3.3

  It turned out that the rumours Silas heard were true.

  This year’s Luminara festival was the busiest Isolde had seen since she first arrived in Neo Arcadia in 2076. Navigating through the crowd wasn’t an easy task, especially with her daughter clutching to her side, but she’d been so relieved following her discussion with Silas that she barely noticed.

  It was a little past five o’clock in the afternoon, but already the sky was getting dark with faint, shimmering specks emerging and blossoming against the encroaching vastness of deep space. Stalls lined the promenade in chaotic, colourful rows, spilling over with trinkets, hand-stitched crafts, and freshly grilled street food, everything from noodles to steamed buns to skyfruit skewers. Street performers had their own little wooden stages; some played the violin, some danced with sensu fans, dressed up elegantly in their Japanese gowns, and others juggled torches, though the flames were artificial, creating beautiful cascades of neon that shimmered like liquid rainbow.

  In the distance, at the far edge of the pier, The Whale loomed over the crowd. Maintenance workers dressed in heavy overalls were finishing up the last bits and pieces, placing candles along the front, lighting them one by one. The front of The Whale had been pulled out to reveal a series of long, rectangular steps, and people sat on them, chowing down and sucking up their sodas through plastic straws.

  Isolde planned to visit Silas’ stand, to see how he was doing, to see if she could help out in any way—Lord knew he would need it on a night like this—but, once again, Elysia stopped in her tracks. When Isolde turned to see what she was focused on this time, she noticed the carnival game kiosk, large and lit up with swarming LEDs that snaked around the edges like lightning through a tube. The line to the cotton-candy machine was huge, so huge in fact that it was no longer unmanned but instead controlled by not one but two employees, young teenagers looking to make a quick buck over the holidays. Isolde could see, clearly now, the full range of prizes available in the back row, and indeed one of them had been a large white rabbit with pink eyes. Not quite as large as a vendor’s cart, but large enough for Elysia to sink her teeth into. The game itself was a type of ring toss. She watched as one of the children threw rings at cylindrical pegs, failing miserably. Interesting. She and Elysia approached the kiosk and waited in line. She noticed it was ten eddies a try for basic prizes, but for the larger ones, the animal plushies, it was twenty-five. Ouch. Lot of dough. But that meant there must have been a setting embedded, or perhaps a change of rules, that made it more difficult to win. Looking around, it seemed that the toy animals were completely stacked, meaning no one won, and no one would win.

  Many in front of her attempted the more difficult challenge, but they all failed, one by one, until it was her turn in line.

  The middle-aged man behind the kiosk bore a smile so fake it was almost a scowl. His salt-and-pepper hair curled over his ears, barely tamed by an N.A. Anglers cap, and his apron, once clean and white, was stained down to a dusty brown. “Which you want?” he snapped. “Small prize or big prize?”

  Isolde waited a little before responding. She just needed a moment to think. “What way does it work? Do we get to choose the prize beforehand, or do you select one at random?”

  “You want the rabbit?” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Yes—we do. How did you—”

  He pointed at Elysia, not saying a word.

  Isolde looked at her, and she was holding the stitched rabbit doll in her right hand. She didn’t even notice it until now; Elysia must have kept it hidden in her coat pocket.

  The man cleared his throat. “I can offer up the bunny, but you have to beat Level 2. Thirty eddies.”

  “But the sign says—”

  “Listen, I’m doing you a favour here by pre-selecting the prize,” he said. “That’ll cost extra. And cash only, no electronic transfer.” He tapped the sign that confirmed the payment method. “Three coins, now hurry up. There’s a line behind you.”

  Isolde didn’t like the idea of paying extra, but she decided it wasn’t worth the argument. With a sigh, she pulled out her wallet, fished out three ten-eurodollar coins, and slapped them onto the table. The man scooped them up, examined one by biting it, and then tossed them into the register with a flick of his wrist.

  “The game’s called ‘Ring Rush’,” he said, grabbing a small remote from his pocket. With a click, the pegs on the board slid back slightly, increasing the distance. He stepped away to collect the neon rings left behind by the last player, speaking over his shoulder as he worked. “You’ve got six rings. Toss them from where you’re standing and land them on the pegs. Green pegs are worth ten points, blue are thirty, and purple are fifty. Easy enough to remember?”

  Isolde nodded, eyeing the setup. “So, the points are based on distance.”

