He didn't know how long he slept, sprawled and bloody on the floor of the race track. A life time and a moment all at once. But he woke, gravel in his mouth and a strange, circular ringing music in his ears, he noted a wisp of smoke remained floating from the tip of his finger, so perhaps it hadn't been long. And then the feelings of his body returned to him.
Mostly pain.
It was a strange pain, unfamiliar to him. It seemed to extend diffusely through the fibres, muscles, tendons and bones of his entire body, from the prickly scalp-skin on the top of his head, to his aching toes. He flexed—generally, and specifically, working through the various muscles and limbs he had control over—and each time he bent his muscles and released them, some of the pain ebbed away. He lay on the ground, slowly exercising the agony out of his body.
Weirdly, where the courier had kicked and kneed and strangled him there was nothing. Usually, abusing your fire channels brings a pain very similar to being struck in the testicles, and he had dredged fire so hot as to cause injuries—in a manner rhata children were taught never to do. But his fire channels felt fine. This was very strange.
He lay on the gravel and watched the smoke ebb and fade from his finger tip, felt the pain ebb and fade from his body, and considered himself very lucky to be alive. He felt a moment of gratitude and wordless clarity. And then it passed and he stood up.
The corpse of the courier lay to one side, satisfyingly dead. Above it moved the strange ribbons of light, seeming to almost rub against the air and leaking music. They were much thinner than before. He felt something inside of him, some strange new organ or muscle wrapped around his spine, and using this organ he called to the ribbons of light. They rushed towards him and slammed into his stomach, disappearing. He took a couple steps backwards. He felt very cold. The music flashed brilliantly in his ears for one moment, impossibly loud. He tried to remember how to breathe.
When he brought his breathing under control, the ribbons were gone. He felt strangely full. He walked over to the medical box and opened it. Inside were two more creatures, exactly the same as the one which had infested him, wrapped around each other and seemingly dormant. He closed the medical box and put it back on the ground, looking around him at the wreckage of the fight.
He tried to remember what had happened, and the impossibility of what he had done hit him all at once.
“What happened?” said Mateo out loud, his voice wavering.
“You know,” said the boy in his head, almost shay.
Mateo didn’t respond.
“You are Mantled.”
Mateo shook his head, as if to rid flies. Fire flashed unnoticed from his palm and nostrils.
“Shut up. Don’t be ridiculous. Shut up.”
“You took his song. He died and you took it and now tomorrow you will be stronger. Why are you fighting?”
“I’m not.” Mateo said, automatically.
The boy didn’t reply.
“Who are you?” Mateo asked instead.
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I don’t know, okay! I forgot.” The voice diminished in his mind, growing quieter and more meek. “I’m sorry.”
Mateo did’t reply. His head was spinning. He glanced at his watch. It was 11:13 AM. His fight with the courier could only have taken a few minutes, even if it felt like an age, which meant he had been unconscious for another ten or so. The ruined body of the courier lay just a few meters away. He froze, remembering, and looked at his bike.
It was destroyed.
Mateo fell to his knees and sobbed.
The boy spoke in his mind, nervous: “I don’t think we have time for that Mateo. People will have heard us shooting and I think someone was looking out of that eye and now whoever it was is coming and we need to leave. We need to leave now.”
Mateo wiped his face, stood and nodded. Annoyingly, the boy was right. It wasn’t the right moment to argue, nor sob on the ground like a baby.
He jogged over to the dead man.
“What do I do with this?”
“That was a Peep. So we should just leave it cuz otherwise-”
Mateo gulped. “I know what a Peep is. You’re sure?”
The boy sent assent. “A thrall to Dandelion, the Kid.”
“So he knows I’m here?”
“He does. You’re lucky you were wearing your helmet. Otherwise I think we’d be kinda dead right now.”
“Right,” said Mateo. “Shit.” This summed the situation up nicely. On the run and he didn’t even have his bike. One thing at a time, he reminded herself. In times like this, all you could do was keep moving.
