Seditious Impetus

District 05’s skyline was bestial in nature. The skeletal outlines of skyscrapers mid-construction lined up like jagged metal teeth, the pollution dense enough to hide the Tower of Dis’s hulking body from view. If he looked straight up, he’d be met by the underside of District 06, the metal framework underneath pulsating with the light blue of arcane aether, its leyline redirected to support the sector’s infrastructure.

Amidst it all, Dante shivered as he caught slivers of sky between metal and smog.

He heard footsteps, followed by the rustle of a cigarette box and a familiar voice. “Behold how vast the circuit of our city! Behold our seats so filled to overflowing, that here henceforward are few people wanting!”

“Not now,” he grumbled. There was nothing more grating than a faithless man quoting scripture to another heathen. Yet his hand reached out on instinct; despite their time apart, it wasn’t easy to forget years of conditioning. No sooner was his hand raised than he pulled it back, his arm unsteady with the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. The last thing he wanted was a smoke, not when he could still smell that rancid, burnt—

“In the time you spent spacing out, the cleaning crew’s come and gone, and I’ve made just about a dozen phone calls.” Regardless of his moral opposition, Dante couldn’t even imagine what it would take to hide that level of destruction. Were half a dozen lives truly so disposable? “Come on, you need one. Then maybe we can have a real conversation.”

Who was he to deny him? He was now more than a friend; with the weight of this “favor,” Dante owed him his life thrice over.

With shaky fingers he took the cigarette, and Virgil flicked a lighter open in one smooth motion to light it. He didn’t know how long it took, but the shaking stopped as the anxiety settled into a low thrum just beneath his skin. Dante had killed them. He’d killed them all and called the one person who’d never turn him in for it, like a coward. “It’s not your fault, we didn’t know you had Aenean—”

“Shut up.”

“Dante, I'm serious. You know Aenean Disorder is random! No one knows when or where it’ll rear its ugly head.”

“I've used this damn power for years!” Dante clutched his head, warm ashes dusting his arm. “Only to be a blightheart. They trusted me! You’ve—You’ve trusted—”

The number of times he had used his strange abilities, tapping the well of exia energy from both the leyline and humans alike, was uncountable. He had served as Virgil’s bodyguard. Even before that, he had killed the vermin in their hovel of a room in District 01 without a second thought. Right now, more than the deaths of those good men and women who had signed his check and taken him into their patchwork family, he couldn’t stop imagining a reality where it could’ve been Virgil who lay a broken and ashen corpse, smelling of singed—

Before the bile could rise, Virgil punched his shoulder lightly.

“Why don’t you listen to me for once, idiot. Your record’s clean thanks to your best friend. Can’t I get a ‘thank you’ before y’get to the self-deprecation?” Virgil spoke roughly for once, so different from the eloquent Higher Plane accent he had adopted ever since they left the slums. It always set Dante at ease to hear him drop the facade; one less thing to struggle to understand.

“Doesn’t make me feel any better t’use every underhanded method we’ve shit on for it!” He felt the cigarette crumpling between his fingers as he dug his fingernails into his scalp. “They should tie me up and ship me off to one of those sanatoriums like every other blightheart. You can’t seriously expect me to keep walking ’round like I’m not a ticking time bomb!”

“So y’went berserk and killed some gang members—That’s enough t’make you give up and abandon our plan? C’mon, man.” Virgil took a long drag, only stopping to hold out a hand to silence Dante’s incoming complaint. After an even longer exhale, he continued, “Just three days. Stay home for three days and don’t use your powers.”

“What the hell are—”

Virgil’s eyes glinted like emeralds in the shadows, evening having enveloped the alleyway at some point. There was that cold confidence, the same kind he had carried since they were soot-ridden brats—the thing that dragged them from the hell of District 01 to DisCorp’s pearly gates.

“I’ve got a plan,” he answered, the dying ember between his fingers trembling in the dark.

Negligent Naivety

Dante wiped the condensation from his bathroom mirror to reveal bloodshot eyes and a five o’clock shadow. The first day, he slept. The second day, his eyes bore holes through the smoke-stained ceiling. Now dawned the third day, and still he felt every ligament in his body aching under some invisible strain. Yet underneath the pain hummed a powerful force—like a bloated battery waiting to catch fire. Worse was when he was reminded of where all of this energy had come from: With the house arrest and the radio silence from Virgil, it was all too easy to imagine that blinding, earth-shattering moment when he...

He picked up the razor and got to work; Virgil could drop by at any time.

There were too many questions he could ask, had he been able to think about anything but the accident—the crime, the massacre—and the faces of those he had killed. It was hard to recall what exactly caused it when the day itself had been so ordinary. Although Virgil had gotten cozy with the suits at DisCorp, Dante decided to get a job instead of living off of Virgil’s scraps. He knew the man would never let him go hungry, but he wasn’t keen to leech off his good graces.

