Dancing In the Shadows

-Original Fiction-

555

by Shuuki and Pookie

Chapter 9

The pair sat side by side on the small couch, once again encompassed by the comfortable silence that seemed to pervade Sophe’s home. The boy lay down on his back, reaching one hand up toward the windows, watching the way the various hues touched his skin.

Nathan looked at the boy playing with the lights for a few silent minutes before resting his head against the back of the couch and closing his eyes. A soft sigh escaped him as he smiled. “You must spend a lot of time in here...” he said softly.

“Yes, I do.” Sophe’s reply was just as soft.

“I think I’m jealous...” Nathan added lightly.

The boy turned his head at that, folding his delicate hands over his chest. “Why is that?”

“You’ve seen my apartment. It’s nice and all, but it doesn’t feel as nice as here,” Nathan answered casually. “This place is just different...”

Sophe returned his gaze to the windows, kicking his legs over the side of the couch thoughtfully. Nathan opened one eye and glanced over at the boy. “You disagree?” he asked.

“I like your window.”

“Ah yes, my window. Which part of it do you like most? The view of the streets below, the skies above, or what’s far in the background?”

“The skies,” Sophe breathed.

Nathan smiled at that, turning his head to look at the boy. “That window was probably the main reason I chose that apartment over the others I had seen. The view from there can be quite nice. Though sometimes it also becomes monotonous,” he finished softly. “Same gray skies, same floating boats, same busy streets and buildings...”

“Which view did you choose it for then, Nathan?” the boy asked as he met the man’s dark eyes with his red gaze.

Nathan smiled an enigmatic smile before answering. “Of all the places I’ve seen, it is one of the best views of the skies, more precisely of that ever-present red light up there.” He could see questions in the boy’s large eyes, but Sophe merely nodded and continued kicking his feet. Nathan sighed and ran a hand through his unruly hair, seemingly unsure what to do next. His eyes returned to the floating colors around him as he said in a quiet voice, “Don’t just stare at me like that...” He smoothly stood up and walked towards one of the bookshelves, his fingers tracing the covers of the books in front of him.

The boy blinked and sat up, caught off guard by Nathan’s uncharacteristic reaction. His eyes fell to the floor as he sat on the edge of the chaise, hands clasped between his legs. His voice was low. “You want me to ask why... why it’s important for you to see that red light.”

“It is a reminder... not that I could ever forget... but it’s also the closest to that place I can get...” Nathan said in a barely audible voice. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the boy’s face.

Sophe looked up, heart catching with the emotion he heard in the man’s words. He angled himself toward Nathan, gripping the edge of the lounge. He hesitated a long moment before speaking again. “Reminder of what, Nathan?”

“How easily humans are manipulated, and how evil that place can be...” Nathan turned around and leaned heavily against the bookshelf. “But that is not the question that should worry you, Sophe...” An almost pained look crossed his dark eyes.

Sophe got to his feet tentatively. He walked over to Nathan and stood before him, looking earnestly up into those troubled eyes. “What do you want me to ask you, Nathan?”

“I lied to you Sophe... I cannot bring you to Triumph....” Nathan shut his eyes again as the boy approached and added quietly, “I cannot even come close to that building anymore...”

Sophe’s eyes widened briefly at Nathan’s “confession”. The man’s face seemed older without its usual grin. The boy took hold of his hand and urged him with a silent squeeze to open his eyes. Nathan’s eyes slowly opened and fixated on the small hand wrapped around his fingers. After a few seconds he looked back up and was met with the boy’s kind smile. “I know, Nathan. You told me you don’t have that access any longer.” Sophe’s red eyes seemed glassy in the fading light. “But you said that you would help me...” Sophe’s sweet voice faltered with emotion. “That’s enough for me.”

“Sophe...” Nathan looked at the boy before him at loss for words, touched by his kindness. He pulled him in his arms and hugged him, his guilty conscience not fully cleansed. “I just don’t know how to help you...”

“Tell me Sophe, do you know what a ghost is?” he asked after a moment.

The boy held onto the man’s coat, resting his head between the open lapels. “What?”

“A ghost is neither alive nor dead. Officially a ghost doesn’t exist anymore but unofficially exists until proven dead...”

The boy’s voice floated up from the man’s chest. “Are you a ghost, Nathan?”

“Yes. I no longer exist to the world,” he answered as he pushed the boy gently from his chest. “Yet were I to reappear I would simply become yet another corpse.”

Young eyes regarded older with a sharp clarity beyond their years, yet the boy’s voice was gentle. “Nathan, I promised I would not ask of your past... but it seems you have a ghost story that needs telling.” His gaze was steady. “If you want me to ask you to tell it, I will.”

