Shotgun
- 27 -
Fuck.
I'm running. I only have one hand working. I'm running as fast as I can, blind and freaked out and swearing under my breath in the dark. Up the dockline. Up the rungs. Past the cobblestone steps. Shoes hitting the pavement louder than god. I'm here, I'm fucking here, I'm here. Need immediate assistance. Thumb against my leg. Thumb means need immediate assistance. She's here. She's fucking here with me right now.
Need immediate assistance. I know, Rhodes, I fucking know! I'm running!
Bakery. The bakery has a pen and paper.
I'm up after what feels like forever, I fall at one point over my own feet, but I'm here. Early morning lights on in the bakery through muggy windows and the light splays across the tiny little plaza and there are two people inside, and one notices me. Doesn't matter. I get to the notice board and rip free a scrap of blank notebook paper hung up on a pin.
Pen. I need a pen. Where's the pen they keep here? Stole it already. Months ago. What?
I look inside. Two humans with mesh haircaps and bizarre expressions. Need a pen. I go inside. Need immediate assistance. Shhh. I go inside. Ceramic floors and echoey interior and two enormous metal machines blaring out a mechanical whir in back.
"Need a pen," I blurt out.
"What?" one of them asks, the one with long hair and tan skin.
I look freakish and wet with sea vapor. "Need a pen, or else she's gonna die." Need immediate assistance.
The other one says, "Your hand," but it seems accidental.
"Please."
Need immediate assistance. I wrench control from Rhodes with all my strength and slam the front counter and the plastic top shatters apart.
"Fucking hell!" someone shouts, further in back.
"Need a pen," I say.
Trembling people. They're trembling like I'm a threat. One of them finds a pencil in her apron and hands it to me and it falls to the floor, and I get it, and I stumble out with my legs wobbly.
-
I let her write. Eventually she understands that I'm letting her write. I am sat against the dry fountain in the plaza, holding my eyes open with one hand, writing with the other. Dim outside.
-
'SORRY,' she writes first.
Don't care. Get to the point. You're in danger.
'HIDING IN ABANDONED BUILDING. THEY FOLLOWED. SURROUNDING NOW. GOT MAYBE 15 MINUTES UNTIL FIND ME. PROBABLY WILL QUESTION AND THEN DRIVE OUT. 267 WEST ALTON. CLOSE'
Yeah. I can map it out in my head. West Alton is not close. Two hours away on foot. You're fucking with me, Rhodes, you're fucking with me.
I wrench control back. Feels like death. 'HOW MANY'
'FOUR INSIDE IDK OUTSIDE'
I write. 'GONNA GET HELP'
'OKAY,' she writes. Her handwriting is a scribble. I can't control my breath.
'THEY HAVE ARMOR?'
'NONE'
I stand up. I'm so wobbly. She's stopped writing and hitting my leg and I can start to feel the pain from where she slapped me awake. Must have been trying a while. I fold up the paper and stick it in the breast pocket of my fishing jacket and start my way towards Laudenberger.
-
Surreal, this hour. More quiet than I've ever seen. Or maybe my vision is just dim from all those dreams, all those memories. Few streetlights are on, and no signs. Have to cross a few wide streets to get to Laudenberger but there's no traffic. A couple factories whirring to life, a couple automated cleaning vehicles. Some aerodrones above, blinkers on. I go on.
-
In a haze I get through Laudenberger Square and into one of the subway entrances, and by this point I'm feeling the distance between now and when Rhodes was tapping at me, when she was telling me she was here, she was always here, she was always here. Now I think it was a dream, all of it. Stupid Nelly dreaming of stupid shit. Face the truth. But it doesn't have to be true. These things aren't in stone. I'm panting but I get to the entrance of Corundum Town where the overhead lights are finally bright again, like morning has come, but it doesn't feel like it ever will.
Barreling down the halls and tunnels until it opens up into a plaza; another plaza; another plaza. I see a group of folk wearing like colors, and with eight-armed crosses made of metal strung around their fronts, all waddling down one of many stairwells. I go on.
Check in. I tell her check in.
She says, need immediate assistance. I go on.
-
The Hang'd Knight is dead silent and closed and the lights are completely off save for a few red lamps near foot level, presumably from when the place was something else a long time ago, and I slip through the kitchen and into the back room.
