Chapter 9
The Bird
Julia had lost herself, in a moment she couldn't take back. She told herself it was the vodka, Vicious's story, a breaking point that had to be prevented. She could believe all this, but it didn't stop her from the realization, upon waking up next to Vicious's boy-fragile sleeping figure, that this kind of fix would be worse than the break. She cursed, silently, in her head. There was a moment of panic, where she knew with absolute certainty that she would run to the farthest corner of the colonized galaxy before Vicious could open his eyes. Then she knew with absolute certainty that everything had changed, and that she would find a way to take Vicious out of this life. Her revenge on the Syndicate, after all, had been had. Now she could save someone much like herself. Softened by her resolution, she turned to look at Vicious, his sleeping body lithe under the thin sheets. She was about to trace her hand over his skin when she saw a bird in the window. It was a dark bird, and it was a few minutes before she realized it was mechanical. She lifted herself from the bed, naked, and walked towards the window to get a closer look at it. It cocked its head at her, squawked, and flew away into the Martian sunrise.
"Vicious," she said, knowing this was important. She sat by him on the bed. He was awake before she'd moved her hand to his shoulder to rouse him. His eyes went from sharp to gentle upon seeing her. He reached up to take her into his arms and she let him, but managed to say, before being enclosed, "There was a bird watching us from the window. It just flew away. I think it was mechanical." He was out of bed before she even finished the sentence. He pulled her up after him and began to grab their clothing from the floor.
"We need to leave, right now," Vicious whispered urgently, throwing her underwear towards her.
Julia clicked into operation mode immediately, nodding and dressing efficiently. "Did you bring your bike?" she asked.
"I walked," he replied.
"We'll take the car to the Narwhal, then." Dressed, they both ran down a flight of stairs to the garage, where Julia's bright red convertible waiting like a piece of candy. A little part of her thrilled at the absolutely necessary speed she was about to indulge in. She started the garage door up before they seated themselves in the car. In the moment before they took off, she spared him a glance. "Why are we leaving?"
Vicious's jaw was clenched. "He uses that bird as a remote spy and message carrier. I don't think he considers this a good year for me."
Julia knew he was talking about his father and briefly thanked Ares that her car went from 0 to 170 in 1.5 seconds. Vicious lurched back in his seat as Julia, leaning forward in focus and manic enjoyment, darted among the cars, bikes, and assorted hovercrafts as though they were in some kind of an impossibly hard video game. "So you think he wants to kill me?" she shouted past the noise of the wind. Vicious didn't answer, but didn't need to either. "Let him try," she muttered, and the wind tore it from her mouth and hid it from Vicious.
Vicious opened the landing to the hangar on the Narwhal once they were near the huge ship. It had only just touched the ground when Julia drove over it, still going 150, and stopped the car inches from Spike's Swordfish. Vicious hopped out of the car without even opening the door and rushed to the navigation room. The landing was only just closing.
Julia went to wait for Vicious on the deck. She tried to place the plants in her limited botanical knowledge. It was twenty minutes before he entered, looking spent.
"I had to run a security check on the Narwhal," he explained. He's beat me to the punch, before." He bit off a bitter grin. "Good thing we had a speedster on hand."
"Hey," she said softly, running her hand down his arm, "I've got your back."
"With my father out for your blood and everything," Vicious said. He looked miserable. "I should have known better than to even communicate with you, or anyone I didn't want to die."
"Don't worry," she said. "I've handled worse. I handled the collapse of the Komodo branch, didn't I?"
"I can't begin to-" he started to say, but she stopped his words with her mouth. She felt his lips pull back into a smile against her own. There was no more violence left in his response to her. They kissed for a long time. It was almost an apology. Mars was a vanishing circle in the deck's window. They undressed each other with the drunken freedom of people who had only just escaped death and wanted to escape, for a moment, the thought of facing more death. Julia couldn't stop running her legs against his smooth body, and Vicious's hands ran over her own as if he were sculpting her. They moved against each other like two tides running different courses. Vicious ran his lips down her throat and breasts, savoring the taste of her, building up the sensation in his loins slowly. All strategy went out of Julia's head and all her movements were instinct. They were two animals who shared the same brain. Vicious knew when to enter her, the rhythm she required, and they broke into orgasm at the same time. They fell into a sleepy tangle of limbs, watching the stars, and the tiny reminder of Mars's place in the sky.
