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...
I sit on the floor in the bathroom, staring at the little bag of white powder in my hands weakly. Craig orchestrates Zina's supply, which means he's working dirty deals with the people that run this place. Is he using Akimitsu's trading routes to courier his black market merchandise? Or is he also supplying Barden compound with the goods it needs? Thai said my father is in bed with the army.
We had a deal! Was his deal that if he were to supply Barden, they would leave me in the city?
Whatever supply route he's using, these drugs are the confirmation that I was dreading... it's the hard evidence that I never wanted to see.
He sold us out. He sold his own people to a breeding farm.
Why am I surprised? He scared Tokyo into enlistment, he domineered my life until the moment I broke. Then he strung me up in a cage.
I inhale.
Craig Warrendale let my mother leak mad poison into his skin and blood, into the smell of his clothes and the colour of his eyes. He bred terror into the hearts of his men, so they'd fear the Manics, whilst he fixed rotten deals with the real enemy. My father was too devoutly hypocritical to even admit that the mother of his children was infected.
A knock on the door breaks me from my slumber and I start scrambling to collect myself from the floor. Reid enters before I can get all the way up, and his eyes fix on the quick motion of my hands as I stuff the white baggie in my pocket.
I clear my throat, using my arm to press myself away from the wall.
Since the first night, he's been rude, like me. It suits me though because I like being estranged. It's a signal that he knows where we stand. Opposing.
Better than complicating this mess and doing what the doctors want.
"Sorry, I'm done." The attitude in my voice is unwarranted, but still, I take my phone from the counter harshly.
"I figured," His deep voice is gravel and tired. His white tank top is slashed with grease and dirt, implying a gruelling day of manual labour. His muscular arms are just as dirty, but beneath the muck sits a patchwork of tattoos. An angel mid-fall down his bicep, an Egyptian hieroglyph on the outter portion of his wrist.
I don' reply, keeping my eyes away from his as I approach the doorway he's occupying. He twists to let my pass, but just when the air between us tightens, he grabs my wrist. I stiffen, but his eyes don't meet mine, instead he inspects the pale veins at the crook of my elbow.
My jaw slackens, rage pinching me at the insinuation of his action. He thinks I'm some closet-junkie bitch? Like my mum. Dad fed her the drugs to keep her Mania at bay.
Mum. Stupid tears prick my eyes, but I jerk my wrist free.
The hint of my attitude makes him block my path, the sheer height of his frame so dwarfing that his presence alone is dominant. My hackles rise, and I glower up at him, telling him to try me. Chuck that gauntlet, see where it gets you.
He contemplates chewing me out, his dark glare emphasized by the sharp ridges of his masculine features. The scar above his left brow is paler than his olive skin, and beneath his eye sits a pinker mark. It looks like a tear drop.
The only scar I know is the one under his lip because my mother stitched it up. His brother Kade put it there before Reid killed him.
The space between us shrinks when he bobs his head lower, provoking the moment to really scare me off. I don' budge, part of me craving the conflict. Might take my mind away from the baggie in my pocket. Or the conversation I had with Thai.
But then he raises his chin, lifting his eyes above me and begrudgingly reclining his shoulder to give me a skinny passage out of the bathroom. Our bodies brush as I pass, but I don' linger. I get fed up with the heated air and rip my hoodie off, flinging it at the pile of excess pillows in the corner.
...
Voytek Territory – Camden Outpost [Recently commandeered from Southern Arm of Australian Army]
HALLSBURY, NEW SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA-[2071]: SEPTEMBER 2nd
(Present Day) - Early Spring
...
...
Scopius Voytah
...
Sphynx and I trudge up the hill toward the barracks, leaving the roaring party behind us. The campus, albeit in disarray since the Voytek's took it, is covered in pavement paths to navigate the base.
I focus on scrolling through the army registry as I walk, but any time I pay actual attention to it I start falling behind. His brutish hands are tucked in the pockets of his sheep skin jacket, and his grown-out mullet mushrooms over the edge of his collar. He bounces with every stride he lays against the white cement. The spider web tatted through his hair down onto his neck is blotchy at best, but somehow it works with the chunky, hand-welded earrings scattered through his folded ear. I use my phone light to guide my step, but if I'm honest I follow Sphynx blindly as I try to read details regarding the army release forms for the personnel assigned to the Repopulation Scheme.
Sphynx is an ugly bloke, with a wrinkled nose that protrudes to take attention, but if you look past it, his eyes are nice. Small, and black, with thick lashes. But other than that his cheeks are puckered with acne scars.
"You got my keys?" I ask him, struggling to breathe through the furious pace he's devouring this hill at. He's a giant, and his legs are so muscular that if you strapped both my thighs together you still wouldn't fit me in a pant leg of his jeans. I'm over six foot, but Sphynx easily has a good eight or nine inches on me.
"Yeah," He passes the keys and they clink and jangle. I briefly jog to catch up, but he continues charging like a fuckin' bull.
I pull out my cigarettes, hoping it'll get me through.
"You parked out back Reece right?" He grunts.
"Yeah," I take the dart in my mouth, "Here," I pass him the deck, looking at the army registry again.
"Any luck?"
