by Sam Hall
“Her-her arm! She’s manifesting!”
I heard the orderly’s yelp as if from very far away, hollow and echoing, from down a tunnel. O’Reilly’s iron grip on my arm, yanking it down and shoving my sleeve up as he turned it from one side to the other soon snapped me out of it. I jerked back but he held me fast. I felt it, the rise, the suffocating pressure in my chest as my heart beat faster and faster. I could hear it, smashing against my eardrums. My mouth opened, to cry, to let it out…
“Lethe. Lethe. Be calm.” Marley’s face swam into view, filling my field of vision suddenly. His bright blue eyes shone, sparkling in the swimming glare. It almost made me feel nauseous. But it didn’t, it stopped, all of it stopped. His voice, I could hear it, it was so steady and calm. A contagious calm, a seductive calm.
“But-but…the glow. That's active mosaicism!”
“She’s a chimaera,” O’Reilly said as he scribbled down something on my file. “Though until now, I thought she was dormant.” He flicked rapidly through my notes, scanning them grimly. “Calm yourself, this just means she needs a top-up, to make sure she doesn’t turn into something else much less useful.”
“But…but…!”
O’Reilly’s eyes narrowed to slits as he shot the white-faced orderly a look. “She’s scared. They all are when they see him. He’s the one that ordered some very creative experiments on them, he always watched and recorded the results, personally. Sonny boy here’s going to keep her calm whilst I hit her with a maintenance shot. Keep her nice and muzzy so she doesn’t go postal when the big man arrives—” O’Reilly bent over his bag and had a needle out and a small ampoule of ready mixed Angelicus in one hand before I realised it was for me. The narcotic marigold, yellow, I hadn’t had it since I was a teenager, having spent a harrowing month or two going through withdrawal.
“No! No! No!” I yelped, trying to wrench my arm free of him as he struggled to prime the needle. I whipped my head from one side to the other, scanning the crowd and their reaction. I couldn’t afford to make too much noise, if I was seen to be making a fuss there’d be soldiers on top of me in a short time.
“Hold her still!” O’Reilly snapped. At the other orderly or at Marley I wasn’t sure. I didn’t care, I just wanted my arm free. My heart beat so fast I could barely hear much else. I gritted my teeth, tensed my arm muscles…
And let myself go limp. The glowing marks that tracked up my arm, all over my body went dark and flat in that instant. The skin just looked very faintly pocked, with tiny little dots, dots that swirled and curled around my forearm and bicep.
“No,” I said quietly as O’Reilly went to inject the needle, the sharp point hovering over my flesh.
And he stopped.
“I’m fine,” I said in an almost monotone, “I was just a little shocked.”
“You need a higher dose, you shouldn’t be manifesting like that at all with what you’re on,” O’Reilly growled.
“You’re right. Perhaps my medication should be reviewed. But if you give me that dose now, I’ll find it very hard to sit through the talk and nearly impossible to get home. Snoring through Hesse’s presentation will look very bad.” I watched the emotions flicker across his face. O’Reilly had maintained a perfect mask of apathy for so long it was amazing to see that he had the capacity for other feelings.
“I’ll take her home. Right after the talk. I’ll make sure she gets there safely, takes her dose,” Marley said. He looked at me, then Marley and back again for a moment, before bending over my file and furiously scribbling in some new recommendations.
“You’ll need to submit for some extra bloods next week. Should be today but we weren’t prepared for this. The labs are backed up with the internal review. They need to look at your levels, make sure you’re still in remission. You don’t turn up; a kill order will be served.”
“Of course,” I nodded and took a long slow breath. Be calm, be calm, don’t flare.
A blood test would be a death sentence in itself. They’d do my blood work and see I’d been un-medicated for years and kill me for non-compliance. O’Reilly finally nodded, capped the needle and handed it to Marley along with another two 500-gram bags for me. “You see she gets it. You siphon off her stash and I’ll hunt you down myself.”
