Bloodback

by Darby Harn

  Kept.

  Our lips draw together, magnets tugging stronger the closer they come together and I turn away from her.

  “Let’s watch the movie.”

  She recoils back in her chair like a seatbelt with too much tension in it. “I feel like we kind of need to have sex first before we get to the Lesbian Bed Death stage of things.”

  Shh!

  I brush her cheek. I try and go back to the movie but Abi is looking at me. She’s waiting on me, and I don’t know what else to say. Music fizzes into static. Mordant light flickers in Abi’s eyes as the screen goes dark.

  Aw, man.

  A dozen half moons rise as everyone activates their PEALs for light. Lunate faces look back at me, expectant.

  I zip down my jacket. Filtered magenta bathes the theater. “Technical difficulties?”

  A voice projects from behind us. “I’ve lost power.”

  I weave through the cluster of lawn chairs and sleeping bags back to the projector. Shepp sits on a stool next to the projector, so tall he can’t stand up straight or else he hits the ceiling. He might have some clearance, if not for his shock of unruly hair.

  He pats the curved gray metal of the beast next to him. “Give it me to straight, doc. She going to live?”

  I peel off a glove and touch a finger to the bulge of the projector’s midsection. Light lances out of the projector, back onto the screen and it’s a tale as old as time again.

  “I don’t think it’s the projector.”

  Naked film reels spoke the back wall. I touch the flat, cartridge-like device nestled between them. My little engine. Energy bleeds off my fingers into the device. Ink-like ferrofluid inside the cartridge prickles with minute quills, morphing into complex patterns and geometric shapes. Heat transfer via ferrofluids was a unicorn Dr. Piller had been chasing in Applied Sciences for years. With the knowledge and power I attained through the Myriad, I found a way to make thermomagnetic convection a practical reality.

  Free, limitless energy.

  What I haven’t found yet is a way to share that power with the people it can benefit the most. I don’t have the tools or money to build more than the few prototypes I’ve scratched together for the apartment building.

  Messages cluster on my PEAL. The lights are out! Again!

  The whole building is down. Grand. It’s only ten degrees out. Something in the network again. I’m retrofitting old appliances like the projector to receive an energy signal from the engine, but none of them were built for it. One overloads and the whole system goes down. Here I am thinking I’m going to light and warm the world with these things, and I can’t even keep the Halfway Hotel turned on. Well. Wherever I am, there’s always light. If you like the overbearing red of darkrooms. Nothing much developing here, though.

  Shepp rests his arms across the shelf of his belly. His T-shirt art for some movie called Lifeforce. He’s got loads of them. “I thought you had all the bugs worked out?”

  In the loveseat, Abi scavenges what she can out of the last of her popcorn. I get myopic. Once I get focused on something, everything else tends to suffer. After the battle, after I accepted what happened to me, who I am now, I thought it would be easier. I thought it would be different. I wanted it to be. But The Derelicts needs everything: housing, electricity, water, food, government. My absolute focus and attention. Without it, this flame I’m trying to kindle, it just won’t take.

  “So did I,” I say.

  “Argento used the same three-strip color process they used in The Wizard of Oz for Suspiria, to get that saturated color,” Shepp says. “That drenched red. It was way antiquated by then, but he was like, I gotta have it. This is my vision.”

  I hold the receiver to my ear. “Uh huh.”

  “In cinema, red usually represents repressed passion.”

  “I see.”

  “Didn’t seem like there was too much repression out there in the theater a minute ago. Not that I was looking.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You can fix it?”

  Abi’s heart thumps through the dark, ba-dumm.

  “I can fix anything,” I say.

  “Cool. I know people are probably like, why is a theater important, but having a place for people to come together and share in wonder and dreams and possibility, that’s important.”

  I smile. “I agree.”

  “People have to believe in something more than themselves. If it’s just you, you’re flawed. You’re fallible. You’re going to croak at some point. There’s got to be something else beyond you, and that’s movies. This place is like church, man.”

  Abi comes to the projector. “Do churches give refunds?”

