.The Boy in the Water.

Through fire and suffering emerge the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.

- Shaelgreath, Krogan Battlemaster

Sometimes when he closed his eyes and thought very hard, pushing through the memories that hung like bloody curtains in his mind, he found a white, soft place. He could remember being on his back there with his eyes half open, drowsy and safe with sun on his skin. The edges of things blurred together there, they lost their shape and their form; they dissolved into a cocoon of clean light around him. If he tried especially hard and reached back as far as he could sometimes a window would appear, then a piece of blue sky beyond, and echoes of a song coming from a long way away. He could never get far enough down to hear the words, but the melody came to him, something sweet and slow, meandering into tuneless, off-key humming in places.

When he was in the water it seemed nearer, somehow more true. Lying supine at the surface he could feel the heat of the sun on his face like he did in his memory. When he dove down, into the cold embrace of the salt water he could cut off the distractions of the city beyond the shore and forget everything, everything except that last memory that sat in his chest like a pearl.

It was a small memory, and he could never be certain if it was a true one. He knew that in desperate times the human mind could be subconsciously creative, constructing whole worlds for people to lock themselves away in. In many ways it could be easier to invent a more pleasing world than it was to face a bleak and unchanging truth. He knew all of this, and yet whenever he reached down into himself, into the very depths, it was always there.

X pushed back toward the surface of the ocean and took a deep breath, gulping salty air down into his aching lungs. He liked to stay down there as long as possible, where the world was crystal clear and uncomplicated. A bull shark prowled the reefs below him as he shook water from his hair and smoothed it off his forehead away from his eyes. He stayed for a moment, treading water, and watched it cut its way through a school of small fish. It didn't scare him; he envied it. It never had to come up for air and smell the stink of the city, it never had to leave its clear blue world where the rules were simple and fair: big fish eats little fish to survive, nothing more and nothing less.

He preferred that world. He preferred being the boy in the water.

X sighed and looked over his shoulder, back to Trinidad. It seemed funny to him for a moment that the government didn't dare send police past the city limits to enforce order, but had slapped severe isolation measures on the place until it stopped dumping its sewage in the ocean. It probably shouldn't have been funny, but all he could do was laugh as he started to swim toward shore, through pristine blue waters, on his way back to the cesspool of the city proper.

He found his clothes where he'd left them, buried in a plastic bag near a rundown dock, and shrugged into them. He'd washed them not even a week ago, but after the clarity of the water they felt filthy against his skin and he grimaced, peeling his oily t-shirt away from his chest as he shrugged into his jacket. He made sure to zip it all the way to the top despite the heat; he didn't want anyone to catch a hint of the red lining within while he was so far away from home. X left the beach and made his way back to the catacombs of partially collapsed streets that formed his world. By the time he made it into the city proper the day was beginning to fade from the ribbons of blue sky overhead and the squats on either side were beginning to empty, pouring their stream of human detritus into the dusk.

During certain moments, usually at dusk and dawn when the gloom obscured a majority of the filth, it was possible to see that Trinidad used to be a great city. It had been a place of sweeping boulevards, lined on either side by trees that must have once thrown sheets of cooling shadows over the city's pedestrians. There were plazas set with fountains that had at one time soared against the blue sky, before they dried up and filled with garbage. The once-grand buildings were tired, sagging behemoths; buckled and leaning menacingly overhead, ready to give up. When they were white-washed with their red clay roofs maintained, Trinidad must have been beautiful. Now those things existed as a crust of rubble that collected in corners and sliced at the feet of the careless urchins that inhabited the ruins of the city.

And there were no street signs.

