thought was of how badly he wanted Jerry’s cock. It was big. He knew it had to be big. Pressure built in his groin. “Ask me,” he said. Tony tried to break Jerry’s grip on his wrists and get at him but the other man was too strong. “Go ahead and ask me.”

Jerry rubbed the thin skin of Tony’s left wrist with his thumb. He traced it across the thick white scar he had from the time he tried and failed to kill himself when he was 14 years old. It would have worked if his mom hadn’t found him passed out in a puddle of his own blood. Some of the nerves there were permanently damaged and sent painful little jolts up Tony’s forearm, causing him to hiss. “Do you still want to die?” he asked contemplatively, turning Tony’s arm over so he could see the contrast of the jagged scar against his dark skin. 

“I want you to fuck me.” The rubber apron and gloves were turning him on.

“Same thing, ain’t it?”

Something had changed. Something was happening. Tony shifted his gaze around the freezing bright warehouse and its metal machinery of death as Jerry gently caressed his skin. Was something wrong? “Just ask me.”

Jerry kissed him tenderly on his forehead the same way that Cihad always did. He never stopped smiling with his wide mouth. Something was– was something rippling beneath his skin? The bright light was playing tricks. He did not let go of Tony’s wrists. For the third time, he asked:  “Will you give yourself to me, Anthony Delmont?” 

“I will.”

In the background, the air of the slaughterhouse seemed to buzz as if from the wings of a monstrous insect.

There was the clang of metal again. Something cold touched his wrists, Tony looked down and saw that tight chains had appeared around them as if by magic. Excitement swirled up inside of him. OK. That was OK. He had always liked to be tied up, but sometimes it made Cihad get all upset and sensitive when Tony asked him to be rougher. Guilt, probably. Cihad feared his own base desires, he liked to think of himself as a good boy. There was a thin line between having fun and acting as a participant in someone else’s self harm. Jerry lacked that emotional component since he was a figment of Tony’s imagination.

Wasn’t he?

Tony rattled the chains. Fuck, he was so horny. He wanted Jerry inside him, he wanted to feel close. Who cared if this dream was creepy? “You’re into this? What, you wanna hold me down?”

“I don’t want you to be wigglin’ around and hurtin’ yourself.” 

“I won’t–”

Without warning, Jerry yanked Tony’s arms up and hooked the chains over one of the meat hooks hanging above them. It stretched his body upwards, forcing him to stand on his tiptoes or bear all his weight in his arms and shoulders. He became aware of how exposed he was, how he was nearly naked and unable to run if he wanted. It was just a dream. This was a dream. Jerry was a creation of his subconscious, this didn’t have to be frightening just because it was in Tony’s mind.

He struggled to free his wrists. “I– I don’t think I can blow you like this, man.” A twinge of fear infected his state of arousal. It hurt to have to stand on his toes.

“I told you that ain’t happenin’ until we meet face to face. I’ve been trapped and bodiless for 200 years, I can wait a few more months until you help me get my new body.” Jerry smoothed down the rubber apron.

“What do you mean, trapped?”

“Why do you think your lover never wants to talk to you about where his Book came from?”

Wait, this was just his mind, wasn’t it? This was just his memories from that early morning weeks ago where Billy asked him to take Cihad’s book upstairs. The morning that he had dreamed of being stung by an enormous wasp…

The buzzing grew louder and louder. And, still smiling gently with his wide mouth, Jerry held the sticking knife.

In that moment, it reminded Tony of the wasp’s stinger.

He was the cow.

“No, wait, wait!” Strung up as he was, Tony could not move. He could not get away. Oh fuck, this wasn’t a sex dream, this was a nightmare. His balls felt like they had shriveled up. This was his fault, this was because he had drugged himself and polluted the chemicals in his mind with alcohol in his desperation to see Jerry! “Hold on, why are you doing this?”

Jerry looked down at the knife. His eyebrows furrowed. “Thought you wanted me inside you, Anthony.”

Was he fucking with him? Tony attempted to yank his arms out of the chains, wrenching his shoulder in the process. Despite the cold, sweat beaded on his chest and forehead. “Don’t touch me.” Jerry was close to him, too close, close enough to feel his body heat. Tony tried to kick him in the groin, slipped and wrenched his shoulder even worse. Pain exploded down his arms. His heart pounded wildly. There was no way for him to get away! There was nothing he could do to fight back! “Don’t touch me. Get back!”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t!”  

Jerry would have been an old pro at working the kill floor. He didn’t hesitate. One of his big gentle hands grasped Tony’s shoulder to keep him from squirming away. The other tensed and then thrust the long blade into Tony’s belly beneath his naval. 

The force took his breath away. Tony started to scream and jerk like a worm impaled on a hook but Jerry held him in place. The pain was nothing compared to the intrusion of the hard blade twisting inside his guts. Wake up, he needed to wake up! Jerry slowly pulled the knife out of him with a wet slick pop, laughing quietly at the way it made him scream louder as he tried to buck away. Blood poured from the gash in hot bursts as he thrashed, soaking Tony’s underwear and staining them red. It trickled down his naked legs to drip down the grate below.

“Please,” Tony whimpered. His screams had made his voice ragged. For reasons he could not explain, the struggle and fear was making him hard again. He was going to die in this dream! His sexual fantasy was going to kill him! “I don’t understand!”

Jerry said nothing. He stuck out two fingers to slide against the gushing wound, making Tony tremble and gasp. The fingers came away dripping with blood. Jerry stuck them into his wide, smiling mouth to taste him intimately.

The lens was completely torn from Tony’s eyes. This was not a man, this was a vessel! He saw the Planet-Eater with its unimaginable size! A twisted, insectile monstrosity with wings so vast that they blotted out the sun! Its terrible teeth and multi-faceted eyes! He saw its hunger and fury and desire to dominate all life! He saw its crushing loneliness! His brain could not process this! It was too much, everything was too much, he did not want to see this, he did not want to know this!

Wake up! He had to wake up! Tony started to fight and scream and scream and—-

“Wake up! Wake up, Anthony!”

Someone was shaking him. He was shaking? 

“I need you to wake up now!”

Tony’s eyes shot open. The bedroom was dark, it was late. Cihad knelt over him, shaking him roughly, terror leaking from him like sweat. When he saw him open his eyes, when he heard him gasp for air like a dying fish, Cihad made a noise like something had broken inside of him and said three words in a language Tony could not understand.

His first instinct was to wrap his arms around the man who loved him. His second was to scramble up, to get away! He wasn’t safe! The wasp had stung him! But Tony’s body would not listen. He could barely keep his eyes open, much less muster the energy for escape. His arms and legs were so heavy and Cihad was pressing his massive weight down on him somehow.

Something had happened.

“You weren’t breathing right,” Cihad said tightly as if he was speaking around his own closed throat. Tony realized that he was straddling his helpless body, pinning him with a knee on either side of his hips, making it harder for him to move. His weight was crushing his ribs. The scared, betrayed look on his face was worse than anger. “You were almost choking! You wouldn’t wake up.”

Tony’s gaze shifted towards the bedside table where the Book sat. Panic like ice water shot through his veins.

 He could feel It! It was watching him. How long had It been watching him? It had told him from the start what it wanted from him and he was too stupid to understand it wasn’t a dream. Every atheistic thought inside him shriveled and died after seeing the vision of Jerry— no, not Jerry, the vision of the bodiless Thing in Cihad’s Book. It was here! It was here and it was looking for its body. Something had happened! Something had pulled the veil from his eyes and shown him the violent desires of a hungry god from beyond the universe! It wasn’t coming, it was already here! 

And Cihad brought it here. Into their house. That was it. The big secret. Cihad already knew. He knew what it was. He knew its hunger and brought it here anyways.

There was no way that Tony could trust him anymore. 

His tongue was thick in his mouth. He stared up at Cihad. Something wet dripped on his face. It was too dark to see if it was a tear or a drop of sweat.

“It’s my fault.” Cihad still sounded choked. He leaned down to kiss Tony’s forehead, then hunched to press his face into the crook of his neck. He shuddered once. “You can’t moderate. It’s not your fault, this is your illness. I’ve been working too much, I told Si– I told my manager that I need to be at home with you on Friday nights! I should have told the doctors to only give you tylenol. But it’s OK. It’s OK, it’s not like you started drinking again. It’s OK. You were just in pain. We can figure that out. We can figure that out together.”

All of their conversations came down to control and Tony’s lack of it. 

That was about all he could take of being pinned down on his back by a huge and terrifying man. With massive effort, Tony thrashed and kicked until Cihad sat back up and took his full weight off his chest. If he had not been sitting on his legs he would have scrambled out of bed and locked himself in the bathroom. Tony tried to shove at him and briefly contemplated hitting him.

“Motherfucker,” he wheezed. Every nerve in him was screaming at him to run! He was going to die if he did not get away! “What have you done?”

“Don’t swear at me like that.”

“You’ve fucked me. You’ve done something to me! How could you do this to me?!”

“You’re confused. Your brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen because you took too many painkillers and it slowed your breathing.”

“I only took two!” Tony lied, natural as anything. He shoved at him again. It was like pushing a brick wall. Cihad sat there and took it without moving. His face did not drop his expression of dumb terror. Why was Cihad so scared? He was not the one who had been targeted by something that had destroyed worlds! He was not the one who had offered himself up to it! He was not the one who wanted to fuck it! “Get off me! You did this! You brought that thing here! You never told me about this! You never said anything!”

The accusations were like bullets. Cihad swallowed hard, staring. His face was shadowed and strained from being out of the house for 18 hours. Slowly, tenderly, he tried to reach out to take Tony’s face in his hands, but was smacked away.

Still, he said nothing. It was as good as a confession. 

This was too much. It was all too much. He could feel the consciousness inside of the Book, the demon that was trapped there, spreading its tendrils towards him. Oh god, it was all over him. He could feel it all over him! He had let it inside him and it was too late. Even now, despite the helpless terror, arousal bloomed inside of him like a flower. If he wasn’t so scared and angry, he might have taken advantage of having Cihad’s crotch smashed against his in this vulnerable position. Tony pressed his hands over his stomach. “How could you bring that thing into the same house where my daughter slept?!”

“Our daughter.” For a second, Tony wondered if those horrible red eyes were welling up with tears. He wondered if Cihad would finally cry in front of him and the closed door of his heart would burst open, pouring out all the secrets that hurt him so badly. But the moment was over. Cihad’s mouth stopped trembling and a hard shell seemed to come over him. “I– I don’t understand why you’re so angry at me?  I’m worried about you. I’m always worried about you because I love you and I don’t know what I would do if you weren’t in my life. But you’re unhappy all the time now and I can’t do anything to fix it! Am I not enough for you? What do you want me to do?”

It was too late for all that. Tony felt his heart crack anyway, then pushed any feelings of tenderness away. “I’ll settle for you telling me exactly where your Book came from and why you fucking brought it here.” 

“That’s why you’re so upset? Has Billy been filling your head with its fairy tales?” Cihad smiled at him sadly. “I already told you about the book. It’s just a family heirloom. My Dad left it to me after h--he died.”

Liar. He was even lying to himself. Tony did not need his psychic ability to understand the dishonest shifting of his gaze. He did not reply. What was he supposed to tell Cihad? It had him. The unspeakable thing had him, it had infiltrated his body, he could feel microscopic pieces of it crawling around his cells. He could feel it altering him! Tampering and manipulating! How long until there was nothing of him left? How could Cihad let this happen to him? They were supposed to love each other. 

Cihad tried pathetically again. “I can—can put it away if it’s upsetting you.”

“I’m sleeping on the couch tonight,” Tony said sharply. He could feel his heart shattering into sharp pieces. “Get off me.”

He did not go back to sleep that night. He could not allow himself to close his eyes. Could not permit the temptation. Could not permit his desires. Tony lay awake in the dark all night, pouring sweat.

His seduction by the hungry god from beyond the edges of the universe had only just begun.

[anonymousanomalyinthebuilding]

[blooblooded]

Cihad's No-Good Very Bad Day

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS

Saint would never leave the three floors that made up Internal Operations. Cihad thought about this as he clocked in to his weekly shift at the facility’s infirmary. He may have gotten out, he may have been pulled out of the Program when he was 18 years old, but Saint would be here forever.

It was miserable. To add insult to injury, Silas told him that he could only work in the infirmary 2nd shift on Friday nights. She may have framed this as if it was for his benefit, as if working an evening shift would be better for his schedule as a single father. It had effectively destroyed his social life, and he knew she had done that on purpose. How was he supposed to date anyone if he worked here 5pm-12am every Friday night after an entire day working himself to the bone as Eden’s Director of Nursing? 

Not that Cihad wanted to start dating again. He hadn’t had sex in well over a year and didn’t care. After what he had done– after everything that had happened with Cathy last year, he was just thankful that he had started sleeping at night again. 

Better not to think about that. He couldn’t let himself think about that. Cihad sighed, walking into the infirmary where he hoped to spend an uneventful evening. Hopefully Cynthia would not call him. She was spending the night at Tony’s apartment, just like she did every Friday evening. She was 19 now and did not have to follow the custody arrangement, but still chose to spend one night a week with her biological father. 

Sometimes he wondered what they thought he did on Fridays. It gnawed constantly in the back of Tony’s mind, he knew that. His secrets lingered over Tony like a heavy cloud. Try as he might, this was one secret that Tony could not pry out of him. Cihad was not an open Book to the invasive psychic like everyone else was.

Tony could never know. Cynthia could never know. Not only would knowing about his involvement in the Program put them in danger, it would make them hate him. There were enough reasons for Tony to hate him already.

The nurse who had worked the day shift glanced up at him as he came in. She was a lazy young Artificial, like the majority of the staff, and had lofty aspirations of becoming a neuroscientist. “I’m glad to see you, I’ve been counting down the hours until my shift ends. I hate this place so bad.”

That was the thing that Cihad had never been able to understand. Almost all of the staff, from the Handlers to the research team, claimed that they hated working in Internal Operations. They hated working with the kids. They hated the long hours. They hated how the prestigious graduate degrees they all lusted after required a year long internship here. But they didn’t have to do it. They didn’t have to work here. They all chose to keep coming back day after day. If Cihad decided that he didn’t want to be here every Friday night, Silas might get it in her head that he needed to be taught a lesson.

“It was that terrible?” he asked her, sitting down in a chair behind the desk. The infirmary was a large rectangular room with light blue walls. There was a front desk when you first came in, and behind that, one exam room with a metal table. Always too cold. Cihad pulled on a soft old sweatshirt that Cathy bought for his birthday one year over his scrubs.

The Artificial girl rolled her unnatural eyes. “Ugh, one thing after another. Everyone has colds. One’s stomach was hurting. It’s so annoying, I don’t feel like I’m actually learning anything here.”

If this girl ever tried to get a nursing position under him, he would fight it tooth and nail. Cihad smiled tightly. He could remember being 16 years old in the Program and having the stomach flu. The nurse who had been working back then had laughed cruelly at the jumbled way he said ‘please, medicine’ because his English still wasn’t good back then. It wasn’t a chore for him to dispense medication to these miserable young people when they were sick and asking for help. It was better than the other things he had to do on Friday nights. “That does not sound terrible.”

“Henry says he feels like some bullshit drama is building up.”

Henry, one of the nastier Handlers, whose codename was October, was not the sharpest intellect. His younger sister had apparently passed away during the bombings, and Cihad understood the pain that had never left him.  “I’m sure I’ll just be passing out night meds.”

“Well you’re better with them than me.” Dayshift elegantly picked up her heavy water bottle and satchel. She polished her long fingernails on the nondescript black scrubs that the medical staff had to wear. “You’re basically one of them since you were part of that first Discharge Program. Even with all the conditioning, it feels like all of them hate to come in here and talk to me.”

They did hate it. Cihad did not let his tight smile drop. “Do you have any plans for the weekend?”

Her smooth, poreless face blushed. “I have a date! See you next week, Saint.” And she hurried out of the infirmary as if it was the last place in Eden she wanted to be.

Because there was not much to do, Cihad mindlessly pulled out his phone so that he could access his profile on a dating website. He did not know why he was on it. It seemed like it was what he was supposed to do. Everything that had– Cathy’s suicide had been over a year ago. Tony had made it clear that whatever they once had together was now over. He needed to move on with his life, he needed to get over it. 

A message popped up from one of the guys he had been chatting with. Cihad opened it to find an explicit diatribe of gruesome sexual acts this man wanted him to enact on him. He clicked out immediately and set his phone down, disheartened. Why was it that guys always assumed he wanted to act violently towards them? The way he looked? The way he talked?

It was best to stay busy. Cihad wanted to go home. Working this late on Fridays messed up his already poor sleep. He stood up and walked over to the locked cabinets where the medication was stored. It made him nervous that there were no physicians on staff, it didn’t seem ethical for a bunch of nurses to be responsible for prescribing and dispensing medication to the secret police. What else could he do? It wasn’t like an actual doctor could be manipulated into working here like all  the fresh-out-of-college Artificials were. Cihad was the only one at all who had actually worked as a medical provider!

Not that it mattered. If the assets got too injured or ill, they were simply put down and replaced. He couldn’t afford to think about that. He couldn’t afford to think about what happened to them, he could only make them a little more comfortable. There was only Cynthia. She was 19 now and Cihad thanked God every day that she had turned 18 before everything that had…happened last year, and that CPS hadn’t been able to stick their noses where they didn’t belong.  In a few years she would be too old to bring into the Program, her brain would be too developed for psychic conditioning. In a few years, he might be able to stop working here on Friday nights.

But Saint would never leave.

He focused on organizing medications for the next few hours and only thought about messaging Tony once.

It wasn’t a bad shift. Not until 8pm. One C-Class girl came in complaining of cramps because her IUD got put in wrong and received a painkiller. Silas’s egotistical one-armed top pick for the Discharge Program bustled in at one point, supporting his malnourished psychic teammate who had fainted and hit her head. Cihad gave her a soda to sip on and some hesitant words about taking care of herself. All normal. He hoped that the highlight of his night would be dispensing night meds to the ones who were unable to sleep. 

He was warming up a mug of herbal tea when the infirmary door slammed open and Saturday, one of the Handlers, rushed in. Panic radiated off of her. She had a heavyset boy’s arm draped over one of her shoulders, half helping him walk, half dragging him. It looked more like dragging than anything else. The boy’s eyes were rolled back in his drooping head and the lower part of his face was a blackened ruin. The noises coming out of him were nothing but gagging whimpering noises.

“Fuck, fuck!” Saturday was saying, panting. She was an angelic looking, frizzy haired Artificial who had been manufactured to be pretty, not dangerous. Cihad had never seen her like this before. She struggled to hold up the injured boy, who was collapsing on her. “Help me! Fucking help me, he’s been burned!”

Without thinking, Cihad hurried up to help her. He vaguely remembered that the boy was a B-Class TK named Coop, but had never interacted much. Together they were able to pull his limp body back to the exam room and Cihad hefted him up to lay back on the table to get a better look at the damage.

He had been badly burned. The shape of a handprint blistered red and white and black across Coop’s mouth and chin. It had destroyed all the layers of his skin, down to the melted yellow subcutaneous fat. No bone was showing through. No blood. Just charred, waxy skin, eaten all the way down. If the burn had been anywhere else, Cihad would not have been so worried, but the rapid swelling of this child’s face and mouth could swell shut and obstruct his airways. Coop made more horrible gagging sounds, his hands flapping towards his face, and Cihad had to hold him down so he would not hurt himself.

Those sounds. Cihad had not heard something like that since–

The memories battered him.

The blood! All that blood! When Cihad had kicked through his own front door a year ago, he had thought Tony was dying. He knew from a glance that Cathy was already dead, since her guts and internal organs were spilling out of the gash in her belly like slippery blue fish from a net. She had eviscerated herself. She had been laying flat on her back with her arms out like she had fallen that way, eyes empty and staring. Tony lay on his side a little bit in front of Cathy, convulsing in his own blood and urine and vomit, gagging because he couldn’t breathe. Making funny “kh–kh–kh,” sounds. Hurting himself more severely with all that flapping around, banging his head. The same kitchen blade Cathy gutted herself with was thrust all the way into his right eye socket, which was hemorrhaging blood, Tony was gasping and choking on that blood, and Cynthia had been holding onto him screaming and screaming, and Cihad–

No.

He couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think about Cathy or Tony. This boy was going to die! Cihad grabbed one of the saline IVs that he used for psychics who pushed themselves too hard, and started a drip. He was acutely aware that he did not have the supplies he needed. He was acutely aware that he was not a doctor. His fear and self-doubt never ebbed away as he worked, they only intensified. He pumped morphine into the IV, pumped the heaviest anti-inflammatories he had. What was the point. What was the point?

When he poured a saline solution over the burn to debride any particles of ash or burnt skin, Coop tried to scream, but the burns made it too painful to open his mouth. The skin there had melted together and with each strangled, hyperventilating breath it tore. The boy was half-conscious and struggling against the morphine. Cihad stared down at the hand-shaped wound that he had no ability to tend to.

“He needs a burn unit,” Cihad told Saturday, who was pacing back and forth and looked like she wanted to start ripping out her long hair. Her real name was Jennifer or something, he had stopped keeping track. “He needs a doctor, now, immediately, facial burns of this degree are extremely dangerous.” He pushed another half-dose of morphine, hoping that it would mercifully knock Coop out.

“This has ruined everything,” moaned Saturday. Her golden skin had gone splotchy. “I’ve been working so hard with her and now she had to freak out and attack this guy! No write ups in 3 years! A-Class with no write ups! I’ll never get her approved for the Discharge Program if she starts having behavioral issues! Fuck!”

Cihad gritted his teeth and turned to dig around in the supply cabinet. The only thing he had for burns were small hydrocolloid bandages. Something like that could not protect deep layers of damaged skin from infection. On the table, Coop quieted, but his respirations were ragged, wheezing. “We have to take this boy to the hospital. Dr. Whelan would be willing to sign an NDA. I can’t fix this myself, he needs skin grafts.”

“You know that can’t happen. Fuck! Is he gonna die?”

Coop was unthinkably young, probably about 14 years old. The same age Cihad had been when he had been forced into the Program. Coop was a stocky B-Class neuropath who had only come into the Infirmary a few times after getting scraped up on his shifts. Cihad used to think that he had a mischievous smile, like most boys that age. Now, even if he survived the massive risk of shock and infection from severe facial burns, he would never smile again. Even the fat beneath his skin had melted into something congealed and blackened.  It looked like someone, and Cihad knew exactly who, had gotten her hand over his mouth and pulled his head back while being on fire.

Cihad held the hydrocolloid bandages. They were designed to keep burns moist but protected from bacteria. What Coop needed was a completely sterile environment and a skin graft. What was he doing here? Why was Silas doing this to him? Why? He was completely helpless here, he was sick of witnessing these atrocities, but Silas, as ever, liked to make him watch. Silas liked to watch him watching.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the desperation and adrenaline he felt a year ago as he watched Tony jerk around and bleed out and slowly die on the floor in front of him. The gifts that God gave him could not heal, they could only cause harm. But Cihad hadn’t known what else to do. Tony had been dying! He had been stabbed in the head and was dying! And there had been so much blood. So much blood. The choice had been so easy to make that Cihad’s body had moved of its own accord. The Book had no instructions for healing, but many pages dedicated to stopping death itself. So Cihad had mixed his own blood with Tony’s, opened his heart to God’s will, pulled him back from the brink of nothingness, and— and was hated ever since.

The power to stop death was not in his hands today. Cihad swallowed down his own pain so that he could distract himself with the pain of someone else.

The bandages weren’t good enough. There was nothing good enough to cover a burn like that, even one as small as a human handprint. He kept working, as Saturday paced and cursed and complained about how her precious pyrokinetic was going to get in trouble now. Time moved achingly slowly. The bottom half of Coop’s face looked like a waxy red candle that had melted and hardened back up the wrong way. Cihad was not a surgeon but had to use a scalpel to recreate a space between the twisted, melted lips. He started to sweat.

“What happened?” he asked, to distract himself as he worked. Using that much morphine made him nervous and he kept glancing at the monitoring device he had attached to the boy. Tachycardic, an indicator of the body’s acute stress response and decrease in blood volume. There wasn’t much he could do at this point other than keep pumping fluids and painkillers and hope that Coop would not wake up screaming in pain to tear at the ruined skin of his mouth and chin.

Saturday made an incoherent noise of disgust. She would not watch Cihad work. “Apparantly he was fighting one of Smoky Pete’s little teammates over a bag of chips from commissary. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, and those two are always fighting because they like each other! She only freaked out for one second– one second! – all she did was grab the kid from behind and pull him back! Of course by the time I got there, that idiot Smiles had shown up and started making a scene. Anyone else could make that mistake and be fine, just not her. Fuck!”

The way that Handlers talked about the agents on their caseloads made Cihad’s skin crawl. It could not have been like this when he had been in the Program 15 years ago, could it? This sick, this unprofessional? 

The handprint shaped burn was all he could see. It was not going to heal right beneath the hydrocolloid bandages. Anyone else would have been treated like a person and would go to a burn unit. Anyone else would get skin grafts, they would get plastic surgery, they would be able to continue their lives without pain or disfigurement. Anyone else would be treated by real doctors, not a nurse with big clumsy hands who could barely understand English!

Oh God. If he slipped up even once, if he made one single mistake, put one toe over Silas’s line of appropriate behavior, Cynthia could be in this position. Cynthia could be the one left injured and dehumanized. There was no way to fight it. There was no way out. 

“It’s fine,” he said to himself. “Fine.”

Saturday turned her unnatural gaze on him. Her heavy black uniform and boots contrasted harshly with her gleaming hair and complexion, half of these Artificial Handlers had been created as beautiful dolls instead of weapons. “Saint. You were Discharged from the Program,” she said, as if she was thinking about Cihad as a person with feelings for the very first time. “You’re one of only the four participants who weren’t terminated.”

Terminated. Cihad tried to keep his face emotionless. How long until his shift was over? “I worked hard.” As if hard work had anything to do with it. The only reason that he hadn’t been shot in the face like a dog when he was still half a child was Silas. It was all Silas. 

“Were you ever written up?”

“No.”

Saturday huffed childishly and crossed her arms. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. She’s special. Maybe you and Hax and Ghost all worked hard to get into the Discharge Program. But I know Sunny broke policies all the time and the only reason they Discharged her was because she’s a technopath and we can’t find any others. We’ve never found another pyrokinetic. It feels like we’re moving away from picking them based on merit. BG and Pete are the top picks in this generation of assets because they follow policy and there’s nobody else like them.”

Was this how staff used to talk about him and Hax when they had been in the Program together? Had they been protective over them, had they picked favorites? All Saint– Cihad could remember was how the uncannily perfect people in uniforms would yell at him in a language he could not understand as desperately tried to do what they wanted.

If he wanted to, he could push enough morphine into the IV to put Coop out of his misery. He wouldn’t have to live as a disfigured child in pain, following orders until staff decided that he needed to be put down. There was nothing more peaceful than a death carried along by a gentle opiate.

Cihad did not have it in him. There was nothing else to do.

He pulled his plastic gloves off so that he could push his wavy hair out of his eyes. “If a real doctor–”

The large metal walkie attached to Saturday’s belt hissed with static and then spoke: “Jennifer. Get Saint down here to the first floor common room with some tranquilizers. I have a situation.” October’s drawling voice. Behind it was the sound of someone yelling profanity.

Cihad went cold all over. No. He hated this!

The sound of her rival co-worker’s voice sent Saturday into a tizzy. The tip of her pointed nose went red as she seized the walkie and pulled it up to her mouth. “You said you were handling it!”

“It’s not my fault that Smiles and his people can never listen! Get down here with— don’t you fucking move, I said get down on the goddamn floor!” More yelling and profanity in the background. 

Saturday scrunched up her angelic face and smacked herself in the head multiple times. “Get the tranqs.”

Cihad did as he was told. At the hospital, they used antipsychotics to sedate patients who were trying to hurt themselves or others. It was necessary. In the Program, they used ketamine shots as chemical restraints. When injected intramuscularly, ketamine causes confusion and sedation at lower doses, complete unconsciousness at higher ones. It was also a dissociative drug, creating a sense of detachment even after it wore off. He did not understand why Internal Operations continued to use injections to control bad behavior when they had over 40 psychics working here. Or rather, he only understood the use of tranquilizers as punishment and control. 

Medical staff in Internal Operations used the tranquilizers so often that they no longer used vials. The syringes were pre-made and packaged individually by dosage size. He grabbed a handful of different doses, but told himself that he would only need one dosed for lightly drugging someone who was about 5’11” and weighed over 180 pounds.

“What about him?” Cihad asked, looking at Coop, who was asleep without pain and still hooked to the saline drip. It was out of his hands now. Either the burn would get infected and the poison would travel to his brain or it would not. 

“We’re fucking understaffed, Saint. What’s more important?” Saturday was trying to tie her hair out of her face so that she looked more serious. She looked like a model dressing up for a role that did not fit her. “January’s about to stop by here in a second to grab some cold meds for one of her people, she can just hang out here and make sure none of the machines start to beep. I hate Smiles, why does he have to fuck everything up for Pete? None of this would have happened if she wasn’t on that team of fuckups. She could be so amazing!”

This level of obsession could not be healthy. Cihad followed her out of the infirmary, locking the doors on the way out. He tried not to think about what he was doing. He tried to think about how this was almost over, he was going to go home soon, and he would go to sleep. Tomorrow he would go to the job that he loved, the job where he helped save people instead of watching helplessly within a system of violence he could never escape. Tomorrow he would be himself, but here he was Saint, doing exactly what he was told.

Saint was the only one who had to keep coming back to this place. The others who had been let out were lucky. Hax was lucky because nobody ever called her Hax anymore. Everyone called her Jenny Castillo, she was the Warden of the Prison District and always seemed enthusiastic and happy when Silas called all of them to her. Ghost was lucky because nobody ever called him Ghost anymore. Everyone called him Blake Joyner, he was in charge of Eden’s Child Protective Services, and while psychics like him were rarely happy, he didn’t seem miserable. Sunny— well, Cihad didn’t know too much about Sunny and supposed that Silas would keep her hooked to a machine somewhere until she found another technopath to suck dry. But that also meant that Sunny never had to come back here.

The Discharge Program only went back 15 years out of the 200 that Internal Operations had existed for. Only four people had ever been allowed to leave. No wonder Saturday was so upset over the pyrokinetic on her caseload. The math was stacked against her. 

A narrow stairwell took them quickly down two floors to the dormitories. Cihad’s body was numb but he knew that he was holding the tranquilizers. Inside was just as he remembered, nothing had changed since he had lived in the dorms. The hallway stretched on, twisting off into two smaller corridors or wings, lined with doors. Some of the doors opened to rooms with four beds, some of them opened to rooms with two beds. The walls were painted that same sick calming shade of light blue, lined with shiveringly encouraging posters that said things like “Every Day You Can Do Your Best!” alongside lists of policies. The dormitory floor had two common rooms: one in the east wing, the other in the west. Saturday peeled off down the western corridor and Cihad followed behind.

The scene in the western wing common room painted a tableau of power and control. The monstrously created Handler October stood closest to the door in an aggressive stance with his stun baton drawn. Cool as a cucumber, he pointed it at Smiles, who had created a nearly transparent blue bubble of electromagnetic energy around him to completely circle and shield his body. Smiles appeared half-wild, bug eyed, baring his teeth. Hatred poured off of him in waves. Behind him, kneeling in front of the couch with their hands in the air, were the two subordinates. The friendly Artificial one looked like he had been in a scuffle and kept his yellow gaze fixed on the floor. The aggressive telepathic one kept looking around and twitching as if it was hard for her to stay down on her knees when her superior was being threatened.

Unfortunately, Cihad knew Smiles very, very well. Smiles was only 23 years old, and the most profoundly difficult person he had ever met. He couldn’t understand why he had not been terminated at this point. The aggression and defiance issues were out of control and bleeding into his teammates. Staff kept trying to punish and train the opposition out of him, they kept trying to drug him, it just never worked. Staff just couldn’t beat him into submission and eventually he was going to die for that.

“Oh, you must be real fuckin’ scared if you called old Sainty for backup!” exclaimed Smiles, as he watched Cihad slink into the common room to stand behind Saturday. “You think he’s gonna help you? Take one step closer, motherfucker, I dare you!”

“Drop the bubble, Smiles,” said October. He was one of those  Artificials whose genes had been tweaked for unimaginable speed and strength. His smug cat-like face did not betray any thoughts of fear, only cold hatred. “If you drop the bubble and let Saint medicate you, this can all be over. If you keep acting like this, you’re getting re-conditioned, and Lady is on shift tonight. I’ll tell her to get deep into your thoughts all night long.”

Lady shouldn’t be working tonight, Cihad thought miserably, contemplating the terrified young people before him. Lady had just fainted a few hours ago. It wasn’t right, but nobody cared. 

“Suck my dick!”

“This looks like it’s going well,” said Saturday primly, looking around with her pointed nose held in the air. “I see that Pete isn’t here. She went to re-conditioning willingly?”

Smiles’s complexion went purple and his eyes bulged even more. His hands clenched into pointless fists. “No, you stupid bitch! He told her to get down on her hands and knees, then kept the fucking stun baton on her until she pissed herself and foam was coming out of her mouth! For fucking what? Because she saw that asshole Coop fighting Johnny over his snacks and she wanted to pull them apart?! She didn’t mean to burn the kid! Peanut isn’t fucking like that, she’s better than that, she’s better than you, she’s better than me, but I am going to fucking kill all of you people!”

A direct threat. Cihad felt sick. For once, he was grateful for his isolation during the four years he was a part of the secret police. He was grateful for his own willingness to follow all the rules and always do his best. Cihad had only ever been punished because it had taken him too long to learn how to exist in Eden. Once, staff had poured water over his face to make him think he was drowning after he misunderstood their instructions too many times. After that incident, his English had improved rapidly.

To him, the thought of making a mistake had always been a death warrant. But people like Smiles did not care about making mistakes. People like that made mistakes on purpose. 

October blinked slowly but didn’t drop his feline smirk. His posture did not shift, he was staring Smiles dead in the eyes. “You could bubble me right now, if you wanted. Why don’t you go ahead and do it?”

The corner of one of Smiles’s eyes twitched.

The conditioning process that each agent in Internal Operations went through was comprehensive. It is difficult to commit an act you associate with pain. Most conditioning was psychic, but for agents who were naturally resistant to mind-control like Saint had been, it took place through non-damaging methods like electric shocks, stress positions, and waterboarding. After all this time, Cihad didn’t even like to look at the Handlers in their uniforms. He was a grown man, he had been out of the Program for years, but still felt like they could hurt him. And Smiles had gone through years of conditioning.

October did not change his gaze, but jerked his head at Saturday. “Grab his favorite.”

“This is not the policy,” blurted Cihad, unable to help himself. He was ignored. 

Nickels flinched from where she was on the floor and jerked her hands out of the air. Unlike most psychics, she was vibrant and expressive, she did not stay closed off inside her head. 16 years old. Mold allergies, she was always coming into the infirmary because of her mold allergies. One time a blood-vessel burst in her eye during a shift, and she rushed to him, terrified that her brain had already started to hemorrhage. “Wait, wait,” she said, her voice pitching up. “But I didn’t do anything!”

It was pointless too. Saturday slid over to yank the girl up to her feet. Nickels was wearing the gray sweatshirt and pants that were issued across the board for the secret police to wear when they were off shift. She yanked right back, an expression of downright hatefulness spreading on her round face. “Fuck! I said I didn’t fucking do anything!” She struggled to stand up straight without getting yanked towards Saturday, then tried to aim a kick at Johnny-on-the-Spot. “This is your fault, you little freak! Next time, just give up your stupid snacks instead of fighting back!”

For his part, Johnny-on-the-Spot, was being obedient and staying still, although he was drenched with sweat. 13 years old, he was small and covered in puppy fat in the way most prepubescent Artificials were before their genetic code forced their bodies to grow too fast. He existed as an unsettling constant reminder to the Artificial staff: being rich and powerful did not mean that your families were safe. “Nicky, they were my chips, if I just let someone take them, everyone will start—“

“Here’s how this is going to work, Smiles,” said October. “You’re going to drop the bubble and let Saint medicate you. Because I’m so nice, I won’t even send you to re-conditioning, since I don’t need your team to be down both of its only competent people. By the time you wake up tomorrow, your girlfriend will probably be back from re-conditioning. And if you don’t drop the bubble, Saturday here is going to shock your lazy fatass telepath until she can’t move anymore.”

There was a beat. Cynthia. Cihad thought about Cynthia. He could not allow this to happen to Cynthia. She had already been through so much. Her parents had just been traumatized teenagers with no idea what they were doing, it hadn’t been their fault! But getting in fights over snacks? Getting threatened with physical harm by staff? The mistreatment, the dehumanization? He would stay here a hundred years if it meant that his daughter did not have to endure what these children did. What he had endured.

It was killing him, though. It was killing him. His entire body was dead and cold, watching this was draining the life out of him. Wasn’t there anywhere he could go where he did not have to witness violence? He could not endure Silas forcing him to watch this forever.

No matter how hard he prayed for this to end, God would not listen. Cihad did not know why he kept asking the Great Devourer to help him. God hadn’t protected him as a child, when his community was slaughtered in the dark and set ablaze by soldiers intent on genocide. God hadn’t protected him as a boy, when he had come to Eden, starving and terrified, only to be forced into an organization that killed people! God hadn’t protected him as a man, when Cathy had– when Tony had been bleeding and braindead and he had selfishly forced him back to—

Sometimes it felt like he had done something wrong and was being punished for it. Cihad couldn’t help it. He had been conditioned to think this way.

Smiles looked insane. He was sick, his face contorted, his fists still clenched. The veins stood out on the sides of his neck. His body was shaking, even his pupils were wobbling back and forth. He stood there in his bubble, the picture of defiance. “And if I don’t listen to you?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

“Fuck you guys,” said Nickels, a bit too bravely for someone who was about to get shocked into unconsiousness due to her superior’s stupidity. “Fuck ‘em up, Boss. I don’t care.” Saturday gave her a vicious shake that made her head snap back. Cihad winced.

“Yeah, screw you guys!” piped up Johnny-on-the-Spot from the floor. 

“You people can't keep this up forever,” Smiles mocked. Every muscle in his body was ready to spring. “Not this moment, not now, but the whole thing, you people can’t keep holding this place together. There’s too many of us. What happens if I say go fuck yourself?! Oh no, Henry, you’re all sad because your baby sister got smashed into red paste during the bombings?! You can go fuck her in hell.”

Had the telepath been intercepting thoughts and feeding Smiles information about staff?! Cihad felt a flash of gratitude towards how God had always protected his own mind from psychics. What was going on with this team? Was Smiles stupid? Why was he encouraging his teammates to act like this?

October did not react to the sound of his name in Smiles’s mouth, nor to the mention of his sister’s death. He was a brute of a man, as big as Cihad. Calm as anything on the outside, but roiling with sadistic rage internally. “Last chance. Are you really going to force poor sensitive Saturday to hurt your little teammates just because you don’t want to calm down? Your psychic is going to get fried until she can’t hear her own thoughts. How long until her brain starts bleeding? It’s funny that you want to bring up sisters. You think of her as a sister, don’t you? A baby sister? A sister you’ve never had? If that doesn’t make you listen, I don’t know. Maybe C-Class here needs to go to re-conditioning too, since all of this bullshit is happening because he was too stupid to give up his snacks to someone who outranked him.”

“Kill yourself!” Something was wrong with Smiles’s voice now. He was cracking. 

“Don’t listen to him, Boss, he’s fucking with you!” Another shake.

Someone was going to get hurt. This needed to stop.

“Please, Smiles,” Cihad couldn’t take this any longer. He couldn’t be part of this. No more violence. Please, God, no more violence. He kept his tone earnest and friendly, beating down the last traces of his light accent. “You’re upset about what has happened and how it isn’t fair. I understand, but you have to calm down and rest so that things don’t get worse. You have control over that. You have control over what can happen next, you have control over this moment. Let me give you medicine so you can relax. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, I just want you to be able to rest.”

For some reason, Nickels started suddenly to hiccup.

Smiles stared directly at him. Something about his eyes glazed and softened, went from angry to frightened to sad. He tried to sneer but it collapsed in on itself. He was only a scared child in a man’s body. “And you’re the motherfucking worst one of all. They make you come here once a week to act nice to us and make the stupid ones think that if they follow the rules and try hard, they can get out of this meat grinder just like you did. What a joke, man, fucking control bullshit. Nobody’s getting out of here. You didn’t.” All the harshness of his voice was changing into something brittle.

“You have control over this moment,” Cihad repeated. “You can choose for nobody else to get hurt.” He heard October’s mean laugh and bit his own tongue.

Smiles dropped the bubble that protected him. Both of his teammates whined their disappointment. He looked down at the floor, then rolled up one sleeve of his t-shirt. Somehow he was less of himself, resigned to something sullen and obedient. All the fight, all the life, drained out of him. The hate turned inward.

It took Smiles longer to understand the truth of Internal Operations. Most of the time it is better to roll over and submit than to cause others harm through defiance. Cihad had learned that lesson the day he formed his partnership with Cathy and Tony. And now…now…

He was just as trapped. Cihad uncapped the syringe of ketamine and quickly administered it to Smiles intramuscularly. At that dose, he would get tired and confused within minutes, followed by the inability to move or speak. Peace and rest that he clearly needed, but at what cost? Smiles backed towards the couch without looking up and sat down, covering his face with his hands. His shoulders hunched like he could not keep himself together. Johnny-on-the-Spot immediately scrambled up off the floor to press his body up next to him with an expression of devotion mixed with dread. Cihad turned away quickly, clearing his throat. 

“You people can’t keep doing this to him!” Nickels said angrily. Saturday gave her a shove. For a second it seemed like the telepath was thinking about throwing a punch, but thankfully decided against getting brutally slammed to the floor and tased. She dragged the back of her hand beneath her nose, then darted back towards the couch and Smiles.

“I want you to think about responsibility and what that means,” October told Smiles, who was probably aware of what he was hearing but unable to react. Cihad didn’t look back at him. Cihad already knew what Smiles had started to look like: not himself. Slack-jawed, glazed, and empty, a hollow shell, a pliable body. Weak and revolting. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right and it was the cleanest outcome Cihad could have prayed for. 

He was a bad person. He could not be forgiven for what he had witnessed and participated in. What else was he supposed to do? Say no to Silas? Fight back? Or look away. Cihad had already learned his lesson about responsibility a long time ago. Was Cynthia’s safety worth the constant reminders of his own suffering and the slow deterioration of his soul? 

He could kill all of them if he wanted to. He could offer God his own blood and then use his gifts to eviscerate them with a brutality that even Hax was incapable of. 

Saint would never be able to leave this place. Saint had been a scared child too! He hadn’t had teammates who stood up for him. Nobody saw him back then. The only person who had acted halfway decent towards him in the Program had been Hax and she was a raging psychopath. Oh, Silas had acted like a mother to him, handing him extra snacks and letting him watch television, but she was the worst out of everyone! Had anyone looked at him with pity back then? Had anyone wanted to turn their face from him?! His head reeled.

Where was God? Was God watching? Had God turned away from him? The Book that held God’s spirit was hidden in his office at the hospital, carelessly shoved beneath junk. It had not been touched for one year, not since— well, everything. Not since Cihad had started turning away from it. What could it do for him? What had it brought other than suffering?

Saturday stepped towards him, saying something in gibberish. The words jumbled together into the harsh consonants and uneven, choppy syllables of English. It was too hard to follow, something about next week. She was smiling at him, a terrifying golden angel, something perfect and beautiful and violent. The conditioning had kicked back in, the terror he had felt as a teenager getting held down and having his head shaved by monstrously manufactured people who looked just like her! Making eye contact with her was like dragging himself through broken glass. Cihad tried to smile back and she clapped him on the back as if they were friends. The implication was clear: good job.

Cihad always did a good job. There was no room to do otherwise. 

She was still talking to him in English. Cihad nodded at her, then followed her out of the common room. He did not look back.

This wasn’t worth it. Was this worth it? He couldn’t breathe. His body felt too big to exist in tight spaces underground. He had not seen the sky for over 15 years! The twisting hallways started to blur together.

Sometimes he wished he had never come to Eden. Sometimes he wished he had died back under the open skies of home when the soldiers from Kimanka had come with their automatic weapons and steel armor. If he had died with his parents and Halima, he would be with them now instead of suffering like this. If the marsh-lander soldiers had riddled him with bullets and left him to bleed out in a pit full of his peoples’ mutilated bodies when he was 14 years old, Cathy would still be alive and Tony would— Tony would be– Tony would be happy? 

With or without him, Tony was incapable of being happy.

He didn’t even know how he got back to the infirmary. Saturday had rushed off at some point. Cihad looked around in a daze just as surely as if he was the one who had been drugged. He was trapped here. He was trapped in this building. Silas was caging him like an animal and telling him that he could leave at any point, but he couldn’t, could he? He was a part of this. Smiles had been right. Saint was the worst one. His very existence here inspired false hope of survival.

Cihad’s body acted as a machine while his mind was far away. One of the Handlers jabbered something at him as he checked on the boy with the burned face. Still too early to know if the burn would become infected, too early to know if more of his flesh would decay. His face looked raw and wet. Unconscious, he was only meat. They were all just slabs of meat. There was nothing to do about it. Cihad’s memories wandered back to a sunny day when he was 10 spent picking strawberries and swimming with his sister. 

What was the point of fighting back when it all ended up like this?

Time moved too fast and too slow all at once. His phone buzzed. The dating website. Some guy he had never talked to before had sent him a message asking him to tie him up and choke him. Cihad barely resisted the urge to smash the device. It hurt to breathe. He was not a violent man!

If Tony didn’t hate him now, Cihad might have fantasized about the careful way he used to put his arms around him. He might have fantasized about how Tony used to press his cold feet against him to make him laugh. That was all gone now. Ruined by his own sentimentality.

When midnight came, he clocked out without speaking to anyone and left the cold concrete walls of the Capitol building. Being awake this late in Eden was unnatural. There was no way of knowing if it was really nighttime beneath the ground, the engineers just turned the lights in the high ceilings off. They turned the air quality down too in order to conserve oxygen, it was impossible to take a full breath. It was like there was a heavy weight on his chest and he walked squinting in the darkness to the metro.

The house he rented on the Mid-Levels did not feel like a home. He had struggled to find a 3-bedroom home through Eden’s Housing Authority after they had to move out of the house where Cathy died. The waitlists were too long. AGA offered private rentals in all of Eden’s levels and Cihad had taken one despite the rent being unsubsidized. There hadn’t been any other choice, he’d had to get Cynthia out of that house! And it turned out that he hadn’t needed three bedrooms anyway.

Cihad fumbled for the keys. His hands shook. He needed to take a shower and wondered if he was going to cry. The tears were bound to come out at some point. Everything was crashing down on him, his failures, his loneliness, his helplessness. He wondered if—-

His front door was already unlocked. That wasn’t abnormal, since his own child had not quite mastered the art of using door knobs yet. Billy better not have been messing around while he and Cynthia were both gone. The slimy creature knew better than to do something like touch the door or try to go outside. Cihad frowned and stepped inside the entryway of his dark house. 

If one more thing went wrong that night, he was going to have a complete mental breakdown.

“Billy?” he asked, looking around. All the lights were turned off. A constant droning noise echoed  from the kitchen. He dropped his bag on the floor and slipped off his shoes. “Billy, we’ve talked about not turning anything on while I’m not here.”

He flipped the lights on in the kitchen and saw that the vacuum cleaner was plugged in and turned on, sucking empty air. The dustbin squeaked with every rotation. He hadn’t left the vacuum on so–

Oh.

Cihad rushed to turn the machine off and yanked the plug out of the wall. The cylindrical dustbin squeaked again. He pressed a button to unlock it from the vacuum, then dumped the contents all over the kitchen floor. It wasn’t dust that poured out of the cylinder, it was about a gallon of thick thick black slime that trembled and jiggled on the tile floor, before quadrupling in size and twisting itself into a many-legged mammal shape. An approximation of a face sprouted on its front, with dozens of eyes and a little cat-like mouth. Gills flapped at its sides. It shook itself all over, spitting and coughing.

“I’ve been in there for hours!” it exclaimed. The voice it used sounded like Cynthia’s. It twisted itself up wetly into a taller, bipedal shape, shifting to be larger and more human-like. The black slime of its body rippled with flashing alarm spots of yellow. “I couldn’t breathe!”

As far as Cihad knew, Billy was the only one of its kind that could speak. The black slimy creatures were shapeshifting invertebrates and lived in Eden by the hundreds, but could only be seen by those born with a connection to the Rift. They seemed to feed on emotion. His father, the faceless-priest, used to slaughter the creatures and offer their black blood to the Book. Cihad found Billy when he was 12 and raised it as a pet. It was a comfort to him just like the Book, but it had never displayed any intelligence. Not until it met Cynthia.

“Are you OK?” Cihad gave it a quick pat of comfort. The invertebrate’s body felt like chilled jello.

Billy continued to grow and appear more like an androgynous teenager. It couldn’t get its face right, it couldn’t keep it from oozing and dripping down its chin. With another cough, it stuck out a long black tongue and started licking the back of one long-fingered hand. “Tony’s here,” it said in a tone that was a little accusatory for his liking. “Tony broke in. I told him that he wasn’t supposed to be here without you, then he just laughed and sucked me up with the vacuum cleaner and left it on so I couldn’t get out to call for help.”

“I’m going to kill him,” said Cihad, more to himself than to Billy. Why. Why tonight? Why would Tony have to do something like this tonight? 

Something clattered upstairs. 

“He’s mean and drunk again.” Billy used its hands to squelch back the gelatinous tissue of its face. It sucked in all the extraneous eyeballs until it only had two.

“I’m going to kill him!” repeated Cihad, louder this time, so that his voice carried through the dark house. “Don’t go up there no matter what you hear.” He moved the vacuum back to its corner, then started to stomp up the stairs as loudly and aggressively as he could.

He had not put work into decorating the house. Between work and everything that had happened last year, he did not have the time or energy. What was the point of hanging up pictures? What was the point in arranging the furniture to appear more aesthetically pleasing? Cynthia and Billy had arranged some items in the house– a plastic tree, a picture of Cathy– but most of it was as empty and unlivable as the day they moved in. Nothing could compare to the comfortable home he and Cathy and Cynthia lived in together until the day everything went wrong.

What could Tony be doing here? What was he thinking? He was supposed to be watching his 19 year old daughter! What was wrong with him?!

The upstairs was small, containing only the three bedrooms and one of the bathrooms. Cihad went into his room first, flipped on the lights. He looked around. His bed was still neatly made and all the pillows were still in place, but somebody had opened all his dresser drawers and pulled out his clothes to leave jumbled on the floor. The tablet he kept on his desk for reading patient charts and paying bills was missing. Cihad’s blood boiled as he stared down at his clothes. He was hot all over. “Tony?” he called, stooping down to make sure that he didn’t need to yank him out from under the bed. “You need to come out now.”

His voice seemed unnaturally calm. He caught a glimpse of his own red eyes in his reflection in the window. When he caught Anthony Delmont, he was not sure what he was going to do to him. Not after everything that he had witnessed, that he had been a part of. 

Cynthia’s room was the next to be checked. It appeared pristine. Her computer was neatly plugged in and all of her childhood stuffed animals were lined up on her bed. Of course it was untouched. No matter how out of his mind Tony was, he would never do anything that would hurt his daughter. Cihad looked under her bed and in her closet as well. Nothing.

His heart was beating faster. All he could think of was catching Tony in the act of whatever it was he was doing. There was nothing of value to take, and Tony was still working at the Prosperity slaughterhouse, he didn’t need to steal! So this was personal. He was up to something, he was doing something, he was plotting something, and Cihad did not like that at all. 

Part of him knew what Tony was here for. Part of him always knew. He had planned for this. The Book that Tony held so much hatred and blame for was safe in his office behind multiple levels of hospital security.

The third bedroom was supposed to be Tony’s, but after he refused to move out of his apartment, it went to Billy. It was empty except for a bathtub that the small alien creature floated in when it slept. Billy first started talking 10 years ago and had told Cihad that it came from a faraway place covered in gentle green oceans where it swam peacefully with millions of other larvae. Then the Planet-Eater came and turned the oceans black with blood before hurtling through the Void to Earth and trapping the juvenile invertebrates with it. Cihad had wanted to stop listening, but his father always used to say that God was a warrior from beyond the stars who became peaceful after seeing the beauty of Earth. So he allowed Billy to float in a bathtub and dream about its home.

Tony had drained all the water out of the bathtub. It was all over the floor, pooling in the cracks of the imitation wood. Cihad’s eyes bugged out of his head, imagining the water damage. He stripped off his sweatshirt and threw it over the enormous puddle. “Anthony!” he snapped. “I know you are up here, I heard you clattering around! Get out here now!” His heart hammered in his chest. Was he about to have a stroke?  He turned out of Billy’s room, slamming the door as hard as he could. 

The little rat was hiding in the bathroom. That was the last place he could be. When Cihad tried the knob, it was locked. He shook his head, laughing and not finding this funny at all. “Open the door,” he said.

What was he going to do when he saw him? Probably grab him. Hopefully not burst into tears.

Tony didn’t answer, but Cihad could hear him breathing all ragged like he was scared. Oh, he was going to get scared all right. “Open the door now, this is not funny!” He made a fist and knocked hard on the door several times. “Get out here and clean up this water!”

“I’m not opening the door if you’re standing out there screaming at me,” came Tony’s voice. Infuriatingly, he did not sound scared at all. He sounded too bold and very, very drunk. 

Cihad had never screamed at anyone before in his life. He was always like this these days, Tony was always flipping the narrative to make him look like some terrifying monster who was trying to get him. He rattled the doorknob. “Get out here now. There’s no window. You’re stuck.”

“I’m not opening the fucking door.”

“Anthony, if you do not come out here, I will have to break in. You’re not well.”

“Oh, that’s original,” said Tony. It sounded like he was pulling the drawers out in there, which made Cihad’s pulse skyrocket. What was he doing in there? “That’s new. Let’s see, how many times have you broken down locked doors when I’ve been trying to keep—”

“--How scary for you, to have me save your life every time you locked yourself away wanting to die–”

“Not that I asked for or needed your help, by the way. Not that I asked for any of this.”

Cihad kept rattling the doorknob. This was not productive. He needed to get in there. He needed to see Tony immediately, needed it like he needed air. Would he be able to control himself once he saw him? A year ago he could have come home after a bad day and Tony would have comforted him. There was a lump in his throat. “10 seconds.”

“You just have to have control, don’t you? You can’t stand it.”

“5 seconds, Anthony, please open the door.”

“If you rip that thing off its hinges, you’re just–”

His hand tightened around the doorknob and he wrenched it open with a vicious yank. The cheap metal hasp bent and released immediately beneath the force of his arm, the door flew open. Upon seeing Tony in the bathroom, Cihad’s body froze as if he had been shocked. All his anger drained out of him.

Tony did not flinch when the door burst open. He stood there with his arms crossed over the tablet he had taken from Cihad’s room. Over the last year he had changed. Although the medically induced coma the neurosurgeons placed him in to repair his brain damage had only lasted a week and a half, it had taken him time to relearn basic functions. Something about him had aged and withered although he was not yet 40. The scarred, hollow socket of his right eye was covered by a patch, his left eye appeared unnaturally blue. His dark hair nearly reached his scrawny shoulders now. The real change was in his face. Where once there had been love, now there was nothing but fear and mistrust.

If it wasn’t for Cynthia, would Tony ever willingly interact with him? Cihad’s heart clenched. He took one lurching step forward.

“Get back,” said Tony. His one-remaining eye was glazed over and slightly jaundiced, his voice was thick, but he stood steadily. He stank like a mixture of slaughterhouse scraps and rotgut liquor and clearly had not showered after getting off his shift. 

Cihad felt a chill all over. “Where’s Cynthia? Body of God, if you have been out drinking and left her—”

“Cynthia’s at Rachel’s apartment like she is every Friday night.” The crooked-toothed smile that spread across Tony’s  face was at once bitter and cheeky. Like he was telling himself a sad joke. He shrugged. “She’s been telling you she’s with me? The custody arrangement ended when she turned 18, I don’t need to wait until Friday nights or for your permission to spend time with my daughter.”

