Part 2 | Chapter 10 - Tenebrosus

Part 2 - Orientation Day

Chapter 10 - Tenebrosus

“Step away from the manifestation platform! Hands in the air!”

I turn around slowly, lifting my hands with my palms open and squint at the bright light. I can make out three figures, backlit by a symbiont hanging from one of them emitting blinding white that obscures my vision of their other symbionts, their weapons and faces, and the crowd beyond them. Green tactical lights dance on my chest.

My own symbiont pads forward to stand at my side, its immaterial touch like the cold-fog that billows out of a refrigerator, and gives a short chuff, bristling its dark mane around its neck and down its back.

“You will proceed to intra-company holding. You will keep your hands in the air. You will cooperate. Repeat my instructions.”

I have never even heard of something like this before. The jockeys must be terrified of whatever I’ve manifested.

“Hands in the air, intra-company, I got it,” I bark back, trying to shield my face from the lights with one of my raised hands.

“Slow movements! Turn around! Hands in the air!” One of the figures gestures with their weapon for me to walk to the side and off the platform where I’ve seen handlers lead the newly bonded off to before.

I look down at my new symbiont, its muzzle wrinkles as it snarls at the three figures and their symbionts hidden in the light. A feeling bubbles in my mind… I…we could take them.

The light-bringer is a Pteropus bonded to the central guard, harmless on its own. The other two guards have Ursus, they make no attempts to hide them when they think we cannot see them. So naive, so like those who were never invited. The humans have rifles, we don’t know anything about guns but within their synthetic materials are fragments of pure metal, from the earth. The earth is us, we know the earth. We can command the earth to crumble in their hands and then they will have guns no more. I could leap, I could dance, I could flow like mist and turbulence and they would never catch me. We would rip, we would tear, we would stain the precious earth with their blood and free what they’ve taken but do not understand. I will cackle over their graves.

I reel, grabbing my head with one of my hands to steady myself. Are these thoughts mine? Or are they the symbiont’s? Our edges are so unclear to me… us? But we’re here. We have power now. We are one now.

“HANDS IN THE AIR!”

I squint hazily into the light and comply immediately. I form words desperately in my own head, surfacing memories of Meiko for the brain we now share. Don’t I plead. I think they have my friend. The symbiont lowers its lips, but leaves its fangs exposed, black mist billowing and dissipating around its jaws.

“I’m going! Hands in the air!” I reassure. I give one last fleeting look beyond the light, hoping to see something of the crowd and my father, or a face within the looming black glass of the seating areas for recruiters. But all I hear is silence, all I see is white light.

I’m led back to a barred holding cell lined with plexiglass sealing the contents within it from the room beyond, and Watanabe is waiting, gesturing me to sit within.

“Symbiont in the cage with you please. We have sensors rigged in this cell to identify their presence.”

My symbiont snarls as it passes but does as it is told, sitting dourly in the back corner. A light above the doorway flickers from red to green. I enter after and find the door quickly locked behind me as a guard swipes their city-monitor on the sensor.

“What is happening?” I demand. The feeling of power in my head quietens all fears. We will kill them if we decide we do not like their answers. My face twitches… shit, this is going to get complicated quickly. Behave yourself. Why? I have no respect for meat bags. Please stop, I need to work this out.

“We’re waiting for your bids to complete. You will be sold, and you might just be about the most lucrative sale we’ve ever had. Your friend, Meiko Kobayashi is safe, we are keeping her as collateral to ensure we can transfer you without incident. It’ll be up to your new employer to control you after that.”

“You did take her! What did you do?” I slam my fists against the bars. I could eat him. Quiet you.

“She’s safe. No harm will come to her if you keep your symbiont under control. Just sit tight for us and we’ll hand you over. And just so you know,” Watanabe points to the cameras on the ceiling and the vents near them, “We’ll gas you if you cease to cooperate.”

“Fuck you VP!” I hiss out his title between my teeth, the symbiont’s disdain slipping my control. Something feels giddy about its feral feelings in my head, shedding all my inhibitions and stripping unconscious social norms. Was this the way they affected everyone? “Let her go now!”

He turns, in no mood to converse with me and leaves the room.

Fuck. I wheel around and sit on the bench against one wall, looking at the fiery eyes of my symbiont as it looks back at me.

What are you?

What are we? I am we, we are you, you is I.

This is insane, two minds in one brain. Is this what normally happens?

They are slaves, taken and bound. We are invited. We came willingly. We are free.

Well, you can’t just flood my mind with thoughts of killing everyone. It’s not how this works.

Why?

Fuck. This was definitely going to get complicated.

Complicated is a choice. We could kill them all, then it is simple.

That was a thought for me only. And, that can’t be the solution to everything.

The symbiont opens its mouth and lolls a tongue out to one side, cheekily panting. Just my luck too, it has a sense of humor. What do I call you?

Tenebrosus pooka is what the human documents will say.

I’ve never even heard of the genus Tenebrosus, but there was a chance I never paid much attention to anything that didn’t have a drawing with it. Pooka might do, kinda cute for something so bloodthirsty.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I dislike slavery, I do not manifest often.

I blink. Wait, what the fuck? The silence in my head indicates it has nothing to say in reply, and there is maybe a sheepishness as if it was caught saying a little too much. I groan and lean into my hands.

“Hands in the air! Repeat your orders!”

I sit bolt upright, hands in the air, parroting obediently, “Hands in the air!”

