Chapter 4
Day one living with lizards. Technically day two, but the last one didn’t count considering I didn’t see them the entire day. So we’re starting fresh at day one, a wonderful and glorious Tuesday. It started out just swell.
Try as it might, the bedroom door couldn’t bar out sound, clanging pots, pans, or whatever other implements I had, and the commotion woke me up. It surely came from the kitchen, which meant it was time for breakfast. Food in the morning nauseated me, but the pillow had stopped working its magic of blocking the ruckus from my ears. I tumbled out of bed and into the bathroom with eyes half-closed and mind all-closed, shedding my soiled clothes along the way.
Here I went, the same damned human morning ceremony that I was a master of for the past 9,356 (±83 or so) days of my life. It should be easy: scrub my teeth of the gunk caked on the enamel, gargle a double-shot of flavored isopropyl to kill the clammy residue left behind, trim down, take a piss, and shower up. To make myself look like a human-fucking-being. I had just spat the burning into the sink when something rustled from the bathtub. I hung in mid-spit and waited for the inevitability. Even in the sanctum of the bathroom, I couldn’t get a break.
Jagged-eyed, the Isian stretched his hands out from the tub and searched for something to grip on. The claws found the edge of the tub and dug in. After he placed both feet onto the lip and pulled himself out, he teetered a bit before he found his balance and planted his rump on the rim. He scratched himself, yawned, and then shook his eyes open to notice me. He chirped and smiled.
“Morning!”
I let the rest of the mouthwash drool out my mouth. “Morning Basil,” I replied with juices dripping off my lips and chin.
Basil chittered and nodded.
Conscious that I now had an audience, I opened the cupboard and took out the shaver. I started to groom, appreciating the electrical hum and hand-numbing vibrations. As if competing against the shrieks of the shaver, I heard a gentler hum from the bathtub. I glanced over and Basil was staring at the ceiling and humming to himself. He shook his head side-to-side and swished his tail in the tub as he meshed his melody with the shaver’s. I didn’t know if he had a particular song or if it was random humming like you do when showering.
What an odd world, shaving in your underwear while a lizard serenaded you from the bathtub. The drone mixing with Basil’s throaty tune would have been an interesting tune if I sought to appreciate it, except I just woke up, I was cranky, and I was trying to make myself presentable. Thus, the noise was starting to annoy me.
The shaver burned my palms; the inductive power supply was spazzing out from being on too long. I threw the shaver back in the cupboard, rinsed, and toweled off. Basil was still humming, unfazed by the lack of an accompaniment. I waited, expecting him to finish, but he instead found a new intensity in the song and tapped his feet to its rhythm on the tub. I was three-for-five in the morning rituals, and I couldn’t do the last couple until he got out.
“Hey, Basil? Basil!”
He seized up and yelped like something just bit him. He shook his head and clicked his tongue when he figured it was just me. “Oh, Ly-lee. Yeah?”
“I need to take a shower.”
“Okay? Go ahead?”
“Well, I have to use the bathroom. You know? The bathtub?”
He blinked. A frown came to his face, and he tapped on his head in thought. The meaning of my words struck him with an “oh!” and he lifted his tail from the bowl and wrapped it out the tub. I waited for him to get out of the bathroom, but he just smiled at me, still perched on the edge but with his tail now resting on the bathroom tiles. “Sorry Ly-lee. Here you go,” he said.
I dipped my face into my hands when he started humming again. It was time for another approach. “Hey, I heard your sister out in the kitchen. I think she might be eating all the food.”
I never saw anything jump so fast out of a room before. I locked the door, pulling on it a few times to ensure its integrity, and stepped into the tub to take care of steps four and five.
Day-freaking-one.
The racket from the kitchen had calmed. I averted my eyes away from the room itself and focused on the ancillaries: the stove, the ceiling light, the refrigerator, and the lizard lapping from a bowl filled with… something. She licked the stuff off her lips when she saw me.
“Good morning, Ly-lee!”
“Morning.”
“Breakfast time is the best time.”
“Sometimes. What are you eating, exactly?”
She nosed into the bowl and sniffed its contents. “Something I mixed up. I couldn’t find anything else.”
Basil came next to her and eyed the bowl with coveting fascination. He reached over and said, “I want some,” but retreated when his sister batted his hand away and snarled.
“Tia, you know the reason you couldn’t find anything to eat?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“It’s because you ate all the food. All of it.”
