Anyway, there were two parts that I wanted to put up here. I know that there's a specific cite for me to do that on that isn't this one, but I'm lazy. I don't really know how long either of these excerpts are, so sorry if they're ridiculously lengthy. These are the two parts that I'm putting up here:
1. Ziv & Vine's weird reunion with Freedom.
2. Tyson's freakish-ness around ZeCat.
These are both things that I mentioned in my earlier post, so, yeah. Here they are. They are totally out of context, but whatever! Oh, and they're unedited, so beware.
* * *
ZeCat and the others obeyed, ZeCat almost falling flat on his face as he did so, which earned him some criticism from the driver.
“What’s wrong with you, do you have two left feet or something? Shut up and try not to kill yourself, huh?”
Once everyone had clambered from the truck, the shadowy form of the truck driver pointed down an empty street that, as far as ZeCat could tell in the limited lighting, crashed headlong into the towering wall. That was how near he was to the outside. It was difficult for him to grasp that he was standing so near to the edge of everything that he had ever known. The wall extended towards the washed-out sky so that ZeCat could hardly tell where it ended and the sky began, but it suddenly seemed so flimsy, so insubstantial. Yes, there was a gigantic wall standing between him and freedom from his Date, but that was all there was. One wall. That was it. One wall.
And it had a hole in it.
“So the people you’re looking for are down that way,” the driver said. “If they haven’t been found out yet, you’ll probably find them. Don’t be too obvious about where you’re going or anything, because if a cop happens to buzz by here you’ll get screwed.”
“Thanks for bringing us here,” Bryony-Rose said as the driver began to shuffle towards the cab. He paused at Bryony-Rose’s words and turned to look at her, his expression indistinguishable.
“Don’t thank me,” he said, his words heavy with some meaning that was gone even before he was driving away, his taillights glowing like the eyes of a monster as the truck coughed down the empty sidewalk and into the night. ZeCat watched it go until it had turned down a road that would lead it back to the more densely inhabited parts of the city.
“Come on, ZeCat,” Bryony-Rose said in an undertone, pulling on ZeCat’s arm to capture his attention. “We should get out of here before someone in one of those apartment buildings sees us and calls the cops.”
ZeCat obeyed; the old woman and Wolfe were already heading down the street in the direction that the driver had indicated, Wolfe seeming flitting in and out of existence like a shadow. ZeCat and Bryony-Rose followed them, slinking below the somewhat dilapidated, dark-windowed residences with all of the quietness they could manage. A light was on in one of the lower floors of one of the buildings, and ZeCat could hear the muffled sounds of a television from inside. He hoped that whoever was up there would not peer out their window before he passed.
The street dead-ended at the wall, so ZeCat and Bryony-Rose took Wolfe and the old woman’s silent advice and followed the wall a little ways to the right. The scenery continued to be the same, with little to no signs of life other than themselves, and ZeCat began to wonder if they had gone the wrong way. He almost voiced his concerns allowed, but sudden shouts from just up ahead disproved his tentative beliefs.
“Hey! Who’s out there?! Show yourselves, you sons of bitches!”
ZeCat and Bryony-Rose inched past a dead pixel building and found themselves face-to-face with a small group of very well-armed individuals with headlamps. Many of them were brandishing at least one gun at the new arrivals, which made ZeCat’s insides squirm. The old woman and Wolfe were already standing with their hands in the air, and ZeCat followed their example. In a strange way, though Wolfe’s face showed no fear, the old woman looked less frightened than him. The thought that Wolfe--a hardened criminal and generally terrifying individual--might be scared ensured that ZeCat was all the more afraid. He had been right; this had been a huge mistake.
“Who sent you?” the person who appeared to be their ringleader demanded. He sounded like he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than ZeCat, though in the limited lighting it was difficult to know for sure.
“N-no one sent us to do anything bad,” Bryony-Rose stammered. “We’re here to help you!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“The guy from The Violet sent us here,” Wolfe growled. “He said you could use some more people.”
The young man lowered his gun, and the rest of his posse did the same.
“He did, huh? Where’s your proof?”
“Didn’t realize we needed to bring a freaking job application,” Wolfe snapped.
The stranger regarded Wolfe silently for a moment, but ZeCat couldn’t see his expression.
“Lucky for us this one has such a mouth,” the old woman muttered to herself.
“What’s your name, kid?” the young man asked Wolfe at last.
“Wolfe,” Wolfe replied.
“You have an attitude, Wolfe. I like that. The first sign of a smart guy is a smartass, you know. The name’s Moore. Tyson Moore.”
