Anthea

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. May your footfalls be silent as butterflies and your kiss swift as cyanide. I have never been so vividly proud of a graduating class as I am of these women before me. They surpass the boundaries of even my twisted imagination. To the graduating class of Saturn 9’s Akademia Assasinoꞔ 3020, may the 12 and ½ galaxies quake with your name!”

Applause floods the glittering ballroom with a nebula sky. A woman with deep silver skin and a lavender afro raises a delicate stemless glass. Gold liquid with burgundy sparkles washes circular within. Her clever old eyes dart down onto the rainbow crowd of alien species before her. Tentacles and scapular disks wedge in next to magenta beehives and nails painted to match. The silver woman fixes on one young woman in the crowd with bubble-gum pink skin and iridescent eyes. The young pink woman smiles up at her.

Silver crow’s feet folded in joy, the elder woman sips her delicate drink, then exits the stage.

With sweeping white pillars and a ceiling lost to the sky, the ballroom resembles a large, elegant rib cage. Thick gold sashes drape bountiful between the even pillars. Threads in the shimmering fabric shift like flowing water along a current. Brief glimmers of the graduates’ faces form for a moment, only to be lost to the blur of shifting current once more.

The chairs that seated the audience fold automatically into the floor as the many creatures rise to their feet and claws. A bubbling frothing liquid rolls swift over each chair and solidifies into a square tile. Hooves and heels, boots and talons stand and shuffle side by side as the xeno-diverse group dips into a gentle chatter.

Serene and smiling, the silver woman descends steps that fold into the floor as soon as she leaves them. She finds the young woman’s vibrant pink skin and winds through the humming crowd to reach it.

“Anthea.” The silver woman draws to a stop behind her student.

Bright pink stretches the smooth reach of a young woman’s shoulders. Light falls across her tropical sheen as she turns to face her silver mentor.

“Exquisite speech as always, Professor.” Anthea smiles, her iridescent eyes shimmering green to silver to violet.

“Call me, Rose. You are an alumnus now.” Silver flesh crinkled in a mischievous grin, the woman’s spectacular lavender hair shivers with her assent. She places a silver hand on Anthea’s magenta shoulder.

“Could we speak on the balcony?” The Professor’s sharp eyes flit to the tuning violin and dual-domed Balimba drums being assembled on the stage.

“Of course.” As Anthea moves, her plain midnight blue dress dances sparkling with sudden stars. She follows her silver-shouldered professor onto a semi-circular balcony large enough for six beings at least. Guarding the edge of the half moon is a stone railing with broad balusters and a smooth top. Professor Rose sweeps to the stone’s edge and sets her glass upon it.

Anthea stares at the cocktail. The base is a small bulb, a burp of glass smaller than her fist. Hovering above the base is the glass bowl where her drink sloshes. The two are held together by a magnetic dance that keeps them a few inches apart, yet playfully close.

Anthea’s eyes follow the reflection in her professor’s drink up to the spectacular sky.

Stretching smooth and silver like an unending rainbow, Saturn’s rings dominate a commanding sky. Epic and demanding, the bright rings split the midnight sky in half, while symphonies of stars glitter on either side.

Anthea’s mind shifts through time to her first arrival at the Akademia. Slithering cold spreads across her rosy flesh like a fungus. She hunches over to shiver. A dark mist churns out from her pink flesh. An inky, stormy cloud blooms to envelope the vibrant Anthea as her body chemically recreates the memory. Her bright eyes snap open. Anthea shakes like a dog ridding itself of water and the smoke fades to a thin grey film. She peers through the fading fog, but cannot find her professor.

A silver whirl slices the smoke. Anthea dodges a jab, but darts into the clutch of a silver hand at her throat. A needled syringe plunges toward her arm. Anthea grabs the silver wrist that wields the syringe and twists it. The syringe drops and Anthea catches it. She releases the silver wrist and pulls free a gold blade from the thick coils of her hair. Anthea spins the blade and jabs it behind her, over her shoulder. The blade stops one wisp from Professor Rose’s eye. The silver hand releases and Anthea turns to face her mentor.

“Thought you had me?” Anthea plays, a bright smile sparkling in her eyes.

Silver Rose lets out a chuckle. “I cannot let the sunshine dismantle your guard.”

“I am grateful that the darkness lies behind me. Saturn and I both it seems have learned to turn our faces sun-ward.” Anthea watches her professor stride across the balcony to the railing where she curls her silver hand about the base of her drink. Anthea holds the syringe up to the starlight as she trails behind her mentor.

“What is this?” Anthea tilts the syringe, tipping the liquid back and forth in the narrow tube. She slips the needle into a slim pocket near her waist.

“New from the girls in the lab. Something about it being as deadly as all of us combined.” The silver woman turns to face her student. Her dark, sharp eyes dance with a flurry of thoughts that whirl like a blizzard behind them. Anthea peers into her eyes, trying to catch one of her mentor’s many snowflakes.

