*
The extra safe house turns out to be a small apartment, and it’s Nazarin’s second home. He has one that the Ratel know about, but this is a separate one, not in his name. He’ll sometimes meet his superiors here, he explains, since he can never go to the SFPD headquarters. Or he’ll come here when he wants privacy, escape. They’ll be shutting it down soon, or assigning it to someone else, since he’s moved to the new safe house to train me.
Though Nazarin has spent nights here, there’s nothing personal about it. It could be a hotel room. It’s a studio apartment, though the one room is a decent size. The bed, with cushions against the wall to make it double as a sofa, takes up a corner; a tiny kitchenette takes up a second; a bathroom another (it has a door, at least) and a wardrobe the last corner. A table and chairs are by the window, and he gestures for me to take a seat.
I wonder what his actual apartment looks like, whether there are knickknacks and photographs that would give a glimpse into his life. Tila and I, when we lived together, had a perfect shelf in my entrance hallway to show people just a little bit about us. Holographic images of the two of us, our arms around each other. My engineering degree, and a little glass award I won for my work on VivaFog. A gorgeous, glazed pot Tila made herself and false sunflowers, some of her smaller pieces of artwork, and a glass sculpture a client at Zenith had given her. All of it rested on top of a scarf we bought when we went on holiday together to United Korea. Now it’s only my half, photos and engineering accolades, and it doesn’t look right.
Nazarin passes me a glass: more SynthGin and tonic. Better than nothing. I shoot it down my throat, grimacing at the subtly wrong taste. I close my eyes, but I keep seeing the screaming mandrakes with the familiar faces. One had looked like Mardel. My eyes snap open.
“Got any more?” I ask.
He takes my cup the three steps to the kitchenette and dutifully pours me more. I drink it down.
“I don’t know what you saw, or what you learned,” he starts. He’s barely touched his drink, swirling it around in the glass. He makes a pretty, if somewhat frightening picture. He’s taken off his overtop and wears a tank, the muscles on his arms bulging beneath his brown skin. He has more pale scars crisscrossed along his forearms. The light from the ceiling screen casts part of his face in shadow. He’s taken off his shoes, and the sight of his socks—the beginnings of a hole in one big toe—makes him look strangely vulnerable.
“What happened to you? What did you see?” I ask. I feel like he has to tell his side before I can tell mine.
I think Nazarin understands this. He finally downs his drink and then goes to the tiny kitchen for more. Begins to pour a drink, thinks better of it, and brings the entire bottle to the chair with him. I approve of that plan.
“Mia doesn’t like men much, does she?” he starts.
“No, she doesn’t.” More SynthGin splashes into my cup. I think of Mana-ma. “There’s plenty of women she hates too.”
“When I came in, I was in a prison cell,” he says.
I can’t help but wonder if it looked anything like the cell my sister is in right now.
“There was no light. I thought maybe the drug hadn’t worked and it’d killed me.” He smiles ruefully at this, as if it’s funny. “I didn’t realize it was Verve, though I did think something was off. I haven’t taken much of either Zeal or Verve.”
Interesting, I think, considering how many people have it as part of their daily lives.
“Anyway, I realized where I was pretty fast,” he says, swigging again. “Found a way out, but then I saw those demon things. They were surrounding the building, like a barricade. Twisted little fuckers.”
“Yeah. A lot of them had faces of the people I grew up with.”
He shudders. “I fought my way through them but it wasn’t pretty. Then the drug hit me pretty hard, and I saw all the people I wouldn’t mind dead. That took a while as well.” He drains the drink.
“Wait, so you affected the Vervescape too?”
He stops at that. “I guess I did.”
“You’re a lucid dreamer, then, or you could become one.” I set down my glass with a clunk. “If you can lucid dream, you don’t need me.” Can I quit? Can I stop this before it’s really begun? The hope is painful.
“I’m untrained, and I can’t do what you can. I couldn’t get rid of these ones. It seemed like they almost killed me. I ended up having to kill them all. Cut them to pieces.”
I swallow.
“Most of the people I saw deserved it. A few have been put in jail and then quietly locked up in stasis. Doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish I could have had the honor of actually killing them myself.”