Fic: LowLives part 8
LowLives
Word Count: 5967
in which there is DRAMA. and VIOLENCE. and some mutants. and some death. mentions of rape involving secondary characters. and MUTANTS. :D
-
Carlo is supposed to run the point on a big job for Vincent on Thursday, handle a deal with some other big drug lord who's interested in getting involved with po, but he's not there, and Vincent's not happy.
"Ike!" he snarls. "Get out there, and find him."
Ike looks up, face blank and eyes dull, and walks over to Vincent slowly, purposefully. He leans in, and speaks in a low tone so that no one else can hear him, but I can see the way Vincent's face goes white, and then purple with rage.
"All right, fine. fucking fine, Arthur, you go."
I look up from where I'm sitting with Jameson, and blink. I don't question him, because that would be retarded, but I need a little more information than that. "I don't know where the fuck he is."
"Go to his fucking house, then, ask his fucking girlfriend. You've got his fucking address, get the fuck out there."
I don't have his fucking address, but apparently I'm supposed to. I reach into my back pocket, where I keep Arthur's little red notebook. I look through it as I leave, flipping page after page, until I find an address on the edge of East Quarter, not quite in the slum, but just before the suburbs start. The busses will get me most of the way there, but I'll have to walk maybe half-a-mile from the last stop, so I'm glad I'm finally wearing the proper clothes for the weather, wearing a hoodie under my jacket and an old pair of combat boots that are suitably Arthur rather than his tattered sneakers.
There's no answer when I get there, not to my knock on the door, and not when I call, cell phone pressed against my ear, standing outside Carlo's house. It's a miniature one-story house, two bedrooms maximum, with a small, poorly cared for lawn out front, grass patchy and dead. It looks like he's got a kid, maybe two, by the toys I can see over the fence in the back yard.
The shutters are closed, and the curtains are drawn, so I can't peer in through the windows.
I call again, and this time, under the low trill of the phone ringing inside, I can hear people's voices.
They're indistinct, though I can tell that one of them is Carlo, speaking rapidly. The other one becomes more apparent when they get louder abruptly, almost shouting, a woman's voice.
I frown, and as I lean forward to knock on the door, there's a loud crash of breaking glass, and the sound of a child's scream.
I'm slamming my shoulder into the door, trying to break it open, before I can think that it might be a bad idea, maybe. I have a gun in the back of my jeans, and I take it out as I ram into the door again, holding it like I'd seen in movies. It takes too long, there's more shouting, and a woman yelling, her voice high-pitched and angry, screaming, and I don't have time, so I stand and stumble back a few steps, and try to kick the door in.
There's a glass panel in the top, decorative stained-glass, with the house number inlaid in lead. It cracks when the door slams open and back into the wall on the third kick, rebounding back on me as I throw myself inside. There's a narrow entrance way, and to the right I can see glimpses of a couch and television, a lamp turned over on its side, and a small child, huddled silent and scared with tears beading in her large eyes.
She looks at me, terrified at a stranger in her house, and I'm afraid she'll scream again - the sounds of shouting are so much louder inside, I don't even think they noticed the door crashing open - but instead she raises one trembling finger and points behind me, to the back room.
I nod at her, and give her the most reassuring smile I can manage, and then I'm tearing through the house until I reach what looks like Carlo's bedroom door. It's only half-closed, like someone slammed it too hard and made it bounce back, so I shove it open and aim my gun at Carlo's back.
I shoot.
I've never fired a gun before.
The bang of the gun sends rattles down my chest, squeezing my ribs too tight, and I can't breathe for a second, so surprised by the noise even as I pull the trigger again. The gun jumps in my hands, jolting my shoulders and my arms tense up to compensate, painful in the seize of terrified muscle.
He's still alive. He's still fucking alive, it's never like that in the movies, gasping and choking on blood, twitching, trying to turn around and see my face, so I shoot him again.
It's easier the second time.
The girl - the one who's screaming, she's not even a girl really, fully grown woman, but terrified all the same - screams again, trapped underneath Carlo's bloody body. Her face is white, light brown eyes wide and startled, long brown hair tangled and mussed about her face, and she's all splattered with blood. There aren't any tears on her face, just a sort of resigned terror that matches the hang of her shirt, ripped off her shoulders, and the way her jeans are rucked down around her hips, Carlo's unmoving hand still shoved down the front.
"Oh my God, get the fuck away from me!" she screams, scrambling back, heaving against Carlo's limp and unhelpful body, throwing him away from her. When she can't get very far, and I'm still standing over her with a gun, she gets hysterical, hands slipping in the blood slowly seeping into the bed sheets. "Whatever you want, just take it, just take it! I don't know what - what do you want?"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm putting the gun away - I - oh fuck, are you okay? I didn't shoot you, did I?" I ask, thumbing the safety back on the gun and shoving it back into the waistband of my jeans. "Did I hurt you?"
She stares at me like I'm a crazy man. It's starting to seem more and more likely as I watch her, so I turn my eyes up, looking over the wall and - there two holes, one in the nightstand and the other in the baseboard, neither of them anywhere near the girl.
"Why are you here? Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm not here to hurt you," I say, and it sounds weak and futile even to my ears. "What's your name?"
"I - Sydney. Sydney Lerner. Oh God please don't hurt me, don't hurt my kids, just take what you want and go, please."
Her hands are covered in blood, and I can see the lace of her underwear over sharp, narrow hip bones. There are bruises on her sides in the shapes of fingerprints, hand prints, teeth, fists.
I want to shoot Carlo all over again, but instead I leave her, confused and frightened and in shock, and flee back to the front entrance. The girl has moved, hiding behind the couch, and in her arms I see the shaking form of a little boy, not understanding enough to cry, but watching me with enormous black eyes.
I'm about to leave, just run out the front door - the neighbours must have called the police by now and I just fucking killed a man, but I stop when I hear a voice, high and curious.
"Did you kill my daddy?"
I turn. It's the girl, she's standing, having positioned the boy behind her small body, and she's looking at me with a face, an expression that's way beyond her years. She's probably eight, and she looks forty - seen too much too early.
"Yes, I did," I tell her, standing at the door.
"Good," she says. "I won't tell on you."
I don't even know what to think. "Thank you," I say, because what else am I supposed to say?
"Mama won't say anything either, I promise."
"Okay. You take care of your mama, all right? Keep her safe. Make sure she doesn't date any more assholes, yeah?"
She nods, solemn and sincere, and then she waves to me as I duck out the door, hood pulled up over my face. I never really felt like a criminal before, not even selling people as things, but now, in this neighbourhood, I know that I've gone past the point of no return. I can't go back from this.
