Chapter VI

‘Uh, sorry if this sounds rude, sir, but you lived here?’

‘At the top.’

The corporal and Morgan stood on the corner of twenty-first precinct, a lavish district of skyscrapers, casinos and lush shopping plazas where the streets were both miraculously clean and dense with people who were engaged in activities of a not-so-legal sort. And in front of the pair of officers, flaunting an almost ostentatious amount of wealth and power, was the newly-renovated high-rise of the Red Dawn gang – the base of operations for notorious mob boss Killian Murphy.

Morgan’s father.

‘At the – if I’m not mistaken, isn’t this Red Dawn’s base? I knew you had connections, lieutenant, but…’

Morgan ventured into the tower lobby, the corporal hot on his heels. Despite the late hour residents milled about the marble reception area; most of them weren’t involved in Red Dawn directly but had distant connections to Joudai underground activity and as such were given exclusive rights to both live on the base and receive the mob’s protection – for a price.

‘You’re going to need to tone it down a bit,’ murmured Morgan into the corporal’s ear as the pair made for the bank of elevators opposite the reception desk.

‘Don’t need to tell me twice,’ she said, her critical gaze locked onto a man leaning on the wall in the corner in a heated conversation on his Glass, a very large automatic firearm as tall as he was propped up beside him.

When the pair made for one of the elevators, the attendant there threw up his newspaper and scrambled to stop them. ‘E-excuse me,’ he wheezed, putting a hand on Morgan’s chest. ‘Do you have ID? I haven’t…’

The attendant squinted. Turned his head this way and that, as though getting a better angle to view Morgan’s face. ‘Do you…live here?’

‘Just a sec.’ Morgan searched his pockets, eventually fishing out an old resident ID five or so years out of date. ‘I did. C’mon, Ben. You remember me.’ Morgan flashed the attendant, Ben, the old battered ID. The man was getting on in years, now in his mid-sixties – he had been the elevator attendant for as long as Morgan could remember – but Morgan didn’t recall Ben’s memory being this abysmal.

Ben squinted at the plastic. Then up at Morgan. His eyes brightened after a moment with recognition. ‘Oh! Killian’s other boy, the cop. The stubble is new. How long’s it been now? Four, five years?

Morgan scratched his beard rather self-consciously. ‘It’s been a while Ben. But I’m a little busy right now. I need to see Killian.’

‘Not bureau business, I hope?’

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ Morgan lied, ducking around the attendant and punching in the code for the penthouse. The keypad flashed red with an angry buzz.

Ben cleared his throat. ‘The code’s been changed since your last visit, son.’

‘Oh. Of course, yeah. Makes sense.’

Ben punched in the correct code, and the number indicator at the top of elevator began to move. ‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ said Ben. ‘Erin was a good man –’

‘Don’t.’

The compulsion was unintentional, but instantaneous and so potent that Ben’s eyes glazed over and his mouth grew slack without Morgan having to say anything else.

‘Lieutenant,’ chided Shalia. She placed her palm on the attendant’s forehead, gold light leaking between her fingers. ‘You can’t just…’

‘I know, I know. It was an accident.’

‘It was so strong even I felt it. You’re…never mind.’

The light came back slowly into Ben’s eyes. He wiped his mouth of saliva and glanced around dazedly. ‘W-wha…? Did I just nod off for a second?’

As Shalia joined Morgan’s side, she frowned, arms crossed.

‘Just for a second Ben,’ Morgan lied once again as the elevator doors opened with a sharp ping.

‘Oh…Well, I’m sorry, son. Nice to see you again!’

Morgan and the corporal boarded the elevator, and as the doors began to close Morgan turned back and waved. ‘You too.’

Soft muzak filled the space. Morgan’s wave became a clenched fist.

‘Lieutenant.’

‘Corporal.’

‘I don’t approve of the way you use coercion on civilians. Particularly without their consent or knowledge. It’s both unethical and cruel, and frankly sociopathic.’