It seemed like a minor detail among so much violence and chaos but it was actually one of the most fundamental parts of living in the city. With no street signs traditional navigation became close to impossible. It was instead a complex game of creative landmarks among the collapsed buildings. One building might resemble a dragon's head or a broken fountain might sport half a noteworthy statue or a spray of graffiti that denoted gang territory. The downtown neighbourhood called The Tombs was controlled by the constantly warring forces of the Red Hoods and the Black Hoods. Gates was ruled by the Sons of Hades and the tiny but relatively intact domain of the Hell's Mouth Gang was called Castle. There were a hundred large and small gangs and each of them had staked out their claim, decorating it with colours and symbols to warn off invaders.

And then there was Children's Street. True to the nature of the city, it wasn't really a street. It encompassed several blocks of what had once been affordable housing units and which now resembled nothing so much as a war zone, after everyone has already died. Barely a single unit still stood freely, and the streets had long ago disappeared under a thick layer of broken cement and drywall dust. No one ruled Children's Street. No one would want to. It was as broken and useless as the creatures that inhabited it. Some people said that Children's Street was haunted; that the victims of whatever forgotten calamity that had destroyed it still walked amidst the rubble at night.

That was a fantasy, of course, and like most fantasies it was easier to stomach than reality. Vengeful ghosts could not dream of generating the same level of horror as a walk through Children's Street on one of Cuba's rare cold nights, when the acid rain came down hard and the wind howled through the skeletons of the buildings.

Unlike the other parts of the city, there was no drama to its name. It was where all the lost and unwanted children of Trinidad gathered, skulking in the shadowy corners of the burnt-out buildings feeding on what they could steal and scavenge. Poems and books and documentaries had been made about Children's Street for twenty years but nothing about it had ever changed. It was a lost cause; a place of madness and apathy. X knew it well, like most people in Trinidad his 'childhood' had been a long stretch of years fighting with other children for scraps and hiding in the ruins of the Street.

When he had put it behind him he knew he was safe, so he unzipped his jacket and reversed it.

It was always bizarre. One moment he was nothing, just another bum dressed in dirty rags, but with the red side of the jacket showing and the bold black X drawn across his back he was instantly transformed. People he didn't even know moved out of the way for him, flashing him nervous smiles while they avoided direct eye contact. Whores of every age and creed called out to him, offering him discounts and freebies as he passed the hovels they had staked out to ply their trade. The jacket was the only authority Trinidad really recognized, gang authority. When a fruit vendor tossed him a simpering smile and an almost fresh chironja X knew it was because he recognized the jacket, not his face.

He still ate it. Fruit was a luxury in Trinidad and for all the vendors' smiles and shouting X spotted three men pretending to loiter casually around his stall with their hands on concealed weapons and their eyes on the crowds. The chironja was sweet and ferociously citrusy, it stung his tongue and made him smile. He rubbed the peel between his hands to take some of the stink of sweat and dirt off his skin before he just dropped it, letting it join the rest of the trash collecting in the gutter.

"X!" Raquelle caught him by the elbow as he reached the ruin of the old Tenth Street Hotel the Reds had staked out as their centre of operations. She dragged him away from the door, into the alley beside the building. Piss soaked cigarette butts squished under their sneakers as she checked the shadows carefully.

"Jesus, what is it?" He asked, glancing back at the mouth of the alley. He stuck his hand casually in his pocket where he found his switchblade, just one of the several knives he had stowed away on his person. He gripped it lightly, keeping his finger on the release button.

"Arturo is looking for you," Raquelle whispered, still glancing nervously from side to side as she leaned in close.

"Shit," X swore, letting go of the knife so he could put his head in his hands. His stomach locked up like she'd snap-frozen his guts. "Why won't he just leave me alone?"

"My guess is because he's a sadistic bastard," Raquelle said, "but it might be because he thinks you know too much about him, or because he's in love with you, or because he thinks your blood will turn lead to gold. Basically, it doesn't fucking matter why, but he's got a burr up his ass about you and doesn't show any signs of letting up."

"Well, Ernesto already gave me work for the week," he replied. "I'm playing security for Tessa's whorehouse up the street. I just stopped by to see if there was a message he wanted passed to her."

