Chapter Text
Alex Hawthorne sat at the bar, a shot glass of Iceberg Aged between their cupped hands. It was a strange substitute for someone who was used to the long-standing empires of Jack Daniels and Jameson, but the people at Halcyon had seemingly forgotten such distilleries entirely. Or, more likely, the HHC didn’t see enough profit in them, so they’d abandoned them, left them behind on Earth as the transferral of humanity from their homeworld to this custom-tailored solar system took place.
Just like they’d abandoned a lot of things, Alex thought bitterly.
And bitter described the whiskey in their grasp, too. It had always been their go-to for a drink. They craved the burn all the way down their throat, and then the firecracker-coated-in-honey warmth that pleasured their insides. This ‘glacial-aged’ shit tasted more like someone had chipped a chunk off an iceberg, spiked it with nondescript liquor, and melted it all down. It didn’t resemble whiskey one bit, but Alex kept drinking it anyway. It was the best they were going to get, especially with their finances being what they were and the 17th not nearly prosperous enough to get anything besides the bottom of the barrel -- literally. To be frank, Alex was stunned they had even managed to secure the Iceberg.
They threw it back, their eyes falling on the aetherwave screen as it lit up with the same news that had been playing for the past god-knows-how-long. Alex had stopped paying attention. Besides … the ridiculous child who was always on the aetherwave nowadays did nothing for them. Nothing for anyone, really, even though he easily could have.
Out of the corner of their eye, they could see Parvati Holcomb, who was sitting next to them, elbows on the bar, sign her displeasure. “Can’t say I’m too thrilled to see his face on the screen either,” she said, her hands making the signs as naturally as if she’d been born doing so. Her eyes were narrowed as she stared up at the screen which, thank Law for small miracles, was so old and in need of such repairs that there was only a picture at all about half the time, and of that half, they were lucky to get color. It was like trying to read a book through a whirring engine blade.
Alex heaved a sigh and leaned over to take a sip out of Parvati’s soda. The latter said nothing -- just glared up at the person on the screen, and the lower third bordering the bottom:
CHAIRMAN’S SON ASSURES GENERAL PUBLIC NEW FOOD-PRODUCTION TECH ON THE HORIZON
It was a lie, of course, just like everything that came out of that son of a bitch’s mouth. Alex felt a swirling in their gut, and it wasn’t the whiskey. It was a hatred that came from as deep down as a feeling could possibly go. The sort of hatred that ran through their veins like blood, sewn into their skin so deeply that one could not hope to remove it from them. The sort of hatred that said that if they were ever in a room alone with him, it would end in only one of them leaving intact.
The bartender, a cute little thing named Viral, with teal hair and a dark grey horizontal stripe across their face, rested one arm on the bar, following Alex’s and Parvati’s eyes up to the screen. They turned slightly for Alex, who they were standing in front of, to be able to see the sign as they said, “What a jerk, huh?”
“More than a jerk,” Alex signed. “That’s way too nice of a word for what he is.”
Viral flashed a smile. “It can also mean asshole. But I try not to be explicit about my swearing.”
“Still too nice of a word.”
Alex and Viral were friendly enough for this to be the moment when Viral would normally pour them another whiskey and claim this one was on the house. But both of them knew that the 17th was Viral’s only mode of income, and that they couldn’t afford to be giving out free drinks, even to someone who had as much of Viral’s respect as Alex did. They quietly acknowledged it, and Alex held out their wrist for Viral to scan and take the bits out of their account. Not really bits they could afford, but they’d dry up soon anyway, so why not spend them on something that would bring them, well, if not happiness, if not satisfaction, then … distraction?
Problem was, nothing could distract anyone from what was going on in Byzantium. They’d had to change their whole lives in order to adapt to it.
See, neither Alex nor Parvati nor Viral had been born deaf. None of them currently were deaf. None of them were even hard of hearing. There was a far more sinister reason that they had taken to communicating entirely in sign language, and why Parvati and Viral wore earpieces that completely blocked out any external sound, meaning they hadn’t heard the outside world in years, living in a quiet, secluded, isolated blank space in which the only sounds they could hear were their breathing.
And the reason for it was the spoiled rich chairman's boy on the aetherwave screen, who oozed confidence and charisma and something else that only people like him could project. Something that made you almost desperate to please him, even before he used his not-so-secret weapon.
As Alex headed home from the bar with Parvati by their side, they swore, just like they did every single morning when they woke up and every single night before they went to sleep, that they would be the one to hold a knife to Felix Rockwell’s throat and watch him take his last dying breaths.
Their apartment in Roseway was little more than a hole in the wall with a bed. As per the usual with anyone not living in Byzantium, cardboard boxes on the street would almost have been nicer real estate. Alex wasn’t going to try and delude themselves into thinking better of it by saying “at least it’s home” or something ridiculous like that. It wasn’t home. It never had been. Home was a comfortable place you felt safe at with people you cared about. Alex went to bed every night with a knife gripped in one hand. Probably a bad idea on account of all the nightmares that constantly plagued their sleep, but they refused to be unarmed even while unconscious -- especially while unconscious. They were quite the fighter while awake -- had to be, to survive in a place like Terra-2 -- so they had to cover themselves while they were asleep, too, at their weakest.
You didn’t sleep with a knife in one hand, starting awake at every little sound, when you felt like you were at home.
So this wasn’t home.
