And the Righteous Shall Punish

Chapter 3-1

3

Kaiya woke, gentle rays of sunlight dancing through her blinds. She had been dreaming of something pleasant – she recalled an image of Kormac and the lavender fields south of Leth – but already it was fading, replaced with a growing awareness of reality. She stared at the cream-painted ceiling, the sound of emptiness pressing into her ears. Seconds passed into minutes, and she surrendered herself to the lethargy sleep could not seem to heal.

She reached out, feeling for the control unit on her bedside table. She found the glassy panel and tapped twice. The murmurs of Leth seeped into the room as the blinds opened and the windows altered to full day mode, flooding the room with direct morning sunlight. Kaiya kicked herself free of the white sheets and rolled out of bed, pausing on the edge as she found her balance. She rubbed her eyes and thought about going back to sleep.

Something crashed in the kitchen, sending a rush of apprehension through her. It took a few moments to remember that Tilda was there. Still thinking of sleep, Kaiya opened her door and walked into the corridor. The pungent odour of mushrooms assaulted her.

"That's disgusting," she yelled. Something sizzled, as if it had just been placed in oil.

Tilda popped her head around the corner and smiled. “I made your favourite.”

Kaiya rolled her eyes and ventured forth, wrinkling her nose. Tilda ducked back into the kitchen and, as Kaiya passed, ambushed her with a serving spoon full of mushrooms, thrusting them at her face. Kaiya jumped back, almost knocking the spoon out of Tilda’s hands, and let out a scream of utter disgust. Tilda laughed and advanced, forcing Kaiya to retreat into the dining room. "Piss off!" she yelled. Tilda continued to laugh and returned to the kitchen, where she ate some of the mushrooms and placed the rest back into the frying pan.

Kaiya walked over to the windows and set them to open. They shifted to transparency, allowing a mild breeze to carry in the sounds of peaceful urban living, a far cry from the previous night's pockets of chaos. She surveyed the boulevard. Fire had gutted the second floor apartment of a building about twenty doors down on the opposite side. She couldn't see it very well from her position, but it was unmistakeable.

A little crowd was gathered outside the burnt building, chatting amongst themselves as police cleaned up the glass. Kaiya pushed down a spark of resentment for Tilda, who had pleaded for Kaiya to stay inside. Next time, Kaiya promised herself, she would do her part in bringing justice against the collaborators.

A pair of uniformed Allied Atlantica soldiers ambled down the footpath, all smiles and enjoyment as they began to talk with the crowd of onlookers. They really knew how to talk to anyone, Atlanticans.

Kaiya turned around and watched Tilda cook the mushrooms. "I want to go to the Allied Atlantica headquarters."

Tilda faced her. "Oh, yeah? Today?"

"Yeah. I'll get ready and we can go after you have your breakfast."

Kaiya walked into the living room and turned on the Vision Caster, switching between various non-existent channels. The Network was still down.

"I…" came Tilda's voice from the corridor, "I think I'll stay in."

Kaiya turned off the Vision Caster. "Really?"

Tilda nodded. "Yeah. I don't feel like going out."

Kaiya reined in her surprise. Tilda was always the one eager to be out and about, dragging her along to this, that, and the other. "Ok. I don't know how long I'll be. I'll bring home something nice."

"Marashta?"

Kaiya smiled. "Maybe."

The answer pleased Tilda, who hugged Kaiya and sang a ditty about her love for marashta. Kaiya laughed and began to think through what she would say to the Atlanticans.

A whole building full of soldiers.

Kaiya approached the eastern bridge, a majestic stone structure with ancient lampposts that had been rendered redundant with modern technology and were retained purely for aesthetic and sentimental reasons. Police patrolled the bridge, striding across glossy road tiles Kaiya had healed far too many times over the past few years. She had heard stories of people jumping into the river, so no doubt the police were keeping a watchful eye out for such behaviour.

As far as she was concerned, they were better off in the river than splattered across the road tiles. Less work for her. It was a good thing she'd never learnt water bioelectrics. The energy conductors had been injured by jumping, in the past, even if most bodies disintegrated before they reached the core infrastructure, and she couldn't imagine having to heal those monstrosities.

One of the officers faced her, eyes lingering, before finding a new target.

Kaiya hugged the thick stone balustrade and gazed down into the river. Silvery webs criss-crossed the eddying water, anchoring themselves to the top of dark, silent turbines with spiralling, curved teeth. Kaiya remembered the fear of her childhood, watching her mother dive into the water to perform maintenance feeding. Even turned off, the turbines would still brood with entitled expectation. Now they stared back at her, watching her, like they were calculating the amount of energy they could strip from her body. The compulsion to look always lingered. Kaiya forced herself to endure the avoidable fear.

Someone touched her on the arm, jolting her into consciousness and breaking the spell of the unrelenting turbines. She looked up at the face of an old man in police uniform. He should have been well past the age of retirement. “Can I help you, miss?” His gentle manner of speech and guileless eyes eased her wariness.

“No. Thank you.”

The officer smiled and peered down at the energy conductors. For some reason Kaiya felt as though the old officer deserved an explanation, though she wasn’t certain what the explanation would be for. “I should be going.”

“Enjoy your day,” he said, nodding at her.

