“Have a play around with it. See what you think,” he says smiling at her. “I’ll get it back off you at the lockdown party.”
She forces herself to breathe, subtly exhaling the air she hadn’t realised she had been holding. She works her tongue, pressed tightly to the roof of her mouth, forcing it to make the words she so desperately needs to voice. “Thanks.” Breathy, but not shaking. “I’ll take good care of it.”
Kaide nods and turns back to Seth. The small movement is a release for Anaiya. Her shoulders relax and her grip on the precious device loosens.
She looks over to Seth. He has shifted on the windowsill, his feet now firmly planted on the floor, his back resting against the glass of the window. It is an arresting sight, his sculpted form backlit and the endless view of the precinct beyond.
And then she sees the slight frown pulling at his eyes. Notices the way he worries at the tattoo on his forearm, running his thumb in endless circles of pressure. A question forms in her mind but dies on her lips.
I need to get out of here.
Before they see the elation in her eyes. Before they uncover her secret.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” she says, indicating the door.
Kaide nods. “I’ll let you out.”
Anaiya doesn’t look back as the door slides open, doesn’t wait for it to close behind her. She passes without a cursory glance at the photovoltaic wall that had captivated her only minutes ago. She doesn’t hurry, she doesn’t stop. She maintains an even, steady pace, free of detour and free of thoughts. All thoughts. Except one.
Game over. I win.
TWENTY-FIVE
“HER LAST ACCESS swipe was four hours ago, but her lifeline hasn’t engaged for at least three hours,” Niamh’s voice echoes into Anaiya’s ear via her lifeline.
“OK. I’ll head to the Lavoir. Contact me if she checks in somewhere public.”
Anaiya disconnects the communication and wraps her lifeline in place. Her hand free, she immediately feels for the hard planes and corners of the device tucked safely away in her kevlar pocket.
After leaving Seth and Kaide she ran straight to her apartment, unconcerned with how strange it must have looked to see an Air Elemental run anywhere. Shutting the door behind her, she had settled on her uncomfortable bed and played with the soundmatcher for hours, recording and matching random sounds, until she was satisfied she had mastered the technology.
She had tried matching her own voice at different decibels and across like-sounded words – learning that volume did not factor in the match and that word approximations would impact on the result. If she tried matching ‘synthfly’ to ‘synthetic’, the wavelength comparison was thrown out by the different ending. After a few tries, however, she learned to concatenate both recordings to match the first syllable only. The result had been a ninety-nine point two per cent match.
And then she had tapped on the recording of the street performance.
“Resistance!” Three syllables. Three opportunities to match Rehhd’s voice.
The words play on repeat through her mind as she makes her way to the Ravignan Strip. They branch off into potential conversations she can use to lure Rehhd to say the sound that will damn her.
I just need to find her. And get her to talk.
The fingers of her right hand twitch at her wristplate, her fingernails plucking at the thin metal edges. Tink. Tink. Tink.
It is only when she sees the familiar sight of the Lavoir that she stills her fidgeting. Even now, weeks after her first visit, the same feeling of unsteadiness and imbalance plague her when she looks along the lines of its facade.
Shaking her head, she closes her eyes tight. When she opens them, she stares resolutely at the entry door and strides towards it. She disregards the Elementals congregating in the street, ignores the ones milling about inside. She brushes past them, bypassing the bar and taking up residence at a vacant table.
The izakaya hums with chatter, laughter and music. A few familiar faces fill the small space, too caught up in their own realities to notice her. Except one.
“Nisha?”
Anaiya looks up as Cressida’s shadow falls over her table. Her eyes are dull with enhanced alcohol, her speech husky and slurred at the edges.
“Hey, Cress.”
Cress looks around before settling into the chair opposite Anaiya. A familiar conflict begins to simmer in Anaiya’s mind. She crushes her limbic brain’s emotions, pulling the rationality of her neocortex to the fore. Cress’s smile is tremulous, uncertain.