"Where are we going?" Julia asked.
"To the end of the universe," Vicious answered, and the fear she felt at those words was delicious. They made love again in the room the color of life and death.
* * *
They were laying on the blood-colored pillows, naked and nearly asleep. They had been laying there for hours. Julia was half aware of a thin, annoying alarm, and then of Vicious gently untangling himself from her body and stretching.
"The communicator," he mumbled.
"It's probably Spike or Mao," Julia said sleepily, and suddenly realized that it most definitely wasn't. Vicious turned to her with about the same thought framed in his eyes.
"How could I not have thought about it?" he whispered.
Disturbed, Julia pulled on her clothes while Vicious slipped into a pair of pants. She followed him to the navigation room. She was praying to Ares that the conclusion wasn't as obvious as it seemed. She didn't ask if Vicious's father knew he and Spike were friends. She already knew. The bird.
Once in the navigation room, Vicious motioned for her to stay out of the frame of the projector. He flipped on the audio-visual switch. His fathers face flickered into place on the screen. It was so much like Vicious's. Only terrifying and lost. Julia couldn't find the differences between the planes of their faces to explain it. There were only more age- worn tracks that deepened Mr. Dragon's face into an unsettling mask.
He was breathing, hard. The type of breath one has while having sex or being tortured. "Don't hide her from me, boy. I have a bird's eye view of the two of you leaving. You know what's coming. Now you have to take your medicine."
The view on the screen flickered again, was replaced by a different figure. One with a cloud of green hair bending as much as his arms would allow, having been tied with barbed wire to a cross.
"Mr Spiegal," came Mr. Dragon's voice. "Don't you want to see what your friends look like after they've abandoned you to certain torture and death?"
The head drifted up, slow with pain. It was bruised, but calm. There were other bruises lining his shirtless chest and arms. A strip of skin had been peeled from his chest. It was in the shape of a V. "Don't," Spike managed. "He'll kill us both." Julia turned to Vicious. He was shaking.
Mr. Dragon bent in front of the camera. "Oh, you know I won't, Vicious." The insane, high-pitched giggle Julia had heard the other day started to burble from his lips, but he cut it off. "If you didn't know I kept my word so well I wouldn't be able to control you so well."
"What's the choice?" Vicious whispered.
His father's face darkened. A vein began to pop out from his forehead. "Oh, cut to the chase, will you? I'll have just as much fun with you as my father had with me, boy!" he barked. His face disappeared, once again revealing Spike's figure. A katana appeared from the edge of the screen, and very, very gently, probed out Spike's eye. Spike started to scream. Vicious looked like he would be sick. Julia walked over to him and kneeled down so she was eye level with him. She fixed him with her own resolute stare and squeezed his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. It did the trick. Vicious jerked out of his state and into one of ready and focus. They could get Spike out of this. That much was clear.
Mr Dragon's face reappeared on the screen. "The choice," he muttered. "The choice." He glared at them. "The girl has chosen to appear. Pretty," he said. "Pretty pretty. She will die quickly, Vicious. She will die quickly, or he will die slowly." His eyes flickered right, then left. "The Cathedral, at 20:00." Then the screen was blank.
Something shiften in his face, and Vicious was calm, resolute. Julia was glad for his focus. She began to run stratagems through her head, like it was one of the fights she used to have in the ring. It was strategy, not her physical strength, that had made her the best fighter in Aurora Borealis. Vicious stood, began to walk through the door.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "We should get there as soon as possible. Sooner than he does."
That broke him. Water started to run from the corners of his eyes, but his voice didn't break, as he said, "We're not going back."
Julia understood. She'd misread him. She frowned, nodded, and before he knew it had knocked him unconscious with a remote control. It was a good thing there was an expert in navigations on hand. She settled in the navigator's seat with a sigh and programmed a speedy course back to Mars.