Wolfe half-heartedly stuck out his hand, likely more out of habit than anything else. If he expected Tyson to shake it, however, he was sorely mistaken. Tyson raised his gun and pressed it to Wolfe’s temple in one fluid movement.
“If you shake my hand I’ll have to kill ya,” Tyson hissed.
There was a tense silence in which ZeCat resisted the urge to get as far away from Tyson as he possibly could. After a few seconds, Tyson abruptly burst into laughter and stuck his gun into his belt.
“You’re a fun guy, Wolfe, you’re just cracking me up.”
Wolfe looked as though he might very much like to kill Tyson while he still had the chance, but he never got to.
“If you and your guys are here to help us out, you’d better be serious about it,” Tyson said. “Digging this hole ain’t no party. Lucky for you we were just stopping for the night; can’t break down a wall when you can’t see what you’re doing, am I right? I said, am I right?!”
Everyone hastened to answer what would normally have been a rhetorical question.
“Yeah, I know, shut up!” Tyson exclaimed, turning to face his crew. “Stop being lazy-asses and get back to base! As for you…” Tyson said, returning his attention to ZeCat and the others as everyone else scattered. “These your guys, Wolfe?”
“Nah.”
“They just come with you?”
“Yeah.”
Tyson looked all of them up and down. He approached the old woman and stood in front of her forebodingly.
“And what use do we have for you, Granny?” he asked.
“I’ll help you out any ways I can,” the old woman replied. “There’s some life left in these old bones yet.”
“Doesn’t look like there’s much of it,” Tyson said, “but I’m a nice guy. If you prove to be an asset, I’ll let you live, how’s that? And hell, I’ll even let you eat tomorrow, since none of you are eating tonight, obviously.”
“What do you mean?” Bryony-Rose inquired.
Tyson turned to her. Though ZeCat could not see Tyson’s face, he was certain he was grinning.
“Well, pretty lady, those who don’t work don’t get food. I think that’s fair and square, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Bryony-Rose responded quietly. ZeCat got the feeling that whether she agreed or not didn’t matter; Tyson had asked the question as some sort of test. To determine what, ZeCat was not sure, but luckily she seemed to have passed.
“I do, too. Very fair. Now get over to base with Wolfie here. It’s right over that way.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “You, too, Granny.”
ZeCat made to follow his three counterparts, but Tyson got in his way.
“What do we have here?” he purred. “Answer my question, kid!”
ZeCat honestly didn’t know how to.
“My name’s Ezekiel Everton,” he said weakly.
Evidently this was a satisfactory answer.
“Ezekiel Everton, huh? That’s a damned classy name. You sound freaking rich! Are you rich, kid?”
“No,” ZeCat breathed.
“No?! Whaddaya mean no, Rich Boy? I can see right through you, you little snake! No, you’re a rich kid, I can tell by the smell of ya, can’t I?”
“Yes.”
ZeCat was scared out of his wits. Tyson was plainly insane. He was a complete maniac, and ZeCat knew that if he said the wrong thing he would probably end up with a bullet in his forehead.
“Ha, ha, you know I can! Now, Mr. Ezekiel Everton, Queen of Paradise City, are my eyes playing tricks on me, or are you the reddest redhead I’ve ever seen, even in this darkness? Who gave you hair like that?”
“My mom,” ZeCat said.
“Well wasn’t that sweet of her?” Tyson laughed, but sobered up immediately. “You know what I think about red hair? I hate it. I really hate it. That means I really hate you.”
Before ZeCat had a chance to say anything more, Tyson pulled his fist back and punched him in the face. ZeCat fell to the ground, his glasses skidding across the cracked and weathered asphalt as he bit his lip to keep himself from crying out in pain. He was so frightened that he was afraid he might start crying. He didn’t want to die! Oh, God, he didn’t want to die. He just wanted to go home to his mother and brother and pretend that none of this ever happened, but Tyson was going to kill him for no reason at all, and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing, nothing…
“What are you doing lying on the ground like that, kid?” Tyson asked.
ZeCat found his glasses and placed them on his nose before tentatively looking upwards again. Tyson’s hand was extended towards him, palm-up.
“If you’re this goddamned lazy, you’ll never make it out here! C’mon, let me help you to your feet!”
If you shake my hand I’ll have to kill ya.
ZeCat allowed Tyson to help him to his feet, shaking with fear. He was certain that he was about to be murdered and left here to be found by the police long after everyone else had escaped through the finished hole in the wall.
