Eighteen years later, a light grey and soft purple ponytail bounced through the tropical foliage of the enclosed arena in the Y. High walls surrounded a planned, forested area for their soldiers and school kids to train and compete. The sand kicked up off her modified boots as she ran. She had a pistol at her hip and an assault rifle in her hands, with the strap around her shoulder and the short butt tucked securely in her armpit. On her other hip she had a long blade with a modded handle. Another matched her speed a dozen paces to her left. She checked her screen which shot a holographic projection into the air above it and several red dots appeared. She continued sprinting, nodding to her counterpart as they both digested the same info on each of their screens. A dog-like creature appeared, with two long arms popping out of his back. Trackers, the attack dogs of the Sikkas. It was square and boxy in the body area, and that's just where Kaiya aimed. She and her colleague slowed down and opened fire, it didn't take long for the Tracker to go down. The drones buzzed around her, carrying the video feed back into town where locals at bars and barbershops had it on their screens, shouting at their teams. She hit the Tracker square in the face, and immediately began sprinting again. A dozen yards out, she clicked a button on her screen and her boots emitted a brief, high pitched noise, as if being pressurized. She leapt towards a tree and ricochet herself off, the added grip and spring provided by her boots. She took aim and fired a burst of bullets at the next Tracker that appeared just as she had predicted it would. It went down instantly and she landed on one knee. She turned to see a shadow hiding behind a tree, and just waited for it to pop its head out again. She did it with one hand, and nailed it right in the head. Each team started the game with ten people and ten trackers. All but Kaiya and Shim were left on their team against five on the other side. Now neither side had any Trackers left. Kaiya and Shim acknowledged the milestone to each other with a nod and made some distance between themselves and the carnage of the Trackers they'd just destroyed.
A few hundred yards away, the five remaining members of the opposite team fanned out. They'd simply scoop the two girls with a broad U shape and take whatever damages they had to in order to win. They pressed forward quickly, soundlessly as they stepped on wet leaves and over rotted branches. This was the final moments of the game and everyone watching knew it. The games could last several hours since the arena in which they played was so large. Each team generally spent the better part of the first half just rigging up explosives or other sensors to help them establish their enemy's positions. There was an art and a science to it. Some fans loved the first part of the game, the strategy, like playing chess. For others, their interests were primal. Their guns and explosives didn't kill. They were sensor based, and would eliminate players as they took on damage. Even the trackers had safety mods that prevented their otherwise deadly arms from punching a holde through a player or ripping a limb off like they did in the wild.
Kaiya motioned upward with her eyes. Shim knew what she meant and nodded. One of their sensors had tripped and they were able to locate two of their enemies. They could see the even spacing between them and guessed their strategy right away. They were going to try and rush them from as many sides as possible. A simple shootout of five against two and hope that the odds would carry them to the win. It wouldn't be so easy, not with Shim and Kaiya working together. While Kaiya climbed silently up a tree directly in the pathway of the two identified enemies, Shim readied a launcher that would hopefully force the group to start firing, giving away all their positions. She snapped the catapult back and looked to Kaiya for confirmation that she was ready. She launched it, and it landed out of sight but within earshot. Moments later they heard the familiar pop of gunfire. Shim swung out wide to the side of their formation, and took down one on the edge with her gun. Shim was spotted and the formation began to collapse around her, which opened up Kaiya to fire from the trees. She was a deadly shot, and took down two more in three shots. Only two left. While Shim was trying to get a clean shot, Kaiya popped down from the tree, and sliced another with her knife. The now removed player cursed and threw his gun. It was two on one now, with the last remaining player caught between Kaiya and Shim. He was fucked and he knew it. After a brief chase, the player posted up by a rock formation and dug in, trying to conceal his body around the large boulder. It didn't work. Kaiya shot him in the foot, and his haptic suit made him flinch forward, exposing his head. That was all Shim needed and finished it. Their wrist screens vibrated, showing no more enemies on the map. The game was over, they had one.
Shim, her black hair pulled tight in a high ponytail, walked up to Kaiya sucking wind and slapped her on the ass. "Game complete, congratulations soldiers." the voice said over their comms. A score card popped up on the screen, as usual Kaiya crushed it, and Shim was shortly behind her. Kaiya and Shim's team had won, but Kaiya took the lead on the most kills. The Arena was wired with all kinds of sensors and cameras to calculate the scores and broadcast the event. Other cadets emerged from the trees, and the entire class lamented over their scores. Petr, who looked disheveled and out of place in the uniform with a weapon in his hands groaned at his score. He kept having to adjust his helmet as he accidently grabbed one with a faulty strap. It made him look like a child wearing their father's clothes.
