(Defunct)Restless - D

I pulled my mask off as soon as I exited the lift and began my journey back to the office. I trudged to Whitewater Courier, my eyes drifting from one ornate pillar hiding the entryway to the next. Or, at least, they had been ornate at some point. Deep grooves clawed into the ornate limestone, acting as center points for a spread of deep gray as if it were some kind of contamination. 

Two large braziers sat outside of the main entry to the building, dwarfed by the solid metal doors standing wide open. A fairly constant stream of bodies came and went through the doors, whether they be couriers, like me, or customers. A girl dashed past me as I slid into the building’s lobby, nearly knocking us both over. At the last second, she ducked past me as I jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding the collision.

I approached one of the side rooms of the place, entering it to find an office full of people running about with papers stacked high on various desks. One in particular caught my attention: my direct supervisor’s. Jayce looked as though he’d been having a rather bad day.

It was a small desk, like so many others crammed into the room, though he seemed to be of a higher quality than the rest. Maybe it was the wood? It seemed to ooze class, even if the skinny man behind it didn’t in the slightest. His eyes seemed to hang as bags dropped from his eyelids. His white shirt, once pristine, now had several stains on it as if he hadn’t left the office in a couple of days. Knowing him, he probably hadn’t.

A man I didn’t recognize stood across from the desk, flinching back as my supervisor yelled at him, his voice barely hearable over the cacophony of the overcrowded office space. “... last time! By the Pyre you’re so dense! Did your brains rot out with the rest of your teeth?”

The man stuttered, his body shaking as his mouth opened to reveal blackened gums and almost purplish teeth. Probably some kind of drug, though I wasn’t too keen on which one. Never got into all that stuff. “N-n-no s-sir. I-it was an h-honest mistake!”

The frail man, his voice at complete odds with his looks, slammed his hands onto his desk and stood, shouting loud enough I’m sure those outside the office could hear him, “Honest mistake? How in Void did you ‘accidentally’ grab a vase from the Governor’s office? Anyone of the other couriers would’ve murdered to deliver something to Domeside, let alone the Governor’s Palace! You’re fired! Get out of my sight before I have you thrown out!”

The now jobless man tripped over his own feet as he stumbled back, slamming into the ground with a sickening crack. He whimpered as he picked himself up and ran stumbling out the door.  Poor guy...

I took a deep breath and approached Jayce. “Sir. The packages were delivered.”

Jayce sighed, falling back into his chair as he covered his face with one hand, the other reaching for one among the many stacks of papers around the place. “Good job, Jasper. Not too much trouble?” His voice calmed down slightly, though there was still a bit of anger in it.

“No sir. Easy enough deliveries.” I replied, standing at attention across from him. “For being in the undercity, at least.”

“If only everyone else could just do their deliveries and leave without causing trouble for Whitewater Couriers.” Jayce filled something out on a piece of paper, then set it down amidst a different stack. He then reached down into one of his desk’s drawers, pulling free a bundle of red slips. He counted it quickly, far faster than I ever could, and handed over a part of it. “Here’s your pay. Thirty hours this week, so ninety Sparks. Oh, and happy birthday!”

I grabbed the bundle, carefully taking a pouch out from around my neck and stuffing the money into it. “Thank you, sir.” 

“Yeah yeah.” Jayce waved me off, returning to write on a new piece of paper. I didn’t need further prompting as I left the office.

– – –

I returned to my apartment block, catching the scent of sizzling fish as a street vendor hawked his wares across the street. My stomach grumbled, though I turned away from it and entered my apartment building. The elevator didn’t work, because of course it didn’t, forcing me to climb the thirteen sets of stairs up to the apartment. Well, maybe not forcing. I probably would’ve taken the stairs anyway.

I shuffled through the dim halls, several lone bulbs helped by the much brighter lanterns. Ancient centcrete walls, largely porous from ages of shifting weight forcing out imperfections, closed slightly as I walked down the dank hall. I stopped before one door in particular and pulled out my key, sliding it into place. I had to jostle the door around several times, getting the lock into just the right location, before it opened for me.

The door creaked open as I stepped into a dim living space with a radio playing some kind of classical music on the backside of the room. The apartment was a small, one-room space with two beds, a few miscellaneous bits of furniture, and a kitchen all tightly packed together. 

“Jasper!” My ‘brother’, Vayne, called out cheerfully as I entered our apartment. A guilty look crossed his face as he stuffed something under the blanket of his bed.

”Hey, Vayne.” I glanced up at my brother’s light gray eyes–completely different from my dark purple ones– in a subtle agreement not to question whatever he was doing.

I looked away, a weary sigh escaping my lips as I caught my own reflection on our fridge’s reflective surface. Us two brothers looked nothing alike. Whereas I was cursed with scraggly black hair that had a mind of its own, Vayne had a straight mop of lush blonde. Vayne was built like a truck, and I was… not. In the slightest. I liked to think I had a ‘lithe’ build, but that was generous at best. More like a ‘barely enough muscle to move around the city and not die’ type build.