Oh, Tony hated him. 

He swallowed the lump in his throat and found that he did not know what to do with his hands. Was shoving them into the pockets of his scrubs less threatening? He had just broken down a door and was having thoughts about grabbing Tony. What did he care about threatening? “Why did you break into my house?”

“Didn’t break in. You leave the key underneath the flower pot.”

Got him there. Cihad eyed the tablet Tony was clutching. His tablet. “You sucked my child up into a vacuum cleaner and threw all my clothes on the ground. What are you here for?”

“Maybe I miss you,” said Tony nastily. He had noticed Cihad’s gaze and shifted to hold the device behind his back. Every few seconds, his good eye would dart around furtively, looking for something. “Maybe I’m here to suck your cock, what do you think about that?”

“Don’t say that.” It had been a long time. Despite the crushing sadness, despite the anger, he felt his cheeks get hot. 

It’s not like he hadn’t loved anyone other than Tony. Back at home, he had traded the sweet secret kisses of first love with Basil Stewart, a refugee boy whose family came to Blagodat fleeing the war. When the marsh-lander soldiers came, they ran Basil through with their bayonets and left him to die with his intestines spilling out. Cihad had to leave him, he had to take care of Halima, he had no other choice! Then, in Internal Operations, there was Meander. Even though they couldn’t communicate, Meander used to smile at him and bring him snacks from commissary. He even let Saint have sex with him. But Meander broke both of his ankles and was terminated soon after. Nathan, back in nursing school. D’andre Paris. He had loved them too, he had never been able to keep his hands off of Nathan. So why was Tony—

Tony made him so angry. He understood his weakness, he understood his desires and used them against him.

Cihad pulled a stack of clean towels from where he had folded them on a bathroom shelf, then held them out to Tony. He kept his face blank but everything in him seemed to shiver. It was like all his insides had fallen out. “Give me my tablet. Go clean up the water you spilled all over my floor and refill the bathtub so Billy can sleep.”

“Fuck you and fuck that thing,” Tony spat. It did not look like he had shaved for several days, dark stubble covered his upper lip. It made him look older. He still didn’t cringe away like he normally would. All the lean muscles of his scrappy body were tensed. The tremor in his hands that he used to get in active addiction was back. “I don’t want it to sleep. I don’t want it near me. Get out of my way.”

“I’m not doing this. I’m not fighting with you. I’ve had a long day, I’ve had a terrible day and I’m tired. Give me my tablet and go clean up your mess, then we are going to talk about going to treatment.”

“I think that all of this is actually your mess. Fuck you. Let me out.”

“You broke into my house!” Cihad shook the stack of towels at him like he was a bad dog. Something was going to happen. The dam was about to break. Either he was going to start crying or he was going to do something he regretted. Violent images crashed through the dark corners of his mind. Why was Tony acting like this? He had lived with him in active addiction and Tony had never been so hateful. “You’ve been drinking since Cathy died and you’re not thinking clearly. I care about you and I’m trying to help you because I’m worried about you. You’re killing yourself. I can get you back into treatment if you’ll let me help you!”

Tony rolled his eye and held out his arms in exasperation. “Oh please. More control bullshit. You didn’t even let them give me morphine when I was screaming for it in the hospital after I was stabbed in the fucking head! You’re the last person I want involved in my medical care or recovery. You always have to be such a saint!”

That word in Tony’s mouth was a skin-crawling violation.

Cihad’s ears rang and his vision darkened into a tunnel with only Tony at the end of it. He threw the towels on the ground, then stepped into the bathroom to back Tony up against the wall. It took no thought at all. It was easy to corral him back, he was a head taller than and had nearly 100 pounds on him. Tony put his hands up to push him back and Cihad was able to yank the tablet away from him. He couldn’t speak and there was nothing to say.

Had Tony somehow invaded his mind with his nebulous psychic omniscience to drag out information about Saint? It was impossible. Even the IODE telepaths trained to torture out information had been unable to force themselves inside him. God protected him and the secrets of his heart. 

Tony immediately attempted to knee him in the groin. “Get back. Don’t touch me.”

“Did you just get into my head?”

“What? You know I can’t. That Thing you carry did something to you just like It did something to me!”

Cihad gritted his teeth. His heart pounded so hard that he could hear every beat of it in his ears. So close to Tony. It would be easy to grab him. He did not know if he wanted to shake him like a dog shaking a rat or if he wanted to collapse into his arms. Neither of those things were valid options. He forced himself to take a step back, trembling with pent up energy. “Why did you call me that?”

“Call you what?” Tony laughed without humor. He kept his body crushed up against the wall, as far as he could get from Cihad. The edge of his shirt had ridden up to reveal a sliver of his brown stomach. “What are you so scared of people knowing about you? What would be so bad about me knowing anything at all about you? You’ve never told me about your parents. You’ve never told me about school. I can’t get anything off you, you lose your mind every time I even ask! Do you understand why that’s so suspicious? What have you done? Where did you come from? I’ve told you every humiliating detail of my life, so what’s your story?”

They had had this fight before. It was a terrible thing. To be loved is to be seen but the very last thing Cihad wanted was for Tony to See him. Eden was an isolated anthill and its people were paranoid. They taught their children to fear and hate the outside world. Tony already hated him and blamed him for what had happened. If he knew about where he came from, if he saw him as a lying outsider who had infiltrated Eden to harm its people, his beliefs would be legitimized.

That wasn’t even taking into account Saint. If Tony knew about Saint…it was best not to think about it. 

His story was the one thing that had never been ripped away from him. He had his secrets. He had the Book. 

Tony was staring right at him like he was daring him to do something. His remaining eye burned blue in a way it never used to a year ago. The last time Cihad had looked into Tony’s brown eyes with their stubby upturned lashes, one had been rolling back in his head and the other had been sliced apart by the knife in his head, one half of it hanging in globs down his cheek. When Cihad had opened his own veins to mix his blood with Tony’s before the Book, something had happened to turn his eyes blue. Changed. He had changed. This was the cost of saving his life.

He had to let him go but their lives were forever entangled because of the daughter they shared.

Cihad took another step back. The bathroom was too small, he didn’t have enough space to breathe. And he was too close. Too close to Tony. His body was begging him to react and wrap his arms around him in that familiar way that was now an impossibility. This was as wrong as cornering Smiles had been. He backed into the hallway. This was too much. “Just leave,” he said. “You couldn’t find what you came here to steal. I have it somewhere safe. Go home. You’re obviously not in your right mind.”

Tony did not have to be told twice. He slipped out of the tiny bathroom and into the hall towards the stairs, stumbling slightly. He hesitated there to cross his arms and give Cihad another mean look. “I’m finally in my right mind. I’m going to figure out what happened to us. I know you won’t help, but I’m going to figure it out. It’s that Book. You brought it here from somewhere.”

He always had to have the last word. He did not understand what he was talking about and Cihad could not allow himself to tell him.

“I’m tired.” Cihad’s voice wobbled embarrassingly. He rubbed his hands over his eyes. “I’ve had a bad day, Anthony, I have had a terrible day and I just want to go to sleep. I just want to go to bed. I didn’t ask for you to break into my house and invade my privacy.”

“I have to wear a jumpsuit over my clothes when I’m butchering a carcass at work. Rubber gloves up to my elbows. I tie my hair back so it can’t touch anything. I have to do it so that my germs can’t compromise the meat, even though we keep the temperature below 40.” The patch over Tony’s right eye was a black nothing, a void. He shivered all over, then dug into his pocket to find a glass shooter of clear liquor and unscrewed the top. “This feels similar. You brought whatever is in that Book here without any safeguards and it spread something to us. It got inside Cathy. It got inside me. You put something inside me. So where did you bring it from?”

Everything was crumbling. All he could do was watch. His eyes pricked. “Please don’t drink around me.”

Tony ignored him and knocked back the shooter. “You know some jackasses are worshipping it now, don’t you? They call it the Great Devourer, but you already knew that, didn’t you? Cathy– or you know what? The infection that got inside Cathy spread it around and now there are hundreds of people at some church down in the Lower Levels mutilating themselves during orgies. Blood and sex, that’s what all of this shit comes down to. What else do you know about it? What are you hiding from me? Why can’t I See the real you?”

For a moment, staring into Tony’s angry intoxicated face, Cihad considered unburdening himself of his secrets. He thought about telling him about the town where he grew up, about worshipping God with his family, about swimming with his sister in warm lakes, about his first kiss with Basil Stewart. What would Tony say if he knew what happened the night the soldiers came? What would Tony think about a scared teenage boy who had searched desperately for somewhere safe to go, only to end up in Eden? No, he could not tell him about Saint, he could never tell him about Saint, but what if–

He could not bear it. “This is the real me,” said Cihad. He looked down at himself. At the scrubs that still smelled of chemicals and body odor. At his scuffed sneakers. At his exhausted body. The lump in his throat was back. He looked back up and tried to smile. “This is it.”

Tony made a small noise of disgust. He shoved the empty shooter back into his pocket with an air of finality. “I know two real things about you. You love Cynthia. And you’re a liar.”

The corners of Cihad’s smile wobbled. Don’t cry. He could not allow himself to cry in front of Tony. He could not allow the role of caretaker to pass from him, he could not allow Tony to see his weakness and vulnerability. Why was this happening to him? What had he done to make Tony hate him? Everything he did, every action he took, was out of love and a desire to protect him! Tony was too stubborn and too blinded by his illness and trauma to See. “I loved you.”

“Yeah.” Tony grimaced, then gave a dramatic full body shrug. “I know. But you were never able to let me love you.”

As usual, Tony got the last word. He turned and walked down the stairs like it was nothing. Cihad stood there in the dark, trying to breathe. Helpless. He was helpless to stop this, just as he was helpless in every other aspect of his life. There was no control. There was nothing. 

There was nothing he could do but watch.

[blooblooded]

Ben and the Blood Magic Cult

The Church of the Peoples’ Red Heaven did not have complicated theological beliefs. It came down to this: all humans were born in sinful bodies, but it was possible for them to transcend that and live with God after He cleansed the world from evil. God would not accept people without the will to change their natures. He would destroy the people who had not changed. The high-priestess taught that there were two ways to change one’s nature. A person had to engage in charitable works, helping others to change their souls. A person had to sacrifice their flesh to God, giving up parts of themselves to change their bodies. 

Ben Prospas was all too happy to help others and give from his body so that he could be closer to God. He could already feel his sinful nature changing. 

Red Heaven got a bad rap. The state media painted them as violent cultists having orgies while drenched in blood. Nothing could be farther from the truth. When Ben gave his blood to God every week, it felt like an intimate gift of meditation and peace. Nobody was holding him down, chanting gibberish and slashing him with a dirty blade while he screamed. The whole process was hygienic. Usually they used tubes and needles.

The only downside was how dizzy and weak he became after giving God part of himself. Normal blood donations took about half a liter at a time. Ben’s weekly sacrifices at church consisted of at least a liter and half of blood flowing into Red Heaven’s supply of blood bags. Sometimes they took more than that. Once, around the time he had first joined Red Heaven, the acolytes had taken three liters of blood for him and Ben had passed out, then didn’t wake up until the high-priestess shot him up with amphetamines.

But that had just been a test! They hadn’t trusted him back then. They hadn’t understood that even someone as corrupted and sinful as he was could submit fully to God’s wishes.

“Your sermon was really moving today,” Ben told the high-priestess. She was a kind little woman in her mid-50’s whose name was Helen. Ben had never seen someone so beautiful and at peace with herself. Her face shone with the same light she talked about God’s home having. “I want to be better at spreading God’s word. I’m going to talk to my boss about letting us bring someone in to minister to the inmates.”

The room where Red Heaven’s congregants sacrificed their bodies for God at least once each week looked more like a doctor’s office than a confessional. It was nestled in the back of the triangular building of worship. The walls were all sterile white, lined with freezers, and it was cold enough to make Ben shiver despite the blue sweater he wore. Cold as a slaughterhouse. He sat in a reclining chair with his right arm stuck out to accommodate the needle.

“You’re sweet, Benedict.” Helen smiled down at him with her red mouth and put a soft hand on his big shoulder. She sometimes used his full name since it meant blessing. Benediction. She said he was a blessing to the church, despite the evil way he was born. Ben’s heart fluttered. “Don’t move. God needs you to give more to Him today than you usually do.”

It seemed like God always asked more of Ben than other people. Ben had more to make up for than the other faithful.

Sometimes the high-priestess would give him a juice box when she was finished taking his blood. He was 25, a man with a job and an apartment, but in those moments he always felt like a child again.

Helen bent over him to check the position of the needle that was sucking what felt like half his blood out of his body. She frowned, then touched the crook of Ben’s arm to straighten it so that his blood rushed down the cannula faster. The needle dug deeper into him and he flinched. “Sorry, love.” She smiled at him again. “You should minister in the Prison District, if your boss would let you. God will be here any day. We want as many people to hear His message as possible.”

“I thought we didn’t know the exact day God would find His new body.”

“I can feel Him.” Helen said this as factually as if she had been talking about what she wanted for lunch that day. Her eyes grew wet with tears. “He’s coming. He doesn’t want to leave us suffering here without Him.”

Another blood bag had filled. She attached another. AB-positive, Ben thought. All Artificials were AB-positive. Universal receivers. The complete selfishness that he had been created with covered Ben with a sense of shame.  

God was coming back soon. 5 years ago, God had visited Helen in the body of a human woman and instructed her to start following Him. She said God was lonely. For millions of years, God had wandered the universe, an unparalleled cosmic warrior, destroying each planet He came across, until He came to Earth and saw the suffering and beauty  there. God fell in love with Earth and all the life there. He made a promise that one day He would be reborn into His true body, then rebuild the world for His followers. There would be no more suffering. There would be no more pain. God would consume all of the bad people and leave the world for His people.

All his followers had to do was spread the word, help others, and give of their own blood to help God become more powerful. Someday, part of Ben would be part of God.

There had been a lot of theological arguments within the Church after Ben showed up, enthusiastic and eager to serve as ever. Artificials were proof of humanity’s arrogance. The human soul melded with the human body during the act of procreation, a soul could not be created in a test tube. Soulless or not, God was willing to use Ben’s blood just like everyone else’s. 

“OK.” After what seemed like hours, Helen pulled the needle out of Ben’s arm and handed him a bandaid. She was tapping her foot like he was anxious about something and looked like she had not slept well for a long time. Helen pulled something up on her tablet, furrowed her dark eyebrows. She did not look like she was going to remember a juicebox. “Thank you, sweetie. You can go home.”

She always talked to him like that if she was not calling him Benedict. The pet names or his full name. Mr. Singh used pet names with him too, like son or kid, and that was a whole other problem Ben tried really really hard not to think about. Everyone at work just called him “Prospas”. Nobody called him Ben anymore. He couldn’t remember the last person who called him Ben, maybe it had been his little brother Romeo all those years ago when he had begged him not to leave home at 18.

Couldn’t let himself think about that! The Church was his family now. 

Ben rolled down the sleeves of his sweater. He gave God parts of his body more than once a week and the sacrifices Ben made in private were not as sterile and hygienic as the bloodletting within Red Heaven’s church. There had been a few times he thought he would need stitches and got so scared he thought about stopping. Many of the faithful had the same marks of devotion. It set them apart from the masses of unfeeling atheists that swarmed Eden. That and the way that a person’s eyes turned red when they started giving themselves to the all-powerful God of the Void.

He hesitated, hoping that the high-priestess would say something to him, but she was too focused on her tablet. “God is coming back soon?” he asked. It was exciting and terrifying. 

“God is already here. He’s waiting for His new body.” One corner of Helen’s mouth twitched when she looked at him as if it was hard for her to maintain a smile. She hung the blood bags she had taken from him in the freezers lining the walls. “We’re just getting things ready for Him. We have to start cleansing Eden and changing it from the top down. Your sacrifice today will help us do that– I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

Eden did need change. Ben knew that better than anyone. People were suffering all around him. He had suffered too, until he turned 18 and was able to get away from his toxic family. He tied his dreadlocks back in a ponytail to keep them out of his face, then stood up.

He didn’t want to go home. Church was what he looked forward to all week, when he was lonely or was being driven out of his mind by the inmates at work. 

But he didn’t want to distract Helen. She was a busy woman with a lot of important work to do. After all, she was single-handedly leading the last remnant of God’s people. If he wanted to talk to someone about his feelings, he could just wait until tomorrow morning when he saw Mr. Singh. 

Ben left the sacrificial room without saying another word to the high-priestess. There were still a few people milling around the temple’s atrium, as there always were on Friday worship nights. Ben gave Faris Holloway, one of the AV guys, a friendly wave. Faris frowned at him as he passed.

“We shouldn’t be insulting the Great Devourer with your offerings, Prospas,” Faris sighed. He was a nerdy young man from the Lower Levels, always very nice to Ben, but he had ideas about what was Right and what was Wrong. He had recently pulled out one of his own eyes for God and the wound looked infected. “It would be like if you handed me a sandwich with mold on it. You know that. There are other ways for you to help.”

Yikes.

“God told Helen that He needed my blood.” Too tired and faint to get angry, Ben tried not to feel insulted. He knew what he was, but it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t asked to be born this way. He even wore brown contact lenses to keep people from remembering his abnormalities– not that he needed them anymore. His yellow eyes had turned red a long time ago, and that was enough of a sign of his commitment to God as he needed.

Faris shook his head. “Yeah. Sure.”

Not everyone listened to the high-priestess without question. Ben was not someone who could afford to have doubts. “By His blood, we are Transformed. Through ours, we are Redeemed,” he said, quoting scripture. Anyone who gave of themselves completely to the Great Devourer would be forgiven.

For a second, Ben remembered everything he needed to be forgiven for, and flinched. What was wrong with him? Why had he hurt people?

“I feel bad for you,” said Faris. “You don’t even understand what she’s going to do. Not everything she tells us comes straight from God, she’s interpreting the ancient texts, not talking to God. You should stay home tomorrow, brother, this whole place is about to get real crazy. It won’t be good for you if she pulls this off.”

Ben knew that the high-priestess talked directly to God. There was no reason for him to doubt her or her intentions. He shrugged. He liked Faris. He liked how dedicated he was to God, how he gave God blood from his neck and face, not just from places he could cover up. It was true self-sacrifice, and that kind of thing made Ben want to get as close as he could, just to see if he could feel God too, he wanted to kiss–

It was time to leave. Red Heaven encouraged regular enthusiastic sexual freedom, since God thought of cum in the same way He thought of blood: a lifegiving sacrifice from a human body. Blood meant death, sex meant life, it was really all very simple, but Ben didn’t have a soul. It wouldn’t be right.

He waved at Faris again, goodbye this time, bought a coffee from one of the vending machines up front, and left the temple. It rose above him, black and triangular. Helen said that God gave her special instructions to build it, when she had met Him in a woman’s body. The woman’s name had been Catherine Delmont. She had given her life to God 5 years ago, right before Helen deciphered the ancient texts and built the temple, and was worshipped as God’s first martyr in Eden.

There would be other martyrs, Ben thought, on his walk to the train that would take him to the subsidized apartment he rented near the Prison District. The state government did not agree with what Helen was doing– which was just helping suffering people, Ben thought– and were trying to crack down with laws regarding disposal of hazardous bodily fluids. There was talk about sending Internal Operations into places where blood was being collected, and their brutality was  something Ben had witnessed at work far too many times.

He would gladly give his life for God if he had to. God had given everything for him, and he didn’t deserve it. He could still remember being 15 years old and so angry and helpless that he had started a fight with a girl who was picking on him, then held her down and hit her over and over again, as hard as he could, until she lost consciousness. Whenever he thought about that, it made him feel so bad all over that he wanted to die. 

Of course he had been thrown in Juvie until he turned 18. That was what happened. People had to take accountability for their actions. Dad hadn’t come to visit him, he hadn’t allowed his brothers to visit him. Ben had been fat and weak when he was a kid, of course all the other boys in Juvie would beat on him and call him names and he deserved that too. When you did something that harmed other people, you had to be punished. The only person who could forgive you was God.

It seemed like God was taking a long time to forgive Ben, though. When would he stop being punished? He turned 18 right before B-Day, got out of Juvie, and was home all of a week before that violent psychopath Kip Nguyen helped set off bombs that murdered nearly 5000 people. OK, Ben deserved to bear witness to that too, he deserved to be punished for that too, because he should have been nicer to Kip when they were in school together and maybe it would have never happened. Dad’s headaches and drinking got worse after the stress of the bombings though, and Ben got tired of getting smacked around all the time, so he left after a month. 

That was the worst thing he could have done. Romeo had been 13. Valentine had been 8. It wasn’t like Ben could have taken his brothers out of that house.  What was he supposed to do, stay? At the time, all he had been worried about was getting out of a house with a violent man.

Ben would never be in a house without a violent man, even when he was alone.

Valentine died two years ago. He would have only been 12. That was on Ben too. Why hadn’t he called more? Why hadn’t he visited, or done anything at all? 

The high-priestess said that these burdens of guilt on the soul would be lifted by God as He received sacrifices. Ben gave all that he could, but the guilt was killing him. 

By His blood, we are Transformed. Through ours, we are Redeemed.

Ben sighed, waiting for the train. God would end the suffering soon, one way or another. He would have to go home and give more of himself.

##

The next morning, Ben’s boss stopped him before he could walk inside the reinforced steel doors of the Prison District.

The Warden was a lean, muscular woman in her early 40s named Jenny Castillo, with an aimlessly capricious manner. She moved like an overly excited dog with boundless energy, cruel one minute and gentle the next. Today, her heart-shaped freckled face looked grim and she sucked her chipped teeth when she saw him in his uniform.

“Oh, Prospas,” she said, bouncing over to him. Ben was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than this woman, but still felt dwarfed by her. “Why don’t you take the day off today, buddy?”

Ben looked down at the two cups of coffee he was carrying. One, with three creams and two sugars, was his. The other, black, was for Mr. Singh. He hoped she would not ask him why he had two cups of coffee. He was not supposed to give presents to inmates because it could look inappropriate. “Er,” he said. “Are we overstaffed?”

A shadow passed over the Warden’s expression. “Overstaffed? We’re lucky if we don’t have to call Internal Operations in to bust up those jackasses in Block 16, no we’re not overstaffed. But you should go home. You know.” She paused awkwardly. “Take care of yourself.”

What was she talking about? Did she know he believed in God? Eden was full of atheists who could not understand, and Ben was very careful to hide the marks of his devotion. He had remembered to put in his contact lenses. He wore long sleeve undershirts beneath his khaki uniform. There was no way that she could know, and no other reason that his boss would be worried about him.

The Warden was staring at him like she thought he was going to start crying or something. “I don’t understand,” said Ben. “You want me to go home?”

“Mental health day,” said the Warden, snapping her fingers. “I know you have piles of sick pay. Artificials never need to use it.”

“I don’t think I need a mental health day?” He felt confused. His boss could be childish and unpredictable, but she never messed around with his mind. In supervision, she always told him that she wanted to boost his self esteem.

“I worry about you.” The Warden kept her brown hair cut close to her head. For the past three years, she had bought Ben a journal for his birthday and he had filled up all of them. “I see how you try so hard to make yourself small and quiet, but you can’t squash down your feelings forever. So if you’re going to freak out here today, I’m going to need you to take that shit home.”

“What are you talking about?”

She stared at him, long and hard. “You don’t watch the news, Prospas?”

Ben shook his head. He wore a khaki colored baseball hat with his ponytail sticking out the back of it. The hot coffee was starting to hurt his hands. Of course he didn’t watch the lies the state media put out. He was even less likely to watch West Agapama’s fascist conspiracy network. Ben started his mornings with quiet prayer instead.

That morning, he had been praying for his only living brother, Romeo.

The Warden grimaced. “You read last night’s bookings before you come in?”

Ben shook his head again. His heart started beating faster. Helen? Had something happened to Helen? Had something happened to the church? He took a breath to try to calm himself, then handed the coffees to the Warden. She took them from him without complaining, with that horrible expression of awkward concern. Maybe she was his friend. That didn’t matter though. Something bad had happened and she was trying to warn him because she cared about him. He pulled his work phone out of his pocket and started to skim through recent bookings.

It all looked very usual. A handful of arrests for drunk and disorderlies, a few for domestic violence. A few dozen thefts and the same amount of assaults. Three arrests for littering. Twenty seven arrests for possession of illegal substances. One for murder. Ben squinted at all the names, until he came to the alleged murderer.

His heart seemed to drop to his stomach. Prospas, R.

Dad’s name was Richard.

“Oh, God,” Ben said before he could stop himself. He closed his eyes. Oh God. Oh God. What had Dad done to Rome?

“You good?” asked the Warden, who looked like she wanted to drop the coffees. “Fuck. Hey, you can go home.”

This was his fault. What was wrong with him? He was 25 years old, he wasn’t a little kid anymore. Why hadn’t he gone back to that house after Valentine died? Ben had been happily living in an apartment with his ex-boyfriend Jordan back then. He hadn’t even called to check on Rome, he had been too scared and selfish, and that had been years ago. Of course something else had happened. 

Was God testing him? Ben didn’t know how much more he could take.

“Oh, God,” Ben said again. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening to him. He didn’t deserve this. “Oh my God. What did he do? What did he do to him?”

“Detectives haven’t been out there long because of all the pigs blood, but it looks like he killed him pretty good– hey!”

He left her at the entrance, holding the coffees he had brought for himself and Marshall Singh.

Booking was nearby, down the hallway and up a short flight of stairs. Ben worked in booking when he first got hired as a corrections officer. He had liked it, had liked encouraging the people who had come in for nonviolent and violent crimes alike. They could turn their lives around just like he had. But thinking about his dad getting processed into the Prison District? Thinking about his dad getting stripped down and fingerprinted and photographed? It was too awful.

Too awful. It was all too awful! Ben didn’t even feel anything, not sadness, not fear, not even anger. Everything had drained out of him. He had to see his dad. He didn’t have any other family left now. 

What was the bond for murder? 2nd degree was less than 1st degree. It had to be 2nd degree, right? Dad would never have intentionally hurt Rome.

God wouldn’t want him making excuses for the violent man who had decided to create him without a soul.

Ben used his ID to open the door into booking. It was a more secure area of the Prison District, where inmates were all processed and then sent to individual cells to wait for the Warden to determine their bond and conditions for release. In the old days, they used a system of different judges for sentencing, but it was more fair and streamlined for the decision to come from a single person.

Another CO, a stocky girl named Olu who sat at the front desk, flinched and cursed when she saw him. “Fucking Prospas!” she snapped, brushing herself off. “You really think you should be up here?”

“Where is he?” Ben asked, calm as anything, not even panting from his jog. He felt like he was floating outside of his body. What was he going to say to his Dad? Was he going to ask him if the bright lights were giving him a headache? Was he going to ask him why he had beaten Rome to death? Was he just going to grab him and strangle him to death? Time would tell!

Olu blew a bubble of chewing gum and snapped it disrespectfully. If Ben wanted to pull rank on her, he could have, he had been working there years longer than her. But he didn’t. She smacked her gum again. “Pod 12. You really shouldn’t go talk to him. Aren’t you the one always talking about boundaries with inmates?”

“He’s my family.” Ben didn’t feel anything at all. God was protecting him from having feelings. Thank you, God.

“I don’t see the resemblance.” Olu looked him up and down, smacking her gum, then looked back down at her phone. “He started crying when we took his mugshot. If that makes you feel any better.”

It didn’t. Thinking about his Dad crying sort of made Ben want to think about killing this girl. He gave her a tight smile of thanks, then turned from the front desk, clenching and unclenching his big hands.

Three times. Dad had used the exact same DNA three times to create his sons and now Ben was the only one left. What was the point?

Pod 12. Ok, that was fine. Pod 12. What was he going to say? Hi, Dad? What’s wrong with you, Dad? Why would you create us if you couldn’t love us, Dad? Pod 12. He was aware of the girl at the front desk watching him.

All of the individual booking pods looked like big white eggs lining the walls. Ben walked up to the one with the white 12 painted on its steel doors. He held his ID up to the scanner and marveled at how his hands weren’t even shaking. If he was still 18, his hands would definitely be shaking. The Great Devourer had given him some strength. God was very good to him, even if he didn’t deserve it. The steel doors slid open and Ben stepped inside of the pod without taking a breath or deciding what he was going to say.

But the inmate sitting in the pod was not his dad. Ben froze. It was an Artificial boy of maybe 20, wearing a baggy prison jumpsuit. He was gangly, made up of long, awkward arms and legs, and his eyes were big and yellow in a pretty, dark face. Rome. Stupid Rome. He was looking at his brother. He was looking at his pathetic little brother. That meant. That meant–

“You,” said Ben, with a breath of finality. Relief? Was it relief? It was, wasn’t it? R Prospas. Romeo Prospas. Not his dad. What had the Warden said? “Killed him pretty good”. Yeah. He bet he had. 

For half a second, Ben felt…happy. He pushed that back down.

Rome stared at him, shivering like an animal. The bright lights were making him squint. He sat with his back to one of the walls. There was no recognition on his face.

“It’s me,” said Ben, frowning. It looked like his brother had snapped. That made sense, from what he could remember. When they were kids, Rome used to just hide in his room all day and never talked.  Maybe the Warden would send him to some kind of facility.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” said Rome. He winced, then tried to hide his eyes from the fluorescents. He still lisped around his sharp teeth, so all his words came out mushy, a problem Ben had fixed years ago with speech therapy. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Rome?” Ben stepped closer to him. “Hey, man. It’s me. Ben.” It was stupid to say that. As if he wouldn’t recognize him. How long had it been? How many years? Rome looked like a man now, tall and nervous, a younger version of Dad. How much had Ben changed?

“I didn’t do anything. I never do anything. Somebody made me do it. I love Dad. I would never hurt Dad.”

Ben nodded, the way you do around crazy people. Poor crazy Rome. “Uh huh.”

“Somebody made me do it.”

“OK.”

Rome put his hands over his eyes and pressed his face against knees. “They took away my clothes,” he said. “Now my hands are dirty. They took my picture, and my face, I wasn’t–”

“Yeah,” Ben said hollowly. He didn’t feel too bad for Rome, since he was being treated about as well as a murder suspect could hope for, if all he was worried about were his clothes and some ink on his hands. Ben had been in Juvie for 3 years, enduring cruel staff and sociopathic children. It was probably easier to feel bad for Rome. Rome had always been the good one. He should probably give him a hug, but he also probably wasn’t supposed to do that.  “You’ll be OK though.”

“No.” Rome continued to hide his face. “Where have you been? Where were you? Here?”

Did he really not know? Was he really so sheltered that he thought Ben could just go out in the world and not need a job? Not everyone was so special. 

He didn’t know what to say and Rome didn’t like to talk. 

Oh, God, Rome had killed their dad. Dad was dead. He didn’t feel anything.

“AJ can tell you that I didn’t do anything.”

So that freak was still getting paid to hang around and beat people up. The scriptures said that a violent heart creates more violence. Ben was glad he had gotten out. He was the only one who had. 

The pod doors slid open and the Warden, looking irritated, grabbed Ben and dragged him back out into booking. He was a big guy, but she could manhandle him easily, more from sheer force of will than from size. He watched the doors separate himself from his brother again. Rome looked miserable.

“What did I tell you about going home today?” she asked, cross. “That was not appropriate. You’re all upset now.”

“What happened?” Ben figured he had already worked it out for himself. He knew what needed to happen too. People had to take accountability for their actions. Someone who murdered their dad couldn’t just be running around, no matter what the motive behind it was. He felt dead inside. This was his fault. This had happened because he thought he could leave. “What did he do?”

“Allegedly slammed Richard Prospas’s face through an electric bandsaw in your family’s meat packing plant. Head split open like an egg, brains everywhere,” the Warden said, as if she was indeed talking about the price of eggs. She noticed Ben’s expression, caught herself, and put a soft hand on his back. “No witnesses though, and lots of blood all mixed in with the pig blood. Messy. Booked in about 5:30 this morning, and let me tell you, that arresting officer is one of those Agapama cunts, so I’m not apt to prioritize her little case. If you know what I mean.”

Ben did not know what she meant. He did not know much of anything other than how badly God was testing him. God wanted to see how he would react while facing the sins of his family. Messy? That was his dad she was talking about.

“Monopolization.” The Warden grimaced, showing her chipped teeth again. “You know. Those people have their eyes on your father’s company. The economy’s about to go down the drain. Food’s about to dry up if there’s nobody leading Prosperity. Bread lines for everyone.”

That was the last thing Ben cared about. Prosperity could go to hell. It would, after God came back. To him, it was nothing more than a symbol of greed and suffering. People shouldn’t have to pay for basic needs. “The state can take it.”

“You should have seen how that cop was yanking your brother around. Twisting his arm, laughing when he asked for water.” The Warden patted him sympathetically. “I don’t know. Seemed pretty personal. Staff Sergeant Vega Pelenato– you know who she works for, right?”

Ben knew all about the police officer in West Agapama’s employment because everyone in Eden knew that. Everyone knew Agapama hated Ben’s family, that he had some kind of personal problem. It still didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t care about the company and he didn’t care about the economy. Why would he care about the company if Dad never wanted him to be a part of it? Why would he care about the economy if God was coming back soon? He did care a little about his brother, but what was he supposed to do about that? 

“I can’t stand those fucking people,” said the Warden, bouncing on the soles of her feet.

This seemed very personal, if Ben thought about it. He knew what she was getting at. His boss liked him. His boss thought that this was a set up by the Agapama crime syndicate. She was willing to bend the rules when it benefited her. This was the corruption that everyone was always talking about. It didn’t…it didn’t seem so bad. “What’s the bond?”

“500,000. Probation, then trial.”

That was more than fair for someone who had just brutally murdered their father, Ben just didn’t have 500,000 credits laying around. He was paid fairly, but 10% of his income went to the Church. 

He shouldn’t be getting involved with this. He had tried so hard for so long to get away. Why should he get pulled back into it now when his life was good?

But it was his fault.

Ben really wanted Mr. Singh. Talking to Mr. Singh would make him feel better. It always did, and maybe Mr. Singh would smile at him and try to pray with him. There just wasn’t any time.

“You really should go home, buddy.” The Warden said, haltingly, as if she regretted everything she just said. Like she had forgotten she was not talking to a friend. “I forget you’re not like other Artificials.”

Ben looked back at Pod 12. Rome was probably in there crying or trying to hang himself or something. This was on him. “Yeah,” he said. “I have to go talk to someone about 500,000 credits.”

It occurred to him that God may have answered his prayers, just not in a way that he liked.

##

Ben found Ajax Gutierrez at the bail bondsman located directly outside of the Prison District, just like he knew he would.

“You motherfucker,” AJ swore when he saw him. AJ was sturdy and hard-faced, a few years older than Ben. He was the kind of man who punched first and asked questions later. Ben did not know how long he had been working for his dad, but knew he had shown up when he was in Juvie to take care of the boys. “Just what I fucking needed.”

“You look stressed,” said Ben, noticing AJ’s sweaty armpits and long unbrushed hair. “I just want to–”

“You look like I’m gonna pop you in the fucking throat if you say one more word to me. You look all crazy, you’ve done something to your eyes,” said AJ. He turned back to the stressed out looking bondsman. “Yeah, 500,000, do you have a problem with that?”

He didn’t know that the only reason he was bonding Rome out at all was because of Ben’s friendship with the Warden. He could hate him all he wanted. 

“It’s just– it’s just a lot at one–”

“500,000, one million, I don’t care.” AJ had his knuckle dusters on. They shone bronze on his hands. Ready for a nasty fight. Ben hoped that he would not try to hit him. If AJ tried to hit him, he was going to smash every bone in his body. “Now. Now. Bond him out now, it’s been four fucking hours, I can’t leave him in there any longer.”

“Four hours is not a long time,” said Ben. Luckily, God was still protecting him from having bad feelings. He still felt dead on the inside, or like he was inside a dream. Like he was watching this happen to someone else.  “Especially if, you know, Rome violently murdered our father and deserves to be punished for it.”

AJ slapped his open palm on the counter repetitively, then rolled his eyes like he had been repeating the same thing over and over. “That boy is not capable of murder. Something else happened. No witnesses, no proof. It was an accident.”

Oh, Ben wasn’t too sure about that. Everyone was capable of harming others, even God. “500,000?”

“It’s nothing.”

Nobody had been acting like this when Ben got dragged to Juvie. Nobody had been spending exorbitant amounts of money just to make sure he was home and safe. He had been scared and little back then too. And he had only beaten a girl, he never killed anyone. What was so great about Rome?

Ben watched Ajax pay the bondsman and pace around the cramped and dirty building. “Can I come home?” he asked. “For a night or two?” He did not know what home would mean without Dad.

AJ looked like he wanted to spit. “What home? Yeah, no. You can go fuck yourself. You left, remember? It destroyed Rome. He lost all his little friends, then you came back just to leave him again, and he has never been the same. He won’t talk to me about it, but I know what’s wrong. You’re so fucking selfish. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t left.”

Everyone else knew that it was his fault too.

“You’re the one who was getting paid to look after them. I just grew up. People leave home when they grow up.”

He was acutely aware that his younger brothers never were able to grow up. It was only him.

The bail bondsman, obviously used to escalated arguments in his place of business, handed AJ a slip of paper. “It’s refundable if all court appearances are made.”

“Thank you,” AJ said, with another poisonous look at Ben. “Again, go fuck yourself and die.”

“I’ll see you later, AJ,” said Ben, waving at him.

Ajax Gutierrez flipped him off on the way out.

##

Ben went home to cry by himself and pray. He wished he was as dedicated as Faris and could pull his own eyes out. God wanted to punish him for being selfish. He hadn’t helped Rome when he needed him, so God had made his brother go crazy and took his father away from him. Ben knew it was fair. He knew it had to happen. That didn’t make it any easier.

If he didn’t have a soul, then why did everything hurt him so badly? If his father had been an evil man who created evil things, then why did he feel grief over his death?

He wasn’t even seeing anyone and could not distract himself from the complicated sadness. Ben’s last boyfriend had broken up with him a year ago, around when he started getting really into the church. Thinking about that last fight they got in just made him feel worse. He was a terrible person, why couldn’t he control himself? He had really hurt Jordan!

Ben would have sat in his dark apartment feeling sorry for himself all day and night if he had not received a call. He squinted at his phone, vision blurring from his tinted contacts. Unknown number. Ben wiped his nose on his sleeve and answered.

“Prospas,” he said, expecting something work related.

“Ben?” his brother’s voice. Stupid AJ. He knew Rome would call. “Sorry. Marty found your number for me on the Prison District directory. You can come over.”

Rome sounded different over the phone. All the trembly-kicked puppy fearfulness had dropped from his voice, he sounded flat and cold. Yikes. Still lispy though. Ben may have misjudged his lack of backbone. “What, it’s just you and Gutierrez over there now?” He could vaguely remember his father’s entourage, all toothy, cold men with bad tempers. The Board. They always used to be lurking around.

“Yes.”

“I can be up there in half an hour.” Ben shivered. What was he saying? He did not really want to go back to that house. He had spent years of his life just trying to stay out of that house. “You want me to get you anything? You used to like those vanilla milkshakes from that place on the corner of 7th and Watson.”

There was a long pause. Rome cleared his throat. “If you want to.”

Got him. Ben smiled. A little kindness could make big changes, that’s what Helen always said. “Yeah. I’ll see you soon, Ro.”

“Thanks.”

Good God, why was he so awkward? Talking to him made Ben feel like he was wildly charismatic and had a robust social life– two things which were categorically untrue. He squeezed into some jeans and an old sweatshirt, both of which were too small for him. It was nearly impossible to find clothes that fit someone who had been manufactured to be so freakishly huge.

Keys, phone, wallet. Ben made his way to the metro station that would take him to the Upper Levels. He tried to keep his breathing steady. He was not going home. He was going to see his brother. Nothing bad was going to happen, he wasn’t a little kid anymore.

On the corner of 7th and Watson, he stopped to buy two milkshakes.

The Prospas family home was located in the Residential Upper Levels, along with all the other sick displays of excess. It rose 3 stories tall, an angular Brutalist monstrosity. Ben shivered harder when he looked up at it. Maybe he should go back home, but how would he get on the metro with his hands full of milkshakes? He pressed the doorbell with his elbow and then waited.

After what seemed like forever, Rome opened the door. He had changed into silk pajamas with a striped bathrobe over them, and appeared more collected than he had when Ben had last seen him. Creepily collected. Rome’s dark face was like a mask. 

Ben handed him one milkshake, then pushed past him because he didn’t want to stand out there all day waiting for his brother to talk. The house was just like he remembered it. Dark wood panelling. Thick velvet drapes. Barely any light. He took a deep breath of stuffy air and tried to stop shivering. 

The house was just a house.

“You could change this place up now,” he said, looking around. There was a painting of himself as a child hanging in the front hallway. Ben frowned at it. “Tear down the curtains. Let in some light so people can see.”

Rome closed the front door, then locked and unlocked it several times. “The light makes my head hurt,” he said sullenly.

Ben rolled his eyes. “The light doesn’t make your head hurt, you’re just saying that because Dad always says that. Quit with the hypochondria, it’s just mind over matter.”

“Hm.” Rome’s expression became chillier. 

Great, he had hurt his feelings. What was wrong with him? Why did he always hurt people? “The curtains are fine. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter to me, I don’t live here.”

“That’s what I wanted to—”

“Hey!” AJ bustled his unwanted self down the stairwell and into the front hallway. He snatched the milkshake out of Rome’s hands. “Don’t drink that. He could be trying to poison you.”

This guy was unbelievable! Who did this puffed up babysitter think he was? Ben found himself squaring his shoulders, clenching and unclenching his fists again. “Please tell me how you think that makes sense.”

“AJ, I really don’t think this is necess–”

“He wants the company. He wants to get rid of you so he can run the company.”

Ben laughed. “Wow. I don’t want Prosperity, it can go to the state for all I care. Romeo only got bonded out because the Warden likes me and thinks that West Agapama’s setting you all up so that he can swoop in and take the company. Who cares? Get away from me.”

“You’re going to ruin everything.”

“Whatever!” Ben grabbed Rome by his collar and steered him past AJ, down the hallway, to the living room. He always used to hate the living room as a kid because it was where dad would have his meetings. Now it was just the biggest room with the most couches in it. He sat down. Nothing bad happened.

Rome looked around the living room like he did not know what to do. He had his arms crossed over his chest. Right. Ben needed to have more empathy, his brother had just been through a horrific event, regardless of what had really happened. What was wrong with him? What was his problem? When he was alone or at church, he understood who he was completely and could express himself. Now he was face to face with someone he really cared about and needed to remind himself to act sad. 

Maybe he was going insane. Maybe dad was dead and it had made him go insane. Ben always used to imagine crying and making some kind of huge scene at the funeral.

“You want the other milkshake?” Ben asked his brother, because he did not know what else to say. “I didn’t put my mouth on it or anything, it probably doesn’t have any germs on it.”

“No, thank you.” Rome was clenching his teeth. He shook himself, tightened the belt on his bathrobe, then slunk over to the bar cart to pour scotch into a glass. The way he stood and grabbed himself as if he was trying to hold himself together, his clothes, the drink, he looked so much like Dad. No wonder he was always the favorite.

“Your 21st birthday isn’t until February…”

“Shut up, Ben.” Rome started to pace.

Ow, OK. So he could get his jabs in too.

“You’ll start staying here. You can have your old room back.”

“That’s not happening.” Did he really think that he could tell Ben what to do? Ben could not take him seriously, slinking around in his stupid pajamas before 4pm! “Sorry. I have my own apartment. And I hate this house. I can hang out until 8, but I work 3rd Shift tomorrow night, so I’ll have to go home to sleep. Don’t you have any friends you can call instead of me?”

That was mean. Ben winced. Stupid. 

Rome gulped down scotch. “You have to stay here. Something’s happening.”

“I would love to see you try to make me do anything,” said Ben. The couch was so comfortable that he might have considered taking a nap on it, if his adrenaline had not been spiking from simply being inside the house. “I get it, something bad happened, you’re scared, you’re feeling regret, but God lov–”

“Somebody did something to me. I couldn’t sleep last night. My nose, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. My body hurt, it started to feel like something was trying to pull me from the inside. I didn’t want to hurt Dad. I was trying n-not–not to hurt Dad. I was trying not to push him.” Rome held onto his drink with both hands. His expression remained flat and dead, but his eyes were huge and unblinking, glowing in the dim light. “He’s only hard on me so I can run Prosperity one day. He has to be hard on me because I get so anxious. So you know I would never hurt Dad. Somebody did something to me. Somebody made me want to hurt Dad. I was so angry. I never get angry.”

What a little liar. Ben remembered being 13 and locking Rome in a closet for 3 hours. When he finally let him out, Rome had been so angry that he had bit his hand. He didn’t feel bad about that, since Dad had thoroughly thrashed him for picking on his baby brother again, but knew for a fact that Rome had the same capacity for anger that he had. “Ok,” he said in that voice you’re supposed to use when talking to a crazy person. 

Maybe he and AJ needed to remove every sharp object from the house. He wondered what the conditions of his probation were. Didn’t Rome see how lucky he was that he was not rotting in the Prison District? He could just waltz around here until the Warden figured out whatever it was that she was doing and set the trial. He would really be unhappy if he was forced to share a communal bathroom with dozens of other inmates.

“Somebody did something to me,” said Rome. “Somebody did something to me. Somebody made me do it. Somebody made me–made me violent. Made me want to hurt people.”

“Ok.”

“Marty told me he’s been researching blood-magic and what it can do to people. He says it gets inside people and changes them. But they need parts of someone’s body, like fingernails or blood or spit, to get their DNA. I just don’t know how someone would be able to do that to me. I’m very clean.”

The nasty slur against Ben’s belief system took him by surprise. More of the propaganda being spread by the state government. They thought they were bad and dangerous, and it looked like Rome thought they were bad and dangerous too. Ben could not understand. “Who’s Marty?” he asked. “Your boyfriend?”

He had no idea his brother liked boys or girls or anything else, he just wanted to hurt him.

Rome’s gaze slid to the floor. “Yes.”

Ben doubted that very much. “You’re worried about your fingernails? That’s all stupid and paranoid. Nobody can force anyone to do something they don’t want to do. Look– it’s been a hard day.”

“Dad’s dead,” said Rome.

“Yeah.” That sounded unsympathetic. What was wrong with him?

“I swear I didn’t kill him.”

“I guess that’ll come out in court.”

Rome stood there, gaunt and quiet and miserable. Ben didn’t know what to do for him. There was nothing he could do for someone like that. His plan to win his brother over by buying him a milkshake had clearly failed. It wouldn’t be right to leave him like this. Alone and scared. 

Maybe there wasn’t anything Ben could do, but God could. Maybe he could get Rome to accept God’s message. Maybe he could save him.

Ben fixed his face to look more open and friendly. He had never invited anyone to church with him. Whenever Mr. Singh was released from his sentence (extortion– 10 years) he hoped to take him. But Rome needed God in his life more than Mr. Singh did. Rome did not have a soul either. “You want to come to Church with me tomorrow? I’ll have time all morning, since I’m working 3rd shift. It’s really helped me. It’s really helped me find peace.

The stink of lifelong atheism was all around them. Rome finished off his drink, then went to pour another. Ben tried not to react to that. Don’t judge, don’t judge! “What do you mean? You go to one of the Weil Churches? The–the numbers and geometry ones?”

Weil was little more than state atheism dressed up with numerology. “No. It’s a smaller denomination.”

“Red Heaven?” Rome was staring at him. His mouth tightened, his eyes narrowed to slits. 

“Yeah.” He put that together fast, hadn’t he? Ben tugged down his sleeves.

“Is that why you’re wearing contacts? They don’t allow Artificials in there. They don’t like that we’re better than them.”

Ben sipped on his milkshake. His was strawberry flavored. “That’s hateful, Ro.”

“You feel better when you go to Church?”

“I feel like God is protecting me and is there for me whenever I’m lonely or upset. The community is changing things here, making things better. It’s helped me a lot. God is going to find His new body soon and make sure that all of His people are safe. By His blood, we are Transformed. Through ours, we are Redeemed.” He shrugged. His testimony was no different than anyone else’s. “I’m less angry now.”

Rome seemed less up tight now that he had had a drink and a half in less than 10 minutes. The emotionless mask started to slip. “The alien God stuff makes you feel better?”

“God gave up everything, even His own body, so that He could stay on Earth and help people who are suffering.”

He knew that his brother did not believe in God. Not yet. Ben could help him see. He could draw him into Red Heaven with his loneliness and terror at the evil world, and keep him there with the peace of God’s love!

“I’ll go with you to your church tomorrow if you stay here tonight,” said Rome. He looked at his feet, then back up at Ben, and to his shock, smiled. Rome’s smile was not big and stupid like Ben’s. He barely turned up the corners of his mouth, barely showed his horrible sharp teeth. But it was a smile. “You don’t have to sleep in your old bedroom. I can send AJ out to get you a toothbrush and some clothes for the morning.”

The thought of Rome bossing AJ around on his behalf was more than tempting. Ben sighed, rubbed his face. It had been a long day and he still did not know how he was feeling. “Deal,” he said. “I’ll sleep here. It’s close to the door, yeah, so I’ll wake up if somebody crazy comes inside the house.”

“So long as somebody crazy isn’t already inside the house.”

That was a weird thing to say, but Rome was weird and his brain was all scrambled up. Ben shook his head and started to take off his shoes.

##

“My head hurts,” Rome complained the next morning, as he followed Ben to the metro station on the Upper Levels. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“You drank too much.” Ben looked around the busy sidewalks, full of Artificials hurrying off to their high paying jobs in the research and development industries. It wasn’t fair. He was going to have to work 3rd shift again in 12 hours. “That’s what you deserve.”

Rome dug around in his stylish leather off-shoulder bag and pulled out a bottle of painkillers, then promptly shook out and swallowed about 6 of them on an empty stomach. Ben grimaced. His brother’s liver was probably screaming for help, but it wasn’t any of his business. 

“Or maybe it’s because of everything that happened to me yesterday. And you’re not wearing the clothes I got you.”

The clothes were not going to work out. Ben suspected AJ had purchased them to specifically punish him. Purple shorts and a T-shirt that had the yellow circular Prosperity logo on it. He wouldn’t have worn that even if there weren’t open wounds lacing his arms up to the shoulders. Rome on the other hand, had dressed himself in a black three-piece suit with a red tie. He looked like a kid playing dress up.

Ben ignored the whining. They were going to church. He was going to open his brother’s eyes to God’s love. That was all that mattered.

“You’ll like it,” he said, once they got on the train and sat down. A schizophrenic homeless guy was urinating in the corner, which made Rome scowl. “I could feel God the second I walked into the temple. It was like He surrounded me and protected me.”

Rome was trying to not look back at the peeing homeless guy. He folded his hands carefully in his lap. “Well, it wasn’t protecting you yesterday. I don’t understand how something all-powerful could exist if it sits back and lets people suffer. Shouldn’t your God stop bad things from happening if it exists?”

“Suffering’s the whole point, Ro. People have to suffer for their sins because it makes them decide to stop hurting people. It’s accountability.”

“That doesn’t make sense. What about little kids who get sick or hurt or something, you don’t think they deserve that?”

Atheist thinking. He wouldn’t be an atheist for much longer. Ben tried to mess up Rome’s carefully groomed hair and got slapped away.

The ride down to the Lower Levels took about half an hour. There were so many stops, so many people. Ben smiled at them as they boarded the cab. Rome shivered and flinched every time it stopped. It did not seem like he used public transportation often. Probably hadn’t willingly left that house for years. Ben was winning. Or maybe not. He had started to get the feeling that his brother was the kind of guy who always let other people tell him what to do.

“Isn’t the architecture incredible?” Ben asked as they approached Red Heaven’s temple. It used to be an old corner store, but Helen had transformed it into something beautiful. The building was covered in oily black stone, shaped into a triangle.

“It’s something,” said Rome, who took half a step back. He had his arms crossed again. “You’re sure this place has helped you?”

“God has helped me more than anything else.”

“And we can leave if I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, yeah, there’s not even a sermon today. Those only happen on Fridays.” Ben was excited for Helen to see what he had done. He could help change Eden too. It was possible that if Rome became a believer, he would sign the company over to the church! He got one of his arms around his brother’s shoulders and guided him up the sidewalk to the temple’s door with its knife-shaped metal handles.

There weren’t many people there on non-sermon days. Mostly the space was used for organizing volunteer projects and accommodating study groups. Helen would sometimes allow the most faithful believers to come learn God’s word from her. Catherine Delmont had given her 5 pages of the ancient texts, and within them contained instructions on how to use God’s gifts and sacrifices for personal power. 

Ben had attended these study groups on occasion, and could use God’s gifts easily. When he spilled his blood and focused his attention, he could control the flesh of others. Anna Veldt had allowed him to practice on her during one group, and Ben had made her pass out without even touching her. But he didn’t feel like it was right for someone like him to use God’s gifts, and being allowed and encouraged to hurt Anna had made him feel sick. Whenever he used that power, his nose would bleed and his stomach would hurt. It was better to leave what the media horribly called “blood magic” to people who deserved it. 

So there were fewer than 10 people in the temple that morning. Ben looked around for Faris and didn’t see him. One of the acolytes looked up when she heard the door open and did a double take when she saw them. Ben smiled at her and waved.

“It’s quieter here during the weekend,” said Ben. “Don’t you like it?”

Rome didn’t say anything. His shoulders were stiff as he looked around the dimly lit triangular atrium, with its long pews. The podium up front was framed by burning candles and before it was an eye-shaped stone altar where the faithful could offer more of themselves to God. Rome tried to stop walking when he saw the altar, but Ben pushed him along. 

Helen was probably in the back with someone. That was fine! He could wait. God was going to help Rome.

“See how dark it is here? The light won’t make your head hurt. Doesn’t that make you feel calm?”

Rome didn’t say anything. He tried to pull his phone out of his waistcoat pocket. Ben grabbed it away from him. The last thing he needed was for Rome to tell AJ and have him run in here to mess everything up.

One of the faithful, Mia Wiley, walked up to them. Ben liked Mia. She had been homeless and addicted to drugs before she found God and now she was happy despite how she had suffered. “Peace in purpose, and joy in giving,” she greeted him, quoting scripture. Her smile looked tight. “What do you think you’re doing here, sweetie?”

“I don’t work until tonight. I wanted to talk to the high-priestess. You– I mean, you watch the news?”

Mia appeared unconcerned. Rome was staring at her, completely still, expression completely blank. Ben could feel his brother’s heart thudding through the fabric of his fancy suit. No, Rome was not staring at Mia’s face. He was staring at her low cut top and the fresh wounds on her chest dripping blood into her ample cleavage.

“My Dad’s dead.” Ben heard his voice crack and was mortified. Idiot. Idiot!  God would not want him to feel sad over an evil man who had never loved him.

“Yes.” Mia’s red gaze slid over to Rome, who had started to breathe funny. “So you thought you should bring your clone?”

The hair on the back of his neck rose. “Um,” said Ben. What to say to that? Yes, most Artificial siblings were genetic identicals who shared DNA, but all their individual traits were tweaked while they grew in amniotic tanks. “Well–”

“I want to go home,” Rome said, not making eye contact. Mia raised her eyebrows.

Ben felt his face grow hot. “It’s OK. Where’s Helen?”

“She’s working to help God find His new body.”

“In the back?”

“Ben. I want to go home.”

Mia licked her lips. “Yes, in the back. You shouldn’t be here today. It’s too holy for someone without a soul. Go home and pray.”

Why was everyone telling him where he should and shouldn’t be lately? Ben tried not to think about hitting her in the face. He smiled tightly and kept his grip on his brother. “By His blood, we are Transformed,” he said, then started walking towards the back. He had to push Rome to make him move.

“You’re embarrassing me,” Ben told him.

“I want to go home. I want to go home. That woman has been carving stuff into herself! Why would you bring me here? I want to go home!”

God would make him understand. Maybe God would help Rome feel less scared.

Ben was vaguely aware that everyone was staring at them. Rome was making a scene now. He tried to pull away and accidentally popped Ben in the eye because he was so gawky and uncoordinated. Ben had to squeeze his shoulder until he stopped trying to fight back.

He only knocked once on the sacrificial room before barging in. Helen would understand. She knew what was going on, she knew how Ben felt about his Dad. She would want to support him when he needed it most, when he was so…confused and twisted up inside!

