by J D Morganne
When he’d caught his breath, he used the table to stand, his hand brushing a thin sheet of paper. A newspaper. It shouldn’t have startled him, but he snatched away.
“Don’t touch that,” Beck sat midway down a staircase wide enough to hold a room beneath it. She hugged a mid-length robe close to her, meddling with a piece of splintered wood on the step. Her armor was gone, replaced by linen pajamas. “Nano hasn’t read that yet.”
Jaxon hadn’t planned on touching or reading it.
“He actually had the balls to bring you here?” She looked around for her brother. “Where is he? Did he leave you down here?” When Jaxon didn’t answer, she assessed him and found the answer for herself. His hair— sweaty. His wheelchair— still outside.
“That muunkei —you see what I mean? He doesn’t know how to commit to anything.” She punched her fist into her palm. “I’ma teach him somethin’, though.”
What she taught her brother was her business. Jaxon wanted some space to think. His head was beginning to pound, like a sack of stones was bouncing around up there.
“You don’t talk much, but you stare a lot, hm?”
He hadn’t realized he was staring. Abashed, he forced himself to look away, focusing instead on his own feet.
“You’re… awfully… compliant. Everybody over there like that or are you someone special? Someone like… army? Some kinda special forces?” When he said nothing, she bit her lip and tapped her chin. She made another wild guess. “Policii? No, not police. Fireman?” When he didn’t answer, she slapped her hands on her knees and stood. “Couldn’t sleep. Decided to eat. Hungry? Was going to put Bucky on the grill.” Bucky squealed from somewhere. Beck’s laugh started as a smile. “Not a joker? All right, if you’re staying, I put your stuff upstairs. First room on the left.” She reached to help him.
Jaxon leaned away. He didn’t want her help.
“Aria said you needed rest. But suit yourself.” She nodded toward his wrist. “You gotta tracker?”
King Dasher had discontinued internal tracking in soldiers after a hack that paralyzed a small percentage. He had a lot of things in him, but tracking wasn’t one. His useless celrings didn’t work. They couldn’t be tracking him, which she’d figured out since she’d stolen them already.
She read him again, her head tilted, a faint smile. “A’ight.”
“First room, left?”
She rolled her tongue in response and flapped her robe before skipping past him and the kitchen. “Aria’s gonna look at you later and then we’re gonna have a chat. Don’t mess up the room, it doesn’t belong to you. Bucky!”
The steps looked steeper than the hill they’d come up. Jaxon was panting by the fifth step and Beck passed him twice to drop off his wheelchair and to look for Bucky.
At the end of the hall, warm air breezed through open casement windows. A stairlift track crossed the floor from an open door to the right, into a closed room labeled INFIRMARY. Glass windows from an indoor garden room arched from the parallel wall, but verdant greenery obstructed his view.
When he finally made it to the somber room, he was thankful for the white sheets and black curtains. He tugged them shut, his eyes desperately needing a break from all the colors. Someone—his guess was Aria—had cleaned, folded and piled his tattered clothes on a bed in the right corner of the room. On a glass end table was Naomi’s book, cleaned of the mud and gunk it had collected. All he had left were filthy clothes and that book.
Yet, he stood there wondering how his mom would fix her celtech wallpaper without his benefits. Now that he was a “sinner”, what did that mean for her? His dad wanted to live a quiet life and survive. How would they live their quiet lives now? How would his mom react when she discovered he was gone? Jaxon would rather hang from Kami Square like other sinners than be this far away from home.
He was finally sitting when someone knocked on the door. Aria’s medical bag popped in first, then her head. “Dressed?” She saw he was and jumped inside before he could answer. “Beck tell you I was comin’?”
“She’s going to cook your pig.”
Aria froze at the door, mortification widening her eyes. “Ah,” she said, coming to her own understanding. “Bucky, you mean? She won’t hurt’im. We don’t eat pork. She just plays too much.” She knelt in front of him and went to work pulling jars and silver tools from her bag and organizing them in order of what she would use first. “How do you feel?”