While roommates on paper, Virgil had stopped coming home once he found an in with DisCorp, and Dante had been delegated to house sitter. There weren’t many opportunities for a barely literate bodyguard from District 01, but he’d found a little crew of hired muscle called the Prodigals who welcomed him regardless. Misfits, the lot of them; many had run away from home or been cast out for one reason or another. They were rough around the edges, but good people.

It was supposed to be another day of pounding pavement and collecting debts, maybe a bouncer gig waiting for him by nightfall—and yet, by the time the sun had set, the crew’s existence had been wiped from Dis’s registry, as if they’d never existed.

As he got dressed for the day, he did his best to reconstruct the scene in his mind, however painful it was. It was important—their blood was on his hands! He started with what he knew of Aenean Disorder, although that term usually applied only to Higher Plane patients; District 01 patients were often just called blighthearts. The condition had existed for at least as long as Dis had but reached a fever pitch in the past few years.

The cause was poorly understood, but the consequences were often deadly. A person’s abilities would spiral out of control: A woman who could influence the winds summoned a tornado in the middle of a home, while a student set a school ablaze during an aetherology class on fireballs. Like Virgil had said, the disorder afflicted people at random, but usually it was most noticeable when they manipulated energy.

Who knew how many people truly had it in the city? When would a garbageman or a street musician ever have the misfortune of going berserk like that?

But unlike all of the publicized incidents, Dante thought his case was unusual. He had consistently used his powers almost every single day for the past twenty-some years. From the moment he had gained consciousness in that orphanage, he’d shown a keen ability for an unusual type of magic. He could channel and control aether—not only his own, but also the exia-aspected aether around him. He could take in that energy from leylines, machines... and even from people themselves. Sometimes the whole world seemed like a mesh of little aetheric veins to him.

No one had known how to deal with it; some orphanage in the slums wasn’t going to bother sending anyone to a specialist, much less an institution that studied such cases. But it never bothered him because it had never been a problem. He killed bugs and mice when they annoyed him, and sometimes when his roughhousing went too far, a kid might end up bedridden for a day—but even if people slowly distanced themselves from him, it was fine.

Virgil had always been by his side, so he had never felt lonely.

He had never gone berserk then. Nor did he go berserk while he served as Virgil’s muscle once they were old enough to pass for adults. They carved a path through the muck of the Lower Plane to achieve what many thought impossible: a job offer at DisCorp for Virgil, despite being born the scum of Dis. The man had always said it had been a joint venture, but in the end it was he who had mapped the path forward. Dante looked down at his calloused hands, mottled with purple bruises—that uncontrollable torrent of energy now threatened that, too.

He remembered a tingling sensation that afternoon—static trailing up his spine and spreading through his veins. Almost like a hunger, but exia had always been a fairly destructive force to grapple with. He had thought about it only briefly between knocks on the door of his mark, right before the rambunctious debtor flung it wide open, his fist glinting with steel in the afternoon light...

One of the crew had eaten a faceful of brass knuckles, his blood splattering across the cracked pavement.

Sure, the situation was stressful. Maybe he had shouted and his heart quickened, but Dante would’ve handled it like he always handled it: Drain the debtor’s exia aether just enough for the others to restrain him, check on the guy with the busted-up nose... But he never got that far. The moment he went to tap the well of aether that every person possessed, it had been like flint to kindling. Such a common, routine act he’d practiced since childhood led to the murder of six people. When he came to in the midst of the smoking remains of his victims, it was all he could do to drag himself to a nearby payphone and call the only person he’d ever truly trusted in this godforsaken city.

Dante groaned as he sat down at the edge of his bed, cradling his throbbing head in his hands. Every joint in his body was screaming in protest while a hollowness chewed through his chest, the full spectrum of human grief unfolding simultaneously within him.

That’s enough t’make you give up and abandon our plan?

“The plan,” as Virgil called it, had been one of the few constants in his life: a childhood promise turned purpose. It was always there in the back of his mind, guiding every step. Dante always knew he’d never amount to much, but the plan meant his life would be worth something to someone, even if nobody else would know his name.

Elegant Retribution

He remembered that night clearly, the sky its usual starless, inky blue. District 01’s blown-out streetlamps would’ve meant total darkness at night if it weren’t for the other districts’ neon glow in the distance. Somehow, Virgil’s green eyes cut through the gloominess, that light he always carried deep within spilling forth.

I wanna fix this messed up city, Dante, but I need you. I know if it's you ’n me, we can do it.

