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NOW.
FORTUNE CITY
IN THE RUIN AND RUBBLE where a monumental research facility once stood four years ago, Cain Castello sits under the eternally overcast sky, letting a cigarette burn down to the filter. If he closes his eyes and inhales the smoke, he can still picture how it all came crashing down.
A long time ago, Velocity Labs could've been considered the pinnacle of scientific research, and now it is in unsalvageable pieces left idle like a scrap yard. A long time ago, Velocity Labs was his home. He felt along the scars encircling his neck, along the burn marks left behind by electric shock collars, a necklace of his own missteps. They weren't pleasant, but they allowed him a shelter. Before that, he had nothing. Was nothing. And though he'd grown up in the sky citadel, soaked in sunlight and the privilege that followed his father's name, it was Warner, his own brother, who continually pointed out that he never belonged, that just because they shared a father didn't mean that they shared blood—Cain's had been tainted, his mother a ghost from the ground. But Velocity Labs had given him something tangible. Something worth holding onto.
Now, though, as he casts his gaze toward the ever-grey sky, Cain can't help but feel that the thread has been severed, the doors slammed shut on him. From the ground, one couldn't see Elysium, only the bottom of it, a screen projecting the illusion of a sky, dark clouds passing by on a loop. The only way to the city was by air shuttle, and only a few people had access. The city blocked all sunlight at noon, and since its construction, the ground had been saturated in its shadow. Under this shadow, Cain felt like a bug under a boot. When the lab went down, they'd been cast out into the dark, locked out of Elysium, his access revoked.
It's merely an incentive, Warner had told him. You earn your way back to Elysium once you've found the girl.
But it's much more than that.
At the base of his neck, Cain traces the unnatural rise and slope of his skin. The bump, just a finger's width, slotted between the discs of his spine feels foreign, unsettling. Though it's inert at the moment, each time he's reminded of it, he can't help but feel the burn of its presence, a smoking gun. Without the protective measures—the power suppressors, the shock collars—Cain understands that his existence is a threat to the fragile armistice humankind and Noumena have written in the past few decades. Vigilare had seen to that. Warner wanted his Horsemen to be lethal, to be weapons, and cleaved them into such. Their original power suppressors had a limited range of activation, and so, they needed something far more feasible to control from headquarters in Elysium. As such, the chips planted in their spines doubled as both a tracker and a kill-switch, rigged to blow his head clean off his shoulders if he so much as put a toe out of line.
It was Warner's idea.
The surgery was painless, but the ridged scar sears with resentment, a bitter sting even though the physical collar is no longer there. Somehow, this feels much worse.
At the last minute, he watches the embers at the lit end of the cigarette devour the paper, the acrid smell of smoke clinging to his leather jacket like a lingering lover, until the heat begins to scorch his fingers. He brings the cigarette up to eye level and closes his free hand into a fist, extinguishing the flame.
Dr. Patmos said it wasn't that he could control the flame. Each time he tries to put it back, the cigarette wouldn't light. Rather, it's the absence of heat that he instils. That's what death is. The absence of anything that sustained life. Heat was the governing factor.
A beat passes. Behind him, a scuff of boots against the gravel draws his attention.
"It'll be dark soon, Cain," a quiet, ruined voice hisses. "We have to move. We're getting anxious."
Flicking the cold cigarette to the ground, Cain turns to face Camellia.
Strands of wiry blonde hair slip from the loose braid hanging over her shoulder. His eyes latch onto the angry purple scarring around her throat, the permanent bruising in the shape of veins seeking outward, lightning-like fractals he'd come to learn were Lichtenberg figures. The shock collars were used on her most. At one point, Camellia could hardly speak for a month straight from the damage the charge had wreaked upon her ravaged vocal chords.
She blinks her big, bug-like eyes at him when she catches him looking.
Self-consciously, she tugs the hair tie off and lets her hair loose. It falls around her shoulders in a sickly pale curtain, obscuring her neck. Around her head, a small swarm of flies hum in anguish as she holds up a hand to still them. The irony isn't lost on him. Between the three of them, she's the hypochondriac, the one who takes at least two showers a day, and yet, her personal entourage of vermin swarm her at every moment. Rats squeak and skitter at her feet, flies draw lazy circles around her head, and an emaciated, dishrag of a fox slinks around her legs, flea-bitten and filthy. Something about bio-electricity, chemical signals and persuasion. The collective "we". Put together with her slight, bony frame, wishbone limbs and doll-like features, haunted and haunting, Cain can't quite acclimatise to the rotten tableau.
Flicking the cigarette to the ground, Cain stands. "We will. Be patient, Cammie."
Camellia ducks her head down.
"Seth!" Cain bellows, sweeping his gaze around the debris, this graveyard of their past. "Seth, get your fat ass out here!"
A groan resonates somewhere to the left and a boy who seems barely there rises from the dust, all lank but no size, all skin and bone but no substance. His ribcage juts through his black shirt as he arches his back and stretches his thin arms over his head. Beneath him, the chunk of concrete he'd been draped over for the past couple hours seems undisturbed. For someone who inhaled three burgers in one sitting last night, the weight doesn't show on him.