  “More or less,” he replied. The green pegs were closest, standing stout and stable, the blue ones were farther back with a narrower base, and the purple ones sat almost at the very edge of the board, flickering intermittently like taunting strobe lights. Each time they blinked, they left faint afterimages in her vision, making it even harder to aim. She frowned slightly. The chances of her securing one hundred points in six rings or less were slim. Now she understood how no one had won any of the big prizes yet. It was a scam.

  “Is there a time limit?” Isolde asked.

  “If you take too long, I’ll tell you to get a move on,” he said, handing her the rings. “But, technically, there ain’t. Just don’t hog it. There are other people who wanna give it a go. You can start now.” He stood out of the way, folding his arms, looking unimpressed.

  Isolde decided it would be best to aim close for her first shot. She stood back, aimed for one of the green pegs, and tossed the ring. The ring landed on the top slightly, but slid clean off, in a way she couldn’t have predicted. How was that possible? It could have only slid off like that if there was a force, such as airflow. An idea came to mind. She placed her hand over the kiosk, and she could feel cool air blowing against her skin. The man had a fan in the back, set up deliberately beneath the shelf.

  He snatched her hand and pushed it away. “No leaning over the counter.”

  “Sorry,” she said, tossing another ring, this time aiming for the green peg to the far right, away from the airflow. It landed, and a screen containing her score popped up on a hologram, updating from 0 to 10.

  Then she noticed something else: the light pattern in the board itself. The neon fixtures zipping through the pegs weren’t random, but deliberate. Every time the light completed a full journey across the tubes and up to the tips, the glowing bases vibrated, just slightly. It seemed plausible that it was to encourage the player to throw only when the pegs were at their brightest, not when dim. That way the vibration would be more likely to knock the ring off balance. So, she waited, and waited, watching as the light travelling through the tubes completed its pattern and climbed up one of the blue pegs.

  Three... two... one....

  She tossed the ring, and it flew gracefully onto the blue peg, a perfect landing. The score updated to 40, and now the crowd stepped forward, intrigued.

  “She landed it?” one man said.

  “Things just got interesting,” a woman said.

  It was surprising, because the blue pegs were much farther away than they would have been had she opted for the smaller prize.

  Four rings left. Sixty points to go. She knew what her next step would be: to toss a ring on the same peg, but her plan was put to a stop before it even began, because not even five seconds after having completed the throw, the peg sank into the board, leaving only the other blue peg, and it was positioned directly in the path of the airflow. Of course. She should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.

  She took a different approach. She knew it would be next to impossible to go for another thirty points, so she aimed for the right green peg again. She repeated her technique, waiting for the light to travel through the tube, and when it fell down, she tossed the ring. It landed, granting her another ten points, leaving only fifty to go. However, this time, like the blue peg, it sank into the board, and now her only options were the purple pegs all the way in the back, because the air was passing directly over the blue and the green, making them virtually impossible targets.

  Three left, and she only needed to land one; it was that easy, and that hard.

  The purple ones were different. They had flashing lights, likely an intentional safeguard in case anyone figured out the pattern. She did her best to analyse them, hoping there was something she could exploit to increase her chances of success, but without being able to see the tube light, it was impossible. She’d have to guess, and not only that: she’d have to throw high, because with the air passing down the board the ring would likely get blown away well before it went the distance. She waited for the light to travel up the tube, and counted down from three before tossing.

  She missed. Frankly, it didn’t even come close.

  The crowd oohed.

  “Gonna need you to speed it up,” the man said, leaning on the table.

  She took a moment, waited for the pattern to repeat itself, and tossed another ring. This time it nearly landed, but fell short because the arch was too low, causing the air to misdirect the fall.

  Shit. Her heart raced. She felt something tugging on her arm. She looked down and saw that it was Elysia. Isolde wondered what she could have wanted, or what she could have been trying to say, but when she saw the look in her eyes, those sweet, little, angelic eyes, she could tell that her daughter understood, on a level so deep and pure, what was at stake—and perhaps it meant very little to your average parent, but to her, she would climb the mountain of hell and back if it meant getting to see her daughter happy, getting to see her smile.

  Isolde took a deep breath, furling her brow in concentration. She changed her footing, placing one leg forward and one leg behind, as if brandishing a bow and arrow. She watched the light travel along the tubes once more, bit by bit, across the board and up the little peg, and she waited.

  Three.

  She drew her elbow back, positioning the throw.

  Two.

  She kept her eyes steady and exhaled slowly.

  One.

  She tossed the neon ring and it glided through the air, leaving a glowtail in its path. It arched high, well above the air, and descended in what felt like slow motion. Down it went, with precision, focus, and determination.

