Dollhouse AU: "Sensory [re:]Generation" (Topher, Dominic, PG-13), 1/3
Title: Sensory [re:]Generation (1/3)
Characters: Topher, Dominic, Caroline, Paul, Kilo, mention of Ivy, DeWitt, eventual appearances by Echo, Whiskey, Sierra, Alpha, Boyd, Claire, Victor, Bennet, Madeline
Pairings: Eventual Topher/Dominic, DeWitt/Dominic, DeWitt/Topher, Topher/Dominic/DeWitt, mention of Victor/Sierra, Topher/Ivy and implications of Paul/Caroline and some vague others
Rating: PG-13 for violence, dark and mature themes, eventual sexuality, drug use, vampirism
Length: 12,600 words
Spoilers: none - complete alternate reality
Summary: After a lifetime of tuning out most of the world, Topher Brink learns the hard way that sometimes the rest of the world doesn't give you the choice to ignore it. His life will never be the same.
Notes:
This story is dedicated to irony_rocks, an amazing and talented fellow fan femme who once made the mistake of wondering on the internet where I could see why there aren't more alternate universe fanfics featuring the Dollhouse characters. I didn't say anything at the time, but I kept the germ at the back of my mind, where it sprouted unexpectedly at a rock concert one night. Well babe, I hope this one is good enough for you - I can't make any claims as to the quality, but rest assured, it's pretty far out.
So now I present for her, and the rest of you, part one of three of my Dollhouse dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi AU, with a side order of vampires, and a hard chaser of alternative rock.
(Title for this section taken from "Believe" by The Bravery, and "19/2000 (Soulchild Remix)" by Gorillaz)
part i: we do our time like pennies in a jar (it’s the music that we choose)
*
At eleven thirty-two AM the monitor beside Topher’s bed beeped its gentle insistent alarm, informing him he’d reached his required eight hours of sleep.
Topher thought of running the glitch loop he’d created, tricking the system into giving him another hour or two. But that would mean getting up, going over to his data-stack and inputting it, at which point he’d already be awake anyway, so he gave in and crawled out of bed.
His morning orange juice felt especially frosty against his tongue. Consulting the weather stats he found it’d gotten a little colder outside, so he adjusted the temperature on the room monitor up another two degrees.
After breakfast, he checked the feed.
There was a new downhill skiing virtu-sim up. Topher wasn’t really interested in skiing, or any sports sim as a rule, but it’d been awhile since he’d checked out something new of this type. He downloaded it.
His holo-drive hummed its familiar whir-skip-whir. Topher closed his eyes and when he opened them, he was rushing down a snow-covered mountain surrounded by pine trees, the wind whipping past.
The sim was pretty good, he thought, but not great. The wind wasn’t quite real enough; he’d felt it a lot more accurate in other sims, though admittedly not many - weather details were still one of those things a lot of programmers tended to overlook. He thought they were underappreciated, because something like the way the air felt against your skin could be key to getting a virtu-sim just right, to really fool you into believing you’d transcended reality like it was supposed to. Plus, some of the three-dimensional light reflection on the snow was off.
After the sim had finished, Topher opened up its file on his system and started tweaking. He spliced in a much better arctic wind coding from another program, fixed the flawed gradients in the snow’s reflective parameters, and made some other changes as well. Then he transcribed the entire thing over into the unique code layout he’d designed, so it would download and run a little faster and smoother. Within a few hours, the new version of the virtu-sim was ready to go.
Topher posted it to the feed, then checked to see if anything else had come up in the meantime. Nothing had, so he went back to some other things.
He did a few more tweaks on a few other second-rate virtu-sims, nothing major. He finished writing a particularly tricky coding expansion that was part of a half-hearted, on again, off again long-term project of his.
In the middle of the afternoon, he took a break with some of his favorite programs: he went on the virtu-sim canoeing trip again for a little while, until he got bored of the placid waters and the sound of birds and insects. He walked along a tropical island beach, the sun warm against the back of his neck, looking down and feeling the wet sand squeeze between his toes. He watched the sun set over some important monument whose name he’d forgotten; he just thought that the view was kind of nice.
He checked the feed again. His improvement on the downhill skiing sim was already being passed around, generating notes of approval. The only other thing up that was even remotely unique was some bird-watching sim - really? Bird-watching? With all the options out there, who would willingly choose to waste their time on something lame and boring like that?
Virtu-sims: the next best thing to being there. Better, even, because a lot of the cities and places captured in the virtu-sims weren’t around anymore. He doubted there were any rivers left in the world safe to go canoeing on, or any snow clean enough for skiing.
Topher took another short break for dinner. Munching on colorful wafers of sugar, he skimmed through the feed channels, never listening to anything for long before flipping past to something else.
The main news stream was promoting an upgrade to the Library, a new wing being added to the Garden. The shopping emporium had a cheerful new jingle; Topher hummed along for a few minutes before promptly forgetting what it was for.
The less-cheerful news stream had urgent-voiced pundits - the number of medical, law enforcement and public service drones being commissioned were all on the rise; before long, the workforce would be just machines, the human element replaced completely.
But less and less people had interest in doing jobs themselves, in actually working. The city would take care of them, from when they were born until they died: the basic comforts of their apartments, the feed and the associated sims, the public entertainment installations. So why want anything more? Why save up to get a traveling license, when you could see the same thing in a sim or at the cinema gallery? Who would want to buy anything, when you could go to the shopping emporium and try on any holo-skin for free?
The sound quality on the pundits’ stream wasn’t very good; alarmist journalists were never very well-funded. People didn’t want to listen to depressing or serious news. Topher changed the channel again and landed on the live broadcast out of the Orphanarium - for a moment the heavy, hypnotizing thrum of the bass held him as it thrilled up his spine. But he couldn’t listen to the sound of the Voice for very long before it brought a lump to his throat, so he turned it off.
Someone was offering up a virtu-sim of an art gallery walk-through on the feed. Classic Impressionist paintings: boring. Topher didn’t even bother. He got up and poured himself some juice.
He looked out his window. The lights were coming up at the Arena, at the Garden. If he squinted, he could make out the walkways of the big shopping complex, and even though he couldn’t see them from this direction, he knew the lights were turning on at the Library and at the cinemas too.
Topher stayed on the feed for a few hours more, well into the night, before finally conceding it was enough for one day. He had the room monitor turn the lights off and the sound dampers on before lying down on his bed, curling up in the puffy, marshmallow-softness of his comforter, wrapping it tightly around himself as he fell asleep.
*
Topher spent the better part of the next day going on different walking tour sims. He was in the mood for something relaxing, something quiet, with very little sound programmed into its background sensory track. He smelled the roses at the gardens of Historic Versailles, walked through the ruins of some place called Parthenon.
There was a new one up called “A Day at Oahu”, but it was an officially-released sim, so it wasn’t very good. Topher didn’t really care to put much effort into it, but he opened up the file and started copying in better code from similar programs, trying to make it at least more tolerable.
He was preoccupied enough with the task that he missed lunch, and after a few hours the room monitor started beeping concernedly, warning that his blood sugar and nutrient levels were getting low.
Topher wasn’t really hungry, but he didn’t feel like hacking the reading, so he accepted some sweetened bread and a bowl of enhanced protein chips, which he paired with a glass of berry juice.
He went back to his tweaking as he ate, one hand on his data-stack while the other brought food to his mouth.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he heard a strange sound.
Topher stopped, frowning. The sound wasn’t coming from his system. It wasn’t being emitted by the room monitor, either. He had the window dampers on so he knew it couldn’t be coming from outside.
The sound came again, a steady rhythmic rapping like knuckles on something solid, and Topher’s whole body gave a spasmodic jerk. The back of his hand collided with his bowl knocking it off the desk, and chips spilled across the floor.
There was somebody knocking on his door - there was somebody outside his door.
Slowly, his nerves thrumming with the static electricity of surprise and fear, Topher rose to his feet. He stared at the door to his apartment.
The knocking came again. Topher swallowed around the lump in his throat.
“H-hello?” he called out anxiously. His voice came out tiny, shaking where it echoed in the empty, familiar space.
There was no answer; whoever it was probably couldn’t hear him through the wall. Topher moved to the main control panel for the room monitor. He gazed at it for a moment, filled with uncertainty. Finally in a swift, ungraceful move like pulling off a bandage, he raised his arm and punched the command to open the door.
It slid back with a faint hiss, unsealing, and Topher sucked in a huge breath, unable to shake the instinctive irrational thought that all the air was escaping.
Out in the hall were two people, a man and a woman, and he jumped, even though he’d known it had to be a person: drones couldn’t knock. The woman gazed directly at Topher with a strong, cool gaze, like she was sizing him up.
Her hair was dark and wavy, her face pretty but filled with a hard confidence. Like the face of something predatory.
Topher took a step back, and stayed where he was.
“Hey,” the woman greeted. Her voice was terse, clipped and impatient. “I’m Caroline.” She gave an almost-nod at the man to her left, who was tall with a broad unreadable face. “This is Paul.”
They didn’t ask to be invited in. They stayed on the other side of the security bubble, out in the hall.
Topher didn’t know what else to do, so he waved. The gesture was awkward from lack of practice.
“…Hi.”
Caroline continued giving him that serious, fixed look. “Are you Christopher Brink?”
“Um.” He swallowed. His mouth felt dry. “Yep. That’s me.” Half-heartedly, he offered, “Most people call me - um; I usually go by ‘Topher’.”
Caroline and Paul exchanged a look. They didn’t say anything, but Paul nodded, and then Caroline looked back at him.
“Are you the one that created that volcano-watching sim? The one that’s been passed around the feed these past few months?”
Topher gulped. People weren’t actually supposed to edit and distribute the virtu-sims themselves; just about everyone with the capabilities did anyway, but still. It was believed that tweaked programs could be upsetting or too stimulating for some users, going outside the carefully-outlined “stressor zones” that the legally-produced sims were always rigorous in adhering to. Topher hid his traces well, but there still was that knowledge at the back of his mind that he could get into big trouble if he was ever caught.
He gazed back at them with wide eyes. “The…what sim?” he asked, pitching his voice like he didn’t know what they were talking about.
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “You know the one.”
Topher thought about how much time he’d spent perfecting the feeling of that heat, getting the look of the lava flow just right. “I-I may know of someone…who may have - allegedly, mind you! Who just may have had…something to do with-”
“Knock it off,” Paul interrupted. “It’s a simple question, so answer it. Did you make the sim or not?”
Topher stared at both of them from the center of his living room, anxious and uneasy.
They smelled feral, like free-flowing air and unfiltered sun and a dozen other things Topher couldn’t even name. Not at all like the sterile safeness of his home. It made his head spin sickly.
“Yeah,” he finally confessed. “That was me, alright?” He played with his hands. “Um, look. If…if there’s a fine, or something-”
“We’re not with Central,” Caroline informed him, bluntly. “We’re not here to arrest you.”
“You’re…you’re not?”
“No. We’re here to recruit you.” She tilted her chin slightly. “We’re with the Revolution.”
“The…the what?” Topher backed up further, panicked, feeling an urge to duck behind his furniture.
No wonder they smelled so wild; it was said the Revolution somehow lived off the grid entirely, their base of operations located outside of cities, out there in the waste. Topher thought of all the poisonous Atmo that must cling to their clothing, and pulled his sleeve to cover his nose and mouth.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Caroline said. “The Revolution could use a programmer like you on our side, someone with your skills at manipulating code, at hacking so many different parts of the feed undetected. Will you come with us?”
“Come with…” Topher gave a hysterical near-laugh. “Are you crazy? Why would I want-?” His voice lowered slightly; he swallowed. “I don’t…I don’t go outside.”
