Darkside Blues: SciFi Alien Romance (Dark Planet Warriors Book 4.5) (8 page)

So Kai was on his own, and no-one greeted him or intercepted him as he made his way to the Sanctuary. Doors opened and hidden electronic eyes watched him, but the place was eerily silent.

Kai could be walking to his death right now, but he knew Vadim. If the Boss wanted him dead, it would have already happened.

But the old man hadn’t gotten to where he was by being rash and impulsive. The Boss was ruthless, calculating, and pragmatic.

And Kai was valuable to the organization.

He had the sought-after North Ward under his thumb, and everyone knew it. The other clans knew it, and they resented him for it.

Become invaluable
.

Vadim had taught him that lesson from the start. Perhaps Kai had learned it a little too well.

He entered an expansive, glass-walled room with vaulted ceilings. Here the sun was unfiltered, shining through the glass roof with full intensity. Kai squinted against the glare, unused to the brightness. He pulled a pair of dark glasses from his jacket pocket and put them on, shielding his eyes.

He preferred the shadows of the streets.

The Sanctuary, as Vadim and his followers called it, was a light-filled space at the very top of the Tower. It had been exquisitely landscaped, and as Kai walked through the space, he passed a verdant garden of tropical plants, their brightly colored foliage glistening with moisture.

A splash reached Kai’s ears as he came to the edge of a giant pond. The dark, deep body of water was filled with waterlilies and swirling emerald pond weeds, which provided shade for numerous species of fish.

It seemed ridiculous that such a place could exist hundreds of meters above the ground in the middle of the desert, but in the grey zones of Earth, anything was possible.

Apparently, The Sanctuary reminded the Boss of the place where he’d been born. And when you were the head of the most powerful clans in Darkside, you could do whatever you wanted.

Kai walked along the edge of the pool, watching as giant orange and white koi swirled close to the surface. He reached a long, transparent platform, where his Boss sat, suspended above the cantilevered platform in a hover-chair.

Vadim Araki was old. How old, no-one really knew. Kai suspected he had at least two centuries under his belt, and it was beginning to show.

He reached the edge of the platform and dropped to his knees, executing a deep formal bow.

He didn’t speak. No words would help him now.

“Get up, Kainan. Ain’t no need for that.” Vadim spoke in the coarse, guttural language of the streets.

“Boss.” Kai inclined his head respectfully as he rose to his feet, meeting Vadim’s rheumy blue eyes for the first time. He kept his expression neutral, clasping his hands behind his back.

The Boss’s dark lips curved into a wry smile. “I know ya had nothin’ to do with that clusterfuck on the Glory Strip, boy.”

Kai breathed a mental sigh of relief, but outwardly, he displayed no reaction. He knew better than to reveal his innermost thoughts.
 

He couldn’t afford to. They were watching him. Always watching him. Vadim’s people stood in the shadows, blending in with their surroundings, unobtrusive amongst the lush foliage.

They were a sinister reminder of Vadim’s pervasive influence.

Just like Kai, he had eyes everywhere.

“Melia was harmed,” Kai said, as a disciple emerged from the shadows, a fishing rod in one hand. He bowed as he offered it to Vadim, vanishing as quickly as he’d appeared. The Boss took the rod into his weathered hands. An incredibly lifelike silver lure dangled from the line, flashing in the sunlight.

Vadim maneuvered over to the edge of the platform. Kai took his cue and followed closely behind, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the clear synthetic surface. Vadim took aim and cast the lure into the pond. It disappeared into the murky depths with a
plonk
.

“My child is safe now,” the Boss said as he slowly reeled in his line. His thin arms shook with the effort. “Thanks to ya.” The wriggling lure flipped out of the water with a tiny splash. Vadim flicked the rod and cast it again. He wasn’t able to throw it very far. He turned to Kai. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Kainan. If I thought ya had something to do with all that, ya’d be dead by now.”

Kai nodded. He knew that. That’s why he’d been confident enough to show up at the Tower alone. Sometimes, actions spoke for themselves. By leaving himself open and unguarded, Kai had been letting Vadim know that he trusted his Boss to do the right thing by him.

“You should visit your daughter sometime,” Kai said quietly, surprising even himself. No-one told Vadim what to do.

Except for Kai, occasionally. But he was the exception to the rule.