Morgan opened his mouth, then thought better of it. Then opened it again, ‘It’s not intentional all the time –’

“All the time.” Sergeant Crane called you in specifically for that hostage case, so this isn’t a one-time or accidental thing.’

‘I’m using it on behalf of the bureau. Doesn’t, what’s the saying, “the end justify the means”?’

The corporal’s fingers flashed with golden light, just once. ‘Not always. And certainly not when it comes to what is essentially a method of torture.’

‘Torture? C’mon, it isn’t that bad –’

‘What was your full name again, lieutenant?’

The elevator pitched dizzyingly as Morgan turned to face the corporal. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Just answer the question. Sir.’

Morgan shrugged. ‘Morgan Callahan Takashima, but why does that matter –’

‘Morgan, I’d like you to get on all-fours and meow like a cat.’

And so he did. He somehow manoeuvred himself in the tiny space onto hands and knees, opened his mouth and mewed like a newly-born kitten. Despite his mind screaming at his body to stop, his muscles simply would not listen.

Shalia kept her expression blank, but discreetly took out her Glass and snapped a photo. ‘Morgan, you can stop now.’

Morgan let out a tense breath and clambered to his feet. Panting, he said, ‘Point…taken.’

Shalia let a small smile find her lips. ‘I hope you have better control of yourself from now on, sir.’

‘Delete those pics then we’ll see.’

‘That’s not how this negotiation works. I’ll publish them on the team billboard for the whole department to enjoy.’

‘You never told me you could do that mind stuff too.’

Shalia shrugged. ‘You never asked. It’s not something I like to use if I can help it, unlike some others. And I need a full name, middle name too, for it to work effectively.’

The elevator pinged once, the level indicator reading ‘forty-seven’.

‘Alright, alright. I’ll…try harder,’ said Morgan as the doors began to open. ‘But please, keep a level-head while we’re here, yeah?’

‘Please. I’m not you.’

‘Phew, that’s some tone. Aren’t I your superior officer?’

‘We’re not technically on the clock right now,’ goaded the corporal with a close-lipped smile.

The current Red Dawn base was divided across four opulent floors: the fourth from the top suite a storage and training facility, the third a recreational lounge where most business transactions, meetings and gatherings took place, the second a residential area and the first, the top-most penthouse, a state-of-the-art administrative area alongside Killian’s private office.

The pair had arrived on the very top floor, where most of the space was dedicated to an array of occupied computers and people at desks going through formidably large stacks of data. Voices clamoured over the whir of computer fans and keyboard keys, many of the conversation topics of things no bureau officer should ever hear.

Although she was trying to keep her expression blank, Shalia’s amber eyes were nonetheless sparkling, impressed.

‘They’ve been busy,’ noted Morgan, combing for a familiar face. After the collapse of the first Red Dawn building five years prior, the subsequent gang war and Morgan having avoided the place since joining the JNDB, the gang’s ranks had slowly been replaced by members who were complete strangers to him. No doubt Erin would have remembered all their names –

He shook the thought away before it could form.

‘Hey, you!’

A very irate administrator at one of the nearby desks wearing a headset and a fogged-up pair of glasses jumped to his feet. ‘How did –’ His headphone wire grew taut and the man was yanked back to his desk. ‘Stupid, damn, shit –’ After snatching the headset from his head, he surged back to his feet. ‘Are you new…or…’ The man was about Shalia’s height, and as he came closer, he had to crane his neck higher and higher to give Morgan his piercing glare.

‘Is Killian around?’ asked Morgan. He didn’t need the gang posturing right now.

‘The boss? No, he’s out. Why –’

‘Good. I need to speak to Rhiley. Where is he?’

The man frowned. ‘That kid? No way, man. If you got an invitation or something, maybe. Or,’ he gave a slow, honeyed smile, ‘you could throw a cen my way then maybe we’ll see.’

