Silence (7 page)

Sheikoh’s eyes raked
Redhead for a single, dangerous moment. If he was being honest with
himself, he would relish a screaming, raging plasmafight. But it
was a very bad idea. His stupid vengeance would make things overly
complicated. There was no way Sheikoh was trusting himself to
Dekla’s boss; the dude was obviously trying to keep this on the
down low.
He took a deep breath and pushed
the weight down his chest.

Sheikoh felt his eyes tighten and draw
away from the raw feeling as he walked forward. When level with the
pair, the Legacy guy winked and flashed him a leering smile.
Sheikoh inclined his head without change in expression and almost
imperceptibly quickened his pace through the alley. He knew Redhead
probably thought that he was scared, that Sheikoh was running away.
His fingers itched for the hilt of his pistol. He’d pay a quart of
blood to disabuse the dealer of that notion. He ached to swing
around and burning a few holes into the scum’s body. He clenched
his fists, forcing himself to listen silently, as the dude picked
on the helpless Four addict behind.

“
You’ a piece of trash at
my feet, kame? Bring that anywhere near me again, and you’
dead.”

Sheikoh’s face twisted into a savage
grin at Redhead’s choice of words. A dealer calling an addict trash
was like admitting that he was a maggot sharing their dumpster.
Sharing their secrets and lies and filth. Sheikoh bit his tongue to
keep from voicing the thought aloud and cut out of the alley
earlier than he’d intended.

Sheikoh stepped into a busy, sunlit
street, brooding. The itch it slice a dealer into pieces wasn’t
there when he was nodding to the everyday drug vendors he got on
with. Sheikoh sympathized with them; he knew about what kind of
concessions you made with yourself. Surviving the heartless west
left you with stains and impurities, accumulated along with each
week of pay.  

However, when it came to dealing Four,
there were no words with any hope at exoneration. That crime
amounted to a knife that’d been stabbed straight through Sheikoh’s
and Dorothi’s hearts. Through their lives. Every happy moment came
with an undercurrent of regret, with the reminder that Emili wasn’t
there to share it with them.

Emili, the girl that’d saved his life.
That’d rescued him from the gutter soaked in his blood. The friend
Sheikoh had grown to love and cherish - the angel that recreated
him, bound his life into a half of something worth living
for.

Then he had been forced to watch her
descent into the depths of self-mutilation and denial. He’d held
her hand, as she fucked everything up, again and again and again.
His street name, Silence, was a testament to the silent tears
that’d marched down his face like conscripted soldiers to their
deaths. All because of Four.

There were too many stories like
there’s. Nobody wanted to be connected to another epidemic of the
lethal Four, the most addictive and dangerous compound in all of
the entire Intrasentient Empire.

He couldn’t keep doing this to
himself. He had to stop torturing himself. His chest felt hollow
and rotted out. It wasn’t empty though, he had Dorothi. He’d take
care of her for as long as he could hold on to that ever-darkening
sense of right and wrong that’d guided him to his point. For her,
he would never join the ranks of the depraved, bloodthirsty demons
that had ripped so many lives apart, literally in his
case.

And not just regarding
Emili.

His hand rose to caress the right side
of his chest as he walked. He snorted with cynical laughter. It
seemed that no matter what train of thought he boarded, its last
station was always Emili…

The wall dominated his right side of the concrete sidewalk.
Sheikoh slunk alongside it for a while, and then finally he made
out the silversteel gate, the only passageway between the west and
east. He glanced uneasily over the two Century standing silent
vigil beside its silversteel. They were the only ones you could
ever reliably expect to find in the west side.

Other than here, the west was
undeniably under Legacy’s rule. Rumor had it that something had
been brokered between Ghost, Legacy’s mysterious leader, and
Centaurai Cylium Vest. What could the gang possibly have to offer
worth half of Interium though? Did they have some kind of blackmail
on Centaurai? And if not, why would the Centaurai quarantine the
area behind a wall and then just leave it to fester?

