Chapter 16
The street I was on was very quiet as I walked toward the very high rise, very expensive apartment complex Darius lived in.
Or to be more accurate, it was a condominium complex which was run by the complex’s syndicate. This syndicate, made up of shady businessmen, lawyers, and other prominent people of the world, was responsible for keeping their little slice of heaven safe from all the evil in the world.
And also those who happened to paint their doors the wrong color.
For once someone paints their door, who knows how many more rules those scoundrels will be willing to break?
Don’t they know they can only paint their door two colors?
White or ivory.
Those were your choices.
Not blue or green, or god forbid black.
No, no, no, if we start letting people get away with these small infractions, next they’ll change their doorknobs to some other color than stainless steel, like gold or purple, and start putting decorations outside their door to celebrate holidays.
Or just for whimsy.
No, the patriarchs of the syndicate cracked down harshly on any expression of individualism, thus making it the most monochromatic building I’d ever been in.
But then, it also was one of the easiest places to get into without a key or having anyone buzz you up.
That’s really the secret to living in a community of residences. The more run down and decrepit the place, the better the locks and the harder it is to break in without trouble. But as you went up in price and niceness, concerns for safety and crime went out the window.
It was someone else’s responsibility to worry about these baser things, not the wealthy homeowner who just dropped a fortune on new artwork and had friends who were CEOs of big, important companies. Yes, someone else was responsible for safety, that’s why you pay good money to the association to take care of those things.
I wanted to laugh.
Safety was just one of those things.
Like garbage removal and pool cleaning.
It was a thing to be relegated to someone else.
A someone else who, in turn, subcontracted the work to another person.
A subcontractor who, in turn, stood to lose nothing if the job was performed incorrectly.
All they cared about was getting paid at the end of the job.
What was it to them if the security wasn’t exactly fool proof?
As long as it was good enough for the people who’d hired them, it was good enough for them.
But when someone put a flower pot in front of their door, in the communal hallway, all hell broke loose. People screamed about how you weren’t allowed flower pots and how it was against all the rules of conformity and that if you didn’t remove the horrible thing this instant, they’d sick the HOA (Home Owners Association) on your nonconformist ass and get you kicked out.
I smiled at the idea of a nonconforming flower.
It would be something Darius would do just for the hell of it.
I turned the corner of his street and saw the hustle and bustle of the morning commuters who were up and hurrying about. The morning craziness made my entrance easier than if I’d tried to get in during the afternoon hours.
I kept walking at a steady pace and pulled out my phone, pretending I was working. When I got to the front door to his complex, the doorman hurried to open the door for me. I mumbled my thanks, still looking and tapping on the phone.
I didn’t put away my phone until I was in the elevator, which could have really used some fun colors to break up all the blah-ness around me, rocketing up to the thirty-fifth story. Stepping out into the white on ivory hallway, which led to three different condos, I went to the only door facing the back of the building.
I smiled at the tiny butterflies which lined Darius’ front door. He’d always had a touch of the whimsy, even when we were younger. Bet the HOA just loved them.
The door opened, revealing a man a few inches taller than me with a pleasant face and a wide smile when he saw me.
“Ana!” he exclaimed, pulling me into a full body hug. “It’s been too long. When was the last time I saw you?”
“Lakeview, year and half ago,” I said, pulling back. “Let me look at you. Why, you haven’t changed at all.”
“But you have, you gorgeous woman you. But then, you always seem more beautiful than the last time I’ve seen you.”
Darius shut the door behind us, guiding me into his home. And what a home it was. Fully modern in style, it had two bedrooms, two and half baths, a kitchen any chef would be envious of, and enough windows to take in the spectacular view he was lucky enough to have.
“You’re too kind,” I murmured. I knew he said that to all the ladies, but he had a way about him which made a girl really believe he meant it when he said it to you.
“So, what’s happening? You still in school?” Darius had gone to the same school as me, graduating two years earlier. He’d been very impressed at my longevity and ability to fool so many people.
He’d only managed to get six years out of college before they kicked him out. His mistake? Dating a school employee who not only worked at the university, but in the Office of Ethical Behavior, who’d squealed on him after he’d broken up with her for another woman.
Actually, his mistake hadn’t been dating the employee.
It’d been boasting what he’d been doing.
When he told me his blunder, I couldn’t believe it. If I’d learned anything in this business, it was that you keep your mouth shut and never boast to anyone who’s not in on the con with you.
