The City Of A Billion Stolen Souls: Aphelion, #1

Part One

Chapter One

The Road to Hell

KAEJD’AN STATION,

NION RF

T

he words were

fighting her today, and Sophya Soulwright felt maybe one more inconsiderate noun away from allowing them victory. She let her pen drop from her fingers, where it rolled off the notebook’s page, and leaned back into her chair. Overwhelmed by the gravity of her impending defeat, she hefted up a dramatic sigh and looped her finger into her necklace, tugging on it with the dedication of a wandering mind.

Its feather pendant dangled left.

Then right.

Sophya stared on ahead, the notebook she’d been writing in forgotten.

There, confined to the frame of a flatscreen pretending itself at being a window, a lighthouse perched atop a cliff. The lighthouse itself was tall and white, with a red roof and small slits for windows. A vividly green slope rolled upwards towards it, interrupted only by a pale, narrow path which wound its way upwards until it ended at the lighthouse’s small porch. Patches of perfectly white flowers, thick shrubs, and precisely three trees added texture to it all, and beyond it all nothing but clear blue skies mirrored by an endless, gently rippling ocean.

Sophya looked at the lot of it, her mind bogged down by mindless buzzing.

Seagulls circled the lighthouse tip. Some had settled down on the slanted roof, tiny grey knobs standing out against the brick red colour of its cap. Caw-caw they went; or so she suspected, anyway. She’d muted the picture. All her ears had for company was Kaejd’an station’s ever-present murmur threaded into an otherwise comfortable silence.

She preferred it that way.

Sophya flicked her eyes back down to contemplate the pen. She ought to pick it up. Have another go. Anything but give the words a triumph, even if they’d fought valiantly and maybe deserved it. Her fingers curled into nothing. Or she could lie facedown in bed for the remainder of the day. A plenty tempting alternative, that.

She leaned her head to the side, first to look to the small bed set into the room’s wall, and then back to her notebook and to the cat lying next to it.

SIN liked to be tall for a cat. Tall and lanky, with long legs, a slender body, and short cinnamon-coloured fur that teased at being smooth as silk. The cinnamon darkened along her spine, where it turned to deep ruddy brown and ran all the way down to her narrow tail and to the crest of her head.

Why SIN had chosen a cat as her favourite sona, Sophya did not know. She suspected neither did SIN; some things just sort of fell into place without your say in them and all of a sudden your default appearance was an arguably ordinary feline with white tufts on her ears.

Said tufts twitched as SIN’s long ears swivelled left and right, but her head remained planted on her paws and her eyes solidly closed.

Sophya quirked a brow.

・・・You have a message, SIN said eventually, her words vivid and clear but her mouth unmoving. Least until she yawned, baring a pink tongue and theoretically sharp teeth. Marked as important, she added. Double-encrypted for some reason or the other.

You going to tell me who it’s from? Sophya picked up the wayward pen, pinched it between her knuckles, and wiggled it menacingly in SIN’s direction. SIN’s tail gave a swish.

・・・Dee Emm Emm, she said, before adding: Daylight Mirror Media.

The pen between Sophya’s knuckles froze. Good as everything on her froze, really. Her eyes. Lungs. Jaw (ouch, she’d gotten right to grinding her teeth together). All except her heart; that drummed itself into a distressed frenzy.

A moment ago, boredom had eaten at her.

That moment was gone.

What was it going to be? Another rejection?

Sophya willed herself to breathe.

What if it was another dead-end? There’d been too many of those already. What was she going to do with another one?

She flicked the pen back down onto the notebook and swallowed thickly.

Worse, what if it wasn’t a rejection? Maybe this is it? she dared to think, terrified into either direction.

Have you read it?

Am I ready?

・・・No. Want me to?

Swish, SIN’s tail went again. A glitch rippled through her, starting at the tip of said tail and ending in a flicker as it hopped off her tufted ears.

Yes— wait. No. Sophya’s knees bounced. I don’t know. What do I want?

SIN contemplated the question for a moment, her rich, honey-coloured eyes blinking lazily as she did.

・・・An expensive vacation, a peach tree full of ripe peaches, and— Oh? Your head for yourself? Ouch. You offend me. Vaguely.

Sophya’s lips tried on a smile. The burst of dread from earlier faded into the background like an echo, though echoes had a habit of coming and going. No doubt this one’d be back around any second, so she had no time so waste. It was now or never.

Let’s take a look, Sophya said, steeling herself best as she could.

In an instant, the air to her left played host to Daylight Mirror’s message. It popped out of nowhere, its letters scrolling into view in neon pink and purple hues against a slightly darkened backdrop. Sophya knew they’d bought her lies the moment she realised the letter didn’t start and end with a variation of We regret to inform you, which she’d read oh so many times prior.

She exhaled a drawn-out sigh. Her stomach hopped, undecided if it should be celebrating that she’d done it; or shrinking in on itself that, yes, she’d done it.

・・・There’s a contract attached. And a waiver. SIN got up and took a moment to have a try at the biggest stretch a cat could muster. Congratulations. You get to sign your life away. No backsies.

Shush. Sophya scrolled through the letter with a flick of her finger, though she wasn’t reading it. Not really. Some words stood out more than others, but her mind had already packed up and hitched a ride to some rickety future held together at the seams by question marks.

Gods, was she really ready for this?

