3. MAELSTROM

“Hey DJ!” Rook punctuated the two letter name through the air of a second story veranda pub, as he half-ducked to avoid a Toran-styled lantern in his path to the bar. 

Plodding ahead of Cass, he turned his head by degrees. For the first time that night his face was fully visible to Cass at a profile glance. The lantern’s incandescent light splashed red glow on a square-jaw, rough with stubble, and a framing underbite for his other powerful features; a bulbous nose, high cheekbones, and deep-set brown eyes with a protruding brow. 

Rook smirked, as he turned to look at Cass. There was a wildness in his eyes that she didn’t know what to make of. A hunger, like the kind that you see in carnivorous animals at the zoo, who are being taunted with their next meal.

Not feeling comfortable exchanging looks with Rook, Cass turned to DJ, the bartender, who was on the far side of the veranda. He was keeping busy in a sectioned off work area for human bartenders -- there were no fancy mechanical workers in Blackwyrm.

Darting her eyes around the veranda terrace, Cass took stock of empty chairs and tables, realizing there were no customers in the pub. 

Rook stopped just short of the bar, dragging a chair far enough away from its table that his large body could slam rear first into the seat, while still having space left to be facing toward DJ at an angle.

“A bottle of Kirkish single malt, and two glasses.” Rook looked back at Cass, and nodded toward the empty chair on the other side of the table, before whipping out another cig-stick and igniting it, taking a few quick puffs. “And if Fish is back there, get yer arse out here!”

Cass waited for a few seconds, while Rook took a couple deep drags on the cig, and DJ busied himself grabbing the bottle of whiskey. She sighed, dragged her feet to the chair, and plopped into it, almost involuntarily. This is my life now, she reminded herself, swallowing her pride. She knew that she was going to have to get used to doing things she didn't want to, in order to be making real money in this town. Such was the life experience of any member of Chyunda’s forgotten, living a life of poverty.

Before long, a second man came behind the bar, appearing through a swinging door with bright lights flickering on the other side. Fish, Cass gleaned from context.

“Wha’s goin Rook?” the new man asked with a defiant drawl, while busying himself, hand drying a white plate.

Rook took another puff, and shrugged. “Life. It’s goin.” He pivoted his head back to DJ, who was hurrying around the bar with two glasses, one stacked into the other, and a corked bottle of Kirkish. As DJ bent over to place the items on the table, Rook glanced over at Cass and gave a solitary wink from one of those hungry eyes.

As soon as DJ removed his hands from the items, Rook, with lighting precision and speed, slammed his right fist down on the hand that DJ had been holding the two glasses in. Startled as if she were the next of Rook’s prey, Cass jumped in her seat, while spurts of red fountained out of DJ’s hand.

The liquid squirted onto the glasses, Rook’s gloved fist, and around the table. After a few moments, the other three in the room each noticed a serrated hunting knife, impaled through DJ's hand and splintering into the tabletop. Rook removed his grip on the knife, and reached into his coat, rummaging for something. 

DJ, caught in disbelief, worked himself up from a quiver, and began to scream. He pawed at the knife, a feeble attempt to grab it with his free, trembling hand.

Cass felt a growing sensation of quease bubbling up from her diaphragm and into her stomach. It was the sort of feeling one who was intimately familiar with violence and pain would get, just at the thought of violence, let alone the experience of it. Full of anxiety, with flashbacks of memories of trauma. Not memories of the actual trauma, per se, but more like memories of how she felt being a recipient to it. On the one hand, it felt like home. On the other, it was terrifying.

Still rummaging through his coat, Rook pulled out a nine millimetre Carbex, and a quick snap from the gun’s chamber silenced the screaming DJ, who slumped to the floor, still half held up by the knife anchoring his hand to the table. Rook set the gun down on the table, and with a clenched grin puffed on his cig-stick. He pulled the bloodied knife out of DJ’s hand, allowing his body to flop to a rest in the growing pool of his own blood.

Hiding the knife somewhere in his jacket, Rook looked back to Fish. “Let yer Pap’s know we collected this clown’s debt.” Rook spat his cig out into the puddle of blood. The stick extinguished as it landed in the red liquid, accompanied soon by an odour like rancid meat. “An’ also tell yer Pap’s we don’t wanna liquidate him if we don’t have to.”

Rook grabbed the bottle, and yanking the cork out, turned to the bloodied glasses. “S**t.” He placed the two glasses side by side, and filled them up to the brim with the amber liquid. The blood of the dead man swirled in the whiskey, before it settled on a maroon hue. “I’ll take the dirty glasses. Ain’t gonna expect a lady to drink this.” He thudded the partially emptied bottle down in front of Cass, and grabbed one of the glasses, slamming it down his throat in a single gulp, and discarding the emptied glass so that he could start nursing the second. 

He looked over at the bottle and nudged it closer to Cass.

“Right.” Cass reached out with a shaky hand, clamping down on the neck, she took a much needed swig of the bottle. It burned, but she took several gulps of the stuff.