He’d never been to the Arena. He hadn’t visited the Garden since he was a kid. Anything could be purchased through the feed, delivered to him. He’d even found a way out of his annuals: all he had to do was hack into his file and tag himself as an invalid, with a condition that left him bedridden, and they sent a medical drone right to his apartment.
“This is important,” Paul said. “Don’t you see? The way the world is going-”
“Don’t waste your time,” Caroline interrupted him. “It’s obvious he’s not going to be swayed by words. He’s a coward.”
Topher reacted to the word with a flinch of unhappiness, but didn’t say anything, watching his own fingertips. After all, it was true.
Caroline nodded. “To convince him, we’re going to have to show him.”
Paul frowned, brow creasing, but waited for her to continue. Caroline faced Topher again.
“They’re building a wall around this city, right now. A bubble, designed to keep everyone in. It’s out on the edges, so no one will notice.”
“So?” Topher asked.
“So?” Caroline repeated. “Don’t you get it? They’re doing it to keep everyone in! It’s hard enough to leave the city right now as it is: soon, people won’t even have the choice. You’re all going to be stuck here, under their thumbs, so they can control you. It’s not just here, either. The same thing is slowly happening in every city around the world.”
Topher thought that maybe he didn’t care if he couldn’t leave the city or not, when he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken two steps outside his front door. Maybe everyone else was happy enough with what they had here, and they didn’t care either.
He didn’t say any of this out loud, though.
“I can prove it to you,” Caroline told him, mistaking his silence for disbelief. “Come with us, and we can show you. All it will take is a couple of hours.” She sneered slightly. “It’s not like you’re going to miss anything.”
Topher still didn’t care, and he really didn’t want to go, but he thought if he just went with them and let them show him their wall and he still said “no” they’d finally leave him alone. It’d just be easier this way.
He nodded, trying to ignore the lump of fright in his breast. “Okay.”
*
Once they were past the main buildings at the center of the city the gliding walkways stopped and turned back into normal concrete ones, hard and smooth under their feet.
Topher followed just a step or two behind Caroline and Paul as they led the way. His plastic breathing mask covered his face, distorting his vision slightly with how it made everything wavy and lightly tinged with green. The smell of the clean, recycled air reassured him as it rushed coolly across his skin.
Neither Paul nor Caroline had bothered with a mask. Just the sight of their exposed faces, the thought of them breathing in all that poisonous night air, made Topher dizzy with horror.
He knew that Atmo wasn’t so deadly it could kill you in a single go - that it had to build up over time, even years, before your body started showing any effects - but he sure wasn’t taking any chances.
The glow of the walkway and city lights was bright, but not bright enough; if Topher looked up, he could see the blackness of the night sky, real darkness that no amount of light could hope to fight off. He quickly ducked his head, looking down, as he struggled to breathe normally.
It was a constant battle to keep from panicking, and he had to make himself take slow regular breaths, instead of gulping greedily at the air in his mask the way he wanted to. It felt so strange, so wrong to be so exposed and open, to not have four strong walls wrapped comfortingly around him. He took precarious, hesitant steps, sometimes his arms rising out to both sides as if he were a toddler on a balancing beam. He kept being afraid he was going to slip and fall downward, even though that didn’t make any sense - there was no “down” to fall to, he was on solid flat ground.
They kept walking. Caroline and Paul didn’t say anything, and Topher didn’t speak to them either. He just wanted this trip to be over so he could go back home where it was safe.
As more and more time passed and they kept going, though, it was too much. Topher had to say something. He cleared his throat.
“So, where is it?”
Up ahead Caroline came to a halt, and Paul followed her lead. Slowly they both turned and looked back at Topher, faces unreadable, silent.
“Where’s this wall you’re taking me to?” Topher pressed. “We’re almost to the edge of the city, and I still don’t see anything. Where is it? How much further do we have to go?”
Paul and Caroline exchanged a glance. Caroline didn’t say anything, but she gave a look like a scowl and a slight roll of her shoulders. Paul turned back to Topher with a short puff of air, a tired almost-sigh.
“There isn’t any wall.”
“What?” Topher’s pulse skipped a beat then quickly rose, fluttering in his throat. He took a shaky step back. “What do you mean, there isn’t any…?”
“She made the whole thing up,” Paul said, indicating Caroline. “She lied.”
Caroline folded her arms, unrepentant. “I had to. Just to get you far enough out here that we could drag you the rest of the way.”
Topher took another step. “You tricked me,” he realized, too scared to be mad. “You…you’re kidnapping me!”
Paul raised a hand, trying to reassure him. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
“We need you,” Caroline insisted. “The things you could do for the Revolution; it’s too important to give you the choice to say ‘no’.”
“You’ll understand eventually, once you come with us and see-”
Topher turned around and bolted. Or tried to. It’d been years since he’d run, and Caroline was on him, grabbing his arm and yanking him back, before he’d gotten even a couple of feet.
“You’re coming with us, Topher,” she ordered. “Whether you want to or not.” She met his eyes intensely, letting him see how serious she was. “It’ll be easier for you if you come willingly, but if we have to force you, we will.”
“Please.” Topher gulped, his whole body trembling. “Please just let me go, I promise I won’t tell anybody you were even here, I swear-”
Caroline made an impatient sound, and ripped the breathing mask off of his face.
Topher gave a startled, terrified cry; without meaning to he drew a deep breath. His hand clutched his throat. He reached for his mask but Caroline stepped back.
“Oh god, oh god…” He kept breathing again and again, faster, in great frantic gasps.
He could feel the poisoned Atmo filling his lungs, killing him slowly. His eyes watered. His heart was pounding out of control.
“Give it back to me! Please, give it back!”
“Not until you agree to come back with us,” Caroline demanded.
Topher’s head spun; his vision swam in and out of blackness. He felt his legs give and the next thing he knew he was on the ground, cold and hard against his cheek.
“Cut it out,” Caroline snapped, irritated. “Atmo doesn’t kill you in five seconds! Stop being such a baby, and get up.”
Topher didn’t move. He couldn’t. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, only that he couldn’t breathe and his pulse was throbbing and he’d never felt more afraid in his life.
“We’ve got a long way to go tonight, and I’m not having you wasting time by-”
“Caroline.” Paul touched her arm. “Wait a second.” He looked down at Topher, eyeing him carefully. He frowned.
“I think he’s having a panic attack.”
“He’s faking it!”
Paul shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I think that he-”
He cut off with a start as there was a loud mechanical roar. Paul and Caroline stared with noticeable alarm up at the sky, at something overhead and behind Topher.
Topher couldn’t see what it was, but the sound grew louder, fast - and the next thing he knew, Caroline and Paul had ducked, throwing themselves to the ground just in time as a motorcycle flew past, diving through the air right where their heads had been.
The bike sped by, swerving around to face their direction even as the rider brought it in for a landing. The motorcycle touched down with a heavy clank of shifting gears and the screech of hydraulics as the engine was cut off.
The figure sitting astride the motorcycle was a man, wearing a leather duster and black night-vision eyelet goggles. In the wake of silence left by the engine’s keen, he swung a leg over the side of his vehicle and dismounted, standing. Even beneath the layers of his travel clothes it was clear he was broad-shouldered, well-muscled.
Paul and Caroline were getting back up.
“You!” Paul exclaimed, glaring at the newcomer with familiarity.
Topher stared blankly at the impending showdown, because there really was nothing else he could do.
The man reached up, pulling off his goggles. “Nice to see you too, Ballard,” he returned. He looked at Caroline, scowl deepening. “And Farrell. Of course.”
“Drop dead, Dominic,” she spat. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“What’s the matter? Not getting enough willing saps to join your little movement - you have to go ‘recruiting’ now through a door to door pressgang?”
“At least we’re doing something,” Caroline retorted. “Unlike you. But then, what would you expect from a member of your kind?”
The man’s face darkened with anger. “Don’t talk about things you have no chance of understanding.”
Caroline sneered at him. “We’re not children, ducking to hide under our beds just because of some scary story about monsters! I’m not afraid of you.”
“Yeah?” Dominic swept his coat aside, unholstering a weapon. “Well, that makes two of us.”
Everything happened fast.
Dominic fired; Paul and Caroline dodged in opposite directions, moving swiftly out of the way. Dominic made to shoot at Paul again, who was closer, but the other man rushed at him and they engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Topher closed his eyes, drawing his breath in a moan. Getting elbows underneath him he started to push himself up.
Dominic knocked Paul to the ground, just in time to be tackled by Caroline. She managed to get his weapon away from him but then he threw her down.
He looked at Topher. “Get to the bike,” he ordered.
Still on his hands and knees, Topher gaped at him.
“Get to the bike,” Dominic repeated, yelling at him. “Now!”
Topher scrambled up and did as he was told. As he ran, behind him he heard the sound of the weapon being fired; he flinched, flailing, and almost tripped, but he wasn’t shot and he managed to get to the motorcycle safely.
He leaned against it, bent double as he struggled to regain his breath. He could barely hear the sound of footsteps over his racing heartbeat as his rescuer came toward him.
Topher tried to get a glance of him out of the corner of his eye. He had a stern face and didn’t look very friendly. But he evidently wasn’t with the Revolution, so Topher would take him.
“I don’t…feel…so good,” Topher gasped, whimpering. Dominic made an annoyed sound, but he rummaged through his pack.
“Hold still.” He drew out a round injection tube.
“Wait-!” Topher protested, alarmed, but there was already the punch where it connected with his back between his shoulder blades. There was the hiss of the injection, and then Topher could breathe again.
“Steroids,” Dominic explained shortly. “Just enough to give your heart and lungs that extra boost.” He nodded at the bike. “Now get on.”
“But I-”
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Dominic snapped. “Do you want to get away from them, or not?” He glanced back over his shoulder, wary, and Topher pictured Paul and Caroline running toward them.
He climbed awkwardly onto the motorcycle, uncertain how to position himself on the smooth curve of its seat. With another short, aggravated grunt Dominic grabbed him by the hips and physically manhandled him into place. He got on behind Topher, and reached around him to grasp the handles on both sides.
The bike came to life, vibration thrumming through Topher’s body. He thought he heard someone yell behind them, but he couldn’t make it out over the sound of the engine - and then, they were off.
Topher didn’t know how fast they were going: not nearly as fast as he had in some of the virtu-sims, certainly, but faster than he ever had in his real life. The corners of his eyelids stung a little from the wind. The resistance pushed him back, the solid wall of the other man’s chest at his back the only thing keeping him in place.
Dominic wasn’t taking them too far above the ground, only about three feet or so. They were heading in direction opposite to where Caroline and Paul had been going, back toward the inner city.
After a few minutes Topher felt calm enough he could focus on something other than hanging on for dear life. He shifted, turning his head to look at Dominic again.
He stopped dead, though, the instant he caught a glimpse of his eyes.
They were blue, but it was nearly impossible to tell. The ring of color that was Dominic’s iris was incredibly dark: practically indistinguishable from his pupil.
Topher nearly choked on the sudden and terrifying realization.
No wonder the press of Dominic’s body felt unusually cool against his. No wonder he smelled strange, even weirder than Paul and Caroline had. No wonder he had a mouth that looked like he never smiled - if he did, he would probably show his fangs.
Topher made a nonsensical frantic sound, and tried to move away. His uncoordinated motions caused the bike to shake.
“Hey,” Dominic began, startled. Topher shoved at him.
“No, no, get away from me, let me go!”
“Calm down, you idiot! What’s your problem? We’re going to crash if you keep-”
Topher squawked, shutting his eyes. “Get away from me, you…you…leech!”
He thought he felt Dominic tense at the word.