Ceder is asleep. He is a big heap covered in blankets, and I shake him awake with my real hand so that Rhodes doesn't think I'm trying to communicate anything. God knows if she's taken or not yet, I haven't asked. Ceder is slow to come alive—up late as he always is. "Please," I murmur.
"Nelly?"
"Rhodes wrote back. Needs help."
"Alright," he murmurs, but not really consciously. "Be right there."
I need five minutes. "Now," I tell him, against my own better judgment.
He comes upright like a person of the mud, a sour and blank expression on him. "Show me what she wrote," he mumbles.
I retrieve the paper and watch his deadened, tired eyes scan it. 'HIDING'. 'DRIVE OUT.' 'WEST ALTON.' I speak something under my breath, but it's useless and I'm panting too much to get anything useful out. Was running the whole way, now it's catching up with me. Just like all those other times I ran til my body died on arrival. All for her. Come on, come on. I tap for her to check in. She just taps, need immediate assistance.
I heft Ceder upright after a few seconds, and he speaks again. "We'll get her," he says. More solidly now. Heart beating, heart beating. "Come."
He lifts a couple boxes from the corner of the back room, prays for a few seconds by the shrine, and takes me along, carrying our meagre cargo.
-
All the way back through town. All the way back to the subway. I'm getting antsy again. I know Ceder is faster than this—I've seen him run, I know his strides are longer than mine. He moves like a soldier. Even pace. Conserving energy.
-
We board a train to Ever Street. He's awake now and speaking, speaking quietly but firmly, like he does in the night hours at the speakeasy. "Need to get you armed," he murmurs. "Weapon crate I was going to sell soon, still in my van. Rest we just got rid of. You will have to manage."
"What's left?"
"A shotgun," he says.
I nod, swallowing. Holding onto one of the vertical metal bars. Mostly-empty train and running autonomously. There are a couple Tasran in rave garb in the back looking at us funny. "They're not armored," I say, my voice now kind of dry.
"Yes. We'll hope it remains true."
I wince. "Not sure if they're Greenview or someone else."
In a tone I haven't heard from him before, Ceder says, "Doesn't matter. We will get her."
-
Almost to Ever Street. I write on the scrap of paper using Ceder's big backside as a surface. 'WHATS HAPPENING'
'GOT ME'
'GONE?'
'NOT YET. BULLSHITTING. JUST TALKING ENDLESSLY'
'GREAT'
'PLEASE COME'
'I WILL'
We are close now. We are close. I'm coming, Rhodes.
-
Ceder's van is parked outside a warehouse in Glasstown. This district is quiet, but there used to be ten thousand factories working in an array like a great, unified machine. Most are dead now, dead or repurposed, or apartments and office buildings and Guilder hives built atop the rubble. Amber streetlights and immense gridded streets stretching off into the forever. His van is a stout but unremarkable thing—a bleached yellow paintjob, four old wheels, blacked-out back windows. This street, Ever Street, is even further from West Alton. But we have wheels now.
He takes me around back and pops open the doors to the trunk, where only a small collection of cargo remains, as well as a dozen briefcases and suitcases used for lugging it quietly through the subway. He gets us two pairs of ballistic vests, police-issue, with little insignias from Baultriel Law Enforcement. Then he picks up a wooden crate and drags it to the edge, and pops it open with the nub of his claw. "Here," he says.
Resting in a bed of paper scraps, I see a shotgun.
It was a Hodeway Super Steady once upon a time, but everything's since been replaced, and it takes six-gauge shells now. The features are a little corroded, the metal nickelplated but dirty and dusty and coarse to the touch. Still an odd muzzle break carved into the choke, and a few scuffs in the pistol grip from a metal hand holding it too tightly. A sling made of horse leather. The stock is wood—real wood—with an engraving of a knight in steel armor, burned to deepen the color.
"Can you use this?" he asks, retrieving an unlabeled box of buckshot. Six gauge is what you wanted, man, don't blame me if it's hard to find ammo.
"It's mine," I tell him, and hold it. Lighter than I remember, or maybe I have gotten better at holding heavy things.
He looks at me oddly. "It is now, I suppose."
"No, I mean." I clear my throat and then check the chamber. It can fit four shells in the tube safely, five shells unsafely. Keep it to four, and don't cycle it until you're ready to shoot. Fox couldn't get the safety working with all the mods. "It's mine. It's one I had."
