by Tyler Vance
Sheikoh nodded warily looking at the muscular man now, full in the face. His eyes were sparkling with a strange amusement.
“Not until I pick up a new one,” said Sheikoh without inflection. Indigo’s smile widened a few teeth.
“Dangerous city, mate. You of all people should know not to leave home unarmed.” Indigo commented. His tone was full of suppressed meaning.
Come on… really? He’d just saved Indigo’s life. Annoyance mixed with apprehension, as he stared at the enormous, grinning man across from him. He suddenly noticed that Indigo was still holding his gun, a sheared assault rifle the ganglord was able to hide in his coat.
Unbidden, his one on one melee with Indigo jolted through his mind. Hand to hand, Indigo was superior. Not just to him, but to every gangster or fighter in Interium. Sheikoh didn’t stand much of a chance at the moment. Indigo was a fighting virtuoso, an artist in the chaotic school of physical domination. Sheikoh shuddered. No matter his special skills and attributes, he was literally bringing a knife to a gunfight. And even if he still had his pistol there was the simple matter of his broken trigger finger. He thought of Dorothi sadly as inspiration, as he searched for some means of surviving this hopeless situation, but there was nothing besides-
Indigo reached behind his back in a flash of motion. Sheikoh cursed vehemently. He probably wouldn’t beat the man holding all the cards, but that didn’t mean he planned on going down without a fight. He flicked out his electroblade smooth as glass, and his body tensed into a fighting stance, his left palm out like a shield and his right behind him, cradling the knife in a light grip.
Indigo’s thick arm swung around, flinging something at Sheikoh’s face. It spun through the air humming with speed. Sheikoh unerringly snagged out of thin air, intending on throwing it right back into Indigo’s shiny teeth. The ganglord would’ve been dead if Sheikoh hadn’t dragged him from the fire. As he lifted his hand back, Sheikoh glanced at the object. Shock stopped his arm.
He twisted the thing around, looking at it from all sides. There was no evidence then it was anything other than he’d thought. Indigo had just thrown him a memento of the day he’d tried to kill him; Sheikoh’s old ML5 silenced pistol.
Sheikoh looked up at Indigo and flashed him the only real smile he ever had. He immediately forced a mocking light into his eyes as he straightened up and tucked the handgun away, but he knew Indigo had seen. Side by side, they walked out of the burned area, silently and uncomfortably.
Sheikoh knew that Indigo knew that he’d thought Indigo had been ready to attack him. He wasn’t sure what to say about; for some reason he didn’t like Indigo thinking that after fighting on the ganglord’s side. Sheikoh was at a loss for words, and the silence was uncomfortable. It was like his chest wanted him to say something that he didn’t want to say.
A subtle flush touched Sheikoh’s cheeks. Flipping his hair out of his eyes, he glanced down at his old pistol.
“Big Zee, is all sad.” Big Zee was thirteen-year-old Sheikoh’s nickname for the pistol. “She misses you already. You must have treated her well. She’s so shiny; did you oil her today for me?”
Indigo grunted noncommittally.
“That was so thoughtful, you great big Dandelion!” Sheikoh mocked, all the while pushing peculiar warmth back down his chest.
“I tossed that piece of trash in a drawer and forgot about it,” Indigo retorted, his cheeks coloring a little. “Until this Celestial started throwing your name around, saying he had a job for that’d make me, you-
Indigo stopped for a second, and thought. “Well, he said after this we’d be the richest people in Interium.”
Sheikoh noticed the stutter, of course. But his mind was on what he considered the most important thing. It was the same promise Dekla had waved in his face. In his experience, the more people who’d been offered a job, the less likely it was for any last second surprises. Still, he didn’t like that neither of them had given him a number. Then he began wondering why a Celestial wanted a thief and a ganglord for.
“So, we talking the richest West Siders in Interium?” Sheikoh asked, thinking. He wondered how that translated into his new deputized status. Indigo smiled, his eyes narrowed with greed and glittering with lust.
“No we’re talking the richest any siders in Interium,” Indigo whispered, his face glowing and magnificent with wild, almost bestial excitement.
“Wow, gotta say that I like the sound of that,” Sheikoh murmured quietly.