But Topher was still flailing around, and he managed to hit Dominic hard enough or in just the right way that his arms were knocked from the handlebars. The circuits built into the grips of Dominic’s riding gloves disconnected from them, the engine promptly cut out and died.
The machine dropped like a stone.
Topher was thrown off; he hit the ground with a thud and rolled. Behind him he winced instinctively at the sound as the motorcycle crashed.
Unsteadily he picked himself up yet again. His arm was sore from landing on it funny but he seemed fortunately, mostly unhurt. Rubbing his elbow he glanced back.
The motorcycle was a wreck. But what made Topher’s heart jump unexpectedly to his throat was the sight of the prone body beside it.
Dominic lay half-curled on his side, eyes closed and seemingly unconscious. Blood was pooling on a wound on the side of his temple. He must’ve been unable to dismount in time when the bike came down and hit his head on the walkway.
Topher stayed back, eyeing him with uneasy wariness.
Maybe this was just a trick they did. Lying there pretending to be asleep, waiting for him to get close enough and then leaping up to rip out his throat.
He waited about half a minute longer. Dominic still didn’t move.
He really didn’t look so good.
Topher finally took one step closer, then another.
When he reached him he touched Dominic lightly with the tip of his shoe, shying back immediately in case he reared up. But nothing happened.
Topher knelt down and, hands shaking, rolled Dominic onto his back.
The movement caused Dominic’s coat to fall open, and Topher spotted another spreading patch on his torso, an ugly-looking gash in his side. Belatedly, he remembered hearing the sound of a shot fired from somewhere behind him as he ran.
The blood looked especially red and dark against the other man’s skin.
Trembling, Topher reached into his pocket and pulled out his emergency caller. He hit the button for “medical” with his thumb.
“Hello? Uh, I’d like to report an accident.”
He glanced down at the unconscious man with a sigh.
“There’s someone down here who needs assistance,” Topher continued. “Please, send some help to my location right away.”
*
The medical drone bound up Dominic’s injury, checked him for signs of a concussion, and informed Topher “his friend” would be fine, he just needed to rest for a little while.
It carried Dominic on a levitating stretcher back to the apartment, and then promptly left with its dismissal.
It was late, but Topher didn’t much feel like sleeping. He got himself some juice and held it awkwardly in his hands, standing at the far side of the living room.
He eyed the prone figure stretched across his spare sleeping cot.
The drone had removed his outer layers to tend to him, revealing a fitted t-shirt just as dark as his other clothes. He had a beard of stubble, and hair that would probably be a lighter blond if it was more thoroughly washed. His skin was pale, a single dark line of ink standing out where it branded his inner right arm.
Topher clutched his cup a little tighter.
With anxious curiosity, he watched the rise and fall of Dominic’s chest. He couldn’t be completely sure, but it looked like his breathing was a lot slower than Topher’s was.
He knew his heart beat slower - the main screen of the room monitor currently displayed the medical stats for them both. Dominic’s pulse was barely a third of his, and his body temperature was about fifteen degrees cooler.
Of course, the system had quickly figured out the other individual it was sensing was not a normal one, and had adjusted its readings accordingly.
Underneath each heading, the screen tracked a series of bars measuring relevant chemical levels in the body. Where Topher’s were things like potassium and sodium, the monitor cheerfully displayed at least twenty more bars for Dominic, most of which had unpronounceable-looking names. Topher considered going on the feed and looking up some of them, but didn’t. He was pretty sure he knew what it’d tell him already.
The process ‘suckers underwent to make them what they were enhanced their immune systems and made them much hardier than normal people. The deadly gases in the atmosphere everyone else was wary of had no effect on them. They were supposedly stronger too, with heightened senses and reflexes.
Although all this benefit didn’t come without major side effects: they were more sensitive to the sun’s radiation, burning even faster if exposed to it. And something about all those chemicals completely trashed their digestive systems - they couldn’t get nutrients from food. They lived entirely on fluids. And blood.
…Fresh, human…blood.
Topher shivered. Out of lack of anything better to do he drank his juice, finishing it in a single gulp.
The hours dragged. Topher wanted to go on the feed; lose himself in a few virtu-sims to forget about his night. But he thought that was a bad idea, because Dominic might wake up. The thought of being unaware of his surroundings with a ‘sucker close by made Topher feel woozy. In the end, he sat in a chair at the other end of the room, waiting.
Eventually the other man made a faint noise, coming to. Topher got to his feet. He was close to the refrigerator anyway, so he poured a glass of lemon-water.
Hopefully Dominic would only be thirsty-thirsty, and not…thirsty.
Topher moved toward him. Dominic’s eyelids fluttered, and Topher saw those darkened irises again, giving him a good reminder what he was dealing with. He set the glass on the nearby table and quickly stepped back.
With a distracted frown Dominic pushed himself to a sitting position. As soon as his eyes were open he looked around, confused but alert.
“My apartment,” Topher offered. His voice squeaked. “I, uh, brought you back here after…” He trailed off, indicating his own temple. “Sorry about the bump on the head.”
Dominic’s gaze narrowed as he recalled what’d happened. But he didn’t call Topher out for causing the accident.
“What time is it?”
“Almost morning.” He’d left the light dampers on the windows casting his apartment in an extended twilight, but the dawn glowed around the frame.
“Terrific.” Dominic scowled. He sat up further. “Looks like I’m stuck here for awhile.”
Topher wanted to ask what he was doing in the city in the first place; how he knew the Revolution and why he was interfering with them.
But he didn’t say anything. He laced his fingers together and twiddled his thumbs, watching them go back and forth.
Dominic spotted the glass and reached for it. He made a face as he brought it near, sniffing.
“Don’t you have any plain water?”
“I’ve got about a dozen different kinds of juice,” Topher began. “Apple, kiwi, mango, apricot-”
“So that’s a ‘no’, then,” Dominic cut him off.
He rolled his eyes, pulling a face as he took a drink. Afterward he looked at Topher again.
“So, what’s your deal? Why’s the Revolution after you?” He eyed him fixedly. “What’d you do to end up on their radar?”
“I don’t know!” Topher protested. He waved an arm. “I don’t have anything to do with…with people like them. They came to me.” He pressed both hands against his chest. “All I know is they showed up at my door, asking me about some sim I’d tweaked. And the next thing I know, I’m being spirited off in the dead of night into the wild.”
“Wait, back up. Sim?” Dominic’s brow furrowed. “You’re a hacker?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. When the mood strikes.”
Topher didn’t really think of what he did as “hacking”. It was just little things he did to make his life easier, to keep from being bored.
“It’s not like I’m rerouting the power grid or anything,” he finished.
“Could you, though? If you wanted to?”
“Well…yeah.” He shrugged. “Probably.”
Dominic grunted. “Well, there you go.” Shifting, he set his boots on the floor. “Sounds like the Revolution wants to put you to work, whether you’re interested in them or not.”
He turned stiffly, looking at the bandage wrapped around his midsection.
“You can’t see them when I talk, by the way.”
“What?”
“My fangs,” Dominic said, bluntly. “You keep staring at my mouth.”
“Oh,” Topher stuttered. He took a half-step forward. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude or anything. I just…I mean, I’ve never actually met a leech before.”
Dominic’s face grew stormier. Topher shied back again.
“Oh, I guess I shouldn’t…use that term around you. That’s, um, kinda the derogatory word,” he meekly stated the obvious. “Whoops. Sorry.”
He cleared his throat. “‘Sucker. I meant ‘sucker.”
If he’d expected Dominic’s expression to lighten, he was disappointed. That frown remained in place as he tugged up his shirt.
“Don’t really like that word either, to be honest,” he muttered, examining the bandage. He started pulling it off.
Topher blinked at him, lost. “But then what are people supposed to call you?”
“I’ve never understood why it seems no one ever wants to just say ‘vampire’. It’s a perfectly viable word; it’s basically what we are. So why not call it like it is?” Dominic said. There was a layer of dried blood caked on his side.
Topher had never heard anything like this. He didn’t really know what to make of it.
“Could you get me a washcloth, a wet rag, something?”
Wordlessly, Topher did as bid. Dominic took the cloth and wiped the crust away, and Topher stared agog as a layer of healthy skin was exposed.
“I thought you were shot,” he said stupidly.
“Well, I was. Probably just a graze.”
He’d healed, Topher realized. Just like that.
Dominic looked at Topher like he’d only just remembered he was there. “Look, thanks for not just leaving me out there,” he offered gruffly. “Really. Not a lot of people would’ve.”
“No, sure; I mean, it’s the least I could do after you…I’m Topher,” he trailed off, kind of breathless.
The ‘sucker’s mouth moved in a brief smirk. “Dominic.”
“I know. I, uh, overheard when the others…” He made a gesture supposed to somehow indicate Paul and Caroline. “How did you know those guys, anyway?”
Dominic became grim again. “Long story,” he said, brusquely.
He leaned forward, elbows rested on his knees, fingers starting to lace. Topher glimpsed the mark on his arm again.
“Is that a blacklight tattoo?” His head tilted for a better look.
The ink seemed to shift and swim between black and very dark blue, the writing encoded in that special way making it virtually impossible to read if you didn’t already know what you were looking at. Topher counted six characters. “What does it say?”
Dominic glanced at it, face unreadable.
“It’s a name,” he said at length. His voice was toneless. “My donor.”
Topher frowned. “Your donor?” From what he’d always understood the relationship between ‘sucker and donor - if they had one, not every ‘sucker did - was such where Dominic might as well have said “spouse” or “soulmate”. “But you came here alone.”
“Yeah. I did.” Dominic glared at him.
“…Oh.”
At some point, Dominic had had a donor. Not so much anymore. There were a couple ways that could’ve happened, but Topher didn’t have to think about it to reach the general conclusion.
He stared at his toes, swallowing.
There was silence for long enough that eventually he dared to look at Dominic again.
The other man pulled his legs up on the bed again and lay down. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to try and get some sleep,” he said coldly. He turned so he didn’t face Topher.
“Um. Okay.”
He waited for Dominic to say something else. He didn’t.
Topher went on the feed. He loaded an undersea snorkeling virtu-sim, and let it all go as he was lost in deep blue oceans and tiny bright fish swimming in vast dark space.
*
Topher spent the better part of the morning viewing and tweaking sims, even some he usually wouldn’t have given a second glance to. He needed the distraction.
He wasn’t used to being threatened, or hunted after. He wasn’t used to having to deal with things like ‘suckers or Revolutionaries.
He wasn’t used to having someone else in his apartment.
He wasn’t used to people.
Topher tried not to freak out entirely when he heard Dominic’s voice speak up after some length of time - realizing the other man had apparently gotten up again, and was standing just behind him.
“This is what you do all day?” Dominic asked. His tone was some combination of disbelieving and derisive.
Topher didn’t really know how to respond to that. To him, it kind of seemed like asking if he breathed.
“Pretty much, yeah.” He didn’t take his eyes off his system, though part of him really wanted to. He was acutely aware of the nearness of Dominic, of the very solid weight of his body that seemed to displace air just by existing in Topher’s space; of the way he smelled faintly like things Topher had experienced only through his holo-drive, like leather and dirt and rainstorms. “So what?”
Dominic just grunted, and then moved away again, like Topher wasn’t worth his focus.
Trying not to feel too hurt or insulted Topher went back to the feed, and pretended that it successfully held his interest.
At lunchtime he turned the sound channels on at random, letting it cycle through the different streams. He helped himself to some crackers, heavy on the flavoring, and a bowl of noodles.
Dominic watched with what could only be called disgust.
“Don’t you eat anything that isn’t junk?”
Topher slurped up a noodle. “What?” he said defensively, because there was only so much he could take. “I am an equal opportunity aficionado of all things sweet and salty. Besides, what does it matter?” He picked up a handful of chips and munched, not caring he was talking through a mouthful of crumbs.
