Silence (11 page)

After Sheikoh had finished
speaking, the Centaurai silently twirled a finger through his
goatee. Then he let out a low laugh. Sheikoh instantly stopped
wriggling his wrist out of the blacksteel to stare innocently up at
the Arch Centaurai. He wasn’t quite sure what the man was laughing
at, but Vest’s bitter laugh grated on his nerves. It had an evil
sound, the kind most at home in a ruined city or a moss-covered
cemetery. Sheikoh had to force himself not to grit his
teeth.
Who put this crackerjack in
office?
he wondered.

“
Ironic,” Arch Centaurai
Vest murmured, still smiling slightly to himself.

Then the smile twisted into contempt,
and he addressed his prisoner.

“
I cut off your clearance
and made arresting you a top priority when you killed my man and
his entourage,” Vest paused to look down his nose.

Sheikoh tried to look
suitably repentant

“
I believed that you had
betrayed Skyrei as well as the entire Intrasentient Empire,” the
Centaurai went on in clipped, icy tones.

“
Honest mistake…” Sheikoh
muttered a little rebelliously.

“
In joining this
Indigo-

“
He made it too me before
your man did!” Sheikoh interrupted. “How was I supposed to know
whether he was or wasn’t my contact?” The Centaurai’s eyes were as
cold and as sharp as icicles, so Sheikoh tacked on a hesitant
“…Sir?”

“
In
joining with this ganglord, this
Indigo . . .
” Vest took a deep
breath and seemed to calm down somewhat. “It would appear that we
have secured a distinct advantage over the Celestial
renegade.”

Sheikoh finally managed to squeeze his
right hand out of its blacksteel manacle. He bit back a smile and
forced his attention back onto Cylium Vest.

"This Celestial rogue was the reason I
requested your services in the first place. When you meet with him
tomorrow, you will kill him. And I just might overlook adding these
new murders to your record.”

Cylium Vest stared down at Sheikoh,
lip curling. Like the fact that Sheikoh came from a poor
background, that he’d had to make something of nothing and
succeeded, and, in the process, somehow managed to find himself in
a position where the Arch Centaurai himself was forced to speak
with him. Like he was an equal.

Well, that was fine. Sheikoh regarded
the Arch Centaurai with almost as much repugnance as the Arch
Centaurai was throwing his way. He found that he didn’t quite like
Vest’s insulting offer. There was no way he could’ve have known any
of this, cause the Centaurai was too up his own ass to tell him
upfront.

Suddenly Sheikoh wanted to have a
conversation with this mysterious Celestial before deciding
anything.

“
So, why didn’t you just
give that Dekla a mission statement?” Sheikoh asked the Arch
Centaurai with a pair of wide, innocent eyes. Then, when Vest
opened his mouth to answer, Sheikoh blurred forward, twisted and
lunged, catching Vest by the throat. Sheikoh pulled the terrified
Centaurai around into a headlock that left him gasping for
air.

“
Let me out, or I’ll snap
your neck, mate. Like a twig,” Sheikoh told Vest in a
conversational tone of voice, as though commenting on yesterday’s
Tri-ball. “I mean, why wouldn’t I? If I kill you here, it’ll be as
the most famous criminal in all Interium. Not a bad way to die, if
you ask me.”

Vest’s weak struggling suddenly
stopped, and Sheikoh raised his eyebrows The Arch Centaurai looked
up at him, face suffused with hatred. Sheikoh started; in all the
death threats he’d seen (or made) in his young life, he’d never
seen anyone respond like this. He had to give it to the dude;
Cylium Vest definitely had a pair.

Then inexplicably,
Sheikoh’s right arm began to loosen. His eyes widened with surprise
and fear as his forearm fell limp. The Arch Centaurai gasped a
desperate breath of air. For a second, Vest made no move to attempt
escape Sheikoh’s bicep around his shoulders. The Arch Centaurai
straightened and let Sheikoh’s arm fall limp.

