Black Eyes

Chapter 3

The small rectangular hole in the door opened with a metallic screech that echoed through the dilapidated corridor like a cawing crow. A few neon lights sizzled above their heads.

“Hi Rimar” Eva greeted.

Two small, quick eyes went between observing the girl and Nakir, who began to feel slightly uncomfortable.

“I’m working, Eva” the man replied in a flat voice, as if he hadn’t noticed Nakir’s completely black eyes and wasn’t even wondering what a demon was doing at the door of his laboratory.

“I brought you something interesting” the girl continued, giggling. 

Does she ever stop laughing? Nakir thought, then returned to focus on those brown eyes so dark they almost merged with the pupil. They were shrewd, inquiring eyes.

While the two were talking Nakir tried to imagine the face of… Rimar. That was what Eva had called him, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“That would?” the man replied, his tone low and inquiring.

“The one everyone is looking for” Eva pressed the syllables as if she didn’t want to pronounce Nakir’s name.

“Are you joking?” Rimar pressed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes, squinting them, then fixed his gaze on Nakir who felt more and more uncomfortable, more and more out of place.

Eva approached the small rectangle and whispered something in the man’s ear.

“M… K…7” was all Nakir could hear despite his unerring hearing.

Rimar’s eyes became astonished.

“Give me five minutes” Rimar said before closing the small rectangle on the steel door. Eva made a victory gesture with her fist and turned to Nakir.

“I convinced him, hehe” she laughed with that dimple between her incisors.

Nakir wondered what he was doing there, in front of a surgeon’s laboratory accompanied by a little girl with a biotech arm that, according to her, Rimar had made. Maybe that was why he was working under a brothel in complete secrecy. His abilities must have been unimaginable. The Kwer would absolutely have wanted him for itself. Eva turned to Nakir still with that smile on her face.

“Ready?” she asked, flamboyant.

“I honestly don’t even know what this is all about”

“It’s about you. To discover who you really are” Eva whispered, crossing her arms.

Who am I? Nakir asked himself, almost astonished. He hadn’t asked himself that question for years… he didn’t even think he’d find an answer anymore. He saw what he knew he was in the mirror everyday. An elf-demon, an outcast of society who found no place in Zraegan except in a dilapidated, abandoned apartment and who broke his back unloading crates just because they paid well and he had to live on something. But who was he really? What did he expect to find beneath that surface which had become wrinkled over time? By now it was scratching like sandpaper, he wouldn’t let anyone see what he really had inside. The remorse he still had for that day. Dylan’s voice begging him… this would be his and his alone.

The girl pulled up the pointed sleeve of her left wrist slightly and observed a digital watch embedded in her arm. A quarter of an hour had now passed. Nakir, in the grip of anxiety mixed with something more visceral… panic perhaps, but he couldn’t define it, took a cigarette out of the packet and lit it in that crumbling tunnel.

“What are you doing?” Eva almost shouted “Rimar uses alcohol and petrol sometimes, do you understand?

But Nakir was unperturbed. He would make sure to put out the cigarette butt on the tiled wall before entering, if they ever entered.