“Of course,” Marley said, his voice a purr of reassurance. I felt his words vibrate a little in my ear, the familiar shift in tension that followed. Even the freaked out new orderly looked a little more mellow, leaning back in his chair.
I think O’Reilly was persuaded. It was hard to tell. He’d seen it all. We used to get brought here in nice neat lines by our teachers when we were little, and then they tested us until they saw what capabilities we had. It was never anything useful, albinos were bred to augment the powers of others. Apart from the occasional like Marley, we were all potential, no end result. O’Reilly didn’t get a chance to reply. We all turned when the entourage of black-suited men arrived. I saw albinos pouring through the door, they were really hustling to get everybody in for this. It could be about only one thing: Reunion.
“Looks like the man himself is about to arrive, we’d better go,” Marley said, reaching down and taking my arm. “She’s in safe hands.”
I heard O’Reilly snort at this as we moved with the rest of the crowd, grabbing a seat in the very back row. We sat down, close to the end, Marley left his arm wrapped around my shoulder as if for support.
“Good going,” he hissed with a small smile. “A kilo haul, that will do very nicely.”
“They’ve ordered bloods, Marley. They’ll kill me!”
“Shhh,” he insisted, “I’ll tag along for support. No one will test for anything we don’t want them to find. They won’t do anything to you.”
If he remembers, my brain prompted me helpfully. I felt Marley’s arm tighten around me as the burn rippled up and down my arms. I yanked my sleeves down over my hands harder now, wadding the loose fabric into tight balls in my fists, I took a deep breath.
Soldiers began to file in, adding to the already extensive group of them, leaving only a small circle free by the microphone. A woman, with long waves of perfectly coiffed black hair and a perfectly fitted white dress, was led to stand to one side of the podium, then came the man himself. Dressed in a dark blue suit, we looked upon the exact same face we’d seen as children, that generations of whites had looked upon. The first successful test subject of his own inventions of youth serums, Hesse.
“Bring her over here and try the needles. It seemed to make her react last time. No, don’t worry about that, it’s just tantrums. They’re always trying to get out of the tests. Those lights, I need to see the lights. There’s something there, I know it.”
I blinked, coming back to the room abruptly. Marley looked down at me in concern, reaching over to clasp my hand with his. “It’ll be OK, we’ll get through this.”
“Good afternoon everyone, I’ve come down to see you all to talk about the upcoming Reunion celebration. Many of you have participated in the ritual for years, and we thank you for your efforts, but some new information has come to light that will affect how it is carried out this year. I’d like to hand you over to her Highness, the Crown Princess Sasha.”
Reunion, yet another reason for the world to hate us. The yearly celebration where the devoted strove to recreate the conditions that brought the gods to earth in the first place, albinos both before and after the Revolution were dragged to the island of Talos. They stood before the Ladder of the Gods, which was just like it sounds, a black ladder that had been on Talos since the dawn of time, leading up into the heavens. Then all the good little albinos danced, performing the ritual and hoping the gods would return. They didn’t, of course they didn’t, but it never stopped people from wishing.
There would be festivals and all of this pomp and ceremony ahead of the day, everyone getting excited, the ministers stirring the believers. And then afterwards would come the recriminations.
“Good afternoon, I t
hink you’ll find this information as exciting as I do. As you know, I am the last surviving member of the Lyran royal family, and the only anomalous member of the government of Meridian City. I believe it is my responsibility to try and advocate for the rights of humans and anomalous both. Reunion, the return of the gods to our world, is the only way the breach between humans and non-humans can be mended. Reunion is our way to bring down the Wall. Which brings me to your role. The sacred albinos have always been featured in the religious texts,” she said, pressing her thumb on a clicker so that reproductions of temple paintings were screened on the wall.
These were very familiar; our teachers had gone over them multiple times when we were kids. “You can see in this image that the albino is the link between the gods and the world. Without you, we are left in our current godless state, abandoned to lurch from one disaster to the next, without divine guidance. I believe with some subtle changes to the ritual, that this time we may truly achieve Reunion.”
