The Immigrant
“How’s the knee?”
Hugo was brought back to Micki’s office and the mug of coffee warming his hands. He nodded as he sipped his cup.
“It’s alright.” He managed. It was true; his knee had hurt like a bitch when the man had first kicked him, but the pain had faded quickly. He didn’t even hobble when he walked anymore.
“Want me to take a look at it?”
“No, I’m okay. Really.”
A comfortable silence fell over them while they each attended to their coffee and thoughts.
“I’ve only been in this City for about a year now,” Micki eventually said, leaning back in her chair. “Never had anything like this here before.”
“Did you see anything like this in any of the other Cities you’ve lived in?” Hugo asked with a small grin.
She smiled at this and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “Back in Jericho, when the border disputes were just heatin’ up, they called in everyone who’d ever studied medicine to work as field medics. I tried to explain I wasn’t a medical doctor, but they weren’t interested in specifics at that point. I saw a good bit back then, but nothin’ quite like this.”
“Wow,” was all Hugo could manage. Norman hadn’t found any record of Micki working as any sort of medic, let alone a combat medic. He sipped his coffee again, mulling over something that was bothering him. “He couldn’t really be from the Wastes, could he?”
Micki raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, how could he have gotten through the Wall? And his dog couldn’t even stand on her own, how the hell could he have gotten her into the City? What, did he carry her through? All 500 pregnant pounds of her?” The more he spoke about it the more the man’s story seemed impossible. “And besides, the BID would have issued some kind of warning or –”
“First of all,” Micki interrupted, fishing into a desk drawer for something Hugo couldn’t see. “Le Fay’s only in the low 200s, baby weight and all.”
“Oh, is that all?” Hugo couldn’t help but ask.
Micki continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And as far as the Biddies are concerned…”
She pulled her wireless (a dinosaur by today’s standards) out of the drawer and slid it across the desk toward Hugo. He glanced at the screen and the morning’s headline – “BABYLON INVADED?” – glared up at him. He quickly scanned the article before sliding the ancient wireless back to its owner.
“Well, shit,” he said, taking another sip of warm coffee.
“Uh-huh.”
“We…” Hugo didn’t know how to approach this subject without sounding like a narc. “We should probably call them, right? I mean, if this guy is some sort of fallout he could –”
“Did he seem like a fallout to you?” Micki asked, her eyes fixed squarely on his face.
“Well, he came from the Wastes, right? Isn’t that sort of the definition of a fallout?”
“He didn’t come from the Wastes.”
“What do you mean? You just –”
“He came through the Wastes to get here, yeah, but that’s not where he’s from. Both of them had soaked up more than their shares of radiation, but if they’d lived in the Wastes their whole lives they’d practically glow in the dark. The sorts of things that live out there, the fallouts, they’re…” Micki’s eyes had grown distant while she searched for the right words to use. “They’re not like him. They don’t look like him or talk like him, they’re… they aren’t human.”
Micki’s voice rang with the sort of truth that comes from firsthand experience, and Hugo had no interest in challenging her.
“So where did he come from, then?” He asked instead. “And what’s he doing here?”
Micki could only shake her head at this.
“I’m willing to accept he’s not a fallout,” Hugo began cautiously, “but he still shouldn’t be here. If the Biddies find out we knew and didn’t –”
“I’m gonna be frank with you, Hugo.” Micki said flatly.
Hello, Frank, I’m Hugo, a voice sang through Hugo’s tired brain.
“As long as these two are here and they’re sick, they’re my patients. And I do not turn my patients over to anyone, the BID included, until I’m done with ‘em. After they’re both healed up we can think about where to go from here, but for now I’m not callin’ anyone.”
Hugo took careful stock of his footing. Micki had said she wouldn’t be calling anyone, but she hadn’t tried to speak for him. He could do whatever he pleased, he knew, but Micki also clearly wanted him on her side of this argument.
He tried his best to weigh the pros and cons of his situation, as he’d done with all his tough problems since he’d been a child.
