Tales from Crossbones - After Dark

June 2067. Returning from a trip to a nearby supermarket, Chai finds three familiar faces waiting for her with a gift - a gift connected with her life before knowing Red... and maybe the beginning of something new.

(Proofread and edited by Kaleb O'Halloran)

Chai ran her fingertip over the braille description of the item, rolling her eyes in disbelief. She looked at the shelf, acting as if she wasn’t, then touched the small sequence of dots in a wide swipe. The label, those small extrusions on the paper-thin plastic, spelled the words “Tomato Soup”. In reality, what was in front of her was a can of peas, of the same size and shape as the item that usually occupied that spot. She could see that very clearly, from the other side of her one-way blindfold. Yet, what if she had been blind for real, rather than simply pretending to be blind for the safety of others? Would she have taken that can, bought it, and only realized her mistake once she got home and opened it? A cold shiver down her spine. Visually impaired people did have it hard, especially when the personnel at the supermarket were that horrifically stupid. She grabbed a real can of soup that sat adjacent to the peas, still acting like she couldn’t see, then carefully navigated the corridors using a cane. Learning to move that way had been a weird process. Chai’s sight was almost perfect, yet she had been forced to view the world through a black silk screen since before she even turned ten. She had been legally blind for her whole adult life, with all that came with the package. At least it had somehow made her more of a novelty when she started her erotic streaming career.

She prodded her way over to the check-out, where a sleepy girl in her early twenties was carrying out her night shift. She was quite tall, sporting a brown ponytail and a standard Molco cashier outfit, lazily waiting for her shift to end – yawning at least three times per minute. It was ten o’clock at night, and there were no other customers around. Chai had made a habit of shopping much later in the day, because it reduced the risk of stumbling into a crowd of people and accidentally losing her blindfold. That happened once, and the result hadn’t been pretty. It also had the benefit of getting to know all the late night employees, sometimes even having small chats with them. That one was new, though. Chai had never seen her at Molco, so maybe she was a student taking an odd job for some money?

Chai decided to ask her later, just for some idle chat. She laid her items on the counter, one after another, with a monotonous rhythm. She stopped for an instant. The cashier was looking at her, more alert than before, as if Chai’s presence had awoken her from her state of lethargy. Chai feigned indifference, continuing to empty her bag. She had spent her whole life learning to never behave as if she could see. All those years, hiding behind her blindfold. Even during her most prized, intimate moments. She could never open her eyes while being kissed, while having the time of her life. Because, if she did, her pupils would have moved. Because, if she did, someone would have had to die.

Thus, even if the cashier was looking at her, and she was completely aware of it, she tried her best to ignore that fact. Most likely, the girl was just taken aback by her appearance, or by that rusted peace locket she always wore, or simply by her blindfold. In any case, she never averted her gaze as she continued to scan each item. The girl’s fingers moved to the display in front of her, pushing virtual buttons to calculate the price, but her eyes still never moved away from Chai.

“That’ll be £45,50. Cash, card, or print?”

“Print, thanks.”

Chai proffered her hand, as she was used to doing. Payment via fingerprint was extremely comfortable in her situation, but of course needed a little bit of external help to work for someone who couldn’t legally see. The cashier took her hand gently, pushing her index finger onto a black surface. The LED turned green, signalling a successful transaction.

“Do you need a receipt?”

“No thanks, I’m good.”

The cashier’s eyes hovered over the display, fixating on the name written there, before she shifted her attention back to Chai, a strange blush spreading across her face. Once again, Chai pretended not to notice.

“Say... uh, sorry if this is too direct, but... are you by chance... BlindSeraphim?”

Chai grinned.

So, that was it.

She turned around to face the girl, while trying to avoid eye contact.

“Oi, what if I am?”

At that signature oi, the girl blushed even further, almost breaking into a squeal. She shot a couple glances across the room, as if to be sure nobody else was listening in, before talking to Chai in a hushed tone.

“I can’t believe it! BlindSeraphim in our hard-discount store? During my first night shift?!”

Chai could see her excitement building up, an overjoyed look almost completely replacing her previous tiredness. She wished she could have reacted to it without blowing her cover.

“I’m a regular here. This Molco gives the best bang for my buck – aaaand it’s open till 3AM. Very handy after a stream, ’specially when I’m cravin’ some freshly-heated pizza after an orgasm or two. Plus, for my money, you’ve got the best by-the-pound Asian takeaway in town.”

The girl’s eyes shone with something akin to awe at that remark.

“Name’s Lita! My boyfriend and I watch all your streams together! We also... uh, take a lot of inspiration! My li’l Miles can be a devil, when he’s up for it! It’s actually thanks to you that we met in the first place, Ms. BlindSeraphim! We’re still studying in college and this is my first job, so we can only afford to subscribe to your base tier, but...”

“Hey, it’s more than enough, don’t sweat it.”

That girl had definitely needed to talk to someone, and it was funny for Chai to see her get all excited like a little rabbit. Sadly, all that energy was filtered by the blackness of the fabric wrapping her eyes. Chai was tempted to rip off her blindfold, to see that fan of hers in full color. But she couldn’t. She knew that she couldn’t. It was always the same story, trapped in that sepia cage of hers. If God existed, he must have derived some sick pleasure from having her be so close to what she wanted, yet so far.

“C... can I, Ms. BlindSeraphim?”

Lita brought Chai’s hand to her own cheek, as if giving her the ability to “see” her face. Chai quietly let it happen. She didn’t have the heart to tell the girl that she did not, in fact, have any visual impairment and that she was just playing a part. Chai allowed Lita to guide her hand onto her nose, up to her forehead, and around her hair.

“Oi, just call me Chai. Ms. BlindSeraphim izza mouthful, and it’s just a stage name.”

“M... may I?!”

“You may.”

