Dark Space: Avilon (17 page)

Chapter 14

E
than couldn’t believe his eyes. “Dad?”

The younger man nodded, confirming Ethan’s suspicions. “Come inside,” he said, holding the door open for them.

Ethan walked through first, and Rovik followed behind him. The apartment was a small, open concept space with living room, dining room, kitchen, and what looked like a bedroom and bathroom at the back.

“It’s not much,” Preston said, but it’s home.”

The floor was a dull matte gray, the walls plain white. The living room furniture was solid blue, and the dining room table solid white with gray chairs. It was all utilitarian and uninspiring to look at, but the space was tidy and warm, much warmer than the air outside. Preston Ortane directed them to sit in the blue living room furniture.

“Drinks?” he asked, already on his way to the kitchen.

Ethan sat down in an armchair that looked to be made of several interlocking pieces. It was surprisingly comfortable. “What do you have?” he asked.

“Beer. Water.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Rovik said, taking a seat on one of the room’s two couches. The cushions squeaked noisily against his armor and he sunk deep into the couch, making him look as though he were a midget with giant legs. Ethan surmised that the Peacekeeper must weigh a lot with his armor on.

“Beer,” Ethan replied.

Preston returned with two bottles of a dark-looking beer and passed one to Ethan. Preston turned and eyed Rovik with a frown. “You better not break my couch.”

“Why? Was it not free?”

“The pieces were, sure, but putting them together costs a lot of sweat.” Preston flicked the cap off his beer and sat down on the other couch, as far from the Peacekeeper as he could. “Don’t tell me you came to Avilon looking for me?” he said, his eyes on Ethan as he took a long gulp from his bottle.

Ethan flicked the cap off his own and tried the brew. It was bitter, flat, and awful, but he tried not to let that show on his face. At least it was cold. “Actually, I came looking for my son.”

“Ah, right, little Atty . . . he must be all grown up now. He died in the war, I guess?”

Ethan shook his head, and Preston’s dark eyebrows swiftly rose. He finished that look of surprise with a heavy frown. “What do you mean? He actually found a way here as a mortal?”

“Him, and a bunch of others, including my wife and I.”

“So where’s Destra, then?”

“Not Des . . . Alara. We’re newly-weds with a baby girl on the way. It’s a long story.”

“I see. Well . . . you shouldn’t have come. Especially not with a pregnant wife.”

“The rest of the galaxy isn’t a great place to be either.”

Preston shrugged and took another gulp of beer. “Grass is always greener or bluer someplace else. Then you get there and find there ain’t any grass at all. I’m guessing you’re stuck here now.”

Ethan nodded.

“So why come visit me? Old times’ sake?”

“Actually, I don’t know why I’m here,” Ethan said, glancing at Rovik. “Omnius wanted me to come.”

“He did, did he?” Preston’s eyes turned to the Peacekeeper, too. “Well, what is it the big ol’ eyeball wants from me?”

Rovik shook his head. “Please show more respect, and he doesn’t want anything. He just wanted the two of you to find each other and catch up.”

Preston snorted and jumped up from his couch. “Ain’t that something! The eyeball doing me a favor out of the kindness of his . . . core. Doesn’t have a heart, now does he?” Preston laughed at his own joke.

Ethan watched his father start pacing around the room with his beer, emptying it in two quick swigs. He tossed the bottle aside, and it bounced and rolled to a stop in one corner. “Want another?” Preston asked, his gaze suddenly sharp and insistent as he turned to Ethan again.

“I’m all right, thanks.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind another.”

Ethan eyed the bottle in the corner of the room, wondering how the apartment could be so clean if his father had a habit of throwing his garbage on the floor. He tried another sip of his beer and grimaced at the flavor of it. It went down with a warm tingling sensation that made him think it probably had a much higher alcohol content than the average brew.

As he sat back in his chair, the buzz began to burn in his veins, but rather than make him feel relaxed and pleasantly numb, he felt more alert than usual. Little noises he hadn’t noticed before became loud. The scratching of a bug’s legs as it scuttled across the floor drew his attention to one side of the room where, sure enough, a small insect was making a hasty dash for the fallen beer bottle. Ethan found his mind felt clearer than usual, and he felt happier, more focused, more at ease in his own skin. He felt like he could conquer the world!

Rovik was watching him carefully.

“What?” Ethan asked.

“Give me that bottle,” he said, reaching out for it.

Ethan withheld his beer, sheltering it with his other arm. “Why?”

“Just trust me, Ortane,” the Peacekeeper said.

“Frek that!” Ethan took a long swig.

His father returned with another beer, already open. This time he didn’t sit down to drink it; instead he paced over to the fallen bottle and cap he’d tossed aside previously, as if it suddenly irritated him to see them lying on the floor. On the way he made a hasty sidestep to crush the bug scuttling across his floor. He picked up both the remnants of the bug and his empty beer bottle and cap and carried them to a wide pipe running down the wall from ceiling to floor. There was a bulge halfway down the tube. His father opened a hatch in the side of it, revealing an empty compartment. He placed the bug there and shut the hatch. No sooner had he shut the door than the bug was sucked away with a noisy
slurp
of air.

Preston carefully placed his empty bottle and cap on an adjacent bar counter, as if he planned to reuse them later. Then he returned to the couch and sat down with a broad grin. Ethan could relate. He felt indescribably happy to have found his father again. They’d never had a great relationship, but now on Avilon, maybe that could change.

“I’m thinking about moving out of here,” Preston said, looking around the room, slowly bobbing his head. “Get myself a bigger place in a nicer district.”

Ethan found himself nodding along with that. “Sounds like a good idea.”

“Yea, just have to get my brew business going and I’ll be set.”

