Coldware (Part 1: Software) -- Chapter Six

“Damn it to Hell,” I curse under my breath as I round another corner and find myself looking at the exact same brass-lined clock at the end of the exact same hallway I’d been trying to get away from for thirty minutes. I was certain I wasn’t taking too many of the same turns, that I was heading in a different direction each time, and that I was not circling back around to this location, so why did that clock keep popping up and flashing it’s silver, numbered breasts at me?!

With a heavy sigh, I walk towards the damned thing, looking down both the left and right corridors. This aerial ship really didn’t look like all that from the outside--in fact, with the proper open-floor designs, like the ones my Lady favored so much, it could’ve been quite cosy--but somehow, some buffoon managed to fluff it up and transform it into a veritable maze of useless circling corridors. It was like something out of your nightmares, where each time you circled the same hallway, you swear that something had changed, even though it had not.

I go right again, passing by an ancient painting of a pale, half-nude woman with long black hair, her back facing the viewer, her head tilted so that she could glare at whoever dared to attempt to eye her slender form. She was, admittedly, quite beautiful, but I couldn’t have given a cat’s arse about the aesthetics of the thing at a time like this.

Reaching a four-way intersection of hallways, I wonder once more how the Devil the designer managed to fail at something so miserably, choosing to go straight. Set after set of the same dark oak doors, yard after yard of the same dull green-painted walls with white baseboards and trim, oak banister after oak banister. It was horrific, and slightly out of taste.

Stupid biter. It’s his fault, in some indirect way. We’d searched my room top-to-bottom again and again, but hadn’t managed to find anything that could’ve been or have been hiding a camera, audio recorder, or transmitter. It was infuriating to know that she had found a way to observe us from afar, but despite her clumsy, childish nature, had managed to hide her means of examination from us.

After we’d tried--and failed horridly--to find some sign of surveillance equipment, the biter had gone to find the Dock Master and ask her about the whereabouts of her room while I was instructed to go find the inventor and keep her distracted while they searched for any hints. That was two-thirds of an hour ago, and I have yet to find the inventor, an exit, or even my current location.

Just as I’m about to take a left--wait, did I do that last time?--I hear a muffled sound from a doorway a few yards down the right hallway and stop. I hadn’t run into anyone since I first got lost, or else I would’ve fallen to my knees and pleaded for mercy. It’s a faint sound, but I find myself drifting toward it still the same. Please, please be a maid or a technician, willing and able to get me out of this dank, lavender-scented hallway!

After putting my ear to six doors on both sides of the right hallway, I finally think I’ve found the source. Pushing the brass handle downwards as gently as I can, I let a bit of my weight rest against the slab of wood so that it swings open easily, softly, and silently.

Peeking my head around the door, I find the room dark and feel disappointment and frustration rise in my gut. Damn it to Hell and back!! What is wrong with this place?!

Turning to leave, I don’t bother closing the door back, my eyes locked onto the left passageway. Something makes me stop, though. It takes me a few moments to place what, exactly, begged me to stop once more. Then I snag at it; another noise. Louder this time, now that the door isn’t closed and muffling it further.

I swear, I must sound like a charging wild boar, boots slamming on the rug-covered flooring as I rush back to the doorway. My fist slams into the trim, my other hand shoving the door open all the way so that the brass knob nearly punches an oddly-shaped hole into the wall. At the burst of sounds, I hear a very, very distinct squeal from… under… the bed?

Dropping to my hands and knees, I waddle to the edge of the finely-carved bedframe, pushing aside soft violet sheets embroidered with silver accents so that I might peer beneath. Even though the curtains that hang over the small port windows on the west side of the room are closed, and therefore let out very little light, I do manage to make out a balled up, disfigured, humanoid shape. Four glowing eyes whirl up to glare at me, pale claws lunging forward to grab at my collar.

The horrified shriek I let out could not only break glass if it were but an octave higher, but also embarrassed me thoroughly. Especially when I see Evora’s face appear from within the darkness, her goggles hanging from her neck like a bowtie, her hands gloveless for what looks to be the first time in centuries. They’re white as bleached bones, for heaven’s sake.

