21. Sticky Petrol
Sticky Petrol
Dylan
Isaak’s posture was completely different now. Guarded, arms crossed. His tone of voice changed, just like in the forest, to the decisive, commanding team captain. He’d lost the cute and the kind, gone back to serious and formal.
Dylan steeled herself. This woman must mean something to him – there was no other reason for him to become so distant in the space of seconds.
“Do you know who she is?”
Isaak didn’t answer, just frowned, lost in his thoughts.
Dylan didn’t press it. Not the right time. “The Gunkatana, and the photo, Astrid’s going to ask you for them. If you don’t give them to her, will she come after you?” She walked over to him, shooing Kitty away with one hand. The cat hopped down from the table. “Does she know where you live?”
Isaak walked back a few steps, hands raised halfway. “Maybe. I don’t know. Probably, knowing her. The bigger problem is, what if she summons me?”
Shit. “She will summon you!”
“I could just not tape in, I guess!”
Dylan tightened her hands into fists at her sides. She knew it was the situation, but the version of Isaak she had started to really like seemed to have disappeared so quickly, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit like she was suddenly less important to him in some way. It didn’t feel great.
The hilt of the Gunkatana, resting on the black pedestal, began to vibrate.
Both of them recoiled from the sword. She looked to Isaak, but he didn’t seem to have any idea what it meant this time.
Then the sound of a bell rang through the landscape.
She noticed something behind Isaak that she hadn’t seen before. She stared at it, then pointed a black-polished fingernail towards it. “What is that?”
Isaak glanced backwards.
Hovering just behind him was a spherical black spot, approximately the size of a football. The inky blackness of it reflected nothing. The more she looked at it, the darker it looked, like a sky devoid of stars.
The impossible black sphere made no sound, but seemed to be growing as she looked at it.
Isaak held up a hand to tell her to stay calm. Keeping his mouth closed, he then gestured in the air, his movements deliberate and slow – as if he was trying not to spook whatever this strange ball was.
A blue portal took shape with a hum that cut out as quickly as it appeared.
Isaak dropped the calm demeanour and grabbed the Gunkatana from the pedestal.
“Let’s go, Dylan. Run!”
Fuck.
She raced for the portal. Next to her, Isaak matched her speed.
Beside them, the high chairs and the table island imploded into cyberdust – all of it blinking out of existence, particles flying to the black sphere as she and Isaak dashed towards the tape-tube. The thing was consuming all of his summonings.
And it was on its way towards them. They were almost at the portal, but—
“Kitty!” She turned to see the cat hopping behind her. It started to float in mid-air, being pulled towards the black spot.
No.
“Isaak, wait! The cat!”
He turned, half his body already inside the portal, the blue stuff dripping around him like sticky petrol. He looked as horrified as she felt, but shouted, “There’s no time, come on!”
Dylan looked at Kitty again, reaching out a hand to grab her. But the cat didn’t look worried.
“I’ll see you later, Dee—” A surge of green light materialised around the cat, eclipsing her. By the time it closed, she was no longer there. Had she found her own way to escape the black spot?
Dylan stared as the ball, now almost as tall as her, devoured whatever it came into contact with.
Then Isaak grabbed her wrist, the skin of his fingers rough on her skin, and yanked her through the portal with him.
She fell through it, and near instantly they came out of the tape-tube corridor, his volcanic mountain hideout replaced by a night-time cityscape, the concrete slabs of a pedestrian walkway beneath them.
Looming large above them were skyscrapers done up in cascades of neon signs, an amped-up version of IRL London, with impossibly tall, towering buildings.
They were lying next to each other on the pavement.
“Are you okay?” he asked her, as he got up and looked around.
She pushed herself up on her elbows and nodded meekly.
What the hell just happened…?
“The tube’s gone, Dylan. I really hope that thing isn’t gonna be able to find us here.
” Breathing heavy, he took off the black faux-leather jacket and tossed it aside, and it dematerialised before it hit the ground.
His t-shirt was tight around his biceps.
She admired the way it wrapped around his chest and abs as he attached the Gunkatana to a loop of his belt.
She sat, smoothing over her stinging knees. The rough landing on concrete had scraped them open. Her white dress was stained with a few drops of blood.
“What… What about Miss Kitty?” she asked.
“I don’t know…” He offered his hand to help her get up.
She thought of rejecting it, the instinct to show she was more than capable of looking after herself. Then the image of him pausing on the stairs up to Sacha’s made her think again. She shouldn’t be worried about taking a little help, especially if he was the one offering it.
She grabbed his forearm, feeling his warm skin and tightened muscles, leaning into him for help.
“It’s okay,” Dylan said. “I think she found another way out. Maybe we can just summon her again? Kitty!” She dusted off her arms and looked around. “Help me look for her.”
Worry warped Isaak’s face. “I don’t know that she’s coming back, Dee.”
“I… Let’s just keep an eye out for her!” The prospect of losing Kitty wasn’t something she wanted to think about. Not now.
“I’m sorry about Kitty.” Isaak placed his hand on her shoulder, and it made her world shake. The gesture comforted her just enough before wounding her an equal amount, when a hint of nervousness got in his way and he removed his hand again.