Shalia elbowed Morgan in the ribs. It wasn’t a light blow. ‘Don’t do it.’

Morgan rubbed his side. ‘Really? Fine.’ He pushed up his right sleeve, revealing the Tape bracer beneath. It was technically illegal to have it hidden or obscured, but it wasn’t as though he was going to be arrested for keeping it hidden. Perks of the job.

The man paled. ‘You ah, you’re like him, then.’

Morgan rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah. Sure. Now will you take me to him?’

The man nodded without a word and led the pair down a hallway to the left that was separate from the main bank of computers and noise. He led them to a row of private offices, their interiors obscured by frosted glass. Morgan didn’t recognise the names on the plaques adorning the doors until the second-last office: ‘Rhiley Takashima’. The largest office right at the end of the hallway and currently shut tight belonged to Morgan’s father.

Even through the opaque glass, Rhiley’s office was different from the others – pitch-black, the only light the ambient glow from computer monitors and TV screens.

The irate man knocked lightly on the door. ‘Uh, hey kid? You got a visitor. A Tape.’

‘Tape?’ came a distracted shout from inside the room. ‘Let ‘em in I guess?’

Morgan didn’t even see Rhiley at first. Floor-to-ceiling, the room was warm with the whirring of an insane amount of computers and screens. Rhiley was seated at a low desk hidden behind the three largest monitors in the room and those were obscured by towers of empty energy drink cans and food wrappers.

‘Why would a Tape be here…?’ wondered Rhiley as he peered around his desk. ‘Oh.’

Rhiley got to his feet in a stretch. Morgan was taken aback by his height – he was almost as tall as he was. His sandy blond hair was long and in disarray and he wore what could generously be described as sweats.

When the administrator didn’t immediately leave, Rhiley gave him a piercing, dismissive glare, one eye lavender the other a wicked scarlet. ‘You can leave now.’

The admin gave a splutter of a farewell and hurried down the hall.

‘You treat ‘em all like that you’re not gonna have many friends,’ Morgan pointed out.

‘S’not my fault he doesn’t know social cues. And anyway, Tapes aren’t really welcome around here.’

Rhiley gestured the pair inside to a couple of spare desk chairs, sparing a curious glance for the corporal who was far too occupied cataloguing the tech that surrounded them.

Morgan took a seat. ‘Wonder why that could be.’

‘I got an inkling. Who’s your friend?’

Shalia blinked, visibly returning to the conversation. ‘My name’s Shalia. You’re Rhiley, I presume? Your name was on the door.’

Rhiley laughed. ‘Not my idea, trust me.’ He took an energy drink from some unseen cooler near the bottom of his desk and cracked it open. ‘Drinks?’

Shalia politely declined, but Morgan took the tangy stuff gratefully.

‘I’m guessing,’ said Rhiley, taking a sip of his soda. ‘That you came here because you wanted something. You wouldn’t have come otherwise, yeah?’

‘That’s not – okay. Maybe. Yes. Well, I didn’t think this was a thing for over the communicator.’

‘Yuh-uh.’ And why’d you bring her along? Rhiley voiced his thoughts loudly enough for Morgan to hear.

Morgan startled at the unexpected volume. ‘The thing is. This is my partner at the bureau, and we’re currently working on a case that we don’t have any leads on. Apart from one, anyway. I don’t like that one though.’

Rhiley peered at him from around his can. ‘They think you did it, don’t they?’

‘Could you please just ask around for someone with – with similar abilities to mine?’

“Ask around” huh. I think I have an idea. You don’t mean someone that’s necessarily a Vorvintti, do you?’

‘No. Just similarities will do.’

Rhiley dragged his chair closer to the desk and typed furiously at the keys. One of the monitors on the wall behind him on the wall flickered with incoming data. ‘Recently,’ he explained as the image of a nondescript entrance to an underground bar came on screen, the sign above the door neon pink. ‘There’s been a new fighter at Reggie’s.’