The click of heels forebodes the entry of a woman, tablet tucked under her arm. She is wearing a coal black suit, fitted with strong shoulders and a tight waist. Her heels make up for some of her diminutive stature, but it’s her confident steps that exude a sense of command and make her feel taller than the security officers. She purses dark red lips, tapping the back of her tablet impatiently with matching fingernails. She pauses, and regards me, hip cocked as she leans against the plexiglass. On her shoulder is a familiar symbiont, a Theraphosid species, this one is a brilliant ochre yellow with umber banding.

“Conrada Dorrien?”

“Who’s asking?” I test back.

“My name is Regina Hawthorne. May I come in.” It isn’t a question, more a warning.

The security officer with her looks concerned, “Are you sure?”

“Do I look unsure to you?” she snaps, clicking one heel impatiently as she shifts posture. She tucks her hair behind one ear, dark brown like black coffee. On her ear, hanging from her pendant earrings, is a Vespa. My heart leaps with recognition.

Watanabe isn’t far behind, “Do as she says.”

The security officer unlocks the door with a swipe of his wrist and Regina steps into the doorway and extends a hand to me.

“City-monitor please.”

I wrap a hand around my wrist, feeling the small device that has been a constant companion my whole life. Undoing the tiny clasp feels more like dropping shackles from my limbs. I retrieve the hand-held interface that goes with it from my pocket too. She takes both from me and passes it back to the security officer.

“Leave me. Shut the door.”

“We’ll not be responsible for your safety,” warns Watanabe, taking my monitor and slipping it into a pocket on the inside of his suit jacket.

“She’s my property now, I’ll take the risk. Leave me,” replies Regina dismissively, seating herself across from me on the other bench and folding one leg over the other. She balances the tablet on her knee.

I glare back at her, feeling more like a rabid animal than human with Pooka's now thoughts blending into my own. Property eh? I dislike slavery.

Watanabe shrugs, and leads the security officers from the room outside my cage again, leaving us as bid. As he does so, Regina’s Therophosid crawls up the wall and settles itself over the camera, umber markings taking on an amber glow.

“What do you want?” I ask cautiously.

“Take this. It’s a gift,” she says, handing me the tablet. As I bend forward and grab it off her she leans back to inspect her nails.

I look down at the document it is open to, my own resume. My grades are there, the classes I took in school, the jobs I’ve worked, everything a recruiter might want to know about a potential opportunity. I swipe, the next pages are records of my various security run-ins. Some of them they sat me down for, others I didn’t know they knew about, still more I remember and see no record of. All minor deviant behaviors but meticulously documented in my employee records nevertheless.

The next page brings me to a stop. Its title is ‘Symbiont Analysis’. Right up the top, just as Pooka said - Tenebrosus pooka. There is almost no text on the page, all the descriptive headers are followed by vague answers or more often just nothing. But there is another number that catches my eye, “Strength of Bond” and the value next to it is NaN.

“You can take your time reading it later,” says Regina, bringing my attention back to her.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Your employee files at Murasaki, and what they got off Symbiotica before that. Every single thing they gave me when we purchased you.”

“Purchased?” I spit the word.

“Yes. Your contract is now my property.”

“Why give this to me then?”

“Because, I would rather build a bond of trust. We’re a small company, and we tend to not work very effectively without it,” she explains, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward towards me.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

She opens the edge of her suit jacket, retrieving a business card that she extends towards me with a familiarity I feel like I’ve seen before. I know what I’ll see as I take it off her, black card, gold embossed symbol of wings spread wide.

“I am the co-owner of Aquila Operations. We don’t normally spend much time reviewing manifest pre-advertisements unless we have an opening that needs filling, but an interesting little wasp might have been buzzing in my ear and I’m glad I picked up a recent copy. It is not every day an opportunity like you comes up.”

“You-” I begin, she holds a finger to her lips, cutting me off, eyes narrowing.

“Aquila is a boutique consulting firm,” she continues, “We do discretion, we do difficult things. We don’t talk about our work where others might be listening,” she finishes firmly, raising her eyebrows in question to see if I understand her point. I shut my mouth.

She fishes within her jacket again and retrieves a small black box.

“I’d like you to meet Adrian,” she says, opening the box to reveal another Vespa, its wings twitching.

My hand jolts, I stare at the box in her hands. Very slowly I say, “It’s empty.”

“There is a symbiont in it,” she explains, holding her hand near the box to let the Vespa step onto her hand. “Vespa crabro. Without Adrian, Aquila would not be what we are, he is central to our operations, more precious than even you.”

I flinch back from her hand as she begins to extend it towards me, “What are you doing?” Pooka suddenly lowers its head, lips drawing back into a snarl.

“You will wear no city-monitors with Aquila, at least not all the time. Instead we all wear a Vespa. You won’t even feel it, after a while,” she says with a grin. The Vespa takes flight and lands itself on my earlobe, I tuck into myself, and fight every instinct in my body to swat at it. The feel of its tiny pointed legs on my earlobe sends shivers down my spine and goosebumps racing up my arms. Already I can hear the buzz of its wings, the odd clicking noises of its mouth parts and joints. It’s sickening, revolting…

“Welcome to Aquila, it’s a pleasure to be working with you,” says a tired male, and very human, voice in my ear, the words carried in the hum of the Vespa's wings.

Regina sits back, crossing her legs again with a satisfied smirk and pocketing the box within her jacket again. “Welcome to Aquila,” repeats her voice from the Vespa’s buzz, her lips do not move across the cell from me. “I’ve paid a lot of money for you, and you will make me my money back, make no mistake. But the nature of our work dictates the need for intelligent employees, who can act independently and effectively, and I know that no matter how much money I spend, some things cannot be bought. We operate on trust here, so I want to know what I can do to earn yours?”

Pooka’s growing growl crescendos, catching into a single whoop of fury, its back fur bristling. I’ll trust you when you bleed out.