Post the fucking post

So yep this is the first chapter of Dollface in all its awful unedited glory. I don't really want critique at this point or I will probably shrivel up in humiliation and die.

It was not the time at which exciting things traditionally happen. It was not late night, or very early morning, or even merely early morning. It was, in fact, late afternoon.
Despite this, Sandra Connors was clearly exhausted, and felt she had been awake longer than humanly possible. In actuality, she and her husband had been awake and locked in their laboratory for almost twenty-one hours straight without so much as a nap between them.
Sandra Connors rested her elbows on the counter and pushed her fingers up under her glasses, massaging her closed eyes. Her black hair, usually imprisoned in a flawless, tidy bun, was tangled about her face in a chaotic web. Her white labcoat was disheveled, her collar askew, and she would have gone so far as to kick off her shoes if laboratory safety code did not require them.
"How many are left?" she asked, her voice echoing softly in the high-ceilinged laboratory.
"Twenty-seven," replied the man sitting listlessly in a swivel chair in front of what looked like a large, glass-fronted cabinet. Inside was a large metal cylinder with three extending rings of metal dividing it into thirds. Each ring held two dozen small vials, each containing a slightly different shade of yellow liquid. The cylinder rocked, gently sloshing the liquid inside each vial. Forty-five of them had darkened to a dirty gold colour.
Once they had all finished churning, and each vial had turned the same dirty gold, they would be ready for sampling. Sampling was where the real excitement was, or it would have been if both Mr. and Dr. Connors had any expectation of anything being discovered.
But they both knew better by now. They had signed on to the Event 16 Research Facility and Stabilization Base's experiments with the DNA recovered from the massive cold-fusion meltdown hoping to uncover new ways to combat exposure to nuclear chemicals, or at the least research the affects of absolute-zero temperature on organic tissue. Instead, they had spent the past two years churning the same samples for hours and hours just to get the same results. They were both weary of the endless, pointless cycle.
The goal behind this recent batch was, as usual, testing the DNA for contaminants. The frustrating thing was that despite the massive area that the cold fusion meltdown had affected--an entire fourth of the New California Biodome--each batch of samples Mr.and Dr. Connors received seemed to be curiously devoid, or at least largely lacking, in any actual contamination.
At first they'd been suspicious. Upon inquiry with the head of their department, it had been explained to them that the theory behind this curious phenomenon was that the bodies--animal, human, insect--had been frozen so fast and died off so immediately that no actual contaminant had time to take foot.
When the doctors had pressed for further explanation, they had been stonewalled, slapped on the wrist, and finally, threatened with expulsion from the project.
Mr. and Mrs Connors were the kinds of people that, when told to stop digging or get kicked out, quieted down and did as they were told, and then went on digging in much less noticeable ways.
But their constant experiments had proven nothing. Befriending other departments and subtly inquiring had been fruitless. They had quietly exhausted all methods of investigation available to them.
And now, with their contract due to end the next week, they had decided to get through with it and then go back to their home dome on the west side of the moon, where they could return to their own, much more interesting, personal projects.
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
BEEP
Mr. and Dr. Connors both jerked out of half-dozes and scrambled for consciousness. Dr. Connors fumbled his glasses back on to his face and hurriedly unlocked the cabinet. Together, the Connors carefully transferred the vials into trays, and then loaded the trays into yet another machine that resemble a large, long microwave. Having sealed it shut and typing in the instructions, both doctors settled back for another long wait as a small syringe began its slow journey back and forth across each row of vials, delicately stabbing through each lid and sucking up one drop of liquid from each, which would then be dissected on a molecular level and analyzed.
This time, the doctors did not wait nearly as long.
The machine began beeping a mere five minutes in. Both Connors jerked upright in their seats, stared wildly at each other in astonishment, and dashed over to the machine.
"What is it--"
"It's only identified an unrecognized contaminant, it doesn't know what it is yet--"
"Which sample is it?"
"Thirty-four. Nothing remarkable about the DNA itself, it came from a four-year old lion, a resident of the metropolitan zoo when the wave hit."
"Any anomalies in the genome?"
"None."
"Contaminants?"
"Nothing new. I don't know what could--"
Light exploded from the console projectors behind the machine, unravelling into huge, ten-by-ten foot screens. Line after line of data streamed across the holographic screens, the two doctors staring up in bewildered amazement.
"Is that--"
"What is it?"
"I've never seen anything like this before."
Both doctors went to work in a frenzy, printing out hard copies, dissecting the data, and prepping other samples of the lion's DNA for analysis.
Thirty minutes later, their lab exploded.

