He just couldn’t do it. Once he left the old man and Ivan, Kaĉjo’s mind seemed to shut down. It had to be the Lethidine, though he had thought himself largely immune after the night when he had pumped the levels up. Apparently, though, its effectiveness came back after a few nights at the normal levels.
Sighing, he decided not to fight it. If he gave in, he might get a couple of chrona of sleep before the visions made his night hell. The plan worked, though maybe not for quite as long as he would have wished. After what seemed almost no time, he was back against the curve of the dome, staring down at the city.
He had done it so many times now that panic no longer gripped him. In fact, he felt completely in control of his motions as long as he stayed far above the dwellings. He could see everything except that southern wall, as usual. When he skirted along the glass, though, he suddenly realized he had approached the space, and it didn’t stand within its usual dense fog. Instead, he recognized what he usually saw – the odd shape, the hedge, the wall. He could just make out some light above the uppermost stones in the barrier.
Light?
If there were light, maybe he could finally see something. He fought against his usual terror, muted by the unusual visibility, and raced toward the bulge in the glass membrane – made even more obvious by his elevation. Even as he dove closer and closer, the fog stayed away, and he tuned his eyes to the line of light. If he could just get a little closer…
When his feet hit the pavement, all of his bones rattled, and they shook him instantly awake. His rapid breaths revealed that he had just endured some ordeal, though he didn’t know what. What he did know was that he had not walked to the southern wall – he had not actually moved from his bed – and yet the wall now stood before him, the actual wall that he had never dared approach in the light.
Had he actually flown? Without his board, even!
His eyes stood wide against the night, and he spun to ascertain that no one had seen him. Whether or not they had, he now saw no one – alone in the dark, in the one place he had wanted more than any to investigate. How had he stepped beyond the property without the headache? Mitigation, he realized. That had to be it. Since he had started receiving it, he had been able to roam freely at any time of day without repercussions – the hollowness of the night had been one of his favorite things about the new status as Advocate.
Well, now he would take advantage of it. Even if he didn’t like the way he had gotten there, Kaĉjo couldn’t regret where he was. He rotated back to the surface and placed his hand on it.
Whatever Channer said, the surface felt like glass. Perhaps before men slipped into the ennui of the domes, they had developed some amazing substance that could sustain the vast arch while still letting the sunshine in. Unlike the other sections of the exterior curve, the houses on the south did not run directly up to the glass, instead stopping a few yards away. A path of brush and shrubbery discouraged anyone from attempting to find what was inside.
Of course, with no one watching and no one monitoring, maybe he could get away with it. Once he had pushed past the initial edge of the greenery, he realized that he would likely come away with scrapes on his hands – maybe even his face – and he would need to make up an excuse for Channer and the others he sometimes encountered. He would figure it out.
After pressing past more shrubbery than he had ever managed, his fingertips found the glass, and he began to trail along its surface in search of an anomaly that might indicate a door or opening. Nothing. Some tall, shrub-like trees stretched as high as his eye could see, and they formed an impenetrable barrier against the vision outside the glass.
After about fifty feet, though, Kaĉjo’s eye caught a flicker of light that barely brushed past his vision. If he had not stood shrouded under an emerald canopy for the past half chrona, he would never have seen. He pressed his eye up to the spot and strained against the blackness. The other side of the glass seemed almost as inky, but as he peered against it and his eyes clouded, a vague motion of shadows seemed to billow through an almost indiscernible glow. They did not seem trees. Animals, maybe? Or humans, his mind tried to insist.
Surely, this couldn’t be the hospital. Surely, his own search had not led him to the same place as Ivan’s curiosity.
Leaning away from the cool surface, Kaĉjo dropped to the ground onto what felt and smelled like a moss. Though it didn’t generally grow inside the dome, he had encountered small patches, brushed his fingers across its velvet. What was he going to do?
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He would have to approach the space from the outside. Probably not immediately, but soon – maybe within the next few days.
The outside.
The Dregs, the Deplorables, the Deluge. So many things that had filled his entire upbringing and training with the closest thing to anxiety he had been able to feel at the time. Now, all the education returned to his memory, and his new access to fear sent a shudder through him. He would do it, though. He would go outside and try to find a way into that anomaly.