Sheikoh stared at the Arch Centaurai
with horror. What could’ve happened to his arm? He hadn’t
overdriven in over a month! This couldn’t be happening
now-

Strange voices began to whisper alien
language into Sheikoh’s head. They grew louder and louder, until
they drowned out his thoughts completely. They began permeating
throughout his body, clinging onto his muscles where they were
evoking twitching spasms. Sheikoh’s body lurched a stumbling step
backwards. And then another. Then he fell back into the cold
blacksteel chair, to the soundtrack of cruel, mental
laughter.

The strange whispers bounced around
his head, suffocating him in a tight, mental grip. Primal fear,
traced Sheikoh’s nervous system at the cruel smile winding across
the face of Cylium Vest. The Arch Centaurai brushed wrinkles out of
his red coat as he stared down at the immobile teenager like a cat
looming over bleeding sparrow. Vest’s hazel eyes were wild with
excitement. The Centaurai stepped towards him.

Sheikoh desperately tried to force his
body to move, unsuccessfully. It was as though his body wasn’t
attached to him anymore. He was forced to watch in horror as the
Arch Centaurai leaned down until they’re eyes were on the same
level. Cylium Vest reached behind his back and pulled a glittering,
silver blade from under his blood-red overcoat. Then he held it to
Sheikoh’s throat.

Sheikoh felt the blood drain from his
face. He knew that he was about to die. He couldn’t believe that it
was happening like this. After everything he’d been through. Then
Vest straightened up and removed the cold instrument from Sheikoh’s
skin. He waved it through the air as if to illustrate its beauty.
All Sheikoh saw was the blade that had almost tasted his blood.
From the scythe’s handle stretched eight inches of pure silver
blade forged into a perfect crescent. Its edge narrowed from hilt
to tip, ending in a razor-sharp point.

The face of its blade was adorned with
countless intricate runes and pentacles, presumably of Celestial
design. The scythe must be how the Centaurai was controlling him.
Cylium Vest admired the cell’s fluorescent light gleaming across
the blade’s silver. The Centaurai gently held it up in a light
caress. Then he began to speak.

“
Years
ago, one of the Celestial went rogue. We recently received
confirmation that he’s here, hiding somewhere within Interium. He
has acquired complete terminal access to the Century databanks, and
joined forces with the so-called Legacy,” Centaurai Vest mused to
himself while Sheikoh listened, paralyzed. “The emperor himself
is
personally
interested in your mission.”

“
I can’t use my Century,
and I can’t hire a Legacy hit man, so I’ve been forced to work with
you. I attempted to keep our communications discreet, hidden behind
contacts, but apparently the Celestial has unearthed my
plans.”

“
Your
reward would for this mission would have been ten million glow.
Sadly, that offer has fallen on the dust. Our new,
amended
bargain is this;
either the Celestial dies by your hand or you yourself die as his
accomplice,” Vest told Sheikoh with contempt. “Consider yourself
lucky that circumstances deem your services necessary. For the
moment.”

Cylium Vest strode to the cell door,
tucking the silver weapon beneath his overcoat.  He pulled out
a controller and the cell door clanged open like the gate between
the East and West. Sheikoh watched the Vest’s red coattails flow
backwards before he realized that he could move.

Sheikoh shook himself like a dog,
trying to shake off the weight that had settled in his bones. He
was embarrassed upon finding that Vest had stopped in the cell’s
doorways and was regarding him with cold amusement. The Centaurai
clicked another button on his remote. The chair’s left manacle
snapped open. Sheikoh rubbed his left wrist, eyeing the Centaurai
warily.

“
Take care of the
Celestial, and you will regain your full pardon,” Cylium Vest told
him coldly. He wasn’t sure that he believed the Centaurai.
  

“
Okay, how am I supposed to
kill this Celestial, then?” Sheikoh called after the
dude.

“
Use your imagination.”
 

Centaurai Cylium Vest swished out of
the room. After a couple of minutes, Sheikoh tentatively crept
after the Arch Centaurai. The Solitarium was confusing, even though
he’d been here before. He didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone for
directions, so it wasn’t until about an hour later that he managed
to find his way out. Then Sheikoh got out of the east as fast as he
could. When he had to pass through the gate, he did so with his
head down, eyes on the dirt. He didn’t want the Century standing
guard to make any not of the loathing burning in his eyes. They
might report back to their Arch Centaurai.

