Ben hates the Misty City.
It was a cold, damp, and particularly miserable place to live, and if Ben had any other option he would not be here. That’s the thing with the Misty City though, it chose the people, not the other way around. He still doesn’t quite understand what makes the city choose who it does and has made his peace with never returning. Well, he gave up. But it sounds nicer to say that he made his peace.
For the most part, anyways. Ben kicks a more solid piece of mist and continues his despondent walk.
If he had any option he wouldn’t be out here walking around the terrible place, but he was running low on funds, and he had a job to get to. He’s survived the Misty City this long, and he’s not going to fade away just because he ran out of money and hates his job. There’s dumb and petty, and then there’s dumb and petty.
It’s not like it’s particularly hard to get either. He just needs to get to the Charity, work for a couple of hours, and be handed the money. It’s pretty easy work, though tedious and soul draining, and to be completely honest, he doesn’t have the imagination for it.
Really, he’s quite lucky. The Misty City chose him quite late compared to the rest of its inhabitants. They already formed a basic government, a basic hospital to deal with wounds, and some basic law enforcement. Essentially government enforced thugs, they were, but better then nothing. Not really, but you can’t have a government and not have some form of police, fucked up or not. Ben snorted at the thought. Law enforcement in the Misty City. All they did was go to the designated rooms and checked to see that everyone could still bleed. Was it mandated? Yes. Was it necessary to ensure there were no infiltrations? Yes. Were they still assholes on power trips? Fuck yes they were.
Ben reached out and dragged his hand through the corner of a building, creating a trail of mist and a corresponding hole. He turned the corner and kept on walking before he could see the building reform.
Really, it could very much be worse for him, he reasoned. He could have had a useful skill and be assigned to the hunter teams. He never thought that being so worthless and having no skills other than Overwatch would be so useful to him. Do the hunters get more funds? Naturally. Is it fucking worth it? Fuck no.
There is absolutely nothing, nothing, that would be worth being put on a hunter team, those poor fuckers.
Ben looked ahead and saw the Charity.
There was never anything special to say about the Charity. It was a building, and the inside was as soulless as the outside. Someone once had a great imagination to its design, and it very much showed. Perhaps it was once majestic, but with so many people imagining and living it over the years, its form had shifted. It was Greek inspired, with columns that were placed oddly and weirdly mixed with what reminded Ben of pictures of old communist blocks he saw online. It was terribly ugly, and discordant with the apartment blocks that surrounded it.
His eyes drifted from the columns that were twisted strangely and almost leaning, and looked at the crowd of people congregated outside.
Looks like the Misty City chose some more people to dwell inside it, and they were busy looking confused and loitering outside the Charity. You could always tell who was new or not by the colors. Something about the city drains out all the colors around. People show up in bright blues and pinks and golds and they always, without fail, end up with the dullest blue or pink or most usual, gray.
The city was a big fan of the color gray for some reason.
Ben didn’t spare another look for the newbies. Someone from the Charity would get to them soon, and then they would be assigned their jobs. Not his problem at all. He went wide to avoid them all, and entered through the side door created for the menial imagination workers.
Ben had never worked any office job before the Misty City took him, but he imagined that the inside of the Charity would be very similar, if not more gray. It was all long hallways and gray beige colors, and flooring that was once possibly carpet, but is now best described as just flooring.
He walked down the hallway until he came to a door labeled “Building Consciousness Department,” which much like the rest of the building, was gray and faded. The door opened up into the room, which was full of his coworkers. When he first came here and was assigned to work here, opening the door was perhaps the creepiest thing that Ben has ever experienced. All of his coworkers were sitting at their empty desks, wide eyed and staring into the distance, all of them dead silent. Now, it was commonplace.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He walked to his desk, jerked the chair out, and was about to sit down when Soledad to the left of him made a sudden gasping noise, blinked a couple of times, and turned to him.
“Oh Ben, there you are. I just wanted to tell you that Joe told me to tell you that he wants to talk to you when you get in.” She tacked on a small awkward smile, as if the news would become less terrible if she did so. Soledad was always unfailingly polite to everyone, but Ben always felt strange talking to her. She was the only other person in the department that was around his age, though the Misty City made that a bit harder to tell, and he felt like she went out of her way to be extra polite to him.
Trying not to make a face at the news, he asked her “Joe said that? Did he say why?”
“Sorry, just that.” She quickly turned back to her desk and stared forward.
Bitch, thought Ben. She always tried to make sure she talked to him as little as possible. He didn’t know what he did to wrong her. He was always a nice guy to her.