"Oh," Ceder says, and in his expression, and in the expression of the Dust all around me, I see a faint and confused smile.
I take some spare shells, load it to four, and we get going.
- 28 -
He has masks for us in the glovebox. A cheap party mask for me, resembling a devil, and as he's driving, he wraps some rags around his face like a keffiyeh until I can make out barely a thing. Takes off his bracelets, takes off his neck ring. I clothe his bare neck in some scraps of black cotton and as he's waiting at a stoplight he checks on his own handgun. Don't know what it is, if it even has a brand, if it's bespoke. Never seen him shoot it, always seen him carry it. Boxy and enormous and with no sights at all. Braced it against his hip to aim it at me, first time we met.
Besides our facial disguises and vests I think he's still in his pajamas and I'm in my fishing pants. Gonna have to ditch it all if this works.
If this works.
I tap my knee with my index finger. Check in. She taps back. Need immediate assistance.
-
Looking down at my good hand. Earlier I was shaking a lot. I lift up my palm from my knee and just hold it out, and I'm still a little shuddery, but—
Calm down, fed.
—I hear her again.
Hold still. I will hold still.
-
Moving lightly now and the air raising me up. We park three blocks away and approach on foot along the side of an enormous brick building half-collapsed and now skewered by a pillar holding up a great wide highway which rests above us. The Gutters, West Alton District of Velnias. We'll have to move every couple days. She must've run out of good hiding spots along the coast. Or she was trying to get out.
Carrying a box by a handle in one hand and my old gun with the other.
We come to a corner. There's a small alleyway with one end blocked up by a fence, and a black-painted sedan parked just by the entrance to an old concrete apartment block with all the windows missing. There are streetlights, but they are so faint with urban decay and the sidewalk is bathed in a near total darkness.
Our footsteps so light now. I speak to Ceder and he speaks back. Trying to make last minute adjustments but it doesn't matter what we say anymore. I move to the other end of the alleyway by the building and lay the metal box down and start to turn a latch. It deploys quietly; a scissor mechanism, unfurling and unfolding along the concrete as I turn, bit by bit, until it reaches fifteen meters alongside Ceder, and once he has it stable I arm it with a little click of a lever.
I kneel down on the sidewalk there and write to her with a scrawled piece of paper pinned to the concrete.
'READY,' I write.
I hear shouting from inside the building. Second or third story. Humans, then a Tasran—a Tasran shouting. 'READY TOO,' she writes.
'CAR?'
'THEY WILL USE THE CAR'
'PROMISE ME'
'I HOPE'
Hope will have to be good enough. I cycle the bolt of my old shotgun as I hear her yelling go quiet, but the other shouting—two voices, maybe three?—continues. Continues and continues. Banging of wood.
Couple minutes pass like this.
I look to Ceder. His eyes are gleaming in the nightlight. He is expressionless. I am starting to tremble again.
Calm down, fed.
They are using the stairs in the building. Sneakers, not boots, and I hear what sounds like a puffy coat, sleek and expensive and unfitting. I hold myself. I hold the gun upright and a gust of wind from down south pulls my piece of paper away from me until it flies away.
Sound of a car door opening. Another, another. Then one shuts. Another, another.
An engine turns on. I look to Ceder and see his eyes pull away. I know he is praying but I don't know how I know. I take a breath.
More footsteps inside the building.
Listen close. I am, Pell. I am. What do you hear? I hear a car going out of park. I hear tires struggling with a wet driveway. I hear other things. I hear the rain starting to pick up. I hear it drizzling in Sundown Street. I hear someone exiting a corner store and the bells ringing on the doorway and I hear a flower getting picked out of a pot on a windowsill. I hear a dog barking. I hear you. I know you're not there. I hear you regardless. I hear the tires turning and a splash of a little puddle and I hear Rhodes in my ear and I hear Ceder's heavy breath. I hear two kids in a backyard half the size of my prison cell playing with a football. I hear my breath. I hear my heartbeat.
I hear the mechanical whir of spikes thrusting upward and tires popping.