He looked at the Dayzl, heart aching. He could hardly take it with him, and he couldn’t stash it anywhere before the goons got here. He ran over and stripped it: taking out Poro’s journal, his bat-singer, a few other tools and nicknacks. He transferred this to the courier’s bike, picked up the medical box and stashed it in the seat locker. Then he ripped off his plates and hastily attached them to the oil bike, taping them over the old ones. It’d have to do for tonight, but if he got stopped by the Beatles he’d be sleeping in a cell.
He searched through the body of the dead man, trying not to look at the face. He took out his wallet, a long knife from his boot, and a set of keys. He found an extra 60 X in his boot which he pocketed, then dashed back to the oil bike. The key was in the ignition. He groaned. The thought of riding one of these things made him uneasy. They were so slow and noisy and smelly, and they accelerated weirdly—he’d seen it—and he was just gunna feel uncomfortable sitting on a bike with his channels quiet. Still, he was lucky to have it. He jumped up and turned the key.
And stalled.
It took three tires to get the bike started and drive it over to the Dayzl. Keeping the engine running, he jumped down and dragged the Dayzl behind him on its back wheel, then sat down on the motorbike. With one hand on the handlebars, and the other on the F-bike, he dragged it into the racing bunker.
The bunker consisted of several rooms where the handlers and bookies and staff would socialise. Mateo ignored them, zipping through to the back till he found what he was looking for: the kennels. He opened one, pulled his bike into it, and stood it on its ruined front half. Then he tossed the tarp over it. It would have to do. He prayed whoever Dandelion sent was lazy.
Mateo remounted the motorbike and turned it around, speeding to the centre of the racecourse. He jumped off and grabbed the envelope, quickly riffling the cash with the tip of his thumb. It was all there, 750 X. He stuffed the cash into his jacket, which still had an attractive hole in it, and gunned the throttle.
And stalled.
By the time Mateo made it to the end of the ally he felt more confident switching gears and keeping the revs up, entertaining himself by composing a list of the many weaknesses and inefficiencies of combustion engines. But he didn’t let it slow him down. He had to get up onto the WW as fast as he could. There, he could rest in a slow lane and hide in the endless traffic.
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He’d never felt more conspicuous in his life, sat at the turnings on this ridiculous bike with its big wheels and its long, swooping handlebars, driving like an idiot. But he made it up and finally, sat at a steady speed in the fifth lane of the WW, he had a chance to think.
It was as good a time as any to talk to his imaginary friend.
“So,” said Mateo. He could finally entertain the possibility that the voice might be something more than the early signs of insanity. “How the fuck do you know what a Peep is?”
“I know loads of stuff!” cried the boy, seemingly offended. “This isn’t my first trip to Creation. I’ve been here three whole times.”
“Right,” said Mateo. “So I guess you have a lot to tell me?”
“Um,” said the boy, sounding guilty. “No. Not really.”
“What do you mean, not really?”
“I told you. I don’t remember.”
“Anything?”
“I remember bits and pieces. But there are holes in it. I’m not from here I can remember that. I think I lost most of my memories coming down.”
“That vision you showed me.”
“What vision?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“You were with some weird old guy with a wooden face and he put you in a star and then you like crashed into Tinjouki. You don’t remember that?”
The boy was quiet for a while.
“No,” he said, eventually.
Mateo drove on in silence, thinking.
“Maybe you’re the Mantle.” He said at last.
The boy gasped “I am not a scarf! I am a person, like you.”
“No you’re not.”
“Am to!”
“Whatever. You’re living in my head, you’re incorporeal, and you’re the one that taught me to use it. Seems pretty damning to me. Presupposing that I buy this whole Mantle theory, and I confess it is getting more and more likely, that seems like the obvious conclusion. But I never heard about Mantles coming along with children before. That’s a bit of a drag.”
“Oi!”
“Sorry. I just meant, I dunno. I didn’t exactly sign up to sharing my head with someone, did I?”
“Are you saying you don’t like me?” the boy asked. Despite his total incorporeality, Mateo could sense he was on the edge of tears.
“Eugh. No, you’re alright. I’ll like you a lot better if you can tell me what you know about Peeps.”
