IXION PROJECT : CHAPTER ONE - THE FUGITIVE
© Fred Dumpling. Redistribution is prohibited.
The nation of Uniosphaera is a solitary creature. Its economy is self-sufficient, its politics self-contained, and its government compliant to no international treaties, laws, or statutes. It keeps its nose in its own business and warns other nations to do the same. Its concentric cities, numbered as Layers One through Nine, are similarly isolated, separated from one another by walls of varying effectiveness and linked only by the Federal Railroad, which pierces each city like the radius of the unending circle.
Uniosphaera has no future and no past. It is a place that knows nothing and can learn nothing. It does not change; it does not expand, annex, or conquer. It simply is.
And it was in the Fourth Layer of this frozen existence that a young man slept, dreaming of the burning man.
In his dream, he was groping his way down a dark corridor. He didn't know why he was there, nor did he question it; he simply walked. Then, he saw it: a thin line of light as if from under a door, just ahead. He broke into a run, desperate to escape the corridor and its suffocating, maddening darkness. He slammed into the walls, again and again, disoriented as if the corridor had become a maze, yet the light was always just ahead, just ahead. He was closer, close, yes!
Suddenly, a man stood before him. He could not see the man's face, but even in the dark, he recognized those ugly hands reaching at him. He grabbed the man's head preemptively, just as the man burst into flames. He reared back, trying to escape, but the man had him by the wrists, holding fast as fire consumed and melted his features. The whole corridor was lit, and he could see that the black walls were moving, shining, wet. It was oil, he realized with alarm, and it coated his hands, his clothing, his face. He fought the man, even as the skin of his arms burned and the corridor lit up, all around, everywhere, fire, fire, fire— but the man wasn't alive anymore. It was merely a corpse holding him prisoner, a corpse that damned him, a corpse that killed him.
"I will be burned alive," was his first thought when he opened his eyes.
The fire was gone, and with it, the man and the corridor and the treacherous light. Bewildered, he sat up on the cot and took stock of the room dimly lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. It appeared to be a storage room, filled with cardboard boxes, large speakers, and rickety shelves of various odds and ends. A layer of foam covered the walls, and he thanked it silently when he laid his head back against it to try to calm the frantic beating in his heart. But he realized after a moment that much of the thumping was a dull bass beat coming from another room.
A door stood in one corner of the room. A thin line of light intruded beneath it.
Warily, the young man stood and crossed to the door. The floor was cold against his bare feet. He noted that he wasn't wearing a shirt, either; just sweatpants and some bandages and gauze wrapped around his abdomen and left shoulder.
Come to think of it, why was he wearing bandages? He certainly didn't feel any pain. Pausing just inside the door, he found the knot of the bandages, undid it, and pulled the bandages and gauze from his body, dropping them in a pile on the floor. Gingerly, he ran his fingers over his side and over his shoulder, where he found large patches of dried blood but, strangely enough, no wounds. He tried to remember where the blood came from, how he had ended up in this room, anything that he might have been doing before falling asleep, but his memory came up blank.
He fought down a panic and assured himself it would all come back to him shortly. "I'm just having a bad day," he muttered aloud. Not entirely soothed by this, he frustratedly opened the door, believing the answers he sought may dwell on the other side.
The next room was smaller than the first and better lit by a two-bulbed hanging lamp. A stairway at the other end of the room led up to yet another door. (The only other exit, the young man noted; he was beginning to hate doors and linear arrangements like this and the corridor.) The bass beat was louder in here; the young man suspected it was coming from the room just beyond this one. In the middle of the room stood a table surrounded by four chairs, and in one of these chairs sat a woman.
Her back was to the young man, and she was looking down, muttering to herself. He peeked around her and saw money in her hands; she appeared to be counting it. She paused. The end of the cigarette in her mouth glowed red. A trail of smoke escaped from between her lips, rose toward the lights, and disappeared. She removed the cigarette from her mouth and crushed the tip in an ashtray.
