Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #14 – Silver Hand Blues

Notes, a cascade of bright, cheerful notes. The strings of a black and gold violin, plucked and caressed by the bow, a joyful symphony filling the air in a continuous stream of music. Kryzalid tapped her foot down at the rhythm of the melody, twirling and whistling at every step on the paved road. Bandaged eyes, dark blue ripped cape with a hood, her red braids swinging behind her, an everlasting grin printed on her face. She pranced around in her stage costume, artfully avoiding the holes and cracks in the ground, while playing her violin in the streets of Lower Aralu, jumping from fence to road to fence again, like an ethereal spirit from an age long gone. Lacrima couldn’t help but wonder why that human was behaving like that. As garish as a peacock, as playful as a sparrow. Not what she was expecting from someone labeled as ‘remorseless terrorist and mass murderer’ on the comnet. If anything, that display of elegance made her put that blind violinist into the ‘cute’ bucket, together with chicks and kiwis. Kryzalid performed another pirouette, leaping from the fence, ending with a perfect landing on the asphalt, before spinning once more on her foot and bowing to her companions. Then, before they even had a chance to applaud, she walked forward, hopping on the beat of her own soundtrack.

Lacrima averted her gaze from her guide, analyzed her surroundings, trying to build a mental map of the neighborhood. Metal above. Asphalt below. Dark everywhere, like the blackest of nights, dotted by neons and LEDs. Old buildings all around, cracked plaster, bricks exposed. A parade of lights above her, around fifteen meters from the ground. That was Lower Aralu’s ‘sky’, the artificial ceiling that watched over the underground block, a ceiling that, according to the comnet, was once everchanging, shifting colors and patterns to mimic the outside world. With time, the systems failed, one by one, till nothing remained but a couple of blinking patches, static, and absolute blackness. Lacrima’s eye darted back to Kryzalid, to her outlandish outfit, one that left her legs and feet bare – something that wouldn’t have been out of place for a rhizome, but that, for a human, was highly unusual. Her hand instinctively went for her own garments, for her chest, her belly. The stitches were keeping up rather well, for being late night fixes. She wasn’t expecting that halfmetal to be that good at sewing, not with those huge hands of his. Yet, the result was remarkable. If she didn’t know that her clothes had been shredded by whips not even one afternoon before, she wouldn’t have been able to discern it. The same went for her skirt, now properly covering her thigh again. She even had a new eyepatch to hide her rose from sight and a new sleeve concealing her vine arm. Effectively, she looked almost like a normal human. She took a mental note to ask Dobriovchka later whether he could teach her some tricks: knowing even half of what he knew about fixing garments would have made her life as a renegade way simpler. Sadly, not even that resourceful iron giant could make her platform shoes a tiny bit taller. She asked him, of course, but he didn’t have anything at hand to increase the sole height from eight to ten centimeters. Though, after all Dobriovchka did for her limited wardrobe, she didn’t have any rights to complain. The halfmetal in question was walking at a leisurely pace, wearing a bright orange crop top that left his biceps and abs in full view, paired with long black pants and spiked boots. Lacrima had scanned that body of his, trying to understand where the mechanical parts began – a surprisingly hard task. The abs he was so proudly showing off were unquestionably organic, and so where his arms. Yet, that gray skin of his felt unnatural. Maybe, he was like a sepia flamingo – born white and turned gray because of what he ate.

“So much for keeping a low profile.”

That remark made both Lacrima and Dobrio turn around, to face the fourth member of their small party. Gas mask on, red vest covering a set of tactical boots, pants and body armor full of belts and straps. And a gun, holstered on her right thigh. Dobrio shrugged, his eye wandered to Kryzalid, now spinning and prancing on a more action-y rhythm. He returned his attention to Robin, raised his thumb up.

“We’ll be fine. A little bit of music never killed anybody.”

Robin crossed his gaze, her eyes hidden by the black lenses.

“Except, I dunno, sixty-one people?”