Slumping back, Sophya tore her eyes away from the contract and waiver and stared at the ceiling instead. Her posters looked back at her. Real posters. Made from paper. Like her books on the single shelf in her small rented room. There weren’t a lot of them; just a modest suitcase’s worth, and yet she’d have to leave them behind. She frowned. She’d not be able to bring any of it. Not the books. Not any mementos of any kind. Not the post cards or posters; not the vistas of coastlines with their lighthouses, some tall and proud, others stubby and stubborn, or the roads striking out into endless night-skies (her favourite was the one with the pink neon letters saying YOU ARE THE ROAD even if, to this day, she didn’t understand what it meant).

Only necessities. No private belongings, the letter had read.

That was alright, she told herself.

It had to be.

With her shoulder squared up again, Sophya sat up straight and grabbed the letter, contract, and waiver out of the air with a pinch of her fingers.

It had to be.

She swept her hand at her window. The lighthouse and its idyllic cliffside winked out, replaced by a deceptively gorgeous cityscape. It was a patchwork of multi-cultural architecture, from brick and whitewashed stone to steel and concrete and everything imaginable in-between. Vibrant green laced through its modern sprawl like veins next to arteries made of asphalt, and massive towers—some simple blocks, others bulbous and stretching the definition of tower altogether—rose like statements from the lot of it. But nothing stood quite as tall as the city’s heart.

Its ancient heart, older than most anyone could fathom.

Horizon’s Crown—a city everyone knew, if not for how it straddled the edge between possible and impossible, then for its tragedy—had risen from the bones of something unimaginably old. At the skeleton’s centre, left behind for someone else to claim, had stood a massive pyramid, its base shaped like hexagon and each of its layers square and tall. Sophya leaned her head to the side. Alright. If you squinted just a bit, it looked a bit like a crown, one surrounded by a metropolis that’d spread far as it could go before it’d had nowhere else to go but up. An umbilical struck upwards from the pyramid’s tip, connecting the city to an orbital island.

Sophya motioned right. The image scooted sideways, revealing more of Horizon’s Crown still, until a jagged, dark furrow cut it off cleanly. The Shear, a helpful tooltip announced. On the Shear’s other side, the urban growth was a lot thinner. Here, fields of green and yellow, along with a massive body of water, took up most of that space until all of that, too, was promptly cut off. From there on there’d be nothing but pale mists and water.

Sophya flicked her wrist. The image refocused, hopping back to the urban mass. As she stared, quietly, a sudden feeling of deep-seated concern rippled through her.

You can’t change my mind, SIN.

・・・I know.

I have to find her, she said, some weak attempt at adding fuel to the quietly burning fire of her resolve.

・・・I know, SIN repeated, her voice uncharacteristically mournful as she padded her way close to the screen. When a smaller picture appeared, she raised herself up and gently pawed at it. Under her paw, the picture grew from a single dot into the portrait of a woman.

Krisi Soulwright was full of life and beautiful as ever; a bright and elegant star compared to the dull and lumpy moon Sophya had often felt like when she’d stood by her sister’s side. But that star had loved its moon and the moon had loved it back fiercely.

The picture changed. Krisi sat on a wide sofa, her long dark hair wet and held up by a towel. Even wrapped in a bathrobe, she looked stately. Professional. The Soulwright’s heir apparent through and through, surrounded by pads with their screens on and notebooks full of tiny handwriting, because there was very little Krisi took as serious as her studies and the weight of her family’s name on her shoulders.

Krisi looked up. The camera moved. It bounced closer and closer until Krisi put her work away and opened her arms wide. The camera winked out when it reached the sofa and left Sophya’s memory to fill in the blanks.

Laughter.

A belly full of popcorn.

A pretence at innocence, while her terrible secret gnawed on Sophya, relentlessly.

Sophya, with her heart hollowing out, discarded the memory with an outwards shove of her hand. She swallowed back a hard knot—then another for good measure—and refocused on the city, twirling her finger as if to spool an invisible cord around it. Horizon’s Crown was swept up by a mad shuffle of day and night trading places in a blur.

When she splayed her fingers out and the image slowed, chaos had already taken the city in a violent storm. Tiny, silver ships fled in droves, thrusting up and away. They reminded her of the seagulls at the tip of her lighthouse, and for a moment she wondered if Horizon’s Crown had any of those. Lighthouses.

With all the oceans, you’d think it would, no?

She cast the fingers on both her hands outwards in a motion that wasn’t unlike her flicking water from them. Though rather than flecking the window with droplets, they scattered pictures across it. Burning streets. People—Aestling and Earthers alike—running for their lives. Mothers and fathers carrying children. Other mothers and other fathers trampling other children. More fire.

And horrible creatures, their humanity stripped from them much like the skin had been stripped from their gaping jaws lined with sharp teeth. Their eyes were … wrong. They weren’t human anymore, their pupils torn, and there was a lightly blue glow sitting under them which caught in the media camera’s lenses with brief, stomach-turning winks.

Each image came with a headline.

A FRONTIER STRUCK BY TRAGEDY, one read. It showed the inside of a stadium lined with bodies covered by grey tarp. The stadium had been abandoned, given up to hunched things roaming between the rows of the dead. They looked like people still, Sophya thought. People who’d been bloodied and bruised. A lot of them had chins steeped in red.

THE EARTHER HUBRIS: AN UNAVOIDABLE CATASTROPHE?

A civilian yacht shot towards orbit. Orbital defence missiles slapped it out of the air. It went up in a bloom of red.

HORIZON’S CROWN DUG TOO DEEP — A HISTORY OF THE TWINS AND THEIR ORIGIN

THE FALL OF GIANTS; HOW WE’RE LOSING ENTIRE ELPISAN GENERATIONS TO THE QUARANTINE

They went on and on and on, spreading out across almost three years worth of sensationalism poorly disguised as reporting. Eventually, Sophya snapped her hands together with a muted clap. Horizon’s Crown and its horrors vanished.