I watched my brother stand up, using his own body as a shield to hide whatever it was he was hiding. Technically speaking, Vayne Nythgale was my adoptive father, but the guy insisted the relationship be that of brothers between us from day one. 

“Good day at work?” He asked, casually pretending nothing happened. As he stepped by me and headed for the small kitchen. 

I shrugged, though he couldn’t see it, and pulled out the dining table and a chair from where they folded into the wall. “Good enough. Got paid… Jayce sent me down to the Undercity, but it was fine.”

My brother’s head flicked back. I could see an ember of anger hiding in his eyes, though he managed to stifle it significantly. He was a medical professional, so he was rather good at hiding his emotions. “Again? I thought he agreed not to send you down there anymore after I talked with him?”

“One of the other Couriers didn’t show up; hasn’t shown up for several days. Jayce needed someone to run some packages down there while he tried to get someone new hired. And you know I’m not officially an employee there, so I can’t exactly say no.” I sighed, rubbing at a spot on my shoulder where the bag weighed down on it. 

“Still, there’s no reason to send a- you down there… look- just- I’m worried about you, you know?” He asked, though it sounded as though he wasn’t expecting an answer as he started pulling out various utensils from around the kitchen.

I shuffled off from the table and laid back on my slightly smaller bed. I also turned down the radio slightly. “Yeah, I know. You making Multi?”

“Nah, I figured I might mix it up…” He glanced back at me for a moment as we shifted topics before grabbing something from the fridge. “You not going to ask me how my day was? I’m hurt.”

“How was your day?” I asked dispassionately as I closed my eyes and laid back fully into the bed. I lazily reached over, grabbing the small stuffed animal I knew was there. The fox had been with me through thick and thin, and by far was the softest thing I owned. I rubbed my hand over its head, wrapping my arms around it.

“Wow, tell me how you really feel, brother dearest. Good enough, I guess. Archmedicus Francis let us off early from the Clinic.” He said easily, though I had a feeling there was more to his words that he wasn’t saying. It was an odd sensation to be sure.

I sat up from bed, pulling out the bundle of Sparks from my pouch as well as the several Stamps I earned. Out of thirty-three deliveries across the Undercity today, nine of them tipped me, leaving me with twelve stamps. ”Really? Isn’t Archmedicus Francis super strict? Why’d he let you off?”

“Uh- no clue. Not that I’m complaining…” He threw something onto a pan that sizzled slightly. Vayne banged on the stove a couple times to get it to work properly, as he usually did. Its surprising how hitting a piece of tech can just fix whatever problem it has.

“Watcha’ cookin’?” I asked as I stuffed the money into a small safe in the cabinet the radio sat on.

 “Food…” He paused for a moment, continuing when I didn’t take the bait. “I’m making a Clo’Rykk dish called Co’Tyzar. It’s supposedly a delicacy… I know how much you love the Clo’Rykk cuisine.” 

I paused for a moment after closing the safe back. I did indeed like the Clo’Rykk Clans’ style of food. It's funny, I’d yet to actually even meet a Clo’Rykk Clansmen in the flesh, or even really see one. The nomadic aliens were a rather reclusive bunch. And yet I loved their food. They had a brilliant grasp of sweet and spicy. It's just that- “Aren’t their ingredients super expensive?”

“A bit, though I mostly swapped them out for some cheaper stuff…” Vayne said as he messed around the kitchen.

“If you say so.”
 “I do. And this recipe came from Medellus Navia herself. I won’t be trying in Vayne to get this one right.” I groaned at the awful pun I’d heard hundreds of times already. Why couldn’t he just go a few minutes without making one? They never stopped.

We talked a bit more, though the conversation inevitably died down as he focused on cooking the Cotzar or whatever it was. I turned the radio back up slightly and changed channels to one playing ‘The New Adventures of Herald BlueSky!’

I lost myself in the entertaining tales of Herald BlueSky and his adventures against the enemies of the republic. All based on the true story, of course. In this episode, he was off to fight the amorphous enemies of humanity, the Xath, using his power to control clouds. I soon dozed as the narrator went on, dramatizing the true story of Herald BlueSky defeating the Xath invasion force mostly by himself.

– – –

”Jasper,” a voice called out to me, shaking my shoulder.

I bolted upright, cold sweat tracing my back as I tried to focus back in. “Wha-“

“Dinner is ready,” Vayne said, heading back off to the kitchen. 

I rubbed my eyes, then joined him at the table. For the first several minutes, we were quiet as we enjoyed the first non-Multi food we’d had in a week and a half. It was delicious, the Clo’Rykk’s method of cooking left the food with a sweet, yet spicy flavor that was hard to replicate.

