Silence (23 page)

There was somebody in the room he’d
landed in, a servant with wide, fearful eyes. The man opened his
mouth to yell, so he leapt over and slammed the man in his stomach,
knocking out a gasp of air. He hurriedly pushed the servant up
against a wall, pressing the barrel of his pistol into the man’s
throat to cut off any potential screams. A little bit rough for
him, true, but he wasn't about to let this servant dude sound any
alarms.

“
Hands where I can see
them, mate,” Sheikoh whispered sharply.

The terrified servant raised two,
shaking palms.

“
If you
want to live, tell me where the Celestial is,” Sheikoh ordered
sharply.
“Now!”

Sheikoh saw that gleam in the man’s
eyes. He knew he was about to get the truth. This guy was sure that
the Celestial could handle him. Sheikoh took a step back and
trained his pistol, letting the servant fall onto the floor
gasping.

“
Well?” Sheikoh prompted
his icy eyes fixed on the man on the floor. He motioned with his
ML5.

“
Next floor up. Third door
to the right. Just a warning though… whatever they promised to pay
you… it wasn’t enough,” the man half sputtered.

Sheikoh looked at the man for a
moment, contemplating taking the servant hostage or using him as a
distraction, before remembering that Dream had told him to kill
anyone he encountered. His face hardened.

The servant backed up
against the wall, wearing an expression of terror. Sheikoh felt a
squeeze in his chest. It didn’t matter. He pushed it aside and did
what he had to.
He spun, unleashing a
devastating back kick in the man’s face.

His foot crunched against
the dude’s nose, and a splash of blood trailed behind the man’s
limp body. The servant sailed a few feet back bouncing onto the
ground. A trail of blood from the dude’s shattered nose vaguely
marked his aerial path. It pointed an accusing finger back at
Sheikoh.
He
stood
there for a motionless moment and considered the implications of
what he’d just done. Then he walked up to the servant and put a
hand on the man’s chest.

There was a heartbeat.

“
You have an awesome
constitution, mate,” Sheikoh giggled quietly.

He flipped his electroblade into his
boot and stood back up.

It was a stupid defiance, but Sheikoh
wasn’t caving to the Celestial’s orders. he’d been hired to kill
one guy, not a house full of his cleaners. Dream wasn’t human. The
Celestial were a completely different race of being, unbound by the
morality that governed humanity. Sheikoh knew the second he wasn’t
useful to Dream anymore, the man would toss him to the side without
a second thought. Ghost as well. And Indigo. Sheikoh had seen their
kind. And If this Sanatous was anything like Dream, a hostage would
just add one more body to the count. He turned from the prostate
servant and looked up the stairs.

‘
This is
it,’
he told himself. Sheikoh
stepped into the winding staircase, climbing the stairs slowly and
deliberately. Each of steps fell with distinct precision exactly
where he meant it to fall. A leaden feeling weighed down his
shallow breathing. Each step brought him closer to murder. Faced
with the reality of what he was doing, Sheikoh suddenly felt dirty
and subhuman. The air around him felt like icy mist.

Sheikoh stepped up into the pale hall
that led to the Celestial’s room. Even if the servant hadn’t told
him, he would have guessed that one of these rooms was Sanatous’s.
In the absence of the usual paintings and marble statues decorating
everywhere else, foreboding runes spider-webbed across cream
walls.

He walked down the thickly carpeted
hall, counting the doors on his right hand side. The burned-black
runes, splayed under dead candles, seemed to flicker with menacing
life. Every time he passed one, his mind rewrote it into a
condemning stare. He flicked one of the wall-mounted candles off of
its holder. It fell onto the white carpet noiselessly. Leaving it
there, Sheikoh strode along the long hallway until at the
Celestial’s room. It was cracked open. He peeked in.

The Celestial was facing away from
him. His shoulders were bent over a desk that overflowed with books
and papers. He was scribbling something, pausing every few moments
to look over and read from a book with age-yellowed pages. He wore
a red robe, edged and striped down the middle with white, then
styled seemingly random black pattern spider-webbing artfully over
his left side. He wore his silver hair was in dreadlocks flipped
over to the left side.

