It was said that there one would learn all the ways to counsel, comfort, and console others, master a few arts, and learn to present themselves like a queen; in short, everything one would need to be wanted by everyone, company and services in demand by governments and the highest of bidders. That was where the jokes came from, of course; the Kalaset usually considered it vulgar and the height of impropriety to suggest that they engaged in sexual activities, but it was often whispered hopefully around that they did, just not where the Kalaset could hear it.
After all, no one really knew if they did that kind of thing or not, anyway; not unless you’d actually had the rare luxury of hiring one. But whatever a Kala did with her clients outside of the public eye was always in the strictest confidence. No one ever talked about it, as it was a stipulation of Kalaset law that the privacy of such meetings be respected, and the only law that was allowed to supercede Altairan Alliance law was Kalaset law when dealing with “Kalaset matters.”
That was how the rumor mill went, anyways. So far, 286 had been unsuccessful in getting Sirrah to sleep with her, for whatever reason; go figure. Even a Kala could have poor taste, she supposed. But a couple of weeks living trapped in a space transport with a Kala was enough for her to sort out some of the truth from the fiction where the rumors were involved.
And so it was when the amorphous flow of the crowd parted and a mind-bogglingly well dressed man stepped out of it, moving lightly and directly into Sirrah’s way with a sense of determination, Prisoner 286 looked up and paid attention. He was holding tightly onto a small, ornate, treasure-chest-looking lockbox in both hands, keeping it protectively close as if he were worried about its safety. Sirrah gave him a querying look initially, her vibrant brown eyes searching his face for answers before she’d even offered her questions.
She took the tiniest, graceful half step back and 286 noticed her tense ever so slightly. 286 just smiled, leaning casually against a nearby stall and watching the encounter closely. The man, fashionably bald with a fancy Altairan coat draped stylishly over his fine clothes, bowed to her ever so slightly, with grave respect obvious in the motion. His ornate earrings swayed and bobbed at the motion, any created sound hidden by the noise of the crowd; when he spoke with his cool, cultured, intent tone, he obviously tried to make his voice likewise disappear.
“Kala Sirrah, I apologize for the intrusion.” He said it like he meant it, and 286 started to lose interest, opening her mouth to emit a loud, obnoxious yawn. The stranger paid her no mind, continuing to focus solely on Sirrah and speak with a quiet insistence. “I come on behalf of Don Mateo, and I’m afraid I have to ask an urgent favor of you.”
Sirrah seemed to relax at the name. “Don Mateo? Of course, what is it that you need?” She smiled agreeably at the man, seeming to attempt to reassure him with the gentle comfort of the expression. Behind her, 286 could hear the two adolescent hangers-on yammering incessantly away about what might be happening, probably assuming that it was yet another fancy client of Sirrah’s presenting her with a gift—there’d been four so far today—but 286 sensed something else from him, though he hid it well. Something like urgency or anxiety, perhaps. No, not that… It’s fear. Her eyes lit up as her interest ignited; she knew that scent very well.
Sirrah seemed to realize it too, to her credit. 286 guessed that maybe all that training was good for something after all. “Certainly, I’ll help in any way I can,” Sirrah said, stepping forward slightly and laying a soft touch on his forearm. “Shall we go somewhere private and speak?”
The man shook his head with quick conviction. “There’s no time, I’m afraid.” He glanced with a note of caution toward 286, but looked immediately back at Sirrah before 286 could give him a hearty “fuck off” look. “There’s been… Something has happened, and Don Mateo respectfully requests that this box be delivered into the hands of High Lumina Elune of the Kalaset here on Altair Prime as soon as possible.”
“Don Mateo, is he okay? Did something happen to him?” Sirrah seemed either honestly concerned or faking really well, 286 couldn’t tell. Sirrah opened her mouth to say more, with the man starting to shake his head as if to deny her, meanwhile extending the box as if pushing it towards Sirrah were some sort of explanation in and of itself.