The screen remained a blank sheet of glossy black.

She wasn’t ready.

She’d never be.

But whoever was when they set out to descend into Hell?

Her fear knocking, she summoned the contract and signed the dotted line.

Wayward: /ˈweɪ.wəd/

Adjective

An Aestling expression indicating anything that can be considered unusual, wild, or generally unwise.

Chapter Two

A Delicate Dozen

HORIZON’S CROWN,

CASTLE FIVE

two months later

P

ain

.

It raked down his back, keen and sharp; enough to cut right through the thick haze choking him and drag a growl from his chest.

Or at least that was what Varrett sincerely hoped it was: a growl. Not a mewl or—God help him—a whimper. See, he wasn’t exactly in perfect control of every little noise making it up his throat, not with how things were so deliciously blurred between all that intimate heat and the sticky sweet floral scent clinging to Naemie’s black skin. So, thank you very much for understanding.

Plus, who’d have thought Naemie was a biter? And liked to use her nails? Like, generously, too?

Not him, no.

Sweet, sweet Naemie with her adoration for math (because who else had Not all math puns are bad, only SUM hanging over their door?), who liked looking at him (a lot), and who still wore clothing (one pair of panties, plus socks).

Also, teeth.

Rrrrr, he admitted, right up until she bit down so fucking hard he banged his knee against the kitchen counter and the Rrrr turned to a whiny Ow-ow-ow rattling around in his head.

Minx, Varrett thought and leaned his head down enough to slip his ear from between her teeth. She tried to follow him, but he went straight to huff-chuckling his way down the curve of her neck, deftly dodging clicking teeth. His fingers—only briefly having gone off-mission when they’d gotten distracted by Oh, dear lord, more nails—hooked around the thin straps of a pair of silky panties. He hiked them ever downwards, his fingers tracking over smooth, hot skin, and made it all the way to the bend of her knees when a green blob popped up in the bottom left corner of his vision.

It pulsed.

Insistently.

Like any other reasonable man, he’d muted his veil before knocking on Naemie’s door. He’d even set himself to Do not Disturb, I’m probably naked, and yet here we were; him, hovering over a delightfully naked Naemie, Naemie’s panties finally out of the way, and a caller ID getting in the way of it all.

[Mom <3], the ID read.

Varrett stood up straight and shuffled back half a step. Abandoned on the countertop, Naemie propped herself up on her arms and immediately gave him a look.

You know.

A look.

The kind not even her perky nipples (especially the one with the piercing and its pink heart-shaped stud) could blunt. Varrett traded her the most innocent smile he could put together on the spot and tapped two fingers of his left hand together.

The call opened up. Audio only, of course. Minimal interface. Just him, some shame, and his mother in his ear.

Hey, Mom.

"Did I get you at a bad time, hon?"

What? No, he fibbed. Had his voice come out a little squeaky? Probably. He dialled it down some. Not at all. What’s up?

He winced. Somewhere at the back of his head, a sixteen-year-old version of himself snickered about something having been up. And now look at him, huh? He grunted and re-buckled his belt.

He’d mourn later.

"Clive dropped in," Mom said, her tone deceptive cheerful. And, yet, Varrett felt all residual heat drain from him in a snap, as if he’d dive bombed his sorry ass into an ice bath.

"He wants to talk to you," she added.

An exasperated voice filtered in from the sidelines. Clive. Good old, stinky Clive. "There’s really no— " Clive tried to say before Mom cut him off.

How she cut him off Varrett wasn’t entirely sure, though there’d been the ghost of a click riding into his ear, which might—or might not—have been a safety disengaging.

I’ll be right there, Varrett blurted.

"My star. But don’t rush, I’ll make tea while we wait and Clive can tell me all about what he’s been up to since his last visit. A pause. Ah! Don’t forget the eggs."

No, ma’am, Varrett said and shoved his head through his shirt. Of course not, ma’am. By the time he’d popped his head out of the collar, the call had ended, erasing the overlaid interface with it.

Naemie was still there. Still staring, too. And still very pretty, with all her curves, thick black hair, and so very, very naked.

Again? she asked. One time is a fluke, V. Two is a habit. She shifted her hips on the counter. Slowly.

Varrett would have liked to throw a tantrum right then. Maybe stomp his feet, too. But when Mom called because the jackass holding your little brother’s life in his hands was being a, well, jackass, then you sucked it up and you postponed any and all fun. Which was exactly what Varrett did. He sucked it up like a big boy, gave Naemie a small smile and a vague motion of I’ll call you, snatched Mom’s eggs from her fridge, and picked up his shoes on the way out.

⁂

Castle Five—or CA5TLE, if you were one of the cool kids—was an exercise in barely domesticated chaos; a buzzing mix of obnoxious noise, sweltering heat, and too many bodies living every facet of their lives within its walls. You slept here. You played here. You worked here. And privacy? That was complicated. Having your own space came at a premium most anyone couldn’t afford and so you had to be either incredibly lucky (such as Naemie and her math) or comparatively unlucky (more on that later).

Not that Varrett minded people. He didn’t.

The noise he could’ve done without though.

Enveloped in the droning of life happening all around, Varrett fumbled in the pockets of his jeans and pulled out a pair of old fashioned earbuds. 100% Earther made. 100% vintage. He wiggled them in place while his right foot blindly quested for a way into its shoe, and summoned up a tune. 100% Earther made, too, and practically ancient, with a raw mix of guitars and defiant vocals working overtime to drown out the ambient buzz.