Nathan simply ignored the boy’s words as he continued. “You see Sophe, a long time ago there was a foolish young man that worked for Triumph. For that task, he had been implanted with a special type of transmitter that allowed him full access to everything and everyone.” A strange smile appeared on the man’s face as he started unbuttoning his shirt. “Of course, while this transmitter allowed him great privileges, it also acted more efficiently than any leash. He had seen and felt the effects of a single discharge.” Nathan’s eyes had lost their usual mirth as he relayed his tale, staring without expression at the silent boy. Pensive anticipation overtook the ruby eyes that stared back. Sophe gripped Nathan’s coat sleeve, but remained silent, realizing the man could no longer hear him anyway.

“One day the young man realized what exactly he was doing in the name of that building and decided to run away. But of course, there was the problem of the transmitter...” His voice did not change intonation; Nathan spoke as though reading a report. “Knowing he would die if he betrayed Triumph, he decided to gamble his life. In a night of desperation he took out his gun and tried to shoot out the transmitter. One of two things could have happened: he could have destroyed the transmitter and removed it, or died painfully if he missed by even a centimeter.” He slipped his shirt off his left shoulder, revealing an old scar just above his hip. He ran a finger over the scar before adding with an ironic smile, “Of course, neither happened.”

The boy leaned in and examined the old wound with avid interest. He ran his small fingers over the skin, probing and stretching the scar tissue. He looked up and asked anxiously, “What did happen?”

“The bullet did indeed destroy the transmitter and the young man disappeared from the face of the earth. But while the bullet was later eventually removed, the remainder of the transmitter was not.”

“And?” Sophe pressed.

“It remains in me, and will reactivate the instant I get too close to Triumph. So while I have appeared on the missing person’s list and miraculously survived so far, if Triumph realizes I am still alive, you will find my name in the obituaries.” Nathan finished with a small smile.

The boy was already re-examining the patch of skin as Nathan answered. He’d pulled one of his many devices from the inside pocket of his jacket and was poking Nathan’s hip. “Not necessarily...”

“Sophe...” Nathan took a step backwards as he guessed the boy’s intent.

An almost childlike excitement was in Sophe’s face as he straightened. “Come with me.” All at once he had caught the man’s hand and was dragging him down the hall into the next room.

“Sophe!” Nathan followed helplessly, feeling a growing nervousness at the enthusiastic look on the boy’s face.

With a rapid twist around a short corner the two entered an extensive laboratory. Workbenches of a more practical quality ran along the right wall and opened up on the main floor. Columnar tanks stood against the far wall, filled with bubbling fluid as were countless networks of glass tubing and beakers on the bench surfaces. As the room opened to the left, it stepped upward onto a platform. The three platform walls were lined to the ceiling with computer systems, which should have contrasted more with the furniture in the center. A pair of twin, red leather armchairs faced each other on a square Oriental rug, separated by a circular table. Like the smaller foyer, the lab equaled the amount of notebooks and papers. Copper piping of varying thickness ran along the ceiling, interfacing with the devices on the walls, and limiting the sense of space to the room. Nathan stopped dead in his tracks as he took in the sight. His eyes wandered from one end of the room to the other in disbelief. He knew the kid had a few things up his sleeve, but he could not recall seeing many laboratories like this one.

Sophe tugged Nathan’s arm insistently, walking them down the isle between benches and around to the larger one in the center. A black leather recliner that reminded Nathan of a dentist’s chair waited at the end of the workstation. “Take off your coat and shirt and sit down,” Sophe ordered as he removed his own jacket. Nathan looked at the boy calmly, making no movement that indicated he had heard him speak Sophe looked at the man with equal steadiness and rolled up his sleeves. “Trust me, Nathan.”

“Tell me Sophe, why you should succeed where others have always failed,” Nathan answered.

The boy’s resolve faltered for only a moment. “Please, Nathan...” His thoughts cried, “...don’t show me a piece of what I have been looking for and then deny me!” His face was set again. “I will succeed where others have failed.”

Nathan studied the boy’s face carefully, seeking an answer in those red eyes. After a prolonged silence, he nodded once, satisfied with what he saw. “All right then, Sophe. My life is in your hands.” Nathan slipped his shirt off and took a seat on the chair.

Sophe breathed a sigh of relief and a suppressed excitement returned to his eyes. He washed his hands in the sink embedded into the counter and began gathering instruments from different drawers. He laid them out on a rolling cart and wheeled it over to Nathan’s side. Nathan cast a tense glance, recognizing only the more surgical of implements. The rest he’d never seen the like of, assuming they must be of Sophe’s own design. Sophe pulled a stool up next to the surgical chair and raised it until Nathan’s hip was at eye level. He grabbed a boxy object about the size of Nathan’s fist from his cart and clamped it down over the scarred area. The pronged edges of the hollow box gripped the surrounding skin.