"You shouldn't be up," she said, standing. She turned to face him. She was a small and curvy woman, with small, pointy features on a face shortened by a thick curtain of black hair, cropped just above her eyebrows and chin. Her eyes, beady as they were, had a piercing quality, but what struck him most is her outfit. It was obnoxiously brightly colored and eccentric, from the orange ski goggles atop her head, to the form-fitting vivid purple dress, down to the leather platform boots that served as evidence of how miniature a woman she really was. And, he noted, he didn't know her.
She pointed at his abdomen. "Your side wound—"
"What side wound?" he interrupted.
"Goodness. That side wound." She snapped her fingers, still pointing. "You see that blood there? Did you take the bandages off? Geez, how careless."
"There's nothing there," he pointed out. "A lot of blood, but..."
"Are you kidding me? I thought you were dead before you started vomiting your guts out. It's a good thing these boots are already red, or you would owe me a new pair." She giggled. The young man regarded her as odd already.
He shrugged. "Well, see for yourself."
And she did. She grabbed his arm, drawing it upward so she could dip her face uncomfortably close to his abdomen. They stood like that for a moment before she slowly straightened and let his arm down.
"That's impossible," was all she said. She sat in her chair, eyes wide with shock. Then she beamed. "You must be some sort of freak!"
"What?"
"Come now, Ixion. What else but a freak, fairy, angel, dragon, moose, piranha, cursed prince, or government conspiracy could heal like that? And I'm fairly sure you're not any of the others——except maybe a government conspiracy."
The young man had stopped listening after the third word, however, for he had not realized until then that even his name had been unknown to him. But when he heard her call him "Ixion," he knew it was correct.
"How did you—" he started.
"So you are a government conspiracy? Smashing! I always knew—"
"No, that's not what I meant," he said quickly. "I meant——my name."
The woman slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead. "How silly of me!" she laughed. She shoved her hand into a pocket in her dress that Ixion had not realized was there and that indeed seemed to disappear as soon as her hand was out of it. When he squinted at it, he could see its opening still barely visible in the devious material.
An "ahem" from the woman drew his attention to the contents of her hand: two silver dog tags. In one was engraved, "IXION." The other, "The ELSCHILDE Family." He took the tags from her.
"I found those on the ground next to you," she said. "'Ixion Elschilde.' Sweet name. You're from the Second Layer, then? That's the only place they use those."
"I don't actually know," Ixion admitted. "I can't seem to remember much."
"That's only to be expected," the woman said. "You must have hit your head hard when you fell from the train. I've cleaned most of it off, but your head was bleeding, too. Although that seems to have healed up just like your other wounds! You really are—"
"I'm sorry," Ixion interrupted. "I fell from the train?" There was no need to ask which train; the only one in Uniosphaera belonged to the Federal Railroad, although he'd heard the Ninth Layer had its own similar modes of public transport. (At least, he thought he had.)
"Yes, you did, you daredevil, you," the woman affirmed. She seemed both impressed and amused. "I didn't see it myself, but judging from the way you were sprawled under the tracks..." She suddenly stopped. "Wherever are my manners! I completely forgot to introduce myself!" She thrust out a hand, which Ixion hesitantly took, only to be yanked forward when she began shaking it vigorously up and down. "My name is Tuva de la Vega, and this—" She turned and ran up the stairs toward the far door, not letting go of Ixion's hand. He stumbled after her, trying not to trip as she forced him after her.
The bass rhythm that had not ceased throughout their conversation was much louder now, and as Tuva pushed open the door, the sound exploded in a catastrophic and beautiful assault of music, color, and dance. He stared in awe through the open door at the crowd moving in time with the bass and the melody that could now be heard to accompany it. Their faces were magenta and green and their bodies seemed to flicker surreally in the changing lights. Each of the dancers was dressed as zanily as Tuva. Each was as colorful, as strange, as magnificent. He stepped into the room as if in a trance, enchanted by this world that, even with his absent memory, he was certain he had never experienced.
"This!" Tuva shouted into his ear, her voice muffled even in such proximity. "Is my nightclub!"
