10: IndoChina
20:44, Fourthsol 15th M5, 2226
Shiro skids to a halt. His ankle crunches under his weight and he collapses in front of me with a howl. His eyes look close to popping out of his head from the agony. The IndoChina guards aim pulsers at his wilting form, and my heart breaks.
I will become as monstrous as I must be, for him.
Hood pulled low, I leap.
I take the first turquoise-clad guard with a gentle clasp to the wrist as they wrestle their pulser from its holster.
Bliss.
They drop to the ground, slipping from my grasping hand. My every neuron suddenly fizzes with the most depraved desire to feed ravenously.
Seeing their comrade fall, the other guard lunges at me. I press my hand to their bearded face. They crumple into a heap, eyes fluttering closed before they hit the pavement.
It feels so fucking good to feed.
But I didn't take enough. The guards might regain consciousness within moments.
"Are they dead?" Shiro stares up at me from the pavement, his jaw hanging. "What the fuck did you do to them?"
I drag him up by the arm. He hisses in pain as I tug him through the gloom of the back alleys that criss-cross the market district. I can't tell if the pounding in my ears is my heartbeat or boots on stone signifying an army of IndoChina security guards swarming around the next bend.
A shout rings out behind us, and a third guard appears through the gloom. Pulser waves diffract around and ripple away into the city's dome as we zig-zag between alleyways.
We hit a dead end and I spin us around, determined to duck into another alleyway when Shiro squeals in agony and clutches at his chest. The smell of burnt flesh charges the air. He's been hit.
I'm about to scream when Shiro slaps a hand across my mouth and presses me against the wall. A flash of turquoise streaks past the mouth of the alley. Shiro trembles with the pain of the pulser shot, his hands slippery with sweat and his eyes glazed at some action in his lenses. I pray to the Goddess that he's hacking a door scanner nearby.
Even better, a yellow hov's door pops open metres in front of us. A turquoise guard storms into the alley with their pulser aimed at Shiro's head. Without a care for his ruined leg Shiro dives into the hov with a roar of "Get in!"
I stop dead in my tracks.
Aside from a grazing pulser shot to the chest, Shiro is safe. He's in a hov, about to get away. I've helped him with his daring escape. I have time to run to the guard's left and escape between the hov and the alley wall. From there I could dash to my pod and pray to Shiva-Shakti that IndoChina won't report me to the wardens as Shiro's accomplice.
But what if Shiro doesn't escape? I'll have lost him forever.
He needs my monstrosity.
In the close confines of the alleyway the guard stows their pulser and approaches me with a slim baton. Throwing myself forwards, I catch their naked hand and grip at their knuckles. I don't let go.
Bliss. It feels so indescribably good to feed.
The guard drops to the pavement in a tangle of turquoise limbs, their baton rolling into the gutter with a dull clatter.
I launch myself at the hov and wedge into the doorspace before Shiro can drive off without me. The hov's nav system erupts in a shower of pink; Shiro has programmed it to hit the hovway tunnels and keep going. We glide away from the market and into the tunnel system towards the edge of Eris-1's dome. After a few frantic kilometres we reach a tholin processing plant that supplies a cluster of factories.
I turn to Shiro, expecting him to light up with a triumphant smile at having bested IndoChina, but his face is hung with that same despair I saw when trapped in the ore transporter, like he's viewing his death from a distance. Lymph and blood have seeped into the tattered fibres of his neon pink shirt.
"I was this close!" He collapses against the hov seat with his head in his hands, his body suddenly wracked with tremors. "I was almost off this fucking Dwarf! I could have been in the Pinhole now, on my way to Earth!"
"Earth?"
"I bribed my way onto a 'porter leaving for Earth in an hour! I'm supposed to be on it!"
I understand now why Shiro was weeping on the 'porter in the storm.
Shiro doesn't care about stealing ore.
"Is that why you stole that 'porter on the sandflats? To stow away on it to reach Earth?"
Shiro's entire plan unfolds before my eyes. He'd hacked an IndoChina Mining transporter as a vessel to take him illegally to Earth. When IndoChina had immobilised it on the sandflats, Shiro had taken the opportunity to escape in my hov. His second attempt to bribe his way onto a 'porter has clearly failed catastrophically, judging by the number of IndoChina guards we've just escaped from. But not all hope is lost.
"We've got an hour, Shiro. We'll get you on that 'porter."
"The wardens will be all over the Spaceport for hours! Every spacecraft entering the Pinhole will get searched, including those carrying 'porters. I lost my chance."
Whatever theft and corruption Shiro deals in, he's not a career thief. All this time he's been trying to get to Earth.
I watch his haunted face. His desire to go to Earth at all bewilders me, let alone his insane plan to go there when he's at death's door. Any Edgers mad enough to attempt the trip would be pulsed by a warden before they even enter the Pinhole. If they were to miraculously get through the Pinhole alive and emerge at an Earth Spaceport, they'd be deported back to the Edge before being swiftly dispatched by a warden.
