Chapter Text
The letter had read, ”It’s time for you to come up.”
Had read, because the first word of the sentence was now blurred beyond comprehension—the ink that had composed had now long been dissolved in tears.
The note lay crumpled on a tabletop that was strewn all over with broken cassette tapes, deflated chip bags, and unopened mail. The ribbons of the cassettes were pulled out, inviting crumbs and dust to corrode their contents. A boy laid with his cheek pressed against the table’s surface, transfixed by the mess magnified before his eyes.
He had been like that, in that collapsed state of half-living, for three days now ever since Rachel had deserted him. His name was Bam, though perhaps he forgot even that as he stared vacantly at nothing, barely registering the way the room cycled through the rainbow wheels of time. Sienna at sunrise, periwinkle by evening, navy during midnight.
Maybe Rachel was telling him to leave, telling him that it was time for him to see what was up there.
As Bam climbed the staircase, the world saturated before him step by step. The sky, once just a tiny porcelain shard above him, unfurled into an open canvas stirring with clouds and birdsong. Sunshine embraced him the way an old relative would, ironing out the shadows on his plain clothes with care.
His hand went up, feeling the sun’s caress on his skin for the first time in ages. He stared up into cerulean for a long time, so mesmerized, so spaced out, that when he found himself suddenly sprawled backwards against the sidewalk, he really thought the sky had just collided with him.
“What were you doing?” The sky snapped at him, solidifying into the shape of a boy not much older than him. “You were putting yourself in danger, standing in the loading zone like that.”
Bam took in the stranger before him, whose visage was a striking combination of blues—blues borrowed from the colors of sapphire and storm. The stranger appraised him from a distance, his stance languid as he leaned against his motorbike. Leather gloves hugged the helmet he rested at his hip.
“What? Oh! I didn’t know” Bam mumbled. The motorist leaned over onto his bike, amusedly scrutinizing Bam as he took in (for what seemed like the first time) the warnings chalked all over the street. Bam looked at them as if they were hieroglyphics.
“It’s alright. I just thought I’d let you know before you let yourself get bowled over by anyone else. These streets are pretty seedy and rife with gang activity, getting run over should be the least of your worries.”
“Thanks, um...”
“It’s Khun. Sorry to scare you.” He swung his legs off his bike, pulling the leather off his hand to extend one out to Bam.
“The 25th Bam.”
“What now?”
“Oh, that’s my name. It’s a little weird, but it’s what she referred to me as at work, and I guess what she called me really stuck with me. You can just call me Bam, Mr. Khun.”
“Sure.” Khun smiled, quite bemused. Briefly, his pocket glowed, his cell phone emitting a rectangular halo of light through his slacks.
“What is that?” Bam nodded towards his pocket.
“Never seen a cell before?” Khun held out his mobile for display.
“No, actually.” Khun’s arched one eyebrow. He was getting the sense that the boy was a little ditzy—more boy than man. He referred to others with no background context and went wide-eyed at basic street smarts. Fine. But now he was telling him that he didn’t know what a cellphone was?
It was as if he had not yet signed a social contract with the world around him.
“Well, it’s a cell.” Khun replied without letting a hint of his curiosity come through to surface. His pocket pulsed twice more, and he shifted his attention towards the incoming messages cascading from Mr. Purple. A second eyebrow flew up.
Papa Purple: THEY’RE TAILING YOU. Sent 2:03pm
Papa Purple: IT’S THE BIKE. Sent 2:04pm.
Khun glanced over at his bike, whose fluid body of steel blue was perching prettily in the sunlight. He hummed, letting multiple futures buffer in his mind as he considered his options. His gaze flickered in between Bam, the motorbike, and his cell.
“Listen. I’m sorry for sending you sprawling like that when I was just trying to give you a fair warning.”
“That’s no problem, Mr. Khun.” Bam stretched out his elbows towards Khun, as if it to show a perfect bill of health. Bam smiled a smile that looked like peacetime, and Khun noticed for the first time that Bam possessed a simple, plain sort of handsomeness. It had a certain charm to it.
“Well let me make it up to you. Care for a ride on Manbarondella?”
