“Flirt with things.”
“Smart-ass.”
“The fire nest is ready,” Leaf said in a dry tone, then cracked a small smile.
Fillion scooted toward the small flame. His hands, jittery and clammy, pulled a joint from his leather pouch and leaned forward. The joint shook in his mouth. But he managed to inhale deeply, exhaling the smoke with rapture as he eased onto his back once more, knees up. His free arm fell over his eyes and he moaned in pleasure as he dragged on the joint again. After a few seconds, he turned and blindly flicked the ashes into the fire nest. Or, where he hoped the fire nest was. Whatever. His mind was rambling.
What was his next move? Think, he reminded himself again. God, he was tired. He just wanted to curl up and drift off to the sounds of the jungle seeping through the opened hatch. Focus. Maybe the network was still accessible. It was worth a shot.
The compacted earth grated against the back of his head as he maneuvered to retrieve Ember’s Cranium, placing it on his ear. With a tap, it turned on. At least that was working for him. He could attempt hacking Bessy. But it would take hours to hack and reprogram that dinosaur. He didn’t have hours tonight.
“Kill the lights,” Fillion said as he squinted at the faint holographic password screen. “Thanks,” he sighed as the hatch plunged into darkness. “You haven’t asked what the note meant.”
“I knew you would share when ready.” Leaf stomped out the fire nest and then stretched out on the ground next to him. “Your father reminds me of Skylar in some ways, especially with his oddly youthful appearance. Even the quality of his voice is reminiscent.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought that since Exchange Day.” Fillion put the joint in his mouth, held his Cranium so he didn’t flash Leaf, and then turned the Earth Element’s direction. “My mom and dad get treatments to eternally look twenty-something. It’s gross. One day I’ll look the same age as them, and then older and older. It weirds me out.”
“Aging is something to respect and honor.”
“Something like that.” Fillion looked back up at his holographic screen.
Leaf looked up. “This is a Cranium?”
“Yep.”
“How is it different than the Messenger Pigeon portal or a Scroll?”
“Bessy needs big parts, physical screens, speakers. Scrolls use smaller parts. Craniums use bone conduction so the sounds are not in your ears but in your head. The display is holographic, ghost-like. The parts are micro.”
“Fascinating.” Leaf placed a hand behind his head.
“Yeah, modern magic.” He adjusted the Cranium on his ear to ensure it was snug. “I hope this works,” he said aloud, mainly to himself.
He held down the power button for ten seconds and waited for the device to reboot into maintenance mode, but nothing happened. “Cheeky thing,” he said under his breath. Fillion repeated the process, but this time touched the upper right-hand corner of the holographic screen as he simultaneously held down the power button. The Cranium refreshed to an admin login screen and Fillion’s lips turned up in amusement. Ember had left a back door into the security settings by hacking her start-up screen.
Fillion arranged the admin screens with one hand while placing the joint between his lips with the other. Smoke curled in front of him and then faded behind the holographic field. He tapped on the service tab, selected the option to “reset admin permissions.” Yes, he wanted to remove the current password and go to factory default. A few swipes later, he was in the system and went to see if TechMage2054 was online. No WiFi access. There had to be a hidden network out there, though, because he just connected to his dad through Messenger Pigeon. He went back to work and began writing code to scan for broadcasting wireless networks.
“It is almost like a language,” Leaf said.
“That’s exactly what it is. I’m fluent in five computer languages and partial in three others. This is the core language. Every hack-wannabe knows it.”
Leaf lifted his hand and pointed. “Is this also the other language you verbally speak?”
“No.” Fillion smiled. “That’s Japanese.” He placed the joint in his mouth, lifted up his tunic, and pulled down his breeches a bit to reveal the lines and curves tattooed on his lower stomach. Leaf sat up and examined the exposed skin, etched in blue. “This is Japanese—its hiragana form, anyway. There are several syllabaries. I like the look of this one.” Fillion rolled his eyes at himself for info dumping on Leaf. Now, he was verbally rambling. There was no help for it. He was so tired. “It says ‘hacker.’”
