Moon City

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  “But come back occasionally—”

  “Yes. I'll see my nieces and nephews grow up through a string of holidays that'll feel like a few months, when in fact, I'm missing out on LIFE. People might die or get sick or get divorced, or all sorts of things... But I'll be sleeping... Waiting for you. I love you, but seriously, Dean.”

  As much as he didn’t want to say it, he did. “I know it’s not worth it. You don't have to do it.”

  “Would you?”

  “Absolutely, but I only have an uncle with advanced Alzheimer’s and dementia who I haven’t spoken to in seven years. I get why it’s harder for you.”

  “Forget family and friends.” Something shadowy and judgmental passed over her face. “Would you wait for me if Limbus told you not to?”

  Dean stood up, knees crackling slightly, and grabbed a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks situated on the empty fireplace mantle. Even though Sandra liked beer, she was more refined than he, choosing something more expensive and brewed from alien technology. Dean’s was Canadian Club whiskey. And it tasted fine. He took a big tug of it and leaned against the mantle. “It's funny,” he said, pausing for a moment to choose his words right. “My ex-wife used to give me hell for not being enough. You though? You don't want me to go anywhere, achieve anything.”

  Sandra almost dropped her pilsner. “You're joking, right? I'm not talking you out of a promotion here. For you, this is different. You go through that membrane transport, go do your politicking on Moon City for a few weeks, and then you're back through the transport station. It'll feel like no time has passed for you, especially if you talk me into stasis. You'll come back here, twelve—eleven and a half years later. I’ll be waiting for you and we can pick up right where we leave off. But if I've not been sleeping all that time, I'll have moved on and that scares the hell out of you.”

  “Sure it does. Of course it would.”

  “If they need you so bad, why can't they get you the Golden Membrane Transport? At least on the return trip? I don’t mind waiting months, but damn it, Dean! Tasha Willings gets to GM transport and she's only a master recruiter. You're a director.”

  “Tasha is the daughter of an owner and she's worked for the company for over a hundred years. And the Golden protocol sometimes removes years off your life. I'd come back about two years younger. You wouldn't care for being four years older than me. You don't even like being two years older.”

  “I'd get over that pretty quick if I knew you were back in a couple months rather than a decade. I'd like it much better than having my family think I was abducted, killed, and dumped in a forest somewhere.”

  “I ain’t getting the Golden treatment, Sandy. This conversation doesn't matter. I'm getting the same membrane transport protocol that all the other directors get.”

  After pressing her pouty lips firmly together for a few seconds, she sighed and calmly asked, “So you won't appeal this?”

  “I actually tried. They wanted Hunter on it, but they can't find him.”

  “Idiots. He’d have been a much better choice.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sandra finished her beer and closed her eyes for a moment. “I love you.”

  “You know I do too.”

  “I've never felt this way before about anyone. I know you loved your wife—”

  “But she didn't love me, and so that makes this better. This is real. We are real. Please think about what I’m asking. We are worth this, Sandy.”

  She began to tear up. He knew better than to console her. She didn’t like crying, and if he brought attention to it, her emotions would transform into coldness or anger. He let her be. He gave her the moment.

  “I'm just not so sure I can wait it out, asleep or not asleep,” she admitted, dragging a knuckle across the large tear forming in her left eye. After this she regained herself and nodded. “It's just really hard, Dean.”

  This was his cue. He put down his whiskey and walked over. For a few seconds, he thought over what he could say, what he could do here. In the end, he awkwardly put his hand on her shoulder. She sniffed and shook her head.

  “Get down here and hold me, you dufus.”

  He knelt next to the recliner and wrapped his arms around her, then rested his head on her shoulder. Her perfume was like sandalwood and cinnamon and sex, and it always drew him closer to her, like the homing beacon he needed to land in the fog.

  “I'm sorry for this,” he said.

  “You're a good man, Dean. I just wish you'd stick up for yourself more.”

  “I do. I appealed this. I did.”