“What?”
“This motorbike, her name is Manbarondenna . She’s a rare item to have in this city, and I don’t usually let people take it for a spin, but I feel like I owe you one.”
“Are you sure?” Bam gaped a little at the ride before him. Interestingly, he seemed more impressed by its molten silver and aerodynamic look than by the Khun family emblem flagrantly embossed over its bodice. In fact, he didn’t seem to recognize it at all.
“Absolutely.” Khun smiled, to which Bam instinctively reciprocated with one of his own. His thinned, stretching a little more taut, as Khun noticed his phone display continuing to blink alive from his pocket. The messages fired with an urgency that felt just like Shibisu.
He didn’t have any more time to kill. Khun maneuvered himself behind Bam and guided Bam’s hands over to Manbarondella’s handlebars. Bam swallowed, unaccustomed to the feeling of warmth pressed up against him all along the length of his back.
“I don’t know how to ride—” Bam met his eyes, and Khun made sure to slacken his face and rearrange his expression into an easy, reassuring one.
“It’s a smart bike, so it’s got autopilot features. You’ll be taken care of.” Khun patted the touchscreen of his bike, which revved compliantly in hello. His fingers danced dexterously over the screen, its LCD screen lighting up as a matrix of light. As Khun bent down to whisper a location to the tiny mic mounted atop the handlebar, his hand gently rested on the small of Bam’s back. Bam straightened imperceptibly at the touch. Heat prickled across his neck, and he was glad his shyness was obscured from Khun’s vision.
“There, I set it up so that she’ll take you for a loop around the block. Hope that’s all good with you.”
“What, I—sure, I guess—” Bam gingerly lifted his feet onto both sides of the bike, feeling for a new center of gravity.
“Look at you, balancing already. You’re a natural! Can I send you off now? You should be back in about ten minutes.”
“Alright,” Bam replied with the most confident smile, one which Khun found genuine, if not slightly queasy.
He patted Bam on the back once more. “Manbarondenna, take him away.” The bike revved once, twice, and then blasted forward at full acceleration.
Khun watched them shrink into miniatures against the silhouette of Jahad’s city, but only for a second. Then, he slung on the helmet he had opted not to give Bam, and raced down the steps Bam had come from. He had kept the helmet for himself, thinking he could use the anonymity.
Khun shivered as he descended down the stairwell, in spite of the fact that he was decked in an aviator’s jacket and dress shirt. It felt like he was walking into some sort of vacuum. Light and color were rapidly siphoning out of his surroundings.
At the very bottom, he was met with a puttering neon sign, which flickered sporadically as the halogen within its tubes bounced around to spell C.A.V.E . Khun couldn’t make out what the C stood for, but the middle two letters seemed to stand for Arlene and Viole. The last letter denoted electronics. That much was evident in the old TV’s stockpiled behind the window displays, seemingly arranged in no particular fashion except to block out any light that could have possibly reached down to this cellar of a store.
Well, this will do , Khun shrugged. Electronics meant power, and he was pleased at the prospect of some power outlets. He noted the dated nature of the doorknob, deftly pulled out a bobby pin from his hair (it was to guard against helmet hair) and jammed it into the keyhole. It surrendered with a satisfying click. He had gotten the door ajar in five seconds.
AA: I’ve got it under control. I sent a decoy—a guy I came across. I knew he could be useful. Sent: 2:08pm
After he fired off the message to Shibisu, he wrestled a laptop out of the messenger bag slung over his shoulder. The laptop was new, and it had come into his possession a little too easily. Khun hesitated over the keyboard. The laptop was probably a Trojan horse, infested with silent programs that could double cross him by streaming back his every keystroke.
Time to improvise.
Khun fished a USB out of his inner pocket and stuck it into one of the ports on the laptop. It was a live one, meaning that the moment it contacted a computer, the program mounted upon it would execute.
Running lighthouse.exe…
Signal preprocessing compiled...configuring...done.
Signal radius set to 5 kilometers…done.