Pros of Not Telling the BID
– Micki would be happy (keeping clients happy is a necessary part of being a noir)
– The guy would get the medical treatment he needs
– You might have a chance of figuring out what this guy’s doing here. If it’s something nefarious and you’re able to stop it you’d be a hero ($$$)
– If Micki’s right and this guy is from somewhere beyond the Wastes, this could be the beginning of a new diplomatic relationship. Who better to handle that than you? Anyone, but still
Cons of Not Telling the BID
– This guy could wake up and kill us both at any moment
– This guy’s dog could wake up and kill us both at any moment
– If this guy is up to something nefarious and you’re not able to stop it you’d be a scapegoat
– If they find out you harbored a fallout they will absolutely flay you alive. No more detecting, probably some internment time
Hugo was aware that this was, quite possibly, the most grossly rushed and over-simplified pro/con list he’d ever mentally assembled, but he also knew there was at least one item he’d left off.
– This is probably the coolest thing that’s ever happened to you, and if you spill the beans it’s over
“Alright, so we don’t tell anyone. What do we do now?”
“Right now we wait for them to wake up. They responded damn well to everything I put into ‘em, so I’m hopin’ for a good prognosis when the anesthesia wears off in a bit. After that? I don’t know, Hugo. I don’t have a clue.”
As Micki mentioned clues and her lack thereof, a realization occurred to Hugo so rapidly and unexpectedly that he nearly spit out the mouthful off coffee he’d just swigged. He spluttered and choked for a moment and finally was able to gasp out, “You still haven’t told me about your case!”
Micki’s eyebrows shot up and her mouth curled back into a smile. She laughed and said, “Shit, you’re right!”
She laughed at this, a full, belly laugh, and Hugo found himself chuckling along. There was an infectious quality to Micki’s cheerful demeanor, and even with everything they’d been through during the night he still found it unusually easy to relax around her.
“Well, I guess after the night we’ve had I’m pretty sure I can trust you,” she said this with a wink, but Hugo got the impression trust wasn’t something Micki handed out lightly. She rocked gently in her chair and pondered for a moment before swiveling to face him fully. “In a nutshell, I want you to track someone down for me.”
Hugo hadn’t known what to expect when Micki had summoned him, but the possibility of a missing persons case hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“Who’s missing?” He asked, trying to jog his exhausted brain into sleuth-mode.
“No, no one’s missing. I want you to find a man that’s hiding from me.”
“Oh.” Hugo tried to keep his face blank. Was he being hired to track an ex-lover of some kind? Again?
“His name is Darreld DuPriest.” Micki’s eyes lost their trademark glint as she said the name. “He’s… He was an associate of mine.”
“An associate? Like another vet?”
“No,” Micki hesitated here. “Remember earlier, when I first brought you back, we started talking about my… hobbies?”
Hugo could barely remember his own name at this point, but he knew Micki was referring to her pseudoscientific interests. “You mean the cryptozoology stuff?”
“Right. Darreld shared my interest in the field and we’d worked a few expeditions together. He was… I thought he was a good man. He’s a damn fine scientist, but turns out he’s got about as many morals as a maggot.”
The joy and lightness that seemed to exude from Micki was completely gone now. Hugo didn’t have to be much of a noir to see that whatever had gone down between her and this DuPriest guy had not been good.
“So what happened?”
“We were working an expedition together. We were… hunting for something.”
“A cryptid?” Hugo tried his best to keep the skepticism he felt about this from his voice, but he wasn’t sure how successful he was.
Micki smiled a small smile and nodded, looking at Hugo intently over the rim of her mug.
“Okay, so what exactly were you hunting for?” Hugo asked. Please don’t say snipes or snarks, he thought to himself.
Suddenly, Hugo felt his ears perk up. What had he just heard?
“Well,” Micki began, seeming sheepish for the first time since Hugo had met her. “I’m gonna need you to just go with me for a bit. I know you might not believe in all the sorts of stuff I do, and that’s perfectly fine with me, but just hear me out.”
Hugo nodded, but again he was distracted. What was that noise? He glanced around him as covertly as he could, but he could find nothing moving in the office save for Micki and himself.
“Go ahead,” he said, trying to focus on the veterinarian.
“Alright,” Micki took a deep breath and paused while she got her thoughts in order. Hugo could tell from looking at her how exhausted she was and let her take her time. “Have you ever heard of a being known as the Mothman?”
Hugo felt his eyebrows rise. He had not heard of any Mothmen, let alone one specific Mothman, but even hearing the name made him want to roll his eyes.
“No, I can’t say I have.” He managed to say without losing his poker face.
“Not many people have these days. A long time ago, before the End Times, he was pretty popular, but –”
“Wait, I’m sorry,” Hugo cut in. “Are you saying this… thing was alive before the End Times? That… Well, I mean, that’s not really possible, is it? That was over 500 years ago!”
