Each Separate Dying Ember - XXXII

Daneel

"Mr. Khoury, have you taken any illegal substances in the last 24 hours?"
Kiah doesn't answer. He hasn't said anything.
Atarah is still holding her composure. Ben, Micah, and Matt are sat beside her, close together on the tiny interview bench, all silent, staring at the floor. Kiah is a half-foot away from Atarah on her other side. One hand is across his abdomen and the other wrapped around his throat.
North is sat next to me. He's still shaking.
"Mr. Khoury," the officer repeats, loudly, "your cooperation would be greatly appreciated at this stage. Please, have you taken any illegal substances in the last 24 hours?"
"I object to the relevance of this question to the investigation," North says. He coughs - his voice is hoarse and low. He doesn't raise his eyes.
The Enforcement is quiet for a few seconds.
"I do not think you are in a position to challenge what I feel may be relevant, Mr. York," the officer responds eventually. North almost flinches at the tone of voice, but then he clenches his jaw and suddenly his fists are opening and closing and he's twisting his head, feathers shaking out in agitation.
"Oh, please, carry on," he snaps, voice black and - sarcastic. "I suppose it's along the same train of thought when you asked Atarah what line of work she was in, asked Daneel how much she'd had to drink, and asked me whether I was quite well and would like a cup of tea for the shock. A... Boy... Is dead - Jesus Christ!"
The officer takes a deep breath through his teeth, whistling the air out through tight lips. "I understand this is difficult for all of you. However, we take this investigation very seriously, and--"
"How seriously?"
The officer stops, turns back to North. Closes the tablet. "Excuse me?"
My neck is prickling. I don't look at him. A Long could never talk this.
But North don't stop.
"I've been looking. There have been more than a hundred reported deaths of Short-Wings beneath the age of twenty in similar violent circumstances in the last six months. Enforcement were called to less than thirty of them. Enforcement turned up to seven. None were taken further. There have been sixty Long-Wing deaths suspected to have been caused by Broad-Wings in the same time period. Ten were investigated. A Long-Wing is more likely to be arrested upon calling Enforcement than taken to hospital, if requiring medical attention. In the past twelve months, more than forty Short-Wings have been shot and killed, arrested and beaten, or otherwise applied to with unlawful force, by Enforcement without charge. Five of them were attacked after having called the Enforcement for help. A boy with a homophobic slur scratched onto his face has been found dead - and your question is what kind of wings he had, and whether or not his best friend was high when he found him."
"Fuck Asher," snarls Kiah, so suddenly that every eye in the room, which has been drawn slowly to North, snaps across to him, "Fuck Asher!"
The Enforcement opens the tablet again, turning slowly to face Kiah, then glances at the rest of us. "Is... Asher... Another Pa-- Short-Wing?"
Just for a second, his eyes dart nervously toward North as he corrects himself. I don't think anyone other than me notices.
But Kiah ain't talking to him - he's looking at the rest of us, not quite meeting our eyes. He looks like he hasn't slept for days, and his face is swollen from the tears that made his eyes red. His hair is out-grown and greasy, hanging limply around his face, not the butchered mess it used to be. His new-grown feathers are slate grey. It makes him look older, and with the days of stubble and the tired way he moves, Kiah could be twenty years older than he is now, as his face twists into an ugly snarl.
"I'm gonna' kill him. I am going to rip that bastard's fucking heart out!"
He's on his feet and screaming and the Enforcement yells. "Sit down!" he roars, but Kiah just snarls and turns away, his wings flaring and knocking the tablet from the officer's hand. The screen shatters on the stone floor, and the Broad makes a grab for Kiah. "I can have you for assault of Enforcement," he spits.
Kiah turns, bringing his elbow up like I've seen him do before, and I know that the officer won't see the blow before it shatters his jaw - but then Atarah is beating on his arm, yanking it down and pinning both hands behind his back. Ben and Matt grab onto his shoulders, pulling him back against the far wall - but the Enforcement is reaching for the handcuffs on his belt anyway, and when he sees that Micah stands up as well, yelling, and in the tiny cell everyone is shouting and pushing and there's no more room to move and there's scuffling outside the door like someone else is going to run in and arrest all of us. The door's pulled open from the other side, and Clay walks in.