She was very passionate; you could see from her expressions and gestures, that she was extremely excited by her subject matter. It was just.. she was the only one. Hesse looked on politely, the soldiers were a wall of expressionless muscle and us? We were a motley collection of misfits, junkies and blood bags, what did she expect? More than the deafening silence she was met with evidently.
“So, I will show you the customary ritual which I am sure you all know, and then the variations I am proposing. I need a volunteer.” Ten soldiers took a step forward, putting themselves between the princess and us. She turned to Hesse, “I need a volunteer to demonstrate the steps otherwise this will be a pointless exercise.”
“Perhaps I can perform the role of partner,” Hesse said smoothly, taking her hand in his and spinning her into the first formation.
“Can you believe this shit?” Marley hissed, smiling his crooked grin at me. I blinked in the face of it, it was so hard to see him acting like his old self. His hand began to shake and our eyes both dropped. His fingers tightened around mine to stop it.
“Marley…” I hissed.
“It’ll be OK, I’ll get some yellow and some food into me as soon as we’re out of here. I’ll be fine.”
“So you see, instead of a twist and then a hop, it will be twist, twist, hop, arabesque,” Sasha continued.
“My staff have all taken extensive notes of your innovations and will be implementing them at each Outreach session, Your Highness, right up until the Reunion ceremony.”
“And we will do several dry runs at the site,” she said, lips flattening into a thin line.
“That may be a little difficult to manage. Reunion is already a nightmare safety-wise, but at any rate, this is a discussion for later. Everyone is dismissed.”
I should’ve heard the guard ticking as I walked into the airlock. I pulled Marley to his feet the minute Hesse stepped down from the podium. I didn’t hear Marley’s protest, just saw his lips move as I yanked him after me. “Where do you think you’re going?” The soldier grabbed me in one moment and had me shoved up against the wall in the next.
“Fuck!” I could hear it now, that insistent little ticking sound, the blood pump picking up speed as he was exerting himself.
“Look, officer…” Marley started but it was futile.
The soldiers were invulnerable to the persuasive lilt in Marley’s voice. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark shining visor but knew there would be no rapid pupil flare. Jacked up on pump fed vamp blood harvested in the post-Revolutionary mass slaughter of vampires we called The Terror; he was immune to anything any one of us could try. “You are marked for a 7-day compliance tracer.”
“Wha—?” I didn’t get a chance to protest, they were so damn fast. My shirt was yanked back from my shoulder, the muzzle of the tagging gun cold against my skin. There was a dead click and then…the pain. “Oh, fuck.”
He let me go and I slumped to the ground, pain and nausea overwhelming me in a series of waves. I whimpered as my shoulder ached and swelled, the tracer settling, fusing with my nervous system.
“Hey, hey you’ll be OK---“
“I’m going to throw up.”
“Not here, all over the nice man’s boots.”
He was trying to be gentle I knew, but my head swam as Marley pulled me up by my good arm. My gorge rose as we rapidly moved, we barely got through the last airlock before I was throwing up in the bushes that grew by the wall. Marley murmured something soothing as he held back my hair until I was finished. “What the fuck happened to her!” one of the boys said.
“Let’s get you in the car.”
My legs felt like rubber, my ankles threatening to give out with each step. I hadn’t finished throwing up, there just wasn’t anything left in my stomach to shift. I ended up propped up against the car door. I yelped when Marley pulled my shirt to one side.
“Let’s have a look now…” His hiss was a confirmation of what I feared. “We’re going to have to get you to Dax.”
“No, not that freak.”
“Lethe, I don’t know anyone else who’s likely to help us.”
“What the fuck is that?” I blinked to see Gavin looking at my shoulder, aghast. “It’s like some kind of spider under her skin.”
“It’s a compliance tracer,” Marley said. “They put them in us if they want to make sure we make Outreach or do something by a specific time. The black tendrils you see are it fusing with her nervous system. If she doesn’t do what she’s told then, boom!”