“Ms. Traditoryn, I am inclined to ask you a simple question: what the living Hell?!” I screech out--quite unattractively, I must say--falling back onto my bum so that the inventor has room to wiggle out from beneath the bed.

“Obscene language, Ms. Ayers? I am positively shocked,” she chuckles, ducking her head so that I cannot see her face. The laugh sounds fake; add that to the way she tries to covertly wipe her eyes and nose with the back of her sleeve--a dreadful habit, really--and you come to the conclusion that she was crying. Or weeping. Well, some variation of sadness and ocular leaking, anyways. “What brings you to this darkened corner of the ship’s halls, dare I ask?” Her words are slightly slurred, which brings me a strong sense of deja-vu from those days of old, when I often crossed paths with her while performing mundane tasks for my Lady. The inventor was often depressed then, and got into a nasty habit instead of turning to a blade. This thought makes me push myself forward instinctively so that I’m resting on my knees.

Without realizing it, I’ve grabbed her chin, lifting her face as I lean in close to examine her in the dim light. She responds by blushing profusely, pupils dilating as her lips part in silent protest. Her eyes are red and puffy and her nose is wet a raw, but while that does confirm my suspicions, it does not tell me what I wish to know.

Flicking my wrist so that her head is tilted to the left, I hear her mumble. “Let off, will you,” it’s a soft, half-hearted attempt, her hands gripping my knees for balance. She’s teetering on her heels, muscles trembling from the ache of being in an awkward position for too long. However, she’s much too close to me to rest on her own knees as I have, and so remains uncomfortable. This thought nags at me, but… I’ve found what I was looking for.

There, just below her jawbone, is a small pinprick surrounded by deep violet veins, each thinner than a half of a hair, spreading out like tendrils a half an inch from the injection site. Dea’s Tears. “You’re using it again.” It isn’t a question. I would know the signs of that drug anywhere.

Dea’s Tears was found in liquid, misted, and hardened forms, the original mineral hailing from some hole in the ground in the East, near the naturally-occurring DL clans. It granted the feeling of the immense power of a Luminexian being, however briefly, to whomever chose to ingest it. While the feeling was beautifully exotic and invigorating--I’d breathed in in accidentally once when I’d walked in on my Lady’s husband one day--it was too dangerous. Side effects drug were noticable immediately, like the violet veins that appeared near the injection site, if a person had taken it that way. Other effects weren’t so obvious until it was too late.

I’d read case file after case file on the stages of the drug’s ‘possession’. Mental instability, a sudden belief in a higher being that had no place in mortal history, violet veins spreading like disease in the form of wildfire over the skin, blackening eyes with faint lavender illumination, purple tears, and... if the person hadn’t spontaneously exploded--yes, they literally exploded from a build-up of a gas in their stomach caused by some unknown reaction with the drug and stomach acids--by then from overdosing, then they would experience growths. Humanoid face-like growths where the veins were darkest and thickest; faces that seemed to be made of rough, pliant stone with black eyes and one vertical violet line drawn under each eye down to the chin.

“Ms. Ayers, I beg you release me. I’m uncomfortable, to say the very least.” I faintly hear the inventor, her squirming drawing me back to the present so quickly, I swear I feel a wave of dizziness and confusion pass over me. That drug… that drug does horrible, horrible things to a person’s mind.

Evora’s hand comes up to grip my own, tugging at my wrist slightly. I feel a tingling beneath the skin of my palm, a warm sensation that makes my eyes flutter away from haunted memories and back into her emerald eyes. I see her eyes widen in horror and head her goggles let out a mechanical beeping sound a split second before I realize what’s wrong.

Jerking my hand away from her, I let the momentum bring my arm back around and backhand the woman viciously across the cheek. She lets out a cry, losing her balance as she tries to cower from me, falling onto her back with a heavy thud. The back of her head hits the edge of the bed frame, and the sound of skull-on-wood makes even my spine tremble, though I dare not touch her again.