When he realized that he had dozed again, Kaĉjo jumped to his feet. Dawn’s light had begun to filter down through the leaves overhead, and he knew that ANGELs and Advocates would soon begin their rounds. Picking through the brush to avoid more scratches, Kaĉjo managed to escape the tangle of twigs and leaves. From his position, he noticed no one else. In truth, the light had not quite reached the brightness he had imagined.
He made his way back toward the Paramount, toward Benevolence and the barracks of the Advocate. If anyone cared to look at the logs, they would note a suspicious lack of a heartbeat in his dwelling for his night abroad. Not likely anyone would, though.
Just as he passed Benevolence, he encountered his first sign of humanity, and he pulled up short, intent to hide.
It was an ANGEL and an Advocate, just as he had suspected.
He narrowed his eyes, intent to note every movement away from him in preparation for his escape, and once they had passed to the next street, he ventured into the open, glancing behind himself to make sure they hadn’t heard his motion. No, they continued on.
What had he been thinking? Honestly, he had no idea what would happen to him if someone found him outside at night. Maybe nothing – it wasn’t like he was out in the Dregs, which would likely have resulted in his reassignment out of the Advocates. He had merely been out at night inside the dome. Maybe he was just monitoring something.
The sound froze him in his tracks when he heard it.
It came from behind him, from where he had just passed, and he felt certain it originated with the ANGEL. No doubt it had not come from the man.
Turning back, Kaĉjo went in search of the sound.
The sound had rung high, with a quality of tone that he had never heard. What was it?
Finally, he made up the distance and could make out the forms of the male and the ANGEL as they moved away from him up the street.
There it was again, the strange bell-tone emitting from her mouth. She had thrown her head back, face raised to the sky, and a note that mimicked the songs of the ANGELs came out repeatedly in short bursts, even as the man turned toward her with a shushing tone.
That was no ANGEL. No Mech had ever made a sound like that.
Like many of the ANGELs, the female – at least, he assumed it was female since all the other ANGELs were made in that form – wore loose ringlets around her face, light brown in color but flashing gold when the occasional flash of light shimmered across her hair. Like most ANGELs, her skin bore a lightly tanned, even appearance, with a glow of energy underneath. This female seemed more an energy of life than of electricity, though Kaĉjo didn’t know why he thought that.
A new suspicion birthed in his thoughts, and he pressed closer to the couple where they stood before a gate in the wall between two houses. Who was the Advocate? Who would help a Deplorable hide inside the city overnight? Perhaps she’s not hiding. Perhaps she was trapped in by the gates. Even so, the Advocate should have reported her rather than given her refuge.
When the Advocate turned toward the woman again, a light brushed across the man’s face, and Kaĉjo knew immediately: the man was Ivan, and the woman had to be his “friend,” the Deplorable. Kaĉjo wanted to confront his coworker, demand that the younger man refer the woman to the authorities, but he couldn’t move. Even as he considered the proper course, he hovered in expectation of hearing the sound again.
There was no repeat performance, but he did observe something equally as fascinating. With a slight toss of her hair, the woman turned her face toward Ivan, and her lips parted to reveal a broad crescent of white teeth. He had seen the ANGELs perform the expression – a smile – but this was different. Even insiders occasionally flashed an empty, polite reflection of a similar expression, but nothing like what he had seen. Something in her eyes, crinkled at the corners, carried life. A spark and a connection, though Kaĉjo did not know with whom. Perhaps Ivan, but he was not certain of that fact. When he thought about it, Ivan was pretty likeable, and as he watched the woman exchanged her unusual energy with her companion. The realization opened a hollow irritation in his gut.
Before he analyze why, the gate had opened, and the pair disappeared into the alleyway behind.
He needed to see this creature again. Most Deplorables, when they came in, seemed distracted and anxious, and Kaĉjo had always chalked it up to a slower wit and the greater suspicion born of life in the Dregs. This woman did not seem anxious, even though she had likely been forced to stay inside the city overnight when the alarms went off. How was she so calm? If the gates did not open for another day, he would find a way to set up surveillance on the spot so he could find out what was going on. Whatever it was, Ivan was in over his head, and with their mutual sharing of secrets, Kaĉjo’s fate lay at least marginally intwined with his younger coworker. He would meet Channer according to the regular schedule, but he would return to his surveillance of the woman at every chance until he found out the truth.