Silence (20 page)

What if the Centaurai found
Dorothi?

Sheikoh’s chest clenched at the
thought, and his breath felt like frost. His mind stuttered over
the implications. Running through the consequences, over and over
and over and over, until the words had stopped feeling real. He
searched for a simple answer, but there didn’t seem to be
one.

Just behind him, a group boasting
blue-silver bandanas of Legacy swaggered through the area reserved
for wagons and Swifthooves. Sheikoh’s face broke into a tight grin.
He glanced over their matching leather, pinpricked with studs and
weapon handles. According to Ghost, these guys were just the west
side’s Century division. Sheikoh shook his head
dismissively.

Then he noticed something.

Wherever Redline had gone, people
seemed to melt away. Shutters closed, curtains were drawn, and
streets emptied. Their joking and laughing had always been
accompanied by echo. Everyone else kept quiet, in perpetual fear of
drawing Redline’s attentions.

Sheikoh observed none of that
here.

Sure, the people around him were a
little quieter than usual. There was less pushing and everyone
moved a little more orderly, but there was no fear in the people
around him. There was caution, certainly. Carts and rented
Swifthooves kept a careful distance around them, but people didn’t
spill into alleyways like they would when Redline passed
by.

Had Ghost been telling him the
truth?

Sheikoh jostled through the waves of
faces until he was close enough to examine one of the men. He
glanced at the tattoo of the snake winding around the grizzled
man’s neck, and then his stomach went leaden. The man’s eyes were
yellow, stained with Four. Emili’s ruined face streaked across the
back of his eyes, a glimpse of a nightmare. Yellow eyes flashed
into memories of Emili’s dying face.

Sheikoh clenched his fists in his
pockets, gripping handfuls of black denim. His chest bunched up in
a tight ball. Fire flashed behind his eyes. This was the point that
dissipated any sliver of redemption. Legacy had never been anything
more than a gang of dealers and scum. They’d taken Emili from him
and Dorothi, tricked her and then strung her along to die in his
arms. Her last words were an apology for their crimes. Sheikoh
could never forgive them.  

Emili’s death, her rasping chokes and
withered frame, spilled into Sheikoh’s mind. He could see the
clumps of hair that’d fallen onto her pillow-

Sheikoh shook his head. Emili hadn’t
spent her life as a zombie. He needed to remember Emili as she’d
lived. Not in the state of living death that Four had exiled her
to. He forced and his thoughts on Emili’s bright, crooked smile and
memories of happier times. The time they’d laid awake through all
hours of the night, talking and comforting one another. Laughing at
a joke one moment and then soothing the other’s tears the
next.

Sheikoh’s body kept pace with the
pushing sea of traffic, but his eyes were uncharacteristically out
of focus. He thought over everything that was happening; Dekla’s
arrogance, Indigo’s rescue, the Arch Centaurai’s threats, Ghost’s
revelation and the Celestial’s offer. Everything was happening so
fast, and now he was perched at the precipice of two
murders.

With this amulet, Sheikoh could no
doubt complete the Arch Centaurai’s task and kill Dream.

Alternatively, he follow Dream’s plan
and kill the other Celestial.

Sanatous.

Someone he knew nothing
about.

Of course, there was always
the “
conventionally
right” method. Sheikoh could take Dorothi and run for the
hills in fear of taking action. He could shatter both of their
lives and earn two, incredibly powerful adversaries, all to avoid
taking a life. Force Dorothi to pay for all of his
mistakes.

Sheikoh snorted to himself. That
wasn’t even an option.

And neither was working for the Arch
Centaurai really. Sheikoh didn’t trust the dude as far as he could
throw him.

Which meant he was murdering the
Celestial, Sanatous.

Rationalizations on the nature of
death coursed through his thoughts, and conjecture pointed an
accusing finger at Sanatous. Sheikoh had killed before, and he’d
always known he would do so again, but something about it felt ice
cold.

The familiar sense of detachment rose
in him.

Emotion fell silent. Yet Sheikoh still
felt cold.

What would Emili
say?

