Chapter One
Rika Reich's felt sore. She felt puffy, frustrated and wanted to scream. She could feel the vortex of emotions twisting around in her gut. Rika didn't want to be working today.
But she did anyway.
Rika drove her silver and red hover bike down Stark avenue. She tried to ignore the tears streaking in her eyes, wishing she had the concentration to make her tear ducts shift away with her biokinesis. But Rika knew she wasn't in the right frame of mind to use her inborn demon ability to alter her flesh. Not now. Concentrating on driving her hover bike over the Weaveway, on Stark Avenue, that seemed to be keeping her from going crazy. She clutched the small package to her chest tightly. Behind her, the immense, tall cube of Ezekiel Square shrank away.
The thick asphalt of Stark Avenue flowed over the top of the Weaveway. The Weaveway was ancient tunnels, built originally when all of the city of Noah had been completely submerged in water. That was long before they had discovered force fields and created open spaces. Stark Avenue was one of many highways, constructed atop the Weaveway to service the tiny communities that lived atop the Weaveway tunnels.
Rika wasn't too bizarre, as Demon standard went. Even though Demon was just slang in Noah for anyone with biokinesis and physical deformities. Demon meant ugly mutant, but she had chosen to forget that for the moment. That wasn't what had set her off.
Rika's demonic appearance had always caused people to underestimate her. Her deformities made her look more akin to a rodent. A long naked, wormy rat's tail. Her long pointed ears and smaller size. Rika's left hand held six fingers. But even with those, most of her deformities didn't carry major cosmetic problems. She didn't have extra heads or ooze for skin. Nothing as bad as those demons down in Imptown.
"Yabai bastard," Rika muttered to herself. She'd put a razor edge to each word.
She had spent the previous night crying her eyes out. She only balled her eyes out whenever she got angry. Very angry. Which sometimes made Rika feel even more angry with herself. That always made things even worse. Then she'd cry some more.
"Yabai bastard," Rika repeated. She also had drank way too much the night before, more than she knew she could handle. Especially for a work night. Even if Rika worked for herself, she should've known better. Rika wished she had girlfriends or at least somebody to talk to about it.
But no, all of her friends were also friends with Arn. Arn. Her yabai jackass of a boyfriend.
Rika's bike cut close to the sidewalk. Over the side, she could see the blur of green from the wilds of the blue dome around the Weaveway. A twenty yard drop.
She tried to focus on the sky and road in front of her. Tears still stung at her. In the distance, the ever dim twilight of the dark ocean above. No clouds, but a fog from trapped water vapor swirled far off. Rika imagined she could see the shimmering energy of the forcefields and shields keeping the water from flooding in.
Rika couldn't focus on that though. Instead, she tried not to cry. Her rage at Arn bellowed up. he had crossed a line with her. What made it worse, though, was that he refused to admit he was wrong. She hated it when others insisted that she needed to apologize. That she was the one with the problem. That she needed to get over it. "Yabai fuckers."
Rika knew that she would be stuck, all day, doing her delivery job while nursing the low hot rage at Arn. It embarrassed her. But she couldn't make that fire go away. Not instantly. She grunted at her metaphysical cage.
She came to a intersection, where the Weaveway split into different routes. Stark avenue followed suit. It was one of the places where the Weaveway crisscrossed with itself. Rika's hover bike stopped in midair, floating as it waited for the traffic light to switch from red to green.
Rika looked around, trying to find an available lane. Some route that might let her get around without having to wait. The demon girl checked her mirrors, frowning. Another set of tears streaked down her face. She didn't like what she saw at all.
"You have got to be kidding me." Rika fought back the urge to hit the throttle. She could just ignore the light, drive past and leave. Instead, against her better judgement, Rika stopped. With deft skill, she parked her hover bike on the side of the road. Her hover bike drifted and dropped gently to the ground, almost like a feather.
"You yabai moron, I'm working!" Rika shouted. She put all the bile she could into her words. Rika thought she still could feel some sobs leak through.
