VAI

On Saturday nights, my friends and I rode as high as we could up the side of the mountain in Callie’s old Levitric repulsor with Olympus City stretched out behind us—an entire horizon of red and white glowing lights.

We went up until our okuli were screeching at us to stop. Went up until it wasn’t safe to go any higher. Or we’d go above the oxygen. Go above the gravity zone. Go skin-out into the death-cold of Mars-natural. Die.

Then Callie would turn the thing around, and I’d put my hand on her knee and squeeze. She’d look at me, adjust the mirror to stare for a moment at Emilio and Posha making out in the back seat, and smile.

It seemed then like all of civilization was laid out before us. How could there be anything more than what we could see from here? Mars was all there was. At least on Saturday nights.

Callie would lean over and kiss me. "Ready?" she’d say.

Posha broke away from Emilio and threw her blue arms high. "I’m ready!" she screamed. "I’M RREADDDDYYYYY!"

And Callie had already given it everything. Full fusion.

We sped down the slope toward the endless city. Scraggles of vegetation passed by so quickly they were just blurs racing past us in the dark.

I swear when I looked at Callie, I saw colors surrounding her. Perhaps it was only my imagination. Perhaps there was nothing around her except my love.

Have you ever felt like you could see love?

On Saturday nights with my friends, it seemed like we were falling forever toward some unspoken dream, some glittering heaven, some field of welcoming red stars.

Sometimes, we told Callie to disable the collision avoidance features on the repulsor.

We wanted to blast down that mountainside at 200km per hour, not knowing if it was everything that we saw before us, or nothing. We wanted to know what it felt like to risk something together.

Emilio, in the seat behind me, leaned forward and clapped my shoulders, bouncing and laughing. There were worse ways to go, we knew, than to die with the people who loved you.

I would get in late on those nights. Sometimes the pink of the dawn would already be creeping over the houses.

And my dad—because back then, I still thought of him as my dad—he wouldn’t become my father until later—he would rage. How could I show such disrespect for the man who raised me, who loved me, who only wanted what was best for me? What was I doing? He wanted answers. Was I out there wilding? Was I abusing drugs? What was I thinking?

I would suffer whatever punishments he gave me.

But when I was free again, I would be right back there, living inside that joy with my friends. I didn’t care what he did to me. It was worth it.

Those were just the low moments. Most of the time, my dad and I got along all right.

Callie and Posha were dead now. They both made it right about to the ages of their life expectancies. Without longevity treatments, the average Human woman lived to be 92—and so did Callie. The average Bundu-jo female only lived to be 80. Posha had made it to 81 before she’d died.

They’d both passed away while I was asleep.

Only Emilio was left. He was 97 years old. He’d lived a good 18 years past the life expectancy for a Human man. I didn't want to think about what he might look like now. I’d never checked. After I came out of stasis, I had checked only one thing. Whether or not they were still alive. No, yes, no. Then I'd spent nearly an entire month in the dark of my bedroom, doing nothing, thinking nothing, eating almost nothing, staring at the shadows.

It was boxing that brought me out of it—discovering an affinity for something new, something I was good at.

Now, in the storeroom beneath the tailor shop, Thrissko wanted to spar one more time. Only the gentleman's agreement that existed between sparring partners was gone. There was nothing to indicate how far he might want to take things; and every time he came near, the zek reached out for me . . .

With his disturbingly-expressive kabuki-mask face contorted into a wicked grin, he whipped an arm toward me, and I batted it away with the clothier's tool I was wielding. The metal clonged against his exoskeleton. Vibrated in my hand.

"Last chance," I said.

"Last chance? Before what? What's going to happen?" There was a mocking tone to his voice.

"I'll have to leave you here."

"You were already going to leave me here!" he barked, sounding angry and sad. "All alone with nothing!"

He jabbed right, right, and I didn't see his left coming. The barbs on the back of his hand ripped through my face. I felt the flesh splitting loose. The impact of the blow knocked me sideways into a dressing dummy, and I careened toward the ground.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

One of the crime gang let out a whoop of appreciation.

Thrissko leapt astride me, smashing me down just as I hit the floor, giving me no time to make another move.

"You were my friend, Vai!" he screamed. He hit me ferociously with his right, blasting the capacity for thought right out of my head. Blood squirted into my eye, stinging and salty and blinding, and as I blinked and squeezed I saw the pink smoke sloughing off him and flowing over me. "You were my only friend! Now you're going away on some warship?"

"No!" I screeched, sounding small and far away. I didn't know what the zek would do to me, but I was terrified of it.

"Yes!" he shouted back. I felt his claws, as smooth and hard as marble, clamp around my throat. He squeezed, and something cracked inside my neck. I heard it. I felt it. But it didn't register as pain. There was a tingling numbness settling onto me, sparkling pleasantly on my skin.

I cracked his head as hard as I could with my makeshift club. It didn't make him go down, but he went just loose enough for me to roll away as I threw him off me. I rose to my feet. I sensed that he was coming after me again. I turned my stumble into a hard run, going full tilt at Papa. Something in me was broken. My shoulder or chest felt weird as I ran, shifted wrong. Was it my clavicle? Had he broken my clavicle? Tendrils of zek seeped from my clothing like steam.

