Silence (18 page)

The Celestial pretended to recover the
composure he’d never really lost. His blue eyes sparked
mysteriously.

“
You may call me Dream,”
Dream told them quietly, face lost in thought.

Sheikoh raised his hand, and Indigo
rolled his eyes.

Dream nodded for him to
continue.

“
Well? Mister Dream?” he
asked.

“
What do you want with me?
Or us, I guess? You’re rolling with Legacy, you aren’t short on
thieves,” said Sheikoh.

Dream smiled at Sheikoh, then at
Ghost.

The kingpin nodded back.

“
We’ll
get to you
specifically
later,” Dream promised him. “But as to our
purpose-“

“
Whoa,
mate, hold onto those hooves, I’m not agreeing to
anything
until I know
what’s up, dig?” Sheikoh cut over the Celestial. He wasn’t about to
get mixed up in another Dekla thing.

On that note, what was he going to do
about the Arch Centaurai? What if the Celestial found
out?

What if the Centaurai found
out?

Did the Celestial know any way to
nullify the Centaurai’s crescent?

He opened his mouth, framing safe
questions in his mind.

“
Prince
of
hell
,
do you ever shut up?!” Indigo burst out.

Apparently he was annoying the
ganglord.

“
Aww is someone a little
cranky?” Sheikoh asked sarcastically. Then; “Listen mate, I’m not a
stupid pile of muscle like you. I’m not gonna sign up for anything
at the first sign of payoff. I don’t know if anyone ever told you,
but money isn’t going to do anything for you when you’re lying in a
coffin…”

“’
Stupid
pile of muscle’, huh? Coming from the guy who let himself get
blinded by a
flash grenade
yesterday!” Indigo shot back at Sheikoh with a
snort of derisive laughter.

“
Yeah?
Well, if I hadn’t been there
you’d
be dead! So why don’t you put
your big boy panties on and stop living in your little state of
denial!” Sheikoh retorted. Indigo’s eyes flashed.

“
Well I
was just helping out your little, white ass, Silence! Those guys
were following you, if it wasn’t for me you’d be
dead,
kid
!” Indigo shouted, flinging spittle into Sheikoh’s
face.

“
You’re right about that,
mate. But you didn’t save anyone. They were trying to give me a
job,” Sheikoh shot back angrily.

Then he remembered what the job was.
He glanced at Dream guiltily before adding; “And say it, don’t
spray it, am I right guys?”

“
You are the
biggest-“

“
Enough!” Dream ordered
sharply, looking at Indigo. Sheikoh had a feeling that the
Celestial knew what he had been hired to do.

“
I wish you really were
silent…” Indigo grumbled under his breath.

Ghost spoke up from his
corner.

“
They wanted you to kill
Dream? Or to steal… something?” he asked Sheikoh, who barely
managed to hide his shock.

They
knew
.

“
Yeah,” Sheikoh shrugged
like it was no big deal. His eyes flicked to Dream, and the
Celestial smiled like he was joking. Dream gestured that he should
continue.

“
I mean, the Arch Centaurai
wanted me to hit you..." Now Ghost was wearing a chilly grin as
well. Sheikoh gulped. "So here’s your chance to give me a better
offer.”

“
I’m not so easy to kill,"
Dream confessed offhandedly. "But for your services, I’d pay…” He
thought for a moment. "How does 40 million glow sound to
you?”

Sheikoh’s and Indigo’s jaws dropped at
the same time. Ghost’s expression didn’t even flicker.

“
I’ll take that as a yes,
then,” Dream surmised, clapping his hands together. “Excellent.
Now, Sheikoh, to answer your earlier questions about the mission,
it’s nothing really. You’re going to procure a book for me. It’s
called the Transcendent Codex.

Sheikoh nodded. Straight forward
enough. Celestial and books, that’s just a part of their
equation.

The Celestial turned to
Indigo.

“
And then we’re going to
instate Ghost as the new Arch Centaurai of the region.”