That, and the pressure building in his chest, urging him to get a fucking move on before anyone got hurt.

And while he hurried, his mind raced about. It did that.

So. What’d math pay these days? And what was it Naemie did with it? Run water and food ration numbers for Distribution? Calculate allotted fun times for the rotating workforce?

He hobbled around on one leg, every skip matching the snap of a drum, and struggled with the second shoe. He’d never asked. Should he have asked? And had he picked the wrong career?

Oh, yeah. Imagine it, he thought when the shoe finally stuck on properly and he got swept up by the tight hallway’s busy foot traffic. Sit on your ass eight to five in an air-conditioned office instead of sweating it skinny in the streets. Trade rev teeth for water cooler chat.

Nah.

The thought of being stuck in here snared his throat shut and made him scowl at the tight walls stained by water damage. They could get fucked, and so could the locked-down windows looking out into the courtyard pit, their impact-proof glass panes always grimy and collecting moss and vines so you couldn’t even look out properly anymore. But the ceiling was what could get fucked the most.

That, and Clive.

Probably.

⁂

Varrett spent an entirety of four songs weaving through crowded corridors before he cleared the first checkpoint and reached CA5TLE’s middle tower and the elevator which’d take him back home. The very packed elevator, as it turned out, which had Varrett vow how this’d been the last time he’d answered a booty call at (or around) rush hour.

Of all the things that’d survived the apocalypse, it just had to be that, huh? Couldn’t jam the streets anymore? No problem, Sir. We’ll go clog some hallways and elevators instead, because what sort of civilised folk would we be otherwise? He grunted at an elbow knocking into his ribs, lifted the carton of eggs a little higher, and gave up shuffling his ass to the back of the elevator. Which sucked. He liked it back there since it’d give him a good look out across the courtyard, where the elevator windows were kept clean by all the shoulders rubbing into them. Instead, he ended up parked right under a beat-up flatscreen. The miserable thing had been vandalised two weeks ago, half its screen smashed in and the other a glitchy mess of colours barely managing to form coherent pictures.

Varrett, in a moment of being an absolute dumb-ass, lifted his chin and pried one of his earbuds out, just in time to catch the tail end of a three-year anniversary polit add popping out of the struggling speakers.

… into independence. Autonomy. A Horizon’s Crown for its people, it crackled. Vote for tomorrow. Vote for hope. Vote Eddie Isaac.

It’s a sham, the man next to him piped up because, obviously, Varrett had signalled himself interested in political debate. He should have just kept his earbud in and kept staring at the wall. The lovely wall caked in rust and dried bodily fluids. Ew. A circus, that’s what it is. What does a labourer know about politics? Nothing, I tell you. Nothing.

Opinion Man threw his hands into the air, a motion that took up way too much real estate in the cramped space. Varrett pulled the egg carton even tighter to his chest and threw the man a cursory glance. His filter got to work, scrounging up a handful of details about the pointlessly gesticulating man. He wore an old suit, its seams stretched by time. Had battered shoes that’d cost a fortune back when they’d still carried a shine, and kept his chin clean-shaven and his hair tightly cropped. An all-purpose wrist replacement aged gracelessly on his arm, its delicate metals not having seen any of their much-needed maintenance for an approximate of three gruelling years.

Who’d have thought three years could weigh like ten on both man and his shiny gear?

Varrett would have bet a mark and a beer that the man had climbed the corporate ladder once, only for the entire thing to burn down under him like everything else had.

Opinion Man kept at it. Morais knows how to run a city, he said, jabbing his hand at the screen.

Ding, went the elevator bell. The cabin shuddered to a stop and about half the passengers pushed out. Not OM though. He stayed right where he was.

My lucky day, huh?

She’s an experienced and proven admin, everyone knows that. Everyone’s seen it. And now look at what they’re having her run against. A plumber. OM straight up turned to stare at him and Varrett had to fight tooth and nail against the urge to egg him out of principle alone. Because he could have. He had the eggs for it. Did you know that’s what he was before the Outbreak? A literal plumber. A union rep. A labourer, not a politician. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Ding, the elevator said again. His hero to the rescue.

Dunno, man, Varrett finally offered when the rest of the passengers got out, OM included. I’ll vote for the guy who keeps my toilet flushing any day.

OM paused for a scoff and a glare—which lasted about as long as it took him to realise Varrett wasn’t getting off the elevator with the rest of them. That turned the glare into something uneasy and maybe a little frightened before OM practically fell out into the hallway.

Varrett plastered on a smile. The doors rattled shut again.

Next stop: Purgatory.

With only the eggs and glitching flatscreen for company, he waited for the numbers to scroll by on the elevator’s control panel. 57, 58, 59; all struck through with a black line. Number 60—the (once) coveted penthouse floor—came up last. Its number glowed red.

Red for Are you sure you belong here?

The elevator thumped to a halt, though its doors didn’t budge, leaving Varrett at the mercy of a commercial jingle in his left ear and a passable guitar solo in his right. He drummed along the latter, his fingers matching the tune’s rhythm as they tapped against the egg carton.

So close.

Yet so far.

But Mom hadn’t called again, which was probably a good thing.

Right?

Right.

He sighed, bounced on his feet, and had gotten yet another tune out of the way before the doors finally parted.

⁂

Up on sixty, CA5TLE was at its quietest. A hush met him when he stepped into the hall, right along with a checkpoint staffed by four familiar faces decked out in Castle Guard gear. Rifles. Sidearms. Riot grenades. Batons. And God knew what else they kept shoved up their asses. No offence intended, of course.

