by Amber Jayne
On soundless feet now Urna glided forward toward the yawning hatch. The Guard would be after him in similar vehicles, but if he could stay ahead of them this escape might prove successful after all.
Just before he slipped inside the conveyance, he detected a faint buzzing on the night air. Though he could just barely hear it, it was definitely there, and quite familiar. A set of wings in flight. Rune, up there in the sky, circling, looking for him.
Urna. Urna…
The ghost voice yet again. This time, though, it might actually have been Rune, at the very edge of the Shadowflash’s ability to project his voice to Urna’s ears. A note of desperation sounded in the voice, real or imagined.
Urna shut the hatch and worked the levers that set the car into motion. He steered it through the quiet, glowing streets. The electric battery should last some while. As he neared the city’s limits, he turned down a narrow alley, one that fed out onto a vacant lot. The roads would have checkpoints. It might be necessary for him to ditch the car. But no. He saw a way. The lot was bordered on its far end by a junkyard. Refuse similar to what he’d seen in the Unsafe cities was piled in moldering heaps. He carefully maneuvered the droning vehicle among the mounds. Eventually he reached a stretch of grass, an unguarded field. He crept the car across it.
As he located and started down a rural road that wound its way into darkened farmlands, he reached into his boot and slipped out the photo. He looked at it in the soft light of the vehicle’s control panel. Two adults, one child. Father, mother, son.
Around him, the city’s electrical incandescence faded away and true night swallowed him.
Chapter Six
“I said, that’s enough, soldier!”
It was that final word, the appellation, that halted Rune. He had barely made it back to this rooftop, the engine that powered his set of wings sputtering ominously for the past few minutes. Belatedly he’d checked the fuel gauge, saw how close to empty he was. Yet even with that knowledge he had longed to continue his search.
Since landing he had demanded, in tones of escalating desperation, that his wings be refueled, that he needed to get back into the sky—now, damn it, now. He made a spectacle of himself, practically foaming at the mouth. He’d already been sweeping the city for hours, crisscrossing it, buzzing the roofs of the opulent Lux houses. Straining his powerful senses, even going so far as to don the strip of blindfolding fabric for minutes at a time. Flying sightlessly so as to enhance his other faculties, just like on missions in the Unsafe. Seeking that single, familiar set of human impulses.
Urna. Urna… He’d called out the Weapon’s name, more and more frequently as the night wore on. And more and more desperately.
This big officer, the one who’d just addressed him as soldier, now loomed before him. Broad of shoulder, thick through the chest, with glowering, commanding eyes. Seeing that he’d succeeded in stopping Rune’s diatribe, he drew a long breath and said in brusque tones that brooked no disobedience, “Shadowflash Rune, you are exhausted to the point of collapse. At the moment you are useless to this cause. I want you to go with this escort. Return to your quarters. Your doctor is waiting. Do not think further of this mission for the time being.”
Rune was trembling, he realized only now. He was chilled to the bone, and damp. A mist had descended over the city and he had been flying around in it for too long. His outfit of loose black strips was plastered to his lean, muscular body. He could only guess what his face looked like under the fabric. Probably pale, and as drawn as a death’s-head.
He had started out on this search operation a determined Shadowflash, loyal and disciplined. But the hours of hunting vainly for his partner had reduced him to this fragile, emotional state. Exhausted. Near collapse. Yes. Yes, he acknowledged. He saw the sense of the officer’s order.
Still, he wanted to resist it. He wanted the troopers on the rooftop to fuel up his wings, which were still strapped cumbersomely to his back. Only, these two hard-faced soldiers were evidently here to see him back to his quarters—and if he tried to fight them he’d just be dragged there. He was too tired to put up any real resistance.
Besides, he was a Shadowflash, not a Weapon. He couldn’t outfight the pair.
Wearily, feeling a sadness that threatened to engulf him, he undid the harness, let the wings fall away with a clank. He sketched a vague salute to the officer then started away with his escort.