SIX HOURS EARLIER

"...always have to vacking do this--"
"You didn't seem too unhappy about it last night!"
"I hate it when you do this, Sil! I hate it! And you know it!"
"Then why didn't you stop me?"
"B-because I--because y-you--you don't listen! You never listen to me, Sil!"
"Oh, I was listening, alright, only the sounds you were making didn't sound very unwilling--"
CRACK
"OW--Sonofa--"
"D-don't you vacking touch me!"
"Glow, come on, wait--"
"Just s-stay aw--w-w--g-get off-f m-me!"
"I didn't mean--I--"
WHAM



Oh God, am I dying?
That's what it felt like. Like I'd been shot in the face. That must have been what happened. Some backsewer genderist with a sawed-off shotgun had seen me on my way home from a hard night's clubbing in my fem attire and gunned me down in an alley. And now I was lying on the concrete floor of some warehouse somewhere, my skull shattered open with my brainspace spilling out, and next door were construction workers operating jackhammers and wrecking balls.
I was absolutely certain of this for about five minutes.
Then my eyes finally insisted on opening(since after five minutes of continuing existence, my brain was arguing that maybe my brainspace wasn't ENTIRELY shattered raw) and saw the the couch pillow my head was resting on. Things beyond that were pretty blurry, but I could just barely make out something that two small white somethings were resting on next to a cup-shaped something. It was right in front of my face, within reach.
What--pills? OhthankGodDRUGS. DRUGS MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER.
I struggled upright, fumbled for the white pills, popped them down my throat, and emptied the cup down after it. Then I collapsed back onto the couch. After an eternity more of jackhammers and wrecking balls, I felt them kick in, and I drifted off into blissful darkness.
This couch pillow is really itchy.


...I don't HAVE a couch.
Oh God, where the hell AM I?

