Kio hurt from the fighting, but it didn’t build like it should have, as the body cooled down and bruises had time to settle in. The aman’s power was at work.
He walked, following his inner map out of the territory that the Rock Dogs had traditionally claimed, and into what had belonged to the Greens. Now it was all Grim’s, apparently.
The gangs he’d grown up around had made more use of human beings or very simple bots and drones, rather than anything really fancy or too small to be seen. But they also hadn’t used guns. Not in the face of Yvenna’s very strict laws about those, and particular culture of pride.
But Grim was making changes, it seemed, or maybe the times were and the giant was just floating along. Whatever.
And what exactly is your plan, Kio? Float along, drown, or swim against the current? Or are you going to try to make like a rock and stand firm? Famously firm guy that you are?
He felt the presence of eyes around him. If not real ones, then at least metaphorical. With three of the major gangs under him, Grim hadn’t been exaggerating. He really did have a powerful reach now. And Kio had humiliated him in front of a pack of his men. And almost bitten a chunk right out of his chest.
“Twenty five hours…” he muttered to himself, as the full implications of all this slowly piled up in his mind.
He let himself drift out of the core of the gang territories and into the peripheries. It had been a couple of years since he’d had to actually sleep under the sky, driven away from home by anger or sheer obstinacy. But it wasn’t a complicated skill, and he found himself a tolerable spot behind a public recycler, lay down, and let himself fade away.
He woke up to someone doing an early-morning dump into the cycler, and there was nothing in particular for him to wait for. He stretched and patted himself to exorcise some of the stiffness such a night caused, then started to drift again.
He munched on his half-bun, drank from a public fountain, and made use of a public toilet. It had a mirror, of course, and he took the chance to look himself in the eyes.
The clarity of a bit of sleep, and more hours, brought the situation into ever-clearer focus.
He is going to come for you, Kio. You know it’s no idle boast. The time limit is just to make sure that the next time goes differently.
Kio’s left hand tapped the wall.
So, are you going to wait for it to hit you, like an animal in a pen? You know what the universe is like. Fight or die, Kio.
Knock-knock-knock.
You walked away from glory and conquest, when it was right within reach. Here’s your chance to take a glimmer of it for yourself. Are you really going to let it slip away?
Knock-knock-knock.
Kio looked away, breathed in deeply, and left the booth.
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The nearest hanha had another setup for all the refugees, although this one was smaller in scale. Kio would have felt safer in a larger crowd, for the extra anonymity, but he was tired, hungry, and was feeling doomed regardless. So he joined the queue, got another meal much like the previous one, and sat down on another simple, barely-comfortable seat.
There were Tanga warriors around, and Kio stooped over his food to hide his face a bit. It was a different outfit from that other hanha, clad in different colours, but they still put him on edge every time they got close.
He looked around, at the hundreds of people who had drifted here from the lanes. He supposed these were fresh arrivals, judging by the rattled air around many of them. Many had, Kio knew, bounced from one stop to another, in search of a community both able and willing to take them in. And now here they were, with food, housing and no bombings, even if the former two were basic and the third one was normally taken for granted.
There were plans in place, Kio also knew. He hadn’t kept up with it before Ciinto Res, but it was impossible to miss glimpses of the ongoing reports, and the public interest.
Language lessons, better housing, trauma counselling, education to match the Yvennan standard, work courses… all the things these people would need to integrate, rather than become an appendix, ignored and only noticed when infection set in.
It was nice, he supposed, when one considered the number of children. A majority of these refugees were families. And Kio knew about fear and violence when one was little.
The kids were being kids, in the cute ways and the bad ones. Some were done eating, and free from immediate supervision as their parents feasted, they were running around, crawling under the tables, shouting and generally distracting themselves. And everyone else. There was also crying, and haunted little faces.
His wandering eyes landed on a kid who was maybe five years old. He wasn’t good at telling. The boy sat with a man who was clearly his father; there was no missing the resemblance. The man wore a style of suit Kio had never seen before, probably from some obscure community on a distant world. He had bags under his eyes and a hoarse voice, but kept one arm around the boy and rocked him a bit, even as he slowly ate with his other hand. The boy was uneasy, half-sobbing in that way they did when nothing major was immediately wrong. Kio didn’t see any evidence that the two of them were part of a larger group.
It had to be nice to have a loving parent, at least. The sight of it was somehow making him feel bad and good at the same time.
Kio sat where he was, letting his mind do whatever it was doing. It sometimes felt like a separate entity.
After a little while of that, Kio reached into his jacket and opened a pocket. Besides the skin box he’d bartered for, he did have one other worldly possession besides the clothes on his back: A pair of extra socks. The material was semi-adjustable, and even clean. He’d bought them at some point, during the nightmare weeks before Ciinto Res, then stuck the pair in there and basically forgotten about it.
He rolled one in on itself, then did it again, tighter, and again. A bit of kneading and manipulating got it into a pretty good ball-shape, and the whole thing was about as stiff as he could make it. He then put it into the other sock, twisted, folded it back over, twisted, and so on until he had a tight skin around the first ball.
Finally he stood up and approached the pair. He felt awkward and foolish, but got their attention by clearing his throat.
“Hey.”
He threw the sock-ball into the table, and it bounced fairly well. He repeated the display a couple of times, then handed the makeshift toy to the kid.
“Here.”
The boy took it, and with something to occupy his mind he actually calmed down a little. The father said something Kio didn’t understand, but his expression and tone said plenty.
Kio nodded curtly and walked away. He picked up speed as he went.
He still felt foolish. It felt so utterly tiny and insignificant compared to the shit he’d done on the mentor’s orders. But for a moment his thoughts turned outside of himself, and reflected that the weary father and son’s day had been slightly improved.
That was something.