Something didn’t add up.
 

As Sheikoh drew nearer, The
Centurys’ reflective, black visors turned his way. He shivered at
their bland featurelessness.
The Centurys’
uniform hid any proof of humanity. Their faceless faces were
outlined by a hood that flowed into a bone-white cloak. The
pitch-black underlay beneath was only broken by the white of their
chest guards, boots and gloves, all lined in skeletal black. The
uniform hid every stray inch of skin.

Uncomfortable, Sheikoh held up his new
deputy badge to the gate’s scanner. The metal door flicked upwards
with a deafening clang, moving so fast that it was as if it’d
disappeared. With the Centurys’ visors on his back, Sheikoh stepped
onto the cobblestones of the east side, officially crossing the
gate’s threshold for the first time in his life.

The east had a quaint, little
cobblestone-village theme that ended at the sharp boundaries of
egregiously modern buildings. The advertising was wholly silent,
peering from behind stores’ perfectly invisible glass. Sheikoh took
in the fountain in the center of the street, the two statues off to
the sides, the hoovesback people wearing suits in varying shades of
grey, black and blue and talking into monocles.

It was very different from
the West Side. Much quieter. More subdued. Cleaner looking. The
only sound was the gently clicking of hooves,
echoing around the
square. This is
the first time he’d seen the East in daylight. And he had to admit;
it was impressive. Sheikoh’d pulled a job or two over here, but
only at night and never near as mysterious as his current one.
Actually, one time he’d been hired to clean up for Interium’s
Coascendant. That’d been fun.

Then he shook the hair out of his eyes
to better see the immaculate, cobbled streets and the perfect
little shops. The stone pathways and highways were all lined with
flower speckled shrubbery and emerald grass. The stones of the
street ended in a precise, little line. Underneath the
cloud-streaked sky, the buildings clothed in greenery managed to
feel both imposing as well as tranquil to Sheikoh’s eye. A signpost
stuck out of the in the middle of a median. Sheikoh walked towards
it, squinting his eyes.

“
Okay... Myzeik Square.
Made it,” he murmured to himself under his breath. “My kind of
work.”

The well-dressed people rode their
Swifthooves around him alone or in pairs almost exclusively. They
all seemed to be trying to avoid eye contact of any kind. Many of
them chattered into various designs of monocles. They looked a
little bit crazy, as though they were talking into the thin
air.

Sheikoh met a couple of light glances.
When he locked eyes with East Siders, they all acted like he’d
caught them in some embarrassing act. It was very peculiar. West
Siders were rarely bashful like this.

None of them seemed overly
threatening, but Sheikoh visually probed anyone who wandered too
close all the same. He knew,
no matter how
unthreatening something seemed there was never any such thing as
‘too careful’. Sheikoh himself, or rather Silence, was a living
lesson to the fact. He kept his hand on the hilt of his pistol as
he strode towards a nearby statue of a marble man riding a horse
into some unknown battle.

“
You get em,
Saint-of-the-Year…” Sheikoh murmured with a tiny smile.

He turned and let his body
slide down the statue, coming to rest on the soft, emerald grass.
He settled in for a wait, he flipped the hair from over his face,
and then scanned the East Siders like they were a part of a mildly
interesting play.
His coal black eyes
swept the area thoroughly, at odds with his languid pose against
the statue.

The few who noticed him in the shadow
of the stone cavalryman took in his sharp features and even sharper
eyes with the detachment that came from seeing a million faces a
day. They inevitably tossed the information away though. What did
it matter to them if a child chose to spend their free time lying
against granite? All they saw in Sheikoh was a child. An
adolescent, a nothing. Sheikoh knew it and he used it. Only a
stupid person ignored their utilities, and as everyone who had
heard of Silence knew, he was anything but stupid.

The sun climbed further and further
through the sky. After a while, the statue’s shadow engulfed
Sheikoh as he waited for the prearranged meeting to take place. Was
he early? Sheikoh doubted it, but he pulled out his battered
Trinity XI to check.

