ElyriasEcstasy

by Amber Jayne

The sexual relationship between Rune and Urna was an open secret. Aphael had no view on it himself, other than to acknowledge it as another factor that was supposed to keep the two men in line. Tie them to each other, tie them to the program.

  He had been strongly hoping that the Shadowflash Rune would quickly locate the Weapon Urna, and that this whole unfortunate episode could be drawn to a close before it got out of hand. Now, no doubt, Urna was well beyond the confines of the Lux city. The Guard had thoroughly combed it, much to the distress of its wealthy and politically powerful inhabitants. There would be consequences because of that, Aphael knew. The Order of Lux would be nattering at him, demanding—well, no one demanded anything of him, but those overly dressed ninnies would be quite insistent—that such disturbances never occur again. Nobody liked having Guard units pouring through their streets.

  But the effort had been necessary, if only to establish that the wayward Weapon had indeed fled.

  Rune could accurately sense his colleague at a distance of—what was it?—one mile. It was a remarkable ability. Superhuman, really. Beyond anything the other Shadowflashes could manage, no matter how many stimulants the doctors pumped into them.

  The Safe, it was said, comprised only five percent of Elyria’s total surface, but that was still a massive area. One man conducting a search of it, no matter how extraordinary his abilities, was virtually pointless. By now Urna could be almost anywhere.

  One day, the military medical technicians would discover just how it was that Rune could do what he did. They would break the code. They would be able to read the Shadowflash’s internal workings like a topographical map, so the Toplux had been assured many, many times. Progress was being made. Technology would solve the riddle. Once they knew Rune’s secrets, they could duplicate him, create as big an army of super-soldiers as Aphael liked.

  The same held for Urna, those doctors said. They just needed to make further tests, study the subject a while more.

  Well, that was going to be a little difficult with Urna no longer available, Aphael thought grimly. And what would happen when the specialized drugs they were giving the Weapon cleared from his system? Would his memories come back in full force? Aphael had also received assurances that this wouldn’t occur. Urna’s early memory storage capacity had been permanently damaged.

  Assurances, though, were one thing. How reality played out was another. Had Aphael Chav asked any of the officers in charge of security whether anyone from the Shadowflash/Weapon program could ever escape the facility, he was quite certain he would have been told no, unequivocally. Absolutely not. Never.

  And yet Urna had gotten away. He had even made it seem easy, which particularly nettled the Toplux.

  Aphael himself had seen to the inauguration of the Weapon and Shadowflash divisions. They served great purposes. The tandem teams were, firstly, very popular among the Safe’s population for their missions into the Unsafe. People liked the idea of humans killing Passengers. It gave them something to cheer for. Secondly, the teams were used very effectively to guard authorized salvage groups who raided the Unsafe for much-needed resources.

  Beyond that, though, the Shadowflash/Weapon units would one day serve a loftier purpose, once Urna and Rune’s secrets had been unlocked and he had an army made up of soldiers just like them. Then the Toplux would have for himself a true private force. An alpha squad that he could send out to eliminate any serious dangers that ever cropped up in the Safe.

  He knew of the so-called resistance, the pretenders who practiced “magic” and blathered anti-Lux sentiments. Most of these people weren’t dangerous. They were annoyances, nothing more. But if—when—they ever truly organized, Aphael Chav wanted something better than the Guard to deal with an imminent uprising. He wanted ruthless, hyper-talented assassination crews that could remove enemies to the Lux anywhere in the Safe.

  No sense in fooling oneself with illusions. At present the resistance wasn’t a true threat. But that could change. He intended to be ready for any eventualities.

  But there was only so much brooding he would allow himself just now. He wasn’t, in the end, an especially morose man. He liked action. He liked setting parameters, then putting events into motion. He enjoyed control. Orderliness. But he didn’t shy from the troubles that inevitably arose. Chaos was an enemy, unless it was his chaos.