“You’d be surprised by what’s possible these days, Mr. Brooke,” Micki said with another small smile. “To answer your question, I don’t know if this is the same Mothman that was around before the End. However, I do know that the creature –”
She cut off abruptly as Hugo twisted in his chair to look at the empty space behind him. He knew he’d heard it that time.
“Are you alright, Hugo?” Micki asked, equal parts concern and frustration in her voice.
“Yeah, no, I’m sorry.” Hugo muttered. The noise was so close, now, but he still couldn’t quite make it out. It was as if every time he was just about to make the mental leap and put a name to the sound it slithered back into the background of his mind. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Micki asked, looking around with mild concern.
“I…” Hugo wasn’t sure how to explain any of it. “I’m sorry, I think I’m just more tired than I realized. Please, go on.”
“You sure you’re up to it?”
Hugo felt his natural defensiveness rise up within him, but he glanced at Micki’s face and saw she was speaking from genuine concern.
“I’m okay, I promise. I’ll probably pass out when I get home, but the coffee’s helping for now.”
“If you’re sure?” A nod from Hugo seemed to give her the assurance she needed. “Okay, well what I was saying was I’m not sure that this is the Mothman that’s written about in the Archive. I know the odds of it surviving the End Times is slim and it’s even harder to believe it’d still be around now, but there are things in nature you’d never believe. Everything wants to survive, Hugo, and there are beings out there who know how to do that better than anyone.
“What I know is the animal we were tracking matched the most common descriptions of Mothman that survived in the Archive. He was first sighted a few years back in Carthage; I was running an animal shelter in the area back then, and that’s how I started to hear the rumors. I networked with a few other local… enthusiasts –” distracted as he was, Hugo was still able to note how carefully Micki chose her words “– and one of them was Darreld DuPriest.
“Everytime a Mothman sighting came in, it was always near an old factory or munitions plants left over from the Carthage/Alexandria skirmishes. We started noticing the pattern and based our plan to find the thing on it, but by that point he’d already moved on and the sightings dried up.”
“What would a cryptid be doing in old war factories?” Hugo asked, desperately ignoring the noise swirling all around him.
“I’m still not sure why he’s attracted to those sorts of places, but even that’s consistent with the old stories from the Archive.” Micki had a glint in her eye, and she was talking quicker and quicker as she got caught up in her own excitement. “The earliest record of a sighting, or at least the earliest one we could find, was near an ancient munitions plant. Anyway, we kept our ears open and soon enough rumors started popping up in Emar, Lifta, even as far as Pathros.”
Hugo recognized two of the places Micki mentioned as suburbs of Carthage, but he couldn’t quite place Pathros. Wasn’t that connected to Baghdad? How far had Micki searched for this thing?
“One thing you should know about me,” Micki continued, “is that once I get worked up over somethin’ it’s a damn struggle to get me off it. I had other projects I was working on and I still had a bit of travelin’ I wanted to get done, but the thought that I had been this close to something like that, something older than anything we’ve been able to build these last few hundred years… I just couldn’t let it go. And neither could Darreld, that was one of the things that kept us together…”
Micki’s voice trailed off as she got lost amid her memories of DuPriest. The silence that filled the room, at least for Hugo, only seemed to amplify the noise. He shook his head in an attempt to rid himself of it, but all he succeeded in doing was catching Micki’s attention.
“Sorry about that,” she said with a bashful smile. “Sometimes I get sidetracked. Anyway, Darreld and I both knew that as long as the reported sightin’s kept comin’ in, there was still a chance we could be the ones to finally catch Mothman. I think I have an idea of how you feel about the field, but you’ve got to understand that from my perspective this was the opportunity of a lifetime. To be able to study this creature in person, to watch him and learn from him, it… It would have made my career.”
“It still might,” Hugo couldn’t help but say. The light in Micki’s eyes had diminished as she’d spoken, and even with the noise tearing through him he’d wanted to do what he could to cheer her up.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said with a small smile. “But first you’ll have to find Darreld for me. We kept up with the reports, lookin’ for anything solid lead we could find. I’d set up the clinic here by that point, and we finally got a few credible reports that he’d been sighted near an old gunpowder plant in Bethel, just outside the City, and we set out to find him.”
