The senile man, named Jason randomly stops at the corpse of one of his men and bursts into laughter. His own hilarity knocks him to the sand as he rolls chuckling.
“Wake up my boy! This is not a time to sleep,” he sings as he erratically shakes the deceased.
“Jason,” Cyrus begins as an increasingly disturbing look drips off his face. These are the first words he’s spoken since the storm. He kneels beside him, putting his gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder. “He’s dead. He’s not going to wake up.”
Jason’s head snaps up at Cyrus. “I know that!” he barks. “They’re all dead.” He looks at the dozens of lifeless bodies spread throughout the desert as if they were his audience. “That’s why they need to wake up. They’re gonna be late you see.”
The darkness in his eyes is gut-wrenching, to say the least. What has happened to this poor old man?
“Jason!” cries a woman’s voice from the dark. Maybe she can make sense of this guy. Her hands and face are covered in dried blood as she sprints towards us. Eight others follow behind her, each looking as if death is right beside them.
“Cyrus!” shouts a voice of relief behind us. Two familiar faces emerge from the night’s shroud holding the man with the mangled leg I helped earlier.
We exchange hugs and greetings and start a small fire from the belongings of the “sleeping”. It’s nice seeing them. I don’t know if I can handle any more death.
The mysterious woman is able to calm Jason down. He listens to her. Her eyes are as wild as his, more blue than grey. They call her Medea. Apparently, she’s his wife or the equivalent to these people. The strangers ramble on about something amongst each other before they fade into the white noise of my anxious mind.
Disarray lingers late into this sleepless night.
Who are these strange people?
Chapter 8
“Where is your girl taking us, Eros?” asks Poth from the rear of the crowded elevator. All of us are dressed in our glitziest apparel and smelling right. Lethe canceled Pankration and closed everything after the assassination attempt earlier. Essential activity only. Lucky for us, Selene knows about a place that Lethe doesn’t.
The four of us exit the metal cage room into a dim hallway. The only light that works flickers sporadically overhead. There’s more grime than paint on the empty plaster walls. A single black door waits for us at the end opposite the lift. The closer we step towards it, the louder the muffled bass on the other side hits.
She bangs exactly three times and steps back.
A Machina with a gun opens the metal door for us from the other side. He’s the same model as Tal, but a less friendly persona.
Darksynth music pulls us towards the bar in the shadowy ambiance. Despite the hundreds of colorful lights peppered on the ceiling synchronized with the music, the entire place has a grunge feel to it, almost dangerous. The walls of this place are clocks, thousands of them, in every shape and size. The bar top itself, two hands of a massive clock.
“Nah, man. I’m out. Fuck this,” cusses Poth abandoning us for the elevator. FUCK LETH CORP! sprayed in red on the bricks behind the bartender, must’ve set him off
“I’ll go with him,” elects Sophia. “You guys need some alone time anyway.”
Selene smiles at me, gazing hard with those fuck-me eyes. She’s got it bad. I’m okay with that.
We find her friend waiting for us at the elbow of the bar. A peculiarly short man with over-extravagant goggles introduces himself as Vulcan. From under the goggles an untamed forest of dark hair. The beginning of a mustache grows heavier around the corners of his narrow lips.
“Selene tells me you think you saw something,” he shouts into the deafening pulse.
“I know I saw something. It cost me the whole race.”
0“Ah, yes, racing. There’s nothing more important, right? What’d you see anyway?”
“I saw a child, holding a knife. The look on his face was terrifying.”
“A child? You realize how ridiculous you sound, right?” exclaims Vulcan.
“Is there any way to hack the feed and give Eros something solid to back his story before he destroys his reputation?” asks Selene handing both Vulcan and me a reddish-orange, bubbly beverage.
“The only way I can recover that type of imagery is with the drone itself. Recover it and I can easily pull the video assuming it isn’t damaged too severely. Of course, with Lethe’s lockdown that’s going to be a tad bit difficult.”
“I’ll make it happen.”
“If only you put that passion to something that actually matters,” smarts off Vulcan. I don’t even know this guy.
“Like what? Sentient rights?”
“There is more to the movement than waving banners,” he snarls.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for what you guys have going on, I just don’t see how any of that affects me,” I say before throwing back a shot of purple liquid, almost the same shade as Selene’s violet eyes.
“Yet,” adds Selene. “It doesn’t affect you yet.”
“The Lethe Corporation is a threat to us all. If you only knew of the shit they’ve done, of the people they harmed… all to serve Archer’s psychopathic vision,” accuses Vulcan.
“Not all of them are bad. I personally know a couple of Lethe’s people. They just want what’s best for us, for the most part.”
“Which do you know? The corrupt that exploit helpless people for their own entertainment or the trained dogs who unquestionably enforce their will ensuring no one can threaten their authority?”
“What do you mean they exploit the helpless? Lethe has given us an entire city that can fulfill our every desire.”
“That’s what you see. What Kronos sees is a different picture, and they have eyes on everything. There is nothing they can’t hack.”
“Help me understand, then. If Lethe is hurting people, I want to see for myself,” I demand taking another shot with Selene.
“In time,” warns Vulcan casually crushing up some gorganite on the
