Archon's Queen

by Matthew S. Cox

  The customer pulled at his collar, staring at her sideways. “W… What’d I get for that?”

  “Whatever ya fancy, ‘cept don’t cause permanent damage. You do anything to ‘er a stimpak won’t fix, I’ll tear your boys off and feed ‘em to ya.”

  She stood on tiptoe, licking the bars and winking. The man peeled his gaze from her to babble at the bouncer. In the end, fear won him over and he scurried away. Anna wanted to turn her back to the room to hide the sudden tears that rolled free, but anywhere she faced was more depravity. Half the multicolored, strobing lights, as well as her holo-rig, sputtered and went dark. She swallowed her shame; emotion let the thing out of its cage.

  Calm down, Anna. Calm down.

  The lights and electronics came back, and within a moment, the confused quiet gave way to the usual din.

  Her body did not want to continue. She held on to the bars, swaying barely enough to convey an attempt at continuing to dance. The flashing lights and overbearing music swirled together in her head, creating nausea as though she had suffered a punch to the gut. She swallowed a hint of her breakfast again, gasping for air as she broke out in a cold sweat. The flavor reminded her of Penny. She wanted Penny to save her from the cage like she had saved her from the street. Anna shook the cage, desperate to escape, wanting to go home. Greedy faces blurred at her feet, spinning and whirling into a sickening spiral of degradation. In a moment of panic, she strained at the door, trying to open it. The crowd cheered and clapped at her yearning look at the club’s exit, assuming her effort to escape was part of her act.

  Stop looking at me.

  She sank to the bottom of the cage and clutched one leg to her chest. The other dangled through the bars below. The initial shock of cold metal upon her skin melted to comfort a few seconds later. Sitting felt wonderful. Her limbs shook, no matter how much she tried to will herself to stop. She leaned her forehead into a space between two bars, too narrow for her skull to fit through. The chill offered momentary relief from the nauseous headache jackhammered into her brain by the sound system.

  The holographic wings curled forward. Blue again, they draped around her like a pixie asleep on a branch. She shivered, having gone from overheated to freezing. Beads of sweat raced each other down her extended leg like errant spiders. The trembling intensified. She let go of her breasts and rubbed both arms trying to warm up. Staring eyes bathed her in a chill as though she sprawled out in the snow with nothing on.

  Anna wanted a warm blanket, a bed, something softer than the rigid cage in which she cuddled. A convulsion brought a trace of vomit to the back of her mouth; a gossamer thread of bile extended through the bars to the floor. Time lost meaning as she flitted in and out of consciousness, the numbing cold the only constant. A man’s voice wobbled through her clouded mind, asking if she was okay. Bottled water came through the bars and she hugged it like a doll, sipping at it, still floating outside of time. Rejecting the offering, her stomach wound into a knot and sent the liquid back up through her nose in a sputtering cough.

  A loud crack of metal on metal jarred her out of her fog. Her head snapped up; the floor around her had cleared of men, except for one. Blake hovered outside, his cheeks red, his eyes glaring. Sprawled at the bottom of the cage, she looked down at him. He roared; his teeth and tongue sprayed her with tiny fragments of discontent. Blake smashed the bars with his truncheon again and again, whatever words he bellowed failed to pierce the haze in her mind.

  She reached up to grip the cage and pulled herself standing. Being eye-level with her shins seemed to enrage him even more. Inch-thick plastisteel bars made for uncomfortable footing. The cage wobbled, chains clattering, with her uneasy balance. Anna tugged at the door, locked as always. Blake said it was for their protection.

  Bullshit, he loves hearing me beg to be let out.

  The incoherent fog between her ears parted as real-time sound came rushing in; the music seemed much weaker than his voice.

  “Oi, stupid doser bitch. This ain’t naptime! Get your ass moving. You forget you’re for sale? None of these gits wants to dip their wick in a zombie.”

  Anna grasped the bars, rattling the hatch. “Please Blake, I need to use the loo. I feel like shit. Lemme outta here?”

  “You’ve only been at it for two hours, your break’s not for another three. Get to it, or you can spend all night in there.”