Helen was in there with some girl Ben didn’t recognize, who jumped up and exclaimed, “Oh, you psycho cocksucker!” Extremely rude! She looked little and sick and was dressed in nurse’s scrubs. Blood was leaking out of her eyes like tears and obscuring her nose and mouth in sticky clots.

Rome stammered, “K-Kassidy?”

“Body of God,” Helen swore under her breath. She was not smiling. Her skin had gone white and her forehead shone with sweat. Her pupils were tiny pinpricks in vast, insane crimson. The way that she was panting, the way her chest was heaving, seemed almost orgasmic. Ben figured they had been doing something sexual. The high-priestess licked her lips. She was shaking all over, ecstatic. “What are you doing, honey?”

“I–” Ben wondered if he needed to cry. He wondered if he needed Helen to hold him and comfort him. She wouldn’t do it if he asked. “I need help.”

“Fucking Ben Prospas,” said the girl with blood all over her face. “Nope. This place isn’t for me. This is fucked up, I knew it would be fucked up.” There were a few open wounds on her arms, like she had been hesitant to offer herself to God. New believer? But she knew his name and seemed to have a personal problem with him. Ben frowned. Beside him, Rome was having a hard time breathing.

“Please.” Helen gently took the girl’s hand. The girl yanked away. “He’s not important. We can send him away. Please— you’re a vessel for God. He chose your body for a reason! I can help you!”

“That guy beat the living dogshit out of me when I was like 14 years old, he gave me a concussion and broke my arm like a fucking psycho.” The girl wiped blood off of her face with her hands, made more of a mess, then pulled up her own shirt to scrub her nose and mouth. She moved erratically. Something was very wrong with her. The more Ben stared, the more terror he felt. It was like standing on the edge of a high building and looking down. “This— I can’t. This is too much.”

Kassidy Nguyen. Ben recognized her now. He had buried her name beneath his guilt. He had not seen her since that day in juvenile court when her mother had been yelling about how someone as violent as him should be locked up for the rest of his life. Ben didn’t remember much of the trial because he had started going into hysterics once he realized that Dad was not going to help him, but he could remember how happy Kassidy and her horrible brother had been when he was sentenced.

So Ben got what he deserved. And every day he had to live with the knowledge that he was the kind of guy who brutally attacked a girl less than half his size. It didn’t matter that she had been calling him names, it didn’t matter that her brother (her brother who ended up becoming a violent terrorist, by the way!) had been picking on him for years, all that mattered was that Ben’s anger was more powerful than his conscience. 

His skin was hot all over. Something was different about Kassidy. The cold little room smelled like ozone after a lightning strike, sharp and metallic. Ben’s stomach lurched. Suddenly he felt small and powerless, gazing up at something his mind could not comprehend. 

God?

God was like a black hole. God was like hunger in human flesh.

“Kassidy?” said Ben, staring at her. Not staring at her. Staring into her. This was how Helen must have felt when she met Catherine Delmont. “I’m sorry.” He choked when he said it. There was a knot in his throat. His brain couldn’t come up with words.

“Stay away from me, motherfucker.” Kassidy still had blood leaking out of her tear ducts. That only happened when someone offered a lot of themselves to God, only happened when someone used God’s gifts and was truly devoted. He had only seen it happen once, after Lukas Tenna castrated himself for God. It was strange. She had been using God’s gifts but her eyes were still brown. “What are you doing, dragging Rome down here to freak him out and torture him because your dad’s dead and these people want control of Prosperity? You’re helping them? You huge dickhead.”

What? Did they know each other? There was no way his brother could willingly be friends with someone like Kassidy Nguyen.

Oh God. Was God inside Kassidy’s body? Surely this could not be God’s true body? Kassidy? What had been so special about her? 

He needed to stop thinking blasphemous thoughts and questioning God’s will. Ben got down on his knees. Kassidy jumped back behind Helen like she thought he was going to hurt her.

“Oh, get up,” snapped Helen. She kept grabbing at Kassidy, almost caressing her. “Benedict, please, I don’t have time for you.”

“Kassidy, can I use your phone to call Marty?” Rome said stiffly. He stood completely still, but kept gasping for air. Why was he so scared? Couldn’t he feel the presence of God? He should be on the ground too. “Can I– It’s so hot in here.”

Kassidy’s face hardened. She smeared more blood from her face, then marched past Ben’s kneeling form to grab his brother. Rome didn’t even flinch when she touched him with her bloody hand. “Yeah. Let me take you home. This shit is crazy.” She glanced back to eye Helen. “Sorry. I don’t think you can help me.”

“You’ll come back.” Helen nodded her head. Her face was still gleaming as if she had experienced some kind of divine revelation. When she smiled at Kassidy, it was the smile of a woman in love, gentle and sacrificial. “God is preparing you for the next step.”

“Sure. God. Next steps. Great.”

“Kassidy.” Ben’s voice cracked again. He did not want to look at her. He remembered how she had put her skinny arm up to protect her face from him and the noise it made when his fist hit it. She had been making fun of him, she wouldn’t stop, so he grabbed her and started banging her head on the ground. Of course. Of course God chose Kassidy’s weak body to specifically test him. To punish him. “I’m sorry!”

“Asshole.” The girl who had God inside her body walked out, leading his brother away.

Ben burst into tears, not even trying to hide how upset he was from Helen. Why did he deserve this? What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he do anything right? 

He knelt there on the floor feeling sorry for himself for a long time. Helen sighed. Kassidy had left drips of blood smeared all over the chair she had been sitting in. The fat droplets were so dark that they almost looked black. Helen dragged her finger through the blood and then stuck it in her mouth, closing her eyes.

“You can leave now,” she said quietly, not looking at him. Her expression was serene, she tipped her chin up towards the ceiling. Towards the Rift far above them.

Ben sniffled and swallowed. “I–I need help.”

“You can help by going home.” She smiled. Her teeth were stained red. “God needs you to take over your father’s company. When He has His new body, He’ll need an efficient way to receive sacrifices and cleanse the evil from Earth. Prosperity would be a gift.”

His mouth went dry. The company. How could she think someone like him was capable of running Prosperity? He wasn’t Dad! Ben never even went to college! Ben’s stomach flipped again. “God told you that? My Dad wanted my brother to be CEO.”

If God was in Kassidy’s body, had Kassidy told her that? Had anyone?

“Your brother seems too weak for that kind of responsibility.”

She was right about that. The problem was that Ben was also too weak.

Ben wished someone would give him a hug. Nothing was making sense. He wished Mr. Singh could hold his hand or even let him— he wished he could kill something.

“Go home now, Benedict.”

As always, Ben did as he was told. While he walked to the train station, he punched a pole so hard that it split the skin on his knuckles.

God would make everything make sense. God had a plan. Ben just had to listen. 

When he got to the house– not his house, he reminded himself, never his house, The House– the front door was locked. Irritated, Ben rolled his eyes and pounded on the door. When nobody answered, he tried to text Rome, only to find that he still had his phone in one of his pockets.

Unbelievable. “Hey!” He said loudly, banging on the door. “Quit being like this and let me in, Romeo, I’ve got your phone!”

There was some scuffling, and AJ swung the door open. He stood there, blocking Ben from coming inside with his body, all puffed up and haughty looking. He must have recently gotten done working out, because he was in shorts and a tanktop, his long hair tied back. “You’re not coming in here, fucker. Give me the phone.”

“What are you going to do, call the cops?” Ben was tired of this. What was AJ’s problem with him? Why was he always so mean? “I need to talk to my brother.”

“I don’t know what you did to him, but he’s all upset again. What the fuck were you thinking, dragging him out of the house the day after his Dad gets into an accident? Give me the phone and then get out of there.”

Accident? There was no accident. Rome was not the helpless child AJ thought he was. Ben knew exactly what his brother was. “He’s such a little drama queen. Get out of my way, I need to go talk to him.”

“You’re not coming into this house again. You’re a bad person, Ben, you’re a dangerous person, and you don’t need to be here. So give me the goddamn phone!”

Everything was too much, too overwhelming, he couldn’t think! The world shrunk down to a pinpoint that contained only AJ. There was only the desire to end this conversation as quickly as possible. He drew back and buried his fist in AJ’s stomach. The movement was fluid and easy, followed by a grunt of pain. AJ doubled over and as he did, Ben slammed his knee up into his face. AJ attempted to get his arms around his waist and push him, disrupting his center of gravity, but Ben was just too big. He had been made too big. 

He wanted to keep pounding Ajax. He wanted to keep hitting him. There wasn’t time and he wasn’t that kind of person. AJ was just a problem he needed to deal with, not somebody he needed to hurt. He pulled AJ off of him, then shoved him out of the door hard, down to the sidewalk. Cursing, AJ stumbled and fell down. Ben shut and locked the front door as quickly as he could.

A lot more cursing and screaming and banging on the door followed. Ben panted and straightened himself up. AJ had torn his sweatshirt. He frowned.

“Hey, Ro?” he called, looked around. Empty. “Where are you? I just want to talk.”

No answer. Outside, AJ sounded like he was kicking the front door. Ben walked away so that he could listen better, closing his eyes. The house’s stuffy trapped air bothered him, how had he slept here last night? He could hear someone skittering around above him.

Ben took a deep breath to regulate himself, then walked upstairs. The house was large, with seven bedrooms and as many bathrooms, and most of them were on the second level. Ben’s old bedroom had been right next to the stairs. He held his breath as he walked by, counting. Rome’s room used to be across from his, so that was probably where he was.

He poked his head in without bothering to knock. Rome’s bedroom was dark and so clean that it didn’t look like anyone lived there. No personal effects or art on the walls. A tablet sat on the desk, along with an empty liquor bottle and a packet of wet wipes. He frowned. The room was empty, but the bathroom connected to it had the lights on and the water running.

“Hey.” Ben walked into the bathroom. His brother had stripped off his suit jacket, waistcoat, and shirt to the floor, and stood there furiously washing his hands in the sink. He didn’t even look up when Ben came in. “I forgot to give you your phone back.” He pulled it out of his pocket and set it on the bathroom counter.

“I told AJ not to let you in the house.” Rome turned the water off, then dried off his hands on a nearby towel. He looked kind of sickly in only his undershirt and trousers, stretched out like his body grew too tall too fast when he was younger. He still did not look up.

“Yeah, I tossed him out and locked the door. He’s probably real mad. I don’t think he’s a very good bodyguard.”

“You can’t be here.”

Ben laughed nervously. “What? You were practically begging me to stay last night. What, did you get scared by the blood? That’s normal. That’s how people are supposed to be, completely un-selfish and giving from ourselves. Don’t be brainwashed by the news.”

Rome looked up. His face was still that blank mask, but something behind it was shattering around the edges. He twitched while looking at Ben, then reached up to tap next to his left eye.

Oh. Ben turned to the bathroom mirror. One of his contacts had popped out while he was trying to keep Rome from resisting God’s love. Beneath it, his iris was completely crimson, the sclera bloodshot. Looking at his own wild face was a shock. It was painfully obvious that he had been crying.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Ben. “It’s a sign of my sacrifices to God.”

“Do you carve into yourself like the rest of those people?”

Ben resisted the urge to grab Rome and shake him like a rat. He smiled, popped out his other contact, and blinked. “See? Not a big deal. It’s not any weirder than your eyes. How do you know Kassidy Nguyen? She was three grades ahead of you and you didn’t go to my trial.”

“How do you know AJ’s mom?” Rome replied hurriedly, brushing over the topic like it was a sore spot. What had AJ said about him “losing all his little friends”? “That lady in the red dress, that was AJ’s mom. And you don’t even know about that. You don’t know about her and Dad. You don’t even know what happened in this house because you weren’t here.”

All that Ben needed to know about Helen’s testimony was that she had been trapped in a house with a violent man until God gave her the strength to leave him. Rome was mad. Rome was trying to hurt him. “You’re being dramatic. Are you serious about not wanting me here? I’ll go home. I didn’t want to get pulled into this drama, I only came because you asked. You don’t want me here? I’ll go now. Have fun with your trial, Romeo, I’ll give you extra wet wipes when you go to prison for murdering our father.”

“I know she did this,” Rome ignored him, crossing his arms across his lanky self as if that would somehow protect him. His speech impediment became profoundly worse when he was nervous. “She did this. Those people want the company! They killed Dad, they did something to me and made me hurt Dad. And I don’t know how they did it, but I think that you helped them and you’re too stupid to understand that. You’re too stupid to understand that those people hate you and want to kill you.”

How could he even think that? “Wouldn’t it be better if someone else ran Prosperity? You can’t even talk to people.”

Rome’s face twitched again. Whatever was shattering behind his cold mask had already done so. “I’d be better than someone like you, who everyone is afraid of.”

Ben thought about showing his brother exactly how afraid he could make him, he thought about punching him in the nose right then and there, but he just stood there instead. He couldn’t argue. Ben was a violent man. He had hurt people. What was he doing? Why was he cornering Rome like this? Rome had been through enough. Here he was, shivering and terrified, and Ben was thinking about hurting him just because he had hurt his feelings? What was wrong with him? God had given him the ability to change his nature, so why wasn’t it working?

He tried to breathe. Why was it harder to breathe when he was in this house? It was like the air was all wrong.

“Fine. I’m going,” he said. “Call me if you need me. I have work tonight anyway.”

Rome didn’t move.

This was awkward. “Bye.” Ben didn’t know if he should just walk out. Slowly, very slowly, he started to turn back towards Rome’s room. AJ was probably going to try to strangle him the second he opened the door. Hopefully he hadn’t already crawled through a window or something.

“Do you want to know what I did the night Valentine died?” Rome blurted. The emotionless mask crumbled. Rome’s eyes glowed yellow in his pretty face. The sudden outpouring of words seemed to have surprised him and he clamped a hand over his own mouth, flinching.

Ben froze. “No, I don’t.” They stared at one another. Rome started to blink rapidly and the corners of his mouth trembled. Ben winced. “I really don’t need to know. I’m good. Bye!”

“I just stayed in my room.” Rome’s words came out with a certain pressure, as if he had been holding them in for a long time. For years. He kept blinking and twitching, so uncomfortably expressive. “Dad had a migraine so I stayed in bed and watched TV all day because I didn’t want to bother him. But Val never understood how to be quiet and he set the fire alarm off while trying to make something to eat, and it was this big thing because the bombings had just happened and– I mean, Dad got pretty mad at him.”

For his part, Ben did not remember his youngest brother well. Sort of clingy and annoying. He was 10 years older, and had been stuck in Juvie by the time Valentine was 5. After that…well, Ben hadn’t wanted to come back to the house. So he was sad that Valentine was dead, but it didn’t tear his heart apart the way other things did. 

It looked like Rome had been silently tearing himself apart over this for years, though. He kept his arms crossed like he was holding himself together, his shoulders were hunched up by his ears. “So Valentine came up here and was trying to talk to me, but I told him to leave because he was crying and it was making me annoyed and angry. I didn’t want to deal with it. So he left and I never saw him again. Vira Niels always said Dad probably hit him in the head too hard and it killed him because he was so little, then they got rid of his body in the slaughterhouse. But I don’t know. I was too scared to come out of my room.”

“Hm.” Oh God. Yikes. What was he even supposed to say? Rome did not like he wanted to be comforted. He looked like he wanted to repent.

“So I don’t feel bad that Dad’s dead. He deserved to die. You said you believe people get what they deserve, right? Maybe I deserve this.”

Ah. Not repenting. 

 “I can take over the company. I can change things. I can make things better for people, I can change conditions for our workers, I can lower the price of our products so people can actually afford to eat. But I can’t do any of that if you’re in my life acting exactly like Dad. If I’m going to do this, I need people around me I can trust. I don’t think I can trust you, Ben.”

Rome was standing up straight now and had stopped shaking. His expression was intense. It was funny. He could talk all he wanted about how he thought Ben was like Dad, but he was the one who really looked like him.

Did he actually think he could run a business that had a monopoly on Eden’s food production? 

Ben shifted his big body awkwardly. “You’re my brother and I love you.”

“Yes.” Rome’s voice cut deep. “I love you too. But that’s not enough.”

“What about--"

“You should probably leave before AJ gets back in and finds you talking to me. I’ll call you when I’ve finished working things out.”

Ben did not want to leave his brother alone in that house with a violent man. He had never wanted to come back to that house anyway. 

Back at home, he offered himself completely to God and prayed for the existence of his brother’s soul.

[blooblooded]

Marty's First Week of Life

The baby had been born during a snowstorm in the dead of winter and Jules’s teacher had not returned.

“She’ll be back soon,” Jules said soothingly, more to herself than to anyone else in the tiny one-room cottage. She knew they weren’t listening to her. Ivy wasn’t doing well after having the baby. All she ever wanted to do was lay down and gaze into the fire. Marten Bonneville, the baby’s father, was not one for conversation, and focused his attention on the winter storm swirling outside. Jules was happy to talk to herself, to the baby, and to her Teacher’s old tabby cat. “She said she needed to go all the way to Kimanka for the marsh-mushrooms.”

“It’s far east of the fighting, so she’ll have no trouble there,” grunted Bonneville. He remained hyperaware of the ambushes happening in the western valleys of the Strath. It was all something about Duke Rowan Gauthier wanting to secede from the King’s rule. Jules didn’t understand much of that, but understood that Bonneville had been born in the Strath like Ivy, and that the Imperial Army was conscripting them to test their loyalty. He was nervous that the Imperials would drag him away to make him fight his own people.

Despite that cowardice, Jules liked Bonneville and was happy that Ivy had given the baby his name. From what she understood of their pastoral culture, it was a strong name. Bonneville was an easy-going fur-trader in his 30’s with wavy hair and an open smile. Sometimes he would stare off into nothingness like he was listening to something from far away. Jules’s Teacher said that he could hear the monsters talking on the other side of the universe. That was the whole reason she kept him around. That and his ability to hunt for game.

As far as Jules saw it, the biggest problem with the war was how hard it was making it to get enough food.

She was 14 and had been learning her teacher’s craft for 3 years. Her Teacher said that she would understand why she kept Bonneville around when she was older. Jules had figured out a little. Teacher was fighting an ancient demon. Someday she would be able to destroy it for good, but she would need their help to make sure the world had witches in it. There were barely any of them left.

The baby started to scream from his cradle. Ivy’s face crumpled up and she put her hands over her ears. It seemed like all the baby did was cry. Jules sighed and stopped her nervous pacing to scoop little Martin up in her arms.

He was a strong baby, weighing in at almost 9 pounds. Jules had been worried about that, since Ivy had tried to stop eating when she was pregnant. She didn’t understand why she had been so upset. Martin was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. He was so fat and soft, he smelled so good, his eyes were so black and shiny. Jules had loved him from the first moment she saw him, when she had been pulling him out of his mother on the cottage floor. Jules looked down at him, beaming. The baby, red faced, screamed his head off.

“He’s hungry,” said Jules, walking over to Ivy by the fire. 

“I just fed him.”

“That was hours ago. He’s hungry.”

“I hate doing it.” Ivy’s fat, pretty face was still crumpled and her voice was whiny. “He bites.”

“Well, you have to do it. Here.”

 She handed the baby over and watched. Most of what Jules had been doing for the last week was watch. Ivy couldn’t be trusted with her own baby. Something had gone wrong inside of her head after she got pregnant. Teacher called it postpartum psychosis and told Jules that she was responsible for her, but there didn’t seem to be anything postpartum about this. 

They used to be friends. Ivy was only two years older than Jules and would sing in English and laugh and talk about how excited she was to learn Teacher’s magic so she could help other girls. Now she was angry and bitter and only talked to complain or say crazy things.

Back then, she used to be jealous of Ivy. She was so beautiful, with her soft face and heavy feminine body. Ivy looked like the kind of girl who had grown up in the gentle western valleys, getting fat and pretty on strawberries and heavy cream. Jules had grown up scrounging for food in the dirty streets of Matane, and was half-starved for her efforts. Her cheeks were pock-scarred from the same illness that had taken her parents. Jules would never be as pretty as Ivy, but the last 9 months had shown her that she would rather be ugly and sane. 

Jules pushed her stacks of bracelets up and down her skinny arms as she watched the baby nurse. His eyes were screwed closed and he had caught a handful of his mother’s hair in his tiny fist. “Like a little kitten,” she said. “He’s like a kitten drinking milk.”

“I wish you could take him,” said Ivy. “I wish you could feed him.”

“Me too.” Jules stroked the baby’s head. It was as soft as a horse’s muzzle. She felt her heart swell up. “He’s going to have hair like his papa, but I think he looks like you. Look at his eyes and lips. He’s going to be pretty like you when he grows up.”

Ivy swallowed hard. “We don’t want him to grow up. You– you don’t understand. Teacher is trying to open a door. We can’t let her open the door!”

There was nothing to say to that. It was the kind of crazy thing Ivy talked about now. “I’m going to make some tea,” she said, changing the subject. Everytime she tried to ask about the door Ivy was so worried about, she just got more upset. Jules tied her thin dark hair out of her face and busied herself with putting the kettle on.

Teacher would be back soon. Winter was already half over, so whenever they needed to go back into town for flour and tea, they would not have to worry about trudging through deep snow with an infant. Lately there had been less tea, and barely any flour. All extra supplies went to the Imperial Army who were bravely fighting Gauthier’s rebels.

Jules didn’t mind having less tea if it meant that the King’s soldiers could have it instead. But she did miss having bread. It made her worried about Ivy not having enough milk to feed the baby. She frowned and started opening cabinets. Not much. Some canned vegetables from the garden. A few jars of honey, some wheels of cheese. The last of the dried fish she had pulled out of the stream during the spring holidays.

“Do you think you could track a deer in this weather?” she asked Bonneville. “If you could shoot a deer, it would change everything.”

“Imps are camped out in de Bois,” Bonneville replied hollowly, watching the snow fall. “They’ll conscript me the second they hear my accent, they won’t ask for papers or anything. I should go out west…”

That line of thinking would lead to Jules and Ivy starving to death in a freezing cottage. Neither of them knew how to use a rifle. He wouldn’t leave his child, would he? He wouldn’t leave him. “What about the beaver traps you set by the stream? We need meat, Ivy needs to–”

“Why don’t you blow me, Julia?” snapped Bonneville. He slammed a scarred hand down on the windowsill. “Shut up. Stop talking. Everything is too loud, I can’t hear myself fucking think.”

Jules shut up. She did not want to make him angrier.

The storm lasted until the next afternoon. They could not open the door to the cottage, the snow had fallen over four feet tall. Jules ended up crawling out of one of the windows and then tunneling through the snow to the door. She used a shingle to dig the snow away from the door, she used her hands. Ivy and Marten Bonneville were no help at all, they just sat inside, staring and insane. Jules couldn’t just sit around stupidly like them. She had to think about the baby, so she dug until her fingers were stiff and bleeding.

“Teacher will come back,” said Jules, after getting into a screaming match with Bonneville over checking the traps. Over gathering wood! Why did it feel like everyone except for her was determined to freeze and die? She would go out into the snow and do it herself if she hadn’t been so worried that Ivy would do something to the baby while she was gone. “She’s on her way now. She probably is bringing those pastries they make in Kimanka. The ones with blackberries in them.”

The two of them shared the same bed, piled high with quilts and soft furs. It was too cold for the luxury of personal space when the fire got low at night. Jules always made sure that the baby’s cradle was between the bed and the fire so that he could stay warm. Bonneville shared the bed with them, and Jules appreciated the heat from his big body, but sometimes got uncomfortable when his erection would poke her in the back. 

“Teacher’s been gone since November,” whispered Ivy. “She might not come back. You should leave before she gets back.”

Jules shivered at that thought. She reached out to gently brush Ivy’s hair out of her face, then got her arms around her. “Kimanka is 150 kilometers away. We needed those mushrooms. She’ll be back.”

“She’s lying to you. Like she lied to me. She isn’t getting mushrooms, mushrooms have stopped growing by now. She’s talking to the marsh-landers. She’s trying to trick them into attacking les yeux sanglants because the demon she’s so scared of is inside one of their Books and she wants it so she can send it back to where it came from. Through the door!”

Poor Ivy. Here she was talking about doors again. Jules had run out of the calming tea she had been giving her. It would be better once the snow melted. She made a quick sign against evil at the mention of the red-eyed demon-worshipping cult.  “Don’t worry about that. Rest.”

“I’ve been here longer,” Ivy said bitterly. She put her hands over her pretty face. “You don’t understand what Teacher does or what’s going to happen to you. Alina Drobyshev was the girl before you, and she told me about all the girls before her. She was from Kimanka, but there were others from the Strath like me and from Matane like you. Teacher took their babies, but none of them were able to open any doors.”

“Mm-hmm.” Because she wasn’t going to be able to rest anytime soon, Jules sat up and scooped baby Martin into her arms. He slept soundly, but opened his mouth to yawn up at her. Jules kissed his smooth face and nuzzled his head. “Teacher loves little babies and everything she works for is to help other women. That’s why she’s training us. That’s the whole reason we’re here, to help people have healthy babies.”

The snowstorm had started up again, howling around the little cottage. All that work digging snow had been for nothing. Jules sucked on a torn fingernail as she rocked the baby.

Ivy sat up too. Her soft, wide mouth was set in an uncharacteristically determined way. The firelight glinted off of the gentle waves of dark hair cascading down her back. “You’re not going to feel that way after Teacher tells Bonneville to hold you down and tells him to put a baby inside of you too.”

“I would love a baby,” Jules said truthfully, since that was all she had been able to think about from the second she held Marty in her arms. She wanted something of her own that she could hold and protect and love very badly. “Teacher says that someday one of the boys in de Bois–”

“It won’t be one of the village boys,Jules,  it’ll be Bonneville,” said Ivy. Her black eyes were all big in her face. “She’s going to tell him to rape you because my baby isn’t going to be good enough for her. Not Hugo or those other boys you flirt with, old, crazy Bonneville. Because he can hear things talking in the demon’s home and you’re a witch. Do you know the word eugenics?”

Eugénisme. It sounded like a spell. Jules shook her head. She did not like to hear the word ‘rape’, it made her uncomfortable. It was not a nice word.

“It means trying to make better babies. Back home, we would be careful to make sure our ewes would only be bred by one ram, because he was the biggest one with the best temperament. Do you understand?”

Jules laughed. This was silly and she was silly for listening. She kissed Marty’s forehead again. He made an annoyed sound. “It’s nice to hear you talking about the Strath again. What do you think your family is doing during the rebellion? You said they were shepherds, right?”

Ivy’s shoulders slumped. “Alina Drobyshev,” she said, miserably. “Ask about what happened to her.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t care about Ivy’s delusions, Jules just couldn’t take someone who had tried to drown her newborn baby in a washbucket seriously.

That night got so cold that the washbucket froze and Jules brought the baby into bed with them so that he could benefit from their body heat. The three of them burrowed together beneath the blankets like rabbits. Bonneville slammed back into the cottage around 2am, the wind sending screaming flecks of ice along behind him. Spots on his cheeks and sharp nose had turned black and dead.

“Fuck.” he said, stomping his boots near the fire. He kicked the kettle and sent it flying. “Fuck!”

Jules pressed herself up against Ivy and Marty, too afraid to move. Ivy was shivering all over and had curled her heavy body over her son’s. They were all dressed for bed. “What happened?”

“I was up at a tavern in du Bois. The King’s ministers just allowed for hanging on any poaching charges. They suspect any meat’s being sent over to help the rebels.”

Her mouth twisted. She hoped he would not kick anything else. “But we’re not rebels, they’d have to understand we’re just hungr–”

“I’m not hanging for that old witch,” hissed Bonneville. His frostbitten face appeared mad. Jules might have appreciated this more if she had not noticed the brace of fleabitten squirrels he had hanging over his shoulders. “Taking care of her girls for her all these years is not worth it for me if I end up dangling on the end of a rope or dragged into the Imperial Army to murder my own people!”

“Ok, Ok,” Jules said placatingly. She didn’t like how he was saying ‘his people’. The King existed to bring the Strath, Matane, and Kimanka together peacefully. The only difference between her and Ivy were their accents and their type of names. He was talking like one of Gauthier’s rebels: the terrifying Partisans with their fierce painted faces like in the old stories.  “Get your wet clothes off, get in bed. I’ll skin those squirrels and start a stew. You rest.”

Thankfully he did not argue the point. Bonneville peeled off his wet coat, gave Ivy the kind of squeeze that made her go white, and was asleep in minutes. Jules sighed.

The last thing she needed was for the only person able to feed them to go insane and run off. Jules wanted to sleep. She hadn’t slept since Marty was born, she woke whenever he started crying. It was like she had all the work of motherhood, but none of the benefits. Now she had to take care of this pathetic man too, again, all of the work of being a wife, but none of the benefits. When would it be her turn?

At least there was stew, and meat to go in it. Jules added some of the canned vegetables from the pantry. They would have stew, even if there was no bread to eat it with. She worked through the night, the tabby cat winding itself through her legs, then crawled back beneath the heavy quilts to dream of bread.

The pleasant dream was sharply interrupted by Bonneville shaking Jules awake with his big hands. His wild-eyed face still looked mad and the black spots of decay of his cheeks were out of a nightmare. “Where is she?” he demanded. He had twisted his fingers into the collar of Jules’s nightdress and was lifting her up without any particular effort. “Where is she? Where the fuck did she go?!”

“Get off me!” Jules tried to scratch him, spitting like a cat, but she was only a child who had been half-starved for 14 years. He shook her again until she stopped fighting him. “Get off me, you crazy– stop!”

“Where the fuck is Ivy?” Bonneville gestured around the empty cottage. He was panting. The cat was asleep by the fire. Marty was still beside her in bed, and had started to whimper at the disturbance. No sign of Ivy. No sign of Ivy’s boots or Ivy’s parka. 

This wasn’t good. She had probably gone out and killed herself and now Jules was snowed in here with a very out stressed man and a baby that depended on her. It was probably only a matter of time before he started swinging on her. She did not want to move in case it set him off. 

“Stasya is going to kill me if I’ve lost her,” Bonneville moaned. Jules sniffed. It smelled like he had gotten into the elderberry wine while she was asleep. That was probably why Ivy had run off. He had gotten drunk and tried something, so she ran off. Jules felt a bit better now that she had a reason for the other girl’s disappearance, but was not comforted by the feeling of a man’s fingers digging into her skin. “She’s young, the witch could get three or four kids out of her before she’s done.”

Jules licked her lips. She wanted to pull away and scoot back. Bonneville had never grabbed her like this. She did not like his smell and did not want him near the baby. “The snow’s too deep for her to go far. It’s OK.”

“She’ll kill me.” He had started to cry. Jules wanted to look away. His frostbitten face was so close to hers that tears were dripping down onto her nightdress and he reeked. “It took too long to find you girls, she can’t find anymore. And I liked Ivy. I can’t fuck you Jules, you– you remind me too much of A-Alina.”

Bonneville really started to cry then, great hiccuping sobs that seemed more obscene than anything. He fell down with his face in Jules’ lap as if she was his mother, twisting his hands in the quilts and sobbing. 

Alina. Ivy had mentioned that girl before, one of Teacher’s old apprentices. But she thought Ivy was just being crazy…

Jules swallowed and started to rub his back. She glanced at the baby out of the corner of her eye. He yawned, pink and warm, and tried to stuff his thumb in his mouth. She smiled at him, then started to hum a lullaby until the man curled in her lap stopped weeping. She kept rubbing his back. “What happened to Alina?” she asked. Her mouth felt dry.

“That was five years ago,” Bonneville said hollowly. He had started to hug her, as if that would bring him some comfort. He was hugging too hard. “Before the war started. She was from Kimanka, so I could never understand what she was screaming, and she was real skinny like you. Her baby got stuck. The old witch made me gut her like a fish while she was still alive to get it out, but it died anyway. She died too. I can hear her talking to me in the Void. Stasya was so mad…”

All she could do was keep rubbing his back. 

Where was Ivy? More importantly, where was her Teacher? Why had she left Jules alone for so long? If she was willing to do that, if she was willing to leave her to starve for months, was she also willing to leave her with a violent man? Her Teacher cared about her. Her Teacher would never leave her in danger.

But what had her Teacher thought about Alina?

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” said Bonneville.

“I know,” Jules said gently, wondering how she was going to get out of the cottage. She couldn’t run out in the snow without any shoes or coat. And she couldn’t leave the baby.

“Her hips were too narrow. It wasn’t my fault.”

“It wasn’t.” Jules brushed his wavy hair out of his face. Her nose ran. Every instinct in her body was telling her to run. She kept remembering that her fifteenth birthday was not until next summer, and that she wasn’t going to live to see it if she did something stupid. “You didn’t do anything.”

She did not know how many hours she sat there comforting him, but she knew that the baby woke up several times to cry piteously for milk until he wore himself out. Jules did not dare move. She existed as a vessel for this man’s guilt.

Ivy blew back into the cottage around noon. She was so bundled up in furs and hats that only her big black eyes were visible. Jules felt her shoulders visibly relax and her own eyes prick with tears when she saw her there, shaking snow off her boots. She wasn’t alone here. She didn’t have to stay here alone, talking a deranged man off of a mental cliff, so he wouldn’t hurt her or the baby.

“Where were you?!” Bonneville demanded, after he had peeled all of Ivy’s coats off and checked her all over for injuries. His eyes were still bugging out. “You can’t just disappear like that!”

“I walked to du Bois.” Flushed, Ivy rubbed her hands together, then pulled a paper bag out of one pocket. She handed it to Jules. “For you.”

Inside were a dozen or so pastries stuffed with last summer’s blackberries. Jules swallowed hard and then looked into Ivy’s soft and smiling face. This was the closest thing she would ever have to a sister. She had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep herself from crying, then flung herself at the other girl to embrace her. 

She didn’t ask her what she had done to get the pastries. It didn’t matter.

Her Ivy was back. The morning’s scary interaction with Bonneville did not seem to matter anymore. Ivy was smiling! Ivy was happy! Ivy was holding her baby without having to be reminded! The two of them stuffed themselves with blackberry pastries drizzled with some of the old honey, then crawled back under the blankets to giggle. 

She should have been worried to see Ivy happy. But Jules wanted to hear about the village boys in du Bois, especially Hugo, who always used to flirt with the two of them when they went into town. Hugo was 13, and itching to join the Army in 2 years so that he could kill the rebel boys, but he always told Jules she was pretty when she smiled. She fell asleep full of sweets and snuggled with Marty.

Soon, she was startled awake again. This time it was someone at the door. Jules frowned and pulled her robe around herself. Who would come all the way out here right after a snowstorm? Male voices. She saw Marten Bonneville freeze from his place by the fire and saw that Ivy was still smiling. 

“Aren’t you going to get the door?” asked Ivy. She started nursing Marty. The soft winter light filtered down on her.

“You bitch,” whispered Bonneville. All the blood had drained from his face.

“What’s–” began Jules, but quickly shut her mouth when she heard the person– or people– at the door pounding louder. 

Bonneville walked to the door like a dead man. He opened it to let in an Imperial sergeant and a couple of his men. Jules had seen Imperial soldiers all her life since she had been born in Matane, and did not have the same visceral reaction to their blue uniforms that Ivy did. She could remember her parents taking her to one of their military parades before tuberculosis took them away from her. She remembered her father lifting her up on his shoulders so that she could throw flowers at the boys. These soldiers looked around at the one room cottage derisively, stamping their feet.

“Your wife is a true patriot, sir,” commented the sergeant, a paunchy mustached man in his 40’s. There was a rifle slung over his back. He stared at Bonneville. “She let the regiment know that you have not registered for Selective Service. Hadn’t got around to it out here in the Hinterlands, I expect?”

“My wife...” repeated Bonneville. His shoulders shook.

Ivy rocked the baby in her arms. She was still smiling. Jules felt a chill go down her back. They couldn’t take him, could they? The conscription thing was just something to make people in the Strath and Kimanka scared. They didn’t have anything to do with this war.

“You are Marten Bonneville?” asked the sergeant. The cold blew in around him. “Born in the town of Laurel Hill, in the Strath?”

She saw him look sideways at the soldiers’ rifles. “I haven’t lived there since I was a boy.”

“So you’re loyal to King Jean-Baptiste.”

Another look at the rifles. A hard look. Bonneville looked back down at his feet and shrugged. Jules felt a wave of disgust. These Valley people were all the same. He couldn’t bring himself to say it. If her patriotism was in question, she could recite the national anthem backwards and in English. But it wasn’t a no.

“Welcome to the King’s Army, lad,” the sergeant said coldly, maliciously, clapping him on the back. “If you want to live in our Territory, you’d better start by helping us blast your godsdamned countrymen back to the stinking barnyards they were born in.”

Bonneville still stood there like a dead man, staring at his feet, staring at Ivy. Conscripts were sent to the front lines. They said that the Partisans ambushed troops at night, pouring out of the woods shrieking and brandishing machetes.

“We need bodies if we’re going to drive back Gauthier’s savages.” The sergeant looped his arm through Bonneville’s, started to frog march him towards the cottage door and the snowbank. “The Butcher of Kimanka sent some of his boys to Matane today, you’ll start training with them…”

Jules shook herself. This could not be happening! This was something that happened to other people, the war was not supposed to affect her! Clutching her robe around her, she stumbled towards the soldiers. “No, no, he takes care of us! We have a newborn baby here, he brings us food! He’s responsible for us!”

She could remember how scared she had been when he had been crying in her lap, but the thought of starving to death scared her more.

The sergeant looked at her dispassionately, then pulled a coin out of his pocket and flipped it to her. It clattered to the floor. “Go to one of the war-widows shelters.”

Jules stared at the coin like she had been slapped. The cold air rushed through her to the bone.

“Bitch.” Bonneville shook his head. Wavy hair fell into his eyes. He still looked like he could not believe what was happening to him. The soldiers led him out. Why wasn’t he fighting back? The answer was the same as ‘why did Ivy not fight back?’ He did not have any choice in the matter. What was he supposed to do? Run and get shot? Bonneville was exactly as trapped as the rest of them were. “You bitch…”

“My brothers are both Partisans,” said Ivy, rocking her son.  “I hope you meet them out there in the mud.”

And that scared Jules more than anything, but the soldiers were too far gone to hear that kind of treasonous talk. Things were civilized in Matane and they did not persecute witches, but a witch who openly supported the rebel terrorists might draw the wrong kind of attention. The soldiers didn’t hear anything. They had no interest in the chatter of a couple of girls. They didn’t even stop to shut the door. They just grabbed Bonneville and left. They were the King’s soldiers and could do things like that.

That was the last they ever heard of him. It made Jules wonder about how bad the war really was.

She shut the door and stared at Ivy, who was rocking the baby and making coo-ing sounds. The last few days had sapped Jules of the strength to even be angry. What was the point? What was the point of even trying? Teacher wasn’t coming back. Even if Teacher came back, Jules was afraid that things would not feel the same.

“We’re going to die now,” said Jules. She wanted to lie down and give up. The cottage felt empty. “We’re going to starve. Because of you. You want your baby to die that badly? You want to listen to him cry when your milk dries up? Is that what you want? Bonneville helped us for years and you just sent him off to die! Do you even understand who they’re going to force him to fight?”

She knew Ivy understood that better than most, but there was no outlet for her anger. Jules couldn’t stay angry at someone incapable of making rational decisions. She hadn’t even been angry when she had pulled the baby out of the water in the bucket his mother had dumped him in. 

When was Teacher coming back? Jules was so tired. Nobody was coming to help her. If they were going to live until spring, she would have to take care of everyone herself. 

Time passed, but she was unsure of how much of it. She seemed to be existing in a dream. They ran out of firewood the day after Bonneville’s conscription. Jules ventured out into the snowdrifts to find some more, but her arms were too weak and skinny to lift the axe. She ended up dragging fallen branches to the cottage door until she felt like passing out, then hacked at them with her knife until they were small enough to fit in the fireplace. The wood was wet and let out thick foul smoke.

At least the baby was warm. She could keep the baby warm. 

When they ran out of the dried fish and canned vegetables, Jules dug in the waist deep snow until her fingernails tore and bled so that she could find roots. She stumbled out to the stream and almost fell through the ice checking Bonneville’s beaver traps. All the little fish had gone away for the winter, and she was too uncoordinated to handle the rifle, even if the fear of getting hanged for poaching was less than the fear of the baby starving to death. Jules boiled boots until they turned into a glue like paste that they could eat like soup. 

Jules knew hunger. It could not chip away at her willpower. When Ivy suggested that they all go lay down in a snowdrift and go to sleep, Jules only sighed and took the baby away from her. 

The idea that she had been talking about, eugenics, eugénisme, seemed to hold true. Ivy was a healthy girl. Much healthier than Jules. Her body was more prepared for hunger, while Jules seemed to wither away. Even while surviving off of roots and frozen carrion, Ivy’s milk never dried up and her chubby baby smiled in his sleep.

On the other hand, Marty was not entirely healthy, so maybe eugenics wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sometimes his whole body would spasm and shake, and his cry became different. He had been normal when he was born, the spasming only started when he was a few days old. Jules was sure that Ivy had done something to him to try to hurt him, but she knew less about the ancient spells than the older girl did.

Jules started to sleep more. She dreamed about fresh bread and blackberries. She dreamed about nice gentle boys who told her that she was just as pretty as Ivy, boys who liked to hold her and who asked her if she would like to have a baby. Jules started to hate waking up. Being awake only meant hunger and the cold reality that there were no nice gentle boys.

She rolled over in bed and pulled a bearskin around her. How long had it been since Marty was born? How long since the snowstorm? A week? More? They should have left with the soldiers. Ivy was sleeping beside her, holding the baby. Why did it seem like she loved him sometimes, but other times she acted like something terrible would happen if he grew up. Jules combed her fingers through Ivy’s thick, beautiful hair. Ivy sighed, then pulled the covers over her head.

“You can tell me about the door,” said Jules. 

Ivy yawned, her eyes half open and bleary from sleep. “It’s in another world,” she said. She sat up. “Where the Planet-Eater’s real body is. Teacher wants to find the demon’s soul then send it back to where it came from before it can hurt us. She has to open the door to do that.”

Jules didn’t know why she was opening up this conversation again. Maybe she was bored. Maybe she thought they were all going to die and wanted to give Ivy a chance to talk about what she pretended bothered her so badly. Maybe a part of her had started to believe that Teacher did not have their best intentions in mind. She couldn’t. She had left them alone for months with only a crazy man to look after them. She smiled. “Why are you so worried about that?”

“Doors work both ways,” said Ivy. She pulled down her shirt so that Marty could nurse. At least she had stopped complaining about that. “I saw the things that live in that endless desert while he was growing inside me. There were monsters there, Jules, and they were all talking to me. I don’t want them to come here, but the only way for them to get here is through one of our babies.”

Jules tried to imagine the horrific world of Ivy’s hallucinations, filled with monsters that wanted to hurt her. She wished she had some tea to offer her. Something. Anything. She stuck her foot out from beneath the covers, then immediately pulled it back into the warmth. 

“I think Teacher will take him away from me if she finds out that he’s different,” Ivy said bitterly, gazing down at the little face of her son. “And now she doesn’t have any more options because Bonneville was the only psychic she could find for years. I know Marty’s different. I can feel it. She’s going to take him away from me.”

I thought you wanted that,” Jules said, with a touch of cruelty. “You tried to drown him right after he was born.” Guilt immediately followed.

That was that. Ivy started to cry. Jules, too cold and weak and frustrated with herself to respond, drifted back to sleep.

The paste ran out the next day. Jules started to eye the old tabby cat as it ambled around the cottage. It was smaller than the baby. If she killed it, there would only be enough meat for Ivy, but she was prepared for that.

Jules wanted to lay down and cry too. It wasn’t fair. Why did she have to take care of everyone? She was so hungry that she could not think about anything else. They needed to go to the village and ask for help, but Jules did not want to go to one of the camps. She heard about the things the Imperial soldiers did to people with names like Ivy or Martin there. People with ugly English nature names like that were the enemy. 

Why couldn’t she have named the baby something normal like Leo or Charles or Matthieu?

She found herself braiding Ivy’s hair and could not remember starting it. Jules squeezed her eyes shut. She needed to go back out to the stream. There were frogs hibernating under the mud there, all she would need to do was dig until she found them. But the thought of dragging her body back out into the deep snow was unbearable. If she went back out there, she would start thinking about laying down and going to sleep. 

“Do you worry about your brothers?” Jules asked. There wasn’t anything else to talk about, but if she didn’t talk, she was going to lose her mind. She turned Ivy’s face to look at her, then pulled out a few strands of hair to drift down to her collarbones. Very pretty. “What are their names?”

“Heath and River,” said Ivy. She had stopped complaining entirely and slept all the time, waking up only to feed the baby. Jules knew she had given up. Even when she talked about her brothers, her face stayed dead. “No, I’m not worried about them. They’re older than me. I haven’t seen them since I was 12, when Teacher paid mama for me. I have a lot of sisters too. Too many mouths to feed. They’re probably killing Imperials right now.”

Teacher hadn’t paid anything for Jules. Teacher just found her. And Ivy’s big brothers were probably dead in the mud with the rest of the stupid soldier boys.

Jules thought about pulling Ivy’s hair but didn’t. The only way she could express her anger, the only way she could release some of the unfairness inside of her would be to go back out into the snow by herself, and she thought that she would rather die. A scream was building up inside of her. “I’m sure they’d like to see their nephew one day.”

“They wouldn’t.” Ivy rocked the baby in her arms. “They would cut his throat. We don’t have bastards where I’m from.”

Wasn’t there anywhere in this world that everyone could be safe? Was that too much to ask? A world where children could be safe and little girls did not have to dig through the snow to keep from starving? Wasn’t there anywhere Jules could go where she did not have to feel afraid of the violent hands of angry men?

She felt very sorry for herself and refused to get up from the carpet in front of the fireplace. The tabby cat curled itself into her lap and purred. Jules was pulled back beneath the surface of consciousness and dreamed of Alina Drobyshev.

In her dream, Jules shared the same face as Alina. They both had tanned complexions that had gone sallow, they both shared the same long pointed nose and crooked teeth. Alina was small and sad, all draped in white furs. The furs were soaked in red blood from her waist down. She stood in a puddle of it.

“You have to keep Marty safe, Julia,” Alina told her. Jules had not heard many people from Kimanka talk, so her accent sounded harsh, like it came from deep in her throat rather than her nose. “He’s special. You can’t give up. You can’t lay down and roll over.”

“I’m tired.” Even in her dream, Jules was bone tired. “Why should I try so hard if I’m just going to die like you?”

Alina smiled at her sadly. “On the worst day, a dog is a dog. On the best day, a dog is a dog.”

Jules stared at the dead girl. She looked like a very sad angel. So a person could go crazy inside of their dreams too.

Mercifully, the rest of her dreams swirled together into unmemorable gibberish. Jules woke and pulled on as many coats as she could so that she could drag her weak body back outside into the bitter cold. She spent an hour by the stream, pawing through the frozen mud for hibernating frogs. Or toads. She couldn’t tell in the dark and it didn’t matter. She would eat bugs at this point, just to escape the never-ending hellish dream of starvation that she was trapped in. Jules dug for hibernating frogs until she was half hysterical and still only found six of them. She brought them back to the cottage and roasted them on sticks until their warty skin started to crackle.

Jules noticed that her fingertips had turned black and there was a cough deep in her chest that wouldn’t go away. She could still remember what her mother’s rattling cough had sounded like while she was dying, and she had died slow. It didn’t matter. She and Ivy went back to sleep with warm food in their bellies.

Of course, the animals Jules had pulled from the mud had not been frogs, they had been toads. Toads were poisonous. It was dangerous to eat them. She knew that. She had known that from the first week Teacher had brought her to the wilderness. But all she had been able to think about was how hungry she was.

The vomiting started almost immediately, but Jules had not had a solid meal since the blackberry pastries. She threw up mouthfuls of yellow bile, shivering and sweating at the same time, passing out and then waking up to do it all again. The pain in her stomach was unbearable. Jules was too weak to pull herself up off the floor, she just lay there wishing she was dead.

It would be better to die than to live like this. When Stasya took her from the streets, she had promised Jules power. Jules didn’t have any power. She was trapped in the witch’s cottage and would die there. 

Was Ivy sick too? Jules’s world had been reduced to the cottage floor and the guttering fire. She needed to get up. She was supposed to get up and get more wood. Marty was going to get too cold…

Soon she was so feverish that she stripped down to her nightgown and watched the fire die. She did not know how long she was sick, but she knew she started to call out for the dead girl. “I promise I’m trying, Alina,” she murmured. Jules could not stop trying to throw up, but soon she was too dehydrated to even do that.

“Poor child,” someone said quietly. Her Teacher’s voice. It was another dream. Jules tried to cry and pull her arms up protectively over her head. Somebody pulled her up, brushed her sweaty hair out of her face, fed her broth. Somebody dumped her into a bathtub and rubbed her arms until she started to wake up. “Poor child.”

It was her Teacher, Stasya. She had come back.

Jules wanted to cry at how nice she was being. It almost made her forget how she left her without anyone who could take care of her. 

But the hazy, dream-like state was drawn from her as easily as Stasya could pull an infection from a wound.  Jules let herself be cared for. She let the old witch feed her and give her medicine and brush her hair. It was all she ever wanted, really. 

“You’ve destroyed your fingers,” Stasya told her, carefully rubbing salves into her frostbitten hands. When Jules tried to pull back, her Teacher would not let her. “Why would you do something like that?”

Jules understood why Bonneville had sounded all dead on the inside when the soldiers had come for him. She knew why he hadn’t tried to run or fight back. She couldn’t get out of her situation or survive on her own either. She winced. “Someone had to find food. Someone had to tend the fire.”

“You got rid of my psychic.” It was impossible to tell how old Teacher was. She was almost as pretty as Ivy, with silver hair and a bright, unlined face. Her eyes were as green and lidless as a snake’s. She smiled at Jules and a sense of warmth and comfort passed over her. “While I was orchestrating the end of les yeux sanglants, you were orchestrating the end of my telepath. You got scared of him, eh?”

Throwing Ivy under the bus was not a choice. Jules allowed her to keep bandaging her damaged hands and wondered what the word telepath meant. Probably the same thing as eugenics. She bit the inside of her cheek, but the anger had fizzled out now. She was too grateful towards the old witch for saving her. She was warm and full and safe.  “You left me alone for months. I was scared.”

“Good girl,” said Stasya, still smiling. She stoked her hair. “Fierce girl. I need to find a strong boy for you. It shouldn’t be too hard to find another among all these soldiers. I should have known Ivy would give birth to an invalid. The baby’s epileptic, so he’s out of the question. Why didn’t you do something when you found out?”

Jules did not want a strong boy. Jules wanted a nice boy. Ivy was right, she should have gone to sleep in the snowdrift. 

If she was braver, she would have asked about Alina Drobyshev and all the other girls. She would have asked about Ivy’s door. She would have asked about the demon, the demon that was so terrifying, so evil, that Stasya was willing to sacrifice the lives of countless girls in order to birth something that could destroy it. It should be making her unthinkably angry! Stasya thought about her in the same way that Ivy’s family thought about their sheep! If she was smart, she would be screaming her head off!

Jules was smart, she just wasn’t brave. 

She was too thankful that someone was taking care of her. It was better to be cared for. It was better to be warm and full and comforted. Jules did not want to be hungry again. It was easier to be scared than to be hungry. She made her choice.

Jules would not leave the witch’s cottage for another six years.

[blooblooded]

Silas Goes to the Lost Colony

200 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS

The night that Silas spent sleeping at Frank Martel’s home in the Northern Territories was pleasant. She had opened one of his windows so that a cool breeze could float inside and started dreaming as the beams of moonlight brushed over her face. The sensation of fresh air and unfiltered light were so foreign to her after centuries of living beneath the ground that it would have caught her by surprise if she had not been so exhausted from her journey. 

She could not remember the last time she had slept in a bed that was not her own. How long had it been? A year? More? When had she last visited Anikah in person? When was the last time she had talked to Anikah? It had been whenever they had that stupid fight. The memories would not come to her. 

And Silas wasn’t here for Anikah. Silas was here for her husband. She was here for Jerry. 

“It’ll take us a bit over 4 hours to make the drive down to Asilo,” Frank told her after she woke up. He was a prim and sanctimonious man of Metis descent, and never could resist the urge to be condescending. She couldn’t stand the nasally French sound of his accent. “Why didn’t you just wait for me to meet you down there, instead of driving twice as far from Eden?”

Silas shook her head. “I told you why. I didn’t want to sit around there by myself. I don’t think it would be safe.”

She could tell that Frank thought she was paranoid. If he had seen what she had, he would be paranoid too. Jerry had given her access to his camera feeds years ago because he trusted her, because he loved her in the best way he knew how. He had known that the cameras made her feel safe. Now they sure didn’t. Now it seemed as if she was the only person outside of Jerry’s Colony who had seen what was happening there. Now she had been forced to bear witness to the depraved violence her husband carried out on his people.

The others wouldn’t even listen to her. It seemed like Anikah hated Silas after the– well, after that problem with that camera she found. Reuben was an idiot, still too in love with Jerry to think that anything was wrong after not hearing from him in months. And Frank? Frank thought Silas was a knuckledragging inbred, but relished any opportunity to prove her wrong.

Frank was also closest. After all, Jerry had decided to build Asilo between Eden and the Northern Territories. 

“I’m flattered that you think I could protect you if something really is wrong over there,” said Frank, patting his ample belly. “What do you think it is again? Some pathogen like the one that came through the Rift and eh, modified all those poor souls?”

“Changed,” corrected Silas. “And yes.” She took off her glasses and polished them on her shirt. Pollen. Eden didn’t have pollen floating around.

Frank grimaced. “I think it’s more likely that your husband is ignoring you just like he’s ignoring the rest of us. He doesn’t want to own up to whatever mess he’s made. He made a mistake by promoting that ridiculous Book of his as a religious object and is paying the price. At least 500 of his people have fled from whatever theological oppression grew out of that and have entered my borders now.”

He already knew what she thought he should do with those people. Frank didn’t agree with that and had called her a sociopath. They were lucky they had shown up at his doorstep instead of hers.

There was nothing to say. Frank would believe her when they got to Asilo. He would see what Silas had seen. He would see the piles of corpses. He would see the terrible black monolith that the hordes of crazed worshippers had raised in the middle of the Colony. He would see the blood, the pain, the fear, and he would see Jerry.

Jerry, changed.

The two of them got ready over the next hour. Silas did not need to pack anything, she had everything she needed back in the van she had driven up from Eden. What was someone supposed to pack to see their insane husband? Insane, demon-possessed, whatever. Should she have brought more people up who could protect her? Her bodyguard’s name was Lakita and had been specially chosen for her ability to control electromagnetic energy into bubble-like shields. Would that be enough? Would it even matter? She had watched Jerry rip a man’s head off with his bare hands!

But Jerry would never hurt her. He had promised her that when he asked her to marry him. He had promised to keep her safe and she had never known him to break a promise.

Something inside of her did not completely trust that. Not after seeing her husband grasp that man’s head between his hands and tear it from his body. There was something wrong with him. During their last call all those months ago, Jerry had been weeping and begging her to help him, but was unable to express what was wrong. 

She stepped outside to take a hit of her vape and try to calm down. They were in the city of Matane, which was the Territories’ capitol. The city was huge, it all seemed so spacious compared to Eden’s dark tunnels. Frank’s chateau style house was built on a clean and charming street lined with trees. It was still early spring so the small green leaves had barely unfurled. Sometimes Silas missed watching the seasons change. She tried not to think about it much.

Yes, there was more space here. The industries here focused on art and medical advancements rather than on biotechnology like Eden. It was a beautiful place to live, but Silas would never feel comfortable staying more than a few days. Frank’s people were all as prideful and argumentative as he was. They seemed too broadly educated, too fierce. And she couldn’t understand them. For reasons she would never comprehend, Frank refused to let go of his first language and never required English to be taught in his schools. It used to cause huge arguments between him and the other four of them– the four Americans. He didn’t understand that there wasn’t any America to argue about anymore. There wasn’t any Quebec anymore either, and there was nothing he could do to keep it alive.

Silas wondered if she should be nicer when she thought about Frank. He was supposed to be her friend. She would never say that to his face.

Frank walked up to her, carrying an overnight bag. He frowned and fanned the air in front of his face. “Fucking osti,” he said. “Stinks. You’re too old for the marijuana.”

