The vector was short. The silver barrel ended centimetres away from the porcelain skin of the woman’s forehead. Her clear blue eyes stared at the weapon with undisguised terror, waiting for the vector to deliver the deadly cargo to its end, to smash through her skull and explode out the other side in a detonation of blood and brain matter. He imagined it happening, how easy it would be to pull the trigger and send blood splattering in a gory arch, showering the pristine faces behind her in a spray of liquid rubies.
Even drunk, he still felt a measure of revulsion at the potency of that urge.
His hand was shaking slightly, and the barrel of his revolver twitched occasionally, but time stretched on. With each passing moment, the frustration began to melt away and was replaced by a growing sense of foolishness. Why was he pointing a gun at this beautiful woman? His grip on the weapon eased, and he licked his lips, glancing at the frightened faces around him.
What a mess he was.
He lowered the gun to his side and holstered the revolver in his left hand. It was best to keep one ready for Fred’s actual assassin.
Someone coughed in the silent bar, some faces turned away awkwardly, attempting to diffuse the palpable tension that choked the dim room. Gradually, conversation started again, and Maxwell heard someone order a drink at the bar. Maybe he could leave with at least a small scrap of dignity still intact. The woman glanced back and forth between the gun at his side and his weary eyes.
She was half a head shorter than him, with a slender figure slipping perfectly inside her burnt orange dress. God, she was beautiful, captivatingly so. Her masterfully proportioned face was still blank with fright, yet she still looked gracefully attractive with her defined chin, a petite nose, and bright eyes peeking from behind dark lashes.
His mouth was parched, and his voice came out as an embarrassing croak, “Sorry about that”
She frowned. “Are you ok? Did you hurt yourself?”
Maxwell was well aware that the closest patrons were still watching the exchange with surreptitious curiosity.
“No, I'm okay.” He looked about himself as if checking to make sure all his belongings were in order. “Goodbye”
He edged past her petite figure, and she stepped back to let him pass. He felt an unexpected and uncomfortable pang of regret leaving her standing there, but he didn't look back as he carefully made his way to the door; almost all his attention was being used to monitor the carpet for any other unexpected obstacles. He could still feel her eyes on his back.
As his hand clasped the brass door handle, he felt the tension easing in his shoulders; he just needed to get home, lock the door, get into bed, sleep and forget. Like he always did. Everything would be an emotionless blur in the morning, like a vague dream. He pulled the weight of the wooden door towards him and held his coat close to him as he slid through the doorway quickly.
The wide corridor was busy with the usual nighttime buzz of inebriated locals, meandering in small groups down the hallway between the stone benches and blue-leafed ferns that sprouted vibrantly from their planter boxes. He scanned those around him quickly, feeling his drunken gaze slide over the groups without really seeing anything. He again tried to initiate the neural cleanse function of his cortical web, but error messages blinked apologetically into his mind’s eye. He turned in the direction of the Matin Skybridge and froze.
Thankfully, his cortical web was still partially functional. Maxwell felt his awareness coalesce into a semi-sober state as potent stimulants increased the speed of his neural activity in a dizzying drag, what he perceived as time thickened and slowed; those around him began walking slower, and his breathing seemed to stretch each breath like a rubber band.
The gunman was dressed in a navy blue blazer and bright orange trousers. His hair was swept back in the popular style of Chalice’s middle class, which had also been adopted by some prominent criminal organisations. His eyes were wide and alert, glancing in slow motion from his own Sharde pistol to the weapon in Maxwell’s right hand. Maxwell used the last few moments of the stimulant’s burn to begin raising his pistol whilst he tried to gauge the man’s weapon. The shiny black finish was characteristic of the Ranger brand of Sharde weaponry. It was probably one of their mid-range handhelds; the magazine could hold five shots and be semiautomatic. No serious mods were evident on its neat composite body, so the damage output would be close to the manufacturer's specs.
His hand was halfway towards level when his brain began slowing back to normal speeds, and soon after that, the man’s weapon snapped off its first shot. The sharde round smacked into his chest with the force of a large piston, and he stumbled backwards as he fired back with his right revolver. Another snap sent him spinning as his shoulder was wrenched backwards with another hit. He fired again without any chance of scoring a hit and surrendered to gravity's embrace as he spun to the ground.
