Eidolon

Warning (PG16)

This episode contains adult themes. Reader discretion recommended.

Drunken Rant

The air in La Bodega was thick enough to chew; a stew of stale tobacco and the cloying sweetness of spilled liquor. Jin Morita, who the world now knew as Tao Lim, sat at the warped polymer bar, cradling a glass of his signature Tres Tercios that had become medio rum. The drink was a lie, just like his face. The cosmetic alterations had sanded down the rugged, augmented brawler he’d been, leaving a pan-Asian canvas that was ageless and unplaceable. He looked like a man who’d been designed by a committee, which wasn’t far from the truth.

“Another”, he mumbled, sliding the empty glass towards Diego. His voice was a gravelly thing, worn down by too many fights and too much regret. A man two stools over watched him in the smeared reflection of the back-bar mirror. He was Italian, sharp-featured, dressed in a linen suit that had wilted in the humidity.

His name was Vittorio, and he was once a lieutenant in the Castellano family of Rome, he’d fallen from grace over a bad debt and a worse temper. Now he was in Montevideo, chasing second chances. For men like him, second chances often wore the skin of other people’s secrets.

Jin’s new drink arrived. He took a long swallow, the wine doing little to mask the rum’s burn. While staring into the glass as if it were a scrying pool, he murmured, “She had this laugh,” speaking to no one, except perhaps to the ghost in his glass, “Like… bells, but rusty bells. From a church that’s seen some things, you know?” Vittorio didn’t react, but his stillness became more profound. He took a delicate sip of his amaro.

“Sera,” Jin breathed the name like a sacrament, “I called her Sera, it was softer. Her real name was a mouthful, Seraphina. Sounded like a princess or a saint.” He chuckled, a sad sound, “She was neither, she was a chef. Could make a piece of fish taste like it had died happy just for her.” 

Vittorio’s ears caught every syllable, a well-honed instrument of survival, kicked into gear. Seraphina, a chef from Italy? The stories always said the ruby haired Maritanis had a runaway daughter named Seraphina, a culinary artist. A cover for the syndicate or a genuine passion? No matter. The hair, Vittorio thought, ask about the hair.

“A woman with a name like that, she must have been striking,” Vittorio said, his tone conversational, neutral. He kept his eyes on his own drink, “Some women, they have a certain… fire.” Jin turned his head, a slow, drunken pivot.

He squinted at Vittorio as if surprised the bar hosted anyone else. “Fire? Nah, not just fire. It was… deeper than that. Like the ocean at night. You know it’s there, you know it’s powerful, but it’s quiet.”  He smiled, a lopsided, tragic thing, “But her hair, friend. Her hair was like a warning sign. Ruby red. Not from a bottle or spray, never once saw her color her hair. It was real. Like God ran out of normal colors and said, ‘Here, have some treasure.’”

Ruby, the words hit Vittorio with force, like a sudden spotlight spilled down on them. The myth might be true after all; stories of the vain Maritani matriarch who spent millions on genetic tampering generations back, rumored to have produced this legendary marker of vibrant hair. The Maritani heiress’s hair was a beacon, a crown, and this sad, plastic-faced man in a dive bar seemed to have known her intimately.

“A rare treasure indeed,” Vittorio murmured, his mind racing. This wasn’t just a lead, it was a potential motherlode. The Castellanos would pay a fortune for confirmation of the heiress’s fate, or for the location of her potential children. His debts would be wiped clean, his status restored, his old house returned to him. Vittorio could almost smell the Mediterranean sea air.

“We met in a casino in Naples,” Jin continued, lost in the haze of rum and memory. He was only almost careful, even in his cups. He mentioned the city, but not the family. The establishment, but not its name. “I was fighting. She was… slumming it. I made a joke and she laughed her rusty-bell laugh. That was it, I was a goner.”

“And where is this ruby-haired siren now?” Vittorio asked, his voice a study in casual indifference, “Surely no man in his right mind would let a woman like that slip through his fingers.” The light in Jin’s eyes guttered out.

The happy-go-lucky mask slipped, revealing the self-loathing tragedy beneath. “Let her go? ” He knocked back the rest of his drink, the glass hitting the bar with a sharp crack, “My fault, all of it. I was a fool, she made the mistake of trying to save me from myself.”

Vittorio filed the information away, a cold, hard data point. But surely the story didn’t end there. The Maritani as well as the Castellanos were obsessed with bloodlines. If Seraphina was still out there somewhere, she had a responsibility to pass on the legacy. There might be a child, another heir.

“Sounds like a tragedy,” Vittorio said, his voice dripping with a sympathy he did not feel, “To lose such a woman.” He signaled the bartender, “Another for my friend here. The good rum, on me.” Jin looked at him, a flicker of his old street-smart suspicion cutting through the drunkenness. But the offer of free, good liquor was a siren’s call he’d never learned to resist, “Thanks, pal.”

 “So,” Vittorio said, as the fresh glass was placed before Jin, “This Sera, this Seraphina… did such a vibrant life leave nothing behind? No… echoes?” Jin held the new glass, staring into the amber liquid. Though he wasn’t an intellectual, he wasn’t a complete idiot. He had sworn to protect one thing above all else. After failing Sera, he wouldn’t fail their daughter more than he already had.

He looked up at Vittorio, and for a second, the drunk, sad man was gone, replaced by the boxer he used to be. “Echoes?” he said, his voice low, “Yeah, just echoes and regrets. Lots of those.” He offered a hollow, joking smile, wrapping the tragedy right back up, “But what’s life without a few regrets, right? Makes the drinks taste better.”

Jin took a sip of the good rum and said nothing more about Seraphina. He had already said too much. But in the underworld ‘too much’ was often just enough. Vittorio had what he needed. The legend looked more real after tonight and the hunt for the Maritani heir had its first new lead in years. The key, this broken man who called himself Tao Lim, was sitting right beside him, drowning in a past he couldn’t escape.