Chapter XXVI

In the Skin of Yllen

In the streets of Dictaduria, Zanda looked up at the buildings surrounding Dicterium, which were not tall enough to reach the sephirot-guarded stagnum. She appreciated the structure with clarity from the outside; it was massive, divided into two visible parts, superior and inferior.

The upper part was where the Gevrum resided, above everything else, surfing in the sky. It was a gigantic thin rhomboid made of dark tourmaline that floated thanks to ingravitas technology tied to the structure built on the ground. With a significant empty space in between, it didn't seem like they were connected to each other.

She saw a levitator ascending; T.H.I.C. zoomed in, and detailed images of Samelia, Hykar, Pagreri, and Refius returning to the superior part of the building. The street she was on was quiet and clean. The concrete structures around Dicterium were well maintained and oddly modernized. Zanda had never been in a city quite like it; concrete was not used in Kosovo or Malkuth due to its degradable and short-lasting nature.Crystacrete was the new norm, created thanks to Tipharet and Binah, working side by side.

“So, to begin,” Gia announced, “find the identity you will use with Sacrorum, and then we’ll meet with an undercover agent.”

“Can I choose any?” Zanda pondered.

“It’s up to you,” Her kabbalah replied.

“Great, let’s begin. Read the heat signatures nearby; there must be people in these buildings,” Zanda instructed.

The gevurah watched as thousands of orange silhouettes illuminated the concrete structures.

“There’s plenty; cut the range to thirty meters around me,” she instructed, and the number of light spots reduced; she focused on the closest ones. Everyone seemed to be inside.

“Gia, extend the radius to a hundred meters, focus only on Dictadurians outside their blocks if there’s any...” The young woman found an answer to her internal debate. “Perfect.”

The sections around Dicterium were built deeper and higher than the rest of the city, with roads downhill and blockades until they reached the C sections. Two kilometers away, a lonely Dictadurian walked, trying not to make any sound. It was a woman, and Zanda listened to her sped-up heartbeat, nervous, aware she was breaking the rules of curfew. The gevurah climbed through a set of steps, stealthily sprinting to that street. Without a problem, she arrived next to her in a few moments.

Her head was shaved and covered by ink. Zanda wasted no time and positioned herself in front of the woman's visual field. “I’m sorry,” she said as a flash went straight to the Dictadurian's eyes, blinding her.

“What...?” Surprised, the woman could articulate nothing else. A hand was placed on her shoulder, and from it, an electrical discharge made her fall to her knees, unconscious; the gevurah caught her before she hit her head on the ground.

“You got the image?” Zanda asked, hoping to avoid doing it twice.

“The full scan; her name is Yllen Francs; an ex-chesed, member of the Fourth, serving her day fifteen thousand and seventy-seven, convicted for murder, manipulation of information, and spread of fake news. She has many years left in Dictaduria before getting transferred to Capitalia. That is, if she sticks to the law; the record shows a couple of extensions to her conviction already, including the murder charge,” Gia reported.

“That will do,” Zanda said, carrying the unconscious woman and observing her face. “I don’t mind becoming her for a little while. She’s gorgeous.” Yllen’s face was angular, shaped like a diamond. Though undernourished, her beauty was still appreciable.

“I don’t understand why a Malkuthian would break the Edictum. Sectum is primitive in so many ways…” Gia seemed to be on her own train of thought.

“They did primitive things to end up here. Come on, manipulating information and spreading fake news? Murder? Why would someone do anything like that? It makes sense when you study their behavior, like the laws of this place. They’re primitive; anyway, where is her block?” Zanda inquired, trying to remember what all the cold, impersonal system represented.

“Let me check…” Gia started. “It is FK54L-22.”

“Section, building number, floor, and block number, right?” Zanda confirmed.

“Yes, it’s a four-minute walk to building FK54 and a twelve-second flight.”

“I’m not flying unless it’s necessary,” she declared, unwilling to do anything that might risk the operation by attracting undue attention.

Her kabbalah offered no objection but instead shared new information.

“The ventos Pagreri uploaded can make your merkabah invisible for a short amount of time. I would recommend only a minute each use as it consumes a significant amount of Vis.”

“What a convenient feature to keep hidden. Thank you, Professor Pagreri,” Zanda expressed her surprise at the revelation.

“Use it wisely; it’s experimental tech, so it has its limits,” the man's voice transmitted from Gevrum.