Hugo couldn’t help but be impressed by this. Not many people went to Bethel if they could avoid it; it was practically a ghost town; it had taken heavy damage a few centuries ago, when the Alexandrians had first started making real trouble, and no one had bothered to spruce the place back up since then. Babylon prided itself on being the largest and most prosperous of the Cities (not to mention the oldest), but it wasn’t the best when it came to looking after its suburbs.
“I actually got to see him for a second.” Micki said, more to herself than to Hugo.
“You saw this thing?” Hugo asked, trying not to sound as incredulous as he felt.
“I saw somethin’ that I believe to be this thing, yes.” Micki answered. “But Darreld was too quick for me. He’d been lying about everything, right from the start. He never wanted to study Mothman, he wanted to sell him to the highest bidder!”
Micki was clearly outraged by this.
“Who would want something like that? What would they even do with it?” Hugo asked.
“You’d be surprised.” Micki said. This was the second time now she’d assumed she knew what would surprise Hugo, and, right as she might have been, it was starting to get on his nerves. It didn’t help that the noise seemed to be increasing in volume every passing second; he thought if it didn’t stop soon he might go mad. While he was distracted with his own thoughts, Micki continued: “There are collectors for everything you can imagine, includin’ animals. The more rare or exotic, the better the pets these people think they’ll make. I’ve heard rumors for years about a black market auctionin’ off cryptids that had been found and caught, but until Darreld told me what he wanted to do I never thought it was real.”
Hugo noted how selective Micki could be when it came to believing in things.
“What exactly did he want to do?” The noise was louder now, and Hugo knew if he just concentrated on it long enough he’d be able to find out where it was coming from.
“He wants to make a name for himself in the market. Mothman would bring a ton of money to whoever was sellin’ him, and it would put the seller in the good books of any vendor they wanted to use. They’d be set for life.” Micki sounded positively bitter now, and the twang of her accent took on a harder, rougher edge. “So he lied to me. After we got to the plant and spotted Mothman we planned to set some traps and try to lure him out in the mornin’. While I was asleep Darreld went in with a tranq gun and managed to snag him all by himself. When I woke up I found a note from him, tellin’ me how sorry he was and how deep into debt he was, but he and Mothman were gone.”
Hugo waited while she reflected on this. He really couldn’t take this noise much longer.
“So,” Micki finally said, “that brings me to you. I’ve tried makin’ reports with the BID, and the beatcops and even a few environmental groups. So far no one’s been willin’ to help me. How about you?”
“Yeah,” Hugo said reflexively. The noise was so close now, if he could –
“Yeah? You’ll track down DuPriest for me?” Micki’s eyes lit up and a smile, large and genuine this time, hesitantly began to tug at the corners of her mouth.
“What?” Fuck. “Oh, yeah, I mean, I’m willing to try.” Truth be told, before he’d spoken out of turn Hugo had intended to pass on this one; it was just too weird for his taste. But he saw the relief in Micki’s eyes as she reclined back into her chair and he couldn’t bring himself to back out now.
“Do you really not hear that?” He couldn’t help but ask. How could she possibly not have heard it by now?
“Hear what?” Micki asked again, her eyebrows raising as she glanced around the office.
There! Hugo thought, standing before he realized what he was doing. Micki froze, staring at him in bewilderment, but he ignored her. As soon as he’d mentioned the noise it had seemed to retreat, but in doing so it had betrayed itself; he knew where it was coming from now. He moved to the door and pulled it open before the noise could –
There, with his hand raised as if he were about to knock, stood the man. He’d draped his cloak around him again, but his exposed legs were bare.
Hugo gasped and moved back until his ass bumped the edge of Micki’s desk. Micki was beside him then, rising from her own seat and moving around the desk before Hugo had time to process that she wasn’t sitting anymore.
The man froze, his fist still raised in front of him. His eyebrows raised as Hugo shrank away from him, but he made no move to enter the room. His dark eyes (still bloodshot, Hugo noticed, but less so than they’d been during the night) slid from Hugo to Micki, waiting for one of them to decide how this interaction would go.
Some small, niggling voice in Hugo’s voice thought the man was a liar. He didn’t understand what his subconscious was trying to tell him at first, but then he put it together. The man only wanted it to look as if he’d been about to knock. He’d been standing out there the whole time, listening while they spoke; he was the one who’d been making that noise. He’d known Hugo was coming so he’d raised his hand to put on this act, but he’d never intended to interrupt them.
