Dirty Work: Volume 2

Story Six - The Breaking Storm: Part 1 - 1

Returning home came with all the jubilant celebration of a 0.01% discount off groceries.

Recovery from the beating in Region 76 took its time, but it gave me the space to think. When I was discharged, I stayed at home. I got tougher. I went to the ranges and did some target practice. I began showering three times a day. I scrubbed and worked and burned away any trace of the Xayne I had been before Dirty Work. If the boss was right, and a storm was about to break, I needed to be right there in the present. Being dragged down by memories of a life left behind years ago would only get someone killed.

I got myself a new coat to replace the jacket I'd lost. It had been drenched in the bloody wash for so long that I started to think it was talking to me in the tongues of the dead. This one was a little longer, not quite trench coat length but not far off. It had mean buckles on the front that might as well have had 'don't try me' in big neon letters on them. Best of all was a pair of easy-access holsters woven into the fabric on the inside.

I loaded up the one pocket and caught the train for Region 11.

Life continued around me as I headed for the private hospital. People began to line up for a concert, shops did a thriving trade, and I was assaulted at every opportunity by big holograms offering me halo-chip upgrades, the latest model had been released, a free two software updates, wouldn't I like to try it?

I'd had the one in the side of my head deactivated since before my fateful visit to 76, and was unlikely unless pressed to switch it back on. Some people needed it going to live, get them into the hyper-real, but I couldn't stand it.

I stepped into the hospital and the woman on the desk gave me a look of disgust. Or gave the coat a look of disgust. Maybe it was the look of me in the coat. I'd thought I'd looked tough.

'You look like a moron,' she said as she turned back down and checked her monitor.

'I wanted a change,' I said. 'A fresh start.'

'Why not change your hairstyle or something? Or change sex? Something that works?'

'Does this not do it for me?'

She scoffed. 'Mr Xayne, I've got a daughter who hangs around here quite a bit. Comes and picks me up when my wife's got the kar. So she's seen you when you come to check in on Miss Siala upstairs. If I had met you in that coat the first time you were checked out of here, back when you looked like death brought back by lightning in Blitz Channel, I would have scalded her for mentioning how good she thought you looked.'

I leaned in, passed my Halo-Core to her, and gave my best devil-may-care smile. 'You mean, you didn't scald her?'

She scanned the core and handed it back. 'Mr Xayne, you have very good eyes, and have enough money to be able to afford a mirror, or at least a new pair of eyes should you need them. It would be unprofessional of me to comment any further.'

I gave her a new smile, tapped the side of my nose to indicate how I would honour her professionalism, and took the lift up to Siala's floor.

It had been a while since I'd last been here, but I didn't need a map to find my way back through the corridors. Misery implanted information like that in you very quickly. Doctors in clinical white garb exited rooms quietly with Halo-Cores in hand, tapping away at charts and graphs. Family and friends waited on seats outside, suits nicely cleaned prim and proper. Flowers (real ones?) sat in vases on windowsills. Everything was top of the range here.

And yet still she slumbered.

I knocked quietly on the door to the private room.

'Who is it?'

'It's me.'

Siala might have been an android, for all the tubes and wires and sensors rigged up to her, keeping her alive. Her hair was neatly tucked back, face serene in endless, fiery dream. She breathed in and out, in and out, as calmly as anyone might in a deep, dark sleep. If you didn't know that she hadn't woken in months, were it not for the machinery hooked up to her vital signs, you'd never be able to tell.

The room smelled of tears and stale medicines.

Reyna was perched on the edge of the bed. She stared wistfully at the monitors, watching the heart-rate bleep away incessantly. How it didn't drive her mad, I'll never know. Perhaps it did.

It took a little of my heart every time I had to look at her. The loyal Harpi, waiting for a miracle she knew might never come. Siala might wake in the next five minutes, or, life support and finances dependent, she might pass away with old age decades in the future. There was no way to tell. We could jump across space, fold it around ourselves at the snap of a finger, but when it came to people's brains, we were still children groping around in the dark with nothing but prayers.

'Still nothing?'

Reyna shook her head mechanically. 'You'd know about it if there'd been a change.'

I sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. I could see her little face reflected in the monitor. 'She'll come back. I know she will.'

Reyna sighed. Looked across at Siala, serene in her darkened mind. 'Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to let her go.'

I wanted to say something but held my tongue. Better to let her speak.

'After all this time, I know it sounds stupid. We've come this far, after all. But the thought of her never coming back, to sit here and watch her waste away, trying to keep her fresh for life that won't come back. I don't know if I can take it.'

She bowed her head. Tiny drops of moisture caught the light as they fell.

I put my hand down and she wrapped her little arms around it. She held on for dear life, as if letting go would mean falling into the void.

'There's always hope,' I said to her. 'There's always the chance that it will change.'

'But to hold on just hoping for luck. Is that enough?'

'Sometimes it has to be. We're only alive through luck. Sometimes it's bad luck, and other times it's good. I choose to live through the bad in the knowledge that the good must come somehow. Celestria might be that cruel, but life isn't.'

Reyna wiped her tears on my hand and smiled.

'And besides. She's family. I won't give up on her, even if you do.'

'You're a bastard sometimes, Xayne. You know that?'

I laughed. 'I'm glad it's only sometimes.'

I stood up again. Reyna held onto my hand as long as she could before letting her own drop away.

'I'll be back when I can be,' I said. 'Dirty Work's opening again next week, so I'll be busy with that. But...'

'Just do it,' Reyna said. 'Say hi to everyone for me.'

'I'll march them back here myself to check in on you two. First chance I get. In fact, I'll come back and force you to come back with me. You've not seen outside these walls in months.'

She scoffed. 'You're about as likely to do that as they are to believe that my name doesn't have a 'y' in it.'

'But it does.'

'Only now I changed it. People kept calling me Reyna when my name was Rena, so I changed it.'

'Always trying to make life better for people, aren't you?'

She turned away. 'Only one person's life,' she said. She clambered over the covers and kissed the Androssian's lips. 'Come back to me,' she whispered through a stuck tongue. 'Please. Just for a moment. That's all I want. One more moment.'

I left them in peace.