Sheikoh’s body felt ice
cold. His mind was racing and his hands were shaking. He’d never
felt like this in his life. His shoulders started shivering. He
suddenly didn’t know if he could go through with this. Nothing had
ever prepared him to feel this coldness, this overwhelming darkness
choking him. Nothing had foretold this shiver, caressing his heart
with clammy, slimy,
dead
fingers. He’d killed Chain in cold blood. He’d
killed people that he’d never even met.

What was so different now?
But the question was pointless; Sheikoh already knew the answer. He
knew
exactly
what
was different this time.

And it was weighing on him.

Every time he’d ever killed, it’d been
murdering someone who had been trying to kill him. That was the
point. He’d had to kill them. Their deaths had been a necessity,
and he was almost certainly saving others down the line.

This time however, there was some
choice in the matter. Sheikoh shook his head, perversely trapped
and conflicted. His shoulder bumped into the door. Its rusty hinges
creaked open. He froze mid-breath.

The Celestial swung himself around, on
his feet in an instant. Sanatous stood taunt and wary, like a
cornered animal. His rolling chair glided over the floor, stopping
at the wall. His expression went from fear to surprise, before
finally settling a relieved smile.

The Celestial straightened up
confidently and smoothed out his robe. Sheikoh’s enhanced eye could
see tiny sweat stains where the Celestial’s hands had rubbed.
Sheikoh straightened up, taking a deep breath.

“
Do come in. What can I do
for you?” Randel Sanatous greeted him in a voice slashed with
threat.

The Celestial wore a cold smile and
gestured around his room expansively. He pushed open the door and
walked inside, forcing his body to adopt a cool, unconcerned
rhythm. He looked around, gazing at anything other than the
Celestial he meant to kill.

A bookcase stood up against the far
wall. It stretched all the way to the ceiling and was packed with
musty looking books. Beside it was the cluttered desk that Sanatous
had been sitting at. On the right wall stood a curtained bed and a
matching bedside table with a lamp, a clock and a pile of
difficult-looking books. The furniture was wood rather than
steel.

“
Hey, Sanatous, right? Nice
place you got here. Very… Celestial,” Sheikoh murmured, muffled by
the Legacy bandana. “Mind if I take this off?”

He pulled the bandana off without
waiting for an answer.

“
Ah. So much better,”
Sheikoh sighed, casting around for something to talk about. Besides
why he was here.

The Celestial wasn’t taking that
course though.

“
So who sent you? The
council? I doubt it; they know that sending a mere gangster against
a Celestial would be a waste. The Centaurai, then? Has he decided
that I know too much?” Sanatous asked Sheikoh, his eyes sparkling
with relief. He flipped his silver-white dreadlocks out of his face
with a cocky swish. “Or maybe… Camillio Tyche?”

“
Some Celestial dude,
greying brown ponytail, older fellow- Wait, I guess he’s younger
than you. Sound anything like your Camillio Tyche?” Sheikoh asked
the Celestial lightly.

“
It does,” Sanatous face
broke into a cruel smile.

“
Then, that’s the one,
mate,” Sheikoh murmured softly.  

“
Tyche stole a valuable
item from me, and I intend on getting it back. You will have the
honor of bearing my message,” Sanatous threatened, his tone
dripping with arrogance.

“
The honor is all yours,
Magicman,” Sheikoh imitated mockingly.

Sanatous’s eyes flickered with yellow
light. The Celestial began to speak in an echoing, double-voice
that roared with elemental power. Sheikoh pulled out his pistol and
rained red plasmafire on the chanting Celestial. Without a pause,
Sanatous raised a hand. Sheikoh’s shots deflected against a
yellow-tinted bubble. Shrieking red plasma left blackened craters
in the walls and ceiling.