The program produced a jamming signal that would blanket the frequency landscape everywhere five kilometers from his location. That was more than enough of a force field for Bam and Manbarondella. Khun presumed that whoever Shibisu had sniffed out was undoubtedly going to be triangulating Bam and Manbarondella in real time, trying to trace their path through the city. With his lighthouse installed and with a random stranger riding on his bike, he was sure he could shake off their pursuers.
Now then, just for good measure.
He plunged a second live-boot USB into a port of his computer, watching the computer stutter for two beats before it established a handshake with Jahad’s infrastructure and authenticated him as one of Ten Families. As a son of Khun, he already had privileges, but the program allowed him to covertly take on the persona of a random Arie boy named White.
Papa Purple: Khun, I have your location. Why are you making a full circle around Hansung’s block when you know you have a detail on you? Sent: 2:10 pm.
The message popped up on his laptop, which was tethered to his phone. Khun’s eyes flickered towards his watch, checking the time. Bam’s joyride as his decoy would be coming to an end soon, and he needed to act fast.
His fingers worked in a flurry to locate Bam. He ran a digital flashlight over the city blueprint, searching for the closest users around Bam with high civic privileges—they were probably the detail chasing him down. They were two blocks away, not yet giving chase, meaning that they had not yet been alerted to the fact that it was in fact Bam—not Khun—at the wheel of Manbarondella.
Two blocks. The timing’s just right , Khun thought as he adjusted the delay of the traffic intersection between the two parties. Ever since Jahad had come to power, the city had been submerged in a digital sort of ether. Every action, every moment in the city was captured in a spider web of surveillance spun by Jahad, who wanted eyes on every inch of the city.
This tampering that Khun was doing, this subversion of Jahad’s smart infrastructure, was quiet treason. In spite of this, Khun smiled.
Jahad would not take note of his transgression. Even if he did, Khun had planted a failsafe, aliasing himself as an Arie boy who had a record for rogue notoriety anyways. It would be nothing more than a blip for Hoaquin, considering his past activity.
Khun sat back, satisfied as he began to see the distance between Bam and his stalkers widen. The traffic intersection executed his planted pause. Soon enough, the dot that would represent Bam would round the corner. He needed to get back up there to meet him.
As he shoved his laptop back into the bag, careful not to disrupt the port holding the live USB, he finally noticed his surroundings and what a spectre of a store he was in.
Swinging the door open, he cast one last glance at the one place where there had been any sign of human presence. The cashier stand was littered with a few chip bags and tissues.
Could that boy really have worked at such a place? The store seemed like it didn’t get any foot traffic at all. Khun hummed to himself as he took the stairs two at a time. Maybe that was the reason Bam seemed to lack any sense of social coherency.
As his feet finally found the sidewalk again, Manbarondella breezed to a stop before him.
“Right on time. Sorry Bam, I forgot to give you my helmet. But it was just a ride around the block, and you came back safe and sound. How’d you like it?”
“It’s like nothing I have ever experienced before!” Bam’s eyes were still wide. Honey-hued, like captured sunshine. Khun noticed that the wind had run a comb through his hair. He found it quite becoming on Bam. Maybe keeping the helmet with himself was a win-win for the both of them.
“Glad you enjoyed it.” Khun replied, easygoing as he kicked the motorbike lock into place for Bam and extended a hand out to help him get off.
“Mr. Khun, I’ve actually never seen that much of the city before. Riding at that velocity, everything was so kinetic and incredible.”
“You’re very welcome.” His next question he asked in spite of himself, unable to tamp down his curiosity. “Did you work in that store down there? C.A.V.E.?”
“Yes! It’s been my home as well for as long as I could remember.” Khun spared another glance at the alley that dropped off into the steps towards the subterranean electronics store. Even in the glare of midday, it seemed enshrouded by shadows, completely obscure to Jahad’s notice.
“You sustained yourself living down there?” Khun maintained a tone devoid of any condescension. He simply wanted to understand how such a radiant boy could have existed in the darkness for so long.
“Sure, I suppose. Is that surprising?”
“There’s not much foot traffic in this ghetto of the city, what with the dogfights between the Ten Families taking place so often here. And rent in Jahad is always high...it’s impressive and bewildering to me that you managed to stay afloat in such a rough location.”
