Velvet Chairs

The chair was velvet. Whether it was a calm velvet or a wild velvet Ciel did not know.

A bloody velvet.

Ciel saw it placed in front of the man's desk as he motioned to it, a wide smile on his face. Everyone she knew was always smiling, but their smiles were never genuine. She smiled like that too.

The Technoid covering her wasn't really any good against bullets, so she allowed it to reveal her head.

She pulled the velvet chair out from against the desk with a screech. She wondered if the chair was originally velvet. When she sat on it, she felt like a person ready to be consumed. Would her velvet soon be joining the chair? The man held his smile. He'd let her ask her questions.

"Why did you poison them?" Ciel asked.

His smile deepened.

"I poison many, Darling, you're going to have to get more specific than that."

"Elias and Alice." Ciel questioned whether or not it would be bad form to shoot him there. He knew she was coming and he knew who she was here for. What he was doing now was playing a game. The game of stalling.

The man nodded as if a great realization hit him, "Ah those two. Almost forgot about them, it's been so long."

"Why did you poison them?"

The man threw his hands out, gesturing to the room around him.

"For the payment," he said. He kept it simple, like she was just a child and he was the adult who had to explain how the tides of the ocean pulled out and in. "For the exact reason you sat down and didn't immediately kill me upon entering this room. You're curious, aren't you. I was curious too. Poverty? Boring. I wanted to see how the big guys lived, and like you, I was ready to risk it all. That girl, Alice, she's too confined by morals. She counts human lives as logistics. At least I'm honest."

He set his arms down and placed a hand under his chin, "Have you heard of Freud?"

Ciel nodded.

"Perfect! Then you should understand. Alice is like the superego, constantly weighing what's morally acceptable and ethical. As long as she can argue she was doing it for the greater good, she'll be just find. But Maddox? Oh, that boy's interesting. He's more like me. The id, is how I'd describe him. Primal desires fill him. He knows what he wants and chases it."

"And Cristo?"

"The Ego. He's the communicator between the two. Keeps them in check." He thought for a moment, "I don't know about that girl, Frenchie, though.

I don't think you're like Alice. I doubt you think you're morally right by coming to my abode to question why I've been poisoning those two. You're either here for curiosity's sake or to pay back a debt, isn't that right?" Ciel didn't think he was wrong. "Good, good. I can't get along with people who only think in black and white."

"Is your only job to poison people?"

"Certainly not," the man's smile shook. "You can't get all this from something as simple as that.

"Then what is it?"

"To die."

Ciel's eyebrows jumped.

"How much time do you have left?"

"However much they give me."

Ciel decided to stop wasting time, pulling her gun and pointing it at the man. "What's the antidote?"

The man laughed, "I can't tell you that or I'll die. However, I can tell you something else fairly interesting."

Ciel narrowed her eyes, but put the gun down. The man leaned forward as if he was gossiping. Ciel thought he was quite eccentric, but she supposed anyone who'd give up their life for some cash might as well be.

"The chips in those pirates," he said, "that's what they put on me too. I bet those pirates were set up to die. They would've known if Alice would be on that ship, that's why they put 'em there. My guess as to why they all came to Onik is that they wanted to save their friends before they self-destructed."

Ciel raised a brow.

The man gave her a knowing look. "You think I'm crazy giving up my life for some quick cash, don't you," he said.

She didn't respond.

"Saw it in your eyes. But honestly, what's losing a bit of lifespan to live your life happily? I could die in an accident any day, at least I get to live the end how I want."

"What about the experience-stretching theory," Ciel shot back, "you could be equally happy as you were then."

"But that's the thing," the man said, "I'm not. Right now, I'm happy as can be."

"You don't look happy," she said. "You look scared." Ciel watched his smile shake once more. Fear of death was human. It was subconscious. This man especially had gotten used to his extravagant lifestyle, and didn't want to give it up. He just pretended he didn't.

The man extended his hand out to her. "You have my acknowledgment."

She shook it.

"Maybe I don't want to die."

Fire ran up her arm as Ciel pushed off the desk. Through the scorch, she rolled her eyes. She really didn't have luck with explosions. The man had self-destructed and attempted to take her down with him. Ciel noticed that she wasn't hurt, but the Technoid's arm wouldn't regenerate. Technoids didn't come with guns unless you got them as a package deal or specifically ordered one, so Ciel had no extra parts to regenerate her D-1 once it ran out.

The room was now velvet too.

Walking over to where the man had exploded, she looked through the burnt file cabinets. Thankfully they'd held up quite well and she found records of Elias's water supply tampering inside. Moving the remainder of what was left to her Technoid to her feet, Ciel swung the velvet chair, now adorned with new scarlet, out the window. She jumped out after it.

Hm, she mused, the chair really was velvet.

Ciel walked back to Elias's home, entering the smaller concrete block. Elias was drinking tea inside.

"Elias," she said. He looked up. A familiar itch ran up Ciel's throat and she started to cough. Elias saw the blood appear on her hand. The teacup he held in his hand slipped out, crashing onto the ground below it. His hands began to shake.

The curse....the curse he'd gotten...he didn't think it was transmittable through contact.

Ciel put a hand up to signal to him to remain seated.

"It's fine," she said, "but I've discovered that this whole coughing up blood thing isn't a curse."

Before Elias could reply, she slammed a document in front of him, clutching onto the table for support as she continued to cough up blood.

"Read it."

Elias picked up the documents. His face drained all color faster than Ciel's resumed it's rosy pinkness. She took a deep breath and stood up as she watched Elias crash to the ground. Alice walked in through the door, running to her father, her face now equally pale, though for different reasons.

"Fuck fuck fuck," she repeated. Her eyes turned to Ciel's, glaring. "What'd you do?"

Ciel didn't manage to respond before Alice's eyes scanned the paper she'd given to Elias. She hovered over the symbol of grapes and a dagger, remembering Ciel passing her a document with the same symbol. Ciel seemed to have a penchant for digging through files. Still, her main concern at the moment was her father.

She turned to face Ciel.

"I'm going to need you to leave," she said, "for my sake and my father's. I'll deal with the water supply."

She pulled out her wallet and took out two cards. Ciel caught the numbers "1000" and "750" imprinted on them.

"The first one's a thank you for telling us," Alice said, "I'm grateful that you let us know, even if it looks like I'm kicking you out right now. The other card is the leftover reward money."

Ciel took the cards, tucking them away in her pocket. She didn't ask for Alice to drive her to the Community Center this time, and Alice didn't offer. It took two hours for her to walk there.

Ciel understood why Alice had done what she'd done. She was sure Elias could finish the robot in two months even without her help. The thing was, Elias had been alive for a long time. Even though the Galactic Federation's average life expectancy reached one hundred ten years old, as a seventy-year-old man, Elias was still at great risk if his mental health declined.

Even though they were thankful for what Ciel had done, there was no telling what would happen if Elias saw the person who reminded him of the thirty years he spent being poisoned. Especially because his own daughter had been poisoned along with him. His guilt would just grow heavier and heavier until he died from stress.