Silence (22 page)

Not his life - that wasn’t worth the
air that he breathed.

No, the brilliant, dancing flames that
she’d inspired, the hole in his chest she’d filled with yearning,
the home she’d opened to him; that was what he had to repay. That
was a gift worth everything he could ever become. Anything he could
possibly imagine.

His countenance simmered with feeling,
and his dark eyes cradled Emili’s intimately, as though whispering
the only relevant truth on this green earth;

I love you.

Chapter 12

Sanatous

A beep and vibration in his pocket interrupted his reverie.
Sheikoh reached a hand inside his ragged black pants and
disentangled his cellpad from everything else in there. He flipped
open its dented silversteel cover and read the message ‘Spanius
location –Ghost,’ and ‘Be in position by 10:00 to strike at 12:00
–Dream.’ There was an attached downloadable file. Sheikoh thumbed
the key for the ‘download now’ option and waited while the blue
loading bar crept across the Trinity’s dim screen.

“
You can do this little
guy,” he muttered with distraction.

As Sheikoh watched the bar
he thought about Emili again. His thoughts pressed her beautiful
face into the look she wore as she told him;
‘Your name is Sheikoh… You’ll never grow out of the boy that
stood up for what’s right…’

He leaned his head back on
the vine drenched wall and closed his eyes with a pained
expression. He wanted to answer with something like; ‘Sure I’m
Sheikoh, Emi, but who
is
Sheikoh?’ Both of his names, Sheikoh and Silence,
were nothing more than words, titles that depended on the occasion.
They were both just labels that were independent of his true self.
Emili had lumped him into two groups, the parts of him she admired
and that parts she didn’t, but Sheikoh knew that there were so many
more facets and niches to himself than what could ever be defined
by just two words. He was so many different people depending on
others around him and whatever feelings gracing his heart. There
was hundreds of variations of Silence and millions of
Sheikohs.

Sheikoh meant the person that Emili
wanted him to be. The good guy him. But without her, he didn’t know
what ‘good’ meant.

His cellpad beeped again, as if saying
‘Hey! Hey, Sheikoh! I did that download thingy you wanted! Did I do
good?’ in robo language, but Sheikoh just stared at its screen
without opening the message. This was it. Whatever choice he had
existed in the very moment Sheikoh sat in. His brow crinkled as he
tried to piece together who he really was and what Emili would have
called right.

The way he saw it was he had two
options. He could kill the Celestial, the man Randel Spanius. He
could shut out any emotion in the matter and let his hands kill the
man that he’d never even seen before and offer Dorothi a rare life
of peace. If he did that, that was it, his very last job. He’d
never have to kill again, or steal or even lie. He could live
happily and honestly. Maybe he’d even figure out what Emili wanted
from Sheikoh. He might finally understand who Sheikoh really was.
Dorothi and Sheikoh could finally live in peace.

Or they could live in pieces. He could
refuse the Celestial, who, if he’d been telling him the truth, was
obviously the more dangerous of the two Celestial. He could try and
take Dorothi and run from the city they’d spent half their young
lives to understand. They could live as refugees in some other
region or eat by stealing from the poor Daisha farmers and aquatic
coast ranchers, always on the lookout for any sign of
Celestial.

Sheikoh was already shaking
his head, there was no way he could consign Dorothi to that kind of
life. Also, Sheikoh was sure that Celestial had some kind of
tracking spell, so they’d be totally reliant on the amulet that
Dream had given him. Maybe Dream had put some backdoor in the
amulet that Sheikoh wore, or maybe he’d even lied and made sure to
cast a spell that would destroy the wall but leave Sheikoh
unharmed. Or maybe he’d even been telling the truth about it
protecting him from all magic, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t put
some kind of
technological
tracking beacon on the thing, so if Sheikoh
betrayed Dream the Celestial could just send an army of Century to
kill him, deputy badge or no.