“Oh! Well I’m not really sure about all of that Mr. Khun. Rachel takes…Rachel took care of a lot of the dealings with the outside for me,” Khun’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. At the mention of the name ‘Rachel’, Bam’s eyes glossed over. He also stuttered, his face contorting for the first time into something other than congeniality.
“So it wasn’t just you living and working down there?”
“Well...as of late it has been. But then I received this last month. It was a letter instructing me to come up.” He passed the note over to Khun.
Khun skimmed over the letter, immediately familiar with the contents. “See this?” He pointed at the three-eyed letterhead. “This is the letterhead of Jahad, and this is your initiation into the city. When we reach the legal age dictated by the city, we are given certain privileges that let us interact with the city’s smart infrastructure. We become Jahad’s citizens and can begin to rise to positions befitting our talents.”
“Oh! I see.” Bam nodded, seemingly grateful for every kernel of common knowledge. Khun again masked his puzzlement with a placid smile.
“Then, do you mind explaining what this is? I received this in a separate package.” From out of his pocket, Bam pointed out a gold bracelet that scrunched around one sleeve of his hoodie. At the center of its matte band was an embossed obsidian dial.
“Oh, that’s also an easy question. When Jahad digitized currency, the worth of all natural gemstones fell, so now they have become physical tokens that represent our digital currency. We pass them along in these bracelets to symbolize monetary transfers. Someone must have gifted it to you.”
Confusion creased Bam’s expression. “Hm. Maybe it was an accident. Don’t know why anybody would give me a monetary transfer.”
“Well, let’s take a look at who the transaction was meant for then.” Khun tugged Bam closer to have easier access to his wrist. Normally, he never allowed people this close—much less manhandled others into his personal space as he was currently doing. But there was something about the boy before him that was so disarming, so nonthreatening, that it gave Khun the heretic idea to be patient. I’ll just be nice for just one second.
He flashed his cell phone over the obsidian stone, which suddenly became kinetic and molten under his phone’s scanner, as if a still pool had been pierced into turbulence. A hologram erupted out of the stone, light trailing out in translucent helixes. Once at eye level with Khun and Bam, the strands of light then began to thread together, the way silk does into embroidery. A symbol—no—a number formed. 13 .
It couldn’t be. Khun was surprised enough for it to show on his face. His jaw slackened as he noticed the three eyes blinking above the 13, glowing ember red, a signature of its authenticity.
His grip on Bam’s wrist tightened, and he pulled his focus upwards to pin Bam with a stare. “How in the world did this come into your hands?” Khun found it difficult to keep the challenge and test in his eyes. The ones facing his own, doe-eyed and placating, held no fight in them.
“What are you talking about? Is this something special?”
Khun laid it out plainly for Bam, lest he lack any other common knowledge. “There are thirteen access tokens in total for this city state. Only those trusted by Jahad are given these tokens, which grant the user significant powers over his infrastructure. Powers within the scope of these access tokens include control over energy, augmented weaponry, and unrivaled rights over just about anything connected to the Jahad network. That means everything.
“Imagine plunging skyscrapers into darkness and stilling economies. Imagine honing in on a person and shutting down their Jahad-sanctioned enhancements or implants. You could kill a guy, and you’re telling me someone gave this to you by accident ?!”
Bam blinked once, and then twice. “It came in a package the same day I received my letter...the only clue I have about where it came from is the signature at the bottom. Some girl named Yuri.”
Khun flinched again, the emotions playing out across his face without restraint. Bam had casually mentioned a councilwoman. This know-nothing employee of a subterranean antique electronics store had really said that an esteemed councilwoman delivered one of the thirteen access tokens of the city to himself.
This boy was nothing like what he had ever come across before in Jahad. A complete wild card.
“Do you mind letting go?” Bam smiled, his expression for the first time slightly perturbed by Mr. Khun’s antics. Finally it dawned upon Bam that not far underneath Khun’s politeness, there was a touch of danger. The way he had been carelessly trusting and blindly following Khun was like tracing the edge of a dagger with his fingertips.