There's barely enough room for him to step into the room, but he does anyway. His entrance is enough to diffuse the situation, not by much but by as much as shuts everyone up. He strides straight to North, almost pushing the Enforcement out of the way - he barely sees him - and pulls him to his feet in a hug.
North is shaking. I watch them. He doesn't flinch away - in fact, he looks... Half-comfortable. He wants to be comfortable but he isn't. He wants to relax and be relieved that Clay's here, but some part of him still withdraws from the hug. But Clay doesn't notice and when he's whispered something in North's ear and North has murmured something back, he looks up, seeing the rest of the room for the first time.
"What's going on?" he snaps.
"The seven of them were brought in for questioning," the Enforcement replies, not looking away from Kiah, who's breathing heavily, almost lifted off the ground by Atarah, Matt, and Ben all holding him back. The cuffs are still out in his hands. "This one attempted to assault me, and his friends are aiding in the resist of his arrest."
"We do not intend to interfere with the course of justice," Clay declares. He's grasping tight onto North's hand, and he starts to pull away, turning toward the door. "I've spoken to the intending officer, North. You can come home."
But North doesn't move, stood so still that he jerks on Clay's arm when he tries to pull him out the door. Clay stops dead and turns slowly back, his dark eyes low and warning. North is shaking his head. His eyes are filled with confusion.
"I can't go," he says weakly, and Clay shakes his head, sighing.
"Yes, you can. I've spoken to the intending officer of the station. You aren't required for further questioning, and as there are no charges to be brought against you--"
"No, I... I need to stay. They haven't taken a statement yet."
Clay's fist tightens around North's hand so suddenly that North flinches - but doesn't move. "Speak to me outside," Clay hisses, his eyes darting around the room - and meeting mine for a second. But I don't look down. I meet his eyes right back. It makes him angrier. I hope he doesn't take it out on North. Shit. I think he might, the way he looks back at him a moment later. "They don't need a statement." His voice is lower, designed not to be heard, but only Kiah isn't listening now. "He was just a fucking Short, it's not like it matter--"
He doesn't finish his sentence.
He stops the word before it ends and then looks at North. He must have felt it. He must have felt that cold icy chill that suddenly washed out from North - because just for a second, the impenetrable, proud Clay Nicholson loses his train of thought. Maybe he even regrets starting the sentence at all.
North lets go of Clay's hand. Not the other way around: North opens his hand and pulls his fingers out of Clay's grip, and Clay's arm drops limply back to his side.
"I need to stay," he says quietly.
Clay's jaw sets and his whole face twists like he's trying to hold in a sour sneer. Then he turns and leaves, closing the door loudly behind him. His movements are jerky and angry.
Shaking, North sits down.
The Enforcement looks back toward Kiah. He knows he's outnumbered and even if he has the law on his side, he could still be dead before his screams woke up the two officers sat in the corridor outside. Normally, he might look to North for support, certain that another Broad would back up his statement, whatever he said, if one of the Shorts didn't make it out of the questioning room in one piece - but now...
He's holding the cuffs in two hands, but one wrist twitches slightly toward the taser on his belt. His eyes flick between Kiah, still held off the ground and breathing hard, the three pinning him back, Micah caught ready to act if he makes any move toward Kiah, and then me and North, sat on the benches by the door. The guy has the pride of the law on him and he probably don't even see six of the people in this room as people at all - but the one who does matter is the one that's maybe least on his side at all. So he starts to lower the handcuffs.