Rook stared patiently across the table at her, waiting for her to place the bottle back down, signifying that she was ready to continue the discussion they’d started in the park. He pointed back across the veranda, gesturing to the other side of the street. “Got a clear lookout from here to the ’Wyse.”

Cass turned her head over her shoulder, looking back across the veranda-terrace to where they came up from, and could make out the neon colours of the club-strip glowing up from street-level. She concentrated on her left eye, and the whirring mechanism began, turning her iris blue, and splashing green-text data across her left field of vision. A red wireframe overlay stretched out, superimposing a three dimensional map to accompany the data. It was a map marked with street names, addresses, owners of buildings. Even data as intimate as the name’s of people walking by, and privacies such as their addresses, and birthdates popped up all along the overlay. 

She concentrated a bit more, and a second overlay grew into being, juxtaposing the simplistic red lines and green text with a vast augmented reality construct. This was the Theatre -- one of the popular AR fantasy universes that coexisted with the entirety of the city of Chyunda. Right down from the replete grubbiness of Blackwyrm, up to the posh sheen of Skyline.

Cass used to spend a lot of time in the Theatre, where her avatar was a more healthy version of herself. In virtual, her thin legs became strong with muscle, her skin had a lively glow, and her asiatic-Toran facial features were accentuated with makeup that she would never use IRL. Clubbing at Blackwyse was a Theatre affair, for many, but judging from the description of the mark, he would not be one of those people. Nevertheless, the two demographics coexisted with each other. And Cass couldn’t go in without the Theatre -- it would be wholly unnatural for her, and she wasn’t about ready to be the Blackwyrm Bandit again if she had concerns about how much she stuck out in a club like the ’Wyse.

Before long, Fish cleaned DJ’s body off of the floor, and closed off access to the veranda pub. Rook threw a wad of cash on the bar to make up for the impossibility of customers. Then, with Cass, moved to another table. The new perch looked out over the club-strip, and had a better view of the ’Wyse, which was halfway down the block. 

In the vert-world of the Theatre, the Blackwyse was much more extravagant than what one would normally find on the rundown Blackwyrm strip. IRL, it was a shoddy affair, done up with neon lighting and a cheap refab exterior. In the Theatre, however, the vert-code was on point. The building was a gleaming skyscraper, with a multistorey sign in red cursive, spelling out ‘The Wyse.’ In Cass’ transparent overlay, the sleek-AR sheen glowed ghostlike over the real brick building, which was not a highrise at all, but rather a repurposed three story factory warehouse.

After a short while, Rook pointed out a tall boy in the line. “That’s him.” 

He didn’t have an avatar, so the real him appeared in the vert-overlay instead; he had dark brown wavy hair, sideswept to show off his side-shave. And he certainly was big and muscular, wearing a sleeveless black tank to show it off. Cass wondered if he was even stronger than the herculean Rook, and what he might do to her if he caught her drugging him.

“Interesting,” Cass mumbled, not quite excited to be looking at her mark. 

The mark also had companions with him; two other well-built men, but not nearly as well-built as him. The three of them were all very grabby to one another. Then, Cass took note that they’d occasionally exchange words with what seemed to be a fourth person in their group. This one was a heavy-set man -- edging on overweight even -- standing nearly as tall as the mark, with crossed arms and a grumpy face. Standoffish, to say the least. 

A chaperone or something? Cass debated.

“Get all the info you need girl,” Rook spat the words out. “Once he’s in there, you’re going in.

Cass played with the vial of Maelstrom in her coat pocket. Thumbing the cap, wondering what it felt like. Was it really that good, that it would throw this guy back off the rails? She felt the itch of desire again. The desire to try it herself, and wipe away here worldly concerns with the narcotic substance.

She focused EYE-ris in on the mark, zooming in for a better look at the data accompanying him. His citizen-ID flashed up onto the overlay, and she started to read it out in a whisper that even if they weren’t alone, only she and Rook would be able to hear. 

“Unregistered Underlow resident. Finnic, Pol.”

Reviews

[Wathanya.5KY3]

Another well-written chapter! I like how you named the bartender DJ. I totally thought he was a disc jockey. Too bad he met his end so suddenly though. It wasn't exactly fighting, but it was action--vividly written action--and I liked it.

Like I mentioned in my review in 2. Rook, making good use of apostrophes in the speeches of these characters would be a good idea. Also, this might be unrelated, but I feel like Rook would say, "A bottle o' Kirkish ..." rather than, "A bottle of Kirkish ..."

One last thing ... I can't seem to shake the feeling that I had already read the name "Finnic" in your first book. A side character, perhaps? Well, I'll probably find out in later chapters. Keep up the good work!

[JT Godin]

Finnic was definitely a side character in Jade and Erk. I've been reworking J&E quite a bit though, and he has way more involvement in the story at this point. You're going to see quite a few of the same characters here, but not Jade or Erk themselves.