Eos, Chapter 2: Layer 32

A/N - Hey guys! This is my LMS novel that I'm in the middle of writing at the moment, but I decided to start posting it from the beginning. Chapter 1 is here: Eos, Chapter 1: New York Enjoy!

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Dameon sat in a chair resembling an airline seat, but much more comfortable. Beneath him, the floor hummed slightly, the only indication they were speeding towards Eos at 150 miles an hour. Once called Toronto, it was now the capital city of Vitas, one of two major countries left in the world.

Across from him, the young woman they had rescued shrunk back in her seat, eating the bread they had given her in quick bites. She refused to meet his eyes. Jade glanced over at them from the tiny kitchen across the cabin of the hoverjet, asking Dameon with a glance if he needed help.

Dameon shook his head just slightly. He leaned forward and winced, his chest well and truly bruised. Maybe his ribs too. “Jade gave you the detoxifier, right?”

The girl nodded.

“Then you won’t have any lingering effects to worry about,” he said. “What’s your name?”

She seemed to have decided to trust them. “Kathy,” she said.

“Well, Kathy,” Dameon said, slipping easily into a speech he’d given dozens, if not hundreds of times by now. “We’re taking you to our country, Vitas. You’ll be safe there. We’re going to show you a video explaining how you got here and how everything works, okay? And after that you can ask as many questions as you want.”

He stood up and fiddled with the holoprojector on the wall, setting it to play the standard welcome video. A moment later, a very familiar face appeared on the screen. The middle-aged black man had hair shorn close like Dameon’s, rather than the afro Sam had always worn. Lines creased his forehead, creating a hardened, cautious visage. He was seated in the Command Office — or, as Dameon thought of it, the throne room.

“Welcome, friend,” the man said in a smooth voice. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Samuel, president of Vitas, your new home.”

He got to the point quickly, Dameon gave him that — the main video was barely ten minutes long. He moved through the facts clearly and logically: reality was actually made up of 32 unstable layers stacked atop one another. This dimension was the very bottom. Very rarely, objects and people — any distinct cluster of molecules, really — would slip out of their original dimension and fall through the layers.

This was what had happened to Kathy, of course, just like every other person the retrieval teams brought in. The whole reason they existed was to recover these people, called the fallen. They would be taken back to Vitas to assimilate as citizens and begin a new life. Because that was the awful finality of falling: there was no way back to a higher layer. No way home.

Welcome to Layer 32, Dameon thought as he watched Kathy’s eyes widen. The universe’s dumping ground. Anything could fall through. Anything. After a while, it led to catastrophic consequences. There was a reason the population of Layer 32 was less than one billion.

Kathy took it well. She didn’t burst into tears or insist that they were lying, an improvement over the last one they’d brought in the day before. Better than Dameon had reacted on that day three years ago when he had seen the very same video.

As the video was explaining the basic process all newly fallen went through to gain citizenship — the interview questions and other legal necessities — Jade motioned to Dameon to follow her into the hoverjet’s tiny bunkroom, where they could have some small amount of privacy.

Pulse quickening, Dameon closed the door behind them and turned on the light. The hidden gun was a heavy weight against his chest. June, the pilot, either hadn’t noticed the crack of the gunshot or had believed his explanation that the creature had hit its head. But one person was enough to turn him in, and Jade had seen everything. Even his… status wouldn’t protect him. Samuel would be quiet about it, but Dameon would go to jail.

Jade turned to him, hands clasped together. “Let me see it.”

Dameon folded his arms across his chest. “Are you going to turn me in?”

“Let me see the gun,” Jade said, voice rising. “I’m not going to shoot you with it.”

They locked eyes for a moment. Dameon couldn’t tell what he saw in Jade’s blue eyes. Neither he nor Jade had ever made secret their distrust of Eos’ government. It was one of the things that had drawn him to her. But there was something there, an intensity that unsettled Dameon.

She won the staring contest. Dameon ripped open his leather jacket and handed her the gun, checking out of habit to make sure the safety was on.

Jade turned it over, running her hands down the barrel and along the sides. She nodded to herself as if confirming something she suspected. “You got it from Gludd, right? Short, balding, scary?”

“Yeah,” said Dameon, blinking in surprise. “Yeah, I did, or at least, that was the name he gave me. But how — “

Jade waved her hand dismissively. “You can’t go three feet in the underground without running into Gludd.” She eased the gun back into Dameon’s hands. Without taking his eyes off Jade, Dameon let the gun disappear back underneath his jacket. His mind was racing ahead. If Jade spoke of Gludd like that, she was far more familiar with the black market than he. Did that mean he was safe?

“So.” Jade swung herself up to the top cloth bunk and settled down to listen. “Explain. Why the gun?”

“I only brought it because this is New York. You can’t argue that it didn’t come in handy.” At the memory of the crack that split the air and saved his life, a lingering satisfaction rose again in Dameon. He had debated for hours on whether or not to bring it.

Jade frowned down at him. “You know I was asking why you bought it in the first place.”

Dameon shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “Because I could.”

“So you sought out an illegal weapon at the risk of live imprisonment just because you could.”

“Okay, then because I was FBI. I’ll always feel safer with a gun on me.” True, to a point.

“Uh-huh.” Jade slid off the bunk and landed on the floor lightly, inches away from him. She leaned in, stretching on her toes to whisper in Dameon’s ear. “I think your first answer was more honest.”

Her proximity dizzied Dameon in that second before she drew away. Too close. She was too close to an uncomfortable truth. Still only a foot apart from her, Dameon did his best to glance off to the side while his face burned.

“Like I said, more honest,” Jade breathed. She smiled. “You have no idea how much I’ve been hoping for this.”

Hoping for what? Dameon almost asked, but she raised a finger to stop him.

“I won’t say anything else now, but when we get back, I have something to show you. Tonight, at the park, eight p.m., okay?”

“Sure,” Dameon said in a flat tone, torn between annoyance and curiosity. He had never known Jade to act so deliberately mysterious. “Let me guess, you swore an oath to secrecy.”

She laughed. “No. But it’s better shown then told. I’m not any good at explaining it.”

“So that justifies leaving me completely in the dark?”

“Of course,” she teased. “It’s only a few hours.” With a finality, she slipped past Dameon to the door of the tiny room in one fluid motion; only when she was turning the door handle did she pause.

“Oh, and if you’re worrying about whether I’ll turn you in,” she said, and only now did she look up at Dameon, still smiling, “I wouldn’t let it keep you up at night.”