We brace against our cover. The car pulls forward another meter or so before the passenger side door swings open and a man with gelled hair and round-rimmed glasses tries to turn to face me but he doesn't see Ceder, he never saw Ceder. I hear the sound of an explosion ten times more striking than the Supranendum or the Rossberg as Ceder shoots his head off. A fusion pistol with a fusion cell, and a bolt of pure solid straight lightning goes through his skull and turns it to a thousand pieces of carbon—bone and brain and eyeballs black and his hands still gripping the top of the door tightly. I cannot hear my heartbeat anymore. I tense my hand and thrust forward my shoulder and aim at the man in the driver's seat struggling with his seatbelt; he is handsome like someone I used to know a long time ago, with a wide nose and curly hair, and I shoot him and it becomes daytime for a second, I can see every little detail everyplace, I can see the paint of the car where it's flecked off, I can see his beautiful face lit like he's getting his picture taken, then the sound reaches my ears and pops into silence everything in the world and when the flash is gone I see nothing but the remnants of a face and upper body, and all the blood sprayed across the dashboard and seat and doorframe and a fully-grown man turned to dripping bits, and the glass powderizes and sparkles in the lamplight, and then the door falls off its hinges. Wake up. Flashing lights. Something brushes me in the backside and dust fills the air in front of me. I turn around. There's a man in a puffy jacket leaning out of one of the empty windows firing at me and I swing my gun up and shoot him and his torso turns to mist. I turn back. Ceder has his gun at hip level and he has turned and fired it again but I don't hear it clearly this time. A storm of superheated air and then another and I shift to the wall again to aim—atop the steps someone without a head is falling over and then another shadow is perched behind a dumpster shooting my way, he was hiding there, he was always there, and I see that he has hit Ceder in the chest, and I shoot him. The metal railing up the steps to the doorway turns into a plume of dust and rust and when the flash is gone I see the shadow has turned to a massive black shape of dripping blood and Ceder is crouched behind the trunk holding his gun one-handed atop the car and training it at the entranceway and he beckons me forward with a wave and I pull open the rear door closest to me.
Rhodes is inside, handcuffed behind her back, half-naked in just her old slacks. I see her ruby eyes and she clambers towards me. I take her in my arms and let my shotgun fall from my hands. One shot left. It falls and then gets caught by my sling and goes to my backside.
Somehow now I hear the first of my spent shells hit the ground.
We run. I have never run like this in my life, not for any reason. I skip every second step and bound like a horse. I have been shot in the back and don't know it yet. I hold her. I can feel her heartbeat leaping out of her chest and I can feel her heart touch mine. Tears in her eyes. I hold her. I hold her so close. I can't hear a word she's saying.
What do you hear? I don't hear anything, Pell, I have just shot my gun and I can't hear anything. What do you hear? A buzzing. I can hear a whistling and a buzzing. The whistling is getting louder.
What do you hear?
Ceder's head tilts up. Mine tilts up, too.
There is a shape approaching out of the firmament at a speed that should not be possible for anything in atmosphere.
I know instantly, though I have never seen one with my own eyes, that this is a Rapid-Entry Dropship of the Peacekeepers of the League of Free Worlds, and that they are coming down from low orbit at a speed quick enough to make earthquakes of the ground from sheer noise, and that they are coming to us.
Ceder yanks me close. Must know my ears aren't working. He shouts at the top of his lungs but it is only a whisper. "Peacekeepers," he says. "I have a contingency. Distraction. Run with Rhodes. Run, run. I'll go. Run."
So I clasp her closer to my chest and run off to the side.
-
Down an alley. Skipping down the steps. Feet bleeding. Nelly, they brought the hammer down. The whistling grows so, so loud. The Peacekeeper response time can get as low as sixty seconds. Can you believe that? In the League's hands, you are never more than one minute away from rescue. The whistling like the sky is screaming.
-
The ground is shaking. I see her eyes. Through a parking garage we go. I realize now that I've been shot in the back, and the ceramics in my vest are jostling around, and it feels like my bones are jostling around. Small cartridge. Can't breathe properly. I see her red eyes.
-
I nearly fall over. Out of gas. I hold her like a potato sack and go again and run.
-
I have you. I have you. Please don't go again.
-
Please.
- 29 -
When I wake up again I realize, with some relief, that I'm not dead and I haven't gone anywhere. There is a flat of cardboard covering my whole body and it's raining.
I go back to sleep.
-
Inertia brings me back a few minutes later. Quiet along the seaboard.