  It landed, and the score updated to 100.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The crowd erupted with cheers, whistles, and applause. Isolde couldn’t believe it. She had actually won this rotten cheater’s game. She’d not felt this kind of excitement since she was a little child. She picked up Elysia and carried her in one arm, grinning broadly. She was smiling, too, and that touched Isolde’s heart.

  “I guess there’s a lucky one in every game,” the man behind the kiosk said, grabbing the white rabbit from the shelf. It was wedged in there good; he had to tug a couple times to get it down. He walked up to them and placed the life-sized animal plushie in Elysia’s hands.

  “She can’t speak,” said Isolde, “but if she could, she’d say thank you.”

  “I can see it in her eyes,” the man said. Then, to the crowd, he shouted, “All right, who’s next?”

  Isolde put Elysia on the ground and let her carry the huge plushie around for a bit, but it was clearly too big and perhaps too heavy, so she decided to tuck it under her armpit and approach Silas’ kiosk, asking if she could place it in the back until later. He had no issue with that—not that she thought he would—and even pointed out that one of the vendors had a pets-for-sale stand on the opposite side with a caged jackrabbit. It would surely be out of her price range, but she saw no harm in having a look at it later. She offered to help Silas with some of the work, because all around him people were lining up with books and tools. He shook his head as he often did, telling her to enjoy herself. No surprise there. She’d also made a promise.

  Elysia tugged on Isolde’s jacket sleeve again, looking suddenly distraught. She raised her hand, splaying two fingers. It was a way of saying she had to poop—one of the more important signs she’d taught her in case she was having an emergency in public—so Isolde looked around. There weren’t any outhouses like there normally would be. There clearly wasn’t enough space given the sheer number of vendors that showed up this year. She decided to ask one of the people behind the stands, and they pointed her back in the direction of The Whale. There was a set of steps to the far-right side that led down to the beach. Supposedly it contained an outhouse, though she’d never heard of it, probably because she’d never been down there before.

  She escorted Elysia along the pier and down the steps. The outhouse was there alright. There had also been tonnes of scrap metal, used tyres, broken furniture, and car doors buried into the sand. Underneath the pier, there were homeless folk with tarps set up, huddling around a drum fire. To think that Isolde had come so close to joining them, to being on the streets. Had Silas not been blessed with such an enormous heart that might have become reality. She was so utterly grateful. She also felt terrible for the people suffering, with no place to go and families to feed. Maybe one day, she thought, when she was in a good spot financially, she might be able to offer a hand, just as Silas did, but for now she had her own problems to worry about, and a pretty large mouth to feed.

  She opened the outhouse door. It wasn’t nearly as dirty on the inside as it appeared on the outside, and it still had a full roll of toilet paper, along with a washbasin. She let Elysia head inside, closing the door behind her.

  Isolde waited, and waited, listening to the sounds of the festival radiate through the cold evening. She shivered. It was supposed to get down to twenty-eight around seven o’clock, so she figured that would be as good a time as any to wrap things up and head back for the weekend. She wanted to stick around for the speeches and the lightshow. It was a tradition she’d held onto ever since she was a little girl, but she also enjoyed what people had to say. She particularly wanted to know how the community planned to cope with the inflation and pay-cuts, because not everyone would be so lucky.

  Elysia took her time—she was something of a shy pooper—and as Isolde looked around at the junk spread out across the beach, something shiny caught her eye. She approached the rubble, got down on one knee, careful not to prick herself on the broken bottles, and picked up the shiny object. It didn’t take her long to recognise what it was: a vial. In particular, one of Rhyce’s vials; she knew by the green smear of liquid at the bottom.

  “Funny I should see you here,” a voice said, and she knew, without even looking, who it belonged to.

  She turned slowly. It was Rhyce alright, but there was something different about him; he wasn’t surrounded by any of his cronies, at least not yet, and his face looked strange: sharper, almost unnaturally symmetrical, with a metallic sheen glinting under the moonlight. His left eye was no longer flesh but a glowing, crimson implant that whirred as it adjusted its focus. Along his neck, faint seams betrayed the outline of dermal plating, and his movements had an unsettling fluidity, as though his muscles had been swapped for something synthetic, something stronger. His ears were replaced with cables, or perhaps tubes, that swerved up and around his cranium, bearing the shape of mouflon horns.

  Carefully, very carefully indeed, Isolde grabbed a broken bottle and stood up, keeping to the side so as to not reveal it. She moved over to the outhouse, mouth gaping, eyes focused but frightened all the same. She wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. Eventually, however, she broke the silence and said, “What do you want?”

