Lex wore her crinkly red jacket with the big pockets for all her things, and underneath she had on her best black sports bra, her spikey boots from the punker store and red shorts. It was the most daring outfit she could stand to wear. But compared to the street boys and glitz girls of the downcity hovertrain, Lex felt as covered up as a Hera Temple priestess.
Her reflection in the train window made Lex blush. She didn't dislike how she looked, but it was as if a stranger stared back. Lex's reflection held a hand to her chest too; their heart still hurting from encountering Manny Grave. Her eyes refocused past her double to the neon streets of Third, where hovercars and hovertrains flew through the air on tracks of light. The lid of the world was made of shining steel, stamped with the Still King's symbol, the Royal Medusa. It was all so new and overwhelming, and a cold sweat already drenched her back.
In the window's reflection, a dark creature sat across from her. He had twin curved horns and iron goat legs. She heard the whirr of cybernetics, the clinks of alloy feet. She smelt blood.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you," the boy said, smooth as smoke. To her relief, the dark stranger leaned back, pulling his cyberlegs aside. An Empyrean proper distance. How nice.
Her chest flared with pain, as if red-hot coals crackled into her heart. Blood roared in her ears, her breath faltered and Lex keeled forward. Her heart was on the verge of collapse.
Lex gripped her chest with her right hand as if trying to hold the arteries in place while her left hand swam into her crinkly jacket to grasp a cold cube. She pulled the auto-injector free, her eyes swimming with the image of her black boots and the boy's steel cyberlegs, each ending in iron hooves.
A dragon's fire scorched her lungs and Lex pressed the auto-injector against her neck—but the cube slipped from her strength-drained fingers. The injector fell, and rolled beyond her meagre reach. Seventeen long orbits ago, the doctors said Lex wouldn't last for seventeen hours. She thought she'd proven her heart be her end.
What a crappy place to die.
Lex closed her eyes and hoped a passenger would be kind enough to slip a credit under her tongue when she moved on. She shuddered to think of what would happen if she couldn't pay the Ferryman's price to the Underworld.
"Hey, this is yours, right?"
Opening her clouded eyes, an Empyrean-pale hand, with a family ring on his third finger, held her auto-injector, Serum glistening red within. Another hand lifted her chin to expose her neck as he pressed the cold alloy against her skin.
"There you go, hope that helped."
As the dragon calmed, her vision became filled with his violet eyes. They were worried, young and bright as morning lavender. The Serum brought the world back into focus and gave her the strength to push his hand aside. He backed away and retook his seat. Empyrean proper. Empyre true. But he had dyed his hair Maketonian black, his real eyes hidden under purple contacts surrounded by thick eyeliner and his head bore a pair of carbon-black horns.
It wasn't Empyrean true to stare at his bare chest that peeked through his black punkers jacket, but she couldn't ignore the three gear-shaped burns across his belly. While his spiked ears and pierced brow intrigued her, the brand worn so proudly made Lex anxious.
"Thanks," she said and turned her head to the window. "It was medicine," she added, in case he thought her a tweaker. "For my heart."
"Ah, I feel you," he said. "I need a pick-me-up too, from time to time. Although I've found music to be just as helpful. Do you play anything? Plasma-guitar, synthesizer—if I were to guess, I'd say you're a singer."
"No—what?" She turned to frown, then noticed two mercenary women clad in white fur getting on the carriage behind them. They were brutish, and they stared at Lex and her strange saviour with a predatory gaze. "Do you know them? They're looking at us strangely."
"Shit," her saviour whispered, and kicked a leg onto an empty seat and squinted into his chrome goat-hoof as if a mirror. "White Lions already—are they wearing white fur, paramilitary looking, covered in scars?"
The women were covered in pale scars, each wearing thick white furs, heavy leather boots and with combat-grade cybernetical eyes. Black objects poked free from the fur—a muzzle, a trigger, a smooth black frame.
"They've got autosnubs," Lex whispered. "Do you think they have a permit?"
"Permit? Of course not, their bloody mercenaries." The boy smiled and chuckled as if she'd told a joke. "Anyway, this has been fun, but I've got to get going. Important places to be and all."
The boy tipped his horns then got up and strode into the next carriage.
Lex wrinkled her brows, then shot off after him.
Entering the other carriage, she ran up to walk beside him. "Do you need help?" she said as the hovertrain slowed down to the next station. "You saved my life, and grandfather always says its best to repay debts quickly."
"What? No, I work alone." Her saviour peered behind her to where the White Lions were closing in. Lex noted their arms move inside their furs to grasp triggers. "Zeus be damned, they'll think you're involved with me now. Come this way then, the Brotherhood might distract them for us."