“Anybody important. ‘Sides, we’re almost there.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry if I don’t trust a mass murderer.”

“Bold words from someone that slept like a brick in said mass-murderer’s den and made a mess of its bathroom this morning. I needed two hours to mop the floor. Two. Hours.”

“How was I supposed to know that the hot water knob in the shower was defective?”

“Ask before you take a shower, maybe?”

Robin growled under her mask. That incident would have never been happened, if she quietly left the house during the night, when everyone else was sleeping. But no, her body had given up, decided for her. At that point, staying one or two hours longer wouldn’t have made any difference. So, she decided to at least take a shower, while Dobrio was cooking breakfast for Kryzalid and Lacrima was watching a PV documentary about ancient swallows (those with two-pronged tails). Little did she know that the hot water knob would cause a massive deluge, one that couldn’t be stopped if not with the brute force of Dobrio’s triceps – but not before having soaked her from head to toes and made her tumble right in front of Lacrima. That caused her plant tendrils to act on their own, wrapping around Robin’s body to suck the excess water off her wet skin and feed, all while their owner’s only eye was still hypnotized by the sight of a swallow bringing a worm to her chicks. That embarrassing experience should have been enough to convince her to leave at the first possible moment but, somehow, the iron giant had convinced her to stay. All it took for him was one word.

‘Truth’.

The truth about Kryzalid, about the massacre that cost the life of forty-one people. That was what Dobrio offered her. And truth wasn’t something she could let go of that easily. Because knowledge was her ultimate goal, and not knowing was simply not acceptable. Yet, she didn’t expect the first step of said ‘truth’ would be walking around Lower Aralu behind a crazy violinist. Dobrio noticed her annoyance, but all he did was shrugging it off.

“Patience, Robin. The early bird gets the worm, but the late bird eats the early bird.”

As soon as Lacrima opened her lips to weigh on that, Dobrio patted her head, caressing her hair.

“It’s just a figure of speech, Laccy. Don’t take it literally.”

Suddenly, the music stopped, causing the three to stop talking and turning all together towards Kryzalid. She let out a big smile, performing a light curtsy before them, pointing her bow towards the side of that street.

“Aaaand here we are. Right, Dobrio?”

“Huh-uh.”

In front of her, a decrepit building with a blinking purple sign spelling ‘The Wrench Wench’. The windows were shuttered, the door was rusted and decaying. Yet, artificial light filtered through it, illuminating the road in the dead void that the street was. Kryzalid’s hand caressed the metallic surface, till her fingers got a hold of the handle. Then, she turned it, pulling the door open. A cloud of acrid smoke welcomed her. Tobacco mixed with some exotic weed, in a white mist that enveloped the small room completely. A desk on the far end of it, with an ashtray, several folders piled up. A rough, metallic arm with exposed pistons and rusted plates, keeping a cigarette between the fingers. A woman in her sixties, maybe seventies – the owner of said arm – drawing a puff while tapping her biological fingers on the wood. Long white hair, wrinkles under her blue eyes, a long-ish nose, a wide cross-shaped scar on her cheek, leather sleeveless jacket on a ‘Fuck the Corps’ t-shirt. And the expression of someone who had enough of that situation already. The woman groaned, her voice like sandpaper, grating to the ears, her index finger pointed at Kryzalid.

“No shoes, no service! How many times do I have to tell you, idiot?”

Kryzalid stomped her bare foot on the floor, growled like a lion.

“Service?! You should be happy I’m still spending my eas on you, granny!”

“Say that one more time, rancid bitch!”

“As many times as you wish, lurid fossil!”

The old woman frowned, put out her cigarette in the ashtray, twisted it till she almost turned it into fine dust.

“Okay, fine. What did you do this time? I mean, aside from, you know, killing twenty Peacekeepers in one go? Because everyone knows that. That video went viral. You’re lucky that your neighbors hate the Corps more than you.”

Kryzalid pulled down her hood, tapped her fingers on her neck, pulled out a set of four cables.