“Well, I was hungry.”
“Yes. So hungry that you ate everything. Now I can’t eat breakfast because there’s no food left.”
She blinked at me, and then the revelation seemed to hit her. She looked away and stirred the goop with one of her fingers. Basil took advantage of the situation.
“Yeah, see? I told you! I told her Ly-lee, but she wouldn’t listen. And now look what happened.”
The guilt trip worked too well against the poor girl. She held up the bowl and offered it to me but kept away eye contact.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice indirect. “You can have this. I don’t want it anymore.”
“I don’t want your breakfast. Look, since we’re all living together we have to work together, okay? Otherwise, everybody is just going to be at each other’s throats all day and we can’t live like that.”
“I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“I’m not. We just have to have some rules, that’s all. Rules that we follow.”
“Yeah, rules,” Basil said, patting on my back. “Rules like, not eating everything and leaving us nothing.”
I turned to him. “That goes the same for you too.”
“Oh.” He slunk down. “Yeah.”
I looked at my handiwork—impressive. It was quiet and peaceful. Basil hovered near my feet while Tia stared at the wall after setting the bowl on the table. A shiver. There I was something about docile Isians that disturbed me. Something wrong and unnatural. I tilted Tia’s chin up and coaxed her to smile with one of my own.
“All right, enough sad faces, guys. Let’s get our scaly butts to work.”
I opened the door, stepped out, and waved for them to follow. While I locked the door, I heard one of them mumble, “I told you so.”
I didn’t take any chances and took the scenic route to the station. The last thing I needed were gawks from strangers or having to explain myself to overzealous cops enforcing leash laws. We zigzagged through alleyways, off roads, and other lonely capillaries of the neighborhood. Away from the bustle and curious gaze of the public at large, only the sounds of territorial mutts and nervous pigeons disturbed our trek.
“This isn’t the way to Summit,” one lizard complained. “It’s the other way.”
“We’re taking the train,” I said. Their eyes bloomed in bewilderment at the lunacy of the plan.
We reached the station just as the train was prepping to leave—the out-of-the-way itinerary swallowed up the time. The throngs of Summitites had arranged themselves in lines and were waiting for SX14 to open her doors. We hurried up the steps to the platform and the entrance gates. I pulled out my Tetra identification card and a realization struck me.
“You guys didn’t happen to bring your ID badges, did you?” I asked.
“What badges?”
Oh boy. I approached the interface screen that carried Tetra’s logo soaked in a friendly shade of blue and held up my card for processing. White text scrolled at the bottom: “Tetra N-Freight identification received. Please verify your identity.” I pressed my hand against the screen and it affirmed with a bright green.
“Thank you, Mr. Ivano. Please be reminded that accommodations for your service animals are available in the last two cars. Have a pleasant day!”
The gate opened and allowed us to enter.
“Huh, just like that?” Tia said, looking back as the gate closed behind us. She nudged her brother. “We should have taken the train last time.”
We waited in line at the far end of the train and incited some curious stares from other would-be passengers. Being employees of Summit, most were already aware of the Isians, but the sight of them waiting patiently to board a train was probably something new. It was about a minute later when the train doors opened and allowed us into the cars.
Life had mercy on me for the day and the ride to Summit was uneventful. The twins spent most of the time occupying themselves with the window view, pressing their claws and nose against the polycarbonate with the wide-eyed fascination of puppies. The riders in the car did the same toward the lizards. One guy stared at them for the longest while before he noticed me next to them. He pointed them and mimed a silent, “Yours?” I shrugged and nodded. He shook his head and mouthed, “Wow.”
When we got out of the train and into Summit, the Isians whistled and bolted into the courtyard to the old maple. I let them. I figured that since I got them safely to Summit, my obligations to them were finished. At least for the next few hours, they were Tetra’s problem. I passed by and waved to the twins in their new day’s productivity of abusing their wooden friend.
I lingered near the entrance of the Spire to listen to the announcements from the PA system. Her milky voice helped to smooth out my mood despite the dreck she parroted. So I was beat up to hell and embarrassed beyond human tolerance yesterday. At least now, I found the lizards and got them back to Summit. It was as good of a day as I could make it. Gotta keep living, gotta keep working, and gotta keep making money. C’est la vie, the French say. You regard that language because it’s the champion of making bullshit sound philosophical.
