agentblack

The rest of the week I spent shuttling between The Administration and the sub levels Inspellen had commandeered. The Administration was aghast at the funds Inspellen was channelling into the project, and the other assets, people and equipment, that he was monopolising.

I preferred assuaging the fears of the Administration to assisting Inspellen in the underworld he commanded. The Administration worked out of airy, plaza like halls, flooded with natural light. Voices echoed and whispered within the domed ceilings and created a gentle cloud of sound like the distant sea.

My conversations with the Administration board members were always pleasant, despite the predictability of their concerns. I tended to remind them gently of Inspellen's excellent track record, and the additional revenue the application of his work always produced.

Assisting Inspellen in the Sublevels was an unpleasant contrast. Inspellen had taken to spending most of his time in the Hub Cell, running various diagnostics and programs, different scenarios, assessing the impact they made to the manipulated dreams the boy had.

He was still delaying revealing the truth about the project to the rest of the teams. I was becoming increasingly adept at ducking the questions about the ultimate aim of their work.

I guessed that Inspellen was postponing the day he revealed the truth until he was sure that the reaction would be favourable.
When he wasn't in the hub cell, he was talking to one of the senior men on the teams, gauging their possible reactions.

The boy in the tank, and Inspellen's talk made me more uncomfortable with each day.
I over heard him asking others in the teams if they believed that there was an alternative to the current system of government that existed at the moment, if subterfuge was ever moral to if it was used to effect lasting and positive change.

It all made me uneasy, but I was unsure of what action I could take. Inspellen's influence over the administration was supreme. If I exposed the true nature of what he was planning, the chances were he could explain it away with the minimum of fuss.

And did I even want to? Was what he was suggesting that outlandish? I wasn't sure. I spent more time in Inspellen's office, musing on my misgivings whilst I stared out over the city. I was spending more and more time at the Institute, avoiding going back to an empty house.

One night I returned home to find a man around my age standing in the hall, with a collection of bags at his feet. He seemed shocked and then embarrassed, and explained to me in that "She just wanted to get her things."

I glanced at the bedroom door and could sense a silence and a stillness in there; someone waiting. The young man explained that I hadn't been answering my phone, and that she had tried to call.

After weeks of unanswered phone messages, the unfairness of those words left me dizzy. I felt lost for a reply, and staggered back out to the street outside. As I left, I muttered a request that they leave the key when they were finished.

Out in the street, I stood in the quiet bustle of people returning from work, street vendors hawking hot food or fruit, and scattering flocks of children shrieking and laughing, waving flags made of gaudy paper, made to look like dragons and mythical birds.

I walked halfway down the street, having decided to find a table at the small caf at the end of the road, before I remembered the time we'd run in there to take shelter from a summer storm. The memory of wet strands of hair clinging to her neck made me flinch, and I turned and walked back up the street, until I realised that I was heading towards the bar we used to go to on Friday nights, to sip strong liquor and listen to the songs played by an old blind guitarist.

I hid my face in my hands for a moment, and fought back the urge to howl. The finality of it all numbed me. I realised that I recognised the man inside from somewhere. A hazy memory, half remembered came to me of a party we had gone to, of her university friends, a quiet nondescript guy my age who had spoken quietly and without much self confidence, laughing nervously through his nose at his own jokes.

I considered briefly storming back inside, kicking down the door, attacking my replacement and throwing them both out into the street.
I wanted her to see me, to acknowledge what she had done, admit her guilt in mistreating me. Realising how much I wanted her approval made me suddenly sick with disgust, and I stormed away up the street, not wanting to still be there, waiting on my own doorstep like a scolded puppy when they had finished.

I called some friends. I wanted to get drunk.


Jalayt was one of my oldest friends from the Institute, and the most unlikely.

He worked in the security teams, the men who patrolled and guarded the grounds, hardfaced and full of professional menace, encased in body armour and loaded with weapons and other paraphernalia of their trade.

He knew the value of delinquent behaviour in easing a broken heart. He raised a posse of us, all the young turks of the Institute, the rowdy young things.
Erst and Gregor, dark curly haired twins who worked in Particle Dynamics, so competitive they could barely speak to each other during working hours.
Ziyad, a polymath working in Theoretical Dimensions and Fluid Mechanics, he'd been working in Plasma Cascades until a month ago, when a divergence of opinion with the senior Academe supervising the theory work had driven him to knock him out.
Constans was notorious within the Institute, his pioneering work in Fractal Theory managed to keep him safe from the frequent scandals that erupted every few months. The most recent was his affair with a research head's daughter.

