The time had passed quickly with a two hour stint in the Morphological Department to deal with, and the rest of the housekeeping and moving had to be taken care of, as well. It was now a quarter to ten. Layme stood in her empty room, having moved even her bathroom cabinet to a temporary locker, and messing with the mirror setting on her embedded wall camera. The camera picked up on her and repeated the view onto her conscreens, as if she was video-chatting with herself. It was a strange thing to get used to, but when one was stuck without a mirror, it served its purpose.
Her eyes shimmered a light blue-green color, the same shade as the lightest refractions of light in her hair, which she'd decided to keep it's already-iridescent blue. Glitter eyeshadow in the same aquamarine color shone in wings on her eyelids, and a glitter pulse tattoo wrapped like a pencil-thin snake down her left arm, undulating in time to her heart beat, which was currently making the tattoo writhe in hectic movements across her pale skin. A biocrystal on the silver choker she wore shone bright and dark in time to her pulse as well, like a miniature heart at her throat, and her tragus pieces sparkled from her ears in the same light aqua. Her dress was ten shades darker than the accents she had chosen, a soft mesh of dark green-blue over the skin-tight two piece biofit that was the only thing keeping anyone's imagination working. The mesh layer was close together, making the dress a layer of nearly opaque color that was bordering on translucency just enough that her navel was a dark shadow in the middle of her stomach. Her boots were another two shades darker, just barely green at all in the right lights. They reached halfway up her thighs and made her three inches taller than normal.
All in all, she thought Tessa would be pleased when she opened up the picture blip Layme had left her before signing off of the communications part of the System.
Nervousness fluttered through Layme like small birds just below her skin. She found herself unable to sit still as she rode out the remaining minutes before the party. Her booted foot tapped a syncopated rhythm on the floor when she sat down, and when she noticed it, she got up and began pacing again, her fingers flicking randomly through views and overlays on her conscreens that she barely noticed, except to get annoyed with them as well and turn her visual feed off entirely. Most of her emotions tended to turn into annoyance when she was on edge, she noted. For someone who's never been to a party before, she thought with that same nervous annoyance, a Dorm pulse is a hell of a way to start. She found herself wishing that she had said no to Zink's invitation, or that she'd been less of a tech geek up until now, so that she would at least have experience with parties of any sort. A bit too late for that one, Lay, she thought, and she had to laugh. It was too true.
Her alarm beeped cheerily in her ears just after that thought, and Layme jumped, feeling her stomach slip down another three or four notches. It was time.
The walk out of her father's apartment and across campus to the spec-ed section seemed abnormally short in lieu of her anxiety. Her surroundings, lit with the occasional street light and the last lingering bits of the late summer sunset, seemed to pass by on all sides with unusual speed, as if they were in a rush to be behind her. With every clicking step of her boots on the paved paths weaving through the perfect campus lawn it all seemed less and less real, as if she would wake up and it would all be forgotten like some brief and hurried dream.
She arrived at the large, old-fashioned metal gates that separated the Specialized Education buildings from the rest of the campus much sooner than she expected. The gates had always stood as a symbol of mystery and awe, as well as a sense of being entirely separate—what stood behind the silent, twisting metal of the gates was unachievable, not even incorporated in any child's wildest dreams. Spec-ed was special. Important. It was also impossible. No one you knew, and no one your friends knew, and no one who lived in the vaguest rumors and stories told by attention-seeking children, no one got into spec-ed. It was as if the people who lived and learned behind those gates had always existed there, in some sort of mysterious vacuum that served only to create questions and speculations.
Now she was about to become part of those speculations.
She took the last few steps up to the gates, looking for a scanner that would grant her access to the grounds beyond. She wondered if she was the only new arrival—there were no other people milling around nearby—or if she had timed everything wrong. Maybe she was late. Maybe she was early. Her nervousness seemed to have reached a plateau—she kept waiting for her heartbeat to kick up another notch, for the smooth glow of her necklace to pick up its pace, but it remained fast and steady, like the beacon on top of a transmission tower. She found what she was looking for: a call button under the notice that informed her that this was the Specialized Education Department, and she would not be allowed access without authorization and/or an escort, if she did not have the necessary clearance. She almost pressed the button without thinking.
“Idiot,” she hissed at herself, rolling her eyes and scanning the panel on the gate post for a retina scanner. She found it and pressed its activation button, and its electronic eye opened, beeping and looking for her own, which she placed in front of the scanner nervously. The familiar light flashed, and there was a terrifying moment where she thought the security system would reject her, and then an electronic voice said, “Access granted. 122018 to Spec-Ed, student clearance code green” and the gates swung inward on hinges too well-oiled and technologically altered to creak like Layme thought they would. This seemed like some sort of outrage, like gates that large and that old should make some sort of sound as testament to all they had seen.