Hugo shushed himself mentally. He had no reason to believe that, but the idea had already taken root in his gut.
“What are you doin’ up?” Micki demanded.
The man looked from Hugo to the vet and finally lowered his fist.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice still deep but nowhere near as rough as it had sounded last night. Hugo still felt himself shiver at the sound of it. “I didn’t… I only wanted to give you my thanks, healer. Last night, fore we found you, I thought… I did not think we had much time left. You saved us and I thank you for it, say true.”
“Well, you’re welcome, but you need to get back in bed.” Whatever fear or apprehension Micki might have been feeling, and Hugo had to believe she felt at least a little of each, none of it was present in her voice. She strode forth and ushered the man out into the hall and back toward the storeroom. Not knowing what else to do with himself, Hugo cautiously followed.
“Le Fay is still asleep, she never sleeps like –” the man began as he sat back on his table beside the one his dog snoozed atop. Micki placed a hand on his colorful shoulder and silenced him.
“I had to give her a tranq last night. When we started workin’ on you she got pretty upset and I couldn’t keep her calm and deal with you at the same time. She’ll be up and about in a little while, but right now you need to relax.”
The man reached over and stroked the sleeping dog’s fur. She stirred slightly, rotating around her massive stomach so that her back was more perfectly aligned with his hand. She snorted lightly and her ears twitched as she dreamed of whatever dogs dream about.
Hugo looked from the dog to the man’s face and saw the relief in his eyes as he continued to pet her. He looked to Micki and said, “I thank you again, healer.”
“My name’s Micki, not healer.” Micki said, placing her fingers on the man’s thick wrist and pausing for a moment. “Your pulse is steady, that’s a good sign. How do you feel?”
“Better, say true. I haven’t felt this well since we left the town.”
“Town?” Hugo couldn’t help asking. “What town?”
The man glanced at him sharply. He studied Hugo’s face carefully while he said “Roundtown. That’s where I come from.”
Hugo wouldn’t claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every suburb of every City in the Union, but he knew there’d never been a place called Roundtown in this part of the world.
“Where’s that?” He asked, feeling emboldened by Micki’s casual dialogue with the man. Aedus, he reminded himself again.
The man’s eyes became guarded. “You’ve never heard of Roundtown?”
Hugo shook his head, and Aedus looked over to Micki. She repeated Hugo’s gesture, and Hugo felt as though he’d just told a child their vacation to the beaches of Beijing had been canceled; Aedus’ dark eyes lowered and Hugo saw his colorful brow crease in thought.
“I knew it,” he said, stroking the dog’s back again. Hugo got the impression he was talking more to the slumbering dog than to either of the humans in front of him.
“Knew what?” Hugo asked. He could feel his apprehension being replaced by curiousity; how many people in this City ever got the chance to talk to someone from beyond the Wall?
Aedus only shook his head and drew the cloak tighter around himself. “Where are my clothes, Micki?”
“Oh, right,” Micki said to herself. “Sorry about that, I bet you were surprised to wake up naked under that sheet like that. I put your clothes and your backpack in one of the lockers over there.
“Thank you,” Aedus said again. “When will Le Fay wake? We must keep going now that we’re here.”
“What?” Micki asked incredulously. “No, you’re not goin’ anywhere.”
The man gave her a hard look.
“I don’t mean you have to stay here forever,” Micki quickly added. “I just mean there’s no way I can let you leave now. I’m surprised you’re even conscious!”
“I am a Belle.” Aedus said flatly, as if this explained everything.
Micki glanced at Hugo, but all he could do was shrug. She looked back at the man and continued gingerly. “Be that as it may, right now you’re my patient. You came to me for help, right? And I want to give it. But I can’t do that if you don’t listen to me.”
Aedus seemed to consider this, but he turned his eyes from Micki’s face.
“We need to talk about Le Fay.” Micki said, which got Aedus’ immediate attention. “Have you thought at all about inducin’ labor?”
Aedus gave her a puzzled look and then glanced at Hugo.
“She means have you thought about making her have the puppies instead of waiting.” Hugo explained as best he could. He was sure it could have been put more delicately, but he hadn’t had a lot of time to think about his answer before he gave it.
“No.” Aedus said flatly. He looked sharply at Micki. “You will not do this.”
