Trickster

by J. C. Andrijeski

  Then I saw her face.

  Not the woman’s… her child’s.

  She stared at me from the black-haired woman’s arms.

  Her eyes glowed, sharp and pale green in the near-darkness, causing me wonder despite my pain, despite the knowledge that I was dying. I watched as Adhipan Balidor cooed to the child, even as the woman with the black hair held her more tightly to her chest. The whole thing happened slowly, in a kind of sepia-toned silence, the only color reaching me being the sharp, incongruous light from that small face, and the feeling that somehow, I knew her.

  The thought came through, sharp, clear, weirdly certain.

  My mind faded before I understood it.

  Then another face hung over mine.

  The fox-faced seer smiled down at me, standing barefoot in the snow under a high, jagged peak that marked out black and white lines against a wintery sky.

  That sky shone blue now over Terian’s head, but a cold wind whipped his auburn hair.

  Terian held the same child in his arms.

  Blood ran down his arms, soaking his shirt, soaking the thin fabric of the scrub pants he wore, leaving drops of blood in the pure white snow by his feet.

  The seer stared down at the bundle in his arms, smiling as he snuggled it to his chest, oblivious to the blood that fell on her blanket, on her skin.

  “Hello, darling,” he murmured to her, blowing warm puffs of light.

  Then, seeing me, he smiled, and my sickness worsened.

  “I love you,” the seer told me, his voice a caress. “I really love you, Revi’… so much. Help me, brother. Help me set them free.”

  I felt myself choking.

  I wanted to kill him.

  I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands, to beat him until he couldn’t walk.

  More than that, I wanted to kill the child.

  I’d never wanted to kill another being so badly.

  …but I couldn’t fucking move.

  Twenty-Three

  Nothing At All

  Visitors Barracks, Eastside

  Parvat Shikhar Work Camp

  The Kingdom of Sikkim, Northern India

  March 13, 1979

  I jerked awake.

  I lay on a bunk, tangled in sheets. Sweating.

  Panting short breaths.

  Still in India. Still in the damned mountains of Sikkim.

  Snowed in, just like I’d thought we would be.

  My stomach hurt from cheap vodka and that fucking meat stew they’d served everyone. Probably rabbit. Maybe horse––or dog.

  I hadn’t wanted to know then, and I still didn’t want to know.

  Like they did in a lot of parts of Asia, they called it “beef,” but I knew better. Whatever it had been, it turned on me now, sliding through the separation pain I suffered from until I wanted to scream, pounding the walls.

  I wanted to yell up into the dark of my room, but I had no words.

  I had nothing to say, not even to the gods.

  Eventually, that feeling passed.

  For a long time, I only lay there, feeling my heart pound against my ribs, feeling the pain coil and reconfigure through my light.

  When I got my breathing under control again, my jaw hardened. Enough to hurt.

  I touched my headset, pinging Cat.

  It was late. I could feel how late it was with my light, but the tone only pulsed twice before she picked up.

  I didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “Do you want to fuck?” I asked her.

  There was a silence.

  “Where are you?” she said then.

  “Room six,” I told her.

  She didn’t bother to answer.

  The line went dead, and I just lay there, fighting the thoughts sifting through my head, fighting to control my light before she reached my door.

  The pain wouldn’t go away.

  I felt my whole body fighting it.

  I fought the pain, even as I fought and sought its source.

  I fought her. My light fought her light, both trying to get deeper within it and recoiling from it, sometimes at the same time.

  I felt desire. I also felt revulsion… sometimes at the same time.

  I had to fight not to hurt her.

  Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind.

  If anything, the feeling I got from her was impatience, a wanting of––

  “Just fucking do it, then!” she snapped. “Stop thinking about it. Gods. I’m not human, brother. Are you really so softened from your attentions to worms?”

  My jaw hardened further.

  I didn’t know if she could see that in the dark.

  Then again, she was seer. She had combat training. She could likely see as well in the dark as I could. Better, perhaps, since she was female.

  In any case, I had to fight not to punch her after she said it.

  The thought must have been loud.

  After it passed through my light, she punched me.

  Hard.

  In the face.

  Something in that released that pressure that banded my chest.

  I let out a gasp, what might even have been a half-suppressed sob.

  Catching hold of her wrists when she swung at me again, I let out a cry, pulling out of her only to force her over to her stomach. I entered her again, fully extended that time, but I didn’t give a damn about that, either.

  My pain worsened as I thrust into her, hard, fast, pinning her wrists to my narrow, mold-smelling bunk mattress, feeling my chest loosen when she started groaning under me, that time from deep inside her chest. I gripped her hair angrily in one hand when I felt her wanting more, clenching my fingers until she gasped, and then I held her throat from behind, too.

  I fought not to squeeze those fingers harder.

  I didn’t want to kill her.

  I told myself that. I believed it, even. My anger worsened along with my pain as I arched into her, though, making it difficult to see any of it clearly. Worse still, she egged me on with her light, half-taunting me in the space.