“Sure! That, I can remember. Maybe cuz it’s down here stuff, not up there stuff. Right?”
“Sure.” Said Mateo.
“Well, let me think,” said the boy, cheerily. “Dandelion has a ‘Thrall’ type Mantle. He imbues his favourite underlings with special powers, which vary, but they always have an eye, and those are called Peeps. They are the signature, most famous aspect of his already very famous Mantle of the All Seeing Eye.“ The boy did a kind of mental shrug. “Nothing goes unseen by the Kid,” he quoted.
“Yeah,” said Mateo. “I’d always figured that was an exaggeration…” He’d heard about Peeps, of course. Everyone had. But it was more of a bedtime story you told to scare kids than a living reality of his own life. He thought about Dandelion, the mysterious Concrete Kid, UnderKing of Tinjouki, trapped forever in the body of the child. The Kid, looking at him on the other side of that horrible eyeball.
Thank Pit he had worn his helmet. But his voice and the bike were known. He’d better be very careful.
“You need a name,” he mused.
“Yes!” the boy squeezed with delight. “Name me! Name me!”
“Alright, jeez. Do you have a name you like?”
“Jawlid!”
“You can’t have that one. That one is taken.”
“Undearms!”
This proceeded for a further five minutes until, when Mateo told him he couldn’t be called ‘Peep’ either, the boy ran out of familiar names.
“I want a name like you,” said the boy, dejected.
“A handle? Like Smoke? Or a rhata name?”
“Both!”
“Ooo-kay. Well, I always liked my uncle Koroth, and he’s not around anymore. And he rode and had a handle. Take his name if you want.”
“Hmm. I like it. What was his handle?”
“Boots.”
“Boots?”
“Yeah. Everyone called him Boots. Even my dad.
Mateo felt a faint, pinkish flash of light somewhere behind his eyes.
“That is very cool,” whispered the boy. “Boots.”
“Great,” said Mateo, chuckling. “Boots it is.”
He couldn’t help but smile. He drove the bike and let it all stew, bobbing his head up and down while he thought about Peeps and stars and good old Boots who had died in an industrial accident involving a generator, nervously adjusting the throttle from time to time. There was an uncanny feeling to everything, an impossibility, like that of a lucid dream. But he realised he should just roll with it, instead of freaking out every ten minutes.
It was the middle of the nights and the roads were quiet. Only the trucks remained, each six or seven carriages long, rolling forward at a uniform rate with a total lack of flare or character. Dumb beasts driven over the plains.
“So,” he said at last. “Let’s say you’re a star.”
“I dunno about that,” said Boots, sounding nervous.
“Just try. Humour me.”
“Okie. Well, it means I fell from the sky and was found. Heaven doesn’t just throw stars down at random of course. Everyone knows that. Stars are an instrument of divine will, right.”
“Sure,” said Mateo, skeptically. He had never heard that before in his life.
“So I guess you were chosen.”
“I was chosen. Okay, super. Lovely. How?”
“I. Don’t. Know. Memories of Heaven can’t survive in Creation, okay?” whined Boots. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Right,” said Mateo, stretching out the word. He thought. “If everything is ‘fated’, as you say, then why does it matter what I do? Heaven already knows how it’s gunna go down. Right?”
“Yeah,” said Boots, sounding vague. “Probably. Whatever, who cares? I reckon we do our best. I wanna feel strong. Anyway, the hunger will set in soon enough. You don’t have a choice.”
“The hunger?”
“What?”
“You said ‘the hunger will set in soon enough’.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said Boots, unhelpfully. He sounded kind of drowsy.
“Fine,” Mateo growled. “Pit, my head hurts.”
The boy yawned, opening teeth flashing through Mateo’s mind eye. “That sucks. I’m gunna sleep for a bit,” he said. “Talk later?”
“Sure,” said Mateo. He shook his head, looked around him at the empty skyway. “Guess I’ll go and see Lia.”
Lia was a girl he was seeing. Like him she lived in Sedum Six, so he still had to make the drive all the way back—almost four hours on the slower bike with a stop for gas. Lia lived in a large, rather fancy apartment complex in central Sedum. When Mateo finally arrived, he drove right by and parked down the road. Then he walked back, finessed the lock to the main doors with the slider he kept on his bike, and slipped inside.