“I don’t want to do anything that you don’t want me to do.” Micki assured him. “It’s just that if she really is in her third month, she’s almost a month overdue. Look how big she is! Her body wasn’t meant to endure pregnancy like this. The longer she waits to go into labor the bigger the risk something will happen to her or the puppies.”
“You do not know her body,” Aedus said. His eyes burned even darker as he glared at the vet. “You do not know what it is to be of Roundtown. She will know when her time comes, not you nor any other. Say true, would you have the pups born weak?”
“I just want the pups born,” Micki said, sounding a little flabbergasted by the intensity that had crept into Aedus’ voice.
“And they will be. And they’ll live.” Aedus sounded certain of this, but Hugo saw the way his hand stroked Le Fay’s back a little faster than he had a moment ago.
“Okay,” Micki said after a moment’s thought. “She’s your dog and I’m not gonna force treatment on her. But, please, give it some thought?”
Aedus nodded at this and again a voice in Hugo’s head called him a liar.
“I’m sorry for us coming here like this,” Aedus said, the intensity gone from his voice. “If there had been another way, I –”
“Don’t worry about it,” Micki assured him. She began checking the readouts on various machines Le Fay had been connected to and occasionally nodded at what she read.
While she was distracted, Hugo let his curiosity get the better of him. “So… You came through the Wall last night, huh?”
Micki glanced at him sharply.
Aedus’ brows raised, but he nodded. “How did you know?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Micki assured him. “I’m going to have some patients I’ll need to see in a bit, but I want to check your vitals before I open up the clinic. And Mr. Brooke has to be goin’; he’s officially on the clock.”
She said this with a smile and a wink in his direction, but Hugo could tell she wasn’t kidding about him being on the clock.
“Mr. Brooke?” Aedus asked.
“That’s me,” Hugo explained. “Hugo Brooke, best detective in Babylon.”
He didn’t realize until it was out of his mouth that he’d usurped his father’s catchphrase.
This only caused Aedus’ tattooed face to wrinkle in confusion. Micki assured him she’d explain everything to him and sent Hugo on his way. Hugo checked with the vet to make sure she was alright being left alone with the man and his dog (she promised him she was) and he made his way back out into the City.
He needed a smoke so badly he thought he might lose his mind.
ⓍⓍⓍ
Hugo could not have explained it to someone if they’d asked him about it later, but as he was walking toward his office he knew he was being followed. It wasn’t that he could hear one person’s footsteps louder than those caused by the hundreds of other people traversing the City walkways, or that he heard someone whistling a familiar tune behind his as he navigated the throng of early-morning commuters. He simply knew in his gut that someone was watching and keeping pace with him. He’d never experienced intuition like this before; maybe it was the way the skin on his neck seemed to tighten or how the light hair on his arms seemed to stand on end. He couldn’t put his finger on the cause any more than he could justify his absolute certainty in the result.
He asked himself the same question almost daily, and he asked himself again as he slowly made his way back to the office. What would Spade or Marlowe do?
Hugo took a deep breath and, as casually as possible, turned down the next alley his path brought him to. This was a risky move, he knew; bad things lived in the alleys of this City, and most of them didn’t care if it was the dead of night or the middle of the day. He told himself he could handle it and did his best to hide himself behind a dumpster sitting a few feet into the alley.
And there he waited.
A minute passed. Then another. Hugo was just beginning to feel like a fool when the man from Roundtown turned the corner and leaned against the cool polysteel of the dumpster. He glanced over to where Hugo half-crouched and raised an eyebrow.
Hugo straightened himself upright and quickly looked around. No one from the mob on the sidewalk seemed to have noticed Aedus, but Hugo quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him further into the alley. Both of Aedus’ eyes raised at this, but he did not protest or struggle against Hugo’s grip.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hugo demanded, his fear of the man temporarily forgotten. Aedus had left his cloak behind and wore only his filthy vest and dark pants. His bandaged feet were clad only in some sort of dark slipper Hugo had never seen before. His pack bulged on his back and he kept a tattooed hand on one of the bag’s straps at all times.
“I’ve come to help you, Hugo Brooke.” Aedus said, puffing out his chest and smiling at Hugo. The smile was somehow both endearing and chilling; there was a sweetness to it, but it looked terribly out of place on the man’s many-colored face.
“Help me?” Hugo asked, feeling more confused than ever. “With what? Micki’s case?”