“Your brew business?”

“The beer. How’d you like it, son? That’s some of your old man’s finest.”

Ethan turned the bottle over in his hand, looking at it as if for the first time. The bottle looked old and there wasn’t any label on it, but he found the flavor was growing on him. He took another sip and savored the warm tingling sensation that coursed through him. “Best I’ve ever had.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Ethan noticed Rovik stand up from the couch. He stretched leisurely, revealing a glowing palm. Ethan realized what that meant and he grabbed the bottle with both hands. Rovik yanked Ethan out of his chair and onto the floor. Then the Peacekeeper stepped on his back, pinning him painfully to the ground and forcing him to release the bottle.

“Thank you.”

The pressure on Ethan’s back eased, and he responded by reaching out with both hands and grabbing Rovik’s foot. He pushed up and twisted, flipping the Peacekeeper off his feet. Rovik landed beside him with a ground-shaking
thud.

Ethan heard the neighbors below them wake up and start asking each other about the noise. He bounced to his feet, his eyes flashing as he stood over the fallen Peacekeeper. “Give it back,” he said, reaching for his drink.

The Peacekeeper responded with a smile and tightened his fist around the bottle. It exploded with a
pop! s
ending a dark rain of beer and glittering shards of glass cascading over his fist.

“No!” Ethan yelled, leaping onto the man’s chest and raising his own fists to hammer the Peacekeeper’s face. Rovik’s visor shimmered to life in preparation for the blow, and that gave Ethan pause. He knew he couldn’t punch through a shield, so he just sat there panting, furious, and unable to imagine why the Peacekeeper had stolen his drink only to
waste
it. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

Rovik’s expression was inscrutable behind his glowing blue visor. “I could ask you the same thing. You attacked me over a beverage, and somehow you found the strength to knock me off my feet. My armor alone weighs more than a hundred pounds. You haven’t stopped to wonder why you were able to do that?”

Ethan clambered off the Peacekeeper’s chest, feeling suddenly stupid about his outburst. He held out a hand to help Rovik up.

The Peacekeeper ignored it and pushed himself off the ground to point a finger at Preston. “Bliss is illegal. What are you doing putting it in beer?”

“What, so now Peacekeepers are being sent to do Enforcers’ work? Mind your own business,
Non
.”

“I should report you.”

“You should leave.”

“What’s Bliss?” Ethan asked, even though the word had already dredged up a definition in his brain, courtesy of the information Omnius had fed them all while they slept. Bliss was a performance enhancing stim that made people stronger, faster, and smarter—the stim to end all stims—and one in every five Nulls was addicted to it.

Ethan turned to his father, suddenly seeing him with new eyes. Preston was agitated all right, his hands clenching and unclenching, his eyes darting, his lips twisted into an angry sneer. He looked ready to explode at any moment.

Ethan felt some of that same restless, angry energy flowing through his veins. The clarity of mind and euphoria he’d felt earlier had come at a price. Forcing himself to calm down, he took a few deep breaths and shook his head. “Dad,” he managed.

“
What?
”

“Why are you living down here?”

“In the Null Zone? Because Omnius is a control freak who wants everyone to be on their best behavior all the time.”

“No, I can understand
that
, but why are you
here.
This is free housing, your furniture is free, your food is free. You don’t pay for anything do you?”

“Sure I do. You think that brew you wasted didn’t cost something to make?”

“Do you sell any?”

“Well . . . I’m not set up for mass production. Not yet. Have to perfect the recipe first. You could help me!” He took another hasty gulp of his beer, part of which missed his mouth and dribbled down his chin.

Ethan shook his head, feeling violated. “You should have warned me you were giving me stims.”

“Then you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about! You wouldn’t get how important this is.” Preston walked up to him, his eyes wide and wild. He held up his half-empty bottle and shook it in front of Ethan’s face. “This stuff is better than what you’ll find on the streets. Fewer side effects! Tastes better, too! We could make a fortune! You and me, son! Think about it!”

“I need to go, Dad.”

Preston’s eyes flashed angrily, but then they darted sideways to the Peacekeeper, and he nodded, offering them a tight smile. “You’ll be back,” he said, turning away, and then—
“He’ll be b-back . . .”
Preston whispered to himself, stuttering like a pro.

Ethan felt himself being pushed and shoved back the way they’d come. He felt a fiery flash of annoyance at that, but he resisted the urge to turn on Rovik again.

Once outside his father’s apartment, Ethan turned to the Peacekeeper and asked, “Why didn’t
you
warn me?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know. Omnius only told me after you’d had your first few sips. I suspect he wanted you to know what it feels like.”

“Why? So he can make me an addict, too?”

“No, so that when you choose to become a Null you don’t end up like your father.”

That cooled his jets. Ethan looked away quickly and made an irritated noise in the back of his throat. “Let’s go. My wife’s waiting.”

“Of course.”

All the way back to the mansion where he’d been staying at the top of Destiny Tower, Ethan tried to convince himself that he would never end up like his father. He told himself that the entire trip had been a waste of time. Just because he’d been a stim runner in the past didn’t mean he would become a stim
user
. That was entirely different.

He
was different.

One in five nulls is an addict,
he thought, remembering the statistic that was apparently common knowledge on Avilon.
Why so many?

Ethan didn’t want to dwell on it, but his mind was still clear as crystal and working twice as fast as usual, so ignorance wasn’t an option. If Bliss made a man stronger, faster, and smarter than he’d otherwise be, it stood to reason that regular citizens would have a hard time competing with all the Bliss-doped addicts, and that would force more people to start using. In a world as overcrowded as Avilon, having a competitive edge wasn’t just good business—

It was key for survival.