ElyriasEcstasy (9 page)

As he located and started down a rural road that wound its
way into darkened farmlands, he reached into his boot and slipped out the
photo. He looked at it in the soft light of the vehicle’s control panel. Two
adults, one child. Father, mother, son.

Around him, the city’s electrical incandescence faded away
and true night swallowed him.

Chapter Six

“I said, that’s enough,
soldier
!”

It was that final word, the appellation, that halted Rune.
He had barely made it back to this rooftop, the engine that powered his set of
wings sputtering ominously for the past few minutes. Belatedly he’d checked the
fuel gauge, saw how close to empty he was. Yet even with that knowledge he had
longed to continue his search.

Since landing he had demanded, in tones of escalating
desperation, that his wings be refueled, that he needed to get back into the
sky—now, damn it,
now
. He made a spectacle of himself, practically
foaming at the mouth. He’d already been sweeping the city for hours,
crisscrossing it, buzzing the roofs of the opulent Lux houses. Straining his
powerful senses, even going so far as to don the strip of blindfolding fabric
for minutes at a time. Flying sightlessly so as to enhance his other faculties,
just like on missions in the Unsafe. Seeking that single, familiar set of human
impulses.

Urna. Urna…
He’d called out the Weapon’s name, more
and more frequently as the night wore on. And more and more desperately.

This big officer, the one who’d just addressed him as
soldier
,
now loomed before him. Broad of shoulder, thick through the chest, with
glowering, commanding eyes. Seeing that he’d succeeded in stopping Rune’s
diatribe, he drew a long breath and said in brusque tones that brooked no
disobedience, “Shadowflash Rune, you are exhausted to the point of collapse. At
the moment you are useless to this cause. I want you to go with this escort.
Return to your quarters. Your doctor is waiting. Do not think further of this
mission for the time being.”

Rune was trembling, he realized only now. He was chilled to
the bone, and damp. A mist had descended over the city and he had been flying
around in it for too long. His outfit of loose black strips was plastered to
his lean, muscular body. He could only guess what his face looked like under
the fabric. Probably pale, and as drawn as a death’s-head.

He had started out on this search operation a determined
Shadowflash, loyal and disciplined. But the hours of hunting vainly for his
partner had reduced him to this fragile, emotional state. Exhausted. Near
collapse. Yes. Yes, he acknowledged. He saw the sense of the officer’s order.

Still, he wanted to resist it. He wanted the troopers on the
rooftop to fuel up his wings, which were still strapped cumbersomely to his
back. Only, these two hard-faced soldiers were evidently here to see him back
to his quarters—and if he tried to fight them he’d just be dragged there. He
was too tired to put up any real resistance.

Besides, he was a Shadowflash, not a Weapon. He couldn’t
outfight the pair.

Wearily, feeling a sadness that threatened to engulf him, he
undid the harness, let the wings fall away with a clank. He sketched a vague
salute to the officer then started away with his escort.

Urna.
Urna
. Where had that dumb fucker gone? Rune was
aware of descending a flight of stairs, his feet numb in his boots. The soldiers
said nothing to him.

Circling the city, Rune had seen the Guard units fanning
out, covering the streets. He’d ignored them. The Guard were nothing. They
would only find Urna through blind luck. None of them had ever ventured into
the Unsafe, to raid a derelict city and slaughter Passengers. The Guard were
weak, good only for putting down ineffectual dissidents and taking bribes and
meting out sadistic punishments as the whim took them.

But Rune had been unable to locate Urna, either. His
confidence had slowly eroded as he systemically traversed the city, then,
finding no hint of his counterpart, repeated the search pattern. Surely Urna
couldn’t have gotten away so quickly.

Evidently, though, he had. A clever Weapon. He had slipped
past the city’s limits somehow, faster than anyone had expected. Now he
was…where? Beyond the city. He might have gone in a dozen different directions,
which would necessarily widen the search exponentially. By now he could have
put vast distances between himself and—and—

And me.
The thought beat in Rune’s head with sorrow
and bitterness.
He has run away from me.