"Listen-"
Rika got off her bike. She walked down the sidewalk in Arn's direction. Rika confronted the panting figure that had been following her. She clenched her hands in fists. "I don't have the fucking time to deal with your shit today, Arn! Don't fucking follow me around when I'm working!"
Arn paused. A stock demon, Arn had an extra set of silvery eyes on his forehead. He tried to smile at her approach. It was a nervous smile, and worry lines seemed to keep him from getting all the way to true smile. Arn's body was covered in reddish fur. His arms were full of various glowing and black flowers.
"You think flowers is going to fix this?!" Rika accused him. She jabbed a finger at him.
"Rika, are you ok? Your makeup is-" Before Arn could finish, Rika slapped him.
Tears streamed down Rika's face, blurring her vision. Rika raged at him, she wanted to rip his throat out. She could feel her demonic biokinesis shifting her teeth and claws subconsciously. Some animal instinct wanted her to punish Arn. Annoyed, crying heavily, Rika shook her head and tried to fight the urges raging through her.
But it felt like a yabai brilliant way to make a point, at least to her it did.
"Fuck off Arn! I don't want to hear it."
"Rika, please, you got to listen to me." Arn pleaded, dropping flowers as he did. He sounded urgent, his eyes filled with worry.
"Listen to what excuse now?" Rika growled. She had one fist on her hip, the other arm still clinging tight to the package.
Dozens of hoversleds whizzed by them on the two lanes they were standing next to. Rike still had a job to do. She didn't want to listen to Arn. Rika was going to go back to work. Let Arn try apologizing to me later, She thought.
"Rika, please-"
"No. I'm working. Talk to me later, when I'm not delivering a package, Arn." Rika spun away. She resisted an ugre to apologize. To hug him and beg him to forgive her. To let Arn hold her and let the fire die away. Let him win the argument.
But Rika didn't have the time for it. Tears streamed down her face. Rika's heart pounded hard in her chest. It pumped in her seething rage. Rika couldn't let that rage go now. She didn't want to admit defeat yet. Not yet.
"Rika this is important." Arn sounded desperate. Frustration crept into his voice, frustrated at her for not listening to him right away. "You need to listen! Something-"
"No, Arn! You don't get to have the last word this time, ok? You need to back off and be a little more yabai patient! Some of us can't turn our emotions off or forget somethings! Maybe if you-"
Rika never got to finish her tirade. A brilliant flash of light interrupted her in mid sentence. She felt force wham right into her. Rika turned around, catching the sight of her hover bike exploding. Blue energy cascaded toward her. Thunder deafened her. Something had caught hold of Rika, throwing her off the top of the weaveway. Shrapnel and fire flew in the air around her.
Rika tumbled down, over the side rail of the Weaveway into the wild trees and shrubs of the Blue Dome below. Crack! Thump! Crash!
The demon girl lost sight of the weaveway, her vision becoming blurs of smoke, trees and branches. She felt herself bounce as she fell down over the curvature of the Weaveway. The trees and plants had been planted originally to be decorative. They took advantage of the space of the blue dome and grew feral. Rika knew she was falling straight down into a forest canopy.
Thorns scratched at her. Vines and branches clawed. Rika felt nausea as she spun around in midair. Each bump and root she scraped past bruised and ripped at her. She felt gashes and cuts rip her flesh open.
Rika closed her eyes. She tried to ignore the pain as she fell down. She to ignore her tears. She kept rolling, falling, until her body slammed into something soft. She stopped.
"Ouch." Rika told herself. "Ow."
Sore, she coughed and opened her eyes. She spat out a chunk of a tooth, blood spittle going along with it. Her arms flopped as she tried to move around. The wind had been knocked out of her. Rika tried to look around, trying to get a bearing of her location.
Something smelled like cooked meat. Like cooked pork. Rika blinked at the smell. The greasy bit of scent made her tired, injured body hungry.
Rika's gaze fell upon the soft thing she'd landed on. It had broken her fall. And it was the source of the cooked meat smell. Arn. She'd landed on his cooked remains. He'd died to soften her fall.
She felt bile boil up into her mouth.
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