The inventor lay still for several moments, hardly breathing at all, no doubt waiting for the pain to subside and the stars behind her eyes to take their leave. Finally, just when I thought she’d passed on to another realm--which made me feel far more guilty than I would have liked--she lets out a small croak of an order. “Security, be a dear and don’t send that update to the Database.”

My eyes widen. “Why?”

She laughs bitterly, pushing herself up into a sitting position beside me, her thighs rubbing against mine. I think she does it on purpose, the way her eyes practically glow as she peeks at the clothes-on-clothes contact. “I’m rather fond of you, Ms. Ayers.”

“In a platonic manner, I pray.” I find myself craning my neck away from her as she turns to look up at me, an angelically hopeful look in her eyes. I hate this situation. I hate it. Makes my heart hammer something awful, as if I were being pursued by a hungry, innocently-clever feline wearing traveling goggles.

“However,” she adds, winking. She actually winked. And pulled it off rather well, too, so one has to give credit where credit is due. “All things given need something in return, yes?”

My mind pulls a blank. “Pardon?”

She leans dangerously, drastically forwards, her fingernails digging into the back of my neck--when the Devil did she lift her arm?!--dragging me toward her. Her other hand catches my cheek, her elbow pressing into my shoulder blade so that I cannot duck away. It seems like a move from a boy’s wrestling match back in the Pit, locking me in place, helpless to save myself as she chuckles at my stiff struggling and tilts her head up close to mine. Heavens above, she isn’t possibly going to--

She does. Right on the damned lips. It’s a kiss if I ever felt one--which I had--soft and unintrusive, all things considered. Were I in a poetic mood, I would say it reminded me of a vanilla-scented butterfly landing on my mouth, tickling my lips with soft footsteps before gently flying away. Aside from the wetness. Somewhere in those three and a half seconds before my hands finally get a solid grip on her neck and start squeezing relentlessly, I know there was a dampness. Thank the heavens she releases me, abandoning the unwanted affectionate gesture before she can--God forbid--get any deeper.

I shudder at the thought, letting the discomfort travel down my spine as her hands claw at mine, her mouth opening like a fish’s as she wheezes “It’s not too late to send it.”

With that, I release her, already standing. “Do not scan me again.”

“I can’t control that,” she hisses, holding out a hand like she needed help rising from the floor. Oh, right. She has weak knees. Well, that’s her problem, isn’t it? I turn from her, stopping in the doorway even as she’s still speaking. “Security scans you automatically. She recognizes one of her data nodes embedded in your palm and responds; it’s part of her personality core code, Law.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” I repeat, though it comes out less forceful than I had wanted. She nods, a smile breaking her lips, though she ducks in an attempt to hide it. “And don’t ever, ever let those filthy, traitorous lips touch mine again. I couldn’t give half of a DL’s arse if you were doing it for CPR; don’t kiss me again.” This time I sound more cruel than intended, and my inner, more-sensitive soul lets out a hearty exhalation of frustration.

The inventor doesn’t seemed fazed by it, strangely enough. Releasing a faint mewl of pain as she stands, gripping her knees as her face contorts, she finally stands at full height and straightens her back. Giving me a mock salute, she flashes a red-faced grin, eyes nearly a-glow with happiness and what appears to be the dampness of joy brimming on her lashes. “Yes ma’am, Lady Maira,”

“Well, burn me eyes out and boil ‘em for breakfast.”

We both freeze, and I, in my surprise, lose my grip on the trim of the doorway, falling back into very thin, alarmingly muscular arms. Turning around, I see the inventor’s deathly pale complexion and haunted expression before I complete my rotation and my eyes greet a mischievous little biter, grinning ear-to-ear, his thumb absently fiddling with his right ear as his left arm holds me up. I grip the wall, the weight of a thousand sins falling onto my shoulders like a blubbered bear.

“Seems you two are getting along right well, eh? And when-slash-where, might I add,” the sneaky little biter lets his pale green gaze fall upon Evora, her knees suddenly buckling before she caught herself and frantically stiffened. “Did you meet my escort? Because if I recall correctly, she never gave you her first name.”