“Will do, professor Kertani.” The gevurah felt reassured knowing Pagreri supported her, turned around, and looked back at the central structure surrounded by those massive buildings. The sky was clouded with dirt and smog, obscuring the moonlight. A path was drawn on T.H.I.C. as she commanded the merkabah to become invisible; the concrete floors were hard raspy.

It was different from what she knew; the buildings she was familiar with were constructed in such a way that they were unbreakable, everlasting. They were created with compounds like stone and graphene, crystacrete, sometimes metawoods and concrene, smooth and perfect. The lack of these textures made her pay more attention. She realized the buildings became older and more decayed the further they were from Dicterium.

Those concrete and steel buildings stood tens of meters high, tightly packed together. The nearest ones to the city center had plaques of gold, copper, titanium, and other metals encrusted in their structure, making them outshine the rest. These were constructions belonging to the Evantias, Copernus' allies.

Zanda flew with Yllen in her arms with a swift push, invisible, morphing space and light around her with Pagreri’s Sacrorum. The flight was brief, as Gia had said, longer than a jump; still, she could observe the city from above.

Most Dictadurians remained in their blocks; with few exceptions, the gevurah witnessed a few heat signatures wandering on the streets. Some buildings at the distance were outdated and fragile. She harbored a frightening thought that everything could collapse if the earth underneath became seismic.

The information on T.H.I.C. indicated that there hadn’t been strong earthquakes in hundreds of years, and there was no reason to suspect they should start now. Still, Zanda knew it was a catastrophe waiting to happen. She landed in front of a skyscraper with a large FK54 printed on its sides, stuck between many others.

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“You can go in; the door is open,” Gia announced.

An automatic aluminum entrance slid open, and she went in with Yllen; the inside was the size of two basketball courts, gray and unexpressive. There was a concrete column with several elevators; she called for one by pressing a black button next to it. A rumble of old, rusty metallic parts announced the incoming transport.

“How long?” She didn’t feel like waiting.

“Two minutes and thirty-nine seconds,” her kabbalah calculated.

“What!? There are five elevators here.” Zanda hoped no one would show up in the meantime; her minute of invisibility was over, and now it was false Yllen carrying the original Yllen.

The biodigital entity took a moment to update her.

“Forget that. It will take longer. Seems two of them were not working and now they’re three. One is at the top, and yours is coming down. Four minutes and forty-two seconds.”

“Where are the stairs?” An updated path showed a gate with that symbol around the corner. Before going in, Zanda changed Yllen’s position, bringing her feet around her waist and arms around her neck, with her chin leaning on the gevurah’s shoulder.

“Gia, help me with her limbs,” the unconscious woman was pulled like a magnet towards the merkabah with ingravitas force. Sacrorum was turned off.

“L floor, right?” The cemented space was lit by fluorescent lights.

“Indeed,” Gia confirmed.

Zanda climbed those steps with Yllen on her back while the merkabah absorbed her weight.

“Why didn’t you wait for the elevator?” Her kabbalah wondered seven floors later.

As she was about to reply, noises an infant’s voice from above paralyzed her.

“I’m hungry!” the innocent voice reached her ears.

The gevurah became silent while another voice echoed from afar.

“Go to sleep, baby. Tomorrow we can find something to eat,” the child’s mother tried to ease her son’s hunger with defeat in her voice.

“I’m hungry now! Mummy, my tummy hurts.” It was gut-wrenching to hear.

“It’s okay, Benay. Mommy’s hungry too. Sleep, come close; it will go away. We need to keep each other warm, honey.”

Zanda saw their heat signatures lying on the stairs from the upper floor, cuddling each other.

“I don’t want to; it’s early. I’m hungry!” The child did not understand the situation.

“Benay…, I’m tired—” was the last thing the gevurah heard before she exited the emergency stair, shocked; her breathing was heavy. It was only a matter of time before the gevurah offered to help. But she couldn’t. Samelia and Hykar had been clear about not interfering.

That was poverty. Zanda had heard about it before but had never been near it. It was heartbreaking to witness hunger and the helplessness of sleeping on the cold ground. Witnessing them deprived of their fundamental Malkuthian rights broke something inside her. She pressed the elevator button and stayed there, shaken, carrying the unconscious Dictadurian.

Something happened with her merkabah; Sacrorum morphed her into Yllen, and the original became invisible. When those metallic doors opened, eight Dictadurians wearing overalls waited, spread out in an elevator that could fit at least fifty people. They didn’t react to her entrance. Gia activated the ventos just in time.