Sirrah didn’t get to voice anything else, however, as a hooded person in nondescript, dark clothing shot out of the crowd, slamming into both of them and wrenching the box free. The bald man fell to the ground with a startled sound, catching himself heavily on one arm, the sound of his surprise shifting to pain. Sirrah cried out in surprise as well as they tore the box away from where she had only just laid a hand on it, but she seemed to step with the momentum of the bodily impact and keep her feet with startling fluidity.
Behind them, one of the girls, or maybe both, let out a loud, startled scream that cut into the air above the crowd. Many, many people started looking, some pointing, some calling out. The marketplace crowd rippled in startled waves as the thief pierced it like a dark arrow, navigating it with enough skill to make quick headway and rapidly disappear from the group’s sight.
Prisoner 286 just leaned there, picking her teeth absently with a fingernail, watching him go with a mild, passive admiration; it took practice to run through a crowd as dense as this one. Sirrah, after a single, stunned moment, spun to face her. “286!”
286 looked at her. “What?” She asked, spitting something out onto the solid concrete sidewalk at their feet.
“286… please… get it back!” She didn’t order, she pleaded.
286 grinned, a slow, jagged grin. “Sounds too much like work.”
Sirrah stared back up at her, finally, with a light sigh and expression of exasperation. “Please,” she implored, delicate shoulders slumping ever so slightly.
Prisoner 286 grinned her manic, spreading grin, looking down at petite, imploring Sirrah. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it? You sure you want my help?” she asked, but it was a rhetorical question. She was already ripping her hands from her pockets, bending her knees, and starting to move.
The chase was on, and there was no stopping her now.
286 launched herself forward before Sirrah could respond, diving headlong into the crowd and through the thickening circle of curious onlookers and helpful Altairan citizens. She shoved, pushed, slammed and dove her way recklessly through the crowd at a breakneck pace, eyes towards the distortion in the tide of people that marked the last vestiges of the thief's passing.
She didn’t use her Kinetics at first; it was fun to just let loose and literally stretch her legs, along with the rest of her body. Her corded muscles were strong from several years under high gravity, where even mundane tasks could be laborious. Her endurance was high, as was her adrenaline, and she felt like she weighed next to nothing in the lighter gravity of Altair Prime. She slammed straight into someone who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, and she barked an abrupt laugh, seeing only a flash of pale blond as they went flying away from her reflexive shove, as suddenly gone as if she’d thrown them.
It cost her, though. She had lost sight of the thief's trail for only an instant, and it was abruptly consumed by the throng; she couldn’t see over the crowd well enough, even with her height advantage, to see for sure where he’d went. With that, 286 realized that no matter how hard she pumped her legs, she wasn’t going to catch him. So she evened the odds.
A split second’s concentration sheathed her in layers of potential energy, so thick it was visible even to the naked eye as a distinct warping in the air, similar to the horizon of a singularity. Further out from 286, the distortion produced a purplish “reverse-negative” halo around the edges of her silhouette as the passage of light was more heavily distorted, warping the colors it carried.
Prisoner 286 fired up that part of her mind responsible for generating her Kinetic powers with the ease of intimate familiarity, feeling the visceral thrumming of power running through her nervous system, and off she went. Her feet cracked the p
avement with the first step as she took off, launching her with greatly magnified force. But running faster wouldn’t be enough; she looked up, fixed her eyes on a point in space, and connected herself to that distant location.
First, gotta get a better vantage point.
Transports, both airborne and ground based, zipped by just around the corners outside of the commercial district, so she targeted a low-flying one, and in an instant, snapped to it, sending it careening with the amount of force her body transferred into it. It crashed sideways into a low residential building, the pilot unable to compensate for the unexpected momentum and impact. But 286 was already gone, amplifying the force she put into her legs and leaping a good ten meters from the transport to the top of the structure as the vessel smashed to a halt against a building, still in midair. She thumped heavily onto one of the well-maintained rooftop gardens common to Altairan residences, her landing absently crushing a substantial row of ceramic pots full of leafy greenery and cracking the tiled surface of the rooftop.
