They ride on in silence. Everyone taut, vigilant, listening. It’s ten thirty-five in the morning and the streets are bustling with activity. Rachel can hear people walking and talking through the thin trailer walls, even a few cars.
They stop three times, and turn at two of those stops. Based on the length of the stops and the noise from the streets, Rachel guesses they've only driven through stop signs, not traffic lights. Since cars were usually reserved for upper class, deliveries, and mercenaries, there would be little traffic on the roads beside pedestrians.
After they pull into another distribution warehouse, the group transfers to a mail delivery van, after they help load it, before being taken to a community house in a poor, run down part of the city. The van swerves around several potholes, piles of garbage, and scrap building supplies that litter a residential area. Close to the ugly industrial side, and away from the stores, markets, and more luxurious areas. Rachel hears a gate rattle as it slides open.
“Alright, this is your stop folks,” the driver calls back as he brings the van around some kind of circular courtyard. “do whatever the nice couple says and you’ll be fine.”
The van grinds to a halt, and the guy riding shotgun dips out, probably to open the van, but Touch doesn’t hesitate and beats him to it, to the annoyance of both the drivers.
The group steps out of the mail van to be greeted by a man with brown hair, no wrinkles, but a streak of gray in the beard, a button up plaid shirt, and khaki pants, standing in front of a three-story, multi wing apartment building surrounding a circular courtyard. Just wide enough to let a single car ride the brick road around a small garden. Many other small gardens and cloth-lines hang off the balconies.
“Hello, and welcome to the Little Village. My name is Xavier and I run this place with my wife, Yani.” He says as one of the drivers take the bag of mail, and Touch’s weapons, packed to look like mail, inside.
“I want to get everyone situated as soon as possible, but before I do that, I need to lay out some ground rules:
One, we share everything here. Income, food, and whatever other resources we can scrape together. We can’t afford any hoarding.
Two, we follow the rules as much as we can. You are all unregistered. Working in this city is technically illegal, but it’s tolerated so long as you keep your head down and don’t cause trouble. This is the only place many people have to go, so any trouble making or illegal activity, and you’re gone, simple as that. We can’t have anything blowing back on the people here.
Three, we don’t demand a set payment, but if you make yourself a burden or a liability, then you’re gone. Also, we don’t talk about anyone from the Village, except in the Village. If the wrong rumors slip out, that can attract more unwanted attention.
Last, and most important, me and my wife; our word is final. We’ve lived here for a long time. We know what we’re doing. If you have any questions or problems, come to us first, and come to us as soon as possible.
If there are no questions…”
There were none.
“Then follow me to your rooms. After you settle in, we’ll have lunch.”
People watch Rachel and her group from the balconies, windows, and walkways as they’re shown to their rooms. Touch stares right back at them. Rachel sees quite a few people with visible mutations and disfigurements. Reptilian eyes and patches of scales across the face of one. A woman with pink hair and thick, discolored, leathery hands. Even a few animal type evos, a brown-haired boar sporting a pair of glasses, and a squirrel with an opalescent sheen looking down from a garden balcony.
Luckily, they get their own small apartment on the second floor. It had a single bedroom, a single bathroom, a living room, and a kitchenette. The place was sparsely furnished with a comfortable and worn couch, a large space heater, and some stools to eat at the kitchenette counter. The counter flips up when Xavier flips the switch to the garbage disposal and lifts the counter top to reveal a large compartment.
“Not bad.” Touch complements, trying to wiggle the now closed contraband counter. It didn’t budge. “The disposal hides the sound and vibration of the lock. And it doesn’t wiggle.”
Touch chooses to sleep on the living room floor with Arch, leaving Dill and Rachel the bedroom. Both rooms have a window with a view of the main street. The two are careful to leave the blinds drawn at all times. Xavier hands them two worn bronze keys for the door.
Rachel and Touch spend some time dropping and arranging their gear. When Rachel steps back into the living room, Touch is standing in the corner, facing the kitchenette and front door. Looking around as if visualizing decorations in his head.
Knowing him, he was probably running through scenarios if they were robbed, attacked, spied on, etc. He doesn’t like being interrupted when he’s thinking. Though he was never rude and never told her not to interrupt him, it quickly became obvious the more they traveled together. So she never interrupts unless she needs too, and Touch would, in turn, give Rachel his full attention whenever she did disrupt his chain of thought.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Touchstone takes cursory notice of his friend, then returns to his machinations.
“Do you want me to bring you any food?” she asks.
“No thanks, I’ll come with you in just a second.” He says, as though to himself, eyes still glued to the interior of the apartment.
