by Tyler Vance
Once Sheikoh had adjusted to what had seemed to a starving orphan the very definition of luxury, his sharp instincts had detected a discord within Namar household. Their business was failing, as was the eventual fate of practically every commercial business on the eternally poor West Side. Between the exorbitant protection fees from the various, competing gangs (before Legacy had absorbed them all), Centaurai Vest’s aristocratic taxes, and the general economic limitations of the unlucky sector of Interium, practically every integrated business had fallen by the wayside.
At eight, Sheikoh had deduced that the solution to his family’s problems had been more money. So he’d secretly dropped out of school and become an errand boy for gang, Redline, the only people willing to offer a job to an eight-year-old. They had actually paid rather well. And it’d been good experience; Sheikoh had learned to dodge kicks and blows leveled without reason.
It’d been his inductive glimpse into the underground - where succession was paid for in blood and the glow was backed by drugs.
For a few months, everything had been great. Their glow troubles dissipated; Sheikoh had persuaded Redline to ease up on the Namar bakery some, and business had chugged solidly.
Everything had been in easy equilibrium.
That is, until Daneil learned that his son was bringing him Redline’s glow. He had shouted himself hoarse at Sheikoh, screamed hate for every bit of love they’d wasted on him. As though he’d personally been the one to come at the end of each month and bled them dry.
Sheikoh winced. Then his face smoothed over half an instant later. The past only hurts if you let it, told himself.
But he knew that was a lie.
Pain hurts regardless of wants. Whether you, ‘let it’ or you don’t, it was always there. By its very nature, pain is immutable. If it could just be ignored, the concept wouldn’t have ever come to be. And Sheikoh knew that better than anyone.
He finished polishing the last tool, and he picked himself up, shrugging his jacket on. Then he set a brisk pace through the sewer. A few moments later, he was back at the safehouse. He quietly went through the decontamination process, and eased the door shut behind him. He could see that Dorothi was already asleep in one of the sleeping bags, curled up in the far left side of the room.
Sheikoh carefully replaced Emili’s old tools and then swung through a door into the only other room in the safe house - a tiny, closet-sized shower.
For the second time, he pulled his clothes off. Sheikoh tossed his clothes into a pull-out compartment and flicked the shower’s knob on ‘hot’. An initial icy shiver, and then the temperature began to rise. Warmer and warmer, until he was surrounded by steam and relaxation.
His muscles went loose, dropping tension until his eyes went heavy. His body felt as soft a jelly. He leaned against a wooden wall, trying to summon the drive to grab the soap. The warm water was magical.
Magical…
Sheikoh yawned.
Was he really meeting a Celestial tomorrow?
Sheikoh was too tired to speculate, however. He grabbed the bar of soap and rubbed until suds overflowed his hands. Then he scrubbed his body down. And again. And then one last time, until he no longer felt covered in a layer of filth. Then Sheikoh flicked the water off and dried himself. He wrapped the towel around his waist, pulled on a clean outfit, and then quietly curled into a sleeping bag on the floor.
As soon as his head touched down, Sheikoh was out for the count.
Chapter 7
Once Upon a Crime
Sheikoh prowled the familiar maze of streets and alleyways in an effort to distract himself from the bubbling nervousness. He passed metal-spackled houses and broken-down wooden cabins, his face furrowed and intense. Sheikoh had less than half an hour left. He stepped forward with brisk, measured paces, identifying landmarks with the passing wonder that came at the knife’s edge of a battle.
This might well be the last time he ever saw any of them.
He couldn’t sit still. Staring at the creeping dangers as time slowly slotted them into place was draining. And he was going to need to be sharper than ever if he wanted to survive this ultimate confrontation. This battle between good and evil. He’d always been destined to play this part.
The part of the hero.
Sheikoh knew that heroes didn’t always come out on top. He’d lost years to the hurricane of conflict, swirling with blood and violence, and there wasn’t a shred of heroism anywhere in there. Only desperation and death; screams and silence; the living and the dead.
