Angel’s back pressed against the mud-stained glass. The gun well in the center of his sight had three muzzles forming three points of a triangle. Its holder was on the opposite side of the elevator with their back to the exit, their eyes burning through both helmets and searing Angel’s soul.

His body was forced still, his chest not even expanding for air. The baton sat next to his foot, pleading to be held and used. It was begging, its eyes watering and arms hugging his foot and kissing the shoe. Yet its master remained an unmoving stone, shutting his ears to the cries of its property. His eyes were reserved for the armored goon with an itching trigger finger before him.

It was the same deep and modulated voice that reached Angel’s ears. “You’re under arrest, I think. Turn around with your arms behind your back, okay?” The near-casual tone did not combine with the voice changer. Angel could not discern if he was being treated like a fool or if the soldier was just being nice.

“I have rights! I’m innocent, you have the wrong person! I’m just taking a walk, a walk! I took a wrong turn!”

There was a long, oppressive quiet before his soon-to-be jailer spoke again.

“Oh. That’s bad, you shouldn’t do that.” He lowered his rifle. “You still trespassed and have a dangerous weapon though, so you’re under arrest. Turn around with your arms behind your back, okay?”

“No no no, you’re mistaken! I’m not dangerous!” Rifle down must mean peace. Clearly. He crouched and took the baton and offered it to his captor, handle first. “If I was dangerous, I wouldn’t give you my weapon, right?”

The extended arm was shaking and violated by the gaze of the Esquive operative. Their helmet shifted from the weapon and to Angel’s own mask too many times for comfort before they reached out to it, the peace offering taken.

The plain helmet almost looked lost in thought as they observed Angel’s weapon, letting their rifle hang by the strap to hold the baton in both hands. “This is good,” he said. “Good quality. Field Marshal would like this. I guess an enemy wouldn’t give this to me, you’re right.”

Voice modulation made it hard to discern sarcasm from genuine praise. Angel just hoped that this was praise as he spoke. “It’s my only one,” he patted his holster by instinct, “so I’m good, right? It’s just for self defense. That’s all, really. I got lost and had to defend myself in case I saw a stalker!”

“You look like a stalker.”

“No no, this is just the best clothing for Net 1 when you think of the quality-to-cost ratio! Not a stalker at all, this is my first time here! By accident!”

“By accident. I believe you.” They were nodding as they spoke. “I’ll tell the judge, it should reduce your sentence. Now please turn around with your arms behind your back, you’re under arrest for trespassing.” The handcuff on their waist was now in their hands and then around one of Angel’s wrists.

Screams. “Help me, Mockingbird! Please! Hey! Answer me, help me!”

“You have Random Rights if you want to stay silent.” Angel’s gas mask and chest pressed against the glass walls as the cuffs clicked around his other wrist. The yellow chains binding the two hands shrunk in size the moment they locked, straining his wrists further. “It’s okay, I’ll take you to a base on the Ground. They’re nice. Net 2 bases are not nice.”

“Xam! I paid so much sugar for protection! Protect me, please!”

“Is that a Machine God or a god from the Sol System? It’s fine if you want to pray. You’ll be fine. You have your Xam and Ciros. I’m Ciros. I’ll help make your sentence shorter with your prayers.”

Ciros gently tapped the button he stopped Angel from pressing and the elevator’s glass doors slammed shut. A short rumble later and the downward motion of the elevator set in as the prisoner slumped on the floor covered in thick dust. They sat in silence as the barely functional screen above the door counted the remaining distance. Six miles.

It would be a while.

I actually got caught… Where’s the Bird Office? I paid so much specifically so I don’t get caught!

Angel banged the back of his head against the walls. “Can I ask something?”

“Yes.”

“How in the world did you find me? I know the district’s power turned on, but that’s still too large a search area to know where to chase me so easily!”

Ciros’ head turned to the sky. Or the ceiling, at least. “I saw a levitating chair. They come on if somebody gets close.”

He stared for a long time. His eyes were met with equal blankness. No words were exchanged. Five-point-five miles.

“So you’re saying you found me because of… a chair?”

“In a way.”

The single slow nod expressed all that Angel’s mouth could never. Rumbling was the only sound that existed. The environment outside matched the status inside the elevator, with each second passed turning the sky from dark to darker. It was pitch black once the counter hit the five-mile mark, both outside and inside. The only lights came from their visors doing their best to give their eyes particles to absorb.

“You also left footprints. I followed them,” Ciros added.

“What footprints?! It’s not like it’s snowing—” his head fell into his lap, his back bending at a far too unnatural angle.

The dust. The dust was the snow.

“It’s okay. I found you because of them. You’re not lost anymore.”

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“Okay.” His voice matched his body’s posture.

“That is odd, though,” Ciros sat opposite Angel, “I thought you were lost. But you know about the power turning on. There are no streetlights to show they’re on.”

Angel failed to swallow his choke and replied in a hoarse voice. “I just felt the vibrations.”

“Vibrations?”

“Yeah, when it turned on, there were… vibrations. Yes.”

Another set of silence. “I wasn’t on Net 1 when the power came back. I can’t tell. That makes sense to me. I believe you.”

Another case of Angel debating in his head if their words were sincere. “Exactly! You weren’t there. You had to be there to know!”

They chuckled. “You sound nervous. I don’t want you to be nervous.”

“Because you’re arresting me! Anyone would be nervous. Or scared. Or crying. I’m not, of course. I’m better than that.”

He was about to.

