Chapter 18: Red Flashes, White Lies
Slave to Memory [19 of 44] - You're only as strong as the weakest person you love. For Murph, that strength is about to be tested—with blood, Dust, and broken bonds.
I should be somewhere else.
I feel it—the urgency. The itch crawling up my spine, the prickling of sweat on my neck. Something was stalking me, even as I fall, fall, fall back into another damned memory.
Omni, are you listening? You need to hear this. There’s only so much time before it slips away again. This is your second lesson, Omni.
You're only as strong as the most vulnerable person you love.
And you're too powerful to lose your head, you’ve got too much raw talent.
Jessalyn used to say the same thing. “Too big to fail,” she’d scoff, whenever she watched the Company snatch from the poor to line the pockets of the rich. She hated that. She hated hypocrisy most of all. She was... She was the best of us. The one who kept us grounded, kept us honest. And now...
Red flashes on white.
The memory slashes through my mind in fragments: blood, pale skin, Jessalyn’s still face. All of it, like a strobe in the dark, there and gone, there and gone.
I remember that first moment—the shock, the numbness that followed.
Gabe and Jess... they were gone.
Their lives snatched away while I’d been too caught up in my own distractions.
I didn’t help clear the room. I couldn’t.
All those promises I’d made to them—how I’d protect them, how I’d be there... All of it broken.
Instead, I fell apart. First night, straight back into bad habits. I crawled into the bottle, into every Dust vial I could find, burying myself in oblivion. Two days later, I surfaced from a bender, filthy, numb, and shaking with regret.
Magda found me on the porch steps, high as a kite and covered in filth. She was the one who cleaned me up, who dragged me back into the light, forcing me to face reality.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, her voice soft but the unspoken implication clear. About them.
"I don’t know," I said. I lied, of course.
I knew exactly what I was going to do. I’d already decided. But the less she knew, the better. Magda was too soft for what I'd done, tough as nails but at her core she wouldn’t agree with my plan.
I needed more information, I told myself. Needed answers. Needed someone to blame. People like to believe there are no laws, that you could get away with anything.
And to a degree, you could. If you had even a little money or street cred, you’d walk. But for what I had in mind, there’d be hell to pay.
I was going to kick over a hornet's nest.
The next night I remember in flashes—neon-bright and jagged. The sign of the Fireman’s Arms. The smoky interior. The press of bodies, the noise pressing in around me.
One drink, two drinks. Three. Waiting and listening.
My djinn, the one I’d lost, was the first to catch him.
<He approaches> his voice said, cool and calm as always. It was strange hearing it again—hearing him again, after everything. Hearing him without remembering his name. A shadow where something vital had once been.
"I’m not looking for your approval," I muttered under my breath.
The man, Vos, caught on the CCTV cameras outside swaggered into the Arms like he owned the place.
I knocked him to the floor, bound him, and had him stuffed in the trunk of an autocar before his idiot friends could react. It took almost half my Compute to create a dead zone for a mile around, blocking every signal. Their cries for help vanished into static, unnoticed and unanswered.
I drove him to the edge of the unfinished highway. It felt apt—another thing left for dead by the Company, just like everything that mattered. The highway was a road to nowhere, an empty stretch leading to unfinished business.
Just like this.
I stood at the edge now, looking down at the parking lot below—a convenient place to have an honest conversation.
The tent dwellers who squatted here watched but didn’t see. They never got involved. Why risk what little they had when it was so much smarter to look the other way.
My djinn sent the autocar away on a spiraling route to throw off the chase.
Voss knelt in front of me, blinking through blood from a cut on his forehead. He was talking, saying something stupid.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked, his tone smug.
"No."
"I’m with the Numbers."
"I know."
"The name's Voss."
“I know.”
He kept talking. "I can sort you out. Anything you need. You like Dust?"
For a heartbeat, I paused as temptation reared its head, and the thirst almost took hold.
Red flashes on white.
The ruined room, Jessalyn’s still face. My hands trembled, but I shoved the craving down. Hard.
Instead, I looked up.
The skies above were alive with the whirring shapes of night flyers, sending this and that to every corner of the city. These modern beasts of burden, with their grabbing arms and rotary blades.