Aimee knew a dozen languages, including French, so I thought she’d be the best person to reassure me. I was about to make the traditional annoyances with her when I froze at the sight of her desk. I hadn’t noticed who she was conversing with when I neared her station—it was the last person in the world I wanted to see. I realized my mistake too late, and Aimee’s inhuman sight snared me before I could back away. She ignored my frantic waving and pointed me out to her companion. That person faced me. I steeled myself.
“Lyle,” Arlene called out, “come over here.”
I didn’t want to do shit for her. I wanted to say, “No my dear. Kiss my ass,” like those manly main characters in movies do. You know, the kind that had more pants than shirts and whose awesome chest could be declared a national park from the amount foliage and wildlife that thrived on it. I wanted to tell her to fuck off and stomp away like a righteous asshole. I wanted to be a righteous asshole. God would’ve wanted me to be a righteous asshole. But no, he didn’t give Lyle the tools to be one. So I just stood, being an indecisive asshole instead.
She got the hint and came toward me. I hunched to myself. Before she can reach striking distance, a shrill echoed through the lobby and stopped her dead. Two forms raced by, their white figures but a ghost flying through the lobby.
“Hi Arlene!” one of them called out.
“Bye Arlene!” the other finished.
In a futile display to stop the twins, Arlene held out an arm after them and shouted, “Basil! Tia! Wait!” but her voice couldn’t keep up with Isian speed. Only the echoes of claws clacking on the floor lingered to understand her words. She cursed something under her breath and turned back to me. I shrugged.
“I thought I’d bring them today,” I said.
“So I see.”
She gazed to the distance past me. Gone were the heavy red scowls and menacing glares. The pins and needles of her features had dulled since yesterday into harmlessness. Her expression defeated any attempt to read it, but the shallow bags underneath her eyes betrayed the image of a fiery woman. This Arlene was almost new to me. Aimee encouraged me to her with a flick of the head. Hesitantly, I went next to her.
“I guess that means we wouldn’t be needing those soldiers today, yeah?” I said.
She shook her head and stuttered her words. “Oh. Oh, oh no. We won’t.”
Her gaze drifted again, and she brushed her hair aside—an aimless gesture one does when she has to face that one guy the morning after a drunken office party. Flustered, she seemed like she had an idea floating in her mind but didn’t know how to express it with her mouth. This kind of Arlene sort of unnerved me, maybe even more than when she was furious.
“Lyle,” she began, pausing to take a breath. “About yesterday. I… well, I want to apologize.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s all right.” I internally smacked myself. What the hell are you doing, you idiot?
“No, no, no. It’s not all right. It’s not all right at all.” She sliced her hand through the air to emphasize the assertion. “It was completely uncalled for. I was, well, a total bitch yesterday, and you didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I got so worked up that morning when I found out they were missing, and I just went ballistic. And when Tetra gave me control of one some of their guards just to shut me up, I guess I just took it out on the easiest target I could.”
Easiest target? Ouch.
She continued. “It was wrong for me to do that, completely and utterly wrong, and I want to apologize. I completely understand if you don’t accept it. I mean, I haven’t really forgiven myself for what I did. But…” She trailed off. She clutched her hands together and waited for me to speak.
Righteous asshole Lyle would have brushed her off. Take your apology and shove it, you stupid bitch, it said. Come back later when you stop being an ugly cow. The goddamn lizards look better than your whore ass. Now was an appropriate time as any to pull out the hatred… but I didn’t. Enough pain and drama plagued the world as it was, and it didn’t need any more. How quixotic of me, the French would say.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
Arlene curled her lips into a semblance of a smile. She folded her arms and straightened her posture. “You’re really amazing, Lyle. This is the second time I did something like this to you, and all you can say is, ‘It’s all right.’ I wouldn’t have forgiven even my mother. Is there anything in the world you don’t get along with?”
“Cats mostly. There was also this one time when a seagull crapped on my head, but I was probably being a jerk anyway.”
She laughed, finally climbing herself back to a normal Arlene. She seemed relieved, and I was too.
“You know, I’m starting to see why the Isians like you so much.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. It was a friendly gesture, not the death-grip that she brandished yesterday. “Look, Lyle. I want to make it up to you. How about lunch? You and me.”
“Lunch?” I haven’t heard that in a long time.
“Yes. There’s an Italian place that just opened downtown. I heard that it’s exquisite. My treat.”