  “Relax.” He turned slightly, revealing a contraption attached to his back: a cylindrical canister tinted with a green hue. The liquid, Ghostfire. “I'm here for the same reasons you are: the lightshow and the speeches. I think the community’s going to want to hear what I have to say.”

  “You’re speaking?” she said, thinking that he wasn’t the sort to talk about hope or justice. She didn’t trust him, not one bit. “You only just got back here.... Listen, I’d much rather you leave me alone, Rhyce. Now’s not the time.”

  He stepped towards her, and she noticed something else that she hadn’t before: in his left hand was a beer bottle that was near three-quarters empty. She got a whiff of the alcohol and body odour off him; it was so pungent she almost gagged.

  “You know,” he said, walking around her, “there was a time where I actually cared about you, know? A time where I was stupid enough to fall for that classy, fresh-out-of-college smile and spend all my hard-earned money on you, up until of course you left me, left the whole district at that, taking my money with you.”

  The toilet flushed in the outhouse, and the faucet began running. Isolde didn’t say a word.

  “She’s with you, isn’t she?” Rhyce took another swig of his beer, downed it all in one gulp, then biffed his chest twice before letting out a belch so gross she caught wind of it from more than a yard away.

  Isolde grimaced. “Rhyce, you need to leave, now, before something really bad happens.” She felt the door of the outhouse begin to creep open, but she shoved back on it, keeping it shut. “You’ve had too much to drink, and you’re not thinking straight.” Not that he was a straight-thinker when he was sober, but this was something else entirely—a volatile mix of suppressed rage and bravado that made her stomach churn, like staring into the eyes of a pit bull who finally gnawed through its abusive owner’s leash.

  Rhyce looked up at the pier, pointing the empty bottle. “This is what you wanted,” he said. “You decided to take all my money and come to this fucking place. Aren’t you a real piece of shit, Isolde? Not only that, but you’re a thief, too. Bet you never told your vegetable child that.”

  She took a deep breath, trying to control her fear, but it was floating up her throat like hot gas. “I’m sorry I used you,” she said sincerely. “I was young, I was stupid, and I was afraid. You scared me when you drank. You’d get angry. You had a problem—have a problem. It was wrong of me to steal, but I can pay it all back.”

  He looked at her with a brow so furled it seemed as though he was about to strike, and Isolde tightened her grip on the broken bottle. “You don’t even have a job,” he said, turning to her. “But there is another way you can repay me.”

  She looked into his eyes, startled. “Rhyce, don’t be stupid.”

  Now he pointed the bottle at her. “Come here,” he said. “I’ll write your debt away. Nice and easy.” He dropped the bottle, walking towards her, one heavy, ground-eating stomp at a time.

  Elysia began banging on the door of the outhouse, trying to break free. She tried to tell him to back off once more, but the words were caught in her throat, and that hot, steaming fear had rolled up her body and wrapped itself around her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Every instinct screamed at her to protect her daughter, but her hands trembled, her voice faltered, and she was frozen.

  “You want me?” she managed, and he slowed down. “I’ll be honest,” she added, trying to hide the quaver in her voice. “It’s been so long since I’ve had a big man take care of my needs. I’ve been so... stressed. But if you’re willing to let everything go for a little fun, then trust me when I say I’m more than happy to oblige.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully, and his brow relaxed, now underwritten by a pair of gentle, understanding eyes. “I promise you,” he said, “it’ll be nice and easy.”

  Another bang from the outhouse door, this time with more force.

  “Elysia,” Isolde yelled, “stay inside. We’ll only be a moment.”

  Rhyce fell silent, brooding. He was close now, very close. He reached down to his belt buckle and began to undo his pants. Slowly, he grabbed her by her chin and pulled her into a kiss. His breath smelled awful, just as it had over a decade ago, but she went along with it. When he reached for the zipper on her coat, she tensed her muscles and, with all the power she could muster, swung the shattered bottle up and around, sticking it right into his eye. Rhyce fell back with a scream, blood pooling down his face.

  Isolde yanked the outhouse door open, snatched Elysia’s hand, and made a beeline for the pier steps.

  “You bitch!” Rhyce shouted, now sounding fully enraged.

  She glanced back, only for a second, and saw that he still hadn’t picked himself up off the ground. She brought her daughter up the steps, moving as quickly as possible, heading back to the crowd, away from that monster’s sight. People watched with confused glares, perhaps wondering why she was in such a panic, but then she noticed that some of the blood had gotten on the neck of her jacket and the lower part of her right cheek. She headed over to Silas’ kiosk, finding that the line had dwindled partially, although not by much, and asked him for some wet wipes, offering to pay.