Tears blurred the stony corridor down which he was now
stumbling. The two soldiers had to support him. Somehow Rune kept himself from
sobbing aloud, though his tears ran freely, dampening the already wet fabric
cloaking his face. His lover had left him, had deserted him specifically. Or so
it felt to him, right now, in the middle of this awful night.

When he got to his quarters he fell across the bed, flinging
out his arm so that the waiting doctor could give him an injection—any
injection—that would allow him to escape this terrible reality in which he
found himself tonight.

* * * * *

Virge decided against stopping at a tavern that was nearby
her house. No official explanation for her liberation from detention had been
offered, but that was hardly surprising. Half the time she suspected the Lux
had no grounds to hold her at all. Aphael Chav just liked to needle her.

The notion that one of his trained killers had left the nest
must be galling him terribly. Virge smiled privately as she imagined the dire
consequences for Chav, at the hands of both the public and his own people,
should word become widespread and this thing blow up on him. If Urna, his baby
bird, decided to talk to anyone while he was free, to tell anybody
why
he’d made his escape…well. The next few days should prove to be very
interesting indeed for the so-called underground, those who resisted the Lux’s
influence with feeble gestures like those pamphlets. Most folk knew that those
people fancied themselves to be mages—whatever that really meant. Magic, to
Virge, was just a way for some people to give themselves hope. Just an
illusion, in the end.

She walked past the lit windows of one of the town’s two
broadcast lounges. It was a large place, furnished, open to the public. Vendors
sold food here. Sometimes people sneaked in drinks. The sites were very popular
but Virge rarely visited. The lounges were social centers, of a sort. But
really they were places where the Lux broadcasts could be viewed.

Looking inside as she passed, she saw the big screen
dominating one wall. A re-airing of an earlier cast was playing for a thin
late-night crowd, those who were eking out the last entertainments of the day
before midnight came.

Images played on the large screen. There were stills of
Weapons and Shadowflashes posed menacingly in their combat uniforms. Graphics
scrolled. Kill numbers and other statistics. A pair of familiar commentators
appeared, trading what was no doubt the usual blathering insights as to how the
featured combatants had performed on their latest mission into the Unsafe. It
faded into the Weapon speaking directly into the camera, no doubt giving his
report.

But it was the people watching the program who drew her
weary interest—and her pity. Virge noted their faces, rapt, their eyes hungrily
following the statistical data. They were, in a way, living vicariously through
these Shadowflash/Weapon teams. The exotic figures were so powerful, so amazing
in their abilities. Especially Urna and Rune, who seemed to have talents that
normal human physiology couldn’t explain. They were the most popular. Many
people seemed to
need
the duo.

On nights when new reports of Urna and Rune’s missions were
broadcast, both of the town’s lounges filled up and people cheered ‘til they
were hoarse. The Weapons and Shadowflashes were vital. To the populace. To the
Lux.

“Urna.”

She found herself repeating the name aloud as she left the
lounge behind, reached her house and let herself inside, opting to give the
tavern a pass. It was later than she’d suspected. Time stood still inside those
holding cells within the Citadel. She had been transported back to her town by
the Guard, who had been tight-lipped about the evident activity of other units
in the streets of the Lux city and on the roads leading outward from it. But
Virge already had the inside information she had gotten from Nick Daphral.

“Urna.” She found she liked the way the escaped Weapon’s
name rolled off her tongue, more sound than word.

Urna, the most famous of all the Weapons.

She didn’t know much about him or any of his stock. No one
did. Other than what was fed to them via Lux propaganda, the elite soldiers’
true identities were shrouded in mystery, the way the Lux liked it. Even their
names sounded more like titles. Urna and his partner, Rune. A warrior and his
guide. The biweekly reports notified the public of the numbers of slain
Passengers, as well as squares of ground in the Unsafe which had been
“reclaimed”.

It was bullshit, naturally. All propaganda was, even that
which told the truth. Anyone with a brain knew that the war against the
Passengers was pointless. Those creatures owned the Unsafe, and killing a
hundred or a thousand or tens of thousands didn’t mean anything in the end. The
kill statistics were no more than entertainment.

