Chapter 23: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Affluent mansions teetering atop cracking stalagmites; a combination of frigid winters and roaring fireplaces creating a perpetual smog of ash and soot; diamonds twinkling, a rare Haven commodity, in the gaping caverns beneath their feet: the sights a denizen of Asher’s Drop witnesses on a daily basis. Hun spoke with childlike excitement about the stories told to him as a boy. “Travel north, play the sympathy card, get adopted, stop running. His simplistic propensity in terms of planning always left room for error.” Upon K’s inquiry into the stranger referenced in this statement, Hun dropped the subject. 

Regardless, Nefaria Farland knew luxury. Yet she rose her nose at Jongdae while sitting in its lap. Brandishing a sword of justice and a shield of hypocrisy, he sought her out. Johnny’s grace supplied him the vehicle to do so: elevator access to the Tower’s 12th floor. No Prayer Tickets required.

Elevator dinging, trepidation overtook him. 3 minutes: the amount of time passed before Jongdae moved forward. Bare feet tapping against tile, he threw glazed glances at machines whirring behind glass walls. 333: Scylla’s appointed room number. 

The door opened with a single click, revealing no bed. No personal effects whatsoever. Only more machines. Buzzing. Beeping. Beckoning Jongdae towards the figure suspended before him. 

Fay: hanging limp from suspended tubing; tempting enough to rival the feeling of corset strings threading between eager skin; stripped bare. White. Tao: stepping from behind a humming apparatus; calling out gleefully; lab coat pristine. White.

“Cerberus,” Tao threw out his arms, “welcome to the 12th floor of the Tower: Elysium!” Waiting for his warm welcome to be reciprocated. “Watch ya step, ya soul’s treadin' cross holy ground.” 

Blinking hard, focusing on the black, Jongdae ignored the curious greeting, “How are you here?”

“Birds of a feather flock togetha'.” Hands falling to dig into deep pockets, Tao rolled his eyes; following orders proved too boring to entice his eccentricity. “Society serves my interests, I serve ‘is.”

Burning every dip and curve into his memory, Jongdae distracted himself with Fay’s unconsciously willing form. White. White. White. Nose sniffing at pheromones. Thighs clenching at sweat. Thoughts bursting like stars across his eyes. Where was Minseok? It didn’t matter anymore.

“To the favored offspring goes the spoils.” 

A whisper, spoken as if in mocking, before Tao returned to his capering pronunciation. Summing up a brief response to Jongdae's question: Tao followed his work. The lengthier answer, the demanding of which the insomniac found utterly hilarious, humbled Chen’s dreary past.

The tragic beauty’s story of conception began with eerie cackling, mad scientist turned hyena sent into a fit of laughter at the irony of Fate. Like Cerberus, she awoke to find herself sold into the Dog Fights at Cusp’s End — an unwilling challenger amongst hundreds of her species vying for glory. Unlike Cerberus, she only lasted one TTD. Expediently thrown to the Strays, left unarmed and alarmed for the sake of adding spice to the traditional sport, Nefaria Farland was beaten half-to-death.

“Darwinism struck,” the mad scientist mimed swinging, wide-breadth caused Jongdae to flinch, "with a very, very, very sharp axe” — ironic.

Unluckily for her, Tao had been in attendance at this particular Dog Fight; his research often took him to places baring questionable morality. Mortality the question of the day, scalpel in hand and smile on his face, the mad scientist enamored by the forbidden posed a rhetorical question. “Death or life.” He repeated. “S’not a hard choice, right?” As he did then. “‘er choice?” It didn’t matter. “Death.”  

Progress needn’t suffer from the selfishness of the few, much less the one.

“Did it anyway.” Why: Jongdae didn’t have to ask. With a shrug embodying his active passivity, the innovator responded with, “Mating season.”

Black Coats are born amongst the average population. Decades of feeding the public “superfoods,” seeds unnaturally sown in a petri dish, resulted in the birth of an entirely new homo homo sapien. Able to adapt, survive, and perhaps even thrive in the rotting landscape surrounding the Havens on all sides, the first Black Coats emerged in the late 2400s. Not all manage to adapt and survive, however, the current male to female ratio in the Tower alone 527:1. Thick tubes pumped blue fluids into Fay’s metal-coated spine — an effort to counteract her unreasonably faulted nature. 