Another piston smacked him in the back as he hit the ground, expelling what little air he still had left in his chest. He heard the first screams from startled onlookers as he rolled onto his back to face the gunman again, drawing his second pistol. A dart flashed from the man’s weapon and split the stone flooring half a meter away from his face, and he felt shards of superheated stone splatter the brim of his hat. Maxwell struggled to line up his weapons as his brain screamed insatiably for air, his chest convulsing under a vice-like grip that was preventing him from inhaling. A vector flickered into existence as he managed to steady one hand amidst the shaking of his arms, and he squeezed the trigger. Recoil wrenched his wrist upwards as the gun barked, and a flash of crimson sprayed the wall closest to the gunmen. It took a second for the man to scream, but when he did, he stumbled and crashed into the wall as his ruined shin gave under his weight. His lower left leg was now a bent mess of bloody orange fabric and ruined flesh. Another vector was created as his vision began to dim, and he fired a second shot with his left hand.
The screaming choked off as the second shot obliterated the gunmen’s right shoulder in a grotesque micro detonation of blood and bone. The shard pistol clattered to the ground from a limp arm.
Maxwell blacked out.
__
Air surged into his convulsing chest as the vice-grip relaxed. Maxwell blinked away from the darkness and immediately began coughing violently as he struggled to sit up. How long had he been out for? His dull mind fumbled about trying to organise his various muddled sensations. Running footsteps and yelling filled the corridor as frightened bystanders continued to flee in both directions, and terrified shrieks pieced the din. His cortical web informed him he had passed out for ten seconds. Where was the shooter?
Maxwell sat up, clutching his chest, and he raised his right pistol.
The gunman was in a sorry state. He had slumped down to the white stone floor, one hand on his ruined shoulder where a crimson tide spread across his blazer, the material darkening with the scarlet fluid’s advance. The other hand twitched in his lap. His head lolled against the stone wall, and his ruined leg now sat within a growing pool of its own bright blood. He was gurgling incoherently as fluid dribbled from his open mouth and spilled down his chest. Bloodshot eyes found Maxwell, and the gurgling was punctuated by a startled choke.
Maxwell struggled to stand up; his entire thorax was numb, and his left shoulder was weak, almost non-functional. It didn't help that his leather boots slid on the smooth white stone below him. He finally found his feet and leaned against the wall for much-needed support, his gun still trained on the dying figure in front of him. The gunman was watching him and must have sensed his impending doom approaching because he started grunting and tried to turn away, but his wounds had reduced his movements to ineffectual fumbling. He didn't even have the strength to push himself off the wall beside him. The effort provoked a coughing fit, which sent gouts of blood spattering from his mouth over his clothes and the stone floor in front of him.
Maxwell aimed at the poor sod's chest with a shaky hand and squeezed the trigger. The metallic bang cracked like a thunderbolt within the confines of the corridor and bounced off the stone around him in a series of deafening echoes. The gunmen smashed into the wall with the impact of the gunshot, and a frightening amount of blood sprayed the stone around him. His head came to rest on one shoulder, and his eyes stared blankly from his blood-stained face.
Silence washed over the bloody scene as the last reverberations dissipated into the night, and Maxwell breathed deeply, feeling bruised and empty.
In any other world, he would have to run, pack his things, and disappear into the void to find another home on a distant planet. Not on Chalice. There would be no sirens, no police, no investigation, and no arrests. Only Fred watching, eternally watching.
Maxwell glanced around, looking for a camera. It was foolish, but he couldn't help himself; there were probably pin cameras embedded in the very stone of the walls.
-Fred, are you there?
-Yes, Maxwell.
Maxwell felt a nugget of dread appear in his chest. Now, it chose to respond. He looked over his shoulder for the next gunman.
-Why?
-Why what, Maxwell?
-Why are you trying to kill me?
-I'm not trying to kill you. The man that attacked you was not sent by me.
Maxwell was too sceptical to even feel slightly relieved.
-Who sent him?
-I don't know.
That was definitely bullshit, the bastard knew everything.
Maxwell eased himself off the wall, still trying to watch both directions simultaneously. He moved towards the dead shooter. He had to get home. In a matter of minutes, the local anaesthetic administered by his body armour would wear off, leaving his bruising to unleash its painful wrath upon his flesh. He looked about himself, inspecting the damage to his clothing. The impact on his shoulder had burnt away the coat's leather, exposing the nanofibre armour's matte black mesh. Embedded within the mesh were tiny shards of alloy and a fine white powder dusted the edges of the melted leather. The ballistics gel had enlarged the shoulder of the coat to twice its normal size, and he could feel the squishy consistency of the goo dissolving back into its dense constituents. The gel would be ready to deploy again within a few minutes if Hanis was to be believed. He suspected there would be a similar mark on his back. As for his waistcoat, the fabric had been burnt away in a diamond shape, exposing the same meshwork below. He would have to visit Hanis next week to fix everything.
