~
Eva and Alain
“Cameron,” Tian shouted above the clamour, as his breathing quickened.
“I’m here.” He felt the agent tug the back of his jacket.
“They’re pushing them away from the Village.” He pointed ahead to a shimmering shield. “Princess Park in Arandene?”
“It’s possible, but the park’s not big enough to hold a crowd this size,” Cameron replied. “There must be a hundred-and-fifty-thousand people here.”
“And more to the point you said it would be the Village.”
Tian stayed low as his heart raced. He was elbowed as he weaved past a woman who blew a whistle, past a man who shouted and shook his fists, past a woman who held a banner that proclaimed, ‘The end of the world is now’, and past a man who threw a small sphere into the air. The sphere burst with a pop and pungent yellow smoke blanketed the jeering crowd.
Through the rank haze and between the banners, flags and streamers, Tian took in a sharp breath as he glimpsed a wall of men in black. Ranks of body-armoured, baton-wielding police barred the road to the left; it was the route the marchers were supposed to take. Behind the uniformed formation the regal cream facades and colonnades were lit by glimmering red and blue lights.
A bottle bounced off Tian’s head and clattered on the ground off to his right.
“Are you all right?” Cameron shouted.
He nodded sharply and rubbed his stinging scalp, as he was shoved in the side. Bottles, smoke spheres and fire crackers sailed overhead toward the police line. The crowd roared its approval as the barrage of missiles bounced off the shimmering defensive screen that extended between the buildings in front of the police. Ripples pulsed across the shield from the impact of the objects, like stones being thrown in a still pond.
Tian craned his neck upward as he was again jostled. Clusters of police harriers and Royal Guard raptors hovered above them; their engines throbbed beneath the leaden cloud and their lights were ablaze. Within the comfortable confines of one of the floating vehicles was the Lieutenant.
“Daxa,” Tian said, with his hand to his ear.
“Yes, sir,” came the reply.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know where the order came from, but the police have been instructed to divert the march away from Parliament Village. They’re sealing off the quarter now and steering the protest through Waterwell Avenue into Princess Park in Arandene.”
“They had Permissions for the Village,” said Cameron.
Over the noise, Tian picked out the angry, bee-like drone of the shield generator as they approached the road to the left. Its humming harmonics pitched up and down with each missile that struck its glistening surface. A jagged rock flew from out of the crowd and bounced off the screen to a raucous cheer. Where they had managed to find rocks, Tian did not know, but it was quickly followed by another, and as the trickle became a flood the police tightened up their ranks.
“Daxa, what’s going on ahead of us?”
“Sir, the protestors are probing the shields on Waterwell Avenue that block the roads leading into the Village. Two of them are buckling but all are presently holding. The Royal Guard has just been deployed from General Kalaman Barracks to reinforce the police lines.”
“We’re approaching the Woolfe Street shield now,” Tian said, as he looked up into a sky that was rapidly darkening. “How’s it holding up?”
“Not well, sir, it may fail.”
Tian ducked as another bottle clipped his head and then shattered on the pavement. He lost his footing, stumbled and fell, and as the ground trembled, his trousers ripped and his knee scraped along the cobblestones.
Cameron grabbed him by the arm and dragged him back onto his feet. “Tian?”
“I’m fine, it’s nothing.” His heart sprinted as he brushed his trousers, dabbed his knee and felt grit in the wound. He straightened up and looked at his hand. There was blood on his fingers. Perhaps he had done more than just graze it. A heavy droplet of water landed on a nail and diluted the blood, as the crack, crack, crack of weapons fire punctured the air followed by a wave of screaming.
“Agent Brooke.”
It was Daxa. “Go ahead,” Tian replied.
“Sir, the Woolfe Street shield has collapsed. The protestors are surging into the ranks of police. They’re brawling and throwing missiles. The troopers are fighting back. They’re firing warning shots, using their batons and they’re about to fire pepper gas into the crowd. The police are being pushed back and the Royal Guard are being rushed in behind them.”
He turned to Cameron. “It fits, doesn’t it?”