“Get your ass to base!”
ZeCat took off at a run in the direction that Tyson had indicated earlier, struggling with tears of shame.
“HEY.”
ZeCat skidded to a stop.
“I hate you. Cover up your nasty hair, Devil Child, you hear me?”
“Yes, yes, I will!”
“You better hope so, because if you don’t I’ll have to kill ya.”
Tyson’s laughter rang into the night long after ZeCat resumed his run and left him behind in the darkness.
* * *
So that's that one. Here's the other. Oh, and to explain it a little Vine is blind, which I've mentioned before but it was a long time ago.
* * *
“Even so,” he said at last, but this was a good sign; he didn’t argue his point further. “Where’s this room, anyway?”
Ziv looked at the numbers stenciled across the heavy, metal doors up and down the walls. This floor was definitely scarier than the first floor.
“It’s down this way.”
The two of them walked down the hallway, their shoes clicking softly on the linoleum tile as Vine’s hand trailed over the wall.
“It’s here,” Ziv said halting in front of the correct door.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Ziv pressed his thumb on a pad below the door handle and waited it to recognize his thumbprint. His thumbprint, along with Vine’s, had been taken when they had arrived as workers at the hospital and had been programmed into the hospital’s mainframe so that they could open the higher-security doors. This way patients could not let other patients out of their rooms.
The door clicked and Ziv pushed it open uneasily. Vine walked inside with more confidence than Ziv had in his entire being and Ziv followed him, hoping that whoever was living in here was not completely insane. Actually, now that he was inside, it didn’t look like anybody was living in here; there was no one in sight.
“Hey, what--?” Ziv began as the door clicked closed, but Vine cut him off.
“Don’t freak out, they’re in the bathroom.”
The bathroom door was, indeed closed, and running water could be heard from the other side.
“…Oh.”
“You should just leave those clothes on the bed so we can get out of here,” Vine said, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. “I don’t want to spend any more time with these people than I have to.”
“They are kind of freaky, aren’t they?” Ziv said, taking Vine’s advice and wandering over to the bed. “I can’t imagine getting that kind of surgery done.”
“I don’t see the point,” Vine said. “If you know that getting surgeries like that is illegal and that criminals end up in jail, why would you try to improve your life by doing something that you know would wreck it?”
“Maybe they don’t think about it that way.”
“Maybe they don’t think at all.”
“Hello?”
The bathroom door had swung open, and a boy who looked to be a few years older than Ziv emerged. His sandy hair was wet as though he had attempted to wash it (the water in the showers on this floor only worked if they were turned on by an employee, so he must have done it in the sink) and his freckled face was tired and old-looking, somehow. There were scars all up and down his arms, and his eyes, a dark blue, had a peculiar glittering sheen to them that must have been due to devices he had had installed in them; Ziv had never seen anything like them before.
“We brought you some clothes,” Vine said disinterestedly.
At the sight of Vine, the person looked as if he might faint. He took a few steps backwards, rubbing his eyes.
“Oh, God, I’m going insane…!” he moaned.
Ziv took this as an invitation to leave, but Vine’s expression was so strange that he stopped in his tracks.
“Vine…?”
“I know your voice…” Vine said, ignoring Ziv completely. “But not well. Where do I know you from? What’s your name?”
“It’s Freedom,” Freedom said weakly. “Freedom Williams. From--”
“Freedom Williams?” Now it was Ziv’s turn to be shocked. He knew that name. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, he knew that voice as well. He had never met Freedom in person, but he had spoken to him over the Celph once or twice. He had been supposed to meet him out front of Station Five recently, but Freedom had never showed. But how did Vine know him?
The answer struck Ziv with hardly an additional thought.
Freedom Williams?! Of course! That name had been all over pixel buildings in Paradise City the day that Vine had been kidnapped, though at the time Ziv had been too out of sorts to take much notice of it. Now, however, this memory was vivid. But even in the light of this realization, what he blurted out was:
“Marrow lubricant!”
Freedom looked thoroughly confused.
“What?”
“Marrow lubricant,” Ziv repeated. “That was what I was supposed to sell to you. I talked to you on the Celph. We were supposed to meet outside of Station Five.”
Freedom didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“Ziv? Ziv Martell?”
“That’s right, you two know each other,” Vine said. His tone was almost amused. “That came up while you had me tied up in that basement.”
“It was an abandoned life house, actually,” Freedom said. “I’m lucky I found it when I did or I would have been caught much sooner.”