After we finished eating, Vayne stared off towards the wall, avoiding my eyes. “Hey, what do you think your power would be?”

”If I was Graced?” I asked, a bit of irritation in my voice. I immediately felt bad about it. To be fair though, it was always the same question. Hadn’t heard it in a while, actually. At least, not since I lift the church's school system.

”Yeah.”

Right, like I would ever randomly awaken an ability out of nowhere. No one even knows how people are even picked in the first place. And, knowing my terrible luck, I was probably well-aged out of it. Heralds were Graced in between their fifteenth to seventeenth years, and I was technically well beyond that. 

”Hopefully something like super speed. I could deliver messages much faster that way.” I answered with confidence and cheer, though the latter was more for my brother’s benefit. I hadn’t spent much time actually thinking about it all things considered. Especially considering the Graced rates were less than one percent. “Why?”

Vayne paused, scraping the edge of his plate with his fork. He shifted, resting his chin into his elbow as he looked down at me with his calm eyes. “Just wondering… hey, if you- uh- if you were by yourself for a while, would you be okay?”

“Why’s this even- oh…” My mind raced for a moment as I sat up in my uneven seat. Some pieces started to pull together… The time of year, his inability to meet my eyes, his desperate attempts to hide something under his blanket. Even Vayne being off from work so early. My tongue felt thick, barely working in the back of my mouth. “Draft notice?”

Vayne’s smile took on a pained note as his eyes dropped to the table. “This morning… The Legion’s ship arrived on the edge of the system… It’ll be here in a week.”

Tears instantly welled up in my eyes at the thought of my brother leaving, but I refused to let them fall even as my voice choked up. “D-do you know where?”

”They need medics on the Varin front…” Vayne shrugged, his expression dropping. “At least I’ll be with Heralds though. Trisha, Vox, Bulwark, and even Bramble are on the front. I guess I’ll be in the thick-of-et. Heck, I even heard a rumor that Saint Endless Praise will be there.”

The Varin front? That’s where all the news channels have been focused for the last couple of weeks. Weren’t we losing Varin to the Zo’thir? Sure, it sounded like we were winning through all the coverage. Listening to the several stations and picking out the discrepancies in their broadcasts showed the truth for the discerning citizen.

My heart hammered in my chest as I stared at my older brother. “So will the Zo’thir.”

My brother didn’t reply as the table went silent. It continued to remain silent for a few minutes. Today was supposed- supposed to be a good day… How’d it turn into this? “W-why?” I asked quietly, not expecting an answer.

Vayne didn’t offer one. He just patted me on the shoulder. I opened my mouth to ask him if he could just avoid the draft- then stopped myself. I knew avoiding it was worse than actually just going to fight and die on the battlefield. The Legion wasn’t kind to traitors. “What about me?”

Vayne sighed as he took off his shoes. ”My dad will come stay here with you… he’s not the greatest, but he’ll help out… And I should be back in four years. I’ll give you access to my account at the Crimson Cross too, so don’t worry about money.”

It was a lie… The chances of getting back to your home planet were ever lower than being Graced… My heart burned as he stood up and headed off towards his bed. I almost- almost convinced myself to believe the little white lie.

He returned a moment later with a wrapped present. The wrapping paper had at one point been white, though it was heavily stained now. Small foxes were drawn all over it. “Happy fifteen thousand ish and twelfth birthday, Jasper.”

I half-heartedly chuckled at the joke, the same joke Vayne made on every one of my birthdays since I was first adopted. Since I was first plucked from that accursed pod.

I tore open the wrapping paper of the box, revealing a Slate. It was the same device Herald Morgan used back when I first met her. Two thin sticks that supported a screen in between them.

It felt bitter as I held the Slate’s box, inspecting the model number. It wasn’t the newest one, not by a long shot. Still, it was the type of device only those up in Domeview would have. Most financing stuff went over my head, but I knew we didn’t have this kind of money to spend on fancy things. Where’d he-

Right, probably a draft bonus. A bit of money given to the families in exchange for their children- their parent's- their sibling's- their spouse's lives… it felt rotten. ”T-thanks.” 

"This way we can keep in touch. I heard from old Henry they'll let us record and send messages home as long as we don't spill any government secrets." I could feel Vayne’s eyes peering into me. The moment passed and he clapped a hand on my trembling shoulder. “Now, let's make the most of our time. It’s a church night, but how about we stay up and figure out how your new device works, yeah? And I have the next week off.”

I forced a smile to my lips, though for whose benefit was up in the air. He knew as well as I did what was to come. No point in making his last days on Voth Prime painful though. Mustering all the cheer I could, I replied, proud that my voice didn’t shake in the slightest, “Yeah!”

-- -- --

Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

It's been a bit slow to world build up to this point, but stuff will start to pick up and really kick off in the next chapter or two.