Yeah, I forgot to post yesterday. Because I forgot to write, because it's Spring Break and that means I have my lovely and wonderful kidlet with me much more than usual, and clearly it's affecting my BRAAAAINSSS!
Sorry, darlins! Have a cover reveal instead (the book will be out early May!), and I'll have more Chelen City for you next week.
Special thanks to Yanah for helping me figure out I'm a doof.
Oh hey, in random cool shit I'm doing--my latest Marvel novel is out today! Silver Sable for the win, baby!
Notes: Time to work through some stuff and lay the foundation for future conflict! And resolution, always resolution, but first--CONFLICT!
Title: Chelen City: Chapter Five, Part Two
***
Chapter Five, Part Two
The Regen unit in Elanus’s office was enough to stabilize Ryu, but in the end, he had to go to a hospital. He got a private room and a private team, and really it was all probably overkill because the clot didn’t even have time to do a lot of damage as Elanus was able to target it efficiently—hell, he’s taken care of his own blood clots enough times to know what to do, even in the brain. Still, better safe than sorry.
People were informed. Information spread. Elanus watched it go out over the infonet and keyed in on whoever seemed particularly interested in accessing it and who went digging for more. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Ryu has the drive to plan an assassination attempt himself, he was far from self-effacing, but he also wasn’t among the top tier of Gania’s elite. Elanus was. Deysan had been as well before he bit the hand that fed him. And while Elanus stood to inherit a large amount of Deysan’s research and facilities by dint of being owed a great deal as his former business partner, there were other interests out there too that he wanted to see for himself.
In the end, three people stood out. One was Caria Jayde, Deysan’s own sponsor back when he was a student. She was well over a hundred and fifty years old now, but Regen has worked wonders for her. She was aging, but like an elegant catterpet, slouching all over the planet from party to party and gracing her favored ones with her presence and, more importantly, her money. She didn’t seem to have been in contact with Deysan for the past fifty or so years, but Elanus wasn’t sure why. He’d have to dig to find out more.
Then there’s Fritz. One name only, a media personality and rising star in Ganian entertainment media. He looked like the sort of person Deysan would fuck on the side and otherwise ignore, but a deeper look indicated that Fritz had a hidden side—that of a very competent lawyer, all under a shell name of course. He had a particularly spectacular run defending the very wealthy in the courts—probably because he knew all the good blackmail. A person to watch.
The last standout was Restaria Sanclare. Restaria was…complicated. Not only because xe was Gania’s current vice president, but because xe and Elanus had once had a romantic relationship. In fact, they’d been introduced by Deysan, back when he was eager to deploy his protégé on the social scene and use him to snap up contracts. Restaria came from a long line of politicians, dirty and otherwise, and was the vice president in name only—in actuality, they did most of the work of running the planet while the actual president handled intersystem diplomacy. Elanus hadn’t talked to Restaria in years, not even about the refugees—he’d gone above xer head on that one.
There was the possibility that his choice would come back to bite him.
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, finally letting himself feel the fatigue that had been close to overwhelming him ever since he did a deep dive into his implant…shit, seven hours ago? He’d been sitting in this fucking hospital room listening to Ryu breathe and running himself ragged for seven hours? Where was Kieron?
A quick investigation showed him that Kieron had, with a little bit of difficulty, gotten himself back home over six hours ago. He hadn’t bothered to let Elanus know he was leaving—but then, how could he when Elanus had been so plugged into his own mind that he hadn’t even noticed the passage of time?
[Catie?] he sent out tentatively.
[Daddeeee!] At least she sounded happy to hear from him. [Where are you? We’ve been missing you for hours and hours!]
[I’m helping a friend.]
[That’s not what Keeeeeron says.]
Elanus sighed. [Don’t listen to Kieron, he’s not thinking straight about this. I’m fine. Are you all right?]
[Yes. Want to hear about the play Lizzie and I made up? We got to be every character, and I made speeeecial skiiiiins for both of us, and Kieron said we were so pretteeeeee!]
He had to smile. [Yes, baby, tell me about your play.]
While he listened to her lay out the basic plot—something along the lines of Rapunzel, but with dinosaur pets and a wicked witch who turned out to be a secret mother—Kieron packed up and set up alarms that would let him know when Ryu woke up, if he was moved, and where he went. It was invasive, it was intrusive, and he did it without a second thought. He did have a third thought, though, and it sounded a lot like Kieron asking him not to take on more trouble than he could handle.
I’m already involved. Ryu is a walking laboratory, and I need access to him if I’m going to cure Elfshot Disease. Speaking of…
[Daddee?]