"Okay," Raquelle nodded, "that's good. For a week. But what about next week? What about the week after that? Arturo is going to keep spreading rumours and turning people off you until there's no one left but him, and you know how it goes. If you don't work you don't earn, and you can't wear the colour."

She plucked the collar of his jacket.

"Do you want to try to get through Trinidad on your own again?"

"No, fuck no, of course not," X said, hugging his jacket tighter around himself. "You got me out of that, you know what it was like for me. But I don't want to go back to Arturo either."

"Good," Raquelle reached into her jacket and pulled out a tight roll of something, pushing into his hand.

"What is this?" He asked. It looked blank, but he realized that was just a single piece of paper she had wrapped around something else and secured with a rubber band. He looked back up as she turned on her heel and started walking away from him.

"It's a way out," she said, not stopping, "take it. But if anyone finds it on you I'll deny that you got it from me, and I'll stop trying to find you any work."

She didn't wait for an answer, just rounded the corner and left the alley.

X stared after her for a moment, stunned. He had never seen Raquelle act like that, not in the six years he'd known her. He looked down at the apparently dangerous roll of paper in his hands and sighed, tucking it into one of the secret pockets he'd stitched into his jackets lining. There were people expecting him and he didn't want to be late with Arturo still gunning for him and his reputation.

He slipped in and out of the building to pick up the messages for Tessa and his pay for the day before without catching sight of the other man. He got out as quickly as he could and made his way up the street to his work assignment, stopping only to make a purchase from the fruit vendor. Tessa's brothel was one of the cleaner ones on the street, which still left it several degrees from truly clean. But the whores there weren't a bad lot, probably since they had a madam who had their backs instead of a pimp that roughed them up all the time. They greeted him with smiles and a few flirty touches as he pushed through.

"Sure I can't convince you to come upstairs?" Amber asked him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he tried to slip through the door and pressing herself against his chest until her tits bulged. She had to press hard; she was thirteen if she was a day and hadn't filled in properly yet. Her large dark eyes were made up to look smoky and sultry, her cheap lipstick the red of fresh blood. "I won't make you pay."

"It's not the paying that puts me off," X replied, grinning at her and tweaking her nose like an older brother.

She slapped his hand away.

"Don't you have any vices I can exploit?" She asked, with a visible pout. After a moment it transformed into a wicked smile. "Give me half a chance and I promise I can inspire a couple."

"If I ever feel the need to be exploited you'll be the first girl I call," he promised her. "Until then though..."

"Just fat old men and drunks," she sighed. "Tessa's in her office."

"Thanks," he produced a fresh chironja from his pocket and slipped it to her. "Don't tell the others, I don't want them to find out you're my favorite."

"Thanks, X," her eyes lit up at the sight of the fruit and she immediately slipped it into the folds of the flimsy scarf she wore tied around her hips like a sash. When she got that excited over a piece of fruit it was easy to see how young she really was, and it made X sad. Maybe it shouldn't have, he was only a few years older than her after all, but he squeezed her shoulder and pushed inside so he didn't have to see her turn back to the street and start calling out for customers.

He found Tessa in her office, as promised, and slapped his credit chit down on her desk.

"Before you check it, I bought fruit," he produced the other three chironja's from his pockets and laid them out on the desk in front of her. "One for you, one for Ortiz, and I gave one to Amber at the door."

Tessa squinted at him suspiciously for a moment, then stuck his chit in her terminal. She checked his balance then sat back in her chair, doing internal math for a moment.

"Okay," she confirmed, "that checks out. Still, show me."

X sighed and rolled up his sleeves. The track marks on his arms were all old, long since scabbed over and gone to scars. He turned his hands over for her, spreading his fingers to show there was nothing fresh between them either.

"Do you want to check between my toes too?"

"No, I think I can trust you," Tessa sat back, looking satisfied.

"Good," X sat up and extended his hand for his chit, "I'm going to get to work."

Tessa snorted and closed the window on her screen, going back to her own figures and balances.