“I just came over…I just wanted to…to, um, apologise.” Her eyes search Anaiya’s, seeking understanding.
Anaiya shifts her body language, relaxing it, encouraging Cress to continue.
“You know, for yesterday?”
A table nearby breaks into raucous laughter, startling Cressida.
“No problem,” Anaiya says. “What was with that, anyway? You all looked so sombre. I thought someone had died.”
Cress shakes her head. Rueful. “Just the usual ego battle. The resistance has us all a little fired up.”
Anaiya’s skin tingles with the unsaid subtext of Cress’s words. Forbidden words thrown out easily among familiar. Resistance. Fire.
She forgoes her usual restraint. “How did you get involved in it? In the Resistance?”
She hears her capitalisation, where Cress had none.
“Seth says there is no resistance,” she says. The words cause Anaiya’s heart to lurch. “Just consciousness.”
The music in the izakaya swells and fades.
“But others. They see the resistance. See the need for it. And the need for it to do more than just exist. To grow. To do something.”
It is more than Anaiya is expecting. Overwhelming.
Her mission had been simple. To find Rehhd. To have her murmur a sound, any sound, that would approximate three simple syllables.
But here is Cress. The sprite with a spark, a daring and youthfulness that pulls at Anaiya. A Heterodox Air Elemental.
“But why did you get involved?” she persists. She wants to hear Cress say it – to confirm Rehhd’s treacherous pull on vulnerable minds.
Cress shrugs, throwing a cautionary glance over her shoulder.
“It’s never felt right. This,” she murmurs, throwing her hands in a vague clarification. “This has never felt right.”
Something crumbles in Anaiya.
There is the raw honesty of Cress’s statement. But it is more than that. There is a part of Anaiya that responds. That echoes the sentiment.
It doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t feel right.
Recognising it, she immediately thinks of Seth. And then stops herself thinking of him.
Chaos everywhere. What she needs is clarity. The simplicity of her mission.
She bows her head and closes her eyes, keeping them shut even as the chair opposite her scrapes backwards along the polished concrete.
“Don’t let the fire burn you, Nisha.”
The words are mournful. A melancholic echo of the words Rehhd had casually thrown to her on their first encounter.
Anaiya opens her eyes. And Cressida is gone.
Suddenly, the izakaya feels larger. Anaiya, smaller. Her newly minted resolve starts to waver.
What am I doing here?
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Who am I?
The world seems to tilt. Anaiya places her hand on the worn tabletop, steadying herself before she stands.
And then the door to the izakaya opens.
And Rehhd saunters in.
* * *
REHHD’S burnished hair flares bright under the warm lights of the izakaya. Despite her obvious Heterodoxy, she is still impressive. Anaiya lets her centre of gravity fall back into her chair.
I can do this.
Her limbic brain voices its doubts, unheard in the power of Anaiya’s resolve.
“Rehhd,” she calls, her voice tilting over the thrum of punk beats.
&
nbsp; She turns, recognition and then confusion carousing across her features. Nonetheless, she wanders over, shifting from her original trajectory, caught in the curiosity of Anaiya’s implicit command.
“Ah, Anaiya.” She draws out the words, like a languid stutter. “We meet again. You’ve certainly caused a stir since your arrival.”
Anaiya ignores the barb, tapping the recording function of her wristplate hidden under the table. “The world’s a chaotic place,” she replies. “Causing a stir is no difficult feat.”
Rehhd laughs, a light tinkling of champenois glasses, set in sharp contrast to the dense beats of the izakaya soundtrack. “And we all love a good stir, don’t we?” she says, taking the seat only recently vacated by Cressida.
“I haven’t seen you around,” Anaiya says. “Eamon mentioned you were working on a solo project.”
She takes some satisfaction when Rehhd’s eyes narrow slightly, but keeps her own features schooled.