She looked back as she walked away. The officer meandered along the sidewalk and car-empty road, smiling at passersby.

Kaiya left the bridge behind, the hungry turbines fading from her mind. She thought of Tilda's mushrooms and smiled. Tilda should have come. The northeast quadrant deserved her mocking presence. Manor quadrant, as she would say, her voice uncanny in its resemblance of those who lived there.

Kaiya stopped abruptly, averting a collision with a hurried woman. Head covered by a shawl, she seemed to shrink into herself, as if pleading for the world to forget her existence. It took a few moments for Kaiya to realise the woman's head had been shaved, and when that fact penetrated her mind she glared. How anyone could submit herself willingly to the needs of the enemy was beyond her. They were the worst type of traitor and deserved to feel every sting of retribution. She had watched a w***e collaborator punished just last night, and still carried a quagmire of exhilaration and disgust at the ritual stripping and shaving.

People like them needed to be marked.

Kaiya moved over to the sidewalk to avoid the traffic – roads in the northeast quadrant were still driveable. The hum of repellent layers announced a car behind her, which passed by with tinted windows. She watched it disappear around the corner.

The sound of humming faded as she pressed deeper into the northeast quadrant, a forest of red stone terrace houses. She had only been in the area a few times, to visit Kormac's mother. He had always felt more comfortable at Kaiya's place, so he said, and she retained that knowledge as a matter of pride. To think that he could be home, soon!

The sidewalks widened as the streets became narrow and one-way, containing quaint gardens and trees in an equidistant, alternating formation. Kaiya glanced around to see if anyone was looking at her, then knelt by the street, examining the road tiles. She didn’t have the qualifications to work in the northeast quadrant, and she thought she understood why. There was something very different about these road tiles. She would have liked to examine them more closely. Their darkness was not quite midnight, and they were more translucent than the ones she worked with. She could almost see the repellent layer underneath.

A car passed by, and she stood up in shock. There had been no hum, or perhaps she just hadn't heard it. There was certainly no characteristic push and pull between the car and the road. She had only ever seen that kind of behaviour in Obsidian Tanks, and the last time she read about it, that technology wasn't yet available in consumer vehicles. She looked at the road tiles. Perhaps they were responsible?

Her mother would have known.

Kaiya filed away the new information and continued on towards the northeast quadrant CBD. Glass towers loomed low in the sky, monstrous and modern, ugly blights on the urban landscape of a town as old as Leth. They had no ground floors, and instead shaded a street-level courtyard, filled by people in business suits sitting at tables drinking coffee and eating sweets available from the mobile food stands. Holoscreens glowed at most tables, men and women speaking with business partners from across Nymosen and around the globe, if the languages were anything to go by.

Anyone who hadn't lived in Leth would think the war had never happened.

Bitterness burned Kaiya's throat. They were all collaborators, probably, their loyalty bought with the promise of assets retained. What was the difference if you worked for the occupiers instead? It was still the same job. She understood that. But at least she had done her best to sabotage her own work as much as she reasonably could.

She looked up, distracted by movement. A giant holoboard perched on the exterior of one of the buildings, angled down for pedestrian consumption. Above it, shimmering painted letters announced that the building – or, at least, its first few floors – belonged to Life Plus. The holoboard turned black, its advertisement having ended, but soon began to glow once more.

A flower bud appeared, and a thrill of excitement passed through Kaiya, soon replaced with utter calm. The flower bloomed and approached, spreading warm detachment as it entered her body. Infused with the scent of flowery meadows, light engulfed her, eliminating the tyranny of physical limitation.

She was a goddess. She could do anything.

The ocean lapped against a nearby cliffside, weaving through faint rustic music, and her skin prickled with electric warmth, the temperature of perfect comfort.

Her eyes watered as her soul thrashed against the confines of her body. Release beckoned ahead, just there, just out of reach. Ever so slowly fading. Something inside her grasped at it, and came up empty. It grasped again, panicked, searching for a final skerrick of the teasing purity that beckoned.

Senses fading, Kaiya's own voice whispered in her mind:

RAPTURE

free yourself

Tears rolled down her cheeks as the holoboard went black, and a fissure emerged in the core of her being, into which all sensation fell and burned. The advertisement began again, but she had been emptied of the capacity to connect, and she experienced nothing from the holoboard but a flat image.

Now she understood.

To live was to be imprisoned.

She looked around as her hearing returned to normal. No one seemed to have noticed the gargantuan display that had just occurred between her and the holoboard. This wasn't any technology with which she was familiar, this was something else. Something more than the Vision Caster.

She had thought an Extensive Vision Creator was only theoretical, but here it was, reaching in like any old Vision Caster, but solely to her. A unique and intimate relationship between her and the technology.

Perhaps that was Rapture?

She walked away from the courtyard, glancing back at the Life Plus section. She would see the Atlanticans then come back. Just for a look. Just to see what it really was. No harm in knowing.

Allied Atlantica had set up their headquarters in a centuries-old, colonnaded edifice with eighteen steps leading down to the roundabout that surrounded the courtyard. She'd never met an Atlantican until the soldier who had shown so much interest in her, but they had a reputation for pageantry and tradition, so it was no surprise they had chosen such a building. A few soldiers lazed about on the steps, supposedly guards, and glanced at her as she strode up towards the front door.