That was funny. Silas was 42 years old, and had been 42 for over 600 years. There was not a single new wrinkle on her face. She did not have an explanation for it and understood that she and the others should have been dead a long time ago. When the demon-worshipping bookbinder, Teddy Isaksen, emptied bullet after bullet into Silas and her friends, they should have all died. Jerry claimed he had used the Book to bring them all back. It didn’t make sense but she had stopped asking questions.

She shrugged, then put her vape in her pocket. “Are we ready to go? My bodyguard’s already in the van.”

“I’m bringing a few lads for assistance as well.” Frank smiled in a way that he probably thought was friendly, but came off as smug on his round, mustached face. He whistled and two young men with backpacks wandered out of an alley and up to them. “This is Roy and Gagnon. They study architecture here and wanted to see the great fortress your husband carved out of the western mountains.”

Silas’s mouth tightened. She had only brought one person with her. Now Frank was bringing two?

One of the young men nodded and smiled at her, jabbering something unintelligible. Frank replied and all three of them laughed. Silas’s face grew hot.

They were off in the van driving south shortly after. Silas drove, while Frank sat in the passenger seat, talking to her happily about his memories of how the five of them used to drive around together after the Isaksen incident. In the backseat, Lakita and the architect boys giggled and flirted despite the language barrier. The level of interest that they had in each other did not seem appropriate but Silas had to remind herself that Lakita was only 22.

It was smart to bring someone like that along with her. If anything happened, if Jerry really wasn’t…himself…Lakita could bubble Silas within a shield of electromagnetic energy. 

Why was she putting herself at risk like this? Why was she trying to see her husband in person after everything she had seen? Silas’s first thought had been to send armed drones to bomb Asilo into dust. That would have been smart. Kill almost everyone inside the Colony so that whatever was happening in there could not get out. Something like that would have been clean and effective, but Reuben and Anikah would never speak to her again if they found out. Maybe they would do something worse than never speak to her again. They had problems with such utilitarian solutions. 

And of course she couldn’t drop missiles on Asilo if Jerry was still inside. If that really was Jerry inside. She couldn’t think about that. A hard lump formed in her throat. Silas tried to swallow and felt her lower lip tremble. It was almost like she wanted to cry.

“The turn’s coming up, then it should be less than 50 kilometers,” Frank said, hours later. He had slipped on a ridiculous pair of sunglasses and was smiling broadly like this was some kind of road trip to see an old friend. “I’m telling you, Silas, the refugees from Asilo all say that your husband is persecuting them religiously. I always figured it would be Reuben who would have that problem. It’s a good thing the two of us built our peoples’ values on intellectualism instead of on faith.”

Except he thought that his people were more intellectually driven than hers. It was glaringly obvious. Frank had brought two architects. Silas had brought a bodyguard who could kill people with her mind. 

She gritted her teeth and kept her eyes on the road. She had forgotten how hard it was to see with the sunlight streaming into her glasses. “No. It’s more than religious infighting, there is something wrong. And I’m guessing you haven’t had any refugees lately, because Jerry isn’t letting people leave.”

“You still think that this is a re-emergence of the pathogen that came out of the Rift? It’s as eradicated as the smallpox virus, and has been for centuries.”

“They used to say smallpox could re-emerge if a sample contained in a lab escaped to a new host.” Silas could hear the fear in her voice. “They used to say that old viruses trapped in the Antarctic could come back as the ice melted.”

“Eugh.” Frank’s mouth turned down. “Speculation, not science.”

He wasn’t listening and she did not know how to make him. How could he accept that he had never aged a day over 50, but couldn’t accept this? “Do you remember the movie The Thing where the creature infects its host like a virus after coming out of dormancy? It reminds me of how Jerry said his Book —”

“You need to be on anxiety medication.” Something about the way he said that was strange, like he was trying to dismiss her. Did he know something she didn’t?

In the backseat, one of the young architects made Lakita squeal with laughter as he showed her a racy picture he had drawn.

The gentle prairie and scrubby brushland gave way almost immediately to the rugged majesty of the Canadian Rockies. Jerry had fallen in love with the land back when they had all been deciding where to build their Colonies. The flat land made him feel too exposed, he’d said, but the mountains were true safety. Asilo was built around the remains of an old resort town, filled with hot springs and crystal clear alpine lakes. Most of the Colony was drilled into the mountains themselves, but when Silas used to visit, Jerry would show her the charming farm-towns and little ski-chateaus scattered along the twisting road.

So she knew something was wrong immediately. Each small house or building along the last few miles to Asilo was empty. They passed by one group of buildings that were nothing but charred wood and broken stone. Silas gripped the wheel tighter. The lump in her throat was back. 

Frank stared out the window. His mustache twitched. “What a waste. We should have planned better for what to do if one of us becomes unstable.”

“Exactly. Exactly, that’s what I was trying to tell you before. We can still use my missiles—”

“No, I mean maybe we should intervene ahead of time, before someone’s personal problems start to affect the people in their Colonies. It’s too late for that here, though, if your husband has been sanctioning random destruction like this.” 

“I don’t think that talking things out would have helped in this situation,” said Silas, as they passed another burned down building and something that looked uncomfortably like a decaying human arm in the road. Not long now. Her heart pounded.

“We all used to be so close and I don’t understand what changed.” Frank paused awkwardly. “I don’t understand why you don’t talk to me if you’re struggling. I– eh, Anikah told me she found a camera in her bedroom, by her bed, and she thinks you put it there. It seems like the kind of thing you’d need to talk to someone about.”

Silas briefly considered driving off the side of the road and killing all of them. Her ears were burning but her face stayed flat and unemotional. Like a mask of stone, face never betrayed her true intentions. “We’re talking about how Jerry is killing people, not about my personal life.”

That shut him up. They continued in silence. As the van approached the mountainous gates of Asilo, nobody could say anything at all. The landscape resembled hell. Silas remembered how tall aspens used to litter the place, scattering fiery orange leaves in the autumn. The trees were gone. The soil appeared charred black, churned up by some unthinkable machinery. The little stream that used to wind around Asilo’s front gate flowed with foul sludge. When the sulfurous odor hit them, everyone in the van gagged.

Silas started shaking the minute she stepped out of the van. The mountain rose up jaggedly before her. She could imagine the inside of it ringing with infernal screams, she could imagine the pools of congealing blood. She was stupid. She was doing something stupid. Why did she have to care about Jerry this much? Why did she still love him? Why couldn’t she just let him go and then bomb this place to hell? Silas knew she couldn’t do that, she knew she couldn’t live with herself if she did that.

They approached the mountain’s gate. It was 100 feet high and wrought from thick steel. Silas looked around for a button to press, a camera to wave at, anything. The space around her was as desolate as if it had been hit with a nuclear bomb. No animals. No plants. No life. Nothing.

One of the architects said something and began drawing in his sketchbook. Frank sighed, his hands on his hips.

Lakita sidled up to Silas. She was easy-going and completely loyal. Lately Silas had been trying to employ people with telekinetic abilities. Since 3% of babies born in Eden had some kind of preternatural powers due to the high presence of the slime-like alien creatures there, it was not hard to find such people. “Do you need some water, ma’am?”

Silas shook her head. “Keep an eye on the others.”

There must have been a camera somewhere, because their presence did not go unnoticed. The mountain’s gate opened into a black chasm. A young woman walked out to meet them. She was tall and proud and strikingly beautiful, all dressed in flowing red robes. Her red eyeshadow and lipstick matched. She held her hands clasped over a belly that looked nearly 9 months pregnant.

“We’ve been expecting you,” she said, in a low and pretty voice that buried a twinge of hysteria. Her eyes were so wide that they almost bulged from her head. The pupils were a bright and unnatural crimson, the eyes of a hungry carnivore. Her red, red lips peeled back from her teeth in a painful smile. “Please follow me to meet the Great Devourer.”

Silas took an involuntary step back. This was not normal. She wanted to be far away, back home, where she was safe. It felt like she was stepping back into the insanity and the desperation of those early days after the Rift opened. She hadn’t been able to sleep back then, always scared out of her mind that someone or something was going to find them and hurt her or rape her or kill her or eat her. And she had seen this girl on the cameras! She had seen this girl laughing next to Jerry during the orgiastic murders and cannibalism!

Frank held his hands out. “Kira?” he said softly. “You– you were the one who sent me all those messages about your people. I’ve been settling them on good land, they’re safe. You can come back with us. I know you asked me to bring soldiers but I know we can figure this out together.”

All the blood in Silas’s body turned cold. He hadn’t told her he had been talking to anyone from Asilo. This girl was the one who had sent refugees to the Northern Territories? This girl, who Silas had watched take a bite from the still-beating heart Jerry had torn from someone’s chest? This girl, who Silas had watched suck the blood from Jerry’s fingers? Frank’s people were in trouble. The people who they had let in were not refugees, they were infiltrators from this cult!

Kira kept smiling but it was all wrong. She completely ignored Frank’s familiarity with her. “You both can follow me. He says He doesn’t want the other three to enter the holy city, since He hasn’t tasted their blood.”

No, no. Silas took another step back towards Lakita, who put her hand on her shoulder to steady her. Tasting blood. That wasn’t good. She didn’t know what that meant, she didn’t want to know what that meant. Jerry had never tasted her blood, she knew that for a fact. He was gentle with her, he was a gentle man, he was the kind of man who cried when he had to put a dog or a horse down. This man she kept seeing, this man she kept hearing about could not be her husband. 

“We came to help you, said Frank. He looked back and jerked his head towards Silas, trying to get her to walk towards him. “Something’s wrong here but we can fix it. We’ve known Botega for a long time.”

“And He knows you. Come with me. He’s waiting.”

“I’m not going in there,” said Silas. “I’m not going in there. Frank, we have to go. We need to go. I don’t think we have time to–”

A jolt of pain shot through the back of Silas’s head and down her spine. She winced. It was almost like a foreign object was penetrating her skull and forcing itself inside. She gasped once in pain, then looked up into the mad red eyes of the girl Frank called Kira. A compelling sense of obedience filled Silas’s mind and she felt herself walking. Her own consciousness seemed to float far away.

Telepath, she thought hazily, dreamily, unaware of what she was doing or where she was going. Jerry had a telepath working for him. They must have had the same idea…

The state of half-sleep and half-dream was more pleasant and comfortable than any sensation Silas had experienced in years. She did not know how long her mind was at rest while her body walked through the darkness. She only knew the shocking terror as her mind was ripped back into reality.

It was almost pitch black beneath the mountain but Silas could see the ruined city. The only light came from fires smouldering in the shattered buildings. She choked on the thick and stinking air, then looked around wildly, unable to remember how she had come there. Where was she? This was the middle of Asilo, she recognized the streets, but they had…changed! She stumbled and somebody, Frank, caught her by the arm so that she wouldn’t fall. Her eyes fell upon the huge piles around them. Unfocused, at first they looked like piles of sticks. But the sticks soon became naked arms and legs, attached to bloody torsoes. Bodies. They were surrounded by piles of bodies.

And above them rose a triangular black monolith of oily stone that stretched nearly to the mountain’s peak. 

“I don’t like this,” said Silas frantically. She needed to leave. She needed to get out of here. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe! “I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here!”

Frank held on to her tightly. Why was he acting so brave? Was he stupid? “It’s OK, Sy.”

“No, no, you don’t understand, I’ve been watching what he’s done to people! He’s hurting people! He’s enjoying their suffering! I swear on my life, I told you, none of you listened and now we’re going to die down here! I told you that Book of his was still infected by that pathogen and now he’s infected too! We’re going to die down here!”

“We can’t die,” Frank said condescendingly. 

“We don’t know that!”

The pregnant girl was still with them. Was she the only other living soul in this city? Was it possible that Jerry had already slaughtered the rest, except for the hundreds he sent streaming into Frank’s Colony? Kira’s tanned, pretty face was still smiling but those red eyes were terrified and had tears in them. She looked over her shoulders and then hissed something at Frank in French. Silas felt another sting of terror. Was Frank conspiring against her too? She had no understanding of the language, but caught the word sabre, which she knew was a kind of sword.

It didn’t matter though. This was her fault. Her love for her husband caused her to leave the safety of her Colony and now she was going to die. Maybe everyone in the world was going to die. 

Silas started to cry. She didn’t know what else to do.

“Oh, darlin’, you don’t need to cry,” said a familiar voice from the darkness. “There’s no need for that here.”

Jerry’s voice. Sweet like honey and completely West Texas. Silas put her hands over her mouth and shrank against Frank as the man who had once been her husband approached them.

He looked like he always had. Jerry was a man of average height, but broad and strong from a lifetime of working with cattle. Even after he built Asilo, he just had to always have some cows to tend to. His mild face with its heavy lidded eyes and smiling mouth was cleanly shaved. His hairline was neat. He even dressed like he always did, in jeans and a button up with a turquoise bolo tie that complimented his dark skin. Usually his shirts were not rolled to the elbows and saturated with blood. Silas fell to her knees.

“What have you done here?” demanded Frank, as if the man he was speaking to was not stinking of gore. “Look at this! What have you done?”

Jerry eyed him. “I remember you. The other uppity atheist. You thought I was– what was it? A pathogen?”

This wasn’t her husband. This man was speaking with his voice, but Jerry didn’t talk like that. Jerry didn’t talk like that to Frank.

“I can have an army here in four hours,” said Frank, drawing himself up to his full height of 5’7’. The only sign of nervousness was a sheen of sweat across his round cheeks. He stared Jerry, or what used to be Jerry, dead in the face. “Or you can return with us to Matane to face trial. This girl has been telling me what you’re up to here, what you’re attempting. You can’t figure it out because you’ve killed all your scientists.”

When Frank mentioned her, Kira cringed back like she had been struck. Her bare arms were mutilated by self-inflicted gashes and some of them had re-opened to drip.

“Aw.” Jerry took a few steps closer. He moved like a big cat, like a contemplative tiger watching a couple of deer. He was relaxed, but coiled muscles rolled beneath his clothing. “I’ll deal with the Tariq girl later. I wanted to see ya’ll here for pleasure, not business.”

Silas cried harder. Frank kept trying to pull her back up to her feet, and she clung on to him. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here!”

“Pull yourself together!”

Jerry cocked his head. “And you’re his mate? I have more memories of you, little wifey.”

This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t talking to her. In her panic, Silas could only think about how badly she wanted her husband. Could only think it over and over again so intensely that she did not realize that she was saying it out loud.

Her husband smelled coppery like old blood and like something else. Like the squirming sour scent of a thousand writhing insects. He reached out gently to brush her dark hair out of her face. “I don’t know why I feel soft for you. Maybe because he did. It’s so confusin’. I thought ya’ll were just animals but bein’ in this body– how are you not goin’ crazy from all these desires?”

She heard Frank curse in his own language. Jerry was dead. Something was in his body. Maybe it had been in there this whole time.

“I remember you didn’t like goin’ to bed with him much and you stopped after you watched a program where two females kissed,” Jerry continued, spilling their marriage’s most intimate secret as if he was a stranger sharing random gossip. He paused, staring at her with his perpetually sleepy eyes. “I don’t reckon you’d wanna do that again, wifey? Jerry always thought of you as bein’ real soft to the touch, and now that Kira’s with child, I’ve been bored. I’ve destroyed thousands of planets but I’ve never found a species that procreates for fun.”

That got Silas to stop crying immediately. She did not know what terrified her more: the imminent threat of rape or the fact that this thing was claiming to be a planet-killer. She froze, suddenly cold. She watched the fires blazing in the buildings around them. For the first time in her life, she wished she believed in God. Not because she thought any God could help her, but because it must be some kind of comfort.

“My army will come here to destroy you if you don’t let us go,” said Frank. He sounded strained but not scared. Not yet. He kept one hand holding onto Silas’s. “Look around you. Everyone is dead, everything is destroyed. We can still fix this.”

Jerry scratched his head. He was close. So, so close. “What were you sayin’ about what I can’t figure out? What’s the girl been tellin’ you?”

“That you can’t stay in Botega’s body forever. That you think you can transfer your consciousness into her infant, because you think that it will be born with hybridized DNA. Only, Kira terminated the spawn you impregnated her with, then slept with another man to continue the trick. To buy more time. Your ritual will never work. You can’t twist our DNA.”

Oh God. He was so stupid. He could never stop talking. 

Silas started to pray.

Kira Tariq had stolen off. Whatever secret plan she had with Frank appeared to be in motion. Silas did not hold out hope for that, whatever that was. All that mattered was the man who stood a foot away from her.

“Hm,” said Jerry. He stopped smiling. “That sounds like something an atheist would say.”

“You have no choice–”

Jerry seized Frank by either side of his head, then crushed his skull between his hands. It sounded wet, like an over ripe melon bursting on hot concrete. His body jerked once, violently going stiff, then toppled over. Brain matter slopped to the ground in creamy chunks. Only some parts of his face were still visible: one side of his jawbone clattered down attached to a flap of skin, one eyeball had been squashed to jelly, the other plopped into the red puddle that had once been Frank’s head.

Viscous fluid splattered Silas’s glasses. Frank had still been holding her hand. She realized that she was screaming and screaming and hurling her glasses away, trying to cover her face, terrified of how she was about to die. There was blood all over her! Frank’s blood all over her! Frank was dead, Frank was gone, he had been wrong about immortality and now she was going to die too!

Jerry was grabbing her now. He had his big strong hands around both of her wrists, pulling her up, restraining her. When she tried to struggle, he shook her once, and that reminder of power was enough to get her to quit immediately. Silas did not want to look at him, this thing that had once been her husband. 

“Please,” Silas said thickly. She kept her eyes squeezed closed. That was Frank’s head. That used to be Frank’s head and she had seen how he had been himself one second, and then a pile of meat the next. “Please don’t.”

“Please don’t what?” asked Jerry. It was impossible to tell if he was being cruel or if he was stupid. “Don’t what?”

Maybe that Kira girl actually could do something about Jerry. Maybe she could stop him. It wouldn’t matter to Silas if she was dead.

She wanted her husband. She wanted the man who used to bring home every stray dog he came across. She wanted the man who would sing old country songs whenever he thought she wasn’t listening. She wanted the man who had threatened to blow Anslow Becket’s brains out after he called her an ugly heifer during that fishing trip in ‘97. Where was he? She had never had to think about the existence of a human soul separate from its body.

“Oh, I ain’t gonna hurt you,” said Jerry. “Is that why you’re upset? I told you this body has feelings for you.”

Somehow that wasn’t comforting. Silas did not move. His touch made her skin crawl. Planet eater, she thought. Planet eater! What would a Starfleet Commander do in her place? Silas was no Starfleet Commander! Real life was not like television, no matter how much she wished it was!

“I just wanted to see if his memories felt the same way in person.” His tone was melancholy. Jerry let go of Silas’s wrists and she peeked a look at him as he wiped his gory hands on his jeans. No, not his hands. Its hands. Her stomach heaved. “It was a test of human love. You can head out, if you want. I have something else to take care of.”

“You– I can go?” Without her glasses, the expression on Jerry’s dark, handsome face was blurry. Part of her knew that she was in shock. Another, more primal part of her recognized that she was frozen by the same terror a deer has when it is face to face with a tiger. She was not the top of the food chain in the darkness beneath the mountain. “You’re l-letting me leave?”

Jerry looked around at the black, smoldering city around them. Its eyebrows were furrowed. “Stay if you want. I’m just waitin’ on my new body.  Maybe another month. Then I’ll meet you in Eden.”

Silas swallowed heavily. She could see Eden’s Upper Levels in her mind. The pristine white towers, the vertical towers. She imagined her peoples’ blood in her streets. She imagined the carnage beneath the mountain in her own home. That could not happen. She could not let that happen. 

Maybe another month? It was waiting for that girl’s baby.

There were splatters of Frank on her clothes. Silas stared at her husband, still too afraid to move. Whatever lived inside of Jerry’s body did not understand humans. It was still looking around at the destruction it had created, as if it was confused about why the pregnant girl would run away from it. Maybe it would be unable to understand that if it let her out of this place alive, she would do anything it took to ensure that it did not come to Eden and destroy everything that she had worked for.

The thing inside of Jerry had wanted to see her so that it could test whether or not it retained its host’s feelings for her. That test worked both ways, and Silas had failed. She would kill this thing if it gave her half a chance. 

Silas took a small step back, keeping her eyes on Jerry.  “You– you can meet me in Eden in a month,” she said. “Yes, you can visit.” Anything to keep it from changing its mind. Anything to get out of the stinking darkness. Anything to get away from Frank! 

“Shoulda started there anyway,” It still sounded confused and melancholy. “More to eat there. You see which way Kira scurried off to?”

“Mm-mm.” More to eat there?! Silas’s breath came raggedly. She took another step back, felt her shoe skid across something soft. When she looked down, she saw that she had stepped into a decomposing loop of intestines. Her eyes pricked and she had to clamp a hand over her mouth. It was too dark to see much of anything and she didn’t know where she had thrown her glasses. 

“Damn.” Jerry sighed. It put its hands in its pockets. “Damn. Why’d she hide from me?”

It wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. It didn’t care. An animal cannot think like a human can. An animal can only think about survival, is only driven by hunger and the drive to procreate. This thing may have been aware of sophisticated concepts like love and betrayal, but could not fully understand them. 

She was not going to wait around to see what it did to the pregnant girl. It said she could leave, so she did so. Silas ran.

She didn’t know how long it took her to stumble down Asilo’s dark central roadway. The only things that mattered seemed to be the stitch in her side and her own ragged wheezing breaths. She was glad she could not see the carnage around her. Get to the gate. All she had to do was get to the gate without anything grabbing her, without the thing that was inside of Jerry changing its mind about her. Silas tripped and fell only once, over the furry crushed body of an old labrador retriever. It was lucky she was too panicked to think about that either or else she might have broken down.

When she got to the mountain’s huge gates, she found that they were still motion censored to open from the inside. She fell out of the darkness and into the clear cool air, panting and half hysterical. Hours must have passed beneath the mountain without her awareness, because night had fallen. For a moment her heart clenched in terror because it seemed as if the night sky had been stained green with poison and swirled above her in mad spirals of color— but it was only the aurora borealis.

Lakita must have been admiring the beauty of the Northern Lights because she appeared surprised when Silas tumbled from the mouth of the mountain, splattered with brain matter and out of her mind in fear. Lakita jumped to her feet immediately and ran up to her. “Ma’am?” she asked. She patted Silas down for injuries. “What happened in there? Are you hurt?!”

Silas entire body shook. She tried to catch her breath, pointing at the young architects from Matane who were staring at her in concern. “Kill them,” she panted. “Kill both of them.”

Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, Lakita held out her right hand and made a fist.  Two transparent blue bubbles of energy formed around each architect, then rapidly shrank to crush them into red sludge. It happened in an instant. The men were standing there, then were replaced by spreading puddles of what used to be their bodies. The green light of the aurora shone eerily over where they had been standing.

There was a beat. “I don’t think they were architects,” said Lakita. “They were doing something with their radios. Trying to reach people in there, I guess. What happened? That– you’ve got blood on you.”

“Yeah.” Of course. Of course Frank had been meddling, and now she was going to have to clean up that mess too. Silas’s teeth hadn’t stopped chattering. She couldn’t calm down, couldn’t regulate. She would not feel safe until they got back to Eden, maybe not even then. Maybe she would never feel safe again. “Drive. Now.”

Eden and safety were over 600 miles away. Her phone would not have a signal for hours.

Silas watched the road’s landscape change rapidly back to gentle prairies and considered the planet eater. She had one option. She would do what she should have done from the start. That thing could not come to Eden. She would not let that happen. The thought of its brain-splattered hands on her skin filled her with dread. It could cut through her people like a knife through butter.

She would kill it. She would kill everyone if it meant Eden was safe.

What would Ben Sisko do? He had always been her favorite Captain on Star Trek because he was a man of action. Reuben used to argue with her over the episode where Sisko poisoned the atmosphere of an entire planet to root out a terrorist cell, he used to say it was a war crime. Silas didn’t agree. Sometimes it was necessary to make hard choices in order to protect as many people as possible. 

The others had thought she was being paranoid when she told them Eden was manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles with the capacity to drop missiles. What was the point of having artillery in a world without war? The leaders of every existing nation-state were her friends. Who was paranoid now? She was about to bomb everything north of Eden back into the stone age.

Asilo was already a lost cause. She had seen that with her own eyes. If there were any survivors hiding in the stinking darkness of the mountain, they would welcome a clean death. The Northern Territories would follow Asilo’s path to destruction quickly, since Frank had been stupid enough to allow the pregnant girl’s blood-cultist followers past his borders. The refugees from Asilo would corrupt the people of the Northern Territories like an infection. It would be kinder to kill all of them quickly too, it would be like how Jerry used to shoot sick cattle to put them out of their misery.

Killing that thing would not be like killing Jerry. Jerry had been dead for a long time.

Her cell signal came back within 50 miles of Eden. Silas called in the drone strike. Asilo’s mountain-city would receive 30 100 pound Hellfire missiles to a concentrated target, which would theoretically destroy the front gates and crush most of what was inside. That was the easy target. The Northern Territories were far more spread out, so it was impossible to get them all. Silas directed the missiles to target high-value sites like government buildings, factories, schools, and churches. If she couldn’t get all of them, she could ensure that their civilization crumbled until they were no longer a threat to her. 

She watched live footage of the drone-strikes on her tablet, curled up in the passenger seat of the van. The people running in the Northern Territories looked like little ants. She felt a sense of relief as she watched their Capitol city crumble into rubble. There was no such relief as she watched the bombs hit Asilo. The cameras on her drones could not see through all that stone.

It had to be good enough. It was good enough. She closed her eyes, still clutching her tablet, and fell into an uneasy sleep.

She never did figure out why Anikah had stopped talking to her.

[blooblooded]

Kip's Birth Mom Dies

The Colony of Eden was a living creature and like all living creatures, it required daily care to keep it functional. Each day energy had to be taken in to sustain it, and each day waste had to be taken out. Without sufficient energy, all life would cease within the subterranean colony. Without sufficient energy, C02 could not be pumped from the air supply in the Lower Levels, the lights would go out, and all transport would stop, leaving everyone to starve and die in the choking darkness.

That was something that Sara Harris thought a lot about while she was at work. Suffocating in the dark. Everyone in Eden would suffocate in the dark without the work of energy technicians like her, tirelessly mending the solar panels on the Dome or repairing the turbines in the dam. Despite the essential nature of her work, she was paid so little that she and her wife and kids were stuck living in a nasty subsidized apartment in the Lower Levels. Meanwhile there were people in the Upper Levels who were so generationally wealthy that they would never have to hold a job, so wealthy that they wasted money on    creating genetically modified children who would in turn, never have to work.

Did they ever have to worry about suffocating in the dark because the power went out? No. That was just another luxury. They were not the ones who had to go outside the safety of the Dome and wear 20 pounds of protective gear. They were not the ones who had to scorch their hands on malfunctioning panels.

Her radio buzzed. Her supervisor. “You check out the paneling in quadrant 19 yet, Harry? It looks like it’s down to 100 watts per day.”

She rolled her eyes, wiped her hair out of her face. The respirator she wore over her nose and mouth to protect herself from the toxic air outside the Dome made her itch. After four years on the job, the bright sunlight no longer hurt her eyes, so at least she didn’t have to wear the goggles. She patted the solar panel she was working on. It crackled. “Way ahead of you. Should be done with repairs by three.”

“What’s the rush? Dana making you dinner tonight?”

Harry scoffed. The thought of her wife trying to cook dinner was not something she liked to imagine. Dana was the type of person who would live off of nutrient paste her whole life if she could get away with it. “Fuck no. It’s my kid’s first day of kindergarten. I want to pick him up.”

“Christopher’s five already?”

“Time flies.”

Harry bent beside the malfunctioning solar panel and unscrewed a bolt from its connector. The entire Dome was covered in the transparent things, simultaneously providing light and energy to the people of Eden. Only the privileged few who lived on the Upper Level received the luxury of natural sunlight filtering down on them. She looked down at the panel and then up at the blue sky, the beautiful clouds floating across the ugly black gash of the Rift.  “Sure does. I’ll call you when I’m done with this quadrant. The EVA film is pretty worn down on these things, we might have to come back to repair it.”

“Whatever you think.”

She hung up. Harry didn’t mind the job, although most people in Eden wouldn’t dream of taking it. Everyone knew that it was dangerous outside of the Dome. The air was toxic to breathe, something to do with the Rift opening hundreds of years ago. It did something to people who were exposed to it for too long, it had turned the majority of the old population into squirming mutants. Harry had seen one, back when she had started the job, and she still had nightmares about its cancerous slack jawed face and melted eyes. Its skin had been falling off. There was a reason that the panel technicians all carried tasers. There was a reason that they wore rubber suits and respirators. 

She had seen animals outside of the Dome too. Big horned sheep, rabbits, even an ambling bear once. They didn’t wear respirators. Harry wondered what the difference between them and people were. Nobody had ever told her why animals were fine and people mutated.

But Harry didn’t mind all that. She didn’t care. She was able to spend her days outside and got paid for it, that was all that mattered. The unfairness of it all bothered her of course, that and the constant thoughts about dying underground. At least she wasn’t like Dana, who slaved her life away as a police officer, answering calls to domestic violence incidents or drunk and disorderlies. Dana was so exhausted when she came home that she often fell asleep without taking her uniform off.

Eden sat on a vast prairie by the banks of a lake. A few copses of scrubby trees surrounded it, but apart from that it was flat and clear enough to see for miles. Sometimes Harry would stare at the lake and think about swimming. She didn’t know how to swim and the water was full of toxins, but she steamed about it anyway. The water looked so beautiful, shimmering with the sunlight reflecting off of it, deep and cool. But she couldn’t touch it. She could work on the dam so that the power continued to flow, but that was it. She had to swelter and sweat in her big rubber suit, knocking on solar panels for 8 hours until she could return to her home under the earth. 

She gave the panel she was working on a pat. It clanged reassuringly under the weight of her glove. All this work and for what? Everyone else in Eden seemed happy to live underground, never thinking about the constant threat of choking on poisoned air if the power went out. It wasn’t natural but what other choice did they have? What other choice did she have? She and the other techs had to work or else everyone died. She had to work or else her son would die in the dark. 

Harry’s communication device told her that it was 12:30. That wasn’t too bad. She could finish the rest of the panels in this quadrant in an hour, then waste another hour or so looking at the lake in the sunlight until she went back underground to pick up Christopher from his first day of kindergarten. 

Christopher! He had screamed his head off that morning because he didn’t want to go to school. He wanted to go to daycare with Kassidy, who was only 4. After he threw himself on the floor to sob and cry for a few minutes, Harry had just picked him up and told him that kindergarten was far more fun than daycare. That didn’t work, so Harry flipped him over and tickled until he stopped crying and started to laugh. He was the funniest little boy, so sensitive and eager. Christopher was Harry’s mirror image in almost every way– hopefully he wouldn’t develop mood problems as he grew  like she had. She couldn’t wait to get back to him and hear all about his day at school. 

The wiring on another panel was frayed so she stripped it, working mindlessly. Only a couple of hours and she would go pick up her son. Dana didn’t get off until 6, so she’d have to pick up Kassidy too. Ever since she married Dana 2 years ago, Harry had thought of Kassidy as her kid, but she was harder to love than Christopher was. Another little mirror; Kassidy was sullen and concealed her emotions just like her mother. Harry never knew what the two of them were thinking unless they were angry.

It was hard. It was hard to start over like that. It was hard to marry a woman who had her own kid. But it was a hell of a lot better than being with Christopher’s deadbeat father. Harry’s blood pressure went up and her stomach dropped as she remembered she needed to harass Arnie for child support again that month.

The sun. The sky. The lake. She wasn’t underground, she was surrounded by light. There were no walls closing in on her. Harry closed her eyes for a moment. The manic energy she had been feeling for the last 6 months was slowly being replaced by fear and sadness and she could not let that happen.  She couldn’t help it, it was only some chemical imbalance in her brain, but she still could not let that happen. She had kids and a wife to think about now. 

With her eyes closed, Harry could hear the gentle calming buzz of the solar panels covering the Dome. She took a deep breath through her respirator. All that existed was that quiet hum which kept the 5 million people in Eden alive.

And then, through that lifegiving song, she heard voices.

Harry’s eyes shot open. She turned from the panels to face the lake. Nothing. She squinted, peered into the twisted brush of some nearby juniper trees. They were too thick to see through but she could hear something moving beyond them. Something big.

Her hands started to shake. Harry could not understand the voices. They sounded backward to her, musical and sibilant. Nobody spoke like that. Had the diseased mutants learned how to mimic human speech? She reached for her taser.

The voices and the sound of sticks breaking grew closer. A bead of sweat dripped down Harry’s forehead. There wasn’t time to grab her radio, there wasn’t time to call for help. If one of those creatures was in the trees, trying to lure her out by speaking, she wouldn’t have time to do much of anything other than get torn apart and die.

Oh god. Who would pick up the kids if she died? She had to pick up the kids. Dana didn’t get off work for another 5 hours!

Something stupid overcame her. Harry held the taser in front of her and stood up as straight as she could. Made herself as big as she could. “I'm armed!” she said. Her own voice sounded remote and far away. “You don’t wanna fuck with me, I’m fucking armed!”

There was some soft musical chattering beyond the tree line. A woman’s voice exclaimed something shrill and incomprehensible. Harry shook her head to clear her mind. It sounded like people.

That was impossible. To live outside a Colony was death.

“Please.” An old man’s voice, tired and shaky. Harry almost dropped her taser. “We don’t want any trouble. We’ve been walking for a month and we have no weapons. Please. It’s only me, two women, and a boy. We need help!”

There was nothing that could have prepared her for this situation. Harry held onto the taser like it was the only thing that made sense anymore. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. The world seemed to move in slow motion. How could there be four people out here? How could she be talking to someone out here? Had prison laborers escaped from one of those hellish Prospas cattle-yards? Or did…was it possible that….

The shrill woman’s voice rattled something off in her strange language, only to be answered by a different voice, careful and boyish and a little haughty. The movement in the brush was very close, close enough for Harry to see the shapes of people through it. She shook her head again, dripping with sweat.

“We’re refugees from Matane,” said the old man. She could see him now beyond the branches and he did not stop. He stood in front of 3 other people. The old man was hunchbacked and bald as an egg. Maybe he was in his 70’s. His clothes were made in a strange fashion; a long sleeved brown tunic and heavy brown boots. Everything about him was brown. He held his empty hands out in front of him. “Please. We need help. We’ve come so far.”

The taser almost slipped out of her hands as she came face to face with these people. The man was right. There were two women with him. One was tall and broad shouldered with big hands and a pink sunburned face. The other was little and very pretty, with coily black hair twisted into braids. There was a chubby teenage boy of maybe 15 with them too, staring insolently at Harry with red eyes. These three were dressed as strangely as the old man and all of them carried bags on their backs.

Harry wondered if she was having a nervous breakdown. This couldn’t be happening. There couldn’t be people wandering around out here. Nothing could have compared her for this, all she knew how to do was fix wiring on solar panels. What was she supposed to do? Shoot them? She was alone and she needed to get home to her children. She couldn’t even speak, all she could do was stand there with the taser pointed at all of them. 

“Is this Eden?” asked the old man in that soft and musical accent. He smiled at Harry. His big white teeth shone bright in his crinkled brown face but his eyes were hollow and exhausted. “I am Arnaud Giroux. My companions’ names are Phoebe and Lark. The boy is Cihad. Is this Eden? The map I have is 200 years old, from before the trade embargo, I was sure we were lost until we saw the light glinting off of the lake.”

“What the fuck?” Harry couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get enough air through her respirator. She looked from the old man to the women and then to the boy. None of them appeared to have any weapons. None of them appeared to be physical threats. She did not lower the taser. “What the fuck is this? What is this?”

“Rebel soldiers are tearing apart our countryside, burning as they go. Men with painted faces, without mercy. Their Lord tells them to kill anyone loyal to the King. Phoebe was my son’s wife, before the Partisan savages slit his throat for not selling them his harvest. When they torched our farm and killed Hugo, we fled. Lark used to sell us milk, until Gauthier’s soldiers killed her cattle. We found the boy wandering along the way, but it was the King’s marsh-lander soldiers who slaughtered his people, not the Partisans. There is nowhere safe. I’ve heard stories about Eden since I was a child. We–”

“That’s not true,” Harry interrupted. The old man was breathless with his raving as if he had had nobody to talk to for so long that the words simply poured out of him.  “You’re lying. The air is poison outside of the Colonies, where did you come from?”

Lark, the smaller of the two women, said something rapidly in her own language and grabbed the boy Cihad’s arm. He looked towards the lake with his strange red eyes. Was he already sick?

Giroux’s smile wavered. He swallowed. “The air is– what? We’ve traveled for months. Nothing’s wrong with the air.”

“No, we learned it in school. Toxins from the Rift get into the air. If people breathe it without masks on, it makes them sick. It changes their bodies, it made everyone into monsters a long time ago. Everyone knows that.” Harry took a step back and kept her taser aimed at the invaders. What was she supposed to do? There were cameras everywhere on Eden’s Dome, surely someone could see what was happening and would send Internal Operations to help her! “You’re already infected. You need to go away. You need to leave.”

“Aide, please,” the old man’s daughter in law, Phoebe, said brokenly. The sunburn on her face was so bad that it was peeling. “We be starving. We be dying! Please, please aide, succor.”

They didn’t even speak the same language! There weren’t even supposed to be any other languages anymore. Harry had learned that in school too. After the Rift opened and so many people died, the founders of the Colonies had decided there was only need for one language and they did away with the others. It had been like that for 800 years, but here these people were, speaking with a foreign tongue. It didn’t make sense. 

Unless she had been lied to. Unless everyone had been lied to.

She couldn’t start thinking like that again. Harry had been…paranoid…before. Manic, paranoid, whatever. It had led to her meeting Christopher’s father and getting knocked up, all that mess. Now she was on meds. Now she had a wife and two amazing children and a steady job and she could not get sucked up into whatever this was. She couldn’t go back to thinking that everyone was involved with some great conspiracy. These people weren’t like her. These people weren’t supposed to be here.

Harry slowly reached for her radio with one hand. 

“This is Eden?” Giroux asked again. His dead, hollow eyes did not leave her own. “We heard it was a paradise where there’s no war, where everyone has all the food they want. We heard that your people closed your gates 200 years ago because of the war between us and Asilo.”

Asilo? “Everyone in the Lost Colony got sick and died because of the air. It infected everyone in the Septentrion too. Everyone knows that.” She struggled to remember basic history. “That guy. Their president, Frank Toussaint. He sent a final message to our Mayor about it, begging us to stay away so we could be safe. We celebrate him as a hero here.”

The name must have been familiar because Giroux, Phoebe, and Lark all perked up. The teenage boy, Cihad, did not show any recognition and only stared around insolently. 

“Toussaint, yes, yes.” Giroux nodded. He was trembling a little bit, wheezing. “From before the monarchy. But there was no sickness. No sickness, only war. Asilo was filled with Rift-worshippers. They would come attack Matane and the Strath and take our young women for their blood sacrifices. But that was long ago…”

“No sickness,” echoed Phoebe, who looked like she was about to cry. The marks of hunger were clearly visible on her face.

If Harry had any food, she might have thought about sharing it. She couldn’t stand to see suffering. It opened something inside her heart. But she couldn’t help these people. She couldn’t risk it. She didn’t even know what the punishment for helping diseased invaders might be. 

So maybe everyone in Eden was being fed a lie. Maybe people could survive outside of the Domes. So what? Their world inside of the Colony was safe. It was hard but it was safe. How did the suffering of others outside of Eden affect her? Up until today, she had never even thought of it. She had never even considered the possibility. She had never considered anything other than making a comfortable life for herself and her family.

“You have to go,” Harry said at last. She holstered her taser. “You can’t stay here. They won’t let you inside the Colony. Everyone will think you’ll get us sick.”

“You can ask.” Sweat was beading on Giroux’s face. He did not look well. He looked like a sick old man. “You can tell them. Tell your leaders. We are refugees! We need food, we need medical attention!”

“I’m just an energy technician!” Harry didn’t want to look at these people anymore. If she kept looking, she would want to help. “You people don’t understand. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything. I have to go home to my son.”

The old man’s sweaty face was turning gray now. Phoebe was helping him stand. “Rowan Gauthier’s Partisans killed my son,” he said, pleading. There were tears on his wrinkled brown cheeks. “We have no home to go back to. You have to help us!”

“Beau-pere,” said Phoebe, alarmed, grabbing at him. Something was wrong. “Asseyez-vous!”

“They came out of nowhere and took everything from us! Everything! We’d done nothing to them other than being born in Matane and having French names!” Giroux’s wiry frame bent nearly double as a coughing fit overtook him. “And this boy! The horrible stories about the marshlanders slaughtering his people! There is nowhere safe, please, we heard that Eden is safe!”

Harry did not understand war. Eden did not have wars. Despite the unfairness, despite the brutal poverty and mistreatment and darkness and choking C02, there was never any upheaval. How could there be? The constant surveillance and presence of Internal Operations agents prevented any sort of organization. Only last month, Dana had been on shift when some lady named Naomi Harlan had tried to set herself on fire to protest low wages in the Prosperity factories. While Dana tried to put the woman out and call for help, the secret police had shown up in 2 minutes flat to drag her to prison. There was no room for political violence in their society.

Sometimes though. Sometimes when Harry forgot to take her medication she would start thinking about the unfairness in Eden. She would start thinking about how she wished things could change. What would she have done if she was in this old man’s place? What would she have done if someone killed her son? Would she run away like he had? Or would she have done something about it?

The boy’s face was all flushed and he said something angrily, gesturing at Harry. He was shushed by one of his companions. Giroux was gasping for breath like a dying fish. Beads of sweat poured off the tip of his nose. Phoebe screamed something shrill as her father in law fell to his knees.

It was the sickness! These people had left their Colony and had breathed in the toxic air and now they had carried it to–

It was an old man having a heart attack after suffering months, years of intense stress. 

Harry stood there, frozen. The outsiders were all jabbering in their musical language as Giroux collapsed onto his face and grew still. Phoebe rolled him over to his back and cupped his face in her hands. Lark started to cry. They didn’t know what to do. Of course they didn’t know what to do, they were just four people who would rather flee into a dangerous unknown that stay trapped in a suffocating present. 

Her body moved before her mind could stop her. She crossed the short distance between herself and the strangers and dropped to her knees. Giroux looked like half a corpse already, up close she could see the wasting of his muscles. Harry pressed two fingers to his throat to try and feel for a pulse. All techs had to attend a yearly first aid training, but Harry never paid attention to the stupid things. She had never imagined that it would ever be useful.

There was no pulse beating beneath his clammy skin. He wasn’t breathing either, which meant that he was in cardiac arrest rather than having a heart attack. First step was to call for help. Panting, Harry held her radio to the mouth of her respirator. “Medic!” she said. “Medic, I need a medic in quadrant 19, I need a medic and transport back inside!”

“Harry?” Her supervisor’s voice crackled with static. “What’s wrong, did you get–”

“Not for me!” Beside her, Phoebe was crying and moaning something in her own language. “Old man. He’s not breathing. I’m about to start CPR, I need a medic now!” She shrugged off the grip of the hysterical young woman.

“Old man? What do you mean, the closest tech I have out there is Tiesha, a mile away in quad 4.”

The radio had already dropped from her grasp. Harry wasn’t thinking of that anymore. She wasn’t thinking much of anything at all. Her body still seemed to move independently from her thoughts and there was nobody piloting the machine of her flesh. She pressed her hands together and placed them in the center of Giroux’s chest. What was the tempo of that old song that you were supposed to sing in your head while giving CPR? She knew it was fast, she knew that it was supposed to mimic the steady rhythm of the heart. She started compressions and counted them in her head. One, two, three. The old man’s body was so withered that it seemed hollow. There was a nasty crunch as his ribs broke beneath the force of her hands. 

30 compressions. It was harder than she imagined it might be. The women were still crying and Cihad was saying something rapidly in his strange language. On the 30th compressions, Harry lifted her hands. Rescue breaths. Her own breath was hot in the stifling respirator and she tore it from her face and discarded it. For the first time in her life, she sucked in lungfulls of unfiltered air, then bent to press her mouth against the old man’s, pinching his nose closed as she did so. 

She didn’t hesitate. There was no time to think or to hesitate. 

30 compressions. 2 breaths. 30 compressions. 2 breaths. Harry’s arms were growing tired. It seemed to go on forever. Cardiac arrest. She knew that a sudden occurrence such as this happened when the electricity in a person’s body malfunctioned and was not able to power the heart’s functions. Theoretically, chest compressions were supposed to keep a person alive until the medics arrived. She could do that. She could keep going.

“It’ll be OK,” she grunted, her shoulders burning from the constant movement. The old man’s thin broken bones creaked beneath her. “It’ll be OK, I promise it’ll be OK.”

She didn’t know why she was helping these foreigners. She did not know why she was so willing to rip her respirator from her face and put herself and risk to save this stranger. It was the right thing to do. She did not need to think. There was only her body and the body on the ground.

Where were the medics? Had 10 minutes passed by already? She couldn’t keep this up forever and Giroux’s body was still limp.

Cihad kept saying something demanding. Unlike the others, the fat teenager did not speak any English. He kept trying to kneel down next to Harry, his voice growing more insistent. When he reached over like he was going to put his hands over hers, she paused her efforts momentarily to chastise him in a language he did not understand.

“Cut it out,” she snapped, panting. Her own heart pounded in her chest and sweat matted her hair to her forehead. She glared into his unnatural red eyes, hoping that she could get her point across through body language.  “Quit distracting me or he will die!” She started chest compressions again. One, two, three.

The boy barked something at her. He grabbed at her hands like he wanted her to stop. Harry shoved him away. She almost hit him. 

“Jai de l'électricité!” shouted Cihad and his voice cracked. He looked very young, all big eyes in a chubby face. It made her think of her son. “Jai de–”  He made a frustrated, desperate noise in the back of his throat. He pushed at Harry, then pressed his own hands to the old man’s brittle chest.

Green sparks seemed to arc down Cihad’s arms. Giroux’s body jerked. It jerked again. His daughter in law screamed.

Harry had never seen anything like it. Her only thought was to stop the boy. She twisted her fingers in the collar of his shirt, intending to pull him away and get back to doing compressions. “The fuck are you thinking, I–”

Giroux coughed weakly and his eyelids fluttered. His chest rose on its own and he moaned weakly, in pain. Phoebe threw herself down over his body, weeping. 

The boy had done something.  Harry knelt there, panting, her muscles burning. Her skin gleamed with sweat and she unzipped the rest of her protective gear, peeling it down around her waist. She wiped her damp hair out of her eyes. 

The man was alive. The man was alive and she had helped to pull him from the edge of death. She started to laugh.

 The sun continued to glint off the water of the lake and Harry could feel its warmth on the bare skin of her face. She was at once more exhausted and more energized than she had ever felt in her life. Eden no longer seemed real. The life she lived, under the ground, breathing fake air and seeing in fake light,  did not seem real. This was how it was supposed to be. Helping people under the light of the sun. 

She pulled herself to her feet, still laughing. Giroux had his eyes open but looked frail, like he needed urgent medical attention. Phoebe was dribbling a trickle of water from a bottle into his mouth. Were you supposed to let someone who had just been in cardiac arrest drink?

“Medics should be here soon,” said Harry reassuringly, hoping that she was right.. She didn’t know if the old man could hear her. The others didn’t understand what she was saying. Her heart pounded in her chest. Was she shaking? She closed her eyes and turned around with her face upturned toward the sun. “They’ll get here soon. They’ll take you to the hospital and help. They’ll help.”

Giroux only gasped for air, open mouthed like a fish, and tried to get his arm around Phoebe. He grunted in pain as he moved.

Cihad was saying something nervously and Lark answered him. Quick acting kid. What had he done to restart the old man’s heart? It was possible that these people had technology that Eden did not. They could share it. All the refugees from wherever these people had come from could travel to Eden and be safe. They could help each other. 

Where was her radio? Communication devices didn’t work outside of Eden because there was no network outside of the Dome. Harry looked about for the place she had tossed the stupid thing. Dana was never going to believe her when she told her about what had just happened. 

Everything was going to change now. Harry laughed again.

“He need help,” Phoebe sobbed. Giroux weakly stroked her hair. His eyes were open and cognizant. “He need help!”

“They’re coming,” said Harry. She kicked a rock that she thought might be hiding her radio. “They’d have to gear up– the masks, you know. The’yre usually good about getting out here in 10 minutes.”

Cihad bent down and motioned towards empty air, looking into nothing. He made a sound that sounded like “Pss, pss, pss” like he was calling an animal. 

“Please,” begged Phoebe. “We carry him inside!”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to move someone after something like this. Really, they’ll be here soon. I’ll probably have to call my boss and my wife but I can check in on you all after.” Harry imagined that the news of outsiders in Eden would break fast. Reporters would probably want to talk to her about how she had helped.

“He need help!”

Once everything came out about the refugees, once everything came out about how the air wasn’t poisoned, things were really going to change. People would start being able to go outside Eden without respirators. Harry stared at the lake. She could learn how to swim. She could take Christopher and Kassidy out here and teach them how to paddle around.

No more darkness. No more choking air. Harry laughed again, radio forgotten. She reached her arms up towards the sky. Adrenaline was still pumping through her body and she felt more alive and alert than ever. She wanted to jump up and down! This was going to change her children' s lives.

“Ah, je t'aime bien,” rasped Giroux. He still patted his daughter in law’s head, murmuring softly as she wept over him. “We are safe. They say Eden is a paradise.”

“Hey!” Someone else’s shout made Harry spin around. She squinted across the flat scrubby prairie and the vast paneled ridge of Eden’s Dome. Two people were jogging towards them. Their uniforms were nondescript and black, with black helmets obscuring their faces. Harry frowned. Internal Operations. Why had they been sent out there? Their usual purpose was to root out criminals that the usual police did not have the skills or jurisdiction to catch. Most of them had medical training though, she had once seen one of them tourniquet a guy’s leg after it had been severed in a metro accident. The operative had stayed with him until the Medics got there. 

“Hey!” answered Harry, waving at them. “Hey over here! Help!” She turned towards the strangers and pointed at the secret police. “See? They’re here to help.”

“Thank you,” Phoebe sobbed. “Thank you!” She pressed her face into Giroux’s chest. He grunted in pain again. 

Everything was going to be OK. Harry beamed happily. She couldn’t wait to tell Christopher when she picked him up from kindergarten.

The two Internal Operations operatives jogged up. They were both fit and uninteresting. Not an inch of skin could be seen on them, even their hands were covered by black gloves. The only real difference between them was that one uniform was bulky from a kevlar vest and had heavy gear and the other one lacked any accoutrements other than a helmet with a few silver buttons on the side. They appeared very serious, even when staring at the scene in front of them.

“Yes, yes,” said Harry, waving at them, then gesturing at Giroux. “Thank god. There’s no time, we have to get him to the Hospital! I was out here giving CPR for I don’t know how long!”

The operatives ignored her. “Fuck,” said the one with the heavy uniform. It sounded like a young woman. “Why do they keep showing up? This is the 3rd group this month!”

“Something must be happening where they’re from,” said the other one. This one was male. “They’re running away from something.”

“Well, I’m tired of getting these calls on our shifts.”

The lack of urgency was shocking. Harry noticed that they hadn’t come in a vehicle or brought a stretcher. She shook her head, then waved her arms more wildly to get their attention. “The man on the ground is the one I called about. How are we going to carry him to the Hospital?”

Cihad said something with alarm and straightened up beside Lark in an almost protective manner. He looked around. Was something wrong? Maybe they were afraid of the Internal Operations agents’ uniforms. IODE wasn’t anything to fear, unless you were someone who was a danger to society.

The secret police agent with the buttons on his helmet sighed like he wanted to be doing something else. Like he didn’t care. He waved a hand. “OK. You clean them up. I’ll wipe the civilian.” 

The next minute happened so fast that Harry’s mind did not have time to comprehend it.

The one with the heavier armor faced Harry and the group of refugees. She extended her right hand towards them with the fingers out, then made a slashing motion as if mimicking a knife. It seemed like nothing. There was no preamble, no warning. The young woman in the mask just made a little movement with one hand and then the bodies of Arnaud Giroux and his daughter in law Phoebe flopped, then lay still. There was only one loud noise. It was heavy and squelching. Where there had once been two living people, there were now two corpses.

They had been cut in half. Somehow the IODE operative had sliced completely through their torsoes without moving anything other than a hand. The invisible slice had been so sharp that it hadn’t even torn their clothes. Blood started to flow, slowly and first, then in a great flood, spilling together with stomach acid and waste.

Harry started screaming. What was happening? No, this wasn’t right, this wasn’t supposed to be happening! She had just saved that man’s life. “Stop!” she screamed, whirring upon them, her mind unable to understand what was happening. An invisible blade? “No, stop, stop!”

The two surviving refugees had nowhere to go. The boy held Lark’s hand as she stood there stupidly, too shocked to react to the murders that had occurred in less than one second. Cihad’s round face was very fierce and scared. He spat something in his language. His dark wavy hair started to stand up as if with static electricity.

Nothing was making sense! Giroux’s dead face seemed to be staring up at her. He had not had time to see his death coming and looked perfectly calm and peaceful. The only thing that gave it away was the cups and cups of blood draining from his body and the body on top of him. Harry turned away, gagging. It was a misunderstanding, she could make them understand. She could stop this!

Lurching, she tried to position herself in front of Cihad and Lark. The secret police agent who had bisected the others made a ‘shooing’ motion at her. It was like having an invisible wall slamming into you. Harry felt the impact and was knocked off her feet. She smashed facefirst to the ground and felt her nose pop. “No, no, no!” Harry was aware that she was crying now. She struggled to her hands and knees. “Stop! They’re just trying to find somewhere safe!”

“I”m sensing the boy’s TK,” said the agent who had not moved. His voice sounded bored. “Hold off on him, I’ll put him down until we can call on-call and see if they want to recruit.”

The other one stomped her foot childishly. “Are you kidding? What if they say yes? That’s too creepy.”

“It’s policy.”

Cihad’s red eyes rolled back in his head and he fell down. Lark looked down at him, trembling, too afraid to move. The heavily armored secret police agent made another small slicing motion. The skin of Lark’s throat opened and was replaced by a cruel gash that exposed her windpipe and severed the arteries in her neck. She stood there for a second, choking on her own blood, before she collapsed as well. Harry screamed again and pressed her hands over her mouth.

She was going to die. She was never going to see her son again. She had believed that Internal Operations existed to protect her, but they had killed these people like it was nothing and now they were going to kill her too. 

“We’re wasting time,” complained the one who had done all the killing. She gestured at Cihad. “We’re not going to recruit someone from outside. Our whole job is to kill them so they don’t get in.”

“It’s policy. They have to test anyone for recruitment if they’re TK or TP and under 18. You should be happy, the higher our numbers are, the less work you’ll get assigned.” He pulled off his helmet so that he could get a lungful of unfiltered air. The face beneath the mask was one of a young man of no more than 18 himself. He was pale, with fair hair shaved to the scalp, and had a look of moderate disinterest. 

She knew she was going to die now. She had seen one of their faces. Did it matter if she had seen one of their faces? These people were employed by Eden’s government and clearly acting on explicit orders. Harry wondered if she should try to run, but there was nowhere to go.

The secret police agent turned towards her and walked over at an easy pace. Harry shuddered, spluttering tears and snot, trying to breathe. Her face hurt from when she had fallen and her nose was bleeding. Christopher! What was Christopher going to do without her? He wouldn’t understand!

“You’re OK,” said the secret police agent as he watched her try not to hyperventilate. His voice was calm but not kind. “You did a good job calling for help.”

Harry stared up into his colorless, emotionless eyes. Her body would not stop shaking and she was aware of the vulnerable position she was in on her hands and knees. Her mouth trembled. “I called for help.” Her voice came out as a strangled wheeze. “I called for help! You – you killed them! They were scared and sick and starving and you killed them! You killed them!” She could not stop thinking about her hands on Giroux’s chest as she pounded endlessly to try to save his life. For what. For what?!

“We can’t let dangerous outsiders into Eden. They carry diseases.” He extended his hand to help her up. Harry did not take it.

