Indentures (H 1.3)

Location: Downtown Archipelago - Car Lyle
Time: late night



Helix,

During the trip with the Sippians to their hangout at Car Lyle, Karo reminded you several times that he could have put a collar and chain on you the way Regal did with Nuport. The ride on the speedboat from The Belly to Car Lyle was loud and choppy. The Sippians pilot a variety of watercraft, mostly what they can plunder and keep running. There are speedboats like the one Bristol and Lucky Strike have. Jet skis are the ride for the brothers Benson and Hedges. And there are a few big houseboats that trawl behind the attack craft where Lucky Strike has some heavy ordinance.

Car Lyle used to be a beautiful and expensive place to live in what was once called Mill District. When the world drowned, the lower five stories were stripped bare and five floors above that became sodden with rot and mold. The Sippians dock at water level, of course, but then Bristol and Karo quickly lead you up the zig-zagging stairs to the Top Three, which are the top three floors of the place. They're spacious and filled with knick-knacks scavenged from all the floors below. The place is lit by barrel fires and the ceilings are blackened from constant smoke. The Sippians use dogs to guard their dren as well as transients who live before the Top Three and keep eyes peeled for trouble and take scraps for their efforts.

Some zokhole is blaring some industrial music over crackly speakers as the Sipps mill about looking for places to sleep and bed partners. There aren't many windows on the level Karo and Bristol bring you to, so it's chilly except near the fires. And smoky near the fires. Choose your poison, Bristol says. Bristol also tells you in very clear terms that nobody can take your body without your word so. That if anyone touches you wrong, tell her and she'll cut them deep. She says the words like it's a covenant - less for your safety and more for her own sense of what's right and good in her world.

A haze of mingled weariness and grief obscures my mind almost as much as the smoke inside Car Lyle obscures my vision. The Sippians may be used to it, but it makes my eyes sting within moments of arriving and I find myself repeating once more the mantra that has echoed in my head with the Whispers since we left the Belly: I don’t want to be here.

I don’t want to be here with the smoke and the dogs and the waters separating me from home. I don’t want to be here with Karo’s taunts and Bristol’s promises and Kiwi’s ghost. I don’t want to be here.

I’m nodding mutely at Bristol’s reassurances - ones I actually believe - and slowly rubbing my arms like I’m making sure they’re still indeed attached to my body when Lucky appears to offer me a choice. It takes me a moment, though, to parse the options. At first, all it sounds like is: do you want to be here, where you don’t want to be, or there, where you don’t want to be?

Then it reforms in my mind into a different shape: here, where you don’t want to be and not the penthouse, or there, where you don’t want to be and a penthouse?

And then again, a dizzying dance of ants reformulating themselves to say: here, with Karo all night, or there, away from him?

Part of me is tempted to stay below and see if Karo tries something stupid enough to see himself at the sticky end of Bristol’s blade, but it’s not a tempting enough prize. Though my mind is made up, I turn to Bristol. "What’s in the penthouse?"

My eyelids flutter as the Whispers whistle and croon about Bristol's crush on Lucky, their stirring an anvil on my mind. I need to go home or they're not going to stop. My hand moves to press against the pain, but I stop when I see the dried blood still staining my skin. I wonder if I will still wear it, even when it's been washed away.

Bristol lumps me in with the "other" slaves so easily that for the first time, I find myself worrying about how this ends. What if they don't let me go when my time is up? How would I stop them from just...keeping me? What could I really do?

"I'm just here to help out for a little while," I tell her, but my words are thin even to my own ears.

I head for the ladder, my limbs leaden, climbing up to what I assume will be my third shift of the night. Or maybe the shift that never ends.

Despite your weariness, there's a kind of comfort in climbing up the thick ropes and cables - it reminds you of younger days when this was your job. Sure, the climb is steady, but the feeling of pulling hand over hand and climbing is welcome enough. But in this liminal space between floors, there's nothing to quieten the Whispers. "Mikkie knows us. We like Mikkie better - he's stronger. He talks back," they tell you.

I stop climbing as the Whispers crystalize into sentences instead of a garbled cacophony. I close my eyes and press my forehead against the back of my knuckles where my hand grips the rope. I don't want to think about Mikkie right now. The Belly. The place Kiwi died.

"Then talk to him," I hiss back, a fraction of me frightened that they will do exactly that. He already knows more about me than I'm comfortable with. "I'm not here for you."

"What if none of this is real and you're still a little one climbing?" A Whisper asks. "This was all one long dream. You never grew up, you're just asleep."

"You're never getting out of here," another Whisper insists. "This is your new home."

You have to climb two stories, which takes almost all your reserves. Your arms are screaming louder than the Whispers are taunting when you finally clamber up on the penthouse floor. This floor is... better than the lower two by far. It's warm and you don't feel a draft. Only a faint smell of smoke. It's quiet up here. Even the Whispers die down as you look around the room and hallways. Lucky Strike is waiting for you.

Here on the penthouse floor, my skin doesn’t prickle with cold and my eyes burn only from weariness and unshed tears. It’s quiet. And when the Whispers halt their barrage of my senses, they leave this hollow void in their place, unnerving and relieving in one, a pummeling taking a hiatus, not surrender.

