Her mind is quiet, reset to its survival factory setting, shut down and getting her only as far as the cold, hard floor of her apartment, where she falls asleep without so much as taking off her boots.
* * *
SHE WAKES from her stupor to a frigid morning – the cool air a fitting backdrop for a colder truth. The day of her realignment procedure has arrived quickly and without ceremony. Her mind shivers with the realisation that the rest of Otpor will continue on its familiar trajectory, oblivious to her turmoil and to impending sacrifice.
She leaves her apartment without a second glance back. Unlike Earth and Air Elementals, Fire Elementals have never been sentimental about inanimate objects.
Or animate ones.
There is no one for her to say goodbye to, no one to mourn her disappearance or offer words of encouragement. There is just the hot Otpor sun, the dusty brown sky and the crumbling pavement leading to her destination.
The journey to Last Defence will take her to the westernmost edge of the city. She could take a more scenic route, along the Syn River or through the Southern Area precincts, but there is no point. Her future has been decided, and delaying it will bring no comfort. She runs without pause along the seven kilometres that separate her from her new life.
The Avenue of the Elysian Fields is wide and unobstructed, allowing her an easy path. Occasionally, she swerves around clusters of Elementals moving slowly on foot or bicycle, but her speed does not falter. Her gaze is glued to the forty-storey hollowed cube that is Last Defence – the indomitable structure growing more immense with every kilometre that flies under her thundering feet.
Drawing closer, her gaze scales the sleek lines of its bevelled facade, inlaid with white tiles and large windows. Beyond the thick squared arch, the dark skin of the Border Wall and the red-tinged brown of the Wasteland sky create a perfect contrast. The colours are vivid, the image striking.
She has viewed Last Defence a hundred times before, yet, in this moment, it is as if she is seeing it with new eyes.
Entering the left tower of the arch, she brushes past Elementals milling about in the lobby. Snatches of conversation rise above the general cacophony and slam into her ears.
“…curfews aren’t working…”
“…another one in Precinct Twelve…”
“…Air Elementals are being persecuted…”
The weight of the gathering swirls around her, the heavy anticipation of the crowd sending her gut cramping. She ignores it all, setting up barriers in her mind and focussing solely on reaching her destination.
Arriving at the room on the thirty-fifth floor, she blinks against the harsh white light. An older Technician in her eighth lustrum is there to collect her.
“Anaiya 234?”
Anaiya nods.
The Technician pauses, a small frown furrowing her brow. “I know you.”
It takes Anaiya a moment before the recognition becomes mutual. It has been almost ten years since they last saw each other.
“You were his protege,” the Technician continues. “They thought you were infected.”
She had been a Psychoanalyst, one of the many who had tested and watched and assessed Anaiya in the lead-up to Kane’s Execution. In those early days Anaiya had been assessed as a primary candidate for infection. They had thought she was more vulnerable, that her conditioning was still too raw, her Premie mind still plastic after only one year of orientation.
They had seen her worship him, emulate him in all his celebrated Peacekeeper ways. They had seen him favour her, seen him spend more time on her training and advocate more fiercely for recognition of her potential.
Under Kane 148’s tutelage, she had been better than Niamh. She had been the best.
“I wasn’t infected.”
The Technician steps forwards to appraise Anaiya more closely. “No. You weren’t infected. But you were certainly affected.”
Anaiya feels herself shrink away from the scrutiny, then bristles at her display of weakness. It immediately reminds her of the days after Kane’s Execution. The never-ending examinations, the constant judgement, the certainty that she had been tainted. That she was Heterodox.
The Technician steps back. “But no longer, it seems.”
Anaiya smiles through tight lips. Convincing Water Elementals she hadn’t been infected by the Heterodoxy had proven much easier than erasing the contamination from her connection to the Resistor. She had learned to push harder, be better. Had forced others to see past Kane’s legacy. To only see her and her dedication and skill and obedience. But, somewhere in that darkened past, she had become weaker. Less. As if Kane had taken some part of her with him to the grave.
