Cassidian
The morning light was weakened once on the other side of the curtain. It wasn’t dark in the Still, but it certainly wasn’t bright either. Shops on the main artery and in the veins had their lights on (they were always on down here), bright colors flashing in discordant beats each trying to outduel each other. I had the sense that the people hovering around the curtain’s edge had been doing the same, fighting to get a glimpse of what was happening down below on the beach. The moment I came through, they must have dispersed like seagulls since they were all at the moment acting as if they were busy.
These people weren’t fools - they knew I was Hunion. Even though I wasn’t wearing my helmet, my entry suit gave me away. It was dark grey, skin-tight, and the ring around my neck pulsed a faint red where the seal had been broken.
I was also carrying my serrater.
Looking back in the direction from which I came, I gauged how much time I had. The sanitization team was already working on moving the large ship on the beach – dozens of pods hovered in the air amidst a sandstorm, metal cables dangling beneath them like jellyfish hoisting a smooth black rock. There were some men standing on the beach there, shouting, directing the work. But nobody was coming my way. They weren’t there to follow me. They were there to erase the past.
I had some time.
Looking downward I could see the blood clearly against the grey brick of the terraced walkway. There were large drops every few feet, until it ended suddenly where the street began.
Exhaling in frustration, I glanced around, analyzing the throng of people in this area, knowing I would need to ask for help. I logically grouped them, taking a big problem and conquering it by solving many smaller problems instead.
Most of the crowd was noise, filler. No blacksuits were on patrol, which was surprising but also ideal in this situation. The local Cassidian police forces seldom interfered with Hunion matters, but even a cursory explanation on my part would only slow me down.
Then again, I thought, perhaps I was now Hunion by sight and nothing more. I silently wished I hadn’t thrown away my helmet in the ship – it was a foolish action on my part, my emotions taking over. With my helmet on, I could have tapped into the local blacksuit network in this neighborhood and listened for pursuit activity. Now I had no idea where the two sets of footprints led, nor did I know if the blacksuits were in fact looking for me now as well.
I pushed it to the back of my mind, focusing on a few pockets of individuals which stood out from the rest. I needed information.
The teens near the burned out innership caught my attention first. He was kissing a waiflike girl, then whispering to her, alternating back and forth. She was pushed up against a blackened shop window with a half-torn UpMove poster on it. In the claw-shaped rip, he was looking at me in the reflection while talking in her ear. Almost too conveniently, I thought.
The pair of men was the closest to me, and probably the biggest threat due to their size, but they kept on playing their game of antitwin on a bench, hunched over the matte pavement while deep in thought into their checkered gameboard. At first I believed them – that they could have been actually doing what they were pretending on doing – but then I caught the subtle ruse.
Not everyone knows the game of antitwin, so I will start with a simple explanation, for it is impossible to understand their mistake without understanding the basic rules of the game.
It is built around a very simple premise: each player starts the game with twenty pieces (ten pairs of twins). Each pair is unique in the sense that it has its own name, look, and special ability within the game. But within each of these ten pairs the uniqueness ends. In truth they are not twins at all, but opposites in almost all respects.
For example, there are the assassin pieces – each player has two of them. The black assassin and the white assassin. The former can kill another game piece, whereas its latter “twin assassin” will prevent a game piece from being killed.
An important constraint is that each player must have only one of each twin on the gameboard at any given time – the game starts with each player controlling ten pieces each, choosing which of each set of twins to play first. For instance, each player much chose whether to start the game with the black assassin which kills, or the white assassin which saves (this is done for the other nine sets as well).
Turns are taken, where each player can “summon” their own pieces (or in some circumstances their opponent’s) onto the gameboard, which causes that piece’s twin to fall off the gameboard. The effect is a continually changing array of powers at play, and the one who manages these powers most effectively usually wins the game. It is complicated, to be sure.
Keeping all of that in mind, their mistake was a simple one. The red player (the one whose game pieces were on red squares) had both of his assassins on the gameboard at the same time - both the black assassin and the white assassin.
Quite simply, it was an impossibility.
Smiling with the fullness of the secret, I slowly moved away through the thin crowd while keeping an eye on them.
In the end I approached a woman who pretended to play with her baby, hoisting him up over her head, but then her smudged face would glance at me when she thought it was safe. There was some fear in her eyes which I was unable to ignore.
“I ain’t doing nothing wrong,” she said while I was still a few paces away. Moving her baby away from me instinctively, she turned her other shoulder my way. Under her torn sweater I could see a heavy green bruise.
“I didn’t say you were,” I said as I approached, keeping the pair of men in the corner of my vision. They were both still hunched over on the bench, but their heads were up, looking in my direction now. “I need you to tell me where they went,” I said.
The woman was shaking her head. “Where did who go? I ain’t doing nothing.”
“There were two of them, right?”
“Listen, I don’t know nothing.”
I grabbed her shoulder on the bruise before she could turn away. “I am not going to harm them,” I said. My former self would have said the same thing, but now I meant it. Silently cursing to myself, I wished I had some local currency on me. Only fear or pain would turn this woman my way.
“Let me go.” Her baby was agitated now, and I could sense the woman wanted to shift the weight to her other side, but couldn’t.
I still had my scanner, I realized then. Hating myself, I said to her quietly, “I’m going to have to ID you, citizen.”
“I ain’t doing nothing,” she repeated loudly.
“You are withholding information. That is punishable by Cassidian law.”
Behind me, I could hear the pod turbines outside kick into high gear as the damaged ship was pulled away from view. Even through the energy curtain the noise was significant. Glancing back quickly, I could see the distortion in the air outside caused by the excessive heat.
This used to be so easy, I thought. Now my words and actions were empty shells, threats nobody would take seriously if they were smart enough to see through them. Before today I would have looked upon this woman as a half-broken instrument which had to be played. But now I saw the confusion and the tiredness in her eyes. Now I saw part of myself in her.
She said something to me, which I missed.
“What’s that?” I moved in closer.
“God eater was one of them,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” I said impatiently. “What about the other man?”
She was shaking her head again. At first I thought she was going to continue to hide the truth from me, and I was ready to walk away at any moment, but then she said something truly interesting.
“No,” she said. “Woman. He was with a woman. She was hurt pretty bad.”
I briefly closed my eyes in both gratitude and shock.
“Tell me where they went, and I promise I’ll leave you.”
“Down Vein Two over there,” she motioned with her chin. “Temple is that way.” She said it in a high-pitched voice, as if I was an idiot for not knowing.
Of course, I told myself. I was expecting some elaborate plan, but perhaps it could be that simple. The God eater would obviously go to his temple.
I removed my gloved hand from her and backed away slowly, still wondering if finding them could be so straightforward. In my peripheral vision I could see the men lower their heads again. The young girl against the poster was laughing, most likely at me.
“You not going to hurt him, are you?”
I shook my head. “How badly was the woman hurt?”
“Hand was all bleeding. She was real pale. Pale but pretty. Could hardly walk.”
Leaving the open terraced area behind me, I faced forward, turning a corner onto Vein Two and slowly letting myself become swallowed by the wave of pedestrian traffic moving in that direction. The crowd was a good thing – I blended in with the masses, my close proximity to others masking my identity. I looked directly up, seeing the tier boundary a few hundred feet above me stretching in all directions, like a low but perfect cloud formation. Then ahead, past dozens of shop fronts I could see a silhouetted bell tower with no bell in it.
I started to push my way forward.