A rattling cough escaped the Boss. His thin shoulders shook and the fishing rod trembled, threatening to fall out of his hands.

Kai waited until the coughing subsided. The boss’s body had been pushed to its absolute limits, held together by a combination of life-prolonging medications and technology.

No-one really knew the old man’s age, but the rumor was that he had almost two-and-a-half centuries under his belt.

Kai had always thought it strange that the old man had decided to procreate so late in life. Melia had been born through advanced reproductive techniques, nurtured in an artificial womb until the day she was delivered. She’d never had a mother, and Vadim had never been much of a father to her.

The Boss nodded at one of his guards, who emerged from the shadows to stand at his side. “Hold this,” he said, handing him the fishing pole. “If ya get a bite, don’t lose ‘im. This old man can’t do two things at once anymore.”

The guard took the rod as Vadim let out a slow breath. “I don’t want her to see me like this. This,” he gestured down at his wasted body, “it ain’t natural. I don’t want the girl to remember me as a withered old zombie.” He shook his head. “I ain’t so good with the affection side of things. Ya know that, Kainan.”

Kai said nothing. When Vadim had taken him in as a child, he’d been a harsh master, his treatment of Kai verging on cruelty.

Vadim was silent for a while, watching the glassy pond as his man jigged the rod up and down.

“Ya know,” he said finally, “I ain’t had anything to eat or drink for three days now.”

The statement chilled Kai to the bone.

“They’ve been poisoning me, Kainan. It’s been so subtle, and over such a long period of time, years, in fact, but I finally noticed it. And don’t give me that look, kid. I ain’t crazy. I got my own personal physician to confirm it. It’s targeted stuff; gene technology that’s designed to affect only me. Complicated stuff. Some shit about degrading my genome. They’ve been putting it in the fuckin’ air-conditioning vents, in my food, my water.” A bitter laugh escaped him. “Can ya imagine? I’ve been breathing it in for months, maybe even years.”

“Who’s responsible for this, boss?”

“The one we always suspect but can never pin down. The technocrat. My wretched offspring.”

“The Second
?
Arik?” Kai squatted on his haunches, so he wasn’t standing over the Boss. He kept quiet for a moment as the shock of realization hit him. Arik was the second lieutenant of the
Urubora
clan. He was a true politician of the underworld, smooth, wily, and impossible to keep a finger on. And he was Vadim’s biological son. “I will kill him.”

“Ya have no evidence yet, kid. Slow down a little, or the Council of Families will have yer head like they want, and everything’ll be lost. Arik’s East faction’s grown like a cancer in the past few years. They’re big, but there’s also a lot of dead wood amongst them. Remember, Kainan, we are constantly expecting betrayal in one form or another. That’s the life of a gangster. Ya need to stick with the plan now.”

Kai tried to rein in his ever-present anger as he studied his boss and mentor in detail, taking in his parched appearance. “If you don’t eat or drink…”

“Either way, I ain’t got much time left. Age is finally catching up with me, kid.” The boss shook his head. “One by one, they’ve started to replace my people from the inside, turning their loyalties against me. I bet they’re going to try and stage a coup when I croak. Yer the only person who can hold them back, but they think they’ve got ya after that little stunt they pulled on the Glory Strip.”

“They’re trying to frame me.” Kai shook his head. “But that makes no sense.”

“Arik’s gonna try’n haul ya before the Council of Families for treason. Against me.” He laughed, a dry, bitter sound that turned into a dirty cough. “Can ya imagine? Word on the street is that ya staged the ambush and took Melia hostage. They’re saying ya wanna use her to threaten me. It’s all fuckin’ nonsense, of course. It’s just a fabricated story to cover up the fact that they failed to kill her. We all know what would have happened if she hadn’t survived.”

Kai nodded, cold anger building inside him. If Melia had died, he would have shouldered the responsibility. The Families would have demanded the ultimate retribution.

The only punishment suitable for that level of failure was death. They would have ordered him to kneel before them and slice his guts open.

Zyara didn’t know it, but by saving Melia, she’d saved Kai’s life.

The whole scenario was murky and ridiculous, the threads of power becoming impossibly twisted and tangled. “So what do you want me to do?
”

The boss looked at him, his grey-blue eyes becoming sharp again for just a moment. His face was old and weathered, his skin paper-thin and almost translucent. Kai was looking at a living corpse. Medical technology had kept this man alive much longer than nature intended.