--
Tuva insisted on giving Ixion a makeover before allowing him to enjoy the festivities. His clothes had been ruined by the blood, after all, and he was, she said, badly in need of a wash. She grabbed his wrist and dragged him through the crowd (returning the occasional greeting), into an elevator, and up three floors to what appeared to be a penthouse. Ixion could see that this was Tuva's natural habitat; the shiny black ceiling and floor contrasted dramatically against furniture as vividly colored as Tuva herself. They were very modern, taking the oddest of shapes: a sharply trapezoidal coffee table kept the company of a couch with a spiked back, and the lamp to Ixion's left was a faceless woman of red plastic with a bulb nested in her hair. Huge glass windows provided a beautiful view of the city, still lit despite the late hour due to its active nightlife. Had it been daytime, Ixion would have been able to see the patch of blood that lay below the train tracks, as well as the men that milled around it, and he would have been able to see how clearly they did not belong in the Fourth Layer. As it was, Ixion enjoyed the neon lights of the buildings instead. The music from the club was almost completely muffled here, but if he listened carefully, Ixion could still hear the reassuring heartbeat of the beast that dwelled below.
Sometime while Ixion had been enjoying her penthouse, Tuva had disappeared and returned with a measuring tape. She had him stand up straight, relax his shoulders, put his arms out, no, not like that, here, legs apart, don't worry, she did this all the time, while she took his measurements and scribbled down numbers. She then ushered him into a surprisingly colorless bathroom and told him to enjoy a long, hot shower while she went shopping. "Be back before you can sneeze!" she said, and she left.
Ixion didn't think he needed a makeover but understood when he faced the mirror that covered the length of one wall. As with his name, Ixion had not known what to expect from his appearance, but once he saw his reflection, it only seemed natural that he should look the way he did, and what he saw was a skinny teenage boy with enough muscle not to appear sickly but little enough that his clavicles and hipbones jutted out sharply and his ribs were clearly visible. His tangled hair was red in parts with blood and gray in others with dust, but he knew that it had once been blond. It framed a gaunt face with high cheekbones that he knew, without knowing how, were typical of the Elschilde Family. Above them, his eyes were shadowed by heavy creases. He frowned. He must not have gotten much sleep lately.
It took him a moment to work the shower; he didn't think he'd ever experienced such luxury. The shower was spacious, and the water was warm, and it seemed to Ixion that it was a waste for less than six people to be using it at any one time. He experimented with the dozen shampoos lined up on the shower shelves, wondering which fruit he ought to smell like before settling on papaya. It had a sweet scent, and Ixion made a mental note to try the fruit itself during his stay in the Fourth Layer. If the city had citizens as wealthy as Tuva, he was sure it must have the fruit, as well.
A pile of clothing was waiting for him when he exited the shower. He didn't know how Tuva could have snuck in without his notice, considering the shower had glass doors in lieu of curtains, but he was grateful to have something to wear besides the sweatpants in which he'd awoken. He lifted up a shirt to examine it. As expected, it was the sort of colorful garb he'd seen on the men dancing downstairs, woven from some sort of vaguely futuristic material. He was more comfortable with the jeans, but they were a disconcerting pale purple. The people in the club had looked magnificent in this type of clothing, but Ixion didn't think he could pull it off. The rest of the clothing were, by Ixion's guess, accessories, but he couldn't be sure how or where they were supposed to be worn. Abandoning those pieces, he beheld himself in the mirror:
He looked like an idiot.
Ixion was greeted by the soles of Tuva's boots when he returned to the living room, his arms full of the more puzzling items. Her legs were swung over the back of the couch, and when he walked around it, he could see that she was lying on the seat, her head hanging off the edge, playing a handheld video game. Her attention still on the game, she said, "You were lookin' pretty hot there, champ. Glad I didn't spring for curtains because oh baby." When Ixion only stared at her, she glanced toward him briefly and muttered, "I was trying to embarrass you."
"Not really embarrassed."
"Yeah, I guess all you Second Layer folk wash together, don't you?"
Ixion thought it probable, as it seemed only natural to him, but he didn't really know. He stood there awkwardly for a few moments before she apparently reached a stopping point in the game, shut it off, and threw it under the couch so that it slid out the other side and hit a wall. Still upside-down, she looked him up and down and said, "Excellent."
"I think you may want to sit straight up because it's not."