“Shut up, crazy-ass,” she told herself, making a face. “They're just gates.” Even so, Layme cast a superstitious glance over her shoulder as she passed them, as if they would come alive and try to chase her down. They only swung shut, equally quiet, and then stood in silence again, awaiting the next person who would dare to ask for entry to what they kept safe. The beep they made when they closed fully sent a shiver down Layme's spine for a reason she couldn't place. Tessa's words from that morning came back to her. It's not like they're throwing you in prison or anything.
So why were they locking her in?
“Shut up, shut up,” she muttered to herself again. “You're a jagging tweak. They're not locking you in, you rotter.” Talking to herself calmed her down again, even if the only things she was saying were insults. She was being stupid. Realizing now that she had no idea where her new Dorm actually was, she called up the System's navigation system on her conscreens and plugged in the Dorm's call number as her destination. She told the display she was wearing cons, and a glowing purple line appeared to light up on the ground ahead of her. Of course, the line wasn't really on the ground, only on her screens, but it was effective, and much easier than a flat map or even a projection—a good sense of direction had never been her strong point. Layme followed the line until she came to a large, old-fashioned looking building with a set of steps leading to a pair of solid double doors. They reminded her of the gates at the entrance: full of age and authority. She switched off her conscreens again and climbed the steps, her different accessories glowing and moving wildly in time to the heartbeat hammering in her ears. She could hear music through the thick brick walls, the heavy bass and repeating rhythm of what was called “post-ban pop” by some people, though any logic behind this name escaped her. Finally she reached the top, and her hand hovered uncertainly over the door handle as she looked for a security panel that would scan her in. Finding none, she had decided just to pull open the door just as the one she wasn't touching swung outward on its own.
A girl who looked about nineteen, with her hair in red and black streaks, was looking at Layme with narrowed eyes. “Who are you?” she asked, stepping out onto the top step and letting the door close behind her. Layme saw that she was wearing a black midriff top and skin-tight pants that were changing to project the architecture behind her, as if they were transparent, but in negative exposure. The effect was slightly dizzying and also a bit intimidating.
“I'm, ah, Layme. Layme Ray. I got a blip from Zink this morning?” She hadn't meant for her words to sound quite so uncertain and questioning.
The girl snorted as if she heard that line all the time, and gave Layme a once-over that made her feel young and inexperienced, which wasn't something she felt very often. It was unsettling and unpleasant. “Alright,” the girl said. “Come with me, tweak.”
Deciding that she wasn't in the best position to argue against the half-insult, especially since she'd used it in reference to herself not long ago, Layme followed the girl through the door and into the biggest room she thought she'd ever seen.
She thought later that the room wasn't actually as big as it seemed, but at the moment of walking into it, she felt overwhelmed and out of place. There were hundreds of people, most of them either moving to the music or moving to get to another part of the room. Their clothes and hair were as multi-colored and various as her own, giving the whole place the appearance of a dulled rainbow whirlpool. The lights were purple-blue, and Layme realized that they were probably blacklights. Vintage. She wondered how many of the bulbs were actually UV, and how many were less expensive substitutes concocted by the Chemistry students. She looked down at her left hand, where the end of her pulse tattoo coiled around her wrist and spiraled to its end on her palm, and she saw that the light made it glow like something oddly alive. The floor beneath her feet was a single seamless stronglite screen where pinpricks of light moved slowly in some vast pattern she couldn't see. It was also curved slightly, so that the center of the room was like the bottom of a shallow bowl. She noticed as she walked across it, trying not to lose her guide in the sea of unfamiliar people, that each step she made left a white imprint that faded to slowly to red, then orange, then through the spectrum until the purple melted into the same black it had been before, interrupted only by the occasional white pinprick—which, Layme realized, were probably meant to be stars.
Layme and her unnamed guide had crossed the bowl of the floor and come up on the the very edge of the other side, to where a group of people stood in a loose circle, some half-dancing, others sitting on low stools that shimmered a spacey blue and green under the lights. Layme hung back as the red haired girl tapped someone on the shoulder and said something. Layme wondered how anyone could hear each other over the throbbing bass of the music. The girl who had brought her in came back, and someone had gotten up to follow her. They both came over to Layme, and the girl looked much less annoyed at her presence. She said something to Layme who shook her head and put her hands over her ears. I can't hear you, she mouthed. The girl rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as she twitched her fingers—covered in a sheer black interface glove—and pinged Layme with a local System address and a password. Layme connected to it, and she jumped when she heard the girl's voice in her ear.
“Welcome to the Dragon Dorm, newbie,” she said. “It's probably a good idea to stay logged in to our local most of the time. Especially for things like this. Almost everyone wears a sound piece, so party talking is a piece of cake.” She smiled wider and winked. “I'm Shylo, a good old Dragon of three years. You'll like it here, I promise.”
With that she turned and half-danced back to the circle of people, her voice
fading from the direct connection as she opted out. That left Layme with the other person—who she realized was Zink as she turned to introduce herself. Seeing a face she had seen at least once before, even if it had been on video, caused an unstoppable smile to break out across her face.