Professor Rose clasps her silver hands together before the zig-zag seam in her white jacket.

“It is a funny thing having care over someone, as I have had for you.” The woman’s dark eyes dance beneath silver lids.

“It is a funny thing to care for something deadly.” Anthea counters. She shifts her weight, sending shimmers down the front of her dress.

“My little scorpion.” Professor Rose hums.

Anthea rockets back through time. A dark fog hurdles outward from her vibrant flesh to wrap student and professor in a thick impenetrable cloud. Thin sprints of lightning trace the puffed edges of Anthea’s heavy smoke. She can see Rose’s features in the bare, moonlit gleam of lightning. An image, a living memory rolls across the clouds. The blur of pipes, the dizzy sway of a grated metal floor as two pairs of feet drag her forward. Anthea can feel the grates pressing deep, frigid brands into the fragile, turgid soles of her feet. The hiss of an opening shuttle door rattles around the cloud. And then?

A blanket. Prickly, itchy - but a blanket for her shoulders. A silver blur smears something smooth and wet into the scabs on her leg. The silver blur gazes at her with two eyes darker than space. A funny nudge squirms at the back of her mind; a calculation. She will not hurt me. The thought is new and hot, the cloud churns warm, brightening low like the urging of dawn. The pink memory pulls out a glistening knife and jabs at the silver blur. The silver blur throws back her head to laugh. Warm and round, the sound rings out. The cloud vibrates with the peals of her joy. “My little scorpion,” smiles the silver blur. And again the new thought peeks through like a planet rolling slow to face the sun. For only the second time, the thought hums through the cloud: She will not hurt me.

Soft as rain, the cloud gathers. The dark veil thickens into tiny tufts of ash that hover between them. Easy at first, then catching speed, the whiffs of ash drop syncopated to pile on the cool stone below. Anthea looks through the downpour at the silver woman whose dark eyes stare intently back. Light pierces the ash as the sun breaks through her fog, launching Anthea and Professor Rose into the blinding light of the present day.

Rose sways. Her dark eyes lose their edge as she spins in the ash and lurches for the stone railing. She bends her silver form over the smooth stone, sending her magnetic glass flying. Anthea catches the base, and the separate bowl re-steadies above it without nary a splash.

Anthea’s iridescent eyes flip up to her mentor. Dark angry scars poke up just beyond the band of her red silk pants, and just below the jagged, intentional hem of her white jacket.

“I forgot you could do that.” The professor spits over the side of the railing. “Is it getting stronger?”

“Feels like it.” Anthea stands and slides the glass along the railing to sit beside Rose’s silver hand.

“You no longer need to impress me.” Professor Rose mutters, still folded over the stone.

“And yet I manage to so beautifully.” Anthea prods. Rose chuckles, her lavender mane quivers.

“I wonder what your people called it.” Rose eases upright and turns to lean her back against the cool railing.

“Me too.” Anthea turns down one corner of her mouth and shrugs. Her dress answers with a swift shimmer.

“You know, from this day on, there is no more free-loading, Anthea. I expect you to pay your way with contracts and bounties like any assassin would.” A demanding glimmer plays in Rose’s dark eyes.

“Move out doesn’t apply for another one thousanth of a cycle!” Anthea curls her lips into a grin. “You wouldn’t punish an innocent orphan, now would you?” Her iridescent eyes flash deep and inky blue.

“Innocent.” The silver woman rolls her eyes. “But you bring us where we need to be.”

Anthea tilts her head in place of asking.

Professor Rose slips her broad-veined silver hand into her square jacket pocket. From the white fabric, she withdraws the golden coil of a necklace. She lets the coil unwind until a black pearl the size of a marble comes zinging to a stop at the bottom of the chain’s bow.

“This belonged to the person that helped you half a rotation ago.”

Anthea hinges her gaze on the stormy pearl.

“It was my payment for saving you.” Silver Rose twists the chain to twirl the glittering pendant between them. “But I feel you have earned it back in these many years.” Her silver flesh creases warm with a smile. She steps to Anthea’s side and unclasps the chain.

Professor Rose whirls the gold metal thread around Anthea’s pink throat. The full grey pearl drops hearty and happy to Anthea’s chest. Stormy and glinting, it sways just above the diagonal cut of her vibrant blue dress. Anthea looks down as Professor Rose steps away.

“Who was it?” Anthea mutters, her iridescent gaze hung low on the charcoal pearl. “Who would pay to help me? Especially back then.”

“Careful now, endangering the third tennant.” Rose toys.

“I know, I know. First, know thyself. Second, nothing to excess. Third, certainty brings insanity.” Anthea recites.

“Precisely. You control yourself, not this other being. It is better to know oneself, than to spend centuries chasing the tales of others.” Rose places her silver hands on Anthea’s magenta shoulders. “Write your own story, child.”