I watch the police cars from my seat on the bus, sirens blaring as they whip around the corners.
There's a million things I could do - most of them would point fingers directly at me, some involving the police; the rest, Vincent and Ike and the rest of a gang of fucking psychopaths.
Or.
I get off the bus, and walk until I'm within view of the warehouse. I shake myself out, breathe deeply, and then I pull out the cell phone Vincent gave me.
"Carlo's fucking dead," I hiss into the phone when he calls me back, pitching my voice so it sounds like it's a shock to me. "I got to his place, fucking - fucking police everywhere, and his girlfriend was saying something about some guy came in and fucking shot him! In the head!"
I hear Vincent slam his hands down on the table and swear. "Son of a bitch. Stupid cock-sucker can't fucking keep his affairs in order. I'm not fucking surprised - that asshole had a lot of enemies. Fuck."
There's some shuffling on the other end of the phone, and I blink in confusion when he says "Blake, you'll have to go in his place. You know Sullivan best after Carlo - take care of it. Mickey, give him the details." I've never heard the name before, don't know who it is, but I realise I'm on speaker phone, and that would be him, that man, because I can hear the accent in his voice.
"Of course, Vincent," he says.
Vincent tells me to get the fuck back, and hangs up. I wait for a while, squatting in the alley way with my back pressed against the roughness of the brick. Out of sight, I just breathe for a bit, before enough time passes.
Inside, I greet Vincent with a nod, and then I go up to him, to Blake, and watch as he tenses when he feels my presence behind him.
"How're you feeling, Arthur?" he asks.
"Better," I say, and sit on the table next to his hands, my legs brushing his elbow. "I never thanked you, for yesterday I mean." I don't even know if I should be doing this - I still don't know anything about him. Now that I know his name - that's not a fucking excuse for wanting to get closer to him.
He looks up at me, and his eyes are inquisitive, a frown marring the smooth skin of his forehead. He's shaved since the day before.
"I needed that," I clarify. "And you didn't have to, so -"
He interrupts me, looking back at his work with a gruff cough. "Of course I didn't have to."
It takes me a moment, I'll admit. Then I smile, ducking my head to hide it, and I'm twisting my fingers all around each other like I'm a twelve year old girl with a school crush. "Well, thanks anyway."
Blake's quiet for a moment, writes something down as I sit there, staring at my hands, and then he says, lowly enough that I have to lean in, "You've really changed - just a few days ago I wouldn't have given you a second glance, you know. But there's definitely something different about you that I simply can't -" He huffs a laugh under his breath, and shifts his elbow so it presses warm against my knee.
And then we sit in silence together. He's reading his drug-dealer reports or whatever it is that drug dealers have to read about other drug dealers, and I'm wondering at myself.
I killed a man today.
And I don't feel any remorse.
Carlo talked to me a few times. Joked around - I'd seen him, he was friends with a few of the other guys. But he was an asshole - no, there are plenty of assholes in this world, they don't all deserve to die - that's no justification. The look on that kid's face though, the way that woman was just resigned to being raped by her boyfriend, used to it even as she tries to fight back - Carlo deserved that.
Sydney Lerner deserved that.
And I'm fucking fine.
-
The day passes in a sort of haze, most of us a little nonplussed as to what to do without Carlo.
Vincent gives the lowdown on our next deal, another bout of trafficking - someone wants a mutant good for killing. We've apparently got quite the reputation as a niche market within the underworld, and those in the know are lining up, just waiting for their turn to buy a new-world slave.
"What kind of killing?" is my first question.
"Sullivan's got his own assassins, he's good for your average hit - now he wants something fucking flash, something that'll make a statement, leave a signature for whatever fucks he wants to teach a lesson. Arthur, you'll be testing them. I want to know exactly what the fuck each of their powers are, because we've got three more clients lined up and they all want different fucking things. Blake, you watch, make sure he doesn't get fucking killed."
He gives instructions to the others, but I tune it out. There's a weird moment of hesitation in which Blake and I stand and then wait, watching each other before we move to go down into the basement.
Spencer locks the door behind us, so the can't get out, and Blake has a really big gun in case of an emergency, but then he just stands there as I do my thing. Which is this, apparently.
I wake the mutants up, one at a time, so as to not overwhelm them. We already know two of them - the two men from the other day, but I might need to know more, what they do specifically, and I'm not really looking forward to it. My ribs still ache from the beating I got.
I start with a young woman in the corner, curly black hair limp and her dark skin thin and stretched over her bones. Her eyelids flutter when I clean the injection site, and she blinks awake with a hazy whisper. I can't help a gasp when I see her eyes - they're a chillingly icy blue, her pupils so deeply black they look like the bottom of a freezing lake.
She's still really out of it, but I can see some sort of recognition in her gaze, so I smile, and say steadily, "Hi, my name's - Arthur." It's weird to say that. Everyone else has just assumed that's who I am, but here I am introducing myself as my brother. Most important, I want them all to know my face - incase I need to come back. "Can you speak? Or is it too hard still?"
She blinks at me, slowly, and her face grows scared, anxious.
"What's your name, then?"
"Abi," she says, in a hoarse mutter, watching me warily.
"Come on, sit up a bit." I help her up, opening her eyes to check her pupils. "Okay, Abi. We need to do some tests - I'm gonna make this as easy for you as I can. You're special, you know that?" Vincent would probably fucking kill me if he heard me talking, so I can only hope that Blake is more neutral in terms of the junkies - our conversation last night wasn't really all that enlightening. "I want you to show me how."
She takes me hand in hers, folding her fingers over mine, tracing the veins under the skin, and then I can feel it. It's slow to start, but a chill starts creeping up through my fingertips, up my palm, speeding up until it's racing up to my elbow, freezing my arm.
It feels like freezer burn, so cold it's hot, painful and I flinch back, unable to help myself, but I keep my hand in hers, trying to show her I'm not afraid.
She lets up immediately, much to my surprise. In the corner of my eye I see that Blake has stepped forward, hand on his gun, but I wave him off as the cold slides back down my hand until it's just the barest tingle in my fingertips.
"Can you do that on anything?"
"Yeah. It works best on water, and things like it," she says, so I look around for something suitable. There're bottles of water in the corner, stored down here or something, and I rush to grab one.
She takes it from me, pale eyes watching my face with unwavering intent, and uncaps it. Slowly, she tips it out onto the floor, and the trickling stream of water freezes solid as it falls, until it's one enormous arc of an icicle. It's beautiful - sparkles in the dim light like it's crystal, or even diamonds. All of the water left in the bottle is frozen too, the outer plastic coated with flakes of ice. I reach out, and touch the cylinder of ice with one finger, and it shatters into tiny flecks that scatter over the cement floor and melt instantly.