I pull the cardboard aside and see that I am in some thin, wet, dim alleyway in the evening of a new day, and Rhodes is across from me, soaking wet, still half-naked, her eyes weary. I try to lurch up towards her but my body doesn't want to. Sharp pain in my shoulder. A glob of rainwater splatters against my face. "Rhodes," I say, and it gets mangled by my dry throat so much that it sounds like a moan.
"Hi," she says back. Her voice is muted. The ringing from the gunfight is gone now and in its place is just the gentle applause of rain. "Can you, ah, can you move?"
"Maybe," I admit.
"Got a place to hide out near. Apartment is still unsold."
Stay on the move. Right. Stay in the brush. Right. I look around. Brick walled buildings, stench of rotting garbage, mud, a broken gutter. Not even sure if I got us here, or... or if she got us here. No recollection after a point. She's taken off my ballistic vest and facemask and put them somewhere. I glance over to my left and see a pinprick wound in my shoulder from where a bullet went straight through some of my skin. Recoil, fed, recoil. Your first shot might hit center mass, but where's the next shot going? First shot in my back. Second shot in my shoulder. Lucky to be alive. Lucky she's alive.
I look over and I assure myself, again, that she is real. Spine doesn't hurt like I assumed it would.
"Thank you," Rhodes says, now, and I hear some twinge of brokenness in her voice. Don't know what it means.
I get up.
She has had a lot of time to rest. Wearing some ill-fitting shirt twice her size, carrying a garbage bag. I can hear a couple things rattling around in it, but not much. "Carry me in this," she says. "Close by. Not long."
"What?"
"Like the Bug Bag," she murmurs, and she has the faintest version of her smile.
I try to smile back at her, but I get interrupted by a sharp, rough cough. "Right," I say. "Is this real?"
She awkwardly dips her head down. "I guess."
I reach over and check my shotgun. She's already unloaded it—shells still in my pockets. I keep it unloaded and put the sling around just one shoulder, then motion at the garbage bag. "Tell me where we're going," I say. "Then let's go."
I got you now, Rhodes. You'll be okay.
We'll be okay.
-
I got us to Salt Row, apparently. Or she got us to Salt Row. Ran down those alleyways until I was unconscious, must have been running eastward toward the Cestabin. No sign of Ceder, of course, but also no sign of the Peacekeepers, no extra holes in my body. Blood drying around my shoulder into a makeshift bandage, and an occasional pinprick ache from the bruise on my upper back. I carry my old shotgun by the sling, and hoist the garbage bag with Rhodes in it over my shoulder. Metal arm makes it pretty easy. Somebody named Jack used to walk like this, used to carry a shotgun over his shoulder. Think he died in the Magenta Rebellion, think he tried something audacious in Stargard. How many clueless idiots like me died for that. What good did it do.
The cobblestones and concrete sidewalks are soaking wet. We're in a crowded neighborhood but not quite the Gutters and it's not the worst walk and I notice again that my feet are bleeding, or at least my socks are soaked with blood from before. I tap the bag handle with one finger. Check in. She taps back. All clear.
J-28 Street. There's a place called Seaview Public Library that is four stories tall and a diverse crowd of people are gathering out front the entrance. Banner for some event. There's an automat here, but it looks small, built into the corner of a rustic-looking apartment block, dim lights and nobody inside.
J-27 Street. A couple cheap compact cars are parked outside an indoor shopping center. Two people are busking, one with a pair of hand drums, one with a stringed piece of oval-shaped wood. There's a line to get a burrito at a little food truck and three of the Baldari in the line are wearing the same raincoats in Salt Row cyan. There's a rotting tire out front one of the brownstones.
J-26 Street. Another automated street cleaner, rugged, covered in graffiti and moving slowly across the old street. No cars are supposed to drive here but there's a convertible with one wheel up on the sidewalk, and then a couple people gliding by on bicycles. Two people step outside an apartment block and slip on some yellow jackets.
J-25 Billet Mother Apartments. I'm tracking in a lot of water. Scuffing my boots against the tile entranceway, staring down at the set of doorways in the first floor hallway, watching for movement. Don't hear anybody upstairs. From my pocket, I retrieve a tiny piece of metal cut from a soda can, and proceed upstairs. Rounding each corner with my breath heavy from exhaustion. Got my bug in my garbage bag. I pass an old woman on the stairs again and she gives me a funny look.