“Okay, so be by the gate around eleven tomorrow,” Indigo ordered. “Eleven in the morning. We’re meeting someone there, then going to see the Celestial in person. So don’t be late.”
Indigo began walking away. But Sheikoh still had something he wanted to make clear.
“Hey wait!” Sheikoh called. "Indigo!"
The ganglord turned. His gaze smoldered with annoyance.
"What?" He grunted.
“If I see a single Legacy dude, I'm gone," Sheikoh warned.
Indigo's eyes widened.
"Wait-”
"-Anyone that even looks a like a hood," Sheikoh went on.
"But-"
"-If I feel anything we didn't plan on-"
"-Don't be-”
"-That’s it," Sheikoh interrupted him sharply. "Reward or no, I’m gone."
Indigo’s jaw dropped. His face looked like I child about to whine, ‘unfair’. He opened his mouth and began speaking in a gruff voice.
“We… we could use the assurance-
“Oh, silly!" Sheikoh giggled. "I already know I’m irresistible in this jacket.”
Indigo’s expression blanked out into shock.
“But I'm more than a body Indi,” he went on, “And this may not be the best time for any surprise gropings, or back alley kisses you got saved up in that big, strong chest of yours, if you take my meaning.” He batted his eyelashes at the ganglord.
Indigo stared at him for a second, wearing a mixture of shock and disgust.
“I’d rather kiss my own ass…” Indigo finally managed to splutter.
“Sounds fun,” Sheikoh giggled. “You bring the lotion and I’ll rustle up a yoga instructor. We’ll oil things up ‘round here.”
Indigo stalked away then, shaking his head darkly. Sheikoh distinctly heard him mutter, “prick”. Then Indigo slipped around East Side Swifthooves traffic and quickly vanished from view.
“Well…” Sheikoh murmured to himself. “It’s been... interesting…”
Chapter 5
Know your Enemies
Sheikoh glided along the picturesque, cobble-stoned walkway meandering through the east side. It was strange walking to the soundtrack of his quiet footsteps. Between the clanking hammers pounding against metal in the factories and the merchants hawking their wares, the west side was a bustling melee of noises and motion. Compared to its west counterpart, the east side’s quiet felt almost unnatural.
The people around him rode Swifthooves or had the animals pull their carriage. Their coattails and scarves fluttered elegantly behind them. Monocles glinted over one of their eyes, usually dominant. A pedestrian wearing ripped, black clothes should have stuck out in their midst like a sore thumb. Luckily, Sheikoh was well practiced at blending into the secret shadows hiding at the edges of afternoon. People couldn’t gossip about what they couldn’t see.
Sheikoh drifted through alleys and streets at the edges of shrubbery and the vestiges of buildings, free to find his way to the gateway independent of conscious thought. He walked silently with the traffic, subtly deviating from its patterns and currents to make for the edges of shadows. His clothing and features were blended with velvet darkness.
As he wandered, Sheikoh thought back over his strange day. He and Indigo had fought on the same side and they planned a repeat. Still, if something felt off, Sheikoh was taking Dorothi and running.
Sheikoh rounded the last block and saw the seamless silversteel gateway to the West Side, guarded by its two, resident Century. The white-
cloaked sentinels stood at attention on either side of the gate. Sheikoh’s eyes glanced over their featureless, visors, just visible beneath a pair of identical bone-white hoods. Suppressing a shiver, he let his hand creep to the reassurance of the Century Deputy Badge inside his pocket. He pulled the octagonal badge out and held to the crystal-faceted scanner on the wall.
Pain flared across his muscles, and his vision was dotted with electric flashing. Cramps writhed their way down his back and arm, and, before he even had the time to register surprise, Sheikoh was falling. He was unconscious before he hit the cobblestoned ground.
Something pounded the inside of Sheikoh’s skull. Disorientating uproar rampaged through his mind, crushing coherency underfoot. When he tried to rub his aching head, something stopped him. He quickly realized that his hands were latched to the arms of his chair. Sheikoh squinted at the blurry scene, trying to take stock.
What had happened?
Slowly, the scene aligned itself, and Sheikoh could make out the details of the face of the man opposite of him. It was someone he had never believed that he would meet in person. Centaurai Cylium Vest, the unquestioned leader of Skyrei, ruler of one of the eight regions of the Intrasentient Empire.