All in all, there seemed to be no
choice in the matter. Sheikoh stood up and walked out of the serene
garden of vines. In a way, he was the same as the plants that were
forever reaching skyward. Sheikoh would do whatever he had in him
power to pull his young ward and himself from the desperation of
the West Side. Sheikoh didn’t know if Emili would approve his
reasons for murder. He knew that he was going into the trade she’d
been so horrified that he’d gotten into once upon a different time,
but he’d promised that he would take care of Dorothi, no matter
what. She was his only family left and Sheikoh wouldn’t put the
innocent girl through anything he could possibly prevent. Even
though his chest felt dizzy and nauseous at the thought of killing
another man, a man who’d never touched him or anyone that he’d ever
loved, Sheikoh forced himself resolute. He was going to kill the
Celestial.

He clicked a key on his cellpad to
open the map Ghost had sent him, then pressed open the flat, wooden
door of the garden and begun to walk in the direction of the wall.
His expression was hard and his dark eyes were icy and focused.
 His brisk walk was eerily calm; a few people looked at him
with a flash of wariness. When one lived in the gang-ridden West
Side, the expression of murder was common knowledge, as Sheikoh
well knew with a little quiver in his chest. He pushed it away
though. There wasn’t anything to feel guilty about, because he only
had the one choice.

One more job before he hung up his
electroblade. This was it. He vowed to himself determinedly as he
walked through the twilight shadows of the last night he’d ever
spend on the West Side.

Randel Sanatous’s mansion was an
intimidating building. Sheikoh estimated its height at about five
stories. He could already see three security cameras mounted on the
swirling marble pillars around the patio area alone. There didn’t
seem to be any windows, which told him that there was undoubtedly
security beneath the borderline palace’s white brick and
silversteel overlay. Most menacingly were the dark scars on the
building’s bright surface. The walls and front area were
intermittently dotted with spidery, death-black pentacles that
stood out like tattoos on an angel.

“
Honestly, it does make it
look a little cooler,” Sheikoh muttered to himself.

Then a hand grabbed his
shoulder.

Sheikoh’s eyes widened and his
heartbeat stopped. His body was suddenly a blur of blinding speed.
Instinct-driven muscles ducked back and grabbed the wrist of
whomever had discovered him. He flung the perpetrator’s body over
his head, stepping and turning in a move that he’d invented and
landed on the assailant, his knee digging into the person’s chest.
His hand reached back and flicked out his electroblade. The blade’s
edge hummed ominously.

He held it to the man’s throat before
realizing that it was the Celestial - Dream.

“
I guess… I guess that was
what I paid for...” the Celestial gasped.

Sheikoh was on his feet in an instant,
and helping the breathless, middle-aged man up.

“
What the hell did you do?
I know you weren’t here when I checked out the area. Were you
invisible or something?” Sheikoh demanded in a terse
whisper.

If Celestial could become invisible to
someone wearing the amulet then that definitely qualified as game
changing information. He was good, but fighting a Celestial blind
wasn’t something he’d ever wanted to try.

“
I Ghoststepped here…”
Dream explained ruefully, rubbing his backside gingerly. Then he
picked up on Sheikoh’s train of thought. “Celestial can become
invisible though. From what I understand, the amulet cancels any
Celestial energy within a certain radius… and Sanatous is marked so
he can’t just vanish, he’d have to go through an incantation. It’s
doubtful that it will occur to him. You don’t have to worry
overmuch.”

“
What other little
loopholes can you guys wiggle through this amulet?” Sheikoh
whispered vehemently. “What if he makes a big flash spell thingy?
Can he blind me?! Make me see things that aren’t here? Smell or
hear things? You really could’ve mentioned that fact
earlier,”

The memory of that flash grenade, just
a day earlier, flashed through his thoughts. Dream narrowed his
eyes angrily.

“
I wore the amulet for a
little time as possible. I didn’t spend any time trying to figure
it out; I took it off as soon as I was done with it,” Dream shot
back.

