章節 268: Impervious To Light
What has not been stated about Iris Valentine thus far is that masturbation did not feel as good as it once had for her. Sex had been easy for her to obtain, since the time she was a teenager, and she had partaken it in a frequency beyond even other host girls; she had gained a reputation as a player, overtly masculine.
She preferred sexuality and violence because they could be a crystallized method of creation of herself; they were not difficult. You have already seen some of her violence, and to add yet another anecdote, there was a time in highschool where her pedophiliac girlfriend Angela had picked her up after class and took her to a local party. While there, Iris had stepped out with Angela and walked around the neighborhood.
On one of the stoops there was a boy, about Iris's age, sitting alone. He had a constant shimmer of drool on him and underneath his pants appeared to be wearing diapers, as he stared at the world.
Angela snickered. "Hey, look, I think he's retarded." She waved her hand in front of his face. "Hey. Hey, can you understand me?"
"Angela, stop it." said Iris. "Leave him alone."
"Oh, shut up, I'm just having some fun. It's not like this little retard can understand me."
"It doesn't matter if he can understand you, that's still not right."
Angela ignored her. She grabbed one of his arms, pulled it up, then let it fall limply. He smiled. "See? Look, he's smiling. Are you gonna tell me that's wrong? He must have somebody who takes care of him, or something."
"Yes, and they're going to be just as pissed at you as I will be if you don't stop it."
For a second Angela seemed worried about appearing bad in Iris's eyes. But she realized, years later, that Angela did not really care.
"Are you seriously going to argue with me about this in public?" Angela sniffed. "God, he stinks."
An argument ensued, where Iris's viewpoint did not get across, the boy was saddened by the miasma of negative emotion, and Angela drove off with Iris still left behind. She had to walk home. She did not speak to Angela for a few days, and a month later, Angela would break up with her for reasons unrelated to any of the above.
During those days, Iris got into another fight with a host student at her school, one who would tell Hirogane that his snapped-back arm was the result of a lunatic host at the grocery store and not a girl his age.
Thus violence had again solved internal morass for Iris. She bragged about it for a few days, so as to ensure that she would have the attention on herself for the next week, and harden her reputation as the toughest host at school. Thus was the contrast of Iris to a misanthropic sociopath like Kirihara Kishor; while Kirihara had no charm and not only despised people but let them know it, Iris still engaged with people and wished to be liked by them.
Sexuality was another method of internal resolution, of course. While she knew wider society would scorn her a promiscuous dyke or a lesbian whore, she could still attain some respect of her peers from sexuality masqued as maturity, later-on a crystallized currency by which she could judge herself, the ability to have seemingly created herself free from society's restraints, even as its construction of that edifice was still typified by forces outside of her command.
But she needed to believe that there was an essence of herself separate from her physical body, lest she be but a shell dismal towards its echoic roar of the ocean.
Years on she has begun to reconsider such aspects of herself. She felt ashamed of how she had used violence and how she would lie to get sex; that she would exchange promises of love for it or pretend to be older than her age.
But she rationalized that life was for the betterment: the hope that her future might do better than herself. Already Natasha's death had forced a reaching out, to Olivia, to Eva, to other students. She was close friends with Amelie now, but she still regretted her cowardice with her, even as the veracity of such feelings had become creased in the remembrance of time: if she did not understand love perhaps it could be because she had not yet expressed it.
The following morning she awoke and Jane was not there; she thought perhaps she was being treated to breakfast. She rolled over, stayed on her phone for fifteen minutes, then went out of the door. She heard no one in the house, and for a moment thought she might have been robbed or bugged; she reverted her phone to how it was last morning.
She entered the living room and there was Jane's corpse.
"Oh, great." she muttered.
She sighed and looked around for any signs of an enemy host; she found none, and tentatively she called up Olivia.
"Hey. What's up? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I might be a bit late getting back. I hooked up with a civilian woman, and she's currently a corpse at the front door of this home, so fifteen minutes in to my day there's already some student bullshit going on."
"Shit. Where are you? I'll come there."
"I- actually, I was going to ask if you could send Eva. Haven't had much time to spend with her this year."
"…okay. I will."
Iris felt guilty. She enjoyed time around Olivia, but she had not ever been on a contract with Eva before.
Still, Eva arrived in about 15 minutes and met with Iris outside. "What happened?"
Iris sighed. "I met this civilian woman last night, I went home with her, stayed the night, and..." She opened the door and revealed the corpse.