  You’re still holding back, brother, she sent, her words a faint rebuke. What are you afraid of? You think I might fight back? Is that it? Are you afraid I might kill you, if you go too far?

  Letting out another gasp, I released her throat long enough to slap her, hard on the ass.

  When she only laughed, I did it again, using my full palm.

  I kept on doing it until she was moaning instead of laughing, her light and body softening under mine when I didn’t let up. I could feel the repetition causing her more pain. I could also tell she wanted more. She wished I had more to give, that I’d thought to bring something more with me, that I would stop holding back.

  Hearing her, I wished I’d brought things too.

  Belts, whips. Clubs.

  I thought it loud, still angry, still inexplicably furious with her––

  She laughed again.

  When I yanked harder on her hair, slamming into her deeper, she grew quiet. Her light opened more, once more growing softer under mine.

  Within minutes she was moaning, pulling on me, begging me––

  She came and the pain in my light worsened.

  I fucked her again, harder… until she came again, and then something in me finally let go, at least long enough for me to release.

  I still hung over her, panting, my body spasming, when she let out another low laugh.

  Fighting an urge to yell at her, I pulled out of her instead, mostly because I could feel she didn’t want me to. I was still kneeling there, gasping, when she flipped over on her back, watching me with narrow, cat-like eyes.

  “You are mourning someone, brother?” she asked me.

  I looked up at her, feeling that pain in my light worsen.

  “Fuck you.”

  “You are mourning someone.” That time, it wasn’t a question. Her eyes and light sparked with curiosity. Her mouth pursed from where she leaned the weight of her upper body on her elbows. “Who, b
rother? Who did you lose?”

  I heard the compassion in her voice that time, but it only made me pull my light away more. When I did, a stab of separation pain nearly blinded me, causing her to flinch.

  I could feel my pain turning her on.

  “What does it matter?” I said.

  Even I could hear the emotion in my voice.

  It made me wince.

  She sat up, wrapping her arms around my neck, kissing my throat, my chest, my shoulders, massaging my back… feeding me light. I felt some part of myself wanting that, wanting all of it. I had to fight the emotions that tried to take over my light, that wanted to overwhelm me again.

  What the hell was the matter with me? What had happened to me?

  “It’s all right, brother,” she soothed. “It’s all right…”

  Those words ended up being the last thing I remembered clearly.

  …at least from that night.

  Time jumped.

  Staggered.

  Left me.

  I opened my eyes to blinding, bright lights.

  Green and blue. Tinged with yellow.

  Another dream. This had to be––

  “It’s not a dream, brother Quay,” a voice said.

  My head jerked sideways.

  I tried to move my body, but resistance wrenched first my neck, then my arms and legs. I struggled harder, writhing instinctively, but I was locked down tightly to whatever flat surface I lay on. I looked down as best I could, tracking all those individual restraints––organic bands on my wrists, ankles, thighs, biceps, waist, throat.

  I knew the material they were made of.

  All of them would be as strong as steel, despite how the material gave under my attempts to get free. They would bend slightly, growing almost soft when I threw myself against them, but they would never break. They would never even weaken.

  There was no hope of freeing myself from these.

  A full-grown male gorilla couldn’t have freed itself.

  I tried to use my sight, to coax them to open with my mind––

  Pain shot through my neck.

  It was blinding––so intense it paralyzed me.

  I stared up at the ceiling, panting and incapacitated, whimpering from that white-hot pain as I fought to see, to get my vision back.

  They had a shock-collar on me.

  They’d fitted me with a gaos d’ jurekil’a sight-restraint collar.

  “Gods!” I cried out, throwing my body against the restraints. “What have I done? Why am I imprisoned?”

  I stared up at the female seer who had spoken to me before.

  I didn’t know her. I’d never seen her face.

  She was old, so old it was shocking to me, who rarely saw those of my kind so aged that they appeared almost like aged humans. Her features struck me as strangely reptilian despite the wire-frame glasses she wore, and devoid of heart, of real light.

  The glasses she wore were so old-fashioned-looking and human in design that I briefly doubted my initial assessment as to what she was.

  But she’d read my mind. She’d heard my thoughts.

  She must be seer.

  “Let me go!” I cried out to her.

  I yanked on an arm, but the organic restraints, coupled with dead-metal, didn’t move.

  She was seer. She had to be.

  Moreover, she had to be of the Org. The rebels had no access to labs like this, to organic hybrid materials of this kind. She had to be one of mine. I looked up at her, and I knew it now. Even without my sight I could feel it.

  I could see it in her eyes.

  “Do not do this, sister!” I said. “Do not do this! I am loyal! I am one of you!”

  She smiled.

  Something in that smile chilled me to the bone.

  I felt her light whisper over mine.

  I could do nothing to stop her. With the shock collar, I could not shield, could not keep her out of my thoughts, my aleimi. I could not read her in return.

  Her light was like smoke.

  It slid over and into mine with a sickening sensuality, a nearly perverse claiming of what I was, without regard for my boundaries or will. She pulled apart the strands of my aleimi like a strong wind shredding smoke in the sky.

