Long Dark Dusk by J.P. Smythe

Author:J.P. Smythe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV053000 Juvenile Fiction / Science Fiction
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2014-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

He’s propped me up in the corner. There’s some sort of wire wrapped around my arms and legs. There’s no give, and when I struggle—try to find a loosening, a fraction of something that I can use to escape—they tighten. He smiles as he sits down opposite me.

“It’s an Unabler. They’re synced to you. Touch your skin, they can tell what you’re trying to do. They work with you or against you. You struggle, they go tight. You don’t struggle, they stay loose and don’t hurt you.” I stop wriggling because the wire is digging into my skin so hard I can feel it about to cut me. “You should calm down.”

He pours a drink. Steam rises from it, the smell of sweetness, of fruit stewing. He tells me that it’s Asian tea. Imported. He makes a joke about how expensive it is, how my shaking had better not make me spill any of it. “That’s a month’s wages for every drop that doesn’t make your lips,” he says. He smiles. His jaw is wired; the raised tracks of the electrics run underneath the skin all the way down past his neck, up around his ears. That’s what the scars are for. They’re totally symmetrical, a perfect pattern etched into his flesh. He passes me the cup, I have to lift both my hands at the same time to hold it.

“Don’t kill me,” I say as he presses my fingers around it. It’s metal like cups we used to have on the ship but painted nicely. We had no paint on ours. Maybe we did once. “Please.”

“You think I’d kill you?” he asks. “Police don’t kill people. Drink that, all of it. You need fluids.” He seems calmer now. “We’re trained to keep you alive. Kind of the point.”

He’s police. Alala didn’t tell me that.

Oh God.

He sits and waits for me to finish my drink. He’s quiet and still. When I’m finished, he takes the cup and puts it onto a table in the corner of the room next to the EMP from my pocket. He sits down again and taps his fingers on his knee: false on false, the hollow sound of whatever artificial material they’re both made of. You glance at him and you’d never tell. It takes closer inspection: the stillness of his face, the smoothness of the skin.

“She made me do this,” I say, and he nods, waves the words away.

“How long have you known her?” He doesn’t need to look at my face to see my reaction. “What has she got on you?” I don’t say anything. “I’m not angry. I understand, okay? We’re the same, you and I. I mean, not exactly.” A flex of his arm—the plates, sheets of metal almost folding over one another. “I haven’t been the same for a while now. I’m not angry.” He has a strange accent. I haven’t heard it before. It’s softer than it should be for how he looks. There’s a lilt to it, an airiness from a different place altogether, I’d guess.

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