"All right," he snarls, voice low and face twisted like with disgust, "you-" he nods at Kiah "-are guilty of assaulting an officer and damage to Regime property. You three-" Matt, Ben, and Atarah "-should be done for resisting arrest. You-" Micah "can still be done for assault, on account of making me fear for my life in your presence. Long, I want to get you for something but unfortunately you can't be clipped just for existing, so you're staying right there until I'm done with the others. You, sir, I recommend follow your friend and follow his advice: get out of here. With all respect, this isn't your gambit and it isn't, as he rightly pointed out, your problem. Now, I am going to call in several other officers when this one's gone, and we are going to put each of you under single arrest until such a time as we see fit. We are going to do it calmly and no-one is going to get shanked or, indeed, tazed up their asshole. Agreed?"
No-one moves for a few seconds. The Enforcement turns his head to look at North out of the corner of his eye.
"I can't go," North says flatly. He's still shaking. His feathers rustling is the only sound. "It is against your own laws to apprehend an innocent without charges. Daneel has every right to leave this room, as do I. As for the others, I think we can quite agreeably make claim that Atarah, Ben, and Matt have attempted to keep the Regime's Peace, in fact aiding an officer of the law, as they attempted to calm their friend, Mr. Khoury. While it is regrettable that his clumsiness has caused you to drop your tablet, I doubt a brave Enforcement officer such as yourself should have come to fear for his life simply because a Short-Wing bated a little."
"As an officer of the law," the Enforcement responds through gritted teeth, glaring with a twisted ugly face at North now, "it is my duty to decide the charges I will apply to criminals, at my discretion.
"Of course," agrees North. He's still looking at the wall straight ahead, hands on the bench on either side of him. I can still feel the waves of cold washing over me from his set, hard, face. "Which is why you must keep all of us, if that is the case, for questioning."
The officer doesn't respond for several seconds. Then he turns away from North and faces the Shorts directly again. "Sir, I do not wish to cause you any inconvenience. Please leave this room before I have to arrest you as well."
"Arrest me."
"I have no cause to arrest you."
North stands up. I make a grab for his suit jacket, trying to pull him back down, but he isn't paying attention and I daren't stand up to try and hold him back as he steps out of my reach.
"Don't you?" he says.


North

"What the fuck happened!?" Clay yells as the cell door bangs against the wall, and I fall off the bench in surprise.
"I- I punched an Enforcement," I stammer. Honesty is the best policy - or at least, the thing you fall back on when you're too alarmed to make up a lie.
"You punched a fucking Enforcement!?"
"I punched an Enforcement," I confirm. He's staring at me, his mouth open, eyes bulging, wings and arms out and legs apart. After a few seconds, I climb back onto the bench and add, "He wouldn't arrest me."
"He wouldn't arrest you so you punched him?"
I give it a moment. "Yes."
Clay makes a noise in his throat - he looks too worn-out even to pace. "What on earth compelled you..." he starts quietly, but then stops, shaking his head and holding up his finger when I go to answer. I sit on the bench and watch him, rubbing my lips between my teeth. After almost half a minute, he gives a little sigh and then suddenly sits down next to me. My heart lurches. He smells of sweat and cigarette smoke - and with his sudden tired collapse, I feel it all hit me as well.
I don't care that I got arrested. I literally don't. I can't feel any kind of reaction to the fact inside of me. But I'm tired and in the silence of Clay's slow breaths next to my face, all I can think about is Ezekiel.
Slowly, I let myself fall against Clay. He lets out another little sigh, and his arm goes around my shoulder. The cell door swung most of the way to on its rebound, but of course the perspex is transparent - distorted by the reinforced white lines ribbed across it, but transparent. There's no-one on the corridor outside, though, and the cell opposite is empty.
"You dick-wad," he whispers, squeezing my shoulder. His lips brush the top of my head.
There are tears in my eyes. They hurt, and I blink to try and get them away but I can't raise my hands to wipe my face.
My voice is hoarse and barely audible, even to me. "Why is everyone dying?" it says.
Clay stops and glances down - I can't meet his eyes, just stay staring at my knees and the wet drops which start to appear on it and the smears where some of them land on the pane of my glasses. "Everyone's not dying," he says. He mostly sounds confused. Two of his friends are dead. He can't be that confused about it.
So I don't know how to respond to that. The tears are stinging. Aren't there digestive enzymes in tears? That can't be good for my eyes.