I put her back to sleep, make a note, and move on to the next one, a young man with floppy brown hair. He looks smaller when lying down, but towers over me when I get him vertical. I give him the same speech that I gave to Abi, learning that his name is Jeremy, and he's younger than he looks.
There's a little flash of light all around him when I ask him to show me his talent, and I'm thrown back several paces, unhurt but pretty fucking surprised. Slightly dazed, I shake my head to clear it a bit, and try to step closer.
It's a fucking forcefield, straight up. I laugh out loud at it, running my hands over nothing, that feels solid and smooth like glass under my fingers, but is, essentially, not there. There's no shadow, no glimmer, nothing to indicate it's presence save that little blink in the beginning, but once it's up, it doesn't dent from anything I give it.
Jeremy starts to laugh too, just barely cracks a smile, but it's enough, when I give up banging my fists on it, and throw myself full body at it only to go bouncing off again.
There's a woman named Marisol, tall and thin - they all seem thin, many of them unnaturally so, from the drug - with long black waving hair and beautiful olive skin, though as soon as she's fully awake she won't let me touch her, but scrambles back on her cot and covers every inch of her that she can with the sheet. She trembles when I reach out to touch, and swears at me in Spanish.
Well, at least, I think she swears.
"She says don't touch her, or she'll hurt you," Blake speaks up abruptly, making me jump.
"What? Shit," I scramble back away from the cot, and try to make myself look as non-threatening as possible.
"No, dumbass -" he sounds fond, "It's her thing. She'll hurt you if you make skin contact - she's saying she'll turn you into stone."
"Well, fuck." That's a new one. "How does that work, then? Is it like that guy? In the story?"
Blake laughs, and I turn my head to see him, head thrown back, long neck exposed. There's a bruise, right under his collar - I can see it even in this light. It makes me flush a bit to see it and remember the heat of him over me, but I'm at least vaguely professional, even if I'm a professional asshole, so I reign it in.
"That's clear, well done."
"Oh, shut up - that guy, with the thing, turns stuff to gold."
"You mean Midas? I mean, I guess that's as close as it can get." He says something in Spanish, and Marisol responds hesitantly with what sounds like a confirmation. Then she stretches her arm out to lay her fingers lightly on the edge of her cot.
There's a loud rumbling noise, and the metal frame crackles and crumbles and turns to stone, inch by inch, grey and streaked with veins like marble, but it's rough and not carved and cold as ice.
Blake translates in a low tone, hesitancy in his voice over Marisol's, as she tells us about getting hooked on po, how amazing it was, like she could own the world, until she changed. And then she touched her girlfriend - she didn't mean to, she really didn't mean to, she didn't know that would happen, she says - and then she lost herself to the drug.
I put her back to sleep with a stone in my heart, and she goes gratefully. It doesn't always work - now that she's got some measure of control over it, she can pick and choose what she turns, but it terrifies her all the same.
Next is a blonde girl with sad features - Parker, is the only name she'll give. She picks up the entire room without twitching a muscle. It's the same as Arthur's - or near enough, and I really fucking wish Jeremy was still awake, but she's got far more control than Arthur, and the dead look on her face, slack and uninterested gives me shivers. She could throw us all about, rip the door off its hinges, and run away if she wanted to.
But it doesn't look like she wants to.
Her eyes are sunken in, deep circles under them, and her cheekbones are gaunt with hunger. She doesn't talk much, just barely responds to the questions I ask her, and she tears my heart out even more than Marisol.
If I ever come back - if I ever get the chance to break them all free, it'd almost be better to offer them mercy killings. Some of these people just don't have the will to live any more, and it makes me sick.
The very first girl I saw - the Asian one, with the bleeding gums and the bruised face - her name is Kathy, and when she concentrates I can never really look at her. It's like I know she's there, but my focus just - slips off. Like I don't care that she's there, because she's not important.
Ethan is a man who won't talk. He's got dirty blond hair and atrophied legs, and he can speak to me in my mind.
Telepathic.
You're name is a lie, he says, and I cast a sharp look at Blake to see if he heard that too, but he's picking lint off his shirt, and not suddenly pointing his gun at me.
No, it's not. But I'd prefer no one else know it, I think back at Ethan, hoping it'll work. It makes him crack a smile at least. I continue with, They think I'm like them, but -
But you're like me, Ethan finishes for me, and I stop dead.
Like you, like how?
He smiles, and keeps reading my thoughts, but he won't tell me any more about it.
Clare can make things look like other things. It works for anything, only for a short while, but it's a solid illusion - three dimensional, even to touch, and the water I drink tastes like the most expensive wine I'd ever drunk. It doesn't go farther than that though, the wine doesn't get you drunk, not even buzzed, and it's no better for your heart that ordinary water.
Then she changes the whole world with a delighted smile.
The basement is gone, dim lights and depressing setting replaced with a veranda in Italy - straight out of a travel advertisement. I can see the Mediterranean, bright blue waves lapping at white sand beaches, stucco houses shining in the sunlight. I can hear the sound of gulls cawing over the noise of crowds - Clare doesn't speak Italian, but she can make you think you might be listening to it.
I don't know how well it works, until Blake walks up beside me, wearing a big straw hat and linen pants.
"Well, fuck me," he says, and I laugh.
"That good, huh?"
He glances at me out the corner of his eye, and his lips quirk in a half-smile. "Well, I'll admit that I've had more fun. This is fascinating though, the language - it's nothing. They're all speaking gibberish."
As soon as he says that, the veranda is silent, the noise and crowds gone, and it's just the two of us, leaning against a stone railing and feeling the sun on our necks, looking out over the sea. Clare is crouched to our left by a stray cat, stroking its head and petting its fur, and smiling like she'd never seen the inside of that basement.
It dissolves, and I feel hollow.
A young Korean boy named Hee Soo can harden his skin like steel. His muscles shift slightly, becoming more angular and darker, like he's been coloured all over with charcoal, and when he makes a fist he can dent the solid concrete of the walls with one hit, but he can't hold it long. He tells me it makes him nauseous when he holds it too long, like something's out of place. He looks pale and slightly sick when I put him back under.
When I move on to the next man, I regret it.
I honest to fucking God, wish I'd never woken him up.
As soon as his eyes open, normal blue irises, and tired looking, I feel this rush that's exactly like the high of po, soaring through my blood and awakening all the nerve endings under my skin. My skin tingles, and my mind expands, until it's too big for my skull and I crumple to a ball on the ground with my head in my hands, trying to scratch it out.