Professor Rose steps back to take all of Anthea in. Her glowing pink skin rises to a narrow face framed by teal curls. Her muscles wind tight beneath the silky blue dress that clings gently to her waist. Hot water wells up in Rose’s dark eyes. She turns from Anthea and dabs the sleeve of her jacket into the corner of each eye. She snatches the base of her glass and brings the rim to silver lips. Silver Rose downs the last of the gold drink and smacks her lips together.

“I think I would do well with another. You?” Professor Rose asks.

Anthea shakes her head. “Pepprina is expecting me for an early run. I’d do best to keep my wits about me.”

“As you wish.” Professor Rose grins at the pink-toned Anthea. “I cannot wait until we are standing here again, and you are regaling me with the epic of your first kill.”

“Well,” Anthea grins, “not quite.”

Rose chuckles. “First official kill,” she clarifies. “Stay right there, I will bring drinks and a photographer. I’d like to see this moment again.”

Professor Rose takes a few more steps and tosses one more glance at Anthea.

“Little scorpion,” she sings, “all grown up.”

Anthea watches her go. She turns to stare up at the massive rings carving gentle arches across the sky. Glinting subtle but steady, she catches the gleaming wink of a ship in orbit.

She narrows her eyes at the craft, when a low and building sound gathers behind her. Anthea turns to see the even white pillars of the ballroom. She darts her gaze across the busy crowd. A slip of metal pokes through the seafoam green clouds high above the Akademia. It rockets downward with a shrieking whistle.

ZeeeeEEEEE-BOHM!

Fire rips the ballroom into a flaming orange haze as a missile blows the Akademia apart. Chunks of stone burst into the air, soaring, tumbling end over end. A roaring mouth of destruction opens its furious maw to swallow her whole.

Anthea throws her arms over her head and drops to her knees. She braces for a fireball, but a warmth greets her back instead. She squints her eyes open in the center of a blooming wall of pain. Wide-eyed, her gaze roams a thin blue orb that keeps Anthea and the air about her separate from the heart of ravenous fire. She traces its periwinkle pulse to the black pearl at her neck.

Kkri-Kkrack!

Her iridescent eyes snap up to the edge where the stone balcony meets the external wall. A gaping crack splinters the balcony from the ballroom. Anthea lunges for the wall, but the balcony drops, taking her with it.

Anthea soars backward, down the jagged face of an impossible cliff. Comets of indiscriminate fire plunge beside her as she grabs at the rough wall. But everything slips in her grasp.

When sudden, miraculous! Her grip finds something and tenses. Her pink palms burn. But her untamed tumble slows. Anthea yanks to a halt, dangling at the end of a scraggly root. She looks up, squinting along the jagged cliff-face through the blue orb. The orb crunches and presses the dirt as she seeks to steady herself.

Flaming chunks of debris pour by as bits of rock and root ease past the blue orb into the realm of her grasp. Anthea wrests and jabs holds from the loose dirt that packs the cliff. She hoists herself up and begins her slow ascent. She climbs, demanding the dirt take her weight.

Dripping with sweat, Anthea pulls herself into the shattered, scattered remains of the glittering ballroom. Columns of fire still eat at the walls, spitting sparks and chunks of rubble into the deadly quiet. The last standing pillar puffs steady with thick choking smoke and a drumbeat of flame. Anthea picks forward past scorched pillars that sprawl like toppled statues, broken on the pockmarked floor. Anthea catches glimpse of a silver hand, limp beneath a dark slab of wall.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Anthea chants, diving for the wall as the blue orb around her sucks slowly back into the pearl. She bends to lift the wall from her mentor, but it will not budge. She rips her gold blade free and slams it down into the wall. Anthea stands, pulls her foot back, and kicks down on the blade hard as she can.

With a gasp of dust, the wall cracks. Anthea drops, tearing at the pieces, ripping them away. Beneath the dust, Professor Rose lays motionless, her lavender hair wilted and singed.

“Professor!” Anthea takes her silver shoulders in her hands and shakes. “Rose!”

The silver woman rolls her eyes open and smacks her lips twice. A hazy focus sways her loose gaze across Anthea’s frame.

“Yes Rose!” Anthea barks. “Stay with me.”

“I - yeuh - ” Her silver lips sputter. Her torn, scorched hands reach for Anthea’s face.

“That’s right, it’s me.” A green tear slips down Anthea’s pink cheek. She takes Rose’s hand and guides it to her cheek. “You stay with me, now.”

“No - Noth.” Professor Rose wheezes.

“Wh-what is it?” Anthea manages

“Nothi - Gnothi Dentem. Gnothi Dentem.” The silver lips repeat. Rose’s thumb brushes Anthea’s cheek twice.

“Please don’t leave me.” Anthea whines, holding Rose’s palm to her face.

“So strong, so bea-utiful.” Rose’s dark eyes lock onto Anthea’s with deadly clarity. “So bright.”

With one exhausted wheeze, Professor Rose drops back to the rubble and her silver hand goes limp.

Catch up with Anthea next time in: Chapter 2: The Tooth and The Whale!