"I know what that means, you're going to go drink rum and gamble, and lose all your money anyway. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to be happy that it isn't going into your arm anymore. Have fun," she waved him away with one small hand.

X laughed and tucked his chit into his pocket. He headed for the door and paused, glancing over his shoulder. Tessa didn't seem to notice his hesitation, she was absorbed in her own work.

He considered for a moment telling her about Raquelle and her strange message. Tessa was probably the best friend he'd ever had, the only one who had gone out of her way to get him off the needle and make sure he stayed off it. He thought he could trust her, but for all her good intentions she was a Red, through and through. Raquelle had told him the little roll of paper in his pocket was a way out, and suggested it was dangerous.

He turned and went to the backroom for another night of warm rum and manhandling drunks. He expected it to be easy. After all, he'd worked security a hundred times or more, he'd even done it before getting himself cleaned up. If a junky could handle it, it should have been a normal enough night.

But it wasn't a normal night, because that night he realized what was happening to the babies.

There hadn't been any serious altercations all night so the muscle was all sequestered in the backroom smoking and playing dominoes while the hookers plied their trade. He hadn't bothered to look up from the table when Tessa brought the woman downstairs and barked orders for the doctor to be called. Even the screams and sobs of labour in the other room had done little to disturb the tap of tiles and shuffle of chits going back and forth across the table.

That was how it worked in Trinidad, in the houses run by the Reds. Life was nothing to be celebrated, it came and went far too easily for such things to matter and he was used to that. When Ortiz left the little room with a bundle of blankets in his arms and stepped into the bathroom X was too busy linking his rows and columns of numbers together to give it much thought. He heard water run, then heard it drain a few minutes later and Ortiz left the bathroom and went out the back door into the alleyway. He carried no bundle, just a backpack, and when he came back half an hour later he didn't even have that.

It wasn't the first time he'd witnessed a birth in this place, with over twenty five prostitutes jammed into a ten-unit apartment such accidents were unavoidable, but it was the first time he'd had enough of himself in hand to realize what was being done. It was also the first time he relapsed, two hours later in that same bathroom with the faucet of the sink still dripping fat drops of lukewarm water.

"Goddamnit X," Ortiz swore when he came downstairs to dismiss them at the end of the night and found him curled up in the bathtub with blood drying in the pit of his elbow. "No pay for you tonight, acere. I'll get Tessa."

He must have blacked out after that, because the next thing he knew that faucet was running again and Tessa was hurling handfuls of water onto his face. It was getting in his mouth and eyes and he sputtered, throwing his hands out to protect himself from her onslaught. For a girl two years younger, and close to fifty pounds lighter, than he was she could look impressively terrifying as she bore down on him with her teeth bared and dragged him out of the tub by his hair. He cried out as his hip hit the bathroom floor and he felt his left leg go numb all the way down to his toes.

"Look at yourself!" Quintessa shrieked, trying to pull him up and make him stand. Dragging him out of the tub had diminished her sudden burst of strength and he sagged at her feet, feeling boneless, like he was melting onto the floor. She let go and he curled up, closing like a clam shell, his eyes shut against the assault of light and noise.

"Look at yourself! Look at yourself!" She kicked him with one small, sneakered foot and X felt it sink into the meat of his side but none of the pain such a blow should have invoked. She screamed, wordless rage, and kicked him harder.

"Tess! QUINTESSA!" Someone pulled her away, he could hear the squeak of rubber soles being dragged across the floor.

He didn't even try to move, he lay there and listened to the rush of the faucet still running, the chug of the drain swallowing water. He curled tighter but he couldn't escape that sound. He clamped his hands over his ears, screwed his eyes closed until bursts of colour bloomed against the darkness and still it remained, etched into his brain like a holy commandment.