“How do you get it out? It has to come out,” Bennett said.
“Dax is the one who made them initially, that’s why I want her to go to Dax.”
I was gently manoeuvred back into the car; the pain was receding down to a dull ache now. I heard a hiss from the backseat and turned to see Marley sticking the needle O’Reilly had given us into his arm. His eyes rolled back as the plunger deployed the drug, his body going limp. “We’re going to need to get food before we go to the pub,” I said to the boys.
“We can get food there,” Gavin said.
“No, Marley, he’s running some kind of compulsion on himself and it’s using him up. He’ll be dead by the end of the day if we don’t get something into him, something else to fuel it.”
A groan came from the back seat and Marley managed to move slightly in his seat, “She’s not wrong. A drink first, with lots of calories.”
“What did you do?” I said, staring into his slitted eyes. “What was the persuasion?”
His smile made the bones in his face stand out in stark relief, “To be what you needed me to be.”
6
Lethe
The Arms Hotel
Hybrid Sector
The Quarter
The Arms was an anomaly in the Quarter, being owned by a human. A pub built on the 9th street away from the Wall, it was surrounded by other reputable businesses rather than the rubble of the vamps’ turf. Dax had been Hesse’s chief scientist back in the day and would’ve been on the team that created the tracer in my arm. “I fucking hate the Arms,” I said as we pulled up to the front.
“It won’t be that busy this early in the afternoon,” Bennett said.
Marley burped, dropping the second empty take out cup of soda on the seat, “Busy or not, he’d see us. Let’s go.”
“Marley, Lethe, did you score big?” Anastasia sat on one of the bench seats outside the pub, fixing us with a sleepy gaze. Hair like a hank of raw silk, long slender limbs and skin as white as milk, she could’ve been some kind of ghostly maiden from legend. Instead, her eyes disappeared into the dark bruised skin surrounding them. She looked as if she’d been given a good smack in the mouth recently, and her legs were arranged so untidily you could see right up to her not so well trimmed bikini line.
“No,” I said firmly, but she’d seen Marley’s face clearly enough the moment before, telling a different story. She unfolded herself from her position with surprising grace and approached him with a wobbly smile. “I’m going i
n,” I said shortly. This got me a cool glance that soon shifted to one of irritation when Anastasia wound her lithe limbs around his, purring. For a second standing in each other’s arms, they looked like they could be brother and sister for their similarity. Well, except that her hand started to slowly slide down the front of his pants. But this wasn’t something unique to Marley and the girl, it was all of us. Pale clones of each other.
“Later, love,” Marley said with a grin, taking her hand out of his pants and placing a kiss across the knuckles.
Inside the Arms was dark, warm and smelt like stale beer. The initial part was where the hybrids went and was a pretty normal bar, lots of wooden tables and chairs with a long chrome and glass bar along one wall. The bartender looked up and nodded as we walked through to a big steel covered door at the back. This was where the magic happened. A much larger space, walls painted black, stage to the left, extensive bar to the right and doors, so many doors, covering the walls. It wasn’t that empty. Half the albinos from Outreach had made the same decision and come here. So had the vamps by the look of all the black. “Down here,” Marley said, opening one of the doors with a sure hand. He’d better know where he was going. There was stuff that went on behind these doors and opening them was taken as tacit approval that it could be done to you.
We walked through a massive warehouse, the only light coming from long blue grow lights that were suspended from the ceiling. In planters, from one end to the other, were the huge nodding flowers of the narcotic marigold, Angelicus. Each bloom was about the size of a dinner plate and packed with tightly curled anthers saturated in the fluorescent yellow pollen from which the drug was made. The flowers shifted in the artificial breeze created by the fans, sending up tiny spirals of pollen into the air. I looked over at Marley whose fingers were twitching. “This is Dax’s special strain, it’s just as likely to have you sitting in a corner, smearing yourself with your own shit,” he said, though I wasn’t sure if that was for my benefit or for his.