‘The illegal fighting ring?’ said the corporal.

Rhiley blinked at her, amused. ‘Yes. Most fighting rings are, last time I checked, illegal. There’s been a new fighter that’s been – straight up? – murdering the competition. And I mean like, actual murder. As in he burns them alive.’

‘Does this fighter have a name?’ asked Shalia.

‘Hmm.’ He tapped away at his keys. ‘They call him Red Wrath – dumb name, to be honest, but I’m not a ring announcer. Speaking of, you should probably talk to the guy that’s currently arranging the matches. He’d probably be able to tell you more.’

Morgan tapped his chin in thought. ‘Reggie’s…he moved, didn’t he?’

‘Did indeed.’ Rhiley rummaged around with a printer on a small table to his left and handed the sheet of paper it spat out over to Morgan. A simple address was printed on the top, somewhere in thirty-third. ‘But lucky for you I know just about everything.’

Morgan folded the sheet of paper and tucked it away in his jacket. ‘Well, I guess we’ll scope out the place. You’re more than welcome to get off your lazy ass and come with.’

‘What? Right now?’ Rhiley yawned, fangs catching the monitor light. ‘Nah. I’m good. Super busy, and all.’

‘You have an impressive set-up,’ the corporal remarked, getting to her feet. ‘For a criminal mastermind.’

Rhiley genuinely laughed. ‘Why, thank you. If you need me to find easily-searchable addresses next time, I’m your guy.’

‘Alright, please,’ Morgan groaned. ‘Corporal, you mind waiting outside for sec?’

She gave him a curious look. ‘Yes sir.’

Once Shalia left, Rhiley smirked, ‘She called you “sir’.’

‘And? I’m her superior officer.’

Rhiley shrugged. ‘Whatever, man. Did you need something else, or what?’

Morgan peered around the empty drink cans and food packaging. ‘I get that you’re a teenager and all, but this is…well…you need to eat better. You’re gonna’ make me cry.’

Instead of smiling and being dismissive, Rhiley frowned instead. ‘Soda and chips aren’t going to kill me, Morg. That’s something for humans to worry about. Not me, and definitely, definitely not you.’

‘I know, it’s just…’ He readjusted his glasses. ‘I don’t know. I’m – I don’t know. Worried, I think.’

Rhiley’s thoughts spoke the words he wouldn’t dare say aloud: Humans all die eventually. It’s what makes them human.

A dull kind of ache started up in his chest. ‘Never mind. Don’t worry about it, I’m sure it’s nothing.’

Rhiley’s scowl deepened. ‘That just makes me worry more.’ He was running his fingers over his throat absently, likely unaware he was even doing it.

That dull ache grew stronger. It was a strange, dragging kind of black sadness that threatened to suck in Morgan’s very soul – then it was gone. He pulled back his jacket sleeve up to his forearm and presented his wrist on the desk. It was the same arm he had just reattached two weeks prior; the flesh there crawled.

It was an unspoken signal. Rhiley and Morgan had lived together for quite a while before Rhiley had moved in with Red Dawn, and they had developed a kind of unspoken form of communication only close family members understood. Family, and monsters.

Rhiley gave Morgan an apologetic smile as he leaned in and took Morgan’s wrist – and those needle-like fangs sunk into skin.

‘You okay sir?’ asked Shalia as the elevator trundled slowly to the ground floor. ‘You’re paler than usual.’

Morgan rubbed his wrist, where the remains of the twin bite marks were now just two spots of angry pink. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll need to stop by my apartment for something first, then we can head over to Reggie’s. If that’s okay with you. I know you don’t usually work this late.’

‘This is nothing. We need to work fast to catch this killer. More will die if we don’t work quickly.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Shalia chewed on a fingernail, deep in thought. ‘Just a feeling I have.’