Cameron nodded as he pulled a black felt pouch from his leather satchel. Tian stood on his tiptoes, and as he strained for even a snatched glance at the breach he caught a glimpse of white billowing fog as it flooded into the marchers from the end of Woolfe Street. The shrieks of hundreds tore through the dead stillness, and as heavy droplets began to splash his face and the air rapidly cooled, Tian was pushed in the back as the crowd surged.
“Damn it,” Cameron growled, as he tripped and his silver palmtop spilled from his hand.
Tian dove forward and caught the monitor before it smashed on the concrete. He gripped Cameron’s arm and thrust the instrument back into his palm.
“I’ve got you, keep at it,” he said, as the flow of crowd increased speed. “Daxa.” A high pitched screeching blasted into his head. The two men wrenched the wireless receivers from their ears.
“Hell fire,” Cameron shouted, and stamped on the miniature device.
Tian again craned his neck upward, and as rain cascaded the harriers’ and raptors’ sparkling red and blue lights flashed across the rupturing clouds; they were a bruised canvas.
“Tian.” Cameron tugged his sleeve and pointed to his palmtop. The instrument displayed a glowing map of the immediate area above its flat screen. There was an eruption of vibrant, primary blue light that emanated from the centre of the clash at the junction of Woolfe Street and Waterwell Avenue.
A single fork of blue lightning that seemed to pulse with wrath struck the junction. A crashing boom smacked the air, and glass shattered in a wave from the centre of the strike outwards. As the tide of breaking glass swept past him, a blast of naked rage ripped through his mind, like a hot, hurricane wind. Tian grabbed Cameron and pulled him to the shaking ground. He threw himself on top of the agent, and clamped his eyes shut as white noise howled.
The coffee cup was a simple, white ceramic affair which suited the quiet cafe. In a slow and considered manner, he lifted the wide rimmed cup to his lips and savoured sips of the deliciously sweetened milky drink.
Tian absently gazed beyond the vacant wooden table before him into the wild gardens beyond the open bay window. The abundance of flowers dripped with dew and burst with vivid colour. Their lush scents drifted in with the cool spring air, and their sweet fragrances were a pleasant contrast to the aroma of bubbling coffee and freshly baked pastries. If only the gentleman sat behind him would stop rustling his broadsheet newspaper, and the two teenagers to his left stop publicly engaging in their lust, then all would be well.
His legs were casually stretched out under the round table instead of tightly tucked under a cushion-less, cold metal chair. He held a thick brand-new paperback instead of a fifty-page report in need of review by yesterday, and he thumbed a battered postcard of the Yanyarbe mountain range of old instead of red-lit page tabs.
His body pleasantly ached with a contented tiredness that seemed to ooze out of his limbs in long and lazy waves. His head lolled slowly forward and his mind unfurled as his eyes closed by slow degrees. It was an unusual and quiet delight to rest in his skin.
The scraping of wood on tiles jolted him and he bolted upright, wide awake, as a young, slim woman in a little black dress sat down at the table opposite him. As the uniformed waiter placed a coffee cup and a tall glass of iced lemon water before her, she blew a long lock of light blonde hair from her face. His breath caught in his throat.
“Thank you,” she said, in a low voice, her face alight as she warmly smiled. The waiter bowed at the waist, an almost imperceptible gesture, as he quietly withdrew.
Tian watched entranced as she stirred the thin layer of dark chocolate into the creamy foam. She delicately placed the spoon on the saucer, and as she stretched and groaned with apparent satistaction, he could not help but smile, as his gaze wandered from the fine hairs on her tanned, bare arms, up to the delightful slope of her shoulders, the elegant curve of her neck, her sweet round chin and her sensuous, pursed lips … she stared at him with her eyebrows raised.
He promptly looked down at the table and, despite having only just started the novel, opened the paperback midway through the last chapter and fixed his gaze on the first word his eye settled on. He dared a glance, and anxiety was transformed into relief, for she was smiling at him. It was a kind and, it seemed to him, a knowing gesture for which he was most grateful. Her exquisite blue eyes sparkled as she lazily sipped her coffee.