Dante had wanted to laugh. What could two brats do against the metal colossus that was Dis? It’d chew them up and spit out their bones—in a way, it already had done so before they were ever born. No one ever made it out of District 01; they might as well be dead for all they were worth.

But Virgil sounded so serious that, instead of laughing, Dante made a promise. The one thing a poor boy could give.

Alright... We’ll fix it together, I swear. Just say the word and I’ll follow you anywhere. An impatient set of knocks jolted him from the dream.

Dante slipped on his ring, the smallest conduit he owned for his magic, and walked quietly to the entrance. Through the peephole he saw familiar cotton-candy pink hair, and as soon as he undid the bolt, Virgil barged in and closed the door behind him. “Took you long enough! I’ve been out there forever!”

“Sorry, must’ve fallen asleep.”

“Whatever.” Virgil sighed, losing his fire once he took a good look at his bedraggled friend. He tossed an empty duffel bag onto the weathered coffee table and took a seat on a chair by the couch. “Sit down, it's gonna be a long one.”

Indeed it was, even though Virgil recounted the past few days in fleeting detail, never spending too long on the specifics but instead opting for a broader picture. The connection that had gotten him into DisCorp had just so happened to be the head of the DCSF, an acronym that held no meaning to Dante but caused Virgil to smile smugly when he spoke it. He had trusted a woman named Beatrice, who spearheaded scientific innovation at the company, enough to share Virgil’s plight with her.

“And guess what, she had already been working on a project that couldn’t be more perfect for us if it tried.” He’d begun speaking animatedly, his hands waving around. “A special institute for those with Aenean Disorder, to help find a cure for the disease.”

Dante scrunched his nose. “So, a lab for us blighthearted rats?”

“What, no! Good Lady Harmonia, you’re always such a pessimist.” Virgil leaned forward, still smiling. “There’ll be tests probably, but it won’t be staffed by just anyone—the DCSF is trying to staff it with just their doctors, and they’re the best of the best when it comes to Aenean Disorder. They want to rehabilitate people, Dante.”

“When has DisCorp ever given a damn about rehabilitation?” He crossed his arms, annoyed at Virgil’s optimism. It wasn’t like him to be naive; Dante struggled to understand where his confidence in this suit had come from. “How’s this any better than a sanatorium? You’re still shipping me off somewhere, just with more steps and worse company.”

“Aw, c’mon.” He wagged a finger before crossing his arms over his knees and giving Dante his most devilish grin. “Is hanging out with me that bad?”

Sigh. “And why would you be going there?”

“Promotion. New venture means new positions to fill, and I just so happened to be willing to transfer.” Virgil leaned back again, hanging an arm over the back of the chair. He must be really excited, Dante noted, considering he won’t sit still. “And because... Well, according to Beatrice, I might be the reason you’ve never gone berserk before.”

The words hung in the air for one long, silent beat. “What?”

Suddenly morose, Virgil continued. “Yeah. She said there’s been a theory that some of us can, I don’t know, calm down people with Aenean Disorder. She calls them Elysians, though they were just a theory before.”

Dante froze. All these years, he could've had the disorder and just gotten lucky by sticking by Virgil? The odds of that happening should have been astronomical, and yet he couldn’t deny that it was the one difference between himself and every reported outburst. Maybe there were other Elysians out there, too, keeping other blighthearts in check.

“You can’t. Call it off.” His nerves were fraying, frustration and anxiety intermingling in his already exhausted body. Dante would rather be locked up in a basement somewhere—he couldn’t derail Virgil like this. They’d gone over it thousands of times in this very room: Get a job at DisCorp, climb the corporate ladder, and change it from the inside. Getting shipped off with a bunch of people with Aenean Disorder to be experimented on wouldn’t help with any of that. “How are you gonna move up the ranks if you’re wastin’ time in some special institute?”

“Calm down,” Virgil said, almost flippantly. “You know I need you for the plan, right? We’re going to fix things together.”

“C’mon, y’know—”

“Think about it, Dante. Let’s say we become the foundation of a cure for Aenean Disorder. You, the first man cured, the symbol of hope for Disonians. Me? A savior, my body the literal medicine for the most destructive illness we know.”

“And you think DisCorp’s gonna do anything but lock us down and turn us into piggy banks for them? Dis isn’t exactly known for charity.”

“You just leave all of that to me. D’you really think I’d be careless when it comes to what happens to our literal bodies?” He waved his hand dismissively. “Just do what you always do: Trust the process and do what I say.”

Dante exhaled through his teeth, trying not to think too deeply on how stupid that made him sound or how easily Virgil seemed to get over the dead people he swept under the rug only a couple of days ago. His eyes landed on the duffel bag, still on the coffee table. “And that?”

“Oh, right. For your things.” At that, Virgil stood up. “We’re leaving tonight.”


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‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Written by apricot