Technically it is still January 6th for me so here's my first kind of on-time addition to the Citizen Sleeper January prompt list created by fmab :)
(ignore the shitty formatting im too lazy to make it more organized anyway enjoy )
...
Laine was a man of power. Not just a man with power, a man of it. He was born with a thirst for it just as much as he thirsted water.
Power, control, influence.
The Belt is a place where most of its inhabitants have mere crumbs of influence and importance that disintegrate the moment they touch it. Only a select few have enough to get what they want.
Laine was one of the few.
The problem was, the only thing Laine really ever wanted was more power. He had more chits than anyone could ever need to survive, and he was never one for personal relationships beyond chasing the satisfaction of seeing people squirm, of bending to his will.
Laine had control over the Utsubo gang, dozens and dozens of members who would do whatever he asked. Not because they admired him, but because they either saw him as a means for power (which he saw right through and would use to his benefit), or they were scared of him. He liked being feared. Even that becomes boring after a while, though.
It was a handful of cycles ago that Laine truly realized just how bored he had become. He was bored of the constant drug deals, the smuggling, the threatening and extorting, even the enjoyment of rounding up a misbehaving Utsubo member and having the disloyalty punched out of them wasn’t as satisfying.
He needed something new. A new goal to look towards while he continued monitoring the ongoing conglomerate war that was sure to hit the Belt sooner rather than later.
First, Laine had things to do, of course. Deals to seal, money to make. People to keep in check.
In one of the many cramped alleyways of Darkside, Laine smiled as Ankhita threw one of his newest contractees against the steel wall, the young man coughing as he was sent flying back to her feet with the rebound. They’d just caught him on one of his many, many escape attempts. If not for the labour the man would provide, he’d have shot him long before then. He still considered it from time to time.
Laine couldn’t be bothered to remember the young straggler’s name, not yet, but he knew getting someone to follow orders after being cornered into a contract would always take a few lessons. It was like breaking in a shoe.
The dim lights of the alley did little to conceal the marks of violence piling up once he was finished with the young man, his tan skin bruised and bloodied, while his short pale hair had Laine’s bloodied handprints soaked onto it.
The young man, or rather the boy- coughed and sputtered at Laine’s feet, his blood floating around in mesmerizing little droplets around Laine’s feet. It was satisfying, but eventually Laine had tired of him after he stopped moving and resisting.
“Ankhita, do me a favour and take him back to solitary. Give it a better lock this time.” Laine said, turning and drifting away from the boy. Ankhita gives a nod, something in her face bothered behind the stoic mask. Nevertheless, she listened. That was why Laine liked ex-mercenaries. They knew how to behave.
Once he was alone, Laine took to wandering through the alleys and corridors of Darkside, watching with a dim satisfaction as the eyes all over him quickly fleeted away with fear.
He wandered into a small bar, far from Darkside’s most lavish, but he hadn’t minded. He ordered a whiskey neat, and smiled as the bartender– a haggish old woman who’d glared at him with both fear and disgust– gave it to him. She knew better than to ask him to pay. In fact, Laine was fairly certain the woman’s son had owed him a sizable stack of cryo after he bailed on a smuggling deal.
Laine had always savoured the taste of an unsoiled spirit, the burn in his throat giving him a sense of adrenaline and happiness that he only ever found in alcohol.
A crash from somewhere outside had disrupted Laine’s thoughts, to his annoyance, but he pushed up from the chair to see what had caused the sound purely to satisfy his curiosity.
The sight, for once- hadn’t been what he was expecting. A neighboring shop was the source of the sound, the tall and burly shopkeeper tossing someone out the door with a disgusted and wild expression and a shout he couldn’t decipher. That wasn’t the part that was interesting, it was the blue tone of the skin with which the unfortunate exile of the bar was illustrated.
Laine’s eyes narrowed with a sick sense of curiosity and even surprise upon seeing the figure flee like a rat, its harrowing orange eyes glowing in the dim light before scurrying off, holding its arm to its stomach as if injured.
Something in Laine stirred at the sight. He’d seen sleepers before, but it had been so long he’d almost forgotten what it was like to see their empty glowing irises pretending to be human.