“I’ve got a few works in progress,” she says, before laughing. It is a brittle sound. “What about you, Anaiya? Any interesting projects?”
“A couple. I find the more promise they show, the more they frustrate my efforts at finishing them.”
“That’s the way with all art. The more you pursue it, the more it resists.”
The word flares in Anaiya’s mind. In the end, it was easier than she imagined. The sense of triumph urges her to take her prize and return to her apartment for the analysis, but she stays where she is. “And resistance leads to failure,” she says.
Rehhd’s expression hardens for a brief moment, but then she shakes her head, her features softening. “No, Anaiya. Resistance leads to growth.”
They are both talking in code, layering their words with enough subterfuge to protect themselves, but grounding them with enough truth to voice what they truly wish to say. The realisation sends a thrill through Anaiya and she leans forwards, folding her arms over the table.
“But, fighting the…art…It weakens it,” she says, encouraging Rehhd to engage.
Rehhd pauses. Anaiya sees her indecision in the slight frown at her brow. And, for a moment, Anaiya thinks she has pushed too hard, too fast.
Rehhd sighs, relenting. “No,” she says. “Fighting the art is about restoring the proper order of things. The Elemental creates the art; the art doesn’t direct the Elemental. Fighting the art strengthens the artist. And it is the artist, and not the art, who needs to be strong.”
An uneasy stalemate settles between them. Anaiya looks at Rehhd, trying to understand her words, gauge her motivations. But the code refuses to translate.
Rehhd stands up, breaking the connection. “Don’t let the fire burn you, Anaiya,” she says, before disappearing into the izakaya crowd.
* * *
STREETS AND ALLEYS blur as Anaiya makes her way back to her apartment. She treads the familiar path with heavy feet, oblivious to everything but the maelstrom within her brain. Over and over, it repeats just one word.
Resistance.
Over and over it echoes. Spoken by Rehhd. Spoken by Cress. Spoken by her. And somewhere, layered underneath, kept quiet but not silent, is a dangerous question. What is Resistance?
“Anaiya?”
Seth’s voice comes crashing into her thoughts. She stops abruptly, finally taking in her surroundings.
The narrow street is uneven underfoot, the bitumen surface cracked and pitted. Stark, blank walls rise either side. Simple, unadorned doors provided the only relief: it’s a service lane. Ahead, the view opens onto a sunlit boulevarde, full of life and activity. But, here in the deep shadows of the laneway, there is none.
Anaiya turns around slowly. Seth stands backlit at the laneway entrance.
He moves towards her, each step bringing more details into focus. He’s tired – she sees it in the set of his shoulders and lines on his face.
“Hey,” she says softly.
“Hey,” he replies.
He stands only a few feet away from her. They stay like that for what seems like minutes, silently observing the other.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he says eventually.
Anaiya’s throat closes painfully around the words, feeling them grate against the soft flesh as she swallows.
Walk away, Anaiya. Don’t let him complicate things. You have your evidence. Your mission is almost complete.
But she remains still.
“How is your project coming along?” he asks, raking his hand in a familiar gesture through messy hair. “The one with Kaide’s soundmatcher?”
Instinctively she runs her fingers over the hard planes of the compact cube buried in her jeans pocket. “It’s almost complete…” she manages.
Seth nods, his hand moving to grip the back of his neck. Anaiya can see that he is trying to establish a connection, can see the pained frustration that every pause and shut-down conversation triggers.
Something within her wants to engage, to open up the dialogue and let him in. She pushes her fingers harder against the outline of the soundmatcher, resisting the temptation.
“Is it working out the way you wanted it to?” he asks, still clinging to the bare-thread conversation.
She thinks of the Heterodoxy, of Rehhd and of erasing Kane’s shadow. But the clarity and strength of her usual self-righteous rage has diminished. Tarnished by the unwarranted aggression of Peacekeepers and her growing disconnect with Niamh and the Fire Element. Subdued by her irrational Air attachment to Seth.