Then the Celestial’s expression grew
introspective. Dream thoughtfully tapped his chin with a
finger.

“
However... The amulet
must
be able to protect against
illusions… Here...”

The Celestial took four long steps
back from where Sheikoh hid. His eyes flared blue

“
Can you
see me?”
Dream asked in an echoing
double-voice.

“
Yeah,” Sheikoh answered
slowly. He suppressed a shiver at the haunting voice.

“
Do you see the giant spider?”
Dream
asked in the same eerie voice.

“
No…” Sheikoh
replied

“
Then you
ha
ve nothing to worry about,” Dream
answered, his voice going back to normal.

Sheikoh turned back towards the
building with narrowed calculating eyes. Dream stepped two,
clinking steps towards him. Without looking, he could feel a swish
of air from the silk, robe-like cloak that the Celestial wore. If
this other Celestial wore as much jewelry as Dream, then he
wouldn’t have to worry about invisibility. He’d just listen till he
hear the sound of a rich, old lady and then shoot it. Sheikoh
grinned.  

Dream brought him back to the
present.

“
Even a master thief isn’t
going to be able to get through that door,” Dream said, nodding at
the flat, mechanized-silversteel gate emblazoned with a black rune.
Sheikoh followed the older man’s gaze. The door stood out jarringly
against the elegant, historically-inspired building, obviously
sacrificing design for security. Dream looked at Sheikoh with a
steel gaze. He held out one of Legacy’s silver-blue bandanas.
Sheikoh eyed it with distaste.

“
Cover your face with this;
you won’t want any Celestial to look at the cameras and learn that
you were the one to kill Sanatous, trust me. Walk up to the front
door and touch the rune with that amulet. I’ll open the door. Then
you’ll run in and kill Sanatous as well as anyone else you meet,”
Dream ordered brusquely. “Don’t forget to bring me back that book,
the one that I told you about, the one with the amulet indentation
in its center.”

Sheikoh nodded back as he wrapped
Legacy’s bandana around his mouth and nose. It stood out from his
shadowy form like a flare. It’d be pretty ironic someone shot at
the bright blue. Sheikoh laughed uneasily to himself. Legacy’s
bandana might just be more dangerous to him than one of their
ganglords.

He suddenly wondered what Indigo and
Ghost were doing now.

“
Good luck, Silence,” Dream
whispered, nodding at the door.

Sheikoh nodded back and, turning,
brazenly loped up to the pillared patio. The cameras were going to
see him no matter how sneaky he went at this; there was no point
wasting effort. He twiddled his fingers in an airy wave at one of
them as he passed, ending at the smooth, silversteel door. He
lifted the amulet from his chest up and held it up to silversteel’s
the dead center.

The door shot up at the speed of
Sheikoh’s blinding right hook. He smoothly darted over the
threshold of the opulent living space without a backwards
glance.

He just wanted to get this over
with.

Sheikoh’s legs carried him swiftly
through the dimly-lit opulence of the Celestial’s house with a
smooth, cat-like leaping run. Each of his strides took him half way
across a room. If anyone had been there to glimpse him, his speed
alone would’ve been enough to assure the perceiver that he was
something other than average.

The leather grip of his returned ML5
pistol in his right hand and the hilt of his electroblade clenched
in his left, Sheikoh blurred through room after room, searching for
Sanatous. He darted in and out of each of the doorless passageways
that spanned through the mazelike first floor in seconds. He
stopped for a moment to listen for any sound of movement with
excitement pounding behind his eyes.

His automatonical legs ran towards the
winding staircase he’d spied earlier, moving so fast that the dark
made him into a wisp of smoke. He launched himself into a ten foot
high flip, grabbed the banister, and vaulted over to land on the
top of the stairs noiselessly. He propelled himself with another
massive leap that took him to a room on the next floor and
transferred his force into a rolling crouch. All in less than a
second.