I hesitate a beat before my legs propel me after Lucky Strike at his invitation, following at a distance that feels safe and almost certainly isn’t. I am a hesitant mouse in a house of cats, and I linger again with indecision in the hall after Lucky disappears into his room. Is this why he brought me here? Was Karo’s hand only a convenient cross on which to nail my freedom?

I bite the inside of my cheek, then bend down to my boot, quickly loosening the laces enough that I can free the scalpel I carry tucked inside. It’s not usually meant for anyone else, but I’ve never been invited? asked? ordered? into a gang leader’s bedroom before either. I tuck the scalpel into the back of the black harness I wear over my dress, then I step through the door.

In better days, this is what this condo entrance looked like:


The hanging light fixtures have been replaced with candles, the kitchen appliances appear to be hooked up to a portable generator, and while the place is much cleaner than below, it's still seen wear over the years - especially the carpet. You find Lucky Strike has stripped off his vest and coat and laid them over a chair. He moves to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water in a big jug and pours it over his hands, grabbing some soap to wash his hands. Bristol said there are cousins here, but you don't see or hear them. It's quiet here and for some reason, The Whispers are, too.

What do you do?

When I was an Ivy, I used to peer into the windows of the highest floors, dreaming of what it would be like to live there. Once I slipped inside a home that had left their balcony door unlocked, and for a few minutes, I was someone. But I wasn't invited there. This might be one of the nicer places I have ever been on invitation.

It isn't glistening and glamorous, but it's easily thrice the size of my own unit and the tile backsplash in the kitchen is mostly intact. I approach carefully, my footsteps too loud without anything to mask them. The silence gnaws at my stomach and I worry that the Whispers went away like I wished, that they're gossipping with Mikkie right now.

I stay on the opposite side of the kitchen island from Lucky, lingering near the wall. I swallow, the sound seeming so loud I think he'll hear it. "I know you didn't kill your mother," I say finally, taking the risk that it might make him angry for the potential reward that it might make him trust me.

I follow Lucky's glance to the sink, wondering if I'm going to find a knife, a bloody nail, a gun waiting as a subtle threat. But it's only a sink, and my hands are still crusted with Kiwi's blood. I move carefully, keeping my back turned away from Lucky so he won't see my own blade tucked away there.

"Neither," I say as I move slowly closer. "Why would Mikkie know about it? Did he do it?" That would explain why Lucky hasn't taken revenge yet. Most people wouldn't even try. I reach for the water, half-expecting him to grab my wrist and stop me, then wash away the blood, the soap foaming pink before it disappears. The corners of my lips twitch downward at the idea of Kiwi disappearing just as swiftly. I rub at some of the blood spatters on my arm and where I feel it tightening the skin on my face, but the tile isn't bright enough to use as a mirror. I imagine once maybe it was.

"Take the gun. Take it, he's a fool! Kill him Kill him Kill him!" a Whisper urges with bloodlust dripping from her tone.

"It's a trick, a trap," another Whisper cautions.

Yet another Whisper murmurs, "It's a dare. Take the dare, Ivygirl. Prove you're tougher than you look."

"Kill him Kill him Kill him" the first Whisper sings in your head.

What do you do?

The momentary stillness after Lucky leaves me looking at his gun is shattered by the storm of Whispers. I'd started to dream they couldn't seek me behind these doors.

I press the back of my fist against my head, closing my eyes tight. "I'm not going to kill him," I whisper back. "They'd throw me down the elevator shaft, or toss me to the Sippians." My attempt to silence the Whispers is no more use than trying to stop a wave. I catch a handful of water while the whole world drowns beyond me. Is it a trick? Is it a dare? Should I answer?

I look to the hall where Lucky disappeared then quickly move over to the weapon, looking at it more closely. I've never fired a gun before, but if Karo can figure it out, I could too.

But I don't think this is a trick or a dare. It's a test.

Hoping I don't regret it later, I pull the scalpel out from my harness and lay it on the counter beside his gun. A silent testimony to what I saw, what I know, what I could have done.

I return to the sink and quickly return to washing as if I never left, bending to scrub again at the blood on my face more thoroughly. I'm sure my legs are stained with it, but I'm not Lucky. I'm not stripping off clothes here and tossing them about like I have nothing to lose. Without even a semblance of defense left on me, I'm exposed enough as it is.

I take a moment and turn my arm, trying to get a look at my elbow where I fell after Lucky threw me to the floor earlier. I haven't dared look yet, though the stinging made me want to. I know the Sippians...no, anyone in this world...would only mock me for even worrying over so insignificant a scrape, but I'm used to working around the fighting pits, not being in them.

Your elbow is covered by an explosion of a large violet and plum bruise with a deep cut in the middle. It makes your whole arm throb looking at it.

My eyebrows pull together, forming a concerned little triangle between them, as I study my elbow. Maybe it's good that I'm here now. I'm not sure I could lift another tray tonight, or even tomorrow.

I flinch at Lucky's reappearance, letting my arm go and quickly drying my hands. I turn to look at the dress, then feel his eyes on me the way you sense a draft on your skin. Suddenly I'm very aware of half his clothes already laying in a pile and regret putting my only weapon beside his gun.

I pick up the pile of yellow fabric. The sunshine feels wrong against my skin. "Where can I change?"