Lia’s apartment was on floor 23. It took a full minute of loud, extremely inconsiderate knocking before the door swung open. Lia appeared, hiding behind the door chain and peeking through with a single blue eye. He felt a flash of panic, remembering. The eye widened.
“Mateo!” she gasped, shoving back the door, scrabbling with the chain and finally throwing it open. She stood in a short, silk dressing gown, embroidered with mice with interlocking tails and mouths, her black hair shaggy from sleep, ending just above her shoulders. With big blue eyes and faint freckles, Lia had a pixyish cast of face that made her look like she was up to no good. She had a distinctive, faint scar that ran down her left cheek, was about his height, and was holding a large kitchen knife.
She dropped the kitchen knife and threw her arms around him, then took hold of his shoulders with both hands and pulled him into the apartment, closing the door with a foot. She kept her hands in place, tucking down her chin and looking very serious.
“What. Happened.”
“What,” said Mateo, confused. “Nothing? I’m fine. Honest.”
“Mateo you are covered in blood and your neck is purple.”
“Am I?” He fondled his face. It was fine. Lia lay a hand on his chest and he looked down. From the neck down he was indeed covered in blood. It said a great deal about his mental state that he had not yet noticed. “Oh,” he said, relaxing. “Well, that’s not mine. Don’t worry about it.”
Lia took her hands off him and stepped back. Fear flickered over her face.
“Mateo what the Pit do you mean it’s not yours.”
“I got jumped. I’m fine, he’s not so fine.” He scratched the back of his head. “It wasn’t me this time. I swear. And I’m real sorry to just jump in on you like this. Really I am Lia. But yeah I had a strange night, and I wanted to see you.” He paused, lifting the medical box with the Orikon Heart. “You got somewhere I can stash this?”
Lia sent him to change clothes and made tea. She was used to him showing up without notice and while she’d joke and tease, she wouldn’t pry. Such was the tacit agreement of their romance—no deep questions. He stripped, showered, threw the bloody clothes in her bathtub, then found a pair of sweats and a t-shirt. He knew it would all fit annoyingly well. Lia dressed baggy and Mateo was short.
“You hungry?” she called from the kitchen while he was getting dressed. He had been staring at himself in the mirror, wondering if he wasn’t slightly more muscular. There were no bruises from his fight with the courier. He shrugged and dragged on the t-shirt.
“Yeah,” he called back. “Starving, actually.”
Lia fried steak and boiled potatoes and cabbage while Mateo entertained himself wandering her apartment, looking at stuff, occasionally circling back to stand behind her and distract her while she cooked. It was a simple place with a large kitchen and living area, a bedroom and a bathroom. She’d decorated it with a lot of house plants, many of them water plants sitting in large bowls of water. She had a pet frog named Joe that lived in the largest bowl, in the corner by the balcony. Mateo went over and put his palm out and Joe hopped on. He went and stood by Lia, who was slicing and buttering the potatoes. She turned around and kissed Joe on the head.
“Hi Joe,” she said. She looked at Mateo, growing quiet. “Can you at least promise me you’re staying safe?”
He looked her in the eyes, expressionless, thinking about lying. He smiled. “Sorry,” he said. He shrugged. “I can’t, really.”
That was the other side of the agreement. There were things they didn’t talk about, and that was fine. But they wouldn’t lie either. He’d met Lia in a bar several months ago, out drinking and dancing with Prince and Wisely. She knew he rode and he could tell that secretly she loved the mystery of it. She shook her head, frowning, but didn’t ask again. “Well, thanks for waking me up,” she said, smiling with one side of her cheeks and flicking her eyes at him.
“That’s okay,” he said. He watched her plating up the food. It seemed to take a long time. She was very careful about where everything went on the plate, and in seasoning it before she’d let Mateo descend. “Thanks for looking after me,” he said, quietly. She nodded, smiling properly now but still focused on the plate. He kissed her.
End of Part One