  “Come on, Blake. I’m serious. I feel lousy…”

  Anger faded to laughter. “Oh, is that so? How many sick days do you have left?” His joviality ended in an instant, voice dropping to a threatening growl. “I own you, girl. Never forget that.”

  “It doesn’t matter how much of a shit you are to me.” Anna clutched at the cage to stay upright, casting a hateful stare. “Answer’s still no. You ain’t gettin’ in my knickers by being a bigger twat.”

  “You don’t wear knickers, whore.” He bashed the enclosure an inch above her fingers.

  She jumped back; her foot slipped through the bars and she landed on her ass. She grabbed her pinched thigh and screamed. Pain rode up her spine and detonated a budding migraine into a cascade of vomit that splattered onto the floor. Letting gravity take her, she curled into a heap on her side, staring at the wavering blue antenna bobbing in front of her eyes. Everything hurt. The music thrummed into her brain, sending wave after wave of bile through clenched teeth. Flashes of hot and cold ran through her limbs. Her bones ached. When his last word reached her brain―whore―the sound system burned out with a deafening concussive boom that sent all but two of the patrons diving to the floor.

  She shivered, glaring at Blake as he turned to deal with pissed off customers. Blue sparks danced over her arms, lapping at the cage. Anna held up a hand, mesmerized by the electricity crackling through her fingers. All she had to do was want Blake dead. Her arm slipped through the bars, straightening, pointing at him.

  The door was still locked. She’d kill him and get caught. Her lip curled into a sneer. Fuck it.

  Power built up around her as she gathered current from her surroundings. She concentrated on Blake’s head, wanting the current to be drawn there. A feeble thread of lightning snapped between her fingertip and his skull. He swatted the spot as if bitten by a mosquito. Anna let her arm fall limp as a head-sized droid floated up outside of the cage, flashing a holographic advert for antacid.

  After a mild convulsion, she vomited again.

  Her left eye felt as though a knife had pierced it; the migraine worsened. A few men wandered over to see what Blake would do, but he shooed them towards other dancers less visibly sick. The sales bot lost interest and glided away and her body succumbed to involuntary shudders punctuated by searing threads of pain that flickered through every nerve.

  ilence crashed over her with the strength of a loud noise, making her sit upright so fast her head felt like it remained on the bottom of the cage. Darkness surrounded her, broken only by the deep blue glow of her wings. Reality spun in circles around her head and numbness had replaced the feeling of biting cold. She leaned forward, reaching to grasp a horizontal bar. The holographic antennae perked up as she raised her head.

  The Bristol City Club was dark, the place having been left to its own devices in the wee morning hours of the next day. Annabelle stared at the obstinate locked door. Blake made good on his threat―she remained trapped inside long after everyone had left. She thrashed at the unmoving door after pulling herself to her feet. Sensing her motion, the faerie wings batted as if she used them to help pull against the enclosure. Her attempt at a scream, a pathetic raspy squeak, reminded her how thirsty she was.

  “Blake, you twat! Let me the feck out of here right this instant!”

  When her scream echoed back unanswered, she seethed with anger for several minutes before her brain sought the comforting retreat of feeling helpless. Tears came unbidden as she struggled to escape.

  The bobbing motion sent her back to her knees in dry heaves; the taste of hours-old vomit returned. Her limbs hu
ng through the bars as she sagged, staring into a bucket Blake had hung below, scowling at the thought he cared more about his floor than his workers. She considered spiting him, but somehow found the presence of mind amid her shuddering misery to fear the beating it would earn her.

  Once the retching ceased, she reached through at the water bottle she had dropped hours before. Blake left it there, no doubt knowing she would never be able to reach it. She could stand under the cage without it touching her head. One arm wouldn’t make it to the floor. For ten minutes she tried, sticking arm and leg through the bars in every conceivable contortion. The closest she got was a toe a few feet away.