There's a roaring in my ears, and all of a sudden I know that this man's name is Will, and he's not really that interested in drugs, but his friend recommended it, so he might as well try it, because he had a fucking awesome trip that one time he did ecstasy with Cameron, so this can't be that bad? I watch as he rubs it over his gums, and then the whole world burns, and then I see as his friend's drug dealer smashes him over the head with a gun and shoves him into the back of a car, and then he's in the dark, always dark, and he doesn't know why, but people always freak out around him now, that girl, the blonde, she screamed so loud, and he didn't mean to do anything, he didn't know what he did, just walked in, but the whole room exploded, and she just kept screaming until she was put to sleep, and he still doesn't understand.
There are hands on my shoulders, and I fall back into someone's arms, but my head just pounds and squeezes, and there's not enough room for all the images in it, and then it all stops.
And I can breathe, and I can open my eyes and see.
Will is unconscious again, limp and slack with drugs rushing through his veins like life blood, and Blake's got his hands on my face, tipping it up so he can see into my eyes, check my pupils.
"What - what the hell was that?" I ask, and Blake's face goes incredulous.
"What the hell was that?" he turns on me, "You just fucking fell down screaming, man. What did he do to you?"
"I - nothing, I don't think - I saw something. But I couldn't understand it -" I shake my head, and Blake pushes his hand against my forehead, feeling my skin, which is probably cold and clammy, and I'm struck with the image of a little boy, lying in bed, and his mother, leaning over to feel his temperature. The boy's not me, the room's not mine, and I don't know how I know that woman is his mother, because her skin is like dark toffee, and his is merely tanned - but I know all of this information, and then I know that that little boy is Blake, when he was eight and caught the flu. His mother was worried he wasn't going to survive, because they couldn't take him to the hospital, but somehow he pulled through, much to the whole family's surprise and delight.
Blake's talking to me, but all I can do is stare at him, looking into his face in wonder.
"Arthur? Arthur, are you listening to me? You need to tell me what he did."
"Nothing. He didn't do anything to me. I'm just a bit - headache, it's nothing. I think he's got some kind of telepathy too, but it's not as focused - keep him asleep for a while longer, I think he's too out of it to wake up properly. That's probably what happened. Come on, then. Next one."
Blake still looks concerned, but he steps with me when I push him back so I can move around him, making a point of ignoring everything I just learned. The only people left are the two men we'd woken earlier, and one last stranger.
The younger man, Tim, just has unnatural strength, extreme muscle mass, but not much control over them - he'd be better at heavy lifting than fighting, it's not a refined talent. The older one, the one who fought like an animal, is named Greg, and he's much more of a berserker - he practically hulks out, when riled up he'll tear your arms off if given a chance, but otherwise he's more subdued than Tim, speaking with a calm, quiet dignity that I am definitely not expecting.
The last person we wake is a man in his thirties, pale and muscled, with dreadlocks and laugh lines etched into the corners of his eyes. He wakes up with a jolt, and a flail, and Blake forces me back to put himself between us, gun raised.
"What the fuck is this?" the man asks, rolling over onto the other side of the cot, standing on unsteady feet, and we find out what his talent is immediately, when great bursts of fire swell up and around his hands, flickering silently. He's in a fighting pose - legs bent and hands raised, not boxing, a martial art - and he's perfectly aware of his surroundings.
I'm too fucking surprised to respond for a long moment, but when he starts to edge away, dark eyes latched on the staircase and the door at the top of them, I step around Blake.
"Hey, hey, it's all right. I'm Arthur, this is Blake -" he steps really fucking hard on my foot for that, and I try to kick him in the ankle as sneakily as possible. "What's your name, do you know how you got here?"
"Where is here? Where am I?" he asks, not remotely calmed by my extremely calming attempts. I can't get too close, I can already feel the heat of the flames on my skin, though it doesn't seem to be doing him any harm.
"You're in the basement of a warehouse - Vincent's keeping you down here."
"Vincent? fucking Vincent? fuck him, let me the hell go, get me out of here!" He's less panicked and more furious, his eyes flashing with an internal fire that makes me stop in place.
"We can't do that, I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry, but you can't leave. Come on, just calm down, and we'll talk about this, okay?"
"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down! This is like a fucking opium den, what the fuck are all these people doing down here - how did I even get here in the first place? fuck you! fuck you both!"
Blake's watching his hands with a kind of fascination that unnerves me, but I ignore it for the moment. I'm getting alarmingly good at that.
"Please, just turn off the flames, and let me talk to you. I'm -" I look over my shoulder at Blake, and then I just fucking take the risk, hoping he's not paying enough attention to me to notice when I stage whisper across the cot, "I'm like you - I know what this is, I know what's happening, but I can't try to get you out if you don't fucking let me."
His dreadlocks whip against his face when he turns his head to me abruptly, and the fire shuts off with an abrupt whiff. The basement is unsettlingly quiet as we all stand, silent and staring at each other.
"I'm - Dan. Your name's Arthur?"
I nod. "Yeah, that's what I said."
"How'd I get here?"
"Have you ever taken a drug called po? Or Potaxus?"
Dan freezes, and his face goes white. "I've been clean for six years - haven't done anything like that since -"
"But you did once?"
He drops his head, sheilding his eyes, and then he nods, regretfully. "I quit everything after that. Don't even drink any more?"
"Did the fire start back then? When you first started using it?"
"Yeah." He sits heavily down on the cot, his shoulders slumping with the weight of his past, I want to know all of it, all about what happened to make him stop, and I can feel the urge curling around in my guts, but I don't let myself reach out and touch him.
"Well someone found out - only recently, I think, just a few weeks ago probably. You haven't been here long -" I look to Blake, who gives a jerky confirmation. "So it's not that surprising that you don't remember - the po can mess with your mind, I'm sure you know, you'll probably figure more out the longer you stay awake."
Dan's whole body shakes. "What about my sister? Is she here?"
"Does she do po?"
He shakes his head with vehemence, eyes flashing in anger, and I put my hands up to show I'm unarmed, and not looking to offend.
"Then no, she doesn't have what Vincent wants. He's looking for people like you - everyone here is like you, but most of them are unstable, so we have to keep them asleep." I sound like I'm fucking pitching it to him, and he's definitely not impressed, but he looks around at the beds with a little more understanding when I explain it to him.
Then he turns his burning eyes to me, and asks, "So what about you?"
I freeze, and something flashes in his eyes that means he knows he asked the wrong question.
Blake immediately steps in to confirm that for him by asking, "What does he mean by that, Arthur?"
"We're just the workers," I say loudly, to both of them. "It's just money."