Sheikoh gripped the comforting hilt of the six-inch-long, blacksteel electroblade, courtesy of a hood who’d drunk himself unconscious. It’d been simple for Sheikoh to shift the blame on another game member. He’d always been a good liar.
But the lies had died on his lips that horrible day. The day Daneil had found out where Sheikoh had been scrounging his money from. The thought of the kind man’s face twisted in fury and the pain of betrayal as Sheikoh’d felt at the man’s screams like blows. He quickened his pace to the bakery. He was going to make this right.
The street spilled into a square, and his eyes found the small bakery cowering in the corner. It was Saturday, the end of the work week, which meant that a group from Redline would be collecting protection fees from each of the struggling businesses that lined Temptation Street. If any of the business was empty or if their owner hadn’t accumulated enough profit to satisfy the cruel brigands, they were instantly made an enemy of the gang.
At a business’s first offense, Redline stripped the unfortunate victim of every item of any possible value. That was the shopkeeper’s warning. The second offense resulted in the trashing and then sacking of the offender’s building. If anyone was unable to pay for their third week, their building was burned to the ground, usually along with the unlucky buildings directly beside it. Consequently, it was rare for a year to go by without some raging wildfire burning its way through the West Side.
Sheikoh could see the swaggering, leather-clad gangsters making their rounds, laughing and joking as they sauntered through the street. His chest went ice cold with fear. He was a single child against seven fully-grown men and women. Every single one of them was armed with a rifle, a handgun or some form of a blade, most with some combination of the three. The eight-year-old Sheikoh might as well plunge his own electroblade into his chest; there was no hope of survival. His body dropped into a ball, shivering uncontrollably. Sheikoh closed his frightened eyes, brimming with terrified tears, and the child rested his tiny head on his knees. His heartbeat pounded throughout his body.
Unbidden Anima’s voice rose inside his head.
“No matter how desperate the future looks we will never take the easy way out. Self-sacrifice is what separates humanity from animals, and humanity looks after its own,” Anima’s soft voice echoed inside of him.
Sheikoh’s chest felt a little bit warmer. He could see the mother figure in his mind’s eye, wearing her yellow apron. Her glossy brown hair was pulled into a loose bun the lines of her face were lightened underneath a twinkling smile. Sheikoh stood up and looked at the cocky gangsters with blazing eyes. He knew that at the time Anima had been explaining why she and her husband had taken Sheikoh in, but it gave Sheikoh something to hope for.
“Humanity looks after its own…” he murmured aloud, thinking.
If he ran down the street and showed people a child was willing to stand up to the bullies, others would follow. He was sure of it. Daneil and Anima, at least, would fight the gangsters with him. They'd see that he was sorry.
Determination lit the innocence in his fearful, dark eyes, and he drew the electroblade. He took a deep breath and then ripped the still air with a wordless battle cry, as he ran towards the hoods.
Shopkeepers’ surprised eyes turned towards him. Their faces twisted into categories of despair, fear, or that curious, blank-eyed jealousy born at the dead end of desperate life. The two Namars had focused their eyes on the child with twin stares of disma
y and horror.
Sheikoh’s scream drew the attention of the laughing, incredulous gangsters. They’re eyes narrowed dangerously on the child running their way, armed only with a knife. A few of them recognized their errand boy and a couple more raised their guns at the screaming eight-year-old.
“Don’t shoot. Let him come,” a savagely grinning woman told them sharply. Her face gleamed with a sadistic grin, and the others criminals hurried to obey. Nobody dared disobey Chain, the leader of Redline.
Sheikoh brandished the humming electroblade as he raced towards the gangsters. His battle scream raged loudly in his pounding chest. A stone’s throw away, the gang’s leader, a woman named Chain took a few quick steps towards him. With a surge of hate for the gangster that had beaten him more than any other, he thrust out his arm to stab her chest. Only his hand was suddenly empty. The wild looking woman had plucked the blacksteel blade from his hand, faster than thought. Then one of Chain’s feet kicked out and tripped him.
Sheikoh face-planted onto the dirt, knocking up a cloud of dust as he slid. When he lifted his head up to take a terrified breath, he took in a lungful of the floating dust. He choked desperately, trying to make force his incompliant body to its feet as Chain walked toward him with an evil grin. He rolled in the dirt desperately while the other gangsters laughed at their former errand runner.
