Past Reason Hated As Swallowed Bait
The amount of people blew her away – almost double the entire population of the Lake and all in one room. Most of them had something missing and replaced by complicated-looking implants, shining in the reflected glow of pulsing red and pink lights.
Dancing in time to a blaring throb, bodies blended into machines.
Not the gleaming city full of AI-invented products, but real and alive.
Human ingenuity clung to relevance, grime in the corners and unpolished.
So much at once, it made her dizzy and then, an anchor to hold while she got her bearings, Kerr’s impish smile.
Glowing almost as brightly in the black lights as her skin, Kerr’s blue eyes gave off fireworks. “You like dancing?”
“I… don’t know?” Lusa admitted. “I’ve never been anywhere like this.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this either. She was the responsible one. The one in control. The person who always knew what to do. This was disorienting.
Kerr didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she looked happy to take the lead. Lusa found herself following before she could decide whether she should.
By the time they made it to the dance floor, Lusa realised their fingers were interlaced.
Dropping her hand abruptly, Kerr sprang to life, her small frame flinging whatever she had been worried about away.
She became a work of art, coloured lights cascading across her glowing skin and slight curves as it sped across her body. Lusa stared.
“You’re not dancing,” Kerr yelled.
“I don’t know how,” she yelled back. It wasn’t a complete lie. She danced occasionally at Cam’s bar, though it was nothing like this.
Refusing to accept her feeble excuse, Kerr shook her head. Strands of slicked-back hair came loose and followed in time. “There’s nothing to know,” she said as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “Just move.”
Several beats behind, Lusa begrudgingly copied Kerr. Graceless, like her skill with pistols. Pinga could pick up any firearm like she was born with her finger around its trigger, while Lusa hated them. They mocked her inability to hit anything smaller than a MobilePod. Knives were much simpler.
“You suck at dancing.” Kerr did not pull punches. Lusa frowned, but that only made Kerr laugh harder.
“It’s okay.” Kerr grabbed a couple of shots from a nearby tray and made a gesture to pay the server. “You need to let go, yeah?”
Lusa had to focus on her lips to make out what she said. Her mouth watered. Swallowing, she shoved those thoughts into the closet and slammed the door.
“Listen to whatever your body wants to do.”
Absolutely not, Lusa thought. She needed to be in control at all times. Especially here, without anyone who knew how to ground her if she failed.
Kerr held out a shot. “Drink this. It’ll help quiet the voices in your head.”
“What voices?” Lusa panicked. She couldn’t possibly know about those.
“The ones that keep you from listening to your body. You can’t dance if there’s a voice in your head telling you that you look stupid.”
Lusa knew that wasn’t it, but she was happy to let Kerr think she was self-conscious. It was better than the truth. “But I do look stupid.”
“Look at everyone else, yeah?” Kerr swept her arm over the crowd. People jumped and twisted and darted arms and legs in time to the steady hum of bass like a unified organism. “Do they look stupid?”
“No, but they know how.”
Kerr laughed. “I don’t know what happens in your city, but dance lessons don’t exist here.”
“Then…”
Kerr interrupted. “They shut off their brains and let the music tell them what to do.” She thrust out the shot again.
Lusa took it. She could do this. There were too many people here for her to get into trouble. She lifted the glass, waiting to see what Kerr would do.
Kerr smiled, teeth glowing white, then pink, then green as the lights flew like Valkyries over the writhing crowd. “Ready?” Kerr downed the shot. Lusa followed – and then coughed. Kerr slapped her back. “Have you never had alcohol before?”
Lusa cleared her throat, vapour burning her nose. “No, I have. It just doesn’t taste like this.”
“Right.” Obviously, Kerr didn’t believe her. Lusa tried to defend herself, but Kerr had already moved on. Grinning stupidly, Kerr shimmied backward onto the dance floor, as if that would tempt Lusa to come with her. It did.
Swearing she could feel them, the eyes and Optis of every person in the crowd, Lusa tried to catch them staring.
She couldn’t find a single person watching her.
If anything, she stood out by not moving.
Kerr grabbed her hand, moving it for her, synthetic fingers surprisingly warm – not cold or utilitarian like Pinga’s. A more modern piece of tech, probably.
Kerr jerked her hand above her head, snapping her back to the present. “You’re supposed to twirl, dammit.”
“But I’m taller than you. By a lot.”
Kerr snorted. “You can twirl me when you know what you’re doing, yeah?”
