* The City, Above and Beneath
A young boy
with dull brown hair smiled back at her through a small ornate black gat in the
wall.
“Hey, having
fun?”
Timothy was
the apprentice timekeeper for the train station and with his grandfather, the
master timekeeper, his job was to see through most the working machinery in the
train-station, in particular the clocks. Back when Inna was still new to being
a stray he had seen her scavenging in the hall an pointed her out to his
grandfather. Unfortunately his grandfather had then had gone straight to the security guards to
report her and Inna had struggled to
keep out of the clutched for the rest of the day. Later when Timothy had found
her again he had explained and apologised for his grandfather and
they had been friends ever since.
“Naturally,”
she replied, answering his question.
“Well thank
god for that, I was getting bored in here on my own, you want to come in?” he
invited.
Inna
hesitated, Timothy lived in the train station’s tunnels and access passages to
tend to the clocks but she rarely got to see them. His Grandfather was too
unpredictable and they had no way of knowing if he would catch them.
Timothy
sensed her hesitation and smiled, “Grandpa’s not here,” he informed her, “he's gone. I figured you’d like to take a look around while we have the chance.”
Inna smiled
and her eyes sparkled, “Sounds like fun.”
Inside they
roamed in the darkness, Timothy looked back over his shoulder, “Grandpa had to
leave for family business,” he explained, “so I’m in charge of the clocks while
he’s away.”
“Nice, a
challenge for you then?” she called ahead.
“I love it,
but it’s my first day on my own, hence you can help me out," he teased, he knew Inna didn't know a thing about clockwork, but she was happy to learn. “I saw your
spat with the guard earlier,” he noted, climbing up a set of stairs.
“Oh?” she
asked, following after him “I was only trying to be friendly, I don’t know why
he got so upset.”
“Yeah, it's not like the punch to the ribs could have offended him at all.”
She smiled at his sarcasm,
“Can’t see why it would have.”
It was a
little dark inside the passageways. Dark but cool and enclosed. Timothy took her first through to the medium clock that overlooked a
restaurant and café hall. He clutched her hand and guided her up to see.
Through the number holes in the clock face she could see out over most the
hall. It was fantastic, she could see everyone but not one person saw her,
despite looking her way often to check the time.
She looked
over and took in a bit of the picture. An elderly couple, a woman in medium
blue and a man in a suit, were being guided to a table by a young waitress
about twenty-three years old and caramel hair. She then noticed Yumie in the
crowd, Well aren’t we all for bumping into each other? she thought,
Although it does tend to start with a one way meeting.
She turned
to Timothy. “So,” she smiled, “How do you wind this thing?”
He smiled
back and started to demonstrate the procedure. Winding the clock with the
massive handle and checking it according to his own pocket watch, he then had to check each part to
see everything was working and no bits needed replacing or mending. Then that clock
done, they moved on to the next one.
At the next clock she was able to help. It was huge and heavy, so she took on
some of the weight and helped him wind. They moved from clock to clock, Inna
mentally outlaying the routes and layouts of the passageways. After three more
clocks Timothy took her hand and led her up another set of unfamiliar stairs.
They were
already pretty high up in the station, they had taken two flights to
get to the latest clock. As they climbed Inna saw light coming through the
gloom. The passageway was drawing to an end and as it did so she couldn’t help
but feel excited and curious thinking of where Timothy might have bought her. Then they
started to emerge. Light temporarily blinded Inna as they came out onto flat
flooring, it took her eyes a minute to adjust, and only then could she take in
where she was … and what she could see.
It was a clock, a huge clock, but it was also glass and transparent, and through it she could
see the whole city. The view was fantastic. She could see all of it, and even
though the state the city was in was less then fantastic, from where she was it
was awe inspiring.
Timothy held
out a hand to the view, “Check out our city.”
Inna walked
forward to soak up the magnanimity of the view. True, it was foggy, a cloudy
day in the city, but she felt illuminated in light, and wanted nothing more
than to soak up every drop of it.
A few
minutes later she and Timothy had sat together in the clock/window area to gaze
out at their leisure. Timothy, having come prepared bought out two cookies and
handed one to Inna, turning the scene almost into a modest picnic. She bit into her share of it gratefully then looked up to see Timothy gazing at her.