My eyes snapped open and I sat up immediately. This wasn't the first time I'd woken up in a strange apartment, so I wasn't completely panicking. Okay, okay, cover the basics--where am I sore, if I figure out what I did last night it can usually help me remember...
I wasn't sore.
Which was odd.
I mean, I had a couple hickeys, the most suggestive of which was right on the inside of my thigh, right at the top, uncomfortably close to certain tender things, and a little to the left of my Masc/Fem Pride tat. And I had one or two finger-shaped bruises elsewhere. But I wasn't sore, in like, you know...important places.
Which was good, right?
...Why was I sleeping on a couch?
I swung my legs off without realizing how tangled up they were in the blanket slung over me. I did realize how tangled up they were when I tried to stand in the same movement and ended up crumpled on the floor with my face in scratchy carpet.
"Ow."
I kicked my legs free and sat up again, barely avoiding cracking my head on an end-table, and got to my feet. I checked myself over and realized I was dressed in strange clothes, right down to the vacking underwear...which was not mine.
"The...what?" I muttered, plucking at the baggy shirt and shorts, then pulling the hem away from my hips and staring down at a pair of boxers two sizes too big. "...What?" I repeated. I gave up trying to remember the night before for the time being and had a look around.
It was nicer than most places I woke up in. It wasn't, you know, tidy, in the way that a bachelor's home isn't tidy when they aren't expecting to bring anyone home. There were random clothes like shirts and socks tossed over the arm of a sofa and piled in the corner, a few empty pizza boxes were stacked on the coffee table next to a half-empty mug, and what probably used to be a very nice duvet before whatever animal had gotten to it had gotten to it was piled in an armchair...under the animal that had gotten to it. A miniraptor, standard size, lay with its head propped up on an arm rest, large hindlegs gathered under it, the massive scythe claws trimmed down to regulation length, the long, rigid tail resting on the other arm rest. It was a dark red with a lighter mottled red along its spine, with some white patches on its legs.
Velociraptors weren't rich people pets, but you had to have good money to afford one--and by good money I mean you can afford to pay more than five bronze monthly rent and have more than two pieces of furniture in your one-room apartment. I was definitely not in the sort of place I usually woke up in.
"The hell," I muttered, staring at it.
"Oh," someone said behind me. I whirled around, my feet twisting up in the vacking persistent sonofabitch blanket and I fell back--
Hands grabbed me in a firm, broad grip that wrapped around my whole upper arm in a way that told me whoever it belonged to could snap this arm like a toothpick. I swallowed hard.
"Sorry about that," she said, raising an eyebrow at me. "Didn't mean to scare you. Didn't think you'd be up yet."
"Hah," I squeaked, trying to smile disarmingly, because disarmingly was the opposite of armingly(I was guessing) and I definitely didn't want to do anything armingly towards a woman that had three inches of height and probably at least a hundred pounds of muscle on me. Her hair was blonde and cropped close to her head with a few thin bars shaved to the skin right above her ears--gang rank tags in the hair. You saw them around where there where the district had so much experience with gangs that they could to lock you up based solely on what they decoded from the symbols in your ink.
So I was in a nicer apartment than usual...in an even worse part of town than usual.
Nice place in a bad town means whoever owns the nice place does very well in the bad town.
"Hey," she growled, and I almost pissed myself(oh God oh God she saw me staring at them now she's pissed she's going to kill me), "I'm not gonna hurt you. You got a little...uh. Wild, I guess? At a bar last night. Barkeep was gonna throw you out on your ass so you could pass out outside and a couple mascs were hanging around looking like they were gonna do something with it once you had...I just, figured I'd, you know..."
"Have it all to yourself?" I snapped, forgetting how scary she was for a moment and trying to yank my arm away.
"Boy who gets that drunk in that kinda place hangin' with those kinda people knows what's gonna happen to him," she growled. "So don't you get uppity wit' me. I didn't touch you, I got sicked up on by you and still found the goodness in my heart to pull you outta there. Woulda sent you home, but the cab wouldn't take your address."
"Uh, yeah. They usually don't. I'm...um, sorry, I just...I threw up on you?"
"Twice."
I winced. Usually I held my liquor better, so this was embarassing in two different ways.
"Um. Sorry. But thanks. For...you know. Doing what you did. And not doing what you could've done."
She grunted.
"Yeah, well, don't feel too bad for me. You threw up all over yourself too."
"Hence..." I gestured to myself and the strange clothes.
"Yeah, let you borrow some of my stuff."
"Right down to your underwear?"
"Figured it was better than you waking up in no underwear."
"...Depends on your experiences with waking up in other peoples' underwear."
A disbelieving grimace flicked across her face, then she said sternly, "That's clean, what you've got on, and you can take my word for it or take it off till yours is done washing."
"Why'd you have to wash my underwear, too? I mean, it would have been...under..."
"Your pants was halfway off when you lost it."
"...Oh God." Now that was embarassing. I mean, I did some vacked up shit when I went off it like that--and I was more than drunk last night, definitely--but that was in, like, the back rooms of clubs or someone's apartment or something like that, you know, somewhere private, but never stuff like that right out in front of people in a bar.
"Yeah. Hence..."
"The barkeep wanting me gone...God, I'm sorry."
"To me? What for?"
"I just...it's embarassing. You know. I mean, I don't do stuff like that in...places like that..."
My voice trailed off and an awful awkward silence ambushed us.
"Um," I suddenly said. "So. I guess, I mean, should I go? I mean, I should go. I mean, I don't even know you--I mean I'm glad you did what you did, like I really appreciate it, you're a really nice gal and everything, but I don't want to impose--"
"Clothes aren't done washin' yet."
"...Oh yeah." More awkward silence. I squirmed for a moment, then hit upon genius. "...How about breakfast?" I beamed a smile at her, and she squashed it with two words.
"Not hungry."
I realized she seemed distant. I mean, here I was, a pretty hot guy in her gratitude, offering to make her an amazing breakfast(granted, she didn't know it would be amazing, yet) and she was...not even looking at me.
I recalled the slamming door that had woken me up. I'd thought I was imagining it, but maybe it had been someone important storming out.
"I, okay, um. Do you have, like cereal? I mean, I'm just--I'm really hungry and I'd go out and get it but I don't know where to go and I'd give you money if you wanted to maybe get it but I don't want you to have to leave me alone in your apartment since you don't even know me and--"
"In the kitchen, right cupboard next to the fridge. Bowls are on the shelf above, spoons in the drawer below."
"Oh. Great. Great! Thanks." I grinned at her again, and she was still totally out of it, chewing on the corner of her bottom lip. "Right. So. I'll go...do that."
I inched around the couch and her and headed for a kitchen, then turned back.
"Hey, like, what's your name? I'm just curious--"
"Sil. Sil Night."
"Oh. Cool. I'm Julian."
"Uhuh," she mumbled, staring out the window on the opposite wall.
I left her to whatever she was thinking about and went to get some cereal.