Adorableness aside, Lusa couldn’t help but fight. “I thought you said there weren’t any lessons. Is there a test you didn’t mention?”
“Yeah, I’m the one who gives out dancing licenses.” Kerr refused to be baited. “Let’s see you move.”
She shouldn’t, but whether it was Kerr’s playfulness or the alcohol, Lusa wanted to see her laugh again.
There was no harm in having fun. They couldn’t be friends, but she could forget they were enemies for an hour or so.
Lusa followed the bass, the whirr, the whines of industrial instruments cobbling together something resembling music.
It felt good. Normal, even. Like the dull ache when you relax your shoulders you forgot you were clenching. Like the sounds slid over her, rhythm dripping from her fingertips like lake water.
“I need to pee.”
“What?” Lusa said, her brief reverie broken.
“I’m going to the lav. You stay here. I’ll be back, I promise,” Blue eyes too sincere, too big for her head.
“Okay.” Lusa took a breath. Blend in, she told herself. She could do this. Lusa willed her body to continue dancing, closing her eyes and letting the music wash over her.
This is what you wanted, she reminded herself. You’re acclimatising. So many different people, so many different experiences, leaving whatever responsibilities they had at the door to share a moment. A maenad of machines celebrating being alive. And in this moment, she could be a part of it.
The crowd pressed closer, the sweat of a thousand different people on her by now.
The slip of arms and cool prosthetics all touching her, invading her space with implicit permission simply because she was here – different than the unmistakable possessiveness of fingers that curled around her waist and slid toward her hips.
“You’re new.”
The voice wasn’t Kerr’s. Neither were the fingers. Hoping it would convey her lack of interest, Lusa froze. The fingers remained. The message either hadn’t been received or it was being ignored.
A small space opened up, the crowd reacting to the hostility steaming off her. Why couldn’t this fool behind her feel it?
Finding the small knife tucked away at her left hip, Lusa twirled it between her fingers deftly in the pulsing light. A warning, before she did something they would both regret.
Instead, he laughed, breath hot against the back of her neck. “Kinky.” He ground his cock disgustingly against her backside.
Lusa had been eleven when she’d seen Sesi kill a trader for doing the same thing, but that was outside with fewer people and more allies. Here, she was badly outnumbered.
It was too crowded to perform a throw. She couldn’t see clearly enough to stab at his face without hitting someone. His metacarpal was exposed. Implants might block the pain, but they couldn’t alter physics.
As she readied to strike, his hand fell away.
Lusa spun about and planted the point against his throat only to find Kerr holding a very large pistol at his head.
Panicked grey-green eyes met hers, begging for sympathy.
She curled her lip, thinking only of the way his corpse would crumple if they’d been anywhere else.
Trembling with rage, Kerr’s eyes glowed dangerously in the dancing lights. A tiny demon, she cocked the hammer. “Apologise, yeah?”
His unevenly stubbled jaw shook, stammering the words. “Sorry miss.” Kerr shoved his head with the barrel and he stumbled off the dance floor.
Gripping the oversized pistol, shoulders hunched menacingly, Kerr glowered at him until he left altogether.
A sudden squall erupted in Lusa’s chest. That was definitely a new experience. She provided security. She came to the rescue, not the other way around.
Holstering the pistol, Kerr grabbed a fistful of Lusa’s shirt, her appetite for violence apparently unsatiated. She pulled Lusa down, practically climbing her, jamming her tongue down her throat before turning to the crowd and yelling “Mine!”
A low murmur of agreement followed before everyone went back to dancing as if nothing had happened.
“They’ll leave you alone now.” Kerr released her with a smug twist of her lips. Suddenly, her face dropped and she ran away.
A thousand questions needing answers and even more feelings she couldn’t name, Lusa chased after her as best as she could.
Averting their eyes, the crowd scurried out of her path. No-one wanted to be caught touching her after Kerr had laid claim.
It was her skin, glowing between her freckles in the black lights that Lusa spotted first. A skinny, androgynous-looking barman with a gleeful smirk poured shots onto an unwashed tray. Lusa hung back. She wasn’t about to confront her with an audience.
“Way out of your league,” the barman said. “You know better.”
“Fuck you, Grease.” Kerr’s head remained bowed, eyes glued to the shots.
“C’mere to me, Seacake.” The barman wiped a drop of liquor from the tray with their finger. “Everyone knows about your jealousy. But normally, you’re dating them first. It wasn’t his fault”
Is that what she was doing? Lusa thought. Kerr flipped the barman off and stole the tray, melting away into the crowd.