The Trinity was one of the old
cellpads, basically a miniscule computer screen covered with a
retractable case one opened like a book. It was a tiny phone that
used to have internet capabilities, but nowadays they weren’t worth
the wait to load. Totally outdated, especially when compared to the
gleaming monocles over everyone else’s eyes, but what works,
works.

Sheikoh’s finger twisted
the case to the side, exposing its digital monitor and glanced at
the clock. It read 4:13. Sheikoh flipped it shut and flipped his
dark hair to the side with an irritated twitch. Apparently it
wasn't enough to drag him all around Interium, His east side
‘contact’
had to be late
too, just to show him who was boss.

He waited there for an
indistinct amount of time. Breathing deeply, Sheikoh managed to
chill his annoyance out, but something shifted. The atmosphere
about the place had changed somehow. Sheikoh’s instincts sharpened
to the point of a razor, and he scanned the lingering pedestrians,
horsemen and carriages alike. There was an unease flickering in the
back of his skull. Something was just…
off
.

His eyes narrowed. Sheikoh
felt an uncomfortable presence behind him. A familiar presence.
Right on cue, a cough sounded just behind him. Sheikoh‘s sixth
sense for danger told him exactly who this was. He cursed under his
breath, hoping against hope that he was wrong. This didn’t
make
sense
.

Sheikoh flashed onto his
feet with his pistol in his right hand and his electroblade in his
left, looking every bit the assassin he’d been hired to play. The
shadow that covered him wasn’t the statue’s anymore. He turned
toward the presence behind him. Just this once
,
Sheikoh hoped his instincts were
off. Just this
once
. But, of course, he’d been right, like always. It wasn’t
much comfort.

He
really
wasn’t in the mood to deal
with Indigo.

Chapter 3

Glimpse of
Magic

“
Indigo,” said Sheikoh
warily. “Always a pleasure.”

“
Silence. Been awhile,”
Indigo responded. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes. Menacing
silence stretched over a couple of heartbeats. Sheikoh’s mind was
racing furiously, but he was getting nowhere besides question-land.
 

So… How’re the kids?” asked Sheikoh
conversationally.

Indigo’s face broke into feral
grin.

“
If I ever meet one of em
I’ll be sure to drop by and we can all talk.” Indigo told him. “If
they live to learn how to talk, that is.”

“
With a big toughie for a
daddy like Indigo of course they will,” Sheikoh
exclaimed.

A few east siders glanced their way.
Good. Sheikoh straightened, hid his weapons, and stepped into warm,
safe sunlight. They were in an east side square, meaning even
Indigo had to watch himself. Strength is irrelevant when you’re
outgunned. And Century outgunned ganglords, especially on this side
of the wall.

Sheikoh turned his back to Indigo. The
next instant, the ganglord grasped Sheikoh’s shoulder, stopping him
in his tracks and then jerked him back into the shadow of the
statue. Sheikoh’s carefree disposition was rudely jolted. He was
too shocked even to slash out his electroblade; he simply gaped at
the ganglord. Could Indigo have bribed a patrol or something? Did
he really intend on attacking Sheikoh in the middle of the
east?

Then the ganglord was hissing into his
ear.

“
Idiot. I’m not here to
start a fight, I’m here to help you avoid one."

Sheikoh turned and eyed Indigo’s glare
with disbelief.

“
Sorry mate. I just can’t
help but not take you at a word,” Sheikoh raised eyebrows at the
ganglord. “I’m sure you understand.”

Then he screwed up his face, and
thought about what he’d said. He wasn’t totally sure whether or not
he’d added a pair of negatives into an affirmation or not.
 

“
My boss sent me here to
get you out before you wind up dead,” Indigo told Sheikoh, with
deadly seriousness.

“
Your ‘boss’?” Sheikoh
giggled a little. “Never heard anyone call someone like Ghost their
boss.”