From the Ashes of Chaos

ONE - GOLDEN YOUTH

She was always a scrappy little shit, even as a kid. That was fine. So was I. But where I led a crew from the front - outfoxing and beating down gangster wannabes three times my size - she was the feral kinda crazy. Creeping around the desolate ruins of Old London like a raggedy stray kitten, hissing and spitting at everyone until she ‘chose’ someone. Y’know, like cats do sometimes… Fuck only knows why she picked me.

She was seven when I first made her acquaintance. Some of the older boys had cornered her - thought it’d be funny to throw stones at the ‘mad little witch’. I was only twelve, but I saw the shits off. Then I sat near her. Waited - just talking at her - till she grew curious enough to crawl forward and take some of the chocolate protein bar I offered her. Our first meal together. I remember it so clearly.

I’d never met a Zenronian - a supernatural - before that day. She was a fascinating little thing. I noticed her eyes first. How empty and deep they were. Intense black… like an abyss to scream into. I liked her. I admired her. She was a survivalist through and through, even young as she was. Wild and untameable. No one could control her. Not her kin. Not her parents. No one… but me. I guess that means she liked me too, even back then.

For three long winters - when her family’s scavver convoy camped secretly beneath Waterloo - the derelict tunnels of the old underground served as our playground. A dangerous deathtrap that made us cockier the longer we survived its challenges. We’d go ‘ghost hunting’ - something my mates were too chicken to try. But not Rose Shipton. She was eager. And she could actually see them! Talk with them! Have fucking tea parties if she so desired! The histories those spirits set straight for us. The secrets of the old world that they whispered. I got a better education with Rose than any damn school could provide.

When I turned fifteen, the fun came to an abrupt end. I did a little too well in my exams, and I was drafted into one of Syndicate’s ‘special programs for gifted youth’. It was an honour - a rare opportunity for a ‘spirited’ T2 boy to maybe boost his social status to T1. If I played my cards right, I coulda lived the high life in Buckingham… If… I was a good little soldier.

I didn’t get a fucking choice. Syndicate whistled, and like every other citizen, I was forced to drop everything and jump however high they demanded. Dragged from home, family, and friends, I was shipped off to St. James’s... I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Rose.

But I’m a smart man. Even back then, I knew opportunity when I was thrust into it. Maybe I didn’t buy into Syndicate’s fascist hatred of anyone who wasn’t ‘good BRIT stock’, but… I did like luxury. And St. James was a heaven of decadence after a childhood in the T3 slums of Lambeth and Waterloo District. I didn’t mind that I’d gone from being one of the highest rank among my own to one of the lowest in theirs. I didn’t care that everyone in St James looked at me like I was shit on their shoe. In fact, their infuriation made the taste of their chocolate, cigarettes, and women all the sweeter. I laughed at them. Deliberately dragged mud into their fancy lobbies, thickened my Cockney, and fucked their daughters just to piss them off. It was a right laugh!

Wilbur Stevenson thought so too. He was a polished little ankle biter - riding daddy’s T1 coattails and getting pissy that no one respected him quite the same as they respected his father. It baffled him, though the reasons were as obvious as his prominent nose to me. Whiny, whingy, overly aggressive little shit. Stevenson was a complete loser. A fucking wet blanket… but he had rank. He had status. And in each other, we saw potential.

He did the bows and the curtsies. Apologised for the ‘rough edges of his associate’ as he dragged me up through the ranks and introduced me to new ‘friends’. In exchange, I whispered instructions in his ear. I taught him to read people – to plot and play them the way my mobster father had taught me. It was hard work to tolerate him at first. But after a year or two - after I’d ironed out his ‘rough edges’ - I confess, he’d begun to grow on me. Like the bratty kid brother I’d never had.

I never told him about Rose. I never spoke about her to anyone. To admit to being friends with a witch was tantamount to literal suicide in the heart of Syndicate… but I never forgot her. I’d dream about her. I basked in the happy memories of scrambling around the tunnels and ruins, investigating anything that fascinated us. Freedom. That’s what life with Rose had been. No regimentals. No drill sergeants screaming in my face. No rules. God, I missed her! More even than my own family. She’d never judged me. She’d never made demands of me. She’d followed me around, happy it seemed, to just be with me.