He shook his head and spat a glob of grit-laden phlegm into the street. His head pounded and his body felt broken, as though he had been in a street fight he had badly lost.
Tian crawled off Cameron onto his knees, and winced as pain shot through his wound and radiated into his body. He screwed up his eyes tight, ground his teeth and growled. The fireworks behind his eyelids dissipated, as his breathing and the smarting eased. He shook broken glass off the back of his brown leather jacket and slowly sat up.
Pain pulsed through his aching limbs, as he pushed himself up onto his unsteady feet and stared, numb, at a river of bodies haphazardly draped with banners, flags and streamers. At his feet lay a woman and a man, unmoving. Ahead of him, a man with grey hair pushed himself up onto his hands, as a young woman beside him raised herself up onto her knees, as a man behind him struggled to his feet. Each of their faces was still and expressionless, like mannequins.
Tian’s feet crunched glass, as he turned through a slow circle. Not one street lamp was lit, the cream facades were no longer splashed with primary colours, and darkness lay beyond broken window panes. The dead still air was filled with powdery grey dirt, billowing black smoke and countless of sheets of fluttering white paper. The only sounds were the crackle of flames, the teeming of rain and the rumbling in the sky.
As Cameron noisily cleared his throat, spat, and then began the struggle to sit up, Tian breathed evenly as he attempted to slow his hammering heart.
Through the haze, he looked up at the shadowy building to his left. A police harrier had crashed into its roof. The vehicle’s power appeared to be offline and its engine grid hung precariously over the edge of the building. Masonry, shattered glass and smashed slate had spewed out into the avenue from the point of impact. The debris had rained down onto the crowd. He looked up further still into the imperious weather, not one vehicle floated above him.
He turned around with a cautiousness he felt reserved for a man twice his age. He inhaled sharply as he looked into the smashed cockpit of a Royal Guard raptor that had slammed into the middle of the static river.
“Daxa,” he whispered.
A brilliant sheet of white lightning ripped across the wrathful cloud. Thunder smacked the air and a shockwave reverberated in his bones. As night became day, screams of terror pierced the silence. Tian whipped his head back toward Woolfe Street, as the avenue was again plunged into murky darkness.
“Come on,” Tian said, as he dragged Cameron to his feet.
Pain spiked through his feet and up his legs, as they picked their way through the sprawl of tangled bodies. As Cameron shook his dead palmtop, Tian gripped him by the arm and led him over the carpet of twisted limbs. A thin hand reached up to him, and Tian looked down upon a woman’s face. Her eyes were lit with fear, and her tears thinned the blood that dripped from her temple. He pressed on and shoved emotion that screamed at him to pause aside. As much as he wanted to help, this was not the time to stop.
His skin tingled and his scalp was suddenly cold. “Can you feel it?” he said, as he rubbed the goose flesh on his arm.
“Yes,” Cameron replied. “Can you hear them?”
Tian closed his eyes. There was a distant wailing. “Sirens?”
“I think so.”
If sirens were closing, then the pulse had not knocked out the entire city. That would surely mean the police, ground troops and the Royal Guard would not be far behind. He pushed his leaden limbs into a run, and though he desperately tried not to, he couldn’t help but kick legs and step on arms as he jumped over inert and waking bodies.
An unseen hand grabbed his ankle. The air was forced from his lungs, as he slammed into the rain and blood drenched road, narrowly avoiding glass. Ahead of him was a dead man in a green shirt and black trousers. The body was face down and blood pooled around the head. Tian’s nostrils flared and his breathing raced, and as he inched closer his blood ran ice cold.
Suspended in the air around the body were thousands of tiny pieces of green and black fabric, little clumps of pale flesh, soft tissue and globules of blood. Each element was being drawn toward the body. As Tian stared and held his breath, fearful to disrupt the display, he followed a fragment of cloth as it settled into a gap in the shirt, like a missing puzzle piece. In a few brief seconds the spectacle had ceased and the corpse was whole.
“Cameron, tell me you see this?”
“I see it, I see it,” he replied, as he crouched next to Tian.
“We have no recorders?”
“The pulse knocked it out.”