“Right.” Khun released Bam and, with effort, attempted to recompose himself to look more at ease. Emotions were dancing across Bam’s face, frank and open, his internal state playing out on his expression like shadowplay theatre. Khun could feel Bam’s unease—he had a preternatural sense for suspicion after all. Everything he said had been too much upon Bam at once.
The sputter of two motorbikes at the far side of the intersection to their left briefly diverted Khun’s attention. Immediately, he went on alert, catching a glimpse of cyan tips peeking out under the silver visor of one of the two helmeted riders.
Shit .
Khun turned to Bam, his voice serious. “Bam. I’m going to need you to trust me. It’s dangerous around these parts. For reasons I can explain soon, I think it’s in your best interests if you come with me.”
Their gazes locked head on. Khun noted that Bam’s eyes were lighter in hue at their core. Khun felt like he was staring into twin halos and receiving judgment.
He saw the answer arrive in Bam’s eyes before he verbalized it. Something in his face hardened as his thoughts sublimated into resolve, not harshly but with kinship. Khun took a moment to place it. Oh, that’s the look of trust .
“I guess I’ll have to put myself in your care for now.”
“Good, we don’t have much time, so let’s consider this the way we shake on it.” Khun grabbed Bam’s hand, interlacing their fingers together for a moment before propelling him towards the bike. He let Bam stay at the helm, with himself behind. Manbarondella hummed to life, recognizing her owner. Her brake was kicked back, leathered hands met her handlebars, and she was off.
In salutation to their pursuers, Khun whipped a tiny grenade from his jacket. He momentarily arched backwards, letting the tip of the grenade combust in the bike’s exhaust and then promptly dropped it onto the center divide of the street.
Three seconds elapsed as Khun put fifty kilometers between themselves and their pursuers, who were accelerating towards them at speeds for all intents and purposes meant to break the sound barrier.
Then, the grenade popped.
To say Bam flinched was an understatement. The sound of the street collapsing into canyons around him was nothing like he had ever experienced before. It was cacophony, it was real, echelons higher from the decibel levels he had been acclimated to wheezing from dated C.A.V.E. headphones. His heart stuttered, and the oxygen that was coming in fast and thin felt thick with smog, now a cocktail of airborne debris.
Bam made to take one glance at the devastation they had left in their wake, before Khun interrupted him, squeezing his palms over the back of Bam’s hands. Their hands were stacked over one another, just like their bodies. “Eyes forward. Can’t have you tipping off our balance right now. We’re sharing a bike made for one.” Khun said, doing just what he preached as he careened through perpendicular streets in parabolas. He cornered intersections with such velocity that Bam felt as if the world was warping before his eyes.
Everything about the city before Bam was astonishing and surreal, from the iridescent oil slicks pooling in moats around the three-eyed streetlights to the pixelated ladies dancing behind glass screens a hundred fold larger than the largest he had ever seen.
After they had cut through the center of the city, the neon bluster of nightlife now paces behind them, Bam broke the newly set-in silence. “Do you think we lost them, Mr. Khun?”
“Not sure.” Khun began to coax the brake pedal, slowing their pace to a tip toe as they abandoned the streets for back alleys as thin as capillaries. They didn’t need speed now, but discretion. Khun seemed to know these alleyways like the back of his hand. They weaved past squat makeshift homeless encampments and tight gaps in between flimsy three-story tenements. The lights surrounding them, previously halogen bright and assailing them omnidirectionally, now dimly hung in the air like limp fireflies, flickering on and off in kerosene incandescence.
“Where are we?”
“This is the Regulars area. It’s where I live. It’s kind of a right of passage to live here, even for people of the Ten Families.”
“The Ten Families…”—Bam’s sentence died in the wind that was buffeting them and shoving dust into their mouths, but Khun could sense that it was meant to be a question.
“The Ten Families are families that had come into power over Jahad a long time ago. The ones pursuing us—I get the feeling that they were from the Khun family.”
“Khun family—doesn’t that mean you were one of them? Why were they pursuing you?” Khun was so close that Bam could hear the clench of his jaw.