“What?” she
asked casually.
He shook his
head, “Nothing ... you just look really nice.” He shrugged.
Inna cocked
her head, confused, and looked down at her outfit. Dark green, almost black
pants, and white top with short sleeves, she didn’t have much else. Not
practically glamorous clothing.
“It’s the
light,” he continued, “I’ve never see you in the light, it’s weird to think but
you look different.”
She
considered this and looked back up at him. She could see it too; he looked
different in the light. His face, it seemed easier to look at, more definite. They’d never seen each other outside the train station, and inside they usually only
met in the gloomy shadows.
“Mmm, you’re
right. I mean, I’ve only seen you in those tunnels and round the station, but
yeah, the light does make a difference.”
He shrugged
his shoulders and looked out again at the city. “This place isn’t running to
smoothly,” he commented. “The city, I mean.”
She looked
up at him curiously.
Timothy
shrugged, “It’s true, I see the articles in the paper my grandpa gets, they try
to only report the good stuff, to keep people’s hopes up, but they still have
to report the facts. There’s been massive rises in crime rates this week,
muggings, gangs, vandalism …” He looked at her oddly, she understood, rape was the
word he wasn’t saying. She lived alone and travelled alone a lot at night,
rape, along with mugging and gangs were a big risk for her.
“Wouldn’t
surprise me, people are growing insane, waiting for the next …” Now she
couldn’t finish, but she knew he understood what she was saying. She was talking
about the next Destroying, the Repetition.
“Who did you
lose?” he asked.
“My sister,
it was hard on my parents. What about you?” she asked.
“My Mum,
after she left us Dad killed himself, and I ended up with Grandpa.”
Inna nodded,
suicide was common during the Destroying; she’d seen some people do it, and it
still gave her nightmares. “That was the worst part, the extra deaths, the
people who died because of a reaction to the Destroying, not the Destroying
itself.”
“Could have
been a lot worse, at least we weren't in the sects," he pointed out,
referring to a political system other countries had used with it's people,
"I wonder when the next one will come?” he breathed, his voice soft.
“I don’t
know, but something tells me that when it comes, rape will be the least of our
worries.”
She looked
out the window. Before the Destroying this city was one of the largest in the
world. It was good, not a wreck, or a sparkling city of angels, but it
was good. Until the Destroying came. Many towns were completely destroyed,
burnt to ashes sometimes, or vandalised past any possible human habitation; people
flocked to the cities. To find work, or be with loved ones or find
treatments to the viruses that began spreading like wildfire after an accident
in one of the hospitals. Inna’s mother had contracted one of those and had very
nearly joined her daughter in the grave.
The city was
thrown into poverty and chaos then the Rioting began. It was the darkest
time in human history. Inna had come through it, but now she was a stray and a
street rat, like so many countless others. Every day there were more people
becoming homeless, joining gangs, sinking to the lowest of the low in society,
and once there many people didn’t make it.
Now the
hospitals only cared for people with identification, they have to check a
person’s record before the even allow any patent to be treated. It was a
security protocol that went in place after the toll began to build of people
attacking hospitals; the other side was one nobody liked to talk about, the
fact that the hospitals didn’t like having to treat so many people. They took
the option that bought down the number of patients they’d have to treat. This
meant Inna would probably never set foot in a hospital for the rest of her
life. She lived on the streets with the gangsters and robbers, it was people
like her that’d need the hospitals most of all.
She got sick
a while ago and almost died because she couldn’t go to any hospital. She was
stuck in a little room, with no bed and unable to get herself food, let alone
medical tablets, for days. Thankfully she improved before she starved and
recovered on her own in a few days, but it had been a scare, and not one she
ever wanted to repeat.
She looked
out on the rusty brown city again and wondered how on earth it could ever
survive another Destroying.
She and
Timothy hung out for a few hours after that. Timothy had money and took her
down to one of the cafés for a cheep coffee each. They sat together and drunk,
talking a bit about what Timothy would do with his free time now he had his
Grandpa off his back for a while. One of these ideas was the passageways, in
his new free time Timothy could properly teach Inna all the passages of the
station.