Before Lita could say anything else, Chai quickly grabbed the girl and pressed her lips against her own. Her tongue took care of the rest, as the two became locked in a French kiss for five short, yet interminable seconds. Then, she finally let her go, savoring her confused expression, her eyes wide open, her cheeks red to the point of burning. Chai grinned, wiped her saliva away with her thumb.

“Aaaah, just what I needed! By the way, that was my signature good luck kiss, Lit. I reserve it for the new employees of my favorite supermarket, ya know, the first time they recognize me.”

As Lita was still reeling from the unexpected make-out, Chai browsed her pocket, taking out a plastic card with a number on it.

“This is for you too. A one-year free subscription to my Booner, platinum tier. You and your sweet half gotta save that juicy money for studyin’, otherwise you both gonna risk wasting your life like me.”

Lita was dumbfounded, her fingers wrapped around the small card, her face oscillating between scarlet and vermilion, still unable to process everything that had just happened. As soon as she found the strength to look up again at her improbable customer, she was already gone, like a shadow in the night. Or an angel under the moonlight.

**

At 10:15, the night was still relatively young. The path from the Molco back to her apartment was short enough, but having to cross it while pretending to be blind could be annoying. At times, she wished she could just blow her cover, throw her blindfold away without a care in the world and stop restraining herself so much at every single step. Yet, in her heart, she knew that she couldn’t. Ange and Uncle Ni... Er, Roger had tried their damned best to keep her out of harm’s way, and, as much as she resented them for their over-protectiveness, she couldn’t really blame them for it.

She was Medusa, after all. A walking, talking bioweapon capable of paralyzing any human being by simply looking them in the eyes. Her irises were dangerous. She was dangerous. The only thing that saved her from becoming yet another lab rat had been the year spent with her unofficial adoptive father, the man named Red – or Donner Misterkay. In addition to acting as her parental figure after she was rescued from the lab, he had also taught her how to pretend to be blind – mostly to get sympathy and a couple dimes thrown at her when begging on the side of the street. Yeah, Red being Red probably had a bigger impact on her psyche than she would have liked to admit, but at least he had helped her make peace with herself. In her opinion, most of the concern surrounding her eyes was just a huge, colossal exaggeration. Her eyes couldn’t kill, not by themselves – anyone who was put under her “spell” just had all their voluntary body functions shut down for a good twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, and would then become immune to her gaze for a couple days. Something, something, their brain adapted to her eyes’ patterns, but only for a short time. She had found out about this weird adaptive response by chance, during a girls’ night out with Cyphr, Lejl, and Paddy, three of the few people outside of Crossbones that knew about her condition. She enjoyed hanging out with them, and it had been refreshing for her to not have to act blind in front of others for a change. Thus, once in a while, they met for some cozy indoor activities, like tabletop games, drinking, or just watching movies together. In those rare moments, Chai could just be Chai. She treasured each and every one of them, as seldom as they happened. After all, Cyphr and Lejl were living together and could hang out even without her, while Paddy was a famous – pardon, notorious – biologist who wrote a book about having sex with hematophages (had to make sure she used the correct name, Paddy could become scary when someone called them haemos in front of her), so she always had a full agenda of meetings and media appointments.

Chai smirked, thinking about those three social disasters. Cyphr, the snake who would sting everyone like a scorpion with surgical precision as soon as they got on her bad side. Lejl, the horny gremlin that had all the traits of an alpha wolf, but would melt like butter when someone she liked complimented her, or even just hugged her, or touched her in the right spot. Paddy, a biologist who thought it would be a brilliant idea to film herself getting boned by a hemato – a video which was totally, positively not leaked on the net – had a pet phage cub, and, when distressed or overstimulated, started reciting all known facts about phages, even while having sex. That last part had been extremely amusing to Chai. Having a girl reach her climax while spouting the exact number of remaining phage clusters in the Dead Zone and their density distribution was something one had to be there and witness in real time to appreciate. That one still made Chai chuckle, as it happened the first time her and Paddy had shared a bed, live on stream.

That was indeed an odd pattern, though – all three of the people she had managed to open up to recently had no less than a one-night stand with her. Maybe it was a rite of passage of sorts, maybe just a result of her weird upbringing, but she simply couldn’t resist the chance to engage in carnal contact with the girls and boys she liked. In the back of her mind, she was convinced that people could only be really understood at their most vulnerable. The way she acted was probably just an extension of that concept. Still, sharing her secret with Cyphr had been surprisingly easy, even before that one time they got intimate. She was a Crossbones member in spirit, even if not in title, especially since Ange had vouched for her. Cyphr had been the first outsider Chai was ever allowed to speak openly with, even if their interactions at the time were quite sporadic. Then there was Lejl, who was a completely different can of worms. That little blond goblin had even more secrets than her, and didn’t seem particularly ready to share them. Chai had done her research in an attempt to learn more about her elusive friend, but she had always come up empty-handed. She had no social network presence, no photos, no official school records from anywhere in the world, and all her pictures were a roughly 99% match with a completely separate person, a certain Aylin Mary Yang. It was to the point where Lejl looked almost like an exact copy of her – save her for cat-like eyes and tribal tattoos – as if they were long lost twins. Lejl Kaleidos was indeed a real phantom, with an aura of mystery glowing around her, those ever-inquisitive eyes, those dumb questions about how to behave near people. Sometimes, Chai had asked herself if Lejl was human in the first place, and not some weird Zavira android in disguise. That doubt had thankfully been washed away after a fateful drunken threesome with her and her girlfriend, where she made sure to inspect her whole body to find traces of metal, wires or sensors. Surprisingly, Cyphr was more of a machine than her, but both of their skins tasted real good. On another hand entirely, revealing her secret to Paddy was mostly a happy accident. After their mutual stream wrapped up, Chai’s blindfold had gotten stuck in a camera support, causing it to get ripped off. That prompted her to curse like a longshoreman and act with such a precise environmental awareness, including tilting her head away from Paddy as fast as possible, that it had been impossible to hide the fact that she was indeed not blind. After that, Paddy asked her if she could look at her eyes – which of course left the girl as stiff as a stockfish for twenty long minutes. Instead of disposing of her, as Ange would have liked to, Chai thought she could take the opportunity to have one more person join the ranks of her “knights,” the few trusted people who knew about her secret. Everything turned out good, in the end, though Paddy’s strange reflex to overshare facts about hematos when under pressure made her a little bit of a cute oddball.