"It's a process," Tuva said matter-of-factly, but she righted herself nevertheless. "Why aren't you wearing the rest of the pieces I bought?"
"What is this?" Ixion asked, holding up a cylinder of white and red fabric.
"It's an arm warmer."
"It's a tube."
"And that one's a scarf."
"Are you sure?"
Tuva laughed. "I like you, Ixion. You're so uncorrupted. I mean, uninitiated."
Ixion eyed her with mock suspicion as she took the pieces from him and began dressing him like a doll. She then sat him at a large vanity and began playing with his hair.
"Your hair's so soft. Did you use my conditioner?"
"Probably. I used a lot of things."
"This color is nice, but it's a bit ordinary." She hummed to herself as she considered her options. "The lightness is convenient, though. We can dye it any color we want."
"What?"
"Let's try blue. Don't worry!" she responded to the alarm on Ixion's face. "It's temporary. We wouldn't want to scare your family when you return, now would we?"
Ixion didn't answer. He had thought a few times since he'd awoken about returning to the Second Layer, but each time, he had become oddly anxious and thought maybe he could stay in the Fourth Layer with Tuva until he felt ready to return home. As Tuva began combing the dye into his hair, he wondered what he was afraid of, why he had left the Second Layer in the first place, and whether there was something he was trying to escape. He was almost certain he was.
"A bit of eyeliner... Geez, you're so twitchy! And we're done!"
Capping the thick eye pencil, Tuva stood back while Ixion examined the result in the mirror. The transformation was remarkable. The vivid blue made his skin look paler, and the hair had been teased upward into a fierce mane. In addition, the black Tuva had drawn around his eyes made them especially menacing.
Tuva seemed to agree. "I've never seen anyone with orange eyes before," she said wonderingly. "You should show them off like this. Before, they just kind of disappeared into your skin and hair."
"I look like I'm going to kill someone. I mean, I like it!" he amended at the look on Tuva's face. "I might actually fit in with the crowd downstairs. But I don't know how to do any of this stuff."
"That's why you have me!" Tuva said with a pat on Ixion's shoulder. "Don't worry about a thing; I've got your back." She sat on the vanity between Ixion and the mirror and smiled a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "You know, Ixion, I own this place. Everybody knows me. But I don't have many friends."
"Why not?" Ixion asked before realizing it was rather tactless.
"I don't know. I guess I'm just not very likable."
"Well," he said shyly, "I like you, Tuva."
She brightened. "Thanks! And I like you, too, Ixion. So, we're friends right?"
He smiled. "Yeah. We're friends."
"Oh, wait." Tuva opened the top drawer on the vanity and withdrew a pair of goggles. She settled them in his hair, explaining, "You were wearing these when I found you. The blood washed right off, which is nice because they match your eyes."
"That reminds me." Ixion stood and returned to the bathroom. He found the dog tags by the sink but hesitated to hang them around his neck. He wasn't ready to claim that identity just yet.
Tuva appeared behind him as he was stuffing the dog tags into a pocket, and the two regarded themselves in the mirror. "Ixion Elschilde and Tuva de la Vega," she said. "Let's go show them what we're made of."
--
When the elevator stopped back at the first floor, Tuva took Ixion's hand and pulled him onto the dance floor. "Dance with me!" she yelled over the noise.
The dance floor was crowded and hot, and Ixion wasn't entirely sure he liked it, but everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves so much that he gave it a try. He picked someone out of the crowd and imitated what he was doing, but evidently he wasn't doing a very good job because Tuva laughed and said, "You don't dance much, do you?"
Before he could reply, a large man wearing a uniform that announced "Club 2va" closed in beside Tuva and spoke into her ear. The smile left her face and she yelled to Ixion, "I have to go!"
"Is something wrong?" Ixion asked, following through the crowd.
"No, no! Just business! You stay here!" She waved vaguely at him and disappeared.
Ixion stood there, unsure of what to do. He didn't wonder long; a voice from close behind him said, "That feeble disguise isn't doing you any favors."