“Routine check-up. I almost lost an arm and got into… a car accident. I feel like some of my connections are fuzzy. I lost contact with one of them three times just this morning.”

“Of course. Of course you would.”

The old woman eyed the entrance, the small party gathered there. She let out yet another groan.

“And of course you ain’t here alone. G’day, Dobrio.”

Dobrio waved his hand, strolled forward with slow steps, standing shortly behind Kryzalid.

“Hello, Ms. Frankberg. I hope you’re having a lovely time.”

“It was perfect before you two showed up, thanks.”

Ms. Frankberg’s gaze turned down to his exposed abs, abs he was flaunting without shame in front of the old lady. She rested her cheek on her mechanical hand, grinned.

“Say, did you dress like that to get a discount, ‘cause you know I like’em rough? Yer cheese-grater abs ain’t it, chief – you can’t sway this old fox with that six-pack.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“So, you need a fix too?”

“I was in the same… let’s call it car accident as Mimi. I… might or might not have caused it. While shooting a buncha ‘keepers with cowmower, that is.”

The old woman coughed, her eyes dilated.

“Lagash take me, you two can’t give me a break, can you?”

Then she shrugged, tapped on an analog calculator.

“Alright, then. Mimi first. I just need a moment to fetch the tools. Strip to yer undies and lie on them bed, yes? Be right back.”

Kryzalid nodded, handed her violin and bow to Dobrio, pulled her vest upside down, took it off. She unhooked her bra, gave it to Dobrio too, leaving the scars on her shoulder blade in plain sight. As a final step, she unclipped her blindfold, letting her blue eyes get a hazy view of her surroundings – patches of colors made even more blurry by the everpresent tobacco mist. In nothing but her black shorts, Kryzalid walked slowly through the store, trying to find her way, using her sense of touch and the clicks of her tongue to orient herself. Echolocation, like bats. It wasn’t a substitute for a good sight, but at least it let her be more independent – using her music, the echoes of the clicks to build a three-dimensional map of the world around her. Seeing without seeing. The only way she could survive so long after losing her eyes. She reached the side of a cot, after coasting an open drape. Then, she lay on it belly down, her head on the pillow, her skin covered by those same yellow plasters with bees that Dobrio so cheerfully applied to her. Ms. Frankberg came back from the warehouse with a bunch of bottles and a set of weird-looking, half-rusted tools in her hands, depositing them close to the cot. But, before she began to work on her patient, she gave a glance at the small group of bystanders again.

“Say, nice-abs, who do them two be? Are them hookers?”

“Business partners.”

“Even gas-mask-guy?”

“Even her, yes.”

The old woman grinned.

“Then, mask off, beauty.”

Robin didn’t do anything. She simply stood still, ignoring her request. At which point, the old woman crossed her arms, started walking away from the cot.

“Oh, I forgot my appointment with the hairdresser. I’m not sure I can operate on Mimi now. Can you come back, let’s say… never?”

Dobrio shook his head, joined his hands, almost bowed to her.

“Please, Carola…”

“Please your sister. Either your ‘business partners’ play nice, or you can take your sorry ass out of me store and find another mechanic.”

“But you are the best!”

“Nah, I’m the only one who still wants to have anything to do with you two.”

Dobrio turned around, stared at Robin, lowered his shoulders in agony.

“Please, do what she says. I’ll keep up my end of the bargain, but I need you to do what Ms. Frankberg asks. Mimi needs that check-up, otherwise...”

He would have bitten his tongue, if he had one. Oversharing. He had almost started to overshare. Kryzalid would have slammed his head with a club, if a word more escaped his speakers. Robin, though, didn’t seem fazed, looked at his red eye in turn.

“Why can you keep your mask on and I can’t? What’s with the double standard?”

Only for the Ms. Frankberg to interject.

“‘Cause that’s no mask, sweetie – that’s his face. This moron sold his head – his whole head, skull and everything – on the BM years ago, yes?”