“Your procedure is scheduled in Room 35.1,” the Technician says, opening a door to a wide corridor. “You can go in now.”
SIX
ANAIYA’S WORLD no longer looks the same, no longer feels the same.
The days following her initial realignment procedure have been much like the realignment itself – brief, painless, yet entirely disorienting.
Relocated to Last Defence, Anaiya finds herself severed from her former life. Forbidden to access her former precinct, Area or Peacekeeper colleagues, her days are spent in the isolation of her new room – a small and bare box containing only a bed, a side table and compact washroom.
Most of the time, she stares out of the window, her eyes drawn to everyday contrasts – the interplay of light and shadow, the subtle tones of grey and brown on buildings and infrastructure, the contrast of bright polyesters and neutral kevlars on the Elementals below.
Her ears, once only attuned to sounds of distress and unrest, now pick up the hidden beats and melodies of Otpor’s streets and precincts. And with these sights and sounds come strange reactions. Her gut tightens, her throat constricts, her eyes tingle.
The city is affecting her, changing her. She can taste it when she breathes, feel its heartbeat when watching the life pulsate on the streets below. She is constantly feeling, but no longer feels like herself.
The numbness of her first days has worn off. The schism in her mind brings with it constant migraines, symptoms of the war it endlessly wages with itself – one minute delighting in new sensations, the next, admonishing its lack of focus. Each attempt to resolve the conflict only leaves her tense and tired, sending her into a deeper malaise.
Even now she rubs at her temples, shielding her eyes from the relentless fluorescent lights in the corridors that stretch between her room and Laboratory 16.1. A deep heaviness pulls at her heart as she enters the lab, eclipsing even the migraine building in her skull. This will be her fifth realignment procedure.
She is halfway through undressing when a familiar Technician from her earlier sessions walks in.
“Don’t bother changing. We’ll be working on conscious limbic response monitoring today.”
His voice is deep and flat, thudding into the dense walls that surround them.
Anaiya pulls her kevlar jeans back up and shrugs back into the long-sleeved black shirt she’d left crumpled on the floor. Pulling on her boots, she takes the time to look at the Technician. He is a generation older than her, the five years showing in his leaner frame and a depth to his eyes. His stance is casual, his weight centred on his right leg, hips pushed out to form a languid, obtuse angle from his head to his feet.
He is not attractive, but he is assured and intelligent and something indefinable that nevertheless intrigues her. All of it – the Technician, her appraisal of him, her reaction to him – it all happens in the space of a glance. Before her realignment, he would have been just another Water Elemental in a white coat. Now, he is a complex collection of parts, each hinting at an untold story.
He looks up from his wristplate and over to Anaiya.
“Ready?”
Nodding, she zips up her left boot, absent-mindedly trailing her finger along the interlocked teeth, eyes still trained on the Technician. In the large, circular room next door, a second Technician
greets them in the perfunctory way of all Water Elementals. She holds a small black box, into which she plugs Anaiya’s lifeline before fastening it to the belt loop of Anaiya’s jeans.
She stands too close, fumbling with the clasp. Anaiya can smell the sweet traces of shampoo still lingering in her hair, can feel the tremor of energy trapped between their two bodies in tight proximity. The levity of these sensations is in sharp contrast to the heavy, insistent beating in Anaiya’s chest and rapid throbbing at her temples.
Finished with attaching the device, the Technician moves to Anaiya’s side – her steps light, her eyes empty. Her touch on Anaiya’s forearm is warm, but the pierce of the needle and fluid injection leaves a chill.
“The procedure will begin in a few minutes,” she says, completing the final checks of Anaiya’s vitals.
The Technician lets go of Anaiya’s arm, letting it fall heavy to her side, before leaving her alone in the cold, windowless room.
