ElyriasEcstasy (5 page)

“If you want to get fucked, you better climb up on it now.”
He had thought about mounting her but this would do. Why get off his back?
Besides, this way he could continue to look at his walls, at the accumulation
of maddened scrawling, years of fitting words together into a diatribe of epic
proportions. Beyond understanding. Beyond decoding. Perhaps even by the artist
himself.

She had released his cock from her mouth and was moving up
to straddle him. He put a hand to her curving hip, asked, “What’s your name?”

“Arvra.”

“How’d you get those scars, Arvra?”

Her blue eyes shot instantly away and he felt an
uncharacteristic pang of regret for asking. Normally he said whatever the hell
he felt like in situations like this, same as when he and Rune were out
gallivanting through the Unsafe.

But something in Arvra’s manner made him reconsider his
attitude. Also, hadn’t he just vowed not to be a prick to her? Maybe, though,
he really was curious, and just not used to framing such questions tactfully.

“Hey,” he said in the gentlest tone he could summon. “Stupid
to blurt it like that. I wasn’t saying I’m put off by them. Really…” He lifted
his hand to her shoulder, traced one of the two purple lines there. “Really,
they’re kind of pretty.”

“No,” she said, still looking away. “They’re not.”

“Okay. Sorry.”
Sorry?
How often did he say that word?

“You really do want to know how I got them, don’t you? I
mean, I didn’t have them last time.”

So she had been here before. Had he successfully impregnated
her, and they’d sent her back for another seeding? Probably not. Her tight
young flesh showed no signs of stretching.

Arvra said, “I’m from a border town, right across from the
Unsafe. We don’t really get the sun, but we’re not completely in the shadow
cast by the outer fringes of the Black Ship either. You wouldn’t believe how
much trouble I have to go through before they’ll issue me a travel pass to come
here to the city, even when the Guard are the ones who’ve ordered me to.” She
was looking down at him, shaking her head.

He wondered if a Passenger’s claw had given her the marks
but didn’t interrupt to ask. He was suddenly engrossed by her unfolding tale.

“People—regular people, civilians—they go into the Unsafe
sometimes,” she said. “You’re a Weapon. I’m sure you know that. People need
stuff, and there’s a whole planet of goodies out there. Metals, fabrics, rare
things that only—” Her blue eyes darted away once again, this time with a hint
of fear in them.

“That only the Lux get,” he finished for her.

Her gaze came back to him slowly. She only nodded. Then she
continued, voice tightening a little. “My brother was with a band that went
into the Unsafe. Illegal as hell, I know. And stupid of him. Not worth the
risk. But he got back okay, though one of his buddies…” She shrugged. “Later,
though, the Guard came. A squad. The captain was angry. I never found out how
they’d learned about the raid into the Unsafe. The squad came into our room and
the captain read the charges. Then he started beating my brother. He used a
baton. I don’t know why he was so furious. But I couldn’t stand it. I dove at
him. The rest of the squad pulled me off, of course. I was stupid, just like my
brother. The captain…he…he took out his sword. And—” The tightness of her
throat closed off further words.

Urna found he was moved. It surprised him. He knew the Guard
could be overly zealous. They were the police force, in charge of all domestic
situations within the Safe. It was the Unsafe that was the bailiwick of the
military. He knew there were many abuses of power among the Guard. But to hear
it in such personal terms was very affecting.

“Come here,” he said softly, and she lay down next to him,
in his arms. He held her in a firm embrace. Her spiky hair brushed his cheek as
she pressed her head against his shoulder. Her body gave a little hiccupping
jerk, once, twice. He felt the warmth of a tear on his skin.

After a few minutes he rolled her gently onto her back and
climbed atop her body. He placed a tender kiss on her lips before entering her
oiled cleft. He was slow about it, starting with a lazy sliding rhythm, working
himself an inch deeper with each delicate thrust.

Soon she was responding. It seemed a more genuine reaction
than when he’d had her finger herself for his amusement. Her mouth was open and
panting. A flush spread over her. He felt the heat rising from her flesh. He
thrust into her with a little more fervor. Her legs wrapped themselves around
his waist. Her pussy was streaming as he fucked her harder still.