I was halfway down the stairs when last night and this morning twisted each other up in knots and just rolled over me in one crushing wave of awful.
Blondie was eating breakfast, so he wouldn't be down any time soon. My knees buckled and I slid down against the stairwell wall.
I felt burning black anger surging inside me, throwing itself against the inside of my ribcage like some furious caged wild thing.
Teeth gritted, fists clenched, I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my back against the bare stone wall. I felt the skin of my palms scream under my fingernails and unbent my hands, digging my fingers into the bare concrete stairs instead.
Tried to hang on to the cold, cold wall, the vacking cold wall that was always burning icy no matter what season the dome was set to imitate. Tried to hang on to the parts of me that weren't angry, the parts that really were sorry and hated the parts that weren't and wanted all of me to just stop being a vacking idiot for once in my life and do something right.
I wanted to rip the wooden railing off the wall and throw it down the stairwell. It was hard not to, just because I knew I could.
Think of the money.
I hated the money. It was a sick, draining thing. It did horrible things to me. It could bring on the black, screaming anger or it could rip a hole in me right when my lungs were bursting with it and drain it away.
Can't afford a new vacking rail, need to pay off the damned interest on the refrigerator...
It was working. I felt that wicked green claw sink its pinpoint right into my gut and all the anger poured out, and then all the things that made me feel strong poured out too. That was the sacrifice for stopping the rage before it could make me do anything.
Now I felt weak and sick with the wave having passed and my head spinning with all the money we didn't have for the things that we needed to have. I shuddered and shifted down a step to more cold wall, the heat of my body having already warmed the first spot. The cold seeped into the back of my hot skull, clearing my head.
Stop thinking about the money. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. If you think about it too much the anger will just come back all over again.
Think of the 3090 Falcon you have to work on, with the brake belts run thin as holograms, it's a death trap, gotta make a note to tell the owner, figure out how to explain why you know the brake belts are worn deadly out when you were just supposed to change the oil...
Think of Glow--
No. Don't. Don't think about--
I wasn't angry again now, I just wanted more than anything not to have to go down there and look at him and see how angry I knew he still was, and have to deal with him ignoring me for the next however many days.
Ignoring me was the most awful thing he could do to me, and he knew it. I hated it more than anything, especially coming from him. It was like I didn't exist. Like nothing I did mattered.
Couldn't face that. Not yet.
I pressed my hands against my eyes and tried to make myself get up and keep going down the stairs.