“Hey,” she said, and was glad to hear that she could hear her own voice through her tragus pieces in addition to other people's. She was momentarily at a loss for what to say, so she asked the first question that came to mind. “How did you direct connect to my audio feed without my authorization?”
“A magician never reveals his tricks,” Zink said. Having the sound of his voice so close to her ears in such a noisy environment was strange but not unwelcome. It felt intimate somehow, as if things were supposed to be exactly they way that they were. Zink grinned, and Layme had to double-take to be sure of what she saw: there was a UV tattoo of an Asian dragon across his teeth. “Frizz you out?” he asked, his grin widening as he saw her take notice.
“No, I like it! It's... surprising!”
“Just like all us Dragons, yeah?”
“I guess so,” Layme agreed amiably. “I've never seen so many people with hair that reminds me of mine!”
“They say great minds think alike,” Zink quipped, sliding past her suddenly and walking towards the throng of dancing people at the center of the depressed floor. Layme turned, wondering whether to follow or not, when Zink's voice in her ears made her jump. It still sounded like he was right next to her in a quiet room. “Coming?”
“Sure,” she replied, deciding that if she stood and dwelt on every strange thing that happened tonight, she would turn into a statue. She followed Zink down, and the music seemed to get louder as she did. She glanced up and saw the speakers mounted on the ceiling—in a circle around a giant chandelier equipped with blacklight bulbs. It was vibrating in time with the music as the bass shook the glass. She tore her eyes away from it just in time to run straight into Zink, who laughed, though not unkindly.
“Kind of a trip and a half, isn't it?”
“Yeah, no jag. How does the University afford all this?”
“Government grant, I think. They're running some kind of experiment in the research section of spec-ed or some track. Since the Dorms are part of Spec Ed, we get some of the perks, I guess.”
“There's more than one Dorm?” This possibility had never occurred to Layme. She knew that the University serviced all the people in the officially assigned area, but it seemed impossible that there would be enough people who had tested out to need more than one Dorm.
“One for each age level. As jag as it seems, there are actually people who test out at five! And at ten, of course. Us? We're the ones who made it to the big time. Not everyone who tests out stays out, you know. And most people don't test out so late.” Zink was dancing now, and after a moment his eyes slid shut in concentration. A pair of UV thread tattoos similar to her own shimmered on the muscles of his arms as they stretched leisurely above his head. Layme tried not to let herself get too distracted; he didn't seem to be doing it to flirt with her. He was just doing what he normally did at an ice-filled pulse. It was all probably completely normal to him. Heck, she felt herself sliding into a half-disconnected state. The music was just too easy to drone out to. She was about to open her mouth to say something about it when Zink seemed to snap out of his doze.
“Sorry!” he said suddenly, turning to find her and then beckoning her to follow him again. “I totally blanked there for a second. The music gets the better of me sometimes, you know? Anyway, I meant to introduce you to some people!” Layme followed Zink again as they disentangled themselves from the dancing mob at the center of the floor to yet another little group of people at the opposite side of the room from where they had started. There were probably fifteen of them, and they were all lounging around on the same small stools, or in big cushions that looked like old-style bean bag chairs, the kind most kids saw in pictures.
“Hey guys,” Zink said, and Layme heard a sound on her tragus that meant Zink had piggybacked her into another mini-network, presumably so that all the lounging people could hear him, and vice-versa. “This is Layme, our other newbie. I trust you'll take care of her.” The faces of the people in front of her all spread into slow smiles, and a girl with surprisingly normal pixie-cut black hair and a blue dress stood up and stuck out her hand.
“My pleasure,” she said over her shoulder to Zink as he left, simultaneously shaking Layme's hand. “I'm Taz, short for Tasmania, but that's only because my parents were cracked, so if I ever hear you calling me that, I will personally kick your sorry tweaking ass.”
Layme
felt her eyes widen, but Taz was smiling and everyone sitting behind her was laughing again, so she assumed Taz was probably joking.
“I'm Layme. There's, uh, not a lot else you can call me, I guess. I go by Lay sometimes.”
“Lay,” Taz repeated, and she sounded like she was testing its flavor. “As in, a good one. I like it.” Her friends laughed again, and Layme had to grin, if only at the absurdity of it. She reminded herself to tell Tessa that her name had been compared to a good lay. It was the kind of thing her cousin would appreciate. Taz turned back to the half-circle of other dormies and threw herself down on one of the “bean bags.” She waved a hand at a few of the empty chairs and cushions nearby, apparently inviting Layme to take a seat, and so she did, choosing one of the low stools. She had to fold her legs awkwardly in order to avoid flashing everyone.
“The buttons on the sides change the height,” one of the other girls said. Layme jumped again, forgetting that she was hooked into their sound network. She found the buttons and adjusted the stool to a better height, hooking her heels over the crossbar underneath her feet.
“Am I the only newbie?” she asked when she was finally situated. She'd been wondering all day if she was the only one assigned to 21 who had tested out this year, and if anyone knew the answer, it would probably be the other Dorm people. The boy and a girl sitting on either side of Taz both shook their heads.