He couldn't say how long he lay in purgatory on the bathroom floor like that, but eventually the screaming stopped and he felt arms encircle him. They lifted him off the floor like he was nothing and he felt air move around him as he was carried out of the bathroom and down a flight of stairs. The temperature dropped a couple of degrees; it felt gloriously cool after the stale, sweat-scented air of the crowded backroom above. With surprising tenderness he was set down on a narrow cot, and strong hands brushed the dirty hair off his forehead, touched the jagged scars carved into his left temple, then the curve of his cheekbone where it jutted through his thin skin like a razor.

"Oh X," a soft, sad voice echoed in the darkness around him, "there's a little bit less of you every day. You weren't made for this world."

It was a tender sentiment from the man who had carried such an evil bundle into the night just hours before, but Ortiz was like that. Everyone was like that in Trinidad, and that was something he thought he'd come to accept.

Tessa woke him the next morning with a bed pan full of piss in the face. He sat up, sputtering as it burned his nose and tongue, then leaned over the side of the cot and puked. Luckily some generous soul had left a bucket beside the bed and he got most of it inside. When he was done he slumped back in the puddle of urine on the pillow. He wanted to move, but his bones felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each, he could barely force his chest in and out with each breath.

"No," Tessa's voice was deadly quiet, "oh no. Get up. Get him up!"

His eyes shot open as he felt hands on him and he saw Ortiz, hauling him off the bed.

"I've done everything I can think of for you," she told him as Ortiz dragged him down the hallway. "I'm done. Do you hear me, X? I'm fucking done. I don't know why you torture me like this, but I can't take it anymore."

"The baby," X rasped. His mouth was horrifically dry, and still tasted of his unfortunate wake up call, but he forced it to work.

Tessa stopped and Ortiz had to pull up short to stop from running into her. She turned slowly and fixed him with one hard brown eye.

"What did you say?"

"The baby," X repeated, forcing himself to meet her eyes. "How could you?"

"Don't you dare judge me," she hissed, raising one hand and slapping him across the face with all the strength she could muster. It whipped X's head to the side and made his ears ring. Tears sprang immediately to his eyes and the world wobbled unsteadily. "After what you did in the pits for Arturo? After you worked in here for almost half a year? Don't you DARE!"

"The drugs..."

"You can't blame drugs for everything, X," she sneered at him, like he was a roach she was thinking of stepping on. "Drugs don't cook themselves up and suck themselves into needles and fly at your arms while you try to shoo them away. YOU do them. You do them because you don't have the guts to survive without them, and because you're weak. And I. Am. Done."

They got to the end of the hall, went down a long flight of stairs to the back alley. Tessa stepped to the side and Ortiz tossed him, gently as he could and making sure he landed in a pile of garbage rather than on the hard concrete. X found himself grateful for that, and let out a dry sob as he realized how pathetic that was. He couldn't find the strength to get up.

"I'm sorry," she said as Ortiz headed back inside. "For this, and only this, I really am sorry. No one is going to hire you now, I told Ernesto why I couldn't keep you here and he told everyone else. But I just... I can't do this anymore. If I'm honest... I think you should kill yourself. Just find someone with some pure stock, load up one more needle and go out in the ocean like you like to do. Drowning isn't supposed to be a terrible way, and I bet it wouldn't hurt too much if you were full of drugs. Don't go back to the Pits. That's... that's all I can say."

She turned and he heard the heavy door close behind her. The deadbolts rattled as she locked them and then there was silence, or as close to silence as there ever was in Trinidad. X closed his eyes. He wanted to get up, to wash the stink off of him and wander home to sit down and think rationally about what his options were, maybe even go down to the beach, but he couldn't find the strength to even open his eyes.

The only thing he could do was curl up in the trash, wrapping his arms around himself. His eyes felt dry and itchy behind their lids, he wanted to cry but it had been years since he had found himself capable of that. His eyes stayed dry, so instead he tried to will himself into unconsciousness, into the pavement underneath him or the ether of un-being. He was sick of this place, this life of garbage and sickness.

At least he was alone, he thought, a moment before that stopped being true.