A door opened behind him, and he spun around with his gun raised.
The woman in the burnt orange dress stepped out and froze, looking from him to the dead gunman slumped in a pool of dark blood. He lowered the gun, and she took a step towards him.
“Are you ok?” Her voice was small within the silence of the deserted hallway.
“Yes, just bruised. You should go.”
He turned around and began shuffling past the bleeding corpse. He would leave this curious woman behind for the second time tonight.
He paused as his foot bumped into the slim black sharde pistol. An idea struck him, and he bent down to pick up the weapon. He started coughing as his hand grabbed the cold composite, and his foot slipped on the growing pool of blood next to his victim’s ruined leg. He came crashing down right next to the fallen shooter and just managed to avoid landing in the still-growing scarlet pool. He heard footsteps rushing towards him as he struggled to get up again; his chest was burning, and his right shoulder had begun throbbing in angry protest.
The woman appeared beside him, ignoring the corpse and extended a hand towards him. He hesitated momentarily before clasping the soft skin of her hand in his. He managed to get to his feet and faced her after falling over for the second time tonight.
“What's your name?” He asked, slipping the shard pistol into his coat pocket.
“Saachi”
She grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the corpse. Her grip was firm, but her steps were light and unhurried.
“Where are we going, Saachi?” he asked.
“I’m taking you home; you're hurt.” She smiled back at him, but the smile faded when her eyes found the disfigured body behind them. “That's the second time you've fallen over tonight. Who knows what you will do to yourself trying to walk home.”
He felt a smile flicker within but didn't let it surface. He glanced behind them and saw cautious patrons from Godwin’s poking their heads out of the doorway. Someone screamed when they saw the body, but Saachi didn't stop.
As the adrenaline wore off, he started to feel his intoxication creeping up again. His cortical web informed him that his blood alcohol was still high, and he chose not to retry the cleansing function; he didn't want to be sober when the pain started.
They crossed onto the starlit expanse of the Skybridge. Around them, neon-lit flyers zipped through the night, dashing like silent meteors through the steel and glass canyons of the Needle City. The silence was thickening between the pair as they crossed the slight arch of the overpass. Maxwell pretended to lose himself in the flashing complexity of the city’s night traffic, watching the various shapes flit towards them and effloresce in a blaze of neon colour before disappearing above or below them, darting away into the obscurity of the city’s buzzing nightscape. The pair didn't speak, but Saachi’s hand still tugged at Maxwell’s arm as she led him forward. He hoped she wouldn't let go. Physical contact was a rare delicacy he hadn’t tasted for some time. Even if she was just holding his arm.
They reached Matin Tower's well-lit and warm-coloured embrace, and Saachi stopped, motioning for Maxwell to lead the way. He nodded and proceeded down the corridor, feeling less than sober again in the bright space. He kept Saachi in his peripheral vision but almost couldn't be bothered being suspicious of her anymore; the post-adrenaline lull was mixing with his current state of inebriation to push away the paranoia in a haze of an apathetic fog.
The elevator was silent as it rose through the guts of Matin Tower. Maxwell welcomed the sensation of lightness, which grew as the gravity decreased the higher they went and the closer they were to the habitat's spin axis. The vestibule on his floor was empty and quiet; Maxwell led the way to his apartment, buoyed by the diminished gravity and the slow-release morphine he had programmed his cortical web to start drip-feeding his brain.
He found his apartment halfway down the nondescript corridor to the right of the elevators. The door to number 1893 queried his cortical web when it recognised he wasn't alone. He sent a command to disengage the deadlock and turned to Saachi. She stared up at him with her blue eyes, her face blank.
“Well, this is me,” Maxwell said, removing his hat in his left hand.
“Open the door, Maxwell,” she said quietly
He frowned. She did look harmless.
Maxwell disengaged all the door’s locks but set them to rearm as soon as they entered. He twisted the brass handle and cracked the door wide, motioning with his left hand.
“Ladies first.” He smiled and regretted it; it probably looked like a car accident after recent events.