A moment later she was quaking beneath him and he gave
himself over to his own come, just letting it take him. It felt less like he
was dutifully depositing his sperm in a ready receptacle than…well, what? Was
this “making love”—another of those hoary phrases he’d found among ancient
fiction? He didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

But the episode was sweet and pleasant and surprising.

Arvra took up her gauzy little wrap and called for the
guards to come unlock his door. A moment later she was gone. He lay on his bed,
aware of the time, aware of the object he’d smuggled from the Unsafe inside his
clothes earlier that day. That picture he had found under the piece of glass
he’d stepped on. It was the reason he was doing this.

It was the reason he meant to escape this place.

* * * * *

The guard (in this case it was guard, not Guard; the Safe’s
police force had no jurisdiction over the military) assigned to this wing of
the Weapon quarters marched past Urna’s door right on time. Urna rolled over
onto his side and craned his neck, straining his ears to count the single set
of bootsteps as they continued down the hall, approximating when the guard
would turn the corner to the best of his ability.

Rune would have known the exact second, of course, he
thought with a small smile. A smile which Rune, the bitter bastard, would no
doubt have heard as well, were he within range. But the Shadowflashes were
housed in an entirely different wing, clear on the other side of the better
than mile-wide Citadel. The two halves of the teams were kept apart
specifically so they couldn’t whisper to each other, Urna suspected. Couldn’t
communicate their thoughts and doubts, notions that came in the night’s
silence, ones that they were discouraged from discussing during the daylight
hours. It made sense enough. The relationship between Shadowflash and Weapon
was supposed to be a strictly professional one. Their bonds were limited to the
Unsafe, to the battleground. They were more effective that way, so the thinking
went.

But as useful as Rune might have been at this very moment,
Urna was confident that his own special skill set was about to serve him even
better. In this instance the Shadowflash would only have slowed him down.

Three minutes until the guard turned down this hall again.
Urna, dressed now, rolled off the mattress, landing in a crouch on the floor.
He moved soundlessly in his boots. He wasn’t wearing his combat outfit, rather
nondescript clothes that wouldn’t attract any attention once he was on the
outside. Easily, he flipped the mattress, running his palm over the rough
material until he found the small, nearly invisible slit he’d made in the
fabric. He worked his fingers in. They scraped over several items he had picked
up in the past—part of a broken shell, an aquamarine stone with a deep crack in
it, a tarnished coin with the vague impression of a face still visible. And the
bronze plaque with the bullet hole in it. He would leave these objects behind.

Eventually his fingers closed over the square of stiff paper
he had found in the Unsafe tonight. He had stashed it in the mattress shortly
after his return, before the doctor had come to lay out his doses for him, his
nightly chemical cocktail of supplements and enhancers, or whatever the hell
they really were.

He had already swept those pills off his stand, into a
pocket, though he hadn’t swallowed any. He wouldn’t be getting any more, but if
his body needed them too badly, he could feed them to himself one at a time
until he broke the cycle, or that was the plan. At the moment he was too deep
in Weapon mode to feel the narcotic draw of the drugs.

Still kneeling, he squinted at the image on the old paper.
The phosphorescent light still filtered in around his doorframe after his room
light was automatically extinguished. His mind conjured up a word from a book
he had recently looked at. Photograph. Those things no longer existed. Only the
Lux security systems were permitted by law to record images, both within the
Safe proper and the semi-shadowed peripheral border towns. This image was
faded, yellow and worn to shit around the edges, as if someone other than him
had spent long hours looking at it before dropping it on the ground back in
that doomed city, perhaps in the chaos that had immediately followed the Black
Ship’s arrival. Or maybe it was a much-handled picture that same someone had
finally stored behind glass so to protect it from total deterioration.

But the outlines of three people were still clearly
definable. Two large figures, one smaller. A boy. The two bigger ones were male
and female, respectively. Parents and son, words as foreign to Urna as the idea
behind them. The sun was a bright spot on the background, reflected by an
expanse of darker water.

