Silence (31 page)

“
You claim that Legacy is
some kind of protection? You were the bastards that sold Emili
Four,” Sheikoh whispered, cold as ice. His words were stolen by the
wind.

Ghost was going to pay. He deserved to
die more than Sanatous, however annoying the dude was.

Sheikoh tipped towards Ghost, aiming
his hissing, blacksteel electroblade straight for the man’s
unconcerned face. He fell through a rush of wind that screamed for
him to stop, but Sheikoh didn’t intend to. Hatred pulsed through
his blood, clawing for the life of the man that was everything
wrong with the world. Ghost, the Century, the gang leader and the
Four dealer who had all but stolen Emili from him and Dorothi. As
soon as Ghost came into range of his electroblade, Sheikoh pounded
the weapon into his face with all of the hatred and desperation
that he’d ever felt in his life.

   
The
knife vibrated Sheikoh’s arms as he raked it down the man’s face
with a metallic screech. He instantly knew that something was off.
His electroblade wasn’t slicing through skin; rather, it felt like
he was trying to slash through a hunk of metal. Sheikoh’s fifteen
foot drop smashed him against Ghost. The leader of Legacy didn’t
even budge, so Sheikoh painfully bounced back. He slid through the
dirt, looking up at Ghost’s face with disbelief.

Torn skin hung from the cut that
Sheikoh had raked across Ghost’s face. The slash scored all the way
from the middle of the man’s forehead down to his jaw. That wasn’t
what had caused Sheikoh’s shock, however.

Underneath the ripped wound hid a line
of blacksteel. The tattered skin drifted in the night’s breeze.
Sheikoh could make out a blacksteel skull hidden beneath what must
have been Synthskin. It was designed on the same alien frequency as
Sheikoh’s own cyborg arm and legs. For a minute, the sectioned
blacksteel skull grinned at Sheikoh.

    “
Surprising, isn’t it?” Ghost asked sardonically. “Century can
choose to go through a conversion. That’s why their robes cover the
whole body; nobody knows which of them are human and which
aren’t.”

Sheikoh glared up at Ghost, his
furious eyes demanding ‘Why won’t you just let me be?’ Camillio
Tyche walked up to stand beside Ghost. The Celestial wore an almost
credible look of sincerity. Sheikoh glared at him as
well.

   
“
Silence, you don’t understand. I
can’t
face the
Sycrarian. An unbound Sycrarian is untouchable to the Celestial.
Upon drawing the slightest bit of magic in, the Sycrarian could
drain my life-force in an
instant
. Without magic, I’m nothing
more than an old man,” Tyche confessed quietly.  

   
“
Yeah, is that right? Well you aren’t the only
one who knows what the demon can do, mate. I’ve seen what it’s
capable of! Even wearing the amulet, it
easily
overpowered me. There’s
nothing we can do!” Sheikoh spat vehemently back at
Tyche.

He lifted himself to his
feet, brushing dust off of his worn, black clothes. Out of the
corner of his eye, Sheikoh saw Ghost take a step towards him.
Sheikoh clenched a hand around his electroblade.
Just try it,
he dared
the android.

“
Ghost,
stop
,” Tyche commanded sharply. “If
you get too close to the Transcendent Amulet it’ll nullify your
blood rune.”

Ghost shot a glare at the Celestial
and took a grudging step back. Camillio Tyche turned back to
Sheikoh.

“
We need you, Silence.
Without the amulet or the codex, there’s no way to stop the demon.
If we stand by and let it, it could destroy the entire world,”
Tyche urged Sheikoh.

“
If it’s
for the fate of the world, I’ll give you your precious amulet back,
but that’s all I can do. The thing is faster than us, stronger than
us, and it can use magic. We need to call it a day and run like you
were planning
before
the bad guy became a freaking demon,
Celestial
,” Sheikoh spat
scathingly.

Camillio’s blue eyes probed Sheikoh’s
expression intently.

“
I don’t think that that
isn’t the reason that you refuse to fight… her…” Tyche murmured,
staring into Sheikoh’s dark eyes.