In his head, Cylium Vest’s face had
been forged together with burning hatred then tempered by
disbelieving wariness. ‘…How is it possible that he controlled my
body?’ Sheikoh asked himself anxiously with a crease in his brow.
An icy tingle traced his spine. He knew that it must have had
something to do with that strange, silver scythe that the Centaurai
had held up to his throat.

Should he take Dorothi out of school
and run away from the city that the two of them had spent their
young lives in? Were they supposed to live on the run, stealing
from the Daisha farms that dotted the countryside? That wasn’t the
kind of life that Sheikoh wanted Dorothi to have.

As Sheikoh walked, he
puzzled through things. All he knew was that whatever he decided,
it wouldn’t involve working with Vest. Even trusting
Indigo
seemed safer than
working for the madman. Sheikoh pursed his lips, thinking about the
mysterious Celestial. That was the key to it all. Once Sheikoh met
the Celestial then things would begin to make sense. And if anyone
knew how to nullify the strange blade, it would be a Celestial.
Things were starting to look up. Sheikoh postponed fleeing Interium
until after he’d met this dude. When Sheikoh was sure that Dorothi
was safe than he was going to give Vest the finger and join Indigo
and the mysterious Celestial.

Sheikoh just hoped that the mysterious
Celestial wasn’t Vest’s political rival. If so, then Sheikoh was
most likely trapped in a dead-end situation. It didn’t make sense
that the Celestial was into politics if he was using a ganglord
like Indigo as a messenger service though. The Supreme Centaurai
wanted the Celestial dead and all Sheikoh could hope for was that
the man mirrored the sentiment. He knew that he was gambling
blind.

He wondered what he and
Indigo had been hired to do. What could require hiring both himself
and a
ganglord?
Indigo had acted as a messenger to something that he
despised. Sheikoh didn’t suffer any delusions regarding the
underworld politics of Interium. He knew that whatever he had made
from his most lucrative heist times ten wouldn’t spark a ganglord’s
interest. Whatever this job was, it was a big one, and Indigo
needed Sheikoh. If he could’ve used another Legacy guy, he would’ve
offered them at half price. He thought about what he and Indigo had
faced together today and suddenly realized that the ganglord wasn’t
that bad of a dude, underneath it all. Especially when compared
with the Centaurai.

Sheikoh had a feeling that he was
about to get Vest one back.

Sheikoh stepped onto an icily familiar
street, Temptation Street, and a sudden streak of memory stopped
him in his track. This had been the very street… all those years
ago… Sheikoh shuddered; he could still feel the blood tracing his
right side.  Remembered pain slashed as sharp as broken glass.
No matter how long ago his body had ‘healed’, it was always there.
Some wounds ran too deep for the years to ever cover. If not for
Emili, this was the very street he would’ve died.

His eyes misted over. He walked
through the faceless crowd, and no one looked his way. Sheikoh
remembered back to how Emili would disassemble the couple of
monocles and the piles of cellpads he’d been able to get his
thieving hands on. She’d used the computerized components in her
other projects. Sheikoh glanced over at a smoking cowboy-looking
dude, leaning up against a brick wall. A puff of smoke drifted out
of his mouth. It intertwined with a breeze and danced like a
floating ribbon. For a moment, Sheikoh watched the smoke drifting
until it dissipated into the sunset.

Suddenly, he desperately wished he
could see Emili one more time. Fall in her arms, and have her lift
this terrible burden from his shoulders. Sheikoh could borrow her
answer to the question bouncing around his head.

Was he making the right
choice?

Chapter 6

Skin Deep

Sheikoh felt nauseous. He trotted
through the sewer pipes, breathing through his mouth. He was
careful not to inhale any of the noxious, eye-watering fumes that
radiated out of the black, clumpy surface of sludge following
beside him. It slithered through its concrete cradle, modeled after
some desecrated travesty of a river.