“You wouldn’t have taken off your helmet if there were diseases.” Harry could not calm her breath. Her face was hot, her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She still cried angrily. “This– this is sick! This is fucked! There’s people out here! There are people out here, tons of people out here! So they just get murdered every time they come near us? What is this? Why doesn’t anyone know about this?”

They were all being lied to! The air wasn’t poison! There were people outside of the Colonies! And the secret police weren’t around to protect anyone if they murdered unarmed refugees!

The young man’s expression did not change. He only shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m about to make sure you don’t know either.”

A sliver of pain shot through the back of Harry’s skull, making her wince although she had not been touched. It was followed by a sense of lightness, a euphoria. The stinging from her nose stopped and she didn’t even notice the blood. Her heartbeat slowed, followed by her breathing. It was like getting into a warm bath, where everything was safe and comfortable, where she never had to worry about anything. It was how she imagined swimming in the waters of the lake might feel.

No, that wasn’t right! She felt drunk. Everything was fuzzy, her vision hazy. Harry’s eyelids were too heavy to keep open. She rubbed at them with clumsy hands. He was doing something to her just like Cihad had done something to the old man, just like the girl in heavy armor had done. There was technology she didn’t know about, there were terrible secrets that she was on the verge of uncovering, and he couldn’t just numb her out like a drug addict until she forgot!

But there was no fighting it. Peaceful sleep overcame her. The last thing that Harry could comprehend was the act of pulling one last breath of fresh air into her lungs.

##

Harry found herself watching the news on the couch in her apartment. It wasn’t a bad apartment. It was subsidized and in the Mid-Levels. Two bedrooms. Not fancy, not too big, but it was enough for her family’s needs. She and Harry had moved in right after they got married two years ago, and even back then, Christopher and Kassidy had fought over who got to sleep on the top bunk.

Program-1 was playing D’asia Kowski with the evening news. Harry rubbed her eyes and winced. Her nose stung like she had hit it. Her head throbbed. Had she fallen asleep? She didn’t even remember coming home from work…

She realized she had been roused from…from whatever unconscious state she had been in by the key rattling in the door. Dana was home from work. It was early, but then Dana had been getting off early after the nasty business with the lady who had set herself on fire. Where were the kids?

Dana stormed into the apartment, still wearing her uniform. She was a small woman, but the bad energy coming off her made her seem larger.  Her mouth was set in a grim line and her eyes were black and cold. She gripped Christopher and Kassidy’s hands in both of her own as they squabbled. 

“Fucking unbelievable, Sara.” Dana had already worked herself up into a rage. About what? She never called Harry by her first name unless she was angry, fiercely, hotly angry. She let go of the kids, then slammed her bag down on the floor. “The school couldn’t get ahold of you, I couldn’t get you to pick up, I thought you fucking died. But here you are, watching TV instead of thinking your kids might need to be picked up!”

Harry winced and touched her nose. She didn’t remember why it hurt. She didn’t remember anything. The day was a blur. Her own work uniform was on, so she must have gone in. But what had she done? Her head pounded. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought that she had been drinking heavily the night before and just woke up with the hangover to kill all hangovers. But she had been sober for the last year and even if she wasn’t, she would never have forgotten the kids at school. It was Christopher’s first day of kindergarten!

“Wait, hold on.” Her mouth was dry and tasted bitter. Harry’s stomach lurched. She dry heaved but there was nothing in her stomach to throw up. 

“Are you sick?!” Christopher struggled out of his backpack and dumped it on the floor. He ran into the living room to jump on the couch beside his mother, throwing his arms around her. “You could have kept leaving me at the school, Mama, I was watching videos with my new teacher!”

“I didn’t leave–”

“What the hell were you doing all day?” Dana just stood there in front of the couch, radiating fury. She ripped her glasses off so that Harry could look at her naked face and the hurt that was there. She was not sophisticated enough to understand that the anger she always felt was actually an unnamed hurt. “Were you out with Arnie getting fucked up again? Huh? We made a deal we’d both stop that shit! If you went out today and got shitfaced on your son’s first day of school, me and Kassidy are sleeping at my dad’s house tonight!”

Dana was as likely to go sleep at her nasty father’s house as Harry was to contact her nasty baby daddy. She had last seen her father 3 months ago and had punched a hole in the living room wall immediately upon returning. “Wait.” Harry tried to peel her son away from her, but he had latched on tight. On the floor, Kassidy was trying and failing to pull off her shoes because her little fingers lacked fine motor control and all the adults were too wrapped up in their own issues to help her. “Something’s wrong. Look, there’s dirt on my boots. I had to have gone to work today but I don’t remember it. I don’t remember anything.”

Harry checked her communication device. The screen told her that she had missed 11 calls and 28 messages. The volume was turned on high enough to wake her from sleep. What was going on? Was she manic? She didn’t feel manic, but knew that she had lost time before when she had been in elevated states and the world had seemed to be going fast fast fast. But now the world seemed to be going very slow.

“What do you mean you don’t remember anything?” Dana deflated. She gestured at Christopher, who was wiping a tiny crust of blood from his mother’s nostril with one sleeve. “Your nose is all fucked up like you hit it, did you fall and hit your head?”

“I don’t know!” Kassidy had pulled one shoe off, but then started to pull off her pants and got them tangled around her feet so she couldn’t move. Her mother had the exact same kind of struggles, only when it came to thinking. “Hit my head, had a stroke, I don’t know, I don’t know, Sparky.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

It must have been saying goodbye to Christopher this morning before he went to school. He had been bawling his eyes out, saying that he wanted to stay in preschool with his sister. And Harry had kissed his little face and told him that it was OK to be afraid, because no matter what he would always come home to her. That was it. That was the last thing she remembered.

Or was it? Fleeting, dream-like images flitted across her thoughts, too fast to catch. She had dreamed about swimming in the lake outside the Dome, but that was nothing abnormal, she had dreamed of swimming ever since she had first seen the glimmering water. But in the dream, the kids had gone swimming with her. And other people too, strangers. An old man, a boy with red eyes. They seemed so real. What had the old man’s name been? She remembered it reminded her of Arnie’s…

Sometimes when she woke up from a dream, she was convinced of its reality. Once, 5 years out of high school, Harry had dreamed that she had not studied for a final exam, and woke up in a state of terror, convinced that she was going to fail the grade. Now she had dreamed about swimming with strangers, and had woken up feeling like she knew them. 

“I should go get checked out.” Harry kissed the top of Christopher’s head. He squirmed and squawked. “I don’t know if it’s my meds, or some kind of medical thing, but it’s like I’ve been asleep since breakfast. I should probably call Wilson and see if I started acting like a freak at work or anything.” 

“Not again,” Dana moaned. The last time that Harry had an episode, she had been so worried that she had removed the gun that she always kept in her side table. She looked down at Kassidy, who was on the floor tied up in her own leggings at this point. “Kassidy Lynn, get those goddamn shoes and pants back on right now! What are we gonna try next if this is another meds issue?”

“They’ll figure out new meds.”

“Yeah but— you left the kids at school by themselves for over an hour. I had to bully the stupid teacher out of calling EDSS on us. That can’t happen again. The kids were starving by the time I got there.”

We be starving, Harry thought nonsensically, then frowned. What kind of phrase was that? Someone had said that in her dream. The memories of it were already fading, as dreams always seemed to do upon waking.

The more she tried to remember her dream, the farther away it seemed. Dana’s uniform was bothering her too. Something about its dark severity was giving her the creeps when it never had before. When she looked at the uniform, her mind felt like she was in danger. 

The most logical answer was that the chemicals in her brain had made her black out again. Harry imagined herself walking around in a fugue state. She imagined herself at work. She imagined one loud, heavy noise, like a blade slicing through meat.

But the doctors could figure it out, couldn’t they?

##

Eden’s medical professionals could not, in fact, figure it out. After a barrage of tests and an hour of questioning, the ER doctor told Harry that she was probably just stressed out because of all of the bad shit that happened in her life, because of her shitty job, because of her chaotic marriage, blah blah blah. They prescribed her some new antipsychotics and sent her on her way. 

“So these ones will just even you out again?” asked Dana, as they rode back home on the metro.

“They should.” Harry imagined what it might feel like to live outside of Eden. It was too bad the air was poisonous. It seemed like air was no good anywhere except on the Upper Levels where the filtration system worked best. Didn’t seem fair.

Christopher started to throw a tantrum and scream, rolling around on the cabin floor. Probably upset that nobody had asked him about his first day of school because they had more important things to pay attention to. Harry pulled him up by the back of his shirt and almost caught a tiny fist in the face. 

“It’s crazy that you can black out without drinking.”

That night, after taking the new meds, Harry dreamed about swimming in the warm lake water and breathing in clean air. In her dream, she watched people run out of the woods screaming, then saw their limbs fall off their bodies. She woke up drenched in sweat. 

Two thoughts filled her mind entirely. Without memories as evidence to back them up, Harry recognized them as delusional. She recognized them as crazy. She was a life-long atheist, conviction without evidence was only faith. But she could not stop herself from thinking or reason her way out of it. 

The first thought was that there were people outside of the Colonies and that something bad was happening to them.

The second thought was that Eden’s government was lying to its people and that they had been doing so for a very long time. 

As she lay there, worrying over these thoughts like a dog worries over an old bone, Harry realized that she was going to have to do something about this. She would have to change something. She did not know what she was going to change, or how she was going to do it, but change was coming. 

These thoughts rapidly turned into obsession.

##

“You need to stop reading what crazy people post on message boards,” said Harry’s friend Marshall Singh, weeks after she lost a day of time. “It’s working you up for no reason.”

Singh didn’t understand her. Nobody did. Not even Dana. Dana had started getting upset at her ideas after the first week. They didn’t have the scope of imagination that Harry had. They couldn’t see the pieces in front of them, much less try to put them together.

They were a coffee shop. Meeting before work like friends did. The shop was sterile and crowded with people. It was hard to breathe. Harry sucked down a black coffee, jiggling her foot as she drank. “You think the people in charge are telling us everything they know?”

Singh gave her an easy smile. He was a wiry and sanctimonious man with wavy hair and a beaky nose who worked as a correctional officer. He had a way with people, everyone he met seemed to like him. Harry did not have it so easy. People liked her until she started talking.

She tried again. “If it’s not safe to go outside because the Rift is poisoning the air, why are there animals outside? Or how did people build Eden in the first place, if the air was poisonous and they didn’t have anywhere to go back then? You know? You ever think about that?”

“I’ve never thought about that. I usually think about my job, my daughter and my friends, how I’m going to pay the bills…”

Harry kept jiggling her leg. She wanted another coffee. The world seemed so slow, everyone moved and talked at such a sluggish rate that it made her want to bite her tongue. “But what if there were people outside? What if there were whole towns and we didn’t know it? If they needed help, wouldn’t you want to help them?”

“I’m more worried about the people in Eden who need help than people who have no proof of existence,” said Marshall Singh.

## 

Harry started to dream about listening to people speak in a language she didn’t understand. The sounds were in repetitive patterns that she was sure her mind couldn’t make up by itself. But what did that mean if she was dreaming in a language she couldn’t imagine? If she had heard people speaking these words, how had she forgotten them? It wasn’t as if memories could be ripped from one’s mind.

She tried making the sounds at Christopher one night as she was tucking him in. He laughed so hard that he fell out of bed and lost his first tooth.

##

The world seemed even slower and people became even stupider after more than a month. By that time, Harry was already interviewing for other positions within the Energy Sector. She was sure that she would get a callback for an Energy Storage Engineer position, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t care what job she got, as long as it brought her up the ladder. The higher up she got, the more likely it was that she would learn something.

Learn something? Learn something about what? She was losing her mind. Every day, Harry felt more and more frantic, for reasons she could not understand. She did not know why this was so important to her, only that it was like being propelled by an invisible force. Something was wrong. Something was bad and she had to find out what it was. There was a sickness in Eden, she could feel it.

One night, Christopher brought up how upset he was that he always got reprimanded by the teacher for acting up, while an Artificial boy in his class never got in trouble for doing the exact same things. “It’s not fair!” he said, after having to sit in a corner for fighting. “Ben pushed me first! She didn’t even talk to him!”

Harry checked on the pizza in the oven. She was always in charge of making dinner because Dana was a harm to herself and others in the kitchen. The kids would probably starve to death if she wasn’t around. Starvation again. It always came back to that in her mind. She stirred the soup pot of genetically modified chicken flesh that was probably going to give all of them cancer. “I’m sorry, Kippy. You’re right, that’s not fair.”

Her son lay on the kitchen floor dramatically, trying to get her attention. He was mad that Dana was busy messily braiding Kassidy’s tangles of blonde curls instead of focusing on him. Christopher tried to yank a string out of the rug he was laying on and stared up at the ceiling with his big sad eyes. “Miss Abby didn’t even listen to me when I said Ben’’s being mean to other kids. I told her like a million times and she didn’t listen, so today I had to hit him back when he pushed me, because– because it wasn’t fair! And then she made me go to the principal and I got in trouble!”

Eden’s poison started revealing itself as early as kindergarten. Of course the Artificial kid was the one who started it, they were all raised with the belief that they were born better than everyone else. That was the whole point of them. They wanted to ensure that their offspring outcompeted everyone else’s, so that there was no chance for kids like Christopher to rise to the top or live anywhere other than shitty subsidized apartments under the ground. She would have to change that. She would have to talk to her son’s teachers.

Harry sprinkled some seasoning into the pot. Needed to finish cooking soon, from the sound of it, Kassidy was becoming fatigued as her mother grew ever more frustrated with the braids. She heard the little girl squeak as Dana yanked at her hair with the brush. It was an experiment that was sure to end in tears– Dana did not know how to take care of all those curls. “You can’t always trust teachers,” she said, tasting her soup. It still needed something and she started to root around in the spice drawer. “They don’t always do what’s fair. They’re like cops, they’re there to make sure that everyone listens to the people in charge.”

Something clattered and Kassidy squealed. “What the fuck?” snapped Dana. She had dropped the hairbrush. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t tell him that.”

She knew that she shouldn’t open her mouth. Harry knew that if she continued to speak, she was going to say something hurtful. She could see it as clearly as she could see the kitchen around her. But the truth was building inside of her and she could not contain it. She couldn’t stop. She could never, ever stop. Because Harry was right. She was right about everything, everyone else was just too blind or stupid to understand. “Some Artificial kid started a fight with him because he called out his bullying and my son’s the one who gets in trouble? Yeah, Dana, teachers are just like cops. They’re there to enforce the status quo, they set it up from a young age.”

Dana’s face looked all red. She tied off one of Kassidy’s braids angrily. “You remember that I’m a cop, right? You remember that I’m out there interviewing rape victims and responding to violent crimes so that you and the kids can be safe, right? And you’re sitting here saying that I’m fucked up for that.”

They were on the verge of a terrible fight, Harry thought in a haze. Mechanically, she stirred the soup. They were on the verge of a terrible fight, and she couldn’t stop herself. And even if she could stop, she didn’t know if she would want to. “The Energy Sector is always hiring. You could quit,” she said. The vision was exciting. She imagined working together with her wife, she imagined figuring out…whatever this was…together. “You don’t have to be a cop. You can opt out of the whole system, you’re only 30.”

“Opt out of the system,” scoffed Dana, shaking her head. She squirted too much oil on her palms and applied it to Kassidy’s hair until it looked greasy. “You need to take your meds.”

Ever since that day of lost memories, Dana had started to consistently refer back to Harry’s meds. She would ask what she thought about her meds, she would ask whether or not she thought the meds were working. It was irritating. Of course the meds weren’t working. Harry had stopped taking them once she realized that they were just another tool to shut her up. She turned up the heat on the stove. “You’re part of the system too, Sparky, whether you like it or not. You and I both know it’s not all saving little old ladies.”

She was toeing the line now. Dana only stared at her like she thought she was something dangerous. She wasn’t brushing Kassidy’s hair anymore. 

Christopher pulled some more strings out of the rug, as if sensing the tension.

“You can think whatever you want,” Dana said in the tone of a kicked dog. She still was incapable of understanding the hurt beneath her anger, and even more incapable of understanding where that hurt had come from. Harry wasn’t the only one with shitty parents.  “I’m making a change. I help people. There’s no fucking system, it’s just people.”

Dana would always be a dog on a chain. She was happiest when someone was telling her what to do. No matter how hard she tried, Harry would be unable to free her from this mindset by herself. 

All she could do was hold up a proverbial mirror and hope that Dana could see herself in the glass. Harry set the spoon on the kitchen counter and fanned herself. “It’s not just people, I know you’ve seen it’s bigger than that. You've been waking up at night covered in sweat ever since that thing with the lady who was protesting Prosperity’s union-busting.”

Why couldn’t she stop herself? She was about to go too far. Didn’t she care more about Dana’s feelings than she did about the web of unfairness that she imagined covering Eden? Didn’t she care more about her wife than she did about this puzzle that she lacked pieces for? 

“Don’t be crazy.” There was a vein pulsing in Dana’s neck. She had dragged Kassidy into her lap and had her arms around her protectively. 

Please. Please, why couldn’t she just see what Harry could? “You can’t be a good person in a rotting system. When you called for backup with that Harlan lady, the secret police showed up and brutalized her. And then she killed herself. How’s that for good intentions?”

“She had set herself on fire!” Dana screamed, then chucked the hairbrush so that it bounced off a wall. She shot up, pulling Kassidy with her. Kassidy yelped because that was all she could do, at 4 years old she still couldn’t speak more than a handful of words. She snatched her wallet, stomped towards the door. Her complexion had changed from red to stark white and her eyes were narrowed and furious behind her glasses. “Me and Kassidy are sleeping at my dad’s house tonight. I can’t keep talking about this bullshit.”

Harry laughed incredulously.  “What? You can’t go to your dad’s house. What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been talking crazy ever since you blacked out. I don’t want to be around it and I don’t want Kassidy around it either!”

“You’d rather sleep over at that drunk child molester’s house than stay here and talk to me about real meaningful shit? That’s great, Sparky. That’s very responsible.”

Christopher looked like he had realized what was going on and didn’t like it. He sat up, screwing his face up as he watched Dana carry his sister towards the door. If he started crying, it would take a good hour to get him to stop again. Harry shifted her glance between her son and her wife.

This was the part where Dana was supposed to scream at her. They were supposed to get in a big fight, then make up. They always used to go out and get ice cream after a fight. Some of Harry’s best memories occurred directly after a period of screaming her head off. But Dana just stared at her hatefully, slipped on her shoes, and slammed the door on her way out.

“Where’s Kassie?” Christopher asked, shoving the strings he had pulled out of the rug into his mouth fearfully. He sniffled once. “Where’d Ma go?”

Harry looked down at the pot of bubbling soup. There was too much to eat for just the two of them.

##

It was only one night. Dana came back and they made up and Harry felt like she came out on top of the entire situation. She started to write lists of ideas and connections on one wall of their bedroom. Dana started to come home later and later. It worked out well for both of them.

She got the Energy Storage Engineer position. Of course she did. It was easy. Harry had gone from days working outside in the hot sun to days spent working within the comfort of an office in the Upper Levels. Harry slid into the role with a natural ease. As long as she didn’t start talking about systems of oppression, she could charm nearly anyone she met. 

One step closer. She was one step closer to finding the missing pieces. Harry’s dreams had grown more violent. Now instead of watching peoples’ limbs fall off, she would watch them tear from their bodies in torrents of dark blood. There was nothing but screams, and they were always screaming for help. Every morning she would wake up with the sounds of screams in her ears and think about the swollen bellies of starving children.

So she stopped sleeping. Harry kept her sobriety promise to Dana, but bought some speed one day after realizing that she could not tolerate the dreams anymore without losing her mind. The sharp edge of her mind grew sharper. And the work continued. 

She had started to suspect that the missing memories had been taken from her. Harry was not sure how. She was not sure if that was even possible. Something inside of her said that she must have been witness to something. She must have seen something and had it taken from her. But what?

Time passed and she continued down her trajectory to a future that she could not imagine.

##

“I’m worried about you,”  said Marshall Singh over coffee. “You look worn out. Have you been sleeping?”

Harry jiggled her leg and glanced around the coffeeshop, looking for Internal Operations agents. Lately she had started to feel worried about them, like they were watching her. She was close to figuring everything out. “I’m sleeping fine,” she lied. She had taken a hit of her modified vape an hour ago and the amphetamines were already starting to wear off. “It’s the fucking stress. There’s stuff I’ve never seen before in the Energy Sector. Do you know there’s a fucking satelite dish on top of the Dome? What would that even be used for?”

“Communicating with Green River and Serenity?” Singh took a careful sip of his coffee. His twinkly eyes never left her face. He had a look that Harry didn’t like. It was the kind of look people like him got before they started arranging interventions. It was the look people like him got before they started calling professionals. ”Why? What do you think it could be used for?”

She shouldn’t be talking to him. A guy like Marshall Singh was the kind of guy to fuck her and sell her out to the system because of his good intentions. He was the kind of guy to call a crisis line and get the law sent down on her because she seemed like a danger to herself and others. Harry hoped that she was a danger to herself and others, at least that would mean she was doing something. She wasn’t too keen on getting a crisis line called on her.

Harry gritted her teeth. She couldn't keep still. Last night she stayed up reading messageboards that claimed that Verne Agapama and his family’s brutal executions had been carried out because he had been trying to expand trade with the other two Colonies and Eden’s public sector wanted to keep all of the profits. That led to a new rabbit hole of reading about the man’s salacious young heir Westley, who seemed to be stirring the pot in an entirely new way.

She needed to shut up but couldn’t stop herself. “I think there’s more people out there,” she said. “I think it could be used to communicate with them. We could help them.”

“Hm.”

It was all hopeless. When she finally found what she was searching for, what was the point if everyone in Eden decided to keep their chains? What if they didn’t want to know the truth? Harry knew from experience that it was easier to stay ignorant. There was great pain in even knowing that her eyes were open.

This was a problem for another day. 

##

Dana started coming home later and later. She started coming home smelling earthy, herbal, and smiling more. She started laughing more. One night she came back home with a strand of someone’s long black hair stuck to her uniform. Harry found it while she was doing the laundry. Her hair only came down to her shoulders. It occurred that Dana might be cheating.

The betrayal stung. Christopher’s dad used to cheat relentlessly. He’d always claim she loved her projects more than she loved him.

But there was more work to be done.

##

Everything moved faster and faster. Days and weeks blurred together in Harry’s mind. She hurtled on without rest. Her son turned six. She stopped thinking about anything other than the lost souls she imagined wandering the wilderness.

##

Harry worked her way up in the sector, gaining access to the communications equipment. She groveled and charmed her bosses, even the Artificial ones, she flashed her big white teeth. All so that she could get promoted. All so that she could get more alone time, more responsibilities, more access to the sprawling labyrinth of wire and metal that made up Eden’s nervous system.

She’d hack the network and get into the communications files, combing through them for hours. Radio transmissions. Like Singh had told her, all of them came from the neighboring Colonies of Green River and Serenity. The Network couldn’t extend outside a Colony without more intense hardware, so they relied on radio waves to communicate. It was more boring than she had imagined it might be. Weather reports came from Serenity in the desert of the west, grain prices came from Green River to the south. Harry listened to each one from her cramped desk.

She wasn’t supposed to have access to these and had no idea what the consequence might be for listening. These were for comms workers only. God knew what they did with them. No wonder all of them drank coffee nonstop throughout their shifts. Harry had even bought a little speed off of one of the younger ones. She boredly clicked the next file.

“Je m’appelle Florence Gauthier,” a young woman’s voice played from her computer to her headphones. Harry jumped and had to stop herself from yelling in excitement. A chill settled over her body. The musical words sounded familiar, like she had heard them before. In a dream? In a memory? The young woman kept talking in the recorded message. Harry craned to listen. 

She didn’t understand any of it. The girl talking had a pretty voice, she didn’t sound scared or anything, but she didn’t make any sense either. Harry frowned.

She knew that other languages had existed at one time, but was this any proof that there were people outside of the Colonies? Green River and Serenity both spoke English. What was this? How could there be people who were speaking a different language? Why would someone try to send this message, whatever it was, to Eden?

And why would anyone keep a recording that nobody could understand?

Harry looked around. She was alone in the office. Nobody was watching her, and even if they were, it wasn’t like they would know what she was doing. She was using too much speed and it was making her paranoid. It wasn’t like anyone was monitoring what she was doing at work. Even she was not that paranoid.

Why was she doing this? She didn’t even know what her own objective was. So she had found information. So what? She did not know what it meant or what she would do with it. Still, Harry moved as if in a dream. Maybe she was in a dream, maybe that was what all of this was. Satisfied that she was not being watched, she took a thumb drive from her pocket and downloaded the file of the girl speaking in the strange language. 

It was as easy as that. Harry slipped the thumb drive back into her pocket, put her feet up on her desk, and laughed. 

##

One night, Harry didn’t use, and crashed so hard that her dreams seemed like flesh and blood reality. She looked down at an old man, twisting and writhing in the grass outside of the Dome, his eyes rolled back in his head. “We have no home to go back to!” he sobbed. “You have to help us!”

“I’m sorry!” said Harry. She looked around wildly. She realized that she was not wearing a respirator, she was not wearing any protective gear, she was not wearing any clothes at all. “I’ve been trying! I’ve been trying my best, I– I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”

Two women and a boy materialized out of the nothingness of her dream. Harry stared at them and realized that one of the women had a throat which had been sliced through the windpipe, and the other one had been cut in half and stuck back together. Both of them were covered in blood and staring at her. The boy appeared unharmed but stared as well with red, red eyes. 

The old man kept crying. The others were silent. Harry waved her arms at them. Why weren’t they paying attention? Why wasn’t anyone paying attention?! “I said I’m sorry! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“They told us Eden is a paradise!”

She stooped to try to comfort the old man. He kept thrashing and when Harry put her hands on his chest to calm him, she wanted to snatch them back immediately. This had happened before! She had seen this happen before and had touched him. But why could she not remember?

Above them, the Rift pulsated heavy red and black. 

And slowly, it started to open, raining fire down upon the surface of the earth. 

Harry’s eyes shot open and she crashed back into bleak wakefulness. Her heart pounded in her chest and her eyes were dry as if she had been straining them. She sucked down a couple gasps of oxygen-depleted air and looked around. The screen on her communication device told her that it was only 3:42 in the morning. She groaned and rubbed her face.

This couldn’t keep happening. 

Beside her, Dana was flopped out and snoring face down into a pillow. She slept in an oversize t-shirt that read “Heydrich’s Plumbing”. That night, she had returned home at 10pm (mind you, she was supposed to be clocked out at 6, so there was another little clue at exactly what was going on with her) and immediately tumbled into bed and passed out. Dana never had problems sleeping. Dana could sleep for 16 hours straight if nobody was around to wake her up. Harry stared at her enviously.

It was pointless to go back to sleep. Her mind would just race for hours if she tried that and she would lie there in agony until it was time to get ready for work. Better to stay busy. The work never stopped. Harry climbed out of bed.

The apartment was dark. Harry stumbled over one of Kassidy’s toys and cursed under her breath. She looked back to see if she had woken Dana. Not a stir. She shook her head, then went out into the kitchen.

Her computer sat on the kitchen table. Harry switched it on. She had uploaded the recording of the woman speaking a while ago so that she could have it in more than one place, but did not know what to do with it. If she took it to the media, who would listen? Nobody could understand what the woman was saying.

Harry understood it though. The woman was asking for help. What else could it be? Harry was the only person who was listening, and she would keep listening. Although she did not understand each word individually, she could sense their meaning. She had to make sure that she was not the only one.

Lately she had started contemplating West Agapama. Over the five years following the deaths of his parents, he had completely rejuvenated his father’s shipping business, and was building his personal brand rapidly. Apparently he was trying to form a private media company to compete with the state run broadcast network. His claim was that private ownership of corporations fostered more innovation and profit than public ownership did. While this may have been true, it did not make him any friends in Eden’s government. 

The man’s overt greed and faith-like belief in capitalism did not endear him to Harry’s mind, but the enemy of her enemy was her friend. Agapama was shaking things up and if he developed his own network, she could get him to broadcast the story. The truth might spread so fast that Harry wouldn’t even get into any trouble for stealing the recording. It might be years before a private media company existed in Eden, but it was something to think about.

She imagined hundreds of thousands of televisions broadcasting the message she had found. Harry smiled. She clicked on the recording and let it play softly as she climbed up on top of the kitchen counter to reach her hand into a small space behind the cabinets. It’s where she kept her dope when she was at home– too high up for the kids to get into it. Harry took a quick hit and blew it away. The amphetamine rush of clarity poured over her in an instant.

She was close. She was close to something, so close that she could feel it. Soon she would understand exactly what she was close to.

Harry paced about the kitchen, imagining the great change she was bringing about, before returning to her computer. She sat with her leg propped up, typing furiously. It would be easy for her to find the contact information for one of Agapama’s people– she wasn’t delusional enough to imagine that the man might make time for her. AGA’s website had a list of his staff’s email addresses. She skimmed over them, looking for a name related to communications or technology. Lakita Klein was AGA’s Marketing Director, so Harry shot her an email containing the recording. She sent the CFO, one Percival Ruiz, a copy as well.

Maybe she should keep sending it. Maybe she should send it to every email address she could find. Somebody, somewhere, would be able to understand what the woman was saying, right? Somebody, somewhere would be able to see if there were people out there who needed help! If she sent it out to hundreds of people, thousands of people, there would be no repercussions. There would be no single person to punish!

It was a great plan, and if she kept working on it–”

“What are you doing out here in the dark?”

The sudden voice caused Harry to flinch and slam her computer closed as if she was doing something wrong. She jerked her head around. Dana was standing just outside of the kitchen with her arms crossed, looking scared and stupid in her oversized shirt. She must have rushed to get up because she hadn’t grabbed her glasses.  

Harry shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Decided to get some work done.” 

Did her voice always sound so intense and agitated? Or was it the amphetamines? She jiggled her leg, feeling the vape in her pocket.

Dana hesitated, then sat down at the table across from her. Her expression of confused apprehension was carried away as she arranged her face to be more blank and dead. “Your pupils are huge.”

“I’m fucking tired, I’m working 10 hour days.”

“You’re looking thin.”

Harry knew where these words were coming from. These were not Dana’s words. Dana yelled first and thought about it later, she was not the sort of person to voice objective concerns. Marshall Singh was such a worm. The two of them had been talking behind her back. She shook her head and laughed in a way that she hoped did not sound crazy. “Let’s not do this in the middle of the night. I have work to do.”

“But it’s not actually part of your work. What you’re doing. It’s not your job.” Dana was looking at her like she was a dangerous animal. Why was she looking at her like that? Like she was considering what to do next. “It’s not your responsibility.”

“Then whose responsibility is it?!” Harry slapped her hand down on the table. The sound reverberated through the kitchen. Dana didn’t have the right to be talking to her about this. She didn’t understand the desire to understand. She didn’t know what it meant to search for meaning. “If I don’t do this, who will? There are people out there who need help and nobody’s doing anything about it!”

Dana just stared at her from across the table. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her mouth was set back into that grim, mean line. She did not uncross her arms. “You don’t even know if that’s true.”

Harry had not let Dana listen to the recording of the woman speaking the foreign language. It was better to keep that kind of thing from her. Why was she trying to tear down her ideas? Why didn’t she want her to do something important?

She didn’t want to talk about this. She wanted to give Dana a little jab for once. It was time for her to stop being the one in trouble and it was time for Dana to start. The ball was about to go back into her court. Harry raked her fingers through her hair and leaned back in a way that she hoped was casual. She felt propelled by a surge of energy inside of her, a twisting cruelty. “So I’m delusional. So what? Who have you been fucking for the last few months, Sparky?”

She imagined swimming in the warm lake. How nice that would be.

All the color drained from Dana’s face. She stopped looking so damn mean in a hurry. “What?”

“Who have you been fucking?” repeated Harry. She tapped her fingernails irritatedly on the table, then pointed. “You can tell me. I won’t freak out on you, I’ve known since I found some girl’s hair on your uniform and you started coming home late, smelling different.”

“That’s not– we didn’t– “ Dana fumbled in her panic. “No! That’s insane!”

Harry only stared at her. She realized that she wasn’t hurt. It seemed like a natural conclusion for something so long in the making.  There was nothing to say. There was nothing to do either, there was only the great mystery and purpose before her and the will to keep going. 

She was going to follow this path to the end or die trying. She could not live with herself otherwise. She had to know. She had to know. She had to help.

It was strange. Dana almost looked like she was going to cry. Dana didn’t know how to cry.

“I have to do something,” said Harry. She stood up and started to make a pot of coffee. Not that it was real coffee. It was unlikely that anyone in Eden had ever come in contact with real coffee, grown on a plant under the sun. This stuff was just as fake as everything else in Eden. “You don’t get it. I’ve discovered something. I’m going to change everything.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Dana enunciated every syllable as if she was talking to someone very stupid. She swallowed hard. “You need to see a doctor. You’ve been manic for months. I’m worried–”

“I don’t need a fucking doctor, I need to keep putting all the pieces together because if I don’t, real people, actual people, are going to continue to suffer! I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something about it. If you think I’m crazy for that, fine!”

She was aware that she was yelling. She was aware that it was taking every ounce of self control in her wife not to yell back. Dana was really looking at her like she was a dangerous animal now. Her eyes were all popped out and her teeth were clenched. 

If there had been something within grabbing range, Harry would have smashed it on the floor. Was this how it was going to be? Was everyone just going to think she was crazy? That was fine too. She would discover the truth and she would show everyone. They had to understand. They had to understand why this mattered!

It was out of her control. The air in the dark apartment was suffocating. 

“Everything is fucked and nobody else is seeing it! Nobody else is doing anything about it!” Harry crossed to a cabinet and snatched a mug, held it tight so that she would not throw it. “I don’t want our kids to have to live like this! It’s like we’re all trapped down here and the government can just do whatever they want to us because if we step out of line, they’re just gonna send IODE. If it's this bad in here, think about how bad it is outside!”

“I’m going to call Arnie and ask him to come help me with you if you don’t shut the fuck up!” Dana hissed, pleading. “Shut up! You’re going to wake the kids!”

But Harry wasn’t thinking about the kids or about anything at all other than how she could no longer stand living like this. She couldn’t take it. She was living like an ant underground, helpless, while her government ignored the messages of foreigners begging for help. Harry had proof. She had the recording. What good was that if everyone ignored it? She couldn’t stand this. She squeezed the mug. “I’m the only one who can do anything about this!”

Dana put her hands over her eyes and shook her head. “I wish I could make you see that nobody even cares about this stuff that’s making you so upset.”

That was the wrong thing to say.

Nobody even cares. It was like all the blood drained out of her body.

Harry smiled at Dana. The coffee pot beeped and she poured herself a cup. The work had to continue. If she stopped, what happened then? All of this could not be for nothing.

“I understand why that lady from that call you had set herself on fire,” she said. “She must have wanted someone to pay attention.”

The silence hung between them in the tiny apartment like the black mouth of the Rift.

##

Harry ended up getting into a screaming match with her smug Artificial manager over something trivial and was promptly fired. Honestly it seemed like a net positive. It freed up more time for her to focus on her real work. There was much to think about. After all, she had not heard back from anyone at AGA after she sent about half a dozen of them the recording of the foreign woman.

It also freed up more time to spend with her son. Christopher got suspended for three days after he hit another little girl. Harry suspected that he had done it on purpose so that he could stay home with her. She didn’t care. The little girl probably deserved it.

She sat on the couch with Christopher, shoving chips into their mouths and watching TV. Christopher sprawled out with his head in her lap, kicking his legs happily. Sometimes he would try to wrestle her and she would just pick him up and hold him in the air until he got tired.

“I’m gonna punch more kids if it means I get to stay home from school,” said Christopher with a big smile. He was such a funny kid. He looked like a miniature version of Harry, there wasn’t an ounce of his dad in him. He had big brown eyes and a bigger mouth, which seemed to be always smiling. The boy could never keep still. “I don’t think the teachers thought of that.”

“I don’t think so either,” agreed Harry, who understood exactly what her son’s academic career was going to look like: just like hers, not great. She brushed his hair back from his forehead. “But you can’t be punching other kids, Kippy. It isn’t nice.”

Christopher yawned. “I have a whole list of kids in my class I want to punch.”

“Me too. But it isn’t nice.”

Christopher rolled his eyes. Harry laughed and bent to kiss him on the cheek. He slapped at her playfully, as if his favorite thing in the world wasn’t snuggling with his mama. “Stoppp.”

“And you’re a nice boy.” She tried to tickle him, and Christopher squealed, laughing, then rolled off the couch and hit his head.

For those three days, Harry’s world was perfect.

##

The day that it happened was one like any other.

Harry sat on the couch with her tablet, scrolling through a paper on the trade routes to Green River. The kids were at school, Dana was at work. She figured that she would have all afternoon to read. Lately she had grown frustrated with the process of her work and had turned to reading in order to sift through any connections that might be made to the outside world.

She shifted in her seat. The essay was dry, it was hard to pay attention. There had been roads crisscrossing the land for thousands of miles before the Rift opened and everyone got sick. Now only a few of them were kept in repair. It was too expensive to keep repairing the roads, since Eden had more to lose than the other two Colonies. The whole argument stated that Eden must cease trade and become self reliant. If other Colonies bought Eden’s goods and did not assist with road repair, it was Eden that was coming up at a loss.

In Harry’s mind, the trade issue was a moot point. It wouldn’t even be an issue if Eden and everyone outside of Eden worked in collaboration. Somehow she didn’t think that anyone in any position of power would see it the same way. West Agapama was screaming his head off in the news about how Eden could profit by keeping trade open and imposing tariffs on the other Colonies to pay for the roads. Nobody was listening to him either. Harry gave it 5 years before Eden was completely isolated.

She was tired. She was tired of reading, she was tired of thinking, and she was tired of doing the work. 

The work had to continue.

She stood up, yawned, and –

A sliver of pain shot through the back of Harry’s skull, making her wince although she had not been touched.

 It was followed by a sense of lightness. A sense of nothingness. Like she was floating higher than any cloud of amphetamines could carry her. She swayed on her feet, completely thoughtless and dead to the world. Something had happened. What was happening? She didn’t know where she was. This was her home, but she didn’t understand what she had been doing there. She couldn’t move, or maybe she didn’t want to move. Harry looked around blankly.

The front door opened and two people walked in. Secret police? What were they doing here? They were wearing blank, nondescript black uniforms. One of them was heavy and broad shouldered, with a heavier uniform. The other was of average build, wearing a helmet with silver buttons on it. There was nothing interesting about either of them and Harry watched them without recognition or curiosity. It seemed natural that they were there. Of course they were there. Why wouldn’t they be?

It was hard to keep her eyes open. Harry wanted to lie down and go to bed. Wouldn’t that be nice? She was so tired. She had worked so hard for a whole year, with no thanks or recognition. Wouldn’t it be nice for her to just go to sleep?

The heavier one looked around the messy little apartment and sighed. 

“You have something you want to say, Saint?” asked the other one in a flat, male voice.

“I don’t think this is right. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t made a mistake.” This one was male too, and had the same kind of sullen, chained-dog tone that Dana got sometimes. Underneath that was a strange accent that reminded Harry of something. “It’s not fair.”

“We would be here anyway, sooner or later. I can hear her thoughts. Seeing you and those other people last year was just the spark for her behavior. She would have started stirring up trouble without TP memory intervention.”

The one called Saint looked down at one of Kassiy’s toys on the floor by his heavy boots.

Harry stifled another yawn. Everything seemed so strange. Was she dreaming? Had she gotten some bad dope? She wobbled. Should she say anything? Her tongue was thick and heavy in her mouth and she couldn’t find the right words.

She was aware that a tiny part of her was very scared. There was a part of her that wanted to move, that wanted to run, that wanted to scream! Wanted to scream and never stop screaming! This was wrong! She was in danger! They had come here to kill her, these were secret police inside of her home, something was wrong, something was very wrong. She was never going to see her son again, she was never going to learn why–

All of that was so silly. She just wanted to sleep.

“Can you get it over with?” asked Saint, and that sullen, chained-dog Dana-voice was all over him. He kicked Kassidy’s toy away. “I don’t want to be here.”

The other one shrugged. He looked at Harry. The pain in the base of her skull went from sharp to crushing, like something was trying to shove its way in there. Tears pricked at the corners of Harry’s eyes. 

And then the pain was gone, as swiftly as it had arrived. There was the feeling of floating again. Harry smiled. She pulled her communication device out of her pocket. She didn’t know why, it just felt like the right thing to do. Like something was compelling her to take out her phone. Some part of her understood that it was the young man from Internal Operations who was doing this. Some part of her understood that he was making her take her device out, that she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. But Harry didn’t want to. It seemed like the natural thing to do.

“Call your wife and tell her you’re sorry,” said the secret police agent. The psychic. The word was not hers but she understood it. How could she not? There was another person shoving his thoughts into her brain.

“I don’t like that,” snapped Saint, who appeared to only be there to stand around and give his unwanted opinions.

“You’d rather nobody knows and they walk in on her? The lady has kids.”

In her dream-like state, Harry dialed Dana’s number.

No, no, no. This wasn’t supposed to happen! She had to do something. She had to tell Dana to do something! It couldn’t happen like this!

And then nothing but peacefulness. 

“What?” snapped Dana, picking up the phone. In the background there was the general chatter of the Police Station. “Look, I can’t talk right now, I have this meeting with the Lieutenant and he’s about to rip me a new one for misfiling a report. What’s up?”

Harry’s heart was overcome by love for this woman. How could she have ever thought she was cheating? What an idiot she had been. She almost wanted to cry for even thinking that Dana could ever betray her like that. Dana didn’t deserve that. Dana had always loved her. Even hearing her voice brought a sort of intoxicated bliss. She laughed.

“What the fuck?” asked Dana.

“I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck do you mean you’re sorry?” A tinge of fear. “What did you do?”

“I love you.”

A heartbeat of silence. “What do you mean?” asked Dana. Now her voice turned all high-pitched. “What are you talking about, Sara? What did you do? What did you do? What are–”

She hung up. Again, this seemed like the natural thing to do. Those five words were all that she had. There was nothing else. She stared blankly at the young man from Internal Operations. She knew that he was about to kill her. There was nothing to do about that either. Harry was completely at peace, a human vessel without fear or doubt or pain. She stood there, smiling. Every ounce of will inside of her body had been hijacked and replaced by a pink cloud.

Her phone was ringing in her hand. Dana. Harry looked at the phone, unsure of what to do with it. Usually she was so sure of everything, it was nice to have someone else hold the reins.

“There’s a firearm in your bedroom,” said the secret police agent. 

“Yes,” said Harry placidly.

“Go get it.”

He was not really paying attention to her. He had noticed an uneaten pastry from Harry’s breakfast on the coffee table and took off his helmet to reveal his face. She saw that he was not much more than a teenager, with a shaved head and pale, bored eyes. He ate her pastry like he was starving. Hunger took precedence.

Harry did as she was told. The hand gun that Dana kept at home was not her service weapon. She had purchased it for personal protection after one of their neighbors had a break in. Harry didn’t know how to use it. She had never touched it and hated guns, lived in constant terror that she would blow her brains out during a depressive episode and the kids would find her. She and Dana used to get into screaming matches about having the gun in the house.  

The gun was lighter than she imagined it might be as she held it in her hands. It was silly that she had been so scared of it all this time.

The phone was still ringing. Over and over. Every time the call went to voicemail, Dana would call again. And again. And again. It would not stop ringing. 

She had always switched rapidly between manic highs and depressive lows. All her life. Forever. It was so exhausting. Most of the time she found herself hurtling towards a finish line that she could not see. There was no rest. There was no peace. Forever racing around, never able to shut up, never able to stay still. Exhilaration followed by heaviness that she could not pull herself out of, then over again. Now?

Harry felt balanced. She was completely still, her brain emptied of everything except for warm comfort and the cozy sensation of being loved. The psychic had pulled her mind to the center of herself. Balance. Neither high or low. From far away, she was aware that she felt grateful for this. For peace.

She was being made to feel grateful. But at this point, there was no reason to fight it.

“Press the gun against the side of your head, right above your left ear.”

“Ok,” said Harry, as she did what she was told. She wanted to do it. There was no reason not to.

Saint made a noise of disgust. The other one, the psychic one, glanced at him and the two seemed to communicate something with a shared look. “Fine.” The psychic shook his head and returned his focus to Harry. “I should have done a better job wiping your memories and I’m sorry. It’s harder to work with anyone older than their mid-20’s because their brain has stopped developing. If it’s any consolation, you’ll never have to feel scared or angry or out of control ever again.”

“Wow,” said Saint.

The psychic was close enough to Harry for her to see his colorless eyelashes. He looked like a nice boy, just disinterested. He smiled at her in a way that made her want to smile back, if only she wasn’t too tired to move the muscles in her face. “Pull the trigger,” he said.

Her phone was ringing. Who was calling? Should she pick up? Had she been talking to someone just now?

Harry imagined swimming in the lake outside of Eden. She didn’t know how to swim, she had never been in the water outside of showering, but she could imagine it so clearly. She was weightless, floating away. It was like she could feel the water on her skin. It was like she could feel the sun. The air in the apartment no longer seemed polluted by C02, but was fresh and clean.

Harry took one delicious lung-full of the rich air and pulled the trigger on Dana’s gun.

The Colony of Eden was a living creature and like all living creatures, it required daily care to keep it functional.

[blooblooded]

Favia Voorst Helps the Gang

“Vita Corp’s Board is duty bound to consider the offer,” said Favia Voorst in the iciest tone she could muster. “But I don’t like it and neither does my mother. My family should hold the majority of the company’s shares. We have 67%. Sell anymore off and, I don’t know– I don’t like the thought of the state owning so many shares in Vita. We’d have to give someone from the government a seat on the Board and everything.”

“The company needs the cash.” Vita Corp’s Chief Financial Officer was a first generation Artificial named Ilah Wenna. She gave Favia the creeps with her wide, almost lidless eyes. The first gens had been prototypes back when genetic modification wasn’t a strict science. Sometimes they didn’t look right. “That’s the way it goes. And the state is buying up shares from all over the place, all of the big companies are selling. We all took hits last year when AGA lost transport rights. Sell now, profit later.”

Not everyone was selling. Favia knew that for a fact. She stirred her cup of coffee and listened to the hushed conversation in the cafe around them. Wild Brews was an upscale place in the Upper Levels residential district, only a few blocks away from Vita’s location. One coffee cost about what someone on the Lower Levels made in an hour. She took a contemplative sip. It wasn’t very good.

This was annoying. This wasn’t how she wanted to start her day, getting pressured into selling off shares of the company that would one day belong to her. She knew what could happen. Look at the Bellamys. Sure, they had money, loads of money, but their company was practically owned by Eden. Government contract work. The thought made her sick. 

“What’s that called?” she asked, although she knew the answer. “Deprivatization?”

Wenna’s smile stretched her thin skin. She was only in her 30’s and aging terribly. Favia was thankful that she wasn’t first gen, thankful that the kinks of the Artificial creation process had been worked out before she was formed. “Vita’s hemorrhaging money,” said the CFO. “We can’t outsource shipping to AGA anymore and we don’t have enough trucks to ship enough product out of Eden.”

“I don’t see that as a good enough reason to sell half our shares.”

That awful smile widened. “So what happens a year from now, Favia? AGA was a completely private company. Agapama kept his Board in his family, he wanted that control too. Look what’s happened now. He’s being investigated as a traitor, two of his kids were executed in that mess last year, and the company is being liquidated. Do you want that for Vita? Your great grandfather built this company from the ground up.”

It was a dirty trick to mention Ayda like that. A knife in the heart. Favia’s composure did not break. She pulled a small mirror from her purse and coolly reapplied her lipstick. Her face was unchanged. The soft line of her jaw was unclenched and her smooth tan skin did not betray her mood by flushing. Her eyes were as dispassionate and gray as ever. Nothing like Ayda’s eyes.

Dark eyes. Long curled lashes. Dark eyes like pools of deep water, deep enough to drown in. 

The mirror snapped closed. “I can’t predict the market.” Numbers. Numbers were what mattered here, not emotions. Not the pressure squeezing her lungs, not the hurt and loneliness. She would not waste her feelings on the death of someone who had never given her the time of day. Numbers. Money. “I can predict that the Board won’t sell to the state government. We own 67% and my mother would never let the Central Committee make decisions for Vita.”

“We can’t afford to lose this chance. As I said, all the other big companies are selling the majority of their shares to the state.”

“Prosperity hasn’t sold.”

Wenna scoffed. “And I hear their workers are trying to unionize. Think about it. If Vita’s majority shares are owned by the state, we can send Internal Operations in to break up anything that our workers try.”

The coffee wasn’t agreeing with Favia’s stomach. Or maybe it was this conversation. She had a healthy respect for the secret police. After all, it was them who had saved her life all those years ago on B-Day. If it hadn’t been for the mobilization of Internal Operations across Eden, nobody would have found her pinned beneath blocks of rubble in the School District. She wouldn’t have just lost her legs– she would have lost her life if it hadn’t been for them! Despite that, she could not in good conscience allow them to brutalize Vita’s workers for the crime of asking for higher wages.

She glanced around the cafe. “This place isn’t very good,” she said. “The coffee tastes modified. Take me somewhere nicer the next time you want to discuss the company’s finances or don’t take me at all.”

“Everything’s modified in Eden.”

“Some things are modified with better skill than others.” Favia took her purse and stood up. The mechanical metal joints that were her knees barely clicked. “Talk to my mother about it if you’re so worried. I have to go. There’s a new neural implant prototype I have to inspect.”

This was of course a lie. The implants had already gone into the review phase. But Favia had started to feel bullied by someone who she considered beneath her and that was something that she swore she had left behind years ago.

She left the cafe. It was still early in the morning, only about 9:00. The Residential District’s clean white sidewalks bustled with people going about their days, mostly other Artificials headed down to the metro tubes for work. Favia rarely left the Upper Levels. She liked the feeling of real sunlight filtering down on her through the dome’s reinforced glass. When she went below ground, her chest would grow tight and her heart would hammer like it was trying to escape. The memories of nearly being crushed to death would never leave her.

Favia paused to straighten her clothes. She tended to go for short skirts that showed off the mechanical marvels of her legs, but always had to check that her underwear wasn’t showing. It was all about portraying the right image. She cultivated herself like one would with a collection of art. Always the newest clothes. Always the newest tech. Her body had been engineered to be perfect but she still worked out. After all, you can always be better. She liked to bleach her hair until it looked like white gold falling down her back in a slick waterfall. When people passed by her, they stared. 

It was a nice day. She was smart and strong and rich and powerful. There wasn’t anything to worry about and there was no way that her mother would allow the Board to sell off Vita’s majority shares. Why did her stomach feel sick?

Favia knew. She already knew. The second that Wenna mentioned Ayda and Casey, she knew that no matter how nice the day was, she was going to feel like shit for the rest of it. Those bitches. Why did it still hurt? When she had read the news about them getting shot like dogs in the street last year she had been unable to get out of bed for days without crying. Wasn’t that stupid? They had iced her out for new friends when they were all kids. They had dropped her like nothing, abandoned her for what? For some Lower Levels trash? They hadn’t even visited her in the hospital after her legs were amputated because they were too upset about that terrorist creep Kip Nguyen getting what he deserved.

Imagine that. They had been more worried about one of the people involved in setting the bombs, involved in killing and maiming thousands of people, than they had been about Favia who had been one of his victims. It wasn’t something she could easily forgive, and she had known them since they were all in preschool. Ayda had been her first kiss and she still couldn’t forgive her.

They had never even told her what had been going on back then. They acted like it was some big secret that nobody else was allowed in on.. Casey started hating her the moment Favia told her how she shouldn’t lower herself by pursuing the Nguyen extremist’s ugly little sister. Ayda did whatever Casey did. Inch by inch, they shut her out. 

Why was she so upset? People grew apart. Childhood friendships didn’t last forever. People outgrow each other. Favia made the right choices and Ayda and Casey had destroyed their own lives. Sure, Ayda used to sometimes drift back to her, usually when she was mad at her sister. Favia fell for it every time. They would laugh, they would hook up, and days later Ayda’s mood would change and she would leave her again. It would always make her so angry. 

Now Casey had gone and gotten herself killed just like Favia always knew she would, and she had dragged Ayda down with her. Even in their last moments, they had chosen their loser friends over her. Stupid. 

She wiped a hand over her face. Now she was being stupid for wasting her energy thinking about them. Not everything had a meaning. Some things just happened. Favia had the company to think about, not this.

Her stomach still felt sick. Favia walked down the sidewalk, scrolling through market predictions on her phone. People scrambled out of her way when she walked. She never worried about getting mugged in the Upper Levels. Nobody would be so stupid as to touch her.

Somebody was that stupid.

“Excuse me.” Behind her, someone reached out to grab her elbow. Favia turned in an instant. She grabbed the offending hand by the wrist so hard that she heard bones click beneath her strong fingers. If she hadn’t been so in control, she would have broken the wrist. The elbow-toucher grunted in surprise.

It was only a disheveled looking man a few years older than she was. His plain pasty facial features were ill-bred and he dressed in a faded brown second-hand suit that he probably thought made him look like an intellectual. Favia immediately categorized him as harmless, although his eyes were wide and desperate behind his glasses. Glasses. How sad, some people didn’t even have the money to correct their vision.

“I don’t give handouts,” said Favia. She released her grip on him and had to suppress the urge to wipe her hand on her shirt. “Don’t sneak up on people like that, I could have hurt you.”

“What?” The man was out of breath and panting, like he had been running. The thought unsettled her. “No– no. Favia Voorst? From Vita Corp? I’ve seen your picture. I heard that you don’t leave this area, I’ve been looking for you since 7.”

If he was a stalker, she could easily knock him out before the police even got there. Favia drew herself up. She was about an inch taller than him and looked down her nose. There was an offensive stench about him like rotten meat. “You can leave now.”

The man glanced around the sidewalk, staring at the passersby as if he believed he was the one being followed. He shoved his hands into his pockets and rearranged his expression to one of half crazed friendliness. A crooked smile with crooked teeth. “Can we talk in private? This is important. Peoples’ lives are at stake, I need to talk to you.”

This was why Rome Prospas had a bodyguard, to take care of the dirty work for him. Favia really didn’t want to splatter this guy’s blood all over her good clothes. It would make a scene and her skirt was new. She gave a derisive sniff. “You have 5 seconds to get away from me.”

He shook his head wildly. It made his mousy brown hair flop around. The crooked smile wavered. “No, you don’t understand, I need your help. We don’t have time. I’m Lee. Lee Harlan. Ayda never told you about me? She told me you two were friends.”

Favia could have fallen over. Wasn’t that just like Ayda? Wasn’t that just like her to tell people that they were friends? Even while she was dead, she was still messing with her head. She clutched her phone so hard her knuckles turned white. It was hard to breathe. She stared at the man in front of her. “She— No?” There were no words to get out. Was this some kind of trick?

“Ayda Jay? You know her, right? She told me you know her and that you could help. Your company ships biotechnology to Serenity and Green River and hasn’t been shut down yet so you’re the only one who can help. Did she ever talk to you about me?”

What was with the present tense? Ayda was dead. Favia wanted to back away from this man. She almost wanted to scream, maybe she would have if she could only suck some air down. Her world was crashing down around her. “I don’t know you.”

Something like relief passed over Lee’s face. When she first saw him she thought that he had appeared plain, but there was an intelligence there, fox-like and sly. “Listen. I’m Ayda’s friend. I’m Casey’s friend too. We met years ago, before B-Day, but – nevermind. Nevermind all that. I need a vehicle. I need to help them. I have to help them, I’m the only one who knows where they are!”

“Ayda and Casey died last year. IODE shot them.”

“No. That isn’t true. They’re outside Eden. You can help me get to them.”

He was insane. She could see that much. The way he held himself, his wild eyes, the way he was panting. Even his crooked smile spoke of an inherent instability. He was a crazy guy who had known Ayda. Maybe he was a teacher who worked with her. Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown, maybe he couldn’t cope with their deaths. Favia didn’t know. Favia didn’t know anything. They had removed her from their lives. She hadn’t heard from Ayda in over a year before her death.

For some reason she couldn’t force herself to get away. Some weakness was growing inside of her. She licked her lips. “You should go talk to their dad.”

Lee laughed. It had a weird edge to it. “No. He can’t know. He can’t get involved. It’s not safe.”