Tian could not stare at the body a moment longer. He pushed himself hurriedly away; he had to get away from the aberration. As he backed into inert body, he sat onto his haunches, coughed until his throat hurt and then looked up toward Woolfe Street.
A young man rose up onto his knees; he held his head in his hands as he rocked back and forth and stared at the body of an old man in front of him. A woman stood up next to him and turned in a slow, uncertain circle as her eyes darted from one body to the next. A man screamed without pause and pulled at his hair, as the eyes of a young, silent girl were fixed unblinking on the eyes of the dead face she stared into. Their pain lacerated his mind, like jagged shards of glass.
The air began to throb with the thump of approaching vehicles. It was not long before the sirens above overwhelmed the cries of distress on the ground. Shouted orders were then added to the discordance as the police, troops and Royal Guard poured into the avenue with their weapons trained.
Tian looked into Cameron’s glazed eyes through a golden cigar shaped tube of light that surrounded him. He pulled out a thick silver chain, and as his shiny identification badge came into view, Tian was also bathed in a golden tube of light. He ran a hand over his face and scratched his bearded cheek. As his breathing levelled out, he allowed himself a glimpse into his punch drunk mind, and found only incomprehension staring back at him.
~
A stiff mandarin collar dug into Tian’s neck. The form of the brilliant white shirt was levelled out by dark blue epaulettes with shiny gold piping. Trams could run on the creases in his freshly pressed black trousers, and his black shoes shone as brightly as they did on his passing out parade. There was a time when he took great care in achieving the refined lines of uniform. These days he relied entirely on the Army’s clothiers.
Tian stood still in a cool, black chamber. As an agent jumped from an armoured carrier onto a surface of mud and machine oil, he looked upon a full-size, three dimensional image of the glistening sludge. The live pictures were transmitted by the agent’s headcam to his secure location in Agency Headquarters, deep within Serene City.
As the downpour spotted the agent’s camera lens, electricity popped within a rolling blanket of pendulous black cloud. Off to the left, beyond the secure compound’s high stone walls, sensors and elemorphic fences, white lightening forked to the ground. It was immediately accompanied by a belting crack of thunder.
Dozens of young, stern faced, helmeted troops in desert colours and body armour, with belts of ammunition slung over their shoulders, fanned out from the squat personnel carriers. They ran toward South Bayoun’s grey stone gatehouse; their utility packs slapped against their sides as they trained their bulky weapons ahead. The troop’s stocky Captain marched with his back straight and his hands clasped behind his back. The moustached officer seemed oblivious to the lashing storm.
The agent turned and looked back toward the stationary vehicles. Two soldiers tightly guarded Tian’s team of three as they followed the troop. Their faces were pale and gaunt, they were weapon-less and breathed heavily, as they lugged heavy-duty camouflaged cases through the foul weather toward the gatehouse’s arched doorway.
Tian squinted, for beyond the gatehouse was the vague outline of a much larger facility hidden within the shadows. White lightening blazed, and as thunder reverberated through him, a black, hulking building loomed out of the pitch dark.
“Captain Lynd, thank God you’ve arrived,” a Corporal said, as he strode out of the gatehouse into the sheeting rain.
The Captain stood at ease before the drawn soldier. “Has discipline broken down here, Corporal?”
The Corporal snapped to attention and his hand shook as he saluted. “No sir, my apologies, sir.” The thin soldier’s eyes were bloodshot and his teeth chattered.
Lynd casually returned the salute, a gesture that seemed laden with sarcasm. “Name?”
“Goodman, sir.”
“Are you the highest rank here?”
“The-the only soldier of rank left, sir.”
“What happened here, Corporal?”
“It was a live fire exercise, sir, but how could we have foreseen … how could we have known, sir.”
As Tian stepped forward his shoes squeaked on the chamber’s smooth, black reflective floor. He glanced at a glowing display by his feet to find her name. “Agent Nyah.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent replied, as Tian’s view of events dipped down to the mud.
“Time is ticking,” he said quietly.