Sheikoh’s expression flickered. He
regained control of it after a second, but the damage was already
done. Camillio Tyche had caught the momentary glimpse of pain in
his eyes. The Celestial’s lips formed a half smiled of pity. He
leaned over Sheikoh’s shoulder and modulated his volume so that no
one else could hear.

    “
Sheikoh,” Tyche whispered into the teenager’s ear. A chill
shivered down Sheikoh’s spine at the mention of his real name. “The
reason that I wanted the codex was because the book was rumored to
hide the lost secret of binding Sycrarian. If you bring the codex
and the demon to me, I will extract it from Emili. You get her
back, and I get my own Sycrarian. Then we can leave this city
behind us.”

   
Sheikoh’s eyes widened when he heard Emili’s name. How had
the Celestial found out about her? He searched the man’s face
intently before deciding that it didn’t matter. Then his eyes
dropped out of focus and he thought hard for a few
minutes.

Tyche’s deal made sense, but Sheikoh
wasn’t sure. Desperation beat one’s morals into submission. Even
though the Celestial’s eyes seemed sincere, the bags underneath
them hinted at desperation. Tyche’s face was lined with stress, his
mouth molded into a serious half-frown. Tyche’s greying brown hair
was pulled back into an unkempt ponytail. The man just had a
strained demeanor.

Of course he was strained. There was a
freaking demon on the loose. His obvious desperation didn’t
necessarily mean the Celestial was lying though. Sheikoh didn’t
make out any glint of falsehood in Tyche’s eyes, and even if he
had, Sheikoh didn’t think that he’d be able to resist the slight
possibility that he could bring Emili back. Finally, he nodded his
head reluctantly. Tyche smiled in satisfaction.

Sheikoh didn’t smile back though; he
didn’t see that he had much choice in the matter. If he let this
opportunity pass, he didn’t think he could ever face Dorothi again.
He was probably going to die. Even with the amulet, victory was a
long way from a sure thing. The Sycrarian’s punches were
lethal.

    “
Fine,
it’s a deal. Double cross me and you’re dead, though,” Sheikoh
warned Camillio Tyche.

    “
That
sounds fair,” Tyche responded quickly with a sparkle of
exhilaration in his eyes.

Sheikoh gazed at Tyche searchingly
with a question perched at the edge of his lips. The Celestial
looked back, his face arranged in amusement.

    “
Go
on,” the Celestial motioned Sheikoh.

    “
Why do
you want me to go so bad?” Sheikoh asked the Celestial with
distrust.

    “
Honestly, the quick answer is that neither Ghost nor I can
wear the Transcendent Amulet without repercussions. I’d lose my
magic, and Ghost would fall over dead the second that the blood
rune tying him to his android body failed. Indigo could wear it for
us, but you’re unique situation proves much more useful,” Tyche
explained, lowering his voice emphatically. “You are better suited
for this than anyone in the entire world. If anyone can do this
it’s you Sheikoh.”

Then the Celestial raised his voice so
that Indigo and Ghost could hear him as well.

   
“
Take three Swifthooves and track the Sycrarian
through the Schizn Canopy,” Camillio Tyche told the three of them,
Ghost nodded quietly. “Deal with the Centaurai and then bring back
the codex and the girl,
Alive
.”

They turned, Sheikoh following
somewhat numbly, and traipsed through the dark, dingy streets.
Behind them, Camillio called out.

“
Good luck.”

Chapter 16

Sycrarian
Silence

Sheikoh rode the smooth springsaddle
of his mottled orange Swifthooves without effort. Alongside him
were the black helmeted profiles of Indigo riding a huge grey beast
of a Swifthooves, and Ghost, in the lead, riding a blue
Swifthooves. It was an infinitely more bearable experience than
Sheikoh’s ride with Emili had been.

Regardless, his face was a tense mask.
His anxiety wasn’t for what lay before them, but for a worry left
behind. He’d quickly searched his two houses for Dorothi, but she
was nowhere to be found. Then Sheikoh’d called her, but she hadn’t
answered. It was too similar to the time that Emili had
disappeared. Sheikoh shivered, remembering it and wished that he’d
checked in on Dorothi during the recess between meeting with Tyche
and heading to Randel Sanatous’s place.

