Chapter 4: Pink eyes
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was stuffed with the ghosts of old arguments and the sharp, chemical smell of the present. Jess held Vi’s stare, and in the unforgiving glow of a flickering overhead strip, the change was absolute.
The green was gone. Not just a hint, not a glimmer around the edges. Her irises were flat, luminescent discs of synthetic pink, the color of diluted blood and refinery runoff. There was no pupil to speak of, just a depthless, glossy film. It was consumption, not enhancement. It was now.
“You’re on it,” Vi said, the words a low scrape of disbelief. The anger was there, heating her blood, but under it ran a colder current of grief. “Right now.”
Jess didn’t blink. “And?”
“And?” Vi took a step forward, her boots scuffing on the grit-covered concrete. “Look at you. You’re not syncing with an engine. You’re drowning in it.”
“You don’t know what I’m doing.” Jess’s voice was eerily calm, a flat affect that didn’t match the simmering tension in the room. It was the shimmer talking, smoothing the jagged edges of emotion into a placid, synthetic lake. “It’s a tool. You use a wrench. I use this. Lets me see the stress fractures in the alloy. Lets me hear the fuel line purr before it splutters. It’s just chemistry.”
“It’s Silco’s chemistry!” Vi shot back, gesturing roughly at the world beyond the garage walls. “That poison is his grip on this whole damn place. You’re feeding the hand that’s choking you.”
A short, sharp laugh burst from Jess. It sounded too loud. “Lecture me on economics? You, who’s been on the Piltover tab for seven years? At least I’m paying for my own mistakes.”
The barb found its mark. Vi’s hands clenched. Caitlyn shifted by the door, her unease a palpable third presence. Daya had gone very still near the tool wall, watching like a strategist assessing a battlefield.
“This isn’t a mistake, Jess. It’s a surrender.” Vi’s voice dropped, straining with an urgency she couldn’t fully articulate. “I’ve seen what this stuff does when it stops being a tool. It remakes people. It erases them.”
For a flicker, something broke through the chemical placidity in Jess’s eyes—a flash of old fear, quick and deep. Then it was gone, submerged again. “Maybe some people need erasing.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?” Jess pushed off from the workbench, moving with a fluid, deliberate grace that was just a hair too precise. “You got erased, didn’t you? Vi of the Lanes, went up top and became a prison number. You think you’re the same person who left? I’m just being honest about my alterations.”
The distance between them vanished. Vi didn’t remember closing it. Her hand shot out, not to strike, but to grab Jess by the front of her grease-stained harness. The move was pure instinct, a raw attempt to physically shake the gloss from her eyes. “Look at me. Really look. This isn’t you.”
The reaction was instantaneous.
Jess moved like liquid. Her own hand came up, not to block Vi’s, but to trap it against her chest, fingers clamping down on Vi’s wrist with shocking strength. At the same time, her other hand blurred, a mechanic’s pin-spanner snatched from the bench now held reverse-grip, its sharp, tapered end hovering a breath from Vi’s throat.
“This is exactly me,” Jess whispered, her pink-eyed gaze unwavering. “The one who survived. The one who didn’t have a big sister to run after.”
Time stretched. Vi felt the cold metal near her jugular. She felt the tremble of raw, shimmer-amplified power in Jess’s grip. She didn’t fight it. She just stared into that unnatural pink void, searching for the friend she’d left in the dark.
“Jess.” Daya’s voice cut through, a single, clean slice of sound.
She hadn’t shouted. She didn’t need to. Jess’s head tilted a fraction, listening.
“Eyes on me,” Daya said, still leaning against the tool rack. Her calm was an anchor in the chemically-charged air. “You put a hole in her, you spend the next three hours mopping the floor. You want that? You want to scrub her out of the grout?”
The reality of it, stated with such pragmatic exhaustion, seemed to seep through the shimmer. Jess’s grip on the spanner didn’t loosen, but the pressure on Vi’s wrist eased a micron.
Caitlyn’s voice was tight, controlled from across the room. “Vi. Step back.”