“I’m hoping she’s still around somewhere,” she said. “Where are we anyway?”
Taking the first real look at their surroundings since landing on her knees on the concrete, she realised the place resembled the area near Bank station, where city boys and city girls did their extremely well-paid finance jobs in extremely high-rise glass-panelled buildings. Bunch of fools.
“Is this somewhere you’ve been before?”
“Yes,” he said. “Sort of. In the real world, I mean. Not in the Tapeworld. I have no idea what this place is.”
The street was deserted. There was no one else here.
“How’d we end up here then? You made the portal…”
“Usually I imagine where I want to go, draw a circle in the air and that’s it. But this time…” He paused.
“This time, what?”
“This time I just thought, ‘Get us the fuck out of here.’”
She couldn’t blame him for that. “And it picked this place… Well, I don’t see that black hole anywhere.” It really had scared her, but she didn’t want to say that to Isaak. Didn’t want him to think she was an easily frightened damsel.
“I never saw anything like that before.” He went quiet and moved closer, reaching for her hand. Dylan could smell his scent again, something like sweet, burnt oranges. It blew her mind a little bit, as she hadn’t considered smell inside the Tapeworld before getting so close to him.
“What are you doing?” Her voice trembled – she wasn’t sure if from fear or excitement.
He positioned himself in front of her, holding both of her hands and looking into her eyes, his chest lightly moving up and down.
Dylan felt seen, the way he looked at her.
She wasn’t just another nameless drone, and not a spoiled daughter, nor a badly performing worker.
His eyes glinted in the darkness of that place, that impossible tape-space with streets lined with the tallest skyscrapers.
He leaned into her, and he was so close his sharp cheekbones brushed hers, and Dylan parted her lips for his kiss. As she closed her eyes, she felt his breath on her cheek, then her ear, and he whispered, “The black spot is over there. Don’t look.”
She let out a little frustrated breath before she could stop herself.
Dylan’s friends had accused her of being unjustly angry at the world, at society, for having robbed her of an opportunity to do something truly groundbreaking.
But she doubted anyone would censure her for being bloody upset at Isaak’s will-he-won’t-he behaviour.
But right now her fear of the black spot drowned out her anger.
She tightened her grip on his hands and opened her eyes, finding the resolve to push forward, his actions be damned. “What do we do?”
“Think of somewhere nice you’d rather be…”
“Why me?” Why put the responsibility on her? She could count the number of times she’d been in the Tapeworld on one hand, and its unwritten rules were getting to be too much.
“Just do it!” he hissed in her ear.
Dylan closed her eyes again and thought about what made her happy.
In the blink of an eye, before she was even conscious of thinking of a specific place, it happened.
The concrete corporate building they stood in front of slightly wavered, and suddenly a familiar blue swirl appeared on the wall.
They looked at each other, still standing so close together. Her heart was racing.
She stole a glance at the black spot behind her. Three larger black shapes appeared beside it as she was looking.
Fuck.
“Go,” she whispered.
He grabbed her hand and they stepped through the blue portal.
The tape-tube’s prismatic flux swallowed them, and she held on to him as tightly as possible, wanting to eliminate any empty space between their palms. A bright light at the other end of the tube grew ever brighter, their bodies pulled towards it like a tractor beam.
A familiar orange horizon welcomed her. The air was hot, and she could hear the bubbling of the lava dripping over a cliff. It was Isaak’s tape-space.
“Wait,” she said, flushing. “I don’t know why… It might not be—”
But Isaak was smiling as he scanned the area. No sign of the black spots. “Back to my tape-space… That’s what makes you happy?”
The butterflies in her tummy became a storm, impossible to ignore. “I should have just thought of mine.”
“No, no, here is great!” Isaak walked over to her. “I mean, I guess it’s not somewhere they’d imagine we’d go right away. Whatever those things are, they aren’t here. Not yet, at least.”
“There’s no sign of Kitty, is there?”
“No. Sorry.”
Dylan kicked a volcanic pebble on the ground. She felt herself wanting comfort, yearning for him to embrace her, and nudged herself closer to him. He seemed to take the hint and wrapped an arm around her, bringing her close.
She rested her head on his shoulder, arm around his waist, feeling the bulk of his muscles. Her eyes closed, and a slow smile built on her face. This was good.
“Your hair smells nice.”
Hearing his voice reverberate through his chest… It made her feel things she wasn’t ready to feel, think thoughts she hadn’t allowed herself to think, not in any of her dreams.
A self-awareness crept into her mind, and she thought of their other selves, IRL, lying there asleep on the couches of Isaak’s estranged friend. Then the photograph of the woman they’d found inside the Gunkatana came to bother her.
She hated herself for what she was about to say. She had wanted this moment for so long, but she didn’t want to ruin it by kissing him now, with her mind clouded with doubts – or let it continue for so long that it put them both in danger again.
“Isaak… We should tape out. While it’s still safe.”
His chest and arms relaxed around her, and he took a deep breath. Was that disappointment in his face now? She kind of hoped it was.