"How am I supposed to graduate at the top of my class with scores like this," he whined to Kaiya.
"Specialization, Petr, you know you're the best programmer we have," she winked back, genuine.
The arena was both a scholastic exercise and competitive sport. The students used it as a training ground for the time they'd have to serve protecting the Y before heading out into the workforce or further education. That is if they decided to stay in the Y at all. Many didn't, seeking fortune on the roads less travelled. They'd come back haggard and addicted in a few years and join the ranks of men who told lies at the bar each night. The cadets took the open air electric carts on small tracks that crisscrossed the large battleground. On their journey back to the exit, there were a few high fives and some shit giving for those that fucked up during training. These were the fish tales of the time. There were always highlight reels of the training session and they'd share funny clips of people falling over or missing big opportunities on their screens. It was an intranet just for the Y, no outside connections were allowed. Nor were they even possible. The training exercises were broadcasted all over the Y for days to come. Since the more formalized arena competition season hadn't started yet, most people watched the school games for fun in the interim. It was the favorite televised sporting event of the region. Teams from all over would come and compete here. Friday afternoons, everyone from the mechanics, to the officers would inch near a tv, or discreetly watch the event on their personal screens. Betting was part of it, and betting on Kaiya was the surest way to win some money, though the occasional times she lost would pay out huge. Kaiya and Shim always teamed up together and the two of them were a deadly combination. The game and it's ensuing fanfare had been part of the engineered culture of the Y. A kind of ideal society to counterbalance the oppressive imperialists to the north. The skills learned and practised during the events were used to protect the Y. And for a time, it had even worked.
After they were released from school for the day, Shim and Kaiya decided to take the long way back into the city. Outside of the town center, the Y was strung up with all kinds of ladders and ropes to hop between lava cliffs, tiny islands, and the dense tropical areas. They could hop between archipelagos. There were makeshift bridges made of bamboo steps and twine between them. The training area was only a fifteen minute monorail ride from the town center, but they wanted to burn off some of the residual adrenaline from the arena match. They hopped between a few tiny islands, barely big enough to pitch a tent and skipped nearer to the port. Kaiya and Shim danced over the vaulted crossings, hopping between them and making their way back to class. They paused on one of the tiny islands a few hops away from the shore. Shim pulled out a slender joint. Some things never change. They flopped onto the sand and smoked it, musing about boys and the latest drama amongst the cadets. Everyone went through cadet training, there was a mandatory two year service period, a policy they stole from a country that once existed before the Awakening. Shim suddenly jumped on Kaiya and pinned her to the ground, kissing her. Kaiya didn't resist. After some time, they pulled their weapons out of the sand and got dressed. As they walked through the port with their full armor on, they got a few looks from surprised foreigners who couldn't identify the cadets in training. There was a solid military presence at the port. They were all well armed and looked no older than Kaiya and Shim. They wore the same kinds of outfits though upon closer inspection you could see that very few of them matched perfectly. Part of what had been destroyed and utterly decimated during the awakening was the means of production. Textile factories and chip manufacturing plants were not just destroyed but levelled. Knowledge had been lost when the population decreased, forcing people to find scraps or make them the slow and ancient way long before the Awakening. When everything is in the cloud and the data centers are destroyed, the data is no longer everywhere, it's nowhere, and as more and more of the population moved everything to the cloud, this once existential risk came down on them hard. Back at the school, Shim and Kaiya showered. Shim sauntered over to Kaiya and grabbed her wrist lightly and kissed her. They giggled. Ayala Moxu, a member of the privileged cool class of training cadets, heard them. This was gossip ammo she would store away to be used later. Though their sometimes intimate relationship was nothing new, it was slightly unusual, just slightly enough to ruffle feathers when needed. Ayala, though lazy, and uninterested, was truly a master of psychological warfare, and it just so happened that was one area of specialization allowed in their program.
High as kites on a Friday night, Shim and Kaiya met up with Brig, Arryn, and Petr. They went to their usual spot, an off the grid bar that was run by a few local kids. You had to know where it was to get in and you also had to know someone to vouch for you before you could enter. Basically everyone in cadet school was in on it though, and the governing body of they Y just looked the other way. They figured if the kids were going to get in trouble, they'd rather they did it in the Y than venture outside of it's strong defenses. Ayala and her crew were there when they arrived.
"Well if it isn't the two love birds," Ayala nodded to Kaiya, her friends laughing at the joke having heard what happened. Kaiya blushed.