"Shit." Eva crouched down. "Okay. So, don't worry, this has happened before. I almost strapped a civilian woman too hard myself. What I can do is de-amp the hardness of her bones out of her. Then she'll deflate. We can crumple her up like a tissue, stuff her in the trunk of a car, then dump her body in the river and you can accelerate the flow downstream."
"What?"
"No one will ever find her again. Now, find me a paper towel. I haven't seen spotting this bad since last Thursday."
"Eva, I..."
She saw Eva looking back at her, grinning.
"God damnit, Eva, that's not funny!"
"Sorry."
"I need you to watch me for a Timeline. Need to figure out if this is a host or not before I do anything else."
Eva nodded as Iris crouched down and focused, Kairos' clouds covering the home and her webs.
At around 3am, Jane went to answer the front door, and she died within seconds. The host aura was not long; it searched for her phone (which had been left, along with her clothes, near the front door), destroyed it, took the pieces with it, then left.
Iris was not fearful, however; she knew her host senses would have alerted her had it gotten closer.
"Few things." muttered Iris. "Most likely premeditated and specifically for her. Likely someone she knew, given I'd hope she doesn't normally open the door for strangers at 3am."
"Why would a host be visiting her at 3am, though? Delivery?"
"Doubt it. We'll check the driveway, but I'm doubtful they parked nearby anyhow. Let's check the rest of the house."
They searched out the rest of the house within Kairos' webs; the living room, kitchen and dining room. None were disturbed beyond the corpse. Iris checked down the hall and the bedroom door at the end of it, then realized there was another door she had not tried yet. She opened it, and there was the bedroom of a teen girl; posters of boy-bands and various slogans adorned the walls.
"She had a daughter?"
"Has or had..." muttered Iris. She reverted time in her to about -1 days, and a teen girl's corpse appeared in the room. She was dressed like she was to attend a rave. Iris checked in her right pocket and sighed as she found her phone. "God damnit."
"Not good?"
"Phone is part of her death stamp. Might be good, might be bad." She checked: it was locked and she could not revert it pre-death. "Gotta bring it to the police later if we want it unlocked. If the data was deleted pre-death, that's a problem."
"Nah, one sec." Eva took her own phone out, changed it to be passwordless, strummed Maestro, then strummed the girl's phone. Iris checked and it had no password.
"Do you actually have to play it for it to work, or do you just like to?"
"It helps the mental-physical connection."
They went out to check the driveway; Timeline's webs thinned there, but enough was covered that Iris could reasonably assume the house had only one car; thus the daughter had been picked up. She checked her cellphone. There were messages of immature romance there from a contact noted only with hearts; little of note.
"I hate that whenever a straight woman is murdered the most likely culprit is the man she's with." said Iris.
Eva sucked in air, then exhaled. "Yeeep."
They went to the neighbors and questioned them, explaining that they were Urasaria students and asking if they had seen anyone visit the home at 1:03am the previous night. None had.
Iris's eye was soon pulled over by a cop car arriving at Jane's house. "Great, one of the civilians called. I swear they've got so little trust in students that they wouldn't believe us if our tongues were notarized." She went over and called out to one of them before he went into the home, who looked back at her Urasaria badge and approached her. A glint of recognition tugged at his brow at 'KRONOS'.
"Are you the one who called?"
"No, I was asking around about it. A woman and a girl murdered. I already verified it's a host, but I've got a phone that might need another set of eyes."
She offered it out to him. He did not take it. A few officers near the car were pointing guns at Iris and Eva. Iris looked to them like a group of odd children. "They haven't yet invented a gun that hurts hosts, so drop your weapons or I'll turn them to molten metal while you're still holding them."
Eva rubbed the back of her neck.
Iris was still holding out the phone. "You taking it or not?"
"Why should we bother helping a student who doesn't understand she works for the police and not the criminals?"
"Pardon?"
"We heard about what you did in Penrose. Mighty convenient that you help a murderer get off and then you're involved in one just a few weeks later."
"That man falsely confessed, you dumb son of a bitch."
"We'll see what the trial says."
Iris sighed. "You mind helping out with *this* murder?"
"You already said yourself it's a host murder. That's your domain, not our's. If you're so adept at solving them yourself, I doubt you need us for anything."
To Iris's mind there was an image of four bodies electrocuted into charred piles. "You've got about ten seconds to get out of my sight before I add you to the list of yearly police casualties."