  She ignored him and went on. “Sometimes—and don't take this the wrong way—but sometimes I'm sorry I fell in love with someone like you. It isn't what I needed when I came to work here. Things are strange and chaotic and I didn't need anything like this. But I don't want anyone else.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I will wait… for a year before I decide on the stasis. If a year goes by and I still can't bear to be without you, that's when I'll do it.”

  He looked up at her and nodded. It wasn’t the answer he hoped for, but it was better than an outright no. “Thank you, Sandy. Even a chance is better than knowing I'm going to lose you over this.”

  “No matter what, I'm going to change the décor in this place when you're gone. I've wanted to do it since I moved in.”

  He chuckled at this, feeling better when the conversation headed elsewhere. “It's comfy though, right? Warm feeling, like camp?”

  “I never went to camp and now I'm kind of glad.”

  Dean tried on his best fake frown. “You don't feel at home here?”

  “Maybe, if I were Goldilocks.”

  He squeezed her midsection, wanting to make love to her then, but also knowing it might be pushing his luck. Instead, he grinned and said, “I don't care what I return to, just as long as you're here when I do.”

  He remembered the look she had given him then. It was serious, like she wanted to believe him, but wasn’t sure. They did make love a few moments later, but they never discussed his trip to Moon City again.

  In fact, Dean couldn’t recall any other conversations after that night. He remembered nothing more as he concentrated on the tech’s blood-covered hands gripping his own. He was gritting his teeth, trying not to overreact to how white the flesh of his arms looked and how his fingers looked undead as they clawed into the transport tech’s wrists. Dean’s arms had slightly perforated in some places and the blood oozed out, rich and red and tiny shards of light flexing through them from the Quantum Flu.

  Ricky Agate, the Crimson Operative, had better get there soon. Otherwise, it didn’t matter if Sandra waited for him or not, Dean the Slaughter Man would be over.

  He closed his eyes then and hoped his first moments in Moon City weren’t going to be his very last.

  Chapter 3

  My search for the mercenary continued onto the main process floor of the desalination plant. This place must have served all of the Bleeding Caves and possibly other nearby territories. I had this wretched idea just then, like what it might feel like to poison the water supply, just let thousands die because I deemed them unfit for survival. There was power in that, power I deserved. After all, I knew what had made them, so I deserved to unmake them. It went beyond just understanding the stitching of flesh and bone and sinew and biological fluid. I knew how the atom had been created. I knew where electrons came from. I knew where it all originated.

  My heart.

  My giving, impatient heart.

  I gazed across the darkness of the vast processing chamber. Red and amber lights, some of which flashed liked hellish police lights against the hanging stalactites and wrought iron catwalks and plastic water tanks, illuminated the walls. I couldn’t find the mercenary, and it was starting to unnerve me. I’d followed him closely enough. It was upsetting he’d slipped away. He was very good for a human. Very good.

  You’re human too, I reminded myself, but then squashed it.
/>   No I wasn’t.

  I hadn’t been for a long time.

  The Deitii spinal cocktail feeding my blood had changed all that, brought awareness.

  A trapezoid of white light opening in the darkness brought me out of my musings. A utility worker walked out of a nearby office with a clipboard in hand. It was hard to distinguish the figure, but the hips and roundness of the chest painted her as female. All of her face was indistinct, save for her dark brows knitted in annoyance.

  “Take your artwork out to the outer caverns,” she said wearily. “You Noggins were told—”

  “I'm not a Noggin,” I told her.

  “I don't care what you are. You have to leave.”

  “Absolutely. But my friend is in here. He’s lost his way. Might you help me find him?”

  The utility worker grew more upset by this. “And your friend will be told the same thing as you. Leave at once.”

  I took my eyes off of scanning the dark corners of the installation and brought them back to her. She took a step back as I approached. I didn’t give her another moment. I pounced. She broke her clipboard against my shoulder. It actually really hurt. I reacted by punching her in the face and she collapsed, her nose pushed inward in a bloody mess. She dropped on her hip, dead before she hit the floor.