Surprised, Ixion jumped and began to back away when a sharply curved blade at his throat warned him not to move. A sidelong glance to him it belonged to a solidly built man in his mid-twenties with a white scar on one cheek. His eyes were set deep in a hard face, and Ixion could see that they were orange like his own. It was not the only indication he had likely come from the Second Layer: in lieu of the club's standard dress he wore the light armor of the Second Layer's Executioner's Office, dusted, like his hair, in the Second Layer's unforgiving fine sand. A dozen more men like him began to emerge from the retreating crowd, and Ixion knew this was what he had been trying to escape.
"You look well," the man in front of him said. The music had stopped so that he no longer had to raise his voice. The crowd had fallen silent, as well, and was watching the two men with mixed apprehension and intrigue. "A little pale around the edges, but better than I'd expected. Or hoped."
"I'm lucky like that," Ixion replied, despite feeling distinctly unlucky at the moment. "What do you want with me?"
"Don't play dumb," the man snapped. "Ixion Elschilde, you are hereby under arrest for the murder of Oleander Elschilde." He dropped the authoritative tone. "I'd give you the bit about coming quietly, but we both know that's not going to happen, is it?"
A disturbance from the crowd swallowed Ixion's reply. "What is going on here?!" Tuva shouted as she made her way toward Ixion and the men from the Second Layer. The crowd parted easily for her, but she was stopped when two of the men crossed their voulges in front of her. "Ixion, what is this?" She tried to fight her way past them, but they grabbed her by the arms. "Let go of me!"
"Tu—" Ixion started toward her, but the blade pressed into his neck reminded him of the man behind him.
"You should be more concerned about yourself right now." Ixion could hear the smirk in his voice. He hated him.
A yelp from Tuva drew him back to her, and when he looked up, he saw that she had fallen, and the men were pointing their voulges at her.
"What are you going to do, Ixion?" the man hissed in his ear.
Ixion's vision left him. He felt himself falling, and a pang in his neck told him he'd cut himself on the blade. He came back to himself before he hit the ground, and he could see the men were all on edge, watching him. He turned to face the man behind him. The man did not seem so solid now. It was almost silly how weak he looked. Ixion laughed. "What am I going to do?" he repeated. "I'm going to kill you, you sad son of a bitch."
His hand shot out and grabbed the arm which still held the blade toward him. Ixion kneed the man in the chest and pulled; the man yelled as his arm was freed from its socket. Ixion then turned on the men who had been threatening Tuva. They ran at him now, their voulges extended, and he grabbed the weapons easily, hitting them with the blunt ends before thrusting the sharp ends into the men coming at him from behind. The crowd screamed and fled toward the exits as the men bled, and Ixion laughed. More came at him. He smashed one with a bar stool, picked up another, and flung him into a third. They landed on top of each other, and Ixion thrust down a voulge, skewering them. As he straightened up, a blade caught him across his side. Ixion yelled and pressed his hands against the wound as he looked for his attacker.
The leader of the men glared back, his arm apparently reduced to its original position by one of his comrades. "It's true, then," he said as he caught the thrown blade like a boomerang. "You really are a monster."
Ixion grinned. "So it seems." Ixion braced one foot on his victims' bodies and wrenched the voulge free. The bottom man gave a hoarse cry, and Ixion chuckled as their leader tensed with anger. "Come on, lawman. Show me what you've got."
The executioner rushed at Ixion, who stood waiting for his moment. When the other man came within range, he pulled back his voulge, ready to plunge it forward, only to find it stuck behind him. Ixion looked back. "What the—"
The remaining soldiers, some of them bleeding profusely, had gotten behind Ixion. One had grabbed hold of his weapon, while two more captured his arms. He struggled to escape but was backhanded for his efforts by the leader. The older man punched Ixion a few times and kneed him in the stomach until he was sure Ixion had ceased to fight. Ixion coughed and spat the blood from his mouth.
"You're skilled, Ixion," the leader said, wiping his hand on his pants, "but there are quite a few of us, and you're completely alone."
"No, he's not," a familiar voice argued from behind Ixion. The men holding his arms were suddenly wrenched away to have their heads smashed together. Tuva let the unconscious men fall and helped Ixion to his feet. "I don't usually like to get my hands dirty," she said, "but nobody messes with my friend. Get out of here, Ixion."
