by Tex Leiko
“What does it sound like?”
“Droning, it sounds like droning, but I can’t hear a thing.”
“Wait for it.”
“Wait for—” He let out a scream of agony as he clutched his head and dropped to his knees. A screech more intense than anything he had ever heard before pierced through his head and shattered his nerves. The noises he felt and heard, the voices in his head, all disappeared and it was back to the way it had been the moment he walked in with Crimson. There was nothing he could hear other than her.
“Want to know what that was?” she inquired of him.
“Kinda, it hurt like hell whatever it was.”
“I’ll tell you, but not here; it isn’t safe. Let’s head back to your apartment.”
Not safe? Great, I’ve only been attacked by five men tonight. What else could possibly go wrong? What world does this chick live in? What is “unsafe” to her?
“What do you mean not safe here?” he asked as he rose to his feet. Max glanced around to see that most of the fans were beginning to open their eyes and look around. The three band members were staring right at Crimson and him, no longer playing their musical instruments. He suddenly felt very, very uneasy. The crowd of thousands was turning, facing the two of them.
“Uh…Crimson? I feel as if we might be unwelcome at this party. They seemed to have been enjoying until we arrived. Perhaps we should go.”
“Start walking toward the door. I know the drill by now. We should be fine.”
“Should be? Why can’t we just be fine? How about that? I like that idea.”
“Shut up and start walking.”
She placed her hand on his back between his shoulder blades and drew his body into hers, spinning him to face the exit. They were walking across a concrete floor and her heels were making what seemed to be an awful racket in the dead silence of the crowd. He could feel the eyes burning their skin as they walked, like prey waiting for an attack.
“If it isn’t our friend Crimson!” one of the members shouted from behind them.
“It’s Badger, their vocalist, keep walking,” said Crimson under her breath.
Max didn’t have anything funny or sarcastic to quip back at her with. He was genuinely afraid, even more so than he had been earlier that day.
“Stop them!” Badger commanded.
At his command, the crowd was rushing up the stairs. In a matter of seconds, they were surrounded by a mob. Every face was glaring at the two of them with an intense anger and hatred. It sent shivers down Max’s spine. Crimson could feel it; she but kept breathing normal as if she wasn’t even phased.
“They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?” Max questioned.
“Probably.”
* * * *
How does he know I’m not going to rip him off? Or ravage his place for the fun of it? He doesn’t know me, and he trusts me like this?
Zarfa’s thoughts were hard for even him to imagine. As long as he had drawn breath, he’d never known trust. Maybe he had…before his parents had been taken. Maybe before then he’d had trust.
He had trust when he came home his parents would be there. He had trust that his sister would be in the crib as usual; his mom would feed him a snack when he got home from school. Because, in thousands of years of history, some things had never changed. His father would be at work when he got home; his mother would be there to attend to his needs as she had done to Sarah all day when he was at school.
But trust? Trust was gone. Trust had vanished the day his parents were abducted by the raiders; it died the day Sarah had been taken. Trust was something he never gave out. Protection, yes. But trust? No. He didn’t trust anyone, and with his less than amiable demeanor, nobody trusted him. People in Ilyeion had seen him kill over a drunkard trying to get fresh with his sister. And not only the drunk… His friends too.
So why did Max trust him?
Why did Max trust me enough to leave me here? For all he knows, I could steal all of his stuff. What was he in a hurry to do? He left with such haste.
Zarfa wanted answers, so he began to look for clues around the office. He stepped over the broken glass strewn on the floor. It crunched under his boots, making a soft crackling noise. Zarfa approached the desk Max had closed in a hurry and noticed the serenity boost in the waste basket.
Nothing was out of the ordinary other than the broken mirror and the blood mixed with glass trailing to the doorway. It looked as if the battle with the five gang-bangers had started here, but as Zarfa examined the evidence, he knew it hadn’t.
He gazed around the clinic, which was really only a small room with a sub divider marking the waiting area and entrance from the office and diagnostic room. Privacy wasn’t much of an issue in the slums and if it was, Max could ask the other patients to wait outside of the building until their turn. His gaze fixed solidly on the Psyker bot injections Max had lying on the counter of the exam area.
It isn’t theft if I pay. I don’t know what these are worth, and for all I know, it will cover it. Plus, I gave him that gun.
The fact he’d saved Max’s life barely crossed Zarfa’s mind. He was about to steal his next four treatments then finish the night by rooting around for some painkiller boosts. He knew that the treatments for the Psyker bots would cost another forty thousand credits he didn’t have, and would take a while to raise fighting in the underground. He also knew he had a fight to perform at in roughly eighteen hours, and he reasoned a guy like Max would know what these two devices he had in his bag would be worth. For all Zarfa knew, they were worth way more than what he was taking.
Zarfa opened his backpack and left the two cloaking devices he had taken from the corpses of the assassins from earlier on Max’s desk. He then went over to where he saw the Psyker injection ampoules and stuffed four into his backpack. He was far from greedy. After having such a violent reaction to the first round of treatment, Zarfa was nervous at the least, but confident that he had observed what Dr. Hall had done to him well enough that he could do it to himself.