“Oh, yeah! It was a very well paid transaction!”

“And guess who had to build a new case for his brain? Guess!”

Robin glanced at the old woman, then back at Dobrio, then at Lacrima. Before heaving a long sigh, untying her gas mask, lowering her hood. Showing her face to Ms. Frankberg, as requested, only to keep up her end of the bargain. Ms. Frankberg whistled, returned to Kryzalid’s side.

“Now you’re speakin’ my language. Let’s begin.”

She cracked her fingers, mechanical hand against biological hand, took a screwdriver, wore a lens on her right eye, switched on the lights on the cot. Then, she delicately placed the tip of her tool on Kryzalid’s neck, forcing the four artificial connectors open, one by one. The tip entered inside them, grazed the surface, examining every single millimeter of the channel. Kryzalid bit her lips, crunched her fingers at every touch.

“I… it hurts, old hag!”

“That’s what you get for messing with your neural connections.”

“But… but normally it doesn’t hurt this much!”

“Shut up and let me work.”

Dobrio couldn’t help but notice the twisted smile on Ms. Frankberg’s face. Punishment. That was the punishment for crossing her. Every single jolt of pain through Kryzalid’s body. Every sudden ‘mistake’ or ‘slip’ in the movement of the tool. He shivered. His turn was going to come soon. And he knew how hard the old woman could twist her screwdriver down his neural paths. All of a sudden, Ms. Frankberg’s voice forced him out of his mind movie.

“While I check this disaster of a gal, what about chatting a little?”

She wasn’t taking her attention away from Kryzalid’s body, from her jittering extensions, and yet her words were flowing out quickly.

“You, eyepatch. That necklace of yers is cute. Whistling swan feathers, amirite?”

Lacrima’s eye widened in surprise, her mouth agape.

“You could tell?!”

“Huh, seen many of them in my youth. Nice birb. A bit small, though.”

Lacrima hopped like an excited rabbit, her eye almost sparkling.

“Whistling swans are such a precious species! True, they are the smallest swans – adult specimens can’t break one meter fifty of length and ten kilos, but their black bill is so elegant! Unfortunately, they were almost driven to extinction in the late 800s…”

The old woman interrupted her, her sandpaper-like voice overshadowing that of the rhizome.

“…but the Van Haijderen Act of 958 restored some of their habitat and saved their white ass, yeah. It was a huuuge victory. I remember having a hangover with the wildlife protection youth, all together. Those were wild times, I tell ya.”

Ms Frankberg winked at Lacrima, still without turning away from her patient.

“I’ve still got a buncha feathers we used to wear back in the days. That night, the damn feathers were all we wore, yes? Truly the best rave party of my life. That’s also how my son was born, by the way. Well, that aside, If ya want, I can give ya a couple of them! I don’t use ‘em anymore, but on you? They’d look pretty.”

“Really?”

“‘Course. Lemme inspect this idiot first, though.”

She pushed a small metallic tip deeper into one of the channel, causing Kryzalid to bite the pillow in response, her eyes almost wet with tears.

“O… old hag, please, focus, I…”

“Hush, I’m fixing the channel. The plug damaged it when it retreated into it and I need to flatten an electrode. It’s a question of seconds, alright? I’m almost done. Then, I’ll check your arms. How’s the wires in yer left hand? Oh well, don’t answer, I’ll get to it.”

Ms. Frankberg cleaned her tools with a mixture of alcohol and a nondescript gel, before starting to inspect Kryzalid’s right shoulder, touching the contour of the scar.

“Who’s the war criminal who stitched you?”

Dobrio waved his hand at the woman, his red eye wide open.

“That would be me.”

Ms. Frankenberg rolled her eyes, before focusing again on the now closed wound.

“Lagash take me, was bringing her to me so hard?”

“Oh, I tried, but she didn’t want to put her dear auntie in danger – her words!”

Kryzalid’s growled, letting go of the pillow, ignoring the pain.