“A life house? So those places really do exist, do they?”
“Yeah, they do.” Freedom nodded, then shook his head as if to free himself from a trance. “I’m sorry, but why are you here, both of you? What’s going on? I can’t decide if I’m dreaming or not.”
“How are you two so okay with each other?” Ziv asked, bewildered.
“Freedom turned out to be much less crazy than he was acting,” Vine replied, a half-smile on his face. “I was going to help him convince my parents to…” He frowned. “You said your Date was moved, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” Freedom said, “and it was. If we want to get technical about it, it has been moved twice. Once when the police found out that I am a tech-head, and again when it was determined that I’ll never make it to Almost Heaven.”
“Your Date was changed?” Ziv was stunned. “They can really do that?”
His mind flashed to not so long ago when he had been selling his art on the streets and waiting for Freedom outside of Station Five. Two policemen had come to shut him down and, after thoroughly humiliating himself, Ziv had been let off the hook…but not before one of them could say something that had made his blood run cold.
“I’m not going to arrest you, but I ever hear you’ve been doing something illegal again anywhere in this city, you had better watch your Date.”
This, of course, did not apply to Ziv because he was one of the Golden Few, but still…
“They really can,” Freedom said grimly in answer to Ziv’s forgotten question.
“What do you mean you’ll never make it to Almost Heaven?” Vine inquired.
“I’m too…automated,” Freedom said. “Usually the people who come through here can have their mechanical parts removed, but I can’t. Not if I want to survive the operations.”
“So?” Vine said.
“So I’m going to die here instead,” Freedom said. His tone held all of the appropriate solemnity to go with his words, but his odd eyes said something differently. They suggested that there was more to his story than he was telling. That he did not believe his tale ended here. “But enough about me. Why are you two here? How did you get here?”
Vine explained their situation, or as much about it as they knew.
“I would ask you how you got here, but it’s fairly obvious,” Vine said at the conclusion of his story.
Freedom smiled humorlessly.
“You could have tried to get me out of jail, you know.”
“I did,” Vine replied, “but I was accused of having Stockholm Syndrome and my requests were ignored.”
“That figures,” Freedom said, nodding knowingly. “I wouldn’t have believed you, either. I have a long list of crimes besides kidnapping you that I had to atone for, which doesn’t really help either of our cases.”
“Other than being a tech-head, what did you do?” Ziv asked. He was having difficulty deciding whether he should trust Freedom or not. On one hand, he and Ziv already knew each other, and he seemed no crazier now than he had back when their connection had put them through to each other. On the other hand, the people that Ziv’s connection put through to him were criminals, and Freedom was obviously no exception. What was more, he had kidnapped his best friend, which Ziv certainly should have been more angry about. What kind of a friend was he? Any normal person would have hauled off and punched Freedom in the face as soon as he had figured out who he was, not have stood around for several minutes and made conversation.
These were the thoughts that bounced around Ziv’s head as Freedom listed his various crimes and offenses with disconcerting casualness. When he was finished, Ziv went ahead and said the most pressing thing on his mind.
“I should hate you. But I don’t.”
Freedom looked surprised.
“Why would you hate me? Is this because I didn’t show up at Station Five?”
“No. It’s because you kidnapped my best friend and because of what that did to his parents.”
Freedom’s expression was pained.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He seemed to mean it, though Ziv couldn’t be sure. “I really am. I can’t ever justify what I did.”
“You don’t have to worry about this, Ziv,” Vine said. “I’m fine.”
“But you could have not been fine.”
“But I am fine. And Freedom...” Vine’s face suddenly fell. “It is incredibly barbaric of them to make you die here. If I was still in contact with my parents, I would get the Department of Criminal Acts and Conducts to change that.”
Freedom was silent for several moments.
“What do the two of you do around here?” he asked at last.
“We’re just general caregivers,” Ziv said. “We do whatever we’re told to do.”
“Like deliver clothes?” Freedom nodded at the pile on his bed.
“Like deliver clothes.”
Freedom sighed.
“I have some thinking to do, but once I get that done, I’d like to talk to the two of you again. I have something of a plan…if you’re interested.”
“That depends on what the plan is,” Vine said.
“I have yet to figure out the details, but I am planning to get out of this place before they have a chance to take what is mine. I--” He stopped. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“I doubt we’ll even be here long enough to squeal on you,” Ziv said. “We’re eventually going to be escaping from here, too.” Vine had left this part out of their story.
Freedom looked surprised.
“Really? How? Where are you going?”