“I'm new, too, and so is Kalla,” the boy said. “My name's Dren. Good to meet you, Layme.”
“You too,” she replied, and she meant it. She didn't feel nearly as out of place as she had when she thought she was the only non-veteran around. “Why were you guys already here when the party started?”
“We traveled in from out-ring,” Kalla answered. “I'm from by by the border, and I think Dren said he was from—what, Burgan?” Dren nodded, and Layme let out a low whistle.
“You came all the way from the border for this?”
“Sure,” Kalla answered. “It's the closest campus in our jurisdiction. The next nearest is out in Milago, I think, and that's like seven hours by ground from here, which is how I would have had to travel.” She shrugged and looked down, as if she was ashamed of that fact, and Layme could see why. Hover transit was much faster, and it wasn't usually considered outrageously expensive. The average person could usually afford hovertran if it saved them a lot of time. Kalla must have come from a bottom city. Layme gritted her teeth in sympathy, though she couldn't imagine coming from a city with such a low merit rating that its citizens couldn't afford a single hovertran ticket for something like sending their kid off for reassignment.
“Wasn't there something about merit reimbursement in the letter?” Layme asked, curious.
Kalla laughed, and it was a bitter sound. “Sure, but that's only if you have the merit to spend in the first place. Not us. The Government footed the bill to send me here, and since ground-trans is cheaper, I got to ride down here old style. It was a jaggin' nice car though, I'll give them that.” There was general laughter around the circle again, and Layme realized that most people in the Dorm had probably come from out of the city ring. She wondered for the first time how many people lived out of the normal merit range—not just in the Dorm, but in general. She had always known there were bottom-merit cities—the modified bell-curve of the merit economy made it necessary—but she had never given much thought to how many people actually fell within that range.
Taz interrupted Layme's train of thought when her voice came over the local system. “Milo, you should introduce our new friends to one of the perks of Dorm life,” she said, smiling. The other veteran Dorm members grinned, and an older boy with an elaborate pulse tat on one eye who was probably set to take his twenty-ones the following spring, laughed and got up, tipping an imaginary hat to Taz.
“Coming right up, my lady,” he said cheerily, and disappeared into the crowd.
“What kind of perk?” Dren asked.
“Patience, my friend,” Taz said smoothly. “For all will be revealed in time.”
“Everyone here is so cryptic,” Dren muttered half-jokingly, eliciting another laugh from the assembled dormies, Layme among them. She liked it here already. There was a sense of belonging, like she was with actual peers for once instead of just people her own age. She'd always viewed those two things as being different, and her parents' professor friends had always seemed more like peers to her than her classmates at school. She was seeing testing out as something she hadn't really viewed it as before all of a sudden: she saw it as an opportunity. Before now it had seemed more like
just another required thing, like going to the dentist and the doctor, or going to school every day, or even the Standards themselves. Now she wondered if perhaps it was a reward of some kind—you do well on your Standards, and you get peers.
This struck her as funny, and she laughed out loud. The eyes of the group turned to focus on her, her laughed carried to them by the local, but most everyone was smiling, so she smiled back.
“What's poppin'?” one of the boys asked.
“I was just thinking that I like it here already,” Layme answered.
“You're gonna like it a hell of a lot more when Milo gets back,” someone said, and there was a general murmur of agreement.
“Speak of the devil!” someone else proclaimed a moment later, and Milo appeared through the crowd again, holding something that looked familiar but that Layme couldn't quite place at first. Dren saved her the trouble.
“Is that a test-tube rack?” he asked dubiously.
“Sure it is,” Milo said, placing it with a mini-flourish on the top of one of the small stools in the center of the loose grouping, and then adding a second one to sit beside it with his other hand. He did it adeptly, as if it was something he did all the time. There were test tubes in all of the spaces on the racks, each of them a little taller and a little wider than a standard test tube, and mostly full of colored liquid. The colors were muted under the blacklights of the room, but it seemed like they ranged across the spectrum.
“What is it?” Kalla asked.
“It's the best part of being a Dragon, little friend,” Milo said, grinning. “Ever had an alc before?” he asked the three new people. All three shook their heads.
“Isn't it illegal?” Kalla asked. “Until you pass your twenty-ones?”
“For the a-ver-age bear it is,” Milo agreed, pronouncing average bear in a cadence that was probably supposed to be a joke, but which didn't make sense to Layme. “But Dragons kick bears asses, so the point is moot, of course.” All the older dormies laughed; apparently there was some sort of joke that the newcomers were missing.
“What does being a Dragon have to do with it?” Layme asked.
“Because, my friend, no one thinks we exist, and, in the end, they're the ones getting their asses burned by whatever fire we damn well want to breathe on them.” More laughter greeted this statement, and Layme and the other two were left even more confused than before.