Jaxon didn’t know how he felt. Confused, afraid, tired.
“I can only work with you so much. Talk, please. I have to make sure your burn isn’t infected and apply antibiotics.”
“It hurts,” he said, finally. Everything hurt.
“I told Beck you needed to sleep. Got you runnin’ up steps. Lift your arm.”
He did, and she leaned in to inspect it.
“Stilt’s holding up,” she said after three seconds.
He stared at it in amazement. It was nothing more than cardboard and strips of cloth.
“The sprain wasn’t severe. We’ll get you a new and improved cast and take you to Jerus so all the ladies can sign it. You won’t need to wear it long. Lucky you didn’t break it.”
Hell, it had felt broken. Still did. He had broken his arm before and sprained his toe training when he was fifteen.
Aria left the room to its silence when Jaxon wouldn’t speak and examined his arm, leg and head. Then she went to uncover the bandages over his burn. He leaned back.
“I have to look at it.” She sighed and slapped her hands on her knees. Despite her annoyance with him, she was patient. “It could get infected.”
Jaxon stayed still. He could do it. He had learned everything watching others. If she talked him through it, he could do it on his own. “Show me,” he found himself saying in a voice smaller than a misbehaving child.
“Tsk. For real?”
“Give me gloves.”
“It’s not gonna be as bad as you’re thinking.”
“I don’t like to be touched.”
Aria, for a while, thought it over, before curving up her lips and nodding. “It’ll take a second. And it’ll be only me.”
He couldn’t control his heart or catching breath, but he wouldn’t be a coward either. “Okay.”
She looked up one last time, her eyes saying, Is this really okay? She went to work peeling at the worn, prismatic tape holding his bandage to him. It was like that gel he’d noticed oozing through his bandages earlier, except it had dried and hardened. Like healing tape, Jaxon noticed. He lost his curiosity for the stuff when Aria’s fingers brushed his skin.
“So far, so good?”
He had expected something like cloth, like when he was a kid, when his mom had worn gloves to lift him into his dad’s arms after he skinned his elbow. Instead, her touch was like a rock. Rough at her fingertips, like sandpaper. Smooth like marble where her fingers curved gracefully. And Jaxon trembled from head-to-toe.
“Deep breaths. You’re okay. How do you get check-ups if you don’t like people touching you?”
“Check-ups?” Jaxon said.
“Doctor’s visits?”
“The law is no skin-to-skin. We have medical laws and glove policies.” It was funny. All medical professionals in Obedience were women. Another practice their Doors had in common. “They wear gloves.” Like she should’ve been.
He watched her mouth twist and her eyebrows turn down in determination. She inspected his wound like her eyes could heal him if she looked hard enough. She wasn’t like Nano and Beck.
“What’s the pain like, on a scale of one-to-ten?” she said. “Ten being the worst.”
“Seven,” he mumbled.
“Well.” She grabbed one of her small canisters, which was brimming with a black salve. “This kolo-scrub should ease some of it.”
The burn was like wrinkled rubber glued to his body. Aria set the old bandages in a bowl of steaming liquid. “It’s second degree. Good thing”— she sniffed the hypnotic
salve— “is that it looks better than it did a week ago.” She snuggled her hands into a pair of latex gloves. “You’re Enkindler, aren’t you?”
Jaxon nodded. She was right. His nationality was Obedient, and his race was Enkindler. She’d surely done her research.
“I knew it. Is your real name CO3?”
“CO3 stands for Third Crimson Officer. My name is… Jaxon… Fletcher.”
“Jaxon. I like that. It’s nice to meet you. So, who did this to you?”
“Nobody.”
“You musta pissed Nobody off.” She palpated his burn for only a second before applying the salve.
Jaxon’s skin ignited. He winced.
“It’ll only take a minute. Nobody scorched half your ribcage. You get in trouble with Nobody’s gang or something?”
A gang? Jaxon thought. He clenched his fist against his sizzling ribcage.