The officers left. Iris grabbed the phone, but she was pissed. "I've got half a mind to accelerate that fucking car into a tree."
"Please don't, because I'm here."
Eva confided in Iris that she felt anxious around police; not because they could hurt her but because if they perceived injury from her they might hurt her family.
"Sorry. Hope I didn't cause any trouble."
"Nah. We're better off without them, anyway. Dumb fucks."
Iris sighed and checked through the phone, particularly the Uber app. "Thought minors couldn't order these."
Eva nodded sagely. "They're also not allowed to drink alcohol or smoke weed."
Iris checked if she could re-order the same driver: she could and put 'Urasaria students' in the note, which generally either hastens the taxi or terrifies them into not even coming.
She decided to add: 'Kind'.
"No, pleasant." said Eva. "Go with pleasant."
Iris added: 'Pleasant'.
"Maybe non-violent, too. Nothing violent."
Iris nodded. 'Two kind, pleasant Urasaria students trying to get away as fast as they can from a dead mother and teen girl. Nothing violent.'
"Perfect. They'll be fine." nodded Eva.
When he arrived he looked a little hesitant to move. Iris was not sure why. She had specified nothing violent. They approached the vehicle. "Hi, I'll pay you $200 to use your car for a few hours."
"Umm... sure. What do I do if the cops show up about the dead women thing you mentioned?"
"…maybe we should just drop you off at a restaurant."
"I could waste a few hours at Applebee's."
"Jesus, you actually want to go to Applebee's?"
"Applebee's is not a restaurant you go to." said Eva. "It's a restaurant you end up at."
"I'm not dropping you off at no god-damn Applebee's. Choose somewhere else."
"Look, you don't know my life!" he said.
Iris sighed and sadly shook her head. "Well, we still need to ask a few questions. Did you Uber for a teen girl last night?"
"Ummm... yeah. Yeah, I remember. It was two teens. Boy and girl."
"You knew they were underage?"
"Yeah, of course. Happens a lot. They just use their parents' accounts. If they don't act up then I don't really care. Sometimes I scare them by saying if I report them they'll go to jail for ten years."
"Where were they going?"
"They said they were going to some concert. Uranium Theater, Los Angeles Rejects, American Nightmare, few others."
"Any indication that the two were a couple?"
"Umm, maybe? I can't really remember."
"Do you remember any kissing, holding hands?" said Eva and Iris shook her head.
"Don't answer that unless you're completely sure. Eyewitness account is unreliable if you're leading them."
"Damn, Big Dick Kronos over here." he said and Eva snickered. "I don't remember, though. Maybe. Sorry. I can't remember exactly."
Big Dick Kronos nodded. "If your mirrors were angled right, you don't need to."
They took this poor beleaguered soul to Applebee's, and Iris reverted, then accelerated the car through time as usual. For herself she was getting used to this type of backwards driving: she found it amusing. For everyone else it was a wonder if the ride ended without the upholstery twenty feet up their clenched assholes. The reverted mirrors verified that the teen girl entered the vehicle with a teen boy; the rear doors opened and closed at her address and at his, which was in the same neighborhood.
Iris made note of it for later. She was feeling a bit tired, and Eva reminded her that they had security work in a few hours. Eventually the car drove near the arena, presumably encountered too heavy of traffic, and the rear doors opened and closed. Iris reverted through the previous states of the mirror to watch the boy's reaction times, yet could not ascertain whether he was a host. She sighed, then leaned her seat back. "Another Timeline..."
She was soon brought out of her focus by her phone vibrating. Kairos quickly crawled back to her, its extended webs shooting back up its asshole.
(Or spinneret.)
Iris took her phone. "Hello?"
"Hey, Kronos." It was Kate. "A young man called and was asking for you by hero name. Said that he needed to speak with you about a dead girl."
"He called you?"
"No, he called the academy's public number, and it was routed through to me. While that's not unusual… obviously, it's impossible to know whether he's a host or not, so be cautious. It might be an ambush, and you aren't obligated to go meet him. Do you want his address?"
"Yes."
Kate gave his address; it was the boy's. They went back and rang the house's doorbell; a middle-aged woman answered. "Oh, you're Kronos. My son was hoping to speak with you about that poor murdered girl."
"Call him out here and tell him to walk backwards to me."
Iris walked back out to the lawn, and they watched as a teenage boy got to the door, was reminded to turn around, then walked backwards with perfect coordination about 10ft away from them.
"Show me your face for a second."