Vi ignored her. She was locked in the terrible proximity of the moment, the smell of oil and ozone and Jess’s breath, which carried the faint, sweet-metallic tang of the substance in her veins. “You remember Mylo’s rants?” Vi spoke softly, for Jess’s ears only. “He’d go on about cheap modifiers, how they were for losers who couldn’t cut it clean. You’d throw a wrench at his head.”
A flicker. A tic at the corner of Jess’s mouth.
“He was an ass,” Jess muttered, but the words had less bite.
“Yeah. But he wasn’t always wrong.” Vi slowly, carefully, pried her hand from Jess’s grip. The spanner remained, a steel promise. “This isn’t cutting it clean, Jess. This is just cutting.”
The pink in Jess’s eyes seemed to swirl, the surface tension breaking for a second. She blinked, and for that instant, Vi saw a profound and frightened exhaustion behind the chemical sheen. Then Jess shoved her back, not with violence, but with a weary frustration.
“Get off me.” She lowered the spanner, tossing it onto the bench with a clatter that echoed. She turned away, presenting her scarred neck and shoulders, a defensive posture. Her hand went to her temple. “You don’t get to come down here and judge my survival kit. You lost that right.”
Before Vi could retort, Daya moved. She crossed the space and put a heavy, insulated water bottle into Jess’s hands. “Drink. The good stuff. All of it.” Her tone brooked no argument. To Vi, she said, “The buzz wears off hard. The clarity’s brutal. You’ve said your piece. Now it’s just cruel.”
Jess cracked the bottle and drank deeply, her back still turned.
Vi stood there, adrenaline fading into a hollow, aching shake. She’d come for Powder and walked into a different kind of wreckage. Caitlyn approached cautiously, her hand now resting openly on her rifle’s stock.
“This is unproductive,” Caitlyn said, her eyes on the tense line of Jess’s back. “We’re drawing attention just being here.”
“You think?” Daya’s sarcasm was dry as dust. “The topside Enforcer and Stillwater’s most famous export having a domestic in my shop? Yeah. The neighborhood watch is probably taking notes.”
As if summoned by her words, a new sound pierced the garage’s ambient hum—a rapid, staccato tapping on metal. It came from the small, reinforced service door at the side of the shop, a door Vi hadn’t even noticed.
It wasn’t a knock. It was a signal.
Daya’s head snapped toward it. All traces of weary amusement vanished from her face. She looked from the door to Jess, who had frozen, water bottle halfway to her lips, the unnatural pink in her eyes dilating with sudden focus.
“We expecting a pickup?” Daya asked, her voice low.
Jess shook her head, once. The shimmer-enhanced calm was now a razor-sharp alertness. “Not for two hours.”
The tapping came again. Insistent. A pattern: three quick, two slow.
Vi knew that pattern. It was old Underground, a call for urgent parley from someone who couldn’t be seen at the front door. Her muscles coiled, old instincts firing.
Daya was already moving toward the door, pulling a heavy rivet gun from a shelf as she passed. “Jess, get the cutter offline. Vi…” She paused, giving Vi a look that was pure, unvarnished assessment. “…get your Enforcer in the shadow of that half-shell glider. If this goes sour, you never saw us.”
Caitlyn bristled. “I am not hiding–”
“You’re a loaded weapon in a room full of vapor,” Daya hissed. “You spark, we all burn. Move.”
The choice was made for them. The service door latch began to turn, not forced, but with a key.
The lock clicked open with a sound like a breaking bone.
Daya didn’t wait. She yanked the door inward, the rivet gun held low and ready at her thigh. The figure on the other side stumbled forward, caught off-balance by the sudden lack of resistance. It was a scrawny kid, maybe sixteen, with wide, chem-rat eyes and a nose that had been broken more than once.
“Kev,” Daya said, her voice flat. She didn’t lower the tool. “You lost your watch. We’re not open.”
“Not a delivery,” the kid, Kev, gasped, hands raised. His eyes darted past her, taking in the tense scene—the pink-eyed Jess, the unfamiliar strangers. He focused back on Daya, desperation winning. “They’re coming. The Sump-faces. Three of ‘em. Saw ‘em casing the front alley two minutes ago. Figured the service run was clear.”
A thick, weary sigh left Daya. She lowered the rivet gun. “Again?”
“Rack’s light this week,” Kev shrugged, a nervous twitch in his shoulder. “You’re the only shop with working lights that don’t buzz. They see it as fancy.”