"Ayala, great to see you. I sense that you have a larger than usual stick up your ass, want me to help you get it out?" Shim stepped closer and closer to Ayala, who was starting to feel both threatened and uncomfortable.
"Come outside, I'll show you how I do it. Nice and slow, you little Imperialist." She added, never taking her eyes off Ayala. Ayala had moved to the Y only a few years ago. She was one of the last amongst their age group to move here from Imperial City, which made her both more exotic, and fashionable, but also a person of interest. There was no doubt the council was keeping tabs on her and her family, just to make sure they weren't sending any information back to the Imperial City.
Another girl in Ayala's crew put her hand on Shim's chest.
"Alright, calm down…" Shim took the girl's arm and put her in a headlock before she could blink. She lost consciousness in a flash and Shim dropped her to the floor, the girl coughing as she got up and moved away.
"A little preview for you sweetie if you don't shut your fucking mouth." She finished the encounter by blowing her a little kiss. The boys inside were nearly in a frenzy from the encounter. Shim was hot, and she could beat almost everyone here except perhaps Kaiya. But the two of them together could probably take on the whole bar at once, and walk away with only a glisten. Everyone knew it too.
Shim made her way over to the bar and ordered two drinks, the local sugarcane based alcohol that could knock a rhino on its ass if drunk straight up. The bartender did some light chemistry and suddenly the drinks were glowing red. They walked into one of the experience rooms that played some killer downtempo beats and showed psychedelic images of plants growing on the walls. It was kitschy, with living room grade sofas and plenty of other seating like hammock chairs that hung from the rafters. It was a typical half indoor, half outdoor space as most places were in the Y.
There were two new guys in the back. They were just in from Imperial City and only here delivering goods for the Leaving of the Light Ceremony. They got to talking to the girls and revealed they had some new drugs Kaiya and Shim had never heard of.
"What's it like?" Kaiya asked gently, trying not to show she was scared.
"It's a psychotropic, and light hallucinogenic," one of the guys said, "it's an upper. I've never met a single person that had a bad trip on it. I've never had a bad trip on it." Shim took a pill from the boys outstretched hands and put it in her mouth. She kissed the pill into Kaiya's mouth and Kaiya chased it down with her glowing drink. They all took them and after a few minutes of intensity, the chemicals in their blood settled. They levelled out and got up to dance.
Kaiya woke up in bed with Shim and the two boys from the night before. Her head was pounding, and she slept too late. She had promised Eros she'd help with the Hikka delivery. She whispered she was leaving to a sleeping Shim who groaned an acknowledgement and she got dressed, heading out of the room up the long road back to her home on the outskirts of the city. When she arrived, it had gotten markedly colder, unusually cold, the cold that usually settled and was held back by the mountains seemed to have poured over into the Y. She didn't go inside the lab to say hello to her father. She was hoping for just a few more minutes to feel less hungover. After a shower and a quick change of clothes, she got straight to work loading up the cases of Hikka.
The chill wind picked up and raised the hairs on the back of Kaiya Hikaiya's neck as she bent to reach the last case of Hikka from storage. She stacked it on top of the pile, and took a peek over her shoulder to see if anyone was looking. Nobody was. Nobody would be. They lived on the outskirts of town, high on the hill where Eros could more easily do his experiments, and a little more space for his lab. She popped the cap off a bottle and inhaled a dose of cinnamon and fermented seaweed. Hikka, the drink of choice during the Leaving of the Light ceremony and though Eros was getting old, he had given his word it would be delivered. And so it would be. She took a small swig in the hopes that it would help with her hangover. It was Eros' hobby to make the stuff. He'd been refining it for decades and as a gesture of good will, he brought some to Wellington when he first arrived, and it had been a hit among the council, and a tradition ever since.
A strong gust of wind blew her hair over her one grey eye leaving just her violet eye with a clean view. She snapped the cap back on the bottle inhaling out loud, as if she were caught. She looked around the hillside, saw nothing unusual, and returned the bottle to its place in the case. I'm really on edge today, she thought, either too excited for the ceremony or too anxious from going hard last night.
She had been a little on edge since the attacks started. Everyone had been. There were weekly reports of Trackers and other creatures tripping the security perimeter Eros had set up for the city. The Y had sentries posted around the rim of the Y, and they'd automatically get an alert when there was something that breached the area. The cold weather hadn't been helping. It came in waves and settled into the bowl of the Y and camped unnaturally. Opaque fog came in the evenings, and sometimes stayed for days, so thick that breathing felt like chewing. Thunderstorms usually stop on the bluffs of the Y and protect them like the shell of an egg. Walls of clouds, rain, and thunderstorms suspended on the hilltops as if a force kept them at bay. It's an epic sight, to see the thunderstorms a few kilometers away suddenly halted at the edges of the bowl. The early snow in the Arc mountains had forced the wildlife to seek food elsewhere, and after reports of attacks outside the Y, there was cause to be alert.