After putting the treatments in his bag, he zipped it tight. Zarfa thought about putting the backpack on and going back to his own place. The medifoam had begun to regenerate his tissue and ease his pains. In no time at all, he would be healed. He could hear it raining outside still, however, and the thought of walking shirtless with a backpack that had uncomfortable straps in the cold rain was less than pleasurable.
He saw his old bloody, wet, tattered shirt lying in the trail of glass where he had thrown it. He let out a sigh and decided to rummage around. He found in a hamper against the wall in the corner behind Max’s desk, a green t-shirt with grey trim. It smelled dirty, but he put it on anyhow. It was too short and his midriff showed like a skanky teenage girl who had grown too large for her extra small sized shirt, but he wore it anyway.
Zarfa looked at himself in a small mirror on the counter by the sink in the section of the room Max did examinations and decided he didn’t care. If anyone questioned it, he would kill them. After deciding that his pseudo payment was good enough for the injections and the shirt, he grabbed his backpack and headed out the door. He was sure to close it behind himself. He felt bad that he couldn’t lock it to keep all of the lowlifes in the area from easily getting into Max’s office and making off with his goods, but he didn’t have a key.
I knew there was something I had forgotten. Recruitment is tonight.
Zarfa’s mind raced as rain came down upon him. He had his own reason for doing what he had been doing, but he thought it would be good to go to recruitment night anyhow and see what they had to say. Maybe his cause was the same as their own; maybe he would find allies in this battle he was fighting by himself. How would he know if he didn’t go to the event?
What have I got to lose? If I don’t like what they’re all about, I can simply walk away and do my own thing. But the saying goes, “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
* * * *
“We thought we told you to stay
out of here,” stated Badger.
Crimson smiled wide and scanned him up and down. Her mind raced as she thought of the best way to deal with the situation. She had done some spying into the Psyker Scream phenomena and she’d gotten too close to the truth without joining them.
“You did… I kinda thought that maybe you would be lenient with me since I brought a guest,” she said sarcastically.
“Oh? So now I have to kill the both of you? And this poor sap probably doesn’t even know what he has gotten into with you.”
“I don’t! Take the girl,” Max said to lighten the mood, half joking…half not.
Crimson glanced over at Max, half annoyed, half impressed. She expected him to be wetting himself like a school child. She could feel that he was afraid, but by this point, she figured they would leave alive since Badger hadn’t ordered them killed yet.
“Let’s face it here; the only three of you who can really fight at this place are you, Surge, and Zax. This is only a base recruitment, and all of these guys are green. I can tell by looking. Max here can’t fight; you can tell by his face…” She lingered in her sentence. “So let’s just say you let us off with a warning? I know you gave me an ultimatum last time—join or die. Be fair, I may not join you, but Max here has no clue what is going on. He may very well join you.”
Her speech was clear and firm; she spoke as if it weren’t for the three that comprised Psyker Scream, she could kill everyone in that room with ease. She turned her gaze from Max back to Badger. She wore a crazed look, trying to stab through Badger with an evil gaze. Her hair had gotten wet and was frazzled and flopped over her face. As she spoke, she began grinning wide. Nobody would have taken her seriously, except those who knew her reputation.
“He doesn’t know a thing, huh? And you brought him here? Why?”
“You could call him your biggest proprietor in the slums. He is practically handing out the bots, which you should be ecstatic about. You know those bots cost a pretty penny, but Max here will let people pay in increments if only to have the pleasure of hearing your beautiful…music.”
Crimson didn’t know if it was true or not. She hoped that Max would pick up where she left off if they questioned him. He stared Badger in the face as she spoke, not saying a word. His expression, if he was giving one that would give him away, was unreadable due to the beating he had taken earlier.
“Really? You have been treating people even if they can’t pay in advance? And you don’t know anything at all. Tell me, what did you hear tonight?”
Max sighed. “What is with that question? All friggin’ night I hear that damn question, what did I hear? I’ll tell you! A bunch of noise, noise that almost deafened me! Noise I couldn’t care about, and yes, I am handing out your bots with no regard. I know twenty percent die, which just means I need to take an educated risk. I need money to stay in business and treat my patients in the slums, even if ingrates live there that would slay me for whatever gain they could possibly take from me. But Psyker patients are some of my only paying clients. Sometimes a patient comes in who can only afford the first treatment. If they come back for the second, I finance them up front as long as they sign a contract stating that they will pay me back in a reasonable time. So I don’t have a damn clue what the hell it is your little club is doing. I wasn’t that interested before and I am even less interested now! You leave us be and I’ll keep doing business at my practice the same way as I always have. It seems as if it is benefitting you, so killing me would be to your disadvantage, it appears. Not that it will deter you, but it is certainly worth thinking about.” Max stated it all as if he had authority to command the whole crowd.
“You’ve got some balls, Max, and you don’t know who this woman by your side is at all, do you?” Badger questioned, raising an eyebrow and giving Crimson a look that could kill.