“Let me guess, you don’t have gangs?”
“We do.” If she could call the rebellious Sungulders a gang, yes. Of the four major cities in Obedience, Sunguld, was the worst. They had holosprayed his door, committed arson to Old-World monuments, and one had deigned to question him about Irveng Syndrome and their “system”.
“Beck said you’re a soldier. Your Door at war?”
“No.” Wait, Beck had said he was a soldier?
Aria’s nose wrinkled when she giggled. “What do you do then?”
“I guard royals. A lot of us get sent to Sunguld.”
“What’s that?”
“A city. The worst people,” Jaxon said. Most criminal hangings were Sungulders who had ignored rules and commandments, who had used their manipulation for their own selfishness. “You aren’t royal?” Jaxon said. “Your Emiir is like my queen.”
Aria grinned. “How many times she told you to stop calling her that? She’s serious about that. And no, I’m regular me.”
“Do you think”— He tapped his rings only for nothing to happen— “she could fix these? Or tell me what’s wrong with them?”
“I doubt it.”
Jaxon did, too. He hadn’t seen much tech, nothing like celecomb’s capabilities. “Could you ask her anyway?”
“Sure.”
His stomach grumbled.
Aria grabbed a clean roll of bandages. “Hungry?”
Jaxon didn’t answer, but he was starving. Mashed potatoes were the last thing he had licked off the floor. As much as he hated the packaged food in Obedience, he’d break his own finger to finish that gyoza he’d thrown away.
“I can make you something.”
“No, it’s fine.”
She scoffed with a smirk. “No need for pride here.”
“It has nothing to do with pride.” There were laws where Jaxon was from, actual order. Not pretend order, or only when Beck felt like it. Eating food from places other than Obedience was a punishable offense. “And I don’t plan on being here long.”
“Right.” Aria finished her work in silence, bandaging and taping him back together. “There.” She popped up, pulling off her gloves. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Excuse me?”
“For your cast? I’m going to fit you for one later.”
Why should he care what color she used for that? “I don’t know.”
“Pick one. The first one that comes to mind.”
The first color that came to his mind was of the real roses his dad had brought home after an argument with his mom. He’d whispered her name—Yumi—and broke his promises as he made them. “Pink.”
“Dope. I’ll cook you something light.”
“You don’t have to.”
“If you’re hungry, I do.” She pushed the wheelchair to the bed. “This is for whenever you need it.”
He nodded a thanks.
No, she wasn’t at all like the others, he realized as he watched her go. Her touch lingered on him, as if she was still there.
11
They continued their lives like Jaxon wasn’t there.
Fine. All he could think about was home. No, her. Naomi. He ruminated reasons why she would kiss him. He knew she was impulsive and had no fear of consequences, but why? Did she know she’d ruin his life? While she moved on with her life, he sat in misery, racking his brain to figure out what to do next. Was Beck right? Was he stuck?
Huffing, he turned over and buried his face in his pillow. Naomi’s book stared back at him from beneath an untouched bowl of vegetable soup. All the stories they had read in secret weren’t his downfall, but a stupid kiss. In any case, he had to get out of there.
He sat up and swept his broken leg over the bed. It was ten times harder to move around with the sling on. He unsnapped it and set it aside. His skin prickled beneath the cotton under his cast. When someone knocked at his door, he jumped up but didn’t rush to answer it. Instead, he hopped to the closet to find something to carry his stuff in. It was empty save for an old box of tealight candles. He hopped back to find the door open and Beck standing with her hand on the knob. Her headscarf was gone and she’d shoved her thick hair into a ponytail.
“Emi—Beck.” Jaxon thought about bowing but didn’t. “There a lock on that door?”
“Why don’t you use the one you took off your mouth?”
It was fine. He was still getting used to the privacy.
Beck was about to say something else but stopped. Jaxon followed her gaze to his untouched soup. His stomach had begged for the savory broth and carrot chunks for a good hour before he got over it.