A tense silence followed the
pronouncement.

Ghost
? The leader of Legacy?

Why
him
of all people?

Sheikoh hated the thought of Cylium
Vest in that office as much as the next guy, but there were worst
candidates. At least Vest's half of Interium didn’t qualify as a
hell hole.

“
Far be it for me to be the
voice of reason,” Sheikoh objected. “But do we really want the
leader of a gang a scum and murderers in control of the country? He
basically rules West Side and, well, it’s still kinda crap.” Indigo
opened his mouth furiously, so Sheikoh added; "No
offense."

“
I’m not so bad,” Ghost
smiled blackly.

Sheikoh snorted his disbelief. He
leaned over by Indigo and stage whispered; “Coming from the dude
who got his name from scaring little kids.”

The ganglord answered him with a death
stare, and Sheikoh giggled. A vein bulged in Indigo’s forehead. He
needed to learn to chill.

Ghost made a sound of amusement, and
Sheikoh looked over.

“
Really, Silence, do I look
the type?” he asked.

Sheikoh raised his
eyebrows.

“
You don’t look like any
type I ever met. Why don’t we have some story time? Down?” Sheikoh
suggested with a grin.

He was surprised when Dream spoke
up.

“
That sounds like an
excellent idea, Silence. Ghost, tell us a bit about yourself,” the
Celestial said with a gleam in his eyes. Indigo leaned forward, and
Ghost smiled.

“
Eight years ago I lived
over on the East Side,” Ghost began quietly. “I joined the Century
and quickly climbed ranks. By the time I was 28, I was already a
Captain. That was back before the wall had been built, of
course.”

Sheikoh squinted with disbelief. There
was no way Ghost was thirty-six. He barely looked twenty years old;
Indigo looked older than him.

“
I was headstrong and
arrogant. I had no doubt that I was invincible,” Ghost’s voice
dripped with irony. “I took two other Century straight through the
Trickway, sure the local gangs wouldn’t dare attack us.” His voice
hardened perceptibly.

“
I was a naïve
child”

Despite himself, Sheikoh found that he
was listening intently.

“
A gang called the Brackets
ambushed us. They killed the other Century with an illegal plasma
shear that broke right through our fields. I had been hit as well.
I would have died there if five vigilantes hadn’t stepped in and
attacked the Brackets themselves. They… we… called ourselves The
Legacy of Vengeance and Vigilantes,” Ghost revealed. Sheikoh shot
an incredulous glance at Indigo. The ganglord was watching Ghost
intently with an unreadable expression. “It was shortened to Legacy
later.”   

“
They took down three of
the eight Brackets before the gang retreated. I don’t think they
were trying to save me; just use the firefight as an element of
surprise and a means of acquiring our Century gear.”

“
They were surprised when
they found me and scared. But they brought me somewhere to… to fix
me up. I wanted revenge for the fallen Century. The next morning,
Legacy brought me to the Brackets hideout.”

“
We cleaned them out
without a single casualty.”

Sheikoh shivered. It was surreal to
hear all of this come out of the mouth of the cultured-looking man
in front of him. Ghost’s smooth speech reminded him of the
mesmerizing clicking of fingers on a keyboard.

“
I went back to the station
and filed a report. My success interested my superiors, so much so
that the Supreme Centaurai authorized a sting expedition inside of
Legacy himself, to root the other gangs out of Interium.” Sheikoh
shivered at the mention of the Supreme Centaurai.”

“
I worked with Legacy’s
original leader, Shadow. We followed computer trails, using the
Century equipment I had brought along with me. We became the
unofficial spies on all of Interium’s communications.”