Tian jolted as the facility’s locking mechanism popped with a booming clang that reverberated off the chamber’s walls. As the great iron doors sluggishly opened, crackling sparks were spat into the rain, and as the wheels ground in their runners, the screeching of metal on metal sent cold shivers racing up and down his spine.
The soldier to the agent’s right adjusted his helmet mounted camera, inspected his wrist power meter, pulled at his ammunition belt, snatched a look over his assault rifle and then inspected his meter again. Captain Lynd strode forward to the threshold of the facility and stood with his legs apart. He popped a stick of gum into his mouth and placed his hands on his hips as he peered into the facility’s darkness. He then took in a long breath and waved the troops in.
Tian’s heart rate picked up speed and pressure built behind his eyes, as an array of virtual dispalys appeared at his feet. The view from the helmet cameras of each soldier appeared within the displays. Tian’s eye flitted from one image to the next, settled for a moment on the soldier on point, and watched as the man cautiously stepped into a cavernous space that read-outs told him was a multi-levelled arena the size of two football fields. He moved on to a soldier who stepped up to an offline deck-to-ceiling holographic projector, and then to a soldier who had come across dozens of blackened shell casings and scattered assault rifles.
“Agent Brooke.”
“Yes, Nyah?” Tian replied.
Tian’s chest tightened and he dug his nails into his hands, as the agent shakily panned her camera up from a pair of scuffed combat boots, to twisted legs, to a torso clothed in desert colours. Nyah zoomed in on the body’s head. It was spattered with dirt and crusted with blood, and a mouth that had once passed breath was locked agape, and eyes that had once held life appeared to have terror frozen upon their glassy surfaces. Nyah stepped to her right and revealed another body face down in the filth, with another alongside it curled up tight into the foetal position.
Tian exhaled slowly and lowered his head. “Badge seven-seven-three,” he muttered.
The South Bayoun facility vanished in a blur of colour and light and was replaced by a lifesize, three-dimensional image of dozens of beams of torchlight that bounced off tall, curved mirrored walls. Tian tightly folded his arms, as he watched police officers pick their way through a sea of bodies that lay upon a labyrinth of floating floors softly lit by coloured lights.
Tian’s view of the nightclub shifted, as the agent who held badge seven-seven-three swung his gaze away from the police and lowered his head. The agent’s headcam transmitted images of a golden dancefloor, and his breathing became ragged as he trod on an arm decorated with rings and bangles. He shone his pencil torch ahead of him. The sharp beam picked out two semi-clad male bodies slumped on steps that led up to another level. To his left were an almost identical pair of male bodies on steps that led down to a lower level.
The agent cleared his throat and ducked an idly spinning glitter mirror as he gingerly stepped past the dead. His laboured breathing filled Tian’s cold chamber as he made it to the upper level. He then lumbered toward a cocktail bar and gripped its golden handrail. Shattered bottles lined the bar’s smashed mirrored walls and coloured liquids had run down the gleaming surfaces and pooled on the floor. Tian gave the scene just a cursory once over for his vision was taken by the agent’s hands. The man’s knuckles were white and his arms shook. A display at his feet revealed the name of yet another draftee to his mushrooming department.
“Nice and slowly, Agent Fields,” Tian said quietly, and he hoped reassuringly. “There’s no hurry.”
“Yes, sir,” came the rasping reply.
The agent stepped down into a secluded alcove and crouched by a long corner sofa with a leopard-skin print. The body of a man with a bare chest lay sprawled across brightly coloured cushions; his eyes were fixed open and glazed. The body of a petite woman in a short red dress lay across one of the sofa arms; a high heeled shoe dangled from her slim foot. Tian’s view of events dropped to the golden floor, as the agent’s breathing became short and shallow.
“Agent Fields, you may go offline.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The image froze.
The only sounds to remain in the chamber were the soothing hum of the air conditioning and Tian’s forced slow breathing. He took a step forward and, mindful of his knee dressing, crouched in front of the unmoving three-dimensional image.
“Pull back to time index seven-thirty-four-spot-seven-thirty-nine.”
Torchlight starkly lit the washed out face of the dead woman in the red dress. The pain he was convinced he saw locked in time behind her solidified corneas spoke to something terrifying. How was it that every single corpse he had observed from these wretched events had that same naked fear etched into the fabric of their passing?