Urna. Urna. Where had that dumb fucker gone? Rune was aware of descending a flight of stairs, his feet numb in his boots. The soldiers said nothing to him.
Circling the city, Rune had seen the Guard units fanning out, covering the streets. He’d ignored them. The Guard were nothing. They would only find Urna through blind luck. None of them had ever ventured into the Unsafe, to raid a derelict city and slaughter Passengers. The Guard were weak, good only for putting down ineffectual dissidents and taking bribes and meting out sadistic punishments as the whim took them.
But Rune had been unable to locate Urna, either. His confidence had slowly eroded as he systemically traversed the city, then, finding no hint of his counterpart, repeated the search pattern. Surely Urna couldn’t have gotten away so quickly.
Evidently, though, he had. A clever Weapon. He had slipped past the city’s limits somehow, faster than anyone had expected. Now he was…where? Beyond the city. He might have gone in a dozen different directions, which would necessarily widen the search exponentially. By now he could have put vast distances between himself and—and—
And me. The thought beat in Rune’s head with sorrow and bitterness. He has run away from me.
Tears blurred the stony corridor down which he was now stumbling. The two soldiers had to support him. Somehow Rune kept himself from sobbing aloud, though his tears ran freely, dampening the already wet fabric cloaking his face. His lover had left him, had deserted him specifically. Or so it felt to him, right now, in the middle of this awful night.
When he got to his quarters he fell across the bed, flinging out his arm so that the waiting doctor could give him an injection—any injection—that would allow him to escape this terrible reality in which he found himself tonight.
* * * * *
Virge decided against stopping at a tavern that was nearby her house. No official explanation for her liberation from detention had been offered, but that was hardly surprising. Half the time she suspected the Lux had no grounds to hold her at all. Aphael Chav just liked to needle her.
The notion that one of his trained killers had left the nest must be galling him terribly. Virge smiled privately as she imagined the dire consequences for Chav, at the hands of both the public and his own people, should word become widespread and this thing blow up on him. If Urna, his baby bird, decided to talk to anyone while he was free, to tell anybody why he’d made his escape…well. The next few days should prove to be very interesting indeed for the so-called underground, those who resisted the Lux’s influence with feeble gestures like those pamphlets. Most folk knew that those people fancied themselves to be mages—whatever that really meant. Magic, to Virge, was just a way for some people to give themselves hope. Just an illusion, in the end.
She walked past the lit windows of one of the town’s two broadcast lounges. It was a large place, furnished, open to the public. Vendors sold food here. Sometimes people sneaked in drinks. The sites were very popular but Virge rarely visited. The lounges were social centers, of a sort. But really they were places where the Lux broadcasts could be viewed.
Looking inside as she passed, she saw the big screen dominating one wall. A re-airing of an earlier cast was playing for a thin late-night crowd, those who were eking out the last entertainments of the day before midnight came.
Images played on the large screen. There were stills of Weapons and Shadowflashes posed menacingly in their combat uniforms. Graphics scrolled. Kill numbers and other statistics. A pair of familiar commentators appeared, trading what was no doubt the usual blathering insights as to how the feat
ured combatants had performed on their latest mission into the Unsafe. It faded into the Weapon speaking directly into the camera, no doubt giving his report.
But it was the people watching the program who drew her weary interest—and her pity. Virge noted their faces, rapt, their eyes hungrily following the statistical data. They were, in a way, living vicariously through these Shadowflash/Weapon teams. The exotic figures were so powerful, so amazing in their abilities. Especially Urna and Rune, who seemed to have talents that normal human physiology couldn’t explain. They were the most popular. Many people seemed to need the duo.
On nights when new reports of Urna and Rune’s missions were broadcast, both of the town’s lounges filled up and people cheered ‘til they were hoarse. The Weapons and Shadowflashes were vital. To the populace. To the Lux.
“Urna.”