He sometimes dreamed of a place of warmth and water. As far
as he knew, he was the only Weapon who ever dreamed. The last time he had carelessly
mentioned seeing pictures behind his eyes when he closed them, they had put him
in seclusion for forty-eight hours, evaluating him and adjusting his
medication.

Two minutes.

He didn’t want to fold the delicate photograph, so he
carefully curled it and slipped it wholly down into the side of his boot. He
rose in an easy motion, stretching once. Preparing. The tips of his fingers
barely scraped the ceiling when he lifted his arms and he heard his bones
crackle delicately as he did so. The sound invoked a recent memory. Again, he
felt the soft breaking of glass beneath his foot.

Again, he felt smooth bare flesh pressed up against his. He
thought it might be Arvra he was thinking of, but an instant later he realized
it was Rune.

If he was going to miss anything about this fucking place,
he thought, it would be that. It would be
him
. As contentious and
complex as their relationship had been over the years, he…he, well, loved that
motherfucker, didn’t he?

With a last, full turning study of the walls, Urna stepped
up to the heavy door. The doctors used their Lux ident-cards to open the doors
from the outside. Strange, considering the Weapons were not prisoners. Not
really. They were elite soldiers, fighting for a cause. An ill-defined cause,
maybe. But it was enough to keep them here.

Kill the Passengers. Defend the Safe. Serve the Lux. Eat
now. Kill now. Don’t feel. Don’t think. Do as you’re told.

For a long time that had been enough for him.

The photograph was not, in final truth, what had started it.
It was that feeling, that vague persistent disquiet he felt regarding his life.
His uncertain past. The picture was incidental, a catalyst. Because of it, Urna
had not swallowed the doses that by now would be making him sleep, or doing
that thing Weapons did that resembled sleep. His muscles should have been
relaxed but they were taut. Primed. Ready.

Ninety seconds.

Without another moment’s hesitation, he drew back his fist
and slammed it into and through the wall. He knew these walls. He had covered
them in his cascade of words and studied every square inch. He had seen the
crack long ago and felt the weakness here, beside the door. He had calculated
how much strength he would need to penetrate it. It worked.

He slipped his arm through and pressed his shoulder to the
crumbling maw of shattered lath and plaster, feeling for the lock on the other
side. Finding it, he chopped the flat of his hand against it once, then again.
It took another sharp blow at the odd angle to break the casing and short out
the device. The door clicked opened.

He did not have a sword, and he wasn’t strapped either. But
that was okay. So long as he did this exactly right, the only weapon he needed
was himself.

At that moment he could have sworn he heard Rune at his ear.
The voice was so real that he looked over his shoulder. But he was imagining
it. He had never mentioned his plan to Rune and it was impossible that the
Shadowflash could be aware of what was happening, despite their much-ballyhooed
affinity, which the doctors tried so hard with their drugs, and the trainers so
hard with their drills, to replicate in the other teams.

Even so, Rune’s voice, seemingly.
Go now!

Urna turned and ran in the opposite direction the guard had
gone. He came to an ell just as the same guard was reaching it, a lone figure,
completing another of his repetitious cyclical rounds through this particular
wing.

“Hey,” Urna said conversationally. He allowed no time for
the guard to look surprised, let alone respond. In an instant, Urna was down,
sweeping with his leg. The guard hit the floor and Urna leaped onto him,
knocking the air from his lungs and wrenching his gun from his holster.

He pressed the barrel to the guard’s forehead, feeling no
hesitation about ending the anonymous man’s life right here.

Until he heard,
Don’t.
Rune again. Or some ghost
version of Rune.

Urna smacked the pistol against the guard’s temple,
rendering him unconscious. Swiping the uniformed man’s card from his belt with
his free hand, he ran.

* * * * *

In the end there wasn’t much to escaping the Lux’s
Weapon/Shadowflash facility—rows of flat, gunmetal gray buildings covering an
entire end-to-end swath of the Citadel’s northern quadrant.