Whatever the case, they had all started hanging out together on a semi-regular basis. And, on one of those nights, her blindfold had fallen off. She was too drunk to put it on again, so she paralyzed her three friends on the spot, and in a bout of sheer curiosity, decided to see what would happen if she never averted her gaze from one of them. Of course, she had chosen Lejl. She loved messing with that little critter, even though she could become scary when she wanted to. So, twenty minutes go by, Lejl comes out of her paralysis like the other two gals, and Chai keeps on staring at her – but nothing happens. In that moment, Chai had felt a sort of puzzling joy. Maybe, she thought, she could have removed that damn blindfold and started seeing in full colour, seeing the world without a filter, at least around her close friends. It was a short-lived feeling, though. Her joy grinded to a halt when she remembered that she had indeed already paralyzed Lejl and Paddy at least once, also by mistake. The mere fact that their brains fell for it again meant that the immunity didn’t last, just a speck of dust in the wind of time.

Chai sighed, pulling a can of Frogga-Cola out of her shopping bag. As she cracked it open and took a quick sip, she noticed a grid of new buildings in the corner of her eye, only some lights still shining. What would it have been like to live in one of them? Living in a single room with a bathroom within the Crossbones base had its advantages, like not having to pay rent or utility bills, but sometimes she wished she could get a flat on her own. As if Ange would have ever allowed it, though. It would be too high a risk of her exposing herself to the neighbors. After all, her supposed secret was already known by no less than four people outside of Ange’s control – the fourth one being Jenn Husler, who worked on and off with Crossbones and was considered reliable enough, though not completely. If even more people knew, it could become a huge problem.

She sipped a little bit more of her cola. The route was completely straight, no need to turn left or right. She could loosen up a little. There was nobody around in that quiet suburb of New Langdon, at least nobody who would care about her. It was like that with Red too – a lot of bystanders, but nobody who would really take notice of them, as they lived at the edge of society. She could almost relive those memories, more than ten years after they happened.

**

“Okay, you know what? I’m sellin’ you to North Korea, if you keep on pesterin’ me like that!”

“Oi, that’s unfair, Dad! You promised me! Two months ago!”

“Say it! Say Dad one more time and I’ll shove you into a cardboard box and send you on a one-way trip to Timbuktu!”

It was a weird sight, for the sleepy commuters along the road. A man in his thirties, wearing a long, beige trench coat with unkempt, red hair and a weird bandanna, arguing with a little girl, half his size, wrapped in a cute pink dress and with her eyes shielded by rather comically oversized shades. The kid was stomping her feet on the ground, while the adult was massaging his own forehead, as if to contain a splitting headache.

“But, come on, you’re my dad! How in the rottin’ hell should I call you? Mr. Donner Misterkay? That name is so campy, Dad!”

“...Okay, okay, stop, Chai. It’s my fault, awright? Gotta buy you a new plushie. Just... stop making a scene.”

Red growled. It had been just four months since his escape from Encorp and the gruesome end he delivered to that slimy worm LeJarme (that bitch Martens was apparently still alive, but that was a problem for later). His plan now was simple. Sell Medusa, send Roger his share, buy a nice flat somewhere in the Caribbean, change his name and start a new life. That was the plan, anyway, but there was one problem: he couldn’t do it. Jerediah “Red” Horowitz, the man who killed his father for money, the guy known for unceremoniously blowing heads off with point-blank shots, couldn’t bring himself to sell an eight-year-old girl. It was both hilarious and sad at the same time.

When he had first retrieved her from Roger’s van, she was a malnourished, dirty, anorexic brat with long, brown hair that had probably never been cut, and a blindfold wrapping those all-important eyes of hers. She wasn’t talking or doing anything, just standing silently, eating only when she was ordered to, even using the bathroom only when she was told to. A miserable life, she must have had. Usually, Red wouldn’t have cared. Sell her to Washington or Moscow and be set for life, that was all he had wanted. Yet, he didn’t want to, not yet. Maybe some would think it was a spark of human compassion, but he knew what it was – a precise calculation. The girl was in such a bad state that nobody would have believed him. Medusa never officially existed, and even state-actors would find his story rather crazy. He needed to take care of her for a while, make her more – let’s say, presentable. A question of days. Weeks, at most.

Or so he thought.

“But, and you listen to me here, little shit! If you lose it like the last one, I’ll never, ever buy you a new toy. That crappy little bunny that fell into the river was so expensive, goddamn you!”

Worth at least ten or twelve joints of weed, and she managed to have it fall from a bridge while she was staring at the ships moving under it, in awe. She had never seen ships, she had never seen running water, she had never seen the outside world. For her, everything was new. So, in a bout of excitement, she lost her grip on poor Nunu and let him fall, drowning in the currents below. Her tears and cries were heard from the other side of the bridge, with her calling the name of her rabbit plushie repeatedly. Nunu was her first toy, the first thing someone had ever gifted her. She was in absolute shambles, to the point where Red had to literally rip her fingers from the rail. He didn’t feel good about that, but what choice did he have, before someone called a bobby on them?