There was an empty cereal bowl on my kitchen table. I'd been in the staircase longer than I thought.
I threw it in the sink, growling about it. I'd cleaned him up and brought him home and he ate my food. The vacking least he could do was put a vacking bowl in the vacking sink.
Then I heard the very familiar sound of vomiting.
It was coming from the bathroom.
"Damn," I said when I looked in. "Uh...hey, are you alright?"
"I think...those pills..."
"Pills?"
"The...the hangover pills..."
"Oh. Yeah. Yeah?" Forgot I'd left those out for him.
"I thhink...ssomekindof--" he lurched into the toilet bowl again, making noises awful enough to make even me grimace. I'd had my fair share of bad times, back when I had serious trouble with drinking, but this was impressive even by my standards. "--Reaction," he gasped, pulling his head back up. "To th--th' pills..."
"Oh, shit," I said, my eyes wide. "I'm so sorry, I didn't--"
"Not your fault," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes and flushing the toilet. "I just--I don't know why,, I mean, I never have reactions to pills or medications..." Blondie blinked and sat up, his eyes clearing some. "Oh. Oh shit." He patted his hips, then looked down at my clothes he was wearing. "Wait. No. That's right. Um." He squinted up at me. "Did you empty my pockets when you put my clothes in to wash?"
...Uh.
"...Uh."
Blondie gave me this pained look. He was also trying to smile at the same time, trying to act he wasn't really mad at me.
"You didn't."
To be fair, I had been kind of occupied at the time. Occupying Glow, who'd made the mistake of squeezing into our damn tiny washroom with me and we kept brushing against each other--
Don't think about last night, don't think about it, don't think about it...
"I...was kind of distracted--"
"Can you get my shorts out now, please? I'm pretty sure the bottle was water proof, I just want to make sure."
The bottle was water proof, and the pills inside it weren't even too badly broke up. I looked hard at the laser-printed prescription. I was pretty sure he'd told me his name at some point, but I'd been kinda preoccupied with how sore my face was at the time and hadn't been paying attention.
FOREST, JULIAN H.
"Here," I said, handing it to him. He ran his finger on the little words and then slapped a hand to his forehead.
"God, I am so vacking stupid." He shoved it in my face, pointing to it. "See? It says not to take with alcohol. That's why I got sick all over last night. I forgot, and then started drinking..."
"Uhuh. I...can see that." I also don't care, and you can get the bottle out of my face now.
Blondie--uh, Julian--whirled away, mumbling to himself.
"What did I do last night?"
"Other than throw up all over me? I have no idea. Look, good that you're okay now, and I don't mean to get unfriendly, but is there, you know, someone who can pick you up--"
"Oh my god! Tris. Duh. Tris would know."
"Hey, look--Julian? I can't really--I have to go to work, you can't really--I don't know you, see, I'd rather you didn't--"
"Wait a second." He whirled back to squint up at me. "Didn't I have my rings in?"
I stared at him blankly.
"What?"
"My rings! You know, in my ears, and my lip, and--I was wearing my chain last night too, wasn't I--and I'm pretty sure my nose studs?"
Now that I thought back, he had been wearing some piercings. I'd done something with them, taken them out in case he kept throwing up and put them somewhere. I used to have a lip ring back in highschool when I first started drinking heavy. Cleaning it out again the next day usually made me feel like throwing up all over again.
"Oh. Uh. Right. Um..."
To be honest I didn't remember much of last night either. Other than being with Glow. Everything else was hazy. Well, being with Glow was hazy too, but in a good, hot blur sort of way.
I patted my pockets, then looked wildly around the washroom until a glint in the corner caught my eye.
"There," I said, pointing to one of my many junk shelves. Normally Glow didn't allow them in the actual apartment--
"Swear t-to G-God, Sil, you've taken over the ent-t-tire d-damn junk room and the spare parts shelves and the work room and half the garage--"
"They do count as spare parts! They belong on the shelves and in the work room!"
"S-Sil, you have an entire pile for shiney bits of glass."
"Glass can be spare parts."
"My God, I d-don't know w-why I even t-try..."--but I'd sort of snuck it in here during one of those months he wouldn't speak to me, much less set foot in the apartment. "I put them over there. In case you kept getting sick and everything. And your earrings were getting caught up in your hair. Cleaned the lip ring off."
"Oh. Um. Thanks," he said brightly, scooping his piercings off the rack. Then he just stood there and looked hard at them. "Were there...any others?"
I was starting to get annoyed. What did it take to get him the vack out of my apartment?
"No. There wasn't anything. Do you, uh--do you have anyone to drive you home?"
"What?" he said distractedly. "Oh. Yeah, I can call Tris..."
"Good. You should probably do that."
Blondie blinked at me, another kind of fog clearing from his eyes.
"Oh. Oh! Right, right, sorry, I'm kind of overstaying here--"
I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah. Little bit."
"--I'll just go call my friend--"
"You can use our shop tel."
"I have a palmface--"
"We're ten levels below yours. Your palmface won't have that kind of range."
Blondie went a little pale.
"Ten...ten levels?"
"Tell your friend not to play their music very loud, don't drive too fast, keep the windows up, and don't stop between here and your level. Not for anything. You should be fine."
"O-ohhh...kay."
The dryer pinged.
"Your clothes are done. Meet me downstairs when you're dressed and I'll show you where the tel is."
This time I made it down the stairs, but I couldn't face Glow yet. I stayed in front to watch the register and I was glad for the excuse, for all I bitched and moaned about us not having anyone to do it properly.