  “Asking for the supervisor probably doesn’t go too far,” I say. “I think it’s the conductor. I can fix it.”

  Abi laces her arms around me. “We were just getting cozy.”

  I give her a squeeze. “Shepp saw us making out.”

  If he turns red, I can’t tell. “Oh. You heard that.”

  “I’m able to focus on multiple things at once.”

  “Right. Because genius. Obviously. Don’t zap me.”

  “I won’t zap you,” I say. “If you can find Verity Bridge To Now.”

  He scratches his chin. “Yeesh. That’s a tough one.”

  I’ve only seen it the once, on the late show some Saturday night as a kid, but I never forgot it. Mostly because I couldn’t make any sense of it. Verity Bridge is this time traveling woman who is skipping around history without any real caution, but how or why you don’t know. There are musical numbers. Fourth-wall breaks. And absolutely no context for any of it. Abi loves them as much as I do. More, maybe. Sometimes, it’s all we talk about.

  “Ooh, you have to,” Abi says. “And then we can do a sing-along. And dress up. I’ll be Tincture.”

  “Hmm… I’ll be Verity,” I say.

  She tugs on the end of my sleeve. “Do you want like maybe rehearse upstairs?”

  Shepp tilts back on his stool. “Who do I get to be?”

  “A successful theater owner,” I say. “Once I fix this. So I’ll get out of here and get started on that.”

  Abi clenches her smile. It used to be so easy. Free.

  “I’ll be as fast as I can,” I say, and go.

  Black shell casing orbits the disassembled components of the engine, a shattered planet held together in its remnant gravity. The individual pieces float round me, buoyed in my magnetic field, as I replace the burnt-out filament in my lab. Lab is a generous word. ‘Functionally Equivalent Space’ might be more apt. The tiny space in the prow of the Halfway Hotel I work out of is maybe smaller than the test chamber in Applied Sciences at the Blackwood Building. There, Abi and I worked on the edge of science.

  Now, I operate somewhere beyond it.

  Strands of copper wire and crystalline, alien conduit lace together in mid-air, creating something wholly unique. Energy arcs from my finger into the filament, and the amalgam begins to glow. With a light tap, I set the filament into the gentle parade of components around me, and close the engine back up. Power isn’t the problem. I’ve all the power in the world. Without converters that can handle the power surging through the network, I’ll never get it to work. Elements of what I need wait inside the wreck, on the other side of the wall. If I wanted, I could strip out the ship and solve all my problems. That wouldn’t exactly be setting the best example. To say nothing of the steep price I pay for taking things from the ship.

  The work must continue, that voice says, always in my ear.

  We had an understanding, I say. You are me. I’m you.

  We are.

  We’ll do as we must, then.

  Yes. We will.

  Something like a chill goes through me. More like electronic distress, running from hot to cold. I touched a rock. Became an alien. Fused with it, anyways. How much of me is still me? How much of me is The Ever?

  Is there even a difference?

  A loud, metal bang thunders th
rough the neighborhood. I slip out the window of the lab, into the sky. Clouds of energy race across the cold, dark void of Six Corners. I zip down my jacket and bring the sun out into the night. The shadows of wolves stretch across the ruins, long, dark and swift.

  Three

  Bent metal coils next to shreds of bandages. Gauze. Pill bottles. What’s left of the mobile clinic splays across the tundra of Shelley, like a tin can that exploded from too much pressure.

  “What…”

  I float over the snow, into the wreck of the clinic. The body of the wolf is gone. Paths burrow through the snow, in tight lines away from the clinic, like they shoveled it.

  “They took him,” I say.

  Abi slogs through the snow after me. “Who did?”

  Yellow eyes glow in the veil of snow like the sun behind gauzy winter clouds. Seven wolves, all with the same overcast fur and glinting blood red streak down their backs advance into the intersection of Shelley, Delaney and Harrison like bleeding tanks. Another wolf, much larger, stays further back but I register her energy output, twice as vivid as the others.