He stood, turned his back to the dead and fixed his gaze on the smooth floor. The constriction that gripped his throat eased only a little as he roughly massaged his temples. Thank goodness his stomach was empty. He raised his head and stood still as he attempted to push his thoughts aside, unwanted as they were. He searched for a place in his mind where he could rest, a gap he was certain existed but was hidden from his vision, a blissful space where forgiveness and ease resided. As his heart slowed from its sprint, he grunted and stretched his back as hard as he could.
As it cracked and creaked, and pain shot through his shoulders and spine, broken images of the faces of the Waterwell Avenue dead flashed into his mind’s eye. What in hell was he doing? What made him think he was even vaguely qualified to investigate events that were clearly spiralling out of control? How could he stand before General Hoth and attempt to present a rational explanation for illogical phenomena he barely understood? He saw the symptoms but was blind to their cause, but then, they all saw the blasted symptoms. To say he was out of his depth was beyond understatement.
A hairline crack appeared in the image of the dance floor and a door revealed itself. It slid open with a quiet hiss, and Alain Cameron stepped into the chamber from the brightly lit control room beyond. The agent wore the same dishevelled civilian clothes from Waterwell Avenue, his shoulders were curved inward and his body was hunched. His long face was drawn and his tanned skin did nothing to mask heavy black bags that seemed to weigh down the skin beneath his bloodshot eyes. Tian took Cameron softly by the wrist and led him to three silver chairs by the door.
As he slumped onto the metal chair, dropped his hands into his lap and interlaced his fingers, his Department Chief did not seem to notice the bead of sweat that ran down his cheek. As his head lolled forward and thick, grey shoulder-length hair flopped before his face, Tian slowly sat down next to him.
“I … I didn’t think it would actually happen to us.” Cameron said, his voice was low and scratchy. “I thought by knowing it so precisely somehow it would just be prevented. It’s ludicrous now I think of it.”
Cameron reached into a worn pocket and pulled out a battered packet of cigarettes. He shook his head rhythmically as acrid smoke billowed in front of his face. Tian patted his knee lightly and forced a smile. It seemed to work, for as the agent pulled on his cigarette, his face cracked and a faint smile curled upward.
“We saw it,” Tian whispered, “finally.”
“But what does it give us?”
Tian sat back and raised his hands. “Well, we know at last, and for certain, it is a molecular disruption causing death.”
Cameron slapped his hands on his legs. “We don’t know that, Tian. We’ve believed a molecular disruption of some description was taking place from the start, but it’s not the cause and you know it.” Tian closed his eyes, a wave of heat pulsed through his mind as Cameron raised his voice. “Not one of us came close to modelling the disruption that took place after the blackout, and if you want me to name a cause then how’s this: magic. And that’s before I even try to unpick what you blithely call ‘intelligence’ that led us to Waterwell Avenue in the first place.”
“I hear you.” Tian rubbed the bridge of his nose as his head had begun to throb. The pressure behind his eyeballs had forged a path to the forefront of his attention. Rubbing his nose was pointless, what he needed to relieve the ache was to reacquaint himself with the half bottle of single malt tucked away in the back of his desk drawer. “Look, right now, with these things escalating, it seems, on a daily basis, I am just grateful we have intelligence, even if it is a thread we don’t understand. Please, don’t let …”
The door slid open, and an immaculately dressed officer in the red, silver and black of the Royal Guard stepped into the chamber.
“Ouch,” Tian said, and grimaced, as he stood and pointed to the white patch on Eva Daxa’s forehead. “Are you all right?”
“Sir, I have a lousy headache,” Daxa replied, in her long, warm eastern drawl. “I could do without the nausea as well.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“Sir, I remember seeing the event and the loss of power in the vehicle that followed, but I don’t remember a great deal after that. I understand the raptor I was aboard landed on a roof and, I’m told, I smacked my head on a panel. We fell only a few feet and we all walked away from it with just a few bumps and bruises.” The young Lieutenant looked into his eyes and glared. “We were the fortunate ones, sir, the crews that hit the deck were not and nor were the people beneath their vehicles.”
