The Swirl

by RJGlynn

Author note: When I saw the theme for TK's March issue, it resonated with the universe I created for my novel Aberrant, one in which mere humans are unaware of just how vulnerable their minds are. So, I put together this little standalone story set in the same universe. Most of you won't have read Aberrant, but if you are familiar with Kaplan and Jinx's story and have some theories as to how the stories are linked, avoid spoilers in the comments (let's just say you're most probably right 😉). Team Tevun-Krus, thanks for the inspiration and opportunity to contribute. Apologies to any readers sensitive to a bit of bad language. [Copyright remains with the author.]

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"Run, or you'll never remember." 

Her sister's parting words—slurred, drug-addled nonsense.

Except for the first word.

Lenni bit back an oath, her drumming pulse drowning in the roar of fast-launching subterranean trains and the fury of underground waters. In a Coalition ore-extraction colony, light-years from real civilisation, there was always some ugly mess to avoid, but this time, her sister had dumped her right in it.

Illicit drug use. Illegal interplanetary transit: her sister a stowaway in some supply clanker's hold. And then there was the 'complication' she'd smuggled in with her—literally.

"Fuck." Pivoting on one spiked heel, pink hair lashing wet against her face, Lenni scowled across the saturated chaos of Sub City's main port, Station 9; searched for the trouble she was due. Corroded sub-train platforms heaved with evening commuter traffic, a steaming mass of irritated humanity spiced with aliens: reptilian Throleans snarling within their rain-ponchos' hoods, and Gooies, their sluglike amphibian bodies undulating through puddles, naked and built for the wet. Beyond, cranes and loader bots shifted containers: incoming supplies and outgoing ore exports. Layers of noise echoed off black rock, transit-service announcements and port industry competing with the thunder of waterfalls, rivers, and the wild, churning vortex at the centre of the port's main cavern.

The Swirl: Station 9 and its residential precinct. A fulminating, towering hollow in a planet's mineral-rich earth. A place where waters and people met, often in violent collision.

Lenni forced in a hard breath. If she hadn't just left her sister sitting in a pool of her own bloody bodily fluids, she'd have murdered the pharma-baked bint. Gone and out of contact for over twelve months, playing some long-game con for her own greedy gain—then blam, the no-good 'tweak' shows up and dumps all her accumulated shit in one load.

One bundle. One gross, sticky bundle.

Lenni cut eyes down to the newborn in her arms, an offense wrapped in her favourite viper-purple jacket. Still rank with the mess all humans got dragged arse- or headfirst through when entering the world, the kid wasn't anything to rave over. But then, from what she'd seen on the many, many worlds she'd hopped about in her twenty-eight years, human infants were as ugly as they were useless. Drooling, shitting, vertebrate flesh worms. The example in her arms, sleeping as blissful as a tweaker on high-end pharma, looked as wrinkled and puny as an apple desiccated for a long-haul freight run. Nothing worth her jacket's steam-clean fee.

Nothing worth getting hauled in for questioning by local Enforcement.

Lenni lifted her gaze to foaming cascades and rock walls lit with advertising signage; searched for the blue and red lights of Enforcement or the flashing green of a medivac drone. Air taxis and courier bots buzzed in the watery haze. Sirens wailed in multiple directions, but that was nothing new in a precinct with fifty thousand miners, an adult entertainment district, and ready access to imported chemical amusements.

A fistful of pills. Glazed eyes. Slurred words, barely intelligible. Unmistakably insane and desperate.

Tailored to provoke guilt.

Lenni curled her lip; shoved back the memory of her sister's first—and likely last—act as a mother. Whatever chems Ali had been shooting up and choking down over the past year had baked her damn neurons. She'd rejected her own kid; chosen her delusions instead: alien abductions; brain-eating worms; stolen time.

Typical paranoid tweaker shit.

Bitterly aware of the living weight in her arms, and every sodden centimetre of her jacketless form, Lenni headed for the nearest rockface elevator that would take her to her work turf, the local entertainment district. Joining the flow of miners coming off shift from nearby tunnels, she angled her dancer body through sodden overalls and groping hands, resisting the urge to shoulder barge and flip middle fingers—her usual style. She'd dressed like a radio-active fairy for her 'rent-a-girlfriend' hostess gig up in the E-district—dayglow tattoos, luminescent bubble skirt—but she'd been built tall and bred to scrap. Like a frigging junkyard rat.