Fillion’s eyes burned and were swollen, compliments of his explosive catharsis. But he turned his attention again to the slew of digital information hovering above him. He groaned after drawing on his joint, frustrated with finding no trace of TechMage2054. Maybe they hadn’t pre-launched for beta. He adjusted the filters on his rules and continued to search.
“You speak many languages.”
“Only two human languages, same as you,” he murmured, distracted by the new data.
“I speak three.”
Fillion smirked. “Hot,” he drawled in a sexy voice and Leaf chuckled shyly.
After scanning through lines of output, he found a hit—an active broadcasting signal. The victory was short-lived, though. The password didn’t work. “Damn,” he muttered and stifled a yawn. Sharp pricks of pain inflamed across his knuckles as he bent his fingers, and Fillion winced. He let out a disgruntled sigh and rubbed his face, then puffed on his joint. “Well, here goes nothing.” He had the channel for the hidden network. So he launched a low-level packet capturing tool he found built into the Cranium’s shell. In a matter of seconds, he collected enough data on the hidden network to reverse engineer the security key. He entered the final command and waited to be “Denied.”
But the dialog never came. It worked. He stared, disbelieving, as his pulse raced with excitement. At the bottom of the field a Xandria icon appeared and he dragged open a Net screen to the front of his tiles and enlarged it. Ads ran across the side, some flashing, some with live action. Normally the activity didn’t faze him, but his eyes were out of practice and he blinked a few times.
“I feel as though I am watching you manipulate a dream,” Leaf said in wonder. “The colors are absolutely stunning.”
Squinting, Fillion swiped in a URL address, concentrating too much to comment. His body wanted to power down and recharge and he fought against the current to stay alert. The cloud system he shared with Mack appeared, stored on a server from the underground, and Fillion swiped in the password. The nub of his joint hung loosely in his mouth as he grinned. Encryption keys, software tools, and cheat files greeted him like old friends, tokens of his prior life and his future.
“Touch the word ‘pathetic’ for me. I need to do something.”
Leaf slowly touched the pool of light in the air, releasing a breath when the screen changed. Fillion used the opportunity to flick the ashes and pull out another joint, lighting up from the previous one, and then tapped on the quick connect to Mack’s line. The outgoing signal was music to his ears and he laughed. Physically laughed out loud. Oh god. He really was losing his mind.
“Who’s th— Whoa, bishounen. You look like, uh, like someone died or something.” His friend’s forehead wrinkled. Or was it a pillow crease? “But you were laughing.” Mack’s eyes widened and he sat perfectly still. “Have you cracked? Is that even you? Or is this an alien using Fillion’s body as a host?”
Fillion pressed his lips together in a droll expression. “The black eyes are bletcherous, man.”
“Ha! Ha! LOL.” Mack scratched his head with his middle finger.
“Don’t use that kind of archaic text-speak with me,” Fillion said with a slight half-smile. “Poser.”
“OK. It’s you.”
“Why haven’t you received a med treatment?”
“Battle wounds to attract the female species,” Mack said, then bit down on his tongue and grinned. Fillion chuckled to appease his
friend. “So, in all seriousness, you look like shit. Are you in trouble?”
“Hanley.”
“Wait, is this line secure? I’m assuming your other Cranium is fried.”
“Shit. So damn tired. I forgot.” Fillion let out a heavy sigh. “I was hacked. We both need new keys.”
“Hackers are such pests. We should rid the world of this plague before it totally ravages the wild fields of Cyberspace.” His friend’s lips twitched as he suppressed a grin. “I got our backs. Again. As usual. Have I mentioned yet that you owe me big time?”
Still gritching under his breath, Mack’s eyes grew distant as he stared at a new screen layer, and his finger danced through the air. His friend’s speech slurred on occasion. But Mack was definitely on the downhill back to sober. A command prompt appeared as a layer on Fillion’s end. He minimized the screen and watched the key download. After a few minutes it refreshed to a new user interface, greeting his handle.
“Did you kill someone for this Cranium? You look like you could’ve committed your first murder and are all twitchy about it.”