Well, alright. Maybe a little bit of offence, even if Brendon and Rikki were alright. Especially Rikki, who stuck to her station behind the security monitors surrounded by bulletproof glass. She even gave him a little wave as he passed and a cute little curl of her lips that went well with her adorable button nose and the friendly eyes.

But Pipe and Tess were clowns. Good luck changing his mind.

Pipe, also wearing a smile (if smiles came looking like a bent front fender), stepped right into his path. He was a tall fucker, with a blocky jaw and a set of arms pumped to the point of stretching the capacity of his guard vest. Back so soon, V?

Varrett had to tilt his head up to look at him. And while he wondered if maybe one day Pipe would wake up and find himself not fitting into his vest anymore, his mouth went off an adventure. Because why the fuck not. Would have been sooner if you hadn’t kept me boxed in the elevator.

Shit. He pinched his lips together.

Uh-huh. ID?

Dude.

Pipe kept smiling.

You heard him. ID, Tess chimed in. She was such a good clown-in-training.

Varrett puffed air into his cheeks and raised his left hand, presenting his synth-skin palm and the holographic ID that popped up ahead of it. Varrett Vild Vickers, it read. Professional dumb-ass, etc, etc. Pipe flicked his scanner over it. Very. Very. Slowly. It beeped. Turned green. To absolutely no one’s surprise.

Pipe—not done with him yet, obviously—jutted his blocky chin at the egg carton. What’s that?

Seriously?

Very.

With his teeth grinding together, Varrett popped the lid open, revealing—you guessed it—two rows of perfectly normal and perfectly innocent eggs ready to be cracked over a sizzling hot pan or turned into cake.

Hmm, was what Pipe had to say to that before he finally slid to the side with a lot more grace than you expected for a hulk like him. One errand boy clear for re-entry, he called.

Tess buzzed the checkpoint gate open. Varrett thanked them and marched through.

⁂

Home was where the heart was and so on and so forth, but, really, it was at the far end of sixty, behind a sturdy metal door labelled 2608/1 in small blocky letters.

Second tower.

Sixtieth floor.

Unit eight.

Houses one infected; one unfortunate doomed soul with a loan on life.

Every unit from floor sixty to fifty-eight had a number like that tacked to the end of it, with the Trents next door leading them all with a whopping /3. They’d been neighbours for a year now and, to this day, Varrett had no clue how they brought in enough castle credits to keep the interest rate from eating them alive.

Wow.

That’d been a shit choice of words. He winced, straightened out his clothes, combed his fingers through his hair as if that’d make him feel better, and snapped his left palm against the locking panel. It lit up green. The door slid open.

Their unit’s stubby front section still dreamed of growing up to be an entrance hall one day and the spacious main room backed by a wide glass wall was exactly where (and how) he’d left it. Nothing was on fire. No one screamed. There weren’t any bodies on the floor. Dust motes danced in the light slanting in through the large window, and Gabriel had planted his curly-haired, six-year-old butt on a rug to live out a thrilling chase between a pair of flying cars he held clutched in his hands. They were both glaring red.

Vrooom—Zooom—Psssshh, the cars went, as they so presumably did. Varrett wouldn’t know. Cars usually didn’t fly.

And sitting on the couch was Clive. Bald, beady-eyed Clive with his grey suit, grey briefcase, and notably grey skin. He looked pale and surprisingly small for a man who made his living walking over other people.

In contrast, Mom was a picture of serenity. She lounged in her wheelchair across from the distressed Clive, her posture open and welcoming. Granted, her hair made her look a little wild, but when didn’t it? Clive must have dropped in while she’d been braiding in her ribbons and beads, leaving them sticking out in an uncoordinated but colourful tangle.

Varrett padded into the room, stepped up next to her, and glanced down. He sighed.

Her sawed-off shotgun laid across her lap, its double-barrelled stare pointed just off to the side. Close enough to have Clive pick rock salt out of his arm if it went off, but not close enough to do any permanent damage.

A pair of teacups sat on the table.

Mom, bless her, had actually gone out of her way to make the fucker some tea. And Clive had even had the decency to halfway finish his.

Good on him.

Hey, Mom. Varrett wagged the egg carton. Got your eggs. Then, as if in afterthought, he looked up at their guest in all his ashen pale misery. Clive.

Clive summoned a nervous smile. Good seeing you, V.

Varrett quirked a brow. Is it?

Mom clicked her tongue and knocked the back of her hand against Varrett’s knee with a few light taps. Clive was telling me how the wife and him are moving to Castle One.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. Right after he mentioned how we’re only getting two Shimmer vials today. She leaned forward and fixed Clive in a stare. For which he’s eternally sorry for. Then she went petting the shotgun like anyone else might pet a lapdog.

So here was the shoe he’d been dreading. The one that’d not just dropped, but then gone ahead to kick him in the stomach. Hard.

He looked over to Gabriel with his flying cars. Not intentionally, nah. He couldn’t help the glance though. His little brother—adopted, as the kid’s black skin tended to highlight—remained oblivious to the grown-ups and the gravity of what’d been said. Varrett’s nerves weren’t though. They were acutely aware and pulled taut when Gabriel sent one of his cars up high, giving Varrett a good long look at the bracelet snug against his wrist.

Yeah, it’ll be okay, buddy, he thought while the car tracked back down to crash into the ground, accompanied by Gabriel’s whooping sound effects. Judging by the volume and severity of them, it’d been a real rough landing. A bit like what Varrett’s stomach had just gone through.

Varrett pulled his eyes away. We paid for five. You fucking ghoul.

And as I’d explained to Ellen—

—Misses Vickers, Mom cut in.