  He had been born among the Lux, but his family hadn’t held a particularly high ranking. As a child, he recalled trailing along behind his parents when they attended functions of the Order. Even at a young age he had realized that they were never the most important people in the room. He remembered his father’s desperate cajoling as he tried to mingle with individuals done up in ridiculous finery. As well he still had memories of his mother’s somewhat more successful flirtations with members of grander status. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn his father had directed his mother to sleep with some of those personages in hopes of elevating their family.

  That advancement had never happened, however. Not while Aphael Chav’s parents had lived. They had died together when a truck carrying salvage had overturned rounding a corner. They had been in their electric roadster, out on some errand of supposed social importance. Aphael had been left home that day to attend to his studies of Lux lore. It wasn’t a subject he’d ever excelled at, recognizing very early on how limited its usefulness was. He preferred mathematics and sociology. He also quite liked manipulation, which he’d mastered by the time he was an adolescent.

  Politics drew him. He took on several internships, never working for anyone more intelligent than he was. He learned how the political system worked, absorbing information at ferocious speed. He found it a simple exercise to get others to do exactly as he wished, without his victims ever being aware of the steerings. After a time, he was even able to affect Lux policy, shuttling his directives through several oblivious lackeys.

  He enjoyed these games. But he had greater ambitions. It was merely a matter of patience, of studying the players and their weaknesses, of arranging for a convergence of betrayals and reprisals. It all happened at once, a veritable bloodbath that threatened to shake the very foundations of the Lux. But Aphael had prepared himself and had prepared the Order for his ascension, though few among the surviving personages realized that they had been subtly readied for him, had been manipulated into wanting him to seize ultimate power. To take this throne. To become the new Toplux.

  Aphael Chav’s forbidding countenance was softened by a smile. For decades now he had held this august post. And he would go on ruling until the day he died.

  His life hadn’t left much time for the making of a proper family. But he didn’t regret that.

  Urna. Urna was a mild inconvenience, nothing more. He would be dealt with. He would be retrieved and studied and eventually replicated, like a part from a factory. And whether or not he ever came to know where he’d come from and how he’d come to be the way he was…well. That wouldn’t mean anything in the end, either. The Weapon was property. His property.

  This was more than a merely proprietary matter. Urna had a significant cultural role to play. The Weapon provided entertainment and distraction for the masses. Aphael had taken those early studies of sociology to heart.

  There were measures to be taken. Some were quite drastic. He would decide which to implement and when.

  He called for his aide. The double doors at the far end of the room flung open and a figure hurried the length of the pillared chamber. The aide waited in an attitude of respect at the foot of the ornate seat. It didn’t matter that Aphael Chav, too restless to sleep, was in this chamber at such an unusual hour. His staff was here to serve him, whenever needed.

  “At sunrise release Urna’s slut from last night,” the Toplux commanded.

  It was all he needed to say. The aide scurried away.

  Aphael still thought it very unlikely that the woman had had anything to do with the Weapon’s disappearance, but she was the last person who’d seen him before he’d set ab
out making his escape. The distant possibility remained that she’d had something to do with it. He could have her interrogated. Those Guard Interrogators loved their work, he knew. But this was more subtle. Set her loose. She would return to whatever squalid hole she called home. And maybe, just maybe, Urna the wayward Weapon would seek her there.

  Meanwhile, he had a notion of what he might do about Rune. The Shadowflash, he judged, required a lesson for having failed him.

  Chapter Eight

  When Rune next opened his eyes following his inglorious collapse, he was lying with his face pressed to one blank wall of his small, sterile room, so close that he was practically flush against it. After colliding with his bed hours earlier he must have fallen asleep straightaway, for he had no recollection of the minutes that had surely passed between when he was hysterical and when he’d actually lost consciousness.

  Now he experienced the acute aftereffects of passing out from sheer exhaustion. His eyes felt swollen, his head tender. His shoulders screamed where the wing harness had bitten into his flesh, and it was all wrong.

