“H-hello, I just uh, I was just driving by Drewcker’s, and uh I think I saw some sort of fight? And someone got hurt…” On the other end, the operator asked a clarifying question, and Azura collected herself. “Yes, Drewcker’s, it’s a convenience store on the west side. I don’t know what’s going on now but, just… just send someone over.” She ripped her hand away from her ear and hung up.
At last, Azura could breathe. It was just after 12, and the Dominion subway station was cold and silent, only being disturbed by the occasional rustling of tracks, and of course, her presence on the bench.
After a few seconds without speaking, all she could do was cup her hand around her mouth as her eyes began to water, and the weight of the evening’s horror finally unloaded itself onto her shoulders. She remained silent.
“Okay,” The young voice beside her filled her head. “you have got to tell me what just happened.”
She turned to Frey, not ready to speak yet.
“Dude, hello? What the hell went down in there?”
She let her hand drop to her side, and said, “Were you not there? Didn’t you see it?”
“I was behind that building. Thought I wasn’t supposed to, y’know, have a witness.”
“Well… I did it. And then those bald… lunatics came in. They were mad about something and they just― they just started wailing on me.”
Frey’s face filled with sorrow. “Dude…”
“And in the commotion, Drewcker… slipped.”
Frey stared, confused. “Slipped? Slipped like what slipped and fell?”
“Yes like slipped and fell. On his head.”
“On his head?! Like, hard on his head?!”
“I―”
“How bad? Was it bad what did it look like?”
“It looked like he slipped and fell on his head!”
Frey leaned back and his hand dragged down his forehead. “Ohhh goddd…”
Azura sat anxiously tapping her hand on her knee, with a face like a wounded puppy.
“You… you work at a hospital, don’t you?”
Frey looked back and shrugged. “I―yeah?”
“Okay so, I’m sure he’s going to be checked in, can you check on him?”
“Check on him?”
“Just… see if he’s…”
“See if he’s what, alive?! Okay, one, I work at Eastern State, not John Forsners, or― Sanctity, which is probably where he’s going!”
“I’m sure you can… you can go there and look him up? Just check if he was admitted, and if he’s alright.”
“How is that supposed to work? ‘Hi there, can you give up some confidential medical info about one of your patients?’ Like, without his signed ROI―!”
Frey looked down and pressed his fingers into his temples.
“Okay… an ROI, we just need to find a way to get an ROI for him,” Azura said.
He looked up. “If we can get an ROI that means he’s alive to sign it! Why is knowing his exact medical state so important?”
“I don’t know… I just think it would be good if… we knew.”
He stared at her. “…Azura I think I’m good.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I think after tonight we can just go our separate ways and, we don’t have to contact each other again.”
She blinked. “Well wh―why, what?”
“Listen I just don’t need any more insane plots or plans in my day, alright? This is good enough for me.”
“The plan worked fine it’s…”
She saw his mouth agape, right below a stare of astonishment. She began saying, “That’s not what I meant―”
“Look I did what I said I would do, I helped you out. I did what you said and you got what you wanted.”
“You…” Her posture straightened as she turned to face him. “You think this is what I wanted?”
She saw an expression on his face she was unfamiliar with. She had seen him hurt, friendly, and concerned, but was made uneasy by his current look… she couldn’t work out if it was more disappointment with the situation, or with her.
“Okay, here’s what I think,” he said as he looked off into the city, “I think that from the start I’m pretty sure, I have been saying that this was a bad idea, and you kept, you were, ‘No this plans good, it’s safe! It’s gonna be safe!’”
“It was!”
“Wha― are we, are we living on the same planet right now?!”
“Oh come on! There is no way I could have predicted this! Those psychos must have― followed me home or something! The plan was fine!”
“Oh sure,” he murmured.
Azura’s brows lowered.
“Well for as many reservations you had about it you were really great at suggesting alternatives―”
“The alternative was DON’T!”
“―and might I add it was very convenient for you to hide away while I got the SHIT beat out of me!”
“Look I―I’m sorry! Okay? But maybe I didn’t want to get my shit beat! Thought of that?”
“Oh, oh yes of course, I should have factored in that my lookout was going to run away the moment I needed him.”
“Lookout―? Oh my GOD stop jerking yourself off! A soda machine, and—and taking the money while he was right in front of you?! JUST ADMIT IT WAS A BAD PLAN!”
“IT WASN’T!”
The rumbling of the tracks returned, and in the distance, they could both make out the lights of the subway approaching. The two were silent until eventually the cart slowed to meet right in front of them, and the doors opened.