“The chemistry specs whip this stuff up for us,” Taz said, flicking a test tube with one long fingernail. Layme just barely heard the ringing sound it made through whatever extra audio pickup Taz had on her. It was probably one in her hand. “And legality doesn't mean shit for us Dragons, you know. Because of exactly what Milo said. We're Dragons. People are afraid of us, because we breathe mother-fucking fire all over their tweaking little butts. We tested out because we're better than them. So we can do whatever we jagging well want to, and they either don't notice, because we're not supposed to exist, don't care for the same reasons, or leave us to it, because they're dogs running around and yes-sirring their Alphas while we light their master's house on fire.”
The rest of the dormies roared with laughter again, but Layme was still confused. It must have been evident on her face, because someone said, “Ah, no fear, jags. You'll get it eventually.”
Milo was nodding. “You will. For now, just kick back and enjoy the fun, yeah? So, as I was saying. How many of you have had a normal alco before? None? Ice, alright, because this stuff is like ten times more kick than your garden-variety juice.” He grinned again. “I mixed this batch up just for us, actually. You'll thank me for it. Just go easy at first. It goes down smooth now, but it can really snag you up later tonight if you over do it.”
Layme saw the other two looking at the color-filled test tubes with the same trepidation that she felt. Taz may have called this a perk, but it sounded more like a giant risk just for the hell of it.
“Come, now, newbies!” Taz cried, slinging and arm around Dren and Kalla's surprised necks. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
Dren muttered something that sounded like cryptic again, and Kalla was looking at Taz with something akin to the admiration you might show a mentally unstable person who hadn't taken their medication in a few days. Layme, inspired perhaps by the surreality of the entire situation, slid forward off her stool.
“I'll do it,” she said.
“Excellent!” Milo proclaimed. He fished an aquamarine drink from the rack and handed it to her. “To match your outfit,” he explained unnecessarily, winking. Layme felt herself blushing and was glad he probably couldn't see it in this light.
“Hold up, hold up, wait!” Taz cried. “We have to sign them in before they get too drunk to do it!” More laughter from the lounging dormies. Taz shoved Dren and Kalla forward and beckoned for Layme to follow. “We'll be back, Milo, hold that thought! And a drink, if you can be bothered.” She ushered the three new dormies ahead of her to a door against one wall that apparently led to the rest of the building. The voices of the others faded as Taz and her three temporary wards moved out of the main range of their signal. On the wall she led them to, there was an eye scanner, and someone clever had drawn an Asian dragon on it, similar to the one on Zink's teeth, so that the retina scanner appeared to be the dragon's watchful eye. Taz pressed the button near it and set it to full system sign-in instead of just security access, then stepped back and shooed Kalla towards the scanner.
“Go on, you first, hup-hup!” Taz chirped, laughing and half-dancing to the bass beat of the music. Kalla stepped forward nervously and stuck her face in front of the eye of the dragon, which proceeded to scan her eye with a mellow red light instead of the usual blue.
“Whose idea?” Layme asked, even though she felt like she might already know the answer.
“Zink,” Taz answered, twirling in a circle as she spoke, her eyes closed and her hands in the air, much like Zink's had been out on the dance floor. “He's kind of a head honcho around here, which is funny, because I'm a year ahead of him, and Milo is the year in front of me, but whatever. We don't want the responsibility of a million little tweaks all over our asses—” Layme was beginning to detect a pattern in Taz's insults. “—and we haven't really earned the infamy. Let him have it. Your turn,” she added, and Layme walked over and leaned forward, careful not to spill her drink, which she still held in one hand. She let the dragon's eye find her own. The scan completed with a beep, and she heard the authorization come over her tragus pieces.
“Layme Tessa Ray 122018, relocation to Spec-Ed 21.522-46518. Official statement of completion issued at 22:49:53.” Another beep closed the statement and Layme stepped back and let Dren take her place at the wall.
“So Zink is kind of a leader around here?” she asked.
Taz, still dancing, laughed. “Somewhere between a leader and a rebel. You'd think those two would just cancel each other out, but Zink makes them work. He keeps kind of elite company. Plays favorites and all that. Milo and I aren't part of it,” she said, answering Layme's unspoken question before she could ask it. “We party too hard for him, I think. Zink's a wet blanket when it comes to his little ring partying too much. Which I think is a shame,” she added, and she stopped dancing. “If you can't party, what's the point of being a Dragon? And speaking of parties, we have one waiting for us. Come with me, little newbies!” Taz led them, dancing, back to where Milo and the others were sitting.
“No one's had any yet?” she asked, throwing herself dramatically down onto a cushion again. There was an overall shaking of heads. “Good shit. We should let our newbies do the honor! Layme? I believe you volunteered to go first.” She waved her hand in a dramatic, twirling go-ahead gesture, tipping her head in a bow that may or may not have been mocking. Layme couldn't tell which it was meant to be, and she found she wasn't sure she wanted to know. Right now, the dormies' teasing all seemed to be in good fun, but Layme sensed a venom just under the surface. They were dragons alright—sleeping ones who would wake up if you poked them in the wrong place. And all of their eyes were on her.