She found herself repeating the name aloud as she left the lounge behind, reached her house and let herself inside, opting to give the tavern a pass. It was later than she’d suspected. Time stood still inside those holding cells within the Citadel. She had been transported back to her town by the Guard, who had been tight-lipped about the evident activity of other units in the streets of the Lux city and on the roads leading outward from it. But Virge already had the inside information she had gotten from Nick Daphral.
“Urna.” She found she liked the way the escaped Weapon’s name rolled off her tongue, more sound than word.
Urna, the most famous of all the Weapons.
She didn’t know much about him or any of his stock. No one did. Other than what was fed to them via Lux propaganda, the elite soldiers’ true identities were shrouded in mystery, the way the Lux liked it. Even their names sounded more like titles. Urna and his partner, Rune. A warrior and his guide. The biweekly reports notified the public of the numbers of slain Passengers, as well as squares of ground in the Unsafe which had been “reclaimed”.
It was bullshit, naturally. All propaganda was, even that which told the truth. Anyone with a brain knew that the war against the Passengers was pointless. Those creatures owned the Unsafe, and killing a hundred or a thousand or tens of thousands didn’t mean anything in the end. The kill statistics were no more than entertainment.
But, it seemed, people wanted to be entertained and went along willingly with the charade. And so Urna and Rune were heroes.
And now Urna had fled. Alone, apparently. But why?
Wondering about it, she was distracted when she opened her front door. Though only detained for a matter of hours, it felt as if she hadn’t been home for days. The differences between the town she called home and the Lux city were plentiful and obvious enough to evoke that illusion. She’d been mere miles from home at the Citadel but it might as well have been worlds away. Still, this town of hers, centrally located within the Safe, was a far sight more comfortable and prosperous than the border towns.
Virge’s house was small and packed full. All the residential structures in this block were of the same modest dimensions. She was very lucky, she knew, to have the place to herself. Though she was generally clean and her job afforded her some sense of taste, her guests, when she had them, still sometimes had trouble navigating the interior without knocking things down. Items she was forced to store here when the lab was low on room were stacked high atop almost every available surface, in addition to her own belongings and the random odd or end left behind by those souls she occasionally deigned to assist, against her better judgment.
They were the reason she’d been detained tonight, she reminded herself. She would have to be more careful, starting with allowing such types into her home, where they could potentially leave more incriminating evidence of her involvement with their unsavory activities.
“Virge? Is that you?”
Speaking of unsavory.
She sighed, locking the door behind her, identifying the disembodied voice immediately.
“Bongo.”
He stepped out of the tiny kitchen area, equipped with a utilitarian electrical stove that she never used and a cold storage box for her perishable rations. At the moment, she believed both were full of papers, most scribbled with chemical formulas she was working on.
Virge regarded the intruder coolly once he was in full view. Bongo grinned at her, nonplussed.
“Where have you been?” he asked cheerfully.
“I had a date,” Virge replied. She considered telling him about Nick and their tryst in the cell. But it probably wouldn’t make Bongo jealous. Jealousy was, after all, a vestigial emotional state. Or it ought to be by now.
“Oh yeah?” Bongo arched an eyebrow and Virge noticed he was holding a bottle in his hands. Booze. Her booze. A small, labeled bottle she’d almost forgotten about. “Anyone I know?”
“Get fucked,” she said flatly. Banter between them could run like this sometimes, but at the moment she was serious, and seriously pissed off at him. Apparently he didn’t know she’d been picked up and whisked off to be interrogated—and, really, there wasn’t any reason he should know—but she let her anger rise nonetheless.
“Aw, don’t be like that.” Bongo mock-frowned. “Let’s have a drink.”
“It’s not yours to offer.”
“Didn’t say it was.” He had that rascally lilt in his voice.
Another sigh escaped her, and with it went some of her misplaced ire. “All right,” she agreed. “But you should know I was planning on drinking anyway and I’m not very happy with you.”
“Why? What did I do?” Bongo blinked, all innocence.