He gestured at the room monitor. “The system always makes sure you get the right balance of nutrients and essentials, no matter what you choose to intake it as. So why not go ahead and get it through-” he loaded the word with as much sarcasm as he could manage “-junk?”
Dominic didn’t say anything. But his sneer was pretty prominent.
Topher decided that if Dominic could act like he was so indifferent of him, well then two could play at that game. He turned up his nose and went back to his lunch.
At the back of his mind, Topher was faintly aware he was being rude; that he shouldn’t eat in front of somebody without asking if they’d like anything.
But he didn’t know what might happen if he asked if Dominic was hungry and the answer was “yes”. It gave him an unsettled feeling.
So he didn’t say anything at all.
They stayed like that, within the same space of five feet, not speaking to one another, for awhile. The entire time, he was aware that Dominic was eyeing him, the same way he kept stealing glances at Dominic.
The ‘sucker stood with head slightly lowered, arms folded tightly across his chest. That semi-permanent frown was etched on his face again. The set of his eyes and lines of his forehead seemed to indicate he was thinking about something.
He waited until Topher had finished eating, was getting up to put his dishes away, before he finally spoke.
“Why do you have an extra bed?” He was calm, distantly curious.
Topher hunched slightly. His fingertips curled tighter around his bowl.
His voice came out hoarse, sort of mumbled when he replied. “I, um…I used to have a girlfriend.”
Used to. He hoped that was explanation enough.
He thought about Ivy. How she couldn’t sleep with the sound dampers off whenever it rained. How her lip gloss tasted like fruit punch. The way her hair always smelled faintly of Atmo even though she wore a breathing mask outside, but it didn’t bother him.
Dominic gazed at him. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding more subdued and mournful than Topher would’ve expected. Genuine.
It occurred to Topher that he was giving far more sympathy to him, than he had when he heard about Dominic’s donor.
Topher swallowed back the strange, unexpected prickle of irritation, and turned his head away. “It’s okay. I mean, it was…awhile ago.”
Yet he still had the bed. Not that it really meant anything. The room would have felt more empty, different, without it there. The open space would have been prominent; it would’ve been even worse.
Topher wasn’t exactly fond of change.
He put his dishes down and then came back. “Where did you come from, anyway?” he said, because if Dominic got to ask questions about him, he figured turnabout was only fair.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed, and he scoffed; it sounded too bitter and impatient to be a real laugh.
He began condescendingly, “Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much-”
“I didn’t mean like that,” Topher snapped. “Way to yank the valve on the bile there, Crankypants. I was just wondering where you were from.”
“Nowhere.” Dominic gave him one of those looks of his. “Isn’t that kind of the point?”
Topher nodded quietly, understanding: ‘suckers didn’t have to live in cities - so they couldn’t.
It was the trade-off. The price for being better than most people was that they weren’t allowed around them.
“But you had to live somewhere, right? I mean, before you zoomed in to save the day, where were you last-”
“Nowhere. The wasteland.” Dominic’s words came out clipped, blunt. “I don’t exactly stay in one place much, okay? I wander. It works for me.”
Topher couldn’t stop noticing how very dark those eyes of his were, which made his anger and impatience seem even angrier. How his every movement had this extra coil to it, like there was energy and strength he was only keeping a rein on because it suited him to.
Topher held his arms up, palms out, cowering slightly in surrender. “Okay, I get it,” he conceded, voice wavering. “Sorry.”
There was a beat of silence. And then Dominic looked at him, belatedly.
“‘Crankypants’?” He sounded more incredulous than anything else.
Topher blinked at him. “Well, you are pretty cranky,” he said defensively.
He turned away, voice lowering to a sulking, begrudging mutter. “Those are pretty nice pants you’ve got, though. You fit them very well.”
“Thank…you?”
Dominic was looking at him like he suspected Topher might have been crazy. Or maybe just like he didn’t know what to think. For some reason, Topher felt inclined to mark that as a victory.
He couldn’t remember when it’d turned into a contest.
Behind him the feed stream changed again: the room was filled with the powerful, gripping sound of the Voice as she sang for the packed crowd at the Orphanarium, as well as her listeners around the world. Even through the filter of a recording, and an older one at that, for a moment Topher’s soul flew.
Dominic’s face remained a careful, neutral blank that he abandoned when Topher changed the channel, moving just a little too quickly to do so.
His eyebrows rose, because everyone knew that reaction wasn’t exactly normal. “Not a music-lover?”
Topher’s eyes dropped to the floor. He didn’t answer at first, going back to his chair and sitting down. Hands in his lap, he twisted them.
“That girlfriend I mentioned having?” he began quietly. “She got…really into…the Voice. Obsessed, I guess I should say. You know, like a lot of people do.”
He remembered how Ivy used to put glossy pictures of her everywhere: on the refridergator. By the window. Over her bed. Everywhere. And she started listening to the live streams religiously, playing the old ones over and over, until she’d remembered every note, memorized every word.
And Topher got it, though he wasn’t really there, the way she was. Lots of people were in love with the Voice. The feed was filled with streams dedicated solely to her, words of fevered praise and awe, people trading her recordings and watching her old performances. Of course Topher liked her music; who didn’t? Who couldn’t? He just didn’t get into it all the way.
Not the way Ivy had.
“And eventually, she did what a lot of them end up doing,” Topher finished. “She took off to the Orphanarium. To be with them. To be with her.” He sighed.
“So I don’t really like listening to the Voice all that much anymore. She sounds great, it’s just…it reminds me. Of her.”
Dominic slowly nodded.
“Makes sense,” he conceded, understanding.
Topher gave a nod of his own for no reason other than following the other’s lead, unfeeling and automatic. He snapped out of it though when Dominic began looking around, head swiveling.
Something in Topher tensed instinctively; he had this feeling like something was about to happen. He just couldn’t tell what.
Dominic gave Topher the onceover, responding to his soft light-colored clothing with yet another disapproving frown.
“I hope you have something more durable than that to wear,” he remarked.
“Huh?” Topher plucked at the fabric of his zip-up sweater, baffled. He had no idea where this conversation had come from all of a sudden. Like, Dominic hadn’t insulted enough about him already, now he needed to take shots at his clothing, too?
“No, this is pretty much it. I have a fairly straightforward wardrobe. Why, what’s wrong with it? Just because I like to be comfortable-”
“Once you head outdoors, ‘comfortable’ is the last thing you’re going to be if all you really own are lightweight sweats,” Dominic stressed. “I know you’re clearly a bit of a recluse, but come on. You don’t own a single jacket? Things that can be layered? Anything?”
“I don’t leave my apartment.”
The ‘sucker made a sardonic noise, apparently thinking this went without saying: “No, really.”
“No, you don’t get it,” Topher pressed. “I don’t.” He raised both hands, palms out. His mouth felt dry, and his voice broke slightly even as he emphasized with quiet conviction: “The other day, with Caroline and Paul, was the first time I’ve been outside since…ever.”
Dominic’s eyes widened as what Topher was saying hit home.
“Oh.”
Ivy and he used to talk about it, at times. She’d insist she was going to coax him out someday, going over the things they would do when she did. They’d feed the animals at the Garden, and read each other their favorite story files at the Library, and all sorts of other things; not even particularly exciting things, just things they’d enjoy. Topher would join in, and they’d elaborate on their plans together, laughing and smiling.
Sometimes, it would seem like it was really going to happen someday. And it didn’t even sound all that scary, or so bad.
Topher rubbed his arm, looking down at his feet on the cushioned floor.
“Topher.” He raised his head at Dominic’s voice, and found the other man staring at him adamantly. “You do get that you can’t stay here now, right?”
“What?” Topher felt a tingle of uneasiness. “N-no…what are you talking about?”
“They know where you are! The Revolution. You don’t honestly think they’re just going to give up, do you?” Dominic moved forward and Topher’s head tilted back, overwhelmed; it was the closest he’d come to him so far and Topher’s breath hitched instinctively at having another actual person right in his face.
“Obviously, they want you,” Dominic continued. “They think you’ll be useful to them, and they’re not just gonna back down because I chased them off.”
The darkness in his eyes was intense; it was easy to miss the blue entirely, now. It was only by staring hard that Topher even found it.
“Caroline Farrell is an idealist. Self-righteous and determined and, unfortunately, typically unstoppable. Paul Ballard’s not much better, especially when he’s paired up with her. If you stay, they’ll be back. The only thing that’ll change is this time they’ll wait until you’re asleep and drug you so you don’t even get the chance to resist.”
Dominic reached out, gripping Topher by the forearms. His fingers were cool but sturdy, strong.
“You don’t have a choice in this anymore, get me? Pack up some food, some supplies, enough to travel light, because we’re getting out of here. We don’t have time to waste.”
Topher stared at him numbly, feeling lightheaded. “You’re saying I have to leave…everything?” he asked. “That we’re going out of the city? That I’m never coming back?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I’m trying to tell you.”
Topher raised his hands and brushed against Dominic’s wrists, shoving him off and away. He retreated back toward his desk, head shaking, channeling his disbelief and fear into anger.
“But…I don’t want to go! I like it here, I…how is this fair?”
“It isn’t fair,” Dominic snapped at him, yelling, patience lost. “It’s not fair, because this is reality! It’s not some code you can manipulate. It’s not some game you can plug in and out of whenever you want.”
Topher cowered again, flinching. Dominic’s face had twisted into a hard, angry mask, his lips curling in a snarl as his voice rose.
And when he spoke, Topher could see the flash of sharp white fang.
“Maybe you never asked to get involved in this, and I’m sympathetic to that, but it doesn’t change the cold, hard facts. You’re not safe here. Not anymore. Your only choice is to leave, and if you can’t wrap your cloistered, sim-fried brain around that, then I will drag you out of here myself!”
Topher slumped back, hand on his desk for support. Everything felt like it was spinning.
He’d never gone outside, not once he was old enough to have a say in the matter, because there was nothing out there he wanted. Nothing he was interested in.
Inside, he was fed and warm and safe and happy. If he wanted to talk to people he could do it on the feed. He had his data-stack, his holo-drive. What more could he ever need?
“Why is this happening?” he whispered, a weak plea. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing you need to understand. All you need is to grasp the fact that you have to go.” Dominic wasn’t yelling anymore, wasn’t glaring. But his face was still set in a serious frown. “If you really need a reason, I’ll give you one: because I’m making you.” He looked away, giving a bitter scoff.
“Make me the bad guy, if that’s what you need. Not like it’s a role I’m unused to playing.”
Topher was quiet for a moment. Slowly he raised his arms, wrapping them around his body.
More to himself he whimpered, “You’re telling me to give up my whole life.”
Dominic gave a dismissive glance around.
“What life?” he asked coldly.
Topher met his eyes. He hugged himself tighter.
Dominic sighed.
“I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re wondering, hey, if I have to go on the run anyway, why not join the Revolution? Why not just go with them? They’re the ones that are supposed to be trying to change things, right?” He met Topher’s gaze hard. “But I’m telling you for your own safety that that’s a bad idea. It’s a very stupid, dangerous idea that if you’re lucky doesn’t end with you getting killed.”
Topher hadn’t actually been thinking about the Revolution at all. It hadn’t even occurred to him. But once Dominic said it, he realized it did bring up a good point. He supposed that he had a choice.
Topher raised his head and looked at Dominic carefully. He watched his face.
“Tell me something. And be honest,” Topher asked. “Have you ever lied to me yet, about anything?”
Dominic blinked, seemingly caught off-guard.
“No. I haven’t,” he promised.
Topher considered that. He nodded.
“All right,” he concluded, softly. “Guess I’m with you, then.”
