Episode 5 - The Tide Recedes, and What it Leaves Behind

  Chapter 43 - Distant Thunder on the Horizon

  “So far I’m coming up clean,” mutters Rhett, scrolling idly on his tablet. “They’re right; it’s just unusual temperature spikes with nothing else in the system to indicate what could go wrong.”

  I sit across from him in his guest quarters, legs crossed beneath the low coffee table and my torso slumped across it, thinking. I’m bored already of scrolling through log after log as we review everything the engineers at Bio-Vats have shared with us.

  “Sabotage then?” I ask, drumming my fingers.

  He grunts in affirmation, sitting back on his bed. With a grimace of pain on his tender leg, he gets to his feet and dumps his luggage on the bed, unzipping the top and unfolding it to rummage through his clothes.

  “It’s not someone internally messing with things?”

  “Neither of the Apis servers indicated anything out of the ordinary associated with the temperature spikes. If someone was sending commands for it internally, they’d see it, user IDs or symbiont signatures or whatever. Whatever is occurring, it’s happening so their systems can’t see it.”

  I watch his shoulder blades shift under his black collared shirt while he continues to dig around in his bag.

  The symbiont that caught Pooka’s attention lingers in my memory, watching from the very top of the bioreactors. Its branched horns were almost as large as the rest of its body. “It’s a symbiont,” I declare.

  “That’s why you wanted their employee manifest? What’s your evidence?”

  I sniff. “Gut feeling.”

  “Hmm. We’ll follow up on it tomorrow.” Rhett doesn’t dismiss the idea entirely. He pulls a shiny piece of red fabric from his luggage finally, tucking it under one arm as he turns back around to face me. “I’m going to sleep.”

  I eye his hands and the scrunched red object, drawing myself up and dragging my hands across the surface of the coffee table. The act smears fingerprints along the polished chrome surface. “What’s that?” I ask, ignoring his obvious command to leave.

  He frowns, a deep, reluctant frown. He coughs. “It’s for my hair.”

  I almost choke, holding back my bark of laughter. “You’re kidding?”

  “My curls get real frizzy-”

  “Your curls!?” I can’t help it, rocking backwards and grabbing my stomach at the thought of him carefully tucking his hair into that absurdly red bonnet to sleep.

  “It looks unprofessional otherwise. Get out.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” I reply as I’m pushed unceremoniously from his room.

  My only reply is the door slamming shut behind me. I catch my breath, letting my laughter out and barely suppressing the grin of amusement that lingers on my face. It wasn’t necessarily my intention to mock him, but it’ll work damn well as an out that’ll ensure he won’t follow me.

  I tie my hair up in my own quarters next door, pinning a loose bun of silver streaked hair to my skull with a beanie and discarding my corporate suit for a high-collared casual jacket, the sleeves banded once each with fluorescent orange in a style that was popular at Apex. I pair the outfit with my old Murasaki scrubs underneath; tucking gloves, a multi-tool, a ball made of rubber bands and heat-shrink tape offcuts, and a pocket-knife into my pockets.

  Then, high-tech gear. An electrical test kit, a battery pack, a set of needle-nose pliers, a length of detonating cord. I don’t need a blasting cap, not with Pooka.

  I step out of my door and Pooka drops from the roof above me, dripping onto the floor and congealing into his hyaenid form. Red eyes look up at me, lips curl back to reveal white teeth, and his dark purple tongue lolls.

  We hunt?

  We hunt.

  I didn’t realize the buildings at the Cooperative City soared so high. If it wasn’t night, I wonder if the surface of the dome above us would be close enough to see properly? If I could stretch a hand and touch it? When I look down, my vision distorts with a spin of vertigo. So I don’t look down, lest my stomach and nerves betray me.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I can see the paths between the skyscrapers that the local train lines carve. I can tell the districts apart by the logos on the buildings, a familiar purple glow in the distance obviously Murasaki.

  I might regret this plan.

  We will leap. We will fly as wind and storm. We are as nimble as the lightning.

  Don’t drop me, I reply ruefully.

  The lightning does not drop the thunder. The wind does not drop the cloud.

  I’m not a cloud.

  Pooka arches his neck, snorting to dismiss my concerns. He dances in place as we stand on the roof of the first building we could break into, climbing upwards in a dark stairwell for what felt like an hour. My calves burn, despite all the hours I’ve spent running with Nessa. Pooka’s dark mane falls between his eyes, his ears pricked forward and attentive. Dark hairs from his fetlocks cover broad, flat hooves that I worry will slip on smooth surfaces. I do not slip.