Azura grudgingly got up, and soon Frey did too.
“I’m really sorry what happened back there but… we’re done.”
Before turning away, he added, “Your face is bruising…”
Frey walked down the stairs to Dominion.
Azura watched him disappear into the dark, and she walked onto the subway cart. She had to get home.
In her seat, she was truly alone. No one else was on the tracks at that hour, leaving her entrapped with just her thoughts in the speeding box. Its lights were bright, and its whirr was like a whistle, singing as it blew by the buildings of stone, and toward the buildings of steel. She became lost in the subway’s song. She succumbed to her mind’s drift as the world around her disappeared, leaving her and the whirr. It was such a fast, distinct sound, yet as time went it seemed to blend so that all she could make out was the buzz of overhead lights. The buzz… the lights… they weakened her, and her heart beat quicker.
CRACK!
The pound of her heart would not relent. She tried shutting her eyes, but the buzz of the convenience store’s lights became even louder.
CRACK!
A man’s head split open that night. It wouldn’t have.
CRACK!
He wouldn’t be going home to his bed that night, he would awake in a hospital… if he woke up at all.
If it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t be there now.
She could never forget.
The walk home could hardly be considered tolerable, but at the very least she could distract her mind with the outside air, breathing it in deeply, and blowing it out fully. It was 15 minutes of roaming through the city’s chilly night, but 15 minutes closer to home.
Soon enough she reached her parking lot, and she could make out Apartment 6 just a few buildings down. Her eyes opened and closed like stubborn car windows struggling to move, and each of her steps was more of a stomp, as she was too tired to control her descent anymore. She could topple over at any moment, but she was almost there.
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It was just the luck of the evening, that at the morning's first hour, one of her neighbors had to be going for a night walk of his own. Azura’s heartbeat rose once again. A man and his dog walked straight in her direction from across the lot.
The plan… the plan was to have no witnesses. She didn’t want a soul in her apartment complex to be able to say that she was anywhere but her bed that night. One person was all she needed. One person could tell Soteria that she was out that night. Soteria could hear that some store was robbed the night she was out. Could she work it out from there? Azura used her bugs, after all.
Azura hurried to cover herself behind whatever she could, and what she had by her was a garbage dumpster. She dropped down into a ball, and waited, listening for the sound of his footsteps to pass by. Her hands felt warm from the consistent cover of her panicked breath.
A dog’s feet scratched the pavement beside her, followed closely by the hard footsteps of a man, and close by her they remained until they soon bled into the city's ambiance.
She stayed hidden for a minute.
Then she peered out from behind the dumpster… and it was safe to keep walking.
She made it back to her apartment and was sure to crawl in from her window on the building’s side… quietly. Once she was inside and the window was shut again, Azura was finally left to her room. She removed her clothes and covered herself with the warm sheets of her bedding for the first time in 30 hours. She sunk into her mattress.
The charger sitting on the left of the bedside waited on her still, so she lastly removed the vocaled from her neck, then set it on the black magnet alongside her watch to recharge. Beside both, she plugged in her glove, removing the last of her electronics from her body.
Finding the correct position for sleep was impossible, as even the soft mattress applied unpleasant pressure on her bruised back and right arm. She flipped from her back and decided to try her left side instead, which she found more comfortable. It was there she saw her knight plushie, still where she left it, still sitting in front of her head. Its sewn blue eyes looked into hers. She flipped to her right.
Hopefully, she could sleep.
Morning light slipped through the cracks of a curtain and kissed her face as she lay sprawled out and asleep still in bliss. Her ears had grown so accustomed to the screech of an alarm blaring in her ears that a peaceful, natural awakening was nearly unheard of.
A few minutes of sunshine in the room soon encouraged her eyes to blink and welcome the day’s light. She lightly blew to get the soggy strand of dark chocolate hair out of her mouth and rubbed away the mildly uncomfortable presence of drool on her cheek with a yawn. Stilly lying down, she stretched out her back and legs as she watched the curtains shuffle calmly above the air vent and smiled at the sight of the subway speeding a street down from her. That type of calm couldn’t be free.
She spun around to take a quick look at the clock on her nightstand.
9:38, the clock displayed.
That was where she found the cost.
“Shit…” she muttered, “ssHHIT!”
She threw off her covers and ran across her room to her closet, hastily pulling on some pants as she hopped to grab her handheld sitting on her dresser and paced out her bedroom door.