It was all Virge could do not to roll her eyes. Then, realizing it was her house and her alcohol, she did let her eyes roll dramatically. Bongo’s infuriating nature was, perhaps, part of what drove him to be a rebel. Maybe he was just naturally contrary. Maybe, she thought wickedly, if those mythical magic-users he was always blathering about actually existed and were ruling the Safe instead of the Lux, he would be rebelling against them.
Bongo went back into the kitchen, reemerged with two glasses. Virge had tossed aside her coat.
He’d been blessed with attractive features—a strong jaw, full lips and green eyes that seemed to dance and spark with light even when there was none around. His hair was artfully arranged. The hue was a glimmering blond. In Virge’s experience, people as attractive as Bongo tended to exude entitlement. Contrarily, Bongo exuded ridiculousness. Perhaps he thought he was entitled to that.
“You know damn well what you’ve done.” She snatched the bottle from his hands. Her own rare spirits, which she’d hidden well out of sight and thus more or less purposely forgotten about. She’d meant this only for special occasions. It had taken her months to beg it off of Raz, the owner of the tavern, and he’d charged her heavily for it despite her being a frequent, favored customer. He had to make a living too. “How did you get in?”
“You loaned me your key, remember? So that I could pick up that paper?” He handed her a glass then held out his. She filled her own first.
“You were supposed to leave that key.” She spoke through her teeth as she remembered Aphael Chav showing her the tract that depicted him as a wolf among chickens. “Speaking of paper…”
“Did you see the pamphlet we distributed?” Bongo grinned again, nodding as though she’d answered affirmatively. “It was good, right?”
“T-y-r-a-n-t. That’s tyrant.”
“Hey.” He raised his hands defensively. “It’s not my fault I received a civilian’s education.”
It was a barb—an ineffective one he’d tried to use against her before. Virge felt no guilt over her privileged education, one that had trained her to be a chemist. She had shown an aptitude as a youngster and she had applied herself, finding the field a fascinating one. Chemicals combined in complex ways. They were the basic components of reality and she, with her knowledge and knack for manipulating such essences, had secured for herself a livelihood. She was good at what she did. More than good, a virtuoso. The chemical concoctions she made for th
e Weapon/Shadowflash division were only part of her duties. Her lab produced medicines for the general population, very necessary supplies.
Like the taverns that paid off the Guard, her labor for the Lux let her operate for a greater good.
To Bongo she said, “For someone so clever, you display a stunning lack of intelligence.”
“You thought it was clever, then?” His eyes were fully alight, the green sparkling.
He hadn’t responded at all to her evident anger and that had the inevitable effect of dissipating it. Virge wanted to be furious with him but it wasn’t quite working. She was tired, though not sleepy.
“Clever?” After taking a savoring sip from her glass she finally said, “Not especially. More juvenile, really. Although, I suppose, something can be juvenile and clever…” Virge slipped out of her boots, losing an inch of height in the process. “The Toplux seemed to enjoy it,” she continued. “He was my date.” Bongo’s eyes widened. And that was gratifying. Yes, far better than regaling him with her sexual escapade with Nick, the Guard Junior Interrogator.
“You’re full of it,” Bongo said, and knocked back half the contents of his glass as if he were belting rotgut rather than this smooth stuff.
“Nope,” Virge said. “He brought me in. Two boys in black were waiting for me when I went to the lab.”
“Shit. What did they get you for?”
The question brought all her anger right back. “For your stupid fucking cartoon!” Virge slammed her palm down, rattling a few empty packages on the counter, once containing protein rations. The last thing she’d eaten, and that had been this morning.
With the anger, recent events came rushing back in a flood. Being taken into custody, transported to the Citadel. No explanations, no threats, no promises. Made to wait hours before being hauled before Chav himself. She’d kept her calm, her deeply ingrained poise, because she’d had to. She would rather die than look weak in front of that old bastard, the man who had ruled the Safe all her life. A man who, just possibly, had some personal, unwholesome—though surely quite nonsexual—interest it her.