She sighs inwardly and waits by the door. Rachel bets he’ll forget about food as soon as she leaves his sight, but she will give him the benefit of the doubt and wait for him by the door, with Dill snuggled under her arm like a football.
To her surprise, she only had to wait just over thirty seconds before he and Arch came along. As they make their way down, Rachel notices her companion shamelessly observing and assessing their new surroundings.
They were all understandably on edge, being in a new place after living in the federation of small towns for months. They step into the main lobby where the owners were passing out fresh food from the markets and gardens, mixed with cheaper processed and packaged foods.
They get their food and the four of them sit together outside on the brick roundabout, as many others were doing. Rachel leads them to a spot where they can easily observe the crowd and the comings and goings of their co-tenets.
She chooses the spot for Touch as well as for herself. The entrance to the courtyard was built opposite from the main street. They were surrounded by apartment wings. Rachel sees people on the roof and by the gate. Watchers, none of them visibly armed, and they all had hand-held radios. None of the people on duty have any visible mutations.
Rachel and Touch watch as a skinny college girl with streaks of dark red running through her tight pony tail strides up to their group. She has big eyes framed in even bigger glasses. A crooked tooth hides within an otherwise perfect set of teeth, brightening a wide smile that envelops the girl’s angular jaw and sharp chin.
As she grows closer, and neither the stone man nor Rachel change expression or avert their gaze, the wide smile falls short in the corners where it had just met her eyes a moment ago.
“Heyyy, I’m Fayyy.” She says with a renewed smile.
“Hi. Rachel.” Rachel smiles back at her.
“What do you want?” Touch says, a statement more than a question. Rachel watches the nerdy girl’s nervous smile sinks even lower than before. She shoots the stone man a look. Touch smiles.
“I can’t help it. She looks so cute when she’s nervous.” He mumbles to Rachel.
“Ignore him.” Rachel says, turning back to Fay, “How are you doing?”
“Well, to answer both of your questions, I’m doing great. Thanks for asking. And I’ll be your guide while you stay here with us. If you have any questions, just ask me. I live in room one-oh-four, right there. Or you can find me out here over lunch and dinner, and I’ll give you my information so you can text or call anytime.”
Touch looks to Rachel. After a pause, he borderline interrogates Fay for everything she knows about the internet situation around the city. Fay doesn’t seem to notice she’s being interrogated and happily spills everything she knows in magnificent detail.
Rachel listens, but she is much more interested in her broad smile; the way it rose and fell and widens and shrinks as she talks. One second it looks like a glued on, uncomfortable contortion. The next it reaches her eyes and envelopes the whole courtyard in its radiance. Rachel decided her smile would never falter, it would just shift to perfectly capture how the girl’s feeling from moment to moment.
Touch and Fay go back and forth. Touch picks apart everything she has to say, asking for more details, asking what Fay thought of this or that, his body and voice growing more relaxed, less measured. Rachel dares say she saw his skin lighten up a shade at one point.
Must just be the sun popping out from behind the clouds.
Fay had a response for every one of Touch’s expositional questions, ready to go from the top of her head. Every time Touch dug deeper, and she was ready with more details, Rachel saw that smile sink deeper into her face. The only time she hesitated was when Touch started asking Fay what she thought personally. But that didn’t last long either.
Arch and Dill had finished their food and were staring at the two going back and forth. Rachel glances around and sees the two divs aren’t the only ones. Touch and Fay both had voices that carried across the courtyard.
According to Fay, this place has secure internet, but it’s rationed out like everything else. Not due to cost, but too much traffic, even if encrypted, would attract attention. They’re told about illegal wifi spots all over this end of the city that technically belonged to no one in particular, and so technically couldn’t trace back to anyone. But, being unaccountable and unregulated, were extremely dangerous to use.
It was always safe to assume that some malicious party, whether corporate, criminal, or freelance asshole, had tampered with it somehow. It was also wise to always travel with your phone off and the kill switch (if you had one) on. Or the battery out if you didn’t.
There were safer options for those who could pay, but you still had to be very careful about who you trusted with your information. One wrong move and it was to the prison, lab, or worse.
There were little more than two dozen people and divs roaming around. According to Fay, there were almost eighty people living here; most were out working whatever small jobs they could get. Most was temporary work like construction, or seasonal work in the markets, or long grueling hours with menial labor like factory work or general labor. There were probably also more dangerous and higher paying jobs working for local gangs and other criminals, Touch pointed out.
“True, and if you want to get involved in that, you can go live with them.” Fay deflects masterfully, with a gleeful smile.