The Bird
Julia had lost herself, in a moment she couldn't take back. She told herself it was the vodka, Vicious's story, a breaking point that had to be prevented. She could believe all this, but it didn't stop her from the realization, upon waking up next to Vicious's boy-fragile sleeping figure, that this kind of fix would be worse than the break. She cursed, silently, in her head. There was a moment of panic, where she knew with absolute certainty that she would run to the farthest corner of the colonized galaxy before Vicious could open his eyes. Then she knew with absolute certainty that everything had changed, and that she would find a way to take Vicious out of this life. Her revenge on the Syndicate, after all, had been had. Now she could save someone much like herself. Softened by her resolution, she turned to look at Vicious, his sleeping body lithe under the thin sheets. She was about to trace her hand over his skin when she saw a bird in the window. It was a dark bird, and it was a few minutes before she realized it was mechanical. She lifted herself from the bed, naked, and walked towards the window to get a closer look at it. It cocked its head at her, squawked, and flew away into the Martian sunrise.
"Vicious," she said, knowing this was important. She sat by him on the bed. He was awake before she'd moved her hand to his shoulder to rouse him. His eyes went from sharp to gentle upon seeing her. He reached up to take her into his arms and she let him, but managed to say, before being enclosed, "There was a bird watching us from the window. It just flew away. I think it was mechanical." He was out of bed before she even finished the sentence. He pulled her up after him and began to grab their clothing from the floor.
"We need to leave, right now," Vicious whispered urgently, throwing her underwear towards her.
Julia clicked into operation mode immediately, nodding and dressing efficiently. "Did you bring your bike?" she asked.
"I walked," he replied.
"We'll take the car to the Narwhal, then." Dressed, they both ran down a flight of stairs to the garage, where Julia's bright red convertible waiting like a piece of candy. A little part of her thrilled at the absolutely necessary speed she was about to indulge in. She started the garage door up before they seated themselves in the car. In the moment before they took off, she spared him a glance. "Why are we leaving?"
Vicious's jaw was clenched. "He uses that bird as a remote spy and message carrier. I don't think he considers this a good year for me."
Julia knew he was talking about his father and briefly thanked Ares that her car went from 0 to 170 in 1.5 seconds. Vicious lurched back in his seat as Julia, leaning forward in focus and manic enjoyment, darted among the cars, bikes, and assorted hovercrafts as though they were in some kind of an impossibly hard video game. "So you think he wants to kill me?" she shouted past the noise of the wind. Vicious didn't answer, but didn't need to either. "Let him try," she muttered, and the wind tore it from her mouth and hid it from Vicious.
Vicious opened the landing to the hangar on the Narwhal once they were near the huge ship. It had only just touched the ground when Julia drove over it, still going 150, and stopped the car inches from Spike's Swordfish. Vicious hopped out of the car without even opening the door and rushed to the navigation room. The landing was only just closing.
Julia went to wait for Vicious on the deck. She tried to place the plants in her limited botanical knowledge. It was twenty minutes before he entered, looking spent.
"I had to run a security check on the Narwhal," he explained. He's beat me to the punch, before." He bit off a bitter grin. "Good thing we had a speedster on hand."
"Hey," she said softly, running her hand down his arm, "I've got your back."
"With my father out for your blood and everything," Vicious said. He looked miserable. "I should have known better than to even communicate with you, or anyone I didn't want to die."
"Don't worry," she said. "I've handled worse. I handled the collapse of the Komodo branch, didn't I?"
"I can't begin to-" he started to say, but she stopped his words with her mouth. She felt his lips pull back into a smile against her own. There was no more violence left in his response to her. They kissed for a long time. It was almost an apology. Mars was a vanishing circle in the deck's window. They undressed each other with the drunken freedom of people who had only just escaped death and wanted to escape, for a moment, the thought of facing more death. Julia couldn't stop running her legs against his smooth body, and Vicious's hands ran over her own as if he were sculpting her. They moved against each other like two tides running different courses. Vicious ran his lips down her throat and breasts, savoring the taste of her, building up the sensation in his loins slowly. All strategy went out of Julia's head and all her movements were instinct. They were two animals who shared the same brain. Vicious knew when to enter her, the rhythm she required, and they broke into orgasm at the same time. They fell into a sleepy tangle of limbs, watching the stars, and the tiny reminder of Mars's place in the sky.