And now, two months later, there they were, looking at the prices through the window of a toy store. Red shivered, thinking it would have been easier to dive into the river and try to find what was left of the goddamn rabbit than to buy a new one. Expenses like this weren’t what he had signed up for. Yet, seeing that little girl get so excited at his words, jumping like a little critter, made him feel something. Whatever that was or whatever it meant, there was a slight warmth inside his heart. That runt, who barely a hundred days ago couldn’t speak and didn’t even have a name, was now a totally different being. His mind raced back to Roger’s van, to the moment he first picked her up, gazing at that pathetic excuse of a girl in a laboratory straitjacket. They were all in the back of the van, with the girl sitting in Roger’s lap, still trying to understand why she was free to move. Red had decided that starting a conversation of any shape or form might have been beneficial, so he decided to begin with a very simple question.

“What’s your name?”

“...Name?”

“Yeah, your name. You have one, right?”

“M... Medusa.”

“No, no, Medusa is – is the name of the project. I asked for your name, little shit!”

The girl turned her head towards him, then towards Roger, then towards him again, a blindfold still covering her eyes.

“M... Medusa?”

Red rolled his eyes, much to Roger’s delight.

“Looks like you ain’t good with kiddos, Red.”

“Shut up! You deal with her if you want, awright?”

Roger chuckled even more, adjusted his sunglasses and Hawaiian shirt. He didn’t really care about fashion, and that rendezvous on the van was never supposed to happen in the first place. Officially, Red had disappeared after the incursion at Encorp, before Crossbones could find him. In reality, he and Roger had made an agreement to sell the girl and make enough money to live like billionaires for the rest of their lives. Roger seemed a bit too relaxed for their situation, casually patting their guest’s head.

“You kno’ what? We should rip that blindfold off, so little missy can see us.”

“And paralyze us like idiots? You know how Medusa works, right?”

“What if I gave her my dark sunglasses?”

“Sure, try it, you do you. But if you get stiff, I’ll leave you here and run away with your van.”

Roger laughed it off, took off his glasses, gently put his hands around the girl’s head.

“Oki-doki, missy. Keep your eyes shut a li’l bit longer, please!”

Medusa nodded, while Roger unwrapped the fabric shielding her eyes. Then, he carefully placed his sunglasses on her face. They were twice her size, but somehow covered her eyes well enough that her irises were completely darkened.

“You can open them. C’mon! Open them!”

The girl gulped. The men in front of her were a strange bunch, more colorful than the scientists that handled her, but also more menacing. Yet, she could see their faces, could watch them, even if behind the lenses of dark sunglasses. Roger smiled.

“See, you jerk? It’s all good, I can move just fine! Too dark for my brain to pick up her patterns!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you that. You were r–right.”

Red, then, stared again at the kid, who had fallen into a deep silence.

“Let’s set things straight: name’s Red, but you’re gonna call me Donner, awright? This bozo here is Roger, and you...”

He looked back at Roger.

“What was it called, that shitty Indian tea Blazer drinks every morning? The one that gave him cancer?”

“...Tea can’t cause cancer, Red.”

“Everything can cause cancer. This little shit here, for example, is starting to give me ball cancer. So, come on, what’s that friggin’ tea called?”

“I guess... masala chai? Black tea with spices and stuff. But I’m sure it didn’t cause...”

“Chai. Good.”

Then, he stared back at the girl, pushed his index on her forehead.

“So, your name is Chai, got it? Not Medusa, not anything else. Chai. Fine with you?”

As it turned out, it was more than fine with her. She loved that name. It was as if she had been born again. Red thought back to that time. Why did he do that? Giving her a name meant acknowledging her as a human being, not a simple merchandise item he was going to sell. That had been his first mistake.

The first of a long series.

Truth was, he kind of liked having Chai around. She was learning a lot, and learning fast. Only four months in, and she had already become a new person. He didn’t know whether he should have felt proud or worried about it. Nine-year-old girls weren’t his field of expertise. Blowing them up was.

“I’m getting you a new Nunu, but no new shoes for a while, okay? These things are expensive as hell.”

Red brought her into the store, let her choose a new bunny plushie, then paid for it with some dirty and ripped notes that were still deemed valid – something he considered a miracle. As he brought her outside again, her tiny arms were still wrapped around the synthetic fur of the small stuffed animal, as if it was her most prized treasure.

“Nunu... I’m not letting you die again. Chai will protect you, this time! And teach you how to swim!”

“You are not teaching him how to swim. Those things ain’t waterproof! If you really want to teach him something useful, teach him how to roll me some weed.”

“Oi, I can already do that, Dad! You don’t need Nunu to do that for you. Here!”

She browsed a pocket in her dress, pulling out what looked like a small cigarette before giving it to Red. He blinked twice at her, grabbed the unexpected gift from her hands. His eyes suddenly felt a bit watery, something that didn’t happen often. She did that for him. Chai, that whining little kid who was spoiled rotten, did that for him. The joint was masterfully crafted, not too long, not too short, not too large, not too thin, with just the right amount of weed. Exactly how he taught her. A sliver of warmth breached through his stone-cold heart again. Then, he patted her on the head, as gently as he could.

“You’re a good girl, Chai.”

It was small things like these that reminded him why he hadn’t gotten rid of her as soon as he could. And, somehow, he was starting to think it would be nice if things could go on like that. Without a penny to his name, constantly having to make ends meet. Yet, somehow... happy? Red shook his head, bursting into a bout of maniacal laughter.

“Dad?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t worry, ’kay? Play with Nunu a bit, we still need to find a cheap supermarket to get somethin’ to eat. That Molco had some good by-the-pound Asian takeaway, didn’t it? You like Asian, I hope.”

“I love it! Spring rolls?”

“Hell yeah, we’ll take at least one each.”

He knew it couldn’t last. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make the best of the little time they could share together.