Italian food didn’t agree with me too well. But on the other hand, I couldn’t object to fine food. Especially those with an attractive woman. Especially those paid for by said attractive woman. I didn’t get to do that often. Still, I had reservations about spending more time with her. A slapped-red cheek would do that. But I relented.
“Okay, yeah. Sounds good.”
Arlene playfully shook my shoulders. “Good! Then it’s a date.” She pulled out and unfolded a tablet from her pocket to scrawl some notes. “I’ll pick you up at noon.”
“Today?”
“Yeah. Oh shoot, no. I have a meeting today. Let’s see…” She flicked the screen and sorted through a pattern of lists and dates that alienated me (being a person that hadn’t been acquainted with a calendar in over two years). She bit her lip and shook her head. “Well, damn.”
“Problem?”
“Mind if you take a rain check, instead?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Thanks. We’ll discuss some things there when we get around to it. Meanwhile, I got this damned appointment to get to. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this whole thing to them.”
Aimee interrupted with a waving stack of paper documents and said, “Here are the reports you had requested, Ms. Neuman.”
I flicked my eyes away at the hand-off. Hard copies shuttering in the air carried a menacing authority, and the less I knew the better.
“Thanks Aimee,” Arlene said, putting the stack into her bag. She offered a hand to me. “Well, Lyle, I got a bunch of work to do, and I guess you do too.”
I shook her hand. “Not really, we just play games,” I said. “Say, you wouldn’t mind trying to talk some sense to the Isians, would you? About this whole ‘being roommates’ thing.”
“I think you and I both all know how that conversation would to end. It’ll be useless. Don’t worry though, I’m working to take care of everything. Just try to take care of them in the meantime, yeah?”
“I’ll try.”
She tugged the bag’s strap over her shoulder and swung it behind her. “You’ll do fine, Lyle, I’m sure of it. See you later.”
“Yeah, you too. Woah, wait!” I stopped her before she could leave. I fished through my pockets for the tracking module and held it up to the light for her to see. “I think this belongs to you guys. I guess it didn’t perform to Isian specifications.”
I gave the chip to her and incited a groan when she realized what it was. “Should’ve gone with the subdermal solution on both of them,” I heard her mumble. She thanked me, took the device, and left. I wandered back to Aimee.
“Well, see?” she said. “That was quite pleasant, was it not? You could do much worse than lunch with her.”
Like a senile grandmother driving down a crowded interstate, the belated realization that I had scheduled a fucking date with Arlene crashed into me. “Did I just agree to have lunch with someone that sicced fucking blacksuits at me yesterday? Why did I do that? Tell me I’m not out of my mind?”
“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend, Mr. Ivano.”
“I guess?” What a silly thing to say from a robot. What does she know about forgiveness? “So an offer of lunch makes up for beating and embarrassment, and I should just forget it? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“Think of it this way, Mr. Ivano: Ms. Neuman’s actions with Sigma Security, as drastic as they were, would have been a pittance compared to Tetra’s had you not shown up as you did. When you arrived, the company was already in progress of petitioning the state governance to seek a bounty on you.”
“You’re fucking kidding me?”
“Surely I am not. The force was to comprise of three squads of Sigma Security, two Bulldog sentries, and that little prototype over there.”
She pointed across to the seldom-traveled far end of the lobby, a corner where the light bent around to create a shadowed bubble. I straightened my glasses and squinted to make out the vague shape of a car-sized biped, its military form defined by austere lines. It slunk in its little corner and hid. I couldn’t make out much else besides that outline.
Aimee continued: “That is Primary Sigma’s latest prototype, an urban light assault platform with reactive camouflage. The plan was to use the opportunity for a live-fire field test. It is a fiery little thing, I am led to understand.”
I groaned. “So, you’re saying I should be grateful?”
“Grateful that Ms. Neuman got to you first, yes. Because of her and Mr. Lefko’s insistences, the company agreed to stay the bounty so that you may prove you had the care of the Isians. Let us not forget that her initial outrage stemmed from a deep and personal compassion for them. I would not wager that our benefactors at Tetra Chromatics Corporation have the same motivation, would you agree? She is trying to make amends for her mistakes, Mr. Ivano. Please do not be offended by it.”
“Yeah.” I took a moment to think over her words and sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Lunch with Arlene wouldn’t be too bad.”