And right that second, all she wanted to do was claw and bite.

She entered the elevator's slime-stained plex, hunching fluro-inked shoulders, grudgingly letting her three-hundred-credit skin art take the jolts of people's jostling. As the car flashed upward through tumbling water and glowing billboards, resentment burned through her chilled flesh.

The unmitigated nerve of her sister. They'd promised never to game one another; never to play the other for a fool. What the hell had Ali been thinking dumping a kid on her? The neuro-deficient tweak knew they shared the same DNA—that of four generations of worthless junkheads and criminals. Not only should Ali have known better than to entrust any member of their family with a helpless lifeform, she should've known better than to breed and bring a fifth generation into existence.

The elevator doors clunked open, showering the water and grime they'd collected on the way up from the lower cavern. As people pushed for the exit, Lenni gave into temper—headbutted the first moron to shove her and her unwanted baggage, sending the half-drunk, overall-clad tunnel rat to the floor.

Delivering a warning to others with cold violet eyes, she stepped over the miner and out into the bright chaos of The Swirl's E-district. Litter and grit crunched under her boots. Dance clubs and restaurants glowed multi-hued, built into stacked, repurposed shipping containers and caves shrouded by disco-lit waterfalls. Service hawkers and pleasure traders draped themselves about doorways, what few clothes they wore slick against their skin in the eternal subterranean wet.

No place for innocent life.

Jaw hardening, Lenni hunted down a glowing green cross amidst the maze of water, rock, and signage. Best thing she could do for the kid was dump it at the nearest Medi-Church. No way could she take the little shit-wiggler to Sweetheart's with her. The second she stepped into the companionship club, she'd be fending off human deviants and aliens with 'exotic' culinary fetishes. Yes, she was a sin-loving, selfish A-hole like the rest of her family, but she wasn't a total psycho. As much as she needed credits, with her skin-art addiction and her landlord on her back, she drew the line at selling out kin. That was the one rule even the worst of her deadbeat relations wouldn't break. Scam and betray others, not family.

The memory of her sister bloody and weak again filled her mind.

Pulse hard, and not as steady as she wanted, she looked back to the elevator. Ali was a worthless pu'ta, a delusional tweak, but...

Lenni hissed out a curse. She should go back for her.

Except Ali had begged her not to.

"Shit." Duelling instincts rose, those fed by memories of childish giggles, pinkie-swears, and screaming hair pulling and those fuelled by good sense and self-interest. As a rule, she'd happily not do what any of her idiot family members asked of her, their requests usually involving moronic get-rich schemes, bail, or credits for drugs. But Ali...

The second the kid was out of her, she'd downed a fistful of chems, desperate to escape her demons.

She'd been scared. Not looking-for-sympathy, angling-a-con scared. Proper scared.

"Fuuuuck." Lenni fought the urge to go back. What good would it do? What good could she do? She wasn't a medic, and as she'd left, she'd seen an Enforcement droid arrive and enter the cargo stack Ali had stowed away in. Local law enforcement had probably already delivered her to an emergency department.

And they were likely looking for what was missing from the bloody, messed-up crime scene they'd stumbled onto.

Lenni glared down at the child fouling her jacket. She needed to ditch it and go looking for her sister. Finding Ali would take time; no one in their family used their real names when they dealt with the authorities. While born Lieka and Allora, she and Ali had learned young that names were nothing but tracking labels. Four months ago, she'd been Lotti Cee; now, she was Lenni Koldeara. In a month, week, or even a day, she'd be someone else, three new IDs stowed on her wrist comm ready to sync with the illegally modded citizen chip in her arm.

Because, as her sister had just proven, when one life got too complicated, it was often best to cut its baggage loose.

She strode for the green cross ahead; pictured herself dumping the kid bloody and naked through the health centre's delivery chute, because she wasn't giving up her jacket. Quality synth leather won hands down over a sticky mess with ridiculous tiny fingers and a stupid little nose.