  I’d never felt anyone who did such things to my light.

  It made me gasp in shock. It nearly awed me.

  It fucking terrified me.

  “Let me go!” I begged. “Sister, please. Whatever wrong I’ve done you, whatever crime for which I’ve been accused––”

  “You’ve done no wrong, brother. There is no crime.” She smiled at me. Again, something in that smile only made that cold pit in my belly deepen.

  I stared up at her, terrified.

  I could not even explain to myself what that terror meant.

  “…Do not blame the female, brother,” the old seer said easily. “She lives to serve, just as you do, brother Quay. We contacted her right after you did, before she came to your quarters… so she really had no choice.” Those thin, lizard-like lips lifted in another of those predatory smiles. “We tried to give you some enjoyment on your last night, brother.”

  I fought to breathe, to even think.

  My last night.

  I remembered my dream.

  I remembered Adhipan Balidor––

  “But why?” I burst out. “Why? I am young. I am healthy! Why am I––”

  “Shhh,” the old seer soothed. “Relax brother. It is all over now. You do not know it yet, but it is already finished.”

  When her eyes shifted down to my arm, I followed them.

  I stared at the needle there, following the tubes to where they fed into an organic arm. Something was being put into me. Something was also being taken out.

  I stared back down at my arm, watching my complexion change.

  I watched it turn gray.

  Terror hit me.

  I could only watch, lost in the certain understanding that she hadn’t been speaking figuratively. It was over. It really was over.

  I had no way to prepare for it.

  I had no way to slow it down, to stop it.

  I was watching myself die.

  At the same time, they were keeping me alive.

  Keeping me alive for… gaos, I did not want to know…

  Would I be a machine? Would they use part of my flesh, my aleimi, trapping it there, for all eternity? I had heard of such things. I had heard of the sick hybrids they made of metal and flesh, ripping apart a seer and sewing it back together––

  “That will not be your fate, brother.”

  I looked up.

  Her eyes were on mine once more, a bird’s eyes, only without the emotion, the heart of the male seer I’d seen out on the snow. I could see that heart now, even in the face of a seer terrorist. I could see it in its absence in the eyes of this old seer female.

  “Not much longer now, brother,” she said, smoothing my brow with a claw-like hand.

  I knew her words meant to soothe, rather than threaten.

  They did not soothe me.

  I watched her look down at me. I watched her examine me like an animal, with as much interest as she aimed at the machines showing her readings about whatever she was doing to kill me. I had thought she forgot me by then. To her, I was already dead.

  Tilting her head then, the old woman gestured vaguely with one hand, smiling that odd smile, part grandmother and part alligator.

  “Think of it as being freed for a new assignment,” she said calmly, touching my head and glancing back at her machines. “Think of it as your last gift to the Brotherhood that loves you. Leave this life knowing you truly gave everything you had, brother Quay, to our glorious cause… and that we await you in your next life, your next journey.”

  I fought to speak.

  I wanted to speak.

  But I no longer could.

  I could only stare up at her, feeling myself die.

  She squinted down at some readings on a machine that
I could not see, although I could feel pieces of it with my light.

  “Your aleimi is very beautiful, brother… as is your body. I must compliment you. Our servant will make good use of it, I assure you.”

  Muttering under her breath, she added sourly,

  “…assuming he doesn’t kill this one off as fast as he did the last one.”

  I suspected I wasn’t meant to hear that last part.

  I did hear it, though, as I separated out.

  My mind grayed, sliding backwards, pulled back into the endless void.

  I fought it. I fought as hard as I could, screaming out…

  Like with the restraints, it did no good. It did nothing at all.

  My screams went to no one, for there was no one I loved… no one who loved me. They happened only in the darkness of my mind, in the cold spots of the Barrier, silent inside my last gasping breaths. Images flickered behind my lids.

  They grew too heavy for me to keep open, and those images sharpened.

  A silver pyramid, rotating in the dark.

  I saw beings there, tied to that pyramid with metallic chains, screaming.

  I saw myself among them. I saw myself screaming there, too.

  Then, that image ripped apart, like wind through smoke…

  Pulsing, green-glowing eyes took its place.

  A crying baby.

  The fox-faced Terian, clutching a bundle protectively in his arms.

  I love you, Revi’, he whispered. I love you.

  I saw the woman there, holding out her heart, trying to reach me. I saw the gray-eyed Balidor, his eyes and body full of light, calling my name––

  But I turned away.

  I saw them, and I turned away.

  Darkness surrounded me, leaving me alone.

  There was no peace.

  Even here, peace was a lie.

  In truth, I felt nothing at all.

  Twenty-Four

  Darkness And Light

  Genetic Research Facility #2910JS-88

  Parvat Shikhar Work Camp

  The Kingdom of Sikkim, Northern India

  March 26, 1979

  He sat on the edge of the cot, yawning.

  He couldn’t remember being so tired.

  Thinking about that, he realized that wasn’t true.