-
previous / next
Word Count: 5967
in which there is DRAMA. and VIOLENCE. and some mutants. and some death. mentions of rape involving secondary characters. and MUTANTS. :D
-
Carlo is supposed to run the point on a big job for Vincent on Thursday, handle a deal with some other big drug lord who's interested in getting involved with po, but he's not there, and Vincent's not happy.
"Ike!" he snarls. "Get out there, and find him."
Ike looks up, face blank and eyes dull, and walks over to Vincent slowly, purposefully. He leans in, and speaks in a low tone so that no one else can hear him, but I can see the way Vincent's face goes white, and then purple with rage.
"All right, fine. fucking fine, Arthur, you go."
I look up from where I'm sitting with Jameson, and blink. I don't question him, because that would be retarded, but I need a little more information than that. "I don't know where the fuck he is."
"Go to his fucking house, then, ask his fucking girlfriend. You've got his fucking address, get the fuck out there."
I don't have his fucking address, but apparently I'm supposed to. I reach into my back pocket, where I keep Arthur's little red notebook. I look through it as I leave, flipping page after page, until I find an address on the edge of East Quarter, not quite in the slum, but just before the suburbs start. The busses will get me most of the way there, but I'll have to walk maybe half-a-mile from the last stop, so I'm glad I'm finally wearing the proper clothes for the weather, wearing a hoodie under my jacket and an old pair of combat boots that are suitably Arthur rather than his tattered sneakers.
There's no answer when I get there, not to my knock on the door, and not when I call, cell phone pressed against my ear, standing outside Carlo's house. It's a miniature one-story house, two bedrooms maximum, with a small, poorly cared for lawn out front, grass patchy and dead. It looks like he's got a kid, maybe two, by the toys I can see over the fence in the back yard.
The shutters are closed, and the curtains are drawn, so I can't peer in through the windows.
I call again, and this time, under the low trill of the phone ringing inside, I can hear people's voices.
They're indistinct, though I can tell that one of them is Carlo, speaking rapidly. The other one becomes more apparent when they get louder abruptly, almost shouting, a woman's voice.
I frown, and as I lean forward to knock on the door, there's a loud crash of breaking glass, and the sound of a child's scream.
I'm slamming my shoulder into the door, trying to break it open, before I can think that it might be a bad idea, maybe. I have a gun in the back of my jeans, and I take it out as I ram into the door again, holding it like I'd seen in movies. It takes too long, there's more shouting, and a woman yelling, her voice high-pitched and angry, screaming, and I don't have time, so I stand and stumble back a few steps, and try to kick the door in.
There's a glass panel in the top, decorative stained-glass, with the house number inlaid in lead. It cracks when the door slams open and back into the wall on the third kick, rebounding back on me as I throw myself inside. There's a narrow entrance way, and to the right I can see glimpses of a couch and television, a lamp turned over on its side, and a small child, huddled silent and scared with tears beading in her large eyes.
She looks at me, terrified at a stranger in her house, and I'm afraid she'll scream again - the sounds of shouting are so much louder inside, I don't even think they noticed the door crashing open - but instead she raises one trembling finger and points behind me, to the back room.
I nod at her, and give her the most reassuring smile I can manage, and then I'm tearing through the house until I reach what looks like Carlo's bedroom door. It's only half-closed, like someone slammed it too hard and made it bounce back, so I shove it open and aim my gun at Carlo's back.
I shoot.
I've never fired a gun before.
The bang of the gun sends rattles down my chest, squeezing my ribs too tight, and I can't breathe for a second, so surprised by the noise even as I pull the trigger again. The gun jumps in my hands, jolting my shoulders and my arms tense up to compensate, painful in the seize of terrified muscle.
He's still alive. He's still fucking alive, it's never like that in the movies, gasping and choking on blood, twitching, trying to turn around and see my face, so I shoot him again.
It's easier the second time.
The girl - the one who's screaming, she's not even a girl really, fully grown woman, but terrified all the same - screams again, trapped underneath Carlo's bloody body. Her face is white, light brown eyes wide and startled, long brown hair tangled and mussed about her face, and she's all splattered with blood. There aren't any tears on her face, just a sort of resigned terror that matches the hang of her shirt, ripped off her shoulders, and the way her jeans are rucked down around her hips, Carlo's unmoving hand still shoved down the front.
"Oh my God, get the fuck away from me!" she screams, scrambling back, heaving against Carlo's limp and unhelpful body, throwing him away from her. When she can't get very far, and I'm still standing over her with a gun, she gets hysterical, hands slipping in the blood slowly seeping into the bed sheets. "Whatever you want, just take it, just take it! I don't know what - what do you want?"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm putting the gun away - I - oh fuck, are you okay? I didn't shoot you, did I?" I ask, thumbing the safety back on the gun and shoving it back into the waistband of my jeans. "Did I hurt you?"
She stares at me like I'm a crazy man. It's starting to seem more and more likely as I watch her, so I turn my eyes up, looking over the wall and - there two holes, one in the nightstand and the other in the baseboard, neither of them anywhere near the girl.
"Why are you here? Who the fuck are you?"
"I'm not here to hurt you," I say, and it sounds weak and futile even to my ears. "What's your name?"
"I - Sydney. Sydney Lerner. Oh God please don't hurt me, don't hurt my kids, just take what you want and go, please."
Her hands are covered in blood, and I can see the lace of her underwear over sharp, narrow hip bones. There are bruises on her sides in the shapes of fingerprints, hand prints, teeth, fists.
I want to shoot Carlo all over again, but instead I leave her, confused and frightened and in shock, and flee back to the front entrance. The girl has moved, hiding behind the couch, and in her arms I see the shaking form of a little boy, not understanding enough to cry, but watching me with enormous black eyes.
I'm about to leave, just run out the front door - the neighbours must have called the police by now and I just fucking killed a man, but I stop when I hear a voice, high and curious.
"Did you kill my daddy?"
I turn. It's the girl, she's standing, having positioned the boy behind her small body, and she's looking at me with a face, an expression that's way beyond her years. She's probably eight, and she looks forty - seen too much too early.
"Yes, I did," I tell her, standing at the door.
"Good," she says. "I won't tell on you."
I don't even know what to think. "Thank you," I say, because what else am I supposed to say?
"Mama won't say anything either, I promise."
"Okay. You take care of your mama, all right? Keep her safe. Make sure she doesn't date any more assholes, yeah?"
She nods, solemn and sincere, and then she waves to me as I duck out the door, hood pulled up over my face. I never really felt like a criminal before, not even selling people as things, but now, in this neighbourhood, I know that I've gone past the point of no return. I can't go back from this.