GLOW

She made me so vacking angry. She was so damn good at it. It was like she'd perfected it as an art vacking form.
I shouldn't have gotten in the car with her. I knew better. I knew better, dammit. We'd gotten to the movie fine and I'd thought we'd get home fine but she started...doing what she always did whenever I was in the car with her.
My wrench slid off the bolt for the fourth time and I slammed it down on the worktable in frustration. Fifty pounds of meta-steel muscle bent the wrench and dented the metal table. I didn't care.
"Dammit. God." I rested my forehead on my hands and bit my lip so hard I could feel the skin break.
I couldn't put a damn carburetor back together like this. I hated it when this happened. I couldn't think straight for days afterwards. Why did I always do this? We'd been doing fine. Great, even. Things had almost been back to normal, and then I'd gone and--
No. I hadn't done anything. This was not my fault. This was Sil's fault. Because she did these things on purpose, and she knew I couldn't stop her. She knew what would happen and she did it anyway because she was so vacking selfish.
I wanted to cry. My throat constricted, the back of my eyes stung, and everything filled up and tried to spill over--and nothing came out.
Cyborgs can't cry.
I had a tiny nuclear generator in my chest instead of a heart and I couldn't cry.
It was then that I looked up and realized that the bolt I'd spent the past five minutes trying to twist back into the carburetor sheath was the wrong size.


JULIAN

"Come on, come on, pick up..."
After the sixth round of ringing, I got Tris's answering machine. Again. I growled in frustration and clapped the tel back into place on its port.
"Hey," my host snapped. She was leaning in the doorway, watching me, like she thought I was going to try to steal the tel right off the kitchen wall. Or even more likely, the fridge it was mounted next to. "Take it easy. Don't break the thing."
"Sorry," I mumbled. "Um. I..."
"He's not pickin' up, is he?"
"No. I don't know what he's doing--he usually always picks it up when it's me."
"Yeah, well, it isn't your number, so."
"Oh. Right. Duh."
We stood there for a long, awkward moment."But yeah, I left him like four messages, so he should get back to me soon--"