The reports of attacks were always vague, and the few that survived the attack never seemed to have gotten a glimpse, or perhaps more accurately, whatever had attacked simply missed a few people by accident. Probably Trackers, which meant the Sikkas were up to something, and whatever it was did not bode well for the Y. The Y had enjoyed a kind of implicit sanctuary status for generations now, but that could very well change with the snap of the Imperial Emperor's righteous fingers.
"Kaiya!" Eros called.
"Coming!" she replied.
She tightened the straps around the cases of Hikka, and bounced towards the warm patinaed roof of her father's lab. The faint green and blue glow escaped a few feet from the door, and burst outside as she swung it open. The humming of circuits and the buzzing of servers welcomed her as her father finished up a weld on a cart. His hands grabbed the cart firmly, in leather gloves that had darkened with sweat and work and time. Eros was a controller, a term for an engineer who knew both hardware and software, and he was one of the best. He collected scrap metal from the abundant waste in the Arc. He was known there, even respected, and not often bothered. He rarely mentioned when he was going and would rarely mention when he would come back. He would always go alone. Kaiya had asked him on more than one occasion to go with him. He never allowed it, despite promising to take her one day so she would know what Eros knew about procuring valuable parts and working them into new products to sell. He would bring some of the creations from his lab to trade in the Arc. Some of his work was to fix broken electronics, and make them work again. Sometimes he was asked to produce code for some specialized hardware, and sometimes the job was straight hardware. Most often it was a mix of both that required a specialized and increasingly rare knowledge. He'd also take contracts from the city to make weapons or to upgrade their defense system. It was his design after all. It was the way they became ingratiated here. Eros had used his skills to provide safety and security to the Y. Before him, they relied mostly on manpower to secure the perimeter. They had some tech of course, but it was old, rusted, and out of date. More importantly, it wasn't nearly as effective as the system Eros put in place. Worst of all it was labor intensive. Being one of the few who still had both hardware and software skills, he was able to make a comfortable living. Partly out of need, he had taught Kaiya since the day she was able to comprehend full sentences. Her toys as a child had been the lab equipment Eros had brought with him from Imperial City all those years ago and after years of training she was nearly as good as he was.
Eros pulled up his welding mask when she walked in. He had been repairing the cart they would take into town. It was electric, and last time he took it to the Arc, he came back with the suspension blown out and didn't mention how it happened. Once the cart locked on to its owner, it would follow them around. It could adjust its course, or be left behind and called remotely. Eros had been putting small propellers strategically around the device. He claimed he could get it to fly, though Kaiya had never seen it work. It was just one of the hundreds of projects tucked into the lab.
"I could use a hand, " Eros said warmly, without looking back at Kaiya.
His left hand appeared normal at first glance but once his palm faced the ceiling, you could see the mechanics of it. He had built it himself from scraps he had traded for in the Arc. Kaiya soldered the last piece while Eros held the wires rock steady with his mechanical hand. He had not needed the help, but through these little lessons, Kaiya had learned. She too could fix parts, write code, and had a keen sense of design.
Kaiya lifted an old photo of her mom, "Why is this out?".
"I take a look at it every year around this time. Light, she was so beautiful." He said, looking at the photo in her hand.
"She abandoned us," Kaiya thought to herself, a fierceness entered her eyes.
Eros never mentioned it. It used to pain her deeply, this empty space, but as she grew older she knew that she simply didn't know the whole truth, but she knew enough to feel a deep disgust for what she considered a weakness, and that her mother's weakness also ran in her blood. She had unconsciously tried to cleanse herself of it ever since. The anger died as quick as it came. She had dealt with it already. Or at least had learned how to live with it.
Eros flipped the switch on the cart and synced it to the device on his wrist, it jittered to life, auto-calibrating itself to the new suspension and then started moving out of the lab. The readout on Eros' screen showed the system was back to normal, displaying the lab in a cloud of dots as sensed by the cart. It sputtered outside in front of the crates of Hikka, and lifted slightly. An arm rotated out from the bottom of the cart at an unnatural angle and grabbed hold of the crates. It threw out a counterweight and then lifted the Hiika onto the cart.
"That's new," Kaiya laughed.
"And it works!" Eros acknowledged without taking his eyes off his wrist.
"It looks like a Tracker arm."
