Erid was throwing knives at a target, which was really just a splintered board of wood pinned to a strut in the tin shed of an old warehouse he was based in for the moment. There wasn’t much point to throwing things in the end. There wasn’t any point to guns either. What use were projectiles when the people you fought could stop bullets in midair, even people with only a natural field like his could do that with enough training. Spikes however, had effectively prevented the development of any other weapons. Anybody who was worth shooting for a reason other than passion had a field in operation almost continuously. It didn’t matter how fast a bullet was when it was up against a sensory field’s near-immediacy. They often had circuits built in for such approaches, too – not least because of fear of Erid’s people. He threw another knife, and it flew out and thunked into the wooden plank, adding another lot of splinters to the chewed up board. He sighed as he heard the clattering of something in the alley behind the warehouse. It seemed they had found his hide-out. He began to pack his meagre belongings into his rucksack, not rushing at all, and then went to the plank and extricated his knives. Even if they were useless, they were still nice to have. They reminded him what kind of edge he lived his life on.

The truth was that in the end, he was lonely. He wanted to find his family again, his people. But they were gone, and he didn’t know where. They had done one big job, and he’d been the only one to get out alive… no, he wouldn’t say that. They might have got out, and they’d been separated in the confusion. He continued to believe that, and he continued to search for them, ever further afield from the place that they’d said they would all gather and wait. Erid sighed and finished his packing, he didn’t have much to his name in the end, and picked up the lamp before reconsidering and leaving it there. He preferred to be able to see with his eyes anyway.

“Three” he whispered to himself

“Two” he continued counting down, looking at the door at the rear of the warehouse

“One” he tapped his fingers impatiently,

“Zero” he said as the door was blown off its hinges, ripped off by some powerful field. He rolled his eyes. Spikes: ever the excuse to cause a mess.

The group of people rolled in, spreading out from the door as they came. The air prickled with the sensation of the fields they were generating. Erid sighed again. These people had no nuance at all. How boring. In the next moment the front door was similarly blown off and another group entered.

“Ah, well well it looks like we found ourselves a rat”

The people all snickered

“Hey, you,”

“Yeah, what?” he did nothing to disguise the ennui in his voice

“Oh, feeling courageous are you, just ‘cos you took one of us down, hey?”

“No, ‘cos I’m going to take all of you down”

The man who was leading them chuckled

“I like you kid, but you’re weak. I don’t know how you got the better of Mal, but we’re not gonna sit around and let you get away with anything like that.”

“I think you should be more worried about the things you don’t know.”

“Oh, why’s that?”

“Why don’t you find out how your friend died?”

“Well, it seems like you think yourself a pretty big fish, lad. So I guess you’ve either got a deathwish or a plan, so we’ll either be granting your wish or destroying the hopes you had. Either way, this is the end. See ya round kid”

At this the man, who was clearly the leader of the group raised his hand, and an attractive field leapt out from the coils suspended around his arm towards Erid. It was a move that was regularly used to throw someone off balance. Before landing another blow on them. But just as the man moved, Erid did too, moving like water, his arms rose up and his legs lowered and he moved into his first stance. The field flowed over him like water. He always enjoyed the looks of horror and surprise that flickered over the faces of people as they realised that they were hopelessly outmatched. The boss suddenly realised he was in trouble, though none of his goons had it figured yet. Erid flicked his arms up and around in a sweeping motion, and turned the field around on itself. The resonance he’d directed caused both the boss and himself to fall under the influence of the field that had previously washed over him. Both of them were launched towards one. Due to the resonance, the force doubled on itself, and the man shouted out in shock as he was dragged forward by his own field’s compounding interest. Erid spun and kicked his head hard. He felt the bones of his neck give out.

There was a brief moment of calm. How elegant, Erid thought, before all hell broke loose.

***

Erid stretched his arms and legs. Around him were the corpses of his aggressors, scattered like broken toys. The effort needed to kill close to ten people was not insignificant, and he was tired. Man, I wish they wouldn’t come in groups. It’s no fun. They don’t think when they outnumber you, they just keep on hitting and get slowly more and more insane as you cut them down. Sometimes he missed the fights he’d had with the corporate elite, they were something else, their skill was unbelievable, and furthermore they knew who they were up against. They didn’t just rely on their field to help them, they knew how to fight – how to fight the only way you could fight when guns and bullets weren’t your weapon of choice: in hand to hand combat. In the end, even if they were the enemies of the tenets of corporeal harmony, they had learned to discipline their bodies. And they were fun. Erid thought. But now, now he was stuck with gangs and stupid fools who thought capacitance was the only thing that meant power… he sighed for the upteenth time that evening, and then slung his knapsack over his shoulder, kicked the bodies out of his way and strolled out through the empty doorway and into the amber glow that bathed the pillars.

***

Yolanda was dreaming. Though it wasn’t exactly her dream. It was the same dream that everybody with sensory spikes had, they told her that it had not been this way until about a thousand cycles ago, but now, somehow, everyone with those spikes, and even a few others with only a normal set, shared a dream. It was one of the mysteries of the pillars, it was said. But it seemed to her that someone must have known, and it worried her. The implication was obvious: if someone could cause the innumerable sensory-type people of the world to share a dream… What else could they do?

It wasn’t the whole world though, not really. She knew that thanks to her role as an observer. It was only this section, only the section controlled by the company she was double crossing. Only where their influence existed, she and others like her had this dream. She knew they were bad news, of course, that was why she had been engaged in undermining them. But now, with her allies out of the picture, and her position as precarious as it could be, she could only hope that the mysterious projection of dreams didn’t mean someone could peek inside her head… She had grown quite paranoid about it.