“Sounds
great,” she enthused. “How about we finish this then get started?”
Timothy
agreed and upon finishing they left the café and spent the next hour getting
Inna acquainted with several routes through the train-station for future usage.
Inna enjoyed her time in the dark enclosed spaces, they felt strangely safe and
cave like. Most of them were completely alien to her after an hour of learning
a few had grown familiar. Then reality hit and it was time to get back to
scavenging and being a stray.
After she
left the train station she first decided to try looking around the nearby
casino. She managed to sneak in quickly and started walking around scanning the
red carpet floor. Loose change was what she usually found of course, but
sometimes other things were dropped, she’d even take a pen or dropped chip if
she saw it.
She spent an
hour searching the floor and counters, but then saw some security guards
heading her way and made a silent dash for the streets.
Back in her
natural habitat she took her usual rounds around the allies, checking drains
and looking in trash bins for money or discarded food. However nothing came
close to last night’s score and eventually she had to give up on this too. Feeling
desperate now she headed to the dump.
The dump was
one of the riskiest places. Sneaking in was difficult, then there was sneaking
out and not being caught in the mean time.
As always
she lay in wait for a convenient vehicle heading into the facility and eventually truck
came motoring her way, its inside filled with trash ready for the dump. It
stopped at the gate to get in and she seized the opportunity.
Moving as a
leopard she dashed to the back and jumped on to the bumper, here she leaped up
grabbing the edge of the truck’s roof then she swung herself round and lay flat
on the top. Here she breathed a second as a young man came around to check the
cargo. They drove in without incident.
The truck
would also serve as her escape once it left so she didn’t have a lot of time.
While it was still moving she leapt off without being seen and made note watch
it wherever it went. She could not afford to get stuck in here. She started
foraging.
The dump
wasn’t a place she visited often. Maybe when she could afford the
time for extra luxuries, but that was rare and it wasn’t the case today. Today most of
her hot spots had turned up nothing, she was bored and she needed to try
something. Her hope was sometimes she could find good stuff here, even things
that she could re-sell. It was a small hope but it was something.
She stated
with one of the smaller piles, and going through she found a small pocketknife.
She smiled, it was a great find to start with, it even looked sharp so she pocketed
it thinking her luck might have turned again. She was right. Three dead watches
showed up next, but even dead she knew an apprentice timekeeper who might fix
one so she pocketed them too.
The truck
driver took his time here and allowed her forty-five minutes of searching. By
the end of this she’d found one knife, three cheep dead watches, a crow bar, a
frayed white top with a small hole in the back and some old pencils. With this
she was immensely pleased, if curious why se was always coming across white
tops. She it on over her old top, hoping it’d at least improve her warmth, stuffed
what she could in her pockets and grabbed the crow bar. Quietly, she then made
her way back to the truck where her driver had stopped chatting. She tucked the
crowbar uncomfortably into her pants then took a breath, waited for the correct
moment, and leapt. She grabbed the edge of the roof. She couldn’t move right
with the crowbar so she quickly grabbed it and waited for a noisy moment to
shove it ahead of her. Then she took another breath and heaved the rest of
herself atop the truck. She looked over, the driver hadn’t seen. A sigh of
relief escaped her lips and she pressed herself down flat on the roof to leave.
Five minutes later they had got out without incident, maybe a little smellier,
but better for the trip.
She left the truck as soon as she could, but only to find herself on the wrong side of town. She gritted her teeth, unfamiliar territory was never good. She kept to the allies; a crowbar
wouldn’t be fun explaining to any police or CSS (City Safety Sergeants) she
might come across. The city grew dark around her; she’d been out too long. She
needed to stay out of sight. She tried the rooftops for a while. It was cool
and clear and the night air seemed colder then the night before, she only
hooped she’d be able to sleep better tonight. As she came across the cold iron
of the rooftops she could afford to feel no peace.
She remained
on guard and edgy as she came across the high streets of the city, but still almost
came into conflict with the infamous gang of the rooftops, The City Bats who watched
from above to ambush those beneath. Spotting them she backtracked, moving
silently away before retreating back to the streets.