“Dobrio, I swear I’ll cut your balls!”

“Hush, gal. Let your dear auntie patch ya.”

Her biological fingers moved on center of the scar, touched the skin patches around it.

“Humpf, not half bad. At a first sight, it looked like the work of a drunken clown, but you actually managed to stitch her muscles and tendons. Did she drink lymph too? Of course she did, since this disaster is a junkie, but that defo helped a lot. Rhizome lymph is that good for regenerating wounds, yes? I just wish this idiot didn’t need to suck it from a plant’s pussy every other day. Unless she likes licking bark clits, that is.”

If Dobrio could burst into laughter, he surely would have. Instead, all he could do was imitating that sound through his speakers, right as Kryzalid’s face became redder than a traffic light. Robin too felt somehow bad for her. Being operated on by that weirdo of a woman in front of three people while also being berated like that… made her almost feel pity for Kryzalid. Almost. Still, she couldn’t understand why Dobrio brought them with him there. He could have gone with his partner in crime without bothering Lacrima and her, but no, he insisted, said it was connected with the ‘truth’. Yet, what that ‘truth’ was, was something she was failing to grasp.

“Hey, greeny, do you happen to have a grandma called Robin?”

Robin’s heart skipped a beat. She gazed at the old woman, blinked once, twice, before her words could form again.

“…she’s my namesake, yes. Did you… know her?”

“You’re her splitting image, cut ears and all, I tell you! For a moment, I thought I was seeing her again, yes? But, yeah, met her at that rave where I conceived my son, a forty ago. Such a sweet gal, that jewel in yer front is the same, I take it? I guess you pass it down from mother to daughter? That’s cute!”

Before Robin could even reply, Ms. Frankberg slapped Kryzalid’s nape, started playing with her hair.

“Auntie’s proud of you, Mimi! You’re building quite the harem of beauties, ain’t ya? If ya’ve got to choose, though, marry that eyepatch gal and keep greeny as yer concubine. Or marry both, but keep it secret, or the Corps will use it against ya! But whatevs, I’ll build the best bed you’ve ever danced the horizontal tango on, it won’t break like ever!”

Kryzalid lifted her head again, her voice almost akin to a growl.

“Old hag, they are just! Business! Partners! I’m not dating them! Stop! Projecting! Your youth! On me! And check! My goddamn! Arm!”

“Alright, alright. Ugh. Such a bad temper.”

Ms. Frankberg’s tools moved to Kryzalid’s left arm. She pulled out a small knife, sanitized it, pushed its blade into her flesh. Kryzalid bit the pillow, closed her eyes trying not to cry. Ms. Frankberg inserted a metal tip into it, another tool that neither Lacrima nor Robin had ever seen in their lives. It looked like a miniature bow, the same you’d use to play a violin.

“Huh, I see why you needed me. Your ring and pinky wires are out of tune, probably as a consequence of the impact that fucked your shoulder. Ever so slightly, but there’s a dissonance – a displacement of a couple microns or so. Good thing you came before going to the Eye. You’d be way less popular if you made children heads explode, instead of – you know – cops. But, if your finger wires are compromised, then there’s a chance those up here are damaged too.”

The old woman sighed, massaged Kryzalid’s forehead in silence for a couple seconds.

“Damn it, kid… what did you push yourself into? You’re all broken inside…”

Kryzalid nodded weekly, her eyes overflowing with tears, her voice trembling.

“…can you… can you fix me… this time?”

“The only thing I can’t fix is yer attitude. I’ll have a shot at it, but it won’t be pleasant.”

Ms. Frankberg turned around to face Dobrio, waved his hand to him.

“Yo Dobrio, take the ladies with you and get lost for a while, please. I still have to go through you-know-what and that ain’t something they should see. One thing’s having a peek at a gal’s mind, one thing is seeing her literal brain. So, do me a favor and walk them dykes out, yes? And try to get at least one of them to marry this disaster niece that Lagash gifted me, so that I can finally stop having to take care of her!”