But, it seemed, people
wanted
to be entertained and
went along willingly with the charade. And so Urna and Rune were heroes.

And now Urna had fled. Alone, apparently. But why?

Wondering about it, she was distracted when she opened her
front door. Though only detained for a matter of hours, it felt as if she
hadn’t been home for days. The differences between the town she called home and
the Lux city were plentiful and obvious enough to evoke that illusion. She’d
been mere miles from home at the Citadel but it might as well have been worlds
away. Still, this town of hers, centrally located within the Safe, was a far
sight more comfortable and prosperous than the border towns.

Virge’s house was small and packed full. All the residential
structures in this block were of the same modest dimensions. She was very
lucky, she knew, to have the place to herself. Though she was generally clean
and her job afforded her some sense of taste, her guests, when she had them,
still sometimes had trouble navigating the interior without knocking things
down. Items she was forced to store here when the lab was low on room were
stacked high atop almost every available surface, in addition to her own
belongings and the random odd or end left behind by those souls she
occasionally deigned to assist, against her better judgment.

They
were the reason she’d been detained tonight, she
reminded herself. She would have to be more careful, starting with allowing
such types into her home, where they could potentially leave more incriminating
evidence of her involvement with their unsavory activities.

“Virge? Is that you?”

Speaking of unsavory.

She sighed, locking the door behind her, identifying the
disembodied voice immediately.

“Bongo.”

He stepped out of the tiny kitchen area, equipped with a
utilitarian electrical stove that she never used and a cold storage box for her
perishable rations. At the moment, she believed both were full of papers, most
scribbled with chemical formulas she was working on.

Virge regarded the intruder coolly once he was in full view.
Bongo grinned at her, nonplussed.

“Where have you been?” he asked cheerfully.

“I had a date,” Virge replied. She considered telling him
about Nick and their tryst in the cell. But it probably wouldn’t make Bongo
jealous. Jealousy was, after all, a vestigial emotional state. Or it ought to
be by now.

“Oh yeah?” Bongo arched an eyebrow and Virge noticed he was
holding a bottle in his hands. Booze.
Her
booze. A small, labeled bottle
she’d almost forgotten about. “Anyone I know?”

“Get fucked,” she said flatly. Banter between them could run
like this sometimes, but at the moment she was serious, and seriously pissed
off at him. Apparently he didn’t know she’d been picked up and whisked off to
be interrogated—and, really, there wasn’t any reason he
should
know—but
she let her anger rise nonetheless.

“Aw, don’t be like that.” Bongo mock-frowned. “Let’s have a
drink.”

“It’s not yours to offer.”

“Didn’t say it was.” He had that rascally lilt in his voice.

Another sigh escaped her, and with it went some of her
misplaced ire. “All right,” she agreed. “But you should know I was planning on
drinking anyway and I’m not very happy with you.”

“Why? What did I do?” Bongo blinked, all innocence.

It was all Virge could do not to roll her eyes. Then,
realizing it was her house and her alcohol, she did let her eyes roll
dramatically. Bongo’s infuriating nature was, perhaps, part of what drove him
to be a rebel. Maybe he was just naturally contrary. Maybe, she thought
wickedly, if those mythical magic-users he was always blathering about actually
existed and were ruling the Safe instead of the Lux, he would be rebelling
against
them
.

Bongo went back into the kitchen, reemerged with two
glasses. Virge had tossed aside her coat.

He’d been blessed with attractive features—a strong jaw,
full lips and green eyes that seemed to dance and spark with light even when
there was none around. His hair was artfully arranged. The hue was a glimmering
blond. In Virge’s experience, people as attractive as Bongo tended to exude
entitlement. Contrarily, Bongo exuded ridiculousness. Perhaps he thought he was
entitled to that.

“You know damn well what you’ve done.” She snatched the
bottle from his hands. Her own rare spirits, which she’d hidden well out of
sight and thus more or less purposely forgotten about. She’d meant this only
for special occasions. It had taken her months to beg it off of Raz, the owner
of the tavern, and he’d charged her heavily for it despite her being a
frequent, favored customer. He had to make a living too. “How did you get in?”