THE STATUE OF THE MINT
1684 Words
Friction.
Skin against skin.
The room smelled of expensive lavender and desperate biological need.
Yera straddled him, arching her back, a perfect curve of spine illuminated by the city lights bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling glass.
She moved with a frantic jagged rhythm.
"Kael..."
She gasped his name like a prayer.
Kael lay flat, motionless. His arms rested at his sides, muscles relaxed, breath even. He was a marble slab beneath a wildfire.
She ground down hard, searching for a pulse.
"Feel me!" she begged. Her fingernails dug into his chest, scraping against the hard muscle. "Damn you, Kael. Feel me!"
She wanted a validation. She had purchased Lust from the black market, a high-grade injectable called Red Velvet, and now it was coursing through her, demanding an outlet. She needed him to break.
It was a game she always lost.
Kael watched her face.
He analyzed the dilation of her pupils, the flush of her capillaries, the sweat beading on her collarbone.
[SUBJECT: YERA ANEV]
[STATUS: INTOXICATED (LUST/DESPERATION)]
[HEART RATE: 145 BPM]
[EFFICIENCY: 0%]
She rode him harder. Her breath came in short, sharp cries. She leaned forward, her hair was falling like a curtain around them.
She kissed him deep, wet and hungry, bitting his lower lip, drawing a tiny bead of blood.
She tasted like copper and synthetic strawberries.
Kael didn't kiss back, he just allowed it.
He calculated the time. 07:00 AM. The Board convened at 08:00. He had forty-five minutes allocated for Maintenance.
"Please..." she whimpered against his mouth. Her hips snapped, a violent, fluid motion. She was close. The Red Velvet was spiking. "Give me something. Anything. Hate me! Use me! Just... react!"
She grabbed his hands and forced them onto her waist. Her skin was burning.
She squeezed his hands against her flesh, forcing his grip.
"There," she hissed, eyes rolling back. "Right there."
She shuddered. A long, broken cry tore from her throat, convulsing her body, tightening around him, milking the sensation, draining every drop of friction she could steal from his indifference.
She collapsed on top of him, panting. Sweat slicking her skin, gluing her to him.
Silence returned to the penthouse.
Kael counted to ten.
One. Two. Three.
Her heart rate slowed. The chemical high began to recede, replaced by the inevitable post-coital shame.
He shifted.
"Yera."
His voice was a flatline with no warmth. Just sound waves cutting through the air.
She flinched, lifting her head, looking at him. Her eyes were glassy, searching his face for a sign of affection, a smile, a frown.
But there was nothing. Just the perfect, symmetrical features of a man who had forgotten how to be human.
"Get off," he said.
It was a statement of fact that the transaction was complete.
Yera scrambled off him, pulling the silk sheet around her naked body, shivering.
Kael sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, then looking at the floor.
"What are you," she whispered with a trembling voice. "I don't know why I come back."
"You come back because I‘m the only thing in this city that doesn't cost you anything," Kael said, standing up naked.
He was a sculpture. Lean, corded muscle, scars from the Academy etched white lines across his back. He walked toward the bathroom.
"Kael!" she shouted.
He stopped at the door, but didn't turn around.
"Do you even have a soul left?" she asked. "Or did you sell the last scrap of it to the Mint?"
"Souls are inefficient, Yera. They depreciate."
The door slid shut.
The shower was a Sonic-Scrub.
Kael stepped into the glass cylinder.
"Initiate," he said.
[VOICE RECOGNIZED. PRIME CEO KAEL. PURGE CYCLE: ACTIVE]
The air inside the cylinder vibrated a high-frequency sound waves that bombarded his skin, atomizing his biological residue.
It stripped the sweat, the scent of Yera‘s lavender, the saliva from his lip.
He closed his eyes, visualizing his internal ledger.
[CURRENT BALANCE]
[JOY: 0]
[GRIEF: 0]
[ANGER: 0]
[LUST: 0]
[TOTAL MASS: NULL]
Perfect.
He was a vessel, like a clean slate.
Most men in the High District needed Calm just to get through a meeting. They were slaves to their cortisol levels.
Kael felt the vibration in his teeth, rattling the bones of his skull.
He focused on the data streaming behind his eyelids. The Mint's nightly yield.
[Sector 7: Output down 4%]
[Sector 3: Riot suppression required. Rage harvest optimal]
[Sector 4: Anomaly detected]
The cycle ended with the dying hum.
Kael stepped out, instantly dry.
He walked to the wardrobe.
The suit was waiting. Black. Tailored. Weave of ballistic nylon and silk.
He dressed in silence. Shirt. Cufflinks (Platinum, heavy). Tie (Black, Windsor knot).
He picked up his gloves. Thin leather, lined with silver mesh. He pulled them on.
SHRAAP.
He was sealed.
He tapped the earpiece.
"Car."
"Waiting, sir," the automated valet replied.
The elevator ride to the Boardroom took twelve seconds. It climbed eighty floors.
Gravity pressed him into the floor while he enjoyed the pressure. It was the only thing he allowed himself to feel.