I watch the police cars from my seat on the bus, sirens blaring as they whip around the corners.
There's a million things I could do - most of them would point fingers directly at me, some involving the police; the rest, Vincent and Ike and the rest of a gang of fucking psychopaths.
Or.
I get off the bus, and walk until I'm within view of the warehouse. I shake myself out, breathe deeply, and then I pull out the cell phone Vincent gave me.
"Carlo's fucking dead," I hiss into the phone when he calls me back, pitching my voice so it sounds like it's a shock to me. "I got to his place, fucking - fucking police everywhere, and his girlfriend was saying something about some guy came in and fucking shot him! In the head!"
I hear Vincent slam his hands down on the table and swear. "Son of a bitch. Stupid cock-sucker can't fucking keep his affairs in order. I'm not fucking surprised - that asshole had a lot of enemies. Fuck."
There's some shuffling on the other end of the phone, and I blink in confusion when he says "Blake, you'll have to go in his place. You know Sullivan best after Carlo - take care of it. Mickey, give him the details." I've never heard the name before, don't know who it is, but I realise I'm on speaker phone, and that would be him, that man, because I can hear the accent in his voice.
"Of course, Vincent," he says.
Vincent tells me to get the fuck back, and hangs up. I wait for a while, squatting in the alley way with my back pressed against the roughness of the brick. Out of sight, I just breathe for a bit, before enough time passes.
Inside, I greet Vincent with a nod, and then I go up to him, to Blake, and watch as he tenses when he feels my presence behind him.
"How're you feeling, Arthur?" he asks.
"Better," I say, and sit on the table next to his hands, my legs brushing his elbow. "I never thanked you, for yesterday I mean." I don't even know if I should be doing this - I still don't know anything about him. Now that I know his name - that's not a fucking excuse for wanting to get closer to him.
He looks up at me, and his eyes are inquisitive, a frown marring the smooth skin of his forehead. He's shaved since the day before.
"I needed that," I clarify. "And you didn't have to, so -"
He interrupts me, looking back at his work with a gruff cough. "Of course I didn't have to."
It takes me a moment, I'll admit. Then I smile, ducking my head to hide it, and I'm twisting my fingers all around each other like I'm a twelve year old girl with a school crush. "Well, thanks anyway."
Blake's quiet for a moment, writes something down as I sit there, staring at my hands, and then he says, lowly enough that I have to lean in, "You've really changed - just a few days ago I wouldn't have given you a second glance, you know. But there's definitely something different about you that I simply can't -" He huffs a laugh under his breath, and shifts his elbow so it presses warm against my knee.
And then we sit in silence together. He's reading his drug-dealer reports or whatever it is that drug dealers have to read about other drug dealers, and I'm wondering at myself.
I killed a man today.
And I don't feel any remorse.
Carlo talked to me a few times. Joked around - I'd seen him, he was friends with a few of the other guys. But he was an asshole - no, there are plenty of assholes in this world, they don't all deserve to die - that's no justification. The look on that kid's face though, the way that woman was just resigned to being raped by her boyfriend, used to it even as she tries to fight back - Carlo deserved that.
Sydney Lerner deserved that.
And I'm fucking fine.
-
The day passes in a sort of haze, most of us a little nonplussed as to what to do without Carlo.
Vincent gives the lowdown on our next deal, another bout of trafficking - someone wants a mutant good for killing. We've apparently got quite the reputation as a niche market within the underworld, and those in the know are lining up, just waiting for their turn to buy a new-world slave.
"What kind of killing?" is my first question.
"Sullivan's got his own assassins, he's good for your average hit - now he wants something fucking flash, something that'll make a statement, leave a signature for whatever fucks he wants to teach a lesson. Arthur, you'll be testing them. I want to know exactly what the fuck each of their powers are, because we've got three more clients lined up and they all want different fucking things. Blake, you watch, make sure he doesn't get fucking killed."
He gives instructions to the others, but I tune it out. There's a weird moment of hesitation in which Blake and I stand and then wait, watching each other before we move to go down into the basement.
Spencer locks the door behind us, so the can't get out, and Blake has a really big gun in case of an emergency, but then he just stands there as I do my thing. Which is this, apparently.
I wake the mutants up, one at a time, so as to not overwhelm them. We already know two of them - the two men from the other day, but I might need to know more, what they do specifically, and I'm not really looking forward to it. My ribs still ache from the beating I got.
I start with a young woman in the corner, curly black hair limp and her dark skin thin and stretched over her bones. Her eyelids flutter when I clean the injection site, and she blinks awake with a hazy whisper. I can't help a gasp when I see her eyes - they're a chillingly icy blue, her pupils so deeply black they look like the bottom of a freezing lake.
She's still really out of it, but I can see some sort of recognition in her gaze, so I smile, and say steadily, "Hi, my name's - Arthur." It's weird to say that. Everyone else has just assumed that's who I am, but here I am introducing myself as my brother. Most important, I want them all to know my face - incase I need to come back. "Can you speak? Or is it too hard still?"
She blinks at me, slowly, and her face grows scared, anxious.
"What's your name, then?"
"Abi," she says, in a hoarse mutter, watching me warily.
"Come on, sit up a bit." I help her up, opening her eyes to check her pupils. "Okay, Abi. We need to do some tests - I'm gonna make this as easy for you as I can. You're special, you know that?" Vincent would probably fucking kill me if he heard me talking, so I can only hope that Blake is more neutral in terms of the junkies - our conversation last night wasn't really all that enlightening. "I want you to show me how."
She takes me hand in hers, folding her fingers over mine, tracing the veins under the skin, and then I can feel it. It's slow to start, but a chill starts creeping up through my fingertips, up my palm, speeding up until it's racing up to my elbow, freezing my arm.
It feels like freezer burn, so cold it's hot, painful and I flinch back, unable to help myself, but I keep my hand in hers, trying to show her I'm not afraid.
She lets up immediately, much to my surprise. In the corner of my eye I see that Blake has stepped forward, hand on his gun, but I wave him off as the cold slides back down my hand until it's just the barest tingle in my fingertips.
"Can you do that on anything?"
"Yeah. It works best on water, and things like it," she says, so I look around for something suitable. There're bottles of water in the corner, stored down here or something, and I rush to grab one.
She takes it from me, pale eyes watching my face with unwavering intent, and uncaps it. Slowly, she tips it out onto the floor, and the trickling stream of water freezes solid as it falls, until it's one enormous arc of an icicle. It's beautiful - sparkles in the dim light like it's crystal, or even diamonds. All of the water left in the bottle is frozen too, the outer plastic coated with flakes of ice. I reach out, and touch the cylinder of ice with one finger, and it shatters into tiny flecks that scatter over the cement floor and melt instantly.