She rolled to her feet, ran to the edge and looked down, scanning back and forth across the surrounding streets. At first she thought she’d need a taller building, but saw the individual in question an instant before she would have decided to abandon this perch for one with more altitude.
There you are! Too easy.
286 connected herself to the point in the alleyway she needed, slamming into the ground an instant later like a falling meteor. Using her Kinetic ability, her body didn’t take the backlash of force from the impact; her surroundings did instead. The shock of her arrival sent a sharp ripple of sudden force through the area, a deep, audible crack rolling through the distorted air. Her erstwhile quarry stumbled, route cut off by her sudden appearance, but he managed to catch the side of a building with a quick arm and kept from tumbling headfirst to the ground.
“So, hey. That thing you took?” 286 commented casually to the thief, running a hand through her hair. She felt a mild sting of disappointment that the game was over so soon. “You might wanna give it ba—”
He took off down a side alley, legs churning the air as he dead sprinted from her view as if… well, as if their life depended on it. Which, maybe it did. They’d both know in a minute. Prisoner 286 laughed, an amused chuckle rapidly growing to a rolling guffaw. And only when she was done did she take off down the alleyways after the thief, her prey.
Altairan residential layouts were just as predictably structured as any other part of their cities, with a dense grid of alleyways and walkways providing the necessary access points to every building. There were literally hundreds of routes one could potentially take in a densely populated area like this one, and it’d be easy to lose someone you were trying to follow if they were smart about it.
But 286 severed most of the runner’s lead when she snapped abruptly to the end of the next alley, almost slamming into him outright as she bounced off of the brick-covered structure right beside him. She felt no pain from the impact, having transferred all of the energy into the building, leaving it the worse for the meeting instead of her. She glanced around as she reoriented, and saw him turn another corner nearby, still at a dead run.
She was laughing again.
She knocked some brick off the outside of several of the next few buildings she slammed into, but her mark was a quick thinker, repeatedly turning corner after corner, keeping her from getting a visual “lock” on him and even using her magnified momentum against her. Several twists and turns later, constantly chasing right behind, but not quite catching up with the thief, 286 decided to change the game again.
286 noticed her best opportunity a few moments later, as he turned into a particular alley and she spotted a way to cut him off. Three quick charges and three heavy impacts later, she turned the corner ahead of him, intercepting him before he managed to exit the alley.
And the thief wasn’t there.
For a moment, 286 scratched the shaved part of her head, furrowing her brow and wondering if she’d actually taken a wrong turn or missed an alley and let him slip from her grasp. But then she heard and felt the echo of a vibration as something scraped above her and sent tiny pieces of stonework trickling down into the alley to her left side. She grinned and looked up, just catching sight of the exposed edge of a foot as its owner clambered lithely over the edge and onto the roof.
Gotcha.
She locked her gaze onto the edge of the rooftop and, like every time before, used her Kinetics to generate a corridor of very low mass in front of her, warping local space and connecting her to the desired focal point and target destination. In the brief instant that the warped corridor existed, she allowed its forces to draw her in; little measurable time passed before her body snapped forcefully into the building’s overhang, smashing straight through the carved stonework rim of the rooftop and arcing over the side in a spray of tumbling masonry shrapnel.
Her point of contact shattered before she could transfer all of the charge’s built up energy into it, so she tumbled a few feet with the excess, feeding the remainder it into the flat, cool brickwork as she rolled. But once on her feet, she saw him again, jacket hood thrown back from either air resistance or exertion. She could admire how fleet of foot he was as he darted for another rooftop, one a decently jumpable distance away, only giving a single quick glance back to gauge her pursuit.
He was too late now, of course. She smiled, taking a couple of deep breaths, and waited until he jumped for the next roof to catch him. Casting out her hand, she stopped him, using her Kinetics to annul all the energy of his motion and leaving him floating in midair, helplessly suspended over an eight floor drop, completely at her mercy. 286 took her time and strolled casually up to him as he slowly spun from the momentum of struggling, panic plain on his face.