She patted her palm over one of my hands and shook it. “Splendid! An outing with her is just what you need to mend old wounds. Besides, you need to get out and explore the world some, Mr. Ivano. Some good air and good food would do you a wonderment of good.”
“I guess so. I’m just glad this whole ordeal is over,” I said, scratching my head over her enthusiasm. I took another peek over at the military bot. “Why is that thing still there anyway? To intimidate me?”
“Ah no. Not only is she fiery, but she is quite temperamental. She refuses to move since yesterday, and Sigma has not gotten around moving her out yet. I gather the project still needs some time to mature yet.”
Classic Tetra engineering at its finest.
After a day and a morning’s worth of fasting, even the gruel they pass off as “food” in the employee cafeteria sounded appetizing. I was never gladder to get out my station and muzzle up my barking stomach. Tia and Basil, their appetites calibrated to Summit’s working schedules, were a step ahead and had sprung out the labs before I could even lock down my terminal. I was standing in line and waiting for a slab of the “Monday Meatloaf” (not made from genuine Mondays) when a tug pulled against my pants leg. It’s the sort of tug you’d expect an attention-starved pet to make if it had opposable thumbs. The twins looked up to me with curiously empty maws. Basil spoke first.
“Hey Ly-lee, can we borrow your badge?”
“My Tetra ID? Why?”
“We need to use the train.”
“It’s the middle of the day, where could you possibly want to go to?”
Tia piped up. “We’re going back home. I have to do something.”
“And I have to go too,” Basil said. His lips crinkled down into a slight frown. “She said I have to even though I want stay here.”
Oh God no. I couldn’t let them roam through the dangerous city ecosystem in the middle of the day, let alone deal with the animals at my apartment. “No guys, I can’t let you do that.”
“Come on, Ly-lee, please? It’s important!” Tia pleaded. She stood up and placed her hands on my chest, which caused me to drop my tray from surprise and splatter Monday Meatpies on the floor. She grasped my hand, sandwiched it between hers, and rubbed it warm. Afterwards, she rolled my fingers into a ball and cupped her claws over them.
“I just don’t think it’s a great idea,” I said, leaning backwards against the counter as she pressed against me.
“I promise we’ll be good. Please, Ly-lee? Just this once.”
Basil stood upright and repeated her.
Conscious of the stares I was receiving from holding up the line, I didn’t have the heart to rebuke them. I sighed. I was such a goddamned softie.
“All right, fine. Just as long as you guys—”
No sooner had I voiced approval, Basil snapped into my back pocket and pulled out my wallet. I yapped in surprise, but Tia prevented me from stopping the thievery by keeping her hands tied around mine. Basil flipped open the wallet, plucked the ID from it, snapped it shut, and had the entire thing back in my pocket before I could utter another syllable. Tia then unwrapped my hands and, to my horror, pulled what looked like my skin off my palms and fingers. She flapped the membrane in the air to inspect it and chirped in approval. I shook my hand and examined it—graciously, my palm was still there.
Basil examined the card. “Oh this will be easy to dupe.” He ran out the cafeteria called out behind him, “Thanks Ly-lee!”
“Thank you,” Tia said. “We’ll give the ID to Aimee when we’re done.” She gave my nose a lick and left me with an empty tray stained with streaks of Monday.
I cleaned up the mess and realized I didn’t want meatloaf.
After lunch, I sat on the rim of the lobby’s fountain and burned the rest of the hour burping the remnants of the Wednesday Wieners. They were surprisingly edible. The meat had a rough and stringy texture wrapped around volatile pockets of fat, the kind that exploded in your mouth when you bit into it. Juiciness goes a long way to make food tolerable. My fellow engineers, after finishing their hard work exercising their jaws, filtered into the lobby with me. The Primary guys coalesced together like globules of oil in water and sipped lattes or other drinks with foreign names. Meanwhile, the bulk of Secondary blasted from the cafeteria epicenter and didn’t bother reassembling themselves. My colleagues sat with themselves with their arms crossed and dignified. Some read the morning’s news on their comms, while the slicker ones hoarded benches and used company time to do “creative mental expansion” with their arms folded over their eyes
Something didn’t play along with the crowd, however. It was an alien, some outsider ruffling the established fabric of the lobby culture. I felt it tingling my sixth sense—that sense of embarrassment—and it broke my reverie. I excused my turning head by pretending to crick my neck, and I saw him staring at me from the other side of the fountain. No one could be so intent on me, I figured, so I shifted along to rim to give him an un-obscured view. His gaze followed through the dancing water all the way to the ends of the fountain, his head pivoting like an owl with round eyes. The pretense of subtlety died, and I stared back at him. The man didn’t seem to notice. Confused and not caring to feel like a zoo exhibit, I stood up and called out to him.