“Hey!” Nathan cried out as cold metal pinched his skin. “Be gentle with me please. I’m an old man and I’m not used to this kind of treatment.” He glanced at the implements again and felt his nervousness return. “You do know what you’re doing, right...?”

Sophe’s head jerked up, his face flushing momentarily. “S-sorry... I’m only used to doing this on myself.”

Nathan raised an eyebrow at that but felt some relief in knowing Sophe had already performed this procedure. “Oh really? That must be a challenge...” An unasked question was evident in his tone as he glanced from the boy to the instruments and back to his wound.

Sophe returned his attention to the small window on the top of the box, closing one eye to peer into it. He adjusted small knobs on the sides as he answered, “Yes, it’s much nicer to be able to examine another human.” His retina darted rapidly, assessing the various data screens that appeared within the hollow of the device. “I used to spend time in Triumph’s courtyard, running tests on myself once the temporary transmitters had entered my system...”

The mere mention of Triumph brought all of Nathan’s senses into awareness, as he carefully watched the boy beside him. “In Triumph’s courtyard you say?”

Sophe continued his examination, grabbing a small metallic vial and inserting it into the wall of the device. “All transmitters are recycled as soon as one exits the plaza. It would not go unnoticed if one were unaccounted for, so I was forced to run tests there... A more difficult task than one can imagine...” Sophe depressed the button on the end of the vial, injecting something into Nathan’s system.

“I can imagine...” Nathan said with a mix of awe and disbelief. He was barely watching the boy play with his vials, trying to picture Sophe experimenting on the transmitters and still managing to remain unseen. Suddenly he realized he had just been injected and asked in the most neutral tone possible, “Um, Sophe? What was that?”

“Phosphorus.”

“Oh,” Nathan replied as though the answer explained everything. “And why phosphorus?”

The boy sat back on his stool. “To illuminate your circulatory system. It will take a few minutes.”

Nathan couldn’t help but smile at the thought. “A human light bulb,” he chuckled. He lay back in the chair, resting his head on his arm. “Hey, Sophe?”

Sophe rolled over to the lab counter and riffled through his numerous notebooks. “Yes?” he replied as he flipped through some of the pages.

“This place is very impressive. Did you set all of this up yourself?”

“Mostly.” Sophe tossed the pad aside and began flipping through another.

Nathan nodded to himself, the response coming as no surprise. “And how long did it take you?”

The boy pushed off from the counter and rolled to a stop at the man’s side. “It’s still not finished,” he said as he peered into the device and started scribbling notes.

Nathan let himself be analyzed, his eyes perusing the lab around him. “Not done, eh?... How long have you been working on it so far then?”

“I began one year after I arrived in this city.” Sophe adjusted one of the dials and his brow creased over the device. “So deeply integrated into the nervous system...” he muttered to himself. “Incredible...”

“Oh?” Curiosity gnawed at Nathan at that seemingly plain statement. He caught the boy’s mumbling and smiled a little. “Well I’m glad you think so...”

The boy’s hands trembled as he gripped the sides of the examination unit. “What was inside my body can’t even compare to the level of technology in this transmitter,” he thought to himself. “This represents the highest level...”

Nathan noticed the boy’s light trembling and softly called out. “Sophe.” The red eyes that met his were glowing with fierce excitement.

“What, Nathan?” Sophe’s voice was strained with impatience.

“Tell me what you see in there.” Nathan smiled as he saw Sophe’s reaction. “I am not so talented to work on myself like you.”

“It’s ingrained in your nervous system,” the boy responded, words rapid fire and precise. “Each electrochemical impulse travels through it as if it were a natural part of the system. The body does not even regard it as a foreign object… I can tell it’s been monitoring and recording data on your biological systems since it was implanted. But I need a closer look to determine how it could possibly store so much information... how it detects and responds to your proximity to Triumph...”

Nathan nodded to himself, recalling those same words from someone much older. “How do you know all this, Sophe?” The question repeated in his mind. As he listened to Sophe’s analysis he found himself staring at the boy, a slight shiver coursing through him at the idea the chip could reactivate. “Do you think it can be removed?”

The boy grinned back at him. “I need a closer look.” He began detaching the rectangular device from Nathan’s hip. “But I will remove it...” Disbelief was written across the man’s face as those words. Sophe’s grin curled into a smirk. He glanced at Nathan and added, “And yes, I know what I’m doing.”