“Yes. It’s just a hunch. It’s also a long story.” A thoughtful look crossed Bam’s face. Khun, who had been so forthcoming with information during the entirety of their introduction, had never once been as recalcitrant as he was now. The silence extended as they continued onwards, falling upon them like the velvet curtain of the evening as they traipsed through more unpaved dirt roads.
Only at the last leg of their journey were they again met with trouble.
A hulk of a man ominously guarded the path through one of their last alleyways.
“You’re blocking the way.” Khun said, tone even in spite of the fact that the hulk’s height was twice theirs. His girth also took up the entire width of the alley.
“I’m hungry.” The shadow spoke. They couldn’t make out anything about the shadow except for his infrared glasses, which tinted his eyes the shade of magma.
“That’s not my problem.” Bam cringed as Khun engaged the stranger before them with disdain. Mr. Khun is such a nice man, but why does this behavior seem so natural to him?
“You.” Bam’s eyes widened as mangled fingers pointed towards him. The bounty hunter gazed into him with a piercing, infrared stare. Hmph. Those eyes look too honest and good for the Regulars area. A predatory grin split his face from end to end—but those eyes looked like topaz, and topaz looked like money. “You seem like a pretty boy, you’ll fetch me a good dinner.”
“What?!”
“You have some kind of smell for money? What are you, some kind of animal?” Khun grunted, revving Manbarondella’s handles menacingly.
Khun looked for openings in the wall of a man before them. Triangular gaps of light backlit the man’s body-built biceps and thighs, muscles that looked like they were wound together like rope. Khun’s fingers wandered over the drive stick, lingering on D4. With enough acceleration, he could transform the tire into a lathe and slice through their human roadblock.
Bam’s elbow lightly nudged Khun in the ribcage. “Mr. Khun, the other mode?”
Huh, he could be helpful, who knew?
His index finger pressed hard on the reverse button. “Okay, you infrared blockhead, we’re taking the back route. Mug us some other day, but not today, and not tomorrow. Good luck and good night!”
The walls receded before them in a zoom as they blindly backed out of the alley. The moment Manbarondella hiccupped back onto the sidewalk, Khun pitched Manbarondella into a sharp right, grazing brick as the two escaped from their roadblock.
The man leapt forward, pissed off, surprise and tension written all over his terracotta-tan brawn. “COME BACK! You pretty boys are my ticket to a meal!”
Khun rolled his eyes at the bounty hunter that now looked dwarfish in the distance. “Bam, that’s a bounty hunter. That’s a euphemism for someone who mugs others for food and money. The name of the game is aggression with people like them.”
“He looked really scary, Mr. Khun.” The man had seemed tough as tungsten, with a metallic grin to match. Bam also could have sworn there was some sort of javelin at his side.
“Bam, I don’t know when was your last time out on the streets, but you’re going to learn fast. How people look should not scare or intimidate you.
Khun leaned his head over to make eye contact with Bam. Cobalt met gold.
“Power isn’t muscle. It’s invisible. It doesn’t exist in a punch, but in privilege.”
Bam let that sink in for a moment.
“You’re telling me that guy back there wasn’t powerful?” Bam studied Khun from the side. From his perspective, with the moonlight landing like a spotlight on them, he noticed that Khun’s skin looked almost translucent, like bottled moonlight, a stark contrast from his otherwise blue vibrance.
“That’s not what I meant Bam, but maybe you’ll come to understand one day.” They navigated the last few blocks to Khun’s destination with ease, snaking now through a quarter where the architecture of the neighborhood looked less haggard, less like tents propped up on pick-up sticks, but nonetheless still unequivocally ramshackle. Khun finally let his foot hit the brakes before a bathhouse, parking with a skid between the two wooden lanterns at their entrance.
“This is it. We should have put a lot of distance between us and our pursuers by now.” Khun hopped off and again extended a hand for Bam to get off. “Sorry for the trouble today, you’re very far away from your store now.”