Shiro blinks away tears. To him, dying in an attempt to get to Earth is better than living any longer on Eris.
"I'll take you somewhere safe to treat your pulser burn."
When he nods, bereft, I programme the market's coordinates into the hov's nav system, instructing it to creep between tunnels until we're close to the midnight centre of Eris-1. Abandoning the hov near the market, I guide Shiro along shadowy lanes to my pod.
He slumps against my pod door before I have a chance to present my iris to the scanner. I ease off his boots and trousers and lug his dead weight to the shower. The melted fabric of his shirt has become embedded in the pulser burn on his chest. We shiver under the spray, lukewarm rivulets of water easing nylon from Shiro's blistered skin. He's corpse-pale, like a ghost about to dissolve into the water sluicing over him. I find myself humming as I pat him dry and swaddle his trembling limbs in my bedclothes, hoping that it might give him an iota of comfort. He cowers under flapping arms like he's falling apart.
Frightened eyes eventually meet mine. "W-what happened to the g-guards? Did they pulse each other? I saw you t-touch them..."
"Shh. All that matters is that we got away."
Shiro's ankle is black and horribly distended, the skin hot to the touch. I wrap it and prop his leg on pillows. Painkiller injections and antiseptic spray almost send him into a faint. A blistered triangle of burnt skin over his heart obliterates the summit of Fuji-san. I work swiftly, dabbing the burn and applying a thick layer of gel, taping it all under the softest gauze.
The taut bow of Shiro's shoulders eases, as if relief is unlocking his muscles one fibre at a time. My breaths seem to come more easily too. Shiro hasn't been hurt too badly. He'll be OK. Before I know what I'm doing, I press a kiss to the taped gauze on his chest, and whisper a prayer.
"What are you doing?"
I peek up at Shiro. His hair falls over his eyes as he watches me, his expression inscrutable.
"Asking the Goddess to keep you safe."
"Why?"
"Because they hurt you."
"No, Heems. I mean... you appear with a hov when I'm about to be killed in a storm. You were following me outside Kida Biotech, and now you save me from IndoChina. And you say prayers for me and... what do you want from me?"
Now is the time to offer my bribe. To ask Shiro what price he'd accept to visit Megumi Kida to fix me. Perhaps even to fix us both. But the words don't emerge from wherever they're lodged.
In my heart, I know why. I don't want this to be a deal, a transaction between a murderous doctor and a broken thief. I want Shiro to help me because he cares about me. So scheming and yet so ungrateful, I'm the worst kind of parasite to want so much more from him than to accept a bribe.
Even if Shiro doesn't care about me, he must surely know how precious he is to me. Perhaps him knowing that is enough. I find myself smiling. "You're special to me, Shiro."
It's been so long since I was last close to him. I need to be closer. Before I know it I've eased him against my pillows and I'm curling into his warmth. All that skin, just for me.
"Heems, what the fuck are you doing?" he whispers against my lips. Shaking palms slide up my back all the same, pulling me closer. "What did you do to those guards? What are you?"
"I'm sorry." I sit back on my knees. "You're injured. We shouldn't—"
Shiro winches me against him with a pale hand. "I want to."
I should be wary. I should be cautious. I know that I'll probably fall so soundly asleep that Shiro will creep out of my pod and leave me. Or I'll awaken to a face full of wardens' pulsers and a quick execution. But I don't care.
Perhaps in a couple of sols I'll be arrested for hurting those IndoChina guards, and I'll never find out the secret of Shiro's parasite-proof meatware. But for now I have his skin against mine. I must take the utmost care of him.
My fingertips trip over cherry blossom and breaking waves. I make the most delicate of advances and retreats, so not to upset Shiro's ankle and the wad of gauze over his heart. The bliss is even more intoxicating than before. Perhaps it's the fact that we're not doomed to die in a storm, or that I'm somewhat sated from feeding on three guards. Or I'm simply drowning in love for Shiro.
Musk and warmth make me drowsy. I settle against Shiro.
"Sleepy." He trails a finger down my dozy face. "And smiley."
"You make me smile," I murmur. My eyelids are too heavy to look at him anymore. "We should have worn our lenses. We could be in a big fancy pod. Or in the mountains on Earth, like you wanted."
"No, Heems. I like being here. It feels real."
The last thing I see before my eyes flutter shut is a smiling Shiro. He gleams so brilliantly, my bright sun burning against the eternal night of Eris.
~~☆☆☆~~
The problem with having crowned myself Eris's vile murderous monarch is that such thinking inevitably makes me underestimate criminals like Shiro.
A shout jolts me awake.
I sit bolt upright in bed. I'm not particularly surprised to find a pulser's collimator in my face.
But this time it's Shiro holding it.
On Love and Desire by indigosa (they/them)
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