“
We eventually ferreted out
every member of every gang. Some of us died in the process, of
course. Shadow and I recruited replacement gang members from the
relative safety we had behind the computer screens. The Centaurai
had expressly forbidden it, but eventually Shadow and I stumbled on
a phone call between him and his pet Celestial, Randel Sanatous,
that made manipulating the Supreme Centaurai… quite easy. The
Centaurai sent a team of assassins that killed Shadow, but with the
help of my first four ganglords, I survived the assault. I promised
Vest that if he ever set foot in the West Side I would kill the man
myself and then tell everyone his secrets. He made up some excuse
to put a wall around the entire West Side to quarantine the area.
My very own kingdom.

“
Under the guise of Ghost,
I became so much more than a mere captain of the Century. I spent
my time on the NNN networks with my spy programs, feeling like a
god. Legacy became the ruling force of the West Side. We set out
protecting the common folk, funded by protection fees and drugs.
You’re too young to have seen the old West Side, Silence, but ask
anyone who isn’t. Legacy has done a lot of good. You’ve just seen
the members of Legacy that have been trying to kill you, but the
only reason for it was justice. It has been our duty to protect the
West Side.”

To his surprise, Sheikoh realized that
as far as he could recall, what Ghost was saying was true. Sure
many of the Legacy grunts threw their weight around, bullying and
demanding privileges, but all of the friends that had been killed
by them had been thieves and cons like him. He was so used to
thinking of Legacy as bad guys that he’d never stopped to wonder
how normal people regarded them. Sure, they were scared, but he’d
seen a few people acting friendly with the gangsters. He’d always
thought that they just acted that way so they wouldn’t get beat up,
but maybe it was something else. Sheikoh couldn’t remember the last
time he’d seen a gang-up beatdown the way Redline used to on a
biweekly basis.  

Ghost met Sheikoh’s completive gaze
through the jumble of numbers and letters that cluttered his
monocle screen for a moment. Then Dream nodded
decisively.

“
I want this city in our
hands by midnight,” the Celestial said. “Me and Ghost will meet
with Silence and Indigo, respectively, to discuss individual
assignments.”

Sheikoh nodded along with the others.
As he did so, he noticed that Dream’s eyes flickered in time with
the blue fires mounted on the walls. The Celestial stared at each
of them in turn. Lastly, his eyes touched upon Sheikoh’s and they
stayed for a few suspended seconds. The Celestial’s midnight eyes
held his filled with both promise and the barest hint of
threat.

He looked closer into Dream’s
ocean-blue eyes. They seemed to be two tunnels, spanning the depths
of both wisdom and madness and reaching for some inhuman shore of
the unimagining, unassuming, undeniably dead. He shivered as
destiny and fear rippled through that moment, making it
theirs.

“
Tonight,” Dream pronounced
dramatically. “Interium is ours.”

Chapter 10

Offhand

They had a short conversation on tactics and strategies. Then
Indigo and Ghost pushed back their chairs to leave. The door
clicked shut behind them, overly loud in the dancing, blue room,
and Sheikoh and Dream were left alone. He sat across from the
imposing Celestial, and nerves prickled across his skin. The
shadows of Dream’s spiky ponytail swam across the Celestial's
grizzled face ominously.

“
Relax, Silence. Or may I
call you Sheikoh? Just between the two of us?” Dream asked
him.

If Dream’d really wanted Sheikoh to
relax, his question hadn’t furthered the cause. Controversially,
he’d managed to make Sheikoh’s body tense up. He didn’t like his
clients to know his name. He didn’t like that Ghost knew it,
especially after everything he’d just heard.

A line crinkled between Dream’s
eyebrows. Sheikoh made his face go blank.

“
I’d prefer Silence,” he
said, trying for offhand.

Dream’s face smoothed itself
out.

“
Of course, Silence,” Dream
murmured softly. “So, to business…”

Sheikoh narrowed his eyes.

“
You think you’re playing
some kind of game here, Dream?” he asked sharply.

Dream’s face filled with
surprise.

“
Whatever you’re going for,
it looks like you’re leading Ghost on, mate, and trust me. That’s
one dude that it probably is not one to double-cross,” Sheikoh
cautioned the Celestial, searching his eyes for clues.