Though her stomach was fluttering nervously, Layme decided it was probably in her best interest to copy the grandiose gestures of the other Dragons. She was going to live here until her twenty-ones—she might as well get along with the locals. Letting the smirk that thought inspired crawl slowly across her face, Layme forced all traces of nervousness to the back of her mind, raised her thin glass in a toast, and made eye contact with Milo. She made sure to keep his asymmetrical gaze as she knocked the drink back in one swallow, and his eyes widened, the one with the tattoo of swirling abstract colors looking absurdly large, when she forced the grimace trying to appear on her face to back down. Milo wasn't wrong—the drink did go down smooth—but it was unexpectedly sweet, and the candy-like flavor
mixed with the subtle tang of alcohol was unfamiliar, sending her taste-buds into an uproar. Even so, she kept her face smirking and her eyes on Milo's. In the last few minutes Layme had begun to see this pulse as a sort of gladiator-style game, except that no one got killed. It was all about proving yourself. It wasn't enough to be smart or clever here, because everybody was; instead it was in the small and insignificant things that you had to beat to provide proof of your superiority.
Layme realized all this in the two seconds it took for her to swallow her drink, as well as stumbling upon another revelation that would have been unsettling to people less used to being separate from the group they were assigned to be with: no one playing this silly little game of King of the Hill knew it was being played, not even Taz and Milo. To them it was just the way things were. You hazed the newbies, you settled into cliques, you drank as much as you could—it was all the natural order for of things to them.
Might as well enjoy it, she thought as she lowered her glass, and laughed. On impulse, she turned the rounded end of the test tube towards Milo and tossed it like a dart. He caught it on reflex, then looked at as if he wasn't sure where it had come from. Layme realized that, though she was well within the short-signal of the clique's network, her sound feed was quiet. Then a set of slow, syncopated claps came from one side of the circle—Taz's thin hands were clapping together with sardonic slowness, and there was a smile on her face that seemed to say So what? I've seen better and done more—but Layme thought she saw a disgruntled train of thought running behind her eyes. Taz was looking at her, a new Dragon of sixteen, and seeing someone she could never be. Taz was nearing the end of her time to breathe fire onto all the tweaks, and she was holding on to it like a failing lifeline. Here she was, going ever faster towards her twenty-ones, to reassignment and job placement, and her power was already failing. Zink, a Dragon for less time than her, thought himself above her, and that bothered her much more than she would ever admit. Now Layme was supposed to be beneath her, and instead she had stolen Taz's spotlight somehow.
You trag! Layme berated herself mentally. Did you come here just to be the same sorry fringe-liver that you were before? Fuck that. Back the fuck down and let her take you. Give her whatever sign of submission she needs to stay happy the rest of the night. What have you got to lose?
Nothing, of course. The answer was nothing. So she pressed a hand to her mouth and made her step backwards to her seat a clumsy one, as if she was either dazed or fighting her gag reflex, even though the only effect the drink seemed to have had was to make her stomach feel warmer than it had and get rid of whatever shreds of nervousness had remained. She ricked a glance at Taz and was glad to see that her grin had widened, and the treacherous waters of her eyes had calmed.
“There we go,” she said. “I thought you were losing your touch, Milo.”
Milo grinned. “Not at all. Same as it always is—newbie batch is a triple. You didn't think I was going to break tradition, did you?”
Taz waved her hand as if to say it didn't matter, and a few of the older dormies grabbed drinks and began sipping at them enthusiastically. They took them from the rack that hadn't held Layme's; apparently there was a difference in the strength. Layme sat and watched them, feeling warm, but not much else. After a bit, Taz cast expectant glances at the new dormies on either side of her. “You're up, trackers,” she said, her voice a satisfied kind of drawl that made Layme think of a sleek, well-fed cat.
Layme really had no desire to watch Kalla and Dren's reactions to their drinks. The rest of her felt hot now, in addition to her stomach, as if the alc had planted something that was slowly growing roots, and it seemed like the rest of the Dragons were used to much more violent reactions from the drinking virgins. Also, as far above her peers as she had always felt, Layme had never had a strong stomach when it came to watching other people be sick.
“I'm going to bug out for this one, guys,” she said, making sure to keep her voice just on this side of trembling for effect. “I really don't want to watch anyone narf.” She thought she looked shaky enough, but even so, she expected someone to protest, or for Taz to try and demean her into staying. No one said anything. There was a low murmur of general assent instead; apparently she had fulfilled her obligations as a new Dragon, finished her role in the ritual, and she was allowed to go. She stood and walked towards the crowd on the dance floor, grateful that she was soon out of the audio range for the rest of the group. She didn't feel sick, like she was pretending to in front of Taz and the others, but she didn't feel like sitting still either. There was that pleasant heat all over her body now, and things had lost that distinctive quality she had grown so used to seeing in the world during her sixteen years—they no longer seemed to be half-forbidden to her, something to observe but never to be a part of. As Layme half-strutted to the middle of the dance floor, her booted footsteps driven by the beat of the music, she was struck by the fact that she wasn't really the black sheep here. She wasn't the only one with colored hair or glittering makeup. She wasn't the smartest, the one who trumped even the teacher's knowledge of almost any subject. Instead, she was another faceless body in the grip of the sounds and lights. She was nothing by herself, but by dancing with them all, here, she was a part of something bigger. A heartbeat.