Shoes were barely tied, and combed hair and brushed teeth were nonessentials for her as she yanked her purse off her living room chair and recklessly swung open her apartment door, barely even taking time to lock it while making her way out and down the building’s dark carpeted stairs and through the lobby to the parking garage.
Outside the doors of her building was a wrinkled old woman with a smile wearing workout clothes, just getting back from a morning walk.
“Hello Amber!” the woman called out.
“Yeah hello hi!” Amber kept her pace as she moved past her, somewhat rudely, but sorrily.
“Did you see what they were saying last night on―”
“I―I am so sorry Trella I’ve gotta―I’ve really gotta keep moving!”
Trella saw the urgency in her eyes and nodded. “Not a worry, I’ll see you!”
“Yeah!”
Cars flowing down the street made obstacles for her trying to get to the parking garage across from her apartments. She quickly and carefully slipped through traffic and ran into the building.
Through the doors, and up the stairs, and past another set of doors. She sharply turned left and sped over to the parked Suzia. A press of her keys clicked the doors open and started up the battery. She jumped inside, and the car zoomed through and out of the garage.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been no stress at all to make the ten-minute drive, but for her then, every stop light, every vehicle going a mile over the speed limit instead of five, urged her anxious fingers to tap away at the wheel and her stomach to fold over.
“Come come, come on… come on…”
The Dominion Street sign passed by, and down the road, she spotted the words on the board right of the road, West Dominion Apartments.
She pulled into the uneven parking lot just off the road and turned the car off once stopped. The buildings weren’t far from the lot; it was just a short walk to get inside the brown brick boxes.
She hurried up the tiny concrete stairs to the entrance at the building’s base and was punched by the building's warmth as she passed through the door.
She continued to the stairs.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe it! I just, the reservations still probably… ugh.
“Dad, how are you? I was coming but then, I. I was coming…
“I’m so sorry… my alarm didn’t―shit,” Amber practiced in between pants.
Once on the top floor, she sped over to the door at the end of the hall, 404.
Without waiting to breathe, she smacked her knuckles into the door’s wood.
Now, she rested.
Her knees bounced, and she rubbed her lips against her teeth.
The number 404 stared at her, silently.
She knocked again.
“Dad, hey it’s me I’m here!”
404.
Amber allowed the silence to continue, anticipating its end any minute.
It continued.
She knocked.
“Dad?”
Nothing called back to her.
“Hey I’m just gonna come in alright?”
From her purse, she took out a key and pressed it into the door’s knob. Amber entered the room and hung her bag on the rack by the door, still open behind her.
She flipped on the lights, and they shined across the living room and kitchen, showing her a messy dinner plate left on the dining table with a pulled-out chair. The home was worn. Bags of chips and vials of ollie were abandoned on couch cushions, and dishes nearly filled the sink. The whole place’s smell reflected its messiness, like a mixture of smog and mint.
“Hey Dad?” she called as she moved through the empty room.
She pushed open the bedroom door and saw clothes on the floor, and the bed unmade.
The bathroom was empty too.
“Dad!” she hollered to no response.
Her eyes squinted with confusion. She opened her handheld and pulled up the messages between her father and her, confirming that he had said nothing to her that morning. The knot in her stomach tightened.
While the screen was open, it notified her that a number was trying to call her, a number that she did not recognize. Her thumb hovered over the answer button for a moment, then she pressed down on it with a light touch.
She raised the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
A woman’s voice spoke. “Hi, is this Amber Drewcker?”
Azura stared up at the ceiling. Her eyes did not move. She lay still. She breathed slowly. Light barely made its way into the room through her curtains, allowing her to make out faint patterns in the ceiling’s texture.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
She shut off her alarm.
She closed her eyes for a moment, but soon removed her covers and got herself out of bed.
As she leaned up, the bruises on her back yelled at her, and she cursed silently.
She put on some clothes, grabbed her electronics from the side of her bed, and sat in front of her mirror with her vocaled in hand. Azura stretched her neck back and clicked the device into the magnetic socket to the right of her esophagus.
Looking in the mirror, though, she saw an ugly gray bruise taunting her under and around her left eye. She groaned and opened her makeup drawer. Going from covering blemishes to giant contusions was a leap for her, but to the best of her ability, she faded out the bruise with layers of concealer and a pair of thick blue wings stretching off her eyelids, leaving her face thoroughly covered but looking like a plastic doll.