To your mother, that is exactly how many I’d have delivered a week ago, but now—

Now you jacked up the price, Varrett shot.

Clive deflated, his beady eyes skipping between them. To be perfectly honest, Varrett’s ego felt a smidgen stepped on. Because come on, look at him. Here he stood with an egg carton in one hand while Mom got to have the shotgun. How was he supposed to add any meaningful threats here? With his mean throwing arm?

Supply and demand, Clive eventually said. He folded his arms. Probably to make himself look tough, but really it just made him look like he wanted a hug. Another supply run was hijacked, ergo: less supply. More demand.

That’s bullshit and you know it. Get Monarch to send more and your supply problem is solved. And I won’t have to egg you.

Monarch is aware and they’re doing what they can. Clive abandoned the folded arm routine to fling his hands out instead. Look, if you need someone to be pissed at, pick the Crows and Limbos. They are the ones waylaying the supplies. Go complain to them and see how far you get before they repurpose your ware and drop you in a ditch. Clive pointed at Gabriel. The fucker actually pointed at his little bro. And then who is going to keep your dependent off the streets?

Varrett’s jaw jumped. He flicked his hand through his hair. Now what? Chuck Clive out the window? Give him a chance to reconsider his life choices on the way down while a gorgeous view whistled by and a hard smack waited for him at the bottom? Nah. That’d blow the window and the ghoul’s wife would miss him for one reason or the other. Plus, murder. Varrett settled for calling up their castle credits, gave them a moment to scroll by the corner of his vision, and wondered briefly just how long the luxury of a carton of eggs could possibly last.

This better be the best damn cake, slash, scramble ever.

Fine. Here. A thought and flick of his hand later and he’d allotted the missing amount to Clive and his distribution racket.

V.., Mom said quietly, even though she’d know that’d be the only way this thing was going to go down. Them poorer. Clive winning. Him fuming.

He dropped a hand to land it on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. We’ll manage.

Clive acknowledge the transfer by unlocking his briefcase and carefully extracting five doses of Shimmer, each no longer than half of Varrett’s pinky finger and considerably thinner. He lined them up on the table, setting them down like fragile toy soldiers. Once all five stood there, he resealed his case.

A pleasure as always, Clive lied while getting up.

Yeah. Right. Now get the fuck out.

Presently.

Varrett swiped a hand down his face and groaned. This fucking sucked.

⁂

Mom waited for the door to shut before she shoved the shotty back into its holster. A holster Varrett had gotten her ten years ago and which had come a long way since then. It’d started out simple: plain leather with a single line of floral patterns etched along the seam and a loop with a metal clasp to secure a weapon with. Then the years had come and gone and the holster had begun collecting decorative patchwork, turning it into a killer conversation starter no matter what wheelchair it was strapped to.

We’ll manage? she asked and fixed her eyes on him. Their dark hazel—which she’d so graciously let him inherit as she liked to point out on occasion—carried a worn out shadow underneath that made his stomach twist uncomfortably. Rent is due in three days, your garage slots are up for renewal, the boiler broke. Her eyes narrowed—and the shadow lifted, right along with the corners of her mouth. They twitched into a subtle Ellen Vickers smile. And my birthday is coming up. So what’s the plan?

Varrett, still with half his face hidden behind his hand, stared at her. Oh man, he whined after a second of recovering from the whiplash. Cold showers? Again?

I know. It’s terrible. She held up a hand. He lowered the carton into it, finally free of his dozen little burdens. It’s not like you whine about it being too hot everywhere else half the time.

Look, you raised a complicated man, he said and absentmindedly squeezed at the back of his neck with both hands.

A tiny, hysteric voice screamed in the back of his head. You’re so fucked, it wailed, and Varrett bit back at himself with a sulky, Yeah, I shoulda been. But look at us.

And I meant it, alright? I’ll talk to Olof first thing in the morning, pick up some fares and a contract or two. Then complain a lot and cry myself to sleep, but I said we’ll manage, so we’ll manage.

She nodded. Never doubted it.

Oh yeah? Egg-selent, he said, glancing at the carton in her hands.

She blinked at him—exactly once—before spinning the chair around with one quick jerk against a wheel. The motion got a jingle out of all her bracelets and necklaces that kept multiplying whenever he wasn’t looking. Oh, and it rolled her chair right over his fucking toes.

Boots still on or not, it smarted. A little. Varrett bit his lip.

Now go make yourself useful, she said halfway to the kitchen.

Yes Ma’am, he said and glanced over to Gabriel once again.

Alright. Useful. Me. Always.

He scooped the Shimmer vials off the table.

Now there was a bunch of delicate little things, even more so than the eggs from before. Varrett handled them accordingly. This was life he was holding in the palm of his hand, after all. Five tiny loan top-ups made of see-through glass tubes stoppered with red caps and filled with liquid so clear, there might as well have been nothing inside at all. He moseyed around the table to the glass wall, pinched the first vial between two fingers, and lifted it against the light. Beyond the vial—beyond the glass wall—Horizon’s Crown stretched far under a painfully blue sky, a dense forest of concrete and steel baking in the sun, bunched up around shadowed streets for miles upon miles before the Shear corded it off and the city scattered. Neon splashes stood out where the grid still held, but otherwise the buildings were dark between here and the Shear, only blooming with fresh pockets of fire whenever one of those decided to catch, or the sun winking off windows. There was a lot of green, too. More than there should’ve been, with the concrete forest gradually getting chocked by the literal Elpisan jungle reclaiming what it’d once lost.

Varrett twisted the vial until the sun hit it just right. The vial lit up. A kaleidoscope of interlocked metallic colours ignited inside the tube; then died again and flared again whenever he turned the vial back and forth.