This wasn’t safe. “It’s impossible to be outside the Colonies. The radiation. The mutants.”

“That’s not true either. Look– I don’t have time to explain this. I don’t know how to explain this. I have to help them. You don’t understand, Marty’s out there too and I– are you sure Ayda never told you about me?”

Ayda never told her anything. Her chest hurt and she thought about Ayda’s dark eyes, deep and unknowable. She thought about her mocking laughter and how Ayda would never laugh again. Now some guy she had never seen was claiming that she was still alive? It was insane. She couldn’t believe it. Favia couldn’t let herself believe it. Ayda believed in things, she used to go to the Weil Church and talk about the threads that connected every living thing in the universe. But Favia only believed in things she could touch.

Why would he mention Marty? Favia remembered Marty. She never met him but Ayda used to talk to him on the phone constantly. Some kind of little freak who never left his house in what Favia assumed to be the Lower Levels. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like Ayda had really been friends with him because she had never seen them hang out. However, knowing Ayda, maybe she used to hang out with Marty all the time and just never included her in it.

The right side of her head throbbed slightly like she was getting a headache.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and realized that she was telling the truth. She actually felt pity for this guy. If he was acting like this, he must have really loved Ayda. That wasn’t surprising. Most people loved Ayda, but only until they got to know her.  “I can’t help you. Ayda’s dead. She died.”

“She’s not dead. She’s starving in the wilderness out there with all the rest of them. I can– I can’t explain. You know the things she can do with her mind? How she can make you feel her emotions? Did you ever notice that?”

All Favia ever noticed was that when she was around Ayda, her anger and lust overcame her. Especially when they were teenagers. That wasn’t because of anything Ayda was doing though. It was because she had been hopelessly in lo—

What was she thinking? She didn’t have time for this. 

“Marty can do things too. Like Ayda but different. I see him in the place I go to in my dreams. Last night it was different, he asked me for help! He told me that they needed my help, that I was the only one who could help them. Do you understand?” Lee’s voice hitched. “This is my only chance to make things right.”

Her head was pounding now. Favia winced and touched a hand to one temple. She never got headaches. “I can’t help you. I have to go.”

“Please. I need a vehicle.” He stepped closer.

“I can’t help you. Ayda never used to tell me anything, I’ve never heard of you. I don’t know anyone who could vouch for you or any of this.” 

Lee made a frustrated noise. He shot a glare at someone passing by, a well dressed young woman intent on ignoring everything around her. “Esther Bellamy’s siblings. The twins. You know them? I’m sure Esther told them what was going on before they left.”

As far as Favia knew, Eddie and Evangeline Bellamy were living in a hell of their own. Their crazy sister had been shot a few months ago after dragging Ayda and Casey down with her and now their mother had overdosed and passed away after getting domestic violence charges put on her.  “No. I have to go.”

Her head was really hurting now. The pain moved down until a sharp ice pick of it seemed to penetrate the base of her spine. Favia’s ears rang. She opened her purse to search for the bottle of painkillers she kept with her. The drugs were prescribed. Lately she seemed to need them more and more. Her legs were long healed from the amputations but sometimes the shattered bones in her thighs ached like ice water. A constant reminder of what had happened. It was worse when she was stressed.

You want to help.

That thought was so crazy that it didn’t feel like it belonged to her. Favia shook out a couple of painkillers and swallowed them dry. Lee was staring at her like a man on the edge of a very tall building. Sweat beaded on his forehead. There was a raised scar there, right next to his hairline.

You want to help.

“I can’t help you,” she repeated. A certain tenderness was growing inside of her. She did not know why she felt so bad for this stranger. “I have to go.” 

A look of irritation flashed across his clever face. “Please,” he said. “I have to help. You have to help me.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” replied Favia, grasping at her last strands of haughty pride. The pain in her head was unbearable and she needed to get out of the light. She thought about Ayda’s dark eyes and the disdainful curl of her lips. “Ayda’s dead and even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t help that bitch. She never helped me. I’m leaving now. Go get some help. You need help.”

There was a beat. Lee squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists. Only for a moment, but Favia noticed. When he opened his eyes again, he only looked sad and frightened. A kicked puppy. “I understand,” he said hollowly. “It’s a lot. Just– will you think about it? I can give you my number. Just think about it.”

You want to help me.

Favia did not know what compelled her to take his number. She only knew that she did.

She did not remember how she got to her apartment either. She simply found herself there, staring at her own face in the bathroom mirror. All this stress about Vita Corp’s future was getting to her. That was it. It was all too much. She was cracking up. 

Stressed and in pain. Her bones ached and it wasn’t even noon. Favia took another painkiller, then removed her prosthetic legs, easing down into her wheelchair. It was something she only did in the comfort of her own home, unable to bear the thought of others seeing her as less than perfect.

“Stupid,” she told herself. She tied her long blonde hair up into a ponytail so that it wouldn’t fall into her eyes. The painkillers could make her groggy, almost high. “You don’t want to help that guy. You just want to feel better about yourself.”

An unbearable thought had already occurred to her: what if Lee Harlan had been telling the truth? He was clearly mentally ill, maybe schizophrenic or something. Could his delusions have a speck of truth to them? Could Ayda be…out there somewhere? Could Ayda be alive?

That was ridiculous. Unless she had traveled to the neighboring Colonies of Green River or Serenity. Nobody could survive outside of a Colony, everyone knew that. When the Rift opened in the sky all those hundreds of years ago, it had released toxins that left the entire world sick. There were mutants crawling around out beyond the Dome and Favia had seen them herself. Vita Corp sometimes used them to test new biotechnology. Slavering, mindless, naked, twisted things. They never stopped screaming because of the pain.

Those things had been human once, generations ago. She didn’t like to think about it, but it was a reminder that nobody could survive out there. 

The world had 8 Colonies. 200 years ago there had been 10, but Asilo and the Septentrion went to war and destroyed each other. There was nothing else. Favia had seen exactly what was outside. She understood exactly why Vita Corp’s trucks had machine guns mounted inside them.

She imagined Ayda out there. Ayda used to scream and pass out when she got a papercut. How was she supposed to survive in the outside world? It wasn’t possible. 

But Favia could not stop thinking about it. The possibility gnawed at her. Should she call Ayda’s dad? Another impossibility. You never knew what lines were tapped. West Agapama was wrapped up in sedition charges so severe that his business had been seized. Favia could not risk Vita by reaching out to him.

You want to help me. 

Evidence was required before she could even think of taking any action. She searched Lee Harlan’s name on her phone and found nothing other than his current employer, which happened to be the media department at AGA. As staunch Favia’s support was for private businesses, the thought of media that wasn’t owned by the state government gave her the creeps. How could you know the information being presented was accurate if it wasn’t provided by Eden’s government? Private journalists were nothing but liars who served private interests.

If Lee had known Ayda and all the rest of them, Favia had no evidence of that either. It shouldn’t hurt. After all these years, she should have been used to being left out, used to Ayda’s secrets and cruelty. But it did hurt and that was that. Nothing she could do about it.

Was Ayda alive? That would mean that the state government had lied. But why would they…

Everything came down to business, didn’t it? Maybe Eden wanted to destroy AGA. Broadcasting information about how West Agapama’s daughters were traitors sent shareholders into a panic and they had sold off millions of dollars in stock, making it easy for the state to swoop in and buy it up, essentially deprivatizing the company. Favia did not want to think about that. What would happen to Vita Corp if she stepped out of line?

Not that she would. She never would.

The world grew hazy as her pain meds kicked in. It was like slipping beneath the water of a warm bath, safe and comfortable. The sensation of pleasant nothingness was accompanied by visions of Ayda’s dark eyes. Favia imagined those eyes bored and hateful and staring at her. She imagined them wide and afraid.

You want to help me.

She slumped in her wheelchair. Favia’s phone was in her hand. She scrolled through Vita’s stock prices. Good. Everything was good. She did not want to mess everything up by getting involved in…in…

Ayda was dead because she and Casey had been stupid enough to step out of line, and now their family’s company was going under. Favia could not do that to her company. She could not do that to her mother. When she lost her legs during B-Day, she thought that her mother was losing her mind with rage that could not be directed. She couldn’t possibly do that to her. 

But what if Ayda was alive and needed help? It was stupid and impossible but what if?

Favia rubbed her eyes, smearing her makeup. She needed proof, but how was she supposed to get it? The first step was verifying Lee Harlan’s identity. Contacting Ayda’s dad was out of the question, if only out of mercy. Lee had mentioned Esther Bellamy’s siblings. The thought of contacting them was distasteful. The Bellamys were old money, they had made their fortune generations before they even founded Opus and started creating Artificials. Favia got the feeling that they looked down on her family, like they saw them as upjumped robber barons like the Agapamas. Her grandfather had built Vita from the ground up. They had money, it was just…newer.

There was nothing for it. She had to call, if only to learn that Lee Harlan was crazy and making things up. Then she could go about the rest of her life. She could let go of this maddening grief over a girl who hadn’t cared about her when she was alive.

Part of her knew that the painkillers removed her self control, her inhibitions, but it was too late for that now. Favia sniffed and watched her own hands scroll through her contacts. She was three years older than the Bellamy twins. As far as she knew, they were both still in graduate school. Eddie was doing neuroscience, Evangeline’s track was more business aligned with a focus in genetics. Favia never had much to do with them, other than a few Board meetings since their mother had owned a bunch of stock in Vita Corp. They both always gave her the creeps because of how modified they were, just like that freak Rome Prospas. A well designed Artificial was hard to distinguish from the average person. 

Eddie was easier to talk to, but Evangeline could actually focus, so Evangeline it was. Favia almost felt like laughing when she called her. Maybe that was the painkillers.

The phone rang twice and Evangeline picked up. Her face shone in a little blue hologram, intense and harsh and pretty, just like Favia remembered. Lily Bellamy designed her children to be all angles, no softness. “Hello,” she said. Her lips were scrunched up in a perpetual thin sneer.

“Evangeline,” said Favia. “You look well.” 

“Are you drunk?” asked Evangeline Bellamy. “What is this? I heard Vita’s about to open stocks to the public. If you want to sell, I can buy shares at above market price.”

Was that the rumor going around? It was a cold knife blade of dread to Favia’s stomach. “The company is doing fine. We’re not selling.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.”

Favia’s smile felt forced. She twirled a strand of hair around one finger to try to appear nonchalant. “Vita’s profitable. We don’t need to sell.”

“Vita was going under before B-Day. Bioengineering only became marketable in Eden because 5% of the population lost limbs or were severely injured during the bombings.”

This bitch. It was true. All at once, thousands of people had found themselves in desperate need of mechanical arms and legs. Favia made herself laugh. “We’re not selling. Don’t believe everything you see in the news.” A pause. A lump formed in her throat the moment she gave a voice to her own doubts. “Anyways, that’s not— I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Sure. I only have a few minutes. All these meetings. You know I’m in charge of Opus now? Mom’s dead, Esther’s dead, Eddie’s cracking up, so it has to be me. I don’t know how you handle all this when Vita’s not even subsidized by the state government.”

Another dirty jab. Favia’s smile didn’t falter. It didn’t even twitch. “It’s not so bad. I thought you were on a business track? It prepared me for whenever my mother steps down.”

Evangeline rolled her reptile eyes. “It’s not great. I had to wrap up my program when Mom died so I could help take over since Dad and Eddie are so stupid and useless. What did you want to ask me?”

“Have you ever heard of a guy named Lee Harlan?”

The harsh young woman’s face did not change in the hologram before Favia. She might have been carved from stone. “What did you say?”

“Lee Harlan. This guy, he stopped me on the street this morning. I didn’t know what to think. He kept saying he was friends with— with your sister and all them a long time ago. He was saying all this crazy stuff and asking me for help. I couldn’t commit to a decision until I knew what he was saying was true.”

“What was he saying?”

“Crazy stuff.” Favia realized that she did not want to disclose what Lee had said over the phone. It didn’t feel safe. “I don’t know.”

“Crazy stuff like what?”

“I can’t explain. So you know him? Knew him?” She could not imagine it. The pain pills made her eyelids heavy, they drooped. She lowered her voice like someone might overhear. “He was begging. It’s so ridiculous. I don’t know how to explain.”

“You can explain by spitting it out and not slurring.”

Slurring? Favia could not recognize her own voice. Surely she was not slurring. She sounded fine. Yes, since Ayda’s death she had been in more pain than usual, her legs hurt more than usual, and she treated that pain in a prescribed manner. But slurring? This bitch.

She tried a different route. “Do you believe everything they tell us? Like the media? Do you believe that the news is ever distorted?”

Evangeline’s pale pointed face became somehow colder. She looked like her mother. “No. The only people who say that kind of thing have their own agenda. My only advice for you is to stay away from that guy. I had hoped that he crawled off somewhere and died years ago. He had a way of messing with peoples’ heads.”

You want to help me.

“Who is he?”

“Just some freak. You should stay away from him. He lied about everything.”

“But he said that he knew your sister and all the rest of them back in the day. I thought he was lying about that, but he was right, you knew him.” Favia bit her lower lip to keep herself grounded in reality. “It all threw me off. He wants to use one of Vita’s trucks for— he says that Ayda and all of them are still alive. He says they’re outside of Eden.”

Evangeline’s mouth twisted. “That’s impossible. You sound like my brother, all crazy, saying that Ki– well, he’s all out of his mind on dope too. Dead is dead. Esther’s dead. My mother is dead. We have to move on, there’s bigger things at stake than feeling sorry for ourselves.”

Anger flared inside of her. She was not like that. She was not a drug addict, she was not crazy. There was no way for her to get a jab in. “I’m keeping my mind open to the possibility that they might be alive. Your sister might still be alive. Ayda might still be alive. We don’t have any proof.”

“You don’t have proof either way. You’re going off the claims of a man who I know for a fact is a liar. You would know that too if you had been around back then. Why do you even care? You weren’t even friends with any of them? Ayda used to talk shit about you all the time, she hated you.”

That was too much. Favia could not take it anymore. She hung up.

Hated her. So she was not the only one who thought that. Everyone else had seen that too. 

In the darkness of her luxurious apartment, Favia was utterly alone. So Ayda hated her. So what? She felt the loss of her as intensely as she felt the loss of her legs. A part of herself was gone and she could never get it back. Evangeline Bellamy was right. What was the point of fixating on something she had no proof of? Wasn’t the loss enough?

The heaviness of her own body overcame her. Favia could not keep her eyes open. Her chin drooped down to her chest. The pain pills made sleep nearly instantaneous and her dreams came rushing up to meet her.

And in her dreams? 

Favia was under warm water in a vast and peaceful nothingness. Gentle light filtered down from above. She floated there without grief or doubt or anxiety. She saw nothing around her save for serene greenish-blue water. When she looked down she saw that she still had her legs. Her legs! Flesh and bone, strong and tan and hers, hers like they had once been before she had been crushed by falling debris on B-Day. Favia kicked her legs, wiggled her toes as she swam and laughed.

There was Ayda, floating before her, as beautiful and cruel as she had been when she was alive, only—

This was not how she remembered Ayda. She remembered Ayda’s soft, heavy body. She remembered Ayda as meticulously clean and dressed. She remembered Ayda never leaving the house without layering mascara on her long lashes. She remembered Ayda covering her hair in accordance with the Weil religion every day after the bombings. The Ayda in her dream was…thin and dirty! The Ayda in her dream was wearing strange clothes covered in furs! The Ayda in her dream had filthy matted hair! The Ayda in her dream had a sad, worn out face! This was not her Ayda!

Talking to that lunatic in the street had distorted her imagination and put false images in her head. Favia kicked the water as she watched this stranger, willing her to disappear and leave her in her pleasant fantasy.

“You can see me?” asked the Ayda in her dream. Her voice was almost as Favia remembered it. Soft and throaty, only now it seemed to waver as if she was on the verge of tears. The water around them did not muffle the sound. “I didn’t think I could do it.”

That didn’t make any sense, but dreams rarely did. Favia pushed strands of her long blond hair out of her face. “I’m trying to swim, leave me alone.”

Ayda floated closer. Favia could see dark hollows beneath her eyes. It would have made her worried for her if she hadn’t known that this wasn’t real. The real Ayda used to like to sleep for at least 10 hours a night back when she was still alive. “We don’t have time. I don’t know how long I can stay out of my body like this.”

Bossing her around, even from the grave. How typical. Favia did a somersault in the warm water and laughed. Bubbles came out of her mouth. She could stay like this forever. From the corner of her eye she saw a school of colorful opalescent squid the size of dogs swim by, twisting in elaborate patterns. They sang a chorus of playful whistling sounds as they twined around one another. How could she imagine something like that, something she had never seen or heard? She laughed again.

“Favia, listen to me.” The Ayda in her dream was staring right at her. Her lower lip started to tremble. “Please.”

Ayda never said please. Favia paddled around lazily, staring at the figment of her imagination. Maybe this would be the last time she saw her before her memories faded and she started to forget what she looked like. “What? What do you want? You’re dead, you have all the time in the world.”

“Lee told Marty he would talk to you first. He said he would ask you to help us.”

“You just know that because you’re a part of my mind.” 

“No. I’m here. My mind is with you, while you’re sleeping.” Ayda clasped her hands before her. Her thick eyebrows furrowed. There was a certain sadness about her. “My body is outside Eden. We’re camped on the old causeway near the Lost Colony.”

Favia laughed again. She folded herself up as she floated so that she could grab one of her own feet and inspect it. What had her toes looked like? She couldn’t remember. Even in her dreams she never had feet anymore. Maybe she had taken more pain pills than usual if she was dreaming this deeply.

“We’re going to starve out there if you don’t let Lee borrow one of Vita’s trucks,” said Ayda, slowly, like she was very stupid. “We’re all going to die. Me and Casey and Esther and— all of us. You’re the only one who can help us.”

The green-blue water was so warm and comfortable that Favia could have stayed in it forever. She held out a hand before her eyes and watched the soft light glimmer over her nails. “How did I imagine all this?” she murmured. In the distance the school of squid swam in long circles.

“You didn’t imagine this. I’m in your mind. Lee’s a telepath, he forced a hole into your consciousness so I could get in. Please listen. I don’t know what we’re going to do if you don’t listen.”

Favia rolled her eyes. She turned onto her back so that she could look up at the light. At least she thought she was looking up. In the vast pleasant nothingness, there was no way to tell what was up or what was down. “Fine. Go ask your dad for a truck. You’re a ghost, I can’t help you.”

“I’m not a ghost. This isn’t your dream. You’re the only one I’ve done this with, I don’t know how to control it yet. I’m begging you to help us get home. You don’t understand what’s going to happen!”

“Only one I’ve done this with,” mused Favia. She blew more bubbles, watched them rise to a horizon she could not see. “You said that before I kissed you for the first time. But then Casey told me you’d already kissed Tiberius Elah. That’s funny. I forgot that until now.”

“This isn’t your dream, Favia.”

“You know, I’ve never gone swimming? I don’t know how I even thought of all this.”

Ayda grabbed her by the wrist hard and then pulled her so that they floated eye to eye. The expression on her face was one Favia had never seen before on Ayda. It was terrified and desperate, like the mask of aloof boredom had cracked and everything real and terrible beneath it was showing through. “Favia,” said Ayda, gripping her hard enough for it to hurt. “This isn’t your dream!”

A monstrous shadow passed over them. It blotted out the gentle light. The water turned icy cold and the playful whistling song of the colorful squid like creatures turned into ear-splitting shrieks. Favia tore her arm from Ayda’s grasp so that she could clamp her hands over her ears, anything to stop the horrible noise. She turned helplessly in the water. What was happening? She did not know what was happening! The cold was enough to feel like needles being jammed into her skin!

In her nightmares, the bombings never stopped. On the nights that she did not put herself to sleep with painkillers, Favia’s mind replayed images of falling buildings and crumbling debris in the school district. The theme was horrifying but familiar: trapped beneath the rubble, her own legs smashed into a red jelly of flesh and blood and bone shards. This was nothing like those nightmares. This was like nothing she had even imagined!

“What is it?” Favia’s own voice had turned hysterical to match the unending screams around her. She looked around wildly. “What is it? What is this?!”

Twisted and colossal appendages thrust themselves down into the water again and again. It was enough to create a violent current that buffeted Ayda and Favia as if they were insects in a storm drain. They clung on to one another.

The green sea became wine dark around them. Blood dark. The chitinous twisted appendages speared themselves into the swimming creatures of that place and the water became thick with their blood. Favia opened her mouth to scream but had to spit as it coursed oil-like into her throat and lungs. Her body burned as if covered with acid!

“This is what’s coming.” Ayda had both hands on Favia’s shoulders, nails digging into her skin. She shook her. “This is what’s coming to Eden and everywhere else if we can’t get home to stop it. This is what will happen if you don’t let Lee take one of Vita’s trucks to come get us! Everyone will die! It came out of the Rift to consume our world and darken our sun just like it consumed a thousand worlds and a million suns before us! Do you understand?!”

“It’s not real!” wailed Favia. She couldn’t bear to look. She didn’t want to see what was happening! The screaming, the blood, the poison water! Her eyes had been squeezed shut and now she opened them to look into the only light that was left. Ayda’s dark eyes, once so deep and unknowable like pools of cold water, were now luminous. She couldn’t believe it. “It can’t be real! What is this?!”

“The last meal of the Planet Eater.” Ayda let go of Favia’s shoulders and took her hands in her own. Long clumps of dark hair swirled around her like a halo. Like…like the icons of the Weil goddesses at the Church she attended. Somehow Ayda had changed from a petulant young woman to something…transcendent. “I can take emotions. You know that, you’ve felt that. This is the fear-memory of one of the larvae that hurtled from this planet through the Rift to ours. I can feel everything it did when this happened to it. And I’m showing it to you.”

It was real. It was real and Favia believed all of it even if she could not understand it. She remembered what Lee had said about seeing that creep Marty in his dreams. Well, Lee had done something to her and now Ayda had jammed her consciousness inside of her dreams. Terror blossomed all over her body. There was nothing but fear, nothing but pain. This was what dying felt like and Ayda had dragged her beneath the water just like she always knew she would.

“You fucking bitch!” Favia squeezed her eyes shut again as another dark mass plunged into the water meters away from them. She didn’t want to see! “You’re hundreds of miles away and you’re still trying to fuck with my mind?! You really hate me that much? You’ve dragged me to this place to torture me?!”

Ayda squeezed her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You wouldn’t have believed Lee on his own because he’s so creepy he looks like a date rapist. We needed you to believe.”

“You bitch! I shouldn’t help you. You don’t deserve it. I should leave you out there like you and Casey left me!”

There was a long pause heavy with the pang of regret. The water crashed around them, acidic and burning with black blood. The dying shrieks continued to echo through the dying sea. “Big talk.I know you.” Her voice was very sad. “You’ll lend one of Vita’s trucks and get us home so we can keep this from happening.”

In any other circumstance, Favia would have contemplated exactly what this was. What all-powerful horror could possibly snuff out all life on a planet and why would someone like Ayda be involved in it? Why had the state made claims that Ayda and all the rest were dead? All very good questions, but Favia’s mind was incapable of grasping anything other than what was directly in front of her. She opened her eyes.

Ayda shone in the black water. It still crashed around them, but she could no longer see the monstrous, grasping limbs and proboscises plunging into the depths. There was nothing but Ayda floating before her and holding her hands. 

How had she ever thought she was cruel? The thought of it made her want to cry. She wanted to float there forever with Ayda’s hands grasped in her own.

“I think I–” Favia choked around the lump in her throat. “You–”

“There’s no time. It’s time to wake up. You have to wake up now and call Lee.”

Something massive thrust into the water so close to them that Favia imagined that she could feel hard, oily skin or a twisted claw. She looked around wildly, unable to see. “But–”

“It’s time to wake up!”

Favia’s eyes shot open and she jolted awake, gasping. Her body was limp, clammy, drenched in foul sweat. Her heart pounded in her throat and there was a bitter taste in her mouth that made her want to spit. Again, she looked around, disorientated by the sudden change in environment. Same perfectly styled apartment. No screaming creatures or oceans full of blood here.

A dream? A drug induced nightmare? No, it had been real. It had been more real than anything Favia ever knew. Not the vision of the dying planet, no— Ayda had been the real thing! And Ayda had asked her for help.

Her teeth chattered. She wiped the sweat from her face with the back of her trembling hand. Ayda needed help. Not just Ayda, Eden. Eden and the whole world. And Favia was the only one who could do it. She was needed. She was needed and being needed was almost like being loved.

Favia’s body moved without thought. She reached down and pulled her phone from her pocket, then dialed the number the madman on the street had given her. He picked up on the second ring.

“You can use one of my company’s trucks.” Favia didn’t even wait for him to speak. She was in control here and Ayda had told her there wasn’t any time. “And I’m coming with you to make sure you don’t fuck anything up.”

[blooblooded]

Cihad's Sister Backstory

The traitors would pay with their blood.

Halima Tariq did not know much, but she knew that. These people would pay.They were going to suffer. She had worked too hard and struggled for too long to let them win. They could do whatever they wanted to, they could hurt her, they could even try to kill her, but in the end the God of the Void would have his vengeance. The people who had torn her from the life she had built would die screaming.

She sat on the carpeted floor of the room they had left her in. It was a comfortable room with a bed and a bathroom, but a prison nonetheless. The men who brought her here had bound her hands. They knew. How could they know? They couldn’t know. All these years she had been so careful! Nobody knew. Not even her lover, not even the King Jean-Baptiste knew that with only a bit of blood and with her hands free she could take a life as easily as she could swat a flea.

No, they couldn’t know what she was capable of. Halima had not drawn her own blood for six years and without that power her eyes had faded to a muddy brown. There was no indication. Her prayers to the Great Devourer were silent, she had not prayed since she had been taken from her home. She made no sacrifices, she made no indication that she was anything but a peasant girl from Ile de Matane. When les yeux sanglants were mentioned— when the mindless slaughter of her family was mentioned– she didn’t even flinch. 

So why had they tied her hands? There was no other reason these traitors would be afraid of her. She was only a girl of 19, a delicate flower of the Imperial palace. Something pretty to look at, something soft and comforting to touch. Unless they believed that she could tear them apart with the power of the place beyond the stars, she appeared completely harmless.

Her hands were tied behind her back. Halima could not even press them down over her belly to comfort herself by feeling the small life that grew there.

The King’s son, she thought. These people would not harm her with the King’s son inside her belly.

That wasn’t true, was it? She knew firsthand what brutality the people from the outer provinces were capable of. They were savages, animals. Six years ago the King’s mad dogs, marshland soldiers from Kimanka, had come to her peaceful town and murdered her mother and father and almost everyone else she knew. They had murdered her brother Cihad and he had barely been any older than her.  Halima had just been lucky that she was so pretty or else she would be rotting in the mud with the rest of them.

Her eyes stung and she blinked. These people would not make her cry. She already knew who they were. King Jean-Baptiste trusted her like he trusted his own heart. She cared for him in his old age and he told her everything. She knew all about how a rebellion was brewing in the gentle valleys of the province known as the Strath. Something about taxes. Something about mistreatment. The Marchioness Florence Gauthier had unleashed her painted guerilla Partisans to pillage the surrounding countryside and if rumors were to be believed, thousands of men from Kimanka had already joined her after the Butcher Mikhail Surkhov’s mysterious death. 

The room was cold. The fire had gone out. Halima tried not to shiver but there wasn’t much she could do about it. The men who had kidnapped her from beneath the very nose of the King hadn’t given her a chance to change out of the gossamer silks she had grown accustomed to. At least they— a cripple and a gigantic lackwit— had the decency not to stare at her chest or bare legs.

Animals. Even if she bit her tongue until it bled there would be nothing for her to do with her hands tied. And if they weren’t tied, what then? Use blood magic? Expose herself as a survivor of Blagodat? As an Acolyte of the Great Devourer? Stupid. These people would gut her in a heartbeat.

Somehow she stood without stumbling and walked to the door. Halima drew herself up as haughtily as she could. “I want to talk to somebody,” she called through the door. She did not degrade herself by crying or screaming. Somebody would hear her. She imagined that there would be guards. “I want to talk to somebody in charge!”

Nothing. Halima pressed her ear to the solid wood of the door. A strand of dark wavy hair fell into her face and she blew it away. She couldn’t even hear anyone shuffling around out there.

Why would they take her, throw her in the back of a truck, and drive for hours if they were just going to lock her in a room? She tried again. “I want to talk to somebody now! The King will want your heads for this treatment of me, but if you let me speak to someone I will ask for your pardon!”

Her own voice sounded cold and superior to her ears. Halima had never made herself lower than what she had been born to be. The Faceless Priest may have been dead for 6 long years but she was still his daughter and beloved in the eyes of God.

The baby kicked inside of her. A tiny fluttering of half formed limbs, thin as matchsticks. She tightened her mouth.

What would happen if they left her here? What would happen if–

There was the squeak of a key in a lock and the door swung outwards. Pressed against it as she was, Halima stumbled and fell in a shimmer of red silk. Someone caught her roughly by the shoulders before she could hit the ground. They pulled her up and did not release their grip.

“Noisy bitch,” commented the sharp faced man who had grabbed her. He was young and wore the camouflaged uniform of Gauthier’s Partisans, streaks of green paint smeared in patterns over his cheeks and forehead. “Quit yapping.”

There were a couple more soldiers in the hallway with him, equally as young and armed. Halima sniffed. The grip on her arms was too tight. “Sir,” she said, then let her eyes drift to the leaf-shaped gold emblems on his chest and paused to remember what they meant. “Lieutenant, my name is Olive Vernier. I don’t think this is neccess–”

“Shut up before I smack you.”

Another soldier laughed. “This one’s got a nicer mouth on her than that little witch. Nicer everything.”

Halima supposed that she could struggle and scream but what good would that do? She had already suffered indignities at the hands of heathen soldiers. It was better to play to her advantage than fight against men who were stronger than she was, or worse, put herself and the baby at risk by using her magic.

She looked up at the sharp faced Lieutenant through her thick lashes. “I’ll be quiet then, sir.”

All of these traitors would pay with their blood when Jean-Baptiste sent his Imperials after her.

The Lieutenant grunted. He jerked his head at the other one. “Keep your hands off this girl. The Prime Minister will have you flogged like she did with Bedny if you try anything. She’ll know, too. That gimpy faggot of hers has spying eyes all over the estate.” His grip on Halima loosened and he slipped an arm around her shoulder as if he was only supporting her. “Come with us, girl. I know you’re not thinking about running.”

How stupid. Where would she run? If they were in the rebel stronghold of the Strath, there was a good 50 miles to Ile de Matane. It was mid-winter. Even if she ran, Halima would freeze or worse before she got to safety.

There were other ways to stay safe. She only had to wait.

The building – Florence Gauthier’s estate– was well built but lacked the opulence of the Imperial palace. The walls were made of carved hardwood. Green carpets covered the long winding halls and various oil paintings and old photographs hung on the walls. Halima glanced at them as she passed. Mostly portraits of people who she assumed were long dead. It was warmer than she thought it would be inside, heat pumping in from fireplaces fueled by lumber cut in the forests that covered the nearby countryside.

Most notable were the people. While the Imperial palace contained the usual armed guards, it was mostly populated by courtiers and visiting merchants bringing luxury items. Here? So many soldiers. Partisans with their fierce painted faces and machine guns as well as men with swords in high necked black jackets and gold epaulettes. Halima had never seen those uniforms before. She boldly made eye contact with one and he sneered back at her.

Marshlanders from Kimanka. So the rumors were true. The Butcher’s death had left that stinking province in such disarray that they had joined the peasant rebels from the Strath. When Jean-Baptiste rescued her, she would be too happy to tell him to destroy them as well. 

They stopped in front of a double paneled red door with twisting iron handles. Armed guards with painted faces stood before it was well, boredly holding automatic weapons. One of them glanced at Halima and let his eyes linger. He raised his eyebrows. “This is the King’s whore, Kimble? She’s a big bitch, isn’t she? Big tits.”

Halima’s mother and father had both been built powerfully. Even her brother Cihad had been nearly full grown when he was murdered and he had only been 14. That wasn’t what she took offense at, but Halima could only bite her tongue and look down. These men’s souls would be lost to the hungry things in the Void for their disrespect.

Sharp-faced Lieutenant Kimble laughed. “She’s carrying the royal bastard. Or someone’s bastard. Hard to believe Flick snuck into the palace last night and stole her out from under the Imperials’ noses.”

The other one rolled his eyes and made a rude gesture mimicking fellatio. “I’m sure he distracted them.” That got another laugh. “You taking her to see the Prime Minister now?”

“Mm.”

The guards at the door straightened their lazy stances and pulled on the iron handles. It creaked open slowly. The Lieutenant guided Halima inside.

The room beyond the door was not what she expected. She did not know what she expected– maybe an ornate throne-room – but this was more of a library than anything. Three walls were covered in floor to ceiling bookshelves and there was an enormous fireplace running up the fourth. No windows. It smelled overwhelmingly of old paper and cigarette smoke. The middle of the room had a big heartwood desk surrounded by chairs.

Halima looked around. She was aware of how fast her own heart was beating and willed it to slow. This was the part where she had to learn how to play the game. She had learned before when she had been dragged from her home and taken to the Imperial palace and that had been very hard. But she had been half a child then. Now she was older, smarter and harder. She could learn how to play any game.

A woman sat behind the desk. She was in her late 30’s, long-limbed and thin, with strands of silver already showing in her plainly styled black hair. She was smoking a cigarette while typing something on the screen of a thinking machine. Halima tried not to stare– the strange woman wore the same uniform as the Partisan soldiers. It all seemed so unnatural. Women did not wear uniforms. And technology? Technology in the provinces was abhorred since it was what led to the near destruction of the North 200 years ago when the neighboring Colony Asilo was overcome by dark forces and was lost. Fire had rained down from the sky in those days.

The woman looked up from her screen. She smiled. A nice smile, even though her nose was too big to be considered pretty and she wore glasses. The glasses gave her an intensely owlish look. “Miss Vernier,” she said warmly. “Please sit down. Reed, untie her hands. This is not how we treat a lady.”

“That would be ill-advised.” With a shock, Halima noticed that one of the men who had kidnapped her was also in the large room. It was the dark rangy one with the cane and the twisted leg. He gave her a self-satisfied smile as she shrunk back against the Lieutenant. She had thought the cripple helpless and harmless when she found him in her rooms at the palace, and that had been her mistake, wasn’t it? That was what everyone thought about her. “Her hands–”

“Nonsense. Untie her hands.”

Lieutenant Kimble did as he was told. Halima rubbed her wrists and tried to straighten up as if she wasn’t scared.

She could kill them. She could tear open her skin and use her blood to call upon the will of the Great Devourer. She could make their eyes bleed, she could make their tongues swell and their guts churn. She could make their blood leak from every orifice. But what would that do? How many would she have to kill before someone shot her? 

But Halima did not sit. She looked around. There was one more person in the room, a big, plainly dressed woman reading a book in a chair by the fireplace. She did not appear to be paying attention. Two other women. Two women and a cripple. This felt safer than being in a room full of rapacious soldier boys, which was what she had expected.

She pushed her hair away from her face. It was so long and thick that she was used to twisting it back and pinning it up on her head. Her chest squeezed at that thought. The King loved her hair. He loved running his age-spotted hands through it, he loved pulling it when they were in bed together. How long before he came for her? She needed him and his strength.

“Florence Gauthier, I presume,” said Halima in the haughtiest voice she could manage. She did not entertain the delusions of these traitors by using the title Prime Minister. She heard the door close behind them. Without windows, the room was dark, only lit by the fireplace and the shine from the computer screen. “You’ve made a mistake.”

Florence laughed at her. She stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. “A mistake? How terrifying.”

“Jean-Baptiste will send men after me.” 

That made the woman by the fireplace snort. Halima felt her cheeks flush. 

“The King doesn’t have enough men to defend his borders, what makes you think that he would waste what’s left of the Imperial Army going after a teenager carrying his bastard child?” Florence shrugged. “I have the Strath. I’ve taken Kimanka. Towns are burning on the edges of Ile de Matane. The Imperials have bigger things to worry about than you do.”

That wasn’t true. Jean-Baptiste had told her that they were winning the war. “My child could be his son and heir.”

“I hope so,” said Florence dryly. “I’ve read that provisional governments are notoriously hard to manage without collateral to hold over loyalist remnants.”

Collateral. So that was what this was all about. “You’re holding me hostage.”

“Don’t be silly. I only wanted to talk to you. Sit down, Miss Vernier– or whatever your name is. You are my guest. Would you like some tea? The girls in the kitchens baked a strawberry pie last night with some of last summer’s harvest, would you like to try it? My province isn’t called the breadbasket of the Northern Territories for nothing.”

She was hungry but Halima was too proud to give in. “No, I–”

“Reed, get Daisy to bring us some strong tea with milk and breakfast. 3 cups of tea.” One corner of Florence’s mouth twitched. “Go find out whatever is taking Mr. Kosarin so long too, while you’re at it.”

Lieutenant Kimble nodded. “Prime Minister,” he said, then left, closing the door behind him again. Halima took note of how polite the soldiers were when in front of their betters.

The young man with the cane sighed from his corner the moment that he had gone. His shoulders slumped. “Mother, this is a waste of time. We should be focusing on the borders and worry about all this superstitious nonsense once we’ve won the war.”

Halima’s ears pricked and she glanced from face to face. Same strong noses, same black eyes and deep golden skin. A weakness, just as the life in her belly was a weakness. She had been led to believe that Rowan Gauthier had been hanged 7 years ago without heirs. Perhaps having no heir was better than having one too crippled to walk on his own. If her own child was born with a twisted leg, she would have to strongly consider leaving it outside for the elements to mercifully kill.

“We have more than one enemy to worry about,” said Florence. She lit another cigarette. “You just lack the imagination to see the big picture. Once I’ve broken the shackles of the monarchy, we can turn our eyes to the south and the ones who created this mess to begin with.”

“Right. Eden.” The cripple rubbed his face like he was bone tired. Like he had heard this half a hundred times already. “That wasn’t the superstitious nonsense I was thinking about, but right. You’re right.”

“Eden?” asked Halima. She couldn’t keep herself from speaking and found herself stepping closer to the desk. For the first time that morning she didn’t feel like watching these people bleed and die. They couldn’t talk if they were dead. They couldn’t tell her what they knew. Her eyebrows furrowed. “That’s not real.”

Florence and the cripple looked at each other with their identical faces and identical raised eyebrows. 

“Only 200 years have gone by and look how easily people forget our history,” commented the woman by the fire. She flipped a page in her book without looking up.

“Don’t be rude, Beatrice.” Florence exhaled a cloud of smoke. “This girl never had a chance to learn.”

“My brother used to tell me funny stories about a place called Eden. He said it was a garden of paradise where people never die.”

“That does sound like a funny story.” The young man with the cane ducked his head to hide a smile. “What a sweet brother you had, Miss Vernier.”

Had.

Her last memory of Cihad had not been sweet. They both had been running, Halima had been choking on black blood that would not stop pouring from her nose and mouth. She had taken their father’s Book to protect the vessel the Great Devourer lived inside of and could feel its power curling in every crevice of her small body. In all of that confusion, in the midst of the slaughter and screaming and darkness, Cihad had reached out to grab her hands. The moment that their skin touched, lightning had arced down her brother’s arms. And Halima’s world had gone dark until later when she woke to Imperial soldiers pulling her to her feet.

There was a pit of emptiness in Halima’s stomach. She tried to ignore it. There were days when she didn’t think about everything that had been taken away from her. Sometimes there were weeks. As time passed, her good memories faded and were replaced by memories of screaming and of mud. She could barely remember her mother’s voice or the feeling of her father’s hands as he taught her how to control the power within her. If she closed her eyes it was hard to picture her brother’s face, the way that he would smile when he laughed at her. It was only bits and pieces now. She was at once younger and older than Cihad would ever be. 

A weakness overcame her and all of a sudden Halima felt very sorry for herself. The God of the Void had wanted her to live even after her family was all dead so that was that. There was nothing to do about it. She sat down in one of the empty chairs. A lump had formed in her throat. Maybe it would be nice to drink a cup of tea.

She wanted someone to hold her. Not Jean-Baptiste, not his old, stinking arms. She wanted her mother. Halima did the next best thing and put her hands over her own belly. Her baby kicked as it swam inside of her.

Time passed. It was almost nice to just sit there and not be expected to do anything. It was quiet and these people did not act like they wanted to hurt her. They didn’t stare at her like she was a piece of meat. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding and–

The peace and quiet were put to an end by the door creaking open again. The man who had opened it was not the Lieutenant, it was the giant who had assisted in Halima’s kidnapping last night. He was bigger than any man she had seen in her life and his broad shoulders blocked out the light from the hallway. The man was not alone. He carefully pushed a pale, fat young woman inside the room. She had her hands all twisted up in her own long dark hair and was breathing heavily. The second he let go of her, she crumpled to the ground in an undignified heap, covering her face.

There was a ragged little boy with them as well, quiet and staring with his big black eyes. Perhaps the woman’s son. He just stood there looking all around as if he had never seen other people or books or anything at all.

Halima did not move either. She did not know what was going on.

“What took you so long?” asked the cripple. “And where’s the other one?”

“The girl wouldn’t come out of the room, Flick.” The giant had a soft, whining voice for someone of his size.  “I didn’t want to grab her. I was talking to her and asking her to come out and then Reed just–”

Someone was screaming curses. The Lieutenant shoved his way inside past the big man. He held another struggling girl tight, one hand knotted through her hair, one arm wrapped around her thin waist. The girl was kicking and trying to scratch him as if it was the only thing in the world that mattered. Maybe it was. He shook her hard enough for everyone to hear her teeth click together.

Now Halima was thankful for how amenable she had been when the soldiers came to take her from her room. She would not want to chip a tooth.

“Bitch!” exclaimed Reed Kimble. “I had to pry her out of there and she fought like a feral cat! She scratched me!”

“Let go of me!” The girl was around Halima’s age and was strikingly ugly. Skinny and dirty, with sallow skin and cheeks spotted by pockmark scars from an old illness. She kept struggling. “Motherfucker, let go of me! Let go! I’ll kill you!”

“You’re hurting her!” said the little boy. He scooted closer to the weeping woman on the floor who was probably his mother. “Stop! You’re hurting Jules!”

The girl twisted her hand around and raked her long nails down the Lieutenant’s cheek. Red streaks appeared alongside the green ones. He swore and cuffed the girl alongside the head, then shoved her to the ground. She went down in a flutter of dirty wool petticoats but scrambled back up immediately with her teeth bared, standing protectively in front of the little boy and his mother.

“This is giving me a headache,” commented Florence. “Go take care of your face, Reed, we’ll be fine without you.”

He had his hand clutched over the scratches and looked down at the new girls hatefully. “I understand why you wanted the King’s whore, Prime Minister, but the elders say that anyone who willingly allows a witch to live won’t go to the summerlands after their death. We need to burn them and purify the estate.”

“Superstitious nonsense,” said Flick with a nasty smirk. From her place by the fire, Beatrice laughed.

Witches? If this was true, Halima could not help but agree. Her father had always told her about how in the old days, in their old home – wherever that had been – a witch had destroyed the human body of the Great Devourer. That was why God’s spirit lived inside the Book to begin with. Witchcraft was the polar opposite of blood magic. Blood magic required self-sacrifice, it was a selfless act. Witches stole their power from the lives around them. They brewed poisons and aborted innocent babies. Thankfully it was said that there weren’t many of them left.

They didn’t look like witches. They looked like dirty peasants from the Hinterlands.

“Let me worry about why I wanted these girls.” Florence flicked the ash from her cigarette. “Go. See about that tea while you’re at it.”

The door closed behind him. Halima eyed the others in the room with her. She did not see any weapons. Who would protect her if these girls were dangerous? Which one of them could she rely on? 

She watched the ugly combative one grab the little boy and turn him this way and that as if looking for injury. She smoothed down his fluffy black hair. The boy couldn’t have been more than 7 and had a dumb glassy look like there was something wrong with him. They had probably locked him away somewhere, witches did things like that. He pulled away from her touch, put his fingers in his mouth, and stared at his mother crying on the floor. The ugly girl made an angry, frustrated noise, then spun back around to glare daggers at anyone looking at her.

“Kidnappers!” She hissed. She pointed a boney black stained hand at Florence. “When my teacher comes for us, she will–”

“I know all about your master, Julia Labelle. I hope she does come, I have personal business with her from many years ago. Why don’t you all sit down?”

“Ahh!” The woman on the floor moaned. She was still hiding her face. The boy hesitated, then tried to put his little arms around her as a comfort but she curled further into herself to keep him away. “Do you smell that? Can you smell it? Like rotting meat! I smelled it in my dreams before I had Marty! That terrible desert!”

“This is a wonderful way to spend the morning,” said Flick.

“I agree.” Halima hid a smile behind one hand to mirror his sarcasm. She had already decided that it would be easy to ingratiate herself with these people. If what they said was true, if the war was lost and Jean-Baptiste's fall was an inevitability, she wanted to be on the winning side. She needed to stay where she was safe, where the power was. Flirt. Charm. Hide what she really was behind her beauty and pleasantness. She watched the cripple cut his dark eyes towards her. 

Jules crouched to pet the crazy woman’s head as she shuddered and sobbed. Halima stared brazenly at her, having already mentally established how far above her she was in the new hierarchy. At least she was above her in the hierarchy of kidnapped young women. What an ugly girl. Her hair was so greasy and tangled. What nasty hole had they dragged these people from?

“It smells like the demons I saw in my dreams!”

“I know. I know, Ivy.” Jules looked up and cast her squinty gaze about the room. Her mouth was set in a hard line. “Like death. I smell it too.”

Halima gave herself a sniff. Although she had not bathed since the day before, the scent of rose petals lingered on her skin and hair. Jean-Baptiste liked it when she bathed in rose water. For her part, she did not smell any rotting meat in the room, only cigarette smoke.

“You all must be wondering why I’ve gathered you here,” said Florence.

“Gathered?” Jules spat. “Kidnapped! Men grabbed us in the night, they burned down our home! They shot my cat! I’m not wondering about anything!” Beside her, the boy, Marty, tried to rub his mother’s back and she twisted away from him. 

“Please stop interrupting the Prime Minister.”

“Prime Minister?! Are you out of your mind?! We’re the King’s subjects!”

Florence shrugged. “You’ll be treated well if you decide to stay at my estate and help me, but I won’t force you. You’ll have food and clothing. I’ll even provide an education for the boy– I’m sure he wouldn’t learn anything if he was stuck out in the Hinterlands all his life. You must understand that war is coming. If you stay with me, you’ll be protected. You’ll be safe. All of you girls must know how dangerous it is out there for anyone who does not worship the new gods. They burn witches, even if they are only young girls. I don’t need to tell you what happens to les yeux sanglants, the bloody eyes. There was a reason the Butcher’s men tried to slaughter all of them 6 years ago.”

Halima’s heart clenched. Her mouth went dry. They knew. They already knew, how was that possible? She was so careful! So that was why they had bound her hands. So that was why Florence Gauthier had commented on her name! All of a sudden she could not move. It was like she was 12 years old and watching her home burn all over again! She saw the ugly witch girl’s face screw up in confusion.

Play along. Protect yourself. Protect the baby. Her parents and Cihad were dead but she wasn’t and that had to mean something. 

It seemed as though Jules was either stupid or uneducated. Or maybe she was only worried about herself and her friends. “You want us to work for you.” Her tone was poisonous. “You want to use us.”

“I’m a collector of talented people. It seems wasteful that our leaders have killed those who can do magic for the last 200 years.”

“Wasteful or prudent?” By the fire, Beatrice smiled. It was a plain, friendly smile, perhaps aimed at Flick or Florence. “Magic combined with technology led to the bloody fall of Asilo, if the rumors are to be believed. The ones who escaped the Lost Colony caused a lot of suffering here. Maybe we should have learned from the mistakes in our pasts.”

Florence inhaled smoke and theatrically pressed buttons on her thinking machine. “Our resident historian, my Minister of Communications, Beatrice Kosarin,” she said to the girls. “Magic and technology were only tools in the hands of our enemies. They can be tools in our hands as well. Ivan, show these young ladies what I mean.”

The giant blinked downturned eyes that gave him a look of perpetual melancholy. He had a few broken teeth, like someone had hit him hard in the mouth a long time ago. Despite how large he was, he was so quiet that Halima had nearly forgotten he was there. He stretched out one huge hand. “What do–”

“That green book on the top shelf.”

And as if by– well, as if by magic, a large old book on one of the shelves behind Florence floated outwards. It was like it had been grabbed by an invisible hand. Halima felt a shiver go up her spine. Her father had always said such abilities existed, something innate, something lower than the worship of the Great Devourer. Cihad had been able to do things without making sacrifices to God. He had been able to pull electricity from the air and direct it. She watched the book float down, down, down, until it thumped down quietly on Florence’s desk.

Jules cursed and made the sign against evil.

“A useful tool,” said Florence, opening the book. A blush spread across Ivan’s cheeks. Maybe he did not like being called a tool. “I like to surround myself with useful people. I have a war to win, after all. And after this war, I plan to win another one. There’s questions I have and you ladies can help me answer them.”

Never ending war. Halima did not like the thought. Her baby twisted around in her belly. Did she want to bring this child up in a struggle that never ended? Did she think she had a choice?

On the floor, the witch named Ivy kept crying. Halima did not want to be like that, scared and stupid. So what. So these people knew what she was. They didn’t know who she was. They didn’t know what she was capable of or what she was willing to do to survive. In Ile de Matane she had used her body to get what she wanted and to appear useful. Here she would appear useful in other ways. It was not so different from being a soldier.

“My teacher didn’t teach us much,” said Jules. She hunched her shoulders, crossed her arms tight. “If that’s what you want. I know the healing arts. That’s it.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can learn.” Florence flipped through the old book. “This is the journal of a man named Frank Toussaint, back before the monarchy. Interesting stuff, if you can believe it. He was the kind of man who liked to keep records. Times used to be different. He wrote about his friends. Some man named Jerry from Asilo. A woman named Silas from Eden. People who should be long dead.” She looked up. “Healing arts. I hear witches can pull life from the things around them and funnel that into their bodies. Is that true? Could a person extend their life unnaturally that way? Maybe a witch could live for centuries if they sucked the life from another soul.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Hm. And I hear blood magic can bring back the dead. They say that the Princess Seraphine is a bloated corpse shambling around the Imperial Palace. What about that, Miss Vernier?”

Halima did not shrink down, but she wanted to. She forced her own pulse to slow by breathing deeply through her nose. Was this a trap? She had not talked about her God or her sacrifices to Him for years and now her mouth was so dry that she could not speak. All eyes were on her now and the look that Jules was giving her was downright hateful. 

And to bring up the revolting Princess as if that was her fault! Halima almost shuddered.

She licked her lips and lowered her eyes. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. It’s forbidden to worship the Void. I would never spill my own blood.”

May the Great Devourer forgive her for denying Him. She didn’t even know where the Book that held God’s spirit was now. It was terrible to even think about. She didn’t know where God was. He didn’t talk to her anymore like he did when she was a child.

“You deny being from Blagodat?”

“I was born to a merchant in Ile de Matane. I worship the new gods. And the King.” There was a lump in her throat. So these people knew about witches and appeared to be willing to let them live despite their danger. So what? That did not mean that she was safe. The bodies of her parents and her brother and almost everyone she had grown up with were rotting in the mud back home all because of their faithfulness to God. Some other pretty girls had been taken along with her, sold to the brothels in the city. Halima did not know what had happened to them. Not everyone was as clever and as careful as she was. But was living better or worse than rotting in the mud? “I can’t help you do whatever it is you want to do.”

“Not much use to us, then,” commented Beatrice.

Jules had grabbed Marty tight up into her arms. “Something does stink in here. You all can’t smell it?”

“Smell yourself,” Halima said coldly. She straightened her back. “I am only a merchant’s daughter, beloved by the King. Send me back if you want. You’ve wasted your time. As you can all see, my eyes are brown, not red with dark magic.” It was unlikely that anyone knew the secrets of her people. They wouldn’t know that the color faded without a connection to the God of the Void. 

The witch-boy whined. Ivan hesitated, then pulled a peppermint out of his pocket, crouching down to offer it to him. Jules snatched it out of his hand.

“How many bodies were you unable to account for in the ruins of the blood magic cult?” asked Beatrice.

Flick shrugged. “Nasty work. It was hard to make much sense of anything there, since the bones were so picked over and scavenged by the crawling mutant howlers. I counted skulls. The census from the year before said that it was a town of 643. A few dozen were missing. Who’s to say.”

If these people wanted to get a rise out of Halima by discussing the desecration of her people’s bodies, it would not work. She believed that their souls were at peace in the Void. She lifted her chin.

“The young sergeant from Kimanka said that his father took a handful of girls as war-brides, as is their savage custom,” mused Florence contemplatively. She blinked and looked around. “Where is your blustery friend, Ivan? Go find him. Here I am talking about my collection and I’m missing one member of the menagerie.”

That made Beatrice laugh her mean laugh again. Halima was not sure if she liked her. She watched the big man nod once and then leave the room. Jules inched back towards the door, pulling Marty with her but paused when she seemed to remember his mother was prostrated and sniveling on the floor.

The thinking machine on the desk gave a series of loud beeps. It made Halima flinch. Everyone knew that technology was a dangerous tool, only a select few built and used thinking machines to send messages or compile data. 200 years ago fiery missiles had rained down from the sky across every province, guided by technology. The thinking machines were what had brought it. That destruction was what had ended democracy in the North and why the first King had come into his power. What was this woman thinking, using it so casually?

She used it for the same reason she had brought witches into her own home. For the same reason she had brought Halima there against her will. Useful tools, but dangerous ones.

“Is it that Agapama fool?” asked Beatrice. She snapped her book shut, showing irritation for the first time.

“Of course it is.” Florence clicked a few buttons, then snubbed out her cigarette. “I don’t understand why he doesn’t just leave. I’ll never understand…”

Now that she was being ignored, Jules seemed to grow angry. “You’ve said what you wanted to, are you going to let us go now?!”

“What will you go back to? Go crawling back to your master so that she can drain the life out of you? She was an old woman when I went to her and begged her to end my pregnancy 20 years ago. What does she look like now? No older than me?”

Jules went pale under her spotty, dirty face. Flick, who appeared no more than 20 years old, coughed awkwardly.

This talk of witchcraft and abortion was obscene but Halima kept her mouth shut. Sit and wait, she thought. Sit and wait this out. They didn’t know her.

Again, the door to the room opened and Ivan returned. He stopped where he had stood before, close to and right behind the ugly witch as if he felt protective towards her. He was closely followed by a young man in one of the armored uniforms that Halima had been unable to recognize. Barely out of his teens, he carried himself in a scornful fashion. His face was smooth and tan and very handsome but he wore a sneering expression, brown curly hair falling into cold eyes.

“Prime Minister,” he said in the same thick marshland accent of Kimanka that Ivan and Beatrice both had. “I told you I don’t want to waste my time with this stupidity. The Imperial Army is marching on our borders.”

“Arrogant puppy,” muttered Flick under his breath, just loud enough for his mother and Halima to hear.

“And I told you to watch your manners, Anatole Surkhov. You didn’t want to meet my guests?”

“They’re only girls,” the young sergeant said dismissively.

Surkhov. That was the name of the Butcher of Kimanka, the man who spearheaded the slaughter of Halima’s people. She remembered seeing him among the carnage while she tried to run with Cihad, she remembered the blood-fury. But the Butcher had died in his own home. And as far as she remembered from her time there, he only had daughters.

The room seemed to fill with a faint high pitched buzzing. It was like listening to a far-off hive of bees. Halima touched a hand to one ear and frowned.

“Girls,” repeated Florence. “Have a look. Do you remember any of these girls from your youth in that barbarous swamp you crawled out of? Do any of them look familiar?”

Anatole cast his cold gaze about. “I don’t remember much of my youth in Kimanka. You can ask Dog.”

Ivan made a movement like someone had hit him when he heard that. Dog. It wasn’t a name anyone chose. Jules looked up at him and made a “tsk” noise with her tongue. 

For her part, Halima did remember everything. She remembered her time in the Butcher’s fortress after his soldiers carried her and the other surviving girls to the marshlands before she was sold to suffer indignity after indignity. Even then she did not draw her own blood to protect herself. She did not remember any boys her own age from that time, only men and their grabbing hands and hungry faces.