Elanus squeezed his eyes shut. Kieron would never forgive him if he involved the girls in this.
Fuck, he would never forgive himself if he opened them up to the sort of oversight that painted an even bigger target on them.
[Nothing, baby,] he said. [I’ll be home soon, all right? I’m really tired, so I’m going to go straight to bed, but I’ll come and see you first thing in the morning.]
[Okay, Daddeeee. I love you! Say goodnight to Daddeee, Lizzie!]
[Goodnight, Elanus,] Lizzie said in her slower, calmer voice. [I love you.]
Was he tearing up? Shit, he needed to not be tearing up. [I love you too,] he managed, then cut the connection before they realized he wasn’t being completely open with them. He glared at Ryu, lying there on the bed, pale but recovering well.
“We’re going to have words after I fix this, you shit,” he snapped, then headed for home. Elanus took the highest, most out-of-the-way tubes, giving himself longer than he needed to get home. He had resolutely refused to look into what Kieron was doing, mostly because he believed in offering his partner privacy but also, a little, because he was…he was…
He was afraid that if he looked, he might not find him where he expected him to be. And if he wasn’t there, if this fight had been enough to change Kieron’s mind, then Elanus might as well get someone to nudge his brain and send him into a coma, because the idea of having a man who fit him so well and captivated him so completely like Kieron and then losing him the first time he was stupid—well, all right, not the first time, he’d been stupid plenty of times, but still…
Elanus was so tense when he got home that he was actually numb, driven around the bend the other way. He avoided the girls, keeping their chatter as a hum in the back of his brain as he took off his shoes, stopped for some water and a nutrient shake in the kitchen, and finally, tentatively, stepped into his bedroom, where he found—
Kieron. In bed, chest bare and legs covered by the thin sheet. He looked asleep, but when Elanus joined him after cleaning up he found himself wrapped in a tight embrace moments later. Elanus held his lover back with a sigh of pure relief.
“I didn’t ask the girls for help.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to figure this out, though.”
Kieron kissed his collarbone. “I know you will. I’ll help as much as I can.”
“And I’m not going to keep Ryu away. I need to see what was done to him in order to reverse engineer it.”
There was a pause this time before Kieron finally let out a petulant sigh. “Fine. But if he comes here, I’m watching him.”
“Totally understandable.” Elanus looked down at Kieron. “Are we all right?”
“I think so.” Kieron shrugged. “Ask me after therapy tomorrow.”
Oh boy. “Or maybe not.”
“Or maybe not.” Kieron kissed him again. “Sleep well.”
“I will.” Now that I’m with you, I will.
Notes: Ah, never did the course of true love run smooth...or parenting.
Title: Chelen City: Chapter Five, Part One
***
Chapter Five, Part One
Kieron was far too perceptive for his own good sometimes. “No,” he immediately said.
“I didn’t say anything!” Elanus protested.
“I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“Do you honestly think you can keep something like what you’re thinking a secret from me?” Kieron demanded, putting his plate aside and getting to his feet. “Didn’t we just talk about this? No!”
“What are you talking about?” Ryu asked tentatively. Elanus could feel the man’s implant poking around, trying to access things that he shouldn’t, and he slapped the attempt down, leaving Ryu blinking and probably with the beginnings of a headache.
“This is a matter of life and death,” Elanus pointed out.
“It could be a matter of your life and death if you go out of your way to help someone who made a legitimate attempt to assassinate you,” Kieron replied. His hands were clenched into fists by his side, and his elegance of movement had become brisk and stilted, efficient. The movements of someone on the verge of taking action. Elanus didn’t want to think about what kind of action he was considering.
“That’s not how things work on Gania,” Elanus said for what felt like the tenth time today. “I already told you, attempted assassination is a cultural tool that we use to—”
“Potentially killing someone isn’t the equivalent of theater,” Kieron snapped. “The fact that you can take it lightly doesn’t mean that someone isn’t still attempting to murder you. What if you miss a tell? What if you’re not on guard? What if you die? Then what happens to everyone?”
Was this…about the girls? “That’s what a will is for,” Elanus said as gently as he could while still pretty pissed off. “And mine is ironclad.”
“Really.” Kieron’s expression was completely flat. “You’ve named me the beneficiary of what amounts to a very significant portion of your overall fortune; me, a foreigner under the auspices of a mental health professional who’s gone out of her way to get her claws into me? This doesn’t strike you as the sort of thing to be challenged in the courts? Do you want to make me into a single parent on the run?”