  I turn to him, sucking in one deep breath through my nose and trying to forget the view down. The next roof over isn’t so far. Maybe I could even make the jump with my own legs?

  I vault onto Pooka’s back. He shifts under me to help me balance, and I lean into his shoulders. His cold emanates upwards to me, seeping into my flesh, wrapping my bones. I twine my hands in his mane, gripping his neck and sides with my knees. I shut my eyes.

  And I open Pooka’s.

  We test our combined weight and balance, trotting a tight circle around the roof. Then, we look towards the distant purple lights. There must be nearly a hundred roofs between us and there, some higher, some lower; a maze of stepping stones.

  We are drifting smoke. We are relentless. The sky does not fear falling.

  We kick forward with our back legs, shoulders bunching, chest heaving, hooves crashing against concrete. Our body uncoils, muscles tight, and we explode into a gallop. The edge of the roof is upon us so quickly, and with unbreakable self-assurance, Pooka leaps.

  Our forelimbs stretch into the sky in front of us, guiding our path. As gravity claims us, there is a moment of weightless suspension. Time hesitates. I spread my arms, wishing I could feel the freedom of feathered wings for myself. I wish I knew the confidence in our own physical, relentless, mastery of space that Pooka feels. Adrenaline sears through my veins. My heart pounds. I want sweat; I want exhaustion; I want to feel the very limits of what I am.

  Then concrete rushes towards us again, and fear with it. But we do not slip. Forefeet bracing, hind limbs planting. Momentum gathers and we surge forward again to the next gap, repeating our leap.

  Pooka helps guide my control over his form, slowly drifting back in our communion to let me feel his body more and more completely. In unison, we gallop across the sky, leaping from roof to roof. His touch is gentle, present, joyful. He loves what he is, and I can feel his elation at sharing this with me. He loves just existing, running, leaping, rolling, dancing. In the hollow where he is nothing, he cannot feel the pleasure of existence. It kept on calling him back each time, even as his heart grew heavier.

  It was better once. We would ride waves. We would dance with storms. We would crash with water. I still remember. A handful of faces, women laughing in ways I cannot.

  I will never be like those women. I am incapable. I am tainted with cynicism and chains from the life we now live. But I still yearn for it.

  It does not matter. So am I now. I will never be like the lives I lived again.

  I shut the hatch of the radio tower access panel, putting my pliers back into my mouth, and begin the nervous climb back down the ladder. Pooka watches from below, his two red eyes like beacons in the dark, his neck stretched to watch me. His black hide catches the vibrant purple glow of a nearby Murasaki logo from an adjacent building. As I descend, I press my back against the basket guard to rest occasionally as I think.

  It’ll work. It’s too high for surveillance cameras to see, unlike the last one; and so out of the way only technicians would come here, and irregularly at that. I can splice into the power line and the data feed to the antenna, although with this voltage I’ll need Pooka to create a temporary blackout, which will attract attention. By travelling overhead like this, we bypass every security measure in place to monitor the movement of people between the districts. Pell is light enough I could bring her with Pooka and me the same way we came today, and Murasaki will never know she was here.

  I’m missing an intranet connection, though. I step onto the roof and crouch, taking a moment to gather my strength again with firm surfaces beneath my feet, and squint around the top of the roof at the access door. There’s no lock from this direction; it’s a safety feature. I could enter whenever I wanted. But I guarantee there is likely a swipe card or something coming the other way. I tap my lips with the pliers as I consider it. It’s a one-way ticket to gamble my entire operation on, and one that I have no way of scouting before I commit to it.

  I’m tempted to look out over the skyline, see if I can work out which building was my old apartments or the labs from above. If I bent over the edge, found the skyways beneath me, and identified just a few landmarks, I think I could work it out. Maybe I could drop down, walk along the familiar streets, and knock on my father’s door. It’s late enough; he might even be home, assuming he didn’t throw himself into his work once I left.

  And then what?

  I’d cry, and burrow into his arms. And then what?

  He might let me inside, and I could tell him about my new life. Maybe he’d buy a hot cocoa from the vending machine on the floor below us. And we could stay awake through the night until I’d have to leave again. And then what?

  I’d have to walk away on my own two feet this time.

  So, I focus instead on my task. Anything except entertaining those thoughts. Anything except opening that envelope pinned above my desk back at Aquila. It’s just a plain beige door, with a push bar across the middle. But it marks the most dangerous part of making the most of this opportunity.

  You will all get an extra chapter next Tuesday!! (So three chapters total next week!)