Shattered Ladder 1-25 (Patreon)

Ken blinked slowly, pulled from a deep, dreamless blackness not by the glare of the sun-lamps through a window, but by a sound that echoed like a rusty saw grinding through a hunk of busted iron right next to his ear.

It was loud. Violent, even; the way the vibration rattled through the worn cushions of the couch, there was almost no other word for it.

He blinked, eyes glued shut with sleep-grit, and stared up at the ceiling, water stains that looked like maps to places nobody wanted to go staring back at him. The dim light of morning — at least, what passed for it under the plate they called the sky — leaked through the reinforced slats of the single window, hitting him with the fake sunlight he had grown used to.

Where… He blinked again, one hand rubbing at his face. Where am…It came to him before he could finish the thought, the feel of the uncomfortable couch beneath him. Zee’s place?

Right, right.

The apartment. 

Memory rushed back, the heavy confusing jumble of the entire last day choosing now to hit him all at once. The fight in the market. The crunch of bone. The smell of Jiro’s shop in all its ozone and antiseptic. The C-Card resting on the table, cold plastic with a dead man’s name printed on it.

Wei Kenshi.

And his eyes.

Ken squeezed them shut tight, then snapped them open again, staring at the gray light.

...the eyes were still the weirdest part.

They’re brown. 

They were brown.

At least, he knew they were brown, even if Zee and Don looked at him crazy everytime he argued that. Am… He blinked again, eyes on the ceiling. No, I… I can’t be that out of it. He’d seen his own eyes for fifteen years; twelve with shiny chunks of metal in the Village and three with the apothecary’s clean mirrors. 

He knew his own face; the way the brown in his eyes caught the light and the way it matched the dirt he dug in for tubers.

But yesterday...

Ken shifted on the couch, the material squeaking under his weight.

Yesterday, Zee’s mirror had shown him something else; something that hadn’t changed no matter how many times he rubbed at his face or tried to blink them away. He had purple — vivid, vibrant, violet — eyes in his head; a color that didn't belong to him. 

A color that belonged to someone else. Old Wei.

His breath had hitched the second he saw the color, panic in his chest forcing his lungs to seize up. Ken had leaned into the glass, pulling at his face as he tried not to scream. “My eyes…”He had turned to Zee, waiting for the freak-out; someone’s eyes changing in their skull wasn’t right.Right?

He’d waited for Don to yell, for Zee to scream; to panic, to anything.

But they hadn't.

She hadn’t.

Zee just looked at him, slurping down something carbonated with a raised eyebrow. "Yeah? I see em’. What about? You lookin' for compliments now, ghost? They're intense, yeah. Creepy, too. But they fit."

“What? Ken had stared at her. "They... they changed. They were brown."

 "Brown? You hit your head or somethin'?” Zee just frowned, her own colored eyes clearly confused. “They were purple in the market. Purple when you wrecked the Junkz. Purple when you stared down Don. Bright as neon."

Ken whipped his head to Don, the redhead still smacking down the remainder of his meal. "Don. M-my eyes? What… what color?"

The redhead hadn't even looked up. "Purple, walker-man. Like bruise. Very bright-bright. Good for branding."

Purple.

Always purple.

It made no sense. 

But it was just him and what he knew, against what he saw and what other people saw and they didn’t even flinch at it. Which meant… maybe I'm just crazy.

That was possible, yeah.

Rough-textured hands scrubbed against his cheeks, calluses getting deep into his skin. Real skin. Real hands. Fake eyes?

Scrap it. No point in even trying to think about it, at least not right now. Just… just scrap it. If he thought about it too hard, he’d start screaming, and he didn't have the energy for screami-

“Snrk-HONK-zzzzzzzzzzt.”

His newly changed eyes twitched as the noise broke out loud again, both of them trailing over to the source of the noise as he tilted his head away from the cushions. …oh, yeah. Him.

A head of thick red hair and a body that outmassed him by about a hundred pounds sprawled out over an armchair across the small room. Don Lee lay there in a pile, looking like a crime scene with his mouth wide open, head thrown back, and limbs flailed out as if he’d been dropped from the top of yesterday’s rooftop.

A drool string connected his lip to the collar of his ratty blue shirt, and the snoring kept that string strong.

Ken sat up, groaning as his spine pop-pop-popped with each motion. Teeth grit tight to bite back a groan, he stretched his arms high over his head, muscles in his back and shoulders fighting him for it. They were sore — tight and hot — but it was a good kind of sore. 

A solid feeling. 

One hand rubbed at the back of his neck, jaw almost unhinging to let out a massive yawn when Ken paused as another sound cut through the snoring.

“...one-fifty…”

A quiet, rhythmic counting. 

“...one-fifty-one…”

Breathless, but steady. 

"...one-fifty-two..."

Ken blinked, eyes trailing the small living room.

By the tiny kitchen where harsh light strips illuminated the floor, there was a flash of bright blonde hair.

Bobbing. Up and down, up and down.

Ken’s eyes trailed lower. …Zee?

A simple gray tank top was soaked through down the back, dark with sweat, as pink leggings clung to the girl’s legs like a second skin. Zee was on the floor, hands planted on the cold plastic tiles, as she continued her pushups.

Down. Her chest almost touched the floor as she lowered her down. Up. 

Each movement was clean, mechanical, and powerful; not a single bit of it wasted motion; no shaking, hesitation or weakness. Just a piston pumping up and down.

"...one-seventy-eight... one-seventy-nine..."

Ken couldn’t move her eyes off her, unable to help it.

The way the muscles in her back and shoulders worked — it was anatomy in motion as sweat dripped off her. Wei had taught him about muscles, deltoids, trapezoids and so much else; where to cut and how to stitch, but seeing them work like this... 

He swallowed a mouthful of nothing.