Fifth floor.
I wipe my shoes at the door.
Rhodes shims the lock for us with my hand.
-
Back again. Been months now, been months, long enough it should have been sold, or the lock changed, or the furniture rearranged, but in the dim light of an overcast evening it looks just like the first day we spoke along the seaboard of the Cestabin. I take Rhodes out of the bag and place her gently down, and one of us initiates a hug, and we hug, and I'm still sopping wet with rainwater, but I hold her. She is small and I am too large. I hold her.
No time to ask anything. I just want her to be able to lay down.
I lead her along into the bedroom. The sound of faint electronic drums beneath us, the floorboards creaking under me. The heaviness in my head. I pick a little at what else is in the garbage bag—my compromised ballistic vest, my mask. We'll have to find a good place to burn them both. No evidence, no trail. What do you think are the odds Ceder got out? What are our odds?
I stumble over and crumple onto the floor and sit on my ass, and Rhodes clambers onto the old bed, on top of the comforter.
I speak now because I've been waiting so many months to speak. "I'll hit them back," I say, my voice crumbling under the lack of water. "Greenview. For you. For that. I promise. I don't know—"
"It was the League," Rhodes says. Her piercing gaze on me. A weary look.
"What?"
"It was the League, that got me to kill Jericho Arborist," she says, and now she's trembling, trying to grip her knees planted on the bed. "That's why, that's why, ah, ah... beh... that's why the Peacekeepers came so fast, to us, I'm sorry, I should have said."
I blink again to make sure she's still there. "What's Greenview—"
Then she speaks over me again. More powerful than me in her tone. "Greenview really doesn't know shit," she whimpers, softly. "It's been the League after us. Why I knew you'd be s-safe if I wasn't around. It was me. It was me, I was the problem. Just w-w-wanted to reclaim me." Now her voice is gibbering and pained.
Before I know it I'm on my feet. Fire in me. Fire in me. Like when I woke up and Pell was gone. Like those months and months and fucking months poured into it trying to find out where she went. The grief in my heart when I knew she was dead and then had to figure out, piece by piece, that she was dead. Fire. Fire in me. I am upon Rhodes and she scrambles flat against the bed. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I'm sorry," she says.
"Why didn't you fucking say it was the League?! Ever? Ever?! I asked you so many fucking times, you know why—"
"I didn't know how—"
My voice is someone else's voice. It's yours and always has been. "Everything I fucking did for you and for us and now Ceder did for you, and you lied, you fucking lied—"
"PLEASE," she screams.
I pause.
"Please let m-m-me talk."
Tears on my face. I can taste myself dying.
"I didn't w-want you to leave or hurt me, or not trust me, I h-had to. I just didn't w-want you to leave."
She is propped up against the window and she is scared of me. My hands are shaking like I need to break something in half.
"It w-was my fault," she whimpers. "I'm s-s-sorry. I just couldn't f-figure out how to s-say anything ever."
"You got forced into it," I tell her.
"No."
I grit my teeth forcefully. "I would have forgiven you. I forgive you. I would have. You got forced into it. It's the League. I can be mad at the League. It's not hard to be mad at the League."
"I d-didn't get forced," Rhodes whispers.
"Okay."
"I didn't. I n-needed money. They came to me." Now she looks off, or she is gone, lost watching some cameras somewhere. "After the shit happened and I needed my brain fixed I couldn't work and I couldn't k-keep anything and lost all my money and I was gonna be homeless. And I was s-scared and I took the job. And then you came. And then they came, a-at the same time." Rhodes looks at me, comes back to reality, and I realize she's smiling. "A-And you saved me from them."
My hands are on the bedframe. Crawling up to her. I just didn't want to lose you. Maybe I could have lost you and kept on living. It could have been so straightforward. "Why did they have you do it," I ask. Then I realize I don't care about that. I get loud enough to make my chest hurt. "Why did they point the finger at Pell."
"I don't know," she says.
"Lying," I say. She is lying. Always lying. Be careful of people that look sad all the time. This wretched creature. Cockroach. Gutter rat. I am on her now. "Just admit it. I forgive you. Just fucking admit it."
Scared of me. "I don't know."
"Please. Just admit it."
"I don't know. I s-swear I don't know why. I just f-fucking turned the turret on."
I grip her by the shoulder. "Just tell the fucking truth for once in your life," I tell her.