   
Right
now he needed to focus. He could worry about Dorothi later. That’s
what Sheikoh told himself at least. But the more he tried to deny
the nagging worry, the more it bothered him. A vision of Dorothi
lying unconscious in that alley pounded at the back of his
head.

Sheikoh almost shook his hair in an
effort to dispel the image, before he remembered that he was
wearing a Swifthooves helmet. Shaking his head wouldn’t move any of
the raven bangs away from his eyes; his hair was all but strapped
where it was. He needed to live in the moment right now. As he rode
the Swifthooves down the dirt road that sliced through the Schizn
Canopy, he called on the cold part of himself to push the
screaming, protesting emotions deep into his chest.

   
They
were following Khryzt using Celestial vision monocles. Ghost had
given him and Indigo each a brand new one before they left, but
Sheikoh couldn’t get his to work. He tried to do the double wink
that activated the monocle’s Celestial energy tracking vision that
Ghost had showed them, without success. He repeated the movement,
exaggerated, but the energy screen wouldn’t pull up. Frustrated,
Sheikoh twisted his face and blinked his eyes, trying to get the
thing to work.  

Most didn’t know it, but the Celestial vision Ghost used to
track down the Sycrarian was actually the reason that monocles had
been developed in the first place. For centuries the Intrasentient
Emperors had directed all of the empire’s research funds towards
figuring out how the Celestial were able to manipulate energy. The
consecutive emperors each nurtured a hope that science would one
day acquire the secrets of magic.

Within that realm of thought,
distinguished scientists had managed to discover the physics of
light and radiation. From there, they’d harnessed the power of
electricity and fueled the entire continent of Octasia with
gigantic nuclear power plants that they kept in secluded, rural
areas. Weapons had evolved from swords and knives into plasma guns
and electroblades. Scientists discovered means to view the strange
currents of energy that the Celestial were able to manipulate as
well as frequencies of light invisible to the naked eye. They
created a portable piece of machinery to study the Celestial’s
actions. It wrapped around the ear with a plastic screen that
extended over one eye. Scientists dubbed it monocle.

The current Intrasentient Emperor had
taken to wearing the monocle at all times, hoping to see something
in the christened ‘Celestial Plane’ that the scientists had missed.
The citizens of Intrasentient City had followed their ruler’s
style, special ordering their own monocles from businesses.
Companies everywhere took their most sophisticated cellpad designs
and adapted them to the monocles that had become popular overnight.
Few knew the device’s original function, the one that Ghost now
tracked the Sycrarian with, even though most of the models
possessed it.

Sheikoh closed his eye for three
seconds to pull up the radio channel that connected the three of
their monocles.

    “
Hey
Ghost, how long until we get there?” Sheikoh asked. The suction cup
on his throat translated his voice box’s vibrations into
words.

   
“
Why don’t you just check for
yourself,
Silence
?” Indigo taunted him
gleefully.

“
About twenty minutes,”
Ghost responded without inflection. “We’re going to have to take
the Swifthooves through the trees though.”

“
Yippee. That sounds fun.”
Sheikoh sighed. “By the way, when we get to hell, you guys like
wanna meet around the lake of fire or the vault of screaming
souls?”

Neither of the two responded to his
remark.

Sheikoh shivered at the finality they
rode towards. His emotions were beginning to catch up to him. To
what they were about to attempt. He tried to push the stark fear
aside, tried to stuff it into the bursting drawer holding all of
his other unwanted feelings. But it didn’t work. Chest bubbling
with apprehension, he searched the blurred woods for some means of
distracting himself. That didn’t work either.

He suddenly found himself
talking.

    “
Aww,
Indigo, you aren’t still mad about that kick, mate? You know it was
a love tap right? I could never hit a big, tough brotha like
you.”   

“
You’re an asshole, kid.
You wanna feel a real love tap? I got one saved up just for you,”
the static bound voice of Indigo reported in Sheikoh’s
ear.