Sheikoh managed a gasping breath of air. He shot a pleading look his parent’s way but their faces were down. ‘Please help me,’ Sheikoh mentally pleaded.
Pain suddenly exploded in his stomach and he was flung at least three feet through whirling air, in excruciating agony. Chain’s boot had ripped into Sheikoh’s stomach. The child saw her put it back onto the ground as he landed in the dirt, heavily. Silent tears tracked down his dirty face.
Sheikoh couldn’t breathe. His body was wracked with astounding agony. He was shaking so violently that he didn’t know if he could move. His stomach like it’d been impaled on a jutting rebar. Sheikoh knew that he should have listened to his first instincts; the truth was that heroes were nothing more substantial than a figment of imagination. People created illusions that gave themselves up so that they wouldn’t have to.
Heroes rush… in… and here we…are, Sheikoh cursed, bitter with pain.
He made a mistake, and now he was going to pay for it. And the consequences would be absolute, he could see it in Chain’s sadistic smile. He clenched his eyes shut and wondered if it was possible to feel more pain.
He was answered with a resounding yes.
His hair was ripped up into the air. Sheikoh choked out a hoarse scream. He could feel his scalp tearing from his skull. Blinding tears drenched his eyes and cheeks. He couldn’t take it anymore.
“MOMMY! DADDY! HELP ME!” He begged Daneil and Anima.
Anima’s face dripped with silent tears, as she averted her gaze, and Daneil shook his head with an expression of absolute terror. Sheikoh’s heart sunk to the absolute pit of despair. Shock choked his throat. His scream died down.
“You heard him,” laughed Chain. “Here’s your one and only chance to save your son.”
Nobody corrected her as to the nature of their relationship. The square was shrouded in still, funeral silence. Even the other members of Redline had gone quiet.
Chain scraped the electroblade along Sheikoh’s side in sadistic delight. Pain flashed with specks of red, and the heavy air resounded with another desperate cry. He writhed in Chains strong hand like a fly caught in a spider web.
Sheikoh’s shrieks ripped the tense silence of the square to tatters. Watchers flinched. Members of Redline glanced at each other uncomfortably, as blood dribbled off the child in their leader’s arms.
“No?” Chain taunted sharply. “Too gutless?” Her voice held the unquestioned obedience of the silence. “Afraid of this?”
She plunged the electroblade deep into Sheikoh’s side.
Sheikoh gasped awake. His heart pounded, and his eyes darted wildly around the safehouse wildly for a second. Then he realized that he’d been dreaming. Adrenaline flowed through him as he sat there, slow to recede. He twisted and punched his pillow, hitting hard enough that a clang reverberated through the night.
Sheikoh shot a guilty glance over at Dorothi, who was still breathing slowly and regularly with a peaceful expression. He rubbed his eyes and twisted so he was leaning against the wall. For a few moments, he watched Dorothi sleep, thinking. She'd only been two when the memory had taken place.
Had it really been so long?
Try as he might, Sheikoh couldn’t forget. Surrounded by dark and the cold, he couldn't summon the will and wrench control of his thoughts. Imaginings flickered in the corners of his eyes, and memory burrowed through the pores of his face.
After Chain had plunged the knife into his side, it was all black.
Sheikoh couldn’t remember anything else of the torture. He couldn’t remember Chain’s laugh or the fire that’d burned the Namar Bakery to the ground, retribution for his pathetic attack.
Or, maybe his parents had tried to avenge him.
Sheikoh honestly didn’t care either way.
The Namars had given up his compassion when they’d stood by to watch him die. He’d put himself into their hands, and they’d let him fall and shatter against the ground. The next time he’d opened his eyes, he’d been blasted back to life by Emili’s defibrillator.
The backs of his eyes began to tingle uncomfortably, as her fiercely determined face swam in his thoughts.
Sheikoh came to lying on a cold, metal table. Dying gasps stuttered across his lips. He stared up at two hazy outlines, stretched over his vision like ghosts. Or angels, maybe.