So, after six years of an easy ride, he’d been flung into the real world with degrees in Shrub Shaping and Bathtub Installation. It wasn’t all bad. With those seemingly useless degrees, he’d created a very profitable business called “Shrub and Tub.”
(In all honesty, I didn’t know how he’d been able to make a go of it, combining foliage and baths, or if he even combined them all that much, but if it paid the bills, I was all for it. Far be it for me to knock someone for having an unorthodox business model.)
“Yeah, but this is my last semester. Unless I get into a graduate program for the culinary arts. I’m still evaluating what my best choice is.”
“Graduate school? Let me guess, all expenses paid?”
“Of course. Who pays for school?” Darius and I looked at each other knowingly before we started laughing.
But laughing wasn’t a good idea because it brought my attention back to my side, which I still hadn’t gotten a look at.
Darius saw me put my hand on my side and wince. “What’s wrong?” He surveyed my dirty, unkempt appearance as if seeing me for the first time since I’d arrived on this doorstep. “What happened to you?”
“Oh, you know, went to a club to follow someone, lost said person, and then when I tried to track them, got caught by snatchers and had to escape with seven other girls.”
Darius whistled. “Wow, you had a way more interesting night than I did. But what happened to your side?”
“When they were pulling me out of a vent shaft, I got caught on something. I was hoping you could patch me up.”
“Let me get the first aid kit.” Darius left the room into what I knew was the powder room while I sat on one of the bar stools lining his kitchen island.
(Darius’s powder room was unlike any powder room I’d ever seen before. Where most people’s powder room was just a place for their guests to use the facilities, this one fulfilled this requirement and went way beyond.
Upon hearing the word “powder” in the name of the bathroom, Darius had decided to make it a literal powder room, as in with hidden guns and a munitions stronghold.
To complete his dream bathroom, he’d cut into the walls, creating hidden compartments everywhere the eye looked. Above and behind the toilet, underneath the sink, in the ceiling, in the shower…you name a place and you’d find a crammed hidden shelf or cubbyhole there
or in the immediate vicinity.
Now, with such a unique bathroom, Darius would never have told anyone about it and that normally would have transferred to me, but I’ve got a nose for when something isn’t quite right and something about the room just screamed that he was hiding something. So naturally I began poking around, trying to figure out what was making my spidey senses tingle and I found one of the secret compartments which was full of ammunition, enough to start his own mini war with the HOA.
Upon questioning him, Darius tried to act all surprised at the ammo’s presence, and when I didn’t buy that story, he tried to tell me he was just holding it for a friend, but I saw right through it all and soon got the truth.
And the truth was that my pacifistic friend was a gun lover. If he saw a pretty gun, or one particularly shiny, he had to add it to his growing collection. And with the growth of the gun collection, he’d bought ammunition to fire out of said guns because “they were a set and you can’t break up a set.” His words, not mine.
So, whereas most people just had a guest bathroom, Darius had a guest bathroom/hidden guns and munitions stronghold. There were worst things to keep in your bathroom, I guess. On the bright side, at least I knew that if we were ever attacked in his condo and I needed a gun or more ammo, that I didn’t have to go any farther than the powder room.)
“How’d you get caught by snatchers?” Darius asked from the other room. I heard him rummaging around.
“I was lazy. I’d been tracking my target when I hit a brick wall.”
“You got stuck?” Darius asked walking back toward me.
“No. I hit a literal ten foot tall, foot thick brick wall. I was trying to figure out how my target had gotten around it when the snatchers snuck up on me.”
“And caught you when you ran. Yeah, I’ve seen how they operate, but how’d you get away? Where are you hurt?”
“My hip.” I lifted up the left side of my shirt, revealing the very top of the gash. And a thin piece of metal which had pierced my skirt on its way into my body.
“Damn, girl. That’s nasty looking.” Darius’ usually cheerful face had turned grim as he examined the wound. “I think the only way to dress the wound will be to take out the metal.”
“You think?”
“No need to be sarcastic. Just wanted us to be on the same page. You in pain? Need any meds?”
“It barely hurts. Get it out.”
Darius considered the metal for a minute more before he grabbed the end and started to pull it out. I stared out his windows, which faced a huge park. Shoots were starting to push up from the black earth and the trees were flowering.
As I gazed upon the beautiful sights, my eyes were drawn to one specific tree. It had to have been a few feet taller than the other trees around it and its flowers were a beautiful dark blue.
“What type of tree is that?” I asked.
“Which tree? I’ve got a lot of them outside my window, in case you didn’t realize.”
“The tall blue one,” I responded, my eyes tracing the tree’s majestic lines and quiet beauty.