“Me? Ha! I’ve known Crimson since kindergarten. She was a mystery then and always will be. I don’t really know her, but she came in today as a patient. I had a patient earlier that had received his first treatment for your little bots and I wanted answers because he was acting so…secretive. She offered to explain things a little. Now that I’ve seen this, I wish I had never asked.”
“All right, let the doctor go. Take her to the back for interrogation and possibly execution. Max, forget what you’ve seen or heard here. This didn’t happen. The second you say it did, you will suffer a worse fate than Crimson here.”
Max was shocked; he hadn’t expected his response to get this reaction. He had a sick feeling in his gut. He’d envisioned himself and Crimson either dying together or walking out together, not this. He felt as if he had done something wrong, as if he should do something else to save her. He looked at her frantically, terrified.
Crimson, still smiling, still looking insane, stared into his eyes and nodded. She didn’t look worried at all. She looked as if she accepted her fate. She didn’t look like someone who believed she would be executed.
“But—” Max began to object.
“Max, old friend. Please shut up. Do as the nice Badger-man says. They only want to have a friendly chat with me… He, his band, and these few thousand admiring fans, that is. Trust me; this is a mere tryst in the park for a girl like me. I’ll be fine.” There wasn’t the slightest tone of fear in her voice. She either had a secret plan or really didn’t care what happened to her.
Max couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to her as he was thrown out into the rain in the back alley. The three men that had escort him hadn’t been particularly gentle, and when they threw him out, they made sure to toss him on the ground and kick him in the ribs a few times. He would definitely hurt in the morning.
He stood after they left; he didn’t want to get up too soon and risk another beating. He knew these men were vicious and meant business. He felt helpless, but he wanted to help Crimson. What would he do? Walk back in waving a pistol?
Shit! Why didn’t I draw it? Sure, even if it was loaded, I could kill only a few at best before they took us down, but if I reversed it and took Badger prisoner, they wouldn’t kill us. They’d let us be until we could get far enough away to outrun them.
“Funny seeing you here.”
Max heard Zarfa behind him. It was total déjà-vu. He should have felt relief—Zarfa had saved him only hours ago—but he didn’t. His stomach twisted in knots. Zarfa, as far as he knew, was one of them.
“I could say the same,” Max stated, not turning around to face him.
“You could? Why? Because I’ve never had Psyker bot treatments? Oh wait…”
Max realized how stupid he sounded. He didn’t need it rubbed in. He was nervous and thinking about too many things. Right now, he had been pondering over fifteen different plans to save Crimson—his wave a gun in Badger’s face plan seemed the least stupid—and now he was trying to hold a conversation with someone he didn’t know whether to count as friend or foe yet.
“I didn’t know they would accept you after only one treatment?” Max questioned.
“They might not. I don’t even know if I want to join them yet.”
“Then why the treatments if you don’t want to join the rest of the ‘Psyker Scream fans?’” Max asked. After the display that led up to him being kicked out of the warehouse, he assumed that there was more to this than them being a band.
“They are necessary for me to find my sister. People where I come from can see the raiders as they come down upon us from the sky. By then it’s already too late. I intend to be the only one who can hear them before they come…where they hide.”
Max stood there agape. He couldn’t believe Zarfa was letting him into his history, his psyche. He knew he needed to be cautious, but for now, he may as well consider Zarfa a friend, even if he did go with the whole “take a prisoner with an empty gun” routine. He didn’t think Zarfa would rat him out.
“Because it’s mine…yellow…kitten.” The words sang clear in Zarfa’s head, but didn’t make any sense. “What was that, Ma
x?”
“What?”
“I thought you said something that didn’t make any sense. Must have been my imagination.”
“Perhaps”
“It is in the...fifty-six…what about…midnight.”
Zarfa shook his head. His vision was getting blurry like earlier that day. It wasn’t pain; the medifoam had almost completely healed his fractured ribs as well as the soft tissues. He didn’t hear the deafening pitches he had heard earlier. But he did hear chaos and confusion. It would come and go, sometimes up to a hundred different voices flooding his head.
“Max, I hear voices. They’re in my head, but I can’t make out what exactly is being said. Some are like whispers; others are screaming. None of them are talking to me, but all of them are talking to me! What is this?”
Max began to get more nervous than he already had been. His first thought was of a serenity boost, but he quickly pushed it out of his mind. You don’t need it, Max! Then he thought about, only minutes ago, what Crimson had asked him, what he heard. He remembered hearing words in his head. Disjointed, unrelated, words…only in his head, not in his ears.
“That’s what she was trying to show me…but how?” Max pondered aloud as he looked at Zarfa in amazement. Max stepped over to Zarfa and rested a hand on his shoulder in a comforting manner. “Zarfa, breathe. Stay calm, I need you right now. Close your eyes, listen. Lock onto a voice and try to ignore the others. Tell me what you hear.”
Zarfa was unnerved. He had never had voices in his head before. To make it worse, he had more voices than he could count at this point, some screaming, some whispering, others having a nonchalant conversation. He closed his eyes and did as Max instructed. He chose a voice that he found distinct and focused on it, and only it. Slowly, the other voices began to fade and now Zarfa could now hear only this one man’s voice clear as if he were talking to him in person.