"Sil? Sil, I need a Jensen-Twenty knob-head for this carburetor, and I can't find it in the--"
His words twisted off with a squeak and he stopped dead, staring at me.
I stared back.
I'd seen cyborgs before, but never up close. At least, not as far as I knew. You could usually only tell a cyborg from looking at them when they went out of their way to not look human. They would change something obvious--eye colour, actual metal spikes instead of hair, moving tattoos, even extra arms and things like that.
This guy would definitely never be mistaken for human. His skin was grey, which was kind of creepy to me, and covered in tiny darker flecks, which I guessed were freckles. His eyes were unnaturally, vibrantly green, practically glowing, and he had small, shifting neon-green tattoos all over his skin. I picked out a gecko, some vines, and something with a broad body, a ridiculously long snout, and some sort of thin, curling tongue.
His hair was the craziest, though. He had vivid green glowdreads, yet another crazy body mod only available to cyborgs. They were sort of a cross of lava lamps and glowsticks, found in any colour and could be as thick as two inches to as thin as a pencil. As we stared at each other and he shrank away from me, I could have sworn his dreads dimmed.
"Uh," Sil finally said, looking from one of us to the other. "Glow. This is...uh..."
"Julian." I smiled and gave a little friendly wave.
"Julian. Yeah. He slept on the couch last night."
The cyborg's mouth dropped open and his eyes snapped wide. He stared at Sil for a long time, clearly groping for something to say, and settled for grabbing her by the arm and dragging her out of the kitchen.
Unable to help myself, I crept up to the doorway and leaned as close to the doorway as I dared.
"C-can't be s-serious, S-Sil, G-God, God, o-oh m-m-my God, he w-w-was there th-the wh-wh-whole time--"
"Glow. Calm. Down. He was unconscious, okay? Out cold the whole time. He didn't hear--"
Oh. My. God. Ohmygawd, tell me they weren't doing what I think they were doing while I was sleeping on their couch.
"S-Sil, I am n-not going to c-c-calm d-down! H-he w-w-w-w--"
"Was completely unconscious, Glow. God. Would you please just stop."
"I-I am n-not g-going to s-s-s--"
"Glow. Just--you're making your stutter worse, just let it go--"
"SH-SHUT UP!"
It was so sudden and loud I jerked back from the doorway and pressed up against the wall.
"Glow, I'm sorry--"
"I am n-not m-making my own d-damn s-s-stutter w-w-w-worse, dammit, S-Sil! It's y-you! You d-do these v-vacking s-stupid things and--"
"How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?"
"Y-you s-s-say it so damn o-often i-it d-d-doesn't even m-m-mean anyth-thing anym-more!"
"...What does that even mean?"
"I-it means--i-it m-m-means--G-God!"
I heard stomping feet and then a door slammed. In the long, long silence that followed, my Palmface beeped.
My heart leapt. Tris! I didn't give myself time to realize how impossible that was, I just tapped the touch-activated microchip embedded under the surface of my palm and the holoscreen leapt out, a new tap scrolling across it.
HEY BAB WER R U LOST U LAST NITE
Oh, God, it was Brett. Part of last night came trickling back--she'd been the one to pick me up, and then we'd met up with Tris at the bar. And then Tris had gone, I remembered that, but I wasn't sure what happened to Brett.
...Why hadn't Brett been the one to take me home and clean me up? Why had some total stranger been more concerned for me than my sort-of girlfriend?
I had just started tapping a reply when a dark blur appeared on the other side of my holoscreen. I blinked and looked up.
Sil was looming over me.
"...Um--"
"Let's go."
She jerked her hand in a this-way motion and walked out of the kitchen. It took my brain a second to kick into gear, and then I minimized my holoscreen and lurched after her.
"Wait, what? Go? Go where?"
"I'm going to drive you home," she growled without so much as a backwards glance.
Just as we entered the garage there was a massive CRASH. I almost jumped out of my skin. I whirled around to see what had happened but the mechanic grabbed my arm, hard, and yanked me back the other way. We were standing in front of her car.
"What--"
"Nothing," she snapped.
"But--"
"I said it's nothing."
"--might be hurt?"
Sil whirled on me, pinning me with a burning glare.
"He is fine. He's just being a little bitch and breaking shit because I kept interrupting him because sometimes it takes him like ten minutes to say one damn sentence and it's not my fault I get sick of waiting. Now get in the damn car."
I got in the damn car.