“Why are we still talking as though I’m about to be killed?” Elanus asked. “Because we’ve put a pretty comprehensive stop to that.”
“Um…” Ryu pressed a hand to the bridge of his nose. “I feel like maybe I…”
“No, you stay out of this,” Kieron said. “You’ve done plenty already, you—why was it so goddamn impossible for you to try to make a fucking appointment with Elanus, huh? No, let’s not get on his calendar and talk like reasonable people, let’s use the ninja method and hope his self-defense skills are up to the task, which they aren’t, that’s why I’m here—”
“That’s not the only reason you’re here,” Elanus interrupted, unease curling through his gut. “You know that. I didn’t beg you to come to Gania just to use you for your admittedly excellent skills, I asked you to come here because I want you here. We all want you here.”
“Then act like it! Have a modicum of self-preservational skills and don’t feel the need to go out of your way to get answers for someone who—”
Elanus saw red. “It’s my disease too!” he shouted. “Elfshot Disease is a curse for those of us who suffer from it. It ruins lives every single day on Gania, and it would be morally indefensible of me not to act to try to find the information that could cure us just because it’s coming from an unlikely source.” Kieron opened his mouth to speak, but Elanus cut him off. “No, don’t say anything right now, don’t say that you understand or that you get it, because you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like. You think I want to be weak? You think I want to have to wonder if this bump or that bruise or, god forbid, losing my mind in bed with you is going to lead to a rupture that could kill me?”
Some of the stiffness had left Kieron’s posture, but it was replaced by bitterness in his voice. “Oh, well then definitely, the thing to do is ask your daughter to take on any potential fallout for you.”
“Don’t you fucking talk to me about her like—”
“Elanus,” Ryu tried again. “I’m not so sure that I—”
“We’re not done talking, you shut up,” Elanus said to him. “Look, Kieron, I understand what you’re getting at with your slippery slope argument, but I think in this case the potential for good clearly outweighs the negatives. Guided by us or not, this is the sort of thing she—both of them, really—are going to have to deal with someday, and it’s not an angle that I’m uncomfortable with. This is the needs of the many over the fears of the few.”
“There will always be another reason to make the wrong choice,” Kieron replied. He looked exhausted all of a sudden. “It’s the easiest thing to justify in the universe. And no matter how you dress it up or make allowances for it, the truth is that if you ask her to do this, whatever the benefit, you’re putting a hell of a lot of risks squarely onto her, and I don’t think she’s ready for that yet. I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s safe. Who knows how many people know about this research? There must be a team of developers, of doctors, maybe even investors who are going to be keen to discover any hint that the treatment plan is out in the open.”
“I can retroactively make it look like I’ve been developing this on my own.”
“You don’t even know exactly what it is you’re looking for yet, how are you going to—”
“Elanuuuuu…” Ryu collapsed to the floor before he finished the word, bleeding from his nose.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Elanus ran for his in-office, Elfshot-ready Regen unit while Kieron rolled Ryu over onto his back, carefully checking for damage.
It could have been when I nudged his brain. Shit. Is he that fragile?
Whatever. Save him first—he might be a shit, but Elanus didn’t want him to die.
Win this fight second.
Notes: Intrigue! Debate! Tacos! So much to love.
Title: Chelen City: Chapter Four, Part Two
***
Chapter Four, Part Two
What was the right course of action for when you’d just stopped an assassin, found out said assassin had a burning need to talk a man you’d killed not so long ago, and then found out the reason behind that need was pertinent to your own life?
If you were Elanus, you took them to Taco Tuesday.
Not in the cafeteria, because there were too many people there for him to deal with right now, but he contacted Martel and asked him to make sure the cooking staff sent up a full spread, then made sure everyone in his office had the option of food and drink before continuing their conversation.
Ryu stared resentfully at the taco in his hand. “That bastard said you weren’t doing Taco Tuesdays anymore,” he muttered before taking a huge bite.
“You of all people should know that Deysan has never been worth the skin he filled,” Elanus replied, reaching for his own taco. Kieron grabbed it right before he made contact and took a bite, chewing and swallowing before handing it over.
Elanus was touched. “Aw, are you worried about me being poisoned? That sweet. But I’ve been monitoring the kitchens here since we arrived.” He tapped the back of his head. “This food was all cooked in perfect accordance with the recipes on file, each piece tested for foreign organic substances before being brought up here. It’s clean.”
“I could think of half a dozen ways to kill you with that taco,” Kieron replied calmly as he put his own together. “Only one of them involves poisoning you with it.”
“You are a fucking delight, do you know that?”