Lenni lengthened her stride. The Medi-Church loomed ahead, its hole-in-the-wall entrance caught between a body-modification club and a Quikki-Kredit loan kiosk. Her heels hit the top of the med centre's downward sloping steps—

Her momentum took her past them.

She stopped under the loan kiosk's awning, promotional ads at the service window wheeling before her, inviting her to "Live life to the full now! One-minute loan approval guaranteed." With a snarl then a curse, she tapped her wrist comm to initiate a transaction.

The service window slammed back, revealing a sleek internal office—and feline, green eyes. Those of an Atillian, a human alterant with alien cat DNA. One with the lean muscle and scars of a regular cage fighter. But in contrast to his gene-altered savagery, shimmering emerald paint rimmed his cat stare, jewelled beads sparkled at the ends of black braids, and a half-buttoned shirt clung to deep brown skin like an obsessive lover: pure, dark, indigo silk.

Lenni's lips twisted. Atillians: connoisseurs of violence and hedonism. Officially, the Coalition military had effed up and broken genetic-alteration laws when they'd allowed some of their super-soldier experiments to breed and pass on their non-human genes. But looking at the cat alterant in front of her now, Lenni had some trouble agreeing with that.

A snap of gold-tipped, clawed fingers right in front of her nose. "Eyes up, objectifier."

She did as asked. No hardship. The Atillian had a pretty face, its lean plains an artwork of shimmery green and purple make-up. "Always nice to see you, Gemini." She put a purr into her voice, knowing full well it would both amuse and irritate the shit out of the cat.

The Atillian exposed cat fangs. "Forget the charm, Koldeara. Your credit rating lies with the worms writhing in this city's deepest crevasses. No loan."

"Of course." She leaned against the kiosk; batted her own sparkly lashes. "Credits before fun. Only way a person stays solvent around here. You're such a clever, pretty kitty. You know, that shirt you're half wearing would suit you even better on the floor."

Another snarl. "Save the ego massage for the lonely fools who pay you by the quarter hour to play girlfriend." The cat sliced his gaze down to her bloody armload. "What morally bankrupt void shit have you got yourself in now? That thing stolen or found?"

"Jee-zus, Gem." Wincing, Lenni slid the kid onto the service counter. "Found. Of course, found. You think I want one of these things? If it were legal, I'd dropkick it into the centre of The Swirl, right along with its first shitty diaper."

"And where'd you 'find' it exactly?"

"It wasn't wanted. That's all that matters." Lenni shoved away the memory of her sister refusing to hold her own child, her taking a fistful of drugs instead. "I'm donating it to your do-gooder neighbours for sanctimonious, post-Earth Cosmo-Christian indoctrination, but dumping it in their charity box without pants seems a tad crass. Loan me fifty credits now, and I'll pay you back sixty after tonight's shift."

"No deal. Your promises are worth less than groundwater around here, leech."

Lenni rolled eyes. "Have a heart, Gem. This is a crappy one-off situation." She gestured to the kid. "Meet said 'situation' due to create the aforementioned crap. How can you say no to that ugly little face?"

"Call Enforcement. Abandoning human kids is a crime. Only Throleans are legally allowed to chew on and spit out their unwanted hatchlings."

"Humans can be as cold-blooded as the lizards—you and I know that, Gem. And Enforcement can't mandate parental love. What's the point of making a fuss? Not one of this kid's deadbeat kin is going to claim it as their own." Lenni's gut knotted at that queasy truth. "Best I hand it straight to the preacher docs since it'll just end up with them anyway."

"No loan." Gem slapped a credit stick down on the counter, then jabbed a glittery claw at her nose. "And that is for the kid, Koldeara. I find you've taken one credit from an abandoned kitten, I'll chew your fingers off and serve them to you with a delightful cave-aged Sangiovese."

"Such faith and flattery. My heart's all a flutter." Lenni snatched up the credits then, reluctantly, the kid. "I'll be sure to keep any receipts—and my fingers."

"You've twenty minutes. Return with anything other than baby goods, and your scheming bones are my toothpicks."