Kiah killed Pike. The Shorts attacked us, so it might have been Ben or Matt or Micah or Asher that gave Leif the knife in his gut that killed him two weeks later. Clay didn't know we were going to be attacked. Clay didn't know what was going to happen.
But he must have known it was a risk. When he asked us to go. When he asked me to go in his place. Everyone went into that situation willingly, with full knowledge of what they were going in for.
Except me.
Because I never asked.
I never asked Clay what he did, even when I mostly knew. I never asked, I just did his accounting and arranged the meetings when I had to and reaped the benefits of whatever he did.
Just like I never asked how the steppes got into such disarray when the Reg clearly had so much money to spend on our parts of the city. And I never asked why exactly Longs would kill each other, just agreed that we should probably shoot everyone who lives on a council estate, damned free-loaders, menace to society, hah hah. Just like I never asked why society is like it is, and how that might possibly, just maybe, link back to a history of hundreds of years of slavery and colonialism that brought Long-Wings into our cities as property and then 'freed' them without any attempt to supplement them, and screwed up the countries of Short-Wings so much that sixty years ago half of their population came to the promised land of the Broad-Wings, who had left them to live in their own slums when they gave them 'independence' a century before - and then told both of their people that they got themselves into this mess, and we shouldn't have to work to get them out of it.
I benefit just from living in the city from the enslavement of people a hundred years before. And I benefit in every meal Clay buys, every set of clothes he gifts, every day I go rent-free in his house, from the enslavement his people, my people, the Faces, evoke on Short-Wings and Long-Wings alike.
Because Clay Nicholson is a drug dealer and in eight weeks he has not apologised for his fuck-up forcing me to take part in the Disciplines, because Clay Nicholson does not apologise.
The Clay Nicholsons of the world do not apologise.
His phone vibrates but he ignores it. Mine was taken off me when I was formally arrested, along with my wallet and tie - since they replaced all of the bars with the clouded transparent panes in cells there's nowhere to do it, but I suppose they have to be sure no-one tries to get out of it before the minor sentencing has gone through.
Clay doesn't check his phone - he shifts a little, and then exhales, his breath stirring my hair and filling my nose with smoke smell. He shifts slightly, unhooking his left arm from my waist to check his watch - it's almost three in the morning. My eyes are raw and red and every part of my body aches. I never had dinner, and barely ate yesterday morning, but I don't even know if I'm hungry. My hands shake, probably due to low blood sugar, and my legs are weak - but even if part of the heavy sickness in my stomach is due to hunger, it makes the thought of food gag in my throat. And my heart is pounding too fast. I don't think it's slowed down since Juniper...
Oh God.
Clay must feel the muscles in my shoulders tense up because he makes a quiet shushing sound, rubbing my arm softly. Yes. Panic about that. Panic about the Juniper situation, your fear of Clay, it's easier than the possibility of maybe thinking about... Ezekiel.
"This has all been one big bullshit misunderstanding," Clay murmurs, lips on the top of my head. My eyes fall closed. I'm too dehydrated for any more tears; all that happens is that my eyes sting a little, and my head continues its dull, gentle throb. "We'll stay here until morning - it's not safe to walk home now. I'll be here with you. Then we'll get you out - don't worry, they're not going to clip you. All of this is over. It's all over now. Any luck, you won't even have to look at the rest of them ever again..."
I blink, hard, trying to bring myself back from the brink of an exhaustion that slips in happily to Clay's gentle, warm rocking, trying to form words in a mouth that's numb and empty to say the words I was thinking... Just a second ago.
"The others," my voice croaks.
"Hmm?" I don't think I actually said "The others", I think I made a noise like Ne huffuss - I try again.
"What about... The others? The equipe? We have... The Disciplines... Have to..." I blink again but somehow my eyes don't open when they shut this time. I try one more time as Clay's fingers slip through my hair, combing it gently out, his other hand holding my shoulders gently still. "Can't clip - carnival..."
I don't know what I wanted to say but it never finishes coming out of my mouth.