A serialised novel of sunless planets, hallucinogenic mushrooms, daemons, and... pizza rats. 🍕🐀
To tie in with Sci-Friday, Midnight Metropolis will start posting on Fridays from next week.
Available Chapters — Content Warnings
“Don’t you ever get tired of the dark?”
“You get used to it.”
Wynner Street stank. Weepcaps rotted in the drains, creating an amorphous, gluey substance that reeked like putrescent flesh. People stepped around the spreading decay, picking their way through creamy-coloured detritus on their way to the glowing monolith that was Bayside Mall. Lights undulated across the smooth marble exterior like a beacon, pulsing blue neon into the smoke-seeded sky.
"Why are we here?"
Brax was on edge, studying the crowds weaving up and down the road.
"You don't have to whisper," Tattie said. "We're here because I need supplies."
A battery of husks walked in brisk formation before the mall’s gaping entrance. The woman at their head, dour face set like stone, eyes clouded and empty, was holding a scanner. Tattie heard Brax's intake of breath, felt him hesitate at her side.
"It's okay, they won't pick you up now. Your new chip's good."
"How do you know that? Do you trust the guy you got it from?"
"I trust that no one at the Bunker would fuck with me."
It would have been so easy to reach for Brax's hand, to squeeze his fingers and offer him some small measure of reassurance. So familiar. Tattie sparked a captube and drew deep, exhaling a long plume of strawberry-laced smoke into the air.
"Come on," she said.
A steady pulse of blues, pinks, and greens followed them into Bayside Mall, racing along the edges of the concourse to vanish into a stretching maw of distance. The mall was a cathedral to capitalism. The chandeliers shaped to resemble masses of drooping orchids, the gilded gold of the fluted archways announcing each storefront, the sheer scale of the place—teetering over twenty-six floors and straddling a winding artificial river teeming with ugly, brown fish—had all been designed to lure the sort of clientele who could afford real leather shoes and diamond-encrusted nightglasses.
Then the monied decided the Noko District was passe. The surrounding streets were too dirty, the air too dry. They built condos in the hills and moved away to live amongst fake trees and simulated cricket noises. Bayside Mall had been left behind. Now the river was a sad slurry of dirt and piss, the decent fish long since dead or stolen. The chandeliers hung in slowly tuning shards and the shops had been replaced by co-operatives and rent-a-day spaces, full of artisans working to sell faux-shell bracelets and hand-sculpted micro projections of wind-tousled meadows and clowns riding fiery-eyed unicorns.
Tattie let Brax dawdle, watched him turn in the neon-edged gloom to side-eye the kids pretending to browse a stand packed with secondhand datacarts, itchy fingers twitching against their suspiciously oversized pockets.
“I expected it to be brighter,” he said.
“Noctarans aren’t big fans of harsh lighting. Unless they’re rich. The condos in Bhume Valley all have sunrooms now.”
They followed the curving path of the artificial river, its surface dim and oily, then turned left when the concourse divided. The lights running along both sides of the floor pulsed slower in this section, morphing from bright cat’s eye green to muted avocado.
Tattie stopped before Rose-Marie’s Specimens, nestled between a secondhand clothes shop and a coffee place that stank like over-roasted beans. She swept back the beaded curtain and ushered Brax inside.
“Morning, Rose.”
“But it is afternoon already.”
“You’re right, the day’s gotten away from me again.”
“And who is this handsome friend?”
Brax had been staring at the contents of a glass display cabinet, nose to nose with a taxidermied bird wearing a small top hat. A monocle dangled from one glazed eye, the minute golden chain disappearing into the breast pocket of a rather handsome burgundy waistcoat. He stepped back when Rose-Marie addressed him.
“What bird is that?” he said. “I’ve never seen one like it.”
“This is the raven,” Rose-Marie said. “They’re common on Lobo, but I suspect they don’t fly the skies of your homeworld.”
The shopkeeper inclined her head at Brax, dark eyes shining behind half-moon spectacles pulled halfway down her nose. Her impressive wig was a curling cloud around her head, backlit by the shop’s rose-gold lighting.
Brax looked to Tattie, unsure how to answer.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Rose is just playing with you. She likes to pretend she has the sight, don’t you Rose?” Tattie stared pointedly at the older woman and she shrugged in reply. “But that’s tourist shit. Just like all this tat.”
Tattie waved a hand around the shop, gesturing at the stiffly posed mice in sundresses and straw hats, the baskets of dried snake eggs, and the stands of divination cards.
“You call my exquisitely curated artifacts tat?”
Rose-Marie pretended to pout but Tattie knew she wasn’t offended. She had been buying hemo from the woman for years. She knew the names of all her cats and every detail of her son’s life working off-world on Black Rock. Brax, of course, knew none of this. He stared at them apprehensively, as though he expected them to start brawling. Tattie clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“This is Brax. He’s with me.”
That was all the reassurance Rose-Marie needed. She nodded at him and moved into the back of the shop, long skirts whispering across her boots.
“I keep some of the good stuff back for you,” she said over her shoulder.
She disappeared through another beaded curtain into a back room. They could hear the sound of boxes being moved, punctuated by small huffs of exertion.
“What is this place?” Brax said. “What’s the good stuff?”
“You a N.E.X. officer now?”
Brax scowled and turned away, pretended to study a collection of silver crosses on long, looping chains. Tattie fought the urge to kick him squarely in his sullen arse.
“Rose-Marie deals in a lot of off-world stuff. The really weird shit. Bones and poultices and biofluids.”
Brax made a disgusted face.
“Really?” Tattie said. “But it’s perfectly fine to throw a hemo blast across Palm Plaza?”
“As if I had a choice. It was a matter of life or death.”
“More like a matter of life or husk.”
Rose-Marie pushed back through the curtain with a rattle of beads, a fat brown parcel in her arms.
“Perhaps you favour me with a little reading this time, hmm? Perhaps old Rosie gives you better deal.”
“So that’s what you do. At your club, I mean?” Brax was so excited to have worked out a tiny detail of her life, Tattie almost smiled at him.
“Yes, Officer Brax, I read fortunes for idiot blow-ins with credits to spare.”
Brax looked as though he wanted to say more, but knew enough to keep his mouth shut. For now. Tattie was quite sure his questions would only get thicker and thornier once they were alone. She should probably just get it over with.
“I’m no idiot blow-in,” Rose-Marie said. She put the parcel down on the glass countertop with a heavy thud. “Favour me this one time, Tattie. I worry for my boy. He looked so thin last time we spoke.”
“Next time, I promise.”
Rose-Marie pursed her lips and Tattie threw an arm around the woman’s shoulders. She slumped against her, seeming small and frail. She really was worried about her son.
“I promise,” Tattie repeated. “But I can’t stay, we’re on a schedule.”
Tattie paid for the parcel and strode down to the main concourse, the package held tight beneath one arm.
“So there’s blood in there?” Brax said, struggling to keep up with her. He dodged an incoming skaterat and finally drew level. “That’s what you bought?”
“Yes. It’s only animal blood, though. Nothing too offensive. You have to be careful who you deal with in Noctara, but I trust Rose.”
“And are we really on a schedule?”
“Fuck, no. I just wasn’t in the mood to get all bloodied up today.”
Tattie could practically feel the questions building inside Brax, threatening to split and pour from every seam of his tired body. She was far too sober for what would come next.
“I need a drink."
Thank you for reading! This week’s burning question is…
Rose-Marie’s shop is an overstuffed emporium of the unique and macabre. If you could visit, what would you buy?
Content Warnings
Smoking, swearing