"I'll be back in ten." With a humourless smile, she saluted the Atillian with his credits, then stepped away to scan the revelry and lights around her for options—and trouble. She had no time for further dithering. Her hostess shift was coming up, and Enforcement would definitely have found her sister by now and be looking for the brat she'd just birthed.

One of the E-district's many waterfall pools got the kid clean, a first bath conducted under a trance club's flashing rainbow lights and accompanied by bobbing cocktail glasses and drug paraphernalia. Five credits transferred to a junk-recycling bum got the kid a stained baby T-shirt declaring "Shit Happens" and a refurbished travel nappy—low-g certified; two-day excretion capacity. Another five credits, slipped to a juvenile Gooie willing to ooze his slug body into the prize chamber of a streetside skill game, got the kid company for the orphanage: a stuffed piece of orange fabric with sparkling fibreoptic whiskers and a squeeze-to-purr option.

Thinking of Gem's likely reaction to the toy, Lenni smirked. He'd hate it. And love it, maybe enough to keep a neighbourly eye on the kid. Maybe, he'd even play benefactor again.

Her smile fell from her lips, something uncomfortable shifting in her chest. Stifling the sensation, she crouched to tap a tip into the young Gooie's comms-commerce throat implant. The stupid little human worm in her arms needed to be grateful she was handing it on to others. Maybe she should leave it with a note telling it to be thank—

The Gooie's red eyes bulged out onto stalks then retracted swiftly inside its body. The next instant, the juvenile alien curled into a grey mucus ball and rolled behind the nearest waterfall.

Hairs lifted on Lenni's nape.

With feigned disinterest, she looked over her shoulder.

A security droid; a dark block of armoured tech gleaming in the street's wet. On stubby articulated legs, it clomped through the crowd, sending puddle water spattering and people scuttling for club and shop doorways. Its scanning lasers beamed from all four sides of its boxy torso; sparkling fans of blue light wheeling through damp air.

Sly reflexes, trained into her from birth, had her easing behind the waterfall to join the juvenile Gooie. Through rushing water and the cascade's coloured spotlights, she tracked the droid as it clunked and swivelled, its lasers sweeping and rotating—scanning faces and other biometrics. Her heart jolted when the droid stopped before the junk-recycler she'd just done business with, the bum too high on chems to have done more than draw down his rain-poncho's hood to hide.

She expected an automated fine announcement for the sale of uncertified tech, but the droid simply turned its upper half, then legs, to clomp away towards...

The streetside skill-for-prize game she and the Gooie had just raided.

Lenni's gut lurched. What were the odds of the droid randomly following her exact shopping path? Was this the unit she'd seen back at the port when she'd left her sister? Was it looking for her—the kid? Shit.

She scanned the street for more Enforcement units—found one: a large humanoid in beige armour. While the officer looked human, their helmet face shield and gloves hid their exact species, and their movements were atypical for Terran Homo sapiens: a smooth rotation of head, shoulders, then hips like the droid—or someone with mech enhancements.

She was out of time.

She ditched the Gooie, slipping out from behind the waterfall and into the bulky cover of a passing trash-collector droid. She stayed at its battered, foul-smelling side, out of view, until an alleyway gave her an exit.

Barging right through yahooing club-crawlers, she straight-lined it back to the Medi-Church. She had to get rid of the kid—now. If the preacher docs had the kid when Enforcement arrived, she could claim to be a good Samaritan. If she was caught in possession of a possibly stolen infant, there'd be questions—all with no good answers. As far as the local records were concerned, she and Ali were strangers. To claim otherwise would be to expose years of ID fraud—and a lot worse.

"Shit, shit, shit." She ignored Gem as the Atillian stepped outside his booth, her goal his sanctimonious neighbours. Why hadn't she just dumped the kid with them first thing? What did she care if its citizen records documented it'd been dropped off naked with zero sign of anyone giving a damn? Plenty of kids got that start.

Gem stepped in front of her, jolting her to a stop. "Koldeara, what the hell?"

She dodged him, heading for the Medi-Church's sunken stairs. "I'll be back with your receipts in a minute! Promise!"

The Atillian snagged her arm; swung her around. "That's a baby. Who gave you a damn baby? What grift are you working? You using it as a prop for begging or extortion?"