“It’s a Jacaranda tree. The one you’re looking at was specially bred to have that deep blue color.”
“How do you know?” I asked looking at him.
In his hand was the piece of metal he’d just extracted from my body. A fraction of its length was coated with thick black clotted blood. It must have gone in about an inch, with about a half inch protruding. It had penetrated my body a lot farther than I’d have thought.
He put it aside, and then pulled my skirt down enough to see the full extent of the damage.
“The wound doesn’t look too bad. Grade one should suffice,” he said, digging though the first aid kit, looking for the grade one wound healer.
Grade one would heal minor scrapes, cuts, and wounds. Everyone had a grade one healer. It was like having band aids in the olden days. If you couldn’t even afford a grade one, you must have been dirt poor and would have sponged off a neighbor if you needed to be healed.
Grade two could semi heal medium deep cuts and wounds and was only available to people trained in medical fields. The normal consumer would get treated with a grade two at a doctor’s office. If you had an injury even worse than medium grade, you probably already had to go to the hospital, but only a grade three healer would do you any good. Those were only available in hospitals and on the black market.
If you were really special, and had all the permits, you could get a very high tech healer which could treat all three grades with the flip of a switch. They had just come out a year or so ago, and went for so much money they weren’t practical for the everyday hospital to buy. On the other hand, it was very cost affective where space was at an extreme premium such as ships, mobile military units, traveling doctors who catered to the filthy rich, and illegal clinics which were constantly on the move. But even though I fit in none of those categories, I’d been intrigued. If I could have afforded it, I’d have invested in the paperwork to get one. You never knew when you might need to be patched up.
But since I didn’t have one of the newest and best gadgets, or anything over a grade one, I’d made friends and business connections with those who owned their own grade two or three. They’d heal me if I really didn’t want to go to a doctor or hospital. But I’d have only gone to them if I was completely desperate, or wanted by the berries. They weren’t the best of people to rely upon if you wanted to stay alive. I think over the years I’ve known them, their success rate has gotten up to about thirty percent for the really critical patients.
When you compare that to the ninety seven percent survival rate of the hospitals, which would you rely on?
Darius finally found the healer, turned it on, and held it over the wound. “I’m not sure how long this could take. Your wound isn’t extensive, but it is deep.”
The healer made my skin warm and tingly. I knew that was the healer mending, knitting my skin, muscles, and whatever else back together.
“The tree?” I prompted Darius when the buzzing of the healer got to be too much for me to take.
“The tree? What tree?”
“The tree outside your window!”
“Ah, that tree.” There was a smile hovering around his lips as if he was happy to have gotten a rise out of me. “Yes, the tree. What did you want to know about it?”
“How do you know it was specially bred for its color?” I gritted my teeth. He’d passed over a particularly sensitive part of the wound. The heat from the healer made it feel as if someone had shoved a warm poker into it.
“I asked Heli.”
“Who’s she? Your girlfriend.”
“He is the doorman. You might have noticed him when you snuck into the building?”
“Not really. I was trying to make myself as unnoticeable as possible at the time, if you remember correctly.”
“Well Heli, my nongirlfriend, mentioned it to me last spring when I said how striking the tree was from my window. His father had been the grounds keeper for the park and commissioned the genetic breeding for the tree. There’s only one other blue flowering Jacaranda tree on the planet.”
“Is there? Where?”
“Bratus. It’s the city’s sister city. I think we’re about done,” he said, waving the healer over the wound one more time before shutting it off. I looked down and saw he was right. The wound, which had been bloody, red and inflamed from being scraped, had disappeared. All that was left behind was some tenderness and a thin red line.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling a lot better. I hadn’t realized how nervous I’d been until he’d finished. I usually wasn’t squeamish about things like this. What was wrong with me?
I yawned, tiredness suddenly weighed heavily on me. Maybe being tired had contributed to my squeamishness.
“Have you eaten today?” Darius didn’t even wait for an answer. He just began to pull out a couple of pans before turning to his refrigerator.
“No. Not since last night.”
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“I’ll feed you and you can tell me all about you’re night. Don’t leave out any details.”
“Only if you let me borrow your microchip detector.”
“Of course you can borrow it. What are you trying to find. Jewels or cash?” The same microchips they put in jewels, they put in large denominations of money. Any bill of a thousand dollars or more was microchipped so some thieving employee didn’t make off with the money before it left the treasury.
“Jewels. It all started with this girl from class, Meredith. She was so annoying…”