“I don’t really know,” Ziv said. “We weren’t told much. Just that we would be safe from the government and the Death List.”
Freedom contemplated this silently for a few moments.
“That’s very intriguing.”
Ziv just nodded.
“Let me get back to you in a little while. I’m supposed to have a doctor come in here soon to talk to be about tests they’re going to do, and if I cooperate then I might be allowed out of my room for a while. They let you do that, don’t they?”
“Not really on this floor,” Ziv said.
“They’ll make an exception,” Freedom said, waving Ziv’s words aside. “I’m going to gain their trust, and they’ll at least let me out into the hallway, I’m sure. I will make sure that they learn to love the name Freedom Williams.”
For one reason or another Ziv was disturbed by this, but he did not let it show.
“We should get back to the staff lounge,” he said. They were always to report back there when their tasks were finished. “It doesn’t take this long to drop off some clothes.”
“Yes, they might start suspecting that Patrick Bishop and Will Millerberg were up to something,” Vine said, straightening his sunglasses.
“I’m guessing that those are your fake names?”
“Yes.”
“Who is who?”
“I’m Will and my good friend Ziv here is Patty.”
A ghost of a smile lit up Freedom’s tired face at the same time that Ziv frowned.
“I’d really rather that you didn’t call me that,” he informed Vine.
Vine shrugged his shoulders.
“We’ll see.”
“Anyway…” Ziv said, heading tentatively for the door. “We’ve got to go.”
“It was nice to meet you in person, Ziv,” Freedom said. “Even under such strange circumstances. And Vine…good to see you again. Once I figure some things out, I’ll touch bases with you two and we can see where things go from there.”
“Right,” Ziv said, pressing his thumb to the pad underneath the door handle.
Click.
“If everything goes as planned,” Freedom went on, “we might just get out of here.” His voice took on a longing quality that made Ziv slightly uncomfortable. “For once, I might just be able to get out of something.”
“See you around,” Vine called as he and Ziv stepped through the door.
“Yes,” Freedom responded. He waved. “Yes, definitely.”
* * *
...So that one was long. Sorry. At least it's mostly dialogue. There is a little part I like here right after what I just posted, so I'm putting that up too because I CAN.
* * *
“Well that was weird,” Ziv said at last. “That whole thing back there.”
“It was a little, yeah,” Vine agreed uncomfortably. “You probably think that I’m making it up, but he really was an okay guy back in that life house or whatever. He was much less…”
“Weird?”
“I guess so.”
“I’ve talked to him before, obviously, when I was--”
“Dealing drugs?”
Ziv glared at him, though the expression was lost on Vine.
“I’ve never dealt drugs.”
Vine laughed, a carefree noise that clashed with the weeping of the invisible tech-head.
“Remember when I told Leala that you were a drug dealer and she almost died? She is the most gullible person that I have ever met in my life!”
“That wasn’t funny,” Ziv said. Or at least it hadn’t been at the time, but now that he was looking back on it and he was about ready to collapse from the stress of being Patrick Bishop, it was a vaguely humorous memory. Especially since…
“It’s odd to think that we’ll never see her again,” Vine said, echoing Ziv’s thoughts.
Ziv didn’t say anything to this at first, as this was a realization that was striking him for the first time.
We’ll never see her again.
Never again would he joke with her through the chain-link fence, never again would he shuffle back to his dad’s apartment with pleasant memories of her dancing around his head, never again would he set eyes on that horrifying yellow bandana of hers and wonder how on Earth she could be so brave. He’d never get to say goodbye to her, to tell her what had happened to him, to explain why he and Vine had stopped seeing her so suddenly. Worst of all, he would never get to tell her how he felt about her. Obviously he loved her, though he had never really acknowledged it openly to himself and had never dared say anything out loud. He had allowed his adoration of her to show only in thoughts that kept him lying awake late into the night and in one, very special painting that he was still struggling to perfect. He had planned to present this painting to her one day, perhaps when she turned eighteen and was released from Paradise City Orphanage, but he had never had the chance. Now he never would.
“Don’t tell me you miss her, Vine,” Ziv said at last, feigning a joking tone.
Vine snorted.
“I don’t. It’s just strange to think that someone who you forced me to spend so much time with isn’t around anymore, that’s all.”
But Ziv sensed that in his own, tacit way, Vine missed her, too.
* * *
I don't know why, but I just kind of like that last little bit there. In case you didn't get it from that, Ziv is hopelessly in love with Leala. So yeah. I'll end this now and spare you all.
-Iridian
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