“Hello? Can I help you?”
The man tensed up as if surprised that I noticed him. He reached for the base of his tie, tightened it, and started brushing off unseen debris from his white sleeves. He didn’t reply.
I guess I could have ignored him and let the creepy man ogle my sexy body all he wanted. Whatever, I didn’t need to care. But Lyle’s Personality Quirk #304: He cares too much, which got him into more trouble than he needed, especially in the last few days. I walked around the fountain to him and noticed he wasn’t anyone I’ve seen before in my routine around Summit. When I neared, his eyes widened and he stopped his brushing in mid-stroke.
“Is there anything I can help you with, sir?” I asked again.
The man trembled. He combed his tie repeatedly, from the top to the bottom and back again. His teeth rattled together like an uneven pot on a stove. His breath cut short, and he tugged at his tie until his collar tussled out. Drops of sweat clung on his forehead and begged gravity to release them. The edge of his lips unfurled upwards with twitching edges and formed a facsimile of a grin. The voice that came out from it rode on excited wheezes.
“You’re, ah… you’re Lyle. Lyle Ivano, yeah? Aha—Lyle! Lyle, right? Lyle!”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, which incited a squeal from him. I stepped back in surprise.
The man swabbed his forehead with his tie and bleated neurotic chuckles. What should have been an expression of relief instead sounded like a hyena on amphetamines. I looked around me as the man continued his crazed laugh—people were edging away from the scene. It would have suited me just fine to accompany them.
He eventually calmed and dulled his voice back to equilibrium, but still sounding ragged and excited. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Mr. Ivano. It’s just that, wow! You know. Meeting you and all. I’ve just heard stories and… wow! To meet you!”
Who in the hell would be excited to meet me?
“Mister, I don’t think I’m the person you think I am.”
“Sure you are! You’re the guy that tamed those lizards, right? Those Isians?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t tame anything. They’re just as wild as ever.”
“Ahaha! You’re on the modest end, a noble trait. I heard what you did that night when they barged into Secondary. You broke them down and showed them the stuff, didn’t you? That’s taming the wild beasts!”
“It’s nothing like that, I assure you.”
He groaned out a chuckle and shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’ve heard all the tales. I know the truth. We owe it all to you, good sir. Aha! It’s good to have a whip in the den of lions!”
There were worse things to be envied for, I guess. Hell, I could just be glad to be envied by anybody. But a hero? This man was drunk off the distilled excitement he had been imbibing, and it warped his sense of what I was. Perhaps this was a message from a higher power to remind me of the dangers of drugs. I couldn’t be sure.
“I think you should ask for a refund from the fool you got your truth from, Mr—” I hesitated when I realized I didn’t know what to call him.
“Ah, my manners! I haven’t even introduced myself!” He wiped his right hand on a thigh of his pants and held it out. “Sophos Andrews from Primary Sigma. An honor to meet a great person such as yourself, Mr. Ivano!”
“Just Lyle, please,” I said. After we shook, I brought my hand behind me to wipe off the sweat that latched to my palm. Sigma? He was far out from his natural habitat. I guess that explained the craziness.
“Ah, ‘just Lyle,’ he says! Ahaha!” He thumped his fist against his chest to contain his laughter. “No, I shall not demean you like that!”
This level of reverence was just too much for me. Joking ego inflation like Mark does is one thing—I could at least play along. This man seemed dead serious. A pair of eyes stared at me and quivered in worship like they had laid witness to the Messiah. God, was it uncomfortable.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not sure what you heard about me or what you think I did, but I’m no hero or whatever, okay? I’m just some random idiot that works here and got caught in the crossfire. It just happened. Nothing special.”
“They’re living with you aren’t they?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Ah! You see! Living in the den of the beasts! First, you battled the beasts in Secondary and then you drag them to your abode, shuttling them down in the deep dungeons where they can no longer do any harm. What sort of non-heroism is that?”
“Look, they just showed up in my house in the middle night, okay? I had nothing to do with it. And the rent for my apartment doesn’t come with a dungeon.”