He glanced back. It was the boy Iris had seen earlier. "Hey, sorry if I don't know how to speak to students, umm, I called the academy up and said I had like, information for you."
"What about?"
"The dead girl?"
"What about her?"
"Umm, her name is Ashleigh. She's a friend of mine. Or was. Fuck, that's crazy. Did she get killed by a Revenant?"
"Maybe.
They go back and question him. Obviously, he's scared, but Iris doesn't reveal that she knows he's a host. (He actually is registered, when Iris asks, in an amusing "just one more thing".) He asks her some questions about Urasaria and Eva happily answers, so he's off the suspect list. He talks about the girl some and reiterates that they weren't together at all, but that she mentioned having an older boyfriend that she would spend nights with. This clears up why he wasn't suspicious to leave without her, and he's genuinely saddened by her death.
"You and this girl romantically involved?"
"No, not at all. I didn't like her in that way. Plus, she already has... had a boyfriend."
"Where were you last night?"
"Umm, I was going with Ashleigh to a concert. We took an Uber and got there around like, 8."
"You didn't come home with her?"
"No, we got separated. I just figured she went off with her boyfriend."
"Was he there?"
"Probably. I mean, she's real proud about having an older boyfriend. I think he's a senior or something."
Iris frowned as she realized what this was now. "You sure he's not older than that?"
"She just said he was older."
"Older as in 16 or older as in 60?"
"I-I don't know, man, I never asked that much."
"So you didn't know, and you didn't ever think to go with her and check if she was safe? Because I know you're a host, by the way. Don't give me any bullshit excuses like you were afraid."
"Huh? How did you know I'm a host? Did you see my registration?"
"Kronos, I think he's registered." muttered Eva.
"Y-Yeah, I am. You can ask my parents."
Iris sighed. "Then answer me. Why didn't you think to go with her and keep her safe from being preyed upon?"
"Dude, w-what? Do you know what would happen if I used my Revenant on a civilian? I'd get my Revenant taken away."
"No, god damnit, you wouldn't. I should know. I defended my girlfriend from harassment when I was your age. I broke people's ribs for looking at me cross-eyed. I stabbed another host because we both liked the same girl and I told that good-for-nothing bitch that I'd give her a boot to the face if she didn't let me have her, god damnit. You wanna see the scar I've still got from..."
Iris frowned as she realized she probably should not have said any of this out loud.
"Umm... okay. But you're a chick and I'm a guy."
"That doesn't make no difference. I still avoided getting caught for it. Even if I am a..."
She trailed off. Darkly she realized that she had partially escaped consequences for her violence in that her victims usually had no wish to report her; even her male coworker had thought it weak to be beaten by a woman. A sense of guilt came over her, uncontrollable as it was.
"…fine. But you thought she was safe."
"Yeah, she never said he hurt her or anything. I would've intervened if he hurt her."
"The current evidence is pointing to him killing her."
"A-Ah, f-fuck." He started crying. "Oh God, I never wanted anything bad to happen to her. I tried to just stay out of her life and b-because of that I might have ended it. Fuck!"
"Hey, it's not your fault." said Eva.
"Can I-I help? I've got a Revenant, b-but it just breaks shit and-"
"Leave it to us. Kronos is the best investigator at our whole school."
"But I gotta do something, damnit."
Kronos smiled. "Right. We'll find him. But if you remember anything else that might help, call up Urasaria again and ask for one of us. We'll get here quick."
He still seemed put-out. "But it's my place to go. It's my place to as a man."
Eva just smiled a bit at him. "Here's what you can do. Ask your parents to take you to a local landfill and train your Revenant on that, so when you enter Urasaria, you'll have a headstart over everyone else. That's how me and Kronos trained. Otherwise, you'll get yourself killed."
"…okay." His shoulders were in a slump.
He asked if he could go back inside. Iris let him, but she knew he wouldn't be worth a lead nickel for weeks. He'd sit dreamy-eyed with his own fantasies of violence, hoping to impress a group of pretty girls his age by ripping apart a few enemy hosts. It wouldn't, but Iris couldn't blame his hormones for trying.
She didn't know his age, but she wondered -- whenever she had thought of her own violent past she tended to place herself at 15, no matter the year. In remembrance she contained not age specific, but a few ages general.
Iris motioned for Eva to follow her, forgetting (or not caring) about the Uber driver stuck at Applebee's, as they went back to the home.
"Another Timeline?"
"…no." Her speech was a little slow. "Just need to rest first."