I put her back to sleep, make a note, and move on to the next one, a young man with floppy brown hair. He looks smaller when lying down, but towers over me when I get him vertical. I give him the same speech that I gave to Abi, learning that his name is Jeremy, and he's younger than he looks.
There's a little flash of light all around him when I ask him to show me his talent, and I'm thrown back several paces, unhurt but pretty fucking surprised. Slightly dazed, I shake my head to clear it a bit, and try to step closer.
It's a fucking forcefield, straight up. I laugh out loud at it, running my hands over nothing, that feels solid and smooth like glass under my fingers, but is, essentially, not there. There's no shadow, no glimmer, nothing to indicate it's presence save that little blink in the beginning, but once it's up, it doesn't dent from anything I give it.
Jeremy starts to laugh too, just barely cracks a smile, but it's enough, when I give up banging my fists on it, and throw myself full body at it only to go bouncing off again.
There's a woman named Marisol, tall and thin - they all seem thin, many of them unnaturally so, from the drug - with long black waving hair and beautiful olive skin, though as soon as she's fully awake she won't let me touch her, but scrambles back on her cot and covers every inch of her that she can with the sheet. She trembles when I reach out to touch, and swears at me in Spanish.
Well, at least, I think she swears.
"She says don't touch her, or she'll hurt you," Blake speaks up abruptly, making me jump.
"What? Shit," I scramble back away from the cot, and try to make myself look as non-threatening as possible.
"No, dumbass -" he sounds fond, "It's her thing. She'll hurt you if you make skin contact - she's saying she'll turn you into stone."
"Well, fuck." That's a new one. "How does that work, then? Is it like that guy? In the story?"
Blake laughs, and I turn my head to see him, head thrown back, long neck exposed. There's a bruise, right under his collar - I can see it even in this light. It makes me flush a bit to see it and remember the heat of him over me, but I'm at least vaguely professional, even if I'm a professional asshole, so I reign it in.
"That's clear, well done."
"Oh, shut up - that guy, with the thing, turns stuff to gold."
"You mean Midas? I mean, I guess that's as close as it can get." He says something in Spanish, and Marisol responds hesitantly with what sounds like a confirmation. Then she stretches her arm out to lay her fingers lightly on the edge of her cot.
There's a loud rumbling noise, and the metal frame crackles and crumbles and turns to stone, inch by inch, grey and streaked with veins like marble, but it's rough and not carved and cold as ice.
Blake translates in a low tone, hesitancy in his voice over Marisol's, as she tells us about getting hooked on po, how amazing it was, like she could own the world, until she changed. And then she touched her girlfriend - she didn't mean to, she really didn't mean to, she didn't know that would happen, she says - and then she lost herself to the drug.
I put her back to sleep with a stone in my heart, and she goes gratefully. It doesn't always work - now that she's got some measure of control over it, she can pick and choose what she turns, but it terrifies her all the same.
Next is a blonde girl with sad features - Parker, is the only name she'll give. She picks up the entire room without twitching a muscle. It's the same as Arthur's - or near enough, and I really fucking wish Jeremy was still awake, but she's got far more control than Arthur, and the dead look on her face, slack and uninterested gives me shivers. She could throw us all about, rip the door off its hinges, and run away if she wanted to.
But it doesn't look like she wants to.
Her eyes are sunken in, deep circles under them, and her cheekbones are gaunt with hunger. She doesn't talk much, just barely responds to the questions I ask her, and she tears my heart out even more than Marisol.
If I ever come back - if I ever get the chance to break them all free, it'd almost be better to offer them mercy killings. Some of these people just don't have the will to live any more, and it makes me sick.
The very first girl I saw - the Asian one, with the bleeding gums and the bruised face - her name is Kathy, and when she concentrates I can never really look at her. It's like I know she's there, but my focus just - slips off. Like I don't care that she's there, because she's not important.
Ethan is a man who won't talk. He's got dirty blond hair and atrophied legs, and he can speak to me in my mind.
Telepathic.
You're name is a lie, he says, and I cast a sharp look at Blake to see if he heard that too, but he's picking lint off his shirt, and not suddenly pointing his gun at me.
No, it's not. But I'd prefer no one else know it, I think back at Ethan, hoping it'll work. It makes him crack a smile at least. I continue with, They think I'm like them, but -
But you're like me, Ethan finishes for me, and I stop dead.
Like you, like how?
He smiles, and keeps reading my thoughts, but he won't tell me any more about it.
Clare can make things look like other things. It works for anything, only for a short while, but it's a solid illusion - three dimensional, even to touch, and the water I drink tastes like the most expensive wine I'd ever drunk. It doesn't go farther than that though, the wine doesn't get you drunk, not even buzzed, and it's no better for your heart that ordinary water.
Then she changes the whole world with a delighted smile.
The basement is gone, dim lights and depressing setting replaced with a veranda in Italy - straight out of a travel advertisement. I can see the Mediterranean, bright blue waves lapping at white sand beaches, stucco houses shining in the sunlight. I can hear the sound of gulls cawing over the noise of crowds - Clare doesn't speak Italian, but she can make you think you might be listening to it.
I don't know how well it works, until Blake walks up beside me, wearing a big straw hat and linen pants.
"Well, fuck me," he says, and I laugh.
"That good, huh?"
He glances at me out the corner of his eye, and his lips quirk in a half-smile. "Well, I'll admit that I've had more fun. This is fascinating though, the language - it's nothing. They're all speaking gibberish."
As soon as he says that, the veranda is silent, the noise and crowds gone, and it's just the two of us, leaning against a stone railing and feeling the sun on our necks, looking out over the sea. Clare is crouched to our left by a stray cat, stroking its head and petting its fur, and smiling like she'd never seen the inside of that basement.
It dissolves, and I feel hollow.
A young Korean boy named Hee Soo can harden his skin like steel. His muscles shift slightly, becoming more angular and darker, like he's been coloured all over with charcoal, and when he makes a fist he can dent the solid concrete of the walls with one hit, but he can't hold it long. He tells me it makes him nauseous when he holds it too long, like something's out of place. He looks pale and slightly sick when I put him back under.
When I move on to the next man, I regret it.
I honest to fucking God, wish I'd never woken him up.
As soon as his eyes open, normal blue irises, and tired looking, I feel this rush that's exactly like the high of po, soaring through my blood and awakening all the nerve endings under my skin. My skin tingles, and my mind expands, until it's too big for my skull and I crumple to a ball on the ground with my head in my hands, trying to scratch it out.