Scylla was made, not born; for breeding purposes. 

“An abomination in human skin. Scylla: the devourer of heroes.”

A familiar face. Expectantly unpleasant table manners. Playing mute. Inward change became difficult to ascertain. Unasked questions filled the time between the scientist’s riveting explanation of human experimentation to his next words. 

“With all the secrets of this 'aven at those fingertips,” pointing up, Tao referenced their maker, “s’time to start ya service to ‘im.” Nothing is free in the Tower; not even K’s conversation came cheap.

Glass shattered to the marble floor. Stolen curtains were ripped from iron bearings. Lemon overpowered the smell of mold, all the black bleached away. Immediate relinquishment of his 6th floor sleeping quarters: Johnny’s price in exchange for infecting his ignorance with knowledge. Jongdae’s personal effects were moved to the 11th floor — room 111 — the next morning. The rigamarole of rehashing restrictions ceased its downward spiral an hour into breakfast.

Buttery croissants stained Jongdae’s hands with grease. Bacon plucked from frying pans so fresh white bubbles popped across crisp skin. One, two, three squeezes of syrup and a golden glaze dripped over ivory edges. Stimulating, such stimulants.

Another succulent meal spent staring down his nose at his browning neighbor: K, the Adlet. Hun offered little solace from the collective discomfiture, diligently chewing into sizzling pork. Bestial indexes busily tearing at gooey pancakes, Fay appeared the least likely to initiate small talk. Whether or not she knew of Jongdae’s visit to the 12th floor was a mystery; another conundrum Jongdae didn’t bother wondering upon. Time desperately fleeing from his reluctant fingertips, the announcement went out too soon.

“Black Coats, our righteous Angels of Haven, proceed now to your respective floors. Screening will begin at 0900 hours.”

The Shisa reacted per usual, obeying the call post haste. Hun did, however, stall with mindless clean up while Fay brushed crumbs from her Black Coat garb. K never packed up quickly. Dissuaded to follow suit in waiting upon the prospective — highly desired — mate by the probing pupils of other carnivorous canines, Jongdae moved first. It was only when he reached the entrance of the mess hall, a black stretch of sea landlocked between white spread out before him, when he noticed.

A crowd begun to form around Fay. The territorial types, K and Hun stood fast, pushing through. A series of shoulder bumps shifted into buckling knees under crippling punches. Despite the show of force, K's fall from grace was swift, wings ripped by unworthy hands: arms dislocated from brittle sockets by flightless angels. Animosity towards K appeared to run high within their Black Coated brethren.

Dirty fighting a staple at the Dog Fights, Hun used the mess hall’s metal chairs to swat hungry swarms of flies. Seemingly emblazoned by the forbidden, angels burned brightly only to fizzle with a single swing. Fellows assembling in “Raphael's” name covered the white with flurries of black. Black Coats fought Black Coats.

Jongdae watched on the sidelines; a habit was a hard thing to break.

In the middle of the snapping jaws and curdling growls, Fay stood unfazed. Perhaps nefarious enough to take enjoyment in the chaos. Perhaps blasé enough to look after personal interests. However she appeared, the Dog Whistle sounded off all the same. Slicing through his eardrums, signaling the end of the debacle, a high-pitched note cut the show short.

It wasn’t the first time a Black Coat sniffed the wrong arse.

Standing on either side of their , bloodied and broken: the last elevator ride Jongdae shared with Hun and K. Left alone with their prize, Jongdae spoke his first words to Fay, Nefaria Farland, Scylla: devourer of heroic men. What’s your choice now? Eyes burning into his shrinking form, she responded with, “Spotless cuticles, yet the fungus persists.”

White. White. White. Where was Minseok? Insulted yet again, Jongdae preoccupied his inferiority complex with useless loathing in the hour that followed.

Three weeks and counting until the seasonal Hunt.

A/N: Checked story statistics. Turns out views per chapter drop by half from chapter 14 to chapter 15. People stopped reading when Hun died. Thanks for sticking around to see what may happen next.