Tian nodded but slammed the door the distress that sprang up in his mind, for he could not think of it, now was not the time. “Should you even be here?” he asked, for the last thing he wanted was to exacerbate the Lieutenant’s injury.
“Probably not, sir.” She pointed to the scene. “Another event?”
“Yes,” Tian replied, slowly, as he cautiously turned back to the sofa.
“Do we have a count yet, sir?” Daxa asked.
“No, not for the whole of Jeradine, but as we stand, and including the crashes from the skylanes caught within the range of the pulse, Waterwell Avenue is in the order of four-thousand dead. So far today, there have been seven events across the country, three of which were here in the city.”
“Sir, those numbers are double the whole of last week put together,” Daxa said, as she shook her head. “And if I’m not mistaken that’s almost last month’s entire death toll in one morning.”
Tian bit his lip and simply nodded at her incredulous face. He had no words for the Lieutenant. Nothing at all in fact that might take the sting out of the new string of terrible disasters. He pointed to the nightclub. “This erm … was actually the first.”
“Where is it?” Cameron asked, as he stood.
“Silk Mills, tucked away in Holdale. It’s a period establishment apparently fashionable among the young.”
Tian and Cameron folded their arms, as Daxa clasped her hands behind her back. As they stood side by side and stared at the dead upon the leopard-skin sofa, the stillness that surrounded Tian was reflected back into his mind. For once, the incessant swirling formation and dissolution of his thoughts and emotions had miraculously settled with the silence. It was no doubt only a momentary glimpse of quiet, one that would be swept away in an instant.
Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Daxa’s head turn to him. He could almost feel her stare piercing him, as if she was trying to climb inside his head and squeeze his mind. “Sir, if you’ll excuse me, I need to report this to General Hoth.” Tian nodded, as his gaze returned to the dead woman in the red dress. The Lieutenant’s shoes squeaked, as she smartly about-faced and marched from chilly room.
If he could make it to the scene in time, Tian would stand in the wake of an event and soak in the charged atmosphere that followed the fury that flared for an instant and unleashed pain of an untold lifespan. Over the years, they had analysed and catalogued hundreds of thousands of images, samples and readings. They had written hundreds of reports that always ended with impressions and theories but never conclusions. They had looked upon the desperation in the eyes of the dead again and again, and it seemed no amount of skill, effort, patience or luck could begin to explain anomalies that killed in ever frightening numbers, and seemed only to be increasing in frequency, scale and ferocity.
Cameron placed a hand on his arm and squeezed it. He glanced back at Silk Mills, muttered something unintelligible as he slouched, and then ambled from the chamber. As the door quietly closed behind him, he felt the chamber vibrate beneath his feet.
Tian looked upon the young woman’s painted face, as his throat again constricted. All he asked for was a clue as to why, a toehold on the inside of what she had seen and what had caused her to pass so suddenly. The solution had to be there in front of him, glaring at and taunting him, and despite what General Hoth would have the Queen believe this was not and had never been the Yarcatzn military.
She blinked and smiled broadly, as the teenagers kissed and played with each other’s hair. Tian hid behind his novel and shook his head as a wide beam crept across his face.
“Can you remember a time when you were so uninhibited?” she asked.
“No, ‘uninhibited’ is not a word I’m well acquainted with.” Tian looked down into his half full coffee cup.
“That’s a shame.”
“I really wouldn’t know.” He glanced back up and caught a smirk that was clearly mischievous. He felt his face flush, as he racked his mind for something to say, anything. “So, you sound like you were born in the city?”
She nodded slowly. “Indeed, from behind one of the mustard facades in West Palentine.” She held his gaze as her smile transformed into a grin. “And your accent suggests you were not?”
He looked away. “Ah, no.”
“I’d say you’re a South Country lad, Yaltran maybe.”
“Further south, Black Barn.”
“Really?” She frowned. “You hide it well.”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
“My name is Petra.”
“T-Tian. Tian. Tian.” He coughed. “My name is Tian.”
~