**

The familiar sight of Crossbones HQ brought Chai back from memory lane. The building was pretty inconspicuous from the outside; a large, three-floor condo with small, square windows, mostly painted in gray, with a backside garden and a couple antennae protruding from the roof. There was also a garage off to the side, hosting somewhere between four and six vehicles. Crossbones didn’t really need a lot of space, as its members didn’t usually live inside the headquarters. Chai was an exception, together with probably no more than five or six other mercenaries. Ange himself owned a small flat on the outskirts of New Langdon and was living there alone, so, more often than not, he was nowhere to be seen during the evening. Vacation periods tended to be even lonelier, as the base only hosted a skeleton crew (no pun intended) of three guards, and the number of permanent residents went down to just one or two people. Overall, that worked really well for Chai – the only reason she was allowed to perform as an erotic streamer in the first place was because nobody was there to complain about the noise. Sure, more recently in her career, she had actively insulated her recording room, but originally she didn’t have that luxury. It had been a pain to sychronize her streaming schedule with the nights when nobody else was around in her wing of the building, but, somehow, it had paid off. To think it had all started as a sort of idiotic bet with uncle Roger – because of course it had started as an idiotic bet. Three years after that first, awkward stream, she was making almost one third of her monthly income just off her side gig, giving her more than enough disposable money. Enough to live on her own, if that bonehead would ever let her do so in the first place.

She reached for the handle, her fingertips touching the scanner. Green light, door unlocked. Chai stepped inside the lobby, closed the door behind her, folded her cane. In there, she could stop pretending to be blind. The guard for the night shift was already there, wearing the eternally unbecoming Crossbones outfit. Chai greeted him.

“Oi, Ryan. Wassup?”

The man called Ryan shrugged, his skull mask covering his face, making it impossible for her to gauge his expression.

“Nothin’ fancy. Kind of tired. I’m already at my third coffee.”

“It’s only ten.”

“Yeah, that might be an issue. But... uh, I’ll keep my eyes open. Seriously.”

“Oi, you’ll better, or Ange will kick you in the nuts so hard you’ll sing like a soprano.”

Ryan shivered, brought his hand down to instinctively protect his family jewels.

“Thanks for ruining my night, Chai. As usual.”

“My pleasure.”

Chai playfully gave him the raspberry, then waved her hand again. She took the flight of stairs to the right, with mechanical precision, then started walking down the corridor. She did it so often that it became purely routine and she didn’t even have to focus. Her body just moved automatically.

Yet, today, something was different.

Wrong.

There was light.

Coming out of her apartment, slipping through under the door, like a little thief. She stopped in her tracks. She was dead sure she had switched off everything when she left. Everything. The door, too, was a little ajar.

Someone was inside.

Chai left the bag with the groceries on the ground, slipping a hand down her trousers to take out the small concealed knife she kept attached to her thigh at all times. She brought her free hand to her nose, removed the blindfold, opened her eyes. Without the black silk partially blinding her view, the light spilling out from her room was even more evident. Chai fell silent. Whoever was inside, they had eluded Ryan. Most likely, he was sleeping like the idiot he was. But, if that wasn’t the case, it had to be someone with access to her credentials. She breathed slowly. Only two possibilities. Either the person (or persons) inside had clearance to enter, and thus knew about her eyes, or they were outsiders, and didn’t know about her eyes. But that wasn’t going to matter, since she was going to kill them before they could spill the beans. She silently stepped forward, as light-footed as she could, trying to make no noise. One meter from the door, her eyes wide open, her knife ready to strike, she took one last breath.

Then, she grabbed the handle, swung open the door as she burst into the room, her gaze at the ready and her knife raised above her head.

“Happy birthday, Chai!”

She blinked. Twice. In rapid succession.

In front of her were three people. Three girls, all around her age. A tall one, with delicate, ceramic prosthetic arms, wearing a pullover and jeans. A short one, with tattoos all over her body, wrapped in a leather jacket, a weirdly cut top and orange trousers. And one in between, with a long red braid and freckles, wearing a t-shirt and green trousers, and carrying a sort of lizard on her shoulder. All of them were wearing dark sunglasses.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Chai, happy birthday to...”

“Oi, oi, OI! Time out. TIME. OUT.”

Chai blinked again. And again. Her knife was still high above her head ready to fall on her prey. Except there was no prey. Only three social disasters holding a cake in front of her, while smiling, dancing and singing together. And wearing sunglasses. At night. In her room. Chai breathed heavily. Once. Twice. Those idiots. Those idiots were almost going to die, for their little reckless performance. Her heart was pumping, the adrenaline still moving through her body at a breakneck pace. Those morons. Those absolute fuckin’ morons. All smiling, those stupid grins painted on their even stupider faces. Chai felt her mind being invaded by slightly homicidal thoughts. She would have liked to kick all three of them in the ass, down the stairs, then bring them back up and kick them down again. Several times. Her heartbeat had started to relax, finally.

There was no enemy.

Only three idiots.

“First. What the hell? Second. How? Third. WHY?”

Her voice became progressively louder, as she couldn’t look away from the three stooges that were standing in her room, near her bed and her table, meters away from her streaming equipment and her array of sex toys, holding a birthday cake. The first to speak up, while still giggling, was Cyphr, the one who towered over every other girl in the room.

“We juuust wanted to organize a small surprise for your birthday! I asked Ange for an access card, and...”

“...Oi, you absolute tool, today is not my birthday!”

Paddy and Lejl started laughing. Chai looked at them slightly puzzled, annoyed too.

“...What’s so funny? Care to share?”

“Well, since you’ve never told us when your real birthday is, we decided to celebrate it on a random day!”

She inhaled deeply. That was... even more absurd than she cared to expect from them.

“You know that doesn’t make any sense, right?”

Cyphr pushed her glasses against her nose, smiled again.

“Okay, okay, you’re right. The truth is, that the gift we wanted to give you took quite some time to get made and we didn’t want to wait for Christmas.”

“...The gift?”

Lejl stepped forward, holding a small silver box in her hands. She placed it in Chai’s open palms, cracking a knowing smile.

“C’mon, open it! It’s all yours!”