Counterfeit protection.

Also a real sweet light show and why most people called them Shimmer, rather than their medical name: Re.X.

Varrett repeated the exercise with each vial. They were genuine.

His eyes cut over to Gabriel. The kid remained a hundred percent engrossed in his game. Up the cars went. Down again. Broom. Voom. And they were still at it by the time Varrett lowered himself to his haunches next to him.

Who’s winning?

Captain Starblaze, Gabriel informed him without looking up.

Oh yeah? See this face? He wagged a finger vaguely at his own nose. That’s my doubt face. And that’s a dumb name.

Gabriel raised his chin and Varrett found himself judged by dark, narrowed eyes and puffy cheeks. How dare he question Captain Starblaze. How dare. People got put out back for lesser evils so he better watch it.

He always wins. He’s the fastest.

Nu-huh. Bet I’d beat him.

Bet not. Gabriel, being a child, stuck his tongue out. And Varrett, being childish and proud of it, stuck his out right back.

Your lack of faith in me stings, munchkin. Now give me your paw.

Gabriel sighed loudly, put his cars away, and stuck an arm out, his bracelet shoved under Varrett’s chin. Varrett turned the kid’s slim wrist until he could access the refill port, pausing only briefly so he could scowl at the lone green dot glowing on its display strip. They’d cut it close. Too close.

One by one, Varrett slotted the vials to the port. Click. Hiss. Click. Plus one green light. Click. Hiss. Click. And another. He kept going until all five lights were lit and he was left with one spare vial.

Kay. You’re all set. Varrett dropped a hand on the curly cloud that was Gabriel’s hair, mussing it like only big brothers were allowed to. Even if they sometimes still got met with a small weaponised pout. How about we get cleaned up for dinner?

Gabriel’s pout grew into a weapon of mass awwstruction. But the water is cold. Really really cold.

Psh. Don’t be such a baby, Varrett said. There aren’t any babies in the Vickers household. Never have been. Ever.

Gabriel folded his arms.

Varrett slid the spare vial into his chest pocket, tousled his dependent’s hair again, and winked.

Nope, no babies. Just whiny grown-ass men whose knees creaked when they got up and who’d just had their evening off blown.

And the one after that. And the one after that one, too.

Yeah.

This sucked.

NetCaster: /netˈkæs.tɚ/

noun, plural: NetCasters

General term applied to anyone technology adept and geared with the appropiate cybernetics to assist them. Examples: coders, netsec, VR actors, Echo streamers.

Chapter Three

Jinx

RO’S TEMPEST

ABOARD THE TRAILBLAZER ‘JACK OF HEARTS’

F

ive years.

It’d been five long years since Sophya had last felt the thick crust of a planet’s surface under her feet and since she’d been locked to the ground by the gravity of giants, rather than the Aesten-made sort.

She wondered what it would be like. Granted, her wonderings of the sort were a bit premature, since first she’d have to survive the last step on her wayward journey.

A long step it was, too.

She looked up, away from where she’d been idly coiling her necklace around her finger and had held a half-hearted staring contest with the naked metal floor at her feet. A small cabin hugged her close, tight as a box and sparsely outfitted. There was a bunk—which she sat on, the mattress thin and uncomfortable—a bare, receding shelf that doubled for a desk, and a sad blocky chair. The chair’s sadness came about since she’d only sat on it once and then abandoned it for the rest of the trip.

A fair reason to be forlorn for a chair.

Someone will find out, she thought and slipped her necklace into her shirt. Its feather pendant settled heavy against her chest. Someone was going to see through her lies, right at the end of the trip. She’d managed the applications. The fake cover letters. The articles and impressive list of accomplishments tacked to a somewhat imaginary person. But she was absolutely certain it’d all fall apart. And then what? Did they toss liars out of airlocks here? Or were they stashed in the brig, neatly packaged for whenever they’d reach an authority of sorts?

Hrm.

That theoretical brig, would it be larger than this cabin? Maybe even big enough to fit all her thoughts? This one sure didn’t.

・・・What did you expect? To be whisked through the Tempest on a luxury yacht? SIN glitched into view next to her, all soft paws and wide, honey-coloured eyes. A lazy blink later and she bumped her head into Sophya’s knee. The gentle impact came with a bud of warmth, almost as real as any cat’s affection, but with a subtle lining of glitchy, electric quivers.

・・・Bed fit for a queen. Breakfast in bed. Your own shower? Are those the amenities you were looking for?

Sophya lifted a hand to drop it on her complicated secret’s head. Delighted, SIN stopped teasing her and instead purred up a quiet and scratchy storm, a noise which folded itself neatly into ship mumbling around them.

No, the Jack of Hearts was not a yacht and Sophya hadn’t expected one. You didn’t work your way through the Tempest in a yacht. You needed a trailblazer for that and trailblazers were bulky brutes. Aesten-made battering rams.

Sophya felt it in every creak and groan, in the engine hrrrmmm-thumping like some great beast’s heart. This ship had only one purpose: to work and to work hard, with anything standing in its way an obstacle to shove aside or to crack.

That’s what it’d been doing while she’d been tucked away in its great, sheltering belly. It’d chewed itself through Ro’s Tempest. Successfully, of course, else Sophya would’ve been dead by now. Dead and floating about inside the Tempest’s unshackled churn where the laws of physics liked to bend and argue with what was generally acceptable.

And now that chunk of her journey was nearly complete and Sophya drew ever closer to the inevitable bit of her inevitable doom.

This was a terrible idea.