*
[continued]
Characters: Topher, Dominic, Caroline, Paul, Kilo, mention of Ivy, DeWitt, eventual appearances by Echo, Whiskey, Sierra, Alpha, Boyd, Claire, Victor, Bennet, Madeline
Pairings: Eventual Topher/Dominic, DeWitt/Dominic, DeWitt/Topher, Topher/Dominic/DeWitt, mention of Victor/Sierra, Topher/Ivy and implications of Paul/Caroline and some vague others
Rating: PG-13 for violence, dark and mature themes, eventual sexuality, drug use, vampirism
Length: 12,600 words
Spoilers: none - complete alternate reality
Summary: After a lifetime of tuning out most of the world, Topher Brink learns the hard way that sometimes the rest of the world doesn't give you the choice to ignore it. His life will never be the same.
Notes:
This story is dedicated to irony_rocks, an amazing and talented fellow fan femme who once made the mistake of wondering on the internet where I could see why there aren't more alternate universe fanfics featuring the Dollhouse characters. I didn't say anything at the time, but I kept the germ at the back of my mind, where it sprouted unexpectedly at a rock concert one night. Well babe, I hope this one is good enough for you - I can't make any claims as to the quality, but rest assured, it's pretty far out.
So now I present for her, and the rest of you, part one of three of my Dollhouse dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi AU, with a side order of vampires, and a hard chaser of alternative rock.
(Title for this section taken from "Believe" by The Bravery, and "19/2000 (Soulchild Remix)" by Gorillaz)
part i: we do our time like pennies in a jar (it’s the music that we choose)
*
At eleven thirty-two AM the monitor beside Topher’s bed beeped its gentle insistent alarm, informing him he’d reached his required eight hours of sleep.
Topher thought of running the glitch loop he’d created, tricking the system into giving him another hour or two. But that would mean getting up, going over to his data-stack and inputting it, at which point he’d already be awake anyway, so he gave in and crawled out of bed.
His morning orange juice felt especially frosty against his tongue. Consulting the weather stats he found it’d gotten a little colder outside, so he adjusted the temperature on the room monitor up another two degrees.
After breakfast, he checked the feed.
There was a new downhill skiing virtu-sim up. Topher wasn’t really interested in skiing, or any sports sim as a rule, but it’d been awhile since he’d checked out something new of this type. He downloaded it.
His holo-drive hummed its familiar whir-skip-whir. Topher closed his eyes and when he opened them, he was rushing down a snow-covered mountain surrounded by pine trees, the wind whipping past.
The sim was pretty good, he thought, but not great. The wind wasn’t quite real enough; he’d felt it a lot more accurate in other sims, though admittedly not many - weather details were still one of those things a lot of programmers tended to overlook. He thought they were underappreciated, because something like the way the air felt against your skin could be key to getting a virtu-sim just right, to really fool you into believing you’d transcended reality like it was supposed to. Plus, some of the three-dimensional light reflection on the snow was off.
After the sim had finished, Topher opened up its file on his system and started tweaking. He spliced in a much better arctic wind coding from another program, fixed the flawed gradients in the snow’s reflective parameters, and made some other changes as well. Then he transcribed the entire thing over into the unique code layout he’d designed, so it would download and run a little faster and smoother. Within a few hours, the new version of the virtu-sim was ready to go.
Topher posted it to the feed, then checked to see if anything else had come up in the meantime. Nothing had, so he went back to some other things.
He did a few more tweaks on a few other second-rate virtu-sims, nothing major. He finished writing a particularly tricky coding expansion that was part of a half-hearted, on again, off again long-term project of his.
In the middle of the afternoon, he took a break with some of his favorite programs: he went on the virtu-sim canoeing trip again for a little while, until he got bored of the placid waters and the sound of birds and insects. He walked along a tropical island beach, the sun warm against the back of his neck, looking down and feeling the wet sand squeeze between his toes. He watched the sun set over some important monument whose name he’d forgotten; he just thought that the view was kind of nice.
He checked the feed again. His improvement on the downhill skiing sim was already being passed around, generating notes of approval. The only other thing up that was even remotely unique was some bird-watching sim - really? Bird-watching? With all the options out there, who would willingly choose to waste their time on something lame and boring like that?
Virtu-sims: the next best thing to being there. Better, even, because a lot of the cities and places captured in the virtu-sims weren’t around anymore. He doubted there were any rivers left in the world safe to go canoeing on, or any snow clean enough for skiing.
Topher took another short break for dinner. Munching on colorful wafers of sugar, he skimmed through the feed channels, never listening to anything for long before flipping past to something else.
The main news stream was promoting an upgrade to the Library, a new wing being added to the Garden. The shopping emporium had a cheerful new jingle; Topher hummed along for a few minutes before promptly forgetting what it was for.
The less-cheerful news stream had urgent-voiced pundits - the number of medical, law enforcement and public service drones being commissioned were all on the rise; before long, the workforce would be just machines, the human element replaced completely.
But less and less people had interest in doing jobs themselves, in actually working. The city would take care of them, from when they were born until they died: the basic comforts of their apartments, the feed and the associated sims, the public entertainment installations. So why want anything more? Why save up to get a traveling license, when you could see the same thing in a sim or at the cinema gallery? Who would want to buy anything, when you could go to the shopping emporium and try on any holo-skin for free?
The sound quality on the pundits’ stream wasn’t very good; alarmist journalists were never very well-funded. People didn’t want to listen to depressing or serious news. Topher changed the channel again and landed on the live broadcast out of the Orphanarium - for a moment the heavy, hypnotizing thrum of the bass held him as it thrilled up his spine. But he couldn’t listen to the sound of the Voice for very long before it brought a lump to his throat, so he turned it off.
Someone was offering up a virtu-sim of an art gallery walk-through on the feed. Classic Impressionist paintings: boring. Topher didn’t even bother. He got up and poured himself some juice.
He looked out his window. The lights were coming up at the Arena, at the Garden. If he squinted, he could make out the walkways of the big shopping complex, and even though he couldn’t see them from this direction, he knew the lights were turning on at the Library and at the cinemas too.
Topher stayed on the feed for a few hours more, well into the night, before finally conceding it was enough for one day. He had the room monitor turn the lights off and the sound dampers on before lying down on his bed, curling up in the puffy, marshmallow-softness of his comforter, wrapping it tightly around himself as he fell asleep.
*
Topher spent the better part of the next day going on different walking tour sims. He was in the mood for something relaxing, something quiet, with very little sound programmed into its background sensory track. He smelled the roses at the gardens of Historic Versailles, walked through the ruins of some place called Parthenon.
There was a new one up called “A Day at Oahu”, but it was an officially-released sim, so it wasn’t very good. Topher didn’t really care to put much effort into it, but he opened up the file and started copying in better code from similar programs, trying to make it at least more tolerable.
He was preoccupied enough with the task that he missed lunch, and after a few hours the room monitor started beeping concernedly, warning that his blood sugar and nutrient levels were getting low.
Topher wasn’t really hungry, but he didn’t feel like hacking the reading, so he accepted some sweetened bread and a bowl of enhanced protein chips, which he paired with a glass of berry juice.
He went back to his tweaking as he ate, one hand on his data-stack while the other brought food to his mouth.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he heard a strange sound.
Topher stopped, frowning. The sound wasn’t coming from his system. It wasn’t being emitted by the room monitor, either. He had the window dampers on so he knew it couldn’t be coming from outside.
The sound came again, a steady rhythmic rapping like knuckles on something solid, and Topher’s whole body gave a spasmodic jerk. The back of his hand collided with his bowl knocking it off the desk, and chips spilled across the floor.
There was somebody knocking on his door - there was somebody outside his door.
Slowly, his nerves thrumming with the static electricity of surprise and fear, Topher rose to his feet. He stared at the door to his apartment.
The knocking came again. Topher swallowed around the lump in his throat.
“H-hello?” he called out anxiously. His voice came out tiny, shaking where it echoed in the empty, familiar space.
There was no answer; whoever it was probably couldn’t hear him through the wall. Topher moved to the main control panel for the room monitor. He gazed at it for a moment, filled with uncertainty. Finally in a swift, ungraceful move like pulling off a bandage, he raised his arm and punched the command to open the door.
It slid back with a faint hiss, unsealing, and Topher sucked in a huge breath, unable to shake the instinctive irrational thought that all the air was escaping.
Out in the hall were two people, a man and a woman, and he jumped, even though he’d known it had to be a person: drones couldn’t knock. The woman gazed directly at Topher with a strong, cool gaze, like she was sizing him up.
Her hair was dark and wavy, her face pretty but filled with a hard confidence. Like the face of something predatory.
Topher took a step back, and stayed where he was.
“Hey,” the woman greeted. Her voice was terse, clipped and impatient. “I’m Caroline.” She gave an almost-nod at the man to her left, who was tall with a broad unreadable face. “This is Paul.”
They didn’t ask to be invited in. They stayed on the other side of the security bubble, out in the hall.
Topher didn’t know what else to do, so he waved. The gesture was awkward from lack of practice.
“…Hi.”
Caroline continued giving him that serious, fixed look. “Are you Christopher Brink?”
“Um.” He swallowed. His mouth felt dry. “Yep. That’s me.” Half-heartedly, he offered, “Most people call me - um; I usually go by ‘Topher’.”
Caroline and Paul exchanged a look. They didn’t say anything, but Paul nodded, and then Caroline looked back at him.
“Are you the one that created that volcano-watching sim? The one that’s been passed around the feed these past few months?”
Topher gulped. People weren’t actually supposed to edit and distribute the virtu-sims themselves; just about everyone with the capabilities did anyway, but still. It was believed that tweaked programs could be upsetting or too stimulating for some users, going outside the carefully-outlined “stressor zones” that the legally-produced sims were always rigorous in adhering to. Topher hid his traces well, but there still was that knowledge at the back of his mind that he could get into big trouble if he was ever caught.
He gazed back at them with wide eyes. “The…what sim?” he asked, pitching his voice like he didn’t know what they were talking about.
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “You know the one.”
Topher thought about how much time he’d spent perfecting the feeling of that heat, getting the look of the lava flow just right. “I-I may know of someone…who may have - allegedly, mind you! Who just may have had…something to do with-”
“Knock it off,” Paul interrupted. “It’s a simple question, so answer it. Did you make the sim or not?”
Topher stared at both of them from the center of his living room, anxious and uneasy.
They smelled feral, like free-flowing air and unfiltered sun and a dozen other things Topher couldn’t even name. Not at all like the sterile safeness of his home. It made his head spin sickly.
“Yeah,” he finally confessed. “That was me, alright?” He played with his hands. “Um, look. If…if there’s a fine, or something-”
“We’re not with Central,” Caroline informed him, bluntly. “We’re not here to arrest you.”
“You’re…you’re not?”
“No. We’re here to recruit you.” She tilted her chin slightly. “We’re with the Revolution.”
“The…the what?” Topher backed up further, panicked, feeling an urge to duck behind his furniture.
No wonder they smelled so wild; it was said the Revolution somehow lived off the grid entirely, their base of operations located outside of cities, out there in the waste. Topher thought of all the poisonous Atmo that must cling to their clothing, and pulled his sleeve to cover his nose and mouth.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Caroline said. “The Revolution could use a programmer like you on our side, someone with your skills at manipulating code, at hacking so many different parts of the feed undetected. Will you come with us?”
“Come with…” Topher gave a hysterical near-laugh. “Are you crazy? Why would I want-?” His voice lowered slightly; he swallowed. “I don’t…I don’t go outside.”