“Ya have enough followers to form yer own clan now, Kainan. The
Urubora
is finished. I should’ve stopped the rot decades ago, but I got complacent.” He chuckled again, his self-loathing evident. “I never told ya this, but when the Council of Families elevated Arik to the position of Second, I ain’t never approved of it. I only accepted the deal ‘coz in exchange, they allowed me to give ya the North Ward. There’s always a price to power, kid, but giving control of that territory to ya, an outsider, was one decision I never regretted.”

Kai bowed his head. “You give me too much credit.”

“Nah. I’ve watched the place transform under yer watch. Ya’ve cleaned the
shabu
 
and all the cheap synthetic drugs from the streets and gotten rid of the low-grade dealers and pimps. Ya’ve built up the infrastructure. Ten years ago, a man couldn’t walk around the North Ward without worryin’ whether he was gonna get stabbed for his body parts.”

The old man raised a skeletal hand and patted Kai on the shoulder. “Keep my daughter safe, and have yer people go to ground. The Council will call for ya tomorrow, and by that time, I’ll probably be dead.”

Kai opened his mouth to protest, but the boss held up a hand. “Don’t worry about me, kid. Ya know very well this body’s been holdin’ up for far too long. And don’t ya tell Melia a thing. I don’t want her to remember me like this. Yer the only one who can protect her now.”

To their left, they heard a splash. The bodyguard flipped a silver fish onto the cracked tiles at the water’s edge. It flailed helplessly, gasping for air.

“They’re going to give me a big funeral, proper mob style. Ya have my permission not to attend. Start workin’ on those arrangements we talked about. I never wanted to see Darkside go this way, but it ain’t gonna be helped.”

“Understood.” Kai bowed again. A heavy weight settled in his chest as he looked at the frail old man who had plucked him from poverty and invested in him. When he’d failed his MQ exam at the Federation Academy, Vadim had been there to take him in.

The Federation hadn’t been able to get rid of him quickly enough.

The Morality Quotient he’d been given had been the rarest one: X.

Unsuitable for any type of employment.

The Academy had high hopes for him after he’d become the first Unregistered to qualify for a scholarship and make it through to the examination stage.

But then the MQ exam had brought him back down to Earth. Apparently, his particular combination of antisocial traits and intelligence was dangerous. Besides, he was just an Unregistered after all, not worthy to become a fully-fledged citizen of the Federation.

He’d been perfect gangster material; perfect fodder for the old man’s recruitment drive.

And now this old man was about to pass on into the next life.

Kai didn’t know whether to feel sad, or relieved, or both.

“Don’t look at me like that, son,” the Boss wheezed. “Ya know me well enough by now to know that death has been on my mind for a long time. I have regrets, but I’m not afraid.”

A faint buzzing sound started up, coming from the Boss’s side. “Fuckin’ babysitters,” he growled. “They can’t let an old man have even a few minutes of peace. They’re gonna come looking for me now. Ya’d better go, Kainan.”

“I can take you out of here,” Kai said grimly. “My people can protect you, Boss.”

“What, and have Arik and the Families after both our heads? Make ya protect a dyin’ man? It’s pointless. I may be the official Boss of the
Urubora
clan, but I ain’t got no power anymore, son. They’ve systematically taken it from me over the past century. The only saving grace is that ya have the North Ward. That’s the best of the territories, Kai. Ya made it like that. And yer so close now. Now get outta my sight and don’t come back to the Tower again. Don’t ya dare show up at my funeral, boy. I forbid it. And don’t worry about the Families. As a parting gift to ya, I’ll handle them. I got a plan to deal with them.”

Kai bowed. His relationship with the sometimes kind, sometimes cruel Vadim Araki had been a complicated one, and now, the old man expected to bow out with minimal fuss.

Kai’s sadness was tempered with acceptance. After all, the old man’s passage into the afterlife was well overdue. His passing would leave a power vacuum, but from time to time, the foundations of their world had to undergo seismic shifts. In Darkside, nothing every stayed the same.

“Goodbye, boss,” Kai said softly. “Perhaps we’ll meet again in the next life.”