When I finally arrived at Cestex Labs, it was just before 7:00. Wiping condensation from my forehead and enduring the wet areas already soaked into my suit, I rushed forward in what I knew to be a dignified, confident stride.
Then I smelled the flowers. I looked down at my right hand and saw a throng of thin, weedy vines trailing from it like Cthulhu's whiskers. Two hours or so ago while on the way home, the magical green hand had either ran out of juice or I managed to turn off my newest gift for a time. To be honest I’d kind of forgotten about it in the stress of getting to work on time.
And here it was, creeping up on me from underneath my own skin. It doesn’t get much stealthier, nor annoying. And I didn’t even have a glove.
Cursing under my breath while still wearing a neutral expression, I darted my hand into my pant pocket and hoped I wouldn’t have to use it for anything. Or risk exposing my new competitive advantage. If we were ever stranded on a deserted island, I could surprise everyone by making us all food. I wondered offhandedly if I could spawn water-carrying plants like cacti or succulents...
“Ciaran, what the fuck are you doing? Get over here and look at this.” Veex - pronounced vee ex - called me over, his chocolate-colored hands waving and his mouth curving up into a savage grin.
The lab looked elegant even from the exterior, with white, greek columns on either side of the front entryway. The place reminded me of a museum in miniature, perhaps 45% scale.
On the inside was marble to complement the outside’s seamless modern white, perhaps a kind of stucco, with both inside and out sporting brushed metal accents.
I walked nonchalantly over to Veex, who was standing by a metal rail overlooking another room separated by glass. I doubted anything interesting would be so close to the entrance, but obliged Veex's request and peered over the edge next to him. There, in a deep pit of multi-colored, fake “natural rock” was a pacing tiger.
I froze, because I've been a tiger before.
“Why is there a tiger in here?”
Veex turned. “Well, it's a research lab. They probably need to record its behavior or something.” He averted his eyes as though there were something more interesting on the ceiling than a pacing tiger below. “We should probably head over for a briefing,” he added carefully, like something was about to snap at him if he said the wrong thing.
I narrowed my eyes as I peered into the tiger enclosure again, recognizing the caged animal's irritation and need to embed its claws into something, to think and wait and prey upon something alive. It's like locking a human into a sedentary lifestyle; at first it's wonderful being able to relax. To sit down, watch TV, nap, get twelve whole hours of sleep, the works.
It works the same way with Respite. After your first few life cycles, Respite feels like jumping into a clean, warm pool of water with a placid surface you can float on without a care. For those who stopped looking for a way out ages ago, they seize the opportunity to unwind.
But in the end, the infinitely bounded cage of Respite, sealed with that sky-scraping, glimmering gate, perverts your rejuvenation into stagnation. The gradual drain drives you insane, like your brain is boiling. It's gradual at first, but then ebbs like a steep slope towards the end, like an exponential function. And that's when you're conveniently picked off, like worms by songbirds after a storm, plucked and deposited into the womb of some woman to be reborn.
If you're sedentary for too long, you lose your ability to work, to think, to function, like a rusty machine. You've grown stale, like a child saving a savory bun for later, only to let it go stale, or the priceless jewels that are never worn.
And that tiger was simply rotting there. You can tell if you've been any kind of animal before. It's only humans that don't read behavior correctly, probably an evolutionary adaption to save us from over-stimulating our emotions. I might not be able to sense it with my human body, but I can remember well enough old behaviors.
I followed Veex across the foyer and into a hallway on the left, the corridor populated with numerous identical doors. There was a team of four already conversing animatedly, like chattering squirrels, at the center of a small area conjoining three different hallways.
I’ve only ever been one kind of animal besides a human. Usually you always reincarnate in the same species, unless your species goes extinct - in which case you find the next most compatible species - or there is some kind of mistake. I’m not sure exactly how a mistake could occur, but they do happen, with myself as case and point. It’s indisputably strange to be born a tiger with all of your memories as a human.
“So, as soon as everyone arrives, we’re going to - well here come the stragglers now,” Eric boomed. He’s a big man, built like a grizzly, with thick arms and a neck as thick as a steel pole. He’s an unforgettable, imposing presence, and he’s one of those people you want to listen to. That’s some of what makes him a good leader and coordinator, besides the fact that he makes the perfect poster child for someone offering protective services. People take one look at him and think all their security problems are solved. People rely far too much on appearances.
“Sorry I wasn’t early,” I intoned wryly. “My car was MIA.”
“Shit, again?” Alice gaped. “Even you can’t let two cars roll off of a cliff in the span of a month.”
“Don’t doubt his car-destroying abilities,” Rex cackled. “Practically every one he’s gotten has ended up damaged within a month or two.” While that’s true, it’s not like my driving is to blame. Let’s just say that Lana hates when I drive other cars. Gives her less freedom since I’m not filling up her tank as much.
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Nothing says fuck you more than a wrecked car.
“I’m not sure how it happens,” I shrugged, a playful smile tugging at my cheeks.
“Wait, it actually did roll off a cliff? A second car? What the fuck?” Veex exclaimed. Eric simply guffawed and smacked his hand against the wall. I didn’t feel the need to explain the reality of the situation; nobody knew Lana was intelligent.
“Jesus, Ciaran, they should revoke your license. Anyways, time to get down to business.” Though the team as a whole was still shooting me funny looks at my inconceivable car-wrecking skills, everyone quieted down to listen. The silence was disquieting; I felt that a research lab should probably have more ambiance.