“That’s alright. I think I was meant to leave that store today anyways. Plus, I made a new friend today.” Khun didn’t deign to comment. He just stared at the incandescence surrounding Bam and the warm lux reverberating off of him. Bam looked like the kind of boy that could exude light and give rough neighborhoods the sunsets they never saw. The vision engrossed him so much that for a moment longer than social protocols necessitated, their hands continued to rest within each others.
“C.A.V.E. won’t open tomorrow?”
“No, it won’t.” Bam’s head mysteriously shook no. Khun then separated himself from Bam and walked over to Manbarondella, hopping on it once more. “Mr. Khun? What are you doing with the bike?”
“Getting rid of it.” Khun said, a picture of nonchalance, as he commanded Manbarondella’s engine to life.
“What?! Did I do something to it or something—”
“No, not at all Bam. Look, I’ll be back in just a second. I have something to take care of. You can go in, but just stay in the waiting area. I’ll introduce you to everyone once I’m back, so don’t talk to anyone just yet.”
Khun steered the motorbike away at a mild velocity, his back already turned away from Bam, trusting that he could enter compliantly. He raised one hand off the wheel in a quick see-you-soon salute. Bam watched Khun’s figure recede into the shadows, the back of his pale blue head fading into a gradient of steel, then gunmetal, and then pitch black. Bam hesitated before the doorstep before rapping his knuckles on the oak door once, then twice. A smile crept up his face. More friends , he thought as the lantern lights flanking him suddenly were eclipsed by a mammoth of a shadow.
“There you are, you slow turtle.”
Khun leaned against the wall as his regression algorithm slowly extracted speech from warbled static. White noise coalesced into the beginnings of language, though the tones were still contorted, no doubt the effect of some masking filter.
“This is K speaking. reporting from block 2. AA got away, though we nearly had him in Arlene’s quarters. Something or someone tipped him off, and he seemed to have prepared a backup plan.”
Che, Kiseia . He ran a few more commands from his mobile command line, denoising the voices into their natural octaves.
A smooth baritone began, almost effeminately enough for Khun to think that his program still had some bugs in it.
“Hansung here, reporting also from block 2. There was a boy with him, chestnut hair but otherwise very nondescript and plain from a distance. Probably a weakling, but we’ll be running the background check.”
Khun internally groaned, his little decoy trick had produced a domino effect. If he didn’t stop it soon, the inertia was going to whisk Bam into the nasty underground of the Regulars area.
“K speaking again. We regret to admit that we lost them after they exited the Ranker-friendly zone.”
That was enough for Khun to hear for now. He could revisit the rest later in his recordings. He kicked himself off the wall he had been reclining on and began the trek back towards the bathhouse.
Manbarondella lay on her side, lonely and decommissioned behind him.
Bam was nowhere to be seen by the bathroom’s entrance or the waiting room. Khun pinched his nose bridge, as he rested a hand on the doorknob. Its keyhole glowed a fluorescent yellow, meaning that Bam and the others were probably behind there already. He was about to push the door open when it suddenly pulled away from him with familiar violence.
“Well, if it isn’t our precious ice cube. Welcome back, Khun.” His gaze, previously downcast on the doorknob, was now met with a pair of fuschia pumps.
“Endorsi.”
“Thanks for bringing your new friends over. Couldn’t believe that you made some! But I’m glad you said they could come in and get introduced to Mr. Khun’s friends .” She floated air quotes over Bam’s polite way of referring to them.
“I’m friends with you all when hell freezes over.” Endorsi gave Khun a bit of room to pass before she shut the door behind them.
“One of them is soo cute.”
“Wait—did you say friends ? As in, more than one ?!” Khun ran through the hallway that opened into some sort of substandard lobby. A group occupied the outdated floral sofas at the center.
“Khuun! You really should reply to me sometimes and stop leaving me on read. You make everything feel so one-sided you know.” Shibisu greeted. He had eagerly stood up from where he had been reclining on a baroque loveseat.
Khun ignored him, his gaze whirling around the room until it settled on Bam, who sat cross-legged on the floor, evidently safe.
“Mr. Khun!”
Shock dilated his eyes, as if electricity had flown through them. Right next to him was—
“So the other turtle has arrived. Let’s let the fun begin!”