Anaiya waits for the medication to kick in, but moments pass and she feels no different. Her eyes trace alternating patterns in the tile work of the curved walls, grouping them in different combinations, picking up the slight differences in how they reflect the dim fluorescent lighting. A soft hum of electricity ripples through the air, resonating gently in her ear.
And then it begins.
The white tiles disappear. Anaiya blinks, her eyes clouding for a brief second. When they clear, she finds that she isn’t in the room any more: she is in Precinct 5.
Smells and sounds come rushing to her as she steps into the dappled sunlight of Purlunge Van Square. The braided section of the River Syn is less than five hundred metres to the north and it tugs at Anaiya as a current to flotsam. She yields to her instinct and pivots on her heel towards the water.
Part of her wants to move slowly to take in every sensation of being where she belongs. The concept comes to her unbidden, clear yet unfamiliar. She doesn’t challenge it, just lets it wash over her.
Part of her wants to free-run, to encourage the breeze against her face, feel the smooth, cold steel under her palms.
After a few halting steps mired in hesitation, she pushes at the barrier in her mind – feels it snap – and propels herself forwards into the smooth motion of a sprint.
She weaves between the sparse collection of Elementals, repelling off the walls of buildings and launching into aerials to clear minor obstacles. Buildings, like broad-shouldered Border Watchers, stretch either side along the narrow Rue Dayburn. The effect forces Anaiya’s eyes to focus in on the small section of river wall framed at the end of the road. With each leap, aerial and vault it zooms larger and sharper.
Accelerating until only a few buildings remain between her and the wall, she falls into the free-run. Her right foot flexes under a deep lunge, giving her the kinetic energy needed to launch at the final facade; her left finds traction, pushing her higher. Arms extend to grasp the slim horizontal beam that straddles the gap between the opposing buildings. The motion carries her into a backwards somersault – the wall, sky and road streaking in a blur of colours that pulls her eyes shut.
The impact of the river wall under her feet pulls her down into a low crouch, perfectly balanced and steady. She straightens slowly, her eyelids unfurling to reveal the sight before her.
She has seen it before, passed it countless times on her patrols of the Eastern Area. But the sight of it now arrests her.
She is still. More still than she had ever thought was possible in a body full of blood and adrenalin.
The eastern facade of En Dahm fills her vision, presenting four of the fourteen stone arms that buttress its elongated rotunda. It stands offset to her left, its form dissonant with the flat matrix of rectangular prisms flanking it either side. Like Last Defence, the structure predates the Singularity and is devoid of the synthetic rationality of post-Emancipation architecture. It is beautiful.
Tiny details flood her senses, her brain both struggling and delighting in shapes and lines and scales she has never given consideration to.
Absorbed as she is, it takes a while before the echo of an unformed sound filters through her consciousness. There is a delay, a pause in her mind as it transitions from its appreciation of En Dahm.
She swivels, pivoting with precision on the river wall.
A body lies face down on the uneven surface of the road. Blood flows like miniature rivers along the contours. It mixes with the sand and dirt and debris, forming pools in some areas, thickening to congealed ribbons in others.
Anaiya’s mind groans as her consciousness switches gears. Belatedly she remembers to scan the area for the perpetrator, her eyes fixing upon a figure two blocks away, running west.
Confusion settles upon her like a wet rayweave blanket, her mind caught in an impossible conflict. She needs to run after the perpetrator. She needs to protect the victim.
The urgency to do something is stifling, but her body refuses to move. She stands there, heart contorting in her chest, unable to do anything.
SEVEN
BLACKNESS.
Anaiya only becomes aware of it, the deep comforting nothingness, when she is pulled from it.
She is in another lab, lying on a low bed. Her cheeks are damp and cool. The room is too bright and her head hurts. She reaches up to contain the throbbing in her temples, but her left arm jolts as the length of her lifeline stretches taut between her wrist and a large panel inlaid in the nearest wall.