Chai sighed. Whatever. At that point it wasn’t even worth it to get angry at them. At least they had the decency to wait for a day where she wasn’t streaming to pay her that surprise visit. She carefully unsealed the box, unlocked it, pried open the lid. To her surprise, a pair of transparent lenses peeked out of the red velvet casing. She stared at them, puzzled.

“Thaaaanks, I... uh, I guess? What’m I supposed to do with them? Oi, you know that my sight is 20/10, right? I don’t even need glasses.”

Paddy raised her finger, words pouring out of her lips like a torrent.

“That’s amazing! You know, hematophages have a natural eyesight that pales in comparison to that of the average human, and would be equivalent to only around 20/50! It’s even further exacerbated in noctiphages, which are almost completely blind! So while it isn’t out of the ordinary for you to see better than...”

Chai pinched her lips, shutting them in the process.

“Thanks, Paddy, but not right now. And, not to sound like a broken record, but what am I supposed to do with contact lenses?”

Cyphr clapped her ceramic hands.

“Act first, ask questions later! Just wear them, du Nervensäge!”

Paddy nodded too, trying to contain her urges to share other facts about phages in the process.

“Y... yes, trust us!”

Chai looked at them with a hint of suspicion, squaring all three of their faces, one after another.

“Oi, know that if this is a prank, I’ll rip off those sunglasses, paralyze you, and kick each of your asses over and over ‘til you pass out.”

She mumbled those words with a hint of irritation, currently unsure if she really meant them or not. As far as she could remember, those three little sunshine sparks had never joked about her condition. Whatever pranks they pulled on her, they had always been tasteful, at least to some degree, so making a joke about her eyes wasn’t something they would have done lightly. She moved to her bathroom, stood in front of the mirror. She put on the first lens, then the second. Closed her eyes, opened them again. They weren’t uncomfortable at all, which surprised her greatly. Yet, she could see no difference. Her sight was still exactly the same. She couldn’t see any changes in her eyes either, only that they were a little bit dimmer than before. She hadn’t thought about it much before, but she was suddenly glad that her brain couldn’t be paralyzed by her own reflection. That would have been an even stupider feature for a bioweapon – even if completely in tune with the original myth behind her namesake. She sighed. Whatever those three blockheads had in mind, it had to be part of some elaborate ruse.

“Have you put them on?”

“Oi, I have. What now?”

“Come back here!”

Chai sighed. Those three unpredictable morons were the bane of her existence, at times like these. She went back to the room, with annoyance painted all over her face. Then, she saw them. And almost had a stroke.

“OI! You idiots! What the...”

They had removed their glasses.

They were staring directly at her.

She averted her gaze immediately, closed her eyes, silently praying not to have paralyzed any of them. She cursed under her breath, cursed her “power”, the source of all her woes since she was a kid. She stood like that for a second, trying not to think about the consequences of that reckless glance. Then, she heard it.

Laughter. Genuine laughter.

“Chai, there’s no need to behave like that, really!”

“Open those shining eyes of yours, princess!”

Chai turned reluctantly, still keeping her eyes closed.

“But, you… you’ll be…”

“Come on, du Dummkopf! We told you to trust us, or?”

Chai wasn’t convinced, not at all. Last time she trusted them to act like responsible adults, they all ended up in bed together. Which wasn’t a problem per se, but it starts becoming an issue when you want to keep your distance and have some normal friends (for any suitable definition of normal), instead of it being all about the benefits. Yet, against her better judgment, she decided to humor them. She slowly opened her eyelids, peeking through her eyelashes, noticing that none of them had put their sunglasses back on yet. She instinctively shut her eyes again almost immediately.

“I can’t. I... this is stupid. This is so stupid...”

Then, she felt them, Cyphr’s ceramic hands wrapping around hers, trying to reassure her. She leaned in and whispered into Chai’s ear.

“Open your eyes, Chai. Please.”

She sighed, took a deep breath as she slowly opened her eyes again, forcing herself to overcome her instincts. Finally, her eyes were wide open, her irises shining through the lenses. Her three friends watched her, cheering for her. She stood still for a moment, incapable of processing that scene.

She was staring at them. They were staring back. But they were still moving.

She wasn’t wearing her blindfold. She was seeing as well as she possibly could, and despite that, her powers were not kicking in. She fell silent, touched her eyes. She could feel the thin, artificial surface separating them from the world, yet she couldn’t see it. It was like not wearing anything, like looking around with naked eyes. The colors. The shapes. Everything matched. Not that darker, blurrier world she was accustomed to seeing from behind her darkened glasses or her blindfold. The real world, as if she wasn’t different. As if her eyes weren’t weapons that paralyzed every human being who looked at them.

“W... wh...”

“Happy birthday, Chai. For real.”

She blinked twice, touched her eyes again, still in disbelief. Then she moved forward, closer to Cyphr, to Lejl, to Paddy, gazing at them, at their beautiful, colorful irises. While they kept moving. They kept laughing. They kept hugging her. Cyphr patted her hair, while looking directly into her eyes.

“One of Ange’s old acquaintances is an expert in nano-optics. Jacques Caller, or Jakall – you know how Ange’s friends tend to be as theatrical as him with nicknames. Well, point is, we had the idea of giving him a visual scan of your irises, with which he managed to build those lenses. They just... filter your vision a bit – not enough to disrupt it, but enough that it averages your rapidly oscillating patterns... making them harmless.”

Chai couldn’t believe those words. Harmless. Her eyes. Not a weapon. She looked at the three of them again, failing to keep her emotions in check.

“O... oi, you aren’t... you aren’t pulling a prank on me, r... right? This... this isn’t a j... joke, right? Right?”

They shook their heads, one after another. She tried to keep her emotions in check, to keep up her bravado, her usual cool demeanor. But she couldn’t. Just one minute before, she was thinking about how stupid her friends were. One minute later, she was crying like a fountain, crying tears of joy, hugging all of them.

