SUMMER AND THE HOUND
1220 Words
The air here was stale, smelling of boiled cabbage and apathy.
Stairs. Up. Four flights. Her legs burned, but she liked it because it was real, and it was hers.
Apartment 4B.
She unlocked the three deadbolts.
Inside was dark. The only light came from the Sorrow Lamp in the corner, a cheap device that burned slow-release melancholy oil to produce a dim blue light.
"I'm home." she whispered.
No answer.
Her father sat in the armchair. He was facing the wall with eyes opened, blinking once every forty seconds. He was a Grey. Not a full Hollow yet, but close. He had traded his Pride ten years ago to pay for Adia’s schooling. Then he traded his Curiosity to keep the heat on. Then his Anger to pay off a debt.
Now, he just sat, existing.
Adia walked to him, then kneeling.
"Papa?"
He turned his head slowly. "Adia. You‘re... back."
"I got food." She pulled a protein brick from her pocket. "Eat!"
He looked at it. "I'm not... hungry."
"Eat anyway!"
She unwrapped it and placed it in his hand. He stared at it. He didn't have the Desire to eat. He would starve to death with food in his hand because the concept of wanting to survive had been extracted.
Adia’s chest tightened like a dangerous spike of Pity. She shoved it down. Pity was heavy and could trigger the storms.
She reached out, taking his cold, dry hand.
"Papa. Look at me!"
She pulled the glove off again.
She didn't give him a spark. She didn't have enough control to give him a complex emotion like Hunger or Love without breaking him. Instead, she gave him a micro-dose of Comfort.
Just a tint, a low-frequency hum.
Her hand glowed soft orange with the warmth bled into his skin.
His eyes widened slightly. The pupils contracted. He took a breath, dropping His shoulders. The rigid tension of the void left him for a second.
"Warm," he whispered. "It feels... like summer."
"Yeah," Adia whispered. "It’s summer. Eat the brick, Papa! For summer."
He took a bite and chewed.
Adia pulled her hand back quickly, couldn't afford to give more. She had to save the charge for the market tomorrow. If she didn't sell, they didn't pay the rent. If they didn't pay the rent, they went to the Sinks. The Sinks killed Greys in a week.
She stood up, her knees cracking.
She walked to the window. The glass was taped over with lead foil to keep the scanners out, but she had peeled back a tiny corner, for a peephole.
She looked out at the city.
The Sinks were black and bruised. But far away, across the river, the High District pierced the clouds. The spires of the Mint were made of crystal and diamond-glass. They glowed with an obscene, shifting light, pink, gold and violet.
They were having a party. She could see the Ecstasy Aurora shimmering above the towers. The excess joy of the rich refracting in the stratosphere.
It was beautiful, but somehow hateful.
Adia touched her chest, beneath the sternum, deep in the bone, she felt it. The Well.
It wasn't just that she had emotions, but she generated them. The Mint taught that sentiment was finite. That for one to be happy, another must be sad. Conservation of Sentiment.
But Adia was a violation of physics. She was a fountain in a desert and she was always full.
The charging with Edala hadn't lowered her pressure, but had spiked it. The pity for her father was churning with the fear of the drone and the adrenaline of the run. It was mixing into a cocktail of volatile, like a high-octane Yearning.
She gripped the windowsill. The wood began to smoke under her fingers.
Control it! Lock it down, Adia!
She breathed in. One.
She breathed out. Two.
The smoke stopped.
She needed to offload, some of a bigger buyer. The ribbons weren't enough. She needed to sell a Memory. A big one. Maybe a First Kiss simulation or a Victory scream.
Tomorrow, she’d go to the deep market tomorrow.
Suddenly, a sound cut through the drone of the rain.
A siren, lower and deeper, like a bass note that vibrated the fillings in her teeth.
The Atmospheric Warning System.
WHIING, WHIING, WHIING.
A mechanical voice boomed from the street speakers, distorted by the water.
[WARNING. LOCALIZED ANOMALY DETECTED IN SECTOR 4. SEVERE EMOTIONAL TURBULENCE IMMINENT. CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO ADMINISTER CALMATIVES. STAY INDOORS! DO NOT FEEL! REPEAT! DO NOT FEEL!]
Adia stiffened.
She looked at her hands. The glow was pulsing fast, like a strobe light.
PULSE, PULSE, PULSE.
It wasn't the city. It was her.
She had leaked. The Comfort she gave her father... she hadn't sealed the connection fast enough, or maybe… the charging with Edala, she didn’t know.
The drone might had seen her as well.
She looked out the peephole.
Down on the street, the rain had stopped falling down.
The droplets were hovering, floating mid-air. Frozen by a massive static charge.
Then, they started going up.
Anti-gravity. The sign of a massive polarity shift.
The air outside her window turned a violent, bruising purple, like the color of bruises, or Panic.
"Papa," Adia said, her voice trembling. "Get under the table!"
"Summer?" he mumbled, chewing his brick.
"Now!" she screamed.
She grabbed him and shoved him under the heavy oak table. She threw a lead blanket over him.
Then she ran to the door. She had to leave. If the hounds were coming, she couldn't be here. She couldn't let them find The Well.
She threw open the door.
The hallway wasn't empty.
The air in the corridor was twisting, like warping. As if heat waves were rising from the concrete.
At the end of the hall, standing in the shadows of the stairwell, was a figure.
Not a drone, nor a man, nor a local.
He wore a suit of matte-black armor, sleek and faceless. No insignia. But Adia knew the silhouette. Everyone knew the silhouette.
A Hound.
The Hound raised a hand. He held a glass vial and crushed it in his palm.
Red smoke exploded from his hand, Rage Silk.
The Hound inhaled the smoke through his helmet. Then, his posture shifted. He grew, muscles bunched. A low, animalistic growl ripped from his throat. He was high on pure distilled Fury.
He turned his helmet toward Adia, screaming a sound of pure, chemically induced hatred, then he charged.
Adia slammed back the door, throwing the deadbolt. A second later, the wood splintered as a fist punched through the door, three inches of solid oak shattered like balsa wood.
A gauntleted hand grabbed the frame. The wood groaned. The door was being ripped off its hinges.
Adia backed up. Her back hit the window.
She was trapped, four stories up, with a rage-monster at the door.
She looked at her hands. They were blinding white-hot.
She had never used it as a weapon and she didn't know if she could.
The door flew off its hinges, crashing into the room.
The Hound stepped in, eyes glowing red through his visor.
Adia raised her hand.
She was afraid. She knew she could never back down again once she tried.
"Burn..."
She whispered.
...
- Writer