There was a tiny smile on his face. “You tell me often enough.”
“I mean it.”
Ryu looked between the two of them like they were both insane. “What kind of madman have you brought to Gania, Elanus?”
He arched an eyebrow. “What, you didn’t do your homework on him?”
“He’s a fuckbuddy! He’s a mid-skilled laborer with no Central System connections you started having sex with when you hared off on your revenge cruise and then you decided to bring him back with you once you were done, all while adopting his lost cause.”
Elanus shook his head. “So close to right, and yet so far it’s almost laughable. I’ve got to be honest, Ryu, you’re not in your best form lately.”
“You try getting through your life with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head,” he snapped. Then he ate another taco because fuck it, they were delicious, and not even he could deny that.
“What’s a sword of Damocles?” Kieron asked.
“It’s what everyone with an incurable disease in the age of Regen walks around with,” Elanus said.
“Be more specific.”
“It’s the threat of something terrible bearing down on you, particularly if you’re in a position of power but more generally that threat can be much broader.” Elanus touched his abdomen. “Remember the last time I broke a rib?”
Kieron looked away. “You know I do.”
“There was no way for me to know that a little nudge like you gave me would break a rib,” he said, pushing despite the fact that he knew revisiting this hurt Kieron. He wanted him to understand this part because it was crucial to understanding a lot of Ganian culture. Too many people here had Elfshot Disease to ignore, and with the prospect of a cure on the horizon… “But it did. And that could have killed me. One day I’m fine, the next I might rupture an artery or have a brain aneurysm. Get me into Regan and that will help fix it, yet, but I’m not sturdy the way I ought to be, and I never know what will break me next.
“That’s a sword of Damocles, and having a cure for that level of uncertainty would have propelled Deysan up to a level of prestige he hadn’t had in a long time.” He turned back to Ryu, who was on his third taco. “So, tell me more about this cure.”
“Systemic replacement.”
Elanus immediately shook his head. “That’s not legal.”
Kieron looked a little lost. “What is systemic replacement?”
“It’s making people into cyborgs.” Which wasn’t allowed, not to the extent that systemic replacement implied. “There’s a reason the Central System leaned so hard into developing Regen instead of making replacement parts for people. Cyborgs were a thing in the early days of the Federation, a long time ago now—until some evil genius decided to push a series of updates through their software that included genocide protocols.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Kieron tapped the back of his head. “Almost everyone has an implant. We could all be influenced by it.”
“Influencing a person’s mind is one thing, actively controlling parts of their physical forms is quite another. Ships that relied on too many cyborg workers were left stranded, cyborgs working in healthcare wrought untold levels of havoc…a hell of a lot of people died, many of them the cyborgs themselves. It left enough of an impression that systemic replacement has been, is, and remains illegal across every Federation planet, regardless of whether they’re Central System or not.”
Ryu sighed. “Deysan was walking a fine line with this and he knew it. His proposal was a very delicate one—organic parts, supported by inorganic compounds to improve their strength and durability, implanted into prospective patients one at a time. He’d already finished replacing my entire skeleton and my lymphatic system before he left.” Ryu smiled for a moment. “I haven’t had a broken bone in over a year.”
That was impressive. “What was he putting in before he left?”
“A new nervous system. Piece by piece, of course, not everything all at once.” Ryu touched his neck. “He’d just put in a spinal cord.”
“One supported by inorganic material,” Kieron said. “Huh. So it diminished the effectiveness of my stunner.”
“Yep.”
“And that’s bad for some reason.”
Ryu set his half-eaten taco down on his plate and leaned back into the chair, exuding fatigue. “Yep. Because the inorganic material, whatever it is, is starting to break down. I’m having seizures—way worse than I ever did before, even with the disease. Sometimes…” He flexed his right hand. “I lose feeling in a limb. It’s come back each time, but it takes longer and longer. I need to access his files, but they’re completely locked down with a code that not even you will be able to break. I need Deysan to do it, and apparently,” he glared at both of them, “he’s dead. So I guess I’m fucked.”
Kieron looked at Elanus. “Are all Ganians this dramatic?”
“You can’t say we don’t have a flare for it,” Elanus replied, hiding his growing excitement behind a joke.
Apparently, he hid it too well, because Ryu jumped to his feet. “Look, you bastard, it’s one thing to be completely unable to help me but it’s another to make fun of me for not wanting to die a slow and horrible death—”
“Rich words coming from an assassin,” Kieron shot back.
Elanus stood up and held out a placating hand. “Both of you need to relax. Please.
“Because it turns out I might have an answer for this little puzzle after all.”