"Nothin'." Frustrated, I shove my phone in my pocket, using my free hand to light the cigarette before I pass it to Sphynx. "You really think we can do this?" My stomach twists, but I pass the grip of nerves off as we round the corner of the shuttle depot that used to take soldiers to the training side of the outpost. They evacuated this reserve when Trick and the rest of the Voytek's took the base near the river.
"Tech wise? Or as in is the plan bat shit?"
I grin, "tech wise."
"Oh yeah for sure, the chip in her eye is tiny, but it's got code that passes off all the running load onto the device it connects into, so the only hiccup is that we're using a device which is way, way out of range, but that's fine because of the high-frequency VINTAR tech Trick has been using to jam Newcastle security waves."
I raise a brow at him, "They're using VINTAR?"
"Well yeah, because that's the only company that has the tech for long range frequency shit, but other than that it's still Vortex."
We share a look, knowing that Vortex Designs is just a scape goat for the Heratix. They own the army by now, that's why Vi and I initiated in.
I pull on my dart, "So the chip won't, I don' know, burn up or nothing?"
"Nah, fuck no. It's too good to cook itself." He looks at the road ahead, then across at a street light that casts a double shadow behind us.
As I step off the gutter onto the grey tar I hold my dart between my lips and check the clock. Shit. She could be asleep by the time we hack in. I tap Sphynx's dirty sleeve, breaking into a jog. He passes me swiftly, and I end up playing catch up on the race I started. I just suck on my dart, hard, letting the heat burn my throat. It stirs a trickle of warmth that leaks from my lungs into my heart, like a dull pleasure that throbs with my pulse. I keep pulling, making myself run as we approach the Regiment Command of Electro Communications Building, RCEC, or as the boys out here have taken to calling it, Reece Building. My head starts to thump, so I take the dart and huff the smoke out rudely, as though I can spit the cancerous soot out. But my pulse thuds, nice and good.
Mania is funny.
Reece Building is where all the toys live. Sphynx is the only prick smart enough that can actually play... but he knows how much Vi matters to me, and, he's too Manic to give a shit if he gets caught. Too genius? Too stupid? Too manic.
"Don' look at no camera's," He huffs as we come to the rise of another gutter. On queue my eye blinks a read on two security devices. One is bolstered to the street sign ahead that reads, 40kmh, in bright red, and the other is pegged to the electricity pole on the corner of Reece Building. I parked my Ute, well, the Ute I stole whilst Vi was in Lake Darling, right behind the storage facility wall.
I look straight at the cameras as we pass, falling into the shadow of the dull building. The concrete turns into gravel as we pass a skip bin. Sphynx raises his hand to thwack me over the head, but I flick my dart and skip out of his reach, "I got drops in." I explain, and he narrows his eyes.
"That's what they were?" He mutters. "I thought you smoked."
Right before we left the gathering I put Reflex Drops in, because they emit a reflective glow to any photographic imaging device. All the cameras saw was a man with a glowing head, like some dude with a reflective number plate strapped to his face.
"Here," My Hilux sits pretty, the features of its grill and head lights like a sleeping face in the chilly night. Sphynx hops the boot, landing with a small thump considering his megalithic size. Without hesitation he pulls a case of his tools out, opening out a laptop with contraption after contraption attached to it. I by comparison land with a deafening boom when I skip the boot, but he doesn't seem to notice. The night is dead anyway.
I take my wrench and gun kit out of his way, and he starts plugging wires to other wires. He moves so quick that he looks like an octopus, but despite his full hands he finds a way to tug his eDart from his pocket. He sucks on the vape, blowing the synthetic flavour into the air, "Gimme a dart?" He asks for another smoke so I pull the deck out, and he exchanges, giving me the vape absently. "You realise this could get you killed?" I ask, talking around the vapour.
"I'll die before the cancer." His eyebrows are creased as he focuses on locking the connection between my Comm-Tech and the eMittance scrambling device.
I accidentally bark a laugh that looks like a dragon cough, shaking my head, "No, dickhead. This." I jam my thumb at the building beside us. Hacking Trick's tech for personal gain is a fuckable offence, and I don' mean the good way.
Sphynx don' seem to notice me, "You think if I inject my code into the rewrite it will trigger the S and J fire wall?"
What a fuckin' nerd... I look over his shoulder, checking his processing and transmission. I bob my head, "Oh shit, you wrote backwards?"
"Had to, the VINTAR tech has a trip wire written in that's only cut by ID clearance..." He picks at a zit on his cheek, his eyes shifting across the screen rapidly, "Risk it?"
"Nah. Scramble it."
He nods, "You got the pass for her eSight?"
I pull a crumpled strip of paper, passing it to his waiting hand which hovers above his shoulder just under my chin. "I'm too fuckin' dyslexic to put it in." The light of the eDart glows blue across his screen.
"Why you only get dyslexic when you're nervous?"
I wrinkle my nose, "That's cap, I'm always dyslexic."
"You only give a shit enough to tell me about it when you're stressed." He quips.
I bob my head as I watch him type, "I don' know when I'm reading shit wonky, so I only tell you when it matters."
He squints, trying to get the paper in the light, "What it even say?"
He shines his phone over it, and under the light, her scrawling, chaotic writing reads:
User: viper
Pass: GH0uLz4LYF3.edit.$iKE
He laughs.
...
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