He’d never been to the Arena. He hadn’t visited the Garden since he was a kid. Anything could be purchased through the feed, delivered to him. He’d even found a way out of his annuals: all he had to do was hack into his file and tag himself as an invalid, with a condition that left him bedridden, and they sent a medical drone right to his apartment.
“This is important,” Paul said. “Don’t you see? The way the world is going-”
“Don’t waste your time,” Caroline interrupted him. “It’s obvious he’s not going to be swayed by words. He’s a coward.”
Topher reacted to the word with a flinch of unhappiness, but didn’t say anything, watching his own fingertips. After all, it was true.
Caroline nodded. “To convince him, we’re going to have to show him.”
Paul frowned, brow creasing, but waited for her to continue. Caroline faced Topher again.
“They’re building a wall around this city, right now. A bubble, designed to keep everyone in. It’s out on the edges, so no one will notice.”
“So?” Topher asked.
“So?” Caroline repeated. “Don’t you get it? They’re doing it to keep everyone in! It’s hard enough to leave the city right now as it is: soon, people won’t even have the choice. You’re all going to be stuck here, under their thumbs, so they can control you. It’s not just here, either. The same thing is slowly happening in every city around the world.”
Topher thought that maybe he didn’t care if he couldn’t leave the city or not, when he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken two steps outside his front door. Maybe everyone else was happy enough with what they had here, and they didn’t care either.
He didn’t say any of this out loud, though.
“I can prove it to you,” Caroline told him, mistaking his silence for disbelief. “Come with us, and we can show you. All it will take is a couple of hours.” She sneered slightly. “It’s not like you’re going to miss anything.”
Topher still didn’t care, and he really didn’t want to go, but he thought if he just went with them and let them show him their wall and he still said “no” they’d finally leave him alone. It’d just be easier this way.
He nodded, trying to ignore the lump of fright in his breast. “Okay.”
*
Once they were past the main buildings at the center of the city the gliding walkways stopped and turned back into normal concrete ones, hard and smooth under their feet.
Topher followed just a step or two behind Caroline and Paul as they led the way. His plastic breathing mask covered his face, distorting his vision slightly with how it made everything wavy and lightly tinged with green. The smell of the clean, recycled air reassured him as it rushed coolly across his skin.
Neither Paul nor Caroline had bothered with a mask. Just the sight of their exposed faces, the thought of them breathing in all that poisonous night air, made Topher dizzy with horror.
He knew that Atmo wasn’t so deadly it could kill you in a single go - that it had to build up over time, even years, before your body started showing any effects - but he sure wasn’t taking any chances.
The glow of the walkway and city lights was bright, but not bright enough; if Topher looked up, he could see the blackness of the night sky, real darkness that no amount of light could hope to fight off. He quickly ducked his head, looking down, as he struggled to breathe normally.
It was a constant battle to keep from panicking, and he had to make himself take slow regular breaths, instead of gulping greedily at the air in his mask the way he wanted to. It felt so strange, so wrong to be so exposed and open, to not have four strong walls wrapped comfortingly around him. He took precarious, hesitant steps, sometimes his arms rising out to both sides as if he were a toddler on a balancing beam. He kept being afraid he was going to slip and fall downward, even though that didn’t make any sense - there was no “down” to fall to, he was on solid flat ground.
They kept walking. Caroline and Paul didn’t say anything, and Topher didn’t speak to them either. He just wanted this trip to be over so he could go back home where it was safe.
As more and more time passed and they kept going, though, it was too much. Topher had to say something. He cleared his throat.
“So, where is it?”
Up ahead Caroline came to a halt, and Paul followed her lead. Slowly they both turned and looked back at Topher, faces unreadable, silent.
“Where’s this wall you’re taking me to?” Topher pressed. “We’re almost to the edge of the city, and I still don’t see anything. Where is it? How much further do we have to go?”
Paul and Caroline exchanged a glance. Caroline didn’t say anything, but she gave a look like a scowl and a slight roll of her shoulders. Paul turned back to Topher with a short puff of air, a tired almost-sigh.
“There isn’t any wall.”
“What?” Topher’s pulse skipped a beat then quickly rose, fluttering in his throat. He took a shaky step back. “What do you mean, there isn’t any…?”
“She made the whole thing up,” Paul said, indicating Caroline. “She lied.”
Caroline folded her arms, unrepentant. “I had to. Just to get you far enough out here that we could drag you the rest of the way.”
Topher took another step. “You tricked me,” he realized, too scared to be mad. “You…you’re kidnapping me!”
Paul raised a hand, trying to reassure him. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
“We need you,” Caroline insisted. “The things you could do for the Revolution; it’s too important to give you the choice to say ‘no’.”
“You’ll understand eventually, once you come with us and see-”
Topher turned around and bolted. Or tried to. It’d been years since he’d run, and Caroline was on him, grabbing his arm and yanking him back, before he’d gotten even a couple of feet.
“You’re coming with us, Topher,” she ordered. “Whether you want to or not.” She met his eyes intensely, letting him see how serious she was. “It’ll be easier for you if you come willingly, but if we have to force you, we will.”
“Please.” Topher gulped, his whole body trembling. “Please just let me go, I promise I won’t tell anybody you were even here, I swear-”
Caroline made an impatient sound, and ripped the breathing mask off of his face.
Topher gave a startled, terrified cry; without meaning to he drew a deep breath. His hand clutched his throat. He reached for his mask but Caroline stepped back.
“Oh god, oh god…” He kept breathing again and again, faster, in great frantic gasps.
He could feel the poisoned Atmo filling his lungs, killing him slowly. His eyes watered. His heart was pounding out of control.
“Give it back to me! Please, give it back!”
“Not until you agree to come back with us,” Caroline demanded.
Topher’s head spun; his vision swam in and out of blackness. He felt his legs give and the next thing he knew he was on the ground, cold and hard against his cheek.
“Cut it out,” Caroline snapped, irritated. “Atmo doesn’t kill you in five seconds! Stop being such a baby, and get up.”
Topher didn’t move. He couldn’t. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, only that he couldn’t breathe and his pulse was throbbing and he’d never felt more afraid in his life.
“We’ve got a long way to go tonight, and I’m not having you wasting time by-”
“Caroline.” Paul touched her arm. “Wait a second.” He looked down at Topher, eyeing him carefully. He frowned.
“I think he’s having a panic attack.”
“He’s faking it!”
Paul shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I think that he-”
He cut off with a start as there was a loud mechanical roar. Paul and Caroline stared with noticeable alarm up at the sky, at something overhead and behind Topher.
Topher couldn’t see what it was, but the sound grew louder, fast - and the next thing he knew, Caroline and Paul had ducked, throwing themselves to the ground just in time as a motorcycle flew past, diving through the air right where their heads had been.
The bike sped by, swerving around to face their direction even as the rider brought it in for a landing. The motorcycle touched down with a heavy clank of shifting gears and the screech of hydraulics as the engine was cut off.
The figure sitting astride the motorcycle was a man, wearing a leather duster and black night-vision eyelet goggles. In the wake of silence left by the engine’s keen, he swung a leg over the side of his vehicle and dismounted, standing. Even beneath the layers of his travel clothes it was clear he was broad-shouldered, well-muscled.
Paul and Caroline were getting back up.
“You!” Paul exclaimed, glaring at the newcomer with familiarity.
Topher stared blankly at the impending showdown, because there really was nothing else he could do.
The man reached up, pulling off his goggles. “Nice to see you too, Ballard,” he returned. He looked at Caroline, scowl deepening. “And Farrell. Of course.”
“Drop dead, Dominic,” she spat. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“What’s the matter? Not getting enough willing saps to join your little movement - you have to go ‘recruiting’ now through a door to door pressgang?”
“At least we’re doing something,” Caroline retorted. “Unlike you. But then, what would you expect from a member of your kind?”
The man’s face darkened with anger. “Don’t talk about things you have no chance of understanding.”
Caroline sneered at him. “We’re not children, ducking to hide under our beds just because of some scary story about monsters! I’m not afraid of you.”
“Yeah?” Dominic swept his coat aside, unholstering a weapon. “Well, that makes two of us.”
Everything happened fast.
Dominic fired; Paul and Caroline dodged in opposite directions, moving swiftly out of the way. Dominic made to shoot at Paul again, who was closer, but the other man rushed at him and they engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Topher closed his eyes, drawing his breath in a moan. Getting elbows underneath him he started to push himself up.
Dominic knocked Paul to the ground, just in time to be tackled by Caroline. She managed to get his weapon away from him but then he threw her down.
He looked at Topher. “Get to the bike,” he ordered.
Still on his hands and knees, Topher gaped at him.
“Get to the bike,” Dominic repeated, yelling at him. “Now!”
Topher scrambled up and did as he was told. As he ran, behind him he heard the sound of the weapon being fired; he flinched, flailing, and almost tripped, but he wasn’t shot and he managed to get to the motorcycle safely.
He leaned against it, bent double as he struggled to regain his breath. He could barely hear the sound of footsteps over his racing heartbeat as his rescuer came toward him.
Topher tried to get a glance of him out of the corner of his eye. He had a stern face and didn’t look very friendly. But he evidently wasn’t with the Revolution, so Topher would take him.
“I don’t…feel…so good,” Topher gasped, whimpering. Dominic made an annoyed sound, but he rummaged through his pack.
“Hold still.” He drew out a round injection tube.
“Wait-!” Topher protested, alarmed, but there was already the punch where it connected with his back between his shoulder blades. There was the hiss of the injection, and then Topher could breathe again.
“Steroids,” Dominic explained shortly. “Just enough to give your heart and lungs that extra boost.” He nodded at the bike. “Now get on.”
“But I-”
“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Dominic snapped. “Do you want to get away from them, or not?” He glanced back over his shoulder, wary, and Topher pictured Paul and Caroline running toward them.
He climbed awkwardly onto the motorcycle, uncertain how to position himself on the smooth curve of its seat. With another short, aggravated grunt Dominic grabbed him by the hips and physically manhandled him into place. He got on behind Topher, and reached around him to grasp the handles on both sides.
The bike came to life, vibration thrumming through Topher’s body. He thought he heard someone yell behind them, but he couldn’t make it out over the sound of the engine - and then, they were off.
Topher didn’t know how fast they were going: not nearly as fast as he had in some of the virtu-sims, certainly, but faster than he ever had in his real life. The corners of his eyelids stung a little from the wind. The resistance pushed him back, the solid wall of the other man’s chest at his back the only thing keeping him in place.
Dominic wasn’t taking them too far above the ground, only about three feet or so. They were heading in direction opposite to where Caroline and Paul had been going, back toward the inner city.
After a few minutes Topher felt calm enough he could focus on something other than hanging on for dear life. He shifted, turning his head to look at Dominic again.
He stopped dead, though, the instant he caught a glimpse of his eyes.
They were blue, but it was nearly impossible to tell. The ring of color that was Dominic’s iris was incredibly dark: practically indistinguishable from his pupil.
Topher nearly choked on the sudden and terrifying realization.
No wonder the press of Dominic’s body felt unusually cool against his. No wonder he smelled strange, even weirder than Paul and Caroline had. No wonder he had a mouth that looked like he never smiled - if he did, he would probably show his fangs.
Topher made a nonsensical frantic sound, and tried to move away. His uncoordinated motions caused the bike to shake.
“Hey,” Dominic began, startled. Topher shoved at him.
“No, no, get away from me, let me go!”
“Calm down, you idiot! What’s your problem? We’re going to crash if you keep-”
Topher squawked, shutting his eyes. “Get away from me, you…you…leech!”
He thought he felt Dominic tense at the word.
But Topher was still flailing around, and he managed to hit Dominic hard enough or in just the right way that his arms were knocked from the handlebars. The circuits built into the grips of Dominic’s riding gloves disconnected from them, the engine promptly cut out and died.
