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“She knows, Al.”
I closed the door of the motel room behind me. Al was sitting cross-legged on his bed with his eyes closed and his brow slightly furrowed. He looked like he was meditating, but I knew better. He was going through the pictures in his iris-cam.
He opened his eyes to look straight at me. “What?”
“She knows.”
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Reminder: If you haven’t yet, submit your entry for The Raw Poetry Contest. The deadline’s 14th June 11:59 P.M. IST, so hurry.
It’d been a week since Al almost died. He was back to normal now and seeing how much he’d missed out on the ‘fun’ activity of researching in my absence, I’d convinced him to look up more about the midnight man at the cyber cafe, while I went to play with the girl we’d tried to kill. Correction: were trying to kill.
But the Creator wasn’t playing today. Pragya had gone to visit a relative with her parents, and that left her just me to play with.
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My thoughts were interrupted by Al’s harsh whispers from the inside.
“Spruce!” He sounded quite tense- like he’d messed up something.
Oh shit. Not again.
I hurried in. The Creator was still asleep, thank god, but Al looked like he’d seen a ghost. He was clutching his left arm, the syringe lying half-empty on the floor at his feet.
My hand automatically clapped over my mouth.
“Did you…”
“Yes. Now hurry.”
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“Dude, we need to shag ass,” Al said.
It wasn’t something one usually heard from him- he was all for fighting back and not running away cowardly.
But.
But.
Cockroaches.
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Katherine Marlow sat down against a cybernetically-enhanced ash tree, clutched her knees and put on her best helpless face. Frankly, she was offended by the fact that in spite of being a silver-badge warrior, she was chosen to do this lowly job. But of course, orders aren’t meant to be questioned.
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Al gulped. “Tell me you’re just messing with me, Spruce.”
“I wish I could, Al.” I spread my hands. “But that’s what they all said.”
“They could be lying,” he said hopefully.
“I hope for our sakes they were.”
“Isn’t there any way to, like, sever the connection?”
“Not that I know of.” I sighed. “I think our best course of action now would be to poison the Creator and get the hell out of here soon as we can. Maybe the midnight man will abandon us if we travel to a different world altogether.”
“Maybe? We can’t risk our asses on a ‘maybe’, Spruce.”
“I personally prefer ‘maybe we’ll live’ to ‘we will definitely die’.”
Al gave his trademark slight frown which indicated he agreed with me but didn’t want to say so.
“Right then. Let’s see where botox gets us.”
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A steady breeze rustled the leaves of the trees in Nehru Park and made the clothes hanging out on the railings of the houses surrounding it flutter ghostily. The Park was deserted, the time being 2 A.M., except for three people who were standing in a triangle near the henna bushes.
A tall bespectacled girl with tangled brown hair stood at one end, her usually alert grey eyes heavy and tired. But she still stood upright, never slouching.
“I gave everything for this.” She locked eyes with the denimmed boy at the apex of the triangle. “You have to.”
Before he had a chance to reply, however, the short girl with a long black ponytail at the other end addressed him.
“I know you’re not a bad person,” she said, her soft brown eyes pleading. “What we had was not all fake, you know. We laughed at your name, remember?” She was trying to be strong and not let them see her cry. “I beat you at badminton.” She smiled sorrowfully.
The tall girl was starting to say something, but the boy didn’t hear it. A loud ringing filled his ears and-
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After hours in the local cyber cafe, I finally knew enough to tackle the midnight man and find out Rennie’s location. Or, at least I hoped I did.
The process of befriending the Creator was, of course, still going on simultaneously. She seemed to be a nice person for the most part, except for the part where she’d killed my parents as a means of ‘character development’. And the part where she’d basically messed up ‘Grey Earth’ for her ‘dystopian YA sci-fi fantasy’, as she put it. It seemed absurd to me that an innocent-looking girl could be the monster at the end of the book, quite literally.
I’d also checked into a room at Hotel Parth Paradise (as I’d told the Creator) after all, since I had to stay somewhere.
I’d sold a couple more gold coins at a jewellery store and bought a hydraulic press from an online shopping website. I’d stocked up on salt, bought silver knives and learnt the number sequence from the Korean elevator ritual by heart. With luck, my plan would work.
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Five hours and hot buttery parathas at a local eatery had calmed me down enough to know that I was essentially directionless at the time. I had no course of action at all before me, but I had plenty of time to chart one.
I was in no mood to try to kill the Creator without any of our poisonous arsenals. I’d even left the potassium chloride with Al, I recalled- when I’d thrown the container in his face. Good times.
Al had lectured me on not caring about Rennie’s sacrifice. About making her sacrifice meaningful. Well, I thought, why let her sacrifice herself anyway? She did it to right our messed-up world, but why her? Why should she have to do it? Wasn’t it the responsibility of those snobby ‘leaders’ of The Society which was created to fight the mutants and keep everyone safe?
So, I decided to bring her back from wherever she was. I contemplated my next move. There was only one person in the universe who could bring her back. The Creator. Continue reading
Hello, people. My exams are over and I’m back. Feel free to scream with joy and shed tears of happiness. *Senses you staring at the screen incredulously* I’ll come back when you’ve composed yourself.
Meanwhile, you can read the previous parts if you haven’t yet, or if you have, move on to this one. Continue reading
Charlie and the cerebration factory 