  The injections the doctor had administered (he remembered that much) should have erased whatever injuries, be they internal or external, he had suffered over the course of his fruitless recovery mission. In fact, he could not call to mind a single time when he’d awakened the morning after a mission feeling anything less than fully restored. Now his throat was raw and sore from crying.

  None of the physical discomfort, however, compared to the dull ache that had apparently settled in the center of his chest while he’d slept. The strange, crushing feeling made it difficult to breathe. It was quite unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

  Rolling over onto his back, he seriously considered calling for a doctor. But what would be the point? He knew, somehow, that this hole could never be filled by drugs or whores or a million solo missions. It was as if a part of him had been torn away, without anesthesia or warning or even the suspicion that he was vulnerable to such a trauma.

  Was this a consequence of his unique pairing with Urna? Was it that the two, after all this time, had become so synchronized, so dependent on each other that one couldn’t function properly outside of the other’s proximity?

  Or was this just how Rune felt?

  No, he thought sharply. He believed that Urna, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, must be suffering likewise. He had to believe that.

  Waking up a bit more, Rune shook his head, trying to banish the notion along with its antithesis. Far more likely that wherever Urna was, whatever he was doing, Rune was the furthest thing from his mind. Otherwise, well, he’d be here, wouldn’t he? Urna might be tough but he was never one to tolerate needless pain.

  The silver-haired tart had probably found himself a lover already, or at least a warm body to charm into his service. He was surely still on the move, but he would need somewhere to shack up during the daylight hours. That just made sense. The Guard were probably still patrolling furiously. It would be good, however, to have some solid information regarding the Guard’s movements and strategies.

  But yes. Someone would be hiding him.

  Rune realized he had been chewing on his lower lip only when he tasted bitter copper, but he felt a little better for these vitriolic thoughts.

  A long, low bell announced the first legal hour of consciousness. Rune swung his long legs over the side of the mattress and stood, wasting no time in pulling his uniform out of the storage compartment beneath his bed and laying out the clothes. No doubt he would be sent out to search again immediately following this morning’s regularly scheduled training session. Maybe even in lieu of it. Surely his superiors understood that if anyone was going to reclaim their runaway Weapon, it would be his partner, who knew him better than anybody. The other half of his whole.

  “Shadowflash Rune, your presence is required.”

  “What?” Rune spun around, sore muscles tensed. How was it possible that his door had opened without his noticing? How had he not heard the steps coming down the hall?

  The Guard Junior Interrogator stood with one foot inside of his room, the other out, as if he were embarrassed by his own intrusion, or maybe by the Shadowflash’s discomfiture. He spoke with a slight stammer, which he took pains to control. “The Toplux requests your presence in the Weapon housing. I’m supposed to bring you there.”

  “Why?” Rune asked, though he would never have questioned orders from a military officer. But perhaps a better question was why this man had been assigned the task of escorting him anywhere. Guard did not routinely enter the military complex. Was this some sort of gibe? Send a Guard to collect a Shadowflash? Rune could only wonder.

  If Aphael Chav was known for anything among those in his service, it was that he always preferred subtle needling to straightforward discipline. The young man swallowed thickly. He was nervous, maybe even starstruck.

  “I don’t know, sir. Rune. Shadowflash,” he struggled for the proper address. His gaze flicked down, then up again, meeting Rune’s eyes with something like reverence. “I’m supposed to take you to Urna’s quarters.”

  “Urna.” That was all Rune needed to hear. He closed the distance between himself and the young man in two long strides. It was all he could do not to wind his fingers into the Interrogator’s starched shirtfront. “Has he been found?” Rune demanded. Then, checking his tone, he took a step back. The last thing he needed after the failure that had been last night was to be sanctioned for insubordination. After staring at Rune for several seconds, perhaps bewildered by this passionate reaction, the young man simply shook his head.