The dream was the same dream, when it came. There were two girls sitting on an outcrop on a pillar, all around them were colourful shrubs and twiggy brush.

“Do you love me?”

She as playing the part of one of the girls, and she asked her question, the other girl turned her head to look at her, but did not reply

“If you love me, why won’t you come back?”

There was something growing out of her, she raised her hands, and saw that her body was unravelling into long black ribbons. “If you love me, help me.” she said

“If you love me, why don’t you kill me”

She woke up, curled up on the roof of a warehouse. She shivered. That dream always disturbed her. Who was it intended for? She hadn’t woken up because of the dream though. She had awoken because her target was on the move.

She was an observer.

Was he really her target though? She knew who he was, or thought she knew. He was one of her former allies, one of the Brethren, but she had never had direct contact with him, and in the aftermath of their defeat, they had both ended up alone and without any help. She had thought about making contact, reaching out and asking for help escaping as she had planned to after the operation; finally leaving the company. But as her careful treachery had failed to do much damage, she wasn’t sure what exactly her relationship to the brethren was anymore. She couldn’t get in touch with anyone she had before.

But she was an observer, and so she thought it best to watch. Why didn’t she just run from the company? Well, she was certainly coward enough to run. She had no real ability in a fight anyway. Truly, she should have run. But she had nowhere to go, and furthermore she was also enough of a coward not to want the company to chase her down. If she ran, she would be implicated, and so she just faded into the background, and tried her best to keep herself there. In short she was paralyzed –at least situationally– with fear. She’d continued with her division, and so she was back where she had been: observing the Brethren. Her treachery burned within her, and she was afraid someone would soon see it.

Her target left the warehouse after dispatching the thugs within it: how does he do that? She wondered. After a few years of watching the brethren, she still didn’t understand the first thing about how they defeated people with spikes as easily as they did. What superhuman abilities did they get? But she shook her head. She knew that it was training, endless, difficult, and tiring training that allowed the brethren, without spikes, to easily defeat those with the implants. Figuring out the methods that the brethren used was one of the objectives of the company. They were always seeking to improve their implants, and they felt that the brethren offered one possible avenue of research. They had yet to succeed on that front, though. No Brethren they’d caught had talked, and they killed themselves as quickly as they were able. Those that were sedated showed no unusual physical characteristics. Upon dissection, their bodies offered up no secrets except how extraordinarily hard their training regimen must have been.

He moved through the alleys faster than she could keep up. But she was keeping watch from such a distance that it didn’t matter. She’d catch up to him again eventually. And she already knew where he was heading.

***

Erid paused and looked around behind him. He felt those eyes again. But he could never detect who it was. They also never seemed to cause him any harm. As far as he knew, they could have been the one who betrayed their plan to the company, but he hadn’t felt any eyes on him when they had been engaged in that enterprise. It was a weird sensation. He could normally do something about sensory fields, but passive fields were impossible to do much with: if that was, infact, what the watcher was using. It bothered him, that he was either paranoid, or that there was someone watching him but doing nothing. It creeped him out. He decided to do some evasive manoeuvres, and disappeared into the maddening vertical maze of the warehouse district of the town. Buildings here were stacked haphazardly, attached to the pillars and themselves in whatever way they could be. It was as if some enormous cancerous metal growth had occurred. He moved as quickly and quietly as he could, all the while trying to pinpoint those eyes that incessantly followed him. He couldn’t find them, but eventually his awareness of them faded and he slowed and returned to the more typical streets, trying to lose his follower even further in the crowds.

He ducked and wove through the crowded walkways, and eventually found a pace that caused him to blend in with their shuffling movements.

He moved through the middle of the town, and then out to the edges, and the eyes seemed to disappear. He breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he was just paranoid. Maybe the whole experience of their last failed job had gotten to him. He looked around quickly and then ducked down an alley, and then through a door. He was in a vestibule with a door. But he didn’t try to move through it, instead he knocked on a wall, and after a few moments it opened seemingly miraculously, and he walked down a narrow stairway and into a small dingy bar. All around it were boxes and containers, and objects covered in cloth and seemingly put away for storage. They were all minor treasures, some of the remnants of the Brethren’s more influential and powerful days. The barkeep strolled out,

“Erid,” he greeted him cheerlessly, and Erid bowed in turn

“Esana” he said.

“What can I get for you”

“Hmmm, I’ll have whatever’s cheap, you know my budget. a place to sleep would be amazing.”

“Yeah, I got you.” he pulled on the tap at the bar and a kind of beer poured out. Erid strode over and sat down on one of the stools there. It creaked under him ominously.

“Any customers”

“Your my first for the day”

“Of course”

The barkeep passed the beer.

“You know, you could leave, there are still some brethren out in some of the sectors beyond here. Maybe there’s even whole sects we’ve been cut off from. But the company’s purged us good here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why stay?”

“I could ask the same of you”

“I’m an old man, I will die here. You could still be happy”

“Who said I’m not happy!”

“Your face, it’s like it’s shouting it”

“Harsh, man, very harsh.”

“You can sleep in the back. I don’t have much space, but it’ll be safe from prying eyes”

“Are there many? Eyes, that is, prying?”

“It is hard to say… I haven’t heard anything though. But I cannot guarantee safety like I once did… I don’t have the resources.”

“Of course.”

“What do you think you will do now, Erid?”

“Hmmm… that is a good question. What will I do?”

The young man looked into the bubbles rising from the bottom of his glass as if there might be an answer floating somewhere in there too.