Vest’s long dark hair was slicked back. He wore his thin goatee sharp and thin. His skin was a little pale and at the early stages of wrinkling, but Sheikoh could spot the teensy scars of one or more face lifts. The way his face was lined though… Sheikoh didn’t like it. They weren’t smile-lines; the marks hinted at bitterness, determination and something else, something darker.
Vest’s plucked and dyed eyebrows were furrowed into an expression of disgust. The Arch Centaurai looked down at Sheikoh like he hadn’t bathed in months. A deep, blood red jacket hung over his straight shoulders with coattails hanging down to the backs of his knees. It hung over a jet-black suit, ending in a pair of polished black, dress shoes. The region’s eagle sigil was etched over the jacket’s heart in silver thread.
Two white-cloaked Century stood vigil at the door behind Vest, presumably the same two that had stood at the wall. Other than the menacing occupants, there wasn’t much worth looking at in the room. Their backdrop was a square of grey concrete, wearing a solitary blacksteel toilet. Obviously a cell in the Solitarium.
Sheikoh thought that taking this strange job meant that he didn’t have to worry about this kind of thing anymore. Luckily he had experience with this kind of thing. When he’d glanced down at his blacksteel manacles before, he’d instantly known that he could break out of them in less than a minute. Any escape plans were going to have to wait until he got rid of the dudes however. Then he shook his hair from his face. His momentarily-forgotten aching head, reminded him that he better not do that. Sheikoh almost gasped at the sharp, concussive pain.
He arranged his expression into what he hoped was a look of innocent curiosity and then realized, for once in his life, he really was curious as to what’d prompted his arrest. He’d only killed in self-defense. Maybe he could talk his way out of this?
“Well. You went with the smart course of action, kidnapping me and all,” Sheikoh told the Centaurai conversationally. “If you sent me an invitation to this party, I can’t guarantee that I would have RSVP’d.”
The Arch Centaurai leveled a calculating gaze on Sheikoh for a few moments. Then he turned to the Century.
“Leave us,” the Vest ordered sharply. “And don’t forget: If I catch any hint of this on record, it will be your last mistake.”
“Leave? Well if you insist,” Sheikoh laughed, shaking his arms. “I might need a little help with these, Mister Centaurai.”
The two Century left without a backward glance. The blacksteel door slammed with a loud clang. The Centaurai’s intensity made his suit and outfit look menacing rather than pompous as it would’ve on anyone else. Or maybe it just seemed that way, seeing as Sheikoh was currently strapped to a metal chair.
Minutes stretched underneath that unwavering stare. Sheikoh searched for something to say and when he came up dry, he imperceptibly began to work his right hand out of its manacle.
“Look, mate, I’m sure you got better things to spend your time with than standing there and posing for me,” Sheikoh told the politician. “And if I’m here cause there was something up with that aide pass thing? That wasn’t me. See, this guy, Dekla-“
“There was nothing wrong with the wall pass, merely its carrier,” Supreme Centaurai Vest coldly informed him. “What do you have to say for yourself, criminal?”
“Well, I’m getting the feeling of some kind of mix up here,” Sheikoh laughed uneasily as he subtly popped half of his right thumb out. “So Indigo... um... He's your guy..? My contact? Right?”
The Supreme Centaurai answered him with a severe frown. He thought that he’d been working for a Celestial? Didn’t the Celestial Enclave play on time with the Imperial folk like the Centaurai?
What was going on?
“Guess not… awkward, huh? He said something about a Celestial..?”
“A Celestial? Go on,” the Arch Centaurai murmured, obviously interested.
So Sheikoh described everything that’d happened to him. He usually wasn’t the cooperating type, but right now it was just an easy smokescreen. The Centaurai was obviously off his guard. Even so, Sheikoh forced himself to stay slow and invisible. It was harder than it usually would’ve been, as his broken index finger was next to useless. At least it didn’t feel pain the way a normal finger would’ve. There were some advantages to a hard life.
After Sheikoh had finished speaking, the Centaurai silently twirled a finger through his goatee. Then he let out a low laugh. Sheikoh instantly stopped wriggling his wrist out of the blacksteel to stare innocently up at the Arch Centaurai. He wasn’t quite sure what the man was laughing at, but Vest’s bitter laugh grated on his nerves. It had an evil sound, the kind most at home in a ruined city or a moss-covered cemetery. Sheikoh had to force himself not to grit his teeth. Who put this crackerjack in office? he wondered.
