CHAPTER ONE
“Wind makes her hair sway slightly. Certain strands of the black locks curl upward, forming into sickle-shapes. The white dress forms to her shape, accentuated by her ornate white gloves. Her eyes are focused on you, glaring. Their purple irises pierce your insides, grasping the haunted heart within your chest. She wants you to do the impossible around her: say something when around her. You feel your throat dry out and begin to burn. Flames seem have ignited in your stomach, and are now licking the back of your tongue. They so wish to be free of your mouth, but they cannot even reach the tip of your tongue. The words are simply not there. Only emotion. Only raw humanity. Only relentless compassion.”
“Yu, I swear, if you don’t stop narrating, I will find a way to kill you,” I threaten, quite emptily.
“Thousands have tried, thousands have failed. A thousand more will fail before you ever come close to killing me,” Yu states, quite emptily.
I grunt in defiance, for I know he’s right. There’s a reason why no sky demon has ever died. How can you kill the sky? Swinging a sword at it won’t do shit. Firing a laser will only make it giggle. And that giggle is Yu.
“And just for the record, she didn’t glare at me, she simply glanced. There’s a difference, especially since we’re just strangers,” I continue.
“I counted, and two seconds of prolonged eye contact is not a glance. It’s a glare. She wanted you to talk to her.”
“But, why would she?”
“Why not? You’re a supple young man. You’ve got good bones— the last time I checked. Did you drink your milk this morning?”
“Yea— wait, what? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Why, everything, Danko! How can you grow into an adult without calcium for your bones!” Yu jokes, holding his clawed hand above my head.
“Hey! Don’t call me that in public! My ryū name is strictly forbidden. You should know that most of all. And I resent that jab at my height! Look who’s talking, Mr. Two-Foot-Two!” I vent.
“Shut up!”
“Don’t tell me to shut— “
“Shut up, cuz she’s coming!”
I freeze in place and draw my attention away from the blue imp on my shoulder. Looking forward, I see the girl walking towards me. She’s got an intense look in her eye, like she’s trying to burn through my skull with her gaze. I’m slightly frightened, and I feel a fight-or-flight sensation arise.
“Cyde, right?” she asks matter-of-factly.
I gape at her, a bit taken aback. Mustering courage, I stammer, “Y-yes. That’s me. And this is Y— “
“Yeah, Yu, I know Yu.” She interrupts with a slight inflection of annoyance.
Yu retorts, “Wait, you know Yu, or you know you?” pointing at me.
“Both of you, gods damn it! Cyde and Yu, that pair of jackasses that trashed my sister’s house last Saturday.”
“That was your sister’s house? Damn, that place was fly, and it’s not because it was floating in the clouds. I loved all those retro games, from Halo 17 to Call of Duty 23,” Yu smirks.
“What? What kind of game is Halo or Call of Duty?” she’s annoyed now.
“Oh, the audience will know what I’m talking about,” Yu winks to no one in particular.
She looks to me for answers, but I have as many questions as she does. I have for years. “He’s fucking with you—take it as a compliment. But yes, that was us at your sister’s party. And I’m sure we’re both very sorry,” I explain, nudging Yu.
“Sure, of course! I give you a full apology, demon’s honor!” Yu bows, quite theatrically.
She sighs. “Just… whatever. It was only a pain getting the servos to clean up the mess. That’s the last time she’ll invite a fire-breather. All those burnt flowers…”
“Oh, the little guy can’t help it. It’s his nature to be chaotic,” I manage to say smoothly. I’m feeling my game coming back.
“I resent that jab at my height,” Yu grunts, baring his teeth.
“Love you too, little buddy,” I laugh, noogy-ing his head.
“Not little. Just vertically challenged,” mumbles Yu.
A silence befalls the flight-stone transporter. I hate silences. Makes me itch. The girl before me is still looking at me with those intense eyes as if she’s trying to pull me apart atom by atom. There’s only three other men sitting on this transporter, each of them side by side in black maintenance suits, eyes cast down. Everything about this moment is unnerving. My gut is telling me to get the fuck out, but I’m frozen in this woman’s glare.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Cassandra. Pleased to meet you. Now get the fuck outta—” she rattles off, but is interrupted by a man suddenly grabbing her by the hair, causing her to scream. The men in black maintenance suits have surrounded us, wrestling with Cassandra. I lunge forward to intervene, only to be met with a swift fist to the face. The sucker punch catches me off guard, knocking me to the ground. In my daze, I see Cassandra being carried, unconscious, onto a servoglyder. The dragonfly-like vehicle charges its engines, flapping its quadruple twin wings.
“Whatever you’re thinking, Danko,” Yu chimes in, “don’t do it.”
Without a second thought, I run forward, leap off the transporter and catch the servoglyder’s tailfin, right before it takes off.
“What did I just say?!” Yu yells over the buzz of the glyder’s wings.
Ignoring him, I climb up the glyder and balance myself on its tail. There’s only enough room for four people on the glyder, so someone has to go. I choose thug number two on the left, tossing him off the glyder after a short scuffle. His screams disappear in between the floating buildings of Tassuru, the City in the Clouds. Thug number three is busy flying the glyder while thug number one, staring me down, has a hold of Cassandra. He has a knife at her throat, her body limp in his arms. “Fuck off, Samaritan! You’re in way over your head!” thug one threatens.
“Why are we trying to save this girl again, who is a complete stranger I might add?” Yu yells over the buffeting wind.
“Yu.”
“Yes?”
“Do the thing.”