A move to her right shifts her attention – the male Technician from the round room looms large beside her bed.
The round room.
Precinct 5.
Fragmented memories, like razors, slash at the soft, vulnerable parts of her mind.
Her body trembles, then shakes, then pitches in violent convulsions. Her lungs push out loud, incoherent cries of injury. She hears them as a stranger would, their sound intimate yet distant. Her chest heaves as though she has free-run at full speed for an hour and her eyes flood with tears as if surrounded by synth toxin smoke. Her tears fall, unimpeded, in long streams down her temples.
She shuts her eyes tight, struggling to shut out the memories and the sight of her body in tumult, but a smooth, cool touch against her cheek sends them flying open. The Technician stands over her, grasping a small narrow-necked bottle, collecting the liquid evidence of her weakness – of her shame, confusion and despair.
Anaiya’s right arm lashes out at him, but he evades the feeble effort easily. A sharp prick at her neck elicits a wail from her lips, but the acute sensation brings with it the welcomed blackness and so she relents and is subdued.
* * *
BLACKNESS.
She knows it now. Realises, in the deepest folds of her mind, that it is her ally.
She clings to it. Welcomes the way it wraps around and consumes her.
She embraces it, lets her mind linger in the deep kiss of nothingness and submits entirely to it.
* * *
BLACKNESS.
She feels it shift in the tremors of her subconscious. It trembles like a dog in labour. Skittles like Wasteland sand grains over the empty roads of the Edges.
She fights to keep it, to make it stay still, to remain with her in the nothingness.
But it pays her no heed. Her consciousness is slowly stripped of it, her mind an inky midnight sky losing its hue at dawn.
The numbness slakes off her like dead skin, revealing a raw and vulnerable mind.
The light invades her awareness, allowing no quarter for retreat. Meeting the light is difficult. Her eyes resist opening, their lashes sticky with the dense residue of old tears. She will not endure another failure. With more effort, they pull apart – slowly, with resistance.
The room is darker than she had anticipated. Her fingers claw clumsily at her neck, scratching at the point of skin irritated by so many injections. She doesn’t stop, letting her nails scrape away the dermis until the blood paints her fingers black. Still she digs, fingertips reaching for the synt
h concoction that is responsible for her weakness and that courses through her veins.
A vague shadow falls across her face. Anaiya doesn’t recognise the Nurse, her eyes drawn to the syringe in his right hand, flashing gold as he moves. Her throat burns with the hoarse roar that she pulls up through her chest and from her lips.
Rage, a fire – her fire – wells inside her, building in intensity.
“Stay away from me,” she rasps.
Her eyes never stray from the syringe and the golden liquid that steals her fire.
The Nurse lays his cold hand on her, the syringe inching closer.
“No…”
The single syllable pulls all but final reserves of energy from her.
“Please,” she whispers, disgusted at her own vulnerability and desperation.
* * *
BLACKNESS.
No longer deep and all-consuming. Its hold on Anaiya is weakened.
Nonetheless she remains in it, using it to help centre her thoughts, deepen her resolve. She has lain awake, floating in the tepid shadows, for a few hours. The passing of time is marked simply in her mind by the succession of small noises and faint smells drifting into the room.
She lies there quiet and still as the chill of reality sobers her mind. In the calm of the blackness she can rationalise her situation, can see that the injections have been sedatives and not enhancers, can recognise that the cause of her altered state is not the synth-medication numbing the pain in her neck and tightness in her muscles.
Can accept that she has been realigned.
The concept floats in her mind, a razor wrapped in so many layers of soft polysilk. She notes it, but otherwise ignores it, careful not to unwrap the buffer that her subconscious has woven. Instead, she concentrates on her breathing. It is a simple Fire Element technique taught to Trainees to help them to make rational, coherent decisions in spite of the significant amounts of adrenalin generated by their typical activities.
Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1) Page 6
