3. Kyle

CHAPTER 3

Kyle

H e didn't run. His leather trousers may have been excellent for the bedroom but were hardly made for other types of exercise, and besides, with his heartbeat and breath pumping in his ears, he wouldn't be able to properly appreciate Slash's opening guitar solo to Sweet Child O' Mine. It was to those inspirational strumming notes, earbuds jammed into his ears, that Kyle entered sector 12 of Level E, more affectionally known as the Pinstripes.

Kyle mused on the lyrics once the riff had ended, the familiar words speaking of unfamiliar things. He had never even seen the bright blue sky that was being sung about and making his heart soar. Or the sun, for that matter, both things existing solely within the handful of vids he'd been shown in the miserable years in attendance at a Lower school, or otherwise caught in passing. His own runepad wasn't nearly sophisticated enough to play vid footage: the messaging and music apps were the limit to its capability, although that suited him just fine.

In Kyle's opinion, there was nothing that couldn't be soothed by music: proper music, that was, the gloriously authentic rock of the 1980s from before the end of the world had sucked the soul from musicians.

But soulless described a lot these days, including the dreariness of his surroundings where the streets had no name. Because despite living on a city kept airborne thousands of metres above the Earth, Kyle might as well have been underground. As citizens of Lower Xerxes – the part of the city that wasn't the top-level surface or all those shiny skyscrapers that supposedly littered it – they didn't have access to anything as luxurious as the sky , with solid metal walls closing in on them from all angles. Their own firmament was merely the floor of Level D, four storeys above, the tangle of rusting pipes and leaking drains illuminated in accordance with the time of day it supposedly was outside.

At 9.03pm, the lights were already at their minimum setting, the roof dark but for the red maintenance lights dotted intermittently at various hatch access points like sinister stars.

Kyle had heard many people complain about the gloom and filth of the city; about the way it kept them in a purgatory between life and death where every day was a struggle to survive. Perpetually rising costs in food, rent, and medicine meant most of Lower Xerxes were one missed paycheck from being evicted onto the streets. And then there were the fickle whims of the police that could land you in trouble with the law for some unwitting, minor infraction, and the increasing runic failures on technology much more important than a runepad. A construction crane had gone down on Level B the other day when the runes keeping the huge equipment stable had inexplicably flickered out despite being freshly etched. Ten people had died.

But Kyle found it difficult to share in their fear and disgruntlement, when the seven billion people who had once lived on Earth were nothing but dust. How could one be ungrateful for what they had when so many had nothing at all? They were fucking living – albeit, not in perfect circumstances – but it was life nonetheless, and he refused to waste it in constant complaint.

Movement in Kyle's periphery caught his eye, and he thumbed the volume down on his runepad to catch the latter half of the greeting directed his way.

"-to see you, Kyle."

"You too, Vin," said Kyle warmly to the man approaching him from a side-street. "Still up for tonight?"

Tall with a smooth-shaven head that had to be the result of premature baldness rather than the work of a good barber considering the man's current financial predicament, Vin nodded. But the caution in the movement and the subtle twist of his lip instantly had Kyle's inner Dominant on edge.

"You don't have to do this," Kyle reminded him, softening his voice. There would be no judgement from him, no matter the other man's choice. Vin was teetering on that final paycheck line, having unfairly lost his labourer job last week, and was crashing at a friend's apartment in the hope he'd be able to pick himself up before the generosity of others –who undoubtedly were also struggling – ran their course and he found himself homeless and at the mercy of the police and the gangs. But what Kyle had offered him wasn't for everyone. "I can help find you other work. Or if it's the kink, there's a couple of purely vanilla Houses that you could apply-"

"It's not the kink," Vin said, with an easy smile that spoke of truth.

Kyle nodded, offering an amiable silence that encouraged him to continue. Some people needed explicit questions to be coaxed to talk, others barely a nudge, and Vin...well, he'd quickly pegged him as someone who flourished best with clear, yet non-verbal prompts. It was Kyle's job to read people and work out what made them tick, so that he could unleash their most genuine selves.

And satisfy their deepest desires.

"It's just..." Vin trailed off and ran a hand down the back of his neck. "I'm not imposing? It's a big favour I've asked of you. And of Master Epsilon."

Kyle snorted. "You didn't ask me. I offered . And neither of us have yet asked anything of Epsilon."

Vin frowned. "But…you said to go to House Epsilon at midnight for a job interview?"

"Where Master Epsilon will be ready and waiting to meet with you," Kyle assured him with a comforting pat on the man's shoulder. "I just haven't had chance to tell him yet." He grinned. "Don't worry. He'll hear you out."

Vin relaxed, the tension visibly draining away from him as Kyle delivered the words in his best I'll handle it voice. Dominance was largely born from confidence: the need to assert control, and the ability to make it happen.

But all he was promising was the interview. It would be on Vin to prove to the Master of House Epsilon that he deserved a job.

And that he actually wanted it. While some of the other House Masters – most of them, from what Kyle heard on the street – didn't give a fuck about whether their staff were there voluntarily or in desperation to save themselves and their families from starvation, Epsilon was...different.

In so many ways, not least that he was the only switch among a pack of Dominants. But while being just as terrifying as the rest of the Coterie Masters, he could also be kind, and Kyle lived for those glimmers of tenderness that occasionally peeked through the rock-like exterior that the man liked to call a personality. He was an absolute hard ass, for sure, demanding every last ounce of effort for the tiniest scrap of emotional response in return, but Epsilon had an irresistible allure to him that made you want to give him everything you had and then thank him for the privilege.

Which the fucker probably got off on.

"Midnight," Kyle said by way of farewell, his feet already pulling him away from Vin and towards the House with nothing more than wistful thoughts about its owner.

"I'll be there," Vin promised, his voice echoing after Kyle and around the nearly deserted street. It was a Tuesday night on Level E: the few law-abiding citizens housed on this level would have long since returned to their homes, and the criminality and debauchery would be held behind closed doors in at least the pretence of civilisation before it inevitably spilled back out into the public eye when the weekend approached. So only a couple of people dotted the darkened roads between Kyle and the place he'd worked for the last five years.

House Epsilon was by far the most understated building of the eight Houses in Lower Xerxes, with ‘House' being nothing more than a fancy term for a brothel. Operated by the eight Masters who held a seat on the exclusive Coterie – clearly named by the same pretentious logophile – each owner ran their individual House a little differently.

Master Rho was all about the showmanship. Made up to the nines and donning a different outfit of extravagance for each night of the month, her staff were there more for the looking than the touching. That wasn't to say that paying clients would be turned down in their more outlandish requests...just that one generally visited House Rho when one was seeking atmosphere in their eroticism. Provocative lap dances. Mass voyeurism. All the music and glitz and drugs to make a night of magic out of an otherwise monotonous existence.

House Lambda was for cheap sex. Want to get your dick wet without the fanfare, and still have money for breakfast the next morning? Head down to the lowest level of Xerxes and simply follow the smell of sweat and desperation.

House Epsilon had a very different reputation, catering primarily to private kink. Also, its staff were exclusively male, the opposite of Master Nu's female-only entertainment, and while women did occasionally cross its threshold, the vast majority of their clients were, unsurprisingly when considering the history of prostitution, also male.

As a gay man with a less than negligible interest in women, that was what had initially drawn Kyle to Master Epsilon's door all those years ago.

But it had been the Master himself that had kept him there for over a half a decade.