“Baiting the beasts, classic!”
Forget it, there was no reasoning with the man. I could only pluck away at so much self-delusion without a psychiatry degree. At least for now, I let him have his little fantasy. I just wanted to cut this odd conversation short before I could provide him any more fodder for Lyle’s mythic heroics.
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Look, I gotta go back to the labs. Those sprockets need to be verified, you know?”
“Oh, oh. Of course! Please, don’t let me keep you here any further. Work needs to be done! You humoring me today was more than enough. Please, go.” He gestured me to go back to the labs.
“Yeah. See you later, Sophos.”
When walking to the labs, I turned back to him every few steps and saw him continuing to wave to me. He kept it up until I was inside the laboratory hallway. Thinking back, I can’t say that having an admirer didn’t tickle me, but I surely would’ve preferred someone a bit more in there. Then again, he was a character from Primary Sigma—I couldn’t expect less from a department that hired lizards as engineers.
The twins didn’t come back to Summit. True to their word, they had given my ID to Aimee, which I collected before I left. I wanted to do some groceries before heading home and replenish the food supply the twins had drained in Olympic-class fashion, but I thought it better to haul back to the apartment. Leaving the Isians to their vices home alone was one thing, but then I realized I haven’t the slightest idea what they actually meant by “we have to do something.” They could be throwing a house party for all lizards around the neighborhood for all I knew. Yeah, so I was an idiot. This “parenting sapient reptiles” stuff was new to me.
I was worried they never made it back home and instead got lost in the maze of the city’s mass transit system. It wasn’t about them getting lost, per se, but that they’ll become bored. Imagine the mess they’d make: harassing hapless passengers, tearing apart control panels on the trains to see how they worked, causing a horrific train-crashing accident, or maybe liking it all so much they wouldn’t want to come home. Bad worries.
Muffled gunfire, sword clanging, and meaty grunting sounded through my apartment door, which came as a relief for me. Inside, the male half of the reptilian pair crunched away on a snack on the couch and was watching an installment of the Adventures of the Iron Maiden. I sat next to him just as the best part of the show came and the heroine began her transformation. Her frail human body flashed into blinding light before the eponymous Maiden, a toned creature wrapped by a golden metal corset, strutted out with stockwhip in hand and a Latin chorus singing her praises from the heavens.
“Good show, huh?” I said.
Unable to speak while tending the crunches rumbling in his maw, he nodded.
“So what did you guys do all day? And where’s Tia?”
He wolfed down his mouthful and squealed. “We were out getting food all day. See!”
From the floor, he brought up a knapsack and jiggled it for me. The funk of aged wet rags seeped from the bag and washed a bad premonition over me. I inched my butt away, not wanting to see what was inside but unwilling to say it. It was the wrong time to be polite. When he opened the bag and presented its contents, I had to hold in my stomach with my hands over my mouth.
Rats. Tons and tons of fucking rats.
To torment me further, he plucked out a rat by its tail and gulped it whole and headfirst into his snout. My guts tried to puke itself out again when I heard the hollow crushing of the rodent’s bones. He slurped in the rat’s scaly tail and smiled at me.
“We have a whole bunch!” he proclaimed, jiggling the bag.
I was about to say something, but a sudden spasm in my chest forced my mouth closed. Meanwhile, the villainous Dark Reaver, the Iron Maiden’s greatest and most powerful enemy, lassoed the heroine in his Dark Recombinator. The Maiden struggled against the grasp of his dark tendrils and groaned in a way that could be confused with pleasure to unsophisticated ears.
I swallowed my guts in and tried again. “Basil, where did you—”
“Oh, wait a moment Ly-lee, I have something good for you too!”
He dropped the bag on the floor and skipped to the kitchen. A dead rat spilled and nestled next to my foot. I kicked the goddamn thing away in reflex. Basil came back a short moment later carrying a large plate.
“Here, it’s special and just for you,” he said and placed the plate on my lap.
My stomach churned and I almost swallowed my tongue. A pinwheel of bloodied mice lay on the plate with their tails wrapped around the rim and their noses pointed toward a gigantic rat in the center. Its hunched form still and lifeless, the black beast gaped at me and dared me to consume it. A top-rate effort in rodent preparation aesthetics? This was the reason why I was an engineer and not a snooty food critic. I gripped the cushions of the couch and tried not to retch.