Yu sighs, “Fine,” and snaps his fingers. The snap echoes unnaturally, slowing everything down. The servoglyder’s wings go from flapping seventy flaps per second to one flap per hour. Thug one and thug two are practically immobile. Only Yu and I are at “normal” speed. Time is at near standstill.
“Alright, you’ve got one minute. Make it count,” Yu states.
First, I remove the knife from thug one’s hand and slide it into his heart. I lay Cassandra down on the glyder’s narrow platform and then move onto the pilot, thug two. I remove his person from the wheel and toss his rigid body off the glyder. It’s always a bit funny to watch someone fall in slow motion. I complete all of this with roughly thirty seconds to spare.
“What a pity. I was going to use my time-stop to fuck with people’s hats and shoes later today. Always a pleasure to see a person’s face when they suddenly realize they’re wearing another person’s shoes,” Yu grins.
“Well, if you can only use it once a day, it might as well be for a good cause,” I reply.
“That ‘good cause’ being whatever your other head thinks is right?”
“Hey, I’m being a good Samaritan, like Master Silver always stresses. ‘When one is in need, they need you,’ is almost his mantra. The whole hero-code-thing he’s got going for him.”
“You know for a fact that we don’t see eye to eye. Silver wouldn’t know fun if it slapped him in the face and cooked him breakfast.”
“Whatever. We’ve got five seconds left anyways. I’m getting on the wheel.”
Gradually, everything returned to normal speed. The floating buildings of mossy stone, steel, and glass continued their methodical movements, glyder traffic resumed its breakneck speed, and the various sky-born fauna began frolicking through the clouds again. I steered the glyder into a remote lane between buildings, parking it in mid-air.
Yu slaps Cassandra’s face gently. “Wakey-wakey Miss Cassandra! Your heroes need a thank you from their damsel-in-distress!”
Cassandra moans, “What the… How did… wait, where are my gloves?!” A look of fear pales her face. Looking over to the limp and bloody body of thug one, I see the pair of pearly-white gloves clutched in his fist.
“Grab those for her, Yu,” I command, pointing at the gloves.
The imp flies over to the body and retrieves the gloves. The moment he returns them to Cassandra, she sighs heavily, closes her eyes and holds the pair to her chest.
“What’s so special about those gloves?” I question, stepping over to Cassandra.
She opens her eyes. She makes a gesture as if to answer, but her gaze turns from me to behind me, and she utters, “Fuck.”
Turning around, I find what she’s looking at. Yu hops onto my shoulder, and we both simultaneously utter, “Fuck.”
Seven black battleglyders are levitating in formation behind us, their twin-front-facing turrets aimed on our simple servoglyder. The pilots and passengers of each are wearing the same maintenance uniforms that the three thugs were wearing. They’re blocking the entire lane.
“What did you do?!” Yu yells at Cassandra.
“It’s not what I did, it’s what I have. Cyde—get on the wheel and gun it,” she commands firmly.
I nod, leap to the controls and thrust them forward. I brake not soon after for another squad of battleglyders have arrived at the other end of the lane in front of us. A particularly important looking thug turns on a megaphone and blasts, “Give us the girl or we’ll push your shit in.”
Cassandra looks to me for an action, and I give her one. “Hold onto something,” I say, switching on the foot-buckles. The floor of the glyder flashes blue for a second, indicating that my feet, Cassandra’s feet, and Yu’s right foot, left elbow, and rear end (don’t ask why, he’s just sitting weird) are all cemented to the floor through technomagic. Cassandra grasps a railing, hands me the gloves and nods. Taking a deep breath, I squeeze the gloves and cut the engines. The wings cease flapping, and we fall out of the sky. It is at this moment that I wake up.
My vision is blurry as I open my eyes to the fluorescent light flickering in my living quarters. I have a headache. The pale blue mattress I lay on is barely wider than the width of my shoulders. The only other things in the small room is a full body mirror and a pillow. The pillow is comfortable, a gift from last year’s birthday. A reminder that my mom still cares, even if I am her 278th child. Today is my 21st birthday, so I begin to wonder if she’ll send me another gift this year, but my wondering ends when I remember the dream I just had. A dream. I had a dream. As Excavation Unit G-4711, I am not supposed to dream. I am a cybernetic organism bred and designed to mine uranium and obey orders, not have dreams of impossible floating cities and magic-blue imps and strange girls.
It must be a glitch, I think to myself. Something wrong with my sleep function or sense nodules. I sit up in bed and shake my aching head. Looking in the mirror across the room, I see myself in the standard sitting posture of a Unit, straight and unflinching. Physically I am functioning fine, but my headache remains. Such a headache is not uncommon among Excavation Units as we are constantly battling cancer we contracted from the radioactive materials we work with. The treatment for cancer is expensive, let alone the cure for it. A Unit like me can only afford replacements—trading in cancerous, organic body parts for machine parts. I already replaced my left leg, right foot, both hands, both lungs, and right eye with cybernetics. If the cancer has spread to my brain, then that means I’ll have to commit reset—replacing my brain, the source of all my humanity, with a computer. I look into the mirror again, studying the black tattoo-wire lines running from my pale cybernetic-eye across my bald head and to the main port at the back of my head. My only human eye has a green iris, the other is gray. If I do have brain cancer, I’ll die. But if I commit reset, I die too.
I shake the thought from my mind. Work will begin soon. I stand up, already dressed. That dream must have been a glitch, I think, but as the thought passes through my mind, I realize I am holding something. I bring my clutched hand up to eye level to see what I’m holding: Cassandra’s white gloves.
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