  Fading to oppressive heat, the numbness retreated. Sweat came, this time with a fever and flashing patches of burning sweeping in waves. The zoom was out of her system; all traces of it sat beneath her in the pail. It had been more than a year since she had let it fade this far. Mercifully, she felt so awful the presence lurking in the back of her mind was the farthest thing from it. At the moment, she would have happily glommed anything she could find: a Zoomer, Narcoderm, Freelove, Flowerbasket, Smileys, Yellow Crumblies, a Racer Dot, anything… except maybe Nightcandy or Lace. She craved a high, not a casket.

  After a short-lived repeat of her ineffectual thrashing at the door, she held her hands over the lock. Ages ago, she might have caused an arc strong enough to melt it. Her fried mind failed to summon even a static shock. Even her emotion racing from anger through shame to terror produced no effect in the surrounding electronics. The throes of withdrawal kept her power well and truly unreachable. She was helpless, for real.

  Is this what it’s like to be normal?

  She draped herself against the cage, letting her legs hang free, too hot to move. In defiance of the lethargy that immobilized her body, her mind searched. Knowing she was locked in and could not go off in search of the substance she so desperately craved made her want to scream and kick and shout. Her muscles spent, her angst took the form of a piteous whimper through her nose. Glimmering threads of light, the silver bars reflecting the faerie wings, mesmerized her. A tendril of drool descended from the corner of her lip, landing unnoticed upon her breast. She gaped at the shifting light as if it offered insight to the deepest mystery of the known universe.

  An hour passed before the shivering came again; the involuntary spasms of protesting muscles rattled the chains from which her prison hung. Her brain cried out for zoom, the static reality of her surroundings displeased it. She stared at the keyhole and recalled a vid she’d watched as a child where an evil magician kept a faerie locked in a jar to use as a lantern. Anna felt like that tiny woman now; her immediate surroundings aglow in the hologram blue of slow-fluttering wings.

  She traced a finger over her pixie tattoo and wondered how much it resembled what she must look like, though certainly she was not grinning. It was futile to fight the cage, and even less purposeful to feel shame. She curled into a shivering ball, forehead against her knees, and cried.

  This is what I deserve.

  Brilliant sparking explosions shocked her eyes open, and she recoiled from a shower of embers sputtering out of media projectors in the roof. Shame and guilt had awoken the beast. Glancing at the wings, she let slip a detached giggle that they had survived. Then again, they didn’t have much power in them. Anna tried again to melt the lock, but the limp tendril of current that leapt from her hand to the cage only grounded into the ceiling. Am I that rusty? In order to melt plastisteel, she would need more current than she could generate from thin air. She would have to redirect it from a mains supply. Alas, everything in the place had been shut off at the breaker.

  The night passed in alternating moments of lucidity and delirium. The bottom of the capsule-shaped cage offered no comfort; no matter how she sat or curled, the bars pressed pain into some tender exposed bit of flesh. Only by virtue of withdrawal did she lose blocks of time. Sweating, shivering, and freezing cycled in minutes-long shifts.

  Anna had not eaten since breakfast the previous day, though her condition kept hunger at bay. Sometimes falling into a dream, she imagined herself a real faerie in a real jar, pounding at the glass and begging someone to let her out. Anna cradled sore hands to her chest, unable to distinguish the line between real and dreamed pain.

  She tried to cover her body, even the unblinking gaze of an empty room made her feel exposed. Her prison hung near the center of the club, she had no direction to turn where someone could not find a view. Sleep teased at the edge of her mind and the sense of cold metal on her back changed to something warm and smooth. She sat up, finding herself sprawled at the bottom of an immense bottle.

  Hand-blown glass distorted the face of the mad wizard leering at her, chin to brow as tall as her height. The initial shock wore off at the realization her world was a flashback. Anna pressed herself into the glass away from the monstrous face as it grew shorter and fatter. The eyebrows thickened, and the ancient mage morphed into the visage of Blake.

  The sphere of a man hovered outside the cage, raking his truncheon back and forth across the bars. Her entire body ached as if she had been hit by a maglev train, then run over by another one going the opposite way. The deafening cacophony made her grab both sides of her head.