  “Why aren’t they leaving?” Abi says.

  “They think we killed him.”

  Her nose wrinkles. “They think – they think. Dude. That’s their power. They’ve got brains and stuff.”

  Hundreds of fragments of chassis rise out of the white, into the air around me. Look how cleans these breaks are. Everywhere she was fastened with a bolt, she broke. “I don’t think that’s all there is to their power.”

  “If one of them talks, I will legit freak out.”

  “Go back inside,” I say.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Go back inside, Abi.”

  I float across the ground, toward into the intersection. “My name is Kitsie Baldwin,” I say, but my focus on the wolves breaks as the wolves’ thoughts scramble through my own.

  Bird Woman. Star Walker.

  I hover in place, dazed from the sound and presence of gravelly voices in my mind. The wolves all speak, as Dr. Piller does, via telepathy. They’re telepathic.

  They’re conscious.

  “Abi, do you hear this?”

  Abi squeals with delight. “They can talk!”

  She vaults off her feet. Before I even know what’s happening, she’s skidding through the snow.

  “Abi!” I turn back to the wolves. “If you can understand me, we didn’t have anything to do with – "

  A strong, invisible force snatches me out of the air and slams me into the ground so hard I channel a trench through it.

  Brilliant. They’re telekinetic, too.

  Snow and ice melts off my face as white snow burns red. I crawl back to my feet, and back to Abi, somewhere in the cold. A ring of burning xanthous surrounds me. Growls chug like diesel engines.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I say, and a streetlight roots out of the ground. Sure. Why not. The trunk scrapes across the street toward me. I blast it into embers, just as a wolf ambushes me from the opposite direction. The wolf pins me down on the ground, and claws at the glowing star in my chest.

  I peel off my gloves. “Don’t make me – "

  I fight the urge to simply acquire him as much as to get free and the wolf sinks its claws into the old leather of my jacket. Slobber dangles from its steaming jaw, over my eye.

  I paint you in cave, Bird Woman.

  Fear locks me up. Cave?

  His teeth snarl against my cheek. I paint you in blood.

  I don’t think the wolf can hurt me – he’s strong but not as strong as The Interdictor – but then again, a few minutes ago, I didn’t think there was such a thing as Empowered wolves.

  We didn’t do this –

  The wolf’s eyes bulge. His claws rake my jacket trying to keep his grip which, God damn it, this is my favorite thing in the world and Vidette swings him around by the tail and hurls him whining back into the dark beyond Six Corners.

  Vidette wades through the snow, picking up stray debris from the mobile clinic. The clinic was the only reliable health care for most people on the island.

  Now, they have nothing.

  I touch her shoulder. “Vi.”

  The debris crunches in her fists. “Let’s finish this.”

  I fire off a curt snap of crimson lightning I hope will send the rest of the Bloodbacks running. Most do. The large wolf remains just out of sight, her yellow eyes blazing suns.

  “We didn’t do this,” I say.

  I know she sees my thoughts. Hers scamper through my head. Fear. Confusion. A chorus of anger, amplified and echoed between all the wolves. The wolves howl in unison, a deep lament that rattles out to a growl. The body of the dead wolf levitates out of the snow beyond, between a pair of Bloodbacks, and together they all flee back into the shadows they came from.

  I follow Abi’s pulse through the snow, ba-dumm and I find her near the curb outside the Halfway Hotel. “Baby?”

  She tries to smile, but her lips are frozen. “I’m ok.”

  I want to hold her. I should hold her. I can’t.

  Two nights I hold watch over Six Corners. The Bloodbacks don’t return. I can’t find the wolves anywhere. We won’t be able to determine what happened without examining the body. We won’t be able to stop whatever this is from escalating.

  My PEAL buzzes. Oh no. What now? A text. Abi.