I was eighteen when they shipped Stevenson and me off to our first posting. We were to patrol the border of Soho – the no-man’s land between Mayfair and Piccadilly. Keep watch over those who came and went from Knox’s. Make sure none of the rogue vampires took a bite out of any of our people. Stevenson hated it. Vampires of any kind unnerved him. Even our best scanners couldn’t detect them when they were incorporeal. Slippery, sly little fuckers that were just as brutal as they were manipulative… But damn if that didn’t suit me just fine!

Rose had taught me a thing or two about vampire powers. ‘Shadow dancers’ in particular. She explained how the darkness would seem just a touch thicker if a vampire were hovering in it. With just my military-grade optical scanner, I began to notice the thickness she spoke of. I began to detect them before they jumped out at us! Came in damn handy when our guard post was attacked by the undead outlaws - a faction of vampire exiles that were more a band of feral beasts than thinking creatures. I loved the challenge of hunting them down. The thrill of looking death right in the eye, never certain that I would survive!

I pulled Stevenson out of the way a second before one leapt out to snap fangs at his neck. My gun came up. I shot the fucker right between the eyes. The utter shock on his expression - glimpsed for a fraction of a moment before his pale body crumbled to ash - was hilarious! My heart thundered beneath my ribs. Adrenaline kept my eyes wide and sharpened my focus. I picked them off. I fought them. I killed them. I killed death! The power that flooded my blood was intoxicating. Violence had always been fun. But to have such prowess…? It was utterly euphoric!

My skill fighting against the creatures that plagued Syndicate the most earned me a lot of notice from my superiors. Syndicate even hauled me into a lab late one night to double-check my bloodline and make sure I wasn’t hiding a magical lineage! No. I was just smart, they concluded. Smart, quick, and most importantly, as ruthless as the devil himself. They liked that. They liked that a lot.

I started rising through the ranks on my own. I didn’t need Stevenson so much anymore. He didn’t like that - I wasn’t so easy to control once our bosses loosened my leash. But he was smart enough to stick with me. I was going places, and he wanted in. I didn’t mind it. He was like a jealous little brother, but a brother nonetheless. I’d always wanted one. It was nice to have the company - to have someone to drag in and out of trouble. Leave him holding the bag, then break him outta jail. And God, I loved that!

As a lieutenant, I was allowed to visit Knox’s. I got to meet the vampires that Syndicate begrudgingly tolerated. Neither side could quite best the other… yet. So they’d hammered out a shaky truce. Both sides played appeasement, smiling while hiding a knife behind their backs. But that danger was what made Knox’s so alluring… and addictive.

I never met Knox herself - not then. But I did see her. Sitting on her private balcony in the old Shaftesbury theatre like the goddess of death herself. She was the Lady. Sired by a Dracula. A dead princess with ethereal beauty eternal. Tall. Thin. Long blonde hair sparkling with diamonds that complemented the floating white silks and chiffons of her ghostly dress. Her sharp blue eyes could knife a man from across the theatre where her nest of followers had made a casino nightclub of their fortress.

I worked hard at Knox’s – escorting dignitaries and the like to the talks Knox would host between the warring Syndicate and the Zenronian Alliance. I sat in on a lot of them, watching both sides play each other as they hammered out negotiations and prolonged their shaky truce. But in my off hours… I partied harder.

I wasn’t the only one. Knox’s was frequented by many T1 Syndicate citizens. Even some T2’s, like myself. It seemed I was far from being the only human obsessed with these creatures. They were just doing what was in their nature to do, after all. Living free and primal in their darkness. Their abilities. Their philosophies. They had such an interesting perspective on life, death, and morality.

They wouldn’t bite us - they couldn’t. Cybernetics ‘poisoned’ our blood, they said. But our bodies were still warm. The secrets that they might pull from our lips in moments of hypnotic ecstasy almost as tantalising to them as the feed. I never gave up anything important or classified. Just a few titbits tantalising enough that they’d let me in - let me glimpse the darkest shadows of their world. Sex. Drugs. Hedonism. Blood. It was as poignant as the kill. Stevenson didn’t understand it. He hated it. Berated me for it. But the vampires understood me. They understood me the way Rose had. If I hadn’t been a cyber, God knows I’d have sold them my soul in a heartbeat!

My ‘deviancy’ was overlooked - provided for, even - by the Ivory Council. I was a ‘valuable asset’. Any time I began to chafe under their whip, I was assigned to Knox’s. I’d come back a few nights later ‘refreshed’. Ready to fight and kill in Syndicate’s name. I served tours in the desolate badlands and hellish heat of Metal’s Grave. When I returned to my family in Waterloo after my seven-year service, I was a decorated officer with a generous T1 commission in my pocket. Stevenson got one too - I’d carried him as he once carried me. It seemed only fair.