The machine dropped like a stone.
Topher was thrown off; he hit the ground with a thud and rolled. Behind him he winced instinctively at the sound as the motorcycle crashed.
Unsteadily he picked himself up yet again. His arm was sore from landing on it funny but he seemed fortunately, mostly unhurt. Rubbing his elbow he glanced back.
The motorcycle was a wreck. But what made Topher’s heart jump unexpectedly to his throat was the sight of the prone body beside it.
Dominic lay half-curled on his side, eyes closed and seemingly unconscious. Blood was pooling on a wound on the side of his temple. He must’ve been unable to dismount in time when the bike came down and hit his head on the walkway.
Topher stayed back, eyeing him with uneasy wariness.
Maybe this was just a trick they did. Lying there pretending to be asleep, waiting for him to get close enough and then leaping up to rip out his throat.
He waited about half a minute longer. Dominic still didn’t move.
He really didn’t look so good.
Topher finally took one step closer, then another.
When he reached him he touched Dominic lightly with the tip of his shoe, shying back immediately in case he reared up. But nothing happened.
Topher knelt down and, hands shaking, rolled Dominic onto his back.
The movement caused Dominic’s coat to fall open, and Topher spotted another spreading patch on his torso, an ugly-looking gash in his side. Belatedly, he remembered hearing the sound of a shot fired from somewhere behind him as he ran.
The blood looked especially red and dark against the other man’s skin.
Trembling, Topher reached into his pocket and pulled out his emergency caller. He hit the button for “medical” with his thumb.
“Hello? Uh, I’d like to report an accident.”
He glanced down at the unconscious man with a sigh.
“There’s someone down here who needs assistance,” Topher continued. “Please, send some help to my location right away.”
*
The medical drone bound up Dominic’s injury, checked him for signs of a concussion, and informed Topher “his friend” would be fine, he just needed to rest for a little while.
It carried Dominic on a levitating stretcher back to the apartment, and then promptly left with its dismissal.
It was late, but Topher didn’t much feel like sleeping. He got himself some juice and held it awkwardly in his hands, standing at the far side of the living room.
He eyed the prone figure stretched across his spare sleeping cot.
The drone had removed his outer layers to tend to him, revealing a fitted t-shirt just as dark as his other clothes. He had a beard of stubble, and hair that would probably be a lighter blond if it was more thoroughly washed. His skin was pale, a single dark line of ink standing out where it branded his inner right arm.
Topher clutched his cup a little tighter.
With anxious curiosity, he watched the rise and fall of Dominic’s chest. He couldn’t be completely sure, but it looked like his breathing was a lot slower than Topher’s was.
He knew his heart beat slower - the main screen of the room monitor currently displayed the medical stats for them both. Dominic’s pulse was barely a third of his, and his body temperature was about fifteen degrees cooler.
Of course, the system had quickly figured out the other individual it was sensing was not a normal one, and had adjusted its readings accordingly.
Underneath each heading, the screen tracked a series of bars measuring relevant chemical levels in the body. Where Topher’s were things like potassium and sodium, the monitor cheerfully displayed at least twenty more bars for Dominic, most of which had unpronounceable-looking names. Topher considered going on the feed and looking up some of them, but didn’t. He was pretty sure he knew what it’d tell him already.
The process ‘suckers underwent to make them what they were enhanced their immune systems and made them much hardier than normal people. The deadly gases in the atmosphere everyone else was wary of had no effect on them. They were supposedly stronger too, with heightened senses and reflexes.
Although all this benefit didn’t come without major side effects: they were more sensitive to the sun’s radiation, burning even faster if exposed to it. And something about all those chemicals completely trashed their digestive systems - they couldn’t get nutrients from food. They lived entirely on fluids. And blood.
…Fresh, human…blood.
Topher shivered. Out of lack of anything better to do he drank his juice, finishing it in a single gulp.
The hours dragged. Topher wanted to go on the feed; lose himself in a few virtu-sims to forget about his night. But he thought that was a bad idea, because Dominic might wake up. The thought of being unaware of his surroundings with a ‘sucker close by made Topher feel woozy. In the end, he sat in a chair at the other end of the room, waiting.
Eventually the other man made a faint noise, coming to. Topher got to his feet. He was close to the refrigerator anyway, so he poured a glass of lemon-water.
Hopefully Dominic would only be thirsty-thirsty, and not…thirsty.
Topher moved toward him. Dominic’s eyelids fluttered, and Topher saw those darkened irises again, giving him a good reminder what he was dealing with. He set the glass on the nearby table and quickly stepped back.
With a distracted frown Dominic pushed himself to a sitting position. As soon as his eyes were open he looked around, confused but alert.
“My apartment,” Topher offered. His voice squeaked. “I, uh, brought you back here after…” He trailed off, indicating his own temple. “Sorry about the bump on the head.”
Dominic’s gaze narrowed as he recalled what’d happened. But he didn’t call Topher out for causing the accident.
“What time is it?”
“Almost morning.” He’d left the light dampers on the windows casting his apartment in an extended twilight, but the dawn glowed around the frame.
“Terrific.” Dominic scowled. He sat up further. “Looks like I’m stuck here for awhile.”
Topher wanted to ask what he was doing in the city in the first place; how he knew the Revolution and why he was interfering with them.
But he didn’t say anything. He laced his fingers together and twiddled his thumbs, watching them go back and forth.
Dominic spotted the glass and reached for it. He made a face as he brought it near, sniffing.
“Don’t you have any plain water?”
“I’ve got about a dozen different kinds of juice,” Topher began. “Apple, kiwi, mango, apricot-”
“So that’s a ‘no’, then,” Dominic cut him off.
He rolled his eyes, pulling a face as he took a drink. Afterward he looked at Topher again.
“So, what’s your deal? Why’s the Revolution after you?” He eyed him fixedly. “What’d you do to end up on their radar?”
“I don’t know!” Topher protested. He waved an arm. “I don’t have anything to do with…with people like them. They came to me.” He pressed both hands against his chest. “All I know is they showed up at my door, asking me about some sim I’d tweaked. And the next thing I know, I’m being spirited off in the dead of night into the wild.”
“Wait, back up. Sim?” Dominic’s brow furrowed. “You’re a hacker?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. When the mood strikes.”
Topher didn’t really think of what he did as “hacking”. It was just little things he did to make his life easier, to keep from being bored.
“It’s not like I’m rerouting the power grid or anything,” he finished.
“Could you, though? If you wanted to?”
“Well…yeah.” He shrugged. “Probably.”
Dominic grunted. “Well, there you go.” Shifting, he set his boots on the floor. “Sounds like the Revolution wants to put you to work, whether you’re interested in them or not.”
He turned stiffly, looking at the bandage wrapped around his midsection.
“You can’t see them when I talk, by the way.”
“What?”
“My fangs,” Dominic said, bluntly. “You keep staring at my mouth.”
“Oh,” Topher stuttered. He took a half-step forward. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude or anything. I just…I mean, I’ve never actually met a leech before.”
Dominic’s face grew stormier. Topher shied back again.
“Oh, I guess I shouldn’t…use that term around you. That’s, um, kinda the derogatory word,” he meekly stated the obvious. “Whoops. Sorry.”
He cleared his throat. “‘Sucker. I meant ‘sucker.”
If he’d expected Dominic’s expression to lighten, he was disappointed. That frown remained in place as he tugged up his shirt.
“Don’t really like that word either, to be honest,” he muttered, examining the bandage. He started pulling it off.
Topher blinked at him, lost. “But then what are people supposed to call you?”
“I’ve never understood why it seems no one ever wants to just say ‘vampire’. It’s a perfectly viable word; it’s basically what we are. So why not call it like it is?” Dominic said. There was a layer of dried blood caked on his side.
Topher had never heard anything like this. He didn’t really know what to make of it.
“Could you get me a washcloth, a wet rag, something?”
Wordlessly, Topher did as bid. Dominic took the cloth and wiped the crust away, and Topher stared agog as a layer of healthy skin was exposed.
“I thought you were shot,” he said stupidly.
“Well, I was. Probably just a graze.”
He’d healed, Topher realized. Just like that.
Dominic looked at Topher like he’d only just remembered he was there. “Look, thanks for not just leaving me out there,” he offered gruffly. “Really. Not a lot of people would’ve.”
“No, sure; I mean, it’s the least I could do after you…I’m Topher,” he trailed off, kind of breathless.
The ‘sucker’s mouth moved in a brief smirk. “Dominic.”
“I know. I, uh, overheard when the others…” He made a gesture supposed to somehow indicate Paul and Caroline. “How did you know those guys, anyway?”
Dominic became grim again. “Long story,” he said, brusquely.
He leaned forward, elbows rested on his knees, fingers starting to lace. Topher glimpsed the mark on his arm again.
“Is that a blacklight tattoo?” His head tilted for a better look.
The ink seemed to shift and swim between black and very dark blue, the writing encoded in that special way making it virtually impossible to read if you didn’t already know what you were looking at. Topher counted six characters. “What does it say?”
Dominic glanced at it, face unreadable.
“It’s a name,” he said at length. His voice was toneless. “My donor.”
Topher frowned. “Your donor?” From what he’d always understood the relationship between ‘sucker and donor - if they had one, not every ‘sucker did - was such where Dominic might as well have said “spouse” or “soulmate”. “But you came here alone.”
“Yeah. I did.” Dominic glared at him.
“…Oh.”
At some point, Dominic had had a donor. Not so much anymore. There were a couple ways that could’ve happened, but Topher didn’t have to think about it to reach the general conclusion.
He stared at his toes, swallowing.
There was silence for long enough that eventually he dared to look at Dominic again.
The other man pulled his legs up on the bed again and lay down. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to try and get some sleep,” he said coldly. He turned so he didn’t face Topher.
“Um. Okay.”
He waited for Dominic to say something else. He didn’t.
Topher went on the feed. He loaded an undersea snorkeling virtu-sim, and let it all go as he was lost in deep blue oceans and tiny bright fish swimming in vast dark space.
*
Topher spent the better part of the morning viewing and tweaking sims, even some he usually wouldn’t have given a second glance to. He needed the distraction.
He wasn’t used to being threatened, or hunted after. He wasn’t used to having to deal with things like ‘suckers or Revolutionaries.
He wasn’t used to having someone else in his apartment.
He wasn’t used to people.
Topher tried not to freak out entirely when he heard Dominic’s voice speak up after some length of time - realizing the other man had apparently gotten up again, and was standing just behind him.
“This is what you do all day?” Dominic asked. His tone was some combination of disbelieving and derisive.
Topher didn’t really know how to respond to that. To him, it kind of seemed like asking if he breathed.
“Pretty much, yeah.” He didn’t take his eyes off his system, though part of him really wanted to. He was acutely aware of the nearness of Dominic, of the very solid weight of his body that seemed to displace air just by existing in Topher’s space; of the way he smelled faintly like things Topher had experienced only through his holo-drive, like leather and dirt and rainstorms. “So what?”
Dominic just grunted, and then moved away again, like Topher wasn’t worth his focus.
Trying not to feel too hurt or insulted Topher went back to the feed, and pretended that it successfully held his interest.
At lunchtime he turned the sound channels on at random, letting it cycle through the different streams. He helped himself to some crackers, heavy on the flavoring, and a bowl of noodles.
Dominic watched with what could only be called disgust.
“Don’t you eat anything that isn’t junk?”
Topher slurped up a noodle. “What?” he said defensively, because there was only so much he could take. “I am an equal opportunity aficionado of all things sweet and salty. Besides, what does it matter?” He picked up a handful of chips and munched, not caring he was talking through a mouthful of crumbs.