If they knew anything of the ordeal I'd been through the last few weeks, they didn't speak of it.

We started drinking in a smoky basement bar in the riverside district, found down a street crowded with long empty warehouses. We tumbled from there to a seedy establishment somewhere at the edge of the Old Quarter, velvet wallpaper and garish tiled floors, where toothless old men drank a foul tasting brown spirit that seemed to strip the skin from my throat. Whilst a blind old whore sings mournful songs about forfeited dowries, village vendettas and lost loves, Jalayt tells stories of his time in the military, boneheaded officers and vicious rebels, ambushes and executions, shelled villages and the women that inhabited the shells of their old homes, flint eyed and vengeful, cursing the soldiers for the deaths of their husbands, children, parents.

Then we were back on the streets, following rumours of a party in one of the empty warehouses back in the riverside district.
We shouted after girls, who shouted back. We chased after them, sent them screaming in mock terror. They told us of a club over on Ibrail Square, and we followed them there, Gregor joking and laughing so easily that I suspect he must know these girls from somewhere already. I started talking to one of them, a pretty girl, shorter than me with a wide open face and short black hair.

I told myself I would've got her number, for definite, remembered the way she gripped my arm with tidy little fingers when she laughed at my jokes, but some roustabout boys, flushed with drink and confident of their numbers, threw some challenges at us, more bluster than aggression.

So off we went, squaring up in the street, first pushing and shoving and the bravado of posturing and empty threat and insult, before Jalayt threw the first punch, Jalayt with the heavy brutal shoulders and the scarred knuckles. Then we were in amongst it, shouting and yelling and elbows flying, knees bouncing off ribcages and kicking out from the floor, I span from a nasty punch on the side of my head to see Ziyad, roaring or laughing with one in headlock and Erst sending another flying to fall in the gutter.

And it feels like some sort of redemption, every punch that rattles my skull, bruises my ribs, each elbow that splits my lips or drives the wind from my guts, it will leave a mark. Now my torment is made visible. This black eye? This is the product of every lie you told me. This dislocated finger? This is that last awful phone conversation, my every question met with silence, your only words stilted and cold and telling me nothing. This split eyebrow is the explanation I never got, the words that would've ended my torment of not knowing.
Theses bruises that spread across my ribs, along my back and down my arms? They're every hour that I suffered, wishing you would make my world right and whole again.
You did this to me, You with your heartless neglect.

And just as soon as it started it finishes, and I stand in the street watching the last of them run, whilst Constans jeers and yells after them that River Bow boys ain't shit.

The girls are gone, obviously disgusted at us, and we laugh at what they must think of us.
The night feels like we've past some watershed, and Erst and Gregor takes us down some back alleys to a dusty courtyard away from the main bustle of the night time streets, bright with lights and loud with laughing chatter.

In the day, the courtyard is given shade by the thick green leaves of a fig tree, but now it's lit by a constellation of lights strung amongst its branches. Gregor calls out to the head waiter, who recognises him and yells a greeting. He calls for hot sweet tea whilst we take a seat at one of the solid benches. A few other customers call out or wave to Erst, and he nods and waves back.

The waiter returns with the tea, served in tall glasses, and tuts and laughs at our bruises, Gregor orders quickly and fluently in a language I don't understand, whilst I probe and prod my teeth, checking that they're all still in my head.

Steaming bowls are brought out to us, succulent chunks of dark and spicy meat, sweetened with apricots and dates, along with soft flat bread and steaming plates of white rice.

For a while, the waiter joins us, and I'm content to listen to him and Gregor talk, whilst we eat. We share tumblers of a resinous spirit, that smells sweetly of menthol and pine sap.

Then, we're left alone, our plates lying around whilst we pick at scraps of rice or bread.
I stare at the lights waving in the fig tree, stirred slowly by a warm night breeze.

I sigh and breathe in the night air. It tastes clean and carries the scent of citrus and coriander from our empty dishes.

I feel hollowed out inside. My face aches from the brawl in the street, my knuckles and bruised sides as well, throbbing slightly if I move or knock them, but inside, I feel as though I've been washed through with ice water. The memory of what happened earlier that afternoon, hours earlier but feeling months away, causes no great spasm of emotion as it did before.

I feel something break and come loose inside me, and as it does, I start to think. Clearly now, I begin to consider Inspellen and his scheme, his plan, and its greater ramifications.