Morgan’s current apartment was a roomy loft space on sixteenth, nestled amongst a sprawl of high-rise buildings that bordered the District of Bones on its east flank. The vast cemetery could not be seen from the long loft windows that looked out instead on the tireless, densely-packed metropolis of seventh and first, the JNDB main building a looming colossus in the distance.

Rain drummed softly on the windows and roof as Morgan led the corporal inside. ‘Coffee? Tea?’ he asked.

‘Coffee, please. Black, no sugar.’ Shalia placed her rain-sodden jacket on a hook by the door. Her inquisitive eyes caught a row of picture frames by the bowl where Morgan kept his keys – the only pictures to be found in the entire house. She wandered from one picture to the next, her fingers moving over the people in each one. She was silent until the last picture frame, which she picked up to examine more closely.

Morgan stood at the sink, pouring hot water into the kettle. The heat felt good on his skin. ‘My brother,’ he said without turning around.

Shalia quickly put the picture down. ‘He looks like you,’ she offered.

‘He did.’

She pursed her lips, as though holding the words back before they could be given life.

The kettle found its base and began to boil. Morgan rummaged around in the fridge and cupboards, gathering this and that as the silence stretched on.

Silence was the best pressure to tease out information, or so they say. ‘He died.’ Morgan’s voice was very small. ‘Well. Not exactly. Maybe – I don’t know.’

The corporal said nothing. She took a seat at the kitchen table and waited expectantly, towing the line of curiosity and condolence.

‘It’s hard to explain. I don’t really understand it myself.’ The kettle let out its tell-tale whistle. Morgan gave the steaming mug to Shalia; she cupped the mug in her hands but didn’t take a sip, allowing the heat to thaw out the cold in her fingers.

‘There was a big fight – a war, really. Kids, adults, soldiers. It’s not something you want to see. That kind of shit, it really fucks you up as a person.’ He pulled a metallic cannister from the refrigerator and, deciding against a clear jug, went for a plastic one instead and poured the cannister’s contents inside, after which the whole thing went into the microwave. ‘Anyway, my brother was a big deal in that war. He – he won the whole damn thing. I know it sounds crazy, but if you’d been there, you’d get what I mean. Godly stuff. Like out of a movie.’ Morgan shook his head. ‘I’m not good at telling stories, corporal. The thing is, whatever he did to win that war, it made him sick inside. Like poison.’ Morgan fished out a water bottle from beneath the sink and the jug from the microwave. ‘So, we didn’t have much else to do…’

He couldn’t say it. That it was either they kill Erin – or Erin kill them all, one by one. ‘We put him away. Sealed him away, I mean.’

Shalia offered him a quizzical glance but didn’t interrupt.

‘I don’t know. Magic, man. It doesn’t make any sense to me. They put him in a sword. And then we put the sword away until we could figure out how to get the poison out of him. But…’

‘This sword,’ Shalia interrupted, her curiosity getting the better of her. ‘It wasn’t the same one that used to sit at the top of a tower at the Parlour, by chance?’

Morgan nearly dropped the jug. ‘How do you…?’

‘I’m a Parlour graduate. Or, I was. Before it disappeared.’ She took an infuriatingly long sip of her coffee before continuing. ‘Not many of the students there could see the tower. It had a powerful perception barrier cast over it. Me and a handful of other first-years were the only ones who could get near it. We all had a go pulling that sword from the stone…’ She glanced away from Morgan’s gaze apologetically. ‘Who could have known…’

Morgan joined the corporal, taking a long, ravenous few gulps from the bottle. ‘Don’t worry about it. But if you know about the place then you know. What happened to my brother, I mean. You could probably explain it to me – I still don’t really get it.’

Shalia took another sip as she gathered her thoughts. ‘I know about the war you’re talking about. It happened after I graduated, but I’m an alum of the school so I like to keep in touch.’

‘Of course you are.’

Shalia’s lips hinted at a smile before it disappeared with her next few words. ‘The school collapsed into a dimensional wormhole that was there because of the Kelaani invasion. The magic used for the other side to get here during the war was unstable – it left traces behind, traces that opened up when the other side tried to come back through again.’