He grabbed her hand and pulled her along, Lex red in the face as he was painfully aware of how un-Empyrean the touch was. "Brotherhood?" Lex said, as a group of Zeus's Temple zealots came through the open train doors. "And please don't touch me."
"No time to explain," the boy said, letting her go so Lex could slip her hands in her pockets.
Four of the navy blue and white clothes zealots carried two-handed vases on their backs, the black enamel painted with the depictions of the Sparkfather with neon red brushstrokes. The last zealot resembled a living statue of Zeus: his eyes crackled plasma blue, his body coated in marble plates and his fists bounds in spiked ardite gloves.
"Bishop," her saviour said, approaching the marble-clad priest and lowering his horns. "Can you hold those White Lions up for a thousand credits?"
Lex gaped as he offered Zeus's servant a ruby credit card.
The Bishop halted, and peered past them to the White Lions closing in.
"Three thousand," the Bishop boomed. "The Sparkfather deserves no less."
"Come on," the boy said smiling wide. "Just—"
"Captain Satyr," a White Lion said. "You are ordered by Floor Lord Odin White to come with us immediately. You are a suspect in a recent murder of a droid pilot—"
Captain Satyr turned and kicked with one cybernetical hoof. The White Lion blocked with her autosnub, the weapon shattering, and was sent flying into her partner. The cabin filled with screams, as citizens pressed against windows, and the zealots pulled handheld snubguns from navy blue robes.
"Woah," Lex said.
"Three thousand credits," Satyr hissed, and pressed two more ruby cards into the Bishop's hand, then pulled Lex past to the next carriage. "Just keep them there!"
"Bishop, let us past, by Floor Lord Odin's—"
"Do you think it wise to challenge a servant of Zeus?" the Bishop said, his gloves charging up with crackling blue energy. He lifted his ionised fists into a boxing stance and stomped one foot with such weight the carriage trembled. The lessor zealots stepped a few steps back. "Do you think the gods would favour a mercenary over a Bishop blessed with Zeus's own thunder?"
Satyr pulled Lex through to the next carriage, and along to a group of five pink-haired hooligans. Three were average punks, one had shining chrome arms, and the last put Lex's hairs on end. The poor girl looked like she had her face scooped out with a melon baller, and the front portion of her skull filled with cords, lights and an assortment of cybernetics.
"Soldiers," Satyr said, approaching the gangsters. "Would you mind hiding this girl while the White Lions chase me?"
Lex's eyes flittered between each 'soldier', noting the workers' overalls, the scars and the dashes of neon pink. She had heard the rumours, of course, of the violent worker uprising, but she hadn't wanted to believe it.
"Understood, Captain Satyr," the tendril-faced girl said with a modulated tone, and three sensors peering between them like a snail tasting the air. "What's wrong greysnob, is there something on my face?"
The group chuckled, Satyr too—Lex felt ill.
"Well, I saved you, you saved me, we're even." Satyr grinned. "Now, I have to go—"
"But what was that all about?" Lex said, standing her ground, a hand on the screwdriver in her pocket. "Why were they chasing you, did you actually kill that droid pilot?"
"I did my duty," Satyr said. "He was a strike-breaker who used his droid to slaughter, maim and threaten Eros workers. With him gone, we can protest in peace."
"Can I help with anything else?" Lex said, rubbing her arm. "Making up things about you isn't enough—you saved my life, that's a big debt to repay."
"How about this," Satyr said as the hovertrain slowed for the next stop. "Don't get killed and don't help the enemy—oh, and you know it's a Red Night, right? Why is your hair still red? Want some hair dye?" He pulled out a little black spray bottle.
"Thank you, but no, I have a wig in my pocket," Lex said, revealing a handful of brown. "But I need my hair to match my floorcode at the border. In case the protectors use the difference to keep me out."
"They don't care about people going downcity." Satyr laughed and pocketed his hair dye. "It's those trying to claw their way upcity that chills the highborns' thugs to their bones. If you ever need my help, stop by the Crimson Arcade and ask the bartender for me—this is my stop, see you."
Satyr winked and slipped out into a street. The White Lions elbowed their way after Satyr, the Eros Union members shielding Lex from view, but the Eros captain ran through the crowd with cyberised speed. Satyr must be a partial-cyberblade, and mere humans just couldn't compete.
"See you, kid," Cable-face said as her 'soldiers' slunk after them. The doors closed, and Lex slumped into a seat as the hovertrain rumbled towards the border between Second and Third. The passengers around her stared; Lex sighed, and let her head rest against the humming steel.