Not satisfied, but out of time, she closed the drawer and snatched her jacket from the prior night. Inside were several hundred dollars’ worth of bills squished into the pockets. Azura grabbed the money, and let it sit in her hand for a few seconds. She looked at it, their faintly dyed colors of yellows and pinks. She felt the texture against her fingers, the weight against her wrist. It was impossible to tell if, under the heavy makeup, her face showed any signs of warmth in its presence.
Azura set down the bills and flipped her hand over to activate her holopalm’s photomesh. With Ren’s chat box opened on the holoscreen, she typed,
Is it alright if I drop something off later?
The message was sent. She stashed the money into her clothes drawer, then reached back into the jacket pocket. She had one last thing to do.
Azura opened her door and heard the shower running in the bathroom. Quietly, she made her way past it, and into Soteria’s room at the end of the hallway. Leaving the lights in the room off, she carefully slid open Soteria’s top desk drawer. In her hand were the six bugs she had borrowed previously, and as she placed them inside one by one, she noticed that one of the bugs had two broken legs. She pressed her lips into her teeth—another consequence of the night. Azura left five inside and kept the broken one. Making sure her action was silent; she slid the drawer shut and then went to the door.
As she stepped out of the room, the bathroom door swung open in front of her, and Soteria walked out in her bathrobe, immediately eyeing Azura on her way out of her bedroom.
“Morning,” Soteria said.
“Morning Sotie.”
“What are you doing in my room.”
Azura quickly blinked as she thought of a response. “I was seeing if you had any USB C’s. Nick was asking for one the other day, so…”
“Why would I have any USB C’s. We tossed all those like, five years ago.”
“I was just checking.”
She shook her head and shrugged. “Ok.”
Azura walked past Soteria and into the light of the living room.
“Woaaah,” Soteria said.
Azura stopped and then turned her head. “What?”
“Look at me.”
She turned around.
“Ho-ly,” Soteria said, but did not change her expression. “what’s that all about.”
“What?”
“Did you get a new job at the circus or something. All that makeup would have me convinced.”
Azura frowned. “Glad you’re finally back to normal.” She proceeded into the living room.
“Heeey,” she called, “hey! I know what’s going on, Azzie.”
Her heart jumped, but she proceeded. “What do you mean? There’s nothing going on.” Azura grabbed her shoes and sat down on the couch to slip them on.
Soteria came into the living room. She looked down at her. “Oh yeah there is. Look here’s the thing, I get being upset at everything that happened. Mhm. It’s upsetting enough to make you wanna distract yourself with cool gloves, aaand going to work, and maybe experimenting a bit to make yourself look like you’re made of plastic.”
“Ass. Hole.” She continued tying her shoes.
“Hey okay! There’s a line. I wanted to give you a little boost to help you start moving forward, but going out with that on? Definitely over the line.”
Azura looked up. “The last time I checked, it was my best friend who was in the coma. Not yours. So, I think I’ll distract myself how I want to.”
“That’s the thing, you shouldn’t be distracting yourself.”
“Is that right?” Azura looked up from her shoes.
“Well, yeah.” Soteria sat down beside her. “Do I need to remind you about the chunk of metal in your neck? You should already know this, but in life, you are gonna get struck some hard blows. I mean hard. And the harder you get struck, the harder it is to get back up. But you got to at some point. You can’t just be sitting around after getting hit, pretending that you aren’t sad you just got hit. You are. You’re sad. Aren’t you sad?”
Soteria stared at her, waiting for a response.
Azura's face was blank. “Just continue with whatever you’re saying.”
Soteria continued. “All I’m saying is that after a while you have to get back to fighting. Take a minute, catch your breath, but sooner or later you have to land the next blow, and stop playing around.”
Azura looked at her sister. “It eludes me how you’re able to put things so eloquently.”
“Yeah, ok,” Soteria murmured as she stood up, “Take it or leave it.”
“Uh huh.”
Soteria took out her handheld from her bathrobe’s pocket and scrolled through some of the notifications from her email, and then the news.
“Doesn’t always hurt to listen to the person who’s been living for longer.”
She saw a notification from her security system, at 11:01 last night.
“Yes, of course.” Soteria heard Azura say from the couch.
Soteria’s eyes squinted at the screen, and she opened her security app. At the top of the menu, a red notification read, UNKNOWN PERSONS DETECTED AT FRONT DOOR, 11:01 PM.
She pressed her finger down on the alert, and it opened the security footage from the last night at 11:01. Two men stood in front of her door.
“Yeah…” Soteria said, not knowing if Azura was still on the couch.