I snagged two from the heavens. My djinn tore through their security like wet paper, and they fell under my control. I tethered them to my fists, like steel boxing gloves, and used drones to knock Voss to the ground again. Sending them smashing into his body. Then I directed their grabbing arms to lift him up, so I could look him in the eye. Realization dawned on him as he blinked at me, fear widening the whites of his eyes. He started to struggle as I gestured for the drones to shift away and dangle him over the edge of the unfinished highway. His feet started kicking over empty air.
"____, crack his Link," I ordered, even reliving the memory his name was absent. Burnt away. I should have known what I was doing to him.
<Done. Overlaying his vitals,> he replied.
His voice remained calm, disapproving the acts of violence. I knew he was angry, I could sense it through the Bond, but I also knew he had hard boundaries I was forcing him to cross. Despite his own version of love for Gabe and Jess, I was pushing him to the limit.
Voss struggled against the drone’s gripping arms, his eyes wide and wild as he hung above the drop. His heartbeat spiked, his blood awash with adrenalin and fear.
Bravado seldom lasts long.
"I want answers," I growled.
"Anything," he said, the word bursting from him in a rush.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
A flick of my fingers, and he dropped a foot, the drones whining as they strained to hold him.
"I don’t know you, man!" he gasped, glancing down at the empty air below. "Give me a clue, please!"
"You killed them—you did something to Gabe."
I flicked an image of Gabe into his mind, and images of the aftermath.
Red splashes on white.
His eyes grew wide as realisation dawned. His face paled.
"Wait —hold on now— I'm just the delivery boy. The messenger. Told to drop the stuff inna his drink and leave him be."
"What stuff?"
"Don’t know." He squirmed, his eyes darting as if he could escape the truth. "Came down from the Doc, they just told me to get him to drink it."
"Who’s the Doc?"
"Numbers, high up, close to the Captain." His gaze flickered down to the ground. "I swear, I don’t know more."
<He’s lying.> His voice cut in, his tone cool and certain.
I tightened my grip on Voss’s fate, anger surging. "Don’t lie to me!"
One of the drones released him on my signal, buzzing away back to its last orders, its memory wiped and its logs scrubbed.
Voss lurched, suspended by the remaining drone, which strained to hold him up, its engines starting to smoke.
"It won’t last long," I said, as his panic intensified.
"They’re in Town— the old CBD—in a hijacked building. An old bank or something." His head jerked as he tried to show the direction. "That’s all I know."
"How do I get in?"
"I don’t know," he whimpered, glancing down at the drop below. "I’m just a delivery guy. I don’t get in off the street—just did the pickup and followed orders."
<I have the location,> my djinn intoned, still calm, but I could feel his disapproval radiating like heat. <This man is broken enough, Murph. Spare him.>
"Do they know I'm coming?"
"No."
<He’s lying,> his voice came again, sharper this time, as if hoping I’d reconsider.
<Revenge will only deepen your pain. Let him go.>
But the rage boiled over. A flick of my fingers, like brushing away dust or dirt. That’s all it took to end Voss.
<No!> His voice ripped through my mind, a burst of raw disapproval. Seconds later, Voss' screams ended in silence as the pavement below refused to yield.
My djinn was silent for a long while.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and sorrowful.
<You’ve gone too far, Murph. This is… senseless.> His words were heavy with disappointment, each syllable a crack in an already icy Bond.
I should have felt the first cracks in the Bond then. But I was consumed with the need for vengeance.
"He made Gabe kill Jess," I muttered, as if that justified it.
<Not knowingly.>
"This trash heap of a world is a little cleaner now," I whispered, but there was no satisfaction.
<That I can agree with, but I won’t help you murder.>
My djinn began outlining the building I needed to find—
<Goddammit, Murph, we could use your help!> Syn’s voice, sharp and urgent, cut through.
The memory fractured, pixelating, the sounds and sensations of the past dissolving like smoke. Murph lurched upright, heart pounding with the adrenaline of the memory.
The now.
Omni lay sprawled on the floor, blood trickling from her ears.
This is real. What the hell just happened?
Was Murph right to do what he did? Part of me thinks I would see red, but another part of me thinks it would just make things worse.
What would you do?