This wasn't Thrissko. He wasn't thinking straight. The drug was warping his perceptions. It was Papa doing this. Operating some kind of device that controlled the flow of the smoke.

Papa's face morphed into an expression of surprise as I flew at him. My diving tackle crushed him against the wall, and I felt him go limp in my arms.

"Turn it off!" I shouted.

The file he had been using to fuss with his fingers clattered to the floor.

I pinned him down and pried open his hands. "Where is it?" They were empty. The space between his eyes crinkled as if in confusion and he kept opening his mouth like he wanted to say something but couldn't remember what it was. "Oh, now you're at a loss for words?" I patted his vest, his pockets --

A huge cold claw gripped the top of my head, and rammed it against the wall. Stars. The one eye I could still through went dim, and a veil of pink smoke fell over my face.

This was wrong. It wasn't supposed to be happening this way. Thrissko was supposed to be on my side of this rescue. Warpaint and Thrissko and I could have given these thugs enough of a scuff that, together, we all could have walked out of here.

Thrissko's other hand floated out of the fog and gently batted my mouth. "Come, humaktra," said Thrissko, "come with me to heaven." He batted my mouth again with the palm of his hand. In the haze of my confusion, I realized he was trying to scoop the smoke into my mouth, into my lungs, the way one might scoop water into the mouth of a refugee.

I twisted my head away, racking out a vicious cough. "No," I said. "No."

He rammed my head into the wall again. "Yes!" Colors bloomed in my mind. I tried to twist away from him. I saw myself hitting him again with the improvised club. I saw myself finding the device on Papa and stomping it, breaking it like an egg, freeing us from this drug. I saw myself grabbing Papa and warding away his gang by shouting Don't come any closer or the chub gets the club! . . . Gets the club. I smiled. I thought that was funny. I saw Thrissko shaking his head in confusion. Vai . . . What did I do? I'm so sorry. I saw myself holding Papa like a human shield, moving backwards toward the stairs. Stay back! Papa shouting, Do as he says! Thrissko coming around quickly. Me shouting at him, Up the stairs. Get the door. We're getting out of here. I saw us reuniting with Warpaint on the street. Are you all right, sir? Oh, no, you look injured! What have they done to you? I saw all of those things. But I was weak. I was weak and there was too much light in that storeroom. The photons were falling through my body, glittering through my bones. How could anyone stay awake with all those photons sparkling inside them? How could anyone stay themselves? Let alone do all those things I was supposed to do. Was I supposed to be doing something? I couldn't remember. Better not to be myself anymore. Better to let the photons be me for a little while.

I screamed.

Light streamed around me. Jumped, vibrated, bounced. The light wasn't inside me anymore. Now it was outside. The only thing inside me was pain.

I kept screaming. And that hurt, too. I could feel the cold air coming through the holes that Thrissko had shredded into my face, sliding around my teeth, touching my tongue. I screamed because the pain was everywhere. I brought my hand to my face and realized that my left eyeball was out of its socket.

"Don't worry, sir. I have you." Warpaint's voice.

We were moving. He was holding me in his arms like a baby, and we were moving.

"Please don't touch your bare eyeball, sir."

I screamed. The pain was beyond anything I had ever felt or imagined. An electrocuting shockwave of torture that blasted every cell in my body. A fire that scorched every atom. It was impossible—bewildering—hellish.

"You seem to be in grave pain, sir."

We were outside. The bouncing lights were the windows of buildings we moved past, the colors were people, pink and brown and blue and gray and bronze and fluffy and striped, and I screamed.

"They say there is never a good time for I-told-you-so's, sir, but if they are mistaken—if there ever is a good time for I-told-you-so's . . ."

I screamed.

He ignored that. ". . . Then certainly this is that time. I told you we were going to be late, and we are. Do you even know what time it is?"

I was aware of the passing of locations, and of time, in some abstract way. When we were on the shuttle, I was aware of it. I was aware of the small group of people who were with us, and of their concern for me. Huddled around, their hands touching my hands, touching my shoulders, as their voices told me—

—It would be okay. Asking Warpaint what they could do.

When they gave me shots that were supposed to knock me out, but which did nothing at all, their concern grew rather fevered.

I was aware there was some discussion of taking me to the nearest hospital for medical treatment.

"No!" my father's voice said through an ansible speaker. "Bring him straight here."

"It's a much longer trip to the Shadow than to the nearest doctor!" someone else said, despairingly.

"Maintain your current course. That's an order."

"He's screaming. He's sick. There's something terribly wrong."

Out the windows of the shuttle, there was only darkness and stars. How long we had been in space, I couldn't say. Minutes or hours or eons passed. In my current state I couldn't tell the difference. Then with a burst of iridescence, the Shadow flashed into existence, vivid and huge beyond the window.

"Look, sir," Warpaint said, "your new home has come to you." He said it like that should have provided me with some special comfort, and squeezed my hand. But when he gently re-positioned my head so I could get a better look at the ship, I only saw myself reflected in the glass.

I was still screaming.