Like him, Seth and Camellia were born in Elysium, never knowing a life on the ground before they'd been signed to Vigilare, to be placed under Warner's legal guardianship. Cain hasn't gathered much else about the twins' past. Camellia is vague and evasive by nature and, when pressed about this particular topic, seems to shrink into herself and close off. On top of that, Seth's blunt refusal to reveal anything personal hardly helps. No one seems successful in excavating any information out of the two of them. But Cain doesn't need, nor want, a sob story. What he needs is their particular subset of skills.
Seth's gaunt face contorts into a scowl. "What? We've been back here dozens of times, and there's still no sign of Sloane, alright? I told you, she's a dead end, dude."
A long time ago, Velocity Labs had been their home, too. Until it'd been ripped apart. A long time ago, they were meant to commandeer the end of the world, the four of them, the modern horsemen of the apocalypse. Until they were three. Nomads wandering the barren planes in search of some impossible Jerusalem.
"We'll find her," says Cain.
"What if we don't?" Seth challenges, lifting a brow.
"I see her in my dreams, sometimes," Camellia says, out of the blue, her voice a raspy breeze, but the words are tar-heavy, the cobwebs of her nightmares a thin veil fluttering over her unblinking eyes. Fixed on the horizon, the space between herself and the glistering cityscape, her stare is vacant, shadows writhing over her pale face. The sun's already setting, and there isn't much else they can do except keep coming back here. Back to where it all began. Camellia turns to Cain. "You think it means something?"
"What's she doing in your dreams?" Cain asks, his tone gentle. In the pocket of his leather jacket, his fists are tight, his nails staking into the heel of his palm.
Camellia blinks, her beady eyes unsettling. "She comes to me."
"Then it means nothing," Seth scoffs dismissively, the scorn in his tone scathing. "We should focus on finding another to replace her."
"You'll be wasting resources," Camellia points out. "Vigilare won't have that."
"Fuck what the fucking company thinks. And fuck Warner to absolute hell for setting us on this wild goose chase," Seth grunts. "They're all wasting time."
"Seth," Camellia whispers, her tone cautionary, wary eyes darting to Cain, who stands facing the gate, his head tilted upward, looking up at the clouds, the artificial barrier that presents a perfect mimicry of an overcast sky, unmoving and unmoved by Seth's outburst. "Stop it."
"Cammie, I don't give a rat's ass if that asshole is Cain's brother, bastard or otherwise," Seth sighs, frustrated, kicking at the ground and launching a chunk of debris into the distance. "I'm fucking exhausted. I'm hungry. I'm disgusting. I want to go home and sleep for three days. And the only reason why Warner won't replace Sloane—which we all know would be the easier option, by the way—is pride. Because he can't stand that one of his pets has escaped the cage."
Around them, the air seems to warp and sag, and the more worked up Seth gets, the heavier Cain's limbs seem to grow. Camellia presses the heels of her palms against her eyes, and sinks to her knees, the flies around her head dropping to the ground one by one. Seth doesn't seem to notice or care, agitation knitting tension into his dark brows.
"What's so special about metal manipulation? Absolutely nothing. There are hundreds of other Noumena out there with half as much strength and firepower in their pinky finger. Fact is, we don't need Sloane. We never needed her. So why are we here, grovelling in the dirt with the rest of the Grounded folk, besides wasting time?"
As darkness blots the corners of his vision, the ground swaying beneath him, Cain shuts his eyes and presses his fingers to his temples. A cold snap runs through his chest, reverberating through muscle and bone. In seconds, his pulse drops and his heart slows, and despite the mid-summer humidity, his blood turns to slush. A sharp clarity slices through the thick sludge blanketing his senses. Finally returning to himself, Cain plants a hand against Seth's back. A chill shudders through him as he nudges the dial on Seth's core temperature. Just enough to alleviate his aggravation, just enough that the effects of Seth's ability begin to ebb. Camellia blinks up at her brother, and rises slowly to her feet again, dusting dirt off the front of her green cargo pants.
It takes a moment for Seth to register Cain's touch, but the moment he does, he jerks out of Cain's reach, and slings him a nasty glower. "Alright, alright, I'm cool. Back off. I just think we deserve to know why we're doing what we're doing."
"You're right," Cain says, a bitter grit to his tone, his eyes flashing, the darkness around them festering, the two-year-forged anger within his gut broiling. He ignores Seth's direct jab at Warner—bastard or otherwise—because all it is is noise, and to some extent, Seth is right. Warner can't let Sloane go. Can't let her slip through the cracks, not out of sentiment, but because she is, legally, Vigilare property, and a very expensive company investment. But the bone Cain has to pick with Sloane is much more personal. "She left us for dead."
The night Sloane shoved the knives in their backs remains a fresh wound they can't scratch, and the itch is there, greedy and demanding as ever, twisting some kind of dial inside of him. In periphery, Cain sees Camellia shudder violently, meets Seth's wary look as he wraps his reedy arms tight around himself from the sudden drop in temperature.
"She destroyed our home and abandoned ship. Then she left us here, to worry about our place in the dirt. But we need her. Our survival depends on it. If she knows what's good for her, she'll know hers does, too."
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
thoughts??