She flipped him upside down and pointed the thief’s face toward her as she approached, wavering energy darkening as it rolled and thickened down her outstretched arm. Able to see his face decently at last, the package-snatcher turned out to be a man in his mid twenties, with, she thought, a roguishly handsome appearance. His eyes were wide, alarmed and wild, and he still clutched that ridiculous little treasure chest to his… well, chest. Walking nonchalantly right up to the edge of the rooftop, she moved her arm to manipulate him until he was nearly face to face with her, albeit upside down and still hanging over a forty meter drop.
She grinned at him and tossed her head curiously, and he finally met her eyes, alight with an eager intensity. The man stared for a moment, then promptly panicked, tossing the ornate lockbox toward the distant ground as hard as he could, a motion that set him to slowly spinning once again. 286 just shrugged, rolling her eyes with vague exasperation as she simply reached out her other arm and stopped the little box dead.
She pulled on it until it arrived, thumping solidly into her extended hand, perfectly safe. Still holding him with a casual ease, she carefully bent and placed the box on the roof, then straightened and looked him in the eye. Her other arm dampened the light around it as she gathered energy into her hand; a physics threshold was crossed and with a snap, a sphere of space in the palm of her gloved hand warped in on itself, creating a distortion that pulled lightly on his dangling clothes and hair.
She’d barely gotten out, “So, how about some questions?” before he fainted.
5.1- Sirrah
Sirrah looked up as the crowd parted with a ripple of murmurs, the press of people obviously eager to keep their distance as Prisoner 286 strolled back up, several minutes later. She was casually tossing the valuable lockbox up and down in one hand, and in the other… Oh, dear; she really, really hoped that 286 wasn’t carrying a dead body slung over her shoulder. Sirrah was relieved as 286 tossed the still form down onto their face, because he let out a vague groan when he came in contact with the ground. She looked back at the arrogant Kinetic just in time to barely catch the lockbox that 286 tossed to her.
“There. Got your box.” 286 grinned a toothsome grin, obviously rather proud
of herself.
“Are. You. Insane?” Sirrah closed the distance to Prisoner 286 in a single smooth step, lowering her voice into an emphatic, quiet intensity and looking up at where the Prisoner loomed over her.
“You sound like my numerous Altairan-appointed psychiatrists. What? I caught him. Like you asked. Got your box. It’s all good. Didn’t even eat him. You still got those fancy cigarettes?”
5.2- Prisoner 286
Prisoner 286 sat alone in a little red carpeted waiting room, in a thickly upholstered chair that kept trying to convince her it was comfortable, though she still didn’t agree with it. She sighed deeply, feeling bone-numbingly bored; it felt like she’d been in here for hours, though her personal datapad said it had barely been twenty minutes. She’d had a couple of magazines to entertain herself with at first, but she’d gotten tired of them pretty quickly, and had ended up tearing them into long strips and setting them on fire with her lighter. To her disappointment, however, the carpeting in here didn’t appear to be flammable. So she sat there, thought a bit, planned a bit, and then just flexed her Kinetics over and over, exercising them relentlessly.
She was just getting bored of that and considering finding out whether she could throw the coffee table out the window when Kala Sirrah Nazai swept back in, expression stormy. Now that they were in private, her eyes were alight with flickers of emotional intensity.
“What? You still mad about something?”
“Of course I am!” Sirrah exclaimed, pointing an accusatory finger at 286 as she closed the distance. “You injured eight people when you went through the crowd earlier. One of them was a child. Emergency medics had to come take an older woman away because you pushed her so hard the impact broke her pelvis!” She stared down at 286, pausing to take a deep breath and reign herself in. “You crashed a transport into one building and damaged several more, and managed to accumulate a couple hundred thousand credits worth of damages. In about two minutes! And you don’t see what’s wrong with any of this?”
Destiny Abounds (Starlight Saga Book 1) Page 8