He walked to Joe’s desk. The department was the least important thing in the charity, and it could be done by almost anybody. This means that despite being the department head, Joe didn’t have his own office, and was crowded on the floor with everyone else. It was a shitty situation to be in, but that was everyone stuck in this place. Ben was fine with Joe. Joe was an overall chill guy, and was always as fair as possible to the people that worked with him. To be fair, he was also getting the short end of the stick, so that probably made him less of a dick then some of the other heads could be. Ben heard stories about the head of the Hunter’s Department.
As soon as he approached the desk Joe snapped out of his state, and showed a tired expression. “Hi Ben, thanks for coming in.” He took a heavy breath before he continued speaking. “How you doing bud?”
Ben squinted at him. There was bad news here, he could just tell. No other reason to call him to talk, but he wasn’t going to broach the subject. He shrugged.
“Right, right. Same old same old huh? Yeah…” Joe trailed off. “Listen, I’ve got some bad news here. I’m sure you’ve seen the new influx of people right? Hard to miss, they’re so bright.” He let out an awkward chuckle, before becoming serious again. “Alright, Ben. Here’s the situation. The Charity just got a bunch of people, and a couple of them are gonna be sent here. I’ve gotten word from the top dogs that I’ve got to let someone go. It’s too many thinkers here for what we need to maintain. I mean, thinking really hard about buildings so they stay there isn’t exactly rocket science.” He paused to look at Ben, and said gently, “Ben, we both know that even in this room of low imagination people, you were one of the worst.”
Ben regretted thinking that Joe was ever chill. Fuck this guy. Joe one hundred percent picked him because he hated Ben. He can pretend to be as nice as possible, but Ben knows that Joe always hated him.
Ben shrugged his shoulders again. “Okay, so… you’re firing me? What else can I do though? The assignment people said that this was the only place.”
“Well.” Joe let out a small wince. “That’s not completely true. They said that you could also be a carrier.”
Ben stared at him. Joe looked back.
“Joe, you're not serious.”
“I’m sorry it had to be this way, bud.”
“You're not serious! That’s practically a death sentence! You want me to die that badly?! Listen. Listen. Joe, just listen for a second-”
“Bud-”
“Joe, listen, I know my imagination is not the greatest but you can’t let them send me to the squads. I’ll work harder, I’ll think harder, there’s something I’ve gotta be able to do here, something that I can do! Joe, please!”
Joe was as somber as Ben had ever seen him. “I’m sorry, kid.”
Ben stared in complete disbelief. “So that’s it then. I’m dead.”
“You should head to the carriers as soon as possible.” He wouldn’t even look him in the eyes. He wouldn’t even look Ben in the eyes!
“You might as well look me in the eyes before you send me off to die, you asshole,” Ben snapped. His eyes were watery.
“Please kid. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
“Fuck you, Joe.” Ben turned around only to find the rest of his coworkers watching the scene. “And fuck all of you guys too! Mind your own fucking business. Don’t you have some buildings to think of?” He looked at a pimply guy in an ushanka. “I know you’re the guy in charge of the Charity, Beau, and you know what? It looks fucking terrible. Stop trying to make it communist, you french asshole. You’re not even Russian, and you look like a dick.”
Beau gave him back two middle fingers as he stomped out of the room.
What the actual fuck. How could Joe do this to him? A carrier? A fucking carrier? What a fucking joke. Might as well mark his name under the deceased already. The worst job there is. All the danger of being a hunter, with none of the gain. Assigned to a random fucking squad, where they’ll treat him like shit and make him carry all their shit, and hope beyond hope that they decide that they like him enough to protect him even though that’ll never happen because no one ever likes him.
He comes to a stop in the middle of the hallway and crouches down, leaning against the wall.
That’s if they don’t outright kill him. Everyone knows how the hunters are. They’re the real people in the city. All of the privileges, none of the consequences. The entire city runs on them, and they definitely know it. If Ben thought that the police power trip, it’s nothing compared to the hunters.
Fuck. What is he going to do. He can’t run, the police will find him, ‘cause this city is tiny. Besides, he has no money to buy any energy. There is absolutely no way out of this. He is so fucked. He takes a deep rattling breath. There’s no other choice. He’s gonna have to become a carrier. Fuck Joe dude. Just… fuck him. It’s not fair.
He takes several more rattling breaths.
Ben straightens up. There’s nothing he can do.
The way space inside the Charity works is based on how people think about it. So he walks down the hallway, thinking hard not to think of the carrier department and hoping it won’t show up. Of course it does though. He may have been terrible at his job, but working as a builder for a year left its marks, and trying not to think about something always guarantees that you are actually thinking about it.
The door stands in front of him. It’s not as worn down as the builders one was. It’s nicer. There’s nothing he can do. Ben reaches for the doorknob, and takes another deep breath.
It’s the first day of the rest of his life, Ben thinks sardonically.