Her baby was kicking like it wanted to get out. The buzz continued.

“Be polite.” These farmers from the Strath did not like marshlanders from Kimanka, that much was evident. So how had Florence convinced them to fight for her? Their only value was brutality, they had nothing in common with people who believed in the gentle summerlands. Halima had even given herself a Strath name– Olive. “Your father did not steal girls from the blood cultists of Blagodat?”

“How would I know? My father did a lot of things to a lot of girls, I wasn’t exactly keeping a record like the rest of you people.” Anatole put a gloved hand on his sword hilt. The buzzing grew loud enough for Halima to wince. “The only thing I remember my father stealing from Blagodat is this.”

“Oh, here we go,” said Flick, rolling his eyes. He leaned on his cane and turned his face towards his mother. “You talk about your collection of useful tools, Prime Minister. It’s that cursed blade you want, not the deviant who holds it.”

Those were the wrong words from the wrong mouth. Anatole’s beautiful, contemptuous face changed in an instant, his eyes going wide, his lips twisting back. He drew his sword one-handed. It was long and wrought of black iron, old as anything, with a strange silver script twisting down the blade. The air seemed to sing the second he pulled it from its sheath. He pointed it towards Flick, his stance perfect and practiced. “You look like the only deviant in this room, cripple.”

Halima could not help herself. She could not control herself. She screamed, then clasped her hands over her mouth. The last time she had seen that sword, it had been in her father’s hands in the black temple.

Florence slapped her hands down on her desk. She did not stand up, her face did not betray any emotion other than the inquisitive firmness it always held. “Control yourselves!” she barked. “By the new gods, I can’t believe I have to deal with this.”

“Take it back before I break your good leg,” gritted Anatole.

“Your father was a murderer of women and children. Mother, it was a mistake to recruit these marshland animals, just like it was a mistake to bring these girls under our roof.”

Meanwhile, Ivan had taken a step forward and placed his big body in between the witches and the man with the sword. The action was instinctual and unconscious. The little boy Marty, who had still been trying to comfort his stupid mother, grabbed hold of his pant leg. Jules appeared at a loss, woefully ignorant of how to act around men.

Nobody thought to step in front of Halima. Not that it would have mattered. She would have ripped at her own hair if she could have. Her heart pounded. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. Her family was dead and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. They hadn’t deserved it and Halima didn’t deserve this. There was another scream bubbling up inside of her and she knew that if she kept staring at this memory of her father, she wouldn’t be able to bite it back down.

The Faceless Priest had been loving and he had been cruel and he was dead. His sword had been forged out of the same metal as the dying star that had brought the Great Devourer’s spirit hurtling to earth from the other place. It was supposed to be Cihad’s, it was supposed to have passed into Cihad’s hands, but Cihad was dead too. The blade had been stolen by heathens just like Halima had been stolen.

“I challenge you,” said Anatole, with a menacing step forward. His boots clicked. The star-metal sword sang in a voice nobody else could hear. 

“And I reject it.”

“Let me know when to call a maid to mop up all the blood,” said Beatrice. She sighed. “You’ll never learn what’s inside the Lost Colony, ma’am. These girls are worse than stupid and we won’t find answers if we can’t even unite the different provinces. Look how that’s working out. Old books are so much more predictable than people.”

“How hard could it be to unite if we all stopped acting like children?!” 

“I challenge you!”

“And I unconditionally reject it!”

Halima’s hands were shaking now. She couldn’t stop it. She had tried for so long and for what? All she had was the memory of Cihad’s hands reaching for her and then it all went black. Somewhere in that blackness she had been doomed to this life of misery, of scratching out a place for herself where she could be safe. Her father had been supposed to protect her. God was supposed to protect her! Where had the Great Devourer been while men had touched her, while she had made herself low?

If the sword had been taken from the corpse of her father, then the Book must have been taken from Cihad’s corpse. She bit her own tongue and tasted blood.

“Where is it?” she asked, and nobody heard her. Her blood was copper-bright. No, no.

The mad woman on the floor was rocking herself back and forth. “I didn’t want to see it,” she whimpered. “I didn’t want to see that place. I didn’t want to have him, so I tried to stop it! I knew it, I knew that he could open a door that led those things here!”

Anatole gave his blade an intimidating little slash. “I’m tired of the disrespect! I’m tired of my father’s name in the mouths of spineless peasants!”

Halima clenched her fists. “Where is it?” she said again, louder this time, her voice wavering. Florence glanced at her sharply.

“Tolya, please calm down,” whined Dog. He pressed closer to Jules and Marty with his arms outstretched, probably ready to snatch something with his invisible hands. The ugly witch-girl stared at him and then touched her own hand to his back as if she wanted to give him strength.

“Yes, Tolya, please calm down,” Flick repeated mockingly. “Put that thing away before you hurt yourself. You’ve been here 6 months. I’ve devoted my entire life to this struggle, I’ve given everything, so don’t you think–”

It was too late and it was too much. Halima shot to her feet. She didn’t care what they thought of her, she didn’t care about hiding herself or protecting herself. Only one thing mattered and that was the God of the Void. The Great Devourer was all that she had left, he was the only family she had left and somebody was keeping him from her. 

“Where is it?!” she was shouting. She could hear her own voice from outside of her body, mingled with the otherworldly ringing of the starmetal sword. There was blood at the corners of her lips. The air around her smelled like ozone, like the sky after a lightning flash. “Where is it?! What have you done with it? Where have you people taken it? Is it in here on the shelves with all the others? Where is my father’s Book?!”

All eyes were on her now. Wide eyes, but not scared, not yet. She could make them scared if she wanted to. They should be scared of her. They did not know her relationship to the God of the Void– they did not know anything about anything! That was why she had been ripped from the palace in the first place! For what? Because one self-important woman from the backwoods province of the Strath was curious and wanted to know things?

Halima wanted to know things now too. Please, God, she thought, praying for the first time in all these years, praying with the taste of blood in her mouth. Please. Please. What else was there to say to him other than please? She had felt God’s embrace curling inside of her once when she had touched the Book and now it was all empty.

“I want the Book!” she yelled. “I want the Book, where is it? Cihad and I took it when we were trying to run while they were shooting everyone in town! I kept asking God for help and they killed everyone anyway! Do you know we were trying to run here because we thought it would be safe? But this isn’t safe, it’s just the same, it’s just more people trying to hurt each other. Now my brother is dead and I don’t remember what happened, so where is the Book? If you people have it, you have to give it to me!”

“Her eyes…” murmured Flick. It made her want to scream again. She had exposed herself and they were all staring at her.

All the fury had drained from Anatole. He lowered the sword along with his gaze, his expression changing to one of shame. “Just a girl,” he said hollowly. “My– my father was only following ord–”

“Where is the Book?!”

Jules had picked up Marty and was holding him close. She was the only one who still looked hateful.

“I was right,” said Beatrice. “I knew it. The Faceless Priest’s daughter survived the genocide at Blagodat. That’s Isaksen’s Book of skin she’s screaming about, Frank Toussaint mentioned it in his journal. From the entries right before he left for Asilo.”

“And the boy she’s talking about?”

“Must have run off and starved to death in the wilderness. Flick and I never found any records of anyone finding that Book. I was hoping that the girl would know, if she really turned out to be Halima Tariq. Guess not.”

It was too much. The last person who had called her by her true name had been Cihad. Halima could not get enough air. She choked once and then burst into tears. “I want the Book!” she wailed. It was too late to care about what they all thought about her, or how childish she was acting. Her childhood had been stolen from her! “You’ve already taken everything from me, I just want the Book! Kill me already, if that’s what you want to do.”

Silently, Flick pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and limped over to her. He handed it over wordlessly. Halima took it and blew her nose. “Sorry,” he said. He did not sound so cheeky now. “We’ve been unkind. Nobody here wants to hurt you.”

Her lower lip trembled. There were spots of blood on the handkerchief. Please, God, she thought again, but she did not know what she was praying for.

The hungry God of the Void did not answer. It was not listening.

They didn’t know. They didn’t have it. Halima would have been happier not knowing any of this, she would have been better off back in the palace with Jean-Baptiste. Or maybe not. If the war came to Ile de Matane and ravaging soldiers entered the palace, she and the baby would be as dead as Cihad.

She didn’t want to die. The pain filled the emptiness that her family’s deaths left in her heart. These people didn’t know where the Book was, but they knew things, that much was clear. And they were trying to learn more. Tears dripped off her face and onto the floor.

 “Poor girl,” said Florence. “At least we know now. Could have done without the dramatics.”

“Another piece of your puzzle,” said Beatrice. “Who’s to say how many pieces there are left.”

Halima rubbed her belly as she sniffled. Only a few months left now. Maybe if it was a boy she would name it after her brother, but it was bad luck to name a child after the dead.

“Would you like to go back to your room and rest now?” Flick’s voice was still kind in the way that people are kind when they want to get rid of you. “We could see about that tea. And the strawberry pie.”

Men were always nicer to her when she cried. She blew her nose again. “That’s fine. For now. Until I figure out what I want to do.”

Ivan looked down at the witch-girl. “And you, miss?”

Jules was clearly struggling to hold Marty. She scowled, which didn’t do her any favors. “Well we don’t have anywhere else to go.” Something was bothering her. Probably the implication that her master ate people.

It would not be pleasant to share a space with witches. It would be even less pleasant to share a space with so many soldiers. But Halima intended to stay here, at least until she had the baby. At least until she saw who was winning the war so that she could end up on the winning side.

And now, like Florence Gauthier, she had pieces of her own puzzle to put together.

Halima Tariq would just have to keep praying.

[blooblooded]

Lost Colony World Building

STANFORD, MONTANA, 1998: JERRY

After a draining day in the stockyard, Jerry Botega came home to find his wife arguing with their housemate for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Not only are you wrong, but you’re stupid,” Reuben Kowalski was saying. Jerry could hear his loud, pretentious voice before he could even see him. It grated on his nerves like the squeaky brakes of a car and brought out urges he could not speak about. “There’s no way you think that. There’s no way that you don’t think Picard is the best Captain in Star Trek. Nobody agrees with you. You’re the only person on earth who thinks that.”

“Sisko’s better at making the hard choices. He–”

“First of all, Silas, first of all– Sisko’s a Commander, he isn’t even a Captain. Second– at least Picard’s not a war criminal! He has an actual moral compass. Do you remember the one where Sisko poisons an entire planet to get one over on that terrorist group? Picard would have come to a peaceful solution instead. Also, TNG is the superior series in every way so I don’t even know why you would think that.”

Not that Jerry held much stock in liberal terminology like mansplaining, but that was the closest word he could find for the way that Kowalski spoke to his wife. Their endless dorky squabbling exhausted him. Jerry bypassed the living room to avoid them both and opened the fridge to grab a beer. One of the dogs jumped up on him when he walked in. He closed his eyes.

Bone tired. He was bone tired. Another calf had been born...wrong…that morning. Its neck had been fused back to its spine and there had been oozing, translucent skin covering its eyes and ears. The poor pitiful thing ripped its momma apart on the way out and had been born screaming. Massive internal hemorrhaging, it was a miracle from the Devil that it had not been stillborn. He’d had to put a .22 slug in the back of its head to put it out of its writhing, painful misery. That was happening more and more often lately and now he had to walk in on the two people he lived with arguing about television.

“The Federation isn’t perfect,” Silas said sullenly. “That’s why I like Sisko better. Picard’s peaceful diplomacy only exists because other people in the Federation are watching over it and doing the nasty stuff that nobody wants to think about.”

“Yeah, Section 30-whatever it is. Oh, that’s wonderful, Silas, I’d rather not watch a series that glorifies terrorism and Soviet style secret police. And Riker’s in TNG! Come on, you can’t beat Riker.”

“Worf gets more development in DS9.”

“That’s– they completely mischaracterize him!”

Jerry took a long sip of beer. Everything smelled like blood. Everything had been smelling like blood since the sky ripped itself open and turned red two weeks ago. The astronomers on the news– including one of Reuben’s prissy ex-boyfriends who lived in Quebec– all said that it was a natural phenomenon. Jerry suspected that everything was about to go to hell.

He gave the dog another pat before walking into the living room. Reuben stood in front of the TV with his hands on his sizable hips, looking pompous. Even though the college stopped its classes after the unprecedented astronomical phenomena, he still dressed up every day in his khakis and button down shirt. Not exactly common for the middle of bumfuck nowhere. His eyebrows were raised haughtily as he looked down on Silas. Jerry’s wife on the other hand, was wearing the same sweatpants and hoodie she always did when she was not at work. She sat hunched and cross legged on the couch holding a half-smoked joint, her dark hair in a loose ponytail. Every day that passed without answers for the terrible slash in the sky left her more agitated and depressed.

Jerry shrugged at them both. The TV wasn’t even on.

“Busy day?” asked Reuben Kowalski.

“Eh.” Better not to worry him by talking about the deformed calf. Silas could handle it, she was entirely cornfed and unsophisticated. But Reuben had soft hands and a softer mind. He was tender. Jerry could not help but think of him with some manner of tenderness. 

“What are your opinions on Star Trek?” Reuben was trying to score some kind of nerdy point. Trying to get one over on Silas. For some reason he liked to poke at her. “You ever watch Star Trek, Jeremiah?”

Over the 10 years he had been married to Silas, Jerry had been forced to watch hours and hours of stupid television shows. Hours he would never get back. He sipped his beer. “I ain’t taking sides in this one, sorry.”

“He’s such a Worf.”

That seemed vaguely racist. Jerry rather thought of himself as more of an O’Brien; exhausted and overworked and married to a botanist who was brighter and better than him in every way. He just shrugged at that as well, then sat down next to his wife. Silas looked at him from the corner of her dark eyes and gave his knee a quick pat.

He knew that she was scared. He knew that they were all scared. The sky was red for god’s sake! People were posting online about some kind of disease that had come from outer space, which was crazy in itself, it was like something out of one of Silas’ shows. How was he supposed to comfort her? How was he supposed to make her or anyone feel like they were safe?

Oh god. The mutated, screaming calves. His hands had started shaking when he put them down. How many had there been now? A dozen? More? Was this happening all over? He could hear them when he closed his eyes. That was what was in front of everyone, wasn’t it? Everyone was going to die screaming because of whatever sci-fi bullshit the earth had been thrown into.

He figured they were all going to die very soon. They were just sitting around waiting for it to happen. And here were Silas and Reuben, arguing about science fiction. Maybe it was better that way. It was a distraction for them. He didn’t have the luxury of distracting himself though. Jerry had to be responsible. He had to take care of his wife and his…well, his Reuben. 

The sky was red! The stars were in the wrong places! People were getting sick all over the world, every country with nuclear weapons was threatening its neighbors, and all Jerry could think about was the screaming, twisting calves. He couldn’t handle it. There was nothing to do and nowhere to run. There was nothing to understand. 

When Jerry had to slaughter an animal, whether it was a chicken or a hog, he always treated it real good before delivering the killing blow. He’d feed the chickens meal worms. Distract them a little. Their lives were so short and bad, they deserved a little distraction. Maybe that was what was happening now. Maybe he was supposed to play along with this conversation, he just didn’t have the heart to.

Silas took a hit off her joint and then passed it to him. Jerry shook his head. She shrugged. Oh, his poor Silas. She tried so hard to protect herself from the world. Ever since she had been just a little kid in foster care she had walled off her heart so nobody could hurt her, she distracted herself with stories about a far off future she could never build. He wished he could protect her.

“You want to watch the news?” she asked him quietly.

Anything but that. He was so tired. Tired of everything, achingly bone-tired, ready-to-die tired. Jerry put an arm around his wife, a woman who could never love him the way he needed but who he loved anyway. He needed a distraction too but he would never get it. “Nah,” he said. “Nah, we can watch Star Trek. But only if we watch the series with the Black Vulcan guy in it. Not the one with the wormhole and the goo aliens, that’s too– that shit’s too close to home.”

He would not realize just how too close to home it was for hundreds of years. By that time it would be too late.

“Oh god,” whined Reuben. “That’s the worst one.” But he sat down on the couch beside Jerry anyways.

A welcome distraction. 

EDEN, 200 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS: SILAS

“I hadn’t heard from him in months,” said Silas. She tried to keep her voice from breaking. Over the last few days, she had cried more than she had in hundreds of years. She couldn’t stand crying, she couldn’t stand any weakness coming from inside of her. But how could she help it? This was her husband! “I hadn’t heard from him in months and two nights ago he calls me and something is– something is wrong! He looked sick and he was talking about– I can’t explain it, he was talking about crazy things!”

“Talking about what?” asked Reuben Kowalski from the screen in front of her. He shared the screen with Frank Toussaint and Anikah Liu; all three of them were hundreds of miles away from her, just like Jerry was. All three of them appeared unaged and unchanged. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Things from before!” She could barely bring herself to say it, it was all too illogical. Her mind could not grasp anything that could not be explained by science and logic but here she was. “That Book. That Book he took from Teddy Isaksen’s compound when we– when we all–”

“--When we all died.”

The hair on the back of Silas’ neck stood up. She remembered how Isaksen had put a bullet in her and each of her friends. She remembered the black nothingness. She didn’t like to think about it, but Jerry had always believed that some kind of miracle had happened that day because of Isaksen’s Book.

But it wasn’t Isaksen’s Book, was it? It was something else. It was something…something alive. She could push that uncomfortable thought away as much as she liked but it did not change the fact that something had happened that day that nobody could explain. It was completely out of her control and there was nothing Silas hated more. 

“Well, what did Jerry say, Silas?” asked Frank. His voice and his nasally Quebecois accent made her grit her teeth. He had always talked down to her, thought that he was better than her because of his education, thought that he was more cultured than her because of where he came from. He thought that she was some stupid midwestern hick. She couldn’t stand him. “He must have said something to you.”

“He said something bad is happening in Asilo. People are– are changing.”

“People are fleeing his Colony and coming to mine.” Frank’s tone was dismissive. “Some kind of religious oppression. They’ve formed religious beliefs based off that Book of his and it’s out of control. I’ve opened my borders to anyone who wants to leave since the Territories are only 200 miles from Asilo.”

On her end, Silas was doing her best to stamp out all religion from Eden and set up the peaceful atheistic utopia that she believed was best. But this wasn’t that. This was something else. Something bad, something unmentionable. Something bad that was no longer contained! She shook her head. “You shouldn’t be letting anyone from Asilo into your Colony, Frank, you shouldn’t be letting anyone in at all. They’re all sick, I think they’re all sick or something’s wrong with them, very wrong. We should all be quarantined!”

“It sounds as if Eden has been quarantined for decades. Not all of us are isolationists.”

She wished that she could reach through the screen and punch him. “You’re not listening to me. Something terrible is happening there. Jerry wasn’t himself when he called me, I think everyone in Asilo is dying! There’s some disease, some sort of infection, it’s worse than what happened to everyone when the Rift opened!”

They had to remember what had happened all those centuries ago. Almost everyone in the world became sick and transformed into weeping, howling mutants. 

“Where’s the evidence? You’re as paranoid as ever. The refugees from Asilo are like anyone else, they’ve just been persecuted for not blindly following the ridiculous religion your husband has made up.”

“Evidence?!”

Reuben laughed nervously. He pushed his blonde hair back from his boyish face. “OK you two. This isn’t the time to bicker. Silas– I speak to Jerry regularly. Last week he was his normal self, he told me that he’d like to take some time to travel to Green River to visit me. I don’t understand why you think there’s something so wrong with him? It sounds like there’s some social problems in Asilo, but which of us don't have social issues in our Colonies? A bit of unrest is natural for any human society. As for the Book… I used to be curious about it as well, but my research led me to believe it’s nothing more than an oddity of the Rift, no different than the little slimy animals that came through it. I understand why Jerry feels a connection to it.”

His love for her husband had always blinded him.

They were all in danger. Silas’ head pounded. Her glasses were fogging up. What could she do to protect herself and Eden? She could not allow anyone to leave Asilo. For all she knew, she could not allow anyone to leave the Northern Territories because Frank, that idiot, had let Jerry’s people across his borders. They were unsafe. They were all unsafe. They didn’t understand. They hadn’t seen how sick Jerry was. They hadn’t seen what was happening in his Colony.

The people there were tearing each other apart. 

She tried again to make them listen. “I’ve seen it. They’re killing each other. There’s blood in the streets, they’ve built a temple, some kind of massive black pyramid, and they’re killing people there. There’s something wrong!”

There was a beat of silence. Anikah Liu made a sound of disgust. Like the others, she was completely unchanged, so completely full of beauty and life. Her eyes were filled with black light, her posture was casual yet poised. Silas could only see her head and shoulders on the screen but imagined that she must be wearing the same stylish athleisure clothing she used to favor. She smiled but there was no joy behind it. “Do you have cameras over there in Asilo too, Sy?”

Silas winced. So she knew about that. It wasn’t her fault. Silas just…she needed to know what was going on. She needed to watch. It made her feel safer to watch.

And the cameras in Asilo…the things she had seen! It was like nothing she could imagine. They were tearing down buildings, they were creating massive structures of unspeakable geometry. They were killing women and children in the streets like it was nothing and everything was red, so red. That madness could not be permitted to leave the Colony!.

“I could show you. I could show you what’s happening there,” said Silas.

“She has cameras there then,” said Anikah. “She has cameras everywhere.”

How had they turned into this? Anikah had loved her once, a long time ago, when they were both different people. Now everything was just...cold and far away. And Silas was alone, just like she was always alone. 

Something still needed to be done. For once she wanted to take action and nobody was listening to her.

“I’ll talk to Jerry,” said Reuben. “I’m sure everything is fine, Silas. He’s been stressed lately. I remember how it is. A few hundred years ago, I was dealing with similar political unrest in Green River. It happens.”

“Listen to me! I’m telling you that something’s wrong with him, he’s not himself!” She struggled to make sense of it. There were no words, she could not come up with a description of the wrongness in her own words. “It felt wrong talking to him, do you remember the episode of TNG where the parasites–”

“For once I’d like you to stop talking about television,” said Frank. He pompously smoothed down his thin mustache. “This is real life we’re talking about. You’re blowing things out of proportion as usual.”

“Blowing things out of proportion?! Can you imagine if we lose everything we’ve built because we ignore this problem? Can you imagine if we go back to the way things were before, with everyone starving and wandering and terrified? My husband is doing the exact same thing Isaksen was doing at his compound, only on a massive scale! We need quarantine procedures. Anyone who’s left Asilo needs to be detained immediately. I have unmanned combat aerial vehicles, I have drones, and I think it would be in our best interest to bomb–”

“Oh, there it is. There’s what this is about,” interjected Anikah with greater disgust. She rubbed her eyes. 

“You’re talking about murdering half a million people,” said Reuben, suddenly cold. 

“They’re already killing each other! What if their beliefs get to Eden?! All I care about is keeping my Colony safe!”

“Je m’en fous,” Frank’s face was all twisted up, he was looking at her like she was a bug. “I’ve met the refugees who’ve fled from your husband’s incompetence. They’re not whatever you’re claiming they are. They’re people like us.”

Silas did not really believe that she was a person anymore. Not since Teddy Isaksen had shot her and she had fallen into thick darkness. Not since Jerry had used that damned Book to bring her and Anikah and Frank back from…back from wherever it was that the spark of human consciousness went when the brain and body can no longer sustain life. For that reason alone, she knew that what Jerry was doing was real and terrible and could not be permitted to continue. If the words…if the power in the Book could pull life back into a dead body, what else could it do? What other terrible things?

The people in Asilo who were being torn apart…the people in Asilo who were being eaten alive?! She had seen the frenzy of their worship. That could not happen in Eden. She would not let it.

She would do anything within her power to keep Eden safe. Anything. If that meant killing everyone in Asilo, so be it. If that meant shutting herself off from the rest of them, from Reuben and Frank and Anikah, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about any of them anymore, and they certainly did not care about her. Silas had one purpose and that was Eden, its people and its safety.

Nobody understood and that was fine. Nobody understood her and nobody ever would. That was fine too. 

Whatever was happening to Jerry, whatever was happening in his colony, had to be stopped by whatever means necessary.

Silas would be the one to stop it. 

ASILO, THE LOST COLONY, 20 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS: YANCEY

The boy did not have a name. Nobody in the place he lived had names. There was no reason for them to have words to call each other in the stinking darkness of the Lost Colony. The only language they had was the twisted, backwards lamentations that the gods spoke in the heaven beyond the stars. If God had no name, then why should any of the crawling humans on Earth have one? None of them even knew what a name was! They did not know what they were missing. 

If you have no sense of self, then it does not matter when you offer yourself up. The 300 people who had been trapped, reproduced, and died in the ruins of the Lost Colony since its fall were little more than animals. Most of their humanity had been stripped from them by starvation and madness.

Well. The boy was different. He had never cared about God. He was interested, but he did not ever throw himself down to the ground to worship him. That was just a good way to get ripped to shreds and eaten. And the boy had no intention of having that happen to him.

He had a secret. The boy had found a secret place. Everyone else was too scared to go there, they would shiver and shake and bite at themselves if they even looked at it. The crumbling building was where God had once lived. It was huge and very old, half destroyed, with numerous twisting passages and old rooms. The boy didn’t understand why everyone was so scared of it. He had never felt scared. He had never felt much of anything, really. All he knew was that he liked his secret.

The secret was this: there were things inside the old building that still worked. The boy did not understand how. He did not know what electricity was. All he knew was that he could touch things, he could flip switches and press buttons and they would light up like magic. The first time he had done it, the shock of the light had nearly blinded him. He had thought that something bad was happening, he had thought that he was about to die. But he kept going back inside. And every day he got more and more used to it. 

There was one room that the boy liked best. It seemed like someone had once lived there, but it was nothing like the place the boy lived, the place where he huddled for warmth with dozens of other stinking, naked people. The walls had been painted a color that the boy had never seen before, and he had learned that it was the color of things that grew and lived outside. There were very old things inside. There were scraps of soft things that people were supposed to put on their bodies. There were all kinds of trinkets and knick knacks. The boy spent hours looking at them and wondering what they were.

One of the first things he found was small and flat and when he saw it for the first time, a shock had gone through him. The image of two people was on this small object. So there was a way to capture the likeness of people and trap it forever? Unthinkable. The boy had held it and stared. The image was of a man and a woman. The woman was clean and smiling, her long dark hair looked very smooth, unlike his own dirty mats. She had clear square things on her face and one of her arms was wrapped around the man beside her. And the man–

Well, the boy had seen the man before. He had seen him many times, crawling and screaming and tearing apart flesh. Because the man was God. He just did not look like God in the image on the flat object. He looked soft and clean and happy.

Had God once been a man? The boy had to wonder this.

The secret place was full of images. In one room, there was a flat and shining surface covered in dust. The boy looked into it and was confronted by a reflection of himself for the first time. It made him flinch back in fear until he realized that he was looking at himself. The boy touched his own face and watched his mirror image copy him. The image of the boy was gaunt and pale as the belly of a blind fish. His eyes were pale pink and half-blind like everyone else’s eyes, his hair was black, and every inch of him was filthy. The boy opened his mouth and looked at his own teeth which were stained red from chewing on the roots that grew in the ruins for sustenance. He frowned.

He had no concept of the grotesque. Every person in that shadowy place was grotesque from generations spent in darkness, from 200 years of gnawing on their own bones. There was no light, there was no beauty. But the boy still did not like looking at himself.

Oh, but the other images! Once the boy found the other images, he could not tear himself away. In the secret place, there was a box with buttons that could be pressed, and the buttons played sequences of images on another flat surface. The images were not real but they seemed real. They showed the boy wonderful things outside of his comprehension. They showed the boy strange people dressed in clothes, moving and talking in clean bright spaces. In these images, there was no howling and wailing and sacrifices of blood. There was no empty God waiting to drag them into the shadows to consume. Only people.

At first the boy did not understand the sounds coming from the box of images. His people did not speak like that, they spoke the twisted language of the Void. Over time, he learned. He learned fast, he picked it up naturally. Something in his mind made the sounds…right.

“Does anyone smell anything smoky?” said a man with brown hair and clear things over his eyes as gray smoke flooded the space he was in.

“Did you bring your jerky in again?” replied a small pale woman, not looking at him.

The images and sound proceed, showing the flat people on the flat screen running around and panicking. The boy would watch transfixed. He would think about how he wanted to live like the people in the moving images. They did not have to worry about starving to death. They did not have to worry about being consumed. 

The boy would return to his own reflection. He would stare at it. He would stare and stare and think about how badly he wanted to look like the people on the flat screen. There was nothing he could do to change his own perception. But the perception of others?

The boy was different. When he thought about it hard enough, he could make others see him as different than he was. If he wanted to, he could make others see him like he saw the people on the flat screen: clean and healthy and happy, not pale, not grotesque, no milky pink eyes.

The other people who lived with him in the darkness didn’t like that very much. The boy didn’t care. He started to think about how different he was. He started to think about how he wanted to go to the places he saw on the flat screen. Did a place like that even exist? Was it real or was it fake, like a dream? But it had to be real. There had to be a place where humans did not have to crawl in the darkness and get ripped apart by a hungry God.

Maybe there was a place with no God. The boy didn’t know.

This wasn’t a life. This wasn’t even survival. This was scratching and clawing and waiting to die while praying to the howling gods of the Void. The boy had stopped praying a long time ago. It didn’t make any difference because they never answered. 

The roots stopped growing and the blind fish of the cave rivers went away. To keep from starving, the people the boy lived with killed a little girl so they could sustain themselves from her flesh. It happened from time to time during the seasons where they could find no other food. They cut her throat and rubbed her blood on their bodies while wailing at the gods of the Void. The boy didn’t eat. The little girl had been born to the same woman who had given birth to him. He wasn’t sad about it, but consuming her was not the same as consuming someone who did not share his blood. When everyone was finished, God crept out of the shadows to gnaw the marrow out of the girl’s bones.

The sound of the crunching bones made the boy’s mother shiver and gnaw her own fingers until they bled in the alcove of stones that they took refuge in. The boy watched her silently tear at her dirty hair, too scared to make a sound that God could hear. He didn’t like it but he had no way to tell her to stop. All he could do was crouch there and watch the huge, twisted creature devour what was left of the girl’s body.

He was close enough to see God’s empty, slack jawed face. Close enough to see his sharp white teeth, close enough to see his long matted hair and beard. Close enough to see his gaunt and naked body. God was starving, just like the rest of them. He fed on their bodies, just like everyone else. 

The boy wondered if God had once been a man. All men died. Maybe God could die. Maybe it could be done. Maybe it could be done. Maybe. Maybe if God died, all the people would be safe again. Maybe they wouldn’t have to starve and eat eachother, maybe they could find somewhere to live that was light and happy like the people in the flat screen.

The boy liked to think about a world where that was possible.

That was the night he decided that he would kill God.

[blooblooded]

Tony Reunites with Cihad

After the first night of being back in Eden, Tony had already decided to find Cihad Tariq.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Casey asked him nervously, watching him get ready in the safehouse’s small bathroom that morning. It was early, 6:30 am. Early was good. Cihad woke up early to exercise and calm his mind. It would be best to catch him before he went to work and exhausted himself. “Dad says that most of the CCTVs are malfunctioning, but there’s still a chance you could be seen. And, uh, have you forgotten all about how that guy freaked out on you the day he came to take the Book back from Kassidy? Or how he tried to drag the truck back the day we left Eden? He was pissed. Beyond pissed.”

Over the last two years, Casey had grown into a natural leader. Of course she was worried about him. She didn’t understand Cihad like he did, she only saw him as a threat. There was no reason for her to see him as anything but a threat after everything they had witnessed, everything they had learned. Tony shook his head. He finished shaving, then splashed water on his face. He felt like he looked presentable, despite how fear and struggle had aged him. His long black hair hung down to his shoulders and he did not tie it back the way he used to. “Did your Dad bring us any aftershave when he picked up supplies?”

Casey’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, no. I don’t think he imagined you or Marty were gonna go try to get some dick. And you didn’t answer my question. Are you sure it’s a good idea to go see the man who brought the Book to Eden? I still think he’s working for it. Nothing we learned in the North proves otherwise.”

“He’s not working for it,” said Tony. “He’s a good man and he’s been raising my daughter. I have to talk to him before I try to come back into her life.”

Try to come back into her life a second time. Cynthia was 15 years old now. The first time he had abandoned her, out of paranoid delusions and a half-pickled brain, he didn’t see her again until she was 6. The 4 years he spent back in her life, together with Cathy and Cihad, had been the happiest he had ever been. Then Cathy had died and everything went wrong. For 2 years he hid in the sewers, out of his mind, living with rats. He never thought he would ever see her again.

He still might never see her again. Cihad might not let him. And even if he did, even if he did let him,  Cynthia might not want him back in her life. He wouldn’t want that, if he was her. 

That was out of his control. The first part of the Serenity Prayer was all about accepting the things he could not change. If reuniting with his family was not an option, he would just have to accept that, and focus on the things within his control. 

Tony looked at himself in the mirror. He had chosen a green shirt because green was Cihad’s favorite color on him. Or, it had been once. 

What was he doing? Cihad had probably moved on a long time ago. He was probably seeing someone else, someone better than him. Of course he hadn’t waited, and it wasn’t fair to expect him to have waited. It seemed almost pathetic for Tony to be preening like this, letting his hair down, thinking about aftershave. There were more important things to think about. Like the Book. Like where the essence of that demon had gone after leaving Kassidy’s body, and whether it would try to hunt him down again.

Well, Cihad deserved to know about that. Even if he never let him see Cynthia again, even if he had moved on. He deserved to know. He was involved. The strings of fate that connected the whole world, future and past, had bound them together.

“I just think that it’s a bad idea,” said Casey. She spoke quietly. Everyone else was still asleep. When Tony woke from where he slept on the couch in the living room, the smallest noises he made had alerted her. Ever since their time in the Northern Territories, she had been unable to sleep soundly. “I feel like he’s working for It. The Thing in the Book. He was the one who brought it here. If that thing is somewhere in Eden, who’s to say he doesn’t just hand your ass over to it.”

“He isn’t and he won’t.” 

There was one thing that Tony was completely sure of: Cihad had once loved him. He had really loved him. No, it hadn’t started out that way. It had started as simple empathy, Cihad saw him as someone he could fix, he felt a sense of control when he was able to fix people. And Tony had liked the attention. Nobody had ever treated him with that kind of compassion, he had spent years as a homeless alcoholic. He was used to getting treated with disgust, or worse, not even seen as a person. Cihad never saw him that way. Cihad had only seen someone who needed his help. The compassion turned into lust, which turned into love. 

Tony hadn’t meant to ruin it all after what happened with Cathy. He had just been so scared. Cihad had probably thought that he killed himself. The look he had got when he saw him again in the attic! That wild, frantic look! Tony felt bad. He had really hurt him but at the time, he hadn’t seen another option than run to the sewers. And then again, the second time, his only option had been to run from Eden.

Now he didn’t know what to expect. Cihad would probably be angry when he saw him again. Tony could deal with angry.

“I’ll come back,” said Tony, checking himself one more time in the mirror. He pushed some of his hair up so that it hung over his shoulders, then Looked at Casey.

She did not think he was coming back. One way or another, she believed that he was leaving. Running away again. Always running away. Tony cringed a little bit inside. He did not know how to make her believe otherwise.

He left anyway. He left, telling himself that he was coming back but not completely believing it himself.

Tony was careful as he made his way to the metro station. Logically he knew that he did not need to be so careful, he knew that he was seen as dead in the eyes of the state. There was nobody looking for him anymore or even anyone who cared. As far as he knew, the only danger he needed to worry about was not even in Eden anymore. It was probably still in the Lost Colony and would be trapped there until…until, well, he did not know.

Still, he was careful. He did not get a single look on the train. Everyone on it was just going about their lives, headed to their jobs that morning. Tony kept his eyes on his shoes. 

He realized that he did not even know if Cihad still lived in the same 3 bedroom house in the Residential Mid Levels. Kassidy was the one who had given him the address, she was the only one who had actually been there. Stupid. If he showed up on some random family’s doorstep, he was going to feel like an idiot. But Cihad was a creature of habit, he was someone who needed to carefully control his environment. He would still be there. It was the place he had moved after Cathy had died. He had to still be there.

Tony got off the train. He took a deep breath of the oxygen rich air that they only seemed to pump in on the Mid and Upper Levels. The Co2 in the air where the Safehouse sat was stifling, choking, after breathing the fresh clean air outside of Eden for the last year and a half. It was funny. Tony had breathed thick, toxic air all his life. He had never felt like it was squeezing and choking him until he experienced what he was missing.

It was a short walk from the metro station to Cihad’s house but the whole time, Tony grew more and more anxious. The streets here were lined with vertical gardens to give residential homes more privacy. He looked up at the vine covered slabs of concrete, so beautiful and wrong at the same time. His heart hurt. He missed Cihad more than anything but seeing him face to face scared him more than anything too.

That wasn’t even taking into account Cynthia. Tony swallowed and almost tripped over a crack in the sidewalk because he wasn’t paying attention. A mother pushing a baby in a stroller gave him a sideways look. He ducked his head and kept walking.

The house was the same as the majority of middle-class family homes in Eden. Two stories, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a little balcony off the back. It was built of concrete blocks in a utilitarian, brutalist fashion that didn’t lend very much to warmth. A chill went up Tony’s spine when he looked at it. He had never lived in this house. But two people he loved did. It was almost like he could feel them.

Tony’s stomach lurched like he was going to throw up. He checked the time on his phone. 7:00. Cynthia would already have left for school, since classes started at 8. There wasn’t a chance that he would run into her. That was good. He needed time to think about what he was going to say.

Was he stupid? Was he making a bad mistake? He kept telling himself that this was not only a personal visit. Cihad still had the Book and Tony needed to examine it while it was still uninhabited and powerless. If it was still uninhabited and powerless. The last time he had the Book in his hands, he had been frantic, trying to rip it to shreds himself. This time he knew better. This time he could be logical.

He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking. “Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he told himself. “Serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

No going back now. Tony walked up to the front door, stood there for a second, then rang the bell. The last time he showed up unexpectedly on Cihad’s doorstep, he had been wasted, dying, and had thrown up on Cihad’s shoes. This was a step up. There was no way he could embarrass himself as badly as he had back then.

He still felt like he was going to throw up though.

The door opened. And there he was. Cihad was dressed in blue scrubs and white sneakers. The scrubs didn’t fit his huge body correctly, he looked like he had been poured into them. His dark curly hair and beard were neatly groomed like they always were, not a touch of gray in that hair. The second he saw him, Cihad’s red eyes became huge in his face. His expression was more shocked than it was angry or horrified. He froze and dropped the mug of tea he was holding and it shattered on his doorstep.

Tony tried to smile. “Well, I’m back,” he said sheepishly. Nonchalant. Maybe cool, or at least trying to be cool. Idiot.

“Anthony.” Cihad’s voice came out as a strangled whisper. He did not move.

“You gonna let me in so we can talk?” Tony’s own boldness shocked him. “You know, since last time I saw you, you were screaming and dragging a truck back with your mind? We have some things to talk about.”

Cihad’s eyes looked shiny. That was weird. His stupid ham-like hands clenched and unclenched. Tony wondered if Casey had been right, that Cihad was still pissed at him and whether he needed to run. God, he was stupid! It was so easy to forget that Cihad was about 150 pounds heavier than him and was an avid user of blood magic on top of his neuroelectrical abilities. If he really wanted to hurt him, it would be easy.

Wait, what was he thinking. Cihad would never hurt him. He would die before he hurt him.

As if in a trance, Cihad extended his big arms and wrapped them around Tony’s body. He didn’t even have time to struggle, he just found himself being lifted off the ground and squeezed tightly. Hugged. He was being hugged. It had been so long since anyone had actually hugged him. Tony was able to free one arm and curled it around Cihad’s back, patting him awkwardly.

“I thought you were dead,” said Cihad. His voice cracked.  His face was pressed into Tony’s neck, he could feel his warm breath and the prickle of his beard hair. “How did you– I thought you were dead. I thought I would never see you again! You were dead and I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it!”

“Yeah, well, I have this funny way of always surviving.” Tony’s ribs were hurting. He squirmed to escape from Cihad’s grasp. Part of him liked it. Even without Looking, he could tell that Cihad still desired him after all these years. It wasn’t exactly something he could hide. The other part of him, the rodenty prey animal part of him, felt afraid. Loving someone just meant that he could lose them. “Hey– quit squeezing the merchandise, get off, get off me.”

He let him go. Cihad pushed back his wavy hair. “I’m calling off work,” he said, and stepped back into the house. “Come inside. You can come inside.”

So he wasn’t seeing anyone else. Good. It sort of scared Tony that he had this much power over him. Within three minutes of seeing him, Cihad was already calling off of work. He wondered what else he could get–

No, what was wrong with him? Tony followed Cihad inside.

The house was furnished in a simple, homey way that made sense for a single father. Tony passed a picture of Cynthia on the wall and looked away quickly. The girl in the picture was a teenager and almost recognizable to him. She had bright blue eyes and a big smile. He couldn’t look at her, not yet. There was another picture of a child Tony did not recognize and he squinted at it for a moment. This kid was also Black, maybe the same age as Cynthia, with a bright and friendly face. Where had Cihad picked up another kid?

He looked around as Cihad led him into the kitchen. “Do you still keep that thing in here?” Tony asked cautiously. He had not forgotten the little slime creature Cihad kept as a pet. It had always disturbed him that it had learned how to speak; they weren’t supposed to do that. Ever since Marty had told him about the one that was trapped in the Void, Tony had thought about the ways he could keep this one away from his daughter. “You know, that alien thing that used to sleep in the drawers?”

Cihad glanced at him. He sat down at the kitchen table. “Billy’s at school.”

Great. The fool had named it. That wasn’t ominous at all. Tony felt a chill go up his spine. “We learned a lot about those things while we were gone.”

“Where was that, exactly?” His voice was clipped. Suspicious.

“North. The Northern Territories.” He watched Cihad’s expression tighten. “We went to this place— this state or territory, I guess —called the Strath. Cassiopeia Agapama’s father was doing business with the person in charge there. We talked to her on his behalf and tried to find answers about that Book you brought into Eden.”

Cihad didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Was he scared? He had always been so secretive about his past. At this point, Tony knew more about it than he felt he would ever be told. Was that a betrayal? Was it like going through someone’s phone for proof of cheating? He knew that Cihad did not want him to know about where he came from. Well, that was too bad.

It wasn’t his fault, but every fucked up thing that had occurred because of the Book was because Cihad brought it to Eden when he was just a kid. There was nothing any of them could do to change that. 

He continued. “There was this place up there. This burnt down town. Have you heard of a place called Blagodat?”

“Stop,” said Cihad.

“That’s where you’re from, isn’t it? That’s where the Book came from.” Tony sat down across from Cihad. There were three chairs at the kitchen table. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was sitting at Cynthia’s. “The people in the North said that they killed almost everyone who lived there over 20 years ago. Not you though. You survived. And you brought that Book to Eden.”

There was an almost unbearable minute of silence. Cihad’s face was like a cold mask, all of the warmth had drained away. He didn’t want to talk about this. Of course he didn’t want to talk about this. It would be easier for Tony to just See the truth of it all instead of prying out answers like he was prying teeth. 

But he wanted to give this man he cared so much about a chance.

At length, Cihad only said, “God kept me safe.”

“You know that thing isn’t a god, right? It’s just some Thing that got trapped here like all of those monsters made of black slime. Only hungrier. It’s from some other place. We’ve been learning about that too.”

“Anthony, I just—“

“You were a kid and you didn’t know any better,” said Tony, and he knew he was about to twist the knife in but was unable to help himself. “But it killed Cathy because it was trying to take her body. And now it’s trying to take mine too.”

Surprisingly, the big nurse didn’t react. Had he already known? To be exposed to the Book for as long as he had, he must have known. That in itself was sickening but Tony could almost understand. Almost. Cihad had not wanted to let go of the one thing that tied him to his childhood. He did not have anything else. It had all been ripped away from him in one night of blood and fire.

“That means Kassidy Nguyen is dead,” he said at last, with a tone of regret. “I didn’t figure it out until I saw her so sick like that. I could have done something. She was just— she was so angry, she was falling apart. I’m sorry. Her mother and I have—“

“She’s not dead but she came close,” Tony interrupted. “It would take more than some stupid alien to kill her.”

Cihad’s shoulders sagged visibly in relief. How strange. It wasn’t like he had known Kassidy. It wasn’t like he had been anything other than her supervisor at the Hospital. Tony used the Sight to take a little peek and saw the swirling truth of why he was so worried about her. There was a common string linking them. A tired little woman. Cihad had been busy for the last year and a half. Cihad had been collaborating with Kassidy’s mother. Not just collaborating, he was her friend. He cared about her. He cared about her so much that he was scared she was going to kill herself if—

No. Stop looking. It wasn’t right. He was here to talk. He was here to talk to someone he cared about like a normal fucking human. Tony shook himself.

“She’s fine,” he said lamely. “Kassidy’s fine.”

What else was he supposed to say? What were they supposed to talk about? There was so much Tony wanted to know. How was Cynthia? How was he? What had happened while he was gone? What had happened before he had gone, during those years that he was hiding with rats and out of his mind? Since Cathy had died, he had seen Cihad twice, and both of those times he had been so…so angry at him! Or angry at the situation. Scared and angry. So scared and angry.

So what now? There was no way to just pick up where they had left off. The time for that had passed years ago. Here he was, grilling Cihad and asking questions about where he came from when he already knew the answers. There were other answers he wanted. How was Cynthia? How was he?

Stupid.

They sat in uncomfortable silence. Tony became acutely aware of how his hair tickled the back of his neck. Every breath seemed to take concentration. Where was he supposed to look? Not into Cihad’s eyes, never into Cihad’s red, red eyes. It was safer to just stare down at his hands in his own lap. Tony had never been good at talking. 

“I just–”

“Are you–”

They started and stopped at the same time. Cihad made a little huff of frustration. Tony grimaced awkwardly and watched the man he had once loved stand up from his chair, turn to the counter, and put the kettle on. Pulled out two mugs. God, what was his problem? He was always trying to take care of other people, it never fucking stopped.

It didn’t take long to brew the tea. Cihad poured three scoops of sugar into one of the cups. Tony’s stomach flipped. He remembered how sweet he liked his tea. It had been years and he still remembered. But for the life of him, Tony could not remember the way Cihad took his. Back when they had lived together, he had never been the one to make it.

When Cihad handed him the mug, he sipped from it without waiting for it to cool down. The taste was so…artificial. In the Strath Tony had gotten used to real tea. The stuff that they sold in Eden was a thin copycat of that, something formed in labs like everything else in this anthill. What did Cihad think of it? He had grown up outside of Eden. Did he remember the taste of real tea? Or had it been too long. Maybe his memories of his old life had faded.

“Are you living in a shelter again?” Cihad asked him.

Tony choked on his mouthful of tea. Was that really what he thought? That he was homeless again? Well, OK, on a technical level he had never stopped being homeless. On a very shameful and technical level, he had been homeless ever since the day he abandoned Cathy. But he had thought that Cihad would have understood the gravity of his situation in this moment and how his life was in danger. “No, I’m–” Maybe he shouldn’t tell him where he and the girls were staying. Not that he didn’t trust him. Tony shook his head. “I’m staying somewhere safe. I probably shouldn’t be out here now. I just wanted to see you.”

“You’re staying somewhere with Kassidy Nguyen.”

“I never said that.” Tony put his mug down. “Look, she isn’t ready to–”

“I don’t need to know.”

Oh, but you wanted to know, you enormous nosy motherfucker. Tony rubbed his face. “Look, a lot has happened. I don’t know how to begin.”

“A lot has happened here too.” Cihad crossed his arms. 

Now that he understood where Cihad’s accent came from, and had heard dozens of irritating people speaking with voices that sounded just like his, it sounded a lot less sexy. The soft T’s. The musical vowels. He was so full of himself. “Yeah, I’m sure it has. I’m sure it’s been fucked, I mean, it seems more fucked here than usual, but maybe that’s because I’ve been gone so long. Everything feels off, I feel like I’m on the verge of–”

“I missed you.”

Ugh. That was not what Tony came to talk to him about. Stay focused. Don’t get drawn in. He laughed nervously. Say it back. Say it back, you piece of shit. “I, uh– you too. My life has gone to hell since the day Cathy…” he trailed off, unable to say what had happened to Cathy.

“I’ve been raising two kids by myself for years now.” Cihad was staring right at him, red, red eyes boring holes into his head. His eyelashes were so thick that it was like he was wearing mascara or something. “It hasn’t been easy. Every night I think about how different things would be if you hadn’t run away.”

Where was he getting two kids from? As far as Tony knew, there was only Cynthia. But then, what did he know? He had run away. Time to diffuse the situation. “I’m sure you haven’t been lonely. Single dad with a tragic past? Guys have probably been lining up outside your door.”

“That’s not funny, Anthony.”

Oh god. Tony prepared to dive head first into uncomfortable sincerity. “I’ve missed you too, OK? I miss you and Cynthia. I did what I thought I had to do at the time. Your fucking Book? We had to run for our lives because of that Thing. You did that. You brought it here and I know, you were a scared little kid, but you still brought it here. I had to run over and over again because of you, I didn’t want to run away, I had to run away. And I still missed you. It’s just all–”

He Saw the guilt and self hatred radiating off of Cihad. Piece of shit. Tony looked away. 

“I’m sorry.”

Self righteous asshole. Tony groaned. “It’s just all fucked. We’re fucked. You and me. I didn’t come back for you. I know, I’m self aware enough to– I came back for my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Cihad’s voice had a funny edge to it. Tony winced. “What do you mean by that? Do you think you can take her away? You don’t have custody. You never–”

“I don’t know what I mean. Goddamn!” Why was he being so defensive? Cihad had never been like that before. He knew that he could never take care of Cynthia. Not now. Not ever.

“You don’t have custody,” Cihad said again. Suddenly he was breathing hard. He seemed big and angry. “I’m her father. I’m the one who’s taken care of her. Alone. By myself. I’m tired of people telling me that they want her to take her away. I’ve got social services sticking their noses where they don’t belong, and all these threats from Si– and now you show up and you finally want her? I don’t think so.”

“Calm down.” Tony put his hands up. “What’s the matter with you? I just meant I want to make things right with her. I’m fucking homeless, man, you think I can take care of a kid?”

That took the air out of him. The silence grew between them. 

This was fucked. Tony knew it. He should have waited longer to make it right. He should have prepared for what he wanted to say instead of just winging it. He was so stupid. He was stupid and he had been lonely for too long. There was a hole in his heart where his family had once been and over the years that hole had expanded. 

And still, he wanted to know more. Why would social services be involved in Cihad’s life? They didn’t get involved with perfect people like him. CPS only went after families like– well, families like Tony’s. All it would take was a little peek. All it would take was the blink of an eye. But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t right to do to someone he loved, he had to keep telling himself it wasn’t right. 

Why couldn’t he just melt into the floor?

“Thanks for the tea,” he said lamely. Tony stood up. “I’ll go. I’ll just go. We can pick this up later when I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Don’t go.”

“No, man.” He didn’t know where he was supposed to put his hands and just stood there awkwardly. “I wanted this to go well but I’m going to screw it all up again.”

“Please don’t go.”

Wasn’t that just a knife in the heart? Sweat beaded on his forehead. What was he supposed to say? Cihad was practically begging him to stay. Every instinct in Tony’s body was telling him to leave. Go home. Regroup. This was too hard. It was going to hurt too much. He wasn’t ready. He was so stupid. Everything he said was just going to piss Cihad off. There was no way to have a civilized conversation with someone like that! The more Cihad clung onto him, the more Tony wanted to push away. But he didn’t want to push away! He was just so– so!

There was a sound from the front hallway. The door opening? Tony frowned and shot a dirty look at Cihad. Fucking liar. Of course he had some kind of lover who had keys to his house. Cihad frowned back at him and mouthed something unintelligible. Tony shook his head. Cihad pointed at him. Tony made a throat slitting motion. 

Hopefully it was burglars because if some little booty call walked into this kitchen, Tony was really going to lose it.

“--so annoying!” chattered a very young sounding voice. “You know she’s copying your look, right? She’s doing her eyeliner exactly like you now.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like shit,” replied an equally young girl’s voice. “It’s so childish. Bitch. I can’t stand her. Such a tryhard, she’s just, she’s like fucking jealous, you know? Yancey said people are just jealous of me.”

“Rachel’s covering for you in homeroom, right?”

“Rachel’s covering for us.”

Tony watched as Cihad’s face flushed and his eyes widened. Ah. So the delinquent apple did not fall far from the delinquent tree. He remembered this little game from his days in high school. Cynthia must be skipping class under the blissful belief that her overprotective father was safely at work and far away.

Ah.

Oh shit. He had to get out of there. Not now! Not like this! He hadn’t seen Cynthia since she was 9 years old and god knew what Cihad had told her about him! She probably thought that he was dead! The best case scenario was that she thought he was dead! What else would she think?! 

There was nowhere for Tony to escape to. He was trapped in the kitchen and was totally unprepared. His body was frozen in horror.

No time. There was no time. He stood there like an idiot as he watched a girl who had grown into a person he did not recognize walk into the kitchen and freeze just like him.

So this was Cynthia at 15 years old. Her round, dark face and sturdy frame were so much like Cathy’s at that age that it was like he had gone back in time. Just like Cathy. And not at all like Cathy. This was a different girl. This girl did not wear glasses. This girl did not cover her hair. Cynthia wore jeans and a crop top, instead of the dresses her mother favored. She wore her braids tied up in pigtails that showed off her pierced ears. And her eyes– her eyes were as blue and vacant as the sky.

When she froze, she wasn’t even looking at him. She stared at Cihad like he had grown a second head.

“What are you doing here?” asked Cihad immediately. Oh, he was very angry. It was coming off him in waves.

“What are you doing here?” Cynthia shot back. She crossed her arms defensively. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school? You’re skipping again? We talked about this– Cynthia– your teachers, they will call social services if you–”

“Oh my god, it’s not that big a deal! Calm down! I didn’t feel well and I didn’t want to call you!”

Another kid edged up behind Cynthia. The kid from the photograph. They looked to be the same age as Cynthia but taller and neater. There was something unsettling about their face but Tony didn’t linger on them too long. They put their hands with black painted fingernails over their mouth. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?” Cihad was getting red in the face now. “Uh-oh sounds right– you’re going along with your sister on this one? After everything you told me about wanting to go to school like the other kids?”

The other kid cringed. “No, Dad, I just– I don’t know.”

“You two are grounded, you’re grounded, I’m taking your phones, I’m taking–”

And then Cynthia screamed. She had finally looked at Tony. The noise she made was horrible, a wail that was equal parts pitiful and excited, like a puppy that had been locked in a cage all day. It came from the deepest parts of her. She screamed and suddenly she was launching herself at him, throwing her arms around him as tightly as she could. Cynthia pressed her face into Tony’s chest. She was sobbing.

And Tony did not know what to do. He did what he had not been able to do for years. He hugged his daughter.

Piece of shit. This was his fault. He had done this to her. In keeping her safe, he had deprived her of a father.

Cynthia wailed and wailed and sobbed and sobbed. She would not let go of him. Tony awkwardly rubbed her back. There was a lump in his throat he could not swallow and his own eye prickled but he would not let himself cry. He was the reason she was crying. He had missed her so much for so long and now he did not know what to do. He did not know how to be. It hurt too bad.

“You’re dead!” Cynthia cried, like she was a little girl instead of a teenager. “Dad told me– me– me you were– were dead! You were dead!”

Oh Cihad. He had chosen the easiest, least hurtful route. It was what he would have told her too if their places had been reversed.

What was he supposed to even say? Tony was so bad at this. He had never had a good father to model himself after. He was out of practice. It had been too long. When he tried to speak, his voice cracked. “I– I’ve got you, baby.”

Cynthia started wailing again. Words weren’t coming out anymore, just long unintelligible whines that sounded like ‘daddy’. 

Not like this. This had been stupid, impulsive. Tony had needed more time to think. He had needed time to think of how to apologize even if he couldn’t make it right. Maybe it would have been easier if she was angry at him. Now all he could do was hold his little girl for the first time in so many years.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, baby.” It was all he could think to say.

The apologies would come later.