I tapped Brett back while Sil drove me to my home address. Brett tried calling me after the first tap, but I didn't pick it up. I didn't want to have any kind of conversations sitting next to Sil in an enclosed space. There wouldn't really be any point in trying to talk, what with her radiating vibes of black anger. It was hugely scary, and I'd just end up mumbling too quietly to be heard.
I didn't like being around angry people. Especially angry people I barely knew. I spent most of the ride indiscreetly pressing myself against the passenger car door as Sil sent the levehicle whipping around turns at ninety miles an hour. She was driving on manual, and if she didn't have me vacking terrified of her already I probably would have asked her to slow down.
She finally started calming down about halfway to my level when we got stuck in traffic on a level merge shaft. There were so many leves packed into the enclosed space that no one could move up or down. For a few minutes I waited for Sil to start getting angry again--she definitely seemed like the type to get roadraging--but instead she just turned the music up, put the windows down, and leaned her seat back, kicking the gear into Hover while we waited for traffic to get moving again. The mega-tense atmosphere started to leak out and I finally unbunched too.
Just in time, because Tris was calling me back.
"Oh my gawd, Tris, where have you been?"
"Julian, sweetie, I am so sorry. I was totally out of it. Are you okay? Where are you?"
"Some really sweet masc hauled my ass out of the club before someone, like, you know," I said.
"Yeah, I bet she was really sweet to your unconscious ass," Tris snorted.
"No, seriously, she didn't do anything. I mean, you know I can tell. Besides, I think she was..." I glanced at Sil, who was looking out her window, and lowered my voice. "Like...Tris, I think she and her fem were humping while I was passed out on their couch."
"Oh my gawd," Tris squealed, his words dissolving into fits of giggles. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, they were, like, arguing and shit about it this morning."
"Oh my gawd, Julian," he said again, still giggling. "Oh. My. Gawd. That's like, so vacked up and so funny at the same time."
"Yeah, it's vacking hilarious. Look, Tris--"
"Oh my God! I forgot, like, I wanted to ask you, did you ever get your package thingy delivered--"
I immediately felt this awful cold weight drop into my stomach, though I was fuzzy on why.
"Uh...package?"
"Yeah. The thingy you were carrying. You said you had to deliver it to some guys."
"I don't...remember. I don't really remember anything last night."
"God, I don't even doubt you, sweetie. You got so vacked up. Like seriously, babe, you shot up like six different toxis all together. I am not surprised you got sickly."
"No, that wasn't it, I got sick because I had alcohol and I'm taking this prescription--" Steady, Julian. Stay on track. I shook my head to clear it, my large, silver bangles lightly slapping against my cheeks. "Tris. Sweetie. Package, what?"
"Oh. Yeah. Right. Something from your sister's boyfriend?"
I could feel a headache coming on. I sighed and rubbed my temples.
"Tris. I don't have a sister." He's known me for nine years. "What are you--oh God. Oh. Oh God. Tris, do you mean Mom's boyfriend?"
"Oh yeah! Him. The galactic dickwad? Oh, God, what's his name--"
"Louis." The word dropped out of my mouth like a chunk of ice. "God. Oh, God. Tris. Tris, he's going to kill me. He's going to vacking kill me. God. Tris, God, what do I do--"
"Julian, Julian, don't panic. Calm down, okay? Just backtrack through the clubs we went through last night and you'll be fine."
"Clubs? Shit, Tris, I only remember one!"
I felt the car shift gears and realized the traffic above and below us was slowly shifting and picking up speed. I wouldn't be able to hear Tris over the hum of the engine.
"Tris, I gotta go. Tap me the names of the clubs we went to last night, okay?"
"Yeah, sure thing sweetie. Good luck!"
I got the list about a minute later. There were about six clubs. I groaned.
"Problem?" Sil asked, glancing over at me.
"Something like that," I groaned.
"Yeah?"
"Um," I said, raising an eyebrow at her. "I left something at a club."
"Uh-huh?"
"Uh...there's like, six clubs we went to last night, so now I have to check all of them. So I guess I have to grab cab fare when I get home."
Sil was quiet, then sighed.
"Or I guess I could take you there."
"Oh, oh God, no, you don't have to do that," I said quickly. Probably too quickly. Can you blame me? She was being nice and all but that didn't change that she was scary, buff, and in a gang. I didn't want to be stuck in a car with her for any longer than I had too.
"No, really, it's fine," she said, rubbing her temples.
"I don't want you to--"
"I said it's fine."
I clammed up tight and went back to pressing myself against the car door, edging the lock up as surreptitiously as I could. Maybe I'd be able to throw myself out fast enough if she snapped. Maybe.
"Blondie?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm gonna need an address if we're gonna get there."