It was a building, at least. There was a roof, which was more than Alex could say for some of the places they’d holed up in before they found Parvati and ran into a little extra side work, just enough to keep the bits in the positive, and to once in a while treat themselves to a shot of whiskey, bitter as it was.
And this building, this place that wasn’t home, was currently housing ten people, including Alex and Parvati, all of who were sitting on the floor, because Alex didn’t have the bits for chairs for this place, and of course they couldn’t be having this meeting outside, they could hardly even be having it inside, except that Byzantium were so far up their own asses that they didn’t see a random apartment in Roseway, or the people in it, as being anything worth their time. Which would, of course, be their downfall, if Alex had anything to say about it.
“We need to move soon,” Alex said. They’d never dimmed their passion in anything that they’d done, including using sign language, and it showed in the exuberant gestures they made, often overshooting the signs, though not by so much they couldn’t be understood at all. “Every single day that goes by, we let them amass more and more power. Pretty soon we won’t be able to get into Byzantium at all.”
Della, the former owner of the 17th before she’d passed it on to Viral, cracked a smile, against the atmosphere in the room, charged with Alex’s energy. “I think we all know you’d be able to get into the city no matter what. You could slink your way into my stockroom, rob it blind, and be halfway across the planet before anyone knew you’d even crossed the threshold.”
“She’s right, boss,” said Parvati. “You’re the slyest person I ever set eyes on. Comes in real handy for the situations we get ourselves into, I should say.”
“Parvati, what did I tell you about calling me ‘boss’?”
“Sorry, boss.”
It was a running joke between the two of them. It was easy to add ‘boss’ to the end of sentences, and Parvati, who had initially done it completely seriously, had now taken to ending quite a few sentences with it, just to see the look on Alex’s face, which was never angry, just a playful frustration. They were close enough that Parvati knew she could count on Alex to tell her when they were actually upset with her.
“I’m serious, though,” Alex continued, unwilling to be distracted from the point at hand. “We need to … I don’t know, even if we’re not going to launch an attack or something, we need to at least make a supply run.”
“Heard it’s going downhill in Byzantium, too.” This voice came from Dameron, who worked in the maintenance tunnels of Byzantium, as undercover as the group was able to get with Byzantium’s high security and desperation to protect the upper class’s way of living, even in the midst of a system-wide famine. He shoved a hand through dark hair before signing, “From the shit I hear from the other workers, you know, the ones that get put up in all them fancy workers’ quarters, Crane’s diet toothpaste is near about the only thing keeping them going. That and other appetite suppressants. But then again, them rich folk barely eat anyway. Trying to lord it over the rest of us that they can afford to eat but choose not to.”
There was an anger in his voice that everyone in this room could relate to. It had Alex so steamed they saw red whenever they thought about it. Sometimes they were glad their parents were dead. It meant they didn’t have to see the shitshow this place had turned into, although surely it had been like this for quite some time now. Not this bad, though. Not to the point people regularly referred to the situation not as a food shortage but as a famine.
“If we could just take him out …” Alex said, half to themselves.
“You talkin’ about the chairman’s boy, boss?” Parvati asked, placing one hand on Alex’s knee in a show of support.
Alex nodded, still seeming a hundred miles away.
“Not sure why you’re so caught up on Felix Rockwell, Alex,” said Mendez, one of Alex’s neighbors in the Roseway Apartments. He bit his lip. “Ain’t like he’s the only one doing all of this. Taking him out just means people--”
“--get angry,” Alex cut in, flashing their fingers so furiously that Mendez had no choice but to fall silent. “If people get angry, change happens. Problem is they can’t get angry on account of Felix-fucking-Rockwell--” they spelled the ‘fucking’ out as if it was part of his name, “singing them those sweet nothings. So they’re content to just live in this shit like there ain’t a thing better than this. That’s why I’m so focused on Felix Rockwell.”
All of them were silent. Well, more silent than they usually were. Alex was right, of course. There were other things they could be planning, but they needed their leader’s support behind it, and obviously Alex wasn’t going to focus on that until Felix was taken care of. So it was best for them to plan how they were going to get Alex in to dispose of Felix. Then, in the confusion and before Byzantium and the chairman had a chance to regroup and form a new strategy, they could strike again and bring the Board to its knees.
Ideally.
Except it was kind of difficult to believe that the ten of them were going to make any sort of difference. They had friends on the fringe, this was only the core group, of course, but it wasn’t like they had an army, and most people were too affected by Felix’s power to even be able to think for themselves, let alone want to overthrow the tyrannical government they lived under and take what was rightfully theirs. It seemed a task too great to even entertain the thought of accomplishing it. But Alex was so enthusiastic about it that it was hard not to fall in with them. Besides, it wasn’t like things could get any worse. At this point, death was almost preferable. So the people in this room with Alex were okay with continuing on. And hey, maybe things really would work out for the best if they went through with all of this. Why not rally behind the only choice that seemed to have any chance of a positive outcome?
And Alex was a really good person. It was ridiculous, to not follow their dream, when the meeting came to a close and Alex shared what little food they and Parvati had been storing up with their friends. Even with how skinny the two of them were, the way that every one of Alex’s ribs could be counted, the way shirts that had used to fit them now hung off of them like they were several sizes too big, they still only thought of others.
So what they wanted to do for now, that was okay. Everyone here would help them in their goal to get rid of Felix Rockwell, and they’d figure it out from there.
Something told them Alex would be quick to figure out what they wanted to do after that, anyway.