[blooblooded]

The girls vs death squad

The truck slowed to a stop. That was what it was supposed to do. Stop, wait for the gates to open, and keep driving. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this. Trucks came into and left Eden by the dozen each week, transporting manufactured goods to the neighboring Colonies of Green River and Serenity, then bringing raw materials back. There was nothing to worry about. Casey’s dad had assured them all that there was nothing to worry about, since he had paid off the Border Guards. No searches, no checks. Only one stop, lasting one minute of time. Nothing to worry about. All good.

One minute passed. Then two.

Kassidy chewed on her lower lip until she tasted blood. The cargo bay was nothing but a metal rectangle, claustrophobic and windowless. The only light shared between herself, Ayda, Esther, Rosie, and Tony came from their phone screens. They were all crammed in there together, alongside various boxes Mr. Agapama intended to send to the Northern Territories. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was inside of them: weapons and technology, the perfect tribute to an embargoed foreign nation on the brink of war.

“We should be moving,” Esther whispered. Her face was bloodless in the pale light. She clutched at the neck of her sweater with spider-like fingers. “It shouldn’t take this long. Something’s gone wrong.”

“Tabby has it handled,” said Rosaline. “Tabby said she drove for AGA 5 years ago, she knows how this goes. Everything’s OK.”

“Tabby’s a liar! All Tabby has ever done is lie!  If she lets the Border Guards search the truck, it’s over for us! I can’t go to prison! Do you know what they do to Artificials in prison?!”

“Babes, you need to take some deep breaths right now.”

Their squabbling was familiar, something easy to tune out. Kassidy stood up. She wanted to pace but there was no space inside the cramped cargo bay. Something was wrong but she did not want to sit still. A frenetic energy had filled her body. Her heart pounded and she could hear every pulse of blood in her veins. Kassidy started to jiggle her legs to disperse the energy. So close, she thought. She was so close. She was so close, she could almost taste it.

Close to what? Kassidy had never left Eden. She had never wanted to leave Eden. It was her home. It was all she knew. But now what did it have left for her? Why should she stay? Her brother was dead. Her mother hated her. She had lost her job, she was losing her health, she was losing everything, so why should she stay? The whole world and all of its gleaming potential was in front of her. So close. They just had to make it through the gate. They just had to make it through the gate and keep driving, keep driving until they reached the ruins of Asilo and–

Wait. No. They weren’t going to the Lost Colony. They were going to the Northern Territories. In her excitement, she had mixed up the two. That was it. That was all that was.

Tony sat next to Ayda. His knees were drawn up to his chest with his eye squeezed shut. Every now and then he would shiver. Suddenly he looked very small and old. Kassidy stared at him. She still did not understand why he had agreed to come along. He had protested for months and still he had got on the truck with the rest of them like a cow walking down the chute of the slaughterhouse. 

Sometimes Kassidy wished that she could grab him and shake him until they were on the same page.

As if he knew that she was thinking about him, Tony opened his one blue, blue eye and looked up at Kassidy. His mouth tightened, then he tapped his nose. Kassidy put a hand to her own nose and brought it back wet with black blood.

Fuck.

Outside, she could hear raised voices. One of them was distinctively male. Oh, their shit was absolutely cooked. They had been found out. The Border Guards were going to search the truck and haul them all off to jail. For what? For smuggling? Human trafficking? Who was to say. Kassidy wiped at her face, smearing the black blood even more. Ayda buried her face in her hands and started to snivel. The air in the cargo bay became heavier. “They got us,” she moaned. “We’re so busted. Oh my god, what are we going to do? This was so stupid. I’m so stupid. Dad’s going to be in so much trouble.”

"Shut up, Ayda,” snapped Marty, from Ayda’s phone. Up until that point he had been uncharacteristically silent. Kassidy imagined him sitting alone in his room. “Just shut up.”

“Tabby and Casey can talk their way out of anything, I’m sure this is just normal. They think we’re scheduled to go to Green River, there’s no way anyone wants to go through the hassle of a search this late at night.”

Rosaline’s pragmatism did nothing to calm Ayda down. She started to cry and Kassidy felt tears prick at the corners of her own eyes. She angrily rubbed them away.

Outside, she could hear Tabitha Delmont talking. She must have been very close, to have her voice carry through the metal cargo bay. “Look, look, wait, you can check my credentials, it’s all right here. Just check the manifest. It’s all good, everything’s good, I swear on my mother’s life.” Hearing that made Tony freeze up. “It’s all good, I swear.”

“Shut the fuck up!” A woman’s voice. More like a girl’s voice, stilted and mean sounding. “Yeah, she’s fucking lying, Boss. They’ve got five unregistered people back there, it’s all she’s thinking about.”

Shit. How could she know that?

“Unregistered? No. Everyone’s been registered. It’s just an honest mistake. You want me to call my supervisor? Look, I can call my supervisor right now if you want me to. We’re all from AGA. We’re all from AGA, there’s no reason to overreact.”

“She told you to shut the fuck up.” A man’s harsh voice, harsh and barking.The hairs on the back of Kassidy’s neck stood up when she heard it. Something about it made her feel sick. Border Guards didn’t talk like that. They were just cops, they never degraded citizens like that. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong and she was trapped in a metal box with nowhere to go.

“Hold on, I’ll just call my supervisor and he’ll–”

There was a hard smack and Tabby grunted in pain. Tony flinched. Somebody else outside the truck laughed. 

“We’re done, we’re so done,” Ayda whimpered. “We’re done, this was stupid, we were stupid for doing this.” The air became heavier. Esther kicked her.

“Just be cool,” said Rosie, who was still frustratingly calm about what was happening. Or maybe she was just in denial like she always was. “So what? So we get arrested. Your dad will bail just us out and we’ll try something else. It’s not a big deal. I’ve been arrested before. Casey’s been arrested before.”

“I don’t want to get arrested, Rosaline!” hissed Esther. She was shaking so hard that her knees were knocking together. She looked around the dark little cargo bay wildly. “Oh my god, we have a bunch of fucking guns in here, they’re going to throw the book at us!”

Throw the book at us. That was a funny turn of phrase. Kassidy looked down at her hands, then turned them over palm-up. The cuts running up her arms from the last time she had used blood magic had not healed yet. It would be so easy to open them up again. All she’d have to do was pull up her sleeves, open up the crusting scabs. She sniffed and felt a thick glob of blood and mucus run down the back of her throat. 

Why wasn’t she afraid? She already knew. Somehow, she already knew who had stopped the truck and she wasn’t afraid. There was only one option. That was just the natural progression of things, wasn’t it? Like poetry. The same group of people who had murdered her brother like he was an animal were now here to stop her. Not if she had anything to do with it. Not if she stopped them first.

Ever since she was 17 years old, Kassidy had been scared of them. Internal Operations. The secret police. Eden’s covert security forces, trained killers of the state. Well she wasn’t scared of them any more. She wasn’t scared at all. Not now. Not after what the Book had given her. It had given her strength. It had given her confidence, it had given her more potential than she was worth. How could she be scared when she had something like that? She wasn’t scared. She was invigorated.

And she wanted to hurt someone. Kassidy wanted someone to hurt in the same way she hurt. She wanted to hurt someone the same way they had hurt Kip. She wanted to create wounds that would never heal.

“OK,” she said under her breath, more to herself than to anyone else. She willed her heart to stop beating so fast. Opened and closed her hands. “OK. OK.”

“Everyone just stay calm,” whispered Rosaline, trying and failing to keep Esther calm by rubbing her back. “It’s not a big deal, this really isn’t a big deal, I’m sure it happens all the time. Casey’s out there talking to them too and–”

“--We should have never done this, we should have never even thought about this, I shouldn’t have–”

“Will you shut the fuck up, Ayda?!”

Tony said nothing. He sat perfectly still apart from the occasional shiver. His face was blank, almost glazed over, and his gaze met with Kassidy’s. That blankness took on a sheen of dread. What did he See when he looked at her? The crushing grief had changed to determination and hate. Was that so terrible to look at? She didn’t care if Tony thought that made her terrible. He was lower than even she was, a scared animal, and given half a chance, he would act like a scared animal again.

Kassidy was not a scared animal. She would never be small and scared again. The Book had changed her into something hungry and nobody could take that from her.

The cargo bay’s back doors swung open and outwards. The sudden noise and movement made Esther and Ayda scream, and Rosaline grabbed her girlfriend as she flinched. Tony made one last strangled sound of despair, deep down in his throat. Kassidy froze. The old terror pounded in her head and she struggled against it.  Her whole body felt hot, she bit down on her tongue hard to find clarity.

There were two people standing outside the cargo bay. It was hard to see them in the dark; the overhead lights far above their heads were dimmed at night. But their uniforms were recognizable in an instant; they were the sleek, black, helmeted uniforms of Internal Operations. One of them was slender and had one circular bronze pip on their neckline, the other was plump and had a collar with two pips. Neither were tall. Both of their stances were forcefully composed, as if barely restraining violent urges.

Only one had a firearm and it was still holstered at their hip. Both had stun batons and tactical knives at their belts.

“Get the fuck out of there!” said the fat one with two pips and no gun, and Kassidy recognized the mean girlish voice of the one who had somehow known that they were all in the back of the truck. “You think you can hide from us back there? Get the fuck out before we drag you out!”

“All you smugglers are really stupid,” said the other one, who sounded male and had a lisp. His gloved hand lingered close to his firearm. “You know we always get you.”

“OK, OK,” said Rosaline. She slowly rose to her feet with her hands up. “Just be cool, we’re coming out.” 

“Oh god,” Ayda sniveled, cringing next to Tony.

“You hear her telling us to be cool?” asked the smaller one with the lisp, cocking his blank and helmeted face towards the other. “Whaddya think about that, Nicky?”

“Pretty fucking stupid,” said Nicky. “Real stupid.”

Muffled words of static crackled through a receiver in one of their helmets. The one with the lisp laughed and the other one gave him a little shove.

Esther started to shake and hyperventilate. Kassidy swallowed hard, tasted the coppery blood in her mouth.

She was not going to die like her brother. She was not going to die like Kip had, murdered like an animal. Put down like a dog. There was something that she had to do. There was somewhere that she had to go and because of that, she knew that these people could not stop her no matter how hard they tried.

She had never felt so alive. 

Rosie kept one of her hands up, but pulled Esther to her feet. They started to climb out of the cargo bay. Ayda followed suit, still sniffling, then Tony, moving like he was dead. Ayda was holding Tony’s hand.

“This big bitch is TP,” said Nicky. She grabbed Ayda’s arm. Ayda whined and tried to jerk away towards Tony, as if he would do something to protect her, but was held fast. “You feel that? Empath.”

“Can’t be a very good one if we didn’t know about it.”

“Mm.”

“You–you– don’t touch me like that!” Ayda cried. Her soft, pretty face was splotchy even in the dull light. Some of her hair had come out from under her scarf. “My father is a very–”

“Yeah, shut up, traitor.” The girl twisted Ayda’s arm behind her back easily and peeled Tony away from her. For his credit, he did try to hold on. “Get moving and don’t even think about trying something or I’ll jam myself into your brain.”

The word TP was meaningless to Kassidy but she knew that it meant something bad. It was a category to put people into. Oh categories. Categories were always bad. She was the last one to get out of the truck. Nobody was looking at her. Of course nobody was looking at her. She used her fingers to make sure that her sleeves were pulled down so that nobody could see the marks on her arms.

Something built up inside of her. Her heart beat fast. 

The two Internal Operations agents led them around the edge of the truck. Tabby stood there with her arms up, with blood dripping down her face. Someone had hit her. Somebody had turned her pockets inside out and taken off her jacket.  Casey was beside her, untouched but very wide-eyed and scared. She was not moving a muscle, probably because there was another masked person standing close to her, and a fourth with their arms crossed near the driver’s side door.

When Casey saw her sister being pushed with her arm twisted behind her back, her posture changed from acquiescing to stock-still. Every lean muscle in her body tensed. Her upper lip drew up to reveal the diamond in her left incisor. 

“You were right, Boss, truck was full of smugglers,” said the one with the lisp. It reminded Kassidy of the way the really fucked up Artificials talked, the ones with nasty teeth like Rome Prospas. He sidled up to the one whose arms were crossed but stood just out of reach. “Bet they got weapons and shit back there too.”

“Don’t use an operative’s name in front of targets,” snapped Boss. His uniform was the same as the others’, except for three bronze pips at his collar. Probably the leader. He was the loud one with the barking voice. The hairs on the back of Kassidy’s neck stood up again. Something about hearing him made her feel sick, it made her skin crawl. It possessed the kind of meanness that she could imagine someone murdering her brother with. “I heard you break 1022B’s confidentiality, this isn’t a game. You want me to write you the fuck up? How many times do I gotta tell you?”

“Aw, Boss.”

“Don’t ‘aw Boss’ me, follow policy or I swear I’ll write you up.”

“Leave him alone,” said the one close to Casey. From her exaggerated form, it was easy to tell that she was a woman. Her uniform also had three pips at the collar. There was a hierarchy among them. More categories. 3 pips were at the top. “Be professional.”

Kassidy had never heard secret police talk this much. Their presence in her life had always been brief and silent. They walked onto trains to check people’s credentials. They stood voiceless on top of buildings, always watching. She had never thought about them as humans with feelings and weaknesses. Hearing them talk was so…so wrong.

She could sense the weakness all over them. If she had to, she would kill them all, starting with the one with the harsh voice that made her feel so uncomfortable.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” said Rosaline, still with her hands up. Esther was clinging onto her. She was talking very slowly and clearly, the way that she would talk to doped up homeless people. “Check our credentials. If you check our credentials, you’ll see that we’re scheduled to drive to Green River tonight.”

Oh, she really was stupid if she thought that she could negotiate with these people. She didn’t understand what they were capable of like Kassidy did. She didn’t understand what they could do, how easily they could take a life. She knew, everyone knew, but they didn’t understand. Nothing had been taken from them like it had been taken from her.

All that Helen had taught her relied on instinct. There was life and there was death and there was the will to change it. Something hummed deep inside of her mind and it rattled her bones. Kassidy did not know the words. She did not know the symbols. Helen said that she hadn’t either. Helen said that there was something unnatural inside of every person that was just waiting to get out. 

All that was required was that she direct her focus. The force of her life could affect the life of others. All that she needed to do was destroy part of herself.

“Credentials don’t matter no more,” said the big one with the barking voice. Boss. Out of the four of them, he was the greatest threat. He was so close to Casey. Close enough to lunge and grab her if he wanted. Close enough to hurt her if he wanted to. Kassidy couldn’t think about that. His posture was just relaxed enough to look underious. “You don’t watch the news much, huh?”

“We’re scheduled– we’re just driving to Green River to–”

“No more trucks in or out of Eden,” said Boss. He did not uncross his arms. “The new trade cargo or whatever it’s called. But AGA knows all about that. What, you’re trying to sneak more weapons out of here? The Central Committee’s putting an end to that now.”

“Trade embargo,” said the woman with the three pips on her collar. Her calm energy did not match the other three. She stood straight and still, her voice was serious. “It means a ban on commercial activity, Boss.” That seemed like a jab. Maybe she was the most dangerous one.

When she said that, Marty spluttered something furiously in his own musical language from the communication device on Ayda’s wrist. Nicky reacted immediately, she tore the device from Ayda and held it out. Seeing that made the corners of Casey’s mouth twitch and she cut her eyes towards Esther and Rosaline. Ayda cried harder, affecting everyone.

“Collaborator,” said Nicky. “But I don’t know–”

Boss snatched the device from her. He held it up before his black visor. “What is that?”

“Motherfuckers!” Marty swore. He was not helping the situation. “All you motherfuckers in Eden. Eh, maudits enfoires?! You think you can just close yourselves off and let people starve? To cut us off, la? To isolate us?! You think you get to make that choice?!”

“Marty, please,” begged Rosaline, who was starting to look scared, finally realizing how far she was out of her element. These were not people who could be de-escalated or reasoned with. “Don’t make this worse, please don’t make this worse.”

“Shut the fuck up, kid.” Tabby spat onto the pavement. “Don’t tell these jumped up little fascists nothing.”

“Yeah, Marty,” said Boss. He cocked his head as he gazed at the blue hologram. Marty, with his funny voice. Marty, with his funny clothes. “I like the way you talk. You wanna make it easy for us and give us your address now or do you wanna do this the fun way and let me chase you down?”

It was as good a distraction as any. Kassidy swallowed the blood in her own mouth. Kill. Kill them. Kill them all. It was the only thing that mattered. She didn’t know these people, they were strangers to her, and she wanted them to suffer like she had suffered. Destroying them would serve two purposes. It would allow her and her friends to leave Eden safely. And it would bring her some kind of fucking relief. Some kind of closure. There was nothing more she wanted to do than hurt them worse than they– they and all of Eden– had hurt her by taking Kip. 

She was hot all over. Even the fillings in her teeth seemed to buzz with power. When the moment struck, she would tear them to shreds. Kassidy had never done it before but she knew that she could. Helen had told her that she could. All she needed to do was really want it. All she needed to do was hate herself so much that all her pain and rage was directed outwards.

“Putain de–”

“Sounds funny, Boss,” interjected the lispy one too eagerly. Thoundth funny, Bothh. He edged closer to the big man.

“Will you shut up when I’m talkin’?”

“I’m just saying. I’m just saying he sounds–”

“Shut the fuck up, Johnny!” snapped Nicky, who then cringed when the one in charge turned his faceless head towards her.

The serious woman who was the only one who had not had her name slip out looked up at the District ceiling as if she was frustrated.

These were just people. Just four stupid people that the government had given masks and weapons and too much power. Why had Kassidy been so scared of them for so long? This was too funny. People like this had murdered her brother? People like this had put out his spark? It was so stupid. A laugh started to build up inside of her. She felt out of control. Her body was shaking all over like an over-excited dog. It was hard to breathe.

She saw Casey’s black sparkling eyes had fixed themselves on her. They were so wide that the whites showed all around them. The corner of Casey’s mouth twitched again. 

Kassidy twisted her own arms behind her back. One of the cuts had opened by itself and she could feel drips of hot blood, blood so hot that it nearly burned her. Everything smelled of iron. She wanted to laugh so badly.

“You motherfuckers,” Marty was saying furiously, no longer caring about the consequences. What consequences? He was safely hundreds of miles away, there were no consequences for his actions. “You fuckers. You’ve been doing this to us for 200 years and now you want to do the same to everyone else?! You people think you’re so smart, you think you’re so much better than us and–”

“I like the way you talk all crazy,” Boss said again, in a mockingly flirtatious tone. “1022B, get this guy’s location so we can nab him.”

“--you think you can just take and take–”

A quick sting of pain shot down the back of Kassidy’s spine. A little invasion, as intimate and unwanted as someone sticking their finger into her mouth. Something was taken from her. The shock of it almost distracted her. She flinched. Everyone flinched but Casey and Ayda. 

“Look, he’s not– he isn’t–” Rosaline blinked fast, clinging onto Esther’s arm. Her eyes suddenly shone amber in the dim light.

“Shut up,” said the tall nameless woman, turning to look at her. The air felt hot.

Blood.

Nicky went still. The lights on her helmet’s black visor blinked. “Hey Boss,” she said, her mean, girlish voice suddenly contemplative. “That guy’s not in Eden. None of them have even seen him before.”

Things were about to get very bad. 

“Whaddya mean none of them have seen him before?”

“--tout est vrai– you fuckers are just–”

“Look, he’s not fucking important!” Tabby put both her hands up and angled her body towards the girl who by this point Kassidy had decided was a psychic, a mind-reader or something. Standing in her way. What was she doing? Everything that the Delmont twins had told her about their Sight seemed so passive and unhelpful. She could see the sweat on Tabby’s lean and clever face. “Just listen to me, listen to me, we didn’t know about all this trade shit! Casey, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what the fuck an embargo is, I was just doing what I was told! Do you really wanna deal with this in the middle of the night? You wanna do all that paperwork? You wanna get stuck doing all that paperwork tonight?”

And Casey shifted as well. She bent her knees almost imperceptibly. 

“We don’t even do paperwork,” said Johnny, the one with the lisp. His hands were nowhere near his firearm and he was the only one who carried one.

Kassidy already knew how this was going to end. Blood. She could hardly restrain herself. What did she look like to these people who had murdered her brother? Just a sick and trembling little woman. There was a terrible hunger inside of her. She wanted to see what was inside of them.

“Where’s this guy from?” asked Boss. That wasn’t his name though. That was just something they had let slip. His harsh voice still had a laugh in it and his posture was still loose. Not for long. He stared at Marty’s blue translucent face on the communication device. “Where do they talk like that, huh?” He shook the device as if that would shake Marty.

The fat little psychic was quiet. Everyone was quiet, except for Ayda who was still crying prettily.

Every beat of her heart made Kassidy dizzier. She could kill them. She could kill them and she wouldn’t even care. They were animals to her. They were lower than animals. Faceless nameless killers who had taken someone she loved. Even if these four weren’t responsible for what had happened to Kip all those years ago, they were still a part of it. They had still participated in it. They still deserved to die. 

“What’s goin’ on here?”

“They’re all thinking about how they want to leave and go find that guy on coms.” Nicky slowly turned. She pressed a hand to the side of her helmet and it beeped. Configuring something. She shook her head. “No, he’s not from Eden. And he’s not from Green River either, they were never going to Green River. They were going up North.”

“There haven’t been people alive up North since the Lost Colony was destroyed,” said the tall nameless woman. “That’s wrong. A disease killed them all.”

Kassidy wanted to look at Tony. She wanted to know what he was Seeing. Not that it mattered anymore. There was only one way this could end. 

“North,” said Boss. “Huh.”

“Stupid motherfuckers,” said Marty furiously. “You stupid motherfuckers, you wait, you wait until the Prime Minister sends–”

The big Internal Operations agent dropped Ayda’s communication device and crushed it beneath his boot. No more Marty. He barked his harsh laugh. Because he thought it was funny. He thought that it was funny to destroy something that wasn’t his. He thought it was funny to terrorize people who had nothing to do with him. Kassidy bit the insides of her cheeks hard. She burned as she looked at him, him with his awful voice and cruelty. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill all–

Nicky extended an arm and pointed a gloved finger directly at her. “And this one’s been using blood magic.”

Kassidy froze. So it was that easy.

“No shit.” Boss ground crushed metal and glass into the pavement with his boot. He didn’t even look up. That was how little any of this mattered to him. “I can smell her from here. They always smell like fucking death. We’ll take her to R&D. Rest of them go to the Prison District for processing. Put her down, I don’t wanna deal with one of these little freaks trying to rip my guts out twice in one month.”

“Oh god,” moaned Tony. His eye was closed tightly shut. His hands were covering his face and he was hunched.

“Wait,” Esther said, shrill and terrified. “Wait, wait wait– my mother, my mother is–”

It did not matter who her mother was. It did not matter who anyones’ parents were.

It only took a second. Another sharp jab of pain shot up the back of Kassidy’s spine. It was not bad enough for her to go limp, only enough to distract her. Nicky stepped close and grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back. It tore open the wounds that were already there and Kassidy inhaled sharply, which made Nicky laugh too. She yanked up on her arm to try and hurt her worse. Kassidy’s blood smeared her gloves.

And even though these people were probably going to kill her, even though they were probably taking her somewhere to kill her, all Kassidy could think of was her brother. Had they yanked on his arm too? Had they laughed when he was scared and in pain?  

She wasn’t Kip and this wasn’t happening to her. She was more than her small, weak body. She wasn’t someone they could push around and laugh at! There was something she had to do! There was something she had to do and there was somewhere she had to go and these people could not stop her. Focus, she had to focus, all she had to do was direct her thoughts and tear them all apart.

And Kassidy couldn’t help herself. She started to laugh. 

“You think this is fuckin’ funny?!” said Nicky, tightening her grip. “You think this is a joke? You know what we do to you people, you–”

Casey launched herself forward, fluid and beautiful. One fist caught Nicky in the throat and on instinct, Kassidy tucked herself down, jerked away as hard as she could. Nicky let go of her wrist, her own gloved hands coming up to protect her face. Casey had her on her back in an instant, raining blows down on her head and chest. The force of her movement knocked Kassidy down onto the pavement and took her breath away.

“Get them in the truck, Delmont!” Casey’s lips were peeled back from her teeth and her black eyes were no longer sparkling. She got her hands around Nicky’s throat and was ignoring the hands scrabbling at her face. No normal person could hope to overpower an Artificial like her, the advantage she had was too unfair. “Get them in the truck! Get them in the truck!”

Tabby broke away and wrenched the driver’s side door open. The lisping secret police agent, Johnny, moved faster than anyone Kassidy had ever seen in her life, faster than Casey. He caught Tabby by the back of her shirt, yanking her away from the truck. When Tabby whirled to throw a punch at him, he moved his head and dodged it completely. Then somebody else barrelled into him and shoved him away. Johnny made a noise of terror when he saw Rosaline bearing down on him, Rosaline who had turned horrible and monstrous in half a breath. There was nothing human left about her, she was all amber eyes and shreds of clothing and hairy, rippling flesh. She started grappling with him as Tabby hauled herself into the truck.

“What is that?!” The quiet, serious Internal Operations agent could hardly disguise her shock and disgust at the sight of Rosaline. Her hands rose to cover the part of her mask where her mask should be. “Smiles, I–”

“You two quit fucking around!” snapped Boss. He turned towards Casey, who was still choking the shit out of Nicky. “Goddamn it, what’s the matter with you, get into her brain and–” Green tongues of electricity shot from Esther’s mangled, outstretched hand and coursed through his body. He started twitching and fell to his hands and knees, the lights on his helmet shattered and went out. He grunted in pain, which sent tingles of blood-lust shooting up Kassidy’s spine.

Was this even possible? Was it this easy? Why had nobody fought back before? Why was everyone so scared? These were just people. These were just stupid people. Kassidy couldn’t stop laughing. Her stomach hurt and she couldn’t stand back up. She was vaguely aware of Tony grasping her beneath her arms and dragging her to her feet. Something deep inside of her urged her to grab him back but she was laughing too hard.

“Stupid cunt!” It looked like Casey was trying to choke the life out of the little psychic. “You keep your hands off her, you keep your–” 

Nicky was able to bring up a knee and catch her hard in the stomach. The momentum knocked Casey off of her and she jumped up, turning a little knob on the side of her helmet. “It’s not working, it’s not working!” she panted. Casey circled her with a look of pure murder on her face. “Help me out here!”

The air seemed to smell like burnt ozone.

As Tony dragged her towards the truck, Kassidy saw the nameless secret police woman turn silently towards Casey. And then, unthinkably, her body became covered in terrible flame. The light was blinding and intense. The woman crackled but her uniform did not melt. 

Fire. 

The last time Kassidy had seen fire was– was when– the last time she had seen fire was when Kip had–

She couldn’t wrap her mind around how a human being had just combusted anymore than she could understand how Esther could generate electricity or how Ayda could make people feel like shit. All Kassidy knew was that she hated and was terrified of fire and that this person was going to hurt someone she cared about. Oh, she cared about Casey. They fought like animals but she still cared about her. A long time ago she might have said that she loved her, but she wasn’t capable of that anymore. Still, something like a thread snapped inside her heart. 

Blood dripped from the wounds on her arms and gobs of it fell from her nose onto her shirt. The blood was black. Kassidy was still laughing but a rage overcame her. She struggled against Tony but was too weak to break away from him. Kill. Kill her. Put out the fire, put out the light. 

The fiery woman advanced on Casey and the little psychic.

There was life and there was death and Kassidy’s mind thought only of the clarity of death. That clarity cut through the chaos around her; past the secret police agent grappling with Rosaline, past the man whose body was being electrocuted by Esther, past Ayda fucking all of them with her wailing. A word beyond her understanding slithered into her mind like a half remembered dream. Another word. A string of words. Words as blind and slimy as worms, more ancient than anything, older than life, older than memory itself.

She didn’t even need to move. Kassidy thought the words as blood, her lifeforce, dripped from her body. And the fire went out. And the woman who had been on fire started screaming, screaming like a hurt child. The screams turned into mindless, gurgling pain as the woman clutched her belly. She dropped to the pavement seizing and writhing and holding herself.

“No, no!” Tony kept dragging her towards the truck. Kassidy’s body was limp but her mind had never been so clear, other than the wet, unknowable words repeating themselves there. Pain erupted in her own body. Hurt her. Hurt the woman like Kip had been hurt. She felt herself being lifted up into the truck and Tony’s face was suddenly close to her own. His one blue eye burned hotter than the fire. “Kassidy. Kassidy! Hey, Kassidy!”

Tony.

The words stopped. Kassidy reached up to try and touch his cheek but he pulled away. The woman who had been on fire kept moaning and squirming on the ground. Whatever she had done to her was over.

“Stay.” Tony’s voice was broken and trembling, his face was wild and terrified. “Stay, stay there while I get Ayda.”

“Fucking bitch!” yelled Boss as he dragged himself up off his hands and feet. Esther lurched towards him with both her hands out. Another green wave of electricity crackled over him and he fell again. Smoke rose from his clothing. “Bitch! Bitch!”

“Get away from us!” The last time Kassidy had seen Esther look like that was when she had attacked Ben Prospas. Her face was contorted, white as a sheet, but she kept shocking him. 

Rosaline threw punch after punch at Johnny but he kept dodging them. The Internal Operations agent was all lean, graceful muscle and he moved like a dancer. He would dart a few paces away, fumble at his gun, then dodge again when Rosaline caught up to him. She was half a beast now, her spine and limbs elongated, her face stretched into a long muzzle and sharp teeth. Sleek and deadly as a wolf. Johnny finally pulled his firearm but hesitated a moment too long and Rosaline crashed into him and got him onto his back. Her monstrous transformation made her three times his size.

The gun went off. The bullet ricocheted off the metal gate. If they did not get out of there soon, actual cops might show up. The thought of that made Kassidy want to vomit.

Tony returned and pushed Ayda up into the truck. She was trembling all over, stupid and useless, and she wrapped her arms tightly around Kassidy. Her emotions were overpowering, fear and fear and fear, and Kassidy struggled to hold onto her clarity. When Ayda embraced her, bones in her ribcage scraped against something raw. When had she broken them? Kassidy focused on the pain. 

“Weil, weil, weil,” Ayda was sobbing, reciting her own ancient words of arcane geometry. Her fingers formed meaningless sacred shapes over and over again. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

“We gotta go!” yelled Tony, who was also shaking like a dog. His hair had come undone and hung over his face in greasy strands. That one blue eye was burning, burning. He slapped the bed of the cargo bay. “Tabby, we gotta go, we gotta go now!”

Her muffled reply was unintelligible but the engine revved. It didn’t matter though, did it? It didn’t matter unless Marty had gotten into the computer mechanisms that controlled the gate like he said he was able to do. Their survival hinged on the hacking abilities of someone who had grown up in a place that abhorred technology. Kassidy allowed Ayda to hold her. It hurt to be loved like that.

The woman who had been on fire wasn’t moving anymore and was curled in the fetal position. Kassidy began to cough uncontrollably, it felt like bits of her esophagus were coming up.

“Fucking Artificials,” said Nicky, slowly circling Casey as she was circled in turn. Casey moved like a prowling animal,all purpose now, her grace long gone. “They did something to you while you were cooking, huh? TP doesn’t work on you? I like working with my hands better anyway!”

For her part, Casey said nothing, every muscle in her body tensed and ready to pounce. The only thing that was missing was her knife.

Electricity poured from Esther’s fingertips. Boss was back on his hands and knees, suffering, in pain. Esther stepped closer to him.

With Johnny on his back, Rosaline was able to whale on him properly. She hit him over and over again, while he squealed and tried to push her away. There was no pushing away a beast of her size and Rosie had been fighting all her life. She had gone from their gentle, thoughtful friend to a brutal monster. In one swift movement, she seized both sides of his helmet and tore it away so that she could gaze upon his killing face. And Rosaline froze, pinning him there on the ground. The helmet dropped from her hands. 

“Guys–” Rosie began, her voice unnatural and distorted from her slavering, lipless mouth. Then she screamed. Johnny had pulled a knife and drove it into her left side over and over again. When Rosie buckled to press her hands to the wound, the Internal Operations agent was able to get up to his feet. He was only a boy, with yellow eyes and a hateful smile.

There was no time to think about this. Esther had gotten too close to the leader, the one called Boss. She was less than two feet away from him and was driving electricity into his body mercilessly. No, no. Not thinking. Too close. Esther was not made like Casey. Esther was an ornament to be looked at, never touched, and she was too close, too close by far. Both hands outstretched. Boss’s black and faceless mask snapped up to look at her and–

And a translucent blue bubble of energy formed around Esther’s scarred arm. 

Oh, that was just like–

The bubble shrank and crushed Esther’s arm inside of it. She didn’t even have time to scream. Her waves of electricity ceased in an instant.

“Playtime’s over!” said Boss. “Playtime’s over.”

——-

part 1!

[blooblooded]

Scenes from the Slaughterhouse

“Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn’t done anything wrong, wasn’t even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn’t stop. And when I finally did stop, I’d expended all this energy and frustration, and I’m thinking what in God’s sweet name did I do.” – Gail Eisnitz

The slaughterhouse was dirty. That was just the way it had to be. It smelled of blood and sweat and shit. That’s where the animals went. That’s where they died, where all their hair and skin and guts were removed. People aren’t used to it. They aren’t used to seeing death on that kind of scale.

Here is how it works.

Cattle are led in through chutes outside the dome. The facility itself was in the Industrial District in the Lower Levels– that was the only way to deal with the stink, the only way to dispose of the gallons of blood. These metal chutes empty into the holding pens where the cattle will crush against each other, confused by the sudden lack of natural light, the lack of fresh air. As the time comes, each cow will walk through a serpentine path, only big enough for one to walk through at a time. This is to try to prevent any panic in the herd. 

Fear ruins the meat.

At the end of this serpentine chute, restrained to limit physical movement, a worker holds a bolt gun to the forehead of the cow and pulls the trigger. The bolt strikes the forehead with great force and immediately retracts, and the concussion that follows is responsible for the unconsciousness of the animal. Stunning before slaughter results in decreased stress of the animal and in superior meat. The cow is hooked and suspended by its hind feet and lifted onto a conveyor, where its neck is slit and the blood is drained. The conveyor pulls the body further into the slaughterhouse, which can only be described as a proper production line.

It can take 5 hours to bleed a cow. The bodies hang there. All the innards have to be taken out, everything has to be processed. The kill floor is the worst part, but the rest of the facility is not much better. The evisceration process is as follows.

(1) skin the head and remove the skull and lower jaw, leaving the whole of the neck and the skin of the head hanging on the carcass.

(2) remove each foot and each limb by cutting through the joint.

(3) make a long incision through the hide in the midline of the chest and abdomen, and continue the incision along each of the limbs.

(4) remove the hide altogether if suitable equipment is available, or just remove it partially and leave it temporarily hanging from the animal's back.

(5) open the thoracic cavity with a saw-cut through the breastbone or sternum.

(6) open the abdomen with a long incision, and remove the penis or udder tissue, and any loose fat in the abdominal cavity.

(7) split the pelvis with a knife-cut or saw-cut through the cartilage that separates the pelvic bones in the middle.

(8) cut around the anus and close it off with a plastic bag.

(9) skin out the tail (if this was not done earlier).

(10) separate the esophagus (which takes food to the stomach) from the trachea (which takes air to the lungs), by pulling the esophagus through a metal ring; close off the esophagus by knotting it,

(11) eviscerate the carcass by pulling out the bladder (and uterus if present),intestines and the stomach, liver; after cutting through the diaphragm, remove the heart, lungs and trachea.

(12) separate the left and right sides of the carcass by sawing down the midline of the carcass, through the vertebral column.

(13) wash the carcass and pin a shroud over it to smooth the subcutaneous fat.

And so on and so forth. The body of a creature that was once living is rendered into many piles of useful parts. 

So naturally, the Prosperity slaughterhouse was filthy. No matter how much cleaning was done inside, it always stank. The awful din of circular saws used to butcher corpses could be heard all across the Industrial District. The gallons of blood and waste that poured into the sewers below caused all kinds of foul life to proliferate in that area. Nothing could be done about that. Disposal was a necessity of the industry.

There were no windows in that building. There were no cameras either. It was a long, rectangular building, all industrial metal and harsh light. It was always very cold. The meat had to stay cold. 

Workers on the kill floor and the packing plant were 3 times more likely to suffer injury than the average blue-collar worker in Eden. Workers lost fingers and limbs to the cruel machinery. They were instructed to wear ear protectors because of the never-ending whirs of the saws and the death-screams of frightened animals. The actions that the workers carried out in that place required them to disconnect from themselves in order to cope and the emotional dissonance that followed led to consequences such as anxiety, social withdrawal, substance use, domestic violence, and PTSD.

There was nothing to be done. The people of Eden needed to eat.

And whenever something living needs to eat, blood must be spilled.

####

Harvest Floor Production Worker**48-55 hours a week**ATTENDANCE BONUS***

Prosperity Inc

Industrial Lower Levels

13.00-15.00 an hour – Full Time

Full Job Description

Summary: Prosperity Inc is seeking entry level laborer positions to train and qualify in skilled jobs for our beef plant. A typical day on our Harvest Floor begins at 7:45 am to about 6:30 pm and duties include but are not limited to the process of removing the hide and trimming all contamination from carcasses after slaughter; using various machinery, knives, and hands.

Responsibilities

Breakdown of full carcasses to half carcasses for further processing.

Willing to work individually as well as in a team.

Maintain a safe environment- Personal Safety and Food Safety.

Willing to learn and follow our processes.

Positive Attitude.

Must Apply In Person.

####

Anthony Delmont had destroyed his whole life and the knowledge of that hung over him like a heavy cloud.

Last year there hadn’t seemed to be any other choice. Last year he had been pacing in the hospital’s labor and delivery ward on what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of his life. And he had fucked it up. He had fucked everything up, just like he fucked everything up. One moment of overwhelming panic had led to him making a choice that he could never make up for. Before his infant daughter was even born, he had run out and disappeared because his stupid shrunken brain had made him believe that he was protecting his family.

When he came to his senses a few days later, he spoke to Cathy for the last time. Tony didn’t even have time to explain himself, not that he could if he had wanted to. What was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to say that he had seen one of the hospital staff being followed by a monstrous creature Cathy didn’t even believe in? Was he supposed to say that in that moment he had been filled with a sense of such evil and dread that it had become unbearable? That in that moment, he had believed that if he stayed there, something terrible would happen to the baby? There was no excuse. He had run away while his wife was in labor. He had allowed his fear and paranoia to become more powerful than his desire to hold his child.

“I never want to see your face again,” Cathy had said, with cold iron in a voice that was shaking. Tony could hear the baby crying in the background. “I never want to see you again, do you hear me? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us?”

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could think of. Sorry. He was sorry, not that it meant anything. He was always fucking sorry. 

“I needed you and you were just gone. You left me. I was scared and I was alone and in pain and you left me. Are you serious? You just left me alone to bleed and scream with only the nurses to help me? It took me 9 hours to deliver Cynthia and I did it all by myself!”

“Sorry.”

“You always do this. Why do you always do this? You just run away, you’ve run away since we were kids, like you never really wanted to be anywhere, like you always wanted to get away. If it wasn’t the drinking, it was the fucking disappearing for days with your trashy sister. And I put up with it because I loved you. Well, we’re done, do you hear me? We’re done, I don’t deserve this.”

Tony swallowed hard. Piece of shit. She was right, she didn’t deserve it. He looked down at his feet. “I was trying to keep you safe. You don’t understand, I saw–”

“No. You got scared and you ran away. This is over. You go ahead and keep running. You’ll never be able to get away from yourself, Anthony Delmont.”

And that was that. Over and done. He had successfully destroyed his life, just like he always knew he would. The patterns repeated themselves. He was just like his mother. Ma had wanted to get away from herself too, and she had passed that into him. But unlike her, Tony had the good sense to stay out of his child’s life. Maybe his self-hatred wouldn’t pass on into Cynthia if he just stayed far away. Maybe she wouldn’t turn out…maybe she wouldn’t turn out like him.

The next year was lost. Nothingness. He bounced from friend’s couch to friend’s couch in the Lower Levels, shelters if he was unlucky, the streets if he was really unlucky. The whole time, he drank heavily. Everything was a blur. Tony lost time and memories. He scraped by working for a gang Tabby had connections with; sometimes he sold dope, most of the time he just stole. Every once in a while, someone would mug him. His left side started to hurt, just beneath the ribs.

He was pulled from this destructive, dream-like state when a cop finally hunted him down and handed him a letter from a judge ordering that he pay Cathy child support.

“300 bucks?!” Tabby exclaimed when he showed it to her. For the last month the two of them had been slumming it at a friend’s house. “That bitch is really trying to fuck you. What the hell does she need that kind of money for a kid that can’t even talk yet? Who does she think you are? Nobody down here can afford to send their baby mama 300 a month.”

Ever since the separation, Tabby had started talking about Cathy that way, calling her bitch and baby mama. Tony never corrected her even though he hated it. He couldn’t afford to piss off the only person he had left in his life that still cared about him. He stared at the paper, licked his lips. 

Responsibility. Right. Cathy. The baby. He was a piece of shit.  “I could get a job.”

“You’re a felon.” She took a hit off her modified vape pen. The jolts of speed made her tap her foot incessantly. Tabby rolled her eyes, brown and downturned, just like his.  “And you don’t even have an address. What kinda job do you think you’re gonna get?”

“Factory job. They’ll hire anyone.”

Tabby sucked her teeth. “Yeah, because they can’t keep anyone. That shit chews you up and spits you out. You’re not built for hauling chemical sludge or pouring concrete. Don’t do that. Don’t even think about doing that. Guys who do that end up crippled for life. Private industry doesn’t give a shit about their workers.”

“Merrick said Prosperity’s hiring.” Tony poured another slug of rot-gut liquor into his glass, then knocked it back. It was the only thing that kept the pain in his side somewhat tolerable. The pain was his own fault. When he was feeling particularly masochistic, he’d look up potential causes of the pain online. 

“Shoveling guts and pulling off skin. That’s fucked.”

“The pay’s OK.”

“The pay’s OK until you have to send a quarter of it to your baby mama every month,” Tabby scoffed. She took another hit, her pupils were blown huge. “The pay’s OK until you go crazy. I knew a guy who used to work the killing floor at Prosperity. Then one day he went and beat his girlfriend to death. Doing that shit all day makes violence seem normal.”

What would Cathy use 300 dollars a month for? Diapers? Did one year olds wear diapers? Tony didn’t know, but he knew that there were a lot of things children needed. Clothes. Food, medicine. Toys, fuzzy little things to hug. What would he spend 300 dollars a month on if he had it? More booze? Cathy needed it more than he did. Cathy deserved help.

There wasn’t any other choice.

And Tabby’s warning didn’t matter. Violence? Tony knew violence like he knew himself. He had known violence since the day he was born, there was nothing more violent than the way he treated himself.

Anyways. He got the job 3 days after he applied. Maybe that was a sign.

There was hardly any training. Maybe that was another sign. He could clearly see the universe screaming at him to get out, but Tony didn’t listen. It wasn’t even because he was particularly determined to help the mother of his child. He just…he just needed a change of scenery.

“I start newbies off by making them work the drains,” said his supervisor on the first day. She was a middle-aged woman named Omo who looked like all the life had been sucked out of her. Half of her face was covered in old burns. “Better get used to spraying blood and shit off the floors.”

“It’s fine.” Tony pulled at the protective rubber apron and gloves he had been given. It was surprisingly cold inside the massive rectangular warehouse. The warehouse was one of 2. One was for killing. The other was for processing. So far he had only seen the processing warehouse, freezing cold and clean and bigger than any building he had seen before. Slabs of meat hung from swiveling metal hooks. Entire sides of cattle. Headless pigs. Endless amounts of chickens. From there, they were processed on steel tables with circular saws or sharp knives. Tony looked around at the neverending flesh. He could not remember the last time he had eaten real meat. “It’s fine. I’m just surprised I got hired. I mean– the felony– and then the piss test, I–”

“Nobody who works here can pass a drug and alcohol screen,” Omo said brusquely. She shrugged. “It’s fucked up, what we have to do, and they don’t pay us enough for it. You’ll understand what I mean the first time you hear the hogs screaming in the chutes.”

“Right.”

“The hogs are smart enough to know what’s going on but not smart enough to do anything about it. Kind of like us.”

At the time, Tony did not understand what she was talking about. He wouldn’t understand for another 10 years when he would find himself powerless in the presence of a Thing that wanted to break him down into separate but very useful parts.

###

Omo motioned to the new applicant to follow her. She needed to show him around. The next stop was the waste room. They walked there very slowly and she told him that each carcass was used almost in its entirety. “Hardly anything goes to waste,” she said. The new applicant stopped to watch a worker use a blowtorch on the corpses that had gone through the scalder.

On the way there they walked through the cutting room. The rooms were all connected by a rail that moved the bodies from one stage to the next. Through the wide windows, they see the way the head and extremities of a hog were cut off with a saw.

They both stopped  to watch.

A worker picked up the hog’s head and took it to another table where he removed its eyes and put them on a tray with a label that said “Eyes”. He opened its mouth, cut out its flat tongue and placed it on a tray with a label that said “Tongues”. The worker picked up an awl and a hammer and carefully tapped the bottom of its head. He continued in this manner until he had cracked a portion of its skull, and then he carefully removed its brain and left it on a tray with a label that said “Brains”.

Omo explained that all of the products were washed and checked by inspectors before they were refrigerated. She pointed to a man who was dressed like the rest of the workers but was carrying a tablet that he occasionally typed information on, and a certification stamp that every so often he took out. 

The hog had now been flayed and was unrecognizable. Without skin and extremities, it was only a carcass.

It was all so normal. It was efficient and normal. None of it affected her anymore.

Omo and the new hire – Delmont, his name was Delmont– continued walking. Wide windows now faced either the intermediary room or the cutting room. The flayed bodies moved along the rails. The workers made a precise cut from the groin to the solar plexus. Delmont asked her why there were two workers per body. She explained that one worker made the cut and the other stitched the anus shut to prevent expulsions from contaminating the product. 

Delmont grimaced. Beads of sweat had broken out over his forehead. “I don’t think I’d want that job.” 

If she had it her way, she wouldn't hire this man for any type of job. He smelled like a liquor store and his clothes were unwashed. Homeless, or nearly so. Definitely an alcoholic. The whites of his eyes were starting to jaundice. Still, they needed bodies. 

The killing floor required all manner of bodies.

The intestines, stomachs, and pancreases fell onto a stainless steel table and were taken to the offal room by employees. The bodies that had been cut open moved along the rails. On another table, a worker sliced the upper cavity. He took out the kidneys and liver, separated the ribs, cut out the heart, esophagus and lungs.

They continued walking. When they reached the waste room, they saw stainless steel tables. Tubes were connected to the tables and water flowed over the surface of them. White entrails had been placed on top of them. The workers slid the entrails around in the water. The entrails were inspected, cleaned, flushed, pulled apart, cut, measured and stored. The two of them watched the workers pick up the intestines and covered them in layers of salt before storing them in drawers. They watched the workers scrape away the fat. They watched them inject compressed air into the intestines to make sure they hadn’t been punctured. They watched them wash the stomachs and cut them open to release a disgusting substance that was then discarded. 

In another, smaller room, they saw red entrails hanging from hooks. The workers inspected them, washed them, certified them, and stored them safely away.

That was when Delmont lost it. He turned green, slapped a hand over his mouth, then threw up in a nearby trashcan. “Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry, I just–”

“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“No. I’m, I– without the legs and heads, they look like people.”

“Meat is meat,” Omo said coldly. She felt bad for the guy, he didn’t deserve to be working in a place like this. “We’re all just meat, Delmont. You better get used to it.”

On the killing floor, you either got used to it, or you ran away.

###

It took him months to get the hang of it.

The routine was the same every day. Tony woke up and put on his protective rubber clothing to keep the body fluids and caustic chemicals away from his skin. Hair tied back. Boots on. No breakfast, he never had time for a real breakfast and sucked down coffee instead. He’d knock back a couple of swigs of liquor on the metro to keep himself going. Nobody would be able to smell it anyway. All anyone could smell on the killing floor was death.

Then, for 8 hours, he’d hose blood down the drains and cart piles of glistening intestines to the incinerator. Mostly he worked in the sections that processed hogs. Not the cattle. Of course not the cattle. That required more care, that kind of work was saved for better men than the likes of him.

Large amounts of blood congealed if it was left too long. Sometimes it took several minutes of going at the clots with the hose to get it to move. Sometimes he had to get a shovel. Tony became acutely aware of the drains. The killing floor was located at the lowest livable point of Eden and the drains fed directly into the sewer system. All the slaughterhouse waste went directly into the water supply, where it would be recycled and made palatable for human usage again. Tony thought about that a lot.

Apparently there had been more regulations 10 years ago, prior to the current CEO. Waste used to be disposed of separately. Those regulations had been cut for profit.

Whose profit? Certainly not Tony’s. He was just the poor guy who shoveled up the shit and blood and had to listen to dying animals. The people who made the real money here never set foot on the killing floor.

“You’d make 50 cents more if you worked the scalding pot,” said his supervisor, after the first month. After he proved that he wasn’t going to start throwing up and quit. “Easier on the body. All you’d have to do is press buttons and work the levers.”

Tony had seen the scalding pots. After a hog was bled, it was held by a chain over an enormous vat of boiling water. They didn’t get skinned like the cattle did. Just a quick dunk to loosen the bristles on the hide. On his third day, he had seen how one of the hogs didn’t get bled out all the way. It had screamed like nothing he had ever heard before when they dumped it into the boiling vat. The screams had lasted less than 10 seconds but he had never forgotten it.

Pigs were as smart as people were. What was he doing?

“Yeah,” said Tony. They were on their lunch break. It never seemed to last long enough. He couldn’t eat much because it hurt his stomach. Soon he’d go to the bathroom to sneak another drink to make it through the rest of his shift. “I don’t know.”

Omo gestured to her face. One of her eyes drooped and her mouth was frozen in a perpetual snarl from the burns. “Got this from the scalder. Machinery broke, dropped the hog too fast. I got splashed. Motherfuckers wouldn’t pay my medical bills.”

But she still came back, Tony thought. That was another thing he had learned while working the killing floor. Nobody wanted to be there and nobody had any other choice. The workers were made up of felons and addicts. Nowhere else would hire them.

“You’re really convincing me.”

“Don’t you want a career? Work your way up, maybe you could be a supe one day. Pay’s not much but it’s better.”

Tony shrugged. “I like working the drains,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m going to last long enough to care about a career.”

When he said that, she looked at him with an expression of gentle compassion and understanding that was more than he could bear.

####

Tony worked in the Prosperity slaughterhouse for two years until it broke him. The nonstop death and cruelty was more than he could stomach. The hogs and cattle were not the only recipients of cruelty, it was the people too. Tired of the backbreaking work and low pay, tired of doing labor that they would never enjoy the fruits of, the workers on the Prosperity kill floor went on strike.

And he knew what was going to happen, didn’t he? He Saw the results of the strike before it even happened. He Saw how pointless it all was. The workers stopped working. Prosperity Inc called in scabs. They called in the union-busters. And when that didn’t work, they called in hired goons to start breaking kneecaps.

It wasn’t worth it. By that point his stomach was hurting all the time. He figured that he was going to die soon. Tony gave up. Tony ran away like he always did when things got too hard for him. He spent another year on the street and tried to forget about the killing floor. 

When the bombings happened, he saw that some of the anarchists tried to target the killing floor. They had failed– the sounds of the bombs that were already going off made the cattle stampede. They weren’t able to set that bomb off.

But Tony wished that they had.

Unlike the hogs, he had been smart enough to get out.

###

8 YEARS LATER

It was all about math.

Eden had a population of 120 million people. Of those people, 19 percent belonged to the Upper Class, that is to say, belonged to households making over 300,000 dollars a year. They were the only ones who really mattered, since they were the only ones who had the capital to purchase real meat. Real meat, not the synthetic slop grown from fungus farms in the sewers. So 19 percent of the population was about 230,000 people. If each of those people consumed an average of 200 pounds of animal flesh a year, an average of 4.5 million pounds of flesh must be provided. A 1000 pound steer produces about 430 pounds of retail cuts. So per year, at least 10,500 cattle had to be slaughtered in order to meet demand. It ended up being something like 28 cattle slaughtered a day.

This did not take into account the meat of hogs and chickens. It was impossible to count all the chickens.

Only 19 percent of people could afford real meat on a daily basis. Currently, a pound of beef cost an average of 40.32. That was no good. That was no good at all. Romeo Prospas didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t like to think about how almost everyone in Eden was forced to eat fake protein filled with synthetic chemicals proven to cause cancer later in life.

“I could up production,” said Rome, staring at the numbers on his tablet. “Breed more cattle. Slaughter more cattle. The market would adjust if we flooded it with product and prices would become more affordable.”

“Who would work the feedlots?” his bodyguard, Ajax, sat with his back to the office door. “You have your mind set on not using prison labor anymore, so how do you plan on getting more workers that are willing to go outside the Dome to check on the stock? At least 3 dozen inmate workers got ripped to pieces by those mutants per year. The company always wrote that off as a tax expense. No free worker is willing to do that kind of labor.”

“I’d pay them more.”

“The company’s already hemorrhaging money. Our employees have been threatening strikes since your grandfather’s time. We can’t afford to pay more than minimum wage, nobody’s willing to risk their lives to tend to cattle they’ll never be able to afford to eat.” AJ had a frustrating kind of proletarian seriousness. Unlike Rome, he understood what it was like to be poor. His mother had been a Lower Levels prostitute, then a mistress to Richard Prospas. AJ started taking care of Rome and his brothers when he was little more than a child himself. “You really want to lower your profit margins now? What do you think the shareholders will say?  If we keep dipping into the red, AGA will end up buying up more of Prosperity shares, and neither of us want Agapama to have more control over this company.”

He was only 20 years old. Rome was quickly realizing that he could not handle this kind of responsibility by himself. The day Dad died he hired a team of the best attorneys to get his older brother out of prison so that he could help him. But Ben had no interest in the company, only his strange new religion that required him to spill his own blood. And Valentine had been dead and rotting for 3 years. Rome alone was responsible for the company. Responsible for the shareholders and their profits. Responsible for feeding the people of Eden.

“I’ll up production,” he said, more to himself than to AJ. If he said things out loud, he would start to believe them. 

“You’ll have a lot of blood on your hands,” replied Ajax.

“Animal blood.”

“Human blood. And not just from the workers.”

Rome already had blood on his hands. He had nightmares about it. He knew what it was like to watch someone’s skull split open, what it was like to see bits of brain splatter. Death came remarkably fast, but the things that happened to the body after the spark of life left it occurred for a long time after. Ever since he saw that, he had never been able to feel like he was clean.

He ran the numbers on his tablet a second time. If they slaughtered 15,000 cattle a year, prices would go down 30%. He sniffed. “What’s worse, having blood on my hands or knowing that people are hungry?”

“Not everyone eats meat.” AJ was a vegetarian. It was frustrating, he always turned up his nose when Rome offered to eat with him. Well, Rome got sick every time he consumed plant matter. It wasn’t his fault that his genes had been tweaked to make him an obligate carnivore. “But I don’t have a say in this matter. Do whatever you like, just don’t come crying to me when the company crashes and burns and the people start rioting. I can’t protect you from that.”

AJ couldn’t protect him from anything, Rome thought hatefully. He always used to look at the floor when Dad flew into one of his rages and beat him. No, AJ couldn’t protect him. Never had, never would. Everything the company had accomplished, everything he had survived, was from his hands alone. He swiped through his tablet. If the company upped production, they would have to expand the slaughterhouse and the packaging facility. That would be easy enough, just a little building. They could buy more equipment. It was do-able, he just needed to hire more workers. That would be easy too. All he had to do was offer better wages than the competition.

He had a sense that things were about to take a nasty turn in the Colony. There was no proof but Rome could sense it, even though he rarely went outside. As prices for everything from housing to food rose, average people grew angrier and angrier. When the time came, he did not want to be targeted by angry, hungry people.

“I’ll up production,” he said a final time. 

And he did

####

15,000 cattle a year. 

Still, the people of Eden grew hungrier and hungrier.

Hunger is a terrible thing.

And it drew God to the slaughterhouse killing floor. God in his new body, God with his gentle face and soft voice and his terrible, terrible hunger.