  He was concerned, asking where the blood came from, but Isolde was too frightened to explain. She was just happy that she’d gotten away and was now surrounded by people. He wouldn’t dare to chase her up here, not if he didn’t want to get arrested or, worse yet, beaten to death. If there was one thing she could say was certain about the southsiders, it was that when push came to shove, and lives were on the line, they would rise up and work together. They wouldn’t just let a mother and child be subjected to physical abuse or danger. She’d witnessed it before, read about it on the news. They might not have had a lot of money, but doing the right thing didn’t cost a single eddy, and in that sense, they were richer than most.

  Silas handed her the wet wipes free of charge, but held on to the neck of her jacket, looking her coldly in the eyes. “Who was down there?”

  Reluctantly, she explained the situation, that Rhyce was her ex-boyfriend from over a decade ago and that she’d taken his money to flee and hide in Neo Arcadia, to start a new life. She explained that he was a drinker and had been selling dopamine boosters, labelling them as stress relievers. She mentioned what he intended to do to her in lieu of her repaying the money she’d stolen, and as soon as he heard that, he picked up his phone and called the police. He temporarily put a halt to the business, stepping away for better audio, telling her to watch the stand while he was gone.

  She waited for what must have been five minutes, comforting Elysia, who, while she wasn’t crying, Isolde could tell was upset. She knew. It was difficult to put into words how she knew; it simply came down to that mother’s intuition that God graced every lady with the moment their firstborn was pulled out of the womb. A connection, a bond, that no one could take away.

  After a while, Silas came back to the stand, telling her that the blues were on their way and would arrive in the next ten minutes, a slow-response unit, looking to take a statement, a description, anything they could get their hands on to track this person down. Whether or not they would actually follow through on this promise was another question, but at the very least it comforted Isolde to know that he wouldn’t just be another face in the crowd anymore, that if he did try to set up a stand and sell his phony product an NACP officer would pull him, toss him into the deepest, darkest cell of the toughest prison in the country, never to be seen again, at least not for another long while yet.

  The stage lights of The Whale suddenly flashed on, pointing inwards, lighting up the cyclorama, and the crowd, once bustling and sprawling with hubbub, quietened, watching as a man dressed in a plain white shirt and slacks walked to the centre, holding a script in one hand and a microphone in the other. “How are we doing Neo Arcadiaaaaaa?” he yelled enthusiastically.

  The crowd roared in applause and cheers.

  “Let’s make some motherfuckin’ noise for 2086!”

  The crowd loudened; Isolde even joined in on the claps, though she certainly was much more reserved than most. She was still getting over what happened, after all.

  The man nodded and raised a hand, doing the peace sign, two fingers splayed, thumb tucked underneath. “We have an exciting list of events for you this year, because we thought we’d go all out given those nasty government changes. First things first, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for making it tonight. This is by far the biggest Luminara event we’ve had, with over five thousand southsiders filling the docks and pier. The atmosphere is absolutely electric and it goes to show that no one and nothing can stop us from banding together. The north can try push us down all they want, but we have something they don’t: strength in numbers.”

  More applause from the crowd.

  “Now I’d like to start off today’s list of events with everybody’s favourite: the lightshow,” the man continued, reading the script. “In the previous years, we—”

  The crowd suddenly shifted reaction, more to confusion than to excitement. She didn’t know why at first, but then she saw someone—some people—climbing up the right-hand side of the stage. A sharp breath escaped Isolde’s lips. It was Rhyce, blood still oozing from his eye, this time with his cronies standing behind him.

  The man with the script laughed awkwardly. “Guys, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but now’s not the time to—”

  He didn’t even manage to get a full sentence out when Rhyce marched up, grabbed the microphone, and pushed him onto the wooden floor. The crowd clamoured with confusion, wondering who on Earth this person was or what he wanted.

  Isolde knew, oh Isolde knew very well, and she couldn’t wait for the blues to show up and arrest him on the spot.

  Behind him, one of his cronies carried the same keg of Ghostfire that was on display in the market. He lugged it along by the handle, grinding the outer rim against the wood. He set it upright at the centre of the stage, then stepped aside, allowing Rhyce to sit on it. His goons gathered around him, arms folded, their soulless, cybernetic faces staring into the crowd.

  “Hello Neo Arcadia,” Rhyce said. “Have I got a proposition for you.”

  The crowd’s reaction was not a cheer or a murmur, but a wave of uneasy silence, punctuated only by the hum of Ghostfire radiating from the keg like a heartbeat in the dark.