  Another door opened from above, a gaping white-hot maw in the dark. A new form emerged, this one taller and broader in the shoulders. It banged heavily down the catwalk stairs. The light from the open door below gave his pensive face some detail. The man was dressed in the same gray and white, striped jumpsuit as the woman I’d just destroyed. He was reading a long, hook-shaped gauge, an expression of distracted interest and bewilderment focused there.

  “Cathleen,” he called out, “there's another spike in total dissolved solids. Fifth one today—”

  Just then, he caught sight of me and froze at the bottom stair. I smiled and lifted my hands, surrendering.

  “Hey, I just came to apply for a sampling job. I think I startled her and she collapsed. Call the medical regent.”

  The man focused now on the slumped-over form at my feet. “Cathleen?”

  I bent over and retrieved a part of the splintered clipboard she’d struck me with. “She said you needed this.”

  The man didn’t have a chance to form a word before I winged the jagged blade of wood at him. It sliced through his neck, almost decapitating him. Blood spilled across the catwalk steps and he dropped to his knees. I noted the red letters on his gauge, FATAL ERROR, and I couldn’t fight off a smile.

  I sensed I was being watched. Perhaps it was my newfound powers, perhaps it was just intuition. The mercenary sent to kill me lay out there in the shadows, watching. Maybe afraid, maybe curious, a mix of both, but whatever the case might have been, his eyes drank me in.

  I felt it.

  “Who do you work for?” I asked, my last word a booming echo in the chamber. After a moment of silence, I went on. “I am not a sadistic type, believe it or not.”

  Still no response. I laughed and massaged my neck thoughtfully. “I just thought since I had a captive audience, I'd like to show you what was in store.”

  The continued silence began to piss me off. My eyes darted around, trying to lock on something meaningful. “What agency do you work for? The Titan Group? Survivors of Ganymede? GalactiaBank? The outer monarchy? Although I doubt you'd worry with me when they're at war with the Fanglions.”

  The murkiness of my knowing shifted; this was how it was with the remainders of the Deitiis’ old power. It came in high-rising and low-crashing waves. I knew where the mercenary was then. I couldn’t distinguish him visually because my eyes were not heightened but my awareness was. I withdrew my Repeater and took aim for a single support cable high above. I fired and neatly cut the cable apart. The entire upper catwalk crashed down at once. A shadowy figure rolled out of the falling structure and leapt on top of a water processing tank. I took aim and fired again. A round shattered the left side of the mercenary’s helmet, revealing his square jaw and bronze skin. A small stream of blood pelted down and his left hand went up in reflex. With another shot, I got him in his left hand. A micro-explosion of blood burst from the wound and the mercenary cried out, the first time I’d ever had the pleasure of hearing the contours of his voice.

  I ran for the tank and spotted the mercenary as he opened a heavy iron door in a non-distinct wall in the darkness—he had to have studied this place beforehand. Whoever this man was, he was not easy prey. In fact, I smelled a richness in his blood indicating a greatness that might have terrified me had I not been a walking god. This man wasn’t the famous mercenary, Christopher Agate, that I’d read about in the news… but this man was related to the same greatness somehow. This was his relative. A cousin? A brother? With how time-warped space travel could be, it was possible it was his son, father, or grandfather as well.

  The door slammed shut as I arrived. It had an airlock wheel, and with one solid slap, I spun at a maddening pace, the force popping the iron door open on its own as the wheel completed its circuit.

  I rushed inside. On the second floor above, I saw the mercenary inside an office, beyond a thick pane of glass. He was throwing switches and pushing buttons.

  An alarm blared then and a digital readout behind the office window read BRINE DISPOSAL ACTIVE, and there were flexing patterns of lines indicating progress. Blasts of brine water rushed from the countless clay pipes in the walls. The chamber started to fill. And quickly. The level of brine rose over my shoes in a matter of a minute or less.