There's a roaring in my ears, and all of a sudden I know that this man's name is Will, and he's not really that interested in drugs, but his friend recommended it, so he might as well try it, because he had a fucking awesome trip that one time he did ecstasy with Cameron, so this can't be that bad? I watch as he rubs it over his gums, and then the whole world burns, and then I see as his friend's drug dealer smashes him over the head with a gun and shoves him into the back of a car, and then he's in the dark, always dark, and he doesn't know why, but people always freak out around him now, that girl, the blonde, she screamed so loud, and he didn't mean to do anything, he didn't know what he did, just walked in, but the whole room exploded, and she just kept screaming until she was put to sleep, and he still doesn't understand.
There are hands on my shoulders, and I fall back into someone's arms, but my head just pounds and squeezes, and there's not enough room for all the images in it, and then it all stops.
And I can breathe, and I can open my eyes and see.
Will is unconscious again, limp and slack with drugs rushing through his veins like life blood, and Blake's got his hands on my face, tipping it up so he can see into my eyes, check my pupils.
"What - what the hell was that?" I ask, and Blake's face goes incredulous.
"What the hell was that?" he turns on me, "You just fucking fell down screaming, man. What did he do to you?"
"I - nothing, I don't think - I saw something. But I couldn't understand it -" I shake my head, and Blake pushes his hand against my forehead, feeling my skin, which is probably cold and clammy, and I'm struck with the image of a little boy, lying in bed, and his mother, leaning over to feel his temperature. The boy's not me, the room's not mine, and I don't know how I know that woman is his mother, because her skin is like dark toffee, and his is merely tanned - but I know all of this information, and then I know that that little boy is Blake, when he was eight and caught the flu. His mother was worried he wasn't going to survive, because they couldn't take him to the hospital, but somehow he pulled through, much to the whole family's surprise and delight.
Blake's talking to me, but all I can do is stare at him, looking into his face in wonder.
"Arthur? Arthur, are you listening to me? You need to tell me what he did."
"Nothing. He didn't do anything to me. I'm just a bit - headache, it's nothing. I think he's got some kind of telepathy too, but it's not as focused - keep him asleep for a while longer, I think he's too out of it to wake up properly. That's probably what happened. Come on, then. Next one."
Blake still looks concerned, but he steps with me when I push him back so I can move around him, making a point of ignoring everything I just learned. The only people left are the two men we'd woken earlier, and one last stranger.
The younger man, Tim, just has unnatural strength, extreme muscle mass, but not much control over them - he'd be better at heavy lifting than fighting, it's not a refined talent. The older one, the one who fought like an animal, is named Greg, and he's much more of a berserker - he practically hulks out, when riled up he'll tear your arms off if given a chance, but otherwise he's more subdued than Tim, speaking with a calm, quiet dignity that I am definitely not expecting.
The last person we wake is a man in his thirties, pale and muscled, with dreadlocks and laugh lines etched into the corners of his eyes. He wakes up with a jolt, and a flail, and Blake forces me back to put himself between us, gun raised.
"What the fuck is this?" the man asks, rolling over onto the other side of the cot, standing on unsteady feet, and we find out what his talent is immediately, when great bursts of fire swell up and around his hands, flickering silently. He's in a fighting pose - legs bent and hands raised, not boxing, a martial art - and he's perfectly aware of his surroundings.
I'm too fucking surprised to respond for a long moment, but when he starts to edge away, dark eyes latched on the staircase and the door at the top of them, I step around Blake.
"Hey, hey, it's all right. I'm Arthur, this is Blake -" he steps really fucking hard on my foot for that, and I try to kick him in the ankle as sneakily as possible. "What's your name, do you know how you got here?"
"Where is here? Where am I?" he asks, not remotely calmed by my extremely calming attempts. I can't get too close, I can already feel the heat of the flames on my skin, though it doesn't seem to be doing him any harm.
"You're in the basement of a warehouse - Vincent's keeping you down here."
"Vincent? fucking Vincent? fuck him, let me the hell go, get me out of here!" He's less panicked and more furious, his eyes flashing with an internal fire that makes me stop in place.
"We can't do that, I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry, but you can't leave. Come on, just calm down, and we'll talk about this, okay?"
"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down! This is like a fucking opium den, what the fuck are all these people doing down here - how did I even get here in the first place? fuck you! fuck you both!"
Blake's watching his hands with a kind of fascination that unnerves me, but I ignore it for the moment. I'm getting alarmingly good at that.
"Please, just turn off the flames, and let me talk to you. I'm -" I look over my shoulder at Blake, and then I just fucking take the risk, hoping he's not paying enough attention to me to notice when I stage whisper across the cot, "I'm like you - I know what this is, I know what's happening, but I can't try to get you out if you don't fucking let me."
His dreadlocks whip against his face when he turns his head to me abruptly, and the fire shuts off with an abrupt whiff. The basement is unsettlingly quiet as we all stand, silent and staring at each other.
"I'm - Dan. Your name's Arthur?"
I nod. "Yeah, that's what I said."
"How'd I get here?"
"Have you ever taken a drug called po? Or Potaxus?"
Dan freezes, and his face goes white. "I've been clean for six years - haven't done anything like that since -"
"But you did once?"
He drops his head, sheilding his eyes, and then he nods, regretfully. "I quit everything after that. Don't even drink any more?"
"Did the fire start back then? When you first started using it?"
"Yeah." He sits heavily down on the cot, his shoulders slumping with the weight of his past, I want to know all of it, all about what happened to make him stop, and I can feel the urge curling around in my guts, but I don't let myself reach out and touch him.
"Well someone found out - only recently, I think, just a few weeks ago probably. You haven't been here long -" I look to Blake, who gives a jerky confirmation. "So it's not that surprising that you don't remember - the po can mess with your mind, I'm sure you know, you'll probably figure more out the longer you stay awake."
Dan's whole body shakes. "What about my sister? Is she here?"
"Does she do po?"
He shakes his head with vehemence, eyes flashing in anger, and I put my hands up to show I'm unarmed, and not looking to offend.
"Then no, she doesn't have what Vincent wants. He's looking for people like you - everyone here is like you, but most of them are unstable, so we have to keep them asleep." I sound like I'm fucking pitching it to him, and he's definitely not impressed, but he looks around at the beds with a little more understanding when I explain it to him.
Then he turns his burning eyes to me, and asks, "So what about you?"
I freeze, and something flashes in his eyes that means he knows he asked the wrong question.
Blake immediately steps in to confirm that for him by asking, "What does he mean by that, Arthur?"
"We're just the workers," I say loudly, to both of them. "It's just money."
-
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