He looked over at his rescuer. "Are you sure? These guys are—" One of the men rose behind Tuva, and Ixion made to warn her, but before he could, she swung one enormous boot into the center of the man's face, and he promptly hit ground again.
"Yeah," she said. "I think I've got it."
Ixion didn't need to be told twice. He ran from the club and out into the brisk Fourth Layer night.
The executioner didn't take his eyes off of the newcomer, but he bellowed to his men, "After him!"
"Don't follow him!" the woman immediately countered.
The man raised an eyebrow. "Just a tip: my men are not very likely to heed your orders. You tell me if that ever works." He then rolled his eyes at the woman and headed for the door himself when he felt the barrel of a gun at the back of his neck.
"I would so hate to have to clean your leader's trachea off of my floor, so all of you just stay where you are." The woman had exchanged her earlier lively tone for a much more forbidding one.
The leader of the men sighed and dropped his weapon. He obediently raised his arms as his men followed his lead. "You can delay our capturing him, but you can't stop our justice."
"I don't want to stop your justice," the woman said. "I just want to do business. Turn around. Careful-like." The man did. "Your name is Vistiel, right?" she asked, now pointing her gun at his face.
"You know me, then," Vistiel said. "Perhaps you also know what happens to people who get in my way."
The woman laughed a humorless laugh. "Believe me, I'm all for catching the kid; I knew he was a criminal the moment I found him. Those dog tags aren't exactly a favorite accessory of law-abiding citizens of the Second Layer——or whatever passes for law-abiding in that place. But you never would have caught him running after him like that. In case you haven't noticed, the boy's strong."
"Yeah, and your strategy of letting him escape was the epitome of effectiveness. He must be in our custody already!"
"Is there a bounty on him?" she asked curtly.
"No."
"Put one. Twenty thousand sounds good to me."
Vistiel snorted. "Lady, that's a bit high—"
"You're not really in a position to argue."
"—and you have no idea what you're dealing with. That kid is a monster."
The woman suddenly grinned. There was something chilling about it, turned chillier when she began to apologize. "I'm sorry, I... I thought you knew who I was."
"I don't, nor do I care. Now get your gun—"
"I'm Tuva de la Vega. Perhaps you've heard of me?"
Vistiel started, and he heard his men share similar shocked reactions. They had heard of her. Tuva de la Vega was one of the wealthiest inhabitants of Uniosphaera. She owned a nightclub, a restaurant, a casino, and a spa in the Fourth Layer alone, as well as a few establishments in the Ninth. She was said to be cunning, cutthroat, and, according to some, strikingly beautiful. (Vistiel begged to differ.) She was also one of the nation's most renowned bounty hunters.
"Now," said said, "let's discuss that bounty."
But while his friend was turning out to be less of a friend, Ixion was running down the streets of the Fourth Layer, looking for somewhere to hide. He didn't see anyone following him, but he didn't want to take the chance, especially not while he was injured. He found what looked like a storage shed next to an arcade that had closed for the night. It was padlocked, but a few kicks broke the door down, and Ixion slipped inside. The room was narrow and filled with nothing but boxes, but it would do. He shut the splintered door behind him and took a seat on one of the larger boxes.
Then it all slammed down on him. His wounds didn't hurt more, but they became much more difficult to ignore. He was breathing heavily. He felt weak. But worse was the sudden realization of what he had done. He gagged as he remembered how he'd stabbed the men who had come for him, and how he'd laughed as they screamed and bled. Oh, God. He wondered if they were alive. He wondered if he'd— The leader had said he was wanted for murder. He'd thought— He'd— "You really are a monster," the man had said.
Ixion fell off the box and onto the floor. He felt sick. There was blood on his clothes and his hands, and not all of it was his, and some had come from the men he'd skewered, and some— Oh, God. Oh, God. This wasn't him. He'd never. (But he did.) He buried his face in his knees and sobbed. He was hurt and afraid, and he stank of sin. There was a monster inside of him, and he didn't know why or how to control it.
Distracted by these thoughts, Ixion didn't notice when his cuts and bruises healed and disappeared.