Chapter 17- Military Velm

  When I wipe the fog from the mirror, the pair of red eyes beams back at me, sinuous blue veins spread down my cheeks and temples, ever-growing webs pulsing with every beat.

  Heinous. I fight back the urge to break the mirror.

  Instead, I drop my head toward the sink, strands of my bloody hair brush down my face, and steam from the running shower breathes on me. The unending pound of my heartbeat drumming in my ears, vision swirling on nothing but the carnadine stained on my hands, craving for more; I’ve never been in this state for this long—hours from the Void into the border, black holes in my memories from the time in between. How did the patrols even let me through? Furthermore, how did I manage to make it back?

  Crimson shadows swim in the corners of my vision, invading my mind. They’re not going away; I need to get rid of the blood first. I’m covered in it—my face, palms, and especially my legs. The whole bathroom reeks of iron.

  When I shed the last of my blood-crust clothes, the flaps of storming slippers echo toward me.

  “Oi, Doviche,” Cyra chides, her voice extra raspy, and accent slurs from abruptly awoken in the dead of night. “What’s all this? You bleed, you bleed outside. Don’t dirty my floors!”

  She swings the door open. The fog slips out, and the cold comes creeping in, gooseflesh forming on my skin. Her eyes dart to me—my bare body coated in blood. She takes a faltering step back, her eyes widen, and the sleepiness evaporates at once. As if she unknowingly fled into a cave for shelter and realized she’d woken a hibernating bear.

  Her lips tremble, slightly agape to speak, but the words are stolen from fear. Good.

  Beside her, a long trail of red dribbles from the warehouse door to the bathroom. My eyes grip onto the color, sending another hammering throb to my head and increasing my heart rate.

  “It’s not my blood,” I tell her. My grip on the door’s edge, my gaze drops to the ground on the soaking duffel bag beside the door.

  A pool of blood leaks from the bottom.

  Cyra studies my glaring eyes before following my direction. “What happened?”

  “I…ran into some people.”

  “Outside the wall?”

  I nod. The events crash into the front of my mind, sending a striking pain. My head drops between my shoulders, fingers clawing at my frontal lobe. And there’s that urge again—to reach out and feel Cyra’s neck between my grip, feel her last breath slip through my palm.

  She must’ve sensed the threat and shifted her attention entirely to the bulging parcel. It’s supposed to be empty. She gives it a light kick, expecting a wine or a jolt. The objects inside hardly stir.

  Her breath shakes as she crouches, distancing her toes from the bloody puddle. She finds the zip at the end and drags it across the wet opening.

  I didn’t mean to kill the guy; It happened within a split second from a triggering moment. He shot me, the ray seared through my flesh and tibia. Then there was nothing on my mind but to repay the pain.

  I returned to him later when the other two escaped, and I made sure this one didn’t. My face hot and drenched in sweat, I took off my velm for better visibility in the dark and found him lying exactly where I left him. His neck crooked, a red light blinked at me. A recording from his velm and my face stared straight into the camera.

  Shit.

  I tackle away the next few minutes, unfurling the type C velm that has a more complex switch. In the complete dark with trembling hands, I had trouble removing it from his skull when the screech of a vehicle caught my attention. A truck stopped at the hindered highway entrance, and dozens of armed men in the same attire as their fallen comrade spilled out. Out of frustration and desperation, I did what I had to.

  Cyra yelps and falls back on her ass at the sight of him. The faint shine of the night sky reflects on the velm’s screen, the short vertebrates of the spine peak out from the base, sinews and tendons stuck to the bones.

  To be clear, I only wanted the velm.

  Not his entire head.

  As best as I can remember, I explain everything to Cyra. She holds her breath the entire time, half trying to piece together the broken events and the other half with her guard up.

  When she finally collects herself and speaks, it’s in Yutainian. “Crazy fucking bitch.”

  Her feet are slightly soaked with blood, but she’s no longer bothered by the fluid and reaches into the baggage, inspecting the velm. “Military-grade,” she realizes. “You kill military man. Federal crime!”

  As if this is the worst offense she’s ever seen. I reach for the knob to close. “Arrest me.”

  *

  I stand under the showerhead until the murky water runs clear, washing away my sense of time, until my vision and heart rate slow to normal, and the untamed rage is locked away. I step out into the cold warehouse, steam rising from my pink flesh.

  The trail of blood is gone from the concrete floors, the bloody duffel bag removed from the door frame. Not a drop of blood in sight.

  I dig through the fresh pile of clothes I washed and dried for Cyra before leaving earlier tonight. I put on a T-shirt and sweatpants, and find a pair of men’s boots in the return crate along with an ugly trench coat from two seasons ago.

  The fumes of cigarettes grab my attention to the back of the warehouse, in the corner where Cyra rots for most of her days. She’s smoked enough for a gray cloud to form, blurring the neon colors of her computer system into a hazy blob.

  Before I leave, I plunge through the fumes, the bitterness brushing under my nose and scraping my lungs, and I bum a stick from her table. The military velm, cleaned and attached to her tiered computer, catches my eyes and compels me to stay. The skull is gone, along with the spine and blood.