“It was a gift from a ghost.”
“Tell me it was a hot-medieval-Martian-cyberpunk chick, the kind that haunts you for all the right reasons. Not Laughing Man.”
Even though he wasn’t in the mood, Fillion played along. “Fat, ugly, hairy beast of a man. Totally your type.”
“Damn Internet.” His friend’s face broke into smile. “All right, hit me.”
Fillion spilled everything. The full conversation with Hanley, the Death and Curse cards, even his supposed engagement to Akiko. All the stuff he wanted to tell his friend before leaving for New Eden, but couldn’t for fear of being overheard. All the goings-on of New Eden, including Leaf’s coming out of the closet. The airlock, and the note.
It felt good to unload. The pressure inside him released. The line was secure and New Eden was housed inside a giant Faraday cage, so he didn’t worry about being vocally tapped by the media.
As expected, Mack wrote out his questions and lifted up the notebook, and Fillion answered. A frown remained in place as his friend listened, an out-of-place look on Mack. The bruises around Mack’s eyes added to the grim expression, their shadows deepening as eyebrows, usually raised in humor, pinched together in distress. This dark look rarely visited Mack and made his friend look much older than his eighteen years.
“Damn. No wonder you look like shit,” his friend said when the purge reached completion. “Stupid question, but are you OK? Like, going to make it, OK?”
“No and yes.”
“Fair enough.” Mack tapped his bottom lip in thought. “Did you watch the links yet?”
“The trip wire cut me off before I could. Load them up?”
A vid box materialized in the lower right-hand corner and Mack started up the first link. The waning nausea attacked full force as Fillion watched his mom’s wild reaction. Not once had she ever expressed such intense emotions about anything. She had always loved Joel? Hanley’s response to that confession confused him. It was like he actually loved his mom. Was it real or for show? He chanced a look at Mack, who studied him closely, the frown reappearing. Fillion cringed with the sound of his sister’s voice, especially when she blabbed his secret to Coal. Was nothing sacred? He let out a nervous breath.
Without missing a beat, Mack launched the next link when the first one ended. Hanley, Coal, and Della filled the screen. So, this was the Son of Fire. Willow refused him? Twice? No time for jealousy. Plus, he hated triangles. Always had. Pyramids, food charts, traffic cones, Bermuda, team flags, the Illuminati, love... He preferred simple lines, of the vertical and horizontal variety. Squares and rectangles didn’t represent unsolved mysteries or domination, nor the complexity of human emotion. Once again, his mind was rambling. It was irritating. Fillion placed the joint in his mouth and distracted his multifarious emotions by memorizing Hanley’s every nuance in the interview.
“Oh my god,” he said in a breath when Joel’s money was mentioned. The look in Hanley’s eyes only confirmed his worst fears.
Thoughts circled in a carousel, up and down, round and round, faces and images fading in and out as the mechanics of Fillion’s mind whirred in perpetual motion. The world was fading. The familiar lies began to seduce his vulnerability. The truth was harder to hold on to now that he knew, without question, that he really was the son of a killer. Voices from his past mocked him, their jeers and taunts like daggers, murdering him en masse all over again. And he felt himself slipping away, hypnotized by the rush of spinning out of control.
An image of Willow flashed in his mind, not the Willow he knew, but the Willow of his delusions. “Save me,” she said, her voice helpless, weak, begging and accusing all at the same time. Dirt and grime smudged her tattered dress and skin, her hair hanging in dingy strings. Sunken eyes implored him, blue lips set in a grim line. “I can’t,” he replied, on the verge of tears. “If I try, he’ll hurt you.” Did he say that out loud? He didn’t know. Reality was soupy. “Please,” she beseeched him once more as she disappeared into the void.