"It is a Tracker arm," he smiled to her.
"Very clever."
With the cart loaded, Kaiya grabbed her bow and slung it over her back. It was her second favorite weapon. Guns were not allowed inside the city except for on duty soldiers. Eros loaded up gadgets into pockets around his waist, it was difficult to tell if they were tools or weapons, but that was part of the point. They left their home and walked along the only path towards the town center. It wasn't far but it was desolate, a good 30 minutes by foot at this slow pace. Tonight would be The Leaving Of The Light ceremony. The sun would set twice on this day. Once it would go down as if it were any other day, though the twilight period was three times as long. The sun would stay down only for an hour, then it would rise again, and again it would fall. A cosmic optical illusion. As the daylight faded, she watched the rear of the cart that quietly hummed along the path, following Eros as he kept watch on the front.
The wind picked up again and a faint rustle in the bushes startled her. She knocked an arrow in her bow and raised it instinctively, continuing to walk. Her grey and violet heterochromic eyes violently examined the treetops and the brush for glowing eyes or other signs of danger. From the corner of her field of vision she saw a flash of light. She repositioned her bow looking for the source. For an instant she saw what looked like a bionic snout, and a powerful arm-like claw lurking from behind a tree in the distance. It looked straight at her, though she couldn't quite make out any features. A small red light appeared and slowly approached. As she watched it she tripped over a stone and fell flat on her back. She scrambled to her feet.
"A… Tracker...," she whispered, "there's something following us."
Eros quickly hit a button on his spectacles and twisted to face the path behind him. Then, slightly late, were the perimeter alerts from the system he had set up.
"Take the front. Quickly now," he said frustrated by the perimeter's delayed detection.
They walked silently for a moment, the quiet humming of the carts hydraulics and the wind through the trees.
"What color did you see?"
"Red"
More silence.
They attacked from the side. It caught Eros off guard though his bionic hand had instinctively formed a fist and he dodged the clasping arm of the bionic hounds. He pulled a device from his belt that elongated as he spun and swung dead center into the Tracker's body. It split the Tracker clean in half with an overwhelming smell of burnt metal.
The second beast went for Kaiya who unleashed her arrow off balance and missed. She dodged the leaping hound, with it's razor sharp claws and dexterous robotic arms. As she twisted, she caught the side of an arm with her bow and spun the tracker so it landed on it's side and slid into a nearby tree, briefly having to re-center itself to position for another attack.
Kaiya hit a button on her wrist and activated her boots as she ran toward the beast slightly to an angle. She knocked another arrow in her bow, and as she jumped, her boots hissed. She was catapulted into the air, landing perpendicular on a tree trunk overlooking the scrambling tracker below. She could hear the charge in the tip of her arrow activate. The beast was up now, recoiling for a leap straight at her. She released the arrow. It magnetically lodged itself right between the body and the front leg of the tracker. For one full second the beast continued toward her, and she started to panic. It looked like the arrow was a dud. As she reached back to try another, the arrow exploded, blasting metal, wires, and blue-green fluid all over the ground below her. She jumped down from the tree huffing from the rush of adrenaline. Eros was sitting on the cart watching her, the Tracker next to him still smoking and sputtering.
He took her by the shoulder, calming her shaking hands. She looked back at the remains of the Tracker she blew up, then back to the one Eros had cut in half, still sparking from the residual charge in its battery.
"Remember the Drop," he reminded her.
Ever since she could remember, Eros would tell her to visualize a single drop of water falling from the top of her head into her center. Whenever she did it right, the world would go away and there was nothing but her and the subject of her focus. She didn't do it well during the encounter today, and she knew it. There was still more work to be done, more weakness to eradicate.
They cinched up the straps on the containers of Hikka, which had been undamaged during the encounter and continued on down the trail. High above them in the trees rested two faint red eyes gazing down on them. The bird made the faintest hum, adjusted its feet, and took off. The bird flew right over their heads as they walked the trail below. Neither of them noticed as it headed past them towards the city. Dozens of them could be seen at any time, if you knew where to look. The Y was close now. She could see the decorative lights throwing faint glows of topaz. Close enough to hear the children playing.
She tried reaching the Drop to go over the event from a place of fearlessness, but couldn't find it. Frustrated, she stopped trying as a deep unease settled into the pit of Kaiya's stomach while they continued toward the city. Something was wrong. These attacks had a meaning she couldn't grasp. She tried to let it go. She was so damn happy to get back into the city. Tonight she would drink Hikka and dance with Shim until the light came up over the beach. Perhaps she'd get some time with Arryn too.