Sheikoh walked along the sidewalk,
lost in thought. He didn’t realize where his feet were carrying him
until he was already there. Just in front of him was the dark,
wooden gate protecting Sheikoh’s quiet place, his personal, public
garden that the public had no interest in. For a moment, Sheikoh
thought about visiting Dorothi beneath the trapdoor. But, if he was
being honest with himself, he knew he needed to be
alone.

As much as he loved Dorothi, he played
the part of a parent. Something about their dynamic just made it
the only kind of relationship they could have. Sheikoh just
couldn’t make their thing feel brother-sister, it never felt
natural. His mentality was too protective, too, ‘always put Dorothi
first.’  He didn’t mind it that way, but there wasn’t any room
for self-doubt.

Few days went by without him wishing
that he had someone to guide him. Someone who understood the
impossible maze of right and wrong that twisted through his world.
Sheikoh stood at the edge of the world, along and afraid. Growing
up had never been his strong suit.

Sheikoh walked into the garden and
leaned up against the ivy-cloaked wall and let his body slide to
the ground, bringing a few, fluttering leaves down along with him.
He closed his eyes, and Emili’s smile flashed into his thoughts.
The all important question flickered through his mind again; what
would Emili have said?

But then, Sheikoh remembered. He asked
himself something better.

What had she actually said?

Chapter 11

Vacation

The enhanced animal was blindingly
fast - as fast as it’d been born to be. Faster even than his
overdrive. Sheikoh held Emili’s waist tight, as the surrounding
country dissolved into a green blur. He buried his face in her
stained, yellow shirt and waited for it to end.

Emili had told him; “The Swifthooves
runs at about 55 mph carrying all of us and our bags so we’ll
probably make it to the cabin… in two hours?”

He’d nodded confidently
back.

Sheikoh was currently exploring the
depths confidence can sink in two hours.

It hadn’t sounded overly long. But
crammed in the harness of a cheap springsaddle with two other
bodies, Sheikoh learned firsthand how much riding could
hurt.

Even for someone with metal
legs.

Sheikoh glanced down at Dorothi,
sitting on his lap. The poor girl was crammed between himself and
Emili, trapped in the middle of a saddle meant for one. Her eyes
were tracked with tears, and her mouth was opened in a wail that
was stolen by the wind.

Sheikoh leaned down and rested his
forehead on the girl in front of him in a small gesture of comfort.
There wasn’t much else he could do. Sheikoh just kept his eyes
closed and wrapped Dorothi in his arms. Whenever he felt her elbow,
he tried to loosen his grip. But at the speed they were going, if
he loosened them too much, he and Dorothi were as good as
dead.

Sheikoh clenched his jaw.

The man they’d rented the Swifthooves
from had told them they were fine three to a Swifthooves.
 He’d refused to give them more than a single helmet for the
ride they’d paid to rent. The shiny, black helmet currently covered
Emili’s face. Its plastic visor was the only thing that let her see
where they were going.

Sheikoh’s left eye had been as good as
blind, and even his right eye could barely keep up with the
landscape blurring around them. He felt Dorothi breathe in beneath
him, and he shifted a little, trying to give her some
air.

“
Are we there yet…” Sheikoh
mumbled miserably.

His words were snatched by the howling
wind before they’d had a chance to reach his ears.

The two hours the three children rode
felt like a year of jolting bumps and aching muscles. Sheikoh was
half-convinced it would never end. But finally, they made it to the
edge of the Schizma Canopy. Emili kept at a gallop all the way to
the edge of Alimiat Wray’s ramshackle hut. Then, at the dark’s edge
of the murky woods, she finally slowed the animal to a
trot.

Sheikoh looked up,
relieved.

They rode the rolling gait, surveying
the house at the edge of sprawling nature. The cabin was built of
dirty, mismatched wood. Its single room was hanging with cobwebs
and long pale-green moss, and the door was warped so the line
between it and the hinges widened as the eye followed downwards.
Plastic-sheathed windows stared from the dark walls.