Her whimpering turns to a scream.
I pull my hand away. It is covered in blood. There is a terrible leaking wound in her bare shoulderblade where my... my metal hand. I wasn't in control of it. She's hurt.
God she's hurt. I pull away. I pull my whole self away. What did you do, Nelly.
She is quiet now. Just staring at me and then the finger-shaped wounds in her shoulder, divots, chasms in her chitin, red soaking her gray self, her self, the self I loved about her, I have gone and hurt her for no reason at all because I am not in control of anything and I back up until I'm against the wall and nearly slip into the closet and tremble viciously from the sight of it.
"I'll get something for that," I manage, and I tumble out of the apartment.
- 30 -
Wandering through the street now. It's pouring rain. At first it's tempting to think, to ponder, to feel guilty—but it doesn't seem like it is any use to think about things right now. I wish I was still by the Cestabin in the night waiting for fish to come along. I guess I don't wish that. I walk.
Clouds blotting out any sense of reality. And here comes the nighttime. I look up and all the buildings along Salt Row are blinking with ten thousand lights. I look back down.
My creaky metal hand has blood on it now. I stuff it into my pocket.
I got a plan. It's not a complicated one or very responsible. There's a corner store nearby and I will just buy some medical supplies. At that point I'll fix part of my mistake and then maybe get out of Rhodes' life. Why am I like this? Why is she like this? Why'd I say all that shit? Why'd she say all that shit? Why'd I hurt her? Why'd she hurt me?
No, I said I wasn't going to think about anything. I walk.
-
Back on Stromm's I knew a Tasran who died. It was my fault. Got him killed from my own stupid choices. Red eyes, too. No, I said I wasn't going to think. Walk, Nelly, just walk.
-
I make it to the corner store called TOM'S. Been here before. Ducking in to dodge the rain.
The bells on the door ring for me, and I wave a little hello to the guy at the counter, who looks at me funny. The overhead lights are oppressive and I feel like I'm a troglodyte facing sun for the first time, and it smells like chlorine. Just passing it all by right now. Some other tall human in the store lugging around a bag of chips in one hand, tired eyes, freight drivers' eyes, and he pays me no mind. I go between the rows just hoping I'll find anything. Taste of rations in my mouth again. No, not quite. Taste of gas station food in my mouth. The gas station outside Crater had good packaged food from the city. I am too wide and tall to belong in a little shop like this.
I find a good assortment of what I'm looking for. A kit of ChitinCare SewUp and some gauze and a lot of different medicine creams and a can of Jetsurp and some sour gummy candy. And a little cheap datapad half the size of Rhodes' old one. I lug it all to the counter.
The guy at the front is happy to see me for some reason. Deep eyes on a young face, and a crooked nose that looks familiar. "Hi, good evening," he says.
"Thank you." I start fishing around in one pocket.
He takes a look at my assortment, starts scanning each piece. Swear I had it here still. I check my back pocket. "Gonna be..." He squints slightly. "Thirty-one fifty, or twelve-something PiCoin."
Found it. I retrieve a few hundred-Vick bills and put one down on the counter. Realizing now that I used my metal hand to do it. Still covered in her blood.
"Oh?" he murmurs.
"Can you keep the change for yourself?"
Then he nods furiously. "Thank you. Cool of you." Now he's really smiling. Part of something interesting for once.
I nod cautiously. "Yeah. Uh. Was just giving you this to ask you don't tell anyone I was here."
He leans in and hushes me playfully. "Lady, I do that for free."
That makes me grin at him a little. I push the bill forward to him. "Then, uh. Have a good one."
He puts forward a paper bag, stuffs all my goodies in, and hands it to me. "You too."
So I go back out.
-
Pouring now. But oddly quiet. Quiet from all the rain draining into the sidewalks, all the people in raincoats with their voices muffled, passing by. I stop outside the shop with my bag and I stare up at Velnias from below. There is one skyscraper of enormous proportions nearby, one overlooking Salt Row, with unfathomable, wrong architecture, shaped like spikes into heaven, ten thousand lit windows on a breathing and thinking machine shaped like a building, and I get some rain in my face, so I lift up my hand, and the rain comes down, and comes down, and comes down, like always, like nothing has changed at all since the first day I died and came back. Then the blood on my hand starts to wash away.