"Oh, shove it, Gem. We've had this discussion already." She jerked out of his hold; shot a panicked look behind her.

A disturbance down the street she'd just exited—her pursuers moving in.

She swung back to Gem. "If Enforcement asks, remember to tell them the plan was always to hand the kid over to your neighbours."

"What?" Gem grabbed her arm again, claws biting in. "What are you talking about? What damn plan?"

Lenni stared up into his savage, snarling face, his obvious confusion spawning her own—along with a lurch of unease. "Gem, we had this conversation like nine minutes ago. Don't you remember?"

A sneer of disgust—all fangs. "We haven't spoken since you last came begging over missed rent a week ago. Don't try and gaslight me, pu'ta. Any discussion involving a baby in your delinquent hands, I'd remember."

Lenni held the cat's pissed stare, disquiet trickling down her spine like cold water. He didn't remember their conversation. How was that possible?

"Run, or you won't remember."

Her sister's slurred words rolled back through her mind. She dismissed them as other memories rose: her sister's delusional panic; her rush to swallow chems in an effort to escape her pain, confusion, and responsibilities.

Lenni wanted to sneer, resentment locking her gut, but as she looked up into Gem's cold, sober eyes, fear killed all disgust. Her sister might be a useless, cowardly tweaker, but the Atillian before her wasn't someone to shy from conflict; wasn't someone who'd annihilate his wits with chems. And he'd never in his life misplaced or forgotten a single credit he'd loaned or gifted.

Sudden movement at the corner of her eye: multiple people at the end of the street ducking into doorways or down alleyways.

A bulky black mech figure appeared, blue lasers sweeping walls and people. Not five paces behind it strode the humanoid officer, their stride smooth and eerily precise.

Unnatural.

That was the final straw. Every survival reflex she'd honed over twenty-eight years in the lowest backworld dives snapped together into one clear impulse.

Lenni ran.

The Medi-Church's steps, she took them three at a time. The centre's clanking auto-doors, she dove through—into a packed waiting room. Dodging and shoving young, old, and bleeding patients alike, she was out the rear door within a dozen heartbeats, trailing a concerned receptionist and security guard.

Staff who raced back inside the clinic as a disturbance broke out behind them—shouts, clattering, and startled curses.

Well-practised routine clicked into play, overriding panic. Despite her drumming pulse, Lenni's mind cleared. So, this would be her last day in The Swirl. No biggie. She had everything she needed for a fresh start stored on her wrist comm: funds, contacts, fresh IDs. She had a dozen escape routes and go-bags stashed—the nearest in the public lockers of an underwater tourist train operation. Its sub-trains, designed for entertainment, not commuting, dove directly into the pounding waters of Station 9's central vortex—a subterranean thrill ride. One that'd take her right to Skywell, a neighbouring open-air cavern with ground-to-orbit shuttle services. Perfect.

A dash through E-district revellers and hazy waters. A lunge down a neon-lit tunnel crowded with people and scrolling travel ads. Ahead, the departure countdown for the next sub-train launch glowed, a bright red beacon. One minute thirty-eight seconds.

She tapped her wrist comm on a ticketing turnstile; sprinted for the platform, the final boarding call blaring through crackling waterlogged speakers. Dodging through travellers and souvenir hawkers, she aimed for the nearest carriage; cast a look behind her.

The droid and Enforcement officer, searching the crowd—lasers and helmeted head swivelling.

Fuck.

She contemplated dumping the kid onto the nearest refuse bin. Retrieving it would slow the bastards down. And what was it to her?

Nothing. Nothing but trouble. Nothing but another mess of her sister's.

A weird wave of movement in the crowd. She glanced behind her again; saw people stepping aside before the officer and accompanying droid. But confusion followed in their wake—people turning and looking wildly about as if they'd lost their bearings. A family of four who'd just paid a hawker droid for snack boxes stood and walked away without collecting their purchases, as if they'd...

Forgotten them.

Lenni's breath caught. She'd witnessed many weird things in her years of travel. Humans who'd altered their bodies through chems, tech, and bio implants. Aliens with extraordinary capabilities. Technology that facilitated the miraculous—and the utterly despicable. Including tech that could stimulate human minds—or screw them up.

