by Beth Ryan
Of course, that was probably just an effect of the filtered air. After spending my whole life with smoke in my lungs, the clean air was a heady experience. The light in Audry’s eyes as she scanned the map in her grasp reflected my own excitement.
When she took my hand and dragged me down the path, I followed without protest. She flitted from one tree to the next, marveling at the flowers that made up the garden. She was full of movement, unable to stop long enough to smell the roses for fear of missing the sunflowers. I’d known she’d react this way from the moment I suggested we come here. Getting to see her smile again made up for my own discomfort and the high expense of the trip.
“It had been a hard year for both of us.”
I sighed, recalling the weeks I’d spent sleeping on Audry’s couch. She’d been so sick, I hadn’t dared go home for even a change of clothing. I’d almost quit smoking then, for fear of leaving her long enough to buy a pack at the store down the road.
I’d wanted to say the words that would bring a medic to her apartment. It had taken everything in me to keep those words at bay, even as I stared at the contraband and clear evidence of her crimes scattered around the apartment. There’d have been no way to hide everything so a doctor could come check on her. Audry had refused to take a car to the hospital, either, refused to even leave her bed. She’d threatened to reveal all of my secrets the one time I tried to pick her up.
So I’d been left to wait, to hope, and to worry, until I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
When her fever had broken, so had my resolve. I’d curled up on the bed beside her and clenched my eyes shut. Relief washed over me, and I’d found myself babbling about how I couldn’t lose her too. How it had felt like losing my mother all over again. Every time I thought about that momentary breakdown, my embarrassment returned.
Of course, when I’d come down with the same illness only two days later, she’d ignored everything I said and called an ambulance to come fetch me from my building right away. Despite the medication they gave me, I was still out for the better part of a week.
In the end, I’d lost three clients taking care of the only person I saw as family, and lost more credits than I could count to the hospital bills. It had cut a dent in my savings that had taken me six months to repair. The loss of Audry’s optimistic smile had been the cost I’d resented the most, though.
“I knew I didn’t belong in a place like that,” I said to the empty room. “Not the way Audry did.”
I cracked a single eye open to glance at the timer and my account. I was up an extra hundred credits with only a few short statements. The orange numbers of the clock ticked down as my time slowly ran out. Eight minutes left.
The dim light of my room was a strange contrast to the memory I had of standing in the New York sanctuary that afternoon. Audry and I had both marveled for a long time over how the plants were so alive. The lights above us were almost unbearable to me, but both the flowers and my best friend seemed to flourish beneath them.
The gardens of the New York sanctuary had at least eight dozen breeds of flowers and even a few animals we’d never seen before. The air was almost as clean as it had been before environmental failure ruined our planet. There was an entire level dedicated to relaxation and detoxing from the pollution pervading the world. In effect, the resort was a paradise that we’d only have one chance to experience, and the garden level was more than we could hope to explore in a single day.
“Alright, Bright Eyes,” I’d said, turning to watch the girl who had been at my side for more than half my life. I was feeling the itch to pull out my cigarettes, but I fought it. There was no smoking allowed in the sanctuary. The few precious minutes it would take to finish a cigarette outside were minutes I couldn’t take from her experience. So I clenched my fists in my pockets and flashed her a charming smile. “You sure you don’t want to look into the other amenities? We’ve only got a day pass, after all.”
She turned from the bluebells she was inspecting to look at me. I caught her slight frown even as she attempted to hide it. She didn’t have to say a single word for me to know how deep her disappointment ran at the reminder. My heart ached for her. Audry deserved more than a day inside the resort. She deserved more than a small break from the endless drudgery and poisoned air that was our lives. The day passes had been more than expensive, though. I couldn’t imagine having enough credits to bring her there for an overnight trip. It would be more realistic to build a time machine and leave the smoke-soaked world behind than to afford living in a place like that. Yet, there were people who did so full-time.
They had no idea how lucky they were, or how much I would give up to let Audry spend more than one day exploring the place.
“Sometimes I wish I could go back,” I whispered, eyes closed tight against the honesty in those words. My breathing was shallow, caught in my throat as I waited for what was coming. There had been five minutes last time I looked. Time was running out. “Sometimes I wish I had enough credits to never see that look in her eyes again.”
The garden had been her favorite place in the whole of the resort. At the center, we’d found a pond that held two teardrop-shaped islands in the middle. She’d been enchanted by it, staring down at the colorful fish that swam by through crystal clear waters.
I’d had the irrational thought to resent those fish. They would live their whole lives in a clean environment. They would never have to worry about where their next meal would come from or if someone was planning to lock them up for the crime of wanting a better life.
Both my heart and my breathing became heavy. I’d had to step back from the pond when I realized how angry I was. Eyes shut against the bright lights, the familiar darkness washed over me, and I took deep breaths to calm myself. The fish were only animals, after all. They couldn’t help their situation any more than I could.