  I don’t ask where she dumped them.

  “Find anything?” I ask instead, and pick up her lighter.

  Though my mind is calm, my stamina and energy are drained. I’m not able to answer the millions of questions in my head. But I need some answers.

  The Yutainian girl remains focused on her work, fingers busy punching down the keys as lines of code scroll down her screen. “I will have the footage in a minute.”

  My cigarette drags to the end when her screen blinks, and the video plays. Dozens of men pop up, all masked under velms, geared the same as the fallen man’s perspective, with assault rifles and thick coats. The audio is disrupted, their voices merge incoherently. Cyra couldn’t fix it. The corner of the screen shows the Offeno police station sign right before the man starts his motor and wheels away. The throng of men traverses south and out of the Grand Wall before they all separate into pairs. The man and his partner arrive at the factory and loiter there overnight. No—patrolling the grounds. Some parts of the night are cut from the velm furling away, but it seems like they’re just waiting, sitting idle for…something. Until I come along, a shot fires, and I leap onto the recording man. Cyra lets the footage run as the perspective remains idle until I reappear some time later.

  “What is the military doing there?” I ask.

  Cyra mashes codes into her other monitor. Her tired eyes lock on her screen. “The velm might be military grade, but their system is from a private company.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The main screen switches to a file system, hundreds of names listed, but Cyra can only open one.

  “Sphinx,” she sounds out. “Strange name.”

  A headshot bloats under the name, a rough-looking man in his late thirties, the owner of the velm, I assume. Then his height and body measurements, and a kill count.

  Until his face appeared before me, it hit me then that I’ve taken his life. I’ve killed a man in cold blood without thinking twice. I wait for the guilt to seep in, but nothing comes.

  “Mythic agency,” Cyra reads at the bottom. A winged logo beside it.

  “It’s not his real name,” I realize. The company sounds familiar. “It’s a security company. They’re security guards?”

  “Do you think mall cops have bodycounts over thirty?” A furrow creases between Cyra’s brow. “They are obviously hitmen.”

  It makes sense. At the same time, my mind isn’t able to register more.

  “So what the fuck are hitmen doing in the Void?”

  Cyra sighs and pushes out from her chair, her deadpan eyes in disbelief as she has to spell it out for me. “This has never happened until after the decimation of the mall, from your last drill. They are obviously seeking the person responsible.”

  Shit.

  I pull another cigarette out of the box, and my hands tremble on the lighter. “What do we do now?”

  Cyra leans into her chair, eyes lower to my right to the duffle bags still dark from wetness, the explosives inside smeared in rusty blood, stacking idly. There’s a slim time frame in which we need to use them before the liquid solidifies, before they expire, and deemed useless. The next shipment won’t come for another eight weeks. The devices are made an ocean away and use highly illegal substances banned by the Bowenese government. So even when shipped across water, we can only slip so many batches under the radar.

  “Should I go back tonight?” I ask. When the night patrol switches at the border, the dirty cops will let me through without question.

  “It’s too risky,” Cyra gulps. “There are too many of them.”

  “But we need shards. We won’t have enough for the next shipment.”

  The girl deeply considers it. “It’ll be worse if you get caught.”

  But I won’t, I want to say. But how close had it been for me? Two men, I can take care of, but I hadn’t expected another to come in at the last moment when I was searching for the second man.

  My legs were blown apart from that mistake. I remember lying there, calling for my legs, but I just remained there as pain poured over me.

  My teeth bite down on the filter.

  I let that man get away.

  How? He should’ve been crushed by the cargo truck. And if I let one outsmart me, how will I handle more of them, especially if they’re all armed?

  “So what now?” I ask. “What do we tell Mital?”

  Cyra stifles a flinch from his name, her eyes landing on me, a pleading demand. “No. We manage this on our own.”

  Though that’s not the solution, I relax a little from her answer. If she doesn’t want to report it to her father, I assume we’re keeping this from Taifung. Cyra’s in charge of this shard-run. So whatever happens—a late shipment, a slip on her part—the responsibility falls on her. Even so, I know I won’t be let off the hook as easily.

  The sky brightens slightly overhead, bringing light to the Yutainian girl’s deep frown.

  “Go home, Doviche,” she finally says, and spins back to her setup. The old panels close, and she opens a new screen and begins typing again.

  “The explosives will expire.”

  “I’ll tell them it’s defective. Buy us some time.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She absently shakes her head. “I’ll figure it out.”

  *

  The morning mist clears when I arrive in the garden of my Gaia. The flower petals are withering, the pruned shrubs are in dire need of a trim, but I can barely muster the energy not to collapse on the dirty foyer.

  The house sounds empty, but the reek of baju stings my nose, awaking my senses. The unequivocal sign that Aba is home.

  Just when I think my day has finally ended, another problem drops on my lap. I wonder how he got home this time; someone must’ve found him at the bottom of the Abyss and called to drop him off the gaia, because there’s no way he’s ever sober enough to find his way back himself.