The next moment, Randel
Sanatous stretched his other palm towards him and double-screamed
the final words of his incantation.
His
dreadlocks blew backwards, perpendicular to the rush of power, as
the space around his hands erupted with a twitching, snarling
lightning. Two writhing bolts of power connected midair. Tendrils
of excess static burned furrows into the floor.

Sanatous held the energy
between his shaking palms for a tense moment, and then, hurling his
whole body, he flung it at Sheikoh. Howling lighting raced towards
him, zigzagging at the speed of death. Its golden light glared in
his eyes.
He stood there, staring at it.
His body unconsciously tensed, and his nails dug into his
palms.

The screaming blast passed right
through Sheikoh. He let out a sigh of relief and watched, detached,
as the chaotic bolt flickered right through his chest like a
lightshow. Squealing, crackling crashes sounded over even the roar
of lightning as the wall behind Sheikoh exploded outwards with a
burst of burned rubble.

A piece of wood bounced off
of his right shoulder. It probably didn’t even scratch the
synthskin, but Sheikoh felt his chest close with dread. The amulet
had a blind spot. He couldn’t give Sanatous any chances at taking
advantage.
Across from him,
Sanatous’s face was arranged in bemusement, like
he thought that he’d missed. The Celestial’s flaming, yellow eyes
sparkled with confusion. Palms back out, Sanatous’s chilling
double-voice screamed something that sounded like;

“
Techria Ghoto!”

A barrage of streaming light passed
straight through Sheikoh. He didn’t have much problem keeping his
feet over the room’s sudden discourse of violent shaking. He aimed
his ML5 and fired a few more rapid bursts at Sanatous. The
Celestial held out a hand and the bursts of energy blew back,
flicking off that yellow bubble.

Sheikoh noticed black markings dancing
over the skin of the Celestial’s palm. His eyes narrowed. He knew
that this was how Sanatous got around saying that bubble
incantation aloud. He shoved his ML5 into his waistband; it didn’t
look like the pistol was going to be of much use to him. Then he
rushed Sanatous, pulling his electroblade out of his boot mid
stride.

The room blurred into streaks of speed
as he flung towards the confused face of the Celestial. There was a
loud crash outside, but he ignored hit. His entire being was
focused on Sanatous. At the last second, he leapt, flipping over
the Celestial’s shield. He could taste the adrenaline on his
tongue, like the burning of cold metal. His airborne revolution
slowed to a crawl.

Sheikoh hung upside-down checking out
burned-through entryway to Sanatous’s room. Three other sets of
Celestial eyes glowed from the hallway; two different shades of
green, poison and emerald, and a dangerous, fiery red. His body
didn’t register even a trace of surprise as he took the newcomers
in. The arc of his flip brought Sanatous back into view. The
Celestial stared up at him, wearing an expression of frozen horror.
Sheikoh tightened his grip on his electroblade and then plunged it
downwards.

Time sped itself back up in a flurry
of noise and motion. Sheikoh’s electroblade buried itself into the
Celestial’s neck. Sanatous’s face was pale and contorted in shock.
The Celestial gazed at the crest of his throat as though he hadn’t
noticed the dagger sticking into the side of his throat. Sheikoh
followed the Celestial’s gaze to the amulet. The one that Dream had
given him. It spun one way and back the other under their eyes.
Sheikoh stood over the kneeling Celestial for a long moment and
watched it.

“
Camillio… Tyche… gave the Transcendental Amulet…
to
you
?”
Sanatous coughed with shock. He
turned to the outside Celestial;
“Bring
the roof-

They were his last words. Three
screaming jets of burning light and fiery beams blasted the
white-haired man, jerking him free of Sheikoh’s electroblade.
Sanatous was tossed limply through a hole ripped in his wall, body
scorched jet black. It receded into the night like a shooting star.
Sheikoh started after the dead Celestial
uncomprehendingly.

Why had the other Celestial
had attacked Sanatous..? He was already dead..?
Then the light switch clicked. It was obvious. They three
other Celestial had been aiming at him. The amulet had sent their
spells straight through him. Sanatous was just on the other
side.