  Floor hit her in the face. She did not remember the cage opening or him grabbing her. The bucket appeared in her hands, the truncheon struck across her buttocks in a series of sharp slaps, urging her across the club to the rear hallway and a bathroom, where he made her dump it. Blake shouted the whole time, though his words drifted through her brain in the form of random explosions of sound somewhere far away.

  Compared to the bathroom, the cage had been warm.

  The annoying metronome rap of the baton upon her backside chased her on unsteady legs from there to a corridor where her face met the wall several times. Each time she stumbled, he helped her up by a fistful of hair. Time stopped and started; her vision presented as a blur of still images flashing in sequence through her mind.

  One by one they came: hallway tilted left, floor, wall, hallway tilted right, ceiling, a bright LED bulb hanging on a naked wire, and doors. From blur to magnificent detail, every grain of sand and every mite upon the surface of each picture glowed in her mind before it returned to unrecognizable haze. The cycle repeated until she sprawled on tattered green carpet that reeked of sweaty socks.

  Blake’s hand gripped her shoulder and warm sausage-laden breath choked her gagging. “Think ye kin freeload here, eh?”

  It should have hurt, but nothing broke through the full-body agony of the absent zoom. He opened a door with her face and shoved her through. The blurring colors in front of her hinted at the shapes of a messy bedroom. His erection stabbed her in the back through his pants; she stumbled when he shoved her forward. The fall seemed to take longer than it should have.

  She landed on her chest in a mound of cold, wet trash.

  Anna lifted her head out of the plastic and stared into the rainy grey of an alley. For several seconds, an empty can adhered to her cheek before it peeled away and fell back into the pile. Water pooled in the small of her back and her surroundings glowed azure from the false wings that still managed to work despite the rain. Her soreness receded to a point, shrinking out of her limbs and hiding in her head as if someone had wedged a cannonball between the lobes of her brain, and it crushed outward at the back of her skull.

  With a soft whimper, she braced a hand to the side of her head, surprised to find the band of imitation flowers still there. Nudging it caused the antenna to wobble in front of her; the nauseating motion of azure orbs set her dry heaving.

  When it passed, she tried to climb off the irregular pile of garbage, but wound up slipping and rolling into a seated position on gritty pavement. Her half-closed eyes gazed at the mound of trash bags, the wet pavement beneath her, and up at eighteen stories of fire escapes from which more water dripped. The wall helped her remember how to stand; she spent a minute leaning on it and trying to understand how s
he had gotten there from the cage, or why it was daylight now.

  Several advert bots swarmed her, displaying advertisements for clothing. When they failed to detect the presence of a NetMini signal or ImDent chip, they lost interest and rushed off, careening over each other around the corner.

  Most of the population carried NetMinis, small hand-held devices that combined the function of a VidPhone and computer terminal. Linked to Personal Identity Data, or PID for short, a wave of the device by a merchant’s terminal let civilized people pay for goods and services. Alas, NetMinis were not on good terms with Anna. Every time she’d gotten one, it had burned out in a week.

  Hand over hand along the wall, she made it into the street and went two blocks over before the steady stream of gasps and insults reminded her the pixie costume electronics were all she had on. She remembered the long-absent feeling of shame coming over her in the cage, but since she was free, only one thought echoed through her mind.

  Nakedness was not it.

  Her face fell to a sullen frown. Anna let the words hit her and she accepted them, cringing away from each voice. Whore was a popular one, tramp, slut, filth, street trash, and of course pikey. She lacked the coordination to reach up behind her back and turn the wings off, so she plodded along with them curled over her like a smashed dragonfly. One or two passersby clapped or whistled in appreciation for the unexpected show; they made her feel worse than the sanctimonious ones.

  This part of the city saw few cops unless a riot or a raid wound up on the menu, but fortunately, neither one had been scheduled that day. The falling rain washed some of the filth of her miserable night into the gutter. She walked through the open space in the crowd as it moved to let her pass. Despite being one bad week away from winding up in Coventry themselves, the dregs of this part of town acted as if above her. Most had low-wage jobs with little prestige and lived ten bodies to an apartment, but even they looked down their noses at people from The Ruin.