For the first time in twenty-three years, she felt she had a chance.

A chance at living a normal life.

**

It wasn’t unusual for Jackson’s to be open that late at night. Its faceless owner usually closed up shop in the evening, but he was known to keep the place open until midnight around two or three times a week. What was unusual, though, was seeing Cyphr hanging out with three other girls. Cyphr, the reclusive, stubborn, tomboy who had still been in her rebellious, lone-wolf teen phase until not even two years ago, was now drinking and eating together with friends (including her even more chaotic girlfriend). Jackson wasn’t even sure where she found them, either. Admittedly, he had grown accustomed to seeing Lejl, albeit much less accustomed to interacting with her. Every time they had a conversation, it felt like reading a book about the unknown. For every question answered, two more mysteries surfaced. She was practically identical to Amy, aside from those amber eyes. Her voice was the same too. What was different was her full body tattoos and her completely unpredictable behavior. Amy was very polite and always careful with words. Lejl was more direct, always skirting the line between piercing, precise observations and totally out-of-left-field remarks.

Jackson liked her well enough – and thought she completed Cyphr perfectly – yet he would have loved to know more about her origins. For curiosity’s sake, sure, but he and Shaz also had an ongoing bet about it. Shaz put his (scarce) money on a lab-grown, clone-in-a-vat of Amy, who escaped containment and found refuge in Cyphr’s house. Jackson, meanwhile, had decided to go with the classic “alien-engineered pod person,” who was supposed to take Amy’s shape and quietly replace her, but fell for Cyphr and abandoned her conquest plans. Whatever the true story may have been, Cyphr saved the world from her. By getting laid by her. Or maybe the other way around – Jackson suspected Cyphr to be the top of the couple, a sentiment surprisingly shared by his finned friend.

That night, Cyphr wasn’t there with just Lejl, though. There were two other people, and both of them spelled trouble. He squinted in their direction, hoping to be wrong, while casually cleaning some beer glasses. One of the two had red hair styled in a long braid... and a sort of red lizard with a ribbon, placidly resting on her shoulder. She looked a lot like that weirdo biologist that wrote a book about mating with haemophages, and was probably exactly that person – which put her firmly in the “stranger than Lejl” basket. The fourth member of the quartet was someone whose face Jackson had a vague recollection of. He remembered having seen her with Ange and Jenn a couple times already, but she always wore glasses or what looked like a blindfold. This time, though, it was different. She was looking around with her bare, colorful irises, starry-eyed and dripping with happiness like a kid going to an amusement park. He considered casually strolling by and eavesdropping on their conversations, but he knew better than most people how curiosity had killed a metric ton of cats. Thus, he went back to his chores, making a mental note to ask Cyphr about it later.

At the table, Chai was enjoying every second of that experience. Colors, colors as she had seldom seen them, not screened by the black velvet or those dark lenses. Colors as they were meant to be seen. She started sobbing, occasionally calming down before bursting into tears again at regular intervals. For her, that was the most beautiful moment she had experienced in a long time. Looking around as if she was normal, allowing people to gaze into her eyes without having to kill them, no longer having to feign blindness.

She wiped the tears once again, promising herself that it was the last time. A promise she wasn’t sure how to keep.

“O... oi, gals, I’m... I’m sorry. I... I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

The reply she got was a parade of bright smiles. They were radiant, all three of them. They were happy for her. She already had to stop herself from bursting into tears once more. Those blockheads. Those blockheads made her the best gift she had ever received in her adult life. And yet, they were just sitting there, smiling as if it was no big deal. Cyphr patted her head, her ceramic hands tapping lightly on her brown strands.

“It’s fine, Chai. We had an opportunity and decided to seize it!”

“B... but it probably cost a lot! And you three... oh, wait.”

She turned towards Paddy with a glare, pushing her finger against the redhead’s lips.

“You’re practically shittin’ money right now. You probably paid for ‘em, didn’t you?”

Paddy chuckled, moving Chai’s finger away.

“You have no idea how much cash you can get by being invited to talk about hematos’ dicks on TV! But for real, no, I don’t have that much disposable income. Cyphr made a sizable contribution too. And Lejl is excused, I’d say, since...”

Lejl pinched Paddy’s cheek before she could finish her sentence, her voice becoming loud enough to overshadow the jazz music from the jukebox.

“Stop it! I’m applying for jobs, seriously, I’m just not getting any interviews! Every time I show up in person, they just pass on me automatically! God, I hate being unemployed!”

Cyphr punched her lightly on the shoulder, sneering at her, knowing full well she would get annoyed by that.

“You should spend some money on a new suit, Lalli! You can’t go there dressed like... you usually do, and expect them to hire you.”

“Oh, yeah, you say that now, but then you beg me to show as much skin as possible when it’s just the two of us, Cyphy. Choose one, either new transparent dresses for our private moments – which you seem to like a lot – or a new suit for job searching! I can’t afford both!”

Cyphr turned red, her cheeks shining like traffic lights. Lejl was also red in her face, but mostly out of anger. Losing her job had been a nightmare for her. Fortunately, she had a roof over her head, as she was living together with Cyphr, but not having any income made her feel like a parasite. And it was all his fault, Mr. Kissilmer’s fault, the fault of the utter chaos surrounding his gruesome, unexpected disappearance, if it could be called such. It all happened so suddenly, not even three days after she met Paddy for the first time at the flower shop, a shop that was now shut down for good, never to open again. Which meant that Lejl was officially jobless, AND that she had an adult noctiphage to take care of, too.

The only saving grace of all that ruckus was that she got to know Paddy better, learned about her exploits with both hematos and their shared livestreaming acquaintance, and finally welcomed her into their little circle of friends. Still, her situation was less than ideal and she was fully, painfully aware of it.

“I can’t believe I worked for a zombie for that long. But come on, he paid well! And always on time!”