“Thankyou”
He followed her handsome behind into the cloakroom and paused to place his heavy jacket, still with its swollen shoulder, onto the brass hook on the left. He then hung his hat on the same hook and smoothed his hair back. Saachi had wasted no time in proceeding deeper into his apartment, and the lights responded as she moved down the corridor, blooming from darkness to illuminate the wooded floorboards and beige walls. He followed her into the apartment’s main room, where she had paused to survey his domain.
The living area was dominated by the large panoramic window, which made up the two perpendicular walls of the apartment; the floor-to-ceiling glass offered a superb view of the Boulevard and the steady streams of multi-coloured lights that made up the street’s nighttime traffic. On the right, his neglected kitchen was still shrouded in darkness, and the dining table lacked any artifacts left over from previous meals. The lounge area was lowered and set up against the floor-to-ceiling windows, consisting of two sizeable leather couches and a glass coffee table. Off to the left were his bedroom, spare room, office, and laundry.
Maxwell signalled the lights in the lounge area to fall to a dusk-like glow, and outside the window, the Chalice nightscape became visible again.
Saachi stepped down to the lounges and stared out the windows. Maxwell desperately wanted to excuse himself and retrieve some serious painkillers from his medical supplies in the laundry but didn’t want to leave the woman alone in his home either. He would just have to settle for a far more common but far less potent painkiller.
“Would you like a drink?” He asked her back.
She turned slightly and looked back at him over her shoulder. “Do you have gin?”
Maxwell nodded. “Yeah, I do. Do you have a preference?”
“Just on the rocks, I don’t care what brand.”
Maxwell nodded, running a hand through his hair, an admirable choice in the eyes of someone who appreciated straight liquor.
Once he returned with the two drinks, Saachi sat on the leather couch, yet her gaze lingered on the nightscape outside the glass. He placed the gin on the table before her and remained standing, forcing down the first gulp of his rum.
Saachi looked at him briefly before picking up her drink and taking a swallow larger than his own. Her face remained neutral despite the potency of the pure spirit, and seconds later took another sip, which also failed to elicit a response.
Maxwell frowned. “I guess I'll get the bottle.”
The woman nodded. “That's probably a good idea.”
___
Maxwell wasn't entirely sure how it happened; the alcohol probably filled in the blanks of their interaction, but somehow, the bizarre circumstances of their meeting faded away, and something else remained. They mainly talked about his apartment and lifestyle, not his occupation. They had laughed cautiously about the incident within Godwin’s, but she had also avoided talking about the shooting. She was kind and warm. She exuded a sense of genuine compassion, yet she also became lost in her thoughts when he explained himself, as if she already knew why he did what he did, even before he started talking. Above all, she seemed secure or, perhaps, genuinely content. It was an attractive quality, especially for a man like himself who, more often than not, became entangled in the clutches of his own near-terminal sense of melancholy.
At some point, they had begun sitting on the same couch; he had removed his battered waistcoat, and she had seemed intrigued by his outfit and its unconventional properties. He remembered her blue eyes, dancing over his figure with curiosity, inspecting every angle and line with tender interest.
Maxwell swam through time as the soup of exogenous chemicals perfused every vessel and organ, watching the currents sweep by with contented disinterest. Sobriety was now a distant, solitary figure, yelling silently into the wind.
Then they kissed.
As they walked to his bedroom, he drifted and swayed like a falling leaf, browned and dying. Something inside him was fighting, screeching and screaming, urging him to stop. The voice emanated from the darkness inside him, yet the voice was dull and incoherent, as if underwater. He ignored it and followed Saachi into his room.
__
Saachi was well past drunk. In fact, her current state could more accurately be described as sedated.
Even to Saachi, it was unclear why she was in this strange man’s apartment, leading him into his own bedroom unwillingly. As she stepped slowly down the hallway, she reflected that this was part of her own mystery as much as his. It was a story they were figuring out together, for no one in the room was sure about anything, especially not her. Saachi’s thoughts ran around themselves as she pushed the door open to his bedroom. He made a slight noise behind her as if to say something, but the moment and the alcohol stole the words from him.
She turned to him and took off her dress. She regarded the handsome loner in front of her, a door in its frame, unsure if it was open or closed.