‘Again?’

‘Yes, again. The connection was too unstable the second time. Something went wrong and the whole school – and the place on the other side – collapsed together. Nothing but rubble was left behind.’

‘I know about that, at least.’ Morgan had searched high and low through that rubble, heedless of the officials warning him of air contaminates and toxins, for a hint of the sword that housed his brother. But there had been nothing. Nothing but ruins and the dead. He had even asked his cousin, Ren, for a way to get to that other place – Runeja, Ren had called it. It was where his cousin had been originally from before arriving in Joudai. Ren had said that whatever happened to the Parlour also collapsed the bridge that joined the two planes together. Even he could never return home.

‘I’ll never know,’ Morgan finished, taking another swig. ‘I’ll never be able to find out if he got out of that alright, and I think that’s the worst part of it all.’ The darkness that crept at the centre of his abdomen threatened to pull him under once again, and Morgan finished the bottle of blood in an attempt to drown the pain there.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Shalia. She meant it too.

‘Thank you. I should’ve – yeah.’ Morgan got up, taking the corporal’s empty mug with him, and refilled the jug with blood from yet another cannister from the fridge. When he dabbed at his eyes with a dish towel, his back to the corporal, the fabric came away red.

‘If it’s – well. There’s something I’d like to ask you, if that’s okay.’ Morgan came back to the table after a moment with another filled bottle. Shalia turned down the offer for another mug of coffee.

‘Ask away lieutenant. I have a hunch I know what you’re going to ask me, anyway.’

‘Why do you keep your wings hidden?’

Shalia brought a hand up to her shoulder, fingers finding the ridges of butterfly’s wings strapped down beneath the fabric of her shirt. Morgan had only seen them once in the last two weeks of the corporal’s assignment to his department, when the pair had changed before a sting operation and Shalia had stripped down to her under things without so much as a second glance. Even strapped down with a set of leather and buckles that kept them close to her torso, they were striking: lime green shot through with violet, and an incandescent yellow glow that travelled from the base where the wings met skin to the glassy tips. It had been a shame to see them disappear beneath her shirt and trousers then, and a shame ever since to know that there they remained.

‘I guess…’ she began. ‘I don’t like to stand out. I’m just a cog amongst many, moving the machine along. I shouldn’t have an advantage above others. Especially one that I can exploit over them. It wouldn’t be fair. I want to do things by my own strength and ability, not ones given to me when I was born.’

Morgan took a long pull from his bottle, turning over replies in his head likes stones and examining their undersides. ‘I think, corporal, that our differences should be something to celebrate, not hide away.’

She shook her head. ‘You’d say something like that. You use your gifts without considering the consequences of what they do.’

A dozen faces, their eyes widened with terror and mouths agape by agony.

Skin charred by a great, savage heat.

The smell of burning flesh and fear and blood.

Morgan’s gut churned with disgust, the past a very present hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not the same. Wings aren’t even in the same league as being able to burn people alive. You have a choice, at least, with what you use them for. My “gift”,’ he flexed his fingers and the veins there gave a responsive pulse of orange light, ‘there’s no doubt what it’s for.’

The corporal crossed her arms over her chest. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Haltingly, ‘I can’t stand people staring at me. My hair, my eyes, my skin – I can’t stand it. It feels like dirt, or something slimy, when they look at me. Like there’s something wrong with me. My wings…’ She shuddered. ‘How else can I cope?’

Morgan didn’t have an answer for that one. ‘Oh.’

The silence stretched on.

The charged atmosphere dragged the words out of the corporal’s mouth: ‘Anyway. That’s out of the way now. If you’re done, we should get going.’

‘Y-yeah. Just give me five minutes.’

He downed his bottle and one more after that and grabbed a change of clothes, and the pair ventured back out into the dreary winter night.