All that coiled, tiger-like strength...

"...one-eighty."

She held the last pushup at the top, holding it without even a gasp or a grunt; her body a perfect, straight line from heel to neck.

Then, slowly, she turned her head.

Amber eyes locked directly onto purple —bright, sharp and not at all exhausted after almost two hundred repetitions. A smirk spread across her face, lifting the corner of her mouth. She wasn't even out of breath.

"See somethin' you like, ghost?"

The question hung in the air, Don’s snores vibrating over it.

Something I like? Ken’s brain was still half-asleep, stuck in the dull gray of the morning light above. He just stared for a second, his mouth slightly open. Muscles. Efficiency. Form.

He blinked. "...n-no."

Zee froze mid-push, eyebrows rising high. "What?"

Heat. Instant prickly heat rushed up his neck, flooding his cheeks as he realized — a second too late — exactly how that sounded. Idiot.

More than that. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Ken jerked his head away, neck twisting so fast it cracked again. “...I mean... g-good morning."

The room was completely quiet again, even Don’s snores nowhere to be heard. 

Then… “Heh.”

The softest sound he’d ever heard from Zee in the day he’d known her. A real laugh, not mean, and it certainly didn’t sound like it came packaged with a smirk. Weird.

The slap of hands pushing off the floor resounded through the room, followed by the rustle of fabric as she stood up. "Good morning to you too, ghostboy. You got a way with words, you know that? Real smooth."

As she walked past him and made her way down the hallway, the air shifted with the faint scent of clean sweat, deodorant, and something a little like flowers.

A few seconds later, her bedroom door clicked shut and silence rushed back in.

Except for the snoring.

Wait. A set of purple eyes narrowed. No. The snoring had stopped.

Ken risked a glance back at the armchair across from him, a single dark eye cracked open and aimed right his way. The other was still squinched shut against the light, Don looking like a pirate after a poor haul.

Just pure disappointment was plastered across his face.

"...you had to ruin it for me, huh?" A voice still raspy with sleep croaked at Ken. "I was watching the show. And you hit Zee-Lady with a 'no'? Cold, walker-bro. Ice cold."

Ken just let out a long sigh, the sound scraping out of his throat as he fell back onto the couch cushions. Hands covered his face, nothing else to say but…

"Shut up, Don."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

By the time Zee had come back out, their glorious leader cleaned up and changed into something non-sweaty, Don and Ken were waiting for her at the small kitchen table. Like everything else in the apartment, the surface was scarred and somewhat worn, but it was clean and quality still.

Breakfast, however, was less than quality.

In the center of the table, sat a plate of stale-looking, brown nutrient bars that looked more like compressed dirt than anything else. 

It didn’t come alone, though.

Zee had gone to the trouble of making three cups of tea along with it.

Ken held his cup with both hands, the warmth seeping into his palms. Huh… Even right below his nose, he could barely smell a thing, which was… not encouraging. With a sigh, he took a sip.

…ugh.

If it wasn’t bad enough that it was more water than actual tea Ken was sure he would have spit it out on the table. How… how do you make tea this weak and also this bad? 

Zee sat opposite him, the girl fresh from a shower. Her hair damp and slicked back, she sipped on her tea with a smile like nothing was wrong while he suffered in silence. Don sat right next to him, the big redhead happily crunching on one of the nutrient bars. Somehow, he managed to not notice the taste of dirt and chemicals that Ken could smell as he broke another bar in half with a sharp snap.

Ken broke the silence. "So."

He set his cup of brown down, tired of pretending to drink it anyway "Who are the people we're... shakin' down?"

Don waved a hand, nutri-stick in his hand spilling crumbs on the table. "'Shakin' down' is such an ugly phrase, walker-bro. We ain’t street wannabes. You’re a walker now, man. Same as Zee-lady."

Ken looked over at the ‘lady’ in question, Zee nodding as she sipped on the leaf-water in her plastic cup. “...so what are we doing then?”

Don popped another piece of the bar in his mouth, munching and crunching loudly before he finally answered back. "Uh… big-big word for this one. My big brother would say ‘facilitating a transaction’.” The redhead nodded to himself, a smile on his face. “Ye-ye. Just collecting on a debt. Teaching them a lesson in ‘fiduciary responsibility’.”Ken stared at Don for a few seconds too long, the bigger boy going silent under his eyes. “...do you even know all those words?”

“Most of them.” Don’s answer was as quick as his smile.“Mmm.” Ken felt his eye twitch, something more than just a grunt on his lips when Zee interrupted him. 

“Basically community service." She chewed on her nutrient bar as Ken’s eyes snapped to hers, chewing slowly as she held him under her gaze. "Easier that way to not over think it, muscleman." Her tongue darted out, a crumb vanishing from the side of her mouth. "They owe Jiro. We owe Jiro. We break them, we no owe Jiro no more.”“Simple-simple math.” Don clapped his hands together.Ken frowned, eyes dropping down to the last grainy brown bar on the plate in front of him. More fighting. He still couldn’t fight, none of what he’d done yesterday actually him on his own. The feel of that… cold instinct taking over his body again... 

The crunch of the man's chest. The way his own hand had moved like a knife…

Ken allowed himself a sigh, breath leaving him hard and heavy."...and who are these guys we're... 'servicing'?"

Don took another bite of the bar as he looked at the ceiling, assuming a thoughtful expression that didn’t fit his monkey face. "...funny question, actually."

He pointed the half-eaten bar at Ken.

"Pretty sure you know 'em."

"...know who?" Ken stared back, blinking at Don. "This is my second day out here. My second day in the city. Who am I supposed t-"

The air in the room seemed to drop a few degrees, Ken stopping midsentence as the pieces clicked together in his head. 

Zee grinned.

"...oh."

It wasn't a nice grin.