“A pulse,” she said under her breath, and the term seemed to make better-than-logical sense, almost as if it was something other, something bordering on divine.
She wondered what else had been in that drink.
She also wanted another.
She loved the way she felt everything more and thought about it less. She had already lost track of where she was in relation to Taz and Milo and Kalla and Dren. She had been too caught up in the way the lights looked reflecting off the floor. The floor itself was also interesting. Its stars—if that was really what they were—seemed to slow down and speed up in relation to the beat of the music. She couldn't be absolutely sure of that, though. Her thoughts seemed to have decided to change speed a little, too.
What had been in that drink, anyway?
She was towards the center of the dancing crowd now, and people were pressed against her on every side, simply because as soon as she had wormed her way through, the crowd had fallen back into whatever wake she had caused in it. She didn't even notice the faces of the people she could see—her eyes were busy searching for Taz and Milo on the outside of the ring—she wanted another alc. In the process of searching for them, however, she realized that the majority of the crowd held alcs or empty tubes of their own in their hands. She tapped the person nearest to her on the shoulder, and when he turned around, she pointed to the test tube in his hand. He grinned and offered his to her. She decided to take it—why not? He could probably go get another one. He wouldn't have offered otherwise. She drained the mostly-full drink in one go. It was blue this time, and the taste was once again reminiscent of candy, and surprisingly sour. The heat it brought down her throat was more intense, but it faded more quickly. A trapped energy replaced the heat, like she was nervous or excited, and it made her dancing more frenzied. She didn't feel self-conscious; quite the contrary, actually. The movements of the people around her seemed to match hers quite well. She was anonymous here.
She could no longer quite remember why she was here in the first place.
There was someone behind her, tapping her on the shoulder. She turned around and saw Milo, and she smiled.
“Hey, newbie,” he said. He had hacked her sound feed again. How did everyone manage to do that? Why didn't she know how to do that?
“Hey,” she murmured, and she smiled. He looked good, his thin form dressed in black jeans and a white shirt, bordering on formal except that it was unbuttoned nearly half way. Why hadn't she noticed that before?
Milo laughed softly, and the sound in her ears made her shiver. Both of them were still dancing. “How you holding?” Milo asked.
“Alright. It's kind of nice like this. It's warm,” she explained, but she had a feeling that the words she thought she was saying and the ones that had tumbled from her mouth weren't exactly the same. She had no idea what those differences could be, either. Milo's grin widened.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, and she heard a difference in his voice too, a sort of detachment that reminded her of what she was feeling. She nodded, and spun in a circle on impulse, bowing to the sounds of the music as she'd been doing most of the night, but before she could turn all the way around, she felt hands grab her waist—strong hands. Milo's hands. They didn't grab to hurt her; in fact, they were surprisingly gentle given the lack of sobriety of their owner. Rather than twist from the grasp as she might have any other night, Layme actually took a step back, feeling the fabric of Milo's shirt on her bare shoulders. He was taller than her by half a foot, even in her boots. He chuckled again, and she was disoriented for a moment—the sound came from above her, but also through her traguses. It was enough to confuse anyone, all their networks and everything. And how did they keep hacking her sound feed?
She was distracted by the comfortable heat of his hands burning through the thin fabric of her dress, and the way it felt as they moved along her sides. It seemed like everything was happening with varying degrees of heat tonight. She moved her body in contrast to his so that when his hands slid up, she shimmied down, and when he tried to swing her waist right, she undulated her hips to the left. She heard him laugh again.
“You're a stubborn one,” he said, but he sounded like his eyes would be flashing if she could see them. She laughed back and said nothing. Suddenly the warmth of his hands was gone. Layme whipped around fast enough to make her buzzed head spin, and she nearly lost her balance, but the press of the crowd kept her upright. Milo was still there, looking at her with a skeptically raised eyebrow.
“You're leaving?” she asked, and she regretted it immediately. Her voice sounded pitiful and slightly desperate.
Milo didn't seem to notice. “Thought you'd like another drink. Do you?”
“Oh.” Layme thought about it for only a second. “Sure. Yeah. Another would be great.” Milo offered her his hand with typical over-dramatic character, and Layme took it, giggling almost without being aware of the sound. He led her off the dance floor to yet another rack of colored test tubes, and he plucked two from their spots, handing one to Layme.
“To being Dragons,” Milo said, raising his glass. Layme raised her own and caught the faint clink of the glasses on her sound feed. Milo must have had another sound pickup, like Taz. She wondered what they were for.