The eternally weaving legs of Kairos slowed, and small clouds of rain sweat upon her back as events around her randomly jut forwards and backwards.
It took Eva four times to open the front door. Iris stepped inside, then flopped onto the couch. She started looking through her pockets. "…Eva, did I leave Jane's phone..."
"I have it." Eva handed it to her. "Unlocked, too."
Iris could barely nod. The phone was reset back to factory state, then rebooted itself with full data, then an old firmware that was not even available online at this point. She sighed and took some rest for a few minutes, then started searching through it. "…disturbs me what he said about the mother. You don't think she knew, do you?"
Eva frowned and sat beside Iris. "Maybe. Me and Violet dealt with two host parents one time who were pimping out their own daughter. Not saying that's what's going on here, though. Did she mention her daughter to you at all?"
"No, but I'll confess we weren't exactly thinking about starting a family together."
"Yeah, I'm sure she was calling you daddy for a much different reason."
"I project a very fatherly aura."
"Very fatherly. Damn, though. She let her daughter go out by herself and not even have to come home? If I came back a second after 8 my mom beat my ass into next week."
"Even once you became a host?"
"I never said it hurt."
"I suppose so." muttered Iris. "…can't imagine Jane wouldn't have wanted to meet her daughter's boyfriend, either." Iris frowned. "…maybe she hid it from her. I'm not sure. Lemme just check something." Kairos' searched for the last time the phone had used its banking app: it had never been used. She found Jane's laptop, or what shards were left of it, then did so there.
Eva peeked over Iris's shoulder. "Hey, see that money transfer button right there? If you could just tap it and lemme enter in my details..."
Iris snickered and pushed Eva off. "No asset forfeiture." She looked over the transactions: nothing unusual. "…Christ. If she did do it, she didn't even do it for money."
"Any theories on why she let her daughter out with the guy?"
"Not sure. Maybe she saw nothing wrong with it. Couldn't speak up about it; maybe she was being paid in something other than money, proximity to fame, a higher social standing. What a sick and celebrity-obsessed country this is." She glanced over to Eva. "I checked Timeline earlier. Never once had a host aura visit the home. Afraid he would be recognized, most likely."
Eva nodded. "Any luck with the girl's phone?"
"She had her messages set to delete every 7 days. Unfortunately, it's part of her death stamp, so if we want to revert it any further back than that, it needs a Timeline. Mother's phone doesn't, though."
They started looking through it. Iris let the call history show, and Eva cross-referenced them, taking notes and crossing out the ones that were to businesses. There were several calls made to a specific number. Tentatively Iris called it: no answer. There were few texts shared between the number, and even those sparse until the deluge of phone calls, often only a few minutes at a time.
Iris checked over at her internet browser search history, though she felt prickish doing so. Little of note; random articles of trivial celebrity bullshit, painters, artists and songs, several musicians. One name caught Iris's attention: "Rose Madrigal ex-boyfriend". She looked up her Wikipedia page. There was none, but there was a page on StarshipAdventepedia. It read:
Rose Lynn Madrigal is a Latino-American most famously known for playing the A103 cyborg in Starship Adventures (2013), the A104 in Starship Adventures: Reloaded, and guest-starred in the short-lived spin-off series Starship Adventures: Crazy On You. Rose was born on January 30th, 1986 in Westminster, California, USA.
Filmography
Can't Buy Me Love (2010) as Homeless Woman
House of Haunts (2011) as Unnamed Victim #9
Hexagon (2012) as Unnamed Invalid
Goddess Struck (2012) as Voice of Goddess¹
Starship Adventures (2013) as A103
Starship Adventures: Reloaded (2014) as A104
"Who watches any of this shit?"
"Every single part of this article could be made up and I would have no fucking clue." said Iris.
Notes
¹ Rose won an award for her performance as the voice of Goddess, although she had suffered an injury to her trachea while filming and was replaced by a different actress before release.
Iris just blinked.
"No recent roles, looks like."
"That's a shame, she was a budding Marlon Brando."
"You don't think it's odd she looked this up?"
"Sure, but maybe she just saw her in a movie."
"If she had seen her in a movie, then she might've typed something in like 'Hexagon cast'. The one time she looks her up, she immediately goes for ex-boyfriend. Goes through several articles off that one search term. See what I'm saying?"
"Maybe. Want me to try to find more?"
Iris nodded. "Could use some rest for myself." She laid back on the couch, dimmed her mind, and let her eyes fold over themselves.
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