SOMA (LGBT-scifi-romance)

Chapter Thirteen: City of Dogs

Sector 09: Cita Canis

Jan. 23, 462 AC

Soma was nearly blinded by flashes of colourful lunaroids. Artificial rain. An ethnic—Italian? Spanish?—store had sausages on display. Nanocables shot away like spider webbing. Neatly strapped garbage bins, a low-hanging water channel, a public lavatory. A couple laughing under a blue umbrella. There was so much light.

"Help!" Soma's voice cut up his trachea, and then was lost in the cascades of the crowd. He couldn't stop shaking. Gemini's weight pressed into his injured arm. "Help!"

A vessel streaked by, blaring loudly and rocking them back against the gate. Rainwater lashed into Soma's face. He sputtered and tore open the front of Gemini's jacket. Cool blood slipped through his fingers, beading in the air. One of Gemini's ribs pushed strangely out of his chest. A dark patch of iron stained along his pant legs. Soma didn't think Gemini was breathing.

Black worms wriggled at the edge of Soma's vision.

"Somebody!" he shouted again, searching the crowds for a sympathetic face. He saw a human hold a com to her lips and contact—Sanctuary, she mouthed. He wanted to stop her, but his stream of pleas ran dry. He wheezed, counting every other heartbeat in his throat to fend off an asthma attack. His hands were rattling and bloody.

A column of humans gathered.

Leanne was supposed to meet them, but there were only strangers. Soma felt as if he'd fallen into a singularity. He'd ridden a sliver of hope this far, kept the coordinates imprinted behind his eyelids like one of Leanne's prayers. And now the humans would send both of them to Sanctuary, where he would be separated from Gemini and never see him again. If they let Gem live at all.

Tears came then, salty with anger. Leanne. Where was Leanne?

Soma heard sirens. The sounds echoed. Lights spun between lunaroids. From a distance, he could see a Sanctuary ship curve towards them, parting artificial rain. No. Soma choked on a sob. How did the Man of Means get here so fast? How did he know?

Slowly, he released Gemini and reached for the screwdriver with sweaty fingers. His breath came in skips and stutters. No asthma. He blinked hard and then forced his eyes open as the Sanctuary vessel loomed over him.

The siren silenced. It was a small tapered ship, white with green stripes, with a hatch at its rear, long tinted windows, and the pale green logo of Sanctuary. One of its headlights was dimmer than the other.

An old synthetic floated from the vessel hatch, blowing smoke from a thick cigar. She was older than anyone Soma knew, and bore her years with a proud lift of her chin. The synthetic had replaced both her front teeth with red metal, and wore woven wire down her front. There was an acidic paleness to her skin that suggested repeated surgical washes but even so, Soma could see the faded impressions of an abundance of tattoos. Soma had never seen a synthetic like her, with her hoary medusa braids held up with a blue scrunchie and fierce laugh lines around her mouth.

She wore a com: the same antique model as Leanne's.

The old syn glanced at Soma from the corner of her eyes. "You called?"

"Survivors came through from Cita Avis again," one of the human bystanders said. "You need to shut the gate. We can't take any more evacuees. There can't be any humans left in o-six anyway."

"Remarkably few syns left as well." The old syn shook residue from her cigar. Her gray dreadlocks moved individually, as if alive. "I'll need three of you to witness that I took them into custody. The rest of you, disperse." Briskly, she pointed her wrist to a few of the bystanders. Coms exchanged musical tones and lights.

After that, the old syn turned to Soma. "From you, I need verbal consent." She held out her wrist and started a new voice archive. "I need you to give me permission to take this synthetic into custody."

Soma saw her eyes flicker to the gawking bystanders. "Yes," he croaked.

"Good," the syn said. "Do I have your permission to move him?"

"Why are you asking...?"

"Sanctuary protocols."

Sanctuary, this old syn said, but she wasn't like any model Soma knew: freer with disdain, somehow, and louder. Would the Man of Means, the way Leanne always described him, employ someone like this? And was Soma willing to bet it all—Gem's life and his own—on a gut feeling?

Soma closed his eyes, took a leap of faith. He whispered, "You can take him."