“Ironic,” Arch Centaurai Vest murmured, still smiling slightly to himself.
Then the smile twisted into contempt, and he addressed his prisoner.
“I cut off your clearance and made arresting you a top priority when you killed my man and his entourage,” Vest paused to look down his nose.
Sheikoh tried to look suitably repentant
“I believed that you had betrayed Skyrei as well as the entire Intrasentient Empire,” the Centaurai went on in clipped, icy tones.
“Honest mistake…” Sheikoh muttered a little rebelliously.
“In joining this Indigo-
“He made it too me before your man did!” Sheikoh interrupted. “How was I supposed to know whether he was or wasn’t my contact?” The Centaurai’s eyes were as cold and as sharp as icicles, so Sheikoh tacked on a hesitant “…Sir?”
“In joining with this ganglord, this Indigo . . .” Vest took a deep breath and seemed to calm down somewhat. “It would appear that we have secured a distinct advantage over the Celestial renegade.”
Sheikoh finally managed to squeeze his right hand out of its blacksteel manacle. He bit back a smile and forced his attention back onto Cylium Vest.
"This Celestial rogue was the reason I requested your services in the first place. When you meet with him tomorrow, you will kill him. And I just might overlook adding these new murders to your record.”
Cylium Vest stared down at Sheikoh, lip curling. Like the fact that Sheikoh came from a poor background, that he’d had to make something of nothing and succeeded, and, in the process, somehow managed to find himself in a position where the Arch Centaurai himself was forced to speak with him. Like he was an equal.
Well, that was fine. Sheikoh regarded the Arch Centaurai with almost as much repugnance as the Arch Centaurai was throwing his way. He found that he didn’t quite like Vest’s insulting offer. There was no way he could’ve have known any of this, cause the Centaurai was too up his own ass to tell him
upfront.
Suddenly Sheikoh wanted to have a conversation with this mysterious Celestial before deciding anything.
“So, why didn’t you just give that Dekla a mission statement?” Sheikoh asked the Arch Centaurai with a pair of wide, innocent eyes. Then, when Vest opened his mouth to answer, Sheikoh blurred forward, twisted and lunged, catching Vest by the throat. Sheikoh pulled the terrified Centaurai around into a headlock that left him gasping for air.
“Let me out, or I’ll snap your neck, mate. Like a twig,” Sheikoh told Vest in a conversational tone of voice, as though commenting on yesterday’s Tri-ball. “I mean, why wouldn’t I? If I kill you here, it’ll be as the most famous criminal in all Interium. Not a bad way to die, if you ask me.”
Vest’s weak struggling suddenly stopped, and Sheikoh raised his eyebrows The Arch Centaurai looked up at him, face suffused with hatred. Sheikoh started; in all the death threats he’d seen (or made) in his young life, he’d never seen anyone respond like this. He had to give it to the dude; Cylium Vest definitely had a pair.
Then inexplicably, Sheikoh’s right arm began to loosen. His eyes widened with surprise and fear as his forearm fell limp. The Arch Centaurai gasped a desperate breath of air. For a second, Vest made no move to attempt escape Sheikoh’s bicep around his shoulders. The Arch Centaurai straightened and let Sheikoh’s arm fall limp.
Sheikoh stared at the Arch Centaurai with horror. What could’ve happened to his arm? He hadn’t overdriven in over a month! This couldn’t be happening now-
Strange voices began to whisper alien language into Sheikoh’s head. They grew louder and louder, until they drowned out his thoughts completely. They began permeating throughout his body, clinging onto his muscles where they were evoking twitching spasms. Sheikoh’s body lurched a stumbling step backwards. And then another. Then he fell back into the cold blacksteel chair, to the soundtrack of cruel, mental laughter.
The strange whispers bounced around his head, suffocating him in a tight, mental grip. Primal fear, traced Sheikoh’s nervous system at the cruel smile winding across the face of Cylium Vest. The Arch Centaurai brushed wrinkles out of his red coat as he stared down at the immobile teenager like a cat looming over bleeding sparrow. Vest’s hazel eyes were wild with excitement. The Centaurai stepped towards him.