Around the house, sparse pockets of
gnarled trees grew, lonely looking compared to the massive forest
just a ways back. The cabin leaned away from the woods. A seemingly
endless crowd of trees looked on behind, silent and ominous. Like
the building was trying to outrun an angry mob of trees.

“
We made it,” Emili stated
in tone of forced lightness.

“
Yay. When do we leave?”
Sheikoh responded.

Emili rapped Sheikoh’s left arm with a
knuckle, knocking it dead, and then she wrapped Dorothi in her arms
and slid off the Swifthooves back. Sheikoh followed suit, swearing
quietly. He stopped grumbling however, when Dorothi trained her
red, reproachful gaze on him. Guilt surged in his chest; as
uncomfortable as his time in the saddle had been, Dorothi’s had
been worse.

Sheikoh resolved to keep
his mouth shut.
He
wasn’t going to be the one to ruin anyone’s first trip out of
Interium. He shot a black look over at Emili. She stuck her tongue
out at him in response.

They lead the Swifthooves to the
building. Sheikoh swung the bags over his mechanized shoulder in a
fluid motion, and the still-saddled Swifthooves trotted away to
munch on a clump of coarse, yellow grass. Emili twisted the knob
with an anxious expression, and Sheikoh imagined how horrible it
would most likely be inside.

But their worries were
groundless.

“
Wow,
this isn’t bad,” Sheikoh lilted with surprise. Emili flashed him a
superior grin that seemed to say; ‘
what did I tell you?’
 He only
smiled back; he knew Emili was just as surprised as he
was.

The single room sprawled with desks
and benches overflowing with mechanical tools, digits,
half-finished arms, empty chemistry sets and tangled snakes of
synaptic wire. The wallpaper was dingy and off-white, and the
boards creaked ominously underfoot, but it was better than a
vacation of mold and spider-webs.

Sliding his hand over the yellowing
wallpaper, Sheikoh carried their bags to an empty corner of the
room. He tossed the bags at the foot of a comfortable-looking, blue
mattress. There was even a TV, but he couldn’t get it to turn
on.

Emili held Dorothi on her shoulders
where she stood in the doorway.

“
Dibs on the bed,” Sheikoh
called.

“
Too bad, Sheek, me and
Dorothi called it on the way here,” Emili said. Her sky-blue eyes
were wide and innocent. “Right, Dodo Bird?”

“
Right!” Dorothi agreed
with a happy yawn.

“
Not fair! You know you
didn’t say anything on the ride here,” Sheikoh grumbled.

“
We didn’t have to,” Emili
explained, dead-panned. “We’ve got a Celestial link. Me and Dorothi
can read each other’s minds.”

Dorothi put two small fingers on her
temples.

“
Right now Emi’s thinking
that you need to take a bath Sheek!” Dorothi giggled. “You
smell!”

Emili gasped in surprise.

“
She’s right!” she
exclaimed. “On both counts!”

Emili and Dorothi fell over one
another, laughing their faces off.  Sheikoh wanted to pretend
to be mad, but he couldn’t help a tiny smile.

“
Made it just for you!”
Sheikoh giggled.

He ran at them and tackled the two
girls to the ground, stuffing Emili’s face into his left armpit.
The two girls squealed beneath him. Then Emili shoved him off; even
though Sheikoh’s prosthetics were stronger than the average limb,
they couldn’t compete with a longer arm’s torque.

For a while, the three of them laid
there, laughing softly. They gazed at the rafters crisscrossing the
ceiling and talked about little nothings that had them giggling all
over again. They were having more fun than any of them had had for
a long time. Sheikoh, for his part, was filled with a hysterical
sort of exhaustion. Emili was so right, he admitted to himself.
Taking a vacation had been a good idea.

Not long later, Emili asked Dorothi
something and was met with the sound of quiet breathing. She
twisted around and discovered Dorothi sound asleep, with a thumb
hanging out of her mouth and her head lolling to the side. Emili
got up, pressing a finger to her lips, and lifted her into bed.
Then Sheikoh and Emili walked outside in silent agreement. They
didn’t want to disturb Dorothi; she was obviously
exhausted.