Anaiya sighs. “It’s complicated.”
“Good art always is.”
He smiles sadly, the expression causing Anaiya’s heart to tighten. She wonders how her mind will remember these moments once it is realigned back to her Fire Element.
Thoughts of the impending return to her old life flick across the surface of her mind. She realises she will never hear music the same way, or look at a simple object and see a complex beauty. Will never again climb air recyclers to just sit and reflect. Will never again savour cold mornings or quiet moments. Will never again see Seth.
And while it is unlikely that her Fire-aligned brain will miss any of that, the thought of losing it creates a melancholy within her.
“Are you still going to the lockdown party?” she asks.
The grin that brightens his face sets an edge to her melancholy. Her betrayal, a dark shadow that lends weight to her fragile shoulders.
“Yeah. Yes.” He ducks his head and gives a short laugh.
Anaiya smiles despite herself.
“Yes, I am still going to the lockdown party. Does that mean you will be joining me?”
The smile turns cheeky. Seductive.
“I told you,” she replies. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
TWENTY-SIX
“THIS IS a recording I appropriated following the performance Heterodoxy.”
Vision from that afternoon in Precinct 19’s riverside area fills the wallscreen of the small briefing room that Anaiya shares with Niamh. She watches his face closely. He looks non-plussed.
“How does this help us, Ani?”
“Wait,” she says.
Niamh frowns, unfamiliar with delayed gratification, unaccustomed with being told to do anything by Anaiya.
She ignores him and watches the screen. As they did that afternoon, the Dancers let out a piercing wail and begin their dramatisation of death throes. Anaiya holds her breath. There is the shout, and the raised fists, and then the voice. The voice she has listened to over and over again in the isolation of her apartment. That high-pitched, melodic projection of three syllables. Resistance.
The recording stops.
“Ani, there’s nothing we can use. There are no identifying marks, no facial data points. How does this help us?”
“We can identify –”
“We can’t identify anything, Ani.”
She ignores the interruption – the terseness in Niamh’s voice, the lines of frustration on his face.
“We can identify t
he voice.”
Niamh falls silent, letting Anaiya’s words sink in.
“We can identify the voice?”
A smile spreads across Niamh’s face. Anaiya can’t help but smile back even as her stomach tightens.
“Show me.”
Using some basic sound software, Anaiya strips away the background noises of the riverside and the izakaya so only Rehhd’s voice remains. In the perfect acoustics of the briefing room, the identical nature of the two samples is undeniable.
“One hundred per cent match.”
It sends a shiver through her, as it has every time she has read it aloud.
“We’ll need to verify the technology,” he says.
“Get your Water Developers on it.”
His smile slips a little at her tone, but he nods. “It will take a couple of days.”
He starts tapping away on his mobile screen, bringing up a mission spec sheet on the wallscreen. “I’ll put Jenna on exclusive surveillance of the target, get her to identify the ideal detention opportunity.”
“No.” The word comes out harsher than she anticipates, but she doesn’t retract it. “This is mine, Niamh. My intelligence. My mission. I’m the one who will take Rehhd down.”
“Anaiya –”
“No. This is mine.”
Niamh frowns at her. She knows the exchange presents a shift in their dynamic, can tell he is not entirely comfortable with it.
“There is a curfew lockdown party in Precinct 18 on the Sixth Day,” she begins, feeding Niamh the details of the plan she has been developing for the past twenty-four hours. “Rehhd will be there. Get your technology verification before then and we can detain her when curfew lifts. I’ll message you the location of the party and confirmation of her attendance. I’ll lead her to a suitable detention place after curfew lifts – separate her from her supporters, minimise complications.”
“You’ll need backup.”
The thought of Jenna being there to assist grates at Anaiya, but she needs Niamh to approve her plan. “Fine. Jenna and the others can provide backup,” she concedes. “But I’m lead – I’m the one to restrain her.”
Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1) Page 22