"Run, or you won't remember." Even as her sister's words rang in her skull, she was vaulting over a safety railing. Warning bells clanged, those of a sub-train's imminent departure. She dove for the graffitied carriage doors closing before her—

And fell into dark, deep silence.

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Swirling, nauseating black. A struggle to push up through it to some unseen surface. Light and noise flickered as she fought not to sink back down and drown. Pain, a roar behind her eyes, tore away the last remnants of unconsciousness.

Streaks of light then darkness. Rolling and rattling gloom. Cold wet underneath hip and shoulder: a metal floor. She blinked, struggling to focus; struggling to make sense of anything. Vandalised red vinyl seats crowded her, some with people hunched in them. Overhead, transparent plex spray-painted with street art arched, holding back what looked like violent, whirling water and flashes of black rock.

A train. She was on an underwater train.

But the wetness trickling down her forehead wasn't river water. It was warm.

Blood. The knowledge drifted through the pain hammering her skull. Had she bumped her head? Where was she? Where was the train going? What was she...? Oh, fuck. Who—who was she?

A distress cry, muffled against her chest.

Heart jolting, she looked down.

A baby. Clean and pink, tucked into a sodden purple jacket along with an ugly orange toy cat. Was this tiny little person hers? No. Her body—long, lean, and dressed for a party—hadn't recently battled through pregnancy and labour, and this kid looked new. She couldn't be its mother.

And yet, she was curled about the grizzling creature like a crash pod around an ejected pilot. Had she tripped in the ridiculous heels she currently wore? Had she taken a knock to the head protecting it from the fall? She was on the floor, not strapped into a seat, and sub-trains launched at speed.

Clambering into a seat, she secured herself and the child. Self-deprecating humour pushed back distress and confusion a moment as she checked her tiny travel companion and found no injuries. Okay, she might not recall her own name, but at least she knew she was the noble, self-sacrificing sort. If she was babysitting, she needed her rate doubled—because, damn, her head hurt.

Hugging the distressed child to her thudding heart, she waited as squeezy upset cries became intermittent grizzles then, finally, fairy-light breaths. Despite pain and queasy disorientation, she smiled. Looked like she had a knack with kids. And why did that thought make her wince?

She checked her wrist comm; found multiple ID options—proof she was, in fact, no one's angel. Additional evidence came in the form of a vid-comm message uploaded to her comm some forty minutes earlier, suspiciously encrypted to open only with her biometrics. An unfamiliar woman appeared on screen, her face contorted, her eyes wheeling in panic. The violent contractions of late-stage labour broke up her rambling, gasped message.

Words of madness. Alien abductions. Mind wipes. The need to take hallucinogenic drugs to interfere with invasive psychic probes.

But in between the insanity, there were words of sisterly love—sentiment strong enough to drive one sister's plan to triple a chem's dose straight after childbirth. Self-medication that wouldn't just create a neurological storm to ward off psychic attacks; it'd stop any interrogation, silence every neuron ... forever.

Tears—warm, wet. Even as the frightened face on her wrist comm's screen remained unfamiliar, painful familiar feelings rose to choke her. She fought them. No. The blood running from her head explained her amnesia; everything else was the ramblings of a stranger's addled mind. She needed to get herself to hospital. She needed to hand the child to Enforcement so they could track down its parents.

She looked down at the kid; just another unfamiliar face in the whirling, watery gloom. Emotions rose to lock her throat, ones her mind didn't have the knowledge to understand. They screamed at her, tore at her heart—told her memory was more than names and faces.

Love and fear; they left echoes.

Ones only a fool would ignore.

She selected a new alias on her comm and booked the first flight off planet she could, via a smuggler in her contacts: Shroomer. Someone she apparently knew well enough to have shared intimate photos with but whose lanky tattooed body and grinning face now meant nothing to her.

As underground station lights flared and the carriage launched up out of the water to cruise along a crowded platform, she gathered the child close, fixed eyes on the nearest exit, and readied herself to run. "Don't worry, little one. I got you."