Basil encouraged me by placing my hand on the plate and saying, “Go on, try one. It’s good!”
I drank back the little bit of vomit that crawled up my throat. The rat was staring at me, its eyes open and face snarled in mid-scream. Even in death, the thing was growling and defiant. It compelled me to seek Basil, who gave no solace and grinned as proud as a dog presenting its owner with a dead squirrel. I gulped, forced myself to smile, and patted his head while scrambling to think of an excuse. God, am I going to do it? It can’t be that bad, right? I closed my eyes and reached for the rodent.
Hiss!
I screamed and the plate fell off my lap, scattering dead mice over the floor. The fucking rat bastard wasn’t dead! Wild-eyed, the vermin screamed back at me. It ran screeching around the living room, confused and hissing at everything.
“Oh!” Basil yelped. He grabbed the shrieking rat and silenced it by crushing its neck with a curt snap with his claw. The crunch of breaking bones boiled over my stomach acids, and I felt like it was going to burn a hole in my gut. Basil picked up the plate and placed the rat, its neck bent unnaturally from its body, back on it. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t kill it good enough.”
I waved the plate away before he can put it back on my lap. “I don’t want it. You can have it.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll just save it for you when you do.”
He tossed the rat into the sack and then began clearing the mice from the floor. He disposed their bodies in his mouth until his cheeks swelled. After he appropriated the dozen or so mice into his jaws, he climbed back on the couch and started chewing the mass.
“So, ah, where’s your sister?” I asked him again after some sensibility.
“Out hunting still,” he said in-between crunches.
“You’re letting her do all the work?”
“No, no, I helped her. She said she didn’t need my help anymore and told me to come back.” He plucked another rodent from the sack. “Girls are better hunters anyway. They get real mean and stuff.”
“Yeah.”
The Iron Maiden, after breaking apart hundreds of the Dark Reaver’s henchmen, was pummeling the evil out of the great overlord himself. She spared no mercy terrorizing her greatest foe and whipped apart his will to live one lash at a time. By this stage, she wore even less than when she started. Such a wonderful show.
“How do you like it here so far?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s good. I think. I mean, it’s not as big as Summit or anything. And it doesn’t have any trees. And it doesn’t have a big cafeteria or anything. And it’s kind of small, I guess. Not a lot of room to run around. Kind of cramped actually. And there’s not a lot of people to play with. And it’s kind of dark in here.” He sneezed and spewed out nasal debris and bits of rat into to the air. “And the air is kind of weird too and smells funny.”
“So besides that?”
“Besides that, I like it!”
Basil’s ears snapped to attention when something knocked on the window leading to the fire escape. “Oh, and there she is now!” he said and ran to open the pane. Another Isian head popped in and licked his forehead, and he made room for the newcomer to hop inside with a bulging sack strung over her back.
“Hey, Ly-lee!” Tia greeted when she saw me.
I waved hello.
The bag met the floor in a fleshy thump, and Tia dragged it behind her and came to sit next to me. I didn’t have to question what the bag held. The stench from the horde of vermin overpowered my nostrils and forced my mouth to take breathing duties. She plunged her head into the bag and fished inside. “Hey little brother, look what I have here,” she said and pulled out, by the tail, a bloated specimen.
Her brother examined the rat and clicked his tongue. “That’s not the biggest, is it?”
“No, but it’s special,” she poked the rodent’s bloated belly, “because I think it has babies inside.”
Basil reached out for it. “Oh, I want to see!”
Before he could touch the rat, Tia stuffed it in her mouth and chewed it whole. Her eyes beaded in a gourmand concentration, she crunched and swished the bits in her mouth and buried them in pockets in her cheeks. “Definitely full of babies,” she said with her mouth still swollen with rat bits.
I clutched my stomach and groaned.
“You always get the good ones!” Basil pouted.
Tia paid no mind to him and concentrated on swallowing the remains. A burp later, she hoisted the bag up and fumbled inside again. “I have something for you, Ly-lee. I found it trying to hunt the rats. I think you’ll like it!”
“That’s okay. I don’t think I want—” My hands snuffed out the rest of the sentence when she pulled out the surprise.
A goddamn fucking cat.
Little greasy bits of the Wednesday Wieners floated in the toilet water—yellow, green, and other cheerful colors dancing in the clear pool. They didn’t taste nearly as good as they did that afternoon.