  ❤️❤️❤️

  I float down from my catbird seat above the intersection, to the Halfway Hotel. The foundation operates out of an office on the fifth floor. Abi buzzes around inside, talking with Zari and Ari about a new T-shirt design. This one has a graffitied red V like people have been tagging on buildings since I showed up. What little money we have comes from Abi. She spends all day online selling the shirts. Stickers. Posters. Lunches she auctions off to gawky celebrities and curious scientists. When I can stomach it, anyways. I learn to stomach it.

  I tap on the door. “Hey, baby.”

  Abi careens out of her meeting. “Dude, I just texted you.”

  “I know,” I say, and I squeeze her hand but it’s not enough for either of us. It’s limp. Weak. “You’re thinking about me. I should be thinking about you. Are you ok?”

  She smiles. “I’m fine. My ass is sore, though. Might have a bruise. Do you want to look? You should probably look.”

  “What are the other people who are also here doing?”

  Zari and Ari both wave at me. I can’t tell if they’re just spooky twins or some kind of Empowered echo of each other.

  “Well, you can see the shirt,” Abi says. “Let’s see. The crowd funder is like at fifty percent, maybe you can do a little booster…”

  “Abi…”

  “Just a little meet and greet we can throw in to get it over the line. It will be small. Biggest donors only.”

  I sigh. “Ok.”

  “And – oh! Zari and Ari have a new video for the vlog.”

  Zari snorts. “Vlog.”

  Ari snorts, too. “No one says vlog.”

  “Whatever it is,” Abi says, with a clenched smile. “The website or channel or what are we calling it?”

  “The Forsaken City,” they both say.

  I hold Abi close. “What’s the new video about?”

  “Which was better – your first fight with The Interdictor, or the second,” Zari says, a little too excited.

  Ari pumps his fist. “Obviously the second one.”

  Zari nods, and nudges her glasses back. “Obviously.”

  That any of this is interesting to people is honestly a little more frightening than fighting The Interdictor himself. “Wouldn’t it be more compelling for you to disagree?”

  “No,” they say.

  “I thought the channel was more like slice of life stuff,” I say. “Down on the ground realism in The Derelicts.”

  “This shit is so real,” Zari says.

  Ari snorts. “So real.”

  Well, all right then. “I should get out on patrol.”

 
; Abi clears her throat. “Hey, guys. We’re done, right?”

  “Right,” Zari and Ari say, and synchronize their exit.

  Abi grips my hand and pulls me close. “You’re warm.”

  “I was thinking about you.”

  She unzips my jacket. “It’s so cold.”

  Flakes so large it’s like someone was shredding paper bombard Shelley. The burden of the snow weighs on me. I still need to repair the transmitter of my prototype engine. What I really need to do is somehow replicate a hundred more. A thousand. I need time and space and resources to finish my project, but the streets aren’t safe. Empowered wolves prowl Six Corners, no longer content with scraps and shadows. Another challenge, another problem is something I do not need but if I’m being honest, the wolves excite me. This is something I can fix, even if I don’t know how yet; this is something I can work on.

  “I need to go back on watch,” I say.

  Abi looks up at me, plaintive. “Stay and look after me. I have an owie.” Abi rubs her bottom. “It hurts so bad.”

  I glance down her backside. “Seems to have healed nicely.”

  “But I have like personal trauma. PTSD and stuff.” Abi locks her arms around me. “I need a night light.”

  I let go a moment in Abi’s arms, overwhelmed with relief that she wasn’t seriously hurt. A moment is all I allow myself. As much I want to stay – as much as I need to – I can’t.

  “I’ll be back,” I say.

  The agitation of her dreams skips across her face. Until we lived in the same space, I always thought of Abi as easy. Happy. And she is, bounding around The Derelicts with a smile and a purpose, but she runs through her dreams every night. Every night, sheets vault like the spray of waves off the end of the bed. I hover outside the window of the apartment, regretting asking Abi to move in, not wanting to be alone, wanting to go to her, wake her up, love her out of her fear but I never do.

  “You know what’s weird?” she says. “Every day, I get to see how much people love you. They post pics online in their shirts. With their stickers. Art they made, about you. For you. And I see you… you let people in, like you never did before. You actually know people’s names. You remember them.”