It’s quite rare to find a place of silence nowadays. Omnipresent noise has become so familiar that pure silence is more a disturbance than a comfort. In this world, there’s always something lurking around the corner; if your body thinks one of your senses is useless, it’s cause for panic. The eeriness of silence, especially on a dark night in a closed off space like an alleyway, is that two of your senses - sight and sound - are blank feeds into your mind, while your escape options are diminished by the compact space. You’re a prime target and even basic, infantile human instincts scream to get away to safety.
“So, first let’s establish what our job here is. There’s a group of people who are allegedly trying to steal corporate secrets from this lab. We are, simply, supposed to stop that from happening,” Eric stated, then continued after letting the information marinate our brains.
“Now you must be wondering about Hephaestus. There’s hearsay that the team out to steal the secrets has two esps. That means that Ciaran and Olivia are going to be especially important to this job.”
Olivia grunted and crossed her arms. I simply nodded: when didn’t we have to go up against a few esps? I saw Rex check his belt, fingering his many knives and incendiary devices. Not that they would be useful in an industrial lab, but he satchelled them habitually onto the space just above his front pockets. They were a comfort when none waited for him at home.
Veex had a few guns holstered over his body. He didn’t need to cover them up when we were working a night job, so his firearms hung out in the open like fruit waiting to be taken, ripe and loaded.
Despite the average person’s expectations, Eric usually hauls his hulking frame to the Hub, where he monitors the security cameras he sets up to cover every square inch of the site we work. It’s for the best: anyone who wants to ruin our video feeds, our way of strategically defending and collaborating, would be able to clip the wings of our operations. Eric will defend those feeds, and his defensive presence has saved many a job.
Eric started to unload his surveillance equipment onto the ground; I knew he customarily set up cameras before the actual job began, so all he needed to do was connect all of them to his many monitors.
Alice didn’t do anything; she didn’t really need to, after all; she trusted her body to take care of all the work.
In this business it’s exceedingly impolite to ask people where their abilities come from, or what their Specia Minora is. Really frowned upon. And unfortunately, most worldly myths and legends are utter crap. I’ve never even heard of a Glory legend in my entire life, not to mention a single accurate tale about sphinx or djinn.
The team started to wander around about fifteen minutes later. That’s how it usually goes. We scatter like leaves in a gale, lacking rhyme or reason. Of course, it’s not much use to actively seek out the enemy when you have a camera-prowling beast like Eric on your side, so we usually just make sure we’re all spread far enough apart to reach hostile intruders wherever they reveal themselves.
We all have little headsets over our ears that we can both speak into and hear out of. The feeds never turn off, so it’s common to hear the steady, arrythmic breathing of everyone softly coming in through the speaker. Eric can manually silence the feeds, which he does when someone’s engaging intruders, but at all other times we are seamlessly connected.
I can hear everyone breathing now, the soft puffing out of their breaths, the quiet, dissonant echo of combat boots on the floor. I don’t make sound when I walk; it’s one gift being a tiger has given me besides the gift of behavioral understanding. You can stalk like nobody’s business, then pounce with the strength of thunder and nail your opponent to the ground like a fastidious hammer. Careful, accurate, swift, brutal.
On our six person team, 3 of us use night vision goggles. I’m one of them, and they dig into the bridge of my nose and the area ridging my eyebrows. It’s important to prepare for the eventuality of a power outage: you can’t be caught blind unawares.
The rest don’t need them. When I’m laying down at night, underneath the stars, nestled in the high grass encircling my property, I’m thankful I don’t have night vision. There’s a wonder in knowing there are things you cannot see. There’s adventure in the unknown, until you get to the end of the maze, the climax of the novel, and you’re left with knowledge and little else.
And then you have me, cheating the whole game, coming back to the beginning of it all with pre-lived-in lives and their secrets to tell. I ruin myself every time, ruin every new life I start. Nobody likes the child who knows too much, the one who has seen everything before and doesn’t bat an eye at the incredible, the mundane. The child who smiles at death.
When you’re in this kind of business you often find yourself alone with your thoughts, stringing them along behind you as you walk in solitude. In these halls, sparsely lit and chilled, or in your home, staring at the ceiling and seeing things that are there but shouldn’t be. They’re there, underneath the cookie jar lid, underneath the layered blankets of your mind, and you have to suppress the temptation to reach out to them, to steal a taste. You have to shut parts of yourself down to do this job correctly.
This is the ideal, of course, but I have dismal impulse control. Besides, there comes a certain point that the things you do - things once horrible, things you had to quarantine and prod with a stick from a hazmat suit - no longer seem so terrible, and you’re able to fully be yourself, whatever that may be. Because if you think you can kill people, even when you remember the final desolation is only a dumping ground scheduled to be recycled, and remain unchanged, you’re wrong. At least I’ve undergone this metamorphosis long enough ago to forget what it is I’m missing.
I’m walking along the hall, and I hear Eric’s voice buzzing from my ear.
“I’’m not sure what it is, but there’s something funny going on around Alice. There’s a kind of distortion on the camera in hallway AB-7, but I can’t see anyone. Be careful. All of you. Esps are nothing to laugh at.” I wondered what kind of esps were going to come. There are all sorts, like ice cream, different flavors branching from core sects of chocolate, vanilla, mint.
It’s not even worth pretending you know anything definitive about esps because the term is an umbrella to describe anyone with psychic abilities. I could be considered an esp. Even Alice could be considered an esp.
And then I heard the noise. Quiet, but discernable. I looked up, studying the open vent above me. Eyes narrowing, my voice was a whisper as I spoke.
“I hear something in the vents.” The line went dead and I dodged, instinctively, my body reacting to the wind’s parting. The assault didn’t stop and I grabbed a focused, muscled arm and flipped it to the side, disengaging myself.
So, it had begun.