  The locals in the Abyss know better than to let him die; Taifung pays handsomely for anyone who finds him drunk at a bar or lying unresponsive in an alley. Mital needs him alive, or else they lose their only leverage on me.

  I push the door to his room ajar. He’s in the same spot I always find him: face down on his chair at the desk near the window. The curtains slump to the floor, the tape ripped from the walls. I hang it back up with new tapes, knowing it’ll just tear again, but I can’t let any drive-byers peek into the state of my home.

  Yun Haiko is supposed to be better, out of retirement, not shit-faced drunk like he’s been for the last decade. No, not many investors are buying into the SEM pill yet. I can’t lose the ones who are pending their interest.

  I brush the curtain close, the last of the brightness gone from the room. While I’m at it, I take Aba under his arms and carry him to his bed. The sheets have never been changed since Dr. Lena’s death. The mattress cover is worn thin, the threads sanded loose and vanished, leaving a large hole in the center. Aba never allows me to wash it, so I don’t. He stirs awake as his head hits the pillow, eyes on me.

  “You’re home,” he mumbles, squinting at the backlight behind me. He flips onto his back and begins to snore the moment he shuts his eyes. I step over to flip him to the side so he won’t choke on his vomit.

  Then I pause.

  Maybe he should.

  Just behind his right ear, a scar etches a half-inch slit. Anyone without a trained eye can miss it. In some stronger lighting, I can see the lump of the device under his skin. A suspended guillotine for a con man, and Mital holds the rope. And I know Aba wishes that one of these days, when he’s drunk and out of his mind, Mital will release that tether.

  Ever since Dr. Lena died, my father has never recovered. After many years, I realized he didn’t want to; a life without her wasn’t one he wanted to live.

  *

  Dr. Lena was buried in Quailen Cemetery. They had never dug this many holes for this many coffins with no bodies to bury inside. Families stood near the victims' plots as the grave diggers went around the rows, lowering them one at a time until all one hundred and thirty-seven caskets were six feet under.

  Lotus had arranged and paid for all funeral expenses, but that won’t settle the overflowing lawsuits and court trials awaiting them. The trials were chaotic and lasted for months, investigations dragged on, the stories dominated the media for weeks, and documentaries were made before any cases were closed. Only the underground department, the one that kept test subjects, was supposed to have flame outlets, yet the entire facility in all departments had burned. But every employee at the facility, including janitors and interns, had signed a waiver acknowledging the risk of working at the establishment, so all the cases were inevitably dropped.

  I stood next to Aba. He knelt before Dr. Lena’s plot, a hand in mine, the other fisted the grass. His whole demeanor and grief threatened to jump into the plot to be buried with her. The house staff loomed close behind us, a step away to prevent him from doing so when the gleaming black aircraft hovered into the cemetery’s entrance.

  The CEO of Lotus, Lavoran Vik Son, had finally made an appearance to pay his respects to his fallen faculty. Glares and frowns shot in his direction. No one wanted him here; that much was clear. But all the reporters and news stations had set up a small film crew to document the closure of the families, and Vikson had yet to make a public statement to the employees under his payroll.

  He adjusted his black suit and stepped in front of the camera, ready to deliver his speech, when Aba shoved the film crew aside and rushed to him, seizing his collar.

  “How dare you show your face?” he cried and swung a fist across the CEO’s jaw.

  The flash photography flooded the moment with bright light, capturing the dispute in real time. Gasps arose. Half horrified by the unanticipated violence, the other half finally sighed in relief at the trickle of justice.

  Both men tumbled to the ground. Vikson’s security team instantly separated the two. Grappling Aba by the back and hurling him off the CEO, and pinning him on the ground so Vikson could get up without another hindrance. He cut a glance at the reporters, imagining the people watching this transpire from the comfort of their home, and gestured for his team to take him back into the safety of his car, ending his public speech before it even started.

  The cameras shifted between him and my father’s breakdown—screaming and shouting profanities without another care in the world.

  The other hovercrafts that arrived a little later had also been escorted back. Raze and his parents merely grazed the camera framework before the security rushed them back inside.

  It’d been weeks since I last saw him. Weeks since I held his hand. Heard his voice. Felt the comfort between his arms. There was nothing more I wanted at that moment. To finally shed a tear after hearing the news. To cry out of grief. To be soothed by his gentleness. He searched for me across the vast graveyard. We locked eyes for a second before he was hurried away, not knowing this was the last time we would see each other as an engaged couple.

  Aba broke the news to me a few days later when I brought him up, and told me never to mention him or his family ever again.

  *

  Before I leave his room, I flip Aba over to his side, slide a vomit bucket next to him, and fill a glass of water on his nightstand.

  The moment I enter my room, I shed off all of Cyra’s clothes and slump into bed, making a mental note to burn everything when I wake up. I fall asleep the moment I hit the pillow, and it’s late afternoon when I open my eyes again. My limbs are heavy and my mind dense. I scroll through my missed notifications during the day and receive a text from the last person I expect, Raze.

  We need to talk.