"Where are we going?" Julia asked.
"To the end of the universe," Vicious answered, and the fear she felt at those words was delicious. They made love again in the room the color of life and death.
* * *
They were laying on the blood-colored pillows, naked and nearly asleep. They had been laying there for hours. Julia was half aware of a thin, annoying alarm, and then of Vicious gently untangling himself from her body and stretching.
"The communicator," he mumbled.
"It's probably Spike or Mao," Julia said sleepily, and suddenly realized that it most definitely wasn't. Vicious turned to her with about the same thought framed in his eyes.
"How could I not have thought about it?" he whispered.
Disturbed, Julia pulled on her clothes while Vicious slipped into a pair of pants. She followed him to the navigation room. She was praying to Ares that the conclusion wasn't as obvious as it seemed. She didn't ask if Vicious's father knew he and Spike were friends. She already knew. The bird.
Once in the navigation room, Vicious motioned for her to stay out of the frame of the projector. He flipped on the audio-visual switch. His fathers face flickered into place on the screen. It was so much like Vicious's. Only terrifying and lost. Julia couldn't find the differences between the planes of their faces to explain it. There were only more age- worn tracks that deepened Mr. Dragon's face into an unsettling mask.
He was breathing, hard. The type of breath one has while having sex or being tortured. "Don't hide her from me, boy. I have a bird's eye view of the two of you leaving. You know what's coming. Now you have to take your medicine."
The view on the screen flickered again, was replaced by a different figure. One with a cloud of green hair bending as much as his arms would allow, having been tied with barbed wire to a cross.
"Mr Spiegal," came Mr. Dragon's voice. "Don't you want to see what your friends look like after they've abandoned you to certain torture and death?"
The head drifted up, slow with pain. It was bruised, but calm. There were other bruises lining his shirtless chest and arms. A strip of skin had been peeled from his chest. It was in the shape of a V. "Don't," Spike managed. "He'll kill us both." Julia turned to Vicious. He was shaking.
Mr. Dragon bent in front of the camera. "Oh, you know I won't, Vicious." The insane, high-pitched giggle Julia had heard the other day started to burble from his lips, but he cut it off. "If you didn't know I kept my word so well I wouldn't be able to control you so well."
"What's the choice?" Vicious whispered.
His father's face darkened. A vein began to pop out from his forehead. "Oh, cut to the chase, will you? I'll have just as much fun with you as my father had with me, boy!" he barked. His face disappeared, once again revealing Spike's figure. A katana appeared from the edge of the screen, and very, very gently, probed out Spike's eye. Spike started to scream. Vicious looked like he would be sick. Julia walked over to him and kneeled down so she was eye level with him. She fixed him with her own resolute stare and squeezed his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. It did the trick. Vicious jerked out of his state and into one of ready and focus. They could get Spike out of this. That much was clear.
Mr Dragon's face reappeared on the screen. "The choice," he muttered. "The choice." He glared at them. "The girl has chosen to appear. Pretty," he said. "Pretty pretty. She will die quickly, Vicious. She will die quickly, or he will die slowly." His eyes flickered right, then left. "The Cathedral, at 20:00." Then the screen was blank.
Something shiften in his face, and Vicious was calm, resolute. Julia was glad for his focus. She began to run stratagems through her head, like it was one of the fights she used to have in the ring. It was strategy, not her physical strength, that had made her the best fighter in Aurora Borealis. Vicious stood, began to walk through the door.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "We should get there as soon as possible. Sooner than he does."
That broke him. Water started to run from the corners of his eyes, but his voice didn't break, as he said, "We're not going back."
Julia understood. She'd misread him. She frowned, nodded, and before he knew it had knocked him unconscious with a remote control. It was a good thing there was an expert in navigations on hand. She settled in the navigator's seat with a sigh and programmed a speedy course back to Mars.