When I opened my eyes again, I traced the lines of the water in an attempt to soothe myself. It didn’t work. With clenched fists, I turned away from the elegant infinity symbol the pond created. My anger returned full force at the realization that it wasn’t the fish I was upset at. My rage was directed at the people who had created their environment.
I was furious at the men and women who had lived their whole lives with clean air and wholesome food. They were the ones who supported the Lemniscate. They were the ones that charged such high prices for the littlest luxuries, for the things that all humans deserved. They were the ones that made ponds in the shapes of the government’s crest and allowed my best friend to stand beside it for only the cost of half her life’s work.
“Sometimes I wish I’d put my dirty hands in the water,” I said, watching the timer change from tracking the minutes to tracking the seconds. “I’d like knowing that I managed to leave behind some small imperfection in the Lemniscate’s perfect little world.”
Then there was no time left. I could feel the euphoria first, whirling around me and making me feel light. I struggled to stay in control. I didn’t want the euphoria any more than I wanted the vertigo. It was all coming, though. I had no choice but to endure, now that I’d taken the CAPS. All thoughts of the aristocracy, the government, and the unfairness of the world left me. My reality became a whirl of falling and floating and not quite catching my breath.
I prayed that no one would have reason to bother me the rest of the day. I wasn’t going to be in the best shape after coming down from this high.
However, only twenty minutes after I’d taken the pill, a young man arrived on my street. As I lay vulnerable in my bed, half asleep, the least accommodating person I would ever have the displeasure of meeting was at the door, pacing as he gathered up the courage to knock.
3
“Nate, chya got a customer!”
Bev’s voice echoed through the whole house. My hands clenched the thin blanket beneath me. I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut tight against the roller coaster of side effects. I wanted to ignore the words more than anything. Ho
wever, I knew there was no hope for that. Bev would continue to shout until she was certain I’d heard her.
My housekeeper could be heard across the city on a quiet night. This city didn’t have any quiet nights anymore. It had the sound of tires on pavement, angry honking, and a cacophony of alarms. Fighting. Shouting. Screaming in terror, or ecstasy, or some mixture of the two.
It was enough to drive a man to insanity on a good day.
A grimace stretched across my face as I struggled to sit up. Today was not a good day. It couldn’t have been more than an hour since the euphoria and vertigo had set in. I scowled, cursing whoever had chosen this moment to come to me for help.
The person at the door had better be dying, I decided, or they’d find themselves doing so very soon.
The whole room spun as I fought to regain control of my senses. As much as I wanted to fall back on my bed and just hang on, I had to address whoever was at the door. Any signs that I was incapacitated would get back to the fraud department faster than Audry could dismantle a firewall.
I clenched the edge of the bed as I pushed through my concern at getting caught. The world tilted on its side. I focused my thoughts on Audry, ran through the things she would say if she weren’t holed up in her apartment hacking her way through the lower levels of the government’s security in an attempt to destabilize their power in any subtle way. Probably she would say something scathing about how I’d brought this on myself.
I could already see her expression, half snide and half affectionate. She’d roll her eyes if I tried to protest and then punch me in the arm if she thought I’d done something dumb enough to deserve it.
I resolved then and there to never tell her about the situation. I figured it would just be easier to avoid the whole mess altogether than endure her disappointment. It had been that way from the very first day we met, when I caught sight of the dismantled server she was sifting through and knew without a doubt that that petite blonde girl would become my partner in crime.
What I hadn’t predicted was how effortlessly she would become my sister as well. There was something about her willful courage and fierce sense of justice that made me hope for a better world. Though she could banter with the best and knew the kind of dark humor that might make me smile, it was her golden heart that kept us going.
She saw beauty in destruction. She always spoke with passion about the complexity of the virus codes she wrote and how the clever lines were like pieces of artwork too clever to be sent out into the world unsigned. She was lighthearted when she spoke of rebellion. I was often treated to her tirades against the upper class and her desire to break down the barriers between the Lemniscate and the rest of us.
Yet, she only ever highlighted the positive effects that anarchy might bring. She was an optimist, the bright light in my dark world. She was the only thing I’d give my life to protect.
If that meant getting off the bed and stumbling to the door, then so be it.
I passed Bev in the hallway and she detached her wheelchair from the stair lift. She took one look at me and rolled her eyes before rolling her way back to her room without another word. As I stood at the top of the stairs, the spinning stopped, and I had one brief, blissful moment of clarity. It wouldn’t last long.
My entire building rattled as I stampeded down the stairs and I could feel the walls trying to shake themselves apart. Despite that, every room in the building was filled to capacity.
As the cheapest accommodations west of the Central Park Memorial Tree, I’d never been low on renters, or high on my attention to repairs. I didn’t make any credits off the building, but that didn’t matter. I had other ways of making ends meet.
Most of the people who lived in my building knew what I did. They also knew it was best to stay out of the way. They’d all been clients at one point or another. They’d all come to me with their eyes blown wide in fear and their hearts racing. Every single one of them had heard about my particular set of skills in pulling people out of trouble, and had found their way to my door.