The Willow he knew suddenly appeared and his heart pulsed in recognition. Sunlight kissed her skin and blended into her long hair. She leaned on an elbow as they lay next to each other, hidden by tall grasses in a field, the sky framing her in a blue aura. He blinked lazily, overcome by her image. A smile, bright and playful, teased him as she leaned forward. Her hair brushed across his face in sweet, seductive caresses, and he sighed. The kind of sigh that filled him up as the breath left his body. Her emerald eyes reflected equal longing as she whispered, “I need you, Son of Eden.” Before he could reply, her lips—warm, soft, and tasting of wine—fell onto his, and she kissed him with the same desire burning inside of him.
He couldn’t breathe. Her presence was so beautiful it suffocated him. He gasped for air, his system drowning in equal parts surrender and fear. Panic overloaded his body until it went into shock. They needed to stop kissing. They needed to disconnect. They could never be together. The joint dropped from his hand onto the ground, and he pressed his palms into his eyes. “Please,” she asked again. A tear pressed through and crawled down his cheek and he whispered back, “I couldn’t live with myself if he harmed you because of me. Everything he touches dies. Everything.”
“Fillion, look at me.”
At first, he thought Willow spoke to him, so he removed his hands. But when the words repeated the vision dissipated and Mack’s holographic image wavered in the air above his face.
“Come back to me.” Mack’s voice held uncharacteristic softness. “Fight it.”
Fillion’s sense of reality pulled into focus and he locked eyes with his friend.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Fillion said, feeling heat creep up his neck and face. Another tear fell. “I’m the son of a killer, Mack. Oh god. They were right. All of them.”
“Maybe. Doesn’t change who you are. And you’re still stuck with my pathetic ass, too.”
The look of compassion on his friend’s face nearly did him in. A soft grip warmed his forearm and Fillion closed his eyes. Leaf didn’t judge him either, and echoed Mack’s sentiments without making his presence known. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the heartache Leaf was processing at this moment. But, god, Fillion felt like such a freak.
Mack frowned again. “This the first time or have they been happening regularly since entering New Eden?”
“The last video triggered it.” He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with tremulous fingers, not even registering the pain in his knuckles. “First time in nearly three years.”
“Glad you were hacked then. Man, if you watched that alone...”
“I know.” His voice quivered with weakness, his breath still shallow and fast.
Tension pulled at the lines of Mack’s mouth as his friend’s dark blue eyes held Fillion’s feeble gaze. “You love her, don’t you?”
“Mack...” Fillion swallowed, afraid to answer. “What w
ould you do if a girl you thought was dead suddenly came back from the grave?”
“Is she cute or creepy looking?” His friend smiled with mild amusement.
Fillion whispered, “Beautiful.”
“I’d kiss her before she got away.” Mack grinned now. “Like a boss. God, this is the weirdest love story I’ve ever heard. Leave it to you.”
Leaf quietly laughed by his side, not loud enough to be picked up on Mack’s end, and Fillion bit the inside of his cheek. Stringing two thoughts together was becoming increasingly difficult after the high-octane emotions and devastating information this night. But he firmly clung to the newly understood belief that perhaps he did possess a love worth giving away. Not that it mattered. Hanley’s reminder echoed in his head.
“I’ll put her in danger. Hanley made it very clear.”
“Fillion,” Mack sighed, his face drooping with a dry expression. “You’re way more intelligent than that. Seriously. Give me a sec.”
Mack wrote out: Her life has always been in danger. Nature of the beast, mate. Hanley played you and you believed him. Whatever he plans to do to her or her siblings, he’s planned to do all along.
His friend tossed the notebook aside. “Your gothic romance is in the way.”
“Gothic romance?” Fillion cracked a small smile.
“Come on, pretty boy. Being poetic. Don’t kill my vibe.” Mack slapped his hands across his thighs, as if everything was settled, and leaned forward. “Continuing from the previous episode: After I kissed her like a boss, leaving her breathless and satisfied, moaning my name...” Mack winked with exaggeration. “...I’d avenge her death. So, let’s get down to business. What’s the plan, bishounen?”
***
This love wounds my heart
with a sweet taste, so gently,
I die of grief a hundred times a day
and a hundred times revive with joy.
My pain seems beautiful,
this pain is worth more than any pleasure;
Elements (The Biodome Chronicles series Book 2) Page 34