“You didn’t eat?”
“Wasn’t hungry.”
“How could you not be hungry, man? You were tube fed for days and you haven’t eaten since you woke up… or slept.”
Intuitive might she be, he didn’t feel like explaining.
“We don’t waste food here,” she said.
“I didn’t.” He’d drunk his water and nodded toward his glass to show her.
Unamused, she sneered. “Perhaps, I wasn’t clear. We don’t waste food here. You eat or you don’t.”
He wouldn’t tell her how Aria had insisted and wouldn’t dare question her precious customs. “Okay.”
By now, she didn’t wait for him to say anything else. She transitioned from one subject to the next with ease. “Ria said something about those rings.” She shrugged, apathy in her eyes. “I wanted to tell you myself that even if there was a way to fix them—which there ain’t—I wouldn’t.” She didn’t give Jaxon the chance to ask her why. “Your tech isn’t welcome here. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
Jaxon clenched his fists to release a tight pressure in his veins. He wanted to shout at her, shake her. “Thanks anyway.”
“We’re going shopping. Thought it’d be your perfect chance to escape. What’re you doing up?” Beck tilted her head and fixed her eyes on him.
Jaxon could tell she had more to ask. He had questions too, but she had already told him she couldn’t help, and he wasn’t predisposed to wasting his time in drastic situations. “Leaving.”
Beck nodded, having known this. “Then you might as well come with us. You won’t get far without supplies. And you’ll bake in Jerus’s sun.”
She said Jerus’s sun like it didn’t belong to everyone. In any case, he would take her up on her offer. He grabbed Naomi’s book and nodded toward the door. She didn’t move. He watched her with a combination of nerves and doubt. What in the hell does she want now? Jaxon thought.
“You only want Aria touching you?” She waited for an answer she knew wouldn’t come. “She’s taken. Nano loves her sometimes. She loves him all the time.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Jaxon said, turning his nose up.
“It’s debatable.”
“She’s a doctor.”
Beck snickered. “Aria ain’t a doctor. She’s a”—
“We only have female doctors and…” His voice quavered, and he stumbled over his words because they were lies. He didn’t know what he was saying or why. True, Dasher allowed only wom
en to practice medicine in Obedience, but Jaxon liked Aria. Either way, it was none of Beck’s business and he didn’t have the energy to explain himself.
Beck pressed her fingers into her glossy lips. “I won’t stop you. Just heed the warning. Come, Neophyte. There’s much to see.”
―
The walk to the rail dragged in seconds of Nano’s poor singing and Aria rechecking everything on a list she’d brought. She started to sing along with Nano, except worse. Her voice crackled like a symphony of nettled cats.
“Would you shut up?” Beck told them. She was the one pushing Jaxon and hadn’t said a word until then. “And please don’t mistake that to mean stop singing. I mean shut up.”
“Whaaaaat?” Nano belted, reaching into the sky with his eyelids shut tight. In baritone, he sang, “How could you ever as-sk me to stop bestowing my bles-sings upon humani-teee?”
Aria popped him in the back of his head without looking up from her list. And in the middle of his solo. He held his hand over his ear and stomped ahead, a five-foot-ten spoiled child. Jaxon stifled his laugh. Finally, accepting they were real— not some fictional characters from Naomi’s fairytales— it was easier for Jaxon to see them as humans.
“See what we have to deal with?” Beck pulled out a list of her own. She leaned forward and pushed Jaxon’s chair with her elbows to read it.
Aria skipped ahead and found a seat next to where Nano was standing. Jaxon caught Nano looking at her, at first like he was angry and then with the fondness of old friends. The mulberry sunset cast a dark light on them and everyone in the rail car. As Beck pushed him inside, he studied the height. About one-hundred meters at its peak, twenty at stops around the cliff’s edge. At that height, a fall was fatal. And his mom thought the scaitren was dangerous.
Out the window, shadows loomed over the forest below. It would be dark soon. Again. Another day wasted. Another day for him to long for home.