He gestured at the room monitor. “The system always makes sure you get the right balance of nutrients and essentials, no matter what you choose to intake it as. So why not go ahead and get it through-” he loaded the word with as much sarcasm as he could manage “-junk?”
Dominic didn’t say anything. But his sneer was pretty prominent.
Topher decided that if Dominic could act like he was so indifferent of him, well then two could play at that game. He turned up his nose and went back to his lunch.
At the back of his mind, Topher was faintly aware he was being rude; that he shouldn’t eat in front of somebody without asking if they’d like anything.
But he didn’t know what might happen if he asked if Dominic was hungry and the answer was “yes”. It gave him an unsettled feeling.
So he didn’t say anything at all.
They stayed like that, within the same space of five feet, not speaking to one another, for awhile. The entire time, he was aware that Dominic was eyeing him, the same way he kept stealing glances at Dominic.
The ‘sucker stood with head slightly lowered, arms folded tightly across his chest. That semi-permanent frown was etched on his face again. The set of his eyes and lines of his forehead seemed to indicate he was thinking about something.
He waited until Topher had finished eating, was getting up to put his dishes away, before he finally spoke.
“Why do you have an extra bed?” He was calm, distantly curious.
Topher hunched slightly. His fingertips curled tighter around his bowl.
His voice came out hoarse, sort of mumbled when he replied. “I, um…I used to have a girlfriend.”
Used to. He hoped that was explanation enough.
He thought about Ivy. How she couldn’t sleep with the sound dampers off whenever it rained. How her lip gloss tasted like fruit punch. The way her hair always smelled faintly of Atmo even though she wore a breathing mask outside, but it didn’t bother him.
Dominic gazed at him. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding more subdued and mournful than Topher would’ve expected. Genuine.
It occurred to Topher that he was giving far more sympathy to him, than he had when he heard about Dominic’s donor.
Topher swallowed back the strange, unexpected prickle of irritation, and turned his head away. “It’s okay. I mean, it was…awhile ago.”
Yet he still had the bed. Not that it really meant anything. The room would have felt more empty, different, without it there. The open space would have been prominent; it would’ve been even worse.
Topher wasn’t exactly fond of change.
He put his dishes down and then came back. “Where did you come from, anyway?” he said, because if Dominic got to ask questions about him, he figured turnabout was only fair.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed, and he scoffed; it sounded too bitter and impatient to be a real laugh.
He began condescendingly, “Well, you see, when a man and a woman love each other very much-”
“I didn’t mean like that,” Topher snapped. “Way to yank the valve on the bile there, Crankypants. I was just wondering where you were from.”
“Nowhere.” Dominic gave him one of those looks of his. “Isn’t that kind of the point?”
Topher nodded quietly, understanding: ‘suckers didn’t have to live in cities - so they couldn’t.
It was the trade-off. The price for being better than most people was that they weren’t allowed around them.
“But you had to live somewhere, right? I mean, before you zoomed in to save the day, where were you last-”
“Nowhere. The wasteland.” Dominic’s words came out clipped, blunt. “I don’t exactly stay in one place much, okay? I wander. It works for me.”
Topher couldn’t stop noticing how very dark those eyes of his were, which made his anger and impatience seem even angrier. How his every movement had this extra coil to it, like there was energy and strength he was only keeping a rein on because it suited him to.
Topher held his arms up, palms out, cowering slightly in surrender. “Okay, I get it,” he conceded, voice wavering. “Sorry.”
There was a beat of silence. And then Dominic looked at him, belatedly.
“‘Crankypants’?” He sounded more incredulous than anything else.
Topher blinked at him. “Well, you are pretty cranky,” he said defensively.
He turned away, voice lowering to a sulking, begrudging mutter. “Those are pretty nice pants you’ve got, though. You fit them very well.”
“Thank…you?”
Dominic was looking at him like he suspected Topher might have been crazy. Or maybe just like he didn’t know what to think. For some reason, Topher felt inclined to mark that as a victory.
He couldn’t remember when it’d turned into a contest.
Behind him the feed stream changed again: the room was filled with the powerful, gripping sound of the Voice as she sang for the packed crowd at the Orphanarium, as well as her listeners around the world. Even through the filter of a recording, and an older one at that, for a moment Topher’s soul flew.
Dominic’s face remained a careful, neutral blank that he abandoned when Topher changed the channel, moving just a little too quickly to do so.
His eyebrows rose, because everyone knew that reaction wasn’t exactly normal. “Not a music-lover?”
Topher’s eyes dropped to the floor. He didn’t answer at first, going back to his chair and sitting down. Hands in his lap, he twisted them.
“That girlfriend I mentioned having?” he began quietly. “She got…really into…the Voice. Obsessed, I guess I should say. You know, like a lot of people do.”
He remembered how Ivy used to put glossy pictures of her everywhere: on the refridergator. By the window. Over her bed. Everywhere. And she started listening to the live streams religiously, playing the old ones over and over, until she’d remembered every note, memorized every word.
And Topher got it, though he wasn’t really there, the way she was. Lots of people were in love with the Voice. The feed was filled with streams dedicated solely to her, words of fevered praise and awe, people trading her recordings and watching her old performances. Of course Topher liked her music; who didn’t? Who couldn’t? He just didn’t get into it all the way.
Not the way Ivy had.
“And eventually, she did what a lot of them end up doing,” Topher finished. “She took off to the Orphanarium. To be with them. To be with her.” He sighed.
“So I don’t really like listening to the Voice all that much anymore. She sounds great, it’s just…it reminds me. Of her.”
Dominic slowly nodded.
“Makes sense,” he conceded, understanding.
Topher gave a nod of his own for no reason other than following the other’s lead, unfeeling and automatic. He snapped out of it though when Dominic began looking around, head swiveling.
Something in Topher tensed instinctively; he had this feeling like something was about to happen. He just couldn’t tell what.
Dominic gave Topher the onceover, responding to his soft light-colored clothing with yet another disapproving frown.
“I hope you have something more durable than that to wear,” he remarked.
“Huh?” Topher plucked at the fabric of his zip-up sweater, baffled. He had no idea where this conversation had come from all of a sudden. Like, Dominic hadn’t insulted enough about him already, now he needed to take shots at his clothing, too?
“No, this is pretty much it. I have a fairly straightforward wardrobe. Why, what’s wrong with it? Just because I like to be comfortable-”
“Once you head outdoors, ‘comfortable’ is the last thing you’re going to be if all you really own are lightweight sweats,” Dominic stressed. “I know you’re clearly a bit of a recluse, but come on. You don’t own a single jacket? Things that can be layered? Anything?”
“I don’t leave my apartment.”
The ‘sucker made a sardonic noise, apparently thinking this went without saying: “No, really.”
“No, you don’t get it,” Topher pressed. “I don’t.” He raised both hands, palms out. His mouth felt dry, and his voice broke slightly even as he emphasized with quiet conviction: “The other day, with Caroline and Paul, was the first time I’ve been outside since…ever.”
Dominic’s eyes widened as what Topher was saying hit home.
“Oh.”
Ivy and he used to talk about it, at times. She’d insist she was going to coax him out someday, going over the things they would do when she did. They’d feed the animals at the Garden, and read each other their favorite story files at the Library, and all sorts of other things; not even particularly exciting things, just things they’d enjoy. Topher would join in, and they’d elaborate on their plans together, laughing and smiling.
Sometimes, it would seem like it was really going to happen someday. And it didn’t even sound all that scary, or so bad.
Topher rubbed his arm, looking down at his feet on the cushioned floor.
“Topher.” He raised his head at Dominic’s voice, and found the other man staring at him adamantly. “You do get that you can’t stay here now, right?”
“What?” Topher felt a tingle of uneasiness. “N-no…what are you talking about?”
“They know where you are! The Revolution. You don’t honestly think they’re just going to give up, do you?” Dominic moved forward and Topher’s head tilted back, overwhelmed; it was the closest he’d come to him so far and Topher’s breath hitched instinctively at having another actual person right in his face.
“Obviously, they want you,” Dominic continued. “They think you’ll be useful to them, and they’re not just gonna back down because I chased them off.”
The darkness in his eyes was intense; it was easy to miss the blue entirely, now. It was only by staring hard that Topher even found it.
“Caroline Farrell is an idealist. Self-righteous and determined and, unfortunately, typically unstoppable. Paul Ballard’s not much better, especially when he’s paired up with her. If you stay, they’ll be back. The only thing that’ll change is this time they’ll wait until you’re asleep and drug you so you don’t even get the chance to resist.”
Dominic reached out, gripping Topher by the forearms. His fingers were cool but sturdy, strong.
“You don’t have a choice in this anymore, get me? Pack up some food, some supplies, enough to travel light, because we’re getting out of here. We don’t have time to waste.”
Topher stared at him numbly, feeling lightheaded. “You’re saying I have to leave…everything?” he asked. “That we’re going out of the city? That I’m never coming back?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I’m trying to tell you.”
Topher raised his hands and brushed against Dominic’s wrists, shoving him off and away. He retreated back toward his desk, head shaking, channeling his disbelief and fear into anger.
“But…I don’t want to go! I like it here, I…how is this fair?”
“It isn’t fair,” Dominic snapped at him, yelling, patience lost. “It’s not fair, because this is reality! It’s not some code you can manipulate. It’s not some game you can plug in and out of whenever you want.”
Topher cowered again, flinching. Dominic’s face had twisted into a hard, angry mask, his lips curling in a snarl as his voice rose.
And when he spoke, Topher could see the flash of sharp white fang.
“Maybe you never asked to get involved in this, and I’m sympathetic to that, but it doesn’t change the cold, hard facts. You’re not safe here. Not anymore. Your only choice is to leave, and if you can’t wrap your cloistered, sim-fried brain around that, then I will drag you out of here myself!”
Topher slumped back, hand on his desk for support. Everything felt like it was spinning.
He’d never gone outside, not once he was old enough to have a say in the matter, because there was nothing out there he wanted. Nothing he was interested in.
Inside, he was fed and warm and safe and happy. If he wanted to talk to people he could do it on the feed. He had his data-stack, his holo-drive. What more could he ever need?
“Why is this happening?” he whispered, a weak plea. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing you need to understand. All you need is to grasp the fact that you have to go.” Dominic wasn’t yelling anymore, wasn’t glaring. But his face was still set in a serious frown. “If you really need a reason, I’ll give you one: because I’m making you.” He looked away, giving a bitter scoff.
“Make me the bad guy, if that’s what you need. Not like it’s a role I’m unused to playing.”
Topher was quiet for a moment. Slowly he raised his arms, wrapping them around his body.
More to himself he whimpered, “You’re telling me to give up my whole life.”
Dominic gave a dismissive glance around.
“What life?” he asked coldly.
Topher met his eyes. He hugged himself tighter.
Dominic sighed.
“I know what you’re probably thinking. You’re wondering, hey, if I have to go on the run anyway, why not join the Revolution? Why not just go with them? They’re the ones that are supposed to be trying to change things, right?” He met Topher’s gaze hard. “But I’m telling you for your own safety that that’s a bad idea. It’s a very stupid, dangerous idea that if you’re lucky doesn’t end with you getting killed.”
Topher hadn’t actually been thinking about the Revolution at all. It hadn’t even occurred to him. But once Dominic said it, he realized it did bring up a good point. He supposed that he had a choice.
Topher raised his head and looked at Dominic carefully. He watched his face.
“Tell me something. And be honest,” Topher asked. “Have you ever lied to me yet, about anything?”
Dominic blinked, seemingly caught off-guard.
“No. I haven’t,” he promised.
Topher considered that. He nodded.
“All right,” he concluded, softly. “Guess I’m with you, then.”
*
[continued]