・・・She speaks reason. But does she change her mind?

Sophya scoffed. She does not.

She’s just scared.

The small speaker by her cabin door popped. A man’s voice got squeezed through sounding terribly tinny. Charlie? the voice asked.

Sophya sunk in on herself. Charlie. Right. Charlie, the talented shutterbug. Charlie, with nothing to lose and everything to prove. Charlie, who Sophya had pretended to be for three years now and a name she’d have to lose come the end of this adventure since now she’d worn it thin.

A knock. Charlie, you in there?

Her stomach folded into a complicated pattern, but she got up, pulling the pack she’d kept squeezed between her knees along with her. She hoisted it up on her shoulders. It was light. She’d taken the essentials only advice to heart. Then she tossed her long scarf around her neck (just once though, she had no reason to complete the barr’s loop) and contemplated the door.

We’re ten minutes from the Well— said that very same door.

Sophya padded up to it. She lifted her hand, though the locking pad she’d reached for gave an affirming CLICK long before she’d touched it. A battering ram the Jack of Hearts might’ve been, but it still had manners and it was terribly eager to please. And so it opened it for her; a small gesture, a courtesy. Neither of which Sophya had asked for. She scowled. She disliked it when ships or stations did that. It made it hard to pretend to be ordinary when your surroundings were chivalrous like that; opening doors, cycling lights, or preparing her a drink before she’d come anywhere near the dispenser.

The door slid open.

—and who wants to miss the Well, finished Pete Mercer, a hand still poised as if he’d been about to knock again.

Pete was a young man of ambiguous Earther roots, whose dark eyes were alight with your typical Earther dreams. Bold dreams. Unreasonable dreams. Like chasing the story of a lifetime. Or at least the scraps of its three-year anniversary.

Sophya masked her scowl with an unfelt, tired smile.

Pete beckoned with his right arm, half of which had been replaced by tricked-out gear between his wrist and elbow. If I hadn’t come looking for you, you’d defo have missed it. He waved again. Paused. And frowned, as if a thought had suddenly struck him. Wait, you’re not worried, are you? Scared of the Well?

Sophya’s tired smile wanted to go have a nap. No, she lied.

Yeah, good. Get your cam then. The gang ’s all by the viewport already and we’ll be squeezing for a good spot.

She nodded and pulled her veil interface glasses from the top of her head to settle them on her nose. The glasses were delicate. Light. And much like Charlie, fake. All they did was clasp gently to her skull and tint her vision, creating a perfect mimicry of the real thing.

Far as Pete knew, they were how she saw through the lens of her camera drone. How she read her veil interface. How she did her casting. How else could she, what with how Sophya/Charlie still had her birth-given blinkers?

He was, of course, very wrong.

She saw just fine without a veil. No implants needed. No glasses, no visors, no contacts.

Sophya waved her hand forward. The drone woke from standby, lifted off the bunk where it’d been resting on the pillow, and zipped across the room to hover by her shoulder. Its front lens adjusted with a series of soft clicks and whirrs, focusing on Pete first and then on the wall behind him. It didn’t look like much; a ball with two lenses, one at the front and one at the back, which spun inside a metal cage meant to protect it from getting smashed up. Yet it’d cost a small fortune. Only the best gear for the best shutterbug and all that. Even if said shutterbug was very fake.

You excited? Pete asked. I’m pumped.

Sophya fought her smile as it tried to curl up somewhere and die. Somehow, she managed to dial it up a notch. Naturally.

I can’t wait. Going through the Well is supposed to be that one thing in your life you won’t forget. Ever. On he went, citing a handful of other unforgettable things in his life, from his academy graduation to his first kiss, and the day he’d picked his new eyes, how he’d been wondering if he should go black black or stick with reasonable.

Sophya let him talk and followed him in silence through the Jack of Hearts’s tight corridors, which were barely wide enough to fit them side by side. SIN kept pace. She wove between her legs, obnoxiously cattish all the way, until she finally got bored and glitched on ahead, her tail held up high.

Pete reacted the way any other sensibly normal person would: not at all. He couldn’t see her, after all.

No one could but Sophya.

Souls were private like that.

⁂

The Jack of Hearts had two viewports. The first one was at the front, tucked under a slanted brow that made the ship look fittingly grouchy for a battering ram. The second was worked into its flank, right where they’d put the commons hall. Even Sophya—who knew very little about ships save that she’d be delighted to never have to board one again in her life—knew ports like those were a structural weakness. Especially in Ro’s Tempest. But when you ferried people through said Tempest, and, ultimately, to the Well, you needed to open it once in a while, else how were your passengers going to gawk? Or pretend they’d seen a dragon?

And so they cracked it open over dinner sometimes and gave their passengers a chance to Oooo and Aaaaa while the ever-crowded mass of asteroids and debris out there churned by like intergalactic garbage stuck in a literal storm.

It was all deceptively pretty.

Didn’t mean Sophya had liked it though when she’d bothered to stay that one time to watch the viewport open. She’d not liked it one bit, no. Not the rocks looking like cragged gemstones tossed into the wild black. Nor the ones trailing luminescent gasses, wisps of which broke off to wrap around neighbouring rocks before dissipating. And especially not the one that had hurtled right at the viewport. Everyone had gasped. Someone had dropped a fork. Someone else had scooted off their bench and fallen on their ass. Then the ship’s hawk jockey had swooped in from above, their hawk’s sharp wings tucked in tight to the small craft’s body. Almost like a real hawk while diving for a poor bun somewhere. Except the bun in this exercise had been a bloated block of rock. The hawk’s wings had fanned out. Its thrusters