From her space near the glider frame, Caitlyn spoke, her voice cutting through the garage’s gloom. “Local enforcement? Should we contact–”
A single, unified snort of laughter from Jess and Kev answered her. Daya just looked pained. “There is no ‘local enforcement’ here,” she said, turning back to a sealed cabinet bolted to the wall. “Just different brands of thug. Ours are usually lazier.” She keyed in a code on a rusty keypad. The cabinet door hissed open.
Inside weren’t weapons, at least not conventional ones. Vials of shimmer glowed like captive fireflies on one shelf, next to stacked hextech capacitors and jars of viscous coolant. Daya’s hand bypassed them all for a small, lead-lined case at the bottom.
“It’s just some thugs,” Daya said, her voice a monotone of practiced routine. “It happens a lot in this part of the lane. The shop is a nicer place than the buildings around it, so it’s targeted a lot. They’ll scratch the door, maybe bash a vent. They see a woman inside, they think it’s easy.”
She popped the case open. Inside, resting on faded velvet, was a single, pristine vial of shimmer. Unlike the murky, reactive stuff common in the lanes, this was a clean, uniform cobalt blue, stable and uncut. A professional-grade stimulant.
Daya took the vial of shimmer herself. A clean, uncut dose. She rolled it between her fingers once, a brief, almost affectionate gesture, then brought it to the injection port on the side of her neck. There was no hesitation, no ceremony. A soft hiss, a push of the plunger.
Her dark eyes snapped shut for a second. When they opened, a corona of electric blue etched itself around her irises, a stunning, controlled luminescence. It wasn't the drowning pink of Jess’s eyes; this was a sharpening, a honing. Every movement she made afterward seemed intentional, efficient, devoid of wasted energy.
“You’re juicing for a bunch of window-smashing chumps?” Vi asked, the disbelief clear in her voice.
Daya looked at her, the blue light making her expression unreadable. “I’m ending it quickly. A show of force they understand. A woman with a tool is a challenge. A woman with chem-lights in her eyes and zero patience is a biohazard they’ll avoid for six months.” She glanced at Jess. “You’re crashing. Go to the office. Lie down.”
Jess, whose own pink glow was starting to flicker and pulse unevenly, nodded weakly. The bravado was gone, leaving behind a raw, shaky fatigue. She shuffled toward a back room without another word.
“You,” Daya said, pointing the now-empty vial at Kev. “Front door. Unlock it, then vanish.”
“But they’re out there–”
“They want in. Let them in.” Daya’s tone left no room. Kev scurried to the large main roll-up door, threw the heavy bolt, and then darted out the side service entrance, melting into the alley’s perpetual twilight.
Daya turned to Vi and Caitlyn. “You have five seconds. Be a wall, or be a shadow.” She walked to the now-unlocked main door and stood calmly before it, waiting.
A fist pounded on the metal from outside. “Open up! We know you’re in there!”
Vi met Caitlyn’s eyes. The Enforcer’s jaw was tight, her knuckles white on her rifle. This wasn’t her procedure. This wasn’t her city. With a curt nod, Vi pulled her back into the deeper darkness behind the skeletal glider.
The pounding became a kick. The roll-up door shuddered.
Daya reached up, grabbed the manual release lever, and yanked it.
The door clattered upward with a roar. Three figures were silhouetted in the hazy green light of the alley. They were big, wearing scavenged enforcer armor plates sloppily bolted over leathers, their faces hidden behind makeshift respirators painted to look like skulls. Sump-faces.
The lead thug took a step inside, a heavy pipe in his hand. “Nice place. We’ll be taking your–”
He stopped. He saw Daya. Not her tools, not her shop. Just her. Standing perfectly still, her face illuminated from within by that cold, electric blue light bleeding from her eyes. It cast strange shadows up her cheekbones.
“We’re closed,” Daya said, her voice quiet, layered with a bass hum that hadn’t been there before.
The thug blinked, his confidence fraying. He glanced at his two companions, who hovered at the threshold. “We ain’t asking, shimmer-eyes.”
“I know.” Daya took one step forward. The blue in her eyes seemed to brighten, focusing. “You never do. You just take.”