They were the criminals who’d almost been caught, or the innocents who’d been framed. They respected my work. Filling the rooms of my home with those who’d revealed their darkest secrets to me was a careful strategy. It ensured that I wouldn’t be alone when the more troublesome clients arrived. Everyone here had a secret to protect and none of them had any interest in letting an untrustworthy stranger ruin things by hurting me.
I’d had to make a very complicated deal with Clyde when he’d shown up. Both of us knowing that he was bringing the CAPS into my space had made things complicated. As much as I could see their usefulness, I also hated them. Everywhere those little blue pills went, the degradation of society followed. It was enough to destroy families, and kneecaps, and souls.
I couldn’t count the number of people who had come to me looking for people they’d lost. Brothers and sisters were separated, children orphaned. Whenever I did take the case, I fully expected to find a corpse rather than a client’s loved one, if I could find anything at all. The high prices and low value output drew money from the pockets of civilians like a starving vampire drawing blood. They were good for making some quick credits and keeping a person from starvation, but the CAPS weren’t worth their consequences en masse. They brought with them an illusion of better days and brighter futures. It was only an illusion though, one that always shattered as soon as the effects wore off.
The fear that my renters would become hooked on the pills and fall back into old patterns was a strong one. It had taken the better part of the day to get Clyde to agree that selling in the building would be restricted only to me. Even with our understanding, I suspected he was trying to toe the line by making the deals in the alley behind the house.
We’d have to have a talk about it soon, if I wanted to keep my operation from falling apart.
I jumped the last three steps and landed in a pile of crumbled drywall at the bottom of the stairs. It billowed out around me, sticking to my old overcoat and probably getting in my hair. The nausea returned as the ground swooped out from beneath me and I stumbled over my own feet. I grasped the wooden door frame to stabilize myself before I could slam into the man at the entrance. An unpleasant whirling sensation hit as I came to a hard stop.
When I managed to glance up at the stranger on my doorstep, my breath caught. My eyes watered. I was engulfed in a coughing fit, lungs burning as I gasped for fresh air. The newcomer had been holding his hand out, polite as you like. He dropped it back to his side after a moment, frowning at me where I rested heavily on the front entrance, wheezing.
“Hey. Hey, there.”
My first words were hacked out through the tail end of my coughing fit, brilliance just pouring out of me. Thinking of a better opening was made difficult by the spike of euphoria that filled me for a long moment.
I did my best not to blush at my own ridiculous entrance. I decided then and there to add sweeping the entrance hall to Bev’s endless list of housekeeping duties. It was hard enough to convince clients that I knew what I was doing because of my age. Introductions like this didn’t help anything in the long run. They usually caused clients to run straight to my competition, rather than stick around to give me a chance.
Their loss, really.
Once I caught my breath, I made another attempt to assess the stranger on my stoop. The increased flow of oxygen improved this endeavor tenfold. As I raked my eyes over him, however, my lungs stopped working once again. This time, there was no way to blame Bev’s poor work ethic, and I knew it.
The first thing I noticed was our height difference. That was made evident in the single moment his whiskey-brown eyes met mine. They stared up at me through the kind of lashes I’d heard more than one woman declare she’d kill for.
I took a deep, shaking breath. It was mostly to steady myself as my stomach jumped and dived again. There was no way to tell how long the effects of the pill would last, but already I could tell they were stronger th
an usual. I felt sick just standing there, staring at the potential client at my door.
He was hunched over, but he didn’t look like that was his natural stance. He held my gaze for far too long as well, like he was used to challenging those around him. His troubled scowl was reminiscent of any other schmuck in need. However, half a glance at him made it more than clear to me that he wasn’t anything like my usual clientele.
Sure, he had a torn coat the color of a three-day-old avocado, and a layer of dust that rivaled my own. Yet it was the other, smaller details that whispered the truth.
His skin was too smooth, like it had never seen the harsh effects of years working in the factories. His features were angled and his eyes were sharp as he peered at the space behind me. His expression took on a slight moue of distaste at the sight of the crumbling mess I called home.
Words of defense sprang to mind, but they were held at bay by the roiling nausea that was pinning me in place. I decided to give the young man an appraising look instead, more to cover up my inability to speak in that moment than anything else.
The wind whipped through the open door to bite a pink blush across his cheeks and the tip of his nose. His well-cared-for scarf fluttered in the breeze. His parted, slicked-back blond hair didn’t waver in the slightest. The aforementioned shabby coat was pulled tighter around his shoulders against the cold, but I still caught the clean white button-up underneath. His jeans appeared well worn, but also well worth however much he had spent for their quality. By the time I reached his feet, there was no doubt the kind of privilege he came from. Unlike my holey, taped-up boots, his shiny black shoes only had a single small scuff on the side.
In short, the young man who had appeared at my door was entirely oblivious to just how out of place he was.