  “I’m meant to take you there,” he repeated. Clearly he had been given no further details or orders. Rune took a deep breath.

  “Of course,” he said. Then, unable to keep the sarcasm entirely out of his voice, he added, “Do I have permission to finish dressing myself?” He gestured at the outfit still spread over the bed.

  He donned it quickly. He almost missed a few straps in his haste. His fingers faintly trembled as he laced up his boots.

  “Follow me,” the Guard said. Rune complied, following closely, though he knew the way himself.

  It was all he could do not to run ahead.

  * * * * *

  Hours and hours of traveling by speedy electric bus. Even the regular stops at checkpoints, where bored or unpleasant Guard members checked the papers of everyone on board, didn’t slow the journey too badly. Still, it was a long haul, and Arvra Finean drifted in and out of sleep as the miles slipped past.

  She didn’t know why she’d been released any more than she understood why the Guard had detained her in the first place. She continued to wonder, idly now, if any of it had to do with the alarms that had gone off at the Citadel last night.

  Who knew? Who the hell cared?

  They’d given her her clothes back. It would’ve been strange to make the trip home wearing that skimpy lingerie. She was dressed again in drab functional attire, work clothes. Only her wild hair, that spray of multicolored spikes, gave her a vibrant appearance. A few of the other passengers glanced her way because of it but nobody said a word to her, which she was just fine with.

  The bus passed through farms, wild country, towns. She supposed it was exciting to see the landscape changing so. Most people, she knew, didn’t travel. They worked their rotten little jobs and stayed their whole lives in whatever shit-holes they’d been born into. The Lux, she guessed, didn’t want the commoners to have freedom of movement. Might give them ideas. Might stir them up. Get too many people talking together about how lousy things were and you’d have trouble on your hands.

  Lucky for the Lux they had the Guard.

  It wasn’t that Arvra was full of revolutionary impulses. She knew folks who liked to mutter about overthrowing the Lux and establishing a new, fairer government to rule the Safe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anybody running anything that constituted more than a dozen people eventually turned into a despot. Hadn’t some ancient philosopher said that?
Arvra, halfway dozing in her seat, supposed so. Or if nobody had ever said it quite that way, the principle remained. Power turned regular people into assholes.

  She blinked open her eyes. It was afternoon. None of the passengers aboard were the same as before, but she was going all the way from the Citadel to the borderlands.

  Going all that distance just to be Urna the Weapon’s fuck toy. And now the ride home, wondering if this time he’d gotten her pregnant. She hoped not. She couldn’t afford to have a baby, couldn’t spare the time.

  They passed through another checkpoint. She presented her travel papers. At least the trip was paid for. It would’ve seriously pissed her off if she’d had to fork out her own money for this. She glared at the back of the stout Guard as he stepped off the bus. The surrounding hamlet was a dismal place, the pavement cracked, the buildings of shoddy construction. Even so, it was better than where she was heading.

  Arvra Finean stayed awake for the last leg of the journey home. Only a handful of riders were left on the bus. She recognized two of them but said nothing to either one. Traveling to the Safe’s border didn’t put a person in a chatty mood. She saw grimly set faces, despairing eyes. She sat stiffly in her seat now as around the bus the daylight started to dim.

  More than the ambient light changed. There was a transformation of the air itself, a kind of deadening, a heaviness added to the atmosphere. Arvra was never sure if the effect was purely psychological. But the scene outside the bus’s windows was unlike anything she had seen during her entire excursion here.

  They were moving into the shadow of the Black Ship.

  When the bus pulled into town the driver seemed eager to get the last few passengers off as quickly as possible, grab new ones, and get the hell back on the road leading away from the border. Arvra, stepping off, didn’t blame the driver. Being so close to the Black Ship was a scary experience if you weren’t used to it. Actually, it was frightening no matter what. Arvra, though, had grown up on the border, in this very town. Having the Ship hovering so nearby was normal.