The broken cowboy took off his gun belt, burdened with holsters holding a pair of huge metallic pistols. The weapons themselves looked like someone had taken the mechanical guts out of a larger weapon, polished them, and sold them as a handgun. The silver devices seemed entirely composed of flat surfaces, hard edges, and smooth, glossy metal. Definitely a design from antiquity; the few weapons Saachi had seen these days were complicated matte back things with special sights, large magazines and composite casings. Maxwell's pistols held their ammunition in a cylinder above the trigger, and the only aiming assistance seemed to be tiny pieces of metal that stood up from the barrel and the flat ridge at the top.
The belt and its cargo hit the ground with a heavy double thud that spoke of their considerable weight; they must be solid metal.
Next, his undershirt came off. Saachi had to exert considerable effort to keep her gaze steady despite the alcohol and her confused thoughts. However, she could appreciate that he was well muscled but not bulging with roundness like some men. His muscles were taught, defined and shaped rigidly, like solid objects placed under his skin. Saachi imagined all the tension the man felt must be exerting itself on his body, coiling him up and wrenching him tight like a rope. His skin also seemed stretched too thin. Saachi reflected he probably didn’t eat much.
They embraced, and Saachi felt the hunger inside of him but also caught a barely suppressed reluctance in his movements. The way he engaged and paused spoke of a conflict or perhaps a failing of spirit like a candle flickering as it ran out of wax. However, as soon as she put it together, the hesitation faded, and a passionate, affectionate man emerged from the shell of another. They fell together, swimming through their inebriated coupling with symmetry and excitement of recently discovered intimacy with strangers.
__
The morning replaced drunkenness with the equally debilitating fog of a mixed drug and alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Saachi lay in Maxwell’s bed, staring at the white ceiling and the inset rectangular light. She didn’t really need a reason to sleep with a man or a woman, however, her motivations in this latest escapade were as ambiguous as they came. She thought about Yarnu drifting through the forest at the festival. She could almost convince herself that it was Yarnu who she had slept with; they were similar, the two of them. One was silent by choice, the other without one. However, as soon as the thought came to her, she became unsure which one was which in such a horrifically simple evaluation of the two men.
She enjoyed sleeping with men, and she had enjoyed sleeping with this man. Perhaps it was best left at that.
Memories of the night before ground uncomfortably into place as she remembered the gunshots and then stepping out into the hallway outside Godwin’s, only to witness the man sleeping beside her execute his already incapacitated foe. She hadn’t even known which of them had shot first. But even so, she still led this man to his own home and got herself even more inebriated, only to embrace the killer. That didn’t make sense. She wasn’t a violent person and tended to judge violent people rather poorly. But she couldn’t quite do the same with Maxwell. There was something about the man that made him seem like a perpetual victim, no matter how she manipulated the scenario. He appeared too injured to be a predator, too fragile to kill maliciously.
When she turned back towards him, she found him looking at her with sleep-burdened eyes. Saachi thought she ought to have felt afraid, or at least startled, but she didn’t. I guess it was hard to fear a man you had been drunk and naked with, she thought.
Saachi held his stare. “You’re a wonderful man.”
He blinked lazily and then sighed as if finally satisfied as if this was his goal all along; in fact, he looked more peaceful now than he had been he’d been sleeping.
Saachi gave him a warm smile, and he returned it.
It was going to be interesting to never see this man again. She didn’t think they would be any closer to solving their mysteries together; in fact, they would just create a new one that was more complex than their own enigmas combined. It would be a strange machine, greater than the sum of their confused parts, bumbling along and doing nothing more than frustrating those trying to control it. Everyone’s life was a story; some could be told and appreciated, and others would leave the listener mildly confused and thoroughly dissatisfied. She imagined his would be the latter but didn’t think she could change that.
She got up with him still watching her, curled up in the blankets, and dressed. She took one last look at him, head peeking out from under the sheet, as she left the room. His expression hadn’t changed, but his arm was now stretched across the bed. She hadn’t seen him reach over, but she chose to ignore it.
She left his apartment and made her way home.
The following week was difficult at her apartment; Artun and Jazz were still figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives, so the atmosphere in their home was different, not better or worse, just a reminder that nothing ever really stayed the same. Maxwell inhabited her thoughts during the times she wasn’t thinking about other things, which turned out to be a lot of the time. It felt unfair that he would exert himself so brashly in her thoughts; she didn’t owe him anything. However, just as she had thought whilst lying next to him the morning after their encounter, she couldn’t see him as anything other than the victim, even when the story involved her.
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