The plan was that I’d visit my family and old friends – say my final goodbyes over the course of the winter – then report to Buckingham that spring. Stevenson saw me off as the convoy departed from St. James. He smiled with bright enthusiasm and reminded me not to be late meeting him at the gates of the palace. We’d go in together, he promised. Brothers in arms to the end…

Ah the dreams of youth.

I’d been a fifteen-year-old scrapper when I left Waterloo. Now, I’d returned as a powerful young man of twenty-two. My family sang my praises. My T1 status - soon as I took it - would be a massive boost for them too. I was the very first from the Waterloo and Lambeth District to ever make that rarest of rare social jumps. It was especially good for my father. His smuggling business with Hector Shipton - Rose’s father - would be under my protection. Oh, the paperwork I could fudge. The goods I could authorise and ‘lose’ for them…!

My father and I visited Hector to tell him the good news. He invited us into his camp under Waterloo for a drink, just like old times… And there she was. My long lost - and long longed for - Rose.

Seven years is a long time when you’re fifteen and ten… and fuck me…! She wasn’t a feral little kitten anymore!

Rose was poison wrapped in a tight black dress. A deadly winter blossom that beckoned with beauty, even as her dark eyes promised to destroy me. Matted black hair was now tight ringlet curls. Pale snow-white beauty. Obsidian eyes… still an empty void to scream into. She knew what she was doing, coming to greet me in that tatty little outfit. Vintage - from days when women were obedient to their husbands. A size too tight, the hemline of her skirt was ragged enough that I could see the top of her creamy thigh. The few buttons left on that plunging blouse strained to contain her chest. God had been so very generous to her. I whistled - impressed - and her blood-red lips curled into a sly smile. Oh, she definitely knew what she was doing. I was being punished for leaving her.

If it hadn’t been obvious in that moment, it was clarified in the night that followed. She said next to nothing - as ever - but her eyes spoke volumes. She sat at my feet, her head resting on my knee, her hands stroking my calf as I tried to focus on talking business with our fathers. She kept my glass full. She leaned in to pour. She gazed at me through long lashes. Little siren!

I intended to fuck her. Friends now with benefits, right? But somewhere between the frantic undressing and the hot, passionate kisses, our mad frenzy to touch, grasp, taste, and claim revealed itself as something… more. Something soul-deep. Intense enough to scar. I rocked into her, stealing away her innocence, and shouting ecstasy into the intoxicating abyss of her heavy gaze. In that darkness, beyond her feral madness… I found a calm place. Like being wrapped in the sanctuary of shadow. The same thick blanket of night I’d tasted among the vampires. Except this one was warm and wonderful. Quivering under my touch.

I’d slept with more women than I could count. In the secret depths of Knox’s, I’d even sampled the forbidden fruit of men. But Rose…? My precious winter blossom. Nothing could ever compare. She ruined me for vice and sin. How could I ever taste sweetness again without her there to share it?

It changed everything. All my carefully laid plans. Everything I’d fought and worked for in St. James. I moped. I screamed. I tore my hair out as the path of my life split in two very different directions. Rose was a witch. Syndicate would kill her on sight. I could never take her to Buckingham as my wife. Nor could I ever see her again if I left Waterloo to claim that T1 future. But to be without her…? I’d pined for the memory of our childhood the whole seven years I’d been away. To pine for just the potential of being her lover would have been torture! I wanted to hate her for it…! But I could only need her.

I tried to push her away, only to come crawling back on hands and knees, grovelling and begging her forgiveness. She’d taunt me for a while - punish me in every deliciously sinful way - and then she’d welcome me back into her embrace. Vixen! Syndicate training demanded I kill her. The training they’d spent seven years drilling into me… but none of that racist bullshit stood up against her power. I loved this woman. Hopelessly. I always had. From the very second that tough, bull-headed twelve-year-old locked eyes with the lost, feral little kitten. She’d always known, and somehow, deep down… I had too.

Her pregnancy sealed my fate. It was the excuse I’d been looking for. With my family’s blessing, I did right by her. I tore up my T1 commission, packed my bags, and when winter broke into spring, I left Waterloo with Hector’s convoy. I followed my ‘Amerass’ - my magical soul-mate - into the freedom of exile.