The doors opened.
The Boardroom was a cavern of white marble and glass, suspended in the center of the room was the Ticker. A hologram of the city's emotional economy.
Red lines for Rage. Blue for Sorrow. Gold for Joy.
The lines were erratic and spiking.
Five people sat around the obsidian table. The Directors.
They looked nervous. Director Halloway was tapping a pen. Director Vex was chewing a Confidence lozenge.
They reeked of anxiety.
Kael walked in, dropping the temperature in the room seemly.
Halloway stopped tapping and Vex swallowed his lozenge.
"Prime," Halloway said. "You're late."
"I am precise," Kael replied, standing at the head of the table. "You started early because you are panicking."
He looked at the Ticker.
"Explain."
Vex cleared his throat. "It's the exchange rate, Kael. Look at the Gold Index. Joy is... it's inflating."
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Joy is a luxury resource. Supply is strictly controlled by the Gala cycle. It cannot inflate unless supply increases."
"That's just it," Halloway said, sliding a glass tablet across the table. "Supply is increasing. But not from us."
Kael looked at the tablet.
Data streams. Market fluctuations.
Someone was dumping high-grade, unrefined Joy into the lower sectors.
"Black market?" Kael asked.
"Beyond black market," Vex said. "This isn't recycled sentiment. It's not extracted from the dying. The purity levels are off the charts. 99.9% pure. It's... Virgin emotion, Kael. New and fresh."
Kael felt a twitch in his jaw. Felt?
New emotion? Impossible.
Feeling cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred and happened.
"Where?" Kael asked.
"Sector 4. The Sinks," Halloway said. "We sent a drone patrol last night. They picked up a spike. Massive thermal resonance."
"And?"
"Nothing," Vex whispered. "The drone lost the signal. But the market reacted. Someone is printing money, Kael, giving away free warmth."
Kael looked up at the Ticker. The Gold line was trembling.
Free warmth.
The concept was offensive. It was anarchy. If the poor could feel happy without paying the Mint, the entire societal structure would collapse.
"A Smuggler," Kael said.
"A Sun-Smuggler," Halloway corrected. "They call her the Glow."
Kael swiped the tablet, zooming in on the Sector 4 map.
The Sinks. A cesspool of rot and gravity.
"You want a liquidation?" Kael asked.
"No," Halloway stood up. "We want an acquisition. If this person can generate Joy... imagine the yield. We don't want her dead, Kael. We want to milk her until she's a husk."
Kael stared at the map.
A generator. A living reactor.
He felt a strange sensation in his chest. Not an emotion, more like… a vibration. The thrill of a challenge in his version.
He hadn't hunted a Prime Target in three years. The last one was a Rage-Prophet in Sector 9. That had taken twelve minutes to resolve.
"The Hounds failed?" Kael asked.
"We sent a Class-4 Hunter. He didn't report back. His bio-signal flatlined."
Kael paused.
A Class-4 Hunter was a walking tank. To kill one required significant firepower of volatility.
"Interesting," Kael murmured.
He turned to the window. The city sprawled below him.
A light that defied his laws.
He pressed his hand against the cold glass.
"Authorize the hunt," Kael said.
"We already have," Vex said. "But be careful. If she's unstable..."
Kael turned back to them. His face was a mask of terrifying indifference.
"She is unauthorized."
He adjusted his cuffs.
"I will go to the Sinks."
"Personally?" Halloway gasped. "Sir, the contamination risk - "
"Prepare my transport!" Kael cut him off. "And clear the frequency! I don't want noise!"
He walked to the door.
"Kael?" Vex called out.
He paused.
"What happens if you touch her?"
Kael didn't look back.
"Then we will shatter."
He walked out.
The Armory was silent.
Kael stood in the center of the room.
The suit was stripped away, then the armor came next.
Matte black plates. Carbon-fiber weave. Thermal dissipation vents.
The helmet sat on the pedestal. Faceless. Smooth. The visor was a single strip of obsidian glass.
He picked it up, looking into the black reflection. He saw nothing, no eyes, no soul, just the void.
He slid the helmet on.
SWIISSH.
The seal locked.
[SYSTEM ONLINE]
[PRIME INTERFACE: ENGAGED]
[EMOTIONAL SUPPRESSION: 100%]
[TARGET: UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE]
[LOCATION: SECTOR 4. THE SINKS]
[OBJECTIVE: CAPTURE]
The world turned into data. The white walls of the armory became wireframes. The air temperature appeared in the corner of his vision.
He walked to the launch bay.
The Silencer was waiting. A sleek, vertical-takeoff craft that looked like a knife blade with engines.
He stepped inside. The cockpit closed around him like a coffin.
"Destination?" the nav-system asked.
Kael gripped the controls, creaking the leather gloves.
"The Sinks," he said. "Take me to the bottom."
The engines screamed. A high-pitched whine that shattered the silence.
The craft dropped., down.
Past the spires of gold, the penthouses of glass and the smog layer.
Down into the dark.
He was coming.
And he was bringing the winter with him.
…
- Writer