“Say true!” Aedus said, clearly pleased with the improved effectiveness of his conversational skills. “I owe Micki, and we must pay the debts we’re able.”
He said it like a street preacher quoting from one of the Archive’s ancient holy books; he said the line like one he’d said a hundred times before and never doubted.
“Okay, that’s great, but you can’t be out here!” Hugo hissed, pulling Aedus further into the dark alley. “You don’t understand, if the BID catches you –”
“Catches me?” Aedus’ jaw clenched hard at this. “I am a Belle of the bluff, Hugo Brooke, not a beast to be run down by dogs in the woods.”
Hugo genuinely didn’t know how to respond to something like that. After a moment, he caught up with his train of thought and brushed Aedus’ nonsense aside. “Please, Aedus, listen to me! Coming through the Wall last night… You weren’t supposed to do that. You’re not supposed to be here –”
Aedus opened his mouth to protest, but Hugo plowed on.
“– but now that you are the entire BID is looking for you. They have drones and scanners and…” Aedus stared at him blankly. “They have really good ways to find you, and I don’t know what they’ll do if they get their hands on you. Micki asked me not to say anything about you being in the clinic, and I won’t, but I can’t keep you a secret if you’re walking around in the middle of the fucking day!”
Hugo’s voice had risen steadily as his panic had gotten the better of him. Everything he had said was true, but he’d kept the greatest source of his anxiety to himself; if the BID found Aedus now they’d also find Hugo, and there was no way he’d be able to claim ignorance.
Hugo wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he thought Aedus looked a little hurt by all Hugo’s shouting. It was hard to tell under all the ink and the scars, but Hugo was sure a crack of vulnerability had unexpectedly opened up in the man’s shell, and Hugo wasn’t sure what to do with it now that it was there. In a softer, calmer tone, he continued: “You… you don’t exactly blend in, you know?”
A thought occurred to Hugo suddenly: “How did you even get here? Micki said you couldn’t leave!”
“Le Fay isn’t well enough to join us yet. Micki couldn’t care for her and chase after me,” something new happened then; a twinkle came into the man’s bloodshot eyes, and a small, mischievous grin played at the corners of his mouth. This was a side of the man Hugo had not yet seen, and it stirred something in him. Some small, dark part of him that wanted to cause trouble and laugh and run and –
Hugo shook his head. There was very little in this City that could motivate him to run. He opened his mouth to scold Aedus (something he would never have been able to do last night), but he lost his voice as a trashcan further down the alley rattled. He spun around and saw two thin, dirty figure slowly advancing down the alley toward them, while a third gripped a trashcan to keep himself steady and few others lingered behind.
The two closest to them were near enough for Hugo to see the midas glinting in their eyes.
“Oh, shit,” Hugo whispered. These were golfiends, addicts who’d lost their minds to gold and caught midas, and they were the only ones Hugo had ever seen in person. He’d heard stories about them, though, and knew they were trouble.
Hugo wanted to glance back toward the alley entrance, to see how far away from the safety of the crowd on the sidewalk they were, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the fiends. They continued their advance, their emaciated hands weakly clutching rocks or bits of metal, while their dead eyes glittered out toward Hugo in the gloom.
“Who are they?” Aedus asked, fear absent from his voice.
Hugo could not speak. He felt his chest seizing up as the fiends advanced ever-closer and he took an involuntary step away from them. He bumped into Aedus, his shoulders thudding into the man’s chest, and Aedus put a hand on Hugo’s shoulder to steady him. Hugo was too absorbed in the fiends’ approach to protest this unsolicited contact.
“What do they want, Hugo?” Aedus asked, his mouth close to Hugo’s ear. Hugo shivered as he felt the man’s breath on his neck.
“They want to kill us,” Hugo squeaked, his throat so tight it hurt to speak.
This was all Aedus needed to hear. He walked around Hugo and, without another word, removed his pack from his back. He reached a colored hand deep inside the bag and when it emerged it was clutching a wide, curved blade gleaming cruelly in the dim light of the alley. The bag fell to the cracked and potholed pavement with a thud, and Aedus pushed it to the side with his bandaged, slippered foot. He held the blade tightly and crouched forward, taking his eyes off the fiends for the first time as he bowed his head. The fiends took notice of him, but their progress did not slow.
Hugo felt himself gasp as Aedus rushed forward to meet the approaching fiends, but he could make no move to intervene.