  I turned to the door behind me. I heard a click and a turning of gears. A bar of red light glowed above the door, indicating it being locked, I supposed. Still, I tried to wrench on the door’s wheel. It didn’t budge, and I didn’t have enough strength left in me to make it come undone. I looked back up to the office. A resounding snap and clunking, followed by a red light illuminating over the office door, specified that room was also sealed off to me.

  The mercenary now did look down. He smiled, his long, black bangs almost touching his thin, but pleasantly red lips. With a patronizing wave of his hand, he departed to the back of the office. I saw a door open and he disappeared. Despite myself, I smiled. This wasn’t it. He couldn’t kill me. He was good, but that didn’t matter. He was only good for a human. We weren’t the same. I smiled wider and chuckled.

  I dashed for the ladder to the second-level catwalk. My hands and feet slapped against the rungs mechanically, the vibrating hum of metal underneath them, its energy helping me ascend. I crashed down the catwalk to the office door. I tried to crank the wheel, but the door was just as sealed as the one down below. I glanced over the railing. The level of foamy brine water lifted rapidly. It was well over three feet deep and increasing. I looked around, trying not to be too frantic because it was humiliating. I turned my sight inward and called on whatever form of power I had left. I had plenty left to look through the world. My eyes roamed around, colors flickering from black to silver. The cavern walls thinned. I began to see through them. I went and dragged my hand over the wall.

  I found a very thin section. I ran my fingers delicately over the rough surface where the rock wall wasn’t as deep. I considered it a moment, stepped back, then began kicking it with all I had. Pebbles and clumps of rock fell away, but not significantly. I continued harder, gritting my teeth, giving it my all. I glanced over my shoulder and noted the rising water. It scared me how fast it was coming. I’d drown after a time.

  I’d drown.

  It made me remember a different time in my life. Something that happened around ten years ago at the mineral pool. There were so many kids and parents roaming around, enjoying themselves, and there I was, at the edge of the cavern pool, staring at my ugly, knobby toes. The thoughts going through my mind rang back clear, recalled completely as though whispered into my inner ear. You’re going to go home, aren't you? She’ll call you feeble. She'll wonder why you didn't give her more bedroom time with Jack. She'l
l say that when she was your age, she'd swim all day, that she was in control of her life even as a child.

  I wiggled my toes and edged closer to the water.

  But you aren't her. The last time you almost drowned, her boyfriend, Ryan, was there to rescue you. He was a good man. But she doesn't keep those kind around. Because she's in control of her life—she makes it what she wants. She creates children and lets them go off on their own... And fall. She doesn't care what happens to us. I only stayed when the others left because I was afraid. What if she knew how I'm not going to be afraid ever again? What if she knew I'd rather die than ever be her plaything? I'm in control. Me.

  I looked back on that younger man, snarling as he leapt into the pool, and then sank beneath the sapphire water and dropped to the bottom. There, that younger man closed his eyes as though to be transcendent of the crushing water around him. But that didn’t last long. His eyes shot open. He began to struggle. Bubbles erupted from his mouth. They covered everything.

  I honestly couldn’t remember how I survived that day. I couldn’t remember saving myself and I couldn’t remember anyone coming to assist me. All I remember were the thousands of bubbles around me, just as there were now, surging up to me on the brine water. I’d not let them claim me again. I took a step back and kicked a melon-sized divot out of the wall. I kicked it again, but buckled backward in pain. My knee throbbed and the joint felt wrong, disengaged now. Limping, I ventured over to the office again and put my hand hopelessly against the wheel. The brine water sloshed down over the catwalk, having filled more than half of the chamber.

  Time was short.

  I returned to the thin place in the cavern wall and kicked with my other leg. Some pebbles crumbled away, but still no progress to boast of. I double-timed my kicks, water flinging up each time. The water level had become ankle-deep and I found it more difficult to continue at the same pace.