Milo drained his alc in one drought, and Layme followed suit, the candy-sour taste seeming much less strange than it had the first time. The heat didn't seem quite as intense either, just a slightly warmer throb for a few seconds. She wondered how drunk she really was, and decided she didn't care. She had never felt so real, so a part of everything, as she did right then. The music seemed not to have gotten louder, but to have gained a new frequency in its sound, so that it throbbed in her ribcage and in the bones of her hips. Milo's pulse tat seemed to have picked up speed, ebbing and flowing around his eye at a frenzied pace. His eyes settled on her, and she realized her biocrystal and her own tattoo were probably doing the same things. He reached a hand out, slowly, and traced the path of her tattoo down her arm. She shivered again, and her eyes shut automatically. When she opened them again, he was grinning once more.
“Do I make you nervous?” he whispered.
“Only a little,” she answered. Then, because it was true and because she felt she owed to to him, “I like it.”
“Do you?” He was standing close to her again, one hand still resting on her shoulder, and his eyes seemed intense above his smile, like this was extremely important. Finding herself unable to speak, Layme nodded. His smile widened again, and he was pressing another drink into her hand, one with a red pressure strip around the middle.
“Like your first one,” Milo explained. “Stronger. It's worth it. There's a point you'll reach when everything bleeds color. It's beautiful. I want you to see it.”
“Why me?” she asked, because the question suddenly seemed terribly huge and evident.
“There's something in you that's different,” Milo said. “Something that other people are looking for. He'll find it in you eventually, and he'll take you away from us. I want you to feel this all before he does.”
Milo's urgency seemed to burn itself into her mind, glowing red-hot and unforgettable. “Who? Who'll find me?” she asked.
“Zink. He finds the best of us. He has since he was a newbie, the tracker. Takes them and sobers them up. Makes them separate again. We're all so tired of being separate, but he takes his favorites and sets them apart again. Do you know what I mean?” he asked her, and the smirk was gone, replaced by a desperate desire for her understanding. Layme thought of her sense of belonging as she took in the Dorm and the Dragons, of how much she liked it, and how much she like the way the alc had made everything less sharp, less apart from her. Then she thought of Taz saying Zink played favorites. We party too hard for him, I think.
“Why me?” she asked again.
“There's just something in you,” Milo repeated, shaking his head. “Just something. And I don't want you to feel apart all the time. I want you to have time to be blended with everyone. Like this.”
“Were you reading my mind?” she asked him, and her question was serious. That made him smile again.
“No. I can just see it. In the way you walk, in the way you look at things. I'm right, aren't I?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you are, you're right,” Layme agreed, blinking hard and trying to get the room to stop rocking like a ship's deck. She still held the drink with the red stripe in her hand, untouched, but the one before that must have made its way into her bloodstream.
“I thought so,” Milo said, and his voice was a breath of air, spoken more to himself than to her. He raised his glass to her again, the red pressure strip gleaming dully in the UV light, and he locked his eyes with hers, just as she had before taking her first drink. It send another little shiver down her spine, and
she thought, I will never forget this. No matter what happens, I won't forget this, what he just said, what this means.
She raised her own glass, having no inkling of the fact that she would remember nothing of the conversation in the morning.
“To bleeding in color,” she said. He nodded, and they drank again, the fiery strands of alcohol exploding in Layme's stomach like they had the first time.
After that, the rest of the night was a blur.
She remembered people, lots of people. She remembered meeting them, but forgot their names as soon as they had said them. She remembered dancing with Milo, with Dren, with people she didn't know. She even remembered dancing with Kalla, every bit as intensely as she had been with Milo earlier in the night, feeling the fabric of Kalla's jacket and curve of Kalla's waist under her hands. Always, though, it seemed she would end up with Milo again, his hands burning pleasantly on her already-hot skin, her tattoo and his seeming to writhe and move almost in sync.
There was a vague awareness of another group of people in a circle in then middle of the floor, and of Milo ushering her away from it.
“I want to see,” she protested, looking over her shoulder as he led her towards the chairs on the outside ring. “Who are they? What are they doing?”
“It's nothing. It's Zink's group. They're surging. They're crazy. Forget it.”
“Surging?” All she could think of was that a surge was a slang term for surgery, usually the intense Morphological stuff that you couldn't get until you were twenty-one.
“Forget it,” Milo said again, and he handed her another drink, and she took it, and the world melted into colors and sound again.
There was lost time after that, and then she came to an awareness of herself again, sitting on Milo's lap, laughing with him, and then his face was very close to hers, and she noticed there were flecks of silver in his dark eyes and at the tips of his dark hair, and his lips were on hers, gentle but insistent, and she kissed him back through her surprise, hoping somewhere in the back of her mind that she wasn't screwing up, wasn't making herself look like a total choke. She'd never been kissed before, not once.
After that, she didn't really remember much, just colors and music and heat, and moving somewhere else—where, she had no idea, nor did she really care.
Somewhere in the midst of the muted chaos of the waning night, she passed out.
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