The two outlines slowly drifted into focus. An old man and a blonde girl.
Alimiat and Emili.
Emili Wray saved his life that day. She’d carried the mutilated corpse of Sheikoh’s body back home, and broken into Alimiat’s study, demanding he save Sheikoh’s life.
After Sheikoh had passed out, Chain had played with his electroblade until she’d run its power dry. Then she’d given Sheikoh up for dead and tossed his ruined body into the dirt beside the street. The Namar bakery had been set alight to blaze the gangster’s warning to anyone even considering defiance. Messages passed faster by smoke signal than even texts. In Interium's residential section, smoke only ever held one meaning - destruction. People usually got the message.
The first time Sheikoh had seen her, Emili’s hair had been hurriedly pulled back into a ponytail with a scraggly, grey tie. Her cheeks were speckled with freckles along with the drops of oil and perspiration. She bit her pale lower lip with those slightly crooked white teeth as she leaned over with a screwdriver inside the child’s gaping chest wound. Her hands remained determinedly steady, but the rest of her body shook with fear.
Alimiat wore a white mask and a pair of latex gloves. His strangely yellowed eyes were his only visible feature and they were almost menacingly intense as fixated upon the bloody flesh that remained of Sheikoh’s body. Alimiat was Dorothi's and Emili’s father. And, as the foremost expert on cyborgs, he was partially Sheikoh’s as well.
After Emili and Alimiat had pulled all six inches (not counting the hilt) of electroblade out of Sheikoh’s chest, they'd set to work repairing him. The electroblade had been stabbed and held in both of Sheikoh’s right shoulder, right thigh and left hamstring for long enough to have completely destroyed the nerves of his perennial nervous system. The limbs had had to come off. Sheikoh totally got that. He accepted it.
But he couldn't help but resent the fact that Alimiat had cut him at the hip instead of the damaged areas of the legs.
“A full waist replacement is both easier for your nerves to adjust to and much less susceptible to infection than two leg additions,” Alimiat had explained to the overwhelmed child.
At the time, Sheikoh hadn't understood what the scientist had been taking from him. But Sheikoh understood now.
They’d removed the body part that m
ade him a man. An eight-year-old couldn’t have asked for anything more than to be a half robot, but when Sheikoh had realized what he had lost, a hole had opened in his self-perception. He’d been mutilated into some kind of fraction of a human that had to hide his body away to protect the eyes of the people he cared for. His genes had been crippled and left to stagnate, until they eventually died without heir.
Sheikoh knew that, even though he had given up a lot and that there was so much he would never be able to experience in life. At least he had a life. Even if Sheikoh had just been a final test for Alimiat’s perfected immunosuppressant, cyborg-creating formula.
Living with the Wrays, Sheikoh had grown close to Emili. He could remember the girl massaging his shoulder muscle when his small, surprisingly heavy, blacksteel arm would threaten the horrible ache of his constantly-pulled shoulder muscles. Emili was the one that patiently helped him through the process of learning to walk again, while Alimiat spent endless hours on hold for old business acquaintances that wouldn’t take his calls. Emili helped feed and clothe the still clumsy Sheikoh, while her father shouted and locked himself in his study days, with only chemicals, test tubes, and a box with the worn label Humanoid Cryomentalynsis specimen: 4 - Dientienide Chloroxyiate. The drug that was known on the streets by the shortened ‘Four’.
Eventually, Emili had grown to trust him enough to let him in the know.
Alimiat’s story was a sad one. Dr. Wray had been a brilliant R and D guy for some company inside the capitol of the empire, Intrasentient City. Alimiat had spent his life working on the cyborgic body parts that were attached to Sheikoh himself. He had thought them perfect in their connection to a patient’s nervous system, and for a while, it seemed like he was right. The people wearing prosthetics were fine anywhere from about one to four years until their body just died. No one in the scientific community could figure out why everyone was dropping dead, much less cure them. Their organs didn’t even fail, it was like they’d brain activity simply vanished. They scrambled around but came up with nothing besides resentment for their colleague who had pushed his pet project through testing.