“You’re right. Sorry, comforting people wasn’t in the manuals or training.”

“Ah, you know, it’s fine, I’m only going to spend the rest of my life in a jail cell. At least it’s not the Nexus, right? Haha. Silver linings.”

“That’s true. Our jails on the Ground are a great place to die.”

Angel shifted in his seat, trying to be as comfortable as he could get in a cramped room and facing the theft of his future. “I’d rather not die in jail at all.”

“Where do you want to die?”

He opened his mouth and closed it immediately. Thoughts. Many of them. He didn’t know what to say, where he wanted to die. Not while imprisoned, he was sure. But exactly where, he didn’t know. Yet his mouth opened and words came out all the same.

“With the stars.”

He had never seen a star before, not even his own planet’s. Bright and beautiful. That was the only thing he knew about them. To see and touch one was his only purpose. Of that he was sure. Three-point-two miles.

“That’s nice. I’m not good at philosophy.”

“I don’t mean metaphorically. I want to see the stars like Arraka! That’s why I want to bring back the Railways!”

“Melville Corp. banned that idea.”

“They ban everything! It’s restricting human advancement! Our own evolution! Once I get out and into a Railway station… Uh…” He coughed, trying to bring his fist to his mouth and groaning upon the chains tightening instead. The sweat dripping down his face mixed with the phlegm on his mask and he gave the best excuse he could. “These are all hypothetical, of course. They outlawed acting on it but not talking about it because we’re not that barbaric, right? Haha. Yeah.”

Whatever face Ciros had, Angel wanted to believe it was one that didn’t see through his lies.

Again, only rumbles echoed in the elevator. Two-point-one miles.

“Yeah.”

One word and every possible doubt surged his mind like a hurricane. He never liked the corporate modulators. Made it impossible to catch somebody’s tone. Now he despised them for the very same reason, but not as much as he despised himself for being dumb and stupid.

They play nice so criminals confess more about their crimes.

Line repeating inside his head, head banging against wall. Thuds were the only things breaking the thick hush the rest of the way down. Soon the counter reduced to zero and the hissing mist of decontamination returned. Ciros rose to his feet once the doors slid open, and Angel followed.

Neon lights were all the eyes could see. Buildings outlined in bright glowing colors stretched for miles. Every stall and house and store and high-rise. Signs and billboards littered the air, all drawn and written in a glaring, colorful display to catch a passerby’s attention. But that was only its secondary purpose.

Glimmering LED lights stained every inch of the Ground out of necessity for no sun would ever grace them with light, not with Sky Network 1 above them, and Sky Network 2 above it. Mere meters above the tallest oval building outlined in green was the all-encompassing pitch-back void, waiting. Waiting for the lights to flicker for the smallest moment that it may devour the city at last. The barriers of light pollution would only last for so long.

Angel and Ciros’ immediate vicinity was less colorful, being the alleyway of two buildings not reached by the light. It was wide enough to fit a small crowd between the two brick walls, if the crowd were still standing. Bruised, bloody, some dismembered. Scattered over the cold stone ground and heaps of trash were motionless blue-skinned thugs dressed in tattered grey capelets.

Leaning against the wall was the obvious perpetrator, her fists rubbing against her eyelids as her head turned to the elevator. Her long dark green hair swayed with her movement with there being no wind to blow for her.

“Glad you did it,” she said, her tone uplifting despite the scene.

Then her eyes slowly opened and she ducked and leapt from side to side as Ciros opened fire. He pushed Angel behind him with a surprising gentleness and chased after the girl without a second’s rest of gunfire. Angel fell within the confines of a monster of plastic as the girl pulled out her own firearm, a long, one-handed pistol washed in brown with silver engravings on its side.

A trigger pulled and a reverberating boom. Ciros’ triple-barreled rifle ceased fire as he rolled to the side, her bullet leaving an inch-wide hole on the wall rather than his torso. In her other hand was a knife that was ten feet away from the soldier and now right next to him, striking at his neck at speeds that blurred. He swung Angel’s baton to parry the blade as he hopped backwards and her knife arm jerked back and her body again ducked and scattered as Ciros returned fire.

The walls and ground and trash and bodies were exploding with each bullet, shrapnel and dust and smokes of blood spraying everywhere they could. The still-restrained stalker somehow remained unharmed and he scurried behind the elevator and its durable glass as the two fought on.

Click.

An empty mag. The woman rushed her foe, firing her weapon once, twice, thrice, and onward. One step and she crossed half their distance and two steps and they were locked in melee. Her wide bullets deflected off of the baton, two of them flinging right next to Angel whose screams of panic were drowned by the clashing metal and bright sparks. A slash and a duck, a jab and a dodge, a kick and a block. Ciros’ gun was knocked out of his hands and hung on with its strap alone.

With his armed hand he blocked the knife going for his knee and with his other he backhanded and redirected the barrel of the gun aiming for his head. In the same second she drove her foot to his solar plexus and he flew to the wall behind him. The next second and her gun’s barrel focused on his chest and the bullet pierced through his vest and his body through the wall and to the next street over.

The woman sighed and hid her weapons inside of her black suit, the white of her shirt underneath muddied brown. Angel left his hiding spot and trudged towards her and her small smile and barely raised brows. Pity.

The two stood still, staring at the hole in the wall as people ran past the alleyway screaming, thirty seconds after the fight started and ten seconds after it ended.

She spoke.

“Rough day, Guerin?”

“I’m going to laugh and cry.”

He did.