“My salary is still more than enough, for now, but...”

“Cyphy, I’m not asking you to pay for me again. It’s a question of principle.”

Paddy looked at them, then at Chai again. She ran a hand through her own hair, wearing a tired smile.

“...Well, to summarize: Cyphr had the idea, Ange put us in touch with Jakall, and we paid him to make the lenses, without giving too many details about your story. I think he might’ve been familiar with your adoptive father, though, because he said – and I quote ‘since when did that patricidal, son-of-a-whore bastard have a daughter?’”

Chai chuckled. That... wasn’t inaccurate. That Jakall had to be familiar with Red, in one way or another. She realized she was staring at her friend, staring at her deep emerald eyes, finally able to admire them without shutting her entire motor system down. She started noticing details and patterns in her freckles, the intricate ways her unruly hair was tamed at the sides of her face, how it flowed around her ears. All those little details she was previously denied, finally surfacing. Chai felt her heart aching. She could have done something about this so much sooner. She could have freed herself from her cage of fake blindness long ago. Yet...

“...If you’re really that desperate for a job, I’m currently looking for a waitress. As long as you respect the dress code, I’m confident not even you could manage to screw that up.”

An unfamiliar voice shook her out of her trance. Vince Jackson. The owner of the place, with his infamous blurry face and yellow fedora, who was now standing right near their table, pointing his finger at Lejl. She looked back at him, dumbfounded.

“...Are you for real? Me? A waitress at Jackson’s?!”

“You’re used to working night shifts, correct me if I’m wrong.”

“No, no, you’re right. But why does that matter? You don’t stay open that late.”

Jackson tipped his hat, pacing back and forth around the table.

“I want to try out a new schedule, with opening hours ‘til four in the morning, but it’s hard to find motivated personnel for that. So, that’s my offer to you: four nights per week, six hours per night. Good starting salary, plus whatever tips you get. If any.”

Lejl started doing some mental math, her eyes closed to focus.

“That... sounds good, but I need some time to think about it. Can I give you an answer next week?”

“Fine with me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to the counter. Even without that dumb shark getting drunk every evening, this place seems to be a magnet for weirdos.”

With those final words, Jackson strolled away, while a few of his waiters were gesturing in his direction, frantically pointing towards the bathroom. The four of them watched him go, before eventually looking back at each other. With Chai forcing herself to not avoid eye contact. It was hard to fight her muscle memory, those habits accrued over more than ten years. She was struggling to let them go, but she was making a conscious effort.

Cyphr, on the other hand, was giggling, her eyes sparkling, her black databands covered in partying face emojis (a function which Lejl had once again switched on the previous night, without her noticing).

“You have a job offer, Lalli! That’s wonderful!”

“...From a zombie scarecrow to a faceless dude, huh? Gee, what a greeeat step forward in my choice of employer. But yeah, it does sound good, it just means I’ll have less time to spend with you. Unless you folks decide to hang out here in the dead of night.”

“I’m excited to see you behind that counter, wearing that nice, white shirt, those elegant trousers with the suspenders. Oh, I’m sure you’ll look dashing! But you should at least have something underneath, otherwise... aaaaah, I can’t think straight!”

“...Is that the only reason you want me to take this job? Because you’d like to stare at my nipples peeking out under a white shirt while drinking a cocktail in this crusty cafe?”

Cyphr blushed, realizing the implications of her impromptu comments, to which both Chai and Paddy started shaking their respective heads. Lejl just responded with a chuckle.

“And they say I’m the horny one.”

“Don’t tell me that...”

Chai and Paddy both laughed maniacally at that scene, as Cyphr was shrinking in her seat, trying her best to hide her embarrassment, but causing it to stand out even more in the process. Chai found her cute, when her tough girl persona crumbled under pressure. Cyphr usually acted way more mature than her age, usually being the only sane voice of reason in their group (maybe together with Paddy, but she was a genius PhD, so it didn’t count), but she was actually the youngest among them. Those rare moments where her naivete surfaced were an absolute treasure. And, in a way, now she felt she understood her even better. Both of them had lived with a handicap since childhood. Both stubbornly refused to find a solution, until the solution presented itself. And neither of them wanted to go back. Cyphr would have never renounced her prosthetic arms willingly. And Chai felt, after not even one hour of wearing them, that she would never want to stop using those lenses. It was as if a veil had been pierced, as if she had only just now managed to learn how to live life.

She stared out the window, peeking at the empty streets, at the flickering lamp posts. She wondered how the world would look the morning after, the day after, with all the colors of the dawn, the sunlight, the twilight, how it would all feel without a filter. How it would feel without that artificial limitation. Martens and LeJarme were dead and buried. Whoever was in the know for the Medusa Project was now six feet under, except for the CEO of Encorp, but he was never privy to the details, and didn’t seem to care much anyway. There was no reason to act blind anymore, if she didn’t have to. No reason at all.

Well, maybe her online subs would plummet once she told her raving fans on Booner that she “had an operation on her eyes” and was finally able to see. Maybe she could come clean with them, but still wear a real, 100% opaque blindfold during her streams only, just so their fantasies and her uniqueness in the ero streaming world could still hold. Yet, those were secondary concerns, compared to that inebriating sensation of freedom.

Chai chuckled. It felt surreal. Exchanging glances with people without being worried about killing them. Doing ordinary stuff like drinking hot chocolate in a cafe on the outskirts of New Langdon at eleven-thirty at night. Walking down the streets, being allowed to look around, to stop and enjoy the view without raising suspicion. She felt reborn. And, for just a second, she wished Red could be there to see her laughing, joking with those three other societal rejects, while wearing his dumb, weed-induced smile and gifting her a bunny plushie again, patting on her head with his rough hands. As she gazed back at her friends, she realized that her story was only just beginning.

That after a long existence in the dark, there was still room for a thread of light.