A sleeper never lasted long, not on Darkside– but one thing he knew for sure was that they were desperate. Always.
Laine stood by the window of the bar for a while, taking a mental note of where the sleeper had fled to. Perhaps he should pay it a visit.
…
Laine proceeded to spend the next few cycles watching the sleeper from afar, which was way too naive and weakened to even notice him in the shadows. It would occasionally relocate, for reasons unnecessary to him, but he quite enjoyed the hunt. It was thrilling.
Now that Laine had spent almost seven cycles watching, waiting, and stalking the sleeper, he was beginning to bore of simply observing and wanted to close in.
Early that cycle, Laine watched the sleeper get ready for another painstaking cycle of unforgiving life on Darkside, the sleeper looking more like a disheveled amalgamation of synthetic parts than the masterful work of Essen-Arp with each passing hour. It was fading, which meant it was desperate.
Watching it from afar, there was something mesmerizing about its disarray. It was intriguing to see something so marvelous and intricate fall apart, a victim of its own design. In addition, it was almost like watching a shooting star, burning desperately before it inevitably dies.
To Laine’s annoyance, the sleeper had run off again, disappearing from his gaze in an instant while he was distracted. This one was a slippery little thing. He liked it.
It didn't take him long to find the sleeper again, watching it slowly integrate with the crowd of Flicker Row with the rush of people that always appears before the heaviest wave of scrapper shifts. Perhaps the sleeper would be working among them, like a naive little imposter.
Hardly to Laine’s surprise, the sleeper was cast aside by nearly everybody it turned to for food, Laine recognizing the shake in their body as hunger. The worn, scuffed, doll-like features of its face did little to hide the starvation it was clearly putting up with. This was good for Laine, even better.
Despite the urge to approach, the dying desire to have the sleepers vinyl fingers signing a contract immediately burning in his chest- Laine stayed away. He watched, and he waited. It had to be natural.
Laine watched as the naive machine before him stumbled down Flicker Row, a desperate sort of tremor and crazed posture wracking their frame.
Through the sea of people passing by, Laine eyed the sleeper with gleeful anticipation as it slowed and eventually collapsed beside an Utsubo unit, unable to push itself back up into the flow. Now was the time.
The shining lights of Flicker Row illuminate the alley in deep cyan and fuschia hues, Laine’s eyes immediately peering into the dim irises of the sleeper, which glowed a crimson red instead of the orange from before. Its face was like an old doll, chipped and battered and yet so pristine and marvellous. Wonderful.
Laine approached with a smile, savouring the hazy and disoriented exhaustion with which the machine looked up at him. He could sense the hunger within it, for more than just food.
Laine pulled a cylindrical vial out from his jacket pocket, the thick heat of Darkside mirroring his eagerness as he carefully, slowly, knelt down in front of the sleeper, vial in hand.
“I think you might need some of this.” Laine said, the sleeper’s tired eyes quickly widening as an almost animalistic need lit up in its eyes, before using all of its available strength to sit up from its crouching position and swatting feebly at the vial. Laine grinned.
“That's not very polite.”
The sleeper eyed him with a mixture of desperation, anger, and need, the involuntary vulnerability in its gaze utterly satisfying to him.
The sleeper squirmed as much as it could, before croaking out a single word.
“Please.”
Laine smiled, pocketing the vial and standing up, watching every ounce of dejection and fear bubble up in the sleeper before he held out his hand.
“Work for me, and I will give you the vial. I'll let you earn your own chits too.” He said, his voice a sickly sweet tone.
The sleeper exhaled a breath it didn't need- a pointless display of something pretending to be human- which both disgusted and thrilled Laine.
“What's the catch?” The sleeper asked, too exhausted to do anything but look up at him hazily. He loved it.
Laine kept his hand extended. “There's no backing out once you're in. I expect loyalty.”
Laine watches with glee as the sleeper clearly knows it has no other options, despite the fear and uncertainty storming around its deep, dark eyes.
As the sleeper took his hand, it's cold, synthetic skin brushing against Laine’s palm, Laine felt the familiar but recently absent sensation of a successful hunt.