Thankful to her kabbalah, she went in, walking to the back in silence, away from them. The ride was quiet. No one spoke; they just waited.

They stopped a few times before making it back to Level A.

Zanda stayed there a few minutes; some left while others entered. She took a deep breath as a strong smell of filtered sulfur filled her nostrils before those doors closed.

“Great. If I had been more patient…” Annoyed at herself, she pressed the button with an ‘L’ on it.

“That indeed,” Gia’s tone of voice reflected her opinion on that resolution.

Zanda thought about the Dictadurians she had been around; they all had the same grim aura, a lower vibration, sad and lost. Trapped in their meaningless routines. Her ride stopped on floors E, G, and J, picking up other hopeless souls before reaching Yllen’s floor. Everyone seemed depressed there. She focused on the timer displayed on T.H.I.C.

Sacrorum was about to run out when she exited. Her merkabah turned visible just as the horizontal doors closed behind them.

Level ‘L’ was like any other: gray and monotonous. A sign in front of them was divided like L1-45/L46-90. She went to the left, turned a corner, and found a hallway illuminated by the cloudy night outside. Each block was marked with alphanumerical codes traced on them. Some doors had items that identified them, with names like Gasal, Termin, Ortizar, Percel, Cabrax, Fraben and a variety of decors to differentiate from others. With weird nicknames like ‘D.R.A.P.T.,’ ‘Purry’s,’ and ‘Fantabuhouse,’ among, she lost interest of them fight away.

Someone slept on the side of the concrete hallway while Zanda avoided them.

“They don’t have where to sleep? I thought they all had blocks,” she questioned, directing her query to the sephirot back at Dicterium.

Hykar’s voice came through her helmet. “Eighty percent of Dictadurians live in some level of poverty. You are correct; there is a block for each Dictadurian. Everyone starts with one, but we can do nothing if they lose ownership. They can lose their houses by gambling and paying debts, sometimes destroyed by natural catastrophes. In those cases, the regime makes an exception and aids them with new installations. Thirteen percent of the people that live within these borders are homeless.”

Zanda kept going, mortified, pacing fast until she reached a block labeled ‘FK54L-22’. A tiny lens on top of it read her face, and the metallic door underneath opened after she placed her right hand on a scanner. “Thanks.”

A ‘👍’ appeared on T.H.I.C. while Zanda stepped into a rectangular room filled with green lights. A few plastic bags stuffed with Yllen’s belongings occupied that space. There was a doorless frame that led to a bedroom, inside there was a sleeping bag, a pile of overalls, and random old clothes spread around, complete with a shower on the room’s corner, a small side table with a rolled needles, and empty bottles of vodka.

“Is this her actual place?” The gevurah laid Yllen on top of her bed.

“Yeah, she got it six weeks ago,” her kabbalah confirmed.

Zanda found that situation deplorable.

“What does she do for a living?” The questions kept flowing. She had to study her persona.

“The most recent records show she’s a widow. Mother of three. Killed her husband,” Gia filled T.H.I.C. with information.

“Why did she do it?”

The details were more gruesome than expected.

“It says here she was abused by him. That’s why she received a shorter sentence; it was in self-defense. Murder usually sends extarri to Sectum for fifty years, starting with time in Eslavia. Yllen was one exception and had a twenty-year sentence, she already did ten in Imperia. Works as a blacksmith in Dictaduria and a cook in the undercity,” Zanda appreciated the information.

“Where do you think she was going?” There was more to know.

“The one place worth breaking curfew for, Negativus.”

“The underground city. I’ve heard things,” it piqued her curiosity.

“The undercover agent is there,” her kabbalah responded.

“Great! That’s where we’re going next. Show me the way.” Zanda couldn’t hide her excitement.

“Get to the rooftop, then I’ll show you the closest passage.”

“Copy,” the gevurah studied Yllen’s angelic face. Her skin was like a cloud hit by sunlight; it glowed with the incandescent bulb from a lamp on the side table. A map was uploaded to her crystasleve showing a path, and an estimated arrival time of seven minutes.

“Can I access the roof through the elevator?” She exited Yllen’s room, turned off the lights, and left the apartment block, wishing that woman’s life would improve.

“Not directly; both points of access are closed during the curfew unless there’s some sort of emergency,” Gia responded.

Disappointed, Zanda pressed the button and waited for the ride down.

****

That's it for Chapter XXVI!

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