* * *
“Saul.”
Roused from his trance, Saul looked up. Pope’s eyes were broad and dark with premonition and he lifted the glass of ambrosia to his lips.
“What do you know about Martial Knight?”
There was a long pause.
“Is there something I should know?”
The hollow eyes veered deviously up and surfaced through the glare of the round lenses.
“Are you aware that she had attempted to cohabit with another martial?”
“Yes,” he replied. “He died in Nova Crimea.”
He elucidated the fact as though there was no disputing it.
“Are you also aware,” Pope asked, “that she tried to kill him?”
There was long, uninterrupted silence.
“She took a knife to him,” the neuralist elaborated, “cut right across his face.”
His immediate thought was that Pope was lying. Then, flashes of Malachi came back to him, and he thought of Celyn’s reticence, her silence about their past…
“You did not know?” asked Pope, stifling his racing thoughts. “Professional secrecy should preclude me from telling you all this. They had shared a long history of defection.”
Saul looked up, tried desperately to spy out the shadows of a lie in the cold, blue eyes. There was no way this could be true. “They were allies,” he murmured in rejoinder.
Pope hummed. “I suppose Martial Malachi’s business interests were of more concern to him. The neural program would have eliminated any traces of residual animosity they may have had toward one another.”
He felt as though he were falling from the heights of all the hopes he had conjured.
“Yes,” whirred the neuralist. “You might say Martial Knight is a … victim of her former life.” He delicately removed the pince-nez from his eyes and slipped them into his coat, once more lacing his fingers together beneath his chin. “Suffice to say, not everyone who comes to our world does so for the reasons we would prefer. Sometimes misfortunes drive us to paths not entirely of our own choosing. Martial Knight is one such person. Unpredictable … Volatile. She is not safe, Saul. I feel you should know that.”
He recalled the feel of thick scars on his fingertips.
What did they do to you?
Memories flashed through his mind uncontrollably until his thoughts stopped on one shocking realisation. His heart stopped.
Naomi.
Pope put down the rest of his drink and lowered his glass. “Well,” he said. “I suppose there is little need to pursue this formality any further unless, of course, there is something else you would like to discuss.”
“No,” Saul answered hastily.
“Very well,” Pope nodded. “I will forward the report of your attendance to the martial court registry … Miss Robinson, please take note.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Thank you.”
The office doors opened.
“Until next time, Martial Vartanian…” Pope bore a portentous simper. “Good day.”
Saul rose from his seat at once. As soon as the doors shut behind him his saunter became a panicked stride and he marched straight out, his heart drumming in his chest.
He entered the capsule, the bubble doors shut. The whole metropolis slowed with his haste. Something had happened – something bad.
The chronometer showed four 1s as he boarded the maglev on Platform 7. Flashbacks of everything Celyn had said and done kept coming back to him throughout the maglev trip and the anger bubbled up inside him. Dark and bloody thoughts ripened in his imagination right until the maglev stopped at Haven Main.
He ran, pushing through the crowded footpaths of the sky city to the next capsule terminal and when the capsule stopped in the second stratum of East Sector at the intersection, he entered the first autocab he could find.
“Fourth Street, Orion Avenue.”
The autocab stopped outside The Grove five minutes later.
He raced up the stairwell bounding two steps at a time.
Please be alright, he hoped frantically.
He mounted the last stair and headed straight for the front door and stopped, suddenly, about three meters away, gasping for air.
The door was open. Strange noises were coming from inside. His sights veered down, at the trail fading over the brink of the doorway, ending right at his feet.
They were footsteps: Blood-red footsteps.
He waited to catch his breath, then, quietly, approached the threshold.
The door closed soundlessly behind.
“Naomi.”
His call echoed through the hall. The holoscreen was still on. The only other sound in the house was the steady whistle of the stove alarm. A kitchen knife and half a sliced bell pepper lay on the kitchen counter. The faint line of bloody footsteps diminished right at his feet.
He followed the trail to the living area and his pulse raced again when the thick bloodstains on the floor came in sight. He picked up the blooded blade from the floor. A thick trail of blood drops led across the floor of the living area to the adjacent corridor smeared all over the parquetry.
He turned the corner of the corridor and charged forward along the blood-smeared trail. The door to his room burst open.
“Naomi!”
She was lying up against the bedside. Her hand was bound with a bloody cloth, her clothes stained red, her head wilted, her eyes closed and her face very pale. He rushed over to her and lifted her head gently by the chin, brushing the hair away. He could see her small chest slowly rise and fall.
She was breathing. She sniffled and her eyelids twitched apart and closed again.
“Dad …”
Her voice was semi-conscious.
He could feel the tears still wet on her cheeks. Her skin was pale from blood loss. The furrows in his frown deepened. “Where is she?”
The little mouth stirred but no answer came.
“Where is she?” he demanded again.
Naomi’s eyes shut. The little head hung. She was gone.
C. 5: Day 613